Peter Handke: The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

QUITT

No.

VON WULLNOW

I mean to say that you, you with your ruthless overexpansion, are destroying our nature. You senselessly transform the old countryside where we could come to our senses into construction sites. Your blind department stores squat like live bombs in our old city centers. Every day a new branch goes up, differing from the others only by its tax identification number, which you even set up in neon light to blink from its roof as an advertisement of your sense of public responsibility!

QUITT

A good idea, isn’t it?

VON WULLNOW

You’re ruining our reputation by carrying on just the way the Joneses think a businessman behaves.

QUITT

Perhaps it’s not our reputation I’m ruining but you.

VON WULLNOW

You know neither honor nor shame. The manure pit behind my country house is too good for you. I’d like to choke you by stuffing blotting paper down your throat. I damn you! Whosoever utters your name before me, there shall I reach into his mouth and rip out his tongue, and with my very own hands in fact. Wait, I’m going to step on your foot. ( He does so, not that QUITT reacts. VON WULLNOW blows up his cheeks and slaps them with his hands. He bites the back of his hand. He hits his head with his fist, quickly touches up his hair .) You’ve disappointed me, Quitt. It’s a pity about you. I liked you best of all. We’ve got so much in common. I still admire you. Whenever I have to reach a decision I think of what you would do under the same circumstances. ( He screams ) You rat, you Judas, for twenty pieces of silver—

QUITT

Thirty, to be exact.

VON WULLNOW

Twenty, I say.

QUITT

(To KOERBER-KENT) But thirty is right, isn’t it?

KOERBER-KENT

Yes, it was thirty pieces of silver. According to the latest findings, it’s a question of—

VON WULLNOW

( Screaming ) Pervert! Atavist! (LUTZ places a hand on his shoulder .) I once dreamed that we grew old together. Every day we drove in a carriage through town, playing bridge. And now all that is supposed to remain a dream? Let’s stop fighting each other, Quitt. It could be so beautiful — just the four of us — that is, five, counting Mrs. Tax — and since all the others have thrown in the towel in the meantime, we lone wolves have become so big there’s no longer any need for arrangements. Those who help us into our coats after our conferences could conduct our affairs for us. Let’s not underbid each other any more.

QUITT

I underbid you. (VON WULLNOW roars. ) Does it help?

VON WULLNOW

A hobnailed boot in your privates! Don’t you understand me! What am I at this moment? A radical! How I’d simply like to yawn at you. Do you have a slice of bread on you?

QUITT

Are you hungry?

VON WULLNOW

I’d like to have something to crumble between my fingers. My brain is scraping against my brain pan. Actually a pleasant sensation. So animalistic. ( To LUTZ) I won’t say anything more now. ( To QUITT) I’d like to switch with you, you shark. Besides, it’s time for your wife to pass through the room again, isn’t it? Come on, say something, I’d like to have something to laugh about! Dear Hermann … ( Pause. He takes QUITT’s arm .) You know, I could be your father? Let’s go fishing together, fathers always take their sons fishing. Up the stream before the thunderstorm hits. I’d like to be drunk now so that I could remember something. ( He lets go of QUITT’s arm .) Apropos streams. You ruin them with your plastic monsters, let the countryside choke on plastic still lives stamped “biodegradable” where no environment is even left or, at most, a multicolored mildew on the ground, a soot-colored dust on a sweetly crinkling leaf, a fish belly in the churning water. Do you know what children ask when they’re actually shown a big ripe tomato? Is it made of plastic? they ask. And I personally saw a child that didn’t want to sit down in a Rolls-Royce because the seat wasn’t made of plastic. Let’s stop all this overexpansion, Hermann — or let’s limit ourselves to products for environmental protection. There’s still a pretty penny to be made in that field. Everything could be the way it used to be.

QUITT

But you stopped expanding a long time ago. Besides, as you say so rightly, the functional units are diminishing in size. So the number of units can continue to increase, right? I’m not the kind of man who wants to leave everything the way it is. I can’t see anything without wanting to utilize it. I want to make everything I see into something else. And so do you! Except that you can’t any more.

VON WULLNOW

( Steps away from QUITT.) You refuse to understand us.

QUITT

I understand you very well. You know what it means when one of us becomes human or even speaks about death. An emotion, after the first moment of fright, becomes a method for us.

VON WULLNOW

It’s not that I call your behavior treason — but what should I call it? Faithlessness? Treachery? Unreliability? Falseness? Cuntiness? Disloyalty?

QUITT

Those are the expressions you apply to employees. Among us I would call it businesslike behavior.

VON WULLNOW

Now I really won’t say anything more. I’ll stick my finger down my throat in front of you. ( Does so and leaves, but returns at once. ) And I really was attached to you. ( He leaves and returns. ) You with your frog’s body. ( He leaves and returns .) My spit is too good for you. All I’ll do is spit it from the back to the front of my mouth. ( Does so, leaves once more, returns once more, is beside himself, makes a horrible face, and leaves once and for all .)

(LUTZ wants to say something .)

QUITT

I know what you want to say.

LUTZ

Then you say it.

QUITT

It’s true. I didn’t stick to our agreement.

LUTZ

But you didn’t plan it that way.

QUITT

I simply forgot about it, did I?

LUTZ

Not exactly forgot perhaps, but you didn’t take it seriously enough.

QUITT

Why should I have taken it seriously?

LUTZ

(Laughs.) Not bad. Very tricky indeed … ( Pause .) Excuse me, I interrupted you. You were going to say something.

QUITT

No, that was it.

LUTZ

Why don’t you defend yourself?

QUITT

Why don’t you accuse me?

LUTZ

You must be very unhappy.

QUITT

Why?

LUTZ

One is completely locked up inside oneself like you only when one is miserable. I know that from my own experience.

QUITT

Don’t compare me with yourself.

LUTZ

There, you see. For you there’s only you, you don’t even want to be compared. You must be in pretty bad shape. ( He’s been playing with his forefinger and thumb the whole time, unconsciously, as though he were counting money .)

( QUITT takes hold of his hand. )

QUITT

Why don’t you admit it: that’s nothing but your new gesture for something tangible? Anyway, you’ve been counting money ever since you started to talk.

LUTZ

All right. Now I’m going to tell you what I think of you.

QUITT

But watch out. Perhaps you’ll think differently once you’ve begun to speak.

LUTZ

Once I begin to speak everything is completely thought out. I don’t stutter. (To KOERBER-KENT) He multiplied his share of the market at our expense. I have nothing against his methods, but he should have discussed them with us. And besides, of course I do have something against his methods: he recruits the ex-convicts away from us in the labor market and promises them a sympathetic environment — and that means that he leaves them entirely to themselves in a certain area of production and pays all of them the same low wages. As he admitted just now, he manufactures smaller and smaller amounts of his products but without changing the size of the package, so that the buyers believe they’re getting the same amount. This way his prices appear to remain the same while we have to raise ours. He lets doctors buy shares in his drug firms and then they prescribe his medicines. ( To QUITT) You duplicate our most expensive products with cheap materials. Your guarantees are only valid for Three-Star refrigerators. You print the national eagle on your retail price tags, so that it looks as though they are government-approved. Your price tags are huge — so that people believe your things are cheaper even when they are at least as expensive as anywhere else. The price structure has cracked, Quitt. We are standing at the deathbed — at the deathbed of the old concept of price — and have gotten sore feet ourselves. We shiver in the shadow of your competition. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still far too calm. Perhaps that is the calm before the next breach of the agreement, which will be my downfall. I can already see the hailstorm in the distance, and panic flattens my ears against my head. I’m afraid, Quitt, afraid of the great storm when I won’t be wearing the thick coat of capital. And yet I tried to save the structure by firing thousands. Quitt, you ruined our prices. You pushed them down to prewar levels! Everything has a slight crack. Every day there’s one product less on the market. It’s all over with the beautiful diversity of the market. Even the high consecration is for nothing. It’s the end of all our proud figures. I’m at a loss. I am at a most poodle-befuddled loss and in utter despair. ( To KOERBER-KENT) I was my parents’ only child. Even my birth was a practical decision: it meant my mother’s death. At age four I kneaded imitation coins out of mud. At age seven I picked flowers for invalids in the neighborhood and sold them. In school they called me “Moneybags.” A sensible boy, my father said. He still has respect for material values, said my relatives. Before my first communion, the priest said that if you really wanted something afterward and really believed it, the wish would come true. Still feeling the pressure of the host against my gums, I walked all the way home with my head lowered: because every cell of my body believed I would find the coin I had wished for. ( To no one in particular ) Since that time I’ve had my doubts about religion. ( To KOERBER-KENT) But I remained reasonable and became more and more reasonable. He’s all business, people said of me. But now it’s all over. All over. I don’t want to believe anything any more. What’s there left to believe in if that s.o.b. destroys our prices and our rational system? What kind of age is that? What’s still valid? I too want to be unbusinesslike at last! (Pause.) I dreamed that I was running and kept on running so that a huge banknote wouldn’t fall off my chest. Just the way I keep on talking now. I’d like to put my head into a bowl of water and drown myself. ( Exit. )