(GEORGE glances briefly at the match, looks away. The second glance: he picks up the match and puts it in the ashtray.)
VON STROHEIM
(Applauds by way of suggestion, but one hears no clapping.) Much better already! Much better! Of course, if I were you …
PORTEN
Who’s stopping you?
VON STROHEIM
Yes, who’s stopping me? (He takes a deep breath and assumes a pose. (JANNINGS takes the coins from the table and flings them into his face. VON STROHEIM shakers himself and comers to his senses. He speaks to JANNINGS and GEORGE as though teaching them something.) You’re still here?
JANNINGS
(Repeating, but twice as loud) You’re still here?
VON STROHEIM
That’s it! Exactly! That’s how I would have done it! (Pause. VON STROHEIM gives JANNINGS a sign to go on speaking. He prompts him.) What do you want here?
JANNINGS
What do you want here?
VON STROHEIM
We just want to take a look around.
JANNINGS
This isn’t an amusement park!
VON STROHEIM
Why don’t you let him speak for himself!
(JANNINGS nods to GEORGE and sits down on the fauteuil, his back to the others.)
GEORGE
This is private property. (JANNINGS nods.) You’re not in a restaurant. You have nothing to say here. Please talk to each other only in whispers. If you must intrude here, at least take off your hats. Didn’t you see the felt slippers by the entrance? Look at me: I’m talking to you. You’re not at home here, where you can put your feet on the table. What has the world come to that anybody can come in? Watch your step, man-traps and self-detonating charges have been set. Danger, rat poison. Don’t touch anything. Beware of dog. Long, hard winter. Floods in spring, mud in the closets, no more cranes wake with their shrill screams in the meadows, no more June bugs buzz through the maple trees. (Pause.) It’s terribly painful to be alive and alone at one and the same time.
(Pause.)
VON STROHEIM
He’ll never learn it.
(Pause.)
GEORGE
It wasn’t raining yet, but farther away one could hear it already raining …
(VON STROHEIM turns away with PORTEN and walks around with her as if he wanted to inspect the furnishings. He wants to take out a magazine, but when he straightens up with it, it turns out that the magazine is chained to the table, like a telephone book, and he quickly puts it back. Then PORTEN wants to pick up the little statue covered with a paper bag, but it turns out that the statue is either screwed or glued to the chest of drawers. She pulls the bag from the statue: it is a multicolored painted dog sitting in an upright position. She touches it and it squeaks: it is made of rubber. VON STROHEIM joins her and pulls on one of the chest drawers. It will not open although he makes repeated attempts. Finally he tries a different drawer, which opens very easily.)
VON STROHEIM
You see!
(They leave the drawer open and continue their inspection tour. He takes off and drops the cover from the first picture: a seascape, not a rough sea, not a calm sea, no ships, only ocean and sky.
Almost simultaneously PORTEN has removed the cover from the second picture: a mirror without particular characteristics. She settles on the second, so far unused, sofa while VON STROHEIM returns from the bar with a bottle and two glasses. He sits down next to her and twists the bottle top but cannot open it. He quite casually blows into the glasses, and a cloud of dust swirls into his face. He casually puts the glasses and bottle aside. He looks at his hands, turns one palm up and down.)
PORTEN
(Suddenly seizes his hand.) Watch out! (Pause. She sees his hand.) Oh, it’s only your hand. I thought, an animal.
VON STROHEIM
Why don’t you look at me?
PORTEN
I don’t dare look at you closely because I’m afraid I might catch you at something! (She looks at him.)
(Pause. BERGNER in the meantime has gone to the mirror and calmly viewed herself in it.
GEORGE, still standing, carefully wipes the cutlery on the table with a large red cloth he pulled out of his pocket and then places it — now and then he tries to stand it on end — on a second red cloth as if he were putting the cutlery on display. He and JANNINGS are spectators.
PORTEN has put her hand on VON STROHEIM’S knee and is caressing her own hand with her other one.)
VON STROHEIM
(Moves his lips soundlessly, but every so often a word becomes audible.) Snowplows … hedges … a dog portrait? (At one point he presses down the intertwined fingers of both hands so that the joints crack.)
(BERGNER is combing herself, but with movements becoming increasingly more insecure. She does not know in which direction to comb while viewing herself in the mirror. With a small pair of scissors she wants to cut a strand of hair, holding it away from her head, but keeps missing until she finally lets go of the strand. She wants to put on makeup, pencils the eyebrows and the eyelines, puts rouge on her cheeks, powders her nose, puts on lipstick. But as she does this her movements become more and more shaky, and contradictory. She confuses the direction in which she wishes to draw the lines. She is mixed up. She wants to put the cosmetics back into the handbag but they fall to the floor. She walks away. She turns around, walks in the opposite direction, at the same time looking back over her shoulder, turns around again. She is totally confused, her face is badly made up. She walks in a direction where no one is and says: “Help me!” but with wrong gestures, hopping around. She bumps into things, bends forward to pick up things that physically lie behind her.)
PORTEN
(Calls to her.) Open your eyes! Say something! Pull yourself together! (But BERGNER does not turn her head toward her, instead to somewhere else. PORTEN gets up and walks up to her from behind.). Don’t be frightened.
BERGNER
(Startled, looks up toward the stairs. She tries to point to the painting with the seascape but is unable to.) It winked at me! It’s winking at me!
(PORTEN calms her down by caressing her and leading her around the room. Together they bend down for the coins and other things on the floor. At first PORTEN guides her hand, then BERGNER reaches for the things herself and also points at them correctly again. While doing this they talk to each other, and the longer they talk, the more sure of themselves and graceful they become.)