LUTZ
I’ll take his arms. Who’ll take the legs?
QUITT
And if we trip, the dragon seed falls out of his mouth. And the new Adam leaps to his feet.
KOERBER-KENT
He doesn’t bother me. I find him entertaining. He reminds me of some dark urge inside myself. Besides, he doesn’t really mean it. He can’t help it, that’s all. Ever since we had a chat, just the two of us, I believe him.
LUTZ
It’s easy to believe someone if it’s just the two of you. I believe anyone if it’s just the two of us. But I get nothing out of it. That’s why I try not to be alone with anyone. It falsifies the facts.
VON WULLNOW
He has no sense of honor, that s.o.b. He reminds me of an old nag we used to have at home. He pissed every time he stepped from his stall out on the pavement. It made such a wonderful splashing sound. He moved through the world with his joint dangling. And look how bowlegged he is. And the part in the middle of his hair — which isn’t really centered. The threadbare fly, the pointy-toed shoes, that’s no way to live!
KOERBER-KENT
Von Wullnow, you’re wasting your time. There’s no insulting him. Your elaborate insults only increase his self-esteem. Let’s sit down and begin. I have to prepare a sermon today.
LUTZ
What are you going to preach on?
KOERBER-KENT
About the fact that death makes all men equal. Even us.
VON WULLNOW
(Indicating KILB.) He’d like that. But now — should he hear everything?
LUTZ
But we’re not going to say anything that no one besides us should hear, are we?
(Pause. The businessmen laugh. KILB is playing with his tongue in his mouth. HANS leaves. The businessmen sit down on a set of matching chairs and sofa.)
VON WULLNOW
Are you standing comfortably, Kilb? We’re only human, after all. (The businessmen laugh again. QUITT’S WIFE appears. She looks at all of them, then walks diagonally through the room and disappears. To KOERBER-KENT) Do you as a priest also employ female help in your enterprises?
KOERBER-KENT
How do you mean?
VON WULLNOW
I was just thinking about the fact that you aren’t married, neither happily nor at all.
KOERBER-KENT
No, we can’t marry.
VON WULLNOW
I didn’t mean it that way.
QUITT
I don’t understand your allusions.
VON WULLNOW
But you understand that they are allusions?
LUTZ
(Distracting them.) Of course, women are cheaper. But you have to be careful. Every month a few of them pull a fast one on us.
KOERBER-KENT
By pilfering inventory?
LUTZ
No, by becoming pregnant. Scarcely have they started work when they turn up with child — not out of passion, mind you, but out of cold calculation; and we have to pay the maternity benefits.
VON WULLNOW
One shouldn’t always be talking about the good old days, but things were different in the past. You didn’t even need to talk about the good old days then. Everyone was one big happy family in my grandfather’s shop. They didn’t work for my father, they worked for the shop, and that also meant for themselves — at least that’s the feeling you got, and that’s what mattered. Anyway, our system is the only one in which it is possible to work for oneself. It’s incredible how strong my sense of solidarity was with my workers. It cut through all class differences and thresholds of natural feeling when they made their work easier for themselves by singing songs or urging each other on during particularly difficult jobs, with original chants which, incidentally, should be collected before they are forgotten altogether. Today they get the work over and done with, mutely and indifferently, that’s all. Their thoughts are somewhere else, nothing creative any more, no imagination. I must say I admire our imports from the South. They’re alive during their work, are happy to be together. Work is still part of their life for them. Moreover, in the good old days the workers used to take pride in their products; when they went for their Sunday walks they proudly pointed out to their children anything in the vicinity made by their own hands. Nowadays, most children haven’t the faintest idea what their parents do at work.
KILB
Why, do you want them to point out the bolt in the car which their father personally screwed in, or the stick of margarine Mother wrapped herself?
VON WULLNOW
I don’t have my cane with me. I refuse to touch you with my bare hands.
KOERBER-KENT
I recently had my library repapered. Of course, I helped with the work, and then I noticed the lack of enthusiasm with which the paper hangers were working, despite the fact that I was paying better than minimum wages. Why is it, I asked them, that you can’t develop any passion for your work even though you are paid for it? The good souls didn’t have any answer to that one.
VON WULLNOW
Typical.
(KILB clipping his fingernails in the meantime.)
KOERBER-KENT
They only think of the money. They’ve got nothing in their minds except bread and broads, as I always put it. Instead of enrolling in evening courses or absorbing our cultural heritage, they spend their wages on refrigerators, crystal, and knickknacks. Since they no longer have any respect for the public good — not to use a religious word in this circle — they have become possessed by the devil of personal happiness, as I sometimes say jokingly. And yet there’s no way for them to be personally happy without considering the public good. You’re scarcely born and already you’re pushing into the revolving door of the here and now and can’t push your way back out, I always say. The paper wraps the stone, consumption cracks the character.
VON WULLNOW
A story. No sermon without a little story, right? I know my rhetoric. Which, incidentally, is another art that has gone to the dogs among us … I was walking through the supermarket.
QUITT
You in a supermarket?
VON WULLNOW
Mine, of course. But I wanted to tell a story.
QUITT
Von Wullnow, the supermarket baron, that’s news.
VON WULLNOW
I had to invest, taxes forced us to. I don’t have to explain that to you. And besides, a big chain is just the right market for some of our products. That way we have our own outlets and don’t need to discount to the retailers.
QUITT
“Harald Count von Wullnow Supermarkets.”
VON WULLNOW
We called them Miller-Markets. Anyway, when I went to inspect one of them, I couldn’t help noticing a woman who made herself conspicuous by standing around a long time with an empty shopping cart. I watched her and wondered to myself, because, aside from the furtive glances she was casting about, she seemed almost ladylike. Suddenly she came up to me and said softly, Do you think they still have the giant-size detergent on sale that was advertised last week? Too bad, I thought afterward. She was just my shirt size, I liked her layout. But to lose one’s dignity over a consumer article like that! I felt quite ashamed for the person.