inconceivable the pleasure of standing at a hot-dog stand,
inconceivable New Zealand,
inconceivable thinking of sooner or later,
inconceivable to be alive or dead
I want to hate you and hate plastic,
you want to hate me and hate the fog.
I want to love you and love hilly countrysides,
you would like to love me
and have a lovely city, a lovely color, a lovely animal.
Everyone stay away from me,
it is the time after my death
and what I just imagined, with a sigh, as my life
are only blisters on my body
which sigh when they burst
(He stops singing.) But things are going well for us right now, aren’t they? I saw a woman walking in the sun with a full shopping bag and I knew at once: Nothing more can happen to me now! I hear an old lady say: “Parsley on the stalk? I’ve never eaten that.” And then she says: “Well, and I don’t think I’ll indulge in it now.” Nothing can happen to me any more! Nothing can happen to me any more! (He continues to sing.)
No dream
could make anything seem stranger
than what I’ve already experienced
and there’s no cure
for the peace and quiet
(He speaks again.) … with which every morning I let the dingaling out from behind my fly to fidget in the peep show to relieve the pressure which I could no longer imagine during the sleepless night. (VON WULLNOW, KOERBER-KENT, and LUTZ appear silently. WIFE wants to leave.) Stay here. (She leaves. HANS leaves too. Pause.) So you still exist. (Pause.) Why don’t we make ourselves comfortable? (Pause.) What can I offer you? Schnapps? Cognac?
KOERBER-KENT
No, thank you. It’s still too early for that.
QUITT
Or juice, freshly squeezed.
KOERBER-KENT
That doesn’t agree with my stomach. Hyperacidity.
QUITT
Then a few breadsticks. Or would you prefer some other snack?
LUTZ
Thank you, we really don’t want anything. Seriously, don’t go to any trouble.
QUITT
You’ve got a frog in your throat. Hans will make you a camomile tea. (LUTZ shakes his head.) Camomile which we picked ourselves at the Mediterranean. The blossoms are intact!
LUTZ
(Clears his throat.) I’m over it already. I don’t need anything.
QUITT
And you, Monsignore? Perhaps you’d like a mint lozenge? One hundred percent pure peppermint.
KOERBER-KENT
I’m perfectly happy too.
QUITT
I’d put it on your tongue myself.
KOERBER-KENT
I usually enjoy sucking on mint lozenges, but not today.
QUITT
Why not today? It isn’t Friday, is it?
KOERBER-KENT
I simply don’t want to. That’s all.
QUITT
You want to jilt me?
KOERBER-KENT
If that’s how you take it.
QUITT
I’m offended.
(He walks out. KOERBER-KENT wants to make a gesture to stop him but VON WULLNOW makes a sign not to.)
VON WULLNOW
I know. I could cut off his head with one slash of the whip and let the decapitated chicken slap on the table before you. I was grinding my teeth so fiercely just now, some must have cracked. (He shows his teeth.) There! You traitor, you upstart, you Polack! (Raving) My hand even trembled briefly, which almost never happens to me. In the meantime, of course, it has become completely steady again. Look! (He holds out his hand.) But we have to be rational now, in the most economic sense of the word: at first as rational as necessary and then, when he no longer has any need for our reason, as irrational as possible. I’m already looking forward to my irrationality. (He makes a pantomime of trampling, torturing, and throttling.)
LUTZ
(Interrupts him.) Yes, that’s it; we have to let ourselves go for a moment. Like you just now. Perhaps that’ll teach us what to do next. Let’s say or do whatever comes to mind. That will determine our method. After all, that’s the way he does it. So let’s dream. (Pause. They concentrate. Pause.) Nothing is happening. I only see myself cutting a steak against the grain or playing tennis in such short pants that my testicles are hanging out on one side. (Pause. They concentrate.) Do you know what I’m most afraid of about myself? (They regard him expectantly.) That one day I will get up in a restaurant so lost in thought that I forget to pay the check.
(Pause. KOERBER-KENT scratches his behind and they regard him.)
KOERBER-KENT
I just happened to think of our minority stockholder …
(Pause.)
LUTZ
Don’t you ever dream?
KOERBER-KENT
Ah! Monstrous dreams!
LUTZ
Well! Let’s hear.
KOERBER-KENT
(Powerfully) I … I’m walking in the woods alone …
(Long, embarrassed silence. Pause. VON WULLNOW laughs.)
LUTZ
You are laughing?
VON WULLNOW
I was remembering.
LUTZ
Was it that funny?
VON WULLNOW
Remembering it was. (Pause.) The grain bins in the loft, the trickling grain and the mouse shit inside, the swirl of grain that my memory delved into like a boy’s naked foot, the grains between the toes, the vacated wasp nest, still so enlivened by memories, on the underside of the roof tile. (Pause.) I’ve got to stop. Remembering makes me a good person. Otherwise I would make up in a moment. Oh, Quitt. Oh, Quitt, why hast thou forsaken us?
LUTZ
Now I know what we are going to do. We have to talk about ourselves, about us as individuals — what we’re really like. I for one sometimes feel like hopping up and down on the street and don’t do it. Why not? And last summer passed by without my having enjoyed it once while I was sitting in my office with its tinted window. Every so often I do something crazy: I eat the rotten part of an apple, slam a car door before everyone’s gotten out … or something like that … and if that doesn’t help, there’s always … (To KOERBER-KENT) our minority stockholder. (QUITT returns.) He’ll show him where the moon is rising.
QUITT
I do miss you. And perhaps you miss me too.
VON WULLNOW
Quitt, today I had a bag of flour in my hand. Do you know how long it has been since I’ve held flour in my hands? I don’t even know myself. The package was so soft and heavy. This weight in my hand and at the same time the gentleness of the pressure — I was transported into delicious unreality. Doesn’t the same thing ever happen to you?