(KOERBER-KENT wants to follow him but returns again. QUITT paces up and down.)
KOERBER-KENT
(With lowered head) I don’t envy you, Quitt. I could also tell you about myself, like the others, but that’s not my way. I never talk about myself. I’m proud that I eliminated myself from my own calculations long ago. I’m not interested in poking around the lint in my navel. I’m glad that I can be replaced. (Pause.) I pity you, Quitt. And I’m afraid for you. I recently saw a drawing a painter made of his dying wife: the pupils had lost almost all their color in the fever, and the iris, too, had become very pale. Nothing but a dark circle separated it from the white of the eye around it, and the centrifugal force of dying had even thickened this circle. It was as if the eyes sighed toward the observer. The artist’s pencil had hatched an endless sea of sighs from a mortal seeing hole, as I called it. And the following morning the woman is supposed to have really died. (A popping sound backstage.) What was that?
QUITT
Hans is at work. He isn’t very good at uncorking bottles. There’s almost always a pop when he opens the cooking wine.
(Pause.)
KOERBER-KENT
Aren’t you afraid to die? (He raises his head and wants to transfix QUITT—but QUITT happens to be standing behind him.)
QUITT
Over here.
KOERBER-KENT
Don’t you ever quickly push everything away from you just because you are deathly afraid? (QUITT steps away from him and comes to a halt with his back to him. KOERBER-KENT lowers his head again and closes his eyes.) Someone once told me how he dreamed he was dying. He was sitting on a sled and said: I am dying. Then he was dead, and at some point they closed the coffin lid over him. And only then did he become deathly afraid: he didn’t want to be buried. He woke up, his heart was fibrillating. Besides, he was very ill, the dream wanted to kill him. Cause of death: a dream, you could say. (Very loudly) You see, dying in your sleep isn’t at all peaceful, but perhaps the worst death of all.
(QUITT has kept pacing around in the meantime, absentmindedly, and now stands in front of KOERBER-KENT.)
QUITT
(Very softly) Really?
KOERBER-KENT
(Is startled. Looks up at QUITT now.) I know from other stories (One can hear a key turning in a lock backstage and a door handle being pressed down.) that a dying person keeps looking away whenever his eye catches a specific object, as though he could postpone death in this way … (He listens.) Someone pushed down a door handle just now, no? Why don’t I hear a door opening? (Pause.) Once during a meal I personally sat opposite a man who suddenly started putting the table in order: put the knife and fork parallel to each other, wiped the edge of the glass with his napkin, shoved the napkin into its silver ring. Then he keeled over dead.
QUIIT
(Distracted) Who kneeled on the bread?
KOERBER-KENT
He keeled over dead, I said. (Frightened) You’re afraid too.
QUITT
(Scratching his pants absentmindedly) Damnit, the cleaner didn’t get that spot out either. Yes? I’m listening.
KOERBER-KENT
He was still smiling beforehand — (Two or three distinctly audible steps backstage.) but in his deathly fear he bared his lower teeth instead of his upper teeth, as you would expect. Nothing wrong with a dead dwarf, that’s still a vegetative process, almost. But a fully grown corpse, just imagine that! It’s monstrous. (He listens.) Why doesn’t he walk on? Wasn’t someone just walking back there?
QUITT
My baby fat starts growing back when I listen to you. You and your deathly fear — at the moment everything seems thinkable to me and also beside the point.
KOERBER-KENT
What? What?
QUITT
It was just the floor creaking, I’m sure of it.
(PAULA appears in a dress and with a veil in front of her face. At the sight of her, QUITT unzips his fly halfway down and up again. A garbage can cover bangs loudly on a hard floor backstage.)
KOERBER-KENT
As I said, I’ve got an eye for those who are marked. (He points to QUITT.) It’s that thin line on the upper lip … (He notices PAULA.) It’s you! How good that you are here. Perhaps you could … him … (He tries to find the word.) What’s the word?