The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (19 page)

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Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

BOOK: The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
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KILB and HANS
(
Simultaneously
) And then you palled it up with your chauffeur?
 
(
Pause. Honking offstage
.)
 
QUITT
That's Lutz. He also honks that way at night when he comes home. It's a signal for his wife to turn on the microwave oven. Made in Japan. Go help him with his coat.
 
( HANS
exits.
)
 
KILB
(
Steps forward
.) How does that story about your parents go?
 
QUITT
It's not idiotic enough. I once dreamed I was losing my hair. Whereupon someone told me that I was afraid of becoming impotent. But perhaps it only meant that I was afraid of losing my hair.
 
KILB
But why are you afraid of losing your hair? What does that mean? Besides, I caught sight of you recently. You were sitting on a bench by the river, rather absentmindedly engrossed in nature.
 
QUITT
Absentmindedly?
 
KILB
You hadn't even wiped the pigeon shit off the bench. Besides, experience tells me that the contemplation of nature is the first sign of a waning sense of reality. And your eyelids scarcely blinked, like a child's.
 
QUITT
Oh, go on, go on. It's beautiful to hear a story about oneself.
 
KILB
I went to have lunch. Steak and French fries. After all, I exist too.
 
QUITT
Kilb, I've admired you for a long time. I like your ruthlessness. That time when you brought an effigy of me to the stockholders' meeting and hung it on the lectern! And had yourself carried bodily out of the hall! I envy you too. Next to you I feel constricted, caught inside my skin, and notice how limited I am. I can tell you this now because it's just the two of us.
 
(KILB
draws
QUITT
forward by both ears and smacks a kiss on his lips.
QUITT
gives him a kick.)
 
KILB
So as to re-establish the previous state of affairs. (
He retreats. )
 
(
Simultaneously
HANS
leads
LUTZ, VON WULLNOW,
and
KOERBER-KENT into the room. KOERBER-KENT,
a businessmanpriest, represents a Catholic-owned company; he is dressed in a suit, but wears the collar of his profession.
)
 
LUTZ
(
To his colleagues
) As I said, we weren't the first ones. We just observed them in the beginning, let them overextend themselves; then we got the green light from our overseas affiliates, tackled them, and down they went. He of course tried to bluff us, but we were on to him long ago. We let him twist in the wind a while longer and then we bagged him.
 
(
They laugh, each in his own way
.)
 
VON WULLNOW
(
To
QUITT) Quite something, that bike out there leaning against your fence. My father once gave me one almost like it, together with my first pair of knickers. They don't do work like that any more nowadays. Instead of selling you a bike, they dress it up like a machine, with speedometer and horn. And a machine of course is allowed to wear out more quickly than a simple bike. It is also characteristic of machines that they become obsolete. A bike wouldn't. Do you ride it to work? (QUITT
points to
KILB.) I wondered straight off why it was so dirty.
 
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.
 
(KILB
has placed his hands underneath his armpits and is producing farting noises.
)
 
LUTZ
All I have to say against the consumers is that they aren't informed. Why don't they read the business sections in their papers which publicize the
Good Housekeeping tests?
Why don't they join the consumer councils? No wonder they can't tell the products apart. Did you ever watch the faces of housewives during a sale? A mass of mindless, dehumanized, panic-stricken grimaces that don't even perceive each other any
more, staring hypnotically at objects. No logic, no brains, nothing but the seething, stinking subconscious. A happening at the zoo, gentlemen. No awareness, no life, no feeling for quality. I know whereof I speak.

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