The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays (27 page)

Read The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays Online

Authors: Peter Handke

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

BOOK: The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
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PAULA
(
Lifts her dress
.) Look at the way my thigh is twitching. Can you see it? Why don't you come closer? (QUITT
grunts.
) Come on.
 
(QUITT
puts his hand on her thigh.
PAULA
presses her head close to him. Pause
.)
 
QUITT
All right, get lost now. (
He steps back. Pause
.) The saliva in your mouth will run over in a moment. And the way your eyeballs jerk back and forth! (
He turns away. Pause
.)
 
PAULA
I'm going already. It's no use. I'll sell.
 
QUITT
(Regards her.) And I'll determine the fine print.
 
PAULA
Only promise me that you won't clean up the moment after I've left.
 
QUITT
Buying yourself a hat can be very comforting.
 
PAULA
Now I know why I like you. It's so easy to think of something else when you're talking.
 
QUITT
Tomorrow at this time it will already be lighter, or darker. Perhaps that will comfort you too.
 
PAULA
(
Suddenly embraces
QUITT'S WIFE,
releases her, and tosses
QUITT a
friendly as well as a serious kiss as she walks out
.) “No hard feelings …”
 
(QUITT
throws a stool after her.
PAULA
exits.
QUITT'S WIFE
comes closer. They stand opposite each other, not saying anything. The stage light changes after some time. First sunshine, then cloud shadows moving across the two of them. Crickets chirp. Far off in the distance a dog barks. The sound of the ocean. A child screams something into the wind. Distant church bells. Woolly tree blossoms blow across the stage. Both of them as silhouettes in the dusk against the backdrop of city lights, which are just coming on. The noise of an airplane engine, very close, slowly
receding—while previous stage lighting comes back on. Quiet.
)
 
WIFE
(
Softly
) You look so unapproachable.
 
QUITT
Remembering does that. I'm just remembering. Let me be. I've got to remember to the end. (
He sits down on the deck chair. She steps closer. He touches her lightly with his foot
.)
 
WIFE
Yes?
 
QUITT
Nothing, nothing. (
He leans back and closes his eyes
.)
 
WIFE
(
Sighs.
) Oh.
 
QUITT
(
To himself
) So that it crashes and splinters …
 
WIFE
What will you do?
 
QUITT
(
To himself
) Stop. Destroy. (
He looks back at her.
) Strange: when I look at you, my thoughts skip a beat.
 
WIFE
I'd like to speak about myself for once too.
 
QUITT
Not again!
 
WIFE
Why, are you listening to me?
 
QUITT
You could have been talking about yourself while you asked that. Did you wash your hair?
 
WIFE
Yes, but not for you. I am not well.
 
QUITT
Then scream for help.
 
WIFE
When I scream for help, you reply by telling me a story how you once needed help. (
Pause. She laughs a few times in quick succession as though about something funny.
QUITT
doesn't react.)
Help!
 
QUITT
You have to shout at least twice.
 
WIFE
I can't any more.
 
QUITT
(
Gets up.
) Then do away with yourself. (
He turns away.
)
 
WIFE
(
Mechanically wipes the dandruff off his shoulders.
) You're up to something. I can't look at you for too long, otherwise I'll find out what.
 
QUITT
What do you want? I have a pink face, my body is warm, pulse eighty.
 
(
Pause.
)
 
WIFE
My eyes are burning. I'm so sad I forgot to blink.
 
QUITT
What's there to eat today?
 
WIFE
Filet of veal with truffles.
 
QUITT
I see. Well, well. Interesting.
What
is there to eat today?
 
WIFE
But you just asked that. Why are you so distracted?
 
QUITT
(
To himself
) Because every possibility has been tried except the very last one, and that one shouldn't turn into just another idle mental exercise! Of course, filet of veal with truffles, you said so—I hear it only now. Why am I so distracted? I have to tell you something, my dear.
 
(
A pause. She looks at him.
)
 
WIFE
No, please don't say it. (
She shies back
.)
 
QUITT
I have to tell someone.
 
WIFE
(
Shies back and holds her ears shut
.) I don't want to hear it.
 
QUITT
(
Follows her
.) You'll know it in a moment.
 
WIFE
Don't say it, please don't. (
She runs away and he follows her. Quiet. Pause. She returns, slowly, walking backward, and goes off again, not that one sees her face
. )
 
(KILB
storms in.
HANS
appears behind him, wearing the chef's hat.
KILB
is holding a knife and runs back and forth
.)
 
KILB
You have to die now. It's no use. I'm alone. No one pays me. Not even they. It's our last way out. Don't contradict me. (
He notices that there's no one present, and puts the knife back in his pocket
.) He isn't even here! And I rehearsed it so well! Into the room and right at him! One, two. A picture without words, only dashes for the caption underneath.
 
HANS
You have to try again.
 
KILB
I have to concentrate once more for that. If I'm as unconcentrated as I am now, everything could just as easily be something else, I think, even I myself. And that is a hideous feeling. Leave me alone.
 
HANS
But look at me first: because it's really me now. People used to say about me: That fellow, it's eating him up inside, but one day he'll blow his stack and the walls will come tumbling down. That moment has come. So I will leave the room and cook the truffled filet with special tenderness, thinking how it will be left over for me. I leave Mr. Quitt to his fate, he believes in things like that. First of all, I'm going to stick to myself and I am curious what that will bring. My big toe is already itching, a good sign; I'm becoming human.
 
KILB
How?
 
HANS
Because an itching big toe means that you should remember something, and someone who remembers becomes a human being. So all I need to do is remember.
 
There was a time something inside me wanted to scream
At the mere thought that I might dream.
Now I want to learn to dream without end
So that the floor of facts I might transcend.
My eyes I want to learn to close
So as to know more of the little I knows.
In my youth a palm reader told me a fable
That I would be able
To change the world's plan.
I hereby announce that at least
my
world is changing.
(
He quickly punches the balloon punching-bag fashion. The balloon bursts.
HANS
exits.
KILB concentrates,
puts the stool on its legs, gently closes the cover of the piano, puts in order what needs putting into order.
QUITT
returns
.)
 
KILB
Not yet!
 
QUITT
You again.
 
KILB
But we haven't seen each other in ages.
 
QUITT
Not ages enough. Recently I thought of a mistake I once made. I couldn't remember what kind of mistake it had been—but I was sure at once that it was not an important mistake. Later on I remembered more distinctly: it had been an important mistake after all. It occurred to me only when I was dealing with you.
 
KILB
Please stay like that.
 
(
Pause.
)
 
QUITT
Kilb, I'm happy that you came. And please note that I said “I'm happy” and not “it makes me happy.”
 
KILB
Please don't become too friendly now. (
Pause.
QUITT
regards him for a long time
.) Why are you looking at me?
 
QUITT
I'm only too tired to look elsewhere. Why don't you at least sit down, so that I won't become even more tired. (
He points to the deck chair
.)
 
KILB
No, that's too deep for me, I'll never be able to get out of it. (QUITT
sits down in it
.) Particularly if you keep your hands in your pockets the way you do. I always keep my hands out of my pockets in moments of danger.
 
QUITT
Kilb, nothing is possible any longer. I feel like I'm the sole survivor, and I find it unappetizing that there's nothing left except me. If only there were an appetizing explanation for
this state of affairs—but my awareness is the awareness of a pile of garbage in an infinite empty space. Imagine: the telephone no longer rings, the postman doesn't come any more, all street noises have ceased, only the wind is rustling one dream further away—the world has already died. I'm the only one who hasn't heard of the catastrophe. I'm actually only a phantom of myself. What I see are afterimages, what I think are afterthoughts. A hair bends over on my head and I'm frightened to death. The next moment will be the last and un-time will begin. Just a moment ago there was still a bubble where I was, but not any more. I know that my time is over. You were right, Paula.
 
KILB
Absolutely right. You're an anachronism, Mr. Quitt. Like the goose step of your soul right now.
 
QUITT
Be quiet. No one but I can say that. (
He bounces a little ball and looks at
KILB.) Now that it's just the two of us, instead of becoming different you only become afraid that you might become different. (
Pause.
) There is nothing unthought of any more. Even the Freudian slip from the unconscious has already become a management method. Even dreams are dreamed from the beginning so as to be interpretable. For example, I no longer dream anything that isn't articulated, and the pictures of the dream follow each other logically like the sequence of days in a diary. I wake up in the morning and am paralyzed with all the speeches I've heard in the dream. There's no longer the “and suddenly” of the old dreams. (
The ball escapes and rolls away
.) Oh, too bad … (
He gets up.
KILB
has approached
.) The chair really is too deep, you're right. When I think of myself, using precise concepts, I have one attack of nausea after the other. This businessman with a handkerchief in his breast pocket and his English worsted suit full of
Weltschmerz
on board his private
plane the soot from whose jets drifts down on the workers' apartment projects, with organ music of the Old Masters oozing from the built-in loudspeakers—stop it, get rid of it, bomb it, it's logical. But: every logical conclusion is immediately contradicted within me by this totally indecisive yet totally self-assured
feeling.

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