______________________________
Frank Wedekind
CASTLE
WETTERSTEIN
A Play in Three Acts
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Translated by Ian Johnston
Vancouver Island University, British Columbia
2017
[Minor revisions 2019]
TRANSLATORS NOTE
This translation is based upon the German text of
Schlo Wetterstein,
published in Munich in 1920 by Georg Mller Verlag. In the following English
text all stage directions and character descriptions are taken from the German
text. Unless otherwise stated, all endnotes are provided by the translator. For
any comments or questions about this English text, please contact Ian Johnston.
Teachers, students, and performing arts companies are free to use this
translation without advance permission and without charge and to edit or adapt
it freely to suit their purposes. Commercial publication of this translation in
any form, however, is not permitted without the written consent of the
translator.
The translator gratefully acknowledges the valuable assistance of a previous
translation of Castle Wetterstein
by Stephen Spender (London: Calder and Boyars, 1972).
To access the German text use the following link: Schlo Wetterstein.
This translation is available in a Word (Rich Text Format) at the following
address: Wetterstein [RTF]
CASTLE WETTERSTEIN
Dedicated to
Kurt Martens
author of Caritas Mimi(1)
AUTHORS PREFACE
The play Castle
Wetterstein contains my views about the inner
needs that are the foundation of marriage and family. Thus, the dramatic
material, the events, and the progress of the plot are of purely secondary
importance. Their improbability was necessary because I needed wide spaces and
freedom of movement to make room for my ideas. More importantly, I required
dramatic intensity and effective staging. I would request, with all due
respect, that critics refrain from forming a judgment about this plays
qualities or deficiencies until they can base their views on an actual
production. If this work is censored, that would not surprise me, since it
would be nothing more than a logically necessary outcome of the notorious
indifference and stupidity characteristic of all our public life.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Rdiger, Baron Wetterstein
Leonore von Gystrow
Effie, her daughter
Meinrad Luckner
Karl Salzmann
Professor Dr. Scharlach
Waldemar Uhlhorst
Matthais Taubert
Schigabet
Heiri Wipf
Chagnaral Tschamper of Atakama
Van Zeeter, a hotel manager
Duvoisin, a police inspector
Housemaid
Waiter
Two policemen.
ACT ONE
SCENE ONE(2)
[Leonore,
thirty-two years old, lies asleep on the sofa. She wakes up, yawns, rubs her
eyes, and sits up.]
LEONORE
What novel have I been reading? . . . European
Slave Life . . . [sitting up straight on
the sofa] . . . and I dreamed of him again. . . .
Once Ive drunk my tea, I wont need to think about him anymore. [She stands up and rings a bell.] Then
Ill once again be sure how Im supposed to deal with my dream life.(3)
[A housemaid enters.]
HOUSEMAID
Madam Major rang?
LEONORE
The tea.
[The housemaid exits.]
LEONORE
God knows, it seems to me he cant get along
without me either, even now.
[Effie, fifteen-years
old, enters.]
EFFIE
Youve called for tea, Mother. Did you sleep
well?
LEONORE
Whos been telling you I was asleep?
EFFIE
I didnt mean to upset you. Most people sleep in
the afternoon. Tell me, Mother dear, would you allow me to go to the theatre
next Sunday with Gertrude Rickenbach?
LEONORE
Youre talking to me, my child, as if I you and I
were complete strangers.
EFFIE
Yes, possibly. The most important thing for me in
the next few years is not to be a stranger to myself.
LEONORE
I dont understand what you mean by that.
EFFIE
Well, right now there is nothing more important
for me than to make a good marriage.
LEONORE
Thats obviously true, my child. And for you, I
hope, that can be done without too much trouble.
EFFIE
Dont concern yourself at all about it, Mother. I
think of nothing else day and night. Heres the tea.
[The housemaid brings in
the tea and exits.]
LEONORE [pouring
the tea]
For a woman everything always depends upon not
demeaning herself by her marriage. A woman who feels unhappy in her marriage
always has only herself to blame.
EFFIE
So why wont you allow me to go to the theatre on
Sunday?
LEONORE
Effie, Im dumbfounded. Have you completely
forgotten your father already?
EFFIE
If I dont go to the theatre on Sunday, that
wont bring father back to us.
LEONORE
This incredible silliness of yours involves you a
lot more than it does your father. The respect people pay you will never be
greater than when you honour your father. You will be
called your fathers child. What could be better than that?
EFFIE
Half of me is. The other half of me is the child
of my mother.
LEONORE
Thats not going to impress anyone.
EFFIE
To tell the truth, I dont think I suffer from
pride or conceit, but if Im anything at all, then I am at least one thing
thanks to you, Mother dear, and thats a good match.
LEONORE
For us women that is something to consider only
as advertising, nothing more. A prudent woman would rather watch all her
possessions being squandered in cold blood than ever claim them as her personal
assets.
EFFIE [blithely]
Then, dear Mother, its all the more necessary
for us to perfect our feminine virtues and capabilities as early as possible.
LEONORE
I completely agree with you. We women cannot
value our feminine assets highly enough.
EFFIE
Then why shouldnt I go to the theatre next
Sunday?
LEONORE
How can you ask me something like that? Were in
mourning!
EFFIE
It will soon be a year and half!
LEONORE
Quite apart from the fact that you could be seen
by someone in the theatre. So long as youre my daughter, I will simply not
tolerate how you so lightheartedly overlook your fathers death.
EFFIE [after
a pause]
You do realize, mother, that Gertrude von Rickenbach is appearing on stage in person.
LEONORE
I heard about it. As far as shes concerned, its
the best thing she can do. Her father squanders everything, and her mothers
conduct cuts her out completely from marrying someone in her own class.
EFFIE
But suppose I get it into my head to shake off
all concerns for our class with one energetic shrug of
my shoulders, completely forget about getting married to someone in our circle,
and simply go on the stage myself?
LEONORE [simply
and easily]
Id be sorry, Effie, but then you would no longer
be my daughter.
EFFIE
Of course, you are totally convinced that I lack
the slightest talent as an actress?
LEONORE
Why on earth should I think that? Thats
completely foolish. First, we women are by nature born actresses, because a
woman who does not pretend cannot make any man happy. Second, you come from a
noble family. You already have in your flesh and blood the vast majority of
those talents people admire as theatrical art in the poor creatures who earn a
living in the theatre. But let me mention one point, Effie: Anyone who allows
herself to be shown off in public for money does not belong in society. I will
certainly not deny that there may well be women in theatre who do nothing
wrong. But gentlemen I know tell me these women are exceptions. In theatre, for
reasons having to do with business, everything is always purposefully designed
as if all the audience members are just as disgraceful and warped as the people
putting on the production.
EFFIE
I have always been entirely convinced that a
theatre show must be much more enjoyable for those putting it on than for those
watching it.
LEONORE
Thats exactly whats so undignified about it.
Acting is a profession in which people get paid to enjoy themselves. No decent
person does that.
EFFIE
But doesnt a woman also do that when she gets
married?
LEONORE
I dont understand what
you mean.
EFFIE
What I mean is that by
marrying she lets herself get paid for her own pleasure.
LEONORE
She lets herself get
paid? By whom?
EFFIE
By her husband,
naturally. Who else?
LEONORE
God forbid! What are you
thinking! In a marriage, the woman does not let herself get paid for her
pleasures any more than her husband does. They both do what they do for each
other for nothing.
EFFIE
Thats strange. Id always imagined it as
entirely different.
LEONORE
You are obviously confusing two activities which
have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. In my parents house in Hamburg
we had visits from actors. Its true. But they were merely tolerated. They were
there on sufferance. Naturally, in exchange for that they had to provide the
required entertainment. But people did not let them get closer than was
socially unavoidable and necessary. What play is being produced on Sunday?
EFFIE
The Wild Duck.
LEONORE
I dont know it. Ive never heard of it.
ESSIE
Its by Ibsen.
LEONORE
Good heavens! Isnt he the northern barbarian
whos been dragging marriage and the family through the mud and saying that all
decent people are insane?(4)
EFFIE
My dear Mother, you dont have the slightest idea
how uneducated you are! Ibsen is in fashion!
LEONORE
Really?
EFFIE
The court goes to the theatre when Ibsen is
playing. The only reason you dont like Ibsen is that father always criticized
him in such a snide way. But Im firmly convinced that nowadays father would
speak about him quite differently.
LEONORE
Really? Are you sure of that?
EFFIE
Today father would say: Ibsen! My word, what a
splendid fellow!
LEONORE
All right, Effie, tell me this: What does he
really write about? Can you explain it to me in a few words?
EFFIE
He always writes more or less about what we
ourselves have lived through.
LEONORE
You mean what he has lived through?
EFFIE
No, what weve lived through! We! You and I
sitting here!
LEONORE
How does he know about that?
EFFIE
God knows. I didnt tell him anything!
LEONORE
But then he cant be dragging family life through
the mud, can he?
EFFIE [cautiously]
Well, after all, . . . father was unfaithful to
you . . .
LEONORE [straightening
up indignantly]
How dare you, child! What a thing to say!
EFFIE [smiling]
How dare I, dear Mother? I dare answer your
question as politely as a young girl possibly can.
LEONORE
Be quiet, I tell you! No young girl speaks the
way you did just now!
EFFIE [with
a gentle smile]
I cant let anyone doubt that Im still a young
girl, Mother dear, if Im to marry a man from our social circles. Least of all
you, because, of course, everyone says that you are best placed to know all
there is to know about me. In fact, I am a young girl. Or has anyone told you
something different about me?
LEONORE
No. So far as I know, no one is spreading any
gossip about you.
EFFIE
Well, God knows, I dont take any pride in that.
But for me the most important task by far in my life now is to be a young girl.
Thats why I surely have a certain right to speak up for myself.
LEONORE
That may be so, but you have all the more reason
to honour the memory of your father and not to keep
insulting him in his grave.
EFFIE [smiling]
Mother, do you really think what I said is such a
terrible insult to him?
LEONORE
You are inhuman! I beg you, Effie, never speak to
me anymore in my lifetime about this disgrace! Since the days of our marriage
your fathers life was honourable. That was my
prideit meant everything to me! Or . . . or . . .
EFFIE
Or?
LEONORE
Thats something the human mind simply cannot
grasp! Or he must have been cheating on me from the first day we met! No! No!
No! I have forgiven him, because I understood him inside and out. And because I
understood myself. This trust I had in him and in myselfI will not let any power
in heaven and earth rob me of that now that he is dead.
EFFIE [stands
up, embraces Leonore, and kisses her]
You are so amazingly beautiful, Mother, when you
get upset about father. All the love I feel for you will not get me to ask you
to forgive me.
LEONORE [dabbing
her eyes with a handkerchief]
I cant describe how much youve hurt me with your
heartless cruelty!
EFFIE
Dont be angry with me anymore, Mother. In that
finishing school in Lausanne with Madam Duplan, no
one uttered a single word about when women are to be blocks of wood and when
they are to be delicate flowers. But trust me, Mother, Ill learn soon enough.
LEONORE
Leave me alone, my child. I feel like a fish on
dry sand. My feelings are overwhelming me from every side.
EFFIE
May I kiss your hand, Mother?
LEONORE
Kiss me on the mouth!
[Effie gives her mother a
quick kiss on the mouth.]
LEONORE [drawing
back]
Child!
EFFIE
What is it, mother?
LEONORE
You must get married as soon as possible.
EFFIE [cheerfully]
Ill be able to manage that perfectly. Cheer up,
mother. I may really surprise you even yet.
[Effie exits.]
LEONORE [with a sigh]
Thank God! I know Ive been irritable with you. [She takes the open book from the sofa.]
European Slave Life. So who wrote this? [She turns to the title page.] Hacklnder! Perhaps Id prefer to read Ibsen next. With any
luck he understands how to interpret dreams. [She lies on the sofa and reads. There is a knock on the door.]
Come in!
SCENE TWO
[The Housemaid enters
silently with a silver tray and brings a calling card to Leonore.]
LEONORE [reading
the card]
Doctor Thilo von Chrysander Court Chaplain retired Consistorial Councillor [to the
Housemaid] A moment! [She sits down
in front of a mirror, carefully arranges her hair, and then gets up.] Ill
see him now.(5)
[The Housemaid leaves. Rdiger enters quickly. He is twenty-seven years old and
dressed in elegant formal clothes. Leonore threatens
to lose her composure.]
RDIGER
Stay calm. You can trust your eyes. I am not a
double of myself. I am me. No fainting, all right? Prove to me now that my
unshakeable trust in your indomitable strength is not misplaced!
LEONORE [struggling
with all her strength to regain her composure]
God . . . my God . . . how am I to survive this?
RDIGER
So you are not going to
throw me out? [Leonore
stares at him without moving.] Think about it! You are not throwing me out?
LEONORE
I . . . words fail me . . .
RDIGER
It would take only one word from you! [Leonore does not
answer.] My thanks for that are infinitelike your magnanimity. [Speaking very cautiously] Now Im
asking you to listen to me for a moment.
LEONORE [collecting
herself]
You find yourself . . . naturally . . . in some
sort of . . . difficulty. You need my . . . help . . .
RDIGER
Yes, very much so.
LEONORE
Talk.
RDIGER
Wouldnt you like to sit?
LEONORE
That will not be necessary.
RDIGER
All right. Well be sitting down soon enough.
LEONORE
Please get to the point.
RDIGER
I have come just as I am now straight from the
fortress. You know that I was punished with a six-month sentence. If the
military court had not been an empty formality, they would have had to sentence
me to life in prison.
LEONORE
Why are you saying this to me? To me? You, the
murderer of my husband, you presume too much . . . .
Perhaps you are afraid that my despair might not have been sufficiently
heartbreaking?
RDIGER
I am afraid of something more serious. I fear you
are committing an injustice against the deceased.
LEONORE
You, the man who murdered him, are afraid that I,
his poor wife, am being unjust to him? Do not imagine Ill put up with your
inhuman mockery a moment longer!
RDIGER
If the memory of your husband is dear to you, and
your outrage convinces me it is, then you will thank me from the very bottom of
your heart for being so extraordinarily bold.
LEONORE
Thank you? Me?! Does the most brutal feeling not
tell you what . . . what a monster you are in my eyes? I loved my husband! You
probably have no idea what that means. It is impossible for me to forget how
much cheerfulness, strength, and patience I have sacrificed. Not that I am
complaining. Heaven forbid! What was I until he
finally made a woman out of me, one worthy of his love.
Then I found my happiness in his happiness. What pleased him kindled my
enthusiasm. What pained him I would have obliterated from the face of the earth
without thinking about it. And I loved with such fire and hated so implacably
that I thought of myself as the most heroic woman who had ever lived. And now
the man who murdered him is saying Im being unjust to the deceased.
RUDIGER
Of course you are unjust to the
Major if you honour in him nothing more noble than
those merits which every wife has to see in her husband, if she is not going to
start looking around for another man.
LEONORE
How dare you make that claim about me?! Do you
imagine I could have made do with an ordinary man?! God knows, there were
enough men who desired me! But when I think back on them, merciful God, what
shoddy goods they were in comparison with him. The infinite depth of his heart
was something I had never anticipated, something an ordinary man simply cannot
imagine. And his nobility! His inexhaustible generosity to me! And all his life
he was the most competent in every field. The best horseman! The most charming
companion! If people talked of military service or campaigns, I never saw
anyone whose argument prevailed against his.
RDIGER
When his wife is present, that is surely obvious!
LEONORE
You attribute these virtues to me?! If so, you
are simply demonstrating you had no idea of the stature of the man you
murdered.
RDIGER
Now you are offering proof that you are wronging
him.
LEONORE [after
recovering from her amazement]
You are displaying an unmatched insolence.
RDIGER
Should I consider Major Gystrow
especially honorable because his own wife considers him the most marvellous man who ever lived?
LEONORE
What you say seems to me like the words of a
mental patient.
RDIGER
I can see no higher value in that than I could if
he had wanted to think it particularly virtuous of you that no other woman had
loved him more devotedly than you did.
LEONORE [rigid
with astonishment]
What finer thing can you say about a married
woman than that she loves her husband above everything else?
RDIGER
Thats nothing but natural history. I could, for
example, say about her that she is the epitome of youthful freshness. That she
has an intelligent mind which, if she can freely develop it, would think
nothing sacred other than crystal clear, inexorable reason. I could say of her
that her powers of perception work with an agility which is rarely encountered,
even among men. But, above all, I can say of her that such a tempestuous
passion lies chained up inside her that from childhood on she has only dreamt
with divine trembling of the moment when she can see her ridiculously small ego
and its domestic misery sink once and for all deep into the abyss beneath her.
LEONORE
And would you let yourself be seduced by such
sinister devilish tricks and force you into the clutches of such a weird
person? You, a man who claims to have high expectations? All those things you
find so admirable in this paragonthose are the very things you could not fight
ruthlessly enough, if your life were not to become a living hell! Other than
our birth and our death, marriage is the most inexorable thing we creatures are
subjected to. If you consider yourself an exception, then youll have to pay
for that in your marriage with extreme disagreements and humiliations.
RDIGER [smiling]
You have no idea how comical your fears sound to
me. If I feel myself demeaned then I need only turn my back. Then Ill find the
highest esteem I could wish for. By the way, I completely forgot to tell you
one of the most beautiful qualities of my chosen one.
LEONORE
Then say it! What are you waiting for?
RDIGER
The woman I adore would go to her death for the
man she loves.
LEONORE
If you love your own life, then guard yourself
against such a woman. A woman who would go to her death for her husband would
also go after him with a bullet through the chest, the moment she felt he had
insulted her.
RDIGER
Then why didnt you shoot the Major?
LEONORE
Why did I not murder my husband? You can ask
that?
RDIGER
But he insulted you!
LEONORE
Because I loved him! Who does the slightest harm
to a person he loves? But even if I had wanted to kill him ten times over, he
was cold and stiff by the time I received the report of his misconduct. You
were too quick for me, forcing him in that treacherous way to face your
dreadful murder weapon.
RDIGER
Out of respect for the Major, I must stipulate
that the bullet from a soldier is at least as deadly as one from a reservist.
LEONORE [getting
angry]
Do not make jokes about his fate in this house! I
am the guardian of his memory, and I will not permit it! A man like you should
never challenge anyone to a duel with pistols. You, a man who is known as
someone who once earned his living with public displays of his skill shooting a
revolver!
RDIGER
For me this moment is too sacred to spend
defending myself against groundless suspicions printed in the newspapers. If
the rumour you mention had been confirmed, I would
not have been condemned to the fortress but to prison, perhaps even to the
penitentiary. Of course, you know as well as I do that
I was not free to make any sort of choice. If I had not challenged the Major,
then today I would be a man without honour.
LEONORE
What do I care about your honour!
RDIGER
But I care about it! For example, I could not
possibly have faced you like this at all.
LEONORE
Could not possibly . . . face me . . . What gives
you the slightest justification to do this? In spite of everything I still find
that incomprehensible.
RDIGER
We are partners in suffering! Thanks to your
husband I have lost my woman.
LEONORE
You mean your wife? I congratulate you on your
loss! Your wife threw herself at my husbands feet like a wild creature that
could no longer find mercy in any human soul! On the evening of that winter day
my husband was buried, I found letters from your wife in which she signed
herself Your slave. What do you have to mourn in a wife who exposes a man
like you to ridicule, in order to destroy the happiness of another woman who
during her life has never harmed her in the slightest?
RDIGER
I was legally divorced from her four weeks ago.
Both my children were, of course, put into my custody. I have just handed them
over to my wifes mother for her to raise.
LEONORE
And what will become of her now?
RDIGER
Of whom?
LEONORE
Of the most unfortunate creature on Gods earth!
How miserable things must now look inside this wretched soul! Everything, even
the last most pitiful happiness, gambled away! But such changelings deserve
nothing better than to be destroyed. Life would be blissful happiness without
limit, if these dismal mischief makers did not spread their poison from below!
RDIGER
My divorced wife was not that degenerate. She did
not give herself away out of mindless frivolity. She let herself be seduced by
her ill-advised malice. She believed I had cheated on her, because someone had
falsely told her I was behaving suspiciously.
LEONORE
She was told you were acting suspiciously? What
does that mean?
RDIGER
Someone wrote her anonymous letters in which he
told her that in the evenings I spent with my friends I was visiting a dancer
from the Olympia Theatre.
LEONORE
And on the basis of this hocus pocus, my husband
is supposed to have let himself be ensnared by this person as a substitute?! As
a substitute! You dare say that to my face?!
RDIGER
I am very sorry about it, madam, but you are
still being unjust to the Major.
LEONORE
Are you going to make some sort of claim that he
would have had to wait until your wife was desperate if he ever had a mind to
spend time with other women?!
RDIGER
All his life the Major could have had any woman
he wanted. Thats obvious. But since he was your husband, he would have only
experienced the most pathetic disappointment every time. What he found
interesting about my former wife was the similarity between his heartfelt
sadness and hers. He was looking for consolation.
LEONORE
Why consolation, if he felt so happy with me?!
RDIGER
Someone made him suspect you.
LEONORE
Suspect me?!
RDIGER
Someone wrote letters to him containing
undeniable proof that you were being unfaithful to him.
LEONORE
Me?! That I was being . . . ?!
Almighty God! And he believed that?!
RDIGER
He was an honest man. He did not overestimate his
own qualities.
LEONORE [crying
out]
No, no! Thats impossible! He cannot have doubted
me for a moment!
RDIGER
He had doubts, and they made him desperate.
LEONORE
He cannot have had doubts! Thats unreasonable!
No, no! Now he can no longer speak for himself, I will not permit any living
person to try to convince me of it.
RDIGER
In an emergency, reason is always the first
comrade to cut and run. If he had thought about these suspicions
dispassionately, he would just as dispassionately have set about investigating
them. Then it would have been extremely easy for him to realize they were
false. But his love for you made it completely impossible for him to put any faith
in the insinuations even for an instant. All that was left for him was the
immense pain of seeing his lifes happiness destroyed.
LEONORE
But am I a block of wood?! In those last weeks
before that New Years morning I lived by his side in unsuspecting happiness.
How could I not have felt the slightest sign of his distrust and his confusion,
of all his harrowing ordeal?
RDIGER
He was a soldier. He controlled himself. The
least sign of his torment would have led to a quarrel with you, and he lacked the
courage necessary for that. In the meantime, the agonizing pretense in his own
house drove him to the house of my former wife, where he found a woman with the
most candid and honest understanding of his situation.
LEONORE
So that was it! Its true! Something as horrible
as this has never happened before! He could not believe for a minute that I . .
. that I would hurt him in the slightest! And with this image in his mind he
entered the fight and stood face to face with death! Its simply unimaginable how
appalling his despair must have been. With a curse against me he took up his
weapon. With a curse against me he sank to his knees. Then he was not even
murdered he was seeking death! And Im his murderer! What in the world did
people tell him about me?
RDIGER
How should I know that?
LEONORE [crying
out]
You know! I see it in your face! Tell me!
RDIGER
You cannot listen to that now.
LEONORE
Havent I already heard the worst? Do you mean to
keep me like this, still stretched out on the rack? What did people tell him
about me?
RDIGER
It is too absurd for you to listen to at such a
serious moment.
LEONORE
So you do know?
RDIGER
Yes.
LEONORE
Almighty God, how do you know all these terrible
details?
RDIGER
From the sessions of the military court, which
took place behind closed doors. They naturally took extreme care to hide these
unpleasant facts from you.
LEONORE
Then the tribunal was a dishonest pretense! Why
was I not summoned to appear?
RDIGER
Your innocence was completely beyond doubt.
LEONORE
But did the proceedings not establish who wrote
the letters that destroyed two unsuspecting families?
RDIGER
No, they did not discover that. But I came here
to reveal that to you.
LEONORE [apprehensively]
Stop talking! I implore you by Almighty God: do
not say another word! I am not strong enough to listen to such appalling
details.
RDIGER
I was the one who wrote the letters.
LEONORE [crying
out]
No, no thats not true!
RDIGER
Do I appear to you
incapable of such a thing?
LEONORE [wide-eyed,
staring at him]
No! You were capable of it!
RDIGER
And now Im asking you to become my wife.
LEONORE
I . . . saw that . . . coming.
RDIGER
For five full years, day after day, night after
night, in my heart I have dreamed of no other goal. When I met you five years
ago, at first sight I had the unshakeable conviction I could not find a person
with a soul as passionate and great as yours a second time in this life. One
victory today has already validated my conviction. You are indeed the wife I
have been fighting for in the past five years. Now I am no longer afraid to
take responsibility for my actions. The victims have not fallen in vain.
LEONORE
Leave my house.
RDIGER
What is the point of that now? You underestimate
the significance of this moment. You underestimate the power you have in your
hands. One word from you will be enough to send me to the penitentiary.
LEONORE
Is that true? Do you swear thats true? Or are
you trying to with my confidence with this pretense?
RDIGER
Whether that is true or not, either way your duty
is now clear beyond a doubt. As the wife of the dead man, you have an
obligatory and sacred duty to declare in public everything you have found out.
LEONORE
And then?
RDIGER
Then I will surrender to my fate. Why not?
LEONORE [with
an enormous effort to control herself]
Go! Leave here! I do not know you! I have not
understood a single word youve been saying. Do you want me to call for help?
RDIGER
Your tone is not genuine. Why not simply ring the
bell?
LEONORE
In any case, I dont understand why the noise
weve been making hasnt disturbed anyone.
RDIGER
Now you simply need to make a choice between
fulfilling your most sacred duty denouncing me and the decision to become
my wife. Please make up your mind.
LEONORE
Your words are nothing more than the most
horrible braggadocio. I am not going to be browbeaten by monstrous apparitions.
I dont see the slightest compelling reason why I should choose between two
fires of hell.
RDIGER
I assure you there is no third option available
to you. As strong as you may be, you will not be able to keep my secret. You
will hint at something, and your sister-in-law or someone else will burn with
curiosity. You will be given no peace. You will feel relieved of a hellish
burden, and I I will be regretting my stupidity.
LEONORE
You are right! You are perfectly right! No one
can keep silent about something so monstrous!
RDIGER
No one except my wife! For five years youve been
my accomplice.
LEONORE
I keep hoping that this business of accusing
yourself comes down to some sort of blackmail.
RDIGER
To the greatest thing you have to give!
LEONORE
Then finally, for Gods sake, state a specific
amount!
RDIGER
You know I want you to be my wife.
LEONORE
Yes, yes. Of course, you want that, dont you?
That way the amount of money will end up being as large as possible! I will
purchase my freedom from you. I offer you . . . fifty thousand marks!
RDIGER
Thats too little.
LEONORE
Fifty-five thousand . . .
RDIGER
Those are just empty words.
LEONORE
I have more than that.
RDIGER
You cannot possibly give away ten percent of your
entire wealth.
LEONORE
What will it take for you to settle?
RDIGER
What I want is for you to become my wife.
LEONORE
I should marry the murderer of my husband?
RDIGER
The man who up to this point has made the
greatest sacrifice for you.
LEONORE
That would be a torture chamber of a marriage!
RDIGER
Theres no such thing as a torture chamber of a
marriage. People either love each other, or they separate! Most healthy people
become happy couples. Why shouldnt we become a happy couple? Marriage is not
being bound up in chains, except for those mental cripples who think thats
what it means. If I cannot adore my wife, then someone should steal her from
me.
LEONORE
Almighty Heaven! The chivalry of a horse trader!
And I am to belong to you on the basis of this confession?
RDIGER
You are not to belong to me! You belong to
yourself! Marriage is there for people, not people for marriage! Your
happiness, your free developmentthose are the most sacred goals of our life
together.
LEONORE
That is admittedly a new goal for me! A
surprising goal! But you! To whom do you belong then! Dont you belong to me?
RDIGER
To far greater degree, at least, than you belong
to me. Have you forgotten that already?
LEONORE
If only that is true! I ask myself that over
and over again. Or are you boasting of vile acts other people have committed?
RDIGER
Now you need only ask me whether I could want you
for my wife because of your possessions!
LEONORE [quickly]
God forbid! No, no, I
have no desire to offend you. That is completely beyond me. But what if after
our wedding it turns out that you were nothing but a husband who had been
betrayed . . . ?
RDIGER
Permit me, madam, to be on my way.
LEONORE
Youve forgotten where youre going?
RDIGER
What concern is that of yours?
LEONORE
Stay here!
RDIGER
Only if you give me a down payment!
LEONORE
What does that mean?
RDIGER
A guaranteed pledge.
LEONORE
What are you demanding?
RDIGER
If I have to ask for it first, then theres not
much here for me to win.
LEONORE
Then help yourself.
RDIGER [turning
around at the door]
I will not force myself on anyone!
LEONORE [runs
to him and throws her arms around his neck]
Here I am! Here I am!
RDIGER [kissing
her]
Im holding in my arms the prize for victory in
the five-year struggle!
LEONORE
Arent you afraid of a woman who lets herself be
kissed by the murderer of her husband?
RDIGER [smiling]
Perhaps I should be feared less than you? We
are a match for one another. Neither one of us has an advantage over the other.
LEONORE
What if you now come across a woman in whom you
find all the charm and attractive qualities you have always valued in women.
Will you then betray me with her?
RDIGER
No, no, my child. You need not expect such
boorishness from me.
LEONORE
Why is that boorish? When I asked my first
husband about that, he shrugged his shoulders and let me know that the truth of
the matter was he would be prepared to do that at any moment. I always used to
quietly give thanks to Heaven that in reality things had not yet come to that.
And, God knows, even now Id still stake my life on it the lapse which cost
him his life was his first and only lapse during our marriage.
RDIGER
Of that Im absolutely certain.
LEONORE
So after our first kiss,
you look me right in the eye and tell me with an impartiality people only use
when they are speaking of historical facts that you will never betray me?!
RDIGER
If I betray my wife, then I have a wife who lets
herself be betrayed. Joking about the experience does not help one get over it.
If my wife allows me whom she counts upon for her happiness to betray her,
then she will inevitably be betrayed in the same way by all the rest of the
world. That market woman who sells her a partridge will betray her. Who has the
partridge served to him? Who has to struggle to force the partridge down? Who
has to pay for the partridge?
LEONORE
Excellent! Now can you also tell me what emerges
from this chain of reasoning if you turn it around? If I betray you . . . ?
RDIGER
Whats sauce for the goose is sauce for gander!
If you betray me, then you have definitely married a man who allows himself to
be betrayed. And by a woman, too. My business friends will not need to be told
twice. They will look on you as an illuminating example. In a very short time
Ill have been cheated of the last shirt on my back, and if you do not wish to
become a beggar, youll have every reason to look around you as quickly as you
can for another partner in life.
LEONORE [clapping
her hands]
Bravo! You are the first person on Gods earth
from whom I have heard a truly human word about these highly dangerous matters.
[She kisses him]. Youre a jack of
all trades! In our circles when these questions arise all we hear are either
dirty stories or biblical quotations.
RDIGER
Human feelings speak an infernally thievish
jargon. Whoever trusts their gibberish is sold off and betrayed.
LEONORE
So do you really think the
wife has just as much right to be unfaithful as the husband?
RDIGER
Thats not my view of it at all. I simply believe
that the wife has as much right to be unfaithful as her husbands lover does.
Its self-evident that the husband has an unimaginably greater right to be
unfaithful than the wife! Thats an irrefutable fact! But there are no
circumstances in which he has a greater right to be unfaithful than his wifes
lover has.
LEONORE
That is an amazing revelation! Never in my life
would I have imagined that the world was arranged in a way so easy to
understand! Where do you get all these pearls of wisdom?
RDIGER
From my experience. I have always found that
mutual infidelity, when both parties are completely honest, leads to the most
pleasant and comfortable parting of the ways. But in the process
both of them, of course, lose all the fruits of their earlier efforts. They
tear open one hole in order to fill in another.
LEONORE
What do you mean?
RDIGER
Each of them shrugs off one burden in order to
take on another.
LEONORE
Ah, I see!
RDIGER
What do you think I meant?
LEONORE
I thought you were speaking personally.
RDIGER
You can construe my words however you like. The
main thing is that theyre still true!
LEONORE [she
embraces and kisses him]
Marvellous! Marvellous!
Marvellous! Whoever can speak like that is allowed
everything, is forgiven everything!
RDIGER
Be mine!
LEONORE
Take me! [A
prolonged ringing sounds from the hall.] Whats that? Whos ringing the
bell so rudely?
RDIGER
Are we the only ones at home?
LEONORE [smiling]
The Major!
RDIGER
I tell you, you are doing him an injustice.
LEONORE
Me? How?
RDIGER
We should leave him to rest in peace!
LEONORE [listening]
I think the girl has gone to open the door.
RDIGER
After all, he has not harmed us.
LEONORE
All of a sudden, I feel so strange here, as if
the entire house was falling apart.
SCENE THREE
[Effie, wearing a hat and coat, enters quickly,
runs to her mother, and flings her arms around her mothers neck.]
EFFIE
Mother, Mother, Ive become engaged!
LEONORE
You, as well! But youre still much too young for
that!
EFFIE
But you told me I had to get married as quickly
as I could . . . [noticing Rdiger] . . . O my God! A ghost! On the day of my
engagement!
LEONORE [introducing
Rdiger]
Rdiger von Wetterstein,
my husband-to-be.
RDIGER
There is not the slightest reason, my dear young
lady, for you to draw back from me. Until you are married, the engagement
between your mother and me will obviously remain a secret.
EFFIE
Mother, mother? I dont know Am I still
alive? Or am I dreaming?
LEONORE
That how all fifteen-year-old girls feel.
EFFIE
Is that true, Mother?
RDIGER
Since you are engaged to be married yourself, you
would have soon been separated from your mother anyway.
LEONORE
Who are you engaged to?
EFFIE
I cant bring myself to say it . . .
RDIGER
You can be certain, my dear young lady, that I
regret the death of your father as profoundly as if in his death I had killed
my own father. But now, my dear young lady, after you have lost your father, do
you wish to lose your mother, as well? If your mother does not like the man you
have just this minute chosen, would that make you send him on his way? Can you
expect your mother to banish the man she has chosen for herself for your sake?
EFFIE [kissing
her mothers hand]
I wish you happiness, my dear Mother. I
understand you. You cannot do otherwise. You must like him.
LEONORE
What about you, my child?
EFFIE [joyfully]
The handsomest man in the world!
RDIGER
Naturally, that is to be expected. And, more than
that, he is also one of the richest.
LEONORE [to
Effie]
Really? Count DArmont?
EFFIE
I met him down in the Platanenallee.(6) I asked
him if he really thought the Pope would be coming to Berlin for the Crown
Princes accession. Then he said, It is no longer possible for me to imagine I
can endure this life without you. I was totally frank with him and said that
to a certain extent, when all is said and done, it was a matter of complete
indifference to me who I was married to. Only I could not guarantee that I was
particularly well suited to marriage at all. Then he asked me whether he could
pay us a visit. Thats up to you, I said. If he does not come here by
tomorrow noon, the fault will lie with the old Countess. She claims Im a
flirt.
RDIGER
I know their family doctor. He will have to send
her away for a few weeks.
EFFIE
How will he manage that?
RDIGER
Hell convince her she has heart trouble. Then
shell move into a sanatorium.
EFFIE
Youre a jack of all trades!
LEONORE
Effie!
EFFIE
What, Mother? Ive often heard you use that
expression.
LEONORE
Dont be angry with me over this, my child. But I
must ask you to be a little more respectful.
EFFIE [kissing
her mother]
You are right, Mother. Of course, its not all
that easy, but I will try to say Father. We women have to stick together.
RDIGER
Our emotional life consists of overestimating the
value of human relationships. Everyone is replaceable.
ACT TWO
SCENE ONE
[A richly and elegantly furnished room in the
Hotel Beaurivage in Ouchy on the shores of Lake
Geneva. In the background there is an open balcony door with a view over the
water. It is evening, and the lights are on.]
LUCKNER [walking around the room]
That clean-living husband of yours, Rdiger, Baron von Wetterstein,
has, in the course of the past year, embezzled from me diamonds valued at two
million. What a god-damned song and dance! [He
breaks out in booming laughter]. Holy cannon fodder! If the baboon had at
least buried the diamonds somewhere in the earth! Hes been cramming the stones
down the throat of every shady dealer in both hemispheres, like rotten bananas.
LEONORE
I find you truly irritating, but in precisely the
opposite way you imagine. Do not assume you can look upon Rdiger
and me as your sacrificial victims.
LUCKNER
Almighty Panama Canal! [He laughs.] Take a leaf out of my book. The pleasure is costing me
a cool two million. Great Brahmaputra! [He
laughs again.] Has Wetterstein never chanted our
priceless Latin school song for you?
Alas, the Maid got such a scare
She could no longer perch up there.
She clutched the stool with all her might,
So she would not fall off in fright.
LEONORE
Thank God in Heaven! The monster is completely
drunk, at least.
LUCKNER
Me . . . drunk? [He laughs.] You really dont know me at all, do you? No, no, my
heavenly sacrificial creature! Even if my father did found
the most magnificent brewery company in the Rhineland-Palatinate a thousand
times over. But since my earliest youth Ive been competing with our strongest
brewery workers in lifting barrels full of beer. Doing that turns every muscle
in ones entire body into bullet-proof armour plate.
LEONORE
Rdiger has no idea of what was
going on around him. Even now, Rdiger doesnt have
the slightest suspicion of what a monster he is dealing with in you.
LUCKNER
Ah well! The very first time we were together in
the mines, you, him, and me, back then in Africa, I could have bullied the
fellow out of all your shares in the wink of an eye. But you were standing at
his side, gaping up at him like a tortoise at a telegraph pole. So I said to myself: one can only catch such splendid
examples of womanhood through the men they love. And he stared at me like a
bloated capitalist dismissing a newspaper boy. Heavens above! Great heavens
above! Then I said to myself: No, Rdiger von Wetterstein, we are not going to part from other without a
word or two. A woman like this, I told myself, is born only once in a hundred
years. The man who does not take her where he finds her, even for two million .
. .
LEONORE
Are you going to let me speak sensibly to you for
a moment?
LUCKNER [smiling]
You see, I am a man . . . I am in fact a unique
individual! An extraordinary person! For instance, Id like you to feel, among
other things, my head just this once. Posemuckel and
Sumatra! Have you ever in your life seen such a gnarled lump on any human body?
LEONORE
If Rdiger remains
co-owner of our mines in Jagersfontein, as he has a
perfect right to do, then in the course of the next five years he can replenish
your diamonds for you right down to the tiniest stone.(7)
LUCKER [breaks
out in booming laughter]
You see, just like me with my head! Because
thats my weakest spot. A world-famous historical fact, respected by boxers and
wrestlers all over the globe. Sailors and butchers assistants who dont give a
shit about the police and providence, any more than people like us do about an
art gallery, when we fight each other never lay their tiniest finger on my
head. Up here, you see, where my hair is most thickly curled, there you can
knock me out with a wooden spoon, but other than that . . . holy hailstones! .
. . And as for you! Brummfiedel, Pestilence and
Armageddon! Your unfathomable emerald-green tigers eyes! You're not letting
them shine now because youre feeling spiteful. And then your hair! Holy hound
of Hades! Enough to break a mans heart on the spot! O you bells
of Hell! In my dreams I saw you rise up like a glowing cannon ball, hissing and
spitting, and I was blown apart, scattered to the four winds. And your hand!
Your hand! Sulphur pools of Hell! Your hands! And then your walk! Blood rain
and thunder! You see, madam, from my youth on Ive been a reliable judge of
horseflesh. Id look over a horse with the same eyes Id use to choose my
mistress. The most hidden flaw stares back at me magnified a million times. Ah
yes, millions. If Wetterstein and I had not gone into
the diamond-washing business, I'd have earned just as many millions as an
American dealer in high-end horses.
LEONORE [still
in the chair, wringing her hands]
Sacred God in Heaven, show me how I can make this
misbegotten monstrosity aware of how he repels and disgusts me!
LUCKNER [with
a wicked laugh]
O you sad, broken lily! You conceited little
fool! Do you think I expect you to love me?! Holy howitzers on the hilltops!
Please just save your love for that sugary young man of yours. Almighty
paradise of fools! Theres nothing I find more excruciating than being
personally attractive to a woman. My private concerns are none of her business!
LEONORE
In any case, Id put a bullet through my head
first.
LUCKNER
Then please hurry up and do it! Your husband,
that thirty-carat rhinoceros, urgently needs someone finally to take him firmly
in hand. After a five-year absence from the world he will be reborn. Once hes
done his time, his new glory days will begin. In six months
hell be the first secretary and right hand of the director . . . [listening] God-fearing world
parliament, those are his footsteps!
SCENE TWO
[Rdiger von Wetterstein enters in a hurry]
RDIGER [as
soon as he sees Luckner]
What are you doing here?
LUCKNER
We are lighting a cigarette, if youve no
objection. [He lights a cigarette.]
RDIGER
Would you get out of here!
[Rdiger goes for Luckners throat, intending to throw him through the door.
The two men struggle. Luckner throws Rdiger into an armchair and lights another cigarette.]
LUCKNER
You diamond washerwoman! If only you had legs as
strong as our arms! Heaven, death, and divorce courts! [He laughs] You had the heathenish madness to found the Wetterstein dynasty. Hammurabi, Caesar, Bonaparte, Wetterstein! You incomparable ass,
you would-be Napoleon, you idiot of the first water, you wanted to be the fifth
great man on this earthly sphereRockefeller, Morgan, Krupp, Carnegie, and Wetterstein! [He
laughs.]
RDIGER [in
the armchair]
I find it impossible to sort out any ideas right
now. Give me until tomorrow.
LUCKNER
Not even for Chicago! Or even if it rains cowshit! Weve been waiting for two years. In half an hour
well call it quits. Its all been so divinely arrangedwords cannot describe
it. When the woman fights back, then the mans power grows superhuman. The more
desperate her resistance, the more skillfully the man sweeps it out of the way.
But if the man resists . . . well, enjoy your dinner!
LEONORE [moving
up close to Luckner with great determination]
Arent you afraid I could strangle you with these
two hands?
LUCKNER
Not in the slightest! Well be waiting in our
sitting room. Well stay at the hotel till ten oclock.
[Luckner
exits.]
SCENE THREE
RDIGER [getting
up]
Im leaving you alone, Leonore.
Luckner has informed the police. I do not wish to
confront my fate here, in your presence.
LEONORE
Then Ill go with you.
RDIGER
In that case it makes no sense for me to leave.
We might both just as well remain here.
LEONORE
Do you want to end your life?
RDIGER
No. I really wanted to, but Im sure I lack the
strength.
LEONORE
Surely theres only one appropriate course of
action for both of us to remove ourselves from the world?
RDIGER
Why? If I am no longer there, no one can harm
you.
LEONORE
When you are no longer there? How does no one
being able to harm me do me any good then?
RDIGER
You were happy before you met me. Youll find
happiness again.
LEONORE
Those are just words. You dont even believe them
yourself. I first learned what happiness is when I met you.
RDIGER
So much the worse for you. In my life I am always
dissatisfied with myself. At my parents house I was an unhappy child; in my
first marriage I was an unhappy husband. I made you unspeakably miserable when
I destroyed your happiness. And since weve lived together, I dont feel any
happier than I did before.
LEONORE [crying
out in anguish]
O! O! To have to hear that now!
RDIGER
Forgive me, forgive me. Its just that since I
was born Ive never been a consistent person. Since my
childhood, two hostile races have been fighting a murderously destructive war
inside me.
LEONORE
Right now your entire
life seems dark and gloomy, just as in happy times you always see everything
bathed in the most brilliant sunshine.
RDIGER
If only we two were not chained together!
LEONORE
How are we chained together? Come on, how?
RDIGER
How are we chained? How? Yes, yes, yes! I ask
myself that all the time.
LEONORE [after
a pause, with a groan]
I think I know, Rdiger,
what it is that keeps the two of us welded to each other.
RDIGER
The criminal acts we carried out together. I
chased your husband to get together with my wife and, once that happened, used
it as an excuse for telling her to leave. Then I freed us from your husband by
tricking him into a duel. Later we got married and wanted to create for
ourselves a life whose splendour would justify
the immense sacrifices it cost.
LEONORE
That is just morbid and effeminate wallowing in
emotion, nothing but superstition gloomy images you never even thought about
when we were happy with our lives.
RDIGER [groaning]
Then tell me the name of the awful chain that
will not let us separate from each other.
LEONORE
Thats extremely easy. Whenever you wanted us to
separate, I did everything I possibly could to prevent it. And when I wanted us
to separate, you did everything you could to keep us together.
RDIGER
But why? Tell me, why did we do that? Why were we
always so unreasonable?
LEONORE
I know as little about that as you do. But I do
know one thing: exploring this riddle now is no help at all.
RDIGER
Thats too bad! Unfortunately
thats what weve told ourselves every time unhappiness has left our reason
paralyzed.
LEONORE
You say its unfortunate? I say, thank God! You
have no answer? You are finding this a struggle? Rdiger,
we do not have much time left. Dont we want to end this quickly?
RDIGER
Thats easy to say.
LEONORE [quickly]
Its over soon.
RDIGER
Here you go. [He
puts a revolver on the table.] Now do it!
LEONORE
You dont know what to do next? [Reaching for the weapon] I do!
RDIGER [grabbing
her arm and holding her hand back]
Leonore! For Gods sake!
LEONORE
Both of us have been demanding too much from the
world if we lack the necessary courage now!
RDIGER [frantic]
I love you!
LEONORE
Thats the first time Ive heard you use that
suspicious word.
RDIGER
Well, what do you think about both of us bringing
things to an end?
LEONORE
I cant think about it. Its all over. From the
first day of our marriage we were no longer a part of good society.
RDIGER
That was an unexpected setback for us. Good
society is the society in which one does good business.
LEONORE
You stake your entire character on belonging in
the big, wide world.
RDIGER
This rebuke comes late!
LEONORE
Its not a rebuke! No, Rdiger!
How could I do that!
RDIGER
The big, wide world is the world where one does
great business.
LEONORE
Up to this point no one has threatened our very
existence.
RDIGER
Except for us.
LEONORE
But why?
RDIGER
Why? Isnt that obvious to you? Because our human
dignity is threatened!
LEONORE
Human dignity! Thats nonsense! Is it dignified
for a man to spend five years of his life as a hangmans slave?
RDIGER
A hangmans slave? So
you are shifting the responsibility all onto me?
LEONORE
How did you arrive at that awful suspicion? Have
you ever kept a secret from me?
RDIGER
You always knew as well as I did what I was
doing. In his own era, Jesus Christ came up with a view of the word suitable
for the army of outcasts that nowadays are sitting in the penitentiary or the
lunatic asylum.
LEONORE
And what did he say about us women?
RDIGER [crying
out]
Leonore! How can you ask that
question? [Calmer] Do as you wish!
Then Ill do what I wish! Human dignity is not a monkey jacket.(8) No, human
dignity is breath, nourishment, light. Human dignity grows out of the marriage
of the parents and is the foundation for the marriages of the children.
LEONORE [reaching
for the revolver]
Here is our human dignity!
RDIGER
Do you wish to kill me? [He stands up and looks her in the eye.] Try it, if you can!
LEONORE
If you dont want me to . . .
RDIGER
Please do it! But quickly!
LEONORE [pulls
her hand back]
Where am I supposed to get the strength for that!
RDIGER
Naturally I am once again the one at fault!
LEONORE [rushing
to hold him around the chest]
No, no! Im to blame! Its my fault!
RDIGER
Thats why Christianity conquered the world.
People never really know whether they are back again in the penitentiary or the
asylum.
LEONORE
And whoever feels he bears no blame, let him cast
the first stone at them.
RDIGER [crying
out in pain]
Be quiet, I say! Shut up! Have you gone mad!
LEONORE
A horrible pain! Yes! A horrible fate! God knows!
But why should I bear this agony all by myself!
RDIGER [extreme
horror]
Leonore? The union of our flesh
. . . could you . . .
LEONORE
I am prepared to go to any lengths! Ill kill
myself right now, if that will in any way help you!
RUDIGER
Kill yourself! Yes? Yes! But . . . No! The very
idea that you are thinking of it . . .
LEONORE
Do you really mean killing yourself is easier?
RDIGER
Easier or not, it does not help!
LEONORE
Ill do whatever you tell me I should do.
RDIGER
If I have to tell you what you owe me, then the
time is long since past when I have any reason to say it.
LEONORE [staring
at him]
I have no answer for that! Its appalling how
little we human beings know about our lives, about how we are constantly in a
state of joy or terror!
RDIGER
With a woman who walks her own path I have
nothing to authorize, no commands to give, and nothing to forbid. Even the most
virtuously chaste woman would not feel undervalued if she were purchased with
two million. God be praised! Then I will be free!
LEONORE [calmly]
The moment they arrest you, I will shoot myself.
RDIGER
I will, too, if it gets that far. I am absolutely
sure of that.
SCENE FOUR
[Effie enters in a hurry.
She is very cheerful.]
EFFIE
But Mother, Mother, what are you getting so
worked up about? I can hear your conversation all the way up in my room. Is
that indefatigable foreigner still not satisfied? But you guessed more or less
from the beginning that you could someday fall into his devils claws.
RDIGER
The moment a man believes he is bound by
something more powerful than his own free will the entire blasphemous horror of
marriage is exposed.
LEONORE [to
Effie]
Then we can expect no help from your husband?
EFFIE
You mean money? No, dear Mother. My husband has
nothing left but debts. Most of the two hundred thousand francs I spent
gambling last Wednesday in Monte Carlo didnt come from him. When I left, he
was busy with a plan to found an Australian railway company. At any rate, he
thought there were still no railways in Australia.
LEONORE
What are you intending to live on then?
EFFIE
That will sort itself out. In the first six
months we would have drowned ourselves from boredom if I hadnt always made an
effort to provide interesting entertainment with my adventures.
RDIGER
What is it really that prevents us from living in
peace and forgetting all maliciousness?
LEONORE
Human dignity prevents us from doing that! Simple
dignity, which the poorest child gets as an inheritance from the way his
parents remain true to each other! The dignity on which the poorest human being
builds his happiness in life!
RDIGER
Five minutes ago you
were just as decisively asserting the opposite point of view.
LEONORE
And you? Five minutes ago, werent you just as
insistently defending the opposite point of view, as well?
RDIGER
I have overcome my lack of conviction and
regained my confidence.
LEONORE
Then why were we not in agreement five minutes
ago? Why arent we agreeing now? Should I say it? I understand my child, and I
understand you . . .
RDIGER
Leonore, you are so upset, you
no longer know what you are saying!
EFFIE
If I were married to a man who was really
jealous, I would be willing to help my husband out of such a situation, without
damaging my loyalty to him in the slightest.
LEONORE
What do you mean?
EFFIE
I would act as if I were resigning myself to my
fate. I would go like a lamb to the slaughter. All of a sudden
I would catch fire and become rapturously excited, in love but all that in such an
exaggerated, artificial, and unnatural way that the brute loses all desire, his
hair stands on end, and his skin crawls. He has no idea where to turn his head.
That way the issue is resolved. Potiphars wife and Joseph. When he sobers up,
the boors keenest desire is that no living soul ever learns about our meeting.(9)
LEONORE
Child, my child, what is this precipice we have
come to!
RDIGER
If we consider things calmly, is our situation
really so terrible? [To Leonore] In the space of three years I have quadrupled
the four hundred thousand marks you received as a dowry from your father. That
money is secure. If we can get through today, no one on Gods earth will have
any more claims against us. Then we will be free and can set off on with our
minds at ease on whatever paths we both have determined for ourselves. Then I
will show people that I had a right to ignore and overstep their boundaries,
and in a hundred years the earth will still bear traces of what I have done.
LEONORE
Whatever a poor creature like me can do to
further your victorious career, I will do. If I dont, have I any right to go
on living? I do enough to bring you down and hold you back.
RDIGER
Are you perhaps under the impression that in this
world great wealth has ever been made in harmless ways? The first return that
every asset immediately brings is the proud advantage that you no longer have
to worry where it came from.
EFFIE
I cannot go on living like this any longer. I
make a special trip from Monte Carlo to Ouchy to see my parents again, and I
find them in a mood that makes me want to put a sack over my head. From morning
to night, nothing but difficulties. But I cant sit here all day long by myself
up in my room reading Dante. Mother, you are mortally afraid your marriage
could be breaking up. But that is just a childish delusion! I know of nothing
in the world more indestructible than marriage. And I am not thinking at all
about my own. That is so strong and so elastic, it could encompass the world.
But I know people who have bickered every day for twenty-five years without
ever being unfaithful to each other a single time! And I know people who for
twenty-five years have been unfaithful to each other every day without ever
quarrelling about it even once! No one has any idea of all the things a proper
marriage can put up with. Its certainly not at all essential that both people
like each other. If only one of the two is fond of the other, thats enough for
half a lifetime.
LEONORE
Perhaps Im not a match for the pressure of
events, but I have a sense that Im being crushed by the situation we face. I
feel has if someone has put a foot on my head in order to grind my mouth into
the dirt.
EFFIE
Thats called hypochondria, dear Mother.
LEONORE
Rdiger! Do you remember when,
in the first three months of our marriage, I came back from Hamburg? You were
waiting for me at the railway station in Hannover. As soon as we were alone,
you told me you had come to the train an hour early. You had walked up and down
the platform asking yourself which of two options would be preferablewhether I
had let myself be touched by a mans foot under the table in Hamburg or whether
on the return journey I had been killed in a railway accident. Back then you
stated very firmly that my death would have been preferable.
RDIGER
If you asked me that today, my answer would be
exactly the same.
LEONORE
For a moment I was confused. But then I thanked
my creator that both of us were sufficiently noble to confront the realities of
life so fearlessly.
RDIGER
Well? And?
LEONORE
And now . . . ? Now . . . ?
RDIGER
There are thoughts buried deep in ones core that
should never be openly talked about, even with married couples. If they start
to question whether they belong together, they immediately face each other as
deadly enemies.
EFFIE
For me the only people in the world worth paying
attention to are the few exceptional ones who make the impossible possible.
LEONORE
The impossible, Effie? Its impossible to give
yourself to the murderer of a person you love. I gave myself to him. Its
impossible to keep on possessing a man by killing yourself. I am prepared to do
that. But to destroy yourself for a man who perhaps does not belong to you
anymore . . . well, that makes me feel like Im being set upon by packs of
dogs!
[A waiter enters in a
hurry]
WAITER
Please excuse me. There is an individual
downstairs who claims that Monsieur is going to be threatened by the police.(10)
LEONORE
Now let the entire universe collapse around me!
[Leonore
rushes out. The Waiter looks around wondering whats going on. When he gets no
answer, he leaves the room, closing the door behind him.]
SCENE FIVE
EFFIE [after
a pause]
Are you really from an old noble family?
RDIGER [sitting
at a table with his head in his hands, groaning]
Im completely shatteredonly a dreadful
caricature of what I used to be.
EFFIE
In a hundred years, no one will understand any
more how we can make such a scandal out such harmless fun and games.
RDIGER [stands
up and pulls himself together]
My mother was born a Goldstaub.
She came from Budapest.
EFFIE
I know an ancient prayer. It comes from the time
when people were still punished with a lifetime of slavery if two of them got
caught embracing in secret. The prayer ends with the words:
You should not love from weakness
But from strength,
From self-assurance!
You should not love in darkness
But in the light.
Woe for the love
That vanishes from sight
When the crowd looks on!
For as your love is,
So your children!
Whoever loves in darkness
also lives in darkness!
RDIGER
Where did you read that?
EFFIE
The prayer begins with the words:
I, the I who is myself . . .
I always like that line the most!
RDIGER
How does it continue?
EFFIE
I, the hidden one
Who called you into life
For my own pleasure!
But there are already omens and miracles
happening. I know an American who champions the people. He has made it his
lifes work to free relationships between men and women from all medieval
instruments of torture.
RDIGER
I know who you mean. I am familiar with the
enchanting eloquence of his writing.
EFFIE
A dry old stick as a lover! But my powers of
endurancewhich I have not yet found in any of my sisters! I think of myself as
an inexplicable natural wonder. One moonlit night in the Coliseum in Rome the
age I should really have lived in became clear to meeither the time of
Pericles in Athens or, even better, in Corinth, or else in Rome under Commodus
or Caracalla.(11)
RDIGER
You are so superhumanly proud of your profession.
I dont know any diplomat who would take more pride in his lack of
responsibility.
EFFIE
Surrendering ourselves is our particular view of
the world. I thought about this for two years, until the scales fell from my
eyes one morning. It was on a lonely mountain top in Upper Austria. I was all
alone waiting for the sun to rise. As the first sparks of light punctured the
steel-blue screen I asked myself, What is the greatest
triumph sought by a woman who has no children? Sensual experience!
RDIGER
You could have miscalculated. Remember Goethes
lines:
Man remains desirable until from life he parts,
but woman shrivels up before her reasoning starts.
EFFIE [sings]
A child I know is a delight,
a very rare and lovely sight.
Her eyes are black and black her hair,
her build and bearing truly fair.
Shes not too thin and not too small
and not too fat and not too tall.
Her songs and dances make her glad,
And even now she drives men mad.
And then theres that other poem by Goethe:
[Effie begins singing and
dancing.]
Are your muscles tense and braced,
your shoes and stockings all in place,
then in the centre of the throng
begin the dance.
Front and back a royal queen!
Dance like no woman ever danced.
With every movement that you can
Left leg,
Nimble leg,
The right must even nimbler be!
Perhaps you know which classical composer wrote
this song:
The young girl is so fair
with legs beyond compare,
a model for the rest,
in all the world the best.
And best of all to tell,
she leapt around so well,
while her legs danced their art
she sprang into my heart.
RDIGER
Your singing is delightful. Im waiting for your
reply.
EFFIE
Just be patient. Our adventures demand
intelligence and skill, in equal amounts. Two weeks ago
in one and the same evening I dined in Monte Carlo with three different
gentlemen at the same time in the same hotel, without any of them knowing
anything about the presence of the other two. That was emotional gymnastics! I
had to keep track of every second. I invented excuses for my departures and for
keeping each one waiting. So much so, my head was whirling like a mechanized
spinning factory. Each one of the gentlemen picked me up where we were staying,
and each of them ordered a different five-course dinner. I did not let a single
one get taken away without tasting it. Each one brought me back in a car to our
residence. It was a confused jumble of delicious mouthfuls, popping corks, car
rides, and squandering money on tips . . . The waiters oversaw the entire
business as delighted spectators. I have never yet been served more
respectfully and with more ceremonious expressions in any hotel. What an effort
that cost me, when the next day I had to sort out once again all the different
events, arguments, and surprises in their appropriate compartments! I still felt
a champagne fog in my headotherwise Id have drawn up a statistical chart.
RDIGER [He
has recovered his composure.]
After this masterstroke in Monte Carlo was your
life still safe?
EFFIE
Why would that concern me? But picture to
yourself what happened afterwards! The next day, as evening approaches, the
three gentlemen go, as usual, to the Casino. Each of them explains to a large
circle of friends he has carefully gathered around him that yesterday at eleven
oclock he had an intimate dinner in the Hotel Mditrran
with the celebrated Countess dArmont, or Little
Monkey, as they call me. The gentlemen furthest away from those telling the
story hear all three reports at once. They keep quiet for quite a while,
enjoying themselves on their own. Suddenly the entire Casino room bursts into
resounding laughter. My three lovers have naturally hated each other for a long
time, just like fathers of the church. At first, they look as if theyve been
struck by lightning. All at once from three different sides the shouting
starts: You liar! You liar! You liar! Each one challenges the other two to a
duel with pistols. Finally, a fearful brawl breaks out. I had been expecting
that. As the bloody heads were cooling off with ice water, I let myself be
escorted through the room by Herzog von Eurasburg. No
one dared make the slightest remark about me. I said to myself, how
pathetically small the whole world looks when it lies at my feet.
RDIGER [at
Effies side]
There is a moist look shimmering in your dark
eyes. Its fascinating. Ive never seen it any other woman.
EFFIE
I will give you a present of one night . . .
RDIGER
I am not in the market.
EFFIE
One single night . . .
RDIGER
But I dont want to fight it out with waiters!
EFFIE
But not tonight . . .
RDIGER
Too bad!
EFFIE
I dont yet know which one . . .
RDIGER
My time is my own to do as I please.
EFFIE
But when this night comes, I will kiss you so you
will never forget me anymore during your lifetime.
[A shot cracks out from
the floor below.]
RDIGER [trembling
with shock]
What was that?
EFFIE
A revolver! What else could it be?
RDIGER
Then something bad has happened!
EFFIE
Why would you say that?
RDIGER
You can still ask that question?
[Rdiger
exits.]
EFFIE [alone]
Something bad does not happen as easily as that!
And what if it does! There are always beneficial consequences, too. How worried
people are about disaster! For me each day can bring catastrophe. When would I
be safe from simple murder? One more thrill! Fate, how I thank you for
preparing me so extravagantly for this career! No getting tired! No breaking
down! No inhibitions! No obsessions! No hangovers!
SCENE SIX
[Rdiger
leads Leonore into the room. She is having trouble
holding herself upright.]
EFFIE [with
a shrill cry]
Mother! [She
runs to Leonore.] Merciful Heaven, you look
dreadful!
LEONORE
Effie? . . . Are you still alive?
RDIGER [trembling
with worry, setting Leonore into an armchair]
Pull yourself together, for Gods sake! Lie down
and rest.
LEONORE
The staircase up to here! The staircase! It never
ended! One wall after another!
EFFIE
What was it? What happened?
RDIGER
He shot himself!
EFFIE [kneeling
next to her mother]
Shot? He shot himself? With you there?
LEONORE
You planted the idea in me, Effie!
RDIGER
Forget that! You shouldnt be listening to people
talking for a week!
EFFIE
I was showing off, Mother, exaggerating with
childish fantasies!
LEONORE
I stagger down there . . . each step, each
landing an impassable wall. [Crying out]
And now he is lying there!
RDIGER
Come to your senses. If you think back on it,
youll kill yourself.
EFFIE
Should I call the doctor, Mother? Should I bring
you something stronger?
RDIGER [stroking
her anxiously]
What done is done! Think! You must get through
this for our sakes! You look as if you didnt have a drop of blood left in your
body!
LEONORE
Your freedom has been bought with blood! Be
proud, Rdiger! Set yourself beside those whose heads
wear royal crowns! Your freedom has been bought with two human lives!
RDIGER
God in Heaven, with two!
LEONORE
Perhaps in your reckoning mine counts for
nothing? How quickly that made you flinch! Do you count my life as nothing?
What am I now? No, you have not suffered!
EFFIE
What man ever came into a womans room in such
despair! And all because we women do not know the power we possess!
LEONORE
Child! Child! God protect us from that power! He
was looking out the window whistling some tune. And the hellish fear that the
brute would throw himself on top of me. I go at him. You are lost! I am lost!
He is planted by the mirror, deliberately tying himself up in his cravat. Now
one last effort. I force myself to laugh . . . laugh . . . laugh. [She breaks out in wild laughter.] I
want you! I order . . . demand! I swear to enjoy you! Now you can . . . to your
hearts content . . . make love to me!
RDIGER [striking
his temples with his fists]
Will this agonizing torture never end?
LEONORE
Well, that wiped the insolence from his face
right away! And his crudeness disappeared! His intoxication with victory
dissolved! And his laughter stuck in his throat before it could break out! And
then . . .
RDIGER
Hurry up, Leonore! Is
this story of how I was saved going to destroy my reason?
LEONORE
He is choking on his own curses. White as
plaster, he bares his teeth. And me? I should be beaten into pieces, trampled
on, crushed! [With her hands covering her
face she sinks into another chair.]
EFFIE [in a
muffled but firm tone, to Rdiger]
You will be committing an inhuman crime if you
still keep tormenting this woman now!
RDIGER
Would it perhaps be more loving if I listened
with indifference?
LEONORE [with
tears streaming down her face]
What did I do then that was so terrible? I kissed
him, so he might kick me around. But then . . . [suddenly composed, without tears, staring first at Rdiger
and then at Effie] . . . then he pulls . . . pulls both hands back over his
own head I can still feel his fists burning on my cheeks then he jerks a
bit . . . he had shot himself from above back through his head. [Pointing to the top of her head] He had
shot himself here! [Staggering back] He
falls against my knees so I fall back onto the fireplace . . . just lies there
without moving. [Pause]
SCENE SEVEN
[Van Zeeter,
the manager of the hotel, enters the room quickly.]
VAN ZEETER
This is obviously extremely distressing for me,
but I must ask you ladies and gentlemen as firmly as possible to avoid making
any unnecessary noise. I have placed our private automobile at your immediate
disposal. I cannot do more than that. The car is waiting in the second
courtyard by the backstairs. [He opens
the door and calls out.] Quickly Monsieur Duvoisin.
Hurry up. Lets finish this. We wont make too much noise! [He allows Monsieur Duvoisin and two
policemen to come into the room, and points to Leonore.]
There is the lady in question!(12)
DUVOISON [to
Leonore]
Madame, I am the prefect of police for the town
of Ouchy. Are you Madame Wetterstein? Is that not
true, Madame? Madame, you are under arrest. Follow me!
EFFIE
Whats going on?
VAN ZEETER [to
Effie]
The death penalty is no longer enforced in this
canton. So the lady does not need to worry too much.
But leave here as quickly as you can. Today we are having a large concert here
in the evening featuring Catalani from Paris.
EFFIE
You do realize that this is a case of suicide.
VAN ZEETER
Forgive me, I dont know anything at all. [To Duvoisin]
All right, Monsieur Duvoisin, lets close this case!
DUVOISON
Madame, you are obliged to follow me to the
prefecture of police. Hurry up, Madame!
RDIGER [to
Leonore]
You will be released immediately theres no
doubt about that at all.
LEONORE
I am going to prison, Effie? Effie,
is this your work? Help me, Almighty One,
help me get over this appalling force,
the power of women! No, Rdiger,
I am still too good, however poor I am,
to force myself on you. Love one another!
Today the poorest mortal human being
no longer pities me! Why should the child
feel any trace of pity for its mother
or the husband any pity for his wife!
Love each other! Love each other! Perhaps,
in ages yet to come, men will view my crime
with milder eyes. I cannot force myself
on you when I am stained with blood.
Dont lay a hand on me. Im off to prison!
[Leonore leaves the
room, moving quickly.]
ACT THREE
[A low but spacious
snow-white panelled room with a white wooden ceiling.
The main doorway is downstage right (from the audiences viewpoint). In the
middle of the back wall there is a doorway covered with white curtains
decorated with a pattern of roses in full bloom, and downstage left there is a small
door with a pointed arch, hardly noticeable in the white wainscot panelling. On both sidewalls between the side doors and the
back wall is a row of low, wide windows close to each other. Through the
windows of the right sidewall, one can see the inside of a large, sunlit
medieval castle courtyard and through the windows on the left side wall a few
slender tree tops, the top of a small watchtower, and above that the deep blue
sky. The windows on the courtyard side are closed, while those on the facing wall
are wide open. The furniture in the room consists of three small tables with
flimsy chairs around them, all blindingly white. There is no rocking chair,
sofa, or settee. The tables are set for tea. There is a samovar on the middle
table. When the curtains on the middle door are open, one can see into a room
lit with a dull red glow, without being able to recognize any particular
details.]
SCENE ONE
[Heiri Wipf,
in shirtsleeves, wearing a green apron and a gigantic hat made out of rushes
with a red band around it, is taking fresh fruit out of a crude wicker basket
and filling fruit bowls set on the tables.]
HEIRI WIPF [singing]
O the plums were so blue!
O the plums were so blue!
PROFESSOR SCHARLACH [opening the door downstage right and calling into the room]
Hey, you good-for-nothing, no more songs!
The tunes are catchy, but theyre too damn loud!
HEIRI WIPF [laughing]
That would be something totally new for me! [He goes towards Scharlach
with his fist raised.] You perjured heretic! Why should I not keep on
singing here?
SCHARLACH
Be quiet! The mistress of the castle is not well.
HEIRI WIPF
What? The mistress of the castle? Our dear young
mistress? Does she have a pain somewhere?
SCHARLACH
Of course, shes in pain! If not, she wouldnt
cry.
HEIRI WIPF
Shes crying? O my God! The mistress of the
castle weeps! Damn it, why didnt you tell me right away? O you worn out fool!
If the young mistress of the castle weeps, it must be something bad!
SCHARLACH
It is! And now get out of here!
HEIRI WIPF
Thats no reason for you to talk so rudely to me!
You burned up, worn-out heretic! Be sure you tell the mistress of the castle Heiri Wipf sends the young lady his best wishes for a quick
recovery!
[Heiri Wipf leaves
downstage right. Professor Scharlach follows him
out.]
SCENE TWO
[Professor Scharlach leads Effie into the room. She is wearing an
evening dress and a tiara. Her face is streaming tears, and she is sobbing
almost uncontrollably. He takes her to one of the open windows. Still weeping,
she sinks down on a chair in front of it.]
SCHARLACH [sighing]
O dear, O dear, O dear, O dear, O dear!
Such a disastrous dolt! Who would have thought
it would turn out like this. Swept away
by my discoveries in medicine
and without thinking what Im doing,
I forcefully inject my murderous idea
into my guinea pig, right in her heart!
EFFIE [howling]
I built myself a way to see the world.
O God, O God, how much of that remains,
my silly childish vision of the world!
[She cries as if her
heart were breaking]
SCHARLACH
It is not good for you, my child, to let
your agitation run with no restraint.
EFFIE [howling]
My pride, my arrogance, my sense of fun,
the freedom of my life as an adventurer,
for that I thanked the way I see the world.
For every glance I used to snare a man,
for every night I spent in sensual riot,
Ive kept a faithful personal account,
as if I had become a manager
entrusted with a piece of property.
And now I hear its all just a disease,
my desire is disease, my eyes disease,
and my vitality only a disease!
SCHARLACH [sighing]
My room up here, the one Im living in,
gets the most sun and is the coziest
in all the castle. Youre the one, Effie,
I have to thank for that. Every morning
the young girl brings me breakfast to my bed,
and I ask myself if Im still dreaming
a dream of childhood. Below my window
there is a noise from where the rabbits live,
while across the way, caressed by sunlight
and by ivy stands, the red-brown quadrant
of the castle keep. Effie, you must not
be ungrateful for such a magic realm.
You are enthroned here like a sovereign mistress
in your baronial seat, a way of life
unknown to anyone for centuries.
EFFIE [drying
her tears]
And this is something you have now prepared
for me to swallow, today of all days,
when, more so now than ever, I still need
my sense of humour, idiocy, and folly,
my vision of the world. And yet today
its all collapsing, crushing me to death!
SCHARLACH
Who knows, my child, if there is not a sign
of Heaven in this. Out of respect for you
for one week now I have been holding back
from openly discussing it with you.
The rest of us, who are all satellites
encircling you, providing you protection,
all of us for once are in agreement . . .
EFFIE [calmly
and firmly]
Enough, enough. Its quite impossible
for me to talk about this. Anyway,
its not a thing the public can decide.
So now please tell memake it short and sweet
what I heard and only partly understood
because I was in shock. My strong desires,
if I understand correctly, arise
from illnesses in my digestive tract?
SCHARLACH [shrugging
his shoulders]
From childhood on, it seems, you wore corsets
and laced them up too tight.
EFFIE
So this gleam in my eyes,
which makes a man a promise of some kind,
I owe that to a problem with my liver?
SCHARLACH
You know, Effie, how ruthless I must be
to whip my work in medical research
through every net, if Im ever going to land
the smallest catch that offers evidence.
Twelve years now Ive been working on my book
called Criminality: Its Preconditions.
Not that I became your personal physician
merely because I wished to spy on you.
The fee that Salzmann is now paying me
would have attracted someone else first rate.
But is it then all that astonishing
if, in the middle of the noisy chatter
of the conversation at our midday meal,
for one single moment I could forget
the purpose of the universe is you,
not science?
EFFIE
And my face changes colour
so easily and fast, my skin is dull.
Do all these symptoms come from gall stones,
or is the cause some sickness in the lungs?
SCHARLACH [with
the most affectionate concern]
In future, Effie, no man you look at
will be able to resisthe will be
completely at your mercy. Thats the truth.
Just as its true there is no living man
who knows how to flatter that pride of yours
more shamelessly than me. You must stay calm!
I hear the noble champions of your realm
already climbing up the stairs. Be happy!
No one must know that youre not feeling well.
EFFIE [getting
up]
Lifes glorious flame has been extinguished,
and nothing now remains but joyless ash.
To expiate ones sins by selling sex,
the rationalization of a whore,
how shockingly insipid and idiotic
that now sounds. But I will not turn back.
Decline and dissolution are approaching,
but they will find me standing strong and proud,
the way I looked when I was fortunate.
SCENE THREE
[Rdiger von Wetterstein opens the door downstage right and sticks his
head into the room.]
RDIGER
May we come in, my child?
EFFIE
Yes, yes, please do.
RDIGER [in
the open doorway, calling back outside]
Come in, dear heart. Were not disturbing her.
LEONORE VON WETTERSTEIN [entering]
My dear child! Good heavens, have you been
crying?
EFFIE [excessively
cheerful]
Ive been laughing till my eyes filled up with
tears.
No, dear mother, if youd heard the story
Hannibal just told and understood it,
youd be on your back, howling with laughter.
LEONORE [embracing
Effie]
O Effie, to find you in this cheerful mood
is such a comfort to me. Do you know
the princely gift you offered us today?
[To Rdiger]
May I mention it?
RDIGER
Its not up to me
to tell my fates companion what to say.
I dont give her orders or forbid things,
not after I have scattered all she owns
to the four winds and seen how that hard work
has made my head turn bald.
LEONORE
And like a young girl
you still fish for compliments! My hair is white,
but not because I worked so frantically.
The first early post today delivered
a contract fully signed, assuring us
an annual income, guaranteed for life.
Rdiger and I, from this day forward,
each year receive . . .
[To Rdiger]
May I state the sum?
RDIGER
. . . eight thousand marks! Professor Scharlach
has already gained our daughters confidence.
LEONORE [to
Effie]
My child, my child, what must that have cost you!
EFFIE
A mere conjuring trick!
LEONORE
But Karl Salzmann
seems to be helped by supernatural spirits.
RDIGER
Ah yes, a good man, Salzmann! In a dream
Id never have imagined I would be
a guest again in my ancestral home.
LEONORE
Here in Castle Wetterstein!
It sounds grand
Rdiger von Wetterstein in Wetterstein!(13)
RDIGER
In Salzmann Guesthouse, Castle Wetterstein,
by contrast, has a much more modern ring.
SCHARLACH
And if sometimes perhaps Director Salzmann
seems radical in treatments he applies,
one must acknowledge with the highest praise
the gift he has for organizing things!
RDIGER
A perfect businessman! I cant believe
what he thinks up, the range of his ideas!
LEONORE [to
Effie]
And what a sensitive and lovely home
hes made for us, me and your father,
in this tower two secret hidden steps lead up
into our bower, like some higher world.
Far to the north, the dark high regions
of the Schwarzwald, and outside our windows
right above the entranceway, the courtyard
originally built in sixteen thirty two.
Its unbelievable! But here he comes!
SCENE FOUR
[Karl Salzmann, Waldemar Uhlhorst,
Matthias Taubert, and Schigabet
enter. Schigabet has a mad hairstyle ( la Wahnsinn) and is wearing a stiff shirt collar, bow tie,
lace shirt cuffs, a blue frock coat, gold vest, purple knee breeches,
silver-grey silk stockings, and leather shoes with buckles and red heels. He is
carrying a troubadours lute under his arm.]
SALZMANN
Come on then, lets have a cup of coffee!
Here everyone feels less inhibited
than when they are at home.
[He turns to Effie as the
others come in.]
In Yokohama
the Worlds Fair will be opening in May.
But still, I wonder if we might prefer
to visit the South Pole. I have a hunch,
Effie, that absolutely everyone
whos anyone in the world will gather
this coming summer at the southern pole.
EFFIE
I think we should see the Worlds Fair first
and then, after that, go to the South Pole.
SALZMANN
Thank you, my little treasure.
EFFIE
This Mister Tschamper
where in the castle is he going to stay?
SALZMANN
In the old armoury,
south-west from here.
The morning sun comes in there from the yard
And, at sunset, sinks behind the furthest peak.
EFFIE
And if he walks across the yard at noon
up to the parapet, the ageless ice
of Jungfraus glacial face will gleam at him.
SALZMANN
Fanfares of trumpets will announce to us
Mister Tschampers entry through the gate
of the lower courtyard. In the gallery
we have placed musicians with hunting horns.
Then in the castle courtyard Schigabet
will make a formal welcoming address.
SCHIGABET
Yes, of course, provided Mister Tschamper
has sorted out my guest performances
in Argentina. Comedians like me,
so people say, in times like these can do
brilliant business in South America.
EFFIE [clapping
her hands]
Now Schigabet
will sing a brand-new song!
SCHIGABET
You want a song? While all those here must
wait
to see this thousand-year-old pile of stone
fly up into the air, and us as well?
EFFIE
The time till Mister Tschamper
reaches us
will fly past much more quickly.
RDIGER
Time up here
sprints past at such a terrifying speed,
even in the absence of explosions,
day and night I have irrational fears
the earth could leap out from its orbit.
LEONORE
For Gods sake, Rdiger,
dont joke so lightly
about this ancient globe of ours.
RDIGER
But then,
my dearest heart, wed get the benefit
of leaving this lovely world together.
LEONORE
The one remaining happiness I pray for!
TAUBERT
A pile of stones? Explosions? Is the castle
in danger of being blown to smithereens?
UHLHORST
In the anarchists laboratory
on the ground floor, which I myself installed,
this morning early I rigged up a bomb
as an experiment to see if it would work.
If it suddenly explodes, all on its own,
and blows us up, the bomb is useless.
But if its violence can be locked in
and released at our command, then people
no longer need to be afraid of armies,
theyll have floods and earthquakes made to order,
and no thief thundering with his artillery
will get away without being punished.
SCHIGABET [sings
and plays his lute]
In secret catacombs
we fabricate our bombs
as the old curse taught us.
Heavenly elements and bombs!
EFFIE
Ive not yet ever possessed a lover
whose acrobatic vocal chords could sing
a coloratura as well as Schigabet.
UHLHORST [in
an armchair, with one leg over the other]
We threeyou, Effie, Taubert,
and I
all contradict our valued social order.
You, Effie, dancing girl and prostitute;
Matthais Taubert, a metaphysician
propped up by mans mental laziness;
and I, who for high stakes would happily
hazard my life, if it were somehow possible
simply to be rid of it without dishonour.
EFFIE [clapping
her hands]
Now Schigabet will sing
a brand-new song!
LEONORE [kissing
Effie on the forehead]
Dont let us disturb you, my dear child.
Your father and I are going to seek
some peace and quiet for an hour or so.
RDIGER
In the mulberry tree outside our window
blackbirds chirp a lullaby.
UHLHORST
As a child,
you have already listened to those songs.
Isnt Castle Wetterstein your home?
RDIGER
No, not at all. I was born in Berlin,
Steglitzerstrassenumber forty-six.
I went from there to school for young cadets.
Not since the thirteenth century has my family
owned this castle. And now, gentlemen,
you must excuse me. In this whole place
I am the only worn-out married man.
LEONORE
But look at how our marriage has withstood
so many trials and storms and how happy
and indestructible it still remains!
RDIGER
Only because at last you understand,
Leonore, what in life has lasting value.
LEONORE
Like sipping coffee in the afternoon,
eyes half closed, no need to think at all.
SALZMANN [to
Rdiger]
Herr Baron, would you allow me to serve
you and the baroness an evening meal
in your hidden honeysuckle bower?
LEONORE [squeezing
Salzmanns hand]
What a splendid man you are, Salzmann!
SALZMANN
I wish the two of you a pleasant rest.
[Rudiger and Leonore leave downstage right.]
EFFIE [clapping
her hands]
Now Schigabet will sing
brand-new song!
SCHIGABET [singing
and playing his lute]
On the steamship
It smells of camphor.
Who brings that smell on board?
No one except some wealthy lord!(14)
SALZMANN
You should try that song in Argentina!
It will bring magnificent success.
Once Mister Tschamper listens to you sing,
hell have to take you. You may have deep roots
in Europe, but hell tear you away.
TAUBERT [sitting
in an armchair]
Up here I had an unexpected pleasure.
It was quite bizarre. The torture chamber
in which Im writing my City of the Sun
is so cut off from the castle courtyard
on such an isolated craggy rock,
only the view towards the south provides
me any company.(15) But in
that place
a blissful feeling overpowers me
when I think of the enormous pain
people once suffered in this narrow space . . .
Often the joy I feel is so intense
I find it hard to keep my self-control.
EFFIE
I once knew a man who in the evening
scattered bits of glass across his bed.
He was afraid that one night without warning
he might die of boredom while asleep.
UHLHORST
In the year
eleven fifty Friedrich Barbarossa
rode up here seeking to catch his rival,
Count Ulerich, and break him on the wheel.(16)
In those years, historically speaking,
anarchism had come into full bloom.
I say this remembering that at the time
the moral order of the world resembled
almost perfectly what we have today
with our Propaganda of the Deed,
so much so that we might praise ourselves
and boast that we are truly heroes.(17)
EFFIE
But in this ancient princely residence
I am the only person who can boast
of any contact with true nobility.
Matthias, after your excommunication
by the Holy See, you finally became
a famous man, but did you stay in touch,
even by letter? As for you, Waldemar,
floods and earthquakes, so people say, obey
what you command. But even that power
brings you no closer to the rulers of the earth.
At best, youll earn yourself a heros death
battling before a judge or the police.
When I think of the riotous excitement,
screams of joy from a thousand, thousand hearts,
every time the one I love goes riding
from the palace and smiles, I count myself
much happier than all those other women
whimpering in their family prison cells.(18)
TAUBERT
Come on then! Uhlhorst,
Scharlach, Schigabet,
and Salzmann! Lets slit our bellies open!
What low and lazy wretches we have been
to find that we are placed here on Gods earth
without a single drop of royal blood!
EFFIE
God in Heaven, such a beautiful man!
And yet no fool. The free and royal way
he uses to express himself. All you here
have pet names for me. Schigabet calls me
My little monkey, and you, Karl Salzmann,
as we all know, call me My little treasure,
while Uhlhorst says My pony. Mathieu Taubert
uses the nickname Epiphania,
and Scharlach christens me My guinea pig.
When my prince observed me at the races
driving my white-eyed black-horse team and glimpsed
the fleshy colour of their sexual parts,
he gave a loud shout to his adjutant,
By the sacramental cross, look at that
see how those horse cocks match that pair of eyes!
SCHIGABET
My little monkey, why is it your prince
does not hire me as his comedian?
SCHARLACH
And me as his physician?
TAUBERT
Or me
as his confessor?
SALZMANN
Me as finance minister?
UHLHORST
And me as chancellor?
EFFIE
Because my lover
must love me purely and simply for myself
entirely for me! Where hes concerned,
I do not wish to owe you anything
for your intellectual talents! Not you
or any earthly power! I thank myself,
the way I was created, for his love.
To prevent a world war breaking out
the prince got married.(19) But to me he brings
his unspent passion. He is a man for whom,
when he is on horseback, women in droves,
even the most beautiful, hurl themselves
beneath his horses hooves. And for this man
I am the loftiest summit of the world.
After our first conversation he sent me
the golden cup from which we both had drunk,
the most precious thing I own. Until today,
I have never found sufficient time
to decipher the engraving on it.
[Effie takes the cup out
of a small box, which she has fetched from a cupboard and gives it to Uhlhorst.]
UHLHORST [slowly
deciphering the inscription on the cup]
Come . . . what . . . come . . . may
All . . . things . . . will . . . pass . . . away.
[to
Effie]
But what does his royal eminence think
about the way you view the world? Your prince
must find it awkward, when in the middle
of the most delightful sensual passion,
he has to rush around, trying to find
a bunch of brand spanking new ideas.
EFFIE
But just think, Waldemar, a man like him!
A ruler without flaw, from head to toe
perfect in every way, a true Achilles!
So I can chatter on however I wish
the silliest jokes will not topple him
from his high place. When I romanticize,
without a single word of blasphemy,
the holy ritual of our embrace,
as if he were a royal libertine,
he hears me out and never bats an eye.
He is so pleased when I play hide-and-seek,
a female game to keep our men in chains.
TAUBERT
It seems unlikely that youd tell your prince
about the stages on our ladder of love.(20)
EFFIE
Sometimes, while deep in a dream, he mutters
something about the ladder of love. And once,
when he was visiting Torpedo Harbour
and christening a ship, he could not read
the speech a person had just handed him,
and so, without pausing to think, he said
First in darkness, second lit by lamps
such cruel suffering for slavish tramps.(21)
UHLHORST
Third in the daylight, fourth in open air,
Joys that even in death do not bring despair!
SALZMANN
Fifth completely naked, sixth in mirror frames
how those tempests quicken senses once again!
TAUBERT
Seventh clothed in pearls, eighth for something
grand,
the sins of servitude have long been banned!
EFFIE
Ninth in competition, tenth sacrificial rite,
so that we never lose our sacred light.
SCHIGABET [tuning
his lute]
I have written a side-splitting parody
of our ladder of love. Youll double up
with laughter when you hear my verse!
[A solemn fanfare of
hunting horns, interspersed with the loud sounds of automobile horns becomes
audible from outside.]
SALZMANN
Those are the horns of Mister Chagnaral!
All of us should go out in the courtyard
to welcome Mister Chagnaral Tschamper
from Atakama to Castle Wetterstein!(22)
SCHIGABET
After your speech of welcome, will you please
recommend me to him for Argentina.
SALZMANN
That will be done! For Mister Tschampers
entry
into the upper hall, we should prepare
a greeting no benefactor of the world
has ever seen up here, not since the time
that Barbarossa visited this place!
[They all leave the room,
except for Effie and Taubert.]
SCENE FIVE
EFFIE
Why are you not attending the reception
for Mister Tschamper?
TAUBERT
I have no wish to see him.
I leave today. How long will he be here?
EFFIE
Hes reserved a room with us for thirty days.
TAUBERT
Epiphania! You need to take great
care
with this old goat! He has already killed
three or four prostitutes.
EFFIE [laughing]
Newspaper stories!
If even one were true, he would not be free
to move around.
TAUBERT
According to reports,
the girls all killed themselves.
EFFIE
Then they were stupid.
And you yourself concede he did not kill them.
TAUBERT
How much money does he pay to have his fun?
EFFIE
One hundred thousand dollars.
TAUBERT
Good for him!
EFFIE
That is the highest price anyone has paid
for me so far.
TAUBERT
Still, you shouldnt take it.
Epiphania, its wiser to refuse.
EFFIE
How can I? If the Prince, once again,
cannot repay his debts, then the Kaiser
will declare he is unfit to manage
his affairs, the regional assembly
will then appropriate his principality,
bypassing the authority of regent,
and make it part of all imperial lands.
They will appoint someone as governor.
A dynasty thats reigned a thousand years
will cease to rule!
TAUBERT
Only to be ruled by you!
And then, at last, youll have him to yourself.
EFFIE
No, just the opposite! If he renounces
his succession to the throne, Im done for.
Then hell live only for his wife and children.
TAUBERT
Is he that business-like about such things?
EFFIE
He is not as free as you are. The Princess
wrote to me herself. And in addition,
he only gets two hundred thousand marks.
Karl Salzmann gets one hundred thousand
for himselfpayment for drawing up the contract
with Mister Tschamper so unambiguously,
he cannot under any circumstances
demand to have my fee returned to him.
In our line of business, that is always
the most challenging problem of them all.
TAUBERT
You get to keep one hundred thousand marks?
EFFIE
Provided I fulfill what weve agreed
the stipulated duties. Otherwise
I get nothing. I needed more than that
to secure my parents an annuity.
Karl Salzmann undertook the personal task
of buying that annuity and showed
so much expert knowledge that my father
goes into raptures when he talks of it.
TAUBERT
His history tells us that two young girls
ended their lives while he was watching.
EFFIE
The Argentinian has a single wish
to die while resting in a womans arms.
And that, in the end, is not astonishing.
A hundred men would not have found the strength
to kill themselves, if, before that moment,
in their relationships with women
they had never felt the disgust with life
which always plays a role in suicides.
TAUBERT
Well, it still appears to me suspicious
that up to now hes not had much success.
EFFIE
In our profession, there are abject creatures,
thousands of them, who cannot bring themselves
to witness a mans death. They have no idea
of the power we have to control mens fate.
TAUBERT
How many deaths have you seen up to now?
EFFIE
My husband shot himself here on my heart.
TAUBERT
Epiphania Aphrodisiaca!
Whenever you make a night-time visit
to a graveyard, the coffin lids rise up.
But you must be careful.(23)
EFFIE [laughing]
What is it
I need to be afraid of? Last summer
I spent my time cooped up in Mondsee
with an Afghani prince, who was quite mad,
a summer stay like all the others.
We played like children.(24)
TAUBERT
Epiphania
Aphrodisiaca! You know all the tricks.
But nevertheless . . .
EFFIE
I once knew a man
who had lots of ammunition and shot
in all directions if someone even tugged
the white hairs on his chest. But listen
to that song! Heiri Wipf is singing!
HEIRI WIPF [up
in a plum tree, singing in front of the window]
O the plums were so blue!
O the plums were so blue!
TAUBERT
Ah, that voice! It goes right through me!
EFFIE [opening
the window and calling outside]
Dearest Heiri, stop
picking all those plums!
TAUBERT
How can one possibly describe that lovely view!
When you think of it, how soon this splendour
will remain beautiful only to other souls.
EFFIE
Here plum-gathering Heiri
comes in person!
HEIRI WIPF [kneeling
on the window ledge, a sack on his shoulders]
That song about plums is a lovely damn song! You
work like a quarryman from morning till night, but you cant for the life of you
get that song out of your head!
EFFIE
Then sing it for us. Come, Heiri.
Climb in
with your sack full of plums, and sing!
HEIRI WIPF
A lovely anonymous song! Its from High Germany!
The court jester has to sing it to the castle maiden every morning! I sing high
German badly.(25)
[He sings]
O the plums are so blue, so blue!
O the plums are so blue!
Then the famers come and crush
all the plums in a dreadful mush.
They crush the plums so blue, so blue!
They crush the plums so blue!
TAUBERT
This stupid fool! O Effie, dont make me
have to suffer through it!
HEIRI WIPF
A stupid fool! [Raising his fist and going after Taubert]
For me that would be a welcome novelty. [Taubert moves quickly out of his way.] I am dirt. You
are dirt. And the castle maiden is she is made of the finest stuff there is.
Wed all be better off if we were stupid fools.
EFFIE
Bravo, Heiri! Youre a
prophet!
Now go outside into the garden
and pick a basket full of large fresh pears
for us to eat tonight.
HEIRI WIPF
For the night! Yes indeed! Large fresh pears for
the mistress of the castle! The night is just such a damn hot time of day!
[Henri Wipf exits
downstage right.]
EFFIE
Now theres the very image of a man!
TAUBERT
Epiphania Aphrodisiaca!
EFFIE
What is it, my sweet treasure?
TAUBERT
At other times,
whenever youve been in a tangled mess,
youve always acted on what Ive advised.
So are we not accomplices? We two
trade in goods we simply cannot sell
to all those who consume them every day,
like their daily bread. You deal with flesh,
and I with spirit, and human beings
accept the two of us with equal rage,
because they cannot do without us both.
Epiphania, you are at a crossroads,
like Hercules was once. A woman buys
her lasting happiness in life for love,
but if that does not work, then love is poison.
At that point you must let your lover go
and keep your distance from the raging beast.
EFFIE
You are a coward, just like everyone
who in disgust has thrown off priestly clothes.
My life is simply unendurable
if some adventure does not lie in wait
whose ending no one can anticipate.
TAUBERT
Only today in your two bedroom
eyes
I saw no sign of any confidence.
You almost look as if youd bumped into
some painter of a local country scene.
EFFIE [breaking
out in tears]
Dont torture me! No more torturing me!
I cant go on without love in my life.
TAUBERT
Then I would even try it with a child
before I risked my love on Mister Tschamper.
SCENE SIX
[Karl Salzmann enters in a hurry downstage right,
followed by Schigabet.]
SALZMANN [reacting to the sight of Effie]
Whats this? Tears? Now? Who brought this on?
[To Taubert]
You stupid clumsy ox! Get
out of here!
SCHIGABET [agitated
and walking around, to Salzmann]
You kept ignoring me completely,
as if I was your valet. A gentleman
at festive celebrations does not strive
so earnestly to keep a waiting servant
at a distance. For you my rank is this
Singer of Opera for the Ducal Court
in Bernburg. Take good note of that!
You have no contractual right at all
to treat me as if I were beneath you.
SALZMANN [to
Effie]
Tonight we hold a large gala
banquet
in the Hall of Knights. The passage way
across the courtyard from the gallery
into the hall will be lit by torches,
candelabras blazing fire. In lime trees
on the old citadel well have lights,
three hundred burning paper lanterns!
And you dare show us tear-stained eyes!
EFFIE [cheerful]
But only
by way of contrast, thats all. Raindrops
smile more joyfully basking in the sun.
SALZMANN
I said I would look after your affairs
provided you remained a prostitute.
If youre a girl who likes to whine or moan,
then find yourself another manager!
TAUBERT
Epiphania, those fears I spoke of
they now seem to me almost ridiculous.
SALZMANN
Fears? When you know every trick in the book
theres nothing you need be afraid of!
[To Taubert
and Schigabet]
You two,
get yourselves out of here! Now!
SCHIGABET
You boordont count on me to recommend you
if the press out there asks me what youre up to.
SALZMANN [pushes
Schigabet and Taubert to
the door downstage right]
Whatever happens, dont recommend me
to anyone at all. I urge you not to.
Our hands are fullwe have enough to do.
The more our bookings grow, the less precise
our work becomes.
[Calling to them through
the door]
Good merchandise,
good prices.
Thats my motto!
[He goes straight across
the room, opens the door in back wall and calls.]
Would you please come in, sir?
[Salzmann lets Mister Tschamper enter and then disappears into the room at the
back.]
SCENE SEVEN
[Tschamper is
a gigantic figure. He has no beard and close-cropped grey hair. He takes off
his top hat as he enters.]
TSCHAMPER
You understand, my child, I intend to die.
EFFIE
Will you die today?
TSCHAMPER
As quickly as I can.
EFFIE
Good. Then Ill go now and take my clothes off.
TSCHAMPER
That is not necessary.
EFFIE
Forgive me,
but, according to the contract, you desired
to die gazing at a naked woman.
TSCHAMPER
How could you manage to misinterpret that?
It was the soul that was to be exposed.
How long is it that you have been for sale?
EFFIE
Five year My profession suits me well.
How long have you been a customer of ours?
TSCHAMPER
As long as the world has been in place,
Ive been your most devoted client.
EFFIE
So old and yet so enterprising
still.
Still like a student, eager for applause.
Im pleased weve had a chance to meet.
TSCHAMPER
As the Lord says, the pleasure is all mine.
If that were not the case, I would not pay
such sums of money to amuse myself.
EFFIE
That was premature. You had no idea
what gives me pleasure. If I love you,
is that your loss?
TSCHAMPER
We are doing business.
I have no wish to change what weve agreed.
EFFIE
A womans business is always with the man
in the finest marriages its like that, too.
TSCHAMPER
And yet in marriages one rarely sees
a contract like the one Karl Salzmann made.
EFFIE
But nonetheless its not so easy
to cast off its fetters.
TSCHAMPER
Such superstitions
help the foolish lull themselves to sleep,
those idiots who all their lives drag lust
bound up in chains of marriage.
EFFIE
Do you believe
there are such fools?
TSCHAMPER
Most people are like that.
They have no idea that in their marriage
they each retain their freedom and every day
can do and leave alone what pleases them.
EFFIE
A lovely and intoxicating thought,
but in reality each person wonders
if marriage comes from heaven or from hell.
TSCHAMPER
Because we need that violent conflict
between heaven and hell for our digestion.
EFFIE
That contract Salzmann made between us
can it not also serve for just that purpose?
TSCHAMPER
No, that cant be done. The comparison
of Salzmann with a devil will not hold.
EFFIE
So am I then more closely
bound to you
than people are in marriage?
TSCHAMPER
I hope so.
For the money I paid to purchase you
two-thirds of all the marriages in the world
would let themselves be torn asunder.
EFFIE
Then use your time with me as your heart wishes.
TSCHAMPER
Thats unavoidable. Im seeking death.
EFFIE
Im pleased to offer all my expertise
to lighten your farewell.
TSCHAMPER
As you well know,
thats what youre paid to do.
EFFIE
No customer
has ever known me break a contract.
For that I am too proud of this profession,
a career I chose myself.
TSCHAMPER [sitting
down at a table]
Of course,
Im counting on the best scenario,
when, without assistance, my suicide
will suddenly take place. Thats the reason
I always carry with me a small glass
of prussic acid. With your permission,
Ill pour some tiny droplets in this cup.(26)
[He pours a few drops out
of a small bottle into the golden goblet, which is on the table.]
EFFIE
And you still prefer I keep my clothes on?
That is not chivalrous. A prostitute,
once her vanity is hurt, is helpless,
as stupid, dumb, and clumsy as a child.
TSCHAMPER
Thats how helpless I require you to be.
EFFIE
Allow me to dilute that drink a little.
[She fills the cup with
water and throws the contents out of the window.]
TSCHAMPER
You have been married, too?
EFFIE
For two years
I put up with it. But our emotions
had no desire to live in harmony.
TSCHAMPER [taking
the goblet from her]
Where did you get this cup?
EFFIE
From my lover.
He gave it to me.
TSCHAMPER [pours
a drop of Prussic acid into the goblet and then adds water.]
Ill pour in the water we need myself.
[He holds the goblet in his hand.]
EFFIE [suddenly
decisive]
Then Ill take off my clothes.
TSCHAMPER
I forbid you to.
When my minds in torment, nervous tension
makes me strong. Dont keep showing yourself off!
EFFIE
You long to be disgusted with the world
but youll not get there with such self-denial.
TSCHAMPER
The flesh has its own spirit. Once the nerves
in this living creature become so tense
I feel I am a man, in that moment
I will drain this cup. And then the world
will be well rid of me.
EFFIE [going
cautiously up to him and stroking him in a friendly way]
But nonetheless,
Ill bet you scarcely know our ten-stage scale.
TSCHAMPER
Is that patented?
EFFIE
Ill name the stages for you.
TSCHAMPER
What is the lowest stage?
EFFIE
First in darkness, second lit by lamps
The cruellest suffering for slavish tramps.
TSCHAMPER
I dont belong there. The highest stage!
EFFIE
Ninth in competition, tenth sacrificial rite,
so that we never lose our sacred light.
TSCHAMPER
In competition! Lovely! Thats my case exactly!
But now, instead of poetry, lets talk
about reality. Explain to me
the saddest thing in your entire life!
EFFIE
I cant do that! Its quite impossible!
All my limbs are quivering already.
TSCHAMPER [getting
up, still holding the goblet, and pushing the electric button close to the
middle door]
To cheat me of a hundred thousand dollars
is no game for children.
EFFIE
I did not choose this job
to talk about distressing things. My task
is to serve you happiness!
TSCHAMPER
One can deceive oneself.
[Salzmann enters from the
back room. Tschamper turns to address him.]
You need to start a bankruptcy proceeding.
This creature will not tell the saddest thing
shes ever lived through in her entire life.
[Salzmann moves very
close to Effie with an expression of urgency.]
SALZMANN
Tomorrow should I show the man you love
the door make him give up the monarchy.
Think of the scandal and the shame.
[As Salzmann leaves, he
turns to Tschamper.]
SALZMANN
Shell speak
and say whatever there is to say.
[Salzmann exits into the
back room.]
EFFIE [to Tschamper; she is trembling]
What story then?
TSCHAMPER [sitting
down again at the table]
The most depressing thing
youve ever lived through.
EFFIE
The first time I broke
my marriage vowthat was the very worst.
TSCHAMPER
Amazing! How did that happen? Explain!
EFFIE [getting
closer to Tschamper, confidingly]
Isnt it the case that youd be better off
if you seized a useful opportunity
to change from being a poor monstrosity
to become instead the happiest guest
in all the world at a feast of celebration?
TSCHAMPER
Where is this favourable
opportunity?(27)
EFFIE
Dont look too far afield!
Unnaturalness is a labyrinth,
which thousands have by now escaped.
One has to laugh and dance on air.
For failure always needs a pair.
The weirdest misfit of them all,
whom our officials label mad,
did you ever hear a person claim
I could not make him sane again?
His only suffering before
was cheerless agonies of love,
and afterwards he sometimes laughs
at how unnatural he used to be.
For now, pursuing harmless thrills,
he battles bravely through lifes ills.
TSCHAMPER
Describe for me your first adultery.
EFFIE [beginning
to tremble]
We suffered from the curse of boredom.
No young girl has ever known
more happinessmy husband was
the handsomest young officer
in the equestrian school,
and since the time of our first kiss
we shared a common thought
each one had to love the other
with all the strength we had.
But though our love was strong,
our boredom swelled up like a sore.
So then he offered me advice
to save ourselves from danger
I should seduce a stranger,
and I, like someone quite obsessed
at finding things to talk about,
flung all his money here and there,
but he didnt even seem to care.
Unable to forget his dream
he could not stop advising me
to go behind his back, betray him
with some conceited well-dressed fop
as a way to make the boredom stop.
TSCHAMPER
Did that not give you pleasure?
EFFIE
What in me was strong
for one year long
during a single night,
disappeared from sight.
Lonely desert, empty heart!
From power of will
no sense of thrill,
and everywhere both far and near,
all things seemed so crudely clear.
Depressed, I thought of earlier days
You threw your happiness away
to bring dead nerves back into play.
TSCHAMPER
Youve told that to a hundred men already.
EFFIE
As if I couldnt tell them funnier tales!
TSCHAMPER
Your husband was then keen for you to leave.
EFFIE
No, no. Precisely the reverse.
His mind was quite resolved
to offer me to other men
to heighten his own pleasure,
and every time I was untrue
he found me twice as beautiful.
He never showed a trace of grief.
So in the end I took on any man
whom I could get into my hand.
I kept my satellites in play
to guard my body from decay,
while, wracked with hunger, my soul died.
The final remnants of our love
made their escape and flew away.
With him I acted as I would
with any wretched relative
one cant allow to die.
I hurled his money to the winds
and always hoped that in the end
hed come to find you hateful
and fly away from you like sin.
But hes a barnacle and sticks,
until were facing destitution,
then kills himself, drops down dead,
afraid of poverty, in my own bed.
TSCHAMPER
After three days you did not find his death
distressing, so how does such a story
give me sufficient strength for suicide?
I want cries from the heart! What about parents?
Are yours still alive?
EFFIE
Only my mother.
TSCHAMPER
How did your father die?
EFFIE [reacting
with shock]
I wont
talk of that!
TSCHAMPER
How did your father die? Tell me how he died!
EFFIE
I cant.
TSCHAMPER
Tell me!
EFFIE [throwing
her arms around his neck]
Come away with me!
Lets not stay here. And afterwards therell be no need
to ask me anything about my fathers death
or how my husband killed himself.
TSCHAMPER
Who paying for this?
You or me?
EFFIE
You! Youre the one whos paying!
TSCHAMPER
Me? Then tell me about your fathers death.
EFFIE [with
mounting distress]
It was in the morning, New Years Eve.
Snow had fallen. They came to us,
Medical Staff Officer Korff,
and Major von Falkenstein.
They entered from the garden, and I,
still in a short frock, went out to meet them.
O look, these gentlemen, cheerful as ever,
have by some mistake forgotten father.
Without a word, they signalled
I should move away, as mother
came in from the breakfast room.
Major von Falkenstein, curt and dull,
Madam, you must be calm.
Whoever trusts in God . . .
Tears were rolling down his face.
Mother screams,
But hes alive! Hes still alive!
The Major trembles.
No words at all.
TSCHAMPER
Did your father fall victim to a stroke
while visiting someone of your profession?
EFFIE [crying
out]
No! He was killed fighting a duel!
TSCHAMPER
How genuine and full the feelings are,
how they still thrive, in this old world.
America and all the British Empire
could not summon up so much emotion.
Once more I have to paint myself a picture.
What is your earliest memory of your parents?
Quickly!
EFFIE
Beside the green-banked oleander tree,
mother and father sit, side by side.
Im with them, standing on their knees.
All of a sudden I see them kissing.
I throw my arms around them both
to me their kissing brought pure joy
and cried we must stay this way forever,
so they could just continue kissing.
TSCHAMPER
But do you still remember your parents
fighting, cursing, striking one another?
EFFIE
That is not true! I never witnessed that!
I cant . . . I cant control myself . . . childhood,
my parents house! If you had never lived
then life would be confusion, madness
stupefying horror!
[She is shaking, gripped
by attacks of weeping.]
TSCHAMPER
Put the handkerchief away!
Stand up! Is this all tension in your nerves?
[He throws over a chair
standing nearby and kicks it against the wall.]
TSCHAMPER
Listen to your father! Talk to him!
Answer your father! Tell your father
what youve been doing since he lay dead,
in his coffin there, in the morning,
on New Years Eve.
EFFIE
Leave my father out of it.
My fathers dead.
[She throws herself on Tschamper and kisses him with wild passion.]
Were you ever kissed like this?
Or this? Or this? Or this?
TSCHAMPER
Yes, for a dollar!
Now earn the hundred thousand I am paying!
You must earn it! Must I show you the way?
[He seizes the cup and
seems to take a drink.]
EFFIE [with
an involuntary cry]
No! You have to live!
TSCHAMPER
You feeble creature!
Cannot watch a person die. Not even you!
EFFIE [passionately]
Because I love you! Have a man and woman
ever found themselves so suitable
for one another as you and me?
For the very first time, my existence
does not grin at me from empty sockets.
TSCHAMPER [apparently
exhausted]
A memory is creeping over me,
as if I had already died in here,
within these walls.
[He looks out the
window.]
This panoramic view
of villages clothed in such greenery,
the serrated wall leading from the bastion
to the watchtower, trees full of plums . . .
My death is childs play, when what it contains
outweighs the contents of my life.
EFFIE [pressing
up against him tenderly]
My love, accept your lifeyou havent lived
until today.
TSCHAMPER
Neither have you.
EFFIE
I would never have become a whore
if Id had someone there to tame me
the way you do.
TSCHAMPER
Did you search for me?
A courageous person looks for someone
to subdue her.
EFFIE [twisting
out his embrace, speaking very passionately]
You need a woman
who will sacrifice everything for you,
and I require a man for whose sake
I would sacrifice myself.
TSCHAMPER
And you, my child,
do you believe you are woman like that?
EFFIE
If you have any doubts my pride demands
I drink whats in this cup.
TSCHAMPER
I have my doubts.
[Effie quickly grabs the
goblet, drinks it down in a gulp, and lets it fall. Then without a sound she
raises her arms, bends convulsively back, and sinks to the floor. Lying on her
back, with her arms and legs bent backwards as far as possible, she throws herself
silently from side to side, until her body, resting on her bent back, hands,
and feet, arches upward. Then convulsions begin. These gradually become less
frequent, until she remains lying there motionless.]
TSCHAMPER
Ah, thats beautiful! Yes, quite wonderful!
Thank you, my child. Thank you. No woman
has ever been so sweet!
[He gets up and looks out
the window.]
This glorious piece of earth!
Did the knights ever dream of tournaments
taking place today in their old castle?
How odd it is no whore can ever feel
the way most normal children tend to do
and think shes better than her parents home.
Many of them have endured your fate.
[He opens the door to the
back room.]
My car!
SCENE EIGHT
SALZMANN [entering
the room]
To me it looks as if youve failed again.
TSCHAMPER
I hoped I had reached my goal, but then,
right under my nose, she drank the poison.
SALZMANN
Too bad! The cars are ready at the central gate.
TASCHAMPER
We were chatting a harmless conversation
about her parents home. Why is it no whore
can bear that? The world and I are incompatible.
The world must change.
SALZMANN
Of course, it has to change
and it does change as quickly as it can.
But how can I make up my losses here?
TSCHAMPER
You simply have to come to Atakama
to manage my affairs.
SALZMANN
Im a family man,
and not well suited for adventures.
TSCHAMPER
Ill pay you
a fixed salary of fifty thousand dollars
and a hundred thousand yearly profit
guaranteed.
SALZMANN
Thats something to consider.
[Opening the small arched
door downstage left]
Lets walk down the tower. A rocky cleft
provides a hidden path to the central gate.
TSCHAMPER [picking
the goblet up from the floor]
Ill take this with me as a souvenir.
[He exits downstage left.
Salzmann follows him.]
HEIRI WIPF [singing
offstage, outside the window]
O the plums were so blue!
ENDNOTES
(1) Kurt Martens (1870-1945), a German
writer. The heading Author's Preface is not in the German text. Wedekind wrote Castle
Wetterstein in 1909-10. The play was not staged
during his lifetime. [Back to Text]
(2) Wedekinds text does not specify
the location or the date of the action. However, one or two lines in the play
suggest that the plot begins in the 1880s (see footnotes for details). And
this scene seems to take place in Germany, probably Berlin. [Back to Text]
(3) European Slave Life,
first published in Germany in 1854, was a three-volume novel written in a comic
style often compared at the time to that of Charles Dickens. Its author,
Friedrich Hacklnder (1816-1877), was a prolific and
popular German writer. [Back to Text]
(4) Leonore uses the word Kamtschadale to
describe Ibsen (translated above as northern
barbarian). The word Kamtschadale
translates into English as Kamchatkan,
an original native inhabitant of the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. [Back to Text]
(5) A consistorial councillor is a clerical member of the consistory
(i.e., a member of the administrative authority of the Protestant church). [Back to Text]
(6) The German here reads Platanenallee, which means avenue
of sycamores or avenue of plane trees, but Platanenallee is also the name of
a street in Berlin, Tbigen, Bad Essen, and
elsewhere. It is not clear here whether the word refers to the name of a
specific street or is simply a descriptive term. Nor is it entirely clear
whether or not Leonore and Effie live in Berlin. [Back to Text]
(7) The Jagersfontein Mine was an
open-pit diamond mine in South Africa (now abandoned). Diamonds were discovered
on the property in 1870, and the operation was officially closed in 1969. [Back to Text]
(8) A monkey jacket is a short, close-fitting coat worn by
sailors or waiters or military officers in their mess. [Back to Text]
(9) This is a reference to the Biblical story (in Genesis).
Potiphar was the captain of the palace guard in Egypt, and Joseph, after being
sold into slavery by his brothers, rises to become head of Potiphars
household. Potiphars wife attempts to seduce Joseph and, when he resists her
advances, accuses him of raping her. Joseph is thrown into prison until he is
rescued by Pharaoh, who later makes him overlord of Egypt. [Back to Text]
(10) In Wedekinds German text, the
Waiters speech is in French. [Back to Text]
(11) These ages are famous for (among other things) the beauty,
power, and influence of certain prostitutes. [Back
to Text]
(12) In Wedekinds text the hotel
manager speaks in French to the hotel employees and to the police, and Duvoison speaks French to Leonore.
[Back
to Text]
(13) The Wetterstein is a group of
mountains in the eastern Alps. The main peak, the Zugspitze, is the highest
mountain in Germany. [Back to Text]
(14) Camphor, a natural substance derived from a tree, has long
been used as a medicine for a wide variety of medical conditions, especially
sexual ailments. It has a very distinctive smell. [Back to Text]
(15) The City of the Sun was a philosophical utopian work by
Tommaso Campanella published in Latin in 1623 in Frankfurt. [Back to Text]
(16) Friedrich Barbarossa (1122-1190) became King of Germany in
1152, King of Italy in 1155, and Holy Roman Emperor in 1155. [Back to Text]
(17) The phrase Propaganda of the Deed derives from the
French propaganda par le fait and
refers to overtly political acts designed to inspire others. The phrase gained
currency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly among
anarchist groups, to express the notion that significant political ideas arise
from actions (including especially acts of violence) rather than the other way
around. [Back to Text]
(18) The lover Effie refers to here and throughout the scene
seems clearly modelled on Crown Prince Frederick William Victor of Prussia
(1859-1941), heir to throne of Prussia (and after 1871 to the new German
Empire). He was married in 1881 and had several children. He succeeded his
father (who reigned for only ninety-nine days) in 1888. If we are to take
Effies details about her lover as indicating someone presently alive, then the
action in this scene apparently takes place in the mid 1880s (i.e., before
Wilhelm became the new Kaiser, but after his marriage and the birth of his
first children). [Back to Text]
(19) Wilhelm II (then Crown Prince) married Augusta Victoria of
Schleswig-Holstein in 1881, a match resisted in some quarters but very much favoured by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, on the
ground that it would relieve tension between Prussia and the Duke of
Schleswig-Holstein (the brides father). The Dukes territory had been annexed
by Prussia and Austria in 1864 and later by Prussia alone in 1866. For a number
of years, this political situation was complex and potentially a great threat
to European peace. [Back to Text]
(20) The ladder of love (Liebesstufenleiter) is a
traditional Christian concept of a series of steps (often ten) leading the soul
from earthly concerns up to a love of God. The notion of this sort of steady
step-by-step progress striving upward to the true and the beautiful goes back
at least as far as Platos Symposium.
Wedekinds images of that ladder here are
characteristically secular. This passage inspired a series of erotic etchings
(by E. L., probably Rudolf Lamm) published in 1920,
entitled Liebesstufenleiter von Frank Wedekind.
[Back to Text]
(21) Torpedo Harbour (Torpedohafen)
refers to Wilhelmshaven, the most important naval base in Imperial Germany. [Back to Text]
(22) The Atacama Desert in Chile is a long stretch of land on
the Pacific coast of South America. It is the driest non-polar desert in the
world. [Back to Text]
(23) Aphrodisiaca,
a Latin word, is the name for an unknown precious stone. The word is also
sometimes used in the botanical name for plants with allegedly aphrodisiac
qualities (e.g., Tumera diffusa var aphrodisiaca). [Back to Text]
(24) Mondsee is a town (and region)
by the shores of a lake in a famous and very popular tourist area of Austria
(the Salzkammergut). [Back
to Text]
(25) The phrase High
Germany refers to the mountainous regions of south Germany. Since the
founding of modern Austria (in 1918) the phrase is no longer common as a
geographical term. The term high German
(Hochdeutsch)
refers to the dialect of the region. The word nowadays refers to standard
German i.e., the officially accepted version of German which transcends all
local dialects. [Back
to Text]
(26) Prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) is a naturally occurring
substance, which is also synthetically produced (since the 1890s). It has many
industrial uses and is also a lethal agent often used in human suicides. [Back to Text]
(27) The changes here in the margin and the length of lines
follow Wedekinds German text. [Back to Text]
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