by Peter Handke
The ward makes himself comfortable on his chair and throws again, unhurriedly.
The warden writes; the ward throws.
We see that the ward’s projectiles are sticking to the warden’s shirt: yes, they are thistles.
While the warden is slowly writing, the ward occasionally throws a thistle at him, yet without expressing anything with the manner in which he throws it.
We hear the music and smell the incense.
The warden’s back is slowly but surely covered with a cluster of thistles while he writes.
He writes slowly down along the door:
The ward now takes the thistles out of his fist and throws them with the other hand.
The warden, while writing, takes the bullwhip from the door.
Now he steps back.
The ward happens to be throwing again.
The warden turns around as though accidentally, not quickly; at the same time, the ward throws a thistle, which hits the warden’s chest (or not). The warden is standing there by himself; the ward throws the remaining thistles at the warden.
The warden is holding the pan with the incense in front of him. The longer the warden holds the pan, the longer the intervals between the ward’s throws.
Meanwhile, it gradually becomes dark once again, and the music … (see above)
The two figures are sitting on the stage, which is bright again; they are sitting at the table, each one by himself.
All at once we notice there is blood running from the ward’s nose. The blood trickles out of his nose, across his mouth, over his chin, out of his nose …
The warden is sitting there by himself, the ward doesn’t budge from the spot, doesn’t budge from the spot …
Gradually it becomes dark again on the stage.
Once we can see again, both of them are sitting in their positions at the table.
The ward gets up and stands against the rear wall, with his back to us.
The warden gets up, goes to the ward, grabs him by the shoulder, without expressing anything (that is, not violently), and turns him around.
The warden, after a pause, changes the position of his hands and turns the ward around once more.
The turning around gradually turns into turning around and turning around, now into turning around pure and simple.
The warden turns the ward with ease, almost as though he were thinking of something else, and the ward turns easily, also as though he were thinking of something else.
Without transition, without either of them staggering, we suddenly see the warden standing by the bottles and plates.
The ward has been standing still for some time before we really notice that he is standing still.
The warden has already bent down and while bending down throws a bottle toward the ward: the ward shows how he would like to catch but can’t—the bottle falls on the floor and does what it does.
As one can imagine, it goes on like this: Bending down, the warden throws bottles, plates, and glasses toward the ward, but the ward, although apparently making an effort, lets all the objects fall on the floor, and the objects either break or they don’t.
This process also lacks a regular rhythm: they wait now and then, then the warden throws once more, then the ward misses again …
Suddenly, even before the collection of bottles has been disposed of—amid the nicest possible throwing and breaking—the ward catches an object, as if by accident.
We are startled.
At the same moment the stage becomes dark, abruptly.
And again it becomes bright, and both of them are sitting at the table. The warden gets up and goes where? Apparently he doesn’t know where he should go.
No, he doesn’t want to go to the calendar.
He turns around, turns around, is turning around.
The ward gets up and walks after him; he shows how he shares the warden’s indecision and imitates the warden’s gestures, his leg movements as well as his indecisive arm movements, although the imitation need not be a complete aping.
They almost collide when the warden suddenly changes direction—he is probably avoiding the pieces of the broken bottles and plates; more than once the ward steps on the warden’s heels. They continue moving about the stage, pretending to have a goal which, however, they never reach, because they always give it up just before they are about to reach it.
Suddenly the warden is by the door, is already going out, reaches for the outside door handle to shut the door behind him—the ward seizes the door handle on the inside, wants to follow the warden, but the warden pulls without letup.
The ward pulls in the other direction.
The warden, by giving one hard pull, pulls the door shut behind him and in front of the ward, who has been pulled along by the violent pull.
The ward stands briefly in front of the door, his hand around the handle, then his hand merely touching the handle.
The ward lets his hand drop.
The warden is outside; it is quiet.
The ward gets down on his knees, without falling down on them, however, and is already crawling out the door, quickly: we see now that the door has an extra outlet, as if for a dog.
Once the ward is outside, the stage slowly becomes dark.
By now we have become accustomed to the music.
The pause is longer this time, for the ‘scenery is being turned inside out.
A revolving stage needs only to revolve.
Otherwise, the scenery is turned around in the dark.
It becomes bright: it is a rainy day.
Warden and ward set up the objects on the stage: the large, longish object, covered by the black raincoat, which they have to bring onstage together, the stool, beets, melons, pumpkins.
When everything has been distributed on the stage, the ward sits down on the stool while the warden stands next to the mysterious object.
Without an actual beginning the play has begun again: the warden takes the rubber coat off the object, so that we see that it is a beet-cutting machine.
The warden puts on the raincoat (he is still barefoot) and, to test the machine, lets the cutting knife drop down several times without, however, cutting any beets.
The ward gets up and walks to the machine. The warden bends down for a beet, shoves it into the machine, and pulls down the cutting knife with one brief, effortless movement, as he indicates with a movement: the beet falls down, its top shorn off.
The warden repeats the process in detail, demonstrating: another beet falls down.
The ward watches, not completely motionless, but without moving very much.
The warden repeats the process.
The ward fetches a beet but makes many superfluous movements and detours; we can hear his hobnail boots on the floor as well as the bare feet of the warden, who now goes to the side and straightens up.
The ward raises the cutting knife, shoves the beet up to its top into the machine, and hacks off the top.
The warden steps up to him, stands beside him, steps back again …
The ward goes and fetches a few beets and puts them into place …
The warden steps up to him and stands there.
The cat suddenly slinks out of the house.
The ward’s next attempt to cut off the top of a beet is so feeble that the beet does not fall on the floor at once.
The warden stands there watching him.
With the next attempt, the beet falls on the floor.
The cat does what it does.
The warden stands there.
The ward has problems with the beet again: he makes one attempt to sever its top, a second one, and then, without looking at the warden, who is starting to walk about the stage once more in his bare feet, a third attempt; then, after a certain time, when the warden is standing next to him again and is watching him, once more; then, later—it is already becoming darker on stage—a fifth time (the warden is starting to walk again); then—it is already quite dark (is the warden standin
g by the machine?)—finally once more, and now —we can’t bear watching it any more—once again, and we don’t hear the sound of anything falling on the floor; thereupon it is quiet onstage, for quite some time.
After it has been quiet onstage for some time we hear, quite softly at first, a breathing that becomes increasingly louder. We recognize it. It becomes louder, that is, larger and larger—a death rattle? A very intense inhaling? Or only a bellows? Or a huge animal?
It becomes steadily louder.
Gradually it becomes too large for the house.
Is it here, is it over there?
Suddenly it is quiet.
After a long time it becomes bright again.
The house, the cornfield, the beetfield.
We see neither the cat, nor the warden, nor the ward; not even the beet-cutting machine remains onstage—except for the three backdrops, it is bare.
Now someone enters from the right: it is the ward.
He is carrying a small tub in front of him, and wound about his upper body is a rubber hose.
He is no longer wearing his coveralls.
The tub is placed on the floor, the hose is unrolled.
One end of the hose is placed in the tub; the ward takes the other end offstage, straightening the hose in the process.
We hear the water running into the tub for some time.
Then the ward returns, a sack of sand in one arm.
He puts the sack next to the tub.
He reaches into the sack with his hand.
He straightens up and lets a handful of sand fall into the tub, without letting the sand slip between his fingers first.
He again reaches into the sack and, standing, lets a handful of sand fall into the water.
He again reaches into the sack and, standing, lets a handful of sand fall into the water, nonchalantly, irregularly, unceremoniously.
He again reaches into the sack and, standing, lets a handful of sand fall into the water.
Now we hear the isolated chords again.
The ward reaches into the sack and, standing, lets a hand
The ward reaches into the sack and, standing, lets a hand
ful of sand fall into the water.
ful of sand fall into the water.
The curtain closes.
Translated by Michael Roloff
Quodlibet
Translator’s note
More than any of Handke’s plays to date, Quodlibet (written in 1969, between Kaspar and The Ride Across Lake Constance) requires fairly extensive adaptation to an American linguistic, cultural, and historical environment. Why this is necessary is made apparent by the play itself. What finally surprised me, though, was the comparative ease with which indigenously German allusions—allusions to the various manifestations, public and private, of fascism—can be replaced by American equivalents. In further adaptations, which a cast may want to make, it would be worthwhile to consult the invectives at the end of Handke’s Offending the Audience (Publikumsbeschimpfung) simply to see how “not to overdo it.” This translation is meant as a basic model for American productions.
M.R.
The curtain rises. On the bare stage, one by one, talking quietly to each other, appear the figures of the “world theater”: a general in uniform, a bishop in his vestments, a dean in his gown; a Maltese knight in the coat of his order; a member of a German student corps with his little cap and sash; a Chicago gangster with his fedora and pin-striped double-breasted suit, a politician with two heavily armed CIA bodyguards; a dance-contest couple—he in a dark suit and white turtleneck sweater, she in a short, pert dress; a grande dame in a long evening gown, carrying a fan; another female figure in a pants suit, a poodle on the leash.
These figures come on stage in no particular order, separately or in pairs, arm in arm or not. Chatting, they slowly walk about the stage, step here and there, laugh softly at some remark or other, walk on again, not that one hears them walking of course. Each chats with the others at some point; every so often one of them stands apart alone as though struck suddenly by some thought before starting a new conversation; only the bodyguards take no part in the conversations; they nod to each other occasionally, that’s all; otherwise they keep peering away from the figures on stage into the surrounding area, once up into the rigging loft, then—this without bending down—into the prompter’s box, then into the vault of the theater as though up into the fifth tier of an opera house—at any event, never at the audience itself: the audience does not exist for the figures on the stage. One notices that all the figures briefly come to a complete stop, but the next moment one or two are walking again. At moments the general conversation almost lapses into complete silence; there are also moments during which only the rustling of garments on the floor is audible, whereafter the conversation resumes more vociferously and insistently than before.
The figures walk about making almost no sound, lost in themselves, stand still, are still, chat: that’s actually all there is to it. It’s entirely up to the actors what they want to say. They can talk about what they’ve just read in the papers, what they’ve experienced that day, what they want to experience, about what just occurred to them, or about something that gives the impression of having just occurred to them … a few times one thinks one hears them speaking a foreign language, probably French: C’est très simple, Monsieur. —Ah merci … oh! ma coiffure! … Ah! Ce vent! … Cette pluie! … Or something of that kind, invariably uttered by the women. The audience of course strains to listen, but only occasionally gets a few words, or snatches of sentences.
Among the words and sentences that the audience does understand—besides the irrelevant and meaningless ones like “Do you understand?” “Not that I know,” “Why not?” “As I said,” “And you?”—are some which the audience merely thinks it understands. These are words and expressions which in the theater act like bugle calls: political expressions, expressions relating to sex, the anal sphere, violence. Of course the audience does not really hear the actual expressions but only similar ones; the latter are the signal for the former; the audience is bound to hear the right ones. For example, instead of napalm they mention no palms onstage; instead of Hiroshima they speak of a hero sandwich; instead of cunnilingus of cunning fingers ; instead of psychopath of bicycle path; instead of leathernecks of leather next; instead of Auschwitz of house wits; instead of dirty niggers of dirty knickers ... Or the actors use double-edged words in sentences with invariably harmless connotations, but in such quick succession that one listens to the ambiguous words instead of the sentences, for example: thigh, pick, member, spread, panties, tear, pant, cancer, victim, fag, rag, paralysis, stroke, frag … Many sentences, which appear to be quite harmless, are also uttered in quick succession; however, they contain words which, when they appear in clusters, begin to give the illusion of an allusion: A sentence with the words tiger cage (“I didn’t want to put my tiger in the cage but the cops insisted.”) is followed by a sentence containing the word gook (“I wasn’t completely satisfied until I had wiped the gook off the wall.”), which is followed by a sentence with the word waste (“Sad to say, but we had to waste a lot of … time”), which is followed by a sentence containing the words anti-personnel weapon (“Anti-Americanism is a weapon I personally refuse to use.”), which is followed by a sentence with the word infrastructure (“The infrastructure of the organization, if I may say so, consists of living bodies, all you have to do is count them”), which of course also contains the words body count in slightly different form, and which is followed by a sentence containing a distorted form of the words Tonkin Gulf & Saigon (“Tom’s kinfolk made a resolution not to take the Gulf Line steamer to Saigon.”) and finally a sentence containing the proper name My Lai, also in distorted form because of the proximity of the event (“As the old bastard of an Irishman used to say to me about Dora: ‘She was me last lay before me prostate operation, and she was me very best lay.’”) .
The hit turns out to be a two-run hit, the bea
ting is a beating around the bush, the bomb turns out to be what a bomb this play was, the smashed brain on the stone turns into mashed potatoes alone, where someone spread blood it turns out that the old beer-belly actually sweated Bud; when shot is mentioned it only refers to a shot of whiskey; and what shot through his head were only thoughts; “Shot through the head!”—“Shot through the head?”—“Yes, thoughts shot through my head.” Syphilis is Sisyphus & the clap is a thunderclap & a dildo becomes dill does it too.
“Cashes in!”—“Cashes in pretty good!”—“The cops?”— “By the cops!”—“Cashed in?”
“ … broken!”—“with grief …”—“The neck?”—“A bottle!” —“ … the neck!”—“Broken …”—“ … and stuck the finger in …”—“Good!”—“Cut off!”—“What kind of head?”— “The conversation?”—“What?”—“He’s one good head shorter.”—“Off.”—“What kind of head?”—“Good, good.”
“ … three, four:”-“One, two, three—go!”—“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven …”—“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven (pause) eight (pause) nine (pause) ten—finished!” “Once, once more, a third time, four times, five times, and once more …”—“And then it was already getting bright outside …”—“Twenty-one, twenty-two-it’s uncanny, uncanny.” —“And then I stopped counting …”
“Corpses in quiet waters …”—“Oh, what a pretty title”—“Like an O?”—“ … laying their eggs there:”—“Like Story of O?”—“As though it were nothing …”—“Shame!”—“ … ‘and didn’t say a single word!’”—“What a beautiful title!”— “Oh!”—“ … the carps lay their eggs in quiet waters …”—“In Lake Erie?”—“Shame! shame! and shame once more!”—“Let’s say it was nothing!”—“According to the Geneva convention, o.k.?”
