by Peter Handke
QUITT, wearing a sweat suit, is working out on a punching bag, belaboring it with his fists, feet, and knees. HANS, his confidant, wearing tails, stands next to him with a tray and a bottle of mineral water, watching. QUITT takes a sip from the bottle, pours some on his head, and sits down on a stool.
QUITT
I feel sad today.
HANS
So?
QUITT
I saw my wife in a dressing gown and her lacquered toes and suddenly I felt lonely. It was such a no-nonsense loneliness that I have no trouble speaking about it now. It relieved me, I crumbled, melted away in it. The loneliness was objective, a quality of the world, not something of myself. Everything stood with its back to me, in gentle harmony with itself. While I was taking a shit I heard the sounds I was making as if they came from a stranger in the next cubicle. When I took the bus to the office—
HANS
So as to maintain contact with the people and to study their needs. For the purpose of R and D?
QUITT
—the sad curve which the bus described at one point at a wide traffic circle cut like a yearning dream deep into my heart.
HANS
The world’s sorrow
Cut Mr. Quitt’s feelings
To the marrow.
Hold on to your senses, Mr. Quitt. Someone as wealthy as you can’t afford these moods. A businessman who talks like that, even if he really feels like that, is only giving a campaign speech. Your feelings are a luxury and are useless. They might be useful to those who could live according to them. Mr. Quitt: for example, why don’t you make me a gift of the sorrows from your leisure time to reflect about my work. Or—
QUITT
Or?
HANS
Or become an artist. You’re already supporting violin recitals; you even condescended to collect money in public for the acquisition of a painting by the National Gallery. The wealth of feelings that is yours as of any given date this month is not only useful but is even essential for an artist. Why don’t you paint the curve, the curve of yearning which your bus described, on canvas? Why don’t you sell your experience as a painting?
QUITT
(Stands up.) Hans, you’re playing your daily role as if you knew it by rote. More realistically, please! More lovingly! Grander!
HANS
And the way Mr. Quitt just stepped out of his role—was that pure make-believe too?
QUITT
Let’s not start splitting hairs. I admit: the salesgirl in the aforementioned bus eating French fries that smelled of rancid oil ruined my feelings—well, I would have loved to have slapped her face. On the other hand: shortly afterwards I met a black on the street; he was completely absorbed in the photos he’d just picked up from the drugstore, grinning to himself, swept away in remembrance, so that I suddenly remembered along with him, I felt solidarity with him. You’re laughing. But there are moments when one’s consciousness, too, takes a great leap forward.
HANS
But brutal reality
In no time destroys
That sense of solidarity.
However, I am laughing because you told me many times how you like to remember the time when you lived for days on end in Paris on nothing but French fries and ketchup.
QUITT
I had guests when I was telling that story. And in company, I sometimes also mention “the wood anemones and the hazelnut bushes from the springtime of my youth.”
HANS
Does the addition of these artistic elements facilitate negotiations?
QUITT
Yes: by serving as an allegory for what is being left unsaid. The wood anemones beneath the hazelnut bushes then signify something altogether different. Only those who speak know that. The poetic element is for us a manifestation of the historic element, even if it is only a convention. Without poetry we would be ashamed of our deals, would feel like primordial man. By the way, just who exactly is coming today?
HANS
Harald von Wullnow
Karl-Heinz Lutz
Berthold Koerber-Kent
Paula Tax
all of them businessmen and friends of Quitt.
QUITT
I still have to change. If my wife comes, tell her to take care of the guests—then we can be sure that she’ll go “bargain hunting” instead of flushing the toilet the whole time. Incidentally, I feel genuinely sad. Almost a comfortable feeling. (Exit.)
HANS
How easily Mr. Quitt talks about himself! You have to envy him his sadness. He becomes talkative then, like someone who’s being filmed. In any event, time passes more quickly with a sad Quitt, because when he feels good he is distant, unapproachable, rubs his hands together briskly, hops up and down once, that’s his Rumpelstiltskin act. (He sits down on the stool.) And what about me? What was I allowed to feel this morning? Isn’t it true that you can tell more stories about yourself when you’ve just woken up than at any other time? Thus: the sun rose and shone into my open mouth. I hadn’t had any dreams. I even find it repulsive the way people purse their mouth when they say “dream.” When I brushed my teeth my gums bled. I would have liked to do it. But there was nothing doing. I: made a list of the meat to be ordered. Who am I, where did I come from, where am I going? Me … Yes, me, me! Always me. Why not someone else? (He reflects and shakes his head.) I have to try it when I’m with people. (He gets up. MINORITY STOCKHOLDER KILB appears in the background.) I can’t remember anything personal about myself. The last time anyone talked about me was when I had to learn the catechism. “Your humble servant” of “Your Grace.” Once I had a thought but I forgot it at once. I’m trying to remember it even now. So I never learned to think. But I have no personal needs. Still, I can indulge in a few gestures. (He raises his fist but pulls it down again at once with the other hand. Now he notices KILB.) Who are you, where did you come from, and so forth?
KILB
My name is Franz Kilb. (HANS laughs.) Don’t you like the name?
HANS
It’s something else. I was talking to myself just now—nuently almost. We don’t have anything against names here. And what are you?
KILB
A minority stockholder.
HANS
The minority stockholder, perhaps?
KILB
Yes, the minority stockholder, Franz Kilb, the terror of the boards of directors, the clown of the stockholders’ meetings, the tick in the navel of the economy with the nuisance value of 100—it’s me, perking up again. (HANS steps forward and puts one fist in front of KILB’s face while showing him out with the other hand.) Are you serious?
HANS
(Steps back and drops his arms.) I’d like to be. But I’m only serious when Mr. Quitt is serious. Nonetheless: it is my honor—scram! (KILB sits down on the stool.) So now you’re going to tell us the story of your life, is that it?
KILB
I own one share of every major corporation in the country. I travel from one stockholders’ meeting to the next and spend the nights in my sleeping bag. I go by bike—see, look at the trouser clips. I’m a bachelor in the prime of life, my reflexes function perfectly. (He strikes his kneecap and his foot hits HANS.) This is my Boy Scout knife; during the Second World War I passed my lifeguard test, I can pull you out of the water with my teeth. There are people who hold me in high esteem, but I don’t put my name on any political endorsements. I once appeared on What’s My Line?, I said I was self-employed, no one guessed what I did. At stockholders’ meetings I sit with my rucksack and keep my hand up all the time. Stockholders’ meetings where the board ignores someone who asks for the floor are null and void. How quiet it is here. Can you hear how quietly I am speaking? My last mistress called me demonic, the press (He quickly proffers a few newspaper clippings.) calls me a gadfly. I am quicker than you think. (He has tripped up HANS, who has fallen on his knees.) I live from my dividends and am a free person, in every respect. My motto is: “Anyone who’s for me gets nothing from me; any
one against me will get to know me.” That’s a warning for you.
(QUITT returns. KILB gets up at once, makes a bow, and steps into the background.)
QUITT
The ubiquitous Mr. Kilb. (To HANS) Stop dusting your tails. As I was looking in the mirror while changing, it struck me as ridiculous that I was growing hair. These insensitive, indifferent threads. I was sitting on the bed, my head in my hands. After some time, I thought: If I keep holding my head like that, all my thoughts will cease. Besides, I really moved myself when I and my sadness regarded the blanket that I had thrown back in the morning. I will prove to you that my feelings are useful.
HANS
Watch out, if you say it once more, you’ll suddenly even believe it. But seriously, I’ve never heard of a mad businessman. Only the other-directed find themselves ominous. But you’re incapable of being at odds with the world. And if you are, you manage to make a profit at it.
QUITT
You’re becoming schematic, Hans.
HANS
Because I’m a compulsive talker.
KILB
Ask him about his parents. His father was an itinerant actor. His mother made dolls which she couldn’t sell. Both of them failed to return from a trip around the world. They’re supposed to have jumped into a volcano. He’s their only child.
QUITT
(To HANS) I’m not sick. Let’s talk about something more harmless.
(Pause.)
KILB
For example, the immortality of the soul?
(Pause. )
QUITT
The reason I’m not sick is because I, Hermann Quitt, can be just the way I feel. And I’d like to be the way I feel. I feel like the blues, Hans. (Pause.) In any event, sometimes I go somewhere and I think I’ve come in through the wrong door. Another second and they’ll ask me who I am. Or I suddenly stand on an incline in my empty office, see the pencil roll down from the desk top and the papers slide off. Even when I come in here, I often become afraid that I’ve intruded. Frequently when I look at a familiar object I think: Where’s the trick? People I’ve known for ages I suddenly call by their last name. That’s not just an old dream. But I wanted to talk about something else. (Pause. KILB raises his hand. QUITI has suddenly butted his head against the punching bag.) What’s still possible? What’s there left for me to do? Recently I drove through a suburban street where I used to walk every day. Suddenly I saw an old board for posters. In those days I used to look it over and read everything on it. Now the board was nearly empty, only one poster left, an ad for a pondered milk that’s long off the market. (He raises his arms.) As I drove slowly past, the posters of all the bygone chocolates, toothpastes, and elections passed before my mind’s eye, and in this gentle moment of recollection I was overcome by a profound sense of history.
KILB and HANS
( Simultaneously) And then you palled it up with your chauffeur?
(Pause. Honking offstage.)
QUITT
That’s Lutz. He also honks that way at night when he comes home. It’s a signal for his wife to turn on the microwave oven. Made in Japan. Go help him with his coat.
( HANS exits.)
KILB
(Steps forward.) How does that story about your parents go?
QUITT
It’s not idiotic enough. I once dreamed I was losing my hair. Whereupon someone told me that I was afraid of becoming impotent. But perhaps it only meant that I was afraid of losing my hair.
KILB
But why are you afraid of losing your hair? What does that mean? Besides, I caught sight of you recently. You were sitting on a bench by the river, rather absentmindedly engrossed in nature.
QUITT
Absentmindedly?
KILB
You hadn’t even wiped the pigeon shit off the bench. Besides, experience tells me that the contemplation of nature is the first sign of a waning sense of reality. And your eyelids scarcely blinked, like a child’s.
QUITT
Oh, go on, go on. It’s beautiful to hear a story about oneself.
KILB
I went to have lunch. Steak and French fries. After all, I exist too.
QUITT
Kilb, I’ve admired you for a long time. I like your ruthlessness. That time when you brought an effigy of me to the stockholders’ meeting and hung it on the lectern! And had yourself carried bodily out of the hall! I envy you too. Next to you I feel constricted, caught inside my skin, and notice how limited I am. I can tell you this now because it’s just the two of us.
(KILB draws QUITT forward by both ears and smacks a kiss on his lips. QUITT gives him a kick.)
KILB
So as to re-establish the previous state of affairs. (He retreats. )
(Simultaneously HANS leads LUTZ, VON WULLNOW, and KOERBER-KENT into the room. KOERBER-KENT, a businessmanpriest, represents a Catholic-owned company; he is dressed in a suit, but wears the collar of his profession.)
LUTZ
(To his colleagues) As I said, we weren’t the first ones. We just observed them in the beginning, let them overextend themselves; then we got the green light from our overseas affiliates, tackled them, and down they went. He of course tried to bluff us, but we were on to him long ago. We let him twist in the wind a while longer and then we bagged him.
(They laugh, each in his own way.)
VON WULLNOW
(To QUITT) Quite something, that bike out there leaning against your fence. My father once gave me one almost like it, together with my first pair of knickers. They don’t do work like that any more nowadays. Instead of selling you a bike, they dress it up like a machine, with speedometer and horn. And a machine of course is allowed to wear out more quickly than a simple bike. It is also characteristic of machines that they become obsolete. A bike wouldn’t. Do you ride it to work? (QUITT points to KILB.) I wondered straight off why it was so dirty.
LUTZ
I’ll take his arms. Who’ll take the legs?
QUITT
And if we trip, the dragon seed falls out of his mouth. And the new Adam leaps to his feet.
KOERBER-KENT
He doesn’t bother me. I find him entertaining. He reminds me of some dark urge inside myself. Besides, he doesn’t really mean it. He can’t help it, that’s all. Ever since we had a chat, just the two of us, I believe him.
LUTZ
It’s easy to believe someone if it’s just the two of you. I believe anyone if it’s just the two of us. But I get nothing out of it. That’s why I try not to be alone with anyone. It falsifies the facts.
VON WULLNOW
He has no sense of honor, that s.o.b. He reminds me of an old nag we used to have at home. He pissed every time he stepped from his stall out on the pavement. It made such a wonderful splashing sound. He moved through the world with his joint dangling. And look how bowlegged he is. And the part in the middle of his hair—which isn’t really centered. The threadbare fly, the pointy-toed shoes, that’s no way to live!
KOERBER-KENT
Von Wullnow, you’re wasting your time. There’s no insulting him. Your elaborate insults only increase his self-esteem. Let’s sit down and begin. I have to prepare a sermon today.
LUTZ
What are you going to preach on?
KOERBER-KENT
About the fact that death makes all men equal. Even us.
VON WULLNOW
(Indicating KILB.) He’d like that. But now—should he hear everything?
LUTZ
But we’re not going to say anything that no one besides us should hear, are we?
(Pause. The businessmen laugh. KILB is playing with his tongue in his mouth. HANS leaves. The businessmen sit down on a set of matching chairs and sofa. )
VON WULLNOW
Are you standing comfortably, Kilb? We’re only human, after all. (The businessmen laugh again. QUITT’S WIFE appears. She looks at all of them, then walks diagonally through the room and disappears. To KOERBER-KENT) Do you as a priest also
employ female help in your enterprises?
KOERBER-KENT
How do you mean?
VON WULLNOW
I was just thinking about the fact that you aren’t married, neither happily nor at all.
KOERBER-KENT
