East of Berlin
Page 1
EAST OF BERLIN
HANNAH MOSCOVITCH
Playwrights Canada Press
Toronto
NOMINATED FOR:
The 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
The 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama
The 2009 Canadian Author’s Association Carol Bolt Award
The 2008 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play, General Category
“Hannah Moscovitch [is] a young and quite irritatingly talented writer…”
—Paul Isaacs, Eye Weekly
“…an emotional and intellectual focus that seamlessly travels across continents and about 40 years of history.”
—Kamal Al-Solaylee, Globe and Mail
“…a Holocaust play with a difference.”
—Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine
“…those looking for real theatre, the kind that stretches your heart and your brain, will be well-rewarded.”
—Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
“[Moscovitch is] not afraid to plunge right through areas that others might consider poor taste in order to come out the other side in search of a deeper truth.”
—Variety
“… important and brave work… a must-see show, by any definition.”
—Fresh Daily Theatre Review
To my father, Allan Moscovitch
PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTES
A note on the title: the word “East” was used by the Nazis to refer to the genocide of the Jews. The official party line was that Jewish communities were being “resettled in the East.” This euphemism entered into the language of Berlin Jews during the war. The word “East” was used to refer to the death camps, and “to go East” of the city signified “going to your death.”
A note for future productions: when I wrote the script, I sought to create the possibility for a tense relationship between Rudi and the audience. I envisioned this relationship as the most important of the play.
CHARACTERS
Sarah (speaks with a slight New York accent)
Hermann
Rudi
East of Berlin was first produced by Tarragon Theatre, October 16 to November 24, 2007, with the following company:
SARAH | Diana Donnelly
HERMANN | Paul Dunn
RUDI | Brendan Gall
Directed by Alisa Palmer
Set and Costume Design by Camilla Koo
Lighting Design by Michael Walton
Music and Sound Design by John Gzowski
Stage Managed by Leigh McClymont
Fight Direction by James Binkley
Script Coordinated by Maureen Gualtieri
Do not hold against us the sins of the fathers; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.
—Psalm 79: 7–9
It’s 1970. RUDI is in the front hallway outside his father’s study, in his family home in Asunción, Paraguay. He is trying to light a cigarette. It’s difficult because his hands are shaking. RUDI stops trying to light the cigarette for a moment and controls himself. Then he lights his cigarette. He takes a drag. He speaks to the audience.
RUDI
I used to smoke, in Paraguay. It’s a disgusting habit, I know. I’m returning to old habits here.
Beat.
I grew up here, in Paraguay. Fucking Paraguay.
Beat.
At the airport, the customs official had Band-Aids on his hands that were crusted over with dirt and pus. I kept looking at them as he went through my suitcase. Also, he was smoking and the ash kept falling onto my clothes.
Beat.
I’ve been away too long; I’ve been in Germany too long, if these things disgust me.
Beat.
(referring to the cigarette) Thank God for… I bought these at the airport and I just fucking love them.
Beat.
When I lived here, in Paraguay, I smoked packs and packs of cigarettes. They—I don’t know—helped me, somehow. Now I only smoke to mark significant events in my life.
Beat.
Births.
Beat.
Deaths.
Beat.
Paradigm shifts.
Beat.
When I get laid, I smoke.
Beat.
Prodigal returns. To countries of origin. Paraguay. Although, I wasn’t actually born here. I’m not Latin American; well, look at me.
Beat.
No. I was born in a little hospital, in Berlin. In 1945. Right as my father was losing the war.
RUDI takes a drag of his cigarette. He regards the audience.
That’s right. My father lost the war, so he must… be… a…
Beat.
Cigarette?
Beat.
I can give you a moment to take that in. I’ve spent my whole life trying to take it in, so, please.
RUDI turns away, smokes.
(singing) “Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, Über alles in der Welt.” (turning back to the audience) Do you want to meet him? He’s… here, he’s in here, in his study, if you’d like to meet him? I’m going to go in there, in a minute, and… say hello, let him know I’m here, in Paraguay, in his house, let him know I’ve come home. Right after I… smoke this cigarette.
Beat.
He’s been here since the late forties. I mean, not in his study, in South America.
Beat.
I still don’t know who provided us with the emigration papers. I think there was an invitation from the government of Argentina. I was ten months old at the time. I have my German passport, a picture of me as a baby and the name “Otto Henrick” printed on it. Who the fuck is Otto Henrick, I’d really like to know. Well, or, maybe I wouldn’t.
Beat.
There was a very pretty little apartment in Argentina. I liked my nanny there, her tits were huge, and she was always vacuuming, I found the sound soothing.
Beat.
At one point a house by the sea, a beach; Chile, I think. There were these girls in these—I think they were meant to be attractive, or, at least, suggestive—grass skirts. When they would come by the beach my mother would put her hand over my eyes.
Beat.
In Colombia, ah, now this you’ll like, my father’s military jacket. When we arrived in Colombia, the house was flooded, a burst pipe, I think. We left all of our packages and suitcases in the front hallway. My father’s military jacket was lying out, so I tried it on. My father caught me at it. I thought he was going to be angry with me, but he wasn’t. He kept saying, “So you like my jacket!”
Beat.
And on and on like that. A series of Latin American countries, a series of Latin American sympathizers. All financed by ODESSA. Not familiar with it? That’s the organization that helped people like my father disappear.
Beat.
At some point we settled down, we stayed here. In Paraguay. But, don’t imagine we tried to fit in. Oh no. In the middle of this colossal South American sewer, a small, shining German oasis. A whole expatriate community here, Third Reich refugees, Germans, Austrians, there was even a newspaper, Die Morgenpost. We had our own school, and our own beer hall, and most of the time we pretended that Hitler didn’t lose.
Beat.
I barely spoke Spanish. Well, no, I spoke Spanish. I did speak Spanish. I tend to exaggerate. It’s another habit. I get the exaggeration and the smoking from my mother. Our house, there was always smoke drifting out of the ashtrays, and
my mother would be going on and on about how the neighbours were going to hand us over to the Russians. Or, after Eichmann, to the Israelis.
Beat.
What I get from my father? Well.
Beat.
It strikes me as stupid, even now, that I didn’t realize, that I didn’t put it together. That I spent so many years leading an ordinary life here. On the other hand, life seemed so ordinary. My father had his business, we were well off, big house, cars, servants. Nothing ever struck me as…
Beat.
Children. They have such a remarkable capacity for either accepting their circumstances, or dying. Who said that? I hope it wasn’t Hitler, sometimes I quote him accidentally.
Beat.
I knew there was something, some part of the war that wasn’t spoken about. If I asked too many questions about the war, my father shook his head at me. But then, if I asked too many questions about Latin girls, I got the same response.
Beat.
And my father, himself, was so very…
Beat.
He had a set of stock phrases he liked to repeat, such as, “You know we eat dinner at seven.” “You know we don’t walk on the lawn.” He wore the same black suits. He had an incredibly methodical way of cleaning his nails.
Beat.
My parents’ bed was up against my wall, and I would hear it creaking. It creaked sixteen times at exactly nine o’clock at night, my whole childhood, that’s how boring he was, sixteen thrusts once a week, and that was it. That was my father.
Beat.
If you met him, you’d think, there’s one of those bureaucrat types whose whole lives can be summed up in a few sentences.
Beat.
The point is, it wasn’t until my late teens, seventeen, that a schoolmate let something slip. His name was Hermann, this schoolmate. Hermann was a bit of a… well. He was… well. Hermann was an aesthete, an intellectual. He was very good at school, he was always bored in class and rolling his eyes. He read Rilke and the beat poets and chain-smoked cigarettes. He talked about how the Latin Americans really knew how to fuck. He was much more sophisticated than I was, than any of us. He was a little jaundiced because of it. He was surrounded by a great deal of boyish enthusiasm and sincerity, and it disgusted him. I was very gratified, I remember, that Hermann liked, or tolerated, me at all. Even though I thought he was a bit of a… well.
Beat.
We were in science class. We were cutting up beetles and looking at the insides of them, and Hermann said something like “That’s what your father did to the Jews.” It was a sort of… joke. I was surprised, I didn’t get the joke. I asked him about it. Here’s what Hermann said to me.
Transition. It’s 1963. RUDI and HERMANN are in science class at the German-language school in Asunción, Paraguay.
HERMANN
It’s an analogy.
Beat.
An analogy, a parallel? I’m not saying it’s an accurate analogy, but it’s close enough that I thought you might react, for instance, with emotion—
RUDI
What are you talking about?
HERMANN
Your father. My father commanded in Poland, it’s not as though he was some sort of war hero either, all right.
RUDI
What are you talking about.
HERMANN
Your father. Am I going too fast for you?
RUDI
What about my father?
HERMANN
It’s as though he took a shit in the middle of the floor, and there’s a dinner party going on, so we’re all trying to pretend he didn’t take a shit there, or at least, that it was all right to take a shit there. Again, not a fantastic analogy but just to be crude about it.
RUDI
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
HERMANN
Your father. During the war. Don’t you… know about the war?
RUDI
Know what?
Beat.
HERMANN
Forget it, I don’t know why I’m— Just, here, fill in the chart, I’ll get rid of the tray—
RUDI
Hermann!
HERMANN
Or, fine, I’ll fill in the chart, but we both know you’re better at it.
RUDI
My father served in the army, during the war.
HERMANN
Yes. That’s—yes. That’s what he told you?
RUDI
Yes that’s what he told me!
Beat.
What!? Hermann, what? What are you talking about? You’re talking about my father. You’re saying my father…? What are you saying?
Beat.
Tell me what you’re saying.
RUDI gets hold of him.
Tell me what you’re saying!
HERMANN
Your father was an SS doctor!
RUDI lets him go.
Did you know that? You didn’t know that?
RUDI
He—no! He was a troop physician, in Russia, then he was promoted to captain, went back east, served as an officer…?
HERMANN
Yes…
RUDI
What?!
HERMANN
No, he—yes he went back east, he was… transferred to the… camps.
RUDI
The camps.
HERMANN
The camps, yes, the trains, on the ramp, selections? To the left, to the right? You know what Auschwitz is, don’t you?
A reaction that indicates RUDI sort of knows, but isn’t sure.
The camp? With the Jews? Doctors, experimenting—it’s why you’re so good at science, you got his…
Beat.
He probably also served at some of the work camps. You don’t get sent to Auschwitz right away. There were doctors who killed themselves there, SS doctors; you had to have the right temperament for it so they were careful who they sent—
RUDI
He wasn’t in the SS. (off HERMANN’s look) He wasn’t in the SS! His jacket, his military jacket is Wehrmacht—
HERMANN
He probably exchanged his SS uniform for an army jacket when the Allies were close to Berlin. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” “Here, lend me your jacket.”
RUDI
No. No, it’s his jacket, it fits him, it’s his—
HERMANN
Then he kept an old jacket.
Beat.
I don’t know, from watching… you, I get the sense you’re not… stupid—don’t you wonder why you’re in Paraguay?
RUDI
We lost the war!
HERMANN
If—listen—if everyone who lost the war left Germany, there wouldn’t be anyone in Germany, would there?
RUDI
This is stupid, there’s no way my father…! Are you saying he—in the camps he—but if he was a doctor—I don’t understand.
Beat.
There’s no way my father…!
HERMANN
Then forget it.
Transition. HERMANN is gone.
RUDI
This was a big turning point in my relationship with my father. (RUDI laughs) There are, I suppose, other things one can find out about one’s father. That he fucks the maid, for instance. Hermann’s father fucked the maid, or, rather, maids. My father didn’t. My father never did anything unseemly in his life.
Beat.
Except, of course, he conducted a series of experiments on Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz between the summer of 1942 and the autumn of 1944.
Beat.
Injected th
em with typhus. For instance.
Beat.
There were no typhus cases on the hospital block, he wanted to study typhus, he injected four Dutch Jews with typhus.
Beat.
He operated on a series of women. With minimal anaesthetic and no surgical training, he removed their… ovaries— This is all familiar enough to you, though, isn’t it?
Beat.
Then, my father took a series of detailed notes on his experiments, which he hoped would advance our understanding of human pathology, and would contribute to the growing pool of scientific knowledge, which has, to a great degree, become synonymous with “progress.”
Beat.
Which, I have to say, is a lot worse than fucking the maid. It is so much worse than fucking the maid that it has… revolutionized our notion of evil.
Beat.
That’s my father.
Beat.
You see. You see now why I smoke, I think I’m entitled.
Beat.
So, Paraguay, and I’m seventeen, and I’m at school. I’m impatient, pacing, it’s after science class, I smoked a cigarette, and I stood on the front steps and waited for Hermann, who I was planning to—what’s a euphemism for “kill”? “Resettle.” (RUDI.) No, I wanted to talk to Hermann about what he’d said in science class, and so I stood on the front steps and waited for him, and waited, and when he didn’t come out, I went to his house.
Transition. HERMANN and RUDI are in HERMANN’s bedroom. RUDI slammed the door as he entered and now they are standing still, looking at one another.
HERMANN
Would you like something to drink? Or do you… just want to hit me?
Beat.
I don’t mind being hit, but it’s a little agonizing waiting like this.
Beat.
I’m going to get you a book to look at, all right? It’s on my shelf. I’m going to go to my shelf, and get you a book. I had it shipped here, from Germany, it’s in German, or you can just… look at the pictures.
Beat.
Can I get you the book?
RUDI
Just…!
HERMANN stays where he is and waits. Beat.
HERMANN
I suppose my father let you in, he’s not very… welcoming, so I’m sorry if he… Anyway, welcome, you’re… here, it’s nice to have you… here, even though it’s… under these—