GRUMBLER And the sufferings of animals will testify against those who butcher and desecrate the created world even more eloquently than those of human beings, for animals cannot speak. The stricken horse, with the form of a heavy gun engraved in its back, the burden of human death — these are nightmare images whose horror will haunt, until their dying day, those who have lain down to rest on their laurels.
OPTIMIST While we’re on the subject of animals — I cut out an odious advertisement for you: “Dogs required for slaughter, good money offered.” There ought to be a law against it! What conclusions would the enemy draw about the state of Austrian nutrition if they heard—
GRUMBLER The conclusions they would draw about the state of Austrian culture seems even more dangerous to me.
OPTIMIST Why so? If a man needs food, he won’t spurn even dog meat, so he kills his dog.
GRUMBLER Unlike the dog, who refuses food if its master dies.
OPTIMIST I’ve never heard of such a case.
GRUMBLER There’s one you can read about here — in The Animal Lover magazine: “A faithful dog. A member writes that Hermine Pfeiffer, a casual worker for whom our association several times provided a reduced-price dog identity disc, died some weeks ago. Since the day of the woman’s death, her female poodle refused all food, and died a few days later. The faithful animal was found in the morning with its head on a pillow that its mistress had formerly used. Curiously, its late mistress had once said that, should anything happen to her, she would be happy for her dog to pass away too, lest it fall into the wrong hands and suffer maltreatment. And the dog, deeply attached to her benefactress, did indeed die from grief very soon after her.” After reading this report one can only say: lucky dog!
OPTIMIST Why so?
GRUMBLER Otherwise it would have been eaten. Provided it wasn’t already too thin from malnutrition. If dogs didn’t love their owners, they would be tempted, before heading for freedom, to affirm their moral superiority.
OPTIMIST But there surely must be deeper reasons why “doggon it” is a swearword and “like a dog” such a term of abuse.
GRUMBLER You’re dead right. It designates the character of those who will pay good money for dogs to slaughter. Or those described in this theatre review: “The Deutsches Volkstheater has demonstrated that it also supports authors who do not slavishly follow the taste of the well-off paying public with doglike devotion.”
OPTIMIST The taste of the well-off paying public at the Volkstheater and the taste of those paying good money for dogs to slaughter — you’re surely not implying—
GRUMBLER Why not? Those paying good money for dogs to slaughter are already sitting in the best boxes. But whatever can be said about dogs, not a single one has ever been accused of trying to follow the taste of the well-off paying public with devotion. Nor do I believe that a dog would die from grief at the death of one of the Volkstheater regulars. The loving creature would draw a line at that. No dog would want to be seen alive in such a dismal place.
OPTIMIST You speak more highly of dogs than of human beings, it seems.
GRUMBLER Without exception. Come rain or shine, night or day, war or peace. In this war the animals, too, saw it through to the bitter end — though they were even more vulnerable. And every war-dog sent to the front could show the five-star gang who dubbed the common soldiers “front-line schweinhunds” that being a dog is a badge of honour compared with those inhuman monsters. Tear off their medals and award them to the dogs serving at the front! In contrast to the General Staff they are models of poverty and dignity.
(Change of scene.)
Scene 32
Reporting to battalion.
MAJOR What were you?
SOLDIER Beg to report, sir, a saddler.
MAJOR Look at me when I’m talking to you, did they teach you nothing?! You dog! Dogs, the lot of you! Son of a bitch! (To another) You wrote to your wife, complaining about how you were treated.
SOLDIER (terrified) Beg to report — Major — sir — please—
MAJOR (brandishing the letter) Here’s the letter! What you staring at?! Didn’t you know I was the censor? You dog! Dogs, the lot of you! Son of a bitch! The biggest swine in all the barracks! Twenty-one days solitary, three days a week without food, then compulsorily enlisted in the front line. You’ll soon see what’s what, you schweinhund! You won’t know what’s hit you! (To another soldier.) Ah, this is the one with the bellyache! So mama sent you a nice food parcel, eh? Hope it chokes you! (He lands three blows with his cane to head and back. The soldier staggers off, in tears.) Just so you know, the four infantrymen who refused their four-ounce bread ration are up in front of the divisional court-martial and will be shot. Czechs, of course! If any soldier fails in his duty to protect his fatherland, it’s always a Czech! Deserters, every man jack of them! A German soldier always does his duty. I’m Czech myself, but I’m ashamed of belonging to that nation. (To a lance-corporal.) You there, you’ll do the shopping for me tomorrow, that’ll give me an opportunity to lock you up. You won’t find anything at the regulation price, and you mustn’t bring back anything above that price. If you bring nothing, you’ll get short shrift, it’s straight off to the cooler. Well — what else?
LANCE-CORPORAL Beg to report, Major, sir, Second-Lieutenant Ederl bought sliced cheese in the Zillertal on the sly at 10 crowns the kilo, and wanted to sell it to the officers’ mess for 24 crowns.
MAJOR What’s that you’re saying? — That’s outrageous!
LANCE-CORPORAL The quartermaster turned the offer down for the mess — said it was poor quality. But so the second-lieutenant shouldn’t lose out, the cheese was bought for the men, and their meat ration cut accordingly. I think, Major, in the interests of the men, and since this action was against regulations, that I should—
MAJOR This is outrageous! It’s not your place to criticize anything officers may or may not do! Six hours in irons! (To another.) You put in a complaint about poor food and not enough of it?
SOLDIER Beg to report, Major, sir, yes sir!
MAJOR (cuffs him) It’s not the quartermaster who’s at fault, it’s your appetite! Think yourself lucky there’s a war on! In peacetime you’d get even less! I’ll put you on exercise drill till your tongue’s hanging out down to your navel — that’ll put a stop to complaints about food all right! You dog! Dogs, the lot of you! Son of a bitch!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 33
Optimist and Grumbler in conversation.
OPTIMIST To get some idea of what a soldier at the front really feels, all you need do is—
GRUMBLER —read a letter home. Especially one where the writer managed to bypass the censor so that it reached its destination.
OPTIMIST Still, such letters would show you that every soldier’s highest ambition is to fight well, and that he even puts devotion to duty above his longing for his wife and children.
GRUMBLER Alternatively, you would be filled with horror at the incalculable crime of those scoundrels who caused, or prolonged, the war: the crime of disrupting millions of individual destinies, tearing them apart and trampling underfoot all individual happiness; the dread of imminent disaster for years on end, both at home and in the trenches; people in both cases trembling in anguish when there is no word, or else fearful that any communication is a herald of death. A wife gives birth, a mother dies — and the person most concerned is lying somewhere out there in the mud — for the Fatherland. Now the scoundrels have come up with the ingenious idea of periodically suspending correspondence to and from the front entirely — this accursed though longed-for invention of the devil. The unfortunates then know more than enough, for the silence is the silence before the storm. How unimaginable the mechanism that subordinates the existential parameters of life — birth and death — to the inscrutable dictates of the General Staff! Only love eludes those dictates. What is love to the General Staff! (He reads out a letter from an Austrian officer to his pregnant wife.)