HOFRAT SCHWARZ-GELBER & HOFRÄTIN SCHWARZ-GELBER No power on earth could have kept us from being here in person.
SECTION HEAD WILHELM EXNER I am here as a pioneer in the field of artificial limbs.
DOBNER V. DOBENAU As Lord High Steward I should rightly be in there with the pillars of society.
RIEDL At the Adria Exhibition I had dealings with His Imperial Highness, as chairman of the committee striving to ensure we continue undaunted along the path on which we had already embarked.
STUKART My presence is required as a matter of course.
SIEGHART Today I am Chief Executive.
ANGLOBANK PRESIDENT LANDESBERGER They call me a financial tycoon.
A VOICE Come and stand here, you’ll see them better, the returning warriors.
ANOTHER VOICE They say it took them eight weeks to cross Siberia. There are so many train delays these days—
A MOTHER Don’t go too close, you never know what diseases they might be spreading. Look at that one writhing around.
HER DAUGHTER No wonder, if he’s been shot in the stomach.
DR. CHARAS Under my direction the First Aid service has also turned out for this occasion, though there have not yet been many opportunities to assist.
(Meanwhile a lady in deepest mourning has entered. Everyone makes way for her.)
FRAU SCHWARZ-GELBER (thunderstruck, elbows her husband in the ribs and says) What did I tell you! She turns up everywhere she isn’t wanted. Can’t one ever be among one’s own kind!
FLORA DUB How peaceful they look, lying there!
NEWSPAPER EDITOR (to his neighbour) Write how the eyes of the returning warriors are shining.
TWO CONSULS (exchange introductions) Stiassny. We have hastened to get here.
THREE HONORARY COUNSELLORS (appear side by side) We come as delegates of the Laurels for Our Heroes campaign, to pay tribute to the returning representatives of our glorious army.
SUKFÜLL As a delegate commissioned by the committee, let me take this opportunity to respond wholeheartedly to the joy of our valiant warriors, who, though in distant parts, have invariably demonstrated their concern for our interests, and can now rest assured of the success of their efforts. Though it cannot be denied that the hotel industry has suffered because of the war, and though tourism was also handicapped by difficulties with food supplies, we cannot close our eyes to the glorious fighters who have bled for the honour of the House of Habsburg.
BIRINSKI & GLÜCKSMANN The fine arts have sent us here today as their representatives.
HANS MÜLLER Let it be! Those contemplating these frail creatures, who are now received into hospital care at the end of their journey home, will be shaken to the very core of their being, as if vouchsafed a sudden glimpse through a crack at life’s dying embers.
(People appear, men and women, who have made helpful suggestions, led by Honorary Counsellor Moriz Putzker.)
PUTZKER At my suggestion, in order to calculate exactly the duration of their captivity, our prisoners of war in Siberia kept a record of the hours up to their arrival.
(The “Prince Eugene March” strikes up. Some of the disabled soldiers faint.)
THE MOTHER Don’t get too close, I’ve told you why.
THE DAUGHTER Oh God, I’ve given refreshment to so many sufferers already!
(A commotion arises. One of the ones who had fainted has died.)
A VOICE Look at the expression on his face. Like he’s in bliss to be at journey’s end.
ANOTHER VOICE What’s keeping Hugo Heller?
A THIRD VOICE He will live on in the annals of history.
DOBNER V. DOBENAU As Lord High Steward I should rightly be—
HUGO HELLER, BOOKSELLER (has forced his way through) Thanks to my extensive cultural contacts it would surely have been easy for me to have established an attachment to those who are now beyond the world of culture, had it not been for the fact already noted that death intervened.
HANS MÜLLER Let it be!
(While officials distribute war medals among the disabled, the “Radetzky March” strikes up.)
NEWSPAPER EDITOR (to his neighbour) Describe how they listen entranced!
(Change of scene.)
Scene 53
A deserted street. Nightfall. Suddenly figures rush in from all sides, each with a bundle of newspapers, breathless, corybants and maenads; they tear madly up and down the street, yelling as if to announce a murder. Their cries are unintelligible. Some seem to groan as they announce their news. It sounds as if the woes of all mankind were being drawn up from a deep well.
Ex-tra-aa edi-shun—!—stradishun—!—xtradishun—! Both muniqués—! Cmuniqués—! Stradishun—! Extraa—!—dishun—! shun — Late Night Ex-tra-aa—!
(They disappear. The street is deserted.)
(Change of scene)
Scene 54
Grumbler at his desk.
He is reading.
Wishing to determine the exact time a tree growing in a forest requires to become transformed into a newspaper, the proprietor of a paper mill in the Harz Mountains conducted an interesting experiment. At 7.35 am he had three trees felled in the nearby forest, and after the bark was removed, had them transported to his pulp mill. The conversion of the three trunks into pulp was so swift that the first roll of newsprint emerged from the machine by 9.39 am. This was promptly delivered by motor car to the printers of a daily paper four kilometres away, and by 11 o’clock the newspaper was for sale on the street. Accordingly, it took no more than 3 hours 25 minutes for the public to be reading the latest news on material produced from trees on whose branches, that very morning, the birds had still been chirping.
(From outside, the very distant cry: “—Ex — traaa!”)
So, it’s five minutes before midnight. The answer has come. The echo of my bloodstained insanity, and this is the only sound I hear reverberating from the ruins of creation, the sound from which ten million dying men accuse me of still being alive, of having had eyes to see and a vision so precise that this world became what I saw. If such carnage was heaven’s idea of justice, it was surely unjust not to have destroyed me first! Did I deserve to see my fear of a living death fulfilled? What is it that haunts my nights? Why was I chosen only to vindicate the prophetic railing of Thersites, not to forestall the heroic posturing of Achilles? Why was I not granted the physical strength to free this planet from its sinfulness with a single blow of the axe? Why was I not granted the intellectual power to compel suffering humanity to cry for help? Why is my cry of protest not stronger than the hollow words of command that held dominion over the souls of the whole created world?
I have preserved documents for an epoch that will no longer comprehend them or will say that I forged them, so remote will they be from today. But that day will never come for there will be no survivors. I have written a tragedy whose doomed hero is mankind; whose tragic conflict, that of the world with nature, ends in extinction. Because this drama has no hero other than mankind, it will sadly have no audience. But what caused the death of my tragic hero? Was the world order stronger than the hero’s personality? No, the laws of nature were stronger than the world order. We are torn apart by a fundamental falsehood: the hollowness displacing traditional humanity has been projected into anachronistic life-forms. The merchant masquerading as hero, compelled to fight heroically so as to succeed commercially! He is destroyed by a toxic mix of compulsion and euphoria. Who are the guilty men? There are none, otherwise there would be retribution, otherwise mankind, my hero, would have resisted the curse of being enslaved by the means at his disposal and martyred by what he took to be necessity. For if the means of subsistence erode the purpose of existence, they enslave us to the instruments of death and even poison the survivors.