GRUMBLER Really?
OPTIMIST —after all, it’s only an advertisement like any other, and an old one at that, note, from before the war. The space for the poster was already booked, maybe the place is still open for business, I’ve no idea, things don’t change overnight, these are mere outer trappings anyhow, but I’m convinced—
GRUMBLER Of course you’re convinced—
OPTIMIST —yes I am, I’m convinced that the Viennese, who really have been transformed overnight into a serious people, “neither high-handed nor fainthearted”, as the Presse so rightly said, have realized the gravity of the situation. I’m convinced that a year from now they won’t want to be implicated in such mindless hedonism, whether the war is over by then or not. I’m convinced of that, yes!
GRUMBLER For my part, I have no convictions, and I think it makes no difference whether things turn out like that or not, or whether one approves or, in your case, finds it reprehensible if the mindless hedonism continues. Unlike you, I would be inclined to approve.
OPTIMIST Then I don’t understand you.
GRUMBLER Look, I am convinced of one thing and one thing only: that people don’t care. But I’ll say this: a year from now Wolf in Gersthof, by then not so much a music hall as a symbol, will have expanded to meet the challenges of this age of grandeur, and its posters will be plastered over every street corner, over the line “I have weighed everything in the balance” and over everything else for which there was once still room beside it and below it. It will depict a false life in its true perspective. And a year after that, when a million men have been buried at the front, the survivors’ dependants will look Wolf in Gersthof in the eye, at a face staring bloodily out like a laceration running through the world, and will read of hard times — and “Don’t miss today’s Grand Matinée and Evening Concert”!
OPTIMIST It makes my heart bleed to hear you talk like that — it’s tantamount to taking an epoch that must surely appear momentous to even the most benighted, and deliberately talking it down. If the times have taught us anything, it is to disregard your way of looking at things.
GRUMBLER That is devoutly to be wished!
OPTIMIST May God grant you more elevated thoughts. Perhaps they will occur to you tomorrow at Mozart’s Requiem—let’s go together, the profits go to the welfare fund for war victims—
GRUMBLER No, the poster is enough for me — there, right beside Wolf in Gersthof! But what is that strange illustration? A church window? If my shortsightedness doesn’t deceive me — a mortar! Is it possible? Whoever managed to combine both worlds in a single image, do you think? Mozart and mortar! What concert programming! Who could find such a happy combination? No, there is no point shedding tears. Just tell me if in the culture of the Senegalese, whose aid the enemy has enlisted against us, such blasphemy would be possible! There you see it, that is the World War against us.
OPTIMIST (after a pause) I think you are right. But, God knows, you alone see it. It eludes the rest of us, and so we see the future in a rosy light. You see it, so it exists. Your eye conjures it up and makes it visible.
GRUMBLER Because it is shortsighted. It perceives the contours, and imagination does the rest. And my ear hears noises that others don’t hear, and they disturb the music of the spheres for me, which others don’t hear either. Think about it, and if you don’t reach a conclusion about it yourself, call me. I enjoy our conversations. You are a prompter for my monologues. I would like to appear with you in public. For the moment, I can only tell the public I am keeping silent, and if possible, what I am keeping silent.
OPTIMIST What, for example?
GRUMBLER For example, that this war, if it does not kill those who are good, may well create a moral island for the good, who were already good without it. But it will transform the whole surrounding world into an enormous backdrop of deceit, degeneracy, and the most barbarous blasphemy, as the evil it produced continues to have its effect, growing fat on its victims under cover of its phoney ideals. That in this war, the war of today, culture will not undergo a renewal, but will take refuge from the hangman in suicide. That it was more than sin — that it was a lie, a daily lie out of which printer’s ink flowed like blood, the one feeding the other, pouring out like a delta into the great ocean of insanity. That this war of today is nothing but an outbreak of peace, and that it cannot be ended by peace, but by the war of the cosmos against this rabid planet! That innumerable human beings had to be sacrificed, not to be lamented simply because an alien will drove them to the slaughterhouse, but as tragic victims compelled to atone for an unknown guilt. That for someone who experiences as personal torture the unparalleled injustice that this worst of all worlds inflicts on itself — that for such a one there remains but one final moral task: to sleep imperturbably through this anxious period of waiting until redeemed by the Word or the impatience of God.
OPTIMIST You are an optimist. You believe and hope that the world is coming to an end.
GRUMBLER No, it is simply unfolding like my nightmare, and when I die, that will be the end. Sleep well! (Exeunt.)
(Change of scene.)
Scene 30
On the Graben. It is night.
TWO COMMERCIAL MIDDLEMEN (arm in arm with their female companions, all tipsy, warbling) Stargazer — stargazer — beware and take care—
NEWSPAPER VENDOR Ex-tra-aa edi-shun! — 40,000 Russians dead at Przemysl!
FIRST COMMERCIAL MIDDLEMAN Stargazer — stargazer—
SECOND COMMERCIAL MIDDLEMAN —beware and take care — (Exeunt.)
ACT II
Scene 1
Vienna, several months after Italy’s entry into the war. People gathering at the corner where the Kärntnerstrasse meets the Ring. The great majority are refugees from Galicia, black-marketeers, regular officers on leave, others posted to hospitals or allocated lighter duties on the home front, and those fit for military service who have “wangled it.”
JEWISH REFUGEE Extro-oo edi-shoon. Buy a copy, loidies and gents—
VIENNESE LOAN SHARK That’s all we need, the riffraff have arrived — wherever you look, nothing but Jews. What’ll they be up to next? They’ll stay put and steal our business!
COMMERCIAL AGENT For the moment I can’t complain. But I can’t say I’m doing anywhere near as well as Ornstein.
LOAN SHARK Which Ornstein? The one who was exempted from the draft?
AGENT Of course. Last Saturday he made eight and a half thousand out of kit bags with a single telephone call. Impressive!
LOAN SHARK So I heard. What did he do before the war?
AGENT Before the war? Didn’t you know — matches! He was an agent for Lauser & Löw. Now he’s set up on his own. Said he’d put some business my way. He’s in the know with some major or other.
(A badly wounded soldier on crutches, limbs trembling, drags himself past.)
LOAN SHARK Yes, indeed, we must just hold out to the bitter end.
NEWSPAPER VENDOR Ex-tra-aa edi-shun—! Neue Freie Presse! Clawrious Jur-man fig-tree in Galicia! Ene-mee repulsed! Bloody ’and-to-’and foitin!
LOAN SHARK Knöpflmacher must be in the money, too. Did you hear, Eisig Rubel takes himself off to the spirits warehouse every day, what d’ya say to that, has it made, eh! Which reminds me — that was a first-rate article yesterday on the spiritual uplift.
AGENT Know what I heard today, they’re going to put leather up by 50 percent.