Dictators and bishops: Scene 15, ‘A small international gay opera’. Photographs: The Finnish National Theatre / Laura Malmivaara, 2011

CAST OF CHARACTERS
Veijo Teräs
Hellevi, Veijo’s wife and a Member of Parliament
Hellevi’s Conscience
Rebekka, Hellevi and Veijo’s daughter
Moritz, Hellevi and Veijo’s godson
Agnes af Starck-Hare, Doctor of Psychiatry
Seven Dwarves
Tom of Finland
Atik
The Bishop of Mikkeli
Adolf Hitler
Albert Speer
Josef Stalin
Old gays: Kale, Jorma, Rekku, Risto
Olli, Uffe,Tiina, Jorma: people from SETA [the Finnish LGBT association]
Second Lieutenant, Private Teräs, the men in the company
A Policeman
Big Gay, Little Gay, Middle Gay
William Shakespeare
Hermann Göring
Hans-Christian Andersen
Teemu & Oskari, a gay couple
The Apostle Paul
Father Nitro
Winston Churchill

SCENE ONE

On the stage, a narrow closet.
Veijo Teräs appears, struggling to get out of the closet.
Veijo Teräs is dressed as a prince. He is surprised and embarrassed to see that the audience is already there. He seems to be waiting for something.
He speaks, but continues to look out over the audience expectantly.

Snow White's spouse, Veijo (Juha Muje), and the dwarves. Photo: Laura Malmivaara, 2011

VEIJO
This outfit isn’t specifically for me, because… I mean, it’s part of this whole thing. This Snow White thing. I’m waiting for the play to start. Just like you are. My name is Veijo Teräs and I’m playing the point of view role in this story. Writers put point of view roles like this in their plays nowadays. They didn’t use to.

Just to be clear – this isn’t a ballet costume. I’m not going to do any ballet dancing, but I won’t mind if someone dances, even if it’s a man. Particularly if it’s a man. But I don’t watch. Ballet, I mean. Not at the opera house, or on television, or anywhere, and I have no idea why we had to bring up ballet – or I had to bring it up – because this is a historical costume, so it’s appropriate. This is what men used to wear, real men like Romeo and Hamlet, or Cyrano de Bergerac. But we in the theatre these days have a hell of a job getting an audience to listen to what a man has to say when he’s standing there saying what he has to say in an outfit like this. People get the idea that it’s a humorous thing, but this isn’t, this Snow White thing, where I play the prince. Snow White is waiting in her glass casket, she died from an apple, which seems to have become the Apple logo, Lord knows why, the one on the laptops you see on the tables of every café in town.

Some people might think that I’m a bit too old, maybe a little miscast in the role of the prince, but wait until you see Snow White.

But you can’t see Snow White until the dwarves make their entrance. They’re late again, probably in the green room chewing the fat… No, wait. Listen. Here they come. Right at the correct dramaturgical moment we hear them singing as they return home from a hard day’s work in the mines.

Maybe I should pretend to be a tree.

Veijo Teräs pretends to be a tree.
The seven dwarves enter with picks over their shoulders.
The dwarves are large and look deceptively like hockey players – even their picks look like hockey sticks.

THE SONG OF THE SEVEN DWARVES

Just whistle while you work
tralalallallallalla
the work is steady, hot and heavy,
but we never shirk!

SECOND DWARF
Cold, wet, and damned unhealthy! Knees are shot, but what the heck.

Just whistle while you work
tralalallallallalla
just us fellas, day and night
together in the dark…..

FOURTH DWARF
But Bashful… what are you bashful about? There’s nothing to be bashful about. Not these days.

Just whistle while you work
tralalallallallalla
when you feel hungry
and go at it…

FIFTH DWARF
Go at what?

THE OTHERS
The puck, of course!

SECOND DWARF
Or anyone at all!

Just whistle while you work
tralalallallallalla
when you feel hungry
and go at it
digging gold from dirt.

FIRST DWARF
Or ice!

when you feel hungry
and go at it
digging gold from ice!

Third dwarf sneezes.

FIRST DWARF
Have you got a cold, Sneezy?

FOURTH DWARF
Poor brother Sneezy. What’s that white stuff in your nose?

VEIJO (Pretending to be a tree)
This is serious for me. This Snow White thing.

SECOND DWARF
Sneezy sucked up all our lines. Now look at us.

VEIJO
Honest it is.

SECOND DWARF
Right on the chalk line.

VEIJO
I can’t bear to listen to this.

FIRST DWARF
Yeah. Sorry. We may have got off course. We’ll get back to the plot. So. Where is Snow White?

FOURTH DWARF
Where is Snow White and our dinner and our mended socks and so forth?

FIFTH DWARF
I think she’s dead.

THE DWARVES
Dead? Dead! Dead! But where is the prince, who can wake her with a kiss?

Veijo steps up to the casket in his prince’s outfit.
Snow White is lying in the casket.
The casket is opened, the dwarves pretend to weep.

DWARVES
Kiss her, sweet prince, oh kiss her, kiss her, kiss her! Maybe then she’ll wake up!

Veijo bends over Snow White. He starts to feel faint.

SCENE TWO

Doctor of Psychiatry Agnes af Starck-Hare is helping Veijo Teräs out of his prince’s costume.

AGNES
And at that moment, you always wake up?

VEIJO
Yes. I mean, although they’re all a little different, these dreams. But plot-wise, it goes right up to this kissing scene, which frightens me.

AGNES
Kissing your wife is frightening?

VEIJO
No, no, goodness no. This is Snow White. Hellevi is my wife.

AGNES

Kissing a woman who isn’t your wife Hellevi is frightening?

VEIJO
No, no. I mean yes. In the sense that I’ve never kissed any other woman but Hellevi. If you don’t count some fumbling around in high school, but…

AGNES (Interrupting him)
Is your wife frigid?

VEIJO
No no no. What do you mean?

AGNES
I just thought… Well, she appears to you behind glass. And dead.

VEIJO
No, no. It’s not Hellevi. It’s Snow White.

AGNES
I see. Right. Yes. We’ll come back to Snow White later. But tell me something about this Hellevi.

VEIJO
Hellevi?

AGNES
Yes. Anything at all that comes to mind.

VEIJO
Fact or fiction?

AGNES
In this room, fact and fiction are the same thing, like they are in your unconscious mind.

VEIJO
Well, then. Hellevi is…

Hellevi arises from the glass casket in all her glory, like a divine vision.
The Chorus [i.e. the dwarves] follows her with folders of documents under their arms.

SONG OF HELLEVI

Snow White? Hellevi Teräs (Rea Mauranen) and her Conscience (Kristiina Halttu). Photo: Laura Malmivaara, 2011

Hellevi is… Hellevi is… Hellevi is…
Who is Hellevi?
Hellevi is… Hellevi is… Hellevi is…

Hellevi is the shining sun,
and the moon primeval.
Hellevi is the tree of the knowledge of good,
and sometimes evil.
Who can describe Hellevi?
Who would dare to do so?
Who dares give the definition of Hellevi?

Hellevi is… Hellevi is… Hellevi is…
Who the Hellevi is she?
Hellevi is… Hellevi is… Hellevi is…

VEIJO
… an exceptionally competent woman.

AGNES
An exceptionally competent woman? In what sense?

VEIJO
In every sense… I mean everyone senses it. In relation to everything. She’s a member of parliament.

HELLEVI
I wasn’t made a minister because…

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
Because you have no heart.

Like a cross across her back
Hellevi carries the burden of her conscience,
carries, carries her conscience,
faithfully,
unflaggingly
Hellevi carries the burden of her conscience
like a cross across her back.
Hellevi is… Hellevi is… Hellevi is…

HELLEVI
I wasn’t made a minister, because I’m uncompromising and I push the values the Finnish people believe in, if they had time to believe in anything with all their drinking liquor and frequenting internet porn sites.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
You’re lacking love, and all that goes with it…

HELLEVI (interrupting)
My constituency is…

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE (interrupting)
… and so your speech is like sounding brass and…

HELLEVI
My approval ratings say otherwise.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
You persecute single parents and church dropouts and gays and conscientious objectors.

HELLEVI
I don’t persecute anyone, but I hold tightly to the limits my constituents demand, around this country and within it.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
You’ve sold your soul to the voters.

HELLEVI
I haven’t sold anyone or anything, not even you, although I would have liked to. Many times. A person needs a conscience, even if it’s a heavy one.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
A person needs…

HELLEVI (interrupting)
Love and the gospel. That’s what a person needs, and nothing else, whether they’re a conscientious objector or a gay or even a normal person. And vitamin D in the winter, of course, here in our northern clime.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
But do you feel love?

HELLEVI
Love isn’t any feeling.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
If love isn’t a feeling, then what is it?

HELLEVI
Well, there are very clear instructions about it, and about how it should be carried out, in the Word, and that’s what I go by. And you’re starting to get on my nerves now. There’s a committee meeting in session here and I ought to concentrate… for God’s sake, forgive me, Lord, for taking your name in vain, we have these fertility treatments for female couples, but I probably didn’t say it out loud, did I?

AGNES
So your wife talks to herself? Does that worry you?

VEIJO
No. I mean yes. Maybe. I don’t know. She has these internal battles with her conscience, sort of like Jacob wrestling his angel. She has a very tender conscience, which shows that she’s…

AGNES
Yes?

VEIJO
She’s very… she has a very unusual… she’s a fine woman, exceptionally competent, and I don’t quite understand why we’re talking about her, since I’m the patient here.

AGNES
Could we describe this Hellevi by saying that she’s a bit domineering?

VEIJO
I’m in charge at our house.

AGNES
Really?

VEIJO
That is Hellevi’s wish.

HELLEVI (commenting during a lull in the committee’s work)
That is my wish, because it says in the Word that man is the head of the woman, and woman is made from man’s rib.

VEIJO (to Agnes)
I frequently have sharp pains right here (pointing to his ribs).

HELLEVI
Of course you have pains. It’s because I’m not there. There’s an empty place there.

VEIJO
I’ve been to the doctor, but they didn’t find anything. That’s why I came here. Because of this rib thing, and also the Snow White thing. This Snow White thing, is it a fixation, or what?

AGNES
Do you have any children?

Like Michelangelo's David? Veijo (Juha Muje) and Rebekka (Anna Paavilainen) both are fascinated by Moritz (Johannes Holopainen). Photo: Laura Malmivaara, 2011

VEIJO
No, but we have a daughter. Rebekka. She studies biology.

REBEKKA
Gene technology.

VEIJO
I mean she’s an adult.

HELLEVI
She thinks she is.

VEIJO
They have these normal mother and daughter intergenerational issues sometimes…. Often.

REBEKKA
It’s not normal. It’s not normal that a member of parliament could give a shit about scientific facts.

HELLEVI
The Bible is my law-book, and my encyclopaedia.

REBEKKA
How am I supposed to talk to a supposedly civilised adult person who believes in creationism?

HELLEVI
Respectfully. It’s mentioned a couple of times in the Good Book, to honour your father and mother.

HELLEVI’S CONSCIENCE
You’re not listening to anyone.

REBEKKA
You never listen to anyone.

HELLEVI
Yes I am listening to you. But not to your point of view. God made man in his image, not an ape.

REBEKKA
A chimpanzee’s DNA is ninety-nine percent identical to human DNA.

HELLEVI
But one percent isn’t identical.

REBEKKA
For God’s sake, that’s scientifically meaningless, because…

HELLEVI (interrupting)
Vive la difference!

….

Translated by Lola Rogers

HOMO! Musiikkinäytelmä (‘HOMO! A musical play’, the play text by Pirkko Saisio, is published by Lasipalatsi, Helsinki, 2011 (ISBN 978-952-480-245-1)

Characters:
Christina, the Queen
Friend
The Queen Mother
Karl Gustav, the Count [Christina’s suitor, the King-to-be]
Descartes, philosopher
Official
Man
The King
Oxenstierna, Per Brahe
A choir of midwives

The play can be performed with six actors (3 female, 3 male). Other ways of dividing the roles are possible. All stage directions may be altered.

1. Prologue
The eels’ court

CHRISTINA
If eels had a court then a great female eel would sit in the centre and the little males would writhe about like seaweed around the throne. However they would not be envious of the queen, because they would know that if they swam up into rivers and lakes, into fresh waters, they themselves would gradually become females, great and heavy, and would be able to rule and close into their great embrace all the small little gentlemen. They just have to wait.
KARL GUSTAV
I don’t know. What I do know is that a great black eel, as thick as a rope, was pulled out of the well last night and the Queen looked at its silver stomach and its thrashing tail, but the eel looked the Queen in the eyes and in the heart and since then she has never been the same.

7. Descartes’ opera

DESCARTES
Descartes’ opera, someone will write it, hopefully me, only I’m so busy. The Birth of Peace, ah yes, a good name, x percent of the national budget goes towards military operations and they dare to grumble about the price of one libretto! The world’s greatest philosopher – that’s me – makes an appearance and the eyes of the world turn here, to this country, to this court, to this lady, to the queen, that one over there, who pays me well for these thoughts, which she cannot be bothered to listen to because she thinks up her own. Thinks, rides, swash-buckles, swears a lot and sleeps little and badly, walks about in men’s clothes and in men’s company and does not understand, what on earth is this woman that others constantly and persistently see in her.
I also thought – because that is what I do – I thought that if someone were to begin to change from a woman into a man, in the way that some lizards become male as they grow older, or that certain kinds of food can change the sex of a starfish – then at what point does the female cease being a woman and must then be called a man, when is the final moment and condition? Moreover, what is the state between femaleness and maleness? What is the being between femaleness and maleness? Is it then both, either or, or neither? Or perhaps some third, new category…
For a woman is not only a woman when she is giving birth or knitting or breast feeding or washing laundry, that femaleness is there in the way she walks, eats, speaks and picks her nose. Everyone who looks at Christina sees a woman, no matter how much she rides about and hits people or how loudly she swears.(The Queen Mother enters.)
QUEEN MOTHER
(laughing) Folk round here say that, once in her life, Christina fell off the back of a horse – on purpose – so that her skirt flew up over her ears and everybody could see what she’s got between her legs. She wanted to prove that everything is as it should be. Of course, I don’t like talking about things like this, just thought I’d mention it to clarify things. (Laughs.)
DESCARTES
Aha, aha.
QUEEN MOTHER
People say that, in her dreams, she sits in a little rowing boat in the middle of a lake and in a circle around the boat there are men floating on their backs, like the petals of a flower. Christina rides each of them in turn, always on a different one – there are plenty of them – and when she’s finished, the man dives and swims away never to be seen again. Can you believe it?
DESCARTES
Aha, aha. But, soon it will be winter and the lakes frozen. So I have heard.
QUEEN MOTHER
Don’t you listen to that, everybody lies round here.
Yesterday she was speaking to a woman who was a full head taller than her and twenty kilos heavier and said: let’s the two of us go in this carriage, it’ll balance things as we’re the same size, and no one said anything to contradict her. I ended up sitting on some back-seat.
Everyone looks up to her, because she’s her father’s daughter, but she thinks that she herself is just as tall and impressive. Dangerous, that’s what it is, deadly. Once she shot a hole through the wall of a house belonging to some moll of hers with a great big cannon – she was jealous – and then she lied about it and said that it wasn’t her, no, of course not. She thinks we’re stupid, even though any child from round here can work out what direction a cannonball’s going to fly. You should be careful of her, she’s a cold dangerous person.
DESCARTES
Aha, aha.
QUEEN MOTHER
You ask her, it’s high time, you ask her! I won’t bother you any longer, but ask her!

8. First conversation with the philosopher
The dance

DESCARTES
How do you reply? Will you marry?
CHRISTINA
Is my most important duty to mate?
DESCARTES
To produce royal heirs.
CHRISTINA
How many eggs does an eel lay at once?
DESCARTES
Four million.
CHRISTINA
How many children can a human have?
DESCARTES
It’s not worth worrying about it: it is enough that you produce one healthy, preferable male, heir. One is enough. Then you have fulfilled your duty, passed on the crown.
CHRISTINA
But what if I am like the eel?
DESCARTES
How so?
CHRISTINA
That one time is enough and then I disappear somewhere deep down and will never be seen again.
DESCARTES
The Queen cannot disappear so long as her realm does not disappear. And it is thanks to God, me, and several other institutions that this country will not disappear, rather it is growing and spreading throughout Europe. You will sit and wait and across far off seas, at their peak and ready to spawn, will come all the best males.
CHRISTINA
(sickened) I feel sick.
DESCARTES
How do you reply to the parliamentary challenge? Will you marry?
CHRISTINA
Say that the Queen accepted the challenge – like a man.
– – –

9. Wonder at the well
Night.

KARL GUSTAV
In the castle well there lives an eel, which will soon be a hundred years old. That is why the water is so clear and fresh, it eats all the frogs and larvae which get down there; strong as a rope, black and gleaming and its eyes shine out of the dark when you look down. Good drinking water, good washing water. (He drinks.)
I look at you as a man looks at a woman; with eyes, which make the skin glow and the hair gleam and the eyes sparkle puts a spring in your step; which make jokes get better and the voice soften and thoughts become clearer and ideas begin to fly and remain unflaggingly awake and laugh heartily and makes one able to do everything, which one never imagined being able to do or having the strength to do or being capable of doing or daring to do – I looked at you in that way, as a man looks at a woman.
CHRISTINA
When we went down to the well that night and the eel came up to the surface and looked at me, suddenly I understood that if I were able – if only I were able to look at you in the same way – I would look at you and you would look at me – it would be the first time that a man and a woman had ever looked at each other the way they were meant to.
It looked at me as one looks for the very first time, for the very first time, full of wonderment, afresh, without lust, anger, hatred, affection or ownership, without any predefined ideas, with the kind of look that left us both unconquerable and free.
(Splash)
KARL GUSTAV
Are you planning to marry a fish?
CHRISTINA
What?
KARL GUSTAV
I don’t like this. What did the eel do?
CHRISTINA
What? It sensed me.
KARL GUSTAV
What did you do?
CHRISTINA
The same. I sensed it. It touched me.
KARL GUSTAV
Yes? And then what? (Christina does not answer.)
But is that agreed then, that we… is it agreed that we’ll… when I come back?
CHRISTINA
Yes, yes.
KARL GUSTAV
Is it? That nothing will happen whilst I’m away?
CHRISTINA
No, nothing.
KARL GUSTAV
Look me in the eyes.
CHRISTINA
Yeah, yeah.
KARL GUSTAV
Why won’t you look at me?
CHRISTINA
Soon enough. (Exits.)
KARL GUSTAV
(Alone) It’s a drag having to be a baby-sitter to an adult. Why can’t she be interested in, say, the flight patterns of migratory birds, white-tailed eagles, that would be somehow more noble, more befitting a queen than thinking about a slimy fish. Of course, I don’t belittle the fact that the eel is one of the most important fish for our national economy, but that’s as far as it goes, it’s sufficient that it exists and that it arrives smoked on a plate.
There’s something in her family, something fishy about the whole Vaasa clan, and I don’t just mean the big goggle-eyes, but some inner quality. There was something fishy about her father’s death too. The king was dressed up in armour for so long that it was difficult to believe that inside there was a real person made of flesh and bones, whose blood flowed from an open wound in his side, like that of a fish flowing into its armour of scales in the hands of a skilled fishmonger, as the king lay naked on a clayey field dotted with sparse, dry blades of grass. Clouds, the clayey field, the grey weather and the red blood flowing from the king’s side like the blood of a fish from its cold flesh and those who saw it were compelled to find out whether it was cold like the blood of a fish.
Soon Christina will be an adult, then things will get easier – or more difficult – for me and for the country.

11. Second conversation with the philosopher
A corridor in the castle. Night.

CHRISTINA
Tell me, as you are a great philosopher and a tall man: does the soul have a gender?
DESCARTES
Well… umm… (thinks) No.
CHRISTINA
Are you sure?
DESCARTES
Well… (thinks for a long time) It is not a philosopher’s job to reply, rather to pose questions so that no previous thought accidentally finds its way into them.
CHRISTINA
But I asked you first. Why does the finger bend? The hand can be fairly nimble grabbing hold of money and putting it in a pocket, but what is the spring and the mechanism that moves those nifty little fingers about? What’s the crank that makes everything click like that? You want to prove that life is just like a steak on a plate with not a single secret, and all you have to do is put little scraps of knowledge together like peas in a line and voilà, there you have it, the chemical formula for love and the secret of life and death, and no one would actually have to live anymore, like the first time you live, at the expense of your soul.
Right, now you’re going to bed, I get quite irritated with people creeping around at night, running about the corridors after young damsels in your nightdress. Hm, French ways mixed together with the Nordic climate, that’s really asking for trouble. I gave you a pair of thick felt slippers, now where are they? You don’t want to lose your manly dignity on these night-time escapades, do you, it’s the pitter-patter of the slippers that disturbs you! And that cold is quite dreadful!
You are not allowed to get ill, otherwise everyone will blame me and say, what a stupid woman, she killed the greatest genius of the age! Do you hear what I’m saying? Go to bed!
DESCARTES
I am used to deciding for myself when I go to bed and when I wake up.
CHRISTINA
I will meet you at five o’clock in the morning. On the dot. And don’t you ever turn up late again! Good night.

14. The Parliament

CHRISTINA
Well? What have you all decided? Will you let me in?
DESCARTES
The matter is still in hand.
CHRISTINA
If you wish me to rule, then you will allow me into the parliament, if not, then it would be best to say so straight away with none of this messing about.
DESCARTES
This is not the point, rather it is a question of the law: women are forbidden entrance to the halls of parliament. Regardless of all your splendid qualities you cannot deny the fact that you are, after all, a woman.
CHRISTINA
I am the Queen.
DESCARTES
We must be extremely vigilant, or soon the halls will be filled with all kinds of crotchet and nappies. Surely you do not want that either.
CHRISTINA
I’m going out.
DESCARTES
Wait here. It is not good for you to be creeping about at night. Rumours will spread, the Queen fishes about in the well, mad just like her mother.
CHRISTINA
(becoming agitated) It’s strange that this is my hall, my country, my realm and my well and I’m not allowed to go anywhere!
DESCARTES
In any case, they rarely talk about anything interesting in there.
CHRISTINA
Do you know, in Sweden people eat many many eels, but only twice in history has a male eel ever been found. In some mysterious way, this country is trying to change all the males into chicks.
DESCARTES
Let us then do the opposite. From now on I shall address you as King. Then no one will have to the power to prevent you from going wherever you please. I shall announce you to the parliament: His Majesty, King Christina!
(An official leads Christina away.)
OFFICIAL
(very nervously) It has been put forward that you should bless the font in the manger for homeless children, and then there is this War Widows’ Knitting Club, they would be most honoured if you would take part in their work. Oh yes, and the League for Hunting Dogs need some new emblems, we must design a new flag for them and have it embroidered, I hear you have an artistic eye, you could come up with some thematic colours, and of course you have such artistic interests.
And, there is a particular system whereby full members enter the hall on the left and others on the right. (They change places.)
Yes, there has always been such a custom. (They change places.)
Indeed, there is one particular custom that full members enter the hall from this side and others from that side and so before the meeting can begin one has to get into the right position, so that everyone is in the right place, before proceedings can get underway…

16. Final conversation with the philosopher

CHRISTINA
(mumbles)
DESCARTES
What did you say?
CHRISTINA
Nothing. (Continues mumbling.)
DESCARTES
You did say something.
CHRISTINA
I can ventriloquise, although it’s not of much use to a Queen. But I will found a school, in Helsinki, an academy in my dire realm Finland, in which the major subject will be ventriloquism. One will have to defend one’s doctoral thesis ventriloquially or it will be failed and a great purple haemorrhoid belt will be tied around the stomach of the new doctor.
Don’t look so critical. I had hoped you’d have at least some bad taste, we’re so poor here in the north that we can’t afford such things, thoughts and ideas have to be clean and strict as Nordic architecture. In France you can afford to call a good restaurant Dog Farts and no one would bat an eyelid. What?
DESCARTES
We will speak in the morning.
CHRISTINA
It’s only two hours until the morning. We may as well speak now.
DESCARTES
I don’t think so.
CHRISTINA
I thought that philosophy would be free from the constraints of time and place, but perhaps that only applies to higher classical philosophy.
DESCARTES
Perhaps. Good night.
CHRISTINA
(shouts) Good morning!
DESCARTES
Everything freezes in this country, rivers, wells, the soul and all thought and reason. Everything! Dear oh dear…

26. The abdication

KARL GUSTAV
When the Queen abdicated the throne, she was wearing a white gown and a cloak. An apple, a sceptre and the crown. The chancellor Axel Oxenstierna read notice of the abdication…
OXENSTIERNA
I will not!
KARL GUSTAV
Well, someone will. Then Per Brahe lifted the crown from the Queen’s head.
PER BRAHE
I will not!
KARL GUSTAV
(panicking) Well then someone will take it!
CHRISTINA
I’ll do it myself.
KARL GUSTAV
Then we all moved over to watch the crowning of Karl Gustav X and joined in the following procession.
CHRISTINA
I did not go.
I watched from the window, there wasn’t all that much to see, it started to rain and I pulled the curtains to. Perhaps I would have seen things better from the balcony, distance helps you to see more clearly.
(Everyone joins the procession.)
KARL GUSTAV
It was raining hard as we escorted the Queen out of the city. Everyone was crying, because it was that kind of occasion. It was difficult not to cry. I was annoyed to see that she was laughing.
What is it? Tossing her hair about and laughing. What’s that all about?
CHRISTINA
When I arrive in Rome and sit upon the high mountain tops between God and the Pope I will have a medallion cast. On one side will be the globe and on the other my portrait and around it in great thick golden letters I’ll slap on the words: Not Enough For Me! (Laughs.)
But I am not greedy. East, West and South, I’ll be happy with them. You can keep the North. That’s no longer on my map.
(She tears up the map; waves with it.)
QUEEN MOTHER
We don’t want to hear a thing about her, the traitor. What is there to know? She’s weak, wanted power, couldn’t handle responsibility, escaped and left. Full stop.
KARL GUSTAV
I know that the Queen was buried in Rome, but precisely what was buried at her funeral no one knows. The coffin is full of silk and the secrets of a lonely woman.

27. Epilogue
The Pope’s meal

CHRISTINA
At the Pope’s table one cannot ask, nor refuse, nor think, just eat, eat the meal in front of you laid out on a pure snow white cloth, drink blood red wine and look at the sea of people gazing up with great big eyes, without even blinking, at the way the mouth chews and the way the crystal goblet rises to your lips; at the way a former Queen ate and swallowed the Pope’s meal and how the flesh of the eel became her flesh and united with her flesh, turned into her hair and her skin and her thoughts never again to leave her.

CHRISTINA

To Apollo, with the golden hair
born of
          the daughter of Kos to the glorious son of Kronos,

Yet Artemis solemnly swore
           by her father’s head:
‘I shall forever remain a virgin
and shall live atop the high mountains and hunt;
please grant my will’

The Father of the blessed Gods nodded his consent,
                    both the Gods
and mortals shall call her the Huntress who
          throws far
The Great Thrower, a splendid name,
                    never to wed

never shall love approach her

        fear

[Poem by Sappho; this English translation is based on a Finnish translation by Pentti Saarikoski, published in his book Iltatähti, häälaulu (‘Evening star, wedding song’, 1984), with reference to D. I. Page’s Carminum Alcaicorum Fragmenta (1955).]

Translated by David Hackston

The scene is a small town in the decade before the First World War 

Cast:

DR FROMM
an imperial,bearded middle-aged gentleman
ERNEST KLEIN
a moustached, ageing, slightly shabby leather-manufacturer
AMANDA KLEIN
his wife, well-preserved, forceful, angular
MARINA KLEIN
their daughter, shapely, withdrawn, wary
NURSE-RECEPTIONIST
open, direct, not too ‘common’

ACT ONE

Scene two

After a short interval the receptionist opens the door and ushers Marina Klein into the surgery. Exit the receptionist. Marina immediately goes to the end of the room and presses herself against the white wall. The white surface makes her look very isolated in her ascetic black dress. The Doctor, who now appears to be headless – an impression produced by the lighting and the yellowish background – half-turns towards her.DOCTOR

Well, Miss… tell me…

(he stops, disturbed by the girl’s rigidity. Silence.)

Don’t be afraid. Tell me what’s worrying you.

No response.

I heard from your mother that you see everyone as headless. Is it everyone? Or just men? Do you see me without a head?

No response.

Your mother also told me you speak a home-made language. Is it that you can’t speak any other? Or don’t you want to?

No response.

I expect what you feel is: The others don’t understand me anyway, and so it’s all the same what I say?

No response.

(He sighs) Supposing I spoke your language7 Bi di fi gi dado ga? Mama nam do re mi why?

THE GIRL

(mechanically and timidly) Mi kri.

As soon as contact is established, the doctor’s head reappears.

DOCTOR

Ah yes. You do trust me, don’t you? Do you trust me?

No response.

DOCTOR Higami hogami?

THE GIRL

(responding mechanically now, but as timorously as if she’d like to vanish into the wall)

Hogami.

DOCTOR

Bigami digami. Gramme decagramme decadent centimetre (to himself:) Now I’m going wrong… (concentrating) Mele kalimaka.

MARINA

Hauoli.

DOCTOR

Makahiki hou. As you see, we’re getting on quite nicely now, together. Your language is, indeed, extremely… difficult, and perhaps you’ll forgive me if from time to time I get it a little wrong. I did speak it myself, as a child, but it doesn’t come back all that easily… so you’ll bear with me, then, won’t you… But it’s a bit difficult to find the proper things to say, spontaneously, you know, if I have to think it all out… ah… rabatsi filu rabatsi fefo escola granimui slaavibuffo garafang….

MARINA

Gang gongola.

DOCTOR

Halleluja. Hell’s bells…. But I’m trying my best. Spektakel. Takel sakel. Demiurgi.

MARINA

Gurki.

DOCTOR

Well, look, we’re getting on fine. Do sit down, please. Try that sofa over there, and settle yourself comfortably. Bitte setzen Sie sich. (to himself) Wrong again! But no, maybe she will take to a foreign language, all consonants. Probably only allergic to her mother tongue – her mother’s tongue!

She seats herself cautiously on the sofa, by the small table.

DOCTOR

Now, if I ask you politely, will you do something for me? Write something about yourself? Any language you like – just to please me? You’ll do that, won’t you? Tell me a little story, say – short as you like, or long as you like. Joyful or sad, it can be what you like, so long as it’s true, and about yourself. Zaragui ragatsi? I’ve got some paper here, and a pen (holding them out: she comes and takes them). Pluma zuma. Just let it all come out, let it flow… as if you were combing your hair in your thoughts. Gadji beri bimba tankredi glandridi dideroid.

She sits calmly down again by the table, pen in hand.

DOCTOR

Good, now write. Berimba bimbana zimzala gadjama.

MARINA (compliantly)

Gadji. (writes)

DOCTOR

Ah. Anodi katodi. Asphaltflplaster rattaplasma. So what shall I do, meanwhile? There’s that new anthropological encyclopaedia, I could scan that.

He jingles a bell loudly; enter the receptionist.

You know that new encyclopaedia, would you let me have it, please?

Exit the receptionist and enter a moment later carrying a huge volume. She sets it on the doctor’s table and exits. In what follows, while the Doctor is reading and soliloquising, surrealistic and schizophrenic paintings, such as Dali’s ‘soft constructions’, are projected onto the white wall-surface. The doctor leafs through the fat volume, reads:

‘Schizophrenic patients may write meaningless poems, very uncommunicative as regards content, but formally very disciplined and outwardly resembling children’s language or Latin.’ She won’t, let’s hope, (glancing at the girl) resort to any New Latin… With luck her motor co-ordination will set a longing going for ordinary letter-connections in her… Ah, now, Miss Klein, you’ve finished your piece. Splendid.

The girl rises timidly and takes the pen and sheets of paper over to the doctor, returns to her sofa and sits rigidly and motionless while he is reading.

DOCTOR

(Disappointed) A poem. And abracadabra. Damn it! – Miss Klein, you won’t mind, will you, taking a rest on the sofa, full-length, while I’m reading this?

The girl obeys mechanically. The Doctor reads:

Mentus nudros nuachtus magna
Monotos tondros tandras tecta
Dian akton dol dolar.
Vilon silont, dinonnemal.
Ilpo valpi avan tales
Leron tonte avant tarant
Isson sensum essim selta
Ardientum idontum delta.
Hm. Hellish long it is too. A tiny train toiling miles and miles, carrying coal that, when it gets there, is no good. No, I’m wrong: she’s writing exactly what she thinks, but the Lord knows what it is she is thinking.

The projections stop. He regards the girl. She’s asleep. Looks at his watch.

Been asleep a few minutes. – Hm. That boring poem, with those trotting trochees, ‘d be enough to send me off too.– I hope she turns out a little more communicative when she wakes up. Sometimes they are. (whispering) Miss Klein –

She sits up – rigid as a string-puppet – and opens her eyes wide like a doll.

DOCTOR

Have you been dreaming?

MARINA

(absently, astonished) Yes.

DOCTOR

Can you tell it to me?

MARINA

Still hovering between sleep and waking but nevertheless much more alert than before; speech hesitant but, following her own private logic, quite matter-of-fact; her dream-images are very real to her.

I was hoping to get across the frontier, into Russia, but I didn’t know where the frontier was. For a long time I was wandering in a dark wood. Then suddenly I found myself in the customs hall. The customs officer asked me if I’d anything to declare. I said the only thing I had was this little handbag… about the size of hymn book… Squeezes her small bag with both hands. Then he took it from me, and he pulled a mattress out of it, a complete mattress, huge, and I was astounded. He asked me what it was. When I couldn’t say a word he took me by the hand and led me down to a lake shore. The lake was sort of a long and narrow gulf, and then I realised it marked the frontier. He lowered the mattress into the water, and suddenly it was a boat, and I stepped in, and I crossed over the border ever so easily.

DOCTOR

Well. Supposing we have a look, shall we, together, at that dream of yours? I’m a customs officer and I’m going to help you across the frontier, into a great unknown country – which is an unknown part of your soul. Here is the frontier – this sort of gulf of a lake.

The Doctor illustrates his discourse with various objects: he first puts a pencil case in the middle of the table.

I insist on knowing what goods you have to declare, and just as inconsistently you claim you have none – that you are, therefore, taking no baggage on that journey of yours, in your soul. Then I pull a mattress out of your handbag.

He picks up a small rectangular rubber.

All that erotic luggage fits into your handbag – even though it’s as small as… a hymn book.

He shows her the rubber.

You’re not pleased, by any means, for you don’t want to admit it even to yourself. I lead you to the shore, and I’m going to help you across the frontier – and suddenly the mattress is a boat, a boat that’ll hold you up.

He inserts the rubber into the empty pencil case.

So: if you confide in me, this journey in your soul’ll be a success, and I’ll be able to help you across the frontier. That’s right, isn’t it, so far?

Marina nods silently.

DOCTOR

These symbols in the soul – archaic images you dream up – look two ways. You know, the customs officer’s not just me: he’s the anonymous guardian of your soul. When you confide in me you’re confiding in yourself too; and that puts things in their true light and proper perspective – and it’ll ease your burdens. This isn’t just an erotic mattress we’re dealing with: it’s a boat too; and a boat’s not just something to cross a frontier with – but: (with a sudden, swift, imperiousness) – What? What is it really? Answer!

MARINA

I don’t know.

DOCTOR

I’m the customs man. I can only help you on your way if you tell me.

Marina opens her handbag and, slowly and demonstratively, takes out handkerchief.

MARINA

I don’t know. All I have is this handkerchief.

DOCTOR

But all I want to do is to help you.

MARINA

I don’t know. I don’t know. (in a panic) I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know.

(grinding on hysterically) Idon’tknowidon’tknowidon’tknow.

DOCTOR

Don’t get upset, dear girl. (to himself:) Not much use going on now.

Rises: gently touches her shoulder.

Your mother’s outside, waiting. There’ll be another time, and we can carry on then.

Accompanies her to the door. Darkness.

END OF ACT ONE

ACT TWO

Scene three

The Doctor’s surgery a few weeks later. A great step forward has occurred – a portent, however, of a new crisis approaching. Marina – in a contrast to the previous scenes, where she was ascetically dressed – is wearing a long, tight-fitting dress of glowing ‘burnt -orange’ silk.

MARINA

… What does a horse stand for?

DOCTOR

A horse stands for a horse of course.

MARINA

But in the highest sense? And in a dream?

DOCTOR

An Arabian dream-book says: ‘Das Pferd – o du Weiser – ist eine Frau, und beide sind das Eigentum des Mannes.’ A horse – O wise one – is a woman, and both are the man’s property.

MARINA

But in my dream?

DOCTOR

Could be various things. It can represent wandering, or be a symbol of change, of death… but generally it’s the self.

MARINA

No it isn’t. A horse is an angel.

DOCTOR

Hm, perhaps it could be that too. A guardian angel… thus the soul. When the soul is integrated, it protects a person.

MARINA

My angel’s dead.

DOCTOR

What did you say?

MARINA

My angel died last night. That’s why I’m wearing this lovely orange dress today.

DOCTOR

In memory of the angel?

MARINA

Yes, or the horse. In my dream it was red. Its name was Burnt Orange.

DOCTOR

So that’s why you’ve let loose the colours you were holding in? You in fact love protective colouring.

MARINA

I don’t know what protective colouring is.

DOCTOR

That, just now, is your protective colouring. But please tell me your dream.

MARINA

A beautiful reddish-brown horse – it was still a colt really – came to my lap, and I warmed it, for it was frozen stiff: its back legs were so stiff, almost as if paralysed. And then suddenly, it revived, and it was thoroughly alive again, and it ran off from me, and galloped back and forth in my room – its red mane flowing. And then, in a flash, it was out through the window, with its mane flaming. And it crashed down onto the pavement, and it was all smashed, and I could hear it weeping.

DOCTOR

(sadly, after a longish pause) Yes, the angel has died. Pause. You know, I can’t help you. Rises. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you, and I don’t want to waken any false illusions in you: that’d be a sort of betrayal.

He starts walking up and down in the room.

Look, when I try to help you, I’m in fact only helping myself. Every time I abandon a patient, I feel as if I’ve lost the game. For that reason alone I’m going to test you just a bit more… although, I admit it frankly, it now feels more like a hopeless party-game to me.

He goes back to his desk, opens a drawer and takes out a series of enlarged pictures. The following test is a free imitation of Szond’s test and is to be thought of as the Doctor’s own invention.

What I have here is a group of pictures. I’ll put them up on the wall.

He begins to hang them. Most are of well-known personalities with very powerful or otherwise special facial traits: they include a straggly-haired Schopenhauer, and a walrus-moustached Nietzsche. Hence, the Doctor’s test-pictures are enlarged portraits of historical personages known to have morbid traits. The end-picture on the wall is of a human-looking ape or ram.

DOCTOR

Now what you have to do is tell me whom you like best, and whom you like least.

Marina regards the pictures with reserve and doesn’t reply.

DOCTOR

Well, Miss Klein. Whom do you like most?

MARINA

None of them! Not a single one of them! They’re all horrible!

She goes towards the pictures and points to each one separately, suddenly beginning to diagnose them.

That one’s (pointing to Voltaire) godless, cynical and ugly! That one’s (pointing to Rousseau) good-looking but a swindler and a thief! Pointing to E.T.A. Hoffmann: Drunken sot! Pointing to Schopenhauer: Groucher! Pointing to Ibsen: Pewit! Pointing to Danton: Bloodhound! That one’s… (pointing with feeling to Nietzsche) father. Whispers: A stupid little dog.

DOCTOR

Is he the one you like best?

MARINA

No! None of them, I don’t want to like any of them! They’re all revolting! Why are you torturing me? Mad people’s photographs! Why are you probing into me? Probe into yourself!

Rushes out of the room and slams the door hard to behind her.

DOCTOR

He stands glumly in the middle of the room.

Failed again. Superb test of mine, no use either. Well, a pioneer’s job is to be humble.

He wipes his glasses in embarrassment.

Hm. She’s so full of affects, it’s the same practically every time: the session ends up in a scene. Well, better so than being dull. And maybe it was good thing too, her going like that: perhaps I wouldn’t have got her out of here at all otherwise.

He pulls a watch out of his waistcoat pocket.

Damn! It’ll be eleven soon.

He opens the window, looks out.

It’s night, deep, and black. Scent of mignonettes coming from the garden… as if there were no unhappiness in the world. That’s her house, almost opposite.

Lowering his voice.

And there she goes… toting her pain along with her… into the loneliness of night.

Eleven clear strokes come from a clocktower nearby. Soon the chimes are joined by another clocktower, then a third one further off. The series of strokes persists, and thins out until the last clangour trembles and fades.

Now the light goes on in one of those windows. Now the curtain’s drawn. Must be at home now, back in her room so full of… what did she say? Sighs? Long hours? Utter dreariness? A mad girl, and I can’t help her. What was it in Pig Latin? Adama irlga, nda antca elpha erha. Sad but true.

END OF ACT TWO

Translated by Herbert Lomas

ACT I

(Pamppu takes Havinen and the Poet to the Publisher’s office)

PUBLISHER
Hello there, you great novelist!
This is really a surprise,
as though you’d blown the door off its hinges.

PAMPPU
These pages are terrific. Take a look at them.

PUBLISHER (reads)
Mnn, rapids… mnnn… wingless iron…
I don’t publish poems.
They’re easy enough to read
but hopeless to publish.
Anyway, the best of them slip out of
the book before you know it,
and nobody pays for them.
Who’s this H.G.
in the dedication?

POET
Hildur Grönq….

PAMPPU
Hildur Granquist, the loveliest woman
in the world.

PUBLISHER
You’re right there.
I loved her too,
but that was a long time ago.
Sign here.
Take the slip to the cashier
and she’ll pay you fifteen hundred marks.
Do you know Hildur?

PAMPPU
Everybody knows Hildur.
Here’s the nephew. (indicates Havinen)

PUBLISHER
Well, let’s get her into the picture,
set her pulse racing a bit.
You’ll get six hundred from the cashier.
I’ll reserve a table at a fine restaurant
and send a copy of the text to the compositor.
So long. Drop in again.

(Pamppu drags his followers out into the reception room)

HAVINEN
I’d like to thank …

PAMPPU
Don’t stand on ceremony
now that your poems’ll be published.
I did what I promised.
Give me that slip and we’ll head over to the cashier.

(To the Poet, who gives him his receipt)

POET
But I don’t want …

PAMPPU
We’re going to celebrate this together.
You’ll go to your bank,
goddamn it, and then to the restaurant
and tell them we want a table for six.

(Pamppu roughly shoves Havinen on his way)

POET
I’m not going with you.
Give me back those receipts.

PAMPPU
But it’s your party,
your chance to show off,
to flash some real money and
show how creative you are.

POET
I’ll show that on paper,
or however I like,
with a knife or a ball,
with sand or earth,
and then you can look at it all you want.

PAMPPU
Throw the crazy man out of here,
that first man.
It’s Adam, and I went and
screwed his precious Eve and
fed the apple to the snake.

POET
Nobody can be like that.
You’re a nobody.

PAMPPU (and others) Now the shit’s hit the fan
and plopped on to the floor.

(They wrestle. Pamppu drags the Poet out. The receptionist follows.)

PAMPPU
I must be leaving
since I’m taking this fellow with me.

(The Poet breaks free and rushes back to the Publisher.)

POET
Like a fierce man
the storm lifts, lifts, lifts
a birch branch,
rustles just one limb of an aspen.
Why do I notice such things?
Because I too am fierce.
Because alone I often tremble.

PUBLISHER
You’re a tough guy.
You’ll never die.
You weren’t even born.
You emerged from some blast furnace
with a batch of steel.
You came here to stay
like a meteorite from the sky.
Now write about death and
think about birth.
And search for the most
feminine woman in the world.
Write about death!

(The Poet looks away, thinks. The others wait.)

RECEPTIONIST (softly)
Don’t talk to him that way.
He’s not a dictaphone.

PAMPPU
Poets sure have sex appeal.
What the hell makes them so attractive?

PUBLISHER
Women fall for bums,
they’re weak, harmless.
Women hate strong men
who won’t negotiate.

RECEPTIONIST
Don’t talk about him.
Let him speak.

(They wait a while, then suddenly…)

POET
Birth is a tough one, to pass through
a tight, bony gate, your head bloody,
mouth eyes full of blood, mucus, piss, to suffocate,
artificial respiration, to hang upside down
in empty hollow air, noise, stench,
light bulb, tortured
unconscious woman, knife bright as a blow-torch,
Ku-Klux-Klan of doctors and nurses.

Death is a tough one, to go through all this again,
to shove yourself out, all of you bit by bit,
to suffer, crush life, spirit, body,
resistance of flesh, bones, sinews, veins,
to let cut, burn,
smash through the elements: water, fire, air,
through friction, human relationships, fate, hope,
expectation,
through compression into a universe so vast that
nothing reaches, fits, agrees, invites, rejects.

(Silence. Everyone solemn. The chorus takes up the Poet’s words. Then the Poet continues.)

That’s why life is repugnant, because people are always
passing through doorways, coming in, going out,
saying this or that for someone to answer, for still another
to ask, letting needle, thread, bullet, letter, priest,
God, morning, evening, spring, autumn come and go.
(The Poet goes to Pamppu, who puts a hand on
his shoulder and leads him away. The
Receptionist follows. The Publisher remains
standing and holds out the sheaf of poems.
The Receptionist takes them away. The
Publisher takes a bottle from his desk drawer
and slowly switches off the lights.)

PUBLISHER (to the Receptionist standing by the door)
Take these to the compositor
and get hold of the bookbinder.
I want them clothbound, in the very finest material.
– –

ACT II

(Matinée in an imposing building. In the audience, middle-aged people wearing dark suits. In front, the Publisher and his authors. Onerva [friend of Hildur] is sitting next to the Publisher’s empty chair and is wearing her fur coat. Male chorus singing. Applause.)

PUBLISHER
If a publishing house is
a stock exchange and a temple,
there on the temple side
are these poets
to whom poems open up
like the world at morning.

I have asked them to describe
their most marvellous visions.

VUORI
Mountains are temples,
yet you cannot enter their
frigid darkness
but must stay on the roof overhead.
The peak of Ararat thrusts
to mid-sky, to the very zenith,
its long silhouette like a
thread of gold.

PUBLISHER
Now the poetess will recite.

PAMPPU
The waves move, not the water.
It is borne by ocean currents.
In the depths six currents
run…

PUBLISHER (interrupting)
I asked the poetess.

PAMPPU
I was quicker.

(Audience laughs wildly and rudely.)

(The Poetess exits, slowly and deliberately. The Publisher hurries to escort her out, at the same time blowing a kiss to Onerva.)

PAMPPU
That was a reverse ‘entree’,
the most impressive ever seen
in this country.

(The Publisher motions Jyrinen to come forward.)

JYRINEN (blushing, sweating, and trembling, takes a swig from a hip-flask)
Clara Petacci and Eva Braun
were sitting together one evening,
unmarried wives.
And Hitler and Mussolini
caught sight of them
through the doorway,
turned, and quietly slunk away,
conceding defeat
to ephemeral beauty
framed by silence.

MAN IN THE AUDIENCE
Mr Jyrinen’s view
is totally incomprehensible.
Are you a fascist?

AUDIENCE
Fascist and communist!

POET
Where’s Hildur?

ONERVA
No Hildurs here.

PUBLISHER (quickly)
Now our youngest poet will
tell us something about himself.

POET (rising)
 When I was at Suomenlinna,
 a woman stood on the ramparts,
looked far out to sea
                                                                 AUDIENCE: We can't hear!
and gave a wave of her hand.

(Poet retreats to the background. Audience begins to laugh after a stunned silence.)

AUDIENCE
 Speak a bit louder!
 We can't hear you back here!

PUBLISHER
 And what happened then?
 We're bursting with
 curiosity.

POET (standing again)
 She had no sleeve
 on the arm she was waving.
 Her arm was bare.

PUBLISHER
 Now we've all heard
 what the poet sees.

POET
 Her hand fell.
 I didn't want it to rise again.

PUBLISHER
 On behalf of everyone,
 I thank you.

POET
 When the hand was lowered,
 she began desiring something else,
 waiting for the moment to leave.
 Now time had passed
                                                          AUDIENCE (Roars with laughter.) Oh, oh, oh how very sweet.
 and I wanted to stop it. 

Again she lifted her hand, 
 covered her neck with her naked arm. 
 (Where's Hildur?)
 She covered her nakedness 
 with nakedness. This is my
 most beautiful vision.

                                                         ONERVA
                                                         Let him speak.
                                                         AUDIENCE
                                                         How disgusting!
PUBLISHER
 All right, everyone! Applause!

(No one claps.)

POET
 And on the red skirt
 white blotches flowered,
 swung with her every move.
                                                         AUDIENCE (general hubbub)
                                                         Oh, what a boy!
She appeared to drape on herself 
 hundreds of skirts. 
 Each shadow in the cloth
 revealed what it concealed.
 That was my most beautiful vision.

PUBLISHER
Which of these is more beautiful?

POET (amid more growling and hubbub from the audience)
There are hundreds of the most beautiful,
none of the more beautiful.
Ugliness is only here
in these terrible stares
from living corpses.

AUDIENCE
Read Eino Leino!
Some first-rate poets!

POET
The dead are most alive
for they’re no longer able to die.
They’ll attack you on stairways
And bring fearful dreams.

AUDIENCE
Don’t let him talk like that!
Why do you invest good money
and expectations in him?
Bring us good, sublime writers,
uplifting poets who will
inspire our minds and
nourish our hearts.

(Pamppu and Vuori try to lead the Poet away. Onerva runs onstage and takes the Poet by the arm.)

ONERVA
Hildur’s gone to the Café.
She’s waiting for us there.

(The poet is already running. Onerva follows prettily, throwing a kiss to the Publisher, who dissolves in euphoria.)

PUBLISHER
This matinée has shown
that poetry is still alive
and arouses strong feelings.
Now let’s all go home
and take a good book
and read those poems
in which there is old silver
and ageless gold
and the rhythm of the gondolier.

(General departure, racket. The Publisher begins to conduct the departing crowd like a chorus.)

EVERYONE
Poetry is alive
like a lush stand of birches.
Poetry is alive
as the human breast breathes.
Poetry is alive
like old silver.
Poetry is alive like a rhythm,
poetry is alive!

Translated by Aili and Austin Flint

Georg Büchner’s contemporaries felt that his life, too, had been left unfinished. He was only twenty-three years old when he died in 1837 – ‘Ein unvollendet Lied’ (‘an unfinished song’), as Georg Herwegh wrote in a memorial poem dedicated to Büchner in 1841. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Büchner was a dramatist who, with his first play, Danton’s Death, had shown great promise which his early death prevented him from fulfilling. At the time, no one could imagine that the ‘almost finished play’ found among the writer’s posthumous works would provide the stimulus for naturalistic, expressionistic, and epic theatre, or that it would serve as the basis for one of the most important operas of the following century.

The manuscript rested in the attic of Büchner’s parents until 1875, when an Austrian joumalist-author named Karl Emil Franzos published the play, first in part and, a couple of years later, in its entirety. The difficulty of deciphering the manuscript is reflected by the fact that he erroneously read the protagonist’s name as ‘Wozzeck’ and also gave the play the title, Wozzeck. Büchner had left the draft, or rather, drafts, of the play without a title. It was titled Wozzeck at his world premiere in 1913, one hundred years after the author’s birth. This spelling has survived in the title and libretto of Alban Berg’s opera, although the name was corrected to Woyzeck well before the opera was composed. The correct spelling of the name was assured when the murder case that had served as the basis for the play became known.

On June 21st, 1821, a forty-one year old barber named Johann Christian Woyzeck fatally wounded the widow of Dr Woost, a surgeon, on the staircase of her house in Leipzig. It was a crime of jealous passion, and when he was arrested, Woyzeck made no attempt to conceal his guilt. Rumors began to circulate that Woyzeck might have been subject to blackouts, and he therefore had to undergo two psychiatric examinations before sentence was passed in court. Clarus, the Saxon Justice of the Court, declared Woyzeck responsible and he was sentenced to death. Woyzeck was publicly executed in Leipzig on August 27th, 1824.

Legal debate continued, however, and Clarus’s reports on Woyzeck’s mental state were published in the periodical, Zeitschrift für Staatsarzneikunde in 1825-26. Büchner had already been familiar with the periodical at home, but he returned to Glarus’s reports when he was writing the first drafts of Woyzeck. Apparently, he also used other murder cases as source material, but it is clear that this case influenced his later manuscript drafts, in which he examines motives for the murder.

The different versions of Woyzeck have puzzled all those who have attempted to compile a publishable dramatic text from the incomplete fragments. The text material is not, however, as confusing as it is often claimed, for one can discern four distinct phases in the drafts. As a result, the internal order of the scenes can be determined rather clearly, although many editors have taken liberties in arranging them according to their own dramaturgical preferences.

If the text itself is unfinished, the world of Woyzeck is not complete, either, but is full of cracks and dizzying black holes. In it, each human being is an abyss, while the society with its institutions – the army, the university – is impenetrable. Woyzeck’s problem is language, which simply escapes from him: he can neither express himself nor interpret his environment. Nevertheless, this poor army barber whom everyone kicks around is the only one who keeps knocking on the door of language, the one who asks questions while others are satisfied with ready-made, conventional answers.

When one attempts to compile a ‘whole’ dramatic text out of Woyzeck , the greatest problem is the ending. In Büchner’s most complete draft, the murder and the events which follow it are entirely missing. One has to reconstruct them from earlier drafts, particularly from the first version, because it is the only one that includes the murder scene. Many dramatisations and text versions have ended with the protagonist drowning himself in the pond where he has hidden the knife after the murder – as deep as possible – and in which he washes himself clean of blood-stains. On the basis of existing texts, it is not possible to determine beyond dispute which scene the author had intended as the closing one of the play.

Eeva-Liisa Manner has embraced the view that, after the murder, Woyzeck is caught and brought into court. She continues from where Büchner left off, and portrays the courtroom scenes in The Othello of Sand Alley.

Only Büchner’s first draft contains the dark anti-fairy tale that precedes the murder. This gloomy fairy tale resounds, at its darkest, with ‘the cold, black tone’ whose lonely strain echoes through the whole sad song, as Eeva-Liisa Manner wrote in 1962. For her, the fairy tale was so important that she borrowed it in its entirety for The Othello of Sand Alley.

Woyzeck also contains a passing, but striking counterpoint to the dark tone of the fairy tale: the quickly suppressed positive change suggested by the relationship between Woyzeck and Marie, and Woyzeck’s striving for a life of human dignity. Without this counterpoint of human dignity, Woyzeck would never have become a fountainhead of modern tragedy, but merely a pessimistic satire on society. The tragedy of the play is born of the shattering of this counterpoint.

In Woyzeck, Büchner does not offer a conciliatory solution. Instead, the basic tension of the play is drawn from open conflict. The play depicts an upside-down world in which good is crushed and inhumanity wins. Whether this situation can ever be changed remains for the reader/onlooker to decide.

Translated by Aili and Austin Flint

PROLOGUE

(Dawn in the market square of Leipzig. A gallows looms, dimly visible in the distance. Brisk rumble of drums.)

1st WOMAN

What’s going on here?

1st MAN

They’re getting ready for an execution. Some villain’s going to be executed in public.

1st WOMAN

Who?

2nd WOMAN

Franz Woyzeck. I guess you know him, the barber.

1st MAN

No, he was a soldier, a military valet. He shaved the beard of his master, the captain. And cleaned up the regiment eunuchs if he had to.

1st WOMAN

So why are they going to kill him?

1st MAN

An eye for an eye. Killed his old woman.

1st WOMAN

Did he have a wife? Wasn’t that woman…

1st MAN

Yeah, sure. A whore.

2nd WOMAN

They did have a child, Kristian. My god, how he cried when they took his father away! They came for Franz in the middle of the night and carried him off in chains and leg irons. And the kid grabbed hold of his father’s trousers and ran right along underfoot. Wanted to go with him, but they yanked him off, rough as anything.

1st WOMAN

Where’ll the child end up now?

1st MAN

The orphanage, of course.

1st WOMAN

Poor kid.

1st MAN

And in the orphanage he could well grow into a murderer too.

2nd WOMAN

Maybe they won’t put him in an orphanage. He’s got a grandmother… but she’s crippled and doesn’t know much about things of this world.

1st WOMAN

Just as well she doesn’t.

2nd MAN

Well, then she knows all the more about things to come. She can predict – she predicted that huge battle when Napoleon was still at the peak of his glory.

1st WOMAN

What battle was that?

2nd MAN

You know, the Leipzig war where half a million soldiers fought.

1st MAN

Oh, yeah, the one where Napoleon burnt his trousers.

2nd MAN

Right. And the old woman knows how to cast spells and do healing. She’s quite a healer, a real witch.

1st WOMAN

How do you know? Has she cured you of anything?

2nd WOMAN

Well, anyway she used magic to get warts off my fingers, warts nothing had ever managed to take off. We’d tried brimstone, lapis lazuli, and asafetida. She cast a spell and got then right off, she’s that much of a witch.

1st WOMAN

Cast a spell? How’d she pretend to do that?

2nd MAN

She tied up the warts three times with a hair, held my hand in the fading light of the moon, and recited an incantation that was Greek to me. I didn’t believe it one bit, laughed into my beard, and shoved off home to my own bed. But next morning the warts were gone.

1st WOMAN

Bah, warts. It’s all the same if you have them or don’t.

2nd MAN

It’s not all the same to an instrument maker. Maybe it is to a stone-cutter, but a violin maker had better have sensitive hands. And she’s cured others too, really sick ones.

1st WOMAN

Who?

2nd MAN

Well, the Keller woman, who had that blood disease.

1st MAN

Where was she bleeding from?

2nd MA N

Idiot. Where do women bleed?

1st WOMA N

Might have been cancer?

2nd MAN

Might have been, but she got better.

1st MAN

But the woman can’t heal herself, can she? Heals everyone else with asafetida and magic spells but can’t help herself.

1st WOMAN

If you had the least bit of faith…

2nd MAN

She’s got faith, all right. It wasn’t lack of faith that made her go lame, just old age. She’s already 77.

1st WOMAN

Well, then the child will end up in an orphanage.

2nd WOMAN

Better for the poor kid.

1st WOMAN

Who’s taking care of the crippled old woman?

2nd MAN

Neighbors look in on her and bring her food. And I guess she gets a few pennies from the poor relief or the church.

(The sound of drumming.)

1st WOMAN

What are they drumming about now?

1st MAN

The execution, of course. They’re calling everyone to watch the killing.

1st WOMAN

Why do they always do executions in the morning darkness?

1st MAN

So people won’t see the blood. They might go wild and end up in some kind of rebellion. And they’re scared of that like the devil.

*

(1) THE TRIAL

(Woyzeck’s hearing.
A courtroom. Schnauzer the prosecutor, Memme the judge, Nagel the counsel for the defense, and Woyzeck. A court officer brings in Woyzeck.)

MEMME

Silence! (Raps the table with his gavel, then sinks into himself and soon falls asleep.)

PROSECUTOR

Franz Woyzeck. Address: Sand Alley, Leipzig; born on the day of the Annunciation of Mary 1780; served in the Magdeburg garrison as military valet to Captain Durchschuss; murdered showing extreme cruelty, his mistress Maria Magdalena Nudel on the 21st of July 1821. Does he confess to this?

WOYZECK

I confess.

PROSECUTOR

Was it a premeditated act?

(Woyzeck is silent.)

PROSECUTOR

He falls silent like Jesus Christ before Pilate.

(The judge stirs, goes on sleeping.) He has often been seen drunk and disorderly, and he has also beaten his woman, Maria Magdalena. Does Woyzeck confess?

(Woyzeck remain s silent.)

PROSECUTOR:

He’s silent like a drunken Jesus Christ. Well, Franz Woyzeck, how did the murder take place? Let’s have it!

(Woyzeck still remains silent.)

PROSECUTOR

I repeat: how did the murder take place? Does he hear?

WOYZECK

I can’t remember.

NAGEL

Your honor! (Memme sleeps.) Mister Prosecutor General! If it was a primitive reaction, he surely can’t remember. In the grip of a primitive reaction, the memory is often erased.

PROSECUTOR

But that was no primitive reaction. I maintain it was a premeditated act. He planned it, purchased a knife from a Jewish traveling salesman, then talked over his plan with his bunkmate. – Woyzeck, were you drunk when you committed the deed?

WOYZECK

I’d had a couple of beers during the day, but I wasn’t drunk.

PROSECUTOR

Woyzeck, when did you get hold of the murder weapon?

WOYZECK

A couple of days earlier. From the junkman.

PROSECUTOR

Was it old junk?

WOYZECK

No, it was new.

PROSECUTOR

But now it’s been used. Slightly used is better than new, isn’t it? So the accused admits planning the murder.

WOYZECK

No. I didn’t plan it. I just had to do it.

PROSECUTOR

What do you mean, ‘had to’?

WOYZECK

It was sort of… something I couldn’t get out of my mind. I got down on my knees in church and prayed to God, but a lot of help that did me.

PROSECUTOR

So what obsessed you? Was it jealousy, Othello of Sand Alley?

(Woyzeck is silent.)

NAGEL

Your honor, may I speak a moment? (Memme sleeps.) Mister Prosecutor, his woman had a lover and it’s humiliating for him to tell about it.

PROSECUTOR

Is it more humiliating to admit that his mistress had a lover than to premeditated murder?

NAGEL

Sometimes it can be more humiliating.

PROSECUTOR

Why?

NAGEL

If a man has been humiliated, he doesn’t want to humiliate himself even more by talking about it.

PROSECUTOR

Is that the case, Woyzeck?

WOYZECK

I don’t know. I don’t remember.

PROSECUTOR

But you remembered the murder and confessed to it even though you didn’t admit it was premeditated.

WOYZECK

I can’t recall exactly. All I can remember is that I got into some kind of panic and I stabbed and stabbed. The next day I went to the spot to look for the knife.

PROSECUTOR

So, Woyzeck does remember where the crime took place?

WOYZECK

No. I looked for the spot a long time.

PROSECUTOR

And you found the knife and destroyed it.

WOYZECK

I threw it into the pond.

PROSECUTOR

So the intention was to conceal the crime?

WOYZECK

Yes.

PROSECUTOR

So, Woyzeck confesses attempting to conceal an intentional and premeditated crime?

WOYZECK

I confess the attempt to conceal. I confess to the crime. Premeditated, no.

NAGEL

Mister Prosecutor, he did not consciously premeditate it, not intentionally. I suggest that it was not murder, but manslaughter.

PROSECUTOR

A ‘nail-headed’ suggestion, Mr Nagel, but let’s hear the witnesses. Summon Woyzeck’s comrade-in-arms.

(Lights out.)

*

(2) EXAMINATION OF WOYZECK’S BUNKMATE, ANDRES MUTTER

PROSECUTOR

Private Andres Mutter, comrade-in-arms of the accused – for how long?

MUTTER

Two and a half years.

PROSECUTOR

Did he speak with you about his plans?

MUTTER

What plans?

PROSECUTOR

Murder. That’s what we’re talking about. Murder, damn it.

MUTTER

No. He was in some kind of state and was giving me his belongings.

PROSECUTOR

What belongings?

MUTTER

Vest, socks, shirt, some passages from the Bible, a bookmark…

PROSECUTOR

Ahead of time?

MUTTER

Sure. You can’t get rid of all that afterwards. That’s when others do it.

PROSECUTOR

Well, I guess so. Did he talk with you about his woman, that Maria Magdalena Nudel?

MUTTER

He talked about his wife. Wife, that’s what he called her. He was hurt when Maria went with the other one. And he heard voices. PROSECUTOR

What voices?

MUTTER

I don’t know. He said he heard some kind of talk coming out of the wall.

PROSECUTOR

What kind of talk was that supposed to be?

MUTTER

‘Stab the bitch to death. Stab the bitch to death.’

PROSECUTOR

Is that what he was saying?

MUTTER

Yes. Or was ranting.

PROSECUTOR

So, he projected his own thoughts outside?

MUTTER

Sir, I don’t understand what you mean.

PROSECUTOR

He doesn’t understand. (To the defense attorney.) Put it into plain language for him, Counsellor Nagel.

NAGEL

If he heard speech coming from the wall he sort of projected those sounds onto the wall. Is that clear, Mutter?

MUTTER

I don’t know. I don’t know what he projected.

NAGEL

The theory of projection means that you project your own voices to the outside – onto a wall or to some other people, so that you don’t recognise them as your own. In this case, the words ‘Stab the bitch to death’, and thus onto the wall.

PROSECUTOR

That is to say, his conscience repelled them, projected them away. ‘Stab the bitch to death.’ Well, Mutter, what did you say to that?

MUTTER

I said, ‘Take a good, fiery swig of brandy, it’ll kill the fever.’

PROSECUTOR

What, did he have a fever?

MUTTER

That I don’t know, but he sure was in pain. Shivering and delirious.

MEMME

(who has waked up:) The accused must be examined. Call the court doctor Dr Semmel to examine him. (Nods off again)

PROSECUTOR

Mutter, what did you think of his mistress?

MUTTER

Me? I didn’t think anything of her. I wasn’t her lover. (Laughter from the balcony.) But the guys, they really went for her. One of the drummers said, ‘Look, look, a hot mare!’

PROSECUTOR

Well, was she hot?

MUTTER

Mister Prosecutor, I don’t know ’cause I never patted her. (Laughter.)

PROSECUTOR

What about Woyzeck? What did he say?

MUTTER

As I already told you, he called her his wife. ‘Got to go home, the wife is waiting.’ When I’d ask him to stop off for a beer, he’d say, ‘No, I’ll take the money to my wife.’ And they did have the child, Kristian, whom Woyzeck spoke of as his own. So I guess she was a wife.

PROSECUTOR

As you wish. In the old days they were called ‘a pair of wolves’.

MUTTER

Woyzeck called her ‘wolf’ too. ‘Stab the wolfbitch to death’, that’s what his voice said.

PROSECUTOR

Well, well. The inner voices are on the mark, all right. This whole case is beginning to be clear-cut. All right, you’re dismissed.

(Lights out.)

*

(3) EXAMINATION OF CAPTAIN DURCHSCHUSS

PROSECUTOR

All right, Captain Durchschuss, what do you have to say about Woyzeck’s case?

CAPTAIN

Sad, very sad. But I guess it was to be expected.

PROSECUTOR

What do you mean, ‘to be expected’?

CAPTAIN

Well, living with a woman out of wedlock. When I told him I didn’t approve of it, he said, ‘Sir, you see, it’s the money, the money. When you don’t have money, you bring bastards like yourself into the world.’

PROSECUTOR

Bastards like himself? Was he a bastard, then?

CAPTAIN

I doubt it, I don’t know, he may have been. I thought it was more like a figure of speech.

PROSECUTOR

Ah. So you think by saying ‘bastard’ he just meant ‘poor devil’ or something like that. And what did you think he was like, this poor devil Woyzeck?

CAPTAIN

A good man, a good man. But always agitated, very worked up. Thought too much about things. It’s no good for a simple person to think too much, that’ll only make him soft in the head, as we’ve seen.

PROSECUTOR

In what way was he ‘soft in the head’?

CAPTAIN

Out of his mind. Off the rails. Didn’t listen when I reprimanded him; was lost in his own thoughts. And after all, he was my military valet, my woodcutter, my bootjack. He should have listened!

PROSECUTOR

And what about his intelligence, what would you say about that, Captain Durchschuss?

CAPTAIN

He was stupid, really terribly stupid. When I said in jest ‘the wind is from the north-south’, he answered , ‘Yes, sir, Captain.’

PROSECUTOR

Just a minute ago you said he thought too much – philosophised?

CAPTAIN

Well, I guess you don’t need intelligence for that. He thought and thought about the mystery of the universe ‘philosophically’, but not rationally. He was like a child sitting on a chair so high that his feet don’t reach the floor.

PROSECUTOR

Do you believe the crime was premeditated all the same?

CAPTAIN

I wonder whether Woyzeck thought over anything rationally, the poor dreamer. Once he said to me, right in the middle of the street, ‘Look up, Captain, sir, the sky’s so firm and hard you could nail a pulley up there and hang yourself on it.’ That’s the kind of nonsense he would come out with, like a poet.

PROSECUTOR

He talked nonsense?

CAPTAIN

He was raving.

PROSECUTOR

You mean to say he was out of his mind?

CAPTAIN

Sure, sure. Really off his rocker. You could see it in his eyes. Looked at me like a cannon.

PROSECUTOR

Like he wanted to shoot you?

CAPTAIN

Well, I guess not necessarily me, but just let everything go off into the air with a big bang. Once he was muttering to himself, ‘Why doesn’t God say one word and put out the sun so that all creatures could run riot, people and animals all mixed up.’

PROSECUTOR

So is he violent by nature?

CAPTAIN

No, I wouldn’t say so. I never in my life saw him violent. He was a good man, a good man. He went to pieces out of jealousy and humiliation when the woman’s lover beat him within an inch of his life. He didn’t attack her lover, it was the other way around. He was the one who was attacked.

PROSECUTOR

But he beat his wife?

CAPTAIN

Maybe he beat her. I don’t know for sure. It’s not that unusual for soldiers to beat their wives. I heard rumours from the others, and I once told him I didn’t approve. But he was as quiet as a ram being led to the slaughter.

PROSECUTOR

A ram? So he was more sheep than raging bull?

CAPTAIN

More like a sheep. Or let’s say a goat. For me he was a goat.

PROSECUTOR

Was? All this time you’ve been talking about him in the past tense, as if he were dead.

CAPTAIN

That’s what you’ve been doing too. And for me he is dead.

(Lights out.)

*

(4) EXAMINATION OF THE NEIGHBOR’S WIFE

PROSECUTOR

Have you known the accused for a long time, Mrs Ketzer?

NEIGHBOR

We’ve been neighbors on Sand Alley for a year and a half.

PROSECUTOR

What’s your opinion about the murder?

NEIGHBOR

Hell, I have no opinion. Nobody usually asks me what I think.

PROSECUTOR

I’m asking you now!

NEIGHBOR

But I simply don’t have any opinions.

PROSECUTOR

So you don’t think the murder was cruel?

NEIGHBOR

No, because I didn’t see it.

PROSECUTOR

Well, I guess you didn’t. But I can act it out, show you how it went. (Takes a paper-knife from the table, limps from his desk to Margareta Ketzer and acts out the murder scene in front of her. He has a clubfoot; his left shoe is thick-soled and shapeless. A voice calls from the audience: ‘Cement shoe.’) This is how he stabbed, and this, and this, without stopping; seven slashes, and her throat almost cut through. If that isn’t a cruel murder, then what is?

NEIGHBOR

Sure, if that’s how it went. But that woman was a filthy whore. Turned all trousers inside out with her eyes, that’s the sort of whore she was.

PROSECUTOR

And you think it’s all right to kill ‘that sort of whore’, or what?

NEIGHBOR

I didn’t say that. Don’t go twisting my words around, judge. Besides, she’s been killed off already. It does no good to dig it all up, and what the hell does it have to do with me, anyway? Don’t you go grilling me. Grill Franz, he’s the one who knows if anyone does, or maybe he doesn’t.

PROSECUTOR

He’s been interrogated already, and soon he’ll be grilled by the court doctor. We just want to know the whole truth, and you were the closest neighbor of the accused.

NEIGHBOR

Yeah, well, I sure was close, so close I often wanted to be far away from there.

PROSECUTOR

Why?

NEIGHBOR

When they’d have a fight on the other side of the wall.

PROSECUTOR

Did Woyzeck beat his wife?

NEIGHBOR

I don’t know who beat whom, but you could sure hear banging noises and that man Franz was often drunk.

PROSECUTOR

And did he beat her when he was drunk?

NEIGHBOR

I didn’t say that. That woman was a devil herself, could well be that she beat Franz. And anyway, you couldn’t stand that hag without being drunk, she had such a terrible mouth. And then she started her little game with the drum major of the regiment and there sure was a lot of amorous banging around. But I won’t talk about that – mustn’t speak evil of the dead.

PROSECUTOR

Only of the living, right? But you don’t say anything bad about Woyzeck, do you?

NEIGHBOR

No, why should I? He hasn’t done anything bad to me. And poor Franz was hurt so bad. Maria’s lover, that brazen drum major, beat him to a pulp and screamed, ‘I’ll twist you double so your nose’ll be a plug for your ass.’ I saw and heard it myself, in the tavern.

PROSECUTOR

So, you go to taverns?

NEIGHBOR

Just to go get my husband. I sure don’t go to them for fun. And now I’ve got to go home and make some food for the little brats. Don’t bother me anymore.

PROSECUTOR

We’re not going to bother you, don’t get excited when there’s no reason. I realise you don’t understand how important matters are under consideration and how you should behave at a solemn occasion.

NEIGHBOR

Solemn, my foot! The judge up there like a moth-eaten old mole – that ancient one who’s dressed like a mad bishop with his wig all askew – has slept just about the whole time. The great dignity of the house hasn’t kept him from sleeping. (Memme stirs, opens his eyes slightly, and continues dozing.) I’d rather sleep, too, when there are such dumb, nasty faces all around.

PROSECUTOR

Witness Ketzer! He’s an eminent old judge and he isn’t sleeping, he’s thinking. And even if he were asleep, his subconscious would be working.

NEIGHBOR

What conscious? Ass-conscious, or what? But Woyzeck can’t sleep, he just trembles. No wonder, with a limping devil that looks like a gargoyle picking on him. And others are tormenting him, too; they’ve been after him for a year and a half now.

PROSECUTOR

What do you mean, Ketzer, you heretic?! Who’s tormenting him, and how?

NEIGHBOR

Klapper, the regiment doctor, who walks around with his bones rattling. With scientific experiments. The way they’ve been going at Woyzeck is that he’s been given nothing to eat but beans for half a year. The doctor said he was conducting immortal experiments and would explode everything into the air. What everything, I’d like to ask. Woyzeck’s lost it already, quaking like an aspen. He’s not afraid, I don’t believe that. It’s just that his nerves are all messed up. What’s he got to be afraid of, ’cause he doesn’t have a thing left except for the brat, that boy, but the kid’s so small, just a little over three, he can’t be a pal yet, more like he’s trouble. And the boy’s really scared, all stirred up.

PROSECUTOR

What’s he scared of? Make it snappy.

NEIGHBOR

Well, what with the mother threatening him and scaring him with gypsies and bogeymen, any little kid would go crazy. It’s clear that Woyzeck’s a victim of ‘science’, science or art, all the same shit, every bit of it. Experimental guinea pig, he was, sacrificial lamb or ram, and sure enough , a ram will tremble when they’re cutting off its head.

PROSECUTOR

Clean up your language, witness Ketzer. Don’t exaggerate!

NEIGHBOR

Exaggerate! What you’re driving at all the time is to get Franz’s head, isn’t that how it is? The executioner’s already sharpening his axe. (The presiding judge raps the table with his gavel.) Theatre, that’s what this is, some kind of show in which Woyzeck, the pour devil, is the pawn, crazy from beans and gone so skinny he can’t keep his trousers up without holding them. And they’ve already written the last act, the one in which Franz is carted off to the dump. Keep your theatre and your silly judges. Woyzeck doesn’t need a ‘big lawyer’; he needs a ‘pig driver’ and a damned big steak.

PROSECUTOR

No slandering the court! I will punish you for slander and defamation of this august body. You’ll get a ten day fine according to Article 21.

NEIGHBOR

Damned if I’ll pay your fine. How could I pay when I don’t have a thing? Drunken, out-of­-work husband takes every penny he earns from odd jobs over to the tavern, five hungry kids howling at my feet, and a sixth kicking under my belly-button!

PROSECUTOR

Fifteen day-fines for prolonged libel! And if you haven’t got the wherewitha l to pay it, it’ll be jail on bread and water for you. No use complaining, witness Ketzer, you’ll be eating the State’s bread.

NEIGHBOR

The State! Want me to tell you what kind of State this is? A miserable, miserly kingdom that squeezes tithes out of people’s bodies!

MEMME

(Raps with his gavel.) Remove the troublemaker!

(The court officer takes Margareta Ketzer out of the courtroom.)

*

(5) EXAMINATION OF DOCTOR SEMMEL, COURT MEDICAL EXPERT

PROSECUTOR

Doctor Semmel, Doctor of Medicine and Surgery, Royal Counsellor to the Court, you have now examined the case of Woyzeck?

SEMMEL

Yes, Mister Prosecutor. He has an aberration, aberratio mentalis, connected with an otherwise normal intelligence.

PROSECUTOR

So you’re saying he isn’t mentally deficient?

SEMMEL

No, Mister Prosecutor. On the contrary, on the contrary.

PROSECUTOR

What do you mean, then? Above-normal intelligence?

SEMMEL

Yes, in a way. He philosophszes, thinks, ponders universal questions, the mystery of the universe.

PROSECUTOR

Well, is he getting anywhere?

SEMMEL

With what?

PROSECUTOR

The universal mystery.

SEMMEL

I don’t really know. You’ll have to ask him yourself.

PROSECUTOR

Doctor, Counsellor to the Court, you’d better ask him.

SEMMEL

Is this a cross-examination, or what? – Well, are you getting it all figured out, Woyzeck? What are you thinking? Or simply: what interests you?

WOYZECK

The soul, Doctor, the soul.

SEMMEL

Nothing else?

WOYZECK God, maybe.

SEMMEL

So it’s God and the soul that interest you. Isn’t there anything else?

WOYZECK

SEMMEL

So, the salvation of the soul, right?

WOYZECK

If God exists, he’ll save the soul, that’s for sure. Because he’s the highest mutilator, he won’t toss the soul onto the scrap heap.

SEMMEL

Ah, that’s how it is. The highest mutilator will save your soul, Woyzeck, right?

WOYZECK

Yes, and Maria’s. And all sinners’. But I think that when we get to heaven we’ll have to help out with the rumbling of thunder.

SEMMEL

That’s a job, too. Is it just the souls of sinners that God saves?

WOYZECK

Yes. I don’t think the sinless ones need salvation. Not the doctor, or the judge, or the chief justice who’s sleeping up there.

SEMMEL

Why won’t he need salvation?

WOYZECK

He who sleeps doesn’t sin.

SEMMEL

But I’m not sleeping and neither is the prosecutor.

WOYZECK

No, he’s keeping watch. He’s a wise virgin, he has oil in his lamp.

SEMMEL

(To the prosecutor.) You see, sir, Woyzeck is quickwitted, very quick-witted. Rational, and hence responsible.

NAGEL

May I speak, Mister Chief Justice?

PROSECUTOR

No use asking. He’s asleep.

NAGEL

It’s quite possible that this is a case of mixing up intelligence and mental powers and forgetting his physical condition. Sir, what is your opinion about the clinical tests that were performed on him?

SEMMEL

Who did them, and when, and where?

NAGEL

The regimental doctor, in the Magdeburg garrison, before the fatal event. For half a year, he had nothing to eat but beans, and hunger was always gnawing at him. He’s told about it, hasn’t he?

SEMMEL

Well, nothing wrong with beans. Foolish to think there’s protein only in meat. There’s a good bit of it in beans, too. I see no problem with a bean diet, and there’s no harm in a supervised fast, either. The body is cleansed of wastes and keeps on eating itself. Our Lord fasted for forty days, didn’t eat even a single bean, and his soul didn’t come to any harm.

NAGEL

How do you know? He got the messiah fever and told his spiritual guerillas: go and make all nations my disciples. And that’s what they did. And what’s come of it? Crusades, blood baths, the Inquisition and auto-da-fé… When they got rid of the Virgin Mary they started to give women and children criminally poor treatment. And then Luther arrived. Jesus sure should have known his Jews better than that.

SEMMEL

But the subject Woyzeck isn’t Jesus.

NAGEL

And you’re not Judas, or are you? Truly he isn’t Jesus, and he was eating himself on a bean fast for two hundred days. One doesn’t have to have studied medicine to know that a radical diet will make a strong man debilitated and weak, in this case even confused. ‘The subject’ Woyzeck does many other things besides shaving his captain’s beard and polishing his boots – he does donkey work. He chops the firewood and lugs it to the barracks, and…

SEMMEL

Do donkeys chop wood?

NAGEL

If that was a question, I’m not going to answer it. A propos, doctor, what is aberratio mentalis?

SEMMEL

I explained at the beginning of one of the sessions. You should have listened.

NAGEL

I’m like Woyzeck. I don’t remember.

SEMMEL

Aberratio mentalis – here you’ll have to do your homework again – is hallucination, delusion of sense perception, but it’s connected with otherwise normal intelligence; therefore, Q.E.D., the delusions don’t lessen his responsibility.

NAGEL

What kinds of delusions did he have?

SEMMEL

What kinds, Woyzeck? Woyzeck will tell you himself. Let’s have it, bootjack and soldier of Christ.

WOYZECK

I had a vision. In the sky there were three huge fires – it was the holy Trinity and in the middle, the biggest fire, was the defender of light, Christ himself.

PROSECUTOR

The Christ who will save you, right?

WOYZECK

I hope and believe so, Mister Prosecutor.

PROSECUTOR

You believe or you hope?

WOYZECK

I hope and believe. God is the highest mutilator, but Christ has mercy and gathers us to him, and –

PROSECUTOR

God the greatest mutilator? What are you rattling on about, Musketeer Woyzeck?

WOYZECK

Yes. Yes. He let his only son be killed, with whom he was greatly pleased. And he commanded Abraham to kill Isaac, although he took back the order when Abraham was just about to kill his son.

PROSECUTOR

Well, well, so that’s how it is. You’ve been born again, Woyzeck, whether it’s because of guilt, loneliness, or beans. Because you have Christ, you have no need for earthly defenders. The earthly verdict is this: guilty of murder in the first degree. What do you say to that, Doctor Semmel?

SEMMEL

I am not the judge. The high court knows better. I do not say that he is guilty, only that he is responsible.

PROSECUTOR

Chief Justice Memme, sir?

MEMME

(Wakes up.) Guilty. (Raps his gavel. Then waves an arm toward the balcony.) Out, citizens, out. Go home. If you have a home. The session is over.

(Lights go out one by one. Darkness.)

*

(6) SCHNAUZER AND NAGEL AT THE COURTROOM DOOR

NAGEL

Shall we go, Schnauzer? (Looks at his pocket watch.) My watch has stopped. Have you got the right time?

PROSECUTOR

I always have the right time, Nagel! People could set their watches by my comings and goings.

NAGEL

Then you must be a bit like Kant.

PROSECUTOR

I am a Kantian in that I have a moral sense of duty.

NAGEL

You’re very cold and hard towards poor mixed-up devils. Kant wasn’t like that.

PROSECUTOR

Kant was not a jurist. I am. Still, I hold to the ethics of responsibility in the spirit of Kant. I am on the side of the categorical imperative!

NAGEL

Haven’t you misunderstood your Kant?

PROSECUTOR

It’s impossible to misunderstand Kant. One either grasps him correctly or not at all. Kant and a Kantian thinker don’t take into consideration anything outside of morality.

NAGEL

But I think Kant himself did take other things into consideration. He wouldn’t have condemned little people without taking into account the circumstances in which the wrongdoing took place.

PROSECUTOR

Really? But it makes no sense to take circumstances into consideration, for it’s quite impossible to know everything about them. According to Kant, causality is one of the categories of thought, and I cannot reflect anything but my own categories. Therefore, I have to stick to facts – that thieves are thieves, murderers are murderers, and prosecutors are prosecutors, regardless of the circumstances.

NAGEL

And by what right do you judge poor cracked-up devils?

PROSECUTOR

I don’t judge, I only prosecute. The court does the judging, by authority of the statutes of the kingdom, by right of the axe and sword. And not only to punish and to prevent the perpetration of new evil deeds, but to cancel out a crime: the crime is written inch by inch on the hide of the criminal and in this way is turned back on himself, rendered null and void.

NAGEL

That’s superstitious rubbish.

PROSECUTOR

That is the magical side of punishment. The moral side is that one must educate the people, train them like stupid donkeys. Straw in the trough and a whip on the hind quarters! Right now there’s some damned lunatic in the square, inciting the people to riot, screaming so loud the courthouse windows are rattling.

NAGEL

Let him scream. There’s lots of room for noise in the square.

PROSECUTOR

You pretend to be a humanist, while at the same time revolution is running all along our borders and making guerilla incursions here as well. Better look at France, how things went there, very badly indeed. They certainly drew the wrath of God down on themselves. Revolution is like a hog that eats its young. If that mad agitator is successful, before long we’ll all be dangling from a lamppost, the whole courtroom gang: I, Memme, and even you, donkey-driver Nagel, although you pretend to be on the side of the donkey.

NAGEL

Have you ever thought how much your intense coldness comes out of your sense of inferiority and lust for power?

PROSECUTOR

You damned Nagel, what the hell do you mean by ‘a feeling of inferiority’? On the contrary, I have a sense of superiority! I’ve managed to get the verdict I wanted in every one of my cases!

NAGEL

Are you sure that’s solely the result of your ability to attack and lay siege?

PROSECUTOR

Actually, no, it’s partly because our Chief Justice Memme is senile and usually sleeps or probably only pretends to sleep because he’s too frail and exhausted to have any interest in what’s going on at court.

NAGEL

And even so, he’s considered legally competent?

PROSECUTOR

Yes, because his sleep is as delicate and easily broken as that of a little child or a watchdog. It’s said that our mushy Memme has a brain tumor or heaven knows what rupture there, but I sure think it’s a very advanced stage of syphilis of the brain.

NAGEL

Well, then you yourself are actually the factotum of the court and bear all the more responsibility on your neck.

(Bell rings.)

PROSECUTOR

So that’s what you think. The bell’s ringing, so let’s go in and hear the verdict. Although it’s clear anyway – the decisions have always gone according to my instructions.

(Darkness.)

*

(7) REBELLION IN THE TOWN SQUARE

(A man, a woman, Woyzeck, and a rebel.)

1st WOMAN

Look, now they’re bringing him here. Fetters and all.

1st MAN

Oh, yeah, shackles around his ankles.

REBEL

(Running into the square, out of breath.)

Judicial murder! Judicial murder! It’s got to be stopped!

1st WOMAN

Wasn’t he guilty, after all?

REBEL

Guilty or not, he was sick. They did scientific experiments on him and he went off his head . Heard voices and saw visions. Once he saw three lights in the sky and he fell down unconscious. He’s a holy madman. Mustn’t kill people like that or we’ll have wars, earthquakes, floods.

(Rapid drumming. A deep sigh issues from the crowd of people, as if from underground, and someone screams hysterically, ‘That’s the way for murderers and thieves!’)

REBEL

That man sure wasn’t a thief, and Maria, his wolf-wife, got what she deserved. She cheated Franz something awful. Jilting a person may be worse than murder, she stole Franz’s trust and heart. And besides, she egged him on, begged him to drive a knife into her body. When she found the handsome new lover, that arrogant drum major, she threw Franz out and said: ‘Don’t even try! I’d rather take a knife into my body than let you touch me.’

1st MAN

Judicial murder or not, there’s no way we can stop it now. His head’s already in the sack.

REBEL

If we can’t stop it, let’s get revenge! Revolt! Revolt against the sort of justice that sentences to the wheel people who’ve been driven mad! Let’s set fire to the courthouse! First, let’s tear down the scaffold – that’ll be the kindling. Light up the Leipzig sky with the executioner’s lumber! On with it, comrades!

(They rush to the scaffold. Sounds of shattering wood. Crackling flames. A little later, as the din dies down, the clatter of cavalry hooves, which grows louder.)

2nd MAN

Listen! The militia’s coming! They’ll put down the revolt! Get away, quick!

(Amid the commotion, the stage goes dark. Silence.)

*

(8) THE PROSECUTOR’S MONOLOGUE

SCHNAUZER

(At the window of his own room.) Beautiful! Down below flows the silvery ribbon of the Elster, and the morning sun lights up the cross on the church. Why did the ancient Romans crucify their criminals? Well, of course, because then death came more slowly. The idea was to shame and humiliate them as much as to kill. Compared to that, Woyzeck got off easy. Only a hundred years ago all the pains were sliced up into a thousand deaths, and a couple of hundred years ago he would have been put on a wheel and broken joint by joint.

The original, magical intention of the wheel was, of course, to prevent resurrection. He ought to have been put on the wheel, Woyzeck the visionary. Some of them are so damned tough there’s no way you can get them to give up the ghost. Others are so fragile and weak that their spirit goes out of them like the fart of an old hag. I think this Woyzeck would have been more in the league of those fart-spirited. Well, now he isn’t breathing any more, his head’s been stuffed in a sack and they’ll soon be carting it off to the clump.

(Clopping of horse’s hooves; the prosecutor looks out.)

Halleluiah! There comes the Bamberg rider from the Bamberg Apocalypse. Now they’ve caught the agitator, got a rope under his armpits and are making him run behind the horse, run for his life, that’s for sure, run his legs to pieces! The horse as pale grey as the stallion of the Apocalypse. (Opens the window, shouts): Tie him up, tie that scoundrel to the war-horse’s tail and drag him off as fast as the plague! (Closes the window.) Well, the case goes on, doesn’t end with Woyzeck. Soon I’ll have another devil to deal with. (Tolling of church bells.) Why are they ringing now? Maybe a church service. When the church bells toll from heaven, an echo answers from hell. Hell and heaven! Open, hell! Show your torments!

(The tolling grows louder. One steeple after another joins in.)

An orgy of bells. What’s happened? Has a war started? Or eternal peace been declared? Or are they ringing for the quelling of that little revolt a while ago! (The clanging builds.) No. The devil take it, there’s got to be something bigger. What if the plague has come to our city? As far as I know, they’d ring then, too, sound an alarm with the church bells. The plague… Come up the Elbe by boat and is now wandering from house to house, drawing a cross on many a door, takes one, leaves another, sometimes passes by… Away! Away from this city! I’m not going to wait here for the black death. (Opens the window again, and the tolling fills the room. He shouts:) Who’ll give me a horse? My prosecutor’s post for a horse!

Nobody. The whole city is asleep, has fled or died. (Closes the window.) No, it can’t be the plague. The plague doesn’t fly by so fast; it limps along like a clubfoot. Stops short for a minute and then starts clumping along again.

Now I know, if the flagellators have come, they’re sure to be ringing too. Flagellators, to incite the people to revolt over Woyzeck’s execution, or what? The blood of the whip and the blood of Christ, verily a holy communion. Already I can smell the cloud of holy smoke, porca madonna. All night long the whip has felt the wound and rejoiced in it… Flagellants, beggars, proletarians… extortionists, barbarians!

(Clumps around the room looking for his things.)

My cane, my cudgel. Where’s my oak cane? May the plague take all.

(Tolling continues and fades. Darkness.)

*

EPILOGUE

(In the cottage of Franz Woyzeck’s mother. The old woman and her grandchild, now about five years old.)

Child:
‘I looked for a spring
and found a mud puddle.
I’m disappointed.’
Old woman:
‘I looked for bread
and found a stone. I’m used to it.’

GRANDMOTHER

(Reading a bad old fairy tale.) ‘Once upon a time there was a child who had no mother or father. Everyone had died and there was no longer anyone in the world. Everything was dead, and the child went to look for the day and the night. And since there was no one upon the earth , the child wanted to go to heaven, where the moon looked at him so very kindly, and when he got to the moon it was nothing but a chunk of rotten wood. And when he came to the sun it was a withered sunflower. And when he reached the stars they were golden insects that had been pierced, just the way a predatory bird impales bugs on thorns. And when he wanted to get back to earth, the earth was a bowl turned upside down. And he was all alone, and sat down and cried, and he still sits there all alone.’

KRISTIAN

Isn’t Father ever coming back?

GRANDMOTHER

No, Kristian.

KRISTIAN

Why not?

GRANDMOTHER

Because.

KRISTIAN

The boys in the alley said that when you die I’ll be sent to the poorhouse.

GRANDMOTHER

But I’m not going to die any too soon, don’t you fear.

KRISTIAN

But what about your being lame?

GRANDMOTHER

Only the right arm is lame, and the left one will learn everything the right one learned in its time.

KRISTIAN

But what if that one goes lame, too?

GRANDMOTHE R

Then the heart will go lame as well, and that’s up to God.

KRISTIAN

Why is God so mean to us?

GRANDMOTHER

You mustn’t blame God for the wicked things people do.

KRISTIAN

What if there isn’t any God? What if he’s dead?

GRANDMOTHER

You can meet God at any crossroads, and he’ll always speak to you, even though he himself is deaf.

KRISTIAN

How are we going to live now that Father won’t ever come back?

GRANDMOTHER

Just as we’ve lived up till now, one day at a time. In the autumn we’ll pick berries and mushrooms for the winter, you can help with that.

KRISTIAN

They’re talking about all kinds of things in the streets.

GRANDMOTH ER

What are they talking about?

KRISTIAN

I don’t know. They shut up as soon as I come out, or else they start yelling mean things at the top of their lungs.

GRANDMOTHER

So what kinds of things do they yell at you?

KRISTIAN

Franzu schmanzu all messed up
shipped him off to Sweden’s cup
Tossed him high above the church
wrapped in cow shit with a birch.

GRANDMOTHER

That’s a stupid song. Don’t pay any attention to it.

KRISTIAN

They also said Franz went off and left you.

GRANDMOTHER

In a way, because he got restless and launched himself out into the world. Wandered from one country to the next, signed on as a soldier here and there, wandered all the way to Finland.

KRISTIAN

What’s that Finland?

GRANDMOTHER

It’s an old Russian corner of the world, way up north. Franz said it was a small, poor, cold country, so terribly cold the people there burn their grain into liquor; otherwise they couldn’t stand it. That’s where Franz became ill and got that eternal ague. He’d get chills even in front of a blazing fire.

KRISTIAN

How could he feel cold by a fire?

GRANDMOTHER

I don’t know, but that’s what he said. He could only warm up by Maria’s side and that Maria, she deceived and renounced him.

KRISTIAN

Why are people so bad to each other? Even animals aren’t so bad. A dog won’t kill a dog. Are men worse than dogs?

GRANDMOTHER

Some are.

KRISTIAN

Why?

GRANDMOTHER

I guess because people can think. An unreasoning creature won’t kill anyone but its enemies, and then only when it’s forced to. It goes by instinct.

KRISTIAN

Then why don’t people go by instinct?

GRANDMOTHER

You ask too many questions. You think too much, like your father. It’s not good to think that much, you ‘ll get sick from it. Better to work and pray.

KRISTIAN

But if you don’t know how to pray? If you don’t have the sense for praying?

GRANDMOTHER

It’s not a matter of sense.

KRISTIAN

What is a matter of sense then?

GRANDMOTHER

I guess nothing much. Pure reason doesn’t lead you to anything. If you haven’t got instinct, you’ve lost all sense too.

KRISTIAN

Teach me one easy prayer, grandmother.

GRANDMOTHER

I guess there aren’t any easy prayers. Everything that’s true is hard. But I’ll teach you the song of the Swiss guards because Franz would often sing it.

KRISTIAN

Sing, grandmother.

GRANDMOTHER

I can’t sing, but I’ll speak it to you. (She recites:)

Life is a journey to Winter and Night
deep as a gorge, there’s nothing like it.
We search for a pass, a narrow way
to heaven, where nothing lights it.

(Darkness.)

Translated by Aili and Austin Flint

ACT II, Scene 3

Kalervo’s cottage by Kalalampi Lake. It is night-time. Kimmo, seated by a fire of woodchips, is mending nets.

KIMMO

(alone) Tomorrow morning I shall leave before sunrise and go to Ilmari’s house to fetch Kullervo and bring him back here to his new home, deep in the wilderness. Oh, Kullervo, how you must be hating it, tending the cattle for the blacksmith’s wife: your heart is aching, I know, but tomorrow you shall be rescued. Your father, your mother, your lovely sister – none of them have any idea that you are still in the world of the living, and I shall tell them nothing until you are safely here under this roof. And then, what rejoicing there will be! – the sunshine of their gladness mingling with the showers of tender tears! Your beard will quiver, Kalervo, like an aspen-leaf in a tempest, your wife will turn pale from excess of joy; grief for a missing daughter, lost in the forest, must surely be lightened when a long-lost son comes to take her place returning like a dead man from the grave. – Just now, indeed, they are weighed down with sorrow, combing the forest tirelessly for any sign of that poor girl. – Well, I must go down to the lake and lower my net: the weather is mild and the water’s calm.

(He departs, with the net over his shoulder. Kalervo enters, from the forest.)

KALERVO

No hope of finding my daughter: I shall never see my lovely Ainikki again. – Misfortune like mine clogs a man’s footsteps, seeking him out wherever he tries to hide. I came to this forest wilderness to escape from human society, and from the bloody feud with my wicked brother; after seeing my little son fall to the swords of those evil robbers, I fled to this place, hoping to find peace. True, I have reared two daughters here, graceful as leafy willows, and the sight of them had almost made me forget the evils of the past; but this very joy has become the source of the grief that now lies so heavily upon us. Better for us to have had no daughters, than for one of them to be thus cruelly snatched away, vanishing into the unknown. Our time here on earth measures no more than a hand’s breadth: it may seem short sometimes, and sometimes long, but short it is, and evil. Looking back now, an old man, I see that a cruel Destiny has pursued me from the start. But my heart bears the scars of so many wounds that its surface is hardened to a crust.

(Kalervo’s wife enters, with Kelmä.)

WIFE

Where is she, where is she? Our Ainikki – tell me where she is.

KALERVO

I have no news of her: what makes you suppose the girl might have come home?

WIFE

I spoke with Fortune’s goddess on the road, I conjured her with all my might, with spells and incantations, to make my hopes come true; I prayed that when I returned from the forest Ainikki would be here waiting for me. I bargained, I made promises, I acted like a madwoman, and I felt sure my wish had been granted; and eagerly I scurried home, like some little creature of the wilds. This is the kind of game that desperate sorrow plays, and in the end believes in, mistaking make­-believe for truth. As I did, wretched fool that I was, and only succeeded in making the anguish worse. There is no Ainikki here, I see no sign of my child.

KALERVO

Nor will you ever. Even if the wild beasts have spared her, the tender creature must surely have perished from sheer terror, as she wandered lost and alone.

WIFE

So deep, so deep, this sorrow.

KALERVO

Deep it is, indeed, but lamenting will do us no good: the gods have cursed us. When misfortune strikes, it is best to harden the heart.

WIFE

Harden it? No! Sooner let me tear open my heart’s wounds, let the blood and the tears stream out in a flood! I long to feel the pain, stir up the fire in my bosom till only the embers are left, proclaiming ‘this was a mother’s grief, this is how she mourned her daughter, her beautiful Ainikki!’ Ainikki, the sound of your voice echoes in my ears unceasingly, calling for rescue, and none takes pity on you. Where is your dwelling now, your table, your cooking-pot and hearth, where are you now, this minute, while I stand here talking, where are you, if there is still life in your veins? Perhaps even now you lie panting on your mossy deathbed, without a drop of water to quench your thirst. Perhaps, in your delirium, you speak to stones, stumps, trees, begging them to relieve your suffering, but in vain. Nature, so mild and peaceful, yet so unloving! Uncaring Mother, cruel Brood-mare, not suckling your foals but leaving them to perish on your very breast. – Sorrow like this is more than any mother’s heart can bear; soon she must sink beneath its weight, if there is no release. O Lord of the Clouds, look down upon me here, and have mercy on me soon.

KELMÄ

Mother, your lamentations are breaking my heart, I shall die.

MOTHER

(embracing Kelmä) Let us die, my daughter, let us go to sleep beneath the green coverlet; only then can we forget Ainikki. Oh, my clear Kelmä!

KELMÄ

My poor mother!

KALERVO

(tearing his hair) A curse upon everything!

(Kullervo enters.)

KULLERVO

Who lives here?

KALERVO

Three people under a curse.

KULLERVO

Say rather, four. – Can you give me water, some cold water?

KELMÄ

(running to her father for protection) Who is this man? He scares me.

KALE RVO

Be calm, my child.

KULLERVO

(to himself) The deadly deed is done.

WIFE

He seems deranged.

KALERVO

Who are you, fellow, and what do you want?

KULLERVO

Who am I? A murderer, who begs you for a drop of water. – What time of night is it, my friends?

KALERVO

(to himself) He is mad, no doubt about it. (Aloud) Give him a drink. (To himself) I shall have to be on my guard, and watch his every movement.

(Kelmä brings Kullervo a stoup of water.)

KULLERVO

(Having taken no more than a sip of the water, roughly pushes the stoup aside. To himself) I have killed that beautiful creature! The gleam of her brow was like the light of dawn, her golden tresses clung about her shoulders when her pale face turned. A snow-white swan, she swam upon the waves, her golden-yellow brood around her; her breasts twin hillocks of joy – happy the man who could lean his head upon them, his were the delights of the Blessed. Daughter of the North, why is it only now that your murderer thinks of your beauty, and falls in love with it? Too late, too late! to go into raptures over the picture that now obsesses his mind the picture he shattered with his own hand, not seeing, in his blind rage, what peerless beauty, what a well-spring of endless joy, he was destroying. – Did all that happen, or is it just a dream? If only it were! But no, I seem to be awake, and standing here, though my mind no longer measures time as it used to, but stretches it out interminably. Was it only yesterday evening that the murderous blow was struck? It seems to me, as I think of it, like a deed done in some far distant age, shrouded in the dim mists of the past.

KALERVO

This is Tyrjönen’s house, what do you want here, fellow?

KULLERVO

(To himself) The same sun, that then was just setting in the West, is still asleep, but soon it will raise its bright head and greet us. (Aloud) You must surely think me mad.

KALERVO

I did, but you seem to have some shreds of reason. Who are you? Whoever steps beneath my roof must state his business and say where he comes from: otherwise I treat him as I would a thief.

KULLERVO

I am a murderer, as I told you .

KALERVO

Whose murderer, ill-starred wretch?

KULLERVO

I will tell you everything, the night is long, I will tell you the whole story. – I have killed a beautiful woman: it happened in the gloomy light of dusk, when the tips of the eastern mountains were still tinged by the setting sun. That moment I remember. But now you must hear who it was that I killed: I want to tell you everything. – But I have been walking hard all night: put your hand to my forehead and feel how hotly it glows.

KELMÄ

Father, we must be wary of this man.

KULLERVO

Your fears are groundless. But if you wish to know who it was that I killed, so brutally – it was the Fair Maid of the North, the wife of Ilmari the Smith .

KALERVO

The Fair Maid of the North!

WIFE

The famous Daughter of Pohjola, renowned for her beauty and goodness?

KELMÄ

You have murdered her?

KALERVO

Monster! I would avenge her death here and now, I would nail you to the earth with my sword, if I did not believe that you did this deed in the heat of passion, and if I could not see how disturbed you are in mind. Wretched man, what have you done?

KULLERVO

The pain is scorching, agonising. It still seems strange to me to have within me the heart of a shedder of blood. Perhaps in time it will become more bearable: a man can get accustomed to anything, they say. But now I am in a bad way; all night I have roamed the forests, and here I now stand, weary and waiting for the sun to rise. But pale Dawn, so it seems, is long in coming; she lingers on the way , and I see no signal of approaching day. But yes! yonder in the East, behind that woody knoll, I think I see the first pale flutter of her wings.

KALERVO

It is the rising moon you see. The time is midnight.

KULLERVO

This night is never-ending: I took that pale sheen for the break of day, but now you say it is only midnight. – But I must press on.

KALERVO

Where are you bound?

KULLERVO

How should I know, a man without a home?

KALERVO

Who are you, and what is your parentage?

KULLERVO

My name is Kullervo.

WIFE

Kullervo!

KALERVO

My wife starts at the sound of that name. It is a name very familiar to us, and very clear.

KULLERVO

Who are you, then, living here, so deep in the forest?

KALERVO

Tyrjönen is my name.

WI FE

Ill-fated youth, whose son are you?

KULLERVO

My father’s name was Kalervo.

WIFE

(To herself) Horror and death! But this is impossible.

KELMÄ

(To herself) Lord of the Clouds, what is he saying?

KALERVO

The son of Kalervo? You scoundrel, you madman, what is this trick you are playing, coming here to haunt us like a ghost returned from the dead? – As I have heard the story, the child of Kalervo was killed along with his parents.

KULLERVO

No, he escaped the slaughter: snatched from the jaws of death, he was seized and carried off to be the slave of his father’s wicked brother, and had this mark of slavery branded upon him. (Points to his forehead.)

WIFE

I am choking, I can hardly breathe.

KALERVO

(To his wife) Think, if this were our son coming to us with guilty hands, stained with the blood of the Fair Maiden of Pohjola!

WIFE

I dare not think it, I am choked, I am drained.

KELMÄ

But Kimmo has told us nothing of all this.

WIFE

No, and that proves that this man is a liar. He has come to trick us. Kimmo would have told us.

KALERVO

Treacherous fox, I see your game now. You are trying to lure me into a trap, and deliver your victim into Unto’s savage claws; but here you face a bear of the wild forest, whose skin will cost you clear. Come on, then, I am ready for you.

WIFE

Kalervo, stay your hand! Consider, if he were indeed – God help us – our own son! Kalervo, those eyes, that hair, do they not remind you of our little Kullervo?

KALERVO

I tremble at the thought that it might be so. I can scarcely breathe, there is cold sweat on my brow.

WIFE

My sight is clouded, I cannot tell where I am. This must be all a dream, all a dream.

KULLERVO

(To himself) What is this woman saying? She spoke of a feeling she had, that I might be her son. Earth and Heaven! Now I remember what the wood-nymph said. (Kimmo enters.) Kimmo! Now we two can clasp hands, though mine have a curse upon them. But tell me who t hese people are.

KIMMO

Can I believe my eyes? You? Here?

KALERVO

Do you know this man, then, Kimmo?

WIFE

Who is he? Tell us, quickly.

KIMMO

I know him well. He is your son, Kullervo.

WIFE

Kullervo!

KELMÄ

God in high Heaven!

KALERVO

Let Death now put an end to everything.

WIFE

(Shrinking away from Kullervo) To find you again, but as a murderer! Why did this have to be? Why? I feel lost, I cannot tell whether it is night or day. Am I delirious, is it all a dream, this anguish in my heart? God of Fire and Lightning, why have you turned this moment, which should have brought a fond and sweet reunion, in to such torment for us all? Lord of the Clouds, why do you toss him back to us, when his coming can bring us no joy? He who should not have come, has come; she whose coming we longed for, has not. My dear sweet daughter lies dead in the forest; my son has returned from the dead, but in a murderer’s guise, so that I shudder to look upon him. A man returns from the grave, yet brings no joy to his family. When has it ever happened before, that a dead man’s return did not rejoice his mother’s heart?

KULLERVO

So, you are my mother? Good health to you.

WIFE

(Backing away) Don’t come near me, my dreadful son.

KULLERVO

And you are my father? Good health to you sir, here stands your son.

KALERVO

Stand away, I don’t know you. Spare my grey hairs and get on your way at once, and never come back here again. Be off, and quickly!

KULLERVO

And here, it seems, I have a sister. Good health to you, young lady.

KELMÄ

(Shrinking from him) Oh, my brother, don’t come near me, I beg you. You make me shudder.

KULLERVO

Kimmo, is this not enough to send a man mad? An orphan boy finds his father and mother after twenty years or more, and neither of them will have anything to do with him. The father who begot him, the mother who bore him – simply show him the door and tell him to be off. Well, perhaps it is all for the best: I shall lose no time in leaving.

(He storms out.)

KIMMO

(To himself) Now I shall never cease to curse myself for my delay.

WIFE

Kalervo, who was that man?

KALERVO

Forget him! Now that he has vanished from our house, let him vanish from our memory too.

WIFE

He said he was our son, and he was: there can be no doubt about it. That was Kullervo! And I shall die if I never see him again.

(Kullervo returns)

KALERVO

He has come back.

KULLERVO

Kimmo, I shall go northward.

KIMMO

Oh Kullervo, what has happened to you now?

KULLERVO

I have heard that m y parents are still alive, and that they live hereabouts. Is that true, I wonder?

WIFE

(Rushing to embrace Kullervo) My dear, dear son, come to my arms! Come, come and rest your head upon my breast, as you did in time gone by. Hard-hearted indeed a mother must be to reject her own child, how could I be so cruel? But truly, when I turned away from you and refused your outstretched hand, my heart was ready to break. Be welcome now! My Kullervo! Welcome, my boy with the lovely hair.

KULLERVO

So, you are not hard, you are gentle and loving.

WIFE

(Still embracing him) You were a beautiful child, and beautiful you still are, as a man. Why, for you this is still the morning of life, the finest age of all, between youth and manhood. But oh! this ugly mark on your forehead. What a cruel, unfeeling monster was your uncle, to disfigure my poor child so!

KULLERVO

This mark has been the starting-point of all my sufferings, from which not even your embraces can set me free.

WIFE

My Kullervo!

KALERVO

A plague on your endearments and caresses! The man is a murderer. Break off your embrace – and you, sir, be on your way.

WIFE

May we not change our minds?

KALERVO

Brute, murderer! Away with you!

KIMMO

Whom has he murdered?

KULLERVO

Kimmo, I stand between two fires: one yonder, a dying flicker on the dim horizon, fretting my mind with its sickly glow; the other here, blinding me with its brightness, so that I can hardly tell which way round the world is.

KIMMO

But whom have you killed?

KULLERVO

The daughter of the Land of Darkness.

KIMMO

Then in deed the spirit of Hiisi has broken loose and done its worst.

KULLERVO

I know nothing of any spirit, I can tell you only of a man sent out to herd cattle, and a stone baked in his bread: a trick I repaid by delivering the cattle to the teeth and claws of savage beasts. I hastened back to the house with anger seething in my soul; the housewife met me in the yard, learned what had happened, and vented her fury on me, naming me a slave. My temper blazed, she repeated the gibe, I plunged my knife into her breast, and she expired. Then I fled into the forest, and now you see me here, my journeying not yet ended.

WIFE

A tragic story.

KIMMO

If only I could have yesterday over again!

WIFE

Kimmo, why did you not tell us about him?

KIMMO

I intended to go tomorrow and bring him back from Ilmari’s house, but ill fate has forestalled me.

KULLERVO

Had you done so yesterday, my hands would be unstained, and beneath this roof there would be great rejoicing; but it was not to be. Here in the wilderness, awaiting me, was a haven of sweet content, and I knew nothing of it until it was too late, for here I can stay no longer. (He turns to go, but pauses.) Let me take one last look at that hidden valley, which now must vanish from my sight for ever. Let me gaze a moment longer. Was th s my mother’s face that appeared before me here, in the darkness of the forest? I took it for the light of dawn, though the autumn night was but half done, and that perplexed me greatly. Good health to you, my mother, and to you, my father, too: this salutation must serve for both greeting and farewell, for now I must take to the road again and hasten away from you to far-off places – so far that even the birds will bring you no word of Kullervo again. See, I still linger. But now I will go.

WIFE

Kalervo, you hear his words, do they not pierce your stubborn heart like a rain of fiery arrows, as I believe they must? Open your heart, then; why do you harden it, causing yourself such pain? Father of my poor, wretched son, think of what he has endured, and then, perhaps, you will not judge him so harshly. What he did, believe me, he did in the heat of passion, and now he is repentant. See him standing here now, dishevelled and wretched, a miserable sight. But this is the same face, these are the same blue eyes that looked up at me from my breast, nearly twenty years ago; the same fair hair that I loved to smooth and stroke. That child I lost, and for long years I mourned and missed him, and thought him dead; till, one pale night, his face appears before me. But no, it vanishes again, vanishes forever. To lose the sight of him so soon, how can I bear it? Sooner let me die. If it is denied me ever again to hold him in my arms, to breathe over him the soft warmth of my love, then let me wither and die.

KALERVO

(Covering his eyes) Let him stay, let him stay. My heart is not yet so hardened that it cannot be wrung. – Come, Kullervo, let me embrace you.

(They embrace.)

*

As you all know, this company has been my life’s work and it stands for everything I’ve had to renounce. You know that for years I have not received a penny for my personal expenses, that I am on the firm’s lowest wage level, zero.

I haven’t even had a free cup of coffee; if, because I have been working hard or I wanted to improve my concentration, I have felt like a cup of coffee, I have always gone to the canteen during my coffee break and challenged one of the boys to a bout of arm wrestling under the agreement that the loser buys the coffees, and the bloke has paid. The money never came out of the firm’s running expenses, investments, trusts or funds.

If I have needed travelling expenses for study or industrial espionage (you know I am a doctor of technology and of psychology), I have requested or forced the head bookkeeper to embezzle the sum I have required. Thus the company has not had to pay tax on it. If anyone supposes that my morals are loose, however, let me assure you that I have always exposed the crime to the auditors, if the cashier hasn’t made up the sum out of her own pocket. You ask how a cashier can lay her hands on millions; I answer, she hasn’t any choice but to pay up. Some of them have tried to rob a bank, others have worked at nights as whores at the Hesperia Hotel, but only three have committed suicide.

This leads me to men. Those girls in accounts knew that if they did not give in to my requests or threats I would send the boys in. Usually one of the summer cats, I call them summer cats because they’re like the cats city people take for the summer and then, when autumn comes, throw into the lake or abandon at the summer cottage. In my younger days particularly I used to keep summer men just like some people keep summer cats, it’s no more immoral than that. I have always made sure that it was someone foolish and harmless, someone with no family, the firm’s lawyers always found them in prison or somewhere else. I have always been careful to choose someone so stupid and helpless that no one would believe what he said. That’s what my summer men were like! [Laughs long and heartily.] Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s take that iron curtain down, so we can have the warehouse wall here. [Takes out a white clockwork mouse.] It was a September evening. My youngest daughter, like the rest of them, had committed suicide that summer and I had just come out of mourning. I was playing with this white mouse. I pulled the cord and watched where it went. I followed it out into the dim courtyard. Over to the factory side it went. It was almost dark and I knew I was on the right track. It moved, flashing white, ahead of me. The tarmac was a bit wet, it had been raining, the whole world had stopped to be serious and pensive, both nature and humanity are wide open and mourn the fact that summer is gone again and ahead is autumn, death.

I follow the mouse as it goes up to the armour-plated door, opens it and scampers inside. I sense that I will be shown something and follow on. I’m in the darkened warehouse. [On stage are tarpaulins and packing cases.] I couldn’t see a thing! Well, I thought to myself, I wasn’t born yesterday! I disconnected my heart pacemaker battery and connected it to the illuminated phosphorous figures on my watch, having first unscrewed it with a hairpin. Then I opened my hearing aid and shortcircuited it permanently in such a way that I could see pretty well. [On the floor is a pine branch with a hangman’s noose made from a washing line.] The mouse had gone under the branch, and I realised it wanted something: you can imagine, pacemaker battery disconnected, hearing aid in hand, there stood a woman on an early autumn evening in a huge warehouse, with a hangman’s noose and a broken branch and the clockwork mouse that had led her there. Should I kill myself? Do I have to do it now? And then the terrible remorse. Can’t I wait until the morning, just one day more? No, you’re going now, it’s all over, it’s time to go, you’ve had it. [Loses her voice.]

Well, after a while I began to look around me and saw the big warehouse, dark, machines dumb, black and threatening. And this is all you did with your life? This is it? How strange and dark and comfortless the warehouse was! I touched the washing line, the plastic washing line I was supposed to hang myself with, plastic, supplied by our own sister company. I had managed the merger and sweated the factory to produce such a hell of a lot of plastic line that now there’s enough for my own neck too. Just then the mouse started moving again and slipped under a huge packing case. [Lifts up cover to reveal the relevant contents.] What on earth is inside there, I wondered, I don’t even know what there is in my own warehouse! [Shades her eyes.] I looked carefully [crouches down to look under the cover]. My heart nearly stopped, there was a church! Just think, a gallows and a church! And the organ started to play! [Sound effect.] I connected the battery to my heart and put my hearing aid back in and saw and heard clearly: the church and organ were already playing for me!

Then I noticed the bill of consignment there and remembered that this had to be the church for Konala*, which we had made and are going to give the church societies just like that as sponsors, because it doesn’t seem right, somehow, just to hand over cash. The mouse, of course, had slipped into the organ or somehow switched on the electricity. [Laughs.] Well, it was ghastly, all the same. A church in a packing case in your warehouse, and you don’t even remember where it came from! [Laughs.]

My eyes began to adjust and I looked around me. But I couldn’t work out what was making me tremble and threatening me. The mouse made another dash and, for God’s sake, the floor began to turn and come alive. [A huge leg appears, hanging from the ceiling with the heel touching the ground.] Suddenly above me there was a huge shoe and a trouser leg. It’s God, I thought, or the Soviet Union or I’ve become a mouse, or this is a space adventure. The mouse had of course gone into the hydraulics [gestures downwards] and caused a short circuit, which started up the loading machines, its tail was a bit scorched and it was hot when next I came to wind it up.

That shoe was somehow so frightening that it positively drew me to it. It looked like my father’s shoe, my teachers’, judges’, somehow there was God almighty, power itself there. Poor little thing, I trembled like a slip of a girl and was humble before it [laughs]. Well, to be accurate, I prayed and stroked that shoe. I, monster, more than human, honorary doctor of many different universities, defamer of man, I, who am not afraid or ashamed of anything, I who touch parliament for cash while the MPs strut and preen and make decisions about what to do with money they could never earn themselves. I revelled in my weakness, my exhaustion, my pleas for mercy.

Yes, I can hear the more stupid of you over there beginning to shout about masochism and something about sex. I’ve never had any problems. In my marriage I was my husband’s equal, and happy, but it was better for him that he died when he did. That’s enough about that. And since I have been a widow I’ve been capable of having a perfectly satisfactory orgasm at a couple of yards’ distance from a man, by sheer willpower, concentrating on eye contact, so it was not that kind of thing at all. This was communion of souls. Sheer soul.

[Peers upwards.] Then I saw the firm’s trade mark, on the sole of the shoe and I realised that this was some exhibition advertisement in which we were shown taking a step forward into the future [kicks the heel] or something like that. I looked upwards to try to see where the trouser leg ended, but I couldn’t. It was just as if the foot had trodden through the roof of the hall.

I held on to the trouser leg [takes hold], burst into tears and shouted, Daddy! Dadd-ee! What shall I do now? I already knew, of course, that it was the window dressing department’s ‘Finland’s biggest’, but I felt emotion all the same. I shouted, why can’t I start my life all over again? Let me live my life again! Just one day!

The floor started to spin. Our company products began to appear: my whole life was there; swindling and crime. Our sister company makes beer and our textile factory straitjackets for alcoholic lunatics. Our tobacco factory cigarettes and our instruments works instruments for the treatment of lung cancer, our shoe factory back problems and our daughter firm analgesics. Our precast panel factory dry apartments and our sister firm humidifiers, we make condoms and coffins, we make knives for muggers and handcuffs for the police. We make this dreadful world and we make it possible to enjoy life here. We make so much stuff that no one is ever alone. We give people their beginning and their end. And for everything we make an advertisement! I have understood it all, I want to start again!

* a suburb of Helsinki

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

As the play begins, we sense night in the old, rambling log house, with a clock ticking in the background; the sound comes closer, intensifies, and then dies away again. The clock strikes three; its works are old and complaining. Long silence.

Then the silence is broken by the loud and happy laughter of Jerine, the sleepwalker. A flock of gulls is heard calling over the beach; there is a gentle summer breeze, and the waves are lapping against the boulders on the shore.

FIRST VOICE (=the mother, frightened)

What’s wrong? What have you wakened me up for?

SECOND VOICE (=the father)

It’s Jerine. She was laughing in her sleep.

FIRST VOICE

What? Jerine! O no, she mustn’t …

SECOND VOICE

Hush! Not so loud. We mustn’t wake her. You must never waken them.

(We hear a door being opened. Soft footsteps)

FIRST VOICE

Did you hear? She came out of her room. Listen. She’s out there in the hall.

SECOND VOICE

She always goes the same way …

FIRST VOICE

… and stops outside the nursery door …

SECOND VOICE

… and rummages among the toys … And listens …

(The change to the sleepwalker is always indicated by the same effect – some clear notes on an oboe. We hear her taking something from a drawer… Jerine is humming a nursery rhyme.)

FIRST VOICE

The doll! She’s always got to take her doll in her arms.

SECOND VOICE

… She’s going down to the veranda door … Now she’s opening it.

JERINE (sings quietly to her doll, then laughs again)

There. There.

FIRST VOICE

She always goes the same way – down to the beach …

SECOND VOICE (in a whisper)

And waves to someone on the lake … Listens …

FIRST VOICE

… and then comes back and walks up and down with the doll in her arms, holding something in her hand… and points to the flagpole and the well … And takes something off someone or other.

SECOND VOICE

But then she gets frightened when she is coming up the stairs again. She cries out in her sleep… She is cold…

FIRST VOICE

No, no. Don’t go near her … Leave her to finish her dream.

MISS SALMÉN (increasingly worried) Don’t show him your mother’s and father’s room. Don’t take him into your own room.

JERINE (as though the lady of the house)

This is the hall. That painting’s of my grandfather. He was a master mariner. The stairs need painting, but father said we couldn’t afford to do them this summer, as he had to buy a new car. And here – this is where Mummy and Daddy sleep, and that’s my room … I tidied up in the doll’s house yesterday …

THE BOATMAN

You’ve got lots of dolls.

JERINE

I’ve got eight, but it’s only Lilian that …’ And he will stretch out his hand to take hold of the doll, but his fingers will brush my arm, and then I’ll be frightened …

FRIGHTENED! FRIGHTENED!’

(She is a child starting to cry in panic. Her cries become louder and more uncontrolled)

FIRST VOICE

This is when she’s frightened by something… SHE’S BITING – SHE’S BITING THE DOLL’S ARM …

JERINE

This is the first summer I’ve had a bikini. I’m big enough now, Mummy says. ‘He climbs out of the boat and gets into the tram and sits on the seat behind us, but we’re not allowed to turn round and look at him. (Gaily) This is where we get off. The tram stops right by the veranda steps.’

JERINE (cries out in her sleep)

Always the same way and the same beach and the man in the boat, and the great yellow tramcar, and on the lawn behind us there’s the stand where they sell all those baskets. And the woman selling them has to say:

STALLHOLDER

Good morning. This is Moses’ basket.

JERINE

‘… from when they found him in the bulrushes.’ And THE ONE WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT – NEITHER ME NOR LILIAN – STARTS LAUGHING ALOUD. He’s got white teeth like a little dog. But it’s Miss Salmén, our Sunday school teacher, that’s selling baskets. There are baskets on the steps to the veranda and on the stones round the flagpole. And in my hand and in …

THE STRANGER (laughing aloud now) I’ve rowed a long way to see you and I’m a bit thirsty. Could you give me a drink of water or a glass of juice?

JERINE (in a grown up voice)

Do come in. How nice to see you. It’s a bit untidy yet, because we overslept this morning.

THE STRANGER

Are you at home all on your own in this big house?

JERINE

No. Miss Salmén’s asleep under the clock outside Mummy’s and Daddy’s room. She read me five verses of a hymn, but she dozed off before the sixth. Do you like Coca-Cola?

THE STRANGER

Aren’t you afraid of me?

JERINE

No. You’ve got a cool hand, just like Mummy’s when I’ve got a temperature, and you speak quietly like Daddy when he’s reading fairy tales to us. (Screams) THEN MISS SALMÉN HAS TO SHOUT ‘DON’T GO INTO THE SITTING ROOM.’

A STRIDENT VOICE (=the stallholder)

DON’T TAKE THE BOATMAN INTO THE HALL.

JERINE

Don’t be afraid. It’s only the gulls scrapping over a fish. (Then her tone changes, and becomes monotonous, resigned) IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME WAY. IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME BEACH. And we walk on the beach and the sand’s warm under our feet. You and I. Me and my doll Lilian. ALWAYS THE SAME WAY AND ALWAYS THE SAME BEACH. And we have to stand near the water’s edge, so near that the waves almost reach my bare feet. WE ALWAYS HAVE TO STAND LIKE THAT AND WAIT.

(The cries of the gulls and the sound of oars)

And then the boat comes. Then someone comes rowing across. THEN SOMEONE COMES ROWING STRAIGHT TOWARDS OUR BEACH. (In terrible fear) ALWAYS THE SAME WAY AND THE SAME BEACH AND THE SAME WHITE BOAT THAT SOMEONE’S ROWING STRAIGHT FOR OUR BEACH. AND ALWAYS THE SAME MAN ROWING.

We have to say the same things. The same sentences. Fit the same words into the sentences. Speak to each other and say: ‘Lilian and I were laughing at the gulls when you came. And the clock in the hall said sixteen minutes to five – or six, as we laughed.’

THE BOATMAN, THE MAN – THE STRANGER

‘Your clock’s wrong. The clock in the hall’s just struck three.’

JERINE

‘That’s what he always has to say. Those very words.’ – Good afternoon. I’m called Jerine, and this is my doll, Lilian. Mummy and Daddy went to town on the nine o’clock bus, but they’ll be back at six. I only take out my dolls when Mummy and Daddy are out. You see, I don’t play with dolls any more. Who are you?

(Suddenly, the rattling and clanging of the old tramcar can be heard through the sounds of summer)

JERINE

… They’ll be coming on the bus, but today the tram goes right to the sauna. No one needs to drive the tram; it’ll find its own way. We’ll sit on the front seat, and you can sit behind us. Sometimes my teddy bear Mischka and my second and third dolls stand on the platform. They hold tight so they won’t fall off when the tram swings round the well – ROUND AND ROUND OUR OLD WELL.

THE STRANGER – THE BOATMAN

You’re beautiful, Jerine.

II

JERINE (The voice is that of a grown, but still young woman – monotonous, factual)

… It’s when the warm weather comes – during the hot nights at the end of July or the beginning of August. I always have the same dream then – the same dream that keeps coming back; it’s always the same things that happen … I’m…a child … a little girl … I get up and go to the dolls’ cot and take a doll. It’s always Lilian. Then I go downstairs … stop outside Mummy’s and Daddy’s room … go down into the hall and out on to the veranda … take the narrow path down to the beach. AND THE GULLS ARE SHRIEKING …

We stand on the warm sand, the two of us, and wait … the dream isn’t nasty. Not yet. We wait and listen and look at the gulls and the bay … and then we shall hear the sound of oars when the boatman comes. And our guest and Lilian and I all have to go back to the house. The tramcar always comes, clanging along the forest road, and Miss Salmén has to show off her baskets and shout to me …

I’m always a little girl in my dream – eleven or twelve years old, I would imagine … and the boatman is a grown man, not old, probably no more than twenty or twenty-five. He’s got a beard … Daddy said he was expecting someone to call, someone who worked for him and was to live in a cottage nearby. Perhaps that’s who it was … but that man never came back. Only in my dream.

—
—
—

There were a few years when the dream didn’t come: the year I got married; The year my little girl was born. I forgot I’d had a dream like that …

In the dream I’m only wearing a thin nightdress, but I’m never ashamed in front of the boatman. HE NEVER HAS A NAME – HE’S ONLY ‘THE BOAT­ MAN’. And I go down to the beach with Lilian, and we wait for the boat. Then we go up to the house, and then … we’re out on the lake. There’s something happens in the boat while we’re out rowing. Then … I wake up sitting on our beach weeping, and earlier … at first Mummy and Daddy used to be there to comfort me, to take me back to the house … NOW … it’s my husband. Sometimes I wake up because a little girl’s weeping. Then it’s either myself or my own child … They never wake me up when I get up and go out in the hot nights. Not Mummy or Daddy. Nor my husband. You must never waken anyone who’s sleepwalking, they say. And they … try to help me. They ask me about it. They ask questions, always questions:

FIRST VOICE (Mother)

But dearest child, can’t you tell us about it? … The two of you go out rowing on the lake … Is that where … DOES HE DO ANYTHING NASTY TO YOU?

THIRD VOICE (A young man)

Dearest Jerine! Try to remember. The two of you go out rowing on the lake …

JERINE

We fly over the house and down into his boat.

THIRD VOICE

But something must happen while you’re out rowing. Did he do anything to hurt you? Did he try to … do anything he shouldn’t?

JERINE (laughs, trying to make light of her dream now)

The boatman says I’m like the song of a tiny bird early on a summer’s morning. Like the first chickweed wintergreen flowering on a spring day. We sing in the boat, but very quietly, so as not to waken anyone up. You are all asleep on the beach: Mummy and Daddy and you and the child. We mustn’t wake you up … then he plays some music, pretends to play a flute, and whistles, quietly … very quietly. I DON’T THINK HE DID ANY­ THING NASTY TO ME BECAUSE FOR A WHILE OUT THERE ON THE LAKE I AM HAPPY – I FEEL SOMETHING GREATER THAN MY LOVE FOR MUMMY AND DADDY – GREATER THAN ANYTHING I HAVE KNOWN IN ALL MY LIFE. I AM HOT IN THE BOAT AS THOUGH I HAD A TEMPERATURE, AND MY HEART IS RACING. It is as though I had never known that I had a heart before now. And I say to the boatman: ‘What is it? My heart is beating so. Just feel how it is beating!’ And he puts his cool hand on my heart beating under my nightdress.

THIRD VOICE

What then … try to remember. You row out. You are hot. You both sing … What then, Jerine? WHAT THEN? …

JERINE

In the dream … in my dream it is as though I were a child and a grown up at the same time. A little innocent girl, but a woman as well. And both … both are frightened and – happy. And Jerine the girl takes the stranger by the hand and they go into the house, through the rooms and up the stairs, and little Jerine … Jerine the girl … the girl I was once … the girl who once had a dream … and can’t free herself from it. Jerine the girl dreams the same dream, and it forces her to get up and walk on the same paths and say the same things … to EXPERIENCE the same events again and again …

THIRD VOICE

But Jerine darling. A grown woman must give up the memory of something that happened so long ago. Try to remember. YOU DO REMEMBER …

JERINE

Ssh. Ssh. Don’t waken her. Don’t waken the little girl who can’t forget. Perhaps doesn’t WANT to forget … JERINE (the child)

… and then you must ask me: ‘But where is Miss Salmén? She should be asleep under the clock, you know … ‘

THE BOATMAN

‘Where is Miss Salmén? She should be asleep …’

JERINE

No, not like that. You must look around and ask … and be very surprised when you can’t see her. Ask again …

THE BOATMAN

But where is Miss Salmén? She should be asleep under the clock outside your parents’ bedroom.

JERINE (the child) That’s right. Now you said it properly. (Half singing a tune from a recorder ) She runs away when she hears our steps … runs, runs, runs … look … look … look … can’t you hear her scuttling about downstairs … into the kitchen and down into the cellar … CAN YOU PLAY MY RECORDER – PLAY ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL … We sang it on the last day at Sunday school … Those pebbles are all mine. We found them on a beach when we were out for a picnic, and Mummy says I can have them in the window … DON’T SIT ON THAT CHAIR, IT’S BROKEN, ‘CAUSE I FELL ON IT ONCE AND HURT MYSELF …

THE BOATMAN

You’ve got a lot of dolls.

JERINE

But I don’t play with dolls any more. Only occasionally when no one’s looking. I can’t play with them now that you’re here … WHAT’S THAT YOU’RE LISTENING TO?

THE BOATMAN

There was someone … walking about in the hall …

JERINE

Mummy and Daddy aren’t coming back until the six o’clock bus, and Mrs. Henriksson only comes twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays, and today is Wednesday … No one’s coming … and I’ve got to go and meet them from the bus … that’s a funny watch you’ve got on … It’s difficult to make it out… I got a wrist watch when I was eleven … Can I have a look?

FIRST VOICE

She’s reaching out. This is where she gets frightened …

SECOND VOICE

It’s as though … as though she’s a bit shy …

THIRD VOICE

You smile at the boatman and then … you begin to cry …

JERINE

My watch is ticking. Your watch is ticking … All the clocks in the house are ticking … ticking… louder and louder …

JERINE – THE WOMAN (terribly afraid)

He takes my hand and puts it to his ear and I SEE him for the first time, but not his face … only that he has a beard and white teeth and big eyes … that get bigger and bigger …

JERINE – THE CHILD (whispers)

… and then, as we listen to each other’s watches, I grow afraid of you … WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT? Don’t look at me. GO AWAY. (She begins to weep now) Go away. Row away … GO … I WON’T HAVE YOU IN MY ROOM – I WON’T HAVE YOU IN MY HOUSE… GO AWAY – GO AWAY – GO AWAY …

Translated by W. Glyn Jones

‘Is Mary Bloom about a revivalist religious meeting, a party political conference at which a new leader is born, or a rock concert? These are among the things that have been suggested. I don’t know. I don’t hope for restraint in the imaginations of those who choose.to interpret my work, although I observe it myself. The work of a writer is a part of life, it is an individual and collective experience that seeks, finds, takes and uses its materials like a motor machine. For those who create it the drama is real, as in the theatre, for the duration of the performance.’ Jussi Kylätasku

Characters

Mary Bloom
Martha, a doctor
Otto, a preacher
Disabled veteran
Serenity, his wife
Alcoholic
Cold Cal, a prisoner
Blind man, Deaf Wife

ACT 1

1.

Dark of night. A chill wind moans. Otto on edge of roof.

OTTO

God! Answer! I can’t get any closer than this!

God! Answer! I can’t get any closer than this!

God! Answer …

MARY

(Climbing ladder) Hello?

OTTO

Occupied. Can you wait a moment?

MARY

(Stepping to roof) It’s crazy howling into the night from the rooftops unless you’re drunk. – A pastor. (Sits to rest) The poor and miserable are forbidden to beg and peddle, and can’t come in to warm up to the landing when they’re numbed to the heart. But just watch out when it’s you rigid with a terror of death …

Goddamn Blacky, didn’t even give me time to get my long underwear.

OTTO

God I’ve come this far on my own power. This step leads two ways. Into your hands. – Or into the jaws of Hell. (Prepares to jump)

MARY

If you’ve got any money, leave it to me.

OTTO

(Who has already forgotten Mary’s presence)

What have we here?

MARY

A human being.

OTTO

That’s enough for you?

MARY

Quite enough.

OTTO

What will remain of you?

MARY

What should?

OTTO

A social security number. And even that will get forgotten in the files. What miraculous resources have kept you hanging on so long?

MARY

Nothing comes to mind.

OTTO

How rich I am in my poverty beside you.

MARY

What have you got?

OTTO

How powerful in my weakness.

MARY

So jump already.

OTTO

In faith do I take this step. (Prepares to jump)

MARY

(Coming to his side) That power you don’t possess.

OTTO

God.

MARY

There is no such thing.

OTTO

God. Answer.

MARY

(Stepping to edge of roof) There is nothing more to your God than to that world down there. I will take that step. (Mary steps from edge of roof into nothingness) Come on, come on. You won’t fall. It’s strange hanging here with nothing to stand on but your own resources. You’re free to rise. What’s holding you? Up, man, up.

OTTO

I cannot – believe …

MARY

And for the rest of your life you’ll swear this was only dream and delusion.

OTTO

Who are you?

MARY

Mary Bloom.

OTTO

Where does your power come from?

MARY

It is within me.

OTTO

Who am I?

MARY

(Returning to roof) The pastor has no faith in God. The man has no faith in mankind. I have come to you in your great need.

OTTO

I will follow you.

MARY

Buy me a cup of coffee?

2.

Tent meeting. Otto on platform before audience. The handicapped, the afflicted: a disabled veteran, an alcoholic, a blind man and his deaf wife. Mary in wheeled bed upstage.

OTTO

In that instant the pulpiteering prophet left his pastures of plenty and turned to the materially insecure but far more spiritually sustaining path of a disciple of Mary Bloom. – The papers claim we earn a fortune by exploiting the anguish of society’s victims, but this is no big business. It all evens out, more or less. And is this entirely a swindle, for which we would be answerable in a court of law? Witness the testimony of those countless individuals whom Mary’s power has freed from physical and mental pain and suffering. And you too are to render judgment, dear guests, gathering together in this meeting with us. Listen! – Silence … as profound as eternity. Into the distance have faded the city’s nerve-rending grind, shriek, insecurity, depravity and violence. Relax and receive the sweet peace which is offered … Well then! Whence comes this state of peace? (Turning to audience) Can you explain it?

An engineer, if I am not mistaken? – You there, madam, haggard with cares? Can this tattered old threadbare tent, which a mystic clue landed me for two grand when the Circus Mundi went bankrupt, seal us off so thoroughly from the oppressive outside world?

I say unto you, the Spirit. It is generated by the Spirit which descends upon us even now like a loving father bending to his child …

“Sleep, my child … ”

We do not sleep! Awake! Arise! – Just sit down now and listen carefully: I do not intend to rouse you a second time. Will the world be saved, or will mankind, which a thousand times over has earned its doom, be destroyed this very night? That depends on us here this evening … on you! So do not sleep, friends, but now if ever remain vigilant as Mary Bloom, with all the power of spirit granted her, performs that miracle on which the hope of the World and man depends. My wife there, Serenity, undefiled virgin … By the power of the Spirit through Mary’s sacred vow … Don’t falter now! Oh, endure!

My virgin wife shall bear a child …

See it with your own eyes! Witness the miracle and proclaim it to the world …

ALCOHOLIC

(To disabled veteran) Have you participated previously? How long is it before the healing … What sort of confession is expected? Does one speak into the microphone? (Clears throat) I don’t mean to step out of line, but I could conk out any second now.

DISABLED VETERAN

You’ve only yourself to blame. Ten times I’ve stood in line on these crutches and nothing has happened to me. – For the tenth and last time, Mary! – I’m no hypochondriac. A direct hit on the Golan Heights, preventing global war, on behalf of human rights. – The entire lower half of my body is paralyzed. No feeling at all. And where there is feeling, it’s constant pain. – Am I too tough for you, Mary! Ten long trips on these humiliating crutches – on a pensioner’s fare in a man’s prime – and am I to go back again on these same crutches to be the neighborhood laughing stock?

ALCOHOLIC

Isn’t it about time something started happening? Just look at these wrists, just look at these ankles … I’ve always backed you up, Mary! Even when my word still meant something … Mary! Mary!

DEAF WIFE

(To blind husband) Stand up for yourself. You’re going to get overlooked!

BLIND MAN

Mary! My wife is deaf. Nothing between her ears, but faith like a rock! – Nobody ever listens to me.

DEAF WIFE

My husband has been blind from birth! Nothing but hide-covered holes! Mary, deliver me from this dog’s life!

OTTO

(To afflicted) Stay where you are! Calm yourselves, dear friends (To audience) The crippled and sick have been brought forward for healing. Understand that their anxiety produces selfishness. (To afflicted) What Mary has promised, I guarantee; none of you shall go uncured. The blind shall receive sight, the ears of the deaf shall be opened, the alcoholic shall be freed of the bottle, and the disabled veteran shall cast away his crutch. (To disabled veteran) No, you haven’t been forgotten, dauntless Finnish warrior! Ten times – to be precise, only eight times – have you pressed forward to the front. Have patience and remember; the first shall be last and time is the great teacher. (To audience) The program will begin shortly. Here, behind this curtain, my wife Serenity is in spiritual training for a powerful exertion: here before you this evening she is to give virgin birth to the child whom the Spirit, through Mary, promised to the world.

And on that wheeled bed Mary Bloom is concentrating on the performance of her life. – Mary! – Does she wake or sleep? The answer remains beyond us. What she strives within her soul to achieve is a Spiritual State. Support her, all of you. Banish doubt! Faithless, be gone! – Now, with all your soul, summon Mary … Mary! – Mary … Mary … (Audience calls rhythmically to Mary. Otto approaches bed)

3.

OTTO

Listen to that, Mary. The time is ripe.

MARY

I’m feeling like the devil.

OTTO

Our only defence against our persecutors is this tiny band of the faithful. If you betray them. Mary! On your account many have come hundreds of miles, many have blown the last of their savings … (Along with audience) Mary … Mary … How many servants of the system have given up good jobs because of you? How many have separated from faithful spouses? How many fathers have left their families in the lurch for their souls’ sakes? How many mothers have spurned their children and in your name demanded freedom?

MARY

You can see for yourself that doesn’t apply to me.

OTTO

I begin to apprehend. As a woman you envy Serenity. You would like to have the child yourself.

MARY

Who’d keep this racket going if I ran off to the baby ward?

OTTO

My God was a bubble you burst. But even though I did discard the collar, I haven’t shed my skin. All the wonders I have seen you work with my own eyes, your incredible career, the thousands upon thousands who have come under your powerful sway … none of that has crushed my doubts. I have waited for this day as for the dawning of Armageddon. Doubt’s triumph over faith, despair’s triumph over hope, hate’s triumph over love.

MARY

I’ll go on.

OTTO

You’ll do it! I knew you’d do it! You put me to the test and I didn’t endure … Without faith … You won’t endure … Without faith … You won’t… (Babbling fades to silence)

4.

Music – on Otto’s signal to musicians. Song.

Sweeter than a cherry, that was little Mary.
Evenings at the harbor she’d hustle up some trade,
Stashing in her garter all the sailors’ jack she’d made.
A jaunty cap upon her head, a rosebud in her tresses;
Rosy too the coat she wore with black and silky dresses.
The sailors flocked around her singing Glory and Amen,
Come here, Mary sweetheart, and let’s you and me be friends.

Daddy’s little girl, that was little Mary.
She gave her folks the earnings from her amorous soirées,
Just as other little girls take home their factory pay.
They weathered the recession with the money they were given
Even though it later proved to stink to highest heaven.

And the neighbors offered prayers, saying Glory and Amen,
Someone ought to set her on the narrow path again.

Not at all contrary, that was little Mary.
So she fell for Captain Blacky, a dark and bearded chap,
Who left her, when he left her, with a parting dose of clap.
Life is but illusion and all tenderness betrayal;
The flesh is sure to flower, it’s the spirit that is frail.
Mary then concluded, with a Glory and Amen,
Fighting fire with fire is what this old world demands.

(Music continues under)

MARY

(Having come before audience) Everybody knew what those southern banjo-boys are like. Nothing to it but so long, little Mary got dumped ashore and the tub set sail. There I was, down with the shakes, wandering the completely unfamiliar streets … (Becomes caught up in memories. Chill wind moans maliciously. Music out)

“Goddamn Blacky, didn’t even give me time to get my long underwear … ” But just you watch out when it’s you gone rigid with a terror of death knocking at mercy’s door, and guarding it in white robes and with a flaming sword stands Mary Bloom!

OTTO

(Shaking Mary awake) Wake up, Mary, to reality …

MARY

I am your reality.

OTTO

(Quietly to Mary) Mary, are you possessed of the power or not? (To audience) We regret this interruption. From time to time the power that possesses her produces unexpected outbursts. (Lowering limp Mary to bed) A moment’s rest will so recharge her that, transformed into thermal energy, her power would suffice to solve the western world’s entire fuel problem … She s sleeping now. And when she wakes it will mean your awakening as well. If you faltered in your faith just now, you have time to collect yourself. There’s been rough going before. I remember as if it were yesterday the beginning of the little lady’s career. She was like a natural force seeking an outlet. We toured the country, from town to town and from one cheap hotel to an even cheaper one … Because of a bill we wound up stuck in the most miserable of parishes, in a boarding house, the Patria … My nerves were frayed and … doubt began to assail me.

5.

Boarding house . Mary sleeps.

OTTO

(Entering) Verily, verily! (Shaking Mary awake) She who would awaken all sleeps most soundly.

MARY

(Waking, grabs New Testament) Blessed are the … blessed are the …

OTTO

(Softening) Ponder as you read. I’ll fix some fish soup. There was enough left over from the price of the coat after I’d bought the train tickets.

MARY

(Eating chocolate) So we’re travelling?

OTTO

We’ll have to sneak out so the old bitch doesn’t notice. (Begins cleaning fish) This won’t be bad in soup. I’ll fix it in the coffee pot. I’d be begging for a good chewing out if I stopped by the old bag’s to borrow a pan.

MARY

I’m not eating any of that fish.

OTTO

So fast. – With a bellyful of chocolate. – Who brought you that? Confess!

MARY

I stole it.

OTTO

You, who should exemplify absolute morality.

MARY

When have I ever said don’t steal? (Reads) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” – That doesn’t hold true. – Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst …” What’s righteousness?

OTTO

And you are to save a world that until recently you believed was flat as a pancake. (Cuts his finger) Stop the bleeding. (Mary stops it) Put the book away and get dressed. The train leaves at five-thirty.

MARY

I threw all my clothes in the trash. – You said yourself they stank.

OTTO

Don’t you ever do any laundry?

MARY

I’ll go naked under the fur coat.

OTTO

This is where your story ends, Holy Mary. I’ve been involved in every possible sort of sect and movement. Each has its own leaders and outsiders are not accepted. And the young have their black magic …

I’ve organized a tour with prison officials under the guise of entertainment – I told you sing. It begins tomorrow at the federal penitentiary. The last possible train leaves at five-twenty-five from platform two. Goodbye, Mary. I shared a bit of the journey you and for that I will curse you and thank until you the end of my days.

MARY

There’s a diamond ring in the fish’s belly. Open it and take out the ring.

OTTO

Open it yourself.

MARY

I’m not touching that revolting mess.

OTTO

(Embracing Mary) Poor child, whom the Spirit embraced for a moment and then abandoned to the mercy of the world … (A knock at the door) We’ll pay up tomorrow!

SERENITY

(Entering) “I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth.” Don’t be afraid, Otto. I won’t make a scene.

OTTO

Serenity, my wedded wife. On our wedding night it was revealed – in present company suffice it to say it became clear – that even then I had no faith in love. Serenity remained a virgin. A rosy country girl born to the village parsonage to provide the world with lots of little middle-class minister’s tots.

SERENITY

I have come to inform you that under no circumstances will I ever again allow you to return to me.

OTTO

Say it in scripture, beloved Serenity.

SERENITY

You could have phoned so I needn’t have kept food in the oven for months on end. (Opens suitcase) I won’t be your dog any longer, Otto. I’ve never even been your kitten …– I brought your best suit and some shirts … (Shirt tears)

OTTO

This girl, whose bloom of youth you view with such bitterness, was a way station on my desperate quest. Mary Bloom, child of the Spirit. (Serenity begins to cry) You two may have something to share with one another, but nothing for me.

MARY

Don’t cry, Serenity. I was just crying myself, but I won’t cry any more. Blessed are they whose hearts are laden with grief, for their … (Shouting at Otto)… for their tormentors shall know a greater torment! Blessed are the oppressed, for they shall see through their master!

OTTO

But, Mary –

MARY

Blessed are the crushed and scourged, for their turn shall come to answer blow with blow!

OTTO

Open up … Open … Let it resound! It’s on its way, Mary!

MARY

Blessed are they that try their best to no avail, for they have something of which their instructors haven’t the slightest notion! Blessed are those at the mercy of their superiors, for they shall come out on top. Blessed are they that are kicked while they’re down, for it is fortune everlasting kicking at their gate.

OTTO

That one was a bit … Let it come, just let it all come! Rage!

MARY

Blessed are they whose mouths are stopped, for their vote shall decide the world’s destiny.
Blessed are they that must humbly accept their lot, for they shall have dominion.
Blessed are the weak and feeble, for from their bitterness shall spring an invincible power.
Blessed are those considered subhuman and driven like beasts, for they shall not be deceived by the mask of piety.
Blessed are they who pay with labor and toil that the lords may glut themselves around their buffet tables, for bread shall not satisfy their hunger.
Blessed are the ruled, for they shall revolt.
Blessed are the unemployed, for they shall be given their due.
Blessed are those who have lost their land, for to them belongs the world.
Blessed are they can’t cut the competition, for they shall declare war.
Blessed are they that fit in nowhere, for they shall have their choosing.
Blessed are the broken, for they shall not leave one stone upon another.
Blessed are the deceived, for they shall not believe in lies.
Blessed are they that do not receive their share of love, for they shall not let the sun go down on their wrath.
Blessed are the hopeless and exhausted, for their patience shall cease.
Blessed are they that can no longer stand their pain, for they shall not wait their turn.
Blessed are they that can’t go on living, for tomorrow is theirs.
Blessed are you that have no one, for you have me

OTTO

(Rummaging through Serenity’s luggage) Any money?

SERENITY

(Taking out chequebook) How much should I put down?

OTTO

Four, five hundred. Go pay the bill. And call a cab.

Translated by Tim Steffa

Hannu Mäkelä describes the birth of Mr Boo:

To be honest, Mr Boo has long been my other self. The first time I drew a character who looked like him, without naming it Boo, I was really thinking of my fifteen­ year-old self.

The years went by and the Mr Boo drawing was forgotten for a time. It hadn’t occurred to me to write for children; I seemed to have enough to do coping with myself. Then I met Mr Boo, whom I had not yet linked up with my old drawing. My son was about six years old and we had been invited out. There were several children present. As I recall it it was a wet Sunday afternoon. I had entrenched myself with the other grown-ups in the kitchen to drink beer. The noise of the children grew worse and worse (in other words they were enjoying themselves). At last the women could bear it no longer and demanded that I, too, get to work. Really, what right had I always to be sprawled at a table with a beer glass in my hand? None. So I rose and went into the sitting-room. I shouted at the children to form a circle around me. At that time I had a motto: ‘Mäkelä – friend to children and dogs’. The reverse was true of course. The name Mr Boo occurred to me, probably as a result of some obscure private (and possibly even erotic) pun and I begun to tell a story about him. In telling it I paused dramatically and accelerated just as primary school teachers are taught to do: that part of my training, after all, wasn’t wasted. I was astonished; the children listened in complete silence. And if my memory doesn’t fail me (or even if it does, this is the way I wish to remember it), at the end of the story the smallest of the children said, rolling his r’s awkwardly, ‘Hurrrrah’. I was hooked.

The children themselves asked me to tell the same stories again. They still enjoyed them. It wasn’t long before I began to think seriously of writing a whole book about Mr Boo. For the first time in my life I really wanted to write for children. Every day after work I wrote a new Mr Boo story. Then in the evening I read it to my son. That is how the stories grew into a book.

The child likes right to triumph; he likes the good and the moral. The child is the kind of person we adults try in vain to be. It was only through Mr Boo that I began to see children in a totally new way and above all to become seriously interested in them.

Translated by Mary Lomas

Mr Boo

Characters:

Mr Boo
Mirror image of Mr Boo
Grandfather’s picture on the wall
Plant
Mike

Scene 3

A contented MISTER BOO bustles about in his shack. It is day, with much light and birdsong. It is spring, although MISTER BOO doesn’t know it.

MISTER BOO

Come on, get boiling … nice water … (Pours tea to steep and immediately pours tea into cup) Tea’s ready. That’s what I call instant tea. Care for a cookie? The answer is yes. But where are they? (Searches) Sugar or spice? Which would taste best? The first thing is just to find either kind … Here! (Familiar sound of GRANDFATHER’s picture clearing his throat) No, Grandfather… I won’t take too many … just a very few … (MISTER BOO stuffs his pockets with cookies and when no more fit he passes some to children around stage) Shhh, so Grandfather doesn’t notice … he’s very strict about these …

MISTER BOO goes to chair and stretches.

MISTER BOO

Whoo-eeee. This is the life. There’s tea. And cookies. And my own home. My own castle. My own peace and quiet. (Ponders) Only, it also tends to get pretty boring. The children are even so nice that I never see them anymore … ‘(Chuckling) They’re afraid I’ll do a repeat performance … shucks … I’m not all that fantastic a magician … a fair average … above average, I’d say … (Ponders) Now I’ve had something to eat. Now I’ve had something to drink. What do I do now?

MIRROR IMAGE

(Appears yawning in mirror) Ho-hum … I’m exhausted … Do something useful… now that it’s spring … Plant something, sow something …

MISTER BOO

What do you mean, spring … ? (Goes to window and draws curtains aside, light floods into his eyes) It’s true … spring … and I’m awake again in the middle of bright daylight. I must have a fever… Somehow everything is so different now …

MIRROR IMAGE

All you ever do is think, when you might actually be doing something … (Yawning) It’s downright sinful to see you so lazy …

MISTER BOO

Lazy, am I? Wait a second …

Hustles and bustles, locates seed packets and pots in cupboard, puts seeds in earth, attaches labels to pots: FLOWER NO. 1, FLOWER NO. 2. Studies fruits of his labors with satisfaction, offering appreciation and bowing to himself.

MISTER BOO

Fine work, Mister Boo … thank you, thank you … no, truly excellent … Isn’t that somewhat of an exaggeration? No, Mister Boo yours is actually the work of a genius …

Notices that there still remains one packet on table.

MISTER BOO

Grandfather, may I plant this one too? No answer … away again … He wanders way far afield … on the seven seas … You’d never get me to sail in a storm … Oh well … let’s do these too …

Makes another label: FLOWER NO. 3. Waters flowers, tends them, clapping and crooning.

There’s more to Mister Boo than meets the eye. With his green thumb he makes our garden hum. He puts seeds in the ground and spreads the dirt around. Next thing you know they’ve grown up to the sky.

Flower No. 3 takes heed, thrusts up green stem in a rush, sprouts buds, and nods; but MISTER BOO, busy tidying up room, doesn’t notice it. And flower grows at appalling pace Soon entire window is covered and stage dims.

MISTER BOO

What’s going on… is it already evening? So soon? The sun was just shining out.

Window is completely covered by green PLANT.

MISTER BOO

Odd. Strange. Most peculiarly astounding.

MISTER BOO turns toward window and drops watering can with a clatter to floor. PLANT sways and waves itself and stares at MISTER BOO. MISTER BOO stares back mortified.

MISTER BOO

Oops … for not noticing before … you get there? I just planted the seeds …

PLANT

I’ve been here for ages on end … waiting you see fit to offer me a little something drink. But no! You just keep straightening the room!

MISTER BOO sits in chair, hand to heart. Shakes his head. Looks around inquiringly, but no one appears to explain to him why PLANT has to be on his window sill, of all places.

MISTER BOO

Where in the world could a boogey-bush like that have come from? I haven’t even opened the door… and the window was closed. It was! I don’t get it!

PLANT

(Listening, dissatisfied, to MISTER BOO’s blather) Pipedown … Weren’t you listening to what I said? I am thirsty … and it’s a mighty thirst too … I could drink a river. Some water.

MISTER BOO recovers sufficiently to search for watering can; takes it to PLANT and begins dousing its roots. But PLANT grasps can in hand-like branch … and drains it in a flash. Then PLANT throws can to floor.

PLANT

More. You call that a river? Nothing but a blamed trickle! Water! And food too … as a matter of fact, I am extremely hungry … a whale of an appetite.

MISTER BOO

(Slowly retreating) What is it that you eat? For other plants, water is enough.

PLANT

What do I eat? Meat, of course. But it has to be prime cut! And well marbled. You won’t catch me eating soup meat, only steak. (Considers) I think I also like hotdogs. Don’t ask me why … With mustard. And ketchup! Lots.

MISTER BOO

I don’t get it at all … How did that get there? There’s not a whole lot to eat here… (rummaging in cupboard) … cookies and tea … and a can of Spam … will this do?

MISTER BOO holds out can, PLANT opens it at once and gobbles Spam.

PLANT

More. That was nothing but a snack. And what’s holding up that water?

MISTER BOO

What are you … ? How did you get there … ?

PLANT

What and how … You planted me yourself. But you make a lousy, lazy caretaker. Water!

MISTER BOO brings water, PLANT instantly gulps it down, then looks more kindly on MISTER BOO.

PLANT

Since you’re at least trying to be nice, I promise not to gobble you up just yet. Even if I am feeling ravenous …

MISTER BOO backs off, looking to GRANDFATHER’s picture for assistance.

MISTER BOO

Grandfather . . . what do I do now? This is your fault. It was your packet of seeds … Oh, how far away have you gone? Help me. (Listens) Not a sound. What do I do now? (MISTER BOO looks at MIRROR IMAGE, which momentarily gawks terror-stricken at room, then draws curtains and flees as well. MISTER BOO is left all alone.)

PLANT

I’m hungry! More food! I’m thirsty! More water!

MISTER BOO

The plant is growing and growing… and I’m all out proper food … And if I give it my bread, what will I eat? (Louder) I don’t have anything more. You have my permission to remain hungry. You’re not getting anything more until tomorrow.

PLANT

Mister Boo … such talk… Come over here and we’ll discuss the matter more fully …

MISTER BOO

What is it you want?

PLANT

(Grasping MISTER BOO) My dear friend … if you don’t quickly bring me enough to eat, you can kiss the world good-bye.

MISTER BOO

(Kicks and punches at PLANT, which gives him a slight shake that sends him sprawling to floor) I’m going to go … now … and do some shopping… (Softly) There’s just no coping with that. It’s like rubber …

PLANT

And when you get back, also remember not to try anything funny. My patience does have its limits.

MISTER BOO dashes out into yard, sags against apple tree in utter despair. MIKE approaches and stops to stare in amazement at whimpering MISTER BOO.

MIKE

Hi … what’s with you? You’re crying …

MISTER BOO

(Shaking his head) Wrong … Mister Boos never cry.

MIKE

Uh-huh … your cheeks are just normally wet. Were you taking a shower?

MISTER BOO nods.

MIKE

Uh, can I help? I was just going out to practice a few shots, but … Catch this … (Demonstrating moves) Like this and this and this and then. . . a dynamite hook. . . and there it is, the inevitable … a basket, scored by that renowned forward, that poetry in motion known as Mike. Hey … you weren’t watching. Listen, what’s eating you?

MISTER BOO

Not a single thing!

MIKE

Nobody cries without a reason. Tell Mommy.

MISTER BOO

I’m not crying. I’m laughing.

MIKE

Why are you laughing?

MISTER BOO

Because … (whimpers in the telling) … in Mister Boo’s house there is a meat-eating plant that eats so much that Mister Boo can’t keep it fed. And so the plant is going to eat Mister Boo.

MIKE

Come off it. Mister Boo wouldn’t be exaggerating slightly, would he?

MISTER BOO

Mister Boos never exaggerate. Ever.

MIKE

(Yawning) OK. What if the two of us go and have a look… We’ll give it one right in the kisser. Like that, really. I’m awful strong, y’know.

MISTER BOO

It won’t help. I already tried. It’s stronger than I am.

MIKE

You don’t say … stronger than you … well, then it sure is strong, all right.

MISTER BOO

(Nodding) And I just don’t know what to do … What do I do?

MIKE

Let’s go look. Together we might come up with something… Come on.

And although MISTER BOO resists, MIKE drags him like a spade into shack.

MIKE

Yoo-hoo … anybody here?

PLANT

What? Who’s there! Mister Boo. You swore you wouldn’t do anything dumb. Who is that?

MISTER BOO

Mike.

PLANT

Is he my lunch? Strange. You look just a mite too big.

PLANT reaches arms toward MIKE, who keeps his distance.

PLANT

Come here! Over here! Mister Boo! I am extremely disappointed in you.

MIKE

Hey, I’ve got it. Come here. (Takes MISTER BOO aside and whispers, MISTER BOO listening and nodding)

PLANT

What? No fair whispering with others around. It’s rude.

MISTER BOO

(Digging in his pocket) Where did I put it … where … ?

PLANT

(Grabbing MISTER BOO) If I’m not getting anyone else, I’ll take you. Hopefully you’re easy on the digestion.

MISTER BOO

Help!

MIKE

It’s eating Mister Boo! (Looks around, seeking help; hurls ball straight at PLANT) A lightning fake, throwing the defense off guard. And it’s another basket! (Ball stuns PLANT and it releases MISTER BOO, who runs to side, probing pockets)

MIKE

Hurry up. It’s coming to.

MISTER BOO

It’s not here… or here… or here… It’s here!

Takes out chunk of wood.

PLANT

Stop. (Reaching out hands) I’ll show you.

MISTER BOO

points piece of wood at PLANT and says “Zip zap”. And PLANT’s hands freeze.

PLANT

What is this? What did you do to me? This is no fair at all. Haven’t you had any upbringing?

MIKE

It’s not moving, but … leave it like that.

MISTER BOO slaps his forehead. He runs to shelf, finds little bitty bottle and runs to PLANT.

MISTER BOO

Promise never to reveal what you are about to see. Promise. (Opens bottle, pours its contents over PLANT; hiss sounds, lights dim, some­ thing whistles, fading; and when lights come up again, there’s no PLANT)

MIKE

I don’t believe it … How did you do that?

MISTER BOO

(Dragging himself toward bed, completely tuckered out) Tsk tsk, remember, you haven’t seen a thing… not a thing … nothing …

And then MISTER BOO falls asleep, sleeps and snores.

MIKE looks at him yet a while and then exits, dribbling ball.

MIKE

Once again it’s looking dangerous. He’s fast as lightning, this young forward … only recently still a rookie, but now in the record books. And again he’s pressing hard, he gains possession, finds an opening, shoots, and yeeeesss, believe it or not, a basket. A basket. That’s the third in a matter of seconds. There’s no one can top that. No one.

Translated by Tim Steffa