KASPAR HAUSER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a play by Peter Oswald

Note. I wrote this for the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust, as a follow-up to THE TEMPLE and THE GODODDIN. However, various organisational changes there have stopped it so far being performed. The play is set in a bombed-out theatre in Berlin in 1945, where starving children are hiding out. Some of the actors return, and with the children they act out the story of Kaspar Hauser. I have actually performed in a theatre in Kreutszberg in Berlin that was the favourite cabaret-venue of some of the top Nazis, bombed and rebuilt and maybe redeemed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

characters

 

 

Fredy, caretaker

Wulf

Otto ; ditto

Marie;

Karla

Veronica – children

Peter Straub

Trudi

Gunther – actors

Lieutenant Jackson, American soldiers

Willis, American army chaplain

 

Some Superficial Character Notes

 

Marie and Veronica are sisters: Marie the older

Otto and Wulf are comrades, rivalrous

Karla is the toughest and cleverest child, the leader

Peter is verbose and theatrical

Trudi is gorgeous and collapsed

Gunther is studious and serious

Fredy sweeps and quotes German playwrights

Jackson is a brute

Willis is a shy, dusty, religious man

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONE. NOWHERE. WILLIS. PRAYING.

 

WILLIS: All around Berlin there are thousands of persons hanging from the trees. Nobody cuts them down. Folk file past underneath, not glancing up. In a city park an SS man shoots first his wife then his six children then himself, they are all sitting on a park bench waiting for the Russians. Twelve million Germans are refugees in their homeland, wandering about. Slave labourers and ex-Prisoners of war and ex-inmates of camps and millions of dead and living soldiers. Dear Lord in heaven, thankyou for showing me this because I sure as hell could not have imagined –

 

EXIT.

 

BOMBED-OUT THEATRE. WARDROBE LYING ON ITS SIDE, INCONSPICUOUS. FREDY. HE SWEEPS, BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS, SWEEPING DUST INTO A PILE AND THEN SWEEPING THE DUST – AND BITS OF BROKEN TILE AND BRICK ETC – IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, THEN SWEEPING IT BACK INTO A PILE AGAIN AND SO ON. FREDY HEARS A NOISE AND GETS INTO THE WARDROBE, CLOSES THE DOORS BEHIND HIM. ENTER WULF AND OTTO VERY CAUTIOUSLY, SCOUTING. THEY HAVE KNIVES OUT. WULF RUNS ACROSS THE STAGE AND CHECKS ENTRANCES AND EXITS, COMES BACK ON, WHILE OTTO CHECKS THE SIDE THEY CAME IN ON.

 

WULF: Stairs.

 

OTTO: To what?

 

WULF: Nothing.

 

OTTO: Cellar?

 

WULF: No.

 

OTTO: Roof still partly up.

 

WULF: Good place.

 

OTTO: Call the others.

 

WULF GOES TO EXIT AND WHISTLES. ENTER KARLA, THEN MARIE AND VERONICA.

 

KARLA: What?

 

OTTO: Good.

 

KARLA: How good?

 

OTTO: Roof.

 

KARLA: Yes! Good! Cellar?

 

WULF: No.

 

KARLA: What else?

 

OTTO: Nothing else, Karla.

 

KARLA: Nothing else? Nothing?

 

WULF: Nothing, nothing, nothing!

 

KARLA: Look! Look around!  

 

MARIE: Can’t see anything.

 

VERONICA: Can’t see anything.

 

WULF: Nobody lives here.

 

KARLA: Nobody?

 

MARIE: Ghosts, only.

 

KARLA: Why is it so swept then?

 

OTTO: Swept?

 

KARLA: Swept! Tidy! No mess!

 

MARIE: Maybe the wind.

 

KARLA: The wind? Somebody lives here. Find them! Search! Find them!

 

KARLA SITS DOWN IN THE MIDDLE WHILE EVERYONE ELSE RUSHES AROUND LOOKING, BUT FAILS TO FIND FREDY.

 

OTTO: No one!

 

WULF: Maybe somebody comes here – and sweeps. Lives somewhere else.

 

KARLA: Ha!

 

OTTO: There is no one here, you are wrong, Karla!

 

KARLA: Am I?

 

MARIE: No she isn’t!

 

OTTO: Wulf?

 

WULF: Maybe there is somebody.

 

OTTO: I don’t see anybody!

 

KARLA: Do you want to fight me, Otto?

 

OTTO: No. But there is nobody here. Look, she is wrong!

 

MARIE: Might be somebody!

 

OTTO: Where? Why doesn’t Karla look? Why don’t you look, Karla?

 

KARLA: Do you want to fight me, Otto?

 

OTTO: I led the way. I came in first. Me and Wulf.

 

KARLA: Because I sent you!

 

OTTO: This is my place!

 

KARLA: You are stupid, Otto!

 

OTTO: Stupid?

 

KARLA: You did not see it is swept! You did not find the person!

 

OTTO: There is not anybody!

 

KARLA: Do you want to fight me?

 

OTTO: Tell me everyone, is there anybody?

 

MARIE: Maybe.

 

VERONICA: Maybe.

 

WULF: No! There is nobody!

 

KARLA: Alright. Fight me. Fight me!

 

THEY SCRAMBLE INTO POSITIONS, OTTO AND WULF AGAINST THE OTHERS. WARDROBE OPENS, OUT GETS FREDY. HE STARTS TO SWEEP.

 

MARIE: Hello mister!

 

FREDY MAKES NO REPLY.

 

MARIE: Crazy.

 

VERONICA: Crazy.

 

KARLA: You see, Otto?

 

OTTO: I see.

 

KARLA: (SHE SPEAKS IN IMITATION OF A NEWSREEL.) Otto, you are brave. You came first into this place, as I asked you to. Thankyou for doing that. Thankyou, Wulf, for going with him. Both of you honour me with your bravery. We should be proud of Otto and Wulf, and thankful to our brave heroes!

 

MARIE, VERONICA AND KARLA CLAP.

 

KARLA: What can I give him? He already has the Iron Cross, which was given to him by the Reichsminister personally, just before the battle of the Oder, which was the last battle of our last army before the battle of Berlin itself, which has now fallen. I cannot give him any more than that! All I can give him is my respect.

 

MARIE, VERONICA AND KARLA CLAP AGAIN, AS DOES WULF.

 

FREDY: Blood is a very special substance.

 

MARIE: Where is it? Where is the medal?

 

WULF: Ha!

 

MARIE: He hides it.

 

KARLA: Of course he does! Because he cares for us! If the Russians saw him wearing it! They would say – aha, here is one of the two that escaped from us out of the Hitlerjugend brigade. The other is Wulf. Him they would also take, by suspicion.

 

MARIE: But in this place he could wear it. If we are safe.

 

VERONICA: Yes in this place he could wear it.

 

MARIE: Give it to him again! Pin it on him!

 

KARLA: Yes.

 

MARIE: Where is it, Otto?

 

WULF: In his pocket.

 

MARIE: Pin it on him!

 

KARLA: Give it to me, Otto.

 

OTTO: I will give it to you.

 

HE TAKES THE MEDAL CAREFULLY OUT OF HIS POCKET AND GIVES IT TO HER.

 

KARLA: Otto -  you are magnificently brave. Like Siegfried of old! And for that reason I, in place of the Reichsminister, who is dead, award you again with the Iron Cross, the highest decoration for bravery that the Reich is able to bestow on you, the youngest soldier ever to receive it. Wear it with pride.

 

SHE PINS IT ON HIM. HE COLLAPSES, CRYING.

 

WULF: Ha!

 

MARIE: Do not laugh at him!

 

FREDY: I am one of those who do good while trying to do evil.

 

VERONICA: He is remembering.

 

WULF: He is remembering the army that stood at the Oder. And the Reichsminister!

 

KARLA: We must all remember! We must all remember all of our friends! It is good to cry!

 

WULF: It is not good to cry.

 

KARLA: I have heard it said that it is good.

 

WULF: It is not good.

 

KARLA: We must still remember the ones we have left behind! Dietrich and Olivia and Richard and the others, in the other place, which one day we will take back from the pigs, when we are strong again. This is a good place but that place is better, it has a cellar. But still, they have it now, they are stronger, even though they are younger than us, most of them, but they are more. But first we must make this place strong. See if this one has got any food.

 

WULF: You work for us now, mister!

 

FREDY: The lovely days in Aranjuez are over!

 

 

TWO. EVENING. A LITTLE FIRE. CANS OF FOOD.

 

VERONICA: Soon our mother will come!

 

KARLA: She may.

 

VERONICA: When she put us on the train in Danzig she said that she would join us soon.

 

KARLA: I know, Veronica.

 

MARIE: It was the last train.

 

VERONICA: It was not the last train, Marie!

 

MARIE: It was the last train.

 

VERONICA: Well she will walk or -

 

MARIE: Ride on a horse.

 

KARLA: What is this building?

 

WULF: It is not a house exactly.

 

MARIE: It is not a factory.

 

VERONICA: Not a factory.

 

MARIE: Just one big room, and a few little rooms.

 

WULF: It was not a museum.

 

MARIE: Was it a government building?

 

WULF: No!

 

MARIE: Or a court?

 

WULF: No! There would be a swastika! And other things!

 

MARIE: What was it then?

 

KARLA: We can say all the many things that it was not.  

 

MARIE: It was not a hospital.

 

VERONICA: Or a railway station.

 

WULF: A Telephone Exchange.

 

MARIE: Barracks.

 

VERONICA: Fortress.

 

MARIE: Maybe a lady lived here once who loved to have big dances!

 

OTTO: Now it is our place anyway.

 

MARIE: It is whatever we want!

 

WULF: We will defend it.

 

OTTO: We will have to sooner or later.

 

SILENCE.

 

MARIE: What will happen?

 

KARLA: What will happen we do not know. We do not even know what is happening now. Tomorrow we will find out. Otto and Wulf will scout. The rest of us will stay here to build the defences. We will make the man work for us. He can do more than sweep!

 

OTTO: The city has been divided up.

 

KARLA: Yes.

 

OTTO: Over by the Tiergarten there are Americans.

 

KARLA: Certainly.

 

OTTO: And British too. And so Canadians and so on.

 

MARIE: They will fight!

 

VERONICA: Yes they will fight!

 

MARIE: The war will carry on!

 

VERONICA: Yes it will!

 

MARIE: But now between Russians and Americans.

 

WULF: Only those with cellars will survive!

VERONICA: We have not got a cellar!

 

SHE STARTS CRYING.

 

VERONICA: It is not fair! They took our cellar!

 

KARLA: We will get it back. We will fight them. They are younger than us.

 

MARIE: By then we will be dead.

 

VERONICA WEEPS HELPLESSLY.

 

KARLA: We will dig a cellar.

 

VERONICA: Yes!

 

KARLA: We have got the man. He can dig.

 

MARIE: Maybe there is a secret cellar!

 

VERONICA: Yes!

 

MARIE: When the bombs come he will run to it and then we will know where it is!

 

VERONICA: Haha! A secret cellar!

 

KARLA: It is not always good to have a cellar.

 

MARIE: Why?

 

KARLA: I spoke to a Jewish girl. People hid her. She told me that in Dresden the people in the house would not let her stay in the cellar. The city was burnt but she lay in the river.

 

VERONICA: Ha!

 

KARLA: All the people died in the cellar.

 

MARIE: They should not have shut her out.

 

OTTO: Yes! The Jews started the war!

 

MARIE: But not her!

 

WULF: God punished those people.

 

OTTO: And us.

 

MARIE: Are all the cities burnt?

 

OTTO: Yes.

 

MARIE: Nothing left then but the countryside!

 

SILENCE.

 

MARIE: There are millions of Germans in other countries. What about them?

 

OTTO: They tried to escape in ships but the ships were sunk and they drowned.

 

VERONICA: Why does God hate the Germans?

 

KARLA: He hates the Russians more!

 

OTTO: Then why did they win?

 

KARLA: You wait! They will all be killed by the Americans. God loves the Americans!

 

VERONICA: I thought we had a battleship.

 

OTTO: We did.

 

VERONICA: What happened to it?

 

SILENCE.

 

MARIE: What will happen?

 

KARLA: We will dig a cellar!

 

 

THREE. THE BOYS ARE ABSENT. THE GIRLS ARE WORKING, BUILDING. KARLA WITH A SPADE IS TRYING TO GET FREDY TO DIG.

 

KARLA: Dig! Dig a cellar! Dig!

 

FREDY: Give us the freedom to think!

 

KARLA: You are crazy but you can still dig! If you do not dig we will kick you out and you will die! This is our place!

 

HE SWEEPS.

 

KARLA: No! We do not want you to sweep! We want you to dig! You have done enough sweeping! No more sweeping! Enough! Dig! Dig!

SHE HITS HIM. HE CRUMPLES UP ON THE GROUND, CRYING.

 

MARIE: Stop! Make him show us where the secret cellar is! That’s why he won’t dig, because there is a cellar already! A secret cellar! Very deep! Very deep!

 

VERONICA: Where is the secret cellar!

 

FREDY: I pity you, King Philip, pity me!

 

VERONICA: Where is it! Where is it!

 

THEY DANCE AROUND HIM, KICKING HIM.

 

MARIE: Drag him over to the fire!

 

THEY START DRAGGING HIM OVER. ENTER PETER STRAUB.

 

STRAUB: Good morning.

 

MARIE, KARLA, VERONICA: Good morning!

 

THEY STOP STILL AND STAND UP STRAIGHT.

 

STRAUB: Broken appearances and death’s-head features

Mask the sick spirit with strict accuracy –

It looks like what it is. Or so it seems.

For is this tragically suggested phantom

Not just another character and costume

Draping and lacing up and painting over

The sea of light, the death-devouring brightness?

 

FREDY: Herr Straub!

 

STRAUB: Fredy!

 

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE SCHILLER PLAY DON CARLOS, WHICH THEY ACT OUT.

 

FREDY: Carlos!

 

STRAUB:       I must be dreaming! Is it you?

Can this be really you – tell me! It is!

I hold you to my soul; I feel your own

Beating against it, indestructible!

Oh all is well again, and this embrace

Heals my sick heart. I lie against the neck

Of my dear friend Roderigo –

 

FREDY:                        What, your heart?

That needed to be made all well again?

This frightens me –

 

STRAUB:               And you, what brings you here

From Brussels? I was not expecting you,

Marquis – etcetera etcetera! No Fredy we will not do Don Carlos! Why? Everybody is doing it, in every wrecked theatre in Germany. Dear God, there are something like twenty productions rumoured! All for the sake of that one line – Give us the freedom to think! Well it is a good line. Now we have the freedom to think but not to eat. I held out for that line. Yes Fredy I carried on longer than anybody else, you know they banned that play but I carried on anyway, right up to Stalingrad and they said well you can do it but you have to take out that line. I said alright but then on the night, I slipped it in, and the audience! They clapped more for that than they did at the end of the play! There was no second night. I was taken away. But as you see they did not completely kill me.

 

FREDY: I wish the exhortation of the thousands

Whose destinies depend on this great hour

Could crowd into my words and raise the gleam

Beginning in your eyes, into a blaze!

 

STRAUB: No Fredy, no, please –

 

FREDY: Tear from your eyes the evil mask of Godhead,

Beneath whose eyes we perish. Be the image

Of truth and everlastingness. For never

Has any mortal man possessed so much

To do such good with. All the Kings of Europe

Honour the name of Spain above all others.

A single word of yours can suddenly

Create the world anew. Give us the freedom –

 

STRAUB: No Fredy I insist, I insist, not us. In every German city the poor bloody traumatised players are staggering out of whatever camp or costume the notorious regime saw fit to cramp them into and traipsing like stick-thin addicts back to the only places they ever felt slightly at home in, ie the theatres, which are now holes in the ground or holes in the air or stink of  - stink of – righteousness or should I say reichsteousness – and they gather in a little quivering group and gasp out Don Carlos. I will not do it. I love it but I will not do it here. Something else. Something else.

 

FREDY: (SINGS, FROM MACK THE KNIFE.)

When the shark bites, with his teeth dear,

Rosy billows start to spread –

 

STRAUB: No not Brecht, I am ashamed to do Brecht, it gives me a headache just to think about it, let the Russians do Brecht, they deserve it.

 

FREDY: Walpurgisnacht!

 

STRAUB: I am not up to Faust yet, are you up to Faust? I am not up to Faust, not yet. Anyway I wonder where the company is. What have they been up to? Some of them of course are dust. A limited number of roles for those ones. A limited number of great roles for women and the dead. Hamlet’s dad. Of course  if they come we will do what we can! Oh! What has happened to them, Fredy? What strange parts have they been forced to play? Non-homosexual serious political officers and U-boat captains with a strong grasp of navigation, sinking a thousand punters at the press of a button! I hope that none of them – was forced to do any harm – to any other theatre person.

 

FREDY: Do not forget that nothing stands forever,

That there are gods who punish pride! The proof

Is at your feet!

 

STRAUB: Yes if Trudi comes back perhaps we will do Maria Stuart.

 

KARLA: Excuse me.

 

STRAUB: Hello there!

 

KARLA: This is our place.

 

STRAUB: Oh is it? You are welcome! Do you mind if we – play around a bit here? We will happily work around you, if it is your place now! Or maybe you’d like to join in? Do you love theatre?

 

KARLA: What?

 

STRAUB: Do you love theatre, the theatre – plays –

 

KARLA: No.

 

STRAUB: Ah.

 

ENTER OTTO AND WULF, RUNNING. THEY THROW THEMSELVES DOWN.

 

WULF: Save us!

 

KARLA: What?

 

OTTO: They saw us. They chased us. The ones who killed Richard.

 

KARLA: You have led them to us?

 

WULF: No! I don’t think so.

 

KARLA: Marie, Veronica – get to the lookout!

 

EXIT MARIE AND VERONICA.

 

KARLA: We have not built up our defences yet! We have not dug a cellar! Why have you done this?

 

OTTO: They were not in their place. We went to the Tiergarten. They were there, talking to the Americans.

 

KARLA: Get ready to fight!

 

WULF: Put it on, put it back on, the Iron Cross!

 

OTTO: I will!

 

HE PUTS IT BACK ON.

 

STRAUB: Dear God!

 

KARLA: You! Will you fight for us?

 

STRAUB: What?

 

KARLA: Children are coming to kill us!

 

STRAUB: I will certainly – do my best to –

 

KARLA: (TO FREDY.) Slave! Fight! With spade! Otherwise, after the fight, we burn you alive! Slave! Fight!

 

STRAUB: I am not sure – how to kill children –

 

KARLA: Then you will die.

 

WULF: Heap up ammunition.

 

OTTO: Here we will make our last stand.

 

THEY HEAP UP BRICKS ETC.

 

RE-ENTER VERONICA.

 

VERONICA: They are coming down the street.

 

KARLA: How many?

 

VERONICA: Sixteen.

 

KARLA: Now we die.

 

STRAUB: Look, I will go out and speak to them.

 

KARLA: Shut up.

 

RE-ENTER MARIE.

 

MARIE: They do not know where we are. They are coming down the street, looking from side to side. They are not going into the buildings.

 

STRAUB: Great Goethe, put your arms around this theatre!

 

KARLA: Silence!

 

THEY CROUCH OR STAND IN SILENCE IN A DEFENSIVE HUDDLE, FACING OUTWARDS, FOR A LONG TIME.

 

KARLA: Marie – go – look!

 

EXIT MARIE.

 

STRAUB: A horse, a horse –

 

KARLA: Shhh!

 

RE-ENTER MARIE.

 

MARIE: Gone. They have gone. Right down the street. And turned at the end. They did not find us! They do not know we are here! It is a miracle!

 

STRAUB: That is because this building is a theatre.

It is invisible to most young people,

They pass by blithely on the other side,

Encircled by their own preoccupations

As by a swirl of dust, and do not notice

The open door of the imagination.

 

KARLA: Luckily for us. Otto, your report.

 

OTTO: Listen – we are in the American sector! They have now marked out a permanent border.

 

VERONICA: Are we American then?

 

KARLA: Are they giving food?

 

OTTO: No they are showing films. We spoke to a boy who saw one.

 

MARIE: Cowboy films?

 

WULF: No, a film of dead people. In Poland. The Americans said that we killed them.

 

MARIE: Who were they?

 

WULF: Jews.

 

VERONICA: The Jews started the war!

 

WULF: There was a huge camp, in this film. Two camps. In one the Jews worked, in the other they were killed by gas in chambers, then the bodies burned in an oven. Millions.

 

VERONICA: Who won in the end?

 

WULF: He said it was a terrible film. All the time he was waiting for John Wayne. Finally he realised the Americans made this film to drive him mad with boredom. So he ran away from them.

 

MARIE: What shall we do, Karla?

 

KARLA: I am thinking, I am thinking.

 

SILENCE.

 

KARLA: We will not surrender to the Americans. When night comes we will leave this place and cross over to the Russians.

 

STRAUB: Oh don’t do that, my little Kaspar Hausers!

 

MARIE: I want to stay here!

 

KARLA: The Russians give food.

 

OTTO: They do not give food.

 

KARLA: The Russians give food.

 

VERONICA: I want to stay here.

 

KARLA: There is no cellar here. The Americans are not giving food. Our enemies are here.

 

WULF: They did not find us.

 

KARLA: Do you not understand? The Americans want to punish us for what we did in the film.

 

MARIE: They will give food soon.

 

KARLA: No.

 

STRAUB: Stay here with me and I will tell you stories!

 

KARLA: No!

 

OTTO: Go, Karla, if you like!

 

KARLA: I am going!

 

SHE SHUTS HERSELF IN THE WARDROBE.

 

WULF: I can’t believe she –

 

MARIE: Karla is clever, she –

 

STRAUB: She has not gone, stay here with me!

 

MARIE: Why did you call us little Kaspar Hausers?

 

STRAUB: He was an orphan. He was not an orphan,

But he was lost, like you. Well I will tell you.

He walked into the town of Nuremberg.

Walked? No, he hobbled. He could barely stumble.

Over the rooves, the international sun

Was pouring love into the German ground,

Paying attention to each tile and cobble

As if it was her child. Oh little one,

She crooned into the cradle where the world,

Hungry and windy, drew a breath to scream

The cockerel-catch of dream-devouring dawn!

 

MARIE: What has happened to Kaspar?

 

OTTO: When did this happen?

 

VERONICA: What has happened to Kaspar?

 

STRAUB: He is there, he is there – waiting for the story to begin. I am setting the scene. No, he is not waiting for the story, the story is waiting for him. But he cobbles very slowly over the hobbles, his feet are terribly painful! Come on, come on, Kaspar, the story is waiting. Look, I am going as fast as I can – I would rather go back but I do not know where I am – I do not know up and I do not know down, how can I go back to before the beginning when I don’t know what back is – there is a dark place that I love but I do not know where or what.

 

MARIE: Oh Kaspar!

 

VERONICA: Poor Kaspar!

 

STRAUB: He met – I think it was a carpenter,

Forgive me if I get the details wrong,

This is the truth that I am telling you –

Truth is the cloth, and so the coat is true,

Though there may be some doubts about the buttons.

These were the only words that he could say:

I want to be a rider like my father.

 

MARIE: Who was his father?

 

STRAUB:                          Oh my dear, my dear.

 

VERONICA: His father was a rider!

 

STRAUB:                                 That’s the answer!

 

MARIE: What happened then?

 

STRAUB:                              He had a letter on him.

It said: look after this poor boy and feed him.

If you cannot afford the fodder, hang him.

 

MARIE: That’s nice!

 

STRAUB: It was addressed to Captain Somebody,

Whose house was in the town. The carpenter

Hitched up the sack of Kaspar with a groan,

And walked him to the Captain’s house. He cried,

‘I want to be a rider like my father!’

 

VERONICA: The Captain was his father!

 

STRAUB:                             Not at all.

And nothing more could any person learn,

Except for Feuerbach. The mystery

Is absolute, and Kaspar did not know

Who Kaspar was, he was a clueless clue

And rotten central plank of evidence.

 

OTTO: What was he wearing when found?

 

STRAUB: Broad peasant’s hat, in which the words, A Present from Munich, had been partly scratched out.

 

VERONICA: Munich!

 

STRAUB: Yes how did I know that? Big boots, too big – big leather breeches.

 

WULF: What was the date?

 

STRAUB: Eighteen-Nineteen. Have you solved the mystery yet?

 

OTTO: We will. We will certainly solve it.

 

STRAUB: Yes we will! We will solve it together! Will you work with me on this?

 

OTTO: What do you mean?

 

STRAUB: A play! A play of Kaspar Hauser!

 

WULF: A play? God!

 

STRAUB: Stay with me here and work with me on this play! I am a triple-thing,  Poseidon uses me to catch fishes – actor, writer, manager!

 

OTTO: No, no, no, we are soldiers.

 

STRAUB: The war is over! Form another kind of company! There is something retrospective now about slaughter. Consider, please, consider the mystery of Kaspar Hauser! It’s such a brilliant idea!

 

OTTO: No. And this is not a theatre, it is our base. Leave! Unless you are prepared to dig our cellar. Otherwise we will kill you.

 

STRAUB: Dear Lord the youth of today!

 

MARIE: No, no, we want to do it, Otto!

 

VERONICA: We want to do it!

 

STRAUB: You will have the main part, Otto, you will be Kaspar Hauser, see? You are perfect!

 

OTTO: A stumbling idiot?

 

STRAUB: Only at the beginning! Then you show your mastery by the way you transform!

 

OTTO: Mastery?

 

STRAUB: I guarantee it. It is a short step from drill and combat to brilliance onstage! Where you have been, what you have done, by now you understand just about everything. But it is buried deep! Time to express it, time to let it out into the light! You will be the most profound, the most harrowing –

 

VERONICA: Oh I want to see it!

 

MARIE: Me too!

 

STRAUB: You, Wulf  - be the carpenter. Here we are. Look, see, Otto, Kaspar, you have been brought here to Nuremberg, by the man who kept you since you were two years old in a cellar. You are now seventeen but you look maybe fourteen or fifteen – you have only just started to learn to walk. You are like a man with shellshock, look, his comrades have just dug him up from where he was buried by the collapse of the parapet. He steps out into the air. The world is turning around him, oh my Lord he has returned to the time of the dinosaurs – he stumbles along, he has one line to remember. Remember?

 

OTTO: I want to be a rider like my father.

 

STRAUB: Carpenter, ask him questions! But always he replies with the same thing! But it means different things – like, my feet hurt, or, where is the man who brought me here?

 

WULF: Where are you from?

 

OTTO: I want to be a rider like my father.

 

WULF: Why can’t you walk?

 

OTTO: I want to be a rider like my father.

 

WULF: What do you want?

 

OTTO: I want to be a rider like my father.

 

STRAUB: Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! Both of you! Yes – very good, very good! Now, girls – he has come to the house of the Captain! Wulf – you are the Captain! You cannot make head or tail of him! Girls, you are the stable boys, who take him to the stable to lie down – and when the Captain has gone you make fun of him!

 

WULF: Put him in the stable! I cannot make head or tail of him!

 

STRAUB: Wulf, have you never seen a Captain?

 

WULF: Yes I have seen a Captain.

 

STRAUB: Be that Captain!

 

WULF: Put that fucker in the straw, I’ve got enough on my hands! Get him in the straw I said, Jesus Mary and God!

 

STRAUB: Good! Now he has gone!

 

GIRLS LIE OTTO DOWN.

 

MARIE: Oh poor Kaspar!

 

VERONICA: Poor Kaspar!

 

STRAUB: No -  no –

 

MARIE: Lie there and sleep little one!

 

VERONICA: Poor Kaspar –

 

STRAUB: No, no, no, girls –

 

OTTO: Kick me for Christ’s sake! Laugh at me, tell me to get up and dance! Spit on me!

 

MARIE: Get up, Kaspar!

 

VERONICA: Get up and dance with me!

 

MARIE: Get up, dog! Dance!

 

THEY DANCE WITH HIM.

 

STRAUB: Magnificent! Magnificent! This will be such a production!

 

ENTER TRUDI AND ROGER.

 

TRUDI: What are you doing?

 

STRAUB: Trudi! Trudi! And Roger! My God! Any others?

 

TRUDI: No. What are you doing?

 

STRAUB: A new play – Kaspar Hauser.

 

TRUDI: We had better work fast. There are twenty productions of Don Carlos in rehearsal already.

 

STRAUB: You see – with this young company –

 

TRUDI: I get it. A play about Kaspar Hauser performed by children in the ruins of Berlin. With a few parts for adults. Alright, so what is this story about?

 

ROGER: Everything! Everything!

 

TRUDI: Roger is a Kaspar Hauser expert!

 

ROGER: Kaspar Hauser is the child of Europe!

 

TRUDI: And what precisely does that mean?

 

ROGER: He was the son of the Prince of Baden!

 

TRUDI: Really?

 

ROGER: Feuerbach said so!

 

TRUDI: Who is Feuerbach?

 

ROGER: President of the Court of Appeal in Ansbach, a great and famous criminologist – in the Kingdom of Baden!

 

TRUDI: Can we speak to him?

 

ROGER: No – dead! Murdered! And all this happened many years ago – before the first war, before the French war, before the revolution – before Germany was Germany!

 

TRUDI: Ah yes you mentioned the Kingdom of Baden. You see, children, some of you may know, some of you may not know –

 

OTTO, WULF: We know!

 

MARIE: We know!

 

VERONICA: I don’t!

 

TRUDI: Ah good! Germany, you see, was not Germany then! It was lots of little principalities with almost  no connection! Only later it became one thing: Germany! You see all this is important even if you know it, to know it again, for the sake of the play, it must all be extra-present in your mind –

 

STRAUB: Quite right!

 

OTTO: I wish to speak.

 

TRUDI: Speak!

OTTO: Have you brought any food?

 

TRUDI: No.

 

OTTO: Then we do not have any. Our leader has left, she has shut herself up in a box. Now I am the leader. I say we should do your play about Kaspar Hauser, as well as we can. Perhaps British and French soldiers and Americans who love theatre will come, and they will give us food for our performing. But to make a play, clearly there must be much discussing, and then the writing and the learning and rehearsing – also there is only half a roof and the walls are smashed.

 

TRUDI: Yes! Absolutely true and right!

 

OTTO: I am taking command. First, you must go and find an American officer, sleep with him and get him to give you food or else cigarettes which we can sell. Bring them back to us. You Marie and you Veronica and you, Fredy, get bricks and wood from other buildings in the street and bring them here to this one. You two actors also. Myself and Wulf will go to find food and to scout. It is too dangerous for anyone else. Between the hours of six and ten in the evening, if we have found food and if we have made progress with the rebuilding, we will work on the play. Otherwise not. I hope all that is understood because I will not repeat it. Rebuilding party, form up! Woman – get to your work!

 

TRUDI: Dear God!

 

ENTER LIEUTENANT JACKSON AND SOLDIERS.

 

JACKSON: Hold it! Hold it! Nobody move!

Nobody move! Ok boys, search the people,

Then search the building. Got to find the cellar,

Search for the cellar, there are always cellars,

Otherwise nobody would still be breathing

And speaking German, they would all be jam

In the old crumbled donut that is known as

Berlin. They got to have the proper papers,

Adults at least. Not sure about the children.

ADULTS PRESENT THEIR PAPERS.

 

JACKSON: Ok, these persons are identified

Sufficiently. Proceed to search for weapons,

Black market items, any foreign produce.

Nothing at present is to be imported

Into the country known as Germany

Which is much slimmer than it used to be

In every sense – a shrinking of the frontiers

And tightening of the belts! No Red Cross parcels

Or charitable gifts, that is verboten,

And must proceed to us. Now we are searching

Chiefly, I am afraid to say, today,

For body parts. Keep sniffing for that cellar,

Might be another hundred krauts down there,

Living or dead! Two cases are reported

Of women being murdered for their meat.

I thought that only happened in Hamburg!

Oh, that is horrible. Remember also,

To search for fertilizer. Might sound crazy,

In the big city, but the peasant mind

Is a sharp object. It has been decided

By Eisenhower, that the German farmers

Shall not enrich their soil with fertilizer

This year or next year. Wouldn’t it be clever

To shift a dungheap to a cellar here

Out of the obvious and honest farmyard?

Precious as life at present is manure,

Yes, life is shit-cheap in the home of Hitler.

Keep sniffing, boys! Tell us, where is your cellar?

 

OTTO: We have no cellar!

 

JACKSON: What’s this, Iron Cross?

 

GETS OUT HIS REVOLVER TO SHOOT.

 

TRUDI: Stop! He is just a child! Just a joke! Haha!

 

JACKSON: Not funny! Give it here you little –

 

TAKES IRON CROSS, SLAPS OTTO, WHO FALLS DOWN.

 

JACKSON: Ok boys, nothing! Clear out!

 

TRUDI:                                          Stop! I love you!

 

JACKSON: Fraternisation, honey? Try the Russians!

 

EXIT AMERICANS.

 

OTTO: We are dead!

 

ENTER WILLIS WITH SACK OF FOOD, WHICH HE DROPS.

 

WILLIS: Shhhh!

 

EXIT. THEY LEAP ON THE FOOD.

 

 

FOUR. OTTO AS KASPAR, STRAUB AS DAUMER. THE OTHERS WATCH.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar, look up!

 

OTTO LOOKS.

 

                                            He looks, and sees the stars

For the first time. When he was in the cellar

He could not see them. Then in Nuremberg

He was always indoors, in the town jail.

He learned to speak. The jailer’s little boy

Was his professor! He was pestered there

By streams of people, having to perform

And to repeat his story. Some believed,

Some raised their eyebrows. It was such a laugh,

How sudden noises made him shake and sweat,

How words he had not heard would make him quiver

And twitch, how questions that he could not answer

Sent him into a trance! The jailer loved him,

And said, ‘If God should speak out of the sky

And tell me with a storm’s authority

That Kaspar is a fraud, I would reply:

The fraud is you, this boy is true as day!’

Imagine that! A child that cannot lie!

Whoever kept him in a cellar bare

Of everything but his toy horse, and taught him

Only his name and eight poor words to say,

They also failed to teach him cruelty,

Dishonesty and cunning. It is strange!

That was the plain example that they gave!

This child of evil, cradled in a grave,

Suckled by darkness, as packed in with evil

As a bird in its egg, did not grow evil,

Rooted in evil – but put out bright flowers

Of innocence. And not just innocence

But goodness too – it was a shining joy

Just to be with him. He clears out the mind,

And fills it with simplicity again!

Kaspar!

 

OTTO REMAINS FIXED, STARING AT THE STARS.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar!

 

OTTO: Who – put – them – there?

 

STRAUB: That is as far as I have written.

 

ROGER: That is good. Pretty good.

 

OTTO: What did Daumer say to that?

 

ROGER: Well Kaspar had no idea about God.

 

MARIE: Ah!

 

ROGER: In the cellar or whatever it was, he never asked himself anything like, who made me?

 

TRUDI: That is a question invented by priests!

 

ROGER: Kaspar hated priests because when he was in the town jail two priests came to convert him, and he asked them one or two simple questions and they started arguing with each other and fighting! Daumer told him about God but Kaspar would never believe anything he could not test for himself. For instance, Feuerbach said to him –

 

MARIE: Who is Feuerbach, again?

 

WULF: Who is Daumer?

 

ROGER: Ah well, now -

 

STRAUB: You are the expert, Roger, the rest of us are all children!

 

ROGER: Daumer is a professor, a young man who lives in Nuremberg. Now at first Kaspar is held in the jail, nobody knows what to do with him, and then Feuerbach takes over, remember he is the President of the Court of Appeal in Ansbach, a criminologist and instructor in criminal law, he loves Kaspar straightaway as soon as he sees him, he arranges for him to be taken out of the jail and looked after by Daumer in Daumer’s house where he lives with his sister and mother.

 

TRUDI: Female characters!

 

MARIE: What did Feuerbach say to him?

 

ROGER: Kaspar I must tell you that the world is very changeable. For example, you see all these rooves, the red tiles sloping up to the sun – Kaspar loves the colour red – you see the streets below and the green hills beyond and all the trees with their many millions of leaves –

 

OTTO: I see them!

 

ROGER: In awhile it will all be white. The wind will blow, the leaves will fall, and all the rooves will be white and the hills and the streets white, and the trees – covered  in cold stuff called snow.

 

OTTO: Very interesting!

 

ROGER: Don’t you believe me?

 

OTTO: Herr President, I will believe it when I see it.

 

ROGER: And by that he means, that he believes that he will see it, but until that point, he cannot believe it. And then, behold, it snowed! And he ran outside, he ran.

 

ROGER WHISPERS TO OTTO.

 

ROGER: And he touched the snow and –

 

OTTO: Ah! It has bitten me! It bit me! The snow bit my hand! – Let Wulf be Kaspar next time.

 

ROGER: Very well! You can each have your turn!

 

MARIE: What else did he say! What else did he say! What!

 

ROGER: Oh, you know, once, before that, on one of his earliest visits, Feuerbach takes Kaspar to the window and says Kaspar look at all that – you know, the buildings and the fields and all the land, and Kaspar looks and then he jumps back and puts his hands over his face and says, ‘Nasty, nasty, Kaspar not like!’ And a long time later when Kaspar has learned to speak, Feuerbach reminds him of this and asks him what he had seen that he did not like. And Kaspar says – I could not understand any of it, it was just a mess, a maze of shapes, like smashed glass. And that was because he did not know what it was. You see, we cannot see what we do not know.

 

VERONICA: What else!

 

ROGER: Early on when he has only a few words, he applies them to similar things – like he knows the word tail and the word mountain, so when speaking about a certain lady with a long dress he says, ‘the lady with the long tail’ and speaking about a fat man, he says, ‘the man with the mountain.’

 

MARIE: The lady with the long tail!

 

ROGER: He speaks to animals! Once he says to Daumer’s cat, ‘I saw your cousin yesterday.’

 

MARIE: Did he go to school? Did he?

 

ROGER: Ah, now later –

 

VERONICA: What else did he say? What! What!

 

ENTER WILLIS. EVERYONE FREEZES.

 

WILLIS: Morning.

 

TRUDI:                 Good morning. Leave us, everyone,

I and the generous American

Will talk alone.

 

EXIT EVERYONE BUT TRUDI AND WILLIS.

 

WILLIS:               I cannot stay here long.

I should not be here. We have got strict orders

Not to make contact.

 

TRUDI:                       Oh! You must be lonely!

 

WILLIS: No madam, I have got about ten thousand

Friends in Berlin, as well as all the angels

And saints and Jesus and the Holy Spirit

And God.

 

TRUDI:  You are a priest?

 

WILLIS:                          I am a chaplain.

 

TRUDI: I too am a believer!

 

WILLIS:                          Well that’s fine.

Hard to believe at present in the world.
Heaven is easier.

 

TRUDI:            We Christians suffered

Under the worse than atheist Dictator!

 

WILLIS: Now you are all included in the term

German. I mean, both atheists and Christians

Are likewise damned by the official strictures

Descending from above.

 

TRUDI:                       You are so charming!

 

WILLIS: I beg your pardon?

 

TRUDI:                           Thankyou for the cabbage!

 

WILLIS: Oh, that’s ok.

 

TRUDI:                            I wish that I could offer

Anything in return! But I have nothing

Except myself! All that I am is yours,

In holy Christian charity.

 

WILLIS:                       Forgive me,

Madam, there is some cultural confusion,

I gave you nothing, it was Christ that gave,

Using my hands. I would have lacked the courage,

Though I was ripped like tissue by the issue.

Listen, my time is running out. They catch me:

Fraternisation is a grievous trespass.

I have to tell you something hard to say

For an American: prefer the Russians.

Get over there before they seal the borders.

 

TRUDI: Go to the Russians?

 

WILLIS:                      They are feeding Germans.

Which we are not allowed to do. It strains

Even my titan powers of believing,

But it is true – the military princes,

Emperor Eisenhower and the others,

They have decided, since the hour is theirs,

To finish you folk off. They got the power,

And moral right! You seen a Red Cross lately?

Not in this country. Such-like institutions

Are barred from entry. All the useful people

Are being shipped out.  See, America

Wants not to be dragged back across the water

A third time, for the stamping of her soldiers

Into your corpse-crammed soil. You understand me?

But Russia loves you as the whale the krill,

To live off, not addicted to the pleasure

Of your extinction. Be a communist,

Hate God and love your neighbours as yourselves.

And eat.

 

HE LEAVES A BAG OF FOOD AND EXITS.

 

TRUDI: I love you darling, do not leave me!

 

RE-ENTER OTHERS.

 

STRAUB: What did he say?

 

TRUDI: What he said was, I am not allowed to give you food. What he did

was –

 

WULF: Food!

 

ROGER: He wants you!

 

TRUDI: He is a religious man!

 

ROGER: He is fighting against his desire!

 

TRUDI: I made it perfectly clear that I will do anything.

 

ROGER: He will be back, for sure!

 

TRUDI: If not, then –

 

 

FIVE. WULF AS KASPAR. STRAUB AS DAUMER.

 

WULF: Professor, I love these roses. Red is the best colour. The trees and the fields, I find very ugly, there is much too much green, I think it would be better if the grass and the leaves were red, and the wood was red, and if people wore only various shades of red, the world would be much more beautiful. Who makes all these roses? People are so clever! I can draw one and paint it but – I feel it will take me a long time to make one of them! Yet somebody has made hundreds! As for the trees, they are such a work! It is astonishing!

 

STRAUB: Kaspar, they are not made by people!

 

WULF: What?

 

STRAUB: They are not made by people, not put there by people. They grow out of the ground. See here, this is an acorn. Out of this an oak tree grows, little by little. You understand? It puts roots down into the ground and then by means of sunlight and rain, it grows up –

 

WULF: Ah.

 

STRAUB: Do you believe me?

 

WULF: I imagined that people make them.

 

STRAUB: No.

 

WULF: Oh.

 

STRAUB: You do not believe me, Kaspar, do you?

 

WULF: Professor, I know of course that you are not lying –

 

STRAUB: You yourself were once small!

 

WULF: Me?

 

STRAUB: Yes – tiny! And you grew.

 

WULF: No.

 

STRAUB: Yes!

 

WULF: No. Out of the ground?

 

STRAUB: First you were inside your mother.

 

WULF: My mother? Where is she now? Show her to me!

 

STRAUB: Look, Kaspar, take these, these are seeds. You will plant them yourself in the ground and then you will see!

 

 

SIX. EVENING. FIRE. OTTO CARVING A WOODEN HORSE WITH WHEELS. EVIDENCE OF BUILDING WORK.

 

MARIE: When will Karla come out of the cupboard?

 

TRUDI: We must fetch her out.

 

MARIE: Not Karla! She will come out when she wants to come out.

 

TRUDI: She has been in there for two days!

 

WULF: That is just what she is like.

 

OTTO: Probably she comes out when we are asleep.

 

VERONICA: She is very angry with us.

 

TRUDI: I am going to look!

 

MARIE: Don’t!

 

TRUDI: I must!

 

SHE OPENS THE WARDROBE.

 

TRUDI: Nothing!

 

MARIE: She has gone.

 

SILENCE.

 

VERONICA: Soon our mother will come.

 

MARIE: On her horse.

 

SILENCE.

 

WULF: What will happen to Germany?

 

OTTO: There is no such thing. It has gone.

 

MARIE: No such thing?

 

STRAUB: It was a good idea, once.

 

VERONICA: What happened?

 

SILENCE.

 

TRUDI: I killed my lover.

 

MARIE: Oh!

 

STRAUB: Who, Rudi?

 

WULF: Tell us!

 

TRUDI: I loved him. He was a busker and sang divinely. I picked him up, I have no apologies, we lived together and he sang in the theatre, and then I fell in love with someone else and Rudi ran away. I realised I had made a mistake and I went back to him, but by then he had joined the party. I said to him, Rudi, the god you worship is a strangler. He said, Well I have got to worship some god or other. Anyway we got back together. He loved me. He never told them what I said to him when we were alone. Never. If he had done, I would be dead of course. Love kept me alive, with its technique of screens. Of course I kept thinking, there is hope for him. But they too had high hopes, they thought he was a perfect instrument and they gave him important positions, like he was in charge of the railways. The railways! Well what can possibly be wrong with the railways? Like you might say, what could possibly be dangerous about taking a shower? That kind of innocence leads to the death of millions. But true love is truly naive. Or its roots are. Often the bud is wise, and the bloom droops with experience. Eventually I decided to poison him. Not because he was a Nazi but because I loved him. He died in my arms and I ran away to Switzerland and lived as a simple shepherdess singing songs. This is a fable. It happened, but it is still a fable.

 

 

SEVEN. THEY ARE ALL BUILDING.

 

OTTO: Six o’clock!

 

EVERYONE DOWNS TOOLS. MARIE AS KASPAR, STRAUB AS DAUMER, IMMEDIATELY SPRING INTO ACTION.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar! Kaspar! Come see! Come see! Your seeds!

 

MARIE RUNS OVER.

 

STRAUB: See! They have grown! They have grown!

 

MARIE: Indeed! Indeed! So none of this, so all of this – no people did – none – so all –

 

SHE BURSTS OUT LAUGHING AND CRYING, DANCES. STRAUB DANCES WITH HER.

 

OTTO: Meanwhile what is Feuerbach doing?

 

STRAUB: I have written a speech for him –

 

GIVES PAPER TO ROGER, WHO READS FROM IT.

 

ROGER: This is a crime against a human soul.

A deed as yet uncodified in law,

Sin without precedent. To take a child

And place it in a cellar six by four,

And five foot high,and caged within that cellar,

So that he could not stand. From four years old.

Release him at sixteen into the world,

Incapable of speaking, walking, writing

Anything but his name over and over

In penny farthing letters. Kaspar Hauser.

This was a crime against development,

A ravage in the lovely weave of nature,

Long drawing-out of harm far worse than murder.

And we can hear the faraway dark laughter

Echoing deeply in this name of Hauser.

Hauser, the one who houses, stays indoors,

Venturing out into the flowers and stars

Never, in all his childhood –

 

MARIE: But then he did! And he was happy! He saw the flowers and stars! And he loved them!

 

ROGER: Feuerbach notes that Kaspar is haunted by profound melancholy. It leaves him never, though he is almost always stimulated and interested. Daumer states that his one concern for Kaspar is that he will harm himself with too much late night study. He wants the world! He never complains against his original jailer, whom he calls, the man I was always with. Except that he says of him, ‘Why did he not tell me about any of these things?’ He has so much to learn! He sees that he is ignorant, he sees that he has been harmed, deep down, that something has been taken away from him that nothing, nothing can ever return! He is sad, desperately, desperately sad – and Feuerbach says to him –

 

STRAUB: Here, here –

 

INDICATES IN THE SCRIPT. ROGER READS, ADDRESSING MARIE.

 

ROGER: Kaspar, these shining people that you see,

Talking so cleverly about the world,

Who were not shut in cellars six by four

When they were young, they do not see the day

With eyes like yours, they walk through fields of flowers,

Hurrying to their end, stone-blind to stones,

And deaf to every common lifted song.

But you are pierced by every passing thing,

Everything that your eye sees, your heart hears.

Your soul presents no surface to the world,

It all pours in, like water to the centre,

Descending unobstructed rush of brightness!

 

SPEAKS OFF-SCRIPT.

 

Yes that is true, but – what does Kaspar reply? He is still as sad as ever! Look, he has to carry that! He can’t stitch it up, that rip in his life! He has got to carry on being wounded!

 

OTTO: Oh Kaspar!

 

WULF: Kaspar!

 

MARIE: Who was that man he was always with?

 

VERONICA: Did he not teach him anything?

 

ROGER: Listen, Kaspar never even saw him until the very end when he came to release him!

 

OTTO: That is not possible.

 

ROGER: Yes! Kaspar slept and when he woke, there was water and bread. Never quite enough water! He first fed his horse – actually he had three horses.

 

OTTO DOES THIS.

 

ROGER: Then he dresses them in red ribbons which he has. Then plays with them. And to Kaspar, when he first appears in Nuremberg, horse means the same as good! Then at last he sleeps again. Sometimes his water tastes bitter and when he drinks it he sleeps deeply and when he wakes he has been washed, his clothes changed, his fingernails and toenails cut. Opium! His trousers were cut behind so he did not shit in them! There was a little hole in the ground. He never saw or spoke to anyone!

 

TRUDI: Who did this thing!

 

STRAUB: Aha! You want to know about the demon

Who works to push us humans back to stooping?

Who longs to drive us back into the cave

Where dim we crouched till speech uncurled our backbones?

His name is Mephistopheles, the liar!

That is your suspect, Feuerbach, no other!

Goethe exposed him in this very theatre,

That is why every building in this city

Gapes like a pole-axed skull, with charcoaled eyeholes!

The devil does not like it if you name him!

He likes to go disguised, so we can serve him

Without demur, and think ourselves good subjects,

Obedient to the law! With tail tucked neatly

Into his uniform or suit, he rules us,

And any foolish god, daredevil angel

Or saint who comes into the world through woman,

Gets crucified or disbelieved or worse!

Earth is the devil’s tight and secret kingdom!

 

VERONICA: Was Kaspar Hauser an angel?

 

ROGER: Well – er –

 

MARIE: Was he? Was he?

 

ROGER: Yes.

 

TRUDI: Haha! We are doing a nativity!

 

ROGER: Yes! Kaspar is the name of one of the wise kings who journeyed to Bethlehem!

 

TRUDI: Roger for God’s sake unravel your theology!

 

ENTER KARLA. THE CHILDREN GASP. SHE IS IN A TRANCE. SHE CARRIES A SACK.

 

STRAUB: Behold, the leader! She has returned!

 

KARLA COLLAPSES.

 

TRUDI: Ah!

 

TRUDI RUNS OVER TO HER, PICKS HER UP, CARRIES HER OFF.

 

 

EIGHT. VERONICA AS KASPAR, WRITING AT A DESK.

 

VERONICA: I will write the story of Kaspar Hauser myself! I will tell how I lived in the prison, and describe what it looked like, and everything that was there.

 

ROGER: Yes that is it, he writes his autobiography, a short document, and it is published, and almost immediately – go on, do it then –

 

STRAUB: Kaspar is sitting on the toilet. In the house of Professor Daumer. Go on then Veronica.

 

VERONICA SITS ON THE TOILET.

 

ROGER: He hears a man come. Fredy!

 

FREDY STARTS TO SWEEP.

 

STRAUB: We cannot ask Fredy to act. He sweeps. That is what Fredy does.

 

ROGER: Alright then, Otto –

 

OTTO: Wulf can do it!

 

ROGER: Otto!

 

OTTO: Wulf can do it.

 

ROGER: Wulf?

 

WULF: Alright then.

 

ROGER: He hears a man. Creak, creak. Who stands outside the door. The door opens. Kaspar stands up.

 

WULF: Now Kaspar you must die!

 

HE STRIKES KASPAR WITH A HATCHET ON THE FOREHEAD. KASPAR COLLAPSES. WULF RUNS OFF. KASPAR GETS UP, STAGGERS AWAY.

 

ROGER: He hides in the cellar.

 

VERONICA: We have  not got a cellar yet.

 

OTTO: We are going to dig one.

 

WULF: But all this theatre work –

 

ROGER: We do not need an actual cellar.

 

VERONICA: Yes we do.

 

ROGER: I mean not for the play –

 

MARIE: But when the bombs come again!

 

STRAUB: We must first rebuild the roof and the walls, so that we can perform! If we can perform we can eat, if we can eat we can dig a cellar!

 

OTTO: We cannot dig a cellar if we are dead!

 

ROGER: They may not start fighting again. They must be tired!

 

ENTER TRUDI.

 

STRAUB: How is she?

 

TRUDI: The girl has been raped.

 

WULF: Where did she get the food?

 

TRUDI: From the Russian sector.

 

WULF: If there is food then we should go there.

 

ROGER: But the American –

 

OTTO: Where is he? That was two days ago. He is scared of fraternising.

 

WULF: It was only Jesus working through him.

 

OTTO: Now Jesus is busy somewhere else.

 

WULF: We must go to the Russian sector.

 

TRUDI: You will have to leave your leader behind. She will not go back there. I will not go there. Nor these girls.

 

OTTO: They are too young even for the Russians! We will take them!

 

MARIE: I don’t want to go! Kaspar Hauser!

 

OTTO: Alright you – woman, you must find the American chaplain.

 

TRUDI: He does not want me.

 

OTTO: He does. Go!

 

EXIT TRUDI.

 

OTTO: Now tell us – who tried to kill him!

 

VERONICA: Tell us why you said he was an angel!

 

MARIE: Tell us everything! Now! Quickly!

 

 

NINE. ROGER AS FEUERBACH, READING SCRIPT.

 

ROGER: What is a child? What are they doing here,

Who lets them fall into the adult world,

As from an airship sacks of gold-dust ballast,

Out of their playful spiritual sphere?

There ought to be a warning on the womb,

Abandon hope all ye who enter here,

There ought to be no children in this world.

So have I got you, Mephistopheles,

Have I deduced some of the human names

You are at present wearing? Somebody

Wants Kaspar dead. Is this political,

Dynastic? Can we find a family

In which for lizard reasons no male child

Has been allowed to live?

 

HE LOOKS THROUGH A PILE OF GENEALOGIES AND FAMILY TREES.

 

Bavaria – no – Prussia – no, no -

The Prince of Baden –

All his male children died, all of his daughters

Survived. One male child died in the same year

Kaspar was born – if I have guessed his age.

The father shortly followed and the crown

Passed to the sons of the Duchess of Hochburg.

The mother, who was French, adopted daughter

Of Bonaparte, she named her little boy

Gaspard –

 

MARIE: It must be him! It has to be!

 

ROGER: They swapped him for another, sickly child,

Who died. His mother did not see the body –

She was too sick herself! They would not let her!

 

VERONICA: She is Kaspar’s  mother, she is Kaspar’s mother!

 

OTTO: I do not believe in this fairytale!

 

ROGER: Alright but you are arguing against Feuerbach, foremost criminologist of the time, who was actually there!

 

VERONICA: I believe! It is his mother!

 

MARIE: (IN A FRENCH ACCENT.) Where are you my little one, I did not even see your dead body, they tell me you are dead but how do I know? Yet another little boy! Why do my girls live and my boys die?

 

VERONICA: He is alive! He is alive!

 

SHE RUSHES INTO MARIE’S ARMS.

 

ROGER: Kaspar sees her in dreams but he can never speak to her! Always she is turned away!

 

MARIE STANDS TURNED AWAY FROM WULF.

 

WULF: Turn around, mother, turn around!

 

ROGER: Now he wakes! She is gone! And in another dream he sees the coat of arms of the House of Baden! He describes them to Feuerbach! See, Kaspar is closing in on himself, he is following his own tracks through the wood of his mind, where the snow is deep. The night is dark but there are one or two helpful stars  – and now the moon is rising!

 

MARIE: You have not told us why you said he was an angel!

 

ROGER: Have you learned this bit? The experiments. Kaspar and Daumer.

 

OTTO: Yes we have learned it.

 

STRAUB: (AS DAUMER.) Kaspar, walk ahead of me a bit.

 

OTTO WALKS AHEAD. STRAUB GESTURES TO ONE SIDE, OTTO LOOKS THAT WAY. STRAUB GESTURES THE OTHER WAY, SAME THING. STRAUB TAKES NOTES.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar, there is a bush of berries around the other side of those trees, what kind are they?

 

OTTO SNIFFS THE AIR.

 

OTTO: Bilberries!

 

STRAUB: One hundred yards. Now I am going to get something, Kaspar, and put it in my pocket and you have got to guess what it is.

 

EXIT STRAUB, RE-ENTER. KASPAR SHUDDERS AND CRIES OUT.

 

OTTO: Mercury!

 

STRAUB: Yes you are correct, Kaspar! I am sorry –

 

ROGER: He can read in pitch darkness, he can remember the names of hundreds of people he has only met once. These powers continue until Professor Daumer begins to wean him from his diet of just bread and water. First a little soup, with a trace of meat – then more and more – Kaspar loses his sensitivity to metals, his telepathy, his cat’s eyes –

 

WULF: And all this means he was an angel?

 

 

TEN. EVENING. FIRE. ENTER TRUDI, IN A KIND OF TRANCE.

 

TRUDI: I could not find him. Everywhere the city

Is wrapped in spiderswebs. You must walk slowly,

They are invisible – there are some people

Who tried to hurry, and they crouch in doorways,

Mummified. Mostly people walk like Kings

Or Queens, with trains of dusty cobweb trailing

For miles behind them, full of moths and houseflies.

 

OTTO: You did not find the American?

 

TRUDI: I met Herr Wagner strolling in the strasse,

Singing his Parsifal. I said, Herr Wagner,

I thought that you were dead. He said, I am,

But look, this country and the underworld

Are now so similar, so frail the border

Of flesh, a tattered sack, that I can wander

Breezily through it like the air a tenor

Sucks in and sings out! So can you my dear.

I said, Which side am I on now? He answered –

Look at the sign. A sign said Wilhelmstrasse,

But to my eyes it was a bristling river

Of lights, and they were rushing to a drain,

And streaming underground. I said, Herr Wagner,

Where is the Holy Grail? He took my hand,

And looked into my eyes, and he was crying –

 

OTTO: You did not find the American! There is no one to look after us! So now we are leaving!

 

MARIE: Should we try the British?

 

STRAUB: He may still come!

 

ROGER: Easier for him to find us than for us to find him!

 

MARIE: We are not going!

 

OTTO: Wulf and I are going! Come, Wulf!

 

VERONICA: Don’t leave us!

 

MARIE: Don’t leave us!

 

OTTO: Damn! Damn! Well do not sleep, you may wake up anytime and find us gone!

 

 

ELEVEN. BUILDING, VERY SLOWLY, STARVING. ROGER STOPS.

 

ROGER: Just after the attack on Kaspar, there appears – an earl! An English earl!

 

THE OTHERS ALL STOP TO LISTEN.

 

MARIE: You have not told us how badly Kaspar was hurt -

 

ROGER: He lies delirious for several days, muttering, ‘You have killed me before I understand what life is,’ and suchlike pitiful things. But then he recovers. He is strong! And suddenly this earl appears, Count Stanhope, and takes him under his wing. But what kind of wing is it, a swan’s wing, a peregrine’s wing, a kingfisher’s wing, a vulture’s wing? Stanhope! We must talk about him, Peter, you must write something for him!

 

 

TWELVE. VERONICA AS KASPAR, TRUDI AS STANHOPE. TRUDI KNEELS ON ONE KNEE.

 

TRUDI: Kaspar, at last my ship has found her star!

The sky has cleared, the shapeless mass of ocean

Has changed into a moon-paved avenue

That leads to my heart’s harbour! I have wandered

Hopeless, my soul starved hollow, through the dead world.

Prophets have told me, go, the truth is there,

The spring of life, the Grail, is to be found

In this place or in that place, so I ran,

Childishly, but my hands clutched empty air

Always! And then I heard, across the water,

Rumours of something new – a child was born –

Oh yes it was like that, I was a magus

Suddenly looking up and seeing there

The expectations of a thousand years

Glimmering to fulfilment! Kaspar Hauser!

 

KASPAR: I do not understand.

 

TRUDI:                                   A perfect person,

Innocent, brilliant, had appeared from nowhere,

Shining with goodness, filling up the hearts

Of grave, responsible and earthly Germans

Like Feuerbach, with light from distant planets!

I had to see you – test the truth of you –

Feel how my own heart swelled! And it is true!

I love you, Kaspar, you have saved my life,

Restored my trust, refreshed the trees of Eden

Experience had blackened. I declare

You are the Grail, my friend, you are the garden.

So I devote my life to you, desiring

To be your guardian, your true friend, your father.

 

KASPAR: Thankyou.

 

TRUDI:                    Let one sweet kiss confirm our union.

 

HE KISSES KASPAR.

 

ROGER: They are always together, the earl takes Kaspar riding, buys him beautiful clothes, introduces him to Dukes and Barons and Countesses, all his glittering friends! Daumer does not trust Stanhope an inch, but Stanhope convinces Feuerbach that he is a true and real benefactor, wanting nothing but the best for Kaspar! A miracle of English kindness! And frequently Stanhope disappears on his travels, and life goes back to normal for Kaspar, studying, wondering, dreaming, riding – he is a good rider! And then Stanhope reappears with gifts from foreign countries for Kaspar. And all this is paid for in secret by the house of Baden! Stanhope himself is penniless and in debt! Yes, Stanhope is working for the Prince of Baden – the one who is sitting on Kaspar’s throne!

 

TRUDI: Child, I have racked my brains, and made enquiries,

Where in the world could such a soul have sprung from?

This tortured me. There has to be an answer!

All things have causes in this world, no flower

Is rooted in the air, rain requires water,

Everyone has a mother and a father!

It is my fate to have acquired by travel

A populated mind, a night sky brilliant

With constellations of acquaintance complex

And widespread. I can think my way by cousins

From capital to capital. I pondered

Like an astrologer, and plumbed my soul

To almost necromantic depths. And broke

At last into the tomb of truth. At last

The sun has risen from the sea of doubt.

Ah Kaspar, I have spoken with your mother.

 

VERONICA: My mother?

 

TRUDI:                             Shhh! We must not speak about her!

Not yet! Sufficient for the intricate,

Delicate present that I simply whisper:

My Prince!

 

HE KNEELS AND BOWS HIS HEAD.

 

VERONICA:             What are you saying?

 

TRUDI:                                                I will serve you

In secret! I will cut the ropes that keep you

Ignorant of yourself, set free your people,

Who are denied a prince like Alexander!

Of course, against us works the witch whose word

Cast you into the pit of black unbeing!

Monsters and giants move at her command,

In her waste heart the multiplying nothings

Increase their need for life! We must not speak

All that we know, until the proper time.

Trust me, I love you and my heart is true.

If you are patient, then I will prevail.

May I serve you?

 

VERONICA:   You may.

 

TRUDI:                        Unbounded honour!

How can I rise to this reality?

I must return to my estates in England.

You I will summon soon to be my heir,

Shining beside me in my ivied castle,

A hut compared to where you should sit throned,

But nobler than this house at least. From there,

Having schemed widely, with a force of friends

We will set out to win you back your kingdom!

 

VERONICA: Father!

 

TRUDI:               Ah, Kaspar! Take these golden coins,

A little but a loving offering,

My Prince! The dragon-guarded treasury

Of the whole mineral and inward world

Ought to be yours, but may this token strain

To represent your splendour with its gleam,

While you and I must wrap ourselves in shadows.

This is a secret gift, my Prince. The man

With whom you live, dim Daumer, must not learn

That I have given you this gold. Remember

Too – he is nothing but a common man.

You are a Prince. You must not tell him so,

But neither must you let his large commands

Shrink you into obedience. Begin

To lift your head – to question, to be dumb,

Or slow. Remember that your will is yours,

Not his. You must begin to learn to reign,

To wear a crown, hold power in your hands.

That is your destiny, of which this man

Is deeply ignorant.

 

ROGER: You see! So Stanhope turns Kaspar against Daumer – divide and rule, the English are masters! Kaspar has looked into the devil as into a mirror, and there he sees – a liar!

 

TRUDI: (TO STRAUB.) Herr Daumer I am going.

 

ROGER: Kaspar is not in the room!

 

STRAUB: Goodbye, Count!

 

TRUDI: I have given Kaspar a few gold coins. He will hand them over to you for safekeeping.

 

STRAUB: Very well. Farewell, Count!

 

ROGER: So the Count leaves! Kaspar enters!

 

STRAUB: (TO VERONICA.) Give me the money that the Count gave to you. I will keep it for you.

 

VERONICA: He gave me no money.

 

STRAUB: What did you say?

 

VERONICA: He gave me no money.

 

ROGER: Daumer! This was the second fall of man! Out of a blue sky falls – blood! A lie has dropped out of the mouth of an angel. Out of the mouth of God flies – the devil!

 

MARIE: Poor Kaspar!

 

ROGER: Daumer cannot bear it. After the first lie comes – another and another! Also Daumer is afraid of the attacker, who is never caught, though Feuerbach has ordered that Kaspar be accompanied everywhere by two police officers. Kaspar has to leave Daumer’s house. First he goes to the house of a rich woman who falls in love with him and later hangs herself.

 

TRUDI: (AS WOMAN.) Kaspar! Kiss me! Kaspar!

 

ROGER: Then he is sent to Ansbach, where Feuerbach lives, and there he lodges with a schoolmaster called Meyer – chosen for him by Stanhope! This Meyer hates Kaspar! He does not believe at all in Kaspar’s story, he thinks Kaspar is a fraud, who just wanted to be famous, Meyer tells Kaspar to stop pretending to be good and sweet and kind –

 

STRAUB: (AS MEYER.) Stop pretending, stop lying! Break down, admit to me the truth that you are nothing, you are no one!

 

ROGER: The worst kind of teacher! A complete disbeliever! Kaspar’s life becomes one long interrogation!

 

WULF: And does he go to school?

 

ROGER: Yes he goes to school now! And he learns Latin!

 

MARIE: Ah!

 

ROGER: He has only just learned to speak German! He wants to learn about the world he is in, to look all around, far and near, and his head is forced down under the water of Latin grammar till he drowns again and again! He complains or should I say he gasps for air and they reply to him: you cannot learn German properly if you do not know Latin. And the Romans, he answers, were they required to learn German?

 

MARIE: Kaspar!

 

VERONICA: Kaspar!

 

OTTO: Where is Stanhope now?

 

ROGER: Visits every now and again, with bigger and bigger promises that are never fulfilled – never!

 

TRUDI: (AS STANHOPE.) Kaspar, you are the King of England’s daughter!

 

WULF: What is Feuerbach doing? If he is so sure that Kaspar is the Prince of Baden, why does he not proclaim it to the world?

 

ROGER: How can he? The ones who did the crime hold absolute power! Feuerbach rages in private but in public he can do nothing. Until one day his rage burns through the barrier, private is public and public is private, he makes his plans, he sets out to confront a certain antique Duke with the truth! But before he can get two miles he drops dead, poisoned!

 

STRAUB: Feuerbach!

 

ROGER: Yes Feuerbach!

 

STRAUB: That will be a good scene, a great scene, full of suspense and death – but what then?

 

WULF: Feuerbach! I had high hopes for Feuerbach1

 

OTTO: So did I! He is really dead is he?

 

ROGER: Dead.

 

STRAUB: So – in this story – nothing goes right –

 

ROGER: Nothing !

 

STRAUB: This is something I am beginning to question. Trudi, where are you going?

 

TRUDI: To check on the girl.

 

STRAUB: Don’t be long. This is an important point. Now Roger, I was enthusiastic about Kaspar in the beginning, but I am beginning to wonder – is there any redemption whatsoever? Yes I did know that Feuerbach dies but I had forgotten just how grim it gets. It starts off hopefully, that’s excellent, the audience are sitting down happily, yes Kaspar is my child, or Kaspar is me, see how well he is doing at reading and writing and speaking and drawing and everybody loves him, excellent, see how the human spirit springs back, not even fourteen years in a slightly oversized grave can stunt it, no, life is stronger than death, love is stronger than hate, all these are great themes and then a normal amount of sadism of course will want things to go wrong, it will be fun to see Kaspar suffer, but if that gets too much they feel complicit, do you see, they feel evil and then they will stay away in droves.

 

ROGER: You are an idiot Peter, it is not sadism it is compassion!

 

STRAUB: Really?

 

ROGER: Have you ever been a busker? Make them laugh and they give you copper, make them cry and they give you paper!

 

STRAUB: But they won’t cry if there’s no hope! Despair is dry-eyed. Look around the streets of Berlin, are the people crying?

 

ROGER: You think we should abandon Kaspar?

 

STRAUB: After a certain point it is all downhill – everything! I know what happens next! It’s horrible!

 

ROGER: But our speech and actions will be beautiful! Even in Lucifer’s fall from heaven there is a certain high-diving beauty, grace even –

 

STRAUB: We can try but – where is the redemption? I say again. If there is none, our beautiful speaking is a lie and so are our beautiful actions, luring the audience with smiles into an alley to kosh them!

 

ROGER: There is redemption. Plenty of redemption.

 

STRAUB: I don’t see it. I can’t write it.

 

ROGER: I will tell you then!

 

RE-ENTER TRUDI WITH KARLA, DEAD.

 

TRUDI: The girl is dead. She hanged herself. There is this note.

 

ROGER: Read it.

 

TRUDI: You read it.

 

ROGER READS.

 

ROGER: Soon you will all follow me. There is nowhere else to go. It is not so bad. I have told the others where you are, the ones who killed Richard. I am sorry. I was angry.

 

OTTO: We must get out of here now!

 

WULF: Wait!

 

WULF EXITS.

 

VERONICA: Wulf!

 

MARIE: He has gone to the lookout!

 

RE-ENTER WULF.

 

WULF: Too late. They are here. They are waiting.

 

TRUDI: What do they want?

 

MARIE: To kill us!

 

STRAUB: Why?

 

MARIE: They are guilty. They took our food and Richard died.

 

STRAUB: Are they insane? If they kill more of you they will be more guilty!

 

MARIE: Well we are their enemies.

 

WULF: We will beat them! We have four adults!

 

OTTO: Ha! They are actors!

 

WULF: Will you fight?

 

STRAUB: I’ll give them a damn good hiding!

 

WULF: Two of them have got guns.

 

MARIE: Perhaps they do not have any ammunition.

 

OTTO: One bullet maybe. It’s enough.

 

ROGER: Christ help us!

 

WULF: Ha!

 

OTTO: It was like this on the Oder. Compared to the Russians we had nothing. And so we lost. Still, we fought them.

 

VERONICA: What shall we do, Otto?

 

OTTO: The actors cannot fight but they can act. Alright, so, you will come in behind us, a little way behind, act frightening. Perhaps straightaway they will run. I do not think so. So, we will fight anyway.

 

STRAUB: We will do as you say.

 

ROGER: You think we can’t fight, you are wrong.

 

OTTO: Haha! It is just like the Oder. Children and old men acting like soldiers. Follow me.

 

EXIT. SOUND OF SHOUTING, SCREAMING. RE-ENTER FREDY CLUTCHING HIS HEAD, REELING AROUND. HE STARTS FRANTICALLY SWEEPING. RE-ENTER TRUDI HELPING ROGER, WHO IS HURT.

 

ROGER: Peter! Peter is fighting like Coriolanus!

 

GUNSHOT OFFSTAGE. SLOWLY RE-ENTER MARIE, VERONICA, WULF, STRAUB, CARRYING OTTO, DEAD.

 

WULF: Victory!

 

TRUDI: Otto!

 

MARIE: He is dead.

 

WULF: Victory! They only had one bullet, he was right! Once they had fired that they ran! Victory!

 

 

THIRTEEN. EVENING. FIRE.

 

ROGER: I wish to tell you then, if you can still listen, the end of the story of Kaspar Hauser. I say it is full of redemption. Why? It is a question of history. And sacrifice. Listen! The angels and the celestial beings who watch over earth and who guide us sometimes, though more and more they leave us to our own devices, hoping, hoping that we will cope on our own, these beings, one of them, intended to come down to earth and to be born as a person.

 

TRUDI: Who told you this?

 

ROGER: It came to me as a vision. In Buchenwald.

 

MARIE: Tell us!

 

ROGER: They were about to hang me.

 

VERONICA: Have you been hanged?

 

ROGER: No. I was reprieved. The Commandant – well never mind –

 

VERONICA: Tell how you were saved!

 

ROGER: He recognised my face from a film.

 

STRAUB: Ah!

 

ROGER: So the others who were not actors, hanged.

 

MARIE: Oh!

 

ROGER: Yes I know, it is shameful!

 

MARIE: No, no! Why?

 

WULF: Carry on with what you were saying!

 

ROGER: I have been tied all my life to that story, ever since I could think my mind has tugged at the knot of that mystery, now as I stood with the rope round my neck, it was given to me to understand.

 

VERONICA: We might never have known!

 

WULF: You might never know, if you don’t be quiet!

 

MARIE: An angelic being –

 

ROGER: Intended to enter into history. But certain brotherhoods –

 

WULF: Who? Who?

 

STRAUB: Jesuits and Freemasons!

 

ROGER: They wanted to prevent this from happening.

 

MARIE: How could they?

 

ROGER: Ah well. By means of strange enquiry they learnt exactly out of which womb this child would be born!

 

VERONICA: Ha!

 

ROGER: Stephanie de Beauharnais, the wife of the Prince of Baden – this was the woman!

 

MARIE: So that an angel would be the Prince of Baden!

 

ROGER: Yes! But the Grand Duchess of Hochberg killed each one of the male children.

 

WULF: So that her own sons could sit on the throne!

 

ROGER: That was the obvious, the historical reason, but –

 

STRAUB: Something even darker was also happening.

 

ROGER: Yes, Peter, you understand! We appear to be living but we are actually dying! We appear to be dying but we are actually living!

 

STRAUB: Two opposite streams flow together as one!

 

ROGER: Ha! And this explains –

 

MARIE: What? What does it explain?

 

ROGER: Why they did not kill him.

 

WULF: They kept him in a cage in the dark till he was sixteen!

 

ROGER: Yes! If they had put a stop to his body, the angel would entered a different womb, or the same one again –

 

STRAUB: Poor Stephanie de Beauharnais!

 

ROGER: Yes, yes! Think of the pain of this woman!

 

VERONICA: Kaspar!

 

ROGER: A body that could not grow up! Could not learn to read or write or speak! A trap set to catch an angel!

 

TRUDI: Roger, on the gallows do you think you might have lost your mind?

 

ROGER: I lost the mind that could not think these things! And there are many like me, who have come through, who have walked through the valley of death, maybe a bullet missed by an inch, maybe an instinct made them quit the house just before it was hit – do you think that the mind remains the same? Do you think that the human mind itself could possibly remain the same after all this? No, no, no. Thoughts that a person could think in Nineteen Thirteen are not possible anymore – and we have seen with our own eyes things he could not imagine!

 

 

FOURTEEN. STRAUB AS STANHOPE. MARIE AS KASPAR.

 

STRAUB: Farewell once more, my Prince. Do not despair.

Though often when I leave you I am gone

For longer than I say, I do return.

When the steel firedoors of necessity

At last relenting to my heart, creak open,

Then like a swallow through the gap I arrow,

Straight to your hand. I know that I have promised

Things unfulfilled. You do not even mention

These gulfs between the thing said and thing done –

That you were to have been my heir in England,

Live with me there – and this will be, I swear,

Only, not yet. If I were to whip on

The horses of slow fortune, in my passion,

That would not bring us quicker to your crown,

I promise you. The wheels of the machine

By which I mean to raise you to your throne,

Have to grind gradually. They mill our bones

To powder in the process, but we grin,

And bend our golden heads to whitening time!

So we grow great! The fact that you, deep friend,

Have not so much as breathed a reprimand

About my promises – that clears my mind,

That dredges me of centuries of slime,

So I flow clear and deep and sweet again,

Berth for the deepest drafts! Your expectations

Are held within, so that I can imagine

Fondly, that it is me you wish to see,

Not just the prize that you will seize through me!

Not just your sacred mother’s heart in mine!

You let me think that, and such sweet indulgence

Is love enough, so I am satisfied,

Your love increases mine and service blooms

Into delight! So we must part again,

And you must stay in Ansbach, still disguised,

Diligent clerk to undivining eyes,

Great Prince to mine alone,

Since Feuerbach is dead. I know this man

Meyer, your teacher, is a biting fly,

But Kaspar, let him have his buzzing hour,

Think how he will be swatted when you ride,

Crowned, to his door, and offer him forgiveness!

 

ROGER AS MEYER.

 

ROGER: Kaspar, say goodbye to the Count and go to your room.

 

KASPAR: Goodbye my Lord.

 

STRAUB: Ah! Goodbye!

 

ROGER: Kaspar goes. They speak alone.

 

STRAUB: He has not given any hint?

 

ROGER: (AS MEYER.) Not yet! He is cunning!

 

STRAUB: Of course he is cunning! How do you think he has fooled the whole world? But there is no Daumer shielding him here, no Feuerbach now! Their Majesties are increasingly eager, as you can imagine, to put to sleep the rumours that the President of the Court of Appeal had printed before his untimely demise. Kaspar knows that Kaspar is a fraud. The best confession must come from him. But if he will not speak then perhaps he will write. He still possesses a diary?

 

ROGER: Certainly.

 

STRAUB: Find the book and bring it to me!

 

ROGER: Of course Stanhope knows that Kaspar is true! But he wants Meyer to think that he is false so that Meyer will find the diary! Stanhope is afraid that in the diary things he has said to Kaspar will be written, that would condemn him!

 

MARIE: Did you say that Kaspar is working as a clerk?

 

ROGER: Yes – copying documents day after day.

 

TRUDI: Strange occupation for an angel!

 

STRAUB: This is the kind of work we give to angels nowadays!

 

WULF: We must find food. No more building.

 

 

FIFTEEN. EVENING. STARVING TO DEATH. VERONICA COUGHING.

 

MARIE: Almost nothing.

 

TRUDI: Veronica is sick.

 

WULF: Yes she will be dead by the morning.

 

STRAUB: Not many words left.

 

ROGER: I was by the hospital. Out came an American orderly. He was carrying a big pan of cocoa. More than a gallon. He tipped it down the drain. I said why can you not give it to the people who are dying? He said, ‘Heil Hitler!’ and stepped back into the building.

 

STRAUB: I met a doctor from Frankfurt. He said there in the hospital, of one hundred children they have chosen twenty-five to be fed. The rest will die. Better, he said, for twenty-five to live than for one hundred to die. He – also – said – to me – that in Berlin – every child that is born -  dies. We have reached one hundred per cent – infant mortality.

 

WULF: There is no more Germany.

 

TRUDI: What was the redemption?

 

STRAUB: In Silesia –

 

TRUDI: Never mind!

 

ROGER: Kaspar Hauser was to have been the Prince of Baden! In Eighteen Forty-Eight there was the revolution. It started in Baden. Wagner himself fought for the rebels. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Democracy! In the end it was all stopped by the Prussian army. Kaspar would have been the Prince of Baden! He would have protected the rebellion -  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!

 

TRUDI: A Prince?

 

ROGER: Yes! A Prince from heaven giving up his power, just at the right time! And then –

 

STRAUB: Then Bismarck.

 

ROGER: Germany was not Germany then, you remember, it was so many principalities, not joined at all. Now the Prussians took over and Bismarck crushed all those crowns together into the Empire of Germany and then –

 

MARIE: The French invaded us!

 

WULF: And we smashed them! We took Paris!

 

ROGER: And made a cruel peace and then the French, for revenge, joined with the English whom they hated and the Russians whom they despised –

 

WULF: So then we were surrounded and we had to attack!

 

ROGER: That was Nineteen Fourteen. If the England had kept out of it, mellifluous England, then we could have settled things quickly with the French and the Russians! But England – I mean the British empire, wanted us dead because our steel production just the year before had outstripped theirs!

 

TRUDI: And so we are dead. Where is the redemption?

 

 

SIXTEEN. DAYTIME. LESS AND LESS MOVEMENT.

 

TRUDI: Veronica has gone.

 

MARIE: What has happened to Kaspar?

 

ROGER: He will not give up his book. He has hidden it. There is a loose brick behind a picture. That is where he keeps it.

 

STRAUB: (AS MEYER, TO THE DEAD BODY OF VERONICA.) Where have you hidden it, Kaspar! You little fraud, you little liar! How could you have lived in a cellar? Nobody believes you anymore, Kaspar! What is your real name? Who did you do this for? It is all written down in your book, I am sure!

 

ROGER: And he said – he said – what is the use of life with all these disturbances?

 

WULF: What is the use of life with all these disturbances?

 

ROGER: In fact his death was quickly coming.

 

TRUDI: Where is the redemption?

 

ROGER: In the end he burned his book. But that did not save him. They were afraid of what else he might write.

 

MARIE: Tell me how it happened!

 

TRUDI: You say he could have saved Germany. I do not want to hear anymore.

 

MARIE: Tell me!

 

ROGER: Ah! Kaspar! A man spoke to him in the street, saying he had a message from his mother.

 

MARIE: Ah Kaspar!

 

ROGER: That he was to meet him in the park the next day.

 

STRAUB: (READS FROM A SCRIPT.)

Your mother sends her love. The wheels have turned,

Slow fortune’s horses have begun to canter,

And I am waiting with my arms wide open.

 

MARIE: Kaspar! Don’t go!

 

ROGER: He does go. It is winter. Snow. The man is waiting. He has a message, written on paper. He drops it, white on white. Kaspar bends down to pick it up and as he straightens he is stabbed in the heart!

 

MARIE: Dead!

 

ROGER: No! He falls as if dead and the man runs away but then Kaspar gets up and staggers through the park, through the streets, home! There Meyer is waiting!

 

STRAUB: (AS MEYER.) What is this? Blood? Ah! What have you done to yourself, you fool!

 

ROGER: Meyer does not believe him! Meyer turns him around and walks him back to the park to show him where it happened!

 

STRAUB DOES ALL THIS WITH WULF.

 

MARIE: Take him back home!

 

ROGER: Passers-by see Kaspar staggering and bleeding and they force Meyer to take him home! There for three days he lies in fever, while Meyer attempts to extract a confession!

 

STRAUB: Tell me the truth, before you meet your maker!

Confess your fraud, and scour your filthy conscience!

 

ROGER: Meyer said Kaspar has stabbed himself to get attention. But the doctor says no, this was not possible. And between the doctor and the priest, Kaspar had some peace, a little peace, in that place, as he lay dying. He can hardly speak but this is what his mind is saying. Wulf you be the body, Marie you be the mind.

 

WULF LIES PRONE. MARIE STANDS BY HIM SPEAKING.

 

MARIE: People are saying that there was no man,

Nobody stabbed me. They are whispering

That I did not grow big in any cellar.

Herr Meyer says it and the others mutter

Softly together that I am a liar,

And all my story is imagination,

It is impossible, it makes the mind

Feel itself foolish, if it was a bridge,

My story, it would buckle half way over,

Train-carriages all crammed with characters,

Tumbling into the flood, the facts all drowned,

Flowing away as fiction. And indeed,

It makes no sense. What person would imprison

A child, prevent him from becoming human,

And then release him? What could be the meaning?

Herr Feuerbach began to understand –

And then he died, as if a thundercloud

Had gathered to the clap, big black hands parted –

Suddenly to disintegrate in sunshine,

Wide-scattered light, without the bolt’s precision.

The count was clear, his presence full of passion,

His absence utter silence. Like a world

Imagined by a god but then abandoned

Before it was created, all his plans

Craved, strained towards existence but remained

Sheer speech, as is my story to the minds

That crowd me now. So to myself what am I?

The tired head begs for rest. How can I carry

A thing so light as my unproven story,

Humming-bird feather that my feather fingers

Cannot quite catch. My own breath’s breeze uptwists it

Out of my reach!

 

STRAUB AS PRIEST.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar!

 

ROGER: This was a good priest, not like the other priests, this was a man whom Kaspar loved and who loved Kaspar – now you, Wulf -

 

WULF: The monster was stronger.

 

ROGER: (AS MEYER.) Nobody believes you, Hauser!  

 

WULF: Many cats were the death of the mouse.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar!

 

WULF: Tired, very tired, and I still have to take a long journey.

 

STRAUB: Kaspar, do you wish to pray with me?

 

WULF: Father – not my – but thy will be done –

 

STRAUB: Who prayed this?

 

WULF: The Saviour.

 

STRAUB: When?

 

WULF: Before his death. Where am I?

 

STRAUB: Give him something to drink.

 

ROGER: He is going!

 

WULF: No one has ever done me any harm.

 

ROGER: Hauser! Hauser! Have you nothing more to say? Look at me once, speak the truth now, at last, Hauser! Have you nothing more to confess?

 

WULF: Oh God – oh God – to have to pass on like this in shame and disgrace!

 

HE DIES.

 

TRUDI: Are you dead?

 

WULF: Yes.

 

ROGER: You see? You see the redemption? You see?

 

TRUDI: That he became a Christian as he was dying?

 

ROGER: No, no, no! That he forgave everyone! He never blamed anyone!

 

TRUDI: How does that help me?

 

 

SEVENTEEN. EVENING. LOW FIRE.

 

WULF: Marie is falling asleep.

 

TRUDI: Well of course, it is night-time.

 

WULF: No. She is falling asleep.

 

ROGER DRIFTS ABOUT, HALF-DELIRIOUS, TALKING TO THE DEAD BODIES.

 

ROGER: All of us are falling asleep. We should have gone to the Russians. Over there is life, whatever the cost. That is what will happen to the last of the Germans. They will become Russian. And so Goethe will be forgotten.You cannot translate Goethe! And Herder will be forgotten and Holderlin, and Kant, and Nietsche, and Fichte and Herder and Steiner! Not Bach, I imagine. Schiller will not be performed – except in translation! A ghost writer. Rosa Luxembourg will be remembered – and Brecht and Marx, but not for being German! Well, look, it does not matter what is forgotten, what matters is what all this could have become, if Kaspar had been the Prince of Baden! Each nation, each culture has its contribution, each is a pillar in the temple of the human mind. With this one smashed, it will collapse. The whole thing will fall down, the great ancient and future construction, and something fake, quick, flimsy will be thrown up in its place, to make do with. Ah Kaspar! But by his life we may see at least that heaven does concern itself with us. It tries its best to help us. Only, as he said, this time the monster was stronger. America is finishing what Hitler began – the final destruction of the German nation! Because Goethe named the devil. And looked into the eyes of nature, and spoke with her! It is better like this! I do prefer that Germany should die completely, and not be changed into a bright efficient American company! She was too precious for that! Ah, how the devil hated Germany!

 

HE FALLS ASLEEP. FREDY GETS UP, LEANING ON HIS BROOM, TRIES TO SWEEP, GIVES UP, SPEAKS.

 

FREDY: You yourself will finish

What I set out to do and failed, Roderigo.

It will be you that brings the golden days

This land had hoped for from its Prince in vain.

For me it is all over and forever,

As you have recognised. Oh dreadful love

Has gathered all the flowers of my soul,

And keeps them. For your vision I will die.

You had to give my secret to the King,

To gain his trust, and you will be his angel,

Led to his side by chance or destiny.

For me, his son, there can be no reprieve,

Perhaps for Spain there can. I did no wrong,

Only I have been criminally blind.

HE CAN’T SPEAK ANYMORE, SITS DOWN WITH THE OTHERS, FALLS ASLEEP. SILENCE. ENTER WILLIS.

 

WILLIS: Hello! Hello! Sorry I took so long. Sweet Jesus, is everybody dead already? I got some emergency starvation medicines – glucose –

 

HE GIVES IT TO THEM.

 

WILLIS: Here you go. Present from America. From Jesus Christ really. Hell of a stink kicked up in Congress. Eleanor Roosevelt screaming her head off! Gospels quoted to the shame of the nation – ‘Whatsoever you do unto one of these little ones you do unto me.’ So says Christ Jesus son of God. And concurrently, Congress noticed everybody who could running like hell to the Russians! Ha! Serious strategic error – all change! Now it’s feed the Germans, boost their agriculture, supe their industry up to smash the Russians! You are saved, my friends, you are saved by that combination of religion and one-upmanship that is the American nation!

 

MARIE: Kaspar! Kaspar is alive!

 

WILLIS: What are you saying, little one?

 

MARIE: Kaspar is in heaven! I have seen him!

 

WILLIS: Well I am sorry. Was he a child? So many are up there with him! But you are going to be fine, you stay down here with us, you are going to be fine, honey!

 

MARIE: Kaspar is in heaven!

 

END.