STIEFEL. He was no son of mine. That boy was no son of mine. I never liked him, even as a baby.
The TEACHERS and HERR STIEFEL go. The BOYS remain.
HANS. Rest in peace. Poor chap. Give my regards to the Almighty – and say hello to all my beautiful victims.
GEORG. Have they found the pistol?
ROBERT. There’s no point in looking for a pistol.
ERNST. Did you see him, Robert?
ROBERT. Hypocrites! They didn’t want anyone to see him.
OTTO. That’s just it! They had covered him with a sheet.
GEORG. Was the tongue hanging out?
ROBERT. No, the eyes. That’s why they covered him up.
GEORG. How horrible!
HANS. Are you sure he hanged himself?
ERNST. I heard he’s lying in there without a head.
OTTO. Rubbish! That’s just talk.
ROBERT. I had the rope in my hands. I’ve never seen a hanged person who wasn’t covered up.
ERNST. What a degrading way to go.
HANS. They say hanging isn’t that bad.
OTTO. He still owes me five marks. We had a wager. He bet me he would pass at the end of the year.
HANS. And you told him off for boasting. It’s your fault he’s in there.
OTTO. Don’t be stupid! I have to swot through the nights just as he did. If he’d learnt his Greek Literary History, he wouldn’t have had to hang himself.
ERNST. Have you done your essay, Otto?
OTTO. Only the introduction.
ERNST. I don’t know what to write.
GEORG. Weren’t you there when it was given out?
ROBERT. I’ll cobble together something from Democritus.
GEORG. Maybe I can find something in the Encyclopaedia.
OTTO. Have you done the Virgil for tomorrow?
The BOYS go. MARTHA and ILSE approach.
ILSE. Quickly. The gravediggers will be here soon.
MARTHA. Shouldn’t we wait, Ilse?
ILSE. What for? We’ll bring fresh ones tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after. There’s no shortage of these.
MARTHA. You’re right. I’ll dig up my parents’ roses. I might as well give them something to beat me for. They’ll grow better here.
ILSE. Then I’ll water them every time I come this way. I’ll bring forget-me-nots from the stream and irises from home.
MARTHA. I want it to look like a garden. A beautiful garden.
ILSE. I’d just crossed the bridge when I heard the shot.
MARTHA. Poor boy.
ILSE. And I know why he did it, Martha.
MARTHA. Did he tell you?
ILSE. Parallelepipidon. But don’t tell anyone.
MARTHA. Cross my heart.
ILSE. Here’s the gun.
MARTHA. That’s why they didn’t find it.
ILSE. I took it out of his hand when I came past next morning.
MARTHA. Give it to me, Ilse. Let me have it, please.
ILSE. No, I’m keeping it as a souvenir.
MARTHA. Ilse, is it true he’s lying in there without a head?
ILSE. He must have loaded this thing with water. The foxgloves were all spattered with blood. His brains were hanging from the willows.
They go.20
Scene Three
MR and MRS GABOR.
MRS GABOR. The school needed a scapegoat. Those pedants were being accused from every side and they feared the accusations would stick. My son had the misfortune to fall foul of them just when they needed him, and now I, his own mother, am expected to help them destroy him? God forbid!
MR GABOR. For fifteen years I have observed your ingenious approach to raising children. I have never interfered, though your methods were at odds with my principles. I have always believed that a child is not a toy. A child has a right to our serious attention. But I told myself that if the spirit and intuition of one parent can be an adequate substitute for the moral principles of the other, then let spirit and intuition take precedence. I cannot therefore reproach you. But you must not stand in my way if I now try to make amends for the damage we have done to our son.
MRS GABOR. I shall stand in your way as long as there is a drop of human blood in my veins. In a borstal my child would be crushed. Perhaps hardened criminals can be reformed in such an institution. I wouldn’t know. But someone who is fundamentally decent will be turned into a criminal as surely as a plant will die if you deprive it of air and sunlight. What damage have I done to Melchior? I thank God even now for showing me the way to instil in my child an honest character and a noble imagination. What has he done that is so dreadful? It is not his fault that he has been hounded out of school, but even if it was, he has paid the penalty. You claim to understand the principles involved better than I do, and perhaps, theoretically, you are right. But I will never allow my only child to be destroyed for the sake of a principle!
MR GABOR. The matter is no longer in our hands, Anna. This was a risk we took as parents. Some will stumble on the march and some fall by the wayside. Our duty is to stiffen those who waver by such means as reason dictates. You are simply too indulgent. You see precocious experiment where I see fundamental flaws of character. I doubt whether women are qualified to judge these matters. A boy who can write what Melchior wrote has been corrupted at the core. The very marrow is diseased. Anyone who was basically sound in mind and body would be incapable of stooping so low. Of course none of us is a saint. We all deviate from the straight and narrow path. But this essay of his exemplifies a principle. We cannot dismiss it as an accidental error of judgement. It documents with terrifying clarity a conscious intention, a natural propensity, a tendency to immorality for immorality’s sake. It exhibits a degree of spiritual corruption that as a jurist I would call ‘moral insanity’. – Whether anything can be done about his condition is not for me to say. But if we want to preserve a glimmer of hope, and keep our consciences clear as parents, then we must act swiftly and with determination. Let us please stop arguing, Anna. I know how hard this is for you. I know how much you worship the boy because you see in him your own noble intuitive nature. But for once in your life, be unselfish in dealing with your son.
MRS GABOR. God help me, how am I to answer all that? You have to be a man to talk like that. You have to be a man to be so blinded by doctrine that you cannot see what is staring you in the face! I have dealt with Melchior responsibly and conscientiously from the beginning, because I found him unusually sensitive to his environment. No one is responsible for accidents! I will not let my child be murdered in front of my eyes. I’m his mother! – This is incredible. It’s beyond belief! What has he written in this essay? Isn’t it the clearest proof of his silliness, his harmless boyish innocence that he can write such things at all? – You would have to be totally ignorant of human nature, you would have to be some desiccated bureaucrat or pedant to find in it traces of moral corruption! – Say what you like. If you put Melchior in a borstal, I shall divorce you. And somewhere I will find the means to save my child from destruction!
MR GABOR. You will have to accept the inevitable. If not today, then tomorrow. I shall stand by you when your courage fails. I shall begrudge no effort or sacrifice to lighten the burden for you. The future seems so grey to me already. I could not bear to lose you as well.
MRS GABOR. I may never see him again. He cannot cope with viciousness. He cannot live with squalor. He would seek a way out. He already has one terrible example hanging over him. – And if I do see him again – dear God, his – his young and innocent heart – his boyish laughter – his childlike resolve to fight for what is good and right – Everything I cherished in him. – Let mine be the punishment, if there is some injustice to atone for. Punish me, do with me what you will. But keep your dread hand from my son.
MR GABOR. He has committed a crime.
MRS GABOR. He hasn’t committed any crime!
MR GABOR. He has committed a crime! – I know how deeply you love him, and I would hav
e done anything to spare you this. – This morning a woman came to see me, so distraught she could hardly speak, and showed me this letter – a letter to her fifteen year old daughter. She opened it out of silly curiosity, the girl was not at home. In the letter Melchior declares to this fifteen year old girl that his conduct gives him no peace, that he has wronged her, etc, that he will of course stand by her in any eventuality – she should not grieve, even if she feels consequences – he is already taking steps to secure help – his expulsion from school makes such a course easier – his transgression may yet bring about her happiness – and more nonsense of a similar nature.
MRS GABOR. I don’t believe it!
MR GABOR. The letter is a forgery. Someone is seeking to exploit our son’s expulsion from school for their own ends. I haven’t yet confronted him about it – but take a look at the handwriting. Please – look at the handwriting.
MRS GABOR (reading the letter). The boy has no shame!
MR GABOR. Precisely.
MRS GABOR. I can’t believe he’s done this.
MR GABOR. This governs our decision, does it not? – The woman was wringing her hands in despair and asking me what she should do. I told her to stop her daughter climbing into haylofts. Luckily she left the letter with me. – Now, if we send Melchior away to another school where he is free of parental supervision, within three weeks we shall have a repeat performance – expelled again – his young and innocent heart will soon become accustomed to it. Tell me, Anna, what shall we do with the boy?
MRS GABOR. Put him in a borstal.
MR GABOR. In a – ?
MRS GABOR. A borstal.
MR GABOR. He will find there what he was unjustly denied at home: iron discipline, principles, and moral constraints to which he must learn to conform. – In any case, a borstal is not the chamber of horrors you imagine. The emphasis there is on the development of Christian thinking and a Christian sensibility. There the boy will finally learn to want what is good rather than what is interesting, and to act according to the dictates of the law rather than his own inclinations. – Half an hour ago I received a telegram from my brother that confirms the woman’s story. Melchior has confided in him and asked him for two hundred marks to help him emigrate to England . . .
MRS GABOR (covers her face). Merciful heaven!
Scene Four21
The borstal. DIETHELM, REINHOLD, RUPRECHT, HELMUT, GASTON and MELCHIOR.
RUPRECHT. What’s that?
DIETHELM. A twenty-pfennig piece.
REINHOLD. What about it?
DIETHELM. I’ll put it on the floor. We make a circle around it. Whoever hits it, keeps it.
RUPRECHT. You joining in, Melchior?
MELCHIOR. No thanks.
HELMUT. His daddy won’t let him.
GASTON. He can’t get it up. He’s only here for the rest cure.
MELCHIOR (to himself). It’s not a good idea to keep myself apart. They’re always watching me. If I never join in they’ll crucify me. Captivity turns them into cannibals. – If I broke my neck getting out of here, it would still be a good exchange. – I could make a friend of Ruprecht. He has a train wreck of a face, but he seems to know the ropes. I could tell him a few Bible stories – Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot getting drunk and screwing his own daughters.
RUPRECHT. I’m coming!
HELMUT. So am I!
GASTON. Sometime next week, you mean!
HELMUT. Coming! Now! Oh God! Oh God!
ALL. Summa! Summa cum laude!!!
RUPRECHT (picking up the coin). Thanks very much!
HELMUT. Give it here, you animal!
RUPRECHT. Arsehole!
HELMUT. Bastard!
RUPRECHT (punching him). Shut up! (Runs off.)
HELMUT (running after him). I’ll kill him!
THE OTHERS. Kill! Kill! Kill!
MELCHIOR (alone). The lightning conductor. It’s close enough to the window. You’d have to wrap something round it. It’s a sixty foot drop and the plaster is coming away from the brickwork. – I’ll try the newspapers, they pay by the hundred lines. Become a hack – articles – local gossip – advice columns. And there are soup-kitchens, hostels. You don’t have to starve these days. – Whenever I think of her, the blood pounds into my skull. I’m sure she hates me, because I took away her freedom. I can think of it how I like, but to her it’s still rape. I can only hope that with time – perhaps in a year or two . . . – Tomorrow I’ll oil the hinges. By Saturday night I must know who has the key. In prayers on Sunday evening I’ll fake an epileptic fit. Hope nobody else is sick. I can see it all as clearly as if I’d already done it. Out I go, over the window sill – one swing and grab the cable. Better wrap a handkerchief round it.
He goes. Enter the warden DR PROKRUSTES, followed by a LOCKSMITH.
PROKRUSTES. The sick bay is on the third floor and there are stinging nettles directly below the windows. But what are a few nettles to these degenerates? Last winter one of them climbed out through the skylight, and we had all the trouble of retrieving the body and organising the burial.
LOCKSMITH. Do you want the bars made of wrought iron?
PROKRUSTES. Wrought iron, naturally – and make sure you bolt them into the wall.
Scene Five
WENDLA in bed. DOCTOR, MRS BERGMANN, her married daughter INA.
DOCTOR. How old are you, Wendla?
WENDLA. Fourteen and a half.
DOCTOR. I have been prescribing Blaud’s purgative pills now for fifteen years. In a large number of cases they have proved extraordinarily effective. I much prefer them to cod liver oil. Start with three or four pills a day and increase the dose as rapidly as you find tolerable. I advised the young Baroness von Witzleben to increase her dose by one pill every third day. She misunderstood me and increased it by three pills every day. In barely three weeks she was ready to accompany her dear mother to the spa at Pyrmont. – You need not go for long tiring walks or observe a special diet. But in return you must promise to move around the house as much as possible and not be afraid to ask for food as soon as your appetite returns. Then the heartburn will go, and the headaches, the shivering, the giddiness – and this terrible indigestion. Only a week after starting her treatment, young Baroness von Witzleben ate a whole roast chicken with new potatoes for breakfast.
MRS BERGMANN. May I offer you a glass of wine, doctor?
DOCTOR. Thank you, no, Frau Bergmann. My carriage is waiting. Don’t worry. In a few weeks our dear little patient will be as sprightly as a gazelle. Rest assured. Good day, Frau Bergmann. Good day, Wendla.
MRS BERGMANN accompanies him to the door and out.
INA. Your plane tree is full of colour again. Can you see it from your pillow? It’s a brief glory, hardly worth getting excited about, it comes and goes so quickly. I have to go soon. My husband’s waiting for me at the post office and I have to drop in at the dressmaker’s first. Mucki’s getting his first pair of trousers and Karl needs some new winter woollies.
WENDLA. Sometimes I feel so happy. I never knew it was possible to feel like this. I want to walk through the fields at dusk and pick primroses and sit by the river and dream – and then the pain starts, and I think tomorrow I’m going to die. I feel hot and cold, everything goes black before my eyes, and a strange dark shape flutters into the room. – Whenever I wake up, I see Mother crying. I can’t tell you how much that hurts me, Ina.
INA. Shall I lift your pillow for you?
MRS BERGMANN (returning). He thinks the nausea will pass soon and then it will be all right for you to get up. Perhaps the sooner you get up the better, Wendla.
INA. Next time I see you, I expect you’ll be running around the house again. Goodbye, Mother. I have to get to the dressmaker. Bless you, Wendla. (Kisses her.) Get well soon.
WENDLA. Goodbye, Ina. Next time you come, bring some primroses. Say hello to your boys for me.
INA goes.
Did he say anything else, Mother, on the way out?
MRS BERGMANN. No. –
Yes. He said Fräulein von Witzleben also had a tendency to faint. It’s quite common with anaemia.
WENDLA. Did he say I have anaemia, Mother?
MRS BERGMANN. You should drink lots of milk and eat meat and vegetables when your appetite returns.
WENDLA. Oh Mother, Mother, I don’t think I have anaemia.
MRS BERGMANN. You have anaemia, child. Don’t worry, Wendla, you simply have anaemia.
WENDLA. No, Mother, I haven’t. I know. I can feel it. It isn’t anaemia, it’s dropsy.
MRS BERGMANN. It’s anaemia, child. He said you were anaemic. Calm yourself, child. You’ll be getting better soon.
WENDLA. I won’t get better. I’ve got dropsy and I’m going to die. Mother, I’m going to die.
MRS BERGMANN. You’re not going to die, child. You’re not going to die. God have mercy, you’re not going to die.
WENDLA. Then why do you cry so much, Mother? Every time I look at you, you’re crying.
MRS BERGMANN. You’re not going to die, child. It isn’t dropsy. You’re going to have a baby, Wendla. You’re expecting a baby. How could you do this to me?
WENDLA. I haven’t done anything to you.
MRS BERGMANN. Don’t deny it, Wendla. I know everything. I just couldn’t bring myself to speak to you about it. Oh, Wendla, my Wendla!
WENDLA. But that’s impossible, Mother. I’m not married.
MRS BERGMANN. Dear God in heaven, that’s just it. You’re not married. That’s what’s so terrible. Wendla, Wendla, Wendla! What have you done?
WENDLA. I don’t actually know any more. We were lying in the hay . . . I’ve never loved anyone in the world except you, Mother.
MRS BERGMANN. My dearest child!
WENDLA. O Mother, why didn’t you tell me the truth?
MRS BERGMANN. Child, child, let’s not make it worse for each other. We must stay calm, and not despair. How could I explain such things to a fourteen-year-old girl? I would sooner be prepared for the sun to go out. I have only done with you as my own dear mother did with me. We must put our trust in God, Wendla. We must pray for His mercy, and do our part. There’s no harm done yet, and if we keep our courage the Lord will not abandon us. Be brave, Wendla, you must be brave. Why are you trembling?
Spring Awakening Page 8