The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays

by Peter Handke

No, we can’t marry.

  VON WULLNOW

  I didn’t mean it that way.

  QUITT

  I don’t understand your allusions.

  VON WULLNOW

  But you understand that they are allusions?

  LUTZ

  (Distracting them.) Of course, women are cheaper. But you have to be careful. Every month a few of them pull a fast one on us.

  KOERBER-KENT

  By pilfering inventory?

  LUTZ

  No, by becoming pregnant. Scarcely have they started work when they turn up with child—not out of passion, mind you, but out of cold calculation; and we have to pay the maternity benefits.

  VON WULLNOW

  One shouldn’t always be talking about the good old days, but things were different in the past. You didn’t even need to talk about the good old days then. Everyone was one big happy family in my grandfather’s shop. They didn’t work for my father, they worked for the shop, and that also meant for themselves—at least that’s the feeling you got, and that’s what mattered. Anyway, our system is the only one in which it is possible to work for oneself. It’s incredible how strong my sense of solidarity was with my workers. It cut through all class differences and thresholds of natural feeling when they made their work easier for themselves by singing songs or urging each other on during particularly difficult jobs, with original chants which, incidentally, should be collected before they are forgotten altogether. Today they get the work over and done with, mutely and indifferently, that’s all. Their thoughts are somewhere else, nothing creative any more, no imagination. I must say I admire our imports from the South. They’re alive during their work, are happy to be together. Work is still part of their life for them. Moreover, in the good old days the workers used to take pride in their products; when they went for their Sunday walks they proudly pointed out to their children anything in the vicinity made by their own hands. Nowadays, most children haven’t the faintest idea what their parents do at work.

  KILB

  Why, do you want them to point out the bolt in the car which their father personally screwed in, or the stick of margarine Mother wrapped herself?

  VON WULLNOW

  I don’t have my cane with me. I refuse to touch you with my bare hands.

  KOERBER-KENT

  I recently had my library repapered. Of course, I helped with the work, and then I noticed the lack of enthusiasm with which the paper hangers were working, despite the fact that I was paying better than minimum wages. Why is it, I asked them, that you can’t develop any passion for your work even though you are paid for it? The good souls didn’t have any answer to that one.

  VON WULLNOW

  Typical.

  (KILB clipping his fingernails in the meantime.)

  KOERBER-KENT

  They only think of the money. They’ve got nothing in their minds except bread and broads, as I always put it. Instead of enrolling in evening courses or absorbing our cultural heritage, they spend their wages on refrigerators, crystal, and knickknacks. Since they no longer have any respect for the public good—not to use a religious word in this circle—they have become possessed by the devil of personal happiness, as I sometimes say jokingly. And yet there’s no way for them to be personally happy without considering the public good. You’re scarcely born and already you’re pushing into the revolving door of the here and now and can’t push your way back out, I always say. The paper wraps the stone, consumption cracks the character.

  VON WULLNOW

  A story. No sermon without a little story, right? I know my rhetoric. Which, incidentally, is another art that has gone to the dogs among us … I was walking through the supermarket.

  QUITT

  You in a supermarket?

  VON WULLNOW

  Mine, of course. But I wanted to tell a story.

  QUITT

  Von Wullnow, the supermarket baron, that’s news.

  VON WULLNOW

  I had to invest, taxes forced us to. I don’t have to explain that to you. And besides, a big chain is just the right market for some of our products. That way we have our own outlets and don’t need to discount to the retailers.

  QUITT

  “Harald Count von Wullnow Supermarkets.”

  VON WULLNOW

  We called them Miller-Markets. Anyway, when I went to inspect one of them, I couldn’t help noticing a woman who made herself conspicuous by standing around a long time with an empty shopping cart. I watched her and wondered to myself, because, aside from the furtive glances she was casting about, she seemed almost ladylike. Suddenly she came up to me and said softly, Do you think they still have the giant-size detergent on sale that was advertised last week? Too bad, I thought afterward. She was just my shirt size, I liked her layout. But to lose one’s dignity over a consumer article like that! I felt quite ashamed for the person.

  (KILB has placed his hands underneath his armpits and is producing farting noises.)

  LUTZ

  All I have to say against the consumers is that they aren’t informed. Why don’t they read the business sections in their papers which publicize the Good Housekeeping tests? Why don’t they join the consumer councils? No wonder they can’t tell the products apart. Did you ever watch the faces of housewives during a sale? A mass of mindless, dehumanized, panic-stricken grimaces that don’t even perceive each other any more, staring hypnotically at objects. No logic, no brains, nothing but the seething, stinking subconscious. A happening at the zoo, gentlemen. No awareness, no life, no feeling for quality. I know whereof I speak.

  KILB

  (Interrupts them.) Fire!

  QUITT

  (Ignores him.) And whereof are you speaking?

  LUTZ

  You know very well. We stopped production just now. Our quality product had no chance against your mass-produced one. Your brand is a household name, even our packaging, a three-dimensional picture on a hexagonal cover, was too revolutionary. Consumers are conservative, their curiosity about progress is fly-by-night. That was our first fire—I mean fiasco.

  (Looks at KILB.)

  QUITT

  When your product came on the market, I immediately put ours on the steal-me list.

  KOERBER-KENT

  Please explain.

  QUITT

  The steal-me list is a full-page ad which we publish once a week in the major newspapers. It lists the ten products of ours that are shoplifted with the greatest frequency. Simultaneously we send this list as posters to the trade. There they construct a kind of altar display of the listed objects and the poster with the legend SHOPLIFTERS’ HIT PARADE is hung above it. This boosts sales. I immediately put my product at the top of the list and left it there, until Lutz gave up. I must say I’ve grown fond of it in the meantime and look at it in its plain square package with genuine affection. Still, I’m going to stop production on it.

  LUTZ

  What do you mean?

  QUITT

  It was a losing proposition for a long time. I just didn’t want you to get a swelled head.

  VON WULLNOW

  Marvelous, Quitt! That’s the old school spirit, but I can see now how important it is that we reach an agreement in time.

  QUITT

  Otherwise why would you be here?

  VON WULLNOW

  Businessmen are people who get things moving, as Schumpeter says. Let’s oil the machinery of the world.

  KILB

  Someone’s coming.

  VON WULLNOW

  (Doesn’t hear him.) This is an important day. For the first time we want to give up our atomization. We’ve been lonely long enough. We planned in loneliness, in sad isolation we watched the market, helplessly each of us set his price by himself, hoping for the best. Despising everything that was alien, each of us on his little island watched the other’s advertising campaigns. We did not recognize our mutual needs, were even proud of our individualism. That has to change; we can’t go on like this.

  ( PA
ULA TAX hurriedly enters.)

  QUITT

  I was just thinking of you, Paula.

  PAULA

  And?

  QUITT

  Nothing bad.

  VON WULLNOW

  Have a seat. (To the others) I always find it embarrassing to say to a woman, Sit down. (To PAULA) All of us were thinking of you. Even the Vicar-General, I think?

  KOERBER-KENT

  (Jokingly) Now I know why I felt the whole time as if a door had been left open somewhere.

  KILB

  Your signet ring is tarnished, Monsignore.

  KOERBER-KENT

  Continue, my friend. (KILB remains silent.) He’s never got more than one sentence in him. The habit of quick interjections has ruined him.

  (PAULA has sat down. She is still wearing riding clothes. QUITT’S WIFE comes in again. She pretends she is looking for something. PAULA loosens her scarf and shakes her hair. QUITT’S WIFE stomps her feet. As she walks on, the heel of her shoe gets caught in a crack in the floor. She hops backward, slips back into the shoe, and tries to walk out with measured steps. KILB barks after her and she disappears with a scream.)

  QUITT

  Perhaps the reason for the nausea is that only a minute ago you could have held an entirely different opinion of the matter, and in that case the story would have taken an entirely different turn.

  PAULA

  You look at me as if I should ask, What does this mean?

  QUITT

  Please remind me later that I must still explain something to you.

  PAULA

  When?

  QUITT

  Later.

  LUTZ

  I don’t want to be pushy. There’s a lot at stake today. I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep last night without my autogenic training. I usually think of the ocean when that happens, but even that sparkled for a long time like freshly mashed spinach from my new freezer package, and the moon above had been crossed out with a felt pen and a smaller one circled in beside it.

  VON WULLNOW

  All right, let’s get down to business. I assume, if not our conversation, then what we mean by it is ears only. In any event, you have my word of honor. (He takes a look around.) The Vicar-General swears on this, doesn’t he? Lutz promises, or no? And Quitt? Nods. Mrs. Tax’s thoughts are still nudging her horse with her thighs. And our guest of honor? (He nods briefly toward KILB. )

  QUITT

  Hans.

  (HANS appears at once, frisks KILB, shakes his head—“no microphone”—and withdraws again. KILB thereupon takes his stool and sits down with the others, assumes the pose of a kibitzer. )

  VON WULLNOW

  We’re no sharks. But we’ve learned that free enterprise is a dog-eat-dog business. Public opinion regards us as monsters belching cigar smoke. And in the often so poetically quoted moments of those overly long cross-country trips we see ourselves like that: we’ve become what once we didn’t want to become at any price. Don’t shake your head, Vicar-General. You know that’s not the way I mean it. No, we aren’t just the bad guys in a game: we really are bad. Even as a gourmet, my face has slowly but surely become less and less soulful—although for a long time I hoped for the opposite. Just take a look at your colleagues business-lunching in the three-star restaurants, Lutz: their jowls register a lifelong sellout. A lifelong circus, not just twice a year like the housewives. Still, it is premature undialectical impressionism, as Mrs. Tax would surely say, trying to dump on us. After all, we didn’t become monsters because we relished it. My primal experience is the thought: There’s no such thing as a human being who becomes inhuman of his own accord. That’s what I tell myself whenever I have to put myself together again after having done something I actually abhor in my heart of hearts.

  QUITT

  What you’re trying to say is that it’s futile to try to enlarge the market any further by means of price wars.

  LUTZ

  (Glances at KILB.) Not like that. Everyone should be able to translate it into his own terms.

  QUITT

  Competition is a game. Fighting is childish. Together we can underbid the small fry until they long to live from dividends. Not force, but the gentle law of displacement. When I was a child I would sometimes quietly sit down on something that someone else wanted, and absentmindedly whistle a song to myself.

  KOERBER-KENT

  You’re not at confession here, Quitt.

  QUITT

  To the point: first of all: there are too many products, the market has become opaque. Who is producing too much? One of us? Perish the thought. Who then? They, of course. We’re going to make the market transparent again. Second: now there are no longer too many products but too many units of the same product. The refrigeration plants are bursting with butter, I read at breakfast today. Is our supply too large? No, demand is too low, and that’s the catch we live off of. Third of all: is demand too low because prices are too high? Of course. And prices are too high because wages are too high, right? So we are going to have to pay lower wages. But how? By having the work done more cheaply somewhere else. Say, “Mauritius represents an excellent labor market. The plantations have accustomed the population to hard work for generations. The nimble Asiatic fingers have become skilled and are a proven value.” Therefore, we will be able to claim that our merchandise is a bigger bargain. That’s the biggest drawing card. Besides, imagine that all goods will bear the legend: “Made in Mauritius.” I remember the yearning such labels used to instill in me as a child. Why shouldn’t they exert the same effect on our beloved consumers? In any event, demand will rise and we will match up our prices again. Fourth: from time to time we take a walk through the forest by ourselves so as to feel like human beings. Fifth: (To VON WULLNOW) All this time I’ve felt the irresistible urge to wipe off your wet mouth. (He wipes off VON WULLNOW’S mouth with a handkerchief. To KILB) Repeat what I’ve said just now.

  (Pause.)

  KILB

  (Moves his lips, falters, tries again, shakes his head. He hops on his stool toward QUITT.) Anyway, it sounded logical. As logical as this here. (He tugs at both his ears and his tongue sticks out of his mouth, grabs his chin, and the tongue slips back inside. The businessmen meanwhile have exchanged significant glances.)

  LUTZ

  So we’re celebrating already?

  QUITT

  I’m not finished yet.

  KOERBER-KENT

  What were you playing just now? It was just a game, wasn’t it? Because in reality you are—

  QUITT

  (Interrupts him.) Yes, but only in reality. (To VON WULLNOW) And you are speechless?

  VON WULLNOW

  I’m just getting used to you again. Perhaps you’re just one of those people who like to squeeze other people’s pimples.

  QUITT

  (Strikes his forehead histrionically.) True, I was carried away by something. But now I’m normal again.

  VON WULLNOW

  It passed so quickly I’ve already forgotten it. I was brushed by a bat. Did something happen? Besides, you haven’t finished yet.

  QUITT

  What is important is that from now on none of us does anything without the other. When I buy raw materials without informing you of my source, that’s treason. When Lutz brings a new product on the market to corner a share of the turf, that’s treason. If the Vicar-General pays his female labor a lower scale than we do, because they are devout farm girls, and depresses prices, that’s treason. If you, Paula, let your workers share in the profits and have to raise prices all by yourself, that’s treason. (To VON WULLNOW) That’s the way you want it, isn’t it?

  VON WULLNOW

  Mrs. Tax would probably pose the counterquestion: But what if I let them share because I find it reasonable—say, to increase production?

  QUITT

  (To PAULA, as if she had answered for herself) It’s not treason as long as you don’t raise your prices without first consulting us. And as long as you and I have
the same habits, you can’t betray me. And now the champagne, Hans.

  (A cork pops backstage. HANS appears at once, carrying a tray with champagne glasses and a bottle which is still smoking. The ceremony of pouring the champagne. QUITT points ironically to the quality of the champagne and glasses, for example: “Dom Perignon 1935, Biedermeier glasses, handblown, notice the irregularities in the glass.” The group rises to its feet, clinks glasses, drinks quietly, looking into each other’s eyes. KILB has not gotten up. While the others are drinking he briefly laughs a few times without the others paying him any heed. He pulls out his knife, turns it back and forth, and lets it fall mumblety-peg fashion to the floor. They look at him without interest. He puts the knife away and plays a little on his harmonica. HANS has already left with the tray. KILB gets up and spits at the feet of each person, one after the other. In front of PAULA he uses his hand to pull out his chin, simultaneously sticking out his behind. The rest continue to regard him benignly. Suddenly he picks up LUTZ and the priest, who don’t object, one after the other, and puts them down somewhere else. He crisscrosses the stage. In passing, he kicks them lightly on the backs of their knees so that their legs give a little, except for the last one. He offers PAULA his thigh, Harpo Marx fashion, which she holds and then lets drop again; he makes an exception of QUITT, only casting sidelong glances at him. Now he has also begun to speak.)