The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays

by Paula Vogel

  CARL: Wasn’t it, Anna?

  ANNA (Deadpan): Yes. Sterile.

  (SLIDE: A hospital aide washing the floor.)

  CARL: Even the Black Forest looked swept. We splurged once again and stayed at the Waldhorn Post here, outside of Wildbad.

  (SLIDE: Exterior of Johns Hopkins Hospital.)

  CARL: The hotel dates back to 1145—the chef there is renown for his game dishes.

  (SLIDE: Anna in front of a vending machine dispensing wrapped sandwiches in the Johns Hopkins Hospital cafeteria.)

  ANNA: I wasn’t too hungry.

  CARL: I was ravenous.

  (SLIDE: Route 95 outside the harbor tunnel; the large toll signs are visible.)

  CARL: Let’s see—the Romantic Road…Die Romantishe Strasse…a trek through picture-book Bavaria and the Allgau Alpen… Füssen to Wurzburg.

  ANNA: Honey, perhaps they’ve seen enough. It’s hard to sit through this many—

  CARL: Wait. Just one more. They’ve got to see Neuschwanstein, built by mad King Ludwig II. It’s so rococo it’s Las Vegas.

  (SLIDE: The castle at Disneyland.)

  CARL: I believe that Ludwig was reincarnated in the twentieth century as Liberace.

  Wait a moment, that’s not the castle.

  ANNA: Yes, it is.

  CARL (Upset): It looks like—how did that get in here?

  ANNA: I don’t know which castle you’re referring to, but it’s definitely a castle.

  (SLIDE: A close-up of the castle, with a large Mickey Mouse in the picture.)

  CARL: That’s not funny, Anna! Are you making fun of me?

  ANNA: Don’t get upset.

  (SLIDE: Donald Duck has joined Mickey Mouse with tourists.)

  CARL: I went to Europe. I walked through Bavaria and the Black Forest. I combed through Neuschwanstein! I did these things, and I will remember the beauty of it all my life! I don’t appreciate your mockery!

  ANNA: It’s just a little—

  CARL: You went through Germany on your back. All you’ll remember are hotel ceilings. You can show them your Germany!

  (He rushes off, angry.)

  ANNA: Sometimes my brother gets upset for no apparent reason. Some wires cross in his brain and he—I’m sorry. Lights, please.

  (The Third Man wheels the projector offstage.)

  ANNA: I would like to show you my impressions of Germany. They were something like this…

  XX. In Munich.

  Anna is under the sheet beside the Munich Virgin, who is very young.

  ANNA: Are you comfortable?

  MUNICH VIRGIN: Ja, ja…danke.

  ANNA: Good. Have you been the bellhop here for a long time?

  MUNICH VIRGIN: Not so very long a time. My vater owns the hotel, and says I must learn and work very hard. Soon I will be given the responsibility of the front desk.

  ANNA: My. That’s exciting.

  (Pause)

  Are you cold?

  MUNICH VIRGIN: Nein. Just a…klein nervös. My English is not so very good.

  ANNA: Is this your first time? You always remember your first time.

  (Pause)

  I’m very honored.

  (Pause)

  Listen. I’m a schoolteacher. May I tell you something? A little lesson? When you’re a much older man, and you’ve loved many women, you’ll be a wonderful lover if you’re just a little bit nervous…like you are right now. Because it will always be the first time.

  MUNICH VIRGIN: You are a very nice woman.

  ANNA: The human body is a wonderful thing. Like yours. Like mine. The beauty of the body heals all the sickness, all the bad things that happen to it. And I really want you to feel this. Because if you feel it, you’ll remember it. And then maybe you’ll remember me.

  XXI.

  Anna and the Munich Virgin rise. Carl gets into the bed with his stuffed rabbit. Anna gets ready to leave.

  THE THIRD MAN: Conjugations of the verb verlassen. To leave, to abandon, to forsake. The present tense.

  CARL: Are you leaving me alone?

  ANNA: Yes. Just for a little while. I need to take a walk. I’m restless. It’s perfectly safe.

  CARL: Okay, sweetie. Don’t be too long. Bunny and I are ready for bed.

  ANNA: I won’t stay out long. I’ll be right back.

  THE THIRD MAN: The future tense of the verb verlassen.

  CARL: Will you be leaving me alone again tonight? I’m ready for bed.

  ANNA: I will be leaving you alone. Just for a little while.

  CARL: Who will it be tonight? The bellhop? The desk clerk? Or the maître d’?

  ANNA: Don’t be mean. You said you didn’t make judgments.

  CARL: I don’t. I just want to spend time with you.

  ANNA: I’ll be back in time for a bedtime story.

  THE THIRD MAN: The past tense of the verb verlassen.

  CARL: Again? Again? You went out last night. And the night before.

  ANNA: I can’t help it. I’ve been a good girl for the past thirty years. Now I want to make up for lost time.

  CARL: And what am I supposed to do while you’re out traipsing around with every Thomas, Deiter und Heinrich?

  ANNA: Hug bunny.

  THE THIRD MAN: There are three moods of the verb verlassen: the indicative, the imperative and the subjunctive. Anna and Carl are never in the same mood.

  CARL: Leave me alone.

  ANNA: Carl, don’t be like that.

  CARL: Why? It doesn’t matter what I want. You are going to leave.

  ANNA: I never stay out very long.

  CARL: All I can say is if this establishment charges us for room service, they’ve got some nerve—

  ANNA: I’ve got to take what opportunities come along—

  CARL: I wish you wouldn’t go—

  ANNA: Please understand. I don’t have much time. I spend as much time with you as I can, but while I still have my health…please?

  XXII.

  THE THIRD MAN: As children they fought.

  CARL: We never fought, really.

  ANNA: Not in a physical way. He was a sickly child.

  CARL: She was very willful.

  ANNA: No roughhousing. But he knew all of my weak points. My secret openings. He could be ruthless.

  CARL: She’d cry at the slightest thing.

  ANNA: He has a very sharp tongue.

  CARL: But when one of you is very, very sick, you can’t fight. It’s not fair. You’ve got to hold it in. We never fight.

  ANNA: But we had a doozy in the hotel room in Berlin.

  CARL: Well, my god, Anna, even though you’re sick, I have the right to get angry.

  ANNA: We’d been traveling too long. We were cranky. The rooms were closing in.

  CARL: I’m just saying that we should spend a little more time together. I don’t get to see you alone enough. You’re always restless.

  ANNA: Fine. You go out without me for a change.

  CARL: I’m going out for a walk.

  ANNA (Starting to weep): I don’t care.

  CARL: When she was little, this would be the time I’d bribe her. With a comic book or an ice cream. I always had pennies saved up for these little contingencies.

  ANNA: But sometimes, for the sake of my pride, I would be inconsolable. I would rush off and then feel just awful alone. Why didn’t I take the bribe?

  (To Carl) I’m going out.

  CARL: To fuck?

  ANNA: No, dear. The passive voice is used to emphasize the subject, to indicate the truth of the generalization. I’m going out. To get fucked.

  XXIII.

  Music: Kurt Weill.

  Anna goes over to a small cabaret table. There is a telephone on the table. The Radical Student Activist sits at another identical table, smoking, watching her.

  ANNA: I’m going to enjoy Berlin without him. I’ll show him. I’m going to be carefree, totally without scruples. I’ll pretend I’ve never taught first-graders.

  (Beat)

  I’m going to have a pe
rfectly miserable time.

  (The Radical Student Activist picks up the telephone. The telephone at Anna’s table rings.)

  ANNA: Oh my goodness. My miserable time is calling me. (Picks up the phone) Yes?

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Are you alone, Fraülein?

  ANNA: Well, uh, actually…yes, I am.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Gut. Du willst mal richtig durchgefickt werden, ja?

  ANNA: I’m sorry. I don’t speak a word of German.

  (The Radical Student Activist laughs.)

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Ja. Even better. I said, would you like to get fucked?

  ANNA: Do you always come on to single women like that?

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Would you like it better if I bought you tall drinks with umbrellas? Told to you the stories of how hard a time my parents had during the war? Tell you how exciting I find foreign women, how they are the real women, not like the pale northern mädchen here at home? How absolutely bourgeois.

  ANNA: I see. Why do you come here?

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: I don’t come here for the overpriced drinks. I come here because of the bored western women who come here, who leave their tired businessmen husbands in the hotel rooms behind.

  ANNA: You’re cute. In a hostile way.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Fucking is a revolutionary act.

  ANNA: Your hovel or my hotel?

  XXIV.

  In the hotel room. Anna, awake, lies in the middle of the bed. To her left, Carl sleeps, curled up. To her right, the Radical Student Activist, curled on her breast, slumbers.

  Anna is awake with an insomniacal desperation.

  ANNA (Singing softly): Two and two are four; four and four are eight; eight and eight are sixteen; sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two…

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST (Groggy): Wo ist die Toilette?

  (The Radical Student Activist rises and stumbles stage left.)

  ANNA: In lovemaking, he’s all fury and heat. His North Sea pounding against your Dreamer. And when you look up and see his face, red and huffing, it’s hard to imagine him ever having been a newborn, tiny, wrinkled and seven pounds.

  That is, until afterwards. When he rises from sleep and he walks into the bathroom. And there he exposes his soft little derrière, and you can still see the soft baby flesh.

  (As the Radical Student Activist comes back into the room) I’ve got a put a name to that behind. What’s your name? Wie heissen Sie?

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST (Starts dressing in a hurry): Auf Wiedersehn. Next thing you’ll ask for my telephone number.

  ANNA: No, I won’t. I was just curious—

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Ja, ja…und then my sign of the zodiac. I’ll get cards from Hallmark und little scribblings like “I’ll never forget the night we shared.”

  ANNA: Forget it.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: There is something radical in two complete strangers committing biological necessity without having to give into bourgeois conventions of love, without breeding to produce workers for a capitalist system, without the benediction of the church, the family, the bosses—

  ANNA: I have something to confess to you. I lied to you.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: About what?

  ANNA: I’m not here on business. I don’t specialize in corporate takeovers. I don’t work on Wall Street. I only told you that because I thought that was what you wanted to hear.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: Okay. So you do estate planning? Income tax?

  ANNA: No. You just committed a revolutionary act with a first-grade schoolteacher who lives in low-income housing. And I’m tired. I think you should go.

  RADICAL STUDENT ACTIVIST: And your husband?

  ANNA: Not too loud. And he’s not my husband. He’s my brother. A maiden librarian for the San Francisco Public.

  (As the Radical Student Activist starts to leave) And by the way—the missionary position does not a revolution make.

  (The Radical Student Activist leaves. Anna, depressed, lies down. Carl rises from the bed.)

  XXV.

  CARL: And as she lay in the bed, sleepless, it swept over her—the way her classroom smelled early in the morning, before the children came. It smelled of chalk dust—

  THE THIRD MAN: It smelled of Crayola wax, crushed purple and green—

  CARL: The cedar of hamster cage shavings—

  THE THIRD MAN: The sweet wintergreen of LePage’s paste—

  CARL: The wooden smell of the thick construction paper—

  THE THIRD MAN: The spillings of sticky orange drink and sour milk—

  THE THIRD MAN AND CARL (Simultaneously): And the insidious smell of first-grader pee.

  CARL: It smelled like heaven.

  ANNA: And the first thing I did each morning was put up the weather map for today on the board under the flag. A bright, smiling sun or Miss Cloud or Mr. Umbrella. On special days I put up Suzy Snowflake. And when I opened my desk drawer, scattered like diamonds on the bottom were red, silver and gold stars.

  (Beat)

  I want to go home. Carl, I want to go home.

  CARL: Soon, sweetie. Very soon.

  ANNA: I’ve had enough. I’ve seen all of the world I want to see. I want to wake up in my own bed. I want to sit with you at home and we’ll watch the weather. And we’ll wait.

  CARL: We’ve come so far. We have to at least go to Vienna. Do you think you can hold out long enough to meet Dr. Todesrocheln?

  (Anna, miserable and homesick, nods)

  That a girl. I promise you don’t have to undertake his…hydrotherapy unless you decide to. I have a friend in Vienna, a college chum, who might be able to get us some blackmarket stuff. It’s worth a shot.

  ANNA: Then you’ll take me home?

  CARL: Then I’ll take you home.

  XXVI.

  Music: A song such as the zither theme from The Third Man.

  Carl and Anna stand, with their luggage, in front of a door buzzer.

  CARL: First we’ll just look up Harry. Then we’ll cab over to Dr. Todesrocheln.

  (Carl rings the buzzer. They wait. Carl rings the buzzer again. They wait. An aging Concierge comes out.)

  CARL: Entschuldigung. Wir suchen Harry Lime? Do you speak English?

  CONCIERGE: Nein. Ich spreche kein Englisch.

  ( Carl and the Concierge start to shout as if the other one was deaf.)

  CARL: Herr Lime? Do you know him? Herr Harry Lime?

  CONCIERGE: Ach. Ach. Ja, Herr Harry Lime. You come…too spät.

  CARL: He’s gone? Too spät?

  CONCIERGE: Fünf minuten too spät. Er ist tot—

  CARL: What?

  CONCIERGE: Ja. Ein auto mit Harry splatz-machen auf der Strasse. Splatz!

  ANNA: Splatz!?

  CARL: Splatz?!

  (It dawns on Carl and Anna what the Concierge is saying.)

  CONCIERGE: Ja, ja. Er geht über die Strasse, und ein auto…sppplllaattz!

  ANNA: Oh, my god.

  CONCIERGE (Gesturing with hands): Ja. Er hat auch eine rabbit. Herr rabbit auch—sppllaattz! They are…diggen ein grab in den Boden. Jetz.

  CARL: Now? You saw this happen?

  CONCIERGE: Ja. I…saw it mit meinen own Augen. Splatz.

  (As he exits) Splatzen, splatzen, über alles…

  CARL: Listen, darling. I want you to take a cab to the doctor’s office.

  ANNA: Where are you going?

  CARL: Ich verlasse. I’ll find out what happened to Harry.

  ANNA: I wish you wouldn’t leave…

  CARL: I’ll come back. Okay?

  XXVII.

  Anna climbs onto a table and gathers a white paper sheet around her. She huddles.

  ANNA: Some things are the same in every country. You’re scared when you see the doctor, here in Vienna just like in Baltimore. And they hand you the same paper cup to fill, just like in America. Then you climb up onto the same cold metal table, and they throw a sheet around you and you feel very small. And just like at h
ome, they tell you to wait. And you wait.

  (As Anna waits, dwarfed on the table, the scene with Harry Lime and Carl unfolds. Music, such as The Third Man theme, comes up.)

  XXVIII.

  On the Ferris Wheel in the Prater.

  Carl holds the stuffed rabbit closely.

  CARL: Why are we meeting here?

  HARRY LIME: Have you looked at the view from up here? It’s quite inspiring. No matter how old I get, I always love the Ferris wheel.

  CARL: I just came from your funeral.

  HARRY LIME: I’m touched, old man. Was it a nice funeral?

  CARL: What are you doing?

  HARRY LIME: It’s best not to ask too many questions. The police were beginning to do that. It’s extremely convenient, now and then in a man’s career, to die. I’ve gone underground. So if you want to meet me, you have to come here. No one asks questions here.

  CARL: Can you help us?

  (Harry Lime at first does not answer. He looks at the view.)

  HARRY LIME: Where is your sister? She left you alone?

  CARL: She’s—she needs her rest. You were my closest friend in college.

  HARRY LIME: I’ll be straight with you. I can give you the drugs—but it won’t help. It won’t help at all. Your sister’s better off with that quack Todesrocheln—we call him the Yellow Queen of Vienna—she might end up drinking her own piss, but it won’t kill her.

  CARL: But I thought you had the drugs—

  HARRY LIME: Oh, I do. And they cost a pretty penny. For a price, I can give them to you. At a discount for old times. But you have to know, we make them up in my kitchen.

  CARL: Jesus.

  HARRY LIME: Why not? People will pay for these things. When they’re desperate people will eat peach pits or aloe or egg protein—they’ll even drink their own piss. It gives them hope.

  CARL: How can you do this?

  HARRY LIME: Listen, old man, if you want to be a millionaire, you go into real estate. If you want to be a billionaire, you sell hope. Nowadays the only place a fellow can make a decent career of it is in Mexico and Europe.

  CARL: That’s…disgusting.

  HARRY LIME: Look. I thought you weren’t going to be…sentimental about this. It’s a business. You have to have the right perspective. Like from up here…the people down on the street are just tiny little dots. And if you could charge a thousand dollars, wouldn’t you push the drugs?

  I could use a friend I can trust to help me.