Two
giant, stuffed monster dolls, made of knitted wool, one Snow
White, the other a hunter with hat and gun, are talking quietly
to each other, the voices are coming from off-stage and are slightly
distorted.
SNOW WHITE
I
have been walking forever around every possible bend and turn in the
forest and what am I not finding? Dwarfs! They say dwarfs are pleasant
like us, but different in shape. Whereas, you, Sir, look like someone
with a shape close to mine, but rather unpleasant. Perhaps it’s all
those responsibilities you have. It certainly is a lot of work clearing
all that Being and cutting to the chase. I represent the lighter side.
For a long time I was successful because of my looks, then, as I was
zealously looking for more success, I stepped into my stepmother’s trap
who grabbed me from an angle I didn’t expect and soon after poisoned
me with fruit. She dug a hole for someone else and didn’t fall into
her own trap. Since then I have become a seeker of truth, also in linguistic
matters. All of that seems to be of enormous interest to the public,
as my story has been around for hundreds of years, I have no idea what’s
supposed to be so funny or exciting about it. It’s as if I had to constantly
lift myself up and fall down again, felled by another woman. A pleasant
exception, which death is not. He always keeps coming, usually as a
man and then it turns out that’s not what he is. He stalks us, arrives
uncalled for, and just as we become successful, as in my case, he doesn’t
let us enjoy it, but takes us off the field without offering any comfort.
HUNTER
Could
it be that you are leading yourself astray? May I suggest that you give
up being your own sole refuge so that you won’t miss the truth, which
has been looking for you all this time, which I found in the forest
several times, a helpless figure—and also in the shape of hidden graves
for man and beasts. The animal graves are not my doing, as I always
take my kill with me. It’s too good for the earth. Since you don’t feed
the truth with things you found and you don’t have any experience in
collecting kills, because you are the kill, it follows that the truth
will be running from you the first chance it gets. I simply don’t believe
your version of the story, my dear. There is no detour anywhere for
truth to avoid you. Just put yourself in truth’s place: she would have
to think she is blinded by the lights of a truck, confronted suddenly
by a woman like you, not to speak of your clothes —that much I understand
about fashion—completely unsuited for the forest. Now, that woman is
questioning truth about one or more people, who are wearing hats which,
in my opinion, no one else would ever want to put on. What a sight that
would be! Take a look at my hat instead, that’s what you and your missing
persons should wear! With those beautiful gurnard feathers on top—super—wouldn’t
you say? Never anything pointed, please! With their short bodies, did
they think they would look taller with those things on their heads!
High heels, special insoles, teased, resurfaced haircuts! No wonder
truth doesn’t want to identify with such creatures! Why should truth
want to appear as seven people, when she can’t even pass quietly as
one? Even though that would finally put an end to it all and one could
start telling fairy tales again? That’s why she became so shy, after
all, with everyone going after her.
And
now you too are hanging out around here. Let me tell you something:
Your beauty doesn’t count much among those of us who hike through the
wilderness. Once a week there is pair-skating practice on the frozen
lakes. Beauty and truth are also participating, so they can get to
know each other better. Why don’t you join them, Miss? Maybe you will
find truth more appealing than beauty? That would be a change for you
for once! One can slurp up beauty like an experience, but then, clutching
to the truth so it won’t slip on the ice, it will be gone. On the other
hand, seven persons for the truth wouldn’t be so bad, come to think
of it, small as it is, , one should perhaps duplicate the truth, so
one can at least see it for once. In any case it would hit you with
its pointed cap. Ouch, yes: The truth as a coat rack spiked with caps.
And then this beauty who doesn’t want to put on any of those caps,
so she won’t be ridiculous and thus her own enemy. Truth as the madness
of Being. You, Miss, are crazy, by the way, if you think you
are seeing me. I am invisible. And if I were visible, I wouldn’t exist
and you wouldn’t be able to see me either. So it doesn’t matter whether
or not you recognize me. You were probably mistaken, when you took me
for the truth just because you couldn’t see me. Well, at any rate,
I am not part of your truths. You better take a closer look at my hat,
before you can’t see me, but nevertheless start a stupid conversation
with me! I am death, period. Death as the ultimate truth. Seen that
way, you’d even be right looking for me! I like that: Death as the final
truth, who for that reason doesn't want to know anything about himself.
But that's not the case. Death exposed: The naked animal and man carried
away by its dumbness so that at long last he would not have to know
anything about himself. Nonetheless, die he must, even if he is unconscious
already. Death as the blindness to your nakedness. But watch out! Not
everything you can’t see is death, as I already explained. As far as
I am concerned you will never know for sure. A hunter certainly isn’t
a particularly original disguise. I shiver when I see your blank-eyed
faith that’s blind to boot. You shouldn’t force any of your little secrets
on me, but I know I can’t stop you anyway. Do you think if one could
see death, anyone would put up with him even if only for, let’s say
the duration of a dinner of unburied animals, to which he would have
had to contribute to begin with? There you go. Still, that’s not a reason
for me to want to have anything to do with the truth. Certainly not.
Truth cares about nothing but itself. But at the moment there’s no better
performer of it than myself. So I’ll have to go on playing it; I don’t
even know whether I’m still playing. I haven’t wanted to for a long
time, but I have to. One, the very last one, I kept as a model, all
the other truths before that didn’t escape me and my weapon. I was thorough.
The last one’s pretty small. I still keep looking at her all the time
so I know who I am. About as small as your little dwarfs are supposed
to be. However, as an autodidact I worked my way up with great energy
and diligence, and now I confidently glide across life as on a frozen
lake.
SNOW
WHITE
Oh,
but life wants to be admired and looked at from many sides, don’t you
think so too? It is beautiful, isn’t it. Nor should trivialities ever
be too small for us. If I don’t find the little things I am looking
for, I can also turn to the big stuff, which you insist you embody.
What’s bigger than death, which brings us nothing useful, only great
damage. Even if it tastes delicious like a Granny Smith apple. Inside,
there’s still the worm, making his opening move: death stored in a safe,
through which he quietly eats his way ; thus the core has been opened
and shut all at once: Being itself, hello! Well, it certainly
wasn’t a good deal! My guts are out of sync because of rotten fruit.
Like the key to my being, which is rather high strung. A pitiful fate,
a mild constipation. Then Climb every mountain as society’s great mission,
but unfortunately most of the time there aren’t any mountains. Here
we have foothills at best, a threshold to be crossed without getting
hurt. I am now filing a claim with the Existential Insurance and then
I will request a search for missing persons, because I was unconscious
for such a long time and diagnosed by my stepmother as dead and powerless.
She was wrong. Besides: No one misses power as much as the one without
it. Maybe that’s why she wanted to kill me. Because she knew I would
rise and instantly become the most power hungry creature, that is, I
would claim all that stuff she loves to pile up around her. All junk!
So suddenly there’s this doozy coming on the scene, not nearly as pretty
as I, quite a bit older than I , which, I am sure, annoys her even in
her dreams, wanting to rob me of my being! She thinks that beautywill
come to her because it finds a corpse too boring. Because beautywants
to stay in the world forever, preferably in full color in all those
magazines one leafs through so quickly that they lose their pages faster
than a tree drops its leaves. Mama can’t come to terms with the experience
of powerlessness vis–à–vis my beauty, so she just
tried to wreck the resources of my power with nothing but an apple.
An apple against apple cheeks! Imagine! A battle of Titanias. Yet it
would have been so simple. You’d only have to stand in front of me and
my power would be gone, because no one could see me! It wouldn’t work
with dwarfs, because they are shorter than I am, that’s why, after
my experience, I am looking only for dwarfs and that’s not easy, let
me tell you. And I’ll be happy to lie down for the dwarfs, so that they
too can have their ego moments. And if it’s just to annoy step-mommy,
who, in questions regarding the unknown set up a ranking system as to
who can exist and who can’t. She can. I can’t. Because of too much beauty
and her fear of competition. The dwarfs can, but only because she never
saw them. Nevertheless, she warned me about them!
HUNTER
Well,
you won’t find them around me, your little dwarfs. I am in charge of
clearing, not of the complications that might come up in the process...
Of course I notice when something blocks my clearing, , a corner, a
set of beings in animal shape and let me assure you, I wouldn’t be so
hot for the second set , it’s my gun, it always huffs and puffs and
drips and pants. No, the other way around. I’d rather preserve and keep
my clearing inside myself, like a Tupperware bowl. That’s why I became
a hunter. That’s why I am not interested in that Dwarf Truth [[ here
Truth should be capitalized because it’s clearly used as a name]], whom
you are looking for here at the edge of the woods, of all places. I
am the GiantUntruth. I extinguish everything that exists with my comprehensive
extinction plan. I did, however, apprentice with the truth and therefore,
in an emergency, I can perform it too. So that you and even I myself
will believe that I am the truth. The last one that’s still on the
market. The circumstances of my life: Holed up in a hide—egging myself
on to cut to the chaste, framing the game from an enframing,
a few big guns like myself, shoot. Game’s over. All processed into food.
All in due process. No judge necessary. The only one who does not have
to fear the judge is death. I am always on the road and always legally,
even if I enjoy speeding sometimes to get to the river of death, which
I cross with my knickerbockered legs.
...
The complete
text is available in THEATER, Volume 36, Number 2, published by the Yale
School of Drama and Duke University Press. (Readers can order it at www.dukeupress.edu/theater
).
1.3.2006