The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays Read Free Page B

that he is wearing hobnail boots.
    The ward is holding the underside of his right knee with his left hand; the right leg, in contrast to the left, is slightly bent.
    We see that the ward is leaning with his back against the backdrop representing the house wall.
    In his right hand the figure is holding a rather large yellow
apple. Now that the curtain has opened and is open, the figure brings the apple to his mouth.
    The ward bites into the apple, as if no one were watching.
    The apple does not crunch especially, as if no one were listening.
    The picture as a whole exudes something of the quality of what one might call profound peacefulness.
    The ward eats the apple, as if no one were watching.
    (If you make a point to watch, apples are often eaten with a good deal of affectation.)
    The figure thus consumes the apple, not particularly slowly, not particularly quickly.
    The cat does what it does. If it should decide to leave the stage, no one should stop it from doing so.
    If at first we paid too much attention to the figure, we now have sufficient time to inspect the other objects and areas (see above).
    Can one gather from the manner in which the ward consumes the apple that he enjoys dependent status? Actually not.
    Because we have been looking so intently, we have almost overlooked that the figure has already finished eating the apple. Nothing unusual has occurred during this process, the figure has no unusual way of consuming apples, perhaps a few seeds have fallen on the floor; chickens are not in evidence.
    Now it’s the second apple’s turn.
    To accomplish this, the ward stretches out his right leg completely, and with his left hand reaches under the coveralls into the right pocket of his pants. Obviously he is not making out too well.
    He couldn’t reach into the pocket with his right hand, however, since he would have to lean back to do so but sits too near the wall to be able to lean back as far as he would have to.

    He slides forward with the stool and leans back against the picture of the wall: no, the upper and lower parts of his body are still at too much of an angle for his hand to be able to do what it wants to do.
    The pause is noticeable.
    The ward stands up and while he stands reaches into his pants pocket and easily extracts the apple.
    While still in the process of sitting down, he bites into the apple.
    With his bottom the ward shoves the stool closer to the wall of the house again and assumes a similar, though not precisely the same, position as the initial one; the cat moves or does not move, the ward eats.
    From behind the cornfield backdrop—from our vantage point, the left—a second figure emerges, the warden, judging from all visible evidence: rubber boots covered with mud up to the knee, gray work pants, a checkered shirt (white & blue) with rolled-up sleeves, tattoos on his arms, an open collar, a mask covering the upper half of his face, a hat with a pheasant feather stuck in it, an insignia on the hat, a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear, a very big pumpkin in front of his stomach.
    Now that the warden has entered the stage, we see that the backdrop representing the cornfield consists of many small movable parts which are falling back into their original positions … the cornfield is calming down, the birds are again circling on one and the same spot.
    The warden sees the ward.
    The warden steps up close and takes a look at the ward.
    The ward is quietly eating his apple.
    The warden’s watching the ward drags on.
    Gradually, as we watch, the eating of the apple also begins to drag on.
    The longer the warden watches the ward, the more the eating of the apple is drawn out.

    When the warden has stared down the ward, the latter stops eating the apple.
    The pumpkin which the warden is holding in front of his stomach is, as we see, a real pumpkin.
    But we hardly notice this any more, for after the warden has outstared the ward and the ward has simultaneously ceased