Hans and Gretel
A Play
by Choi, In-hoon
Translated into English
by Ryu, Yung-kyun
Chun, Gap Bae's illustration Eulogy to Nature III
CHARACTERS
X
BORHERT
GRETEL
MR. STOCKMAN
HITLER
A NAZI OFFICER
The front curtain is closed.
The apron stage is dimmly lit only by some footlights.
Hans enters from stage right looking for Gretel.
He crosses the stage shouting her name several times.
"Gretel.......,Gretel......, Gretel............"
Hans exits stage left.
Gretel enters from stage left looking for Hans.
She crosses the stage shouting his name several times.
"Hans.......,Hans......, Hans............"
Gretel exits stage right.
Pause
X : (Enters from one wing to the apron stage with the still closed
front curtain behind him. He carries two packages wrapped as
gifts. He opens with a key an imaginary door. As he opens the
door to enter, he turns towards the audience.) This is a jail.
I can't tell you its location. There's only one prisoner imprisioned here. He has been shut off from the outside world since 1943. It's been nearly 30 years. Once every year, his wife comes to visit him. Otherwise, I am the only person he makes contact with. I take care of everything for him. Every morning, I get up from my chair in my livingroom/office located within this building. I open the door and step into the hallway. I am on my way to his cell. To get to his cell, I have to pass through several inner doors in between. I take out my keys and unlock each of those doors. (He crosses the stage to reach the other end of the stage and turns towards the audience.) This is the last inner door between my office and his cell. (He inserts a key into the lock,opens the door,walks through,and continues on his way to exit.)
As curtain goes up,
we see a livingroom come workshop.
A large window with steel bars upstage.
The setting reminds us of Giacometti's The Palace at 4 a.m.,
which imposes an entirely different atmosphere upon this room although it is furnished with quite ordinary pieces of furniture.
Hans Borhert appears at the door of his bedroom.
Slowly, he walks out of his bedroom and
sits stiff-necked on the chair in front of his workstand.
He picks up a lenz from the workstand and puts it into the frame. He is about sixty years old.
With his gray hair, he gives us an impression of
being stern, yet serenely ascetic.
He absorbs himself in his work.
He takes the lenz out of the frame and wipes it with a towel.
He is deeply immersed in some thoughts.
Every now and then, he raises his head and looks straight ahead.
With the lenz in his hand,
he stands up.
Still wiping the lenz,
he starts walking slowly.
One step at a time,
he takes it very slowly
as if he were thinking deeply
about every step he takes.
All this time,
he keeps wiping the lenz
as he walks as if the gesture of wiping the lenz was
none other than the very gesture of his thinking.
He reaches the end of the room,
stops and stays there for a moment,
slowly turns around,
and starts walking again.
Such gestures and movements
give us an impression
that although he has infinite time to kill,
he has in fact nothing else to do
except this work of making lenzes.
Sometimes, he stops in the middle of the stage.
For a good while, he stands still.
Whenever he does so, he appears to be making strenuous efforts
to solve a certain difficult problem
simply by looking into the lenz.
After a long while,
he starts to walk again.
Occasionally, he looks around the room
in a very meticulous manner.
A bird chirps.
He listens.
He looks up at the barred window.
What makes this room rather unusual is
probably this very window.
For a window, it is too big.
And the steel bars over the window are extraordinarily thick.
The bird stops chirping.
Borhert listens.
A sound at the door.
With the sound of a machine running,
the door opens.
And X steps in.
He is about the same age as Borhert.
With his gentle and soft appearance,
he looks like a retired manager of a symphony orchestra.
He stays at the door for a short while.
Borhert looks up to greet him.
X walks up to Borhert.
X : Happy Birthday to you. How do you feel?
Borhert : (After a slight pause) Thanks--, I'm all right.
X : Nothing is more important than health (Sits in a very polite and
cautious manner)...... to you as well as to me--
Borhert : You too look well.
X : Thank you......(Picks up one of the two gift boxes he has brought
along) A box of cigars for you.
Borhert : It's very nice of you. (Wiping the lenz)
X : If there's anything you need.
Borhert : Yes, there is in fact something that I need. I need to get out of
here. I, Hans Borhert, demand on the bases of international law and the principles of humanitarianism that you release me promptly and give me the opportunities of an open trial.
X : (A pause. Shortly afterwards and full of deep emotion) Every year
on your birthday for the past thirty years, we've been always
talking like this. You demand the prompt release. And I always
say (Changing the tone of his voice into a very official and
formal one)...... "I'll report to my superior office about the
demand you've just made"...... It has been my answer --the same as before for thirty years...... But (Straightening up his posture) ...... But it's different today.
Borhert : (Looks him up and down)
X : Today, my answer is this.-- "It is my pleasure to inform you that
the office is sincerely concerned about your demand. If you accept some conditions which my superior office suggests, the office is willing to consider the matter of your release in an earnest and sincere manner."
Borhert : (Getting up)-- To consider-- the matter of my release--
X : That's right.
Borhert : (Gazing at X, and finally) What are those conditions?
X : Firstly, after you get released, you must stay out of Europe. Borhert : ......(His facial expression turns shrewd.)
X : Secondly, after your release, I should be able to visit you. Borhert : (His face becomes even more shrewd and his body gets stiff.)
X : Thirdly, you have to swear to keep silence without any exception
and under any circumstances about the reason you had to leave
Germany and about whatever happened up till now since you left Germany.
Borhert : (Slowly, he lifts up his right fist in which he holds his lenz.
As he slowly holds his fist above his chest, he says quietly).
--I refuse to accept such conditions.
(Pause.)
X : Mr. Borhert
Borhert : I refuse. I cannot swear to keep silence.
X : In fact, the world would not be able to hear you anyway whether
you swear or not.
Borhert : You people wouldn't withdraw from being between me and the world. X : (Pause)-- That's true-- Therefore, the truth is......
Borhert : The truth.
X : (He nods.)
Borhert : The truth,...... What is the truth? What is it anyway? What the
world knows? It's nothing but a lie, a lie you people defined as the truth, a lie that goes around as the truth, is it not? I have an obligation to let the world know (holds the lenz out) that what the world knows now is at least not the whole truth. I have no right to give up that obligation.
X : What benefits will the world have from it?
Borhert : The fact that they know the truth--That's where all the benefits
will come from.
X : But, in fact.
Borhert : You mean I wouldn't be able to let the world know the truth as
long as you have me imprisoned here-- Well, that might be your
job, but I cannot cooperate with you on that matter. As long as
I live, I will not abandon my obligation to tell the world what
I know. I swear to keep silent, I live outside Europe, I allow you to keep coming to visit me as you did before--
(enraged) You call that release?
X : You have left your wife out of consideration.
Borhert : (Shocked) Gretel......
(Pause)
X : (Hands out the other gift package) It's from your wife.
It's the record of Die Linden Baum sung by the Berlin Choir from
the 30's. Just imagine her looking all over the attic to search
for this old record. (Puts the package on the table)
Borhert : (Sits on a chair. Picks the record up, holds it on his lap, and
looks far way in front of him.) Gretel......
X : Twenty years ago, your wife got a notice that you were still
alive. And she was allowed to come to see you. Ever since then, she has been filing a petition to release you. I believe my superior office has decided to consider your release in an attempt to respond to your wife's petition as well as to your demand. Mr. Borhert, I have been living almost half of my entire life together with you. It was my duty to be in charge of you and to elate your intention to my superior office and to notify you
of the office's demands. Once in a while,I actually think I am you.
Borhert : That's an hallucination. It occurs once in a while between
a prisoner and his warder.
X : Once in a while...... You mean you don't understand this halluci-
nation could become something unusual when it occurs once in a while for thirty years? Do you think that what happened between you and me happened in human history only once in a while?
Borhert : Do you think the world knows that people like me still exist on
this earth?
X : All right. Whether there was a precedent or not,this is my life.
Mr. Borhert. We--we are old. So is your wife.
Borhert : ......
X : You did more than enough to serve what you believed in.
Borhert : If there was anything like retirement from the service to
the truth, I wish I would retire, only if there was somebody else
who knows about it...... only if I were not the only person .....
(gazing into the lenz)
X : Oh, yes, that's what it's all about. I haven't thought about it,
yet. If I speak your words, who knows even that? In other words,
I mean you might not be the only person.
Borhert : (looking X in the face) I don't know how you and your office take
this matter. But I have no criteria by which I could make my
final decision other than what I know I am responsible for.
On this earth, there's no other Hans Borhert but me. I don't
think I could desert myself. The most inexcusable and ultimate crime a man could ever commit would be the act of deserting himself. I am the one and only being of myself. (starts cleaning the lenz)
(Pause)
X : I'm sorry to hear that. Of course, you are free to think whatever
you wish to think. I'll report to my boss what you've just said
to me. And-- allow me to share some of my thoughts with you. Mr. Borhert, it is my belief that as long as human affairs are
concerned, there is nothing not worth thinking over again. I hope
that we could somehow share such a belief together. That's why
I'd like you to listen to my views. Of course, a man is the one
and only being to himself. There is nothing else more obvious to
him than the fact that he is not any other person but himself.
However, Mr. Borhert, how would you like to think of it this way?
Though a man may be the one and only being to others, does he
have only one 'face' to himself, after all? There might be more
than one self in us. And as we live our lives, we may be perhaps
going through each of the several selves in us one at a time.
Mr. Borhert, are we not living with several selves in us? I think
we are. Let's think about our early days when we were young. There is no doubt that the young 'we' of the past are also ourselves. Yet, we feel that it's so far away and not much to do with us as if those days were of somebody else's past. Is it because of none other than the time distance? Don't you feel that you of the past is inevitably far away from you of the present as if you were somebody else? Oh, I don't know since when, but sometime in the past, I gave up making an effort for the sake of my ego to take responsibility for each of my other selves. And then, I came to learn that other people are doing the same. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to lead what they call 'life.' The world wouldn't let me keep intact this one and only 'me.'
Borhert : It's a matter of degree.
X : You're right. If the degree remains within limits, our life
wouldn't be so disagreeable. But we have no choice but to lead
our life inevitably to the degree that exceeds the limits. It's
such a pain for everybody. In my line of work, it is not possible
to go on living if you don't accept as it is this unavoidable truth of life. That reminds me of an incident I experienced. He was a friend of mine. He had been working in my line of occupation for a long time. And we found out that he had been working for ten years as an enemy's spy. Unfortunately, I was assigned to the job to test and push him into a trap. How I wished the suspicion of my superior office were wrong! But, he was the enemy spy after all. I could never forget the expression in his eyes when he looked at me after he fell into my trap. (Lamentably) The rain was running down off his raincoat! It made me feel somehow that I had done to him something terribly wrong. It was since then that I couldn't regard myself as the one and only person. I found myself accepting with ease that that man was not the one I used to know as my friend. Treachery and treason we mustn't accept, of course. But people sometimes do accept such things. And that does not necessarily mean that they are entirely worthless. What I mean to say is that a man can choose at times to be his other self.
Borhert : It's what we usually go through when we fall in love with
a woman,isn't it?
X : That's it. As far as love is concerned, we get the hang of it
quite well. But when it comes to friendship, truth, and other
such areas, we often make mistakes.
Borhert : I don't think you do.
X : Me? Is it a compliment or a criticism? I'm not sure. Borhert : Take it as a compliment.
X : Thank you.
Borhert : Aren't you aware that a prisoner is in no way in a very
comfortable position to compliment his warder?
X : Yes, of course. I wouldn't dare to claim that I have been more
unfortunate than you have ever been during our life together
here. But, Mr.Borhert, I had strange feelings when I heard that
the higher office was considering the matter of your release.
Can you imagine what feelings I had?
Borhert : Well......
X : Strangely enough,I had a feeling that I didn't want to
let you go.
Borhert : Your friendship for me is dreadful. You must have been much
relieved when you heard my answer.
X : No, it's not that simple.
Borhert : Then, is it complicated?
X : Yes. I had also found out there was inside me another feeling--
it was a feeling that I should help you to turn yourself into
somebody other than what you used to be.
Somewhere inside me......
Borhert : I think I know what you're trying to say.
X : You know,but you still don't accept what I'm trying to say.
Borhert : Perhaps, Destiny doesn't allow me to have more than one self.
X : Destiny? He does allows us to have many faces.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Borhert : You sound as if you wanted me to be a monster or something.
X : A Monster? That's a bit too much, no, that's even better. Are we
not monsters? We are monsters. If we are ,then, mustn't we love
them? What I mean by 'love them,'is --that is to say, that
we must take them into consideration,is it not so?
Borhert : I must say that now I understand more than enough what your
friendship for me is all about.
X : Thank you. My thirty years of service is no guarantee of getting
such a compliment-- I mean, it's not available to every one of us
warders.
Borhert : As I said before,I am not in a very comfortable position to
compliment you in any manner. Even though I am well aware that it
is more reasonable not to have you related to, or affected by, my
feeling towards those people who had assigned you this duty of
being my warder--
X : Of course not. Since, to you, I am the only window open toward
the outside world, officially, I am the least comfortable person
for you to deal with,not to mention to compliment. In fact, I had
proposed once that I be replaced by somebody else. It was rejected. Thus, I've been getting old as your permanent warder. Mr. Borhert, you have no choice but to have many selves. If you do, it will at least give you some rest,or it will at best give you some creative opportunities. And when you hang on to one job-- in my case, when I limit my life-long activities to a job of keeping a man cut off from the outside world, that means I myself am a prisoner, imprisoned and being cut off from the outside.Don't you think so? The Frustration of a Warder -- it is not a very interesting title,is it? But, such a thing does exist. Every warder is a prisoner. To keep somebody in prison, the warder himself is being 'imprisoned.' Moreover, a warder finds it a lot more difficult to justify the days of his 'imprisonment' than his prisoner does. It happened automatically. I didn't choose you as my prisoner. I chose this job and then my job chose me as your warder. I felt the first five years to be the most unbearable. So, I requested that I be transferred to another duty. My request was rejected. I had rather wanted to be assigned to a series of dangerous duties. I was younger,then,you know. In the midst of danger, I wanted to see my life flame up. People in my line of work lead their life with mixed feelings. I think it's a mysterious occupation. It's an occupation people choose out of despair or even out of despair of despair. I am not sure when and where the former stops and the latter starts. Regardless of however I think, that's objectively the way life is for most people who are in my line of work. We are the Government within the Government. In our uniform of the darkest color, we are engaged in the most sacred occupation.
Or, perhaps, it's the other way around. We are engaged in the darkest occupation in the most sacred. After a successful revolution, those ardent leaders of the revolution had no choice but to turn themselves into politicians,government officials, or other worldly and snobbish little zombies. Yet, there are a few who remain where they are. They are a small number of people who want to go on living inside the flame of their revolution. After a revolution is over,however,the revolutionary flame survives only in the darkest part of this living organism called society. Not even a thin beam of sunlight is allowed to creep in there. You know what I mean? The same applies to power. European civilization is an old one. The power of European civilization is time-hornored but a decrepit one. Numerous young people exert strenuous efforts to study and cultivate themselves with a hope that they will be the young masters of this civilization someday. But we know that they usually end up finding themselves as the servants supporting
this decrepit and decadent civilization. You understand that, Mr. Borhert?
Borhert : That's what you've always been saying. I am a European,too,you
know. I am against your sensibility that tells you you are the
only orthodox and legitimate people. In general,however, I guess
you could be right in a figurative sense.
X : It's a metaphorical statement, an opinion put forward as a common
and general idea. Your scientific sensibility might tell you the
difference between metaphor and fact. But, it was such a general
and common idea that helped me gradually accept you as the fate
of my life. Without violating the regulations imposed upon you
and me by the higher office, we could have managed to establish
a multi-faceted relationship between us. We could have been working on some joint research work on mysticism. I could have been an anonymous supportor for the lenz you made which had won you the grand prix in the European Contest.(Pointing to the lenz in a polite manner) I also have a dream, you know, a dream to have my potential creativity unfold to do something truly creative. As far as the regulations allow, I also tried to help you maintain your health.
Borhert : Thank you. At first, I had a difficult time to control my pent-up
anger and despair,and then, to kill too much time with nothing
much to do. So, I tried to concentrate my life on the work of
making lenzes and reflecting on my life as a whole. I came to
think that the fact itself that I am here is the one and only meaning of my life. In a sense, I've been enjoying a time of peace and perfection. I've never even dreamed that my release would be suggested today like this -- in such an abrupt manner on a conditional basis. I am afraid, I am afraid to see if there's
another me inside me, (gazing into the lenz--) I am not sure
myself, but I have a hunch that if I submit myself to your
suggestion, I might make a mistake.
X : I know how you'd feel. I admit you must have felt this suggestion
thrown at you out of the blue. But, is there anything that's not
thrown at you like that? Most of the important things in our life
happen by sheer chance. For now, I'll leave you alone. Think it
over before you go out for a walk in the evening, no,-- reflect fon it well for as long as you want.
X stands up.
He goes towards the door.
With a sound of a machine running,
the door opens.
He goes out.
The door closes.
Borhert doesn't move.
Long pause.
A bird chirps.
Borhert looks down at the table.
He puts his lenz down,
picks the record up in both hands,
kisses it,
stretches himself up to move to the record-player in the corner,
puts the record down on it,
comes back to his seat.
Schubert's Die Linden Baum is played.
(Scene changes.)
001