The Baltimore Waltz and Other Plays Read online

  Harry? Harry? Wie geht es dir?! Listen, I…can you hear…no, I’m in Baltimore…yeah, not since Hopkins…no, there’s—well, there is something up. No, dear boy, that hasn’t been up in a long time. No, seriously—it’s my sister. ATD.

  THE THIRD MAN: ATD? Jesus, that’s tough, old man. You’ve got to watch where you sit these days. She’s a sweet kid. Yeah. Yeah. Wait a second.

  (Offstage) Inge? Inge, baby? Ein Bier, bitte, baby. Ja. Ja. You too, baby.

  (Pause)

  Okay. Dr. Todesrocheln? Yeah, you might say I know him. But don’t tell anybody I said that. There’s also a new drug they’ve got over here. Black market. I might be able to help you. I said might. But it’s gonna cost you.

  (Cautiously, ominously) Do you still have the rabbit?

  CARL: I’ll bring the rabbit.

  THE THIRD MAN: Good. A friend of mine will be in touch. And listen, old man…if anybody asks you, you don’t know me. I’ll see you in a month. You know where to find me.

  THE THIRD MAN AND CARL (Simultaneously): Click.

  V.

  THE THIRD MAN: Lesson Number Three: Pronouns and the Possessive Case. I, you, he, she and it. They and we. Yours, mine and ours.

  VOICE OF ANNA: There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing he, she or it can do. There’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing they can do.

  ANNA: So what are we going to do?

  CARL: Start packing, sister dear.

  ANNA: Europe? You mean it?

  CARL: We’ll mosey about France and Germany, and then work our way down to Vienna.

  ANNA: What about your job?

  CARL: It’s only a job.

  ANNA: It’s a very important job! Head of the entire San Francisco Public—

  CARL: They’ll hold my job for me. I’m due for a leave.

  ANNA: Oh, honey. Can we afford this?

  CARL: It’s only money.

  ANNA: It’s your money.

  CARL: It’s our money.

  VI.

  THE THIRD MAN: Lesson Four: Present Tense of Faire. What are we going to do? Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire.

  ANNA: So what are we going to do?

  CARL: We’ll see this doctor in Vienna.

  ANNA: Dr. Todesrocheln?

  CARL: We have to try.

  ANNA: A urologist?

  CARL: He’s working on a new drug.

  ANNA: A European urologist?

  CARL: What options do we have?

  ANNA: Wait a minute. What are his credentials? Who is this guy?

  CARL: He was trained at the Allgemeines Krankenhaus during the Empire.

  ANNA: Yeah? Just what was he doing from, say, 1938 to 1945? Research?

  CARL: It’s best not to ask too many questions. There are people who swear by his work.

  ANNA: What’s his specialty?

  CARL: Well, actually, he’s a practitioner of uriposia.

  ANNA: He writes poems about urine?

  CARL: No. He drinks it.

  ANNA: I’m not going.

  CARL: Let’s put off judgment until we arrange a consultation—my god, you’re so messy. Look at how neat my suitcase is in comparison. You’ll never find a thing in there.

  ANNA: I refuse to drink my own piss for medical science.

  (Carl grabs a stuffed rabbit and thrusts it in Anna’s suitcase.)

  ANNA: What are you doing?

  CARL: We can’t leave bunny behind.

  ANNA: What is a grown man like you doing with a stuffed rabbit?

  CARL: I can’t sleep without bunny.

  ANNA: I didn’t know you slept with…stuffed animals.

  CARL: There’s a lot you don’t know about me.

  VII.

  THE THIRD MAN: Lesson Five: Basic Dialogue. At the airport. We are going to Paris. What time does our flight leave? Nous allons à Paris. A quelle heure depart notre vol?

  (The Third Man becomes an Airport Security Guard.)

  AIRPORT SECURITY GUARD: Okay. Next. Please remove your keys and all other metallic items. Place all belongings on the belt. Next.

  (Carl and Anna carry heavy luggage. Carl halts.)

  CARL: Wait. I need your suitcase.

  (He opens Anna’s luggage and begins to rummage around.)

  ANNA: Hey!

  CARL: It was a mess to begin with.

  Ah…(He retrieves the stuffed rabbit) There.

  ANNA: Are you having an anxiety attack?

  CARL: You hold it.

  (Carl and Anna stamp, sit and stand on the baggage. Carl manages to relock the bag.)

  ANNA: What is wrong with you?

  CARL: X rays are bad for bunny.

  AIRPORT SECURITY GUARD: Next. Please remove all metallic objects. Keys. Eyeglasses. Gold fillings.

  CARL: Go on. You first.

  AIRPORT SECURITY GUARD: Metallic objects?

  (Anna passes through, holding the stuffed rabbit. Carl sighs, relieved. Carl passes through. The Airport Security Guard stops him) One moment, please.

  (The Airport Security Guard almost strip-searches him. He uses a metallic wand which makes loud, clicking noises. Finally, he nods. He hands Anna and Carl their bags, still suspiciously looking at Carl.)

  ANNA: Okay, bunny—Paris, here we come!

  VIII.

  THE THIRD MAN: At the hotel.

  (Simultaneously with Carl’s next lines) Lesson Six: Direct Pronouns. I am tired. And my sister looks at herself in the mirror.

  CARL (Simultaneously with The Third Man): Sixieme Leçon: Pronoms—Compléments Directs. Je suis fatigué. Et ma soeur elle se regarde dans la glace.

  (Carl climbs into a double bed with the stuffed rabbit. Anna stares into a mirror. The Third Man, apart, stands in their bedroom.)

  THE THIRD MAN: The first separation—your first sense of loss. You were five; your brother was seven. Your parents would not let you sleep in the same bed anymore. They removed you to your own bedroom. You were too old, they said. But every now and then, when they turned off the lights and went downstairs—when the dark scared you—you would rise and go to him. And he would let you nustle under his arm, under the covers, where you would fall to sleep, breathing in the scent of your own breath and his seven-year-old body.

  CARL: Come to bed, sweetie. Bunny and I are waiting. We’re going to be jet-lagged for a while.

  ANNA (Continues to stare in the mirror): It doesn’t show yet.

  CARL: No one can tell. Let’s get some sleep, honey.

  ANNA: I don’t want anyone to know.

  CARL: It’s not a crime. It’s an illness.

  ANNA: I don’t want anybody to know.

  CARL: It’s your decision. Just don’t tell anyone…what…you do for a living.

  (Anna joins Carl in the bed. He holds her hand.)

  ANNA: Well, there’s one good thing about traveling in Europe…and about dying.

  CARL: What’s that?

  ANNA: I get to sleep with you again.

  IX.

  CARL: Medical Straight Talk: Part Two.

  (The Third Man becomes a Public Health Official.)

  PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIAL: Here at the Department of Health and Human Services we are announcing Operation Squat. There is no known cure for ATD right now, and we are acknowledging the urgency of this dread disease by recognizing it as our 82nd national health priority. Right now ATD is the fourth major cause of death of single schoolteachers, ages twenty-four to forty—behind school buses, lockjaw and playground accidents.

  The best policy, until a cure can be found, is of education and prevention.

  (Anna and Carl hold up posters of a toilet seat in a circle with a red diagonal slash)

  If you are in the high-risk category—single elementary schoolteachers, classroom aides, custodians and playground drug pushers—follow these simple guides.

  (Anna and Carl hold up copies of the educational pamphlets)

  Do: Use the facilities in your own home before departing for school.

  Do: Use the f
acilities in your own home as soon as you return from school.

  Do: Hold it.

  Don’t: Eat meals in public restrooms.

  Don’t: Flush lavatory equipment and then suck your digits.

  If absolutely necessary to relieve yourself at work, please remember the Department of Health and Human Services’ ATD slogan: Don’t sit, do squat!

  X.

  Music: Accordion playing a song like “La Vie en rose.” Anna and Carl stroll.

  CARL: Of course, the Left Bank has always been a haven for outcasts, foreigners and students, since the time that Abelard fled the Île de La Cité to found the university here.

  ANNA: Oh, look. Is that the Eiffel Tower? It looks so…phallic.

  CARL: And it continued to serve as a haven for the avant-garde of the twenties, the American expatriate community that could no longer afford Montparnasse.

  ANNA: My god, they really do smoke Gauloise here.

  CARL: And, of course, the Dada and Surrealists who set up camp here after World War I and their return from Switzerland—

  (The Third Man, in a trench coat and red beret, crosses the stage.)

  ANNA: Are we being followed?

  CARL: Is your medication making you paranoid?

  (Pause)

  Now, over here is the famous spot where Gertrude supposedly said to her brother Leo—

  (The Third Man follows them.)

  ANNA: I know. “God is the answer. What is the question?”—I’m not imagining it. That man has been trailing us from the Boulevard St. Michel.

  CARL: Are you getting hungry?

  ANNA: I’m getting tired.

  CARL: Wait. Let’s just whip around the corner to the Cafe St. Michel where Hemingway, after an all-night bout, threw up his shrimp heads all over Scott’s new suede shoes—which really was a movable feast.

  (The Third Man is holding an identical stuffed rabbit and looks at them.)

  ANNA: Carl! Carl! Look! That man over there!

  CARL: So? They have stuffed rabbits over here, too. Let’s go.

  ANNA: Why is he following us? He’s got the same—

  CARL: It’s your imagination. How about a little déjeuner?

  (Anna and Carl walk to a small table and chairs.)

  XI.

  GARÇON (With a thick Peter Sellers French): It was a simple bistro affair by French standards. He had le veau Prince Orloff, she le boeuf à la mode—a simple dish of haricots verts, and a médoc to accompany it all. He barely touched his meal. She mopped the sauces with the bread. As their meal progressed, Anna thought of the lunches she packed back home. For the past ten years, hunched over in the faculty room at McCormick Elementary, this is what Anna ate: on Mondays, pressed chipped chicken sandwiches with mayonnaise on white; on Tuesdays, soggy tuna sandwiches; on Wednesdays, Velveeta cheese and baloney; on Thursdays, drier pressed chicken on the now stale white bread; on Fridays, Velveeta and tuna. She always had a small wax envelope of carrot sticks or celery, and a can of Diet Pepsi.

  Anna, as she ate in the bistro, wept. What could she know of love?

  CARL: Why are you weeping?

  ANNA: It’s just so wonderful.

  CARL: You’re a goose.

  ANNA: I’ve wasted over thirty years on convenience foods.

  (The Garçon approaches the table.)

  GARÇON: Is everything all right?

  ANNA: Oh god. Yes…yes—it’s wonderful.

  CARL: My sister would like to see the dessert tray.

  (Anna breaks out in tears again. The Garçon shrugs and exits. He reappears a few minutes later as The Third Man, this time with a trench coat and blue beret. He sits at an adjacent table and stares in their direction.)

  ANNA: Who is that man? Do you know him?

  CARL (Hastily looks at The Third Man): No, I’ve never seen him before.

  (The Third Man brings the stuffed rabbit out of his trench coat.)

  ANNA: He’s flashing his rabbit at you.

  CARL (Rises): Excuse me. I think I’ll go to les toilettes.

  ANNA: Carl! Be careful! Don’t sit!

  (Carl exits. The Third Man waits a few seconds, looks at Anna, then follows Carl without expression.)

  ANNA: What is it they do with those rabbits?

  (A split second later, the Garçon reenters with the dessert tray. Anna ogles him.)

  GARÇON: Okay. We have la crème plombière pralinée, un bavarois à l’orange, et ici we have une Charlotte Malakoff aux framboises. Our specialité is le gâteau de crêpes à la Normande. What would mademoiselle like?

  (Anna has obviously not been looking at the dessert tray.)

  ANNA (Sighing): Ah, yes.

  GARÇON (Smiles): Vous êtes américaîne? This is your first trip to Paris?

  ANNA: Yes.

  GARÇON: And you do not speak at all French?

  ANNA: No.

  (The Garçon smiles.)

  GARÇON (Suggestively): Bon. Would you like la specialité de la maison?

  XII.

  CARL: Exercise: La carte. La specialité de la maison.

  Back at the hotel, Anna sampled the Garçon’s specialité de la maison while her brother browsed the Louvre.

  (Anna and the Garçon are shapes beneath the covers of the bed; Carl clutches his stuffed rabbit)

  Jean Baptiste Camille Corot lived from 1796 to 1875. Although he began his career by studying in the classical tradition, his later paintings reveal the influence of the Italian style.

  ANNA (Muffled): Ah! Yes!

  GARÇON (Also muffled): Ah! Oui!

  CARL: He traveled extensively around the world, and in the salon of 1827 his privately lauded techniques were displayed in public.

  ANNA: Yes—oh, yes, yes!

  GARÇON: Mais oui!

  CARL: Before the Academy had accepted realism, Corot’s progressive paintings, his clear-sighted observations of nature, revealed a fresh, almost spritely, quality of light, tone and composition.

  ANNA: Yes—that’s right—faster—

  GARÇON: Plus vite?

  ANNA: Faster—

  GARÇON: Encore! Plus vite!

  ANNA: Wait!

  GARÇON: Attends?

  CARL: It was his simplicity, and his awareness of color that brought a fresh wind into the staid Academy—

  GARÇON: Maintenant?

  ANNA: Lower—faster—lower—

  GARÇON: Plus bas—plus vite—plus bas—

  CARL: He was particularly remembered and beloved for his championing the cause of younger artists with more experimental techniques, bringing the generosity of his advancing reputation to their careers.

  ANNA: Yes—I—I—I—I—!

  GARÇON: Je—je! Je!! Je!

  (Pause.)

  CARL: In art, as in life, some things need no translation.

  GARÇON: Gauloise?

  CARL: For those of you who are interested, in the next room are some stunning works by Delacroix.

  XIII. Back at the Hotel.

  CARL: Lesson Seven: Basic Vocabulary. Parts of the Body.

  (Carl, slightly out of the next scene, watches them.

  Anna sits up in bed. The Garçon is asleep beneath the sheet.)

  ANNA: I did read one book once in French. Le Petit Prince. Lying here, watching him sleep, I look at his breast and remember the rose with its single, pathetic thorn for protection. And here—his puckered red nipple, lying poor and vulnerable on top of his blustering breast plate. It’s really so sweet about men.

  (She kisses the Garçon’s breast. The Garçon stirs.)

  GARÇON: Encore?

  ANNA: What is the word—in French—for this? (She fingers his breast)

  GARÇON: For un homme: le sein. For une femme: la mamelle.

  ANNA: Le sein?

  GARÇON: Oui. Le sein.

  ANNA (She kisses his neck): And this?

  GARÇON: Le cou.

  ANNA: Et ici?

  GARÇON: Bon. Décolleté.

  (Anna begins to touch him under the sheet.)
>
  ANNA: And this?

  (The Garçon laughs.)

  GARÇON: S’il vous plâit…I am tickling there. Ah. Couille.

  ANNA: Culle?

  GARÇON: Non. Couille. Le cul is something much different. Ici c’est le cul.

  ANNA: Oh, yes. That’s very different.

  GARÇON (Taking her hand under the sheet): We sometimes call these also Le Quatrième État. The Fourth Estate.

  ANNA: Really? Because you press them?

  GARÇON: Bien sûr.

  ANNA: And this?

  GARÇON (With pride): Ah. Ma Tour Eiffel. I call it aussi my Charles de Gaulle.

  ANNA: Wow.

  GARÇON: My grandfather called his Napoléon.

  ANNA: I see. I guess it runs in your family.

  GARÇON (Modestly): Oui. Grand-mère—qu’est-ce que c’est le mot en anglais? Her con—here—ici—do you know what I am meaning?

  ANNA: You’re making yourself completely clear.

  GARÇON: We called hers the Waterloo de mon grand-père—

  ANNA (Digs under the sheet more): And this?

  GARÇON (Scandalized): Non. There is no word en français. Pas du tout.

  ANNA: For this? There must be—

  GARÇON: Non! Only the Germans have a word for that.

  (Carl enters and casually converses with Anna. Startled, the Garçon covers himself with the sheet.)

  CARL: Hello, darling. Are you feeling better?

  (Carl walks to the chair beside the bed and removes the Garçon’s clothing.)

  ANNA: Yes, much. I needed to lie down. How was the Louvre?

  (The Garçon carefully rises from the bed and takes his clothing from Carl, who is holding them out. He creeps cautiously stage left and begins to pull on his clothes.)

  CARL: Oh, Anna. I’m so sorry you missed it. The paintings of David were amazing. The way his paintbrush embraced the body—it was just incredible to stand there and see them in the flesh.

  ANNA: Ah yes—in the flesh. (She smiles at the confused Garçon)

  CARL: Well, sweetie. It’s been a thoroughly rewarding day for both of us. I’m for turning in. How about you?

  (The Garçon is now fully dressed.)

  ANNA: Yes, I’m tired. Here—I’ve warmed the bed for you. (She throws back the sheet)

  CARL: Garçon—l’addition!

  ANNA (To the Garçon): Merci beaucoup.

  (Anna blows him a kiss. The Garçon takes a few steps out of the scene as Carl climbs into bed.)