The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays Read Online Free PDF

down.
    The warden gets up, goes to the door, takes the scissors off the nail, and returns with the scissors to the table.
    After sitting down, he places his naked foot on the side crosspiece of the chair and cuts his toenails.
    We know the sounds.
    He behaves as if we were not really watching.
    He cuts his toenails so slowly and for such a long time that it no longer seems funny.
    When he is finally done he places the scissors on his knees.
    After some time the ward gets up and walks about the stage, picking up the clipped-off toenails and putting them in the palm of one hand.
    He does this so slowly that it, too, is no longer a laughing matter.
    When the ward finally straightens up and returns to the table, the warden takes the scissors from his knees and now begins to clip his fingernails.
    The ward turns around and goes to the calendar hanging on the right-hand wall.
    The warden cuts and the ward tears off a sheet from the calendar.
    The warden cuts and …

    The warden cuts and …
    It is a slow process, without rhythm; it takes the warden a different amount of time to cut off each nail, and the ward needs a different amount of time to tear off each sheet from the calendar; the noises of the snipping and tearing overlap, are not necessarily successive, sometimes occur simultaneously; the calendar sheets flutter to the floor.
    Now the calendar has been completely shorn: all we can see of it is the rather large empty cardboard backing left hanging on the wall.
    But the warden is still cutting his fingernails, and the ward is standing inactively by the wall, his face half to the wall.
    The music, which becomes more distinct, is so pleasant that the noise the scissors make hardly affects us.
    And now that the stage is becoming dark the noise stops at once.
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    It becomes bright.
    The two persons are sitting in their initial positions at the table, quietly, each by himself.
    The warden gets up, goes to the hot plate. He takes the teakettle from behind the row of bottles and puts one end of the rubber hose into the kettle.
    The warden exits, returns immediately.
    We hear water running into the kettle.
    The warden exits and returns at once.
    He takes the hose out of the kettle, lets it drop. He puts the cover on the kettle and puts the kettle on the hot plate.
    The warden drags the rubber hose onstage.
    As the hose is apparently very long, he has to drag for quite a long time. Finally the warden drags the entire hose onstage.
    Nothing funny happens.
    He winds the hose in an orderly manner over hand and elbow, goes to the table, and places the rolled-up hose with the other objects on the table. He resumes his position.

    Quietly, contemplating each other, the two figures squat onstage.
    Gradually we begin to hear the water simmering in the kettle.

    The ward gets up, fetches the coffee grinder, sits down, makes himself comfortable on the chair, clasps the coffee grinder between his knees and starts to grind. We can hear the grinding …

    The ward gradually stops grinding …
    Now the stopper is probably blown off the kettle, so that it becomes quiet again.
    The music sets in at the appropriate moment, when the stage once more becomes dark.

    On the bright stage we see the two persons at the table, the hot plate having of course been turned off in the meantime.
    The warden gets up and goes offstage.
    But he returns quite soon, a frying pan with glowing incense in one hand, a big piece of white chalk in the other.
    We smell the incense and also see clouds of incense.
    The warden goes to the door and starts writing something on the top of the door.
    The moment he puts chalk to wood, the ward turns toward him on the chair; the ward reaches into his pants and throws something at the warden … it must be something very light because the warden does not stop his very slow writing, which looks almost like drawing.
    The ward makes himself comfortable on his chair and throws again, unhurriedly.
    The warden writes; the