Five European Plays. Tom Stoppard

me, Chief!

      ZANGLER What?—No. I will go and plait my truss—no—

      CHRISTOPHER Plight your—

      ZANGLER That’s the boy! (He goes.)

      WEINBERL (in a daze) Partner … partner … I’m a partner. One moment a put-upon counter-clerk, the next a pillar of the continental trading community.

      CHRISTOPHER Chief sales assistant … I’ve always been at the bottom of the ladder and now … (A thought strikes him.) Who’s going to be under me, then?

      WEINBERL Book-keeper—that was the Himalaya of my aspirations, but from the vantage point of partnership I look tolerantly down upon the book-keeper’s place as if from a throne of clouds.

      CHRISTOPHER He’s a partner and I’m the entire staff. I’ll have two masters instead of one, three counting the widow, and the weight of my authority will be felt by the housekeeper’s cat.

      WEINBERL And yet—strangely enough—now, now of all times, when fortune has smiled upon me like a lunatic upon a worm in an apple, I feel a sense of … (Pause.) grief.

      CHRISTOPHER That cat is going to wish it had never been born.

      WEINBERL What is happening to me? I feel a loosening of obscure restraints … Desires stir in my breast like shifting crates on a badly loaded barrow.

      CHRISTOPHER (breaks out) Oh, Mother, what is the wherefore of it all?!—Whither the striving and how the abiding for a poor boy in the grocery trade? I’m glad she’s dead and doesn’t see me chained to this counter like a dog to a kennel, knowing nothing of the world except what happens to get wrapped around the next pound of groceries. Seeing the sunrise only from an attic window, and the sunset reflected in a row of spice jars, agog at travellers’ tales of paved streets! Oh, Mr Weinberl, I have come into my kingdom and I see that it is the locked room from which you celebrate your escape! And if I have to wait until I am as old as you, that’s longer than I’ve been alive!

      WEINBERL (soberly) Beyond the door is another room. The servant is the slave of his master and the master is the slave of his business.

      CHRISTOPHER (regarding Zangler’s old uniform left in the room) Try it on.

      WEINBERL What?

      CHRISTOPHER Try it on.

      WEINBERL No—

      CHRISTOPHER Go on!

      WEINBERL Gertrud might come in—I mustn’t!

      CHRISTOPHER All right.

      WEINBERL I daren’t!

      CHRISTOPHER All right.

      WEINBERL Dare I? (He starts to don the uniform.) If only I could look back on a day when I was fancy free, a real razzle of a day packed with adventure and high jinks, a day to remember when I am a grand-grocer jingling through Vienna in my boots and spurs and the livery of the Grocers’ Company or passing the grog and spinning the yarn with the merchant princes of the retail trade, when I could say, ‘Oh, I was a gay dog in my day, a real rapscallion—why, I remember once …’ but I have nothing to remember. (desperately) I’ve got to acquire a past before it’s too late!

      CHRISTOPHER Can I come with you, Mr Weinberl?

      WEINBERL Come with me where?

      CHRISTOPHER I want it now!

      WEINBERL Now?

      CHRISTOPHER This very minute!

      WEINBERL (appalled) What? Lock up the shop?

      CHRISTOPHER It’s already locked.

      WEINBERL While he’s at the parade …?

      CHRISTOPHER And dinner in town. It’s only us two. Marie is confined to quarters. He’ll never know.

      WEINBERL Wait … (He paces about feverishly and then embraces Christopher.) What about the books?

      CHRISTOPHER We’ll cook the books!

      WEINBERL Yes!—what about the cook?

      CHRISTOPHER We’ll fix the cook. We’ll tell her he told us to tell her he told us he doesn’t want to open the shop.

      WEINBERL What happens when she tells him we told her he told us to tell her he told us—

      CHRISTOPHER The cook …

      GERTRUD (offstage) Isn’t it time you opened the shop—it’s gone two o’clock.

      WEINBERL She’ll do for us … Get me out of this!

       Christopher pulls the uniform tunic over Weinberl’s head. Gertrud appears.

      GERTRUD So you’re still in two minds, Herr Zangler?

      CHRISTOPHER He is, and he’s half out of both of them. (to Weinberl loudly) It’s Gertrud, Herr Zangler … Get it?

       All Weinberl’s lines are muffied and unintelligible and furious. Weinberl speaks.

      WEINBERL Got it!

      GERTRUD Twenty-three Carlstrasse, Miss Blumenblatt’s.

       This is the wrong answer and Weinberl speaks even more furiously.

      CHRISTOPHER Master says find Mr Weinberl and tell him not to open the shop this afternoon.

      GERTRUD Don’t open the shop. Tell Mr Weinberl.

       Weinberl again.

      CHRISTOPHER Strict orders, he says, and now he would be obliged if you would be so kind as to leave him.

      GERTRUD That doesn’t sound like him.

       Weinberl dances about and roars. Christopher goes as though to help him into the tunic. Gertrud speaks as she leaves.

      That does.

      CHRISTOPHER (pulling the tunic over Weinberl’s head) She’s gone.

      WEINBERL And now, best foot forward.

      CHRISTOPHER I’ll get my worsted stocking.

      WEINBERL Is that necessary?

      CHRISTOPHER It’s got my savings in it.

      WEINBERL I’ll get mine and we’ll be off.

       Door slam and jingle of spurs.

      ZANGLER (offstage) Gertrud!

      WEINBERL God in heaven he’s back again!

       Christopher picks up Weinberl’s discarded clothes and runs off towards the shop. Spurs however still approach.

      I can’t let him see me like this!

       Before Weinberl can follow Christopher, Gertrud enters from the kitchen and Weinberl dives behind the furniture. Zangler enters at the same time.

      ZANGLER (shouts) Marie! Damn and blast it, that swinehound Sonders is nowhere to be seen in the village, and he didn’t leave on the coach and