East of Berlin Read online

  RUDI

  (low) He worked in…

  Beat.

  HERMANN

  He… worked in…?

  RUDI

  Before he bought the pharmaceutical company, he worked in… it was the hospital, in Sajonia. He has medical journals, of his, in his study, that I… I looked at, but, the journals, they weren’t from the hospital, they were…

  HERMANN

  From…? Of…?

  RUDI nods.

  Oh. (off RUDI’s look) All right. Jesus. Cheer up. Have a cigarette, or would you like a drink? I have a bottle of whisky.

  RUDI

  You have photographs?

  HERMANN goes and gets the book from where he’s hidden it.

  HERMANN

  Here.

  RUDI

  What is it?

  HERMANN

  Letters to a Young Poet. I’m joking. It’s a book about the final solution. It’s called The Final Solution. Of the Jews? There’s a photograph in here somewhere, if I can find it…

  HERMANN flips through the book. He shows photographs to RUDI.

  This is the ramp.

  Beat.

  The hospital block.

  Beat.

  (off RUDI’s look) Corpses.

  Beat.

  Here’s the photograph I wanted to… This is from 1943. That’s the camp commandant, at Auschwitz, Rudolf Franz Hoess, and the chief doctor, Edward Wirths, and beside him on the left, that’s your… father.

  RUDI grabs the book.

  Take the book.

  Beat.

  I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… told you like that, in class— I wanted to… make you—I think you’re… very… not like the other—I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry.

  Beat.

  Just, try to calm down before you see him, for fuck’s sake.

  Transition. HERMANN is gone.

  RUDI

  I went home. My father was on the front lawn, kneeling down, looking at the grass. It was dying a little around the edges, and he was telling one of the servants to water it again. He asked me how my school day was. I asked him how he liked it at Auschwitz.

  Beat.

  I remember the sound of blood in my ears, and my father calling to me as I walked into the house.

  Beat.

  He came after me.

  Beat.

  I stood there in the front hallway and asked my father questions about the war. They were the first real questions I’d ever asked about it.

  Beat.

  I told him I wanted to know about the mistakes he made at the camps.

  Beat.

  He didn’t answer. He just… stood there and looked at me, with his… pink eyelids, and his well-manicured nails, and the slight stoop in his shoulders.

  Beat.

  I called him a murderer.

  Beat.

  He told me not to raise my voice.

  Beat.

  We had a… physical fight. I hit him a couple of times. I blacked his eye and I split his lip. He was mostly just trying to defend himself, he didn’t hit me back, he just… turned towards the wall, and… let me hit him.

  Beat.

  My mother was screaming in the background the whole time.

  Beat.

  Afterwards, she kept saying, “What happened, what happened?” My father said, “It’s over, it’s fine, it’s over.”

  Beat.

  He… needed an X-ray, he was breathing badly, he thought I might have fractured one of his ribs, so I… drove him to the hospital. I remember the hospital, dirty little hallways and no doctors, my mother and father sitting there, on the metal chairs, her arms around him, his nose all crusted with blood.

  Beat.

  He looked very… beaten. (RUDI laughs.) He was already fifty-one years old, then.

  Beat.

  Later, I took the car and I went back to Hermann’s house. The lights were all out. I—I put my fist through his bedroom window. I meant to knock on it, to get Hermann’s attention, but I, well—

  Transition. RUDI and HERMANN are standing outside of HERMANN’s house. RUDI holds his hand as though he has cut it.

  HERMANN

  You just broke my window.

  Beat.

  You’re not going to hit me, are you? Because if you are, I want to take my glasses off.

  Beat.

  Are you going to hit me?

  Beat.

  You’ve cut your hand. You should get someone to look at your hand.

  Beat.

  What happened? You hit him? You punched him?

  Beat.

  You hit him.

  Beat.

  Is he all right?

  Beat.

  Where is he? Is he in hospital?

  Beat.

  Is he all right?

  Beat.

  Don’t… cry.

  Beat.

  Don’t cry, it’s all right.

  HERMANN puts a hand on RUDI’s shoulder. RUDI shrugs him off, then turns and hugs him with a sort of violence. RUDI cries in HERMANN’s arms. Transition. HERMANN is gone.

  RUDI

  I was upset. He is my…

  Beat.

  And, as a child, his child…

  Beat.

  There are some, of course, some childhood—he read Goethe to me, and well, Mein Kampf. I’m joking, he didn’t read me Mein Kampf. He sent me to the German-language school, in Asunción, and we learned quotes from Mein Kampf, but my father, he read me children’s books, The Little Prince, Max and Moritz…

  Beat.

  You don’t want to hear this, do you? That he was a good father?

  Beat.

  (trying to remember what he was saying) I… found out about my father, in Paraguay, at seventeen, and then… what happened? Things fell apart for a period. They, yes, fell apart. But here’s what really fucked me up.

  Beat.

  Life continued. My father wore his black suits to work, fucked my mother once a week, and at night he ate a good dinner. Then he fell asleep in his study with the radio on and the newspaper over his head. The servants watered the lawn twice a week instead of only once. The grass looked very green, and my father stood outside and admired it.

  Beat.

  Aside from the injuries, the split lip and the bruises to his eye, life just… continued. I didn’t hit him again. The servants wiped the blood off the wallpaper in the front hallway.

  Beat.

  I asked him questions about it, after that. We ate dinner together every night at seven o’clock, so that was when I would argue with him about it. I would say things to him like, “How could you…?” I don’t know, I was reading about the concentration camps in the books Hermann lent me, and I would say to him: “How could you”—one thing or another. “How could you do the selections?” That’s the sort of thing I— “How could you select people?”

  Beat.

  He said, “All the doctors had ramp duty, all of us. No one liked it, but if we hadn’t done it, it would have been chaos on the ramp, much worse.”

  Beat.

  When I pushed him to say how he could select people for the gas chambers, he said, “You don’t understand, we selected for the camp. If we hadn’t selected people, they would have all gone on the transports, all of them. We selected based on the camp’s labour requirements, that was it.”

  Beat.

  I asked him: “Why would you go to the camp?”

  Beat.

  He said, “I was transferred there. After I was wounded in Russia, I was accepted into the Waffen-SS, and they transferred me.”

 
Beat.

  I asked him: “Then why did you stay there?”

  Beat.

  He said, “I wanted to leave, when I went there, and saw it. I was shocked and I wanted to leave. But my colleagues told me not to be stupid, I would become accustomed to it. And it would have been very bad for me to leave, for my career. For the superior who recommended me, it would have been very unpleasant. And for your mother, in Berlin, I had her there, I had a wife.

  Beat.

  Once, he said, “I took an oath to Hitler.”

  Beat.

  When I asked him about the… experiments, he said something like, “You have to understand, it was nothing, there, to conduct those experiments, not even worth talking about. They were all going to go on a transport at some point, so it was nothing. And you can’t imagine the… opportunity. Under any other circumstances it would not have been possible to use human subjects like that. I was able to do medical work, gain surgical experience, you should understand this, you’re a scientist. If I learned about typhus then we could control it in the camps and on the Eastern Front, I could contribute to German medical literature, to the war, that way.”

  Beat.

  Then he would go on and on about how I didn’t understand, I didn’t realize, those were different times.

  Beat.

  I would end up yelling, “How could you stay there, how could you stay there,” and he would clutch his cutlery, and slump over his plate, and my mother would say, “Don’t yell at him, look at him, you’re upsetting him.”

  Beat.

  One time, my mother pulled me out into the hallway during dinner and said, “Your father was wounded at the front, he was shot there, in Russia. I didn’t want him to be sent back, I knew he would be killed if he was sent back, and I would be a widow, with nothing. I begged him to stay at the camp, because it was so much safer there.”

  Beat.

  I think she felt that explained it.

  Beat.

  The point is, it went on and on like that, the fights over dinner, us going through the same set of questions over and over again, until finally, I just stopped arguing with him. I stopped arguing with him, and… life continued.

  Beat.

  I don’t know. I don’t know what I should have done. Turned him in?

  RUDI regards the audience.

  Yes? Turned him in?

  Beat.

  I do know that that was when I—those quiet dinners when I wasn’t questioning him anymore, and the cutlery would clink, and the servants would come in and out, that’s when I started to feel… guilty, because I…

  Beat.

  I was sitting across from my father over dinner and watching him talk and swallow food and laugh, and I was starting to… recognize him. I hadn’t recognized him since I found out. He could have been anyone, sitting there across from me, but then I started to go back, to see him as… my… so I wanted to—I couldn’t live that way, so I needed to…

  RUDI regards the audience.

  You’ll like this part.

  Beat.

  Hermann, my friend Hermann, became a means of—a means of—well. The rumours were—we’d all heard them, but I was close with him, so I knew.

  Beat.

  Hermann became a means of…

  Beat.

  You have to remember. I was searching for a way of distancing myself from my father.

  Beat.

  It was Hitler’s birthday. My father—all the old Nazis—celebrated Hitler’s birthday at the beer hall every year. It was the only times my father let himself get drunk, Christmas and Hitler’s birthday. While he was out celebrating, Hermann came to my house and I… took him into my father’s study.

  Transition. RUDI and HERMANN are in RUDI’s father’s study. HERMANN pours drinks for them.

  HERMANN

  “I want my youth to be strong and beautiful.” Who said that?

  RUDI

  J.F. Kennedy?

  HERMANN

  No, stupid, Hitler. It’s Hitler’s birthday, why would I quote Kennedy?

  Beat.

  My father calls me down to his study every year on Hitler’s birthday, and shakes my hand. Me, and then the servants. He talks to me just like I’m a servant, these days.

  RUDI

  No he doesn’t.

  HERMANN

  He does, there’s a girl here, the cook’s daughter, she works somewhere up in Mexico, some family up there, she comes down to visit her mother. She’s here now, she makes me things in the kitchen, bitter drinks that taste sort of like fruit and, well, shit, and these dry biscuits that I politely choke down. She comes and finds me, and gives these things to me and then runs away and hides. I couldn’t work it out. Then I heard how my father talks to her. It’s exactly how he talks to me. Like I’m a stranger he’s obligated to look after. I think the girl must feel sorry for me.

  RUDI

  We all feel sorry for you, Hermann.

  Beat.

  HERMANN

  He didn’t call me down this year. I went by his study, after school, and the door was closed. I wonder if there’s anything specific, or if I’m just generally disappointing him—pass me that.

  RUDI passes HERMANN the cigarette. HERMANN takes a drag.

  I’d like to go up there, to Mexico. I wonder what it’s like up there. I’d like to go and walk around in the desert up there.

  RUDI

  Visit the girl?

  Beat.

  HERMANN

  There’s a picture of Hitler on your father’s desk.

  RUDI

  Yes.

  HERMANN

  In a gold frame, that’s nice. That’s really nice, a picture of you and a picture of Hitler.

  RUDI

  It was a gift.

  HERMANN

  From whom?

  RUDI

  Hitler.

  Beat.

  HERMANN

  What would you have done? Do you ever think about that?

  RUDI

  About what?

  HERMANN

  You know, the party tells you how bright your future is, and if you’ll only go and work in a “special camp” for “prisoners” they’ll promote you to Hauptman. I don’t know what I’d do.

  Beat.

  I would go.

  RUDI

  You wouldn’t go.

  HERMANN

  I would.

  RUDI

  No, you wouldn’t.

  HERMANN

  Why not?

  RUDI

  Your asthma? Your glasses? You cry when you get dirty.

  HERMANN

  Fuck you—you would go. You would have been Sieg Heiling along with the rest of them. Waffen-SS, Luftwaffe—

  RUDI

  Yeah.

  HERMANN

  Gestapo.

  RUDI

  Yeah, that’s right, Gestapo.

  HERMANN

  You would have. You know you would. You’re German, up and down.

  RUDI

  And you’re Latin American?

  HERMANN

  I have a Latin American spirit.

  RUDI

  Because you can’t play sports?

  HERMANN

  (sarcastic) Yes, exactly, because I can’t play sports, that’s why they’ve given me a passport.

  Beat.

  Let’s go, let’s go out. Let’s go drive around, I hate it here, in his study, what does he do in here?

  RUDI

  There’s liquor here.

  HERMANN

  There’s liquor out there.

  RUDI
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  Where?

  HERMANN

  I don’t know.

  Beat.

  RUDI

  To… one of the clubs. To one of the clubs you go to, is that where you want to go?

  Beat.

  Will you… take me to one of the clubs?

  HERMANN

  Why?

  RUDI

  Let’s—show me… I know you… show me what you do?

  RUDI hits on HERMANN.

  HERMANN

  Don’t—

  RUDI

  Show me.

  HERMANN

  You’re drunk.

  RUDI

  I’m not—I’m yes—I’m drunk.

  RUDI hits on HERMANN again.

  Just let me.

  HERMANN pushes RUDI away.

  HERMANN

  You don’t—you’re—this is stupid. You’re drunk!

  RUDI

  I’m not drunk! I’m too nervous to be drunk. Let me. You want to, I know you… I know you… like me.

  RUDI kisses HERMANN. They kiss more intensely. HERMANN undoes RUDI’s belt. He goes down on him. RUDI throws his head back. RUDI turns and regards the audience.

  Well?

  Transition. HERMANN is gone.

  It’s a nice image, isn’t it? The two sons of prominent Nazis sucking each other off in Paraguay somewhere?

  Beat.

  When my father found us he was… upset. (RUDI laughs.) I heard the door to the study open, I looked up, and there he was, in his black suit, standing in the doorway.

  Beat.

  I… kept on… with Hermann, I didn’t stop. It’s a bizarre thing, because your immediate reaction to a parent seeing you have sex is to stop, and I had to fight that for a moment, but then I was able to continue.

  Beat.

  He just stood there in the doorway, and watched.

  Beat.

  He closed the door on his way out.

  Beat.

  And then, of course, things fell apart. They fell apart, and not just for me, but for my father as well.

  Beat.

  He wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t speak to me, he wouldn’t say my name. He passed me in the hallways with his eyes down. My mother locked herself in her room and cried. The sound filled the house. I would go out and come home to it. It went on and on like that, for weeks, their shame and my… well. Although, I wasn’t as enthusiastic about it, after that.

  Transition. RUDI and HERMANN are in RUDI’s bedroom. HERMANN kisses RUDI. RUDI is not responding.