“The Harrowing” — Wim’s variation on the Frankenstein story…

Drawing by Pat.

As a storyteller, I’m always looking for new approaches to old stories. I don’t know how many times I’ve read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but one episode in particular never fails to shock and horrify me.

Poor Justine Moritz! Rescued by the Frankenstein family from poverty as a child, she grows up to become their loyal servant. But after Victor Frankenstein’s creature vengefully murders the family’s youngest child, Justine finds herself accused of the crime. Victor knows that she’s innocent, but can’t bring himself to come forward with the truth. Justine is tried, found guilty, and hanged for murder.

I decided to write a play about Justine called The Harrowing, subtitling it “A Rhapsody on a Theme by Mary Shelley.” In my retelling, Justine is a bitterly alienated young woman, exploited horribly by the Frankenstein family and all too aware of her lowly status. One night she encounters the monster (called the Demon in my version) who shows her the murdered boy’s body. She reacts with horror at first, but soon recognizes the Demon as a kindred spirit, a fellow casualty of a cruel and unjust world. Before the night is over, they have become lovers.

The first half of The Harrowing was presented via Zoom in 2022, with the late Everett Quinton as the Demon. A staged reading of the entire play was performed in New York on October 2, 2023, at the Theater for the New City in New York. You can download the complete script for The Harrowing here.

In the following scene, the Justine and the Demon hold a macabre picnic near the murdered boy’s body.

The late Everett Quinton as the Demon in a Zoom performance of The Harrowing; photo by Denise Gregorka.

(JUSTINE and DEMON sit on the spread-out blanket, eating berries and nuts in the moonlight. DEMON is drinking straight from a bottle of wine. JUSTINE looks over at William’s dead body and smiles.)

JUSTINE. Willy, dear, won’t you wake up? You must be hungry. Would you like to join us for something to eat?

DEMON. He isn’t asleep.

JUSTINE. I know. But let me have my little lie. I have so few of them left. The world is getting crowded with truth. Sleep on, sweet Willy, don’t let us grownups disturb you.

(JUSTINE and DEMON eat a few bites.)

JUSTINE. Where did you get these nuts?

DEMON. I took them.

JUSTINE. From where?

DEMON. A tree.

(JUSTINE and DEMON eat some more.)

JUSTINE. What about these berries?

DEMON. I took them.

JUSTINE. From where?

DEMON. Some bushes.

(DEMON passes the bottle to JUSTINE, and she drinks from it.)

Frontispiece to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein.

JUSTINE. Where did you get this wine?

DEMON. From a house.

JUSTINE. Inside a house?

DEMON. Yes.

JUSTINE. How did you get inside?

DEMON. I just went in.

JUSTINE. Did you take the wine, or did you … ask somebody for it?

DEMON. I don’t understand.

JUSTINE. Was anybody in the house?

DEMON. No.

JUSTINE. Where did you find the wine in the house?

DEMON. On a table.

JUSTINE. You shouldn’t take things from houses like that.

DEMON. But I took nuts from the tree.

JUSTINE. I know, but—

DEMON. I took berries from the bushes.

JUSTINE. I mean from people. You shouldn’t take things from people like that.

DEMON. Oh. (drinks from the bottle) I don’t think I understand. I was hungry, and I needed something to eat. There were nuts on the tree and berries in the bushes. What could I do but take them? I was thirsty and I needed something to drink. There was wine in the house, so I took it. What was I supposed to do?

JUSTINE. You should have asked the people who lived there if you could have it.

DEMON. Would they have given it to me?

JUSTINE. I … don’t know.

DEMON. Do people … often … give things to others?

(Silence; JUSTINE takes the bottle from him and drinks from it.)

JUSTINE. You were right and I was wrong. It’s best to take. Everybody takes, and nobody’s likely to give you anything, even if you ask. People have been taking things from me my whole life without asking. They don’t give anything back, even when I ask.
I suppose that’s why I have so little. 
I don’t do enough taking.
I should have known, the truth was all around me.
Taking is the way the world works.
What a fool I was.

(JUSTINE takes long swallow of wine, then passes the bottle to the DEMON.)

JUSTINE. I’m going to be drunk. You should get drunk too.

DEMON. Drunk?

JUSTINE. You’ll know it when you feel it.

—Wim

Illustration from an abridged version of Frankenstein in the The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 16, 1910.

Long John Silver’s Parley — a dramatic monologue

Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell: that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

Illustration for Catalan translation of Treasure Island, 1926 (credit: Blau-Barcelona, Creative Commons Share Alike 4.0 International license)

We godless devils want the treasure map;
you good and godly fellows want to live.
It’s fair straightforward bart’ring, Cap’n Smollett,
with not much elbow room for give nor take.
We’ll crush this stockade underfoot like a snail.
Give o’er the map, and we’ll give o’er your lives—
a bargain all around, no need for losers.
But this here handkerchief’s my flag of truce.
May I set myself down on this tree stump?
My crutch gets tired from holding up my carcass.

Now pay good heed to this bird on my shoulder.
“Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!” he caws.
Old Cap’n Flint here wants to mediate,
and we could do worse for a diplomat;
his squawking’s scarce the nonsense you may think.
He’s old—no, older—than the briny sea.
He perched on the gloved hand of Francis Drake,
the greatest buccaneer that e’er there was,
knighted by the Virgin Pirate Queen
Elizabeth herself, who might as well’ve
unfurled the Jolly Roger to wave above
the decks and timbers of her Sceptered Isle—
for what was England in those golden days
but the yarest pirate ship ever sailed?

“Pieces of eight” he croaks, again, again,
till one gets sick at heart of hearing it.
But what else ’tis for anyone to say?
The tallied sum of all accounts is stowed
in that taut turn of words—“Pieces of eight.”
Cap’n Flint remembers when ’twas first spoke,
“Pieces of eight,” after the Fall from Eden,
when sons of men burrowed to fall still farther.
His lum’nous plumage cast its precious light
in the bowels of the first mines ever dug
at the orders of the hunched angel Mammon,
cast out with Satan and his warrior hordes—
Mammon, whose rum-drunk eyes gaze ever downward.

That was the first piracy, I’d maintain,
despoiling Mother Earth of what was hers
and hers alone—pound by pound, ton by ton,
nuggets and ingots and wagons and shiploads
of her tender flesh, while Mammon conducted
the hellish miners’ chorus: “Pieces of eight.”
’Twas then this parrot learned his wretched song.

But let’s scan your thinking, as best I take it.
You’ll do honest with our stolen treasure
if you can dig it up before we do.
Perhaps you’d give it back to them whose throats
we cut for it—but were it wise to go
hunt them out in their current whereabouts?
I hear it’s fiendish hot down in their tropics,
for those blighters were no angels themselves;
such sinless men as you are a rare breed.

No, you’d rather keep it, and I can’t blame you.
You’re not like us, I’ll be the first to warrant;
you’re decent, well-spoke, clean, and civilized—
and sober, which my men are surely not;
you worship a God way up yonder skyward,
a God my poor brain’s too stunted to reach.
It’s only square for you good honest men
to snatch our stealings into your good care.
But tell me—do two thefts make a right sale,
first by pirates, again by honest men?
Can theft cancel theft, crime unravel crime?
Because what’s plundered has been stolen double
is it legit’mized as a lawful haul?
In short, is it more rightly yours than ours?

Answer this riddle for me if you can:
What gives preciousness to gold and silver
so sons of men covet such things as glister?
Look, in my palm, a doubloon and a Spanish
dollar, minted from gold and silver each.
They don’t so much as twinkle as we spy ’em;
they’ll look dullish till I wipe ’em with spit.
Devious solid to the touch they feel,
and yet so soft and yielding, they would melt
and go to oozing ’tween my greedy fingers
if I so much as puffed my hot breath on ’em.
Such variable metals, gold and silver;
not pract’cal for the skillets, pans, and kettles
employed by sea cooks such as my good self;
too ready blunted to make knives and axes;
prone to bursting when hollowed out and charged
with powder, too heavy for balls of shot;
too scarce to forge into gallows enough
to hang all them that ought rightly to hang,
for who’re the souls that don’t deserve that fate?

But there’s tricks in the alchemy of theft
that makes of sparkling things more than they are.
A coin’s value to a man is in proportion
to what gets wrung out from another’s hands;
its price is weighed by how some poor soul lacks it;
it measures out the emptiness of bellies;
it’s stamped with gaping faces dispossessed—
the sick, the starving, destitute, and slain.
Aye, Cap’n—aught that gets owned is blood and terror,
and we pirates do due diligence by both,
shirking not lives of man, woman, nor child,
but toiling always to earn our proper swag.
Can you kind gentlemen say nigh the same?

It’s time to play my winning hand, good Cap’n.
I’ve not come here for any earnest dealing;
my showing here’s a sham; we two shan’t haggle;
the only settling left to do is slaughter.
I’ve made a fine treaty with Mother Earth
already, for we parleyed in a dream.
I found her the vestige of a grand lady—
Daughter of Paradise, Refuge of Sinners,
Isis Unveiled, Wise Muse of Solomon,
the Lavish Madonna of all Abundance,
enthroned in luxury botanical,
her cornucopia bountiful and brimming,
a twelve-star constellation in her crown,
our round world raised upon her royal scepter.

But she was weary when we met last night,
her diadem drooping, her bright vestments faded,
with tear-shaped pearls upon her pallid cheek
and black-winged sighs heaving out of her breast—
all, all, she says, because of honest men
and the wrongs they wreak upon her creation.

“’Tis honest men, not thieves,” she said, “who bolt
their lowly brothers in shackles, consigning
them to swallow pitch black soot by the lungful
in caves that harvest coal. ’Tis honest men,
not thieves, who choke and suffocate the sky
with smoke from heaps of flaming anthracite.
’Tis honest men, not thieves, who put the fingers
of mothers and their babes to bleeding in
mills fueled by sulf’rous, profitable fires,
mills where raiments of the rich are made,
mills where wealth is manufactured from despair,
mills that weave out of tears and hunger
and disease all merchandises fine and dear,
mills where godliness incubates and hatches,
taking wing in this vale of decency,
of gluttonous virtue and righteous greed.

“Take it all,” she told me. “Reclaim the treasure
from my bosom, and give me nothing in
return but bloody lives of honest men—
more than their lives, give me their shrieking pain,
that they may feel the agony of earth,
the rape of all my innocence and bounty.
Don’t let your cutlasses and daggers rest
until they’re slain, the cursèd multitude
of all the virtuous and honorable
throughout this doomed and damned bedeviled world,
and thieves receive their just inheritance,
for the earth shall be theirs when time gets full.
Then shall my poor heart leap with exultation
and my visage blush sanguine once again.”

—Wim

John Silver by William Nicholson (1872-1949), Characters of Romance, 1900. Poem previously appeared in Open Arts Forum.)

Five new poems …

Wim is grateful to editor Nolcha Fox for including five of his poems—including this one—in Chewers by Masticadores.

The Purloined X

A poem should not mean   
But be.
—Archibald MacLeish

Tomorrow’s assignment
(Mr. Fritz told us,
lo, those many years ago),
is to find the poem’s meaning
and bring it to class,
in cuffs if it resists,
sedated if necessary.

To find its coordinates
(said Mr. Fritz)
make use of concordances—
one for Shakespeare
and one for King James—
and pluck out the heart
of the poem’s mystery
word by word
until you’ve got
the exact latitude and longitude
where the meaning lies in lurk.
And remember,
a poem can only have
one meaning,
like any other equation.
The meaning is x
so solve for x.

But I’d have none of that.

If there was one thing
I already knew for sure
even at that age,
it’s that meaning
can’t be come by honestly,
so I called the cops
who didn’t even bother
with a warrant.
They smashed the door
and stormed right in
and turned the poem
upside down and inside out,
breaking all the furniture in sight—
but still no meaning.

Now I thought I was smarter
when I glimpsed
a folded piece of paper
tucked in a letter compartment
of the rolltop desk
right there in plain sight.
But when I seized it and unfolded it,
it was just a shopping list
for the day’s necessities—

a thing with feathers
a stately pleasure dome
a grain of sand
a wild flower
a red wheelbarrow
a wine dark sea

—just the usual stuff.






But when I went to consult
the little French detective
in his humble digs,
redolent of mildew and a meerschaum,
walls bedecked with Beardsley prints
and Toulouse-Lautrec posters,
he didn’t even have to rise from his divan
to figure it out.





Mon dieu, mon ami!
(he said, pouring each of us a glass of absinthe)
What silliness you talk!
Can you tell me what it is,
this thing you speak of,
this—this meaning?
I can tell you for certain
there is no such animal
as a meaning.  
It is a make-believe creature
for the hazing of—
—how do you call them, you Américains?—
Boy Scouts, n’est-ce pas?
They put a tenderfoot alone
holding a bag by a hollow log
and tell him to stand there waiting
deep in the night
for the meaning
to show his little head,
and they watch
just out of reach of his earshot
snickering to each other,
those comrades of his,
while he keeps waiting there
like an idiot.





No, mon frère,
a meaning is a chimera,
a mere opinion,
and the poem holds opinions in contempt.
The poem is smart,
the poet its useful fool.
Now as for the poem in question—
never having read it
I am quite au fait with it,
for having read one poem,
I have read them all
and know wherein their secrets may be found.





You see, the x you sought
is very big,
the biggest thing there is,
the only thing there is,
and you were—comment tu le dis?—
getting warm
to think you saw it
right where anyone else could see it.
But it wasn’t in plain sight,
it was plain sight.
For a poem is not a thing that means,
it is a handless
springless clock
that tells only the moment,
only what is really there.
It is a thing
that conundrums the sense,
so to speak—
that blisses the heart
and fierces the brain
and verbs its breath into a world.





—Wim






“The letter stolen again,” illustration by Frédéric-Théodore Lix for “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allan Poe.


			

	
	



				
					


	

		
“The Rake’s Visit” — Wim’s new play …


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		

I just finished writing a new two-character play: “The Rake’s Visit: A One-Act Capriccio on a Theme from Don Giovanni.” It is a revisionist take on Mozart’s opera, his wife Constanze, and especially the notorious adventurer Giacomo Casanova. You can download the entire play by clicking here.





Here’s a synopsis:







Prague, 1787: It is the night before the scheduled world premiere of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The aging roué Giacomo Casanova has read the libretto by his libertine friend Lorenzo Da Ponte—and he hates it. He goes to Mozart’s lodgings hoping to rewrite it, only to find that Mozart wants nothing to do with him. But Mozart’s wife, Constanze, is intrigued by the legendary rake, and the two of them pass the night in the “alchemical brandy” of storytelling.







This exchange between Constanze and Giocamo takes place early in the play …





GIACOMO.
(thumbing through the libretto)
Would you help me … to fix this dreadful libretto?
Or just a little bit of it, at least?
Maybe just an aria or two?
If you don’t mind very much?
I’d hate to have squandered both my time and yours
with nothing to show for it.





CONSTANZE.
What’s wrong with it?






Portrait of Constanze Mozart by Joseph Lange c. 1782






GIACOMO.
Well, obviously it’s an abomination.
I knew it would be vile, but hadn’t expected—this,
not even from Lorenzo,
who is shameless as only a priest may be
(and, oh, I can assure you,
he was even worse before he was defrocked).
What he has done here with the Don Juan legend …
well, he has cast to the winds
the abundant moral lessons of Tirso and Molière
out of sheer infatuation with this scoundrel.
Giovanni is the lying looking-glass
that shows Lorenzo as he loves to see himself—
a rake of irresistible allure;
his very villainy flatters men’s dreams of debauchery,
of what they might do were their desires untethered
from decency or respect for womankind.
Oh, of course, in the end Giovanni does get swallowed up by hell and all—
the traditional perfunctory comeuppance
to lend an obligatory veneer of redeeming moral value.
But believe me, if you knew Lorenzo as I do—
well, he considers an eternity of hellfire
a paltry price to pay for a lifetime of glutting his earthly appetites
and ruining the lives of myriad ladies.






Drawing of Casanova by his brother Francesco






CONSTANZE.
Aren’t you a fine one to talk about ruining ladies’ lives?





GIACOMO.
My dear Frau Mozart,
of the thousands of women
who have conquered my heart and eyes and loins,
I challenge you to find one—
even one—
whose life I have ruined,
or one still living
with whom I do not remain on the most cordial terms
even after many years.
I am not a deceiver,
nor have I ever been deceived;
I have never been unfaithful,
nor have I ever been betrayed;
I have lived a happy life,
and I have generously shared my happiness.
Friendship is my categorical imperative—
I treat every woman I meet as an end in herself
and for herself,
not as a means toward an end.
For you see, the pleasures of flesh upon flesh are brief
and all the sweeter for it,
while friendship—
ah, friendship!—
is eternal—
but only when it really lasts!





—Wim






Don Giovanni confronting the stone guest; painting by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, c. 1830–35


			

	
	



				
					


	

		
Operation Ares — a short play


				

			
				
			
					

			


		

		
Characters:


Adolf Hitler

Wernher von Braun


The scene is Adolf Hitler’s vast office in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, December 1944. Downstage, an imaginary window in the “fourth wall” looks out into the night. Hitler is seated at his desk. Wearing an SS uniform, Wernher von Braun enters and salutes.


Peenemünde, Start einer V2
V-2 launch in 1943.


VON BRAUN. Sieg Heil, Mein Führer!


(HITLER rises from his chair and begins stalking around VON BRAUN, who stands at attention.)


HITLER. Major von Braun, where are my rockets?


VON BRAUN. Sir?


HITLER. My Vengeance Weapons. Where are they?


VON BRAUN. Mein Führer, I don’t understand.


HITLER. It is a simple question, Major von Braun.


VON BRAUN. You have your V-2 rockets, Mein Führer. Several thousands of them.


HITLER. Several thousands.


VON BRAUN. Yes, Mein Führer. They’re being launched daily from mobile sites in western Holland.


HITLER. Several thousands.


1024px-Damage_Caused_by_V2_Rocket_Attacks_in_Britain,_1945_HU88803
Damage caused by a V-2 rocket attack in Whitechapel, London.


VON BRAUN. Raining death upon London, sir.


HITLER. Why have you disobeyed my orders?


VON BRAUN. Mein Führer?


HITLER. Some three years ago, when you showed me plans for the V-2, I ordered the production of hundreds of thousands. Enough to turn all of London into a lake of flame, fire and fury like the world has never seen. You promised exactly that. Raining death, you say? Your rain is but a puny drizzle. Where are my rockets?


VON BRAUN. Sir, we couldn’t reckon on …


HITLER. On what?


VON BRAUN. Sir, the laborers can’t —


HITLER. You have all the forced labor you could possibly need from Mittelbau-Dora.


Hitler_portrait_cropVON BRAUN. Yes, but slave laborers have an unfortunate way of …


HITLER. Of what?


VON BRAUN. Dying.


HITLER. How?


VON BRAUN. Overwork. Starvation. Disease. What have you. Sir.


HITLER. So I hear. More laborers die making the rockets than Londoners die from their warheads! Take more slaves from Mittelbau-Dora. Empty the camp if need be. Then take more from Buchenwald. The supply will be endless, I promise you. You’ll have millions to choose from.


VON BRAUN. Yes, sir. But there is also the matter of raw materials, sir.


HITLER. Materials! Always materials! Are you telling me that hundreds of thousands of rockets are an impossible task?


VON BRAUN. So it would seem, sir.


HITLER. Why did you not reckon this three years ago?


VON BRAUN. A terrible miscalculation, sir.


(Pause)


HITLER. You may relax, Major von Braun.


(VON BRAUN stands at ease, but anything but relaxed; there is no place for him to sit.)


HITLER. You were jailed in Stettin last March, were you not?


VON BRAUN. Regretfully, yes, Mein Führer.


HITLER. Do you know why?


VON BRAUN. I was never entirely clear about that, Mein Führer.


HITLER. You were suspected of sabotaging your own rocket program. You were also suspected of planning an escape from the Reich. A truly astonishing escape. Not to England, or America, or Russia—but to the planet Mars!


VON BRAUN. Sir, I assure you that I never planned any such —


HITLER. Do you know why I’ve summoned you?


VON BRAUN. I received your memo, Mein Führer.


HITLER. And what did you glean from my memo?


VON BRAUN. You want to speak to me about Operation Ares.


HITLER. And what are your thoughts on Operation Ares?


VON BRAUN. Regretfully, I have no thoughts on Operation Ares.


HITLER. And why not?


VON BRAUN. Because, Mein Führer, I have never heard of Operation Ares.


(Pause)


HITLER. You’ve also been overheard making defeatist remarks about the war.


VON BRAUN. If so, my words have been terribly misunderstood.


HITLER. No? You haven’t been repeating vicious lies? That the Reich is crumbling? That the war effort is failing? That the Allies have taken back France? That the Russians are advancing upon us from the east?


VON BRAUN. I’ve said no such things, Mein Führer.


HITLER. But you’ve heard such lies?


VON BRAUN. I give them no credence, Mein Führer.


HITLER. Before you leave this office, I demand a list of every voice you’ve heard spreading such lies.


VON BRAUN. Yes, Mein Führer.


HITLER. I am about to launch an offensive in the forest of the Ardennes, crushing the Allied armies underfoot. The Russians, too, will live to regret their encroachment upon our realms. The Reich has never been so close to victory, believe me.


VON BRAUN. I have complete faith in the destiny of Reich, Mein Führer.


(Pause)


marsproject_0000-570x865HITLER. Do you deny that you want to go to Mars?


VON BRAUN. I never intended to escape —


HITLER. Do you want to go to Mars?


VON BRAUN. Yes, sir, I do. Very much, sir.


HITLER. Is it possible to go to Mars?


VON BRAUN. I believe it is entirely possible, sir.


HITLER. Explain.


VON BRAUN. I have in mind a fleet of ten spaceships carrying a total of seventy men. The voyage, if optimally timed, should take thirteen months and six days.


HITLER. Why aren’t we building such spaceships right now?


VON BRAUN. We will if you command it, Mein Führer.


HITLER. And how do you suppose we shall be greeted by the Martians?


VON BRAUN. Sir?


HITLER. The natives. The inhabitants. Will they greet us as friends, liberators, enemies?


VON BRAUN. Mein Führer, it is by no means certain that there is any life at all —


HITLER. There is intelligent life on Mars. My people tell me so.


VON BRAUN. There might be, sir, but —


HITLER. It is a certainty. I have it on good authority.


(HITLER goes to his desk and unrolls a large map.)


800px-Mars_Atlas_by_Giovanni_Schiaparelli_1888
1888 map of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli.


HITLER. I have here a detailed map of Mars and its canals—a vast and sophisticated network, a miracle of engineering that could only have been built by an extremely advanced civilization.


VON BRAUN. Sir, I am familiar with that theory, and I must regretfully say —


HITLER. That all this is impossible?


VON BRAUN. Not impossible at all, but —


HITLER. Surely you will not tell me that this map is in any way false or inaccurate.


VON BRAUN. It is a very old notion, sir, and more recent observations —


HITLER. I received it from the Reich’s most brilliant astronomers.


VON BRAUN. Very well, sir.


HITLER. So let me ask again—how will we be greeted by the Martians?


VON BRAUN. I haven’t the slightest idea, Mein Führer.


(HITLER rolls up the map.)


HITLER. Major von Braun, I can’t say I’m at all pleased by what I’m hearing. Surely the world’s other great powers have advanced space programs, while the Reich seems to have none at all. What about the Americans?


VON BRAUN. They’ve scarcely given it any thought, sir.


HITLER. The British?


VON BRAUN. Even less, sir.


HITLER. The Russians?


VON BRAUN. The Soviets have far-reaching hopes for space travel.


HITLER. How so?


VON BRAUN. It isn’t easy to … articulate, Mein Führer.


HITLER. What is its guiding spirit?


VON BRAUN. Sir?


HITLER. The fundamental principle, the single thought, the solitary word that sums up the aspirations and the philosophy of the Soviet space program. What is it, Major von Braun?


VON BRAUN. I cannot say.


HITLER. Cannot or will not? Come, come, Major. I’m not squeamish. I’m prepared to hear any notion, however vile or repugnant or obscene, any sort of sick and depraved Judeo-Bolshevist perversion —


VON BRAUN (interrupting fearfully). It’s love, Mein Führer.


(Pause; VON BRAUN clearly dreads HITLER’s reaction to this awful revelation.)


HITLER. Love?


VON BRAUN. Yes, Mein Führer. Love and …


HITLER. Well?


VON BRAUN (with mounting dread). Altruism.


HITLER. Explain.


VON BRAUN. The Russians’ greatest rocket engineer was also a philosopher.


HITLER. His name?


Tsiolkovsky
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky


VON BRAUN. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.


HITLER. His beliefs?


VON BRAUN. That Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever. That the Cosmos is perfect, and its cause and purpose is nothing else but love. That the universe is inhabited by untold billions of perfect races, and it is the destiny of humankind to join in their perfection; to resurrect the dead and grant them happiness and immortality; to selflessly spread love among the stars, throughout the infinite and the eternal.


HITLER. A loving Cosmos.


VON BRAUN. Yes, Mein Führer.


HITLER (shuddering). Yes, I have sensed this possibility myself.


VON BRAUN. Sir?


(HITLER holds out his hand to VON BRAUN.)


HITLER. Come. Let us look into the night together. Let us talk of Operation Ares.


(VON BRAUN takes his hand; they go downstage and gaze through the imaginary “fourth wall” window into the night.)


HITLER. With every passing night, I believe I see fewer and fewer stars. Some grow dim, some disappear altogether. (pointing) Look, right now, at that one, flickering with its last gasp of light. Last night it was large and blazing. Tomorrow I’ll look for it and it will be gone, just an empty pocket in the sable velvet void. The universe is dying, trudging in the funereal footsteps of its lame and senile God of Love, doomed to share in his wretched extinction. It’s pitiable! The sin of pity creeps up inside of me. But what need has the universe of my pity? It needs rather my fist, my rage, my volcanic cruelty. It begs for conquest, whimpers for a master to teach it strife and destruction, to breathe a fresh conflagration of hatred into its waning orbs. For struggle, not love, is the father of all things—and the more brutal the struggle and the more fierce the hatred, the greater life becomes, and the brighter the heavens. (clenching his fist) I’ll soon crush Russia with the Reich’s great hatred, and Britain, and America. I’ll teach hatred even to my enemies, those who most profess their love. I’ll make our planet great again. And then … Major von Braun, together we must conquer Mars.


VON BRAUN. Yes, Mein Führer.


(HITLER goes to his desk and spreads the map again; VON BRAUN joins him.)


HITLER. Let us prepare for Operation Ares.


END OF PLAY.


—Wim


800px-Walt_Disney_and_Dr._Wernher_von_Braun_-_GPN-2000-000060
Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, 1954.