Test
GEORG (OS)
To My Sister
Where you walk autumn and evening descend,
Blue deer sound beneath the trees.
Lonely pond at eventide.
Soft the flight of birds sounds,
Melancholy above the arc of your eye.
Your slight smile sounds.
God twisted the arc of your eyelid.
At night, Good Friday’s child, stars seek
The arc of your brow.
As the poem “To My Sister” is recited, Grete turns slowly to face the audience. By the end of the poem she is facing downstage center. Her face is expressionless but alert. The spotlight on her goes from red to blue as the poem is read.
Suddenly, Grete rushes to stage front and into brilliant white light. She flaunts a sequined handbag that matches her red silk dress. She laughs, speaking now to the audience.
GRETE
Am I late? You can’t have started without me?! Don’t you just love parties? Somebody else’s champagne, somebody else’s food, somebody else’s work! (After a pause, more sedately:) It’s November 21, 1917, we’re in Berlin, three years into the War. An important day for me—I’ll remember it for the rest of my life! But what a dull party! All the young men are in the trenches, either wounded or already dead. And medicine? Drugs? Nobody’s got any! Can’t buy them! Can’t steal them! (Turning to the imaginary host:) Herbie! You sweet thing, have you got a morsel of something for your fetching Grete? . . . No, I thought not. Bye, Herbie! Ah, Max! Any cigarettes? Any treated cigarettes? No? Ta! (Putting her hand to her ear:) What’s that? You want me to play for you? Me, play the piano?! God, no, I haven’t touched it in years, decades! Lost the knack altogether. . . . Has anybody here got some stuff for a grieving widow? You’re all dry as a bone? Well, then, gentlemen, how about some gratuitous sex with a grieving widow? I thought not. . . . Don’t worry, ladies, I’m not here to rob you of the paltry manhood that’s left. (To the audience:) What can I say? What can I do? I’m Good Friday’s Child! God twisted my eyelids! (Turning again to the imaginary host:) Herbie, darling, may I use your bedroom anyway, just for an instant?
Grete walks to the purple-draped bed. She empties out her purse onto it. Two larger items among the paraphernalia are a black-framed portrait of Georg and a silver-plated pistol. She raises the portrait, gazes at it intently, speaks again to the audience.
GRETE, CONT’D.
I miss my family. . . . He was my family.
She puts the portrait down carefully, lovingly, onto the bed, picks up the pistol. She raises it slightly, turns to face the audience with that blank but alert look. Then, almost shouting:
2. Screenplay
THE SCREEN IS BLACK. We HEAR the full statement of the main theme from Brahms’s First Intermezzo for Piano. We then HEAR the ambient sound of an old-fashioned photographic flash pan crackling. THE SCREEN LIGHTS UP with the 1910 black-and-white oval PHOTO-PORTRAIT of GEORG TRAKL. This PHOTO now FADES to the PHOTO of the mature GRETE TRAKL. The MUSIC continues to play. FADE IN TITLE: “To My Sister.” The TITLE and the Grete portrait FADE to the PHOTO of Georg and Grete as children. As the opening credits roll, the CAMERA focuses on the face and especially the determined gaze of the three-year-old Grete. It then moves to the softer look of her older brother. Ambient sounds OS of children playing. CUT TO:
1 EXT -- COURTYARD OF THE TRAKL HOUSE IN SALZBURG -- DAY
Morning, August 8, 1891. Children are bouncing a ball to one another in the courtyard of the Trakl home. Georg, five years old, stands apart wearing a worried expression. He looks up to a window on the second floor of the house. The children laugh and bounce the ball off his body.
CHILDREN
Hey, Georg! Hey, sleepyhead!
The window opens. Georg’s father, TOBIAS TRAKL, leans out. He is beaming.
TOBIAS TRAKL
All right, Georg. You can come up now.
CUT TO:
2 INT -- THE APARTMENT OF THE TRAKL FAMILY IN SALZBURG -- DAY
The boy dashes up the stairs to the main entrance of the family apartment, through the door, then up an interior staircase to the second floor. He approaches a closed door, pauses before it, afraid to knock. CUT TO:
3 INT -- BEDROOM OF THE TRAKL PARENTS -- DAY
His father opens the door and leads the boy to the bed--where Georg’s mother MARIA TRAKL has just given birth to Grete. The room is busy with midwives and the family physician.
3. Fiction with images
The Mahler Man
The next time you are strolling casually through the alley in the back of Carnegie Hall—the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City—look up to the second floor where you will descry an unadorned plaque. It is affixed to the outside rear wall of the Old Met just beneath the double door through which the stage crew used to hoist, by means of a winch you can still see jutting from the wall above that same massive door, instruments that were too bulky and too heavy to maneuver through the backstage door, celestas and pianofortes, for example. The plaque reads:
• •
In Memory of Gus Liberman (1946-1990)
who devoted his life to the music of
Gustav Mahler
Dark is life, is death!
Presented by the Gustav Mahler Society of America
• •
One could demonstrate it every bit as handily by examining the final movement of the Third, the Adagio (“slowly, with tranquillity, deeply felt”) following the bim-bam chorus, but I am going to demonstrate it with exclusive and conclusive reference to the first and the final songs of Das Lied von der Erde, “The Song of the Earth” to you nongermanspeaking motherfuckers sorry. Demonstrate what? The noncontroversial claim—the empirical fact, really—that Gustav Mahler is the consummate artist of our time and the greatest composer of all times. Don’t bother me about Bach or Beethoven, don’t beguile me with Brahms or Bruckner, it’s Mahler for all time and all eternity. Be patient and I will show you. I said be patient, you piss ant punk motherfuckers sorry.
Allow me to introduce myselves.
Okay. Okay. I sense your impatience. We might as well get to the heart of this first song. We’ll skip all the merely beautiful stuff—I mean, look what the first and second harps get to do about six measures into the Trinklied:
Okay. Okay. The heart of the matter. I sense your waxing impatience.
•
Case Notes
Malcolm Herbert, M.D., P.C.
Praxis for Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychotherapy
352 W. 117th Street
New York, New York 10026
Patient: Gus Liberman Date: December 20, 1989
If I could write up Mr. Liberman’s case properly I’d make my mark as a therapist. If I could cure him I’d become a happy one. Hysteria, bipolar (depression, mania), obsessive compulsive disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, Tourette’s—you name it, he’s got it. The only thing Liberman isn’t is borderline. He’s nowhere near the border anymore, he’s a full-fledged resident of Loonyville, an indigenous indigent, why didn’t I go into cosmetic surgery like mama said?
4. Fiction with color images
Magdalena, with a delicate hand, raises the leather cover. The odor of moldering parchment rises to her nose. After a number of blank pages, withered with age, the elegant handwritten script meets her eyes. All the new books are printed, she thinks to herself. This one shows the steady hand of a dedicated monk, the ink now as russet as the earth in which the monk lies, Magdalena reflects. Some of the lines are in red ink: these are the lines that comment on the dazzling pictures. For the book is illustrated, as all the best books of old are illustrated. And the illustrations are so magnificent, so meaningful! Magdalena gasps each time she turns a page.
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An angel with wings of crimson, emerald, and cerulean blesses the young woman whose hands are folded in prayer. The young woman, perched on a bench alongside her bed, is saying her bedtime prayers—her bed, with its scarlet coverlet and blue pillow, awaits her. Magdalena cannot help but see herself in the young woman. Her blond hair curls cascadingly below the small of her back all the way to her knees, as Magdalena’s had before her shearing three years earlier. The red ink says that the young woman wishes to dedicate her life to the Lord. She begs to be sustained in life through the coming night so that she may serve Him on all the days to follow.
Magdalena turns the page.
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There she is again, sound asleep in her bed. She smiles as she dreams. Or perhaps it is no dream. The Lord appears at the foot of her bed. There is no mistaking the auburn hair and
