JOHANNA
You are building a house, and digging out submerged cities, and writing queer poetry—and human beings who once meant so much to you have been rotting in their graves these seven years—and you are still almost young. How incomprehensible the whole thing is!
SALA
"Thou that livest on, cease thou thy weeping," says Omar Nameh, who was born at Bagdad in the year 412 of the Mohammedan era as the son of a cobbler. For that matter, I know a man who is only thirty-eight. He has buried two wives and seven children, not to speak of grandchildren. And now he is playing the piano in a shabby little Prater[1 ] restaurant, while artists of both sexes show off their tights and their fluttering skirts on the platform. And recently, when the pitiful performance had come to an end and they were turning out the lights, he went right on, without apparent reason, and quite heedless of everything, playing away on that frightful old rattle-box of his. And then Ronsky and I asked him over to our table and had a chat with him. And then he told us that the piece he had just played was his own composition. Of course, we complimented him. And then his eyes lit up, and he asked us in a voice that shook: "Gentlemen, do you think my piece will make a hit?" He is thirty-eight years old, and his career has come to an end in a small restaurant where his public consists of nurse-girls and non-commissioned officers, and his one longing is—to get their applause!
REUMANN (enters)
Good evening, Miss Johanna. Good evening, Mr. von Sala. (Shakes hands with both of them at the same time) How are you?
SALA
Fine. You don't suppose one must be your victim all the time because one has had the honor of consulting you once?
REUMANN
Oh, I had forgotten all about it. However, there are people who feel just that way.—I suppose your mother is having a little rest, Miss Johanna?