A Comedy in One Act
By Gustav Wied
[The room of Helms and Krakau in the Old Men's Home. The time is afternoon of a late September day. There is a window at right looking out on the street and another at left overlooking a courtyard. There is a single door back center which opens into a corridor on both sides of which are similar doors in long regular rows and at the end of which is a stairway from the lower floors.
An imaginary line divides the room into two equal parts. Helms lives on the street side and Krakau on the side nearest the courtyard. In each division there is a bed, chiffonier, a cupboard, a table, a sofa and several chairs. The stove is on Krakau's side, but by way of compensation Helms has an upholstered arm chair with a tall back. A lamp hangs in the exact center of the ceiling.
Though there is a low screen which can be used as partial partition between the two divisions it is now folded and standing against the back wall, and the two tables are placed down center, end to end, so that the place is for all present purposes a single room.
Helms' side is conspicuously ill kept and in disorder; Krakau's side is spick and span. On Helms' table there is a vase filled with flowers and near it a pair of gray woolen socks and a pair of heavy mittens. There is also a photograph of a boy in a polished nickel standing-frame.
Helms, his spectacles on his nose, sits in his great arm chair at the table and reads a newspaper.
Krakau sits next to him working out a problem on a chess board.
There is a short pause after the curtain rises.]
Krakau. There, I've done it again.