THEATREMACHINE

Heiner Muller
translated and edited by Marc von Henning

t1
Jabtr andJaber
LONDON BO STON
The Mission

Memocy of a Revolution
 -
The play uses motifs from the novel The Light in the Gallows by Anna
Seghers.
An experience that became a part ofthis text is one ofmy approaches to
HQnecker in the House ofthe Central Committee, going "P in the paternoster.
On every floor a soldier with machine gun sat opposite the entrance to the
paternoster. The House ofthe Central Committee was a high security jail for
the captives ofpower.
I have always been interested in the strut/Ure ofstories within dreams, how
it is free oftransitions, and associations are ()Verlooked. The contrasts create
acceleration. The whole effort ofwriting is to ruhieve the quality ofmy own
dreams. lntkpendence from interpretation, too. Faulkner's best tc:m have this
quality. H.M.
, your name, Antoine. Someone who lived behind the scaffolding in a
Galloudec to Antoine: I am writing this letter on my deathbed. I am
writing in my name and in the name of citizen Sasportas who was
lynched at Port Royal. I inform you herewith that we are forced to
return to you the assignment entrusted to us on behalf of the
Assembly; we are unable to fulfil it. Perhaps others will be more
successful. You will not hear any more from Debuisson, for him things
are going well. It seems that traitors are out having a good time while
the poor walk the streets up to their knees in blood. That is the order
of the world and it is good. Forgive my handwriting. I have had one
leg amputated and am writing in a fever. I hope this letter finds you in
good health and salute you with Republican greetings.
SAILOR. ANTOINE. WOMAN.
SAILOR
Are you citizen Antoine. Then this letter is for you. From a certain
Galloudec. It's not my fault if this letter is old and the matter has
maybe already been resolved. The Spanish trapped us on Cuba, then
the English in Trinidad until your Consul Bonaparte made peace with
England. Then I was mugged in the street in London, because I was
drunk, but they didn't find the letter. As far as this Galloudec is
concerned, he won't be getting any older. He kicked the bucket in
some hospital on Cuba, half prison, half clinic. He was in with
gangrene. I was in with fever. TAKE THE LETTER IT HAS TO
ARRIVE AND IF IT'S THE LAST THING YOU DO YOU
HAVE TO DO THIS FOR ME was the last thing he said to me. And
the address ofan office and your name, if you are this Antoine. But
there is no longer an office and nobody there has heard of you, if that is
cellar sent me to a school where some Antoine is said to have taught. A
cleaning woman told me that her nephew saw you here. He's a cabbie.
And he described you to me, if you are him.
61

THEATREMACHINE
ANTOtNE
I know no Galloudec.
SAILOR
I don't know what was so important to him about this letter. Something
about a mission. That he had to give back so that others could carry on
his work. Whatever that might have been. Towards the end he spoke of
nothing else. Except when he screamed and that was the pain from his
wounds. It came in waves. And it took long enough for him to finish his
dying. The doctor said, his heart is too strong, he should be dead ten
times over. Sometimes man tolerates too much, sometimes too little.
Life is ruthless. The other one he talks about in his letter, the Negro,
he had a quicker death. He read the letter out aloud to me, Galloudec,
so that I'd know it by heart in case it got lost. And if you still don't
know him I'll tell you what tl1ey did to him and how he died, you
weren't there. First they sawed one leg off at the knee, then the rest. It
was the left one. Then -
ANTOINE
I know of no mission. I don't assign missions, I am no general. I earn
my money with private tuition. It isn't much. And I've seen enough
butchery. I know my way around the human anatomy. Galloudec.
WOMAN with wine and cheese.
WOMAN
You have a visitor. I sold a medal The one for the Vendee where you
beat the farmers to death for the Republic.
ANTOINE
Yes.
SAILOR
As far as I can see you still have everything. As opposed to Galloudec
who you don't know and who is dead as a stone. The other one is called
Sasportas. He was lynched in Port Royal, ifyou want to know, for the
mission ofwhich you know nothing, on Jamaica. The gallows were built
on the edge ofa cliff. When they're dead, they're cut down and then fall
into the ocean. The rest is shark's work. Thanks for the wine.
ANTOINE
Sasportas. I am the Antoine you've been looking for. I have to be
62
THE MISSION
careful, France is no longer a republic, our consuJ has turned emperor
and is conquering Russia. It's easier talking about a losr revolution with
your mouth full. Blood, coagulated to the tin that medals are made of.
The farmers didn't know better either, d'you think, And mayb they
were right, d'you think. Trade is thriving. We give those on Haiti their
own earth to eat. Freedom, she leads the people on to the barricades
and when the dead awaken she's wearing a uniform. I'll tell you a
secret: she too is nothing but a whore. And I can laugh about it already.
Hahaha. But in here there is something empty that was alive once. I
was there when the People stonned the Bastille. I was there when the
heads of the last Bourbons fell into the basket. We harvested the heads
of the aristocracy. We harvested the heads of traitors.
WOMAN
A fine harvest Are you drunk again, Antoine.
ANTOINE
She can't stand it when I talk about my great era. The Gironade stood
trembling in front of me. Take a look at her, my France. Her breasts
shrivelled. Between her thighs the desert. A dead ship on the cusp of a
new century. See her scoff. France needs a bloodbath, and that day
will come.
ANTOINE pours red Tlrine (!VU Isis head.
SAILOR
I don't understand any of that. I am a sailor, I don't believe in politics.
The world is different everywhere you go. [Goe1.]
ANTOINE
[Shouts:] Be careful, sailor, when you leave my house. Our minister
Fouche's police won' t ask you whether you believe in politics.
Galloudec, Saspor1as. Where is your leg, Galloudec. Why is your
tongue dangling from your mouth, Sasportas. What do you want from
me. Is your stump my fault. And your rope. Shall I cut off one of my
legs. Shall I hang myself next to you. Ask your emperor for your leg,
Galloudec. Stick your tongue out at your emperor, Sasportas. His
victory is in Russia. 1 can show you the way. What do you want from
me. Go. Go away. Get lost You tcJI them, woman. Tell them, they're
to go, I don't want to see them any more. Are you still there.
Your letter has arrived, Galloudec. This is it. For you it's over. LONG
THEATREMACHINE THE MISSION

LIVE THE REPUBLIC. [Laughs.) You think I'm doing all right, do SASPORTAS
you. Are you hungry. There. [He throws food on to the dead.) Till we've finished our work.
WOMAN GALLOUDEC
Corne to bed, Antoine. You can start straight away. Didn't you come here to free slaves. That
thing in the cage is a slave. Tomorrow he will be a dead slave, ifhe isn't
ANTOINE freed today.
SO THAT'S THEW AY TO HEAVEN ON THE CHEAP DEBUISSON
AS LONG AS THE WROUGHT IRON RIBCAGE WILL KEEP They are exhibited in cages, if they've tried to escape, or for other
THE HEART THE BAST ARD crimes, as a deterrent, till the sun has desiccated them. It was like that
During roitus theAngel ofDespair appears. when I left Jamaica ten years ago. Don't look, Sasportas, we can't help
an individual.
ANTOINE/VOICE
Who are you. GALLOUDEC
It's always just the one that dies. And then we count the dead.
WOMAN/VOICE
I am the Angel of Despair. With my hands I distribute intoxication, DEBUISSON
narcosis, amnesia, lust and agony of the body. My speech is silence, my Death is the mask of the revolution.
song the scream. Terror lives in the shadow of my wings. My SASPORTAS
11
conviction is the last breath. My conviction is the first battle. I am the When I leave here, others will hang in those cages, with white skins, till
blade with which the dead pry open the coffin. I am who will be. My the sun scorches them black. Many will have been helped then.
flight is the uprising, my heaven tomorrow's abyss.
GALLOUDEC
We arrived on Jamaica, three emissaries of the French People's Perhaps we should put up a guillotine. It's much more hygienic. The
Convention, our names: Debuisson, Galloudec, Sasportas, our mis- red widow is the best scrubberwoman.
sion: a slave uprising against the sovereignty of the crown in the name DEBUISSON
of the French Republic. Motherland of the revolution, terror to the The mistress of the suburbs.
throne, hope of the poor. Where all are equal under the axe of justice.
That has no bread against the hunger in the suburbs, but enough SASPORTAS
hands to carry the torch of liberty equality brotherhood to all con- I'm sticking to the cage, it's a good method, as long as the sun rises
tinents. We stood in the square in the harbour. In the centre of the high enough, for a white skin.
square there was a cage. We heard the wind from the ocean, the hea\')' GALLOUDEC
rustling of the palm lea\>es, the brushing of the palm branches with We haven't come here to bicker at each other over the colour of our
which the Negro women swept the dirt from the square, the groaning skins, citizen Sasportas.
of the slave inside the cage, the waterfront. We saw the breasts of the
Negro women, the blood-ripped body of the slave inside the cage, the SASPORTAS
governor's palace. We said: This is Jamaica, disgrace of the Antilles, We are not equal until we have peeled each other's skin off.
slave ship on the Caribbean sea. DE BUISSON
That was a bad start. Let's hold our masks. I am the one I was:

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THEATREMACHINE THE MISSION

Debuisson, the son of slave-owners on Jamaica, heir to one GALLOUDEC

plantation, with 400 slaves. Returned home into the lap of the family Shouldn't be difficult for you to play the slave, Sasportas, in your black
to claim his inheritance, from the overcast skies of Europe, murky skin.
from the smoke of fires and the blood mist of new philosophies into
SASPORTAS
the clear Caribbean air, after the terrors of the revolution had opened
On the run from the victorious black revolution on Haiti I joined
his eyes to the eternal truth that all OLD is better than all NEW.
Apart from that I am a doctor, a servant to mankind who knows no rI master Debuisson, because God has created me for slavery. I am his
slave. Will that suffice.
discrimination, master or slave. I cure the one for the other so that
everything stays the way it is, as long as it lasts, my face the rosy- I GALLOUDEC applauds.
cheeked face of the slave-owner who, in this world, has nothing to
Next time I will answer you with my knife, citizen Galloudec.
fear but his own death.
GALLOUDEC
SASPORTAS
I know yours is the most difficult part. It has been written into your skin.
And his slaves.
SASPORTAS
DEBUISSON
Who are you Galloudec. f With the canes that will in our hands write a new alphabet on other
skins.
GALLOUDEC jl DEBUISSON
A farmer from Bretagne who learned to hate the revolution under the
Victorious revolution is not good. You don't say that in front of your
blood-showers of the guillotine, I wish the rain would have fallen more
plentifully and not only on France, faithful servant to his I masters. Black revolution is not good either. Blacks cause a riot at best,
not a revolution.
compassionate master, Debuisson, and believes in the divine rule of
the monarchy and the church. I hope I won't have to say that prayer too SASPORTAS
often. Was the revolution on Haiti not victorious. The black revolution.
DEBUISSON DEBUISSON
Twice you stepped out ofline, Galloudec. Who are you. It was the scum that was victorious. The scum rules on Haiti.
GALLOUDEC SASPORTAS spits.
A fanner from Bretagne who learned to hate the revolution under the
You spit in the wrong direction: I am your master. Now say it.
blood-showers of the guillotine. Faithful servant to the compassionate
master, Debuisson. I believe in the divine rule of the monarchy and the SASPORTAS
church. On the run from the scum th.at turned Haiti into a sewer.
SASPORTAS GALLOUDEC
[In parody] I believe in the divine rule of the monarchy and the church. Sewer is good. You're learning fast, Sasportas.
I believe in the divine rule of the monarchy and the church.
DEBUISSON
DE BUISSON Take the hands from your eyes and look at the flesh dying in the cage.
Sasportas. Your mask. You too, Galloudec. It is yours and yours and my flesh. His groaning is
the Marseillaise of the bodies on which the new world order will be

66
THEATREMACHINE
built. Learn the melody. We will be hearing it for a long time yet,
voluncarily or not, it is the melody of the revolution, our work. Many
will die in this cage before our work is done. Many will die in this cage,
because we do our work. This is what we will be doing for others like
us with our work, and perhaps nothing else. Our place will be in that
cage, if our mask is uncovered before it is time. The revolution is the
mask of death. Death is the mask of the revolution.
A huge negm enters.
That is the oldest slave that belongs to our family. He's deaf and
dumb, something in between man and dog. He will spit into the cage.
Perhaps you should do it too, so that you learn to hate your black skin
for as long as it is necessary. Then he'll kiss my shoes, he's licking his
lips already, can you see, and carry me on his back, his new and old
master into the house of my fathers, grunting with pleasure. The
family opens its lap, tomorrow our work begins.
The huge NEGRO spits into the cage, looks at SASPORTAS, bows before
GALLOUDEC, kisses DEBUISSON's shoes, carries him away on his back.
GALLOUDEC and SASPORTAS/of/ow him (in that order).
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
DEATH IS THE MASK OF THE REVOLUTION
THE REVOLUTION IS THE MASK OF DEATH
Return efthe prodigal son. FATHER and MOTHER in an open wardrobe. On
a throne FIRSTLOVE. DEBUISSON, GALLOUDEC and SASPORTAS are
undressed and put into costume by slaves: DEBUISSON as slave-owner,
GALLOUDEC as guard with whip, SASPORTAS (1J slave.
68
THE MISSION
FIRST LOVE
Little Victor's been playing revolution. Now he's come back into the
family lap. Home to daddy and his worm-ridden brainbox. Home to
mummy and the smeJl of rotting flowers. Have you hurt yourself, little
Victor. Come closer and show your wounds. Do you recognize me.
Don't be afraid, little Victor. Not of me. Not of your first love. Whom
you've been two-timing with the revolution, your blood-smeared
second. With whom you squirm around in the gutter in competition
with the lower classes. Or in the mortuary, the place where she counts
her spoils. I can smell her perfume made of cow dung. Tears, little
Victor. Did you love her that much. Oh, Debuisson. I tell you, she's a
whore. The snake with the blood-sucking vagina. Slavery is a law of
nature, as old as mankind itself. Why should the one end before the
other. Look at my slaves and yours, our property. They've been
animals all their lives. Why should they suddenly become human
beings, just because there is a piece of paper in France that says so.
Barely legible for all that blood, much more than ever flowed at the
hands of slavery here on beautiful Jamaica, yours and mine. I will tell
you a story: on Barbados a plantation owner was beaten to death two
months after the abolition of slavery. They came to see him, his
liberated ones. They walked on their knees like in church. And do you
know what they wanted. Back into the sanctuary of slavery. That is
man: his first home is his mother, a prison.
SLAVES lift the MOTHER sskirts ooer her head in the 11Jardrobe.
Here it unfolds, the gaping home, here it yawns, the womb of the
famity. Say the word, ifyou want back in, and she'll stuff you inside,
the idiot, the eternal mother. The poor man on Barbados didn't have it
quite so good. They battered him to death with truncheons, his
slaves-no-more, like a rabid dog, because he wouldn't take them back
out of freedom's fresh spring with his beloved whip. Do you like the
story, citizen Debuisson. Freedom lives on the back of slaves, equality
under the axe. Do you want to be my slave, little Victor. Do you love
me. Here are the lips that kissed you.
A FEMALE SLAVE pain/$ her a large mouth.
They remember, Victor Debuisson, your skin. Here are the breasts
that warmed you.
THEATREMACHINE
A FEMALE SLAVE paintJ her nipples, etc.
They have not forgotten your mouth or your hands. That's the skin that
drank your sweat. That's the womb that received your spenn now
burning my heart.
A FEMALE SLAVE paints her a blue heart.
Can you see the blue flame. Do you know how escaped runaway slaves
arc caught on Cuba. They are hunted down with bloodhounds. And
that's how I want to take back, citizen Debuisson, what your whore, the
revolution, stole from me, my property.
SLAVES as dogs rucompanied by GALLOUDEC with whip, with 'fetch' calls
from the FATHERGHOST.
With the teeth of my dogs I want to rip out from your flesh the imprint of
my tears, my sweat, my screams oflust. With the blades from their claws
I want to tailor my wedding dress from your skin. Your breath that reeks
of kings' corpses I will transform into the language of pain as spoken by
slaves. I want to eat your sex and beget a tiger which will devour the era
that chimes through the clockworks of my empty heart where the
tropical rainstorms beat down.
A FEMALE SLAVEputs on a tiger mask.
YESTERDAY I BEGAN/TO KILL YOU MY LOVED ONE/NOW
I LOVE/YOUR CORPSE/WHEN I AM DEAD/MY DUST WILL
CALL OUT FOR YOU. I wantto give you this bitch as a gift, so you'll
fiU her with your sour semen. And first I'll have her flogged so that your
bloods can mingle. Do you love me, Debuisson. A woman should not be
left alone.
s LA v ES take the whip from GALLO UDE c, close the wardrobe, take off
Fl RSTLOVE '.s make-up, sit DEBUISSON on the throne, FIRSTLOVE as
footstool, dress GALLOUDEC, and SASPORTAS as Danton and Robespierre.
The theatre ofthe revolution is open. While the two performers and the audience
take their seats we hear the dialogue eftheparents from the wardrobe.
FATHER
This is the resurrection of the flesh. It is the worm that gnaws for
ever and the fire will not go out. MOTHER. Is he whoring around
again. Crack, now my heart is broken, see. FATHER I give her to you,
THE MISSION
my son, as a gift. I give you both, black and white. MOTHER Take the
knife from my stomach, you coloured whores. FATHER On your
knees, you miscreant, and ask your mother for her blessing. MOTHER
HIGH UP IN THE MOUNTAJN/THAT'S WHERE THE WIND
BLOWS WILD/THAT'S WHERE MARIA SLAUGHTERS/
THE HEAVENLY CHILD. Home to Greenland. Come my
children. Where the sun shines every day. FATHER Shut the idiot
woman's hole.
SASPORTASROBESPIER.RE
Go take your place, Danton, in the treadmill of history. Look at the
scrounger stuffing himself with the bread meant for the starving. The
debaucher who rapes the daughters of the people. The traitor who
turns his nose up at the smell of blood with which the revolution
washes dean the body of the new nation. Shall I tell you why you
cannot stand blood any more, Danton. Did you say revolution.
Snatching at the meat dish was your revolution. The freebies in the
whorehouse. That's why you strutted about on the platform to the
applause of the masses. The lion that licks the boots of the
aristocracy. Do you like the taste of Bourbon spit. Is it snug and cosy
up the monarchy's arse. Did you say courage. Go on shake your
powdered mane. You won't be taunting anyone once your head has
slipped under the a~e of justice. You can't say I didn't warn you,
Danton. Now your conversation partner will be the guillotine, that
scrupulous invention of the new epoch that will march over you like it
will over all traitors. You'll understand its language, you spoke it
fluendy in September.
SLAVES.flick GALLOUDECDANTON's head down and throw it to each
other. GALLOUDECDANTON succeeds in catching it back. He traps it
under his arm.
Why don't you stick your head in between your legs, Danton, where
you do all your thinking among the lice of your debaucheries and the
sores of your vices.
SASPORTAS push<S the Dantonhea4.from under the arm ofGALLOUDEC.
GALLOUDEC crawls aftt:r and puts it on.
GALLOUDECDANTON
Now it's my tum. Look at the ape with the shattered jawbone. The
71
THEA TREMJ\CHJNE THE MISSION

bloodaholic who can't hold his drooling. Did you bite off more than SASPORTASROBESPIERRE
you could chew. Mr Incorruptible with the virtue drum. That's the Parasite Syphilitic Royal slave.
gratitude of the fatherland: a gendarme's fist.
GALLOUDECDANTON
SLAVES rip SASPORTAS 's jaw bandage from his Robespierrehead; his jaw Sycophant Eunuch Wall Street footman.
falls down. SASPORTAS looks for the bandage and jaw.
5ASPO RTAS ROB ESP! ERRE
Has something faUen off you. Are you missing something. Property is Swine.
theft. Can you feel the wind at your neck. That's freedom.
GALLOUDECDANTON
SASPORTAS has found the jaw and bandage and restores the Hyena.
Robespierrehead.
They hit ea.ch other's heads offagain. DEBUISSO N applauds. SLAVES drag
Watch out that clever head of yours isn't taken off altogether, him from the throne and sit SASPORTAS ()11. it. GALLOUDEC his footstool.
Robespierre, by the love of your people. Did you say revolution. The Inauguration ofSASPORTAS.
axe of justice, wasn't it. The guillotine is not a bread factory. Thrift,
SASPORTAS
thrift Horatio.
The theatre of the white revolution is over. We condemn you to death,
SLAVES flick the Robespierrehead from SASPORTAS and use it as a Victor Debuisson. Because your skin is white. Because your thoughts
football are white under your white skin. Because your eyes have seen the
beauty of our sisters. Because your thoughts have eaten their breasts,
That is equality. LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC. Didn't I tell you
their bodies, their sex. Because you are a landholder, a master. That's
that you'd be next in line.
why we condemn you to death, Victor Debuisson. Snakes will eat your
He gets invoroed in the football gam.e with. th.e SLAVES. shit, crocodiles your anus, piranhas your testicles.
That's brotherhood. DEBUISSON screams.

SASPORTASROBESPIERRE cries. Your trouble is, you can't die. That's why you kill everything around
you. For your dead social systems that surround you, that leave no
What's your problem with football. Emre '10us: shall I tell you why you
space for ecstasy. For your revolution without gender. Do you lave this
were so keen on my beautiful head. I'll bet, when you let your
w0Jru1n. We will take her so you will die quicker. Those who have
trousers down, they'll be cobwebs. Ladies and gentlemen, the theatre
nothing die easier. What else is yours. Tell quickly, time is our teacher,
of the revolution is opened. Attraction: the man without
it will not return, and not one breath for didactics; those who don't
undercarriage. Maximillian the Great. Max the Virtuous. The futon
learn also die. Your skin. Who did you peel it off. Your flesh our
farter. The wanker from Arras. The bloody Robespierre.
hunger. Your blood empties our veins. Your thoughts, hey. Who do
SASPO.RTASROBESPIERREp11ts his head b~k on. you think sweats for your philosophers. Even your urine and your
excrement are exploitation and slavery. Not to mention your sperm:
My name is engraved into the Pantheon of history.
the residue of corpses. Now there's nothing that belongs to you any
STANDING IN THE FOREST ALL ALONE more. Now you are nothing. Now you can die. Bury him.
IS THE LEPRECHAUN
HE'S GOT ALL STAINED IN PURPLE I am standing between men I don't know in an old lift with an iron grid
A RAINCOAT ON that rattles as we travel up. I am dressed like an office worker, or a manual

73
r
THEA TREMACHINE
worker on his bank holiday. I've even put a tie on, the collar rubs on my
neck, I am sweating. I have an appointment with the boss (whom I refer
to in my mind as No. 1), his office is on the fourth floor, or was it the
twentieth: hardly have I given it some thought than I begin to doubt. The
news of my appointment with the boss (whom I refer to in my mind as
No. 1) reached me in the basement, a protracted area with empty
concrete chambers and emergency procedure notices in case of bomb
alert. I presume, it is about a mission that I am to be assigned to. I make
sure that my tie is tied properly and pull the knot tight. I would like a
mirror so I could inspect with my e.yes whether my tie is tied right.
Impossible to ask a stranger whether your tie is tied properly. The ties of
the other men in the lift are tied impeccably. Some of them seem to be
acquainted. They speak quickly about something I don't understand.
Nevertheless, their conversation must have distracted me: at the next
stop the indicator above the door, to my horror, shows eight. I have gone
too far, or still have half my journey before me. The time factor is
crucial. A GOOD FIVE MINUTES IN HAND/T HAT'S THE
PUNCTUALITY I DEMAND. The last time I looked at my wrist
watch it was ten. I remember feeling relieved: fifteen minutes till my
appointment with the boss. At the next time check it was only five
minutes later. Now, between the eighth and ninth floors, looking at my
watch again, it is exactly fourteen minutes and forty-five seconds after
the tenth hour: it's over with my ideal punctuality; time is not on my side
any more. Quickly I reassess my predicament. I could get off at the next
possible stop and run down the stairway, three stairs at a time, to the
fourth floor. If it turns out to be the wrong floor this would of course
mean an irrecoverable Joss of time. I could go up the twentieth floor and,
if the boss's office cannot be found there, down to the fourth, provided
the lift doesn't pack up, or down the stairways (three stairs at a time)
where I could break my legs, or my neck, only because I'm in a hurry. I
see myself laid out on a stretcher which is at my request wheeled into his
office and put down in front of his desk, I'm still prepared for duty, but
no longer fit for service. Meanwhile everything comes down to the
question unanswered at the outset, because of my negligence, on which
floor the boss (whom I refer to in my mind as No. 1) is waiting for me
to assigu an important mission to me. (It has to be an important
mission, why else should he not have sent one of his staff to give it to me.)
A quick glance at the watch informs me irrefutably that it is now too late
even for common punctuality, although our lift, as I see at second
74
THE MISSION
glance, has not yet reached the twelfth floor. The hour hand is on ten
the minute hand on fifty, the second hand has long since ceased to b~
of interest. There seems to be something wrong with my watch, but it
is even too late to compare watches: I am, without having noticed
where the other gentlemen got off, alone in the lift. In a panic that tears
out my hair by the roots I see on my watch, from which I can no longer
take my eyes, the hands circling at an ever-increasing speed, so that
from one blinking to the n ext more and more hours go by. It is obvious
to me that something has been foul for some time: with my watch, with
the lift, with time. I am caught up in wild speculations: gravity is
decreasing , a disturbance, a kind of stuttering in the earth's rotation,
like a cramp in your leg at football. I regret that I have too little
knowledge of physics to be able to dissolve into science the contradic-
tion between the speed at which my lift is travelling upwards and the
speed at which time is travelling forward according to the hands of my
watch. Why did I not pay attention at school. Or read all the wrong
subjects: poetry instead of physics. The time is out of joint and
somewhere on the twentieth or the fourth floor (the OR cuts like a
knife through my careless brain) in a room most likely fitted with a
heavy carpet, behind a desk along the narrower back wall facing the
entrance, my boss (whom I refer to in my mind as No. 1) is waiting
with a mission to assign to me, a failure. Perhaps the world is coming
apart at the seams and the mission, so important that the boss wanted
to hand it to me in p erson, has already become insignificant as a result
of my carelessness. IMMATERIAL to use the language of
bureaucracy which I learned so well (superfluous science). TO THE
ARCHIVES which no one will see any more, because it referred to
the last possible step to be taken against total annihilation, the begin-
ning of which I am n ow experiencing, trapped in this insane lift with
my insane wrist watch. Desperate dream inside a dream: simply by
rolling myself together, I am able to metamorphosize into a bullet,
which, bursting through the ceiling of the lift, overtakes time. Cold
awakening in the slow-travelling lift glancing at the speeding hands of
my watch. I imagine No. 1 in despair. His suicide. His head, the
portrait of which decorates every office of the department, on the desk.
Blood from a black-ringed hole in the (most probably) right temple. I
didn't hear a shot, but that doesn't prove anything, the walls of his
office are of course soundproof; incidents were anticipated and what
happens in the boss's office is no concern of the people; power is
75
THEATREMACHINE
solitary. I leave the lift at the next possible stop and stand without
assignment, the now useless cravat still tied underneath my chin, on a
village street in Peru. Dry mud with tyre tracks. On both sides of the
street barren grassland with rare scars of grass and blotches of grey
bush snatching at a murky horizon, above this a mountain range that
swims in fog. To the left of the road a group of barracks, they look
abandoned, the windows black holes with shards of glass. In front of a
billboard advertising products from a foreign civilization two enonnous
natives. From behind they exude threat. I consider turning back, as I
have as yet not been noticed. I'd never have thought during my
desperate ascent to the boss that I might feel homesick for the lift that
was my prison. How should I e:Jt..Plain my presence in this no-man's
land. I have no parachute to show for it, no plane, no car wreck. Who
can believe that I travelled to Peru in a lift, in front of me and behind
me the road flanked by the grassland that snatches at the horizon. How
will any kind of communication be possible; I don't know the language
of this country, I might as well be deaf and dumb: perhaps there is pity
in Peru. All that remains for me is to escape to the place hopefully void
of humans, perhaps from one death to another, but I prefer starvation
to the murderer's knife. I am without means of buying my way to
freedom in this case, considering my non-existent cash-flow in the
foreign currency, fate doesn't even allow me to die in the line of duty,
my cause is a lost cause, employee of a dead boss, my mission conjured
up in his head that won't hand anything over any more until the vaults
of eternity are opened, and it is for the combinations that open their
locks that wise men slave on this side of death. Let's hope it isn't
too late for me to loosen the knot of my tie - its correct fit cost me so
much sweat on my way up to see the boss - and let the loud piece of
clothing disappear in my jacket. I almost threw it away, a due. Turning
round I see for the first time the village, thatch and clay, through an
open door a hammock. Cold sweat at the idea, I could have been
watched from there, but I cannot make out anything alive, the only
movement a dog burrowing through a smoky rubbish dump. I hesi-
tated too long; the men withdraw from the billboard and approach
from across the road, at first without loo.king at me. I see their faces
above me, vaguely black the one, his eyes white, their look indis-
tinguishable; the eyes are without pupils. The head of the other is
made of silver. A long calm gaze out of eyes the colour of which I
cannot determine, inside them a red glow. A shudder runs through the
THI MISSION
fingers of the right hand hanging heavy, it also seems to be made of
silver, the blood tracks have a metallic shine to them. The silver one
walks on behind me following the black one. My fear dissipates and
makes way for disappointment: am I not even worth stabbing, or to be
strangled by a hand made of metal. Was there not in that gaze directed
at me five paces long something like contempt. What it is that con-
stitutes my crime. The world did not go under, provided this isn't
another. How do you accomplish an unknown mission. What can my
mission be in this wasted landscape beyond civilization. How is the
employee to know what goes on inside the boss's head. No science on
earth will tear the lost mission from the brain tissues of the already
eternalized boss. It'll be buried with the remains, the state funeral,
which is probably already in progress, does not guarantee resurrection.
Something joy-like spreads around inside me, I lay my jacket over my
arm and begin to unbutton my shirt: my walk is a stroll. In front of me
the dog runs across the road, a hand lodged sideways in its muzzle, the
fingers turned to me. Exuding a threat that is not meant for me, young
men cross my path. Where the road becomes one with the plain stands
a woman, as if she has been waiting for me. My arms reach out for her,
how long have we not touched a woman, and hear a man's voice say
THIS WOMAN IS THE WOMAN OF A MAN. The tone is final
and I move on. As I look back the woman's arms reach out at me and
she bares her breasts. On an embankment overgrown with grass two
boys are piecing together something between steam engine and loco-
motive that is resting on a disused piece of railway track. I, the
European, see at first sight that their effort is in vain: this vehicle will
not move, but I don't tell the children, work is hope, and walk on into
the landscape that has no other work than to wait for the disappearance
of mankind. Now I know my vocation. I throw off my clothes, the
exterior is of no issue here anymore. One day THE OTHER will walk
towards me, the antipode, the doppelganger with my face of snow. One
ofus will survive.
DEBUISSON. GALLOUDEC. SASPORTAS.
DEBUISSON gives GALLOUDEC a paper. GALLOUDEC and SASPORTAS
read.
DEBUISSON
The government that commissioned us to organize the slave uprising
77
THEATREMACHINE
here onjamaica is no longer in office. General Bonaparte has
dissolved the directorate with the bayonets of his grenadiers. For
France write Napoleon. The world will be what it was, home of
masters and slaves.
GALLOUDEC &rumples up the paper.
What are you gawping at. Our company is no longer on the Register of
Commerce. It is bankrupt. The goods for sale, to be paid in the native
currency, blood sweat and tears, are not being traded any more in this
world.
He rips the paper to shreds.
I release you from your mission. You, GaJloudec the farmer from
Bretagnc. You, Sasportas the son of slavery. Me, Debuisson.
SASPORTAS
[Quiet(y) The son of slavery.
DEBUISSON
Everyone to his own freedom or slavery. Our performance is over,
Sasportas. Watch out when you take off your make-up, Galloudec.
Your skin could come off with it. Your mask, Sasportas, is your face.
My face is my mask.
He t:OVers his ftue with his hands.
GALLOUDEC
This is too fast for me, Debuisson. I am a farmer, I can't think that fast.
For over a year I've risked my neck, preached my gob to smithereens at
secret gatherings, smuggled weapons past cordons ofbloodhounds,
sharks and informers, played the idiot at soirees given by English
cut-throats- as your dog, have been scorched by sun and shaken
delirious by fever on this godforsaken piece ofearth without snow, all
this for a lethargic mass of black flesh that doesn't want to move unless
it's under your boot. And what have I got to do with slavery on Jamaica.
Seen in the light, I'm a Frenchman, wait, Sasportas, but I wished I'd
tum black on the spot, ifI could get it into my skull why all this isn't true
any more and deleted and for nothing, no mission any more, because in
Paris some general is feeling his oats. He isn't even a Frenchman. But
hearing you talk, Debui.sson, I'd be inclined to believe chat you've been
waiting for this General Boneparte.
THE MISSION
DEBUISSON
Perhaps I really have been waiting for this General Boneparte. Just as
half of France has been waiting for him. Revolution tires you out,
Galloudec. When the people sleep the General rises up and shatters
the burden of freedom which is too heavy for them to carry. Can you
feel your shoulders buckling under its weight, Galloudcc.
SASPORTAS
I don't think I understand you either, Dcbuisson. Not any more. The
world home for masters and slaves. Slaves have no home, citizen
Debuisson. And as long as there are masters and slaves, we cannot be
discharged from our mission. What's a military coup in France got to
do with the abolition of slavery in Jamaica which is our mission. Ten
thousand men await our command, yours, if you so wish. But it need
not be your voice that gives the command. They are not asleep, they
are waiting for a general. They are prepared to kill and to die for your
BURD EN OF FREEDOM of which they have been dreaming all
their life, like of an unknown lover, a life of dying daily. They do not
ask about the shape of her breasts, or the chastity of her womb. What
do these men have to do with Paris, a distant rock formation that for a
while was the metropolis of their hopes, with France, a country where
the sun cannot kill, where for a short while blood was the colour of the
dawn on a pale continent behind the tomb of Atlantis. There'll be no
mention of your general, I've already forgotten his second name, when
Haiti's liberator has a place in every school book.
DEBUISSON laughs.
You're laughing.
DEBUISSON
I am laughing, Sasportas. Ask me why.
SASPORTAS
Could be I've failed to understand you again. I don't know, I am
supposed to kill you now, or apologize to you.
DEBUISSON
Do what you want, Sasportas.
SASPORTAS laughs.
Oh, Debuisson. For a moment I believed what you had said was
79
THEATREMACHINE
actually your opinion. l shoul<J have known, I should have known, it
was a test. I didil't pass the test, am 1 right. Everyone of us has to be
as cold as a knife, when they give the signal and rhe battle begins. Jt
is not fear tbat has me tremble, but the joy in anticipation of the
dance. I hear the dnuns before they sound. I hear with my pores, m.y
skin is black. But I doubted you and that i.c; not good. Forgive me,
Debuisson. You bathed your hands in blood for our cause. I saw that
it was difficult for you. I love you for both, Debuisson, for the one
who had to be killed so that he wouldn't betray our cause was one
like me, and he needed his death before his next torture for which
you were to heal his wounds, the consequences of the first, as healer
and helper of humanity, but he said: kill me, so I cannot betray; and
you killed him for our cause as physician and revolutionary.
SASPORTAS embraces DEB UISSON.
DEBUISSON
You needn't apologize, Sasportas, it wasn't a test. We will have no
place in the school history books, and the liberator in Haiti, where
now rhe liberated Negroes are beating to pulp the Mulattos, or vice
versa, will have to wait a long time for his name to be entered.
Meanwhile Napoleon will have turned France into barracks and
Europe perhaps into a battlefield, trade will bloom whatever happens
and peace with England will be a certainty; what unites mankind is
business. The revolution has no home any more, that's nothing new
under this sun thatwill perhaps never shine on a new world; slavery
has many faces the last of whic.h we have not yet seen; you haven\
Sa5portas, and neither have we, GaJloudec, and perhaps what we
believed to be the red dawn of freedom was only the mask of a new,
more terrifying slavery compared with which the reign of the whip in
the Caribbean or elsewhere was a friendly appetizer for the bliss of
paradise, and your secret lover, freedom, perhaps when her masks
are all used up, she'll have no face left, but that of treachery: what
you don't betray today, you'll kill tomorrow. From the point of view
of biological science the revolution is a stillbirth, Sasportas: out of the
Bastille and into the Concierge the liberator turns prison governor.
DEATH TO THE LIBERATORS reads the last truth of the
revolution. And as far as my killing in the line of duty of our cause is
concerned: the healer as murderer is not a new role in the theatre of
society; death does not mean that much to the helpers of humanity,
80
THI. MISSION
another aggregate of chemistry; until the desert has its victory, every
ruin is just another reason to rebuild against the razor teetli of time.
Perhaps l was only washing my hands when I bathed them in blood for
our cause, poetry has always been the language of the impotent,
Sasportas, my black friend. We now have other corpses on our
shoulders and they will be the death of us, if we do not discard them
before we get to the trench. Your death is called liberty, Sasportas,
your death brotherhood, Galloudec, my death equality. It was good
riding them when they were still our stallions, tomorrow's wind around
our temples. Now the wind blows from yesterday. We are the stllllions.
Can you feel the spurs digging into your flesh. Our riders have
baggage, the victims of terror, pyramids of death. Can you feel the
weight. With every doubt that walks the corridors of our brains they
weigh more. A revolution has no time to count its dead. And we need
our time to abandon the black revolution we had prepared so
thoroughly in the service of a future that has turned into the past
already, just like the others before it. Why, Galloudec, does our
language only allow us to talk of the future in the singular. Perhaps it's
different for the dead, ifdust can talk. Think about this, Sasportas,
before you risk your neck liberating slaves into an abyss that has
become bottomless with this news, which I shaU now devour so that
there will remain no trace of our work. Do you want a shred. 'fhllt was
our mission, it tastes of nothing but paper now. Tomorrow it will have
gone the way of all flesh, every ascension has its direction, and perhaps
this st.ar is already on its way out of the cold depths of the universe, a
lump ofice or metal that will blow the final void into the firm ground of
our reality into which we plant our brittle hopes. Or the cold itself that
freezes our yesterdays and tomorrows to an eternal today. Why were
we not born as trees to whom all this is of no concern. Or would you
rather be a mountllin. Or a desert. What do you say, Galloudec. Why
are you two staring at me like stones. Why are we not just simply here
to watch over the war of the landscapes. What do you want from me.
Die your own death, if you don't like the taste oflife any more. I'm not
going to help you climb into your graves, I don't like the taste of it
either. Yesterday I dreamed that I was walking through New York. It
was a dilapidated area, uninhabited by whites. In front of me on the
pavement a golden snake rose up, and as I crossed the road, or the
jungle of scorching met.al that was the road, on the opposite pavement
another snake. It was a luminous blue. l knew in my dream: the golden
THEATREMACHINE
snake is Asia, and the blue snake, that is Africa. When I woke up, I'd
forgotten it again. We are three worlds. Why do I know it again now.
And I heard a voice say: AND THERE BEHOI .D AN
ENORMOUS EARTHQUAKE FOR THE ANGEL OF THE
LORD D ESCENDED AND CAME AND ROLLED BACK THE
STONE FROM THE DOOR AND SAT U PON IT. HIS
COUNTENANCE WAS LIKF. LIGHTNING AND HIS
GARMENTS WHITE AS SNOW. All that I don't want to know any
more. For thousands of years our three loved ones have been laughed at.
In every sewer they've squirmed, they've swum down every gutter of the
world, been dragged through every brothel our whore freedom, our
whore equality, our whore brotherhood. Now l wnnt to sit where they're
laughing, free to have whatever takes my fancy, equal unto myself, mine
own and no one else's brother. Your hide, Sasportas, will always be
black. You, Galloudec, will always be a farmer. They laugh at you. My
place is there from where they're laughing at you. I laugh at you. I laugh
at the Negro who wants to wash himselfwhite with his freedom. I laugh
atthe farmer who hides his face behind the mask of equality. I laugh at
the mundane brotherhood that made me, Debuisson, master offour
hundred slaves. Yes is all I have to say, Yes and Yes to the holy order of
slavery, blind to your filthy hide ofa slave, Sasportas, to your four-
legged farmer's trot, Galloudec, the yoke around your neck under which
the oxen tread the furrow in your field that doesn't belong to you. I want
my slice of the world's cake. I will cut off a piece for myself from the
world's starvation. You, you have no knife.
SASPORTAS
You have tom my flag to shreds. I will cut myself a new one from out of
my black hide.
He ca.roes a CToss into thepoJm ofhis hand.
That is goodbye, citizen Debuisson.
Heprnses his bleeding hand on DEBUISSON'sforehead.
Do you like the taste of my blood. I said that slaves have no home.
That's not true. The home of slaves is the uprising. I go into battle
armed with the humiJiacion oflife. You have laid a new weapon into my
hand, for this I thank you. Could be my place is on the gallows and the
rope might already be growing around my neck while I am talking to
82
T HE MISSION
you, instead of killing you, you whom I owe nothing but my blade. But
death is meaningless and on the gallows l will know that my
conspirators are the Negroes ofall races, their number increasing with
every minute that you spend at your slave trough, or in between the
thighs of your white whore. When the Jiving cannot fight any more, the
dead will fight on. With every heartbeat of the revolution flesh grows
hack on to their bones, blood flows back into their veins, life into their
death. The uprising of the dead will be the war of the landscapes, our
weapons the forests, the mountains, the oceans, the deserts of the
world. I will he forest, mountain, ocean, desert. I, that is Africa. I, that
is Asia. Both Americas am I.
GJ\.LLOUDEC
I'll go with you, Sasportas. We all have to die. And that is all we have in
common any more. After the massacre in Guadeloupe they found in
the middle of a pile of corpses, all black, one white one that was every
bit as dead. That won't be happening to you any more, Debuisson.
You're out of it.
DE BUISS ON
I'm afraid, Galloudec, of the beauty of the world. I know well it is the
mask of treachery. Don't leave me alone with my mask, which is
growing into my skin, already and it doesn't hurt any more. Kill me
before I betray you. I'm afraid, Sasportas, of the humiliation of bliss in
this world.
Said whispered shouted Debuisson. But Galloudec and Sasportas
walked away together, left him alone with his treachery that had come
upon him like the snake from out of the stone. Debuisson closed his
eyes against the temptation to look irito his first love's eyes, his first
love, which was treachery. Treachery danced. Debuisson pressed his
hands over his eyes. He heard his heart beating out the rhythms of the
dance steps. With his heartbeat they accelerated. D ebuisson felt his
eyelids quivering against the palms of his hands. Perhaps the dance
had already stopped and it was only his heart that continued to drone
on while treachery, her anns folded over her breasts, or her hands on
her hips, or already clawed into her crotch, her sex perhaps trembling
with lust, looked out of watery eyes at him, Debuisson, who was now
forcing his eyes down their sockets with his fists, for fear of his hunger
for the humiliation of bliss. Perhaps treachery had already left him. His
THEATREMACHINE

own greedy hands refused Debuisson their service. He opened his

eyes. With a smile on her face, treachery showed her breasts, spread The Hamletmachine
silently her thighs, her beauty hit Debuisson like an axe. Ht' forgot the
stonning of the Bastille, the hunger march of the eighty thousand, the
end of the Gironade, their last supper, a dead man at the table,
Saint-Just, the black angel, Danton, the voice of the revolution, Marat
bent over the dagger, Robespierre's broken jaw, his scream as the
henchman ripped off the blindfold, his pitiful glance at the cheering
crowd. Debuisson grabbed at the last memory that had not yet left him:
a sandstorm before Las Palmas; crickets were swept onto the ship with
the sand and accompanied the voyage across the Atlantic. Debuisson
ducked down to avoid the sandstorm, rubbed the sand out of his eyes,
kept his ears closed against the song of the crickets. Then treachery
threw herself on top of him, the bliss ofher vagina lips a red dawn.

.1