Eldorado

Marius von Mayenburg, Maja Zade

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783196357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

Anton's got it made: dream house, artistic wife, baby on the way. And, as the smoke rises from another city saved by coalition bombs, there's a fortune to be made rebuilding the wreckage. So what's he doing forging his boss's signature? And why has his wife crushed her hands under the piano lid? Painfully funny scenes of married bliss in meltdown and the insistent presence, on their screens and in their dreams, of the West's far-flung and half-forgotten wars – Eldorado asks what happens when the drive for success carries us past our coping point.

1.

ASCHENBRENNER: In the distance, beyond the forest, helicopters have ascended, a dark swarm in an echelon formation, they pull up over the city with a shredding drone, teeter over the gasworks, then tilt towards the train station. Shortly afterwards, when the first shots have smashed through the glass roof and sliced open a train standing on the tracks, a black squadron of tactical aircraft cuts through the red sky. It’s the beginning of the first wave of attacks. Three months later, we’re faced with an extraordinary challenge. Seen from above, the contours of the area resemble a decapitated head. The northernmost point is the veterans’ cemetery, where the toppled gravestones appear white against the wreckage of the surrounding area. The smell of burned tropical woods drifts across from the western border: the botanical gardens have burned down to the edge of the riverbank, the orchid house has burst from the heat, and the animals have followed their instincts and abandoned the adjoining zoo. Now they’re roaming through the ruins of the government quarter, drinking from the fountains someone has forgotten about, but that’s beside the point. By the southern border lies the sports stadium, which has to be conserved in its present condition. When the wind is right, you can hear the refugees’ voices ringing out from the oval concrete. If you continue east past the torched wrecks by the side of the motorway, you get to the cadet schools and refineries that were the outermost targets. In the autumn, a murder of crows circles here. Over a total area spanning more than eighty square kilometres, our company is today able to offer you an investment opportunity with unique historic prospects. Here history has entrusted the investor with a piece of the world. A piece of the world that looks almost virginal in the glow of the morning sun.

2.

THEKLA: I just need the garden and a room for the piano.

ANTON: The stairs are for the nursery.

THEKLA: That’s news to me.

ANTON: If the tree bothers you we’ll get rid of it.

THEKLA: We’ll put the barbecue on the lawn and burn sausages, and when it gets loud on the other side of the fence we’ll throw water bombs. We need a pergola as well.

ANTON: (Friendly.) Yes.

THEKLA: No reason to get into a bad mood.

ANTON: I’m not. Pergola.

THEKLA: Wild wine. And a pond with fish in it. We’ll make love on a swinging bench. A birch tree.

ANTON: (Friendly.) I don’t know when I’ll have time.

THEKLA: No need to shout.

ANTON: I’m not shouting, I’m thinking.

THEKLA: We’re just getting started. You should be pleased I’m not sitting on the stairs to the nursery, crying.

ANTON: I am. You’ll get your birch tree.

THEKLA: It’s going to be lovely. A bird just landed in the tree.

3.

ANTON: Please don’t destroy me.

ASCHENBRENNER: You’ve destroyed yourself. You’ve massacred yourself. Does it bother you when I stare at you like this? You don’t have to be polite anymore.

ANTON: If you tell the legal department, you’ll blow up my foundations.

ASCHENBRENNER: I don’t find this embarrassing. From a professional point of view, you leave me cold. I’ve sent lots of people to their social deaths without flinching. The only interesting thing about you is my personal failure. That’s why I feel sorry for you.

ANTON: I shocked myself.

ASCHENBRENNER: Does the South Pacific mean anything to you? When I was there, a lantern-eye fish swam past my diving mask. His eyes glow when the sea gets dark, so the small fish, attracted by the iridescence down below, venture in front of his mouth, and then he closes his teeth around his prey. You’re one of those lantern-eye fish. Your face is a trap, lethal seriousness shines from your eyes, and we wander in drunk with naive trust, not noticing your stupid mouth that shows you’re stupid, after all the lantern-eye fish is related to the slimehead – you’ve got those eyes so we don’t notice when your stupid mouth snaps shut. I bet you spend your whole time staring into your serious eyes in the mirror and hypnotising your brain into stupidity. Now you’re snapping.

ANTON: I have a wife. We’re about to buy –

ASCHENBRENNER: Wrong. You’re not a cleaning lady. Say something else.

ANTON: I can’t think of anything.

ASCHENBRENNER: Then improvise – isn’t that your specialty? Fake your self.

(Nothing.)

Pathetic. I don’t mind you underestimating me, your entire disposition is wrong; your brain is probably a prosthetic. Here. Sign my name under your dismissal.

ANTON: Where? I don’t understand, this is...