The Golden Dragon

Roland Schimmelpfennig

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781849431248
• eBook ISBN: 9781849435291
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British Drama

Number 6: Thai soup with chicken, coconut milk, Thai ginger, tomatoes, button mushrooms, lemon grass and lemon leaves (hot). On a typical evening, anywhere in Europe, you walk into your local Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant, and the whole world is there. Everyone connected to everyone else, through this one place… The Golden Dragon is a funny and theatrical fable of modern life and migration, whisking you from your local takeaway to East Asia and back, revealing what really goes into that bowl of spicy soup. Are you hungry yet?

1.

THE MAN, THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY, THE YOUNG MAN, THE YOUNG WOMAN, THE MAN OVER SIXTY.

THE MAN: The Golden Dragon.

Early evening.

Pale summer light falls through the windows onto the tables. Five Asians in the tiny kitchen of the Thai/Chinese/ Vietnamese fast food Restaurant.

THE YOUNG WOMAN: A young Chinese man, beside himself with toothache:

Beside herself.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts –

THE YOUNG WOMAN screams with pain.

THE YOUNG MAN: Don’t cry, don’t cry.

THE YOUNG WOMAN screams with pain.

THE YOUNG WOMAN: It hurts –

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: He’s in pain.

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: The boy’s in pain.

THE YOUNG MAN: Don’t cry – don’t cry.

THE MAN: Don’t scream, but he does scream; he screams, he’s really screaming –

THE YOUNG WOMAN screams with pain.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY fries noodles in a wok. It hisses.

THE YOUNG WOMAN: It hurts so much – this tooth hurts so much –

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: We’re standing round the boy in the tiny kitchen of the Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese restaurant.

Don’t scream, – he’s really screaming.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: Number 83: Pat Thai Gai: fried rice noodles with egg, vegetables, chicken and spicy peanut sauce, medium hot.

THE MAN: Toothache.

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: The boy’s got toothache.

THE YOUNG WOMAN gasps with pain.

THE YOUNG MAN: Stir it, keep stirring.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY stirs the wok.

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: The boy.

THE YOUNG MAN: Out front two stewardesses sit down at a table by the window, table eleven. Hello.

THE YOUNG WOMAN gasps with pain.

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: Don’t scream like that-

THE MAN: The first stewardess says:

Hello.

THE MAN OVER SIXTY: The second stewardess says:

Hello.

THE YOUNG MAN: Hello.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: That tooth’s got to come out.

THE YOUNG MAN: Can I get you some drinks?

THE YOUNG WOMAN: Oh God. My tooth, oh God. Oh God.

2.

THE YOUNG MAN and THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY.

THE YOUNG MAN: A mild evening in late summer. An old man with grey hair, very thin, haggard, sick maybe, stands on the balcony of his flat. His granddaughter has been visiting him, grandfather, grandad. She lives upstairs in the same building with her boyfriend in the little flat under the roof and now she was going to tell her grandfather something special, something very special, but she doesn’t tell him because her grandfather seems lost in thought or worries.

Below them: the red lanterns of the Chinese/Thai/ Vietnamese restaurant THE GOLDEN DRAGON. Apparently everyone working in the kitchen is Vietnamese. But whether that’s true –

The old man says:

If I could have one wish.

Pause.

If I could have one wish.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: Next to the old man on the balcony a young woman, not yet nineteen. She is strikingly young and strikingly beautiful.

She says:

What is it, Grandad, what would you wish for?

THE YOUNG MAN: The old man looks at the young girl.

My granddaughter. I look at my granddaughter:

You –

Short Pause.

You’re so young.

Short Pause.

You look wonderful.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: You think so? Do you really think so, Grandad?

Pause.

When I get to be your age – what am I going to look like then –

THE YOUNG MAN: I’m not going to see that.

I’m not going to be around to see that.

I laugh.

He laughs or smiles.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: You’re laughing.

THE YOUNG MAN: I’ll be dead a long time before then.

He laughs desperately.

I’ll be dead and buried a long time before then.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: But what was it, what were you going to say –

THE YOUNG MAN: What?

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: What you were going to say – you just said: If I could have one wish –

THE YOUNG MAN: Yes. I said that: if I could have one wish.

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: He pauses for a long time. Stands there with the empty wineglass in his hand. On the table are empty foil containers, number 101, Su ki ya ki, fried beef with straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots and glass noodles and number B6, the carrot curry, a Vietnamese speciality. I’d got them to take away, downstairs in THE GOLDEN DRAGON. He looks into the dusk.

Hm?

He says nothing. Then:

THE YOUNG MAN: And you? What would your wish be -

THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY: Yes, what – you’ve not said what you would wish for.

THE YOUNG MAN: Pause.

3.

THE MAN, THE WOMAN OVER SIXTY, THE YOUNG MAN, THE YOUNG WOMAN, THE MAN OVER SIXTY.

THE MAN: In the kitchen of the Thai/Chinese/Vie...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Section 4
• Section 5
• Section 6
• Section 7
• Section 8
• Section 9
• Section 10
• Section 11
• Section 12
• Section 13
• Section 14
• Section 15
• Section 16
• Section 17
• Section 18
• Section 19
• Section 20
• Section 21
• Section 22
• Section 23
• Section 24
• Section 25
• Section 26
• Section 27
• Section 28
• Section 29
• Section 30
• Section 31
• Section 32
• Section 33
• Section 34
• Section 35
• Section 36
• Section 37
• Section 38
• Section 39
• Section 40
• Section 41
• Section 42
• Section 43
• Section 44
• Section 45
• Section 46
• Section 47
• Section 48