(AN INTERLUDE)
WALL: Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And being done, thus Wall away doth go.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1
THlSBE: It’s not here anymore.
PYRAMUS: It separated us. We yearned for each other. We grew apart.
THISBE: I was always thinking about it.
PYRAMUS: I thought you were thinking about me.
THISBE: Ninny! (Gives him a kiss.) How often have I reassured you.
But I’m talking about what I didn’t say. With every sentence I uttered, there was another, unspoken half sentence, “And the wall …” Example: I’m going to the Paris Bar.
PYRAMUS: “And the wall …”
THISBE: Example: What’s playing at the Arsenal tonight?
PYRAMUS: “And the wall …”
THISBE: Example: It’s terrible for the Turks in Kreuzberg.
PYRAMUS: “And the wall …”
THISBE: Exactly.
PYRAMUS: It was a tragedy. Will it be a comedy now?
THISBE: We won’t become normal, will we?
PYRAMUS: Does this mean we can do whatever we want?
THISBE: I’m starting to feel a little nostalgic. Oh, the human heart is a fickle thing.
PYRAMUS: Thisbe!
THISBE: Not about you, beloved! You know I’ll always be yours. I mean; you’ll be mine. But of course that’s the same, isn’t it? No, I’m thinking about … you know. I miss it a little.
PYRAMUS: Thisbe!
THISBE: Just a little. (Sees PYRAMUS frowning.) Smile, darling. Oh, you people are so serious!
PYRAMUS: I’ve suffered.
THISBE: So have I, in my way. Not like you, of course. But it wasn’t always easy here, either.
PYRAMUS: Let’s not quarrel.
THISBE: We quarrel? Never! (Sound of wall-peckers) Listen! What an amazing sound!
PYRAMUS: I wish I’d brought my tape recorder. It’s a Sony.
THISBE: I’m glad you can buy whatever you want now. I didn’t realize you were so poor.
PYRAMUS: It was awful. But, you know, it was good for my character.
THISBE: You see? Even you can feel regret. An American artist warned me last year, You’ll miss this wall. (She spies some wall-peckers spraying their hoard of pieces of the wall with paint.) They’re improving it.
PYRAMUS: Let’s not be nostalgic.
THISBE: But you agree there’s something to be said for it. It made us different.
PYRAMUS: We’ll still be different.
THISBE: I don’t know. So many cars. So much trash. The beggars. Pedestrians don’t wait at corners for the green light. Cars parked on the sidewalk. Enter the SPIRIT OF NEW YORK.
SPIRIT: O city, I recognize you. Your leather bars, your festivals of independent films, your teeming dark-skinned foreigners, your
real-estate predators, your Art Deco shops, your racism, your Mediterranean restaurants, your littered streets, your rude mechanicals—
THISBE: No! Begone! This is the Berkeley of Central Europe.
SPIRIT: Central Europe: a dream. Your Berkeley: an interlude. This will be the New York of Europe—it was ever meant to be so. Only postponed for a mere sixty years. SPIRIT OF NEW YORK vanishes.
THISBE: Well, I suppose it won’t be too bad. Since New York isn’t America, this city still won’t be—
PYRAMUS: Sure, sure, provided it stays shabby as well as full of unwelcome foreigners. (Sighs.) Let’s not be too hopeful.
THISBE: Oh, let’s be hopeful. We’ll be rich. It’s only money. PYRAMUS: And power. I’m going to like that.
THISBE: We’re not getting anything we don’t deserve. We’re together. We’re free.
PYRAMUS: Everything is going too fast. And costing too much.
THISBE: No one can make us do what we don’t want as long as we’re together.
PYRAMUS: I’m having a hard time thinking of those less fortunate than we are. But sometimes we’ll remember, won’t we.
THISBE: I want to forget these old stories.
PYRAMUS: History is homesickness.
THISBE: Cheer up, darling. The world is divided into Old and New. And we’ll always be on the good side. From now on.
PYRAMUS: Goethe said—
THISBE: Oh, not Goethe.
PYRAMUS: You’re right.
THISBE: In Walter Benjamin’s last—
PYRAMUS: Not Benjamin, either!
THISBE: Right. (They fall silent for a while.) Let’s stroll.
They see a procession of vendors, including some Russian soldiers, coming across an empty field.
PYRAMUS: And to think that was no-man’s-land.
THISBE: What are they selling?
PYRAMUS: Everything. Everything is for sale.
THISBE: Do say it’s better. Please!
PYRAMUS: Of course it’s better. We don’t have to die.
THISBE: Then let’s go on celebrating. Have some champagne. Have a River Cola.
They drink.
PYRAMUS: Freedom at last.
THISBE: But don’t toss your can on the ground.
PYRAMUS: What do you take me for?
THISBE: Sorry. It’s just that—I’m sorry. Yes, freedom.
Curtain.
[1991]