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THE PROBLEM OF ALMA
A Play for Two
MAURICE ROWDON
Property and copyright
of MAURICE ROWDON
OPA INTERNATIONAL
125 Crescent Road
San Anselmo
USA


CHARACTERS
MAHLER/KOKOSCHKA
ALMA MAHLER


This is a various-purpose set.
There is an arch at the top of three
or four steps upstage right, from
the actor's point of view. Lilac-
colored curtains are drawn across
it, meeting in the middle.
These
can be operated both manually and
automatically.
Downstage of this arch is a
chaiselongue, set at a sharp angle
from down right toward up centre,
with its head downstage.
A knee-
height coffee table is set before
it, toward centre.
Left and upstage stands a desk with
an upright chair or two.
Behind it
is the back wall which is set at a
slight angle,
the rake,
disappearing behind the center side
of the raised archway.
There is a
window more or less behind the desk.
Under this window a pile of canvases
lean against the wall, and there is
a painter's easel.
On the wall right of the window is a
telephone of the earliest hook-up
type.
A doorway or narrow arch leads off
left, that is to the left of the
table.
There are two other
entrances- -one the gap upstage
centre between the wall and raised
archway, the other downstage right
between the right side of the
archway and the proscenium arch.
There is a pile of women's clothes
on a chair by the desk.


The scene is dimly lit.
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA is seated stage
left, facing what appears to be ALMA
MAHLER.
She is sprawled on the
chaiselongue.
He has tight cavalry trousers on
with black shoes and a black coat,
and a dark tie.
He is fairly
tall, blond, thin, the hair cut
short and the head held rather high.
The deep blue of his eyes is, in the
words of a friend, 'unbelievable'.
He is given to brief loud outbursts
of anger or enthusiasm.
continually springs surprises of
tone, phrasing, movement.
Silence.
KOKOSCHKA (quietly, watching her) Ko-ko-ko-ko-ko (in imitation
of the cock).
No response or movement from ALMA.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) Ko-ko-ko.
He chuckles.
He rises slowly and goes toward
her.
He stands looking down at her
but doesn't touch her.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) Come (holding his hands out).
Come.
She doesn't move.
He goes up to
the arch and draws the curtains,
revealing a double bed with canopy.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) You wish to be carried?
Instead he goes left and starts
rummaging about among the canvases.
He pulls one out and puts it on the
easel.
In the dimness we can
hardly make out more than that it
involves two lying figures.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., dusting off his hands)
There!


He sits down again, turning to gaze
at the picture.
With a sharp movement he flings out
his legs in the manner of the ex-
cavalry man.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
Alma, there's something I've been dying to
tell you.
About the happiest moment of my life.
When I was being murdered.
With the blood oozing
out of my nose.
Russian front, 1915.
In fact I
think I might even have died.
I mean how would I
know?
I was lying on the ground wounded with the
rest of my troop and the Russians decided to finish
us off.
What they did was twist their bayonets
round in your lungs. I could see him doing it to
the others.
They were screaming.
I told myself
not to resist.
I felt the point go in and suddenly
I was happier than I'll ever be again---the blood
spilling out of my mouth--and I started laughing
with joy, I actually looked up at him, he dropped
his gun and with the bayonet still in me---he ran
for his life!
Death's so easy---like turning on
your side and smiling at a friend. All you have to
do is go limp.
Silence.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.)
(Turning to the picture
again)
Should I cut down on the red do you think?-
the color of how we gorged ourselves on each other,
ate and drank with our kisses! (Rising and putting
his hand on her leg, then her hip).
The rump soft
yet resistant (he seems giddy and about to fall).
He lifts her up and we see now that
it is A LIFESIZE DOLL of ALMA.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Come my lady!
He holds her carefully, with an arm
round her waist.
Her head lolls on
his shoulder.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., gazing into the doll's face)
What a
personality-: --ruling by divine right (as they walk
to the double bed), the divine right of ever-open
legs, beautifully formed asses.
Even your farts
are a blow to democracy!
The phone rings.


He lets THE DOLL drop to the ground
and rushes to answer.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. bubbling over)
Reserl my sweetheart what a
wonderful hour to call---it's nearly four in the
morning!
He leaves the phone abruptly,
letting the earpiece hang on its
cord, in order to pick the doll up.
While he is doing so we hear a
female voice over the wire--'Oskar!
Oskar!', and then laughter.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., at the phone again, only holding the doll now)
She's here Reserl.
What would you like to say to
your mistress?
Yes? Shall I tell her? (To the
doll) Reserl wishes to massage it for you.
To give
it new life after so much exposure to architects,
musicians, poets!
What?
(Bending his head to
listen to THE DOLL, then to the phone) I'll have
to take her to bed! The woman's completely beyond
control!
He hangs up the phone and bears
THE DOLL to bed, mumbling excitedly
to himself.
Then, with her on the
bed, he pulls the curtains of the
arch sharply closed.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off)
Up with your legs---there! (Slapping
pillows) Damn---asleep again!
Silence.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., quietly, off) Not the world for women, eh?
This fact provokes you to cruelty, yes?
He yawns, off.
We hear him take off his shoes and
change, humming now.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., suddenly raising his voice, off)
You slut!
You ransacked my studio didn't you-- -on the day
they announced me killed in action!
(Furious,
seeming to shake THE DOLL)
You did didn't you?
Took all your things away in case Vienna said she
loves Kokoschka as she loved no other man---that was
the shameful thing, wasn't it?
He chuckles.
Sounds of movement


from the bed.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off)
(Suddenly furious again) It's
too hard! I told that woman firm and textured but
not like a rock!
(Chuckling again)
Ah, you like
that!
(Spits something out of his mouth)
What a
silky tongue you have!
Is it a mixture of powder
and fruit juice and gold dust and wax, according to
my orders?
This time KOKOSCHKA's laughter is
joined by ALMA's.
They giggle
together as the movement of the bed
increases.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off)
And what's this?
A delighted gasp comes from ALMA,
off.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off)
Silk too! And cavernous !
Another gasp from ALMA, deeper.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off) A pocket---a pouch---!
There are continued love-cries, with
much rhythmic movement on the bed,
then the climax.
ALMA (off)
Oskar! Oskar!
Silence.
We hear a cock crowing in the
distance.
The light grows on the
scene, and the picture on the easel
can now be identified as KOKOSCHKA's
The Tempest in its first stage,
before he changed the red to hard
blue.
The silence is broken by the sound
of water being poured into a bowl
behind the curtains.
Someone is
washing, softly.
The arch-curtains open slightly and
ALMA emerges, rather tussled and in
a lilac petticoat.
She closes
the curtains carefully behind her
and tiptoes across to the desk area.


ALMA MAHLER is a striking woman in
her early thirties at this moment,
surer of herself than we shall see
her in later, younger scenes.
She
too is blonde, with a remarkable
combination of the sweet, wild and
arrogant in her features.
She
stands gazing at the canvas for a
moment.
Then she begins dressing
from the pile of clothes on the
chair.
She puts on a bracelet, a
necklace of pearls and two rings,
gazing at the rings with pleasure
for a moment.
She sits and combs out and dresses
her hair.
She goes off left and in a few
moments returns with a tray on which
are two coffee cups, a thermos
flask, a bowl of sugar and a small
jug of cream.
She pours steaming coffee from the
flask into the two cups, adds cream
and sugar.
She returns to the arch and pulls
the curtains aside.
KOKOSCHKA is
lying in an enormously disordered
pile of brightly colored cushions -
red, green, yellow, blue, his first
favourite colors.
He appears
asleep.
She wakes him gently---a hand on his
shoulder.
ALMA (softly) Ko-ko.
He raises himself, blinking.
rubs his face while she stands
holding his coffee.
He stretches
his arms, yawns, taking his time.
Finally he takes the cup without a
word and begins sipping rather like
a child, cupping his hands round it.
He is a younger man now.
ALMA returns to the desk area and


sits down to sip her own coffee.
She glances at her watch (on a
gold chain).
ALMA (putting the cap back on the thermos flask) What an idea!
KOKOSCHKA:
What idea is that?
ALMA :
Coffee made the previous day! Why do you camp out
like a student? How old are you?
KOKOSCHKA (with a trace of irritation)
Twenty-six.
ALMA:
I was only teasing!
KOKOSCHKA;
Twenty-six and I'm going to marry you and have your
child.
ALMA (taking up her bag)
And I'm going back to Semmering.
Where I shall have a bath.
And a change of
clothes.
And fresh coffee waiting for me with the
morning letters.
KOKOSCHKA (still immersed in his coffee)
Very funny.
ALMA (preparing to leave)
I'll pick you up at the art-school
Friday evening.
She goes to the door, left.
KOKOSCHKA:
Alma.
ALMA stops.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) ) We go to Semmering for the weekend?
ALMA:
Yes.
KOKOSCHKA:
You don't kiss me goodbye any more---you go for an
eternity of three days and don't even kiss me!
ALMA (delighted, running back to him)
What a baby you are!
They embrace, kiss, laugh together.
KOKOSCHKA : You know what a student said to me yesterday---he
said your name Kokoschka reminds me of ko-ko-ko-ko-
(he tickles her simultaneously as he makes his
cock-sound).
They roll on the bed and he begins
piling bedclothes on top of her.


She throws cushions at him and he
stands up in the bed, pulling one of
the blankets with him and leaping
about, dancing and crying 'Ko-ko-ko-
He subsides.
Silence.
He lowers
himself to the bed, sighing, out of
breath.
He rummages about in the bed.
THE
DOLL is there in place of ALMA, who
has gone.
He pulls it out of the
piled bedclothes roughly and throws
himself on it in a wild embrace.
As he does so light grows on the
downstage scene.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) Alma! (Making love desperately)
Alma!
Suddenly he stops.
He gets off
the bed, leaving the doll on its
back.
He shades his eyes from the light,
peering round.
He is once more an
older man- -that is, the first world
war has intervened between his
affair with ALMA and now.
Apart
from being older, he has escaped
death narrowly many times, and lain
many weeks in hospital.
He is now
given to losing his balance easily,
because of a bullet wound in the
head.
He goes to the desk and is just
about to drink the coffee ALMA left
behind when the phone rings.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., answering it)
Ah, doctor.. - .A hint of
bronchitis.. But it's the balance more than
anything.
I'm scared to walk in the street. You
can go to hell, I'm not carrying a bloody stick for
anybody!
While talking he dabs at his canvas,
using his fingers and knuckles, not
a brush.
He then picks up a brush
and uses the handle, to make quick
strokes.


KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
I'm not going to bed early because of a
hole in my head either!
That's got to adjust to
me! Did you know we all have other lives?.. .How
do you know you don't just because you're
unconscious of them?
It just means you're
unconscious, that's all!
His eye caught by something on the
canvas, he drops the phone abruptly,
letting it hang by the cord, and
places himself better to work,
seated,
using
knuckles
and
fingertips and brush-end as before.
There is the sound of an old-
fashioned doorbell.
He jumps up, flings his brush down,
rushes to the arch-curtains and
closes them.
A younger man again, he flies about
the place.
He takes the coffee
cups and thermos flask etc and
rushes them off left.
We hear a
door open.
We hear ALMA's laughter off.
ALMA (off) Get up you fool! Up!
KOKOSCHKA enters backwards on his
knees, drawing ALMA with him by the
hands, clasping them and kissing
them continually.
She is in a travelling coat.
KOKOSCHKA (referring to his canvas) Look at it Alma and tell me
why they say such horrible things about me.
Here!
(Rushing to the desk and pulling out a whole drawer
and crashing it down on the desktop)
Listen to
this! (Picking out a scrap of newspaper)
This
Oskar Kokoschka, using his ko-ko rays on people who
have the misfortune to fall under his brush, is
qualified to decorate brothels with harrowing
pictures of syphilitics and paralytics.
These
paintings are disgusting plague sores and puddles
that emit a foul stench.
And this---'He boils up
his paints from lethally poisonous putridity, from
juices that have been fermented out of diseases!
Here are shimmering gall-yellows, fever-greens,


frostbite-blues, hysteria-reds, and the chemicals
binding them all together seem to be iodide of
formyl, carbolic and asafoetida!"
Do you hear
that?
Asafoetida---a horrible stink again!
When he smears them on they set like scars.
Perhaps this gauche portrayal of sick bodies in
states of disgusting uncleanness, spongy, porous,
leathery, flabby, dotted and spotted' ---are you
listening?
ALMA has throughout this speech
been quietly taking off her coat and
settling down.
ALMA (sitting)
Of course.
KOKOSCHKA:
The archduke Franz Ferdinand stood in front of my
pictures and said this man ought to have every bone
in his body broken! We'll go and live in Prague.
ALMA:
What's this phone doing off the hook? (replacing
KOKOSCHKA:
I was talking to Adolf Loos.
We're no longer
friends.
ALMA:
Why?
KOKOSCHKA:
He wants me to leave you.
Before that my mother
called.
She said I've become very short-tempered
since I met you---also very reserved.
Of course
she's scared of you.
ALMA:
Rubbish.
She thinks I'm too old for you---too
important.
KOKOSCHKA:
Yes.
ALMA (taking up some of the printed reviews)
Why do you take
this so seriously?
Don't you see they're paying
you compliments? You never wanted to paint pretty
pictures like the French---so you have to take the
rap!
KOKOSCHKA (staring at her hard)
Is it true you lost your
virginity to Gustav Klimt, the pope of Viennese art
and the most lascivious bastard in the city?
ALMA (roused)
He fell in love with me!
KOKOSCHKA:
I didn't ask you that.
I can't imagine a man like
Klimt not getting his way---Gustav Mahler did after


two days flat, I believe.
ALMA (jumping up in a flash) I won't have you talk like that!
I'm not staying anyway!
I only came to tell you
that!
KOKOSCHKA (aghast, flattened)
What?
ALMA:
I promised my child.
And my mother too.
They've
a right to see me alone sometimes.
KOKOSCHKA (finding difficulty in speech)
But you leave them
all the time!
ALMA :
All the more reason to stay with them now!
KOKOSCHKA (savagely)
It's that damned biologist Kammerer---he's
got his water tanks and toads all over your house-
copulating toads!
ALMA:
Don't be stupid.
He has a wife!
KOKOSCHKA: :
But she says it too!
Everybody says it! It's
your reputation---flirting and assignations---I
ALMA (gathering up her bag and coat) I won't hear any more of
KOKOSCHKA (visibly trembling)
You slept with me after a couple
of days---Mahler you married in a month with his
child inside you---you've been hanging round that
Viennese organ-grinder Franz Schreker-- -and how
many others?
ALMA (putting on her coat with his trembling help) You always
make a mess of it, don't you?
KOKOSCHKA: Alma, please.
(Half to himself)
Even when we
travel together you take a separate room.
ALMA:
I'm Mrs Mahler---Mrs Gustav Mahlerl---and I always
will be!
KOKOSCHKA (grabbing her)
That's a lie!
ALMA:
Ever since his death-mask came to the house you've
behaved like a fool!
KOKOSCHKA:
I forbid you to think of him alive or dead! He was
foreign to you---he robbed you of your body!
She tries to fight him off, making


frightened gasping cries.
She
manages to tear herself away but he
grabs her again. In this scuffling
situation they move off, left.
For
a moment they are out of sight.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., shrieking, as they struggle) Mrs Kammerer--
Mrs Schreker---Mrs Klimt---Mrs Zemlinsky---Mrs
Gabrilovitch!
He returns but now he is scuffling
with THE DOLL.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., smacking the doll round the face) Mrs Klimt--
Mrs Schreker-- -Mrs Kammerer---Mrs Zemlinsky---!
He throws THE DOLL savagely down on
the chaiselongue and then leaps on
top of it, the older man again.
Suddenly a harsh light comes up
behind the curtains of the arch and,
simultaneously,
the sound of a
tuning
orchestra
from
close
quarters.
He stops at once, his mouth open
with astonishment, and stares at
the arch.
He jumps up, completely cowed. He
takes the doll carefully in his arms
and draws it into the standing
position, with frightened glances
at the arch.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., quietly)
Come, my darling, let's go for a
swim.
Still staring at the arch he slinks
away with the doll, left, and
disappears.
The tuning orchestra dies as the
arch-curtains part automatically and
reveal ALMA sitting under a dryer in
a New York hairdressing salon.
She
is an old woman.
A plastic cape
covers her.
Some equally plastic
music comes over the speakers.
She has her right hand in a


manicure's bowl.
There is a bottle
of Benedictine and a small glass by
the bowl.
She pours herself a drink.
After
she has drunk she begins talking in
the easy grand manner of a
distinguished lady reminiscing.
She seems to believe that there is
someone listening,
though in fact
her hairdresser has left her for a
while.
Being under a dryer she
raises her voice somewhat.
ALMA:
The Gibson girl I think she was called, stank of
money--no brains at all but very beautiful, if
that's possible--the whole of New York was talking
about her. She asked me in her limousine one day,
I think it was on Fifth Avenue, what made a
beautiful young woman like you marry that hideous
and impossible old man?
It was a year before he
died.
I sat in the car and talked and talked---I
tried to say all of his music, as my reason for
marrying him.
But of course it didn't mean a thing
to her.
And he wasn't old. Hardly fifty-one.
(Drinking again)
He went to see Sigmund Freud I
remember.
He was worried I might be yearning for a
younger man.
Freud said rubbish, she's so much in
love with her father she'll never leave you.
She
examines
her fingernails,
musing.
ALMA (cont.) I think we had many more obligations in those days
and yet we were much freer.
In ourselves.
I mean
if-- --or rather when---I conceived a child out of
wedlock I felt the most awful remorse.
On the
other hand I never in all my life wore panties.
The sound of a tuning orchestra
returns,
drowning out everything
else.
She listens, half rises,
remembers the dryer, slumps back.
GUSTAV MAHLER enters briskly center,
between the back wall and the raised
arch.
He is dressed for a concert,
apart from his tails, which he is
carrying.
He holds some scores and
puts them down on the table. He is
in his middle age-- --small, rather
pale and slight, with a longish face


and an unusually steep forehead.
His hair is intensely black, his
eyes sharply aware and penetrating
behind their gold spectacles.
has an irregular way of walking,
tending to stamp his feet, to stop
suddenly and then rush forward
headlong;
something is always
pulling or halting him, it seems .
His shoulders are rather hunched.
The tuning dies away as MAHLER
begins to study a score.
MAHLER (looking round)
Alma! Alma!
ALMA seems to hear this.
She tries
impotently to leave her seat again,
this time almost grabbing the arch-
curtains but they slowly close and
she disappears from view as the
tuning orchestra is heard again.
MAHLER continues to read his score,
while getting into his tails. He
makes a few light conducting
movements.
To concentrate more
deeply he puts two fingers of his
right hand on his cheek and his left
hand on his hip, while he curls the
left leg behind the right, standing
on one foot.
This was one of
MAHLER's characteristic positions.
ALMA, a young woman now (she was
twenty-two when she married him)
enters left.
ALMA:
Did you call?
He abruptly leaves his position.
MAHLER:
Ah Alma!
I wanted to know if you'd mind if I
don't get you a wedding ring.
A pause of bewilderment.
ALMA:
He quickly finishes his dressing and
walks vigorously up the steps to the
arch, carrying his baton.


MAHLER (cont.) After all it's only a stone.
ALMA (with quiet defiance)
I adore rings as a matter of fact.
MAHLER (stopping)
What?
ALMA:
I said I adore rings.
Like I adore Christmas trees
and Easter eggs and birthdays and you don't!---why
can't I have these little satisfactions?
MAHLER:
Because of the big satisfactions!
Because we're
not getting married for show! If I went in there
and conducted for show like any damned little
kappelmeister do you think they wouldn't clap just
the same?
They'd clap even more!
But you
wouldn't love me!
ALMA:
So because of a little ring I'm suddenly one of the
crowd!
MAHLER (successfully raising his voice above the orchestra)
Have all the rings in the world, go to parties night
and day---lobster and champagne for breakfast---but
for god's sake don't marry me! Do you realise how
we're going to live?
I shall enter the house by
the back, sleep in another room, I may not see you
for days on end apart from meal-times! I'm a slave
to music not to women!
The sound of tuning has petered out,
replaced by audience noises.
ALMA:
They're getting impatient.
MAHLER:
And then I shall want you pretty and clean.
can't stand a slovenly woman.
There is sporadic clapping, off.
ALMA:
Quickly (shooing him off)!
After a surprised glance at the
arch he leaps up the steps and
simultaneously the curtains are
pulled back from behind. He passes
through them and the curtains are at
once drawn closed again.
There is
a loud storm of applause.
Then it
fades and we hear the rap of a baton
on the conductor's desk.


The first bars of Mahler's Second
symphony are heard loud and strong
from beyond the arch.
ALMA runs to the chaiselongue and
looks for something underneath.
Failing to find it she pulls the
chaiselongue round in such a way
that: it is parallel with the
proscenium arch.
She is on all
fours.
She at last finds the
bottle of Benedictine and small
glass that she is looking for.
She
moves the coffee table so that it is
now at the side of the chaiselongue,
toward center.
She puts the bottle
and glass on it and sits down with
relief.
She pours herself a drink and is
just about to put the glass to her
lips when the music is suddenly
drowned by the clattering sounds of
a railway station, and there is a
change of lights.
She stares all
round her and quickly hides the
bottle and the glass under the
chaiselongue once more.
She hurries off left as if late for
an appointment.
A mellow light grows over the
chaiselongue area as the other
lights dim.
MAHLER bustles on from down right in
a travelling coat, snow on his hat
and shoulders. He stamps the snow
from his overboots.
The chaiselongue area has become a
railway compartment.
He sits down
puffing, tired.
He opens his
overcoat, takes off his hat, cleans
his spectacles.
He takes out a
small book, looks at it, sniffs,
glances round.
ALMA, still a young girl, also in
travelling clothes and equally
covered in snow, comes staggering


on, down right, her arms full of
hand luggage.
MAHLER (briefly looking up) Ah, there you are.
He returns to his book.
She
settles the hand luggage.
He puts
the book down, sighs with pleasure.
She takes off her travelling coat.
Suddenly they seem to see each other
for the first time.
They hug each
other and kiss.
They can't stop
laughing.
With a great sigh ALMA unclips her
skirt, and the corset underneath.
ALMA:
There!
I needn't play the virgin any more!
MAHLER:
You played it very well.
ALMA:
Do you think mummy suspected?
MAHLER:
Of course.
Mummies always do.
ALMA
(touching her tummy)
He feels happy to be going to St
Petersburg.
MAHLER (also touching her tummy) And his mama---what about her?
ALMA:
Oh! You tell me ! Look in my eyes!
MAHLER:
I read a certain---well, it could be pleasure!
They hug again.
ALMA:
People outside are looking.
MAHLER:
And you love it.
I saw you laughing when I fell up
the altar steps.
ALMA:
It was funny! Even the priest laughed!
MAHLER (gazing out of the compartment window) Do you think all
those people are going to St Petersburg?
ALMA (busy with the hand luggage again) I don't know.
All I
know is that we three are!
MAHLER:
Perhaps they're all going to my concert.
ALMA takes out bread and salami, a


thermos
flask of coffee, lace
napkins etc.
MAHLER (cont. ) I didn't know you brought all that stuff.
ALMA:
You talked to me while I was packing it.
You
poured the coffee yourself.
MAHLER:
Good god.
ALMA offers him some food.
MAHLER (cont. ) You haven't got an apple have you?
ALMA (pouring his coffee)
I absolutely refuse to give way to
your apple obsession.
MAHLER:
We're off!
ALMA (handing him the coffee)
Here!
MAHLER:
ALMA:
'Ah'! Well I'm going to eat.
MAHLER:
It's so hot in here.
ALMA eats ravenous ly.
ALMA:
Mm! I
MAHLER:
They overheat these compartments (taking off his
overcoat).
ALMA:
I hope you don't start one of your throat
infections.
The whistle goes and the train pulls
out with a steady nineteenth-
century boom and clatter.
ALMA (cont. )
Wouldn't it have been nice if somebody had waved
us goodbye? Mummy for instance? or Karl Moll?
MAHLER:
To hell with Karl Moll! I see him every day.
ALMA :
He happens to be my stepfather.
MAHLER:
I'm sick to death of them all!
I have them every
day---orchestras of them, choruses of them.
And
I'll have them again as soon as I step off that
platform at St Petersburg.


ALMA (her mouth full)
You're a demon!
MAHLER (chuckling, and pinching her)
You have a certain
interest in demons eh?
You're right! How else
could I manage those singing chicken-farms?
A phrase from the Seventh symphony
comes over.
His mouth is open, he
is gazing before him, conducting
slightly with his right hand.
ALMA looks at him, a piece of bread
poised.
ALMA (cont.) Are you composing?
He surfaces suddenly and the music
fades.
MAHLER:
It'll be years before I write anything like that.
ALMA:
Anything like what?
MAHLER:
It's in the tragic mood---it's for later---later in
life.
ALMA:
Tragic?
Is the future going to be tragic?
(Staring at him)
He simply gazes before him.
She
finishes eating and settles deeper
into her seat.
She leans her head
on his shoulder, closes her eyes.
Again the phrase from the Seventh
steals over, softer now.
His right
hand comes up almost imperceptibly
again, twitching.
He shakes his
head to the music, beguiled.
MAHLER (his voice waking her with a start) For fifteen years I
put my music in a drawer and nobody looked at it! I
sent my songs to Liszt and he returned them with the
remark that they were quite pretty in parts! And
Brahms---called my music 'conductor's music'! So
even the great are deaf! Even you are deaf!
You
don't like my First and you don't like my Fourth--
you said it at dinner with Siegfried Lipiner there
and you made an enemy of all my closest friends -
they hate you because they love the First and the
Fourth, and until you understand my work you daren't


call yourself a musician, much less a composer!
ALMA (throwing herself apart from him)
That Siegfried Lipiner
put you against me! He told you I flirted with the
president of the Society of the Friends of Music all
through your Fourth symphony didn't he? (Shaking
him) Didn't he?
MAHLER:
Why do you hate Lipiner?
ALMA: :
I admire him tremendously:
MAHLER:
He doesn't think so.
ALMA:
He never thinks.
Nietzsche does it for him.
gets all his talk out of books.
MAHLER:
It's marvellous talk though, the best in Vienna!
ALMA:
I flirt with everybody, not just the president.
It's a habit I have.
Do you remember Dr Adler from
your young vegetarian days---well, I flirted with
him at the opera the day you proposed to me!
Also
a few seats down on the other side there was a young
man who'd sworn a few hours before to commit suicide
if I didn't marry him.
And the truth was that I
didn't love any of them including you---I loved one
man and that was--
MAHLER (mimicking her---he is a devastating mimic)
Alexander
Zemlinsky my music teacher!
He shared my musical
aspirations and encouraged my songs!
ALMA (furious)
And I still love him!
MAHLER (with immense force)
I don't care who you love!
I've
had all the top sopranos in the Austro-Hungarian
empire---do you think I give a damn about your
flirtations? Its your dynamism I won't stand for.
There's only room for mine in this family and you'd
better get that straight---settle down and have your
baby and remember you've hooked the most desirable
man in Vienna- -my singers may call me 'that Jewish
monkey' but there's nobody in the world they sing
better for.
Even the emperor stopped in the street
the other day to have a look at me---did you know
that?
ALMA (ironically) Of course!
And schoolboys become popular
with each other just by telling each other how they
caught a glimpse of you in a cafe. (Turning on him
suddenly)
Your disgusting friends have started a


campaign against me!
MAHLER (with a laugh) So you won't even let me have my friends,
you who brought me Christ, who gave me light!
ALMA:
You told me I was an atheist last week!
MAHLER:
You are.
So are all Christians.
Look at Carl
Moll and Max Burkhard and Pfitzner and all that
insipid crowd---they're proud of it---it helps
their cardboard personalities!
ALMA:
I still don't like your First or your Fourth, and
your Third isn't all that much better! Your music
has to win me over---not plough me over!
MAHLER:
You don't even like Verdi.
Anybody who claims to
have an ear and doesn't like Giuseppe Verdi has to
have his ear examined!
All this stuff about
'German' music!
You're just like Cosima Wagner!
Won't have me near Bayreuth because I'm a Jew---she
won't even look at my production of Tristan and
Isolde!
Another Christian!
ALMA (through grinding teeth)
I hope you never get to Bayreuth.
A disturbing passage from the second
movement of the Second symphony
comes crashing through, melting in
with the screeching of the brakes.
The train comes to a violent halt.
They are both flung forward by it
and then as quickly thrown back.
They stare
before them with
astonishment.
There are the bright
lights and sounds of a station,
larger than life, seemingly the
climax of the music.
MAHLER clutches at his throat and
tears his collar open, then dashes
right, out of the compartment. She
jumps up, calling after him.
The
music comes to a climax, with all
the station noises.
ALMA (shrieking)
Gustav!
Gustav!
It's freezing outside--
Gustl! -come back!
The lights come up behind the arch
and the station noises die into the


tuning of an orchestra.
The
conductor's desk is rapped.
Silence.
ALMA gapes, as if waking
from a dream, staring about her.
Frantically she gathers the hand
luggage together, puts his hat on
top of hers, throws both his and her
overcoats on.
She staggers across
the scene under the load, toward
left.
ALMA (cont., stopping suddenly)
Look, the Neva's frozen over!
There are tramlines across it!
Gustav!
The Liebestod steals over.
The
light over the scene glitters. She
stands enchanted in a sea of
luggage.
The arch-curtains are pulled open
briskly and MAHLER appears behind
them in his rehearsal clothes.
The
area behind the arch is bare.
MAHLER (hoarse)
Listen to that!
Wagner fits in everywhere
doesn't he-- --even raw Russia!
ALMA: :
Oh Gustl!
How ever are you going to get through
three concerts with a throat like that?
She stumbles up the steps of the
arch toward him with all the luggage
etc as he talks.
MAHLER:
Do you realise these Russians look down their noses
when you mention Dostoevsky?
ALMA (slumping down)
What a lot of stairs!
MAHLER:
Oh you're young! !
ALMA:
I'm expecting!
They sit together on the steps
surrounded by the luggage.
MAHLER:
Such a funny little cow that archduchess from Moscow
wasn't she?
But they're nicer than our
aristocracy.
She asked me to tell her what death
was like.


ALMA:
What is it like?
MAHLER:
The same as life!
ALMA: :
What?
All these disappointments and grudges and
things going wrong? That's hell!
MAHLER:
Disappointments aren't life.
They're your
interpretation of it!
ALMA: :
I am an atheist really---though a sort of believing
one.
MAHLER:
The trouble is you look for God in the distance.
You must look for him here (touching her cheek),
here (touching the steps).
ALMA:
What do you mean ? You who notice nothing! You
don't even see I'm wearing a wedding ring- -and you
hate wedding rings (showing it)!
They share the joke and hug.
The light mellows and the Liebestod
fades.
They gaze round.
MAHLER:
Alma, why did they stare at us when we were driving
through the streets of St Petersburg in an open
troika?
ALMA :
Because it was thirty degrees below zero and open
troikas aren't for that kind of weather.
And
secondly we look funny.
People always stare at us.
MAHLER:
Do you remember Crefeld?
where I did my Third
symphony?
You had one of those reform dresses on
and children called after us in the street - -and we
had to pour water on their heads from the hotel
balcony.
ALMA:
And what about when your hands were sticky and you
washed them over a balcony right onto a group of
women underneath and one of them looked up and said
'It's all right, it's only Mahler'!
(Tickling him)
It's only silly Mahler!
MAHLER (rising)
I'll go ahead and see that everything's all
right.
He leaves via the arch.
ALMA:
Gustav!


MAHLER (returning)
Yes?
ALMA:
Please take these bags.
MAHLER (taking them) Ah yes.
ALMA:
He goes through the arch with some
hand luggage.
ALMA (cont., calling him)
Gustav!
GUSTAV (off)
Yes?
ALMA:
Why do you look shabby in the most expensive
clothes?
MAHLER (off, with a laugh)
I'm too busy being in love my
darling---with
you---with
Mozart---the Rhine
Maidens!
She continues gazing after him.
ALMA (to herself)
You're just like Dostoevsky with
his 'love'! A bloody egotist!
She grabs the rest of the luggage
and follows him, still wearing two
greatcoats, and with his hat on top
of hers.


There are no longer canvasses or
easel.
A gramophone suddenly screeches out
the popular song of the time, Ach du
lieber Augustin.
The record is
scratched and worn.
MAHLER dashes in from the left.
MAHLER:
Stop!
(Frantic)
Take that record off!
Take it
off!
He addresses this to the air,
turning this way and that in
panic.
ALMA dashes in from the other side.
ALMA:
What's going on?
MAHLER:
It's that blasted captain---the one who shares the
flat!
ALMA (shrieking)
Captain?
MAHLER:
He's got a room at the end of the corridor!
ALMA:
A woman?
MAHLER:
A room, a room!
ALMA:
And why this noise?
MAHLER:
Because he hates me! He knows I'm a composer and I
can't stand noise! So he puts it on when I come
ALMA:
Oh he does does he?
She storms across the stage and
exits up right, between the archway
and the wall.


The noise continues.
This seems to
inflict dire bodily distress on
MAHLER.
He almost doubles up,
plugs his ears with his fingers.
Then it abruptly ceases.
MAHLER (straightening up) Good lord.
She's killed him.
(Appreciating the silence) Ah!
ALMA strolls back.
ALMA:
He's out.
MAHLER:
Out? Who?
ALMA:
The captain.
It's his batman puts the record on.
He has orders to start it up whenever you come in.
MAHLER:
I know.
I told you that myself.
ALMA:
No you didn't.
You said the captain put it on.
Anyway I guaranteed him a little income and he'll
only put it on when the captain comes home.
MAHLER:
It's always been like that.
I told Dr Freud about
Every time I have a deep experience something
banal happens. I was sitting in my room thinking
about Mozart and you, and how wonderful it is to be
living with you at last, then this infernal noise
breaks out.
I told Freud I thought it was a
childhood pattern.
My mother and father were
having a fearful row one day and I ran out into the
street. A barrel organ was playing right outside.
And that's why the tragic and commonplace are
always mixed in my music.
She is seated on the chaiselongue by
now,
listening
to him with
attention.
MAHLER (cont.) ) And do you know what that barrel organ was
playing when I escaped from the house?
ALMA:
MAHLER:
Ach du lieber Augustin!
You don't find a key to
life there?
Jan Sibelius told me once that a
symphony must be logical.
I said, no, it must be
all of life.
Nothing less will do!
(Gazing
round him)
How different the flat looks. You've
let the sunshine in.


ALMA:
When our house on the lake's ready we'll go there,
won't we, all the summer, and be alone, and you'll
compose, and I'll orchestrate your scores, and---!
The awful cracked record blares out
again.
MAHLER (shouting)
I thought you'd stopped him!
ALMA:
The captain's come back!
She storms out again.
MAHLER makes frantic movements as if
these will exorcise the sound.
Suddenly the record ceases.
MAHLER:
Ah! (Going to his desk)
And now she'll find out
how charming the captain is.
He opens a score, stands reading it.
soon
moves
into
his
characteristic pose--two fingers of
his right hand on his cheek, the
other hand on his hip, one leg
curled behind the other.
A passage from the last movement of
the Sixth symphony comes over
swiftly and relentlessly.
MAHLER (cont., suddenly, two feet back on the ground)
There!
One, two, three (following the drum-beats) !
The
three blows of fate!
falls!
He stands listening to the music as
it comes to full volume.
The music ceases.
He stands gazing
before him.
MAHLER (cont.)
First, dismissal from the opera.
(screwing up his eyes as if to see better) a loss.
He sits and returns to his score.
ALMA laughs, off.
We hear children
playing, and a cock crows in the


distance.
As a warm summer light grows on the
scene we hear other country noises--
the bark of a dog, hammering,
birds, hens.
ALMA (off)
Gustav!
MAHLER (shaken out of his concentration)
Yes?
ALMA (off)
You shouldn't swim so far out! Mummy says so too.
He nods to himself.
ALMA (cont., off) Did you hear me?
He nods again, composing.
Softly, hardly audible at first, the
Hanna-Danilo waltz from Act 11 of
The Merry Widow steals over the
speakers and begins to oust his own
music.
He wonders where it comes
from, so far away.
He listens,
looks out of the window.
He peers
off, left, goes to the right and
looks toward the arch.
MAHLER:
Alma!
It's lunch time!
ALMA (off)
I'm playing with my tribe!
In the woods! They're
touching me all over (screaming with laughter)!
She makes howling noises, little
screeches of pleasure.
MAHLER (dashing off, right) Where are you? (Off)
Alma!
He returns once more.
He peers
round the room, looks behind his
desk, the curtains of the arch.
MAHLER (cont., with a delighted chuckle)
You minx!
suddenly
darts
the
chaiselongue and pulls it out.
MAHLER:
There!
But he finds something else.
slowly retrieves the bottle of


Benedictine and the glass.
stands there holding them.
Then he walks to his desk with a
rather sad gait and hides them away.
Gradually the music becomes louder.
The lights go dim and he looks round
with perplexity.
Taking their
place a rather glaring and lurid
light comes up behind the arch so
that he is now silhouetted.
MAHLER:
Alma!
(Going towards the arch) Alma!
He pulls the arch-curtains aside.
The area beyond is empty, strangely
illuminated.
ALMA is glimpsed
dancing but disappears at once.
runs after her, and also disappears.
She again appears alone, this time
entering downstage right, below the
archway, whirling.
MAHLER appears in the archway
dressed now in evening clothes.
waits for her and they begin dancing
the waltz together in a dreamlike
fashion.
The music now comes up
loud and strong.
Their dance should be choreographed
with care.
They disappear behind
the arch and reappear downstage
right,
whirling
between
the
furniture and up to the top of the
steps again and for a time on the
steps themselves.
It is almost a
ballet, with the strange glaring
light from
beyond
the arch
silhouetting them.
When the music ceases they come to a
halt centre, happily out of breath.
The glaring light dies.
A soft
evening light comes over the scene.
MAHLER begins singing as Danilo in
the last act of the opera, and ALMA
answers him as Hanna.
This ends
with Danilo's 'A woman's too much


for a man!'
This singing exchange also should be
carefully prepared, since ALMA too
was an excellent musician, better
able to improvise at the piano even
than MAHLER.
MAHLER (interrupting)
We got that bit wrong.
ALMA:
Which bit?
MAHLER:
The da-di-da-da-tum-ti-di-da-ra-ra!
ALMA:
Look it up.
MAHLER:
What? You don't imagine I've any Franz Lehar in
the house do you?
ALMA (putting her arms round him and half-dancing again) Did
you enjoy it Gustl?
MAHLER:
Every minute!
Every second-rate singer, every
cardboard tree!
ALMA:
Our one night out in five years! It ought to be
chronicled somewhere.
And the Merry Widow, not
Lohengrin or Parsifal!
MAHLER:
I tell you what, we can go to Doblinger's tomorrow
and I'll ask about the sales of my music and while
I'm doing that you can thumb through the Merry Widow
and we'll play it in the evening.
She closes the arch-curtains as if
they were over a window.
ALMA:
When we were dancing I had the impression we
floated---you held me up---you---!
A child's cry---disturbed sleep---in
the distance.
MAHLER stares at her.
Silence.
ALMA: :
Gustav! Don't look like that!
MAHLER:
Who is it for god's sake?
ALMA:
The baby scalded her fingers this morning.


MAHLER:
It's more than that!
She leaves, left, while he watches
her.
savage
phrase
from
the
Kindertotenlieder comes over.
He continues to stand there, waiting
tensely.
The music dies.
ALMA reappears.
ALMA:
She has a slight fever.
Mummy's looking after her.
MAHLER:
And little Putzerl?
ALMA:
Asleep.
MAHLER:
She isn't flushed?
ALMA:
MAHLER:
Come and sit down Almschili.
She does so, with a concerned glance
at him.
MAHLER (cont.)
The Lord Chamberlain called me into his office
today.
ALMA:
Yes?
MAHLER:
Someone stole my appointments book and took it to
him.
It showed three concerts in Rome.
He said
box office receipts fall off when I'm away. I told
him this wasn't true.
They want me out.
It has
nothing to do with receipts.
ALMA:
It's because you stood by Alfred Roller.
MAHLER:
He's the finest designer in Europe!
ALMA:
Yes but making the Rhine Maidens sing from hanging
baskets!
MAHLER (with a shrug) It's only because they're so fat---they're
afraid the ropes'll break.
The child's cry again.


ALMA:
Gustav! Stop worrying.
MAHLER (making an effort)
What an evening it was!
Do you
know, I think Richard Strauss has evening after
evening like that!
Everything's so smooth with
him!
Do you notice that?
(Wandering about
distractedly) Just two rehearsals and he gets a
marvellous performance. Healthy relatives bustling
round him! And the happy way he worries over his
accounts, so many deutschmarks from this production,
so many Austrian schillings from that.
And then
look at me---in a fearful sweat all the time, the
orchestras hating me, tears and calamities and
upsets!
Born in a family of thirteen kids--
witnessing all those deaths-- --looking after the ones
who survived! Sending them money and---!
A bell rings.
ALMA (rising)
It's the doctor.
Mummy called him.
(Stopping
on her way out) I wish you wouldn't worry!
MAHLER:
You're hiding something!
ALMA (frantically)
Why don't you go and see for yourself?
MAHLER:
Tell me the truth damn you!
ALMA:
Putzerl has a fever too.
MAHLER:
It's diptheria!
ALMA:
Yes.
MAHLER:
And she must have a tracheotomy !
ALMA: :
Yes.
The bell sounds again, urgently.
She rushes off.
The savage
passage from the
Kindertotenllieder comes over once
more, then quickly dies.
He stands trembling.
ALMA screams, off.
ALMA (off)
Gustav!
Gustav!


He runs---but in the opposite
direction.
ALMA comes in from the left,
distraught, crying.
She looks for
him.
There is a great burst of applause
and lights come up behind the arch.
She turns towards the arch with
surprise.
The conductor's desk is
rapped three times.
MAHLER (off) Let's take it from your entrance Isolde please!
But instead of an aria from Tristan
and Isolde there is a soprano
singing Ach du liebe Augustin in
the Wagnerian manner.
She turns with astonishment as
KOKOSCHKA enters from the left with
a tray of coffee things.
The music
abruptly cuts off.
KOKOSCHKA (indicating the desk as he puts the tray down) You
leave his scores everywhere---your little babies!
(Pouring her coffee)
If you could only come alive-
--kill yourself and come alive---!
She stares at him, tears still in
her eyes.
He takes her coffee to her and then
notices her state.
KOKOSCHKA (putting her cup down on the small table by the
chaiselongue)
You came to tell me!
It's true
isn't it?
He draws her to the chaiselongue and
as she sits down kneels before her.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Is everything OK?
ALMA: :
Yes.
KOKOSCHKA: You saw the doctor?
ALMA:
Yes.


KOKOSCHKA:
We'll marry at once.
She again simply looks at him.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
I never dreamed of being a father! I can
feel the freshness of the baby-skin---smell it!
She places a hand softly over his
mouth.
ALMA:
I'm tired and not quite healthy, Koko.
The doctor
noticed that.
I don't know how I can face a child!
Silence.
KOKOSCHKA draws back.
ALMA (cont.) A connection like ours---it's too powerful!
drives people apart.
Much more often than you
think.
When it's so very deep---deeper than
anything you've ever thought possible---the woman
becomes afraid.
KOKOSCHKA (quite apart now, staring at her) Of what?
ALMA:
Stagnation.
KOKOSCHKA:
It's barely human what you say!
ALMA (looking away)
Perhaps I don't mean it.
KOKOSCHKA:
I almost hope you love someone else---rather than
say such barbarous things!
ALMA:
Perhaps men love more than we do--it provokes you
to wonderful work---nourishes you, makes you great--
-but the woman may feel diminished.
KOKOSCHKA:
So, feeling diminished, she must look for another
man to undiminish her and so it goes on and on!
ALMA (rising briskly)
I won't hear that discussion any more!
KOKOSCHKA: All your friends are telling you to leave me! It's
because Mrs Gustav Mahler can't be seen with a man
who lacks poise!
She walks, right.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., feebly)
You're going the wrong way


ALMA:
I left the car at the back.
KOKOSCHKA (afflicted with difficulty of speech)
T-to conceal
your visit.
(Quietly)
Yet you allow Hans
Pfiztner in your apartment.
For the night!
(Seizing her hands) Alma, he got into your cells--
-you say it yourself---everything for his music,
music, music, never you!
You say it yourself!
And you're trying to bring yourself back to life
with all these other men---but only I can do that,
you know it!
ALMA (quietly)
If Gustav Mahler killed me, is my body dead---
does it feel dead to you?
KOKOSCHKA:
ALMA:
I don't make love like someone dead?
KOKOSCHKA: No.
ALMA:
So how did Gustav Mahler kill me? And who brought
me to life?---if I was already the woman you see
before you when we met?
KOKOSCHKA (humbled) B-but he wore you out---!
ALMA:
He burned me alive---he fed the flame that I gave to
KOKOSCHKA:
You n-never said that.
You say it now.
I had to
hold you like a corpse, you were cold, I could feel
the life come back to you!
She walks away from him, right.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., almost in a whisper) I feel him with you all
the time. In your clothes.
He watches us.
ALMA (still very quiet)
What's wrong with death watching over
ALMA hums the waltz she and MAHLER
danced, from The Merry Widow.
ALMA: :
Do you hear it?
KOKOSCHKA (screaming at her) No I don't hear it!
She laughs as she goes, quickly now.
He rushes after her.


KOKOSCHKA (continuing to scream)
It was you killed him! You
killed Gustav Mahler!
They both disappear.
We hear his voice echoing down the
well of the back stairs.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) You killed Gustav Mahler!
Suddenly the bell rings---the one we
heard before, when the doctor came.
MAHLER (off, right)
Where are all the servants?
The bell sounds again.
MAHLER crosses the empty scene in
an irritated manner.
MAHLER (cont., brusquely indicating the coffee things left lying
about) And clear these things for god's sake!
We hear children playing in the
distance. splashing, the bark of a
dog.
MAHLER (cont., off)
Thank you.
He returns breaking open a letter in
a feverish way. He reads it.
MAHLER (cont., calling)
Alma! Alma!
ALMA
comes
centre-stage
hurriedly.
MAHLER (cont.) Look!
He holds the letter out to her with
trembling hands.
MAHLER (cont.) )
It's from that architect---Walter Gropius.
says he fell in love with you.
At the Tobelbad
sanatorium.
When you were ill. I said at the time
you were hiding something---look, he's addressed it
to me! He wants to marry you! my wife! What can
I say? He wants to come here and talk it over!
ALMA (suddenly much alive, laughing)
He must be mad !
She snatches the letter.


MAHLER (gazing at her grimly)
You laugh.
So it's serious !
ALMA:
I was tired and he sympathised.
MAHLER:
Sympathised with the fact that you're married to me!
ALMA (turning on him with surprising vehemence) Do you remember
you told me once that spring couldn't last for ever,
our spring?
It was the Fifth and the Sixth and
the Seventh and now it's the Eighth---the Song of
the Earth---the song of children---dead children-
before it happened!
You wake me in the middle of
the night to make love!
And I must always look
nice---but never have new clothes! Do you wonder I
needed a bit of warming sunshine?
After staring at her with shock and
astonishment MAHLER stumbles off
right.
She reads the letter with excitement
and kisses it and whirls round with
joy.
She sees the coffee cup on the small
table with mock horror and does a
little burlesque act gathering it up
and running with it to the desk
where the rest of the coffee things
are.
ALMA (cont., imitating MAHLER)
'For god's sake clear these
things away!'
She whirls round and round with the
tray, the letter now between her
teeth, and goes off left as if
trembling with fear, so that the
cups etc clatter together.
'A woman's too much for man', sung
by MAHLER, comes over the speakers.
The telephone rings, interrupting
the music.
Silence.
It rings again.
THE DOLL puts its head between the
arch-curtains,
looking in the
direction of the phone.


KOKOSCHKA (off, behind the curtain, imitating ALMA)
Answer it
like an angel Ko-Ko!
THE DOLL is abruptly pulled back and
KOKOSCHKA now appears between the
curtains.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., his normal voice) Yes darling.
He limps down the steps after
drawing the arch-curtains closed.
He answers the phone.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.,) Hullo.. Yes doctor!
The wound won't let
any air in.. Well I know it's not supposed to, it's
only a figure of speech. . What's that?
Alcohol?
(Tearing open a drawer of the desk and pulling out
a bottle of Benedictine and a glass)
Well of
course not (pouring himself a glass)! Absolutely
not (drinking it in one go)!... . What's that? An
effigy of a woman, what are you talking about? Yes
but you don't want to take too much notice of what
people say.. Well I like her company of course!
.Listen, if people find it funny to see me with
her at the theatre that's their lookout isn't
it?.. - Alma Schindler... Yes.. .No not Alma Mahler,
she's dead....I mean, he's dead.. No, not Alma,
Gustav. No, I haven't seen her since 1915, when was
that, about three years ago, men were killing each
other on the Russian front you remember and she
thought it an excellent occasion to get rid of me
by demonstrating patriotism for the first and last
time in her life. But you don't understand! She
was and always will be like a thousand mothers for
me, or a thousand sisters or angels! Our love was
an offence against nature, it broke all laws!
There's been nothing like it since the middle
ages.. Find my balance doctor? But don't you see
she is my balance!
It has nothing to do with the
war---were she here I'd recover like a shot.
You
see I chose the cavalry because I thought she might
prefer me on a horse.
Women prefer to think of
their lovers on horseback on the whole don't they?
Do you remember that painting of Alma and me called
The Tempest-- --yes that's Alma and me- well, I sold
it in the spring of 1914 and bought a horse with
the money.
To join the cavalry in those days you
had to have your own horse. - . What? Oh do get off
that subject, it's only a totem after all...I said a
(pronouncing it in a burlesque manner) to-tem. - - I
carry it round as a to-tem and if people think I'm


mad because I have a hole in my head I can assure
them that western civilisation has a hole in its
head far bigger than mine!
ALMA screams, off.
He drops the phone and stares at the
arch.
Silence.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., rushing to the arch and throwing the curtains
back)
Alma! Alma!
THE DOLL is lying on the bed.
rushes to it and promptly lifts the
skirt up and tries to bend the
knees.
As ALMA never wore panties
there is no evidence of panties on
the doll.
He looks round in a
panic-stricken way.
KOKOSCHKA (in a very soft, rushed voice)
Don't worry!
Just
push darling! Push!
He dashes back to the hanging phone.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.)
Doctor, doctor, it's a delivery---it's
happened, come at once!
He replaces the phone and dashes
here and there in his panic.
makes a scream as if it were ALMA's.
At last he finds what he's looking
for.
He pulls two small blank
canvases from the pile under the
window and rushes with them to the
bed.
He uses them as supports for
the doll's legs, so that they are
bent and raised in the manner of
stirruped legs during delivery.
puts cushions under the feet, and we
are now staring into the doll's
procreative area, which is simulated
with remarkable accuracy.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Calmly my angel, calmly!
Grip the bed -
here!
(Rushing to pull back her arms so that she
can hold onto the head of the bed while pushing)
There!
Push!
(He screams in imitation of ALMA's
scream and at once grabs THE DOLL's hand to comfort
her) Only a moment more-- -a moment!
(Putting his


head between her legs) I can see the head!
The
head Alma! Only a little more! A little more and
dawn will come, the skies will sing with echoing
choruses and aeons of joy will be inaugurated!
A ring at the bell.
He looks
completely shamefaced and bewildered
for a moment, then jumps away from
the bed.
He pulls the curtains
together smartly and rushes left to
open the door.
He returns at once and looks about
him in bewildered fashion.
Who
rang the bell?
ALMA (off, behind the curtains)
I'm ready.
He is astonished to hear her
voice.
He stands uncertainly, trying to
make sense of events, looking this
way and that.
ALMA (cont., off)
I'm ready Ko-Ko.
KOKOSCHKA (galvanized into action) Yes!
He dashes off, again left, and
reappears with his easel.
He sets
up his paints and a canvas with
feverish haste.
He goes to the arch and, after a
moment's renewed hesitation, pulls
the curtains aside.
The canopy bed
is now tidy, and ALMA is seated on
a corner of it, facing centre, a
laurel wreath round her head.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., gazing at her)
Splendid!
(Stepping back)
Splendid!
The following dialogue takes place
while KOKOSCHKA rushes off left to
fetch a ladder, climbs it and turns
on and adjusts a spotlight so that
it spots ALMA.
He returns the
ladder to its place left, off.
ALMA (laughing at his nervousness)
What's the matter? What


were you doing?
KOKOSCHKA: I thought I heard a bell.
I---forgot you were
here!
ALMA:
Forgot?
KOKOSCHKA (hurriedly going back to the easel)
My head spins
sometimes! I feel I'm somewhere else!
ALMA:
Does it frighten you?
KOKOSCHKA: It excites me.
You remember when we were out
walking round the Prater and I told you that a boy
at one of the stalls would murder his father one day
and he did a week later?
ALMA (calmingly)
Yes Ko-Ko.
KOKOSCHKA: Well, that excited me.
He sits and begins painting and
gradually recovers his calm, making
bold strokes with his brush.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
They deny I have god's eyes but I have.
That's why they call my portraits horrific.
The
moment I set eyes on that Ludwig von Janikowsky I
knew he was round the bend.
A regimental band passes below the
window, acoompanied by the sound of
horses' hoofs and marching feet.
ALMA:
Or is it the war that frightens you?
KOKOSCHKA:
Declarations don't scare me.
The actual fighting
might.
They listen to the band, and the
sounds gradually fade.
ALMA:
I was twenty minutes behind this curtain before you
came to.
Where do you go?
KOKOSCHKA: All over the universe as a matter of fact.
ALMA:
Will you take me with you?
KOKOSCHKA:
They wouldn't recognise your social position, they
don't speak Viennese.


ALMA;
Who's they?
KOKOSCHKA: All those beings that are playing within you and me
and all around us.
ALMA:
If they're beings in that sense they should speak
every language.
KOKOSCHKA: Let's put it this way---they could but they don't
want to waste their time.
I mean what would they
want to hear Max Burkhart talking balls for?
They laugh together.
ALMA:
Is that why there should always be something
missing?
KOKOSCHKA:
I don't understand.
ALMA:
I think Gustav fell in love with me when I no longer
needed him.
KOKOSCHKA : Wanted him.
ALMA:
When it was missing it became heaven for him.
KOKOSCHKA: And what about me?
ALMA:
What about you?
KOKOSCHKA:
Were you always missing for me?
I mean I always
loved you.
Are you missing when you're in my arms?
ALMA:
We want more and more of each other, it seems we
can't make love enough, so something must be
missing for us to keep on wanting it.
KOKOSCHKA:
Do you know what you're really saying? That you're
already missing from me too.
All this Mahler and
Kokoschka stuff is nonsense in the end.
It's all
to do with you-- - -what you feel inside.
Don't you
see-- -we all invented each other? Being poorly
educated you can't break through the shoddy ideas
that rattled about in the brains of the fashionable
men who hung about your house in your childhood
years.
You can't see that my thoughts and
yearnings could have been prepared in Mahler's
brain!-- -and that you chose me because you knew me
already, because he'd been forming me in his brain,
forming my desires for you-- -yes and forming yours
for me! Your silly world is composed of distinct
individuals, so you can never see the truth about


anything, and unless you marry me and stay with me
your whole life is going to be a bloody shambles!
ALMA (with a smile)
Well, at least I know where I stand, which
not many women in their early thirties could say.
He in turn smiles.
There is
silence between them as he paints
ALMA (cont.) When we lost our little one I saw her many times
afterwards, in New York.
She helped us through a
difficult period.
Gustav had just been to the
doctor in Maiernigg and been given a sentence of
death--- -a throat full of streptococchi.
He had
everybody intriguing against him in New York--
including Toscanini-- -can you believe it?
Toscanini actually wanted to do a version of Tristan
and Isolde a few weeks after Mahler's, which was
the best ever heard.
It really was an insult!
KOKOSCHKA:
The streptococchi came from falling in love with
you---from knowing you were missing.
ALMA (without resentment) Yes, I'm aware that's what you think.
KOKOSCHKA:
But you won't kill me. I have a plan.
He paints on.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Not that you're a femme fatale.
A femme
fatale never gives herself.
She hums the waltz.
ALMA:
He said he breathed for me, at the end.
You're
right---he got sick for me---he actually said it.
He said it's because you're no longer with me.
Those were his words.
KOKOSCHKA:
Don't start crying for christ's sake, I've got a
difficult bit here.
ALMA:
Not at all. I realise perfectly well that if he'd
been in love with me all those years he'd never have
done those symphonies.
I couldn't have supported
him you see.
KOKOSCHKA (intrigued, so that he stops painting for a moment)
How---support?
ALMA:
I saw all his needs.
Something was missing---in


him, for me---and he filled it with music.
KOKOSCHKA (entranced by this idea, quietly)
You damned realist!
She laughs.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) What you don't say is that he was missing for
you too.
ALMA:
But he wasn't.
He was everyone for me---father,
family, Vienna.
KOKOSCHKA: And what am I?
ALMA: :
I simply---love you.
He gazes at her for some time.
KOKOSCHKA: And yet---if I'm not everything for you---I'm one of
many, perhaps the first---of many---!
ALMA:
I see you with Mahler inside me and you don't like
that.
He was all I knew---I was twenty when I met
him---how do you expect me to have held my own
against the most famous man in Vienna?
KOKOSCHKA:
Vienna's most famous man with Vienna's most
beautiful woman.
It ought to have been a
thoroughly idiotic match oughtn't it?---but somehow
wasn't.
ALMA:
Isn't that a little to my credit?
KOKOSCHKA: A lot to your credit.
He goes on painting.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) This easel used to belong to Lotte Franzos.
Remember her?
ALMA:
KOKOSCHKA:
You threw her out of my studio.
You walked through
my door, a complete stranger, you watched her
painting at her easel for a moment, then you strode
across the room and packed up her things and told
her to leave, and we---Lotte and I--were too
astonished to speak.
This is something I'm trying
to catch---the haughty,
the unyielding, the
sensuous,
the spurning,
the
tempting,
the
enquiring, the delighted, the ravishing-- --all the
beings that play within your face!
I was in love


with Lotte Franzos.
That's why I painted her so
tenderly.
ALMA:
Is this one tender?
KOKOSCHKA: It seems mad to be painting at all.
I was at the
station today. I heard a woman say to her husband
with a laugh 'Don't kill too many Serbians!.
was drunk.
He told her quietly to go, he
couldn't stand to say goodbye.
These are the
fiercest partings of the human race aren't they
Alma---the war ones?
ALMA: :
I don't know.
KOKOSCHKA: He looked frightened as he walked to the train.
Not of death but separation.
What are you
thinking?
ALMA:
Nothing.
He sits back, puts his brush aside.
KOKOSCHKA:
I'm not pleased with myself.
ALMA:
I know.
KOKOSCHKA:
All I ever thought about was enjoying myself.
can't stand to see all this tragedy and just flit
around it, I mean my old life can't go on anyway.
ALMA (furtively) Do you want to go?
KOKOSCHKA:
Do you want me to go?
ALMA:
I want what you want.
KOKOSCHA:
I'll join the cavalry.
She watches him.
ALMA:
People say it'll be over by 1915.
Russia's not
strong enough for us.
KOKOSCHKA:
There are forces at work they know nothing about.
He now watches her too.
He begins glaring at her wildly.
Suddenly he kicks the easel and the
canvas on it clean over.


ALMA (jumping up, terrorised)
What's the matter?
KOKOSCHKA (also standing, or rather throwing himself into the
air) You aborted my child! You damned she-devil!
(advancing on her)
Why don't you fight on the
Russian front---they need baby-killers!
She jumps up terrified, tearing off
her laurel wreath.
She flees
behind the bed and he dashes up the
steps after her.
She is nowhere to
be found.
He even looks under the
bed, where she sat.
He finds
something else---the Benedictine
bottle and glass. He takes them to
the desk with a gait reminiscent of
MAHLER's when he made a similar
discovery.
Instead of putting them on the desk
he carries them off, left.
We hear him smashing the bottle to
pieces.
The smashing continues---long after
that of one bottle would justify.
ALMA steals onto the scene from
behind the bed, staring toward the
kitchen area, approaching it in a
state of fascinated horror as she
watches KOKOSCHKA destroy all his
plateware, off.
She
becomes
more
and more
frightened as the sounds of fury
increase.
She wants to go into the
kitchen and stop him and nearly does
but as the fury increases she begins
withdrawing.
Silently
and slidingly MAHLER
appears centre, to one side of the
archway.
She has her back to him,
and is still retreating from the
kitchen.
MAHLER is frail, hunched, pale. He
sits on the arch-steps softly and
slowly, perfectly collected, remote,
as she retreats towards him.


appears not to hear, or at least not
to be in the smallest manner
troubled by the sounds of fury.
Suddenly she walks into him, turns
and, seeing him, begins screaming.
She runs to the chaiselongue as if
to hide behind it.
The smashing sounds cease abruptly.
MAHLER (hushed)
Don't be afraid.
Sit down.
Staring at him, she sits on the
chaiselongue.
ALMA (almost inaudible)
Gustl, I'm so frightened!
MAHLER:
You have help.
ALMA:
Where?
MAHLER:
In the architect.
ALMA:
I only want you!
MAHLER (without emotion) You slept with him on the night of my
Eighth, in Munich.
You slept with him again on
your way to join me in Paris for our trip to
America, when I was dying.
ALMA:
You knew!
MAHLER:
ALMA:
You think I'm selfish and stupid.
MAHLER:
First you'll want his child.
Then you'll want to
marry him.
ALMA:
MAHLER:
He'll be away many months, fighting in the war.
It'll last four years.
ALMA:
Four years!
That's impossible!
How can people
fight about anything for four years? Will we all
die?
MAHLER:
Your husband won't.
But by the time the war ends
you won't much care whether he's dead or limbless.
In all you'll live with him for a fortnight.


ALMA:
Then I shan't marry him.
Help me resist!
MAHLER:
You see, our architect has both feet on the ground,
poor man.
And he's a German aristocrat, which adds
to his appeal.
Oh, by the way, an interim matter--
-your stepfather will be inviting a young painter to
dinner.
Tonight.
Sit for him.
Take him to the
piano after dinner and sing something that mixes
death and love.
He flinches at nothing.
Thanatos and Eros are the twin poles of his life.
And he'll give you your body back, so it's no mean
bargain.
ALMA:
That's happened already.
MAHLER:
Has it? I always get my dates wrong.
Then you
followed directions?
ALMA:
I sang the Liebestod.
MAHLER:
The Liebestod!
Then
you followed
directions well!
He closes his eyes and begins
conducting with his fingers, hardly
moving, as if conjuring the music
The music steals over and they
begin singing together from Act 11,
Scene 2 (the quality of the voices
here is less important than the
style).
MAHLER (as TRISTAN)
'Must I awaken?'
ALMA (as ISOLDE)
'I shall not wake!'
MAHLER:
'Must the dawn awaken Tristan?'
ALMA:
'Let the day be given to death!'
MAHLER:
'Can daylight's menaces be met so lightly?'
ALMA:
'If only we could fly from its lies!'
MAHLER:
Then the glimmer of morning would frighten us no
ALMA: :
'If only night were for ever!'


The music fades.
He continues
conducting in the silence.
ALMA (cont. ) Gustl, a little question.
How will the world see
his art?
MAHLER (surfacing gently) Whose?
ALMA:
The painter's.
MAHLER (after a pause) Well, they have to acknowledge the great
somehow---even they.
ALMA:
Great, you say!
MAHLER:
But he'll never have a social position.
It's the
one thing he's dead set against.
At the age of
sixty he'll own no more than the painting under his
arm.
(Gazing at her as she goes through a
complexity of feelings)
It's difficult isn't it?
ALMA:
I feel so isolated Gustl!
(As MAHLER comntinues to
gaze at her---rather ironically)
But it's true---!
MAHLER:
Did I say it wasn't?
ALMA:
I can't get into life.
He isolates me Gustl!
MAHLER:
Which one? Not the architect, for god's sake, with
all his forbears and retainers!
ALMA: :
No---the painter!
MAHLER:
With armies of musicians round me and receptions and
opening nights and hectic rehearsals, contracts,
appointments, with all Vienna watching you you were
isolated my child!
ALMA:
Yes! You isolated me too! Who was I compared to
the great Mahler? I simply got his meals on time!
MAHLER:
And the painter? He's a nobody !
Vienna fails to
watch him, except to scorn him!
He too isolates
you!
ALMA: .
Yes!
MAHLER:
When you've finished with the architect you'll look
for the painter again---mark my wordsl---he's your
body, your life!
ALMA (urgently) Will I find him?


MAHLER:
I hope so! I trust so!
ALMA:
Oh Gustl put a good spell on me---let me get right
inside life and perform this role I feel waiting for
me, if only I knew what it was! Show me who I am!
MAHLER rises and is about to go.
MAHLER:
Do things in their proper order.
Go to your
architect.
ALMA:
But I don't want to Gustl!
He's an ordinary man,
bless him, a wonderful, ordinary man and you know I
can't stand ordinary men!
MAHLER:
They don't exist if you did but know.
ALMA:
Oh Gustl I want art to come true, I ached for your
music to draw me into its life and change
everything, and this young man's paintings are the
same, his hands color me as they do canvasses,
they touch me into life and I wish to be changed, I
don't want the smell of coffee in the morning and
the sound of carriages outside, all the ordinary
MAHLER (with scorn) You mean the miracles! You don't want the
daily miracles!
He begins walking off.
ALMA:
Tell me Gustl! You believe in the painter?
But
are we talking about the same one? I meet a dozen
a week! What's his name? I want to check on his
name!
MAHLER (leaving)
She tries to follow him but he is
gone.
She stands thinking about
the encounter.
She walks slowly left, off into the
kitchen.
We hear her treading
through the smashed
glass and
crockery.
A door closes.
Silence.


The scene is still dim.
The easel
is still there, upright again.
ALMA is pacing up and down in her
outdoor
clothes,
carrying an
umbrella.
She goes and peeps
behind the arch curtains. Then she
resumes her pacing.
At last her
impatience gets the better of her
and she deliberately knocks a box of
paints off the desk.
It makes an
enormous clatter.
KOKOSCHKA suddenly puts an alarmed
head between the curtains.
emerges from the archway with
tussled hair and in pyjamas.
KOKOSCHKA (seeing ALMA)
Alma!
Why didn't you tell me you
were here?
ALMA (with heavy irony)
I didn't wish to disturb the cavalry
officer so early!
KOKOSCHKA (running to her and taking her hands)
You got my
telegram?
ALMA: :
You shouldn't have done it!
He makes no reply and she begins
pummelling his chest with her fists.
ALMA (cont.) ) You shouldn't have done it!
You might be away
for years!
The light grows from the window.
He draws her to the chaisdelongue
where they sit side by side.
leans back and yawns.
KOKOSCHKA:
What's done's done.
ALMA :
You take your revenges in the cruellest manner.
KOKOSCHKA:
I didn't start the war---!


ALMA:
But you're using it!
KOKOSCHKA: - Yes I am!
ALMA:
It's like a comic opera!
I saw your sword and
spurs in there (indicating the bedroom).
And I'm
supposed to cry and worry about you while you're
away and I won't stand for it! Do you think for a
moment that Mahler would have opted to be a
murderer---in whatever cause?
KOKOSCHKA: They wouldn't have had him.
Not with a throat like
that.
(Kissing her hands) I have no intention of
killing anyone.
But I promise to get killed.
ALMA (after gazing at him in silence) You think that's what I
want.
KOKOSCHKA:
That's what you've procured.
ALMA: :
How?
KOKOSCHKA: Do you think I missed the meaning of what you did to
my child?
You think the murder of the father
wasn't also signified? It was emblazened across the
sky---LET HIM DIE TOO!
ALMA (close to tears)
The doctor said I must do it---I was worn
out with grief, with ten years of serving Mahler!
KOKOSCHKA:
I'm going to the Russian front purely as a
sacrifice---partly to show you what sacrifice means.
I shall be thinking of you always---in danger,
death---whatever it is.
ALMA:
I can't bear all this rhetoric!
From you---an
artist!
KOKOSCHKA (half-lying in the chaiselongue) I must rouse myself.
My horse is champing at the turf---or is it the bit?
(Rising)
I don't believe in your sorrow Mrs
Mahler!
ALMA:
If I ask you to take me with you will you believe
KOKOSCHKA:
To the front?
It's a novel idea.
And officers'
wives are sometimes allowed!
(Throwing himself
down in front of her)
Would you marry me? We
could do it tomorrow---at the regimental hall!
Alma!


ALMA:
Marry a corpse? a murderer? I want the artist!
KOKOSCHKA:
You damned impostor!
There's somebody else isn't
there?
ALMA (furious)
I won't let you say that!
KOKOSCHKA walks away calmly.
mounts the steps of the archway.
KOKOSCHKA (calmly)
Leave me alone Alma.
ALMA:
How dare you say there's somebody else!
KOKOSCHKA (whirling round) Marry me then! MARRY ME!
She is silent.
He continues to walk away.
She
jumps up and rushes after him.
ALMA (flinging her arms round him) I won't let you go!
We can
be soldiers together---!
They laugh together and collapse on
to the bed.
ALMA (cont.) Show me how you wear your sword!
The sound of a passing regimental
band comes through the window. He
stops.
KOKOSCHKA:
I must dress.
ALMA (clinging to him)
He walks behind the bed with her
hanging on to him.
They disappear.
The sound of the band dies away.
There is dead silence.
This is prolonged.
We hear horses' hoofs and the rumble
of a cart from the street below,
then the sound of a car.
And again
there is silence.
The light grows.


KOKOSCHKA shuffles on from the left
bearing a tray of coffee things.
He has a dressing gown over his
pyjamas.
He stops,
staring at the open
curtains of the archway and the
bedroom area beyond.
KOKOSCHKA:
Good god---(setting the tray on the desk) aren't you
up yet?
Very welll---(striding across the scene)
no coffee! I was very clear about wanting an early
sitting!
He drags THE DOLL out from under the
bedclothes by the arm.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Look at you! Limp as a rag doll!
He sits her against the frame of the
arch with her legs down the steps.
He walks back to study this.
then goes out left and returns with
his ladder.
He climbs the ladder
and begins setting the portrait-
spot on THE DOLL as he did on ALMA
in the former portrait-scene.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. as he descends the ladder)
Let's try
something burlesque.
A straight vaudeville act!
How about that?
He goes across to THE DOLL and,
raising her, stands at her side
under the spot, holding her as a
ventriloquist holds a dummy, his
left hand at the back of the head,
in order to move it, his right under
her bent legs.
Gazing into the spotlight as if
facing an audience he adopts a
quizzical expression, again in the
manner of a ventriloquist, and
begins firing questions at her.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) )
Well are you having a good time these days
Almschili?
ALMA's voice answers from behind the
scene, restricted in the manner of a
dummy's, while KOKOSCHKA works THE


DOLL's head and makes those barely
perceptible but still perceptible
movements of mouth and throat which
a ventriloquist makes while throwing
his voice.
ALMA (off)
As good as anybody could expect with a second world
war coming up!
KOKOSCHKA: You say there's going to be a second world war
(amused eyes at the audience)?
ALMA (off) As true as I'm sitting on your arm old pal!
KOKOSCHKA: And what makes you so sure we're going to have a
second world war so soon after the first one?
ALMA (off)
Because my husband says so and he's no dummy!
(Sotto voce)
Not like some sons of bitches I'm
acquainted with!
KOKOSCHKA:
Well Almschili you've certainly been picking up some
American expressions!
ALMA (off)
Seeing I'm living in LA that figures!
KOKOSCHKA: So you're living in LA are you Almschili?
ALMA (off)
I sure am!
KOKOSCHKA: And is life treating you well in LA Almschili?
ALMA (off)
I hate to make you sick but yes!
KOKOSCHKA: And have you married again Almschili?
ALMA (off) I hate to make you even sicker but yes I have.
KOKOSCHKA:
And how's life been with the architect?
ALMA (off) I divorced him nearly eighteen years back!
KOKOSCHKA: You did?
ALMA (off)
Man, are you looking sick!
I'm talking about my
third husband, goonhead!
KOKOSCHKA:
Your third husband?
And who was the lucky man
this time Almschili?
ALMA (off) A poet!


KOKOSCHKA: A poet?
ALMA (off)
That's what I said!
KOKOSCHKA (a sickly wink at the audience)
And what would you
be doing with a poet Almschili?---they're usually
as poor as church mice!
ALMA (off)
This one isn't---wise guy!
KOKOSCHKA: Oh he inherited a fortune?
ALMA (off) He made it.
With a little guidance from me.
KOKOSCHKA (amused glitter again)
And how did he make it
Almschili?
ALMA (off) He wrote a novel---this is going to make you so
sick!
KOKOSCHKA:
Could we have the name of the novel Almschili?
ALMA (off)
The Song of Bernadette two-timer!
KOKOSCHKA: The Song of Bernadette! Yes, I think I've heard of
that!
ALMA (off)
You bet you've heard of it! It made millions,
which is why we're in Hollywood!
KOKOSCHKA: So you're in Hollywood are you Almschili?
And
what are you doing there?
ALMA (off)
Making more millions you slouch!
KOKOSCHKA: And you're still going strong with your new husband?
ALMA (off)
Stronger than ever greencheeks!
KOKOSCHKA:
No sign of divorce on the horizon? No arguments--
anguish---flirtations?
ALMA (off)
Flirtations galore!
KOKOSCHKA (cheese on his face) And what about---what about the
old Ko-ko-ko-ko-ko?
ALMA (off) I feel ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-kompletely ko-ko-ko-ko-ko-
kold towards him!
KOKOSCHKA (screaming with rage and throwing THE DOLL to the
floor) It isn't true!
It isn't true!


Sobbing he flings THE DOLL into the
air.
It falls onto its head, so
that its feet are splayed out,
upwards, across the arch-steps.
There is something about this pose
that interests him and he steps
back to appraise it.
It seems to satisfy him and he goes
to the easel and begins working,
which makes him calmer.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) I shouldn't allow your devilries to anger me.
As always, I suppose the reason is you want some
amusement?
(Laying down his brush with a sigh)
Very well then. What about the dress rehearsal of
The Land of Smiles?
Yes?
He goes to THE DOLL and takes it up
again.
Supporting it round the
waist he escorts it up the steps.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) ) Ever the socialite!
Once through the arch, he draws the
curtains.
The scene is empty.
KOKOSCHKA (cont., off) No, not that lace thing dammit!
The
lilac!
The portrait-spotlight fades and the
scene dims considerably.
We hear
a snatch of the Hanna-Danilo waltz
again.
In the distance there is anti-
aircraft gunfire.
There are slight
flashes in the sky beyond the
window, and faint searchlights.
Then we hear an air-raid siren.
is London in 1942.
This drowns out
the music.
The gunfire becomes
louder, and we hear the hum of
bombers.
In the darkness ALMA enters from the
right.
She is dressed for outdoors
in the style of WW2.
As we shall
see later, her colours are lilac.
She is leaning on a stick and


carries a large handbag of American
Indian weave.
She is an old
lady.
She sits down on the
chaiselongue with an exhausted sigh.
In the dimness we see a shaky
flashlight coming from the left.
It is KOKOSHKA, older by at least
thirty years but as nimble as ever.
He also is dressed in the style of
the Forties, with a cap now.
He shines his torch on the easel.
He begins clearing up the paints
that ALMA knocked down in a previous
scene.
Hearing a movement, he searches
round the room with his flashlight
until he finds ALMA.
KOKOSCHKA (mildly)
Who are you?
ALMA:
You don't recognise me?
KOKOSCHKA (peering at her, his torch still trained on her)
Have
you been bombed out? Are you from the Dorchester?
(Approaching her with the flashlight still trained
on her)
My wife and I can put you up.
It's
dangerous here.
He stands close to her.
KOKOSCHKA: How did you get in? By the roof?
ALMA: :
Not even my voice do you recognise!
KOKOSCHKA (recognising her at last) Good god!
What made you
come here?
ALMA: :
They told me this was where you lived.
KOKOSCHKA:
Wrong. I only paint here.
But what are you doing
in London for god's sake? You're not the type to
risk your life!
ALMA:
A quick, secret visit.
KOKOSCHKA:
To see me? That's impossible!
ALMA:
You know, at my age, one may as well be an enigma-
it's a way of creating interest.


KOKOSCHKA (going to the window)
I'll fix the blackout.
ALMA:
And when there's light I'll ask you not to look too
closely.
KOKOSCHKA: Are you so hideous?
ALMA:
Age is.
It could give you a shock to think that-- -
KOKOSCHKA:
I see inside.
ALMA:
Oh don't do that---it's even worse!
(As KOKOSCHKA
works at the curtains)
What were you doing
grovelling about on the floor?
KOKOSCHKA:
Picking my paints up.
It happens all the time.
Last week the windows blew in.
We'll give you some
dinner by the way. My wife loves legends.
Any
news of Vienna?
ALMA:
None.
I close my ears to it.
KOKOSCHKA: Karl Kraus always said the Viennese would never take
to Nazism, I told him they'd take
to it like
leaches.
The blackout has been fixed and he
switches the lights on.
She lowers
her face.
KOKOSCHKA (sitting at his easel)
Weren't you a Nazi too, under
the influence of that priest you fell in love with?
ALMA:
He's in a concentration camp.
Also I was more of a
fascist.
I had long idealist discussions with
Mussolini's mistress.
KOKOSCHKA:
While your husband dreamt about world bolshevism.
ALMA:
That's right.
KOKOSCHKA: A darling man, though.
ALMA:
Who---Mussolini?
KOKOSCHKA:
No, your husband.
She makes no reply.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.)
You don't mean to say you've left him as


well!
ALMA:
I happen to love him.
That's another thing one is
obliged to do at my age.
KOKOSCHKA:
And California?
ALMA:
I've applied for citizenship.
KOKOSCHKA:
Good lord!
ALMA:
Why good lord?
KOKOSCHKA:
Surely they require more than two words of English?
ALMA:
Apparently not.
KOKOSCHKA (nodding to himself)
I understand your linguistic
difficulties.
It's hard to be scandalous in a
foreign language.
A bomb falls in the distance and
shakes the building.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
All my life's been war.
I was really
fighting for you on that dear horse of mine.
While
you were screwing Gropius.
ALMA:
While my young self was screwing him.
KOKOSCHKA: Oh do get off your age.
They sit in silence.
There is
sporadic gunfire.
KOKOSCHKA (cont.) ) Now we have the holy trinity of Churchill,
Roosevelt and Stalin.
Would you tell me how a good
world could grow out of that trio?
Roosevelt and
Churchill need an interpreter between them even more
than they do with Stalin.
ALMA:
They think they're fighting the devil.
KOKOSCHKA:
You can't beat the devil.
I'm a catholic, not a
Christian, so I know about the devil.
ALMA:
It figures.
You used to be one.
She is rummaging in her bag.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. watching her)
Shall I get you something to
drink?


ALMA:
I've brought my own.
She pulls a bottle of Benedictine
and a glass out of the bag and sets
them on the coffee table.
KOKOSCHKA:
How can you bear that sickly stuff?
ALMA (pouring herself a glass) I think it must be the colour.
She drinks with satisfaction.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Talking of Benedictine, there's a Benedictine
monk called Macnab who lives round the corner.
goes wherever a bomb falls and he comforts the
people and always has a kindly peaceful smile.
These Londoners adore him.
I learned the other day
he's dying of cancer of the tongue.
So he can't
eat---starving to death.
She drinks again.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. ) Thanks for sending the food parcel to my
brother by the way.
ALMA:
Is he alright?
KOKOSCHKA:
He's not in Hitler's army, anyway.
(With a sudden
sharp look at her)
Do they haunt you?
your
dead?
ALMA (shaking her head mildly) Death's highly contagious, so I
keep off the subject.
(Drinking) I never went to
their funerals, you know---not to Mahler's or any
of the children's.
KOKOSCHKA:
You lost two?
ALMA:
Three.
KOKOSCHKA:
When we met by accident in Venice in 1926 I told
myself your figure had gone and that helped me a
lot.
ALMA:
Everybody in Hollywood's asking why don't you come
to the States instead of this doomed country?
They'll be finished even if they win.
KOKOSCHKA:
If the Germans go down or the English---what's the
difference?
I could easily have gone to New York
and got rich.
But I came here where nobody's heard


of me.
ALMA:
But Koko these people exhibited some of your finest
oils in 1928 and they didn't sell a single one-
you told me so yourself!
KOKOSCHKA:
I came here with half a painting under my arm and
ten pounds sterling in my pocket and above all my
beloved wife.
Socrates said 'integrity of mind is
all that counts'.
I haven't turned my back on the
Germans either.
I did well in Germany.
They were
the first to recognise me.
They were starved and
degraded and humiliated after the first war more
than any people should be, and the inevitable result
was that goose-stepping clown---a Viennese one at
that!
ALMA is watching KOKOSCHKA with
interest.
ALMA:
I remember your mother threatened to kill me if I
didn't give you up-- --she got hold of a revolver---do
you remember how frightened I was?
KOKOSCHKA:
I think she was the more frightened.
ALMA:
Rubbish.
She thought I was corrupting you.
KOKOSCHKA:
So you were.
They laugh together.
KOKOSCHA:
Do you know I think we shall live to see the
collapse of human personality?
People as well as
art are going to become abstract.
ALMA:
How do you keep your youthful look? When we met in
Venice that time you looked like a boy, and you were
forty.
I thought who's he sweating out his vices
onto now?
KOKOSCHKA: Alma---do you remember the sound of horses' hooves
on the cobbles---and footsteps in courtyards---and
snatches of conversation, how they echoed between
windows if you were standing below, so leisurely
and light, melting into the air, and the wells with
their ropes and buckets and the rolling swaying
carriages, the way the drinking water used to come
to the house in great barrels on carts drawn by huge
Pinzgauers, and the muslin across the window against
insects, the horsedung you could smell from inside
the cafes?


ALMA:
We were happy in Semmering.
So much harmony.
you remember the fresco you did over the fireplace?
But you horrified us with your behavior over
Gustav's death mask.
The moment it came in the
house you were the devil incarnate.
You said
Gustav was 'foreign' to me and all that silliness.
KOKOSCHKA:
Do you expect good sense from a lover?
ALMA:
I hope you learned something.
KOKOSCHKA:
I did.
ALMA :
What?
KOKOSCHKA:
That a modern woman won't fight for the man of her
life if the going gets hard.
The all-clear siren sounds.
KOKOSCHKA (cont. )
I'll get you some tea.
You drink it?
ALMA :
I think I did once.
KOKOSCHKA (going left to the kitchen)
My wife's expecting me
for dinner.
I'll take you along in a few minutes.
(Stopping) He won't live long.
ALMA:
Who?
KOKOSCHKA (leaving)
Your husband.
She looks down, about to burst into
tears.
ALMA:
He's very sick.
KOKOSCHKA (off)
Weak as Mahler was! ! Do you notice a theme?
ALMA (handkerchief to eyes, hardly audible)
Oh do be quiet!
We hear KOKOSCHKA moving about in
the kitchen,
getting cups and
saucers, putting the kettle on etc.
ALMA looks round her, drinks.
ALMA (cont. )
You never went in for studios did you Ko-ko?
None of that rubbish about the northern light and a
room upstairs to fornicate in.


KOKOSCHKA (off)
I call it the library.
She gets up and walks a little,
using her stick.
She gazes out of
the window.
ALMA:
You're right, people are ashamed to paint the human
figure nowadays.
(Turning towards the kitchen to
address him)
You used to make love like you paint
(with a satisfied little laugh)---such close
attention to the human figure!
(To herself, in a
disgruntled manner)
Not that any of them were good
lovers.
KOKOSCHKA (off)
Do you like it weak or strong?
She doesn't answer at once, her mind
concentrated on something else.
ALMA (surfacing)
I'm used to American coffee now, so rather
weak!
KOKOSCHKA (off)
This is tea!
ALMA:
KOKOSCHKA (off) You aren't getting gaga already are you?
She makes no reply, again thinking
of other things.
ALMA:
I burned all the letters I ever wrote---to Gropius,
Mahler, you, Werfel.
KOKOSCHKA (off) You did?
ALMA:
Far too incriminating for a woman!
I wasn't
prepared either to expose myself or pass on my
secrets, if you see what I mean.
KOKOSCHKA (off, laughing, moving about)
You sound just like a
dowager!
ALMA:
Did you know I went to Berlin while I was still
married to the second one---looked for you
everywhere and couldn't find you? Yet you were
there.
Do you remember how you used to sign
yourself 'Alma Oskar Kokoschka' when you wrote to
me? (Chuckling)
What a fool!
She walks about restlessly.


ALMA (cont. ) People say I have diabetes.
But I always remind
them that it's a Jewish disease so it's out of the
question.
(Holding up her glass)
I wonder if
it's the name that attracts me? Perhaps I should
have married a monk.
That priest you mentioned
didn't turn out very well.
He left the priesthood
and started a family---after telling me I was the
first and last woman of his life.
I seem to have
started a taste in him, don't I?
She sits again, sighs and closes her
eyes.
ALMA (cont.) )
Do you remember that telegram you sent me saying
we would always be together in that picture of
yours?
A little uncomfortable, I thought
(chuckling to herself)!
MAHLER puts his head between the
arch-curtains, behind her.
MAHLER (quietly, a little apologetically)
Alma.
ALMA looks round and gazes at him
for some time.
ALMA (also quietly) Gustl, it's amazing-- -can you believe it?
I've just been talking to the Prince Rudolph--you
remember Prince Rudolph?---and he wants a child by
MAHLER (still largely behind the curtains)
And what did you
say?
ALMA:
I said that's asking a lot at the age of eighty-five
isn't it?
MAHLER (walking softly down the steps)
I don't agree. Not at
all.
ALMA rises to greet him.
She is
trembling violently.
ALMA (almost in tears) Gustav!
MAHLER (taking her hand gently)
Courage.
She quietens with his touch.
They
both look out right, waiting, she
with great anguish.
She gasps and tries to withdraw as a


trolley slides from the right with
THE DOLL on it, its head appearing
first.
He holds ALMA firmly.
They gaze down at THE DOLL, standing
close together.
MAHLER (cont.) )
It was diabetes by the way.
The sound of flames licking into the
air
comes
from
the right,
simultaneously with a burst of
bright red and yellow light.
It is
a roaring furnace and ALMA, but not
MAHLER, is inclined to turn away
from the brightness.
MAHLER (cont., gazing at THE DOLL) Do you remember that photo
when she was a child---with her mother and sister-
--she had to bend over sideways and peer into the
lens and spoil the picture didn't she?
Had to
investigate everything!
Perhaps these will help
her now.
He takes off his glasses and puts
them on THE DOLL's face.
The
trolley slides noiselessly off right
into the flames.
The flames die.
Silence.
MAHLER (cont.) Shall we go?
ALMA:
He leads her to the steps. At the
foot of the steps she stops.
ALMA (cont.) ) Gustav---where's Oskar Kokoschka?
MAHLER (quietly, with a smile, as he leads her up the steps)
Alma Mahler-Kokoschka would have sounded quite
dramatic wouldn't it? But---(with a shrug)!
He stops again.
MAHLER (cont.) ) And what a funnt coincidence that Mahler should
mean painter.
He pulls the arch-curtains briskly


aside.
The bed has gone.
Instead there is
banner overhead,
colorfully
designed, with the words LIBERTE
EGALITE FRATRICIDE in bold block
capitals across it, with bright red
flames round it in the KOKOSCHKA
manner.
She stops when she sees it.
ALMA:
What's that?
MAHLER:
It's Koko's description of modern society.
ALMA:
When will he die?
MAHLER:
He'll be ninety-six.
It's his smoking you
see. Otherwise he'd live his full span.
They chuckle together and, holding
each other close, pass slowly on
under the banner.
The Hanna-Danilo
waltz comes up.
The lights dim and the banner is the
last piece of scenery to be
illuminated: LIBERTE, EGALITE,
FRATRICIDE.