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5b 1910 CLAIR DE LUNE
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June 4th, 1910. ALMA and young WALTER GROPIUS in Spa Tobelbad.
NURSE You
have to stop drinking, Madame. Really. - Please Give up the
bottle. Try to return to yourself, to what you were before
your miserable marriage--
ALMA What
was I? I can't remember anymore…
NURSE A young
person with the whole world at your feet. You had the most
wonderful gift a person can have: you had talent--
ALMA I don't
know what's left of it. My head is empty. My heart is mute.
My feelings are dead.
NURSE Leave
that life behind you--
ALMA How
can I? I'm keeping house, I'm supporting Gustav, I have a
young daughter…
NURSE Give
it all up. Take your forgotten songs with you, and go back
to composing.
ALMA You
think I can still do it?
NURSE I'm
sure you can. But this time don't let anyone distract you
from your path.
Alma and the nurse meet with Walter Gropius and his nurse,
coming from the scene “The Eurydice Syndrome”.
NURSE Madam,
may I introduce you to Mr Walter Gropius, an architect from
Berlin and a guest in our sanatorium. - Mrs Alma Mahler, wife
of the Director of the Vienna Court Opera House, Gustav Mahler.
Alma (the nurse) and Reserl (Hulda) take a step back and
leave for “On the road to Palestine”.
GROPIUS If
I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a kiss.
ALMA Good
pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this,
For saints have hands that pilgrim's hands do touch
And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.
GROPIUS Have
not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
ALMA Ay,
pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
GROPIUS O,
then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
ALMA Saints
do not move, though grant for prayer's sake.
GROPIUS Then
move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.
They kiss.
ALMA Then
have my lips the sin that they have took.
GROPIUS Sin
from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
They kiss again.
ALMA You
kiss by the book. - If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
GROPIUS There's
beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
ALMA I'll
set a bourn how far to be beloved.
GROPIUS Then
must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
They are interrupted by Dr. Fraenkel.
DR. FRAENKEL Mister
Gropius?! - - Mister Gropius?!!!
GROPIUS Yes,
doctor?
DR. FRAENKEL Mister
Gropius, it's ten past five! You should have been at your
underwater treatment ages ago!
GROPIUS Thank
you, doctor! Thank you very much indeed!
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