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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!