The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 1: Four Plays

RESORT 76

Shimon Wincelberg zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedc RESORT 76 based on the novella A CAT IN THE GHETTO by Rachmil Bryks CAST OF CHARACTERS In Order of Appearance YABLONKA, 30-60 years old, a mountebank. KRAUSE, 40—50 years old, an outsider. SCHNUR, 40-60 years old, a slaughterer. BERYL, 13—15 years old, his pupil. BLAUSTAIN, 35-45 years old, an engineer. ESTHER, 30 years old, his pregnant wife. HAUPTMANN, 60 years old, a retired officer. HUPERT, 45 years old, a charlatan. MADAME HERSHKOVITCH, 40 years old, a charwoman. ANYA, 20—30 years old, Blaustain's sister. All characters are fictitious or dead. Any similarity to actual events is regretted. SETTING The action takes place in and around the living quarters of "Resort 76," a small factory for the salvage of textile wastes. The locale is one of the the Rehabilitation Zones1 of an occupied country in eastern Europe. The time is during the Second World War. The season is winter. Act 1 Sunday afternoon Act 2 Sunday evening Act 3 Monday morning 1. Rehabilitation Zones: a sardonic euphemism for territory which the Nazis captured and ruthlessly controlled. The area referred to in the play is the city Lodz in central Poland. 41 RESORT 76 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW ACTl zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQ Fade up on the damaged horizon of an industrial city. Drooping electric wires, gap-toothed housetops and factory chimneys, a sullen , sunless sky. Sounds: Some sour, derisive strains on a harmonica. Windborne snatches of more distant noises, blending, overlapping: the dying wail of an air-raid siren . . . the labored chug of a railroad engine . . . a jaunty old Prussian marching song . . . vibrations of a heavy truck . . . slivers of wind knifing through the bones. In contrast , the harmonica, close by, sounds morbidly cheerful. Fade up on a snow-encrusted brick wall chipped and scarred by bullets and shell fragments. A tall, baroque iron gate decorated by a clumsy sign: RESORT 76 Salvage of Textile Wastes No Trespassing Behind the wall, the upper story of a small, cracked, fire-smudged factory building. The wall is barnacled with announcements and decrees of the Military Government in curt, gothic black on white, forbidding all the usual things. The only poster legible to us reads: WORK IS FREEDOM As the light firms into the foggy grayness of a winter afternoon, enter YABLONKA, a small, bent, hook-nosed man with a wild, wiry shock of red hair and the large, staring, shrewd, hooded eyes and nutcracker jaws of a Punch puppet. He is dressed somewhat less zyxwvutsr 43 44 THEATRE OF THE HOLOCAUST zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX adequately than a scarecrow, an effect enhanced by the amounts of straw and newspaper he has stuffed in his clothing. Unaccountably, his clothes, his hair, his very skin are stained with garish patches of dye. He walks on his wooden-soled shoes like a man furtively kicking dirt into his open grave. He wears a battered tin mess kit slung around his waist by a string. His skin, where the dye-stains permit, is transparent, as though it enclosed little more than bones and water. He stops, shivering, runny-nosed, to admire one of the newer posters. Another gust of wind, YABLONKA shivers, pockets the harmonica . He glances shyly, furtively about him. Then, with one swift pickpocket's movement, he rips off a corner of a poster and stuffs it greedily under his vest for warmth. Another guilty glance over his shoulder. Then he tears off a smaller piece and explosively empties his nose into it. Seeing no one about, he gets down on all fours searching keenly amidst the holes and rubble on the ground. YABLONKA: Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty . . . puss, puss, puss . . . (But now, with a melodramatic gesture of alarm, he sees someone approaching. At once he straightens up and executes a little pantomime of excruciating casualness, as he resumes blowing into his harmonica. KRAUSE, the man who enters, is upright, stocky, blond, pinkcheeked , middle-aged, dressed in a Tyrolean-type hat and leather coat. Also a shirt, tie, socks, leather shoes with laces, and no doubt even underwear. He is carrying a small suitcase, an umbrella and a thermos flask. He is unbearably tired and depressed, but too proud to show it.) KRAUSE: Here, you . . . old fellow? (YABLONKA, as though just made aware of him, turns and executes a servile little bow.) KRAUSE: How do I get to this address? (He hands YABLONKA an official-looking document.) YABLONKA: "Resort 76" . . . Hmmmm . . . (He...