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Closet Drama

SETTING: A psychiatrist's office in post-war Vienna

CHARACTERS:
Stephen, an American Jew, in his twenties, of Viennese parentage
Dr. Abisch, a Viennese Jewish psychiatrist

ABISCH: It's a legacy of my fathers.

STEPHEN: So everything is Freudian, is that it?

ABISCH: Why have you come here to see me?

STEPHEN: I've heard you've even treated ex-Nazis.

ABISCH: Are you trying to locate war criminals?

STEPHEN: That's my business, Doctor.

ABISCH: Well, I can tell you I've seen a lot in my life. I was once a visitor at Sobibor.

STEPHEN: I'm sorry I have to put this to you… I'm trying to relocate my past… for my own father and his family lived here for centuries. They were one of Austria's first Jewish families.

ABISCH: First or last, what does it matter, anymore. We have to preserve the living. That's our legacy as Jews.

STEPHEN: I'm sorry that I walked in here off the street without an appointment, and I'm acting choleric and abrasive.

ABISCH: You are worked up to a sweat.

STEPHEN: But why do we victimize each other, idolize others, even our enemies? May I have a drink of water?

ABISCH: Our resemblance to the Nazis is that most of them had a fear they might be Jewish by their name, their psychical or physical characteristics, they may have been taken for a Jew either at school or work and it wounded their pride, so they became even more determined to get rid of the Jewish side everywhere. In their hearts they hated the idea of God choosing one people. They wanted to be chosen and they were, for death in the world, while we choose life for the world. Think of it – the worst Nazis had either a name or a facial expression or something in them that they feared belonged to the Jewish people. Hitler tried to convince them that they were a master race, but they turned out to be disobedient dregs and obedient dogs while having a genuine devotion, or feigning, for their master. They had lost their minds and integrity because Hitler convinced them that conscience was only a Jewish invention.

STEPHEN: This is very apropos to your master.

ABISCH: Freud had a price on his head because the Nazis feared him. Fascists fear anyone different than themselves. Anyone who lives in fear of an arch enemy eventually is defeated by him, even if it is the enemy within.

STEPHEN: I'm living without an identity because my parents were murdered; I do not have anyone, no grandparents, brother or sister.

ABISCH: Are you married?

STEPHEN: I get the feeling I've been so obsessed with reading about the Holocaust I've lost interest in any forms of sexuality. It's that way with religion, even at times with my relatives and Israel.

ABISCH: Israel is a woman throughout the Bible.

STEPHEN: Don't put me in a "Moses was an Egyptian" scenario.

ABISCH: That's not my point, but I've treated many Messianic complex people too that were going to save our people or the world.

STEPHEN: I'm suffering. I just came back from visiting the camps. Maybe I should be put in a sanitarium for a rest.

ABISCH: So it would be the crematorium so you could assuage your guilt by being alive. Who are you?

STEPHEN: Just a poet.

ABISCH: Just a poet?

STEPHEN: But when I think of the Nazis reading Rilke or Goethe, or listening to Mozart of Schubert, I question the value of art.

ABISCH: We are the people of the Book. The Word has preserved us in a strange mystery, my Christian patients try to tell me.

STEPHEN: I have no patience with Christians.

ABISCH: I've had several in therapy.

STEPHEN: I didn't think there were any Christians in Austria except those naturally and culturally.

ABISCH: Most Austrians don't accept the fact that most of them welcomed the fascists with open arms, as it were. They pretend they were victims and a few Germans say Hitler was an Austrian, remember.

STEPHEN: I've felt guilty I was Jewish, perhaps having to live with it after the tremendous destruction of my people.

ABISCH: I sometimes feel I should be a doctor in Israel treating only Holocaust survivors and their families rather than my rather cosmopolitan clientele.

STEPHEN: I need help, doctor. I've been very depressed.

(Doctor Abisch takes out a map of all the concentration camps and shows Stephen.)

ABISCH: Visiting so many concentration camps would make anyone depressed, especially you.

STEPHEN: I was born in one of those camps.

ABISCH: You can think of yourself as a survivor.

STEPHEN: So what? But why am I here and why am I facing you across the table? Now look at all your books on civilization or they could be wiped out today.

ABISCH: So should we give them up and go to the Wall in Jerusalem and wait for the Messiah? That's what a New York rabbi's son told me just the other morning. Yet he comes here, too. I've treated priests, Catholics and reformist Christians as well and they've treated me to their lives. Isn't that what it's all about?

STEPHEN: I don't know. If I had the answer, I would not be seeing you.

ABISCH: I wonder sometimes if we really see each other. Or see through each other.

STEPHEN: No, we are all blind. I think at least the world was blind to us and we were blind to our enemies.

ABISCH: Would you like medication?

STEPHEN: No. It makes me feel like a defeated person. Look at how the Stalinists have used psychiatry also for political oppression, dispensing mind-altering substances to destroy believers in freedom or God.

ABISCH: Some time ago I began to think Jesus was a Jew and State Christianity only a terrible distortion, and Marx a Messianic soul, and State Marxism a terrible dictatorship, and Freud a healer and prophet, and State psychiatry a terrible abomination. That's why Reich had to leave Germany, because he saw the Messiah in all of us.

STEPHEN: Isn't there any way out of our closet drama of individual suffering?

ABISCH: Create, my poet – dream of better days, work for it, struggle against oppression and self-hatred. And believe in the Messiah in your neighbor.

STEPHEN: I felt like ending my life when I came in here.

ABISCH: Yes. But there is always healing as we have breath.

STEPHEN: I'm only going through the motions of living.

ABISCH: Where will you go?

STEPHEN: European culture intrigues me. America is still a land of dreams. Jerusalem is still eternal, but perhaps I will sit on a bench and write out my thoughts.

ABISCH: Don't let the enemy get you, my friend, as he may get me in old age today. After seeing you, it is very painful to see another.

(Stephen leaves the office. Curtain. Gunshots are heard.)

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