Nothing to be Done

The anonymous 'She' of A Woman in Berlin' wrote:

"I nibbled on some cake the widow baked using a sinful amount of wood, and took account of my life. Here is the balance.

On the one hand things are looking pretty good for me. I'm healthy and refreshed. Nothing has harmed me physically. I am extremely well armed for life, as if I had webbed feet for the mud, as if my fibre were especially supple and strong." (This after 7 weeks of being serially raped while living on air in a wreck of a half-bombed building.) "I'm well equipped for the world. I'm not delicate -- my grandmother hauled manure. On the other hand , there are multiple minuses. I don't know what in the world I should do. No one really needs me. I'm simply floating, waiting, with neither goal nor task in sight. I can't help thinking of a debate I once had with a very smart Swiss woman, in which I countered every scheme for improving the world by insisting 'that the sum total of tears always stays the same' -- i.e. that in every nation of the world, no matter what flag or system of government, no matter which gods are worshipped or what the average income is, the sum total of tears, pain and fear the every person must pay for his existence is a constant. And so the balance is maintained: well-fed nations wallow in neurosis and excesses, whil people plagued with suffering, as we are now, may rely on numbness and apathy to help see them through -- if not for that I'd be weeping morning, noon and night. But I'm not crying and neither is anyone else, and the fact that we aren't is all a part of a natural law. Of course, if you believe that the earthly sum of tears is fixed and immutable, then you're not very well cut out to improve the world or to act on any grand scale."


This could be a synopsis of Beckett's 'en attendant godot'. For example:

POZZO:

Make haste, before he stops. (Estragon approaches Lucky and makes to wipe his eyes. Lucky kicks him violently in the shins. Estragon drops the handkerchief, recoils, staggers about the stage howling with pain.) Hanky!

Lucky puts down bag and basket, picks up handkerchief and gives it to Pozzo, goes back to his place, picks up bag and basket.

ESTRAGON:

Oh the swine! (He pulls up the leg of his trousers.) He's crippled me!

POZZO:

I told you he didn't like strangers.

VLADIMIR:

(to Estragon). Show me. (Estragon shows his leg. To Pozzo, angrily.) He's bleeding!

POZZO:

It's a good sign.

ESTRAGON:

(on one leg). I'll never walk again!

VLADIMIR:

(tenderly). I'll carry you. (Pause.) If necessary.

POZZO:

He's stopped crying. (To Estragon.) You have replaced him as it were. (Lyrically.) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased.

VLADIMIR:

Try and walk.

Estragon takes a few limping steps, stops before Lucky and spits on him, then goes and sits down on the mound.

POZZO:

Guess who taught me all these beautiful things. (Pause. Pointing to Lucky.) My Lucky!

VLADIMIR:

(looking at the sky.) Will night never come?

POZZO:

But for him all my thoughts, all my feelings, would have been of common things. (Pause. With extraordinary vehemence.) Professional worries! (Calmer.) Beauty, grace, truth of the first water, I knew they were all beyond me. So I took a knook.

This one is dedicated to Lucy.