Stage directions

The imaginary aspect of the dialogue is dependent upon, among other things, the fact that it is between two writers.

The author identifies himself completely with the external emigrant.

The internal emigrant is identical to the opinions and attitudes which have been put forward in this place of internal emigration in words and in print by precisely those people who in this place between 1933 and 1945 put forward these ideas in words and in print. The author took care not to deny them any argument that could be made on their behalf in any valuable manner and not to make any argument on his own behalf that could be denied him. He took care to maintain decorum and evenhandedness. Wherever this is not the case it is those who recognize this whom he means.

(When the curtain rises, the internal and external emigrant enter from opposite sides.)

BOTH, at the same time:

It's impossible to discuss anything with you!

(Both exit. Curtain. When the curtain rises again both the internal and external emigrant are on stage.)

INTERNAL:

Good day.

EXTERNAL:

Good day. How do you do?

INTERNAL:

Appropriate for the situation. And you?

EXTERNAL:

Likewise. Now we have to be clear about just whose situation is meant.

INTERNAL:

Mine, of course. Which by the way is yours, too, is it not? You are a German, aren't you?

EXTERNAL:

No.

INTERNAL:

No? You speak very good German. What are you?

EXTERNAL:

American.

INTERNAL:

Aha. And what did you used to be?

EXTERNAL:

My case is a bit complicated. I was a Czechoslovakian.

INTERNAL:

But you must have become one of those. Don't try to get out of it. You did belong to a nation at first. Which one was it?

EXTERNAL:

Actually I'm an Austrian.

INTERNAL:

That's not a nation.

EXTERNAL:

But it's a concept.

INTERNAL:

I didn't ask you what concept you belong to.

EXTERNAL:

Too bad.

INTERNAL:

Too bad, that you are so stubbornly avoiding the term German. As if it were a disgrace to be a German.

EXTERNAL:

Though it's you who so insistently esteem this term, as if were an honor. Or at least: as if it mattered. As if I had no right to discuss with you. Have we heard this before?

INTERNAL:

On the contrary, you should be hearing my desire to greet you properly as a German.

EXTERNAL:

But my no less worthy desire is to be greeted as a Jew. Am I some how disqualified because of this?

INTERNAL:

Oh, God. Let's not get into that. It's got nothing to do with our topic.

EXTERNAL:

Perhaps it does? Or should we perhaps avoid it without lying about it?

INTERNAL:

No, no. We don't need to argue about the Jewish question. It's already caused us enough unpleasantness already.

EXTERNAL:

Us too. Actually more than enough.

INTERNAL:

Well not you obviously. You're obviously as healthy as can be, warm, well dressed, and superbly nourished. But me-look at me. I'm sick. I'm wearing rags. I'm cold. I'm hungry. Well?

EXTERNAL:

If you want to put off our discussion I could understand why. A hungry belly doesn't talk. It growls.

INTERNAL:

I'm not growling at all. I merely observed the deprivations I am suffering of.

EXTERNAL:

Pardon the question, but: since when?

INTERNAL:

Pardon the answer, but: since my liberation by the allies. Maybe even longer. And anyhow longer than you; you're not even suffering at all.

EXTERNAL:

I'm waiting.

INTERNAL:

For what?

EXTERNAL:

For you to ask me "Since when?" In all the years we haven't seen each other the last two or three have been hard on you. Does that cancel out all those years during which I had to fight for my life harder and more bitterly than you've had to lately? And I at least had the good fortune to be able to fight. With a little less luck--and I mention this knowing that you might not have noticed back then, and that my words today might be boring to you--with a little less luck I might have been among those from whom the gas chambers robbed any chance of resistance. Only by chance am I not dead. And only by chance am I getting along a bit better than you. But only just lately. And only through fate.

INTERNAL:

Thank fate, just as I do. I take joy in every one of you who escaped the horror. Neither do I hold anything against anyone who is getting along better than I. But holding this situation against me--that's taking things too far.

EXTERNAL:

In other words: you can conditionally pardon me for the fact that I'm alive. But for the fact that you killed six million Jews--you don't pardon me for this.

INTERNAL:

A bleak way of putting it, and of attacking me. If you really mean "me," then surely only to the degree that I am part of some collective guilt. But I cannot accept this concept at all. However, let's assume I did do it and now look around. What so you see? A devastated country. Depraved, miserable people. The blackest present and the most hopeless future a people ever had to face. If there is such a thing as collective guilt, hasn't this people done its penance.

EXTERNAL:

Then just tell me which collective guilt the six million Jews were doing penance for.

INTERNAL:

The fact that they were not guilty is the basis of our guilt.

EXTERNAL:

So you do recognize the concept?

INTERNAL:

Recognition only of the fact that six million murdered Jews surpass my conceptual abilities.

EXTERNAL:

Admittedly: mine too.

INTERNAL:

But you nevertheless insist on some concept that should encompass all six million? And you think you found it in some "Collective Guilt of the German People"? I could do nothing worse than to agree with you. Because as soon as one begins talking about moral questions collectively any sort of individual responsibility is erased. And then there is for the individual neither guilt nor atonement.

EXTERNAL:

So a crime has to be enormous to be unpunishable. One who does something incomprehensible can't be comprehended.

INTERNAL:

One perhaps. Even some. But not all.

EXTERNAL:

Doe you consider yourself among those some or among all?

INTERNAL:

I consider myself among those who do not wish to profit from the incomprehensibility of all. I wish to be personally liable for anything of which I am personally guilty.

EXTERNAL:

And what are you personally guilty of?

INTERNAL:

Nothing. Or at least in no way different from you. That Hitler came to power is no more your fault than mine. And that he stayed in power: you and the allies could have done something about that more easily than I.

EXTERNAL:

Your guilt therefore ends exactly at the moment when you begin to repudiate any attempt from outside to spare you from further, greater guilt as condescending interference in your internal affairs.

INTERNAL:

Me? In my internal affairs?

EXTERNAL:

Through your decision to live under the conditions created by Adolf Hitler you adopted them as yours. So your guilt doesn't end here. Rather it only really begins here. And it doesn't begin here because you didn't change these conditions, which you naturally did not approve of, because of course you were not able to do that. Instead you are guilty because of the fact that you chose, strangely, to remain under conditions that you neither approved of nor were able to change.

INTERNAL:

As eyewitness.

EXTERNAL:

Elegant retort. I don't know what to say to that. I did not come here for the pleasure of the trip.

INTERNAL:

And what if I had family members to consider?

EXTERNAL:

That might have been a reason to remain. But not to write.

INTERNAL:

Through my writing I am giving comfort amidst all the hopelessness around to all the depressed people who had to stay.

EXTERNAL:

Instead of making them aware of the hopelessness of situation--knowledge of which might bring comfort--through your departure or at least through your silence.

INTERNAL:

Unfortunately I cannot allow you to doubt that my work has brought comfort.

EXTERNAL:

Then it has not been only the oppressed who have found comfort there, but also the oppressors.

INTERNAL:

That is something I have to accept. I was interested in the oppressed.

EXTERNAL:

Whom you have given the illusion that things weren't so bad, just as the oppressors would have it. Otherwise no one would have let you say a thing.

INTERNAL:

Thanks for the support that you're granting me. In fact, it was much more difficult for me to write than for you. I had to use the most risky tricks and turns to express myself, while you, out there, were able to proclaim away in complete freedom.

EXTERNAL:

At least my words were clear and pure. Your obscurantist scribbling is so dense that it's impossible to know what you meant.

INTERNAL:

So I should have emigrated, externally, just so I could have said anything I pleased?

EXTERNAL:

Well didn't you perhaps emigrate internally only in order not to have to say anything about what didn't please you? And in order to be able to point out this impossibility when it became possible to do so? And if it never became possible to do so then you would never have pointed this out? So no matter what happened nothing would happen to you. You have created a place for yourself the security of which is surpassed only by its dubiousness.

INTERNAL:

My own position was not important to me. Germany was important to me. My homeland was important to me. I felt allegiance. I wanted to take part in Germany's fate, at any cost, as dark as it was.

EXTERNAL:

And on the chance that from this darkness there might arise the glorious brightness which then you would also take part in.

INTERNAL:

That's enough! I did not stay in Germany on the chance that Hitler might win, but on the chance that he might lose. I did not go into inner emigration to strengthen the regime, but to weaken it. Behind the fake obedience that I dispassionately showed I was energetically disobedient in every possible way. I did not act out of opportunism but out of opposition. And I did not wish for Hitler's success but for the success of the opposition. So I ask you: now that it's arrived, should I perhaps act as if I had not wished for it?

EXTERNAL:

And I ask you: are you very sure you were really in the camp of the opposition?

INTERNAL:

Very sure.

EXTERNAL:

Then you must also be very sure that had Hitler won you would have emigrated. Left I mean. Like we did.

INTERNAL:

I don't understand.

EXTERNAL:

You went into inner emigration in hopes for Hitler's defeat and the conscientious applause with which you greeted his actual defeat is the only proof there is that you really wanted his defeat. It follows, then, that if the hopes of Hitler's defeat were dashed you would have drawn the only proper conclusion and exchanged your inner emigration for an external one. I am simply asking if you would really have done this.

INTERNAL:

When?

EXTERNAL:

If Hitler had won the war.

INTERNAL:

Won the war-- What is that supposed to mean? You mean just some part of the war. Or just won it for now. It wouldn't have been more than that. So of course then I would have stayed in inner emigration. Decidedly so.

EXTERNAL:

Just as I said. Nothing could have happened to you.

INTERNAL:

Why are you so keen on something happening to me?

EXTERNAL:

I'm not. But when I think about how damned close it was that I escaped Hitler who lost the war--and how damned tough it would have been to escape him had he won it--and when I see you here who never had to escape from Hitler no matter what his status . . . then I am green with envy.

INTERNAL:

But think--I get the same hateful feeling when I look at you.

EXTERNAL:

Envy? What would you envy me for? For the loss of my homeland? For the dangers of having to flee? For the fears of trying to make it in foreign places? For the poverty of my whole existence?

INTERNAL:

Point for point. Envy for envy. The loss of your homeland, no matter how great it was and how painful has been replaced by your getting American citizenship.

EXTERNAL:

Getting American citizenship, as fine as that is and as much as I realize its value, can not ever replace the loss that I, as an author who writes in German, feel through the loss of my homeland, something which you, as an author who writes in German, know the proper value of.

INTERNAL:

I admit this was a loss you really suffered from through all the years of your emigration-- But it didn't stop you from taking care of your existential needs. Concerning the dangers of fleeing, those came to an end as soon as you got across the border, whereas the dangers for those of us who stayed were always growing. And as for your fears of trying to make a living in a foreign country, those could hardly have been greater than our fears of staying in our homeland. Seems to me that you're completely mistaken. And no wonder. Because you're basing your ideas about inner emigration on complete ignorance.

EXTERNAL:

Not quite as complete as your ideas about my situation. I know well enough about the place and the situation of your emigration, but you know nothing about mine. You never had to cross a border secretly by night and fog--and we were lucky if was really foggy; you never had to fear that the border guards on the other side might send you back--and we were lucky if they weren't in cahoots with the other side; you never had to hid from the police out of fear--and we were lucky if a hiding place wasn't a trap: what do you know about fleeing, you've never been hunted and hounded before fleeing, during fleeing, after fleeing. What do you know about my dangers? You never had to beg in a foreign language for asylum in a foreign country; never had to worry that the decision would be expulsion or that just maybe your deadline would be extended a bit; never had to see it as being saved if you were able to get from one foreign country to another; never had to fight for the chance to stay and the possibility to leave at the same time, never had to guess who might more likely get you, the cops from the place you've fled to or the cops from the place you've escaped from--what do you know, you for whom "moving on" never had literally murderous connotations--what do you know about my fears? And you never had to then expend your last pitiful bit of strength remaining after fleeing for your very survival to try to begin a new life, maybe no longer mere survival, but still a new life in a foreign place with hundreds of difficulties and problems, a life the newness of which was interesting only to the extent that former foundations and assumptions were useless--: what do you know, you for whom no matter what else, whose foundations and assumptions on which you built and led your life remained solid-- -- what do you know about my existential needs?

INTERNAL:

And you? After your successful flight you were no longer spied on by the block warden or watched by the Gestapo; didn't have to avoid the SA and SS every step of the way; didn't have to ask yourself that by saying even the simplest thing your friend or even your brother might turn you in; weren't threatened with prison and concentration camp and all the rest for the littlest thing--what do you know, you who were safe from all this through borders and distance--what do you know about my dangers? When you were trying to stay you mastered all the bureaucratic tricks and when it was time to get away all the allied borders opened wide for you, one after the other, all the way to America; you were not surrounded by enemy territory, not closed in from all sides with no way out, not exposed with less and less protection to the more and more furious bombings from every direction; didn't come staggering up out of the earth night after night to have to look through the ruins to see what of your dearest possessions and whose dear lives had been destroyed this time; didn't have to worry night after night if you might again get to be one of those who got the chance to stagger out at all--what do you know, you who got only the most tasteful reports on all this sitting there in your safe haven--what do you know about my fears? And you got to choose how you wanted to live and work; weren't dependent on the few possibilities that could still be found between the terror of the enemy bombers and the terror of our own regime; didn't have to think about how to get around the demands of the regime without falling into its hands; and you saw that the possibility of a halfway acceptable, halfway humane existence was getting not less probable as the end of the war got closer, but rather more so--what do you know, you who didn't have to wish hardship upon yourself, but instead your own prosperity, by hoping for the war to end--what so you know about my existential needs?

EXTERNAL:

As I see, you use the notion of collectivity which you so firmly rejected with respect to guilt quite broadly in the question of suffering. Of German guilt you know nothing, but of German suffering everything. If I were to try this technique I fear you would come off badly.

INTERNAL:

Why the subjunctive? I did come off badly.

EXTERNAL:

If Hitler had won, you would have come off well.

INTERNAL:

Without helping. Actually against my will.

EXTERNAL:

Who doubts that. You would not have been able to avoid the collective necessity to enjoy the fruits of his successes. In fact you didn't avoid this as long as he was winning. And the among the considerations that led you to decide upon inner emigration surely some thoughts about your personal well-being played a role. Now some might hold this against you--not I. I know exactly what it means to have to do without one's well-being all of a sudden. Up until my flight, as you'll remember, I was getting along as well as you.

INTERNAL:

I remember. And I see that you're doing as well now as you were then.

EXTERNAL:

I cannot deny that. I have most scandalously ignored the preparations made for me by those who forced me to emigrate. I have not completely taken advantage of the opportunity to live out a pitiful existence in exile. I obediently followed the demand that I give up the life I worked for over many years; but the evident obligation to forego any further life in the years to come, that I have craftily rejected. The fact that I might be incurring Hitler's displeasure by so doing, had, I admit, a certain fascination. But that I should also incur your own displeasure at this: that surprises me.

INTERNAL:

You haven't done that at all. But neither have you gained the moral upper hand--certainly not from me, someone who passed up the chance to go live on the sunny west coast of America, who didn't avoid a pitiful existence in the homeland; and who doesn't enjoy the advantage of belonging to a victorious country as you do.

EXTERNAL:

You overestimate my farsightedness. Back then, when I left, I had no idea that America would enter the war in 1941 and win it in 1945. I didn't even know that my path would eventually lead me to America. Mine was a path into nothingness and you simplify things when you postulate America as the normal result. For the majority of my comrades it wasn't.

INTERNAL:

Aren't you the one who's now making it easy on yourself at the expense of those less fortunate?

EXTERNAL:

Well I could make it really easy on myself and speak to you as a prisoner in a French concentration camp or as a slave laborer on the Sarah railway or as someone deported by the English to Australia; or easiest of all, I could speak to you as a corpse. Those were all more common fates than a lucky landing in America.

INTERNAL:

That doesn't alter the fact that you left because you had to. I stayed even though I didn't have to.

EXTERNAL:

Precisely.

INTERNAL:

What do you mean: precisely. I think this fact speaks for me, not against me. For me, not for you. You were never subjected to a moral conflict. The decision whether you should go or not was made for you.

EXTERNAL:

And I'm grateful for it. One might also note that it was a matter of life or death for me.

INTERNAL:

Precisely. It had nothing to do with morality.

EXTERNAL:

But that it was able to become a question of life or death: that is a moral matter? In order that I could save my life only by fleeing had to depend first on bringing about the situation in which staying would have meant my death?

INTERNAL:

I didn't bring about this situation as much as you did and its occurrence was as unwelcome for me as it was for you.

EXTERNAL:

But still you didn't have any trouble getting along within the new situation once it was there; and even, if necessary, welcoming it.

INTERNAL:

If necessary. Only outwardly. But that was meaningless. A formality I had to take care of for the sake of my inner emigration.

EXTERNAL:

If you had been in external emigration then you would have been able to criticize the situation from the outside in, rather than to have to praise it from the inside out.

INTERNAL:

But then I would have only been taking care of the outward formalities of an external emigration and that would have been just as meaningless. No, no. The decision that mattered came much earlier. And because I had decided to stay I had to make sure I was safe. Otherwise it would have made no sense. Otherwise I would not have had to accept the odium you're making this out to be now. And I wouldn't have to defend myself against the self-satisfied righteousness that doesn't want to accept the fact the I was carrying out a more difficult and more important task through my staying than I could ever have done by leaving.

EXTERNAL:

What task if not that of your personal morality.

INTERNAL:

The task of a impersonal responsibility. The task not to let Germany go completely to the dogs who were ruling it; to protect and save what was good about Germany and what should remain so; to maintain continuity until something good would follow the bad.

EXTERNAL:

Strange. In the external immigration we thought that saving the good and preserving continuity would make no concessions and accept no base influences and that for this reason it was external emigration which had to fulfill this task.

INTERNAL:

Only partially. The task of the internal emigration went further. We had to remain clearsighted and unblemished then and there--until the day came when we would be needed again; when we would have to tell the story of what happened; when we might speak freely again and would know what we were saying.

EXTERNAL:

That doesn't sound bad. Certainly better than all the dense, obscurantist scribbling you produced during your inner emigration. And better than your political witnessing under that evil regime.

INTERNAL:

We were forced to do that.

EXTERNAL:

To which you have to admit that you didn't shy from the chance to express yourself in your unfreedom.

INTERNAL:

So that I wouldn't lose the chance to stay.

EXTERNAL:

Wasn't staying the more important task? And wouldn't you have allowed yourself to commit any indecency if it would help you stay.

INTERNAL:

Your using pretty vague words there. The borders of decency that I wasn't allowed to cross were not always so clear and well-marked as the borders of Germany that you crossed. And you only had to cross once. But I was continually forced to make a decision for decency.

EXTERNAL:

But that was no longer a decision. No, no. The only decision that mattered was made long before. And because you decided to stay, you had to remain decent. Otherwise it wouldn't have been moral. Otherwise you wouldn't have had the right to defend yourself against the blame of your staying. Just as I had no other choice but to cross the borders of Germany, you had no other choice but not to cross the borders of decency.

INTERNAL:

Correct. And because your choice had nothing to do with morality you have no right to blame me for mine--you and all the others who, given the chance, would have accepted this blame just as I have.

EXTERNAL:

I certainly would not have done that.

INTERNAL:

You mean to say, you would have left Germany even if you hadn't been forced to? Even if your life were not threatened? On moral grounds, you mean?

EXTERNAL:

Exactly.

INTERNAL:

Easy for you to say.

EXTERNAL:

No easier than when you claim moral grounds for having stayed, though you can't prove them.

INTERNAL:

Though you on the other hand base your emigration on moral grounds that you didn't possess. Without this insinuation you couldn't give your external emigration any more moral weight than my internal emigration. And you'd have to prove this.

EXTERNAL:

I'm not so much concerned with my own moral superiority as with your moral inferiority; and the fact that I can't even have become morally inferior does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that you were allowed to become so. But I am still prepared to accept the validity of your point of view. Under one condition. Namely: that you grant my moral claims to everyone who doesn't need to insinuate theirs as I do. Those who in fact emigrated without having their lives threatened, without being forced to leave, for moral reasons. Those who willingly took on all the hardship, the loss of an existence cut off from homeland and language, which I only unwillingly took on. These people, I say, are the ones whom you cannot deny the moral superiority that you also possess over me.

INTERNAL:

What? You can't be serious. I, who remained in Germany although I didn't have to, should grant moral superiority to those people who didn't remain in Germany even though they could have? I, who defied the lackeys of the regime and remained loyal to my homeland and who now have to eat the bitter bread of defeat along with all those former lackeys, I should recognize their moral superiority over me, those who got to safety in time and who now play the victor over me just as they do over the former lackeys?

EXTERNAL:

I understand. It's very difficult, but I understand. You mean to say: whoever was able should have stayed in Germany.

INTERNAL:

Obviously. This was his post. And whoever leaves his post in a moment of danger is a traitor.

EXTERNAL:

That sounds familiar. Isn't Hitler the one who talked about treason and emigration and didn't he disparage both?

INTERNAL:

It matters who accuses one of treason and why; and whether one deserted a good cause or a bad one.

EXTERNAL:

It would be so much easier to accept you as a representative of the good cause if only the representatives of the bad cause had accused you of treason!

INTERNAL:

That didn't matter. What mattered was supporting the good and undermining the bad.

EXTERNAL:

And to never get caught undermining.

INTERNAL:

If possible. In the inner emigration, along with many other things you were spared in the external emigration, one had to be careful.

EXTERNAL:

And you've followed this command exceptionally well. Others were less careful.

INTERNAL:

You can't make me responsible for that.

EXTERNAL:

If I only knew whether you were careful not to get caught--or not to do anything that you could get caught for.

INTERNAL:

Are you trying to tie me a new noose out of the one I managed to escape?

EXTERNAL:

That wouldn't be very becoming. Who, who was not a hero himself, could demand heroism from others? Not even a hero could. All told, one of the unwritten human rights is the right to cowardice and conformism. But: may one who has made use of this right never put on the mask of martyrdom. Then may he know what he's done. No, I certainly don't want to tie a noose for you because of the fact that you didn't avoid danger from Hitler by leaving but by staying. But less so should you be able to make it out as if you had stayed in order to expose yourself to this danger. As if you had made some final decision. As if you had exposed yourself to clear risks. You didn't. Instead you opted for ambiguity.

INTERNAL:

Might I ask which authority determined this?

EXTERNAL:

Your own. The term that you have coined for yourself-- and which ultimately says nothing more than this: the act of fleeing you so dislike in others is just what you yourself have done internally. Inner emigration. Doesn't that sound ambiguous enough to you? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? And isn't it a questionable proof which is based on such a contradiction? If not even a questionable life?

INTERNAL:

I've suspected for a long time that I would have to be long dead to prove anything to you.

EXTERNAL:

You'd be dead thanks to the same fate which let me live.

INTERNAL:

Still I could have avoided having myself meet this fate and I didn't. Watch out. We are getting back to the beginning.

EXTERNAL:

I know. For you the unambiguity of my situation is just as crucial as the ambiguity of yours is for me. And because I couldn't do anything about the unambiguity of my situation I'm not allowed to criticize you for not having done anything about the ambiguity of yours. Because it was easier for me to talk, now I am supposed to be quiet. Because it was easier for me to die, now I am not supposed to make it more difficult for you to live. Because I avoided my own unambiguous though highly involuntary risk just as you avoided your voluntary, though highly ambiguous one, my own life has become questionable. Always allow my own life to serve as your proof that you are not guilty for the deaths of millions like me. But don't ever try to remove the guilt for these victims from those like you.

INTERNAL:

I am no more guilty than you, who may well owe your life to one of those victims. I am no more guilty than the many whom no one has any reason to thank.

EXTERNAL:

No one? Isn't it just that one and those few to whom you assign all the guilt--don't they get to thank you for making their own guilt so enormous as to be incomprehensible? And isn't it just this enormity that allows your guilt and that of the many to appear so insignificant? The paper that attests to your membership in the Reich Chamber of Writers is really nothing compared to the paper on which the first instruction manual for the gas chamber was printed; the hand that you raised in a Hitler salute is nothing next to the hand that slung infants against the walls of houses in order to save ammunition; the little benefits of daily life that your indifferent obedience brought you are nothing compared to the profits and looting of the grand lechers. Nothing at all. But a part. And I'm not concerned here with the important ones, those who secured their own might through the nothingness of the many--and not with the many, who only through their own nothingness made possible the others' might. Rather I am interested in the few who first had no part in this infernal symbiosis. Who didn't hope to weaken their greater obedience with minor disobedience, nor their obvious approval with hollow protest: so that they might, as necessary, respond to accusations about the obvious by pointing out their hidden doings and respond to accusations about the hidden bits by pointing to the obvious. Those are the ones I'm interested in, who had everything to lose if Hitler won and could only win if Hitler lost and lost soon, and for some it wasn't soon enough. And because your bad conscience cannot be moved by me because I didn't voluntarily accept my lot--and not in view of those who in your eyes are not volunteers but traitors--then at least let it be moved by those who stayed whose fate you never shared and never planned to share and never risked sharing. I speak here neither of myself nor for those who voluntarily shared my fate; they can speak for themselves, and my dead speak for me. But your dead don't speak for you. Yours speak against you.

INTERNAL:

And they are the only ones whose right to speak against me I recognize.

EXTERNAL:

Then indeed we are back where we began: we cannot discuss together. Well--at least now we know why.

INTERNAL:

But we don't know if it was worth it.

EXTERNAL:

That depends on you.

INTERNAL:

No, on you.

EXTERNAL:

Perhaps--just so our discussion wasn't all for naught--maybe we could agree that it depends neither on you nor on me, but on those who don't even make the effort to have this kind of discussion. And on those who can only be embarrassed by our efforts, more than we are. Whom would we do it for anyway, if not for those who would do it themselves. And who would like it? It was too forgiving for the revenge seekers and to revengeful for the forgivers; too trivial for the scholars and too complicated for the press; too confused for the rationalists and too sober for the madmen; to distant for the victims and for the unscathed--ha, if there were such as thing as unscathed ones, who were not made sick by the horror, those remaining to whom one can talk for a good long while as I do, the good people: where are they, that I might stand silent before them?

INTERNAL:

I am silent. For I cannot prove to you that I am one of them. Just as you cannot prove to me that in my place you would have been one of them.

EXTERNAL:

So you're not silent after all.

INTERNAL:

No, not as long as you are talking. Not as long as both of us are here. And we'll always be here.

EXTERNAL:

We? You might not believe it, but just saying that is already progress.

(The Internal and External Emigrant exit on different sides. No curtain. The stage remains empty, though open.)