The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War

THE BODY OF A WOMAN

AS A BATTLEFIELD IN THE BOSNIAN WAR

by

Matei Visniec

Translated from the French byAlison Sinclair

CharactersKATE

DORRA

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Copyright ã 1987 by Matei VisniecAll performance rights, including professional, amateur, stock, motion

picture, radio, television, recitation, public reading, etc. are strictly reserved. All inquiries should be addressed to the author's agent:

SACD (Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques)11 bis, rue Ballu, 75009 Paris, France

Tel. 33 - (0)1 40 23 44 44 Fax. 33 - (0)1 40 23 45 58E-mail: [email protected]

First performed at the Studio des Champs Elysées, Paris, November 1997directed by Michel Fagadau

Original title in French: DU SEXE DE LA FEMME COMME CHAMP DE BATAILLE DANS

LA GUERRE EN BOSNIE (published by ACTES SUD PAPIERS, Paris, France 1997)

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SCENE 1

KATE reads extracts from her diary.

KATE: Slavonski Brod Hospital, Croatia, May 1994. (A beat.)

In inter-ethnic wars, the body of a woman becomes a battlefield. Witness Europe at the end of the twentieth century. The penis of the modern fighter is soaked in the screams of raped women, just as the knight’s blade was once soaked in the blood of his enemy. (A beat.)

An attempt to apply psychoanalytical concepts to the autopsy of horror. This inter-ethnic violence could perhaps be better understood by the use of Freudian terms. Certain Freudian notions that belong to the world of primal urges, can shed more light on this world of nationalist violence than a more conventional terminology.

See if the following concepts can better explain the sources of ethnic violence in Bosnia:

Nationalistic libido.Libidinous nationalism.Infantile ethnic sadism.The fantasy world of a national minority.Nationalist neurosis.Narcissistic neurosis of the ethnic majority.Obsessive neurosis of the ethnic minority.The nationalistic imperative: the urge to dominate, the urge to threaten, the urge to destroy.

SCENE 2

KATE enters DORRA’s room. DORRA sits motionless on a chair. She stares vacantly.

KATE: Hello.

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DORRA: …KATE: It’s me, Kate.DORRA: …KATE: It’s a beautiful day.DORRA: …KATE: Some people are walking in the garden.DORRA: …KATE: If you’d like to go into the garden, I’ll come with you.DORRA: …KATE: I’m not asking you to talk to me.DORRA: …KATE: But, if you’d like to go into the garden, I’ll come with you.DORRA: …KATE: Or you could go by yourself if you’d prefer.DORRA: …KATE: Do whatever you like.DORRA: …KATE: I’m going to open a window.DORRA: …KATE: Can you feel the Spring?

SCENE 3

KATE reads from extracts from her diary.

KATE: Doboj Camp, Bosnia, June 1994. (A beat.)

Are those ethnic groups who have never had their own nation state most vulnerable to such atrocity? Are they more at risk than others of becoming caught up in the primitive sadism?Amazing parallels exist between nationalistic sadism, and Freud’s description of infantile sadism. (A beat.)

Do members of ethnic groups who have never had their own nation state react in a similar way to those people who have never sublimated their sexual urges?First thought: the manifestations of nationalistic frustration have much in common with the manifestations of sexual frustration. Following this logic, the nationalist explosion could be analysed from a Freudian perspective, as an urge born frustration. (A beat.)

See if the following concepts can explain something:

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Growing anxiety in the ethnic group.Nationalist explosion. Nationalist depression. Depressive nationalism. The neurotic phobia of ethnic groups who share the same territory.The neurosis of destiny and the neurosis of failure.The ethnic neurosis of abandonment.

SCENE 4

KATE enters Dorra's room.

KATE: I know you can hear me.DORRA: …KATE: I feel you can hear me.DORRA: …KATE: That’s why I’m talking to you.DORRA: …KATE: Because I know you can hear me.DORRA: …KATE: I’m not asking you to answer me.DORRA: …KATE: I’m not asking anything.DORRA: …KATE: I’m Kate.DORRA: …KATE: You’re Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: Hello, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: I’m Kate. Hello Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: It's a pretty name, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: What would you like for lunch?DORRA: …KATE: Would you like me to read the menu?DORRA: …KATE: There’s soup… zucchini soup… cream of vegetable soup… cabbage

lasagne… I like soup. I'm no totally vegetarian, but I do like vegetable soups… I’ll leave the menu for you here on the table. You

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can tick off the dish you’d like… And the dessert… Is that okay, Dorra?

DORRA: …KATE: Goodbye, Dorra.

SCENE 5

KATE reads extracts from her diary.

KATE: Modrica, Bosnia, August 1994. (A beat.)

And what if nationalism is nothing but a suicidal impulse?Are there nationalities more disposed to melancholia?Nationalistic hysteria. Mass hysteria. Defensive ethnic hysteria.Identifying with the aggressor. (A beat.)

The frustrations of history. The distortion of a dream. Nations on the brink of disintegration. The break-up of self.

The sexual impulse and nationalistic libido can be useful concepts when we try to understand the incidents of rape that take place in ethnic wars.

A portrait of today’s Balkan “soldier”. Literate, educated, often to the level of high school certificate, even college. Fascinated by western wealth. His dream: to move to Germany or the States. He speaks a little English, can get by in German, knows a few words of Italian and French, can have a proper conversation in Russian. He can be obnoxious; he can be melancholic. He’s anti-communist, but also full of nostalgia for the communist past because it was “stable”. Drinks a lot: anything he can get his hands on. He feels depressed when he has to admit to himself that he has no country, he hasn’t been given a country, people have stolen his country from him, they’ve occupied his country, amputated his country, humiliated his country. And the West is always to blame: the West has forgotten him, the West hasn’t kept its promises, the West has betrayed him, the West is a whore.

He fights in the name of his people, who have never had a country. But, he doesn’t really know who his enemy is. He doesn’t have a clearly defined battlefield.

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Let’s see if these concepts can explain something:Seeking refuge in horror.Frustration inherited from his ancestors.The fantasy world of the “soldier”.The “soldier” finally finds his ideal conditions in frustration and, so, in war. This is exactly Freud’s analysis in the case of frustrated subjects who become ill just at that precise moment when they achieve the object of their desire.

SCENE 6

Night. DORRA is alone, curled up in her bed, under the blanket.

DORRA: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…

She is silent for a moment. Then she sits up, gets out of bed, crosses the room, goes to the bathroom, turns on the tap, pours herself a glass of water and drinks it. She goes back to bed and covers herself with the blanket.

DORRA: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…

SCENE 7

KATE enters DORRA’s room.

KATE: Observation number 1. The subject is suffering from traumatic neurosis. In German, this is called traumatische Neurose; in French, nevrose traumatique; in Italian, nevrosa traumatica. The root cause of this trauma is the rape to which she was subjected about two weeks ago. It would appear that there was no neurological harm done.

The state of the subject: mental confusion, permanent exhaustion, traumatic paralysis. The subject doesn’t respond to any external stimuli. Her determined refusal to answer my questions makes me think that she understands everything I say.

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SCENE 8

DORRA kneels, as if praying. She speaks in a quiet voice.

DORRA: I hate you… I hate you… I hate you…

No, don’t tell me that time heals everything. I don’t believe that time can heal everything. Time can’t heal wounds that are unhealable. It just can’t. Time can only do what time can do; nothing more.

No, Lord, you can’t deliver us from evil.No, Lord, you can’t give us our daily bread.No, Lord, you can’t forgive us our trespasses because we don’t ask to be forgiven, because we can’t forgive you.No, Lord, we can’t accept your will be done, because your will brings only blood and fire and madness.No, Lord, you are not the truth, because truth has been murdered, truth has been buried along with heaven, which is dead like you; because your house, Lord, is now a house of the dead, yes, a house of the dead.No, Lord, the evil does will never be punished and what’s more they will go on to inherit the earth.No, Lord, there is no victory of good over evil, of the weak over the strong, of the poor over the rich, of the believer over the non-believer, of life over death, of beauty over ugliness…No, Lord, I cannot describe my suffering.

No, I don’t believe that we can speak about everything.I don’t believe that we can understand everything.I don’t believe that there is sense in everything we hear.I don’t believe that there is any sense in what I am saying.

SCENE 9

KATE stands by DORRA’s bed.

KATE: Observation number 2. The subject is suffering an alteration of the ego. In German, this is called Ichveränderung; in French, altération du moi; in Italian, modificazione dell’io.

The subject seeks refuge in silence and offers positive resistance to every attempt at communication from the outside world. This

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behaviour is simply a defence mechanism. Every attempt to communicate with her is perceived by the subject as an act of aggression. For her, the rape continues.

SCENE 10

DORRA, alone; night. She gets up, goes to the bathroom, turns on the tap, fills a glass of water. She looks at herself in the mirror. She washes her face. She sings to herself. The words are just about audible.

KATE enters. Throughout the following monologue DORRA continues to look at herself in the mirror and to sing.

KATE: (To the audience) Communism: the force that obliged everyone to be “brothers” is a time-bomb; this is the real powder-keg in the Balkans, out of which has grown this national frustration. It’s the Freudian revenge of peoples who have never had a country to call their own.

Nowhere does this ethnic hate manifest itself more strongly than in the new “battlefield”. And what precisely is this new battlefield for this new “soldier”? It is the body of the wife of his ex-neighbour, the body of the wife of his old schoolmate, the body of the wife of his best friend whom for nearly half a century he has called “brother”. The body of a woman who is his ethnic enemy becomes a battlefield in its own right, and he thrusts himself into it regarding rape as a weapon of war. A woman’s body symbolises resistance, and the modern Balkan “soldier” rapes the wife of his ethnic enemy in order to smash that resistance and to strike a coup de grâce at this enemy. For him, rape has the taste of total victory. He doesn’t have to expose himself to the dangers of bullets, shells or tanks. He merely has to expose himself to the screams of a woman, and these only inspire him to serve his country to his last breath. In today’s ethnic conflicts, rape is a kind of blitzkrieg; and nothing can destabilise the enemy more than the rape of his women.

Having secured shelter for his own wife, daughter, mother and sister, the “soldier” goes in pursuit of his enemy’s wife, daughter, mother and sister; because today’s “soldier” prefers to destroy the sources of his enemy’s strength rather than have a face to face confrontation with that enemy. And, he knows what these sources are. Because once he was the neighbour of his enemy, he knows all the members of his enemy’s family, he knows his enemy’s habits. In short, his enemy

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having once been his “brother”, he knows that the women surrounding him are at one and the same time his enemy’s source of greatest strength, and also of greatest weakness.

More than half of the women raped in ethnic wars are victims of aggressors whom they know personally, or whose paths they have crossed frequently within a radius of 60 kilometres or less. Around half the women whom we were able to question state that the men who raped them came from the same village, or from a neighbouring village. Almost a quarter of the women we questioned are able to give the name, or names, of their violators. It seems that many women, married to men from a different ethnic group, were raped by men of the same ethnic group as themselves, as punishment for entering into a mixed marriage.

So, these “soldiers” don’t rape for animal pleasure, or out of sexual frustration. For them, rape is a form of military strategy aimed at demoralising the enemy. In today’s ethnic wars, rape fulfils the same purpose as the destruction of the enemy’s houses, his places of worship, his cultural heritage and his values.

SCENE 11

KATE enters DORRA’s room. DORRA sits motionless on her chair.

KATE Hello, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: It’s me, Kate.DORRA: …KATE: They’ve lit a big fire in the drawing room.DORRA: …KATE: Would you like to go down?DORRA: …KATE: If you’d like to go down, you know you’d be very welcome.DORRA: …KATE: Do you like an open fire?DORRA: …KATE: I think it’s really beautiful.DORRA: …KATE: We’re all down there.DORRA: …KATE: Do come down if you’d like.

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DORRA: …KATE: Or, if you’d rather I stay with you here, just say.DORRA: …KATE: You have a little bell here, Dorra. If you’d like me to come up and sit

with you, just ring. OK?DORRA: …KATE: I’m not a doctor, Dorra. I’m not here as a doctor. I’m not here to

force you to get better.DORRA: …KATE: I’m here because I need you.DORRA: …KATE: Bye-bye then, Dorra.

SCENE 12

DORRA: (To the audience)The Balkans, it’s like this: an emotional time-bomb. In the Balkans, we really know how to drink. Hey, we haven’t seen each other for three weeks, that’s a long time, that’s unbearable, so let’s go and have a drink. And you drink till the small hours. Because - in the Balkans, if you’re mates - you can’t bear not to see each other for three whole weeks. Any excuse to booze till five in the morning. Haven’t seen you for a week; oh, dear; that’s a long time; let’s go and have a drink. And you drink till midnight. To make the separation of friends bearable, you have to drink, just a bit, every single day. So, the thing to do is to go drinking every day after work, from about 6 o’clock till about 10 o’clock; then it’s OK, then you can go home, and spend a few minutes with the kids. Or with your wife. Your wife who is nothing but a childbearing machine. The only thing she knows is how to nag her husband from the moment he comes in. And that’s why the husband comes home late and goes out early. In the mornings, he has a hangover. That’s really the best moment for his wife to have a go at him. In the evenings, she doesn’t dare say too much. In the evenings, a sense of honour is very strong in Balkan man. In the evenings, if his wife oversteps the mark with her nagging, he’ll just get angry and knock back another bottle. Or two. Or three. Because, in the evenings, having spent time drinking with his friends, Balkan man suddenly becomes sad. His soul feels pain. He begins to get obsessed and tortured by great metaphysical questions. You don’t understand the first thing about history, my dear. No, she doesn’t understand anything at all. She doesn’t

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understand that her man has been struck by a melancholia passed down to him by his ancestors. She doesn’t understand why he suddenly starts to question the meaning of life. Where do we come from? Where are we going? The world is a shit-hole; a meaningless shit-hole. In the evening, having knocked back several dozen bottles of beer with his friends, Balkan man starts to despair at the sheer inadequacy of language. All he can do is piss and cry. He pisses tears of anxiety, tears of sorrow, tears for the helplessness of humankind in the face of the mystery of the universe. And he’s going to vomit, though not just yet, not till around 3 in the morning, when the pain in his head becomes unbearable because those bastards have made the beer with rotten malt. (DORRA becomes “Balkan man”.) And in the world of business, everybody’s a crook, a swindler. If you want a decent beer, it has to be foreign. And even then, you have to make absolutely sure that the labels haven’t been faked. Because everything is fake nowadays. That’s why this country will never get out of the hole it’s in. Because everybody’s a crook, a swindler. They’ve faked our history, they’ve faked our future, we don’t stand a chance, we’ve missed the boat, we’re the scum of Europe, we’re a nation of gypsies, we don’t even know where we really come from, we’ve never been free. We’ve never had a proper country, we’ve never been independent, we’ll never free ourselves of communism, communism has changed us down to the very marrow, we don’t… (“Balkan man” vomits.) Aaaargh… (Pause. DORRA becomes herself again.) At 3 in the morning, he lays his head on his wife’s breast. He needs her warmth, he needs her to caress him while he sheds his bitter, transcendental, cosmic tears… He lays his head on his wife’s breast because this breast, so warm and sweet and welcoming, reminds him of his mother… Oh, his mother, the only person in the whole world who always understood him, who always loved him, who always had faith in him… In the arms of his wife (though he thinks she’s a bitch) he hopes to find the security he felt nestled in the arms of his mother. And his soul is bleeding, because he hasn’t seen his mother since his sister’s wedding, because his mother has grown old, because his mother is far away, because his mother has been dead for two years, because his mother has been dead for ten years, because his mother left him when he was only five… Do you realise what kind of a childhood I had? Deprived of a mother’s love from the age of five? (DORRA once again becomes “Balkan man”.) Do you? Shit, you don’t understand at all, you don’t care, all you want to do is take my pay packet every week and shut me up in this house… (Change of tone.) Yes, at 3 in the morning, Balkan man is a fragile creature, one you have to deal with gently,

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otherwise his soul will be in danger of breaking into a thousand pieces. But his wife can get at him later, when he’s getting ready for work, as he shaves lethargically in front of the mirror in which he doesn’t even recognise himself. That’s when she can get at him. Look at you, you’re unrecognisable, you no longer even recognise yourself… Look at the state you’re in, look at the state you came home in, look at your shirt, look at your trousers all torn, look at the stains, why are you doing this to me, me and the children, you don’t care do you, why, why are you doing this to me? Because of his hangover he finds it hard to answer, in fact he doesn’t answer. He’s in a stupor, as if in a bubble separating him from the outside world. Then he drinks a coffee, very black and very strong, but he doesn’t eat anything because when you’ve got a hangover like that you can’t face eating… And then he goes off to work without saying a word, without looking at his wife, hardly even looking at his children, extremely uncomfortable in the shirt his wife has made him put on, all clean and freshly ironed. All day this clean shirt will be his wife’s silent reproach, a reproach that she has stuck to his skin, heavy to bear, impossible to forget, a sort of cage which will remind him with every move he makes that he is a prisoner for life and that he has all those mouths to feed, not least his own.

SCENE 13

DORRA, KATE

DORRA: Do you want me to tell you how I was raped?KATE: No, Dorra.DORRA: Yes you do, you want me to tell you how they raped me.KATE: No, Dorra, I don’t want you to tell me anything at all.DORRA: Yes you do, you want me to tell you in detail how they raped me.KATE: No, Dorra, I don’t.DORRA: Yes you do, it’s for your report.KATE: I’m not making a report, Dorra.DORRA: Yes you are, you’re making a report for the Boston Psychiatric

Clinic.KATE: No, Dorra, I’m not making a report for the Boston Psychiatric

Clinic.DORRA: But you do work for the clinic. And you’re American. And you’re

called Kate.KATE: I am American, and I am called Kate, but I’m not making a report

for the Boston Psychiatric Clinic.

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DORRA: There were five of them.KATE: I don’t want to know, Dorra.DORRA: You come from Boston.KATE: Yes.DORRA: There were five of them.KATE: I don’t want to know, Dorra.DORRA: You come from Boston. Soon you’ll be going back to Boston.KATE: Yes, I do live in Boston, but I won’t be going back there for a

while.DORRA: There were five of them. But I don’t know if they were Muslims,

or Croats or Serbs. You see, in Bosnia, everyone speaks Serbo-Croat.

KATE: I have to go now, Dorra.DORRA: You have to put in your report that I don’t know whether they were

Muslims, or Croats or Serbs.KATE: Good-bye, Dorra. You can call me whenever you want.DORRA: (In tears) Go back home, Kate. Go back to where you belong.

SCENE 14

KATE: Observation number 3. The subject suddenly comes out of her state of torpor. That doesn’t mean she’s getting better. She’s just trying to come to terms with the world by means of aggression. It is absolutely imperative that somebody is with her every single minute in order to absorb her negative energy.

SCENE 15

DORRA, KATE.

KATE: Hello, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: I’d like to talk to you, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: I’d like us to be friends, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: I’ve brought you some tulips.DORRA: …KATE: I hope you like tulips.DORRA: …

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KATE: May I put them on the table?DORRA: …KATE: I’d really like us to talk, Dorra.DORRA: …KATE: Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, and the shortest night…DORRA: …KATE: It’s the summer solstice…DORRA: …KATE: There’s going to be a party…DORRA: …KATE: Everyone’s going down to the lake…DORRA: …KATE: If you like, we could go for a walk by the lake.DORRA: …KATE: It’s a very beautiful lake. It’s called Lake Constance.DORRA: …KATE: Good-bye then, Dorra.

SCENE 16

KATE: (Looking at her collection of rare stones) Daddy, what is Europe? It’s just a pile of old stones. Grandpa, what is Ireland? It’s a stone country, a country made of stones scattered like this. (She describes the horizontal plane with her hand.) Just stones, or old stones? Stones that are good for nothing. But aren’t there stones that are good for something? No, they’re all good for nothing. Daddy, is that an old stone? No, that’s a lump of cement. So, what’s an old stone like? Much bigger, and almost black… Black like Betty?No, not as black as Betty.When I told Betty my nanny that Europe was full of black stones, but not as black as she was, she started to laugh. You’ve got a very smart daughter here, Mrs McNoil. You should have called her Europe. But I wasn’t called Europe. I was called Kate. Mommy, what does the word ‘Kate’ mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing? Nothing. And I started to cry. How could my name mean nothing? Well, sure it does mean something, it means Kate. And McNoil, what does that mean? It means McNoil. And why did the McNoils leave Ireland?What!?

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Well, I know you left Ireland, but why? Why did you? Grandpa told me that all the McNoils left Ireland.Go and ask him and let me be!Grandpa, why did you leave Ireland? Because there were too many stones on my land. How many were there? One day I started to count them. And I counted them for 10 years. Every day, I picked up about 100 stones… That’s about 36,000 every year. After 10 years, I’d picked up 99,999,999 stones. And that’s when I said stop, enough; there are just too many stones. Too many stones. And so we went to America.Too many stones. That’s Europe.Too many stones, that’s Europe: one day, she will sink under the weight of all those stones.

(KATE does her daily jog, running on the spot)

Actually, she has already begun to sink.

This was the first image I conjured up of Europe: a huge mountain of stones, a sort of iceberg made of stones gradually sinking on the other side of the ocean. But at the foot of this mountain there was something else: a little garden with two or three little, withered trees… and that’s where I used to imagine my grandfather, armed with a pickaxe, on his knees, scratching out 100 stones a day from his little piece of land.

I think it’s this image that made me go to Bosnia. When I was told that I’d be helping specialist teams responsible for locating mass graves and exhuming their contents, I was suddenly struck with this image of my grandfather digging up stones. Every one of us McNoils is a born digger. For me, though, it wasn’t stones; it was corpses.

SCENE 17

DORRA and KATE

KATE: Hello, Dorra.DORRA: You lied to me.KATE: I never lied to you, Dorra.DORRA: You don’t need me.KATE: Yes I do.DORRA: You don’t.

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KATE: I do, Dorra. I do need you.DORRA: What do you want to know?KATE: I don’t know.DORRA: What are you trying to understand?KATE: I don’t know. All I know is that I had a breakdown.DORRA: Do you have children?KATE: Two girls. And I haven’t seen them for six months.DORRA: You’re mad.KATE: No, I’m not.DORRA: What’s Boston like?KATE: It’s beautiful.DORRA: Do you have any photos?KATE: Of my daughters?DORRA: No, of Boston.KATE: Yes, I’ll bring them to show you tomorrow.DORRA: I hate being interrogated, Kate.KATE: But I’m not interrogating you.DORRA: Yes you are. You’re all the same, you Americans: obsessed with

psychotherapy. And I hate being interrogated.KATE: But I’m not interrogating you.DORRA: You make it seem as if you’re not interrogating me, but what

you’re actually doing is torturing me with all your clever techniques, your clever therapy.

KATE: I swear to you, Dorra, that I’m not here as a doctor.DORRA: You’re all so obsessed with psychotherapy.KATE: You have to go on living, Dorra.DORRA: I don’t think I want to, Kate.KATE: You have to, Dorra.DORRA: Why should I care what you think. Don’t try and sell me all those

old clichés about a better life, blah, blah, blah.KATE: No, Dorra, I won’t.DORRA: Life isn’t the strongest force.KATE: I’m not sure.DORRA: Death is stronger.KATE: I’m not sure.DORRA: And it’s brute force that’s stronger than anything.KATE: I’m not sure.DORRA: Do you know why I’m still alive, Kate?KATE: No… Yes…DORRA: Because I discovered that God does exist.KATE: Yes.DORRA: And I hate him, Kate. Before, I didn’t believe he existed. But

after, I said to myself, no, so much evil, that only makes any sense

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if God exists and this is what he wants for us: to feed us on a diet of atrocities. And since then, even though I don’t really believe in him, I hate him. And that’s what keeps me hanging on. I hate him so much that I cannot let myself die. Quite simply, I can’t die because hate is keeping me alive. Do you understand, Kate? Do you believe in God, Kate?

KATE: I don’t know.

DORRA begins to methodically pull the petals off the tulips that KATE brought on her last visit.

DORRA: You couldn’t force me to live if I didn’t want to, Kate. You and your clever techniques, they just make me laugh.

KATE: I know, Dorra.DORRA: You’re so naïve, Kate, that I’m actually starting to like you.KATE: ….DORRA: Yes, I really think I like you, Kate. And, because I like you so

much, I’m going to do something for you.KATE: What?DORRA: You know, Kate, I know exactly how I’m going to die. But, I

haven’t yet decided when I’m going to. Because you’re an intelligent woman, Kate, you’ll understand why I can’t go on living like this. And, because you’re so nice, I’m going to tell you, and only you, when I’m going to die.

KATE: When?DORRA: I’ll tell you soon, one day before…

SCENE 18

KATE: Observation number 5. The subject’s mood swings from outward aggression to periods of complete self-absorption. These apparent whims are actually a good sign, a sign that she is in fact capable of entering into some kind of new relationship with the outside world. It’s too early to submit her to questions about the circumstances that provoked her trauma. At this stage, one can only assess her ability to recall by patiently employing various psychological techniques.

SCENE 19

KATE and DORR.A.

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KATE: Hello.DORRA: …KATE: How are you, Dorra?DORRA: …KATE: Do you know there’s a t.v. downstairs? You can watch it if you

want.DORRA: …KATE: I’ve brought some photos of Boston. Would you like to see them?DORRA: …KATE: (Putting the album on the table) I’ll leave them there. You can look

at them when you feel like it. DORRA: …KATE: Would you like me to show them to you now?DORRA: …KATE: I’ll show them to you whenever you want.DORRA: Kate…KATE: Yes…DORRA: That lake, is it really Lake Constance?KATE: Yes.DORRA: Is that in Switzerland?KATE: No, it’s in Germany. But the Swiss border is only a few hundred

yards away. You can actually see Switzerland from the window.DORRA: Where?KATE: Come here, I’ll show you.

KATE leads DORRA to the window.

KATE: Can you see those houses there, at the foot of the hill? That’s Switzerland.

DORRA: Are you sure?KATE: Yes. And here, we’re in Germany. On the left, that’s Germany.

On the right, that’s Switzerland.DORRA: And what’s on the other side of the lake?KATE: Still Switzerland.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: Kate…KATE: Yes, Dorra…DORRA: How did I get here?KATE: You were transferred here because you were very ill.DORRA: It’s funny. I always wanted to see Switzerland… And Germany…KATE: And now you can.

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DORRA: Yes. I like this window. You can see Switzerland and Germany from it. What is this place, a hospital?

KATE: It’s a sort of convalescent home.DORRA: And why are the letters “USA” stamped on everything?KATE: Where’ve you seen that?DORRA: (Turns the chair round) Here. “USA.” There’s also an inventory

number: 6632D. So, America has sent a chair for me, number 6632D?

KATE: It’s because this used to be an American army medical centre.DORRA: For the insane?KATE: No, not for the insane, for the sick.DORRA: Kate…KATE: Yes.DORRA: I want to leave here now.KATE: …DORRA: Did you hear what I said, Kate?KATE: …DORRA: Kate?KATE: …DORRA: Kate!KATE: Yes…DORRA: (Hysterical) I want to leave here now. I don’t want chair number

6632D from the Americans. I don’t want this blanket, number 32507F. I want to leave here now, this minute. (Tearful) I want to go away.

KATE: Where to, Dorra?

SCENE 20

DORRA and KATE are eating together. There are flowers on the table, and a bottle of rosé. The atmosphere is relaxed, they’ve both got a bit tipsy and there’s a real complicity between them.

DORRA: (Eating) As soon as he’s had a drink, a sense of history is awakened in Balkan man. In the seediest bar, wherever he can get pissed, whether it’s in Zagreb, Tirana, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia, Ljubliana or Skopje, Balkan man all of a sudden becomes an internationalist, brimming with love for his nearest and dearest. And he starts to judge the whole world using the philosophy of “but”. But is the mirror of Balkan man’s thinking, it’s the key to his soul, it’s the word that makes ordinary conversation take a sudden turn into subtle diatribe.

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Gypsy music. Or perhaps it’s DORRA who starts to sing a snatch of a gypsy tune. In the following monologues, it isn’t really DORRA who speaks, but her memories and her life experience. Each time, she really enters into the skin of “the Balkan man” who churns out, year in year out, those same old clichés, those same over-used insults and those same spiteful comments directed at his “Balkan brothers” of another nationality.

DORRA: (As “Balkan man”) I do like gypsies; I’ve really got absolutely nothing against them. Come on, gypsy, give me a song. No, don’t get me wrong, gypsies are really great. They go back a long way; they have something about them that’s deep and mysterious, but at the same time light-hearted and joyful. But, let’s face it, they’re all thieves; you can’t take your eyes off them for a minute; they steal horses, sheep, chickens, children, and now, to top it all, they’re even stealing our own sacred folklore, our own most beautiful songs that they bring out on western CDs, making millions of dollars…

Their game continues. This time, it’s Albanian music.

I really like the Albanians. I’ve got an Albanian colleague at the university. He’s quiet, keeps himself to himself, is careful with his money: he’s done really well. Yes, they’re really good people, the Albanians, especially those from the north, who are Catholics. No, don’t get me wrong, I can’t say I’ve got anything against the Albanians. They’re probably the oldest race in the Balkans… But, let’s face it, my university colleague actually came from Kosovo, so he’s not really Albanian at all, and you have to admit that in today’s Europe the Albanians are the lowest of the low. Enver Hodja really dumped them in the shit, and the whole world had them knocking on the door: the Yugoslavians, the Russians, the Chinese. Luckily, people fed them. But then they fell out with everybody, and now they’re the poorest people in Europe; even their ideas are poor, like wanting to annex Kosovo. I mean, look what happened to that idea…

They clink glasses.

Cheers!KATE: Cheers!

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Bulgarian music. DORRA, letting herself go more and more, clicks her fingers and sings.

DORRA: (As yet another “Balkan man”, speaking of his “Balkan brothers”) The Bulgarians; oh the Bulgarians, they’re really nice. They’re really good gardeners. My mother only ever bought vegetables from a Bulgarian greengrocer. You should have seen the gherkins he had, and the yoghurt. Bulgarian yoghurt really is the best in the world. And the Bulgarians have great taste… and their roses… they’re simply fantastic. And their rose petal jam, have you ever tried it? It’s wonderful. Yes, don’t get me wrong, I really like the Bulgarians… But, let’s face it, they’re a disappointed and frustrated race. It’s they who started the Balkan war in 1913. They wanted a country bigger than they actually needed, those Bulgarians. They wanted the whole of Macedonia to grow their gherkins in. And, even today, they say that Macedonians are really Bulgarians. They’ve bulgarised the names of all the Turks who live in their country. That’s the Bulgarians for you; you can only get along with them if you keep them in their place. Cheers!

KATE: Cheers!

They clink glasses and kiss. DORRA starts the game again. Turkish music. KATE fills up their glasses and enters more and more into the spirit of the game.

KATE: It’s Turkish!DORRA: Yes, it’s Turkish.KATE: So, the Turks…DORRA: (As yet another “Balkan man”) The Turks, now I do respect the

Turks. They really are a force to be reckoned with. One foot in Asia, one foot in Europe; the Turks, they don’t understand the meaning of the word “border”. Never underestimate the Turks! This spring I went to Istanbul. It’s amazing what you can buy there. And they still have a huge empire. They do most of their business with us now, because the French, the Italians and the English are too far away. Yes, the Turks are really good workers. You’ve seen how many there are in Germany, and they’re all in work. There are 4 million unemployed in Germany but not one of them is a Turk. Amazingly every single Turk managed to get work. Honest to God, a few months ago, a Turk opened a bakers’ shop near where I live, and now I only ever eat Turkish bread, it’s really good. The Turks will come back to the Balkans bit and bit, you’ll see. I don’t actually have any Turkish friends myself; still – don’t

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get me wrong - I do respect them as a people. But, let’s face it, it can’t be right that they put our own bakers out of business. People will think we’re no longer capable of making our own bread. And the Turks just barge in wanting to show us how to do it. I’m not in favour of that, them coming in with their electric cookers that they’ve bought in the west with our money. And it’s those same Turks who’ve looted our country for four centuries. Five centuries actually. And on top of that, they’re not even Europeans, and yet they’ve been accepted into NATO, and just you wait, they’ll soon worm their way into the European Union.

They clink glasses and drink. Jewish music.

KATE: That’s…DORRA: Jewish…KATE: Oh, yes. I really like the Jews…DORRA: Some of my friends are Jews, and once I had Jewish neighbours…KATE: When I was little, I used to play with Jewish kids who lived near

us…DORRA: Yes, personally, I think it’s a shame that the Jews have left our

country over the years. In the town where I was born, between the two world wars, there were 5,000 Jews, 5,000 Germans, and there were only 4,000 of us. Did you know that? But, personally, I saw nothing wrong with that, because all the Jews were businessmen or intellectuals. My history professor, at high school, he was a Jew, and so was the dentist my mother used to drag me to; and when I started to learn the violin, the woman who taught me was Jewish. And then nearly all of them went to Palestine. No, don’t get me wrong, the Jews are OK, and - what’s more - wherever they go the economy flourishes…

KATE: But…DORRA: Ah ha! You learn quickly… But, let’s face it, we mustn’t forget

that it was the Yids that crucified our Lord Jesus Christ. And, when they saw that communism wasn’t really working in the east and that the quality of life there was gettingworse and worse, they left en masse, not the least bit grateful that those same countries had given them their nationality. Cheers!

KATE: Cheers!

Serbian music.

KATE: So what’s next…DORRA: The Serbs…

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KATE: Ah, the Serbs. Now I really like the Serbs…DORRA: Actually my wife is a Serb. Of all the Slavs in the Balkans the

Serbs are the toughest. They have a very primitive, wild side to them, that has often made the world quake over the centuries. They’re bloody great drinkers, and they’re bloody great fighters. And it’s strange how charming they can be, considering that by nature they’re rather morose. They have a melancholy that’s been in their veins for generations. But they can be hot-blooded. Their blood sometimes literally boils. They always have to be on the move, they’re always restless. So, don’t get me wrong, the Serbs are actually rather attractive, and I should know, my wife’s a Serb. They’re full of surprises, off the wall, unpredictable…..

KATE: But…DORRA: But, let’s face it, they have an annoying tendency to exaggerate

everything; they exaggerate all the time. They’ve got no concept of moderation, the Serbs, they’re nationalists through and through. They’re completely crazy. All they think about is their empire, lost in the 14th century by the way, and their martyred king, King Stefan. But they haven’t done much since then. Now they’re just pig-farmers, dreaming of a Great Serbia. I’ve had them up to here. And what’s more, my ex-wife who was a Serb left me for a mother-fucker of a Serb, for a good for nothing mother-fucker of a Serb.

The women kiss each other, eat and drink. The game continues; Croatian music.

KATE: (With her mouth full) That’s…DORRA: (With her mouth full) The Croats…KATE: The Croats, yes, I like the Croats…DORRA: It’s lovely in Croatia. It’s so clean, so beautiful. You must have

seen the cathedral they’ve got in Zagreb, this shows they’re Catholics, you can tell they’re part of the Roman civilisation, Latin, the Pope, the Holy Roman Empire, the spirit of Venice. The Croats have first-class minds, they’re sharp, they’re like the Adriatic Sea: open, they have insight, they’re Slavs but they’re westernised. They did well to get rid of the Cyrillic alphabet and start to write in Roman letters; that put them a hundred years ahead of everybody else. No, don’t get me wrong, the Croats are great, they’re like our twin brothers…

KATE: (Stuffing her mouth) But…

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DORRA: But, let’s face it, nobody can hurt you like your own brother. That’s what they’re like, the Croats, they’ll stab you in the back, they’ll betray you as soon as look at you. You saw what they did in ’41, they went over to the Nazis, all of them in the end, all except Tito. They sided with the Nazis and massacred the Serbs. Because that’s what they’re like, the Croats: bastard collaborators; ustashi. And even today they’re thick as thieves with the Germans, Germany’s their real country. Oh, the Croats… Here’s to us!

KATE: To us!

Greek music. DORRA makes dancing movements whilst still seated on her chair.

Oh, I know that, it’s Greek.DORRA: (Dancing) Ah, Zorba the Greek…KATE: The Greeks, here’s to the Greeks, I adore the Greeks…DORRA: You can really have a good time with the Greeks.KATE: Have you seen them playing their crazy bazoukis? DORRA: But they are crazy, the Greeks, crazy but beautiful. The second a

Greek becomes your friend, he’ll give you everything. And they’ve certainly left their mark on history, the Greeks; they laid the foundations of civilisation as we know it. So, don’t get me wrong, I love the Greeks…

KATE: But…DORRA: (She stops dancing) But, let’s face it, the Greeks nowadays have

absolutely nothing in common with the ancient Greeks, even though they believe they’re the direct descendants of Pericles. Ha, that makes me laugh. Have you seen those stupid little outfits their National Guard wear…

KATE: Peasant costume!DORRA: Ah, the Greeks, they’re just an unscrupulous nation of shopkeepers.

Now they’re starting to build motorways with money they wheedled out of the European Union…

KATE: (Starts to open a bottle of champagne) No!DORRA: Yes!

The sound of the cork popping. They start to drink the champagne. The game continues; Hungarian music. The alcohol is clearly going to their heads.

KATE: The…DORRA: The Hungarians…KATE: Oh, I love the Hungarians…

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DORRA: They’re real originals, the Hungarians. Have you heard the language they speak?

KATE: It’s not like any other language at all…DORRA: Right; you can’t understand a word. It hasn’t got any Latin in it…KATE: It hasn’t got any Slav…DORRA: It hasn’t got any Greek…KATE: Certainly no Turkish!DORRA: No German.KATE: It’s all just… Hungarian!DORRA: That’s the thing about the Hungarians, they’re not like anybody

else; they’re absolutely unique. They’re indomitable; born leaders. You remember how they had the audacity to rise up against Moscow in ’56? It’s crazy, but they wanted to throw out communism as far back as ’56. They had a bloody nerve, those Hungarians. And they paid for it. Even so, after that, you know, they lived better than we did, even under Janos Kadar: more freedom, more small businesses, proof that big brother Russia had more respect for his little Hungarian brother than he had for his other little brothers. That’s the Hungarians for you, tough as old boots, throughout history…So, don’t get me wrong, I admire their strength, their virility…..

KATE: But…DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re profiteers, and megalomaniacs; and

actually they’re servants of the Austrians. What did they think, these Hungarians, that their empire was going to last for a thousand years? It’s their arrogance that ruined them, their unbelievable arrogance, it’s…

The game continues; Romanian music.

KATE: Oh no, is there more?DORRA: Well, you know, there are rather a lot of us in the Balkans. The

Romanians…KATE: (Feigning exhaustion) I like the Romanians a whole lot…DORRA: They’re the Latins here. When you hear them speak, you’d think it

was French, or Italian. And between the two wars, do you know what they called Bucharest? They called it “little Paris”. I really like the Romanians. And their women! It’s amazing what a hit Romanian whores are now in Turkey. The Turkish whores are even starting to learn Romanian so that they can pass themselves off as Romanians in Istanbul. Yes, don’t get me wrong, I really like the Romanians…

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KATE: But…DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re all doom and gloom, and they’re really

two-faced. They always somehow manage to pop up on the winning side. And, actually, their language is riddled with Slavic words. They say they’re not really Balkan, that the Balkans stop at the Danube, but there’s nothing more Balkan than a Romanian, take my word for it…

KATE: (Egging DORRA on to speed up the game) The Muslims…DORRA: The Bosnian Muslims? They’ve really had their share of suffering,

you know. They deserve a country of their own. Do you remember how they held out in Sarajevo?

KATE: I take my hat off to them.DORRA: They’ve got guts, the Bosnian Muslims. So, don’t get me wrong, I

really like them…KATE: But…DORRA: … but, let’s face it, they’re actually just Slavs who’ve converted to

Islam.KATE: So they’re traitors?!DORRA: Actually, it’s hard to know what to call them. Last century, people

called them “Turks”. And then Tito came along, with his idea of inventing a Muslim nation, something that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. At the time, the Saudis protested…

KATE: (Now completely drunk, and victorious) The blacks…DORRA: Who?KATE: The blacks…DORRA: There aren’t any blacks in the Balkans.KATE: Yes, but…DORRA: But…KATE: But, this but - it’s everywhere. Do you think this Balkan “but” is

really only found in the Balkans? No, you’re wrong there, honey… Come to my country one day if you want to hear the “Balkan but” sung to an American tune…. The blacks are great, the blacks are really, really great. I like the blacks. Music seems to run in their veins; it’s amazing. They invented the blues, the blacks did. The blacks’ blues! And they invented gospel music. And they’re terrific boxers…

DORRA: I like the blacks, too…KATE: But…DORRA: But…KATE: But…DORRA: But…KATE: But the problem is… there’s “a black problem”.DORRA: “A black question”…

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KATE: Because, frankly, they’re not like us…DORRA: (Pretending to “fall in” quickly) Because they’re black!KATE: No. We have to be politically correct here… Because they are

“people of colour”… But they’re uncultured “people of colour”… and they stink… and they’re violent… and they’re always causing riots… and they’re trouble-makers… and they’re drug-dealers… There! And don’t think it’s just the goddamn fucking niggers who fuck us up… No… there’s also…

DORRA: (More and more drunk) The Indians…KATE: That’s riiiight! The “Native American Indians”…DORRA: Who are rather beautiful…KATE: … with their feathers and things, very decorative…DORRA: But…KATE: But…DORRA: But…KATE: But it’s better when they’re deeeaad! A good Injun is a dead Injun!DORRA: Shiiiiit!KATE: Oh, yeah. And then there’s the Mexicans…DORRA: Not in the Balkans…?KATE: But…DORRA & KATE:  The “Balkan but” gets everywhere…DORRA: So, what about the Mexicans? I like the Mexicans…KATE: Yes, the Mexicans are nice…DORRA: They wear big hats…KATE: They’re called sombreros…DORRA: And they have ponchos…KATE: And guitars…DORRA: But…KATE: But…DORRA: But…KATE: But, they all want is to come and live in my country, the goddamn

fucking Mexicans, in my United States of America, those bastard Mexicans. Every day, every single day, thousands of them sneak across the border to come and work illegally in my country, taking jobs away from honest Americans. And their bloody kids are a burden on our education system and on our health system, and they don’t even bloody try to learn our language… Oh, my God.

DORRA: Then there’s the Puerto Ricans…KATE: Oh yes, the Puerto Ricans…DORRA: I like the Puerto Ricans…KATE: But…DORRA: But…

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KATE: (Now acting like a full-blooded racist, banging her fist on the table) I’ve had the bloody Puerto Ricans up to here, they make me puke!

DORRA: Then there’s the…KATE: The…DORRA: The Aztecs…KATE: Oh, I like the Aztecs…DORRA: Yes, they’re nice, the Aztecs…KATE: Yes, but…DORRA: But…KATE: But…DORRA: But they’re Aztecs! That’s the problem!KATE: That’s it. That’s fucking it… They’re fucking Aztecs…DORRA: Just like the…KATE: The Patagonians…DORRA: The Patagonians, yes…KATE: The Patagonians… they’re nice the Patagonians…DORRA: But…KATE: But…DORRA & KATE:They’re Patagonians! Shit!

Rock music. They dance, building up to dancing rock and roll.

SCENE 21

KATE: When you open up a mass grave, there are certain techniques you have to use. So, I took a course in the excavation of mass graves. You can’t just go into one and rummage around. There are, after all, laws governing such excavations. The person undertaking the job is in the same position as someone who uncovers a murder. He must, at one and the same time, dig up the body of the victim (or victims) and yet not actually touch anything. If he is not perfectly trained to do this work, he is in danger of covering up the very evidence of murder that he should be uncovering.

He will discover not only the body (or bodies) but also, very often, evidence of how the crime was committed, for example bullets if the victim (or victims) were shot. Every single object found in the vicinity of the victim (or victims) in a mass grave has a legal significance, because it could help reconstruct the crime and reveal the context in which the crime was committed. Consequently, the person doing this work carries an enormous responsibility. Under

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no circumstances must he separate the corpse (or corpses) from personal effects that could help identify the victim (or victims). He must make an inventory of every single thing, down to the last detail, making sure not to damage anything.

He has to work in stages. The first stage is to survey the area, and identify any potential mass grave. The second stage is to record the layers of earth, and the way in which the various layers cover the body (or bodies). Depending on how many layers of earth there are, and on their composition (earth, sand, stone, concrete etc.) he has to choose the right tools for that particular excavation. The third stage is the excavation itself. The fourth stage involves the preservation of the excavated materials. The fifth stage is the interpretation of what’s been found.

This work is always done by a team. In every team there’s a topographer, a photographer, an archaeologist, a doctor, a lawyer, experts to examine the military context in which the victim (or victims) were killed, and a psychologist. The psychologist is there to make sure that the other members of the team don’t break under the stress. If he notices that a member of the team is no longer in a fit state to continue, he has to intervene and remove him from the site, then he’ll make an evaluation of his mental state and advise him (or, it could be, her) to take a break from the excavation for a while.

That’s how I came to Bosnia: to work as a psychologist with the teams of people excavating the mass graves. And so I became an excavator myself. Me, Kate McNoil, 35 years old, a graduate from Harvard University, a specialist in obsessional neurosis and psychoanalysis, author of a 770 page doctorate thesis on Freud and his concepts of child narcissism, married and a mother of two daughters, me, Kate McNoil, I should be ashamed of myself, I haven’t seen my family for six months and I don’t have time to think about them much because there’s now something else that’s taken over my life: to excavate, excavate, excavate, to excavate mass graves in Bosnia in the name of the United States of America, in the name of the Allies, in the name of western civilisation, in the name of the UN, in the name of justice, in the name of truth, in the name of the past and of the future. It’s hard to carry such a burden on your shoulders, Kate McNoil, but you’ll never be able to regain your balance of mind unless you understand why.

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SCENE 22

DORRA rings the bell. She rings several times, becoming more and more desperate. KATE arrives)

DORRA: I want an abortion!KATE: Yes, Dorra…DORRA: Now…KATE: Yes, Dorra…DORRA: Now!KATE: Whatever you want…

A moment’s silence.

KATE: But you’ll have to wait just a little.DORRA: I don’t want to wait. I’m unclean. I’m unclean because of this

thing inside me…KATE: Yes…DORRA: Kate, I don’t want it to start moving.KATE: It won’t move.DORRA: It’s moving already! I can feel it.

Another moment’s silence. DORRA stares into space.

DORRA: I can feel it pushing. And I don’t want it to… I want someone to get it out.

KATE: You just have to wait one more month…DORRA: Kate…KATE: Yes?DORRA: I want something to drink.KATE: Yes, Dorra.DORRA: Something strong.KATE: Yes.DORRA: Some vodka.KATE: Right.

KATE exits.

SCENE 23

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DORRA, her belly swollen, lies on her bed, in a state of great agitation. She shudders and trembles. And she’s sweating. KATE stands by the bed. Everything she says resembles more a kind of therapy than a confession. So, her tone is not a normal tone. She talks, hardly pausing for breath, trying to console DORRA. DORRA barely listens to her. Or, perhaps, she doesn’t listen at all.

KATE: Grandpa, what is America? America is a pile of stones built like this. (She describes the vertical plane with her hand.)

(To DORRA) My grandfather used to tell us the story about when he first came to the States at least two or three times every year, when the family was gathered together at Thanksgiving, at Christmas, or at New Year’s.

Tell me, Grandpa, how did you get to America? We came on a big boat. As big as this? No, bigger. As big as this room? No, bigger. As big as this house? No, even bigger than that. As big as the house and the garden and the chicken-shed put together. As big as the whole street. I don’t believe you. Look, look at this boat. (She gets out an old photo) Here, here, on the third class deck, that’s me. And that’s your great-grandmother. And that’s your father. But it can’t be him, he’s even littler than me. Well, he was then, even littler than you. And who’s that? It’s your Uncle Sean. And that’s your Uncle Simon. And that’s your Uncle William. And that’s your Aunt Molly. And that’s your Aunt Elizabeth. And that’s your grandmother who died last year. And why aren’t I there? Because you weren’t born yet. And the boat? What about the boat? Is the boat made of stones too? No, my precious, the boat isn’t made of stones.

DORRA: (Almost delirious) No! No! No!KATE: Once he got to America, my grandfather became a stonecutter.

The stones never forgave him. These stones from his land that he’d gathered all those long years, as well as those he hadn’t, all pursued him to the United States. He was always convinced that the stones from Ireland and the stones from America had joined forces to trap him.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: This child doesn’t have a father.KATE: Yes it does.DORRA: This child doesn’t have a name.

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KATE: But it will have. It’ll have your name.DORRA: It will never be my child. I didn’t want it. Nobody wanted it. This

child doesn’t have a mother or a father. It doesn’t exist, Kate!KATE: Yes it does. It’s moving inside you. You’re its mother.DORRA: And its father? Who will be its father? If it ever asks me who its

father is, what will I say? Who is its father?KATE: War. War is its father.DORRA: I could never tell a child that. How could I tell it that? How could

you say to a child: “Listen, my angel, war is your father.”? No child could understand that.

KATE: It will understand one day.

Another silence.

But you must let me tell you how my grandfather became a stonecutter.

She speaks in her grandfather’s voice.

First of all, we got off at Ellis Island. Then we had to go into the Immigration Office. I knew that we’d have to look clean and neat and make a good impression. As we were Irish and spoke good English, we were accepted straightaway. So then we took the boat to Manhattan. And the minute we arrived, I saw a man waving a placard that said: “Woolworth Building Company. Good stone workers wanted.”I’d never been a stone worker. All I wanted was to find a little plot of land with no stones in it, somewhere in the west, and to work it with my family.

DORRA: No! No! No!KATE: But I only had 10 dollars in my pocket. I looked at my wife, and

my children, and my mother, none of whom knew where we were going to sleep that night, and I decided to take my chance.It was the first offer of work that I stumbled on when I got to America and I was frightened that I wouldn’t find another one. So I went up to the man and I said: “I like stones.”And he asked me: “Have you ever cut stones?”And I said “Yes.” And he said: “And where was that?”“In my garden,” I replied. “In my garden.” And the man thought my answer was good enough and he offered me the job at 50 cents an hour. And I looked behind me and I saw that there was already a queue of about twenty men who wanted to cut stones. And I said “OK”. And I cut stones for twenty years, for every skyscraper in

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New York. I worked on the Woolworth Building, which was 787 feet high. And then I worked on the Walter Chrysler Building, which beat the Woolworth Building because it was over 1,050 feet high. Then I worked on the Empire State Building, which was 1,246 feet high, and then the Irving Trust Company Building and the Rockerfeller Centre and so on and so on… I cut thousands of stones, for floors, ceilings, decorations, pillars, arches, stairs, balconies, lobbies, terraces… That’s what I did. For thirty years I placed like this (she describes the vertical plane with her hand) all those stones I had picked up like that (she describes the horizontal plane with her hand) in Ireland.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: Kate!KATE: Yes?DORRA: It’s moving!KATE: Are you sure?DORRA: It woke me up.KATE: There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll stay with you.DORRA: It’s eating too much. It’s always hungry. It’s always hungry, the

little beast. It’s eating away at me, it’s devouring me from the inside, I can hear it munching…

KATE: I’m here. I’ll stay with you.DORRA: I can feel it pushing… It’s climbing up my insides… And it’s

hurting… I can’t stand it… I feel sick… You have to get it out, Kate.

KATE: It’s too soon.DORRA: I’m cold. It’s making me cold. It’s cold like a snake, and it’s

making me cold. I’m shivering. I can’t sleep any more. I’m the size of a barrel… It’s taking up more and more space… I can’t stand it any more…

KATE: Go to sleep. I’m here.

Another moment’s silence. DORRA is in a restless sleep. KATE continues sotto voce.

KATE: When people asked my Dad where he worked, he used to say rather enigmatically: for the emergency services at the biggest bank on the East Coast! That was his little joke. He actually worked for a donor bank! And they could wake him at any time of the day or night, even at 2 o’clock in the morning, for the emergency transport of a kidney to Springfield, or Worcester or Fall River or anywhere

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else in Massachusetts. Sometimes, he’d get home just when we were having breakfast. So what did you have to deliver last night, Daddy? I had to deliver a heart, he’d say, staring into space. He hardly ever got the chance to sleep a whole eight hours. Usually, after every “delivery”, he only managed to get two or three hours rest. He fell straight to sleep, with the telephone by his bed. All through my childhood, I only ever saw him sleeping, or dashing out, or coming home and sitting straight down at the table where my Mom would give him something to eat.So what did you deliver last night, Daddy? I delivered a “donor”. A donor usually meant someone who’d been smashed to pieces on the freeway or somewhere, one of whose organs was going to be speedily sewn into some other poor creature who needed a lung or a pancreas or a liver. The donor was either dead or dying, and the quality of the organ depended on the speed at which the two unfortunate people could be brought together in the same operating theatre. Other days, my Dad would have to provide transport for the “receiver”. I saved him, he would say at breakfast, and his face reminded me of the face of a priest just after his Sunday sermon.But there were, maybe two or three times a year, nights when things were quiet. My Dad would look up at the stars and say: Tonight it’ll be quiet. That meant that nobody would need him that night; he wouldn’t have to go anywhere, not for a skin graft, or an eye-transplant, a heart, a kidney, blood, marrow… But how do you know that tonight’ll be quiet, Daddy? I just feel it, he’d say, looking out of the window, into the black night, as if some unseen messenger was giving him a secret sign that tonight everything would be OK.

DORRA wakes up suddenly.

DORRA: I saw him!KATE: What do you mean you saw him?DORRA: In the darkness!KATE: When?DORRA: Just now. He was bending over me.KATE: What did he look like?DORRA: He didn’t have a face.KATE: No face?DORRA: No, just a…KATE: A what…DORRA: A mouth… He was just a gaping mouth.KATE: Go to sleep, Dorra. I’m here.

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SCENE 24

DORRA alone in the darkness.

DORRA: “I’m here.” Who are you? “It’s me”. Who? “Me”. I can’t see you. “Yes you can”. What do you want? Go away. “I’m hungry”. So what? “You have to give me something to eat”. You’ve already eaten my flesh. What else can I give you? “You have to give me something to eat”. I’ve given you every drop of my blood. What else can I give you? “I’m hungry. You’re my mother. You have to give me something to eat”. I’m not your mother. I didn’t want to be your mother. I will never be your mother. You have no mother. “Yes I do. You’re my mother, and you have to give me something to eat.” I’ve got nothing left to give you. You’ve eaten all of me. And you’ve emptied me. You’ve even emptied my soul. “If you don’t give me something to eat, I’ll scream”. Scream then! I want to hear you scream.

We hear a horrible scream. It’s the scream of a woman being raped.

No! No! Stop it!

We still hear the scream.

No! No! For God’s sake, stop it! Stop it!

These are perhaps the words of a woman being raped.

No! No! Help! Help! Stop it! Just kill me! Kill me!

A few seconds of silence.

“What’s your problem?” Stop it. Stop it. “I’ve stopped. OK?” What do you want? “I’ve already told you. I want something to eat. Either you give me something to eat, or I’ll start screaming again.” No, please, don’t. I’ll give you something to eat. I will. I’ll give you something to eat…

SCENE 25

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DORRA, sitting up in bed, hunched over a plate of food. She is devouring a huge breakfast. She sobs as she eats. She eats, staring into space, her mouth too full, with jam and butter on her lips and on her chin)

DORRA: “I’m here”. Who are you? “It’s me”. Who? “Me”. I don’t know who you are. “Stop pretending. You know exactly who I am”. No I don’t. I don’t know you. You don’t exist. “Yes I do. I do exist. And it’s you who are going to bring me into the world”. No, I’ll never bring you into the world. “Yes you will, you have to”. No, I don’t; I don’t have to bring you into the world. “You don’t have any choice. You’re my mother. And it’s a mother’s job to bring achild into the world”. You don’t have the right to be brought into the world. You’re a war child. You don’t have any parents. You were born of horror. You are a child of horror. “Listen to me, if you don’t bring me into the world, I’ll scream”.

The terrifying scream of a woman being raped. KATE enters.

KATE: I’m here.DORRA: I don’t want to bring this into the world.KATE: Dorra…DORRA: I don’t want to bring this into the world… It’s asking me to bring it

into the world, but I don’t want to… Why is it screaming like that? Tell it to stop screaming.

KATE: Dorra, if you don’t want this child, give it to me.DORRA: All right, I will.KATE: I’d like to have it.DORRA: But take it now, this minute.KATE: I can’t take it now. But, if you bring it into the world and give it to

me, then I’ll take it.DORRA: No, take it now. If you really want it, take it now.KATE: All right then, I’ll take it now. (She lies down next to DORRA. She

takes DORRA in her arms). Come on, let’s go to sleep.

SCENE 26

KATE is smoking. Her face looks twisted. We hardly recognise her. A diary lies open on the table.

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KATE: What do you do if you’re in a forest near Srebrenica and you find the following objects in a clearing, scattered in the grass over an area of about 10 yards:two hundred and forty seven cartridgesa bicycle wheela teat from a baby’s bottlea beret with the letters UN barely decipherablepieces of a stretcherthree packets of Drina cigaretteseleven empty cans of Croatian beera broken alarm clocka squashed tube of toothpastea piece of barbed wire about three and a half metres longa rifle butta plastic bag full of rotting potatoesan Elvis T-shirta leather belt, burnt black, with the pouches where you keep the grenades ripped offa postcard of the Eiffel Tower with a few lines written on the back which are completely illegible.

If you’re in a forest near Srebrenica and you find these things scattered around in the grass, there’s a 50/50 chance that you’re in the vicinity of a mass grave.

DORRA enters. Her stomach is now much bigger than when we last saw her.

DORRA: (Without looking at KATE) And is that why you had a breakdown?KATE: Yes, that’s why I had a breakdown.DORRA: But nobody knew anything about it.KATE: No, because I was the team’s psychologist.DORRA: After how many mass graves?KATE: Sedamnaest. Seventeen.DORRA: You could no longer bear to read the inventories they attached to

each body they dug up.KATE: No.DORRA: You could no longer bear to hear the sound of the pickaxes, the

trowels and the crowbars that were beating and digging and grating and sweeping.

KATE: No.DORRA: And the preservation of the “excavated matter”, the handling of the

corpses, the state of their decomposition, you weren’t able to deal with any of that either.

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KATE: No.DORRA: And everything you’d learnt about excavating corpses made you

feel ashamed?KATE: Yes.DORRA: For example, rule number one for the excavator: you have to keep

the site clean, a frequent sweeping of the site is one of the best methods for guaranteeing proper observation of an excavation…

KATE: (Smoking, on the verge of tears) Yes.DORRA: (Coming towards Kate and taking her by the shoulders) So you

asked to be sent somewhere else. For example…KATE: Yes.DORRA: (Looking at KATE’s open diary; we have to know that DORRA has

already read it) For example, here: to apply a new method, your cathartic method, in the psychotherapy treatment of women in Bosnia who’ve suffered rape.

KATE is motionless, perhaps in tears. DORRA kisses her.

SCENE 27

DORRA is alone in the darkness.

DORRA: “I’m here.” What do you want? I’ve given you something to eat, what do you want now? “I don’t know.” I don’t want to hear from you again. I’ve given you something to eat. So, shut up. “I can’t shut up: I’m frightened.” Shut up. Leave me alone. I need to rest. “Yes, but I’m frightened.” I want to go to sleep. I don’t want to hear you again. I want to rest. “I want you to give me a cuddle.” I don’t want to cuddle you. I can’t cuddle you. I’ve given you something to eat; that’s enough. “It’s not; I want you to cuddle me a bit. I’m frightened, and I want you to cuddle me.” I can’t cuddle you. I don’t know how to. And I’m frightened, too. “If you don’t cuddle me, I’ll scream…”

SCENE 28

DORRA is alone.

DORRA: Why do you want this child, Kate? Are you mad or something? You’ve got two children already. Your own children. And you have a husband. You’ve got a family. Your life is somewhere else. Why do you stay here? You’re not responsible for this; you’re not

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guilty. You weren’t born here. You’re American. You weren’t even born in Europe. You were born in the United States. OK, you have roots in Ireland; but Ireland, it’s just an island. It’s almost not part of Europe at all; it’s a world of its own. Anyway, it’s not up to you to come here, waving the American flag, beating your breast with mea culpa. You’re not the President of the United States. You’re not the Special Envoy of America’s guilty conscience.

A moment’s silence. KATE enters.

Why do you want this child, Kate?

KATE: Because I do.DORRA: Can’t you have any more of your own?KATE: Yes I can.DORRA: So it is because you love children?KATE: Yes, it’s because I love children.

Another moment’s silence.

DORRA: Why do you want this child, Kate?KATE: I don’t know.DORRA: You’re mad, Kate.KATE: No I’m not.DORRA: Do you want it for your Freudian experiments?KATE: No.DORRA: Are you sure?KATE: No.DORRA: Stop acting as if you had the whole of America’s subconscious

guilt on your shoulders.KATE: I’m not.DORRA: So, why do you want the child, Kate?KATE: Why?DORRA: I’m not going to give it to you, Kate.KATE: Why not?DORRA: I’m not giving this child to the United States.KATE: I’m not the United States. I’m not a representative of the American

government. I’m not the President of the United States. My roots are in Ireland!

DORRA: I’d rather it died than give it to the United States.

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KATE: (At breaking point) I want it! That’s all there is to it! After all the corpses I’ve dug up here, in your country, I have the right to go back home with this child!

DORRA: Stop it, Kate. You’ll never have it.KATE: (Calm again, staring into the distance) Your belly is a mass grave,

Dorra. When I think of your belly, I see a pit full of corpses, dried up, swollen, rotting… But, at the bottom of this pit, there’s something moving… A living being… Amongst all the dead, there’s someone alive… Someone asking to be let out… I’ll never let you kill your child, Dorra. I came to your country to learn how to excavate mass graves. And every time I excavated one, I had the insane hope that I’d find just one survivor… This child is a survivor, Dorra. And it has to be saved, it has to be pulled out. That’s it… It’s as simple as that… We have to rescue it from the mass grave…

The noise of an aeroplane about to take off.

KATE: (Speaking to and for DORRA, but not addressing her directly; a suspended moment) How can I explain to you, Dorra, that nature abhors a vacuum; that the laws of nature have nothing to do with the impulses behind man’s barbarity, that nature doesn’t acknowledge rape. So, your baby is a boy. As always seems to happen after a war, there are more boys born than girls. Nature, Dorra, is impervious to man’s stupidity, his inhumanity. She pursues her work relentlessly, despite the evils perpetrated by mankind. And her work remains, as it always was, mysterious and full of beauty.I’m going home soon, Dorra. I’m going back to my children.

SCENE 29

KATE(A letter in her hand):

Dear Chief Commander,

I’m sending you, as requested, the report on my activities in Bosnia over the past twenty-two months.

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May I remind you briefly that I was a member of the mission evaluating medical needs in Croatia and Bosnia, that I then became part of one of the teams responsible for identifying the mass graves in the Krajna and Srebrenica areas, and that at my request I was transferred to a NATO medical centre in Germany.

I confirm that, as from the 1st of April, I would like to return to my post in the Boston Psychiatric Clinic, in Massachusetts.

Thanking you for your understanding,

Kate McNoil.

A moment’s silence.

DORRA: (Speaking to and for KATE, but not addressing her directly; another suspended moment) How can I tell you, Kate, that I hate my country. That in fact I no longer have a country. That I don’t want to go back there. That I no longer have a God. That all I want is to get as far away as possible from this accursed nightmare place, this hell… I don’t want to see my home again… Because I don’t have a home. I don’t want to know if my family is still living. Even if the war ends, this place will stay cursed for a long time to come. It’ll be haunted by the cries of victims, by hatred and by shame. For years and years, the people who live there will rack their brains to try and understand how all this could have been possible. Till the very end of time, they’ll ask the same questions: Who started it? Who was responsible? Who was the most evil? How could people, either collectively, or individually, sink to such a level…

Another moment’s silence.

DORRA: (To herself) How can I tell you, Kate, that I hate my country?KATE: One can’t hate one’s country.DORRA: How can I tell you that I no longer have a country?KATE: We’re all born somewhere.DORRA: How can I tell you that I never want to go back there, where I was

born.KATE: You will one day.DORRA: How can I tell you that my country no longer has a God; my people

killed Him.KATE: You will find the need to believe again, one day.

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DORRA: How can I tell you that all I want to do is to get as far away as possible from this accursed place, this hell…

KATE: One day you’ll see your home again.DORRA: I don’t have a home anymore.KATE: One day you’ll want to know if your family is still alive.DORRA: There’s nobody left alive in my heart any more.KATE: There must be an image of your country that you’ll always carry

with you.DORRA: Do you want to know what image of my country I carry with me?

Do you? It’s the image of a drunken soldier, with a rather surprised expression on his face, who wipes his dagger on his trouser leg, puts it back in its sheath, then spits on the corpse of the man whose throat he has just cut.The image of my country is that of an old man leaving a column of refugees to lie in the grass for a rest, grass that hides an anti-personnel mine.My country is a mother who notices that her dead son’s uniform is missing a button. She hurries to sew one back on before he’s buried. My country is a father who spends all his time making a doll for his 7-year- old daughter, who’s been dead for 346 days.My country is a grandmother who has to flee from the approaching soldiers, and who - before leaving her house - kisses the porch.My country is an old peasant who looks at the soldiers entering his village and asks them: “Are you on our side?”.My country is a residential district of Vukovar renamed “Burnt Tank Avenue”.My country is a soldier who mixes in his glass cognac, raki, wine, whiskey, and any other alcohol he can put his hands on. The drink is called a fighting cocktail. He knocks it back, then goes to take his position in the trenches.My country is a Muslim refugee, who dies in a village in Hungary where there is no Muslim cemetery and where nobody knows how to bury a Muslim.My country is three soldiers pissing on the embers of a house they’ve just torched.My country is the inscription you see all over the place in Sarajevo: PAZI! SNAJPER! BEWARE! SNIPERS! And the taste of my country is the soup handed out by the Red Cross.My country is an 18-year-old soldier who, for a joke, writes: CUT HERE on his neck, just like on those packets of instant soup.

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My country is an American tv series that nobody wants to miss in Mostar, even when the town is besieged by Serbs on one side, and by Croats on the other.My country is that young Karlovac who wants to become a sniper to defend his people, but who can only get his hands on three rounds of ammunition a day.My country is a peasant who hides in the forest because “chetniks” or Muslims “fighting for Islam” have arrived in his village. He’s killed three days later when he decides to go home to feed his starving cows, because he can no longer bear to hear their bellowing…My country is a soldier writing on a door with red spray-paint: THIS IS SERBIA. Two weeks later, new words cover the old ones, saying: THIS IS CROATIA. A few days after that, even newer words say: IDIOTS, THIS IS A POST OFFICE!My country is an inscription written on a tree in Sarajevo: HELLO! I’M STILL ALIVE!

SCENE 30

DORRA writes a letter.

DORRA: Dear Kate,I don’t really know what I’m going to do now. I’ve filed applications for emigration at the Canadian, Australian and South African embassies.I don’t want to go to America.My baby is fine. He weighs 13 pounds now.When you last called, you wanted to know the precise moment at which I decided to keep him.I’ll tell you.One day, just after you left, I went for a walk by the lake. As I walked, I looked at the trees and the water… All of a sudden, a notice nailed to a tree caught my eye. I went to take a closer look, and this is what I read:

WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT THIS TREE IS DEAD. IT WILL BE CUT DOWN WEEK COMMENCING APRIL 2ND. IN ITS PLACE, AND FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF ALL VISITORS TO THIS PARK, WE WILL BE PLANTING A SAPLING.

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Signed: THE DEPARTMENT OF PARKS & GARDENS.

I read this once, then again, then several times more. And that’s when I decided to keep my baby.

Ljubim-te,Dorra.

THE END

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Author's Note:This play was written in residence at La Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon in November and December of 1996. This play, inspired by the Bosnian crisis, remains a work of fiction. The author has nonetheless made use of some eye-witness reports (for example "Chronique des oubliés", Edition La Digitale, France, 1994, by Velibor Čolić) both for the description of the uncovering of mass graves in Scene 26 and the "image" of Dorra's country in scene 29, because, with horrors like these, reality beggars the imagination.

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Address: 10, rue Watteau 75013 Paris FRANCE Tel. Fax. 33 - (0)1 47 07 31 89Mobile. 33 – (0)6 19 66 05 98 E-Mail: [email protected]

Matéi VISNIEC

- playwright, poet and journalist, born 29 January 1956 in Romania, now settled in Paris, working as a journalist at Radio France Internationale.

In Romania he studied history and philosophy before starting writing for the theatre in 1977. During the following ten years he wrote some 20 plays, but all of them were banned by the Romanian censors. In September 1987 he was invited to France by a literary foundation, and he asked for political asylum. Since then he has been writing mostly in French, and he has received French nationality.

After the fall of communism in Romania, in December 1989, Matei Visniec became one of the most performed playwrights in the country, with more then 30 plays put on in Bucharest and other towns. In October 1996 the National Theatre of Timisoara organised a "Matei Visniec Festival" with 12 companies presenting his plays.

His international audience as a playwright started in 1992, with the play "Horses at the Windows" performed in France, and "Clown wanted" at the BONNER BIENNALE. Since then, Matei Visniec has had more then 20 plays performed in France (Théâtre Guichet Montparnasse, Studio des Champs-Elysées, Théâtre du Rond-Point de Champs Elysées - Paris, Théâtre de l'Utopie - La Rochelle, Compagnie Pli Urgent - Lyon, Théâtre Le Jodel - Avignon, Théâtre de Lenche and Théâtre de la Minoterie - Marseille, Compagnie Nice-Théâtre Vivant - Nice, etc.).

- OLD CLOWN WANTED was performed in: France, Germany, United States, Denmark, Austria, Poland, Russia, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Brazil, Romania, Moldavia.- DECOMPOSED THEATRE, performed in: Canada, France, Belgium, Romania, Moldavia. - THE SPECTATOR SENTENCED TO DEATH, performed in: France, Holland, Romania.- POCKETS FULL OF BREAD, performed in: France, Germany, Morocco, Romania.- THE STORY OF PANDA BEARS TOLD BY A SAXOPHONIST WITH A GIRLFRIEND IN FRANKFURT, performed in: France, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Island, Hungary, Romania, Moldavia- THREE NIGHTS WITH MADOX, performed in: France, Romania, Hungary.- HORSES AT THE WINDOW, performed in: France, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Russia.- WOMAN AS BATTLEFIELD, performed in: France, Germany, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, Romania.- HOW TO EXPLAIN THE HISTORY OF COMMUNISM TO MENTAL PATIENTS: United States, France, Moldavia.

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AWARDS

2002 - National Drama Award of the Romanian Ministry of Culture2002 and 1999 - Drama Award of the Romanian Union of Writers1998 - Drama Award of the Academy of Romania1995 and 1996 - Award Avignon-off at the Avignon Theatrical Festival1994 - Award of The French Society of Authors and Composers, for the play THE STORY OF THE PANDA BEARS TOLD BY A SAXOPHONEPLAYER WITH A GIRLFRIEND IN FRANKFORT1991 - Award of The Romanian Theatrical Society for CLOWN WANTED, the best play of the year in 1991 in Romania

Plays published in France by "Les Editions L’Harmattan", "Les Editions Crater" et "Les Editions Actes Sud Papiers", in Belgium by "Les Editions Lansman", in Romania by "Cartea Romaneasca" and "Expansion Armonia", in Germany by "Editions Palais Jalta", in Hungary by "DUNA pART", in Poland by the theatrical review "Dialog", in Bulgaria by the theatrical review "Panorama"

Plays by Matéi Visniec available in English

- Old Clown wanted- Horses at the Window- Pockets full of Bread- Three Nights with Madox- The Story of Pandas told by a Saxophonist with a Girlfriend in Frankfurt- The Body of a Woman as a Battlefield in the Bosnian War- How to explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients- The Chekhov Machine- The King, the Rat and the King's Fool

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