Characters
Son
Father
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, first president of the Soviet Union
Gorbachev, last president of the Soviet Union
First Child
Second Child
Mircea Snegur, first president of the Republic of Moldova
Petru Lucinschi, second president of the Republic of Moldova
Vladimir Voronin, third president of the Republic of Moldova
Igor Smirnov, a self-installed president of a part of Moldova, Transnistria
Ion Iliescu, a now retired former president of Romania
George W. Bush, a president of the United States
Mailman
The presidents can all be played by the same actor. The actor will wear their masks, made by Alexandru Vakulovski. They should be made of cardboard and should have the presidents’ basic features. Although the presidents say various things which might seem made up, generally the words are based on fragments of real speeches. Son, First Child, and Second Child should be played by children, or else by adults but with children’s gestures and clothes. Father should be played by an older child.
Scene 1
Son: In the beginning the Soviet Union collapsed. I believed in it so much that when this happened I didn’t know what to do and what to believe in any more. The freedom I was so proud of turned out to be slavery, and communism just a pretty fairy tale with dreams of terror when night fell. The Soviet people are a failed clone of their creators who were running a temperature.
Enter Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
Lenin: Fuck you, blea.1 The rotten bourgeoisie will make slaves of your children and kill them. You will suck their cocks and kiss their asses while they drink your blood. Didn’t you like me carting you off to Siberia? Now you’re picking strawberries. You didn’t like me shooting all those fucking capitalist intellectuals that you’re wiping your asses with now. There were just a few remaining steps to turn the idea into reality—but this is what you deserve—a heap of shit.
Son: Gorbachev, a really shitty president, came along and demolished everything, and got the Nobel Prize for it as well. Betrayal has replaced honor and it pays well.
Enter Gorbachev
Gorbachev: Comrades, it’s really just all about restructuring. Perestroika . . .
Someone hits him with a stone or throws an egg at his head and Gorbachev withdraws.
Son: The Republic of Moldova became sovereign and independent. The comrades quickly split into various camps full of shit: neocommunists and nationalists, or to be more precise—neo-Nazis. The same comrades moved around from one camp to another: Snegur, Lucinschi, Voronin.
Everything turned sour. On the horizon appeared the new world of unrestrained capitalism, just a few steps away.
Scene 2
Enter Mircea Snegur, first president of the Republic of Moldova.
Mircea Snegur: I am Mircea Ivanovich Snegur and I am a bull. In fact I was president of the Republic of Moldova. But that doesn’t matter. I’m an agronomist and I prefer being among pigs and cattle. That’s why I was unhappy both in the Agrarian Party and with the Democrats and all the other ones—I can’t remember what they were called, but it doesn’t matter anyway.
When I was president of the country—not of a collective farm—I went to war against Transnistria. Transnistria is still in Moldova, but as president of a collective farm you have to slaughter a pig or a cow or do a bit of castrating . . . and as a respectable president of a country you have to start a fucking war. The fools were out there shooting each other, and me and Smirnov, not Smirnoff vodka, blea, I mean the president of Transnistria, Igor blea, we used to tell each other jokes on the phone.
It’s fucking great being president, you fuck a cow, you butcher a pig. You tell lies every day and get applauded for it. You know, all the cattle cried when I didn’t get re-elected. They wanted me to keep screwing them.
Instead my friend—Petica Lucinschi was elected. We still sometimes meet up for a shashlik or a vodka and talk about cattle. And we keep telling each other, “What a bull you were! Man you were such a bull!”
The war is over, sort of. We won and then occupied Bendery—a town which is also part of my country. But then I got a phone call from the Russians. They told me to get my fucking troops out of there and they would send the 14th Army and to hell with our Moldova. What the fuck was I supposed to do? I told my bulls to withdraw. They were pissed off but they did withdraw.
Ladies and gentlemen, comrades, I am Mircea Snegur, the first president of the Republic of Moldova, I am a bull and the war I began is not yet over.
Scene 3
Room of an apartment. Father is reading. Son’s voice is heard offstage.
Son: Mom!
Father looks around helplessly, scratches himself, and carries on reading.
Son: Mom, where’s my T-shirt with the cat on it? Or the one with the woman and the moon.
Father: Look under the chair.
Father wipes his glasses and runs his fingers through his hair. Son enters.
Son: Any sign?
Father: No.
Father picks up a bottle of vodka and drinks.
Son: I think I’ll have some milk, too and a sandwich.
Son pours some vodka into a glass and lights a cigarette. Father rips the book in two and throws it on the floor. He takes the bottle of vodka and drinks. He stamps on his glasses.
Knocking at the door. Son opens it.
Son: Mom!
Enter Mircea Snegur dressed as a mailman.
Mircea Snegur: There’s a letter for you.
Father grabs him by the collar and slams him down into a chair.
Father: You brought it so you read it.
Mircea Snegur: Comrades, good people, but I am just a simple mailman . . .
Father: Tell that to your fucking mother. Read, you son of a bitch.
Mircea Snegur opens the letter and reads. His voice is different, like a woman’s.
Mircea Snegur: My dear family, I arrived here last week, but have just now found a job. It’s not so bad. They nearly got me at customs. They shouted out my name from the passport and I looked around to see who it was. I’d forgotten I was crossing the border with a false passport and another name. But I quickly realized and they let me through.
I’ve just come back from Liuba’s, our neighbor. She’s really nice and has found me a lady for me to look after. The lady is about eighty and paralyzed. She doesn’t talk much, in fact she doesn’t talk at all. But I tell her everything and she cries. When she cries it means she’s wet herself or shit her pants so I have to clean her up. I wipe her and change her clothes. Actually it’s not so difficult, except that she cries all the time and I have to keep the windows open.
I get paid in two weeks and I’ll send you the money so you can start to pay off your debts. I’ll have to stay here for a few months to pay everything off.
What are you all up to? I really miss you and my heart stands still when I think I can’t do anything to get to see you.
Love and kisses. Take care,
Mom
Father looks at the mailman furiously.
Father: So we’re running a post office now, are we?
Everyone freezes and remains still. Enter Vladimir Ilich Lenin.
Lenin (to the audience): Hi there comrades. Why are you looking so astonished? Did you think you’d seen the last of me? You’ll never escape from me.
I stayed alive in your hearts. Every one of your dead cells has been replaced with me. The revolution smolders every second in the tortured souls of the peasants, the proletariat, the teachers who have forgotten what it is to be paid, and in the souls of the doctors drowning in formalin.
Are you trying to tell me you’re not peasants? What are you then, extraterrestrials? So who’s your father, who’s your grandad? You’re a fucking peasant! You’ve all become bourgeois, and make fun of peasants now, eh?
That’s why the revolution exists. It’s a question of prophylactics. We eliminate nine out of ten deadweights. The tenth gets sent straight to Siberia. Let the rotten bourgeoisie go to hell, comrades. Shove their heads up their asses and bring on the firing squad. They’re just a bunch of idiot peasants anyway. The whole lot should be wiped off the face of the earth. Shot, strangled, fucked with a knife to their throats.
Long live the Revolution!
Scene 4
Enter Petru Lucinschi, second president of the Republic of Moldova.
Lucinschi: Hello there, comrades. I am Piotr Kiril’ci Lucinschi, president of the Republic of Moldova. I was president after my bull of a neighbor old Mircea Snegur. Also known as Snegur-chops. I still get called Petica the fucker. I’m a regular guy too. But I was first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan. I’m part of the old system, not a lousy agronomist like old Mircea.
Those Kazakhs, small people with narrow eyes, a bunch of jerks. I got used to being in charge and I said to myself: why shouldn’t I be president of the Republic of Moldova as well? It’d be a piece of cake.
I came with the guys from Moscow, with their ugly mugs stuffed with cabbage, I rustled up a few posters, I bought the election observers and all their folks, I gave the bulls a bag of sugar each, some bread and some rice, and, blea, I won. It was really easy by Jove.
Then I realized how much more I could extract from this country. I paid my debts, I ensured my future and my grandchildren’s and really screwed the country over. It was great. Let Voronin be president too, if he wants to!
I’m glad the business I started is still going well in Moldova. One Moldovan girl for one sheep! Tell a Moldovan girl you’re taking her to Spain, Germany, or Italy, roll her up in a blanket, stick her in the luggage and she wakes up in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, or Uzbekistan. That’s where the deal is made. If she’s any good she gets swapped for a camel, and if she’s only so-so you get a sheep. Sometimes one of them manages to escape and tell her story. Practically every week there’s an interview complete with evidence. Trouble is the papers are bored with the subject and have stopped paying much attention.
It’s great to see a tradition which started in your time continuing to be profitable and go from strength to strength. It means I wasn’t president in vain.
Blea, I’m going now.
Scene 5
A number of children are standing in a line. They are acting like grown-ups. Among them is the Son. Most of them are in a state of agitation, some have papers under their arms.
First Child: You’ve put your papers down already?
Son: Yes.
First Child: Where do you want to go?
Son: I don’t know for sure. Probably to my mom in Germany.
First Child: And how many years have you been waiting for Romanian citizenship?
Son: Three.
First Child: Didn’t you try with a visa and a Moldovan passport?
Son: No. I tried to get a visa to go to a football match—they turned me down. I tried to go there on a trip—nothing doing there either. I would have better off being born black.
First Child (laughs): Yeah, because of positive discrimination.
Son: I was cool. And I could travel. But we’re stuck in this shitty ghetto twice over. First in the ghetto of the postcommunist Eastern Bloc, with everyone afraid of us and on their guard, then we end up in the Romanian ghetto and are treated like we’re Romania’s blacks. Fuck Romanian citizenship—I’m going to get myself a passport and get the hell out of here.
First Child: And fuck the West with their democracy and capitalism. First Stalin caged us in with barbed wire to keep us in the Soviet Union, now they fucking won’t let us into their Europe. I just don’t understand.
Son: We’ll show them.
First Child: Do you really think so?
Son: Yes, in a few years they’ll have a guilty conscience and all sorts of complexes. We’ll be their blacks and get affirmative action. Then we’ll screw them all over.
Second Child approaches.
Second Child: Hey guys, do you want to sell me your place in line?
First Child: How much are you offering?
Second Child: 200 euros.
First Child: That’s not much.
Second Child: 350.
First Child: OK.
Second Child takes out 300 euros and gives it to him. First Child goes to one side and whispers in the Son’s ear.
First Child: Listen, let’s get together this evening for a smoke.
Son: Ok, I’ll call you.
First Child: So long. I’m leaving but I’m in no hurry to go anywhere.
Enter Ion Iliescu, former president of Romania. He speaks to the children but nobody pays any attention to him.
Iliescu: What are looking for here, you fools? You donkeys. I shafted Ceauşescu by going to school in Moscow—the school of life I mean, not the other sort—no I never managed to learn English. To hell with that sort of school. Mind you, this sailor president Băsescu doesn’t know any English either. But him and me we understand each other. He picked up English when he was a ship’s captain. He would speak it to the porters and tourists who didn’t even speak English themselves.
Do you seriously think we don’t have anything better to do? That we really need Moldova? And what would we do with it? You don’t belong to anybody. Not to us, and not to them. Why don’t you go on home, why hang around? Haven’t you realized that an empty chair can get Romanian citizenship more easily than a Romanian from Moldova? Is there something wrong with you that you can’t see?
I’ll call on the miners to clean up on you guys in Romania. We’ll give you a good beating with our billy clubs. Have you got Kalashnikovs or grenades? Do you think Putin will stop me from chucking you over the border? He won’t you know, believe me. Me and him are buddies.
Go back home! We don’t need you.
Second Child approaches Ion Iliescu.
Second Child: Listen, here’s 300 dollars to get me into that office.
Iliescu: Now that’s a different matter altogether, comrade. Let’s go. Have you got any vodka?
Iliescu wants to escape from the crowd but everyone comes towards him and spits. He stops.
Scene 6
Enter Vladimir Voronin, third president of the Republic of Moldova.
Voronin: My name is Vladimir Nikolaevich Voronin. I’m a general in the KGB and I’m also president of the Republic of Moldova. Blea, I like tradition. I also like cognac, wine, vodka, and shashlik. Because the Communist Party has been outlawed, like in the days of good old Vladimir Ilich, I set up the Communists Party—note the plural. Ok, so I’m a bit of a wheeler-dealer, and this little ruse shafted them and they can’t do anything about it. I even got to be president of the Republic. The KGB might have been an interesting option, but times change and we have to try out some new strategies and new techniques to train and manipulate that bunch of blockheads, yeah, fuck it.
OK, so sometimes I fuck up, dammit, but I’m not any dumber than little Mircea and Petica. I’m a bigger bastard than them. I get into all these fights with the local Nazis but come the elections they vote for me and I end up president. That’s because we come from the same pile of shit. Those guys are just like me. They like the KGB and they like fucking with me. The masses are even easier to keep down. You cheapen them with a bit of cash for bread and they kiss my ass and make me a fucking national hero.
I have this country wrapped around my little finger. The people love me. They really need me. I gave up a few square miles of the Republic of Moldova to the Ukraine just like that—free of charge, I bet nobody had thought of that. I’m proud of it. Instead of fighting someone or getting it in the neck and being screwed, it’s better to give things away, so I don’t make any fucking trouble for myself like that stupid bull Snegur. I’m the biggest boy on the block.
Sure, sometimes Smirnov still pulls one on me, that fag of a president of Transnistria. I was born there in Transnistria. My mother stayed there. When I try to go and see her, Smirnov doesn’t let me. He’s a KGB general too, fuck him. I promised the Moldovans I’d sort out the Transnistria issue. But then if I’m going to sort out this Transnistria crap, what else could I do? Nothing. So I’ll keep on trying, but I won’t overdo it. Maybe I’ll be president for life, like in the good old days, like Lenin and Stalin.
I’ve already got them all to love me. They love me so much. Wherever you go, you’ll see my portraits—in schools, offices, town halls, cinemas, police stations, military barracks, everywhere. It is time that I started to build monuments to myself. I have erected a monument to myself not built by hands. That’s a line of poetry translated from Pushkin—if you get my drift.
I’m a communist, but I want Moldova to join the EU. So we can piss on those capitalist assholes. I have to think of my future and my family. As grandpa Lenin used to say—the family is the basic unit of society. Anyhow, like I already said before becoming president, the Moldovan tricolor flag is a Nazi flag. It’s the same with the Romanians. We don’t need the Romanian flag. The one back in Soviet times was just fine, with the red and the green. Sorry to say this, but the masses will forgive me and they will love me even more for my sincerity. Everything can be forgiven, absolutely everything, blea. Fuck you all. Do excuse me.
Scene 7
Son and First Child in a room smoking a joint.
Son (after inhaling on the joint): Listen, maybe I’ll go to America for a few years.
First Child: Yeah, America.
Son: Yeah, I hear it’s really great.
First Child: Yeah.
Son: Some of my buddies were there last summer and they were saying you don’t have to do much work—you just sell Coke and hot dogs and can do whatever you like.
First Child: Yeah, great. America, fucking hell man.
Son: And after selling whatever for a few hours you can have fun any way you want.
First Child: Ganja man, yeah.
Son: Yeah, ganja till you’re high as a kite. Everyone smokes. Everyone’s stoned. Everyone’s got red eyes and they’re all happy.
First Child: Yeah, America’s cool.
Son: At least in those summer camps.
First Child: Yeah, the camps.
George W. Bush enters from the back wearing a cowboy hat and carrying an automatic pistol. He looks at them, rolls a joint.
Son: Even their moron of a president admitted to smoking grass. During the election campaign.
First Child: Smoking grass during the elections? That is so cool, man.
Son: No, blea. During the election campaign he admitted that he’d smoked grass when he was a student.
First Child: I think he was really proud of that. Bush, fuck Bush.
Son: These friends of mine told me they never went to sleep. They smoked nonstop and had fun. And they came back with loads of money.
First Child: And what did they do with it all?
Son: What do you think, they came back to Chişinău. What else should they do? Get arrested?
First Child: I was referring to the money, blea.
Son: They blew it all here, of course.
First Child: And they just keep going.
Son: Yeah, they want to go back this summer. Maybe I’ll join them.
First Child: I want to come along too.
Son: Come on, let’s get going.
George W. Bush lights the joint. He aims his automatic at the Son and First Child and sprays them with bullets. He quietly smokes his joint, fans himself with his hat, and clears his throat.
George W. Bush: I’m George W. Bush, president of the USA for life. I’ve had it up to here with the blacks. Wherever you look, fucking niggers. I reckon they’re the reason Americans are so stressed out. The American people need to take lots of pills. For multiple personality, anxiety, mental confusion, nausea, obesity, anorexia, bulimia, Tourette’s syndrome, manic depression, Down syndrome
America is a cancer. It needs an operation. The kids are really aggressive thanks to Manson. Thanks to Marilyn Monroe and Robert de Niro. Thanks to Mickey Mouse. My wife wears panties with Tom and Jerry on them. What else can I say about those niggers? Eminem takes my breath away—he’s given me asthma. No wonder I have to light up a joint every now and then. Those motherfucking niggers. And I only want some peace and quiet. I want peace in Baghdad, I want peace in Kabul. But these stressed-out kids won’t let me. Instead of doing their homework, they play around with bombs. I should blow them all away. Peace to America! Peace to the whole world!
Ladies and Gentlemen. Guess what? I’m not George Bush at all, I’m really Jesus Christ.
Scene 8
Enter Igor Smirnov, president of Transnistria.
Smirnov: I’m Smirnov. I’m president of Transnistria and I’m also a moron, and a much bigger one than all those asshole presidents of Moldova. They come and go but I stay. To make things work out, why become president of a country that already exists? It’s crazy. Anyone can come along and grab power. Much better to do like me—make your own country. You’ll always find herds of beasts to support you. You’ll find frustrated retirees, you’ll find loners, all the social outcasts, who’ll see you as a kind of messiah, or as a mother and father figure, and if you try and do something for yourself and not for them, blea.
I brought the dregs of the Soviet Union into Transninstria and proclaimed myself president. In came retired officers, all the old whores of the USSR. In came a load of Cossack drunks, who would kill their mothers for some vodka and rape the rest of the family. And they all fought on my behalf. When it looked like everything was going to collapse, that the vodka was going to run out, the Russians came and helped out. I said I was one of their own and they’re used to being on the winning side. So they brought the Moldovans back in. And Romania could help them too, except that Romania doesn’t want to get involved, as they still haven’t sorted out the mess created by Ceauşescu and all the other shit. They’re waiting for someone to open their eyes, screw them over and brainwash them.
Now I do what I want. I’m really wealthy, all the traffic from Eastern Europe passes through Transnistria—cigarettes, alcohol, arms, and drugs. I’ve got a football team too which, big joke, ends up champion of Moldova. And last year they were the champions of the Commonwealth of Independent States, blea. In other words, they won the championship of the former Soviet Republics! Well, they have to play someone. In exchange I won’t let Voronin go and see his mother. In exchange I’ve banned the use of Romanian here. I mean, the stupid Romanians in Moldova don’t even call the Romanian language Romanian, yet they call it the official language of the country.
I’ve closed their schools and destroyed everything. I’ll destroy them as well. Because I can do whatever I want. And nobody can stop me. Not the communists, nor the capitalists.
At night I have dreams. I have really good dreams, like during the war. I see the Dniester River flowing with blood. I’m standing there with a fishing rod. And shooting all the time. I take out a mother or two and a kid or two tied to a post, shoot an eye out, or a limb or two, or the odd head. I grab human flesh and especially aim for the eye.
I make a big cauldron of soup. I eat and grow. I’m really big already. I only get depressed when I wake up and see the waters of the Dniester are clear again and just occasionally do I get the odd scalp from the olden days. My patience is running out. I must do something. I’m tired of torturing people as a reminder of the good old days.
I want death, lots of death and blood. Oh, if only I could kill you all.
Scene 9
Father and Son are at a table. Father is drunk. Son has a black eye.
Father: What happened to you?
Son: Nothing.
Father: What do you mean nothing, you oaf, with your face looking like that?
Son: Nothing, some guys stopped me in the street and asked for a cigarette . . .
Father: And you gave them one?
Son: I did, then they asked me what time it was.
Father: And you told them?
Son: I did, then they told me not to wear the Manson T-shirt, dragged me along for a bit then took my jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt. That’s all there is to it.
Father: My god you’re stupid. Now you’ll have to go around stark damn naked. I’m broke.
Son: Mom’ll have to send us some money.
Father: Oh yeah, your mummy.
Someone knocks at the door.
Father: Go and open the door, go on, didn’t you hear?
Son gets up and opens the door. Enter Voronin with a bag of mail.
Voronin: Good evening. There’s a letter for you. Here you are.
Voronin looks in the bag and takes out a crumpled letter stuck together with Scotch tape.
Voronin (smiling): It’s from Germany.
Voronin lays out the letter for Father and tries to withdraw but Father stares at him without making any move.
Father: Sit down.
Voronin (stammering): Sir, I’m at work, I’ve still got a lot of walking to do . . . I’d be happy to stay but I can’t, sorry, but I have to go . . .
Father: Sit down motherfucker, you and your whole fucking bag of mail.
Voronin, intimidated, sits down.
Father: Why is this letter all crumpled—have you been reading it you fat ox?
Voronin: How could you think that I would read it? Never!
Father: So what did you do with it? Did you stick it up your ass and then seal it with Scotch tape?
Voronin: How would I stick it up my ass, comrade?
Father looks at him bored.
Father: Read.
Voronin: I can’t.
Father: Oh yes you can.
Father pours a glass of vodka. Voronin takes the glass and downs it in one gulp.
Voronin: There’s a lot here, blea.
Father: Stop fucking about like you usually do, read!
Voronin starts reading with a stammer, then his voice changes into a woman’s.
Voronin: My dear family,
Things are going really well for me. I’ve stopped cleaning old grannies’ backsides for free. Now I’ve started doing it for money. I realized the most important thing is to do something and be paid for it. I hadn’t realized this before. Then I worked for pleasure, with or without being paid. Now there’s no time for pleasure. There’s just work and money. Money cleans up everything and doesn’t smell.
I’m sorry but I have something to tell you. I’m never coming back home again. Don’t want to go through it all over again. Because I know that this is how it will be.
Dear husband, please remarry, start another family. There’s no longer any hope for us together. Don’t think I don’t like you any longer, on the contrary. But too much dirt has piled up, I know, which neither of us can get out of. We’re up to our necks in dirt.
I want you to know that I met a man. It’s very difficult being a foreign woman here. He’s not great but I have to say he’s helped me and helps me a lot. If it’s any consolation—I’m pregnant and I’m going to sell the baby to a rich family. They’ve given us food and shelter. I have to send you more money so you can manage as well.
You’ll no doubt be furious with me and you have every right to be so, but please understand that I really miss you and that I love you.
Please forgive me, it’s not your fault in any way, but neither was it through any fault of mine that I ended up here.
Mom
Father and Son burst out laughing. Voronin looks at them briefly and then laughs as well.
Scene 10
Father is sleeping. He is snoring. He looks either tired or drunk. The room is dirty and untidy. The masks of the presidents are on the walls. Son is packing his bags. He takes off his clothes, looks at them, sticks them in his backpack, then takes them out again, then repeats these actions. He is smoking and drinking vodka.
Son: This is how it all ends. When I started to feel free, everyone suddenly jumped up to shut my mouth.
I believed in the freedom that was to come. It was so wonderful to believe that before you were a vegetable, a tomato, or a cucumber. And that everything would change.
It was really hard for me, because I believed in Lenin. He was the man who sacrificed himself for me, for the children whose blood was sucked by the stinking bourgeoisie. Telling them stories about God. Lenin said: what’s all this crap about God? What a load of bullshit, blea! God is a stupid invention to keep people in check. Lenin sent all the priests to Siberia. Lenin sent all the fucking intellectuals to Siberia. There was so much mold growing from the sweat of those brutish peasants that Stalin had to come along.
The truth only exists here, only here in the Soviet Union. Because this is where the sun rises. People worked and were paid properly. There were no beggars, no cripples, no lunatics. Everyone was happy to be part of the great Soviet people. It’s true, it wasn’t too easy to cross the border into the West, but not so many people wanted to anyway. Bombs, on the other hand, could cross without any problem. The paradise of the Soviet Union was the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. They used to talk of Moldova basking in the sun, blea.
Then the USSR went down the tubes. They said Lenin was a fucking criminal, that he only wanted evil things, and that actually capitalism is good. Capitalists are human beings too who don’t go around exploiting women and children. They said God exists. It was very hard, but in the end I believed. The ruble lost in value, then came the coupons. They lost their value too and disappeared. Then along came the Moldovan leu—brother to the Romanian leu. I learned that we were actually Romanians, not Moldovans. How come you only find out what your nationality is when you’re fifteen? Eh? Very nice I’m sure. Palpitations, breathing problems, alcohol, overheating blood, and a long face. Then you calm down and believe in something else.
You believe in America and you believe in the West. It’s the other side of the coin. Because you started to believe, you want to see. You grow, you wait, you make an effort. You find out it’s not so easy. Because they’re afraid of bombs. How will we be received? I might have a grenade in my mouth, a Kalashnikov on my shoulder, and a machine gun on my head. The capitalists are scared of bombs.
Because Romanians, that’s us, actually it’s them, I mean the Romanians over in Romania, not in Moldova, are starting to be able to move around more easily, you want to get back the citizenship you once had. You get put on hold, you have to bribe someone—they look at you like you’re just trash because they’ve got this fucking citizenship but you don’t. At first they let you into their country, which is yours too—with an ID card. Then with a passport. Then they don’t allow you to stay more than three months at a time. If you insist and continue to believe, you eventually get your citizenship papers. You end up a national of your own country. For what? So you can go from one ghetto to another and you want to escape from there too. But where to? To pick strawberries or clean out shithouses. Because the overweight and retarded westerners think they’ve achieved something, just because they were born there, all fat and stupid.
I don’t want anything else. This is my Romanian passport.
Son takes his Romanian passport out of his pocket, leafs through it, tears it up, and throws it away.
Son: In fact we really are different. You only respect us when you’re scared. And I believed in your stories, but no more, that’s all over. What have you given us? Poverty, hate, dirt, porn films, hot dogs, and French fries. Prostitution, human trafficking, trafficking in arms and drugs. Religion. That’s about it. Hell is our destination, that’s where it’s all leading.
Father wakes up and looks at Son.
Father: Who are you talking to?
Son: With mom’s son who is not my brother.
Father: Where are you off to?
Son: To the mausoleum. To Moscow.
Son leaves the room.
Curtain.
[Note]
1. The word blea derives from the Russian word for whore and was used as a derogoratory term for the Tsar. Today it is used as a slang interjection, such as “man,” “yeah,” “shit.”
(traducerea piesei în germană, aici) |
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