a Cabaret
By David Turkel
With Performances by Elena Passarello
From Fall 2018
I. Eva Braun Rides a Train On the train there was a man with a hair-lip Outside to my left a stone wall was running the length of the window For what seemed an impossibly long time How many stones must have been in it? It was a mild day A little overcast The man with the hair-lip was writing in a small leather-bound book In a tight very careful script And occasionally he would pause to lick the tip of his pencil Why do people do this I don’t know I’ve never found it necessary to lick the tip of a pencil He glanced out the window and I wondered if he was writing a poem There’s not anything normal about this I mean these thoughts for me Outside the stone wall kept going and going It was like we were going in a circle And the man with the hair-lip I felt for a second must be thinking this too That’s when a stand of trees just beyond the wall came into our view Trees black with leaves Darkening our window for a second And in that second I was suddenly aware The man could see me there in the reflection Staring not out the window But at him I looked down too quickly And I felt my face flush And suddenly a host of things were there in the train with us A whole host of things Visible only to me I was caught at a store with a fistful of candy When I was a girl The store owner held me tight by the wrist Until I opened my hand He looked at me like I was perhaps the worst person who had ever lived And also like he wanted me to say something Something that would I don’t know Release him somehow From what I don’t know He made me think for a second That stealing candy was the worst thing anyone had ever done My mother was there At the front of the store by the window Because of the light The natural light that’s so important to see true color And she was holding a skein of yellow organza Standing there with the store owner’s wife Who was taking a corner And the two of them appeared to be catching the sunlight The way fishermen would catch fish Using a net They were all there in the train Because of the heat rising to my face The heat of getting caught at something I looked up and the man had returned to his writing And that’s when I noticed it It wasn’t until then that I saw He had a hair-lip Before that it had seemed like a shadow And when he turned to the window I remember thinking that there was something about him like a bird Because his hair-lip had given him a hawk’s expression As if he would take flight straight through the window And into those dark trees that were now far behind us Though the wall outside the window kept going and going It was made of light colored stones Some almost white The things men do I remember thinking And I wondered if perhaps that was why I thought he’d been writing poetry? Because I’d noticed something amiss Something I couldn’t place I say he had a hair-lip But I want to be clear I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mouth so sensual On a man On a woman it’s not so strange She wears lipstick they say to make you picture the insides of her His lip worked this way in its defect The effect of it was to draw me into his mouth I tried to picture his face without it It’s rare that I would ever stare at a stranger like this What am I doing? What am I doing? I put my hands in my lap and stared down into them Like I was pouring something A spirit of some kind Out of my face and into my open palms Watching it pool there invisibly But still viscous somehow Thick as time Instantly there were babies crying and being shushed The clanking and creaking train noise beneath us A dozen whispered conversations The sounds of a train A train I was on There was nothing peculiar about any of this Except that these sounds had not been there a moment ago And I hadn’t noticed their absence Have you ever thought you were cracking up? Have you ever thought I have to remind myself to breathe now I can’t forget to breathe whatever I do I was holding this spirit in the palms of my hands in my lap Like it was the antidote for a poison I had swallowed But it was very heavy or I was too weak already from the poison to lift it to my lips Or like I was holding my own eyes that had fallen out of my face And I needed to carry them carefully to a doctor Only it wasn’t a doctor I needed It was him I knew that The only one that could put my eyes back in And I knew several other things in quick succession I knew when I raised my head there wouldn’t be anyone there in front of me And in spite of the fact that I knew this I knew that I would scream at the empty seat just the same I knew exactly how it would sound though I’d never heard that sound before The sound of my own screams I knew that the wall outside the window was gone Though it was night now Had been night for a while yes And I wouldn’t be able to see anything out there when I looked I could tell we had travelled beyond it Were cut free now Worst of all I knew what he had been writing There in his book Knew it as if it were written in flames In the cave of my own memories Feeding on them like anthracite Not a poem No Unless you think that a poem is a kind of curse? Unless you think the soul of Man A kind of poetry? V. Eva Braun Sings a Cabaret Number It’s not It never was The little things O no It’s all who you know It’s all who you know Don’t get me wrong Looks count for something It stings When they go It’s all who you know It’s all who you know That’s all it is That’s showbiz It’s who says “Hello” It’s all who you know All— The way to the banks Of the Red Sea Moses told the Pharaoh … It’s all who you know It’s all who you know It’s all— … Who You Know … Thank you darlings Thank you I’ll be here all week… VIII. Eva Braun, Dream Analyst Please darling Don’t tell me your dreams Really There’s nothing worse But your nightmares? Now those I’ll take For years I dreamed of a certain room At the end of a long hall With a floor and walls of unpainted plywood A small wooden table and chairs And a low bed with a simple metal frame The kind you’d find in rows in an orphanage A room of crimes What was a little girl doing With such a place as this Crouching in her mind? IX. Wild Nights at the Cabaret Continue You’ve got me dead to rights! I should have killed the lights Drawn the blinds Worn a mask I’ve no alibi since you ask It was my favorite knife! I must admit it’s queer I wear it on my thigh Way up here How did it wind up there? Suspicious minds abound… Same as everywhere In every two-bit town The streets that I go down The whispers and the stares (a girl can’t get a break!) O I confess: I took the cake! I took the cake! For Heaven’s sake I took it right off of your plate! It tasted great! The cake you baked I ate it naked And dropped crumbs on my milkshake It was a dream for me O it was heavenly! I’m so excited And delighted by my crime But what’s obscene to me Is how you brazenly Act so shocked and offended every time I’ll make it simple For your sake: You make them & I take them Lit-tle E-va Al-ways Takes the CAKE!XXII. Eva Braun Gets Creative One day for fun After I had taken my bath I sat on the rim of the tub With a razor I had just purchased a new swimsuit A two piece! And the devil took my hand As I contoured Bavaria (I call her) Can you tell where this is going? A few careful strokes A little shoe polish And Viola! O you should have seen Woolfie’s face! And you would have too you know? For there Beneath my skirt Was his mustache! XXIII. Mushroom Season O my head today! I feel like I have slept for a thousand years This morning I locked myself out of the house Can you believe? Such a dingbat! And I couldn’t get anyone to let me back in I was naked you know What was I thinking? I circled the house looking into every window Where had they all gone? Servants are like cats Sometimes I think they have another life A car was coming up the drive And I escaped to the woods It’s mushroom season here It gives the world such a flavor The Dark Life All the leaves coming down And they have never been so beautiful The creatures all preparing for the change My first kiss was in mushroom season She was a friend We were only playing Until we weren’t And the air was different there Closer to the ground It was thick Full of the Dark Life Insects hidden beneath the wet leaves Moss on the bark And the mushrooms Like the mark of Death itself Or like its laughter bursting Rootless Fully formed Suddenly everywhere What was it like to touch tongues? I think that was the question we asked that day Once the dog’s tongue got into my mouth And I thought it tingled with a dull electricity But hers My friend’s Was just soft Softer than mine I think Smaller This is the way grownups kiss I told her And she didn’t believe me (ha) It wasn’t like it is now You didn’t see such displays in the movies Or anywhere else for that matter But once after the first war A boy A man I suppose he would have been then Fresh from the front Walked up our street in his uniform With such determination It was impossible to take your eyes off him And the girl who flung herself from her house Into his arms Opened her whole mouth to him It was a scandal! Her father had to throw a pot The way you would to break up a cat fight But for me the secret was out The flush of love starts here in the mouth I’ll show you I told my her You be the girl… Now in mushroom season I think of her My first seduction! There was something there you know The change in our breath The way it became almost milky Redoubled somehow As churned milk begins to thicken That felt echoed by the forest Thick with the Dark Life As if Death were caressing the earth Probing her with its tongue Pulling forth the thickened milk of her breath We sank into the leaves And I said Feel And I took her hands And placed one on my chest And the other over her own heart They were pounding you know? In exactly the same rhythm It was I thought our rhythm But also the rhythm of the forest Of mushroom season and of the Dark Life As if it were pulsing through us Sweeping us up And it did too you know It swept us up and it blew us Not together But away But today I thought there was a remnant There in the forest still For the Greeks all memory is in the sky Their heroes flung into outer space to become constellations But for me the earth remembers her dead In mushroom season In their clusters the stories are told Was it my nakedness brought this sudden understanding? That I was of the forest And the forest within me? Are our bodies like another eyeball That our clothing only blinds? Perhaps we all need to be walking naked Through the woods So that we can see Truly see Who we are What it means to be of the earth? (ha) Can you imagine Woolfie naked in the forest? But perhaps that’s something I could do for him? In the beginning So says the Bible There was a naked man and woman Adam and Eve Adolf and Eva It’s not lost on me you know? Sometimes the cards are dealt upside down We were born in the light And the Lord said Let there be darkness And it’s up to us now to get back to the garden Forget all we’ve learned Only it’s mushroom season And the earth will not forget her dead