OTTO'S INFERNO A PLAY BY JIM LAWRY FOR MANHATTAN THEATER CLUB DECEMBER, 2013

James Lawry Box 268 Inverness, Ca 94937 [email protected] 415-663-8004 OTTO'S INFERNO A Play By Jim Lawry For ABBEY THEATER December, 2013. [email protected] OTTO'S INFERNO PREFACE How did Otto's Inferno begin? I was born in San Francisco in 1940. At seventeen I met a victim of Hiroshima and wrote a poem about her. In the sixties after living in Scotland and Germany I learned of the Allied Gomorrah raids on Germany in 1945 when at the close of the war, heavy bombings destroyed mostly civilian populations in an already devastated country. Misuse of overwhelming power has since become a major theme in my writing. The British Gomorrah raids on Hamburg are the subject of my play, Dropped. HIROSHIMA Saturdays we fished together on Crissey Pier. She was Japanese or Chinese, maybe Korean. I was too young to know. I loved her. Loved how she threw out her crab net, how she sang, how she looked at me, how she watched the sea. We walked home together Past the Palace of the Legion of Honor, a gift to San Francisco on an ancient Potter's field. "I think I want to have you." (MORE) 2. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) "I should like that. But my breasts? I've had surgery." "Why?" "Hiroshima." "I'm sorry." We walked home through the Cypresses, the Eucalyptus. Potters field again. Slow. She didn't fish the next Saturday. Or the Saturday after that. One Saturday I found in my tackle box- (I'd been absent for an hour to walk on the beach near Fort Point)- A saucer, blue, white, Imari. Small. Forget-me Nots, On nested fish-hooks. *** In Otto's Inferno my fisher-woman became Hiroshima. I imagine holding her, and her pale gray eyes telling me of the many men she had known as a hot springs geisha. "Oh, men always wanted to kill me." "Oh, had I known what I do now, I would have wished to die back then." HIROSHIMA Now after so many years I still feel the sufferings of Hiroshima's extraordinary soul. OTTO HAHN Otto Hahn, my main character, received his doctorate in 1901, served at the front in WWI as a chemical warfare specialist and headed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's radiochemistry section in Berlin. Otto Hahn is a highly private and complex character. In 1944, Hahn receives the Nobel Prize for chemistry, but the prize was kept secret because Germans in (MORE) 3. OTTO HAHN (CONT'D) wartime could not accept Nobel Prizes. Otto is reticent and complex. In accepting the prize much later he denied the work Lise Meitner had done and claimed the prize for himself. In postwar Germany, Otto Hahn became the most revered elder statesman of what had once been Europe's proudest scientific establishment. LISE MEITNER Lise Meitner worked as Otto Hahn's assistant and was an excellent scientist. All her life Lise gave Hahn the credit he only half deserved. Lise said, "Hahn and Strassmann were able to discover nuclear fission by exceptionally good chemistry, fantastically good chemistry, which was way ahead of what anyone else was capable of at that time. The Americans learned to do it later. But at that time, in 1938, Hahn and Strassmann were really the only ones who could do it, because they were such good chemists." Lise was politically aware but never an activist. Open, incapable of deceit, Lise never put friendship or profession to military use as it would betray her friends and values. "I will have nothing to do with a bomb," Lise had said. Lise did not join the Allies nor share the outlook of her German friends. She waited for the end of the war in anxious isolation. WERNER HEISENBERG Werner Heisenberg, one of the greatest German theoretical physicists and not a Nazi, had to confront Goebbels who had decided a nuclear weapon could be built rapidly enough to win the war. Heisenberg's view was that "the technical prerequisites for production would take years to develop if adequately supported." (MORE) 4. WERNER HEISENBERG (CONT'D) Heisenberg believed nuclear energy to be a technology of great promise for the future of Germany. Heisenberg became the de facto director of the Nuclear Program and Director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Physics at the University of Berlin. His appointment did not please everybody. THE LABORATORY On 13 July, 1938, Lise Meitner emigrated to Stockholm, while Hahn continued to work in Berlin with Fritz Strassmann, a pre-war aide to Hahn. Late in 1938 using an organic Barium salt in their samples they found isotopes of an alkaline earth metal. Finding this Group 2 alkaline earth metal did not logically fit with the other elements they'd found. Hahn initially suspected this metal to be Radium that was created by splitting two alpha-particles from the Uranium nucleus. The idea of getting Barium after removing about 100 nucleons from Uranium was "not considered." After Hahn visited Bohr in Copenhagen, he and Strassman performed the "radium-barium- mesothorium fractionation" that showed that the three isotope products behaved as Barium not Radium as they had expected. Hahn wrote to Lise in Stockholm: "We come to the awful conclusion that our Radium isotopes behave not like Radium, but like Barium. Perhaps you can suggest some fantastic explanation. We realize that Radium can't really burst into Barium." In her reply, Meitner also believed that Hahn's bursting of the uranium nucleus into Barium was very difficult for her to accept but that it might be possible.

END OF THE RACE Up until 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945, physicists in the United States and Germany had been locked in a race to (MORE) 5. END OF THE RACE (CONT'D) unleash the devastating power released from the splitting of Uranium, Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn had figured out. Earlier, the 130 thousand Americans working on the Manhattan Project finally ended the race and exploded a device in the middle of the New Mexican desert. Twenty miles away Richard Feynman ignored the official advice to use dark glasses while looking at the blast and figured that the windshield of his truck would protect his eyes from the radiation, and so became the first person to see the full flash of the explosion. Feynman watched the fireball silently turn from blinding white to yellow to orange before black smoke curled from the edges and grew to a cloud so dark it seemed to rip a hole out of the sky. A minute and a half later a tremendous bang broke the silence of the morning, stole his breath and shook him to the bone. ALSOS MISSION The ALSOS mission, part of the Manhattan Project, was formed after the Allied invasion of Italy in September,1943 to investigate the German nuclear project. ALSOS searched for personal and records to prevent their capture by the Soviet Union. Colonel. B. Pash of ALSOS, whom the Allies had ordered to round up the German scientists at the end of the war, narrowly missed Heisenberg who had set off the day before on a bicycle to be with his family in the mountains of Bavaria. FARM HALL Ten German scientists after capture were brought to England and interned in an old country estate named Farm Hall. They were given good provisions. (MORE) 6. FARM HALL (CONT'D) They had books, newspapers, a radio, a piano, and could use a small athletic field behind the house. Their complaints were that they were prisoners and that they could not communicate with their families back in Germany. At first they did not know why they were imprisoned but later assumed that it had something to do with their attempts to harness nuclear power. HIROSHIMA Shortly before eight o'clock on the evening of 6 August 1945 one of the British Officers, who were guarding the German scientists, joined his captives for dinner and told them what he had already mentioned to Otto Hahn. According to the six o'clock news the Americans had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. A lively discussion ensued, and a few Germans expressed the opinion that if any part of the radio report could be trusted, then an atomic bomb referred to something other than nuclear weapons as the Germans had conceived them. The American atomic bomb has nothing to do with nuclear fission some said. A skeptical yet curious group of scientists impatiently awaited the nine o'clock news. The second broadcast shattered their disbelief, yet increased their confusion. Now the German scientists learned that uranium had been used to make a bomb as powerful as 20,000 tons of high explosives. Moreover, the interned scientists were told of the massive scale of the American and British nuclear power project. A hundred and twenty five thousand people helped build the factories, and sixty five thousand kept them running during the Manhattan Project. Little doubt now. At first Hahn was calm and pleased he hadn't helped create this monster. (MORE) 7. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Completely shattered Otto turns to the gathered physicists to say, "If the Americans have a Uranium bomb then you are all second raters, poor old Heisenberg." The superficial radio broadcasts frustrated Werner. They were so sketchy that he couldn't understand what went on inside the American atomic bomb even though he and the others had their own work to fall back on. Werner believed the news releases had been kept vague intentionally. He believed the detonation at Hiroshima was merely a trick, nothing but high explosives, but denial gave way to guilt. How did we, this elite of German Physicists fail? What did we do wrong? It became immediately clear that the separation of isotopes had required an extraordinary collaboration among the American physicists, a team of a type and scale unknown in their own laboratories. "A tremendous achievement without parallel in history." Hahn leaves to go to his bedroom. "I failed my country." JAPAN'S PROGRAM Eri Yagi Shizume, going beyond what's written in English, uncovered unpublished historical records and diary entries that showed that Japan had also been pursuing its own nuclear bomb in Project Aeropower (Kokudoryoku Kei-kaku). Yoshio Nishina, Japan's top physicist, had been friends with Einstein and Bohr in Europe during the 1930's, and when war broke out, the Japanese government told him to make a nuclear bomb. He had been in the middle of building a pilot plant to concentrate the U235 needed to sustain a nuclear reaction when the facility was bombed in an air raid in 1945. 8. THE PLAY: OTTO'S INFERNO WHY THE NOH THEME?

Noh Theater enshrines important Japanese stories of great and sad deeds of the past and especially wars using historical characters. The Ideal Warrior fears nothing, even collision between the samurai and the supernatural powers in which the samurai usually get the worst of it. Are Hahn, Meitner, Claire, Heisenberg, Hiroshima and Fuji Noh characters? Otto's Inferno shows Hiroshima at the instant of her agony: the light blue and cold between the explosion and the shock. Survivors remember that first awesome silence. Light then came in streaks of light blue or a flash from white to blue and then back again. Then darkness descended, an inky rolling cloud, clogging nostrils and throats bringing instantaneous death where people stood or sat. Mysterious is the affinity of that deep purple hue.. DANCE

Why dance? Dance reveals but also conceals. Dance is sacred. Only the gods can truly Dance. Dance signifies absolute freedom and a rich world of the imagination that exists in a form found only in the dance. When we come to access this world of the gods, we too are able to dance. And when we dance, the gods come out and dance with us. EXPLORATION

Otto's inferno is a very human scientific journey. I wanted to explore the question: Who is responsible when a scientist discovers something others misuse? I resist describing the play, as it is yours to witness, but I comment on its structure. Otto's Inferno intrigues both by its content and its form, or how the structure of the play brings us into conflict with the play's heart intensifying Otto's self-interrogation and blame. Who IS responsible and for WHAT? The early scenes proceed in the dramatic mode. Dialogue constructed in quotidian time establishes the world of the play. The form is familiar. We enter an historical but fictive world.

EXPLORATION

The one dissonance is when after hearing the radio report of the attack, Otto confronts a court of his peers and is judged 9. and then withdraws to his room alone to meet Hiroshima and converse with her. Hiroshima is a comfort to him and prepares him to enter into the changed world she has been torn from. As Otto passes through the Fusuma into the devastation we enter compressed time: a telegraphic rendering of the life changing events that transpire. We reveal all through compressed stage time. In the last scene we enter the exploded time of the lyric mode when we experience the solitude of four minds once at odds, but now together. The lyric mode blends with the timeless and future, forward and back. A world of thought where we are in this world but also move back and forth within the realm of the past and future, much as particles do in nuclear physics, both by reflection and projection. In the end Fuji, our mute child, has the final say. She provides the basketball ending as can only an angel of this world. Would you like to be responsible for light and dark and death and life? Perhaps Otto was. Can we discover how guilt and doubt can be compatible? QUOTE "History is a spacious realm. There should be no walls. What history is chiefly about is life. And while there are indeed great, unfathomable forces in history, before which even the most exceptional of individuals seem insignificant, the wonder is how often events turn on a single personality, or the quality called character". David McCullough.

CHARACTER LIST 10. OTTO WERNER LISE HIROSHIMA FUJI MAJOR CLAIRE SIR OLIVER CHORUS OF SCIENTISTS GUARDS, DANCERS, FISHERMEN, OTHERS VOICES: EDITH SCHUSCHNIGG SEYSS-INQUART RADIO In bocca al lupo! Jim Lawry OTTO'S INFERNO

PIKA DON Enter musicians single file with flutes, samisens, drums, then in single file, ten scientists, dressed in white as Buddhist monks. Music. CHORUS We are scientists. Science is power. Yoh! We live in our heads. Yoh! We dare to seek meaning. Dare to seek truth. Dare to know. Yoh! Clack! * Note: Yoh is spoken together sharply. Clack is a clear articulated sound or drum strike together with a stamp. Workers struggle to move a heavy bell with a tiger painted on it to stage center. They rest, resume. A rope descends; a worker fastens the free end to the bell and passes the other end to WERNER who steps forward. WERNER I Werner, am the Abbot of our temple of science. (Bows) CHORUS Our high priest of theoretical physics, Yoh, Clack! 11. WERNER Today is a day of good omen. CHORUS Good omen. Yoh, Clack! WERNER Today we dedicate our creation. We finish our work. CHORUS Yoh, clack! The workers and scientists together haul the bell up into position. CHORUS (CONT'D) Yoh, Clack. Yoh, clack, clack. WERNER Pull, pull, pull. Our tiger rises. Our tiger waits. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! Waits to kill. Yoh, Clack! HIROSHIMA (Off, singing) Over the waves the moon is down/ Along the beach the salt spray dashes/ So quickly do we hasten on our ways/ To reach the temple of science/ To change the course of history. Enter HIROSHIMA, FUJI, bedraggled, forlorn, their lives on their backs in large Japanese kerchiefs. WERNER Away, leave our temple; you cannot be here. CHORUS Yoh clack! HIROSHIMA We have crossed oceans, and many a country and province. We can not forget. We saw it from afar and mistook it for a cloud. CHORUS Go back Women may not enter. No! No! Yoh, Clack! 12. WERNER Go back. Who dares before our tiger lunges, before our enemies die? CHORUS Yoh, Clack! HIROSHIMA Kore wa, komo atari no mono de gozaru.(I am one who comes from around here.) WERNER Who are you? HIROSHIMA A mother. WERNER What role do you play? HIROSHIMA I play no role. WERNER Who is she? HIROSHIMA My Fuji. WERNER Where are you from? HIROSHIMA History. CHORUS History. Yoh, clack! WERNER What do you want? HIROSHIMA Nothing. Pikadon. They fall to the floor. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) We fall as flowers return to the dark. Fuji, have we arrived? FUJI struggles, only mouths the words. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Where? 13. WERNER Leave our temple! HIROSHIMA Where temple? WERNER Here. In our minds. CHORUS Minds. Yoh, clack! HIROSHIMA Where's here? WERNER That's all I know. HIROSHIMA Hear that my Fuji? He doesn't know. It's his temple. And he doesn't know. Now ask your question? FUJI mouths but no sound. WERNER What's she say? HIROSHIMA (Hiroshima lip reads) Where's, go on, where's, where's Harry? WERNER Harry? Who's Harry? We have no Harry. FUJI mouths Harry. HIROSHIMA Harry, Harry the magnificent? WERNER We don't know Harry the magnificent. HIROSHIMA My dearest, he doesn't know Harry. You hear? FUJI nods then cries silently.

WERNER How can she know Harry when we don't? HIROSHIMA How? People say Harry is god's gift. 14. WERNER Harry is not god's gift. We are god's gift. We don't know a Harry not god's gift. CHORUS Yoh, clack. WERNER Who is this Harry not god's gift? HIROSHIMA We can't. We die when we say.. HIROSHIMA sings. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) How will we count our losses, our city, our homes, our lives?.. WERNER That's beautiful. Why doesn't she sing? HIROSHIMA She can't. Fuji can't sing. WERNER Why? HIROSHIMA Fuji's dumb. WERNER So she's stupid? HIROSHIMA Fuji's dumb. Not stupid. WERNER Dumb. HIROSHIMA Yes. We are lucky. We want Fuji different but she never is. HIROSHIMA and FUJI move to exit. WERNER What will you do? HIROSHIMA Accept, the good, the bad. Do you agree my dearest? 15. FUJI nods. HIROSHIMA dances under the bell.. WERNER No. Get away.. HIROSHIMA shields FUJI and dances Pikadon. WERNER (CONT'D) No, you can't, You can't. OTTO No, Werner, let her finish.. WERNER I am Abbot here. I forbid.. CHORUS Yoh, clack! Yoh, clack, clack. HIROSHIMA dances before WERNER HIROSHIMA Seek peace. You agree my dearest? WERNER Peace? What's that? HIROSHIMA The people's voice. Can you not hear the people's voice? WERNER We do not hear the people's voice. HIROSHIMA Why? WERNER We don't listen. HIROSHIMA But it's the truth. WERNER The dumb truth? HIROSHIMA dances. OTTO, FUJI join. Dance slow with great emotion.

HIROSHIMA Our hearts fill with heaviness. The moon will go dark. Fires will rise; winds will blow.. 16. WERNER Stop, you cannot. Stop.. HIROSHIMA Pikadon will cover the earth. (To OTTO) You will see Pikadon. CHORUS Yes. Otto. Pikadon. Yoh, clack. HIROSHIMA strikes the bell. Bell sounds, glows brilliant blue. Crescendo to Quick Dark. HIROSHIMA The moon hides her face in shame.. Lights up. HIROSHIMA, FUJI exhausted, put on white death robes. HIROSHIMA wets FUJI'S lips. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Know why? FUJI nods. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Water of the last moment. HIROSHIMA places flowers, incense, a candle. They lie down. Each places an unsheathed knife on the other's chest. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) These are permanent and forever but we are frail and fleeting. Yes? FUJI nods weeps silently. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Dead, all dead. CHORUS Yoh clack. (Rapidly) Clack, clack, clack, yoh clack! HIROSHIMA fends off spirits. HIROSHIMA NO! No. Thank god you are dumb. Darkness then light.

WERNER Gentlemen. Look our scientific wonder lives. Our tiger lives. To pounce. To kill. 17. CHORUS Yoh! Clack! What we see. Yoh! What we think. Yoh! What we know. Yoh! Dare to find. Yoh! (Beat) But what do you do? You? Who made our tiger? You? Otto? You Otto Yoh? Otto Yoh, clack! Scene end

FOREBODINGS Laboratory. OTTO. Enter WERNER. WERNER Under the circumstances then, this little matter that I came about. I couldn't of course think.. OTTO What? No, don't.. This little matter you came about? I know all about it. WERNER You do? You know why I'm here? It had better be settled. But you can't be aware of this letter. OTTO Lise and I are colleagues. Thirty years. You know the rest. WERNER I do? OTTO That's not really why you came is it? Shows letter. WERNER I am worried. Look here "Your Jewess endangers the Institute." And here "Frau Meitner is non-Aryan." They're after her now. Only with the blessing of the ministry of culture has Lise been permitted to work for you. But now.. 18. OTTO Who sent you this? WERNER Professor Sievers. OTTO Damn! WERNER He's the new Chairman of the Reich Research Council. OTTO I just heard. But Lise is Austrian. She has an Austrian passport. Lise is protected. WERNER I'm warning you. They're getting in our hair. They are hunting us; this laboratory is in their sights.. OTTO So they have you.. WERNER Yes. Both of you. And me of course. OTTO As a civilized people we will not stand for this. Sievers is a loose cannon. We are working for a good cause and he knows it. WERNER Stop deluding yourselves. You and Lise are being blackballed.. OTTO We'll lose our positions? After all we have done? WERNER Maybe not you. Lise can leave. OTTO Should we go to Bohr in Copenhagen and let this Institute go to you and these bastards? WERNER It might be better. 19. OTTO But surely you wanted to ask me something else? WERNER Of course. OTTO Yes? WERNER (Beat) Please don't tell me that you are wreaking a vulgar spite on Edith and your family. OTTO What do you mean? WERNER I'll tell you. Is Lise also your mistress? They suspect.. OTTO Who told you this? WERNER Chairman Sievers. OTTO Again with Sievers? You believe him? WERNER Yes. OTTO I can't believe this. Werner, as my friend and colleague. What are you saying? Are you pointing a pistol at my head and pulling the trigger? WERNER Would I do that? OTTO If it would do you any good. Will you stop at nothing? You're not aware of all the circumstances. WERNER I know how this kind of thing works. OTTO Of course you do. You definitely understand. 20. WERNER I understand this situation, and I understand infidelity. OTTO Yes you do. Don't go accusing us because you're guilty of what you think we're doing. They need your position more than mine.. WERNER Mine? OTTO As director of Kaiser Wilhelm. They repositioned Sievers. You must protect yourself and your position and us. WERNER I've taken risks for this place..Many.. This place's my baby. OTTO So to speak. You've gone out on a limb again. You love being out there. You do it all the time. But please don't saw it off.. WERNER Why? OTTO Who else is out there? Think of them. WERNER I need to. There's work and then there's living. OTTO I know too much, please. Leave me out of this. WERNER I'm starving and my hunger allows me no choice. OTTO And your work provides you no reward?

WERNER I'm not young and no longer as vigorous as I want to be. 21. OTTO Don't risk us all and our work. Keep your head down. Stand up. Be strong. Be our director and stop with the frisky. Please,.. if you want to save German physics. WERNER Within her rights isn't she? In the case of two people so much esteemed. OTTO I forbid you to talk like this. Forces WERNER to leave. WERNER (Aside) I need Otto to want Lise to go abroad. If he doesn't they'll dismiss her and who will be blamed? CHORUS The Abbot of our Temple of Science. Yoh, Clack. Yoh, Clack, clack. Scene end

IN MEDIAS RES OTTO in laboratory OTTO Lise is my lucky accident. My work is a lucky accident. In 1907 Lise joined me in Berlin. We happily joined my chemistry with her physics. To the physicists I am a chemist, to the chemists I am a physicist. But Lise. Werner's wrong. When we stand side by side only our hands may meet? No. But damn it, Edith is wrong. Our hands didn't meet. No. Never even went for a walk together. Apart from colloquia we met only in the workshop. First in Fischer's basement at the Chemistry. We were so cramped. Then here at Kaiser Wilhelm. Work until eight at night. Every night. You go home when I do. Always did. I don't believe we've shaken hands. (MORE) 22. OTTO (CONT'D) I don't believe I've touched you in my life. I'm not the hand-shaking sort. A meeting, then our working together, now this? OTTO hears EDITH.. EDITH'S VOICE Otto, you and your assistant playing around? Well drop that. I've no right to stick a spoke in her wheel or in yours. You both are...If you love each other you have a right to happiness of course, but have you ever considered how fully you've used me? I'm your Edith, your wife, remember? If you'd only once have said.. Enter LISE LISE Otto. Now look at this. So they're saying those things again? We have always worked to appear circumspect and right. We're being watched, Otto. And now, look at this, Austria is threatened. Now the whole world squeezes like a vice to crush us. Phone rings, LISE answers. EDITH'S VOICE You'd better keep off the grass, Jew. My husband's mistress they say. You keep off. Understand? LISE You are mistaken. The person you are speaking to.. EDITH'S VOICE Perhaps you will. Will speak about to.. But I'd keep off the grass if I were you. Hang up.

OTTO Professor Sievers told him... LISE What? Sievers has no power over me. 23. OTTO He does now. Werner demands now as well. LISE That I leave? So I shouldn't come to the institute anymore? OTTO Yes. Would be better. Please. LISE This lab is my home. OTTO Home? LISE What else but home? OTTO It all depends on what you mean. LISE I belong. You belong. Home. We grew up here. Thirty years. OTTO They are arranging your dismissal. We are all under the Sievers microscope now. LISE I have my work, my students. Your work. You started this with them? OTTO No. Rumors are rampant. The pressure's on. Who knows? LISE You will discover.. OTTO What? The truth? LISE No, not the truth. Their truth. There is no truth now. Just more of their non-truths! Their promises are never kept. "In the nightmare of the dark/ All the dogs of Europe bark/ And the living nations wait,/ Each sequestered in its hate.." So you have joined them? 24. OTTO Not yet. Because, Frau Meitner, the noose around your neck is tightening. Look. You and your work are well known in international scientific circles: England, America, Italy, Sweden, Denmark. They have to keep you from traveling. LISE So I'm being expelled? OTTO Banished is more like it. Please..Jews cannot represent modern German Science abroad. LISE So they are pulling us apart.. OTTO Our new scientific Diaspora.. LISE Juden 'raus? The bastards. But I am Austrian, not German. OTTO Yes. But you'd still be this well known Jewish physicist carrying German Science to the world. Can't have that.. No. LISE Expatriated, eradicated.. It's the same. OTTO But you still can leave.. We can arrange that. LISE So I leave and you stay? So you have joined them? We were a team doing wonderful things. Now we aren't! Please. Think what you please, Haenschen, and be damned to you.. To make a pact with the devil means we both die.

Exit OTTO. Takes call in next room. OTTO [On phone] Jawohl Herr Reichsminister. (MORE) 25. OTTO (CONT'D) Frau Meitner can leave at any time. Yes, Austrian passport. I would be very grateful, Herr Reichsminister, if in the interests of our institute you'd help me settle this. No? Thank you Herr Reichsminister, Heil Hitler. VOICE FROM CHORUS Professor Lise Meitner who belonged to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute as a scientific member from 1914 and who led the physical radioactive division from its beginning entered retirement early this morning. CHORUS Yoh, Clack. Yoh, Clack. Yoh, Clack. Clack. Clack. LISE My life's over.. They'll take my passport. America might take me but it's too foreign. No positions with their depression now. I'll never get a place. Otto you are throwing me out. After thirty years! You are ready to sacrifice me to these brutes for this institute? What about us? Is that right Otto? Enters from completing the phone call. OTTO They say no! Denmark and Bohr are out. Can't go to Copenhagen. They are coming there too. LISE My friend of thirty years, I'm ashamed of you. You embrace this new world without caring enough even to try to set it in order. That takes thought, courage.. What's out there now goes to my heart.. Scene end 26. ANSCHLUSS OTTO, LISE hear radio through static. Music: Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser. RADIO 10 March 1938. A momentous day. Heil Schuschnigg, Heil Liberty. SCHUSCHNIGG Before dawn today troops moved on our German border. The plebiscite is postponed. The Austrian Cabinet resigns except for Nazi sympathizing Seyss-Inquart. SEYSS-INQUART Plebiscite Postponed. I will stay on as your Interior Minster. Honored Austrians. Today brings us face to face with a serious and decisive situation. The government of the German Reich demands our president choose the candidate the Reich government has chosen for our office of Austrian chancellor. If we don't accept this decision German troops will cross our frontiers this very hour. Because I'm not willing to spill noble German blood, I have ordered our Austrian army, if we are invaded, to pull back without offering any resistance whatsoever. We await the decisions of the next few hours. So now I must take my leave of you, the Austrian people. With my heartfelt wish: God protect Austria. Music: Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser. Then an unruly crowd cries: "Juden verrecken, Jews out, Jews out...death to the Jews.." Then Brown shirts, horns, swastikas, arm bands, shouting, waving, jubilation. Quick Dark. LISE How long can you pretend this is not happening? OTTO How can I know what they are going to do? Music: Hohenfriedberger March, windows breaking. Sounds of ransacking. 27. RIOTERS OFF You think you own us you fucking foreign shit... You'll be fucking next, you shit, you fucking Jews... New plebiscite! New plebiscite! RADIO Do you support Adolph Hitler as our Fuehrer and the reunion of Austria with the German Reich effected on 13 March 1938? Ja oder Nein? Ja oder Nein? Juden raus! Jews are ineligible to vote. Ja oder Nein? Juden raus... I proclaim today we are now part of the greater German Reich. 99.75 percent of you have voted Ja to legitimize the Anschluss. Sieg Heil. (Jubilation). Enter WERNER WERNER Lise: all Jews now have lost their jobs at official institutions. I think Otto can still get you a Dutch passport. OTTO A Dutch passport will shield you from arrest as an undesirable Jewish intellectual.. LISE You will help me now? OTTO Yes. I'll try. WERNER This is very dangerous; I don't want to be a part.. LISE I refuse to be cowed by your Nazi rules. You want me to be official? WERNER I must be official. You will be official. With a Dutch passport you may emigrate on a one way journey. (Reads) But if three of your four grandparents are Jewish, then you cannot... 28. LISE Please Werner.. Enough already. OTTO You will travel first to Holland, then on to Bohr in Copenhagen and then on to Sweden. LISE Sweden. That's where the king rides a bicycle and they commit suicide. WERNER I've asked Siegbahn. LISE So how is he? OTTO He'll take you. But you have to get there. LISE I know him well. Siegbahn has a new physics institute in Stockholm, but limited positions and resources..Feel that. OTTO I don't want to feel your arm. What do I want to feel your arm for? Feel your own arm. LISE feels OTTO'S arm. LISE You use your arm? OTTO Sure. LISE That's the point. I don't use my arm. I can't feel it now. It's useless. OTTO Your excuse to curry sympathy. Do you feel that?

LISE Barely. I'm bored. 29. OTTO Lise you'll have a bigger laboratory. One with under-floor heating. You let it beat you that arm. You have to give it a new challenge, something to overcome. That's our new philosophy with handicaps: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. LISE So I'll exercise my arm in Stockholm while you stay here? OTTO We'll write often. There are people with worse arms than you gone on to not bad careers. WERNER (Aside) I wish women would retire. CHORUS Yoh, Clack. OTTO But I'll never cut you out of my memory. Never! CHORUS Yoh, Clack. Scene end

ESCAPE LISE, OTTO, WERNER WERNER Why now? Answer me Otto. LISE Think of it this way. Power gives in to evil because we invited evil in. Their ethics differ.. OTTO Their way of behaving.. They behave badly.. LISE No. Not ethics. Evil is physical. Evil is bullets, Otto. (MORE) 30. LISE (CONT'D) We don't shoot those we disagree with. We are above that. We can measure our particles see how they move. Then together we draw their paths on your slate, up here. Together. We work together. Then together we plot things out.. (Points to his head) But your slate is getting dirty, Otto. Can you see clearly enough yet? Can you follow their bullets, Otto? They're so many. They'll come at you too, so fast, Otto. Do you have the will to clean your slate? OTTO I'm born to suffer. LISE You're being narcissistic. Don't. Stand up. Be counted. OTTO No, I have a life I love in work that is mine. Lise, you will always be first among my friends. You who thought it right to join your fate with mine. You and what you've done for me will live in my memory. I'll be your eternal debtor as long as I live. My loyalty will not fade. LISE So you will stay? And staying makes your arm, your soul stronger than mine? They can't crush your Aryan soul too. Remember that. What they will shoot is just your flesh. Keep your arm back here. Out of the way. WERNER So you accept the challenge? Your noose tightens, your neck stretches. From Sievers this morning: Political considerations now prevent issuance of a Dutch passport for you. OTTO Surely you can find private work for her to keep her here.. WERNER Not possible. We must answer to our new bosses now. 31. LISE Cowards! You all lie. The Dutch government will admit me without a visa.. Siegbahn will have me. I'll go from Holland to Bohr to Sweden on my own.. OTTO You've got to cross the German border. You can't wait much longer. You can't be expected to lay down your life.. And with you being German now and your invalid Austrian passport, we can't keep working together. LISE You still could leave with me? OTTO I can't. I must stay. They'll come to Sweden and find us together there too. All has been arranged. You shall leave tonight. OTTO gives LISE a small bag and an heirloom diamond ring for emergencies. OTTO (CONT'D) You may have to bribe your way.. From my mother. LISE Only if I must. Yes. The talismanic passage. Of course I'll wear it. (Hebrew) God bless you and keep you. God watch over you at your goings out.. If we could be together this afternoon would make it easier to bear. I beg you to believe.. We can do it.. OTTO Well. LISE Well? You must. Stand tall. Take me to the station.

OTTO I won't watch you out of sight. I can't.. LISE Why? 32. OTTO It's unlucky to watch you out of sight. Werner will take you to the station.. LISE Haenschen, I will never cut you out of my memory. No matter what. I have eight beautiful Reichmarks. I can leave. (Aside) So as not to arouse suspicion I spent my last day until late at night correcting his paper. I had a hour and a half to pack. We agreed on a code telegram where we would say whether my journey ends in success or failure.. WERNER The SS is checking all the trains.. Train compartment. Sounds of steam train, doors closing.. VOICE This rack is reserved for her, I'm sorry. Put it over there.. I'm sorry.. LISE You won't leave until you lose everything and they drive you out. WERNER May god grant you good fortune in Sweden. If in '36 you had not published with Otto, he'd have faded from view. Steam, doors close, whistle, a shot.. OTTO The shot that was to bring you down in the last minute missed. You did not notice it. LISE (Off) The baby has arrived in Sweden. All is well.. OTTO My heartiest congratulations. End scene 33.

DANCING PHYSICS Siegbahn's laboratory, Stockholm 1938. LISE Here I'm free to think again. But I'm a foreigner, a refugee. At fifty nine to be thrown out after thirty years. A refugee. Unbearable. No one to talk to. Only when I first came to Germany have I felt so alone. I need to work. But a new start? Here? Don't know. I dare not look back, and I can't look forward. OTTO I've lost my trusted friend. Only Lise. Led our uranium project. No use discussing this with Werner. Who will be her replacement? Writes OTTO (CONT'D) How are you Lise?.. It's about our newest results. My numbers don't make sense.. LISE Otto still asks me for advice, what now? Can't you do anything without me? Your results are confusing. Come on Hanschen..(Writing) Dear Otto. People are friendly here. But they don't have the imaginations to picture the situations others are in. What's this about Thorium? OTTO With Thorium we just can't find enough of it. There should be more Thorium after the reactions finish. What Thorium we get is not produced fast enough.. LISE Otto. Rethink. This needs new interpretation. Dancers appear working out, creating by trial and error the dance they will perform.. 34. LISE (CONT'D) I hope Haenchen, that after our work together you will tell me everything. Leave nothing out. I want all the numbers and how you got them. Separating the pieces like this just doesn't work. Way too complicated. We must rethink the chemistry. Are you holding back? OTTO I'm certainly not keeping secrets from you. You know we can't be sure until after many trials.. Dancers try out new movements, try again and make changes over and over.. OTTO (CONT'D) We really can't say anything definite about the 3.5 hour substance even though we work on it day and night. Remember when Curie found it she'd been working at it one and a half years. Enter WERNER to OTTO WERNER And Lise? How is she? Do we hear quite diminished the sound that only a magnificent old bell produces, a sound that at full intensity roars forth with all the latent power of a distant world? OTTO (To Werner) Lise's deeply unhappy as a refugee. Thinks she evaded her responsibilities to me and us. Says I cut her future off. Threw her out. WERNER You had to.. Her work so enriched Kaiser Wilhelm, our science and our lives.. LISE Will you take my past too? Again you want me to solve your nuclear problems? You always want more, Otto, more, more.. Kristalnacht memories.. Jews abused on streets in Germany 35. LISE (CONT'D) One always thinks that in this world life cannot get harder, but one is mistaken. OTTO (Writes) Should I answer this as bitterly as you have written? Naturally we should like it very much if you would think about this. How can all this happen with slow neutrons.. Dance begins incrementally as a neutron moving slowly glances off the nucleus group of dancers. Each time the neutron glances off, the group oscillates and almost splits.. OTTO (CONT'D) Now Hitler will invade Czechoslovakia? You are not a deserter. You did what you could. LISE Our students will think I left them in the lurch.. Don't be bitter, Otto. It is so hard here. I feel so lost and helpless. Our letters make me crazy. Here I am so alone, completely alone and cannot ask anyone. You know so much. I know I am not important to you or anyone. But you now at last you have rid of me.. Now after thirty years... WERNER You did Otto? Didn't you? CHORUS Yoh, Clack. Yoh, clack clack. OTTO We want to help each other. You need my help, Lise; I need yours. LISE I'm extremely eager to figure out how this happens. Give me more details. I won't tell. Why do you think we have several substances?

OTTO We've determined the three half lives quite exactly. We can separate the three isotopes from all the elements except Barium. 36. LISE Did you get more half lives? Have you more production with slow neutrons? Please be nice and answer my questions even if you cannot be so definite. (Beat) How do you sleep? Dance begins and complicates. More dancers enter. Still working out the possibilities but now a large nuclear group has formed. Edges of the nucleus move in and out. OTTO Quite well. I'm as tired as if I had finished not six weeks of vacation but a year of hard work. We hear samisens, then roaring, a deep rumbling fades.. OTTO (CONT'D) Can you come up with some fantastic explanation? We should be getting Radium and now all we see is Barium. Uranium can't just burst into barium, can it? LISE So you've split two alpha particles off the uranium nucleus? OTTO Yes, and we get Barium not Radium. It's all so complicated. We have to clear it up. I need your help. LISE I can't help. I have no place here. I have no money. Siegbahn has no equipment. I agree with you the Barium is puzzling. To think of a "large-scale breakup" of the Uranium nucleus is very difficult to imagine... A dancer crashes through the center of the nucleus of dancers. The group splits into two groups that oscillate but then they draw back together. LISE (CONT'D) But in nuclear physics we have had so many surprises that one cannot unconditionally say, 'It is impossible.' Dancers press forward, surround and interact with LISE 37. LISE (CONT'D) I often appear to myself as this windup doll who behaves automatically with a friendly smile but with no real life in her. DANCERS in their more agitated movements involve LISE more and more. LISE (CONT'D) From that you can tell how useful my work is. But I am grateful, because you force me to collect my thoughts. That's not so easy.. How can a tiny neutron moving so slowly result in a smashed uranium nucleus? Uranium nucleus is now large and behaves like a bouncy drop of liquid very wobbly and unstable. Dance the splitting of a Uranium nucleus into two Bariums and a Krypton as a slow neutron hits the nucleus causing it to shake then split apart and discharge a Krypton that might start another split. LISE explains. LISE (CONT'D) The neutron reduces the surface tension each time; lets the nucleus split. It does not chip or crack; see it just elongates and divides.. When the two drops separate we need a very large energy to hold them close.. The two new nuclei are lighter than the original uranium nucleus by about one fifth the mass of a proton. When we get mass we get energy, E=mc^2, and I think one fifth of a proton's mass gives that energy.. Yes! There we have it. If Uranium with 92 protons splits in two, and one piece is Barium with 56 protons, then the other has to be Krypton with 36 protons. 92-56=36 (Aside) After figuring the numbers I knew the other product of fission had to be an isotope of krypton. I solved two puzzles with one blow; the uranium one and with the krypton and barium I extended nuclear theory. What fools we've been! We ought to have seen that before. We have found nuclear fission, and now I have explained it. 38. OTTO Lise, you are not a chemist, you can do nothing with your hands. End scene

CAPTURE CHORUS Yoh. Clack. Yoh Clack. Yoh. Clack! Clack! SCIENTIST ONE Gentlemen, it must be done. SCIENTIST TWO If there's the slightest chance, it must be done. SCIENTIST THREE Experiments in the physics laboratories at Columbia University reveal that conditions may be found under which the chemical element Uranium may be made to liberate its large excess of atomic energy. This might mean that Uranium might be used as an explosive that would liberate a million times as much energy per pound as any known explosive. CHORUS Yoh. Clack. Yoh, Clack. Yoh, Clack Clack. SCIENTIST ONE Find and disable the German fission project. This is our mission. CHORUS Yoh! Clack! Yoh! Clack! Yoh clack, clack clack!

Quick Dark Street. Darkness. Shelling. Chorus points at WERNER and clacks fans each time a shell lands. WERNER on bike dismounts and lies on ground when shots come close. 39. He drinks from canteen, rides, then SS guard in her 20's with hand gun stops WERNER and holds the bike. WERNER almost falls. Frozen they stare at each other. Neither moves. Long silence. GUARD (Laughs) Was? Points to canteen. Gestures what's in it.. WERNER Coffee? GUARD Was? WERNER Coffee. Want some? Just made it. GUARD I was looking for a cigarette. WERNER It's fresh. I'll dump it then. Starts to empty canteen. GUARD Nein. Genug. Stops.. WERNER Just made it. GUARD You didn't. Going somewhere? WERNER Home. GUARD What the fuck are you doing. (Takes offered canteen. Drinks) It's fucking hot. WERNER Just made it.

GUARD You said that before. WERNER I'm sorry, really. I'm sorry. 40. GUARD Burned my tongue. WERNER Sorry. GUARD Scheisse. Your papers? WERNER What? GUARD Ausweis? Papers. WERNER searches. GUARD (CONT'D) Mach schnell.. WERNER Not here.. GUARD Can get you shot. Where's work? WERNER Thinking. GUARD Where I said. WERNER Isn't here. GUARD Sure about that? WERNER Yes. GUARD You're sure? WERNER Why? GUARD Why what?

WERNER Why keep saying that? GUARD Where is Hahn? 41. WERNER Not here. GUARD Got tired of you? WERNER No. GUARD Tired of looking? WERNER No. GUARD Are you lying? WERNER No. GUARD How do I know you're not lying? WERNER You can't. GUARD What does that mean? WERNER I don't know. GUARD You don't know what you are saying? WERNER I just meant. GUARD Just meant what? WERNER I just meant you have to trust what I'm telling you.. GUARD Shut up. You're an idiot.

GUARD pushes the bike down, scratching WERNER'S leg. WERNER reaches in his pannier.. GUARD (CONT'D) Hände hoch! (Hands up) Kaiser Wilhelm, what do you do for them? 42. WERNER You know. GUARD I don't. WERNER I write. GUARD What? WERNER Numbers. Mathematics. GUARD It's bleeding. WERNER I'll live. GUARD Shall I wrap it? WERNER Why? GUARD That's what people do. WERNER Oh. Wrapping. GUARD How's it feel? WERNER What? GUARD Your leg. WERNER All right. GUARD Right?

WERNER Not left. GUARD Huh? 43. WERNER Left too. Wouldn't say anything about that one I wouldn't say about the other. GUARD Where'd you get it? WERNER For my birthday. Quite nice. Came with five toes. (Gives her cigarettes) Grandfather had a wooden one. On and off. When he gave up the ghost, we burned it. Wrapping's complete. WERNER (CONT'D) Thank you. Gives her more cigarettes. GUARD My pleasure. Why didn't you look? WERNER Look? GUARD Where you were going. WERNER I never look. Studies her face.. GUARD You're looking now. WERNER You have beautiful eyes. Quick Dark. Exit WERNER and GUARD Then lights up. Enter OTTO under guard. GUARD TWO You are in the custody of the US Army. You will not be harmed if you follow my orders. No one will leave the building without my CO's permission. You will be held responsible for any destruction of equipment or papers. You have any? 44. CHORUS Yoh clack. Yoh clack. Yoh ckack, clack. GUARD TWO Who are you sir? OTTO Otto Hahn, sir. A chemist. GUARD TWO You will come with me. OTTO Yes sir. GUARD TWO Do you have any papers for me? OTTO I have them right here, sir. OTTO hands over charred papers. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! Yoh, clack clack. Enter WERNER guarded. GUARDS confer. GUARD TWO My brother looked up to you. Glad to meet you sir. WERNER Hi! GUARD TWO Don't you want to come to America and work with us? WERNER You want me for my wealth of nuclear knowledge? I'd love to instruct Americans on nuclear fission. GUARD And you? OTTO No, I don't want to leave my country. GUARD Why not? 45. OTTO Germany needs me. GUARD Come with me. You too.

(End scene)

SIR OLIVER SIR OLIVER, CLAIRE. SIR OLIVER is Director of the British Intelligence Service, MI5. CLAIRE is striking, tall, elegant experienced. SIR OLIVER Major Claire. CLAIRE Yes sir. Kisses him. SIR OLIVER Welcome back to MI5.. CLAIRE Sorry to have left our esteemed British Foreign Intelligence Service, yes sir. SIR OLIVER When you last worked here you broke our Eleventh Commandment. Tell me the commandment, Major. CLAIRE Thou shalt not get caught, sir. SIR OLIVER Well Spoken. And you were. You were stupid. I am under orders. I do this reluctantly. But because you might learn more, I risk myself and the Service by putting you in charge of our inmates I mean guests. You're on a very short leash my dear.

CLAIRE But you said. SIR OLIVER Please.. 46. CLAIRE Who are my guests? SIR OLIVER Some German physicists we picked up. CLAIRE Why don't you just shoot them? SIR OLIVER Please. We promised the Americans. We will keep them in secret near the village of Godmanchester. CLAIRE I know the place. SIR OLIVER You do? CLAIRE Farm Hall. We used it for paratroopers as a staging area. SIR OLIVER How do you know Godmanchester? CLAIRE Bedded a chap out there.. SIR OLIVER What? CLAIRE I studied at Cambridge. Our recreation.. SIR OLIVER Of course. But we've changed the lodgings as you will see. I put you in charge of Farm Hall very reluctantly. Claire, you do have good breeding. You are a judge's daughter. But from now on you must behave like one. Listen. People are watching you now. You fuck with the Abbot and I'll fuck with you. Understand? Is my meaning clear. You are being watched.

CLAIRE Yes, sir. 47. SIR OLIVER Yes. You will keep our guests safe and out of harm's way. CLAIRE And my husband? SIR OLIVER Yes, yes, your husband. That little squirrel. Like to shoot his little nuts. Please don't interrupt. I'll inform him and deal with him. Go to Farm Hall now. Look around. The place has changed. You are to listen, cajole, entertain. We want our guests to be happy. Pay special attention to Werner Heisenberg and Otto Hahn. Get them to talk. Tell me what you learn. And keep your cunt out of my payroll. CHORUS Yoh, clack. Yoh, clack. Yoh, clack, clack. Quick Dark. End scene.

RECEPTION FARM HALL Club room, chairs, covered windows. Guards set up a buffet with liquor service, candles. Ventilator hums. GUARD ONE and GUARD TWO enter with a table.. GUARD ONE Lovely was he? GUARD TWO Peaceful like? Yes. GUARD ONE Tired? Bist thou all right, o' but? GUARD TWO Indeed. Yes indeed. Look at all this. Splendid. And on the top of each one there wasn't Guy Fawks not this time, but ol'Hitler himself. He couldn't stick his arm out and shout Heil, but whoosh! (MORE) 48. GUARD TWO (CONT'D) Made no difference: crackle, crackle, up in flames he goes.. GUARD ONE I love you, o'but. With all my heart, Robert. With all my.. Shush, (Louder) It's doin' what we're told as makes us free.. Would you-excuse me-would you like a fag? GUARD TWO Don't smoke. Shh..somebody might hear us. GUARD ONE What? GUARD TWO (Points at wall) Some bugger's always listening.. Keep quiet. GUARD ONE 'll be a long night. GUARD TWO Wait till after she gets bollocking. Bloody 'ell. Cheers. (Toasts) GUARD ONE You're knackered? GUARD TWO Just exhausted. Before forty it's one long hangover. But at forty you learn. The circus gets to be a jag on my nerves. GUARD ONE This courtesy's Sir Oliver's. His Majesty's secret circus! Noises off.. GUARD TWO Here she comes. Better toast yourself? Ready, aim.. What's all this gray round the edges? I'll post your bail. Cheers.

Enter WERNER, OTTO, CHORUS of scientists.. GUARD TWO (CONT'D) Shush. 'tension!. 49. GUARD ONE (Drinks quickly, then sotto voce) Kein Deutsch. Achtung. OTTO (Sotto voce to WERNER) What's this? Who? We had fifty-five at Kaiser Wilhelm? Who are these others? WERNER Some aren't here and should be. Other's are and shouldn't be. OTTO What does MI5 know? Von Laue, he's here. Nobel in 1914. Never worked in fission. WERNER Anti-Nazi, antiwar. They can't help it. Want to keep our precious secrets from the French and the Russians. Noises off. WERNER (CONT'D) Commandant kommt.( Sotto voce) Sieg Hiel! Enter CLAIRE, guarded, a fur coat over her arm. GUARD Gentlemen. Good Evening. Your attention please. Your director here at Farm Hall, Major Mrs. Claire Campbell of our secret service. CLAIRE Good evening, gentlemen. Meine Herrschaften soll ich sagen. I'm your new Fuehrer. Look at this. A feast. All this is for you. His Majesty's lobsters are nice and red tonight. Heil Hitler. That's what I'm to say isn't it? WERNER Please. Good evening Major Claire..

CLAIRE Call me Claire... OTTO Major Claire. We didn't expect.. 50. WERNER What a splendid coat. I'll take it. CLAIRE Thank you. Give it to him. Thank you. Have a drink if you please. WERNER Thank you Major (He drinks) Prost MI5! CLAIRE My heartfelt welcome to all of you. You are Germany's finest. We want all of you to be comfortable. Please help yourselves. All you can eat. There's more of everything.. Yes, please, everyone to the table. Just remember who's host. (Aside) Thought he had a couple of king Edwards down there. It's like staying up at Cambridge for the long vac. One makes do with whatever's around. WERNER pours, drinks. WERNER Grand Mariner. Ganz Schoen. Prost. OTTO All this in wartime? WERNER War's over. You lost. CLAIRE Don't want to disturb you gentlemen. By now you are acquainted, yes? I have only a few points to make. Please. Aside to WERNER CLAIRE (CONT'D) Listen darling I'm no actress. Not a bright lady by your standards. Not even a Lili Marlene. I've never taken interest in politics or science. Our poor dears look so tired.

WERNER Come on, Major Claire. Does your conscience let you do war work? 51. CLAIRE No my dear, but we're hard up. GUARD TWO (To GUARD ONE sotto voce.) I really don't want to hear this. She'll fuckin' do me. WERNER Why? CLAIRE'S arm against WERNER'S flatters him. WERNER hangs back. CLAIRE turns away but would rather not. WERNER (CONT'D) (Aside to OTTO sotto voce) Enormous eyes, nice neck, good shoulders, good breasts, clean hips, small hands, isn't knock kneed, nice fetlocks, hooves about right, stands well. A really fine filly. OTTO At ease professor. CLAIRE Rules. We do have a few. And now we have all night to pretend that building bombs, that's what you do isn't it, is a social misdemeanor or some such. Better than being caught in some lavatory the way some of our men often are. We won't mention that out of politeness shall we? So we shan't be embarrassed. So very English, isn't it? We will pretend it hasn't happened, as we are all such very civilized people. I can't summon much morality myself, and outside of Shakespeare, the word treason means nothing to me. Mum's not a German word. But for one reason and one reason only we are sorry for you. You got caught. As a consequence we must live here in close quarters. Actions we do in company should be respectful of others.

CHORUS How long? For how long. Yoh clack, Yoh clack. Yoh CLACK! 52. CLAIRE For several months at least gentlemen until we find out what to do with you. Read and write in private. Talk freely among yourselves but don't read what other's write or give your opinions. My friends here and I, we will be watching you. OTTO You look bushed. Haven't fainted yet have you? CLAIRE I don't faint. WERNER What do you do? CLAIRE I cry. And that probably adds my name to the list of all the other rusty hens you've conned. [Dillies if attractive] But you are not conning me darling. In comedy there are just two, he who spanks and he who get's spanked. You are not fooling this pussy. WERNER That's your side of it. I can see that. I know women. CLAIRE Hunks of heartbreak can't know dillies. Take it from me. I've tried. (Beat) No one knows you are here. (To OTTO) Gut Shabbos. GUARD TWO I really can't hear this. She's going for a Burton.. Makes plane crashing gesture. OTTO What? CLAIRE You look like a Jew. OTTO You understand bad jokes? I am one. Honoris causa. 53. CLAIRE Yes, jokes that don't go too far. OTTO Like candies in peacetime. Keep us all warm here round the heart. CLAIRE And I hope in your stomach. Cheers, professor. (To OTTO) We don't have shabbos here every night. Only when you first arrive. Have to have manna raining down in the desert don't we? Isn't that right?.. Please excuse my non-Aryan example.. OTTO You honor us too much, Major. CLAIRE Please call me Claire.(Toasting) We are provincial here, darlings. En famille. Buffet, champagne, party till midnight. I'm not used to this either. Back in London all goes dark at ten. Nothing open all night. But here in Farm Hall..Cheers.. Officially we close at twelve. Sir Oliver gave me permission, special permission for this... Wait please. Don't drink yet. Put that down. Yes. Now all together, from the heart, warms the cockles. I drink to you all. To your successes: scientific, personal, political, we shall soon be celebrating. And to your healthy return home...cheers. They drink, "Prost" all around. shake hands. OTTO To VE Day. WERNER To losing. CLAIRE For all of us. And to King George the Sixth. A better king we couldn't have...Cheers! Hip, hip.. CHORUS Hooray! Yoh, clack! Yoh, clack? Yoh, clack, clack! 54. WERNER So charming, major.. CLAIRE But no. You are mistaken. For charm you must have class. I don't. For class you must have nobility. I'm not. Would you like to go to bed with a commoner? Not particularly. Got so spoiled during the war. The joys of those London blackouts. OTTO [To WERNER] She's engaged. CLAIRE Engaged? Such a terrible word. I don't like it. Sounds so bourgeois. I mean reactionary. After the war we shouldn't do such things. Would hold things up. We'd grow too old with so much waiting, wouldn't we? WERNER You don't have to marry, just have children; raise the number of births, ho, ho, sorry, sorry.. GUARD ONE (Offering) Would you go it again? WERNER Yes, certainly, thank you. OTTO takes WERNER aside. OTTO Pass Auf! She's your enemy. Not your friend. WERNER Tell me, sir. Have you something to add? OTTO About the thing? WERNER It will come out.

OTTO I hope not. You've.. (indicates WERNER has had too many) She'll go for your jugular. 55. WERNER My jugular is fine. I know what I'm doing. OTTO You know nothing about her. You're being an idiot, sir. I want to go home. WERNER Not now when we're living like this. But you know we do have to find a way out soon. OTTO A course of action? What's yours? WERNER I don't want to take a position before I know yours.. OTTO You want my opinion? Official, personal or political? WERNER We can trust each other, now can't we? OTTO Remains to be seen. I have nothing I can say here to you now. WERNER About her. Your first impressions? OTTO English. Northern. Mixed Anglo-Saxon type, but up here? No explanation I think.. She thinks she knows, and maybe she does, we don't, so be careful.. WERNER Thinks you're Jewish.. Not us. You. OTTO How?

WERNER Inference or intelligence? 56. OTTO Stop it. From Bohr maybe.. Lise is. I guess she knows.. CLAIRE listens in.. CLAIRE Am I disturbing you, darlings? Professional secrets on such a splendid evening? I don't understand physics, but how you work is very interesting to me.. WERNER We have no professional secrets do we Otto? Not tonight. All is basically mathematical.. Life reduces quite simply to matrices and quantum mechanics. That's it. OK Otto, ten steps back. Can you still do it? OTTO Sure. OTTO steps back ten steps. WERNER does as well. They then march in a comic travesty of a Nazi parade as they goose- step towards each other with full glasses in their hands, accelerating as they come together so that it seems as if they will crash, and each glass will hit the face of the other, but in the last second they swing, belly to belly, their glasses to the side and give each other to drink. Each empties the other's glass with a gulp, then they turn so they remain tail to tail for a second, and then they march at the same tempo to their starting positions and refill their glasses. Bravos and applause. WERNER We learned this at Kaiser Wilhelm or was it Copenhagen? OTTO With Bohr? Be serious for once. CLAIRE Drunk. Can you two shoot glasses from each other's heads? Just kidding. WERNER No. He took mine.

CLAIRE motions to GUARD who is drunk. GUARD gives WERNER'S gun he's kept hidden to CLAIRE. CLAIRE leaves it on the table. WERNER picks it up.. 57. WERNER (CONT'D) Look, I still have my steady hand. CLAIRE Sorry, Professor. Shooting's verboten. WERNER Why? CLAIRE King's orders. Stroking his face CLAIRE (CONT'D) Too many laurels for my brilliant professor tonight? Hum: How do you feel, darling? WERNER Danke. (Guard pours for WERNER.) You dance Major Claire? CLAIRE Only with the handsomest of men. See, (Makes Boogie Woogie moves) I'm a bobbysoxer now. WERNER I'm the king of dancing neutrons. The king of German theoretical physics. CLAIRE You are? How charming. WERNER I am. Without me we wouldn't be here.. Bomb boogie you like? CLAIRE Gladly, some evening we'll schedule a diplomatic evening of dancing. WERNER Closed party naturally. You might invite our friends from Cambridge. (Indicates guards) Those guys included? CLAIRE Naturally. 58. WERNER Last night traveling in that dark bus, now this. Everything goes by so fast.. CLAIRE Thank god you're here. We're so lucky to have you. WERNER Why? CLAIRE You've got power, vision, bravery and my support. Don't let anybody take you out of the game. OTTO Enough now. Come on over here, son, be a good boy. Let me encourage you. You want some encouragement? Give me your encouragement. WERNER gives OTTO the pistol. OTTO puts it down. GUARD and CLAIRE ignore the gun. OTTO then picks it up and hides it. Mill's Brother's version of Paper Doll fades to CLAIRE with SIR OLIVER End Scene

CABAL SIR OLIVER, CLAIRE. SIR OLIVER So who's top dog in your bordello? CLAIRE I beg your pardon Sir. Madam? Werner I think. SIR OLIVER Not Otto? CLAIRE No. Werner answers for anybody who doesn't. Loose lips. SIR OLIVER Sink ships. Figures. 59. CLAIRE Admires me, and he drinks more than the others. Full of himself. Handsome, touching. Warped fantasies. A crazy world they have built together. And they're pretty tight. SIR OLIVER You were tight last night. Don't fall off your horse. CLAIRE I'll be careful sir, but all their auld filth has got to start coming out. SIR OLIVER And never brought to mind! Boundaries, Major Claire. Boundaries! And I don't give warnings. Now Otto? I'm more interested in him. CLAIRE Withdrawn. Observant. Avoids eye contact. Paranoid perhaps. Even acts guilty. He and Werner are.. SIR OLIVER Know who he is? CLAIRE A chemist? Worked in Berlin.. SIR OLIVER At Kaiser Wilhelm. With Lise Meitner. He split uranium. CLAIRE Where is Meitner? SIR OLIVER In Sweden. In Siegbahn's laboratory in Stockholm.. We're watching.. CLAIRE What more do you know? SIR OLIVER In '44 Otto got the Nobel Prize for discovery of nuclear fission. But it's been kept a secret. CLAIRE Why? 60. SIR OLIVER Because under Hitler, Germans couldn't accept Nobel prizes. CLAIRE And Meitner? SIR OLIVER After she got to Sweden, Otto's started working with Strassman, but Otto needs Meitner. They've written back and forth and even talked in Copenhagen with Bohr. But now they're not getting letters.. So how's the King of German physics? Otto doesn't approve of you two together. Otto knows he'll snitch. CLAIRE He's my type. He got drunk last night, and we'd just met. SIR OLIVER I bet he thinks you don't have a brain in your head? CLAIRE The only thing he sees in me is my incredible body. SIR OLIVER He'll tell you everything he knows. Give him time. But watch yourself. Remember, Claire you work for me. Behave. (Beat) I'm more interested in Otto. The corrupt world of war allows me this move. I need you to get Otto to talk. Let them know Lise has been arrested in Sweden. By whom we don't know. For no reason. Because Otto can't check the veracity of this, he's in your power. You might somehow hint that it's up to Otto when Lise can be released. CLAIRE You my dear propose an intrigue? My, my: Cheers to the Circus.

Scene end 61. ENNUI Night. OTTO, trapped, isolated, alone in his room, examines then hides gun. Sees LISE.. OTTO It's you. LISE Yes, your slave. She left in servitude and returns at night.. You miss me? OTTO Of course. Yes. LISE How are you Haenschen? OTTO I wish I were dead. LISE You work your work, I mine. OTTO How can you? LISE The key for me is work. When things are devastating or overwhelming, or when I'm lost or getting out of touch, or when I'm failing everything at once, I focus and do the work. OTTO You carry on.. LISE Never to the point of quitting but I've had moments. It's this wild beast you've got to hold on to. So many emotions around my heart. Not a life I'm cut out for. I don't have a place. Never will I find.. Once a long time ago you knew how to give.. A cruel time but healing is getting out there and working. It's in the physics.

OTTO No, it's not.. 62. LISE Stop. You need me but don't recognize me. I thought for you, pushed you to redo, talked uranium with Bohr when you couldn't.. OTTO We didn't mesh.. LISE My silence is my speech. (Disappears) OTTO My discovery had nothing to do with physics. You can do nothing with your hands. (Dark) Early morning. Common room. GUARD strings wire, hides it, then opens panel, pulls lever. Lights dim, come back with faint buzzing. Exit GUARD. Pause. ENTER WERNER, OTTO. Sit. OTTO tries to work, paces. WERNER with a book. WERNER Look here they've put us an English Bible. Attentive nannies, huh? OTTO They want you to convert. What did Absalom say to the tree? WERNER How should I know? OTTO You're messing with my hair. So it's like that. Leave off. We've got months of this. WERNER (Reads) And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: (Gen 5:22) And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: (Gen 5:23). OTTO You are mad! Schluss jetzt.

WERNER And all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty and five years: (Gen 5:24) (MORE) 63. WERNER (CONT'D) And Enoch walked with God; And he was not; for God took him. OTTO Damn it. I'm trying to work.. WERNER What now? OTTO These diameters. You wanted me to check.. OTTO shows a sketch and numbers WERNER I wanted you to check my figures.. OTTO I'm a chemist not a physicist. WERNER Yes you can. The critical mass. Anything less than that would be inert. A fission occurs here in this volume you drew. It releases neutrons.. It now takes some time before one neutron hits another nucleus in the chain so how much uranium we have determines the distance... OTTO Keep your voice down. You know we're.. WERNER Claire asked me. Yes. And asked me what I knew about other countries. OTTO Claire? Damn. So you said? WERNER Nothing. But of course we all know. Japan's top physicist, knew Einstein and Bohr in the thirties. When war broke out his government said build a bomb.. So Yes. Japan is working...

OTTO We never mention names even if we know them do we? Come on. You're no fool. You fool around with her and you're a big problem. 64. WERNER plays God Save the King. OTTO (CONT'D) You're driving me potty with that. WERNER Excuse me, this is the hard part. OTTO Hard for whom? WERNER (Sings) Heil Dir im Siegerkranz, Herscher des Vaterlands, Heil Kaiser, dir.. OTTO That's torture. That poor instrument. WERNER So? I'm torturing you? But you're torturing me trying to kill my fragile ego. OTTO I'm sorry for your ego. They'll kill your ego before they kill mine. WERNER This is my overture to dying. CLAIRE walks by checking up WERNER (CONT'D) We're her guests. OTTO No. Prisoners. WERNER We wait quietly for something to change. It will of course. OTTO I hope this ends in some sensible way, but.. WERNER Why think otherwise?

OTTO They keep us from our friends at Cambridge. I'm losing hope. 65. WERNER She wants something from you before they let us out ... OTTO What? WERNER Your understanding of fission. OTTO That's not much. Lise knows more.. WERNER And my knowledge of quantum mechanics? OTTO No, Everybody knows what you did. You let the cat out of the box. WERNER That was Schroedinger. OTTO Yes. But is the pussy alive or dead? Can you tell? WERNER Can't tell professor. OTTO It all started when you opened the cat box. Keep silent and stop. WERNER No. OTTO Your understanding of (gestures) and fission are simplistic WERNER No. Indeterminate. OTTO Behave! Stop that... WERNER She won't bite.

OTTO As long as you don't put your hand in her cage. 66. WERNER Don't you feel erotic? I love erotic. I get a horn on me when she climbs the stairs. OTTO Quite an accomplishment for an old fart. WERNER Damn you, I still can. Outside I couldn't get a woman below fifty, but she likes me and she likes.. They squabble. OTTO Let's leave it at that. WERNER Maybe you should convert. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! GUARD listens outside then enters with food, drink. WERNER You chaps treat us well. Thank you. You grant our every wish. GUARD Thank you, sir. OTTO Except writing letters. (Beat) What's that? Shush.] Ventilator hums but there's a new hum.. WERNER What? OTTO That sound. WERNER It's the ventilator. B flat sixty cycles.. With natural overtones of D and F.. OTTO No, a tick, tick, tick.. Hear it? 67. WERNER Yes, now. OTTO (To guard) Hear something? GUARD No, sir. WERNER Turn off that fan. GUARD Yes sir. WERNER Now? You hear? GUARD What am I listening for? WERNER Ticking. GUARD I don't hear anything. WERNER So it's in my head? GUARD Maybe so sir, you've had several. WERNER Over here. Here. In the wall. GUARD Maybe it's the heating. They are saving coal, and the pipes cool and contract. WERNER Seems to be coming out of the wall. Could be a bomb. GUARD Can't be a bomb, sir. They checked this place before you came. You're too valuable to blow up, sir.

GUARD starts the ventilator again. WERNER plays piano. Enter CLAIRE 68. CLAIRE Sorry professor, I know how much you dislike being interrupted. WERNER You aren't. I was only thinking. CLAIRE Keep it up, I like it watching you work. I like thinking what you're doing. What are those lines, those numbers? WERNER Not for you, for me. CLAIRE It's just as well you didn't come to dinner. (Exits) WERNER Doesn't act like she's.. OTTO Believe me she is. So watch your arse. WERNER No, but I'm watching hers. OTTO paces then sits with a whisky. WERNER (CONT'D) Ever go to the zoo, Otto? Maybe the reptile house is more to your liking, the tiger? Up down, up down. Pad, pad, pad.. You'll get sore paws looking for a way out through those bars. But you know what he hasn't solved? There's no way out, no way through the bars. He never gets out, Otto. Never.. OTTO That's very profound. WERNER Then I'll tell you direct. Let's sell what we know to pay for our new lives in Argentina, Russia.. OTTO Our economic value's gone to hell. 69. WERNER Somebody's got to want us.. OTTO We're outmoded. WERNER No, we're too valuable. OTTO To whom? WERNER The Americans, the British, the Russians, the Japanese.. OTTO Maybe they know more than you? And maybe we're history. WERNER You forget what public feeling there is about me. Father of quantum mechanics. I'm famous. You're off to bed, Otto? So early? Sleep fast. Dream of your sweet little Lise. There is a way out. I have a plan. They will pay us. OTTO exit. GUARD (Enter GUARD) Just bringing you another bottle. Cheers. Is it too loud for you in there? WERNER No. Want to go see? Enter CLAIRE CLAIRE Stay Werner, please. Exit guard. CLAIRE puts her arm on WERNER'S shoulder. CLAIRE (CONT'D) You look tired.

WERNER Not bad darling. A bit relaxed. That's all. CLAIRE We might talk a bit... upstairs. 70. WERNER No. I need to think. I need to work. CLAIRE Work's OK I guess, but don't stay up too late. You belong in bed. You realize I'm with you day and night. WERNER No, no. They drink alone. CLAIRE Tired enough now? WERNER When I'm with you like this how could I be tired? CLAIRE Better than sleeping? WERNER Huh? CLAIRE Without you my job would be so much tougher. WERNER Is it hard? CLAIRE Very hard. WERNER You hold me up. CLAIRE Support you? That we can't be together tonight is difficult you know. WERNER I know. How about you? CLAIRE My home. The service. Sir Oliver's not enough for me now. WERNER Not good to work too hard. 71. CLAIRE Not good to work at killing people. WERNER Why? Who asks that of you? CLAIRE He does. It has to be. For the fatherland, the future, a better world? (Beat) By the way they took Lise. They drink. WERNER drunk but still able. WERNER Who did? CLAIRE In Sweden. Do you know? WERNER Damned if I know. Tell me. CLAIRE Don't know who or how. But Otto might help her. WERNER How? CLAIRE Have him talk to me. (Beat) Shall we retreat? You should sleep.. I’m getting sad. WERNER From now on we won't be sad. Nobody. CLAIRE At least when we drink together. WERNER I need a kiss. CLAIRE No. Please professor. WERNER That will cost you two kisses.

CLAIRE So it doesn't shame you at all professor, to play around with me, an old hen? (MORE) 72. CLAIRE (CONT'D) And kisses with your breath? If I lit a match there'd be a boom. WERNER I'm already booming and with no match. CLAIRE You impress me. Tell Otto.. Whistles for her guard. WERNER What? CLAIRE I have my bodyguard out there just like other gangsters. CLAIRE exits with GUARD. Good night. Sweet dreams etc. Scene end

OTTO'S ROOM OTTO (Alone) We infatuate ourselves chasing, chasing.. Now we will die, not on the rack necessarily but from what we know. Preafflicted. Intellectual suicide.. You are.. Stabbing yourself in the neck, Werner. How can you? Enter Werner OTTO (CONT'D) You again. Why can't you stop. You risk us all, everything. She wants us to talk.. Remember we are at war.. Can you explain yourself. Would make it easier for me. WERNER Must be some mistake from the beginning. Can't explain it. To define and understand it we must stand outside of what's to be understood. OTTO You're inside it now, Werner. Deep. 73. WERNER I only feel secure when I'm on grounds that don't touch me in my deepest part.. Takes away the bad taste of emptiness.. OTTO Like a play when you come in in Act two. The actors speak and move about no one knows why. We project our own ignorance onto them and they seem like madmen. But they are not mad. WERNER Speak for yourself.. Thumping in wall OTTO Lower your voice. WERNER Without any words I feel I know I'm here. That's what I call reality now even if it's all there is. OTTO We're out of touch except by means of feeling and words. Otherwise.. WERNER Things we must mistrust if we are serious. OTTO You think there is a definable reality because we talk here at the same time and because we think that something will happen soon that's predetermined? WERNER A simple belief based on terror and experience. OTTO (Thumping) Don't shout.

WERNER Unless some crime has been committed there is no criminal. 74. OTTO We're invited to this Eden to submerge ourselves into a lost paradise, propose a future for ourselves so we grab onto science like an anchor of salvation. (Light) OTTO sees LISE hears a samisen. WERNER doesn't. LISE What is the nature of that luminous phenomenon? So much blue. We know what happens to enriched uranium now don't we? Do we like isotopes? Do you know we already, you and I, have already changed lead into gold? It's all so very exciting. Makes you dizzy, Otto, you are no longer so comfortable. We are a part of it. It's here now.(LISE disappears) OTTO Can't deny this happens to me. Nothing I can do about it. What we don't see is why it has to happen this way. Absurd. WERNER Who are you talking to? OTTO Absurd. WERNER Absurd is not the things themselves. What's is absurd is that the things are there, and that we think they are absurd. The relationship between me and what's happening to you escapes me at the moment. OTTO But you don't deny it's happening to you too. Claire. She's what's so absurd. Doesn't fit. WERNER Clarity is the only intellectual requirement if only we could know more clearly, think more clearly along that fuzzy border between what we think we know and reason. Perhaps the only anchor is that U238 becomes U235, things like that. But we have to live our lives after all. 75. OTTO Your metaphysical outbursts show the real absurdity of a calm world. Miracles have never seemed absurd to me. It's what comes before them and after them. Knocking again.. CLAIRE (OFF) Come down here quick. It's on the wireless right now. Scene end

SECOND RATERS August 6, 1945. SCIENTISTS assembled. CLAIRE turns up wireless for a NEWS FLASH. CLAIRE The Americans have dropped an atomic bomb.. Scientists gather around the set.. Voice through static. WIRELESS A United States aircraft has dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The device was two thousand times more powerful than the largest bomb to date. Cannot assess damage accurately as there is a huge impenetrable cloud of dust.. CHORUS No, no this cannot be. Yoh, Clack. Yoh, clack. Yoh, clack, clack. Beaten, beaten, Yoh, clack clack. WIRELESS President Harry S. Truman (static) the atomic bomb heralds the harnessing of the basic power of the universe (static) victory over the Germans in the race to be first to develop a weapon (static) atomic energy. (Static) outpaced all German efforts. (MORE) 76. WIRELESS (CONT'D) If the Germans had this power it might have altered the outcome (static). CHORUS Yoh, clack! Yoh, Clack! Yoh, Clack, Clack! Confusion, anger, sadness.. Improvised speeches twist, cross, overlap each other. OTTO ...could only have if they could separate Uranium isotopes... WERNER ..they have.. They have... OTTO No, far too complicated. For 93 they need a reactor that runs for days, weeks. (Head against wall almost in tears).. If the American's have a Uranium bomb you are all second raters. Poor old Werner. CHORUS Poor old Werner, yoh, clack! WERNER ...I'm not. We don't know anything yet.. CHORUS Uranium, did he say Uranium? Uranium, Uranium, Yoh, clack. CLAIRE No. WERNER So it's got nothing to do with atoms. But the equivalent of twenty thousand tons of explosive is terrific. Love to see it... OTTO Corresponds to your factor ten to the fourth. I don't believe this. I just don't. It's impossible.. (Cries) Look what I've done.. CHORUS Yoh, clack. Yoh, clack, clack. 77. WERNER No, it’s a trick. CHORUS They are wrong, wrong, Yoh, clack! WERNER Some American dilettante who knows nothing conned them.. Said if you drop my thing it equals twenty thousand tons of high explosive... and it really doesn't work at all. OTTO Now you talk nonsense! NO, No. Anyway, you are all just second raters, SECOND RATERS and you might as well pack up. Now we can leave. Claire, take us to the train.. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! Yoh Clack! Yoh, clack clack,Yoh. [clackity clack]. WERNER Didn't think it possible for twenty years. OTTO If they do have a bomb, they've been clever about keeping it secret. WERNER I'm glad we didn't get it. Claire, that's for the record. CLAIRE Who's to blame? Nobody here. Come on Otto. Get a hold of yourself.. Buck up. That's better.. CHORUS Otto, yes Otto. Yes Otto.. Yoh Clack. Clack. WERNER Of course, Otto, but not so fast. You discovered fission. Think of it like this. You and Lise found it. It was the quickest way to end the war. 78. OTTO Dreadful, just dreadful for the Americans. They did it. They built it. They dropped it, they killed.. WERNER I still don't believe. It's possible they had ten tons of Uranium but not ten tons of pure U235. OTTO You told me you need very little U235? WERNER If they just enrich it, they can build a reactor that will go, but they can't get an explosion.. OTTO But with thirty kilograms of pure U235? How about thirty? Wouldn't that make a bomb? WERNER Sure, but still it wouldn't go off. OTTO Why? WERNER The mean free path is still too big. Remember the diameters.. CHORUS Yes the mean free path, the mean free path, what about the diameters Werner? Yoh, clack. OTTO But tell me why you used to tell me that you need fifty kilos of 235. Now you say you need two tons! WERNER I don't want to commit myself yet, but it's certainly true the mean free paths are pretty big.

Dance: a scientist cavorts with a demon who chases the scientists and lowers the bell to destroy it. The warrior dancers battle the scientists, try to burn the bell. Accelerating tempo, arguments, tension. 79. WERNER (CONT'D) We didn't do it, we all didn't want to do it; if we’d wanted Germany to win, we'd have.. OTTO I don't believe that, but I'm thankful we didn't. CHORUS Absurd. Werner didn't want it. Maybe in his case, but not for all of us. No. Yoh, clack. WERNER Now the Americans did it. We've wiped our slate clean. CHORUS We would have if we could have, Yoh clack. Yoh, clack, clack. WERNER No. No. I am successful, scientifically and ethically uncompromising. CHORUS The Abott's postwar apologia. Yoh, clack, clack. End scene

WAR AGAINST MEMORY Next morning CLAIRE grills OTTO and WERNER over breakfast. CLAIRE Why did you lie to me? WERNER I didn't lie to you. CLAIRE Why, then? WERNER I wanted to discourage the Americans from building one and using it. OTTO Werner, we tried and failed. (MORE) 80. OTTO (CONT'D) Are scientists morally justified in using science to make bombs? WERNER How can I answer that? CLAIRE You said you could build a German bomb. Then you said you understand very little bomb physics. Which is it? WERNER That is your belief. CLAIRE Our American partners say your notes of diameters are wrong. About two orders of magnitude wrong. These mistakes tell me you don't know how to make a bomb. Your moral scruples or your ignorance, which is it? WERNER Suppose I say I wanted to employ young German physicists in our Uranium project to keep them from dying. CLAIRE You did save a few, so I can believe that. WERNER Our theoretical understanding is not far behind theirs. Because money was limited we abandoned a bomb and worked on reactors. CLAIRE Is that the only reason? Are you whitewashing your own incompetence in saying that you alone, stymied the German program? WERNER Maybe I know more than I let on and deliberately killed the project. You’ll never know.

OTTO I pray that future politicians will save us from this evil misuse of science. 81. OTTO weeps uncontrollably WERNER Not only did we only work on a peaceful reactor, but I kept the atomic bomb out of Hitler's hands. But I don’t want to tell you this, to tell you would be to commit treason. It would have been so beautiful if we had won. So beautiful. CLAIRE But you didn't. OTTO Because he couldn't. Werner said he'd never taken the trouble to calculate the minimum amount of U235 we would need to fuel a bomb. The critical mass. WERNER Quite honestly I never worked it out in detail. I never thought anybody could get enough pure U235... CLAIRE You try to separate yourselves from the Nazis. But you doing harmless work under them is untenable. WERNER No! CLAIRE You cowards! You're all victims responsible for nothing, and now Germany will rebuild. Is that right. You should all die. WERNER We must prevent young scientists from wars in a refuge to preserve science. America and England did it. But we made a workable machine.

CHORUS Yoh, Clack! Quick dark. End scene. 82. BREAKFAST CLAIRE at breakfast alone. Plays recordings. She studies the wall. CLAIRE I hear your music, your sighs, your moans, your dreams. You’ve shown us your naked selves. I like you Werner. Because you drink and you've advised the highest levels of German science, I'll work with you. We'll live dangerously together. Don't worry, I am protected. The Circus gives me peepholes, mirrors, wall hangings, and these. We'll play together, and you'll sing, and to return your favors, I'll entertain you. I'll be your Geisha. I'll determine what happens to you. Isn't that grand? Here in Farm Hall outside laws are suspended. To enter Farm Hall is to leave the world. Enter WERNER WERNER Good morning. CLAIRE Dr Heisenberg. Glad you chose to join me. You as spokesperson of your group are to inform me of your thinking. WERNER Inform? What do you mean? CLAIRE Sir Oliver's orders. Each day I will confer with you over breakfast. You will listen to your fellows, then give me what I ask for. Understand? In return.. WERNER No. Yes. CLAIRE When you impart anything to me, papers, words, diagrams, my assistant will be present. Tell him if you need something. 83. WERNER When do I meet him? CLAIRE When I'm done with you. You will be searched before and after each meeting. No shenanigans. WERNER Why? I love dancing out of the row, especially with you. CLAIRE Werner, we both know you're a dangerous man? WERNER No, madam Major. I'm not a dangerous man. CLAIRE A dangerous man I scarcely know yet. Yes, a dangerous man among dangerous men. WERNER Why? CLAIRE I have my reasons. WERNER Tell me one. CLAIRE You've said the war should have been won by Germany. I have my informants. What did you mean? WERNER I do not like the charges. CLAIRE Neither do I. What were you doing before we caught up with you? WERNER Mathematics, Physics, Research. Music I might add. (Sings God save the Queen.) CLAIRE Can I trust you? I will support you the best I can. 84. WERNER Yes? That would be wonderful... CLAIRE Now why should I? WERNER I'm valuable to you. CLAIRE Perhaps you can be. Will you tell me the truth? (Points to the wall). WERNER Remains to be seen. CLAIRE So what should I call you? WERNER Dr. Heisenberg. Is that all? CLAIRE For now. (Stands, salutes} Heil Hitler (Exits). WERNER Please. (Enter OTTO.) Buck up. You're depressed, Otto. OTTO No, just thinking. WERNER You are giving up, and a whole life awaits you. OTTO Get out. WERNER Don't withdraw. I say life is beautiful. Wonderful. OTTO Then don't you do so much to screw it up. WERNER Think now. We are successful men. We know so much more than anybody. But our need to know. Where it comes from I don't know. We are scientists, not prophets, but we know our attitude is right. Our way forward. 85. CLAIRE Yoh, Clack. Yoh, clack clack! OTTO What do you want? WERNER Power, and the beauty of learning to know. Say it comes from here if you want. I don't have a word for it. It's what we both believe in, in our best moments. Then we hold it in here, keep it safe, guard it, until we possess it. And then we must live for its beauty. Do you hear? Live? What's the mumbling? OTTO Please. WERNER What are you mumbling? OTTO No, nothing’s possible. Can’t go on. Know what I mean? We are this stubborn funny species. Well meaning. But now and then we go crazy, mad, and have to go burn ourselves out. We fight ourselves to the death. We can't wait to hang up a few, murder, slaughter. WERNER War is our excuse to build new things no one's seen before. Scientists are never entirely normal. Always a loose screw somewhere, something twisted in our plan. (Chorus Humming) We build up a world, and then we must destroy it. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! WERNER Then we do it again. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! WERNER And again, 86. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! WERNER But each time, a new invention starts us off again. Each time a different path. First spears and lances, then guns, then dynamite, then bombs, then fission. But we never find the real formula, what lies underneath everything that happens, or if we do, we don't pay attention to it. Or can't. We must keep going, Otto. OTTO STOP, ENOUGH. I WANT TO DIE. End scene.

TICKING CLAIRE alone. GUARD enters. GUARD Major, we're having trouble. CLAIRE I'm busy. What kind of trouble? GUARD They hear ticking? CLAIRE Shit. You sure? There's ticking and there's ticking. GUARD But which is which? Sorry? CLAIRE Fuck. GUARD Only partially understandable. CLAIRE What do you mean?

GUARD Not my problem. The shellac disks work once. And you've made us erase them. Record over them. 87. CLAIRE We can't get them now. GUARD Second and third times, even four. They get too thin.. CLAIRE What? GUARD Garbled. I told you. You wouldn't.. CLAIRE Make them work. That's an order. Christ! Make the god-damn fucking disks work. You must if you know what I mean.

GUARD TWO enters with a paper, takes CLAIRE aside. CLAIRE (CONT'D) What now? Why? GUARD TWO Sorry, Major. Not without reason. Sorry. I've something that might interest you. Wanted to show it to you. See that no one comes in. Didn't hide it. On the table. (Shows drawing and figures) in plain sight.. CLAIRE Diameter and critical mass. GUARD TWO Smuggled across the border in here.. Plans for a bomb.. Took his life in his hands. Betrayed his country, death sentence. CLAIRE Give me that. GUARD No.. GUARD tries to throw paper into the fire. CLAIRE catches it. CLAIRE Can't throw can you? Cake! You need training in basketball. 88. GUARD Stupid. CLAIRE Dumb. Not stupid? GUARD In the wrong hands this could condemn him. Get him killed for spying. CLAIRE I'm the boss. GUARD Would be stupid of you, Major. Suppose he's not your man. What if? In war fortune and misfortune change places back and forth. Things turn out otherwise. This is a poor sketch. Many deletions. Omissions. Scratch outs. Wrong numbers. Subject to interpretation. We need people like him. We should be happy we know such people. We may need them. CLAIRE You're a bloody cake. It's Otto's. I know him. GUARD What will you do? CLAIRE Combine it with all you've got. I need all you’ve got now. GUARD Shellac? We don't keep them. We record over them. You said.. CLAIRE You don't save them? GUARD No. You said. This one is defective. Please. Give him a chance. CLAIRE (Aside) Guess it depends on me now doesn't it? Make him grow big, fall down, trample him. Grind him into the dirt. (Retains the evidence) I need a drink. 89. GUARD Major Claire, are you fighting the circus again? You fucked up last time? CLAIRE Not your business. GUARD You fell off your horse.. CLAIRE You son of a bitch. End scene. COURTROOM OTTO'S room. Despondently OTTO throws himself onto his bed and tries to sleep. Can't. Takes gun from hiding place and plays with it. Drinks, sleeps, dreams: OTTO is defendant in the temple court. Scientists accuse. CLAIRE judges. HIROSHIMA observes. CLAIRE Please come to order. (Gavel). CHORUS Order, order, Yoh clack. Yoh clack, clack. CLAIRE Otto knows what he did. Otto's an educated man. Intelligent he knows the value of words. I ask you, has Otto uttered a single word of regret for his most odious crime? Not one word, gentlemen. CHORUS No, No. Yoh, clack! OTTO Alfred Nobel hoped his discovery of dynamite would make future wars impossible.. Now dynamite does peaceful work. I hoped the same for atomic energy.

WERNER Gentlemen of the jury we cannot blame Otto for who he no longer is. This man, Otto Hahn, is now morally guilty for so many deaths.. 90. CHORUS Thousands, thousands, Yoh, clack! WERNER Otto possesses none of the attributes of our traditional luminaries. See how he stands there, his head bowed. CLAIRE Is that high brow searching honesty, his critical inviolability, his nobility? I ask you. Professor Hahn's crowning achievement was his cleavage of atoms...and.. CHORUS Guilty! Guilty! Otto is guilty. Yoh, clack! WERNER We deem you unfit to be in our Temple of Science. I look to you for a verdict of banishment gentlemen. CLAIRE Otto Hahn has, I repeat, no place in a community whose basic principles he disregards. Now I ask you, should Otto be sent down? OTTO In my defense, I could never regret. I've always been too involved in getting through the present to reflect. (To CLAIRE) Now my soul has left me. There is nothing human about me, not a single moral quality left that normal men possess. CHORUS Thousands, thousands, Yoh, clack! WERNER You are unfit for a place in our Temple of Science. I look to you for a verdict, gentlemen. CHORUS Hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands, Yoh, clack! Do we see the thousand fireflies? HIROSHIMA rises.. 91. HIROSHIMA I object your honor. Otto is a good person. He has befriended me and Fuji. We are temple bells, we listen and resonate long after being struck.. Don't accuse.. All of you are as distinct from each other as shrubs that bloom different times of the year. OTTO My mind blurs. WERNER The foreman will read the verdict. Otto Hahn, you are called to step forward and receive your judgment. The scientists surround OTTO. OTTO You will banish me, then execute me. Nothing's more important than an execution? I have no chance at all, absolutely none. I am condemned. You will come at dawn. I will wait all night. I want to be ready. My family, Edith, nothing left to remind us of each other? Perhaps you are dead? HIROSHIMA Have you no hope at all? Do you really think that when you die you die outright and nothing of you remains? (Near tears..) CLAIRE You received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1944. It was kept secret because Germans couldn't receive the Nobel Prize. Congratulations Otto.. CHORUS Yoh, clack. OTTO (Near tears) This court and Lise Meitner had nothing to do with fission. It was my discovery. I, a poor chemist discovered it. My discovery.. Lise is innocent. 92. CLAIRE Lise had left Germany half a year before your discovery and did not participate in it. It was your peaceful work under Hitler. CHORUS Yoh, Clack! End scene

FUSUMA OTTO, still in his room now condemned awakens still speaking to himself. OTTO Would I lie to you? It hurts. Like nothing I know. It's all we know how to do. Drinks. OTTO (CONT'D) All my life, I've wasted.. OTTO takes the pistol, loads it, plays with it, puts it down. He can't sleep, gets up, sits. OTTO (CONT'D) Why am I sitting in this chair? I never sit in this chair. I don't remember sitting in this chair, (Beat). A whole city. Gone. My whole language gone. Our numbers gone. Silence, then sounds of a flute or samisen, played unevenly.. OTTO (CONT'D) My life. Finished. No questions. The dead know, I don't. Don't touch things and change them. Time to go.. OTTO sits. Dark. A shot. Lights up, OTTO on the floor dazed.. Shot has missed. Door slowly opens. HIROSHIMA, in kimono and obi, with FUJI enter like blossoms drifting from a bough. HIROSHIMA plays a flute or a samisen.

HIROSHIMA I'm glad you are alone. Plays.. 93. OTTO After what.? You. I'm so sorry. Plays.. HIROSHIMA It's embarrassing to be stared at. OTTO Sorry. I don't know what I'm doing. HIROSHIMA It's not that... OTTO Am I bothering you? HIROSHIMA No, but it's all right? My playing is not the best. She plays. OTTO (Aside) You're watching me. It's only me sitting here. No, that's not accurate because you're here with me.. You know me? Why I must die? Damn. Lise. I know you want to know. All my dyings are too deep. Over my head. (Reaches out touches her hair) Such cold hair? Are you a, a geisha? HIROSHIMA Don't. No. When you're starved for love and find something that seems genuine.. I'm not. But isn't it fine you can? Hold my feet. My feet are so lonely, I can't stand it. OTTO I can't talk like I'd like to with you. You are beautiful. Ways I've never.. HIROSHIMA You think? I'll never know. If I'm any good for you.. Plays OTTO Why'd you come? 94. HIROSHIMA Entertain, subdue.. OTTO I never learned.. HIROSHIMA To be subdued? I detest subdued emotions. OTTO Lovely. HIROSHIMA I'm glad. I'll never forget you as long as I live. I'm old, but a geisha is always beautiful even those who aren't. From you I can almost believe. OTTO You feel? HIROSHIMA Like a bird must feel.. when she flies and finds her nest gone.. OTTO You smile? HIROSHIMA I learned to put on a practiced smile. My Noh smile, it's a Noh mask my features are frozen.. You can interpret me any way you want. OTTO But you're here with me.. HIROSHIMA Yes, we are here together. OTTO Together. Not a delusion? HIROSHIMA What kind of a delusion? OTTO A feminine one. HIROSHIMA Lots of women are unhappy. So they console themselves with delusions. 95. OTTO Must be something wrong with them? HIROSHIMA Yes. It's easy for a woman to go wrong. You're a man. You can make a woman go wrong can't you? (Beat) I can't be that girl in your imagination now.( Beat) I had to sacrifice myself, maybe that's why I'm here. Grew up in a large family. I was punished all the time, spent my life caring for young children with no mothers. And men with no honor. After what I've lived.. OTTO No don't make another sacrifice for me. HIROSHIMA But I do. Gladly. Sacrifice comes from love. OTTO How do you find good in things you can do nothing about. That's right isn't it? Then why?... Tears HIROSHIMA Please, then there'd be no one like you to remember me. OTTO I must die. You would let me? Wouldn't you? HIROSHIMA Maybe. But if I were threatened, you'd step forward to protect me? Wouldn't you? . OTTO I'd gladly give my life for yours. HIROSHIMA If some danger jumped in between us you'd throw yourself at it to shield me? OTTO Without thinking. 96. HIROSHIMA You would? OTTO Of course. HIROSHIMA No man I ever knew would. Only my little Fuji.. FUJI I'm not little. I'm not a man. CHORUS Time flows in many streams, Yoh, clack! HIROSHIMA The worst thing is being sick of life. OTTO You could strangle me. Would end me now, make me happy. HIROSHIMA I suppose there is something in what you say but first..These may help you.. HIROSHIMA gives OTTO a package tied with red string. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) You'll need these. Be careful. OTTO opens the package..

OTTO What? HIROSHIMA Masks. OTTO Masks? HIROSHIMA Noh masks. Show the mood and character of who we are, the parts we play. They are sacred. Only a few geniuses can carve these. Look. Shows the Ko-omote mask with the square holes in the pupils.. 97. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) My mother's eyes were gray like mine. When I was very young I told my mother someone had poked a hole in her eyes, and all the ink had drained out.. See the square holes? OTTO You do have pale eyes.. HIROSHIMA The fortune tellers said my eyes were so pale because I have too much water in my personality. So much water that the other four elements are less. You will need these. OTTO I know nothing about masks. HIROSHIMA This is Ko-omote, and this is Yase- onna. Ko-omote is a young girl; Fukai a distraught mother, Yase- onna a woman undergoing hell. OTTO She's a child? HIROSHIMA Yes. Her hair. Like a gingko leaf. The mark of a child, a girl who's not yet come of age. See, her dimples? No you had it right. There. Hold her above your eyes, yes, out here. It's better when we get old. Tilt it to cloud it. OTTO Cloud it? HIROSHIMA Makes her melancholy. Tilt her so. See, she changes. She becomes bright, happy. It's called shining. OTTO Not a child now.

HIROSHIMA No, a young woman. Now she's seen too much.. 98. OTTO And this one? HIROSHIMA Yase-onna struggles through deep torment. You don't like her? OTTO No. Slash her to ribbons. HIROSHIMA She knows you. You know her.. OTTO I'm afraid I'll dream about you. HIROSHIMA But Mr Otto, you haven't done anything to make you dream about me. OTTO puts Yase-onna on, becomes transformed. Weeps. OTTO How? HIROSHIMA See what they can do for you? OTTO What now? HIROSHIMA You might say you'd like to see me naked. Or just take me in your arms. OTTO You wouldn't resist? HIROSHIMA I'm no hot springs geisha. My obi's tied in back. Not in front. I'm no slut. You seem so depraved. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) (Beat) You need some of this. There. She dabs him with perfume. OTTO So. HIROSHIMA You're hurting me. Naughty aren't you? 99. OTTO I like you. Cheeks, eyebrows, lips.. OTTO kisses her deep, sputters.. HIROSHIMA Don't stop. Even pearl divers can't stay underwater that long. Yes.. Now go to sleep.. OTTO sleeps in her arms.. FUJI I want you to take revenge for me? HIROSHIMA Revenge? FUJI You're in love.. Weak, jealous. HIROSHIMA Can't stand men. He's asleep. Marvelous feeling to know I could strangle him. FUJI You are dangerous. HIROSHIMA It was just a feeling but it made me happy. FUJI Don't fall. There's your baby. Love him then kill him. HIROSHIMA Why? FUJI He killed my mother and my sister. So many.. HIROSHIMA Once you had a baby you wouldn't. FUJI I'll never change.

HIROSHIMA If you don't, you'll end up unhappy. FUJI I'm not afraid of unhappy. 100. HIROSHIMA You are young and pretty so you can say that. FUJI As long as I can be with you, I'll be happy. Beat HIROSHIMA (Aside) I suppose a woman's hate is a kind of love. If you won't abandon me. FUJI How could I? ... OTTO awakens. HIROSHIMA Do you remember how you first spoke with me? OTTO Must you bring that up now? I feel as if a sorceress has me in her arms.. She bites his finger, hard. OTTO (CONT'D) Why? HIROSHIMA Both my parents are dead. Committed suicide together in front of Pika don. I rolled away before it killed me. Now my home, my baby, my life gone. I can make up my own mind. OTTO Why don't you desert me? HIROSHIMA What? OTTO You can. Go ahead. Do it. I'm strong.

HIROSHIMA Must you say desert? 101. OTTO Best to be precise. What else would you call it? HIROSHIMA Parting? As a girl I was sold you know. Before the war. As a contract geisha. So not to get a job at a factory. OTTO I can't understand you. What are you trying to say? HIROSHIMA I thought you were going to abandon me. OTTO You are not going to leave me? HIROSHIMA Keep insisting, and I will. OTTO Stop. So being apart would be best for you? HIROSHIMA In your heart you are already apart from me? OTTO Of course not. HIROSHIMA That hurt. OTTO I meant it. But you really.. No. You are stubborn. HIROSHIMA I'm the kind of girl that always gets deserted in the end. So you think I'm stubborn? Don't do that please. OTTO Isn't your body the same as mine? It really is you know. HIROSHIMA We're not the same. 102. OTTO Don't do that. HIROSHIMA You're not being fair. Beat OTTO Look, there's no such thing as a woman that can't marry. HIROSHIMA But there is. Shows her burned scared breast HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) If you don't we'll both be among the unlamented dead. OTTO Who are they? HIROSHIMA They're the ones with no relatives left to mourn them. OTTO Which of your losses have been deepest? HIROSHIMA Had far too many. OTTO To get to know each other would take so long. So long. HIROSHIMA Put your arms around me and go to sleep. OTTO Now I notice your scent. HIROSHIMA My scent?

OTTO The smell of geisha. HIROSHIMA Oh, because I'm so hot and sticky? I'm sorry.. 103. OTTO No, it's not that.. OTTO nestles his face on her breasts. HIROSHIMA I like that.. OTTO You knew? HIROSHIMA Yes. OTTO You are so dazzling. It's hard to believe you came to see me after what I did... HIROSHIMA After what you tried to do...to me...to us. OTTO rises, stares.. OTTO I didn't. Lise and I.. Didn't know..Yes, such sad beauty your kimono, your obi, your hair, and your face.. HIROSHIMA What do you think this is? HIROSHIMA turns, demonstrates her obi, how it's tied. OTTO Let's see. Water, a stream... a rainbow? HIROSHIMA No, just curves in light and dark ink.. OTTO Yes, but there's more.. HIROSHIMA Yes there is. But nobody recognizes it, a summer rainbow embraces me in the mountains at dusk, now it holds me together. Out here the sea.. OTTO But your two sides don't match.. 104. HIROSHIMA An odd obi.. OTTO What's this? Shows a burned area of her obi near her hairline..Otto studies her neck, the V of geisha, the rose flush against creamy skin below her upswept black hair at the nape of her neck captivates him.. HIROSHIMA You still have the courage to...look at me.. Can I be sad, or must I be happy? Never mind. Don't answer. I'm glad I came, found you in time, but I'm not a girl you have to take courage to be with. I too want to die. Come on, trample on me. OTTO Why lash out at me like that? HIROSHIMA That's the kind of woman I am. I need you to destroy my pride. OTTO I'm afraid I'm not the kind to hurt anyone's pride. HIROSHIMA So it seems, but I can't have that. You can walk all over me. You should. OTTO Don't say such things. HIROSHIMA You can't know me. How could you? Maybe I'm unhappy. But I'm not allowed. Else I'd... Strange to be here with you. OTTO I just want to be here and listen to you talk. HIROSHIMA Now why do you study me like that? OTTO You have such thick lashes. 105. HIROSHIMA They are real, pull them and see. OTTO I feel like tugging them. I'll kiss them.. HIROSHIMA Oh.. I should have been extremely attractive, like my parents were. A mushroom tastes lovely and so does a plum but you can't eat the two together. This is the terrible trick nature played on me. I have my mother's lovely mouth but my father's features. But mother's gray eyes, and her thick lashes, made her look startled. See. OTTO Striking. Open your eyes. Look up. Open your eyes wide. You are.. shining. HIROSHIMA Want me to look straight at you? OTTO Sure, I see. Neutral now.. Where's your feeling now, all gone? HIROSHIMA You will or you know don't you? OTTO I'm not sure you can rescue me. How did you decide to take revenge on me? Indicates FUJI HIROSHIMA By falling in love with you. She saw it and I did too. OTTO Fuji is right. Yes. I guess.. HIROSHIMA Don't you find this is funny? OTTO Falling in love as your revenge? 106. HIROSHIMA Or feminine jealousy is. Guess.. OTTO Do you love Fuji that much? HIROSHIMA Enough to die for her. I can't help what you did, what they did. What Harry did. That's in the past. But.. OTTO But does our being here have to do with? HIROSHIMA Of course. If I weren't with Fuji, I'd never have met you. Sadness is very heavy. Opens heavy doors. OTTO Don't think like that. Too many ghosts. HIROSHIMA My ghosts are not yours. How could they be? But I'll show you some of mine.. OTTO What do you hear? HIROSHIMA I can't hear voices now. There. A sound like a bird's wing's flapping in panic. Perhaps it's just my heart, I don't know. But if you've ever heard a bird trapped inside a temple looking for way out, a way up, well that's how it is.. OTTO Yes I have them too. Do we see Lise? OTTO (CONT'D) Maybe that's why your neck is so slender? Beautifully slender.

HIROSHIMA A slender neck says I have never loved a man. I'd hate for it to be thick. 107. OTTO Are are trapped in a spell? HIROSHIMA No, in love. OTTO You've been out to deceive me ever since you met me. Haven't you? HIROSHIMA No, but you don't want me to know what you think. OTTO I'm not trying to deceive you. HIROSHIMA Then this is how you always talk? OTTO You are being very unfair. You said I should walk all over you. HIROSHIMA So you'd get me to tell the truth? OTTO There you go, hiding your thoughts. HIROSHIMA That's why I'm sad. I don't know why I'm here with you. OTTO You can't say? Because you love me? HIROSHIMA Yes. OTTO passionately tries to kiss HIROSHIMA. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) No, no, no.. OTTO runs his had through her hair, tries to tilt her head back, HIROSHIMA resists. OTTO May I.. HIROSHIMA presses her face against OTTO'S chest and heart. 108. OTTO (CONT'D) I must go, leave, get out. You can't, no; you can't save me. OTTO withdraws, stands, slides his hands along the wall. He expects a western door and becomes confused.. HIROSHIMA No heavy doors here. OTTO Why? HIROSHIMA If you shut a heavy door it pushes air in front of it, so what's left? Murmurings.. OTTO I must go.. He struggles with the Fusuma. HIROSHIMA Be gentle. Kneel in front of the fusuma; place your fingertips in the handle; slide the fusuma open just two inches; place the same hand on the frame, about nine inches above the floor; now push the fusuma open halfway; switch hands now push the fusuma, open it the rest of the way; stand up, back away, bow. HIROSHIMA pours Sake, offers it. OTTO gulps, bows.. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) When the wall opens and the blue shines, what can we do? OTTO exits. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Being in love isn't the only way. If you dedicate yourself to bringing joy, you may be redeemed. Cracked bell booms from far away..

HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Do you believe when you die that nothing of you remains? End scene 109. INFERNO HIROSHIMA in the large yellow open space that was the city begins to dance Pikadon. HIROSHIMA April six. (Fan of city) My city a fan on six islands at the mouth of the Ota. Four miles. Two-hundred and forty five thousand people. Day brightens. Parachute, siren wail then three short blasts, the all clear, a plane high up, a flash, a sheet of sun, sudden dark and a silent brilliant flash like an electric spark. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Life is living. HIROSHIMA dances Pikadon (spark and bang) in blue and white kimono, hit by killer beam. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Spark and bang, the killer beam. CHORUS Pikadon the killer beam, Yoh, Clack! Silken heat waves ripple, shoulder drums thunder. HIROSHIMA changes to red, black and brown kimono and dances the tornado of fire. HIROSHIMA A fiery tornado whirls touches everything. So this is dying in a war. I am going to die. HIROSHIMA crouches with other dancers. An invisible force jolts, knocks them down. Some fall, roll, shimmer in the extreme heat, close eyes. Colors and vertically moving black splotches play over everything as raindrops that coalesce to blot out the colors. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Grass stems stick in bare skin like darts. Hundred mile an hour winds. Thick miasma, smoke, black rain. HIROSHIMA lifted up, dangles between two crossed timbers like chopsticks.

CHORUS Sasaki, gambare! Sasaki, gambare! Be brave! Yoh, clack! 110. HIROSHIMA Tasukete, tasukete, help help. Itai, Itai, it hurts, it hurts. I can't. Leave me. No come with me or you will die. Help if you please. Aye, aye.. Black rain CHORUS They drop gasoline. Set fire on us. Mizu, mizu.. Water, water, Yoh, clack. Injured struggle, walk, heads bowed, look straight ahead, silent, expressionless. Some naked or in shreds of clothes. Patterned burns in shapes of suspenders, undershirt straps, flowers from kimonos. The injured stay quiet, isolated screams, No crying. They die silently. CHORUS (CONT'D) (Fading) Mizu, Mizu, water, water, Yoh, clack. Mother with her dead burned baby. MOTHER Find my husband, loved our baby so much. Must see her once more. CHORUS Mizu, mizu water, water, Yoh, Clack! MOTHER I will die. Look, she moves. Her father said Fuji's not my child. Wanted to kill her. Fuji doesn't look like me, but she's mine. Take her please. Don't let Fuji die with me. Help my Fuji live. (Mother dies) HIROSHIMA lifts little FUJI from the dark body. Cuddles her. FUJI coughs. Blue bursts in the sky. CHORUS (Voices) Mrs Fuji Mrs Fuji!.. Why is it night? Why did our house fall down? What happened? Don't be foolish. What if planes come and drop more bombs? Mizu, Mizu, yoh, clack. Enter HIROSHIMA'S brother, TOSHIKO, a mad almost naked man hides his face. HIROSHIMA chases him. TOSHIKO is delirious. Water drips from his mouth, nose. 111. TOSHIKO Stop. Which part was hit? HIROSHIMA You're Toshiko, aren't you? Toshiko! (Aside) My brother. TOSHIKO I don't know you. Leave me alone. I don’t need your help. Go away. Let me die. Don't touch me. I failed. I failed. We failed. HIROSHIMA Toshiko, don’t go crazy on me. Don't. Don't. TOSHIKO I'm growing bigger. Cut a hole in the ceiling. This room is too small. I can't stand up. Colored cloud grows bigger and bigger. Catches the light rainbow color.. HIROSHIMA stares transfixed, Quick dark. Then up. HIROSHIMA (Beat) Only some come back. Survivors, hibakusha.. CHORUS Hibakusha, survivors, Hibakusha, yoh clack. HIROSHIMA We started at different ages, but now we are all the same age. We cry if we can when we can. We all died. But just some of us came back. CHORUS Back, back, Yoh, clack! HIROSHIMA Couldn't moisten the lips of all the dying. (Weeps) (Aside) My registration number number 1203. I'm ready now for God. But God doesn't. Then the radiation. Bomb sickness: our bones, our brains, our babies. Fever for days, delirious for months. Four leafed clovers grew five and six leaves. Shouldn't be alive. Couldn't feel. We hibakusha, are too reserved.. 112. End scene

FORGIVENESS OTTO stumbles and glides heels on stage as a Noh dancer in the yellow wasteland of what was Hiroshima. OTTO Murder myself. But I keep breathing and each time the murder doesn't happen. Is it happening? No, one two, one two. Poor beast of a heart trapped in there in me silent. Do I know who I am? No.. I'm not for long. CHORUS Dead. Clack. Before their time. Clack. Six zeroes dead. Clack! You understand six zeros, can you say the six zeroes Otto. Too many zeros. Yoh,clack! OTTO Nothing living. No houses. No children. No dogs. Nothing, Nothing.. Gone, gone, everything gone. CHORUS Nothing, nothing, gone Yoh, Clack! OTTO stumbles, sees grass, stoops to look. OTTO Here's something. Yes, something green. Something little, green still tries to live, survive. Green. Prost. WERNER'S VOICE Don't listen Otto. You hear everything bent, Otto.. OTTO Green, look.. Normal grass.. HIROSHIMA Nourished by ashes from all our corpses. OTTO So many little blades. So many little blades. (Moved) They live. 113. CHORUS Cemetery grass. Shreds itself over the yellow, Yoh, clack. OTTO Green will cover the yellow, cover the Earth. Prost. Green lives; the green earth lives. CHORUS Grass on our graves. Nourished by our corpses. (Cracked bell booms) Yoh, clack. HIROSHIMA Hairy Harry covers the world. Laughter like breaking glass. OTTO sees a bent light pole, a dangling phone, a burned news kiosk.. To one side HIROSHIMA. The pole laughs like breaking glass. OTTO You poor bent thing. You're laughing at me. Stop it. I bent you. I’m sorry. Where's your light now? The light of our lives. Blasted.. You show nobody the way home now. No lovers meet under you. And you. Takes the dangling phone, listens for dial tone OTTO (CONT'D) Six four eight zero. Zero, zero, zero, numbers, dead numbers. Your guts drip, your receiver twisted. Where's your beautiful book? All those names, those numbers? CHORUS Dead names, dead numbers now. Yoh, clack! HIROSHIMA Don't listen Otto. You can't hear. Live! Don't listen Otto. Go on. Go live. OTTO Don't listen. Is that my answer, my whole answer? Millions of dead, half dead, missing.. Go live? Why? For whom? For what? 114. WERNER (Voice from phone) For you, for me. For her. We stay together. Are you are afraid of the dark of one old light? You made light remember? HIROSHIMA Ashes, ashes yellow ashes, Yoh, clack! OTTO leans like the pole. OTTO I blew you to leaning? HIROSHIMA Don't stop, don't give up.. OTTO I can't. So tired. Prost! Nothing. I'm liquidated, ruined.. HIROSHIMA I've been searching for you Otto. I had a heart and a baby once. But I'm a rotten mother. Now our two little rottenesses are together. A rotten chemist and a rotten mother. Bench with a one-legged fishermen a line in the river. HIROSHIMA with him. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Come sit. Here come. OTTO sits, gives the fishermen cigarettes. Expressionless without looking, the one-legged man tears the cigarettes into small pieces, and one by one, throws the pieces into the river. Telephone rings far away. OTTO pretends to answer. OTTO Hello. Otto here. Jawohl Herr Professor. Otto. Yes Otto. Otto Hahn. WERNER You lit us up. Remember Otto. Shouldn't have done that, Otto, no shouldn't do that..

OTTO I can't. No more light. Destroyed. Liquidated. 115. CHORUS Yoh. Clack. Yoh clack, clack. Two masks peer through the dark: LISE wears Yase-onna and HIROSHIMA Fukai. FUJI wears Ko-omote and kicks ashes.. OTTO What?

HIROSHIMA Ashes of the never to be born..

The scene overcomes OTTO, so he sits silently facing the bench, where the fisherman was, remembers the court. Now CLAIRE the judge, despondent and morose, plays with a gun. OTTO Oh.. Oh my god.. Quick Dark. Lights up. Temple graveyard as thousands of lights of Sento Kuyo burn before countless little gravestones, memorials to the un- mourned dead. Some stones wear red bibs for Jizo who guards and intercedes for children’s souls who died before birth and suffer in hell. Thousands of candles light paths home for anonymous dead spirits. FUJI watches OTTO and HIROSHIMA. Shadows of bereaved parents place bibs, toys and offerings of flowers. HIROSHIMA We are intruders, Otto? LISE behind her mask approaches OTTO, stumbles, kicks a cage of fireflies.( We glimpsed this in...) All glow at once as the cage turns over. Greenish white friendly light streams out mushrooming up. OTTO, paralyzed, watches the overturned cage, the spreading light. HIROSHIMA changes Kimonos, transforms.. OTTO sees HIROSHIMA and LISE now together. LISE I still live. HIROSHIMA Four leaf clover now.

OTTO Please help me die. Am I'm already gone? I don't feel myself. Over there, like god.. .. 116. OTTO sees HIROSHIMA after her kimono change as god in her new Kimono. OTTO does not know it's HIROSHIMA who answers. OTTO (CONT'D) Strange. I don't know a dear god. Where are you dear, dear god? How can you let this? HIROSHIMA I didn't... OTTO But you let it. How can you? You didn't. You don't listen.. Are you not there, not at all. Aren't there. CHORUS Over the waves the moon is down. And on the beach the salt spray dashes. So quickly do we hasten on our ways. Yoh, clack. HIROSHIMA No one believes me now. You don't listen. You can't listen. You are too loud. You turned away. Now I turn away from myself. I cannot change anything. I am the god no one believes in now. OTTO We need a new god. A new loud God. A booming God. A god who hears crying.. Go away old man, but don't fall in the dark. That way is bones and ribs. That's it. Go to sleep. Sleep well old god. You need it. HIROSHIMA throws off her kimono, sits cross-legged, scared, stares in front of her, remembers. Memory of Figures that dance and run silently. Some flash; some roll. Sun cuts through the clouds into red yellow purple white light. We see the moving lump FUJI'S MOTHER. Lump writhes in pain disappears. HIROSHIMA sees colored cloud bigger and bigger. HIROSHIMA So bright. So much heat. Catches the light, wavy, so beautiful.

HIROSHIMA stares transfixed. OTTO now resolved to die draws pistol. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Should have died back there. 117. OTTO What are you saying? HIROSHIMA Men all wanted to kill me in their hearts they always wanted to. Only you were different. Hold my feet they are so cold.. Sits.. OTTO You are dying? HIROSHIMA Yes. OTTO But you have Fuji.. HIROSHIMA I can't anymore. I killed two babies to keep them from slow dying.. You take her. I can't. (Weakening) Parents have to be responsible. Don't have them if you can't. Yes, I was a hot springs geisha, a prostitute. No one does this to enjoy.. Can't prohibit. Had to find a way. No other ways open.. to survive.. Banning won't stop it. OTTO Why did you come? HIROSHIMA See how Harry got it. OTTO Why? HIROSHIMA If you'd used it on London or America, Hiroshima would still be. And Fuji's mother, and I .. OTTO We think life cannot get harder, but we’re always mistaken, Here take revenge.. Gives HIROSHIMA the pistol. HIROSHIMA I can't. No. Only by loving.. 118. HIROSHIMA lays down the pistol, sees LISE walking looks far away. HIROSHIMA (CONT'D) Aren't we funny? LISE Falling in love is revenge? LISE (CONT'D) It's feminine jealousy. You stole my ideas, my work, my love, used me, took credit. I forgive you.. OTTO Please. HIROSHIMA Fuji has no anger. She doesn't. OTTO Without Fuji you wouldn't be here.. Not have met you. Now I can.. OTTO reaches for the pistol.. LISE Sacrifice.. Look deep inside Otto. Deep inside. OTTO Study the pieces, all we can do. Blew them apart. Now fit them together. HIROSHIMA I'm not a pessimist. (Dies) Darkening.. Temple bell tolls far away. FUJI creeps up, takes pistol from OTTO throws it away and kisses him. OTTO falls to his knees. LISE holds FUJI. DARK then up. Scientists show death mask of HIROSHIMA. LISE Like a woman also a man. Also a young girl an old woman. A Noh mask. Look, she's shining. OTTO I thought her mask would be feminine as no woman was more womanly. LISE Hiroshima's us now. 119. LISE embraces FUJI as quick dark. CHORUS Over the waves the moon is down. And on the beach the salt spray dashes. So quickly do we hasten on our ways. To reach the temple while the sun is high. For all our days pass quickly away and are not remembered.. Yoh, clack. End play