Cover Page

Democracy

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and read Russian, French and Moral Sciences (Philosophy) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He began his career as a journalist on the Manchester Guardian and the Observer. Democracy is the fourteenth of his plays, which include Noises Off, Copenhagen and Wild Honey (adapted from Chekhov's untitled play). Frayn has done a number of translations, mostly from the Russian. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning (in the USA, Against Entropy), The Trick of It, A Landing on the Sun, Headlong and Spies. Methuen has published two selections of his columns, The Original Michael Frayn and The Additional Michael Frayn. He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.

by the same author

Novels

Headlong

A Landing on the Sun

Now You Know

The Russian Interpreter

Spies

Sweet Dreams

The Tin Men

Towards the End of the Morning

The Trick of It

A Very Private Life

Plays

Alphabetical Order

Balmoral

Benefactors

Clockwise (screenplay)

Clouds

Donkeys' Years

First and Last (screenplay)

Here

Jamie on a Flying Visit & Birthday

Look Look

Make and Break

Noises Off

Now You Know

The Two of Us

Wild Honey

Non-fiction

Constructions

The Additional Michael Frayn

The Original Michael Frayn

Speak After the Beep

Translations

The Cherry Orchard

Exchange

Fruits of Enlightenment

Number One

The Seagull

The Sneeze

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

Wild Honey

Title Page

Democracy

Michael Frayn

Methuen Drama

Copyright Page

Published by Methuen 2003

3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

First published in 2003 by

Methuen Publishing Limited

215 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 1EJ

Copyright © 2003 Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Methuen Publishing Limited Reg. No. 3543167

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN: 978-1-40811-742-2

Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

Caution

All rights whatsover in this play are strictly reserved.

Application for performances etc. should be made to the author's agent: Peters, Fraser and Dunlop Group Ltd, Drury House, 34-43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA.

No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Democracy

Democracy first premiered at The Royal National Theatre, London on 9 September 2003 with the following cast:

Director Michael Blakemore

Set Designer Peter J Davison

Costume Designer Sue Wilmington

Lighting Designer Mark Henderson

Sound Designer Neil Alexander

Characters (in order of speaking)

Günter Guillaume

Arno Kretschmann

Willy Brandt

Horst Ehmke

Reinhard Wilke

Ulrich Bauhaus

Herbert Wehner

Helmut Schmidt

Hans-Dietrich Genscher

Günther Nollau

Setting

A complex of levels and spaces; of desks and chairs; of files and papers; also of characters, who mostly remain around the periphery of the action when not actually involved in it, listening or unobtrusively involved in their work.

Table of Contents

Contents

Act One

Act Two

POSTSCRIPT

Act One

Act One

Darkness. The expectant murmur of an audience, silenced by a handbell.

Voice Ladies and gendemen, I declare the result of the vote to be as follows. Those in favour: 251. Those against: 235.

Applause, excitement. Lights up on Brandt.

I therefore declare . . . I therefore declare, according to article 63 paragraph 2 of the Basic Law, that the proposed Member has received the votes of the majority of Members of the Bundestag. Herr Brandt, do you accept election as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany?

Guillaume (with Brandt and Kretschmann) And for a moment time seemed to hold its breath. The world was about to change in front of our eyes. A Chancellor from the left again, after nearly forty years!

Kretschmann Twelve years of Hider. Four years of military government. Twenty years of conservatism and Cold War. And now a hope at last of ending the long stalemate in Europe.

Guillaume Eleven twenty-two a.m., on the twenty-first of October, 1969 . . .

Brandt Yes, Herr President. I accept the election.

Guillaume Congratulations, tears. Willy Brandt had finally done it!

Kretschmann And you were there in the Bundestag to see it.

Guillaume An ordinary party worker from a humble district office in Frankfurt, up in Bonn for the day with a spectator's ticket. I shed a tear myself, I have to confess.

Brandt I am grateful for the confidence that has been reposed in me. I am also a little proud. Almost forty years have passed since any member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany has held this office. Years during which this great party of ours, founded by a poor turner in Leipzig exactly a century ago to bring strength and hope to the oppressed, was brutally crushed by the Nazi state; years during which so many of our members underwent unspeakable sufferings in prisons and concentration camps, and so many of them met a violent death; years during which, after the end of the horror, we played our part, in city after city, in the resurrection of our nation from degradation and destruction, and in the miracle of its rebirth as a stable and decent society. No one can ever belittle what has been achieved in this country by people in all parties and of all persuasions. But on this day the war that Hider waged, against the peoples of Europe and against so many of our own people, has finally been lost. We have a chance at last to create the Germany glimpsed by that ordinary Leipzig working-man a hundred years ago - a fatherland of love and justice.

Kretschmann (with Guillaume) The most extraordinary thing of all, though, is what's happened to you. No one back home can believe it.

Guillaume I can't quite believe it myself.

Kretschmann You never seriously expected to see Willy Brandt elected Chancellor. Not in your wildest dreams, though, can you have imagined that three weeks later they'd be sending for you to join him.

Ehmke (with Guillaume) Ehmke. Horst Ehmke. Willy's chief of staff. Running the Chancellor's office for him. Getting the whole enterprise up and running . . . (With Wilke and Bauhaus.) Thank you, Uli. Very helpful. Over there, if you would, on the desk . . .

Wilke Not over there, if you please, Herr Bauhaus! Not on the desk!

Ehmke (with Guillaume) Good of you to come in at such short notice. Listen, we need some fresh blood in here. And not just academics like me who learnt their politics at university. - Over here, Uli! Don't take any notice of Reinhard. - What we need is some of the lads from the party. People who can talk to people. Our colleagues in Frankfurt say you're just the type for us. Done wonders down there. Work all the hours God made. And I'm told you have a lively appreciation of our young friends on the left. All the idealistic young folk who've just put us into power. I believe you would describe them as . . .

Guillaume Well . . .

Ehmke Arseholes?

Guillaume Arseholes.

Ehmke Right - job for you. - The key to the drinks cupboard, Uli. I'm going to put it in your safe hands. - Chancellor's office. Liaison with the trade unions. Start Jan. 1. Yes?

Guillaume Chancellor's office? Work there? You mean . . . with Willy?

Ehmke Department III. Economic, Financial, and Social Policy. Federal salary scale Ha. Accept?

Guillaume Yes, Herr Ehmke. I accept the appointment.

Kretschmann (with Guillaume) So, you and Willy! Under the same roof! Starting your new jobs together!

Guillaume I joined the party the year Willy became Governing Mayor of Berlin. Our stars are linked!

Kretschmann You can't help laughing, though. Willy Brandt talks about the achievements of West Germany. Twenty years it's taken West Germany just to get its first mildly leftish government. Not a word about us over there in East Germany. No mention of what we've done in those same twenty years. We've actually built the socialist society they used to dream about!

Guillaume Including the best foreign intelligence service the world has ever seen.

Kretschmann Mischa Wolf asked me to give you his personal congratulations. This is the biggest feather in his cap yet. Our own man in the Federal Chancellor's office!

Guillaume As long as Mischa's happy. That's all I want . . . And now here I am at work. A little room all to myself, up in the attics of the Palais Schaumburg. My first morning!

Ehmke (with Guillaume) Would you step into my office for a moment, Herr Guillaume? One or two things we need to talk about.

Guillaume - Personal welcome from the boss, even. Very charming.

Ehmke Security want some questions answered. You left East Germany thirteen years ago. They've gone very carefully through your career in the West.

Guillaume - Not a speech of welcome. A security vetting.

Ehmke Freelance photography . . . photocopy shop . . . party work - it all seems to check out. Lot of unanswered questions, though, about what you were doing in East Berlin before you left.

Guillaume - I wondered when it was coming. But out of the blue like that! Fright of my life. Somebody's obviously been telling tales. Two solid hours it goes on! Where? When? Who? In the end I have to lose my temper. - Herr Ehmke, escaping from East Germany means that you have to abandon everything you ever had in life. Your home, your friends, your family. For ever. And then you have to start life again from nothing, as nobody. You haven't had to do that, if I may say so. You can't begin to understand what it means. But now comes the bitterest part of all. You find you're going to spend the rest of your life in your new homeland under a black cloud of distrust and suspicion. Thirteen years I've been here! The last nine of them working night and day for this party! — Etcetera, etcetera. I could hear the choke in my voice. And in the end . . .

Ehmke Sorry. Have to put you through the hoops, though. I have actually been doing a bit of checking with your old boss in Frankfurt. Says he'd put his hand in the fire for you. So what are we wasting each other's time for, Günter? Let's get cracking!

Kretschmann (with Guillaume) Your initiation rite.

Guillaume And now of course he's my friend for life.

Kretschmann So there you are, in the Palais Schaumburg! What's it like? I'm blind, I'm deaf. You're my eyes, you're my ears. I've got to paint the picture for Mischa! You've got to paint it for me.

Guillaume Towers, casements. A nineteenth-century ironmaster's dream of the aristocratic life. Ghosts, of course. From the Kaiser's time, from the Nazis. From the Occupation. From Adenauer. And every now and then in my office I hear a tiny ticking in the roof timbers.

Kretschmann Deathwatch beetle. Symbolic, perhaps.

Guillaume And every now and then Willy hears faint sounds over his head. Footsteps. The scrape of a chair.

Kretschmann That's you?

Guillaume My office is directly above his.

Kretschmann His own weevil in the woodwork. Can you hear him?

Guillaume Not a sound.

Kretschmann Ear to the floor?

Guillaume Nothing. He works very quietly. And when I come downstairs . . .

Wilke (with Guillaume) Herr Guillaume.

Guillaume Günter! Please! Call me Günter!

Wilke Settled in up there, are you, Herr Guillaume?

Guillaume Snug as a bug, thank you, Reinhard. - Dr Reinhard Wilke. My immediate superior. The dragon guarding Willy's door. - Anything I can do for you, Reinhard? Filing? Copying? Watering the plants?

Wilke Thank you, Herr Guillaume. We do have secretaries.

Guillaume Extra pair of hands always available if you need them. No job too big or too small.

Wilke I'm sure you have plenty to do upstairs.

Guillaume — He's a little resistant to my charms. I'm not a prof or a doctor of anything, like all the others. -Just popping down to Party Headquarters. Anything you want me to take? Files? Papers?

Wilke We have messengers, Herr Guillaume.

Guillaume - I'll wear him down in the end.

Kretschmann - Take your time. Don't rush it. We've waited thirteen years. We can wait a few more weeks.

Wilke (with Ehmke) This Herr Guillaume of yours.

Ehmke Good man. Just the type we need.

Wilke Everyone in the office finds him a most surprising appointment.

Ehmke Reinhard, we need to broaden our horizons in here. You're a lawyer, I'm a professor. We've all got dust in our hearts!

Wilke But this wretched man has no professional training or experience of any sort whatsoever!

Ehmke He's a trained photographer.

Wilke So if we should need a souvenir of the staff outing . . .

Ehmke He's also got practical experience of management.

Wilke Management? Of what?

Ehmke Of a photocopying shop.

Wilke Horst, can we be serious for a moment?

Ehmke Times have changed, Reinhard. We have to embrace the whole of society. Photographers. Managers of copy-shops. Women! We have to find some women, Reinhard, and embrace theml

Wilke There's no shortage of secretarial staff. And as I understand it, Horst, they have been embraced by every government since the foundation of the Federal Republic.

Guillaume - And now - the big day!

Kretschmann — You met Willy?

Guillaume - I'd just come downstairs and put my helpful smiling face round the door . . . — Would you like me to slip out for a sandwich, Reinhard? Oh, hello, Horst. How are things on your side of the corridor? Sandwich for you?

Wilke Herr Guillaume, we must come to some understanding about access to this office . . .

Guillaume - And suddenly, before he could push me out again . . .

Brandt Capitalism stands on the brink of the abyss!

Wilke Herr Chancellor . . .

Ehmke Willy . . .

Brandt And what's it doing there? Looking down on the Communists. And this is . . . ?

Ehmke Herr Guillaume. Our contact with the unions.

Brandt Oh yes. The owner of the footsteps.

Guillaume - He knew who I was!

Kretschmann - He knows who everyone is. Politician's trick.

Brandt Another member of the Berlin Mafia, I believe. We Berliners have to stick together. They don't like us here in Bonn, Herr Guillaume.

Guillaume No. When the Wall went up in sixty-one no one in Bonn lifted a finger. The only one who fought for us was you. We're never going to forget that. Particularly those of us who come from the other side. Those of us who know what it's like over there. - Sorry. Live with the wolves howl with the wolves.

Brandt East Berliner goes to the Stasi. 'My parrot's escaped.' Stasi: 'We don't do Lost and Found - we're the political police.' 'Exactly. I want it put on record that I don't share the parrot's political views.'

Guillaume — He loves jokes. Particularly East German ones. — Why do the Stasi go round in threes? One who can read, one who can write . . .

Brandt . . . And one to keep an eye on the two intellectuals.

Kretschmann - You'll need fresher ones than that.

Guillaume - I'm out of touch! Rush me the latest!

Brandt My speech. Has it been typed?

Wilke I'll send a messenger across.

Guillaume I'll go! - And here I am! Fetching Willy's speech for him!

Brandt Guillaume?

Ehmke Günter Guillaume.

Guillaume - I think I've caught his eye!

Brandt He looks like the manager of a pornographic bookshop.

Wilke He was in fact the manager of a photocopying shop.

Guillaume Herr Chancellor . . .

Brandt Thank you. Run off a few copies, will you, Reinhard?

Guillaume I'll do it, Herr Chancellor.

Brandt Oh yes. Your speciality.

Guillaume Virtuoso of the Xerox machine. Confidentiality assured.

Kretschmann - So we've got our foot in the door. Well done. Mischa's very pleased.

Brandt I don't think I shall be able to stand very much of Herr Guillaume's company.

Ehmke Willy, it's not good for you to be surrounded by professors and politicians. You need to keep some contact with the grass roots. You need some ordinary human being around who can tell you what people are thinking.

Brandt Herr Guillaume, however, carries ordinariness a little too far. Find me someone else, will you, Horst?

Kretschmann (with Guillaume) Now, here's how we're going to work. We're living in a goldfish bowl in Bonn - and if one of the goldfish keeps vanishing from sight people are going to notice. So we'll carry on meeting like this, quite openly, in the restaurants and bars where everyone goes. Two old friends having a drink together, where everyone can see us. Nothing passing between us. All photographs or photocopies of documents you'll hand over to your wife. She'll be your courier.

Guillaume Poor Christel. She was the star of the show, not me!

Kretschmann She did Very well.

Guillaume A job in the Hesse State Chancellery in Wiesbaden! What more could anyone hope for?

Kretschmann One in the Federal Chancellery in Bonn.

Guillaume Pure blind chance, Arno! A gift from the gods!

Kretschmann Even the gods are working for Mischa.

Guillaume It was her life, you know.

Kretschmann Nevertheless, all written material to Christel. What Mischa really wants from you, though, is all the things that politicians and civil servants don't write down. The gossip. The background. The smell of things. The way they think. Who's in, who's out. Who's got their knife into whom. Copier and camera, certainly. But, above all, eyes and ears.

Guillaume Willy keeps saying he wants to open their working procedures to public scrutiny.

Kretschmann Here's how we can help him. And of course what we want to know about most of all is . . .

Guillaume The Eastern Policy.

Kretschmann The Eastern Policy. Any scrap of information that helps us judge his intentions towards the socialist block. Reconciliation, he says. Peace. But can we trust him? Is he really going to risk everything on such a gamble? 'Small steps', he says. How small? As small as the space he gives it in his speeches, slipped in below security and a lot of pious platitudes about 'daring more democracy'?

Brandt — It was the historical achievement of my predecessors in this office to establish an understanding between Germany and its former enemies in the West. This understanding remains the basis of our political life and the guarantee of our security. But the division of the world into two great power blocs has torn Europe apart. It has split our country and our capital, and undermined our relationship with the peoples to the East of us. Our reconciliation with them is, as we all know, especially difficult. And yet it is as essential for peace as our reconciliation with the West.

Kretschmann But will he really pay the price, when he comes right down to it? Is he really going to persuade people here to take their head out of the sand at last and recognise that we exist? You and me? The other Germany? Will he pay the final bill for the war: a quarter of Germany's lands lost to Poland and Russia - another quarter, us seceded and free. Half the nation, gone for ever!

Brandt - Those who have been separated from their families, those whose homeland has been taken, will never forget what they have lost, and we can only try to understand and respect their grief.

Kretschmann Twelve million people who have taken refuge here will never forgive him. Can any democratic politician simply write off a fifth of the population? He chooses his words so carefully. What do they mean?

Brandt - Even if it is true that two separate states exist in Germany they can never be foreign to each other. We are bound by our language and our history, by our glory and our woe. We have even now common tasks and common responsibilities: for the peace between ourselves and for peace in Europe. Our unity is gone, and there is no way back. Step by step we must seek to ease the pain of separation. We must draw a line under the evils of the past. This government, then, will venture to open direct negotiations with Moscow, with Warsaw, and with East Berlin . . .

Kretschmann But can we really trust him?

Guillaume You can't help trusting him. When you're there in the audience. You look up at him - and there he is looking straight back at you. You personally. Talking to you alone. One human being to another.

Brandt - Dear friends, we must be at one with our neighbours. With all our neighbours - in the East just as much as in the West, within the German lands just as much as without. We must at last be reconciled.

Kretschmann And then when you remember him in his Berlin days. When you think of all his efforts to stop West Berlin being reunited with the East. When he trots out his ancient East German jokes . . . Has he really changed? Or has he simply noticed that the young people in West Germany are all suddenly turning against capitalism and militarism? That the world is going our way? What does he say in private? In the office. Talking to his own people.

Brandt (with Ehmke, Wilke and Guillaume) Can we trust them, though, Horst? When you look at their record. When you think of their total cynicism. What would people here say if they knew how East Germany tries to balance its trade deficit with us?

Wilke I believe we may be about to venture onto rather sensitive ground here. Herr Guillaume . . .

Guillaume Going, going!

Ehmke No, let's try it on him. Ordinary voter. Our man in the street. Günter, this is something our new friends over there in the East don't want you to know about, for some strange reason. They have to find something to export to us. What's their one successful industry? The manufacture of political prisoners. So that's what they sell us. They arrest as many as they need, and we buy them out. A thousand or so a year at 40,000 Deutschmarks a head. Oh, and they also charge us for letting people out to be reunited with their families. So what do you think, Günter? Can we trust these new friends of ours?

Guillaume - Yes? No? What do I say? Which one of me's going to answer?

Kretschmann - I leave it to you, Günter.

Guillaume - Leave it to which of me?

Brandt A difficult decision, evidently.

Guillaume Half of me wants to say one thing. Half of me wants to say another.

Brandt The position of the electorate as a whole on almost everything.

Ehmke I told you, Willy! Our man in the street!

Guillaume (with Kretschmann) Do we sell them political prisoners, though? Do we charge for family reunions?

Kretschmann Never mind about traitors and dissidents. What's worrying us now is the effect Willy's having on the rest of our people.

Wilke (with Ehmke) His visit to East Germany.

Brandt — The most moving day of my life.

Wilke It starts as soon as his special train crosses the border.

Kretschmann Suddenly there he is amongst us. The first West German leader ever to set foot on East German soil.

Wilke Suddenly there it is all around us. The other Germany. The Germany we've never recognised. The Germany that doesn't exist.

Kretschmann Our people have never seen anything like it before. A living, breathing West German leader!

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