Gschwendtner [sighing]
Yes, yes! . . .
Gschwendtnerin
The joy you have when finally they’re over the worst part, when all of a sudden they can stand and they can walk . . . and then they’re grown up and you think you’ve done your duty but you still worry quietly with every cough . . . and now he’s off to be done in . . .
Gschwendtner
It’s happening to the others, just like to us, look . . .
Gschwendtnerin
Yes . . . but a mother doesn’t think about the others . . .
Gschwendtner
Of course not . . .
He turns from the window, takes a candleholder from the console, puts it on the table and lights the candle. Then he takes a chair and sits down next to his wife. Both have just turned to the audience.
Gschwendtner [well-meaning]
Come on, wife, it’ll turn out alright . . . .
He takes her hand; she removes the apron from her eyes.
Gschwendtnerin
[more to herself than to anyone else]
We’ve had all these plans for him – how he’d help out on the farm for a couple more years and then marry the right girl . . .
Gschwendtner
[Also contemplative]
Yes . . . yes . . .
Gschwendtnerin
And we two would have retired and had our peace and quiet . . .
Gschwendtner
And we would have known that everything is in the right hands . . . [Sighs, then livelier once again.] Hans became a real farmer. He made me completely happy, that boy. How he sat on that horse for the first time, how he went out with the hay wagon. Martin says to me, farmer, one day he’ll be – –
Gschwendtnerin
[Joining in enthusiastically]
And how he knew every horse in town by name and recognized whose it was from afar, so that I often said, well, boy, how can you remember all that in your head, and he laughed and said, Ma, I can just do it!
Gschwendtner
You have to have something like that inside of you; you can’t just learn something like that.
Gschwendtnerin
He was smiling over his whole face and he said: I can just do it, Ma!
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