LANKES: Yes, sir. I’ll tell the captain. Puppies, sir. Every one of our pillboxes has a puppy in it. Walled up in the foundation.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: A puppy?

LANKES: Pretty soon there won’t be a single puppy left in the whole sector from Caen to Le Havre.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: No more puppies.

LANKES: That’s what eager beavers we are.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: What eager beavers!

LANKES: Pretty soon we’ll have to use kittens.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Meow!

LANKES: But cats aren’t as good as dogs. That’s why we hope there’ll be a little action here soon.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: The big show! (They applaud.)

LANKES: We’ve rehearsed enough. And if we run out of puppies…

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Oh!

LANKES: …we’ll have to stop building. Cats are bad luck.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Meow! Meow!

LANKES: Would you like me to tell you short and sweet why we put in puppies…

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Puppies!

LANKES: Personally I think it’s the bunk…

BEBRA’S TROUPE: For shame!

LANKES: But my buddies, here, are mostly from the country. And in the country when they build a house or a barn or a village church, it’s the custom to put something living in the foundations… and…

HERZOG: That’s enough, Lankes. At ease. As you’ve heard, sir, we’re given to superstition here on the Atlantic Wall. Like you theater people who mustn’t whistle before an opening night or spit over your shoulders before the curtain goes up…

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Toi-toi-toi! (Spit over each other’s shoulders.)

HERZOG: But joking aside, we’ve got to let the men have their fun. Recently they’ve started decorating the entrances to the pillboxes with improvisations in concrete or sea-shell mosaics, and it’s tolerated by order from way up. The men like to be kept busy. Those concrete pretzels get on our C.O.’s nerves, but what I tell him is: better pretzels in the concrete, sir, than pretzels in the head. We Germans are no good at sitting idle. That’s a fact.

BEBRA: And we, too, do our bit to distract the men who are waiting on the Atlantic Wall…

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Bebra’s front-line theater sings for you, plays for you, boosts your morale for the final victory.

HERZOG: Yes, you’ve got the right point of view. But the theater alone isn’t enough. Most of the time we have only ourselves to depend on, and we do our best. Am I right, Lankes?

LANKES: Right, sir. We do our best.

HERZOG: There you have it. And if you’ll excuse me now, sir, I’ve got to take a run over to Dora Four and Dora Five. Take your time, have a good look at our concrete. It’s worth it. Lankes will show you everything…

LANKES: Everything, sir.

(Lankes and Bebra exchange salutes. Herzog goes out right, Raguna, Oskar, Felix, and Kitty, who have thus far been standing behind Bebra, jump out. Oskar is holding his drum, Raguna is carrying a basket of provisions. Felix and Kitty climb up on the concrete roof of the pillbox and begin doing acrobatic exercises. Oskar and Raguna play with pails and shovels, make it plain that they are in love, yodel, and tease Felix and Kitty.)

BEBRA (wearily, alter examining the pillbox from all sides): Tell me, Corporal, what is your civilian occupation?

LANKES: Painter, sir, but that was a long time ago.

BEBRA: House painter?

LANKES: Houses too, but mostly pictures.

BEBRA: Hear, hear! You mean you emulated the great Rembrandt, or maybe Velasquez?

LANKES: Sort of in between.

BEBRA: Why, good God, man! Why are you mixing, pouring, guarding concrete? You ought to be in the Propaganda Company. Why, a war artist is just what we need!

LANKES: It’s not my line, sir. My stuff slants too much for present tastes. But if you’ve got a cigarette… (BEBRAhands him a cigarette.)

BEBRA: Slants? I suppose you mean it’s modern?

LANKES: What do you mean by modern? Well, anyway, before they started up with their concrete, slanting was modern for a while.

BEBRA: Oh.

LANKES: Yep.

BEBRA: I guess you lay it on thick. With a trowel maybe?

LANKES: Yeah, I do that too. I stick my thumb in, automatic like, I put in nails and buttons, and before ‘33 I had a period when I put barbed wire on cinnabar. Got good reviews. A private collector in Switzerland has them now. Makes soap.

BEBRA: Oh, this war! This awful war! And today you’re pouring concrete. Hiring out your genius for fortification work. Well, I’ve got to admit, Leonardo and Michelangelo did the same thing in their day. Designed military machines and fortifications when they didn’t have a madonna on order.

LANKES: See! There’s always something cockeyed. Every real artist has got to express himself. If you’d like to take a look at the ornaments over the entrance, sir, I did them.

BEBRA (after a thorough examination of them): Amazing! What wealth of form. What expressive power!

LANKES: Structural formations I call them.

BEBRA: And your creation, your picture, or should I call it a relief, has it a title?

LANKES: I just told you: Formations, or Oblique Formations if you like that better. It’s a new style. Never been done before.

BEBRA: Even so, you ought to give it a title. Just to avoid misunderstandings. It’s your work, after all.

LANKES: What for? What good are titles? Except to put in the catalog when you have a show.

BEBRA: You’re putting on airs, Lankes. Think of me as an art lover, not as an officer. Cigarette? (LANKES takes it.) Well then, what’s on your mind?

LANKES: Oh, all right, if. you put it that way. This is how I figure it. When this war is over—one way or another, it will be over some day—well, then, when the war is over, the pillboxes will still be here. These things were made to last. And then my time will come. The centuries… (He puts the last cigarette in his pocket.) Maybe you’ve got another cigarette, sir? Thank you, sir… the centuries start coming and going, one after another like nothing at all. But the pillboxes stay put just like the Pyramids stayed put. And one fine day one of those archaeologist fellows comes along. And he says to himself: what an artistic void there was between the First and the Seventh World Wars! Dull drab concrete; here and there, over a pillbox entrance, you find some clumsy amateurish squiggles in the old-home style. And that’s all. Then he discovers Dora Five, Six, Seven; he sees my Structural Oblique Formations, and he says to himself, Say, take a look at that, Very, very interesting, magic, menacing, and yet shot through with spirituality. In these works a genius, perhaps the only genius of the twentieth century, has expressed himself clearly, resolutely, and for all time. I wonder, says our archaeologist to himself, I wonder if it’s got a name? A signature to tell us who the master was? Well, sir, if you look closely, sir, and hold your head on a slant, you’ll see, between those Oblique Formations…

BEBRA: My glasses. Help me, Lankes.

LANKES: All right, here’s what it says: Herbert Lankes, anno nineteen hundred and forty-four. Title: Barbaric, Mystical, Bored.

BEBRA: You have given our century its name.

LANKES: See!

BEBRA: Perhaps when they restore your work in five hundred or a thousand years, they will find a few puppy bones in the concrete.

LANKES: That will only give additional force to my title.

BEBRA (excited): What are the times and what are we, my friend, if our works… but take a look at Felix and Kitty, my acrobats. They are performing on the concrete.

(For some time a piece of paper has been passing back and forth between Roswitha and Oskar and Felix and Kitty, each pair writing on it by turns.)

KITTY (with a slight Saxon accent): Mr. Bebra, see what we can do on the concrete. (She walks on her hands.)

FELIX: Nobody ever did a back flip on concrete before. Not even a front flip. (He does both.)