oma: ausländer und staatenlose | master of arts researchAIM/RMIT
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Mark Fedotych is dying. He and his wife, Marusia have been living in Lagerstrasse, a refugee camp in Central Europe. They survived off what money he made selling goods on the black Market. Chocolate, stockings, that sort of thing.

Mark drank and smoked all the time. Years of poor food, beatings, tobacco and alcohol were taking its toll. His will shaken by life on the run, from one war torn crisis to the next his body could take no more.

When Mark and Marusia, arrived at Lagerstrasse his life came quickly to a standstill. His was a life on the run. Movement was his country, his freedom. To stop was the end of knowledge, the end of life, to die.

Marusia loved, cared and looked after him. She'd done the same for her father, also a heavy drinker, since she was in her early teens. Why should life with Mark be any different?

Soon it would all come to an end. Mark was in great pain and Marusia could not bare to see him suffer.

Their friend, Semyon Semyonych, watches over them, comforting Marusia as Mark nears his death.

"What have I become," Mark wonders. It seemed that all his struggles; the strength and courage it took to stay alive had amounted to nothing. Nothing, but food for the worms. "I will lie in a grave, in a grave cold and yellow."

"I was born without a country, born staatenlos, my home was the land my feet walked upon." He cried, like a child, softly, helplessly...

No matter how many borders he'd had to cross, his country was movement, his language was that of the road and the people he would meet along the way. A foreigner, ein Auslaender!

Dying staatenlos wasn't a problem for Mark. This was just one more runner. "Forever stateless, forever free... the road is my home. So long as I move I have a place. It's this camp, this Lagerstrasse that's killed me. If the ground ceases to move beneath my feet then so must I."

And then the day and the hour of death came. His was a difficult death, he was fully conscious, looking at his Marusia, parting from her forever, and from his friend Semyon.

Marusia wept inconsolably, and so did Semyon.

Mark Fedotych's last breath tore from his chest, his eyes closed and everything disappeared. It was all over.

SUITS (quietly)
Ausländer und Staatenlose
Ausländer und Staatenlose
Ausländer und Staatenlose
Ausländer und Staatenlose

(Continues till the end of MARK FEDOTYCH's first song)

MARK FEDOTYCH
(strained)
I
I will
I will die
And
and these
these hands
these hands and legs
these hands and legs and all of me will die

Yes, living
living had been good
Yes, living
Living had been good

I
I will
I will lie
lie in a grave
in a grave cold and yellow
and
and the worms
worms will eat all of me
yes, the worms
the worms will eat it all

(SUITS end abruptly)


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