Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  WATZMANN to Johannes: Does it distress you? Do you think about it?

  JOHANNES: It’s a waste of a man, I tell you. Drinks.

  Silence.

  WATZMANN: He’s getting more and more disgusting.

  EKART: Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear it. I love him. I don’t resent him, because I love him. He’s a child.

  WATZMANN: He only does what he has to. Because he’s so lazy.

  EKART goes to the door: It’s a mild night. The wind’s warm. Like milk. I love all this. One should never drink. Or not so much. Back to the table. It’s a mild night. Now and for another three weeks into the autumn a man can live on the road all right. He sits down.

  WATZMANN: Do you want to leave tonight? You’d like to get rid of him, I suppose? He’s a burden.

  JOHANNES: You’d better be careful.

  Baal enters slowly.

  WATZMANN: Is that you, Baal?

  EKART hard: What do you want now?

  BAAL enters, sits down: What a miserable hole this place has turned into! The waitress brings drink.

  WATZMANN: Nothing’s changed here. Only you, it would appear, have got more refined.

  BAAL: Is that still you, Luise?

  Silence.

  JOHANNES: Yes, it’s agreeable here. – I have to drink, you see, drink a lot. It makes one strong. Even then one makes one’s way to hell along a path of razors. But not in the same way. As if your legs were giving way under you, yielding, you know. So that you don’t feel the razors at all. With springy loose joints. Besides, I never used to have ideas of this sort, really peculiar ones. Not while everything went well, when I lived a good bourgeois life. But now I have ideas, now that I’ve turned into a genius. Hm.

  EKART bursting out: I’d like to be back in the forest, at dawn! The light between the trees is the colour of lemons! I want to go back up into the forest.

  JOHANNES: That’s something I don’t understand, you must buy me another drink, Baal. It’s really agreeable here.

  BAAL: A gin for —

  JOHANNES: No names! We know each other. I have such fearful dreams at night, you know, now and then. But only now and then. It really is agreeable here.

  The wind. They drink.

  WATZMANN hums:

  The trees come in avalanches

  Each very conveniently made.

  You can hang yourself from their branches

  Or loll underneath in their shade.

  BAAL: Where was it like that? It was like that once.

  JOHANNES: She’s still afloat, you see. Nobody’s found her. But sometimes I get a feeling she’s being washed down my throat with all the drink, a very small corpse, half rotted. And she was already seventeen. Now there are rats and weed in her green hair, rather becoming … a little swollen and whitish, and filled with the stinking ooze from the river, completely black. She was always so clean. That’s why she went into the river and began to stink.

  WATZMANN: What is flesh? It decays just like the spirit. Gentlemen, I am completely drunk. Twice two is four. Therefore I am not drunk. But I have intimations of a higher world. Bow! … be hup! … humble! Put the old Adam aside! Drinks heavily and shakily. I’ve not reached rock bottom yet, not while I have my intimations, not while I can add up properly that twice two … What is this thing called two? Two – oo, curious word! Two! Sits down. Baal reaches for his guitar and smashes the light with it.

  BAAL: Now I’ll sing. Sings:

  Sick from the sun, and eaten raw by the weather

  A looted wreath crowning his tangled head

  He called back the dreams of a childhood he had lost

  altogether

  Forgot the roof, but never the sky overhead.

  Then speaks: My voice is not entirely clear as a bell. Tunes the guitar.

  EKART: Go on singing, Baal.

  BAAL goes on singing:

  O you whose life it has been always to suffer

  You murderers they threw out from heaven and hell

  Why did you not stay in the arms of your mother

  Where it was quiet, and you slept, and all was well?

  Speaks. The guitar’s not in tune either.

  WATZMANN: A good song. Very apt in my case. Romantic.

  BAAL goes on singing:

  Still he explores and scans the absinthe-green ocean

  Though his mother give him up for lost

  Grinning and cursing, or weeping at times with contrition

  Always in search of that land where life is best.

  WATZMANN: I can’t find my glass. The table’s rocking stupidly. Put the light on. How’s a man to find his mouth?

  EKART: Idiot! Can you see anything, Baal?

  BAAL: No. I don’t want to. It’s good in the dark. With champagne in the blood and homesickness without memory. Are you my friend Ekart?

  EKART with an effort: Yes, but sing!

  BAAL sings:

  Loafing through hells and flogged through paradises

  Calm and grinning, with expressionless stare

  Sometimes he dreams of a small field he recognizes

  With blue sky overhead and nothing more.

  JOHANNES: I’ll always stay with you. You could take me with you. I hardly ever eat.

  WATZMANN has lit the lamp, with an effort: Let there be light.

  Heh heh heh heh.

  BAAL: It’s blinding. Gets up.

  Ekart, with the waitress on his lap, gets up with an effort and tries to take her arm from his neck.

  EKART: What’s the matter? This is nothing. It’s ridiculous.

  Baal gets ready to leap.

  EKART: You’re not jealous of her?

  Baal gropes, a glass falls to the floor.

  EKART: Why shouldn’t I have women?

  Baal looks at him.

  EKART: Am I your lover?

  Baal throws himself at him, chokes him.

  The light goes out. Watzmann laughs drunkenly, the waitress screams. Other guests from the adjoining room enter with a lamp.

  WATZMANN: He’s got a knife.

  THE WAITRESS: He’s killing him. Oh God!

  TWO MEN hurl themselves on the wrestlers: Blast you, man! Let go! – He’s stabbed him! God Almighty!

  Baal gets up. Sunset suddenly bursts into the room. The lamp goes out.

  BAAL: Ekart!

  10°E. of Greenwich

  Forest. Baal with guitar, his hands in his pockets, walks off into the distance.

  BAAL: The pale wind in the black trees! They’re like Lupu’s wet hair. At eleven the moon’ll rise. It’ll be light enough then. This is a small wood. I’ll go where there are forests. I can move now that I’m on my own again. I must bear north. Follow the ribbed side of the leaves. I’ll have to shrug off that little matter. Forward! Sings:

  Baal will watch the vultures in the star-shot sky

  Hovering patiently to see when Baal will die.

  Disappearing.

  Sometimes Baal shams dead. The vultures swoop.

  Baal, without a word, will dine on vulture soup.

  Gust of wind.

  A Country Road

  Evening. Wind. Rain. Two policemen struggle against the wind.

  FIRST POLICEMAN: The black rain and this wailing wind!

  The bloody tramp!

  SECOND POLICEMAN: It seems to me he keeps moving northwards towards the forests. It’ll be impossible to find him there.

  FIRST POLICEMAN: What is he?

  SECOND POLICEMAN: Above all, a murderer. Before that, revue actor and poet. Then roundabout proprietor, woodsman, lover of a millionairess, convict and pimp. When he did the murder they caught him, but he’s got the strength of an elephant. It was because of a waitress, a registered whore. He knifed his best and oldest friend because of her.

  FIRST POLICEMAN: A man like that has no soul. He belongs to the beasts.

  SECOND POLICEMAN: And he’s childish too. He carries wood for old women, and nearly gets caught. He never had anything. Except for the waitress. T
hat must have been why he killed his friend, another dubious character.

  FIRST POLICEMAN: If only we could get some gin somewhere or a woman! Let’s go! It’s eerie. And there’s something moving over there. Both go.

  BAAL comes out of the undergrowth with rucksack and guitar. He whistles through his teeth: So he’s dead? Poor little animal! Getting in my way. Now things are getting interesting. He follows the men.

  Wind.

  Hut in the Forest

  Night. Wind. Baal on a dirty bed. Men at cards and drink.

  A MAN by Baal: What do you want? You’re at your last gasp. A child could see that. And who’s going to look after you? Have you got anyone? That’s it! That’s it! Grit your teeth! Got any teeth left? Now and then it even gets the ones that could go on enjoying themselves, millionaires! But you don’t even have any papers. Don’t you be afraid, the world’ll keep rolling, round as a ball, tomorrow morning the wind’ll whistle. See the situation in a more reasonable light. Tell yourself it’s a rat that’s on the way out. That’s it! Don’t move! You’ve no teeth left.

  THE MEN: Is it still pissing? We’ll have to spend the night with the corpse. – Shut your mouth! Trumped! – Got any breath left, fatty? Sing us a song! ‘Baal grew up within the …’ – Let him be! He’ll be a cold man before the black rain’s stopped. On with the game! – He drank like a sieve but there’s something about that pale hunk that makes you think about yourself. That’s something he didn’t have crooned over his cradle. – Ten of clubs! Keep your cards up, please! That’s no way to play; if you’re not going to be serious, you can’t get a good game going.

  Silence, except for a few curses.

  BAAL: What’s the time?

  ONE OF THE MEN: Eleven. Are you going?

  BAAL: Soon. Are the roads bad?

  THE MAN: Rain.

  THE MEN getting up: It’s stopped raining. Time to go. – Everything’ll be soaking wet. – Another excuse for him to do nothing.

  They pick up the axes.

  A MAN stops in front of Baal and spits: Good night and goodbye. Have you had it?

  ANOTHER MAN: Are you on the way out? Incognito?

  A THIRD MAN: Arrange your smelly periods better tomorrow, if you don’t mind. We’ll be working till twelve and then we want to eat.

  BAAL: Can’t you stay a little longer?

  ALL amid loud laughter: Do you want us to play mother? – Do you want to sing us your swan song? – Do you want to confess, you old soak? – Can’t you throw up on your own?

  BAAL: If you could stay half an hour.

  ALL amid loud laughter: You know what? Snuff out on your own! – Let’s get moving! The wind’s died down. – What’s the matter?

  THE MAN: I’ll follow.

  BAAL: It can’t last much longer, gentlemen. Laughter. You won’t like dying on your own, gentlemen! Laughter.

  ANOTHER MAN: Old woman! Here’s a souvenir! Spits in his face.

  They go.

  BAAL: Twenty minutes.

  The men leave by the open door.

  THE MAN in the door: Stars.

  BAAL: Wipe the spit away!

  THE MAN to him: Where?

  BAAL: On my forehead.

  THE MAN: Done! What are you laughing at?

  BAAL: I like the taste.

  THE MAN indignant: You’re done for. Good-bye! With his axe to the door.

  BAAL: Thanks.

  THE MAN: Is there anything else … but I have to go to work. Jesus. Corpses!

  BAAL: You! Come closer! The man bends down. It was very beautiful …

  THE MAN: What was, you crazy hen? I nearly said capon.

  BAAL: Everything.

  THE MAN: Snob! Laughs loudly, goes, the door remains open, one sees the blue night.

  BAAL uneasy: You! You there!

  THE MAN at the window: Mmmm?

  BAAL: Are you going?

  THE MAN: To work.

  BAAL: Where?

  THE MAN: What’s that got to do with you?

  BAAL: What’s the time?

  THE MAN: A quarter past eleven. Goes.

  BAAL: He’s gone.

  Silence.

  Mother! Tell Ekart to go away, the sky’s so damned near too, you can touch it, everything’s soaking wet again. Sleep. One. Two. Three. Four. It’s suffocating in here. It must be light outside. I want to go out. Raises himself. I will go out. Dear Baal. Sharply. I’m not a rat. It must be light outside. Dear Baal. You can get to the door. You’ve still got knees, it’s better in the door. Damn it! Dear Baal! He crawls on all fours to the threshold. Stars … mmm. He crawls out.

  Early Morning in the Forest

  Woodcutters.

  A WOODCUTTER: Give me the bottle! Listen to the birds!

  ANOTHER: It’ll be a hot day.

  A THIRD: There’s plenty of trees left standing that’ll have to be down before nightfall.

  A FOURTH: He’ll be cold by now.

  THE THIRD: Yes. Yes. He’ll be cold by now.

  THE SECOND: Yes. Yes.

  THE THIRD: We could have had the eggs now if he hadn’t eaten them all. There’s a man for you, stealing eggs on his deathbed. First he kept moaning at me, I got sick of that. He never got a whiff of the bottle in all three days, thank God. It’s inconsiderate. Eggs in a corpse.

  THE FIRST: He had a way of laying himself down in the dirt, and then he never got up again, and he knew it. It was like a ready-made bed to him. He lay down carefully. Did anybody know him? What’s his name? What did he do?

  THE FOURTH: We’ll have to bury him, anyway. Give me the bottle!

  THE THIRD: I asked him, as the death-rattle was in his throat, what are you thinking about? I always want to know what goes on in a man’s head then. I’m still listening to the rain, he said. I went cold all over. I’m still listening to the rain, he said.

  Drums in the Night

  a play

  Translator: JOHN WILLETT

  Characters

  Andreas Kragler • Anna Balicke • Karl Balicke, her father • Amalie Balicke, her mother • Friedrich Murk, her fiancé • Babusch, journalist • Two men • Manke, waiter at the Piccadilly Bar • His brother, waiter at Glubb’s bar • Glubb, schnaps distiller • A drunk man • Bulltrotter, a newspaper seller • A worker • Laar, a peasant • Augusta, Marie — prostitutes • A maid • A woman selling newspapers

  The Manke brothers are played by the same actor.

  [Annotations refer to passages from the 1922 version, printed in the Notes, p. 409 ff.]

  ACT ONE (AFRICA)

  At the Balickes’

  Dark room with muslin curtains. Evening.

  BALICKE shaving at the window: It’s now four years since they posted him missing. He’ll never come back now. Times are damned uncertain. Any man’s worth his weight in gold. I’d have given my blessing two years ago. Your bloody sentimentality stopped me. Nothing’ll stop me now.

  FRAU BALICKE by the framed photograph of Kragler as a gunner: He was such a good man. A man just like a child.

  BALICKE: He’s dead and buried by now.

  FRAU BALICKE: Suppose he comes back.

  BALICKE: People don’t come back from heaven.

  FRAU BALICKE: Anna would drown herself, as heaven’s my witness!

  BALICKE: If that’s what she says she’s an ass, and I’ve never seen an ass drown itself.

  FRAU BALICKE: As it is she can’t keep anything down.

  BALICKE: She shouldn’t keep stuffing with blackberries and Bismarck herring. Murk’s a fine chap, and we ought to go down on our knees and thank God for him.

  FRAU BALICKE: He’s making money all right. But compared with him… It makes me want to cry.

  BALICKE: Compared with that corpse? I tell you straight: it’s now or never. Is she waiting for the Pope? Has it got to be a nigger? I’m fed up with the whole silly story.

  FRAU BALICKE: And suppose he does come – the corpse you say is dead and buried – back from heaven or hell? ‘The name is Kragler’ – who’s goin
g to tell him that he’s a corpse and his girl is lying in someone else’s bed?

  BALICKE: I’ll tell him. And now you tell that creature that I’m fed up and we’ve ordered the wedding march and it’s to be Murk. If I tell her she’ll flood us out. So kindly put the light on, will you?

  FRAU BALICKE: I’ll get the sticking plaster. You always cut yourself when there’s no light.

  BALICKE: Cuts cost nothing, but light …Calls: Anna!

  ANNA in the doorway: What is it, Father?

  BALICKE: Kindly listen to what your mother’s got to say to you and no blubbering on your big day!

  FRAU BALICKE: Come over here, Anna. Father thinks you’re so pale you can’t be sleeping at all.

  ANNA: I am sleeping.

  FRAU BALICKE: It can’t go on like this for ever, don’t you see? He’ll definitely not come back now. Lights candles.

  BALICKE: She’s making those crocodile eyes again.

  FRAU BALICKE: It hasn’t been easy for you, and he was such a good man, but he’s dead now.

  BALICKE: Dead, buried and decayed.

  FRAU BALICKE: Karl! And here’s Murk, a good hard worker who’s sure to get on.

  BALICKE: So there you are.

  FRAU BALICKE: And you’re to say yes, for God’s sake.

  BALICKE: Without making a song and dance about it.

  FRAU BALICKE: You’re to accept him, for God’s sake.

  BALICKE furiously occupied with his sticking plaster: Hell and damnation, do you imagine fellows are going to stand being kicked around like footballs? Yes or no! It’s rubbish rolling your eyes up to heaven like that.

  ANNA: Yes, Father.

  BALICKE huffily: Blub away, then, the floodgates are open. I’m just off to get my life-jacket.

  FRAU BALICKE: Aren’t you in love with Murk at all, then?

  BALICKE: Well, I call that simply immoral!

  FRAU BALICKE: Karl! Well, what about you and Friedrich, Anna?

  ANNA: Of course. But of course you know, and I feel so horribly sick.

  BALICKE: I know nothing at all! I tell you, the fellow’s dead, buried and rotten; all his bones have come apart. Four years! And not a sign of life! And his whole battery blown up! in the air! to smithereens! missing! Not so difficult to say where he has got to, eh? You’re too damned scared of ghosts, that’s what it is. Get yourself a man, and you won’t have to be scared of ghosts any more. Going up to Anna, expansively. Are you a brave little woman, or aren’t you? Get on with it, then.