Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  KRAGLER: Then we didn’t have any shirts left. That was the worst of all, I can tell you. Can you conceive that that might be the worst of all?

  ANNA: Andy, they’re listening to you.

  MURK: Then I offer sixty marks. You ought to sell.

  KRAGLER: Beginning to be ashamed of me, are you? Because they’re standing round the ring like in a circus and the elephant’s pissing with fear. Yet they know absolutely nothing.

  MURK: Eighty marks.

  KRAGLER: I’m not a pirate. The red moon’s no affair of mine. It’s just that I can’t get my eyes open. I’m flesh and blood and I’ve got a clean shirt on. So I’m not a ghost.

  MURK leaps up: A hundred marks, then.

  MARIE: You should be ashamed to the depths of your soul.

  MURK: The swine, he won’t let me have his old boots for a hundred marks.

  KRAGLER: Something’s speaking, Anna. What’s that voice?

  MURK: You’ve got sunstroke. Do you need help to leave?

  KRAGLER: Anna, it thinks it shouldn’t be squashed.

  MURK: Are we seeing your face at last?

  KRAGLER: Anna, it’s one of God’s creatures.

  MURK: Is that you? What do you really want? You’re just a corpse. You’re getting smelly. Holds his nose. Have you no idea of hygiene? D’you want a monument put up to you because you’ve had a touch of the African sun? I’ve worked. I’ve sweated till the blood ran into my boots. Look at my hands. You get all the sympathy, because you got yourself shot up, it wasn’t me did the shooting. You’re a hero and I’m a worker. And that’s my girl.

  BABUSCH: That still holds good if you sit down, Murk. You’re still a worker sitting down. Kragler, the history of humanity would be different if only people sat on their bottoms more.

  KRAGLER: I can’t see into him. He’s like a lavatory wall. Covered with obscene scribbles. Not the wall’s fault. Anna, is that the man you love? Is it?

  Anna laughs and drinks.

  BABUSCH: You’re cutting off your nose to spite your face, Kragler.

  KRAGLER: I’m cutting out a tumour. Is it him you love? With a green face like an unripe nut? Am I to be sent away for his sake? He’s got an English suit and a chest padded out with paper and boots full of blood. And I have only my old suit, which has the moth in it. Say you can’t marry me because of my suit, say it. I’d rather!

  BABUSCH: Oh, do sit down. To hell with it. Now we’re off.

  MARIE: That’s him! And the embarrassing way he danced with me, how he pushed his knees into my stomach.

  MURK: Put a cork in it. They only have to look at you. Haven’t you got a knife on you that you can cut my throat with, because you got bubbles in the brain in Africa? Get out your knife, I’m fed up to here, slit it through.

  FRAU BALICKE: How can you listen, Anna?

  BALICKE: Waiter, bring me four glasses of kirsch. I couldn’t care less.

  MURK: Mind you don’t draw that knife. Pull yourself together, we don’t want you playing the hero here. Here it means gaol.

  MARIE: Were you in the army?

  MURK furious, chucks a glass at her: Why weren’t you?

  KRAGLER: At last I’ve come.

  MURK: Who asked you?

  KRAGLER: At last I’ve got there.

  MURK: Swine!

  ANNA: Don’t answer.

  Kragler lets it pass.

  MURK: Bandit!

  KRAGLER silently: Thief!

  MURK: Ghost!

  KRAGLER: Look out.

  MURK: You look out for that knife of yours. Feel it twitching? Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!

  MARIE: You swine! You swine!

  KRAGLER: Anna! Anna! What am I doing? Staggering over the ocean full of corpses: it won’t drown me. Rolling south in darkened cattle-trucks: nothing can happen to me. Burning in the fiery furnace: I myself burn hotter. Someone goes mad in the sun: not me, thank you. Two men fall down a water-hole: I sleep on. I shoot niggers. I eat grass. I’m a ghost. At this point the waiter rushes to the window and pulls the curtain. The music stops abruptly, there are excited cries of They’re coming! Quiet! The waiter blows out the candles. 2> Sound of the ‘Internationale’ from outside.<2

  A MAN appears in the door left: Ladies and gentlemen, please keep calm. You are requested not to leave the premises. Disturbances have broken out. They are fighting around the newspaper offices. The outcome is uncertain.

  BALICKE sits down heavily: Spartacus! Your friends, Mr Andreas Kragler. Your murky companions. Your comrades who are now roaring round the newspaper offices.3 Smelling of murder and arson. Animals! Silence. Animals! Animals! Animals! Want to know why you’re animals: you eat flesh. You should be stamped out.

  WAITER: By you! You who’ve eaten yourselves silly!

  MURK: Where d’you keep your knife! Out with it!

  MARIE goes up to him with the waiter: Will you shut up?

  WAITER: It’s inhuman. Animal, that’s what it is.

  MURK: Draw the curtains! Ghosts!

  WAITER: Are we supposed to be put up against a wall we built with our own hands, while you people swill down kirsch behind it?

  KRAGLER: There’s my hand and there’s my artery. Cut it. If I’m destroyed it’ll bleed all right.

  MURK: Ghost! Ghost! What are you really? Am I supposed to grovel because you’ve got an African skin on?4 And go roaring round the newspaper offices? Is it my fault you were in Africa? Is it my fault I wasn’t?

  WAITER: He must get his girl back. It’s inhuman.

  FRAU BALICKE in front of Anna, furiously: The whole lot are sick. They’ve all got something. Syphilis! Syphilis! They’ve all got syphilis!

  BABUSCH bangs the table with his stick: That’s the last straw.

  FRAU BALICKE: Kindly leave my child alone! Kindly leave her alone! You hyena! You’re a swine, you are!

  ANNA: Andy, I can’t. You people are destroying me.

  MARIE: You’re the swine.

  WAITER: It’s not human. A man must have some rights.

  FRAU BALICKE: Be quiet! You menial! You little bastard, I ordered kirsch, do you hear? You’ll be sacked!

  WAITER: It’s the human element. It’s all of our business. He must get …

  KRAGLER: Oh, get out. I’ve had enough. Human and inhuman! What does that drunk cow think she wants? I’ve been on my own and I want my girl. What does that sodden archangel think he wants? D’you want to hawk her body as if it were a pound of coffee? Tear her away from me with grappling-hooks and you’ll simply rip her apart.

  WAITER: You’ll rip her apart.

  MARIE: Yes, like a pound of coffee.

  BALICKE: A man absolutely without money!

  BABUSCH: You kick his teeth in, he spits them back in your face.

  MURK to Anna: You look like a baby’s vomit, letting him lick you up with his eyes like that. With a face like you’d pissed in a bed of nettles.

  BALICKE: Is that how you speak about your fiancée?

  MURK: Fiancée! That what she is? My fiancée, is she? Isn’t she cutting loose already? Back, is he? Do you love him? Is the unripe nut sinking to the bottom? Is it African thighs you’ve an urge for? Is that the way the wind lies?

  BABUSCH: That’s something you wouldn’t have said if you’d been sitting down.

  ANNA continually getting closer to Kragler, regards Murk with disgust. Softly: You’re drunk.

  MURK pulls her to him: Let’s see your face! Show us your teeth! Whore!

  KRAGLER simply lifts Murk to his feet, the glasses rattle on the table, Marie keeps applauding: You’re not too steady on your feet. Go outside. Make yourself sick. You’ve drunk too much. You’re falling over. Gives him a push.

  MARIE: Let him have it! Do let him have it!

  KRAGLER: Leave him be. Come to me, Anna. I want you now. He wanted to buy my boots off me, but I’m taking my coat off. The sleet cut through my skin so that it’s red and splits in the sun. My bag’s empty, I have no money whatever, I want you. I’m not beautiful. Up to now I’ve been frig
htened out of my wits, but now I’m drinking. Drinks. And then we’ll go. Come!

  MURK completely collapsed, tipped towards Kragler, says almost calmly: Don’t drink. You don’t know the half of it. Call it a day. I was drunk. But you don’t know the half of it. Anna – soberly – you tell him. What are you going to do? In your state?

  KRAGLER doesn’t hear him: Don’t be frightened, Anna! With the kirsch. Nothing will happen to you. No call to be scared. We’ll get married. I’ve always got along all right.

  WAITER: Bravo.

  FRAU BALICKE: You bastard!

  KRAGLER: If you’ve got a conscience, the birds’ll shit on your roof. If you’ve got patience, you’ll end up eaten by vultures. They’ve got it all fixed.

  ANNA suddenly sets off, falls across the table. Andy! Help me! Help, Andy!

  MARIE: What’s the matter? What is it?

  KRAGLER looks at her astounded: Well?

  ANNA: Andy, I don’t know, I’m so miserable, Andy. I can’t tell you anything, you mustn’t ask. Looks up. I can’t belong to you. God knows it. Kragler drops his glass. And I’m asking you to go, Andy. Silence. In the next room the Man can be heard asking ‘What’s happening?’ The waiter answers him, talking through the door left.

  WAITER: The crocodile-hide suitor from Africa has been waiting for four years and the bride still has her lily in her hand. But the other suitor, a man with buttoned boots, won’t give her up and the bride who still has her lily in her hand doesn’t know which side to go off.

  VOICE: Anything else?

  WAITER: The revolution in the newspaper district is part of it all and then the bride has a secret, something the suitor from Africa who has been waiting for four years doesn’t know about. It’s still quite undecided.

  VOICE: No decision one way or the other?

  WAITER: It’s still quite undecided.

  BALICKE: Waiter! Who are that low-down crowd? Are we supposed to sit and drink surrounded by vermin? To Kragler: Have you heard enough now? Are you satisfied? Shut up! The sun was hot, was it? That’s what Africa’s for. That’s in the geography books. And you were a hero? That’ll be in the history books. But the cheque book’s empty. Hence the hero will be going back to Africa. Period. Waiter, show that object out! The waiter starts to tow away Kragler, who accompanies him slowly and with reluctance. But Marie the prostitute walks on his left side.

  BALICKE: Chimpanzees’ tea-party! Shouts after Kragler, because it’s too quiet: Wanted meat, did you? It isn’t a meat auction. Pack your red moon up and sing your monkeys something. I’m not interested in your palm trees. The whole of you’s come out of a novel. Where do you keep your birth certificate? Kragler is off.

  FRAU BALICKE: You’ll be better for a good cry. But what’s that? Want to drink yourself senseless with all that kirsch?

  BALICKE: What sort of a face is that, anyway? Paper-white!

  FRAU BALICKE: No, just look at the child. What are you thinking of? You ought to lay off now.

  Anna sits behind the table, motionless, almost up against the curtains, ill-naturedly, with a glass in front of her.

  MURK goes up to her, sniffs her glass: Pepper! Hell’s bells! She takes it contemptuously away from him. Oh really! – What the hell are you up to with that pepper? You’ll be wanting a hot douche next, will you? Then have to be fixed up manually, I suppose? Hell’s bitches! Spits and flings the glass to the floor.

  Anna smiles.

  Machine-gun fire is heard.

  BABUSCH at the window: It’s starting. The masses are stirring. Spartacus is rising. The slaughter continues.

  All stand rigid, listening to the noises outside.

  ACT THREE (RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES)

  5> Street Leading to the Newspaper District<5

  Red-brick barrack wall from up left to down right. Behind it the city, in dim starlight. Night. Wind.

  MARIE: Where are you off to?

  KRAGLER with no cap, collar turned up, hands in his trouser pockets, has entered, whistling: What kind of a red fig is that?

  MARIE: Don’t run so.

  KRAGLER: Can’t you keep up?

  MARIE: D’you think someone’s after you?

  KRAGLER: D’you want to go to bed? Where’s your room?

  MARIE: But that’s no good.

  KRAGLER: Yes. Wants to go on.

  MARIE: It’s in my lungs.

  KRAGLER: Why tag along like a dog, then?

  MARIE: But your6 …

  KRAGLER: Pooh, that’s been scrubbed! Washed out! Cancelled!

  MARIE: What’ll you do till morning, then?

  KRAGLER: 7There’s knives.

  MARIE: Dear Jesus …

  KRAGLER: Quiet, I don’t like it when you scream like that, there’s also 8>schnaps<8. What d’you want? I can try laughing if you like. Tell me, did they lay you on the steps before you were confirmed? Scrub that! D’you smoke? He laughs. Let’s go on.9>

  MARIE: There’s firing down by the newspaper offices.<9

  KRAGLER: We might be useful. Exeunt both.

  Wind. Two men in the same direction.

  THE ONE: I think we’ll do it here.

  THE OTHER: Mightn’t have a chance down there …

  They make water.

  10>THE ONE: Gunfire.

  THE OTHER: Hell! In the Friedrichstrasse!<10

  THE ONE: Where you watered the synthetic alcohol.

  THE OTHER: That moon alone’s enough to drive you crazy.

  THE ONE: When you’ve been selling doctored tobacco.

  THE OTHER: All right, I’ve sold doctored tobacco, but you’ve stuffed human beings into rat-holes.

  THE ONE: That must be a comfort to you.

  THE OTHER: I won’t be the only one to hang.

  11> THE ONE: You know what the Bolsheviks did? Show us your hands. No callouses? Bang bang. The Other looks at his hands. Bang bang. You’re getting smelly already.<11

  THE OTHER: O God.

  THE ONE: Fine business if you turn up in your bowler hat.

  THE OTHER: You’ve a bowler too.

  THE ONE: Battered, my dear fellow.

  THE OTHER: I can batter mine.

  THE ONE: That stiff collar of yours is as good as a hangman’s noose.

  THE OTHER: I’ll sweat till it’s soft; you’ve got button boots, though.

  THE ONE: Your waistline!

  THE OTHER: Your voice!

  THE ONE: Your look! Your way of walking! Your manner!

  THE OTHER: Yes, they’ll hang me for that, but you’ve a grammar school face.

  THE ONE: I’ve a mangled ear with a bullet through it, my dear sir.

  THE OTHER: The devil!

  Exeunt both. Wind.

  From the left now the entire Ride of the Valkyries: Anna, as if fleeing. Next her, wearing an evening coat but no hat, Manke, the waiter from the Piccadilly Bar, who behaves as if intoxicated. After them comes Babusch, dragging Murk, who is drunk, pale and bloated.

  MANKE: Forget it. He’s gone. Blown away. He may be swallowed up in the 12> newspaper district<12 already. They’re shooting all over the place, all kinds of things are happening at the newspapers, this night of all nights and he might even be shot. Speaking to Anna as if drunk: One can run away when they shoot, but one can also choose not to. Anyhow: another hour and no one will be able to find him. He’s dissolving like paper in water. He’s got the moon in his head. He’s running after every drum. Go! Save your beloved that was, no, is.

  BABUSCH flinging himself in Anna’s path: Halt, all you Valkyries ! Where are you going? It’s cold and there’s a wind too and he’s landed in some schnaps bar. Aping the waiter. He who waited four years. Nobody’s going to find him now, though.

  MURK: Nobody. Not a soul. He sits on a stone.

  BABUSCH: And look at that, will you?13

  MANKE: He’s nothing to do with me. Give him a coat. Don’t waste time. He who waited four years is now running quicker than those clouds are drifting. He’s gone quicker than this wind is gone.

  MU
RK apathetic: The punch had colouring matter in it. Just now when everything’s set. The linen got together, the rooms rented. Come over here, Bab!

  MANKE: What are you standing about like Lot’s wife for? This is no Gomorrah. Does drunken misery impress you? Can you find a way round? Is it the linen?14 Will the clouds hang back for that?

  BABUSCH: What business is that of yours? How are the clouds your affair? You’re a waiter, aren’t you?

  MANKE: My affair? The stars run clean off their rails if a man’s left unmoved by unfairness. Seizes his own throat. It’s driving me too. It’s got me by the throat too. A man frightened out of his wits is nothing to be petty about.

  BABUSCH: What’s that? Out of his wits? Where did you see that? I’m telling you: something’s going to be bellowing like a bull down at the newspapers before daybreak. 15> And that’ll be the mob thinking here’s a chance to settle old scores.<15

  MURK has stood up, whines: Dragging a man round in this wind! I feel terrible. What are you running away for? What is it? I need you. It’s not the linen.

  ANNA: I can’t.16

  MURK: I can’t stand on my feet.

  MANKE: Sit down! You’re not the only one. It’s infectious. Father gets a stroke. The drunken kangaroo is in tears. But the daughter goes down to the slums. To her lover who has waited four years.17

  ANNA: I can’t do it.

  MURK: You’ve got all the linen. And the furniture’s already in the rooms.

  MANKE: The linen is folded, but the bride is not coming.

  ANNA: My linen has been bought, I laid it in the cupboard piece by piece, but now I need it no longer. The room has been rented and the curtains hang ready and the wallpaper is up. But he is come who has18 no shoes and only one coat, and the moths are in that.

  MANKE: And he is swallowed up by the 19>newspaper district<19. Awaited by the schnaps saloons. The night! The misery! The dregs! Rescue him!

  BABUSCH: All this is a drama called The Angel of the Dockland Boozers.

  MANKE: Yes, the angel.

  MURK: And you want to go down there 20>to the Friedrichstrasse?<20 And nothing’s going to stop you?

  ANNA: Nothing that I know of.

  MURK: Nothing?21 Won’t you still be thinking of ‘the other thing’?

  ANNA: No. I don’t want that any more.