Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  ACT 5

  55 They stormed the barracks a bit after two.

  ANNA: He won’t come now.

  BABUSCH: Now they’re marching to the newspaper offices. Yes,

  56 BABUSCH: The last time, somewhere round four, it looked to me as if he’d gone down, he was swimming powerfully but didn’t surface.

  ANNA:

  57 ANNA: How far gone the year is, and how red the moon. Like in one’s sleep. I sit here on a stone, and the red moon, and the year’s far gone.

  BABUSCH: They’re drumming again down there.

  58 The streets wake up wherever they go. Fever falls through the roofs. The houses become restless.

  59 It’s fever,

  60 Shouldn’t you go, though?

  61 I’ve forgotten it now. I suppose it’s hopeless.

  62 wife

  63 GLUBB: She’s earth too, my lad; have a look from down there.

  64 THE ONE: They’ve got into the newspaper buildings.

  THE OTHER: Artillery’s being brought up.

  THE ONE: Things will change now.

  THE OTHER: They’re far too slow, far too few.

  THE ONE: Far more are on the way.

  THE OTHER: Far too late.

  They have passed, but behind them are many marching past to the newspaper buildings.

  65 Is his hand still in his trouser pocket?

  66 They’re marching, they’re screaming, they’re waving.

  67 your lack of hair may be due to the unflattering light.

  68 Your fingers are black too: show us.

  69 I’ve known you for just four hours.

  70 ANNA: Is it seven?

  KRAGLER: Come over to me, Anna.

  71 ANNA: So gracious, are you?

  GLUBB: Wouldn’t you rather have a Scotch?

  KRAGLER: Over here to me.

  ANNA: Is it because of the catechism?

  KRAGLER: Anna.

  AUGUSTA: Aren’t you a soldier, love?

  ANNA: Are you whistling me again?

  GLUBB: You must milk a cow while it’s still warm.

  MANKE: In your army tunic, man?

  KRAGLER: My voice is gone with the shouting but my knife’s still there, you!

  Glubb places himself in front of Anna, the tall shadows of the marchers in the background fall across the buildings, and snatches of the Marseillaise are borne on the wind.

  GLUBB: Yes, she looks like sicked-up milk, it’s not very pleasant.

  72 and it was the same with smoking a cigar. Which was a pity.

  Kragler is silent.

  GLUBB: Won’t you come along for a bit, brother gunner?

  Kragler is silent.

  MANKE: What’s he staring for in that queer way? Is he laying another egg?

  73 ANNA: You can go, Andy, go on.

  AUGUSTA: Now watch him light his pipe again.

  ANNA: Go on, go on, I don’t want to see you again, you’ve got a black face, go away, I’m glad.

  74 Kragler shakes his head.

  Augusta gives a horse-laugh.

  GLUBB: The Eternal Feminine is drawing him upwards.

  KRAGLER looking at her: Come, Anna.

  GLUBB: Couldn’t you just step into the water and have a bath?

  KRAGLER: I’m all cold.

  AUGUSTA upstage: Only a few left now, they’re hurrying, they’re disappearing in no time. Oh, the newspapers, come on to the newspapers!

  GLUBB to Anna: Can’t you get this wild beast down to the newspaper buildings?

  75 Everybody is top man in his own skin.

  76 GLUBB: So you’ve no sympathy for these people?

  KRAGLER: God help me, stone me, no. What kind of face is that, Anna? Have I got to defend myself to you too? They poured your kirsch down the lavatory, but I’ve got my woman back. Anna, come.

  GLUBB: They could give me six kirsch distilleries, I’d spit in their face because of the kirsch, I’d rip out their bowels because of the kirsch, I’d burn down their houses because of two barrels of kirsch, and smoke as I did it.

  KRAGLER: Anna! To Glubb: Look! You’ll go to the wall and smoke as you do it. I see you against the wall before dawn, can’t you see how grey and glassy he looks as he stands against the wall? Can’t you smell it in him? What’s to become of you all, go home!

  Augusta laughs.

  GLUBB: Oh, they’ll get little wounds in their throat or their chest, all very tidy, they’ll get labels with numbers stuck on them when they’re stiff, not like drowned kittens, more like victims of a slight injustice.

  KRAGLER: Drop it.

  77 What’ll that do to your chest?

  GLUBB looks coldly at him: The rats’ll take it over.

  Across the bridge comes a dolled-up woman.

  AUGUSTA: You come from down by the newspaper offices?

  THE WOMAN: Yes, down that way.

  MANKE: Are they fighting there, how’s it going?

  THE WOMAN: Nobody knows.

  AUGUSTA: Have they taken the newspaper buildings yet, then?

  THE WOMAN raises her arm, there is a distant screaming: Is that the artilleryman the Friedrichstadt people have been waiting for?

  AUGUSTA: Oh, have they been waiting?

  THE WOMAN: Yes, there’ll be a lot of dead men today. Exit hurriedly.

  AUGUSTA: You hear, they’re going into the attack!

  KRAGLER: Anna.

  AUGUSTA: Would it be too much bother for the gentleman?

  KRAGLER to Anna: What are you looking like that for, damn it?

  78 Devil!

  79 That’s the attack going in.

  80 And I love you.

  81 Now they’re being blown open like fishes.

  82 the moon’s fading out, and

  83 The night blows away like black smoke.

  84 The Half-Dead Suitor

  85 A Man Works his Passage; The Thorn in the Flesh or A Tiger at Dawn.

  86 But the man goes to the woman and goes home.

  87 It gets cold, so early in the year.

  88 Like a little flag, the first red appears in the smoky grey dawn sky above.

  THE DEUTSCHES THEATER ACTING VERSION

  A copy of the Deutsches Theater’s typescript is in the Brecht-Archive in Berlin. It is annotated in pencil (not by Brecht) with a full cast list, a sketch plan of the stage arrangement for Act 1 and other production details, and was presumably used for the production of 20 December 1922. This was directed by Otto Falckenberg, who had also directed the Munich première three months earlier. Kragler was played by Alexander Granach, Glubb by Heinrich George, Babusch by Paul Graetz, Anna by Blandine Ebinger.

  The introductory note, which differs from that to the 1922 edition, has been given above on p. 394. The Piccadilly Bar becomes the Grünes Haus (though at one point it has been changed back in pencil). Augusta becomes Carmen; she is sometimes alluded to as Augusta, and then objects, presumably because the name is not fancy enough. Kragler on his first entry is described as ‘a short, thick-set man’, and there is no reference to his old blue uniform. Otherwise the main changes in the first two acts are confined to cuts.

  There is also a long cut at the start of Act 3, which now begins with Anna’s entry. The stage direction for this begins: Clouds racing by. The street runs from upstage left to downstage right. From the left come … The street leads over a bridge, not along a barrack wall. The rest of the act is virtually unchanged.

  Act 4 starts thus:

  Glubb, a pale desiccated individual with a little red goatee, sings ‘The Ballad of the Dead Soldier’ to guitar accompaniment. Two drunks – a farmer and a sinister man, both drunk – stare at his fingers. Manke the waiter, a tall fellow, is dancing with Carmen, a blowsy creature. A small square man called Bulltrotter is reading the paper. The drunks keep on laughing.

  BULLTROTTER: When the landlord’s drunk and singing like a primadonna, rattling the glasses, then everything’s cockeyed. Look at that tart dancing with a shark like that between her legs: how the hell is a fellow to
digest his paper? You see your arse through it. A god-forsaken bar in the back of beyond, where the waiter shuffles round the dance-floor looking like a shark and the landlord serves him when he isn’t singing hymns.

  BULLTROTTER putting his feet on the table: The revolution’s on the way! Freedom’s here!

  GLUBB: You’re spoiling my fake marbling. Goes on singing.

  THE DRUNK MAN to Laar: Scum and Lazarus. I’m scum, you’re Lazarus. Heaven, arseholes and bits of string. None of them know a bloody thing.

  MANKE: When they grab something it’s schnaps, when they share something it’s a bed, and when they produce something it’s babies. Augusta, come across my knee and pour some brandy into me!

  BULLTROTTER: That’s all talk. Pure grand opera. Where are you saying it? In a schnaps bar.

  MANKE: Where there’s a horse there’s horse-shit; that’s the way, Augusta.

  CARMEN: Make up your mind. It’s Carmen, or you can dance by yourself. Vulgar beast!

  MANKE: Ah yes, Augusta, they’re practising the Marseillaise, in four parts with tremolo. The bourgeois. Well done, landlord.

  THE DRUNK MAN: The bourgeois. Coming forward: The bourgeois is a necessity, just like the Gents. If it weren’t for those two institutions public life Would be simply immoral.

  BULLTROTTER: Change the record. Shut up, landlord! I saw the fellows earlier. And they’ve got a look in their eye, mates, or rather landlord, just like before going over the top. You know what I mean?

  MANKE: I’ve a notion. When they had some schnaps in them, dear man, with those pale faces in the air where it was raining, raining bullets, dear man. And guns in their hands and a sticky feeling at the tips of the fingers, my boy!

  BULLTROTTER: That’s how they look, that’s how they looked just now, just a minute or two ago.

  It then continues much as before up to Kragler’s entrance, which is slightly different in that the rumble of guns is not heard, and no reference is made to his artillery tunic. His account of his experiences in Africa is also very much as in the 1922 edition (see notes 38-40 above), up to where the nickelodeon plays and he begins dancing with Carmen/Augusta. Then comes an expanded version of Laar’s cryptic remarks about the fir trees, (which in both other texts are put later):

  GLUBB: Quiet: the farmer’s got something to say, the stone is going to speak. Watch out! He’s always opening his mouth; now he’s made it.

  LAAR: But I had land and animals and a wood, simply fir trees, little fir trees.

  GLUBB excitedly watching him: Listen to the stone speaking, he’s speaking now.

  LAAR: Nowadays I’m drunk all the time. There was a fellow who just happened to have some money on him, see? Silence. Kragler sits by the nickelodeon, which has stopped playing. Carmen has her arm round him.

  BULLTROTTER: And you sold, you beast?

  LAAR: Yes, I did. I didn’t want to deliver, and I thought … I thought I’d sell instead. It’s just a lot of paper, and I handed over my land and my animals, I did, for paper and some schnaps in my gullet. The wife and kids are living like pigs. I live here. We’re peaceable folk and we get on; the music plays and the schnaps flows and we say, ‘Yes, yes, Amen.’ A small schnaps, please.

  GLUBB: A small schnaps, please!

  MANKE: Can’t you get your land back?

  GLUBB:

  They’ll have the whole damn lot –

  Wife, land and all you’ve got.

  Let them swallow it … etc.

  BULLTROTTER: What a world!

  CARMEN: It isn’t possible.

  THE DRUNK MAN: Looks as though it is, mate, so close your eyes. Close your hand, mate.

  GLUBB: Isn’t it possible? Isn’t he flesh and blood? Is he just paper? …

  Glubb’s song ‘They’ll have the whole damn lot’ recurs below. (The songs or jingles in the other two texts are omitted.) Glubb also has more to say about his particular motive for joining the revolutionaries. After The Drunk Man’s remark in the 1922 edition (note 45 above), he says:

  Don’t insult me. Don’t insult anyone, mate. Yes, they poured my schnaps away, just two little barrels; I’d more under the floorboards but it went down the drain because of a regulation on a bit of paper. Mind my words. Since that day I have[n’t] slept properly, not because the schnaps went but because of the human hands that poured it down the gutter. Because that’s the moment I decided the world was all wrong.

  Needless to say there is no hint of this (not even by the Drunk Man) in the 1953 text, where Glubb is relatively silent. Glubb is also given a verse speech, more or less in lieu of his two longer speeches (48 and 49 above). He climbs on a chair:

  You who have drowned in schnaps –

  You whose skin is covered in rashes –

  You whom they thrust back with bayonets –

  You whom they gave guns and swords to and turned into murderers –

  You who have always been beaten and spat upon –

  You who were never loved

  Come here and see, your hour is here

  And you shall enter into the kingdom!

  Then, as the bullets whistle and the woman selling newspapers appears calling her headlines about the Spartacists, it is he rather than Kragler who leads them all into the street:

  GLUBB: Just keep calm. Come along, all of you, link arms. Join all the others and face up to the soldiers and just let them shoot. And the story will be told wherever there are people who have forgotten their own …

  These changes in the character and weight of the role persist throughout the next act, and may of course be connected with the powerful talents of Heinrich George, the actor in question. There is none of the disillusioned cynicism of the other versions.

  In Act 5 the opening stage direction is again changed:

  A street corner in the slums. Autumn night. Big red moon. Left, the low pale wall of a house. In the right background a wide wooden bridge, rising towards the rear. Sitting on a stone, left, Anna, who is still wearing her light-coloured dress. Babusch is walking up and down. The wind is blowing. Distant shots and shouting are heard. Rapid tempo.

  The start of the act is basically as in the other two versions, though it is somewhat expanded both before and after Kragler’s entry. Then, when Anna has told him she is expecting a child his next stage direction (Sways … as if trying out walking) is made to run on:

  Then turns and looks round at Anna. Anna sits on the stone and looks up at him with as loving a look as she can muster, while he groans and shuts his eyes and draws a deep breath. Manke and the drunk man approach from the bridge. Glubb squats there, waiting. Behind them Marie slowly comes nearer.

  Kragler’s attack on Anna with clods of earth is again expanded, mainly with additional rhetoric that represents no change of substance. An extra stage direction describes the scene as the men hold Kragler down and Babusch crosses the battlefield (p. 110):

  At this point Marie is standing protectively in front of Anna, with her arms round her. Glubb has stood up by the bridge. Laar is sitting in the roadway, picking dirt out of his hair. Manke is holding Kragler by the collar …

  Babusch’s ensuing speech is likewise expanded, and concludes:

  It isn’t a vast idea. The nights are chilly in November. You’re out to liberate the world, by all means do so, it’s an excellent thing; but tell the woman that you want no part of her. Tell her straight to go home if she can. Don’t give us any purple passages, no more speeches, it’s a small and perfectly simple human situation.

  The emphasis on the ‘idea’ is peculiar to this version. The two Men are cut, with their conversation about how the attack on the newspaper offices is going. Then from Carmen/Augusta’s appeal to Kragler to come down there (p. 110), to his final refusal with the speech beginning ‘Fling stones at me,’ (p. 112) there is an entirely new section, enlarging on the ‘idea’. Thus:

  BABUSCH: Say yes or no. Or else you’re a coward.

  GLUBB: Tell her, Andy. Try to think what you want. Don’t tell her all that qu
ickly. It’s as well to say yes or no. Have you got your idea inside you? It needn’t be in the catechism. Tell her. She’ll go away, she’s not bad-looking.

  THE DRUNK MAN: I’ll marry her, let’s have her. Because none of them know a bloody thing.

  BABUSCH: They don’t. Know a thing, I mean. That’s to say men don’t. Dogs do.

  GLUBB: Don’t listen to him, Andy. Watch the woman. He’s making fun, he has rotten teeth. Watch the woman. Andy! Have you still got your idea? You have to sense it in your throat.

  MANKE: What nonsense are you talking? He said, ‘To the newspaper buildings’; he’s going to the newspaper buildings. Why is he hanging around with his hands in his pockets, trying to get out of it? Come along!

  CARMEN on the bridge: They’re coming! Stop quarrelling. They’re coming, lots of them, the streets are black with them, as if they’d gone rotten.

  BABUSCH: He’s got one, Kragler, I’m quite sure. I know the story of his schnaps. But you haven’t, though you did have. You’ve got a gullet full of phrases.

  GLUBB: Andy, it’s only the devil, but best say yes or no. The others start concentrating on events offstage, where it seems that masses of people are approaching with drumming and shouts.

  BABUSCH: Don’t let them make a hero of you, Kragler. If it’s what you want it isn’t so tragic. Do whatever you really want. Everybody is top man in his own skin.

  [There is a blank space in the typescript here.]

  MANKE over his shoulder: Why doesn’t he say something? Has he fallen on his face?

  CARMEN: More and more of them are coming, and the whole lot’s going to the newspaper offices. Do come along! Isn’t it settled?

  GLUBB somewhat hoarsely: And I’d like to know why you don’t say something too. Are you so feeble? It’s irritating, your not saying anything. Here we are, charging through the streets like bulls and finding nothing, and you’re not with us. God has tossed you your woman, half torn to pieces and with a body full of strange fruit, all you need do is step over her; are you stuck? I tell you, if you’re pure a hundred women won’t be able to touch you. They’re less than an idea, they only mislead you. The swine poured my schnaps in the gutter; it made my head go queer, and no wonder. They can give me a hundred schnaps factories instead of those two small barrels of mine, and I’ll still spit in their faces for the schnaps that was washed away and will never come back. I’ll tear out their guts for that schnaps. I’ll burn down their houses for that schnaps that went down the drain. I’m telling you, Andy, the idea is what matters.