Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 7

by Bertolt Brecht

  3. FEUCHTWANGER’S NOVEL

  Simone, a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, was published in 1944 by the Viking Press in a translation by G. A. Herrmann. It is less ‘the book of the play’ than an independent reworking of the ideas discussed in the course of the author’s collaboration with Brecht, and it differs in various important respects. Thus out of twenty-one chapters only two contain Visions (as against the much more even alternation in the play) though there are three others where Simone is shown reading the books (plural) which she has been given by an old bookbinder friend. The town where the story is set is a fair-sized place, a Burgundian chef-lieu d’arrondissement (i.e. of the importance, say, of Châlons-sur-Saône) where the step-uncle who corresponds to the Patron runs a largish transport business, not a hotel. The refugees are in the Palais de Justice; the sous-préfet corresponds to the Mayor, and the local Marquis de Saint-Brisson to the Captain who wants his wines evacuated. Simone Planchard is ‘a tall, lanky fifteen-year-old’:

  Her bony, tanned face framed with dark blond [sic] hair was tense; her dark, deep-set eyes under a low but broad and well-shaped forehead eagerly absorbed all that moved before her. … She could scarcely be called beautiful, but her intelligent, thoughtful, somewhat stubborn face with its strong chin and prominent Burgundian nose was good to look at.

  Moreover her father had been a local left-wing hero who had died in the Congo two years previously while investigating native working conditions. Madame, who corresponds to the Patron’s mother (and like her appears as Queen Isabeau) was evidently the father’s step-mother. Thanks to her, Simone’s role in the household (the Villa Monrepos) is that of an unpaid servant.

  This Simone has no brother. She has a confidant in the secretary of the sous-préfecture and two friends of her own age—her schoolmate Henriette and Henriette’s brother Étienne—though neither figures very largely in the story. Of her uncle’s employees in the loading yard Maurice (there is no Robert, and Georges is a nonentity) is at first cruelly and gratuitously offensive to her; it looks as if he is meant to stand for the French Communists, sceptical of the bourgeoisie and their war, and uninvolved until after the German victory. In the dream episodes he figures as the monstrous Gilles de Rais. From the first Simone seems attracted to him, and once she has set fire to the yard (lorries, petrol and all)—which occurs about half-way through the book, as against two-thirds of the way through the play—he starts behaving more amicably, though still in a rather condescending way. He offers to get her away on his motor-cycle; but by the time she decides to accept his offer it is too late and he has already gone. She escapes by herself, but is arrested in Nevers and brought back.

  Though Madame and the other villains (such as the lawyer Maître Levautour) seem heavily caricatured, the step-uncle’s actions are generally credible and within the bounds of reason. For much of the story he even behaves kindly. ‘Don’t you understand’, he asks her, ‘that I can’t live without my business? I am a business man. I can’t help that’. And again, in explanation of his actions, ‘Some people are born to be artists, others to be engineers; I was born to be a business man, a promoter.’ To save his business and at the same time prevent the Germans from punishing the entire town he arranges with the French authorities that Simone shall confess to having caused the fire for personal reasons. This she formally does on the understanding that no proceedings will be taken against her. However, the Marquis and Madame see to it that she is sent away to the Grey House, the reformatory at ‘Francheville’, the departmental capital, and ‘an uncouth woman’ escorts her away. As she is driven off the crowd in the street makes signs to her—

  Arms were raised waving to her, women and girls wept, the gendarme had come to attention, shouts sounded in her direction: ‘Good-bye, Simone—good-bye, Simone Planchard—take care of yourself, Simone—so long, Simone—we won’t forget you, Simone Planchard—we’ll come and get you, Simone.’

  And she rides away confident ‘that she would survive the Grey House’.

  SCHWEYK IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

  Texts by Brecht

  THE STORY

  The Good Soldier Schweyk, after surviving the First World War, is still alive. Our story shows his successful efforts to survive the Second as well. The new rulers have even more grandiose and all-embracing plans than the old, which makes it even harder for today’s Little Man to remain more or less alive.

  The play begins with a

  Prologue in the Higher Regions

  wherein a preternaturally large Hitler with a preternaturally large voice talks to his preternaturally large police chief Himmler about the putative loyalty, reliability, self-denial, enthusiasm, geopolitical consciousness and so on and so forth of the European ‘Little Man’. The reason why he is demanding such virtues of the Little Man is that he has made up his mind to conquer the world. His police chief assures him that the European Little Man bears him the same love as he does the Little Man in Germany. The Gestapo will see to that. The Führer has nothing to fear, and need have no hesitation about conquering the world.

  1

  There has been an attempt on Hitler’s life. Hearty applause from the ‘Chalice’ in Prague, where the good dog-dealer Josef Schweyk and his friend Baloun are sitting over their morning drinks and discussing politics with the Chalice’s landlady, the young widow Anna Kopecka. Fat Baloun, whose exceptional appetite presents him with special problems in these days of Nazi rationing, quickly lapses into his normal gloom. He has learnt from reliable sources that the German field kitchens will dish out sizeable helpings of meat. How much longer is he going to be able to hold out against the temptation simply to go and join up in the German army? Mrs Kopecka and Schweyk are greatly disturbed by his situation. A soul in torment! Schweyk, ever the realist, suggests making Baloun swear an oath never under any circumstances to have anything to do with the Germans. Baloun reminds them that it is six months since he last had a square meal. In exchange for a square meal, he says, he would be prepared to do anything. Mrs Kopecka thinks something might be arranged. She is a blazing patriot, and the idea of Baloun in the German army is more than she can bear. When her young admirer turns up, the butcher’s son Prochazka, they hold a touching conversation in which she poses Cleopatra’s age-old question: ‘If it truly is love, then tell me how much?’ She wants to know if, for instance, his love would run to the scrounging of two pounds of pickled pork for the undernourished Baloun. He could take it from the paternal shop, only the Nazis have established heavy penalties for blackmarketeering. None the less, seeing the way to the widow’s heart open before him for the first time, young Prochazka agrees in a positive tornado of emotion to bring round the meat. Meanwhile the Chalice has been filling up and Schweyk has started letting all and sundry know what he thinks of the Munich plot against Hitler. Inspired by the announcements on the German radio, he plunges with foolhardy innocence into a mortally dangerous conversation with Brettschneider, who is known to all the regular customers as a Gestapo agent. His classic drivelling fails to deceive the Gestapo man. Without any more ado Herr Brettschneider arrests the amazed but obliging Schweyk.

  2

  Introduced to Gestapo headquarters in Petschek’s Bank by Herr Brettschneider, Schweyk flings up his right hand, bawls out ‘Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler! We are going to win this war!’, and is discharged as chronically half-witted.

  Hearing that Schweyk is a dog dealer, the interrogating SS officer Ludwig Bullinger asks about a pedigree dog he has seen in the Salmgasse. ‘Beg to report, sir, I know that animal professionally’, says Schweyk cheerfully, and goes on to expatiate on the racial question. That pomeranian is the apple of Privy Councillor Vojta’s eye, and not to be had for love or money. Schweyk and the SS officer discuss how best to have the Privy Councillor arrested and expropriated as an enemy of the state; however, it turns out that he is ‘no yid’ but a quisling. So Schweyk gets the honourable job of stealing the pedigree pom and showing himself to be a good collaborationist.

 
3

  Returning in triumph to the Chalice, Schweyk finds that a tense situation has developed. Fat Baloun is waiting for his meal like a cat on hot bricks, fully prepared at the first glimpse of the meat to abjure all intention of ever joining Hitler’s army. It is now ten past twelve, and young Prochazka has not yet shown up. Schweyk has been considerate enough to bring along SS-Man Müller II from Gestapo HQ, with the promise that widow Kopecka will tell his future by reading his hand. At first the landlady refuses on the grounds that she has had unfortunate experiences with her predictions. Young Prochazka now finally appears, and everyone looks nervously at his music case—he is a student at the music academy—because of course the SS-Man must not see the meat. To get him out of the way Mrs Kopecka sits down and reads his hand. It seems that he is destined to perform heroic deeds, and has been picked out finally for a hero’s death. Depressed and demoralized, the SS-Man lurches out and Baloun flings himself on the music case round which he has been longingly circling for some time. The case is empty. Young Prochazka makes his miserable confession: he didn’t dare steal the meat because the sight of Schweyk’s arrest gave him such a fear of the Gestapo. Angrily the widow Kopecka spurns him with a biblical gesture, for he has failed the test as a man and as a Czech. Despondently he leaves, but no sooner does the bitterly frustrated fat man speak slightingly of her suitor than she snaps back that the Nazis are to blame for it all. So Baloun’s wrath is diverted to the oppressors of his once beautiful country, and when Herr Brettschneider the Gestapo agent comes in he starts singing the subversive song of the black radish, which must ‘get out’, and be ‘sliced and salted’ till ‘he sweats’, all of which strikes Herr Brettschneider as suspicious but without offering him any pretext to intervene.

  First Schweyk Finale

  Interlude in the Upper Regions

  The mighty Hitler, having encountered obstacles in his attempt to conquer the world, needs more planes, tanks and guns, and inquires of the mighty Goering whether the European Little Man is prepared to work for him. Goering assures him that the European Little Man will work for him just like the Little Man in Germany. The Gestapo will see to that. The Führer has nothing to fear and need have no hesitation about carrying on conquering the world.

  4

  Schweyk’s operation against the germanophil Privy Councillor Vojta’s pom takes place in the gardens along the Vltava or Moldau, which is where Vojta’s maidservant and her friend Paula are accustomed to take the pedigree hound for his walkies every evening. Schweyk and Baloun come up to the bench where the two girls are sitting, and pretend to have erotic aims in view. Schweyk warns the girls in all honesty that SS-leader Bullinger wants to annex the pom for the sake of its racial purity and have it sent to his lady wife in Cologne; he has had this on impeccable authority. Thereupon he goes off ‘to meet someone at the Metropole’. Baloun exchanges pleasantries with the girls, and they are moved by the Moldau’s majestic flow to start singing a folk song. By the end of the song the dog has gone. Schweyk has underhandedly lured it away as they were singing. The girls rush off to the police station, and Schweyk has just returned with the pom to tell his friend that they mustn’t let the SS-leader have it till he has put down the money, when a fishy-looking individual appears on the scene. Schweyk the dog-catcher has a man-catcher on his track; the individual identifies himself as a functionary of the Nazi Labour Organization whose job it is to recruit idlers and loafers into the ‘voluntary labour service’. Concerned for the pom, Schweyk and Baloun are led off for registration.

  5

  Dinner break in the Prague goods sidings. Schweyk and Baloun have become shunters for Hitler and are waiting under the eyes of a heavily-armed German soldier for their cabbage soup to be sent up from the Chalice. Today it is widow Kopecka in person who brings their enamel dishes. The stolen pom left in her care by Schweyk is becoming the focus of some intense political activity, and must be got off the premises. The controlled press is saying that the dog’s disappearance is due to an act of vengeance by the population against a pro-German official. Schweyk promises to come and collect it. He is only half concentrating, since he is troubled by the state of Baloun. The sentry’s dinner has arrived—goulash! Trembling from head to foot, Baloun has gone sniffing after the pot as it was borne past him. Now he is excitedly asking the sentry whether the helpings in the German army are always as big as that, etc., etc., and scarcely pays attention to the imploring glances of his friends. The soldier is plunged in thought as he munches his goulash, all the while silently moving his lips between gobbets. He has been told to memorize the number 4268, being that of a waggon with agricultural machinery for Lower Bavaria, and this is something he finds difficult. Always ready to help, Schweyk sets out to teach him a mnemonic technique which he learned from a water-board statistician who was one of the regulars at the Chalice. By the time he has finished explaining it the poor sentry’s brain is in such a tangle that when they eventually ask him for the number he helplessly points to any old waggon. Schweyk is afraid that this may mean that a waggonload of machine guns for Stalingrad may get sent to Bavaria in lieu. ‘But who can tell?’, he remarks consolingly to Baloun and Mrs Kopecka. ‘By that time perhaps what they’ll need most in Stalingrad will be combine-harvesters and it’ll be Bavaria’s turn to want machine-guns.’

  6

  Saturday evening at the Chalice. Dance. A morose Baloun takes the floor with the Privy Councillor’s maidservant, who is there with her friend. The police are still interviewing the two girls about the pom. Yesterday however they dropped a hint to Herr Brettschneider as to its whereabouts: at SS-leader Bullinger’s; possibly by now in Cologne. Baloun hints that this may be his last evening at the Chalice: he is fed up with feeling hungry. And it incidentally emerges that the noisy fun of the dance floor serves a higher purpose: covering up the sound of the news from London, which Kopecka is listening to and passing on to the guests. Enter then Schweyk, cheerfully, with a parcel under his arm: meat for Baloun’s goulash. The fat man can hardly believe it; the two friends embrace most movingly. Baloun’s enthusiasm is such however that Schweyk asks Mrs Kopecka to put extra paprika in the goulash, since it’s only horsemeat. The landlady looks quizzically at him, and he confesses that it is Mr Vojta’s pom. A police car draws up. SS-leader Bullinger enters the Chalice, with SS-men at his heels. Hue and cry for the Vojta pom. Asked by Bullinger whether he knows the dog’s whereabouts, Schweyk innocently replies that he hasn’t got it. ‘Didn’t you see in the papers, Herr SS-leader, where it said it had been stolen?’ Bullinger’s patience gives way. He bellows that the Chalice is the source of all subversive Czechish subversiveness and will have to be smoked out. Moreover the dog can only be there. The SS is starting to search the place when Herr Brettschneider arrives. Herr Brettschneider, who has long pictured himself in the role of protector (this is, after all, a Protectorate) to the charming Mrs Kopecka, forcefully stands up to the fuming Bullinger and invites him to Gestapo HQ, where he has some rather revealing information about the present location of the missing dog. Mrs Kopecka’s house is above suspicion; he would go to the stake for that. Unfortunately at this very moment the gentlemen’s attention is drawn to a parcel reposing on one of the tables. The wretched Baloun has been unable to keep his fingers off Schweyk’s gift. A triumphant Bullinger discloses the contents of the parcel: meat. So the Chalice is a centre of the black market! At that Schweyk feels forced to admit that he put the parcel there. He claims that a gentleman with a black beard gave it to him ‘to look after’. All those present affirm having seen the man, while Herr Brettschneider, after going to the stake on the Chalice’s behalf, thinks it very possible that the criminal spotted the SS a hundred yards off and accordingly ran away. None the less Bullinger insists on arresting Schweyk, and the gentlemen escort him out of the Chalice—Bullinger, with the parcel under his arm, prophesying that he will find that dog yet. Cold-shouldered by the widow, young Prochazka has spent the entire evening sitting in a corner; now he slinks guiltily ou
t, followed by the widow’s icy stare. Baloun bursts into tears. Thanks to his weakness the loving couple has been parted and his friend landed in mortal danger. The Chalice’s landlady consoles him. In a big song she foretells that just as the Moldau washes away all the dirt, so her oppressed people’s love of their country will wash away the cruelties of their invaders.

  Second Schweyk Finale

  Interlude in the Upper Regions

  The anxious Hitler, having been caught by the Russian winter, needs more soldiers. He inquires of the anxious Goebbels whether the European Little Man is prepared to fight for him. Goebbels assures him that the European Little Man will fight for him just like the Little Man in Germany. The Gestapo will see to that.

  7

  As a result of disagreements between Bullinger the crocodile and Brettschneider the tiger, and what with Hitler’s screaming for fresh soldiers, the good soldier Schweyk has moved from the cellars of the Gestapo to the German Army recruiting bureau. Among those whom he encounters there is Privy Councillor Vojta, who is being sent to the front because his pom was stolen. All the inmates are discussing what loathsome diseases they can report to the doctors at their medical inspection. Schweyk for his part feels another bout of rheumatism coming, since he has no time to travel to Russia for Hitler when ‘nothing’s been settled in Prague’. Hearing that young Prochazka is standing outside the barracks with an important message for him, he fears the worst. Happily Prochazka manages to bribe an SS-man to smuggle in a note to him, and it is an encouraging one. The Chalice landlady’s suitor writes that, having been deeply moved by Schweyk’s self-sacrifice and ghastly fate, he will now supply ‘the desired article’. At that Schweyk feels prepared to devote himself with an untroubled mind to Hitler’s Russian affairs, said to be going none too well. Outside is heard the Nazis’ notorious Horst Wessel song; a battalion is moving off to the East. The inmates begin singing their own version of the Nazi anthem, where ‘The butcher calls’ and they ‘march like sheep’; and an NCO comes in who is mistaken enough to praise them for joining in so cheerfully, then informs them that they are all undoubtedly fit to enlist and are accordingly accepted into the army. They are to be divided among different units to prevent them from getting up to any filthy tricks, so Schweyk bids a touching farewell to the Privy Councillor and goes off to Hitler’s war.