The child reappears in the gateway. It seems surprised by Shen Teh’s play-acting. Suddenly she observes it and beckons it into the yard.
THE CHILD: Where are you going?
SHEN TEH: I don’t know, Ni Tzu.
The child rubs its stomach and looks expectantly at her.
SHEN TEH: I haven’t any more rice, Ni Tzu, not a grain.
THE CHILD: Don’t go.
SHEN TEH: I’d like to stay.
The water seller is heard calling ‘Buy water!’
SHEN TEH: That’s something I can still do for you. Come on, little man.
To the audience.
Hey, you people. Someone is asking for shelter.
A citizen of tomorrow is asking you for a today.
To the child: Wait a moment. She hurries to the gateway, where the water seller has appeared.
WANG: Good morning, Shen Teh. Is it true that you’re having to clear out of your shop?
SHEN TEH: That’s not important: happiness has come to me, I am to have a child, Wang. I’m so glad you came; I had to tell somebody about it. But don’t repeat that or Yang Sun may hear of it, and he won’t want us. Give me a cupful.
He gives her a cup of water. When she turns round with it she sees the child and stiffens. It has gone over to the dustbin and is fishing around in it. It picks out something which it eats.
SHEN TEH, to Wang: Please go at once; I’m not well. She pushes him out. He’s hungry. Fishing in the garbage.
Then She lifts up the child (p. 79) and makes her big verse speech as in our text, and the scene ends with ‘for the last time, I hope’ on p.79.
A new, much shorter interlude follows in lieu of the present one (pp. 83–4). It goes thus:
The water seller walks slowly along before the curtain as if it were a street. He stops and addresses the audience.
WANG: Can any of you good people tell me where to find Miss Shen Teh, formerly of Sandalmakers’ Street. It’s five months since she completely vanished. That was when her cousin suddenly popped up – must have been for the third time – what’s more [?] there have been some queer business dealings in her tobacco shop, very profitable but dirty. Softly. Opium. The worst of it is I’m no longer in touch with the Enlightened Ones. It may be because I’m so worried I can’t sleep a wink, so that I no longer have dreams. Anyway, if you do see Shen Teh, could you tell her to get in touch with me? We miss her badly in our district; she is such a good person, you see. He walks worriedly on.
8
Is omitted.
9 [renumbered 7]
This is the scene in Shen Teh’s shop (pp. 90 ff.), but with changes. It starts thus:
The shop has been transformed into an office, with easy chairs and fine carpets. Shui Ta, fat and expensively dressed, is ushering out the elderly couple and the nephew who called on Shen Teh the day the shop was opened. Mrs. Shin, in noticeably new clothes, is watching with amusement. Outside it is raining.
SHUI TA: I tell you for the tenth time I never found any sacks in the back room.
THE WIFE: Then we’d better write to Miss Shen Teh. What’s her address?
SHUI TA: I’m afraid I don’t know.
THE NEPHEW: So that’s it. The sacks have gone, but you’ve done all right for yourself.
SHUI TA: That indeed is it.
MRS. SHIN: Better watch your step. Mr. Shui Ta found jobs in his factory for some of your family, didn’t he? His patience might suddenly give out.
THE WIFE: But the work’s ruining my boy’s health. It’s more than he can take.
Shui Ta shrugs his shoulders. The elderly couple and the nephew go off angrily.
SHUI TA, feebly: Working in a factory unhealthy? Work’s work.
MRS. SHIN: Those people wouldn’t have got anywhere with their couple of sacks. That sort of thing is just a foundation, and it takes very special talents to build any real prosperity on it. You have them.
SHUI TA, has to sit down because he feels sick: I feel dizzy again.
MRS. SHIN, bustling around him: You’re six months gone! You mustn’t let yourself get worked up. Lucky for you you’ve got me. All of us can do with a helping hand. Yes, when your time comes I shall be at your side. She laughs.
SHEN XEH, feebly: Can I count on that, Mrs. Shin?
MRS. SHIN: You bet. It’ll cost money, of course.
A smartly dressed man enters. He is the unemployed man who was given cigarettes the day the shop was opened.
THE AGENT: Our accounts, Mr. Shui Ta. From street-corner clients 50 dollars. From the Teahouse of Bliss …
SHUI TA, laboriously: Go away. Tomorrow.
MRS. SHIN: Can’t you see Mr. Shui Ta isn’t up to it?
THE AGENT: But we’ve got a little problem with the police in District Four. One consignment got into the wrong hands, Mr. Shui Ta.
MRS. SHIN: Can’t you ever handle anything by yourself? The agent starts to go, nervously.
SHUI TA: Wait! Hand over the money! The agent hands over money and goes.
Then as in our text from ‘SHUI TA, pitifully’ down to ‘They’re watching the shop’ (p. 91) after which Mrs. Shin says:
Have a drop of water, dear. She gets some water. Why don’t you move out of this place and take a villa in a better district? Oh, but I know why. You’re still waiting for that broken-down pilot. That’s a weakness.
SHUI TA: Nonsense.
Enter a decrepit figure, the former pilot Yang Sun. He is amazed to see Shui Ta in Mrs. Shin’s arms, being made to drink by her.
SUN, hoarsely. Am I disturbing you?
Shui Ta gets up with difficulty and stares at him.
MRS. SHIN: Mr. Yang Sun in person.
SUN, respectfully: Excuse me coming to see you dressed like this, Mr. Shui Ta. My luggage got held up, and I didn’t want the rain to stop my calling on one or two of my old acquaintances, you see.
SHUI TA, draws Mrs. Shin aside before she can open her mouth’: Go and find him some clothes.
MRS. SHIN: Chuck him out right away. I’m telling you.
SHUI TA, sharply: You do what you’re told. Mrs. Shin goes out, protesting.
SUN: Woollen rugs. What riches. I’m told people are calling you the Tobacco King, Mr. Shui Ta.
SHUI TA: I’ve been lucky.
SUN: Oh, Mr. Shui Ta, it isn’t just luck; you’ve earned it. Ah yes, some get fat and others get thin, that’s it, isn’t it?
SHUI TA: I take it that fate has not been kind to you, Mr. Yang Sun; but are you ill?
SUN: Me? No, my health is fine.
SHUI TA: Good. Damage to one’s health is the only thing that cannot sooner or later be repaired, I would say. Enter Mrs. Shin from the back room with clothing.
SHUI TA: I hope these things will fit you. Isn’t that hat rather big? Mrs. Shin tries a hat on Sun.
SHUI TA: Yes, it’s too big. Get another, Mrs. Shin.
SUN: I don’t want a hat. Suddenly angry. What are you up to? Trying to buy me off with an old hat? Controlling himself. Why should I want your hat? It’s something else I need. Ingratiatingly. Mr. Shui Ta, would you grant just one favour to a man down on his luck?
SHUI TA: What can I do for you?
MRS. SHIN: It’s written all over him. I can tell you what kind of favour he means.
SHUI TA, beginning to understand: No!
MRS. SHIN: Opium, eh?
SHUI TA: Sun!
SUN: Only a little packet, enough for two or three pipes. That’s all I need. I don’t care about clothes or food. But I’ve got to have my pipe.
SHUI TA, in the depths of horror: Not opium! Don’t tell me you’re a victim of that vice. Listen to me, those wretches who think it may help them escape their miseries for an hour or two are plunged in misery by it forever, so that in no time they need the drug not to make them happy but simply to reduce their worst sufferings.
SUN: I see you know all about it. That’s how it is with me.
SHUI TA: Turn back at once! You must be ruthless and control your craving; never
touch the drug again, you can do it.
SUN: All very well for you to say that, Mr. Shui Ta; you deal in it and know all about it. Your livelihood depends on us smokers not finding the way back.
SHUI TA: Water! I feel sick.
MRS. SHIN: You haven’t been in form lately, not in your old form. Mockingly. Perhaps it’s Mr. Yang Sun’s fault for bringing the rain with him. Rain always makes you so touchy and melancholic. I expect you know why.
SHUI TA: Go away.
Then Wang’s vpice is heard singing, as on p. 93, but this time it is Mrs. Shin who comments: ‘There’s that bloody water-seller. Now he’ll be nagging us again’. She then goes out at a sign from Shui Ta as his voice continues with his speech from outside, after which Sun says, pressingly:
We’ll make a bargain. Give me what I asked for, and I’ll shut him up. What business is it of his, where she is?
Then Wang enters, and with two minor changes the text is the same as ours up to Shui Ta’s ‘Have you dropped that?’ on p. 95. The first change is the addition of the words ‘as if transformed’ after ‘SUN, to the audience’ on p. 94. The second is the substitution seven lines on of ‘left here rotting’ for ‘left here to work like a slave’ and the addition of ‘So that lousy water seller can’t even recognise me’ before ‘He is losing his temper’. Then after ‘Have you dropped that?’ the next four pages of our text are considerably changed and shortened, going on thus:
SUN, cautiously: Why do you ask that? Want to buy me a pilot’s job? Now? What makes you think anyone can fly with hands like this? He shows his; they are trembling. Where’s my fiancée? Do you hear me? I said, where is my fiancée Shen Teh?
SHUI TA: Do you really want to know?
SUN: I should think so.
SHUI TA: My cousin might be pleased to hear that.
SUN: Anyway, I’m concerned enough not to be able to shut my eyes if, for instance, I find that she is being deprived of her freedom.
SHUI TA: By whom?
SUN: By you.
Pause.
SHUI TA: What would you do in such an eventuality?
SUN, crudely: I’d say you had better meet my request and no arguing about it.
SHUI TA: Your request for …
SUN, hoarsely: The stuff, of course.
SHUI TA: Aha. Pause. Mr. Yang Sun, you will not get a single pinch of that drug out of me.
SUN: In that case perhaps your cousin wouldn’t deny the father of her child a few pipes of opium every day and a bench to sleep on? Dear cousin-in-law, my longing, for the lady of my heart cannot be suppressed. I feel I shall be forced to take steps if I am to enfold her in my arms once more. He calls. Shen Teh! Shen Teh!
SHUI TA: Didn’t they tell you Shen Teh has gone away? Do you want to search the back room?
SUN, giving him a peculiar look: No, I don’t, anyway not by myself. I’m not physically in any condition to fight with you. The police are better fed. He leaves quickly, taking care not to present his back to Shui Ta.
Shui Ta looks at him without moving. Then he goes quickly into the back room once more and brings out all kinds of things belonging to Shen Teh: underwear, toilet articles, a dress. He looks lengthily at the shawl which Sun once commented favourably on in the park, then packs it all up in a bundle. Then he gets a suitcase and some men’s clothes which he stuffs into it.
SHUI TA, with the bundle and the suitcase: So this is the finish. After all my efforts and triumphs I am having to leave this flourishing business which I developed from the dirty little shop thought good enough by the gods. Just one weak moment, one unforseeable attack of softness, and I’m pitched into the abyss. I only had to let that broken-down creature open his mouth, instead of instantly handing him over to the police for having embezzled $300, and I was ruined. No amount of toughness and inhumanity will do unless it is total. That’s the kind of world it is.
On hearing sounds from outside, he hurriedly stuffs the bundle under the table. Somebody throws a stone outside the window. Voices of an excited crowd outside. Enter Sun, Wang and the policeman.
The scene then ends virtually as it does after their entry in our text (p. 98). The policeman in his first speech says ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and omits the words ‘received from your own firm.’ Then in place of Mrs. Mi Tzu’s speech Sun ‘points at the bundle’ saying, ‘He’s packed his things. He wanted to clear out.’ Finally Shui Ta’s last speech is cut and he simply ‘bows and goes out ahead of the policeman.’ The interlude which follows (pp. 99–101) is as we have it.
10 [renumbered 8]
This is very largely the last scene as we have it, less the epilogue. Minor changes in the first part are:
P. 101, for Wang’s first speech substitute ‘I’ve collected as many witnesses as I could.’
Three lines below, for ‘property owner’ substitute ‘lady tabacco merchant.’
P. 101 for ‘THE OLD WOMAN’ substitute ‘THE YOUNG PROSTITUTE.’
Pp. 102–3, in the policeman’s evidence cut the two sentences beginning ‘There were some people’ down to ‘perjury.’ P. 103, Mrs. Mi Tzu’s evidence goes:
As president of the United District Charities, I wish to bring to the attention of the court that Mr. Shui Ta is giving bread and work to a considerable number of people in his tobacco factories. This Shen Teh person, by contrast, was not in particularly good repute.
Five lines below, Wang steps forward with ‘the carpenter and the family of eight.’
There are also still slighter changes in the German which would not affect the translation. After the sister-in-law’s ‘But we had nowhere to go,’ however (p. 104), the scene goes on thus:
SHUI TA: There were too many of you. The lifeboat was on the point of capsizing. I got it afloat again. There wasn’t a single morning when the poor of the district failed to get their rice. My cousin regarded her shop as a gift of the gods.
WANG: That didn’t prevent you from wanting to sell it off.
SHUI TA: Because my cousin was helping an airman to get back into the air again. I was supposed to find the money.
WANG: She may have wanted that, but you had your eye on that good job in Peking. The shop wasn’t good enough for you.
SHUI TA: My cousin had no idea of business.
MRS. SHIN: Besides, she was in love with the airman.
SHUI TA: Hadn’t she the right to love?
WANG: Of course she had. So why did you try to make her marry a man she didn’t love, the barber here?
SHUI TA: The man she loved was a crook.
THE FIRST GOD, showing interest: Who was it she was in love with?
MRS. SHIN, pointing at Sun, who is sitting like some kind of animal’. That’s him. They say birds of a feather flock together. So much for the private life of your Angel of the Slums.
WANG: It wasn’t the fact that he was like her that made her love him, but the fact that he was miserable. She didn’t just help him because she loved him; she also loved him because she helped him.
THE SECOND GOD: You are right. Loving like that was not unworthy of her.
SHUI TA: But it was mortally dangerous.
THE FIRST GOD: Isn’t he the one who accused you of her murder?
SUN: Of restricting her freedom. He couldn’t have murdered her. A few minutes before the arrest I heard Shen Teh’s voice from the room behind the shop.
Then from the first god’s ‘intrigued’ question (on p. 105) for nine lines, down to Shui Ta’s ‘Because you didn’t love her,’ the text is the same as ours, after which:
SUN: I was out of work.
WANG, to Shui Ta: You were out for the barber’s money, you mean.
SHUI TA: But what was the money needed for, your worships? To Sun: You wanted her to sacrifice everything, but the barber offered his buildings and his money so that she could help the poor. Even to let her do good I had to promise her to the barber. But she didn’t want that.
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI
Texts by Brecht
INSTRUCTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE
In order that the events may retain the significance unhappily due them, the play must be performed in the grand style, and preferably with obvious harkbacks to the Elizabethan theatre, i.e., with curtains and different levels. For instance, the action could take place in front of curtains of whitewashed sacking spattered the colour of ox blood. At some points panorama-like backdrops could be used, and organ, trumpet, and drum effects are likewise permissible. Use should be made of the masks, vocal characteristics, and gestures of the originals; pure parody however must be avoided, and the comic element must not preclude horror. What is needed is a three-dimensional presentation which goes at top speed and is composed of clearly defined groupings like those favoured by historical tableaux at fairs.
[’Hinweis für die Aufführung,’ from GW Stücke, pp. 1837–38.]
ALTERNATIVE PROLOGUES
Friends, tonight we’re going to show –
Pipe down, you boys in the back row!
And madam, your hat is in the way –
Our great historical gangster play
Containing, for the first time, as you’ll see
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SCANDALOUS DOCK SUBSIDY.
Further, we give you for your betterment
DOGSBOROUGH’S CONFESSION AND TESTAMENT.
ARTURO UI’S RISE WHILE THE STOCK MARKET FELL
THE NOTORIOUS WAREHOUSE FIRE TRIAL, WHAT A SELL!
THE DULLFEET MURDER! JUSTICE IN A COMA!
GANG WARFARE: THE KILLING OF ERNESTO ROMA!
All culminating in our stunning last tableau:
GANGSTERS TAKE OVER THE TOWN OF CICERO!
Brilliant performers will portray
The most eminent gangsters of our day
All the hanged and the shot
Disparaged but not
Wholly forgotten gangsters
Taken as models by our youngsters.
Ladies and gentlemen, the management knows
There are ticklish subjects which some of those
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 6 Page 37
