Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 4

by Bertolt Brecht

  She pours the bottle out for him.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Doesn’t matter. Shakes hands with the worker: Did you bring the valve? Fancy walking all that way here. To the SA man: He lives out in Moabit.

  THE SA MAN: Hey, where’s my beer got to? Somebody’s drunk my beer. To the chauffeur: Was it you drunk my beer?

  THE CHAUFFEUR: No, certainly not. What d’you say that for? Has your beer gone?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: But I poured it out for you.

  THE SA MAN to the cook: You swigged my beer, you did. Gives a resounding laugh. Keep your hair on. Little trick they teach you in our squad. How to knock back a beer without being seen or heard. To the worker: Did you want to say something?

  THE WORKER: That trick’s got whiskers.

  THE SA MAN: Let’s see how you do it then. He pours him a beer from the bottle.

  THE WORKER: Right. Here I have one beer. He raises his glass. And now for the trick. Calmly and appreciatively he drinks the beer.

  THE COOK: But we all saw you.

  THE WORKER wiping his mouth: Did you? Then I must have done it wrong.

  The chauffeur laughs aloud.

  THE SA MAN: What’s so funny about that?

  THE WORKER: You couldn’t have done it any different. How did you do it, then?

  THE SA MAN: How can I show you when you’ve drunk up all my beer?

  THE WORKER: Of course. That’s right. You can’t do that trick without beer. D’you know another trick? You people surely know more than one trick.

  THE SA MAN: What d’you mean, ‘you people’?

  THE WORKER: You young fellows.

  THE SA MAN: Oh.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: But Theo, Mr Lincke was only joking.

  THE WORKER thinks he had better be conciliatory: Don’t mind, do you?

  THE COOK: I’ll get you another beer.

  THE SA MAN: No call for that. I washed my food down all right.

  THE COOK: Herr Theo can take a joke.

  THE SA MAN to the worker: Why not sit down? We won’t bite your head off.

  The worker sits down.

  Live and let live. And a joke now and then. Why not? Public opinion, that’s the one thing we’re really strict about.

  THE COOK: A good thing you are.

  THE WORKER: And how’s public opinion these days?

  THE SA MAN: Public opinion these days is fine. You with me there?

  THE WORKER: Oh yes. It’s just that nobody tells anyone what he thinks.

  THE SA MAN: Nobody tells anyone? What d’you mean? They tell me all right.

  THE WORKER: Really?

  THE SA MAN: Well of course they’re not going to come along and tell you all their thoughts. You go to them.

  THE WORKER: Where?

  THE SA MAN: To the public welfare for instance. In the mornings we’ll be at the public welfare.

  THE WORKER: That’s right, now and again you hear somebody grumbling there.

  THE SA MAN: You see?

  THE WORKER: But that way all you can do is catch them once, then they know you. And after that they’ll clam up again.

  THE SA MAN: Why should they know me? Shall I show you why they don’t? Interested in tricks, aren’t you? No reason why I shouldn’t show you one, we’ve got plenty. I always say if they only realised what a lot we’ve got up our sleeve, and how they’ll never survive whatever happens, then perhaps they’d pack it in.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Go on, Theo, tell them how you do it.

  THE SA MAN: Right. Let’s suppose we’re at the public welfare in the Münzstrasse. Let’s say you – looking at the worker – are in the line ahead of me. But I got to make a few preparations first. He goes out.

  THE WORKER winking at the chauffeur: So now we’re getting a chance to see how they do it.

  THE COOK: They’re going to smell out all the Marxists because they got to be stopped disrupting everything.

  THE WORKER: Is that it?

  The SA man comes back.

  THE SA MAN: I’d be in civvies of course. To the worker: Okay, start grumbling.

  THE WORKER: What about?

  THE SA MAN: Go on, you’ve got something on your chest. Your lot always have.

  THE WORKER: Me? No.

  THE SA MAN: You’re a tough guy, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you think everything’s a hundred per cent.

  THE WORKER: Why not?

  THE SA MAN: All right, let’s call it off. If you won’t play the whole thing’s off.

  THE WORKER: All right then. I’ll shoot my mouth off for you. These buggers keep you hanging about as if we’d all the time in the world. Two hours it took me to get here from Rummelsburg.

  THE SA MAN: What the hell. Don’t tell me the distance from Rummelsburg to the Münzstrasse is any further under Hitler than it was under that racketeering Republic. Come on, you can do better than that.

  THE COOK: It’s only play acting, Franz, we all know what you say won’t be your real opinions.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Don’t you see you’re just acting a grumbler? Theo won’t take it amiss, you can depend on it. He just wants to show us something.

  THE WORKER: Right. In that case I’ll say. The SA looks very fine, but I think it’s shit. Give me the Marxists and the Jews.

  THE COOK: Franz! Really!

  THE MAIDSERVANT: How can you say that, Mr Lincke?

  THE SA MAN laughing: For Christ sake! I’d just turn you over to the nearest cop. Not got much imagination, have you? Look, you’ve got to say something you might be able to wriggle out of. Sort of thing you’d hear in real life.

  THE WORKER: All right, then you’ll have to give me a hand and provoke me.

  THE SA MAN: That went out years ago. Suppose I said ‘Our Führer’s the greatest man there’s ever been, greater than Jesus Christ and Napoleon rolled into one,’ all you’d say was ‘You bet he is.’ So I’d best take the other road and say: ‘They’re a big-mouthed lot. You know the one about Goebbels and the two fleas? Well, the two fleas had a bet who could get from one side of his mouth to the other quickest. The winner was the one went round the back of his head. It wasn’t so far that way.

  THE CHAUFFEUR: Ha.

  All laugh.

  THE SA MAN to the worker: Now it’s your turn to make a crack.

  THE WORKER: I can’t cap a story like that bang off. Telling the joke wouldn’t stop you being an informer.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: He’s right, Theo.

  THE SA MAN: You’re a right bunch of turds. Make me sick, you do. Not a bloody soul got the guts to open his mouth.

  THE WORKER: Is that what you really think, or is it what you say at the public welfare?

  THE SA MAN: I say it at the public welfare too.

  THE WORKER: In that case what I say at the public welfare is Look before you leap. I’m a coward. I don’t carry a gun.

  THE SA MAN: Right, brother, if you’re going to be so careful about looking, let me tell you you can look and look, then all of a sudden you’re in the voluntary labour service.

  THE WORKER: And if you don’t look?

  THE SA MAN: Then you’ll be in it just the same. Sure. It’s voluntary, see? Voluntary’s good, don’t you think?

  THE WORKER: That’s where it might be possible for some daring fellow to make a joke or two about the Voluntary Labour Service, suppose both of you were standing at the Public Welfare and you gave him one of those looks with your blue eyes. I wonder what he could say. Maybe: another fifteen went off yesterday. Funny how they get them to do it, when you think it’s all voluntary and folk are paid no more for doing something than for doing nothing though they must need to eat more. Then I heard the one about Dr Ley and the cat and of course I saw the whole thing. You know that story?

  THE SA MAN: No, we don’t.

  THE WORKER: Well, Dr Ley went on this little Strength Through Joy trip, strictly on business, and he met one of those former Weimar party bosses – I’m not up in all their names, anyway it might have been in a concentration camp though Dr Ley’s got much too
much sense to visit one of those – and the old boss asked him how’d he get the workers to swallow all the things they usedn’t to put up with at any price. Dr Ley pointed to a cat lying in the sun and said: suppose you wanted to give that cat a mouthful of mustard and make her swallow it whether she wanted or not. How would you do it? Boss takes the mustard and smears it over the cat’s chops; of course it spits it back in his face, no question of swallowing, just a lot of bloody scratches. No, old boy, says Dr Ley in his endearing way, you got the wrong approach. Now watch me. He takes the mustard with a practised follow-through and sticks it abracadabra up the wretched beast’s arsehole. To the ladies: Excuse my French, but that’s part of the story. – Numbed and stunned by the frightful pain, cat instantly sets to licking out the lot. There you are, my dear fellow, says the triumphant Dr Ley, she’s eating it. And voluntarily at that!

  They laugh.

  THE WORKER: Yes, it’s very funny.

  THE SA MAN: That’s got things going. Voluntary Labour Service, that’s a favourite subject. Trouble is: nobody bothers to dig his toes in. Oh, they can make us eat shit and we’ll still say thank you for it.

  THE WORKER: I’m not so sure about that. There am I the other day on the Alexanderplatz wondering whether to volunteer for the Voluntary Labour Service spontaneous-like or wait till they shove me in. Over from the grocer’s on the corner comes a skinny little woman, must be some proletarian’s wife. Half a mo, says I, what are the proletarians doing in the Third Reich when we’ve got national unity and even Baron Thyssen is in it? No, says she, not when they’ve gone and put up the price of marge. From fifty pfennigs to one mark. You trying to tell me that’s national unity? Better mind out, ma, says I, what you’re saying to me, I’m patriotic to the backbone. All bones and no meat, says she, and chaff in the bread. She was that worked up. I just stand there mumbling: best get butter then. It’s better for you. Mustn’t skimp on your food, cause that saps the people’s strength and we can’t afford that what with so many enemies encircling us even in the top civil service … we been warned. No, says she, we’re all of us Nazis so long as we got breath in our bodies, what mayn’t be long now in view of the war menace. Only the other day I got to offer my best sofa to the Winter Aid, says she, cause I hear Goering’s having to sleep on the floor he’s that worried about our raw materials, and in the office they say they’d rather have a piano – you know, for Strength Through Joy. And no proper flour to be had. I takes my sofa away from the Winter Aid People and goes to the second-hand dealer round the corner, I been meaning to buy half a pound of butter for some time. And at the dairy they tell me: no butter today, comrade, would you like some guns? I say, give me, says she. I say: come on what d’you want guns for, ma? On an empty stomach? No, says she, if I’m going to be hungry they should be shot, the whole lot of them starting with Hitler at the top … Come on, says I, come on, exclaims I appalled … With Hitler at the top we’ll conquer France, says she. Now we’re getting our petrol from wool. And the wool? says I. The wool, says she: these days that’s made from petrol. Wool’s another thing we need. Any time a bit of good stuff from the old days reaches the Winter Aid the lot that run the place grab it for themselves, says she. If Hitler only knew, says they, but he knows nothing the poor lamb, never went to secondary school they say. I was struck dumb by so much subversiveness. You just stay here, young lady, says I, I got to make a call at police headquarters. But when I come back with an officer what d’you you think, she’s cleared off. Stops play-acting. What d’you say to that, eh?

  THE SA MAN still acting: Me? What do I say? Well, I might give a reproachful look. You went straight round to the police, I might say. Can’t risk talking freely when you’re around.

  THE WORKER: I should think not. Not with me. You confide in me, you’ll be done. I know my duty as a comrade: any time my own mother mutters something to me about the price of margarine or something I go straight to the local SA office. I’ll denounce my own brother for grumbling about the Voluntary Labour Service. As for my girl, when she tells me ‘Heil Hitler’ she’s got pregnant at a work camp then I have them bring her in: we can’t have abortions because if we made exceptions for our nearest and dearest the Third Reich would run out of manpower, and the Third Reich’s what we love best. – Was that more like it? Did I act all right?

  THE SA MAN: I guess that’ll do. Goes on acting. You’ll be okay, go and draw your benefit, we’ve all understood, eh brothers? But you can count on me, my friend, ’nuff said, mum’s the word. He slaps him on the shoulder. No longer acting: Right, then in you go into the office and they’ll pick you up bang off.

  THE WORKER: What, without you leaving the line and following me in?

  THE SA MAN: Yeh.

  THE WORKER: And without you giving someone a wink, which might look fishy?

  THE SA MAN: Without me winking.

  THE WORKER: How’s it done then?

  THE SA MAN: Ha, you’d like to know that trick. Well, stand up, and show us your back. He turns him round by the shoulders, so that everyone can see his back. Then to the maidservant: Seen it?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Look, he’s got a white cross on it.

  THE COOK: Right between his shoulders.

  THE CHAUFFEUR: So he has.

  THE SA MAN: And how did he get it? Shows the palm of his hand. See, just a little white chalk cross and there’s its impression large as life.

  The worker takes off his jacket and looks at the cross.

  THE WORKER: Nice work.

  THE SA MAN: Not bad, eh? I always have my chalk on me. Ah, you have to use your loaf, things don’t always go according to the book. With satisfaction: Well, so it’s off to Reinickendorf. Corrects himself: That’s where my aunt lives, you know. You lot don’t seem very enthusiastic. To the maidservant: What are you gawping like that for, Anna? Missed the whole point of the trick, I suppose?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Of course not. Think I’m silly or something?

  THE SA MAN as if the whole joke has gone sour, stretches his hand out to her: Wipe it off.

  She washes his hand with a rag.

  THE COOK: You’ve got to use those sort of methods so long as they keep on trying to undermine everything our Führer has built up and what makes other people so envious of us.

  THE CHAUFFEUR: What was that? Oh yes, quite so. Looks at his watch. Well, time to wash the car again. Heil Hitler!

  Exit.

  THE SA MAN: What kind of a fellow’s that?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Keeps himself to himself. Not a bit political.

  THE WORKER: Well, Minna, I’d better be off. No hard feelings about the beer, eh? And let me say I’m surer than ever that no one’s going to complain about the Third Reich and get away with it. That’s set my mind at rest. Me, I don’t ever come across that sort of subversive element. I’d gladly confront them if I did. Only I’m not quite so quick to the punch as you. Clearly and distinctly: All right, Minna, thanks a lot and Heil Hitler!

  THE OTHERS: Heil Hitler!

  THE SA MAN: Take a tip from me and don’t be quite so innocent. It attracts attention. No call to have to watch your mouth with me, I can take a joke now and again. All right: Heil Hitler!

  The worker goes.

  THE SA MAN: Bit sudden the way those two cleared out. Something’s put ants in their pants. I shouldn’t have said that about Reinickendorf. They’re waiting to pounce on that sort of thing.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: There’s something else I wanted to ask you, Theo.

  THE SA MAN: Fire away, any time.

  THE COOK: I’m off to put out the laundry. I was young once too. Exit.

  THE SA MAN: What is it?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: But I shan’t ask unless I can see you won’t mind; otherwise I’ll say nothing.

  THE SA MAN: Spit it out, then.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: It’s just that … I don’t like saying … well, I need 20 marks from your account.

  THE SA MAN: Twenty marks?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: There you are, you do mind. />
  THE SA MAN: Twenty marks out of our savings account, can’t expect me to give three cheers. What do you want it for?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: I’d rather not say.

  THE SA MAN: So. You’re not saying. That’s a laugh.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: I know you won’t agree with me, Theo, so I’d sooner not give my reasons yet awhile.

  THE SA MAN: Well, if you don’t trust me …

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Of course I trust you.

  THE SA MAN: So you want to give up having a joint savings account?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: How can you say that? If I take out twenty marks I’ll still have ninety-seven marks left.

  THE SA MAN: No need to do sums for my benefit. I know how much there is. I just think you’re wanting to break it off, probably because you’re flirting with someone else. Perhaps you’ll be wanting to check our statement too.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: I’m not flirting with anyone else.

  THE SA MAN: Then tell me what it’s for.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: You don’t want to let me have it.

  THE SA MAN: How am I to tell it isn’t for something wrong?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: It’s not anything wrong, and if I didn’t need it I wouldn’t call for it, you must know that.

  THE SA MAN: I don’t know nothing. All I know is the whole business strikes me as rather fishy. Why should you suddenly need twenty marks? It’s quite a bit of money. You pregnant?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: No.

  THE SA MAN: Sure?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: Yes.

  THE SA MAN: If I thought for a minute you were planning anything illegal, if I caught a whiff of that kind of thing, I’d be down like a ton of bricks, let me tell you. You might just have heard that any interference with our burgeoning fruit is the worst crime you can commit. If the German people stopped multiplying itself it would be all up with our historic mission.

  THE MAIDSERVANT: But Theo, I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s nothing like that, I’d have told you if it was because you’d be involved too. But if that’s what you’re thinking then let me tell you. It’s just I want to help Frieda buy a winter coat.

  THE SA MAN: And why can’t your sister buy her coats for herself?

  THE MAIDSERVANT: How could she on her disability pension, it’s twenty-six marks eighty a month.