Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 4
Page 32
THE COURT CRIER:
And the judge goes away.
The accused sits down.
He crouches by the railing
And leans back his head. He is exhausted, but he overhears
Talk behind the door
Where new shadows have appeared.
A SHADOW:
I came to grief through an oxcart.
LUCULLUS softly:
Oxcart.
THE SHADOW:
It brought a load of sand to a building site.
LUCULLUS softly:
Building site. Sand.
ANOTHER SHADOW:
Isn’t it meal time now?
LUCULLUS softly:
Meal time?
FIRST SHADOW:
I had my bread and onions
With me. I haven’t a room any more.
The horde of slaves
They herd in from every spot under heaven
Has ruined the shoemaking business.
SECOND SHADOW:
I too was a slave.
Say rather, the lucky
Catch the unlucky’s bad luck.
LUCULLUS somewhat louder:
You there, is there wind up above?
SECOND SHADOW:
Hark, someone’s asking a question.
FIRST SHADOW loudly:
Whether there’s wind up above? Perhaps.
There may be in the gardens.
In the suffocating alleys
You don’t notice it.
11
THE HEARING IS CONTINUED
THE COURT CRIER:
The jurymen return.
The hearing begins again.
And the shadow that was once a fishwife
Speaks.
THE FISHWIFE:
There was talk of gold.
I too lived in Rome.
Yet I never noticed any gold where I lived.
I’d like to know where it went.
LUCULLUS:
What a question!
Should I and my legions set out
To capture a new stool for a fishwife?
THE FISHWIFE:
Though you brought nothing to us in the fish market
Still you took something from us in the fish market:
Our sons.
THE COURT CRIER:
And the jurywoman
Speaks to the warriors in the frieze.
THE FISHWIFE:
Tell me, what happened to you in the two Asias?
FIRST WARRIOR:
I ran away.
SECOND WARRIOR:
And I was wounded.
FIRST WARRIOR:
I dragged him along.
SECOND WARRIOR:
So then he fell too.
THE FISHWIFE:
Why did you leave Rome?
FIRST WARRIOR:
I was hungry.
THE FISHWIFE:
And what did you get there?
SECOND WARRIOR:
I got nothing.
THE FISHWIFE:
You stretch out your hands.
Is that to greet your general?
SECOND WARRIOR:
It was to show him
They were still empty.
LUCULLUS:
I protest.
I rewarded the legionaries
After each campaign.
THE FISHWIFE:
But not the dead.
LUCULLUS:
I protest.
How can war be judged
By those who do not understand it?
THE FISHWIFE:
I understand it. My son
Fell in the war.
I was a fishwife in the market at the Forum.
One day it was reported that the ships
Returning from the Asian war
Had docked. I ran from the market place
And I stood by the Tiber for many hours
Where they were being unloaded and in the evening
All the ships were empty and my son
Came down none of the gangplanks.
Since it was chilly by the harbour at night
I fell into a fever, and in the fever sought my son
And ever seeking him more deeply
I grew more chilled, died, came here
Into the Realm of Shadows, and still sought him.
Faber, I cried, for that was his name.
And I ran and ran through shadows
And from shadow to shadow
Crying Faber, until a gatekeeper over there
In the camp of fallen warriors
Caught me by the sleeve and said:
Old woman, there are many Fabers here, many
Mothers’ sons, many, deeply mourned
But they have forgotten their names
Which only served to line them up in the army
And are no longer needed here. And their mothers
They do not wish to meet again
Because they let them go to the bloody war.
And I stood, held by my sleeve
And my cries died out in my mouth.
Silently I turned away, for I desired no longer
To look upon my son’s face.
THE COURT CRIER:
And the Judge of the Dead
Seeks the eyes of the jurymen and announces:
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
The court recognises that the mother of the fallen
Understands war.
THE COURT CRIER:
The jurymen of the dead
Consider the testimony of the warriors.
Silence.
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
But the jurywoman is moved
And in her trembling hands
The scales may tip. She needs
A recess.
12
ROME, ONCE AGAIN
THE COURT CRIER:
And again
The accused sits down and listens
To the talk of the shadows behind the door.
Once again a breath is wafted in
From the world above.
SECOND SHADOW:
And why did you run so?
FIRST SHADOW:
To make an enquiry. It got about that they were recruiting
Legionaries in the taverns by the Tiber for the war in the
West
Which is now to be conquered. The land is called Gaul.
SECOND SHADOW:
Never heard of it.
FIRST SHADOW:
Only the big folks know these countries.
13
THE HEARING IS CONTINUED
THE COURT CRIER:
And the Judge smiles at the jurywoman
Calls the accused and regards him sadly.
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
Our time runs out. You do not make use of it.
Anger us no more with your triumphs!
Have you no witnesses
To any of your weaknesses, mortal?
Your business goes badly. Your virtues
Seem to be of little use.
Perhaps your weaknesses will leave some loopholes
In the chain of violent deeds.
I counsel you, shadow
Recollect your weaknesses.
THE COURT CRIER:
And the juryman who was once a baker
Puts a question.
THE BAKER:
Yonder I see a cook with a fish.
He seems cheerful. Cook
Tell us how you came to be in the triumphal procession.
THE COOK:
Only to show
That even while waging war
He found time to discover a recipe for cooking fish.
I was his cook. Often
I think of the beautiful meat
The gamefowl and the black venison
Which he made me roast.
And he not only sat at table
But gave me a word of praise
Stood over the pots with me
And hims
elf mixed a dish.
Lamb à la Lucullus
Made our kitchen famous.
From Syria to Pontus
They spoke of Lucullus’s cook.
THE COURT CRIER:
And the juror who was once a teacher says:
THE TEACHER:
What is it to us that he liked to eat?
THE COOK:
But he let me cook
To my heart’s content. I thank him for it.
THE BAKER:
I understand him, I who was a baker.
How often I had to mix bran with the dough
Because my customers were poor. This fellow here
Could be an artist.
THE COOK:
Thanks to him!
In the triumph
He ranked me next to the kings
And gave my art recognition. That is why I call him human. (9)
And I know
That in Amisus, the daughter city of splendid Athens
Brimming with art treasures and books
His rapacious troops promised not to burn it.
Wet with tears he returned to his supper.
That too was human, mark you.
THE COURT CRIER:
There was silence. The jurymen consider
The testimony of the cook.
Silence.
And the juryman who was once a farmer
Puts a question.
THE FARMER:
Over there is someone too who carries a fruit tree.
THE TREE BEARER:
This is a cherry tree.
We brought it from Asia. In the triumphal procession
We carried it along. And we planted it
On the slopes of the Apennines.
THE FARMER:
Oh, so it was you, Lakalles, who brought it?
I once planted it too, but I did not know
That you introduced it.
THE COURT CRIER:
And with a friendly smile
The juryman who was once a farmer
Discusses with the shadow
Who was once a general
The cherry tree.
THE FARMER:
It needs little soil.
LUCULLUS:
But it doesn’t like the wind.
THE FARMER:
The red cherries have more meat.
LUCULLUS:
And the black are sweeter.
THE FARMER:
My friends, this of all the detestable souvenirs
Conquered in bloody battle
I call the best. For this sapling lives.
It is a new and friendly companion
To the vine and the abundant berrybush
And growing with the growing generations
Bears fruit for them. And I congratulate you
Who brought it to us. When all the booty of conquest
From both Asias has long mouldered away
This finest of all your trophies
Renewed each year for the living
Shall in spring flutter its white-flowered branches
In the wind from the hills.
14
THE WHEAT AND THE CHAFF (10)
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
And so I close the hearing.
Among your witnesses, shadow
The most brilliant did not serve you best. In the end however
Some small ones came forward. Not wholly empty
Were your bloody hands. Of course your
Best contribution was a very costly one; the cherry tree:
You could have paid for that conquest with just one more man.
But eighty thousand were what you sent below. Against that
We must set a few happy moments for your cook, tears
For damaged books and suchlike trivialities.
Alas, all that violence and victory serves to extend just one realm
The realm of shadows!
THE JURORS OF THE DEAD:
But we who are chosen to judge the dead
Observe, on their departure from the earth, what they gave it.
THE COURT CRIER:
And from the high bench they rise up
The spokesmen of the world-to-be
Of those with many hands, to take
Of those with many mouths, to eat
Of the rarely gullible, eagerly gathering
Joyful world-to-be.
The court
Withdraws for consultation.
Notes and Variants
ROUND HEADS AND POINTED HEADS
Texts by Brecht
‘MEASURE FOR MEASURE, OR THE SALT TAX’ (1931)
Act One, scene 1
Duke. Eskaler. Sitting over the books.
DUKE:
Now it’s enough, Eskaler.
The day is dawning: all our endless sums,
Creative twists, accounting sleights of hand
Have demonstrated, each and every time,
Precisely what we can’t afford to know,
And what, if we sat here till doomsday counting,
Would always be the outcome: the economic
Meltdown of the state. In short: we’re bankrupt.
ESKALER:
My lord!
DUKE:
A stronger hand than mine is needed now,
I’d fain withdraw a while from public view
To think things over. There is our commission.
For now a stronger man must take my place,
Undaunted by the task in hand and eager.
Call hither, no, bid Angeler approach.
Exit servant.
How well d’you think he’ll represent my office?
For you must know, I have a special purpose
Electing him our absence to supply;
I’ve lent him all our power of justice and
Of mercy, furnished him with all the organs
Of our power! But speak – what think you of it?
ESKALER:
If any in Vienna be of worth
To take on such a matter
It is Graf Angeler.
SERVANT:
Graf Angeler.
DUKE:
Bid him come in.
Enter Angeler.
ANGELER:
Always obedient to Your Grace’s will,
I come to know your pleasure.
DUKE:
Angeler!
You oughtn’t so to hide yourself!
Yourself and your wise words are not your own!
God does with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves. So too our power.
If it should not go forth from us – it were
As well we had it not. But to the point.
The finances of state – you know – lie ruined.
And what tomorrow holds is anybody’s guess.
And so it’s up to us to hold the fort
Until new money streams from sources new.
The two of us have reckoned all the night
And think we’ve found a way …
[… and so on. This abrupt first scene then ends, a page later:]
DUKE:
So fare you well.
ESKALER:
May God be with you.
ANGELER:
Come back well rested, sire.
DUKE:
I thank you both. Exit.
ESKALER:
As I, dear Angeler, am now your subject,
I’d know what role you have in mind for me?
ANGELER:
For now I’ll take the government to myself
Since I bear all responsibility.
In detail, well, I’d rather not commit.
Yet straight away I’ll give you one word, Eskaler:
Reform. And now I beg you to excuse me.
ESKALER:
Of course.
Exit Angeler.
ESKALER:
Reform.
Reform. (In the beginning was the wo
rd.)
Exit.
[BBA 266 (9/10), 264 (50) and 262 (01/02). These are the most important folders of material for this play (see also Editorial Note, below); and these sheets represent the very first stage of the Shakespeare adaptation, such as it has survived. Brecht’s text is typed beneath stuck-on pages cut out from the standard German translation, from which Brecht has borrowed only a few lines and phrases. In most cases he has subjected even these to a process of simplification and colloquialisation, which we have attempted to represent by similarly abusing Shakespeare’s original.]
CHEATED HOPES
On our travels through Peru we met a tenant farmer and his family living in indescribable misery. A conversation with the farmer revealed that these unfortunate people had sunk to such unimaginable depths of poverty not because of despair, as we had thought, but rather because of hope, a commodity of which they had rather more than of other things. The farmer told us how, towards the end of the previous year after a poor harvest, he could see no way, after he had paid the rents and dues which were too high in any case, that he could buy in winter provisions for his family and above all for his cows. Unable to help himself by other means, with a hardhearted landlord and an uninterested government, he had been on the point of joining the Association of the Black Flag, which was then rallying the discontented farmers in preparation for an uprising. Given the feebleness of the government and the parlous state of the economy, the farmers’ movement had been not without prospects. Like most Czuchish* farmers he had, however, been dissuaded when the anti-Czich Thomaso Angelas, a schoolteacher from Lima, took the reins of government. Angelas had the reputation of being a friend of the people and, coming himself from the lower classes, he seemed originally to have genuinely populist intentions. And indeed, there was a proper lawsuit against the landlord, a Czich, in which the landlord was even condemned to death, albeit not for rack-renting but for seducing the farmer’s daughter. At the time this affair had in fact brought the family some relief, and had enabled the girl to get into a public brothel in Lima. And in this explication of a judgement apparently so favourable lay the seeds of all the farmer’s further misfortunes.
[BFA 19, p. 337. This sketch from 1932 may have originally been intended as an independent short story.]
NOTES FOR DRAWINGS
1
Two Round Heads reading the newspaper. The Viceroy of Yahoo and his advisor learn from the press that the country is bankrupt. (Champagne bottles, cigars.)
The Viceroy receives the racial theorist Iberin. The Privy Councillor introduces him.
‘I hear that you’ve discovered what has caused
These small misfortunes in the fiscal realm. Is that correct?’
The Viceroy discovers the symbol of the rebel Sickle in his own study. (Eskahler hides the chalk behind his back.)
2
The wealthy Czichish landowner de Guzman is denounced as a Czich by the daughter of one of his tenant farmers.