Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2

by Bertolt Brecht

  This survived till 1931 and was then cut.

  2. Street outside the Pagoda of the Yellow God

  The 1924/5 text has a version of his scene which finishes after ‘I’m hanging by the hair’ (p. 7) and appears to have been added after the writing of the following scene. In it Uria refers to the army as ‘Mummy’:

  the army whom we call mummy and who sends her sons to such towns half way across india pays them two and a half bottles of whisky per head.

  JESSE: nothing’s stronger than mummy.

  The opening stage direction specifies ‘four soldiers and a machine-gun marching to their camp on whisky’. The 1926 published version has them also singing the Man equals Man Song, but in both texts the talk throughout is of whisky rather than beer. The 1926 version differs also from our text in (a) its omission of all Jesse’s opening speech after ‘Kilkoa!’ (p. 4): instead he continues with the words now given to Polly (‘Just as the powerful tanks’ etc.); (b) the wording of the first attempt to break into the temple; and (c) its omission of the paybook episode (pp. 5-6).

  [2, amended to 3. in the huts, evening. cake, bak, beep, hiobja sneeze.]

  This is in the 1924/5 version only and was later absorbed in our scenes 3 and 4. There are two alternatives for this short scene, the second of which is marked ‘Written by Hesse Burri to dictation’ (i.e. presumably Brecht’s). In the first Hiobja, who is also known as Hipsi, talks to the three soldiers as the ‘wanted’ notice is being put up, and calls Blody 5 ‘the devil of saipong’. His voice is then heard bawling out the men:

  call those trousers? what? i’ll have you scrubbing the shit-house with a toothbrush till your hair turns white, you swine!

  Rations are doled out and Jip’s portion falls on the floor as there is no one to take it. Blody asks ‘where is your fourth man?’ as at the top of p. 9. The three then agree that they must find him before nightfall, and the text breaks off. A page of notes follows with phrases like ‘the hell of kilkoa’, ‘begbick and bloodsucker’, ‘two cents a chair’, ‘one full whisky’, ‘our skins are at stake’ and ‘the fragile rocking-chair’, then a fresh start with

  canteen. evening. hiobja begbick, soldiers

  The soldiers sing ‘In Widow Begbick’s Splendid Drinking Truck’, and one Jack Townley (see the end of the Elephant Calf) complains about the prices and says:

  i jack townley who unlike you footsloggers and gun-tuggers know such a metropolis as cairo like the back of my hand can only tell you i must have been in some 1500 gin- rum- and alebars there with say between two and five ladies on each storey but so sinful an establishment as this is more than jack ever …

  Enter then the three, who are asked by the others about their missing fourth man. They buy drinks all round and are charged two cents per chair, one of which breaks. The ‘Wanted’ notice goes up and the sergeant’s voice is heard cursing the men and announcing the Afghan campaign:

  i knew we’d be getting the scum of every regiment but now i come to look at you it’s far worse than i thought it’s my considered opinion that you’re the most plague-ridden bunch of throwouts that ever wore its boots out in the queen’s service today i observed some individuals among the huts laughing in such a carefree way that it chilled me to the marrow i know who they are and let me tell you there will be one or two hairs in their christmas pudding

  The rations are doled out; the sergeant asks about the missing fourth man, and the scene breaks off, all much as before.

  3. Country Road between Kilkoa and the Camp

  In the 1924/5 text this is marked ‘brecht first version’ and described as ‘deserted road. galgei carries leokadja begbick’s cucumber basket for her’. It starts with the entrance of Begbick and Galy Gay, much as on our p. 9, and has two alternative endings of which the second is close to our version. The 1926 added the beginning of the scene somewhat as we now have it, taken from the abandoned canteen scene above. The rest of the scene was slightly revised and extended, leaving only a few lines to be added in the 1938 version to arrive at the present text.

  4. Canteen of the Widow Leokadia Begbick

  The 1924/5 scene 4 is set ‘in the cantonment. night. leokadja. hiobja. roll-call off.’ The three soldiers are worried as now that if it rains Jip’s palanquin will be taken indoors, so they go off with Begbick’s scissors, leaving her and Galy Gay to discuss whether he was or was not the man who carried her cucumber. They make no serious approach as yet to Galy Gay.

  The 1926 version starts as now, with material from the second part of the abandoned scene above. The opening song is accompanied by Begbick’s three half-caste daughters, after which the dialogue (p. 14) is allocated rather differently from now, so that it is the soldiers who inquire about the missing man and say that the sergeant is ‘not nice’, while it is Hiobja (’thou flower on the dusty path of the soldiery’, as her mother calls her) who describes the sergeant’s habits:

  They call him Blody Five, the Tiger of Kilkoa. His hallmark is The Human Typhoon. His warcry on seeing a man ripe for the Johnny-are-you-dry wall is ‘Pack your suitcase, Johnny.’ He’s got an unnatural sense of smell, he smells out crime. And each time he smells one he sings out ‘Pack your suitcase, Johnny.’

  – a reference, surely, to the line ‘Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek’ in Kipling’s ‘Song of the Banjo’, which in turn derived from the South African song ‘Pack your kit and trek, Ferrera’. The phrase recurs throughout this version of the play.

  The appeal to Galy Gay which follows (p. 15) is much as now except that it is all given to Polly and Galy Gay’s speech on entering is omitted. The other soldiers do not exit, but remain to comment; Galy Gay is not undressed; and the bargaining over the uniform is somewhat shorter. Begbick’s account of the effect of rain on the sergeant is the same as now from ‘Not a bit of it’ (p. 18) to ‘as a kitten’, but goes on to end

  For when it rains Blody Five turns into Blody Gent and for three days the bloody gent only bothers about girls.

  On Galy Gay’s departure after the announcement of the roll-call there is no further bargaining (down to p. 19), nor are Polly’s speech to Begbick and her seductive preparations included. Instead she tells Hiobja to put the tarpaulin over the waggon, after which Blody enters ‘appallingly transformed’ and listens to the roll-call outside:

  BLODY: You’re laughing. But let me tell you I’d like to see this all go up in flames, this Sodom with its bar and its rocking chair, and you who are a one-woman Gomorrah. Don’t cast such devouring glances at me, you whitewashed Babylon.

  LEOKADJA: You know, Charlie, a woman likes to see a man being so passionate.

  There is no verse speech by Begbick, and Blody goes on with his next speech as now, down to ‘one means business’ (p. 20), after which the voice off summons the MG section, so that there is no reference to Blody dressing in a bowler hat. The remainder is much as now, except that there is no verse speech by Galy Gay and no song by Begbick at the end, nor does Uriah provide beer and cigars. The song comes in the 1931 stage version, where it is sung through a megaphone. In 1926 Polly says ‘Drink a few cocktails and put them down to us’, which Galy Gay then proceeds to do. The scene ends with his denying having carried Begbick’s basket, and Begbick saying ‘It’s begun to rain’.

  5. Interior of the Pagoda of the Yellow God [misnumbered 6 in the 1926 edition which specifies that the sacristan is Chinese. Cut in the Arkadia scripts of 1929-30.]

  The 1924/5 version is close to our text, except that after ‘seem to slumber very well’ (p. 24) Uriah goes on to say:

  i am sure you would be ashamed to tell a lie and here are 3 revolvers what’s more made by everett & co each containing 6 bullets i am sure you would not wish to contain 6 bullets as you are not a revolver

  – whereupon the sacristan aims a rifle at him. Wang shouts ‘fire!’ and the sacristan runs away.

  The rest of the scene, with the drawing of the four men, is virtually as now. In the Arkadia scripts this is the only part to be retained; it
is taken into the canteen scene when Wang enters to order drink.

  6. The canteen [7 in the 1926 edition. Cut in the Arkadia scripts, but restored in modified form for the 1931 production.

  This scene remained unchanged since 1926 and would be almost the same in the 1924/5 version too but for the omission of Jesse’s and Polly’s concluding remarks. It concludes with Baker saying after ‘a mere thread’ (p. 26):

  I shan’t say anything more to him tonight.

  Galgay yawns in his sleep and makes himself comfortable.

  7. Interior of the Pagoda of the Yellow God [8 in the 1926 edition. Cut in the Arkadia scripts].

  In the 1924/5 version this comes after the next canteen scene, but it is almost word for word as now apart from the substitution of beer for the original whisky. The 1926 text is even closer.

  The 1931 text simply showed Jip outside the pagoda surrounded by beer bottles and a large plate of meat, and had him deliver a verse speech paraphrasing his concluding speech here:

  What am I, Jeraiah Jip from Tipperary, to do

  When I’m told our entire army

  Twelve railway trains and four elephant parks

  Moved over the Punjab Mountains during the past month?

  Here however I can eat meat and drink beer

  My ten bottles a day, and in return have only to

  Look after the temple that there are no further incidents

  And get my food and get my beer and get my

  Orderly existence. True

  I ought to go and help them

  In their life’s worst quandary, since I after all

  Am their fourth man. But why

  Does meat taste so good and

  Is beer so essential? True, Jesse will say ‘Jip’s sure to come.’

  Once he’s sober Jip will come.

  But this beefsteak suits me, good meat.

  Uriah may not wait quite so patiently since

  Uriah is a bad man.

  Jesse and Polly will say ‘Jip’s sure to come.’ But

  Must a man abandon meat like this?

  Can he go away? If he’s hungry?

  No, no. He mustn’t if he cannot.

  8. The canteen.

  The 1924/5 version, like the 1926 published text, has Galy Gay half asleep while the three soldiers play billiards. The scene follows on scene 6 and starts with Polly’s comment ‘He must be frozen stiff’ (p. 30), then they wake Galy Gay up and continue approximately with the dialogue from ‘Dear Sir’ (p. 31) to where Galy Gay wants to leave (p. 32), Uriah’s speech about the joys of army life being marked by Brecht ‘written by Hesse Burri in Augsburg’. Next it appears that Galy Gay wants to rejoin his wife:

  CAKE: of course he needs a woman the fellow’s like an elephant

  URIAH: he can get one with his next week’s pay

  BAK: i’ll go with him myself and select one so he doesn’t go sick

  CAKE: meantime he can do it with begbick

  Enter Blody 5, who brings in the wife (p. 35), after which the dialogue is roughly as now up to the wife’s exit (p. 37), after which the soldiers congratulate themselves:

  URIAH: it’s an honour for us to have a man like you in the unit.

  GALY GAY: the honour’s mine you people are so much sharper if i wasn’t so uneducated i would never have become a porter that woman’s a bit stupid and she’s even more uneducated than me almost crude in some respects

  POLLY: is she at all faithful to you?

  GALY GAY: yes because i’ve got the money

  Then they give him chewing gum:

  GALY GAY: this is the first time for me but i think it tastes nasty

  POLLY: that’s just at first once you’ve got its inmost taste on your lips you’ll find your tongue can’t do without this sport any more than a boxer his punchball

  As he polishes off his gum Polly tells him ‘your way of spitting out your gum is exactly like jip’s except that it went to the left’. The riddle (p. 34) appears to follow, though it is even more idiotic than now, being concerned with how many peas go in a pot. Then comes Wang’s entry (p. 30) to buy drink. ‘I don’t serve niggers or yellow men,’ says Begbick as he orders ‘seven bottles of good Old Tom Whisky for a white man’; and the scene ends with Uriah saying ‘Jip won’t be back now.’

  [Scene: Bungalow/Late Afternoon]

  The 1924/5 version therefore omits the reflections on’personalities’ (p. 31) and all the preliminaries to the elephant deal. However, they come into the outline sketch of a separate scene which follows the pagoda scene (our scene 7 above), in which ‘the three are packing their mg in grease galy gay is asleep on his chair. This contains a first version of Uriah’s speech about multiple opinions (p. 31), also an attack on ‘personalities’; then when Galy Gay wakes up the soldiers pretend to be the voice of Buddha addressing him. Half awake, he knocks one of them flat and Blody 5 comes to see what the noise is about:

  URIAH: sorry sergeant we were just having a little game of golf

  Bak (i.e. Polly) thereupon congratulates Galy Gay on his ‘phenomenal right hook’ and reckons that he would make mincemeat of a ‘company of shiks’ (i.e., presumably, Sikhs). He is applauded by ‘eleven soldiers of the worchester regiment stationed at kilkoa’, with whom he then drinks toasts to the Queen, the Regiment and others. Once they have left he tries to go as on p. 32 and the text continues much as now up to Polly’s inquiry about the elephant on p. 34, after which the episode concludes with a few changes.

  In the 1926 published script all these elements are brought together to make scene 8 virtually as we have it. Wang orders ‘seven bottles of good old Victoria Whisky’; Uriah’s order and his remark about ‘taking beer on board’ are not included, nor is Polly’s second speech about the peculiar attractions of military life in wartime (p. 32). The passage from Galy Gay’s ‘But I fancy I’m the right man’ (p. 34) to ‘you can rob a bank’, with its portrayal of him as a wrestler, is not included, so that Blody Five appears almost at once after the riddle. Nor is Galy Gay’s important remark about his wife’s origin in a ‘province where nearly everyone is friendly’, a phrase presumably added in the 1950s, since it is not in the 1938 edition either. The 1926 scene ended without the Alabama lines but with Blody Five reappearing to shout ‘The army’s moving off to Tibet!’ After which

  Exit, whistling ‘Johnny’. Galy Gay picks up his clothes and tries to sneak away quietly. The three catch him and fling him into a chair.

  The duplicated Arkadia script (1930 version) greatly economised by eliminating the second and third pagoda scenes (our scenes 5 and 7) and rolling scenes 4, 6 and 8 into one single canteen scene. It makes various cuts and changes: thus in scene 4 Blody 5 makes a pass at Hiobja, while at its end Galy Gay is seated in a rocking chair, denying that he carried Begbick’s basket. Then Wang enters to order drinks as in scene 8 and does his demonstration with the drawing (our scene 5) in order to prove that his white servant cannot be the missing man. The soldiers have decided that they must get Galy Gay to go with them, when Blody reenters:

  LEOKADJA: Cocktail or Ale?

  BLODY: Ale!

  When Blody says he needs a woman Begbick calls ‘Hiobja!’, and he starts telling her about his pornographic pictures, much as in the 1924/5 version of scene 9. Begbick accuses him of abusing his uniform, saying that he should wear rubber shoes and a dinner jacket, after which the text is roughly as ours from Polly’s ‘But how do we manage it … ?’ (p. 30) to Galy Gay’s ‘I’m the right man for any bit of business’ (p. 34). Blody’s reappearance and the rest of the scene are approximately as in the 1926 version.

  All this was altered in the 1931 production, where the latter part of scene 4 was much changed, with Galy Gay falling asleep after his denials and Begbick singing her verse offstage through a megaphone. A version of scene 6 followed under the title of Return of the three soldiers the same night, after which the half-curtain was closed for Jip’s verse monologue outside the pagoda (given above). It reopened on a version of scene 8 ta
ken largely from the Arkadia script.

  Interlude

  This is not in the 1924/5 version. In the 1926 text it was to be spoken by Begbick ‘alongside a portrait of Mr Bertolt Brecht’. This was replaced in the Arkadia script by a ‘portrait of Galy Gay as a porter’. In 1931 the portrait remained but the speech was shifted to make a prologue, being replaced by Jesse’s long prose speech from pp. 41-2. In the 1938 Malik edition, as now, there was no mention of any portrait.

  9. The canteen [10 in the 1926 version]

  The 1926 text was very different from now, and a good deal longer. The setting to start with was ‘canteen made of hollow bamboos and grass matting,’ which Leokadja and Hiobja are busy dismantling. Galy Gay arrives all agog as Uriah and Polly are wondering what form their business deal should take; asking Leokadja to lend them her elephant’s head they develop their plot from that. Enter Blody 5 to show Hiobja his pictures:

  BLODY: hiobja i have a definite feeling that my sentiments for you have almost reached their peak scientifically speaking it’s nothing for a girl to visit a man’s room if he asks her only a swine would gossip about that my photographs are notable sights i have items you won’t find in the british museum when you see them you may think them slightly too free but against that once you’ve seen them you never forget them

  HIOBJA: if they’re truly scientific yes i’d like to see them but not in your room for a girl is a poor weak thing

  Galy Gay takes a drink (‘so that’s gin it really does taste like a small fire’) and the three soldiers assemble their elephant:

  KAKE: this tarpaulin makes so many folds in his belly that even leokadja begbick is blushing

  Then Polly complains that he must work the tail by hand: