Brecht Collected Plays: 7: Visions of Simone Machard; Schweyk in the Second World War; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Duchess of Malfi (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From the ancient city of Prague?

  From Prague it brought her some high-heeled shoes.

  Just a card with news and some high-heeled shoes

  That was what she got from ancient Prague.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From Warsaw on Poland’s plains?

  From Warsaw it brought her a fine linen blouse

  To wear in the house, a superb linen blouse.

  That was what came from Poland’s plains.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From Oslo’s well-equipped stores?

  From Oslo it brought her an elegant fur.

  Just the thing for her, an elegant fur!

  That was what she got from Oslo’s stores.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From the port of Rotterdam?

  From Rotterdam it brought her a hat.

  And she looked good in that very Dutch-looking hat

  Which was sent her from Rotterdam.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From Brussels in Belgium’s fair land?

  From Brussels it brought her some delicate laces.

  Nothing quite replaces such delicate laces.

  That was what she got from Belgium’s fair land.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From the lights of gay Paree?

  From Paree it brought her a lovely silk dress.

  To her neighbour’s distress, a lovely silk dress

  That was what she got from gay Paree.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From the desert around Tobruk?

  From round Tobruk it brought her a pendant.

  A copper pendant that looked so resplendent

  That was what it brought her from Tobruk.

  What did the post bring the soldier’s wife

  From the Russian steppe-lands?

  From Russia it brought her her widow’s veil.

  So we end our tale with the widow’s veil

  Which she got from Russia’s steppes.

  The SS man nods in triumph at the end of each verse, but before the last his head sinks to the table—he is out to the wide.

  SCHWEYK: A very nice song. To Baloun: It shows you should think twice before you do anything without thinking. Don’t get the idea of going off to Russia with Hitler for the sake of the extra rations, and then freezing to death, you dope.

  BALOUN deeply affected by the song, has propped his head on his elbows and begun to sob: Mother of God, what’s going to become of me the way I am about food? You lot’ll have to take me in hand, otherwise I’ll go to pieces completely. I can’t stay a good Czech on an empty stomach.

  SCHWEYK: If you swore by the Virgin Mary never to volunteer out of greed, you’d keep to it. To Mrs Kopecka: He’s religious. Would you swear, though? No.

  BALOUN: I’m not swearing on an empty stomach, it’s not funny.

  MRS KOPECKA: It’s dreadful. You’re a grown man, after all.

  BALOUN: Yes, but I’m weak.

  SCHWEYK: If they put a plate of pork in front of you and said ‘Eat, you sinner, but swear you’ll stay a good Czech’, you’d swear if I know you; I mean, if they kept their hands on the plate and pulled it back straightaway if you didn’t swear, you’d swear then all right.

  BALOUN: That’s true, but they’d have to keep their hands on it.

  SCHWEYK: And you’d only keep your word if you knelt down and swore on the Bible and in front of everybody, right? Baloun nods.

  MRS KOPECKA: It’s almost worth a try. Goes back to young Prochazka.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Soon as you start singing I have to hold myself back.

  MRS KOPECKA absently: Why?

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Love.

  MRS KOPECKA: How d’you know it’s love and not just a passing fancy?

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: I know, Mrs K. Yesterday I wrapped up a customer’s handbag for her instead of her cutlet, and got told off by my father, and all because I was thinking of you. And I get headaches first thing in the morning. It’s love all right.

  MRS KOPECKA: Suppose it is, the question then is how much love.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: What d’you mean by that, Mrs K?

  MRS KOPECKA: I mean, how far is your love prepared to go? Perhaps only spitting distance, I know that kind of love.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Mrs K., you cut me to the quick, you really do, with accusations like that. There’s no truth in them at all. My love’s prepared to go to any lengths if only you’d accept it. But you won’t.

  MRS KOPECKA: I was wondering for instance whether it would stretch to two pounds of pickled pork.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Mrs K! How can you be so materialistic at a moment like this?

  MRS KOPECKA turning away to count bottles: There you are. Even that’s too much.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA shaking his head: There you go again. I just don’t understand you. Ships that pass in the night, Mrs K.

  BALOUN despairingly: It didn’t only start with the war, it’s an old story, this gluttony of mine. It made my sister I used to live with take her kids and go to the saint’s festival at Klokota. But even Klokota didn’t work. My sister brought the kids back and began to count the hens as soon as she got in. There were one or two missing. I couldn’t help it, I knew they were needed for the eggs, but out I went to have a good look at them, suddenly I get this great yawning chasm in my stomach, and an hour later I’m feeling better again and the hen’s already plucked. I’m probably beyond help.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Did you mean that seriously?

  MRS KOPECKA: Quite seriously.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Mrs K., when do you want the meat? Tomorrow?

  MRS KOPECKA: You’re sure you know what you’re doing, promising it? You’d have to get it out of your father’s shop without his permission and without meat coupons, and that’s blackmarketeering and you’ll be shot if it’s found out.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Don’t you think I would get myself shot for you if I knew it would do me any good?

  Schweyk and Baloun have been following the conversation.

  SCHWEYK appreciatively: Now that’s the way a lover ought to be. In Pilsen there was a young man in love with a widow, she wasn’t so young, neither, and he hanged himself from a rafter in the barn because she happened to say that he never did anything for her; and down at the Bear a chap cut his wrist open in the gents because the barmaid had given another customer better measure, and him a family man too. A few days later a couple of fellows jumped into the Moldau off the Charles Bridge because of a woman, but that was on account of her money, she was supposed to be well off.

  MRS KOPECKA: I must admit a woman doesn’t hear that sort of thing every day, Mr Prochazka.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: She doesn’t indeed. I’ll bring it tomorrow dinnertime; is that soon enough?

  MRS KOPECKA: I don’t want you to get yourself into trouble, but it’s in a good cause, it’s not for me. You heard yourself that Mr Baloun must have a proper meal with meat, or else he gets evil ideas.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: So you don’t want me to get myself into trouble. That just slipped out, sort of, didn’t it? So it isn’t all the same to you whether I get shot or not, now don’t take it back, when you’ve made me happy. Mrs K., it’s settled, you can count on that pickled pork if I have to swing for it.

  MRS KOPECKA: Come in tomorrow dinnertime, Mr Baloun, I’m not promising anything, but it looks as if you’ll be getting your meal.

  BALOUN: If I only get one decent meal I’ll get all the evil ideas out of my system. But I’m not going to start counting my chickens till I can stick a fork into ’em. I’ve been through too much.

  SCHWEYK pointing to the SS man: I bet he’ll have forgotten all about it when he wakes up, he’s out to the wide. Shouts in his ear: Hurrah for Beneš! When the SS man doesn’t stir: That’s the surest sign that he’s unconscious, o
therwise he’d have made mincemeat of me, you see that’s what they’re scared of.

  Brettschneider the Gestapo agent has come in.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: Who’s scared?

  SCHWEYK firmly: The SS. Won’t you join us, Mr Brettschneider? A Pilsener for the gentleman, Mrs Kopecka, it’s a warm day.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: And what are they scared of, in your opinion?

  SCHWEYK: Of being caught off their guard and letting slip some treasonable remark, or something like that, I don’t know. But perhaps you want to get on with reading your newspaper, don’t let me disturb you.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: Nobody ever disturbs me if he has something interesting to say. Mrs Kopecka, you look as fresh as the flowers in May.

  MRS KOPECKA giving him his beer: September’s more like it.

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA when she is back at the bar: If I were in your place I wouldn’t let him take that sort of liberty.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER unfolding his paper: This is a special edition. There’s been an attempt to assassinate the Führer in a Munich beercellar. What do you say to that?

  SCHWEYK: Did he suffer long?

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: He wasn’t harmed, the bomb went off too late.

  SCHWEYK: Probably a cheap one. Everything’s mass-produced these days, and then people are surprised when they don’t get the quality stuff. Stands to reason something like that can’t be made with the same loving care like when they were hand-done, I mean, doesn’t it? But I must say they were a bit careless not to pick a better bomb for a job like that. There used to be a butcher in Cesky Krumlov who...

  BRETTSCHNEIDER interrupting: You call it careless when the Führer is nearly killed?

  SCHWEYK: A word like ‘nearly’ is deceptive, Mr Brettschneider. In 1938, when they sold us out at Munich, we nearly went to war, and then when we didn’t we lost nearly everything. Back in the First World War Austria nearly beat Serbia and Germany nearly beat France. You can’t depend on ‘nearly’.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: Go on, this is interesting. You have interesting customers, Mrs Kopecka. So well up in politics.

  MRS KOPECKA: One customer’s the same as another. When you’re in business like me, politics don’t exist. And I’d be glad, Mr Brettschneider, if you wouldn’t lead my regulars on to talk politics so you can put them in prison. And as for you, Mr Schweyk, you can pay for your beer and sit yourself down and talk as much rubbish as you want. But you’ve talked enough, Mr Schweyk, for two glasses of Pilsener.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: I have the feeling that you wouldn’t think it any great loss for the Protectorate if the Führer were lying dead at this minute.

  SCHWEYK: Oh, it would be a loss, you can’t say it wouldn’t. A dreadful one at that. You can’t replace Hitler by any old halfwit. There are a lot of people grumbling about Hitler. I’m not surprised there was an attack on him.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER hopefully: How do you mean that exactly?

  SCHWEYK cheerfully: Great men are always unpopular with the common herd, I read that in a leading article in ‘Field and Garden’. And for why? Because the common herd don’t understand them and find the whole thing unnecessary, heroism and all. The common man doesn’t give a bugger for living in a great age. He wants to go down to the pub for a drink and have goulash for supper. What’s a statesman to do with a lot of sods like that when he’s got to get a people’s name into the history books, poor bastard? The common herd’s a thorn in the flesh of any great man, it’s like Baloun with his appetite getting half a Frankfurter for his supper, it’s no good at all. I wouldn’t like to hear what the great men say about us when they all get together.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: Are you perhaps of the opinion that the German people are not solidly behind the Führer, that they complain?

  MRS KOPECKA: Gentlemen, please change the subject, it’s all so pointless, there’s a war on, don’t you know?

  SCHWEYK taking a good swig of beer: The German people are solid behind the Führer, Mr Brettschneider, you can’t say they’re not. As Marshal Goering put it, ‘The Führer cannot always be understood immediately, he is too great’. He should know. Confidentially: It’s amazing how many times they’ve put a spoke in Hitler’s wheel the moment he’s got one of his ideas, even the people up top. They say last autumn he wanted to put up a building to stretch from Leipzig to Dresden, a temple in memory of Germany once it’s gone under in one of his great plans he’s planned down to the last detail, and as usual they shook their heads at the Ministry and said ‘too great’ because they can’t understand something incomprehensible, the sort of thing a genius thinks up when he’s got nothing better to do. Now he’s landed them in a world war just by saying he wanted the town of Danzig, nothing more, it’s the last thing he’s set his heart on. And that’s the people at the top, the educated ones, generals and directors of IG Farben, and after all they oughtn’t to mind, they don’t have to pay for it. The common man’s even worse than they are. When he hears he’s to die for something great he doesn’t like the taste of it, he picks at it and pokes it around as if it was going to stick in his throat, and I ask you, isn’t that going to make a Führer sick when he’s made a real effort to think up something absolutely new for them, or perhaps just having a shot at conquering the world? Anyway what’s left to conquer now, there are limits to that like everything else. It’s all right by me.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER: So you’re maintaining that the Führer wants to conquer the world? That it’s not just a matter of defending Germany against her Jewish enemies and the plutocracies?

  SCHWEYK: Now don’t you take it like that, he doesn’t mean it badly, you know. Conquering the world’s all in the day’s work for him, like drinking beer is for you, he gets a kick out of it so anyway he’ll have a go. Down with perfidious Albion. Enough said.

  BRETTSCHNEIDER standing up: Quite enough. Come along with me to Gestapo headquarters, we’ll have something to say to you there.

  MRS KOPECKA: But Mr Brettschneider, Mr Schweyk has only been making quite innocent remarks, don’t get him into trouble.

  SCHWEYK: I’m so innocent I’m being arrested. That’s two beers and a slivovitz I’ve had. To Brettschneider amicably, after paying: Pardon me going out first, but that way you’ll be able to keep an eye on me and see I don’t escape.

  Exit Schweyk and Brettschneider.

  BALOUN: And now maybe they’ll shoot him.

  MRS KOPECKA: You’d better have a slivovitz, Mr Prochazka. The shock went right through you, didn’t it?

  YOUNG PROCHAZKA: They don’t dawdle over taking you away.

  2

  Gestapo HQ in the Petschek Bank. Schweyk and Brettschneider are standing in front of SS-Lieutenant Ludwig Bullinger. An SS man in the background.

  BULLINGER: This Chalice place seems to be a nice hotbed of subversive elements, eh?

  BRETTSCHNEIDER hurriedly: Oh no, Lieutenant. The landlady, Mrs Kopecka, is a very respectable woman who has nothing to do with politics; this man Schweyk is a dangerous exception among her regulars, I’ve had my eye on him for quite a time. The telephone on Bullinger’s desk buzzes. He lifts the receiver and the voice at the other end can be heard.

  VOICE ON PHONE: Mobile squad to Headquarters. Kruscha, the banker, claims he couldn’t have passed any opinions about the attempt on the Führer’s life, having been unable to read the newspaper report as he was arrested before it appeared.

  BULLINGER: Is that the Commercial Bank fellow? Ten on his backside. To Schweyk: Yes, I know your sort. First of all I’m going to ask you a question. If you don’t know the answer, you swine, then Müller II—pointing to the SS man—will take you down to the cellars for some education; d’you understand? Here’s the question: Do you shit thick or do you shit thin?

  SCHWEYK: Beg to report, sir, I shit any way you want me to.

  BULLINGER: Correct answer. However, you have expressed opinions that endanger the security of the Third Reich, you have called the Führer’s defensive war a war of conquest, you have criticized the rationing system, and so on. What have y
ou got to say to all this?

  SCHWEYK: It’s a lot. You can have too much of a good thing.

  BULLINGER heavily ironical: I’m glad you’re clear about that.

  SCHWEYK: I’m clear about everything, stringent measures are called for, nobody’ll ever get nowhere without stringent measures, like our sergeant used to tell us in the 91st. ‘If you didn’t have us to make things hot for you you’d be dropping your pants and swinging from the trees.’ Just what I told myself last night when they were knocking me about.

  BULLINGER: Oh, you’ve been knocked about, have you, now fancy that.

  SCHWEYK: In the cell. One of your SS gentlemen came in and gave me one over the head with his leather belt; and when I gave a bit of a groan he turns the light on and says, ‘No, that’s wrong, ’tisn’t this one’. And he gets so annoyed because he’s wrong that he gives me another, on the back this time. But that’s human nature: we go on making mistakes from the cradle to the grave.

  BULLINGER: Hm. And you admit everything this says about your remarks? Pointing to Brettschneider’s report.

  SCHWEYK: If you want me to admit it, your eminence, I’ll admit it, what have I to lose? But if you say, ‘Schweyk, don’t admit a thing’, they can tear me apart and they won’t get a word from me.

  BULLINGER yells: Shut up! Take him away!

  SCHWEYK when Brettschneider has reached the door with him, raising his right arm in the Nazi salute, loudly: Long live our Führer Adolf Hitler. Victory shall be ours!

  BULLINGER dumbfounded: Are you a half-wit?

  SCHWEYK: Beg to report, sir, yes sir. I can’t help it, I’ve already been discharged from the army on account of half-wittedness. I have been officially certified an idiot by a medical board.

  BULLINGER: Brettschneider! Didn’t you see the man’s a half-wit?

  BRETTSCHNEIDER injured: Lieutenant, the observations of the man Schweyk in the Chalice resembled those of a halfwit who disguises his defeatist utterances so cleverly you can’t prove anything.

  BULLINGER: And you are of the opinion that what we have just heard are the observations of a man in his right mind?