Brecht Collected Plays: 6: Good Person of Szechwan; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui; Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

  THE PARSON’S WIFE, to Laina: Have you started bottling your this year’s mushrooms yet?

  LAINA: I don’t bottle them, I dry them.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: How do you do that?

  LAINA: I cut them in chunks, string them together with a needle and thread and hang them in the sun.

  PUNTILA: I want to say something about my daughter’s fiancé. Matti, I’ve had my eye on you and I’ve got an idea of your character. To say nothing of the fact that there’ve been no more mechanical breakdowns since you came to Puntila Hall. I respect you as a human being. I’ve not forgotten that episode this morning. I saw how you looked as I stood on the balcony like Nero and drove away beloved guests in my blindness and confusion; I told you about those attacks of mine. All through tonight’s party, as you may have noticed – or must have guessed if you weren’t there – I sat quiet and withdrawn, picturing those four women trudging back to Kurgela on foot after not getting a single drop of punch, just harsh words. I wouldn’t be surprised if their faith in Puntila were shaken. I ask you, Matti: can you forget that?

  MATTI: Mr Puntila, you can treat it as forgotten. But please use all your authority to tell your daughter that she cannot marry a chauffeur.

  THE PARSON: Very true.

  EVA: Daddy, Matti and I had a little argument while you were outside. He doesn’t think you’ll give us a sawmill, and won’t believe I can stand living with him as a simple chauffeur’s wife.

  PUNTILA: What d’you say to that, Freddie?

  JUDGE: Don’t ask me, Johannes, and stop looking at me like the Stag at Bay. Ask Laina.

  PUNTILA: Laina, I put it to you, do you think I’m a man who’d economise on his daughter and think a sawmill and a flour mill plus a forest too much for her?

  LAINA, interrupted in the midst of a whispered conversation with the parson’s wife about mushrooms, judging from the gestures: Let me make you some coffee, Mr Puntila.

  PUNTILA: Matti, can you fuck decently?

  MATTI: I’m told so.

  PUNTILA: That’s nothing. Can you do it indecently? That’s what counts. But I don’t expect an answer. I know you never blow your own trumpet, you don’t like that. But have you fucked Fina? So I can ask her? No? Extraordinary.

  MATTI: Can we change the subject, Mr Puntila?

  EVA, having drunk a bit more, gets to her feet and makes a speech: Dear Matti, I beseech you make me your wife so I may have a husband like other girls do, and if you like we can go straight off to catch crayfish without nets. I don’t consider myself anything special despite what you think, and I can live with you even if we have to go short.

  PUNTILA: Bravo!

  EVA: But if you don’t want to go after crayfish because you feel it’s too frivolous then I’ll pack a small case and drive off to your mother’s with you. My father won’t object…

  PUNTILA: Quite the contrary, only too delighted.

  MATTI likewise stands up and quickly knocks back two glasses: Miss Eva, I’ll join you in any piece of foolishness you like, but take you to my mother’s, no thanks, the old woman would have a stroke. Why, there’s hardly so much as a sofa at her place. Your Reverence, describe Miss Eva a pauper kitchen with sleeping facilities.

  THE PARSON solemnly: Extremely poverty-stricken.

  EVA: Why describe it? I shall see for myself.

  MATTI: Try asking my old lady where the bathroom is.

  EVA: I shall use the public sauna.

  MATTI: On Mr Puntila’s money? You’ve got your sights on that sawmill-owner, but he isn’t materialising, ‘cause Mr Puntila is a sensible person or will be when he comes to first thing in the morning.

  PUNTILA: Say no more, say no more about that Puntila who is our common enemy; that’s the Puntila who was drowned in a bowl of punch this evening, the wicked fellow. Look at me now, I’ve become human, all of you drink too, become human, never say die!

  MATTI: I’m telling you I just can’t take you to my mother’s, she’d hammer my ears with her slippers if I brought home a wife like that, if you really want to know.

  EVA: Matti, you shouldn’t have said that.

  PUNTILA: The girl’s right, you’re going too far, Matti. Eva has her faults and she may finish up a bit on the fat side like her mother, but not before she’s thirty or thirty-five, at the moment I could show her anywhere.

  MATTI: I’m not talking about fat, I’m saying she’s hopelessly unpractical and no kind of wife for a chauffeur.

  THE PARSON: I entirely agree.

  MATTI: Don’t laugh, Miss Eva. You’d laugh on the other side of your face if my mother tested you out. You’d look pretty silly then.

  EVA: Matti, let’s try. You’re the chauffeur and I’m your wife; tell me what I’m supposed to do.

  PUNTILA: That’s what I like to hear. Get the sandwiches, Fina, we’ll have a snug meal while Matti tests Eva till she’s black and blue all over.

  MATTI: You stay there, Fina, we’ve no servants; when unexpected guests turn up we’ve just got what’s generally in the larder. Bring on the herring, Eva.

  EVA, cheerfully: I won’t be a moment. Exit.

  PUNTILA calls after her: Don’t forget the butter. To Matti: I like the way you’re determined to stand on your own feet and not accept anything from me. Not everyone would do that.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE to Laina: But I don’t salt my field mushrooms, I cook them in butter with some lemon, the little button ones I mean. I use blewits for bottling too.

  LAINA: I don’t count blewits as really delicate mushrooms, but they don’t taste too bad. The only delicate ones are field mushrooms and cêpes.

  EVA, returning with a dish of herring: We’ve no butter in our kitchen, right?

  MATTI: Ah, there he is. I recognise him. He takes the dish. I met his brother only yesterday and another relative the day before; in fact I’ve been meeting members of his family ever since I first reached for a plate. How many times a week would you like to eat herring?

  EVA: Three times, Matti, if need be.

  LAINA: It’ll need be more than that, like it or not.

  MATTI: You’ve a lot to learn still. When my mother was cook on a farm she used to serve it five times a week. Laina serves it eight times. He takes a herring and holds it up by the tail: Welcome, herring, thou filler of the poor! Thou morning, noon and night fodder, and salty gripe in the guts! Out of the sea didst thou come, and into the earth shalt thou go. By thy power are forests cut down and fields sown, and by thy power go those machines called farmhands which have not as yet achieved perpetual motion. O herring, thou dog, but for thee we might start asking the farmers for pig meat, and what would come of Finland then?

  He puts it back, cuts it up and gives everyone a small piece.

  PUNTILA: It tastes to me like a delicacy because I eat it so seldom. That sort of inequality shouldn’t be allowed. Left to myself I’d put all the income from the estate in a single fund, and if any of my staff wanted money they could help themselves, because if it weren’t for them there’d be nothing there. Right?

  MATTI: I wouldn’t recommend it. You’d be ruined in a week and the bank would take over.

  PUNTILA: That’s what you say, but I say different. I’m practically a communist, and if I were a farmhand I’d make old Puntila’s life hell for him. Go on with your test, I find it interesting.

  MATTI: If I start to think what a woman has to be able to do before I can present her to my mother then I think of my socks. He takes off a shoe and gives his sock to Eva. For instance, how about darning that?

  THE JUDGE: It is a lot to ask. I said nothing about the herring, but even Juliet’s love for Romeo would hardly have weathered such an imposition as darning his socks. Any love that is capable of so much self-sacrifice could easily become uncomfortable, for by definition it is too ardent and therefore liable to make work for the courts.

  MATTI: Among the lower orders socks are not mended for love but for reasons of economy.

  THE PARSON: I doubt if the pious sisters wh
o taught her in Brussels had quite this sort of thing in mind.

  Eva has returned with needle and thread and starts sewing.

  MATTI: If she missed out on her education she’ll have to make up for it now. To Eva: I won’t hold your upbringing against you so long as you show willing. You were unlucky in your choice of parents and never learned anything that matters. That herring just now showed what vast gaps there are in your knowledge. I deliberately picked socks because I wanted to see what sort of stuff you’re made of.

  FINA: I could show Miss Eva how.

  PUNTILA: Pull yourself together, Eva, you’ve a good brain, you’re not going to get this wrong.

  Eva reluctantly gives Matti the sock. He lifts it up and inspects it with a sour smile, for it is hopelessly botched.

  FINA: I couldn’t have done it any better without a darning egg.

  PUNTILA: Why didn’t you use one?

  MATTI: Ignorance. To the judge, who is laughing: It’s no laughing matter, the sock’s ruined. To Eva: If you’re dead set on marrying a chauffeur it’s a tragedy because you’ll have to cut your coat according to your cloth and you can’t imagine how little of that there is. But I’ll give you one more chance to do better.

  EVA: I admit the sock wasn’t brilliant.

  MATTI: I’m the driver on an estate, and you help out with the washing and keeping the stoves going in winter. I get home in the evening, how do you receive me?

  EVA: I’ll be better at that, Matti. Come home.

  Matti walks away a few paces and pretends to come in through a door.

  EVA: Matti! She runs up to him and kisses him.

  MATTI: Mistake number one. Intimacies and lovey-dovey when I come home tired.

  He goes to an imaginary tap and washes. Then he puts out his hand for a towel.

  EVA has started talking away: Poor Matti, you tired? I’ve spent all day thinking how hard you work. I wish I could do it for you. Fina hands her a towel, which she disconsolately passes to Matti.

  EVA: I’m sorry. I didn’t realise what you wanted.

  Matti gives a disagreeable growl and sits down at the table. Then he thrusts his boot at her. She tries to tug it off.

  PUNTILA has stood up and is following with interest: Pull!

  THE PARSON: I would call that a remarkably sound lesson. You see how unnatural it is.

  MATTI: That’s something I don’t always do, but today you see I was driving the tractor and I’m half dead, and that has to be allowed for. What did you do today?

  EVA: Washing, Matti.

  MATTI: How many big items did you have to wash?

  EVA: Four. Four sheets.

  MATTI: You tell her, Fina.

  FINA: You’ll have done seventeen at least and two tubs of coloureds.

  MATTI: Did you get your water from the hose, or did you have to pour it in by the bucket ‘cause the hose wasn’t working like it doesn’t at Puntila’s?

  PUNTILA: Give me stick, Matti, I’m no good.

  EVA: By the bucket.

  MATTI: Your nails [he takes her hand] have got broken scrubbing the wash or doing the stove. Really you should always put a bit of grease on them, that’s the way my mother’s hands got [he demonstrates] swollen and red. I’d say you’re tired, but you’ll have to wash my livery, I’m afraid. I have to have it clean for tomorrow.

  EVA: Yes, Matti.

  MATTI: That way it’ll be properly dry first thing and you won’t have to get up to iron it till five-thirty.

  Matti gropes for something on the table beside him.

  EVA, alarmed: What’s wrong?

  MATTI: Paper.

  Eva jumps up and pretends to hand Matti a paper. Instead of taking it he goes on sourly groping around on the table.

  FINA: On the table.

  Eva finally puts it on the table, but she still has not pulled the second boot off, and he bangs it impatiently. She sits down on the floor once again to deal with it. Once she has got it off he stands up, relieved, snorts and combs his hair.

  EVA: I’ve been embroidering my apron, that’ll add a touch of colour, don’t you think? You can add touches of colour all over the place if only you know how. Do you like it, Matti? Matti, disturbed in his reading, lowers the paper exhaustedly and gives Eva a pained look. She is startled into silence.

  FINA: No talking while he’s reading the paper.

  MATTI, getting up: You see?

  PUNTILA: I’m disappointed in you, Eva.

  MATTI, almost sympathetically: Failure all along the line. Wanting to eat herring only three times a week, no egg for darning the sock, then the lack of finer feelings when I arrive home late, not shutting up for instance. And when they call me up at night to fetch the old man from the station; how about that?

  EVA: Ha, just let me show you. She pretends to go to a window and shouts very rapidly: What, in the middle of the night? When my husband’s just got home and needs his sleep? I never heard anything like it. If he’s drunk let him sleep it off in a ditch. Sooner than let my husband go out I’ll pinch his trousers.

  PUNTILA: That’s good, you must allow her that.

  EVA: Drumming folk up when they should be asleep. As if they didn’t get buggered about enough by day. Why, my husband gets home and falls into bed half dead. I’m giving notice. That better?

  MATTI, laughing: Eva, that’s first rate. I’ll get the sack of course, but do that act in front of my mother and you’ll win her heart. Playfully he slaps Eva on the bottom.

  EVA, speechless, then furious: Stop that at once!

  MATTI: What’s the matter?

  EVA: How dare you hit me there?

  THE JUDGE has stood up, touches Eva on the shoulder: I’m afraid you failed your test after all, Eva.

  PUNTILA: What on earth’s wrong with you?

  MATTI: Are you offended? I shouldn’t have slapped you, that it?

  EVA, able to laugh once more: Daddy, I doubt if it would work.

  THE PARSON: That’s the way it is.

  PUNTILA: What d’you mean, you doubt?

  EVA: And I now see my education was all wrong. I think I’ll go upstairs.

  PUNTILA: I shall assert myself. Sit down at once, Eva.

  EVA: Daddy, I’d better go, I’m sorry, but your engagement party’s off, good night. Exit.

  PUNTILA: Eva!

  Parson and judge likewise begin to leave. But the parson’s wife is still talking to Laina about mushrooms.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE, with enthusiasm: You’ve almost converted me, but bottling them is what I’m used to, I know where I am. But I shall peel them beforehand.

  LAINA: You don’t have to, you just need to clean off the dirt.

  THE PARSON: Come along, Anna, it’s getting late.

  PUNTILA: Eva! Matti, I’m writing her off. I fix her up with a husband, a marvellous human being, and make her so happy she’ll get up every morning singing like a lark; and she’s too grand for that, and has doubts. I disown her. Hurries to the door. I’m cutting you out of my will! Pack up your rags and get out of my house! Don’t think I didn’t see you were all set to take the Attache just because I told you to, you spineless dummy! You’re no longer any daughter of mine.

  THE PARSON: Mr Puntila, you are not in command of yourself.

  PUNTILA: Let me alone, go and preach that stuff in your church, there’s nobody to listen there anyway.

  THE PARSON: Mr Puntila, I wish you good night.

  PUNTILA: Yes, off you go, leaving behind you a father bowed down with sorrow. How the hell did I come to have a daughter like that, fancy catching her sodomising with a scavenging diplomat. Any milkmaid could tell her why the Lord God made her a bottom in the sweat of his brow. That she might lie with a man and slaver for him every time she catches sight of one. To the judge: And you too, holding your tongue instead of helping to expel her evil spirit. You’d better get out.

  THE JUDGE: That’s enough, Puntila, just you leave me be. I’m washing my hands in innocence. Exit smiling.

  PUNTILA: You’ve be
en doing just that for the past thirty years, by now you must have washed them away. Fredrik, you used to have peasant’s hands before you became a judge and took to washing them in innocence.

  THE PARSON, trying to disengage his wife from her conversation with Laina: Anna, it’s time we went.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: No, I never soak them in cold water and, you know, I don’t cook the stalks. How long do you give them?

  LAINA: I bring them to the boil once, that’s all.

  THE PARSON: I’m waiting, Anna.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: Coming. I let them cook ten minutes.

  The parson goes out shrugging his shoulders.

  PUNTILA, at the table once more: They’re not human beings. I can’t look on them as human.

  MATTI: Come to think of it, they are, though. I knew a doctor once would see a peasant beating his horse and say ‘He’s treating it like a human being’. ‘Like an animal’ would have given the wrong impression.

  PUNTILA: That is a profound truth, I’d like to have had a drink on that. Have another half glass. I really appreciated your way of testing her, Matti.

  MATTI: Sorry to have tickled up your daughter’s backside, Mr Puntila, it wasn’t part of the test, more meant as a kind of encouragement, but it only showed the gulf between us as you’ll have seen.

  PUNTILA: Matti, there’s nothing to be sorry about. I’ve no daughter now.

  MATTI: Don’t be so unforgiving. To Laina and the parson’s wife: Well, anyway I hope you got the mushroom question settled?

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: Then you add your salt right at the start?

  LAINA: Right at the start. Exeunt both.

  PUNTILA: Listen, the hands are still down at the dancing.

  From the direction of the lake Red Surkkala is heard singing.

  A countess there lived in the northern countree

  And lovely and fair she was.

  ‘Oh forester, see how my garter is loose

  It is loose, it is loose.

  Bend down yourself and tie it for me.’

  ‘My lady, my lady, don’t look at me so.

  I work here because I must eat.

  Your breasts they are white but the axe-edge is cold

  It is cold, it is cold.

  Death is bitter, though loving is sweet.’