Bertolt Brecht

by Bertolt Brecht

  It was in those days that Kückelmann founded the celebrated Kückelmann Jam Factory. His ship had come in, and he had little time to concern himself with Kleiderer who naturally went into total decline. Still, he looked him up, though many months later, but only because it was his principle to finish any job he started. And when he found Kleiderer, who had now sunk totally into the morass, he was in for a surprise. The man whom he had repeatedly dragged out of that morass, whom he had clothed and fed, not to say stuffed – this man, who should have thanked him for the few moments in his poor and uneventful life in which his health and fortunes had bloomed – had the gall to respond to his friendly invitation to a meal for old time’s sake with a negative and quite unprintable answer.

  Four Men and a Poker Game or Too Much Luck is Bad Luck

  They sat on cane chairs in Havana and let the world go by. When it got too hot they drank iced water; in the evenings they danced the Boston at the Atlantic Hotel. All four of them had money.

  The newspapers called them great men. They read it three times and chucked the paper into the sea. Or they held the paper between their hands and pierced it with their toecaps. Three of them had broken swimming records in front of ten thousand people, and the fourth had brought all ten thousand to their feet. When they had beaten the field and read the papers they boarded ship. They were headed back to New York with good money in their pockets.

  To tell this story properly really calls for jazz accompaniment. It is sheer poetry from A to Z. It begins with cigar smoke and laughter and ends with a corpse.

  For one of them, it was generally agreed, could coax salmon out of a sardine tin. He was what they call fortune’s child. His name was Johnny Baker. Lucky Johnny. He was one of the best short-distance swimmers in either hemisphere. But the ridiculous luck he enjoyed threw a shadow over all his triumphs. For when a man can’t unfold a paper napkin without finding a dollar bill, people begin to wonder whether he is good at his business, even if his name is Rockefeller. And wonder they did.

  He had won in Havana just like the two others. He had won the 200 yard crawl by a length. But once again it was an open secret that his strongest opponent couldn’t stand the climate and hadn’t been fit. Johnny of course said they would try to pin something like that on him and go on about his ‘luck’ whatever happened, no matter how well he had been swimming. When he said it the other three just smiled.

  This was the state of play when the story began, and it began with a little game of poker. The ship was a bore.

  The sky was blue and so was the sea. The drinks were good, but they always were. The cigars smoked as well as any other cigars. In short, sky, sea, drinks and cigars were no good at all.

  They thought a little game of poker might be better. It wasn’t far short of the Bermudas when they began to play. They settled themselves comfortably for the game; each of them used two chairs. They agreed like gentlemen about the seating arrangements. One man’s feet lay by another’s ear. Thus, not far short of the Bermudas, they began to work their own downfall.

  Since Johnny was feeling insulted by certain insinuations, they were only three to start with. One won, one lost, one held his own. They were playing with tin chips, each standing for five cents. Then the game got too boring for one of them and he took his feet out of the game. Johnny took his place. After that, the game wasn’t boring any more. That is, Johnny began to win. If there was one thing Johnny couldn’t do, it was play poker: but winning at poker was something he could do.

  When Johnny bluffed, the bluff was so ridiculous that no poker player in the world would have dared go along with it. And when anybody who knew Johnny would have suspected a bluff, Johnny would innocently lay a flush on the table.

  Johnny himself played stone cold for a couple of hours. The two others were het up. When the fourth man came back after watching potatoes being peeled in the galley for two hours, he observed that the tin chips were standing at a dollar.

  This little increase had been the only way Johnny’s partners could hope to get back some of their money. It was quite simple: they were to recoup in greenbacks what he had won in cents. Responsible family men could not have played with more caution in this situation. But it was Johnny who raked in the spondulicks.

  They played six hours at a stretch. At any time during those six hours they could have left the game and lost no more to Johnny than the prize-money they had won in Havana. After those six hours of worry and effort they no longer could.

  It was time for dinner. They polished off the meal in double-quick time. Instead of forks they felt straights between their fingers. They ate their steaks thinking of royal flushes. The fourth man ate much more slowly. He said he was really beginning to feel like taking a hand, since a little life seemed to have crept into their dreary diddling.

  After dinner they were a foursome again. They played for eight hours. When Johnny counted their money about three in the morning they had left the Bermudas behind.

  They slept rather badly for five hours and started again. By then three of them were men who, whatever happened, would be in hock for years. They had one more day ahead of them; at midnight they would arrive in New York. In the course of that day they had to make sure they were not going to be ruined for life. For among them was a lousy poker player who was sucking the marrow from their bones.

  In the morning, when the appearance of several ships showed that the coast was near, they began to stake their houses. On top of everything else Johnny won a piano. Then they took two hours off at noon before squaring up to play for the shirts on their backs. At five in the afternoon they saw no choice but to go on. The man who had waited till after the Bermudas to take a hand and who was still eating calmly when the others had forgotten what their forks were for, offered to play Johnny for his girl. That is to say, if Johnny won, he would have the right to take a certain Jenny Smith to the male voice choir’s Widows’ Ball in Hoboken, but if he lost he would have to give back everything he had already won from the others. And Johnny took him up.

  First of all he got his facts straight.

  ‘And you won’t be coming along?’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  ‘And you won’t hold it against me?’

  ‘I won’t hold it against you.’

  ‘Or against her?’

  ‘What do you mean, against her?’

  ‘Well, the girl, you won’t hold it against her?’

  ‘Godammit no, I won’t hold it against her either.’

  And then Johnny won.

  When you place a bet, win, pocket your winnings, raise your hat and leave, it means you have been in danger and emerged unscathed. But if you have too big a heart and give your partners another chance, then, unless you end in the poorhouse, your partners will be on your back for the rest of your life. They will eat your liver like vultures. When playing poker you have to be as hard-hearted as in any other form of expropriation.

  From the moment when Johnny joined the game because another player left the table, he had let the others call the shots. They had forced him to look at several thousand cards, they had robbed him of his sleep, they had made him wolf down his meals in record time. They would really have preferred him to carry on playing and every six hours snatch the odd mouthful from a steak dangling on a string above the card-table. Johnny found it all distasteful.

  When he got up from the table after playing for the girl – which so far as he was concerned had topped everything – he had in his naive way thought they had had enough. They had taken him on knowing how lucky he was, because they thought he knew as little about poker as a traindriver knows about geography. But trains have rails which know their geography: a guy goes from New York to Chicago and nowhere else. That was exactly the system with which he had won, and the only thing left was for him to return his winnings without mortally offending them. Johnny’s weakness was his heart. He had too much tact.

  He said straight out not to worry, it had all been in fun. They didn’
t answer. They sat there as they had since the previous day and watched the seagulls, which were now more plentiful.

  Johnny concluded from this that, so far as they were concerned, more than 24 hours of poker was no joke.

  Johnny stood by the railing and thought. Then it came to him. He suggested that they should first of all have a meal with him that evening to restore their spirits. At his expense naturally. What he had in mind was a grand function, a blow-out, a really slap-up meal. He himself would mix drinks that would loosen their tongues. In view of the circumstances no expense need be spared. He even had caviare in mind. Johnny expected big things of this meal.

  They didn’t say no.

  They took this without exactly showing enthusiasm, but at any rate they agreed to go along with him. It was time to eat anyhow.

  Johnny went off and did the ordering. He went into the kitchen and ingratiated himself with the chef. He wanted a meal dished up for himself and his friends, a banquet which would outdo anything of its kind ever produced by any first class ship’s galley between Havana and New York. Johnny felt a lot better after this conversation with the chef.

  During this half-hour not a single word was spoken on deck.

  Johnny set the table himself downstairs. Beside his own place he put a little serving table on which he arranged the drinks. No need for him to stand up to mix. He had the chef bring his guests down. They came with a look of indifference and sat down as if it were an ordinary meal. It was all a bit flat.

  Johnny had thought that they would open up during the meal. People usually unbutton when they are eating, and this meal was excellent. They tucked in but they did not seem to be enjoying it. They ate the fresh vegetables as if they were porridge, and the roast chicken as if it were cafetaria ham. They seemed to have ideas of their own about Johnny’s meal. At one point one of them reached for a beautifully glazed little porcelain pot and asked ‘Is this caviare?’ And Johnny answered truthfully. ‘Yes, the best that a leaky old tub like this has to offer.’ The man nodded and emptied the pot with a spoon. Right after that another pointed out to his neighbour a little, specially packed speciality in mayonnaise. And then they smiled. Neither this nor several other aspects of their behaviour escaped their host.

  But it was only over the coffee that it dawned on Johnny what a piece of impertinence it had been for him to invite them to a meal. They didn’t seem to appreciate his desire to apply some of the money he had won to the common good. It seemed as if they only realised the extent of their losses once they were forced to watch their money being spent on such senseless titbits. It is more or less the same with a woman who wants to leave you. When you read her nice little parting letter, you may understand, but it is only when you see her getting into a taxi with another man that it really hits you. Johnny was quite taken aback.

  It was eight in the evening. Outside you could hear the tugs hooting. It was four hours to New York.

  Johnny had a vague feeling that it would be intolerable to sit in this cabin with these ruined men for four hours. But it didn’t look as if he would be able simply to get up and go. Given the situation, Johnny realised that he only had one chance. He suggested playing again for the whole pot.

  They put down their coffee cups, pushed the half-empty cans to one corner of the table and dealt the cards.

  They played for money with the same tin chips as they had done at the beginning. It struck Johnny that the other three were unwilling to go beyond a certain stake. So they were taking the game seriously again.

  At the very first hand Johnny was dealt yet another straight. Nonetheless he dropped out in the second round and threw in his hand. He had definitely learnt a thing or two.

  In the second hand and in the third when the stakes were raised he bluffed and strung them along as far as he could. But then one of them calmly looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Play the game.’ Whereupon he played a few hands as he had done previously, and won as before. Then he had a curious desire to play it by ear and follow his luck where he saw it. Then he saw their faces again and noticed that they scarcely looked at their cards before throwing them in, and at that he lost his nerve. He wanted to start deliberately losing, but each time he had a chance to pull a fast one he felt them watching him so closely that he drew back. And when he played badly out of sheer ignorance they played even worse, because the only thing they believed in was his luck. They took his total uncertainty for sheer malice. More and more they came to think that he was just playing cat and mouse with them.

  When once again he had collected all the chips in front of him the other three all got up, and he was left sitting alone without a thought in his head, amid the cards and the cans. It was eleven o’clock, one hour out of New York.

  Four men and a poker deck in a cabin between Havana and New York.

  They still had a little time. Since the air in the cabin was hot and stuffy they decided to go up on deck. They thought the fresh air would help. The idea of fresh air seemed to improve their spirits. They even asked Johnny whether he wanted to go on deck with them.

  Johnny didn’t want to go on deck.

  When the other three saw that Johnny didn’t want to go on deck they began insisting.

  It was then that Johnny lost his head for the first time and made the mistake of not standing up immediately. This probably gave them a prolonged glimpse of fear on his face. And this in turn made up their minds.

  Five minutes later, without uttering a word, Johnny went on deck with them. The steps were wide enough for two. It just happened that one of them went up ahead of Johnny, one behind him and one at his side.

  When they reached the top the night was cool and foggy. The deck was damp and slippery. Johnny was glad to be in the middle.

  They passed a man at the wheel who paid no attention to them. When they had gone four paces beyond him Johnny had a distinct feeling that he had missed a chance. But by then they were heading for the stern railings.

  When they reached the railings Johnny wanted to put his plan into effect and give a loud shout. But he abandoned this idea, oddly enough because of the fog; for when people have trouble seeing, they think no one can hear them.

  From the railings they heaved him into the sea.

  Then they sat in the cabin for a while eating what was left in the half-empty cans. They consolidated what was left of the drinks, three men and a poker deck on the way from Havana to New York, and asked one another whether Johnny Baker who was no doubt swimming behind the ship as its red navigation light disappeared into the night, was as good at swimming as he was at winning poker games.

  But nobody can possibly swim well enough to save himself from his fellow men if he has too much luck in this world.

  Barbara

  I wondered for a long time what this story should be called. But then I realised it had to be ‘Barbara’. I admit that Barbara herself only comes into it right at the beginning and is presented in an unflattering light throughout, but it’s a story that can only be called ‘Barbara’.

  Edmund, known as Eddy, 200 pounds of melancholy, made a bad move one evening at nine o’clock, when, just because we had downed a couple of cocktails on the Kurfürstendamm together and his Chrysler was standing outside the bar, he took me up to see Barbara at 53 Lietzenburger Strasse, although he should have known that Barbara would have ‘a very important appointment with a man who ran a cabaret.’

  We rang, went in, hung up our coats, saw Barbara bearing down on us in a rage, heard her scream, ‘You’ll drive me mad with your idiotic jealousy,’ then a door banged and we found ourselves down in front of Eddy’s Chrysler again. We climbed straight in.

  Eddy drove at a tidy pace. He whistled between two passing trams like the wind, flashed under the nose of an old lady, round a policeman and over the Halensee bridge at full throttle.

  And he talked the whole time. It was as if a ball of fat with a little, stiff black hat for a head, had a little black gear-lever right in its middle, and between this a
nd the hat, all carefully padded with fat, a sizeable steering wheel, and was travelling terribly fast and getting faster all the time as it headed for deeper and deeper forests.

  Moreover, as I told you, the ball of fat was talking the whole time.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘that was just a little thing. A bit of rudeness due to nerves. But you know, to be candid, it’s just these little things. I’ve had more than enough of them. What does she mean by jealousy? If there is one man who isn’t jealous, doesn’t know the feeling, never has known it, it’s me. Naturally I’m not struck on cabaret johnnies, that would be too much to ask. Naturally she has every right to entertain a guy like that at nine o’clock at night in her pyjamas, and if there is anybody who respects people’s rights, of every kind, right up to the hilt, it’s me. It’s just that it was thoughtless of Barbara. That’s all I’m saying, no more. Jealousy!

  ‘I can’t tell you how mad I get when I see a man’s ulster on Barbara’s coatstand. It’s not the coat of course, I don’t know what it is really, but I’ve got a thing about coats with fur linings. Even my own, the one I wear myself, makes me puke. I’ve long since given up expressing my own opinions. But all I can say is, that’s got to end now. For good.’