Collected Plays, Volume 4 (Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry & Prose) 8 Read online

  CRY: The Committee will take that risk. We trust and believe that the people of Paris not only have hands to work with but also eyes to see.

  Applause.

  MAYORS: And they will see all sorts of things. I for one have no desire to stand for election alongside murderers. Murmurings. The Committee did not protest against the murders of General Thomas and General Lecomte.

  CRIES: We had nothing to do with it. – I object to the word ‘murder’. It was the just execution of murderers by the people of Paris. – Beware of censuring the people, or they will censure you. – No threats! The people joined hands with the bourgeoisie in the Republic of 4 September. – Indeed they did, and that alliance must continue. Everyone must take part in the elections, everyone! Until Paris has voted for us we acknowledge the Government in Versailles as the rightful power of the state. – And what if we do? The National Guard is the nation in arms against the power of the state.

  The mayors appear in the doorway.

  ONE OF THE MAYORS calling back angrily into the room: We note with satisfaction that you are divided even among yourselves.

  CRIES in the room, and murmurings: We need the entrepreneurs to start up production again. Very well, turn your back on the people to humour the bourgeoisie. The people will withdraw from us and we shall discover that no revolution is possible with the bourgeoisie.

  PAPA: That’s the truth.

  MAYORS: We leave you our sincere good wishes. May you succeed in your task, it is rather too large for us. Exit.

  CRIES: The bourgeoisie are quitting the room. Good.

  PAPA shouting after the mayors: Villains!

  Langevin and Geneviéve come out of the room.

  PAPA: Pierre, you must bring a motion at once: people protecting the traitor generals must be eliminated. Shoot them like dogs, straight away, all of them, without trial, or you are lost.

  LANGEVIN: What have you got to do with the shootings? Calm down.

  PAPA: Me? Nothing. What do you mean? The Committee is dallying.

  LANGEVIN: Wouldn’t you do better to listen? He opens the door again.

  RIGAULT’S VOICE: Citizens of the Guard, the right to decide the fate of the country can only rest in the hands of those who are defending it, namely the proletariat, the 200,000 combatants. Their ballot paper is the bullet.

  Murmurings.

  CRIES: Do you really want to throttle the elections? That means anarchy. Remember it means civil war. And with Prussian batteries from the Bois de Vincennes to the Bois de Boulogne. Unity! The elections are agreed.

  GENEVIÈVE: We are divided, that is bad.

  LANGEVIN smiling: No, it is good, it means movement. So long as it’s movement in the right direction. But why have you come?

  PAPA: In the 101st we’ve been talking about the gates not being closed. All night long they’ve been sending their police, their baggage and their artillery off to Versailles. And that’s where Thiers is. We are to tell you that we’ll march on Versailles as soon as you give the signal, Langevin.

  GENEVIEVE quickly: That would be civil war as well.

  COCO: There are 20,000 men with bread stuck on their bayonets camped outside the Hôtel de Ville alone, and fifty cannon have been brought up around the building. You only need shout through the window ‘To Versailles!’ and everything will be settled once and for all.

  LANGEVIN slowly: Perhaps. But we need the agreement of France, do we not?

  PAPA: Good, then vote. Or don’t vote, that’s also good. But destroy the enemy while you can, now.

  LANGEVIN hesitantly: It’s hard enough getting the Commune on its feet. Once we’re there, Thiers and his henchmen will be a handful of bankrupts in the eyes of France. But I know what you mean, Papa. It’s good that you’re breathing down our necks. Don’t leave us in peace, you are always further on than we are. He hurries back into the room.

  PAPA: Coco, let’s leave it at that. They must know what they’re doing after all.

  They turn to go. Then they hear the closing speech.

  VARLIN’S VOICE: Citizens of the National Guard! The proletariat of Paris, amid the defeats and treachery of the ruling classes, decimated on the battlefields of their own and the Prussian bourgeoisie, weakened by the hunger visited upon them by the Prussian generals and the Parisian black-marketeers, in the early hours of this morning rose up to defend what is left of their shattered quartiers and to take their destiny into their own hands. It is the destiny of France. The so-called Government of National Defence, formed by the bourgeoisie after military defeat, has been unmasked and shown to be a Government of National Treachery. Those same people who brought in the Emperor for their adventures and dropped him when he did not deliver the loot, they are now bringing in Herr von Bismarck to defend their wealth against the ones who created it, the proletariat. But the capital of France, declaring the revolt against this gang of adventurers to be legitimate, arms herself now and strides calmly and determinedly to the election of her own free and sovereign Commune and calls on all free Communes of France to gather themselves around her.

  Loud applause and cries of ‘Long live the Commune!’

  GENEVIÈVE: This is one of the greatest days in the history of France.

  PAPA: And a part of its greatness will be that nobody can say the representatives of the people wanted civil war. It will be a New Age and there will not have been a bloodbath.

  RESOLUTION

  1

  Whereas you knew how weak we were and made

  Laws so we should ever more be slaves

  These laws in future shall be set aside

  Because we’ve had enough of being slaves.

  Whereas you thereupon will threaten us

  With rifles and with cannon we hereby

  Resolve from now on we shall fear death less

  Than we fear living wretchedly.

  2

  Whereas we’re hungry and hungry we’ll remain

  If we put up with being robbed by you

  We’ll show there’s only a pane of glass between

  Us and all the good bread we are due.

  Whereas you thereupon will threaten us

  With rifles and with cannon we hereby

  Resolve from now on we shall fear death less

  Than we fear living wretchedly.

  3

  Whereas there are dwelling-places where you are

  While you leave us without a home to go to

  We have resolved that now we’ll move in there

  Because we’re sick of slumming it down below.

  Whereas you thereupon will threaten us

  With rifles and with cannon we hereby

  Resolve from now on we shall fear death less

  Than we fear living wretchedly.

  4

  Whereas there’s coal in surplus piled up high

  While we are freezing cold without the stuff

  We have resolved we’ll be the ones that we supply

  Because if we do then we’ll be warm enough.

  Whereas you thereupon will threaten us

  With rifles and with cannon we hereby

  Resolve from now on we shall fear death less

  Than we fear living wretchedly.

  5

  Whereas it seems you’ll never work out how

  To pay the ones who work a decent rate

  We’ll have the factories in our own hands now

  Because there’s plenty for us if we throw you out.

  Whereas you thereupon will threaten us

  With rifles and with cannon we hereby

  Resolve from now on we shall fear death less

  Than we fear living wretchedly.

  6

  Whereas nobody’s left who still believes

  The government whatever it promises

  We have resolved we’ll build ourselves good lives

  By being the only ones who govern us.

  Whereas you’ll listen to what the cannon say –

  No other langu
age will you listen to –

  Well then, we’ll have to turn the cannon your way.

  Yes, that will be the best thing we can do!

  5

  19 March 1871. Gare du Nord. Posters everywhere urging people to vote for the Commune. Crush of bourgeois families, nuns, functionaries fleeing to Versailles.

  NEWSPAPER SELLER: Declaration of the Press: Commune elections unconstitutional! Parisians, the following newspapers urge you not to vote: Le Journal des débats, Le Constitutionel, Le Moniteur universel, Le Figaro, Le Gaulois – and then during what follows – La Vérité, Paris-Journal, La Presse, La France, La Liberté, Le Pays, Le National, L’Univers, Le Temps, La Cloche, La Patrie, Le Bien public, L’Union, L’Avenir libéral, Journal des villes et des campagnes, Le Charivari, Le Monde, La France nouvelle, La Gazette de France, Le Petit Moniteur, Le Petit National, L’Electeur libre, La Petite Presse.

  The tax-collector, among his family, buys the declaration.

  TAX-COLLECTOR: What does that mean, ‘the Committee is nothing’? It represents 215 battalions. Those people can do what they like. Alphonse, stand up straight. Where’s Bourdet with the briefcase? Do I or don’t I have a chief clerk in my hour of need?

  HIS WIFE: Alphonse, don’t slouch. If Bourdet doesn’t come you’ll have to stay behind, Christophe. Everything’s very dear in Versailles, we’ll be lost without money. Everywhere will be full.

  TAX-COLLECTOR: ‘You’ll have to stay behind …’ That’s very typical. They can put me up against the wall so long as the money…

  HIS WIFE: Don’t start getting sentimental. You’ll wait for Bourdet. Alphonse, stop shrugging your shoulders. Exit without her husband. He waits.

  Enter Philippe and Jean just as some regular soldiers, led by a functionary, arrive dragging an iron chest.

  FUNCTIONARY: Not in the goods wagon, if you please. Those are the registers and the cash boxes from the town hall.

  PHILIPPE: It’s your mother’s fault that I have to go back to the army. How could she pawn François’ microscope while he was fighting? It will take all my pay, which I haven’t even got yet. And they might court-martial me because of that business with the cannon, and you’re to blame for that as well.

  JEAN absent-mindedly: We had to pay the rent, Philippe. If you bring us twenty francs we can get the things back again. But the most important is that François doesn’t find out.

  PHILIPPE: His studying gobbles up everything. And if he gets involved in your Commune business the reverend brothers will expel him. A priest and in the Commune! And you can see how wrong your ideas are when you look at him. François wants his microscope, doesn’t he? And why? Because it’s his property. People want their property, and that’s that.

  JEAN: Philippe, your head’s like a bakery, everything in a mess.

  PHILIPPE: Everything’s not in a mess in a bakery.

  JEAN: Listen. The microscope is a tool of his trade, that’s why he wants it. And the lathes in the locomotive works are the tools of our trade, that’s why we want them. Got it?

  PHILIPPE: Where are you going?

  JEAN thrusts the sack at him that he was carrying for him: Don’t you see, they’re taking the cash boxes away. Hey, you there! To the soldiers dragging the boxes: Nothing’s to be taken away. It’s the property of the people. The soldiers continue, after one of them has given him a kick. Scum! And no one here to stop them. Hurries away.

  Exit Philippe, shaking his head. Enter an aristocratic woman with her niece and servants carrying hat-boxes and the like.

  NIECE: Who would have thought, Aunt Marie, that the first trains allowed out of Paris would witness such a tragic spectacle! The whole of Paris in flight.

  ARISTOCRATIC WOMAN: Not for long. Philine, mind the box doesn’t get crushed. There’s a Farnaud hat in it.

  NIECE: We should have taken the carriage.

  ARISTOCRATIC WOMAN: Don’t talk nonsense. They’d have unhitched the horses and eaten them. Ah, de Plœuc, how very kind of you. At times like this one learns who one’s friends are.

  DE PLŒUC: I couldn’t let you leave without shaking your hand, Madame la Duchesse.

  NIECE: Must you really stay behind? Is it not dangerous?

  DE PLŒUC: Perhaps. But the Bank of France is worth the risk, mademoiselle. To the Duchess: Might I ask you to hand over the note in this bouquet to Him? He hands her a bouquet.

  ARISTOCRATIC WOMAN: It will be done. The whole pantomime won’t last more than a week. Goodbye for a little while, Henri. Exit with her niece.

  DE PLŒUC: For a little while, ladies.

  The newspaper seller is now selling individual papers. Opposite him a street trader is selling his wares.

  NEWSPAPER SELLER: ‘Pronouncements of eminent persons’ in the Figaro! – ‘Murders of General Thomas and General Lecomte!’ – ‘Occupation of the Hôtel de Ville unlawful!’ – ‘Is the Central Committee in league with the Germans?’ – ‘Looting in the rue Gras!’ – ‘Rule of the Mob!’

  STREET TRADER interjecting: Braces! – Combs from Lyons! – Buttons! – Soap and toiletries, cheap! – Mouth organs! – Belts from Tripolitania!

  Soldiers bring in Jean, whose clothes are torn. They are halted by a sergeant of the National Guard and some of his men.

  SERGEANT: One moment! What are you doing with him?

  SOLDIERS: He was caught trying to climb on the locomotive. A saboteur, sergeant.

  JEAN: Listen will you. They’re carrying off the cash boxes. You must stop them. You must arrest the whole lot of them.

  SERGEANT: Easy, comrade, easy now. We’ve had no orders to stop the trains. Let him go.

  DE PLŒUC: Friends, I am the Marquis de Plœuc of the Bank of France. You say yourselves that the Executive has issued no orders. We do not have a civil war yet, so far as I have heard. And if that is the case the man has committed a crime and must be arrested.

  JEAN: Oh? And where was I being taken to? Answer me that. Nobody speaks.

  SERGEANT: I see. You were dragging him off on the train? Let him go at once. To his people: Fetch reinforcements. Exit some of his men. Jean is released. The soldiers creep away. Exit DE PLŒUC.

  SOLDIERS: We were only doing our duty, comrade.

  SERGEANT to Jean: You were lucky.

  JEAN: And you let them go! Look at these posters. I’ll tell you something: I voted. But not for your Commune. Your Commune will go under. He stumbles away.

  6

  26 March. Outside the café in Montmartre. Mme Cabet and her little family – Jean, Babette, François, Genevieve – are making themselves at home in the little café, that had been closed. They take down the shutters, roll up the blinds, carry out chairs, hang up white paper lanterns. The waiter in the uniform of the National Guard and the wounded cuirassier in civilian clothes help them. Fast music can be heard from a square nearby. Genevieve comes out of the café with bottles of wine followed by one of the children in Sunday best.

  FRANÇOIS arriving with cane chairs: This is the Commune, this is Science, the New Millennium! Paris has decided in favour of it!

  WAITER: The patron decided against it so the waiter has become the patron. Make yourselves at home in his café.

  GENEVIÈVE: So even the young men of the church salute the dawn. She places bottles of wine in front of Mme Cabet.

  FRANÇOIS: And the teachers serve the widows with black-market wine. For now the Sermon on the Mount has been set down in paragraphs of the law which begin with the word ‘Whereas’ and finish in deeds. He embraces the German soldier who, grinning all over his face, has opened a shutter. I embrace you, cuirassier, my new brother, deserter from the predatory armies of the anachronistic Bismarck!

  MME CABET who from the start has been sitting on a chair in the middle of the street: And they’ve let us off the rent! Calls out: Jean! Babette!

  FRANÇOIS: Whereas the unjust war that has plagued our country was the work of a minority and whereas it is unjust, unjust, to shift the whole burden of it on to the majority, which is a vast
majority of the very poor … I’ve learned it by heart, like my Lavoisier.

  JEAN looking out of the upper window of the café: Be patient!

  FRANÇOIS: And the pawnbrokers give the poor their pawned belongings back for free, it being the case that life must be worth living.

  MME CABET: Francois, you knew all about it? I’m a thief, everything’s so dear. That’s why I asked you for the rent, a bit tactlessly, but I wanted to get the things back, you need them of course. Jean! To the child: Sit down, Victor. Eat something before you taste the wine. Jean! The child sits down stiffly. Jean looks out crossly. I want to speak to Babette. Haven’t you finished yet?

  BABETTE somewhat flushed, appears in the window next to Jean: Maman?

  MME CABET: See what wonderful wine we’ve got, Babette. Babette laughs and disappears. She needs looking after, he’s very radical, that one.

  Down the street come Papa and Langevin. Langevin looks very tired. Papa is carrying a white lantern on his bayonet.

  PAPA: Madame, mademoiselle. I bring you your brother-in-law, Member of the Commune for Vaugirard. I dragged him away from work, they’re at it like wage-slaves in the Hôtel de Ville.

  MME CABET: Have a glass, Pierre.

  WAITER: The wine is the patron’s, the patron is in Versailles, help yourself, monsieur.

  LANGEVIN: They’ve left six thousand sick behind, there’s nobody for the street lighting, that’s a lot of work.

  Jean and Babette raise a red flag out of the window.

  PAPA: Ah, raise a glass to Beauty! Loved and feared! Hounded and terrifying! Friendly Beauty, rides in on the storm wind!

  MME CABET: Yes, she’ll do it. Pierre, Papa, take some of these loaves. And where are the children? The baker opposite brought us bread out on the street when we carried our flag past. Yes, when we carried our flag past, of a certain colour, the baker, the sour-puss, forced these loaves upon us.

  GENEVIÈVE: Sit down. I’ll sing you an old song.

  Margot went to market early.

  How loud the drums beat!

  She bought meat and celery

  And found the butcher grey,

  Hair and face gone grey.

  ‘That’ll be twenty francs, the meat.’

  Tarrabom, tarrabom, tarrabom.