Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1 Page 12

  MURK: You don’t want ‘the other thing’?

  ANNA: That’s the tie.

  MURK: And it doesn’t bind you?

  ANNA: It’s broken now.

  MURK: Your child means nothing to you?

  ANNA: It means nothing.

  MURK: Because he is come who has no coat?

  ANNA: I didn’t recognize him.

  MURK: It’s no longer him. You didn’t recognize him.

  ANNA: He stood in the middle like some animal. 22>And you<22 beat him like an animal.

  MURK: And he howled like an old woman.

  ANNA: And he howled like a woman.

  MURK: And cleared off and left you sitting there.

  ANNA: And went away and left me sitting there.

  MURK: Finished, he 23>is.

  ANNA: And he’s finished.<23

  MURK: He has gone away …

  ANNA: But when he was gone away and he was finished …

  MURK: Nothing remained. Absolutely nothing.

  ANNA: There was a turbulence behind him and a slight wind and it grew very strong and was stronger than anything else and now I am going away and now I am coming and now it’s all finished for us, for me and for him. Because where is he gone? Does God know where he is? How big is the world and where is he? She looks composedly at Manke and says softly: Go to your bar, I’m grateful to you, and please see that he gets there.24 But Bab, you come with me! And hurries off right.

  MURK plaintively: Where’s she off to?25>

  BABUSCH: That’s the end of the Ride of the Valkyries, my boy.<25

  MANKE: The lover has already vanished, but his beloved hastens after him on wings of love. The hero has been brought low, but his path to heaven is already prepared.

  BABUSCH: But the lover’s going to stuff his beloved down a sewer and take the path to hell instead. O you romantic institute, you!

  MANKE: She is vanishing already as she hastens 26>down to the newspaper buildings<26. Like a white sail she can be seen still, like an idea, like a final cadence, like an intoxicated swan flying across the waters …

  BABUSCH: What are we to do with this sodden clod?

  MURK: I’m staying here. It’s cold. If it gets any colder they’ll come back. You know nothing about it. Because you don’t know the other thing. Let her run. He won’t want two. He left one behind and got two running after him. Laughs.

  BABUSCH:27 She’s vanishing heavenwards like a final cadence.

  Slogs after her.

  28>MANKE calls after him: Glubb’s bar, Chausseestrasse! That whore with him hangs out in Glubb’s bar. Spreads both his arms widely once more: The revolution is<28 swallowing them up. Will they find one another?

  ACT FOUR (29>THE DAWN IS TURNING RED<29)

  A Small Schnaps Distillery

  Clad in white, Glubb, the proprietor, sings the ‘Ballad of the Dead Soldier’1 to guitar accompaniment. Laar and a sinister drunk man stare at his fingers. A small square man called Bulltrotter is reading the paper. Manke, the waiter, brother of the Manke from the Piccadilly Bar, is drinking with Augusta, a prostitute, and all are smoking.

  BULLTROTTER: I want schnaps, not a dead soldier, I want to read the paper and I need schnaps for that or by God I won’t understand it.

  GLUBB with a cold glassy voice: Don’t you feel at home?

  BULLTROTTER: Yes, but there’s a revolution on.

  GLUBB: What for? This is my place where the scum feels at home and Lazarus sings.

  THE DRUNK MAN: I’m scum, you’re Lazarus.30>

  A WORKER enters and goes up to the bar: Evening, Karl.

  GLUBB: In a hurry?

  THE WORKER: Hausvogteiplatz at eleven.

  GLUBB: Plenty of rumours.

  THE WORKER: There’s been a guards division at the Anhalt station since six. All quiet at the ‘Vorwärts’ building. We could do with your boy Paul today, Karl.

  MANKE: We don’t talk about Paul here usually.

  THE WORKER paying: Today’s unusual. Exit.

  MANKE to Glubb: Wasn’t it unusual last November? You need a gun in your hand and a sticky feeling at the tips of the fingers.

  GLUBB chilly: What can I do for you, sir?

  BULLTROTTER: Freedom! <30 He takes off his coat and collar.

  GLUBB: Drinking in shirtsleeves is against the law.

  BULLTROTTER: Reactionaries.

  MANKE: They’re practising the 31 >Internationale<31, in four parts with tremolo32. Freedom! Then I suppose a fellow with clean cuffs will be put to scrub the lavatories?

  GLUBB: They’ll make a mess of the false marble.

  AUGUSTA:33 So people with clean cuffs are not to scrub the lavatories, eh?

  BULLTROTTER: You’ll be put up against a wall, mate.

  AUGUSTA: Then let them with the clean cuffs be so good as to strap up their arseholes.

  MANKE: Augusta, you’re crude.

  AUGUSTA: O you swine, you ought to be ashamed, your bowels should be ripped out, you should be hanged too, and them with the clean cuffs be strung up a lamp-post. ‘Can’t you cut the price, ducky, now we’ve lost the war?’ You’ve no business making love if you haven’t got the money, and you’ve no business making war if you don’t know how to. Take your feet down when there are ladies present. Why should I smell your stinking feet, you dirty bugger?

  GLUBB: His cuffs aren’t a bit clean.

  THE DRUNK MAN: What’s that rumbling?

  MANKE: Guns.

  THE DRUNK MAN gives the others a pale grin: What’s that rattling?

  Glubb goes to the window, throws it open, they hear guns racing down the street. All at the window.

  34>BULLTROTTER: That’s the regiment they call the Cockchafers<34

  AUGUSTA: Jesus Christ, where are they going?

  GLUBB: To the newspaper offices, girl. They’re the readers. He shuts the window.35

  AUGUSTA: Jesus Christ, who’s coming in?

  Kragler swaying in the doorway as if drunk, rocking on the soles of his feet.

  36>MANKE: Are you laying an egg in that doorway?<36

  AUGUSTA: Who are you37?

  KRAGLER grinning maliciously: Nobody.

  AUGUSTA drying him: The sweat’s running down his collar.38 Been running hard, haven’t you?39

  THE DRUNK MAN: Got squitters?

  KRAGLER: No, I’ve not got the squitters.40>

  MANKE goes across to him: Well, what have you been up to, my boy? I know the type.

  MARIE appears behind him: He hasn’t been up to anything. I invited him, Augusta; he hasn’t got anywhere to go. He’s been in Africa. Sit down.

  Kragler continues to stand in the doorway.<40

  MANKE: Prisoner of war?

  MARIE: And posted missing.

  AUGUSTA: Missing too?

  MARIE: And a prisoner of war.41>And in the meantime they pinched his fiancée.

  AUGUSTA: Come to Mummy, then. Have a seat, gunner. To Glubb: Five double kirsches, Karl.

  Glubb pours out five glasses, which Manke puts on a small table.

  GLUBB: Last week they pinched my bicycle.

  Kragler goes to the table.<41

  AUGUSTA: Tell us about Africa.42>

  Kragler drinks without answering.

  BULLTROTTER: Cough it up. The landlord’s a red.

  GLUBB: What did you say I was?

  BULLTROTTER: A red.

  MANKE: Mind yourself, sir; there’s nothing red about this place, if you don’t mind.

  BULLTROTTER: All right. Not red, then.

  AUGUSTA: And what did you do out there?

  KRAGLER: Shot wogs in the belly. Made roads. – Is it your lungs?

  AUGUSTA: How long for?

  KRAGLER keeps addressing Marie: Twenty-seven.

  MARIE: Months.

  AUGUSTA: And before that?

  KRAGLER: Before that? I lay in a hole full of mud.

  BULLTROTTER: And what were you doing there?

  KRAGLER: Stinking.

  GLUBB: Yes, you could lie around as much as you wa
nted.

  BULLTROTTER: What were the tarts like in Africa?

  Kragler is silent.

  AUGUSTA: Don’t be crude.

  BULLTROTTER: And when you got back she wasn’t at home, eh? I suppose you thought she’d go to the barracks every morning and wait around for you among the dogs?

  KRAGLER to Marie: Shall I hit him?

  GLUBB: No, not yet. Give us a tune on the nickelodeon, that’s what you can do.

  KRAGLER stands up swaying, and salutes: Sir! He goes and starts up the nickelodeon.

  BULLTROTTER: Mush.

  AUGUSTA: It’s just that he feels he’s a corpse. He’s dead but he won’t lie down.

  GLUBB: Yes, yes. He’s been the victim of a slight injustice. He’ll get over it.

  BULLTROTTER: Here, you’re a red, aren’t you? Glubb! Weren’t they saying something about your nephew?

  GLUBB: They were. Not in this house, though.

  BULLTROTTER: No, not in this house. At the Siemens works.

  GLUBB: For a short while.

  BULLTROTTER: For a short while at Siemens’s. He worked a lathe. He worked a lathe for a short while. Worked a lathe till last November, didn’t he?

  THE DRUNK MAN who has done nothing but laugh so far, sings:

  My brothers are all dead

  And I was nearly so.

  November I was red

  But January no.

  GLUBB: Herr Manke, this gentleman doesn’t want to be a nuisance to anybody. See that he isn’t.

  KRAGLER has seized Augusta’s waist and is dancing round with her:

  ‘A dog went to the kitchen

  To get a bone to chew.

  The cook picked up his chopper

  And cut that dog in two.’

  THE DRUNK MAN convulsed with laughter: Worked a lathe for a short while … <42

  GLUBB: You’re not to smash my glasses, gunner.

  MARIE: He’s drunk now. It’ll be a relief.43>

  KRAGLER: A relief, is it? Console yourself, brother Schnapsvat, just say: it’s not possible.

  AUGUSTA: Drink up, love.

  THE DRUNK MAN: Weren’t they saying something about a nephew?

  KRAGLER: What is a swine in the eyes of the Lord, sister prostitute? He is nothing.

  THE DRUNK MAN: Not in this house.

  KRAGLER: And why? Can we do away with the army or God? Can you do away with torture, Red, with the torments the devil has learnt from the human race? No, you can’t do away with them, but you can serve schnaps <43 So drink up and shut the door and don’t let the wind in, which is frozen too, but put wood between.44

  BULLTROTTER: The landlord says you’re the victim of a slight injustice; you’ll get over it, he says.

  45>KRAGLER: Will I? Did you say injustice, brother Red? What sort of a word is that? Injustice! A whole lot of little words like that they keep inventing, and blowing in the air, and then they can put their feet up and one gets over it. And big brother clouts his little brother on the jaw, and the cream of society takes the cream off the milk, and everyone gets over it nicely.

  THE DRUNK MAN: Over that nephew. The one they say nothing about in this house.

  KRAGLER:

  ‘The other dogs came running

  To dig that dog a grave

  And set him this inscription

  Upon the stone above:

  A dog went to the kitchen …’

  Therefore make yourselves at home on our planet, it’s cold here and rather dark, Red; the world’s too old for the millennium and heaven has been let, my friends.

  MARIE: What are we to do, then? He says he wants to<45 go to the newspaper offices. There they are, but what’s happening there?

  KRAGLER: A cab driving to the Piccadilly Bar.

  AUGUSTA: Is she inside?

  KRAGLER: With her inside. 46>My pulse is quite normal: feel. Holds out his hand, while drinking with the other.

  MARIE: He’s called Andy.

  KRAGLER: Andy. Yes, I was called Andy. He continues absentmindedly to feel his pulse.<46

  LAAR: They were mainly fir trees, little fir trees …

  GLUBB: The stone’s starting to talk.47

  BULLTROTTER: And you sold, you 48>idiot?

  LAAR: Me?

  BULLTROTTER: Oh, the bank? Interesting, Glubb, but not in this house.

  GLUBB: Are you feeling offended? Well, control yourselves then. All right, then prepare to be controlled.<48 Keep calm when they pull the skin off you, gunner, or it may split; it’s the only one you’ve got. 49> Still busy with glasses: Yes, you’re a bit offended <49 you’ve been killed off by guns and sabres, shat on a bit, and spat on a bit. 50> Well, what about it?

  BULLTROTTER referring to the glasses: Aren’t they clean yet?

  THE DRUNK MAN: Wash me, Lord, that I may become white! Wash me that I may become white as snow! Sings:

  My brothers all are dead, yes dead

  And I was very nearly so.

  November I was red, ah red

  But January no …

  GLUBB: That’ll do.

  AUGUSTA: You cowards!

  NEWSPAPER WOMAN enters:<50 Spartacus threatens press offices! Red Rosa speaks at Zoo !51 Mob rule for how long? Where are the troops? Ten pfennigs, soldier? Where are the troops: ten pfennigs. >Exit, as there are no customers.

  AUGUSTA: And Paul not there.<

  KRAGLER: That whistling again?52>

  GLUBB closes his cupboard, dries his hands: We’re closing.

  MANKE: Let’s go, Augusta. He’s saying nothing against you, but let’s go. To Bulltrotter: Anything the matter, sir? Two marks sixty.

  BULLTROTTER:<52 I was at Jutland; that was no picnic either.

  53THE DRUNK MAN with his arm round Marie:

  The saintly slattern disappears

  Swimming with him through floods of tears.54>

  KRAGLER: Down to the papers, everyone!

  ‘A dog went to the kitchen

  To get a bone to chew.

  The cook picked up his chopper

  And cut that dog in two.’<54

  LAAR staggers to the nickelodeon, pulls the drum away and starts a roll, swaying after the others.

  ACT FIVE (THE BED)

  Wooden Bridge

  Shouting, big red moon.

  BABUSCH:55 It’s time for you to go home.

  ANNA: I can’t go back there.56 What’s the use, I waited four years with a photo and took another man. I was frightened at night.

  BABUSCH: I’ve run out of cigars. Aren’t you ever going home?57 They’re flinging torn-up papers in the puddles, screaming at machine-guns, shooting in each other’s ears, imagining they’re building a new world. Here’s another group coming now.

  ANNA: There he is!

  As the group approaches there is a great disturbance in the street. Shooting breaks out in many directions.

  ANNA:58 I’m going to tell him.

  BABUSCH: I’ll stop you.

  ANNA: I’m not an animal. I’ll scream!

  BABUSCH:59 And I’ve run out of cigars.

  From between the houses come Glubb, Laar, the drunk man, the two women, the waiter Manke from the Piccadilly Bar, and Andy Kragler.

  KRAGLER: I’m hoarse. I’ve got Africa in the throat. I’m going to hang myself.

  GLUBB: Why not hang yourself tomorrow and come with us to the newspaper buildings now?

  KRAGLER stares towards Anna: Yes.

  AUGUSTA: Seen an apparition?

  MANKE: Hey, your hair’s standing on end.

  GLUBB: Is that her?

  KRAGLER: What’s the matter, then; are you stopping here? I’ll have you shot. March, march, double march!

  ANNA goes to meet him: Andy!

  THE DRUNK MAN: Lift your leg, I spy love!

  ANNA: Andy, stop a moment, it’s me, I wanted to say something. Silence. I wanted to remind you of something; stop just a moment, I’m not drunk. Silence.60You’ve no cap, either; it’s cold. I must say something to you privately.61

  KRAGLER: Are you drunk
?

  AUGUSTA: His fiancée comes after him, and his fiancée’s boozed.

  ANNA: What do you think? Walks a few steps. I’m with child.

  Augusta laughs shrilly.

  Kragler sways, squints towards the bridge, springs around as if trying out walking.

  AUGUSTA: Are you a fish, gasping for air like that?

  MANKE: You must think you’re asleep.

  KRAGLER hands down his trouser seams: Sir!

  MANKE: She’s with child. Having children’s her business. Come on!

  KRAGLER stiffly: Sir! Where to, sir?

  MANKE: He’s gone off his head.

  GLUBB: Usedn’t you to be in Africa?

  KRAGLER: Morocco, Casablanca, Hut 10.

  ANNA: Andy!

  KRAGLER listens: Listen! My 62>fiancée,<62 the whore! She’s come, she’s there, she’s got a bulge in her belly!

  GLUBB: She’s a bit anaemic, isn’t she?

  KRAGLER: Sh! It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it.

  ANNA: Andy, there are people around.

  KRAGLER: Is your body blown up with air or did you make a whore of yourself? I was away; I couldn’t keep an eye on you. I was lying in the filth. Where did you lie while I was lying in the filth?

  MARIE: You shouldn’t speak like that. What do you know about it?

  KRAGLER: And it was you I wanted to see. Otherwise I’d be lying where I belong, would have wind in my skull, dust in my mouth, and know nothing. But I wanted to see you first. I wouldn’t settle for less. I ate husks. They were bitter. I crept on all fours from my hole in the mud. That was comic. Swine that I am. Opens his eyes suddenly. Have a good look, eh? Did you get free tickets?

  He picks up lumps of earth and throws them about him.

  AUGUSTA: Hold him down!

  ANNA: Throw them, Andy! Throw them! Throw them at me!

  MARIE: Get the woman away, he’ll stone her to death.

  KRAGLER: Go to the devil! You’ve everything you need! Open your mouths. There isn’t anything else.

  AUGUSTA: Down with his head! Rub it in the dirt!

  The men hold him to the ground.63

  AUGUSTA: Blow, will you, miss?

  GLUBB to Anna: Yes, you go home, the early morning air’s no good for the ovaries.

  BABUSCH crosses the battlefield to Kragler, and tells him while chewing his mangled cigar: That’ll teach you where the shoe pinches. You’re God; you’ve thundered. As to the woman, she’s pregnant, she can’t go on sitting on that stone, the nights are chilly, perhaps you’ll say something …