Bertolt Brecht Read online

  We spent the whole day over drink and women, we were like the beggar who threw an old louse-ridden shirt over the hedge saying: Live and let live! Only Bargan worked in the tent – he never moved into a house, always said the ceiling would fall down – pretty well the whole day, distributing the booty among other things, in so far as it consisted of pure gold. He didn’t see the young woman even once and in the evening we all shook our sodden heads over the fact that Croze had the wench; Bargan himself had her brought over to the house where the Clubfoot of St. Marie had lain the whole afternoon with another slut. Later on we said his hatred of Bargan, who loved him like a child, came about because when Croze got the woman in the evening he couldn’t do it any more, and that irritated him. Anyhow, that same night some of us discovered the young wench in Croze’s room with her throat cut, but he had made off, after slaughtering her like a hen, at the dead of night. Together with seven or eight more young fellows who weren’t too keen on Bargan because they were born with rotten souls. When we told Bargan early the next morning he didn’t give anything away but afterwards he drank and stared into a hole all the time, right in the middle of our victory celebrations which lasted three more days. On the evening of the third day, when the women had all been used up and the brandy was getting bitter, fat Croze came back, but on his own, and behaved as if he had been relieving himself in the bushes and looked questioningly into all our faces. And though we would have liked to pull his thick skin over his gristly ears, we pretended we hadn’t missed him and hadn’t found the hen, just because Bargan did nothing at all to hide his joy over his return, which did him no credit. And during the following days, while we prepared to move off, the two of them lived together as before like brothers who together had committed murder.

  We loaded the best of the stuff – the merely good we had to leave behind – on the ox-carts, chose the draughthorses and made everything ready, for we had planned an expedition of two or three days and now it had turned into a week. But as we were about to leave, we noticed the ammunition was missing. There had been heaps of gunpowder, we had taken even more as booty, now the whole lot had disappeared, blown up without a sound. The guards had heard nothing, perhaps they’d been sleeping it off; it was just a curious fact that the chests up on top were the old ones, only there was sand in them, while instead of the barrels under them lay chests and herring casks, all kinds of old junk. We searched like bloodhounds and put off our departure The next day we came across the good powder-kegs in a pond, you could have slept on them. It was a neat bit of work to bring them that far without strangers getting alarmed, nobody had a scrap of proof but nobody in the camp doubted that Croze was as closely connected with this nasty business as a mother with her baby’s belly button. The umbilical cord had been bitten off, but from then on we kept an eye on the Clubfoot of St. Marie, who was hopping about among the herring barrels like a furrier whose furs had floated off after he had already sold them, and we didn’t forget the fellows who had been swallowed up by the forest either.

  Our column had a swollen stomach – the crowd of carts and draught oxen – and a lame fist in the shape of those empty powder-kegs; we waddled at an easy pace through the wood, which we had to demolish with axes, and we had to stuff up the crevices in the ground to get across. It was dull work. Then we got some entertainment, more than we bargained for.

  On the second day of our march, as we were forcing our way through a picturesque region with attractive cliffs to right and left, it began to rain stones the size of ostrich eggs, or even bigger. We were wedged between the carts and the oxen which wanted to scatter in all directions, because the stones seemed to be harder than we were and we could only hide under the wheels and wait till Heaven showed us some sympathy or ran out of stones. Under different circumstances we would have fired up at them and then, in addition to the stones, a couple of skinny angels would have fallen down, but not even Bargan could use herrings for bullets. We’d have been buried slowly or quickly, and the fellows up above who arranged for the rain would have looked down on a field where useful stuff once grew but where after the hail there lay nothing but stones with no names written on them – but then one of us had a bright idea and, risking his life, seized the Clubfoot of St. Marie by the collar and pulled him out of his cart where he was squatting in safety like the yolk in an egg. And the ones up above must have had good eyes and remembered his cart with gratitude, for the rain stopped straightaway and we were able to continue.

  That was a clear signal from Heaven, and if Bargan had only been blind, he would have seen it. But he loved fat Croze and told us there was no proof and we should be ashamed of ourselves. Then Croze, who was standing beside him looking at the sun, shook hands with him before our very eyes. So we arranged that one of us should watch Croze all the time, day and night, because Bargan didn’t, he closed his eyes, he lived with Croze like two friends in a gloomy wood who don’t have anybody else. So we had to keep our eyes skinned, because Bargan was the sort of person we would all rather have gone to the Devil with than hurt.

  But then came the business about the right direction.

  Somehow or other we must have lost our way. God was wrong about the stars. In earlier times Bargan used to cast one glance at the night sky and afterwards we could march straight to a peg in the forest. Now he stood outside the tent for hours on end and made calculations, so our guards said, and sometimes in the middle of it all he had an argument with Croze who grew more insolent all the time. And then he’d make mistakes and we did all we could not to let him notice it. Later on something went wrong with his orders now and again, but it began with the business of the stars.

  We thought he was worrying about Croze whom he had taken up with after all, he probably felt like a man who would rather mend an anchor chain five times than buy a new one, even though there are storms. In short, we forgave him, the bad business with Jammes as well, whom Croze accused of stealing his knife and whom Bargan ordered whipped, though we all knew that the knife belonged to Jammes and Bargan must have known that the knife didn’t belong to Croze. Croze stood there and didn’t even bother to fabricate any evidence. He just stared at his friend as if he had wanted to test him. Afterwards there was even a rumour that the Clubfoot of St. Marie had told Bargan he recognised the knife as his own, because it was the one with which he had cut the throat of the woman Bargan had given him. That was the limit. It was Croze all over.

  The mistake about the direction became very embarrassing. We arrived far beyond the place in the bay where the ship lay. Then Bargan decided, despite all that had happened, to send Croze on ahead to inform the ship’s crew of our approach. We all objected but it was no use. The Clubfoot of St. Marie had his way and rode on ahead of us. We watched him, fat and bilious, bounding off through the bush on his horse. We all had crabs in our throats.

  We had been marching for a bare two hours when the man who had ridden with Croze came back with a message that the latter and the whole ship’s crew would come and meet us in a dried-up creek which led to the bay, so we should march in that direction. We smelt a rat, yet Bargan actually directed us to the river-bed, and even though we had figured out that the Devil would take over, we still didn’t know what he had in mind; so because of Bargan we obeyed. With a cool breeze blowing, we marched over the close-set stones of the river-bed until well into the evening. The river-bed widened very considerably till in the end we lost sight of the banks and swore that the bed had dried up completely or that we had already left it. Bargan on his black stallion had the route firmly fixed in his head. In the mild light of the first stars which surged out of the darkening sky and which for certain reasons I remember more clearly than those of any other night, we pressed forward in good order and suddenly felt water in our shoes as the darkness gathered, observing without pleasure that it was rising steadily and none too slowly. The waves of shallow water also followed a certain course opposed to ours, and then it dawned on us that we had no more lost the river-bed under our feet than
we had our shoes, that it wasn’t a river-bed at all but a bay and that the tide was doing its level best to drown us all, men and horses and carts, before cock-crow. At first the darkness was kind enough to let us stare at one another but then a soft and disgustingly whitish mist veiled the few stars and the water round our ankles rose with the determination of a phenomenon that knew how to do its job. The acquisition of our booty had cost us and its former owners much sweat and blood but now we had to leave it for the cold water which, preoccupied with its own meaningless ascent, was no more troubled by us than by dry stones. The river looked like an eye which for some reason or other was growing darker and darker as happens in love at the onset of ecstasy. When the waters had risen high enough to disconcert us even if they had been still, they began to take on the agitated life of a whirlpool. The carts were getting stuck and we swung ourselves on to the bulls. But then the bulls too began to find it tricky, and it must have been a little after midnight when the first bull sank soundlessly into the waves and drifted away. And then we had to resort to swimming, we did it like brothers with the help of wooden planks. We managed to stick together, not all of us of course, some swam away for a long time, I’ve never seen them again. But Bargan stuck with us.

  Around two hours after midnight we felt firm ground under the clods that hung from our knees and climbed in Bargan’s wake on to a small stony island where, hungry and without fire or blankets, and wet to the skin, entertained by concern that the water might follow us, we waited till morning like a sinner on Judgment Day waiting for God’s voice to give him permission to go through the right-hand door into that famous state of bliss.

  During all these hours Bargan didn’t say a single word, though we were all thinking about the seventy men and women whom Bargan had had slaughtered at Croze’s request before we marched off.

  Towards morning the water subsided, and once the icy morning wind had dried out our clothes we were able to go on and look for our ship, without booty and bereft of the things we had taken into the wood and of many comrades as well. And we didn’t find the bay until around midday. We hadn’t had too good a time, we had stood in cold water and under a shower of stones and frozen like dogs waiting at night for a bitch in heat, but we still had our eyes in our heads and evidently this was the bay, we recognised it like our mother by the fat leaves on the trees. It was just that with our weakened eyes we could see nothing of our ship, though it had two sails hoisted and was made fast to those fat-leaved trees. There wasn’t even a hawser anywhere. But the Clubfoot of St. Marie hopped out from among the trees, pale and somewhat dishevelled and swung his backside as if everything was in good hands. Then he asked Bargan where he had been, said he had been waiting in pain for hours, there was nobody there, had they wanted to leave him alone among the wild animals? Bargan just looked at him and didn’t even ask about the ship but walked away from us, past Croze, in among the tree trunks as if he were looking for something which you couldn’t see so well from far away. But to us Croze said abruptly over his shoulder, the ship was gone when he arrived, it was full of rogues or the wind and the tide had torn away the cables. Then he limped off after his friend, probably because he had judged the look on our faces correctly.

  Weak-kneed we stood around between the trees and stared the eyes out of our heads; but if someone has lost his glasses, he can’t see anything, and he can’t find his glasses for the same reason. He’ll stay blind for all eternity if nobody helps him. So we too couldn’t catch up with our ship without growing wings and for that we would at least have to kick the bucket first. All the same we didn’t want to throw away the gun we had no more powder for, if only Bargan had been healthy again. So we sent some men to him and they found him sitting on a root, his arm round Croze’s shoulder. They told him plainly that he was to blame for the slaughter of the seventy, for the seven deaths in the quarry and for the fact that many of us had floated off to an unknown destination and that the ship had gone to Heaven; he, Bargan, was responsible for this and not the Clubfoot of St. Marie, whom they’d have drowned right away like a fat dog. However, they wanted to ask him, Bargan, to lead them again, because he was worth all the trouble he’d made. But they wanted to bump Croze off quickly and bury him no less than seven feet deep. Better to bite off a disgusting wart than throw away the whole man. Bargan listened to this very calmly. And when they had finished he asked them what they intended doing if he refused to abandon his friend just on account of their suspicions that didn’t hold water. Then they began to enumerate everything for him, piling one piece of evidence on top of another, last of all how Croze had sent away the man who he knew would be keeping an eye on him, with a message that was intended to send him and all the rest into the water, while he himself took care of the ship. And while it all became clearer and clearer to them as they spoke, the Clubfoot of St. Marie sat grinning on a tree-stump and running his splayed fingers through his black hair which he wore long and combed back and which the dirt had matted into greasy strands. But Bargan asked just what did they intend to do if he simply refused. Then it suddenly dawned on our men how matters stood with Bargan, that he knew it all even better than they did and still didn’t want to abandon that fat dog, God knows why. So they turned back without a word and came and told us the whole story.

  We now grew very sad for we all saw that something had happened to Bargan that had never been told him in his cradle or at the coffins of his enemies, something that can befall any of us: a disaster under full sail and in brilliant sunshine. Just this happened to Bargan as he sat alone in the bush with the Clubfoot of St. Marie and showed his obstinacy. We didn’t blather for long because the best man among us had got cancer, but made the sign of the cross in the air and a clean break between him and us. Some wanted to leave a bag of dates for the man who had nothing but the friend who had betrayed him, but we were all against stuffing a corpse with food if the living had empty stomachs. So on a warm day in summer, in the bush near Mary’s Bay in Chile, we went away without again seeing Bargan, a man who had been a dear friend.

  We tried for two whole days to find the ship, with a feeling inside us that crabs can’t catch greyhounds, then we found a tub swaying in the bay with two sails which looked about as strong as St. Patrick’s Christmas crib, our ship’s twin brother. That twin brother was drifting under the full midday sun. If we could have waited till the mild light of evening it would have been a pleasant trip, with eggs and bottles of wine, to honour St. Patrick’s Christmas crib with our visit; a fine raft was built in less time than it once took us to come by our dear cockleshell. However the dear cockleshell seemed to have her cargo on board already for she abused the wind with all her canvas even though, sensing the state of play, it scarcely danced attendance, and they sailed as badly as if they had been let loose on a modern two-master straight out of navigation school. Anyhow we had to hurry up, so we jumped on to the raft and rowed with powerful ease towards our fat fish. It frittered away its precious time with droll dancing practice till we got within shot, while we went flat out like with another man’s wife and as if we had stolen the raft. Then the first bullets whistled their welcome over our heads. One of us who had secured his powder-bag round his neck also fired a shot for honour’s sake, but then something happened that really gave us the shivers. After our first shot there appeared at the rail, upright, a good target which we knew well and which bore the name Bargan. We were far from pleased that Bargan should be the man who wanted to get our cockleshell out on the high seas as quickly as possible without us. And here he was, trusting so firmly in our kind hearts that he was acting as cover against our shots for the whole of his new crew! We didn’t yet realise that we were doing him wrong when we stopped shooting because it was him.

  When we clambered on to the ship – Bargan himself lowered a rope – it was as quiet as a church and there was nothing to be seen. Bargan himself was no longer exactly a tourist attraction, he was wearing a disgusting garment, probably a present from his friend Croze, and he would hav
e done better to put on a mask for he was hardly able to parade his new face. But he probably looked like that because of the disgusting garment. Good morning, we said, on board St. Patrick’s Christmas crib, no doubt you’ve been waiting for us? No, he said. Then we saw that he could only manage to get out one word and since that’s not much for the kind of man Bargan used to be, we were ashamed of our unjust anger and asked very gently: so you found the ship again? They must have sailed to meet us and then came back? We wanted to help him out in this way, because he was standing there like a child and we couldn’t bear it. But he got his mouth open and said: no, it wasn’t like that. So we saw that he couldn’t lie, he hadn’t learnt how. And we left him standing there and went down into the ship and he remained standing in the same place, motionless, as if he were a prisoner.

  Down below we came, of course, upon the dear fellows who had emigrated from the town earlier on and arranged for the rain and rolled the gunpowder with great difficulty into the wells and finally didn’t think it would be too much to recuperate with a little trip on St. Patrick’s Christmas crib. They squatted around the walls and busied themselves trembling. In the middle their God Almighty sat on a coil of rope, the Clubfoot of St. Marie, fat and shameless, looking at us as if we were his wedding guests; only his skull twitched a little and his front view was a little pale when he grinned. We ventured with the greatest respect to ask what he believed in just now, about his religion, his business prospects, the future of his unborn children and what he thought about life after death. Then one of us asked why had they steered so atrociously when after all they had Bargan on board? Then it emerged that Bargan’s job was to scrub the awning, that’s what the clubfoot wanted, and they had dragged him to the washing trough with their knives; for he was really going to have to earn his meals on Croze’s ship. We were just about to knock the sweet monster in the teeth when Bargan came down the steps and asked us to leave Croze alone and deal with him. He wasn’t all that long-winded about it. Then we looked at each other and just for the sake of saying something one of us tossed a little question into the black bilge, namely: do you happen to know where the good lads are who were supposed to defend the ship against enemies whilst we conquered the town and took all this booty? But not a sound came out of the brute’s maw which was black and showed stumps of decayed teeth; it was suffocating in there. Then we understood that the poor lads had swum off to tell us that St. Patrick’s Christmas crib was going to set sail and we should hurry up if we wanted to come along. And without a word two of our men took Bargan between them and went back up the steps with him, while in the half-darkness the rest of us dedicated our hands to the memory of our dear brothers. We only left Croze’s neck intact because he went up after his friend and we wanted to keep him for later.