Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1 Read online

  THE YOUNGER SISTER: No, then she went in the river. They haven’t found her yet.

  BAAL: Still afloat …

  THE YOUNGER SISTER: What’s the matter?

  THE OLDER SISTER: Nothing. A chill perhaps.

  BAAL: I’m too lazy today. You can go home.

  THE OLDER SISTER: You can’t do that, Mr Baal. You shouldn’t do that to her.

  Knocking at the door.

  THE YOUNGER SISTER: Somebody’s knocking. It’s mother.

  THE OLDER SISTER: For God’s sake, don’t open!

  THE YOUNGER SISTER: I’m frightened.

  THE OLDER SISTER: Here’s your blouse.

  Loud knocking.

  BAAL: If it’s your mother you’re in for it.

  THE OLDER SISTER dressing quickly: Wait a minute, don’t open yet. Bolt the door, please, for God’s sake!

  LANDLADY fat, enters: Ah ha! I thought as much. Two at a time now! Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? A pair of you in his fishpond? Night and day, that fellow’s bed never gets cold. Now I’m going to have my say. My attic isn’t a brothel.

  Baal turns to the wall.

  LANDLADY: You’re sleepy, are you? My word, don’t you ever get enough of it? I can see the daylight through you. You look like a ghost. You’re nothing but a bag of bones.

  BAAL moving his arms: Like swans they fly to my wood.

  LANDLADY clapping her hands: Nice swans! The way you put things! You could be a poet, you! If your knees don’t rot first.

  BAAL: I indulge in white bodies.

  LANDLADY: White bodies! You’re a poet, you really are! Don’t know what else you are though. And the poor young things! You’re sisters, are you? And snivelling because you’re poor orphans, I suppose. How about a good hiding? For your white bodies? Baal laughs. And he laughs. You ruin poor girls by the hundredweight, poor girls you drag here. You disgusting pig! I’m giving you notice. As for you, look sharp and back to your mother! I’m coming with you.

  The younger sister sobs loudly.

  THE OLDER SISTER: It isn’t her fault.

  LANDLADY taking both by the hand: Now for the waterworks! These girls! Oh well, you’re not the only ones. That one’s up to his neck in swans. There’s plenty besides you he’s made happy, then dumped on the rubbish heap. Off with you now, into the fresh air! There’s no need for tears. She puts her arms round them both. I know what he’s like. I know the make. Stop snivelling, else it’ll show in your eyes. Go home to your mother like good girls and don’t do it again. She pushes them out. And you, you’ve had your notice. You can set up your swan-sty somewhere else. She pushes the girls out of the room and goes out herself.

  BAAL gets up, stretches: A bitch with a heart! … I’m dead lazy today anyway. He throws paper down on the table and sits down. I’ll make the new Adam. He sketches big letters on the paper. I’ll have a go at the inner man. I’m hollowed out, but hungry as a vulture. Nothing but a bag of bones. The bitch! He leans back and stretches his arms and legs with emphasis. I’ll make summer. Red. Scarlet red. Greedy. He hums again.

  3 Evening.

  Baal sits at his table.

  BAAL picks up the bottle. The following speech to be delivered with pauses: I’ve covered the paper with red summer for four days now: wild, pale, greedy; and fought the bottle. There have been defeats, but the bodies on the wall are beginning to retreat into the dark, into the Egyptian night. I nail them to the wall, but I must stop drinking. He murmurs: This white liquor is my rod and staff. It reflects my paper and has remained untouched since the snow began to drip from the gutter. But now my hands are shaking. As if the bodies were still in them. He listens. My heart’s pounding like a horse’s hoof. With enthusiasm: Oh Johanna, one more night in your aquarium, and I would have rotted among the fish. But now I smell the warm May nights. I’m a lover with no one to love. I give in. He drinks and gets up. I must move. First I’ll get myself a woman. To move out alone is sad. He looks out of the window. No matter who. One with a face like a woman. Humming, he goes out. Tristan is being played down below on the hurdy gurdy.

  Johannes enters, wretched and pale. He riffles the papers on the table, picks up the bottle and goes shyly to the door.

  He waits there.

  Noise on the landing. Whistling.

  BAAL pulling Sophie Barger into the room. Whistles: Be nice to me, darling. That is my room. He sits down, sees Johannes. What are you doing here?

  JOHANNES: I only wanted to …

  BAAL: So you wanted to? What are you standing there for? A tombstone for my Johanna, who’s been washed away? The ghost of Johannes from another world, is that it? I’ll throw you out! Leave this room at once! Runs round him. It’s an impertinence! I’ll knock you down. It’s spring, anyway. Get out!

  Johannes looks at him and goes.

  Baal whistles.

  SOPHIE: What did the poor boy do to you? Let me go!

  BAAL opens the door wide: When you get to the first floor, turn to the right.

  SOPHIE: They followed us after you picked me up in front of the door. They’ll find me.

  BAAL: No one will find you here.

  SOPHIE: I don’t even know you. What do you want from me?

  BAAL: If you mean that, you may as well go.

  SOPHIE: You rushed up to me in the street. I thought it was an orangutan.

  BAAL: It’s spring, isn’t it? I need something white in this damned hole, a cloud. He opens the door and listens. Those idiots, they’ve lost their way.

  SOPHIE: I’ll get thrown out if I come home late.

  BAAL: Especially —

  SOPHIE: Especially what?

  BAAL: The way a woman looks when I’ve made love to her.

  SOPHIE: I don’t know why I’m still here.

  BAAL: I can give you the information.

  SOPHIE: You needn’t think the worst of me, please!

  BAAL: Why not? You’re a woman like any other. The faces vary, the knees are always weak.

  Sophie is half prepared to go; at the door she looks round.

  Baal looks at her, astride a chair.

  SOPHIE: Good-bye!

  BAAL indifferently: Do you feel faint?

  SOPHIE leans against the wall: I don’t know. I feel so weak.

  BAAL: I know. It’s April. It’s growing dark, and you smell me. That’s how it is with animals. Gets up. Now you belong to the wind, white cloud. He goes to her quickly, slams the door, and takes Sophie Barger into his arms.

  SOPHIE breathlessly: Let me go!

  BAAL: My name’s Baal.

  SOPHIE: Let me go!

  BAAL: You must console me. The winter left me weak. And you look like a woman.

  SOPHIE looks up at him: Your name’s Baal?

  BAAL: That makes you want to stay?

  SOPHIE looking up at him: You’re so ugly, so ugly, it’s frightening. – But then —

  BAAL: Mm?

  SOPHIE: Then it doesn’t matter.

  BAAL kisses her: Are your knees steady, mm?

  SOPHIE: You don’t even know my name. I’m Sophie Barger.

  BAAL: Forget your name. Kisses her.

  SOPHIE: Don’t – don’t – it’s the first time anybody’s ever …

  BAAL: Untouched? Come! He leads her to the bed. They sit down. You see! Bodies have poured through this room like water. But now I want a face. We’ll go out tonight. We’ll lie down in the fields. You’re a woman. I’ve become unclean. You must love me, for a while.

  SOPHIE: Is that what you’re like? … I love you.

  BAAL rests his head on her breasts: Now the sky’s above us, and we’re alone.

  SOPHIE: But you must lie still.

  BAAL: Like a child.

  SOPHIE sitting up: My mother’s at home. I have to go home.

  BAAL: Is she old?

  SOPHIE: She’s seventy.

  BAAL: Then she’s used to wickedness.

  SOPHIE: What if the earth swallowed me up? What if I’m carried off at night and never return?

 
; BAAL: Never? Silence. Have you any brothers or sisters?

  SOPHIE: Yes, they need me.

  BAAL: The air here is like milk. Goes to the window. The willows down by the river are soaking wet, and unkempt from the rain. Takes hold of her. Your thighs must be pale.

  Whitewashed Houses with Brown Tree Trunks

  Sombre ringing of bells. Baal. The tramp, a pale drunk individual.

  BAAL striding in a half circle round the tramp, who sits on a stone, his pale face turned to the sky: Who nailed the tree corpses to the wall?

  TRAMP: The pale ivory wind around the corpses of trees. Corpus Christi.

  BAAL: Not to mention ringing the bells when plants die!

  TRAMP: Bells give me a moral uplift.

  BAAL: Don’t the trees depress you?

  TRAMP: Pff! Tree carcases! Drinks from a bottle.

  BAAL: Women’s bodies aren’t any better!

  TRAMP: What have women’s bodies to do with a religious procession?

  BAAL: They’re both obscene. There’s no love in you.

  TRAMP: There’s love in me for the white body of Jesus. Passes him the bottle.

  BAAL calmer: I wrote songs down on paper. They get hung up in lavatories these days.

  TRAMP transfigured: To serve the Lord Jesus! I see the white body of Jesus. Jesus loves sinners.

  BAAL drinking: Like me.

  TRAMP: Do you know the story about him and the dead dog? They all said, it’s a stinking mess. Fetch the police! It’s unbearable! But, he said, it has nice white teeth.

  BAAL: Perhaps I’ll turn Catholic.

  TRAMP: He didn’t. Takes the bottle from him.

  BAAL runs about enraged: But the women’s bodies he nails to the wall. I wouldn’t do that.

  TRAMP: Nailed to the wall! They never floated down the river. They were slaughtered for him, for the white body of Jesus.

  BAAL takes the bottle from him, turns away: There’s too much religion or too much gin in your blood. Walks away with the bottle.

  TRAMP beside himself, shouting after him: So you won’t defend your ideals, sir! You won’t join the procession? You love plants and won’t do anything for them?

  BAAL: I’m going down to the river to wash myself. I can’t be bothered with corpses. Goes.

  TRAMP: But I’m full of drink, I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the damned dead plants. If I had more gin in me, perhaps I could bear it.

  Spring Night Beneath Trees

  Baal. Sophie.

  BAAL lazily: It’s stopped raining. The grass must still be wet … it never came through the leaves of our tree. The young leaves are dripping wet, but here among the roots it’s dry! Angrily. Why can’t a man make love to a plant?

  SOPHIE: Listen!

  BAAL: The wild roaring of the wind through the damp, black foliage. Can you hear the rain drip from the leaves?

  SOPHIE: I can feel a drop on my neck … Oh, let me go!

  BAAL: Love rips the clothes from a man like a whirlpool and buries him naked among the corpses of leaves, after he’s seen the sky.

  SOPHIE: I should like to hide in you, Baal, because I’m naked.

  BAAL: I’m drunk and you’re staggering. The sky is black and we’re on a swing with love in our bodies and the sky is black. I love you.

  SOPHIE: Oh, Baal, my mother’ll be weeping over my dead body, she’ll think I drowned myself. How many weeks is it now? It wasn’t even May then. It must be nearly three weeks.

  BAAL: It must be nearly three weeks, said the beloved among the roots of the tree, after thirty years had passed and she was half rotted by then.

  SOPHIE: It’s good to lie here like a captive, with the sky above, and never be alone again.

  BAAL: I’m going to take your petticoat off again.

  A Club Called ‘The Night Cloud’

  A small, swinish café; whitewashed dressing-room; at the back on the left a dark brown curtain; to the side on the right a whitewashed door made of boards leading to the lavatory. At the back on the right a door. When it is open blue night sky is seen. A woman entertainer sings at the back of the café.

  Baal walks around, chest and shoulders bare, drinking and humming. Lupu, a fat, pale boy with black glossy hair gummed down in two strips on to his sweaty, pale face and a prominent back to his head, stands in the doorway right.

  LUPU: The lamp has been knocked down again.

  BAAL: Only pigs come here. Where’s my gin ration?

  LUPU: You’ve drunk it all.

  BAAL: You watch your step!

  LUPU: Mjurk said something about a sponge.

  BAAL: Does that mean I don’t get a drink?

  LUPU: No more gin for you until you’ve done your number, Mjurk said. I’m sorry for you.

  MJURK by the curtain: Make yourself scarce, Lupu!

  BAAL: No drink, no song.

  MJURK: You shouldn’t drink so much, or one of these days you won’t be able to sing at all.

  BAAL: Why else do I sing?

  MJURK: Next to Savettka, you’re the ‘Night Cloud’s’ most brilliant attraction. You’re my personal discovery. Was there ever such a delicate talent in such a fat lump? The fat lump makes the success, not the songs. Your drinking’ll ruin me.

  BAAL: I’m sick of haggling every night for gin that’s my contractual right. I’m clearing out.

  MJURK: I’ve got police backing. You should try sleeping one of these nights, you crawl around as if you’d been hamstrung. Tell your sweetheart to go to hell! Applause in the café. You’re on now, anyway.

  BAAL: I’m fed to the teeth.

  Savettka with the pianist, a pale apathetic individual, coming from behind the curtain:

  SAVETTKA: That’s my lot. I’m off now.

  MJURK forcing a tail-coat on Baal: You don’t go half naked on to the stage in my club.

  BAAL: Moron! He throws down the tail-coat and goes off behind the curtain, dragging the guitar.

  SAVETTKA sits down and drinks: He only works for that woman he’s living with. He’s a genius. Lupu imitates him shamelessly. He has taken his tone as well as his girl.

  PIANIST leaning on the lavatory door: His songs are divine but he’s been haggling with Lupu for his drink for the last ten days.

  SAVETTKA drinking: Life’s hell!

  BAAL from behind the curtain: Small am I, pure am I, a jolly little boy am I. Applause. Baal continues, accompanying himself on the guitar:

  Through the room the wild wind comes.

  What’s the child been eating? Plums.

  Soft and white its body lay

  Helping pass the time away.

  Applause and whistles. Baal goes on singing, and the noise gets rowdier as the song gets more and more shameless. Finally, uproar in the café.

  PIANIST phlegmatically: My God, he’s packing up. Call a doctor! Now Mjurk’s talking, they’ll tear him to pieces. No one censored that!

  Baal comes from behind the curtain, dragging his guitar.

  MJURK following him: You bastard! I’ll have the hide off you! You are going to sing! As stated in the contract! Or I’ll get the police. He goes back behind the curtain.

  PIANIST: You’ll ruin us, Baal.

  Baal raises a hand to his throat and goes to the lavatory door.

  PIANIST not letting him pass: Where are you off to?

  Baal pushes him aside and goes through the door, dragging his guitar after him.

  SAVETTKA: Taking your guitar to the lavatory? Lovely!

  GUESTS peering in: Where’s that bastard? Go on with the song – don’t stop now! The filthy bastard! They return to the room.

  MJURK: I spoke like a Salvation Army general. We can rely on the police. But they’re shouting for him again. Where is he? He’ll have to go on.

  PIANIST: The main attraction’s sitting on the lavatory. Cry from behind the scenes: Baal!

  MJURK drumming on the door: You. Answer me! Damn it, I forbid you to lock yourself in! While I’m paying you! I’ve got it in writing. You swindler! Thumps wildly.
r />   LUPU in the door on the right. Blue night sky outside: The lavatory window’s open. The bird has flown. No drink, no song!

  MJURK: Empty! Gone? Out through the lavatory? The cutthroat! Police! I want the police! He rushes out. Calls in rhythm from behind the curtain: Baal! Baal! Baal!

  Green Fields. Blue Plum Trees

  Baal. Ekart.

  BAAL slowly coming through the fields: Since the sky turned green and pregnant, summertime, wind, no shirt in my trousers. Back to Ekart. They rub my backside, my skull’s blown up with the wind, and the smell of the fields hangs in the hair of my armpits. The air trembles as if it were drunk.

  EKART behind him: Why are you running away from the plum trees like an elephant?

  BAAL: Put your hand on my head. It swells with every pulse-beat and goes down like a balloon. Can’t you feel it?

  EKART: No.

  BAAL: You don’t understand my soul.

  EKART: Let’s go and lie in the river.

  BAAL: My soul, brother, is the groaning of the cornfields as they bend in the wind, and the gleam in the eyes of two insects who want to devour each other.

  EKART: A mad summer boy with immortal intestines, that’s what you are! A dumpling, who’ll leave a grease spot on the sky.

  BAAL: Only words. But it doesn’t matter.

  EKART: My body’s light as a little plum in the wind.

  BAAL: That’s because of the pale summer sky, brother. Shall we soak up the warm water of a blue pond? Otherwise the white roads that lead across the land will draw us like angels’ ropes up to heaven.

  Village Inn

  Evening. Farmers. Baal. Ekart on his own in a corner.

  BAAL: I’m glad I’ve got you all here together. My brother will be here tomorrow evening. The bulls have to be here by then.

  FARMER gaping: How can we see if a bull’s the right sort for your brother?

  BAAL: Only my brother can see. They all have to be strong, fine beasts. Or they’re no use. Another gin!

  SECOND FARMER: Will you buy the bull on the spot?

  BAAL: The one with the strongest legs.

  THIRD FARMER: For your price they’ll bring them from eleven villages.

  FIRST FARMER: Come and have a look at my bull.