Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  FIRST MAN on the bed, under the net: For Christ’s sake get that thing off us. For … Christ’s sake … put some kind of sheet over us, will you?

  THE OTHERS roaring with laughter: It’s all a matter of habit, as the woman said to the eel when she skinned him. – What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, as the wife said on her wedding night. – That was a bright idea, getting in there, mate. – You’re in clover. Must have had a struggle to make it, eh?

  FISHERMAN: I bet he’d stand the company a bucket of rum to be allowed out.

  FIRST MAN: A bucket of rum, you old devil, but let’s have a sheet first.

  FISHERMAN to one of the spectators: Go and get the rum, mate, before he thinks better of it. Now then, boys, let’s take these fish and drop them in the bay to cool off. Take that pole and carry them carefully, like in a procession, with some nice singing. This isn’t something you’ll see every day.

  THE OTHERS loop the net over a pole. Two of them carry the couple out, amid great laughter: Take it easy, kids! Don’t burst yourselves laughing. – Better knock off a moment. – If you come back you’ll have done better than a fart; they only go one way.

  FISHERMAN: Fine fish! Glistening fish! Fresh fat frisking fish! They can swim away; I don’t want them. Let them go, I give up. But it was a splendid catch. And all of you must stay here, because you’re invited to the wake. My wife’s died; she was a good soul. So have some of the rum her lover’s bought us and let’s celebrate my being in the shit. Sit down with me; you can help me drown my sorrows. The fishermen sit down. A jar of rum is brought in. Some of them sing. A game of cards starts.

  FISHERMAN lights candles: Those are the lights of the dead, those candles in the mugs. Careful not to blow them out when you laugh. This table’s in a house of mourning. Kindly turn your heads away when you throw up. I’m giving you glasses from the pub, because my wife’s dead and I don’t know where our own are kept.

  Wind blows. Fishermen sing.

  A FISHERMAN: Wind’s getting up. It’s chilly outside. Drink up and keep warm.

  A SECOND: God, how I laughed. I liked it when they wriggled, but it was still better when they lay doggo and pretended they weren’t there and hid their faces in the sheets. Ha ha ha!

  FISHERMAN: This is a house of mourning, and I must ask you not to laugh. Can’t you get drunk without making all that noise? Don’t you see I want to pass out?

  A THIRD: Ah, she was a good wife, she was: she kept you going. Washed your face and brushed your hair and let you kick her about.

  THE FIRST: What a wind! Just you listen to that wind.

  A FOURTH: Better drink up. That wind’s no business of yours.

  THIRD: She didn’t half look good in that nightdress, let me tell you.

  SECOND: That wasn’t a nightdress. That was a shroud.

  FIRST: When she clasped the top of it and pressed up to Mac so as to stop us seeing, that was your fault, Tom.

  FOURTH: It started with a bang, and the rum’s good, but there’s no real atmosphere.

  The two fishermen (fifth and sixth) come back.

  FIFTH: There was a bloody great splash.

  SIXTH: They asked for it.

  FIFTH: Your own bed; I ask you.

  SIXTH: Didn’t half yell, they did.

  FIFTH: Go on, can’t you lot say anything? It’s like a funeral here.

  SIXTH: Rum, no wife: what else do you want?

  FISHERMAN: Sit down and shut up. My wife’s dead. The wind’s up now, and when it drops she won’t be there. She was a good wife, and God has come and taken away his own. The wind’s got up, listen, drink, and let’s say my wife drowned in the wind.

  SECOND: Don’t take it too hard. She lost her head.

  FOURTH: She oughtn’t to have done it, not in your bed.

  FISHERMAN: God has punished me. I’ve drunk too much. She was the best wife I’ve got. The wind came, and the boat went down with her. Drink up and say a rosary for her and her soul. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Lord grant her eternal rest. He prays on his own.

  FIFTH: That’s a lot of nonsense. Blasphemous too.

  SIXTH: He’s plastered.

  THIRD: You have to draw the line somewhere, as the man said when he beat his wife to death.

  SECOND: Why weren’t you in that bed yourself? There’s only room for one man.

  FOURTH: Or you could have given her a good hiding. As it is, you ought to be ashamed.

  THIRD: It’s immoral.

  FISHERMAN: Immoral, is it? You’re immoral. God has smitten me and you think it funny. Which of us lost his wife? I’m a miserable sinner, a drunkard, a poor good-for-nothing, but now the Lord has punished me and no one’s got a right to laugh.

  THE OTHERS getting up: He’s gone crazy. – Come on. Let’s take the rum. – Poor woman, serve the old soak right. -She can get another one like him any time.

  FISHERMAN: You blaspheme. Show me the man who has suffered as much as me. Where’s your sense of shame, ye of little faith? I am exceeding sorrowful. Drinks.

  THE OTHERS: Get the jar off him and let’s go to the pub. -He’s going gaga.

  FISHERMAN: gets up and hugs the jar: This is a wake and you’re the mourners. And now you’re drunk and saying wicked things. You should be ashamed for the sake of your miserable souls.

  THE OTHERS trying to get the jar away from him: Leave go, you old villain. Give us that jar! – We’ll do you!

  FISHERMAN: Lust was written on your countenances as you watched them, and you slavered with envy as you carted them off. You are the villains. You degenerates. Degenerates!

  THE OTHERS thronging to the door: Good God, he’s gone mad. – He’s delirious, he dreamt it all up. – Gives me the creeps, no more rum for me. – Leave him lying among his candles. Perhaps God’ll work a miracle and drown him in the jar. Exeunt. The fisherman blows out all but three candles. Kicks away the chairs. Stares in front of him.

  SECOND MAN at the window, left: Hey!

  FISHERMAN turning round: Who is it? Oh, you. Come in. My wife’s died.

  SECOND MAN climbs in. His face is bleeding: Are you drunk?

  FISHERMAN: Hear that wind? She’s been drowned.

  SECOND MAN: When?

  FISHERMAN: Just now.

  SECOND MAN: How do you know?

  FISHERMAN: God woke me up. There was my wife lying dead in bed. She looked like a fish, see? Have a drink with me. I’m so terribly lonely.

  SECOND MAN: I don’t get you. There’s a creepy feeling round here. That your rum?

  FISHERMAN: Yes. Have some. A present from her bloke.

  SECOND MAN: Had she got a bloke, then?

  FISHERMAN: Dozens. But this was the only one I got rum from.

  SECOND MAN: How long have you been sitting here by yourself?

  FISHERMAN: Not long. There were some people here. They laughed, then they went off. They saw my disgrace and they’re going to tell everyone about it.

  SECOND MAN: I don’t like it. I’m off.

  FISHERMAN: Why’s your face got blood on it? You been attacked too?

  SECOND MAN: Had a bit of a fall. I’d been drinking.

  FISHERMAN: You’re the only friend I’ve got, because you’ve had bad luck too. I’ve been smitten by God in person. I’d have handed my heart over to him and said, It’s yours.’ But he took my wife, who was dearer to me still. And now I’m drinking and going to the bad. It’s all his fault.

  SECOND MAN: When did that happen?

  FISHERMAN: Just now. When my turn comes and the Lord says, ‘Where am I to put a good-for-nothing like you?’, then I’ll say, ‘In hell, so I can meet up with my wife.’

  BEGGAR in the doorway, with a beggarwoman behind him: Come along! – This where the rum is? They said there was some rum going here.

  FISHERMAN: Come in and sit down. We’re having a wake. My wife’s died. Thank you for the honour of your company.

  BEGGAR and the beggarwoman sit down: A good wife, was she, eh?

  FISHER
MAN: Mustn’t speak ill of the dead. Drink up.

  BEGGARWOMAN: That wind outside. It’s warm in here.

  BEGGAR: Good rum that. It’s very sad when one loses a wife.

  FISHERMAN: One’s left all on one’s own. But they’re a lot of animals. Bangs on the table: Animals! That idea about the net came to me as I was wetting my head. I looked up at the stars and thought ‘that’ll be useful’.

  BEGGAR: It’s like as if the spirit was speaking through you. Very moving. Drinks a lot.

  The two of them retire to the sofa, rear left, during what follows. Occasional murmurs and giggles.

  FIRST MAN in the doorway, right, dripping water: Hey, Tom, is it all right if I have a tot of my rum?

  FISHERMAN ecstatically: I stood in the doorway just like that after wetting my head.

  FIRST MAN: Right. You shouldn’t have got pissed, though.

  FISHERMAN: Join us if you like, but mind you keep quiet. I’m not angry any longer. Were you dried off by the same wind drowned my wife? Sit down and have a drink. All is vanity. He speaks drunkenly and laboriously.

  The first man approaches the table.

  SECOND MAN stands up. They confront each other: I wouldn’t advise you to sit down here.

  FIRST MAN unsure: I must talk to him.

  SECOND MAN steps forward, but starts to sway: Want me to knock you down? You swine.

  FIRST MAN drinking: I’m sober as a judge now.

  SECOND MAN as he sits down: And I’m going to knock you down. Tomorrow.

  FIRST MAN: There’s something I must say to him. Drinks.

  SECOND MAN: He will keep on about God. What happened?

  FIRST MAN: Something. Drinks.

  SECOND MAN: Not exactly cosy, is it?

  FIRST MAN: What’s going on over there?

  SECOND MAN: Two of the mourners.

  FISHERMAN thickly: God punished me. God fished me out of the booze. Hear that wind? That’s where I was, in that wind.

  FIRST MAN: Not shy, are they?

  SECOND MAN: It’s the fault of your rum.

  FIRST MAN: His wife’s going around outside, she’s scared to come home. In that wind. He must be terribly angry.

  SECOND MAN: He’s terribly pissed.

  FIRST MAN to the fisherman: We’re all sinners together, mate.

  FISHERMAN embracing him: Now she’s drowned and I’m alone, and there’s no one around here.

  FIRST MAN drinks: You’ll have to take her back. Goes on drinking. The fisherman lays his head on the table. I’ve got five kids. You’ll have to take her back. To the second man, who has slid under the table: You tell him. He’s absolutely dead drunk. Oh, I feel so miserable. Weeps. You’ll have to take her back. They all saw us. I feel dreadful.

  FISHERMAN: We are alone. Completely alone. Listen! The wind.

  Silence. Wind.

  WIFE stands in the doorway, likewise dripping, with the net over one shoulder: Still angry, is he?

  FIRST MAN: He’s asleep. Staggers towards her and tries to embrace her. She pushes him away.

  FIRST MAN: I put in a word for you.

  WIFE: You get out of here. Drops the net to the ground.

  FIRST MAN: You’ve had a pretty rough time …

  WIFE: Go on home. Shoves him as far as the door, turns round, tugs the second man out and drags him after. Pig. Bastards! Come on out, both of you.

  FISHERMAN gets up laboriously: All a lot of beasts. Pray, will you? A mass for her soul. Beasts. Wind. Soul. Sits down, falls asleep.

  Both men, drunk, leave together as before.

  WIFE shuts the window. Shakes out the jar, mops the floor with the remains of the rum. Comes on the beggar and beggarwoman:

  What’s this trash?

  BEGGAR: Two poor people.

  WIFE: Get out. Have you got no sense of shame?

  BEGGARWOMAN: It’s cold outside. And what a wind!

  WIFE drives them out with her broom: Out with you, get on. Half turning to the fisherman as she mops: What did you want to get so drunk for? Shall I make some coffee? No answer. They must have dropped the net into the well, those bastards. Looks at him. Asleep. She dowses the light, puts him on her back, and carries him to bed.

  Notes and Variants

  BAAL

  PROLOGUE TO THE 1918 VERSION

  The subject of this play is the very ordinary story of a man who sings a hymn to summer in a grog-shop without selecting his audience – together with the consequences of summer, grog and song. The man is not a particularly modern poet. Baal has not been handicapped by Nature. He belongs to the period of the play’s performance. Remember Socrates and Verlaine, with their lamentable skulls. For actors (who love extremes, except when they can get away with mediocrities), Baal is neither a specially comic character nor a specially tragic one. Like all wild animals he is serious. As for the play, the author has managed to find a message in it: it sets out to prove that you can have your cake if you are prepared to pay for it. And even if you aren’t. So long as you pay … The play is the story neither of a single incident nor of many, but of a life. Originally it was called Baal eats! Baal dances!! Baal is transfigured!!!

  [GW Schriften zum Theater, p. 954.]

  PROLOGUE TO THE 1926 VERSION

  This dramatic biography shows the life story of the man Baal as it took place in the first part of this century. You see before you Baal the abnormality trying to come to terms with the twentieth-century world. Baal the relative man, Baal the passive genius, the whole phenomenon of Baal from his first appearance among civilized beings up to his horrific end, with his unprecedented consumption of ladies of high degree, in his dealings with his fellow-humans. This creature’s life was one of sensational immorality. In the stage version it has been considerably toned down. The performance begins with Baal’s first appearance as a poet among civilized beings in the year 1904. As a preliminary you will see Baal in the round from several aspects and hear his version of how he used to perform his famous Hymn of Baal the Great, accompanied on his own unique invention, the tin-stringed banjo.

  [Ibid., pp. 954-5.]

  THE MODEL FOR BAAL

  The dramatic biography called Baal treats of the life of a man who really existed. This was a certain Josef K., whom I heard about from people who retained clear memories of the man’s person and the commotion created by his activities. K. was the illegitimate son of a washerwoman. He soon made a bad name for himself. Though without formal education of any sort he is said to have been able to impress the most highly educated people by his extraordinarily well-informed talk. A friend told me that the idiosyncrasy of his movements (when taking a cigarette, when seating himself on a chair, and so on) made such a mark on a number of (mainly) young people that they wanted to imitate him. His carefree way of life, however, led him to sink ever deeper, particularly since he never started anything himself but shamelessly took advantage of every opportunity offered him. A number of shady episodes were laid at his door, including a girl’s suicide. He was a trained mechanic, though so far as we know he never worked. When A. became too hot for him he went off on protracted wanderings with a broken-down medical student, returning to A. in about 1911. There his friend was killed in an affray with knives in a grog-shop on the Lauterlech, almost certainly by K. himself. At all events he then disappeared with remarkable suddenness from A., and is supposed to have died miserably in the Black Forest.

  [‘Das Urbild Baals’, from Die Szene, Berlin, January 1926, reprinted in GW Schriften zum Theater, p. 955. Elisabeth Hauptmann’s ‘Notizen über Brechts Arbeit 1926’ on p. 241 of the Sinn und Form special Brecht issue of 1957 cites her diary for 18 January: ‘Wrote the “Model” for Baal for Die Szene in the form of a newspaper report. The model for Baal, the “anti-social” man, is an Augsburg mechanic.’ This has not prevented commentators from taking at their face value both the report and Brecht’s claim to have written it.]

  BAD BAAL THE ANTI-SOCIAL MAN

  but that is what makes bad baal the antisocial man great
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  that the report of his enemy

  describing him with my voice is

  permeated by his

  accusing me that i

  a delighted onlooker

  while he was exploiting the exploiters

  and making use of the users

  started treating him more harshly

  as soon as he derided my own rules

  but that is his offence

  and why he is called antisocial

  because in making trivial demands of him

  the perfect state would appear like an exploiter.

  [‘Baal’, from Dieter Schmidt (ed.): Baal. Der böse Baal der asoziale, Suhrkamp, 1968, p. 90. This poem, which is not included in GW, is part of the material relating to the Baal Lehrstücke project discussed on pp. 372-3 below.]

  ON LOOKING THROUGH MY FIRST PLAYS (ii)

  Baal is a play which could present all kinds of difficulties to those who have not learnt to think dialectically. No doubt they will see it as a glorification of unrelieved egotism and nothing more. Yet here is an individual standing out against the demands and discouragements of a world whose form of production is designed for exploitation rather than usefulness. We cannot tell how Baal would react to having his talents employed; what he is resisting is their misuse. Baal’s art of life is subject to the same fate as any other art under capitalism: it is attacked. He is anti-social, but in an antisocial society.

  Twenty years after completing Baal I was preoccupied with an idea (for an opera) related to the same basic theme. There is a carved wooden Chinese figure, two or three inches high and sold in thousands, representing the fat little god of happiness, contentedly stretching himself. This god was to arrive from the East after a great war and enter the devastated cities, trying to persuade people to fight for their personal happiness and well-being. He acquires followers of various sorts, and becomes subject to persecution by the authorities when some of them start proclaiming that the peasants ought to be given land, the workers to take over the factories, and the workers’ and peasants’ children to seize the schools. He is arrested and condemned to death. And now the executioners practise their arts on the little god of happiness. But when they hand him poison he just smacks his lips; when they cut his head off he at once grows a new one; when they hang him from the gallows he starts an irresistibly lively dance, etc., etc. Humanity’s urge for happiness can never be entirely killed.