BEGBICK appears, carrying a gun barrel on her back: Don’t run so fast, Jippie. The trouble is, you’ve got a heart like a lion. The three soldiers appear, groaning as they drag their machine-gun.
JIP: Hullo, Uriah, hullo, Jesse, hullo, Polly! Here I am again. The three soldiers pretend not to see him.
JESSE: We must get this machine-gun set up at once.
URIAH: The gunfire’s so noisy already you can’t hear yourself speak.
POLLY: We must keep a particularly sharp eye on the fortress of Sir El-Djowr.
GALY GAY: And I want to have first shot. Something is holding us up, it must be taken out. All these gentlemen here can’t be kept waiting. It won’t hurt the mountain. Jesse, Uriah, Polly! The battle is starting, and I already feel the urge to sink my teeth in the enemy’s throat. And he and Widow Begbick together assemble the gun.
JIP: Hullo, Jesse, hullo, Uriah, hullo, Polly! How are you all? Long time no see. I was a bit held up, you know. I hope you haven’t had any trouble on my account. I couldn’t make it sooner. I’m really glad to be back. But why don’t you say something?
POLLY: How can we be of service to you, sir? Polly puts a dish of rice on the gun for Galy Gay. Won’t you eat your rice ration? The battle will be starting soon.
GALY GAY: Gimme! He eats. Yes: first I eat my rice ration, then I get my correct apportionment of whisky, and while I am eating and drinking I can study this mountain fortress and try to find its soft spot. After that it will be a piece of cake.
JIP: Your voice has completely changed, Polly, but you still like to have your joke. Me, I was employed in a flourishing business, but I had to leave. For your sakes, of course. You aren’t angry, are you?
URIAH: This is where I fear we must inform you that you seem to have come to the wrong address.
POLLY: We don’t even know you.
JESSE: It is of course possible that we have met somewhere. But the army has vast reserves of manpower, sir.
GALY GAY: I should like another rice ration. You have not handed your ration over yet, Uriah.
JIP: You people really have become very different, you know.
URIAH: That is quite possible, that’s army life for you.
JIP: But I am Jip, your comrade.
The three laugh. When Galy Gay also begins to laugh the others stop.
GALY GAY: One more ration. I’m ravenous now we’re going into battle, and I like this fortress better and better.
Polly gives him a third dish.
JIP: Who is that gobbling up your rations?
URIAH: Mind your own business.
JESSE: You know, you couldn’t possibly be old Jip. Old Jip would never have betrayed and abandoned us. Old Jip would never have let himself be held up. So you cannot be old Jip.
JIP: I certainly am.
URIAH: Prove it! Prove it!
JIP: Is there really not one of you who will admit he knows me? Then listen to me and mark my words. You are extremely hard-hearted men and your end can already be foreseen. Give me back my paybook.
GALY GAY goes up to Jip with his last dish of rice: You must be making a mistake. Turns back to the others. He’s not right in the head. To Jip: Have you been going without food a lot? Would you like a glass of water? To the others: We shouldn’t upset him. To Jip: Don’t you know who you belong to? Never mind. Just sit down quietly over here till we have decided the battle. And please don’t get any closer to the roar of the guns, as it demands great moral strength. To the three: He has no idea what’s what. To Jip: Of course you need a pay-book. Nobody’s going to let you run around without a pay-book, are they? Ah yes, Polly, look in the ammunition box where we keep the little megaphone and fish out Galy Gay’s old papers, you remember, that fellow you used to tease me about. Polly runs over to the box. Anybody who has lived in the lowlands where the tiger asks the jaguar about his teeth knows how important it is to have something on you in black and white, because, you see, these days they are always trying to take your name away, and I know what a name is worth. O my children, when you called me Galy Gay that time, why didn’t you just call me Nobody? Such larks are dangerous. They could have turned out very badly. But I always say let bygones be bygones. He hands Jip the papers. Here is that paybook, take it. Is there anything else you want?
JIP: You’re the best of this lot. At least you’ve got a heart. But the rest of you will have my curse.
GALY GAY: To save you people having to listen to too much of that I’m going to make a bit of a noise with this gun for you … Show us how it works, Widow Begbick. The two of them aim the gun at the fortress and start loading.
JIP: The icy wind of Tibet shall shrivel your bones to the marrow, you devils, never again shall you hear the harbour bell in Kilkoa, but shall march to the end of the world and back, over and over again. The Devil himself, your master, will have no use for you once you are old, and you will have to go on marching night and day through the Gobi desert and the waving green rye fields of Wales, and that shall be your recompense for betraying a comrade in need. Exit.
The three are silent.
GALY GAY: All set. And now I shall do it with five shots.
The first shot is fired.
BEGBICK smoking a cigar: You are one of those great soldiers who made the army so dreaded in bygone days. Five such men were a threat to any woman’s life.
The second shot is fired.
I have proof that during the battle of the River Chadze it was by no means the worst elements in the company that dreamed of my kisses. One night with Leokadja Begbick was something for which men would sacrifice their whisky and save their shillings from two weeks’ pay. They had names like Genghis Khan, famous from Calcutta to Couch Behar.
The third shot is fired.
One embrace from their beloved Irishwoman set their blood to rights. You can read in The Times how staunchly they fought in the battles of Bourabay, Kamatkura and Daguth. The fourth shot is fired.
GALY GAY: Something that’s no longer a mountain is tumbling down.
Smoke begins to pour from the fortress of Sir El-Djowr.
POLLY: Look! Enter Fairchild.
GALY GAY: This is tremendous. Leave me alone now I’ve tasted blood.
FAIRCHILD: What do you think you are doing? Take a look over there. Right, I am now going to bury you up to the neck in that anthill to stop you shooting the whole Hindu Kush to pieces. My hand is steady as a rock. He aims his service pistol at Galy Gay. It’s not shaking at all. There, it is plain as a pikestaff. You are now looking at the world for the last time.
GALY GAY loading enthusiastically: One more shot! Just one more. Just number five.
The fifth shot is fired. A cry of joy is heard from the valley below: ‘The fortress of Sir El-Djowr that was blocking the pass into Tibet has fallen. The army is advancing into Tibet.’
FAIRCHILD: Right. Once more I hear the familiar step of the Army on the march, and now I propose to take a few steps of my own. Steps up to Galy Gay. Who are you?
VOICE OF A SOLDIER from below: Who is the man who overthrew the fortress of Sir El-Djowr?
GALY GAY: One moment. Polly, pass me that little megaphone out of the ammunition box, so I can tell them who it is. Polly fetches the megaphone and hands it to Galy Gay.
GALY GAY through the megaphone: It was me, one of you, Jeraiah Jip!
JESSE: Three cheers for Jeraiah Jip, the human fighting-machine!
POLLY: Look!
The fortress has begun to burn. A thousand horrified voices cry out in the distance.
DISTANT VOICE: Flames are now engulfing the mountain fortress of Sir El-Djowr, in which seven thousand refugees from Sikkim province had found shelter, peasants, artisans and shopkeepers, most of them friendly, hard-working people.
GALY GAY: Oh. But what is that to me? The one cry and the other cry.
And already I feel within me
The desire to sink my teeth
In the enemy’s throat
Ancient urge to kill
&
nbsp; Every family’s breadwinner
To carry out the conquerors’
Mission.
Hand me your paybooks.
They do so.
POLLY: Polly Baker.
JESSE: Jesse Mahoney.
URIAH: Uriah Shelley.
GALY GAY: Jeraiah Jip. At ease! We are now crossing the frontier of frozen Tibet.
Exeunt all four.
The Elephant Calf
An interlude for the foyer
Translator : JOHN WILLETT
Theatre
A few rubber trees above a trestle stage. Chairs in front of it.
POLLY before the curtain: In order that the act of the drama may have its full effect on you, you are invited to smoke like chimneys. Our artistes are the best in the world, our drinks over proof, our seats comfortable, bets on the story’s outcome can be placed at the bars, acts will end and the curtain fall according to how the betting goes. Kindly do not take shots at the pianist, he is doing his best. Anyone who doesn’t get the plot first go off needn’t bother, it’s incomprehensible. If you insist on seeing something full of meaning you should go to the gents. Ticket money will be refunded under no circumstances. Here is our comrade Jip, whose privilege it is to play the Elephant Calf, Jackie Pall. If that should strike you as impossibly difficult then all I can say is that stage artistes have got to be able to do absolutely anything.
SOLDIER in audience: Hear hear.
POLLY: Presenting Jesse Mahoney as the Elephant Calf’s mother, with Uriah Shelley, the famous international turf expert, as the Moon. It will furthermore be your good fortune to see my humble self in the important role of the Banana Tree.
SOLDIERS: Get started, can’t you? Fancy charging ten cents for rubbish like that.
POLLY: Permit me to inform you that we are absolutely impervious to crude interjections of that sort. The play is mostly about a crime committed by the Elephant Calf. I’m just telling you so that we don’t have to keep interrupting.
URIAH behind the curtain: Alleged to have been committed.
POLLY: Quite right. That’s because the only part I’ve read is my own. The Elephant Calf is innocent, you see.
SOLDIERS slow clapping: Get on with the show, get on with the show.
POLLY: All right, all right. Steps behind the curtain. You know I’m not sure we didn’t charge too much for admission. What do you blokes think?
URIAH: Much too late to worry about that now. We just have to jump in at the deep end.
POLLY: It’s such a feeble play, that’s the difficulty. I’m sure you can’t really remember, Jesse, how things went in the real theatre, and I rather think, Jesse, that what you’ve forgotten is the most important part of it. Here, half a mo’, I’ve been taken short. The curtain rises. I am the Banana Tree.
SOLDIER: High time too.
POLLY: The arbiter of the jungle. I have been standing here on a parched savannah in South Punjab, yea ever since elephants were first invented. Now and then, but mainly in the evening, the Moon cometh to me to lay a complaint against an Elephant Calf, let’s say.
URIAH: You’re going too fast. You’re half way there. It’s ten cents, you know. Enters.
POLLY: Greetings, Moon, whence comest thou at this late hour?
URIAH: I have heard a good one about an Elephant Calf —
POLLY: Art laying a complaint against it?
URIAH: Aye, of course.
POLLY: So the Elephant Calf hath perpetrated a crime?
URIAH: It is precisely as thou supposest, indeed this is an instance of thy perspicacity from which naught can be hid.
POLLY: O, you’ve seen nothing yet. Hath not the Elephant Calf murdered his mother?
URIAH: Indeed he hath.
POLLY: Well, that’s terrible.
URIAH: Appalling it is.
POLLY: If only I could find my specs.
URIAH: I just happen to have a pair on me, if they should fit you.
POLLY: They would fit all right if only they had lenses in them. Look, no lenses.
URIAH: Better than nothing, anyway.
POLLY: It’s not a laughing matter.
URIAH: Aye, it is passing strange. Therefore I lay a complaint against the Moon, or rather the Elephant Calf.
Enter the Elephant Calf, slowly.
POLLY: Ah, here is that agreeable Elephant Calf. Whence comest thou, eh?
GALY GAY: I am the Elephant Calf. Seven Rajahs stood around my cradle. What are you laughing at, Moon?
URIAH: Keep talking, Elephant Calf.
GALY GAY: My name is Jackie Pall. I am taking a walk.
POLLY: They tell me thou didst beat thy mother to death.
GALY GAY: No, I just broke her milk jug to pieces.
URIAH: On her head, on her head.
GALY GAY: No, Moon, on a stone, on a stone.
POLLY: And I tell thee thou didst do it, as sure as I am a Banana Tree.
URIAH: And as sure as I am the Moon I shall prove it, and my first proof is this woman here.
Enter Jesse as the Elephant Calf’s mother.
POLLY: Who’s that?
URIAH: It’s his mother.
POLLY: Isn’t that rather peculiar?
URIAH: Not in the least.
POLLY: All the same it does strike me as peculiar her being there.
URIAH: Not me.
POLLY: Then she may as well stay, but of course you will have to prove it.
URIAH: Thou art the judge.
POLLY: All right, Elephant Calf, prove that thou didst not murder thy Mother.
SOLDIER in the audience: Hey, with her standing there …
URIAH to the audience: That’s just the point.
SOLDIER: Even the start’s a load of tripe. With his mother standing there. How on earth can the rest of the play be worth bothering about?
JESSE: I am the Elephant Calf’s Mother, and I bet my little Jackie can prove quite conclusively that he’s no murderer. Eh, Jackie?
URIAH: And I bet that he cannot and will not.
POLLY bellows: Curtain!
The audience goes silently to the bar and loudly and aggressively orders cocktails.
POLLY behind the curtain: That went very nicely, not a single boo.
GALY GAY: I’d like to know why nobody applauded?
JESSE: Perhaps they found it too gripping.
POLLY: But it’s so interesting.
URIAH: If only we had a few chorus girls to flash their bums at them they’d tear up the seats. Get out in front, we must have a go at the betting lark.
POLLY before the curtain: Gentlemen …
SOLDIERS: Here, none of that. Let’s have a proper interval. Give us time for a drink. A fellow needs it in this place.
POLLY: We just wanted to see if we could get you to lay a bet or two, on one of the two parties, that is, Mother versus Moon.
SOLDIERS: Bloody cheek. So that’s their way of squeezing extra cash out of us. Just you wait till they get going. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
POLLY: All right. Bets on the Mother, this side. Nobody moves. For the Moon, over here. Nobody moves.
URIAH behind the curtain: Have they placed their bets?
POLLY: Not so as you’d notice. They say that the best part’s still to come, which I find most disturbing.
JESSE: They’re drinking so appallingly, it’s as if they couldn’t sit through the rest otherwise.
URIAH: Sock them with a bit of music, that’ll cheer them up.
POLLY steps through the curtain: Now for a few discs. Withdraws. Curtain up. Step forth, Moon, Mother and Elephant Calf, and ye shall learn the complete explanation of this mysterious crime, and you lot out there too. How dost thou hope to conceal the fact that thou, Jackie Pall, didst stab thine honourable Mother to death?
GALY GAY: How could I have done, seeing as how I am but a defenceless maiden?
POLLY: Art thou? Then let me put it to thee, Jackie Pall, that thou art by no means a maiden, as thou claimest. Now hark ye to my first major proof I re
call a strange incident in my childhood in Whitechapel —
SOLDIER: South Punjab. Roars of laughter.
POLLY: – in South Punjab, when a fellow dressed up as a girl so as not to have to go off to the war. Up came the sergeant and tossed a round in his lap, and because he didn’t move his legs apart, like a girl would to catch it in her skirt, the sergeant could tell he was a man, and the same thing here. They do it. There you are, now you all know the Elephant Calf’s a man. Curtain! Curtain. Feeble applause.
POLLY: It’s a smash hit, hear that? Curtain up! Take a bow!
Curtain. Applause stops.
URIAH: They’re positively nasty. It’s all no use. The whole thing’s hopeless.
JESSE: We must simply pack it in and refund their money. It’s a matter of to be lynched or not to be lynched, that is the question; the situation is absolutely critical. Have a look out front.
URIAH: What, refund their money? Not on your life. There isn’t a theatre in the world could stand that.
SOLDIERS: Tomorrow we’ll be moving off to Tibet, eh, Georgie, may be the last time you ever sit under the rubber trees swigging four-cent cocktails. It’s not particularly good weather for a war, or else it would be quite nice here, apart from this show.
SOLDIER: How about entertaining giving us a bit of a song, like ‘Johnny Bowlegs, pack your kit and trek’ say?
SOLDIERS: Bravo. Sing ‘Janny mit dem Hoppelbein’.
URIAH: They’ve started their own singing now. We must get going again.
POLLY: I wish I were out there with them, ‘Johnnys’’ one of my favourite songs. Why couldn’t we give them something like that? Curtain up. Now that … He is competing with the singing. Now that the Elephant Calf …
SOLDIER: Still going on about that Elephant Calf!
POLLY: As I was saying, now that the …
SOLDIER: Acting unpaid lance-calf.
POLLY: … That the animal in question has been exposed as a swindler by my first major proof, we move on to the second, even majorer proof.
SOLDIER: Can’t we skip that one, Polly?
URIAH: Don’t let them rattle you, Polly.
POLLY: I suggest that thou art a murderer, Elephant Calf. Therefore prove thine inability to murder, let’s say, the Moon.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2 Page 12