Brecht Collected Plays: 6: Good Person of Szechwan; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui; Mr Puntila and his Man Matti (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

8

  Tales from Finland

  Country road. Evening. The four women are walking home.

  SLY-GROG EMMA: How’s one to tell what sort of a mood they’ll be in? When they’ve been on the booze they’re full of jokes and pinching your you-know-what, and it’s all you can do to stop them getting intimate and straight into the old hay; then five minutes later something’s hit their liver and all they want is call the police. I think I got a nail in my shoe.

  THE TELEPHONIST: The sole’s half off.

  THE MILKMAID: It wasn’t made for five hours’ walking on a country road.

  SLY-GROG EMMA: I’ve worn it out. Should have lasted another year. A stone’s what I need. They all sit down, and she bangs the nail in her shoe flat. As I was saying, you never know where you are with that lot, sometimes they’re one way, sometimes another till your head spins. The last police sergeant’s wife used often to send for me to massage her poor swollen feet in the middle of the night, and every time she was different according to how she was getting on with her husband. He was having it off with the maid. Time she gave me a box of chocolates I knew he’d sent the girl packing, but a moment later apparently he’d started seeing her again, ‘cause however hard she tried racking her brains she just couldn’t remember I’d given her twelve massages that month, not six. All of a sudden her memory had gone.

  THE CHEMIST’S ASSISTANT: Other times it works out all right for them. Like Chicago Charlie who made a fortune over there, then came back to his relatives twenty years later. They were so poor they used to beg potato peelings from my mother, and when he arrived they served him roast veal to sweeten him up. As he scoffed it he told them he’d once lent his granny fifty marks and it was disturbing to find them so badly off they couldn’t even settle their debts.

  THE TELEPHONIST: They know what they’re up to all right. Must be some reason why they get so rich. There was this landowner our way got one of the tenants to drive him across the frozen lake in the winter of 1908. They knew there was a break in the ice, but they didn’t know where, so the tenant had to walk in front the whole seven miles or so. The boss got frightened and promised him a horse if they got to the other side. When they’d got half-way he spoke again and said, ‘If you find the way all right and I don’t fall through I’ll see you get a calf.’ Then they saw the lights of some village and he said, ‘Keep it up and you’ll have earned that watch.’ Fifty yards from the shore he was talking about a sack of potatoes, and when they got there he gave him one mark and said, ‘Took your time, didn’t you?’ We’re too stupid for their jokes and tricks and we fall for them every time. Know why? ‘Cause they look just the same as our sort, and that’s what fools us. If they looked like bears or rattlesnakes people might be more on their guard.

  THE CHEMIST’S ASSISTANT: Never lark with them and never accept anything from them.

  SLY-GROG EMMA: Never accept anything from them: I like that, when they’ve got everything and us nothing. Try not accepting anything from the river when you’re thirsty.

  THE CHEMIST’S ASSISTANT: I’ve got a thirst like a horse, girls.

  THE MILKMAID: Me too. At Kausala there was a girl went with the son of the farm where she worked as a maid. There was a baby, but when it all came to court in Helsinki he denied everything so as not to pay maintenance. Her mother had hired a barrister, and he produced the letters the fellow wrote from the army. They spelled it all out and could have got him five years for perjury. But when the judge read out the first letter, took his time over it, he did, she stepped up and asked for them back, so she got no maintenance. She was crying buckets, they said, when she came out of court carrying the letters, and her mother was livid and he laughed himself silly. That’s love for you.

  THE TELEPHONIST: It was a stupid thing to do.

  SLY-GROG EMMA: But that kind of thing can be clever, it all depends. There was a fellow up near Viborg wouldn’t accept anything from them. He was in the 1918 business with the Reds, and at Tammerfors they put him in a camp for that, such a young chap, he was so hungry he had to eat grass, not a thing would they give him to eat. His mother went to visit him and took some grub along. Fifty miles each way it was. She lived in a cottage and the landlord’s wife gave her a fish to take and a pound of butter. She went on foot except when a farmcart came along and gave her a lift. She told the farmer: ‘I’m off to visit my son Athi who’s been put in camp with the Reds at Tammerfors, and the landlord’s wife has given me a fish for him in the goodness of her heart and this pound of butter.’ When the farmer heard this he made her get down because her son was a Red, but as she passed the women doing their washing in the river she again said ‘I’m off to Tammerfors to visit my son who’s in the Reds’ camp there, and the landlord’s wife in the goodness of her heart has given me a fish to take him and this pound of butter.’ And when she got to the camp at Tammerfors she repeated her story to the commandant and he let her in though normally it was forbidden. Outside the camp the grass was still growing, but behind the barbed wire there was no green grass left, not a leaf on any of the trees, they’d eaten the lot. It’s God’s truth, you know. She hadn’t seen Athi for two years, what with the civil war and him being in that camp, and he was thin as a rake. ‘Here you are, Athi, and look, here’s a fish and the butter the landlord’s wife gave me for you.’ Athi said hullo Mum to her and asked after her rheumatism and some of the neighbours, but he wasn’t going to accept the fish and the butter at any price, he just got angry and said, ‘Did you softsoap the landlord’s wife for that stuff? If so you can bloody well carry it back. I’m not accepting nothing from that lot.’ She was forced to pack her presents up again, even though Athi was starving, and she said goodbye and went back on foot as before except when a cart came along and gave her a lift. This time she told the farmhand, ‘My boy Athi’s in prison camp and he refused a fish and some butter because I’d softsoaped the landlord’s wife for them and he’s not accepting nothing from that lot.’ She said the same thing to everybody she met, so it made an impression all along the way, and that was fifty miles.

  THE MILKMAID: There are fellows like that Athi of hers.

  SLY-GROG EMMA: Not enough.

  They get up and walk on in silence.

  9

  Puntila betroths his daughter to a human being

  Dining-room with little tables and a vast sideboard. Parson, Judge and Lawyer are standing smoking and having coffee. In the corner sits Puntila, drinking in silence. Next door there is dancing to the sound of a gramophone.

  THE PARSON: True faith is seldom to be found. Instead we find doubt and indifference, enough to make one despair of our people. I keep trying to din it into them that not one single blackberry would grow but for Him, but they treat the fruits of nature as entirely natural and gobble them down as if it was all meant. Part of their lack of faith comes from the fact that they never go to church, so I am left preaching to empty pews; as though they lacked transport … why, every milkmaid’s got a bicycle; but it’s also because of their inborn wickedness. What other explanation is there when I attend a deathbed as I did last week and speak of all that awaits a man in the other life, and he comes up with ‘Do you think this drought’s going to spoil the potatoes?’? When you hear something like that you have to ask yourself if the whole thing isn’t just a waste of time.

  THE JUDGE: I feel for you. It’s no picnic trying to bash a little culture into these bumpkins.

  THE LAWYER: We lawyers don’t have all that easy a time either. What’s always kept us in business has been the small peasants, those rock-hard characters who’d sooner go on the parish than forgo their rights. People still get something out of a quarrel, but they’re hampered by their meanness. Much as they enjoy insulting each other and stabbing one another and pulling down each other’s fences, soon as they realise that lawsuits cost money their ardour quickly cools and they’ll abandon the most promising case for purely mercenary reasons.

  THE JUDGE: We live in a commercial age. Everything gets flattene
d out and the good old institutions disappear. It’s dreadfully hard not to lose confidence in our people but to keep on trying to introduce it to a bit of culture.

  THE LAWYER: It’s all very well for Puntila, his fields grow of their own accord, but a lawsuit’s a terribly sensitive plant and by the time it’s fully mature your hair will have gone grey. How often do you feel it’s all over, it can’t last any longer, there can be no further pleas, it’s doomed to die young; then something happens and there’s a miraculous recovery. It’s when it’s in its infancy that a case demands the most careful treatment, that’s when the mortality figures peak. Once it’s been nursed up to adolescence it knows its way around and can manage on its own. A case that has lasted more than four or five years has every prospect of reaching a ripe old age. But the in-between time! It’s a dog’s life.

  Enter the Attache and the Parson’s Wife.

  PARSON’S WIFE: Mr Puntila, you mustn’t neglect your guests; the Minister’s dancing with Miss Eva at the moment, but he has been asking for you.

  Puntila doesn’t answer.

  THE ATTACHÉ: His Reverence’s wife made a deliciously witty riposte to my Minister just now. He asked if she appreciated jazz. I was positively on tenterhooks to know how she would deal with that one. She thought for a moment, then she answered well anyway you can’t dance to a church organ so it’s all the same to her what instruments you use. The Minister laughed himself silly at her joke. Eh, Puntila, what d’you say to that?

  PUNTILA: Nothing, because I don’t criticise my guests. He beckons to the Judge. Freddie, do you like that face?

  THE JUDGE: Which one d’you mean?

  PUNTILA: The Attache’s. Let’s have a straight answer.

  THE JUDGE: Go easy, Puntila, that punch is pretty strong.

  THE ATTACHÉ humming the tune being played next door and tapping the time with his feet: Gets into the old legs, eh what?

  PUNTILA again beckons to the Judge, who does his best not to notice: Fredrik! Tell me the truth: how do you like it? It’s costing me a forest.

  The other gentlemen join in and hum ‘Je cherche après Titine’.

  THE ATTACHÉ unconscious of what is coming: I could never remember poetry even at school, but rhythm is in my blood.

  THE LAWYER since Puntila is violently beckoning: It’s a bit warm in here; what about shifting to the drawing-room?

  Tries to draw the Attache away.

  THE ATTACHÉ: Only the other day I managed to remember a line, ‘Yes, we have no bananas’! So I have hopes of my memory.

  PUNTILA: Freddie! Take a good look at it and let’s have your verdict. Freddie!

  THE JUDGE: You know the one about the Jew who left his coat hanging in the café. The pessimist said ‘He’s bound to get it back.’ Whereas the optimist said ‘Not a hope in hell of his getting it back.’

  The gentlemen laugh.

  THE ATTACHÉ: And did he get it back?

  The gentlemen laugh.

  THE JUDGE: I don’t think you’ve entirely seen the point.

  PUNTILA: Freddie!

  THE ATTACHÉ: You’ll have to explain it to me. Surely you got the answers the wrong way round. It’s the optimist who ought to be saying ‘He’s bound to get it back.’

  THE JUDGE: No, the pessimist. You see, the joke is that the coat is an old one, and it’s better for him if he loses it.

  THE ATTACHÉ: Oh I see, it’s an old coat? You forgot to mention that. Hahaha! It’s the most capital joke I ever heard.

  PUNTILA gets up lowering: The hour has struck. A fellow like this is more than flesh and blood can bear. Fredrik, you have been avoiding my solemn question about having a face like that in the family. But I am old enough to make up my mind for myself. A person without a sense of humour isn’t human. With dignity: Leave my house – yes, it’s you I’m talking to – stop looking round as if you thought it might be somebody else.

  THE JUDGE: Puntila, you are going too far.

  THE ATTACHÉ: Gentlemen, I would ask you to forget this incident. You cannot imagine how delicate is the position of a member of the diplomatic corps. The slightest weakness, morally speaking, can lead to the refusal of one’s agrément. In Paris once, up in Montmartre, the mother-in-law of the Rumanian First Secretary began hitting her lover with an umbrella and there was an irrevocable scandal.

  PUNTILA: A scavenger in tails. A scavenger that gobbles up forests.

  THE ATTACHÉ, carried away: You see the point: it’s not that she has a lover, which is normal, nor that she beats him, which is understandable, but that she does it with an umbrella, which is vulgar. A question of nuance.

  THE LAWYER: Puntila, he’s right, you know. His honour is very vulnerable. He’s in the diplomatic service.

  THE JUDGE: That punch is too strong for you, Johannes.

  PUNTILA: Fredrik, you don’t realise how serious the situation is.

  THE PARSON: Mr Puntila is a little over-emotional, Anna, perhaps you should see what’s going on in the drawing-room.

  PUNTILA: There’s no danger of my losing control of myself, missis. The punch is its usual self and the only thing that’s too much for me is this gentleman’s face which I find repugnant for reasons which you can surely understand.

  THE ATTACHÉ: My sense of humour was most flatteringly alluded to by the Princess Bibesco when she remarked to Lady Oxford that I laughed at jokes or bons mots before they’re made, meaning that I’m very quick-witted.

  PUNTILA: My god, Freddie, his sense of humour!

  THE ATTACHÉ: So long as no names are mentioned it can all be mended, it’s only when names and insults are mentioned in the same breath that things are beyond mending.

  PUNTILA, with heavy sarcasm: Freddie, what am I to do? I can’t remember his name; now he’s telling me I’ll never be able to get rid of him. O thank God, it’s just occurred to me that I read his name on an IOU I had to buy back and that it’s Eino Silakka; now will he go, do you think?

  THE ATTACHÉ: Gentlemen, a name has now been mentioned. From now on every word will have to be most meticulously weighed.

  PUNTILA: What can you do? Suddenly shouting: Get out of here at once and don’t you ever let me catch another glimpse of you at Puntila Hall! I’m not hitching my daughter to a scavenger in tails!

  THE ATTACHÉ, turning to face him: Puntila, you have begun to be insulting. To throw me out of your house is to cross that fine boundary beyond which scandal sets in.

  PUNTILA: It’s too much. My patience is giving out. I was going to let you know privately that your face gets on my nerves and you’d better go, but you force me to make myself clear and say ‘You shit, get out!’

  THE ATTACHÉ: Puntila, I take that amiss. Good day, gentlemen. Exit.

  PUNTILA: Don’t loiter like that! Let me see you run, I’ll teach you to give me pert answers!

  He hurries after him. All but the judge and the parson’s wife follow.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: There’ll be a scandal.

  Enter Eva.

  EVA: What wrong? What’s all that din out in the yard?

  THE PARSON’S WIFE, hurrying to her: My poor child, something unpleasant has occurred, you must arm yourself with courage.

  EVA: What’s occurred?

  THE JUDGE, fetching a glass of sherry: Drink this, Eva. Your father got outside a whole bowl of punch, then he suddenly took exception to Eino’s face and threw him out.

  EVA: O dear, this sherry’s corked. What did he say to him?

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: Don’t you feel shaken, Eva?

  EVA: Yes, of course.

  The parson comes back.

  PARSON: Terrible.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: What’s terrible? Did something happen?

  THE PARSON: A terrible scene in the yard. He threw stones at him.

  EVA: Did he hit him?

  THE PARSON: I don’t know. The lawyer quickly got between them. And to think that the Minister’s in the drawing room next door.

  EVA: Then I’m pretty sure he’ll go, Uncle Fredr
ik. Thank heaven we got the Minister along. It wouldn’t have been half the scandal otherwise.

  THE PARSON’S WIFE: Eva!

  Enter Puntila and Matti, followed by Laina and Fina.

  PUNTILA: I have just had a profound insight into the depravity of this world. In I went with the best of intentions and told them that there’d been a mistake, that I’d all but betrothed my only daughter to a scavenger but now I’m quickly betrothing her to a human being. It has long been my ambition to betroth my daughter to a first-rate human being, Matti Altonen, a conscientious chauffeur and a friend of mine. So you are to drink a toast to the happy couple. What kind of response do you think I got? The Minister, whom I’d taken for an educated man, looked at me like something the cat had brought in and called for his car. And the others naturally followed him like sheep. Sad. I felt like a Christian martyr among the lions and gave them a piece of my mind. He cleared off quickly but I managed to catch him by his car, I’m pleased to say, and told him he’s a shit too. I take it I was voicing the general opinion?

  MATTI: Mr Puntila, suppose the two of us went into the kitchen and discussed the whole thing over a bowl of punch?

  PUNTILA: Why the kitchen? We’ve done nothing yet to celebrate your engagement, only the other one. A bit of a mistake. Put the tables together, you people, make me a festive board. We’re going to celebrate. Fina, you come and sit by me. He sits down in the middle of the room while the others bring the little tables together to make one long table in front of him. Eva and Matti together fetch chairs.

  EVA: Don’t look at me like my father inspecting a smelly breakfast egg. Not so long ago you were looking at me quite differently.

  MATTI: That was for show.

  EVA: Last night when you wanted to take me catching crayfish on the island it wasn’t to catch crayfish.

  MATTI: That was night-time, and it wasn’t to get married either.

  PUNTILA: Parson, you sit next the maid. Mrs Parson next the cook. Fredrik, come and sit at a decent table for once. They all sit down reluctantly. Silence ensues.