Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays: "Baal", "Drums in the Night", "In the Jungle of Ci (World Classics) (11 page)

BAAL
slowly reaches for her throat
: Is that your throat? Do you know how they put down pigeons, or wild ducks in the wood?

THE YOUNG WOMAN
: Mother of God! Leave me alone!
She struggles
.

BAAL
: With your weak knees? You’re falling over already.

You want to be laid in the willows. A man’s a man, in this respect most of them are equal.
He takes her in his arms
.

THE YOUNG WOMAN
shaking
: Please, let me go!

BAAL
: A shameless bird! I’ll have it. Act of rescue by desperate man!
He takes her by both arms and drags her into the thicket
.

Clouded sky. Baal and Ekart, sitting among the roots
.

BAAL
: Drink’s needed, Ekart. Any money left?

EKART
: No. Look at the maple in the wind!

BAAL
: It’s trembling.

EKART
: Where’s that girl you used to go around the bars with?

BAAL
: Turn into a fish and look for her.

EKART
: You overeat, Baal. You’ll burst.

BAAL
: I’d like to hear the bang.

EKART
: Do you ever look into water when it’s black and deep and got no fish in it? Don’t ever fall in. Watch out for yourself. You’re so very heavy, Baal.

BAAL
: I’ll watch out for somebody else. I’ve written a song. Do you want to hear it?

EKART
: Read it, then I’ll know you.

BAAL
: It’s called Death in the Forest.

And a man died deep in the primaeval woods

While the storm blew in torrents around him -

Died like an animal scrabbling for roots

Stared up through the trees, as the wind skimmed the woods

And the roar of the thunderclap drowned him.

Several of them stood to watch him go

And they strove to make his passage smoother

Telling him: We’ll take you home now, brother.

But he forced them from him with a blow

Spat, and cried: and where’s my home, d’you know?

That was home, and he had got no other.

Is your toothless mouth choking with pus?

How’s the rest of you: can you still tell?

Must you die so slowly and with so much fuss?

We’ve just had your horse chopped into steaks for us.

Hurry up! They’re waiting down in hell.

Then the forest roared above their head

And they watched him clasp a tree and stagger

And they heard his screams and what he said.

Each man felt an overwhelming dread

Clenched his fist or, trembling, drew his dagger:

So like them, and yet so nearly dead!

You’re foul, useless, mad, you mangy bear!

You’re a sore, a chancre, filthy creature!

Selfish beast, you’re breathing up our air!

So they said. And he, the cancer there:

Let me live! Your sun was never sweeter!

- Ride off in the light without a care!

That’s what none of them could understand:

How the horror numbed and made them shiver.

There’s the earth holding his naked hand.

In the breeze from sea to sea lies land:

Here I lie in solitude for ever.

Yes, mere life, with its abundant weight

Pinned him so that even half-decayed

He pressed his dead body ever deeper.

At dawn he fell dead in the grassy shade.

Numb with shock, they buried him, and cold with hate

Covered him with undergrowth and creeper.

Then they rode in silence from that place

Turning round to see the tree again

Under which his body once had lain

Who felt dying was too sharp a pain:

The tree stood in the sun ablaze.

Each made the mark of the cross on his face

And rode off swiftly over the plain.

EKART
: Well, well! I suppose it’s come to that now.

BAAL
: When I can’t sleep at night I look up at the stars. It’s just as good.

EKART: IS
it?

BAAL
suspiciously
: But I don’t do it often. It makes you weak.

EKART
after a pause
: You’ve made up a lot of poetry recently. You haven’t had a woman for a long time, have you?

BAAL
: Why?

EKART
: I was thinking. Say no.

Baal gets up, stretches, looks at the top of the maple and laughs
.

Evening. Ekart. The waitress. Watzmann. Johannes, in a shabby coat with a turned-up collar, hopelessly gone to seed. The waitress has the features of Sophie
.

EKART
: It’s been eight years.

They drink. Wind
.

JOHANNES
: They say life only begins at twenty-five. That’s when they get broader and have children.

Silence
.

WATZMANN
: His mother died yesterday. So he runs around trying to borrow money for the funeral. When he gets it he comes here. Then we can pay for the drinks. The landlord’s a good man. He gives credit on a corpse which was a mother.
Drinks
.

JOHANNES
: Baal! There’s no wind left in his sails.

WATZMANN
to Ekart
: You must have to put up with a lot from him?

EKART
: One can’t spit in his face. The man’s done for.

WATZMANN
to Johannes
: Does it distress you? Do you think about it?

JOHANNES
: It’s a waste of a man, I tell you.
Drinks.
Silence
.

WATZMANN
: He’s getting more and more disgusting.

EKART
: Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear it. I love him. I don’t resent him, because I love him. He’s a child.

WATZMANN
: He only does what he has to. Because he’s so lazy.

EKART
goes to the door
: It’s a mild night. The wind’s warm. Like milk. I love all this. One should never drink. Or not so much.
Back to the table
. It’s a mild night. Now and for another three weeks into the autumn a man can live on the road all right.
He sits down
.

WATZMANN
: Do you want to leave tonight? You’d like to get rid of him, I suppose? He’s a burden.

JOHANNES
: You’d better be careful.

Baal enters slowly
.

WATZMANN
: Is that you, Baal?

EKART
hard
: What do you want now?

BAAL
enters, sits down
: What a miserable hole this place has turned into!
The waitress brings drink
.

WATZMANN
: Nothing’s changed here. Only you, it would appear, have got more refined.

BAAL
: Is that still you, Luise?

Silence
.

JOHANNES
: Yes, it’s agreeable here. – I have to drink, you see, drink a lot. It makes one strong. Even then one makes one’s way to hell along a path of razors. But not in the same way. As if your legs were giving way under you, yielding, you know. So that you don’t feel the razors at all. With springy loose joints. Besides, I never used to have ideas of this sort, really peculiar ones. Not while everything went well, when I lived a good bourgeois life. But now I have ideas, now that I’ve turned into a genius. Hm.

EKART
bursting out
: I’d like to be back in the forest, at dawn! The light between the trees is the colour of lemons! I want to go back up into the forest.

JOHANNES
: That’s something I don’t understand, you must buy me another drink, Baal. It’s really agreeable here.

BAAL
: A gin for —

JOHANNES
: No names! We know each other. I have such fearful dreams at night, you know, now and then. But only now and then. It really is agreeable here.

The wind. They drink
.

WATZMANN
hums
:

The trees come in avalanches

Each very conveniently made.

You can hang yourself from their branches

Or loll underneath in their shade.

BAAL
: Where was it like that? It was like that once.

JOHANNES
: She’s still afloat, you see. Nobody’s found her. But sometimes I get a feeling she’s being washed down my throat with all the drink, a very small corpse, half rotted. And she was already seventeen. Now there are rats and weed in her green hair, rather becoming … a little swollen and whitish, and filled with the stinking ooze from the river, completely black. She was always so clean. That’s why she went into the river and began to stink.

WATZMANN
: What is flesh? It decays just like the spirit. Gentlemen, I am completely drunk. Twice two is four. Therefore I am not drunk. But I have intimations of a higher world. Bow! … be hup! … humble! Put the old Adam aside!
Drinks heavily and shakily
. I’ve not reached rock bottom yet, not while I have my intimations, not while I can add up properly that twice two … What is this thing called two? Two – oo, curious word! Two!
Sits down. Baal reaches for his guitar and smashes the light with it
.

BAAL
: Now I’ll sing.
Sings
:

Sick from the sun, and eaten raw by the weather

A looted wreath crowning his tangled head

He called back the dreams of a childhood he had lost
altogether

Forgot the roof, but never the sky overhead.

Then speaks
: My voice is not entirely clear as a bell.
Tunes the guitar
.

EKART
: Go on singing, Baal.

BAAL
goes on singing
:

O you whose life it has been always to suffer

You murderers they threw out from heaven and hell

Why did you not stay in the arms of your mother

Where it was quiet, and you slept, and all was well?

Speaks
. The guitar’s not in tune either.

WATZMANN
: A good song. Very apt in my case. Romantic.

BAAL
goes on singing
:

Still he explores and scans the absinthe-green ocean

Though his mother give him up for lost

Grinning and cursing, or weeping at times with contrition

Always in search of that land where life is best.

WATZMANN
: I can’t find my glass. The table’s rocking stupidly. Put the light on. How’s a man to find his mouth?

EKART
: Idiot! Can you see anything, Baal?

BAAL
: No. I don’t want to. It’s good in the dark. With champagne in the blood and homesickness without memory. Are you my friend Ekart?

EKART
with an effort
: Yes, but sing!

BAAL
sings
:

Loafing through hells and flogged through paradises

Calm and grinning, with expressionless stare

Sometimes he dreams of a small field he recognizes

With blue sky overhead and nothing more.

JOHANNES
: I’ll always stay with you. You could take me with you. I hardly ever eat.

WATZMANN
has lit the lamp, with an effort
: Let there be light.

Heh heh heh heh.

BAAL
: It’s blinding.
Gets up
.

Ekart, with the waitress on his lap, gets up with an effort and tries to take her arm from his neck
.

EKART
: What’s the matter? This is nothing. It’s ridiculous.

Baal gets ready to leap
.

EKART
: You’re not jealous of her?

Baal gropes, a glass falls to the floor
.

EKART
: Why shouldn’t I have women?

Baal looks at him
.

EKART
: Am I your lover?

Baal throws himself at him, chokes him
.

The light goes out. Watzmann laughs drunkenly, the waitress screams. Other guests from the adjoining room enter with a lamp
.

WATZMANN
: He’s got a knife.

THE WAITRESS
: He’s killing him. Oh God!

TWO MEN
hurl themselves on the wrestlers
: Blast you, man! Let go! – He’s stabbed him! God Almighty!

Baal gets up. Sunset suddenly bursts into the room. The lamp goes out
.

BAAL
: Ekart!

Forest. Baal with guitar, his hands in his pockets, walks off into the distance
.

BAAL
: The pale wind in the black trees! They’re like Lupu’s wet hair. At eleven the moon’ll rise. It’ll be light enough then. This is a small wood. I’ll go where there are forests. I can move now that I’m on my own again. I must bear north. Follow the ribbed side of the leaves. I’ll have to shrug off that little matter. Forward!
Sings
:

Baal will watch the vultures in the star-shot sky

Hovering patiently to see when Baal will die.

Disappearing
.

Sometimes Baal shams dead. The vultures swoop.

Baal, without a word, will dine on vulture soup.

Gust of wind
.

Evening. Wind. Rain. Two policemen struggle against the wind
.

FIRST POLICEMAN
: The black rain and this wailing wind!

The bloody tramp!

SECOND POLICEMAN
: It seems to me he keeps moving northwards towards the forests. It’ll be impossible to find him there.