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) (19 page)
Authors: Bertolt Brecht
KRAGLER
: Are you drunk?
AUGUSTA
: His fiancée comes after him, and his fiancée’s boozed.
ANNA
: What do you think?
Walks a few steps
. I’m with child.
Augusta laughs shrilly
.
Kragler sways, squints towards the bridge, springs around as if trying out walking
.
AUGUSTA
: Are you a fish, gasping for air like that?
MANKE
: You must think you’re asleep.
KRAGLER
hands down his trouser seams
: Sir!
MANKE
: She’s with child. Having children’s her business. Come on!
KRAGLER
stiffly
: Sir! Where to, sir?
MANKE
: He’s gone off his head.
GLUBB
: Usedn’t you to be in Africa?
KRAGLER
: Morocco, Casablanca, Hut 10.
ANNA
: Andy!
KRAGLER
listens
: Listen! My
62>
fiancée,
<62
the whore! She’s come, she’s there, she’s got a bulge in her belly!
GLUBB
: She’s a bit anaemic, isn’t she?
KRAGLER
: Sh! It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it.
ANNA
: Andy, there are people around.
KRAGLER
: Is your body blown up with air or did you make a whore of yourself? I was away; I couldn’t keep an eye on you. I was lying in the filth. Where did you lie while I was lying in the filth?
MARIE
: You shouldn’t speak like that. What do you know about it?
KRAGLER
: And it was you I wanted to see. Otherwise I’d be lying where I belong, would have wind in my skull, dust in
my mouth, and know nothing. But I wanted to see you first. I wouldn’t settle for less. I ate husks. They were bitter. I crept on all fours from my hole in the mud. That was comic. Swine that I am.
Opens his eyes suddenly
. Have a good look, eh? Did you get free tickets?
He picks up lumps of earth and throws them about him
.
AUGUSTA
: Hold him down!
ANNA
: Throw them, Andy! Throw them! Throw them at me!
MARIE
: Get the woman away, he’ll stone her to death.
KRAGLER
: Go to the devil! You’ve everything you need! Open your mouths. There isn’t anything else.
AUGUSTA
: Down with his head! Rub it in the dirt!
The men hold him to the ground.
63
AUGUSTA
: Blow, will you, miss?
GLUBB
to Anna
: Yes, you go home, the early morning air’s no good for the ovaries.
BABUSCH
crosses the battlefield to Kragler, and tells him while chewing his mangled cigar
: That’ll teach you where the shoe pinches. You’re God; you’ve thundered. As to the woman, she’s pregnant, she can’t go on sitting on that stone, the nights are chilly, perhaps you’ll say something …
GLUBB
: Yes, perhaps you’ll say something.
The men allow Kragler to get up. There is silence, the wind is heard, two men pass by in a hurry
.
64>
THE ONE
: They’ve got the Ullstein building.
THE OTHER
: And artillery’s getting into position outside the Mosse building.
THE ONE
: We’re far too few.
THE OTHER
: Far more are on the way.
THE ONE
: Far too late.
They have passed.
<64
AUGUSTA
: There you have it. Pack it in.
MANKE
: Stuff the answer down his gullet, that bourgeois and his tart!
AUGUSTA
tries to drag Kragler along
: Come along to the newspaper buildings, love! You’re beginning to wake up.
GLUBB
: Let her stay on her stone if she wants. The underground starts at seven.
AUGUSTA
: It won’t be running today.
65
THE DRUNK MAN
: Forward, forward to alleluia!
Anna has risen to her feet again
.
MARIE
looks her over
: White as a sheet.
GLUBB
: A bit pale and a bit thin.
BABUSCH
: She’s on her way out.
GLUBB
: It’s just the unflattering light.
Looks at the sky
.
AUGUSTA
:
66>
Here come the workers from Wedding.
<66
GLUBB
rubbing his hands
: You came with the guns. Perhaps you belong with them.
Kragler is silent
. You don’t say anything, that’s sensible.
Walking round
. Your tunic’s been slightly shot up, and
67
altogether you’re a bit pallid, a bit worn down.
68
But it doesn’t much matter. The only slightly displeasing thing is your shoes, they squeak. But you can put grease on them.
He sniffs the air
.
69
Of course, one or two star-spangled skies have gone under since eleven and a number of Redeemers have been gobbled up by the sparrows, but I’m glad you’re still there. Just your digestion worries me. All the same you aren’t transparent yet, at least one can see you.
KRAGLER
: Come over here, Anna.
MANKE
: ‘Come over here, Anna’.
70
ANNA
: Where is the underground, does anyone know?
AUGUSTA
: No underground today. No underground, no elevated, no local services, for the whole of today. Today there will be universal rest, on all tracks today the trains will be stopped, and we shall walk around like civilized people till evening, my dear.
KRAGLER
: Come over here to me, Anna.
71>
GLUBB
: Won’t you come along for a bit, brother gunner?
<71
Kragler is silent
.
GLUBB
: One or two of us would like to have drunk another schnaps or so, but you were against it. One or two would like to have slept in a bed again, but you hadn’t
got a bed,
72>
so it was no good planning to go home either.
Kragler is silent.
<72
ANNA
: Won’t you go, Andy? They’re waiting for you.
MANKE
: Fish your paw out of your pocket, mate, anyhow.
73
KRAGLER
: Fling stones at me, here I am: I can rip the shirt off my back for you, but bare my throat to the knife, I will not.
THE DRUNK MAN
: Heaven, arseholes and little bits of string.
AUGUSTA
: And and and the newspapers?
74
KRAGLER
: It’s no use. I won’t let myself be dragged down to the newspapers in my shirtsleeves. I’m not a lamb any more. I don’t want to die.
75
Takes his pipe once more from his trouser pocket.
76
GLUBB
: A bit pathetic, isn’t it?
KRAGLER
: Look, they’ll riddle your chest like a sieve.
77>
Anna! What the devil are you looking at me like that for? Have I got to defend myself to you too?
To Glubb
: They shot your nephew, but I’ve got my wife back. Anna, come.
GLUBB
: It looks as though we’d better go on without him.
<77
AUGUSTA
: Then was all that lies, Africa and so on?
KRAGLER
: No, it was true. Anna!
MANKE
: The gentleman was bellowing like a stockbroker and now he wants his bed.
KRAGLER
: Now I’ve got my wife.
MANKE
: Have you got her?
KRAGLER
: Here, Anna. She is not untarnished, nor is she innocent; have you been an honest woman or have you got a brat in your body?
ANNA
: A brat, yes, I’ve got one.
KRAGLER
: You’ve got one.
ANNA
: Here he is, inside here, the pepper didn’t do any good and my figure has gone for ever.
KRAGLER
: Yes, that’s her.
MANKE
: And us? Soaked to the heart in schnaps and filled to the navel with talk, and with knives in our paws, and who did they come from?
KRAGLER
: They came from me.
To Anna
: Yes, that’s the sort you are.
ANNA
: Yes, that’s the sort I am.
GLUBB
: You didn’t yell ‘To the newspaper buildings!’ I suppose?
KRAGLER
: Yes, I did that.
To Anna
: Walk over here.
MANKE
: Yes, you did that, it’ll be the end of you, mate, you yelled ‘To the newspaper buildings!’ all right.
KRAGLER
: And I’m going home.
To Anna
:
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Get moving
<78
.
AUGUSTA
: You swine.
ANNA
: Let me alone. I pretended to Father and Mother, and I lay in bed with a bachelor.
AUGUSTA
: Swine too.
KRAGLER
: What’s the matter?
ANNA
: I bought the curtains with him. And I slept with him in the bed.
KRAGLER
: Stop it!
MANKE
: Look, mate, I shall hang myself if you change your mind.
A distant shouting off
.
AUGUSTA
:
79>
They’re attacking the Mosse building.
<79
ANNA
: And despite the photo I forgot everything about you.
KRAGLER
: Stop it.
ANNA
: Forgot! Forgot!
KRAGLER
:
80>
And I don’t give a damn.
<80
Am I to fetch you with my knife?
ANNA
: Yes, fetch me. Yes, with the knife.
MANKE
:
81
Into the water with that lump of rotten flesh!
They fling themselves on Anna
.
AUGUSTA
: Yes, let’s get rid of his tart!
MANKE
: Get a hand on her neck!
AUGUSTA
: Under water, that profiteer’s tart!
ANNA
: Andy!
KRAGLER
: Hands off!
No sound but panting
.
In the distance dull gunfire is heard irregularly
.
MANKE
: What’s that?
AUGUSTA
: Artillery.
MANKE
: Guns.
AUGUSTA
: God have mercy now on all of them down there. They’re bursting open like fishes.
KRAGLER
: Anna!
Augusta runs upstage, bent double
.
BULLTROTTER
appears on the bridge upstage
: For God’s sake, where are you all?
GLUBB
: He’s going to the lavatory.
MANKE
: Louse.
Making his way off
.
KRAGLER
: I’m going home now, dear man.
GLUBB
has reached the bridge
: Yes,
82
you’ve got your balls intact.
KRAGLER
to Anna
: It’s whistling again, hold on to me, Anna.
ANNA
: I’ll make myself very thin.
GLUBB
: You’ll hang yourself all the same, tomorrow morning in the lavatory.
Augusta and the others have already gone
.
KRAGLER
: You’re heading for the wall, man.
GLUBB
: Yes, my boy, the morning will see quite a lot of things.
83
Some people will manage to get away safely, of course.
He disappears
.
KRAGLER
: They almost drowned with weeping over me and I simply washed my shirt in their tears. Is my flesh to rot in the gutter so that their idea should get into heaven? Are they drunk?
ANNA
: Andy! None of it matters.
KRAGLER
doesn’t look her in the eyes, wanders around, grips himself by the throat
: I’m fed up to here.
He laughs irritably
. It’s just play-acting. Boards and a paper moon and the butchery offstage, which is the only real part of it.
He walks round again, his arms dangling, and in this way he fishes up the drum from the schnaps bar
. They’ve left their drum.
He bangs on it
.
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Half a Spartacist
<84
or The Power of Love; Bloodbath round the Newspaper Offices, or
85>
Everybody is Top Man in His Own Skin.
<85
Looks up, blinks
. To do or to die.
He drums
.
The bagpipes play, the poor people die around the newspaper buildings, the houses fall on top of them, the dawn breaks, they lie like drowned kittens in the roadway, I am a swine and the swine’s going home.
He draws breath
. I’ll put on a clean shirt, my skin’s intact, my jacket I’ll take off, my boots I’ll put grease on.
Laughs unpleasantly
. The shouting’ll all be over tomorrow morning, but tomorrow morning I shall lie in bed and reproduce myself so I don’t die out.
Drum
. Stop that romantic staring! You racketeers!
Drum
. You bloodsuckers!
Laughing full-throatedly, almost choking
. You cowardly cannibals, you!
His laughter sticks in his throat, he cannot continue, he staggers around, throws the drum at the moon, which was a lantern, and drum and moon together fall into the river, which is without water.
86
Very drunken and infantile. Now comes bed, the great, white, wide bed, come!
