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) (23 page)

GARGA:
Thank you.

MAE:
Don’t mention it.

Both go out
.

Worm enters cautiously and sniffs around the room
.

MANKY
: Hey, who’s there?
Comes in with John
.

WORM:
Me, a gentleman. Mr Garga, I presume? Mr John Garga?

MANKY
: What do you want?

WORM:
Me? Nothing. Could I speak to your son – I mean, if he’s had his bath?

JOHN
: What’s it all about?

WORM
sadly shaking his head
: What inhospitality! If it’s not too much of an effort, could you tell me where your excellent son is taking his nap?

JOHN
: He’s gone away. Go to the devil. This isn’t an information bureau.

Mae enters
.

WORM
: Too bad! Too bad! We miss your son terribly, sir. And it’s about your daughter, too, in case you’re interested.

MAE:
Where is she?

WORM:
In a Chinese hotel, milady, in a Chinese hotel.

JOHN
: What?

MAE
: Holy Mary!

MANKY:
What’s the meaning of this? What’s she doing there?

WORM
: Nothing, just eating. Mr Shlink wants me to tell you and your son that he should come and get her. She’s too expensive, it’s running into money, the lady’s got a healthy appetite. She doesn’t lift a finger. But she pursues us with immoral propositions. She’s demoralizing the hotel. She’ll have the police after us.

MAE
: John!

WORM
shouting
: We’re sick of her.

MAE
: Christ!

MANKY
: Where is she? I’ll get her right away.

WORM
: Sure, you’ll get her. Are you a bird dog? How do you know where the hotel is? You young fool! It’s not so simple. You should have kept an eye on the lady. It’s all your son’s fault. Tell him to call for the bitch and kindly look after her. Or tomorrow night we’ll get the police on the move.

MAE
: Good God. Just tell us where she is. I don’t know where my son is. He’s gone away. Don’t be hard-hearted. Oh, Mary! John, plead with him. What’s happened to Mary? What’s happening to me? Oh, George! John, what a city this is! What people!
Goes out
.

Shlink appears in the doorway
.

WORM
mutters in a fright
: Yes, I …this place has two entrances…
Sneaks out
.

SHLINK
simply
: My name is Shlink. I used to be a lumber dealer, now I catch flies. I’m all alone in the world. Can you rent me a place to sleep? I’ll pay board. On the door plate downstairs I recognized the name of a man I know.

MANKY
: Your name is Shlink? You’re the man who’s been holding these people’s daughter.

SHLINK
: Who’s that?

JOHN
: Mary Garga, sir. My daughter, Mary Garga.

SHLINK
: Don’t know her. I don’t know your daughter.

JOHN
: The gentleman who was just here …

MANKY
: Sent by you, I presume.

JOHN
: Who slipped away the moment you came in.

SHLINK
: I don’t know the gentleman.

JOHN:
But you and my son…

SHLINK:
You’re making fun of a poor man. Of course there’s no danger in insulting me. I’ve gambled away my fortune; often you don’t know how these things happen.

MANKY:
What I say is, when I steer my ship into port, I know my channel.

JOHN
: You can’t trust anybody.

SHLINK:
Lonely through sheer bungling at an age when the ground must close if snow is not to fall into the crevices, I see you deserted by your breadwinner. I’m not without compassion; and if you’ll keep me, my work will have a purpose.

JOHN:
Reasons won’t fill anybody’s stomach. We’re not beggars. We can’t eat fish heads. But our hearts aren’t made of stone, we feel for your loneliness. Your elbows want to rest on a family table. We’re poor people.

SHLINK:
I like everything, I can digest gravel.

JOHN:
It’s a small room. We’re already packed in like sardines.

SHLINK:
I can sleep on the floor, and a space half my length is good enough for me. I’m as happy as a child as long as my back’s protected from the wind. I’ll pay half the rent.

JOHN
: All right, I understand. You don’t want to wait out in the wind. You may share our roof.

MAE
comes in
: I’ve got to hurry downtown before dark.

JOHN:
You’re always gone when I need you. I’m taking this man in. He’s lonely. There’s room now that your son has run away. Shake hands with him.

MAE
: Our home was on the prairies.

SHLINK:
I know.

JOHN
: What are you doing in the corner?

MAE:
I’m making up my bed under the stairs.

JOHN:
Where’s your bundle?

SHLINK:
I have nothing. I’ll sleep on the stairs, ma’am. I won’t intrude. My hand will never touch you. I know the skin on it is yellow.

MAE
coldly
: I’ll give you mine.

SHLINK
: I don’t deserve it. I meant what I said. I know you didn’t mean your skin. Forgive me.

MAE
: I open the window over the stairs at night.
Goes out
.

JOHN
: She’s a good soul under that skin.

SHLINK
: God bless her. I’m a simple man, don’t expect words from my mouth. I’ve only teeth in it.

Chinese Hotel

The Morning of 24 August
Skinny, Baboon and Jane
.

SKINNY
in the doorway
: Aren’t you even thinking of starting a new business?

BABOON
lying in a hammock
,
shakes his head
: All the boss does is walk along the waterfront, checking the passengers on the ships bound for Tahiti. Some fellow has run off with his soul and his entire fortune, maybe to Tahiti. It’s him he’s looking for. He’s brought what was left of his belongings for safekeeping, down to the last cigar butt.
Referring to Jane
: And he’s been feeding this here free of charge for the last three weeks. He’s even taken the fellow’s sister in. What he means to do with her is a mystery to me. He often sits up all night, talking to her.

SKINNY:
You’ve let him put you out in the street, and now you feed him and his hangers-on too?

BABOON:
He makes a few dollars hauling coal, but he gives them to the fellow’s family; he’s taken up lodging with them, but he can’t live there, they don’t like having him around. That fellow really took him for a ride. He got himself a cheap trip to Tahiti and hung a tree trunk over the boss’s head that’s likely to come crashing down any minute;
because in five months at the most they’re going to drag him into court for selling the same lumber twice.

SKINNY:
And you bother to feed a wreck like that?

BABOON:
He had to have his little joke. A man like him can always get credit. If that fellow stays lost, the boss will be back at the top of the lumber business in three months.

JANE
half dressed
,
making up
: I’ve always thought I’d end up like this: in a Chinese flophouse.

BABOON:
You’ve no idea what’s in store for you.

Two voices are heard from behind a screen
.

MARY:
Why don’t you ever touch me? Why are you always wearing that smoky sack? I’ve got a suit for you, like other men wear. I can’t sleep; I love you.

JANE:
Pst! Listen! You can hear them again.

SHLINK
: I am unworthy. I don’t know anything about virgins. And I’ve been conscious of the smell of my race for years.

MARY
: Yes, it’s a bad smell. Yes, it’s bad.

SHLINK
: Why cut yourself in pieces like that? Look: My body is numb, it even affects my skin. Man’s skin in its natural state is too thin for this world, that’s why people do their best to make it thicker.
⁴
The method would be satisfactory if the growth could be stopped. A piece of leather, for instance, stays the way it is, but a man’s skin grows, it gets thicker and thicker.

MARY
: Is it because you can’t find an opponent?

SHLINK
: In the first stage a table has edges; later on, and that’s the nasty part of it, the same table is like rubber, but in the thick-skinned stage there’s neither table nor rubber.

MARY
: How long have you had this disease?

SHLINK:
Since I was a boy on the rowboats on the Yangtze Kiang. The Yangtze tortured the junks and the junks tortured us. There was a man who trampled our faces every time he stepped into the boat. At night we were too lazy to move our faces away. Somehow the man was never too lazy. We in turn had a cat to torture. She was drowned
while learning to swim, though she’d eaten the rats that were all over us. All those people had the disease.

MARY:
When were you on the Yangtze Kiang?

SHLINK:
We lay in the reeds in the early morning and felt the disease growing.

WORM
enters
: The wind has swallowed the fellow. There’s neither hide nor hair of him in all Chicago.

SHLINK:
You’d better get some sleep.
Steps out
. Still no news?

Shlink goes out; through the open door the sound of Chicago waking is heard
,
the shouts of the milkmen
,
the rumbling of meat waggons
.

MARY
: Chicago is waking up. The shouting of milkmen, the rumbling of meat waggons, the newspapers and the fresh morning air. It would be good to go away, it’s good to wash in water, there’s something good about the prairie and the asphalt.
⁵
Right now, for instance, there’s surely a cool wind in the prairies where we used to live.

BABOON
: Do you still know your shorter catechism, Jane? JANE
droning
: Things are getting worse, things are getting worse, things are getting worse.

They begin to straighten the room, pull up the blinds, and stand the sleeping mats up
.

MARY:
For my part, I’m a little out of breath. I want to sleep with a man and I don’t know how. Some women are like dogs, yellow and black ones. But I can’t do it. I’m all torn apart. These walls are like paper. You can’t breathe. You’ve got to set it all on fire. Where are the matches, a black box, to make the water come in. Oh, if I swim away, I’ll be in two parts, swimming in two different directions.

JANE
: Where has he gone?

BABOON:
He’s looking into the faces of all the people who are leaving town because Chicago’s too cruel.

JANE:
There’s an east wind. The Tahiti-bound ships are weighing anchor.

Same Hotel

A month later, 19 or 20 September
A filthy bedroom. A hall. A glass-enclosed bar. Worm, George Garga, Manky and Baboon
.

WORM
from the hall towards the bar
: He never sailed after all. The harpoon is in deeper than we thought. We thought the earth had swallowed him up. But now he’s in Shlink’s room, licking his wounds.

GARGA
in the bedroom
: That dog Shlink. ‘In my dreams I call him my infernal bridegroom.
⁶
We are parted from bed and board, he has no room any more. His little bride smokes stogies, and tucks money away in her stocking.’ That’s me!
Laughs
.

MANKY
in the bar behind the glass partition
: Life is strange. I knew a man who was really tops, but he loved a woman. Her family was starving. He had two thousand dollars, but he let them starve before his eyes. Because with those two thousand dollars he loved the woman, without them he couldn’t get her. That was infamous, but he can’t be held responsible.

GARGA:
‘Behold, I am a sinner. I loved deserts, burnt orchards, run-down shops, and hot drinks.
⁷
You are mistaken. I am a little man.’ I’m through with Mr Shlink from Yokohama.

BABOON
: Take that lumber dealer. He never had any heart. But one day a passion made him wreck his whole lumber business. And now he’s hauling coal down there. He had the whole neighbourhood by the throat.

WORM:
We took him in the way you might take in an exhausted pedigree dog. But now by some stroke of luck his lost bone has turned up again, and if he won’t let it go our patience will be at an end.

GARGA
: ‘One day I’ll be his widow. That day, I know, has already been marked on the calendar. And I in clean underwear shall walk behind his corpse, swinging my legs lustily in the warm sun.’
⁸

MARY
enters with a lunch basket
: George.

GARGA
: Who’s that?
Recognizing her
. Good God! You look like a soiled rag!

MARY
: I know.

WORM
in the direction of the bar
: He’s dead drunk. And now his sister has come to see him. He’s told her that she’s soiled. Where’s the old man?

BABOON
: He’s coming today. I’ve brought Jane. For bait, I suppose. There won’t be any punches pulled in this fight.