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) (52 page)

BAAL
: How come?

ECKART
: I’ve got a photo of Marseilles. Three dingy ellipses. Are you coming?

BAAL
: Possibly. I don’t know yet.

A version of the scene as we have it then begins, with Baal’s account of Mäch’s party and then Johannes’s entrance. Johanna, however, is now fifteen: two years younger. It is not specified what ballad Baal sings. Eckart having already made his appeal does not make it again, but before singing Baal says:

Today, my friends, I was made an offer which no doubt has erotic motives. Kirsch, Luise. The man in question is about to move off. He’s just smoking his last cigar and drinking his last kirsch. I’m probably going to say ‘not yet’. Drink up, Emilie. Obviously I’m in the market for counter-offers. I imagine that poses a problem for you, Emilie.

EMILIE
: I don’t know what’s the matter with you today …

After the driver Horgauer has kissed Emilie the ending is wholly changed. The taxi-drivers applaud and Johanna tells Baal he
should be ashamed of himself, as in our version. Then Emilie tells Johanna:

Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ve been criticized for not having enough temperament for this kind of place. But perhaps I’ve shown that my dirtiness has been underestimated.

ECKART
: Bill!

BAAL
: Emmi, you haven’t paid. You can relax. It’s over now. Forget it.

ECKART
: I’m going.

BAAL
: Where?

ECKART
: South of France. Are you coming too?

BAAL
: Can’t you put it off?

ECKART
: No, I don’t want to do that. Are you coming or not?

BAAL
: No.

64a Holzstrasse

Scene 4. Garage.

A condensed conflation of scenes [4 i] and [4 ii]. The tone of Baal’s dialogue with Johanna is drier. She has no remorse, and is only concerned about getting dressed. The Porter’s Wife irrupts after Baal’s ‘Give me a kiss’, and berates him in much the same shocked words as the landlady of [4 ii]. Then back to the finish of [4 i], with Baal saying:

Off home with you! Tell Johnny Schmidt we just came in for five minutes because it was raining.

JOHANNA
: Tell Johnny Schmidt it was raining.
Exit
.

BAAL
: Johanna! There she goes.

– and no music.

Two Years later: Baal Discovers a (to him) New Kind of Love

Scene 5. Garage.

On the wall a nude drawing of a woman. Baal arrives with Miss Barger
.

BAAL
: My workshop.

BARGER
: Excuse me, but I’m going back down.

BAAL
: You can’t just do that.

BARGER
: They’ll find me here. There was a man who followed us when you came up and spoke to me outside.

BAAL
: Nobody’ll find you here.

BARGER
: Out there you told me you were a photographer.

BAAL
: That’s what I said out there, wasn’t it?

BARGER
: Then I’m going.

BAAL
: There was something particular I wanted to ask you.

BARGER
: No.

BAAL
: What are you scared of all of a sudden?

BARGER
: I’m not the least bit scared.

BAAL
: Oh. That’s a drawing I did to help make matters clear. If you don’t like it we’ll take it down. But you see, I know you inside and out; there’s no mystery. There!
He scratches out the drawing with his knife
.

BARGER
: Holy mother of God!
Screams
.

BAAL
: What are you screaming about? Don’t make such a noise. They’ll hear you next door. Is it the knife?
Picks up a bottle
. Nothing left in there. No air left either. As for the meat! The meat’s pathetic. It’s not meat at all, just skin and a couple of fibres. I don’t call that meat. Altogether this planet’s a washout. A piece of impertinence. All fixed up for visitors. With mountains. But there aren’t any mountains. That’s what the valleys are for. Stuff the one into the other and the stupid planet’s flat again. There, now you’ve stopped.

BARGER
: Shall I stay with you?

BAAL
: What?

BARGER
: Your drawing’s very ugly. But you look discontented. Me too. When I was fourteen the butcher next door wouldn’t even let me sweep the snow off his pavement because I was too ugly. Lately men have taken to turning round and looking at me in the street; what I’ve got won’t last long; I think I ought to make use of it. I don’t think it has to be a man in a smart hat. But it’s no good having something that isn’t made use of.

BAAL
: Now could that surprising way of talking be because she’s scared of death?

BARGER
: Scared of death? Have you had ideas of that sort?

BAAL
: Don’t get up. You don’t suit.
Smokes
. Get your voice in operation again. It was a great moment. I’m abandoning hope. Seven years in this room, eighteen months’ conscious abstention from food, washing out my mind with unadulterated consumption of alcohol. Never in my life having done the least little thing, I’m on the verge of entering new territory.
This place of mine is all worn out. Mostly by systematic overestimation of everything, I suppose. I can see them saying that at the time of my death table and wall had been utterly worn away. And I still have to resolve the permanent problem of my life: the devising of an evil deed.

BARGER
: It isn’t easy, but I’m sure I can understand you if I really try.

BAAL
: I give up. You talk now. Nobody shall say I neglected anything. You’ve got a woman’s face. In your case one could perhaps cause seven pounds of disaster, where with most women one can’t even cause two. How old are you?

BARGER
: Twenty-four in June.

BAAL
: How many men have you had in your life?

Barger says nothing
.

BAAL
: Then you’ve got that behind you. Any relatives?

BARGER
: Yes, a mother.

BAAL
: Is she old?

BARGER
: She’s sixty.

BAAL
: Then she’s got used to evil.

BARGER
: They oughtn’t to blame me. I can’t support myself.

BAAL
: You’ll learn.

BARGER
: You’re asking an awful lot. You’re so ugly it’s terrifying. What’s your name?

BAAL
: Baal.

Baal Earns Money for the Last Time.

Scene
6.
The Prickly Pear nightclub.

This is scene [7], still the ‘Small, swinish café’, with the difference that the parts of the Soubrette and her accompanist have been considerably written up, that the text of Baal’s song is not given, and that when Baal escapes through the lavatory window it is (according to the accompanist) to go to the Black Forest, where a postcard from Eckart at the beginning of the scene has asked him to join him.

Baal Abandons the Mother of his Unborn Child.

Scene 7. Flat land, sky, and evening.

This is approximately [12], but without reference to Baal’s taking Eckart’s women, or having been in prison, and without the
two men’s wrestling at the end of the scene. It is all shorter, and it appears to come as a surprise to Baal that Sophie is pregnant:

BAAL
: Pregnant? That’s the last straw. What do you think you’re up to? And now I suppose I’ll have you hanging round my neck?

ECKART
: On principle I don’t interfere in your exceedingly shabby human relationships. But at least when a third party is present they should be conducted with some semblance of fairness.

BAAL
: Are you going to abandon me on her account? That’d be just like you. She can clear out. She’s going downhill. I’m as patient as a lamb. But I can’t change my skin.

SOPHIE
: You see, Baal, I didn’t need to tell you before. It’s been slower than I thought, mostly because you didn’t like me all that much. I’m in the fourth month.

ECKART
: She’s showing some vestige of common sense. Once again: I refuse to let my feelings get involved, but I’ll wait here till it’s all settled.

Sophie then starts begging them to stay, for an hour, for half an hour. She tells Baal: ‘Oh yes, it’s a beautiful evening, and you like it. But you won’t like it when you have to die without another soul there.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ says Baal. And as Sophie shouts that they are degenerate beasts Baal tells Eckart, ‘I absolutely insist that you and I leave now.’

In the Years 1907-10 We Find Baal and Eckart Tramping across South Germany.

Scene 8. Countryside. Morning. Wind.

Baal – Eckart

BAAL
: The wind’s getting up again. It’s the only thing you get free in this country, but all it does now is touch my skin. It isn’t strong enough for my ears these days. Your fugue hasn’t made much progress either.

ECKART
: The sounds my fugue is based on are no worse than most. As for the mathematics of it, it’s more mathematical than the wind. The landscape keeps getting more mathematical. It’s humanity’s only prospect. There’s already a corrugated iron barn over there; tomorrow there’ll be a
steel-framed building. The big cities are spreading their standardized limbs across the old landscape. Between all those tall buildings the wind will be measurable.

BAAL
: We’re the last people to see the flat plain. In forty-nine years the word ‘forest’ won’t be needed. Wood will cease to be used. Mankind will disappear too, if it comes to that. But to stick to our own lifetime, by the time your big cities are built you’ll be delirious. Instead of those tall constructions you’ll see rats.

ECKART
: By then it will take entire typhoons to make you hear the slightest noise.

BAAL
: My friend, I want to live without a skin. You’re really an evil man. Both of us are. Unfortunately. Here’s a poem I’ve written.

He then reads ‘The Drowned Girl’, as in [15], after which:

ECKART
: You don’t seem to have lost much of your power.

BAAL
: Everything there is to say about life on this planet could be expressed in a single sentence of average length. That sentence I shall some time or other formulate, certainly before I die.

Scene 9. Countryside.

Night. Baal asleep. Eckart looking at him
.

ECKART
: This man Baal worries me. He’s not light enough any longer. I’m an objective kind of person. It would be simple enough to pick up a piece of chalk and establish the graph of his life on all the house walls. When I think about it, the only thing that keeps me is the fact that his character’s if anything getting harder. All the same, I’m the last man to want to witness the enfeeblement that’s bound to accompany his decline and death. I’m not a vindictive character. Just lately he’s been keeping a very sharp eye on me. It’s difficult to tell if he’s genuinely asleep now, for instance. There are no fields left for him to graze down. It’s starting to rain again; I’d better cover him up.

In the Year 1911 Baal Succumbs to his Predestined Disposition to Murder.

Scene 10. ‘Pub.’

Autumn evening. Eckart, Emilie Mäch, and Johann Schmidt in black
.

This is essentially [18], with the difference that the waitress is Sophie and that Emilie is present, with a good deal to say. Watzmann is cut, his verse about ‘When the hatred and venom’ from the 1919 version being now hummed by Emilie. There are no other verses apart from those of the ‘Ballad of the Adventurers’ sung by Baal.

It starts with Johann asking, ‘When’s Baal coming?’ Then Eckart:

It’s become increasingly clear to me in these last few years that great times are in store for us. The countryside is going to ruin. I’ve seen photographs of buildings on Manhattan Island which indicate a vast power in the human race. Having reached a high point of insensitivity, mankind is setting to work to create an age of happiness. The years in question will be limited in number; what matters is to be there. For a few weeks I’ve felt myself becoming increasingly restless.

EMILIE
: When’s Baal coming?

They discuss who has any money to pay for drinks. Emilie’s husband has died. They discuss Baal, before his entrance, somewhat as in [18]. Emilie, who says she has ‘come to see the golden boy eight years later … You know, I’d feel there was something missing if he didn’t somehow or other go completely to pieces,’ asks Eckart if he is abandoning him. Eckart says: ‘Yes, it’s already written on my face. It’s obvious to everybody. Only he doesn’t realize it yet. Although I keep telling him. As I did today,’ then breaks off as Baal arrives.

The first exchanges are much as in [18], but Baal then asks the waitress, ‘Is that you, Sophie?’ Johann answers:

Yes, that’s her all right. How are you? I’m doing very nicely. It’s a very good atmosphere here. Beer.

SOPHIE
: Beer.

After Eckart’s outburst, where he says he is going back to the forests, Baal says ‘Are you off again? I don’t believe it, you know. I feel perfectly well myself.’ Eckart then tells the story of the man who thought he was well, as told by the Beggar in the Bolleboll-Gougou
scene [13], up to the final ‘Did he get well?’ (here asked by Baal). ‘No.’

Johann(es) makes none of his long melancholy speeches, but when he for the second time says, ‘It really is a very good atmosphere here,’ he adds, ‘Like in the old days.’ Emilie thereupon hums her verse, and Baal turns to Eckart:

That girl Johanna Schreiber was with us then.

EMILIE
: Oh, the one who killed herself. She’s still stuck in a culvert somewhere. They never found her. He’s got a wife now, and a nice little coal-merchant’s business.