Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (31 page)

The war’s still hungry. So enlist!

9

It is the seventeenth year of the great war of faith. Germany has lost more than half her inhabitants. Those who survive the bloodbath are killed off by terrible epidemics. Once fertile areas are ravaged by famine, wolves roam the burnt-out towns. In autumn 1634 we find Courage in the Fichtelgebirge, off the main axis of the Swedish armies. The winter this year is early and harsh. Business is bad, so that there is nothing to do but beg. The cook gets a letter from Utrecht and is sent packing

Outside a semi-dilapidated parsonage
.

Grey morning in early winter. Gusts of wind. Mother Courage and the cook in shabby sheepskins, drawing the cart
.

THE COOK
: It’s all dark, nobody up yet.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Except it’s parson’s house. Have to crawl out of bed to ring bells. Then he’ll have hot soup.

THE COOK
: What from when whole village is burnt, we seen it.

MOTHER COURAGE
: It’s lived in, though, dog was barking.

THE COOK
: S’pose parson’s got, he’ll give nowt.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Maybe if we sing….

THE COOK
: I’ve had enough.
Abruptly:
Got a letter from Utrecht saying mother died of cholera and inn’s mine. Here’s letter if you don’t believe me. No business of yours the way aunty goes on about my mode of existence, but have a look.

MOTHER COURAGE
reads the letter:
Lamb, I’m tired too of
always being on the go. I feel like butcher’s dog, dragging meat round customers and getting nowt off it. I got nowt left to sell, and folk got nowt left to buy nowt with. Saxony a fellow in rags tried landing me a stack of old books for two eggs, Wiirttemberg they wanted to swap their plough for a titchy bag of salt. What’s to plough for? Nowt growing no more, just brambles. In Pomerania villages are s’posed to have started in eating the younger kids, and nuns have been caught sticking folk up.

THE COOK
: World’s dying out.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Sometimes I sees meself driving through hell with me cart selling brimstone, or across heaven with packed lunches for hungry souls. Give me my kids what’s left, let’s find some place they ain’t shooting, and I’d like a few more years undisturbed.

THE COOK
: You and me could get that inn going, Courage, think it over. Made up me mind in the night, I did: back to Utrecht with or without you, and starting today.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Have to talk to Kattrin. That’s a bit quick for me; I’m against making decisions all freezing cold and nowt inside you. Kattrin!
Kattrin climbs out of the cart
. Kattrin, got something to tell you. Cook and I want to go to Utrecht. He’s been left an inn there. That’d be a settled place for you, let you meet a few people. Lots of ’em respect somebody mature, looks ain’t everything. I’d like it too. I get on with cook. Say one thing for him, got a head for business. We’d have our meals for sure, not bad, eh? And your own bed too; like that, wouldn’t you? Road’s no life really. God knows how you might finish up. Lousy already, you are. Have to make up our minds, see, we could move with the Swedes, up north, they’re somewhere up that way.
She points to the left
. Reckon that’s fixed, Kattrin.

THE COOK
: Anna, I got something private to say to you.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Get back in cart, Kattrin.
Kattrin climbs back
.

THE COOK
: I had to interrupt, cause you don’t understand, far as I can see. I didn’t think there was need to say it, sticks out a
mile. But if it don’t, then let me tell you straight, no question of taking her along, not on your life. You get me, eh.
Kattrin sticks her head out of the cart behind them and listens
.

MOTHER COURAGE
: You mean I’m to leave Kattrin back here?

THE COOK
: Use your imagination. Inn’s got no room. It ain’t one of the sort got three bar parlours. Put our backs in it we two’ll get a living, but not three, no chance of that. She can keep cart.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Thought she might find husband in Utrecht.

THE COOK
: Go on, make me laugh. Find a husband, how? Dumb and that scar on top of it. And at her age?

MOTHER COURAGE
: Don’t talk so loud.

THE COOK
: Loud or soft, no getting over facts. And that’s another reason why I can’t have her in the inn. Customers don’t want to be looking at that all the time. Can’t blame them.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Shut your big mouth. I said not so loud.

THE COOK
: Light’s on in parson’s house. We can try singing.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Cooky, how’s she to pull the cart on her own? War scares her. She’ll never stand it. The dreams she must have … I hear her nights groaning. Mostly after a battle. What’s she seeing in those dreams, I’d like to know. She’s got a soft heart. Lately I found she’d got another hedgehog tucked away what we’d run over.

THE COOK
: Inn’s too small.
Calls out:
Ladies and gentlemen, domestic staff and other residents! We are now going to give you a song concerning Solomon, Julius Caesar and other famous personages what had bad luck. So’s you can see we’re respectable folk, which makes it difficult to carry on, particularly in winter.
They sing:

You saw sagacious Solomon

You know what came of him.

To him complexities seemed plain.

He cursed the hour that gave birth to him

And saw that everything was vain.

How great and wise was Solomon!

The world however didn’t wait

But soon observed what followed on.

It’s wisdom that had brought him to this state –

How fortunate the man with none!

Yes, the virtues are dangerous stuff in this world, as this fine song proves, better not to have them and have a pleasant life and breakfast instead, hot soup for instance. Look at me: I haven’t any but I’d like some. I’m a serving soldier but what good did my courage do me in all them battles, nowt, here I am starving and better have been shit-scared and stayed at home. For why?

You saw courageous Caesar next

You know what he became.

They deified him in his life

Then had him murdered just the same.

And as they raised the fatal knife

How loud he cried: You too, my son!

The world however didn’t wait

But soon observed what followed on.

It’s courage that had brought him to that state.

How fortunate the man with none!

Sotto voce:
Don’t even look out.
Aloud:
Ladies and gentlemen, domestic staff and other inmates! All right, you may say, gallantry never cooked a man’s dinner, what about trying honesty? You can eat all you want then, or anyhow not stay sober. How about it?

You heard of honest Socrates

The man who never lied:

They weren’t so grateful as you’d think

Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried

And handed him the poisoned drink.

How honest was the people’s noble son!

The world however didn’t wait

But soon observed what followed on.

It’s honesty that brought him to that state.

How fortunate the man with none!

Ah yes, they say, be unselfish and share what you’ve got, but how about if you got nowt? It’s all very well to say the dogooders have a hard time, but you still got to have something. Aye, unselfishness is a rare virtue, cause it just don’t pay.

Saint Martin couldn’t bear to see

His fellows in distress.

He met a poor man in the snow

And shared his cloak with him, we know.

Both of them therefore froze to death.

His place in Heaven was surely won!

The world however didn’t wait

But soon observed what followed on.

Unselfishness had brought him to that state.

How fortunate the man with none!

That’s how it is with us. We’re respectable folk, stick together, don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t burn places down. And all the time you might say we’re sinking lower and lower, and it’s true what the song says, and soup is few and far between, and if we weren’t like this but thieves and murderers I dare say we’d be eating our fill. For virtues aren’t their own reward, only wickednesses are, that’s how the world goes and it didn’t ought to.

Here you can see respectable folk

Keeping to God’s own laws.

So far he hasn’t taken heed.

You who sit safe and warm indoors

Help to relieve our bitter need!

How virtuously we had begun!

The world however didn’t wait

But soon observed what followed on.

It’s fear of God that brought us to that state.

How fortunate the man with none!

VOICE
from above:
Hey, you there! Come on up! There’s hot soup if you want.

MOTHER COURAGE
: Lamb, me stomach won’t stand nowt. ‘Tain’t that it ain’t sensible, what you say, but is that your last word? We got on all right.

THE COOK
: Last word. Think it over.

MOTHER COURAGE
: I’ve nowt to think. I’m not leaving her here.

THE COOK
: That’s proper senseless, nothing I can do about it though. I’m not a brute, just the inn’s a small one. So now we better get on up, or there’ll be nowt here either and wasted time singing in the cold.

MOTHER COURAGE
: I’ll get Kattrin.

THE COOK
: Better bring a bit back for her. Scare them if they sees three of us coming.
Exeunt both. Kattrin climbs out of the cart with a bundle. She looks around to see if the other two have gone. Then she takes an old pair of trousers of the cook’s and a skirt of her mother’s, and lays them side by side on one of the wheels, so that they are easily seen. She has finished and is picking up her bundle to go, when Mother Courage comes back from the house
.

MOTHER COURAGE
with a plate of soup:
Kattrin! Will you stop there? Kattrin! Where you off to with that bundle? Has devil himself taken you over?
She examines the bundle
. She’s packed her things. You been listening? I told him nowt doing, Utrecht, his rotten inn, what’d we be up to there? You and me, inn’s no place for us. Still plenty to be got out of war.
She sees the trousers and the skirt
. You’re plain stupid. S’pose I’d seen that, and you gone away?
She holds Kattrin back as she tries to break away
. Don’t you start thinking it’s on your account I given him the push. It was cart, that’s it. Catch me leaving my cart I’m used to, it ain’t you, it’s for cart. We’ll go off in t’other direction, and we’ll throw cook’s stuff out so he finds it, silly man.
She climbs in and throws out a few other articles in the direction of the trousers
. There, he’s out of our business now, and I ain’t having nobody else in, ever. You and me’ll carry on now. This
winter will pass, same as all the others. Get hitched up, it looks like snow.

They both harness themselves to the cart, then wheel it round and drag it off. When the cook arrives he looks blankly at his kit
.

10

During the whole of 1635 Mother Courage and her daughter Kattrin travel over the high roads of central Germany, in the wake of the increasingly bedraggled armies

High road
.

Mother Courage and Kattrin are pulling the cart. They pass a peasant’s house inside which there is a voice singing
.

THE VOICE
:

The roses in our arbour

Delight us with their show:

They have such lovely flowers

Repaying all our labour

After the summer showers.

Happy are those with gardens now:

They have such lovely flowers.

When winter winds are freezing

As through the woods they blow

Our home is warm and pleasing.

We fixed the thatch above it

With straw and moss we wove it.

Happy are those with shelter now

When winter winds are freezing.

Mother Courage and Kattrin pause to listen, then continue pulling
.

11

January 1636. The emperor’s troops are threatening the Protestant town of Halle. The stone begins to speak. Mother Courage loses her daughter and trudges on alone. The war is a long way from being over

The cart is standing, much the worse for wear, alongside a peasant’s house with a huge thatched roof, hacking on a wall of rock. It is night
.

An ensign and three soldiers in heavy armour step out of the wood
.

THE ENSIGN
: I want no noise now. Anyone shouts, shove your pike into him.

FIRST SOLDIER
: Have to knock them up, though, if we’re to find a guide.

THE ENSIGN
: Knocking sounds natural. Could be a cow bumping the stable wall.

The soldiers knock on the door of the house. A peasant woman opens it. They stop her mouth. Two soldiers go in
.

MAN’S VOICE
within:
What is it?

The soldiers bring out a peasant and his son
.

THE ENSIGN
pointing at the cart, where Kattrin’s head has appeared:
There’s another one.
A soldier drags her out
. Anyone else live here beside you lot?

THE PEASANTS
: This is our son. And she’s dumb. Her mother’s gone into town to buy stuff. For their business, cause so
many people’s getting out and selling things cheap. They’re just passing through. Canteen folk.

THE ENSIGN
: I’m warning you, keep quiet, or if there’s the least noise you get a pike across your nut. Now I want someone to come with us and show us the path to the town.
Points to the young peasant
. Here, you.