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) (22 page)

WORM:
Don’t talk like a fool.
Mocking him
. He thinks we’ve been talking about the mildew in the floor.

SKINNY:
I love you, lady. You have a way of holding out your hand…

WORM:
Christ! He’s lost his bed, and he wants a woman to share it.

SKINNY:
Come with me. I’ll work for you. Come with me.

BABOON
also comes forward
: Pitiful! There are all sorts of women, black and golden yellow and white like apples! Black women. Straight as a die from hip to foot! Full thighs, by God, not chicken legs like this! Oh Papua! Forty dollars for Papua!

SHLINK
appears in the doorway and turns to call offstage
: Yes, that’s all.

WORM
to the Baboon
: You’re a barbarian. Ungrateful! The lady’s innocent. Does she smoke a pipe? She’s inexperienced, but who’s to say she has no fire? Forty dollars, and all for the lady.

SKINNY
: As much as you want for her!

BABOON
: Without make-up, naturally, uncooked, the naked flesh. Ah, the tropics! Seventy dollars for the chick!

MARY
: Protect me, Mr Shlink.

SHLINK
: I’m ready to protect you.

MARY
: Do you think I should go with him?

SHLINK
: Here nobody loves you. He loves you.

GARGA
has entered
: Do you like being for sale? There’s a lot of lumber here, and now they’ve put a few pounds of flesh up for auction! And isn’t jiu-jitsu known as the gay and easy art?

SHLINK
walks up to Garga
,
troubled
: But aren’t you making things too easy for yourself?

MARY
to Garga
: You should have helped me. Come with me, George, this minute. Something terrible has happened. Even if I go away now, this thing may not be over. You must be blind not to see that you’re losing.

In the background
,
the sound of two guitars and a drum. Salvation Army girls sing
: ‘Christ receiveth sinful men.’

GARGA
: I can see you’re ready to lose yourself. It’s the bog that’s sucking you in. Here’s something for you, Mary. The Salvation Army! Marching in here for you.
He gets up from the table and goes to the rear
. Hey! Salvation Army! This way!

WORM
to Mary
: A river has drained off here, and at night the place is haunted by the ghosts of drowned rats. Go home to your parents!

GARGA
coming back
: Clean this joint up. Get rid of that whisky!
Shlink starts to do so
,
but Mary does it for him
. Come in, you people.

Shlink, bowing low, opens the wooden gate. A young Salvation Army preacher enters, followed by two girls with guitars and an old sinner with a drum
.

PREACHER
: Did you want me?

WORM
: Hallelujah! The Salvation Army!

GARGA
: I don’t think much of what you people are doing. You could use a house though. Here, take this one.

PREACHER
: The Lord will bless you.

GARGA
: Maybe.
To Shlink
: Did you inherit this house and these papers?

SHLINK
: No.

GARGA:
You worked forty years for them?

SHLINK:
Worked my fingers to the bone. I never slept more than four hours.

GARGA:
Were you poor when you came over?

SHLINK:
I was seven. I’ve worked ever since.

GARGA
: You don’t own anything else?

SHLINK:
Not a thing.

GARGA
to the preacher
: I’ll give you this man’s property on one condition. For the sake of the orphans and drunks whose shelter this will be, you must let me spit in your insufferable face.

PREACHER:
I’m a man of God.

GARGA:
Then take the consequences.

PREACHER:
I have no right.

GARGA:
Snow falls on the orphans, the drunks die like flies, and you take care of your face.

PREACHER:
I’m ready. I’ve kept my face clean; I’m twenty-one. You must have your reasons I beg you to understand me: please ask the lady to turn around.

MARY:
I’ll despise you if you accept.

PREACHER:
I expect that. There are better faces than mine. But none too good for this.

GARGA:
Spit in his face, Shlink, if you please.

MARY:
This isn’t right, George. I don’t like it.

GARGA:
A tooth for a tooth, if you please.

Shlink steps coolly up to the Preacher and spits in his face. Worm bleats like a goat. The reformed sinner plays a drum roll
.

PREACHER
shaking his fists, in tears
: Excuse me.

GARGA
throws the papers at him
: Here is the deed of gift. For the Salvation Army. And this is for you.
Gives him his gun
. Now get out, you swine!

PREACHER:
I thank you in the name of my mission.
He leaves, bowing awkwardly. The hymn singing fades with striking speed
.

GARGA
: You spoiled my fun. Your brutality has no equal.

I’ll keep some of the money. But I’m not staying here, because this is the point of the whole thing, Mr Shlink from Yokohama: I’m going to Tahiti.

MARY:
You’re yellow, George. When the preacher left, you winced. I saw you. How desperate you are!

GARGA:
I came here peeled to the bones. Trembling from the spiritual debauches of the last two weeks. I spat in his face many times. Each time he swallowed it. I despise him. It’s all over.

MARY:
Disgusting!

GARGA
: You left me in the lurch. A tooth for a tooth.

MARY
: And now you’re going to carry on the fight with me? You never knew where to stop. God will punish you. I want nothing from you, only my peace.

GARGA:
And to find bread for your parents in a whore’s bed. And to offer your horse’s smell for sale and say: It’s not me! That you may prosper in bed and dwell long upon the earth.
He exits with the others
.

MARY:
I don’t really understand you, Mr Shlink. But you can go in all four directions, while others have only one. A man has many possibilities, hasn’t he? I can see that a man has many possibilities.
Shlink shrugs his shoulders
,
turns around and leaves. Mary follows him
.

Living-room of the Garga Family

22 August, after 7 p.m
.
A filthy attic. In the rear a curtain hangs in front of a small balcony.
John Garga and his wife Mae. Manky is singing a song
.

JOHN
: Something has happened here that’s hard to talk about.

MANKY
: They say your son George is mixed up in the kind of
deal that never ends. They say he’s mixed up with a yellow man. The yellow man has done something to him.

MAE:
We can’t interfere.

JOHN:
If he’s been fired, we can eat grass.

MAE:
Ever since he was a little boy, he’s had to have things his way.

MANKY:
They say you shouldn’t have hired out your daughter, Mary, to this yellow man.

MAE:
Yes, Mary’s been gone two weeks now too.

MANKY:
People must be beginning to see that it all hangs together.

MAE
: When our daughter left, she told us she’d been offered a job in a lumber business. Ten dollars a week and only linen to attend to.

MANKY:
Linen for a yellow man!

JOHN:
In cities like this nobody can see the next house. When people read a newspaper, they never know what it means.

MANKY:
Or when they buy a ticket.

JOHN
: When they ride in these electric trolleys, it probably gives them …

MANKY:
Stomach cancer.

JOHN
: Nobody knows. Here in the States wheat grows summer and winter.

MANKY:
But suddenly, without any warning, there’s no dinner for you. You walk in the street with your children, observing the fourth commandment to the letter, and suddenly you’ve only got your son’s or daughter’s hand in your hand, and your son and daughter themselves have sunk into a sudden gravel pit.

JOHN:
Hello, who’s there?

Garga stands in the doorway
.

GARGA
: Still chewing the fat?

JOHN
: Have you finally got the money for the two weeks?

GARGA
: Yes.

JOHN:
Have you still got your job or not? A new jacket! Looks like you’ve been well paid for something? Huh?
There’s your mother, George.
To Mae
: Why are you standing there like Lot’s wife? Your son’s here. Our son has come to take us out to dinner at the Metropolitan Bar. Your darling son looks pale, doesn’t he? Slightly drunk maybe. Come on, Manky, let’s go. We’ll smoke our pipes on the stairs!

Both go out
.

MAE:
Tell me, George, are you mixed up with somebody?

GARGA:
Has somebody been here?

MAE:
No.

GARGA
: I’ve got to go away.

MAE
: Where?

GARGA:
Any place. You always get scared at once.

MAE:
Don’t go away.

GARGA:
I’ve got to. One man insults another. That’s disagreeable for the man who gets insulted. But under certain circumstances the first man is willing to give up a whole lumber business for the pleasure of insulting the other. That’s even more disagreeable for the second man. Maybe when he’s been insulted like that, he’d better leave town. But since that might be too pleasant for him, even that may no longer be possible. In any case, he’s got to be free.

MAE:
Aren’t you free?

GARGA
: No.
Pause
. We’re none of us free. It starts in the morning with our coffee, and we’re beaten if we play the fool. A mother salts her children’s food with her tears and washes their shirts with her sweat. And their future is secure until the Ice Age, and the root sits in their heart. And when you grow up and want to do something, body and soul, they pay you, brainwash you, label you, and sell you at a high price, and you’re not even free to fail.

MAE
: But tell me what’s getting you down.

GARGA
: You can’t help me.

MAE:
I can help you. Don’t run away from your father. How are we going to live?

GARGA
giving her money
: I’ve been fired. But here’s enough money for six months.

MAE:
We’re worried about not hearing from your sister. We hope she’s still got her job.

GARGA
: I don’t know. I advised her to leave the yellow man.

MAE:
I know you won’t let me talk to you the way other mothers do.

GARGA:
Oh, all those other people, the many good people, all the many other good people who stand at their lathes and earn their bread and make all the good tables for all the many good bread eaters; all the many good table makers and bread eaters with their many good families, so many, whole armies of them, and nobody spits in their soup, and nobody sends them into the next world with a good kick in the pants, and no flood comes over them to the tune of ‘Stormy the night and the sea runs high’.
³

MAE
: Oh, George!

GARGA:
No! Don’t Oh, George me! I don’t like it, and I don’t want to hear it any more.

MAE:
You don’t want to hear it any more? But what about me? How am I to live? With these filthy walls and a stove that won’t last through the winter.

GARGA:
It’s plain as day, Mother. Nothing can last long now, neither the stove nor the walls.

MAE
: How can you say that? Are you blind?

GARGA
: And neither will the bread in the cupboard or the dress on your back, and neither will your daughter for that matter.

MAE:
Sure, go ahead and shout, so everybody can hear. How everything is useless and anything that takes an effort is too much and wears you down. But how am I to live? And I’ve still got so much time ahead of me.

GARGA:
If it’s as bad as all that, speak up. What makes it so bad?

MAE:
You know.

GARGA:
Yes, I know.

MAE:
But the way you say that! What do you think I said? I won’t have you looking at me like that. I gave you birth and fed you milk, I gave you bread and beat you, so don’t
look at me like that. A husband is what he wants to be, I won’t say a word to him. He has worked for us.

GARGA:
I want you to come with me.

MAE:
What’s that?

GARGA:
Come south with me. I’ll work, I can cut down trees. We’ll build a log cabin and you’ll cook for me. I need you terribly.

MAE:
Who are you saying that to? The wind? When you come back, you can come by and see where we spent our last days.
Pause
. When are you leaving?

GARGA:
Now.

MAE:
Don’t say anything to them. I’ll get your things together and put your bundle under the stairs.