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) (5 page)

MECH
drinking
: I’ll publish your poems. I’ll let the cinnamon logs float away, or do both.

EMILIE
to Mech
: You shouldn’t drink so much.

BAAL:
I haven’t got any shirts. I could use some white shirts.

MECH:
You’re not interested in the publishing deal?

BAAL:
But they’d have to be soft.

PILLER
ironic
: Oh, and what can I do for you?

EMILIE:
You write such wonderful poems, Mr Baal. So sensitive.

BAAL
to Emilie
: Won’t you play something on the harmonium?

Emilie plays
.

MECH:
I like eating to the harmonium.

EMILIE
to Baal
: Please don’t drink so much, Mr Baal.

BAAL
looks at Emilie
: Do you have forests of cinnamon floating for you, Mech? Butchered forests?

EMILIE:
You can drink as much as you like. I was only asking a favour.

PILLER:
Even your drinking shows promise.

BAAL
to Emilie
: Play higher up! You’ve got lovely arms.

Emilie stops playing and approaches the table
.

PILLER:
Apparently you don’t care for the music itself.

BAAL:
I can’t hear the music. You’re talking too much.

PILLER:
You’re a queer fish, Baal. I gather you don’t want to get published.

BAAL:
Don’t you trade in animals too, Mech?

MECH
: Do you object?

BAAL
stroking Emilie’s arm
: What’s my poetry to you?

MECH
: I wanted to do you a favour. Couldn’t you be peeling some more apples, Emilie?

PILLER
: He’s afraid of being sucked dry. – Haven’t you found a use for me yet?

BAAL
: Do you always wear wide sleeves, Emilie?

PILLER
: But now you really must stop drinking.

PSCHIERER
: Perhaps you ought to go easy on the alcohol. Full many a genius —

MECH
: Would you like to have a bath? Shall I have a bed made up for you? Have you forgotten anything?

PILLER
: Your shirts are floating away, Baal. Your poetry has floated off already.

BAAL
drinks
: I’m against monopolies. Go to bed, Mech.

MECH
has risen
: I delight in all the animals on God’s earth, but this is one animal you can’t do business with. Come, Emilie! Shall we go, ladies and gentlemen?

All have risen indignantly
.

CRIES
: Sir! Astounding! That’s the…!

PSCHIERER
: I am shattered, Mr Mech …

PILLER
: Your poetry has a malicious streak.

BAAL
to Johannes
: What is the gentleman’s name?

JOHANNES
: Piller.

BAAL
: Well, Piller,
you
can send me some old newspapers.

PILLER
leaving
: You mean nothing to me. You mean nothing to literature.

All go
.

SERVANT
entering
: Your coat, sir.

Starlit night. At the window Baal and the adolescent Johannes. They look at the sky
.

BAAL
: When you lie stretched out on the grass at night you
can feel in your bones that the earth is round and that we’re flying, and that there are beasts on this star that devour its plants. It’s one of the smaller stars.

JOHANNES
: Do you know anything about astronomy?

BAAL
: No.

Silence
.

JOHANNES
: I’m in love with a girl. She’s the most innocent creature alive, but I saw her once in a dream being made love to by a juniper tree. That is to say, her white body lay stretched out on the juniper tree and the gnarled branches twisted about her. I haven’t been able to sleep since.

BAAL
: Have you ever seen her white body?

JOHANNES
: No. She’s innocent. Even her knees … There are degrees of innocence, don’t you think? And yet, there are times when I hold her, just for a second, at night, and she trembles like a leaf, but only at night. But I haven’t the strength to do it. She’s seventeen.

BAAL
: In your dream, did she like love?

JOHANNES
: Yes.

BAAL
: She wears clean linen, a snow-white petticoat between her knees? Bed her and she may turn into a heap of flesh without a face.

JOHANNES
: You’re saying what I always felt. I thought I was a coward. I can see now that you also think intercourse is unclean.

BAAL
: That’s the grunting of the swine who are no good at it. When you embrace her virginal loins, the joy and fear of created man turns you into a god. As the juniper tree’s many roots are entwined within the earth, so are your limbs in bed. Blood flows and hearts beat.

JOHANNES
: But it’s punishable by law, and by one’s parents.

BAAL
: Your parents –
he reaches for his guitar
– they’re a thing of the past. How dare they open their mouths, filled with rotten teeth, to speak against love, which anybody may die of? If you can’t take love, there’s nothing left but vomit.
He tunes the guitar
.

JOHANNES
: Do you mean if I make her pregnant?

BAAL
striking chords on his guitar
: When the pale mild summer ebbs and they’re swollen with love like sponges, they turn back into beasts, evil and childish, shapeless with their fat stomachs and hanging breasts, their damp arms clinging like slimy tentacles, and their bodies collapse and grow heavy unto death. And with hideous shrieks as if they were bringing a new world into being, they yield a small fruit. They spew out with pain what they once sucked in with pleasure.
He plucks the strings
. You have to have teeth for it, then love is like biting into an orange, with the juice squirting into your teeth.

JOHANNES
: Your teeth are like an animal’s. They’re yellow and large, sinister.

BAAL
: And love is like putting your naked arm into a pond and letting it float with weeds between your fingers, like the pain in which the drunken tree groans and sings as the wild wind rides it, like drowning in wine on a hot day, her body surging like a cool wine into every crease of your skin, limbs soft as plants in the wind, and the weight of the collision to which you yield is like flying against a storm, and her body tumbles over you like cool pebbles. But love is also like a coconut, good while it is fresh but when the juice is gone and only the bitter flesh remains you have to spit it out.
He throws the guitar aside
. I’m sick of this hymn.

JOHANNES
: Then you think it’s something I ought to do, if it’s so wonderful?

BAAL
: I think it’s something
for you
to avoid, Johannes.

Morning. Lorry-drivers. Ekart at the back with Luise, the waitress. White clouds can be seen through the window
.

BAAL
talking to the lorry-drivers
: He threw me out of his nice clean room, because I threw up his wine. But his wife ran
after me, and in the evening we celebrated. I’m lumbered with her and sick of it.

DRIVERS
: She needs a good hiding … They’re randy as cats but stupider. Tell her to go and eat figs! … I always beat mine before I give her what she wants.

JOHANNES
enters with Johanna
: This is Johanna.

BALL
to the drivers, who go to the back
: I’ll give you a song later.

JOHANNA
: Johannes read me some of your poems.

BAAL
: Ah. How old are you?

JOHANNES
: She was seventeen in June.

JOHANNA
: I’m jealous. He does nothing but talk about you.

BAAL
: You’re in love with your Johannes. It’s spring. I’m waiting for Emilie … Better to love than make love.

JOHANNES
: I can understand your winning a man’s love, but how can you have any success with women?

Emilie enters quickly
.

BAAL
: Here she comes. And how are you, Emilie? Johannes is here with his fiancée. Sit down!

EMILIE
: How could you ask me to come here! A cheap bar, only fit for drunken louts! Typical of your taste.

BAAL
: Luise, a gin for the lady.

EMILIE
: Do you want to make a laughing stock of me?

BAAL
: No. You’ll drink. We’re all human.

EMILIE
: But you’re not.

BAAL
: How do you know?
He holds the glass out to Luise
. Don’t be so mean, Luise.
He takes hold of her
. You’re devilishly soft today, like a plum.

EMILIE
: How ill-bred you are!

BAAL
: Tell the world, darling.

JOHANNES
: It’s interesting here, I must say. Ordinary people. Drinking and amusing themselves. And then, those clouds in the window!

EMILIE
: He dragged you here too, I expect. For a view of the clouds.

JOHANNA
: Wouldn’t it be nicer to go for a walk in the meadows by the river, Johannes?

BAAL
: Nothing doing! Stay here!
He drinks
. The sky is
purple, particularly if you happen to be drunk. Beds on the other hand are white. To begin with. That’s where love is, between Heaven and Earth.
He drinks
. Why are you such cowards? The sky’s free, you feeble shadows! Full of bodies! Pale with love!

EMILIE
: You’ve had too much again and now you’re babbling. And with that bloody wonderful babble he drags you to his sty.

BAAL
: Sometimes –
drinks
– the sky is yellow. Full of vultures. Let’s all get drunk.
He looks under the table
. Who’s kicking my shins? Is it you, Luise? Ah, you, Emilie! Well, no matter. Drink up.

EMILIE
half rising
: I don’t know what’s wrong with you today. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come here after all.

BAAL
: Have you just noticed? You might as well stay now.

JOHANNA
: Don’t say things like that, Mr Baal.

BAAL
: You’ve a good heart, Johanna. You’ll never be unfaithful, will you?

DRIVER
winning
: Ace, you bastards! – Trumped!

SECOND DRIVER
: Keep going, the tart said, the worst’s over.
Laughter
. Tell her to go and eat figs.

THIRD DRIVER
: How could you betray me, as the lady said to the butler when she found him in bed with the maid.

JOHANNES
to Baal
: Because of Johanna. She’s a child.

JOHANNA
to Emilie
: Will you come with me? We can go together.

EMILIE
bursting into tears at the table
: I feel so ashamed now.

JOHANNA
putting her arm round Emilie
: I understand; it doesn’t matter.

EMILIE
: Don’t look at me like that. You’re still so young.

You don’t know anything yet.

BAAL
gets up forbiddingly
: Comedy, entitled Sisters in Hades!

He goes to the drivers, takes the guitar down from the wall and tunes it
.

JOHANNA
: He’s been drinking. He’ll regret it tomorrow.

EMILIE
: If only you knew. He’s always like this. And I love him.

BAAL
sings
:

Orge told me that:

In all the world the place he liked the best

Was not the grass mound where his loved ones rest

Was not the altar, nor some harlot’s room

Nor yet the warm white comfort of the womb.

Orge thought the best place known to man

In this world was the lavatory pan.

That was a place to set the cheeks aglow

With stars above and excrement below.

A place of refuge where you had a right

To sit in private on your wedding night.

A place of truth, for there you must admit

You are a man; there’s no concealing it.

A place of wisdom, where the gut turns out

To gird itself up for another bout.

Where you are always doing good by stealth

Exerting tactful pressure for your health.

At that you realize how far you’ve gone:

Using the lavatory – to eat on.

DRIVERS
clapping
: Bravo! … A good song! Give the gentleman a cherry brandy, if you’ll accept the offer, sir! He made it up all on his own … What a man!

LUISE
in the middle of the room
: You’re a one, Mr Baal!

DRIVER
:
líjou
did a real job, you’d do all right for yourself. You could end up running a transport business.

SECOND DRIVER
: Wish I had brains like that!

BAAL
: That’s nothing. You have to have a backside and the rest. Your very good health, Luise.
He goes back to his table
. And yours, Emmi. Come on, drink up. Even if you can’t do anything else. Drink, I said.

Emilie, tears in her eyes, sips her drink
.