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) (58 page)

You whom they thrust back with bayonets –

You whom they gave guns and swords to and turned into murderers –

You who have always been beaten and spat upon –

You who were never loved

Come here and see, your hour is here

And you shall enter into the kingdom!

Then, as the bullets whistle and the woman selling newspapers appears calling her headlines about the Spartacists, it is he rather than Kragler who leads them all into the street:

GLUBB
: Just keep calm. Come along, all of you, link arms. Join all the others and face up to the soldiers and just let them shoot. And the story will be told wherever there are people who have forgotten their own …

These changes in the character and weight of the role persist throughout the next act, and may of course be connected with the powerful talents of Heinrich George, the actor in question. There is none of the disillusioned cynicism of the other versions.

In Act 5 the opening stage direction is again changed:

A street corner in the slums. Autumn night. Big red moon. Left, the low pale wall of a house. In the right background a wide wooden bridge, rising towards the rear. Sitting on a stone, left, Anna, who is still wearing her
light-coloured dress. Babusch is walking up and down. The wind is blowing. Distant shots and shouting are heard. Rapid tempo
.

The start of the act is basically as in the other two versions, though it is somewhat expanded both before and after Kragler’s entry. Then, when Anna has told him she is expecting a child his next stage direction (
Sways … as if trying out walking)
is made to run on:

Then turns and looks round at Anna. Anna sits on the stone and looks up at him with as loving a look as she can muster, while he groans and shuts his eyes and draws a deep breath. Manke and the drunk man approach from the bridge. Glubb squats there, waiting. Behind them Marie slowly comes nearer
.

Kragler’s attack on Anna with clods of earth is again expanded, mainly with additional rhetoric that represents no change of substance. An extra stage direction describes the scene as the men hold Kragler down and Babusch crosses the battlefield (p. 110):

At this point Marie is standing protectively in front of Anna, with her arms round her. Glubb has stood up by the bridge. Laar is sitting in the roadway, picking dirt out of his hair. Manke is holding Kragler by the collar …

Babusch’s ensuing speech is likewise expanded, and concludes:

It isn’t a vast idea. The nights are chilly in November. You’re out to liberate the world, by all means do so, it’s an excellent thing; but tell the woman that you want no part of her. Tell her straight to go home if she can. Don’t give us any purple passages, no more speeches, it’s a small and perfectly simple human situation.

The emphasis on the ‘idea’ is peculiar to this version. The two Men are cut, with their conversation about how the attack on the newspaper offices is going. Then from Carmen/Augusta’s appeal to Kragler to come down there (p. 110), to his final refusal with the speech beginning ‘Fling stones at me,’ (p. 112) there is an entirely new section, enlarging on the ‘idea’. Thus:

BABUSCH
: Say yes or no. Or else you’re a coward.

GLUBB
: Tell her, Andy. Try to think what you want. Don’t tell her all that quickly. It’s as well to say yes or no. Have you got your idea inside you? It needn’t be in the catechism. Tell her. She’ll go away, she’s not bad-looking.

THE DRUNK MAN
: I’ll marry her, let’s have her. Because none of them know a bloody thing.

BABUSCH
: They don’t. Know a thing, I mean. That’s to say men don’t. Dogs do.

GLUBB
: Don’t listen to him, Andy. Watch the woman. He’s making fun, he has rotten teeth. Watch the woman. Andy! Have you still got your idea? You have to sense it in your throat.

MANKE
: What nonsense are you talking? He said, ‘To the newspaper buildings’; he’s going to the newspaper buildings. Why is he hanging around with his hands in his pockets, trying to get out of it? Come along!

CARMEN
on the bridge
: They’re coming! Stop quarrelling. They’re coming, lots of them, the streets are black with them, as if they’d gone rotten.

BABUSCH:
He
’s got one, Kragler, I’m quite sure. I know the story of his schnaps. But you haven’t, though you did have. You’ve got a gullet full of phrases.

GLUBB
: Andy, it’s only the devil, but best say yes or no.
The others start concentrating on events offstage, where it seems that masses of people are approaching with drumming and shouts
.

BABUSCH
: Don’t let them make a hero of you, Kragler. If it’s what you want it isn’t so tragic. Do whatever you really want. Everybody is top man in his own skin.

[There is a blank space in the typescript here.]

MANKE
over his shoulder
: Why doesn’t he say something? Has he fallen on his face?

CARMEN
: More and more of them are coming, and the whole lot’s going to the newspaper offices. Do come along! Isn’t it settled?

GLUBB
somewhat hoarsely
: And I’d like to know why you don’t say something too. Are you so feeble? It’s irritating, your not saying anything. Here we are, charging through the streets like bulls and finding nothing, and you’re not with us. God has tossed you your woman, half torn to pieces and with a body full of strange fruit, all you need do is step over her; are you stuck? I tell you, if you’re pure a hundred women won’t be able to touch you. They’re less than an idea, they only mislead you. The swine poured my schnaps in the gutter; it made my head go queer, and no wonder. They can give me a hundred schnaps factories instead of those two small barrels of mine, and I’ll still spit in their faces for the schnaps that was
washed away and will never come back. I’ll tear out their guts for that schnaps. I’ll burn down their houses for that schnaps that went down the drain. I’m telling you, Andy, the idea is what matters.

KRAGLER
angry and obstinate
: No, it isn’t.

BABUSCH
: Bravo! No, it isn’t! When a woman’s going to pieces it isn’t the idea that matters.

GLUBB
: Well? Do you want to stay back here?

Offstage crowds are marching by. The wind brings snatches of the Marseillaise and military band music
.
Kragler is silent
.

In all this concluding section of the play Anna now gets given nothing to say, nor is there any mention of Kragler’s knife as in the 1922 edition. His ‘fling stones at me’ speech ends ‘It’s a waste of time, believe me, it’s nickelodeon stuff and you’re all drunk and that way you’re going to hell.’

GLUBB
: Andy, it’s not a waste of time. God forbid that you found it one. There’s a thin red flame shooting sharply out of the human breast and scorching the world.

KRAGLER
: What for?

GLUBB
: At the innermost heart of the world, racing at the speed of our planet – a man blown like a leaf, lonely, ice-cold, and without a home, a man who goes on strike and the world falls apart.

BABUSCH
: Don’t be bamboozled; he’s got a pigeon’s egg in his head. His talk is all newspaper articles, his ideas are grand opera. Go to bed. Don’t be drunk. Mind the cold wind – it’s November 9th – and go home.

KRAGLER
: I was drunk. I’m sober now. It’s a waste of time.

GLUBB
: Heaven and hell are full of revolution, and you are going to bed! Smash your head against the bridge! Jump in the water and float with the ice; but don’t go home!

BABUSCH
: You’ve no coat and it’s freezing, Andy. November nights are cold, and it’s nearly morning. Four years is a long time. Take your woman with you.

GLUBB
: Let her lie, let the woman lie. Let her lie where she’s lying on the stones. She’s like grass in the wind, she’s not there any more and she doesn’t know where she belongs. In four times four years her face will have faded, and we’ll all be dead by then and wondering where to go next.

BULLTROTTER
: The whole lot have gone past, pretty well. We’re last, and you’re still hanging back.

CARMEN
: They’re last, and they’re still hanging back.

GLUBB
: And we’re hanging back. He’ll never let her lie, the world will roll on, and they’ll let the schnaps go down the gutter and nothing’ll ever change. O Andy, come with us. We’re setting off into the dark, into our most crucial hour. Don’t abandon us. What can we do with the schnaps in our heads if there are so few of us? What will the beast do if we’re beaten? I’ve known you for only four hours, yet in that time whole skies full of stars have floated away and kingdoms have surrendered. I’ve known you for four ages; oh, don’t disappoint me.

Silence
.

Why do I have to stand here at a street corner in the dark after all those years, so they can shoot me tomorrow? Wrestling with you for your soul, and my hands not strong enough? Look: none of these people are any help to me.

KRAGLER
calmly
: We all know a lot of unfortunates go under, and if it’s in our power we give a hand. But I’m nearly done for myself and must fight for dear life. My girl’s with child.

GLUBB
: Is that all you have to say?

CARMEN
: Coward! Coward! He’s shaking like a jelly because he heard shots. He isn’t coming with us, you bet, he’s going to take cover. In her body, which has already got something in it.

KRAGLER
calmly
: Don’t you think it takes rather more to go home now and tell the hyenas ‘I want no part of it’, and say to the sharks as they swim round under the red moon hunting for corpses ‘I’ve got some procreating to do’? More than to run along after you lot yelling something I don’t believe in?

THE DRUNK MAN
: Look at the old blood-orange! Sh! Quiet! Don’t shoot, look at the sky!

KRAGLER
: Go home too. All one has to do is what one wants. Because one mustn’t do what the others want. And I want to go home. That’s all I wanted. I ought to know.
Very calm
. I can’t go on.
Silence
.

GLUBB
: I don’t know what to say to you. There’s nothing in my mouth that would fit you.

KRAGLER
: They poured your schnaps into the shit, brandy-seller, and they turned your farm into paper, Laar. But I’ve got my woman back.

After Glubb’s ‘So you’ve no sympathy for these people’, etc. (p. 420) (his following remarks having been transposed as above) they move more or less straight on as in the 1922 edition to Carmen/Augusta’s ‘Then that was all lies, Africa and so on?’ and to an extended version of Manke’s ‘The gentleman was bellowing like a stockbroker’. Right up to the attack on Anna by Laar and Manke (p. 113) the only substantial differences lie in Anna’s silence and the absence of any clue as to how the fighting is going. This is given only when the shooting starts after Glubb has extricated Anna. The final section which follows is a good deal longer, but the changes are unimportant until everybody begins moving to the bridge. Then:

GLUBB
: If he wants to go, let him. Don’t stop him. Let him get into bed, we’re fighting for him. Let them all do as they want, don’t press them. He shouted for us, he went with us. There are so many of us, allow him to feel tired. We’ve got the room, we can accommodate lots of them. Admit him too, he still belongs to us.

KRAGLER
laughs raucously
: You people almost drowned at first with weeping at my story, and now you want to drag me down to the newspapers to get shot. Just because you’ve stuffed your heads with newspapers and novelettes, because you can’t get grand opera out of your system. I barely managed to get my own wife; am I now supposed to liberate all yours? Free my neck so I can hang a hurdy-gurdy round it? And I simply washed my shirt in your tears. Ha ha ha ha! My flesh is to rot in the gutter so that your idea can come out on top! Are you drunk?

CARMEN
: What nonsense is he talking? Come on! They’ve retreated. We’ll still be in time for the attack!

BULLTROTTER
: It’s about time, damn you!

GLUBB
with simplicity and grandeur
: Tonight everybody must be out on the street. Tonight it will happen. Come with me, we must stick together now. Take each other by the hand and run for all you’re worth. That’s the way!
They run up the slope and vanish over the bridge. Glubb can still be heard, singing
:

They’ll have the whole damn lot –

Wife, land and all you’ve got.

Let them swallow it,

They’ll get no benefit

The kingdom must be ours.

BABUSCH
flaps along after him
: There’ll be heavy gunfire over Berlin in a quarter of an hour’s time.

Exit across the bridge
.

KRAGLER
piqued
: All right, go off to your newspaper buildings. Do yourselves in! If you won’t let a man help you.
He throws dirt after them. Anna tries to come to him, but he thrusts her off and doesn’t look her in the eyes
.

ANNA
: Andy!
She has sat down
. I must go home, Andy. I’m not going to have one. I’m not going to have a baby.

Kragler’s long last speech, which follows, is basically the same as in the other two versions, including the anomalous mention of ‘so early in the year’. Among the passages added are ‘The shouting and that red moon they hoisted over the newspaper buildings: all of it’s to swindle the people!’, and

Am I a baritone? Ha ha ha! Were you aiming to wash your dirty faces with tears once again? Did you want a swollen pregnant body floating down to the weir under the red moon? Was I myself to die in the newspaper buildings for you? Every evening? Did you want to have a good cry? Well, I’m going to bed. Would you like to help them? Rip the phrases from their throats!
Drumbeat
. Wash your own shirt!
Drumbeat
. Hang, hang yourselves if you don’t get ahead!