THE FIRST BOY: And why won’t anyone in the town let her have a jug of milk even, if she’s not a witch?
THE SECOND BOY: Who says she flies through the air? It can’t be done. To Andrea: Can it?
THE FIRST BOY referring to the second: That’s Giuseppe. He doesn’t know a thing because he doesn’t go to school because his trousers need patching.
THE FRONTIER GUARD: What’s that book you’ve got?
ANDREA without looking up: It’s by Aristotle, the great philosopher.
THE FRONTIER GUARD suspiciously: Who’s he when he’s at home?
ANDREA: He’s been dead for years.
The boys mock Andrea’s reading by walking round as if they were meanwhile reading books.
THE FRONTIER GUARD to the clerk: Have a look if there’s anything about religion in it.
THE CLERK turning the pages: I can’t see nothing.
THE FRONTIER GUARD: All this searching’s a bit of a waste of time anyway. Nobody who wanted to hide something would put it under our noses like that. To Andrea: You’re to sign that we’ve examined it all.
Andrea gets up reluctantly and accompanies the frontier guard into the house, still reading.
THE THIRD BOY to the clerk, pointing at the box: There’s that too, see?
THE CLERK: Wasn’t it there before?
THE THIRD BOY: The devil put it there. It’s a box.
THE SECOND BOY: No, it belongs to that foreigner.
THE THIRD BOY: I wouldn’t touch it. She put the evil eye on old Passi’s horses. I looked through the hole in the roof made by the blizzard and heard them coughing.
THE CLERK who was almost at the box, hesitates and turns back: Devil’s tricks, what? Well, we can’t check everything. We’d never get done.
Andrea comes back with a jug of milk. He sits down on the box once more and goes on reading.
THE FRONTIER GUARD following him with papers: Shut the boxes. Is that everything?
THE CLERK: Yes.
THE SECOND BOY to Andrea: So you’re a scholar. Tell us, can people fly through the air?
ANDREA: Wait a moment.
THE FRONTIER GUARD: You can go through.
The coachman has taken the luggage. Andrea picks up the box and is about to go.
THE FRONTIER GUARD: Halt! What’s in that box?
ANDREA taking up his book again: Books.
THE FIRST BOY: It’s the witch’s.
THE FRONTIER GUARD: Nonsense. How could she bewitch a box?
THE THIRD BOY: She could if the devil helped.
THE FRONTIER GUARD laughs: That wouldn’t work here.
To the clerk: Open it.
The box is opened.
THE FRONTIER GUARD unenthusiastically: How many are there?
ANDREA: Thirty-four.
THE FRONTIER GUARD to the clerk: How long will they take to go through?
THE CLERK who has begun superficially rummaging through the box: Nothing but printed stuff. It’ll mean you miss your breakfast, and when am I going to get over to Passi’s stables to collect the road tax due on the sale of his house if I’m to go through this lot?
THE FRONTIER GUARD: Right, we need that money. He kicks at the books: After all, what can there be in those?
To the coachman: Off with you!
Andrea crosses the frontier with the coachman carrying the box. Once across, he puts Galileo’s manuscript in his travelling bag.
THE THIRD BOY points at the jug which Andrea has left behind: Look!
THE FIRST BOY: The box has gone too! Didn’t I tell you it was the devil?
ANDREA turning round: No, it was me. You should learn to use your eyes. The milk’s paid for, the jug too. The old woman can keep it. Oh, and I didn’t answer your question, Giuseppe. People can’t fly through the air on a stick. It’d have to have a machine on it, to say the least. But there’s no machine like that so far. Maybe there never will be, as a human being’s too heavy. But of course one never knows. There are a lot of things we don’t know yet, Giuseppe. We’re really just at the beginning.
Mother Courage and Her Children
A Chronicle of the Thirty Years War
Translator: JOHN WILLETT
Characters
MOTHER COURAGE
KATTRIN, her dumb daughter
EILIF, the elder son
SWISS CHEESE, the younger son
THE RECRUITER
THE SERGEANT
THE COOK
THE GENERAL
THE CHAPLAIN
THE ARMOURER
YVETTE POTTIER
THE MAN WITH THE PATCH
ANOTHER SERGEANT
THE ANCIENT COLONEL
A CLERK
A YOUNG SOLDIER
AN OLDER SOLDIER
A PEASANT
THE PEASANT’S WIFE
THE YOUNG MAN
THE OLD WOMAN
ANOTHER PEASANT
HIS WIFE
THE YOUNG PEASANT
THE ENSIGN
Soldiers
A Voice
1
Spring 1624. The Swedish Commander-in-Chief Count Oxenstierna is raising troops in Dalecarlia for the Polish campaign. The canteen woman Anna Fierling, known under the name of Mother Courage, loses one son
Country road near a town.
A sergeant and a recruiter stand shivering.
RECRUITER: How can you muster a unit in a place like this? I’ve been thinking about suicide, sergeant. Here am I, got to find our commander four companies before the twelfth of the month, and people round here are so nasty I can’t sleep nights. S’pose I get hold of some bloke and shut my eye to his pigeon chest and varicose veins, I get him proper drunk, he signs on the line, I’m just settling up, he goes for a piss, I follow him to the door because I smell a rat; bob’s your uncle, he’s off like a flea with the itch. No notion of word of honour, loyalty, faith, sense of duty. This place has shattered my confidence in the human race, sergeant.
SERGEANT: It’s too long since they had a war here; stands to reason. Where’s their sense of morality to come from? Peace – that’s just a mess; takes a war to restore order. Peacetime, the human race runs wild. People and cattle get buggered about, who cares? Everyone eats just as he feels inclined, a hunk of cheese on top of his nice white bread, and a slice of fat on top of the cheese. How many young blokes and good horses in that town there, nobody knows; they never thought of counting. I been in places ain’t seen a war for nigh seventy years: folks hadn’t got names to them, couldn’t tell one another apart. Takes a war to get proper nominal rolls and inventories – shoes in bundles and corn in bags, and man and beast properly numbered and carted off, cause it stands to reason: no order, no war.
RECRUITER: Too true.
SERGEANT: Same with all good things, it’s a job to get a war going. But once it’s blossomed out there’s no holding it; folk start fighting shy of peace like punters what can’t stop for fear of having to tot up what they lost. Before that it’s war they’re fighting shy of. It’s something new to them.
RECRUITER: Hey, here’s a cart coming. Two tarts with two young fellows. Stop her, sergeant. If this one’s a flop I’m not standing around in your spring winds any longer, I can tell you.
Sound of a jew’s-harp. Drawn by two young fellows, a covered cart rolls in. On it sit Mother Courage and her dumb daughter Kattrin.
MOTHER COURAGE: Morning, sergeant.
SERGEANT blocking the way: Morning, all. And who are you?
MOTHER COURAGE: Business folk. Sings:
You captains, tell the drums to slacken
And give your infanteers a break:
It’s Mother Courage with her waggon
Full of the finest boots they make.
With crawling lice and looted cattle
With lumbering guns and straggling kit –
How can you flog them into battle
Unless you get them boots that fit?
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
Th
e thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
Captains, how can you make them face it –
Marching to death without a brew?
Courage has rum with which to lace it
And boil their souls and bodies through.
Their musket primed, their stomach hollow –
Captains, your men don’t look so well.
So feed them up and let them follow
While you command them into hell.
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
SERGEANT: Halt! Who are you with, you trash?
THE ELDER SON: Second Finnish Regiment.
SERGEANT: Where’s your papers?
MOTHER COURAGE: Papers?
THE YOUNGER SON: What, mean to say you don’t know Mother Courage?
SERGEANT: Never heard of her. What’s she called Courage for?
MOTHER COURAGE: Courage is the name they gave me because I was scared of going broke, sergeant, so I drove me cart right through the bombardment of Riga with fifty loaves of bread aboard. They were going mouldy, it was high time, hadn’t any choice really.
SERGEANT: Don’t be funny with me. Your papers.
MOTHER COURAGE pulling a bundle of papers from a tin box and climbing down off the cart: That’s all my papers, sergeant. You’ll find a whole big missal from Altótting in Bavaria for wrapping gherkins in, and a road map of Moravia, the Lord knows when I’ll ever get there, might as well chuck it away, and here’s a stamped certificate that my horse hasn’t got foot-and-mouth, only he’s dead worse luck, cost fifteen florins he did – not me luckily. That enough paper for you?
SERGEANT: You pulling my leg? I’ll knock that sauce out of you. S’pose you know you got to have a licence.
MOTHER COURAGE: Talk proper to me, do you mind, and don’t you dare say I’m pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, ‘tain’t decent, I got no time for you. My honest face, that’s me licence with the Second Regiment, and if it’s too difficult for you to read there’s nowt I can do about it. Nobody’s putting a stamp on that.
RECRUITER: Sergeant, methinks I smell insubordination in this individual. What’s needed in our camp is obedience.
MOTHER COURAGE: Sausage, if you ask me.
SERGEANT: Name.
MOTHER COURAGE: Anna Fierling.
SERGEANT: You all called Fierling then?
MOTHER COURAGE: What d’you mean? It’s me’s called Fierling, not them.
SERGEANT: Aren’t all this lot your children?
MOTHER COURAGE: You bet they are, but why should they all have to be called the same, eh? Pointing to her elder son: For instance, that one’s called Eilif Nojocki – Why? his father always claimed he was called Kojocki or Mojocki or something. The boy remembers him clearly, except that the one he remembers was someone else, a Frenchie with a little beard. Aside from that he’s got his father’s wits; that man knew how to snitch a peasant’s pants off his bum without him noticing. This way each of us has his own name, see.
SERGEANT: What, each one different?
MOTHER COURAGE: Don’t tell me you ain’t never come across that.
SERGEANT: So I s’pose he’s a Chinaman? Pointing to the younger son.
MOTHER COURAGE: Wrong. Swiss.
SERGEANT: After the Frenchman?
MOTHER COURAGE: What Frenchman? I never heard tell of no Frenchman. You keep muddling things up, we’ll be hanging around here till dark. A Swiss, but called Fejos, and the name has nowt to do with his father. He was called something quite different and was a fortifications engineer, only drunk all the time.
Swiss Cheese beams and nods; dumb Kattrin too is amused.
SERGEANT: How in hell can he be called Fejos?
MOTHER COURAGE: I don’t like to be rude, sergeant, but you ain’t got much imagination, have you? Course he’s called Fejos, because when he arrived I was with a Hungarian, very decent fellow, had terrible kidney trouble though he never touched a drop. The boy takes after him.
SERGEANT: But he wasn’t his father …
MOTHER COURAGE: Took after him just the same. I call him Swiss Cheese cause he’s good at pulling cart. Pointing to her daughter: And that’s Kattrin Haupt, she’s half German.
SERGEANT: Nice family, I must say.
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye, me cart and me have seen the world.
SERGEANT: I’m writing all this down. He writes. And you’re from Bamberg in Bavaria; how d’you come to be here?
MOTHER COURAGE: Can’t wait till war chooses to visit Bamberg, can I?
RECRUITER to Eilif: You two should be called Jacob Ox and Esau Ox, pulling the cart like that. I s’pose you never get out of harness?
EILIF: Ma, can I clobber him one? I wouldn’t half like to.
MOTHER COURAGE: And I says you can’t; just you stop where you are. And now two fine officers like you, I bet you could use a good pistol, or a belt buckle, yours is on its last legs, sergeant.
SERGEANT: I could use something else. Those boys are healthy as young birch trees, I observe: chests like barrels, solid leg muscles. So why are they dodging their military service, may I ask?
MOTHER COURAGE quickly: Nowt doing, sergeant. Yours is no trade for my kids.
RECRUITER: But why not? There’s good money in it, glory too. Flogging boots is women’s work. To Eilif: Come here, let’s see if you’ve muscles in you or if you’re a chicken.
MOTHER COURAGE: He’s a chicken. Give him a fierce look, he’ll fall over.
RECRUITER: Killing a young bull that happens to be in his way. Wants to lead him off.
MOTHER COURAGE: Let him alone, will you? He’s nowt for you folk.
RECRUITER: He was crudely offensive and talked about clobbering me. The two of us are going to step into that field and settle it man to man.
EILIF: Don’t you worry, mum, I’ll fix him.
MOTHER COURAGE: Stop there! You varmint! I know you, nowt but fights. There’s a knife down his boot. A slasher, that’s what he is.
RECRUITER: I’ll draw it out of him like a milk-tooth. Come along, sonny.
MOTHER COURAGE: Sergeant, I’ll tell the colonel. He’ll have you both in irons. The lieutenant’s going out with my daughter.
SERGEANT: No rough stuff, chum. To Mother Courage: What you got against military service? Wasn’t his own father a soldier? Died a soldier’s death, too? Said it yourself.
MOTHER COURAGE: He’s nowt but a child. You want to take him off to slaughterhouse, I know you lot. They’ll give you five florins for him.
RECRUITER: First he’s going to get a smart cap and boots, eh?
EILIF: Not from you.
MOTHER COURAGE: Let’s both go fishing, said angler to worm. To Swiss Cheese: Run off, call out they’re trying to kidnap your brother. She pulls a knife: Go on, you kidnap him, just try. I’ll slit you open, trash. I’ll teach you to make war with him. We’re doing an honest trade in ham and linen, and we’re peaceable folk.
SERGEANT: Peaceable I don’t think; look at your knife. You should be ashamed of yourself; put that knife away, you old harridan. A minute back you were admitting you live off the war, how else should you live, what from? But how’s anyone to have war without soldiers?
MOTHER COURAGE: No need for it to be my kids.
SERGEANT: Oh, you’d like war to eat the pips but spit out the apple? It’s to fatten up your kids, but you won’t invest in it. Got to look after itself, eh? And you called Courage, fancy that. Scared of the war that keeps you going? Your sons aren’t scared of it, I can see that.
EILIF: Take more than a war to scare me.
SERGEANT: And why? Look at me: has army life done all that badly by me? Joined up at seventeen.
MOTHER COURAGE: Still got to reach seventy.
SERGEANT: I don’t mind waiting.
MO
THER COURAGE: Under the sod, eh?
SERGEANT: You trying to insult me, saying I’ll die?
MOTHER COURAGE: S’pose it’s true? S’pose I can see the mark’s on you? S’pose you look like a corpse on leave to me? Eh?
SWISS CHEESE: She’s got second sight, Mother has.
RECRUITER: Go ahead, tell the sergeant’s fortune, might amuse him.
MOTHER COURAGE: Gimme helmet. He gives it to her.
SERGEANT: It don’t mean a bloody sausage. Anything for a laugh though.
MOTHER COURAGE taking out a sheet of parchment and tearing it up: Eilif, Swiss Cheese and Kattrin, may all of us be torn apart like this if we lets ourselves get too mixed up in the war. To the sergeant: Just for you I’m doing it for free. Black’s for death. I’m putting a big black cross on this slip of paper.
SWISS CHEESE: Leaving the other one blank, see?
MOTHER COURAGE: Then I fold them across and shake them. All of us is jumbled together like this from our mother’s womb, and now draw a slip and you’ll know. The sergeant hesitates.
RECRUITER to Eilif: I don’t take just anybody, they all know I’m choosey, but you got the kind of fire I like to see.
SERGEANT fishing in the helmet: Too silly. Load of eyewash.
SWISS CHEESE: Drawn a black cross, he has. Write him off.
RECRUITER: They’re having you on; not everybody’s name’s on a bullet.
SERGEANT hoarsely: You’ve put me in the shit.
MOTHER COURAGE: Did that yourself the day you became a soldier. Come along, let’s move on now. ‘Tain’t every day we have a war, I got to get stirring.
SERGEANT: God damn it, you can’t kid me. We’re taking that bastard of yours for a soldier.
EILIF: Swiss Cheese’d like to be a soldier too.
MOTHER COURAGE: First I’ve heard of that. You’ll have to draw too, all three of you. She goes to the rear to mark crosses on further slips.
RECRUITER to Eilif: One of the things they say against us is that it’s all holy-holy in the Swedish camp; but that’s a malicious rumour to do us down. There’s no hymn-singing but Sundays, just a single verse, and then only for those got voices.
MOTHER COURAGE coming back with the slips, which she drops into the sergeant’s helmet: Trying to get away from their ma, the devils, off to war like calves to salt-lick. But I’m making you draw lots, and that’ll show you the world is no vale of joys with ‘Come along, son, we need a few more generals’. Sergeant, I’m so scared they won’t get through the war. Such dreadful characters, all three of them. She hands the helmet to Eilif. Hey, come on, fish out your slip. He fishes one out, unfolds it. She snatches it from him. There you are, it’s a cross. Oh, wretched mother that I am, o pain-racked giver of birth! Shall he die? Aye, in the springtime of life he is doomed. If he becomes a soldier he shall bite the dust, it’s plain to see. He is foolhardy, like his dad was. And if he ain’t sensible he’ll go the way of all flesh, his slip proves it. Shouts at him: You going to be sensible?