From Scene Three of “The Good Person of Szechwan” by Bertolt Brecht - John Willet Translation.
It starts raining.
Shen Teh: What’s that rope for? You’re not to do it!
Sun: Mind you’re own business! And get out of the way!
Shen Teh: It’s raining.
Sun: Don’t you try sheltering under my tree.
Shen Teh remains motionless in the rain : No.
Sun: Why not give up, sister, it’s no use. You can’t do business with me. Besides, you’re too ugly, Bandy legs.
Shen Teh: That’s not true.
Sun: I don’t want to see them! All right, come under the bloody tree, since it’s raining!
She approaches slowly and sites down under the tree.
Shen Teh: Why do you want to do that?
Sun: Would you like to know? Then I’ll tell you, so as to be rid of you. Pause. Do you know what an airman is?
Shen Teh: Yes, I once saw some airmen in a teahouse.
Sun: Oh no you didn’t. One or two windy idiots in flying helmets, I expect: the sort who’s got no ear for his enginge and no feeling for his machine. Gets into a kite by bribing the hangar superintendent. Tell a type life that: now stall your crate at 2,000, down through the clouds, then catch her up with the flick of a stick, and he’ll say: But that’s not in the book. If you can’t land your kite gently as lowering your bottom you’re not an airman, you’re an idiot. Me, I’m an airman. And yet I’m the biggest idiot of the lot, because I read all the manuals in flying school as Pekin. But just one page of one manual I happened to miss, the one where it says Airmen Not Wanted. And so I became an airman without an aircraft, a mail pilot without mail. What that means you wouldn’t understand.
Shen Teh: I think I do understand all the same.
Sun: No, I’m telling you you can’t understand. And that means you can’t understand.
Shen Teh, half laughing, half crying : When we were children we had a crane with a broken wing. He was very tame and didn’t mind our teasing him, and used to come strutting after us and scream if we went too fast for him. But in the autumn and the spring, when the great flocks of birds flew over our village, hebecame very restless, and I could understand why.
Sun: Stop crying.
Shen Teh: Yes.
Sun: It’s bad for the complexion.
Shen Teh: I’m stopping.
She dries her tears on her sleeve. Leaning against the tree, but without turning towards her, he reaches for her face.
Sun: You don’t even know how to wipe your face properly.
He wipes it for her with a handkerchief
Sun: If you’ve got to sit there and stop me for hanging myself you might at least say something.
Shen Teh: I don’t know what.
Sun: Why do you want to hack me down, sister, as a matter of interest?
Shen Teh: It frightens me. I’m sure you only felt like that because the evening’s so dreary. To the audience:
In our country
There should be no dreary evenings
Or tall bridges over rivers
Even the hour between night and morning
And the whole winter season too, is dangerous.
For in the face of misery
Only a little is needed
Before men start throwing
Their unbearable life away.