Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (22 page)

“Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.”

“Because you do not know me. Because you do not know who I am. Who Franz Biberkopf is. He’s not afraid of anything. I have my fists! Just look at what muscles I have!”

FIFTH BOOK

A quick recovery, our man stands again where he stood before, he has not understood anything, nor learned anything more. Now the first heavy blow falls on him. He is dragged into a criminal case, it’s against his will, he defends himself, but the issue he must face.

Fiercely and bravely, with hand and foot, he tries to win the race, but it’s no use, he’s beaten, the issue he must face.

Rencounter on the Alex, cold as the Devil. Next Year, 1929, it’ll be colder still

Boom, boom, the steam pile-driver thumps in front of Aschinger’s on the Alex. It’s one story high, and knocks the rails into the ground as if they were nothing at all.

Icy air, February. People walk in overcoats. Whoever has a fur piece wears it, whoever hasn’t, doesn’t wear it. The women have on thin stockings and are freezing, of course, but they look nice. The bums have disappeared with the cold. When it gets warmer, they’ll stick their noses out again. In the meantime they nip a double ration of brandy, but don’t ask me what it’s like, nobody would want to swim in it, not even a corpse.

Boom, boom, the steam pile-driver batters away on the Alex.

A lot of people have time to spare and watch the pile-driver whacking away. Up on top there is a man who is always pulling on a chain, then there is a puff on top, and bang! the rod gets it in the neck. There they stand, men and women, especially youngsters, they love the way it works, as if it were greased, bang! the rod gets it in the neck. After that it grows small as the tip of your finger, but it gets another blow and it’s welcome now to do whatever it pleases. Finally it’s gone, Hell’s bells, they’ve given it a nice drubbing, the people walk off satisfied.

Everything is covered with planks. The Berolina statue once stood in front of Tietz’s, one hand outstretched, a regular giantess, now they have dragged her away. Maybe they’ll melt her and make medals out of her.

People hurry over the ground like bees. They hustle and bustle around here day and night, by the hundreds.

The street-cars roll past with a screech and a scrunch, yellow ones with trailers, away they go across the planked-over Alexanderplatz, it’s dangerous to jump off. The station is laid out on a broad plan, Einbahnstrasse to Konigstrasse past Wertheim’s. If you want to go east you have to pass police headquarters and turn down through Klosterstrasse. The trains rumble from the railroad station towards Jannowitz Briicke, the locomotive puffs out a plume of steam, just now it is standing above the Pralat Schlossbrau entrance a block further down.

Across the street they are tearing down everything, all the houses along the city railroad, wonder where they get the money from, the city of Berlin is rich, and we pay the taxes.

They have torn down Loeser and Wolff with their mosaic sign, 20 yards further on they built it up again, and there’s another branch over there in front of the station. Loeser and Wolff, Berlin-Elbing, A-l quality for every taste, Brazil, Havana, Mexico, Little Comforter, Lilliput, Cigar No.8, 25 pfennigs each, Winter Ballad, package containing 25 at 20 pfennigs, Cigarillos No. 10, unselected, Sumatra wrapper, a wonderful value at this price, in boxes of a hundred, 10 pfennigs. I beat everything, you beat everything, he beats everything with boxes of 50 and cardboard packages of 10, can bemailedtoeverycountryonearth.Boyero25pfennigs.this novelty has won us many friends, I beat everything, but I never beat a retreat.

Alongside the Prälat there is lots of room, there are wagons standing there loaded with bananas. Give your children bananas. The banana is the cleanest of fruits, because it is protected from insects, worms as well as bacilli, by its skin. We except such insects, worms, and bacilli as are able to penetrate the skin. Privy Councillor Czerny emphatically pointed out that even children in their first years. I beat everything to pieces, you beat everything to pieces, he beats everything to pieces.

There is a lot of wind on the Alex, at the Tietz corner there is a lousy draft. A wind that blows between the houses and through the building excavations. It makes you feel you would like to hide in the saloons, but who can do that it blows through your trousers pockets, then you notice something’s happening, no monkey business, a man has got to be gay with this weather. Early in the morning the workers come tramping along from Reinickendorf, Neukölln, Weissensee. Cold or no cold, wind or no wind, we’ve gotta get the coffee pot pack up the sandwiches, we’ve gotta work and slave, the drones sit on top, they sleep in their feather-beds and exploit us.

Aschinger has a big cafe and restaurant. People who have no belly, can get one there, people who have one already, can make it as big as they please. You cannot cheat Nature! Whoever thinks he can improve bread and pastry made from denatured white flour by the addition of artificial ingredients, deceives himself and the consumer. Nature has her laws of life and avenges every abuse. The decadent state of health of almost all civilized peoples today is caused by the use of denatured and artificially refined food. Fine sausages delivered to your house, liverwurst and blood-pudding cheap.

The highly interesting
Megazine,
instead of 1 mark, now only 20 pfennigs;
Marriage,
highly interesting and spicy, only 20 pfennigs. The newsboy puffs his cigarettes, he has a sailor’s cap on, I beat everything.

From the east, Weissensee, Litchtenberg, Friedrichshain, Frankfurter Allee, the yellow street-cars plunge into the square through Landsberger Strasse. Line No. 65 comes from the Central Slaughter-House, the Grosse Ring, Weddingplatz, Luisenplatz; No. 76 from Hundekehle via Hubertusallee. At the corner of Landsberger Strasse they have sold out Friedrich Hahn, formerly a department store, they have emptied it and are gathering it to its forebears. The street-cars and Bus 19 stop on the Turmstrasse. Where Jurgens stationery store was, they have torn down the house and put up a building fence instead. An old man sits there with a medical scale: Try your weight, 5 pfennigs. Dear sisters and brethren, you who swarm across the Alex, give yourselves this treat, look through the loophole next to the medical scale at this dump-heap where Jurgens once flourished and where Hahn’s department store still stands, emptied, evacuated, and eviscerated, with nothing but red tatters hanging over the show-windows. A dump-heap lies before us. Dust thou art, to dust returnest. We have built a splendid house, nobody comes in or goes out any longer. Thus Rome, Babylon, Nineveh, Hannibal, Caesar, all went to smash, oh, think of it! In the first place, I must remark they are digging those cities up again, as the illustrations in last Sunday’s edition show, and, in the second place, those cities have fulfilled their purpose, and we can now build new cities. Do you cry about your old trousers when they are moldy and seedy? No, you simply buy new ones, thus lives the world.

The police tower over the square. Several specimens of them are standing about. Each specimen sends a connoisseur’s glance to both sides, and knows the traffic rules by heart. It has putties around its legs, a rubber mace hangs from its right side, it swings its arms horizontally from west to east, and thus north and south, cannot advance any farther, east flows west, and west flows east. Then the specimen switches about automatically: north flows south, south flows north. The copper has a well-defined waist-line. As soon as he jerks around, there is a rush across the square in the direction of Konigstrasse of about 30 private individuals, some of them stop on the traffic island, one part reaches the other side and continues walking on the planks. The same number have started east, they swim towards the others, the same thing has befallen them, but there was no mishap.

There are men, women, and children, the latter mostly holding women’s hands. To enumerate them all and to describe their destinies is hardly possible, and only in a few cases would this succeed. The wind scatters chaff over all of them alike. The faces of the eastward wanderers are in no way different from those of the wanderers to the west, south, and north; moreover they exchange their roles, those who are now crossing the square towards Aschinger’s may be seen an hour later in front of the empty Hahn Department Store. Just as those who come from Brunnenstrasse on their way to Jannowitz Bri.icke mingle with those coming from the reverse direction. Yes, and many of them turn off to the side, from south to east, from south to west, from north to west, from north to east. They have the same equanimity as passengers in an omnibus or in street-cars. The latter all sit in different postures, making the weight o( the car, as indicated outside, heavier still. Who could find out what is happening inside them, a tremendous chapter. And if anyone did write it, to whose advantage would it be? New books? Even the old ones don’t sell, and in the year ‘27 book-sales as compared with ‘26 have declined so and so much per cent. Taken simply as private individuals, the people who paid 20 pfennigs, leaving out those possessing monthly tickets and pupils’ cards-the latter only pay 10 pfennigs-are riding with their weight from a hundred to two hundred pounds, in their clothes, with pockets, parcels, keys, hats, sets of artificial teeth, trusses, riding across Alexanderplatz, holding those mysterious long tickets on which is written: Line 12 Siemensstrasse D A, Gotzkowskistrasse C, B, Oranienburger Tor C, C, Kottbuser Tor A, mysterious tokens, who can solve them, who can guess and who confess them, three words I tell you heavy with thought, and the scraps of paper are punched four times at certain places, and on them there is written in that same German in which the Bible and the Criminal Code are written: Valid till the end of the line, by the shortest route, connection with other lines not guaranteed: They read newspapers of various tendencies, conserve their balance by means of the semicircular canals of their internal ear, inhale oxygen, stare stupidly at each other, have pains, or no pains, think, don’t think, are happy, unhappy, are neither happy nor unhappy.

Rrrr, rrr, the pile-driver thumps down, I beat everything, another rail. Something is buzzing across the square coming from police headquarters, they are riveting, a cement crane dumps its load. Herr Adolf Kraun, house-servant, looks on, the tipping over of the wagon fairly fascinates him, you beat everything, he beats everything. He watches excitedly how the sand truck is always tilting up on one side, there it is up in the air, boom, and now it tips over. A fellow wouldn’t like to be kicked out of bed like that, legs up, down with the head, there you lie, something might happen to him, but they do their job well, all the same.

Franz Biberkopf has his knapsack on again and is selling newspapers. He has changed his beat. He has left the Rosenthaler Tor and is now on the Alexanderplatz. He is feeling entirely O. K. again, 5 feet 10½ inches tall, his weight is down, that makes it easier to carry. On his head he wears the official newspaper cap.

Danger of a crisis in the Reichstag, talk of March elections, probably April elections, which direction, Joseph Wirth? The Central German fight continues, they may appoint an arbitration commission, man attacked by bandits in Tempelherrenstrasse. He has his stand at the Alexanderstrasse subway exit, opposite the Ufa movie-house, on the same side where Fromm, the optician, has built a new business. Franz Biberkopf looks down Munzstrasse as he stands for the first time in a crowd and thinks to himself: Wonder how far it is to the two Jews’, they don’t live far from here, that was when I was having my first troubles, maybe I’ll call on them one of these days, they might buy a copy of the
Völkischer Beobachter
from me. Why not, if they want it, I don’t care, as long as they buy it. He grins foolishly at the thought, that very old Jew in those funny slippers was really too comical for words. He looks around, his fingers are stiff, next to him stands a little cripple with a crooked nose, probably broken. Talk of crisis in the Reichstag, No. 17 Hebbelstrasse evacuated owing to danger of collapse, murder on a fishing boat, mutineer or madman.

Franz Biberkopf and the cripple blow through their fingers. Business before noon is slack. A thin, elderly man, looking seedy and down at the heels, comes up to Franz. He has on a green felt hat and asks Franz how the paper business is going. Franz, too, had once asked that. “If it’s for yourself, pardner, who can tell?” “Yes, I’m fifty-two.” “Well that’s just it, don’t the rheumatiz start around fifty? When I was in the Prussian army, we had an old reserve captain, he was only forty, from Saarbrucken, a lottery-cashier-I mean, that’s what he said, he was probably a cigar salesman-he had the rheumatiz at forty already, in the small of his back. But he pulled himself together, he did. He walked like a broomstick on roller-skates. He always had himself rubbed with butter. And when there was no more butter to be had, around 19 I 7, only Palmin, first class plant-oil, and rancid at that, he had himself shot dead.”

“What’s the use? The factories won’t take you any more either. And last year they operated on me, in Lichtenberg, Hubertus Hospital. One testicle is gone, it was supposed to be tubercular. I tell you, I still have pains.” “Well, you better look out, otherwise the other one’ll get it too. Maybe it’s better to work Sitting down, why not be a hack-driver.” The Central German struggle continues, negotiations without results, attack aimed at the Tenants’ Protection Law, Wake Up, Tenants, or they’ll take the roof from over your head. “Yes, pardner. it’s all right to sell newspapers, but you’ve gotta be able to get around, and you’ve gotta have a voice, how’s the chest, robin redbreast, can you sing? Well, y’see, that’s the main thing with us, we’ve gotta know how to sing and get around. We need good barkers. The loudspeakers do the best business. A bunch of tough birds, I’ll tell ye. Look, how many groschen is that?” “Four, as far as I can see.” “Righto, for you it’s four. That’s the point. For you. But when one of these chaps is in a hurry, and then looks around in his pockets, and he’s got a half-groschen piece and a mark or ten marks, go ahead and ask those boys, yes, sir. they can all make change. Clever, I should say so, they’re real bankers, they are, they understand all about making change, they deduct their own percentage, but ye don’t notice anything, that’s how fast they work.”