Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (25 page)

And Reinhold turns his lamps towards Franz-the boy looks all in, if he only don’t start blubbering away now. “I’ve been twice to the Salvation Army, Franz, I’ve already talked to one of them, I tell him ‘yes: I’m goin’ to stick to the straight and narrow, and then I topple off.” “Well, what’s up now?” “Y’know I get tired of the dames very quick. You can see that, can’t you? Four weeks, and that’s all. I don’t know why. Don’t like ‘em any more. And up to that time I was crazy about ‘em, you ought to see me, completely gone, enough to put in a padded cell, that’s how crazy I get. And afterwards - nothin’, out they go, can’t see ‘em. I’d throw money after ‘em if only I didn’t have to see ‘em.” And Franz is astonished: “Well, old boy, maybe you really are crazy. Wait a minute ...” “Didn’t I go to the Salvation Army, told ‘em about it and then I prayed with a fellow ...” Franz grew more and more astonished: “Y’mean, prayed?” “Boy, suppose, that’s the way you feel and you don’t know where to turn to for advice.” Well, I’ll be damned. What a man, never saw the likes of him. “Helped a bit, too, for six or eight weeks, a fellow thinks of other things, you get a hold of yourself, it gets you going all right, all right.” “Well, Reinhold, maybe you’d better go to the Charité Hospital. Or maybe you oughtn’t to’ve rushed away like that up there at the hall. You might of sat down quietly on the bench in front. Needn’t be ashamed before me.” “Nope, don’t want to any more, and it don’t help me, any more, anyway and it’s all a lot of bunk. Why should I be crawling around up there in front and praying, when I don’t believe anyway?” “Yes, I can understand that. If y’don’t believe, it won’t help anything.” Franz looked at his friend, who was staring glumly into his empty cup. “Whether I can help you, Reinhold, me?-weIL I don’t know about that. I’ll have to study over that a little, first. They ought to try and give you a real disgust for the dames, or something like that.” “I could puke already at the sight of that yellowhaired Trude. But tomorrow or day after tomorrow you just ought to see me when Nelly or Gusta or whatever her name may be, comes along, boy, you ought to see little Reinhold. His ears bright red. All I want is her, and if I gotta spend all my money, I gotta have her.” “What is it you like especially about the dames’“ “You mean how they get me? Well now, what shall I say? With nothing at all. That’s it, really. One of ‘em hashow do I know?-maybe she has bobbed hair, or she cracks a joke. Well. I like her, Franz, I never know why. The dames, ask ‘em, they wonder about it, too, when all at once I begin to goggle at them like a bull and keep sticking around. Ask Cilly. But I can’t help it I just can’t help it.”

Franz is still watching Reinhold.

There is a mower death yclept. Hath power which the Lord hath kept. When he ‘gins his scythe to whet keener it grows and keener yet soon will he slash, man must endure the gash.

A funny chap. Franz smiles. Reinhold doesn’t smile at all. There is a mower death yclept. Hath power which the Lord hath kept. Soon will he slash.

Franz thinks to himself: you need a good shaking up, m’boy. We’ll push your hat a few inches farther down on your neck. “All right that’s what I’ll do, Reinhold, I’m going to ask Cilly about it.”

Franz meditates on White Slavery and suddenly he is off of it, he wants Something Else

“Cilly, not on my lap now. And don’t start beating me right away. You’re my li’l darling. Now guess who I was with today?” “Don’t want to know.” “Babykins, my little snookums, who do you think? With-Reinhold.” The little girl grows spiteful. I wonder why: “Reinhold-is that so, what did he have to tell you?” “Well, a lot of things.” “That’s so. And you let him tell you all that and you even believe him, don’t you’“ “Why, no Cilly, li’l girl.” “Well. I might as well get out then. First I wait up for you exactly three hours and then you come with all this bunk and try to tell me all about it.” “Why no, I don’t, little girl” (she’s nutty) “it’s you who ought to tell me all about it. Not him, of course not.” “Whatsa matter? I don’t understand nothing.” And then it started. Cilly, the little black-haired thing, got into a rage so that at times she was unable to tell her story, what with all the steam she got up, and Franz squeezed her while she was talking, because she looked so pretty, such a shining cherry-red WI bird, and then she started crying as it all came back to her. “So that man Reinhold, he’s no lover and no mack either, why he’s not even a man, just a scoundrel. He goes around the streets like a sparrow, says peck, peck, and snaps up the girls. There’s dozens of us could sing a song about that fellow. You don’t suppose 1 was his first or his eighth, either, do you? Maybe the hundredth. If you ask him, he never knows how many he’s had before. But how’s he had ‘em? Now, listen, Franz Biberkopf, if you squeal on that criminal, you’ll get something from me, no, I got nothing, but you can go to police headquarters and get yourself a reward. He doesn’t look it, when he sits around like that and broods and drinks his chicory, which is nothing but slop. And then a girl comes along and he bites.” “He told me all that.” “And you think to yourself first, what does the guy want, he ought to try some flop-house, so he can take a good long nap. Then back he comes again, a snappy lad, a fine buck, I tell you, Franz, you hold your head, what’s happened to him, has he got himself some monkey-glands since yesterday? That’s a fact and he starts talking and the way he can dance…” “What, Reinhold can dance?” “I guess, maybe. Where’d 1 get to know him? On the dance floor. Chausseestrasse.” “He certainly must shake a mean hoof.” “He picks ‘em out, Franz, wherever they are. And if it’s a married woman, he won’t let go, he gets her.” “Fine buck, all right.” Franz laughed and laughed. Don’t swear you’ll be true, For oaths 1 don’t care, It’s always the new that makes me dare. Never peace in a warm heart dwells, There’s ever a fresh inspiration that wells, Don’t swear you’ll be true, 1 like to change, too, Just like you.

“Now you’re laughing, huh? Maybe you’re one of those fellows, too?” “Why no, Cilly, old girl, only the guy’s really too funny and he’s always bellyaching to me that he can’t keep oil of women.” Can’t keep off, can’t keep off, I just can’t keep off of you. Franz took off his coat. “Now he’s got that little blonde, Trude, and perhaps, what d’ye say, shall I take her off his hands?” How that tart does screech! She certainly can screech, that tart! She roars, Cilly does, like a wild tigress! Tears Franz’s coat off and throws it on the floor, maybe she thinks I bought it on the installment plan, she’ll tear it to pieces in a minute, she certainly could do it. “Franz, say, they must have been handing you lollipops. What was that, what’s that about Trude, say that again.” She screams like a tigress run amuck. If she goes on screaming like that, they’ll call the cops who’ll think I’m turning her gas off. Keep calm, Franz! “Cilly, now don’t throw my clothes around like that. Them’s objects of value and nowadays difficult to procure. That’s it, let’s have ‘em. Did I bite you?” “No, but you sure are a soft one, Franz.” “Fine, suppose 1 am. But if he’s my friend, Reinhold, and is in trouble, and even trots out to Dresdener Strasse to the Salvation Army and wanted to say his prayers, imagine it, why, a fellow has to put up with him, when he’s his friend, or don’t he. Shouldn’t I take Trude off his hands?” “And how about me?” With you, I’d like to go fishing with you. “Well, we’ll have to talk it over some time, might have a drink or two and decide how to do it. Where the deuce are those boots, those big boots? Take a peep at ‘em.” “Leave me alone, won’t you?” “I just want to show you the boots, Cilly. I got those, why, I got ‘em from him, too. You remember, you brought me a fur collar that time. All right then. And before that, one of the girls brought me these boots.” Tell her quietly, why not, don’t keep anything back, everything comes out right if you’re only frank.

The girl sits down on the footstool, and looks at him. Then she bursts out crying, doesn’t say anything. “So that’s the way it is. That’s his scheme. I helped him. He’s my friend. And 1 won’t lie to you.” The way that gal can stare. And what a rage she gets in: “Dirty common dog, low common skunk that you are! Y’know, if Reinhold is a scoundrel, then you are worse-worse than the worst pimp.” “No, I’m not that kind.” “If I were a man…” “All right, good thing you’re not a man. But you needn’t work yourself up, Cilly, old girl, I told you what happened. I’ve thought it all over while I was looking at you. I won’t take Trude off his hands, you can stay here with me.” Franz gets up, takes his boots, throws them on top of the wardrobe. This thing won’t do, he’s ruining human beings, I won’t go along with him in that. Something has got to be done about it. “Cilly, you stay here today, then early tomorrow morning, after Reinhold is gone, you go to Trude and talk to her. I’ll help her, she can depend on me. Tell her, wait a minute, tell her to come up here, we’ll talk things over between us.”

And when the little blonde, Trude, comes to see Franz and Cilly at noon, she looks very pale and sad, and Cilly tells her right off the bat that Reinhold gets on her nerves and he doesn’t care about her, either. All that’s true. Trude keeps on crying, but doesn’t know what they want with her, so Franz explains: “The lad’s not a scoundrel. He’s my friend. 1 won’t let anything be said against him. But it’s downright torture, like hurting an animal, the things he does. It’s cruelty.” She shouldn’t let him force her out, and moreover, he, Franz, well, he’s going to see about it.

That night Reinhold calls on Franz at his stand, .it’s cold as hell. Franz lets himself be invited for a hot grog. He listens calmly to Reinhold’s preface and then Reinhold pounces directly on the situation about Trude, how he’s sick and tired of her and he wants to get rid of her today.

“Reinhold, I suppose you’ve gone and got another girl.” Sure enough he has, and he says so. Whereupon Franz says, he won’t get rid of Cilly, she has got used to him now and besides she’s a decent sort of a jane; Reinhold oughta really put on the brakes a bit, like any decent fellow would, things can’t go on that way. Reinhold doesn’t understand, wants to know if it’s on account of the collar, that fur collar. Maybe Trude would bring him, well, what, a watch maybe, a silver watch, or a fur cap with ear-muffs. Franz might need them, now. Nope, nothing doing, only cut that stuff out. I’ll buy all that myself. And now Franz would certainly like to talk to Reinhold as friend to friend. So he teUs him what he has been thinking today and yesterday. Reinhold should keep Trude now, no matter if everything goes to hell. He should get used to her, then it’ll go all right. A human being is a human being, a skirt is, too, otherwise he might just as well buy a whore for three marks, who is perfectly happy if she can trot off the moment it’s over. But to begin by coddling a girl with love and a lot of soft stufL and then push her off like that, and one girl after another, no sirree.

Reinhold listens to all this in his own way. He slowly drinks his coffee, staring dully in front of him. Then he says calmly, if Franz won’t take Trude off his hands, it’s all right with him. He got along without him before. Then he dashes oft got no time.

That night Franz wakes up and does not fall asleep till morning. It’s ice-cold in his room. Cilly is asleep and snoring beside him. Why don’t I fall asleep? Now the vegetable wagons are driving to the market-hall. I wouldn’t like to be a horse, running around at night in this cold. In the stable, yes: there it’s warm. Funny how that woman can sleep. She certainly can sleep. Not me. My toes are frozen, how they tickle and itch. There’s something inside him, is it his heart, his lungs, his respiration, or his innermost feeling, anyway, the thing inside there is being shoved and pushed on, but by whom? By whom, it doesn’t know. It can only say it’s sleepless.

A bird sits on a tree, a snake has just glided past it in its sleep, the bird wakes up at the rustling sound and sits there with ruffled feathers, it hadn’t sensed the snake. Well, just go on breathing quietly taking in the air. Franz tosses about. Hatred of Reinhold weighs on him, wrangles with him. It penetrates the wooden door and wakes him up. Reinhold, too, is lying in bed, lying beside Trude. He sleeps soundly. In his dream he commits murder, in his dream he frees himself.

Local News

It was the second week in April, when the weather in Berlin is sometimes spring-like, and, as the press unanimously stated, this splendid Easter weather lured people out-of-doors. In Berlin, at that time, Alex Frankel, a Russian student, shot and killed Vera Kaminskaya, aged twenty-two, arts-and-crafts worker, in their boarding-house. Tatiana Sanftleben, same age, a governess, who had agreed to join in the suicide pact, became afraid of this decision at the last moment and ran away when she saw her girlfriend lying on the floor. She met a squad of police to whom she told the story of her terrible experience of the last few months, and led the officers to the place where Vera and Alex were lying mortally wounded. The criminal police were called in and the homicide commission dispatched its officers to the spot. Alex and Vera had planned to get married, but economic conditions did not permit their conjugal union.

Furthermore, the investigation into the question of responsibility for the street-car disaster in Heerstrasse is not yet completed. The examination of the victims and of Redlich, the conductor, is still proceeding. The opinions of the technical experts have not yet been received. Only after their receipt will it be possible to enter upon an examination of the question whether there is any culpability on the part of the conductor, because he applied the brakes too late, or whether it was a concatenation of unfortunate circumstances that caused the disaster.

Quiet conditions prevailed in the stock market; open stock prices were steadier in view of the Reichsbank statement about to be published, which is said to show a very favorable state of affairs with a reduction in the bank-note circulation of 400 millions and a reduction in the exchange situation of 350 millions. Quotations on April 18 around 11 o’clock were:

1. G. Dye Stuffs 260½ to 267, Siemens & Halske 297½ to 299, Dessauer Gas 202 to 203, Waldhof Cellulose 295. Bids for German Oil at 134½ . To return once more to the street-car disaster in Heerstrasse, all those seriously injured in the accident are improving.