Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (27 page)

Hell, that’s where I almost spilled the beans. “I just mean you can depend on me, oughta get used to liquor, how about a light Kümmel?” The other quietly: “Maybe you’d like to play doctor with me?” “Why not? That’s where I’m at home. Y’know, Reinhold, didn’t I help you with Cilly, and the time before? Don’t you think I’ll be able to help you now? Franz is still a friend of men. He knows which way the road goes.”

Reinhold looks up, staring at him with his sad eyes: “So you know all that?” Franz quietly endures his look, won’t allow his happiness to be ruffled by it, let ‘im notice something if he wants to, it’ll do him a lot of good if he notices that others don’t let people flatten ‘em out. “Yes, Meck here can confirm it, we’ve got experience behind us and we’re building Oil that. And then that thing about the booze; Reinhold, if you can stand it. we’ll celebrate right here at my expense. I’ll pay the whole shebang.” Reinhold continues to look first at Franz, who is sticking out his chest, and then at little Meck who is gazing at him with curiosity. Reinhold lowers his eyes and searches around in his cup: “Maybe you’d like to fix me up as an old family man, who maybe can’t do nothing for his wife?” “Hurray for Reinhold, the old family man, three times three is ni-i-ine, we swig our drinks like swi-i-ine, come on, Reinhold, now sing, the first ten years are the hardest, friend, but without ‘em there never would be any end.”

Company, halt! Form fours! By the right, march! Reinhold leaves his coffee cup. Pums, of the fat red face, is standing beside him, whispering something to him. Reinhold shrugs his shoulders. Then Pums blows through the thick smoke and starts to croak merrily: “I’ve asked you once before, Biberkopf, how things are going with you, do you want to go on forever running around with that paper junk of yours? What profit do you get out of it, two pfennigs a copy, five pfennigs an hour, don’t you?” And then there’s a lot of pushing back and forth. Franz ought to take over a fruit and vegetable wagon. Pums furnishes the merchandise, the profits are splendid, Franz wants to, and then again he doesn’t want to, all those birds around Pums don’t quite suit him, they’re liable to give me the dirty end of the stick. Reinhold, the stutterer, remains silent in the background. When Franz asks him what he thinks about it, he notices that Reinhold has been looking at him all the time and only now looks back into his cup. “Well, what do you think about it, Reinhold?” The latter stutters: “Yes, I’m going to join up, too.” Meck says, why not, Franz, but Franz wants to think about it; he doesn’t want to say yes or no, he’ll come back tomorrow or day after tomorrow and talk the situation over and see how the merchandise is handled and about fetching it, billing it, and which section of the town is the best for him.

All of them are gone, the place is almost empty. Pums is gone, Meck and Biberkopf gone, alone at the bar stands a street-car employee, discussing with the proprietor wage-reductions, which he finds exorbitant. Reinhold, the stutterer, is still in his seat. Three empty soda bottles stand in front of him, one of them half filled, and a coffee cup. He doesn’t want to go home. At home Trude is sleeping. He thinks about it and wonders. He gets up, drags his feet across the room, his woolen socks hanging overboard. He looks a pitiable sight, pale yellow, gaping lines round his mouth, terrible wrinkles across his forehead. He takes another cup of coffee and lemonade.

Cursed be the man, says Jeremiah, that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed, blessed, blessed, is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Water in the dense black forest, black and terrible waters, you lie so dumb. In terrible repose you lie. Your surface does not move, when there is a storm in the forest and the flrs begin to bend, and the spider-webs are torn between the branches and there is a sound of splitting. Then you, black waters, lie there below in the hollow place; and the branches fall.

The wind tears at the forest, to you the storm does not come. You have no dragons in your domain, the age of mammoths is gone, nothing is there to frighten anyone; the plants decay in you; in you move fish and snails. Nothing more. Yet, though this is so, although you are but water, awesome you are, black waters, and terrible in your repose.

Sunday, April 8, 1928

“Are we going to have snow? Perhaps we will see white again in April.” Franz Biberkopf sat at the window of his little place, his left arm on the window-sill and his head in his hand. It was in the afternoon, Sunday, warm and comfy in the room. Cilly had lighted the stove at noon, now she was sleeping back there in bed with her little cat. “Are we going to have snow? The air’s so gray. It would be nice.”

And as Franz closed his eyes, he heard bells ringing. For several minutes he sat in silence, listened to them ringing: Boom, bim, bum, boom, bim, bam, bum, bum, bim. Then he raised his head from his hand and listened: Two deep bells and one shrill one. Then they stopped.

Why are they ringing? he asked himself. Then all at once they started again, very loud, eager, roaring. A frightening crash. Then they stopped. Everything was suddenly quiet.

Franz lifted his arm from the window-sill, stepped into the room. Cilly was sitting on the bed, a little mirror in her hand, her curl-pins between her lips, humming a friendly little tune, when Franz came up. “What’s on today, Cilly? Holiday?” She was busy with her hair. “Why, yes, Sunday.”

“Not a holiday?” “Maybe a Catholic holiday, don’t know.” “Because the bells are ringing like mad.” “Where?” “Just now.” “Didn’t hear anything. Did you hear anything, Franz?” “Why yes. It was crashing and banging around here like anything! “ “You musta been dreaming.” I’m scared. “No, I wasn’t dreaming, I was sitting over there.” “Maybe you were dozing.” “Nope.” He stuck to it, felt all numb, moved slowly, sat down at his place at the table. “Funny the way a man dreams. But I heard it, all right.” He poured down a swallow of beer. The scared feeling didn’t leave him.

He glanced towards Cilly, who was beginning to look tearful. “Who knows, Cilly, m’darlin’, if something didn’t happen to somebody just now.” Then he asked for the paper. She was able to laugh. “It didn’t come, never on Sundays, didn’t you know that?”

He picked up the morning edition, looked at the head-lines. “Only small stuff. Nope, that’s all nothing. Nothing has happened.” “If you hear ringing, Franz, that means you’ll be going to church.” “Oh, leave me alone with them sky-pilots. Not for me. Only it’s funny: a fellow hears something and when you look around afterwards, there’s nothing.” He meditates on this, she stood beside him now, caressing him. ‘‘I’ll go down and get some air, Cilly. Just for an hour or so. Want to hear what’s happened. In the evening there’s the
Welt
or
Montag Morgen .
I’ll have to look into that.” “Oh, Franz, always speculating. It probably says in the papers: a garbage truck had a breakdown at the Prenzlauer Tor and all the garbage spilled out. Or, wait a minute: a paper-seller had to change some money and gave the right amount by mistake. “

Franz laughed: “Well, I’m off. Bye-bye, Cilly.”

“Bye-bye, Franzeken.”

Then Franz went slowly down the four flights of stairs, and he never saw Cilly again.

She waited in the room till five. When he didn’t come, she went out in the street and asked for him in the cafes as far as the Prenzlauer corner. He hadn’t been seen anywhere. But hadn’t he wanted to read in the paper about his silly story, she thought, that thing he had dreamed? He must have gone somewhere. At the Prenzlauer corner the proprietress said: “Nope, he hasn’t been here. But Herr Pums asked for him. So I told him where Herr Biberkopf lived, that’s probably where he went.” “Nope, nobody’s been to our home.” “Maybe he didn’t find the place.” “Perhaps.” “Or maybe he met him in front of the door.”

Cilly sat there till late in the evening. The cafe began to fill up. She kept looking towards the door. Once she went home and came back again. Meck was the only one who came, he consoled her and entertained her with jokes for a quarter of an hour. He said: “He’ll come back, that boy is used to his three squares. Don’t you worry, Cilly.” But while he was saying this, he remembered how Lina had once come and sat beside him, and she had been looking for Franz, too, that time, when he had the trouble with Lüders and the shoe-laces. And he almost went along with Cilly when she went out into the dark muddy street again, but he really didn’t want to make her afraid, it was probably a lot of bunk anyway.

Cilly suddenly got furious and went to look for Reinhold; maybe he had talked Franz into getting another jane and simply giving her the go-by. Reinhold’s place was locked, not a soul there, not even Trude.

She went slowly back to the cafe, Prenzlauer corner, back again into the cafe. It was snowing, but the snow had begun to melt. On the Alex the newsboys were calling
Montag Morgen
and
Welt am Mittag.
She bought a paper from a strange boy, even looked at it. Wonder if anything has happened, if he was right this afternoon.

Oh well, a railroad accident in the United States, in Ohio; a clash between communists and swastika-men, nope, that’s not Franz’s idea of a fight, big damage by fire in Wilmersdorf. What do I care. She sauntered past Tietz’s bright store-front, crossed towards the gloomy Prenzlauer Strasse. She had no umbrella and got soaked to the skin. In Prenzlauer Strasse in front of the little confectionery shop, a group of street-girls stood under umbrellas, barring the passage. Right behind them a fat man with no hat approached her, as he stepped out of the hallway of a house. She walked quickly past him. I’ll take on the next one, what’s that boy thinking about anyway. That was the meanest Irick anybody had ever played on her.

It was a quarter past nine. A terrible Sunday. At that hour Franz was already lying on the ground in another section of the city, his head in the gutter. his legs Oil the pavement.

Franz goes down the stairs. One step, another step, another step, step, step, step, four flights, always down, down, down, and still down. A fellow gets dizzy, all dopy in the head. Y’cook soup, Fraulein Stein, got a spoon Fraulein Stein-got a spoon, Fraulein Stein cook soup, Fraulein Stein.... Nope, nothing doing in that line; how I sweated with that tart. Gotta get some air. Banisters, no decent lighting arrangements here, could hurt yourself on a nail.

A door opens on the second floor and a man waddles heavily along behind him. He must have
some
belly, to puff like that, and walking downstairs, too. Franz Biberkopf stands in front of the door, the air is soft and gray, it’ll soon be snowing. The man from the staircase puffs beside him, a flabby little man with a bloated white face wearing a green felt hat. “A bit out of breath, neighbour?” “Yes, it’s because I’m so fat, and then walking up and down the steps like that.” They walk down the street together. The man with the short breath is puffing away. “Been up and down four flights of stairs five times today. Just figure out for yourself: twenty flights, with an average of thirty steps each, winding stairs are shorter, but it’s harder to walk up, so we’ll count thirty steps, five flights make a hundred and fifty steps. Up. And down.” “As a matter of fact, it’s three hundred. Because I see you use up a lot of strength walking down, too.” “You’re right, going down as well.” “If I was you, I’d look for another job.”

Heavy flakes of snow are now falling. They turn around, it’s a pretty sight. “Yes, I follow the ads, and I’ve got to keep at it. There’s no weekday and Sunday about it. Sunday even more than weekdays. Most people advertise on Sundays, they expect better results that way.” “Yes, because people have time to read the paper. I understand that blindfolded. That’s in my line.” “You in advertising, too?” “Nope, I only sell papers. Now I’m goin’ to read one myself.” “Well, I’ve read ‘em all. What weather! Did ye ever see anything like it?” “April, yesterday it was still nice. I tell you tomorrow it’ll be all white again. What you bet?” He begins to puff again, the street-lamps are lighted already, under a lamp he takes out a little notebook without a cover, holds it far away from him, reads. Franz surmises: “You’ll get your book wet.” The other does not hear him and puts the book back, the conversation is finished, Franz thinks, I’ll be off. At that moment the little man looks at him from under his green hat: “Listen, neighbor, what do you live on?” “Why do you ask, I’m a newsvender, a free-lance newsvender.” “That so. And that’s how you earn your money?” “Well, I manage it somehow.” What’s he want anyway, funny bird. “Yep. Look here, I‘ve always wanted to do something like that. earn my money on my own. Must really be nice, a man does what he wants and if you’re good at it. you earn enough .” “Sometimes you don’t. But you run around just about enough already, neighbor. Today being Sunday, and in such weather, there ain’t many running around like that.” “Right you are, right you are. I’ve been dashing around half the day. And there ain’t nothin’ comin’ in, nothin’ comin’ in. People are hard up these · days.” “Whatcha trading in, neighbor, if I may ask?” “I got a little pension. Y’see I wanted to be a free man; work and earn my money. Well, I’ve had my pension for three years now, was in the postal service before, and now I do nothing but hoof it all the time. Y’see it’s like this: I read the paper and then I go there and take a look at what people advertise.” “Furniture, perhaps?” “Anything, second-hand office fixtures, Bechstein grands, old Persian rugs, pianolas, stamp collections, coins, clothes left by dead people.” “Lot’s of people die?” “By the truck-loads. Well, then I go up and look at the stuff, and sometimes I buy something.” “And then you sell it again, I getcha.”