Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (34 page)

The girl rivets her eyes on his. “Haven’t got ‘em now. I’m just saying it, but I’ll get ‘em, and not eight lousy groschen.” She clings to him heavily in wonder and delight.

American Quick Pressing, an open window, two steaming ironing-boards, in the background several men, not much American about them, sitting smoking, in the front a swarthy young tailor in his shirt-sleeves. Franz looks the place over. He chuckles: “Emmi, cute li’l Emmi, it was nice I found ye today, wasn’t it?” She doesn’t yet understand the man, but is mightily flattered, he can go to hell, that other guy who had stood her up, let ‘im get mad, if he wants to. “Emmi, sweet Emmi, just take a peep at this shop.” “Well, he certainly don’t make much with his pressing.” “Who?” “That little black fellow.” “Nope, not him, but the others.” “Those fellows back there? How do you know? I don’t know ‘em.” Franz chuckles: “Neither do 1. never seen ‘em before, but I know ‘em just the same. Just look at ‘em. And the boss: he presses in front, but in the back - well, he does something else.” “Rooming house?” “Maybe so, nope, oh, they’re all a lotta crooks. Who do all those suits hanging there belong to? I’d just like to be a bull with a brass badge and ask that guy-you’d see ‘em beat it, all right.” “What is it?” “It’s all stuff they’ve hooked, and just deposited here! Quick-pressing place, my eye! Swell guys, eh? Look at ‘em puffing away! They take it easy all right.”

They continue walking. “You oughta do like ‘em, Emmi. That’s the only real thing. Only don’t work. Get that out of your head, that stuff about working! Working gives you blisters on your hands, but no money, or at best, a hole in your head! Work never made a man rich. I’m tellin’ you. Only cheating. You bet!”

“And what do you do, anyhow?” She is full of hope. “Come along, Emmi. I’ll tell you.” They are back again in the Rosenthaler Strasse crowd, then they go through Sophienstrasse into Münzstrasse. Franz goes his way. Trumpets are blaring a marching song beside him. A battle was fought upon the open wold, ratatata, ratatata, ratatata. We have sacked the town and taken all their heavy gold. Sacked it-racked it, ratatata!

They both laugh. This girl he fished up has class. To be sure, her name’s only Emmi, but she has the reformatory and divorce behind her. They are both in high spirits. Emmi asks: “Where’s your other arm?” “It’s at home with my girl, she didn’t want to let me go, so I had to leave my arm in hock.” “Well let’s hope that arm’s as gay as you are.” “You said it. Say, haven’t you heard: I’ve started up a business with that arm o’mine. It stands on a table and says the whole day long: Only he who works shall eat. He who doesn’t work must go hungry. That’s what my arm says all day: Admittance one groschen, and the proletarians gather and enjoy it.” She holds her belly, and he laughs, too. “Listen, dearie, you’re going to tear my other arm off.”

Another Man gets another Head as well

A funny little wagon passes through the town, on its chassis a paralyzed man, trundling himself forward with his arms. The little cart is decorated with a lot of colored streamers; and he rides along Schönhauser Allee and stops at all the corners, people gather around him, while his assistant sells penny post-cards:

“Johann Kirbach, globe-trotter, born February 20, 1874, in München-Gladbach, healthy and active till the outbreak of the World War. My industrious efforts were brought to a close by a paralytic stroke on my right side. But I recovered enough to be able to walk for hours on end, which permitted me to carryon my calling. Thus my family was protected from distress. In November 1924, the entire population of the Rhineland rejoiced when the state railroad was liberated from the oppressive Belgian occupation. Many German brothers drank their fill with glee; but for me it was disastrous. That day, on my way home, not 400 yards from my house, I was struck down by a troop of men coming out of a saloon. Such was my bad luck, that as a result I am a cripple for life and can never walk again. I have no pension nor other means of support. Johann Kirbach.”

In the cafe where Franz Biberkopf passes these lovely days reconnoitering, looking out for any opportunity, a brand-new, reliable one which will help a fellow get on, there’s a young smart aleck who has seen the wagon with the paralyzed man in front of the Danziger Strasse station. And he fills the cafe with his yapping on the subject, as well as all about what they did to his father, who had been shot in the chest and can hardly breathe now, and then all at once they decide it’s only a nervous disease and reduce his pension, and soon he won’t get any at all!

Another young fellow with a big jockey-cap listens to all this gibble-gabble; he is sitting on the same bench, but has no beer. This boy has a lower jaw like a boxer’s. “Pooh” says he, “them cripples-they ought’n to give ‘em a pfennig.” “You would say that. First let ‘em shove ye into the war and then not pay ye nothing.” “That’s the way it should be, pard. If you make a fool o’ yourself anywhere else, nobody’s goin’ to hand you any dough, either. If a little boy steals a ride on a wagon and then falls down and breaks a leg, be don’t get a single pfennig. Why not? He was a fool all right.” “Listen here, you weren’t even alive during the war, you were still in diapers.” “Tommyrot, the trouble with Germany is they pay out doles. There’s thousands of ‘em running around, not doin’ nothing, and gettin’ money for it.”

Others at the table get in on the conversation: “Well, now, just hold your horses, Willy, m’ boy. What you working at, anyway?” “Nothin’. I don’t do nothin’, either. And if they go on paying me, then I’ll go on doin’ nothin’. Jest the same, it’s a lot o’ rot for ‘em to give me somethin’.” The others laugh: “Well, he’s a bunk-artist all right.”

Franz Biberkopf is sitting at the same table. The youngster over there with the jockey-cap and his hands thrust cheekily in his pockets, looks at him as he sits there with his one arm. A girl embraces Franz: “Say, why, you’ve only got one arm. What pension you gettin’?” “Who wants to know?” The girl makes eyes at the lad opposite. “Him, over there. He’s interested in it.” “Nope, I don’t really take no interest in it. I only say this: any fellow who was damn-fool enough to go to war-well, that’s all there is to it.” The girl turns to Franz: “Y’ see, he’s scared.” “Not o’ me. He needn’t be afraid o’ me. Don’t I say the same thing, I don’t say nothin’ else. Y’ know where my arm is, the one that’s off here, I put it in alcohol and now it’s settin’ on the press at home, and it says all day long: Howdy, Franz, hey, you old blockhead.”

Haha. Great guy that one, he’s a hot one. An elderly man has taken a few thick sandwiches from out of a newspaper wrapping, he cuts them up with his pocket-knife and stuffs the pieces into his mouth. “I wasn’t in the war, they kept me locked up in Siberia all the time. Well, and now I’m at home with my folks and gOt the rheumatism. Now suppose they should come and want to take my dole money away-hell, are you all daft?” The youngster: “How didja get the rheumatism? Peddling on the streets, didncha, eh? Well, if you got sick bones, you better not go around peddling on the slreets.” “I might be a pimp, then.” The youngster bangs on the table right in front of the sandwich-paper. “Righto! That’ll be fine. And it’s not to be laughed at. You ought to see my brother’s wife, my sister-in-law, they’re decent people, hold their own with anybody, d’you think they felt embarrassed about it, letting themselves be paid that junk, dole money? Why, he went running around looking for work, and she didn’t know what to do with them few pfennigs, and two little brats at home. A woman, of course, can’t go out to work. Then she got to know J fellow, and then maybe she got to know another one, get me? Till he noticed something, my brother did. Then he comes to me and says he wants me to come and hear what he’s got to tell his wife. Well, he came to the right party that time. Say, you shoulda heard that show! He flew off like a wet hen. She gave him and his couple of dirty simoleons such a good talking to that he simply shook on his pins, he did, my brother, her honored husband. He won’t never show up again.” “Ain’t he never showed up again?” “He’d like to all right. But nope, she don’t want to have nothing to do with a damn fool, a fellow who lives on the dole and then shoots off his mouth when somebody else earns some money.”

They’re all of about the same opinion. Franz Biberkopf is sitting next to the youngster, Willy, they call him, and drinks to his health: “Y’ know, you’re only ten or twelve years younger than us, but you’re a hundred years cleverer. Boys, would I ‘a’ dared talk like that when I was twenty? For the love o’ mike! As the Prussians used to say: hands on the seam of your trousers!” “And so say we, only not on our own!” Laughter.

The room is full; the waiter opens a door, a narrow room in back is empty. So the whole table troops in under the gas light. It’s very hot, the room is full of flies, a straw mattress is lying on the floor, they lift it up onto the window-sill to air it. The talk goes on. Willy sits between them, doesn’t give in.

Just here, the young smart aleck they had snubbed before notices a wrist-watch on Willy’s arm and can’t get over it’s being gold. “Bet you bought that cheap.” “Three marks.” “Somebody hooked it.” “None of my business. Want one, too?” “Nope. Thanks. So somebody can catch me and say: Where didja get that watch?” Willy grins at the company: “He’s afraid of theft!” “That’s enough from you.” Willy stretches his arm across the table: “He’s got something against my watch. To me, it’s just a plain watch that runs and is made outa gold.” “For three marks.” “Then I’ll show you somethin’ else. Lemme have your mug a minute. Tell me, what’s that?” “A mug.” “Right. A mug to drink out or.” “Can’t deny that.” “And this here?” “That’s a watch. Say, are you trying to kid me?” “That’s a watch. It’s neither a shoe nor a canary bird, but if you want to, you can call it a shoe, too; you can do that, it’s just as you want, that’s your business.” “Don’t get that. What you after, anyway?” Willy seems to know what he’s after. He takes his arm away, grabs a girl and says: “Say you, walk for us a bit.” “What for? What do you mean?” “Aw, go ahead and walk along the wall.” She doesn’t want to. The others call out to her, “Go ahead and walk for him. Don’t put on airs.”

Finally she gets up, looks at Willy and walks along the wall. “Hop to it, little filly!” “Walk,” cries Willy. She sticks her tongue out at him and starts forward, shaking her buttocks. They laugh. “Now you can come back. Well, what did she do?” “She stuck her tongue out at you!” “What else?” “She walked.” “O.K. Walked.” The girl puts in a word: “Not on your life, that was dancing.” The elderly man with the sandwiches: “That wasn’t dancing. Since when is it dancing when a person sticks out her behind.” The girl: “When you stick yours out, it ain’t.” Two fellows shout: “She walked.” Willy hears them and laughs triumphantly. “Well, all right, then, and I say she marched.” The smart aleck gets peevish: “Well, what’s it all about, anyway?”

“Nothing at all. Don’t you see; walked, danced, marched, whatever you want. You don’t understand that yet. Then I’ll chew it for you first. This here is a mug o’ beer, but you could call it spit just as well, then maybe we’d all have to call it spit, but we’d drink it up all the same. And so, when she marched, then she either marched or walked or danced, but what it was, you saw for yourself. With your own eyes, too. It was what you saw. And if anybody takes my watch from me, then it’s not stolen, by a long run. Do you get me now? It’s taken away, out o’ your pocket or out of a display-window, or a shop. But stolen? Who says so?” Willy leans back, his hands in his pockets again. “Not me.” “Well, what do you say then?” “Listen, I say, taken away. Changed owners.” Tableau. Willy sticks out his boxer’S chin and says nothing. The others reflect. Something queer hovers about the table.

Willy, in his penetrating voice, suddenly attacks one-armed Franz: “You had to join up with the Prussians, you’ve been in the war. Now I call that theft of liberty. But they had their own courts and police, and because they had them, they put a muzzle on you, and so now it’s not a theft of liberty, according to a poor bum like you, but military seevice. And you’ve got to put up with it, like taxes, which go for something you don’t understand any better.”

The girl pouts: “Now don’t talk politics. That’s no way to spend an evening.” The youngster hawhaws himself out of a tight hole: “It’s all a lot of hooey! The weather’s too nice for that bunk.” Willy challenges him: “Then suppose you go Out in the street. I guess you think, you poor nut, you, that politics only exists here in this room and that I’m just makin’ it up for your benefit. It don’t need me for that. It pukes on your head, m’boy, wherever you go. If you let it, that is.” A man yells: “Oh, forget it, shut your traps.”

Two new customers arrive. The girl sways daintily, then serpentines along the walL and, dandling her buttocks, slithers sweetly across to Willy. He jumps up, grabs her for a brazen rollicking dance, after which they clinch in a ten-minute burner. Deep immured beneath the earth stands the mold of dry-burnt clay. Nobody looks at them. One-armed Franz starts tilting his third beaker and strokes his shoulder stump. The stump burns and burns. A clever hound, that Willy, a damned clever hound. The boys drag the table out and throw the straw mattress through the window. One of them has come along with an accordion, he’s sitting on (he footstool by the door, wheezing away at it. My Johnnie, he’s the one who can, my Johnnie’s the essence of a man.

They carouse merrily, their coats off, swigging, brawling, sweating. If anyone can, it’s Johnnie, my man. Then Franz Biberkopf gets up, pays, and says to himself: I’m not a youngster any more, to go around raising hell, and then I ain’t crazy about it either, gOlla get some money. Where I get it from, don’t matter.

Cap on and off he goes.

Two men are Sitting in Rosenthaler Strasse at noon, ladling out pea soup; one has the
Berliner Zeitung
beside him. He laughs: “Fearful domestic tragedy in Western Germany.” “What do you mean, what’s that to laugh at?” “Listen to this: ‘A father throws his three children into the water.’ Three at one stroke. A rambunctious fellow, all right.” “Where’d it happen?” “Hamm, in Westphalia. That’s some mess. Boy, he musta had it full up to here. But you can depend on a fellow like him, all right. Wait a minute, let’s see what he did with the wife. Musta given her-nope, she did it on her own, did it beforehand. Whatcha say to that? A gay li’l family that, Max, they know how to live. Letter from wife: Deceiver! With an exclamation point, he ought to hear that! As I am tired of leading this life, I have decided to jump into the canal. Get yourself a rope and hang yourself, Julia. Full stop.” He doubles up with laughter. “There’s not much harmony in that family: the canal for her and the rope for him. The wife says: hang yourself, and he throws the children into the water. The man didn’t listen to her. Nothing could come from a marriage like that.”