Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (39 page)

She measures out half a glass for the girl, but the tears continue trickling down the child’s cheeks, and her face remains as sad as ever. “Another little sip, Sonia.” Eva puts down the glass, strokes Sonia’s cheeks and says to herself, she’s going to get worked up again. But the girl continues staring in front of her. Then she gets up, stands before the window and looks out. Eva now stands beside Sonia, can’t make her out for the life of me, damn it. “You mustn’t take that business with Franz so much to heart, little Sonia, what I just said, you know I didn’t mean it that way. But you shouldn’t let him run around with that slob of a Willy. Franz is such a good-natured fool, y’see, he’d do better to go after this Pums feller, or whoever it was ran over his arm and do something about it.” “I’ll watch out,” says little Sonia softly, and without raising her head she puts an arm around Eva, and thus they stand for almost five minutes. Eva thinks: I don’t begrudge this one Franz, but I would any other.

Afterward they tear through the room with the little monkeys; Eva shows her everything. Sonia is amazed by it all: Eva’s wardrobe, the furniture, the beds, the rugs. Do you dream of that lovely hour when you will be crowned the Pixavon Queen? Kin a guy smoke here? Sure. I don’t understand how, year after year, you are able to carry this high quality cigarette at such a low price; I am happy to confess to you. Say, but that smells nice! The wonderful scent of the white rose, as delicate as the cultivated German woman demands, and yet strong enough to develop the entire personality. Ah, the life of the American film star, in reality, differs essentially from what the legends surrounding her would lead us to assume. The coffee arrives; Sonia sings a song:

Once there roved at Abrudpanta Brigands wild and daring, too. But their chief whose name was Guito Had a noble heart and true. Once he met in darkling forests Count von Marschan’s little lass. Soon there echoed through the branches: I am yours till death shall pass!

But they are discovered later, Hunters come with loud halloo. They’re awakened from their rapture, Ask themselves, what shall we do. And her father damns the maiden, Curses loud the chieftain grim, Oh, have pity, father, darling, I shall go to death with him.

Soon there lies in darkness Guito, Fearful is his woe and pain! Isabella seeks to shatter Her own sweetheart’s heavy chain. And she does succeed - oh wonder, He is once more safe and free, Hardly rid from ghastly shackles, He can stop a murderer’s glee.

To the castle then he hastens With the woman he released, But already she is kneeling, Ready for the wedding feast, Forced to say “yes” to the union Which she loathes with all her might, But the crime’s revealed by Guito, And his lips are pale and tight.

Swoon of death grips Isabella, And she lies so sweet and pale, Ah, there is no kiss can wake her, Nobly then he tells his tale. To her father he has spoken: Yours the guilt that she be dead, You, alone, her heart have broken. You made pale those cheeks once red.

When the chief again beholds her Lying on the silent bier, He bends down, her face descrying, She still lives, Death is not near. Off he bears her, gently crooning, Struck with fear the people stand, And she wakes up from her swooning, He’s her mate and helping hand.

And they flee by love’s wind carried, Peace and quiet have left them now, By the courts pursued and harried, Solemnly they take this vow: Freely let us both surrender, When the poison cup we’ve drained, God his judgement then will render, Up in heaven our love we’ve gained.

Sonia and Eva know it’s only a common little song from the street fair; the kind they toot as an accompaniment to illustrative posters; but both have to weep when it’s finished, and they’re unable to relight their cigarettes right away.

Enough of Politics, but this eternal Far-Niente is still more dangerous

Franz Biberkopf muddles around in politics a bit longer. The smart boy Willy has not much cash; but he has a sharp bright mind, even though he is only a beginner in the pickpocket business, and that’s why he exploits Franz. He was once an inmate in a house of correction where somebody had told him all about communism, to the effect that it’s nothing at all; and that a reasonable man believes only in Nietzsche and Stirner, and does what he pleases; all the rest is bunk. So the sharp, ironical lad gets a lot of fun out of going to political meetings, and heckling the speakers. At the meetings he fishes up people with whom he wants to do business, or whose legs he simply wants to pull. Franz goes about with him for a while only. Then it’s all over, finished with politics, even without Mieze’s and Eva’s intervention.

Late one evening, he is sitting at table with an elderly carpenter whom I hey got to know at a meeting; Willy, in the meantime, is standing at the bar talking with another man. Franz has his arm propped up on the table, his head in his left hand, as he listens to what the carpenter says. “Y’know, mate, I only went to the meeting because my wife is sick, and she don’t need me at home at night. She needs her rest; at eight o’clock sharp she lakes her sleeping tablets and tea, and then I’ve got to put out the lights. What can I do upstairs? That’s what drives a man to the saloons, when a man’s got a sick woman.”

“Put her in a hospital, why doncha? It’s no good at home.”

“She’s already been in a hospital. I took her out again. She didn’t like the meals there, and besides she didn’t get any better, either.” “Is she very sick, your wife?” “Her womb has grown onto the rectum or something like that. They’ve operated on her once, but it don’t help any. Something internal. And now the doctor says she’s only nervous and there’s nothing the matter with her. But she’s got pains all right, she groans all day long.”

“The hell she does.”

“He’ll write her down as cured, just you watch. She was supposed to go twice to see a specialist, get me, but nothing doing. He’ll write her down as healthy, sure enough. If a person’s got sick nerves, then he’s healthy.”

Franz listens, he’s been sick, too, his arm was run over, and he was in the Magdeburg Hospital. He can get along without that, it happened in another world. “Another beer?” “Sure.” “One beer.” The carpenter looks at Franz: “You don’t belong to the parry, do you?”

“Used to, in the old days. Not any more now. It’s no use.”

The proprietor comes and sits at their table, greets the carpenter with a “g’d evening, Ede,” and asks about the children, then he whispers: “Gee whiz, are you talking politics again?”

“We just been talking about that. Don’t pay no attention to it now.” “Well, that’s the stuff. I tell you, Ede, and my boy says the same thing as me, you don’t earn a penny with politics, politics don’t help us to get ahead any, only the others.”

The carpenter looks at him with narrowed eyes: “Is that so? Little August already has that idea, too?”

“The boy’s good, I’m telling you, you can’t fool ‘im. I’d like to see anybody try it. We want to make money. And-things are goin’ pretty well. Only no grumbling.”

“Well, here’s how, Fritze. I don’t begrudge you nothin’.”

“Me, I don’t give a damn for all that Marxism or Lenin and Stalin and those guys. Whether somebody’ll give me credit or not, the dough, I mean, and how much and how long-get me, that’s what makes the world turn round.”

“Well, you’ve got somewhere.” Whereupon Franz and the carpenter grow silent. The proprietor goes on chattering, but the carpenter gets himself all worked up:

“Me, I don’t understand nothing about Marxism. But watch out, Fritze, it’s not as simple as you paint it here in your skull. What do I want with Marxism or what those fellows say, those Russians, or Willy with his Stirner. Maybe it’s all bunk. What I need, I can figure that out on my fingers every day. Sure, I can understand when a fellow beats hell out of me, what that means. Or when I’m up at my place and tomorrow I’m kicked out, because there ain’t no orders comin’ in, the boss stays, and the big foreman stays too, of course, only me I’ve got to go out into the street and look for the dole. But-I’ve got three kids and they go to the public school, the eldest girl has got crooked legs from the rickets. I can’t send her away, but maybe the school will do it some day. Maybe my wife can go to the Children’s Aid or something like that, the wife’s got to work, but now she’s sick, otherwise she’s a good worker. She peddles fish, but as far as learning some thin’ is concerned, the kids don’t learn a lot, you can imagine that. So y’see how it is. And I can’t understand either, how other folks learn their children them foreign languages, and in summer they go to the seaside, and we ain’t even got the cash to pay our fare out to Tegel. And the swell children, they don’t get crooked legs so easy, either. But when I’ve got to go to the doctor, with my rheumatism, there’s thirty of us sittin’ in the waiting-room and afterwards he asks me: that pain in your legs, well, you had it before most likely, and how long have you held this job, and have you got your papers: he don’t believe me, not on your life, and the next thing, off I go to the specialist, and if I want to be sent on a trip by the state insurance people, they’re always docking your pay for that, well I tell ye, you gotta carry your head under your arm before they’ll do that. I tell ye, Fritze, ye don’t need no glasses to see that. A fellow sure has to be a jackass from the Zoo if he don’t get it. We don’t need no Karl Marx to tell us that. But, Fritze, but - yea, that’s the gospel truth, s’help me God.”

The carpenter raises his gray head and stares, wide-eyed, at the proprietor. He puts his pipe back into his mouth, then puffs and waits for someone to answer. The barkeeper grumbles, purses his lips, and looks fed up. “Yep, you’re right. My youngest girl’s got crooked legs, too. I ain’t got any money for the country. But there’s always been rich and poor, and that’s all there is to it. And us two won’t change it, either.”

The carpenter calmly puffs away: “Only the ones that likes it ought to be poor. Let the others have a try at it first. I ain’t got no liking for it. A fellow gets tired of it after a while.”

They are talking quite calmly, Slowly sipping their beer. Franz listens. Willy comes over from the bar. Franz decides to get up, he takes his hat and goes out: “No, Willy, I want to hit the hay early. You know how it was yesterday.”

Franz tramps alone along the hot dusty street, marching along, bumbledly, bumbledy, bumbledy, bee, tumbledy, rumbledy, tumbledy, bee. Wait awhile, my little beaver, soon will Haarmann come to you, with his little chopping cleaver, he’ll make sausage out of you, wait a while, my little beaver, soon will Haarmann come to you. Damn it, damn it, where am I walking to? He pauses, can’t get across the street; he turns around, marches back along the hot street, past the cafe, where they are still sitting, where the carpenter sits with his beer. I won’t go in. The carpenter told the truth. That’s the truth. What do I want with politics, it’s a lot of tripe! It don’t help me any. Don’t get me anywhere.

So Franz marches again through the hot, dusty, restless streets. August. In Rosenthaler Platz the crowd is thicker, a man is there selling newspapers,
Berlin Workers’ Journal, Marxist Fehmic Court,
Czech Jew as Sadist, seduced 20 boys, but no arrests made, I used to peddle here, too. Terribly hot today. Franz stops and buys a paper from the man who has a green swastika on his cap, the one-eyed war veteran of the
Neue Welt.
Drink, drink, brother, let’s drink, Leave all your worries at home, Shun all trouble and shun all pain, Then life’s a happy refrain, Shun all trouble and shun all pain, Then life’s a happy refrain.

He drifts round the square into Elsasser Strasse, shoelaces, Lüders, Shun all trouble, and shun all pain, Then life’s a happy refrain. It’s some time ago now, Christmas last year, boy, that’s a long time, I stood here in front of Fabisch’s, what a lotta trash that was, things for neckties, tie-holders, and Lina; Lina, the fat Polish girl who used to come fetch me here.

Franz keeps on tramping along, he doesn’t know what he wants, back to Rosenthaler Platz, and finally he stands in front of Fabisch’s at the car-stop, opposite Aschinger’s. And there he waits. Yes, that’s what he wants! He stands there and waits and feels like a magnetic needletowards the North! To Tegel, to prison, to prison-walls! That’S where he wants to go! That’s where he must go.

Then it so happens that car No. 41 comes by, stops, and Franz gets on. He feels that’s as it should be. Off he rides, as the car speeds’on to Tegel. He pays 20 pfennigs, he has his ticket, it goes like greased lightning, that’s the stuff! He feels fine. So it’s true that he’s riding out there. Brunnenstrasse, Uferstrasse, tree-bordered streets, Reinickendorf, it’s real, every bit of it, that’s where he’s going, it’s written there. And now all is well. As he sits there, it grows truer, more intense, more potent. The satisfaction he feels is so deep, so strong, and so overpowering is his sense of well-being that Franz, as he sits there, shuts his eyes and is engulfed in a profound sleep.

The car has passed the city hall in the dark. Berliner Strasse, Reinickendorf West, Tegel, end of the line. The conductor wakes him up, helps him to his feet. “We don’t go any farther. Where did you want to go, anyway?” Franz stumbles out: “Tegel.” “Well, here you are!” He’s got a good load on, that’s how those cripples booze their pensions away.

A tremendous need for sleep has so overcome Franz that he sets out full sail across the square into which he has drifted, up to the first bench he finds, behind a streetlamp. A police-squad wakes him up, it’s three o’clock, they don’t do anything to him, the man looks like a decent fellow, he’s got a good load on, but somebody might rob him. “You mustn’t sleep here, where do you live?”

Franz has had enough. He yawns. He wants to go sleepy-bye. Yes, that’s Tegel, what did I want here, anyway, did I want anything here? His thoughts run into each other. I’ve got to hit the hay, there’s nothing else to be done. He broods gloomily: Yes, yes, that’s Tegel, he doesn’t know what it’s all about, he did time here once. An automobile. What was it, what did I want in Tegel? Say, wake me up, if I go to sleep.

And a profound sleep seizes him again, unsealing his eyes. Franz knows everything.