Berlin Stories (10 page)

And now you turn a corner and the fire is right in front of you, it looks as if it wants to leap forward to greet you; an entire street is brightly, garishly lit up by it, it resembles a sunset in the distant south, ten evenings ablaze, a host of suns setting in unison. You see the façades of buildings looking like pale-yellow paper, and the bright red glow of the fire approaches, a thick, glowing, wounded red, and beside it the street lanterns look like feebly burning damp matches. And cries ring out. It seems as if trumpets are sounding everywhere, but this is a false impression, everything is relatively quiet, it's just that you are running, and beside you, before you and behind, others are now loping as well, and hackney cabs are trotting past, and the electric tram passes by. There is something ordinary about all of this, yet at the same time something incomprehensible. Suddenly everyone stops short as if standing before a fairy tale. What now appears resembles a bomb effect dreamed up by an enterprising theater director.

A thick, seemingly incessant rain of small, light sparks and embers flies out of the dark air and down into the crowded street, sowing a crop of glowing snow. At just this moment a commuter train rolls past, and it too is soon entirely covered with this peculiar snow. People are standing there incautiously gazing up into the red-dotted sky without considering that a glowing, scalding hot snowflake might strike them in the eye. The coat of a gentleman who is just riding past on the tram catches fire. This tiny conflagration, however, causes no serious harm. Still it goes on raining in this unfamiliar, unprecedented way. Involuntarily you sense how very fortunate you are to still be capable of believing in a miracle out of the
Thousand and One Nights
. And indeed: we feel we have suddenly been transported to the Orient and the Arabian nights when we glimpse, right in front of us, a rosily shimmering fairy palace. It is perhaps a building whose architecture has been repeatedly criticized. But at this moment it isn't clear which is more deserving of admiration: the charm of the Venetian illumination or the unsurpassedly beautiful architecture. This fiery glow is the consummate architect.

You find yourself being shoved this way and that, half lifted up, carried along and rocked. An immense crowd has assembled all around this roaring, hissing, flickering fire catastrophe. Will lives be lost? people wonder. Soon all are finding the throng as familiar as an intimate friendship with a dear, admirable person. Now and again hot fiery winds blow across people's faces, new flurries of sparks rise in the air, a splendid sight. And still it burns, and so and so many people are taking in the spectacle of the flames. One or the other is about to leave, but once again his eye is drawn back to the fire, irresistibly. If you now stand up high on your toes, you can see constables on horseback. “We were just expecting you,” some young fellow remarks. Others laugh. Everyone is standing head to head, breath beside breath, feeling beside feeling, curiosity beside curiosity, body to body, and each of them still finds himself compelled to go on reading this suspenseful nature story. Automobiles in the midst of the pressing crowd. “Let's go stand somewhere else. This corner gives me the creeps.” Words of this sort are heard. Suddenly a majestic flaming figure bursts forth from a glowing gap in the conflagration, a veritable fiery giant, and thrusts itself far out into the night air, taking the form of gently falling rain, as though something beautiful and huge was just there and now is dying out.

More and more people keep arriving as others leave. Those departing throw themselves amusingly into the wake of the puffing, tootling cars, which helpfully bore a path through the malleable throng, making their departure possible. The electric trams are stuffed to bursting because of all the many people taking refuge in the cars. Other inquisitive faces peer out the windows of nearby buildings. And now even the elegant nocturnal party set is sending out its envoys, both female and male, bedded in hackney cabs and furs, and still the fire continues to rage. The fire's wrath is not so easily placated, not even with streams of water, even the most sustained. You see the team of firefighters, admiring the daredevil positions they assume, yet cannot help expecting at every moment to see them succumb to smoke and flames. Now a general jostling ensues: policemen up front are pushing back the crowd! It's difficult to keep your footing, and in the first uncertainty of your new position you grasp, as if to steady yourself, the nearest available hand, which happens to be the delightful hand of a girl, but then, like it or not, this property must be let go of.

Is this a great calamity? Thanks to the vigilance and valor of the fire department, the extent of the loss has been reduced, but an old, memorable, venerable building has been lost, and this is loss enough. Enough charming sites from ancient times have been snatched from us by everyday life and its raucous demands, and now the fire too is helping to thin out Berlin's statues and historical monuments. But the populace is not terribly concerned with all that “old rubbish.” A postman standing there among the crowd remarks that it's good to have room for new things. In Berlin, he adds, things are getting too cramped anyhow—it's terrible how it blocks the flow of traffic. A person has to head for Charlottenburg—now there's a proper region where you can find wide, lovely, bright streets, etc.

My companion is now urging me on, he's cold, and both of us are meanwhile convinced that we are hungry for a nice supper. We leave, but keep turning around to look back again. The yellow, red, glowing entity behind us is still alive, displaying frightful vitality, still speaking this same fierce, furious language, still feeling the same indestructible incendiary sentiments. But my companion declares it's getting tedious to watch the flames for so long. I concede the point. It is one of my possibly bad habits that I am constantly conceding points to my fellow man.

1908

How nice it is to stand about in train stations and in a leisurely fashion observe the travelers who are arriving and going off again. Many a poor, destitute devil enjoys this pastime, for it is an amusement that costs nothing at all. Nor does it require any formalities or rules; you merely stand there, your hands possibly in your trouser pockets, a cigarette or cigar stump in your mouth, almost indecorously, and yet without attracting any particular notice, and in this way you may enjoy the liveliest and loveliest spectacle in the world, for this is a train station. Train stations in the countryside can be downright ravishing with their gardens and the little stands of trees that tend to be situated beside such buildings, but in the train stations of royal seats and capitals there's more going on, and all this mobility is sometimes far more beautiful than all beautiful, peaceful landscapes. For the unemployed and all the various sorts of idlers that today's industrial, artistic, and commercial life and activity at times sets out on the street, train stations and the sight of the departing and arriving trains are ideal. The ne'er-do-well has plenty of time at his disposal, and as a result he observes practically everything, he walks slowly up and down the smooth platforms, measuring out steps of noble elegance, and lets his eyes wander everywhere. What a great massing and intermingling! At the ticket windows there are often veritable public assemblies and imperiously demanding mobs, as though we found ourselves in a year of passionate revolution. Everyone wants to receive his ticket as quickly as possible, but usually he has failed to sort out the exact change in advance as admonished by the station's solicitous management. The idler is better off: he need not run and need not fear that the express train will pull out right under his nose. “I was just about to get on when, so help me God, that black devil of a train took off right past my hat.” This is the sort of thing uttered by travelers with boarding intentions, but not by the person whose aim it is to blithely, quietly observe. What a pushing, pressing, shoving, racing mayhem! Ah, here's an important train pulling in, and you stand there watching how they throw their arms about each other's necks, how kisses are distributed left and right, how hats are waved about, how the charming heads of women blush, how hands and arms are held out to receive, how eyes light up, how servants awaiting their masters stand to attention as they catch sight of them and then swiftly relieve them of their little suitcases, packages, and all sorts of silly items.

After two or three minutes the hubbub generally dies down, and the idler takes up position somewhere else. There is always something happening everywhere in a train station, he's quite aware of this, and so he is not at all concerned he might have cause to suffer tedium. Not a bit of it. He goes into the third-, fourth-, sixth-, or, as far as he cares, fourteenth-class restaurant, where there are always people sitting about on the benches or chairs or at tables. He's already accustomed to the unsavory odors to be found in such establishments, and so nothing could possibly shrink or incinerate his pleasure. The twine he's used to bind his enjoyment to this spectacle holds firm, and now perhaps he drinks a glass of beer and converses with an honest traveling journeyman who's sitting on his suitcase as though he were afraid someone might come along and rob him of all he owns. From time to time the loiterer might venture into the first- and second-class waiting rooms so as to pay a visit, if only a brief and rather conspicuous one, to the elegance and luxury that has settled itself here in lordly comfort. Sometimes he's chased off by a stern official wearing a railway uniform, but this does him no harm, after all, he has once again beheld something beautiful with his eyes! If he is well-dressed, he might secretly sit down here among the aristocracy and the bankers' guild and order a cognac which he will drink intelligently and with pensive dignity while striking up a conversation with a pretty waitress clad in a folksy Oberland costume. “Express train departing for Milan in four minutes,” a by all appearances courteous employee announces; our man rises to his feet, pays his tab, and strolls casually out to have a look at this Milan departure. What excellent grooming, what ensembles! Many of the ladies boarding the train wear white veils on their hats, and their cavaliers assist them with greater or lesser degrees of skill as they get in. The train chugs off, a few handkerchiefs are waved about like little flags, the ne'er-do-well is himself departing in his thoughts, in other words he imagines sitting in an empty compartment, reading a newspaper.

But for the moment begone with this loitering observer, whose experiences in the end are after all rather one-sided. All at once we really are sitting in one of the many trains as an actual and not just imaginary traveler, experiencing journeys that last entire days and nights. Landscapes fly past the window like movable stage sets at the theater being spun around on the revolving stage. If agreeable company is present, conversation ensues, and if not, one feels a bit vexed and proceeds to light a cigar—to the annoyance of an all too sensitive fellow traveler—and produces great quantities of smoke. Or else one has a book and would like to read a bit of it, but one cannot quite, until in the end one can. The rectangle of window keeps displaying fresh new images. You watch vineyard-covered hillsides slowly falling away, houses sinking down, trees suddenly shooting up out of the earth. Clouds and meadows alternate amicably, meaningfully. “Might you give me a light from your fire there?” someone accosts you, but given your good breeding you willingly tolerate this interruption and reply “Why, of course!,” and with pleasure distribute some of the superfluous embers. What a flying, rattling, rustling. Entire towns and villages are left behind on both sides as though they were lifeless images, and yet in these places human beings respire, horses whinny, a metalworker hammers away, a factory spins its wheel, a steer bellows, a child is crying, a person is consumed by bitter despair, two lovers secretly rejoice, boys are heading off to school, a midday meal is cooked in someone's kitchen, a pair of unfortunate invalids lie in bed, or two men exchange blows in some wretched altercation. But the railway keeps on flying down its precisely predetermined, prearranged path and lets all the rest of human life and activity be human life and activity. At each tidy station, people get out and in, those getting out are generally received by a mother, father, brother, son, or daughter, or else by acquaintances, and those who get in nicely say “Good day” or “Good evening,” depending on where, for example, the hour hand has gotten to. And then the journey continues, crossing plains, passing by thick fir forests and splendid little garden-encircled huts for the level-crossing attendants, then passing a woodcutter on the shore of a brightly glittering lake. What lake is that, people are asking in the car. Onward. Many sit silently in their seats, surrendering to a melancholy thought or memory, a few laugh and jest, most are now eating something they have extracted from paper wrappers and boxes, and one or the other takes railway-car friendliness to the point of offering his neighbor something to eat with the calmest demeanor in the world. Thank you! But no one is even expecting to be thanked. Traveling inspires camaraderie. And how marvelous it is to ride the train in winter! Snow everywhere, snow-covered rooftops, villages, people, fields, and forests; on rainy days: dampness everywhere, fog and darkly veiled views; in the sunny springtime: blue, green, and yellow everywhere, and white blossoms. The meadows are yellow and green, sweet sunlight shimmers through the beech forest, high up in the blue sky float the gayest, whitest clouds, and in the gardens and fields there is such a blossoming, humming, and splendor that one is tempted at every station to get out and lose oneself in all this warmth, color, and beauty. And in the fall, and in the middle of summery, languid, humid high season, and again in the frosty clear winter—no, one shouldn't be so cocky as to try to cram all of this into the brief space of a newspaper article.

Nowadays anywhere there is nature, trains are also found. Soon there will no longer be a single colossus of a mountain that people have not yet begun to pierce for the sake of transport, civilization, and pleasure. There is no shortage of cable cars, and all of this is good, for it sets hands and minds in beneficial motion. To be sure, traveling by train for pleasure or business can also be quite perilous, as recent accidents have taught us; bridges can collapse, tracks can suddenly jut up in a fury and fling the train about, two trains can, owing perhaps to an oversight on the part of a single responsible official in the middle of a forest where no human habitations can be found far and wide, crash into each other—what horrific things! Or a fire can suddenly break out within a flying train, or else the train can—in holy Russia for example—be attacked by bandits. These are things that, it appears to me, display a blanched, solemn visage, but at least occurrences of this sort are met with only very rarely. Mankind cannot, after all, abandon something so
advantageous
just because of certain dangers, and the steam locomotive with all the cars hanging on behind does represent an unmistakable advantage. Many a person has already been liberated from torments, worries, and annoyances by his peaceful journey in a quiet compartment, using the railway to put his pressing plans and thoughts more or less in order in the course of long, possibly nocturnal journeys. Here the foolishnesses and pettinesses of quotidian life fall silent, triumph as they may in their usual milieu. Today one can rest while completing a journey. But one can also easily experience the most tender
adventures
, above all on express trains. How? This is something every person must discover on his own. I now come to a close, looking forward to the train trip I shall soon be making. To be honest, I don't travel much, and this is why the thought of travel fills me with such longing.