The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (3 page)

For the Max who returned was entirely different from the Max who had run away a year before. He was an entirely different Max, wearing new duds—a tight-fitting jacket, pants with cuffs, yellow gloves, a ring on his finger, a wristwatch, and a walking stick in hands that were now at any rate always washed. And he had money—so much money that he invited them all on a Sunday afternoon to the neighboring village, so as to get them all drunk there—from beer and schnapps and grog, but above all also from his tales of Berlin.

Of this Berlin with its theaters and lounges; its cinemas, where there always were seats for not less than five thousand people; its circus, which played every day (not just Sundays); its cafes and fine restaurants without number—this Berlin, where money just lay in the street, so that you only had to pick it up.

They sat around him with open ears and jaws, elbows propped on the table, listening, and when someone tried to question or object he cut them off with a grand wave of his hand: “None of you have any idea of it!” (“You yokels!”—to himself.)

In the evening, staggering home arm in arm with Max, he asked if it were all true, what he had said, and if you could really make so much money there and how. Max stopped, looked him over from top to bottom, and said:

“Such a good-looking boy like you! If you don’t believe it, just come there!” Then he reached into his pocket and drew out his billfold—a real billfold with monogram and corners covered with silver. From the billfold he drew a calling card with his name in printed letters. Under the name, in pencil, was his exact address.

“Just come there! You’ll soon see.”

He had pressed the card into his hand and promised, “I’ll help you.”

On the next day Max, who had so unexpectedly popped up, vanished again, since things had became too hot for him, but his card had been kept and preserved like a sacred possession.

It burned in his breast. He felt transformed. Again and again he secretly repeated to himself the words he had heard, and each time a decision was growing in him: he, too, must go to Berlin! To Berlin and to Max!

He knew going would not be easy. He would never receive permission to go, neither from his grandparents, nor from his guardian. So, he also had to run away.

And when spring arrived, lovely and careless spring which arouses so many wishes—some of which come true—he could no longer be held.

One evening, when everyone was sleeping, he donned his Sunday suit, packed some underwear and personal possessions into a box, emptied his savings bank, and crept out of the humble house.

He left a note saying not to worry about him. He promised to write when he found work and to return once things were going well for him.

He walked half the night, all the way to a train station other than the one in his village. He bought a ticket there to one of the next stations, so as not even there to give away where he meant to go, and only from there on to Berlin.

Everything went well. No one spoke to him or stopped him. The trip had lasted the remainder of that night and into the next afternoon.

Now he was already in his second day in the city of his longing.

When he awoke on the third day, earlier than the day before, he thought less than he had the evening before about returning. As long as his money lasted, he was staying here. He carefully counted it again, confirming that it would last for at least two or three days, and decided to pay for the room for the next two nights in advance. The old waiter acknowledged his payment with the indifferent words, “All right, it’s paid until early Thursday!”

The days passed quickly.

To be sure, it was boring being all alone the whole day with no one to talk to. But there was a lot to see!

The buildings and streets soon began to bore him: the streets were denser, longer, and wider, the building were taller and larger; both never ended. But the shops in them! What all there was to see and buy there! He could not get his fill of looking at them, and he would have liked to own everything—this stylish suit and those colorful ties; that wristwatch and this cigarette case of silver, no, that other case there, the flat, gold one. And this here! And that there!

Thus he stared in wonder, and could stand before the same shop window an hour without stirring.

He was also no longer as shy as on the first day. When he felt hungry and thirsty, he went into the first beer hall he came to and ordered, thinking every time, you’ve still got money.

He gradually came to know the part of the city where he usually roamed. The long street that started up here and seemed never to end was Friedrichstrasse. The broad one with trees and benches in the middle and a gate at the beginning—or at the end?—was Unter den Linden.

He even rode on streetcars and buses, up on the top. Once, just for the pleasure of it, he rode through the Tiergarten, another time down to Kreuzberg and back.

If he became too bored all alone, there was always the cinema. It was much lovelier, more colorful and mysterious in its darkness than the bright life outside. There were some that already opened in the early afternoon. He could sit for hours looking at the flickering screen, mostly without comprehending the films, but held by the quivering and ever-changing spell of the pictures.

One day, he no longer knew which it was, he counted his money on awakening, then counted once more and realized it was not even enough for the return trip. He was terribly frightened at first, especially when he counted back and realized that the day was Thursday, the day to which he had paid for the room.

He had to go home now. What was he to do here without money? He would a thousand times have preferred to stay, but he had to go home.

He thought it over. He realized that his things in the box were worth nothing. But he still had his watch, his confirmation watch.

He crept out of the hotel, luckily without being seen. Somewhere near the train station he remembered having seen the sign of a pawnbroker. He found it again.

“Silver? Nonsense, nickel,” the pawnbroker said, and announced he could have one mark on it. One mark! No, then he’d rather not. But in the end, he took the mark anyway.

Now he had two marks and seventy pennies altogether. What was he to do? He still had to eat and get through the day.

So he drank a cup of coffee and ate a couple of dry rolls, then sat hungry almost the whole day in one corner of a poorly ventilated all-day cinema. He was discovered and had to pay an additional amount. He saw his money shrink to a bit over one mark.

For today, a meal was out of the question, or what would he live on tomorrow?

He crept around his hotel, going inside in an unobserved moment, and reached his room unhindered. He fell uneasily asleep.

Early the next morning the old waiter was standing at his bed in his eternal tailcoat.

“What’s this? The room not yet paid for the night?” He had to admit it. But that ended it.

“That would really be great! Sleep and not pay? “What, leave your old box of rags here as security? Naturally it stays here. You’ll get it again when you bring money. Now you’re to get out of here, as quick as possible.”

The boy begged: “Just a couple days more . . . I’ll pay then, really I will.”

“Nothing doing! Then everyone could come.” The old man remained standing beside him until he finished dressing.

“When you have money, you may return and pick up your things. Not before, understood?”

*

He was standing now in the street; he could have howled with rage. Couldn’t the old guy let him stay at least this night, when he already had slept there four nights and paid for them on time, in advance even!

What now?

If only he could find work. But where and how? He had no idea how to go about it. (That he might still meet up with his friend Max somewhere—this hope had now really been given up.)

He had to get through the day, however, and he did have to eat, especially today since he had gone to bed hungry yesterday. So, cutting into his last mark, he bought a couple of rolls and a pair of garlic sausages and ate them in a corner of the train station.

He spent the morning loitering near the Friedrichstrasse Train Station until sent away by one of the porters (who threatened him with something terrible), and he spent the afternoon on the benches of the Tiergarten, going from bench to bench, sitting on each a while. Finally, he fell asleep in the evening on a bench in a less frequented part of the park.

In the night he awoke and felt something moist and warm on his hand. He sprang up, heard the curse of a watchman, and ran away as fast as his feet could carry him. The guard, with stick in hand and a dog on a leash, was after him for a while, but didn’t catch him.

At the Reichstag building he crouched in a dark niche and slowly dozed off again in the mild spring night.

He woke in the early morning feeling a painful hunger. He still had precisely twenty pennies—enough for four rolls and a couple of cigarettes. When he smoked—he had already noticed this yesterday—he felt less hunger for a while. He had to smoke.

Again, he loitered through the morning on the benches of the park. From time to time he nodded off, but rose quickly when he felt the gaze of a passerby on him.

Once, when he looked up, sitting close to him was a small, very well dressed but ugly man, looking at him through a pince-nez attentively, with no malice it seemed to him, but still so oddly that he got up. What did he want from him? Certainly not to help.

On the next bench he was startled by the laughter of two youngsters, who suddenly were in front of him asking what time it was. “You do have a watch?” When they saw his dull face, they walked on roaring with laughter.

And on a third bench he heard a coachman shout something to him from his coachbox, which he did not understand, but which certainly was not something flattering.

He was too tired to become angry, too dull to be startled, and much too hungry to reflect on what all these people wanted from him.

He sat longer on an out-of-the-way bench, undisturbed. It was now noon. A boundless rage, such as at times had gripped him as a child, came over him. He felt rage at Max, at the old waiter in the hotel, at the whole world. He stamped on the ground with the heels of his shoes and bit a blade of grass into tiny pieces.

His rage passed and now he broke out bawling. Great pity for himself, his misery, and his desolation came over him. What was he to do? What was he to do now? He did not know.

He wanted to speak to the first passerby that came along and tell him everything. But hardly anyone came by here, and he realized himself that it would help nothing. In Berlin, he had already seen, you had to have money or you went to the dogs.

When he had cried himself out and his tears came more slowly, an angry defiance gripped him. He got up, furious, and crept into the nearest, thick bush. There he threw himself down at full length and soon fell asleep.

After hours of a deep sleep he woke. He no longer felt tired and his hunger no longer pained him so much.

He washed his face and hands a bit at a nearby fountain.

Then he walked slowly into the city, to Unter den Linden. It had become afternoon.

Over and over again, as he had since yesterday, he thought about what Max had said to him. He tried to recall every word, so as finally to understand its meaning.

What was it he said?—that you could make money in Berlin, much money. But with what? With what kind of work? And where was this work to be found? And why did good-looking boys—of which he was supposed to be one—find work easier than others?

He did not understand. No, he did not understand.

And again it occurred to him that his former friend (which he was not any longer now, even if he should see him again!) always talked about Friedrichstrasse, and later on that afternoon when they were alone, also about the Passage.

The Passage—surely that was the large throughway he had been in on the first afternoon, right after his arrival, where the people had looked at him so oddly that he had become really frightened and had run away? So frightened that ever since he had always made a wide detour around it.

Young guys had been standing around there, but they had not seemed to him good-looking, rather ugly and common. Were they gathered there looking for some kind of work?

He did want to go there again and take a closer look at the situation—maybe ask somebody directly. No one could do more than chase him away or laugh at him.

But suddenly hunger powerfully gripped him again and at the same time his heavy boots, which he had not taken off since yesterday, pained him so that he could go no farther. He had to sit down on the nearest bench under the linden trees and press his hands against his stomach. He was unable to think clearly any longer. In his burning head everything was all mixed up.

A complete lethargy to everything seized him. It was all the same to him. If he fell down, someone would pick him up. Or let him lie.

He had sat thus for almost an hour, dully staring straight ahead, his aching head in his hands, when he felt a coin pressed into his hand. He saw only an old, simply dressed woman, who walked away before he could thank her. She had probably been sitting on one of the other benches and observing him for a long time.