Berlin Alexanderplatz

by Alfred Doblin

  Across the street they are tearing down everything, all the houses along the city railroad, wonder where they get the money from, the city of Berlin is rich, and we pay the taxes.

  They have torn down Loeser and Wolff with their mosaic sign, 20 yards further on they built it up again, and there’s another branch over there in front of the station. Loeser and Wolff, Berlin-Elbing, A-l quality for every taste, Brazil, Havana, Mexico, Little Comforter, Lilliput, Cigar No.8, 25 pfennigs each, Winter Ballad, package containing 25 at 20 pfennigs, Cigarillos No. 10, unselected, Sumatra wrapper, a wonderful value at this price, in boxes of a hundred, 10 pfennigs. I beat everything, you beat everything, he beats everything with boxes of 50 and cardboard packages of 10, can bemailedtoeverycountryonearth.Boyero25pfennigs.this novelty has won us many friends, I beat everything, but I never beat a retreat.

  Alongside the Prälat there is lots of room, there are wagons standing there loaded with bananas. Give your children bananas. The banana is the cleanest of fruits, because it is protected from insects, worms as well as bacilli, by its skin. We except such insects, worms, and bacilli as are able to penetrate the skin. Privy Councillor Czerny emphatically pointed out that even children in their first years. I beat everything to pieces, you beat everything to pieces, he beats everything to pieces.

  There is a lot of wind on the Alex, at the Tietz corner there is a lousy draft. A wind that blows between the houses and through the building excavations. It makes you feel you would like to hide in the saloons, but who can do that it blows through your trousers pockets, then you notice something’s happening, no monkey business, a man has got to be gay with this weather. Early in the morning the workers come tramping along from Reinickendorf, Neukölln, Weissensee. Cold or no cold, wind or no wind, we’ve gotta get the coffee pot pack up the sandwiches, we’ve gotta work and slave, the drones sit on top, they sleep in their feather-beds and exploit us.

  Aschinger has a big cafe and restaurant. People who have no belly, can get one there, people who have one already, can make it as big as they please. You cannot cheat Nature! Whoever thinks he can improve bread and pastry made from denatured white flour by the addition of artificial ingredients, deceives himself and the consumer. Nature has her laws of life and avenges every abuse. The decadent state of health of almost all civilized peoples today is caused by the use of denatured and artificially refined food. Fine sausages delivered to your house, liverwurst and blood-pudding cheap.

  The highly interesting Megazine, instead of 1 mark, now only 20 pfennigs; Marriage, highly interesting and spicy, only 20 pfennigs. The newsboy puffs his cigarettes, he has a sailor’s cap on, I beat everything.

  From the east, Weissensee, Litchtenberg, Friedrichshain, Frankfurter Allee, the yellow street-cars plunge into the square through Landsberger Strasse. Line No. 65 comes from the Central Slaughter-House, the Grosse Ring, Weddingplatz, Luisenplatz; No. 76 from Hundekehle via Hubertusallee. At the corner of Landsberger Strasse they have sold out Friedrich Hahn, formerly a department store, they have emptied it and are gathering it to its forebears. The street-cars and Bus 19 stop on the Turmstrasse. Where Jurgens stationery store was, they have torn down the house and put up a building fence instead. An old man sits there with a medical scale: Try your weight, 5 pfennigs. Dear sisters and brethren, you who swarm across the Alex, give yourselves this treat, look through the loophole next to the medical scale at this dump-heap where Jurgens once flourished and where Hahn’s department store still stands, emptied, evacuated, and eviscerated, with nothing but red tatters hanging over the show-windows. A dump-heap lies before us. Dust thou art, to dust returnest. We have built a splendid house, nobody comes in or goes out any longer. Thus Rome, Babylon, Nineveh, Hannibal, Caesar, all went to smash, oh, think of it! In the first place, I must remark they are digging those cities up again, as the illustrations in last Sunday’s edition show, and, in the second place, those cities have fulfilled their purpose, and we can now build new cities. Do you cry about your old trousers when they are moldy and seedy? No, you simply buy new ones, thus lives the world.

  The police tower over the square. Several specimens of them are standing about. Each specimen sends a connoisseur’s glance to both sides, and knows the traffic rules by heart. It has putties around its legs, a rubber mace hangs from its right side, it swings its arms horizontally from west to east, and thus north and south, cannot advance any farther, east flows west, and west flows east. Then the specimen switches about automatically: north flows south, south flows north. The copper has a well-defined waist-line. As soon as he jerks around, there is a rush across the square in the direction of Konigstrasse of about 30 private individuals, some of them stop on the traffic island, one part reaches the other side and continues walking on the planks. The same number have started east, they swim towards the others, the same thing has befallen them, but there was no mishap.

  There are men, women, and children, the latter mostly holding women’s hands. To enumerate them all and to describe their destinies is hardly possible, and only in a few cases would this succeed. The wind scatters chaff over all of them alike. The faces of the eastward wanderers are in no way different from those of the wanderers to the west, south, and north; moreover they exchange their roles, those who are now crossing the square towards Aschinger’s may be seen an hour later in front of the empty Hahn Department Store. Just as those who come from Brunnenstrasse on their way to Jannowitz Bri.icke mingle with those coming from the reverse direction. Yes, and many of them turn off to the side, from south to east, from south to west, from north to west, from north to east. They have the same equanimity as passengers in an omnibus or in street-cars. The latter all sit in different postures, making the weight o( the car, as indicated outside, heavier still. Who could find out what is happening inside them, a tremendous chapter. And if anyone did write it, to whose advantage would it be? New books? Even the old ones don’t sell, and in the year ‘27 book-sales as compared with ‘26 have declined so and so much per cent. Taken simply as private individuals, the people who paid 20 pfennigs, leaving out those possessing monthly tickets and pupils’ cards-the latter only pay 10 pfennigs-are riding with their weight from a hundred to two hundred pounds, in their clothes, with pockets, parcels, keys, hats, sets of artificial teeth, trusses, riding across Alexanderplatz, holding those mysterious long tickets on which is written: Line 12 Siemensstrasse D A, Gotzkowskistrasse C, B, Oranienburger Tor C, C, Kottbuser Tor A, mysterious tokens, who can solve them, who can guess and who confess them, three words I tell you heavy with thought, and the scraps of paper are punched four times at certain places, and on them there is written in that same German in which the Bible and the Criminal Code are written: Valid till the end of the line, by the shortest route, connection with other lines not guaranteed: They read newspapers of various tendencies, conserve their balance by means of the semicircular canals of their internal ear, inhale oxygen, stare stupidly at each other, have pains, or no pains, think, don’t think, are happy, unhappy, are neither happy nor unhappy.

  Rrrr, rrr, the pile-driver thumps down, I beat everything, another rail. Something is buzzing across the square coming from police headquarters, they are riveting, a cement crane dumps its load. Herr Adolf Kraun, house-servant, looks on, the tipping over of the wagon fairly fascinates him, you beat everything, he beats everything. He watches excitedly how the sand truck is always tilting up on one side, there it is up in the air, boom, and now it tips over. A fellow wouldn’t like to be kicked out of bed like that, legs up, down with the head, there you lie, something might happen to him, but they do their job well, all the same.

  Franz Biberkopf has his knapsack on again and is selling newspapers. He has changed his beat. He has left the Rosenthaler Tor and is now on the Alexanderplatz. He is feeling entirely O. K. again, 5 feet 10½ inches tall, his weight is down, that makes it easier to carry. On his head he wears the official newspaper cap.

  Danger of a crisis in the Reichstag, talk of March elections, probably Apr
il elections, which direction, Joseph Wirth? The Central German fight continues, they may appoint an arbitration commission, man attacked by bandits in Tempelherrenstrasse. He has his stand at the Alexanderstrasse subway exit, opposite the Ufa movie-house, on the same side where Fromm, the optician, has built a new business. Franz Biberkopf looks down Munzstrasse as he stands for the first time in a crowd and thinks to himself: Wonder how far it is to the two Jews’, they don’t live far from here, that was when I was having my first troubles, maybe I’ll call on them one of these days, they might buy a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter from me. Why not, if they want it, I don’t care, as long as they buy it. He grins foolishly at the thought, that very old Jew in those funny slippers was really too comical for words. He looks around, his fingers are stiff, next to him stands a little cripple with a crooked nose, probably broken. Talk of crisis in the Reichstag, No. 17 Hebbelstrasse evacuated owing to danger of collapse, murder on a fishing boat, mutineer or madman.

  Franz Biberkopf and the cripple blow through their fingers. Business before noon is slack. A thin, elderly man, looking seedy and down at the heels, comes up to Franz. He has on a green felt hat and asks Franz how the paper business is going. Franz, too, had once asked that. “If it’s for yourself, pardner, who can tell?” “Yes, I’m fifty-two.” “Well that’s just it, don’t the rheumatiz start around fifty? When I was in the Prussian army, we had an old reserve captain, he was only forty, from Saarbrucken, a lottery-cashier-I mean, that’s what he said, he was probably a cigar salesman-he had the rheumatiz at forty already, in the small of his back. But he pulled himself together, he did. He walked like a broomstick on roller-skates. He always had himself rubbed with butter. And when there was no more butter to be had, around 19 I 7, only Palmin, first class plant-oil, and rancid at that, he had himself shot dead.”

  “What’s the use? The factories won’t take you any more either. And last year they operated on me, in Lichtenberg, Hubertus Hospital. One testicle is gone, it was supposed to be tubercular. I tell you, I still have pains.” “Well, you better look out, otherwise the other one’ll get it too. Maybe it’s better to work Sitting down, why not be a hack-driver.” The Central German struggle continues, negotiations without results, attack aimed at the Tenants’ Protection Law, Wake Up, Tenants, or they’ll take the roof from over your head. “Yes, pardner. it’s all right to sell newspapers, but you’ve gotta be able to get around, and you’ve gotta have a voice, how’s the chest, robin redbreast, can you sing? Well, y’see, that’s the main thing with us, we’ve gotta know how to sing and get around. We need good barkers. The loudspeakers do the best business. A bunch of tough birds, I’ll tell ye. Look, how many groschen is that?” “Four, as far as I can see.” “Righto, for you it’s four. That’s the point. For you. But when one of these chaps is in a hurry, and then looks around in his pockets, and he’s got a half-groschen piece and a mark or ten marks, go ahead and ask those boys, yes, sir. they can all make change. Clever, I should say so, they’re real bankers, they are, they understand all about making change, they deduct their own percentage, but ye don’t notice anything, that’s how fast they work.”

  The old man sighs. “Yes, you’re fifty years old and rheumatiz along with it. If you can put up a old front, old boy, you won’t be by yourself, hire a couple o’ youngsters, have to pay ‘em of course, they get half maybe, but you’ll have to mind the business, you can save your legs and your voice. You’ve gotta have connections and a good stand. When it rains, it’s wet. For business to be good you must have prize fights and changes in government. At Ebert’s death, they tell me, people grabbed the papers away from you. Don’t make such a face, old fellow, things are only half as bad as they look. Just watch that pile-driver over there, imagine that falling on your head, then what’s the use in worrying about all that?”

  Attack aimed at the Tenants’ Protection Law. Discharge for Zörgiebel. I resign from the party of traitors to their principles. British censorship concerning Amanullah, India must be kept in the dark.

  Opposite, in front of the little Web Radio Store-till further notice free charging of batteries-there stands a pale young woman, her hat pulled down over her face, she seems to be thinking intensely. The chauffeur of the big black and white taxi standing nearby thinks to himself: Is she wondering now whether she ought to take a taxi, and if she has enough with her or is she waiting for somebody. But what she does is to twist about in her velvet coat as if her body were being wrenched, then she starts up again, she’s unwell, that’s all, and has the cramps, as usual. She is about to take her teacher’s examination, today she would have liked to stay at home with a hot-water bottle, it’ll go better tonight anyway.

  For a long while Nothing, Rest Hour, back to a normal Basis

  On the evening of February 9, 1928, when the Labor government fell in Oslo, and it was the last night of the six-day bicycle races in Stuttgart - the winners were Van Kempen-Frankenstein with 726 points, 2440 kilometers - the situation in the Saar Valley appeared more criticaL on the evening of February 9, 1928, a Tuesday (one moment please, now you will see the mysterious face of the strange woman, the question asked by this beautiful woman concerns everybody, even you: do you smoke Garbaty Kalif?), that evening Franz Biberkopf stood on the Alexanderplatz before a poster column studying an invitation of the truck-gardeners of Treptow-Neukölln and Britz to a meeting of protest in Irmer’s Assembly Hall, order of the day, the arbitrary notices of dismissal. Underneath was the advertisement: the torture of asthma and masks for rent, large assortment for ladies and gentlemen. Suddenly little Meck stood beside him. Meck, why we know that fellow. Up he comes a-shaking, long steps he is taking.

  “Well, well, Franz, old boy.” Meck was delighted, how delighted he was! “Franz, old fellow, who woulda thought it, seeing you again, you’ve been like a dead man. I’d ‘a’ sworn-” “Now what? Can imagine it all right-I’ve done something again. Nope, nope, old boy.” They shook hands, shook each other’s arms up to the shoulders, shook each other’s shoulders down to the ribs, slapped each other on the shoulder-blades till their bodies began to wobble.

  “That’s the way it is, Gottlieb. We never see each other any more. Why, I’m in business around here.” “Here on the Alex, Franz, you don’t say, why, 1 should have run into you sometimes. Here 1 go past a fellow and don’t see him.” “That’s true, Gottlieb.”

  And arm-in-arm they wander down the Prenzlauer Strasse. “Didn’cha once want to sell plaster heads, Franz?” “I ain’t got the brains for plaster heads. You need culture for plaster, 1 ain’t got that. I’m selling newspapers again. You can make a living out of that. And how about you, Gottlieb?” ‘Tm over there on Schbnhauserstrasse peddling men’s wear, leather jackets and pants.” “And where do you get those things?” “Still the same old Franz, always gotta ask where from. That’s what the girls ask when they want alimony.” Franz toddled silently along beside Meck with a gloomy expression on his face: “You fellows will keep on swindling till you get it in the neck.” “What do you mean get it in the neck, what do you mean by swindling, Franz, a fellow has to be a business man, he’s got to know something about buying.”

  Franz did not want to walk along any farther, no, he didn’t want to, he was recalcitrant. But Meck wouldn’t give in, kept on gabbling and wouldn’t give in: “You come along with me to the cafe, Franz, you might meet the cattle dealers, you remember ‘em, don’t you, the ones with the law-suit going on who were Sitting with us at the table at the meeting when you got your membership card. They certainly got themselves in trouble with their suit. Now they’ve gotta take an oath and they’ve gotta get witnesses to take the oath. Boy, they’re gonna get a nice fall, but with their heads first.” “Nope, Gottlieb, I’d rather not come along.”

  But Meck did not give in, he was his good old friend and the best of them all at that, except of course Herbert Wischow, but he was a pimp, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with him, nope, never again. And arm-in-arm, down Prenzlauer Stras
se, the distillery, textile factories, candy, silk, silk, I recommend silk, something amazingly smart for the well-built woman!

  When eight o’clock came around, Franz was sitting with Meck and another man who was mute and had to talk in signs, at a table in the corner of a cafe. And things went on in great style. Meck and the mute were astonished how completely Franz thawed out, with what joy he ate and drank, two pig’s feet, then baked beans, one mug of Engelhardt after the other, and he paying for it. The three of them propped their arms one against the other so that no one could come near the small table and disturb them; only the thin proprietress was allowed to clear the table off and get things straightened up and bring the new orders. At the table next to them sat three men who from time to time stroked each other’s bald heads. Franz, his cheeks bulging, smiled, the slits of his eyes roved towards the group. “What are they doing there, anyway?” The proprietress pushed the mustard towards him, his second pot: “Well, I guess they’re in love.” “Yep, I can believe that.” And they laughed and guffawed, smacking their lips and gulping away, the three of them. Again and again Franz announced: “Gotta fill yourself up. A man must eat to be strong. If your belly ain’t full, you can’t do anything.”

  The animals come rolling along from the provinces, from East Prussia, Pomerania, West Prussia, Brandenburg. They moo and low as they run along the cattle gangway. The pigs grunt and sniff at the ground. In fog you walk. A pale young man takes a hatchet, bing, that was a great moment, it’s all over with.