Seven heads and ten horns, in her hand a cup full of abominations. We’ll get ‘em now, all right, there’s nothin’ can stop it now.
“Man alive, if you had just let one peep out, I tell you Mieze would still be living today, and another guy would be carrying his head under his arm.” “It’s not my fault. What a guy like that does, you’ll never know. And you can’t know what he’s doin’ now, you’ll never find out.” “I’ll find out, all right.” Eva pleads with him: “Don’t go near that fellow, Herbert, I’m afraid, too.” “We’ll fix him up all right. First we’ll find where he hangs out, and half an hour later the bulls’ll get him.” Franz nods. “Just you keep your fingers out of that pie, Herbert, he don’t belong to you. Let’s shake.” Eva: “Shake, Herbert, what are you gain’ to do, Franz?” “What do I care. You can throw me on the garbage-dump.”
Then he moves quickly to the corner and stands with his back against the wall.
Now they hear a sobbing, sobbing, a whimpering, he is weeping for himself and for Mieze, they hear it, and Eva cries and weeps upon the table, the paper with “Murder” on it is still lying on the table, Mieze is murdered, nobody did anything, it just happened to her.
Wherefore I praised the Dead which were already Dead
Towards evening Franz Biberkopf is on his way again. Five sparrows, on the Bayrischer Platz, fly over him. They are five slain evil-doers, who have often met Franz Biberkopf before. They have considered what to do with him, what decision to take about him, how to make him anxious and uncertain, over which beam they shall make him stumble.
One of them screams: There he walks. Look, he has a false arm, he hasn’t yet given up the game for lost, he does not want to be recognized.
The second says: That fine gentleman has certainly done a lot of shady things. He is a dangerous criminal, they should put him in the bull-pen, he ought to get life. Killing one woman and going around hooking things, burgling and then taking another woman, that’s another of his crimes. What does he want now, I ask you?
The third: He’s puffing himself up. He’s playing the innocent. He’s aping the honest man. Look at the louse. When a bull comes along, let’s kick his hat off.
The first speaks again: Why should that fellow live any longer? I croaked in prison after nine years. I was much younger than this chap here, I was dead already then, and couldn’t say boo. Take your hat oft you monkey, take off your damned glasses, you’re not an editor yet, you jackass, Why, you don’t even know the multiplication table, and then you go putting on horn-rimmed glasses like a professor, look out, you’ll see, they’ll get you.
The fourth: Heh, don’t scream so loud. What do you want to do to him? Look at the fellow, he has got a head, he walks on two legs. We little sparrows, we might let something drop on his hat.
The fifth: Go ahead and bawl him out. He’s chewing his cud, he’s got a screw loose. He goes walking about with two angels, his sweetheart is a mask at police headquarters, go ahead and do something to him. Go ahead and scream.
So they whir, scream, and twitter above his head. Franz raises his head, his thoughts are muddled, the birds squabble and mock at him.
Autumn weather. In the Tauentzien Palast they are playing The Last Days of Francisco; there are fifty dancing beauties at the Jager Casino, for a bunch of lilacs you can kiss me. Then Franz decides: my life is at an end, it’s all over, I’ve had enough.
The street-cars rattle along the streets, they are all going somewhere, but I don’t know where to go. The Nord-End 51, Schillerstrasse, Pankow, Breitestrasse, Schonhauser Allee Depot, Stettin Depot, Potsdam Depot, Nollendorfplatz, Bayrischer Platz, Uhlandstrasse, Schmargendorf Depot, Grunewald, hop in. Howdy, here I am, they can take me anywhere they please. And Franz starts inspecting the city like a dog that has lost a trail. What kind of a city is this, anyway, this huge city, and what kind of a life, how many lives he has led in it. He gets out at Stettin Depot and then moves along Invalidenstrasse. Here’s the Rosenthaler Tor. Fabisch’s Ready-to-Wear Shop, here’s where I stood, hawking tie-holders, last Christmas. He rides out to Tegel on the No. 41. The red walls appear, red walls on the left, the heavy iron gates, and now Franz grows silent. This is part of my life, and I must look at it, look at it.
The walls are red, and the roadway streams past them, car No. 41 rides past, General Pape Strasse, West Reinickendorf, Tegel, Borsig, they thunder by. Franz Biberkopf stands in front of the red walls, walks across the other side where there is a saloon. Then the red houses behind the walls begin to shake and tremble, and to puff out their cheeks. Convicts line all the windows, pushing their heads against the bars, their hair has been shaved close, almost to the skull. They look miserable, underweight, their faces are gray and scrubby, they roll their eyes and lament. There they stand, murderers, burglary, theft, forgery, rape; all the crimes of the code are there, and they wail with gray faces. There they sit, the gray men, and now they’ve twisted my Mieze’s neck.
Franz Biberkopf roams around the giant prison; it goes on trembling and shaking and calling to him, across the fields, to the wood, back again to the tree-lined street.
Then he is in the street with the trees. I didn’t kill Mieze. I didn’t do it. I ain’t got nothing to do here. That’s all over. I ain’t got nothing to do with Tegel any more, I don’t know how all this came about.
Now it is six in the evening and Franz says, I want to go to Mieze. I must go to the cemetery, where they buried her.
The five criminals, the sparrows, are with him again. They sit up there on a telegraph post and scream down: Go to her, you scoundrel, have you the courage, ain’t you ashamed to go to her? She called to you when she lay there in the hollow. Go and see her in the cemetery!
For the Repose of our Dead. In Berlin, in 1927, there died 48,742 persons, excluding infants born dead.
4570 deaths from tuberculosis, 6443 from cancer, 5656 from heartdisease, 4818 from vascular diseases, 5140 from apoplexy, 2419 from pneumonia, 961 from whooping cough, 562 children died of diphtheria, 123 of scarlet fever, 93 of the measles, 3640 deaths of children at the breast. There were 42,696 births.
The dead lie in the cemetery, in their garden plots, the guardian walks by with his stick, prodding scraps of paper.
It is half past six and still quite light; on her grave in front of a beech tree is seated a very young woman in a fur coat, without a hat, her head is bent and she is silent. She is wearing black kid gloves, she holds a sheet of paper in her hand, a small envelope. Franz reads: “I can live no longer. Give my love once more to my parents, my darling child. Life is a torture to me. Bieriger alone need have me on his conscience. But I hope he will go on enjoying life. I was a mere toy for him, and he exploited me. He is just a vulgar lout. I came to Berlin only on account of him, he alone made me miserable and I became a ruined woman.”
Franz gives her back the envelope. “Oh my, oh my! Is my Mieze here?” Mustn’t be sad, mustn’t be sad. He weeps. “Oh my, oh my! where is my little Mieze?”
There is a grave like a big soft divan, and a learned professor is lying on it, he smiles at Franz. “Why are you grieved, my friend?” “I wanted to see Mieze. I just happened to pass by.” “I’m dead, you see, one mustn’t take life too seriously; nor death either. One can make everything easier. When I had had enough of it, and became ill, what did I do? Do you think I was willing to go on lying sick-a-bed till the end? What use would that have been? I had them put the morphine bottle near me and asked for some music, they were to play the piano, jazz, the latest hits. I had them read aloud something from Plato, the great Symposium, that’s a beautiful dialogue, and, unobserved, I injected syringe after syringe underneath the sheets. I counted them, three times the fatal dose. I heard them banging away merrily, and my reader talking of old Socrates, yes, there are wise men and some less wise.”
“Reading aloud, morphine, but where is Mieze?”
It is terrible, from a tree there hangs a man, and his wife stands beside him, wailing, when Franz comes b
y. “Come quickly, cut him down. He will not stay in his grave, he’s always climbing the trees and dangling to one side.” “Oh God, oh God, and why?” “My Ernst had been sick for such a long time, nobody could help him, and they didn’t want to send him away, they always said he was pretending. So he went down to the cellar and took a nail and a hammer with him. I heard him hammering in the cellar and I wondered what he was doing; a good thing, I thought for him to be working and not sitting around all the time, maybe he’s building a rabbit-hutch. But he didn’t come up that evening. I got afraid and puzzled as to where he could be, are those cellar keys up here, they weren’t back in their place. Then the neighbors went down and fetched the police. He had hammered a stout nail into the ceiling, though he was quite a thin man, but he wanted to make sure, what are you looking for, young man? What are you whimpering about? Do you want to kill yourself?”
“No, they killed my girl, and I don’t know if she’s lying here.” “Well, you had better look for her back there, that’s where the new ones are.”
Now Franz is lying on the path beside an empty grave, he cannot shout, but bites into the earth. Mieze, what have we done anyway, why did they do that to you? You hadn’t done anything, Miezeken. What can I do, why don’t they throw me into the grave with you, how long is life going to treat me like this?
He gets up, hut he can hardly walk, he rouses himself and goes out, staggering along between the rows of graves.
Franz Biherkopf, the gentleman with the stiff arm, gets into an automobile outside, which takes him to the Bayrischer Platz. He keeps Eva very, very busy. Eva is busy with him all day long and all night long. He does not live and he does not die. Herbert has practically vanished.
There follow a few days when Franz and Herbert are busy chasing Reinhold. Herbert is armed to the teeth and listens around everywhere, he’s out to catch Reinhold. Franz does not want to at first, then he, too, feels the urge, it’s the last medicine which will serve him in this world.
The Fortress is entirely Surrounded, the last Sallies are made, but they are only Feints
November is advancing. Summer has been over for a long time. The rain has continued into the autumn. Very far away are those weeks when a soft glow lay upon the streets and people walked about in light clothes and you would have said the women were in chemises. A light dress, a tight-fitting hat, that’s what Franz’s girl, Mieze, wore, she who once rode out to Freienwalde, and never came back again; that was in the summer. The court is in session to try Bergmann, the parasite, who preyed on the community, a public danger, devoid of scruples. The Graf Zeppelin, on a day of low visibility, flies over Berlin, the stars are bright when it leaves Friedrichshafen at 2.17 a.m. To avoid the bad weather, reported in Central Germany, the airship follows a course leading over Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Frankfort on the Main, Giessen, Kassel, Rathenow. At 8.35 it passes over Nauen, at 8.45 over Staaken. Shortly before nine o’clock the Zeppelin appears above the city, and in spite of the rainy weather, the roofs are crowded with sightseers who exultantly acclaim the airship as it moves to and fro in a loop to the east and north of the city. At 9.45 the first landing-rope is dropped in Staaken.
Franz and Herbert scour Berlin together. They are nearly always away from home. Franz haunts the shelters of the Salvation Army, men’s almshouses, and watches out as he wanders through the August Shelter in Auguststrasse. He is sitting in Dresdener Strasse in the Salvation Army hall, where he once went with Reinhold. They sing Hymn No. 66 in the Hymn Book: Say, brother, why do you wait? Arise, and hurry to your goal! Your Saviour called you long ago, He’d like to give peace to your soul. Chorus: Why? Why don’t you hurry to your goal, Why? Why don’t you want peace in your soul? O brother, don’t you feel in your heart the spirit’s living might? Don’t you want salvation from sin? Oh, hurry to Jesus in flight! Say, brother, why do you wait? Soon death will come and judgment-day too! Oh come, while the gate is still open, Jesus’s blood is ready to pray for you!
Franz walks through Fröbelstrasse to the public flophouse, to the Palme, trying to find Reinhold. He lies down on a bunk, today in this one, tomorrow in another, hair-cut 10 pfennigs, shave 5, there they sit, get their papers in order, shoe and shirt peddlers, hey there, guess it’s the first time you been here, no use undressing, or you’ll be lookin’ for your stuff tomorrow morning, your shoes, look here, you’ve got to put each one separate at the bottom of the bed, else they’ll steal everything you got, even your teeth. Do you want to get tattooed? And rest. Night. Black rest, snoring like a sawmill, I haven’t seen him. Keep quiet. Ding, dong, what’s that, prison. Thought I was in Tegel. Wake up. A fight over there. Let’s get out. Around six o’clock, the girls are over there, waiting for their sweethearts, they go into the dives with them and gamble away the money they begged.
Reinhold isn’t there, it’s damned hopeless lookin’ for him, he’s probably out chasing a skirt again, Elfriede, Emilie, Caroline, Lilli; brown hair, fair hair.
Each night Eva watches Franz’s drawn features, no caresses, not a single kind word, he eats and talks but little, just swills liquor and coffee, lies on the sofa with her and groans and groans. We can’t find him. “Let him go!” “We can’t find him. What’ll we do, Eva?” “You’ve got to stop that, there’s no sense in it, you’ll go to pieces.” “You don’t know what we’re going to do. That - you didn’t go through that, Eva, you don’t understand it, Herbert understands a little bit. What’ll we do? I want to get him, yep, I’d go to church and get down on my knees if I could catch him.”
But all that is unreal. Nothing is real. All this chasing after Reinhold is unreal, it’s all a moaning and a terrible fear. Now the die is cast for him. He knows how it will fall. Everything will reveal its meaning, an unexpected, terrible meaning. This game of hide-and-seek won’t last long now, my friend.
He spies around Reinhold’s house, but his eyes avail him nothing, he looks around and feels nothing. Many people walk past the house and some go in. He has gone in himself, had a look, just because of tararara taraboomdeeay.
The house bursts into laughter, as it sees him standing there. It would like to be able to move in order to collect its neighbors, so that the crosswise wing and the end wings could get a look at him. Here’s a fellow with a wig and an artificial arm, a flaming fool, full of liquor, standing and jawing away about something.
“How do you do, lil’ Biberkopf? This is November 22nd. Still rainy weather. Do you want to catch a cold? Wouldn’t you rather go to your beloved saloon and get a cognac?”
“Give him up.”
“Give in.”
“Give Reinhold up.”
“Go out to Wuhlgarten. Your nerves must be on edge.”
“Give him up.”
Then Franz Biberkopf works in the house one evening, he hides a gasoline can and a bottle. “Come out, are you hiding there, you snake, you stinking dog? You haven’t got the nerve to come out, have you?” The house: “Why are you calling him when he’s not here? Why don’t you come in, you might have a look around.”
“I can’t look into all the holes.”
“He isn’t here. Do you think he’d be crazy enough to stay here?”
“Give him up to me. It’ll go bad with you otherwise.”
“You and your ‘it’ll go bad with you.’ Go home, fellow, and get a good sleep, you must be pickled, it’s because you don’t eat nothin’.” Next morning he arrives there just behind the newswoman. The street-lamps watch him run and start to rock: Fire! Fire! The flame’s crawling higher!
Smoke, tongues of flame pour from the dormer-window, the firemen arrive at seven, but Franz is already with Herbert, his fist clenched: “I know nothing and you know nothing, needn’t tell me anything. He’ll be smoked outa there. Now he can go and look for something, yep, I set it on fire.”
“Aw, he don’t live there any more, you can bet on that.”
“That was his dump all right, and he knows if it burns it was me. We’ve smoked him out, you’ll see him marching
up here yet.” “I don’t know, Franzeken.”
But Reinhold doesn’t appear. Berlin goes on rattling and rolling and roaring, there’s nothing in the papers about their having caught him, he’s escaped, gone abroad, they’ll never get him.
And Franz stands before Eva, groaning and twisting his body. “I can’t do a thing, and gotta stand it, he can smash me to pieces, he gave that girl the works and I’m standing still like a milk-sop. It ain’t fair, it’s unjust.”
“Franz, it can’t be changed.” “I can’t do nothin’, I’m finished.” “But why are you finished, Franzeken?” “I did what I could, it ain’t fair, it’s unjust.”
The two angels walk beside him, Sarug and Terah are their names, and they talk together, Franz stands in the crowd, walks in the crowd. He is silent, but they hear him, the wild outcry within him. Bulls walk past on raiding parties, but don’t recognize Franz. Two angels walk beside him.
Why do the two angels walk beside Franz, and what child’s game is this, that angels should walk beside a man, two angels on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, in 1928, beside a former murderer, a burglar, and now a pimp? Yes, this tale of Franz Biberkopf, of his hard, true, and revealing existence, has now progressed thus far. Everything is growing clearer and clearer, the more Franz Biberkopf rears and rages. We are nearing the point where everything will become clear.
The angels talk beside him, their names are Sarug and Terah, and their conversation, while Franz is looking in Tietz’s show-window, runs as follows:
“What do you think, Sarug, what would happen if we abandoned this fellow, if we let him go his own way and be caught?” Sarug: “Fundamentally it would make no difference, I think; they will catch him anyhow, that is inevitable. He looked towards that red building over there and he was right, he will be in there in a couple of weeks.” Terah: “So you think we are superfluous?” Sarug: “A little, I think-as long as we arc forbidden to take him away from this present life.” Terah: “You are still a child, Sarug, you have seen this present life for a couple of thousand years only. If we take this man away from the Present, and set him elsewhere, in another existence, will he have accomplished what he could have done in the Here and Now? For every thousand beings and their lives, you must know, there are seven hundred, nay, nine hundred failures.” “And what special reason is there, Terah, to protect this man, he is a commonplace man, I see no reason to protect him.” “Commonplace, uncommon-what are these? Is the beggar ‘commonplace’ and the rich man so exceptional? The rich man may be a beggar and the beggar rich tomorrow. This man is on the brink of a vision. Many have reached that stage. But he is also on the point, I tell you, of becoming sentient. You see, Sarug, he who goes through much experience, and lives through much, is easily inclined towards mere knowledge, and then-towards escape, and death. He is no longer interested. He has passed along the road of experience and grown weary. His journey has outwearied body and soul. Do you understand?” “Yes.”
Berlin Alexanderplatz Page 44
