Berlin Alexanderplatz

by Alfred Doblin

  Reinhold, of course, has nothing to say, he reserves the right to a second trial, he’s glad they talked to him that way, nothing can happen to him. So two days later everything is over, everything, everything. And we’re out of the woods. All that damned bunk with Mieze and that jackass Biberkopf, but I didn’t get into trouble, I did what I wanted, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

  Things have reached this point, when they catch Franz and take him to headquarters; the real murderer, Reinhold, is kept in Brandenburg, and nobody thinks about him, and he’s drowned and forgotten, the world can go hang, they won’t find him so easy here, don’t you worry. No remorse tortures him, and if things had gone the way he expected them to go, he would still be sitting there today, or have escaped while being removed to another prison.

  But such is life, the silliest proverbs prove to be true, and when a man thinks, now it’s all right it’s not all right by a long shot. Man proposes, God disposes, and there’s always that last straw to break the camel’s back. How they catch Reinhold, and how he soon will have to travel a hard and cruel road-all this I shall now relate. But if any of my readers is not interested, let him simply skip the next few pages. All I have reported in this book, Alexanderplatz, Berlin, about Franz Biberkopf’s fate is true, and you may read it twice or three times and learn it by heart; it contains a truth which can be grasped. But now Reinhold is through playing his role. Since, however, he represents that cold force which nothing in life can change, I will tell you about that force in its last bitter struggle. You will see him, hard and stone-like, right up to the last unmoved, his life goes on-whereas Franz Biberkopf bends, and at last, like an element struck by certain rays, is transmuted into another element. Oh, it’s easy to say we’re all human beings. If there is a God-not only do we differ before him as regards our malevolence or kindness, we all have different natures and different lives, in kind, in origin, in future and destiny we are all different. Listen now to what finally happened to Reinhold.

  *

  It happens that Reinhold has to work in Brandenburg Prison with a man in the mat-weaving department who is also a Pole, but a real one, and he’s real pickpocket, too, a very clever one who knows Moroskiewicz. He hears the name Moroskiewicz, why, I know him, where is he; then he sees Reinhold and says to himself, gee whiz, he’s certainly changed, it’s unbelievable. So then he acts as if he hadn’t spotted anything and didn’t know him, but one day he sidles up to Reinhold in the toilet where they are smoking away and gives him half a cigarette and talks to him; and it turns out that he doesn’t know any Polish at all. Reinhold isn’t pleased about this Polish conversation and gets himself transferred from the weaving department, and, because he sometimes shams weakness, the foreman takes him on as helper in the cell division where the others can’t get near him. But Dluga, the Pole, keeps at it. Reinhold shouts from cell to cell: Finished work outside! When they are standing with the foreman near Dluga’s cell and the foreman is just about to count the mats, Dluga whispers to Reinhold that he knows a fellow named Moroskiewicz from Warsaw, he’s a pickpocket, are you any relation of his? Reinhold gets frightened, slips the Pole a small package of tobacco, and moves away. Finished work outside! The Pole is pleased about the tobacco, there’s something in this for him, he starts to blackmail Reinhold, for that feller’s always got money from somewhere.

  This business threatens to become terribly dangerous for Reinhold, but this time he is still in luck. He parries the blow. He spreads the news that his countryman Dluga wants to squeal, he knows something about him. And right in the middle of recess, there develops a big row. Reinhold joins the others in giving the Pole a terrible clouting. For this he’s given a week’s isolation cell, with bedding and warm meals only every third day. Then he gets out and finds everything calm and tame as usual.

  But then our Reinhold gets into trouble all by himself. Throughout his life the janes had brought him either evil days or good days. Now love is about to break his neck. That business with Dluga has caused him a lot of excitement, and he is raging because he has to sit around here all the time and let a goof like that get his goat. A fellow has no fun here, none at all, and it’s lonesome, the whole thing is getting more and more on his nerves each week. He goes on like that for a time, he’d like to kill that fellow Dluga; then he gets to know a young chap, a burglar, who is here in Brandenburg for the first time, and is to be discharged in March. They first come together through tobacco-smuggling and calling Dluga all kinds of names, then they become true and loyal friends in a way Reinhold had never known before, and even if it’s not a dame, but just a youngster, it’s very nice, and Reinhold is now very happy in the Brandenburg Prison. So this damned affair with Dluga has brought me something after all. Only it’s too bad the boy’s got to leave so soon.

  “I’ve gotta wear this black cap and this brown coat for a long time to come, and while I’m cooped up here, where will you be, my little Konrad?” Konrad is the lad’s name, or rather that’s what he says, he hails from Mecklenburg, and has the talent to become a big criminal. One of the two men with whom he had pulled a few jobs in Pomerania is here with ten years to do. One black Wednesday, the evening before Konrad’s discharge, the two are together again in the dormitory, and Reinhold almost kills himself worrying because he’s gonna be all alone again now and has nobody-but there’ll be somebody all right-don’t you worry, Reinhold, you’ll soon get an outside job at Werder or somewhere else but Reinhold can’t pull himself together, he just can’t, can’t, no, sir, he just can’t understand why things went so wrong with him, that damned bitch Mieze and that blockhead Franz Biberkopf, what are they to me, those boobs, those boneheads, I might be outside now playing the big boy, here there’s nothin’ but a lot of poor nuts who’ll never get any farther. Then Reinhold almost has a fit and whimpers and wails and begs Konrad, you gotta take me along with you, you gotta take me along. Konrad consoles him as best he can, but it won’t do, it’s no use advising anybody to make a breakaway.

  Through one of the polishers they get a small bottle of distilled alcohol from the carpenter-shop. Konrad gives Reinhold the bottle, they both take a nip. It’s impossible to escape, two did it yesterday, or rather tried to do it, but one of them only got as far as Neuendorfer Strasse and tried to hop on a truck, when a patrol got him, the fellow had bled a lot from those damned pieces of glass they put on top of the wall, they had to take him to the hospital, who knows if his hands will ever get well again. As for the other, well, he was cleverer, all he did was to take a look at the glass, and oU he went back into the courtyard.

  “Nope, there’s nothin’ to this makin’ a break, Reinhold.” The latter is quite contrite and soft, he’s got to stay here four years, and all on account of that fool business in Motzstrasse, and on account of that sow Mieze and that jackass, Franz. He sips some of the carpenter’s alcohol and feels better, they’ve laid their things out, the knife on top of the bundles, closing-time, the lock’s turned twice, the bolt’s drawn, the beds are made. They whisper together, sitting on Konrad’s bed, it’s Reinhold’s melancholy hour: ‘Til tell you where to go in Berlin. When you get out, you go see my girl, who knows whose girl she is now, I’ll give you her address and then lemme know, get me? And also find out what’s happened about that case I was tellin’ you about, y’know, this fellow Dluga smelled somethin’. I knew a feller in Berlin once, a real dumbbell, his name was Biberkopf, Franz Biberkopf-”

  And so he whispers and tells stories and clings to Konrad who listens with his ears wide open, he just keeps on saying yes, and soon he will know everything. He has to help Reinhold get to bed, because Reinhold is weeping with rage and desolation and anger at his fate and feels he’s caught in a trap. It doesn’t help him when Konrad says, what’s four years anyway? Reinhold can’t, he simply can’t, he just can’t stand the gaff, he can’t go on like this, it’s a regular prison fit he has.

  That’s Black Wednesday. On Friday Konrad is with Reinhold’s girl in Berlin. He gets a cordial recept
ion, tells her a lot of stories, and gets money from her, too. That’s Friday. On Monday it’s all up with Reinhold. Konrad meets a friend in Seestrasse with whom he had once been in a reformatory, and who is now out of a job. Konrad starts boasting as to how things are going with him, pays for him in the beer-saloon, and they go with some girls to the movies. Konrad tells terrible stories about Brandenburg; after they get rid of the gals, they sit half the night in his friend’s room, and that’s the night before Tuesday, when Konrad tells who Reinhold is. Moroskiewicz is just an assumed name, and he’s a fine feller, you won’t find the likes of him outside so easy, they’re looking for him on a serious charge. Who knows how much reward there is on his head. He’s hardly said that when he knows he’s done a stupid thing, but the friend promises on his word of honor not to say anything, of course, we’ll keep mum about it, and Konrad gives him 10 marks on top of that.

  Then Tuesday comes around, and this friend is standing on the ground floor at Police Headquarters, scanning the posters to see if it’s true, who’s wanted by the police, if Reinhold, that’s his name, is really on the list, and if a reward has been promised, and if Konrad has not been humbugging him perhaps.

  He’s fairly knocked out of his senses and can’t believe his eyes when he reads the name, that’s it, by God, murder of a prostitute, Parsunke, in Freienwalde, his name’s actually there, wonder if it’s really him, by God, why, it’s a thousand reward, a thousand marks, wow! That fetches him, the thousand marks. So off he goes and comes back with his girl-friend that same afternoon; she says she’d met Konrad and he asked for him, yes, he smells a rat what’ll we do, what’ll we do? Gee, why hesitate about it, is that man a murderer or isn’t he? What’s that to you? I wouldn’t bother about Konrad, you’ll never meet him again, and then how would he know it’s you, all that money, imagine it, a thousand marks, you go and get the dole and yet you hesitate about a thousand marks. “Wonder if it’s really him.” “Well, come on, let’s go in.”

  Inside, he makes a clear statement to the officer on duty of all he knows about Moroskiewicz, Reinhold, Brandenburg, etc., but he won’t say how he found out about it. Since he has no papers, he and his girl-friend have to stay there for the time being. Then-everything’s fine.

  As Konrad rides out to Brandenburg on Saturday to visit Reinhold, carrying all kinds of things to give him, from Reinhold’s girl and from Pums, he sees a paper lying on the floor of the car, it’s an old paper dating from Thursday evening and on the first page it says: “Capture of the Freienwalde Murderer. In Prison Under Alias.” The train rattles under Konrad, the tracks stretch on and on, and the train rattles. What’s the date of this paper, what is it? Lokalanzeiger, Thursday evening.

  So they got him. He’s been taken to Berlin. I did that.

  Women and love have brought luck, good and bad, to Reinhold all his life, and that’s how in the end they brought him disaster as well. He was taken to Berlin, acting like a madman. A little more, and they would have rushed him to the same asylum in which his former friend Biberkopf is confined. After calming down in Moabit, he waits to see how his trial will shape up, what will develop from that quarter, to wit Franz Biberkopf, his accomplice or instigator, but so far nobody knows anything at all about what’s to become of him.

  Buch Insane Asylum, Detention Ward

  In the lock-up of the panoptical building at headquarters it is at first suspected that Franz Biberkopf is flying a kite, as it were, that he is shamming madness, because he knows his bean is at stake. But then the doctor has a good look at the prisoner and orders his removal to Moabit Hospital. They can’t get a word out of him, it looks as if the man were really crazy, he lies there quite rigid or just blinks his eyes a bit. Having refused to eat for a few days, he is taken to the Buch Insane Asylum, where they place him in the detention ward. At any rate, that’s the thing to do, the fellow has to be kept under observation, that’s certain.

  They first put Franz in the observation ward, because he was always lying around without a stitch on and didn’t cover himself up; he even kept tearing off his shirt which was the only sign of life Franz Biberkopf gave for a few weeks. He kept his eyes shut tight all the time, lay perfectly stiff refusing all food so that they had to feed him forcibly; he lived for weeks on milk and eggs and a bit of cognac. The strong man grew so wasted that one guard alone could easily carry him to the bathtub. Franz greatly enjoyed his bath and while he was in it, even uttered sometimes a few words, opened his mouth, sighed or groaned, although nobody was able to make anything out of these sounds.

  The Buch Asylum lies somewhat away from the village; the detention ward is detached from the dwellings of those who are only sick and have not committed a crime. The detention ward lies in an open lot out on the level plain; wind and snow, cold and rain, day and night, beset the house with might and main. There are no streets to hold up the elements, only a few trees and bushes, and a few telegraph wires, otherwise there is only rain and snow, wind and cold, day and night.

  Boom, zoom, the wind stretches his chest, draws in his breath, then he exhales as if he were a barrel, each breath heavy as a mountain, the mountain approaches, and crash-it rolls against the house. Rumbling of basses. Boom, zoom, the trees sway, they can’t keep time, they’re swaying right, they’re swaying left, and now he knocks them down. Falling weights, hammering air, a rattle and a roar, and a crash, boom, zoom. I’m yourn, come on, we’ll soon be there, boom, night, night.

  Franz hears the calls. Boom, zoom, they do not stop, can’t they be quiet for a while? The guard sits at his table, reading, I can see him, he won’t let this howling outside disturb him. I’ve been lying here a long time. The chase, the damned chase, they have chased me helter-skelter, my arms and legs are broken, my neck’s smashed and broken. Boom, zoom, let it whimper, I’ve been lying here a long time, I won’t get up, Franz Biberkopf won’t get up again. And even if the Doomsday bugles should blow, Franz Biberkopf won’t get up again. Let them shout all they want, let them bring up their old feeding-tube, now they’re even pushing it down my nose because I won’t open my mouth, but don’t worry, I’ll starve to death all right, what can they do with their medicine, they can do anything they like. Tripe, a lotta damned tripe, but all that’s behind me. Now the guard is drinking his glass of beer, all that’s behind me, too.

  *

  Boom, crash, zoom, crash, boom, a battering ram, zoom, a knock at the door. Rushing and whirling and crushing and skirling, the Powers of Storm get together and hold their conference, it is night and they set about awakening Franz, not that they want to break his limbs, but the walls are so thick, he cannot hear what they call; but if he were nearer them, outside, he would feel them and hear Mieze crying. Then his heart would open up, his conscience would be awakened, and he would arise and everything would be all right. Now, however, they don’t know what to do. When a man takes a hatchet and slashes the solid wood, even the oldest tree begins to scream. But this rigid lying around, this selfeffacement, this self-abasement before disaster, that’s the worst thing in the world. We must not give up, either we’ll break into the detention ward with our battering ram and smash the windows, or we’ll raise the tiles on the roof; when he feels us, when he hears our screaming, Mieze’s screaming, which we are bringing along with us, he will live again and know better what’s up. We must put fear into him, we must frighten him, until he has no peace left in his bed, and then, how are we going to raise the coverlet, blast him to the floor, whirl the guard’s book and beer from the table. Boom, zoom, how am I going to overturn his lamp, I’ll kick the bulb down, maybe there’ll be a short-circuit in the house, maybe there’ll be a fire, boom, zoom, a fire in the madhouse, a fire in the detention ward.

  Franz blocks his ears and stiffens up. Around the detention ward fair weather and rain follow each other day and night.

  A girl from the village stands by the wall talking to a guard: “Can you see I’ve been crying?” “No, only one of your cheeks is a bit swollen.” “My whole head, t
he back of my skull, everything, I tell you.” She starts crying and takes her handkerchief from out of her bag. Her face has a sour expression. “What’s more, I didn’t do anything at all. I was told to go to the baker’s and fetch something. I happened to know the young lady there, so I asked her what she was doing, and she says I’m going to the bakers’ ball today. A person can’t sit at home all the time, in this bad weather. She had an extra ticket and wanted to take me along. Don’t cost me anything. That was nice of her, wasn’t it?” “Why, yes.” “But then you should hear my parents, my mother, I shouldn’t go. But why not, isn’t it a respectable ball? And then a girl would like a bit of fun, too, sometimes. What do I get out of life? No, I can’t go, the weather’s too bad, and father’s sick. But I said, I’ll go anyway. Then I got such a beating, is that nice?” She is crying again and stares into space. “The whole back of my head hurts. And my mother says, now are you going to do us this favor and stay at home. That’s going a little bit far, don’t you think so? Why shouldn’t I go out, I’m twenty years old now, Mother says you can go on Saturday and Sunday, well, then, why not on Thursday, because she’s got the tickets anyway.” “I can give you a handkerchief that long, if you want to.” “Oh, I’ve used up six so far, crying so hard; and then I got a cold on top of it, crying all day long like this, and what’ll I tell the young lady, why, I can’t go to the store with that swollen cheek I just want to go away, get a change of air; you know about your friend Sepp, I’ve written him, it’s all over between us, he hasn’t answered, it’s all over now.” “Leave that fellow alone, you can see him in town every Wednesday with another girl on the string.” “I like him a lot. That’s why I want to run away.”