An old man with a whisky-nose sits down on Franz’s bed. “Heh, fellow, open them eyes of yours, you might listen to me a minute. I’m in the same boat as you are. Home Sweet Home, you know what that means for me: under the sad. When I’m not at home, I wanta be under the sod. The microcephalics want to make a troglodyte outa me, a cave-dweller. That’s the cave they want me to live in. Y’know what a troglodyte is, don’t you, that’s us, awake, you wretched of the earth, doomed to starve, poor fallen victims of the fight in your holy love of mankind, you gave up your all for the people, life, liberty, and happiness. That’s us, old boy. In his luxurious mansions the despot feasts, drowning his unrest in wine; but a hand has already been writing the menacing signs upon his sumptuous board. I’m an autodidact, I am, everything I learned I learned by myself, from the jail, the detention ward, and now they lock me up here, they’re putting the people under tutelage, I’m too dangerous for society. You bet I am. I’m a freethinker, yes, sir, look at me, I’m the most peaceful man in the world, except when they get me excited. A time will come when the people will awake, strong and mighty and free, so rest in peace, my brothers, immense is the sacrifice you have made.
“Listen, brother, open them lamps of yours, I wanta know if you’re listening to me-that’s all right, you needn’t do more than that. I won’t give you away-what ‘dja do, didja take one of them tyrants for a ride, death to you all, executioners and despots, sing ho. You’re lying around here, y’know, and me, I can’t sleep all night long, there’s always that noise outside, boom, boom, don’t you hear it too? One of these nights they’ll be knocking down the whole shebang. They’re right. Last night I figured out, I was doing it all night, how many revolutions the earth makes around the sun in a second, I calculate and I calculate, I think it’s 28, and then I get a notion my old woman’s sleeping beside me and I wake her up and she says: Don’t get ‘excited, darlin’, but it was only a dream.
“They locked me up ‘cause I drink, but when I drink I get in a rage, I tell ye, but only at myself, and then I gotta knock everything into smithereens, everything that comes my way, simply because I’m not able to control my will. So one day I goes to the office about my pension and they’re all sitting around in the room, those lazy boobs, sucking their penholders and thinking they’re our Lords and Masters. I comes in, I opens that door with a bang and starts talkin’,and then they say what do you want here, who are you, anyway? Down goes my fist on their table: I don’t wanta talk to you, whom have I the honor of addressing, my name’s Schogel, please give me the telephone book, I want to call up the governor. So I smashed up the whole place, and two of them birds had to bite the dust, I tell ye.”
Boom, crash, zoom, crash, boom, a battering ram, zoom, a hammering at the door. Bashing and crashing, crackling and smashing. Who is this lying fool, Franz Biberkopf, this crying mule, this sighing ghoul, he’d like to wait here till it snows, then, he thinks, we’re gone and won’t come back again. Wonder what he’s thinking about, a feller like that can’t be thinking a great deal, he’s got water on the brain, he wants to lie around here and act like a mule. But never mind, we’ll make things hot for him, we have bones made of iron, crash door, look out, smash door, hole in the door, crack in the door, look out, no door, just an empty hole, a gaping hole, boom, zoom, watch out, boom, zoom.
There is a clatter. A clatter invades the storm, a clattering sound is audible through all its mumbling and rumbling, a woman upon a scarlet beast turns around. She has seven heads and ten horns. She cackles, holding a glass in her hand, she sneers, she lies in wait for Franz, she lifts her glass to the Powers of Storm: cluck, cluck, pipe down, gentlemen, the feller is not much good, you won’t be able to do much with that man, why, he’s only got one arm, there’s no flesh or fat on him, he’ll soon be a stiff, they’re beginning to put hot-water bottles in his bed, and I have his blood, he has only a wee bit left. he can’t go bragging around with that any more. Shush, I tell you, gentlemen, pipe down.
This happens right before Franz’s eyes. The whore moves her seven heads, cackles and nods. The beast plants its feet beneath her, lolling its head.
Grape-Sugar and Camphor Syringes, but in the end Somebody Else takes a Hand in it
Franz Biberkopf fights with the doctors. He can’t tear the tube away from them, he can’t pull it out of his nose, they pour oil on the rubber, and the tube slides down his throat and down his gullet, then milk and eggs flow down into his stomach. But after the feeding Franz starts to retch and to vomit. That’s troublesome and painful, but it works, even if they tie a fellow’s hands so that he can’t stick his fingers in his throat. A man can vomit everything he wants, and we’ll see who has the strongest will, they or I, and if anybody is going to coerce me in this damned world. I’m not here for doctors to experiment on me, and, anyway, they don’t know what’s wrong with me.
So Franz persists and grows weaker and weaker. They try all kinds of methods with him, they try to persuade him, they feel his pulse, they raise and lower him, they give him caffeine and camphor injections, they squirt grape-sugar and common salt into his veins, the prospects of his intestinal canal are discussed at his bedside, maybe we ought to make him inhale an extra amount of oxygen, he can’t get rid of the mask. He asks himself why are those gentlemen, those big doctors worryin’ about me all the time? A hundred men die in Berlin every day, and when a man’s sick, the doctor only comes if he gets a lotta money. Now they all come rushing up, but they don’t do it. because they want to help. They don’t care a rap about me today, no more than they did yesterday, but maybe I’m an interesting case for ‘em, and that’s why they get so mad about me, because they can’t do anything with me. And they don’t want anybody to get away with it, not on your life, it’s against the rules of the house here for somebody to die, it’s against the discipline of the institution. If I croak, they may get a calling down, and then they wanta put me up for trial on account of Mieze and so on and I’ve gotta be on my feet first, why, they’re hangman’s assistants, that’s all, not even hangmen, just assistants to the hangman, his beaters, and then they walk around in a doctor’s blouse and they ain’t ashamed, either.
There’s a Jot of sneering and whispering going on among the prisoners in the detention ward, after the doctor has made his round again, and Franz is lying just as before; they’ve gone to a lot of trouble with him, always new injections, next time they’ll make him stand on his head, now they’ re starting to talk about blood-transfusion for him, but where are they goin’ to get the blood from, there ain’t nobody here as dumb as all that, lettin’ em tap his blood, why not leave the poor feller alone, a man’s will is his Paradise, and what a man wants, well, that’s what he wants. The whole house is only interested to know what kind of injection our Franz is goin’ to get today, and they laugh behind the doctor’s back, for what’s the use, they won’t get anywhere with that feller, he’s hard-boiled all right, he’s hard as nails, he’ll show ‘em a thing or two, he knows what he wants.
The doctors put on their white blouses in the consultation-room, the Head Doctor, an assistant, two volunteers, and an interne, they all say it’s a case of stupor. The younger gentlemen have opinions of their own about this case: they are inclined to consider Franz Biberkopf’s trouble as psychogenic that is, his rigidity derives from the soul, it is a pathological condition of inhibitions and constraint which would be cleared up by an analysis (perhaps it emanates from earlier psychic levels) if-the big If. a most regrettable If, it’s too bad, a most irritating If-if only Franz Biberkopf would talk and sit down with them at the conference table to liquidate the conflict with them. The younger gentlemen envisage a Locarno with Franz Biberkopf. These younger gentlemen, the two volunteers and the interne, go, one by one, to the little ward, after the morning inspection and again in the afternoon, and visit Franz; each of them tries to start a conversation with him as best he can. They experiment, for instance, with the device of pretending nothing’s wrong, and talk to him as if he were list
ening to everything, and that’s all right, and as if they could coax him out of his isolation and break down his blockade.
But it doesn’t work so well. One of the volunteers, therefore, insists on fetching an electrolytic machine from the ward across the way, and on galvanizing Franz Biberkopf, that is, the upper part of his body; and after that he directs the galvanic current particularly to the region of the jaws, throat, and palate. That’s the region, he says, which needs special stimulation and excitation.
The older doctors are alive and full of worldly knowledge; they like to take a little constitutional by walking to the detention ward from time to time. They let a lot of things pass. The Head Doctor sits at his table in the consultation-room examining the documents which the head attendant hands him from the left side; the young generation, consisting of the interne and one of the assistants, is standing near the barred window chatting back and forth. The list of soporifics has been checked, the new attendant has been presented and has left the room with the head attendant, the gentlemen are alone and glance through the minutes of the last congress in Baden-Baden. The Head Doctor says: “They’ll soon believe that paralysis is a psychic condition and that spirochetes are nothing but lice that happen to be in the brain. The soul, the soul-it’s simply sentimental modern gush. Medicine soaring on the wings of Song.”
The two gentlemen are silent, smiling inwardly. The older generation talks a lot, after a certain age a calcium deposit begins to form in the brain and nothing new is learnt. The Head Doctor puffs away, goes on signing papers, and continues:
“You see, electricity is all right, anyhow it’s better than all that bunk. But suppose you use a weak current, that wouldn’t help at all. And if you use a strong one, well, then you’ll get the surprise of your life. We found out about it in the war, with that high-tension treatment. We can’t allow that, it’s modern torture.” The two young gentlemen take heart and ask what’s to be done in the Biberkopf case. “We need, first of all, a diagnosis, and, if possible, the right one. In addition to that indisputable soul-you see, we still know our daddy Goethe and Chamisso, even if it’s some time since we read them-there are such things as bleeding at the nose, corns, and broken legs. They must be treated as a decent broken leg or corn demand from a doctor. You may do whatever you please about the broken leg, but it won’t be cured merely by talking, and piano-playing won’t cure it either. What it wants is to be put in a plaster Cast with the bones properly set, and that’ll fix it up. In the same way, a corn wants swabbing, or just a better pair of shoes. The latter cost more, but they’re more practical.” The wisdom of pension privileges, intellectual content: zero. “Well, what’s to be done about this Biberkopf case, what’s the Chief’s opinion?” “Make the right diagnosis. Which, according to my naturally somewhat old-fashioned diagnostics, is called in this case: Catatonic stupor. Unless, of course, there is a serious organic condition back of it, such as tumor of the brain or something in the middle-brain, you remember what we learned during the epidemic of the so-called Spanish influenza; at least what we older men learned. We may perhaps find something sensational in the operating-room, it wouldn’t be the first time.” “Catatonic stupor?” He ought to buy himself a pair of new shoes, that one. “Yes, this rigidity of his, his fits of perspiration, that periodic twitching of the eyes, he observes us intently, but won’t talk or eat, all that looks like catatonic trouble. A malingerer, or a psychogenic case, flops out of his role in the end, but starve, he’ll never go that far.” “And what’s to be done for a man with such a diagnosis, Doctor, that alone won’t help him a great deal.” Now we’ve got him up a tree. The Chief laughs heartily and gets up. He steps to the window and slaps the assistant’s shoulder: “Well, in the first place, he’ll get out of both your clutches, my dear fellow. At least he can take a quiet snooze. That’s an advantage for him. Don’t you think that in the end he gets a bit bored with all the prayers you and your colleague recite over him? As a matter of fact, do you know what I am going to base my iron diagnosis on? You see, I’ve got it. Why, man alive, he would have made a grab for it long ago, if his trouble had been your so-called soul. When a confirmed jail-bird such as he is sees for himself that here are two young gentlemen who, of course, know only a lot of rubbish about him-excuse me, we’re talking between us-and they want to do some prayer-healing with him, well, take it from me, a chap like that has been looking for you all his life. That’s what fills his bill. And then what does he do, may have been doing all along? You see, supposing this fellow has sense and a bit of cunning-” Now the blind chicken thinks it’s found a grain at last. How it cackles and cackles! “But he’s inhibited, Chief, in our view it is a repression, conditioned by a psychic crisis, a loss of contact with reality, due to disappointments, failures, then infantile and instinctive demands on reality and a fruitless attempt to re-establish contact.” “Psychic crisis be damned! In that case he would have other psychic moments. He’d give up those repressions and inhibitions. He’s handing them to you as a Christmas present. In a week he’ll be up and about with your assistance, good Lord, you really are a master-healer, bravo for the new therapy, you can send a telegram of congratulations to Freud in Vienna, a week later the lad is walking in the corridor thanks to your assistance, a miracle, a miracle, hallelujah; in another week he’ll know all about the courtyard, and in another week, he’ll be, hallelujah, hooray, skedaddling and away, thanks to your benevolent assistance.” “I don’t understand, we ought to try it sometime, I don’t agree with you, Chief.” (I know everything, you know nothing, cluck, cluck, we know everything.) “But that’s the way I see it. You’ll find out. It’s a question of experience. All right, now don’t go torturing the fellow, you can believe me, it’s no use.” (I’ll have to go across to House 9, these smart-alecks, nearer my God to thee, what time is it anyway?)
Franz Biberkopf is now unconscious and drifting in space. He is very pale, jaundiced, water swelling at his joints, starvation sickness, he smells of hunger, of sweetish acetone; people entering the room notice at once that something queer is happening there.
Franz’s soul has reached a deep stratum, and consciousness is present only at intervals. The gray mice who live up in the store-room understand him, so do the little squirrels and the field-rabbits leaping outside. The mice sit in their holes, between the detention ward and the big central Buch building. Something flutters from out of Franz’s soul, it roams and searches, sputtering and questioning, it is blind and returns to its tenement which lies still breathing on the bed behind the wall.
The mice invite Franz to join them at their meals and not to be sad. What is it makes him sad, they ask. Then it develops that it is not easy for him to talk. They urge him on, why not make a complete end of it all? Man is a hideous beast: the enemy of enemies, the most loathsome creature on earth, far worse even than the cats.
He says: It is not good to be living in a human body. I’d rather cower under the earth or run across the fields and eat whatever I can find, and the wind blows and rain falls and the cold days come and go, that’s better than living in a human body.
The mice scamper about, and now Franz is a field-mouse, and digs along with them.
In the detention ward he lies in bed, the doctors come and keep his body nourished, but meanwhile he grows paler and paler. Now they themselves admit it: he cannot be sustained any longer. All that was animal in him is wandering in the fields.
Now there slips away from him something that gropes and searches and makes itself free, something that he has felt within himself before, although rarely and dimly. It swims away across the mouse-holes, delving into the grass, groping in the earth, where the plants hide their roots and seeds. Something is talking with them, they are able to understand it, there is a blowing back and forth, a patter, as if the seeds were falling on the ground. Franz’s soul is giving its seed-germs back to the earth. But it is a bad season, cold and frost-bound, who knows how many will be fruitful, although there is much space in the fields, and
Franz has many seeds in him, each day he blows out of the house and scatters more seed-germs.
Death sings his slow, slow Song
The Powers of Storm are silent now, another song has started, they all know the song and him who sings it. When he lifts up his voice, they are always silent, even those who on earth happen to be the most impetuous.
Death has begun his slow, slow song, and he sings it like a stammerer, repeating each word; when he has finished singing a verse, he repeats the first before he starts anew. His song is like the hiss of a saw. Quite slowly the saw ascends and then plunges down into the flesh, shrilling louder, clearer and higher, till it comes to the end of a note, and rests. Then it withdraws, slowly, slowly, hissing, higher and clearer grows the note, it shrills, and then it plunges into the flesh once more.
Slowly Death is singing.
“It is time for me to appear beside you, for the seeds are already flying out of the window and you shake your winding-sheet as if you would never lie down again. I am not a mere mower, nor a mere sower, I have to be here because it is my duty to preserve. Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.”
Oh, yes, this is the word Death speaks at the end of each stanza. And when he makes a strong movement, he also sings, oh, yes, because that pleases him. But those who hear it close their eyes, they cannot bear it.
Slowly, slowly, Death is Singing and evil Babylon listens to him, the Powers of Storm listen to him.
“Here I stand and here I must record: He who lies here and offers up his life and his body is Franz Biberkopf. Wherever he may happen to be, he knows where he is going and what he wants.”
That certainly is a beautiful song. Franz hears it and wonders what it means: Death is singing? If it were printed in a book, or read aloud, it would be rather like poetry, Schubert composed such songs, Death and the Maiden, but what about it?
Berlin Alexanderplatz Page 48
