‘And what about Trude, she astonished how well everything’s going? And you, mate, aren’t you happy to be through that bit of bother? You know, women are a bit of all right, and fun. But if you ask me for my opinion of em, then I say: not too little of them, and not too much neither. If it’s too much, then lay off of em. Just ask me, I know.’ The lay of Ida, Paradiesgarten, Treptow, canvas shoes and Tegel to follow. The echo of triumph has drained away in the drink. ‘I’ll help you out, Reinhold, get you nicely set up. What do you need the Sally Army for, we’ll get it sorted. Cheers Reinhold, old son, mebbe you’ll have a beer with us now.’ He silently bumped his glass against the coffee cup: ‘What can you get sorted, Franz, and why?’
Christ, I almost shot me mouth off. ‘Oh, just that you can always rely on me, schnapps is a bit of an acquired taste, but kummel’s nice and easy on the system.’ The other, insistently: ‘You wanting to play doctor with me, is that it?’ ‘Why not. I know about these kind of things. You remember I helped you out before, Reinhold, with Cilly, and all. Don’t you trust me to stand by you now? Franz the philanthropist. The one who knows the way to go.’
Reinhold looks up, fixes him with his sad expression: ‘I see, so you know that, do you?’ Franz doesn’t look away, won’t be disturbed in his own joy and pride, let the other guy see, it’ll do him good if he notices people standing up for themselves. ‘Yeah, Mack here can confirm that we have been through certain grave experiences, and that’s what gives us our authority. And then about the schnapps; Reinhold, once you can stomach some, then I’d like to throw a party for you here, at my expense, I’ll pay the whole shebang.’ Reinhold is still fixing Franz, who has his chest thrust out, and little Mack, who is eyeing him curiously. Reinhold lowers his regard and starts staring into his coffee: ‘I expect you want to make half a married cripple out of me, then.’ ‘Cheers, Reinhold, here’s to married cripples everywhere, three threes are nine, we drink like swine, sing along, Reinhold, beginnings is tricky, it’s the endings are sticky.’
The whole lot. In formation. By the rate, quick, march. Reinhold climbs out of his cup of coffee. Pums, the one with the red feisty face, is whispering something in his ear, Reinhold shrugs. Then Pums parps through the fug: ‘I’ve asked you once before, Biberkopf, what about you, are you still happy in the newspaper trade? What do you make, tuppence a copy, five pfennigs an hour, something like that?’ And then there’s a little back and forth, Franz is to take over a fruit or veg stand, Pums will supply the wares, the expected earnings are impressive. Franz is in favour and against, he doesn’t really like Pums’s set-up, they’re bound to swindle me. Reinhold the stammerer keeps silent. When Franz turns to ask him what he thinks of it, he notices he’s been watching him all along, and has just turned to seek refuge in his cup. ‘Well, what do you reckon, Reinhold.’ He stammers back: ‘Well, I’m in, inni.’ And when Mack chips in, why not, Franz, then Franz promises to think it over, he doesn’t want to say yes or no right away, but he’ll come by tomorrow or the day after and talk it over with Pums, and about the goods, and picking them up, and what area would be best suited to him.
Everyone’s gone home, the pub is almost empty, Pums is gone, Mack and Biberkopf are gone, a tram driver is standing at the bar, getting into the question of wage stoppages with the landlord, he thinks they’re on the high side. The stammerer Reinhold is still in his chair. There are three empty lemonade bottles in front of him, a half-full glass and the cup of coffee. He’s not going home. At home is blonde Trude. He ponders and thinks. He gets up, shuffles across the pub, his woollen socks are round his ankles. The man looks wretched, deep furrows either side of his mouth, the terrible creases across his forehead. He buys himself another coffee and another lemonade.
•
Cursed be the man, saith Jeremiah, that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Water in the thick dark woods, terrible black water, you are so quiet. You lie there quiet and terrible. Your surface is not moved, no, not when the forest is hit by storm and the pines begin to bend and the spiders’ webs between their branches tear and the branches themselves begin to crack. Then you lie down in the hollow, you black waters, and the boughs fall.
The wind tugs at the trees, but you the storm does not reach. You have no dragons in your beds, the time of mammoths is gone, nothing is there that might frighten anyone, plants moulder away in you, fishes and snails bestir themselves. Nothing more. But even then, even though you are nothing but water, you are eerie, black water, terrible, quiet water.
Sunday, 8 April 1928
‘Will there be one more snowfall, one more white-out in April?’ Franz Biberkopf sat by the window in his little digs, propped his left elbow on the sill, leant his head on his hand. It was Sunday afternoon, the room warm and snug. Cilly had heated the room, now she was asleep in the alcove with her little pussycat. ‘Is there going to be snow? The sky’s so grey. I wouldn’t mind if there was.’
And as Franz closed his eyes, he heard the bells ringing. He sat there for minutes, listening to the ringing: boom, bim bim boom, bim bam, boom boom bim. Until he lifted his head off his hand, and listened: there were two tenor bells and one treble. They stopped.
Why are they ringing now, he wondered. Then all of a sudden they began again, authoritative, greedy, turbulent. It was a terrible din, and all at once it was over.
Franz took his elbow of the sill and turned to face the room. Cilly was sitting on the bed, hand-mirror in her hand, hairpins between her lips, humming as Franz approached. ‘What’s goin on, Cilly babes. Is it a holiday?’ She fiddled with her hair. ‘Well, t’s a Sunday, innit.’ ‘Not a holiday?’ ‘Maybe Cathlick, I dunno.’ ‘Coz the way the bells was going.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Juss now.’ ‘Didn’t hear nuffink. Did you hear em, Franz?’ ‘Well, they was loud enough.’ ‘I reckon you must of bin dreaming.’ Alarm. ‘Nah, I wasn’t dreaming, I was sitting there.’ ‘Dropped of, mebbe.’ ‘Nah,’ he insisted, was adamant, moved slowly, sat down at his place at the table. ‘You can’t dream summing like that. Heard it, dinni.’ He poured a swallow of beer. His alarm remained.
He looked over to Cilly, who was already looking a bit tearful: ‘Who knows what’s just happened, Cilly.’ And he asked about the paper. She could laugh. ‘Not now, man, it’s a Sunday.’
He looked at the morning paper, scanning the headlines: ‘Loads of small fry. No, it’s not in there. Nothing.’ ‘If you can hear bells, Franz, then you’ll go to church.’ ‘Ah, leave the priests out of it. I got no use for them. Just it’s so queer, you hear somefink, and you go and see, and it weren’t nothing.’ He stopped and thought, she by his side, stroking him. ‘I’m going out for a breath of air, Cilly. Just an hour or so. I wanna find out if anything’s happened. Die Welt or Montag Morgen will be out, I gotta go see.’ ‘Oh, Franz, you and your pondering. It will say: Garbage truck breaks down at Prenzlauer Tor, and sheds its load. Or, how about this one: Newspaper seller gives correct change.’
Franz laughed: ‘Well, that’s my cue. Bye, Cilly.’
‘Bye, Franz.’
And thereupon Franz slowly walked down four flights of steps, and never saw his Cilly again.
She waited in the room till five o’clock. When he didn’t show up, she went out and asked after him in the bars as far as the corner of Prenzlauer Strasse. He hadn’t been seen in any of them. But he was going to read up in the paper about that silly thing he probably dreamt. So he must have gone somewhere.
On the corner of Prenzlauer, the landlady said: ‘No, he’s not been seen in here. But Herr Pums was asking for him. And then I tells him Herr Biberkopf’s address, and he’ll have gone to look for him there.’ ‘No, no one’s been round.’ ‘Perhaps he didn’t find him.’ ‘Maybe.’ ‘Or bumped into him going out.’
Then Cilly sat there till late at night. The bar filled up. She kept looking in the direction of the door. Once, she ran home and came back. Mack showed up, he comforted her and made her laugh for a quarter of an hour. He said: ‘Oh, he’ll be back. The lad’s used to getting his meals. Don’t you worry about him, Cilly.’ But even as he said it, he remembered how Lina had sat next to him that other time, how she’d been out looking for Franz, during the business with Lüders and the bootlaces. And he almost accompanied Cilly out onto the dark mucky street; but he didn’t want to alarm her, because it might all be a fuss about nothing.
In a temper, Cilly suddenly took it into her head to go looking for Reinhold; maybe he’d talked Franz into some other cow, and Franz was dumping her. Reinhold’s place was locked, no one home, not even Trude.
She drifted back to the bar. It was snowing, but the snow didn’t stick around. On the Alex the newspaper sellers were crying Montag Morgen and Welt am Montag. She bought a paper from one of them, to take a look herself. To see if something had happened, to see if he was right this afternoon. Well, there was a train crash in the United States, in Ohio somewhere, and there was a clash between Communists and swastikas, no, that’s not Franz’s scene, and a fire in Wilmersdorf. That’s nothing to do with me. She dawdled past the brightly lit Tietz’s, then crossed over to unlit Prenzlauer Strasse. She was getting soaked, she’d forgotten her umbrella. Outside the little café on Prenzlauer Strasse was a little clutch of tarts under umbrellas, blocking the way. Just past them a hatless fat man accosted her as he stepped out of a doorway. She hurried by. But I’ll go with the next man, what does he think he’s playing at. I’ve not had such a mean thing done to me as that.
It was quarter to ten. A ghastly Sunday. At that time Franz was lying in another part of town with his legs on the pavement and his head in the gutter.
•
Franz goes down the stairs. One step, then another and another and another, four floors, down and down and down and down. A man feels tired, jumbled in his brain. Cooking soup, Miss Stein, got a spoon, Miss Stein, gotta spoon, Miss Stein, cooking soup, Miss Stein. No, that’s no help, my, I was just boiling in there. I had to get some fresh air. The light’s so dim, hang onto the balustrade, it’d be so easy to catch on a nail or something.
A door opens on the second floor, a man slowly follows him down. He must be carrying some weight, to hear him puffing like that, downstairs and all. Franz Biberkopf stops at the foot of the stairs, the sky is soft and grey, it really does look like snow. The man goes puffing past him, the man on the stairs, a little plump fellow, with a puffy white face; wearing a green felt hat. ‘You’re a bit short of breath, ain’t ya, neighbour.’ ‘Yes, I’m overweight, and all those steps.’ They walk along the street together. The short-breathed man puffs: ‘Today I’ve been five times up and down four flights. Work it out, twenty flights, each of thirty steps or so, spiral stairs are shorter but harder, so say thirty steps, five flights, a hundred and fifty steps. All the way up and all the way down.’ ‘Makes three hundred all told. Coz going down is a strain as well, as I’ve had occasion to notice.’ ‘You’re right there.’ ‘I should look for a new job for myself.’
It is snowing heavy flakes, they twirl prettily in the air. ‘Yes, I’m in the ads business. Not every day, mind. Sunday’s best. More people buy space on Sundays, they think that’s most likely to bring results.’ ‘Sure, because that’s the day people have time to read the paper. I don’t need glasses to understand that. It’s my metier.’ ‘Do you advertise as well?’ ‘Nah, I just sell papers. I’m on my way to read one now.’ ‘Ha, coz I’ve read them all. What about this weather, eh. Have you ever known the like.’ ‘Typical April, innit. Yesterday was beautiful. Mark my words, tomorrow’ll be fine again. Wanna bet?’ The fellow gets his breath back, the street lights are on, under one he pulls out a small looseleaf-jotter, holding it out a long way away from himself to read. Franz volunteers: ‘It’s getting wet, you know.’ The man doesn’t hear him, stashes his jotter away, the conversation is finished, thinks Franz, I’ll take my leave. Then the little man looks at him from under his green hat: ‘Tell me, neighbour, what is it you do, again?’ ‘Me? I’m a newspaper seller, self-employed newspaper seller.’ ‘I see. And that gets you by, does it.’ ‘Well, it’s all right.’ Wonder what’s he after, queer fish. ‘I always wanted to be self-employed meself. Must be nice, you’re your own boss, and if you work hard, you get by.’ ‘Yeah. Or not. But you do enough walking as it is, neighbour. Today, on a Sunday, and with this weather, there’s not many out and about.’ ‘You’re right, you’re right. I spend half the day on my feet. And if nothing comes in, then nothing comes in. People nowadays are strapped.’ ‘What is it you sell, neighbour, if I might ask?’ ‘I’ve got my little pension. I just wanted to, you know, be a free man, work, earn a living. So I’ve had my pension for three years, that’s how long I used to work for the post office, and now I’m walking and walking. It’s like this: I look in the paper and then I go see what people are advertising.’ ‘Furniture, stuff like that?’ ‘Whatever there is, used office furniture, Bechstein pianos, old Persian rugs, pianolas, stamp collections, coins, old clothes.’ ‘There’s people dying all the time.’ ‘A whole bunch. Well, and so I go up and take a look, and sometimes I buys.’ ‘And then you sell them on, I get it.’
Thereupon the asthmatic fell silent once more and pulled his coat around him, and they strolled on through the gently falling snow. At the next street light the fat asthmatic pulled a bunch of postcards out of his pocket, looked gloomily at Franz and pressed a couple into his hand: ‘Read this, neighbour.’ On the card he read: ‘Dated as postmarked. To my regret I am forced by adverse circumstance to go back on the agreement we came to yesterday. Respectfully, Bernhard Kauer.’ ‘That’s you is it, Kauer?’ ‘Yes, I had it printed on a copy machine I bought once. That’s the only thing I bought meself. I do my own printing with it. You can make fifty copies in an hour.’ ‘You don’t say. Well, but what’s it in aid of.’ The fellow’s not right upstairs, his eyes wobble and all. ‘Just read it, will you: forced by adverse circumstance to go back on the agreement? I’m buying something, and then I can’t manage to pay for it. People don’t hand stuff over without payment. Who can blame them either. And I keep running up and buying and agreeing, and the people are pleased because it all passed of so easily, and I’m thinking to myself I’m in luck, all these nice things, wonderful coin collections, I could tell you a thing or two, people who all’ve a sudden ‘ve got no money, and then I walks up, look at everything and they tell me straight off what the position is, the misery people live in, if they could only manage to lay their hands on a few pennies, I bought something in your building too, people are so needy, a mangle and a small icebox, they were glad to be rid of em. And then I go down, see, I’d like to take everything off their hands, but downstairs I start to get worried: no money, no money.’ ‘But you must have already got someone lined up to take the stuff off your hands.’ ‘In your dreams. I bought the copy machine that I turn out the postcards on. Each of em costs me five pfennigs, those are my overheads, and that’s it, end of story.’
Franz made big eyes: ‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me there, neighbour. You’re not serious.’ ‘My expenses – and sometimes I save five pfennigs, and drop the card in the box on my way out.’ ‘And you walk your legs of, and are short-winded, and all in aid of what?’
They had reached Alexanderplatz.
There was a crowd, and they joined it. The little man glowered up at Franz: ‘You try living on eighty-five marks a month and your native wit.’ ‘But for God’s sake, man, you need to give some thought to flogging the merchandise. If you
want, I can ask around, I know some people.’ ‘Get away with you, I never asked you for help, I’m in business by myself, I don’t work for a company.’ They were in the middle of the crowd, there was some kind of commotion going on. Franz looked for the little man, but he was gone, stomped off. So he’s run off, wondered Franz, you could have knocked me over with a. What got him going? He walked into a bar, ordered a kummel, leafed through a copy of Vorwärts, local advertiser. There’s more in there than in the rotten Mottenpost, a big horse race in England, and another one in Paris, mebbe; could be they had a huge payout. It might have been a great stroke of good fortune that I’ve got ringing in my ears.
And he’s in the process of turning on his heel and going home. Then he just needs to go over the way and see what the kerfuffle is all about. Frankfurters’n’potato salad! Here, young man, try our whopping franks. Montag Morgen, Welt, Welt am Montag!
What do you say to those two, they’ve been pummelling each other for the past half-hour, for no reason. Think I’ll stay here till tomorrow morning. You, you must have paid for a standing place, the way you’re set there. Nah, a little flea can’t exactly take up space. Ooh, look at that, isn’t he just giving him what for.
When Franz has managed to push his way through to the front, who is it who’s fighting? Two lads he knows, two of Pums’s boys. Well, how about that. Smack, the tall one’s got the other in a grip, smack, he’s dropped him in the slush. My, how you let someone like that boss you about, you weakling. Hey, what’s all the shoving about. Uh-oh, it’s the filth. Scarper. Under rain-capes, two cops push their way through the mob. Hupp, the one Greco-Roman wrestler is up again, barging his way through the crowd. The other one, the tall geezer, it takes him a while to get up, he’s winded from a pop in the ribs. Then Franz pushes his way through to the very front. I’m not about to leave the feller lying there, what kind of people are these, no one lending a hand. And Franz has picked him up and is hauling him away through the crowd. The police are looking. ‘What’s going on here then?’ ‘A couple of boys was having a fight.’ ‘All right then, nothing to see, move along.’ Always plenty to say for themselves, and always a day late. We’re doing our best, ossifer, keep your hair on.