Eva, Herbert and Herbert’s friend Emil are sitting together. Ever since Franz turned up in the night having been run over, they are stumped. He wasn’t just hit by a car, there was something else going on, what’s he doing up in the north of the city at ten at night when no one’s around. Herbert concludes: Franz must have done a job that went wrong, and now he’s ashamed because his little paper business didn’t work out, and there’s other people involved who he doesn’t want to betray. Eva agrees, he tried to do a job but something went wrong, and now he’s a cripple. We’ll worm it out of him one way or another.
It emerges when Franz tells Eva his latest address and asks her to pick up his stuff, but without saying where she’s taking it. Herbert and Emil are sworn in, first the landlady won’t surrender it, but for 5 marks she finally does, and then she goes back to her lamentations: every other day people come asking after Franz, who is she referring to, well, Pums and Reinhold and so on and so on. Pums, now they know. The Pums gang. Eva is beside herself, and Wischow is furious as well: if he’s in business again, why with Pums? But of course, once the accident’s happened he goes back to us; he’s done work for Pums, well, he’s a cripple now, half dead, else I’d talk to him differently.
Eva has with difficulty managed to be present when Herbert Wischow and Franz settle their accounts, and Emil is also present, the whole thing set them back an even thousand.
‘Well, Franz,’ begins Herbert, ‘now you’re out of the woods. Now you can get up and – what will you do? Did you give it any thought?’ Franz turns his stubbly face in Herbert’s direction: ‘Just let me get on my own two feet first, won’t you.’ ‘Oh, we’re not hurrying you along, don’t think that. You’re still in good with me. But why didn’t you come back to us in the first place. You’ve been out of Tegel for a whole bloody year.’ ‘It’s not that long.’ ‘Well, then half a year. Through with us, were you?’
The buildings, the sliding roofs, a tall, lightless courtyard, ‘Es braust ein Ruf wie Donnerhall’, juvivallerallera, that’s how it all began.
Franz lies back, looks up at the ceiling: ‘I was flogging papers. I’m no good to you.’
Emil gets involved, pipes up: ‘Jesus Christ, you were not flogging newspapers.’ The liar. Eva calms him down; Franz can sense there’s something afoot, they know something, what is it they know. ‘I was flogging papers. Ask Mack.’ Wischow: ‘I can imagine what Mack would say. You sold papers. The way Pums’s people sell fruit, some. Also wet fish. You know that.’ ‘Yeah, but I didn’t, see. I sold newspapers. I earned my money. Then ask Cilly, we were together all day, ask her what I did.’ ‘For two marks a day, or three.’ ‘Or more, sometimes. It were enough for me, Herbert.’
The three of them are uncertain. Eva sits down beside Franz: ‘You knew Pums, didn’t you, Franz?’ ‘Yes.’ Franz is no longer thinking they’re quizzing me, Franz is reminiscing, he feels alive. ‘Well?’ Eva strokes him: ‘Why not tell us what happened with Pums?’ Herbert beside her weighs in: ‘Go on, spit it out. I know what happened with Pums. Where you were that night. Don’t think I don’t know. Sure, you joined in. I don’t care. It’s your lookout. They’re who you go to, they’re the ones you know, the old crook, we don’t hear a dicky bird.’ Emil yells: ‘See. We’re only good when—’ Herbert motions to him. Franz is weeping. It’s not quite as bad as it was in the clinic, but it’s pretty bad. He sobs and cries and throws his head from side to side. He got a blow on the head, he got a bang in the chest, and then he was thrown out in front of a car. Which ran over him. His arm is gone. He’s a cripple. The two men leave. He goes on sobbing. Eva keeps wiping his face with the towel. Then Franz lies there quietly, eyes shut. She watches him, thinks he’s sleeping. Then he opens his eyes, is all awake, says: ‘Tell Herbert and Emil to come in, won’t you.’
They walk in with eyes lowered. Then Franz asks: ‘What do you know about Pums? Do you know the first thing about him?’ The three of them exchange looks of incomprehension. Eva pats him on the arm: ‘Come on, Franz, you know him too.’ ‘Well, I want to hear what you know about him.’ Emil: ‘That he’s a hardcore swindler who’s done five years in Sonnenburg, and it could easily have been fifteen or life. Him and his fruit cart.’ Franz: ‘He doesn’t even live off his fruit cart.’ ‘No, he eats steak and plenty of it.’ Herbert: ‘For Christ’s sake, Franz, you weren’t born yesterday, you must have known that, can’t you tell from just looking at the feller?’ Franz: ‘I thought he lived of fruit and greens.’ ‘Well, and what were you doing the Sunday you took off with him?’ ‘We were going to collect fruit for the market.’ Franz lies there perfectly still. Herbert bends down over him to see his expression: ‘And you believed that?’
Franz starts crying again, very quietly, his mouth is shut. He went downstairs, a man was looking up addresses in his notebook, then he was in Pums’s flat, and Frau Pums was supposed to send Cilly a note. ‘Of course I believed it. Then I noticed there was something fishy, when they told me to be lookout, and then—’
The three don’t know where to look. What Franz is saying is the truth, but they can’t believe it. Eva touches his arm: ‘Well, what happened then?’ Franz has his mouth open, say it now, then it’ll be out, and over and done with. And he says: ‘Then I didn’t want to, and they threw me out the car because there was another car coming after them.’
Silence, no more words, no: I was run over, I might have been killed, they wanted to kill me. He doesn’t sob, he keeps contained, teeth gritted, legs tensed.
The other three hear him. Now he’s said it. It’s God’s truth. All three of them sense it instantly. There is a reaper, Death yclept, by Almighty God employed.
Herbert asks: ‘Now just tell me this, Franz, we’ll leave you in a minute: the reason you didn’t come to us is because you wanted to log newspapers, right?’
He can’t speak, he thinks: yes, I wanted to go straight. I was straight till the end. Don’t be put out that I didn’t come to you. You remained my friends, I never give any of you away. He lies there in silence, they troop out.
Then – Franz has taken his sleeping pills again – they’re all sitting down the pub, and can’t think what to say. They don’t look at each other. Eva is shaking like a leaf. She had the hots for Franz when he was going out with Ida, but he wouldn’t give Ida up, even though she had already taken up with the Breslau boy. She’s with Herbert, he gives her everything she needs, but she still has a soft spot for Franz.
Wischow orders a round of grog, and all three of them knock it back. Wischow orders another. Their throats remain tight. Eva has icy hands and feet, she keeps on feeling cold shudders going down the back of her head and neck, even her thighs feel icy, so she crosses her legs. Emil has his head in his hands, he’s chewing away, sucking his tongue, swallowing his spittle, then he has to spit on the floor. Young Herbert Wischow sits upright on his chair as on horseback; he looks like a lieutenant leading his troop, impassive. None of them are present in the bar, they are not in their own skins, Eva is not Eva, Wischow is not Wischow, Emil not Emil. A wall around them has been breached, darkness is streaming in, different air. They are still at Franz’s bedside. There is an unbroken shudder that connects them to Franz’s bed.
There is a reaper, Death yclept, by Almighty God employed. His blade he whets, it cuts much better, soon he will cut, and we must suffer.
Herbert turns to face the table, he says in a hoarse voice: ‘Who do you think it was?’ Emil: ‘Who what?’ Herbert: ‘Who threw him out?’ Eva: ‘Will you promise, Herbert, that if you get hold of him.’ ‘No need to ask. To think that a creature like that walks the earth. But, but.’ Emil: ‘Christ, Herbert, I can’t get my head around it.’
Not wanting to hear, not having to think. Eva’s knees are shaking, she implores: ‘Herbert, Emil, do something.’ To get out of that atmosphere. There is a reaper, Death yclept. Herbert concludes: ‘What can we do, if we dunno who it was. The first step is to establish who it was. Maybe it means gettin the whole Pums gang.’ Eva:
And Franz with them?’ ‘I said maybe. Maybe that’s what we’ll do. Franz was no part of it, not really, a blind man’d see that, any judge would believe him. And here’s the proof: they threw him out in front of the car. They’d hardly have done that otherwise.’ He shudders: bastards. Think of it. Eva: ‘Maybe he’ll tell me who it was.’
But the man lying there like a lump of wood and giving no information is Franz. Let be, let be. The arm’s gone, it’ll not grow back. They threw me out of the car, they left my head on, we need to get along, we need to move forward, gotta pull the wagon out of the mud. First crawl.
The weather turns warm, and the patient improves with surprising speed. He’s not supposed to get up yet, but he does, and it’s all right. Herbert and Emil, who are flush, don’t mind buying him whatever he wants and whatever the doctor says he needs. And Franz wants to get up and about, he eats and drinks what he’s given, and he doesn’t ask where they get the money from.
By now there are conversations between him and the others, but nothing consequential, nothing regarding the Pums affair. They talk about Tegel and they talk about Ida a lot. They talk about her frankly, and with sadness that it should have come to that, she was so young, but Eva agrees, the girl was a lowlife. Everything between them is as it was before Tegel, and no one knows or makes mention of the fact that since then the buildings have shaken, and the roofs made to slide off, and Franz has sung in back yards, and sworn, as his name is Franz Biberkopf, that he wants to remain on the straight and narrow, and the things of before are over and finished.
Franz sits and lies easily in their company. A lot of old acquaintances come along as well, bringing wives and girlfriends. They don’t touch the subject, they talk with Franz as if he’d only just got out of Tegel and been in a hacksident. The boys don’t ask what happened. They know what an occupational accident is, they can imagine. You get into a contretemps, and you come away with a bullet in your shoulder, or a broken leg. Well, it beats dying on bread and water or TB in Sonnenburg any day of the week. Innit.
In the meantime, the Pums mob have got a whiff of Franz’s whereabouts. Who was it picked up Franz’s trunk? They established that pretty quick, and it’s someone they know. And before Wischow realizes anything, they’ve worked out that Franz is at his place, they were friends back in the day after all, and he got away with losing an arm, lucky bleeder, nothing worse than that, so the boy’s still in circulation, and, who knows, in a position to grass them up. They have half a mind to set about Reinhold, who had the daft idea of inviting the likes of Franz Biberkopf into their gang in the first place. But it would take a lot to undertake anything against Reinhold, not before, and not now, even old Pums doesn’t want to know. The way the lad so much as looks at you is terrifying, with his yellow face and the deep creases in it. He’s not a well geezer, he’ll not make fifty, and the frail ones you don’t want to mess around with. You wouldn’t put it past him to reach into his pocket and smirk and blow you away.
The thing with Franz and the fact that he survived remains a danger. But Reinhold just shakes his head and says: stay calm. He’s not about to grass. If one arm isn’t enough for him, then he might grass. Well, I don’t care. He might want to lose his head and all.
There is no call for them to fear Franz. Once, admittedly, Eva and Emil get together and try and get Franz to tell them where it happened and who done it, and if he can’t do anything against them all by himself, then there’ll be others to help, there are enough of the right sort in Berlin. But he clams up, and says: oh, leave be. Then he turns pale, gulps, so long as he doesn’t start crying again: there’s no point in talking about it, what’s the use, it won’t make my arm grow back, if I could I think I’d leave Berlin altogether, but what’s a cripple to do? Eva: ‘It’s not on account of that, Franz, you aren’t a cripple, but that can’t be allowed, what they did to you, throwing you out of a car.’ ‘It won’t make my arm grow back.’ ‘But they should pay for it.’ ‘What?’
Emil puts his oar in: ‘Either we beat the bloke’s brains in, or we make his firm pay if he’s in one. We’ll settle it with them. Either others will pay for him, or Pums and the firm will throw him out, and we’ll see where he manages to join after, and what happens to him. The arm wants paying for. It’s your right arm, innit. They gorra pay you a invalidity pension.’ Franz shakes his head. ‘You shake your head all you like. We’ll catch up with them, it’s a crime, and either we bring em to justice, or we take care of it ourselves.’ Eva: ‘You know Franz wasn’t in a gang, Emil. He didn’t have anything to do with the rest of them, that’s why they did that to him.’ ‘He’s perfectly entitled, he don’t need to. Since when can you force a man to do something he don’t wanna do? We’re not savidges here. They can take those views and try them out on the Injuns.’
Franz shakes his head: ‘What you’ve shelled out for me, you’re going to get it repaid, every last penny.’ ‘You don’t have to do that. But goddamnit, this thing needs sorting. Can’t just sweep that under the carpet.’
Eva chips in: ‘No, Franz, we’re not going to let this rest, they’ve destroyed your nerve, that’s why you can’t just say yes to us. But you can put your faith in us: Pums hasn’t broken our nerve. You should listen to what Herbert says: there’ll be a bloodbath in Berlin that will make people sit up and take notice.’ Emil grimly nods: ‘You betcha.’
Franz Biberkopf looks straight ahead, thinks: what they’re talking about is no concern of mine. And if they go through with it, it’s still no concern of mine. It won’t make my arm grow back, and I’ve got no beef with my arm being gone neither. It had to go, there’s no sense in yapping about it. And that’s not all either.
And he thinks about everything that happened: how Reinhold was down on him because he wouldn’t take the woman off his hands, and that’s why he threw him out of the car, and there he is lying in the clinic in Magdeburg. He wanted to stay on the straight and narrow, and that’s what happened. And he stretches out in bed, makes a fist: it’s happened, that’s all there is to it. We’ll see. We will and all.
And Franz won’t say who threw him in front of the car. His friends are calm. They think that one day he will.
Franz won’t go down, and they can’t make him go down
The Pums gang, now quids in, has disappeared from Berlin. A couple of them are down on the farm, somewhere in the Oranienburg area, Pums is taking the waters in Altheide on account of his asthma, getting his superb machine oiled. Reinhold is tippling a bit, one or two glasses a day, the man is enjoying himself, he’s acquiring a taste for it, you might as well get something out of life, and he feels stupid for getting by without it for so long, just on coffee and lemonade, what kind of life was that. Well, Reinhold has a couple of thousand tucked away, which not a lot of people know. He wants to spend them on something, but he doesn’t know what. Not the farm, like the others. He’s picked up a nice-looking bird who’s been around the block, and he rents this nice pad for her on Nürnberger Strasse, and he can crawl in there whenever he wants to play the big feller, or when there’s trouble brewing. So everything’s hunky-dory, he has his pad out west, and of course kept on his old place with a girl in it, a different one every few weeks, the lad can’t seem to kick the habit.
Well, when some of Pums’s boys get together end of May time, in Berlin, what do they yatter about but Franz Biberkopf. Because on account of him, so they hear, there’s been some talk in the fraternity. Herbert Wischow is turning people against us, he’s saying we’re scum, Biberkopf never wanted any part of the action, we forced him into it, and then to cap it all we tossed him out of a moving vehicle afterwards. But we countered like this: he was aiming to grass us up, there’s nothing about any violence on our part, no one manhandled him, but when push came to shove, there was no other way of going about things. They sit there, shaking their heads, no one wants to be on the outs with the rest of the fraternity. Then your hands are tied, and you’re out of a job. And so they say: we’d better show willing, pass the h
at around for Franz, because he was decent after all, we can pay for him to convalesce somewhere, and settle his hospital bill and all. Not skimp.
Reinhold is adamant: the guy needs putting out of his misery. The others aren’t really opposed, but no one steps forward, and in the end you might as well let the poor chump run around with just the one arm. They’re not sure how things would end up either, if they got on his case again, because it seems the bloke enjoys astounding luck. Well, they get some money together, a coupla hundred, only Reinhold sticks to his guns and refuses to chip in, and someone is deputed to go up and see Biberkopf, sometime when Herbert Wischow’s not around.
So here’s Franz quietly reading the Mottenpost and then the Grüne Post, which is his personal favourite, because they go easy on the politics there. He’s reading the edition of 27 November ’27, it’s a while ago, before Christmas, innit, there was Polish Lina, wonder what she’s up to now? In the newspaper the new brother-in-law of the old Emperor is getting hitched, the Princess is sixty-one, the groom is just twenty-s even, it’s costing her a bunch of money because he’s missing out on a title. Bulletproof waistcoats for detectives, we’ve long since stopped believing in those.
Then all of a sudden Eva’s arguing with somebody outside, hello, don’t I know the voice. She doesn’t want to let him come in, well I suppose I’d better see for myself what it’s all about. And, Grüne Post in hand, Franz opens the door. It’s one of Pums’s lads, fellow by the name of Schreiber.
What’s going on? Eva yells into the room: ‘Franz, the only reason he’s coming up is he knows Herbert’s not here.’ ‘What do you want with me, Schreiber?’ ‘I told Eva, and she won’t let me in. You a prisoner or something?’ ‘No, I’m not.’ Eva: ‘You’re just afraid he’ll grass you up. Franz, don’t let him in.’ Franz: ‘So what have you come for, Schreiber? You can come on in, Eva, let him in.’
They’re sitting in Franz’s room. The Grüne Post is on the table, the new brother-in-law of the ex-Kaiser is getting married, two men are standing behind him holding the crown over his head. Lion hunt, rabbit hunt, whatever. ‘What do you want to give me money for? I weren’t no help to you.’ ‘For Chrissakes, you were lookout.’ ‘Nah, Schreiber, I weren’t no lookout, I didn’t know what I was doing when you stood me there, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.’ Am I glad I’m out of it, I’m not going to stand around in that yard any more, I’d even pay not to have to stand there. ‘Nah, that’s rubbish, and there’s no need to be afraid of me, I’ve never yet grassed anyone up.’ Eva waves her fist at Schreiber: there are other people who are paying attention here. Christ, the risk you took in coming up. Herbert will have something to say to you.