They walk their old beat down to the Alex, take a turn through Gipsstrasse, where Franz takes him to the Old Ballroom: ‘It’s all renovated, and you can watch me dance and see me at the bar.’ Mack doesn’t know what’s going on: ‘Hey, wassa matter with you?’ ‘You’re right, I’m starting over. And why not. Got any objections. Come on in, watch me dance with one arm.’ ‘No no, I’d sooner go to Münzhof.’ ‘Not a bad idea, they won’t let us in dressed as we are, but try on a Thursday or Saturday. You probably take me for a eunuch, just because I’ve had one arm shot off.’ ‘Who shot yer?’ ‘I was involved in a shoot-out with the cops. It wasn’t about nothing really, it was back of Bülowplatz, there were a couple of thieves, nice fellers, but they din’t have a clue. So like I say, I’m walking along minding my business, and seeing what’s going on, and right on the corner there are these two suspicious-looking characters with shaving brushes on their hats. So of course I go in the house, whisper something in the ear of the lad who’s the lookout, but they’re not about to quit, not on account of two policemen. They were just lads, looking to nick some gear. So then the two policemen roll up, and they go sniffing about. Must have smelt a rat, furs, women’s stuff, handy when you’re running low. So we mount an ambush, and when the police try and get in, do you follow, they can’t manage to open the door. Of course the others are meanwhile making good their escape out the back. And then, while the police are buggering about with the lock, I let em have it through the keyhole. What do you say, Mack?’ ‘Where was all this?’ He’s incredulous. ‘Round the corner, Kaiserallee.’ ‘You’re having a laugh.’ ‘No, I shot blindly. But they shot back, through the door. They never catched me though. By the time they got the door open, we were long gone. Just my arm. As you see.’ Mack whinnies. ‘See what?’ Franz magnificently shakes him by the hand. ‘Well, be seeing you, Mack. And if you need anything, I’m living – ah, tell you later. Health and prosperity.’
And exit down Weinmeisterstrasse. Mack in his wake a broken man. Either the fellow’s having me on – or I’ll have to ask Pums. The version they told was different.
•
And Franz loops back up to the Alex.
The shield of Achilles, how armed and accoutred he went into battle, I can’t exactly bring to mind, but I have a dim sense of forearm guards and greaves.
But how Franz looked, as he moved into his next engagement, that’s something I am able to tell you. So, Franz Biberkopf is wearing his old and dusty, lightly horse-soiled gear, a seaman’s peaked cap with a curved anchor on it, over-jacket and trousers of worn brown serge.
He goes in the Münzhof, and after ten minutes and a beer he walks out with someone stood up by someone else, still reasonably fresh, and because it’s fuggy indoors and very nice out, though there’s some drizzle in the air, he takes her for a gander along Weinmeisterstrasse and Rosenthaler Strasse.
And Franz, his heart turns over at the sight of so much swindling and deception. Crikey, it’s everywhere! A new man and a new pair of eyes. As if he had just been given the gift of sight! He and the girl are laughing themselves silly about all the things they see. It’s six o’clock, or a little after, and it’s chucking it down, thank God the little chit has an umbrella.
The bar, they peer in at the window.
‘Here’s the landlord selling his beer. Watch the way he pours it. There, see that, Emmi: it’s half foam!’ ‘So what?’ ‘Half foam? A swindle is what that is! A cheat! And he’s right. A dab hand. I’m pleased for him.’
‘Ooh you! Then he’s a rascal!’ ‘No, a dab hand.’
Toyshop:
‘Jesus, Emmi, the very sight of that stuff makes me unhappy. It’s such trash, and those painted eggs, when we were little we used to make them with Mum. I don’t want to know what they want for them.’ ‘Well.’ ‘They’re pigs. Want their window smashing. Loot. Exploiting the poor is cruel.’
Ladies’ coats. He’s for fast-forwarding, but she applies the brakes. ‘If you’re interested, I can tell you a thing or two about them. Sewing ladies’ coats. You. For fine ladies. What do you think you get paid for work like that?’ ‘Oh, come on, why would I care? If you let them get away with it.’ ‘Now, hang on a minute. What do you propose to do if you were in my shoes?’
‘Well, I’d be a fool to accept a few pennies. Not if what I want’s the silk coat, innit?’ ‘I hear you.’ ‘And so I’ll see that I gets a silk coat. Otherwise I’m a fool, and they’ve every right to go on paying me their rubbish wages.’ ‘Sez you.’ ‘Just because my trousers are dirty. You know, Emmi, that was a horse what done that, that fell in the shaft of the U-Bahn. No, I’ve got no use for a few coppers, I reckon I need a thousand marks.’ ‘And you’re going to get them?’
She eyed him. ‘Haven’t got them, I say, but – but I’m going to get them, and not a few coppers.’ She hangs on his arm, startled and happy.
American steam-laundry, open window, two steaming irons, in the background several ‘Americans’ of doubtful authenticity sitting around, smoking, in the front, in shirtsleeves, the young black-haired tailor. Franz eyes the scene cursorily. He yelps: ‘Emmi, little Emmi, I’m so glad I ran into yer today.’ She doesn’t understand yet, but she feels mighty flattered; oh, the other fellow, the one who stood her up, he’ll be sorry. ‘Emmi, Emmi, sweetheart, look in that shop.’ ‘Come on, he won’t be earning much for just ironing.’ ‘Who won’t?’ ‘The little tailor.’ ‘No, you’re right, he won’t, but the others will.’ ‘You mean them? How could you know. Who are they?’ Franz whoops. ‘I’ve not seen them before neither, but I know them all right. Take a look at them. And the owner; there he is ironing, and at the back – he’s doing something different.’ ‘A dive?’ ‘Maybe and all, no, them’s all crooks. Who do the suits belong to that are hanging up? I tell you, if I was a copper with a badge and walked in and popped the question, I’d see him take to his heels all right.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Course. It’s all stolen goods parked in there. Good-looking boys, mind. See them smoking. Living life to the full.’
They walk on. ‘You should do as they do, Emmi, you know. It’s the only way. Not work. Forget about working. Working gives you calluses, but not money. At most a hole in your head. Working never made anyone rich, I tell you. Only cheating. As you see.’
‘So what do you do?’ She is full of hope. ‘Keep going, Emmi, I’ll tell yer.’ They are back in the throng of Rosenthaler Strasse, follow Sophienstrasse into Münzstrasse. Franz walks. The trumpets at his side are playing a march. The battle has been fought, the field is ours, ratatata, ratatata, ratatata, we have won the town, and taken all the gold, bold, hold, sold, rolled, ratatata, tatata, tata!
They both laugh. The girl he’s picked up is class. She may just be a common-or-garden Emmi, but she’s already been through welfare and divorce. They’re both feeling on top of the world. Emmi asks him: ‘What happened to your other arm then?’ ‘It’s at home with my sweetheart, she didn’t want to let me go, so I left it with her as a deposit.’ ‘Well, I hope it’s as good company as you are.’ ‘You bet it is. Haven’t you heard, I opened a business with my arm, it stands behind a counter all day and intones: only them as works gets to eat. Don’t work, and you can starve. My arm goes banging about like that all day, entrance is sixpence, and the proles come in and have a whale of a time.’ She splits her sides, and he laughs as well: ‘Jesus, you’ll tear the other one off!’
A new person gets a new head as well
A strange little vehicle comes trundling through the city. On a wheeled structure is a cripple, cranking himself forward with his arms. The little cart is flying a whole lot of brightly coloured flags, and it goes down Schönhauser Allee, stopping every so often, people cluster round, and an assistant sells postcards for 10 pfennigs apiece.
‘World traveller! Johann Kirbach, born 20 February 1874 at Monchengladbach, a happy and busy character till the outbreak of the Great War, my ambition and industry were checked by a stroke that lamed the right side of my body. I recovered sufficie
ntly so that I could walk unaided for hours at a time, to pursue my profession. My family was shielded from the gravest consequences. In November 1924 the whole population of the Rhineland cheered when the railway was freed of the oppressive Belgian occupation. Many German comrades got drunk, which was to have calamitous consequences for me. On that day I was on my way home, when I was knocked over not more than a quarter of a mile from my front door by a group of men discharged from a licensed premises. So unhappy was my fall that I was crippled for life and will never walk again. I draw no pension or other form of support. Johann Kirbach.’
In the bar where Franz Biberkopf is scouting around these fine days, looking for an opening, some new, solid and hopeful business, a young lad saw the cart with the cripple at the Danziger Strasse station. And then he starts a commotion about what happened to his father, who was shot in the chest and now can’t breathe, but all of a sudden that’s supposed to be just a nervous ailment, and they cut his war pension and before long he won’t get any at all.
His gripes are listened to by another young fellow in an oversized jockey cap, sitting on the same bench as Franz, but with no beer in front of him. The guy has a jaw on him like a boxer. He goes: ‘Bah, cripples, they shouldn’t get a penny!’ ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Stick em in your war, and then not pay them.’ ‘That’s the way it should be, Christ, man. If you do something idiotic, then you won’t expect to be paid for it. If a small boy falls off a roller and breaks his leg, he won’t expect a penny neither. Why should he, just for being stupid.’ ‘When there was a war on, before your time by the look of you, you were still in nappies.’ ‘Rot, rot, the trouble with Germany is that they pay support. Thousands of people sitting around, no one doing anything, just collecting.’
Others around the table weigh in: ‘Think for a moment, Willi! What work do you do?’ ‘None. And if they goes on paying me, I’ll not do anything then either. They’ve got no sense just paying me.’ The others laugh: ‘He likes to talk.’
Franz Biberkopf is of the company. The boy in the jockey cap keeps his hands cheekily tucked in his pockets, looks at him sitting there with his one arm. A girl embraces Franz: ‘What about you, you’ve just got the one arm and all. What kind of benefit are you on?’ ‘Who wants to know?’ The girl gestures at the boy in the cap: ‘Him. He’s interested.’ ‘No, I’m not interested. I just says: anyone stupid enough to go to war – forget it.’ The girl to Franz: ‘I think he’s scared.’ ‘Not of me he isn’t. He’s no call to be scared of me. That’s all I’m saying. Do you know where my arm is, this one here, the one that’s missing? I put it in a bottle of spirits, and now it sits around on the sideboard at home, and lectures me all day long: “Morning, Franz. You blimming idiot!” ’
Ha ha! What a card. An old gent has unpacked some sandwiches from a newspaper, cuts them up with his pocket knife, crams the pieces in his mouth: ‘I weren’t in the war, I were locked up the whole time in Siberier. Well, and now I’m back with my old lady, and I’ve got roomatism. What if they come round to take my benefit, Jesus, imagine.’ The youth: ‘Where’d you get your roomatism from, then? From dealing out on the street, right? If your bones are sick, then don’t go work on the street.’ ‘Then maybe I’ll become a pimp.’ The boy brings his hand down on the table, crumples up the newspaper: ‘That’s right. Yes. It’s not a joke neither. You should see my brother’s wife, they’re respectable people, a match for anyone, do you suppose they were too proud to collect stamp money, dole, whatever. So he ran around looking for work, and she didn’t know how to get by on the pittance he earns, and two little bairns at home. The woman can’t go to work then, can she. So she met a man, and then she maybe met another one. Till my brother notices something’s up. Then he gets hold of me and he says I’m to come and listen while he sorts her out. Well, he came to the right man. You should have heard it. She tore him off a strip for his few dirty bills, and left him shaking. Just let him try that again.’ ‘So, no more action?’ ‘Oh, he’d like to all right, but she doesn’t want to go near such a flaming idiot, a fellow who goes on the state and lectures her for earning money.’
That converts most of the listeners. Franz Biberkopf, sitting next to the youth they call Willi, raises a glass to him: ‘You know, you’re probly ten or twelve years younger than what I am, but you’re about a hundred years smarter. Jesus, if I talked like you when I was twenty. Respect, or what the Prussians used to say say: at-ten-shun.’ ‘We still say that. When we’re not paying any.’ Laughter.
The pub is full, the waiter opens a door, a little back room is free. The whole table decamps there, under the gaslight. It’s very hot, the room is full of flies, a straw sack is on the floor, it’s tipped up onto the windowsill to air. The talk goes on. Willi sits there in the midst of it, giving as good as he gets.
Then the young boy who went missing earlier sees the watch on Willi’s wrist, and keeps remarking on the fact that it’s gold: ‘You must have bought that cheap.’ ‘Three marks.’ ‘Stolen goods.’ ‘Nothing to do with me. Do you want one?’ ‘No thanks. And have them pull me in and ask where d’you get that from?’ Willi laughs in their faces: ‘He’s afraid of robbers.’ ‘Now that’s enough.’ Willi lays his arm across the table: ‘He’s got something against my watch. As far as I’m concerned it’s a watch that keeps time and is made of gold.’ ‘Yes, for three marks.’ ‘Then I’ll show you something else. Give me your beer mug. Now tell me, what is it?’ ‘It’s a beer mug.’ ‘That’s right. A mug to drink out of.’ ‘Right.’ ‘And this here?’ ‘That’s your watch. Christ, you seem to like playing silly buggers.’ ‘That’s a watch. It’s not a boot and it’s not a canary, but if you want you can call it a boot, well, suit yourself.’ ‘I don’t follow. What are you getting at?’ But Willi seems to know what he’s about, he takes back his arm, and touches a girl, and says: ‘Take a walk.’ ‘Waa? Why should I?’ ‘Oh, just go walk over to the wall.’ She doesn’t want to. The others call out to her, ‘Oh, go on, do it.’
Then she gets up, gives Willi a look and walks over to the wall. ‘Fascist!’ ‘Walk!’ yells Willi. She sticks out her tongue at him and marches, swinging her hips. They laugh. ‘Now come back! So: what did she do just now?’ ‘Stuck her tongue out at you!’ ‘What else?’ ‘Walked.’ ‘Right. She walked.’ The girl puts her oar in: ‘Nah, I didn’t. That was dancing.’ The old man over his sandwiches: ‘That weren’t no dancing. Since when is waggling your bum dancing.’ The girl: ‘Well, it wouldn’t be if you did it.’ A couple of calls: ‘That were walking.’ Willi laughs triumphantly to hear it: ‘Well, then, and I say she marched.’ The boy, irritably: ‘What’s all this in aid of, I’d like to know.’
‘Nothing. But you see walked, danced, marched, whatever you like. You still don’t get it, do you. I’ll give it you in bite-size pieces. This was a mug before, but you can call it spittle, and then maybe everyone else will take to calling it spittle too, though people will still use them to drink out of. And when she marched, she was marching. Or walking or dancing. But what it was you could see for yourself, with your own eyes. It was what you saw. And if someone takes your watch off you, then that’s not the same as stealing it, by a long chalk. See, now you get it. Maybe it came out of a pocket or a display, but stolen? Who’s to say?’ Willi leans back, thrusts his hands in his pocket: ‘Not me, for sure.’ ‘And what do you say?’ ‘You heard me. I say taken away. I say change of ownership.’ Freeze. Willi shoots his boxer’s jaw and stops. The others are lost in thought. Something a little eerie has come over the group.
Suddenly Willi turns to Franz, the one-armed, with his harsh voice: ‘You had to join the Prussians, you were in the war. For me that’s the same as being deprived of liberty. But they had the courts and the police on their side, and because they had them, they could gag you, and now it’s not called loss of liberty, as you, fool, think, but patriotic duty. And you sign up for it, just like you pay your taxes, and you don’t know what happens to that money neither.’
The
girl whines: ‘Enough politics. I don’t like it in the evenings.’ The boy, muttering, withdraws: ‘Load of rubbish. When it’s so nice out.’ Willi chases him off: ‘Then away with you. You think politics is what’s said indoors, and it’s people like me. I’m just demonstrating it to you. Politics will shit on your head wherever you go. If you let it.’ A shout of: ‘I’ve had it, shut up now.’
Two new customers come in. The girl swings her hips cutely, slithers along the wall, waggles her bottom, scoots sweetly over to Willi. He leaps up, they dance a pert little number, then fall into a clinch, ten-minute snog, ‘festgemauert in der Erden steht die Form aus Mehl gebrannt’.[7] No one looks. The one-armed Franz starts on his third drink, strokes his stump. The stump burns, burns, burns. Helluva boy, that Willi, helluva boy, helluva boy. The lads lug the table out, drop the straw sack out of the window, someone has showed up with an accordion, he’s sitting on a stool by the door, noodling away. Andy can, oh Andy can, he’s a handy man.
They chatter away, have taken of their jackets, are drinking, yacking, sweating. If no one can, then my handy Andy can. Franz Biberkopf gets up, pays and says to himself: I’m too old to dance, and I don’t rightly feel like it either, I need to come into money, and I don’t much care where I get it from.
Cap on and out.
•
A couple of fellows are sitting on Rosenthaler Strasse in the middle of the day, tucking into pea soup, one has the Berliner Zeitung open next to him, is pissing himself laughing: ‘Horrifying family tragedy in Westphalia.’ ‘What’s so funny?’ ‘Listen. Father drowns his three children. Three in one go. Desperate man.’ ‘Where was it?’ ‘Place called Hamm. That’s making a clean breast of things. He must have had it up to here. But you can rely on a man like that. Wait, let’s see what become of his missus. I spect he— No, it seems she took her own life first. Separately. What do you say to that then? Jolly family, Max, they know how to live. The wife’s note: Cheat! The heading, with exclamation marks, that’s a cry for help. “I’ve had enough of this life, I’m going in the canal. Why don’t you take a rope and hang yourself. Julie.” Full stop.’ He doubles over with laughter: ‘There’s real strife for you: she goes in the canal, and he’s to reach for the rope. The wife says: hang yourself, and he throws the kids in the water. The man doesn’t do as he’s told. No wonder the marriage was a failure.’