Berlin Alexanderplatz
And Reinhold starts to talk about Cilly, as if we had seen each other only yesterday, she came by not long ago, a couple of weeks, yes, that happens sometimes, a woman I haven’t seen in a few months, then I don’t mind taking her back, a reprise, funny thing. And he gets out cigarettes and a bunch of dirty postcards, and there’s Cilly on them, with Reinhold.
Franz is incapable of saying anything, he just keeps looking at Reinhold’s hands, Reinhold has two hands and two arms, while he’s down to one, with those two hands Reinhold threw him under the car, oh wherefore, oh therefore, shouldn’t I have to kill him for that, oh just on account of the tarara-boom di-ay. Herbert thinks so, but I don’t think so, what do I think. I must do something, I gotta, oh just on account of the tarara-boom di-ay – I’m not a man, just a sadsack. He slumps and then trembles up again, he gulps his cognac and then another, it doesn’t help, and then softly softly Reinhold says: ‘What I’d like, Franz, I’d like very much to see your injury.’ Oh just on account of the tarara-boom di-ay. Thereupon Franz Biberkopf-for it is he – opens his jacket, produces the stump from the shirtsleeve, Reinhold pulls a face: disgusting, Franz shuts the jacket: ‘Used to look worse.’ And then Reinhold goes back to looking at Franz, who says nothing and is capable of nothing and is as fat as a pig and can’t even open his mouth, and Reinhold breaks into his grin again, and doesn’t stop.
‘Hey, do you always keep your sleeve tucked into your pocket like that? Is it sewn in place, or do you have to keep putting it there?’ ‘No, I keep putting it there.’ ‘With your other hand? I guess before you put the jacket on?’ ‘Well, sometimes one and sometimes the other; but once I’m already in the jacket, ’s not so easy.’ Reinhold stands next to Franz, tweaks at his sleeve. ‘You have to remember not to put anything in your right pocket. It’d be too easy to steal.’ ‘Not with me.’ Reinhold is still exercised: ‘Say, what do you do with an overcoat, that must be tricky. Two empty sleeves.’ ‘It’s summer. That’s a problem for winter.’ ‘You’ll be in for a surprise then, I tell you. Shouldn’t you maybe get an artificial arm, I mean when someone loses a leg, they get an artificial one.’ ‘Yes, because he couldn’t walk otherwise.’ ‘You could strap on an artificial arm, it would look better.’ ‘No, no, I think it would just press.’ ‘I would, you know, or at least pad the sleeve with something. Come on, let’s give it a go.’ ‘What’s the point, I don’t want to.’ ‘So you wouldn’t be running around with an empty sleeve, it would look better, no one would have to know.’ ‘What would be the point. I don’t feel like it.’ ‘Come on, I can see wood is wrong. Look, just stuff in a few socks or shirts, here.’
And Reinhold gets going, he untucks the empty sleeve, reaches in, goes across to his dresser and starts padding it with socks and handkerchiefs. Franz resists. ‘What are you doing, there’s nothing to secure it, it’d just hang there like a sausage, leave off.’ ‘No. I think you should get something professionally made, like by a tailor, nice and tight, it’d look really good, your hand in your pocket, you wouldn’t even look like you’re a cripple.’ The socks fall out: ‘See, it’s a job for a tailor. I don’t like cripples, in my eyes a cripple is a worthless person. When I see a cripple, I say: get rid of him.’
And Franz listens and listens, and nods. The tremor comes over him, without him being able to do anything about it. He’s somewhere on the Alex at the break-in, all of him is gone, it must be to do with the accident, it’s his nerves, let’s see. But it goes on tugging and shaking him. All right, up, out, adieu Reinhold, I gotta go, put my feet down, right, left, right, left, tarara-boom di-ay.
•
Then fat old Franz Biberkopf gets home, having been to see Rein-hold, and his hand and his arm are still shaking, the cigarette falls out of his mouth when he walks in. And there is Mitzi up in his room with her gentleman, waiting for Franz, because she wants to go away with her gentleman for a couple of days.
He pulls her aside: ‘What good are you to me?’ ‘What shall I do, Franz? God, Franz, what’s the matter?’ ‘Nothing, get lost.’ ‘I’ll be back tonight.’ ‘Get lost,’ he almost roars. She looks over at her gentleman, quickly gives Franz a kiss on the neck and she’s off. And downstairs she gives Eva a ring: ‘If you’ve got a moment, go and see Franz. What the matter is? Search me. Come if you can.’ But then Eva can’t make it, Herbert’s been cross with her all day, she can’t get away.
In the meantime, our Franz Biberkopf, the cobra snake, the iron wrestler, is sitting alone, all alone, sitting in front of his window, gripping the windowsill with his hand and wondering if it wasn’t stupid, if it wasn’t fucking moronic of him to go up to Rein-hold’s room, and the devil take it, it’s stupid when the soldiers go marching through the town, stupid, obstinacy, and I need to get out, I need to do something different. And meanwhile he’s already thinking, I will do it, I’ve got to go there, things can’t go on like this, he humiliated me, he stuffed my jacket with handkerchiefs and socks, I can’t tell anyone about it, that anything like that happened to me.
And Franz presses his head hard against the sill, and digs himself in and feels shame, feels bitterly ashamed of himself: that’s what I did, that’s what I stood for, I am such an idiot to tremble in front of that feller. And his shame is so great and so strong. Franz grits his teeth, he feels like tearing himself in pieces, I didn’t want that, I’m no coward, even if I just have one arm.
I need to go see him. And he gets into it. By the time Franz has reached this point it’s already evening, and he gets up off his chair. He looks around the room, there’s the schnapps, Mitzi put it there, I’m not going to drink it. I don’t want to be ashamed of myself. Let people look into Franz’s eyes. I – I’m going to go see him. Rum di bum. Tucket, fuck it. Forward, downstairs, jacket on, that he wanted to stuff for me, I’m going to plonk myself down in front of him, no one’s face trembles when they see me.
•
Berlin! Berlin! Berlin! Tragedy on the seabed, submarine sunk. Crew drownded. And when they’re drownded, they’re dead, no cock will crow over them, then it’s over, then it’s finished. Nuff said. March, march, two military planes downed. Then they’re down, then they’re dead, no cock to crow over them, what’s dead is dead.
‘Evening, Reinhold. Yup, it’s me again.’ He stares at Franz: ‘Who let you in?’ ‘Me? No one. The door was open, so I walked in.’ ‘I see, ringing the bell is too much trouble, is it.’ ‘I don’t have to ring the bell when I want to see you, I’m not plastered.’
And then the two of them sit facing one another, smoking, and Franz Biberkopf isn’t trembling, and he sits upright and is happy to be alive, and this is his best day since he fell under the car, and the best thing he has done since that time: to be sitting here, damn, it feels good. And it’s better than the political meetings and almost better – better than Mitzi. Yes, it’s the best of everything: he’ll not throw me out.
It’s eight in the evening. Reinhold looks Franz in the face: ‘Franz, you know what you and I have to sort out between us. Tell me if you want anything from me, just put it out in the open.’ ‘What do I have to sort out with you?’ ‘With the car.’ ‘There’s no point, it’ll not make my arm grow back. And t hen—’ Franz hits the table with his fist: ‘It was good. I couldn’t go on like that. It had to happen.’ Oh ho, so that’s as far as we’ve got, we’ve been there for a while. Reinhold considers: ‘You mean with the street vending.’ ‘Yes, that too. I had a bee in my bonnet. Now it’s gone.’ ‘And your arm is too.’ ‘Well, I’ve still got the other one, and then I’ve got a head and two legs and all.’ ‘What will you do? Turn tricks by yourself, or with Herbert?’ ‘What, with one arm? I can’t do anything.’ ‘But you know, just pimping, that’s a bit boring.’
And Reinhold thinks and looks at him, sitting there so fat and strong: I fancy playing this lad. He’ll sit up and beg. He likes getting his bones broken. One arm’s not enough for him.
And they get on to the subject of women, and Franz is telling Reinhold about Mitzi, who
used to be called Sonia, who’s earning well, and is a good girl. Then Reinhold thinks to hisself: that’s well and good, I’ll take her off him, and that’ll throw him in the dirt for good.
Because when worms eat soil and make more, they always eat the same stuf. The creatures can’t stop once they’ve had a healthy breakfast, they need to stuff themselves the next day as well. And it’s the same way with people, and with fire: it’s hungry if it’s burning, and when it can’t eat, it goes out, that’s the way of it.
Franz Biberkopf is pleased with himself for being able to sit there, perfectly quiet and not tremble, and cheerful as a newborn. And when he goes downstairs with Reinhold, he feels the same thing: when the soldiers march through the town, right, left, it’s good to be alive, these are all my friends walking beside me, no one will throw me over, just let them try. Oh wherefore, oh therefore, the girls are looking at windows and at doors.
‘I’m going dancing,’ he says to Reinhold. Who asks: ‘Will your Mitzi be there?’ ‘She’s gone away with a patron for a coupla days.’ ‘When she’s back, I’ll go with you.’ ‘That’s nice, she’ll be happy then.’ ‘Well, so how about it?’ ‘I tell you, she won’t bite.’
Franz is in an exhilarated mood, he has danced away the night, the newborn, the happy, first in the old ballroom, then in the pub at Herbert’s, and everyone’s happy for him, but not as much as he is for himself. And furthest inside himself, while he’s dancing with Eva, he loves these two people: the one is his Mitzi, whom he misses, and the other is – Reinhold. But he doesn’t dare say so out loud. All through the whole wonderful night where he’s dancing with this and that broad, he’s in love with those two who’re not there, and he’s happy with them.
The fist on the table
Here everyone who has read thus far can see the turn that has been taken; the turn back, and we’re where we started, with Franz. Franz Biberkopf, the strong, the cobra snake, has reappeared on the scene. It wasn’t easy, but he’s back.
He seemed to be there already when he became Mitzi’s pimp and wandered around with a gold cigarette case and a natty yachting cap. But now he’s all back, whooping it up and not afraid of anything. Now the roofs have stopped wobbling for him, and his arm, well, that was the price of admission. The screw that was loose in his head has been tightened up. He is a pimp now, and will shortly turn to crime again, but all that doesn’t bother him, quite the opposite.
And everything is the way it was at the beginning. But the reader will understand that this is not the old cobra. Our old Franz Biberkopf, clearly, is not that. The first time it was his friend Lüders who cheated him, and he threw a wobbly. The second time he was supposed to stand watch, but he didn’t want to, and then Reinhold threw him out of the car and ran him over. Franz has had enough now, it would be enough for any normal fellow too. He doesn’t enter a monastery, he doesn’t tear himself in pieces, he goes on the warpath, he won’t be just a pimp and a criminal, and high time too. Now you will see Franz, not skidooing and filling his belly by himself, but in a dance, a rattling dance with something else, which wants to see how strong it is, and who is the stronger, it, this other thing, or Franz.
Franz Biberkopf made a vow when he came out of Tegel and could walk freely again: I will be decent. That vow he was unable to keep. Now he wants to know what he has it in him to be. He wants to ask whether and why his arm had to be run over. Or perhaps, who knows what someone’s head looks like from the inside, perhaps Franz wants to reclaim his arm from Reinhold.
Chapter Seven
In which the hammer, the hammer comes down on Franz Biberkopf.
Pussi Uhl, the flood of American visitors, and do you write Wilma with a V or a W?
On Alexanderplatz they’re going on and on. On the corner of Königstrasse and Neue Friedrichstrasse they want to knock down the building over the Salamander shoe shop, they’ve already started on the building next door. The route under the S-Bahn arches on the Alex is severely complicated: new supports for the railway bridge are being put in; you can look down into a neatly bricked-in shaft, where the pillars will set their feet.
Anyone who wants the S-Bahn station has to go up and down a little flight of wooden steps. The weather has got cooler too, it’s raining a lot, to the detriment of cars and motorcycles, which often slip and crash, there are suits for damages and so forth, people fall and break various bones, all attributable to the weather. Do you know the tragedy of the aviator Beese-Arnim? Today he was questioned by the police, he is the principal in the shooting incident that took place in the fat of the clapped-out old whore Pussi Uhl, may she rest in peace. Edgar Beese was shooting wildly in Uhl’s place, he was feeling, so the detectives say, rather peculiar. Once during the war he was shot down a mile up in the air, hence the tragedy of the aviator Beese-Arnim, shot down a mile high, cheated of his inheritance, in prison under an assumed name; the last act was still ahead of him. Once he was shot down, he went home, where an insurance director relieves him of his money. Only he was a crook, and so the airman’s money went very straightforwardly to the crook, and the airman has no money left. From that moment forth, Beese takes to calling himself Auclaire. He is ashamed in front of his family, because he is so hard up. This was all ascertained and written up by the police at the station this morning. It also says that is when he was set on the path of crime. Once, he was put away for thirty months, and because he was calling himself Krachtovil at the time, he was repatriated to Poland at the end of them. Later on, in Berlin, there was a particularly murky entanglement with this Pussi Uhl. Amid a ceremonial we don’t care to describe in detail, Pussi Uhl baptized him as ‘von Arnim’, and his subsequent crimes were committed under that moniker. On Tuesday, 14 August 1928 von Arnim planted a bullet in the body of Pussi Uhl, how and why the rabble won’t say, they don’t speak out of turn, not even at the foot of the scaffold. Why would they tell the police, who are their enemies? All that is known is that the boxer Hein was also involved in some capacity, and amateur psychologists wrongly presume jealousy. I myself would bet there was no jealousy involved. Or if jealousy, then jealousy beefed up by money, but with money the main element. Beese, the police tell us, suffered a complete psychological collapse; you can believe that if you like. I think the lad will have collapsed – if collapse he did – because the police were onto him, and he’s annoyed with himself for shooting the Uhl woman. Because what’s he going to live off now; he’s thinking: pray god the bitch doesn’t die on me. And herewith enough of the tragedy of the aviator Beese-Arnim, shot down a mile high, cheated of his inheritance, and now in prison under an assumed name.
The flood of Americans visiting Berlin continues. Among the many thousands visiting the German metropolis are prominent individuals who have come to Berlin for professional or personal reasons. Thus the Secretary of the American delegation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Dr Call from Washington, is currently in town (Hotel Esplanade) in advance of a group of American senators. Also in the course of the next few days we are expecting the head of the New York fire brigade, John Keylon; like the ex-Secretary of Labor Davis before him, he is staying in the Hotel Adlon.
From London, the President of the World Union of Religious Liberal Jews, whose conference is scheduled to take place in Berlin from 18 to 21 August, Claude Montefiore, has arrived; he is staying at the Esplanade, along with his assistant, Lady Lilly Montague, who is travelling with him.
•
The weather being so dismal, it seems a good idea to get out of the rain, perhaps into the Zentralmarkthalle, but there’s a huge commotion, we are almost run over by trolleys, and the porters don’t even give a warning shout. So let’s instead pop into the Industrial Court on Zimmerstrasse and breakfast there. Whoever has occupied himself with small lives – and let’s face it, Franz Biberkopf is no household name – likes to take the occasional trip west, and check things out there.
Room 60, Industrial Claims Court, cafeteria; a fairly small space with a bar and coffee machine; there’s a board
with ‘lunch menu: rice soup, rissoles (all the r’s) 1 mark’. A fat young man in horn-rims is sitting on a chair, eating his lunch. You look at him and see: in front of him is a steaming plate with rissoles, gravy and potatoes, and he is polishing it off in short order. His eyes rove around his plate, even though no one’s threatening to take anything away from him, no one is sitting anywhere near him, he is all alone at his table, but he is still worried, he slices and squashes and shovels, quick, one two, one, one, and while he works, one in, one out, one in, one out, while he slices and squashes and bolts and snuffles and gulps and swallows, his eyes are wide open, his eyes are watching the diminishing quantity of food on his plate, guarding him like two Alsatians, alert to his surroundings. Another one in, one out. Full stop. Finished, now he gets to his feet, flobby and fat, the fellow has eaten it all up, now he can pay for it. He reaches into his inside pocket and smacks his lips: ‘What’s the damage, Fräulein?’ Then the fat fellow walks out, puffs, adjusts his waistband to make room for his belly. He must have three pounds of lunch in there. Now his stomach gets to work. The guts wobble and lurch, there are twistings and windings like earthworms, the glands do what is in their power, they hose their juice into the stuff, like firemen, from up top spittle drenches down, the man swallows, it fows into the guts, there’s a rush to the kidneys like the assault of shoppers in the New Year’s sales, and easy does it, drip by drip, the drops fall into the bladder. Wait, laddie, soon you’ll be headed back this same way, to the door labelled: gentlemen. That’s the way of the world.