Berlin Alexanderplatz
No, no, she cries, and wails, and he goes to the door, smiles, takes down his hat from the hatstand, and walks out.
And behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter
Franz has an artificial arm, he doesn’t wear it often, now he goes out on the street with it, the artificial hand in his coat pocket and in his left the cigar. He had trouble getting out of the flat. Eva yelled and threw herself in front of the door, he had to promise he wasn’t leaving and that he would be careful, he said: ‘I’ll be back at tea-time,’ and then he went downstairs.
Franz Biberkopf wasn’t caught, not as long as he didn’t want to be. He was flanked by two guardian angels that drew attention away from him.
By four o’clock he’s back for tea. Herbert’s there too. For the first time they hear a long speech from Franz. He read the paper while he was out, including about his friend Karl the plumber, who squealed on them. He’s not sure why he did that. And Karl the plumber was also of the party in Freienwalde, where they dragged Mitzi off to. Reinhold did that by force. He got hold of a car and maybe he drove Mitzi a ways, then Karl got in and they held her down and dragged her off to Freienwalde, maybe at night. Maybe she was dead before they even got there. ‘And why did Reinhold do it?’ ‘He threw me under the wheels, may as well tell you now, it was him, but never mind, I’m not upset with him, you learn as you go along, otherwise you’ll never understand anything. Then you just run around like an ox and don’t know the first thing about life, so no, I’m not upset with him. Then he wanted to do me down, thought he had me under his thumb which wasn’t the case, and so he took Mitzi of me, and done this to her. It’s not her fault.’ Therefore, oh wherefore, oh therefore. Thunder of drums, company, by the right, quick march. When the soldiers march through the town, oh wherefore, oh therefore, and all on account of the chingderada bumderada bum.
So I marched in on him, and so he replied, and it was accursed and wrong of me to march.
It was wrong of me to march, wrong, wrong.
But that doesn’t matter, that doesn’t matter any more.
Herbert is staring, Eva can’t produce a squeak. Herbert: ‘Why didn’t you tell Mitzi anything about that?’ ‘It’s not my fault, there’s nothing you can do about it, he could equally well have shot me when I was up in his room. I tell you, there’s no remedy.’
Seven heads and ten horns, in one hand a cup full of horrors. They’ll get all of me now, there’s nothing to be done about it.
‘If only you’d let on, man, Mitzi would be alive now and someone else would be wandering about with his head under his arm.’ ‘It’s not my fault. You never know what someone like that will do.’ ‘I would.’ Eva begs him: ‘Don’t go round to him, Herbert, I’m scared too.’ ‘We’ll be careful. First of all, find out where he’s hiding, and then half an hour later the cops will have him.’ Franz gestures: ‘Leave off, Herbert, he’s not yours. Shake on it, all right?’ Eva: ‘Go on, Herbert. And then what are you going to do, Franz?’ ‘Who cares? May as well put me out with the trash.’
And he walks over to the corner and turns his back on them.
And they hear a sobbing, sobbing, whimpering, he is crying for himself and Mitzi, they can hear it, Eva is crying and shouting across the table, the newspaper with ‘Murder’ on it is still lying there, Mitzi has been murdered, no one lifted a finger for her, that’s what’s happened here.
Then I praised the dead which are already dead
In the evening, Franz Biberkopf heads out again. Five sparrows fly across the Bayrischer Platz over his head. They are five murdered villains who have run into Franz Biberkopf many times before. They are considering what to do with him, what decision to come to in his regard, how to make him uncertain and apprehensive, what beam to have him stumble over.
One screams: there he goes. Look, he’s got his falsie on, he’s not given up yet, he wants to be incognito.
The second: all the crimes he’s committed. He’s a serious criminal, he should be put away, and for life. Killing one woman, thefts, break-ins, and now a second woman. What does he think he’s playing at?
The third: he’s puffing himself up. He’s playing the innocent. The law-abiding citizen. Look at the wretch. If a policeman comes along, we’ll knock his hat off.
The first one again: why should someone like that even be alive? I snuffed it in prison at the end of nine years. I was younger’n him and I was already gone, I couldn’t cheep. Take your hat off, you ape, take your silly glasses off, you’re not a journalist you bloody fool, you don’t even know the times table, and you go putting on horn-rims like a scholar, we’ve got your number.
The fourth one: hush, not so loud. What do you want with him. Look at him, he’s got a head, he’s a biped. Us little sparrows, the most we can do is shit on his hat.
The fifth: yell at him. He’s crazy, he’s got a screw loose. He’s out strolling with two angels, his sweetheart is a mock-up at the police station, we need to do something. Shout at him.
There they swoop, screech, yammer over his head. And Franz lifts his head, his thoughts are in pieces, the birds scold and argue away.
•
Autumn is here, in the Tauentzienpalast they’re showing The Last Days of Francisco, fifty dance-hall beauties are in the Jägerkasino, you may kiss me for a bouquet of lilac. There Franz concludes: I’m finished, it’s all up with me, I’ve had it.
The trams go barrelling down the streets, they’re all on their way somewhere, where shall I go. The 51 to Nordend, Schillerstrasse, Pankow, Breitestrasse, Bahnhof Schönhauser Allee, Stettiner Bahnhof, Potsdamer Bahnhof, Nollendorfplatz, Bayrischer Platz, Uhlandstrasse, Bahnhof Schmargendorf, Grunewald, hop on shall I. Hello, I’m sitting here, take me wherever you’re going. And Franz starts to look around at the city like a dog that’s lost a scent. What a city, what a stonking great city, and what lives he once led when he was living there. He gets out at the Stettiner Bahnhof, then he walks down Invalidenstrasse, there’s the Rosenthaler Tor. Fabisch Konfektion, that’s where I used to stand selling me ties last Christmas. He goes to Tegel on the 41. And the instant the red walls surface, the red walls on the left, the great heavy iron gate, that settles him. That’s part of my life too, and I need to take a good look at it, a good long look.
The walls are red, the avenue leading up to them long, the 41 takes you past the entrance, General-Pape-Strasse. West Reinickendorf, Tegel, the Borsig works. And Franz Biberkopf stands outside the red walls, and he crosses over to the other side, where there’s a bar. And the red buildings behind the walls start to flutter and bulge and puff out their cheeks. At all the windows there are convicts, nutting themselves against the bars, their hair is shaved to half a millimetre, they look wretched, underfed, their faces are grey and stubbly, they roll their eyes and lament. There are the murderers, the break-ins, petty thefts, forgeries, rapes, the whole statute book, and all complaining with grey faces, sitting there, grey, now they’ve squeezed the life out of Mitzi.
And Franz Biberkopf wanders round the enormous prison that continues to tremble and to bulge and to call out to him, over the fields, through the wood and back onto the street with the trees.
Now he’s on the tree-lined street again. I never killed Mitzi. I didn’t do it. I’ve got no business here, that’s history, there’s nothing for me in Tegel, whatever happened, it’s nothing to do with me.
It’s six at night when Franz says to himself, I want to see Mitzi, I need to go to the cemetery they buried her in.
The five jailbirds, the sparrows, are with him again, they are sitting up on a telegraph pole, shouting down to him: go to her, you crook, have you got the neck, aren’t you ashamed of going to see her? She called out to you when she was lying in the dell. Look her over in the cemetery.
•
May they all rest in peace. In Berlin in 1927, there were 48,742 deaths, not counting stillbirths.
Of TB 4,570, 6,443 of cancer, 5,656 of heart disease, 4,818 of vascular diseases, 5,140 o
f strokes, 2,419 of pneumonia, 961 of whooping cough, 562 children died of diphtheria, 123 of scarlet fever, 93 of measles, 3,640 died in infancy. There were 42,696 births.
The dead are lying in their graves, the attendant walks around with a pointed stick, picking up bits of rubbish.
It’s half past six, still light, and a young woman in a fur coat, no hat, is sitting on her grave under a beech tree, lowers her head and doesn’t speak. She is wearing black kid gloves, a piece of paper in her hand is a small envelope, Franz reads: ‘I can no longer be among you. Greet my parents for me, and my baby. Life has become a torment for me. Bieriger is to blame. I hope he’s enjoying himself. He used me as a toy and emptied the life out of me. A big cruel bastard. He’s the only reason I went to Berlin, and he alone made me unhappy. I have been ruined.’
Franz passes the envelope back to her: ‘O woe, o woe, is Mitzi here?’ Don’t be sad, don’t be sad. ‘O woe, o woe, where is my little Mitzi?’
There is another grave like a big soft ottoman, a learned professor is reclining on it, smiling down to him: ‘What afflicts you, my son?’ ‘I wanted to see Mitzi. I’m just visiting here.’ ‘Whereas I’m already dead, it doesn’t do to take life too seriously, or death either. Make everything easy on yourself. When I’d had enough and became ill, what did I do? Am I supposed to waste away? What for? I had them leave a bottle of morphia at my bedside, then I asked for music, piano, jazz, the latest hits. I asked to be read to from Plato, the great Symposium, those beautiful dialogues, and secretly the while I administered injection after injection to myself under the sheets, I counted them, three times the lethal dose. And all the while I listened to the tinkle and parp, and my friend reading to me about old Socrates. Yes, there are some clever people, and some not so clever.’
‘Never mind reading aloud and morphine. Just tell me where to find Mitzi?’
Terrible, a man hanging from a tree, his wife stands by him wailing just as Franz approaches: ‘Come and help me, cut him down, please. He doesn’t want to stay in his grave, he keeps climbing up in his tree, and hangs there crookedly.’ ‘O my God, why?’ ‘My Ernst was sick for such a long time, no one could help him, and they didn’t want to transfer him either, they kept calling him a malingerer. Then he went down into the cellar and got himself a hammer and nail. I can still hear him hammering away down there, I’m thinking what’s he doing, I’m glad he’s working at something and not just sitting around, maybe he’s building a new hutch for the rabbit. Then he didn’t come up in the evening, and I began to worry and think, what’s keeping him, are the cellar keys where they’re supposed to be, no, they weren’t. Then the neighbours went down and they sent for the police. He hammered a strong nail into the ceiling, even though he was no great weight himself, I suppose he wanted to make sure. What are you looking for, young man? Why are you whimpering? Do you want to kill yourself?’
‘No, but my sweetheart was murdered, I’m not sure if she’s here or not.’
‘Oh, you’d best look round at the back, where the new ones go.’
Then Franz is lying on the path beside an empty grave, incapable of howling, so he bites in the earth: Mitzi, what did we do, how could they do that to you, you never hurt a fly, Mitzi. What can I do, why don’t they throw me in a grave too, how long can I go on for?
And then he gets up, he can hardly walk, pulls himself together, totters out between the rows of gravestones.
Then Franz Biberkopf, the gent with the stiff arm, piles into a cab that takes him to Bayrischer Platz. Eva has an awful lot to do, an awful, awful lot. Eva has days’ and nights’ work cut out for her. He doesn’t live and he doesn’t die. Herbert doesn’t show up much.
There are a couple of days when Franz and Herbert take off after Reinhold. Herbert is packing, and he keeps his ear to the ground, he wants Reinhold. To begin with Franz doesn’t care much either way, then he gets into it, it’s his last medicine on this earth.
The fortress is completely surrounded, the last sallies are undertaken, but they are nothing but diversionary tactics
We are into November. Summer is long past. With the autumn has come the rain. The weeks of pleasurable heat in the streets are a distant memory, when people went around in light clothes and the women wore little more than their petticoats: a white dress and a cloche hat was what Franz’s girl, Mitzi, wore when she went out to Freienwalde that time, never to come back, that was summer. Before the court is the case of one Bergmann, who was an economic parasite and common danger and without scruple. The Graf Zeppelin arrives in Berlin in poor visibility, the sky was starry when it left Friedrichshafen at 2.17. In order to avoid the bad weather reported over central Germany, the airship takes its course via Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Frankfurt am Main, Giessen, Kassel and Rathenow. At 8.35 it is over Nauen, 8.45 over Staaken. Shortly before 9 a.m. the Zeppelin appears over the city, in spite of the rain the rooftops were occupied by curious onlookers who hailed the airship’s arrival with jubilation as it meandered on over the north and east of the city. At 9.45 the first mooring rope came down in Staaken.
Franz and Herbert are prowling through Berlin, they are out most of the time. Franz stays in Salvation Army shelters and men’s homes, wanders through the August refuge on Auguststrasse. He sits in the Dresdener Strasse, in the Salvation Army, where he went with Reinhold. They sing # 66 from the songbook: ‘Say, why wait, my brother? Arise and join our merry throng. Your Saviour has been calling you, to give you peace and quiet. Refrain: Why? Why? Why not join the merry throng? Why? Why do you not want peace and quiet? Don’t you feel it in your heart, brother, the living tug of the spirit? Don’t you want relief from your sins? O fly to Jesus, brother, do! Say, why wait longer, my brother. Quickly death and judgment approach. O come, while the gates are still open. And Jesus’s blood will speak for you!’
Franz goes to the homeless shelter on Fröbelstrasse, to the Palme, to look for Reinhold there. He lies down on the charpoy, today on one, next day on another, 10 pfennigs for a haircut, 5 for a shave, there they all are, sorting out their papers, trading shoes and shirts, Christ, is this your first time here or something, keep em on, not unless you want to go looking for them in the morning, see, this is what you do, you put the foot of your bed in each boot, they steal everything here, even false teeth. Do you want a tattoo? And peace, nights. Black peace, snoring like a lumberyard, I never clapped eyes on him. Quiet. Bim bim bim, what’s this, prison, I thought I was back in Tegel. Wake up. Fight going on. Back on the street, 6 a.m., the women standing there, waiting for their man, accompany him to the alehouse, gamble away what they’ve managed to get from begging.
Reinhold’s not here, stupid idea to go looking for him, he’ll be chasing skirts, Elfriede, Emilie, Karoline, Lili; brunettes, blondes.
And at night Eva sees Franz’s rigid face, he doesn’t react to caresses, doesn’t react to kind words, barely eats, barely speaks, knocks back coffee and spirits. He lies on her sofa, sobbing. ‘We won’t find him.’ ‘Let him go, then, Christ’s sakes.’ ‘We can’t find him. What can we do, Eva?’ ‘Leave him be, there’s no sense in it, you’re running yourself into the ground.’ ‘You don’t know what we’re doing. You – you haven’t experienced it, Eva, you don’t understand, Herbert does, a little bit. What we gonna do. I want to get him all right, I’ll go to church and pray on my knees if it means I get him.’
But all that’s not really true. Everything’s not really true; the whole chase for Reinhold isn’t real, it’s groaning and indescribable fear. Just now the dice are being thrown for him. He knows the score. Everything will acquire a meaning, a terrible, unexpected meaning. Your hide-and-seek won’t go on much longer, boy.
He stakes out Reinhold’s pad, his eyes are no good, he looks and sees nothing. Plenty of people walk past the building, a few of them go inside. He went in there himself, was taken in, oh just on account of the chingderada bumderada bum.
The building starts to laugh at him when it sees him standing there. It would like to move, to summon i
ts neighbours at the back and either side, just to look at him. There’s a man standing there with a wig and an artificial arm, a fellow burning, full of spirits, standing there babbling.
‘Morning, Biberkopfchen. 22 November today. Persistent rain. You’ll catch your death of cold. Why not pop into your local and get something warming, if you take my meaning.’
‘Give him here!’
‘Give it up!’
‘You give Reinhold up!’
‘Go to Wuhlgarten, your nerves are shot.’
‘Give him here!’
Then one evening Franz Biberkopf is working in the building, concealing petrol canister and bottle.
‘Come out, wherever you are, you poison git, you smutty dog. You haven’t got the balls to show yourself.’
The building: ‘Whoever you’re talking to, he’s not here. Come in and see for yourself.’
‘I can’t look all over.’
‘He’s not here, who would be crazy enough to be here.’
‘Hand him over! You’ve got it coming otherwise.’
‘All I hear is otherwise. Go home, fellow, get some sleep, you’re drunk, no wonder, you never eat anything.’
The next morning he’s there minutes after the newspaper woman.
The street lamps see him running, they sway: ‘Eia weia, there’ll be fire.’
Smoke, little jabbing flames out of the attic windows. By seven the fire brigade are on the spot, Franz is with Herbert, clenching his fists: ‘I don’t know nothing and you don’t know nothing, no need to tell me, but now he’s got nowhere to stay any more. That’s right. I torched his place.’
‘Christ, you didn’t think he was living there, did you.’ ‘It was his building, he’ll know when there’s a fire that it was me. We’ve smoked him out, mark my words, he’ll come now.’ ‘I’m not so sure, Franz.’