And he moves his hand. But the coffin doesn’t budge. He hasn’t reached it. Then Franz weeps with frustration. And stares and stares in frustration. And in his tears and in his frustration the coin disappears. But Franz is still weeping.
But what is Franz Biberkopf weeping about, gentle readers? He is weeping because he is suffering and because of what he is suffering, and also for himself. That he did these things and behaved like this, that’s what Franz Biberkopf is weeping about. Franz Biberkopf is weeping about himself.
•
It’s broad noon, in the institution lunch is being brought out, the food cart is just going back to the main building, the kitchen warder and a couple of the better-off patients are pushing it out of the building.
Here is Mitzi with Franz. She has a calm, sweet expression on her face. She is wearing a street dress, and has a tight cloche hat on that covers her brow and goes over her ears. She looks candidly at Franz, calmly, intimately, the way he remembers her, when he sometimes ran into her on the street or in the bar. When he asks her to come nearer, she does so. He wants her to give him her hands. She gives him her hands, her two in his one. She has kid gloves on. Take yer gloves of, won’t you. She takes them of, gives him her hands. Come on over here, Mitzi, don’t be a stranger, gimme a kiss. Calmly she steps closer, looks at him candidly and intimately, and kisses him. Stop a minute, he says to her, I need you, you gotta help me. ‘I can’t, Frankie. I’m dead, you know I’m dead.’ Stop here. ‘I’d love to, but I can’t.’ And she kisses him again. ‘You remember, Franz, from Freienwalde. You’re not cross with me, are you?’
She’s gone. Franz writhes. He tears open his eyes. He can’t see her. What have I done? Why’ve I not got her any more. If I hadn’t have showed her off to Reinhold, then I wouldn’t have got involved with him again. What have I done. And now.
His contorted face produces a stammer: he wants her back. The warder just hears ‘again’ and he pours more wine into his open, dry mouth. Franz has to drink, he has no choice.
In the heat lies the dough, the dough rises, yeast pushes it, bubbles form, the bread rises and browns.
The voice of Death, the voice of Death, the voice of Death:
What’s the use of so much strength, what’s the use of going straight, oh yes, oh yes, look at her, discern, rue.
Whatever Franz has he throws from him. He holds nothing back.
In which is described what pain is
Here we describe what pain and suffering are. How pain burns and tears. Because it is pain that has come. Many people have described pain in their poems. Churchyards see pain every day.
Here we describe the effect of pain on Franz Biberkopf. Franz can’t stand up to it, he throws himself down before it, he is its prey. He lays himself in the burning flame, so that he may be killed, destroyed and incinerated. We celebrate the effect of pain on Franz Biberkopf. We speak of the devastation wrought by pain. Snapping of, topping, casting down, dissolving, all these things it does.
To every thing there is a season: to kill and to heal, to break and to build, to cry and to laugh, to complain and to dance, to seek and to lose, to rend and to sew. There is a time to kill, mourn, seek and tear.
Franz wrestles and waits for Death, for merciful Death.
He thinks Death, the merciful and conclusive, is now approaching. He trembles as he pulls himself upright to welcome him.
For the second time they come to him, those who threw him down at noon. Franz says: let it all happen, this is me, don’t leave without Franz Biberkopf, take me with you.
With deep quaking he receives the image of the pathetic Lüders. Foul Reinhold trudges up to him. With deep quaking he receives Ida’s words, Mitzi’s face, it’s her, now everything is fulfilled. Franz howls and howls, I am guilty, I am not a human being, I am a beast, a monster.
At that hour of the evening, Franz Biberkopf, former transport worker, housebreaker, pimp, manslaughterer, died. Another lay in his bed. This other has the same papers as Franz, looks like Franz, but in another world he bears a different name.
So this was the end of Franz Biberkopf, which I wanted to describe from the moment he left Tegel prison to his end in the mental asylum Buch in the winter of 1928-9.
Now I would like to append a short report on the first hours and days of a new man who has the same papers as him.
Departure of the evil harlot, triumph of the great sacrificer, drummer and axe-swinger
Dirty snow on the fields, in the bare landscape outside the red walls of the institution. There is drumming and drumming. The whore of Babylon has lost, Death has won, and drums her away.
The whore spits and carries on and drools and screams: ‘What’s so good about him, what do you see in him, Franz Biberkopf, cook him till he’s sour, your Gottlieb Schulze.’
Death beats his drum roll: ‘I can’t see what you’ve got in your cup, you hyena. Franz Biberkopf is here, I chopped him into little pieces. But because he’s good and strong, he is to put on a new life, get out of my way, we both have nothing more to say.’
And she humps her back and screeches, and Death moves of, gets going, his grey giant coat flaps up, then paintings and landscapes become visible swimming around him, all of them, swirling around him from his feet to his chest. And cries, shots, noise, triumph and tumult around Death. Triumph and tumult. The beast under the woman shies away, lashes out.
The river, the Beresina, the marching legions.
Marching along the Beresina the legions, the icy cold, the icy wind. They have come all the way from France, led by the great Napoleon. The wind blows, the snow whirls, the bullets whistle. They fight their way across the ice, they charge, they fall. And always the cries: vive l’empereur, vive l’empereur! Sacrifice, sacrifice is death.
Trundling of locomotives, cannons bang, exploding of grenades, barrage fire, Chemin des dames and Langemarck, ‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein, lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein’. The shelters buried, the troops slumped. Death spins his coat, sings: oh yes, oh yes.
Marching, marching. We’re moving into battle with firm stride, we have 100 companions on our side, dawn red, dusk red, light us until we’re dead, 100 companions drum, widdeboom widdeboom, if things aren’t straight, they’re skew, widdeboom widdeboom.
Death spins his coat and sings: oh yes, oh yes.
An oven burns, an oven burns, before an oven stands a mother with seven sons, the groaning of the people is behind them, they are to forswear the god of their people. They beam and stand there peaceably. Will you forswear and join us. The first says no and suffers the torture, the second says no and suffers the torture, the third says no and suffers the torture, the fourth says no and suffers the torture, the fifth says no and suffers the torture, the sixth says no and suffers the torture, the seventh says no and suffers the torture. The mother stands there, encouraging her sons. In the end she says no and suffers the torture. Death spins his coat and sings: oh yes, oh yes.
The woman with the seven heads yanks at her mount, the beast refuses to get up.
Marching, marching, we’re marching into battle, with us are 100 companions, they pipe and drum, widdeboom widdeboom, one’s all right one’s all wrong, one stops still the other falls down, one runs on, the other lies still, widdeboom widdeboom.
Cheering and shouting, marching by sixes and twos and threes, marches the French Revolution, marches the Russian Revolution, march the Peasant Wars, the Anabaptists, they all fall into line behind Death, there is cheering in their wake, they are headed for freedom, the old world must fall, wake up, the dawn air, widdeboom widdeboom, in sixes, in twos, in threes, brothers, to the sun, to freedom, brothers to the light, in stride and left, right, left, right, widdeboom widdeboom.
Death spins his coat and laughs and grins and sings: oh yes, oh yes.
The great Babylon at last pulls the animal to its feet, it starts to trot, it races across the fields, it sinks into the snow. She turns back and howls in the face of grinning Death. Under the roaring,
the animal collapses, the woman sways over the neck of her mount. Death spins his coat. He sings and grins: oh yes, oh yes. And the field soughs: oh yes, oh yes.
Beginnings are difficult
When the deathly-pale bedridden man who once was Franz Biberkopf could once more speak and look in Buch, the detectives and doctors asked him lots of questions, the detectives to help them with their inquiries, the doctors to help them with their diagnosis. From the detectives the man learnt that they have arrested a certain Reinhold, who earlier in his life, or in his earlier life, played a certain role. They tell him about Brandenburg and ask whether he knew one Moroskiewicz, and where he might be found. He is told these things several times over, and remains quiet. He was left in peace for the whole of one day. There is a reaper, Death yclept. He sets his knife to the whetter, now it cuts better. Careful, wee blue flower.
The following day he made his statement to the detective superintendent that he had nothing to do with the business in Freienwalde. If this Reinhold party says different, then – he’s mistaken. The shrivelled, pale figure is to put together his alibi for that time. Everything in the man jibs at going back that way. It feels blocked of to him. With groans, he brings up a few dates. He groans that they’re to leave him alone. He flinches like a beaten dog. The old Biberkopf is gone, the new one is sleeping and sleeping. He says not one incriminating word about Reinhold. We all lie under one axe. We all lie under one axe.
His information checks out, it tallies with statements from Mitzi’s gentleman and his nephew. The doctors do a little better. Catatonia is forgotten. It was a psychic trauma and ensuing semitrance state, the man has traumatic events in his past, it’s clear that alcohol plays a part. In the end, the whole argy-bargy over the diagnosis is left behind, the fellow obviously wasn’t malingering, he was suffering from severe shock, and that’s the main thing. So, draw a line under it, and he’s left accountable for the shooting in Alexander-Quelle under Paragraph 51. Wonder if he’ll be back here ever.
The wobbly fellow, whom they call Biberkopf in memory of the departed, doesn’t know as he traipses about the building, sometimes helping out at mealtimes, and no longer subject to questions – he doesn’t know that there’s still lots of things going on behind him. The detectives are exercised about what happened with his arm, where he left it, where he was treated. They ask around in the Magdeburg clinic, it may all be ancient history, but the police are interested in ancient history, even if it’s twenty years old. But they don’t come up with anything, we’ve got to the happy end now, Herbert is a pimp as well, the boys have all got these golden girls, they blame them for everything, they claim to have got all their money off them. None of the police thinks that’s true, maybe they get a little bit from the girls every now and again, but in between they’re up to something. The brothers keep mum about that.
The storm, that storm as well, passes the man by, he’s to be forgiven for all this too. Looks like you got yourself a return ticket this time, my son.
•
Then there is the day he is released. The police leave him in no doubt they will continue to take an interest in him. The things that belonged to the old Franz are produced from the cupboard, everything is restored to him, he puts his togs back on, there’s still a bloodstain on the jacket, that’s where a cop whacked him over the head with a nightstick, I don’t want the false arm, and you can keep the wig as well, if you ever get to play-acting here, oh, we do that all the time, but just about the only thing we don’t wear is a wig, you’ve got your release form, goodbye, nurse, come and visit us one day when the weather’s good, will do, and thank you, I’ll let you out.
So that too is now behind us.
Dear Fatherland, don’t worry, I shan’t slip again in a hurry
For the second time Biberkopf leaves an institution in which he was confined, we are near the end of our long road, and will take just one more short step with Franz.
The first establishment he left was the prison in Tegel. Timidly he hugged the red wall, and when he peeled himself off it and the 41 tram came and took him into Berlin, then the buildings wouldn’t keep still, the roofs were falling on top of Franz, he had to walk and then sit for a long time before everything quietened down, and he felt strong enough to stay there and start over.
Now he is exhausted. He can’t stand the sight of the locked institution. But there, as he gets off the train at the Stettiner Bahnhof, the suburban station, with the Baltic Hotel in front of him, he feels – nothing. The buildings keep still, the roofs are firmly anchored, he can move around freely in their lee, he doesn’t need to be creeping into some courtyards. Yes, this fellow – let’s call him Franz Karl Biberkopf, to distinguish him from his predecessor, Franz was baptized with a middle name as well, for his maternal grandfather – t his fellow is now walking slowly up Invalidenstrasse, past Ackerstrasse, towards Brunnenstrasse, past the yellow market building, and he’s looking coolly at the shops and the buildings and the people all running around, and it’s been a long time since I last saw this, and now I’m back. Biberkopf was gone a long time. Now Biberkopf is back. Your man Biberkopf is back.
Suffer them to approach, suffer them to approach, the wide plains, the red-brick buildings with lights on inside them. Suffer them to approach, the freezing travellers with sacks on their backs. This is a reunion, more than a reunion.
He goes into a bar on Brunnenstrasse and picks up a newspaper. Will he find his name anywhere, or Mitzi’s, or Herbert’s, or Reinhold’s? Not a sausage. Where shall I go, where will I go? Eva, I’ll visit Eva.
She’s not living at Herbert’s any more. The landlady opens the door: Herbert’s gone, the police have been through all his stuff, he hasn’t come back, his things are all up in the attic, should I put them up for sale, I don’t know, I’ll ask around. Franz Karl runs into Eva out west, in the flat of her put-put patron. She takes him in. She’s happy to see Franz Karl Biberkopf.
‘Yeah, Herbert’s gone, he got put away for two years, I do what I can for him, they asked about you a lot too, first in Tegel, and what are you up to, Franz?’ ‘I’m fine, I’m out of Buch, they gave me my hunting licence.’ ‘Yes, I read it in the paper.’ ‘Wonder what they’ve got to write about. But I’m weak, Eva. Institution food is institution food.’
Eva sees the look in his eye, a still, dark, questing look that she’s never seen before in him. She doesn’t say anything about herself, she’s been through stuf too, on his account, but he’s very feeble, she looks for a place for him, she helps him, he’s not to do anything. He says himself when he’s sitting in his new place and she’s about to go: no, I can’t do anything any more.
•
So what does he do? He slowly starts going out on the street again, and walking around Berlin.
Berlin 52° 31’ north, 13° 25’ east, twenty mainline stations, 121 suburban stations, twenty-seven circular-railway stations, fourteen S-Bahn, seven shunting yards, tramway, overhead railway, autobus network, yes, but there’s only one imperial city, there’s only one Vienna. Desire of women, three words expressing all desires of women. Imagine a New York company bringing out a new cosmetic that gives yellowing irises the fresh blue of youth. The most beautiful eyes, from sapphire-blue to deep brown, all coming out of a tube. Why spend all that money getting your furs cleaned.
He walks around the city. There are many things that can make you healthy, if only the heart is healthy.
First off, the Alex. It’s still there. It doesn’t let on much, the winter was terribly cold so they stopped work and left everything the way it was, the big ram is now in Georgenkirchplatz, that’s where they’re digging out the rubble from Hahn’s emporium, they’ve laid down a lot of tracks, maybe they’re going to build a station here. And there’s lots of other things going on in the Alex, but main thing: it’s still there. And there’s always people walking across it, it’s dreadfully dirty, because the city fathers of Berlin are so hands-off and humane and they let all the snow just gradually melt aw
ay and turn to dirt, they don’t want anyone to touch it. When there’re cars driving past, you need to jump in the nearest entryway else you’ll catch a hatful of slush and a summons for theft of public property into the bargain. The old ‘Mokka-fix’ is shut, on the corner is a new joint called ‘Mexiko’ which is supposed to be a world sensation: the chef at the grill in the window, an Indian blockhouse, and they’ve put up a security fence round the Alexander barracks, who knows what’s going on there, they’re knocking out windows. And the electric trams are stuffed with people, they’re all of them busy, and the price of a ticket is still 20 pfennigs, a fifth of a mark in cash; but if you want you can pay 30 or buy yourself a Ford instead. The S-Bahn is still going, there’s no first and second class, just third, everyone’s sitting pretty on their cushioned behinds, if they’re not standing, which has been known to happen. Getting of between station stops is forbidden and carries a fine of 150 marks; you’d have to be a mug to do that, given that you stand to pick up an almighty electric shock as well. Admiration for a shoe, kept clean and supple by new Ägü. Please enter and leave quickly, move back inside the carriage, plenty of room inside.
These are all fine and dandy, they help a man get back into the swing of things, even if he’s feeling a bit weak, so long as the heart is healthy. Don’t stand by the door. Well, and Franz Karl Biberkopf is healthy all right, would that everyone was keeping time like him. Wouldn’t be worth doing anyway, telling a long story about someone who wasn’t good on his pins. And when a travelling bookseller one day stood on the street in mizzle and bellyached about his poor takings, Cäsar Flaischlen went up to his box of books. He listened to the bellyaching, then he patted the man on both shoulders, said: ‘Quit bellyaching, keep the sun in your heart’, and disappeared. That was the occasion for the celebrated sun poem. A sun like that, not that one but similar, is in the heart of Biberkopf too, and a tot of brandy and a lot of extract of malt stirred into the soup, that will do its bit to reinvigorate the man. We would like to offer you a share in an extraordinary vat of 1925 Trabener Würzgarten at a preferential price of 90 marks for fifty bottles, including emballage from here, or just 1.60 per bottle, sans glass and crate, which we will take back in the accounted price. Dijodyl for arteriosclerosis. Biberkopf doesn’t have arteriosclerosis, he’s just a little weak, he was fasting like a madman when he was in Buch, and it takes a while for a man to get replenished. Still doesn’t mean he needs to see the magnetopath that Eva wants to send him to, because he helped her one time.