Berlin Alexanderplatz
Franz pushed his hat back, looked the newspaper seller in the eye and exploded with laughter, Lina’s hand in his. ‘ ’S not his fault, Lina. He was like that when he was on the breast. You know what you look like staring like that? No, not like that. The way you were doing before. You know? As if he was at his mother’s breast, and the milk was sour.’ ‘Get away. I was a bottle baby.’ ‘Joke.’ ‘Brother, tell me, how’s the business treating you?’ ‘Red Flag, coming right up. Let the man through, brother. Gangway.’ ‘It’s you who’s in the way.’
Lina towed him away, they sailed down Chausseestrasse as far as Oranienburger Tor. ‘I wouldn’t mind his job. I don’t feel the cold. Just all that hanging around in the passageway.’
•
A couple of days later it’s warmed up, Franz has hocked his coat, put on some warm underclothing that Lina had from somewhere, stands in front of Fabisch & Co. on Rosenthaler Platz, gentleman’s outfitters, quality work and low prices are our hallmarks. Franz is selling tie-holders.
‘A question: why is it that in the West the gentleman wears a bow tie, and the working man doesn’t. Step nearer, sirs, you too miss, with your sweetheart, young people welcome, and you don’t have to pay extra, neither. So why does the working man not wear a bow tie? Because he don’t know how to tie it, that’s why. So he buys himself a tie-holder, and once he’s bought it, it turns out to be no good, and he can’t tie his tie with it. That’s a swindle, it embitters people, it immiserates Germany further than it is already. Why did they not wear this great tie-holder here? Because you didn’t want to tie bandages round your neck. A man didn’t, his wife didn’t, not even their little baby did, if it could only speak. Don’t laugh, gentlemen, don’t laugh, we have no idea what goes on in those tiny brains. Oh Lord, such a dear little head, a sweet little head, and the fluffy little hairs on it, adorable aren’t they, but paying child support, that’s no laugh is it, that pauperizes a man. Buy yourself a tie at Tietz or Wertheim, or, if you don’t want to take your custom to a Jew, go elsewhere. I’m an Aryan myself.’ He doffs his hat, fair hair, red sticking-out ears, round blue eyes. ‘There’s no reason for me to go touting for the big department stores, they manage perfectly well without me. Buy yourself a tie like the one I’m wearing, and then think about how you’re going to tie it in the morning.
‘Gentlemen, who’s got the time to tie a tie first thing in the morning, who wouldn’t rather have an extra minute of shut-eye. We all need our sleep because we work so hard and earn so little. A tie-holder like mine will help you sleep at night. It will compete with the chemist’s because if you buy one of my tie-holders, like I have here, you will have no reason to take sleeping draughts and sedatives and nothing. You will sleep like a baby in the knowledge that tomorrow there’s no fuss or bother, the thing you need is all ready and waiting for you on top of the chest of drawers and just has to be inserted in your collar. We spend our money on all kinds of shoddy, useless things. Last year you saw the crooks in the Krokodil, there were sausages on sale outside, at the back Jolly lay in his glass case, letting the sauerkraut grow round his muzzle. Every one of you will have seen that – move nearer if you will, so I don’t strain my tonsils, my voice isn’t insured you know, I still owe on the down payment – anyway you all saw Jolly lying in the glass cabinet. But what you didn’t see was them feeding him chocolate. Here you’ll be buying an honest product, no celluloid, vulcanized rubber, twenty pfennigs apiece, three for fifty.
‘Step off the roadway, young man, else you’ll get yourself run over, and I don’t want to be the one to pick up the pieces. Now pay attention, I’m going to explain to you how you tie a tie. It’s very simple, I don’t have to din it into you. On the one side, you take a piece ten to twelve inches, then you fold it over, but not like that. That looks like a squashed bedbug on a wall – an indoor flounder, know what I mean – and no gentleman would wear one of those. Then you take my little contraption here. You need to save time. Time is of the essence, remember. The romantic age is dead and gone, these days we need to be able to do our sums. You can’t tie a gas-pipe round your neck first thing every day, you take this finished civilized article here. You see, it’s your Christmas present, it’s your taste, sirs, it’s for your benefit. If you’ve got anything left over from the Dawes Plan, then it’s the head under your hat, and that is surely telling you, this is for you, sunshine, this is the thing you buy and take home with you, where it will be a solace to you and a source of comfort.
‘Gentlemen, we all of us need to be comfitted, and if we’re stupid, we go looking for it in the pub. But if you’re sensible, you don’t, not least because of the expense, because what publicans sell as drink nowadays is outrageous, and the good stuff is dear. So you take my little contraption, you pull the narrow end through, or you can take a wide piece too, like what the queer lads tie their shoes with when they go on their travels. Then you pull it through here, and you take the end. A German man is looking for a real product, like what I’m offering you.’
Lina takes it to the queers
But that’s not enough for Franz Biberkopf. He casts his eyes about. With lovely, well-built Lina he takes in the street life between the Alex and Rosenthaler Platz, and he decides to get into newspapers. Why? They told him about the job, Lina would come in handy, and it’s the right thing for him. In, out, it’s not so very hard.
‘Lina, I can’t address the public, I don’t know how to talk. When I’m barking, they understand what I’m saying all right, but it’s no good. Do you know what intellect is?’ ‘No,’ Lina looks at him enquiringly. ‘Look at the fellows on the Alex and here, they’ve none of them got any intellect. Or the ones with the booths and the carts, they don’t either. They’ve got smarts, they know what’s what, don’t need to tell me. But imagine a speaker in the Reichstag, Bismarck or Bebel – the ones they’ve got nowadays are no good – and by gum, they had intellect. Intellect is brains, not just a turnip or hat stand. None of them would get any prizes from me. A speaker’s a norator.’ ‘But you are that, Franz.’ ‘Don’t give me that, me a norator. Do you know who was a norator? You won’t hardly believe this, your landlady.’ ‘Ma Schwenk?’ ‘No, the last one, where I went to get your things from, in Karlstrasse.’ ‘The one at the circus. I don’t think so.’
Franz leans down discreetly: ‘She was a norator, Lina, a textbook example.’ ‘Nonsense. She walks into my room, when I’m in bed, and pulls down my suitcase, just because I’m a month late.’ ‘All right, Lina, that wasn’t nice of her, I know, but listen. When I’m upstairs and asking about your suitcase, you shoulda heard her.’ ‘I know that sort of talk. You won’t catch me listening to that. Franz, you shouldn’t get caught up in that.’ ‘Lets fly, I say, with paragraphs and the law, and how she managed to eke out a widow’s pension for her old man who had a stroke, and nothing to do with the war. Since when does it take a war to bring on a stroke. She says. But she got her way. Sheer obstinacy. She’s got intellect, any amount. She gets her own way, and that’s more than earning a few pennies. There you show your mettle. You can breathe. My, I’m still done in.’ ‘Are you still going up and seeing her, then?’ Franz gestures dismissively with both hands: ‘Lina, it’s your turn. Go and collect your suitcase, show up on the dot of eleven, by twelve you’ll be making your excuses, and quarter to one you’ll still be standing there. She talks and talks, and you still won’t have your suitcase, and chances are you’ll leave without it. I tell you, that woman can talk.’
He studies the table top, draws something in a beer puddle with his finger: ‘I’m going to report somewhere and flog papers. That’s solid.’
She is left speechless and faintly offended. Franz does what he likes anyway. One lunchtime finds him on Rosenthaler Platz, she’s bringing him sandwiches, then he’s off, leaves her his soapbox and his carton of wares, and pushes of to learn about newspapers.
•
First, an old man on Hackescher Markt and Oranienburger Strasse urges him to get into sexual enligh
tenment. That’s a booming industry right now. ‘What’s sexual enlightenment?’ asks Franz, feeling a bit squeamish. The greybeard points to his display: ‘See for yourself, then you won’t have to ask.’ ‘I can see drawings of naked ladies.’ ‘That’s about the size of it.’ They smoke in silence for a while. Franz gets up, takes in the pictures top and bottom, blows out smoke, the old man takes no notice. Franz fixes him: ‘Now, brother, do you get a kick out of that, those girls, I mean, and pictures? The Gay Life. So they go and sketch a naked lady and a little pussy cat. Can you tell me what she’s doing with her pussy cat on the stairs? Doesn’t seem right to me. Does it not bother you, brother?’ The other man sighs loudly in his folding chair: there are donkeys the size of tenements, proper camels who go running round the Hackescher Markt in the middle of the day, and who even stop in front of you, if your luck’s out, and gabble on and on. When nothing is forthcoming from the greybeard, Franz unpegs a couple of the publications: ‘You don’t mind do you, brother. What’s this one called, Figaro. And this one: Marriage. And this one’s Ideal Marriage. Must be different to Marriage. And Women in Love. All for sale separately. There’s a lot of information there, I’ll be bound. If you’ve got the dough, but it costs. And there’s a snag somewhere.’ ‘There’s no snag. Everything’s allowed, innit. Nothing’s banned. What I have on sale here, I have a licence to sell, and I tell you there’s no snag. I wouldn’t touch the other stuff.’ ‘I’m just telling you, though, looking at pictures is no good. I know. It destroys a man, it really makes a mess of him. It begins with looking at pictures, and afterwards you’re not capable of nothing natural no more.’ ‘What’s your point. And don’t drool over my publications, they’re expensive, cost money, and stop soiling the covers and all. Here, look at this one: Unmarried. They’ve covered all the angles, everything’s got its own mag.’ ‘Unmarried, well, why wouldn’t there be, I’m not married to my Polska neither.’ ‘Now look at this, and tell me if this ain’t right, ’s just one instance: to attempt to regulate the sexual life of the partners by contract, to define and insist on conjugal rights, as the law claims to do, is nothing but the vilest and most humiliating servitude imaginable. What do you say to that then?’ ‘How d’you mean?’ ‘Well, is it right, or ain’t it.’ ‘I wouldn’t know, doesn’t apply to me, does it? A woman asking for it, well, I never heard of such a thing. Have they got that, then?’ ‘It’s in black and white.’ ‘Well, I can’t believe that. I’d like to meet her.’
In perplexity, Franz reads the sentence over again, then he jerks his head up and points to a passage: ‘Look, what about this here: I should like to furnish an example from the work of d’Annunzio, Lust, watch out, d’Annunzio is the name of that pervert, he must be a Spic or an Eyetie or an American. Here the thoughts of the man are so consumed with the absent beloved that in the course of a night of passion spent with another woman who stands in for her, he lets slip her name. That’s where the fun stops. No, no, brother, you’ll not catch me doing something like that.’ ‘First, show me the place, here, let’s see.’ ‘Here. Stand in for. Artificial rubber for the real stuff. Rutabagas instead of real food. Have you ever heard of that, a girl, a woman, as a substitute? He helps himself to another one, because his own bird happens not to be available, and she notices, and she’s supposed to be fine with it? That’s what that Spaniard has the neck to print. If I was his typesetter, I’d refuse.’ ‘Come on, be reasonable. Your tiny mind can’t understand everything that a proper writer, and a Spaniard or Italian at that, is trying to say, and in the Hackescher Markt too.’
Franz reads on: ‘A great void and silence thereupon filled her soul. I’ll bet. I’d like someone to explain that to me. Anyone. Void and silence, since when. I can say as much as he does, and the girls won’t be that different to what they are wherever. So I had one once and she noticed something, name I wrote in me address book, you think: she’s noticed something, and she’s shut up? That’s what you think, and you know women. You should of heard her. The whole house echoed with her screams. She didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. On and on like a banshee. People came to see what the matter was. I tell you, I was pleased to get out.’ ‘Well, there’s something you’re missing, a couple of things, in fact.’ ‘All right’ ‘If a man takes a paper from me, he buys it and takes it home. The words don’t matter anyway, he’s only after the pictures.’ Franz Biberkopf’s left eye looked deprecating. ‘And then we’ve got Women in Love and Friendship, and they don’t natter, they fight. For human rights.’ ‘What do they want?’ ‘Paragraph 175, if you really want to know.’ There’s a public lecture in the Alexander Palais on Landsberger Strasse, where Franz would be able to hear about the injustice visited on a million people in Germany on a daily basis. It would make his hair stand on end. The man jammed a stack of old journals under his arm. Franz sighed, looked at the heap of old papers; yes, he expected he would attend. What am I going to be doing there, will I really go, is that a proper trade, those papers. The gay lads; he palms them off on me, I’m supposed to lug all that home with me and get across it. Sure, my heart bleeds for em, but do I really care.
He went of in a great confusion, the whole thing was so un-kosher that he didn’t say a word about it to Lina, and put her off that night. The old newspaper seller pushed him into the little hall, where there were almost nothing but fellers, most of them very young, and a handful of young women, but they were taken up with each other. For fully an hour Franz said not a word, though under his hat he was grimacing. Come ten o’clock he could no longer keep a straight face, he had to leave, the whole affair and those people were too weird, so many queers in one place, and him bang-smack in the middle of them, he had to rush out and laughed all the way to the Alex. The last thing he remembered hearing was one speaker talking about Chemnitz, where there was a police bylaw dating from November of ’27. Persons of the same sex may not go out on the street together and not visit public conveniences, and if they are caught, there is a 30-mark fine. Franz looked for Lina, but she was out with her landlady. He went to bed. In his dream he was laughing and scolding a lot, keeping company with an idiotic coachman who kept driving him round and round the Roland fountain on the Siegesallee. The traffic policeman was already giving pursuit. In the end, Franz jumped out, and then the car was driving round and round the fountain and around him like a mad thing, and it went on and on and wouldn’t stop, and Franz was standing with the traffic policeman and they were pondering: what do we do with this one, he must be mad.
The following morning he goes to meet Lina in the bar, same as always, and he has his magazines on him. He wants to tell her what boys like that are put through, with Chemnitz and the 30-mark fine, even though it’s none of his business, and let them sort out their paragraphs by themselves, also Mack might show, with some job for the livestock dealers. But no, he’s not interested, he doesn’t want anything to do with them.
Lina can see at a glance that he’s slept badly. Then he shyly pushes the journals across to her, pictures on top. Lina puts her hand to her mouth in alarm. Then he gets going on intellect again. He reaches for yesterday’s beer puddle on the table, but it isn’t there any more. She backs away from him: is he by any chance interested in the kind of thing the journals go on about. She doesn’t understand, there was no sign of it before. He fiddles about, draws lines on the wood with his dry finger, then she grabs the whole clutch of papers, drops them on the bench, stands there like a Maenad, they glower at each other, he like a small boy up from under, and she stomps off. And he’s left sitting there with his papers, free to think about queers.
•
A baldie goes for a walk one evening, meets a pretty boy in the Tiergarten, who straight away links arms with him, they stroll about for an hour, then the baldie feels the wish, the desire, o the urge, irresistible, to be very sweet to the boy. He is married, he feels these stirrings occasionally, but now it must be, it is lovely. ‘My sunshine, my gold.’
And the boy’s so gentle. That there should be
such a thing. ‘Come with me, we’ll go to a small hotel. You can give me five marks or ten, I’m all washed up.’ ‘Whatever you say, honeybunch.’ He gives him his whole wallet. That there should be such a thing. That’s almost the sweetest thing of all.
But the room has peepholes in the door. The hotelier sees something, and he calls his wife, who sees it too. And afterwards they tell each other they’re not going to stand for it in their hotel, they saw it and he can’t deny it. And they weren’t going to allow it, and the man should be ashamed of seducing boys, they will take him to court. The handyman and a chambermaid also come and grin. The next day the bald man buys himself two bottles of Asbach Uralt, goes on a business trip to Heligoland to get dead-drunk and washed overboard. He gets drunk and he goes on the ship, but two days later he’s home with his wife, and nothing has happened.
And nothing happens all month, all year. Only one thing: he inherits 3,000 dollars from an uncle in America, and can afford to take things easy. Then one day, he’s away taking the waters in a spa, his wife receives a summons for him. She opens the envelope and reads all about peepholes and his wallet and the sweet boy. And when the bald man comes home from his holiday, everyone is in floods of tears all round him, his wife, his two grown-up daughters. He reads the summons, he can barely remember it all, it feels like a piece of gobbledygook from the year dot, but here it is, and it’s all true. ‘Your Honour, what have I done? I didn’t cause any public offence. I went into a room and locked the door. Is it my fault if there were holes drilled in the door? Nothing illegal took place.’ The boy confirms it. ‘So what did I do wrong?’ The bald man in his fur coat begins to cry: ‘Did I steal anything? Did I break and enter? All I broke into was the heart of a person dear to me. I said to him: you’re my ray of sunshine. And so he was.’