He is acquitted. At home everyone goes on crying.
‘Magic Flute’, palais de danse with American-style dance hall on the ground floor. Oriental casino open for private parties. What shall I give my girl for Christmas? Transvestites: after years trying all sorts of things, I finally found a cure for hair-growth. Every part of the body can now be made smooth and hairless. At the same time, I found a way of growing a proper female breast in double-quick time. No drugs, absolutely harmless preparation. And as proof: myself. Freedom for love all along the line.
A clear, starry sky looked down on mankind’s darksome places. Kerkauen Castle lay in profound nocturnal peace. But a curly-haired blonde tossed and turned and could find no rest. In the morning, her dearest was leaving. A whisper went (coursed) through the gloomy, impenetrable (dark) night: oh, Gisa, stay, stay (don’t leave me, don’t go away, don’t fall down, please have a seat). Don’t leave me. But the dismal silence had neither ear nor heart (nor foot nor nose either, for that matter). And there, separated from her by a few thicknesses of wall, a pale, slender woman was lying with eyes wide open. Her dark, luxurious hair lay tangled on the silk sheets (Kerkauen Castle, renowned for its silk sheets). Shudders of cold convulsed her. Her teeth chattered as in an icy frost, full stop. She, comma, though, comma, did not draw the blankets around her, full stop. Her shapely ice-cold hands lay still (as in a deep frost, shuddering with cold, slender woman with eyes wide open, renowned silk sheets), full stop. Her shining eyes wandered flickeringly in the dark, and her quaking lips breathed, colon, open quotation marks, capital o-aitch Helena, em-dash, em-dash, Helena, em-dash, close quotation marks, rotation marks, flotation marks.
•
‘Nah, I’m not going out with you any more, Franz. I’m done with you. You get lost.’ ‘Oh, Lina, please, I’ll take his stuff back to him.’ And as Franz took off his hat and laid it on the chest of drawers – all this was in her room – and made a few convincing moves in her direction, she first of all clawed his hand, and then she went off with him. They each took half of the questionable publications and approached the front line that led along Rosenthaler Strasse, Neue Schönhauser Strasse, Hackescher Markt.
There, on the battlefield, Lina, short, buxom, unwashed, tear-stained, dirty Lina, charged forward on her own à la Prince of Homburg: Noble uncle Brandenburg! Natalie! Let be! Let be! O God, he is undone, but onward, onward! She made a beeline, an A-line, an I-line, straight for the stall of the greybeard. Franz Biberkopf, the noble tolerator, preferred to loiter in the rear. He stood in the lee of Schröder’s Cigars (Import, Export) and surveyed the action, mildly impeded by mist, trams and passers-by. The principals were in a clinch. They felt for each other’s weaknesses. The bundle of newspapers was thrown down, hurled to the ground, by Lina Przyballa, only legitimate surviving daughter of farmer Stanislaus – after two miscarriages, both of whom were also to have been called Lina. The rest of the action was lost in the sound of traffic. Attagirl, attagirl!’ thus admiringly groaned Franz the tardy tolerator. In lieu of cavalry, he approached the mid-point of the conflagration. Then from outside Ernst Kümmerlich’s licensed premises there beamed at him the heroine and victrix of the hour, sluttish Miss Lina Przyballa, ecstatic and asquawk: ‘I shown him, Franz!’
Franz already knew. In the bar, she slumped against that part of him she took for his heart, but that underneath his woollen shirt corresponded to his sternum and the upper lobe of his left lung. As she swigged her first Gilka she crowed: ‘And he can scrape his periodicals off of the pavement, where they belong!’
Now, o immortality, you are all mine, dearest, what lustre spreads, and hail, hail the Prince of Homburg, victor of the battle of Fehrbellin, hail! (Court ladies, officers and torches appear on the castle ramparts.) ‘Gimme another Gilka!’
The Neue Welt, in Hasenheide, if it’s not one thing it’s another, no need to make life any harder than what it is already
And Franz is sitting in Fräulein Lina Przyballa’s room, laughing: ‘Do you know what a stock-girl is, Lina?’ And he gives her a poke in the ribs. She sits there open-mouthed: ‘Well, the Fölsch woman, she’s a stock-girl, she looks out the records at Fritz’s.’ ‘ ’S not what I had in mind. If I give you a push, and you wind up lying on the sofa with me beside ya, then you’re the stuck girl and I’m the stuck man.’ ‘Yes, and wouldn’t you like that?’ She squawked.
And so it’s time again, so it’s time, fol de rol rol lala, to make merry, make merry, trallala. And so it’s time again to be merry la la, time again to make merry.
And they get up off the sofa – you’re not ill, are you, sir, otherwise you’d best be off to see the quack – and they wander merrily of to Hasenheide, to the Neue Welt, where things are swing, where the fires of joy are lit, where prizes are awarded for the trimmest calves. The band sat onstage in Tyrolean dress. They softly sang: ‘Drink, little brother, drink, leave your worries at home, feel no trouble, feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain, feel no trouble and feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain.’
And the rhythm got them going, and they smirked and hummed among the beer steins and they swayed their shoulders in time: ‘Drink, little brother, drink, leave your worries at home, feel no trouble, feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain, feel no trouble and feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain.’
Charlie Chaplin was there in person, whispering a north-easterly variant of German, waddling around the balcony in baggy trousers and enormous shoes, pinched the leg of a lady not in the first flush of youth, and sped down the slide with her. Numerous families sat clustered round tables. You can buy a long stick with paper tassels for just 50 pfennigs, and establish any connection with it you want, the neck and throat are sensitive, and so are the backs of the knees, afterwards you pick up your leg and turn round to look. Who’s here? Civilians of both sexes, plus a sprinkling of Reichswehr with their escorts. Drink, little brother, drink, leave your worries at home.
Everyone’s smoking, clouds of smoke from pipes and cigarettes and cigars fog the whole huge hall. When it gets too smoky for the smoke, it looks for a way out which, thanks to its lightness, it can, through chinks and holes and ventilator shafts, all of which are under instruction to see it out. Once outside, though, there’s only black night and freezing cold. Then the smoke regrets its impulsiveness, and opposes its nature, but the ventilators turn only one way, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Too late. It’s subject to physical laws. The smoke’s not sure what it thinks about that, it tries to touch its brow and there’s nothing there, it wants to think and it can’t. The wind, the cold, the night, have it in their grip, and it is never seen again.
At one table are two couples, watching the passers-by. A man in a pepper-and-salt check inclines his moustaches over the available bosom of a well-stacked brunette. Their sweet hearts are trembling, their noses snuffling, his over her bosom, hers over the pomaded back of his head.
Next door a lady in loud yellow checks is laughing. Her swain lays his arm around her chair. She has buck teeth, a monocle, a wall-eye (the left), she grimaces, smokes, shakes her head: ‘How can you ask such a thing?’ A young chick with blonde marcel waves sits at the next table, or if you prefer, eclipses the iron seat of a low garden chair with the planet of her powerfully made derrière. Under the effect of a steak and three lagers she is humming happily along to the music. She blabs and blabs, lays her head on his shoulder, the shoulder of a partner in a firm in Neukölln, whose fourth relationship this year is this particular chick, while he is her tenth, if not her eleventh if you count her cousin, to whom she is engaged to be married. Her eyes widen in panic, because it looks as though Chaplin is about to fall on top of them. The manager puts out both hands in the direction of the slide, where it seems something is about to happen. They order pretzels.
A gentleman of thirty-six, co-proprietor of a small grocery, invests in six large balloons at 50 pfennigs a pop and releases them one at a time in the aisle in front of the band, hoping thereby for want of other att
ributes to secure for himself the attention of girls, women, spinsters, widows, divorcees, adulteresses alone or in pairs, and effect an easy introduction. It’s 20 pfennigs in the rear aisle to test your strength. For a look into the future: with a well-moistened finger touch the chemical preparation in the circle with the two heart shapes and rub it on the empty sheet of paper, and the visage of your future spouse will become clear. You have been on the right road since childhood. There is no shred of falsehood in your heart, and yet with a finely honed instinct you sense each trap your envious friends will set for you. Trust to your instinct, because the star under whose light you came into this world will lead you to the consort who will perfect your happiness. The partner you can trust has the same reserved character as you. His suit will not be stormy, but all the more durable will be your quiet happiness at his side.
From a balcony near the cloakroom in a side hall, a band was playing. They were all kitted out in red weskits and they kept yelling that they had nothing to drink. Below them stood a solid-looking man in a frock coat. He was wearing a striped paper hat, and while singing along, he was trying to insert a paper flower into his buttonhole, which he kept failing to do, in consequence of eight beers, two punches and four cognacs. In the crowd he sang up to the group, and he footed a waltz with an old and extraordinarily digressive-looking person, with whom he was tracing wide circles around himself. As she danced, this person seemed to disintegrate further, but luckily she still had enough presence of mind, just before she exploded, to sit on three chairs.
Franz Biberkopf and the man in the frock coat found themselves under the balcony during an interval in which the band were clamouring for beer. One beaming blue eye stared at Franz, O moon of Alabama, his other was sightless, they raised their white beer steins together, the invalid wheezed: ‘You’re another one of them traitors, the others are all stuffing themselves in the food hall.’ He gulped: ‘Don’t stare at my eye like that, look at me, where did you serve?’
They toasted one another, little fanfare from the band, we’ve got no drink, we’ve got no drink. Hey, you, stop that, relax, relax, here’s a toast, a toast to geniality. ‘Are you German, are you German to the core? What’s your name?’ ‘Franz Biberkopf. You don’t know me.’ The invalid whispered, hand to mouth, he burped: ‘Are you really a German man, cross your heart. You’re not a Red, else you’d be a traitor. No traitor can be a friend of mine.’ He hugged Franz: ‘We give our blood for the Fatherland against the Poles and Frogs, and this is how the nation thanks us.’ Then he pulled himself together, danced another round with the reassembled extensive person, always slow waltzes, irrespective of the tempo. He stood, lurching, and looked. ‘Over here!’ called Franz. Lina came for him, and he took a turn with Lina, arm in arm he appeared before Franz at the bar: ‘Forgive me, with whom do I have the pleasure, the honour. Your name, sir, if you please.’ Drink, little brother, drink, leave your worries at home, feel no trouble, feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain, feel no trouble and feel no pain, life is a jolly refrain.
Two pigs’ knuckles and one corned beef, the lady ordered extra horseradish, the wardrobe, yes, where did you leave your coat, there are two cloakrooms here, are prisoners in remand allowed to keep their wedding rings? I say no. The festivities in the rowing club went on till four o’clock. The roads are unspeakable, you bounce against the roof of the car the whole time, it’s like total immersion.
The invalid and Franz are sitting arm in arm at the bar: ‘They cut my pension, I tell you, I’ve half a mind to join the Reds. The Archangel drove us out of Paradise with the sword of flame, and we’re never going back. We’re sitting up at Hartmannsweilerkopf, then I says to my captain, who’s from Stargard, same as me.’ ‘Storkow?’ ‘Naa, Stargard. Now I’ve lost my carnation, oh no, there it is.’ He who has kissed by the beautiful sea, while the billows listened and rippled with mirth, he knows what life’s greatest charm can be, he has whispered to love upon this earth.
•
Franz is now dealing in Nationalist newspapers. Not that he’s got anything against the Jews, but he is a supporter of order. Because there must be order in paradise, anyone can see that. And the Stahlhelm, he’s seen those boys, and their leaders as well, well, they’ve got something. He stands at the exit to Potsdamer Platz underground station, in the passage in the Friedrichstrasse, under the Alexanderplatz station. He is of one mind with the invalid from the Neue Welt, the one-eyed geezer with the fat lady.
To the German people this First Sunday in Advent: destroy false idols and punish those who would lead you astray with their lies! The day will come when Truth will rise up on the field of battle with the sword of righteousness and unstained buckler, to put the foe to flight.
As these lines are being written, the case against the knights of the Reichsbanner is being heard, whom a fifteen-to twenty-fold superiority in numbers permitted such expression as much of their renowned pacifism as of their indomitable courage in the line of duty that they ambushed and beat up a handful of National Socialists, killing in foulest wise our own party member Hirschmann. From statements of the accused who have legal licence and party duty to lie, it emerges with what deliberate, programmatic violence – clearly betraying the hand of a system – they here saw fit to proceed.
‘True federalism is anti-Semitic. The fight for the independence of Bavaria is the fight against international Jewry. Long before the meeting commenced, the great Mathäser Festival Hall was full to bursting, and ever more joined the throng. Those present were kept entertained by the brisk marches and soulful ballads of our S.A. band. At half past eight, party member Oberlehrer opened the meeting with a heartfelt welcome, and gave the floor to party member Walter Ammer.’
In Elsasser Strasse, the brothers laugh themselves silly when he walks into the pub at lunchtime, with his Fascist armband tucked in his pocket as a precaution, but it doesn’t take them long to pull it out. Franz cuts them dead.
To the young out-of-work engineer he says – and he sets down his pint pot in astonishment: ‘What’re you laughing at me for, Richard? Because you’ve got a wife? You’re twenty-one and she’s eighteen, what do you know about life? Zero minus three. I tell you, Richard, if we talk about our lasses, and you’ve got a little boy too, then you’ll be in the right because of that brat. But what else? Hello.’
The lens-grinder and polisher Georg Dreske, thirty-nine, presently locked out, waves Franz’s armband around. ‘Look here, Orge, there’s nothing on that banner that can’t be defended. I ran away, man, same as what you did, but what happened after? If a fellow wears a red sash or a gold one or a black-white-and-red one, it doesn’t make his cigar taste any different, does it. It’s the tobacco that matters, the tobacco and the wrapping leaf and the drying and where it comes from. Say I. So what have we done, Orge, tell me.’
Orge quietly lays the sash on the bar in front of him, sups his beer, speaks hesitatingly, stammering occasionally, and moistening his lips frequently: ‘I just looks at you, Franz, and I’m just saying I’ve known you a long time, from Arras and Kovno, and I say they’ve soft-soaped you.’ ‘You mean, all on account of the sash?’ ‘Yes, and everything else as well. Let it go. You don’t need to go around in that.’
At that Franz gets up, and he pushes aside the young engineer Richard Werner with the green shirt, who wants to put a question to him: ‘No, little Richard, you’re a good sort, but what we’re dealing with here is man stuff. Just cos you’ve joined the electoral roll don’t mean you can talk with the grown-ups.’ Then he stands pensively next to the lens-grinder at the bar, the publican in his big blue apron is the other side, looking alert in front of his selection of spirits, with his big hands in the sink. ‘All right then, Orge, what was that about Arras?’ ‘What do you mean? You’re the only one who knows. And why you made a break for it. And the sash. Christ, Franz, I’d sooner use it to hang myself wiv than wear it. They’ve really made a muggins of you.’
Franz has a confident expression and with it he fixes the
lens-grinder, who stammers and throws his head around: ‘I want to know what you means about Arras. Let’s test it out. If you even were in Arras!’ ‘You’re crazy, Franz, I’m not going to talk to you, you’re drunk.’ Franz waits, thinks: I’ll pull one over on him, he’s pretending not to understand, he’s playing the smart guy. ‘Of course we were, Orge, of course we were at Arras, along with Arthur Böse and Bluhm and the little sergeant major, what was his name again, he had a funny name.’ ‘I forget.’ Let him talk, he’s drunk, the others will notice too. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue, Bista or Biskra or something. Little guy.’ Let him talk, I’ll shut up, he’ll tie himself in knots, then he’ll stop. ‘Yeah, we all knew him. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Where we went after Arras, when it was all over, after ’18, when the next show started, here in Berlin and in Halle and Kiel and . . .’
Georg Dreske has had enough, this is too much, I’m not listening to this: ‘Oh, give over, I’m going. Tell it to little Richard. Come on, Richard.’ ‘He acts so splendid to me, the Baron. He only talks to other barons now, you know. And him condescending to visit us in our bar.’ Clear eyes in Dreske’s flickering ones: ‘That’s exactly what I mean, Orge, when we were in Arras after 1918, field artillery or infantry or flak or radio brigade or engineering corps or whatever else. Where were we afterwards, in peacetime?’ Ah, I see where this is going, just wait, sonny, you really shouldn’t mess with that. ‘Well, I’m going to finish my beer, and you, Franzeken, all those places you were at afterwards, and where you ran and didn’t run, where you stood your ground, or sat it, I suggest you look them up in your papers if you happen to have them on you. A trader has to have his papers on him, isn’t that right?’ Now you’ve probably caught my drift, all right, now remember. Calm eyes in Dreske’s cunning ones: ‘For the four years after 1918 I was in Berlin. The whole war previously weren’t no longer than that, innit, and I was running around, and you was running around, and Richard here was holding on to his mammy’s apron strings. Well, and what had Arras done for us when we got back here? Did you notice anything? We had Inflation, paper money, millions with a b., and no butter and no meat, worse ’n before, and we noticed, you did too, Orge, and what became of Arras, you can work it out on the fingers of your hand. Weren’t nothing, right? We was just a rabble, nicking potatoes from the farmers.’