Berlin Alexanderplatz Read online

  Äv = (I/c)f Ät.

  The natural and actual result is as follows: the spiral of the cream-whipper is pressed together and the wooden part encounters something. On the other side, the side of inertia and resistance: fracture of the 7th and 8th ribs in line with the left shoulder-blade.

  Thanks to such timely consideration, we can dispense entirely with Furies. We can follow, step by step, what Franz did and what Ida suffered. There is no unknown quantity in the equation. There remains only to enumerate the continuation of the process which was thus inaugurated: We have the loss of the vertical position on Ida’s part, a transition to the horizontal, this being the effect of the rude shock received, at the same time, respiratory impediment, violent pain, terror, and physiological disturbance of the equilibrium. Franz would nevertheless have killed this damaged person, whom he knew so well, like a roaring lion, if her sister had not come bouncing in from the next room. Before this woman’s abusive talk he retreated, and in the evening they nabbed him during a police raid in the vicinity of his home.

  “Up and at him, whoa,” shriek the old Furies. Horror, oh, horror, to see a God-accursed man at the altar, his hands dripping with blood! How they snort: Dost thou sleep? Thrust slumber away. Up, up. Agamemnon, his father, had started many years ago from Troy. Troy had fallen, and thence shone the signal fires, from Ida over Athos, oil-torches constantly blazing towards the Cytherean forest.

  How splendid, be it said in passing, this flaming message from Troy to Greece! Isn’t that grand, this march of fire across the sea, this is light, heart, soul, happiness, rejoicing!

  The dark-red fire, flaming red over the Gorgopis lake is seen by a watchman who shouts with joy, ah, that’s life, and fresh fires are lighted to pass on the news, the excitement and joy, everything together, and with a leap over a gulf, in a stormy race to the heights of Arachneon, this outcry continues, this madness, which you see, flaming red: Agamemnon is coming. We can’t compare ourselves with this way of doing things. Here again we’re inferior.

  Let us use for purposes of information a few results from the experiments of Heinrich Hertz, who lived in Karlsruhe, died at an early age, and who, at least in the photo of the Munich Graphic Collection, wore a full beard. We telegraph by wireless. We produce high frequency alternating currents through transmitters in big stations. We produce electric waves by oscillations of a vibrating circle. The vibrations spread out spherically, as it were. And then there is also an electron-tube of glass and a microphone the disk of which vibrates in alternating degrees, thus reproducing tones, precisely as when they entered the machine, and that is astonishing, clever. tricky. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about all this; it functions, and that’s all.

  Quite different the oil-torch with its message of Agamemnon’s return.

  It burns, it blazes, it speaks, it feels, at every moment, in each place, and the joy is general: Agamemnon is coming. A thousand men are aglow in each place: Agamemnon is coming, and now there are ten thousand, across the bay, a hundred thousand.

  And then, to get to the point, he arrives home. Things change. Things change considerably. The disk turns. When the wife gets him home, she sticks him into the bath. She shows then and there that she is the worst bitch on record. She plunks a fish-net over him in the water, so that he can’t do anything, and she has brought an ax along, presumably to chop wood. He groans heavily: “Woe is me, I am undone!” Outside they ask: “Who is bemoaning himself?” “Woe is me, and again woe.” The Hellenic beast finishes him off, without batting an eye, and outside she even has the nerve to yelp: “I have achieved it, I threw a fish-net over him, and struck twice, and with two sighs he was laid out. Then, with yet a third blow, I sent him to Hades.” Whereupon the senators are grieved, but nevertheless they remark appropriately: “We bow before the boldness of your speech.” It was this woman then, this Hellenic beast who, as the result of conjugal amusement with Agamemnon, had become the mother of a boy who was called Orestes at his birth. She was subsequently killed by this fruit of her joys, after which he was tortured by the Furies.

  Our Franz Biberkopf, however. is in a different position. Five weeks later his Ida, too, is dead in the Friedrichshain hospital, complicated fracture of the ribs, rupture of the pleura, small rupture of the lung, with the resultant empyema, pleurisy, pneumonia, the dickens the fever won’t go down, how badly you look now, get a mirror, baby, you’re done for, you’re finished, you can pack up and go. They dissected her, put her in the earth in the Landsberger Allee, three yards under ground. She died with a feeling of hatred against Franz, he was stinkin’ mad at her even after her death, her new friend, the one from Breslau, paid her a visit before she died. Now she lies below, five long years already, horizontally on her back, the planks are beginning to rot, she is dissolving in manure-juice, she who once danced in white canvas shoes with Franz in the Paradiesgarten of Treptow, who loved and gadded about now she lies quite still, she is no more.

  But he has done his four years. He who killed her is walking about, alive and flourishing, boozing, swilling, spilling his semen, continuing to disseminate life. Even Ida’s sister did not escape him. He’ll get it in the neck, too, some day. For didn’t what’s-his-name die? But that’s a long time off. He knows that. In the meantime, he will go on breakfasting in the cafes and praising the sky over the Alexanderplatz in his own sweet way: Since when does Grandma play the trombone, and: My parrot don’t eat hard-boiled eggs.

  And where is now the red prison wall of Tegel, which had made him so afraid that he could hardly get his back away from it? The guardian stands at the black iron gate, which once excited such abhorrence in Franz, it is still hanging on its hinges, it does not bother anybody, there is always a good draft there, at night it is closed, as is the case with every good gate. Now in the morning the guardian stands in front smoking his pipe. The sun shines, it is always the same sun; you can predict exactly when it will reach a given place in the sky. Whether it shines or not depends upon the cloud formation. A few persons are just leaving car No. 41, they are carrying flowers and small parcels, they are probably going to the sanatorium, straight ahead to the left, down the Chaussee, all of them well-nigh freezing. The trees stand in a black row. Inside, the convicts are still cowering in their cells, bustling about in the work-rooms, or marching in goose-step on the promenade grounds. Strict orders to appear during recreation hour with shoes, cap, and muffler only. Inspection of cells by the old man: “How was the soup last night?” “It could have been better and a bit more wouldn’t hurt.” Doesn’t want to hear that, pretends to be deaf: “How often do you get clean bed-linen?” As if he didn’t know.

  One of the convicts in solitary confinement has written: “Let sunlight in. This is the call that resounds throughout the world today. Only here, behind prison walls, it has not found an echo. Don’t we deserve to have the sun shine on us? The penal institutions are so constructed that certain wings do not receive the rays of the sun during the entire year, on the northeast frontage. Not a ray of sun strays into these cells to bring greetings to their occupants. Year in, year out, these people have to work and wither without the vivifying light of the sun.” A commission is about to inspect the building, the guardians run from cell to cell.

  Another prisoner: “To the District Attorney. During my trial before the High Criminal Bench of the District Court, the President, Director of the District Court, Dr. X, informed me that an unknown person removed various articles from my home, 76 Elizabethstrasse, after my arrest. This fact has been established by court records. Since this has been established by court records, a perquisition must necessarily have been made by the police or the district attorney’s office. I was not informed in any way about the theft of my articles after my arrest until I learned it at the trial. I beg the district attorney to inform me about the result of the inquiry, or else to send me a copy of the report as recorded, in order that I may subsequently start a suit for damages, if my landlady has acted with negligence.”

  And
as regards Frau Minna, Ida’s sister, she is doing well, thank you for asking. It is now 11.20, she is just leaving the Ackerstrasse Market, a yellow municipal building, which has also an exit on the Invalidenstrasse. But she chooses the Ackerstrasse exit because it is nearer for her. She is carrying cauliflowers and pig’s-head, also some celery. In front of the market she buys something else from a wagon: a big fat flounder and a bag of camomile tea, you never can tell, you may need it any day.

  THIRD BOOK

  Here Franz Biberkopf, who is a respectable, good-natured man, suffers his first blow. He is deceived. The blow carries.

  Biberkopf has vowed to become respectable and you have seen how he stayed straight for many a week, but it was only a respite, so to speak. In the end life finds thi s going too far, and trips him up with a wily jar. To him, Franz Biberkopf, however, this doesn’t seem a very sporting trick, and, for a considerable time, he finds this sordid, draggle-tailed existence, which contradicts his every good intention, a bit too thick.

  Why life acts this way, he does not understand. He still has a long way to go before he will see it.

  Yesterday upon proud Steeds we rode

  With Christmas coming on, Franz makes a change, doing business in all kinds of occasional articles. He gives a few hours in the morning or the afternoon to shoe-laces, first by himself, then later with Otto Lüders. The latter has been out of work for two years, and his wife takes in washing. Stout Lina got them together, Otto being Fatty’s uncle. In the summer he had worked for a few weeks as a Rüdersdorfer Peppermint Man with a plumed hat and a uniform. Franz and he do the streets together, enter houses, ring bells, then meet afterwards.

  One day Franz Biberkopf arrives at the cafe. Fat Lina is also there. He is in an especially good humor. He gulps the fat girl’s sandwiches down and while still chewing away, gives another order for pig’s ears and peas for the three of them. He squeezes fat Lina so hard that she waddles off after the pig’s ears with her face flaming red. “Good thing Fatty’s going, Otto.” “She’s got a place of her own, hasn’t she? Always traipsing around after you.”

  Franz leans over the table, looks up at Lüders: “Say, Otto, what do you think has happened?” “Well, what?” “Well, shoot.” “Well, what is it?”

  Two light beers and a lemonade. A new customer comes puffing into the place, wipes his nose on the back of his hand, coughs: “Cup of coffee.” “With sugar?” The proprietor rinses the glasses. “Nope, but make it quick.”

  A youngster with a brown sport cap walks through the place looking for somebody, warms himself at the big stove, looks around at Franz’s table, then at the next one: “Have you seen a man with a black overcoat, brown collar, fur collar?” “Here often?” “Yep.” The older man at the table turns his head to the pale man next to him: “Brown fur?” The latter gruffly: “Lots of ‘em come here with brown fur on.” The gray-haired man: “Where do you come from? Who sent you?” “What difference does that make? As long as you didn’t see him.” “Lots of men come here with brown fur coats. We have to know who sent you.” “But I don’t have to tell you my business.” The pale man gets excited: “If you ask a man if somebody’s been here, can’t he ask you who sent you here?”

  The customer is already standing at the next table: “If I ask him, it’s none of his business who I am.” “All right, if you ask him, he certainly can ask you back. You don’t have to ask him, do you?” “I don’t have to tell him what kind of business I’m in.” “Then he don’t have to tell you if anybody was here.”

  The customer goes to the door, turns around: “If you’re that clever then just stay that way.” He turns around, opens the door brusquely, is gone.

  The two at the table: “Do you know him? I don’t know him at all.” “He never comes here. Who knows what he wants?” “A Bavarian.” “That chap? A Rhinelander. From the Rhineland.”

  Franz grins at the wretched, shivering Lüders: “So you can’t guess. Well, supposing I had some money?” “Well, have you got any?”

  Franz has his fist on the table, he opens it, grins proudly: “All right, how much?” Poor, wretched little Lüders is leaning forward, sucking a hollow tooth: “Two tens, the deuce you say.” Franz plunks them on the table. “How about that? Did that in fifteen, in twenty minutes. No longer. Betcha.” “Say, boy.” “Nope, not what you think either, nothing underhanded, nothing shady, no, it ain’t that. Honestly, Otto, I got it decent, in a proper way, you get me.”

  They start whispering, Otto Lüders moves closer to him. Franz had stopped in at a woman’s house: Makko shoe-laces, do you need anything for yourself, for hubby, for your little kiddies, she looked at them, then she looked at me, she’s a widow, still in good condition; we were talking in the hallway, then I asked her if I couldn’t get a cup of coffee, terribly cold this year. I drank some coffee, she did too. And then a little bit more. Franz blows through his hand, laughs through his nose, scratches his cheeks, pushes his knee against Otto’s. “I left my whole caboodle with her. Did she notice anything?” “Who?” “Well, the fat girl, of course, who else, because I didn’t bring anything back with me.” “What if she did notice anything, you sold everything, where was it?”

  And Franz whistles: “I’ll go there again, but not right away, it’s behind Elsasser, she’s a widow, twenty marks, that’s business for you.” They eat and drink till three, Otto gets a fiver, but doesn’t become any livelier for that.

  Who is that slinking through the Rosenthaler Tor next morning with his shoe-laces? Otto Lüders. He waits at Fabisch’s on the corner, till he sees Franz ambling down Brunnenstrasse. Then quickly he goes down Elsasser. Righto, that’s the number. Maybe Franz has been upstairs already. How quietly people walk down the street! I’ll stand in the hallway a bit first. If he comes, I’ll say, what’ll I say, I’ve got heart palpitations. People worry you all day long, and no profit, the doctor don’t find anything the matter, but I’ve got something all right. A fellow gets down and out, in rags like this, always the same old outfit, from the war. Up the stairs he goes.

  He rings: “Want some Makko shoe-laces, madam? Nope, just wanted to find out. Say, won’t you listen to me a minute.” She tries to push the door shut, he jams his foot between. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t come for myself, my friend, you know, he was here yesterday, he left his stuff here,” “Oh, Lord.” She opens the door, once inside, Lüders quickly pulls the door to behind him. “Good Lord, what’s the matter?” “Nothing at all, lady. What makes you so dithery?” He’s dithery himself, he got in so suddenly, things are moving, whatever happens, it’ll go all right. He ought to be tender, but his voice fails him, in front of his mouth and under his nose he has a wire netting, that spreads out over his forehead, and his cheeks. If my cheeks get stiff, it’s the end of me. “I just came to get the stuff.” The nice little woman runs into the room, starts to get the package, but he is already in the doorway. She chews and stares: “Here’s the package.” “Thanks, thank you. What makes you so dithery, lady? Why, it’s nice and warm here! It’s real nice and warm here. Can’t you lemme have a cup of coffee, too?” Just remain standing, keep on talking, mustn’t get out, strong as an oak tree.

  The woman, who is thin and neat, stands before him, her hands clasped over her abdomen: “Did he tell you anything else? What did he tell you?” “Who, my friend?” Keep on talking, talking all the time, the more you talk, the warmer you get, the netting only tickles now in front, under the nose. “Oh nothing else, nope, what else was there to tell? Why should he talk about the coffee? I got the goods anyway.” “I’m just going into the kitchen.” She’s afraid, what do I care about her coffee, I can make it much better myself, I can get it quicker in the cafe, she’s trying to back out, just wait, we’re not gone yet. But it’s a good thing I’m inside, I slipped in like lightning. But Lüders is afraid, nevertheless, and listens towards the door, the stairs, upstairs. He steps back into the room. Slept damned badly last night, the brat’s always coughing, all night long, I believe
I’ll sit down. And he sits down on the red plush sofa.

  Here’s where she did it with Franz, now she’s making coffee for me, I guess I’ll take off my hat, my fingers are cold as ice. “Here’s a cup for you.” But still she’s afraid, she’s a pretty little person, really tempts a fellow to try something. “Why don’t you take some, too? To keep me company?” “No, no, my lodger will soon be here, this is his room.” Wants to get rid of me, where does she keep her lodger, there ought to be a bed here. “Is that all? Forget that fellow. A lodger, he won’t come back before noon, hasn’t he got his work? Well, that’s all my friend told me. I’m just supposed to get his stuff.” -He leans forward and contentedly laps up the coffee. “Nice and hot, it’s cold today, what do you think he told me anyway? That you’re a widow - that’s true, ain’t it?” “Yes.” “What about your husband, dead? Killed in the war?” “I’m busy now, must get at my cooking.” “Go ahead, and let me have another cup. Why be in a hurry like that? We’ll be older the next time we see each other. Have you got any children?” “If you’d only go, you got your things, I got no time.” “Now don’t get nasty, I suppose you’re going to get the police, you won’t need ‘em for me, I’ll go, but can’t I finish my coffee? You got no time all of a sudden. The other day you had lots of time, you know what I mean. All right, here’s how, I’m not like that, I’m off.”

  He planks his hat on his head, gets up, shoves the little package under his arm, ambles slowly to the door, has already passed her, then he turns quickly around: “All right now, let’s have the small change.” His left hand stretched out, the index-finger coaxing. She holds her hand before her mouth, little Lüders is close upon her. “You better not yell. I suppose you only give something when you’ve had what you want out of a fellow, you see I know all about that. There’s no secrets among friends.” Damned swinishness, she’s an old sow, with her black dress, I’d really like to box her ears for her, she’s no better than my old woman. The woman’s face is flushed, but only on the right side, the left is snow-white. She has her purse in her hand, rummages in it, but looks at little Lüders with scared eyes. Her right hand offers him several pieces of money. Her expression is strained. His index-finger goes on coaxing. She pours the contents of her purse into his hand. But suddenly he goes back to her room, and snatches up the red embroidered cover from the table. She groans, but otherwise does not let out a sound; she can’t get her mouth open any further and stands quite still in the doorway. He grabs two sofa cushions, then rushes into the kitchen, pulls open the cupboard, searches it. A lot of old junk, gotta run, otherwise she’ll start yelling. There she’s toppling over, let’s get out o’ here.