Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (12 page)

They are all silent. Franz opines: “Yes, that’s what he composed, came from Hannover, but I memorized it. Nice, heh, it’s something for life, but bitter, too.”

From across the way: “Well, you’d better keep it in mind, that stuff about the State, the good old father State, who rags and irks, the State. To memorize it, comrade, that’s not all.” Franz still has his head in his hand, the poem is still there: “Yes, they haven’t got any oysters or caviar, and neither have we. To have to earn his bread, must be hard for a poor devil. Still a man should be glad he can walk about, and is out of it all.” The men across the way start shooting again, the fool’s going to wake up yet. “A man can earn his bread in many ways. Why, they used to have spies in Russia in the old days, they earned a lot of money with that.” The other newcomer trumpets: “And there’s other fellows here, too, who sit up there by the feed trough; they betrayed the working man to the capitalist, and what’s more, they’re paid for it.” “They’re no better than whores.” “Worse.”

Franz thinks about his poem and wonders what those nice boys are doing out there, they probably got some new ones by now, patrol wagons come and go every day; but then they shout: “Let her go! What about our song? We got no music, you’re a man of your word, ain’t you?” Another song, well. I’ll give it to ‘em. I’ll keep my promise. First I’ll wet my whistle.

And Franz orders a fresh mug, takes a nip, what’ll 1 sing? For the moment he sees himself standing in the courtyard, bellowing something at the walls, funny things a fellow thinks about, now what was it? And calmly and slowly he sings, it flows forth: “1 once had a faithful comrade, Never better could there be, The trumpet echoed wihidely, He firmly marched besihide me, There step for step with me, There step for step with me.” Rest. He sings the second stanza: “One ball wing’d by death came flying, Is it sent for me or thee? Torn away from life and dyhying, As at my feet he’s lyhying, He seems a part of me, He seems a part of me.” And loudly the last stanza: “His hand he strives to give to me, 1 meanwhile my gun must load, No time have I to grahasp it. Until again I clahasp it, In yon eternal abode, In yon eternal abode.”

At the end he sings loudly, solemnly, leaning back; boldly he sings and with a sense of satiety. Towards the close the fellows across the way have conquered their amazement, they howl with him and beat on the table, and scream and start acting the fool: “Until again I clahasp it.” But while he was singing, Franz remembered what he really wanted to sing. He had been standing in the courtyard, he’s satisfied now that he’s found it, he doesn’t care where he is; he’s in the midst of singing now, out with it, he has got to sing the song, the Jews are there, they begin to quarrel, what was the Pole’s name, what was that fine old gentleman’s name; tenderness, gratitude; he blares it into the cafe: “There comes a call like thunder’s peal. Like billow’s roar and clash of steel. The Rhine, the German Rhine so free, Yes we will all thy guardians be, Dear Fatherland, be comfort thine, Dear Fatherland, be comfort thine, Firm stands and true the watch, the watch on the Rhine, Firm stands and true the watch, the watch on the Rhine.” That’s over with now, we know that, and here we sit, and life’s nice, nice, everything’s nice.

Then they grow quite silent, one of the newcomers calms them down, they let this pass; Dreske sits humped together and scratches his head, the proprietor steps up from behind the bar, sniffles and sits down at the table beside Franz. Franz at the end of his song salutes the whole of life, he swings his mug: “Cheerio,” beats on the table, beams, everything’s all right, he has eaten his fill, wonder where Lina’s gone to, he pats his full face, he’s a strong man, plenty of flesh with a touch of fat. Nobody answers. Silence.

One of the men across the way swings his leg over his chair, buttons his coat up, tightens his belt, a tall erect fellow, one of the newcomers; the applecart’s upset all right. He goose-steps towards Franz, who’ll get a crack on the head, that is, if the newcomer can reach him. With a hop he straddles Franz’s table. Franz looks on, waiting: “Look here, there must be other chairs in the place.” But he points down at Franz’s plate: “What you been eatin’?” “Didn’t I tell you, there must be other chairs in the place, if you only use your eyes. Say, your mother musta given you a bath that was too hot for you when you were a kid, didn’t she?” “That’s not the point. I want to know what you been eating.” “Cheese sandwiches, you jackass. Don’t you see the rind, you numbskull. Now you get down from the table, if you got no manners.” “They were cheese sandwiches all right, 1 can smell that for myself. Only where from?”

But Franz leaps up with flushed ears, the men at the other table do the same. Franz has grabbed his table, tipped it over, and the newcomer, with plate, mug, and mustard pot, falls plump down on the floor. The plate is broken. Henschke expected that, and stamps on the pieces: “Nothing doing, no brawls in my place, no scrapping here, if you don’t keep quiet, you’ll get thrown out. “ The long-legged chap is on his feet again, shoves the proprietor aside: “Just leave us alone here, Henschke, there ain’t going to be any fight. We’re settling accounts. If anybody breaks anything, he’ll have to pay for it.” With heart and with soul, thinks Franz, who has squeezed himself against the window in front of the blinds, here goes, if those fellows only don’t touch me, boy, if they only don’t touch me: I feel kind towards everybody, but there’s going to be trouble, if that fellow’s silly enough to touch me.

The tall man pulls up his trousers, well, he’s off. Franz sees there’s something coming, what’s Dreske going to do now, I wonder, he’s just standing there and looking on. “Georgie, what kind of a cheap guy is this anyway, where did you pick up this louse you’re dragging round here?” The tall man was fussing with his trousers, they’re slipping down most likely, ought to get some new buttons sewed on. He gibes at the proprietor: “Just let ‘em talk. We let Fascists talk, too. Whatever they say, they get freedom of speech from us.” And Dreske Signals towards the back with his left arm. “Nope, Franz, I didn’t mix in this, the trouble you get yourself into with your songs, and everything, nope, I won’t mix in it, we never had that kind of thing here before.”

There comes a call like thunder’s peal, aha! that song I sang in the courtyard, they want to razz me about that, they’d like to say something about that, too.

“Fascist, bloodhound.” The tall fellow roars at Franz: “Gimme that arm-band! And be quick about it.”

Now it’s going to start, the four of ‘em want to get at me, I’ll stand with my back to the window, first of all let’s get a chair. “Lemme have that arm-band. I’ll pull it out of his pocket. I want to get that band from this guy.” The others are with him. Franz has the chair in his hands. First get hold of him. Hold him first. Then I’ll pull it out.

The proprietor holds onto the tall chap from behind, and pleads: “Now Biberkopf, you better go, right away, just get out.” He’s worrying about his premises, probably hasn’t had his panes insured, well, it’s all right with me. “Henschke, of course, there’s plenty other saloons in Berlin, I was only waiting for Lina. So you’re going to help those fellows? Why do they want to push a man out, when I come here every day and those fellows are here for the first time?” The proprietor has pushed the tall chap back, the other, the newcomer, spits out: “Because you’re a Fascist, you got that band in your pocket, you’re a swastika man.”

“So I am, I told Georgie Dreske all about it, too. And why? You don’t understand and that’s why you holler.” “No, it was you who hollered, the Watch on the Rhine.” “If you start a row, like you did just now, and one of you sits down at my table, you’ll never get any peace in this world that way. Not that way. And there’s got to be peace so we can work and live. Factory hands and tradespeople and everybody, and some kind of order, otherwise you can’t work. And how do you want to make your living, you big-mouthed slobs? What you do is to get soused on talking. All you know is bow to start a row and bait other people till they get mad and land you one. Are you going to let anybody step on your toes?”

Suddenly be begins to shout, what’s come over him, something bubbles up in him, something’s been released, his eyes become bloodshot: “You criminals, you, you lousy fools, why, you don’t know what you’re doing, somebody has got to beat hell out of you, you ruin the whole world, just watch out you don’t get into trouble, you blood-spillers, you crooks, you.”

He is bubbling over, he’s done time in Tegel, life is awful, what kind of a life is this, the fellow who wrote that song is right, I mustn’t think about what happened to me, Ida.

And he goes on shouting with a feeling of horror, what’s going to happen there, he wards it off, he steps on it, he must bellow, bellow it down. The cafe roars, Henschke stands before him at the table, dares not come near him, standing there like that with that roaring coming out of his throat all topsy-turvy and foaming: “And none of you’s got anything to say to me, not one of you can tell me anything, not a single one of you, I know all that better than you do, I didn’t go to the front and lie in the trenches for this, so you could bait me, you agitators, we’ve gotta have order, order, I’m telling you, order-and put that in your pipes and smoke it, order and nothing else” (yes, that’s it, here we are, that’s just it), “and if anybody comes and starts a revolution now and don’t give us order, they ought to be strung up all along the street” (black poles, telegraph poles, a whole row on the Tegel Road, I know all about that) “then they’ll get theirs, when they swing, yes, sir. You might remember that whatever you do, you criminals.” (Yes, then we’ll have order, then they’ll be quiet, that’s the only thing to do, we’ll find that out.)

A frenzy, a numbness comes over Franz Biberkopf. Blindly he croaks in his throat, his eyes are glassy, his face blue, bloated, he spits, his hands burn, the man’s out of his mind. His fingers claw the chair, but he manages to hold on to it. Soon he will take the chair and haul out.

Danger ahead, clear the streets, load, fire, fire, fire.

At the same time this roaring man hears his own voice, from far away, is looking at himself. The houses, the houses threaten to cave in again, the roofs to smash over him, this won’t do, no, they can’t get away with that, those criminals won’t succeed, what we need is order.

Something buzzes inside him: it’s going to start soon and I’m going to do something, grab a throat, no, no, I’m about to topple over, fall down, another moment, just one moment more. And me thinking the world is quiet, there is law and order. In his twilight state he is frightened: something is out of gear with the world, the others seem so terrible to him, he experiences it with a sort of clairvoyance.

But once in Paradise there lived two beings, Adam and Eve. Paradise was the wonderful garden of Eden. Birds and animals played about. Well, if that fellow isn’t crazy. They’re not moving, the tall one, too, is puffing away back there through his nose and blinking at Dreske; we’d better sit down at the table, then we can talk about something else. Dreske stutters during the calm: “Well, Franz, you’d better be going, you might let go of that chair, too, you’ve talked enough now.” Things are calming down inside Franz, the cloud is passing over. Passing over. Thank God, passing over. His face grows paler and paler, becomes less tense.

They stand at their table. The tall fellow is seated drinking. The woodmanufacturers boast about their receipts, Krupp lets his pensioners starve to death, a million and a half unemployed, an increase of 226,000 in two weeks.

The chair bas fallen from Franz’s hand, his hand has become soft his voice sounds as usual, he still holds his head bowed, they don’t excite him any more: ‘T1I go then. The pleasure is all mine. What’s in your heads is none of my business.”

They listen without replying. Let those contemptible scoundrels, belonging to a renegade clique, slander the Soviet constitution with the approval of the bourgeoisie and the social chauvinists. It bu t. hastens and deepens the rupture of the revolutionary workers of Europe with the Scheidemen, and their likes. The masses of the oppressed classes are with us.

Franz picks up his cap: “I’m sorry, Georgie, for us to separate like this.” He holds out his hand, Dreske does not take it, sits down on his chair. Blood must bubble, blood must bubble, in currents muggy and thick.

“All right then, I’ll go. How much do I owe, Henschke, and don’t forget the glass and the plate. “

That’s his kind of order. For 14 children a china cup. A charity edict by Hirtsiefer, the Centrist minister: Publication of this edict shall be omitted. But because of the paucity of the means put at my disposal only those cases can be considered where not only the number of children has reached a very high figure - let us say 12 - but also where the careful education of the children with respect to economic conditions involves a special sacrifice and is nevertheless carried out in an exemplary manner.

One of the fellows shouts after Franz: “Greet you in victory, hail - potatoes with a herring’s tail.” Ought to wipe the mustard off his backsides, the louse. Too bad I didn’t get my claws on him. Franz has his cap on. He is thinking about the Hackesche Market, the fairies, the whitehead’s stand with the magazines, and he didn’t want to do it, he hesitates, he leaves.

He is outside in the cold. Lina, who happens to be just arriving, is standing directly in front of the cafe. He walks slowly. He’d give anything to go back and tell those fellows how crazy they are. They sure are crazy, they get all boozed up, they’re not really all like that, not even the tall, nervy fellow who flopped down on the floor. Only they don’t know what to do with all that blood, yes, sir, their blood’s hot, if they were out in Tegel, or had something behind them, they’d find out a thing or two, maybe a hundred things.

He takes Lina’s arm, looks around the dark street. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few more street-lamps. What do those people want anyway, first the fairies, who don’t concern me, and now the Reds? What have I got to do with all this, let ‘em clean up their own dirt. Ought to leave a fellow be; you can’t even finish your beer in peace. What I really would like to do would be to go back and smash Henschke’s whole outfit into smithereens. Something flares and flickers again in Franz’s eyes, his forehead and nose become thick. But that passes, he sticks close to Lina, he scratches her wrist, she smiles: “That’s all right, Pranzeken, that’s a nice Ii’l scratch you gave me.”