Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (37 page)

To what heights has our Franz Biberkopf now attained! How well off he is, how things have changed for him! He was on the point of death, and what a resurrection now! What a satiated creature he has become, one who lacks nothing, neither in the line of food, drink, nor clothing. He’s got a girl who makes him happy, he’s got money, more than he needs, all the debt to Herbert has been paid off. Herbert, Eva, and Emil are his friends, and they wish him well. For days on end he sits around at Herbert and Eva’s, waits for Mieze or rides out to Muggel Lake, where he goes canoeing with two other men: for each day Franz is getting more active and stronger in his left arm. From time to time, he also listens in around Munzstrasse, or around the pawnshop.

You swore, Franz Biberkopf, you would stay straight. You led a rotten life, you got under the wheels, in the end you killed Ida and did time for it, that was terrible. And now? You’re sitting on the same old spot. Ida’s name is Mieze, and one of your arms is gone, but look out, you’ll take to boozing, too, and everything will start all over again, only much worse this time, and that’ll be the end of you.

-Hot air, can I help it, did I force myself to become a pimp? A lotta bunk, I say. I did what I could, that’s me. I did everything a man kin do. I let ‘em drive over my arm - I’ll tell the world! I just got about enough of it! Didn’t I go out peddling, didn’t I ankle around from morning till night? Now I got my dander up! No, I ain’t respectable. I’m a pimp. I don’t feel ashamed about that, either. And what are you living off of, off of something different from other people, I suppose? Do I put the screws on anybody, say?

-You’ll end in prison, Franz, somebody’s gonna stick a knife in your guts, yet. -Let ‘em just start with a knife. First, they’ll have to try mine!

The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn’t believe it gets one in the neck. In Kopenicker Strasse at Michaelkirchstrasse there is a meeting, the hall is long and narrow; workers, young men with Schiller collars and green collars sit in rows one behind the other, girls and women and pamphlet-sellers circulate through the hall. On the stage behind the table, between two other men, is a stout, half-bald man; he agitates, baits, laughs, and solicits successively.

“And when you get down to it, we’re not here to talk into thin air. Let’s leave that to the fellows in the Reichstag! Somebody once asked one of our comrades if he wouldn’t like to get into the Reichstag. Into the Reichstag with its golden cupola overhead and club-chairs below. Says he: Y’know, comrade, if I was to do that and go into the Reichstag, it’d be just one more scoundrel. We got no time to talk through our hats, comrades, no phoney stuff for us. The communists say in all sincerity: We’re out to pursue a policy of exposure. We’ve seen what comes out of that; the communists got corrupted themselves, and we need waste no words on their policy of exposure. It’s all a big swindle, even a blind man can see all there is to expose in Germany, and for that we don’t have to go to the Reichstag, but a man who can’t see that, why there’s nothing to be done for him, with or without the Reichstag. That hot-air shop is good for nothing except to soft-soap the people, and all the parties know it, except the so-called representatives of the working classes.

“Our pious socialists. Well, we already see religious socialists in the party, and that’s the last straw: they’ve all got to get religion, so let them run after the priests! For it don’t matter whether the man they all run to is a priest or a bonze, the only thing is: obey. (A voice in the audience: And believe.) Why, that’s understood. The socialists want nothing, know nothing, can do nothing. They always have a majority in the Reichstag, but they don’t know what to do with it, beg pardon, yes, they do: they give them club-chairs to sit on, cigars to smoke, and ministerial jobs. For that the workers gave them their votes, for that they’ve given the pennies from their pockets every pay-day: just another fifty or hundred men who’re going to line their purses at the expense of the workers. The socialists don’t conquer political power, it’s political power that conquers the socialists. We get old as a jackass every day, and are always learning, so they say, but such a jackass as the German worker is yet to be born. Again and again German workers take their ballots in their hands, go to the polls, and vote and think to themselves: well, that’s done. They say: we want to make our voices resound in the Reichstag; well, they’d do better to found a singing-club!

“Comrades, men and women, we’re not going to touch a ballot, we’re not going to take part in the election. A Sunday picnic is better for our health, is what I say. And why? Because the voter is hidebound by legality. But legality is the brute force, the violence of the ruling class. Those tub-thumpers want to mislead us into putting a good face on it, they want to humbug us, to prevent our realizing what legality means. But we won’t vote, because we know well what legality means and what the state is, and there are no holes and doors by which we can penetrate into it. At best, as official donkeys or beasts of burden. And that’s what the electioneers are out for. They want to decoy us and train us as their official donkeys. They attained their aim long ago with the majority of workers. We in Germany are trained in the spirit of legality. But, comrades, you cannot marry fire and water, the worker must understand that.

“The bourgeois parties and the socialists and communists shout in a joyful chorus: All blessings come from above. From the State, from Law, from Order in the highest. But look at the way it works. Certain liberties have been set down in the constitution for everybody who lives in the state. They’ve been set down, all right. But the liberty we need, no one will give us, we must take it ourselves. This constitution is out to batter down the constitution of reasonable people, for what can you do, comrades, with rights which are only on paper, with coded liberty? If you look for liberty anywhere, up comes a cop and knocks you over the bean; if you yell: what’s the matter, the code says so and so, then he replies: None o’ your lip, citizen, and he’s right, he doesn’t recognize any constitution, only his own regulations, and he’s got a club for that, and you’ve got to keep your damned mouth shut.

“Soon there won’t be any possibility for strikes in the principal industries. You’ve got the guillotine of the arbitration committees on your necks, and it’s only under that you can move freely.

“Comrades, men and women, you vote again and again, and you say, this time it’ll be better, just watch us, a little effort, spread your propaganda at home, in the factory, only five more votes, ten more, twelve more, just wait, then you’ll see, then we’ll get things going. Yep. You’ll get ‘em going. Just an eternal blind circle, everything going round the same old way. Parliamentarism prolongs the misery of the workers. They may talk of a crisis of justice, and indeed justice ought to be reformed, reformed lock, stock, and barrel, the juridical body should be renewed, it should be made republican, constitutional, just. But we don’t want new judges. We want, instead of this justice, no justice at all. We must overthrow all state institutions by direct action. We have the weapon: Refusal of labor. All wheels at a standstill. But that’s not a song to be sung out loud. As for us, comrades, we must refuse to be lulled to sleep by parliamentarism, social service, and all such social-political buncombe. We have only one enemy, the government, and our watchwords are: anarchy and self-help.”

Franz walks around the room accompanied by the clever boy Willy, listens in here and there, and buys a few pamphlets which he stuffs into his pocket. He is not made for politics, but Willy hammers away at him and Franz listens curiously. He touches it with his fingers, it touches him, then again it does not touch him. But he does not leave Willy.

-The existing social order is based upon the economic, political, and social enslavement of the working class. It is expressed in the rights of property, monopoly of possession, and in the state monopoly of power. Not the satisfaction of natural human needs, but the expectation of profit is at the basis of modern production. Every technical advance multiplies the wealth of the possessing classes to an infinite degree, in shameless contrast to the misery of vast sections of the community. The state works for the protection of the privileges of the possessing class, and for the oppression of the teeming masses, it acts with weapons of cunning and force for the preservation of monopoly and class distinction. With the genesis of the state begins an age of artificial organization from above down. The individual thus becomes an automaton, a dead wheel in a vast mechanism. We must rouse ourselves! We do not, like all other parties, strive for the conquest of political power, but for its radical elimination. Do not work with the so-called legislative bodies: the slave is invited there only in order that he may impress the seal of law upon his own slavery. We reject all arbitrarily established political and national frontiers. Nationalism is the religion of the modern state. We reject every national unity: behind that lurks the rule of the owning classes, comrades, wake up!-

Franz Biberkopf swallows what Willy gives him to swallow. There follows a debate after the meeting, and they stay on and join in a discussion with an older worker. Willy knows him; the worker thinks that Willy is a comrade from the same trade as his own, and urges him to agitate more effectively. Cocky Willy just laughs and laughs: “Say, since when are we co-workers? I’m not employed by the coal barons.” “Well, then, do something, wherever you are, wherever you work.” “I don’t have to do nothin’. Where I work, they all learnt long ago what they got to do.” Willy leans over the table, he laughs so hard. That’s a lot of bunk, he pinches Franz’s leg, one of these days a fellow’ll come running around here with a pastepot, sticking up posters for ‘em. He laughs at the workman, who has long iron-gray hair and wears his shirt open at his chest: “You sell those papers, eh, the
Priests’ Mirror,
the
Black Flag,
and the
Atheist?
But did you ever look to see what’s in ‘em?” “Now, listen here, comrade, you needn’t open your trap half that wide. Me, I’m gonna show you what I wrote myself.” “Aw, cut it out. Wanta show off, don’t you? But one of these days maybe you’ll read what you wrote yourself and stick to it. For instance; it says here: Civilization and Technology. Listen: ‘Egyptian slaves spent many decades working without machines to build a royal grave; European workers toil at machines for decades to build a private fortune. Progress? Perhaps. But for whom?’ Well, I’ll be going to work myself one of these days so that Krupp in Essen or Borsig may have a thousand marks more a month, like a sort of Berlin king. Say, old man, if I look straight atcha, what do I see anyway? You’re out to be a man of direct action. Where do you keep it, eh? I don’t see nothing. D’you see anything, Franz?” “Aw, leave him go, Willy.” “Now, tell me, Franz, if you can see what’s the difference between this comrade here and a fellow from the Socialist Party.”

The worker settles himself solidly in his chair. Willy: “For myself, I don’t see no difference, comrade, and that’s a fact. The only difference is on paper, in the newspapers. All right, as far as I am concerned, have it your way. But watcha gonna do with it, that’s what I’d like to know. And if you want to ask me what you do, why, then I’ll answer right off the bat: exactly the same thing as a man from the S. P. Exactly, precisely the same thing: you stand in front of a turning-lathe, you carry your coupla pfennigs home with you, and your corporation pays out dividends on your work. European workers toil at machines for decades to build a private fortune. I guess you wrote that by yourself.”

The gray-haired worker lets his eyes rove from Franz to Willy, he looks around again and sees a few men standing at the bar behind him. The worker moves closer to the table and whispers: “Well, what do you do?” Willy flashes across to Franz: “You tell him.” Franz doesn’t want to at first, he says political conversations do not interest him. But the gray-haired worker keeps hammering away at him: “This here is no political conversation. We are just talking about ourselves. What kind of work do you do?”

Franz draws himself up in his chair and grabs his beer-mug and looks steadily at the anarchist. There is a mower, death yclept. In the mountains will I take up a weeping and a wailing, and for the habitation of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up so that none can pass through them, both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled, they are gone.

“What I work at, I can tell you that, my friend, for I’m not a comrade. I go about, do a bit here and there, but I don’t do any work, I let other people work for me.”

He’s giving me a lot of bunk, they’re poking fun at me. “Then you must be an employer, with people working under you, how many have you got? And what do you want here, anyway, if you’re a capitalist?” I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons, and I will lay the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.

“Say, don’t you see I only got one arm. The other one’s gone. That’s what I paid for working. That’s why I don’t want to listen to any more talk about respectable work, get me?” Get that, get that, open your lamps, shall I buy you a pair of specs, eh, go ahead and make goggle-eyes all you want. “Nope, can’t say I understand yet, pardner, what kind of work you’re in. If it ain’t respectable, why, I guess it must be a disreputable sort o’ job.”

Franz bangs his fist on the table, points his finger at the anarchist and thrusts his head towards him: “Y’see, he’s tumbled to it now! That’s it, all right! Disreputable. All your decent work is slavery, didn’t you say so yourself, that’s what decent work is. Yep, and that’s what I found out.” Spotted that without you, too, didn’t need your help for that, you soft-soaper, you ink-splasher, you bunk-artist.

The anarchist, who is a skilled mechanic, has lean white hands. He looks at his finger-tips and muses: It’s a good thing to show up such crooks, they compromise a fellow. I’m gonna call somebody to listen to him. He gets up, but Willy holds him back: “Where you going, old man? Are we through already? You better settle things up with my pal here first. Trying to slip off, eh?” “I’m just going to get a fellow to listen to this, you’re two against one.” “What’s that, you say you’re gonna get somebody? But I don’t want anybody. Here, what were ye saying to my friend here’)” The anarchist sits down again, we’ll have it out alone, then. “So he’s not a comrade, and he’s not a fellow-worker. For he don’t work. And he don’t seem to be getting the dole, either.”