The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse

THE HUSTLER

The Story of A Nameless Love
from Friedrichstrasse

Translated by

Hubert Kennedy

Copyright © 2002 by Hubert Kennedy.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to
any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
 

PART ONE
 

PART TWO
 

PART THREE
 

PART FOUR
 

PART FIVE
 

AFTERWORD
 

INTRODUCTION 

The first edition of my translation of John Henry Mackay’s
The Hustler
appeared in 1985 (Alyson Publications, Boston; Sasha Alyson was still the owner-publisher). It has been out-of-print for several years, so that a new edition now seems called for—along with a revision of the translation, for in an attempt to make the novel “flow more smoothly” the editor had trimmed my rather literal translation. I had forgotten how much until once more, after many years, I compared that version with the original German. And—I should add—my acquaintance in the meantime with Mackay’s writings showed me a number of errors in translation. For example, in my attempt to make the story clear I often put the names of the characters in place of the pronouns “he” and “him.” I discovered that I sometimes got them wrong, so I have now left Mackay’s pronouns in and trust the reader to straighten them out. Nor did I earlier trust the reader to know the distinction between the German personal pronouns: the familiar “Du” (used between close friends) and the more formal “Sie.” Each must be translated as “you,” but when the characters in the novel refer to the distinction, I have now given the German words.

The result is a return to a more literal translation—not a word-for-word translation, but a closer adherence to the original text as well as to Mackay’s own writing style: short paragraphs, repetitions designed to pace the reader through the story and heighten the suspense—so that the present edition is nearly four percent longer than the first. In short, having immersed myself in Mackay’s writings over the years—and having followed
The Hustler
with five other volumes of Mackay translations—I have come to appreciate the force of his personal style, which is superficially simple, but carefully constructed—and very effective.

Beginning in 1905, the Scotch-German writer John Henry Mackay (1864-1933), using the pseudonym Sagitta, began a literary campaign for the recognition of man-boy love with several works in various genres; the first were suppressed by the government, but all were published underground in 1913. The relative freedom of the Weimar Republic allowed him to reprint those works in a one-volume edition in 1924. Two years later he followed this with his last work as Sagitta, the long novel
Der Puppenjunge
(which I have translated as
The Hustler;
the title will be explained in my afterword). All the Sagitta writings were reprinted in a two-volume edition in 1979 (simultaneously published by the Verlag rosa Winkel, Berlin, and the Verlag der Mackay-Gesellschaft, Freiburg/Breisgau). I first became acquainted with the novel in this edition and, encouraged by Kurt Zube, secretary of the Mackay-Gesellschaft, spent several months translating it while on a sabbatical leave in Munich in 1982-1983. I followed that translation with a number of articles on Mackay’s writings as well as other translations, and Mackay has continued to be a special interest.

When a new edition of
Der Puppenjunge
was planned for 1999, I was asked to write an afterword for it. It was this that prompted me to return to the novel, and I was once again reminded of its timely theme—and Mackay’s passionate, yet objective treatment of it. I wanted to make it available again in an English edition worthy of the original.

Thus I hope that the numerous readers who enjoyed the first edition of
The Hustler
will also want to revisit the story in its new appearance. I believe they will discover further depths to the story and appreciate more its historical context. And of course I hope that this edition will introduce Mackay’s unique novel to a new generation of readers. In our time, which has demonized intergenerational love, Mackay’s novel of “a nameless love from Friedrichstrasse” is the classic document of the agonies, triumphs, and defeats of this love “like any other love.”

Hubert Kennedy

“If one of them would once fall in love with me, then I would really take
advantage of him!” (Saying of the hustler and pimp Arthur Klemke, called “the
refined Atze,” from Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.)

*

“Trotter, trotter . . . toujours trotter!” (Saying of the Petit Jesus Andre Devie from
the great boulevards in Paris.) [“Petit Jesus” was a term for a young hustler in
Paris in the 1920s. HK]

PART ONE 

1

Punctually on schedule the four o’clock afternoon train from the northern part of Germany rolled into the Stettin Train Station.

The travelers streamed out, crowding and jamming the gates, then dispersed—to be met or not—into the large room, finally to be drawn out in thin streams from the various exits, and to submerge and disappear in the life outside.

The hall was again empty, as it had been a half hour earlier.

Only in its middle did there still stand, as if lost, a boy about fifteen or sixteen years old, looking around indecisively. He wore a gray, wrinkled, ill-fitting suit, heavy boots, and a yellow sports cap, and in his hand he carried a simple cardboard box wrapped around many times with string.

Eventually he seemed to have found what he was looking for. He resolutely walked up to the hand luggage checkroom, handed over the check piece, and, when he wanted to pay right away, was promptly—for he was now in Berlin—growled at: “When you pick it up!” A minute later he was standing at the entrance to the train station, the great city and its boisterous life before him.

He was again hesitant and still expectant. For what he saw here—the flood of human activity, the confusion of vehicles of all kinds, the noise and bluster, all immersed in a haze of smoke and the humidity of the spring afternoon—was completely new to him and stunned him.

But not for too long.

Once more, he pulled himself together, turned instinctively to the right, and resolutely set foot on the pavement of Berlin, which from that moment, for the duration of the coming year, was to be his true home.

*

Letting himself be pressed and shoved, he reached a street so long that it seemed never to end and turned into it, stopping in front of every fourth shop. Driven and pushed along again, he eventually halted spellbound before the show window of a men’s clothing store. There, among an enormous quantity of splendid things, were straw hats. He must have something like that, he felt. But which?—the one with the thick ribbing or the one with the colorful band? The price written by each was the same—three marks. He could not decide. He liked both. The colorful one won out.

He gathered up what courage still remained to him since fleeing home and rolled his yellow cap into the side pocket of his jacket. Without speaking he pointed out the desired article to the young salesman. The hat was put on, fit, and became his.

Happy again outside, he looked at himself for a long time in the mirror window of the shop. Finding himself handsome, he contentedly walked on.

This street really did seem to have no end. He walked and walked—stopped and walked on. Coming to a wide bridge on which work was being done, he saw black water under it and a huge train station stretching over the street. The street grew narrower and narrower, but then, quite suddenly, spread to the right and left, becoming very broad and open, with trees in the middle and tall buildings on either side. He was on Unter den Linden—under the linden trees.

*

It was still early in the evening, hardly six, and still quite light. The wide street was busy in its middle and especially on the south side, and all the benches among the trees were filled with people on this splendid spring afternoon.

The boy was able to find a place on the edge of a bench. He was tired from the long train trip, the walk through the strange streets to here, and all the new and unfamiliar things.

Between the cabs that stopped just in front of him, he could peer through to the incessant flood of automobiles that jammed up when the passage into Friedrichstrasse became closed for a moment. The cabs stopped and pushed on again, sliding through and disappearing, their horns sounding awful. Buses, heavily loaded with people, stopped and then rocked around the corner like monstrous animals making their way through the swarm of little creatures. But motorcycles and bicycles just darted through the throng, and the boy stared in amazement, marveling that the riders, plus the people who so carelessly walked through it all across the street, were not crushed under the thick wheels of iron and rubber.

When he had seen enough, he looked up. An immense yellow building was precisely opposite. As his eyes slid down it, he read over its entrance—an entrance to a high hallway, it appeared—on a semicircle, in black letters, the word: PASSAGE.

Passage! He had heard that word once; and it could have been none other than Max, Max Friedrichsen, who had named it for him (on that afternoon). He had repeatedly talked about Friedrichstrasse and the Passage, and had smiled so peculiarly.

He leaned over to see better. Yes, it was obviously the entrance to another street. People were streaming in and out of it in masses, and some were just standing around.

He wanted to see where it led to if you went inside.

He got up, had to wait until the traffic allowed him to cross, and then entered the hall. For it was a hall, as he now saw, very high and covered with a roof of glass. On both sides were shops.

He began to examine them. The first ones he saw did not interest him. Chocolate and cigarettes could be found elsewhere. But then, to the right, where some people were gathered in a knot, an unheard-of splendor opened up before him. There, behind high panes, were hanging and standing some wonderful pictures whose brilliancy of color blinded his eyes: pictures of beautiful women in sumptuous gowns, of proud men in colorful uniforms, of sweet children and lovely girls. Plus, far in the background—he had pushed his way through so as to see everything—there towered, magically lit, entirely in white and larger than life, the grand figure of a woman with blond hair, a crown on her head, shield and sword in her hands, gazing victoriously into the distance. He did not know what the picture was supposed to represent. But he did know that it was the most beautiful thing he had seen, today or ever, and he could not part from the enchanting sight.

Finally, he did tear himself away and walked on. After what he had just seen, the other shops didn’t attract him as much.

Only at one with odd tools, small machines, wires, and coils, with strange and unintelligible names on their tags did he again stand for a long time, perplexed about the instruments’ purposes.

Why were the people here pushing and shoving so? he wondered. It was even worse than it had been in the street. And just what did that guy want from him, the one who kept standing beside him, who seemed to be talking to himself? Again and again when he moved off, the stranger placed himself beside him and nudged him—intentionally or not?—with his elbow, leering sideways as he did so. He was a repulsive man with hollow eyes and protruding cheekbones.

The boy left the window with the incomprehensible objects and crossed to the other side. There he saw a case containing tools of magic equipment—dice boxes, decks of mysterious cards, a skull—things such as a traveling magician and illusionist had used to delight the audience in his home village once. He recalled that time as he looked at the paraphernalia in front of him.

But he was nudged here too. Again a man was standing close beside him. Not the same one as before, but a taller, fatter man, who said nothing, but smiled at him familiarly. What did this man want from him? It gave him an uncanny feeling.

He walked on into the middle of the hurrying, driving human flood. The hall made a sharp bend and opened above to a high dome. A cafe with a porch was here and music sounded from it. He stopped to listen.

And again he felt that someone was standing beside or behind him, looking at him. He no longer dared to look up, for fear of meeting those looks again. Just what did all these men want from him? Surely no one knew him! Was he already being pursued? But that was just not possible—who could know that he was here!

With this feeling of uneasiness and fear, his only thought was to get out of this throughway as quickly as possible and he pressed toward the other exit, which he could already see. But he did not get ahead so quickly in the crowd.

Finally he reached the exit, and the streets opened out before him again. He stood still, removed his new hat and wiped his forehead with his dirty handkerchief. Now he would be safe here.

But no: as he looked up he felt a gaze on his face again, the gaze of a quite young man who was standing close in front of him and looking at him, but not maliciously or obtrusively. He was also not smiling or questioning, but was obviously aroused as if about to speak to him. Fear gripped him anew; hat and handkerchief still in hand, he began to run. He ran across the street, between the automobiles, by the entrance of a subway, over the avenue, and down a street on the other side, on and on, without looking up or around, as if he were pursued. He ran down a side street and continued on farther, until he arrived in a large square, in front of a tall building and beside a low church that stood by itself.

*

There he finally halted and looked around. No one appeared to be following. There were benches all around but he did not sit down. He walked on and on, down new streets until he found himself on a street that was quiet and empty of people. He looked around again. No, no one was following him. He was all alone here.

More slowly and calmly, he strode on farther. He passed over a large square and across a bridge, going always into new streets, but narrower and poorer ones. Suddenly he felt hungry, but he dared not go into a pub. They all looked sinister, and through their open doors he saw noisy, drinking men standing around at the bars by the entrances. Only at the next bakery did he buy himself a couple of rolls and eat them as he wandered along.

He decided he should look up Max, but it was already almost too late in the day for that. Besides, how was he to find the street where Max lived? It was certainly far away, a couple of hours away. He could no longer make it today with his tired feet.

He would like to sleep now. Should he return to the train station? He had seen hotels there. But there must be hotels in other regions of Berlin.

He began to pay attention to the signs on buildings. It was not long before he read over the door of an old and narrow building: “Guest House.” In the doorway stood a man in shirtsleeves and an apron. The boy approached hesitantly.

“Could I perhaps sleep here?”

“Sleep? Well, why not? You have money then, kid?” the man replied.

“Yes, I have money.”

“ How much?”

Then, as he gave no answer, the man said with a watchful side glance, “Can you pay five marks?”

It startled him at first—five marks! But then he nodded yes.

“Well, just come along then.”

He was led two flights up to a tiny hole where, except for a wobbly bed and chair, there was only a kind of washbasin made of sheet metal. He put a five-mark bill in the landlord’s red, dirty fist, and was left alone.

Dead tired now from the long and exciting day, he stripped off his jacket, pants, and boots, and fell immediately asleep in the unclean bed before he had the time to reflect clearly about the shameless fleecing he had just taken from the beast of an innkeeper.

2

That same day and—as chance would have it—almost at the same hour, at another train station in Berlin, the Potsdam Train Station, a another traveler arrived from far in the south of Ger-many—a young man, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three years old. He, too, was coming here for the first time. But he had become familiar with the major streets and squares of the capital from books and maps, so he quickly and surely found his way around. After he had washed and changed clothes in the Furstenhof, where he had taken a small room on the top floor, almost everything seemed to him, as he slowly walked along, to be recognizable, even familiar—the lively square, the unique construction of the department store on Leipziger Strasse (in front of which he stood for a long time), the Tiergarten, and of course, the splendid gate with the row of trees and buildings—Unter den Linden. He was in no hurry to enter it. He sat for a while, not wearily—though the trip was indeed long, it had been comfortable—on one of the chairs at the nearby lake, enjoying the afternoon hour of this already warm spring day. The first, tender green of the trees, the mild sweetness of the air, the happy feeling of at last being in the great city, for which he had secretly yearned for so long—without being able to say exactly why—all of this filled him with an inner cheerfulness that was usually almost foreign to his serious nature.

After an hour he rose, strode through the gate, and gazed down the broad street. Unter den Linden lay before him in its entire length. It charmed him with its newly fresh garment of trees, even though he had imagined the trees and the buildings would be taller and more majestic. Joyful as always at the sight of something beautiful, he strode down it.

The human and vehicular traffic was lively, but not overpowering. One flower shop looked magnificent with its profuse splendor of blooms, and beside it a quite tiny one for a single kind of perfume was thoroughly in the best taste.

He stopped before them, but preferred to keep to the middle where there was more elbow room and he could better survey the lovely street on both sides, all the way to its far end.

After a stroll that seemed short to him, he saw the long, narrow street that cut across the width of Unter den Linden, and he knew immediately that he had reached Friedrichstrasse. He felt not the least desire to plunge into its thick and loud traffic. Instead he sat down, somewhat apart, on a folding rental chair and let the traffic just pass by him.