Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (60 page)

But it doesn’t work so well. One of the volunteers, therefore, insists on fetching an electrolytic machine from the ward across the way, and on galvanizing Franz Biberkopf, that is, the upper part of his body; and after that he directs the galvanic current particularly to the region of the jaws, throat, and palate. That’s the region, he says, which needs special stimulation and excitation.

The older doctors are alive and full of worldly knowledge; they like to take a little constitutional by walking to the detention ward from time to time. They let a lot of things pass. The Head Doctor sits at his table in the consultation-room examining the documents which the head attendant hands him from the left side; the young generation, consisting of the interne and one of the assistants, is standing near the barred window chatting back and forth. The list of soporifics has been checked, the new attendant has been presented and has left the room with the head attendant, the gentlemen are alone and glance through the minutes of the last congress in Baden-Baden. The Head Doctor says: “They’ll soon believe that paralysis is a psychic condition and that spirochetes are nothing but lice that happen to be in the brain. The soul, the soul-it’s simply sentimental modern gush. Medicine soaring on the wings of Song.”

The two gentlemen are silent, smiling inwardly. The older generation talks a lot, after a certain age a calcium deposit begins to form in the brain and nothing new is learnt. The Head Doctor puffs away, goes on signing papers, and continues:

“You see, electricity is all right, anyhow it’s better than all that bunk. But suppose you use a weak current, that wouldn’t help at all. And if you use a strong one, well, then you’ll get the surprise of your life. We found out about it in the war, with that high-tension treatment. We can’t allow that, it’s modern torture.” The two young gentlemen take heart and ask what’s to be done in the Biberkopf case. “We need, first of all, a diagnosis, and, if possible, the right one. In addition to that indisputable soul-you see, we still know our daddy Goethe and Chamisso, even if it’s some time since we read them-there are such things as bleeding at the nose, corns, and broken legs. They must be treated as a decent broken leg or corn demand from a doctor. You may do whatever you please about the broken leg, but it won’t be cured merely by talking, and piano-playing won’t cure it either. What it wants is to be put in a plaster Cast with the bones properly set, and that’ll fix it up. In the same way, a corn wants swabbing, or just a better pair of shoes. The latter cost more, but they’re more practical.” The wisdom of pension privileges, intellectual content: zero. “Well, what’s to be done about this Biberkopf case, what’s the Chief’s opinion?” “Make the right diagnosis. Which, according to my naturally somewhat old-fashioned diagnostics, is called in this case: Catatonic stupor. Unless, of course, there is a serious organic condition back of it, such as tumor of the brain or something in the middle-brain, you remember what we learned during the epidemic of the so-called Spanish influenza; at least what we older men learned. We may perhaps find something sensational in the operating-room, it wouldn’t be the first time.” “Catatonic stupor?” He ought to buy himself a pair of new shoes, that one. “Yes, this rigidity of his, his fits of perspiration, that periodic twitching of the eyes, he observes us intently, but won’t talk or eat, all that looks like catatonic trouble. A malingerer, or a psychogenic case, flops out of his role in the end, but starve, he’ll never go that far.” “And what’s to be done for a man with such a diagnosis, Doctor, that alone won’t help him a great deal.” Now we’ve got him up a tree. The Chief laughs heartily and gets up. He steps to the window and slaps the assistant’s shoulder: “Well, in the first place, he’ll get out of both your clutches, my dear fellow. At least he can take a quiet snooze. That’s an advantage for him. Don’t you think that in the end he gets a bit bored with all the prayers you and your colleague recite over him? As a matter of fact, do you know what I am going to base my iron diagnosis on? You see, I’ve got it. Why, man alive, he would have made a grab for it long ago, if his trouble had been your so-called soul. When a confirmed jail-bird such as he is sees for himself that here are two young gentlemen who, of course, know only a lot of rubbish about him-excuse me, we’re talking between us-and they want to do some prayer-healing with him, well, take it from me, a chap like that has been looking for you all his life. That’s what fills his bill. And then what does he do, may have been doing all along? You see, supposing this fellow has sense and a bit of cunning-” Now the blind chicken thinks it’s found a grain at last. How it cackles and cackles! “But he’s inhibited, Chief, in our view it is a repression, conditioned by a psychic crisis, a loss of contact with reality, due to disappointments, failures, then infantile and instinctive demands on reality and a fruitless attempt to re-establish contact.” “Psychic crisis be damned! In that case he would have other psychic moments. He’d give up those repressions and inhibitions. He’s handing them to you as a Christmas present. In a week he’ll be up and about with your assistance, good Lord, you really are a master-healer, bravo for the new therapy, you can send a telegram of congratulations to Freud in Vienna, a week later the lad is walking in the corridor thanks to your assistance, a miracle, a miracle, hallelujah; in another week he’ll know all about the courtyard, and in another week, he’ll be, hallelujah, hooray, skedaddling and away, thanks to your benevolent assistance.” “I don’t understand, we ought to try it sometime, I don’t agree with you, Chief.” (I know everything, you know nothing, cluck, cluck, we know everything.) “But that’s the way I see it. You’ll find out. It’s a question of experience. All right, now don’t go torturing the fellow, you can believe me, it’s no use.” (I’ll have to go across to House 9, these smart-alecks, nearer my God to thee, what time is it anyway?)

Franz Biberkopf is now unconscious and drifting in space. He is very pale, jaundiced, water swelling at his joints, starvation sickness, he smells of hunger, of sweetish acetone; people entering the room notice at once that something queer is happening there.

Franz’s soul has reached a deep stratum, and consciousness is present only at intervals. The gray mice who live up in the store-room understand him, so do the little squirrels and the field-rabbits leaping outside. The mice sit in their holes, between the detention ward and the big central Buch building. Something flutters from out of Franz’s soul, it roams and searches, sputtering and questioning, it is blind and returns to its tenement which lies still breathing on the bed behind the wall.

The mice invite Franz to join them at their meals and not to be sad. What is it makes him sad, they ask. Then it develops that it is not easy for him to talk. They urge him on, why not make a complete end of it all? Man is a hideous beast: the enemy of enemies, the most loathsome creature on earth, far worse even than the cats.

He says: It is not good to be living in a human body. I’d rather cower under the earth or run across the fields and eat whatever I can find, and the wind blows and rain falls and the cold days come and go, that’s better than living in a human body.

The mice scamper about, and now Franz is a field-mouse, and digs along with them.

In the detention ward he lies in bed, the doctors come and keep his body nourished, but meanwhile he grows paler and paler. Now they themselves admit it: he cannot be sustained any longer. All that was animal in him is wandering in the fields.

Now there slips away from him something that gropes and searches and makes itself free, something that he has felt within himself before, although rarely and dimly. It swims away across the mouse-holes, delving into the grass, groping in the earth, where the plants hide their roots and seeds. Something is talking with them, they are able to understand it, there is a blowing back and forth, a patter, as if the seeds were falling on the ground. Franz’s soul is giving its seed-germs back to the earth. But it is a bad season, cold and frost-bound, who knows how many will be fruitful, although there is much space in the fields, and Franz has many seeds in him, each day he blows out of the house and scatters more seed-germs.

Death sings his slow, slow Song

The Powers of Storm are silent now, another song has started, they all know the song and him who sings it. When he lifts up his voice, they are always silent, even those who on earth happen to be the most impetuous.

Death has begun his slow, slow song, and he sings it like a stammerer, repeating each word; when he has finished singing a verse, he repeats the first before he starts anew. His song is like the hiss of a saw. Quite slowly the saw ascends and then plunges down into the flesh, shrilling louder, clearer and higher, till it comes to the end of a note, and rests. Then it withdraws, slowly, slowly, hissing, higher and clearer grows the note, it shrills, and then it plunges into the flesh once more.

Slowly Death is singing.

“It is time for me to appear beside you, for the seeds are already flying out of the window and you shake your winding-sheet as if you would never lie down again. I am not a mere mower, nor a mere sower, I have to be here because it is my duty to preserve. Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.”

Oh, yes, this is the word Death speaks at the end of each stanza. And when he makes a strong movement, he also sings, oh, yes, because that pleases him. But those who hear it close their eyes, they cannot bear it.

Slowly, slowly, Death is Singing and evil Babylon listens to him, the Powers of Storm listen to him.

“Here I stand and here I must record: He who lies here and offers up his life and his body is Franz Biberkopf. Wherever he may happen to be, he knows where he is going and what he wants.”

That certainly is a beautiful song. Franz hears it and wonders what it means: Death is singing? If it were printed in a book, or read aloud, it would be rather like poetry, Schubert composed such songs, Death and the Maiden, but what about it?

I only want to tell the honest truth, the honest truth, which is: Franz Biberkopf hears Death, this Death, hears him slowly singing, singing like a stutterer, repeating himself over and over again like a saw cutting through wood.

“Franz Biberkopf, I have to record that you are lying here and that you want to come to me. Yes, you were right, Franz, in coming to me. How can a man prosper if he does not seek Death? Death, true and real. You preserved yourself all your life. To preserve, to preserve-that is man’s terrible desire, and thus it stays in one spot, and it can’t go on that way.

“I spoke with you for the first time when Lüders deceived you, you started drinking and - preserved yourself! Your arm broke, your life was in danger, Franz, confess, at no moment did you think of Death, I sent you everything, but you did not recognize me, and when you divined me, you ran away from me, growing more desperate and more frightened. It never entered your head to blame yourself and everything you had undertaken. You clung to force with might and main, and the spasm continues to reign, and it’s no use, you realized it yourself, no use whatever, the moment comes, and vain is all endeavor. Death does not sing a gentle song for you, nor does he place a strangling necklace around your throat. I am life and truest strength, and now at last, at last, you will preserve yourself no longer.”

“What? what! what do you want from me, what do you want to do with me?”

“1 am life and truest strength, my strength is stronger than the biggest guns of war, and you don’t want to live quietly anywhere before me. You want to experience yourself, to test yourself; without me life can mean nothing to you. Come, Franz, draw nearer, that you may really see me, look, in how deep an abyss you lie, but I will show you a ladder, and you will find a new outlook. You will climb up towards me now, I’ll hold the ladder for you, although you have only one arm, catch hold, Franz, your foothold is firm, catch hold, climb up, come.”

“I can’t see a ladder in the dark, where is it, and I can’t climb up with that one arm of mine.”

“You don’t climb with your arm, you climb with your legs.”

“I can’t grasp anything, there’s no sense in what you ask me to do.”

“It’s because you don’t want to come nearer me. All right then, I’ll make a light for you and you’ll find your way.”

Then Death takes his right arm from behind his back, and now it becomes clear why he had concealed it behind his back.

“If you lack the courage to come to me in the dark, I shall make light for you, crawl nearer.”

And a luminous hatchet flashes through the air, it flashes and is extinguished.

“Crawl nearer, nearer.”

He swings the hatchet, and as he swings it up from behind his head, forward and farther forward in an are, following the circle which his arm describes, the hatchet seems to whirl from his hand. But already his hand is rising again from behind his head and it swings another hatchet. It flashes, falls, guillotines in a half circle through the air before him, it strikes, it strikes, and another one whizzes up already, then another one whizzes up, and another.

Swing up, fall down, hack in, swing up, crash down, hack in, swing, fall, hack, swing fall hack, swing hack, swing hack.

And in the flash of the light, while the hatchet swings and flashes and hacks away, Franz creeps and gropes for the ladder; he screams and screams. Franz screams. But he does not crawl back. Franz screams. Death is here.

Franz screams.

Franz screams, creeps forward, screams.

He screams all night long. He got in motion, did Franz.

He screams into the day.

He screams into the forenoon.

Swing fall hack.

Screams into noon.

Screams into the afternoon.

Swing fall hack.

Swing, hack, hack, swing, swing hack, hack, hack.

Swing, hack.

Screams into the evening, into the evening. Night comes.

Screams on into the night, Franz screams into the night.

His body continues to thrust itself forward. One piece after the other is struck from his body on the block. His body automatically thrusts itself forward, it must press forward, he cannot help it. The blade whirls in the air, flashes and falls. Inch by inch he is hacked into pieces. And beyond, beyond those inches his body is not dead, it thrusts itself forward, slowly forward, but nothing falls, everything goes on living.