Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (61 page)

People from the outside walk past his bed, stand at his bed and raise his eyelids to see if the reflexes are still active. They feel his pulse, which is no more than a thread, and they hear nothing of all his outcry. They only see that Franz has opened his mouth, they think he is thirsty, and they cautiously pour a few drops into it, let’s hope he won’t vomit again, a good thing his teeth aren’t clenched any more. How on earth does a man manage to keep alive that long?

“I am suffering. I am suffering.” “It is well that you are suffering. There is nothing better than suffering for you.”

“Oh, do not let me suffer. Make an end of it.”

“It is useless to do that. The end is near.”

“Make an end of it. It lies in your hands to do so.”

“I have only a hatchet in my hand. Everything else lies in your hand.”

“What have I in my hand? Make an end of it.”

Now the voice changes entirely and grows to a roar.

Rage immeasurable, rage uncontrolled, insensate rage, wholly immeasurable, ravening rage.

“So it has come to this, that I stand here and talk with you. That I stand here like a knacker or an executioner and choke you like a venomous, snapping beast. I called you again and again, and you take me for a mere talking-machine, a phonograph to turn on, whenever you please, then I have to call you, and when you have enough, you simply stop the record. That’s what you take me for, or that’s whatcha take me for. Go ahead and take me for it, but I tell you you are wrong.”

“What did I do, heh? Haven’t I taken enough trouble about it? I don’t know nobody else who had things happen to ‘im like I did, such wretched, miserable things.”

“You were never there, you dirty louse, you. I ain’t never seen Franz Biberkopf in my life. When I sent you Lüders, you didn’t open your eyes, you went down like a house o’ cards, and then you got boozed up and you went swiggin’ away, swiggin’ nothing but liquor and again liquor.”

“I wanted to be a decent man, and that guy put one over on me.”

“You didn’t open your eyes, you poor fool! You curse and swear about crooks and their doin’s, but you never look at people, and you don’t ask about the how and why. What a fine judge o’ men you are, where are your eyes? You’ve been blind, and pretty cocky at that, turning your nose up at the world, Herr Franz Biberkopf of Swankville, asking the world to be exactly like you’d like to be. It’s different, m’boy, and now you notice it. It don’t worry about you. When Reinhold grabbed you and kicked you under the car, your arm was run over, but did our Franz Biberkopf collapse then? Lying under the wheels he swore: I’m goin’ to be strong! He didn’t say, not he: let’s think a minute, pull yourself together, old fellow. No, sir, he said: I want to be strong. And you didn’t want to notice that I was talking to you. But now you’re listening to me.”

“What d’y mean ‘notice’?”

“And finally Mieze-Franz, shame, shame on you. Say it. Shame, come on, yell: Shame!”

“I can’t. I don’t know why I should.”

“Yell shame! She came to you, a lovely girl, protected you and was happy with you, and you, what did you care about a human being, a flower-like human being; why, you go and brag about her to Reinhold. The greatest feelin’ we ever had. But you, all you wanted was to be strong. It gave you pleasure to fence with Reinhold, and to show your superiority, and then you went and got him excited about her. Now think it over, isn’t it your fault she’s dead? And you didn’ t shed a tear over her, the girl who died for you, just for you.

“A lotta palaver from you about ‘I’ and ‘I,’ and ‘the wrong I’m suffering,’ and what a noble man 1am, how fine I am, and nobody wants to let me show what kind of a guy I am. Say shame. Yell shame!”

“How do I know?”

“You’ve lost the war, young man. It’s all over with you, my son. You can chase yourself. Let ‘em put you away with the moths. I’ve struck you off my list, and you can howl and whine as long as you like. You’re a rotten specimen all right. Got a heart and a head and eyes and ears and he thinks it’s a good thing to be decent, what he calls decent, but he sees nothing, hears nothing, and goes on living like a fool, unaware of anything people might do for him.”

“Well, what, what do you want a feller to do?”

Death is roaring now: “Nothin’, I’m tellin’ you, don’t talk rubbish to me. You got no bean, no ears. Why, you’re not even born yet, you never saw the light of day. An abortion with hallucinations. Our Pope Biberkopf, he had to be born with cocky ideas, just to show us the way things are. The world needs fellows that are different from you, brighter ones who are a bit less cocky and can see how things actually are-not just made of sugar, but of sugar and dirt, and the whole caboodle mixed up. Out with your heart, you fool, and have done with youl I’ll throw it into the dirt where it belongs. You can keep your big mouth for yourself.”

“Wait a minute. Lemme think. Just a bit. Just for a little while.”

“Out with your heart, you fool!”

“Just for a little while. “

“Or I’ll get it myself, damn you.”

“Just for a little while.”

Now Franz hears Death’s slow Song

Lightning, lightning, lightning, the lightning lightning stops. Hacking falling hacking, the hacking falling hacking Stops. It is the second night that Franz has screamed. The falling hacking stops. He no longer screams. The lightning stops. His eyes blink. He lies rigid. This is a room, a hall, people are moving about. You mustn’t pinch your mouth like that. They pour warm stuff down his throat. No lightning. No hacking. Walls. A little while, just a little while, and then what? He shuts his eyes.

When Franz has shut his eyes, he starts doing something. You can’t see what he’s doing; you just think he’s lying there, perhaps he’ll soon be a goner, the man doesn’t move a muscle. He calls and moves and roams about. He is calling together all that is his. He walks through the windows, across the fields, he shakes the grass and creeps into the mouse-holes. Get out get out, what’s in here, is there anything of me here? He fumbles in the grass: Outside, you bums, what’s all this yapping about, it don’t mean anything. I need you, I can’t give any of you a furlough, there’s lots of things to be done here, let’s be gay, I need everyone of you.

They pour broth down his throat, he swallows it and does not vomit. He doesn’t want to vomit, he doesn’t like to vomit.

Franz has Death’s word in his mouth and nobody is going to tear it away from him, he turns it around in his mouth, it is a stone made of stone, and no nourishment comes out of it. At this stage many people have died. There was no Farther in life for them. They did not know that they had to suffer only one more pain to advance beyond that, only a little step was needed to get farther, but they could not take this step. They did not know it, it did not come quickly, or not quickly enough, there was a faintness, a spasm that lasted for minutes, for seconds, and already they had passed over there where their names were no longer Karl, Wilhelm, Minna, or Franziska - satiated, darkly satiated, red-flaming in rage and the palsy of despair, they had slept their way across. They did not know they had but to flame up whitely and then they would have become soft and all things would have been new.

So let it come-the night, however black and nothing - like it be! So let them come, the black night, those frost-covered acres, the hard frozen roads. So let them come: the lonely, tile-roofed houses whence gleams a reddish light; so let them come: the shivering wanderers, the drivers on the farm wagons traveling to town with vegetables and the little horses in front. The great, flat, silent plains crossed by suburban trains and expresses which throw white light into the darkness on either side of them. So let them come-the men in the station, the little girl’s farewell to her parents, she’s traveling with two older acquaintances, going across the big water, we’ve got our tickets, but good Lord, what a little girl, eh, but she’ll get used to it over there, if she’s a good little girl it’ll be all right. So let them come and be absorbed: the cities which lie along the same line, Breslau, Liegnitz, Sommerfeld, Guben, Frankfort on the Oder, Berlin, the train passes through them from station to station, from the stations emerge the cities, the cities with their big and little streets. Berlin with Schweidnitzer Strasse, with the Grosse Ring of the KaiserWilhelm Strasse, Kurfürstendamm, and everywhere are homes in which people are warming themselves, looking at each other with loving eyes, or sitting coldly next to each other; dirty dumps and dives where a man is playing the piano. Say, kiddo, that’s old stuff, you’d think there was nothing new in 1928, how about “I kiss your hand, Madame,” or “Ramona.”

So let them come: the autos, the taxis, you know how many you have sat in, how they rattled, you were alone, or else somebody sat next to you, or maybe two. License Number 20147.

A loaf is put in the oven.

It is an open-air oven near a farm-house, back of it lies a field, it looks like a little heap of tiles. The women have sawed a lot of wood and gathered dry twigs, which they have heaped beside the oven, and now they are stuffing it in. One of them walks across the courtyard carrying big molds containing the dough. A young man quickly opens the door of the oven, it glows inside, it glows and glows, a tremendous heat, they shove the tins in with poles, the bread will rise there and the water will evaporate; the dough will turn brown.

Franz is Sitting half up. He has swallowed and now he is waiting; almost everything that was running around outside is back with him again. He trembles, what was it Death had said? He ought to know what Death had said. The door opens. Now it will come. The curtain’s up. I know him. It’s Lüders. I have been expecting him.

So they come in, awaited with trembling. What can be the matter with Lüders7 Franz has made a sign and they thought he had difficulty in breathing, because he was lying flat, but he just wants to lie a bit higher and straighter. For they are coming now. He is lying high. Go ahead.

One by one they come. Lüders, he’s a miserable cuss, such a funny little man. Let’s see what’s the matter with him. He walks upstairs peddling shoe-laces. Yes, that’s what we did. A fellow goes to the dogs in his rags, still the same old outfit left over from the war, Makko shoe-laces, I just wanted to ask you, Ma’am, can’t you let me have a cup o’ coffee, what about your husband, probably died in the war; claps his hat on. All right now, hand over the change! That’s Lüders, he was with me. The woman’s face is flaming red, but one cheek’s snow-white, she fumbles in her pocketbook, she squeals and topples over. He digs around among kitchen things. A lotta chicken-feed, let’s hustle off, or she’ll start screamin’. Through the hallway, slam that door, downstairs. Yes, he did it. Hooks something. Hooks a lot. They give me the letter, it’s from her. what’s happening to me now, suddenly m y legs are hacked off, my legs hacked off, but why, I can’t get up. Do you want a cognac, Biberkopf, probably. a death in the family, yes, oh why, just why, why are my legs hacked off, I don’t know. Gotta ask him, gotta talk to him. Listen, Lüders, good mornin’, Lüders, how are you, not well, me neither, come here a minute, sit down on that chair, now don’t go away, did I do anything to you, don’t go away.

Let them come. Let them come, the black night, the autos, the hard frozen roads, the little girl’s farewell from her parents, she’s traveling with a man and a woman, she’ll get used to it over there, got to stay nice and good, and it’ll be all right. Let them come!

Reinhold, here’s Reinhold. Ugh! the bastard! So here you are, what d’you want here, d’you wanta play the big gazook with me, no rain will ever wash you clean, you crook, you murderer, you big scoundrel. take that pipe out of your mug when you talk to me. It’s a good thing you came, I missed you, come on, you dirty louse, haven’t they caught you yet, you with your blue overcoat on? Look out, they’ll nab you in that outfit. “Who are you, Franz?” Me, you crook? Not a murderer, you know who you murdered? “And who showed me the girl, and who didn’t look out for the girl, and I gotta lie under the bed-cover. you fathead you, who was it?” But you needn’t have killed her for that. “What of it, didn’t you nearly beat her black and blue yourself? And then how about a certain other woman we’ve heard about, she lived in Landsberger Allee; she didn’t get to the cemetery all by herself, did she? Well, what about it? Now you got nothin’ to say, what has Herr Franz Biberkopf, our big-mouth by profession, to say now?” You kicked me under the car, you let’em run over my arm. “Hah, hah, well, you can get one made of cardboard. If you’re jackass enough to take up with me!” A jackass? “Well, don’t you realize you’re a jackass? Now you’re in Buch playing the wild man from Borneo, but I’m doin’ well: who’s a jackass now?”

There he goes, and hell-fire flashes from his eyes, horns grow out of his head, and he yells: Why don’t you fight with me, come on, show what you are, Franzeken, Franzeken Biberkopf, dear little Biberkopf, ha, ha! Franz presses his eyelids together. I shouldn’t have started anything with him, I shouldn’t have fought him. Why did I fall for that so hard?

“Come on, Franzeken, let’s see who you are! Have you got any strength?”

I shouldn’t have fought. He’s teasin’ me, he’s still teasin’ me, makin’ me mad, my God, he’s a dog. I shouldn’a done it. I can’t do anything against him, I shouldn’a done it.

“You gotta have strength, Franz.”

I should’na had any strength, not against him. Now I see it, it was all wrong. A fine mess I made of things! Away, away with him! He doesn’t go. Away, away with-! Franz screams and twists his hands: I must see somebody else, nobody else is coming, why does he stay on? “I know it, you don’t want none o’me. I don’t taste nice. But somebody else is comin’ right away.”

Then let him come. Let them come, the great, flat, silent plains, the lonely tiled houses whence gleams a reddish light, cities which lie along the same line, Frankfort on the Oder, Guben, Sommerfeld, Liegnitz, Breslau, from the stations the cities emerge, cities with their big and their little streets. Then let them come: the cabs driving along, the rushing, gliding automobiles.

Reinhold leaves. Then he stands there once more flashing a look at Franz. “Well, who is the strong man? Who won, Franzeken?”