Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (8 page)

Out in the street Meck got into a violent discussion with the two livestock dealers. Both expressed their views about a lawsuit one of them was engaged in. He had been trading cattle in the Province of the Mark, but had a trade permit for Berlin only. A competitor had then met him in a village and reported him to the police. Whereupon the two dealers, who were traveling together, played a deep game: the defendant testifies in court that he was only the other’s companion, and had acted according to his orders.

The cattle dealers were explaining: “We won’t foot the bill. We’ll take the oath. That is, we gotta take an oath in court. He’ll swear he was only my companion and that he’s done it of tell before, and we’ll swear to that and that’s all there is to it.”

Then Meck got quite excited, holding the two cattle dealers by their overcoats: “There you are, you’re crazy, why, you belong in Loonyville. Imagine taking an oath for a lousy thing like that, just to do that scoundrel a service, so that he can get you in trouble for good. It ought to be put in the papers that the law is giving its support to things like that, why, that’s not straight, those gents with their monocles. But now we’re talking justice.”

The second live-stock dealer insists: “I’ll swear, well, why not? Me - cough up, three appeals, and that crook getting a lot of fun out of it? No, sir. That guy’s green with envy. As far as I’m concerned, Nothin’ doin’, I won’t shell out.”

Meck tapped his forehead with his fist: “You fat-head, you deserve to lie in the gutter where you are.” They took leave of the cattle dealers, Franz took Meck by the arm and they bowled along through the Brunnenstrasse. Meck hurled a threat after the cattle dealers: “Funny birds. Got something on their conscience. The whole country’s got something on its conscience.” “What did you say, Gottlieb?” “They’re a lot o’ jellyfish, instead of showing their fists to the court, nothin’ but jellyfish, the whole country, business men, working men, the whole bunch of ‘em.”

Suddenly Meek stopped in his tracks and planted himself in front of Franz: “Franz, we gotta have a talk together. Otherwise I can’t let you come with me, nohow.” “Well, go ahead then.” “Franz, I gotta know who you are. Look me in the face. Tell me honestly and on your word of honor, you got a taste of it out there in Tegel, you know what’s right and just. And right is always right.” “That’s true, Gottlieb.” “Well then, Franz, honest and true, what did they do to you out there?” “Don’t you worry. You can believe me: if you got a fight to pick, just leave it outside. Out there they read books and learned shorthand and then they played chess, me, too.” “You know how to play chess, too?” “Well, don’t you worry, we’ll go on shuffling our little game of skat, Gottlieb. So you sit around, you haven’t got much gray matter to think with, with us transport workers it’s more the muscles and bones that count, so you say one day: Damn it all, don’t get yourself mixed up with people, go your own way. Hands off people! Gottlieb, what’s a man like us got to do with the law and police and politics? Out there we had a communist. he was bigger than me, he did his share in the ‘19 show in Berlin. They didn’t get him then, but afterwards he got reasonable, got to know a widow and went right into her business. A clever boy, you see!” “Well, how did he get out there?” “Probably tried some shady deal. Out there we always stuck together, and if one of us squealed, he got what was coming to him. But it’s better if you ain’t got nothin’ to do with the others. That’s suicide. Just let ‘em go their own way. Stay respectable and keep to yourself! That’s my idea.”

“Is that so?” said Meek and looked at him severely. “Why then we might as well all shut up shop, that’s pretty wishy-washy of you, we’d all go to pieces that way.” “Let ‘em shut it, if they want to shut up shop, we’re not worrying about it.” “Franz, you’re a sap, no doubt about that. You’ll regret it some day, Franz.”

Franz Biberkopf is walking down the Invalidenstrasse, his new girl-friend, Polish Lina, is walking along with him. At the corner of the Chausseestrasse there is a newsstand in the hallway, a few people are standing there, gabbling and chattering. “Hey, don’t stand around here.” “Can’t a man look at the pictures?” “Why don’t you buy ‘em? Don’t block the passage-way.” “Dumbbell.”

Tourists’ Supplement. When in our cold North there comes that disagreeable season which lies between snow-glittering winter days and the first green of May, something draws us - an urge thousands of years old - to the sunny South beyond the Alps, to Italy. He who is so fortunate as to be able to follow this urge to roam. “Don’t get so excited about people. Just look here, how barbarous they’re getting; here’s a fellow who attacks a girl in the street-car, and beats her half dead for fifty marks.” “I’d do it too for that much.” “What?” “Why, do you know what fifty marks is? You don’t know anything about fifty marks. That’s a pile o’ money for a man in our position, a big pile, say. All right then, some day when you know what fifty marks is, I’ll talk to you again.”

Fatalistic speech made by Chancellor Marx: Whatever is to happen lies, in my opinion, in the hands of a Divine Providence, which has its special intentions for each people. Human accomplishment, on the other hand, will remain only fragmentary. All we can do is to continue to give our utmost effort, according to our convictions, and thus I shall have fulfilled, faithfully and honesty, the office I now hold. I conclude, gentlemen, with best wishes for a successful conclusion of your laborious and devoted activities in behalf of beautiful Bavaria. God speed your further efforts. So live, that when you die, hope you had a pleasant evening.

“Welt sir, are you through reading?” “Why?” “Shall I take the paper off the hook for you? There was a guy once, asked me for a chair so he could read in comfort.” “Guess you only display your pictures so they-” “What I do with my pictures, that’s my affair. You’re not paying for my stand. But fellows that simply sponge, I don’t want ‘em around my stand, they only drive customers away.”

There he goes, he’d better have his shoes polished, probably camps out in that “Palme” flop-house on Frbbelstrasse, there he is taking the street-car, I bet he’s riding on a fake ticket or has picked up an old one, and is trying it out. When they catch him, then it just happens he lost the right one. Those sponges, here come two more now. I’ll have to put up a railing here, the next thing. Got to get some lunch now.

Franz Biberkopf comes marching along in a derby hat, plump Polish Lina on his arm. “Lina, eyes right, let’s get into the hallway. The weather’s not made for the unemployed. Let’s look at the pictures. Nice pictures, but there’s a draft here. Say, comrade, how’s business? Why, a fellow could freeze to death here.” “Well, it’s not meant for a Turkish bath.” “Lina, would you like to stay in a place like that?” “Come on, let’s go, that fellow’s got such a dirty grin.” “Say, Fraulein, I bet it gives the boys a thrill, when you stand in the hallway and sell papers. Service from dainty hands.”

Gusts of wind, the papers blow loose from the clamps. “Say, bo, you ought to put up an umbrella outside here.” “So nobody could see anything?” “You could put a glass pane in front of it.” “Come along, Franz.” “Well, wait a minute. Jest a second. That man stands here for hours on end and isn’t blown over. Don’t be so fussy, Lina.” “But what makes him keep on grinning like that?” “That’s the expression of my face, Fraulein, my features, I can’t help that.” “He’s always grinning, I tell you, Lina, the poor guy.”

Franz pushed his hat back, looked the newsvender in the face and burst out laughing, holding Lina’s hand in his. “Why, he can’t help it, Lina. He got it from his mother’s breast. Do you know, bo, what kind of a face you make, when you grin? Nope, not like that, I mean, when you grin like you did before? You know, Lina. As if he was lying at his mother’s breast and the milk had got sour.” “That’s where you’re on the wrong tracle They raised me on the bottle.” “A lot of boloney.” “Listen, bo, what does a man earn in this business?”
“Rote Fahne,
thanks. Let this man get by, please. Watch out, a box coming.” “But you’re sure in a nice mob here, all right.”

Lina pulled him away, they floated down the Chausseestrasse as far as the Oranienburger Tor. “That’d be something for me, all right. I don’t catch a cold so very easy. If it wasn’t for all that hanging around in the hallway.”

Two days later it is warmer. Franz, who has sold his overcoat, and is wearing thick underwear, which Lina got him somewhere, stands on the Rosenthaler Platz in front of Fabisch & Co., high-class men’s tailoring to measure, excellent work and low prices are the characteristics of our products. Franz is hawking necktie-holders. He shouts his spiel:

“Why does the smart man in the West End wear a bow tie when the proletarian doesn’t? Ladies and gents, right up here, you too, Fraulein, with your husband, minors allowed, it costs no more for minors. Why doesn’t the proletarian wear bow ties? Because he can’t tie ‘em. Then he has to buy a tie-holder, and after he’s bought it, it’s no good and he can’t tie the tie with it. That’s swindling, it makes the people bitter; it pushes Germany still deeper into poverty than she is already. Why, for instance, don’t they wear those big tie-holders? Because nobody wants to put a dustpan around his neck. No man or woman wants that, not even the baby, if he could speak for himself. Please don’t laugh at that, ladies and gents, don’t laugh, we don’t know what’s going on in that dear little child brain. Oh, Lord, the dear little head, the little head and the little curls, it’s pretty, ain’t it, but when you got to pay alimony, it’s not to be laughed at, that gets a man into trouble. Go buy yourself a tie like this at Tietz’s or Wertheim’s or, if you don’t want to buy it from Jews, get it somewhere else. I’m a Nordic, I am.” He raises his hat, blond hair, red ears standing out, merry bull’s eyes. “The big department stores don’t have to get me to advertise them, they can exist without me. Buy a tie like the one I have here, and then decide how you’re going to tie it tomorrow.

“Ladies and gents, who has time nowadays to tie his tie in the morning, when he would rather take one more minute of sleep? We all need a lot of sleep, because we have to work so much to earn so little. A tie-holder like this helps you go to sleep. It competes with the drug stores, for whoever buys a tie-holder like the one I have here don’t need any sleeping powder and no night-cap or nothing. He sleeps without rocking, like a child at his mother’s breast, because he knows there’ll be no hurrying around in the morning; all he needs lies, ready for use, on his chest of drawers, and has only to be shoved into the collar. You spend your money for a lot of junk. Last year, for instance, you saw the crooks at the Krokodil bar, in the front they sold hot dogs, in the back Jolly was fasting in a glass case with sauerkraut growing around his mouth. Everyone of you saw that-just come up a little closer, I wanta save my voice, I ain’t insured my voice, I never had the money for the first premium-you saw Jolly lying in the glass box, didn’t you? But how they smuggled chocolate to him, that you didn’t see. Here you are buying honest goods, it’s not celluloid, it’s vulcanized rubber, twenty pfennigs a piece, fifty for three.

“Get away from the curb, young man, or you’ll be
run over by an auto, and who is going to sweep up the rubbish afterwards? Now I’ll explain to you, how the tie is tied, or do I have to knock you on the head with a wooden hammer? You’ll understand it at once. Here you take about twelve to thirteen inches from one side, then you fold the ends together, but not like this. That looks as it a flattened out bedbug was sticking to the wall, a wallpaper splotch, a man of the better class don’t wear that. That’s when you take my contraption. We gotta save time. Time is money. The romantic days are over and won’t come back again, we all have to take that into consideration nowadays. You can’t pull a rubber hose slowly around your neck every day, you need a ready and efficient article like this here. Just look, that’s your Christmas present, that suits your taste, ladies and gents, it’s for your own good. If the Dawes Plan has left you anything at all, it’s your head under your lid, and it ought to tell you that this is just what you want; buy it and take it home, it’ll be a consolation to you.

“Ladies and gents, we need consolation, all of us together, and when we are foolish, we try to find it in the saloon. But if you’re reasonable, don’t do anything of the kind, for the pocketbook’s sake anyway, because the kind of rotten liquor the bartender hands out nowadays cries to heaven, and the good kind is expensive. Therefore, take this contraption, put a small loop through here, you can also make a large loop, like the ones the fairies wear in their shoes, when they step out. You pull it through here and then take hold of one end. A German citizen buys only genuine goods, that’s what you get here.”

Lina gives it to the Pansies

But that isn’t enough for Franz Biberkopf. He rolls his eyeballs. In the company of sloppy Lina he observes the sweet life between the Alex and Rosenthaler Platz and decides to sell newspapers. Why? They had told him all about it. Lina could lend a hand, and it’s just the thing for him. Moving to, moving fro, roundabout and away we go.

“Lina, I can’t make speeches, I’m not a popular orator. When I’m selling something, they understand me, but it’s not just right, either. Do you know what ‘mind’ is?” “Nope.” Lina ogles him expectantly. “Look at the boys on the Alex and here, too, none of them has any mind. The fellows with the stalls and wagons, too, that ain’t nothin’ either. They’re smart, clever boys, a lot of sap in ‘em, needn’t tell me anything about that. But just imagine a speaker in the Reichstag, Bismarck or Bebel, why, the ones we got now ain’t nothing, take it from me, they got mind all right, mind, that means head, not just any old noodle. None of them can get anything out of me with their soft soap. A speaker that is a speaker.” “Ain’t you a speaker, Franz?” “You make me laugh - me a speaker! Know who’s a speaker, well, you’ll never believe it, your landlady.” “That Schwenk woman?” “Nope, the other one, where I got the things, in the Karlstrasse.” “The one near the circus? Don’t talk to me about her.”

Franz bends mysteriously forward: “She sure was a speaker, Lina, a real one, I tell you.” “Not on your life. Comes into my room, and me lying in bed and wants to get my valise on account of one month.” “All right Lina, now listen, it wasn’t nice of her. But when I went upstairs and asked about the valise, she started off.” “I know that bunk of hers. I didn’t listen to her. Franz, you mustn’t let a woman like that put the skids under you.” “I tell you, Lina, she started off about criminal law, the civil code, and how she squeezed out a pension for her dead old man, when the old fool had an apoplectic fit, which didn’t have anything to do with the war. Since when has apoplexy got anything to do with the war? She said so herself, hut she didn’t give in, and she won her case. She’s got mind, Fatty, no two ways about it. Whatever she wants she gets, that’s more than earning a coupla pfennigs. That’s where you show what you are. That’s how you get air, baby. I’m still knocked flat.” “You go up to see her once in a while?” Franz protests with both hands: “Suppose you go up there, Lina, you want to get a valise; you’re there at eleven sharp, you got something to do at twelve, and about a quarter to one you’re still standing there. She talks and talks to you, and you haven’t got your valise yet, and maybe you trot off without it. She can talk, that one, take it from me.”