The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (30 page)

Life of another kind, less pleasant and often unbearable, was brought in by Clever Walter. With his brutal nature, which already expressed itself in his forward-tilted forehead—as if he always wanted to attack someone—and usually already half drunk, he picked a quarrel with everyone in turn and acted as if he alone were boss here. Nevertheless, he was very respected as Uncle Paul’s son-in-law and twice a father. When he had made enough noise, he left again to return in the evening, when things were in full swing. Pipel named his age: just seventeen. Clever Walter also had to be listened to because he could not be ignored.

Otherwise it was usually always the same people just sitting around there—afternoon for afternoon, evening for evening. Newcomers were not welcome but were ordered to leave, especially if they were not yet eighteen.

It held together in its way, this odd society here in the Adonis Lounge.

*

If this man, who was already viewed to a certain extent as belonging here (not a customer—a “miserable john”—but otherwise a quite decent chap), ever had thoughts about his new surroundings, it was only because he continually had to think:

So
he,
too, frequented this place!
He,
too, sat around like this on so many afternoons! He listened to this nonsense and joined in the conversation.

Many weeks in the past summer!
He!

At first he was only astonished—astonished over the way these young people talked about sexual things as a matter of course, as others would talk about the weather. It was this calm self-evidentness that kept their conversation from becoming unbearably vulgar.

He was also astonished over their absolute lack of willpower. They made no resistance of any kind to their life. Wherever it tossed them, there they lay—today here, tomorrow there. They never made even the slightest attempt to get up again. Everything seemed to be completely indifferent to them—whether they went entirely to ruin or not. They were all the merest children. In big things and in little: if they had money—”come into a tidy sum”—then it had to be dispersed as quickly as possible and was thrown away in the most foolish way. None among them—the majority did not even know where they were to sleep the next night—thought of taking a room and maybe paying in advance, to have a roof over his head for the next days or weeks. Here and there the most necessary thing for the moment was procured—a shirt, pants, a pair of boots—but mostly money was spent immediately in foolish extravagance.

They went with whoever took them. If a decent man came among them, one with good intentions toward one of them and ready to help bring him up again (naturally it might not be through work), that opportunity too was wasted until the gentleman, discouraged by this lethargy, dropped him again. They all returned back here again, like sheep to their accustomed stall, to live their lives until one day they had grown too old or some unexpected event, mostly of a bad sort, threw them onto other tracks. They returned here, semiconscious by day, living it up at night.

Until one after the other they each finally disappeared. No one knew where.

They all wanted, at least in gloomy hours, to get out of this life.

They were all, one as much as the other, crammed with all kinds of plans about what they wanted to do, and each day they came and told what they had in mind: There was a gentleman, a new acquaintance from just yesterday, who had promised to secure a position (only the gentleman never returned); a letter had come from home, he was to return there immediately (but the fare for the trip had to be procured first, only to be spent again right away); one already had a position and meant to start tomorrow (tomorrow he was dead certain to be here again). Plans, plans, always new ones, always newly formed, and never once seriously carried out. If one of them really stayed away and did not return, there were certain to be other reasons (they had him again).

They were often discontented and in a bad humor, but seldom unhappy. Not a single one perceived his life as a disgrace, however. He would not have understood if someone had tried to make him comprehend this. It was better not to try. One ran a bad chance doing it.

In the final analysis, they were indifferent to everything. One just had to live. So much the more when one was still young.

Live—and enjoy life as much as possible. For one
was
young.

*

One afternoon, toward evening, such a quiet fell over the pub that Graff looked up.

Two men had entered and were standing at the bar. One was tall and lean, with an extremely unpleasant expression on his face—mean, distrustful eyes, and an unkempt red-brown mustache over his wry mouth; the other was small, stout, and awoke trust with his round little belly and his even-tempered, smooth face.

With one stroke all conversation stopped. The boys, eight or ten in number, clearly wanted to creep behind their tables. Leo had dived into his dark corner entirely. And Pipel, who had just now been beside him, had vanished—probably under the table.

After about ten minutes, during which the two stood at the bar, drank, and conversed with Father, they left again. (Only Clever Walter had gone up to them and quite familiarly taken part in the conversation.)

It was as if they had not seen any of the others present. But it appeared to Graff that the tall one especially had sharply examined each one, even if inconspicuously.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they were gone.

Pipel’s freckled little face popped up beside him again: “The cops!”

And when he was again not understand right away:

“They were policemen. One of them is the one who arrested Chick that time.”

Graff was boiling. So that was the man Gunther had told him about. Him—he looked it, too—with that face like a bird of prey, with his piercing eyes and hooked nose.

But he was set right.

“No, no,” said Pipel, angry over so much lack of discernment, “not the tall one. He really has a heart for us and always leaves us alone. The other, the short one, he’s a louse, I tell you!”

What, the one with the even-tempered face who acted as if he saw and heard nothing? Him!

For the rest of the evening he never got rid of the thought:

Hunter and hunted! The hounds and the game! Hunting human beings!

*

When he had come here for the first time, he had known nothing at all about these boys and their life. He did not comprehend them. He did not understand them.

Now, when he saw daily how they lived, he found that there was not a great deal to understand and comprehend.

It was basically always the same for all of them: the struggle with each day, during which they were bored—if they did not sleep through it. And what lay between—the nights—they, too, were probably much alike.

Only because
he
had once led this life did it interest Graff. Otherwise he found it boring, empty, and bleak.

In the meantime he grasped much about Gunther only now in detail. He, too, was young. He, too, wanted to enjoy his young life. With those his own age, when possible; with older men, if it could not be helped—in loud circles, pampered and desired, surrounded by flattery and gifts, from one hour to another, slipping or snatched from one arm to another.

He grasped why so many things about his darling had appeared so strange at first and so unintelligible. He grasped what, when they had become closer, had then always driven him out and away. He grasped why he had so often come to him cross and tired—it was not his age alone, this age of moods and contradictions, it was the hangover after the drunkenness. And again and again this intoxication had vanished—to new acquaintances, new intoxications, to always new adventures, as exciting and as boring as those in his dime novels!

He had lived the way these boys lived: from day to day and from night to night—a terrible life! But for him, the only life!

And yet he had been different from these boys here.

Would he otherwise have loved him? Would he otherwise have been able to love him?

Did any one of these boys attract him, even enough so that he could halfway patiently listen to his conversation? Not a single one!

Would it be possible for him to take even one of them in his arms, associate with him, not to mention love him? Not one.

And these times—were they not over for him whom he loved (loved today more than ever before)? Completely over?

Was he not a different, a completely different person?

Again the person he was basically and had always remained?

The fall from the dreamy heights, iridescent and empty, from the deceptive heights to the hard earth, this precipitous fall had brought him to his senses!

And now, in his awakening recovery, when they should have been together, and forever—now he was gone and (both of them) lost once more!

One week went by. Two. A third began. Graff went day by day to the Adonis Lounge to wait for news that never came (however much Pipel endeavored to give him hope: “It will come for sure”).

He was now living quite regularly again: punctually at nine he was in his office. At the stroke of five he left it. At six he was here.

He did his work—mechanically exact, but then he was through with it.

He was no longer unhappy.

He had a goal. Whoever has a goal in life is never entirely unhappy. He cannot entirely despair.

He had one thought, and this thought became for him a fixed idea:

I must rescue him and I will rescue him.

This one thought pursued him from morning till evening: during his work, during his meager lunch, on his walk to the lounge. The thought pursued him while he sat here and all the way home and into his oppressive and restless dreams.

To rescue him—no longer to possess him again, but to save him from that horrible environment in which he was and from his downfall in it.

It was as if his passion had vanished, yes, even his longing. Only fear for him, concern, and sympathy were still in him. Fear above all.

He
must
find him in order to rescue him.

4

One day, in the second half of the third week, he could stand it no more and went to an attorney. Since he knew none, he went to the first available one. Perhaps the attorney could give him some kind of advice.

After a long wait he was admitted.

Everything about the small, misshapen man was yellow: his hair, his skin, his eyes, his teeth, the nails of his greedy hands. He glanced at him through his pince-nez:

“What does it concern?”

“A boy.”

“A boy?”

“Well, yes, a boy in a state institution.”

The little yellow man immediately got the picture and became reserved.

These were not cases that he liked. Nothing came of them. Besides, he was no specialist in matters of Paragraph 175 and did not intend to become one. But he at least listened while his client explained the situation in a few words.

Then, looking sideways through his glasses:

“In what relationship do you stand to the boy?”

When, after asking this boundlessly impertinent question, he noticed that Graff was about to stand up (or was he about to box his ears?), he became more reasonable:

“I mean, what interest do you take in the boy?”

Graff forced himself.

It was not a question of himself and this fellow in front of him, but of him whom he loved and wanted to rescue.

He replied as calmly as possible: “That of a friend who wants to help him.”

The lawyer noticed now that he had gone too far, if not exactly in the wrong direction, and became professional. He reached over the desk for a thick volume and leafed through it.

Then looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.

“I can only advise you to keep your hands out of the matter. In no case can you help him. For freeing an institutionalized state ward or even only attempting it, there is imprisonment for not less than a year.”

The book was closed.

“But the parents—in this case the guardian—can they do noth
ⁱⁿ
g?”

“I know of only one case in which a state ward was freed. That happened years ago on the intervention at the highest level of His Majesty.”

Then as he saw the careworn and sad face opposite, he spoke somewhat more humanely.

“Let the boy go. Believe me, whoever is once in there is ripe for”—he had almost said “for us,” but caught himself in time—”ripe for the penitentiary.”

Graff thought: how right the guy is with his cheap wisdom.

But he only said bitterly:

“That’s why so many of them run away.”

“And are then always caught again,” he heard as answer.

Always? But what did this man know about it and what point was there in sitting here any longer? He stood up and walked out—not without having his hand shaken and being relieved of twenty marks.