The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (4 page)

He stared at the money. Ten pennies!

Bread! he thought first. Then immediately: no—cigarettes!

Ten pennies’ worth of bread could not fill him and he would have to go hungry anyway. Better to smoke once more.

Across the way he bought four cigarettes for three pennies each from a peddler. He still had two pennies. He hurriedly chainsmoked them, lighting one from the other.

He stood up feeling dull and knocked out. Avoiding the middle walkway of Unter den Linden, he walked beside the buildings on the north side. Then, crossing over, he looked for a seat on one of the densely occupied benches opposite the Passage.

Gloomy and irresolute, he stared through the confusion of carriages at the entrance. Only the hunger that continued to make itself felt kept him awake. Otherwise he would have fallen asleep again here.

It was the same bench, even the same corner of it, on which he had sat and looked across that first afternoon almost a week ago at this same hour, strange and shy, but oh!—with what other feelings.

4

The young man who had arrived in the capital at almost the same time as he spent his first day here in the most cheerless and tiring of all activities—the search for a room.

Disgusted by almost all the lodgings, the triviality of their furniture, the impossible manner of their landladies, he had arrived, half dead and despairing, at a dead-end street. He was reluctant to enter at first, but then was drawn by its obvious peace and quiet. The street had houses on one side only, the other side being taken up by the high firewall of a large warehouse followed by another lower wall that apparently led into a neighboring courtyard or garden.

Only the door of the last of the ten houses on the street showed the usual room-for-rent sign, which he had read probably a hundred times already today.

The house, which did not have a doorkeeper, seemed quiet and clean.

The rental room was supposed to be on the second floor to the left.

He rang.

A woman dressed entirely in black, with scrawny features and strikingly dark, sharp eyes, opened the door, scrutinized him in a glance, and let him enter.

The door of the room was close beside the entrance. The room was large and faced the street with two windows. It was fitted out with old-fashioned, but large and comfortable furniture—a sofa with two armrests, an armchair with wings, a desk, and bookcase. A smaller room joined it, which served as a bedroom and got its light from the front room.

Altogether it made a somewhat cold but very clean impression.

Bath and toilet were opposite; the landlady’s own rooms were at the dark end of the hall. Therefore, completely independent of her! the young man thought with satisfaction.

The lodgings were all together not bad.

But the wall? Was it possible to stand the sight of that bare wall across the way for long without going crazy?

Then he considered that he would mainly be in only evenings, when it was beginning to be dark or was already dark, that he would see it and have to endure it at most on Sundays. The quiet and peacefulness of the street decided the matter. Carriages would almost never come by, and seldom pedestrians.

A few more questions, concisely asked and briefly answered, and he made his decision.

The price was no problem. It was the usual and he immediately paid a month in advance.

With a clear, firm handwriting he signed his name, “Hermann Graff,” on a registration card, and a couple of hours later he had already moved into his new quarters.

*

The following day, after a long sleep, he started his new job in the large publishing house.

He was assigned his place in the multi-office concern—a wheel, one small wheel more in a machine—by a window that faced a courtyard where there was constant life and activity. He read manuscripts and proof sheets, he copied letters and bills. He began to familiarize himself with the work and was among complete strangers: smart and stupid; aspiring and indifferent; friendly and grumbling; old, grown gray in service, and young, still to grow gray. And among books, books, books.

He had to be at his place by nine o’clock in the morning and remain until five (with an hour break at noon). Then his eight-hour workday ended.

During the first days of working, he was so tired at day’s end that he only went out in the evenings to eat. Only toward the end of the week did his thoughts return from his new, unaccustomed work to his life.

What form would it take for him?

He knew rather well.

He was a very serious person, very solitary and introverted, who experienced difficulty joining others.

He had never felt a mother’s love, since he lost her quite early. He had had one friend of his own age, but lost him too when he told him how it was with him (and he suffered a long time under the bitterness of this separation). He had once been in love, long and hopelessly, and he whom he loved had never known that he was loved and in what way. He was unable to lose the love of his father because he never had it. When his father died several months ago, he was firmly decided to come to Berlin. He applied for a position and received it. Now he was here.

He felt that he could not and must not continue to live as he had done until then—that he had to win and have a human being that he loved. He also knew that this person could only be a boy, such as had been the one he had loved; and he knew finally that he could not seek him out, but rather must find him as one finds good luck.

He had read much. What’s more: he had thought about it for himself—about the others and about himself. He was sure of the direction of his love, to whom alone it could be directed,
must
be directed by virtue of the law of his nature.

Just as his emotions were always directed only toward few people, whereas he was indifferent to the great mass of them (by far the majority of individuals were foreign to him, often distasteful); just as there were only a few books that he could read over and over, only a few picture that he could not view enough—so too he knew that among the many boys there were only a very few individuals whom he would be able to love. Perhaps only one. How could he hope to meet him?

And yet he did hope.

Because every life without hope is meaningless.

*

Perhaps he had already met him, here and already on the first day?!

When his thoughts were partly directed to himself again, he asked himself this—only to see at once how foolish this question was.

He was not a man of quick decisions, not a person who will-lessly gave in right away to strange impressions.

He only knew that he had probably never, no
never
yet experienced such a feeling, almost like that of a fright, as in the moment when that strange boy at that disgusting place had walked in front of him and he had looked for a second into his face.

But that had all been much too fleeting, had vanished much too quickly to be taken seriously.

He had almost forgotten that meeting over these recent days.

No, he had not forgotten it. For now, when he had become quiet, in the long, lonely hours of the evening before going to bed, that small, pale face popped up again before him. He saw again the gray-blue eyes as they had looked into his, startled and fearful, and he tormented himself again with the question that had disturbed him on that first evening, all the way into his sleep. For the answer he had given himself then was no longer able to satisfy him.

Where was he now? Submerged into the millions of this huge city, perhaps already in another far from here: unreachable in any case, lost to him forever.

For, if what he believed was true—that he was a decent boy—he would never meet him again at the only place where he could still look for him. And if it was not true—if he was not a decent boy—should he still hope and wish to see him again?

An inner unrest gripped him so strongly during the last days of the week that it drove him out, for the first time again, to Unter den Linden.

He wanted at least to try once, just a single time. If chance and luck were favorable to him? If he met him again—what then?

He did not believe in chance nor in good luck, which could then no longer be good luck.

He only wanted to see again the place where he had met him.

So this time he walked directly to the entrance of the Passage, strode through the hall without looking around, and stood at its southern exit.

Everything was like before. The people shoved and crowded, shouted and laughed.

Here he had stood. He had run over there. He recalled him again, the way he had run. Naturally he was not here. Why should he be here!

He turned and walked back through the Passage and out. He did not look around.

“I don’t need to look,” he thought. “If he is here and near me, I will feel him.”

He deceived himself. He was unaware that the boy he sought was sitting on a bench not twenty steps away—tired, hungry, and completely in despair.

No feeling and voice told him, as with bowed head he strode down Unter den Linden, away from the place so abhorrent to him.

5

The boy was still sitting on the outer edge of the thickly occupied bench, staring across to the entrance as often as the view was free.

A whole troop of young guys were standing there without moving from the spot the whole time, as he could see, entirely indifferent to the fact that they were blocking traffic. They were laughing and talking to one another.

He still did not venture over.

Then, however, as the pain in his stomach again became especially strong, he slowly got up and, eyes lowered, just as slowly walked across the road when it was clear for a moment from vehicular traffic and up to the entrance.

At the corner where a mailbox projected, a boy was standing alone. He was bareheaded, looked down and out, and under his dirty jacket showed a lean, shirtless chest. He stood there as if waiting for someone who had made an appointment.

The boy positioned himself beside him. He felt how his legs were trembling. Was it hunger? Or was it a sudden fear?

Of what? For the moment no one was concerned about him. Yet it did seem again that the passersby and people coming out—and always mostly older men—looked at him peculiarly before walking on. He also believed he was being watched by the group of young people in the middle of the entrance. They turned toward him and laughed disdainfully before they continued talking. Were they talking about him? No, he would not have trusted himself now to go up to one of them and ask if they knew where he could find work. He would sooner ask the one standing next to him. But he looked as if he did not have work, not for a long time already.

While he was thinking this over, he suddenly heard a hissing, angry voice close to his ear. It was this other boy.

“Stupid lout! Ain’t ya got eyes in ya head? Can’t ya see that the john there is keen on ya? What ya standing here for, messing up my chance?”

And then, still more furiously, almost threateningly: “Just go after him!”

He became terribly frightened. What had the boy said? Whom was he talking about? What did he want from him?

He could not stay here any longer, however.

He walked as fast as his feet could carry him away from the entrance and down Unter den Linden. Laughter echoed after him. Were they laughing at him again?

He did not know. He knew nothing any more. He walked and walked, first past the buildings with their shops, then across the middle promenade, and again to another bench. He could go no farther.

Why had the strange boy been so angry? What had he wanted from him? Whom was he to follow? And why? His head was spinning. He understood not a word of it all.

*

Then, as he was just sitting there, still trembling from the scare and from hunger, it seemed to him that he was again being watched. By the gentleman on the bench next to his, who was leaning forward and looking over at him. He no longer dared to look over there. Then the seat next to him was free. The man got up and came to sit close beside him. He plainly felt his glance resting on him.

But now he too got up. It was again the sudden rage that he had felt earlier that came over him. What did all these people want from him? Would he nowhere be left in peace? Was he not allowed to sit here on a bench like anybody else! He wanted to get away—no matter where—just away.

He crossed to the other side and turned into a quiet side street. He crept along close to the buildings, tired enough to drop. I would like to just drop, he thought, drop and stay there. Then it would at least be at an end.

He did not know how long or where he had walked when he heard a voice beside him, a quite friendly and encouraging voice.

“Well, lad, also out for a walk? Don’t you want to come along a while with me?”

He looked up. Was this the gentleman on the bench or another? He could not say, but he believed he had already briefly seen him. One of those from earlier who had looked at him so?

The gentleman wore a light summer coat. He carried a briefcase under his arm and had a beardless face. He was now smiling and flushed as if from walking fast.