Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (40 page)

Now in that place there is a mountain and the old man arises and says to his son: Come with me. Come, says the old man to his son, and he goes forth and his son goes with him, goes behind him, up into the mountains, up, up, mountains, valleys. How far is it, father? I do not know. Are you tired, my child, will you not come with me? No, I am not tired; if you wish me to come, I will do it. Yes, come with me. Uphill, downhill, valleys, a long way, noon, here we are. Look around you, my son, yonder is an altar. I am afraid, father. Why are you afraid, my child? You woke me up early, we walked forth, we have forgotten the ram we wanted to slaughter. Yes, we have forgotten it. Uphill, downhill, long valleys, we have forgotten all that, the ram did not come with us, yonder is the altar, I am afraid. I must take off my cloak, are you afraid, my son. Yes I am afraid, father. I am also afraid, my son, come nigh, and fear not. We must accomplish it. What must we accomplish? Uphill, downhill, long valleys, I arose so early. Do not be afraid, O my son, do it with joy, come nigh unto me, I have already taken off my cloak, for I must not defile my sleeves with blood. I am afraid, because you hold the knife. Yes, I hold the knife, I must slaughter you, I must offer you for a burnt offering, the Lord commands, do it with joy, O my son.

No, I cannot do it, I will cry out, touch me not, I will not be slaughtered. Bend down now on your knees, do not cry out, my son. Yes I shall cry. Do not cry; if you do not suffer it, I cannot accomplish it, but you must endure it, my son. Uphill, downhill; why may I not return home again? What do you want to do at home, the Lord is more than home. I cannot, yes, I can, no, I cannot. Come nearer and see. I have the knife ready, here, look at it, it is sharp, it is ready for your throat. To cleave my throat? Yes. The blood will spurt? Yes. The Lord commands it. Will you endure it? I cannot, not yet, my father. But come soon, I cannot murder you, if I do this deed, it must be as if you yourself did it. Myself? Ah. Yes, and without fear. Ah. Not to live out your life, for you offer your life to the Lord. Come nearer. Is it the Lord God’s will? Uphill, downhill, I have risen so early. You will not play the coward? I know, I know, I know! What do you know, my son? Take the knife to me, wait; I will turn my collar back so that my neck may be quite free. You seem to know something. You must will it and I must will it, and thus we will both accomplish it, and then the Lord will call and we will hear him call: Cease!! Yes, come, offer your neck. There! I am not afraid, 1 do it with joy. Uphill, downhill, long valleys, there, take the knife to me and begin to cut! I shall not cry out.

The son lays bare his throat, the father steps behind him, presses against his forehead and with his right hand wields the butcher knife. The son has willed it. The Lord calls out. The twain fall on their faces.

Hear the voice of the Lord calling; Hallelujah. Through the mountains, through the valleys. Ye have obeyed me, hallelujah! Ye shall live. Hallelujah! Cease! Fling the knife into the abyss. Hallelujah! I am the Lord whom ye shall serve and ye shall serve none other. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, lujah, lujah, lujah, Hallelujah, lujah, hallelujah.

“Mieze, baby, little Miezeken, why don’t you wade into me good and proper?” Franz tries to pull Mieze to his knees. “Do say something. What of it, if I came home late last night?” “Say, Franz, you’ll get in trouble yet, the people you go around with.” “How so?” “The chauffeur had to help you up them stairs. And I said something to you, too, but didn’t get no answer, there you lay, dead to the world.” “I tell you I went out to Tegel, yeah, alone, all by myself.” “Now tell me Franz, is that true?” “By myself, yep, I had to do a few years there, once.” “Well, is there some time left over?” “No, I did my lime right up to the last day. I just wanted to have a look at it, and you don’t need to get mad about that, Miezeken.”

She sits down beside him and looks at him tenderly, as usual: “Listen, Franz, don’t play polities.” “I ain’t playin’ politics.” “Don’t go to meetings, either.” “I ain’t thinkin’ o’ going.” “You’ll tell me if you do?” “Yes.”

Mieze puts her arm around Franz’s shoulder, rests her head on his, they are silent.

And so once more it would be hard to find anything more contented than our Franz Biberkopf, who has sent politics to the devil. He’s not going to beat his skull against that thing. So he sits in cafes, singing and playing cards, and now Mieze has got to know a gentleman almost as rich as Eva’s fellow, but he’s married, which is better still, and sets up a swell little joint for her, out of two unfurnished rooms.

And Franz can’t help doing what Mieze wants. One day Eva makes a surprise attack on him at his place; why not, if Mieze wants it herself, but say, Eva, supposing now you really do have a little one, say, if
I was to get that way, my old man’d build me ten castles, he’d be that glad!

The Fly crawls upward, the Sand falls from it, it will soon start humming again

There really isn’t much to tell about Franz Biberkopf, we know the lad already. You can guess what a sow will do when she gets into the trough. Only a sow is better off than a man, because she’s just a lump of flesh and rat, and what can befall her later, doesn’t matter much, if only the swill lasts: at most she might litter again, and at the end of her life there is the cleaver, but that’s not really so horrid or exciting after all: before she’s noticed anything-and what does an animal like that notice? -she’s gone, finished. But a human being, he’s got eyes, you bet, there’s a lot in him, and everything’s all topsy-turvy; he can think a hell of a lot and has to think (he’s got that terrible head of his) about what may happen to him.

Thus lives our dear, fat, one-armed Franz Biberkopf; our big baby Biberkopf goes his little jog-trot way on into the month of August, when it’s still tolerably warm. And our little Franz has already learnt to row pretty nicely with his left arm, and, as far as the police are concerned, he hears nothing at all, though he doesn’t register any more. At the police-station they’re enjoying their summer vacation, too; good Lord, after all, even an officer has only got two pins, and for the few measly shekels they earn, they ain’t going to wear their legs out, and why should a guy run around trying to find out what’s happened to Franz Biberkopf, what Biberkopf, that man Biberkopf, why’s he got only one arm now, when he certainly had two before? Just leave him molder in the official records, a fellow has other things to worry about, damn it all!

But the streets are still there, and on them one hears and sees all sorts of things, something comes back from the old days, something quite unwanted, and then life slips by so fast, day after day, and today something comes our way, and we miss it, then tomorrow something else comes, and we forget it again, something’s always happening to us. Life will surely work out all right, he dreams in a kind of trance. One warm day we might catch a fly on the window and put it in a flower-pot and blow sand over it. If it’s a real healthy fl y, it’ll clamber out again, and all that blowing over it didn’t hurt it. That’s what Franz sometimes thinks when he sees one thing or the other, I am all right, what do I care for this or that, polities don’t interest me, and, if people are so silly as to let themselves be explOited, it ain’t my fault. Why should I worry myself sick for other people?

Mieze has trouble keeping him off the booze, that’s Franz’s sore spot. He’s got a sort of innate need for boozing, that’s inside him, and keeps coming out again. He says: a fellow gets fat on it, and don’t think too much. But Herbert advises Franz: “Old boy, don’t swig so much. You’re really a lucky devil. What were you before, anyway? A paper-peddler. Now you got one arm missing, but you got your Mieze and your income, so don’t go to boozin’ again like you did that time with Ida.” “No question of that, Herbert. When I booze, it’s only in my spare time. A fellow sits there, and what’s he gonna do? You drink; and then you take another drink, and another. And then, look at me, can I stand it or can’t I?” “Man, you say you can stand it. All right, you got good and stout again, but look at yourself in the mirror, and see what your lamps look like.” “What’s wrong with ‘em?” “Well, just grab a hold of ‘em once, you got regular bags like an old man. Say, how old are you, anyway? You’re gettin’ old with all this drinking, drinking makes a man old.”

“Aw, cut it out. What’s the news? What you doing anyway, Herbert?” “Things’ll soon start up again, we’ve got two new fellows, fine fellows. Y’know Knopp, the fire-eater? Well, he got the lads together. He says to ‘em: what’s that, you want to work with me? First of all, you gotta show me what you can do. Eighteen, nineteen years old. Well, Knopp stands across the street, on the Danziger corner, to see what they can do. They’ve got their eye on an old dame they saw get some money from the bank. Keep right on her track. Knopp thinks to himself they’ll just. give her a little push, grab the stuff and off with it. Well, they stick around after her in no hurry, till they come to the place where she lives, and there they are when the ole girl comes rolling along, and they look her right in the face. Say, are you Frau Muller? That’s her name all right; so they palaver a bit with her, till the street-car heaves in sight; then they throw pepper in her face, snatch her bag, slam the door to, and across the street in a jiffy. Knopp swears up and down and says they were fools to jump on the damned street-car; before she’d a got the house-door open, or anybody’d known who it was, they coulda been sitting quietly in the cafe. They made themselves suspicious running like that.” “Hope they jumped off soon, anyway.” “Yes, and then them two did something else, when Knopp started to grumble and fuss, they just took Knopp along and then simply picked up a brick-bat, it was around nine in the evening, and plugged it right through the window of a watch-shop in Romintener Strasse, shoved a hand inside and off they went. They didn’t get caught, either. Them lads is fresh as paint, why, they just mingled in the crowd afterwards. Yes, sir, we kin use them two.” Franz’s head droops. “Smart guys, all right.” “Well, you don’t need it.” “Nope-I don’t need it, now. And I ain’t gonna worry my head about later on.” “Just cut out the booze, Franz.”

Franz’s features quiver: “Why not booze, Herbert? What do you folks want outta me? Why I can’t, I just can’t, I’m a hundred-per-cent cripple.”

He looks into Herbert’s eyes, the corners of his mouth drool’ “Y’see they’re all after me all the time; one of ‘em says I shouldn’t booze, another, don’t go around with Willy, and another says, just leave politics alone!” “Politics, I ain’t got nothing against politics, believe me.”

Franz leans back in his chair and keeps looking at his friend Herbert who thinks to himself: His face sure looks like it’s fallin’ to pieces, he’s a dangerous fellow, good-hearted as our Franz is in other ways. Franz
whispers as he grasps him with his outstretched arm: “They’ve gone and made a cripple out of me, Herbert, just look at me, I ain’t good for nothin’.” “Now just stop that. Just tell that to Eva or Mieze.” “Good for lying in bed, yes. I know that. But you, you’re at least somebody, you do something, and those lads, too.” “Well, and you, if you really want to, you ‘kin do business with that one arm o’ yours, why not?” “They didn’t let me, did they? And Mieze didn’t want me to, either. She got around me again.” “Why not go ahead then and try again?” “Yes, that’s the tune now-try again. Stop and try again. Just as if I was a little dog: on the table, Fido, down again, on the table.”

Herbert pours out two cognacs: I must give Mieze a tip one o’ these days, the boy’s not kosher, she ought to look out, he’ll get furious again and then it’ll be like that time with Ida. Franz tosses off his drink. ‘‘I’m a cripple, Herbert, look at that there sleeve, nothin’ in it. You don’t know how that shoulder hurts at night, I can’t sleep with it.” “Better go see a doctor.” “Don’t want to, don’t want to, don’t want to hear nothin’ about doctors, I got enough o’ that at Magdeburg.” “Then I’m gonna tell Mieze, she ought to take you away from Berlin for a change of air.” “Just let me booze, Herbert.” Herbert whispers in his ear: “One of these days you’ll do to Mieze what you did to Ida.” Franz listens: “What’s that?” “Yeah. Now I guess you’re looking at me, better take a good look at me, too, y’ didn’t have enough with your four years!” Franz clenches his fist in front of Herbert’s nose: “Say, are you ... ?” “No, not me, you!”

Eva, who is ready to go out, has been listening at the door. She comes in dressed in a smart tan suit, and gives Herbert a tap. “Why not lel him booze, are you crazy?” “Aw, you don’t understand. Want him to get like he was before?” “You’re nuts, hold your trap.”

Franz gapes stupidly at Eva.

And half an hour later, in Mieze’s place, he asks her: “How about it, can I booze or not?” “Yes, but not too much. Not too much.” “Maybe you’d like to get boozed up, too?” “Sure I would, with you.” Franz is exultant: “Mieze, old kid, you want to get drunk, but you never was drunk before?” “Sure I was. Come on, let’s get drunk together. Right away.”

A moment before he had been sad, but now Franz sees how she flares up; it’s like the other day when she started with Eva about that child. And Franz stands there beside her, what a darling girl, what a sweet little girl she is, she seems so small beside him, he could put her into his coat-pocket. She flings her arms around him, and he holds her around the waist with his left arm and then - and then-

Then Franz passes out, but only for a second. His arm, which has grown quite stiff, is entwined around her waist. But in fancy Franz couldn’t help making a movement with his arm. His face is set like stone. In fancy, he held in his hand-a little wooden instrument-with which he dealt a downward blow at Mieze, in the chest, once, twice. He’s broken her ribs. Hospital, cemetery, that man from Breslau.

Franz releases Mieze, she doesn’t know what is the matter, as she lies beside him on the floor and he grumbles and bawls and kisses her and weeps; she weeps, too, without knowing why. And then she fetches two bottles of brandy, and he says again and again: “No, no,” but it makes them so jolly, so jolly, oh Lord, what fun they have, and how they do laugh! Mieze should have gone to her gentleman-friend long ago, but what’s the girl to do, she stays with her Franz, she can’t stand up, much less walk. She sucks the brandy from out of Franz’s mouth, and he wants to have it back again; but it runs out of her nose. And then they giggle, and soon he’s snoring away loudly into the bright daylight.