Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin

Author:Alfred Doblin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781681372006
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2018-02-07T05:00:00+00:00

A new person gets a new head as well

A strange little vehicle comes trundling through the city. On a wheeled structure is a cripple, cranking himself forward with his arms. The little cart is flying a whole lot of brightly coloured flags, and it goes down Schönhauser Allee, stopping every so often, people cluster round, and an assistant sells postcards for 10 pfennigs apiece.

‘World traveller! Johann Kirbach, born 20 February 1874 at Monchengladbach, a happy and busy character till the outbreak of the Great War, my ambition and industry were checked by a stroke that lamed the right side of my body. I recovered sufficiently so that I could walk unaided for hours at a time, to pursue my profession. My family was shielded from the gravest consequences. In November 1924 the whole population of the Rhineland cheered when the railway was freed of the oppressive Belgian occupation. Many German comrades got drunk, which was to have calamitous consequences for me. On that day I was on my way home, when I was knocked over not more than a quarter of a mile from my front door by a group of men discharged from a licensed premises. So unhappy was my fall that I was crippled for life and will never walk again. I draw no pension or other form of support. Johann Kirbach.’

In the bar where Franz Biberkopf is scouting around these fine days, looking for an opening, some new, solid and hopeful business, a young lad saw the cart with the cripple at the Danziger Strasse station. And then he starts a commotion about what happened to his father, who was shot in the chest and now can’t breathe, but all of a sudden that’s supposed to be just a nervous ailment, and they cut his war pension and before long he won’t get any at all.

His gripes are listened to by another young fellow in an oversized jockey cap, sitting on the same bench as Franz, but with no beer in front of him. The guy has a jaw on him like a boxer. He goes: ‘Bah, cripples, they shouldn’t get a penny!’ ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Stick em in your war, and then not pay them.’ ‘That’s the way it should be, Christ, man. If you do something idiotic, then you won’t expect to be paid for it. If a small boy falls off a roller and breaks his leg, he won’t expect a penny neither. Why should he, just for being stupid.’ ‘When there was a war on, before your time by the look of you, you were still in nappies.’ ‘Rot, rot, the trouble with Germany is that they pay support. Thousands of people sitting around, no one doing anything, just collecting.’

Others around the table weigh in: ‘Think for a moment, Willi! What work do you do?’ ‘None. And if they goes on paying me, I’ll not do anything then either. They’ve got no sense just paying me.’ The others laugh: ‘He likes to talk.

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