The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse Read online

  The days passed quickly.

  To be sure, it was boring being all alone the whole day with no one to talk to. But there was a lot to see!

  The buildings and streets soon began to bore him: the streets were denser, longer, and wider, the building were taller and larger; both never ended. But the shops in them! What all there was to see and buy there! He could not get his fill of looking at them, and he would have liked to own everything—this stylish suit and those colorful ties; that wristwatch and this cigarette case of silver, no, that other case there, the flat, gold one. And this here! And that there!

  Thus he stared in wonder, and could stand before the same shop window an hour without stirring.

  He was also no longer as shy as on the first day. When he felt hungry and thirsty, he went into the first beer hall he came to and ordered, thinking every time, you’ve still got money.

  He gradually came to know the part of the city where he usually roamed. The long street that started up here and seemed never to end was Friedrichstrasse. The broad one with trees and benches in the middle and a gate at the beginning—or at the end?—was Unter den Linden.

  He even rode on streetcars and buses, up on the top. Once, just for the pleasure of it, he rode through the Tiergarten, another time down to Kreuzberg and back.

  If he became too bored all alone, there was always the cinema. It was much lovelier, more colorful and mysterious in its darkness than the bright life outside. There were some that already opened in the early afternoon. He could sit for hours looking at the flickering screen, mostly without comprehending the films, but held by the quivering and ever-changing spell of the pictures.

  One day, he no longer knew which it was, he counted his money on awakening, then counted once more and realized it was not even enough for the return trip. He was terribly frightened at first, especially when he counted back and realized that the day was Thursday, the day to which he had paid for the room.

  He had to go home now. What was he to do here without money? He would a thousand times have preferred to stay, but he had to go home.

  He thought it over. He realized that his things in the box were worth nothing. But he still had his watch, his confirmation watch.

  He crept out of the hotel, luckily without being seen. Somewhere near the train station he remembered having seen the sign of a pawnbroker. He found it again.

  “Silver? Nonsense, nickel,” the pawnbroker said, and announced he could have one mark on it. One mark! No, then he’d rather not. But in the end, he took the mark anyway.

  Now he had two marks and seventy pennies altogether. What was he to do? He still had to eat and get through the day.

  So he drank a cup of coffee and ate a couple of dry rolls, then sat hungry almost the whole day in one corner of a poorly ventilated all-day cinema. He was discovered and had to pay an additional amount. He saw his money shrink to a bit over one mark.

  For today, a meal was out of the question, or what would he live on tomorrow?

  He crept around his hotel, going inside in an unobserved moment, and reached his room unhindered. He fell uneasily asleep.

  Early the next morning the old waiter was standing at his bed in his eternal tailcoat.

  “What’s this? The room not yet paid for the night?” He had to admit it. But that ended it.

  “That would really be great! Sleep and not pay? “What, leave your old box of rags here as security? Naturally it stays here. You’ll get it again when you bring money. Now you’re to get out of here, as quick as possible.”

  The boy begged: “Just a couple days more . . . I’ll pay then, really I will.”

  “Nothing doing! Then everyone could come.” The old man remained standing beside him until he finished dressing.

  “When you have money, you may return and pick up your things. Not before, understood?”

  *

  He was standing now in the street; he could have howled with rage. Couldn’t the old guy let him stay at least this night, when he already had slept there four nights and paid for them on time, in advance even!

  What now?

  If only he could find work. But where and how? He had no idea how to go about it. (That he might still meet up with his friend Max somewhere—this hope had now really been given up.)

  He had to get through the day, however, and he did have to eat, especially today since he had gone to bed hungry yesterday. So, cutting into his last mark, he bought a couple of rolls and a pair of garlic sausages and ate them in a corner of the train station.

  He spent the morning loitering near the Friedrichstrasse Train Station until sent away by one of the porters (who threatened him with something terrible), and he spent the afternoon on the benches of the Tiergarten, going from bench to bench, sitting on each a while. Finally, he fell asleep in the evening on a bench in a less frequented part of the park.

  In the night he awoke and felt something moist and warm on his hand. He sprang up, heard the curse of a watchman, and ran away as fast as his feet could carry him. The guard, with stick in hand and a dog on a leash, was after him for a while, but didn’t catch him.

  At the Reichstag building he crouched in a dark niche and slowly dozed off again in the mild spring night.

  He woke in the early morning feeling a painful hunger. He still had precisely twenty pennies—enough for four rolls and a couple of cigarettes. When he smoked—he had already noticed this yesterday—he felt less hunger for a while. He had to smoke.

  Again, he loitered through the morning on the benches of the park. From time to time he nodded off, but rose quickly when he felt the gaze of a passerby on him.

  Once, when he looked up, sitting close to him was a small, very well dressed but ugly man, looking at him through a pince-nez attentively, with no malice it seemed to him, but still so oddly that he got up. What did he want from him? Certainly not to help.

  On the next bench he was startled by the laughter of two youngsters, who suddenly were in front of him asking what time it was. “You do have a watch?” When they saw his dull face, they walked on roaring with laughter.

  And on a third bench he heard a coachman shout something to him from his coachbox, which he did not understand, but which certainly was not something flattering.

  He was too tired to become angry, too dull to be startled, and much too hungry to reflect on what all these people wanted from him.

  He sat longer on an out-of-the-way bench, undisturbed. It was now noon. A boundless rage, such as at times had gripped him as a child, came over him. He felt rage at Max, at the old waiter in the hotel, at the whole world. He stamped on the ground with the heels of his shoes and bit a blade of grass into tiny pieces.

  His rage passed and now he broke out bawling. Great pity for himself, his misery, and his desolation came over him. What was he to do? What was he to do now? He did not know.

  He wanted to speak to the first passerby that came along and tell him everything. But hardly anyone came by here, and he realized himself that it would help nothing. In Berlin, he had already seen, you had to have money or you went to the dogs.

  When he had cried himself out and his tears came more slowly, an angry defiance gripped him. He got up, furious, and crept into the nearest, thick bush. There he threw himself down at full length and soon fell asleep.

  After hours of a deep sleep he woke. He no longer felt tired and his hunger no longer pained him so much.

  He washed his face and hands a bit at a nearby fountain.

  Then he walked slowly into the city, to Unter den Linden. It had become afternoon.

  Over and over again, as he had since yesterday, he thought about what Max had said to him. He tried to recall every word, so as finally to understand its meaning.

  What was it he said?—that you could make money in Berlin, much money. But with what? With what kind of work? And where was this work to be found? And why did good-looking boys—of which he was supposed to be one—find work easier than others?

  He did not u
nderstand. No, he did not understand.

  And again it occurred to him that his former friend (which he was not any longer now, even if he should see him again!) always talked about Friedrichstrasse, and later on that afternoon when they were alone, also about the Passage.

  The Passage—surely that was the large throughway he had been in on the first afternoon, right after his arrival, where the people had looked at him so oddly that he had become really frightened and had run away? So frightened that ever since he had always made a wide detour around it.

  Young guys had been standing around there, but they had not seemed to him good-looking, rather ugly and common. Were they gathered there looking for some kind of work?

  He did want to go there again and take a closer look at the situation—maybe ask somebody directly. No one could do more than chase him away or laugh at him.

  But suddenly hunger powerfully gripped him again and at the same time his heavy boots, which he had not taken off since yesterday, pained him so that he could go no farther. He had to sit down on the nearest bench under the linden trees and press his hands against his stomach. He was unable to think clearly any longer. In his burning head everything was all mixed up.

  A complete lethargy to everything seized him. It was all the same to him. If he fell down, someone would pick him up. Or let him lie.

  He had sat thus for almost an hour, dully staring straight ahead, his aching head in his hands, when he felt a coin pressed into his hand. He saw only an old, simply dressed woman, who walked away before he could thank her. She had probably been sitting on one of the other benches and observing him for a long time.

  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 dire
cted 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!