Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf Read Free Page B

knew a lot, a clever man. We were seven hungry mouths, and whenever there was nothing to eat, he told us stories. It don’t fill your stomach, but you forget things.” The muffled groaning below continued. (A sick jackass can groan, too.) “Well, well, we know that in this world there ain’t only gold, beauty, and happiness. Now, who was Zannovich, who was his father, who were his parents? Beggars like most of us, hawkers, peddlers, tradespeople. Old Zannovich came from Albania, and went to Venice. He knew why he went to Venice. Some fellows go from the city to the country, others from the country to the city. In the country it’s quieter, people turn everything around and around, you can talk for hours, and if you’re lucky, you’ve earned a couple of pfennigs. Now, in town, too, it’s hard, but the people live closer together, and they have no time. If it’s not one thing, it’s the other. Got no oxen, but fast horses with cabs. You lose and you win. Old Zannovich knew that. First sold what he had with him and then he took to cards and played with the folks. He wasn’t straight. He made a bizniz out of it, he did, knowing that folks in the city have got no time and want to be amused. He entertained ‘em all rightl It cost ‘em hard cash. A swindler, a cardsharp-that was old Zannovich, but he had a head on him. The peasants made things hard for him, here he made a softer living. Things went well with him. Till one of them suddenly imagined he had been done a wrong. Noo, old Zannovich hadn’t exactly counted on that. It came to blows, the police mixed in, and finally old Zannovich had to scoot with his children. The law of Venice was after him, the old man thought he’d rather have no dealings with the law, they don’t understand me, they couldn’t catch him either. He had horses and money with him and settled again in Albania and bought himself an estate, a whole village, he did, and his children he sent to college. And when he became very old, he died peacefully and respected. That was old Zannovich’s life. The peasants wept over him, but he never could bear them, because he always thought of the time when he had stood before them with his trinkets, rings, bracelets, and coral chains, while they turned them around and around, fiddling with them, and finally went away and left him standing there.
    “Y’know, when the father’s a WI plant, he wants his son to be a tree. When the father’s a stone, he wants his son to be a mountain. Old Zannovich said to his sons: ‘I was nothing here in Albania, as long as I went peddling for twenty years, and why not? Because I didn’t take my head where it belonged. I send you to the big school, to Padua, get horses and wagons, and when you’re through studying, think of me, who had many cares together with your mother and you and who slept at night with you in the forest, like a boar: it was my own fault. The peasants had drained me dry like a bad year, and I would have gone to pieces. But I went among people and I didn’t go under.”
    The red-haired chap laughed to himself, wagged his head, rocked his body. They were sitting on the carpet. “If anybody should come in now, he might think we’re both meschugge, we’ve got a sofa and we sit on the floor. Noo, if we want to, why not? If we only get some fun out of it. Young Zannovich Stefan was already a great orator as a young man of twenty. He could scrape and bow, make himself popular, he could make goo-goo eyes at the women and act noble with the men. In Padua the nobles learn from the professors, Stefan learnt from the nobles. They were all nice to him. And when he came home to Albania, his father was still living, how happy he was about him and he liked him, too, and said: ‘Look at him, there’s a man of the world for you, he won’t trade with the peasants for twenty years as I did, he’s twenty years ahead of his father.’ And the youngster stroked his silk sleeve, brushed his beautiful curls from