Käsebier Takes Berlin

by Gabriele Tergit

  Miermann, Gohlisch, and Miss Kohler began their day’s work at the office.

  “I can’t write today,” said Miermann, and phoned home. “Emma, I’ll be home late, don’t wait up for dinner.”

  He went to the little Geroldstube, ordered a bottle of wine, and sat there for several hours. Then he walked through the dead city.

  Sparse streetlights burned on Zimmerstrasse. A few miserable-looking girls stood on Markgrafenstrasse. A couple was fighting. A man yelled, “You damned whore, fooling around with a married man,” a woman sobbed loudly. Then everything went quiet. I don’t want to go west yet, thought Miermann, Everyone will be cheerfully sitting about on Tauentzienstrasse and the women are pretty. I don’t want to see that. —He went back down sad Zimmerstrasse, over dead Leipziger Strasse, which was brightly lit up by arc lamps and looked like a film set that would be torn down the next day. He crossed the Spittelmarkt, walked along the water until the Waisenbrücke, and looked at the silhouette of the town hall spire against the red sky. He went over the bridge and along Stralauer Strasse. He could hear only his own steps. He stepped into the Grosser Jüdenhof for a moment. The large tree cast a shadow over the old houses; light shone from the windows. Miermann felt incredibly homesick. The strains of “Be Honest Truth Thy Guide” came from the parish church. Miermann hugged the tree, “Help me,” he said to the tree, “Help me.” He was not ashamed in front of the tree, this tree was good, it sheltered him, it did not expose him to scorn, it did not demand any posturing, irony, or industriousness. “You dear,” he said, and patted the tree. He walked back through old, narrow alleys. They want to demolish all of this—all of it. It’s all supposed to become office buildings, he thought. The buildings on the Molkenmarkt were already empty. I knew this city, he thought, when it still looked like a city, when they hadn’t torn down house after house yet, when wool was still stored in Hohes Haus and the horse carts stood on Klosterstrasse, the Hollmann school was still at Hackescher Markt, and there were gardens everywhere. There’s no more space left for mankind or its longings. He wandered farther, came to the Schlossplatz, and walked along Französische Strasse. He encountered no one. He had returned to a derelict city after a thousand years. The houses were unoccupied, and sometimes only an old God stood out front wearing a uniform with braided trim, holding the keys. Never again would people breathe here. Laughter had died when the people had perished. He alone was awake. He was tired, the soles of his feet ached. “Tired feet,” he thought. “The mildest work is washing feet. We have stopped wandering, we no longer have tired feet, we have no one to wash them for us, our hearts betrayed, our trust deceived in the cities.”

  There were people, trolleys, cars on Friedrichstrasse. He took a taxi. “Potsdamer Brücke,” he said. He got out, walked along the canal. The scaffolding of the Shell house rose up in the air. He spoke to the guard:

  “Such beautiful houses torn down here.”

  “But it’s good after all, those old dumps,” said the man. “There’s work, and a big house from a foreign company brings in cash.”

  “I think it’s a shame,” Miermann insisted.

  “Oh, no, sir,” said the man.

  “The people of Berlin think nothing of tradition,” thought Miermann. “They like tearing things down and hullaballoo and ta-ra-ra.”

  Miermann couldn’t go home yet.

  On Würzburger Strasse, he thought, there’s something bleaker, more meaningless than this street, something more hopeless than these houses that were built so lovelessly. He hailed a taxi. “Friedrichstrasse,” he said. He got out, went past the girls, hot dog sellers, pimps, construction sites, and torch flames, and into a bar. A den of vice in faux Chinese style, wooden carvings, dragon heads, colorful lanterns, many women. A few coarse but pretty girls in low-cut dresses danced with lanky young people. A blonde in black sequins sat down at his table.

  “Well, sugar.”

  It was a man. Miermann was disgusted. But he didn’t want to raise a fuss.

  “I want a curaçao.”

  “Don’cha want a bottle of wine? I’ll be nice, too.”

  “A curaçao, please.”

  He paid and left. Continued on, saw a young strumpet in a skimpy skirt.

  “Come,” he said. Took her along.

  “Where’dja wanna go?”

  “To a café.”

  “I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I just want to drink a cup of coffee.”

  “And then?”

  “You can go.”

  “Oh, you’re one of those perverts? Well, fine.”

  He went into a café with her. “Order whatever you like,” he said. She ordered cake and whipped cream, stuffed herself like every other little girl in Berlin. Miermann kissed her and gave her five marks, and she was on her way again.

  In the dance hall on the corner, a girl in a twenty-mark red silk dress was splayed over the podium singing a love song. She was in a bad mood. Below her sat young men, blond and greased up. There was screeching from the next street over. “Can’tcha do something else than arrest a poor girl,” a woman in a uniform of black silk shrieked; over it she wore a thin coat trimmed with gray goat. “I wasn’t even working, I was going to my friend’s birthday party.” The shrieking subsided. The “U” of the underground shone in the night.

  It was already light and the night was long over when he ended up in a basement in the north. Long tables, wooden benches, a piano player, streetcar workers. A dark crowd of misshapen, pale girls with red mouths wearing bright knit cardigans, and men with sport hats.

  •

  The next day, Miermann received a letter by registered mail:

  “Dear Mr. Miermann! Unfortunately, it is no longer possible for us to uphold our current contract with you. It will be terminated on the first of October.

  “Berliner Rundschau Publishing Company, sgd. Frächter.”

  “Look here,” said Miermann. “I’ve been here for eighteen years. Now, suddenly, right now, when everyone knows that jobs are scarce, even for the best people! What are we? Freelance writers? Journalists? Politicians? No, dear Gohlisch, we’re small-time employees, you see. We can go to the labor courts like a maid, a servant who’s fired on the fifteenth. Are you an artist, Gohlisch? You think so? You’re not! You’re a poorly paid employee. Nothing more than a poorly paid employee. The free man is going to the dogs. They’ll say, Are you surprised? This is capitalism, this is what it looks like.”

  “He didn’t need to do that,” said Miss Kohler. “Not everyone behaved or behaves like that. Those who’ve built up their own business treat their workers like colleagues. Only careerists are that heartless.”

  “Not just,” said Miermann. “Heirs and retirees who become entrepreneurs are bad news too. The worst—and by the way, it’s the same in politics—is that those who have power are those who seek power, and those who seek power are not decent people.”

  “You should talk to Frächter,” said Gohlisch. “But it won’t help.”

  “I’ll say, Sun of the East, d’you remember the Sun of the East from 1918?”

  “Don’t fly off the handle. You’re right, but you have a wife; it’s not Napoleon’s seven, but you have two reasons to give in.”

  “Everyone can do that,” said Miermann. “But I can’t. I’ve spoken too much about the freedom of the press, I’ve defended freedom of expression thousands of times. I’ve tried to never make compromises in someone’s favor or harm. And I’m supposed to go and ask the renegade Frächter for two hundred marks? I can’t do that. Tomorrow I suppose I’ll have to speak with an outside representative? I’m supposed to remain a free man if I go begging for two hundred marks? And I’m supposed to get by on a salary of three hundred marks a month? I can’t do that.”

  “Frächter will tell you that ninety percent of the German population has to get by on a lot less. Go to Frächter, but not today.”

  31

  Miermann goes on strike

  MIERMANN made a plan of
attack. He went on strike. For eighteen years, the readers of the Berliner Rundschau had been used to reading the little Miermanns. Miermann had written between twenty and fifty lines of finely polished prose on the day’s events for eighteen years: cabinet crises, presidential elections, the Krantz affair,42 the Haarmann trial,43 the battleship debate. Miermann stopped writing. He waited for his readers and his publisher to respond. Miermann had been deeply loved by his readers over the years. He had three thick binders stuffed with letters from readers. He had received packages during the inflation, wine and sweets. He was betting on those three thick binders.

  Every day, Gohlisch asked him, “Has anyone written?”

  “No.”

  Miss Kohler asked and waited.

  But nothing came.

  Miermann said, “No mass will be sung, no Kaddish recited. Nothing will be said nor sung on my dying day. By the way, this has only happened to me since my ‘Käsebier’ stopped working. The nib burst yesterday.”

  After four weeks, a friendly woman inquired whether Miermann was sick.

  Gohlisch, who had noticed the strike on the second day, said to Miermann, “I’m curious to see what will happen. Öchsli said that he was sadly quite certain of the consequences of such measures.”

  On August 28, it transpired that even Heye hadn’t noticed Miermann’s silent protest, let alone the publisher. No one had noticed. Perhaps they would have if he had remained silent for several months, but even that was highly questionable.

  32

  Käsebier returns

  WHILE Miermann was still on strike and the atmosphere at the Berliner Rundschau made any kind of intellectual collaboration impossible, Käsebier returned to Berlin.

  Frächter made an editorial intervention and demanded that Käsebier be put on the front page.

  “Käsebier after His Show in London.”

  “Käsebier Boards the Leviathan.”

  “Käsebier Returns to the Continent.”

  He was treated like a blimp or a firestorm or a tornado.

  “Käsebier Comes to Cologne.”

  “Käsebier Comes to Berlin.”

  In fact, his show in London had been a complete flop. The London press unanimously agreed that he was a local celebrity and could not be exported. His guest appearance had greatly damaged the exchange between German and British artists and art. Influential German artists were completely appalled by this thoughtless and poorly prepared guest appearance, which had been orchestrated by Frächter’s friend.

  The London correspondent of the Berliner Tageszeitung sent Waldschmidt a private report.

  Among other things, it said, “Unfortunately, I must report that the Times had only very nasty things to say. ‘It can only be considered shameless to invite London’s high society to partake in the offerings of an extremely mediocre bench-singer. Pronouncing this lovely and amiable dilettante of the same caliber as Raquel Meller, Guilbert, or even Marc Henry (a rather average artist), indicates a strong bias for one’s own nation.’ We should publish these opinion pieces in Germany. Misguided guest shows hurt us more than they help us. Above all, they hurt German art that is truly great.”

  But barely anything was published on these reactions. There were tremors at the Berliner Tageszeitung. The Berliner Rundschau reveled in “Käsebier’s Triumph.” But the Käsebier economy was over for good. The toy and rubber industries and Miss Götzel weren’t the only ones who had turned away from him. His records were no longer in demand. Käsebier’s songs were replaced by new ones, and in locales that had once played only “How Can He Sleep with That Thin Wall?,” one could now hear “Three musketee-heers, three cavalie-heers,” or “In Paris, in Paris, the Girls Are So Sweet” from Under the Roofs of Paris.

  He was over for the film industry—his films had been too bad—and there were no journalists left to discover him. The only thing that proved lasting were the Käsebier woven shoes, which sold steadily all summer long. The large papier-mâché sculpture of Käsebier was still standing in the shopwindow, but the Käsebier cigarette factory—“Käsebier Bonus, Melior, and Optimus”—had gone bankrupt after a year. Its sign on the Friedrichstrasse train station had rusted, and was now being removed to make way for a new one: NICOBAR, THE NICOTINE KILLER.

  Meanwhile, Käsebier had terminated his contract with Hasenheide for the first of April.

  They were keeping the apartment until October 1. Mrs. Käsebier had wanted a five-room apartment, but Käsebier insisted on four.

  Although the apartment on the Kurfürstendamm had first seemed like paradise, Mrs. Käsebier shed quite a few tears. She was used to eating in the kitchen; she didn’t want to give up her habit. But as was standard in modern apartments, the kitchen had been pared down to the minimum. Its coziness would have been ruined by carrying plates back and forth, and she did not want to give in and get a maid. She tackled the kitchen problem several times, finally demanding that the kitchen be moved into a more spacious room. The construction management refused. Deciding on wallpaper, curtains, and furniture left her with no piece of mind. She got new furniture for the living room, study, and dining room, but decided to keep the bedroom as it was. She had been very happy in it, she was superstitious, and she wanted to keep something as a reminder of the day that all their debts had been paid off.

  Käsebier, on the other hand, rehearsed and rehearsed and had more stage fright than ever before, even more than in his earliest days. He, who was so unpolitical, wanted to keep his show focused on human interest topics in these tumultuous times.

  Margot Weissmann, who had just returned to Berlin, invited everyone to her apartment on September 3 for a housewarming party at which the latest sensational news would be announced: Frächter’s engagement to Mrs. Kaliski, née Waldschmidt.

  Mrs. Muschler had already ordered the first winter look, a white georgette dress, for the Weissmanns’ party. Muschler agreed to it, although he was doing quite badly. The complex on Kurfürstendamm, which was still mostly empty, wasn’t going to pull him out of the hole as he had hoped. It was more than doubtful whether Käsebier could manage three thousand marks a month in rent. In addition, Muschler had gotten involved in rather dubious business investments, even as his private banking had suffered. The stock market was turning ever more bearish with the rise of the National Socialists. If Kurfürstendamm had still been an untouched plot of land, Muschler could have sold or leased it off. The partnership between the associates often grew heated because of the construction project.

  Uncle Gustav said, “I was against it from the start, but you always know better.”

  “It’ll be a great business venture if we can hang on to it,” Muschler said.

  “But we can’t,” said Uncle Gustav.

  “You’re always a pessimist,” Muschler retorted.

  “I’ve always been proven right, unfortunately.”

  “But you believed in the mark.”

  “No one could believe in the madness of inflation.”

  “Well, I guessed right that time.”

  “Maybe in abnormal times, but you’re not prepared for a normal crisis.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “All too soon, I’m afraid.”

  Mitte anxiously watched these developments. The sanguine Mitte, that eternal optimist, was counting on Muschler to go bankrupt. This would relieve him of his obligations. But even then, he would first have to pay Muschler an owner’s mortgage of 250,000 marks as well as the property transfer tax, and he was completely illiquid.

  33

  Miermann dies

  SINCE neither his publisher nor his readers had noticed his silence, Miermann decided to speak to the publisher on the twenty-ninth.

  “I’m going to see Frächter now,” Miermann said.

  “Chin up and best of luck.”

  Even a month ago, Gohlisch wouldn’t have dared to say that to his venerated editor. But Miermann had changed. He had changed in such a way that Gohlisch could now say “chin up” to him.

/>   But before Miermann went to Frächter, he glanced over two articles, one by Gohlisch, one by Miss Kohler.

  “I’m going to order coffee,” said Gohlisch.

  “Ah, leave it,” said Miermann. “I don’t want one.”

  “What about a grappa?”

  “That’s kind of you, but I don’t want one. Dear Golisch,” he said, “your manuscripts! You simply can’t say: ‘The political audacity of the German Nationalists allows them to speak about weak wills and so on, despite the clear state of affairs under a gloomy sky.’ However, ‘clear state of affairs under a gloomy sky’ is the most beautiful thing I’ve read in a while.”

  He cut, reorganized, added punctuation, straightened out thoughts, lifted ideas out of the confusion of dim intuition and brought them into the clarity of enlightening prose, and only then did the articles by his faithful students Gohlisch and Kohler first become themselves: a good Gohlisch, a good Kohler. Indeed, Gohlisch and Kohler had gotten into the habit of writing articles as if they were composing private letters to Miermann. Their articles became good as they thought of his kindhearted, loving critique. This was also the case on the day Miermann sent both of their articles into the composing room and went to see Frächter.

  Frächter had gotten a haircut. A buzz cut. A small bald spot had become noticeable. Nothing still resembled the man who had frequented the Romanisches Café a year and a half ago. Across from Miermann sat a slightly plump citizen, wedging in his monocle from time to time, with a salary of thirty thousand marks and royalties up to fifty thousand marks.

  Frächter began, “I deeply regret this conversation. Believe me, if I could have my way, I would gladly give you a handsome salary.”

  “Mr. Frächter, you know as well as I do that a man in my position requires a different standard of living from a low-level office employee to retain his professional point of view.”