The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 understand. No, he did not understand.
    And again it occurred to him that his former friend (which he was not any longer