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I’ll get discharged soon. Psst, say, one of the boys got out last night, pard, the rope’s still dangling out there over the wall, they got the police after him. He groans, he lifts his head, he sees the girl her chin, her neck. If I only knew how to get out of prison. They ain’t going to discharge me. I’m not out yet. She puffs blue rings from the side at him, sniggers: “You’re sweet, come on, I’ll pour you a glass of Mampe brandy, thirty pfennigs.” He lies there, stretched out at full length. “What do I care for Mampe? They knocked hell out of me. I did time at Tegel, I did, what for, I’d really like to know. First with the Prussians in the trenches, and then in Tegel. I ain’t a human being any more.” “Well, but you’re not going to cry here. Come on, open your l’ilbeakie, big mans gotta drink. We’re a jolly lot, we are, we’re as happy as can be, we laugh and sing with delight from morning until night.” And the dump heap for that. Why, they might have chopped off the fellow’s head at once, and be done with it, the lousy dogs. Could have dumped me on the garbage heap, why not. “Come on, big man, take another glass. I’d walk a mile for Mampe’s brandy, it makes you feel so hale and dandy.”
    “To think the girls ran after me like a bunch of sheep and I didn’t even spit at ‘em, and there I was, flat on my nose.” She picks up another one of his cigarettes which have fallen to the floor. “Yes, you ought to go to the policeman sometime and tell him.” “I’m going.” He is looking for his suspenders. And says nothing more and doesn’t look at the girl with her slobbery mouth, she smokes and smiles and looks at him, shoves a few cigarettes quickly under the sofa with her foot. And he grabs his hat and hurries down the stairs, takes the 68 car to Alexanderplatz, and sits brooding in a cafe over a glass of light beer.
    Testifortan, authorized patent No. 365695, sexual therapeutic agent approved by Sanitary Councillor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and Dr. Bernard Schapiro; Institute of Sexual Science, Berlin. The main causes of impotence are: A. insufficient charging through functional disorder of the internal secretory glands, B. too strong resistance through extreme psychic inhibitions, exhaustion of the erective center. At what moment the impotent patient will be able to resume his functions can be determined only through the progress of each individual case. A period of abstention is often effective.
    And gluttonously he eats and sleeps his fill, and the next day on the street he thinks: I’d like to have this gal, and that gal I’d like to have, but doesn’t go near any of them. And the one in the show-window, what a plump little morsel. She could suit me, but I won’t go near any of ‘em. And he hangs around the cafe again and doesn’t look at any of the girls and guzzles and boozes. Now I won’t do anything the whole livelong day but eat my fill and booze and sleep and life is over for me. Over. Over.
    Victory all along the Line! Franz Biberkopf buys a Veal Cutlet
    As Wednesday rolls around, the third day, he puts on his coat.
    Whose fault is it all? Ida’s of course. Who else’s? I knocked that tart’s ribs to pieces, that’s why I had to go to the jug. Now she’s got what she wanted, the wench is dead, and here I am. And he snivels to himself and races along the streets in the cold. Where to? Where she had lived with him, at her sister’s. Through the Invalidenstrasse, into Ackerstrasse, right into the house like a whirlwind, second courtyard. Prison had never existed, nor the conversation with the Jews in the Dragonerstrasse. Where is the wench, it’s her fault. Seen nothing in the street but found Illy way. A little twitching of the face, a little twitching in the fingers, I lien we’ll go there, bumbledy, bumbledy, bumbledy, bee, tumbledy, rumbledy, tumbledy, bee, rumbledy, bumbledy.
    Ring-a-ling. “Who is it?” “Me.” “Who?” “Open that door, old