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

astonishment, wonder, and giddy delight.
    For the Max who returned was entirely different from the Max who had run away a year before. He was an entirely different Max, wearing new duds—a tight-fitting jacket, pants with cuffs, yellow gloves, a ring on his finger, a wristwatch, and a walking stick in hands that were now at any rate always washed. And he had money—so much money that he invited them all on a Sunday afternoon to the neighboring village, so as to get them all drunk there—from beer and schnapps and grog, but above all also from his tales of Berlin.
    Of this Berlin with its theaters and lounges; its cinemas, where there always were seats for not less than five thousand people; its circus, which played every day (not just Sundays); its cafes and fine restaurants without number—this Berlin, where money just lay in the street, so that you only had to pick it up.
    They sat around him with open ears and jaws, elbows propped on the table, listening, and when someone tried to question or object he cut them off with a grand wave of his hand: “None of you have any idea of it!” (“You yokels!”—to himself.)
    In the evening, staggering home arm in arm with Max, he asked if it were all true, what he had said, and if you could really make so much money there and how. Max stopped, looked him over from top to bottom, and said:
    “Such a good-looking boy like you! If you don’t believe it, just come there!” Then he reached into his pocket and drew out his billfold—a real billfold with monogram and corners covered with silver. From the billfold he drew a calling card with his name in printed letters. Under the name, in pencil, was his exact address.
    “Just come there! You’ll soon see.”
    He had pressed the card into his hand and promised, “I’ll help you.”
    On the next day Max, who had so unexpectedly popped up, vanished again, since things had became too hot for him, but his card had been kept and preserved like a sacred possession.
    It burned in his breast. He felt transformed. Again and again he secretly repeated to himself the words he had heard, and each time a decision was growing in him: he, too, must go to Berlin! To Berlin and to Max!
    He knew going would not be easy. He would never receive permission to go, neither from his grandparents, nor from his guardian. So, he also had to run away.
    And when spring arrived, lovely and careless spring which arouses so many wishes—some of which come true—he could no longer be held.
    One evening, when everyone was sleeping, he donned his Sunday suit, packed some underwear and personal possessions into a box, emptied his savings bank, and crept out of the humble house.
    He left a note saying not to worry about him. He promised to write when he found work and to return once things were going well for him.
    He walked half the night, all the way to a train station other than the one in his village. He bought a ticket there to one of the next stations, so as not even there to give away where he meant to go, and only from there on to Berlin.
    Everything went well. No one spoke to him or stopped him. The trip had lasted the remainder of that night and into the next afternoon.
    Now he was already in his second day in the city of his longing.
    When he awoke on the third day, earlier than the day before, he thought less than he had the evening before about returning. As long as his money lasted, he was staying here. He carefully counted it again, confirming that it would last for at least two or three days, and decided to pay for the room for the next two nights in advance. The old waiter acknowledged his payment with the indifferent words, “All right, it’s paid until early Thursday!”
    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