Freshly free off a quadrennial confinement, Franz vows to walk the straight and narrow. No more funny business from here on out. The whole Ida business leading to his arrest was a fluke, see, he is no villain, this time Franz is going things legitimate. But, there is a reaper...

1920's Berlin's criminal underbelly, they're building a station on Alex, you know, Franz selling papers on the duckboards, only thing is, tuppence a copy, five pfennigs an hour, something like that, a man can't live. Jeremiah said we would heal Babylon, but Babylon would not be healed. Crime pays.

Cinematic, no, operatic, replete with choral refrain. Döblin holds us at arms' lengths, wonder what in the world Franz is getting at half the time. Christlike innocence until he's pimping his new woman, until he is beating her half to death. There is a conflict of interest, his ego and his impulse. And what with society on the brink and all...1,399 cattle, 2,700 calves, 4,654 sheep, 18,864 pigs. There is a reaper, Death yclept.