Danzig - The Tin Drum Part 7

Only toward the end of the eighteenth century, at the time of the part.i.tions of Poland, were effective measures taken against her. The Prussians, who had taken the city by force of arms, issued a Royal Prussian edict prohibiting "the wooden figure Niobe". For the first time she was mentioned by name in an official doc.u.ment and at the same time evacuated or rather incarcerated in that Stockturm in whose courtyard Paul Beneke had been drowned and from whose gallery I had first tried out my long-distance song effects. Intimidated perhaps by the presence of the choice products of human ingenuity of which I have spoken (for she was lodged in the torture chamber), she minded her business throughout the nineteenth century.

When in '25 I climbed to the top of the Stockturm and haunted the windows of the Stadt-Theater with my voice, Niobe, popularly known as "the Green Kitten", had long since and thank goodness been removed from the torture chamber of the tower. Who knows whether my attack on the neocla.s.sical edifice would otherwise have succeeded?

It must have been an ignorant museum director, a foreigner to the city, who took Niobe from the torture chamber where her malice was held in check and, shortly after the founding of the Free City, settled her in the newly installed Maritime Museum. Shortly thereafter he died of blood poisoning, which this over-zealous official had brought on himself while putting up a sign saying that the lady on exhibition above it was a figurehead answering to the name of Niobe. His successor, a cautious man familiar with the history of the city, wanted to have Niobe removed. His idea was to make the city of Lubeck a present of the dangerous wooden maiden, and it is only because the people of Lubeck declined the gift that the little city on the Trave, with the exception of its brick churches, came through the war and its air raids relatively unscathed.

And so Niobe, or "the Green Kitten", remained in the Maritime Museum and was responsible in the short s.p.a.ce of fourteen years for the death of three directors -- not the cautious one, he had got himself transferred -- for the demise of an elderly priest at her feet, the violent ends of a student at the Engineering School, of two graduates of St. Peter's Secondary School who had just pa.s.sed their final examinations, and the end of four conscientious museum attendants, three of whom were married. All, even the student of engineering, were found with transfigured countenances and in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s sharp objects of a kind to be found only in maritime museums: sailor's knives, boarding hooks, harpoons, finely chiseled spearheads from the Gold Coast, sailmakers' needles; only the last of the students had been obliged to resort first to his pocketknife and then to his school compa.s.s, because shortly before his death all the sharp objects in the museum had been attached to chains or placed behind gla.s.s.

Although in every case the police as well as the coroner spoke of tragic suicide, a rumor which was current in the city and echoed in the newspapers had it that "The Green Kitten does it with her own hands". Niobe was seriously suspected of having dispatched men and boys from life to death. There was no end of discussion. The newspapers devoted special columns to their readers' opinions on the "Niobe case". The city government spoke of untimely superst.i.tion and said it had no intention whatsoever of taking precipitate action before definite proof was provided that something sinister and supernatural had actually occurred.

Thus the green statue remained the prize piece of the Maritime Museum, for the District Museum in Oliva, the Munic.i.p.al Museum in Fleischerga.s.se, and the management of the Artushof refused to accept the man-crazy individual within their walls.

There was a shortage of museum attendants. And the attendants were not alone in refusing to have anything to do with the wooden maiden. Visitors to the museum also avoided the room with the amber-eyed lady. For quite some time utter silence prevailed behind the Renaissance windows which provided the sculpture with the necessary lateral lighting. Dust piled up. The cleaning women stopped coming. As to the photographers, formerly so irrepressible, one of them died soon after taking Niobe's picture; a natural death, to be sure, but the man's colleagues had put two and two together. They ceased to furnish the press of the Free City, Poland, Germany, and even France with likenesses of the murderous figurehead, and even went so far as to expunge Niobe from their files. From then on their photographic efforts were devoted exclusively to the arrivals and departures of presidents, prime ministers, and exiled kings, to poultry shows. National Party Congresses, automobile races, and spring floods.

Such was the state of affairs when Herbert Truczinski, who no longer wished to be a waiter and was dead set against going into the customs service, donned the mouse-grey uniform of a museum attendant and took his place on a leather chair beside the door of the room popularly referred to as "the Kitten's parlor".

On the very first day of his job I followed Herbert to the streetcar stop on Max-Halbe-Platz. I was worried about him.

"Go home, Oskar, my boy. I can't take you with me." But I stood there so steadfast with my drum and drumsticks that Herbert relented: "Oh, all right. Come as far as the High Gate. And then you'll ride back again and be a good boy." At the High Gate I refused to take the Number 5 car that would have brought me home. Again Herbert relented; I could come as far as Heilige-Geist-Ga.s.se. On the museum steps he tried again to get rid of me. Then with a sigh he bought a child's admission ticket. It is true that I was already fourteen and should have paid full admission, but what people don't know won't hurt them.

We had a pleasant, quiet day. No visitors, no inspectors. Now and then I would drum a little while; now and then Herbert would sleep for an hour or so. Niobe gazed out into the world through amber eyes and strove double-breasted toward a goal that was not our goal. We paid no attention to her. "She's not my type," said Herbert disparagingly. "Look at those rolls of fat, look at that double chin she's got."

He tilted his head and began to muse: "And look at the a.s.s on her, like a family-size clothes cupboard. Herbert's taste runs more to dainty little ladies, cute and delicate like."

I listened to Herbert's detailed description of his type and looked on as his great shovel-like hands kneaded and modeled the contours of a lithe and lovely person of the fair s.e.x, who was to remain for many years, to this very day as a matter of fact and even beneath the disguise of a nurse's uniform, my ideal of womanhood.

By the third day of our life in the museum we ventured to move away from the chair beside the door. On pretext of cleaning -- the room really was in pretty bad shape -- we made our way, dusting, sweeping away spiderwebs from the oak paneling, toward the sunlit and shadow-casting green wooden body. It would not be accurate to say that Niobe left us entirely cold. Her lures were heavy but not unshapely and she wasn't backward about putting them forward. But we did not look upon her with eyes of covetousness. Rather, we looked her over in the manner of shrewd connoisseurs who take every detail into account. Herbert and I were two esthetes soberly drunk on beauty, abstract beauty. There we were, studying feminine proportions with our thumbnails. Niobe's thighs were a bit too short; aside from that we found that her lengthwise measurements -- eight head lengths -- lived up to the cla.s.sical ideal; beamwise, however, pelvis, shoulders, and chest demanded to be judged by Dutch rather than Greek standards.

Herbert tilted his thumb: "She'd be a d.a.m.n sight too active in bed for me. Herbert's had plenty of wrestling matches in Ohra and Fahrwa.s.ser. He don't need no woman for that." Herbert's fingers had been burnt. "Oh, if she was a little handful, a frail little thing that you've got to be careful not to break her in two, Herbert would have no objection."

Actually, if it had come to bra.s.s tacks, we should have had no objection either to Niobe and her wrestler's frame. Herbert was perfectly well aware that the degree of pa.s.sivity or activity he liked or disliked in naked or half-clad women is not limited to the slender type to the exclusion of the buxom or stout; there are slim young things who can't lie still for a minute and women built like barrels who show no more current than a sleepy inland waterway. We purposely simplified, reducing the whole problem to two terms and insulting Niobe on principle. We were unforgivably rude to her. Herbert picked me up so I could beat her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with my drumsticks, driving absurd clouds of sawdust from her sprayed and therefore uninhabited wormholes. While I drummed, we looked into her amber eyes. Not a quiver or twinge, no sign of a tear. Her eyes did not narrow into menacing, hate-spewing slits. The whole room with everything in it was reflected perfectly though in convex distortion in those two polished, more yellowish than reddish drops of amber. Amber is deceptive, everyone knows that. We too were aware of the treacherous ways of this enn.o.bled, ornamental wood gum. Nevertheless, obstinately cla.s.sifying all things womanly as active and pa.s.sive in our mechanical masculine way, we interpreted Niobe's apparent indifference in a manner favorable to ourselves. We felt safe. With a malignant cackle, Herbert drove a nail into her kneecap: my knee hurt at every stroke, she didn't even flick an eyelash. Right under her eyes, we engaged in all sorts of silly horseplay. Herbert put on the overcoat of a British admiral, took up a spygla.s.s, and donned the admiral's hat that went with it. With a little red jacket and a full-bottomed wig I transformed myself into the admiral's pageboy. We played Trafalgar, bombarded Copenhagen, dispersed Napoleon's fleet at Aboukir, rounded this cape and that cape, took historical poses, and then again contemporary poses. All this beneath the eyes of Niobe, the figurehead carved after the proportions of a Dutch witch. We were convinced that she looked on with indifference if she noticed us at all.

Today I know that everything watches, that nothing goes unseen, and that even wallpaper has a better memory than ours. It isn't G.o.d in His heaven that sees all. A kitchen chair, a coat-hanger, a half-filled ash tray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe, can perfectly well serve as an unforgetting witness to every one of our acts.

We came to work in the Maritime Museum for two weeks or more. Herbert made me a present of a drum and twice brought Mother Truczinski home his weekly wages, which included a danger bonus. One Tuesday, for the museum was closed on Monday, the cas.h.i.+er refused to sell us a child's ticket; he refused to admit me altogether. Herbert asked why. Grumpily but not without benevolence, the cas.h.i.+er told us that a complaint had been made, that children could no longer be admitted; the little boy's father was against it; he didn't mind if I waited down by the ticket window, since he, as a businessman and widower, had no time to look after me, but he didn't want me in the Kitten's Parlor any more, because I was irresponsible.

Herbert was ready to give in, but I pushed him and prodded him. On the one hand he agreed that the cas.h.i.+er was right, on the other hand, he said I was his mascot, his guardian angel; my childlike innocence would protect him. In short, Herbert almost made friends with the cas.h.i.+er and succeeded in having me admitted "one last time", those were the cas.h.i.+er's words, to the Maritime Museum.

Once again my big friend took me by the hand and led me up the ornate, freshly oiled winding staircase to the second floor where Niobe lived. The morning was quiet and the afternoon still more so. Herbert sat with half-closed eyes on his leather chair with the yellow studs. I sat at his feet. My drum remained silent. We blinked up at the schooners, frigates, and corvettes, the five-masters, galleons, and sloops, the coastal sailing vessels and clippers, all of them hanging from the oak paneling, waiting for a favorable wind. We mustered the model fleet, with it we waited for a fresh breeze and dreaded the calm prevailing in the parlor. All this we did to avoid having to look at and dread Niobe. What would we not have given for the work sounds of a wood worm, proof that the inside of the green wood was being slowly but surely eaten away and hollowed out, that Niobe was perishable! But there wasn't a worm to be heard. The wooden body had been made immune to worms, immortal. Our only resource was the model fleet, the absurd hope for a favorable wind. We made a game out of our fear of Niobe, we did our very best to ignore it, to forget it, and we might even have succeeded if suddenly the afternoon sun had not struck her full in the left amber eye and set it aflame.

Yet this inflammation need not have surprised us. We were quite familiar with sunny afternoons on the second floor of the Maritime Museum, we knew what hour had struck or was about to strike when the light fell beneath the cornice and lit up the s.h.i.+ps. The churches round about did their bit toward providing the dust-stirring movements of the sun's beam with a clock-time index, sending the sound of their historical bells to keep our historical objects company. Small wonder that the sun took on a historical character; it became an item in our museum and we began to suspect it of plotting with Niobe's amber eyes.

But that afternoon, disinclined as we were to games or provocative nonsense, Niobe's flaming eye struck us with redoubled force. Dejected and oppressed, we waited out the half-hour till closing time. The museum closed on the stroke of five.

Next day Herbert took up his post alone. I accompanied him to the museum, but I didn't feel like waiting by the ticket window; instead I found a place across the street. With my drum I sat on a granite sphere which had grown a tail that grownups used as a banister. Small need to say that the other side of the staircase was guarded by a similar sphere with a similar cast-iron tail. I drummed infrequently but then hideously loud, protesting against the pa.s.sers-by, female for the most part, who seemed to take pleasure in stopping to talk with me, asking me my name, and running their sweaty hands through my hair, which though short was slightly wavy and already looked upon as attractive. The morning pa.s.sed. At the end of Heilige-Geist-Ga.s.se the red and black brick hen of green-steepled St. Mary's brooded beneath its great overgrown bell tower. Pigeons kept pus.h.i.+ng one another out of nooks in the tower walls; alighting not far away from me, they would chatter together; what nonsense they talked; they hadn't the faintest idea how long the hen would go on brooding or what was going to hatch, or whether, after all these centuries, the brooding wasn't getting to be an end in itself.

At noon Herbert came out. From his lunchbox, which Mother Truczinski crammed so full that it couldn't be closed, he fished out a sandwich with a finger-thick slice of blood sausage and handed it to me. I didn't feel like eating. Herbert gave me a rather mechanical nod of encouragement. In the end I ate and Herbert, who did not, smoked a cigarette. Before returning to the museum, he went, with me tagging after him, to a bar in Brotbanken-Ga.s.se for two or three drinks of gin. I watched his Adam's apple as he tipped up the gla.s.ses. I didn't like the way he was pouring it down. Long after he had mounted his winding staircase, long after I had returned to my granite sphere, Oskar could still see his friend Herbert's Adam's apple jumping up and down.

The afternoon crept across the pale polychrome facade of the museum. It sprang from cornice to cornice, rode nymphs and horns of plenty, devoured plump angels reaching for flowers, burst into the midst of a country carnival, played blindman's buff, mounted a swing festooned with roses, enn.o.bled a group of burghers talking business in baggy breeches, lit upon a stag pursued by hounds, and finally reached the second-story window which allowed the sun, briefly and yet forever, to illuminate an amber eye.

Slowly I slid off my granite ball. My drum struck hard against the stone. Some bits of lacquer from the white casing and the red flames broke off and lay white and red on the stone steps.

Possibly I recited something, perhaps I mumbled a prayer, or a list: a little while later the ambulance drew up in front of the museum. Pa.s.sers-by gathered round the entrance. Oskar managed to slip in with the men from the emergency squad. I found my way up the stairs quicker than they, though by that time they must have begun to know their way around the museum.

It was all I could do to keep from laughing when I saw Herbert. He was hanging from Niobe's facade, he had tried to jump her. His head covered hers. His arms clung to her upraised, folded arms. He was bare to the waist. His s.h.i.+rt was found later, neatly folded on the leather chair beside the door. His back disclosed all its scars. I read the script, counted the letters. Not a one was missing. But not so much as the beginning of a new inscription was discernible.

The emergency squad who came rus.h.i.+ng in not far behind me had difficulty in getting Herbert away from Niobe. In a frenzy of l.u.s.t he had torn a double-edged s.h.i.+p's ax from its safety chain; one edge he had driven into Niobe and the other, in the course of his frantic a.s.sault, into himself. Up top, then, they were perfectly united, but down below, alas, he had found no ground for his anchor and his member still emerged, stiff and perplexed, from his open trousers.

When they spread the blanket with the inscription "Munic.i.p.al Emergency Service" over Herbert, Oskar, as always when he incurred a loss, found his way back to his drum. He was still beating it with his fists when the museum guards led him out of "the Kitten's Parlor", down the stairs, and ultimately stowed him in a police car that took him home.

Even now, in the mental hospital, when he recalls this attempted love affair between flesh and wood, he is constrained to work with his fists in order to explore once more Herbert's swollen, multicolored back, that hard and sensitive labyrinth of scars which was to foreshadow, to antic.i.p.ate everything to come, which was harder and more sensitive than anything that followed. Like a blind man he read the raised script of that back.

It is only now, now that they have taken Herbert away from his unfeeling carving, that Bruno my keeper turns up with that awful pear-shaped head of his. Gently he removes my fists from the drum, hangs the drum over the left-hand bedpost at the foot end of my iron bed, and smoothes out my blanket.

" Why, Mr. Matzerath," he reproves me gently, "if you go on drumming so loud, somebody's bound to hear that somebody's drumming much too loud. Wouldn't you like to take a rest or drum a little softer?"

Yes, Bruno, I shall try to dictate a quieter chapter to my drum, even though the subject of my next chapter calls for an orchestra of ravenous wild men.

Faith, Hope, Love

There was once a musician; his name was Meyn and he played the trumpet too beautifully for words. He lived on the fifth floor of an apartment house, just under the roof, he kept four cats, one of which was called Bismarck, and from morning to night he drank out of a gin bottle. This he did until sobered by disaster.

Even today Oskar doesn't like to believe in omens. But I have to admit that in those days there were plenty of omens of disaster. It was approaching with longer and longer steps and larger and larger boots. It was then that my friend Herbert Truczinski died of a wound in the chest inflicted by a wooden woman. The woman did not die. She was sealed up in the cellar of the museum, allegedly to be restored, preserved in any case. But you can't lock up disaster in a cellar. It drains into the sewer pipes, spreads to the gas pipes, and gets into every household with the gas. And no one who sets his soup kettle on the bluish flames suspects that disaster is bringing his supper to a boil.

When Herbert was buried in Langfuhr Cemetery, I once again saw Leo Schugger, whose acquaintance I had made at Brenntau. Slavering and holding out his white mildewed gloves, he tendered his sympathies, those sympathies of his which made little distinction between joy and sorrow, to all the a.s.sembled company, to Mother Truczinski, to Guste, Fritz, and Maria Truczinski, to the corpulent Mrs. Kater, to old man Heilandt, who slaughtered Fritz' rabbits for Mother Truczinski on holidays, to my presumptive father Matzerath, who, generous as he could be at times, defrayed a good half of the funeral expenses, even to Jan Bronski, who hardly knew Herbert and had only come to see Matzerath and perhaps myself on neutral cemetery ground.

When Leo Schugger's gloves fluttered out toward Meyn the musician, who had come half in civilian dress, half in SA uniform, another omen of disaster befell.

Suddenly frightened, Leo's pale glove darted upward and flew off, drawing Leo with it over the tombs. He could be heard screaming and the tatters of words that hovered in the cemetery air had no connection with condolences.

No one moved away from Meyn the musician. And yet, recognized and singled out by Leo Schugger, he stood alone amid the funeral company. He fiddled embarra.s.sedly with his trumpet, which he had brought along by design and had played beautifully over Herbert's grave. Beautifully, because Meyn had done what he hadn't done for a long time, he had gone back to his gin bottle, because he was the same age as Herbert and Herbert's death, which reduced me and my drum to silence, had moved him.

There was once a musician; his name was Meyn, and he played the trumpet too beautifully for words. He lived on the fifth floor of an apartment house, just under the roof; he kept four cats, one of which was called Bismarck, and from morning to night he drank out of a gin bottle until, late in '36 or early in '37 I think it was, he joined the Mounted SA. As a trumpeter in the band, he made far fewer mistakes but his playing was no longer too beautiful for words, because, when he slipped on those riding breeches with the leather seat, he gave up the gin bottle and from then on his playing was loud and sober, nothing more.

When SA Man Meyn lost his long-time friend Herbert Truczinski, along with whom during the twenties he had paid dues first to a communist youth group, then to the socialist Red Falcons; when it came time for his friend to be laid in the ground, Meyn reached for his trumpet and his gin bottle. For he wanted to play beautifully and not soberly; his days in the equestrian band hadn't destroyed his ear for music. Arrived at the cemetery, he took a last swig, and while playing he kept his civilian coat on over his uniform, although he had planned to play in Brown, minus the cap, of course.

There was once an SA man who, while playing the trumpet too beautifully for words after drinking plenty of gin, kept his overcoat on over his Mounted SA uniform. When Leo Schugger, a type met with in all cemeteries, came forward to offer condolences, everyone else came in for his share of sympathy. Only the SA man was not privileged to grasp Leo's white glove, because Leo, recognizing the SA man, gave a loud cry of fear and withheld both his glove and his sympathies. The SA man went home with a cold trumpet and no sympathy. In his flat under the roof of our apartment house he found his four cats.

There was once an SA man, his name was Meyn. As a relic of the days when he drank gin all day and played the trumpet too beautifully for words, Meyn still kept four cats, one of which was called Bismarck. One day when SA Man Meyn came home from the funeral of his old friend Herbert Truczinski, sad and sobered, because someone had withheld his sympathies, he found himself all alone in the flat with his four cats. The cats rubbed against his riding boots, and Meyn gave them a newspaper full of herring heads. That got them away from his boots. That day the flat stank worse than usual of the four cats who were all toms, one of which was called Bismarck and was black with white paws. But Meyn had no gin on hand and that made the stench of the cats more unacceptable. He might have bought some gin in our store if his flat hadn't been on the fifth floor, right under the roof. But as it was, he dreaded the stairs and still more he dreaded the neighbors in whose presence and hearing he had sworn on numerous occasions that never again would a drop of gin cross his musician's lips, that he had embarked on a new life of rigorous sobriety, that from now on his motto was order and purpose, away with the vapors of a botched and aimless youth.

There was once a man, his name was Meyn. One day when he found himself all alone in his flat under the roof with his four tomcats, one of which was called Bismarck, the smell was most particularly distasteful to him, because he had had an unpleasant experience earlier in the day and also because there was no gin on hand. When his thirst and displeasure and with them the cat smell had reached a certain point, Meyn, a musician by trade and a member of the Mounted SA band, reached for the poker that was leaning against the cold stove and flailed out at the cats until it seemed safe to a.s.sume that though the cat smell in the flat had lost none of its pungency, all of them, including the one named Bismarck, were dead and done for.

Once there was a watchmaker named Laubschad who lived on the second floor of our apartment house in a two-room flat, with windows overlooking the court. Laubschad the watchmaker was unmarried, a member of the National Socialist Welfare Organization and of the SPCA. He was a kindly man who liked to help all tired humans, sick animals, and broken clocks back on their feet. One afternoon as the watchmaker sat pensively at his window, thinking about the neighbor's funeral he had attended that morning, he saw Meyn the musician, who lived on the fifth floor of the same building, carry a half-filled potato sack, which was dripping and seemed wet at the bottom, out into the court and plunge it into one of the garbage cans. But since the garbage can was already three-quarters full, the musician had trouble getting the lid back on.

There were once four tomcats, one of which was called Bismarck. These tomcats belonged to a musician by the name of Meyn. Since the tomcats, which had not been fixed, emitted a fierce, uncompromising smell, the musician clouted them with a fire poker one day when for particular reasons he found the smell particularly distasteful, stuffed their remains in a potato sack, carried the sack down four flights of stairs, and was in a great hurry to stow the bundle in the garbage can in the court beside the carpet rack, because the burlap was not water- nor bloodproof and began to drip before he was even half down the stairs. But since the garbage can was a bit full, the musician had to compress the garbage and his sack in order to close the lid. No sooner had he left the court in the direction of the street -- for he had no desire to go back to his flat which though catless still stank of cats -- than the compressed garbage began to expand, raised the sack, and with it the lid of the garbage can.

Once there was a musician, he slew his four cats, buried them in a garbage can, left the house, and went out to visit friends.

There was once a watchmaker who sat pensively by his window, looking on as Meyn the musician stuffed a half-filled sack in the garbage can -- and quickly left the court. A few moments after Meyn's departure, he saw the lid of the garbage can beginning to rise and slowly go on rising.

There were once four tomcats; because they smelled particularly strong on a certain particular day, they were knocked dead, stuffed into a sack, and buried in a garbage can. But the cats, one of which was called Bismarck, were not quite dead; they were tough customers, as cats tend to be. They moved in the sack, set the lid of the garbage can in motion, and confronted Laubschad the watchmaker, who still sat pensively at the window, with the question: what can there be in the sack that Meyn the musician threw in the garbage can?

There was once a watchmaker who could not look on with indifference while something was moving in a garbage can. He left his flat on the second floor, went down into the court, lifted up the lid of the garbage can, opened the sack, took the four badly damaged but still living tomcats home with him, and cared for them. But they died the following night under his watchmaker's fingers. This left him no other course than to enter a complaint with the SPCA, of which he was a member, and to inform the local party headquarters of a case of cruelty to animals which could only impair the party's reputation.

There was once an SA man who did four cats in with a poker. But because the cats were not all-the-way dead, they gave him away and a watchmaker reported him. The case came up for trial and the SA man had to pay a fine. But the matter was also discussed in the SA and the SA man was expelled from the SA for conduct unbecoming a storm trooper. Even his conspicuous bravery on the night of November 8, which later became known as Crystal Night, when he helped set fire to the Langfuhr synagogue in Michaelisweg, even his meritorious activity the following morning when a number of stores, carefully designated in advance, were closed down for the good of the nation, could not halt his expulsion from the Mounted SA. For inhuman cruelty to animals he was stricken from the members.h.i.+p list. It was not until a year later that he gained admittance to the Home Guard, which was later incorporated in the Waffen SS.

There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langa.s.ser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze. But his son Oskar, seeing his father so occupied and inflamed, slipped away un.o.bserved and hurried off in the direction of a.r.s.enal Pa.s.sage, because he was worried about his tin drums with their red and white lacquer.

There was once a toystore owner; his name was Sigismund Markus and among other things he sold tin drums lacquered red and white. Oskar, above-mentioned, was the princ.i.p.al taker of these drums, because he was a drummer by profession and was neither able nor willing to live without a drum. For this reason he hurried away from the burning synagogue in the direction of a.r.s.enal Pa.s.sage, for there dwelt the keeper of his drums; but he found him in a state which forever after made it impossible for him to sell tin drums in this world.

They, the same firemen whom I, Oskar, thought I had escaped, had visited Markus before me; dipping a brush in paint, they had written "Jewish Sow" obliquely across his window in Sutterlin script; then, perhaps disgusted with their own handwriting, they had kicked in the window with the heels of their boots, so that the epithet they had fastened on Markus could only be guessed at. Scorning the door, they had entered the shop through the broken window and there, in their characteristic way, they were playing with the toys.

I found them still at play when I, also through the window, entered the shop. Some had taken their pants down and had deposited brown sausages, in which half-digested peas were still discernible, on sailing vessels, fiddling monkeys, and on my drums. They all looked like Meyn the musician, they wore Meyn's SA uniform, but Meyn was not there; just as the ones who were there were not somewhere else. One had drawn his dagger. He was cutting dolls open and he seemed disappointed each time that nothing but sawdust flowed from their limbs and bodies.

I was worried about my drums. They didn't like my drums. My own drum couldn't stand up to their rage; there was nothing it could do but bow down and keep quiet. But Markus had escaped from their rage. When they went to see him in his office, they did not knock, they broke the door open, although it was not locked.

The toy merchant sat behind his desk. As usual he had on sleeve protectors over his dark-grey everyday jacket. Dandruff on his shoulders showed that his scalp was in bad shape. One of the SA men with puppets on his fingers poked him with Kasperl's wooden grandmother, but Markus was beyond being spoken to, beyond being hurt or humiliated. Before him on the desk stood an empty water gla.s.s; the sound of his cras.h.i.+ng shopwindow had made him thirsty no doubt.

There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar. When they took away his toy merchant and ransacked the shop, he suspected that hard times were in the offing for gnomelike drummers like himself. And so, in leaving the store, he picked out of the ruins a whole drum and two that were not so badly injured, hung them round his neck, and so left a.r.s.enal Pa.s.sage for the Kohlenmarkt to look for his father, who was probably looking for him. Outside, it was a November morning. Beside the Stadt-Theater, near the streetcar stop, some pious ladies and strikingly ugly young girls were handing out religious tracts, collecting money in collection boxes, and holding up, between two poles, a banner with an inscription quoted from the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. "Faith. . . hope. . . love," Oskar read and played with the three words as a juggler plays with bottles: faith healer, Old Faithful, faithless hope, hope chest, Cape of Good Hope, hopeless love, Love's Labour's Lost, six love. An entire credulous nation believed, there's faith for you, in Santa Claus. But Santa Claus was really the gasman. I believe -- such is my faith -- that it smells of walnuts and almonds. But it smelled of gas. Soon, so they said, 'twill be the first Sunday of Advent. And the first, second, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent were turned on like gas c.o.c.ks, to produce a credible smell of walnuts and almonds, so that all those who liked to crack nuts could take comfort and believe: He's coming. He's coming. Who is coming? The Christ child, the Saviour? Or is it the heavenly gasman with the gas meter under his arm, that always goes ticktock? And he said: I am the Saviour of this world, without me you can't cook. And he was not too demanding, he offered special rates, turned on the freshly polished gas c.o.c.ks, and let the Holy Ghost pour forth, so the dove, or squab, might be cooked. And handed out walnuts and almonds which were promptly cracked, and they too poured forth spirit and gas. Thus it was not hard, amid the dense blue air, for credulous souls to look upon all those gasmen outside department stores as Santa Clauses and Christ children in all sizes and at all prices. They believed in the only-saving gas company which symbolizes destiny with its rising and falling gas meters and staged an Advent at bargain prices. Many, to be sure, believed in the Christmas this Advent seemed to announce, but the sole survivors of these strenuous holidays were those for whom no almonds or walnuts were left -- although everyone had supposed there would be plenty for all.

But after faith in Santa Claus had turned out to be faith in the gasman, an attempt was made, in disregard of the order set forth in Corinthians, to do it with love: I love you, they said, oh, I love you. Do you, too, love yourself? Do you love me, say, do you really love me? I love myself too. And from sheer love they called each other radishes, they loved radishes, they bit into each other, out of sheer love one radish bit off another's radish. And they told one another stories about wonderful heavenly love, and earthly love too, between radishes, and just before biting, they whispered to one another, whispered with all the sharp freshness of hunger: Radish, say, do you love me? I love myself too.

But after they had bitten off each other's radishes out of love, and faith in the gasman had been proclaimed the state religion, there remained, after faith and antic.i.p.ated love, only the third white elephant of the Epistle to the Corinthians: hope. And even while they still had radishes, walnuts, and almonds to nibble on, they began to hope that soon it would be over, so they might begin afresh or continue, hoping after or even during the finale that the end would soon be over. The end of what? They still did not know. They only hoped that it would soon be over, over tomorrow, but not today; for what were they to do if the end came so suddenly? And then when the end came, they quickly turned it into a hopeful beginning; for in our country the end is always the beginning and there is hope in every, even the most final, end. And so too is it written: As long as man hopes, he will go on turning out hopeful finales.

For my part, I don't know. I don't know, for example, who it is nowadays that hides under the beards of the Santa Clauses, nor what Santa Claus has in his sack; I don't know how gas c.o.c.ks are throttled and shut off; for Advent, the time of longing for a Redeemer, is flowing again, or flowing still, I do not know. Another thing I don't know is whether I can believe that, as I hope, they are polis.h.i.+ng the gas c.o.c.ks lovingly, so as to make them crow, what morning, what evening, I don't know, nor know I whether the time of day matters; for love knows no time of day, and hope is without end, and faith knows no limits, only knowing and not knowing are subject to times and limits and usually end before their time with beards, knapsacks, almonds, so that once again I must say: I know not, oh, I know not, for example, what they fill sausage casings with, whose guts are fit to be filled, nor do I know with what, though the prices for every filling, fine or coa.r.s.e, are legibly displayed, still, I know not what is included in the price, I know not in what dictionaries they find the names for fillings. I know not wherewith they fill the dictionaries or sausage casings, I know not whose meat, I know not whose language: words communicate, butchers won't tell, I cut off slices, you open books. I read what tastes good to me, but what tastes good to you? Slices of sausage and quotations from sausage casings and books -- and never will we learn who had to be reduced to silence before sausage casings could be filled, before books could speak, stuffed full of print, I know not, but I surmise: It is the same butchers who fill dictionaries and sausage casings with language and sausage, there is no Paul, the man's name was Saul and a Saul he was, and it was Saul who told the people of Corinth something about some priceless sausages that he called faith, hope, and love, which he advertised as easily digestible and which to this very day, still Saul though forever changing in form, he palms off on mankind.

As for me, they took away my toy merchant, wis.h.i.+ng with him to banish all toys from the world.

There was once a musician, his name was Meyn, and he played the trumpet too beautifully for words.

There was once a toy merchant, his name was Markus and he sold tin drums, lacquered red and white.

There was once a musician, his name was Meyn and he had four cats, one of which was called Bismarck.

There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar, and he needed the toy merchant.

There was once a musician, his name was Meyn, and he did his four cats in with a fire poker.

There was once a watchmaker, his name was Laubschad, and he was a member of the SPCA.

There was once a drummer, his name was Oskar, and they took away his toy merchant.

There was once a toy merchant, his name was Markus, and he took all the toys in the world away with him out of this world.

There was once a musician, his name was Meyn, and if he isn't dead he is still alive, once again playing the trumpet too beautifully for words.

BOOK TWO.

Sc.r.a.p Metal

Visiting day: Maria has brought me a new drum. After pa.s.sing it over the bars enclosing my bed, she wished to give me the sales slip from the store, but I waved it away and pressed the bell b.u.t.ton at the head end of the bed until Bruno my keeper came in and did what he always does when Maria brings me a new drum. He undid the string, let the blue wrapping paper open of its own accord, solemnly lifted out the drum, and carefully folded the paper. Only then did he stride -- and when I say stride, I mean stride -- to the washbasin with the new drum, turn on the hot water, and, taking care not to scratch the red and white lacquer, remove the price tag.

When, after a brief, not too fatiguing visit, Maria prepared to go, she picked up the old drum, which I had pretty well wrecked during my saga of Herbert Truczinski's back, my stories about the figurehead, and my perhaps rather arbitrary interpretation of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. She was going to take it home to store in our cellar, side by side with all the other worn-out instruments that had served my professional or private purposes. "There's not much room left in the cellar," she said with a sigh. "I'd like to know where I'm going to put the winter potatoes."

I smiled, pretending not to hear this plaint of the housekeeper in Maria, and gave her my instructions: the retired drum must be numbered in black ink and the brief notes I had made on a slip of paper about the drum's career must be transferred to the diary which has been hanging for years on the inside of the cellar door and knows all about my drums since 1949.

Maria nodded in resignation and kissed me goodbye. She never did understand this pa.s.sion of mine for order; in fact it strikes her as almost insane. Oskar can see how she feels, for he himself is at a loss to account for the pedantry he puts into collecting battered tin drums. The strangest part of it is that he never wants to lay eyes on that pile of sc.r.a.p metal in the potato cellar again as long as he lives. For he knows from experience that children despise their father's collections and that his son Kurt will look with indifference at best on all those pitiful drums he will one day inherit.

What is it then that makes me, every three weeks, give Maria instructions which, if regularly followed, will one day take up all the room in our cellar and expel the potatoes?

The idea which lights up in my mind now and then, though more and more infrequently, that a museum might one day take an interest in my weary instruments, came to me only after several dozen of them had found their way to the cellar; hence it cannot have been at the root of my collector's pa.s.sion. The more I think of it, the more I veer toward a very simple motive: fear, fear of a shortage, fear that tin drums might be prohibited, that existing stocks might be destroyed. One day Oskar might be obliged to unearth a few of the less damaged ones and have them repaired as a stopgap to carry him through a period of bleak and terrible drumlessness.

The doctors at the mental hospital offer a similar explanation, though they put it differently. Dr. (Miss) Hornstetter was even curious to know the exact date when my complex was born. I told her at once: November 9, 1938, for that was the day when I lost Sigismund Markus, who had kept me supplied with drums. After my mother's death, it had already become difficult to obtain a new drum when I needed one; there were no more Thursday visits to a.r.s.enal Pa.s.sage, Matzerath's interest in my drum supply was very halfhearted, and Jan Bronski came to see us more and more infrequently. Now that the toy store was smashed to bits, my situation became truly desperate. The sight of Markus sitting at his empty desk made it very clear to me: Markus won't give you any more drums, Markus won't be selling any more toys, Markus has broken off business relations with the makers of your beautiful red and white drums.

At the time, however, I was not yet prepared to believe that the relatively serene and playful days of my childhood had ended with Markus' death. From the ruins of the toystore I selected a whole drum and two that were dented only at the edges and, running home with my treasures, imagined that I was secure against hard times.

I was very careful with my drums, I drummed seldom and only in cases of absolute necessity; I denied myself whole afternoons of drumming and, very reluctantly, the drumming at breakfast time that had hitherto made my days bearable. Oskar had turned ascetic; he lost weight and was taken to see Dr. Hollatz and Sister Inge, his a.s.sistant, who was getting steadily bonier. They gave me sweet, sour, bitter, and tasteless medicine and put the blame on my glands, which in Dr. Hollatz' opinion had upset my const.i.tution by alternating between hyperfunction and hypofunction.

To escape from Dr. Hollatz' clutches, Oskar moderated his asceticism and put on weight. By the summer of '39, he was his old three-year-old self again, but in filling out his cheeks he had irrevocably demolished the last of Markus' drums. The object that hung on my belly was a pitiful wreck, rusty and full of gaping holes; the red and white lacquer was nearly gone and the sound was utterly lugubrious.

There was no point in appealing to Matzerath for help, though he was a helpful soul and even kindly in his way. Since my poor mother's death, he thought of nothing but his Party occupations; when in need of distraction, he would confer with other unit leaders. Or toward midnight, after ample consumption of spirits, he would carry on loud though confidential conversations with the black-framed likenesses of Hitler and Beethoven in our living room, the genius speaking to him of destiny and the Fuhrer of providence. When he was sober he looked upon the collecting of Winter Aid as the destiny allotted him by providence.

I don't like to think about those collection Sundays. It was on one of them that I made a futile attempt to possess myself of a new drum. Matzerath, who had spent the morning collecting outside the Art Cinema in Hauptstra.s.se and Sternfeld's Department Store, came home at noon and warmed up some meatb.a.l.l.s for our lunch. After the meal -- I can still remember that it was very tasty -- the weary collector lay down on the couch for a nap. No sooner did his breathing suggest sleep than I took the half-full collection box from the piano and disappeared into the store. Huddled under the counter, I turned my attention to this most preposterous of all tin cans. Not that I intended to filch so much as a penny. My absurd idea was to try the thing out as a drum. But however I beat, however I manipulated the sticks it gave but one answer: Winter Aid, please contribute. Let no one be cold or hungry. Winter Aid, please contribute.

After half an hour I gave up; I took five pfennigs from the cash drawer, contributed them to the Winter Aid, and returned the collection box thus enriched to the piano, so that Matzerath might find it and kill the rest of his Sunday shaking it for the cold and hungry.

This unsuccessful attempt cured me forever. Never again did I seriously attempt to use a tin can, an overturned bucket, or the bottom of a washbasin for a drum. If I nevertheless did so from time to time, I try my best to forget these inglorious episodes, and give them as little s.p.a.ce as possible on this paper. A tin can is simply not a drum, a bucket is a bucket, and a washbasin is good for was.h.i.+ng yourself or your socks. There was no more subst.i.tute then than there is now; a tin drum adorned with red flames on a white field speaks for itself and no one can speak for it.

Oskar was alone, betrayed and sold down the river. How was he to preserve his three-year-old countenance if he lacked what was most necessary to his well-being, his drum? All the deceptions I had been practicing for years: my occasional bed-wetting, my childlike babbling of evening prayers, my fear of Santa Claus, whose real name was Greff, my indefatigable asking of droll, typically three-year-old questions such as: Why have cars got wheels? -- all this nonsense that grownups expected of me I now had to provide without my drum. I was soon tempted to give up. In my despair I began to look for the man who was not my father but had very probably begotten me. Not far from the Polish settlement on Ringstra.s.se, Oskar waited for Jan Bronski.

My poor mama's death had put an end to the relations, sometimes verging on friends.h.i.+p, between Matzerath and my uncle, who had meanwhile been promoted to the position of postal secretary. There was no sudden break, but despite the memories they shared, they had gradually moved apart as the political crisis deepened. The disintegration of my mama's slender soul and ample body brought with it the disintegration of the friends.h.i.+p between these two men, both of whom had mirrored themselves in her soul and fed on her body. Deprived of this nourishment and convex mirror, they found no subst.i.tute but their meetings with men who were dedicated to opposing political ideas though they smoked the same tobacco. But neither a Polish Post Office nor meetings with unit leaders in s.h.i.+rtsleeves can take the place of a beautiful, tender-hearted woman. Despite the need for caution -- Matzerath had to think of his customers and the Party and Jan had the postal administration to consider -- my two presumptive fathers met several times between my poor mama's death and the end of Sigismund Markus.

Two or three times a month, toward midnight, we would hear Jan's knuckles tapping on our living room window. Matzerath would push the curtain aside and open the window a crack; both of them would be thoroughly embarra.s.sed until one or the other found the saving word and suggested a game of midnight skat. They would summon Greff from his vegetable store or, if he was disinclined, which he often was on Jan's account, because as a former scout leader -- he had meanwhile disbanded his troop -- he had to be careful and besides he was a poor player and didn't care much about skat in the first place, they usually called in Alexander Scheffler, the baker, as third. Scheffler himself was none too enthusiastic about sitting at the same table with Jan, but a certain affection for my poor mama, which had transferred itself like a kind of legacy to Matzerath, and a firm conviction that retailers should stick together, induced the short-legged baker to hurry over from Kleinhammer-Weg in response to Matzerath's call, to take his place at our living room table, to shuffle the cards with his pale, worm-eaten, floury fingers and distribute them like rolls to the hungry mult.i.tude.

Since these forbidden games did not as a rule begin until midnight, to break off at three in the morning when Scheffler was needed in the bakery, it was only on rare occasions that I managed to rise from my bed unseen, unheard, and drumless, and slip into the shady corner beneath the table.