On the evening of the very same day on which I surprised the two of them on the sofa, the day when I sat drumming on Matzerath"s sweat-bathed back and frustrated the precautions demanded by Maria, I made a desperate attempt to win back my sweetheart.
Matzerath succeeded in shaking me off when it was already too late. As a result, he struck me. Maria took Oskar under her protection and reviled Matzerath for not taking care. Matzerath defended himself like an old man. It was Maria"s fault, he protested, she should have been satisfied with once, but she never had enough. Maria wept and said with her things didn"t go so quick, in and out before you can say Pilsener beer, he"d better get somebody else, yes, she admitted she was inexperienced but her sister Guste that was at the Eden knew what was what and she said it don"t go so quick, Maria had better watch out, some men just wanted to shoot their snot, the sooner the better, and it looked like Matzerath was one of that kind, but he could count her out from now on, her bell had to ring too, like last time. But just the same he should have been careful, he owed her that much consideration. Then she cried some more and stayed sitting on the sofa. And Matzerath in his underdrawers shouted that he couldn"t abide her wailing any more; then he was sorry he had lost his temper and blundered again, that is, he tried to pat her bare a.s.s under her dress, and that really threw Maria into a tizzy.
Oskar had never seen her that way. Red spots came out all over her face and her grey eyes got darker and darker. She called Matzerath a mollycoddle, whereupon he picked up his trousers, stepped in, and b.u.t.toned up. She screamed for all she was worth: he could clear out for all she cared, he could join his unit leaders, a bunch of quick-squirts the whole lot of them. Matzerath picked up his jacket and gripped the doork.n.o.b, there"d be changes, he a.s.sured her, he had women up to here; if she was so hot, why didn"t she get her hooks on one of the foreign laborers, the Frenchie that brought the beer would surely do it better. To him, Matzerath, love meant something more than piggishness, he was going to shoot some skat, in a skat game at least you knew what to expect.
And then I was alone with Maria in the living room. She had stopped crying and was thoughtfully pulling on her panties, whistling, but very sparingly. For a long while she smoothed out her dress that had lain on the sofa. Then she turned on the radio and tried to listen to the announcement of the water level of the Vistula and Nogat. When, after announcing the level of the lower Mottlau, the speaker promised a waltz and his promise was directly kept, she suddenly removed her panties again, went into the kitchen, plunked down a basin, and turned the water on; I heard the puffing of the gas and guessed that Maria had decided to take a sitz bath.
In order to dispel this rather unpleasant image, Oskar concentrated on the strains of the waltz. If I remember aright, I even drummed a few measures of Strauss and enjoyed it. Then the waltz was broken off for a special communique. Oskar bet on news from the Atlantic and was not mistaken. Several U-boats had succeeded in sinking seven or eight ships of so and so many thousand tons off the west coast of Ireland. Another group of subs had sent almost as much tonnage to the bottom. A U-boat under Lieutenant Schepke -- or it may have been Lieutenant Kretschmar, in any case it was one or the other of them unless it was a third equally famous submarine captain -- had especially distinguished itself, sinking not only the most tonnage but also a British destroyer of the XY cla.s.s.
While I on my drum picked up the ensuing "Sailing against England " and almost turned it into a waltz, Maria came into the living room with a Turkish towel under her arm. In an undertone she said: "Did you hear that, Oskar, another special communique. If they keep on like that. . ."
Without letting Oskar know what would happen if they kept on like that, Maria sat down in the chair on which Matzerath customarily hung his jacket. She twisted the wet towel into a sausage and whistled "Sailing against England" along with the radio; she whistled loudly and in tune. She repeated the final chorus once more after it had stopped on the radio, and switched off the radio as soon as the strains of immortal waltz resumed. She left the sausaged towel on the table, sat down, and rested her sweet little hands on her thighs.
A deep silence fell in our living room, only the grandfather clock spoke louder and louder and Maria seemed to be wondering whether it might not be better to turn on the radio again. But then she made another decision. She pressed her face to the sausaged towel on the table, let her arms hang down between her knees to carpetward, and began, steadily and silently, to weep.
Oskar wondered if Maria was ashamed because of the embarra.s.sing situation I had found her in. I decided to cheer her up; I crept out of the living room and in the dark shop, beside the waxed paper and packages of pudding, found a little package which in the corridor, where there was some light, proved to be a package of fizz powder with woodruff flavoring. Oskar was pleased with his blind choice, for at the time it seemed to me that Maria preferred woodruff to all other flavors.
When I entered the living room, Maria"s right cheek still lay on the bunched-up towel. Her arms still dangled helplessly between her thighs. Oskar approached her from the left and was disappointed when he saw that her eyes were closed and dry. I waited patiently until her eyelids stickily opened, and held out the package, but she didn"t notice the woodruff, she seemed to look through the package and Oskar too.
Her tears must have blinded her, I thought, for I wanted to forgive her; after a moment"s deliberation, I decided on a more direct approach. Oskar crawled under the table, and huddled at Maria"s feet -- the toes were turned slightly inward -- took one of her dangling hands, twisted it till I could see the palm, tore open the package with my teeth, strewed half the contents into the inert bowl, and contributed my saliva. Just as the powder began to foam, I received a sharp kick in the chest that sent Oskar sprawling under the table.
In spite of the pain I was on my feet in an instant and out from under the table. Maria stood up too, and we stood face to face, breathing hard. Maria picked up the towel, wiped her hand clean, and flung the towel at my feet; she called me a loathsome pig, a vicious midget, a crazy gnome, that ought to be chucked in the nuthouse. She grabbed hold of me, slapped the back of my head, and reviled my poor mama for having brought a brat like me into the world. When I prepared to scream, having declared war on all the gla.s.s in the living room and in the whole world, she stuffed the towel in my mouth; I bit into it and it was tougher than tough boiled beef.
Only when Oskar made himself turn red and blue did she let me go. I might easily have screamed all the gla.s.ses and window-panes in the room to pieces and repeated my childhood a.s.sault on the dial of the grandfather clock. I did not scream, I opened the gates of my heart to a hatred so deep-seated that to this day, whenever Maria comes into the room, I feel it between my teeth like that towel.
Capricious as Maria could be, she forgot her anger. She gave a good-natured laugh and with a single flip turned the radio back on again. Whistling the radio waltz, she came toward me, meaning to make up, to stroke my hair. The fact is that I liked her to stroke my hair.
Oskar let her come very close. Then with both fists he landed an uppercut in the exact same spot where she had admitted Matzerath. She caught my fists before I could strike again, whereupon I sank my teeth into the same accursed spot and, still clinging fast, fell with Maria to the sofa. I heard the radio promising another special communique, but Oskar had no desire to listen; consequently he cannot tell you who sank what or how much, for a violent fit of tears loosened my jaws and I lay motionless on Maria, who was crying with pain, while Oskar cried from hate and love, which turned to a leaden helplessness but could not die.
How Oskar Took His Helplessness to Mrs. Greff
I didn"t like Greff. Greff didn"t like me. Even later on, when Greff made me the drumming machine, I didn"t like him. Lasting antipathies require a fort.i.tude that Oskar hasn"t really got, but I still don"t care much for Greff, even now that Greff has gone out of existence.
Greff was a greengrocer. But don"t be deceived. He believed neither in potatoes nor in cabbage, yet he knew a great deal about vegetable-raising and liked to think of himself as a gardener, a friend of nature, and a vegetarian. But precisely because Greff ate no meat, he was not an authentic greengrocer. It was impossible for him to talk about vegetables as vegetables. "Will you kindly look at this extraordinary potato," I often heard him say to a customer. "This swelling, bursting vegetable flesh, always devising new forms and yet so chaste. I love a potato because it speaks to me." Obviously, no real greengrocer will embarra.s.s his customers with such talk. Even in the best potato years, my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek, who had grown old in potato fields, would never say anything more than: "Hm, the spuds are a little bigger than last year." Yet Anna Koljaiczek and her brother Vincent Bronski were far more dependent on the potato harvest than Greff, for in his line of business a good plum year could make up for a bad potato year.
Everything about Greff was overdone. Did he absolutely have to wear a green ap.r.o.n in the shop? The presumption of the man! The knowing smile he would put on to explain that this spinach-green rag of his was "G.o.d"s green gardener"s ap.r.o.n." Worst of all, he just couldn"t give up boy-scouting. He had been forced to disband his group in "38 -- his boys had been put into brown shirts or dashing black winter uniforms -- but the former scouts, in civilian clothes or in their new uniforms, came regularly to see their former scout leader, to sing morning songs, evening songs, hiking songs, soldier"s songs, harvest songs, hymns to the Virgin, and folk songs native and foreign. Since Greff had joined the National Socialist Motorists" Corps before it was too late and from 1941 on termed himself not only greengrocer but air raid warden as well; since, moreover, he had the support of two former scouts who had meanwhile made places for themselves, one as a squad leader, the other as a platoon leader, in the Hitler Youth, the song feasts in Greff"s potato cellar were tolerated if not exactly authorized by the district bureau of the Party. Greff was even asked by Lobsack, the district chief of training, to organize song festivals during the training courses at Jenkau Castle. Early in 1940 Greff and a certain schoolteacher were commissioned to compile a young people"s songbook for the district of Danzig-West Prussia, under the t.i.tle: "Sing with Us." The book was quite a success. The greengrocer received a letter from Berlin, signed by the Reich Youth Leader, and was invited to attend a meeting of song leaders in Berlin.
Greff certainly had ability. He knew all the verses of all the songs; he could pitch tents, kindle and quench campfires without provoking forest fires, and find his way in the woods with a compa.s.s, he knew the first names of all the visible stars and could reel off no end of stories of both the funny and exciting variety; he knew the legends of the Vistula country and gave lectures on "Danzig and the Hanseatic League." He could list all the grand masters of the Teutonic Knights with the corresponding dates, and even that did not satisfy him; he could talk for hours about the Germanic mission in the territories of the Order, and it was only very rarely that locutions smacking too strongly of boy scout turned up in his lectures.
Greff liked young people. He liked boys more than girls. Actually he didn"t like girls at all, just boys. Often he liked boys more than the singing of songs could express. Possibly it was Mrs. Greff, a sloven with greasy bra.s.sieres and holes in her underwear, who made him seek a purer measure of love among wiry, clean-cut boys. But perhaps, on the other hand, the tree on whose branches Mrs. Graff"s dirty underwear blossomed at every season of the year had another root. Perhaps, that is, Mrs. Greff became a sloven because the greengrocer and air raid warden lacked sufficient appreciation of her carefree and rather stupid embonpoint.
Greff liked everything that was hard, taut, muscular. When he said "nature", he meant asceticism. When he said "asceticism", he meant a particular kind of physical culture. Greff was an expert on the subject of his body. He took elaborate care of it, exposing it to heat and, with special inventiveness, to cold. While Oskar sang gla.s.s, far and near, to pieces, occasionally thawing the frost flowers on the windowpanes, melting icicles and sending them to the ground with a crash, the greengrocer was a man who attacked ice at close quarters, with hand tools.
Greff made holes in the ice. In December, January, February, he made holes in the ice with an ax. Long before dawn, he would haul his bicycle up from the cellar and wrap his ice ax in an onion sack. Then he would ride via Saspe to Brosen, whence he would take the snow-covered beach promenade in the direction of Glettkau. Between Brosen and Glettkau he would alight. As the day slowly dawned, he would push his bicycle over the icy beach, and then two or three hundred yards out into the frozen Baltic. The scene was immersed in coastal fog. No one could have seen from the beach how Greff laid down the bicycle, unwrapped the ax from the onion sack, and stood for a while in devout silence, listening to the foghorns of the icebound freighters in the roadstead. Then he would throw off his smock, do a bit of gymnastics, and finally begin, with steady, powerful strokes, to dig a circular hole in the Baltic Sea.
Greff needed a good three-quarters of an hour for his hole. Don"t ask me, please, how I know. Oskar knew just about everything in those days, including the length of time it took Greff to dig his hole in the ice. Drops of salt sweat formed on his high, b.u.mpy forehead and flew off into the snow. He handled his ax well; its strokes left a deep circular track. When the circle had come full circle, his gloveless hands lifted a disk, perhaps six or seven inches thick, out of the great sheet of ice that extended, it seems safe to say, as far as Hela if not Sweden. The water in the hole was old and grey, shot through with ice-grits. It steamed a bit, though it was not a hot spring. The hole attracted fish. That is, holes in the ice are said to attract fish. Greff might have caught lampreys or a twenty-pound cod. But he did not fish. He began to undress. He took off his clothes and he was soon stark naked, for Greff"s nakedness was always stark.
Oskar is not trying to send winter shudders running down your spine. In view of the climate, he prefers to make a long story short: twice a week, during the winter months, Greff the greengrocer bathed in the Baltic. On Wednesday he bathed alone at the crack of dawn. He started off at six, arrived at half-past, and dug until a quarter past seven. Then he tore off his clothes with quick, excessive movements, rubbed himself with snow, jumped into the hole, and, once in it, began to shout. Or sometimes I heard him sing: "Wild geese are flying through the night" or "Oh, how we love the storm. . ." He sang, shouted, and bathed for two minutes, or three at most. Then with a single leap he was standing, terrifyingly distinct, on the ice: a steaming ma.s.s of lobstery flesh, racing round the hole, glowing, and still shouting. In the end, he was dressed once more and departing with his bicycle. Shortly before eight, he was back in Labesweg and his shop opened punctually.
Greff"s other weekly bath was taken on Sunday, in the company of several boys, youths, striplings, or young men. This is something Oskar never saw or claimed to have seen. But the word got round. Meyn the musician knew stories about the greengrocer and trumpeted them all over the neighborhood. One of his trumpeter"s tales was that every Sunday in the grimmest winter months Greff bathed in the company of several boys. Yet even Meyn never claimed that Greff made the boys jump naked into the hole in the ice like himself. He seems to have been perfectly satisfied if, lithe and sinewy, they tumbled and gamboled about on the ice, half-naked or mostly naked, and rubbed each other with snow. So appealing to Greff were striplings in the snow that he often romped with them before or after his bath, helped them with their reciprocal rubdowns, or allowed the entire horde to rub him down. Meyn the musician claimed that despite the perpetual fog he once saw from the Glettkau beach promenade how an appallingly naked, singing, shouting Greff lifted up two of his naked disciples and, naked laden with naked, a roaring, frenzied troika raced headlong over the solidly frozen surface of the Baltic.
It is easy to guess that Greff was not a fisherman"s son, although there were plenty of fishermen named Greff in Brosen and Neufahrwa.s.ser. Greff the greengrocer hailed from Tiegenhof, but he had met Lina Greff, nee Bartsch, at Praust. There he had helped an enterprising young vicar to run an apprentices" club, and Lina, on the same vicar"s account, went to the parish house every Sat.u.r.day. To judge by a snapshot, which she must have given me, for it is still in my alb.u.m, Lina, at the age of twenty, was robust, plump, light-headed, and dumb. Her father raised fruit and vegetables on a considerable market garden at Sankt Albrecht. As she later related on every possible occasion, she was quite inexperienced when at the age of twenty-three she married Greff on the vicar"s advice. With her father"s money they opened the vegetable store in Langfuhr. Since her father provided them with a large part of their vegetables and nearly all their fruit at low prices, the business virtually ran itself and Greff could do little damage. Without Greff"s childish tendency to invent mechanical contrivances, he could easily have made a gold mine of this store, so well situated, so far removed from all compet.i.tion, in a suburb swarming with children. But when the inspector from the Bureau of Weights and Measures presented himself for the third or fourth time, checked the scales, confiscated the weights, and decreed an a.s.sortment of fines, some of Greff"s regular customers left him and took to buying at the market. There was nothing wrong with the quality of Greff"s vegetables, they said, and his prices were not too high, but the inspectors had been there again, and something fishy must be going on.
Yet I am certain Greff had no intention of cheating anyone. This is what had happened: After Greff had made certain changes in his big potato scales, they weighed to his disadvantage. Consequently, just before the war broke out, he equipped these selfsame scales with a set of chimes which struck up a tune after every weighing operation; what tune depended on the weight registered. A customer who brought twenty pounds of potatoes was regaled, as a kind of premium, with "On the Sunny Sh.o.r.es of the Saale"; fifty pounds of potatoes got you "Be True and Upright to the Grave", and a hundredweight of winter potatoes made the chimes intone the naively bewitching strains of "annchen von Tharau."
Though I could easily see that these musical fancies might not be to the liking of the Bureau of Weights and Measures, Oskar was all in favor of the greengrocer"s little hobbies. Even Lina Greff was indulgent about her husband"s eccentricities, because, well, because the essence and content of the Greff marriage was forbearance with each other"s foibles. In this light the Greff marriage may be termed a good marriage. Greff did not beat his wife, was never unfaithful to her with other women, and was neither a drinker nor a debauchee; he was a good-humored man who dressed carefully and was well liked for his sociable, helpful ways, not only by lads and striplings but also by those of his customers who went on taking music with their potatoes.
And so Greff looked on calmly and indulgently as his Lina from year to year became an increasingly foul-smelling sloven. I remember seeing him smile when sympathetic friends called a sloven a sloven. Blowing into and rubbing his own hands, which were nicely kept in spite of the potatoes, he would sometimes, in my hearing, say to Matzerath, who had been chiding him over his wife: "Of course you"re perfectly right, Alfred. Our good Lina does rather let herself go. But haven"t we all got our faults?" If Matzerath persisted, Greff would close the discussion in a firm though friendly tone: "You may be right on certain points, but Lina has a good heart. I know my Lina."
Maybe he did. But she knew next to nothing of him. Like the neighbors and customers, she never saw anything more in Greff"s relations with his frequent youthful visitors than the enthusiasm of young men for a devoted, though nonprofessional, friend and educator of the young.
As for me, Greff could neither educate me nor fire me with enthusiasm. Actually Oskar was not his type. If I had made up my mind to grow, I might have become his type, for my lean and lank son Kurt is the exact embodiment of Greff"s type, though he takes mostly after Maria, bears little resemblance to me, and none whatever to Matzerath.
Greff was one witness to the marriage of Maria Truczinski and Alfred Matzerath; the other was Fritz Truczinski, home on furlough. Since Maria, like the bridegroom, was a Protestant, they only had a civil marriage. That was in the middle of December. Matzerath said "I do" in his Party uniform. Maria was in her third month.
The stouter my sweetheart became, the more Oskar"s hate mounted. I had no objection to her being pregnant. But that the fruit by me engendered should one day bear the name of Matzerath deprived me of all pleasure in my antic.i.p.ated son and heir. Maria was in her fifth month when I made my first attempt at abortion, much too late of course. It was in Carnival. Maria was fastening some paper streamers and clown"s masks with potato noses to the bra.s.s bar over the counter, where the sausage and bacon were hung. Ordinarily the ladder had solid support in the shelves; now it was propped up precariously on the counter. Maria high above with her hands full of streamers, Oskar far below, at the foot of the ladder. Using my drumsticks as levers, helping with my shoulder and firm resolve, I raised the foot of the ladder, then pushed it to one side: amid streamers and masks, Maria let out a faint cry of terror. The ladder tottered, Oskar jumped to one side, and beside him fell Maria, drawing colored paper, sausages, and masks in her wake.
It looked worse than it was. She had only turned her ankle, she had to lie down and be careful, but there was no serious injury. Her shape grew worse and worse and she didn"t even tell Matzerath who had been responsible for her turned ankle.
It was not until May of the following year when, some three weeks before the child was scheduled to be born, I made my second try, that she spoke to Matzerath, her husband, though even then she didn"t tell him the whole truth. At table, right in front of me, she said: "Oskar has been awful rough these days. Sometimes he hits me in the belly. Maybe we could leave him with my mother until the baby gets born. She has plenty of room."
Matzerath heard and believed. In reality, a fit of murderous frenzy had brought on a very different sort of encounter between Maria and me.
She had lain down on the sofa after lunch. Matzerath had finished washing the dishes and was in the shop decorating the window. It was quiet in the living room. Maybe the buzzing of a fly, the clock as usual, on the radio a newscast about the exploits of the paratroopers on Crete had been turned low. I perked up an ear only when they put on Max Schmeling, the boxer. As far as I could make out, he had hurt his world"s champion"s ankle, landing on the stony soil of Crete, and now he had to lie down and take care of himself; just like Maria, who had had to lie down after her fall from the ladder. Schmeling spoke with quiet modesty, then some less ill.u.s.trious paratroopers spoke, and Oskar stopped listening: it was quiet, maybe the buzzing of a fly, the clock as usual, the radio turned very low.
I sat by the window on my little bench and observed Maria"s belly on the sofa. She breathed heavily and kept her eyes closed. From time to time I tapped my drum morosely. She didn"t stir, but still she made me breathe in the same room with her belly. The clock was still there, and the fly between windowpane and curtain, and the radio with the stony island of Crete in the background. But quickly all this was submerged; all I could see was that belly; I knew neither in what room that bulging belly was situated, nor to whom it belonged, I hardly remembered who had made it so big. All I knew was that I couldn"t bear it: it"s got to be suppressed, it"s a mistake, it"s cutting off your view, you"ve got to stand up and do something about it. So I stood up. You"ve got to investigate, to see what can be done. So I approached the belly and took something with me. That"s a malignant swelling, needs to be deflated. I lifted the object I had taken with me and looked for a spot between Maria"s hands that lay breathing with her belly. Now is the time, Oskar, or Maria will open her eyes. Already I felt that I was being watched, but I just stood gazing at Maria"s slightly trembling left hand, though I saw her right hand moving, saw she was planning something with her right hand, and was not greatly surprised when Maria, with her right hand, twisted the scissors out of Oskar"s fist. I may have stood there for another few seconds with hand upraised but empty, listening to the clock, the fly, the voice of the radio announcer announcing the end of the Crete program, then I turned about and before the next program -- light music from two to three -- could begin, left our living room, which in view of that s.p.a.cefilling abdomen had become too small for me.
Two days later Maria bought me a new drum and took me to Mother Truczinski"s third-floor flat, smelling of ersatz coffee and fried potatoes. At first I slept on the couch; for fear of lingering vanilla Oskar refused to sleep in Herbert"s old bed. A week later old man Heilandt carried my wooden crib up the stairs. I allowed them to set it up beside the bed which had harbored me, Maria, and our fizz powder.
Oskar grew calmer or more resigned at Mother Truczinski"s. I was spared the sight of the belly, for Maria feared to climb the stairs. I avoided our apartment, the store, the street, even the court, where rabbits were being raised again as food became harder to come by.
Oskar spent most of his time looking at the postcards that Sergeant Fritz Truczinski had sent or brought with him from Paris. I had my ideas about the city of Paris and when Mother Truczinski brought me a postcard of the Eiffel Tower, I took up the theme and began to drum Paris, to drum a musette though I had never heard one.
On June 12, two weeks too soon according to my calculations, in the sign of Gemini and not as I had reckoned in that of Cancer, my son Kurt was born. The father in a Jupiter year, the son in a Venus year. The father dominated by Mercury in Virgo, which makes for skepticism and ingenuity; the son likewise governed by Mercury but in the sign of Gemini, hence endowed with a cold, ambitious intelligence. What in me was attenuated by the Venus of Libra in the house of the ascendant was aggravated in my son by Aries in the same house; I was to have trouble with his Mars.
With mousy excitement, Mother Truczinski imparted the news: "Just think, Oskar, the stork has brought you a little brother. Just when I was beginning to think if only it isn"t a girl that makes so much worry later on." I scarcely interrupted my drumming of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, which had arrived in the meantime. Even in the guise of Grandma Truczinski, Mother Truczinski seemed to expect no congratulations from me. Though it was Sunday, she decided to put on a little color, rubbed her cheeks with the good old chicory wrapping, and thus freshly painted, went downstairs to give Matzerath, the alleged father, a hand.
As I have said, it was June. A deceptive month. Victories on all fronts -- if you choose to lend so high-sounding a term to victories in the Balkans -- but still greater triumphs were imminent on the Eastern Front. An enormous army was moving forward. The railroads were being kept very busy. Fritz Truczinski, who until then had been having so delightful a time of it in Paris, was also compelled to embark on an eastward journey which would prove to be a very long one and could not be mistaken for a trip home on furlough. Oskar, however, sat quietly looking at the shiny postcards, dwelling in the mild Paris springtime, and lightly drumming "Trois jeunes tambours"; having no connection with the Army of Occupation, he had no reason to fear that any partisans would attempt to toss him off the Seine bridges. No, it was clad as a civilian that I climbed the Eiffel Tower with my drum and enjoyed the view just as one is expected to, feeling so good and despite the tempting heights so free from bittersweet thoughts of suicide, that it was only on descending, when I stood three feet high at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, that I remembered the birth of my son.
Voila, I thought, a son. When he is three years old, he will get a tin drum. We"ll see who"s the father around here, that Mr. Matzerath or I, Oskar Bronski.
In the heat of August -- I believe that the successful conclusion of another battle of encirclement, that of Smolensk, had just been announced -- my son Kurt was baptized. But how did my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek and her brother Vincent Bronski come to be invited? Of course if you accept -- as I do -- the version according to which Jan Bronski was my father and the silent, increasingly eccentric Vincent Bronski my paternal grandfather, there was reason enough for the invitation. After all my grandparents were my son Kurt"s great-grandparents.
But it goes without saying that no such reasoning ever occurred to Matzerath, who had sent the invitation. Even in his moments of darkest self-doubt, even after losing a game of skat by six lengths, he regarded himself as twice a progenitor, father, and provider. It was other considerations that gave Oskar the opportunity to see his grandparents. The old folks had been turned into Germans. They were Poles no longer and spoke Kashubian only in their dreams. German Nationals, Group 3, they were called. Moreover, Hedwig Bronski, Jan"s widow, had married a Baltic German who was local peasant leader in Ramkau. Pet.i.tions were already under way, which, when approved, would ent.i.tle Marga and Stephan Bronski to take the name of their stepfather Ehlers. Seventeen-year-old Stephan had volunteered, he was now in the Infantry Training Camp at Gross-Boschpol and had good prospects of visiting the war theaters of Europe, while Oskar, who would soon be of military age, was reduced to waiting behind his drum until there should be an opening for a three-year-old drummer in the Army or Navy, or even in the Air Corps.
It was Local Peasant Leader Ehlers who took the first steps. Two weeks before the baptism he drove up to Labesweg with Hedwig beside him on the seat of a carriage and pair. He had bowlegs and stomach trouble and was not to be mentioned in the same breath with Jan Bronski. A good head shorter than Jan, he sat beside cow-eyed Hedwig at our living room table. The looks of the man came as a surprise, even to Matzerath. The conversation refused to get started. They spoke of the weather, observed that all sorts of things were happening in the East, that our troops were getting ahead fine -- much faster than in "15, as Matzerath, who had been there in "15, remembered. All took great pains not to speak of Jan Bronski, until I spoiled their game by making a droll infantile pout and crying out loudly and more than once for Oskar"s Uncle Jan. Matzerath gave himself a jolt and said something affectionate followed by something thoughtful about his former friend and rival. Ehlers joined in effusively, although he had never laid eyes on his predecessor. Hedwig even produced a few authentic tears that rolled slowly down her cheeks and finally said the words that closed the topic of Jan: " He was a good man. He wouldn"t hurt a fly. Who"d have thought he"d come to such an end, a scarecat like him that was scared of his shadow."
These words having been spoken, Matzerath bade Maria, who was standing behind him, to bring in a few bottles of beer and asked Ehlers if he played skat. No, Ehlers was sorry to say he didn"t, but Matzerath magnanimously forgave the peasant leader this little shortcoming. He even gave him a tap on the shoulder and a.s.sured him, after the beer gla.s.ses had been filled, that it didn"t matter if he wasn"t a skat player, they could still be good friends.
Thus Hedwig Bronski in the guise of Hedwig Ehlers found her way back to our flat and brought with her, to attend the baptism of my son Kurt, not only her local peasant leader but also her former father-in-law Vincent Bronski and his sister Anna. Matzerath gave the old folks a loud, friendly welcome out in the street, beneath the neighbors" windcws, and in the living room, when my grandmother reached under her four skirts and brought forth her baptismal gift, a fine fat goose, he said: "You didn"t have to do that, Grandma. I"d be glad to have you even if you didn"t bring a thing." But this was going too far for my grandmother, who wanted her goose to be appreciated. Smacking the n.o.ble bird with the palm of her hand, she protested: "Don"t make so much fuss, Alfred. She"s no Kashubian goose, she"s a German National bird and tastes just like before the war."
With this all problems of nationality were solved and everything went smoothly until it came time for the baby to be baptized and Oskar refused to set foot in the Protestant church. They took my drum out of the taxi and tried to lure me with it, a.s.suring me not once but several times that drums were allowed in Protestant churches. I persevered, however, in the blackest Catholicism; I would rather at that moment have poured a detailed and comprehensive confession into the apostolic ear of Father Wiehnke than listen to a Protestant baptismal sermon. Matzerath gave in, probably dreading my voice and attendant damage claims. While my son was being baptized, I remained in the taxi, staring at the back of the driver"s head, scrutinizing Oskar"s features in the rear view mirror, thinking of my own baptism, already far in the past, and of Father Wiehnke"s valiant effort to drive Satan out of the infant Oskar.
Afterwards we ate. Two tables had been put together. First came mock turtle soup. The countryfolk lapped. Greff crooked his little finger. Gretchen Scheffler bit into the soup. Guste smiled broadly over her spoon. Ehlers spoke with the spoon in his mouth. Vincent"s hands shook as he looked for something that wouldn"t come into the spoon. Only the old women, Grandma Anna and Mother Truczinski, were committed heart and soul to their spoons. As for Oskar, he dropped his and slipped away while the others were still spooning and sought out his son"s cradle in the bedroom, for he wanted to think about his son, while the others, behind their spoons, shriveled more and more into unthinking, spooned-out emptiness, even though the soup was being spooned, not out of, but into them.
Over the basket on wheels a sky-blue canopy of tulle. The edge of the basket was too high and all I could see at first was a puckered little reddish-bluish head. By laying my drum on the floor and standing on it, I was able to observe my sleeping son, who twitched nervously as he slept. O paternal pride, ever on the lookout for grand words! Gazing upon my infant son, I could think of nothing but the short sentence: When he is three years old, he shall have a drum. My son refused to grant me the slightest insight into his intellectual situation, and I could only hope that he might, like me, belong to the race of clairaudient infants. Quite at a loss, I repeated my promise of a drum for his third birthday, descended from my pedestal, and once more tried my chance with the grownups in the living room.
They were just finishing the mock turtle soup. Maria brought in canned green peas with melted b.u.t.ter. Matzerath, who was responsible for the pork roast, dressed the platter in person; he took his coat off and, standing in his shirtsleeves, cut slice after slice, his features so full of unabashed tenderness over the tender, succulent meat that I had to avert my eyes.
Greff was served separately: he was given canned asparagus, hard-boiled eggs, and black radish with cream, because vegetarians eat no meat. Like the others, he took a dab of mashed potatoes: however, he moistened them not with meat gravy but with brown b.u.t.ter which the attentive Maria brought in from the kitchen in a sizzling frying pan. While the others drank beer, he drank apple juice. The encirclement of Kiev was discussed, the prisoners taken counted on fingers. Ehlers, a native of the Baltic, showed a special apt.i.tude for counting Russian prisoners; at every hundred thousand, a finger shot up; when his two outstretched hands had completed a million, he went right on counting by decapitating one finger after another. When the subject of prisoners, whose mounting numbers made them increasingly useless and uninteresting, was exhausted, Schemer spoke of the U-boats at Gotenhafen and Matzerath whispered in my grandmother Anna"s ear that they were launching two subs a week at Schichau. Thereupon Greff explained to all present why submarines had to be launched sideways instead of stem first. He was determined to make it all very clear and visual; for every operation he had a gesture which those of the guests who were fascinated by U-boats imitated attentively and awkwardly. Trying to impersonate a diving submarine, Vincent Bronski"s left hand upset his beer gla.s.s. My grandmother started to scold him. But Maria smoothed her down, saying it didn"t matter, the tablecloth was due for the laundry anyway, you couldn"t celebrate without making spots. Mother Truczinski came in with a cloth and mopped up the pool of beer; in her left hand she carried our large crystal bowl, full of chocolate pudding with crushed almonds.
Ah me, if that chocolate pudding had only had some other sauce or no sauce at all! But it had to be vanilla sauce, rich and yellow and viscous: vanilla sauce! Perhaps there is nothing so joyous and nothing so sad in this world as vanilla sauce. Softly the vanilla scent spread round about, enveloping me more and more in Maria, to the point that I couldn"t bear to look at her, root and source of all vanilla, who sat beside Matzerath, holding his hand in hers.
Oskar slipped off his baby chair, clung to the skirts of Lina Greff, lay at her feet as above board she wielded her spoon. For the first time I breathed in the effluvium peculiar to Lina Greff, which instantly outshouted, engulfed, and killed all vanilla.
Acrid as it was to my nostrils, I clung to the new perfume until all recollections connected with vanilla seemed to be dulled. Slowly, without the slightest sound or spasm, I was seized with a redeeming nausea. While the mock turtle soup, the roast pork in chunks, the canned green peas almost intact, and the few spoonfuls I had taken of chocolate pudding with vanilla sauce escaped me, I became fully aware of my helplessness, I wallowed in my helplessness. Oskar"s helplessness spread itself out at the feet of Lina Greff -- and I decided that from then on and daily I should carry my helplessness to Lina Greff.
165 lbs.
Vyazma and Bryansk; then the mud set in. In the middle of October, 1941, Oskar too began to wallow intensively in mud. I hope I shall be forgiven for drawing a parallel between the muddy triumphs of Army Group Center and my own triumphs in the impa.s.sable and equally muddy terrain of Mrs. Lina Greff. Just as tanks and trucks bogged down on the approaches to Moscow, so I too bogged down; just as the wheels went on spinning, churning up the mud of Russia, so I too kept on trying -- I feel justified in saying that I churned the Greffian mud into a foaming lather -- but neither on the approaches to Moscow nor in the Greff bedroom was any ground gained.
I am not quite ready to drop my military metaphor: just as future strategists would draw a lesson from these unsuccessful operations in the mud, so I too would draw my conclusions from the natural phenomenon named Lina Greff. Our efforts on the home from during the Second World War should not be underestimated. Oskar was only seventeen, and despite his tender years Lina Greff, that endless and insidious infiltration course, made a man of him. But enough of military comparisons. Let us measure Oskar"s progress in artistic terms: If Maria, with her naively bewitching clouds of vanilla, taught me to appreciate the small, the delicate; if she taught me the lyricism of fizz powder and mushroom-picking, then Mrs. Greff"s acrid vapors, compounded of multiple effluvia, may be said to have given me the broad epic breath which enables me today to mention military victories and bedroom triumphs in the same breath. Music! From Maria"s childlike, sentimental, and yet so sweet harmonica I was transported, without transition, to the concert hall, and I was the conductor; for Lina Greff offered me an orchestra, so graduated in depth and breadth that you will hardly find its equal in Bayreuth or Salzburg. There I mastered bra.s.ses and wood winds, the percussion, the strings, bowed and pizzicato; I mastered harmony and counterpoint, cla.s.sical and diatonic, the entry of the scherzo and the tempo of the andante; my beat could be hard and precise or soft and fluid; Oskar got the maximum out of his instrument, namely Mrs. Greff, and yet, as befits a true artist, he remained dis- if not un-satisfied.
The Greff vegetable shop was only a few steps across and down the street from our store. A convenient location, much handier for me than the quarters of Alexander Scheffler, the master baker, in Kleinhammer-Weg. Maybe the convenient situation was the main reason why I made rather more progress in female anatomy than in the study of my masters Goethe and Rasputin. But perhaps this discrepancy in my education, which remains flagrant to this day, can be explained and in part justified by the difference between my two teachers. While Lina Greff made no attempt to instruct me but pa.s.sively and in all simplicity spread out all her riches for me to observe and experiment with, Gretchen Scheffler took her pedagogic vocation far too seriously. She wanted to see results, to hear me read aloud, to see my drummer"s finger engaged in penmanship, to establish a friendship between me and fair Grammatica and benefit by it her own self. When Oskar refused to show any visible sign of progress, Gretchen Scheffler lost patience; shortly after the death of my poor mama -- by then, it must be admitted, she had been teaching me for seven years -- she reverted to her knitting. From then on her interest in me was expressed only by occasional gifts of hand-knitted sweaters, stockings, and mittens -- her marriage was still childless -- bestowed for the most part on the princ.i.p.al holidays. We no longer read or spoke of Goethe or Rasputin, and it was only thanks to the excerpts from the works of both masters which I still kept hidden in various places, mostly in the attic of our apartment house, that this branch of Oskar"s studies was not wholly forgotten; I educated myself and formed my own opinions.
Moored to her bed, the ailing Lina Greff could neither escape nor leave me, for her ailment, though chronic, was not serious enough to s.n.a.t.c.h Lina, my teacher Lina, away from me prematurely. But since on this planet nothing lasts forever, it was Oskar who left his bedridden teacher the moment it seemed to him that his studies were complete.
You will say: how limited the world to which this young man was reduced for his education! A grocery store, a bakery, and a vegetable shop circ.u.mscribed the field in which he was obliged to piece together his equipment for adult life. Yes, I must admit that Oskar gathered his first, all-important impressions in very musty pet.i.t-bourgeois surroundings. However, I had a third teacher. It was he who would open up the world to Oskar and make him what he is today, a person whom, for want of a better epithet, I can only term cosmopolitan.
I am referring, as the most attentive among you will have noted, to my teacher and master Bebra, direct descendant of Prince Eugene, scion from the tree of Louis XIV, the midget and musical clown Bebra. When I say Bebra, I also, it goes without saying, have in mind the woman at his side, Roswitha Raguna, the great somnambulist and timeless beauty, to whom my thoughts were often drawn in those dark years after Matzerath took my Maria away from me. How old, I wondered, can the signora be? Is she a fresh young girl of nineteen or twenty? Or is she the delicate, the graceful old lady of ninety-nine, who in a hundred years will still indestructibly embody the diminutive format of eternal youth.
If I remember correctly, I met these two, so kindred to me in body and spirit, shortly after the death of my poor mama. We drank mocha together in the Cafe of the Four Seasons, then our ways parted. There were slight, but not negligible political differences; Bebra was close to the Reich Propaganda Ministry, frequented, as I easily inferred from the hints he dropped, the privy chambers of Messrs. Goebbels and Goering -- corrupt behavior which he tried, in all sorts of ways, to explain and justify to me. He would talk about the influence wielded by court jesters in the Middle Ages, and show me reproductions of Spanish paintings respresenting some Philip or Carlos with his retinue; in the midst of these stiff, pompous gatherings, one could distinguish fools about the size of Bebra or even Oskar, in ruffs, goatees, and baggy pantaloons. I liked the pictures -- for without exaggeration I can call myself an ardent admirer of Diego Velasquez -- but for that very reason I refused to be convinced, and after a while he would drop his comparisons between the position of the jester at the court of Philip IV of Spain and his own position in the entourage of the Rhenish upstart Joseph Goebbels. He would go on to speak of the hard times, of the weak who must temporarily incline, of the resistance that thrives in concealment, in short, the words "inward emigration" cropped up, and for Oskar that was the parting of the ways.
Not that I bore the master a grudge. In the years that followed, I searched vaudeville and circus posters for Bebra"s name. Twice I found it, side by side with that of Signora Raguna, yet I did nothing that might have led to a meeting with my friends.
I left it to chance, but chance declined to help, for if Bebra"s ways and mine had crossed in the autumn of "42 rather than in the following year, Oskar would never have become the pupil of Lina Greff, but would have become the disciple of Bebra the master. As it was, I crossed Labesweg every day, sometimes early in the morning, entered the vegetable shop, for propriety"s sake spent half an hour in the vicinity of the greengrocer, who was becoming more and more crotchety and devoting more and more of his time to his inventions. I looked on as he constructed his weird, tinkling, howling, screaming contraptions, and poked him when customers entered the shop; for Greff had ceased to take much notice of the world around him. What had happened? What was it that made the once so open-hearted, so convivial gardener and friend of the young so silent? What was it that transformed him into a lonely, eccentric, rather unkempt old man?
The young people had stopped coming to see him. The new generation didn"t know him. His following from the boy scout days had been dispersed by the war. Letters came from various fronts, then there were only postcards, and one day Greff indirectly received the news that his favorite, Horst Donath, first scout, then squad leader, then lieutenant in the Army, had fallen by the Donets.
From that day Greff began to age, neglected his appearance, and devoted himself exclusively to his inventions, until there were more ringing and howling machines to be seen in his shop than potatoes or cabbage. Of course the general food shortage had something to do with it; deliveries to the shop were few and far between, and Greff was not, like Matzerath, a good buyer with good connections in the wholesale market.
The shop was pitiful to look upon, and one could only be grateful to Greff"s silly noise machines for taking up s.p.a.ce in their absurd but decorative way. I liked the creations that sprang from Greff"s increasingly fuzzy brain. When today I look at the knotted string spooks of Bruno my keeper, I am reminded of Greff"s exhibits. And just as Bruno relishes my smiling yet serious interest in his artistic amus.e.m.e.nts, so Greff, in his distraught way, was glad when I took pleasure in one of his music machines. He who for years had paid no attention to me was visibly disappointed when after half an hour I left his vegetable and work shop to call on his wife, Lina Greff.
What shall I tell you about my visits to the bedridden woman, which generally took from two to two and a half hours? When Oskar entered, she beckoned from the bed: "Ah, it"s you, Oskar. Well, come on over, come in under the covers if you feel like it, it"s cold and Greff hasn"t made much of a fire." So I slipped in with her under the featherbed, left my drum and the two sticks I had just been using outside, and permitted only a third drumstick, a used and rather scrawny one, to accompany me on my visit to Lina.
It should not be supposed that I undressed before getting into bed with Lina. In wool, velvet, and leather, I climbed in. And despite the heat generated by my labors, I climbed out of the rumpled feathers some hours later in the same clothing, scarcely disarranged.
Then, fresh from Lina"s bed, her effluvia still clinging to me, I would pay another call on Greff. When this had happened several times, he inaugurated a ritual that I was only too glad to observe. Before I arose from the palace of matrimony, he would come into the room with a basin full of warm water and set it down on a stool. Having disposed soap and towel beside it, he would leave the room without a word or so much as a glance in the direction of the bed.
Quickly Oskar would tear himself out of the warm nest, toddle over to the washbasin, and give himself and his bedtime drumstick a good wash; I could readily understand that even at second hand the smell of his wife was more than Greff could stomach.
Freshly washed, however, I was welcome to the inventor. He would demonstrate his machines and their various sounds, and I find it rather surprising to this day that despite this late intimacy no friendship ever developed between Oskar and Greff, that Greff remained a stranger to me, arousing my interest no doubt, but never my sympathy.
It was in September, 1942 -- my eighteenth birthday had just gone by without pomp or ceremony, on the radio the Sixth Army was taking Stalingrad -- that Greff built the drumming machine. A wooden framework, inside it a pair of scales, evenly balanced with potatoes; when a potato was removed from one pan, the scales were thrown off balance and released a lever which set off the drumming mechanism installed on top of the frame. There followed a rolling as of kettledrums, a booming and clanking, basins struck together, a gong rang out, and the end of it all was a tinkling, transitory, tragically cacophonous finale.
The machine appealed to me. Over and over again I would ask Greff to demonstrate it. For Oskar imagined that the greengrocer had invented and built it for him. Soon my mistake was made clear to me. Greff may have taken an idea or two from me, but the machine was intended for himself; for its finale was his finale.
It was a clear October morning such as only the northwest wind delivers free of charge. I had left Mother Truczinski"s flat early and Matzerath was just raising the sliding shutter in front of his shop as I stepped out into the street. I stood beside him as the green slats clanked upward; a whiff of pent-up grocery store smell came out at me, then Matzerath kissed me good morning. Before Maria showed herself, I crossed Labesweg, casting a long westward shadow on the cobblestones, for to the right of me, in the East, the sun rose up over Max-Halbe-Platz by its own power, resorting to the same trick as Baron Munchhausen when he lifted himself out of the swamp by his own pigtail.
Anyone who knew Greff the greengrocer as well as I would have been just as surprised to find the door and showcase of his shop still curtained and closed at that hour. The last few years, it is true, had transformed Greff into more and more of a crank. However, the shop had always opened on time. Maybe he is sick, thought Oskar, but dismissed this notion at once. For how could Greff, who only last winter, though perhaps not as regularly as in former years, had chopped holes in the Baltic Sea to bathe in -- how, despite certain signs that he was growing older, could this nature lover suddenly fall sick from one day to the next? The privilege of staying in bed was reserved for his wife, who managed for two; moreover, I knew that Greff despised soft mattresses, preferring to sleep on camp beds and wooden planks. There existed no ailment that could have fastened the greengrocer to his bed.
I took up my position outside the closed shop, looked back toward our store, and ascertained that Matzerath was inside; only then did I roll off a few measures on my drum, hoping to attract Mrs. Greff"s sensitive ear. Barely a murmur was needed, already the second window to the right beside the shop door opened. La Greff in her nightgown, her hair full of curlers, shielding her bosom with a pillow, appeared over the window box and its ice plants. "Why, Oskar, come in, come in. What are you waiting for when it"s so chilly out?"
I explained by tapping the iron curtain over the shop window with one drumstick.
"Albrecht," she cried. "Albrecht, where are you? What"s the matter?"
Still calling her husband, she removed herself from the window. Doors slammed, I heard her rattling round the shop, then she began to scream again. She screamed in the cellar, but I couldn"t see why she was screaming, for the cellar transom, through which potatoes were poured on delivery days, but more and more seldom in the war years, was also closed. Pressing an eye to the tarred planks covering the transom, I saw that the light was burning in the cellar. I could also distinguish the top part of the cellar steps, on which lay something white, probably Mrs. Greff"s pillow.
She must have dropped the pillow on the stairs, for she was no longer in the cellar but screaming again in the shop and a moment later in the bedroom. She picked up the phone, screamed, and dialed; she screamed into the telephone; but Oskar couldn"t tell what it was about, all he could catch was accident and the address, Labesweg 24, which she screamed several times. She hung up, and a moment later, screaming in her nightgown, pillowless but still in curlers, she filled the window frame, pouring the vast bipart.i.te bulk with which I was so familiar into the window box, over the ice plants, and thrusting both her hands into the fleshy, pale-red leaves. She screamed upward, so that the street became narrow and it seemed to Oskar that gla.s.s must begin to fly. But not a windowpane broke. Windows were torn open, neighbors appeared, women called out questions, men came running, Laubschad the watchmaker, pulling on his jacket, old man Heilandt, Mr. Reissberg, Libischewski the tailor, Mr. Esch, emerged from the nearest house doors; even Probst, not the barber but the coal dealer, appeared with his son. Matzerath came sailing up in his white smock, while Maria, holding Kurt in her arms, stood in the doorway of our store.
I had no difficulty in submerging myself in the swarm of excited grownups and in evading Matzerath, who was looking for me. He and Laubschad the watchmaker were the first to spring into action. They tried to enter the house through the window. But Mrs. Greff wouldn"t let anybody climb up, much less enter. Scratching, flailing, and biting, she still managed to find time to scream louder than ever and in part intelligibly. The ambulance men should be first to go in; she had telephoned long ago, there was no need for anyone to telephone again, she knew what had to be done in such cases. They should attend to their own shops, things were already bad enough without their meddling. Curiosity, nothing but curiosity, you could see who your friends were when trouble came. In the middle of her lament, she must have caught sight of me outside her window, for she called me and, after shaking off the men, held out her bare arms to me, and someone -- Oskar still thinks it was Laubschad the watchmaker -- lifted me up, tried, despite Matzerath"s opposition, to hand me in. Close by the window box, Matzerath nearly caught me, but then Lina Greff reached out, pressed me to her warm nightgown, and stopped screaming. After that she just gave out a falsetto whimpering and between whimpers gasped for air.
A moment before, Mrs. Greff"s screams had lashed the neighbors into a shamelessly gesticulating frenzy; now her high, thin whimpering reduced those pressing round the window box to a silent, sc.r.a.ping, embarra.s.sed mob which seemed almost afraid to look her lamentations in the face and projected all its hope, all its curiosity and sympathy into the moment when the ambulance should arrive.
Oskar too was repelled by Mrs. Greff"s whimpering. I tried to slip down a little lower, where I wouldn"t be quite so close to the source of her lamentations; I managed to relinquish my hold on her neck and to seat myself partly on the window box. But soon Oskar felt he was being watched; Maria, with the child in her arms, was standing in the doorway of the shop. Again I decided to move, for I was keenly aware of the awkwardness of my situation. But I was thinking only of Maria; I didn"t care a hoot for the neighbors. I shoved off from the Greffian coast, which was quaking too much for my taste and reminded me of bed.
Lina Greff was unaware of my flight, or else she lacked the strength to restrain the little body which had so long provided her with compensation. Or perhaps she suspected that Oskar was slipping away from her forever, that with her screams a sound had been born which, on the one hand, would become a wall, a sound barrier between the drummer and the bedridden woman, and on the other hand would shatter the wall that had arisen between Maria and myself.
I stood in the Greff bedroom. My drum hung down askew and insecure. Oskar knew the room well, he could have recited the sap-green wallpaper by heart in any direction. The washbasin with the grey soapsuds from the previous day was still in its place. Everything had its place and yet the furniture in that room, worn with sitting, lying, and b.u.mping, looked fresh to me, or at least refreshed, as though all these objects that stood stiffly on four legs along the walls had needed the screams, followed by the falsetto whimpering of Lina Greff, to give them a new, terrifyingly cold radiance.
The door to the shop stood open. Against his will Oskar let himself be drawn into that room, redolent of dry earth and onions. Seeping in through cracks in the shutters, the daylight designed stripes of luminous dust particles in the air. Most of Greff"s noise and music machines were hidden in the half-darkness, the light fell only on a few details, a little bell, a wooden prop, the lower part of the drumming machine, the evenly balanced potatoes.
The trap door which, exactly as in our shop, led down to the cellar, stood open. Nothing supported the plank cover which Mrs. Greff must have opened in her screaming haste: nor had she inserted the hook in its eye affixed to the counter. With a slight push Oskar might have tipped it back and closed the cellar.
Motionless, I stood behind those planks, breathing in their smell of dust and mold and staring at the brightly lit rectangle enclosing a part of the staircase and a piece of concrete cellar floor. Into this rectangle, from the upper right, protruded part of a platform with steps leading up to it, obviously a recent acquisition of Greff"s, for I had never seen it on previous visits to the cellar. But Oskar would not have peered so long and intently into the cellar for the sake of a platform; what held his attention was those two woolen stockings and those two black laced shoes which, strangely foreshortened, occupied the upper righthand corner of the picture. Though I could not see the soles, I knew them at once for Greff"s hiking shoes. It can"t be Greff, I thought, who is standing there in the cellar all ready for a hike for the shoes are not standing but hanging in midair, just over the platform, though it seems possible that the tips of the shoes, pointing sharply downward, are in contact with the boards, not much, but still in contact. For a second I fancied a Greff standing on tiptoes, a comical and strenuous exercise, yet quite conceivable in this athlete and nature lover.