Three carpeted steps led up to the Virgin clad in green and silver, to John"s s.h.a.ggy, chocolate-colored pelt, and to the boy Jesus whose coloring suggested boiled ham. In front of them there was an altar outfitted with anemic candles and flowers at all prices. All three of them -- the green Virgin, the brown John, and the pink Jesus -- had halos the size of dinnerplates stuck to the backs of their heads -- expensive plates adorned with gold leaf.
If not for the steps before the altar, I should never have climbed up. Steps, door handles, and shopwindows had a power of seduction for Oskar in those days, and though today he has no need of anything but his hospital bed, they still do not leave him indifferent. He let himself be seduced from one step to the next, though always on the same carpet. He came close enough to tap the group, at once disparagingly and respectfully with his knuckles. He was able to scratch it with his fingernails in the way that discloses the plaster under the paint. The folds in the Virgin"s drapery could be followed along their devious course to the toes resting on the cloud bank. A succinct intimation of the Virgin"s shin suggested that the sculptor had first created flesh and then submerged it in draperies. When Oskar felt the boy Jesus" watering can, which should have been circ.u.mcised but wasn"t, when he stroked it and cautiously pressed it as though to move it, he felt a pleasant but strangely new and disturbing sensation in his own watering can, whereupon he left Jesus" alone in the hope that Jesus would let his alone.
Circ.u.mcised or uncirc.u.mcised, I let matters rest there, pulled out my drum from under my sweater, removed it from my neck, and, taking care not to nick Jesus" halo, hung the drum round his neck. In view of my size, this took a bit of doing. I had to climb up on the sculpture and stand on the cloud bank that served as a pedestal.
This did not happen in January, "36, on Oskar"s first visit to church after baptism, but during Holy Week of the same year. All that winter his mama had been hard put to it to keep abreast of her dealings with Jan Bronski in the confessional. Consequently Oskar had plenty of Sat.u.r.days in which to mature his plan, to reject, justify, and revise it, to examine it from all sides, and finally, with the help of the stations of the Cross on the Monday of Holy Week, to discard all previous variants, formulate a new one, and carry it out with the utmost simplicity and directness.
Since Mama felt the need to confess before the Easter to-do should reach its climax, she took me by the hand on the afternoon of Pa.s.sion Monday and led me down Labesweg to the Neue Markt and Elsenstra.s.se, down Marienstra.s.se past Wohlgemuth"s butcher shop, turning left at Kleinhammer-Park, through the underpa.s.s always dripping with some disgusting yellow ooze, to the Church of the Sacred Heart across from the railway embankment.
It was late when we arrived. There were only two old women and a frightened young man waiting outside the confessional. While Mama was examining her conscience -- leafing through her missal with a moistened thumb as though searching a ledger for the figures she would need in preparing her tax returns -- I slipped out of the pew and, managing to avoid the eyes of the open-hearted Jesus and the Athlete on the Cross -- made my way to the left side-altar.
Although I had to move quickly, I did not omit the Introit. Three steps: Intraibo ad altare Dei. To G.o.d who giveth joy to my youth. Dragging out the Kyrie, I removed the drum from my neck and climbed up on the cloud bank; no dawdling by the watering can, no, just before the Gloria, I hung the drum on Jesus, taking care not to injure the halo. Down from the cloud bank -- remission of sins, pardon, and forgiveness -- but first I thrust the drumsticks into Jesus" hands that were just the right size to receive them, and one, two, three steps, I lift my eyes unto the hills, a little more carpet, then at last the flags and a prayer stool for Oskar, who knelt down on the cushion and folded his drummer"s hands before his face -- Gloria in Excelsis Deo -- squinted past the folded hands at Jesus and his drum and awaited the miracle: will he drum now, or can"t he drum, or isn"t he allowed to drum? Either he drums or he is not a real Jesus; if he doesn"t drum now, Oskar is a realer Jesus than he is.
If it is miracles you are after, you must know how to wait. And so I waited. In the beginning at least I waited patiently, though perhaps not patiently enough, for the longer I repeated the words "All eyes attend thee, O Lord" -- subst.i.tuting ears for eyes as the occasion demanded -- the more disappointed Oskar became as he knelt on his prayer stool. He gave the Lord all sorts of opportunities, closed his eyes on the supposition that Little Lord Jesus, afraid that his first movements might be awkward, would be more likely to begin if no one were looking, but finally, after the third Credo, after Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth of things visible and invisible, and the only begotten Son, begotten not made by Him, true Son of true Father, consubstantial with Him, through Him, who for us men and our salvation, descended from Heaven, became incarnate, was made man, was buried, rose again, sitteth at the hand of the Father, the dead, no end, I believe in, together with the Father, spoke by, believe in the one Holy, Catholic, and. . .
Well, my Catholicism survived only in my nostrils. My faith was just about washed up. But it wasn"t the smell I was interested in. I wanted something else: I wanted to hear my drum, I wanted Jesus to play something for my benefit, I wanted a modest little miracle. I wasn"t asking for thunder that would send Vicar Rasczeia running to the spot and Father Wiehnke painfully dragging his fat to witness the miracle; I wasn"t asking for a major miracle that would demand reports to the Diocese at Oliva and impel the bishop to submit a testimonial to the Vatican. No, I was not ambitious. Oskar had no desire to be canonized. All he wanted was a little private miracle, something he could hear and see, something that would make it clear to him once and for all whether he should drum for or against; all he wanted was a sign to tell him which of the two blue-eyed identical twins was ent.i.tled and would be ent.i.tled in future to call himself Jesus.
I sat and waited. I also began to worry: Mama must be in the confessional; by now she must have the sixth commandment behind her. The old man who is always limping about churches limped past the main altar and then past the left side-altar, saluting the Virgin with the boys. Perhaps he saw the drum but without understanding. He shuffled on, growing older in the process.
Time pa.s.sed, but Jesus did not beat the drum. I heard voices from the choir. If only no one starts playing the organ, I thought anxiously. If they start practicing for Easter, the organ will drown out the first feeble, hesitant drumbeats.
But no one touched the organ. Nor did Jesus drum. There was no miracle. I rose from my cushion with a cracking in my knee joints. Desolate and morose, I moved over the carpet, pulled myself up from step to step, but neglected all the gradual prayers I knew. I climbed up on the plaster cloud, upsetting some medium-priced flowers. All I wanted was to get my drum back from that preposterous naked kid.
I admit it and I always will: it was a mistake to try to teach him anything. I can"t imagine what gave me the idea. Be that as it may, I took the sticks but left the drum. Softly at first, but then with the impatience of an impatient teacher, I showed little pseudo-Jesus how to do it. And finally, putting the drumsticks back into his hands, I gave him his chance to show what he had learned from Oskar.
Before I had time to wrench drum and drumsticks away from this most obstinate of all pupils without concern for his halo, Father Wiehnke was behind me -- my drumming had made itself heard throughout the length and breadth of the church -- Vicar Rasczeia was behind me. Mama was behind me, the old man was behind me. The Vicar pulled me down, Father Wiehnke cuffed me, Mama wept at me, Father Wiehnke whispered at me, the Vicar genuflected and bobbed up and took the drumsticks away from Jesus, genuflected again with the drumsticks and bobbed up again for the drum, took the drum away from Little Lord Jesus, cracked his halo, jostled his watering can, broke off a bit of cloud, tumbled down the steps, and genuflected once more. He didn"t want to give me the drum and that made me angrier than I was before, compelling me to kick Father Wiehnke and shame my mama, who indeed had plenty to be ashamed about by the time I had finished kicking, biting, and scratching and torn myself free from Father Wiehnke, the Vicar, the old man, and Mama. Thereupon I ran out in front of the high altar with Satan hopping up and down in me, whispering as he had at my baptism: "Oskar, look around. Windows everywhere. All gla.s.s, all gla.s.s."
And past the Athlete on the Cross, who kept his peace and did not so much as twitch a muscle, I sang at the three high windows of the apse, red, yellow and green on a blue ground, representing the twelve apostles. But I aimed neither at Mark nor Matthew. I aimed at the dove above them, which stood on its head celebrating the Pentecost; I aimed at the Holy Ghost. My vocal chords vibrated, I battled the bird with my diamond. Was it my fault? Was it the dauntless Athlete who intervened? Was that the miracle, unknown to all? They saw me trembling and silently pouring out my powers against the apse, and all save Mama thought I was praying, though I was praying for nothing but broken gla.s.s. But Oskar failed, his time had not yet come. I sank down on the flagstones and wept bitterly because Jesus had failed, because Oskar had failed, because Wiehnke and Rasczeia misunderstood me, and were already spouting absurdities about repentance. Only Mama did not fail. She understood my tears, though she couldn"t help feeling glad that there had been no broken gla.s.s.
Then Mama picked me up in her arms, recovered the drum and drumsticks from the Vicar, and promised Father Wiehnke to pay for the damage, whereupon he accorded her a belated absolution, for I had interrupted her confession: even Oskar got a little of the blessing, though I could have done without it.
While Mama was carrying me out of the Sacred Heart, I counted on my fingers: Today is Monday, tomorrow is Tuesday, then Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and then it will be all up with that character who can"t even drum, who won"t even give me the pleasure of a little broken gla.s.s, who resembles me but is false. He will go down into the grave while I shall keep on drumming and drumming, but never again experience any desire for a miracle.
Good Friday Fare
Paradoxical: that might be the word for my feelings between Pa.s.sion Monday and Good Friday. On the one hand I was irritated over that plaster Boy Jesus who wouldn"t drum; on the other, I was pleased that the drum was now all my own. Though on the one hand my voice failed in its a.s.sault on the church windows, on the other hand that intact multicolored gla.s.s preserved in Oskar the vestige of Catholic faith which was yet to inspire any number of desperate blasphemies.
And there was more to the paradox than that: On the one hand I managed to sing an attic window to pieces on my way home from the Church of the Sacred Heart just to see if it was still within my powers, but from that time on, on the other hand, the triumph of my voice over profane targets made me painfully aware of my failures in the sacred sector. Paradox, I have said. The cleavage was lasting; I have never been able to heal it, and it is still with me today, though today I am at home neither in the sacred nor the profane but dwell on the fringes, in a mental hospital.
Mama paid for the damage to the left side-altar. Business was good at Easter although the shop, on the insistence of Matzerath, who was a Protestant, had to be closed on Good Friday. Mama, who usually had her way, gave in on Good Fridays and closed up, demanding in return the right to close on Catholic grounds for Corpus Christi, to replace the gingerbread in the window by a gingerbread Virgin with electric lights and to march in the procession at Oliva.
We had a cardboard sign with "Closed for Good Friday" on one side and "Closed for Corpus Christi" on the other. On the Good Friday following that drumless and voiceless Monday of Holy Week, Matzerath hung out the sign saying "Closed for Good Friday", and immediately after breakfast we started for Brosen on the streetcar. To run our word into the ground, the scene in Labesweg was also paradoxical. The Protestants went to church, the Catholics washed windows and beat everything vaguely resembling a carpet so vigorously and resoundingly in the courtyards that one had the impression thousands of Saviours were being nailed to thousands of Crosses all at once.
Our Holy Family however -- Mama, Matzerath, Jan Bronski, and Oskar -- left the Pa.s.siontide carpet-beating behind us, settled ourselves in the Number 9 streetcar, and rode down Brosener-Weg, past the airfield, the old drill ground and the new drill ground, and waited on a siding near Saspe Cemetery for the car coming in the opposite direction, from Neufahrwa.s.ser-Brosen, to pa.s.s. Mama took the wait as an occasion for gloomy, though lightly uttered observations. The abandoned little graveyard with its slanting overgrown tombstones and stunted scrub pines was pretty, romantic, enchanting, she thought.
"I"d be glad to lie there if it was still operating," she said with enthusiasm. But Matzerath thought the soil was too sandy, found fault with the thistles and wild oats. Jan Bronski suggested that the noise from the airfield and the nearby streetcar switches might disturb the tranquility of an otherwise idyllic spot.
The car coming from Neufahrwa.s.ser-Brosen pa.s.sed round us, the conductor rang twice, and we rode on, leaving Saspe and its cemetery behind us, toward Brosen, a beach resort which at that time, toward the end of April, looked mighty dismal: the refreshment stands boarded over, the casino shut tight, the seaside walk bereft of flags, long lines of empty bathhouses. On the weather table there were still chalk marks from the previous year: Air: 65; water: 60; wind: northeast; prospects: clear to cloudy.
At first we all decided to walk to Glettkau, but then, though nothing was said, we took the opposite direction to the breakwater. Broad and lazy, the Baltic lapped at the beach. As far as the harbor mouth, from the white lighthouse to the beacon light on the breakwater, not a soul to be seen. A recent rainfall had imprinted its regular pattern on the sand; it was fun to break it up with our footprints; Mama and I had taken off our shoes and stockings. Matzerath picked up smooth little disks of brick the size of gulden pieces and skipped them eagerly, ambitiously over the greenish water. Less skillful, Jan Bronski looked for amber between his attempts to skip stones, and actually found a few splinters and a nugget the size of a cherry pit, which he gave Mama, who kept looking back, as though in love with her footprints. The sun shone cautiously. The day was cool, still and clear; on the horizon you could make out a stripe that meant the Hela Peninsula and two or three vanishing smoke trails; from time to time the superstructure of a merchant ship would bob up over the horizon.
In dispersed order we reached the first granite boulders of the breakwater. Mama and I put our shoes and stockings back on. Matzerath and Jan started off into the open sea, hopping from stone to stone, while she was still helping me to lace my shoes. Scraggly clumps of seaweed grew from the interstices at the base of the wall. Oskar would have liked to comb them. But Mama took me by the hand and we followed the men, who were gamboling like schoolboys. At every step my drum beat against my knee; even here, I wouldn"t let them take it away from me. Mama had on a light-blue spring coat with raspberry-colored facings. She had difficulty in negotiating the granite boulders in her high-heeled shoes. As always on Sundays and holidays, I was wearing my sailor coat with the gold anchor b.u.t.tons. The band on my sailor hat came from Gretchen Scheffler"s grab bag; S.M.S. Seydlitz, it said, and it would have fluttered if there had been any breeze. Matzerath unb.u.t.toned his brown overcoat. Jan, always the soul of fashion, sported an ulster with a resplendent velvet collar.
We hopped and hobbled as far as the beacon at the end of the breakwater. At the base of the little tower sat an elderly man in a longsh.o.r.eman"s cap and a quilted jacket. Beside him there was a potato sack with something wriggling and writhing in it. The man -- I figured he must be from Brosen or Neufahrwa.s.ser -- was holding one end of a clothesline. The other end, caked with seaweed, vanished in the brackish Mottlau water which, still unmixed with the clear open sea, splashed against the stones of the breakwater.
We were all curious to know why the man in the longsh.o.r.eman"s cap was fishing with a common clothesline and obviously without a float. Mama asked him in tones of good-natured mockery, calling him "Uncle". Uncle grinned, showing tobacco-stained stumps; offering no explanation, he spat out a long, viscous train of tobacco juice which landed in the sludge amid the granite boulders, coated with tar and oil, at the base of the sea wall. There his spittle bobbed up and down so long that a gull circled down and, deftly avoiding the boulders, caught it up and flew off, drawing other screaming gulls in its wake.
We were soon ready to go, for it was cold out there and the sun was no help, but just then the man in the longsh.o.r.eman"s cap began to pull in his line hand over hand. Mama still wanted to leave. But Matzerath couldn"t be moved, and Jan, who as a rule acceded to Mama"s every wish, gave her no support on this occasion. Oskar didn"t care whether we stayed or went. But as long as we were staying, he watched. While the longsh.o.r.eman, pulling evenly hand over hand and stripping off the seaweed at every stroke, gathered the line between his legs, I noted that the merchantman which only half an hour before had barely shown its superstructure above the horizon, had changed its course; lying low in the water, she was heading for the harbor. Must be a Swede carrying iron ore to draw that much water, Oskar reflected.
I turned away from the Swede when the longsh.o.r.eman slowly stood up. " Well, s"pose we take a look." His words were addressed to Matzerath, who had no idea what it was all about but nodded knowingly. "S"pose we take a look," the longsh.o.r.eman said over and over as he continued to haul in the line, now with increasing effort. He clambered down the stones toward the end of the line and stretched out both arms into the foaming pond between the granite blocks, clutched something -- Mama turned away but not soon enough -- he clutched something, changed his hold, tugged and heaved, shouted at them to make way, and flung something heavy and dripping, a great living lump of something down in our midst: it was a horse"s head, a fresh and genuine horse"s head, the head of a black horse with a black mane, which only yesterday or the day before had no doubt been neighing; for the head was not putrid, it didn"t stink, or if it did, then only of Mottlau water; but everything on the breakwater stank of that.
The man in the longsh.o.r.eman"s cap -- which had slipped down over the back of his neck -- stood firmly planted over the lump of horsemeat, from which small light-green eels were darting furiously. The man had trouble in catching them, for eels move quickly and deftly, especially over smooth wet stones. Already the gulls were screaming overhead. They wheeled down, three or four of them would seize a small or medium-sized eel, and they refused to be driven away, for the breakwater was their domain. Nevertheless the longsh.o.r.eman, thrashing and s.n.a.t.c.hing among the gulls, managed to cram a couple of dozen small eels into the sack which Matzerath, who liked to be helpful, held ready for him. Matzerath was too busy to see Mama turn green and support first her hand, then her head, on Jan"s shoulder and velvet collar.
But when the small and medium-sized eels were in the sack and the longsh.o.r.eman, whose cap had fallen off in the course of his work, began to squeeze thicker, dark-colored eels out of the cadaver. Mama had to sit down. Jan tried to turn her head away but Mama would not allow it; she kept staring with great cow"s eyes into the very middle of the longsh.o.r.eman"s activity.
"Take a look," he groaned intermittently. And "S"pose we!" With the help of his rubber boot he wrenched the horse"s mouth open and forced a club between the jaws, so that the great yellow horse teeth seemed to be laughing. And when the longsh.o.r.eman -- only now did I see that he was bald as an egg -- reached both hands into the horse"s gullet and pulled out two at once, both of them as thick and long as a man"s arm, my mother"s jaws were also torn asunder: she disgorged her whole breakfast, pouring out lumpy egg white and threads of egg yolk mingled with lumps of bread soaked in cafe au lait over the stones of the breakwater. After that she retched but there was nothing more to come out, for that was all she had had for breakfast, because she was overweight and wanted to reduce at any price and tried all sorts of diets which, however, she seldom stuck to. She ate in secret. She was conscientious only about her Tuesday gymnastics at the Women"s a.s.sociation, but on this score she stood firm as a rock though Jan and even Matzerath laughed at her when, carrying her togs in a drawstring bag, she went out to join those comical old biddies, to swing Indian clubs in a shiny blue gym suit, and still failed to reduce.
Even now Mama couldn"t have vomited up more than half a pound and retch as she might, that was all the weight she succeeded in taking off. Nothing came but greenish mucus, but the gulls came. They were already on their way when she began to vomit, they circled lower, they dropped down sleek and smooth; untroubled by any fear of growing fat, they fought over my Mama"s breakfast, and were not to be driven away -- and who was there to drive them away in view of the fact that Jan Bronski was afraid of gulls and shielded his beautiful blue eyes with his hands.
Nor would they pay attention to Oskar, not even when he enlisted his drum against them, not even when he tried to fight off their whiteness with a roll of his drumsticks on white lacquer. His drumming was no help; if anything it made the gulls whiter than ever. As for Matzerath, he was not in the least concerned over Mama. He laughed and aped the longsh.o.r.eman; ho-ho, steady nerves, that was him. The longsh.o.r.eman was almost finished. When in conclusion he extracted an enormous eel from the horse"s ear, followed by a mess of white porridge from the horse"s brain, Matzerath himself was green about the gills but went right on with his act. He bought two large and two medium-sized eels from the longsh.o.r.eman for a song and tried to bargain even after he had paid up.
My heart was full of praise for Jan Bronski. He looked as if he were going to cry and nevertheless he helped my mama to her feet, threw one arm round her waist, and led her away, steering with his other arm, which he held out in front of her. It was pretty comical to see her hobbling from stone to stone in her high-heeled shoes. Her knees buckled under her at every step, but somehow she managed to reach the sh.o.r.e without spraining an ankle.
Oskar remained with Matzerath and the longsh.o.r.eman. The longsh.o.r.eman, who had put his cap on again, had begun to explain why the potato sack was full of rock salt. There was salt in the sack so the eels would wriggle themselves to death in the salt and the salt would draw the slime from their skin and innards. For when eels are in salt, they can"t help wriggling and they wriggle until they are dead, leaving their slime in the salt. That"s what you do if you want to smoke the eels afterward. It"s forbidden by the police and the SPCA but that changes nothing. How else are you going to get the slime out of your eels? Afterward the dead eels are carefully rubbed off with dry peat moss and hung up in a smoking barrel over beechwood to smoke.
Matzerath thought it was only fair to let the eels wriggle in salt. They crawl into the horse"s head, don"t they? And into human corpses, too, said the longsh.o.r.eman. They say the eels were mighty fat after the Battle of the Skagerrak. And a few days ago one of the doctors here in the hospital told me about a married woman who tried to take her pleasure with a live eel. But the eel bit into her and wouldn"t let go; she had to be taken to the hospital and after that they say she couldn"t have any more babies.
The longsh.o.r.eman, however, tied up the sack with the salted eels and tossed it nimbly over his shoulder. He hung the coiled clothesline round his neck and, as the merchantman put into port, plodded off in the direction of Neufahrwa.s.ser. The ship was about eighteen hundred tons and wasn"t a Swede but a Finn, carrying not iron ore but timber. The longsh.o.r.eman with the sack seemed to have friends on board, for he waved across at the rusty hull and shouted something. On board the Finn they waved back and also shouted something. But it was a mystery to me why Matzerath waved too and shouted "Ship ahoy!" or some such nonsense. As a native of the Rhineland he knew nothing about ships and there was certainly not one single Finn among his acquaintances. But that was the way he was; he always had to wave when other people were waving, to shout, laugh, and clap when other people were shouting, laughing, and clapping. That explains why he joined the Party at a relatively early date, when it was quite unnecessary, brought no benefits, and just wasted his Sunday mornings.
Oskar walked along slowly behind Matzerath, the man from Neufahrwa.s.ser, and the overloaded Finn. Now and then I turned around, for the longsh.o.r.eman had abandoned the horse"s head at the foot of the beacon. Of the head there was nothing to be seen, the gulls had covered it over. A glittering white hole in the bottle-green sea, a freshly washed cloud that might rise neatly into the air at any moment, veiling with its cries this horse"s head that screamed instead of whinnying. When I had had enough, I ran away from the gulls and Matzerath, beating my fist on my drum as I ran, pa.s.sed the longsh.o.r.eman, who was now smoking a short-stemmed pipe, and reached Mama and Jan Bronski at the sh.o.r.e end of the breakwater. Jan was still holding Mama as before, but now one hand had disappeared under her coat collar. Matzerath could not see this, however, nor could he see that Mama had one hand in Jan"s trouser pocket, for he was still far behind us, wrapping the four eels, which the longsh.o.r.eman had knocked unconscious with a stone, in a piece of newspaper he had found between the stones of the breakwater.
When Matzerath caught up with us, he swung his bundle of eels and boasted: "He wanted one fifty. But I gave him a gulden and that was that."
Mama was looking better and both her hands were visible again. "I hope you don"t expect me to eat your eel," she said. "I"ll never touch fish again as long as I live and certainly not an eel."
Matzerath laughed: "Don"t carry on so, p.u.s.s.ycat. You"ve always known how they catch eels and you"ve always eaten them just the same. Even fresh ones. We"ll see how you feel about it when your humble servant does them up with all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and a little salad on the side."
Jan Bronski, who had withdrawn his hand from Mama"s coat in plenty of time, said nothing. I drummed all the way to Brosen so they wouldn"t start in again about eels. At the streetcar stop and in the car I went right on drumming to prevent the three grownups from talking. The eels kept relatively quiet. The car didn"t stop in Saspe because the other car was already there. A little after the airfield Matzerath, despite my drumming, began to tell us how hungry he was. Mama did not react, she looked past us and through us until Jan offered her one of his Regattas. While he was giving her a light and she was adjusting the gold tip to her lips, she smiled at Matzerath, for she knew he didn"t like her to smoke in public.
At Max-Halbe-Platz we got out, and in spite of everything Mama took Matzerath"s arm and not Jan"s as I had expected. While Matzerath was opening up the apartment, Mrs. Kater, who lived on the fourth floor next door to Meyn the trumpeter, pa.s.sed us on the stairs. A rolled brownish carpet was slung over her shoulder, and she was supporting it with her upraised arms, enormous and meat-red. Her armpits displayed flaming bundles of blond hair, knotted and caked with sweat. The carpet hung down in front of her and behind her. She might just as well have been carrying a drunken man over her shoulder, but her husband was no longer alive. As this ma.s.s of fat moved past us in a shiny black house smock, her effluvia struck me: ammonia, pickles, carbide -- she must have had the monthlies.
Shortly thereafter the rhythmic reports of carpet-beating rose from the yard. It drove me through the apartment, it pursued me, until at last I escaped into our bedroom clothes cupboard where the worst of the pre-paschal uproar was damped out by the winter overcoats.
But it wasn"t just Mrs. Kater and her carpet-beating that sent me scurrying to the clothes cupboard. Before Mama, Jan, and Matzerath had even taken their coats off, they began to argue about the Good Friday dinner. But they didn"t stick to eels. As usual when they needed something to argue about, they remembered me and my famous fall from the cellar stairs: "You"re to blame, it"s all your fault, now I am going to make that eel soup, don"t be so squeamish, make anything you like but not eels, there"s plenty of canned goods in the cellar, bring up some mushrooms but shut the trap door so it doesn"t happen again or something like it. I"ve heard enough of that song and dance, we"re having eels and that"s that, with milk, mustard, parsley, and boiled potatoes, a bay leaf goes in and a clove, no, no, please Alfred, don"t make eels if she doesn"t want them, you keep out of this, I didn"t buy eels to throw them away, they"ll be nicely cleaned and washed, no, no, we"ll see when they"re on the table, we"ll see who eats and who don"t eat."
Matzerath slammed the living room door and vanished into the kitchen. We heard him officiating with a demonstrative clatter. He killed the eels with a crosswise incision in the backs of their necks and Mama, who had an over-lively imagination, had to sit down on the sofa, promptly followed by Jan Bronski. A moment later they were holding hands and whispering in Kashubian. I hadn"t gone to the cupboard yet. While the three grownups were thus distributing themselves about the apartment, I was still in the living room. There was a baby chair beside the tile stove. There I sat, dangling my legs while Jan stared at me; I knew I was in their way, though they couldn"t have done much, because Matzerath was right next door, threatening them invisibly but palpably with moribund eels that he brandished like a whip. And so they exchanged hands, pressed and tugged at twenty fingers, and cracked knuckles. For me that was the last straw. Wasn"t Mrs. Kater"s carpet-beating enough? Didn"t it pierce the walls, growing no louder but moving closer and closer?
Oskar slipped off his chair, sat for a moment on the floor beside the stove lest his departure be too conspicuous, and then, wholly preoccupied with his drum, slid across the threshold into the bedroom.
I left the bedroom door half-open and noted to my satisfaction that no one called me back. I hesitated for a moment whether to take refuge under the bed or in the clothes cupboard. I preferred the cupboard because under the bed I would have soiled my fastidious navy-blue sailor suit. I was just able to reach the key to the cupboard. I turned it once, pulled open the mirror doors, and with my drumsticks pushed aside the hangers bearing the coats and other winter things. In order to reach and move the heavy coats, I had to stand on my drum. At last I had made a cranny in the middle of the cupboard; though it was not exactly s.p.a.cious, there was room enough for Oskar, who climbed in and huddled on the floor. I even succeeded, with some difficulty, in drawing the mirror doors to and in jamming them closed with a shawl that I found on the cupboard floor, in such a way that a finger"s-breadth opening let in a certain amount of air and enabled me to look out in case of emergency. I laid my drum on my knees but drummed nothing, not even ever so softly; I just sat there in utter pa.s.sivity, letting myself be enveloped and penetrated by the vapors arising from winter overcoats.
How wonderful that this cupboard should be there with its heavy, scarcely breathing woolens which enabled me to gather together nearly all my thoughts, to tie them into a bundle and give them away to a dream princess who was rich enough to accept my gift with a dignified, scarcely perceptible pleasure.
As usual when I concentrated and took advantage of my psychic gift, I transported myself to the office of Dr. Hollatz in Brunshofer-Weg and savored the one part of my regular Wednesday visits that I cared about. My thoughts were concerned far less with the doctor, whose examinations were becoming more and more finicky, than with Sister Inge, his a.s.sistant. She alone was permitted to undress me and dress me; she alone was allowed to measure and weigh me and administer the various tests; in short, it was Sister Inge who conscientiously though rather grumpily carried out all the experiments to which Dr. Hollatz subjected me. Each time Sister Inge, not without a certain irony, reported failure which Hollatz metamorphosed into "partial success." I seldom looked at Sister Inge"s face. My eyes and my sometimes racing drummer"s heart rested on the clean starched whiteness of her nurse"s uniform, on the weightless construction that she wore as a cap, on a simple brooch adorned with a red cross. How pleasant it was to follow the folds, forever fresh, of her uniform! Had she a body under it? Her steadily aging face and rawboned though well-kept hands suggested that Sister Inge was a woman after all. To be sure, there was no such womanish smell as my mama gave off when Jan, or even Matzerath, uncovered her before my eyes. She smelled of soap and drowsy medicines. How often I was overcome by sleep as she auscultated my small, supposedly sick body: a light sleep born of the folds of white fabrics, a sleep shrouded in carbolic acid, a dreamless sleep except that sometimes in the distance her brooch expanded into heaven knows what: a sea of banners, the Alpine glow, a field of poppies, ready to revolt, against whom, Lord knows: against Indians, cherries, nosebleed, c.o.c.ks" crests, red corpuscles, until a red occupying my entire field of vision provided the background for a pa.s.sion which then as now was self-evident but not to be named, because the little word "red" says nothing, and nosebleed won"t do it, and flag cloth fades, and if I nonetheless say "red," red spurns me, turns its coat to black. Black is the Witch, black scares me green, green grow the lilacs but lavender"s blue, blue is true blue but I don"t trust it, do you? Green is for hope, green is the coffin I graze in, green covers me, green blanches me white, white stains yellow and yellow strikes me blue, blue me no green, green flowers red, and red was Sister Inge"s brooch: she wore a red cross, to be exact, she wore it on the collar of her nurse"s uniform; but seldom, in the clothes cupboard or anywhere else, could I keep my mind on this most monochrome of all symbols.
Bursting in from the living room, a furious uproar crashed against the doors of my cupboard, waked me from my scarcely begun half-slumber dedicated to Sister Inge. Sobered and with my heart in my mouth I sat, holding my drum on my knees, among winter coats of varying length and cut, breathed in the aroma of Matzerath"s Party uniform, felt the presence of sword belt and shoulder straps, and was unable to find my way back to the white folds of the nurse"s uniform: flannel and worsted hung down beside me, above me stood the hat fashions of the last four years, at my feet lay big shoes and little shoes, waxed puttees, heels with and without hobnails. A faint beam of light suggested the whole scene; Oskar was sorry he had left a crack open between the mirror doors.
What could those people in the living room have to offer me? Perhaps Matzerath had surprised the two of them on the couch, but that was very unlikely for Jan always preserved a vestige of caution and not just when he was playing skat. Probably, I figured, and so indeed it turned out, Matzerath, having slaughtered, cleaned, washed, cooked, seasoned, and tasted his eels, had put them down on the living room table in the form of eel soup with boiled potatoes, and when the others showed no sign of sitting down, had gone so far as to sing the praises of his dish, listing all the ingredients and intoning the recipe like a litany. Whereupon Mama began to scream. She screamed in Kashubian. This Matzerath could neither understand nor bear, but he was compelled to listen just the same and had a pretty good idea of what she was getting at. What, after all, could she be screaming about but eels, leading up, as everything led up once my Mama started screaming, to my fall down the cellar stairs. Matzerath answered back. They knew their parts. Jan intervened. Without him there could have been no show. Act Two: bang, that was the piano lid being thrown back; without notes, by heart, the three of them all at once but not together howled out the "Huntsmen"s Chorus" from Freischutz: "What thing on earth resembles. . ." And in the midst of the uproar, bang shut went the piano lid, bang went the overturned piano stool, and there was Mama coming into the bedroom. A quick glance in the mirror of my mirror doors, and she flung herself, I could see it all through the cleft, on the marriage bed beneath the blue canopy and wrung her hands with as many fingers as the repentant gold-framed Mary Magdalene in the color print at the head end of the matrimonial fortress.
For a long time all I could hear was Mama"s whimpering, the soft creaking of the bed, and faint murmurs from the living room. Jan was pacifying Matzerath. Then Matzerath asked Jan to go and pacify Mama. The murmuring thinned down, Jan entered the bedroom. Act Three: He stood by the bed, looking back and forth between Mama and the repentant Mary Magdalene, sat down cautiously on the edge of the bed, stroked Mania"s back and rear end -- she was lying face down -- spoke to her soothingly in Kashubian -- and finally, when words were no help, inserted his hand beneath her skirt until she stopped whimpering and he was able to remove his eyes from the many-fingered Mary Magdalene. It was a scene worth seeing. His work done, Jan arose, dabbed his fingers with his handkerchief, and finally addressed Mama loudly, no longer speaking Kashubian and stressing every word for the benefit of Matzerath in the kitchen or living room: "Now come along, Agnes. Let"s forget the whole business. Alfred dumped the eels in the toilet long ago. Now we"ll play a nice game of skat, for a quarter of a pfennig if you like, and once we"ve all forgotten and made up, Alfred will make us mushrooms with scrambled eggs and fried potatoes."
To this Mama said nothing, stood up from the bed, smoothed out the yellow bedspread, tossed her hair into shape in front of my mirror doors, and left the bedroom behind Jan. I removed my eye from the slit and soon heard them shuffling cards. I think Jan was bidding against Matzerath, who pa.s.sed at twenty-three. Whereupon Mama bid Jan up to thirty-six; at this point he backed down, and Mama played a grand which she just barely lost. Next Jan bid diamond single and won hands down, and Mama won the third game, a heart hand without two, though it was close.
Certain that this family skat game, briefly interrupted by scrambled eggs, mushrooms, and fried potatoes, would go on far into the night, I scarcely listened to the hands that followed, but tried to find my way back to Sister Inge and her white, sleepy-making uniforms. But I was not to find the happiness I sought in Dr. Hollatz" office. Not only did green, blue, yellow, and black persist in breaking into the redness of the Red Cross pin, but the events of the morning kept crowding in as well: whenever the door leading to the consultation room and Sister Inge opened, it was not the pure and airy vision of the nurse"s uniform that presented itself to my eyes, but the longsh.o.r.eman at the foot of the beacon on the Neufahrwa.s.ser breakwater, pulling eels from the dripping, crawling horse"s head, and what set itself up to be white, so that I tried to connect it with Sister Inge, was the gulls" wings which for barely a moment covered the horse"s head and the eels in it, until the wound broke open again but did not bleed red, but was black like the black horse, and bottle-green the sea, while the Finnish timber ship contributed a bit of rust color to the picture and the gulls -- don"t talk to me of doves -- descended like a cloud on the sacrifice, dipped in their wingtips and tossed the eel to Sister Inge, who caught it, celebrated it, and turned into a gull, not a dove, but in any case into the Holy Ghost, let it take the form of a gull, descending cloudlike upon the flesh to feast the Pentecost.
Giving up the struggle, I left the cupboard. Angrily pushing the doors open, I stepped out and found myself unchanged in front of the mirrors, but even so I was glad Mrs. Kater had stopped beating carpets. Good Friday was over for Oskar, but it was only after Easter that his Pa.s.sion began.
Tapered at the Foot End
And mama"s as well. On Easter Sunday we went with the Bronskis to visit Grandma and Uncle Vincent in Bissau. It was after that that her sufferings began -- sufferings that the smiling spring weather was powerless to attenuate.
It is not true that Matzerath forced Mama to start eating fish again. Quite of her own accord, possessed by some mysterious demon, she began, exactly two weeks after Easter, to devour fish in such quant.i.ties, without regard for her figure, that Matzerath said: "For the Lord"s sake stop eating so much fish like somebody was making you."
She started in at breakfast on canned sardines, two hours later, unless there happened to be customers in the shop, she would dig into a case of Bohnsack sprats, for lunch she would demand fried flounder or codfish with mustard sauce, and in the afternoon there she was again with her can opener: eels in jelly, rollmops, baked herring, and if Matzerath refused to fry or boil more fish for supper, she would waste no breath in arguing, but would quietly leave the table and come back from the shop with a chunk of smoked eel. For the rest of us it was the end of our appet.i.tes, because she would sc.r.a.pe the last particle of fat from the inside and outside of the eel"s skin with a knife, and in general she took to eating her fish with a knife. She would have to vomit at intervals throughout the day. Helplessly anxious, Matzerath would ask: "Maybe you"re pregnant, or what"s the matter with you?"
"Don"t talk nonsense," said Mama if she said anything at all. One Sunday when green eels with new potatoes swimming in cream sauce were set on the table, Grandma Koljaiczek smacked the table with the flat of her hand and cried out: "What"s the matter, Agnes? Tell us what"s the matter? Why do you eat fish when it don"t agree with you and you don"t say why and you act like a lunatic?" Mama only shook her head, pushed the potatoes aside, pulled out an eel through the sauce, and set to with relentless determination. Jan Bronski said nothing. Once when I surprised the two of them on the couch, they were holding hands as usual and their clothing was normally disarranged, but I was struck by Jan"s tear-stained eyes and by Mama"s apathy, which, however, suddenly shifted into its opposite. She jumped up, clutched me, lifted me up and squeezed me, revealing an abyss of emptiness which apparently nothing could fill but enormous quant.i.ties of fried, boiled, preserved, and smoked fish.
A few days later I saw her in the kitchen as she not only fell upon the usual accursed sardines, but poured out the oil from several cans she had been saving up into a little saucepan, heated it over the gas, and drank it down. Standing in the doorway, I was so upset that I dropped my drum.
That same evening Mama was taken to the City Hospital. Matzerath wept and lamented as we were waiting for the ambulance: "Why don"t you want the child? What does it matter whose it is? Or is it still on account of that d.a.m.n fool horse"s head? If only we"d never gone out there. Can"t you forget it, Agnes? I didn"t do it on purpose."
The ambulance came, Mama was carried out. Children and grownups gathered on the sidewalk; they drove her away and it soon turned out that Mama had forgotten neither the breakwater nor the horse"s head, that she had carried the memory of that horse -- regardless of whether his name was Hans or Fritz -- along with her. Every organ in her body stored up the bitter memory of that Good Friday excursion and for fear that it be repeated, her organs saw to it that my mama, who was quite in agreement with them, should die.
Dr. Hollatz spoke of jaundice and fish poisoning. In the hospital they found Mama to be in her third month of pregnancy and gave her a private room. For four days she showed those of us who were allowed to visit her a face devastated by pain and nausea; sometimes she smiled at me through her nausea.
Although she tried hard to make her visitors happy, just as today I do my best to seem pleased when visitors come, she could not prevent a periodic retching from seizing hold of her slowly wasting body, though there was nothing more to come out of it except, at last, on the fourth day of that strenuous dying, the bit of breath which each of us must give up if he is to be honored with a death certificate.
We all sighed with relief when there was nothing more within her to provoke that retching which so marred her beauty. Once she had been washed and lay there in her shroud, she had her familiar, round, shrewdly naive face again. The head nurse closed Mama"s eyes because Matzerath and Bronski were blind with tears.
I could not weep, because the others, the men and Grandma, Hedwig Bronski and the fourteen-year-old Stephan, were all weeping. Besides, my mama"s death was no surprise to me. To Oskar, who went to the city with her on Thursdays and to the Church of the Sacred Heart on Sat.u.r.days, it seemed as though she had been searching for years for a way of breaking up the triangle that would leave Matzerath, whom perhaps she hated, with the guilt and enable Jan Bronski, her Jan, to continue his work at the Polish Post Office fortified by thoughts such as: she died for me, she didn"t want to stand in my way, she sacrificed herself.
With all the cool calculation the two of them, Mama and Jan, were capable of when it was a question of finding an undisturbed bed for their love, they nevertheless revealed quite a talent for romance: it requires no great stretch of the imagination to identify them with Romeo and Juliet or with the prince and princess who allegedly were unable to get together because the water was too deep.
While Mama, who had received the last sacraments in plenty of time, lay submissive to the priest"s prayers, cold and impervious to anything that could be said or done, I found it in me to watch the nurses, who were mostly of the Protestant faith. They folded their hands differently from the Catholics, more self-reliantly I should say, they said the Our Father with a wording that deviates from the original Catholic text, and they did not cross themselves like Grandma Koljaiczek, the Bronskis, and myself for that matter. My father Matzerath -- I sometimes call him so even though his begetting of me was purely presumptive -- prayed differently from the other Protestants; instead of clasping his hands over his chest, he let his fingers pa.s.s hysterically from one religion to another somewhere in the vicinity of his private parts, and was obviously ashamed to be seen praying. My grandmother knelt by the deathbed beside her brother Vincent; she prayed loudly and vehemently in Kashubian, while Vincent only moved his lips, presumably in Polish, though his eyes were wide with spiritual experience. I should have liked to drum. After all I had my mother to thank for all those red and white drums. As a counterweight to Matzerath"s desires, she had promised me a drum while I lay in my cradle; and from time to time Mama"s beauty, particularly when she was still slender and had no need for gymnastics, had served as the model and subject matter for my drumming. At length I was unable to control myself; once again, by my mother"s deathbed, I re-created the ideal image of her grey-eyed beauty on my drum. The head nurse protested at once, and I was very much surprised when it was Matzerath who mollified her and took my part, whispering: "Let him be, sister. They were so fond of each other."
Mama could be very gay, she could also be very anxious. Mama could forget quickly, yet she had a good memory. Mama would throw me out with the bath water, and yet she would share my bath. When I sang windowpanes to pieces, Mama was on hand with putty. Sometimes she put her foot in it even when there were plenty of safe places to step. Sometimes Mama was lost to me, but her finder went with her. Even when Mama b.u.t.toned up, she was an open book to me. Mama feared drafts but was always stirring up a storm. She lived on an expense account and disliked to pay taxes. I was the reverse of her coin. When Mama played a heart hand, she always won. When Mama died, the red flames on my drum casing paled a little; but the white lacquer became whiter than ever and so dazzling that Oskar was sometimes obliged to close his eyes.
My mama was not buried at Saspe as she had occasionally said she would like to be, but in the peaceful little cemetery at Brenntau. There lay her stepfather Gregor Koljaiczek the powder-maker, who had died of influenza in "17. The mourners were numerous, as was only natural in view of my mama"s popularity as a purveyor of groceries; in addition to the regular customers, there were salesmen from some of the wholesale houses, and even a few compet.i.tors turned up, such as Weinreich Fancy Groceries, and Mrs. Probst from Hertastra.s.se. The cemetery chapel was too small to hold the crowd. It smelled of flowers and black clothing seasoned with mothb.a.l.l.s. My mother"s face, in the open coffin, was yellow and ravaged. During the interminable ceremony I couldn"t help feeling that her head would bob up again any minute and that she would have to vomit some more, that there was something more inside her that wanted to come out: not only that fetus aged three months who like me didn"t know which father he had to thank for his existence; no, I thought, it"s not just he who wants to come out and, like Oskar, demand a drum, no, there"s more fish, not sardines, and not flounder, no, it"s a little chunk of eel, a few whitish-green threads of eel flesh, eel from the battle of the Skagerrak, eel from the Neufahrwa.s.ser breakwater. Good Friday eel, eel from that horse"s head, possibly eel from her father Joseph Koljaiczek who ended under the raft, a prey to the eels, eel of thine eel, for eel thou art, to eel returnest. . .
But my mama didn"t retch. She kept it down and it was evidently her intention to take it with her into the ground, that at last there might be peace.
When the men picked up the coffin lid with a view to shutting in my mama"s nauseated yet resolute face, Anna Koljaiczek barred the way. Trampling the flowers round the coffin, she threw herself upon her daughter and wept, tore at the expensive white shroud, and wailed in Kashubian.
There were many who said later that she had cursed my presumptive father Matzerath, calling him her daughter"s murderer. She is also said to have spoken of my fall down the cellar stairs. She took over the story from Mama and never allowed Matzerath to forget his ostensible responsibility for my ostensible misfortune. These accusations never ceased although Matzerath, in defiance of all political considerations and almost against his will, treated her with a respect bordering on reverence and during the war years supplied her with sugar and synthetic honey, coffee and kerosene.
Greff the vegetable dealer and Jan Bronski, who was weeping in a high feminine register, led my grandmother away from the coffin. The men were able to fasten the lid and at last to put on the faces that pallbearers always put on when they lift up a coffin.
In Brenntau Cemetery with its two fields on either side of the avenue bordered by elm trees, with its little chapel that looked like a set for a Nativity play, with its well and its sprightly little birds, Matzerath led the procession and I followed. It was then for the first time that I took a liking to the shape of a coffin. Since then I have often had occasion to gaze upon dark-colored wood employed for ultimate ends. My mama"s coffin was black. It tapered in the most wonderfully harmonious way, toward the foot end. Is there any other form in this world so admirably suited to the proportions of the human body?
If beds only had that narrowing at the foot end! If only all our habitual and occasional lying could taper off so unmistakably toward the foot end. For with all the airs we give ourselves, the ostentatious bulk of our head, shoulders, and torso tapers off toward the feet, and on this narrow base the whole edifice must rest.
Matzerath went directly behind the coffin. He carried his top hat in his hand and, despite his grief and the slow pace, made every effort to keep his knees stiff. I always felt sorry for him when I saw him from the rear; that protuberant occiput and those two throbbing arteries that grew out of his collar and mounted to his hairline.
Why was it Mother Truczinski rather than Gretchen Scheffler or Hedwig Bronski who took me by the hand? She lived on the second floor of our house and apparently had no first name, for everyone called her Mother Truczinski.
Before the coffin went Father Wiehnke with a s.e.xton bearing incense. My eyes slipped from the back of Matzerath"s neck to the furrowed necks of the pallbearers. I had to fight down a pa.s.sionate desire: Oskar wanted to climb up on the coffin. He wanted to sit up there and drum. However, it was not his tin instrument but the coffin lid that he wished to a.s.sail with his drumsticks. He wanted to ride aloft, swaying in the rhythm of the pallbearers" weary gait. He wanted to drum for the mourners who were repeating their prayers after Father Wiehnke. And as they lowered the casket into the ground, he wished to stand firm on the lid. During the sermon, the bell-ringing, the dispensing of incense and holy water, he wished to beat out his Latin on the wood as they lowered him into the grave with the coffin. He wished to go down into the pit with Mama and the fetus. And there he wished to remain while the survivors tossed in their handfuls of earth, no, Oskar didn"t wish to come up, he wished to sit on the tapering foot end of the coffin, drumming if possible, drumming under the earth, until the sticks rotted out of his hands, until his mama for his sake and he for her sake should rot away, giving their flesh to the earth and its inhabitants; with his very knuckles Oskar would have wished to drum for the fetus, if it had only been possible and allowed.
No one sat on the coffin. Unoccupied, it swayed beneath the elms and weeping willows of Brenntau Cemetery. In among the graves the s.e.xton"s spotted chickens, picking for worms, reaping what they had not sowed. Then through the birches. Hand in hand with Mother Truczinski. Ahead of me Matzerath, and directly behind me my grandmother on the arms of Greff and Jan; then Vincent Bronski on Hedwig"s arm, then little Marga and Stephan hand in hand, then the Schefflers. Then Laubschad the watchmaker, old Mr. Heilandt, and Meyn the trumpeter, but without his instrument and relatively sober.
Only when it was all over and the condolences started, did I notice Sigismund Markus. Black-clad and embarra.s.sed, he joined the crowd of those who wished to shake hands with me, my grandmother, and the Bronskis and mumble something. At first I failed to understand what Alexander Scheffler wanted of Markus. They hardly knew each other, perhaps they had never spoken to one another before. Then Meyn the musician joined forces with Scheffler. They stood beside a waist-high hedge made of that green stuff that discolors and tastes bitter when you rub it between your fingers. Mrs. Kater and her daughter Susi, who was grinning behind her handkerchief and had grown rather too quickly, were just tendering their sympathies to Matzerath, naturally -- how could they help it? -- patting my head in the process. The altercation behind the hedge grew louder but was still unintelligible. Meyn the trumpeter thrust his index finger at Markus" black facade and pushed; then he seized one of Sigismund"s arms while Scheffler took the other. Both were very careful that Markus, who was walking backward, should not stumble over the borders of the tombs; thus they pushed him as far as the main avenue, where they showed him where the gate was. Markus seemed to thank them for the information and started for the exit; he put on his silk hat and never looked around at Meyn and the baker, though they looked after him.
Neither Matzerath nor Mother Truczinski saw me wander away from them and the condolences. a.s.suming the manner of a little boy who has to go, Oskar slipped back past the grave-digger and his a.s.sistant. Then, without regard for the ivy, he ran to the elms, catching up with Sigismund Markus before the exit.
"If it ain"t little Oskar," said Markus with surprise. "Say, what are they doing to Markus? What did Markus ever do to them they should treat him so?"
I didn"t know what Markus had done. I took him by his hand, it was clammy with sweat, and led him through the open wrought-iron gate, and there in the gateway the two of us, the keeper of my drums and I, the drummer, possibly his drummer, ran into Leo Schugger, who like us believed in paradise.
Markus knew Leo, everyone in town knew him. I had heard of him, I knew that one sunny day while he was still at the seminary, the world, the sacraments, the religions, heaven and earth, life and death had been so shaken up in his mind that forever after his vision of the world, though mad, had been radiant and perfect.
Leo Schugger"s occupation was to turn up after funerals -- and no one could pa.s.s away without his getting wind of it -- wearing a shiny black suit several sizes too big for him and white gloves, and wait for the mourners. Markus and I were both aware that it was in his professional capacity that he was standing there at the gate of Brenntau Cemetery, waiting with slavering mouth, compa.s.sionate gloves, and watery blue eyes for the mourners to come out.
It was bright and sunny, mid-May. Plenty of birds in the hedges and trees. Cackling hens, symbolizing immortality with and through their eggs. Buzzing in the air. Fresh coat of green, no dust. Bearing a tired topper in his left gloved hand, Leo Schugger, moving with the lightness of a dancer, for grace had touched him, stepped up to Markus and myself, advancing five mildewed gloved fingers. Standing aslant as if to brace himself against the wind, though there was none, he tilted his head and blubbered, spinning threads of saliva. Hesitantly at first, then with resolution, Markus inserted his bare hand in the animated glove. "What a beautiful day!" Leo blubbered. "She has already arrived where everything is so cheap. Did you see the Lord? Habemus ad Dominun. He just pa.s.sed by in a hurry. Amen."
We said amen. Markus agreed about the beautiful day and even said yes he had seen the Lord.
Behind us we heard the mourners buzzing closer. Markus let his hand fall from Leo"s glove, found time to give him a tip, gave me a Markus kind of look, and rushed away toward the taxi that was waiting for him outside the Brenntau post office.