To check this hypothesis, meaning, if it were confirmed, to have a good laugh at the greengrocer"s expense, I climbed cautiously down the steep stairs, drumming, if I remember correctly, something or other of a nature to create and dispel fear: "Where"s the Witch, black as pitch?"
Only when Oskar stood firmly on the concrete floor did he pursue his investigation -- by detours, via bundles of empty onion bags, via piles of empty fruit crates -- until, grazing a scaffolding he had never seen before, his eyes approached the spot where Greff"s hiking shoes must have been hanging or standing on tiptoes.
Of course I knew Greff was hanging. The shoes hung, consequently the coa.r.s.ely knitted dark green stockings must also be hanging. Bare adult knees over the edges of the stockings, hairy thighs to the edges of the trousers; at this point a cutting, p.r.i.c.kling sensation rose slowly from my private parts, slowly following my rump to my back, which grew suddenly numb, climbed my spinal coard, settled down in the back of my neck, struck me hot and cold, raced down again between my legs, made my s.c.r.o.t.u.m, tiny to begin with, shrivel to nothingness, leapt upward again, over my back, my neck, and shrank -- to this day Oskar feels that same gagging, that same knife thrust, when anyone speaks of hanging in his presence, even of hanging out washing. It wasn"t just Greff"s hiking shoes, his woolen stockings, knees, and knee breeches that were hanging; the whole of Greff hung by the neck, and the strained expression of his face, above the cord, was not entirely free from theatrical affectation.
Surprisingly soon, the cutting, p.r.i.c.kling sensation died down. I grew accustomed to the sight of Greff; for basically the posture of a man hanging is just as normal and natural as that of a man walking on his hands or standing on his head, or of a human who puts himself in the truly unfortunate position of mounting a four-legged horse with a view to riding.
Then there was the setting. Only now did Oskar appreciate the trouble Greff had gone to. The frame, the setting in which Greff hung, was studied to the point of extravagance. The greengrocer had aimed at a form of death appropriate to himself, a well-balanced death. He who in his lifetime had had difficulties and unpleasant correspondence with the Bureau of Weights and Measures, whose weights had several times been confiscated, who had had to pay fines for inaccuracy in the weighing of fruit and vegetables, had weighed himself to the last ounce with potatoes.
The faintly shiny rope, soaped I should think, ran, guided by pulleys, over two beams which, for the last day of his life, Greff had fashioned into a scaffolding whose sole purpose it was to serve as his last scaffolding. Obviously the greengrocer had spared no expense, he had used the very best wood. What with the wartime shortage of building materials, those planks and beams must have been hard to come by. Greff must have bartered fruit for wood. The scaffolding was not lacking in superfluous but decorative struts and braces. The platform and the steps leading up to it -- Oskar had seen a corner of it from the shop -- gave the whole edifice a quality verging on the sublime.
As in the drumming machine, which the inventor may have taken as his model, Greff and his counterweight hung inside a frame. Forming a sharp contrast to the four whitewashed crossbeams, a graceful little green ladder stood between him and the potatoes that counterbalanced him. With an ingenious knot such as scouts know how to tie, he had fastened the potato baskets to the main rope. Since the interior of the scaffolding was illumined by four light bulbs which, though painted white, gave off an intense glow, Oskar was able, without desecrating the platform with his presence, to read the inscription on a cardboard tag fastened with wire to the scout knot over the potato basket: 165 lbs. (less 3 oz.).
Greff hung in the uniform of a boy scout leader. On his last day he had resumed the uniform of the pre-war years. But it was now too tight for him. He had been unable to close the two uppermost trouser b.u.t.tons and the belt, a jarring note in his otherwise trim costume. In accordance with scout ritual Greff had crossed two fingers of his left hand. Before hanging himself, he had tied his scout hat to his right wrist. He had had to forgo the neckerchief. He had also been unable to b.u.t.ton the collar of his shirt, and a bush of curly black hair burst through the opening.
On the steps of the platform lay a few asters, accompanied inappropriately by parsley stalks. Apparently he had run out of flowers to strew on the steps, for he had used most of the asters and a few roses to wreathe the four little pictures that hung on the four main beams of the scaffolding. Left front, behind gla.s.s, hung Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts. Left rear, unframed, St. George. Right rear, without gla.s.s, the head of Michelangelo"s David. On the right front post, provided with frame and gla.s.s, hung the photo of an expressively handsome boy, aged perhaps sixteen: an early picture of his favorite, Horst Donath, later Lieutenant Donath, who had fallen by the Donets.
Perhaps I should say a word about the four sc.r.a.ps of paper on the platform steps between the asters and the parsley. They were disposed in such a way that they could easily be pieced together. Oskar pieced them together and deciphered a summons to appear in court on a morals charge.
The ambulance siren aroused me from my meditations about the greengrocer"s death. A moment later they came hobbling down the cellar stairs, mounted the steps to the platform, and took the dangling Greff in hand. No sooner had they lifted him than the potato baskets making a counterweight fell with a crash, releasing a mechanism similar to that of the drumming machine, housed on top of the scaffolding but discreetly sheathed in plywood. While down below potatoes rolled over the platform or fell directly to the concrete floor, up above clappers pounded upon tin, wood, bronze, and gla.s.s, an orchestra of drums was unleashed: Albrecht Greff"s grand finale.
Oskar finds it very difficult to reproduce on his drum an echo of that avalanche of potatoes -- a windfall, incidentally, to some of the ambulance orderlies -- and of the organized din of Greff"s drumming machine. And yet, perhaps because my drum accounted in good part for the form Greff imprinted upon his death, I occasionally manage to drum a pretty faithful tone-poem of Greff"s death. When friends, or Bruno my keeper, ask me what my piece is called, I tell them the t.i.tle is "165 Lbs."
Bebra"s Theater at the Front
In mid-June, 1942, my son Kurt was one year old. Oskar, the father, attached little importance to this birthday; two years more, he thought to himself. In October, "42, Greff, the greengrocer, hanged himself on a gallows so ingeniously conceived that I, Oskar, have ever since looked upon suicide as one of the n.o.ble forms of death. In January, "43, there was a good deal of talk about the city of Stalingrad. But since Matzerath uttered the name of this city very much in the same tone as previously Pearl Harbor, Tobruk, and Dunkirk, I paid no more attention to the happenings there than I had to those in the other cities whose names had been made familiar to me by special communiques; for Wehrmacht communiques and newscasts had become Oskar"s school of geography. How else would I have learned the situation of the Kuban, Mius, and Don rivers, who could have taught me more about the Aleutian Islands, Atu, Kiska, and Adak than the radio commentaries ori the events in the Far East? So it came about that in January, 1943, I learned that the city of Stalingrad is situated on the Volga; but I was far less interested in the fate of the Sixth Army than in Maria, who had a slight case of grippe at the time.
As Maria"s grippe drew to a close, the geography lesson went on: to this day, Oskar can locate Rzev and Demyansk instantly and with his eyes shut on any map of Soviet Russia. No sooner was Maria well again than my son Kurt came down with the whooping cough. While I struggled to retain the difficult names of a few hotly disputed Tunisian oases, Kurt"s whooping cough, simultaneously with the Afrika Korps, came to an end.
Oh, merry month of May: Maria, Matzerath, and Gretchen Scheffler made preparations for little Kurt"s second birthday. Oskar, too, took considerable interest in the impending celebration; for from June 12, 1943 it would be only a brief year. If I had been present, I might have whispered into my son"s ear on his second birthday: "Just wait, soon you too will be drumming." But it so happened that on June 12, 1943, Oskar was no longer in Danzig-Langfuhr but in Metz, an ancient city founded by the Romans. My absence was indeed so protracted that Oskar had considerable difficulty in getting back to his native place by June 12, 1944, before the big air raids and in time for Kurt"s third birthday.
What business took me abroad? I won"t beat around the bush: Outside the Pestalozzi School, which had been turned into an Air Force barracks, I met my master Bebra. But Bebra by himself could not have persuaded me to go out into the world. On Bebra"s arm hung Raguna, Signora Roswitha, the great somnambulist.
Oskar was coming from Kleinhammer-Weg. He had paid Gretchen Scheffler a call and had leafed through the Struggle for Rome. Even then, even in the days of Belisarius, he had discovered, history had its ups and downs, even then victories and defeats at river crossings and cities were celebrated or deplored with a fine geographical sweep.
I crossed the Frobelwiese, which in the course of the last few years had been turned into a storehouse for the Organization Todt; I was thinking about Taginae -- where in the year 552 Na.r.s.es defeated Totila -- but it was not the victory that attracted my thoughts to Na.r.s.es, the great Armenian; no, what interested me was the general"s build; Na.r.s.es was a misshapan hunchback, Na.r.s.es was undersized, a dwarf, a gnome, a midget. Na.r.s.es, I reflected, was a child"s head taller than Oskar. By then I was standing outside the Pestalozzi School. Eager to make comparisons, I looked at the insignia of some Air Force officers who had shot up too quickly. Surely, I said to myself, Na.r.s.es hadn"t worn any insignia, he had no need to. And there, in the main entrance to the school, stood the great general in person; on his arm hung a lady -- why shouldn"t Na.r.s.es have had a lady on his arm? As they stepped toward me, they were dwarfed by the Air Force giants, and yet they were the hub and center, round them hung an aura of history and legend, they were old as the hills in the midst of these half-baked heroes of the air -- what was this whole barracks full of Totilas and Tejas, full of mast-high Ostrogoths, beside a single Armenian dwarf named Na.r.s.es? With measured tread Na.r.s.es approached Oskar; he beckoned and so did the lady on his arm. Respectfully the Air Force moved out of our way as Bebra and Signora Roswitha Raguna greeted me. I moved my lips close to Bebra"s ear and whispered: "Beloved master, I took you for Na.r.s.es the great general; I hold him in far higher esteem than the athlete Belisarius."
Modestly Bebra waved my compliment away. But Raguna was pleased by my comparison. How prettily her lips moved when she spoke: "Why, Bebra, is our young amico so mistaken? Does not the blood of Prince Eugene flow in your veins? E Lodovico quattordicesimo? Is he not your ancestor?"
Bebra took my arm and led me aside, for the Air Force kept admiring us and annoying us with their stares. After a lieutenant and a moment later two sergeants had saluted Bebra -- the master bore the stripes of a captain and on his sleeve an armband with the legend "Propaganda Company" -- after the fliers had asked Raguna for autographs and obtained them, Bebra motioned the driver of his official car and we got in. As we drove off, there was more applause from the Air Force.
We drove down Pestalozzi-Stra.s.se, Madgeburger-Stra.s.se, Heeresanger. Bebra sat beside the driver. It was in Magdeburger-Stra.s.se that Raguna started in, taking my drum as a springboard: "Still faithful to your drum, dear friend?" she whispered with her Mediterranean voice that I had not heard in so long. "And in general how faithful have you been?" Oskar gave no answer, spared her the narrative of his complicated s.e.x life, but smilingly permitted the great somnambulist to caress first his drum, then his hands, which were clutching the drum rather convulsively, to caress his hands in a more and more meridional way.
As we turned into the Heeresanger and followed the rails of the Number 5 car line, I even responded, that is, I stroked her left hand with mine, while her right hand bestowed tenderness on my right hand. We had pa.s.sed Max-Halbe-Platz, it was too late for Oskar to get out, when, looking into the rear view mirror, I saw Bebra"s shrewd, light-brown, age-old eyes observing our caresses. But Raguna held on to my hands, which, out of consideration for my friend and master, I should have liked to withdraw. Bebra smiled in the rear view mirror, then looked away and struck up a conversation with the driver, while Roswitha for her part, warmly caressing and pressing my hands, embarked in Mediterranean tones upon a discourse addressed simply and directly to my heart, fluid, lyrical words which, after taking a brief practical turn, became sweeter than ever, paralyzing all my scruples and thoughts of flight. We were at Reichskolonie, heading for the Women"s Clinic, when Raguna owned to Oskar that she had never stopped thinking of him all these years, that she still had the gla.s.s from the Four Seasons Cafe, upon which I had sung an inscription, that Bebra was an excellent friend and working companion, but marriage was out of the question; Bebra had to live alone, said Raguna, in answer to a question from me; she allowed him complete freedom, and he too, although extremely jealous by nature, had come to understand in the course of the years that Raguna could not be tied, and anyway Bebra, as director of the Theater at the Front, had little time for conjugal duties, but as for the troupe, it was tops, in peacetime it could perfectly well have played at the Wintergarten or the Scala, would I, Oskar, with all my divine talent that was just going to waste, be interested in a trial year, I was certainly old enough, a trial year, she could promise me I would like it, but presumably I, Oskar, had other obligations, vero? So much the better, they were leaving today, they had just given their last performance in the military district of Danzig-West Prussia, now they were going to France, there was no danger of being sent to the Eastern Front for the present, they had that behind them, thank goodness, I, Oskar, could be very glad that the East was pa.s.se, that I would be going to Paris, yes, they were certainly going to Paris, had I, Oskar, ever been in Paris? Well, then, amico, if Raguna cannot seduce your hard drummer"s heart, let Paris seduce you, andiamo!
As the great somnambulist spoke these last words, the car stopped. Green grew the trees on Hindenburg-Allee, at regular Prussian intervals. We got out, Bebra told the driver to wait. I wasn"t in the mood for the Four Seasons, my head was spinning and in need of fresh air. We strolled about the Steffens-Park, Bebra to my right, Roswitha to my left. Bebra explained the nature and purpose of the Propaganda Company. Roswitha related anecdotes from the daily life of the Propaganda Company. Bebra spoke of war artists, war correspondents, and his theater. From Roswitha"s Mediterranean lips poured the names of distant cities I had heard of on the radio. Bebra said Copenhagen, Roswitha murmured Palermo. Bebra sang Belgrade; Athens, lamented Roswitha in the tones of a tragedienne. But both of them raved about Paris; even if I never saw those other cities, they a.s.sured me, Paris would compensate for my loss. And finally Bebra, speaking as director and captain of a front-line theater, made me what sounded like an official offer: "Join us, young man, drum, sing beer gla.s.ses and light bulbs to pieces. The German Army of Occupation in fair France, in Paris the city of eternal youth, will reward you with grat.i.tude and applause."
Purely for the sake of form, Oskar asked for time to think it over. For a good half an hour I walked about in the springtime shrubbery, apart from Raguna, apart from Bebra my friend and master; I gave myself an air of tormented reflection, I rubbed my forehead, I hearkened, as I had never done before, to the little birds in the trees; a little robin would tell me what to do. Suddenly some winged creature was heard to outchirp all the rest, and I said: "Mother Nature in her wisdom and benevolence advises me, revered master, to accept your offer. You may look upon me from this moment on as a member of your troupe."
Then we went to the Four Seasons after all, drank an anemic mocha, and discussed the details of my getaway, but we didn"t call it a getaway, we spoke of it rather as a departure.
Outside the cafe we recapitulated the details of our plan. Then I took my leave of Raguna and Captain Bebra of the Propaganda Company, who insisted on putting his official car at my disposal. While the two of them sauntered up Hindenburg-Allee in the direction of town, the captain"s driver, a middle-aged corporal, drove me back to Langfuhr. He let me off at Max-Halbe-Platz, an Oskar driving into Labesweg in an official Wehrmacht car would have attracted far too much attention.
I hadn"t too much time ahead of me. A farewell visit to Matzerath and Maria. For a while I stood by the playpen of my son Kurt; if I remember right, I even managed a few paternal thoughts and tried to caress the blond little rascal. Little Kurt rebuffed my caresses, but not so Maria. With some surprise she accepted my fondlings, the first in years, and returned them affectionately. I found it strangely hard to take leave of Matzerath. He was standing in the kitchen cooking kidneys in mustard sauce; utterly at one with his cooking spoon, he may even have been happy. I feared to disturb him. But when he reached behind him and groped blindly for something on the kitchen table, Oscar guessed his intention, picked up the little board with the chopped parsley on it, and handed it to him; to this day, I am convinced that long after I had left the kitchen Matzerath must have stood there surprised and bewildered with his parsley board; for never before had Oskar handed Matzerath anything.
I ate supper with Mother Trunczinski; I let her wash me and put me to bed, waited until she had retired and was snoring, each snore followed by a soft whistle. Then I located my slippers, picked up my clothes, and tiptoed through the room where the grey-haired mouse was snoring, whistling, and growing older; in the hallway I had a little trouble with the key, but finally coaxed the bolt out of its groove. Still in my nightgown, I carried my bundle of clothes up the stairs to the attic. Stumbling over the air defense sand pile and the air defense bucket, I came to my hiding place behind piles of roofing tiles and bundles of newspapers, stored there in defiance of air defense regulations. There I unearthed a brand-new drum that I had set aside unbeknownst to Maria. And I also found Oskar"s one-volume library: Rasputin and Goethe. Should I take my favourite authors with me?
While slipping into his clothes, adjusting the drum round his neck, stowing his drumsticks under his suspenders, Oskar carried on negotiations with his two G.o.ds Dionysus and Apollo. The G.o.d of unreflecting drunkenness advised me to take no reading matter at all, or if I absolutely insisted on reading matter, then a little stack of Rasputin would do; Apollo, on the other hand, in his shrewd, sensible way, tried to talk me out of this trip to France altogether, but when he saw that Oskar"s mind was made up, insisted on the proper baggage; very well, I would have to take the highly respectable yawn that Goethe had yawned so long ago, but for spite, and also because I knew that The Elective Affinities could never solve all my s.e.xual problems, I also took Rasputin and his naked women, naked but for their black stockings. If Apollo strove for harmony and Dionysus for drunkenness and chaos, Oskar was a little demiG.o.d whose business it was to harmonize chaos and intoxicate reason. In addition to his mortality, he had one advantage over all the full divinities whose characters and careers had been established in the remote past: Oskar could read what he pleased, whereas the G.o.ds censored themselves.
How accustomed one becomes to an apartment house and the kitchen smells of nineteen tenants. I took my leave of every step, every story, every apartment door with its name plate: O Meyn the musician, whom they had sent home as unfit for service, who played the trumpet again, drank gin again, and waited for them to come for him again -- and later on they actually did come for him, but this time they didn"t let him take his trumpet. O Axel Mischke, for what did you exchange your whip? Mr. and Mrs. Woiwuth, who were always eating kohlrabi. Because Mr. Heinert had stomach trouble, he was working at Schichau instead of serving in the infantry. And next door lived Heinert"s parents, who were still called Heimowski. O Mother Truczinski; gently slumbered the mouse behind her apartment door. My ear to the wood, I heard her whistling. Shorty, whose name was really Retzel, had made lieutenant, even though as a child he had always been compelled to wear long woolen stockings. Schlager"s son was dead, Eyke"s son was dead, Kollin"s son was dead. But Laubschad the watchmaker was still alive, waking dead clocks to life. And old man Heilandt was still alive, hammering crooked nails straight. And Mrs. Schwerwinski was sick, and Mr. Schwerwinski was in good health but nevertheless died first. And what of the ground floor? Who lived there? There dwelt Alfred and Maria Matzerath and a little rascal almost two years old, named Kurt. And who was it that left the large, heavily breathing apartment house? It was Oskar, little Kurt"s father. What did he take out with him into the darkened street? He took his drum and a big educational book. Why did he stop still amid all the blacked-out houses, amid all those houses that put ther trust in the air-defense regulations, why did he stop outside one of these blacked-out houses? Because there dwelt the widow Greff, to whom he owed not his education but certain delicate skills. Why did he take off his cap outside the black house? Because he was thinking of Greff the greengrocer, who had curly hair and an aquiline nose, who weighed and hanged himself both at the same time, who hanging still had curly hair and an aquiline nose, though his brown eyes, which ordinarily lay thoughtfully in their grottoes, were now strained and protuberant. Why did Oskar put his sailor cap with the flowing ribbons back on again and plod off? Because he had an appointment at the Langfuhr freight station. Did he get there on time? He did.
At the last minute, that is, I reached the railway embankment, not far from the Brunshofer-Weg underpa.s.s. No, I did not stop at the nearby office of Dr. Hollatz. In my thoughts I took leave of Sister Inge and sent greetings to the baker couple in Kleinhammer-Weg, but all this I did while walking, and only the Church of the Sacred Heart forced me to pause a moment -- a pause that almost made me late. The portal was closed. But only too vividly my mind"s eye saw that pink boy Jesus perched on the Virgin Mary"s left thigh. My poor mama, there she was again. She knelt in the confessional, pouring her grocery wife"s sins into Father Wiehnke"s ear very much as she had poured sugar into blue pound and half-pound bags. And Oscar knelt at the left-side altar, trying to teach the boy Jesus how to drum, but the little monster wouldn"t drum, wouldn"t give me a miracle. Oskar had sworn at the time, and today outside the closed church door he swore again; I"ll teach him to drum yet. Sooner or later.
Having a long journey ahead of me, I settled for later and turned a drummer"s back on the church door, confident that Jesus would not escape me. Not far from the underpa.s.s, I scrambled up the railway embankment, losing a little Goethe and Rasputin in the process, but most of my educational baggage was still with me when I reached the tracks. Then I stumbled on a few yards, over ties and crushed stone, and nearly knocked Bebra over in the darkness.
"If it isn"t our virtuoso drummer!" cried the captain and musical clown. Bidding one another to be careful, we groped our way over tracks and intersections, lost our bearings amid a maze of stationary freight cars, and finally found the furlough train, in which a compartment had been a.s.signed to Bebra"s troupe.
Oskar had many a streetcar ride behind him, but now he was going to ride in a train. When Bebra pushed me into the compartment, Raguna looked up with a smile from something she was sewing and kissed me on the cheek. Still smiling, but without interrupting her needlework, she introduced the other two members of the troupe: the acrobats Felix and Kitty. Kitty, honey-blonde with a rather grey complexion, was not unattractive and seemed to be about the signora"s size. She had a slight Saxon accent that added to her charm. Felix, the acrobat, was no doubt the tallest member of the troupe. He must have measured almost four feet. The poor fellow suffered from his disproportionate stature. The arrival of my trim three feet made him more self-conscious than ever. His profile was rather like that of a highly bred race horse, which led Raguna to call him "Cavallo" or "Felix Cavallo". Like Captain Bebra, the acrobat wore a field-grey Army uniform, though with the insignia of a corporal. The ladies, too, wore field-grey tailored into traveling uniforms which were not very becoming. Raguna"s sewing also proved to be field-grey, my future uniform. Felix and Bebra had purchased the cloth, Roswitha and Kitty took turns sewing, snipping away more and more of the material until trousers, jacket, and cap were the right size for me. As to shoes, it would have been useless to search the clothing depots of the Wehrmacht for Oskar"s size. I had to content myself with my civilian laced shoes, and I never did get any Army boots.
My papers were forged. Felix the acrobat proved very clever at this delicate work. Sheer courtesy deterred me from protesting when the great somnambulist adopted me as her brother, her elder brother, I might add: Oskarnello Raguna, born on October 21, 1912 in Naples. I have used all sorts of names in my time. Oskarnello Raguna was certainly not the least mellifluous.
The train pulled out. By way of Stolp, Stettin, Berlin, Hanover, and Cologne, it carried us to Metz. Of Berlin I saw next to nothing. We had a five-hour stopover. Naturally there was an air raid. We had to take refuge in the Thomaskeller. The soldiers from the train were packed like sardines in the vaulted rooms. There was quite a to-do as an MP tried to fit us in. A few of the boys who had just come from the Eastern Front knew Bebra and his troupe from earlier performances; they clapped and whistled and Raguna blew kisses. We were asked to perform; in a few minutes something resembling a stage was improvised at one end of the former beer hall. Bebra could hardly say no, especially when an Air Force major requested him amiably and with exaggerated deference to give the men a treat.
For the first time, Oskar was to appear in a real theatrical performance. Though not wholly unprepared -- in the course of the train trip Bebra had several times rehea.r.s.ed my number with me -- I was stricken with stage fright and Raguna found occasion to soothe me by stroking my hands.
With loathsome alacrity the boys handed in our professional luggage and a moment later Felix and Kitty started their act. They were both made of rubber. They tied themselves into a knot, twined in and out and around it, exchanged arms and legs. The spectacle gave the pushing, wide-eyed soldiers fierce pains in their joints and sore muscles that would plague them for days. While Felix and Kitty were still tying and untying themselves, Bebra embarked on his musical clown number. On beer bottles ranging from full to empty, he played the most popular hits of the war years; he played "Erika" and "Mamatchi, Give Me a Horse"; he made the "Stars of the Homeland" twinkle and resound from the bottlenecks, and when that didn"t quite take, fell back on his old standby: "Jimmy the Tiger" raged and roared among the bottles. That appealed to the soldiers and even to Oskar"s jaded ear; and when after a few ridiculous but successful tricks of magic Bebra announced Roswitha Raguna the great somnambulist and Oskarnello Raguna the gla.s.s-slaying drummer, the audience was nicely warmed up: the success of Roswitha and Oskarnello was a.s.sured. I introduced our performance with a light roll on my drum, led up to the climaxes with crescendo rolls, and after each phase invited applause with a loud and accurately timed boom. Raguna would invite a soldier, even an officer or two, to step forward; she would bid a leathery old corporal or a bashfully c.o.c.ky young ensign sit down beside her. And then she would look into his heart -- yes, Raguna saw into the hearts of men. She would reveal not only the data, always correct, out of her subject"s paybook, but details of his intimate life as well. Her indiscretions were always full of delicacy and wit. In conclusion she rewarded one of her victims with a bottle of beer and asked him to hold it up high so the audience could see it. Then she gave me, Oskarnello, the signal: my drum rolled crescendo and I lifted up my voice, a voice designed for far more exacting tasks. It was child"s play to shatter that beer bottle, not without a resounding explosion: the bewildered, beer-bespattered face of a case-hardened corporal or of a milk-faced ensign -- I don"t remember which -- wrote finis to our act -- and then came applause, long and thunderous, mingled with the sounds of a major air raid on the capital.
Our offering was hardly in the international cla.s.s, but it entertained the men, it made them forget the front and the furlough that was ended, and it made them laugh and laugh; for when the aerial torpedoes landed overhead, shaking and burying the cellar and everything in it, dousing the light and the emergency light, when everything about us was tossed topsy-turvy, laughter still rang through the dark, stifling coffin, accompanied by cries of "Bebra! We want Bebra!" And good old indestructible Bebra spoke up, played the clown in the darkness, wrung volleys of laughter from the buried mob. And when voices demanded Raguna and Oskarnello, he blared out: "Signora Raguna is verrry tired, my dear tin soldiers. And Oskarnello must also take a little nap for the sake of the Greater German Reich and final victory."
She, Roswitha, lay with me and was frightened. Oskar, on the other hand, was not frightened, and yet he lay with Raguna. Her fear and my courage brought our hands together. I felt her fear and she felt my courage. At length I became rather fearful, and she grew courageous. And after I had banished her fear and given her courage, my manly courage raised its head a second time. While my courage was eighteen glorious years old, she, in I know not what year of her life, rec.u.mbent for I know not the how-manieth time, fell a prey once more to the fear that aroused my courage. For like her face, her body, sparingly measured but quite complete, showed no trace of time. Timelessly courageous and timelessly fearful, Roswitha offered herself to me. And never will anyone learn whether that midget, who during a major air raid on the capital lost her fear beneath my courage in the buried Thomaskeller until the air-raid wardens dug us out, was nineteen or ninety-nine years old; what makes it all the easier for Oskar to be discreet is that he himself has no idea whether this first embrace truly suited to his physical dimensions was conferred upon him by a courageous old woman or by a young girl made submissive by fear.
Inspection of Concrete, or Barbaric, Mystical, Bored
For three weeks we played every night in the venerable casemates of Metz, long a city of garrisons and once a Roman outpost. We did the same program for two weeks in Nancy. A few words of French had begun to sprout from Oskar"s lips. In Reims we had an opportunity to admire damage created by the previous World War. Sickened by humanity, the stone menagerie of the world-famous cathedral spewed water and more water on the cobblestones round about, which is a way of saying that it rained all day in Reims even at night. But Paris gave us a mild and resplendent September. I spent my nineteenth birthday strolling on the quais with Roswitha on my arm. Although Paris was well known to me from Sergeant Fritz Truczinski"s postcards, I wasn"t a bit disappointed. The first time Roswitha and I -- she measured three feet three, three inches more than myself -- stood arm in arm at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, looking up, we became aware -- this too for the first time -- of our grandeur and uniqueness. We exchange kisses wherever we went, but that"s nothing new in Paris.
How wonderful it is to rub shoulders with art and history! Still with Roswitha on my arm, I visited the Dome des Invalides, thinking of the great Emperor and feeling very close to him, because, though great, he was not tall. Recalling how, at the tomb of Frederick the Great, himself no giant, Napoleon had said: "If he were still alive, we should not be standing here," I whispered tenderly into my Roswitha"s ear: "If the Corsican were still alive, we should not be standing here, we should not be kissing each other under the bridges, on the quais, sur le trottoir de Paris."
In collaboration with other groups, we put on colossal programs at the Salle Pleyel and the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt. Oskar quickly grew accustomed to the theatrical style of the big city, perfected his repertory, adapted himself to the jaded tastes of the Paris occupation troops: No longer did I waste my vocal prowess on common German beer bottles; here, in the city of light, I shattered graceful, invaluable vases and fruit bowls, immaterial figments of blown gla.s.s, taken from French castles. My number was conceived along historical lines. I started in with gla.s.sware from the reign of Louis XIV, and continued, like history itself, with the reign of Louis XV. With revolutionary fervor I attacked the crockery of the unfortunate Louis XVI and his headless and heedless Marie Antoinette. Finally, after a sprinkling of Louis-Philippe, I carried my battle to the vitreous fantasies of the Third Republic.
Of course the historical significance of my act was beyond the reach of the field-grey ma.s.s in the orchestra and galleries; they applauded my shards as common shards; but now and then there was a staff officer or a newspapermen from the Reich who relished my historical ac.u.men along with the damage. A scholarly character in uniform complimented me on my art when we were introduced to him after a gala performance for the Kommandantur. Oskar was particularly grateful to the correspondent for a leading German newspaper who described himself as an expert on France and discreetly called my attention to a few trifling mistakes, not to say stylistic inconsistencies, in my program.
We spent the whole winter in Paris. They billeted us in first-cla.s.s hotels, and I shall not deny that all winter long Roswitha joined me in investigating the superior qualities of French beds. Was Oskar happy in Paris? Had he forgotten his dear ones at home, Maria, Matzerath, Gretchen and Alexander Scheffler; had Oskar forgotten his son Kurt and his grandmother Anna Koljaiczek?
Though I had not forgotten them, I missed none of them. I wrote no Army postcards, gave no sign of life, but on the contrary gave the folks at home every opportunity to live a whole year without me; for from the moment of my departure I had been resolved to return, whence it followed that I would have been rather interested to know how they were getting along in my absence. On the street or during performances, I sometimes searched the soldiers" faces for familiar features. Perhaps, Oskar speculated, Fritz Truczinski or Axel Mischke has been transferred here from the Eastern Front, and once or twice he thought he had recognized Maria"s handsome brother amid a horde of infantrymen; but it wasn"t he; field-grey can be misleading.
Only the Eiffel Tower made me homesick. Don"t go supposing that I rode to the top and that remote vistas made me dream of home. Oskar had mounted the Eiffel Tower so often on postcards and in his thoughts that an actual ascension could only have brought him disappointment. As I stood or sat at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, but without Roswitha, alone beneath those towering girders flung upward by the pioneers of steel construction, the great vault, which seems so solidly closed despite s.p.a.ces on all sides, became for me the sheltering vault of my grandmother Anna: sitting beneath the Eiffel Tower, I was sitting beneath her four skirts, the Champ de Mars was a Kashubian potato field, the Paris October rain slanted endlessly down between Bissau and Ramkau, and on such days all Paris, even the Metro, smelled of slightly rancid b.u.t.ter. I grew silent and thoughtful. Roswitha respected my sorrow and was very kind and considerate on these occasions; she was a sensitive soul.
In April, 1944 -- from all fronts came communiques announcing that our lines had been successfully shortened -- we were obliged to pack up and leave Paris for a tour of the Atlantic Wall. Our first stop was Le Havre. It seemed to me that Bebra was becoming taciturn and distraught. Though he never lost his grip during performances and still had the laughs on his side, his age-old Na.r.s.es face turned to stone once the last curtain had fallen. At first I thought he was jealous, or, worse, that he had capitulated in the face of my youthful vigor. In whispers Roswitha dispelled my error; she didn"t know exactly what was going on, but she had noticed that certain officers were meeting with Bebra behind closed doors after the show. It looked as though the master were emerging from his inward emigration, as though, inspired by the blood of his ancestor Prince Eugene, he were planning some direct action. His plans had carried him so far away from us, had involved him in preoccupations so vast and far-reaching, that Oskar"s intimacy with his former Roswitha could arouse no more than a weary wrinkled smile. One day in Trouville -- we were lodged at the Casino -- he found us intertwined on the carpet of the dressing room he shared with us. Our impulse was to leap apart, but with a gesture he gave us to understand that there was no need to. Looking into his make-up gla.s.s, he said: "Enjoy yourselves, children, hug and kiss, tomorrow we inspect concrete, and the day after tomorrow it"s concrete you"ll have between your lips. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."
That was in June, "44. By that time we had done the Atlantic Wall from the Bay of Biscay to Holland, but we spent most of our time inland and saw little of the legendary pillboxes. It wasn"t until Trouville that we played directly on the coast. Here we were offered an opportunity to visit the Atlantic Wall. Bebra accepted. After our last show in Trouville, we were driven to the village of Bavent near Caen, three miles behind the sh.o.r.e dunes. We were lodged with peasants. Pasture, hedgerows, apple trees. That is where the apple brandy called calvados is distilled. We had a drink of it and went to bed. Brisk air came in through the window, a frog pond croaked until morning. Some frogs are good drummers. I heard them in my sleep and said to myself: Oskar, you"ve got to go home, soon your son Kurt will be three years old, you"ve got to give him his drum, you"ve promised. Thus admonished, Oskar, the tormented father, awoke each hour, groped about in the darkness, made sure his Roswitha was there, breathed in her smell: Raguna smelled ever so slightly of cinnamon, crushed cloves, and nutmeg; even in summer she had that scent of Christmas, of cake spice.
In the morning an armored personnel carrier drove up to the farm. We stood in the doorway, chatting into the sea wind, all of us shivering a little. It was early and very chilly. We got in: Bebra, Raguna, Felix and Kitty, Oskar, and a Lieutenant Herzog who was taking us to his battery west of Cabourg.
To say Normandy is green is to disregard the spotted brown and white cows which were chewing their cuds on misty meadows, wet with dew, to the right and left of the straight highway, greeted our armored vehicle with such indifference that the armor plate would have turned red with shame had it not previously been daubed with camouflage paint. Poplars, hedgerows, creepers, the first hulking beach hotels, empty, their shutters clattering in the wind. We turned into the beach promenade, got out, and plodded along behind the lieutenant, who showed Captain Bebra a condescending yet properly military respect, across the dunes, against a wind full of sand and surf roar.
This wasn"t the mild, bottle-green Baltic, sobbing like a tenderhearted maiden as it waited for me to come in. It was the Atlantic carrying out its immemorial maneuver, pressing forward at high tide, receding at low tide.
And then we had our concrete. We could admire it and even pat it to our heart"s content; it didn"t budge. "Attention!" cried someone inside the concrete and leapt, tall as a mast, from the pillbox, which was shaped like a flattened-out turtle, lay amid sand dunes, was called "Dora Seven", and looked out upon the shifting tides through gun embrasures, observation slits, and machine-gun barrels. The man"s name was Corporal Lankes. He reported to Lieutenant Herzog and at the same time to our Captain Bebra.
LANKES (saluting): Dora seven, one corporal and four men. Nothing special to report.
HERZOG: Thank you. At ease, Corporal Lankes. Did you hear that, Captain? Nothing special to report. That"s how it"s been for years.
BEBRA: There"s still the tide. Ebbing and flowing. Nature"s contribution.
HERZOG: That"s just what keeps our men busy. That"s why we go on building pillboxes one after another. They"re already in each other"s field of fire. Pretty soon we"ll have to demolish a few of them to make room for more concrete.
BEBRA (knocks on the concrete; the members of his troupe do likewise): And you have faith in concrete?
HERZOG: Faith is hardly the right word. We haven"t much faith in anything any more. What do you say, Lankes?
LANKES: Right, sir. No more faith.
BEBRA: But they keep on mixing and pouring.
HERZOG: Between you and me, Captain, we"re getting valuable experience. I"d never built a thing until I came here. I was in school when the war started. Now I"ve learned a thing or two about cement and I hope to make use of it after the war. The whole of Germany is going to have to be rebuilt. Take a good look at this concrete. (BEBRA and his troupe poke their noses into the concrete.) What do you see? Sh.e.l.ls. We"ve got all we we need right at the doorstep. Just have to take the stuff and mix. Stones, sh.e.l.ls, sand, cement. . . What else can I tell you, Captain, you are an artist, you know how it is. Lankes, tell the captain what we put in our cement.
LANKES: Yes, sir. I"ll tell the captain. Puppies, sir. Every one of our pillboxes has a puppy in it. Walled up in the foundation.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: A puppy?
LANKES: Pretty soon there won"t be a single puppy left in the whole sector from Caen to Le Havre.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: No more puppies.
LANKES: That"s what eager beavers we are.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: What eager beavers!
LANKES: Pretty soon we"ll have to use kittens.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Meow!
LANKES: But cats aren"t as good as dogs. That"s why we hope there"ll be a little action here soon.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: The big show! (They applaud.) LANKES: We"ve rehea.r.s.ed enough. And if we run out of puppies. . .
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Oh!
LANKES: . . .we"ll have to stop building. Cats are bad luck.
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Meow! Meow!
LANKES: Would you like me to tell you short and sweet why we put in puppies. . .
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Puppies!
LANKES: Personally I think it"s the bunk. . .
BEBRA"S TROUPE: For shame!
LANKES: But my buddies, here, are mostly from the country. And in the country when they build a house or a barn or a village church, it"s the custom to put something living in the foundations. . . and. . .
HERZOG: That"s enough, Lankes. At ease. As you"ve heard, sir, we"re given to superst.i.tion here on the Atlantic Wall. Like you theater people who mustn"t whistle before an opening night or spit over your shoulders before the curtain goes up. . .
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Toi-toi-toi! (Spit over each other"s shoulders.) HERZOG: But joking aside, we"ve got to let the men have their fun. Recently they"ve started decorating the entrances to the pillboxes with improvisations in concrete or sea-sh.e.l.l mosaics, and it"s tolerated by order from way up. The men like to be kept busy. Those concrete pretzels get on our C.O."s nerves, but what I tell him is: better pretzels in the concrete, sir, than pretzels in the head. We Germans are no good at sitting idle. That"s a fact.
BEBRA: And we, too, do our bit to distract the men who are waiting on the Atlantic Wall. . .
BEBRA"S TROUPE: Bebra"s front-line theater sings for you, plays for you, boosts your morale for the final victory.
HERZOG: Yes, you"ve got the right point of view. But the theater alone isn"t enough. Most of the time we have only ourselves to depend on, and we do our best. Am I right, Lankes?
LANKES: Right, sir. We do our best.
HERZOG: There you have it. And if you"ll excuse me now, sir, I"ve got to take a run over to Dora Four and Dora Five. Take your time, have a good look at our concrete. It"s worth it. Lankes will show you everything. . .
LANKES: Everything, sir.
(Lankes and Bebra exchange salutes. Herzog goes out right, Raguna, Oskar, Felix, and Kitty, who have thus far been standing behind Bebra, jump out. Oskar is holding his drum, Raguna is carrying a basket of provisions. Felix and Kitty climb up on the concrete roof of the pillbox and begin doing acrobatic exercises. Oskar and Raguna play with pails and shovels, make it plain that they are in love, yodel, and tease Felix and Kitty.) BEBRA (wearily, alter examining the pillbox from all sides): Tell me, Corporal, what is your civilian occupation?
LANKES: Painter, sir, but that was a long time ago.
BEBRA: House painter?