by Günter Grass
The sun shines down almost vertically. Kindled by Kriwe’s hand with Kriwe’s lighter, the fire spreads rapidly. All take a few steps backward, but stay on, eager to witness the great holocaust. While Walter Matern, as he always did at official functions, makes big noises, trying to drown out the crackling by sheer grinding of the teeth, Eduard Amsel, known as “the milliner” and occasionally—the merry bonfire is another such occasion—called “Sheeny,” stands negligently on freckled legs, rubs his upholstered palms strenuously together, screws up his eyes and sees something. No green-yellow smoke, no stewing leather goods, no glittering flight of sparks and moths compels him to transform round eyes into oblique slits: no, it is the bird, spouting innumerable tongues of flame, the bird going up in smoke that falls to the ground and creeps over the nettles, which makes him a present of brisk ideas and suchlike flimflam. For as the burning beast, creature of rags, tar, and feathers, sizzling and showering sparks and very much alive, makes a last stab at flying, then collapses into dust, Amsel has resolved in his heart and diary that later, one day when he is big, he will revive the idea of the Great Cuckoo Bird: he will build a giant bird which will burn, spark, and blaze everlastingly, yet never be consumed, but continue in all eternity, forever and ever, by its very nature, apocalypse and ornament in one, to burn, spark, and blaze.
TWENTY-SIXTH MORNING SHIFT
A few days before the fourth of February, before the critical constellation of the heavenly luminaries calls this world into question, Brauxel decides to add an item to his stock or pandemonium: the burning perpetuum mobile in the form of a bird, inspired by Amsel—he will have it built. The world is not so rich in ideas that he should abjectly forgo one of the finest inspirations even if the world were coming to an end within the next few morning shifts; especially as Eduard Amsel, after the auto-da-fé behind Folchert’s barn, offered an example of stoical fortitude by helping to put out the fire that flying sparks had kindled in Folchert’s barn.
A few weeks after the public burning of Amsel’s stock and his latest crow-scaring model, after a fire which, as we shall see, kindled all sorts of kindling in Amsel’s little head and produced a fire that was never again to be quenched, the widow Lottchen Amsel, nee Tiede, and Herr Anton Matern, miller in Nickelswalde, received blue letters, from which it could be gathered that Dr. Battke, principal of Sankt Johann High School, wished to see them in his office on a certain day and hour.
Widow Amsel and miller Matern took one and the same train to the city—they sat facing one another, each in a seat by the window. At Langgart Gate they took the streetcar as far as Milchkannen Bridge. Because they were early, they were able to attend to a few business matters. She had to call on Hahn & Lochel, then on Haubold & Lanser; he had to drop in on the construction firm of Prochnow on Adebargasse in connection with the new mill. They met in Long Market, stopped at Springer’s for a drink, and then—although they might have walked—took a taxi and reached Fleischergasse ahead of time.
To speak in round numbers, they had to wait for ten minutes in Dr. Rasmus Battke’s waiting room, before the principal, in light gray shoes and the sports clothes they implied, appeared, imposing and without glasses, in the waiting room. With a small hand on a short arm, he motioned them into his office, and when the country folk hesitated to sit down in the club chairs, he cried out airily: “No formalities, please. I am sincerely delighted to meet the parents of two such promising students.”
Two walls of books, one wall of windows. His pipe tobacco smelled English. Schopenhauer glowered between bookshelves, because Schopenhauer… Water glass, water pitcher, pipe cleaners on heavy red desk with green felt cover. Four embarrassed hands on upholstered leather arms. Miller Matern showed the principal his protruding ear, not the one that hearkened to mealworms. Widow Amsel nodded after every subordinate clause uttered by the fluent principal. The subjects of his discourse were: First, the economic situation in the countryside, hence the impending regulation of the market necessitated by the Polish customs laws, and the problems of the cheese producers on Great Island. Secondly, Great Island in general, and in particular the wind-swept far-billowing wheatfields; the advantages of the Epp variety and of the winter-resistant Siberian variety; the campaign against corn cockle—“but what a fertile blessed region, yes indeed…” Thirdly, Dr. Rasmus Battke had the following to say: Two such gifted students, though of course their gifts lay in very different directions—everything came so easily to little Eduard—two students bound by so productive a friend ship—how touching it was to see little Matern defending his friend against the teasing, quite devoid of malice you may rest assured, of his fellow students—in short, two students so deserving of benevolent encouragement as Eduard Amsel, but in no less degree Walter Matern, were to say the least deterred by the long trip in the dreadful, though of course highly entertaining narrow-gauge railroad, from devoting their maximum energies to their work; he, the principal of the establishment, an old hand, as you may well imagine, at problems connected with schooling, who had learned a thing or two from his years of experience with commuting students, wished accordingly to suggest that even before the summer holidays broke upon the land, next Monday in fact, both boys should transfer to a different school. The Conradinum in Langfuhr, whose principal, an old friend, had already been consulted and supported his views wholeheartedly, had an in-student plan, or in plain German, a dormitory where a considerable number of students were provided with board and lodging—for a reasonable fee—thanks to the ample endowment from which the Conradinum benefited; in a word, they would both be well taken care of, it was an arrangement which he as principal of the Sankt Johann High School could only recommend.
And so on the following Monday Eduard Amsel and Walter Matern exchanged the green velvet caps of Sankt Johann for the red caps of the Conradinum. With the help of the narrow-gauge railway they and their suitcases left the Vistula estuary, Great Island, the dikes from horizon to horizon, Napoleon’s poplars, the fish-smoking establishments, Kriwe’s ferry, the new postmill, the eels between willows and cows, father and mother, poor Lorchen, the Mennonites rough and refined, Folchert, Kabrun, Lickfett, Lührmann, Karweise, schoolmaster Olschewski, and Grandmother Matern’s ghost, which was haunting the house because they had forgotten to pour the water in which the corpse had been washed over the threshold in cross form.
TWENTY-SEVENTH MORNING SHIFT
The sons of rich peasants, the sons of landowners, the sons of West Prussian, slightly indebted country gentry, the sons of Kashubian brickworks owners, the son of the Neuteich druggist, the son of the pastor in Hohenstein, the son of the district president in Stüblau, Heini Kadlubek from Otroschken, little Probst from Schönwarling, the Dyck brothers from Ladekopp, Bobbe Ehlers from Quatschin, Rudi Kiesau from Straschin, Waldemar Burau from Prangschin, and Dirk Heinrich von Pelz-Stilowski from Kladau on the Kladau—in short, the sons of rich man, poor man, beggar man, chief, not to mention the pastor, became, not all at once, but most of them shortly after Easter, boarders at the dormitory attached to the Conradinum. For many years the Conradinum had managed to keep afloat as a private institution thanks to an endowment, but by the time Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel became Conradinians, the city was making considerable contributions to its budget. Accordingly the Conradinum was looked upon as part of the municipal school system. Only the in-student facilities were not municipal, but still the private prerogative of the Conradinum and subject to an extra charge.
The sleeping quarters for students of sixth, fifth, and fourth, also called the small sleeping quarters, were situated on the ground floor, with their windows looking out on the school garden, that is to say, on gooseberries. There was always one bedwetter. The place smelled of him and seaweed mattresses. The two friends slept bed to bed under an oleograph showing the Crane Gate, the observatory, and the Long Bridge in winter with ice floes. The two friends never or seldom wet their beds. An attempt to initiate the newcomers, that is, to blacken Amsel’s backside with shoe polish, wa
s averted by Walter Matern before anybody could say Jack Robinson. In recreation period the two of them stood aloof under the same chestnut tree. At most little Probst and Heini Kadlubek, the son of a coal dealer, were privileged to listen while Walter Matern maintained a long dark staring silence and Eduard Amsel developed his secret language, giving new names to the new surroundings.
“I tnod ekil eht sdrib ereh.”
I don’t like the birds here.
“Sworraps ni eht ytic tnera sworraps ni eht yrtnuoc.”
Sparrows in the city aren’t sparrows in the country. “Draude Lesma sklat sdrawkcab.”
With fluent ease he stood long and short sentences word for word on their heads and was even able to speak the new backward language with the broad accent of the Island: Dootendeetz (death’s-head) became Zteednetood. With the help of a tongue molded to the Low German language, he smoothed out an awkard c, an unpronounceable ps, the difficult sch, and a tongue-twisting nr, and rendered “Liebarchen” (my friend) by the simplified “Nahkrabeil.” Walter Matern caught his meaning and gave brief, equally reversed, and usually correct answers: “Good idea—-doog aedi.” And impatient of shillyshallying: “Sey ro on?” Little Probst was flabbergasted. But Heini Kadlubek, known as “Kebuldak,” proved to be not at all backward at learning to talk backward.
Many inventions on a level with Amsel’s linguistic arts have been made in the playgrounds of this world; subsequently forgotten, they have ultimately been unearthed and perfected by childish old people in city parks, which were conceived as extensions of school playgrounds. When God was a schoolboy, it occurred to him in the heavenly play ground, along with young Satan, his school friend, who was as bright as a button, to create the world. On the fourth of February of this year, as Brauxel has read in a number of newspaper articles, this world is expected to end; another decision arrived at in playgrounds.
Playgrounds, it might also be noted, have something in common with poultry yards: the strutting of the officiating rooster resembles the strutting of the teacher in charge. Roosters also stride about with their hands behind their backs, turn unexpectedly, and cast menacing looks about them.
Dr. Oswald Brunies, who is supervising at the moment—the authors’ consortium is planning to build him a monument—does his best to oblige the inventor of the poultry-yard simile: every nine paces he scratches with the tip of his left shoe in the gravel of the school yard; moreover, he crooks his professorial leg—a habit not without significance. Dr. Brunies is looking for something: not for gold, not for a heart or for happiness God fame; he is looking for unusual pebbles. The playground is asparkle with pebbles.
Small wonder if singly, or sometimes two at a time, students come up to him and call his attention, in earnest or animated by the usual schoolboy whimsy, to perfectly ordinary pebbles they have just picked up. But Dr. Oswald Brunies takes each one, even the most contemptible run of the millstream, between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, holds it away from, then up to light, takes a magnifying glass secured by an elastic band from the breast pocket of his peat-brown and partly threadbare jacket, moves the glass on stretching elastic slowly and expertly into place between pebble and eye, then, elegantly and with full confidence in the elastic, lets the glass spring back into his breast pocket. An instant later he has the pebble in the cup of his left hand, lets it roll about in a small radius at first, then circle more boldly as far as the rim of the cup, and finally rejects it by tapping his left hand with his free right hand. “Pretty but superfluous!” says Dr. Brunies and digs the same hand into a bag which, always and as often as we shall speak of Oswald Brunies here, juts brown and rumpled from his side pocket. By ornamental detours, such as those made by priests in the course of Mass, he guides a cough drop from the bag to his mouth: celebrates, licks, sucks, diminishes, swirls juice between tobacco-stained teeth, shifts lump from cheek to cheek, while the intermission dwindles, while dread of intermission’s end mounts in the muddled interiors of many children, while sparrows in chestnut trees yearn for the end of recreation, while he struts, scratches in the gravel of the playground, and causes the cough drop to become smaller and more vitreous.
Short intermission, long intermission. Intermission games, whisperings, sandwiches, and distress: anxiety, says Brauxel: in a moment the bell…
Empty playgrounds that belong to the sparrows. A thousand times seen and filmed, as the wind blows a sandwich paper through a deserted, melancholy, Prussian, humanistic, gravel-strewn playground.
The playground of the Conradinum consisted of a small rectangular playground, shaded irregularly by chestnut trees, and to the left of it with no fence intervening, an elongated Big Playground framed by young linden trees propped on poles and standing at regular intervals. The Neo-Gothic gymnasium, the Neo-Gothic urinal, and the Neo-Gothic old-brick-red, ivy-covered school building with its bell-less belfry bounded the Small Playground on three sides and sheltered it from the winds, which sent funnels of dust over the Big Playground from its southeast corner; for here nothing stood up to the wind but the low-lying school garden with its close-meshed wire fence and the two-storied, likewise Neo-Gothic dormitory. Until later, when a modern athletic field with cinder track and turf was laid out beneath the southern gable of the gymnasium, the Big Playground had to serve as an athletic field during gym classes. Also worth mentioning is a tarred wooden shed, some fifty feet in length, which stood between the young lindens and the school garden. Bicycles could be stored in it, front wheel upward. A little game: as soon as the upended front wheels were set in motion with strokes of the flat hand, the gravel that had stuck to the tires after the short ride through the Big Playground flew off and rained down on the gooseberry bushes in the school garden behind the wire network fence.
Anyone who has ever been obliged to play handball, football, volkerball, or faustball, let alone schlagball, in a field strewn with gravel will always, whenever he steps on gravel in later life, be forced to remember all the scraped knees, all those bruises which take forever to heal, which develop crusty scabs, and which transform all gravel-strewn playgrounds into blood-soaked playgrounds. Few things in the world make so lasting an impression as gravel.
But to him, the cock-of-the-playground, Dr. Oswald Brunies, the strutting, candy-sucking teacher—a monument will be erected to him—to him with magnifying glass on elastic, with sticky bag in sticky coat pocket, to him who collected big stones and little stones, rare pebbles, preferably mica gneiss—muscovy biotite—quartz, feldspar, and hornblende, who picked up pebbles, examined them, rejected or kept them, to him the Big Playground of the Conradinum was not an abrasive stumbling block but a lasting invitation to scratch about with the tip of his shoe after nine rooster steps. For Oswald Brunies, who taught just about everything—geography, history, German, Latin, and when necessary religion—was not one of your universally dreaded gym teachers with shaggy black chest, bristling black legs, a policeman’s whistle, and the key to the equipment room. Never did Brunies make a boy tremble under the horizontal bar, suffer on the parallel bars, or weep on hot climbing ropes. Never did he ask Amsel to do a front vault, not to mention a side vault over the long horse that is always too long. Never did he drive Amsel’s fleshy knees across mordant gravel.
A man in his fifties with a cigar-singed mustache. The tip of every hair in his mustache sweet from ever-renewed cough drops. On his round head a gray felt hat, to which, often for a whole morning, clung burrs tossed on by his charges. From both ears swirling clumps of hair. A face seamed with wrinkles produced by laughing, giggling, grinning. Romantic poetry nestled in his tousled eyebrows. Schubert songs revolved around never-resting nostrils. Only in the corners of his mouth and on the bridge of his nose, a few blackheads: Heine’s pungent Winter’s Tale and Raabe’s abrasive novel Stopfkuchen. Well liked and not taken seriously. A bachelor with a Bismarck hat and class director of the sixth, including Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel, the friends from the Vistula delta. By now the two of them smell only mildly of cow b
arn, curdled milk, and smoked fish; gone too is the smell of fire that clung to their hair and clothing after the public burning behind Folchert’s barn.