Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Amsel tried to show that his friend was mistaken; he placed one of his splendidly bedizened figures on the terrace outside the paneled room, shaded by the beech trees of Jäschkental Forest. The figure enjoyed a modicum of success, for the good old faithful sparrows shut their eyes to the artistic aspect and as usual allowed themselves to be scared a little; but no one could have said that a cloud of feathered beasts, thrown into panic by the sight, had risen screaming from the treetops and re-enacted a scene from Amsel’s village childhood over the forest. His art was stagnant. Weininger’s text remained paper. Perfection proved tedious. Sparrows were unmoved. Crows yawned. Wood pigeons refused to believe. Chaffinches, sparrows, crows, and wood pigeons took turns in sitting on Amsel’s artistic figure—a paradoxical sight which Eddi Amsel bore with a smile. But we, in the bushes behind the fence, heard him sigh.

  Neither Tulla nor I could help him;

  nature helped: in October Walter Matern had a fist fight with the platoon leader of a platoon of Hitler Cubs, who were putting on so-called war games in the nearby forest. A squad of uniformed Cubs moved into Amsel’s garden with the pennant around which the operation revolved. From the open window Walter Matern dove head-first into the wet foliage; and undoubtedly I too would have come in for a licking if I like my squad leader had tried to stand by Heini Wasmuth our group leader.

  The following night we were ordered to throw stones at the villa from the woods: we heard several windowpanes crash. That would have been the end of the affair if Amsel, who had remained on the terrace while blows were falling in the garden, had contented himself with looking on: but he sketched his observations on cheap paper and built models the size of upright cigar boxes: wrestling groups, a muddled shapeless free-for-all of scrawny Cubs, short-panted, knee-socked, shoulder-strapped, brown-tattered, pennant-maddened, rune-bepatched, dagger belts askew, Führer-vaccinated and hoarse with triumph—the living image of our Cub squad fighting over the pennant in Amsel’s garden. Amsel had found his way back to reality; from that day on he stopped wasting his talent on fashion plates, hothouse plants, studio art; avid with curiosity, he went out into the street.

  He developed a mania for uniforms, especially black and brown ones, which were taking on a larger and larger part in the street scene. In a junkshop on Tagnetergasse he managed to scare up an old SA uniform dating back to the heroic period before the seizure of power. But one did not satisfy his needs. With considerable effort he abstained from putting an ad in the Vorposten under his own name: “Wanted: Old SA uniforms.” In the stores specializing in uniforms the Party rig was obtainable only on presentation of a Party card. Because it was impossible for Eddi Amsel to join the Party or any of its organizations, Eddi Amsel set about, with coaxing, blasphemous, comical, and always adroit words, persuading his friend Walter Matern, who, though he had stopped distributing Communist leaflets, had a photograph of Rosa Luxemburg pinned to his oak paneling, to do what Amsel would have liked to do for the sake of the uniforms he needed, but couldn’t.

  Out of friendship—the two of them were said to have been blood brothers—half for the hell of it and half out of curiosity, but especially in order that Amsel might obtain those intensely brown uniforms for which he and the skeletons of future scarecrows were thirsting, Walter Matern, step by little step, gave in: he put aside his pocket-sized paperbacks and filled out an application in which he made no secret of the fact that he had been a member of the Red Falcons and later of the C.P.

  Laughing, shaking his head, grinding, no longer outwardly but deep within, every tooth in his head, he joined a Langfuhr SA sturm, whose headquarters and meeting place was the Kleinhammerpark Beer Hall, a spacious establishment with a park by the same name, with dance hall, bowling alley, and home cooking, situated between the Aktien Brewery and the Langfuhr railroad station.

  Students from the engineering school made up the bulk of this largely petit-bourgeois sturm. At demonstrations on the Maiwiese beside the Sports Palace the sturm performed guard duty. For years its main function was to start fights on Heeresanger, near the Polish student house, with members of the “Bratnia Pomoc” student organization, and to wreck the Polish clubhouse. At first Walter Matern had difficulties, because his Red past and even the leaflet incident were known. But since he was not the only former Communist in SA Sturm 84, Langfuhr-North, and since the former Communists began to exchange Red Front salutes as soon as they had a few drinks under their belts, he soon felt at home, especially as the group leader took him under his wing: before ’33 Sturmführer Jochen Sawatzki had made speeches as a Red Front Fighter and had read strike proclamations to the shipyard workers in the Schichau housing development: Sawatzki was loyal to his past and said when making his brief and popular speeches in the Kleinhammerpark: “Take it from me, boys, if I know anything about the Führer, he’d get a bigger kick about one Communist that joins the SA than about ten Center Party big shots, that only join the Party because they’re scared shitless and not because they realize the new day has dawned, yep, believe you me, she’s dawned all right. And the only ones that haven’t caught on is the big shots, because all they do is saw wood.”

  When early in November a delegation from the trusty sturm was sent to the Party congress in Munich and consequently put into new uniforms, Walter Matern succeeded in diverting the old rags that had weathered full many a beer-hall battle, to Steffensweg. Actually Matern, whom Sturmführer Sawatzki had soon appointed squad leader, should have taken the whole kit and boodle including boots and harness to Tiegenhof, where they were just organizing a new SA sturm, which was short on funds. But Eddi Amsel gave his friend a check that had zeroes enough on it to put twenty men into new-smelling togs. Between Amsel’s oak panels brown tatters piled up: beer spots, grease spots, blood spots, tar and sweat spots gave the rags additional value in his eyes. He began at once to take measurements. He sorted, counted, piled, took his distance, dreamed of marching columns, let them march by, salute, march by, salute, looked on with screwed-up eyes: beer-hall battles, movement, tumult, men against men, bones and table edges, eyes and thumbs, beer bottles and teeth, screams, crashing pianos, potted plants, chandeliers, and more than two hundred and fifty well-tempered knives; and yet, apart from the piled-up rags there was no one between the oak panels but Walter Matern. He was drinking a bottle of seltzer and didn’t see what Eddi Amsel saw.

  My cousin Tulla,

  of whom I am writing, to whom I am writing, although if Brauxel had his way, I should be writing of nothing but Eddi Amsel, Tulla arranged for our watchdog Harras to attack Felsner-Imbs, the piano teacher and ballet pianist, a second time. On the open street, on Kastanienweg, Tulla let the dog off the leash. Imbs and Jenny—she in a yellowish fluffy coat—were probably on their way from the ballet school, for the laces of her ballet slippers were dangling pink and silky out of a gym bag that Jenny was carrying. Tulla let Harras loose, and the rain was slanting down from all sides because the wind kept shifting. Over rilled and bubbling puddles leapt Harras, whom Tulla had let loose. Felsner-Imbs was holding an umbrella over himself and Jenny. Harras made no detours and knew whom Tulla meant when she released him. This time it was the pianist’s umbrella my father had to replace, for Imbs defended himself when the black beast, rain-smooth and distended, sprang at him and his pupil, withdrawing the umbrella from its rain-combating function and wielding it, transformed into a shield with a point in the middle, against the dog. Naturally the umbrella gave way. But the metal stays, radiating toward the star-shaped edge of the umbrella, remained. A few of them bent and broke through the cloth; but they confronted our Harras with a painful obstacle. Both his forepaws became entangled in the forbidding spokes; a couple of passers-by and a butcher, who dashed out of his shop in spotted apron, were able to hold him in check. The umbrella was done for. Harras panted. Tulla wouldn’t let me run for it. The butcher and the pianist got wet. Harras was put on the leash. The pianist’s inspired mane was reduced to matted strands: diluted hair powder dripped on dark cloth. Je
nny, the roly-poly, lay in a gutter which gushed Novemberly, gurgled, and secreted gray bubbles.

  The butcher didn’t go back to his blood sausage; exactly as he had dashed out of his shop, as bald and hatless and porcine as a heel of bologna, he delivered me and Harras to the master carpenter. He described the incident in terms unfavorable to me, representing Tulla as a timid little girl who had run away in terror when I had been unable to hold the dog on the leash; when the truth of the matter is that Tulla had looked on to the end and beaten it only after I had taken the leash away from her.

  The butcher took his leave with a shake of a large hairy hand. I got my licking, this time not with a rectangular roofing lath but with a flat woodworking hand. My father promised Dr. Brunies to pay for cleaning the fluffy yellowish coat: fortunately Jenny’s gym bag with the pink silk ballet slippers hadn’t been carried away in the gutter, for the gutter flowed into the Striessbach, and the Striessbach flowed into Aktien Pond, and the Striessbach flowed out the other end of Aktien Pond and made its way through the whole of Langfuhr, under Elsenstrasse, Hertastrasse, Luisenstrasse, past Neuschottland, up Leegstriess, and emptied near Broschken-weg, opposite Weichselmünde, into the Dead Vistula, whence, mingled with Vistula water and Mottlau water, it passed through the harbor channel between Neufahrwasser and Westerplatte to merge with the Baltic Sea.

  Tulla and I were present

  when in the first week of Advent, at 13 Marienstrasse, in Langfuhr’s largest and finest garden restaurant, the Kleinhammerpark, Manager August Koschinski, Tel. 41-09-40—fresh waffles every Tuesday—one thing and another led to a brawl that was quelled only an hour and a half later by the police detachment which during Party meetings was always on standby duty in the small Hunt Room: Sergeant Burau put in a call for reinforcements: One one eight, whereupon sixteen policemen drove up and restored order with beauty doctors.

  The meeting, held under the motto “Home to the Reich—Down with the tyranny of Versailles!,” was well attended. Two hundred and fifty people had crowded into the Green Room.

  According to the agenda one speaker followed another at the speaker’s desk between the potted plants: first Sturmführer Jochen Sawatzki spoke tersely huskily vigorously. Then Local Group Leader Sellke spoke of his impressions at the Reich Party Congress in Nuremberg. The spades of the Labor Service, thousands upon thousands, had particularly impressed him, because sunshine had kissed the blades of Labor Service spades: “I can only tell you, dear citizens of Langfuhr, who have turned out in such gratifying numbers that was unique, absolutely unique. It’s something a man won’t forget as long as he lives, how they glittered, thousands upon thousands of them. A shout went up as from thousands upon thousands of throats: our hearts were full to overflowing, dear citizens of Langfuhr, and many a hardened fighter had tears in his eyes. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of, not on such an occasion. And I thought to myself, dear citizens of Langfuhr, when I go home, I’ll tell all those who could not be present what it’s like when thousands upon thousands of Reich Labor Service spades…” Then Kreisleiter Kampe spoke of his impressions at the harvest thanksgiving festival in Buckeburg and of the projected new apartments in the projected Albert Forster Housing Development. Then SA Sturmführer Sawatzki, supported by two hundred and fifty citizens of Langfuhr, shouted a triple Siegheil for the Führer and Chancellor. Both anthems, one too slow and one too fast, were sung too low by the men, too high by the women, and by the children off-key and out of time. This concluded the official part of the program and Local Group Leader Sellke informed the citizens of Langfuhr that the second part would now begin, a friendly informal get-together in the course of which useful and tasty products would be raffled off for the benefit of Winter Aid. The prizes had been donated by: Valtinat Dairy Products, Amada Margarine, Anglas Chocolates, Kanold Candies, Kiesau Wines, Haubold & Lanser Wholesalers, the Kühne Mustard Co., the Danzig Glass Works, and the Aktien Brewery of Langfuhr, which had donated beer, two cases to be raffled off and an extra keg for SA Sturm 84, Langfuhr-North; for the boys of Langfuhr SA Sturm 84; for our storm troopers, of whom we are proud; a triple hip-hip-hurray for our storm troopers of Sturm 84—hurray, hurray!”

  And then came the tangle which could be disentangled only after a phone call to the police—one one eight—and with the help of beauty doctors. It should not be supposed that the peace was disturbed by Communists or Socialists. By that time they were all washed up. What set off the battle at the Kleinhammerpark was booze, the barrel fever that rises up from within to hit the eyeballs from behind. For, as is only natural after long speeches that have had to be made and listened to, liquid nourishment was drunk, guzzled, lushed, slushed, and sopped up; sitting or standing, one good thing led to another; some ran from table to table, growing damper all the while; many leaned on the bar, pouring it in with both hands; few stood upright and gargled headless, for a dense cloud of smoke cut the hall, which was low to begin with, off at shoulder height. Those whose euphoria had made the longest strides struck up a part song as they drank: Knowyoutheforestallshottobits; Inacoolvalley; Ohheadboweddownwithbloodandwounds.

  A family affair, everybody was there, all old friends: Alfons Bublitz with Lotte and Franzchen Wollschläger: “You ’member the time in Höhne Park. Along the Radaune on the way to Ohra, who do we run into but Dulleck and his brother, and there he is, stewed to the gills.”

  And in a row at the bar stood beer-assed the SA men Bruno Dulleck, Willy Eggers, Paule Hoppe, Walter Matern, and Otto Warnke. “And one time at the Café Derra! You’re nuts, man, that was in Zinglers Höhe, they beat Brill up. And then another time, only a coupla days ago. Where was that? By the dam in Straschin-Prangschin. I hear they chucked him into the basin. But he climbed out. Not like Wichmann in Klein-Katz, they gave it to him good, with gun butts: shoilem boil ’em! They say he’s gone to Spain. That’s what you think! They done him in and stuffed the pieces in a sack. I remember him from the Sharpshooters’ Club, before they elected him to the Diet with Brost and Kruppke. They got away, slipped across the border near Goldkrug. Say, would you look at Dau. The guy’s a walking bank. One time in Müggenwinkel he said…”

  Gustav Dau came ambling over, arm in arm with Lothar Budzinski. Wherever he went, he stood a couple of rounds and then another round. Tulla and I sat at a table with the Pokriefkes. My father had left immediately after the speeches. There weren’t many children left. Tulla looked at the toilet door: MEN. She drank nothing, said nothing, just looked. August Pokriefke was stewed. He was explaining the railroad connections in Koshnavia to a Herr Mikoteit. Tulla was trying to nail the toilet door closed by just looking: but it swung, moved by full and emptied bladders. The express line Berlin, Schneidemühl, Dirschau passed through Koshnavia. But the express didn’t stop. Tulla looked at the door of the ladies’ toilet: she saw Walter Matern, disappearing into the men’s toilet. Mikoteit worked for the Polish railroad, but that didn’t prevent August Pokriefke from listing every single local station on the Konitz-Laskowitz run. Every five sips of beer Erna Pokriefke said: “Now go on home to beddy-bye, children, it’s time.” But Tulla kept her grip on the fluttering toilet door: every exit and entrance was snapshot by her slit-eyes. Now August Pokriefke was rattling off the stations on the third Koshnavian run—Nakel-Konitz: Gersdorf, Obkass, Schlangenthin… Chances were being sold for the Winter Aid raffle. First prize: a dessert set for twelve, including wine glasses; all crystal, pure crystal! Tulla was allowed to draw three lots, because one time, last year, she had drawn an eleven-pound goose. From the all but full SA cap she drew, without removing her eyes from the toilet door: first, a bar of Anglas chocolate; and then, with small scratched hand, she draws the second lot: blank! But none the less the first prize, the crystal: the door to the men’s toilet is slammed and wrenched open. Where pants are being unbuttoned or dropped, things are starting up. Quick on the draw, out come the knives. Stabbing each other and slicing each other’s jackets, because Tulla is drawing the lot: China against Japan. Shoilem boil ’em. />
  And kick and clout and turn over and lay out flat and bellow: “Shut up your trap! You crazy loon! You lousy bastard! You stinking ape! Not so rough!” And all the drunks at the bar: Willy Eggers, Paule Hoppe, Alfons Bublitz, the younger Dulleck, and Otto Warnke pull out their clasp knives: “Shoilem boil ’em!” A brawny-armed chorus, stewed to the gills, take their pick of fruit plates, behead glasses, and oil the toilet door. Because Tulla has pulled a blank, they brawl around and tickle each other with knives hooks chivies. Chair and bone, here and now, nobody’s yellow, gimme room, plunk on the head, artifacts crack, Willy stands, self-point totters, beer and blood, exaltation. For all ten are champs and have no need to catch their breath. Each looking for each. Who’s crawling down there? Whose ink is running out? What are them plug-uglies hollering about? How are toilet doors lifted off their hinges? Who drew the lot? Blank. Uppercut. Tackle. Inside-out. Squirting brains. Telephone: one one eight. Police, shoilem boil ’em! Sneaky and under handed. Never never. Existent. Green Room. Chandelier crashes. Being and Time. Fuse blows. No lights. Darkness: for in the Black Room the black beauty doctors of the Black Maria look for pitch-black round heads, until brains, black under black chandelier, and the black women scream: “Light! Where’s the light? Oh, my, the police! Shoilem boil ’em.”

  Only when Tulla in the darkness drew a third lot from the SA cap that had stayed with us between her knees, only when my cousin had drawn and unrolled the third lot—it won her a pail of dill pickles from the Kühne Mustard Co.—did the lights go on again. The four stand-by policemen under Sergeant Burau and the sixteen reinforcements under Police Lieutenant Sausin moved in: from the bar and the swinging door to the cloakroom: green, loved, and feared. All twenty-two cops had police whistles between their lips and warbled down on the crowd. They worked with the new night sticks, introduced from Italy by Police President Froboess, there termed manganelli, here beauty doctors. The new billies had the advantage over the old ones that they left no open wounds, but operated dryly, almost silently. After one blow with the new police truncheon, each victim turned two and a half times in patent consternation on his own axis and then, but still in corkscrew fashion, collapsed to the floor. Near the toilet door August Pokriefke also submitted to the authority of the article imported from Mussolini’s Italy. Without open wounds he was laid up for a week. Not counting him, the final count was three seriously injured and seventeen slightly injured, including four cops. SA men Willy Eggers and Franzchen Wollschläger, Gustav Dau, the mason, and Lothar Budzinski, the coal dealer, were taken to police headquarters but released the following morning. Herr Koschinski, manager of the Kleinhammerpark, reported one thousand two hundred gulden worth of damages to the insurance company: glass, chairs, the chandelier, the demolished toilet door, the mirror in the toilet, the potted plants around the speaker’s stand, the first prize: crystal crystal!—and so on. A police investigation revealed that there had been a short circuit, that someone—I know who!—had unscrewed the fuses.