Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  South of Lake Schwielow he passed without incident the advance elements of the Twelfth Army that were supposed to relieve the pressure on the capital. After he had taken a short rest in the overgrown garden of a villa, an armored infantryman fed him still-warm pea soup and, without taking an official tone, called him by his name. Immediately thereafter enemy artillery subjected the villa area to harassing fire, slightly wounded the armored infantryman, but missed the dog; for what you see there, running with steady, reliable haunches, following the pre-established Visigothic migration route, is still one and the same self-grounded black German shepherd.

  Panting between rippled lakes on a windy day in May. The ether teeming with weighty happening. Snapping at his goal, westward over the Prussian sand into which pine trees claw. A horizontal tail, fangs far in advance, waving tongue cut down the distance on sixteen times four legs: dog’s leap in successive part movements. Everything in sixteenths: land scape, spring, air, freedom, tufty trees, beautiful clouds, first butterflies, singing of birds, buzzing of insects, kitchen gardens bursting into green, musical lath fences. Furrows spit out rabbits, partridges flush, nature without scale, no more sandbox but horizons, smells you could spread on bread, slowly drying sunsets, boneless dawns, now and then a wrecked tank, romantic against the five-o’clock-in-the-morning sky, moon and dog, dog eats moon, dog close-up, evaporating dog, dog project, dog deserter, get-out-of-here dog, count-me-out dog, dog-thrownness, genealogicals: And Perkun sired Senta; and Senta whelped Harras; and Harras sired Prinz… Dog greatness, ontic and scientific, dog deserter with the wind in his sails; for the wind too, like everybody else, is headed west: The Twelfth Army, the remains of the Ninth Army, what is left of the Steiner and Holste combat teams, the weary Löhr, Schörner, and Rendulic army groups, unsuccessfully the East Prussia and Kurland army groups from the ports of Libau and Windau, the garrison of Rügen Island, whoever is able to get away from Hela and the Vistula delta, in short, the remains of the Second Army; everybody who has a nose to smell with runs, swims, drags himself away: away from the Eastenemy toward the Westenemy; civilians on foot, on horseback, packed into former cruise steamers, hobble in stocking feet, drown wrapped in paper money, crawl with too little gas and too much baggage; behold the miller with his twenty-pound sack of flour, the carpenter, laden with doorframes and bone glue, relatives and in-laws, Party members, active and passive, children with dolls and grandmothers with photograph albums, the imaginary and the real, all all all see the sun rising in the west and take their bearings from the dog.

  Left behind: mounds of bones, mass graves, card files, flagpoles, party books, love letters, homes, church pews, and pianos difficult to transport.

  Unpaid: taxes, mortage payments, back rent, bills, debts, and guilt.

  All are eager to start out fresh with living, saving, letter writing, in church pews, at pianos, in card files and homes of their own.

  All are eager to forget the mounds of bones and the mass graves, the flagpoles and party books, the debts and the guilt.

  There was once a dog,

  who left his master and traveled a long way. Only rabbits pucker up their noses; but let no one who can read suppose that the dog didn’t get there.

  On May 8, 1945, at 4:45 a.m., he swam across the Elbe above Magdeburg almost unseen and went looking for a new master on the west side of the river.

  BOOK THREE | Materniads

  FIRST MATERNIAD

  The dog stands central. Between him and the dog runs barbed wire, old and new, from corner to corner of the camp. While the dog stands, Matern scratches tin out of an empty tin can. He has a spoon but no memory. Everybody and everything are trying to give him one: the central dog; the tin can filled with air; the English questionnaire; and now Brauxel is sending advances and setting deadlines determined by the entrances and exits of certain planets: he wants Matern to shoot the shit about those days.

  To begin is to select. What about this double row of barbed wire between dog and tin can: deprivation of freedom, prison camp jitters, all very graphic though the current has been turned off. Or stick to the dog, then you’ll be central. Pour soup, noodled with names, into the tin can for him, expelling the air. Because you can always find scraps—dog food: the twenty-nine potato years. Memory soup. Remembrance dumplings. All those unseasoned lies. Theatrical roles and life. Matern’s dehydrated vegetables. Gritty guilt: that’s the salt.

  To cook is to select. Which takes longer to cook, barley grits or barbed wire? Grits are spooned up, and yet under done barbed wire between him and the dog induces grind ing of the teeth. Matern could never abide wire and fences. Even his ancestor, who still called himself Materna, carried subversive grinding of the teeth with him to the Stockturm, the windowless tower.

  To remember is to select. This, that, or the other dog? Every dog is central. What will drive a dog away? There aren’t that many stones in the world; and Camp Munster—who doesn’t remember it from the old days?—was built on sand and has scarcely changed. Barracks burned down, Nissen huts went up. The camp movie house, a few stray pines, the inevitable mess hall, and the whole enclosed in old wire, enriched by new wire: Matern, whom an English anti-fascist camp had spewed out, is spooning up barley grits behind the new barbed wire surrounding a discharge camp.

  Twice a day he laps soup from a clattering tin can and follows his footprints in the sand along the double row of wire. Don’t look around, the Grinder’s around. Twice a day the selfsame dog refuses to eat stones: “Beat it! Clear out! Go back where you came from!”

  For tomorrow or the day after the papers will be ready for somebody who wants to be alone, without a dog.

  “Where will you go when you get your discharge?”

  “Let’s see, Mr. Brooks, let’s say Cologne or Neuss.”

  “Date and place of birth?”

  “April 1917, just a minute: the nineteenth, to be exact, in Nickelswalde, Danzig Lowlands District.”

  “Education and special training?”

  “Well, first the usual: public school in the village, then high school. After graduating I was supposed to study economics, but I took up acting instead, under good old Gustav Nord, played Shakespeare marvelously, but he did Shaw, too, Saint Joan…”

  “Then you’re an actor by profession?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Broox. Played everything that came along. Karl and Franz Moor: Slavish wisdom, slavish fears! And once, in our good old Coffee Mill, when I was still a beginner, I even took the part of a talking reindeer. Those were the days, Mr…”

  “Ever a member of the C.P.? During what period?”

  “Well, I graduated in ’35. I must have started in with the Red Falcons at the beginning of second. Pretty soon I joined the Communist Party and stayed in until it was suppressed in Danzig, that was in ’34. I worked illegally for a while after that, handing out leaflets and putting up posters, it was no use.”

  “Have you ever been a member of the National Socialist Party or any of its organizations?”

  “A few months in the SA, for the hell of it. Sort of snooping around to see what was going on, and partly because a friend of mine…”

  “During what period?”

  “I just told you, Mr. Braux, a couple of months. From late summer ’37 to spring ’38. Then they threw me out. My sturm had me for trial for insubordination.”

  “What sturm?”

  “If I could only remember! You see, I wasn’t in very long. The whole thing was on account of this good friend of mine, who was a half-Jew. I was trying to protect him from the pack… All right, it was SA Sturm 84, Langfuhr-North. Belonged to Standarte 128, SA Brigade 6, Danzig.”

  “What was your friend’s name?”

  “Amsel. Eduard Amsel. He was an artist. We grew up together, so to speak. He could be awfully funny. Made stage sets, mechanical things. For instance, he wouldn’t put on a suit or a pair of shoes until they’d been worn by somebody else. He was terribly fat but he had a good singing voice. A wonderful guy, real
ly.”

  “What became of Amsel?”

  “No idea. Had to leave town, because they’d kicked me out of the SA. I asked all over, for instance, I went to see Brunies, our former German teacher…”

  “Where’s the teacher now?”

  “Brunies. He must be dead. Sent to a concentration camp in ‘34.”

  “Which one?”

  “Stutthof. Near Danzig.”

  “Your last and next-to-last military unit?”

  “Up to November, ’43, 22nd AA Regiment, Kaiserhafen battery. Then I was court-martialed for insulting the Führer and undermining Army morale. They broke me from tech sergeant to private and sent me to the Fourth Punitive Battalion to clear mines. On January 23, ’45, I deserted to the 28th American Infantry Division in the Vosges.”

  “Any other trouble with the authorities?”

  “Plenty, Mr. Brooks. Well, first the business with my SA sturm. Then, just a year later—I’d gone to Schwerin to work in the theater—I was dismissed without notice for insulting the Führer and so on. Then I went to Düsseldorf. I did odd jobs on children’s radio programs and played faustball on the side with the Unterrath Sports Club. A couple of the club members turned me in: I was held for questioning at the Kavalleriestrasse police headquarters, if that means anything to you. When they got through with me, I was ready for the hospital, and if the war hadn’t broken out in the nick of time… Oh yes, I almost forgot the business with the dog. That was in midsummer 1939…”

  “In Düsseldorf?”

  “No, Mr. Broox, that was back in Danzig. I’d had to volunteer or they’d have cooked me. So I was stationed in the former police barracks in Hochstriess, and during that time, maybe because I was mad or maybe just because I was against, I poisoned a dog, a shepherd.”

  “What was this shepherd’s name?”

  “Harras, and he belonged to a carpenter.”

  “Anything special about the dog?”

  “He was a stud dog, as they say. And in ‘35 or ‘36 this Harras had sired a dog by the name of Prinz, honest to God, as true as I’m standing here, that was given to Hitler for his birthday and was supposed—there must be witnesses—to have been his favorite dog. In addition—and here, Mr. Braux, the story gets personal—Senta, our Senta, had been Harras’ mother. In Nickelswalde—that’s in the Vistula estuary—she whelped Harras and a couple of other pups under the jack of our windmill when I was just ten. Then it burned down. This windmill of ours was a very special mill…”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, it was known as the historical mill of Nickelswalde, because on her flight from Napoleon Queen Louise of Prussia spent the night in our mill. It was a fine German post-mill. My great-grandfather built it, that was August Matern. He was a lineal descendant of Simon Materna, the famous hero of Polish independence, who in 1516 was arrested by Hans Nimptsch, the city captain, and beheaded in the Danzig Stockturm; but by 1524 his cousin, the journeyman barber Gregor Materna, was sounding the call for another uprising, and on August 14, while the St. Dominic’s Day market was going on, he in turn, because that’s the way we Materns are, we can’t button up, we’re always shooting our traps off, even my father, Anton Matern, the miller, who could predict the future, because the mealworms…”

  “Thank you, Mr. Matern. You’ve given us sufficient information. Your discharge papers will be issued tomorrow morning. Here’s your pass. You may go.”

  Through this door on two hinges, to give the sun outside a chance to show what it can do: on the camp grounds POW Matern, barracks, Nissen huts, the remaining pines, the crowded bulletin board, the double row of the barbed wire, and the patient dog outside the fence cast shadows, all in the same direction. Remember! How many rivers empty into the Vistula? How many teeth has a man? What were the names of the ancient Prussian gods? How many dogs? Were there eight or nine muffled figures? How many names are still alive? How many women have you… ? How long did your grandmother sit riveted to her chair? What did your father’s mealworms whisper when the miller’s son asked him how somebody was getting along and what he was doing? He whispered, remember, that this somebody was hoarse as a grater and nevertheless chain-smoked all day long. And when did we do Billinger’s The Giant at the Stadttheater? Who played the part of Donata Opferkuch, and who did her son? What did Strohmenger the critic write in the Vorposten? Here’s what it said, remember: “The gifted young Matern distinguished himself as the son of Donata Opferkuch, who, it should be added, was played sloppily but powerfully by Maria Bargheer; son and mother, two interesting, ambivalent figures…” Chien… cane… dog… kyon! I’ve been discharged. In my windbreaker I’ve got papers, six hundred reichsmarks and traveler’s food tickets! My barracks bag contains two pairs of drawers, three under shirts, four pairs of socks, a pair of American combat boots with rubber soles, two almost new Ami shirts, dyed black, a German officer’s overcoat, undyed, a real civilian hat from Cornwall, gentlemanlike, two packages of K-rations, a pound can of English pipe tobacco, fourteen packs of Camels, about twenty paperbacks—mostly Shakespeare Grabbe Schiller—a complete edition of Being and Time—still containing the dedication to Husserl—five cakes of first-class soap and three cans of corned beef… Chien, I’m rich! Cane, where is thy victory? Beat it, dog! Get thee behind me, kyon!

  On foot, with his barracks bag over his shoulder, Matern takes steps on sand which outside the camp isn’t trampled as hard as inside the camp. No more social life, that was the main thing! Accordingly, shank’s mare and no trains for the present. The dog shrinks back and refuses to understand. A real or simulated throwing of stones drives him into plowed fields or up the path. Empty throwing motions make him tense; real stones he retrieves: zellacken.

  With ineluctable dog Matern covers three sandy miles in the direction of Fallingbostel. Since the good dirt road is not like himself headed southwest, he drives the critter across the fields. Anyone who has noticed that Matern is striding normally on the right side will have to admit that on the left side he has a barely perceptible limp. All this was once a military terrain and will remain so for all eternity: damage to crops. A brown heath starts up and merges into young woods. A felling makes him a present of a club: “Beat it, dog. Faithfulasadog. You no-good bastard, beat it!”

  I can’t take him with me, can I? To live for once without admirers. Haven’t I been hounded enough? What can I do with this flea bag? Rat poison, cuckoo clocks, doves of peace, sharks, Christian dogs, Jewish swine, domestic animals, domestic animals… “Beat it, dog.”

  This from morning to night till he was almost hoarse. From Ostenholz to Essel his mouth full of self-defense and names aimed not only at the dog but at the whole environing world. In his cold homeland zellacken and not stones were picked up from the fields whenever there was somebody to be stoned. These, and clods of earth and the club as well, are meant to hit the critter and just about everything else. Never has a dog, unwilling to leave his self-chosen master, had an opportunity to learn so much about the dog’s function in mythology: is there any underworld he doesn’t have to guard; any river of the dead whose waters some dog doesn’t lap up? Lethe Lethe, how do we get rid of memories? No hell but has its hellhound!

  Never has a dog unwilling to leave his self-chosen master been sent to so many countries and cities at once: Go where the pepper grows. To Buxtehude, Jericho, Todtnau. What multitudes of people this dog is told to nuzzle up to! Names names—but he doesn’t go to hell, doesn’t go to Pepper City, doesn’t kiss the ass of strangers, but follows, faithfulasadog, his self-chosen master.

  Don’t look around, here comes the hound. Then Matern gives a peasant a piece of advice in Mandelsloh—that makes him a Lower Saxon peasant, they had been following the River Leine together. In exchange for four Camels the peasant has let him sleep in a real bed, white in and out. Over steaming fried potatoes Matern suggests: “Couldn’t you use a dog? He’s a stray, he’s been after me all day. I can’t get rid of him. Not a bad mutt, only kind of run down.”


  But the following day from Mandelsloh to Rothenuffeln isn’t dogless for a single step, though in the peasant’s opinion the dog wasn’t bad, only neglected, he’d sleep on it and tell him in the morning. At breakfast the peasant was willing, but not the dog, his mind was made up.

  The Steinhuder Sea sees them coupled; a load off Matern’s feet between Rothenuffeln and Brackwede when a three-wheeled cart picks him up whereas the dog has to shake a leg; and in Westphalia, when their day’s destination goes by the name of Rinkerode, the couple is still undivided: not a dog more, not a dog less. And as they are hiking from Rinkerode past Othmarsbocholt to Ermen, he begins to share with him: rye bread and corned beef. But while the dog bolts scraps, a club that has come along from Lower Saxony thuds dully on matted fur.

  On which account he scrubs him next day—after the two of them have maintained a moderate distance from Ermen via Olfen to Eversum—in the River Stever, until he glistens black: coat and undercoat. A pipeful of tobacco is traded for an old dog comb. Matern receives an attestation: “He’s a purebred.” He can see that for himself, he knows a thing or two about dogs. “You’re not telling me anything new, man. I grew up with a dog. Take a look at the legs. He’s not cow-hocked or bowlegged. And the line from croup to withers: no sign of lumpiness, just that he isn’t as young as he used to be. Take a look at the lips, they don’t close tight. And those two gray spots over the stop. But his teeth will be good for years.”