Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Well, when it’s all over, the confessional is undamaged. But she lies for a long while on cold flags and lets her nose bleed in the dusk. He goes roaming again, dog at heel, wordless. And back again at the indestructible confessional after two lonely echoing rounds, he snaps open his good old lighter with a view to lighting a comforting pipe; the lighter accomplishes more than he expected: first, it helps the pipe, second it proves that Inge’s nose blood is red, and third it lights up a little card pinned to the confessional, and on the card something is written: a name in black and white: Joseph Knopf. Without further address, for at the moment the name is residing right here and has no need, like other names, to indicate street and number in Cologne’s holy men’s toilet; daily, for half an hour, from nine forty-five to ten fifteen this Knopf inhabits the indestructible confessional, making his certified ear available to each and all. O leit- and murder motives! O revenge, syrup-sweet! O justice plying the rails in all directions! O names crossed off and still to be crossed off: Joseph Knopf—or the Eighty-sixth Materniad!

  Matern crosses him off on the dot of ten, solo and in person. Meanwhile he has tied Pluto—parting is sweet sorrow—to a bicycle stand still intact amid the ruins of Neuss. Still weeping, Inge slips away without a word shortly before early Mass and with squashed nose tramps back in the direction of Cologne. Some truck will pick her up—but he stays; on Batteriestrasse, almost exactly halfway between Münsterplatz and the industrial port, he doesn’t seek but finds ten pfennigs in one piece. Wealth! St. Quirinus has put it there especially for him; with it you can buy a butt; or the Rheinische Post, fresh off the press; it’s the price of a box of matches or a stick of chewing gum; you could put it in a slot and, if you stood on the scales, out into the world would come a little card: your weight! But Matern smokes a pipe and when necessary snaps open his lighter. Matern reads newspapers in showcases. Matern has plenty to chew on. Matern doesn’t need to be weighed. For ten found pfennigs Matern buys a beautiful long smooth chaste knitting needle—for what?

  Don’t turn around, knitting needle’s going round. This knitting needle is for the priest’s ear and is intended to enter the ear of Joseph Knopf. With malice aforethought Matern, at nine forty-five, walks into the asymmetrical church of St. Quirinus to judge with a long knitting needle alienated from its function.

  Ahead of him two old women confess briefly and meagerly. Now in the somnolent church night he kneels down in the very place where Inge, having been put into position, was going to confess to the dog. Anyone looking for evidence could probably find Ingeblood on the wooden grille and bear witness to a case of martyrdom. He takes aim and whispers. Joseph Knopf’s ear is large and fleshy and doesn’t quiver. There’s room for the whole confession, sins checked off on fingers, and bang in the midst of it an old old story that happened in the dog years of the late thirties, involving a former SA man, then a Neo-Catholic, and a professional Old-Catholic who, on the strength of the so-called resolutions of Maria Laach, advised the Neo-Catholic to get back into a regular SA sturm in spite of everything and with the help of the Blessed Virgin to reinforce the Catholic wing of the inherently godless SA. A complicated story that turns cartwheels on thin ice. But the priest’s ear doesn’t quiver. Matern whispers names, dates, and quotations. He breathes: his name was Soandso, the other one’s name was Soandso. No fly molests the priest’s ear. Matern is still as busy as a bee: And the one whose name was Soandso said to the other one after devotions, that was in May of the year… The priest’s ear is still hewn of marble. And from time to time substantial words issue from the other side: “My son, do you repent with all your heart? You know that Jesus Christ, who died for us on the cross, knows of every sin, even the most venial, and is watching us, whatever we do. Be contrite. Keep nothing back, my son.”

  Such precisely were Matern’s intentions. Once again he reels off the whole story. From an ingenious music box emerge the carved figures: Kaas, the prelate, Pacelli, the nunzio, the former SA man, the repentant Neo-Catholic, the crafty Old-Catholic, and the representative of the Catholic wing of the SA. All, lastly the merciful Virgin Mary, do their little dance and exit; but Matern still hasn’t unreeled the whole of his whispered spool: “And it was you, you and no one else, who said that, get back into the SA. A lot of rubbish about the concordat and anecdotes from Maria Laach. They even secretly blessed a banner and whined out prayers for the Führer. You Dominican! You black shitbag. And to me, Matern, you said: My son, resume the brown garment of honor. Jesus Christ, who died on the cross and watches us in all our works, has sent us the Führer to stamp out the seed of the godless with your help and mine. That’s right. Stamp out!” But the priest’s ear, mentioned several times by name, is still the ingenious product of a Gothic stonecutter. When the knitting needle, retail price ten pfennigs, is put in motion, when the instrument of vengeance rests on the ornate grille of the confessional and is aimed knittingneedle-sharp at the priest’s ear, nothing quivers in alarm for the eardrum; only the old man’s voice, thinking the penitent has finished, drones out wearily and with routine mildness the everlasting words: “Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.” The penance imposed consists of nine Paternosters and thirty-two Ave Marias.

  Then Matern, who has come to judge with a ten-pfennig knitting needle, lets his instrument recoil: this priest is lending his ear only symbolically. He is invulnerable. You can tell him your whole story twice a day, all he hears is the wind in the trees or not even. Joseph Knopf. Deaf-as-a-button Knopf. Deaf-as-a-button priest absolves me in the name of this one and that one, and in the name of the dove. Behind the grille stonedeaf Joseph makes monkeysigns for me to leave. Clear out, Matern! Other people have things to confide in my deaf ear. Get thee behind me. All your sins are remitted. O.K., get a move on, cleaner can’t be did. Mingle with the penitents: Maria Laach is near Neviges. Find yourself some nice little Canossa. Take the knitting needle back to the store. Maybe they’ll take it back and return your ten pfennigs. For that you can get matches or chewing gum. That’s the price of the Rheinische Post. For ten pfennigs you can see how much you weigh after alleviating confession. Or buy your dog some sausage skins. Pluto has to be kept in form.

  THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH WORM-EATEN MATERNIAD

  Everybody has at least two fathers. They aren’t necessarily acquainted with each other. Some fathers don’t even know. Sometimes fathers get lost. Speaking of uncertain fathers, Matern possesses one who is particularly deserving of a monument, but doesn’t know where he; or suspect what he; in whom he hopes. But he doesn’t look for him.

  Instead, and even in his dreams, whose work consists in felling a murmuring beech forest trunk by trunk, he gropes for Goldmouth, concerning whom mysterious things are being said on all sides. Yet, painstakingly as he searches every bay in the men’s toilet of Cologne Central Station for hints about Goldmouth, no pointing arrow starts him on a dogtrot; but he reads—and this lesson puts him on the track of his father Anton Matern—a maxim freshly engraved in defective enamel:

  “Don’t listen to the worm. There’s a worm in the worm.”

  Without striking his search for Goldmouth and his dream job of felling beeches from his program, Matern sets out in a fatherly direction.

  The miller with the flat ear. Standing beside the historical postmill in Nickelswalde, situated to the east of the Vistula estuary and surrounded by Siberian frost-resistant Urtoba wheat, he shouldered a hundredweight sack until the mill, with turning sails, burned down from the jack via the flour loft to the sack loft. Thereupon the miller evaded the clutches of war, which was approaching from Tiegenhof by way of Scharpau. Laden with a twenty-pound sack of wheat flour—milled from the Epp variety—he, along with his wife and sister, found room on a ferry barge which had operated for years between the Vistula villages of Nickelswalde and Schiewenhorst. The convoy included the ferryboat Rothebude, the railroad ferry Einlage, the tugboat Future, and a bevy of fishing launches. Northeast of Rügen the ferry barge S
chiewenhorst had to be unloaded because of engine trouble and taken in tow by the Rothebude-Käsemark ferry. The miller, the twenty-pound sack of white flour, and the miller’s family were allowed to board a torpedo boat. This vessel, overloaded with seasickness and children’s screams, struck a mine west of Bornholm, and sank instantly, taking with it screams and collywobbles, not to mention the miller’s wife and sister; he, however, managed to find standing room for himself and his sack of flour on the excursion steamer Swan, which had put out from Danzig-Neufahrwasser, destination Lübeck. Without further change of ship, miller Anton Matern, with flat ear and still-dry twenty-pound sack, reached the port of Travemünde, terra firma, the continent.

  In the course of the following months—history goes right on: peace breaks out!—the miller is obliged to defend his shouldered refugee property often and craftily, for around him there are many who would like to eat cake but have no flour. He himself is often tempted to diminish the twenty pounds by a handful and cook himself a creamy wheat soup; but whenever his stomach prods him, his left hand gives his right-hand fingers, toying with the sack strings, a sharp smack. And it is thus that creeping misery, now engaged in environmental studies, finds him: lopsided, silent, and abstemious in waiting rooms, lodged in refugee barracks, squeezed into Nissen huts. The one ear protrudes enormously, while the flat ear is pressed by the undiminished twenty-pound sack. There the sack lies safe and—to an outside observer—as still as a mouse.

  When, between the Hanover railroad station and the perforated but still long-tailed equestrian monument, miller Matern is caught in a police raid, taken to headquarters, and—because of the flour-filled sack—threatened with prosecution for black marketing, King Ernest Augustus, the Hanoverian, does not dismount from his charger to save him; a German official employed by the Allied military government takes his part, defends him and the twenty pounds with a fluent speech, and little by little in the course of his half-hour plea allows two and thirty gold teeth to glitter: Goldmouth vouches for miller Matern and takes the lopsided man and his sack of flour under his protection, nay more: in consideration of the miller’s professional aptitudes, he buys him a slightly damaged postmill on the plains between Düren and Krefeld, and has the roof fixed, though he has no intention of having the tattered sails mended and turned into the wind.

  For at Goldmouth’s behest, the miller is to live a contemplative life on two stories: upstairs, under the main shaft and the dust-matted gears, in the so-called sack loft, he sleeps. Though cluttered with the big bedstone, the hopper, and the counterwheel which projects between the rafters, this loft, where formerly grist was piled, provides ample space for a bed, which, what with the proximity of the border, is an almost Dutch bed. The stone serves as a table. The damsel over the hopper contains shirts, underwear, and other belongings. Bats evacuate the counterwheel and lantern, arbor and windlay drive, to make room for Goldmouth’s little presents: the radio, the lamp—he had electricity put in—the illustrated magazines, and the few utensils required by an old man who knows how to conjure up the smell of fried potatoes from a camp stove. The steps leading down are equipped with a new banister. For the spacious flour loft, marked in the center by the mill post, yields the miller’s parlor and soon his consultation room. Under the iron plank and the overhung rail, under the inextricable clutter of machinery which formerly served to adjust the burrs, Goldmouth, who translates the miller’s every whim into suggestions, places an imposing newly upholstered wing chair. Because one of its wings gets in the way of the shouldered twenty-pound bag, it ultimately has to be exchanged for a wingless easy chair. The mill creaks even on windless days. When the wind blows outside, dust still clouds up from the meal bin through the chute into the tattered bolter that hangs crooked in its frame. Easterly winds make the pot-bellied stove smoke. But usually the clouds, coming from the canal, scud low over the Rhenish Lowlands. Once, right after he has moved in, the miller oils the cotter that holds the oak lever in place and retightens the keys in the tenons to do justice to the occasion: a miller has moved into a mill. After that he lives in felt slippers and dark denims, sleeps until nine, eats breakfast alone or with Goldmouth when he happens to be visiting, and leafs through wartime or post-wartime numbers of Life. He signs his contract right away, immediately after the momentous tightening of the keys in the tenons. Goldmouth doesn’t demand much: with the exception of Thursday, the miller with his flat ear has to give consultations from ten to twelve every morning. In the afternoon, except for Thursday, which sees him hard at work from three to five, he is free. Then he sits with protruding ear by the radio, or goes to the movies in Viersen, or plays skat with two officers of the Refugee Party, to which he also gives his vote, because he holds that the cemeteries to the left and right of the Vistula estuary, especially the one in Steegen, are richer in ivy than any of the cemeteries between Krefeld and Erkelenz.

  But who comes to consult the lopsided miller with the flat ear in the morning and Thursday afternoon office hours? At first the nearby peasants come to see him and pay in produce such as butter and asparagus; later on, small manufacturers from Düren and Gladbach come, bringing finished products with barter value; early in ’46, he is discovered by the press.

  What attracts these visitors, at first few and far between, then swelling to a stream that can hardly be regulated? For the benefit of anyone who is still in the dark: miller Anton Matern listens to the future with his flat ear. The lopsided miller knows important dates in advance. His recumbent ear, which seems to be deaf to everyday sounds, hears pointers with the help of which the future can be manipulated. No table tipping, laying out of cards, stirring of coffee grounds. Nor does he, from the sack loft, point a telescope at the stars. Nor unravel meaningful lines in hands. No poking around in hedgehog hearts and fox spleens or in the kidneys of a red-spotted calf. For the benefit of anyone who is still in the dark: it’s the twenty-pound sack that knows so much. More specifically, mealworms, which in the flour milled from wheat of the Epp variety have survived the trip on the ferry barge, the swift sinking of the torpedo boat, in short, the turmoil of the war and the postwar period, at first with God’s, later with Goldmouth’s help, whisper predictions; the miller’s flat ear—ten thousand and more hundredweight sacks of Urtoba wheat, of Epp wheat, of wheat flour milled from Schliephacke No. 5, have made it so flat, deaf and clairaudient—hears what the future has to offer and the miller’s voice passes the mealworms’ pointers on to those in quest of advice. For a reasonable fee, miller Anton Matern, abetted by East German worms, helps in no small degree to guide the destinies of West Germany; for when, after peasants and small manufacturers, Hamburg’s future press moguls sit down facing his easy chair and write their questions on a small slate, he begins to wield influence: showing the way, molding opinion, influencing world politics, speaking the universal language of pictures, of reversed mirror images.

  After handing out advice for many years in his native Nickelswalde, after guiding wheat production between Neuteich and Bohnsack with mealworm pointers and making it profitable, after predicting, with flat ear against mealworm-inhabited sack, plagues of mice, hailstorms, the devaluation of the Free City gulden, the collapse of the grain exchange, the date of the Reichspresident’s death, and the ill-omened visit of the fleet to Danzig harbor, he now succeeds, with Goldmouth’s support, in leaping from provincial obscurity to world fame throughout West Germany: three gentlemen drive up in a jeep belonging to the occupation authorities. Young and hence blameless, they take the stairs to the flour loft in two and a half steps, bringing with them noise, talent, and ignorance, pound on the mill post, potter with the windlay drive, and are determined to climb up to the sack loft and dirty their fingers in the mill machinery. But the “Private” sign on the banister of the sack-loft stairs enables them to show good breeding; they quiet down like school boys as they face miller Matern, who points to the slate and slate pencil, in order that wishes may be formulated and opened to fulfillment.

  What the mealwo
rms have to say to the three gentlemen may sound prosaic: the handsomest of the three is advised to insist, in his negotiations with the British authorities, on newspaper license No. 67, in order that, under the name of Hör zu (Tune In), it may run up a circulation and—just in passing—provide miller Matern with a free subscription; for the miller is wild about illustrated magazines and gone on the radio. License No. 6, titled Die Zeit (Time) at the worms’ suggestion, is the advice given to the most agile of the three gentlemen. But to the smallest and most distinguished of the young gentlemen, who is bashfully chewing his fingernails and doesn’t even dare to step forward, the mealworms whisper by way of the miller that he should have a try with license No. 123 and drop his unsuccessful experiment, known as, Die Woche (The Week).*

  The smooth Springer taps the unworldly Rudi on the shoulder: “Ask Grampa what name to give your baby.”

  Instantly the blind mealworms send their message through the lopsided miller: Der Spiegel (The Mirror), which finds the pimple on the smoothest forehead, has its place in every modern household, but the mirror has to be concave; what’s easily read can easily be forgotten and yet quoted; the truth isn’t always essential, but the house number has to be right; in short, a good card index, ten thousand or more well-filled file drawers, take the place of thought; “people,” so say the mealworms, “don’t want to be made to think, they want to be accurately informed.”

  By right the consultation is over, but Springer sulks and sticks at the mealworm prognoses, because in his heart he doesn’t want to start a radio magazine for the great masses, but is more inclined toward a radically pacifist weekly. “I want to stir people up, stir them up.” At this the mealworms via miller Matern comfort him and forecast, for June 1952, the birth of an institution conducive to the general welfare: “Every morning three million reading illiterates will breakfast over an illustrated daily.”