Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Quickly, before the miller can spring open his pocket watch a second time, the gentleman who only a moment before was as cheerful as a senator and whose manners Axel Springer and little Augstein are trying to copy, owns to perplexity bordering on despair, and pleads for help. At night, so he confesses on the slate, he has Social-democratic dreams, by day he dines with Christian heavy industry, but his heart is with avant-garde literature, in short, he can’t make up his mind. Whereupon the mealworm informs him that this mixture—left by night, right by day, and avant-garde at heart—is characteristic and timely: wholesome, honorable, liberal, prudently courageous, pedagogic, and lucrative.

  Question after question comes bubbling out. “Advertising rates? Who’s going to be the vetoing minority in the house of Ullstein?”—but the mealworms, represented by miller Matern, decline to reply. Before they politely take their leave, all three gentlemen are permitted to carve their names in the mill post—which the miller exhibits to this day: the handsome Springer, the weltschmerz-tormented Rudi, and Herr Bucerius, whose family tree has its roots in the medieval enlightenment.

  After a quiet week—a carpet is laid under miller Matern’s feet; the lever, which formerly started or stopped the shaking movement of the hopper, serves as a temporary support for the glassed photograph of the aged President Hindenburg—; after a week of trifling domestic changes and of organizational initiative—Goldmouth has the path leading to the idle windmill widened and a sign put up on the highway between Viersen and Dülken—after a week, then, of quiet preparation, a number of big businessmen or their agents with decartelization troubles drive in over the freshly graveled driveway; and in a twinkling the mealworms, rested and communicative, cure the headaches of the tangled Flick group. On a hard stool sits Otto-Ernst Flick in person, representing his father and needful of advice. Not that the miller knows who is sitting there, crossing leg and leg, each time in a different way; with benign indifference he leafs through his worn illustrated magazines, while the slate fills up with urgent questions. The Allied decartelization law demands that Flick Senior should drop either iron or coal. The mealworm proclaims: “Unload your coal mines.” So it happens that the holding company whose merger with Mannesmann has been dissolved takes over the majority of Essen Anthracite AG and later, as the mealworm advises, rejoins Mannesmann. Nine years later, or five years after his anticipated and mealworm-dated release from a term at hard labor, Flick Senior manages to get back into Harpener Coal, this time as a majority stockholder.

  In the same year, incidentally, Dr. Ernst Schneider, who calls at the windmill shortly after Flick Junior, joins the Trinkhaus Bank; and with him the whole Michel group comes aboard: soft coal, soft coal!—and the carbon dioxide industry, whose chairman he is, thanks to the mealworm; for with a tongue as broad as the Vistula the miller hands out positions which shortly before were filled by the mealworms. Thus, for example, a retired cavalry captain, soon to be the key figure of the burgeoning German economy, is promised twenty-two board memberships including six chair manships, because if Herr von Bülow-Schwante is to remain in the saddle, he will have to lead the entire Stumm Corporation over high and crowded hurdles that the Allies have put in his path.

  Coming and going. Gentlemen exchange greetings on the stairs leading to the flour loft and to miller Matern. Resounding names begin to fill up the mill post, for nearly everyone wants to immortalize himself, Hoesch, or the Bochum Association in this famous place. Krupp sends Beitz, and Beitz learns how, with the fickle times working in Krupp’s favor, decartelization is to be sidestepped. At an early date the mealworms also pave the way for the crucial interview be tween Messrs. Beitz and R. Murphy, U.S. Undersecretary of State. The mealworms speak, as Beitz and Murphy will do later on, of long-term credits to underdeveloped countries; but it is not the government that should open its moneybags, let Krupp pour out riches privately and with careful aim: iron foundries in India are projected by mealworms who, if they had been permitted to live in Nickelswalde to the right of the Vistula estuary, would have devised projects for the People’s Republic of Poland; but the Poles refused to be helped by the East German mealworm.

  Accordingly Siemens & Halske; Klöckner and Humboldt; Petroleum and Potash, wherever rocksalt flourishes. This honor is accorded miller Matern on a rainy Wednesday morning. Dr. Quandt comes in person and finds out how Wintershall AG is going to obtain a majority interest in the Burbach Potash Works. A deal is being arranged, in which Goldmouth, who has an interest in a shut-down potash mine between Sarstedt and Hildesheim, blandly participates.

  But when on the ensuing free Thursday morning—it is still raining—which miller Matern spends driving nails into props and hanging the great President’s picture now here, now there, Goldmouth, who to tell the truth had dropped in only to leave a pile of illustrated magazines for the miller, is gone again. Next day, however—the persistent downpour hasn’t been able to discourage them—the IG-successors call in a body. Although decartelized, Baden Aniline, Bayer, and Hoechst come together and let the mealworm vote their policy for the ensuing years: “Don’t pay dividends, increase your capital.” But this mealworm slogan isn’t restricted to the chemical industry; whoever calls, Feldmuhle AG or Esso, the Haniels or North German Lloyd, all the big banks and insurance companies—the chorus of mealworms repeats emphatically: “No dividends. Increase your capital!” And concurrently the usual chickenfeed: How can the old-established Hertie Corporation, associated with the still-older-established firm of Tietz, transform itself into the Karg Family Foundation? Should Brenninkmeyer introduce customers’ credit? What will the men’s suit of the future look like—this refers to the doublebreasted number responding to revived consumer demand—which Peek & Cloppenburg will soon be putting on the market?

  The mealworm answers all questions after advance payment at fixed rates. He refurbishes the Mercedes star, forecasts the rise and fall of Borgward, disposes of Marshall Plan funds, is present when the Ruhr Authority meets, dismisses the Constitution before it is approved by the Parliamentary Council, fixes the date of the currency reform, counts votes before the first Bundestag elections are held, builds the imminent Korean crisis into the shipbuilding program of the Howaldt Works of Kiel and Hamburg, arranges the Petersberg Agreement, picks a certain Dr. Nordhoff as the future pacemaker in the setting of prices, and, when it suits him and his ilk, exerts terrifying pressure on the stock market.

  But by and large the trend is favorable, though the Thyssen ladies do not shun the path to the converted windmill. Is the mill a mill of youth? Are wrinkles smoothed, calves upholstered? Is the mealworm a matchmaker? An elderly Stahlhelm veteran who comes to attention at the sight of President von Hindenburg—who has meanwhile moved from the sack loft to the flour loft—and gives him an ingratiating salute, this gentleman still hale and hearty, is advised to establish cordial family relations with the key figure Bülow-Schwante, as an encouragement to the construction industry: “Tu felix Portland Cement, nube!”—for family enterprises are favored by the mealworm.

  Of course anyone who is on his way to the mealworm has to carry humility and childlike faith in his baggage. This is something the indestructible Hjalmar Schacht, the imp with the stand-up collar, can’t get through his head, although he often shares the opinion of the mealworms. Both the worms and Schacht warn against overexpansion of the export trade, overaccumulation of dollars, overincrease of currency volume, and rising prices. But only the mealworms reveal the solution to future problems. Consulted separately by Schäffer, the future Minister of Finance, and Vocke, the future President of the Reichsbank—future pillars of the state, they will go down in history!—the mealworms advise them to loosen up: let the minister stop hoarding enormous reserves; let the bank president lend wings to his piles of gold. Once again, as in the mealworm-arranged Krupp-Beitz-Murphy conversations, the watchword is: “Dollar credits to underdeveloped countries.”

  A first boom. Wool markets strengthened by orders from Latin America. Bremen jute picks u
p. Warning against weakening Canadian dollar. A breathing spell, wisely ordered by the mealworms with a view to consolidation, prevents the market from running wild. The trend remains favorable. Goldmouth has the driveways surfaced with asphalt. The miller’s crazy notion of getting married—a widow from Viersen seems to have been under consideration—comes to nothing, because it would have meant giving up a pension. Still alone but not lonely, the miller leafs through the illustrated magazines: Quick and Kristall, Stern and Revue, all supplied in gratitude and gratis: the Frankfurter and the Münchner Illustrierte, Tune In, now in its third year. And all who have been loyal to him from the very first, and those who have only belatedly found their way to the right faith, call regularly or bashfully for the first time, carve or reinforce their names in and on the imposing mill post, attentively bring little gifts, and cough when the stove smokes in the east wind: the gentlemen who have risen from the ranks: Münnemann and Schlieker, Neckermann and Grundig; the old foxes Reemtsma and Brinkmann; potential leaders such as Abs, Forberg, and Pferdmenges; the erstwhile future, then present Erhard comes regularly and is allowed to swallow a surplus mealworm: which lives to this day, miraculously miracle-working, in the exemplary paunch—expansion expansion! The free-market economy is run by the mealworm. From the very first the worm’s been inside the father of the economic miracle, miraculously miracle-working. “Don’t listen to the worm, there’s a worm in the worm!”

  So cackles the opposition, which doesn’t come calling, doesn’t pay, doesn’t cough in the east wind, and doesn’t consult miller Matern. In line with a decision of the Socialist Party in the Bundestag, it refuses to have any truck with medieval hocus-pocus. Certain trade union leaders secretly take the path to the mill notwithstanding. But although their mealworm-formulated directives have had a good deal to do with the present powerful position of the German Trade Union League, they are sooner or later exposed. For all Social Democrats brand the miller and his mealworm-counseled clientele as heretics. The lawyer Arndt harvests nothing but laughter when in the course of a question period in the Bundestag he tries to prove that association with, and taking counsel of, mealworms constitute an offense against Article 2 of the Constitution, because the rising mealworm cult represents a threat to the free development of the individual personality. Cynical worm jokes are hatched in the Bonn Socialist Party headquarters and when publicized as election slogans deprive the party of critically needed votes. Herr Schumacher and—as of August 1952—Herr Ollenhauer have not made a single election speech without heaping scorn and contempt on the consultations in the converted windmill. Party officials speak of the “capitalistic worm cure” and are still sitting—small wonder!—on the opposition benches.

  But the clergy comes. Not, to be sure, investments, not with Cardinals Frings and Faulhaber at the head of field processions; those who come to the windmill that gives directives are for the most part anonymous Dominicans, seldom motorized, usually on foot, occasionally on bicycles.

  More tolerated than favored, they sit outside the mill with open breviary and wait humbly until a Dr. Oetker of Bielefeld has received his personal order of the day: “Bake fleet of ships with Oetker’s baking powder. Stir Oetker’s pudding mix, bring it to a boil, let it cool, spill it carefully into all seven seas—and behold: Dr. Oetker’s tankers are afloat.” Later, after Oefker has immortalized himself on the mill post and left, Father Rochus is obliged to breathe on his spectacles in wild surprise, for as soon as he has quoted the catechism with shrill slate pencil: “Lord, send us Thy spirit and everything will be created anew…” the mealworms speak up as vicars: working through the Christian government party, the true Church must strive little by little to restore the ways of life of the Gothic and late Romanesque periods; Charlemagne’s empire must be renewed, if necessary with Latin help; better lay off the torture and witch burning as a starter, because heretics like Gerstenmaier and Dibelius will eat out of the blessed Virgin’s hand unasked: “Mary, virgin with the child, give us all thy blessing mild.”

  Overwhelmed with gifts, pious fathers return home on foot and on bicycles. Once the wind even blows six Franciscan nuns from the Convent of Our Lady in Aachen directly and decoratively to the mill. Though Sister Alfons-Maria, the mistress of novices, spends half an hour asking the miller for information, what the mealworms have to say to the nuns is a secret that no one must ever spill; only this much is certain: Catholic mealworms—miller Anton Muller is a Catholic—drafted pastoral letters for every conceivable situation; they whisper the name of a rising minister; nomen est omen —he will be Würmeling and, with the help of Catholic families, will create a state within the state; mealworms submit bills; mealworms demand measures in favor of denominational schools; for religious reasons Catholic mealworms oppose reunification; mealworms govern West Germany—for the East German government sends its planning expert too late.

  Before the miller with his twenty-pound sack of wheat flour, which, it should be mentioned in passing, has had to be replenished with a few pounds of the Epp variety, obtained with difficulty from the now Polish Vistula delta—before miller Matern with his well-fed mealworms has a chance to participate in the planning of the Stalinstadt steel combine in the Oder marshes, in the building of the Black Pump power combine, in the uranium- and wolfram-mining operations of the notorious Wismuth AG, before he can help to organize socialist brigades, plain-clothes men are sent in to guard the area surrounding the speaking mealworms; for if Herren Leuschner and Mewis—and Ulbricht went so far as to send Nuschke—had been able in those days to slip two, three, or several times through the cordon set up by a general and his men, the German Democratic Republic would have a different look today, would have potatoes galore and paperclips to burn—while as things stand, it hasn’t even enough barbed wire.

  Equally slow in getting started, certain critics of the economic miracle, whose oratorical potshots at the symbolic Erhard are consistently wide of the mark, have also missed the bus to Düren. Herr Kuby and all the cabaret wits would have poisoned arrows, arguments, and biting satirical songs fit to shake an empire if they had only dropped in on miller Matern. For it is a mistake to suppose that partisan worms were always behind the one and only Konrad. Not at all! Early visitors to the mealworms, the gentlemen of the press and those with decartelization troubles, will testify that the dominant sentiment in the twenty-pound bag was strongly anti-Adenauer from the very start; it was not the mealworms who put forward the incompetent mayor as the first chancellor; why, he only visited the windmill four times, and then with nothing but questions of foreign policy on his mind. No, their vote was not for him, actually they cried out unanimously: “The man for us is Hans Globke, the modest resistance fighter who worked in the background.”

  It was not to be. But if mealworm-trained supporters, mindful of the mealworm’s words, had not made a shadow chancellor of Dr. Hans Globke, so obtaining a hearing for the mealworm party in the Bundestag and for certain undersecretaries in the most important ministries, a great deal, everything perhaps, would have gone wrong.

  And miller Matern? What honors was he accorded? Was a free subscription to this and that illustrated weekly, were the New Year’s presents—calendars of corporations from Auto Union to Hanover-Hannibal Mines—his only profit? Did appointments, decorations, or blocks of shares come his way? Did the miller grow rich?

  His son, who drops in with black shepherd in March 1949, doesn’t get to see a red cent at first. Outside, the west wind is tugging at the idle sails. Neckarsulm Motors and United Boiler Works have just roared down the driveway. Visiting hours are over. The twenty-pound sack is resting in the safe. This article of furniture—donated by Krauss-Maffei, which has belonged to the Flick syndicate since Buderus acquired a majority interest—was installed by Goldmouth, who thought it unsafe just to leave the sack lying in the hopper. Other noteworthy acquisitions are nonutilitarian: in a spacious bird cage—the gift of Wintershall AG—bill and coo two parakeets—a gift of the Gerling Corporation. But father
and son sit facing one another in silence, unless importance is attached to such exclamations as “Hmm” or “Well, well.” The son politely opens the conversation: “Well, Pa, what’s the mealworm been saying?”

  The father waves the question aside. “What’s he been saying? Just spinning yarns.”

  Then the son, as is fitting and proper, has to inquire after his mother and his aunt: “And Ma? And Auntie Lorrchen? Ain’t they with you?”

  The miller points his thumb up toward the flour loft: “They was all drownded on the way.”

  It occurs to the son to ask about old acquaintances: “And Kriwe? Lührmann? Karweise? What became of the Kabruns? Old Folchert and Lau’s Hedwig from the Schiewenhorst side?”

  Again the miller’s thumb points at the ceiling timbers: “Drownded. They was all drownded on the way.”

  Even if mother, aunt, and all the neighbors have been swallowed up by the Baltic, there’s no harm in asking about his father’s mill. And again the miller has to announce a loss: “She burned down in broad daylight.”

  The son has to shout when he wants information of his father. At first cautiously, then directly, he comes out with his business. But the miller understands neither with his flat nor with his protruding ear. Accordingly, the son writes wishes on the slate. He asks for money. “Dough, dough!”—for he’s as flat as the Vistula delta: “Hard luck, broke!” The millerfather nods understandingly and advises his son to go to work either in the coalfields or for him. “Make yourself useful around here. You can always find something to do. And we’ll need to be doing some building pretty soon.”