Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Matern sighs with relief: oh, how different the sausages smell in the Socialist Peaceloving Camp. Gone forever that capitalistic curry smell. Matern’s heart bursts iron bands: Marienborn! How beautiful the people are here, and even the tenements, Vopos, windowboxes, and spittoons. And the well-fed redness of the flags, and the billowing streamers with their slogans. After all the bad years, with black dog at heel, at last socialism triumphs. No sooner is the interzonal train in motion than Matern wants to communicate the red jubilation of his heart. But as he starts to speak and to praise the Peaceloving Socialist Camp, quietly and suitcasedraggingly the smoking compartment empties. The smoke is getting too thick, there must be room in a compartment for nonsmokers. No offense and a pleasant trip.

  All the fellow travelers on their way to Oschersleben, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg, and finally the grandma who is changing in Magdeburg for Dessau leave him. In his loneliness Matern is haunted by the rhythm of the rails: posts ghosts posts ghosts.

  Message-bearing, they are on their way. Now clad like Spartacus or the toiling masses. Strike pickets hand on the baton. Sansculottes smell blood. Even in mixed forests Matern thinks he sees rebellious proletarians. Woods spit out scare crows in windbreakers. Brooks are no obstacles. Hedges taken at a leap. Long-legged over knolls. Swallowed up, there again. Stockingless in wooden shoes, in Phrygian caps. Cross-country scarecrows. Field and stream scarecrows. Peasants’ Revolt scarecrows: Bundschuh and Poor Konrad, vagabonds and iron miners, mendicant friars and Ana baptists, the monk Pfeiffer, Hipler and Geyer, the Fury of Allstedt, the peasants of Mansfeld and Eichsfeld, Balthasar and Bartel, Krumpf and Velten, on to Frankenhausen, where already the rainbow of rags and tatters, of leitmotives and murder motives… At this point Matern changes his view; but on the corridor side of the interzonal train he is horrified to find the same spooks behind sash windows, all moving in the same direction.

  Out! At every station where the train doesn’t stop, he wants to get out. Distrust germinates. Every train has a different destination. And will the Peaceloving Camp really take me to its bosom when this locomotive, hitched to first and second class, hitched to my dreams, says amen? Matern checks his ticket: all in order and paid for. What, seen through sash windows, is happening outside, is happening free of charge. Why should he have forebodings just because he sees a few plain ordinary scarecrows running? After all, it’s the nationalized Magdeburg Bowl, famed for its sugarbeets, and not the capitalistic desert of Nevada that is being traversed by swift dynamic scarecrows. Besides, there have always been scarecrows. He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last to make dozens of them out of old rags and chicken-wire. But these here—a glance out of the window—might have been made by him. His style. His work. Eddi’s deft fingers.

  Thereupon Matern takes flight. Where can you run to on a speeding interzonal train, rendered transparent to left and right by sash windows, mostly stuck, if not to the john. He even manages to take a shit and so motivate his flight. Relax. Settle down. Put away all fear; for, generally speaking, the toilet windows of all trains, whether fast or slow, are made of frosted glass. Frosted glass windows negate spooks. O peaceful idyl. Almost holy and just as Catholic as the station toilet that Cologne held in readiness for him when he went to Cologne and was looking for a quiet place. Here too scribble-scrabble on damaged enamel. The usual: verses, confessions, suggestions for doing something this way or that way, names unknown to him; for neither heart, spleen, nor kidneys quiver as he tries to decipher individual words. But when the hand-sized and cross-hatched drawing catches his eye—the black-sketched dog Perkun Senta Harras Prinz Pluto jumping over a garden fence—his heart blackens, his purple spleen darkens, the urine curdles in his kidneys. Once again, this time from a skillfully sketched dog, Matern takes flight.

  But where can you run to on a speeding interzonal train if you leave the one refuge which frosted glass windowpanes secure against the spook show? At first, quite logically, he wants to get out in Magdeburg, but then, like a hypnotized rabbit, remains faithful to the destination on his ticket, expecting salvation from the River Elbe. The Elbe forms a barrier. The Elbe is the natural frontier of the Peaceloving Camp. Bird-repellent spooks and anyone else who may be headed in that direction will halt at the Western shore of the Elbe and send their scarecrow screams or other spectral bowlings heavenward, while the interzonal train hurries off across the not yet fully repaired Elbe bridge.

  But as Matern and the meanwhile half-empty interzonal train—most of the travelers have got out in Magdeburg—leave behind that saving event, the Elbe bridge, multiplied evil bursts forth from the rushes of the East-Elbian shore: not only are the usual news-pregnant scarecrows racing along as from Marathon to Athens; in addition, his coat still Elbe-wet, a dog glistening deep black knows only one direction: after the interzonal train! A race begins, neck and neck, dog versus express train roaring through the Peaceloving Camp. For a time the animal takes the lead—the train is running slightly late because the roadbed is soggy in the Peaceloving Camp and, timetable or not, can’t afford to be in too much of a hurry—but then drops back, enabling Matern to feast his eyes on blackness.

  Oh, if you had only left Pluto at the Catholic mission instead of its animal-loving competitor! If you had given him reliable poison, or if a club, properly handled, had destroyed the half-blind mutt’s drive and his passion for the chase. But as it is, a black shepherd grows dog years younger between Genthin and Brandenburg. Rises in the ground swallow him up. Hollows spit him out. Fences split him into sixteenths. Fine steady driving gait. Soft landings. Powerful hind quarters. No one but he can jump like that. The line from the withers to the slightly sloping croup. Eight—twenty-four—thirty-two-legged. Pluto draws up and leads the field of scarecrows. Evening sun edges silhouettes. The Twelfth Army surges toward Beelitz. Götterdämmerung. Structure of the end. If I only had a camera: cut cut. Spook close-up. Final victory close-up. Dog close-up. But you’re not allowed to take pictures of the Peaceloving Camp from moving trains. Unfilmed, the Wenck combat team, disguised as an army of scarecrows, and a dog by the name of Perkun Senta Harras Prinz Pluto remain on a level with the teeth-grinding Walter Matern behind a sash window. Beat it, dog. Scram, dog. Get thee behind me, kyon!

  But only after Werder, near Potsdam, in among the vast expanse of lakes, do scarecrows and dog lose themselves in league with the land-engulfing darkness. Matern sticks to the plastic upholstery of his second-class seat and stares at the framed photograph across from him: in oblong the fissured landscape of the Elbsandstein Mountains advertises itself. Hikes through Saxon Switzerland. Something new for a change, especially as neither scarecrows nor Pluto are to be seen among the crags. Sturdy comfortable hiking shoes, if possible with double soles. Woolen stockings, undarned. Knapsack and map. Large deposits of granite, gneiss, and quartz. Brunies used to correspond with a geologist in Pirna and exchange specimens of mica gneiss and mica granite. Quantities of Elbe sandstone besides. That’s the place for you. It’s quieter. There nothing will sneak up on you from behind. With or without dog, you’ve never been there. In general people should only go to places where they’ve never: to Flurstein, for instance, and then up the trail and along the Ziegenrück road to Polenz View, a rock platform without a railing, offering a marvelous view of the Polenz Valley: then follow Amsel Valley to Amsel Falls and the Hockstein. Stop for the night at the Amsel Valley Hunting Lodge. I’m a stranger in these parts. Matern? Never heard of him. Why is Amsel Valley called Amsel Valley and Amsel Falls Amsel Falls? No connection with your friend by the same name. In addition we have here Amsel Gulch and Amsel Rock. We’re not interested in your past. We have other, socialist worries. We’re engaged in rebuilding the beautiful city of Dresden. The old Zwinger Palace with new Elbe sandstone. In people’s quarries we’re cutting house fronts for the Peaceloving Republic. Nobody grinds his teeth in these parts, and neither will you. So show your papers and turn in your pass. Steer clear of West Berlin, that bastion of capitalism. Go right on th
rough to East Station, then come and see socialism being built in the Elbsandstein Mountains. Stay right in your seat when the train has to stop at the warmongers’ and revanchists’ station. Be patient until Friedrichstrasse Station bids you welcome. For God’s sake don’t get out at Zoological Gardens Station.

  But shortly before the interzonal train stops at Zoolog ical Gardens Station, Matern remembers that he still has a fat chunk of his radio fee in his pocket. He decides to stop for a minute, exchange his West marks for East marks at the profitable capitalistic rate, one to four, and take the “L” to the Peaceloving Camp. Besides, he has to buy a razor and blades, two pairs of socks, and a change of shirts; who knows whether these vital necessities are available over there at the moment?

  With these modest desires he leaves the train. Along with him others, who doubtless have greater desires. Relatives welcome relatives, taking no notice of Matern, whom, as he reflects with a note of bitterness, no relatives are expecting. Nevertheless, a reception has been provided for Matern. Reception jumps up on him with forepaws. Reception licks him with long tongue. Glad barking, whimpering jubilation. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you love me any more? Did you want me to stay in that station mission forever, until dog-death? Haven’t I a right to be faithful as a dog?

  Of course of course! It’s all right, Pluto. Now you’ve got your master back again. Let’s have a look at you. It’s him and it isn’t him. An obviously black stud dog answers to the name of Pluto, but the scissors bite is gapless to the touch. Gone are the ice-gray islands over the stop, the eyes are no longer bleary. Why, at the most that dog can’t be a day over eight. Rejuvenated and new. Only the dog tag is still the same. Dog lost, dog found again; and—as usual in rail road stations—here comes the honest finder: “Pardon me, is this your dog?”

  He removes the Borsalino from his smoothly combed hair: a slim, affected stringbean, as hoarse as a grater, which doesn’t prevent him from sucking a coffin nail: “The animal ran up to me and insisted on dragging me to Zoological Gardens Station; he pulled me right through the entrance hall and up these stairs to where the big expresses come in.”

  Is he after a reward or does he want to strike up an acquaintance? Still with hat in hand, he doesn’t spare his vocal cords: “I don’t wish to be obtrusive, but I am glad to have met you. Call me what you like. Here in Berlin most people call me Goldmouth. An allusion to my chronic hoarseness and the twenty-four-carat substitutes for teeth that I am obliged to wear in my mouth.”

  Thereupon Matern’s internal cash drawer gets a checking over: coins of every kind jingle together. Inflamed with red only a moment before, his heart is now wrapped in gold leaf. Spleen and kidneys are heavy as ducats: “My, what a surprise! And in a railroad station of all places. I can’t say what is more amazing, finding my Pluto again—I lost the dog in Cologne—or this momentous, I can’t think of any other word, meeting.”

  “The pleasure is all mine!”—“But haven’t we friends in common?”—“You think so?”—“Why yes, the Sawatzkis. Wouldn’t they be flabbergasted if they.”—“Why then I must be—or can I be mistaken?—talking to Herr Matern?”—“As he lives and breathes. What a coincidence! We really have to drink on it.”—“Suits me.”—“Where do you suggest?”—“Wherever you like.”—“I’m pretty much of a stranger around here.”—“Then let’s start our little round at the Barfuss place.”—“Anything you say. But first I’d like—my trip was unexpected—to buy a change of shirts and a razor. Heel, Pluto! My, is he happy!”

  THE HUNDRED AND SECOND FIREPROOF MATERNIAD

  Here you see God’s gigolo with his one and only prop! In between mincing pigeon steps, the guy is actually whirling an ebony cane with an ivory handle. In this station as in all others, familiar and welcomed: “Hi, Goldmouth. In town again? How’s your love life?”

  And smokes Navy Cut the whole time at high speed. While inside the station—the shops here are open until late—Matern buys his vital razor and the blades that go with it, the little fellow smokes without interruption and, when he runs out of matches, asks a policeman for a light: “Good evening, officer.” And the officer salutes the idling smoker.

  And everybody winks at Goldmouth and, so it seems to Matern, points to him and the rejuvenated dog: Among friends. Complicity. That’s a hot one, Goldmouth. Some bird you’ve scared up.

  Talk about birds! When Matern comes back with two pairs of woolen socks and a fresh shirt, five or six kids are surrounding his new friend. And what are they doing? Horsing around between the Heine Bookstore and the ticket windows of the “L,” dancing around him while he offhandedly beats time with his cane, twittering like telegraph wires, cackling and chirping sound effects. They turn their jackets inside out; with the lining out they look like members of the scarecrow family that was staging a relay race on both sides of the just-arrived interzonal train, as though intending, even before the train pulled in at Berlin-Zoological Gardens, to make known, deliver, and loudly proclaim the tidings, message, watchword: “He’s coming! He’s coming! He’ll be here in a minute and needs to buy a razor and socks and a change of shirts.”

  But all the boys evaporate as soon as Matern steps up to Goldmouth with parcels and rejuvenated dog: “O.K. Let’s go.”

  It’s not far. The place is no longer in existence, but at the time when the trio is crossing Hardenbergstrasse is situated across the way from the Newsreel Theater, which today is projecting the news somewhere else. Not into the Bilka department store, but across Joachimstaler on the green light, and a few steps up Kanstrasse. After the Ski Hut sporting goods store, an electric sign over the usual Berlin pub makes it clear that ANNA HELENE BARFUSS—who by now must be rinsing glasses behind the heavenly bar——still reigns behind an earthly cash register as our trio is approaching. The place used to be a coachmen’s hangout. Today traffic cops gather there after hours. Also teachers of art from Steinplatz and couples who are ahead of time for their movie. And now and then the kind who are often between jobs. They stand at the bar shifting their weight from leg to leg between glasses. For good measure one might mention a flighty old biddy who, always under the same hat, is enjoying a free lunch, in return for which she has to tell Anna Helene about the repertory at the Volksbühne from the latest Adamov to the last time Elsa Wagner brought the house down; for Anna Helene’s cash register rings so steadily that she can never get out to the theater.

  Here too Goldmouth is a familiar figure. His order: “A hot lemonade, please!” surprises no one but Matern. “For your throat, I suppose. That’s a bad cold you’ve got. No, it must be smoker’s cough. You sure smoke like a chimney.”

  Goldmouth listens attentively to the voice. He connects himself with the hot lemonade by means of a straw. But listening to Matern and sucking lemonade are only two activities; in addition, he smokes cigarettes, lights the fresh smoke-stick with the last third of the old one, and throws the burning butt behind him, whereupon la Barfuss, deep in retrospective theatricals at the free-lunch counter, motions the waiter with her eyebrows to stamp out the butt. The gentlemen pay for two beers, a hot lemonade, and three meatballs. Dutch, except that Matern pays for the dog.

  But Goldmouth and Matern with newly found Pluto haven’t far to go: up Joachimstaler, across Kurfürstendamm on the zebra stripes, and at the corner of Augsburger into the White Moor. There Matern consumes two beers and two schnapps; Goldmouth drains a hot lemonade to the sweet dregs; the dog is served a portion of fresh blood sausage—homemade! The waiter has to stamp out four butts in all behind the smoker’s back. This time they don’t cling to the bar but stand at a small table. Each becomes the other’s opposite. And Matern counts as the waiter reduces to silence what Goldmouth flips smoking behind him. “You ought to quit smoking so much. It doesn’t make sense when you’re as hoarse as a grater.”