by Günter Grass
I made do alone and sat quietly, having no reason to worry. Mama, who still seemed embarrassed, ducked in among the other mothers. She was probably ashamed to face her peers, owing to my so-called backward state. They acted as if they had some reason to be proud of their own little louts, who had grown far too quickly for my taste.
I couldn't look out the window at Fröbel Meadow, since the height of the windowsill was no better suited to me than the height of the school bench. But I would have liked to look over at Fröbel Meadow, where I knew that Boy Scouts were pitching tents under Greff's leadership, playing at lansquenets, and, as befitted Boy Scouts, doing good deeds. Not that I would have participated in this inflated glorification of camp life. Only the figure of Greff in short trousers interested me. His love of slim, if somewhat pale, wide-eyed boys was so great that he had clothed it in the uniform of the founder of the Boy Scouts, Baden-Powell.
Denied a worthwhile view by the insidious architecture, I simply stared at the sky and found pleasure in that. One new cloud after another emigrated from northwest to southeast, as if that direction had something special to offer. I wedged my drum, though it had not spent one drumbeat thinking about emigration, between my knees and the desk drawer. The backrest protected the back of Oskar's head. Behind me my so-called schoolmates cackled, roared, laughed, wept, and raged. They threw paper pellets at me, but I didn't turn around, finding the resolute clouds more aesthetically pleasing than the sight of a horde of grimacing, overexcited oafs.
When a woman entered and announced that she was Fräulein Spollenhauer, things settled down in class I-A. I didn't need to settle down, since I'd been waiting for what was to come in a calm, almost self-absorbed state. To tell the honest truth: Oskar wasn't even waiting for what was to come, he had no need for entertainment, and thus was not waiting, but simply holding his drum and sitting at his desk, content with the clouds behind or more properly beyond the paschally polished panes of the school windows.
Fräulein Spollenhauer wore an angularly tailored suit that gave her a dry, mannish look. This impression was reinforced by a stiff, tight collar that looked washable to me, which furrowed her neck and closed about her Adam's apple. She had scarcely entered the classroom in her flat walking shoes when, in an attempt to make herself immediately popular, she asked, "Now, dear children, how about singing a little song?"
She received a roar in answer that she must have taken for a positive response, for she set out in a prim, high-pitched voice on the spring song "In the Merry Month of May," though we were in mid-April. She had barely signaled May when all hell broke loose. Without waiting for a sign to start, without knowing the lyrics, without the slightest feeling for the simple rhythm of this ditty, the pack behind me began to loosen the plaster from the walls with their yowling.
In spite of her yellowish skin, her bobbed hair, and the man's tie peeping from beneath her collar, I felt sorry for Spollenhauer. Tearing myself free from the clouds, which apparently didn't have school that day, I rose to my feet, pulled the drumsticks from beneath my suspenders with a single motion, and drummed out the beat of the song loudly and emphatically. But the pack behind me had no ear or understanding for my efforts. Only Fräulein Spollenhauer gave me a nod of encouragement, smiled at the troop of mothers clinging to the wall, and sent a special wink toward Mama, which I took as a sign to continue drumming, simply at first, then with increased complexity, displaying all the tricks of my trade. The pack behind me had long since ceased their barbaric vocal medley. I had already begun to imagine that my drum was teaching my fellow pupils, educating them, turning them into my pupils, when Spollenhauer stopped before my desk, observed my hands and drumsticks closely, and even tried to tap along with my beat, not entirely without skill, smiling to herself, lost in thought, portraying for one brief moment a somewhat sympathetic older woman who, forgetting her teaching profession, escapes the existential caricature it prescribes and turns human, that is, childlike, curious, complex, immoral.
However, when Fräulein Spollenhauer could not follow my beat quickly and correctly, she sank back again into her old rectilinear, obtuse, and poorly paid role, pulled herself together, as teachers must from time to time, and said, "You must be little Oskar. We've heard so much about you. How nicely you drum. Isn't that so, children? Isn't Oskar a good drummer?"
The children roared, the mothers drew closer together, Spollenhauer had herself under control again. "But now," she piped in falsetto, "let's put the drum safely away in the classroom locker, it's tired and wants to sleep. Afterward, when school's out, you can have your drum back."
While she was still reeling off this hypocritical speech, she showed me her close-clipped teacher's fingernails and initiated a tenfold close-clipped assault on my drum, which, God knows, was neither tired nor wished to sleep. At first I held on tight, wrapped the arms of my sweater around the red and white flames of the cylinder, and stared at her; then, since she maintained the ancient stereotypical schoolteacher's gaze without flinching, I looked right through her, finding sufficient narrative material inside Fräulein Spollenhauer for three chapters of depravity, then tore myself loose from her inner life, since my drum was at stake, and as my gaze passed through her shoulder blades, registered the presence on her well-preserved skin of a mole the size of a gulden piece with long hairs sprouting from it.
Whether she sensed I'd seen through her, or because of my voice, with which, by way of warning, I had inflicted a small scratch, causing no real damage, on the right lens of her glasses, she abandoned the use of naked power that had chalked her knuckles white, no doubt unable to stand the glass scraping that gave her goose bumps, released my drum with a shiver and said, "You're a bad little Oskar," threw a re proachful glance at my mother, who didn't know where to look, left me my wide-awake drum, turned on her heel, marched on flat heels to her desk, rummaged through her briefcase, pulled out another pair of glasses, probably for reading, briskly removed from her nose the spectacles my voice had scraped as fingernails scrape a windowpane, acting as if I had desecrated them, placed the second pair on her nose, lifting her little finger as she did, drew herself up so stiffly you could hear her bones rattle, and announced, as she reached once more into her briefcase, "I'll now read you the schedule."
She fished out a stack of sheets from her pigskin case, took one for herself, passed the rest on to the mothers, Mama among them, and revealed at last to the six-year-olds, who were growing restless, what the schedule had to offer: "Monday: religion, writing, arithmetic, play; Tuesday: arithmetic, penmanship, singing, nature study; Wednesday: arithmetic, writing, drawing, drawing; Thursday: geography, arithmetic, writing, religion; Friday: arithmetic, writing, play, penmanship; Saturday: arithmetic, singing, play, play."
All this Fräulein Spollenhauer proclaimed as an irrevocable fate, reading out this product of a teachers' conference in strict tones that gave full weight to every letter, then, recalling her days at teacher-training college, turned gentle and progressive, burst out joyfully in pedagogical high spirits: "Now, my dear children, let's all repeat it together. All right—Monday?"
The horde roared, "Monday."
She continued: "Religion?" The baptized heathens roared out the word Religion. I spared my voice, but drummed the religious syllables on tin by way of substitute.
Behind me, spurred on by Spollenhauer, they screamed, "Wri—ting!" Twice my drum responded. "A-rith—me-tic!" Four beats this time.
The screaming continued behind me, Spollenhauer leading the litany in front of me, while I beat out the syllables soberly on my drum, putting a good face on a foolish game, till Spollenhauer—I don't know at what inner urge—sprang up, clearly annoyed—but it wasn't the louts behind me who were making her cross, no, I was the one turning her cheeks a hectic red, Oskar's poor drum was the stumbling block that made her draw the drummer keeping the beat into prayer.
"Now listen to me, Oskar: Thursday: geography?" Ignoring the word Thursday, I struck the drum four times for geography, four
times for arithmetic, twice for writing, and a triune trinity as the only true and saving drumbeats for religion.
But Spollenhauer had no ear for such distinctions. To her all drumming was equally repugnant. Ten times she bared again at me the shortest-hacked of fingernails and tried ten times to grab my drum.
Before she had so much as touched it, I unleashed my glass-slaying scream, deleting the upper panes from the three oversize windows of the classroom. The middle panes fell victim to my second scream. A mild spring breeze flowed freely into the classroom. Obliterating the lower panes with a third scream was basically superfluous, purely a matter of high spirits, for Spollenhauer had pulled in her claws when the upper and middle panes failed. Instead of assaulting those last panes in an aesthetically questionable burst of pure wantonness, God knows Oskar would have been smarter to keep his eye on the reeling Spollenhauer.
The devil knows where she conjured up that cane. At any rate it was suddenly there, vibrating in the classroom air now mingled with spring breezes, and through this airy mixture she made it whistle, rendered it flexible, hungry, thirsty, crazed for bursting skin, for Sssst, for all those curtains canes can imitate, bent on satisfying both herself and the cane. And she banged it down so hard on my desk that the ink in my inkwell took a violet leap. And when I wouldn't hold my hand out to be hit, she struck my drum. She struck my tin. She, that Spollenhauerite, struck my tin drum. What was she hitting it for? If she wanted to hit something, fine, but why did it have to be my drum? Weren't there enough crude louts behind me? Did it have to be my drum? Did she, who knew nothing of drumming, have to attack my drum? What was that glint in her eye? What animal longed to strike? Escaped from what zoo, seeking what prey, lusting for what? Something seized Oskar, welled up in him, rose from unknown depths through the soles of his shoes, through the soles of his feet, forced its way upward, took command of his vocal cords, and made him release a scream of passion sufficient to deglaze an entire Gothic cathedral with all its glorious windows capturing and refracting light.
In other words, I fashioned a double scream that literally pulverized both lenses of Spollenhauer's glasses. With slightly bleeding eyebrows, peering now through empty frames, she groped her way backward, then finally started to blubber in a manner far too ugly and hysterical for a schoolteacher, while the pack behind me fell into a terrified silence, some disappearing under their desks, some sitting fast with chattering teeth. Others scooted from desk to desk toward their mothers. The mothers, however, having assessed the damage and sought out the guilty party, were about to fall upon my mama, and would no doubt have done so, had I not grabbed my drum and shoved myself away from my bench.
Passing the half-blind Spollenhauer, I made my way to my mama, who was being menaced by the Furies, took her by the hand, and pulled her from the drafty room of class I-A. Echoing corridors. Stone stairs for giant children. Breadcrumbs in bubbling granite basins. In the open gymnasium boys trembled beneath the horizontal bar. Mama was still clutching her sheet of paper. Outside the portals of the Pestalozzi School I took it from her and converted the schedule into a meaningless paper ball.
But Oskar did allow the photographer, who was waiting between the columns at the entrance for the first graders with their paper cones and mothers, to take a picture of him with his own school cone, which, in spite of all the confusion, he had not lost. The sun came out, classrooms buzzed above us. The photographer posed Oskar before a blackboard on which was written: My First Day at School.
Rasputin and the ABCs
Relating the story of Oskar's first encounter with a schedule to my friend Klepp and my keeper Bruno, who listened with only half an ear, I said just now that the blackboard the photographer used as a traditional background for his postcard-sized pictures of six-year-old boys with knapsacks and school cones bore the following inscription: My First Day at School.
Of course this little phrase could only be read by the mothers, who were standing behind the photographer and acting more excited than the boys. It was at least a year before the boys in front of the blackboard could decipher the inscription, either next Easter when the new class entered or in their own earlier photos, and realize that those pretty pictures had been taken on the occasion of their first day at school.
Sütterlin script crawled across the blackboard with spiky malevolence, its curves falsely padded, chalking the inscription that marked the beginning of a new stage in life. And in fact the Sütterlin script is well suited for items of marked importance, for succinctly striking statements, for slogans of the day. And there are certain documents that, though I admit I've never seen them, I nonetheless envision in Sütterlin script. I have in mind immunization certificates, sports records, and handwritten death sentences. Even back then, when I could see through the Sütterlin script but couldn't read it, the double loop of the Sütterlin M with which the inscription began, malicious and smelling of hemp, reminded me of the scaffold. Nevertheless I would have preferred to read it letter for letter and not just divine its sense darkly. Let no one suppose that I spent my encounter with Fräulein Spollenhauer highhandedly singshattering glass and playing my drum in rebellious pro test because I had already mastered my ABCs. Oh no, I knew only too well that simply seeing through Sütterlin script was not enough, that I lacked the most elementary schoolboy knowledge. Unfortunately the methods by which Fräulein Spollenhauer wished to educate him did not appeal to Oskar.
So I had by no means decided, having left the Pestalozzi School, that my first day at school would be my last. No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. Nothing of the sort. At the very moment that the photographer was recording my image for posterity, I thought to myself: You're standing here in front of a blackboard beneath a no doubt meaningful, possibly ominous, inscription. It's true you're able to judge the inscription by the script and sense its associations, such as solitary confinement, protective custody, supervisory custody, and one-rope-fits-all, but you can't decipher the inscription. Meanwhile, in spite of your ignorance, which cries out to the partly cloudy heavens, you intend never to enter this schedule-school again. So just where, oh Oskar, do you plan to learn your big and little ABCs?
Though the little ABCs would no doubt have been enough for me, I had deduced the existence of both big and little ABCs from, among other things, the manifest existence of big people who couldn't be wished away and called themselves grownups. They never tired of offering a justification for big and little ABCs, pointing out that there were also big and little books, big and little leagues, and even state visits coded as big or little railroad stations, based on the number of arriving dignitaries and decorated diplomats for whom the red carpet had to be rolled out.
Neither Matzerath nor Mama worried about my education over the next few months. That one attempt to enroll me, so stressful and embarrassing for Mama, had been enough for them. Like Uncle Jan Bronski, they now sighed when they gazed down at me, and dredged up old stories like the one about my third birthday: "The trapdoor was open! You left it open, didn't you? You were in the kitchen, and the cellar before that, right? You brought up a can of mixed fruit for dessert, right? You left the trapdoor to the cellar open, didn't you?"
Every reproach Mama heaped on Matzerath was true, as we well know, and yet the whole was false. But he accepted all the blame and sometimes even wept, softhearted as he was. Then Mama and Jan Bronski would have to comfort him, and spoke of me, Oskar, as a cross they had to bear, a fate they could not flee, a trial they faced but knew not why.
No help was to be expected from these cross bearers, struck down by fate and plagued by trials. Aunt Hedwig Bronski, who frequently took me to Steffenspark to play in the sandbox with her two-year-old Marga, was likewise ruled out as my teacher: she was good-natured enough but dumb as the sky was blue. I was also forced to abandon the thought of Dr. Hollatz's Sister Inge, who was neither sky-blue nor good-natured, for she was no mere office girl but an extremely bright and irreplaceable assistant, and so had no time for
me.
I conquered the hundred-plus steps of our four-story building several times a day, trying to drum up advice on every floor, smelled what nineteen lodgers were having for lunch, but knocked at no door, since I couldn't see old Heilandt, or the clockmaker Laubschad, and certainly not fat Frau Kater, or, much as I liked her, Mother Truczinski, as my future schoolteacher.
Under the eaves lived a musician and trumpeter named Meyn. Herr Meyn kept four cats and was permanently drunk. He played dance music at Zingler's Heights, and on Christmas Eve he and five fellow drunks would stamp through the snowy streets battling the harsh frost with carols. I met him one day in the attic: he lay on his back in black trousers and his white Sunday shirt, rolling an empty bottle of Machandel gin with his bare feet and playing the trumpet beautifully. Without lowering his trumpet, just shifting his eyes slightly to where I was standing behind him, he stole a glance at me and accepted me as his percussionist. He valued my instrument as highly as he did his own. Our duet drove his four cats out onto the roof and set the roof tiles gently vibrating.
When we finished our music and lowered our instruments, I pulled an old issue of the Neueste Nachrichten newspaper from under my sweater, smoothed out the pages, crouched beside Meyn the trumpeter, held out my reading matter, and asked him to teach me the big and little ABCs.
But Herr Meyer had fallen straight from his trumpet into a deep sleep. For him there were only three containers that counted: his bottle of Machandel gin, his trumpet, and sleep. It's true that for some time after that—to be precise, till he entered the SA cavalry and gave up gin— we played unrehearsed duets in the attic for the stove, roof tiles, pigeons, and cats, but he was just never any use as a teacher.