by Günter Grass
My gaze had turned toward something totally different: the Stadt-Theater, which I'd found closed upon leaving the Arsenal Arcade. The box with its dome bore a fiendishly close resemblance to a senselessly enlarged, neoclassical coffee grinder, though it lacked the handle on the rounded top of its dome which, in that temple devoted to culture and the muses filled to the brim each evening, would have allowed it to grind to grisly scrap a five-act play with its entire assemblage of tragedians, stage sets, prompters, props, and curtains. This building, from whose column-flanked lobby windows a sagging afternoon sun, steadily applying more red, refused to depart, annoyed me.
At that hour, some one hundred fifty feet above the Kohlenmarkt, above streetcars and clerks heading home from work, high above Markus's sweet-smelling junk shop, above the cool marble tables at the Café Weitzke, above two cups of Mocha, towering above Mama and Jan Bronski, above our building, our courtyard, all other courtyards, above bent and straightened nails, leaving the neighborhood children and their brick soup far below, I, who up till then had screamed only when forced by circumstances, now screamed without cause or compulsion. Until I climbed the Stockturm, I'd only sent my piercing tones into glass, the interior of a light bulb, or a bottle of flat beer when someone tried to take away my drum; now on the tower I screamed down, though my drum was not threatened in any way.
No one was trying to take Oskar's drum away, and yet he screamed. No pigeon had sullied his drum with his droppings, to be repaid with a scream. There was verdigris on copper plates nearby but no glass, yet Oskar screamed. The pigeons had blank reddish eyes, but no glass eye eyed him, yet he screamed. What was he screaming at, what distant horizon lured him? Was it a focused attempt to demonstrate what he'd tried at random in the attic above the courtyard after enjoying his brick soup? What glass did Oskar have in mind? With what glass—and it had to be glass—did Oskar plan to experiment?
It was the Stadt-Theater, the dramatic coffee grinder, whose setting-sun windowpanes attracted my newfangled tones, first tested in our attic and bordering now, I might say, on mannerism. After a few minutes of screams of various calibers, which however produced no results, an almost soundless tone took effect, and Oskar could report with joy and telltale pride that two midlevel panes in the left window of the lobby had been forced to surrender the evening sun and now registered as two black quadrangles in need of immediate reglazing.
This success required further confirmation. Like a modern painter who, having at last found the style he's been seeking for years, bestows upon a stunned world a whole series of equally wonderful, equally bold, equally worthy, similarly formatted finger exercises in the same mode, I proceeded to put on a show.
Within a mere quarter-hour I managed to deglaze all the windows in the lobby and a portion of the doors. What appeared from above to be an excited crowd gathered in front of the theater. There are always curious bystanders. I was not particularly impressed by my admirers. Of course they forced Oskar to work with even greater rigor, even greater formal skill. I was just setting out on an even bolder experiment to lay bare the inner essence of all things, namely to project a special scream through the open lobby, through a keyhole in a lobby door, into the still darkened interior of the theater and strike the pride of all season-ticket holders, the theater's chandelier, with all its polished, reflecting, refracting, faceted claptrappery, when I spotted a rust-brown suit in the crowd outside the theater. Mama had found her way back from the Café Weitzke, had enjoyed her Mocha, had left Jan Bronski.
Admittedly, Oskar still sent a scream toward the fancy chandelier. It appeared to have had no effect, however, for the following day the newspapers reported only the mysteriously shattered panes in the lobby windows and doors. For weeks afterward semi-scientific and even scientific investigations appeared in the feature sections of the daily press, spreading one column after another of the most fantastic nonsense. The Neueste Nachrichten referred to cosmic rays. Staff members at the local observatory, highly qualified academics, spoke of sunspots.
I made my way down the spiral stairs of the Stockturm as quickly as my little legs would carry me and arrived somewhat breathlessly among the crowd in front of the theater portal. Mama's rust-brown autumn suit no longer stood out, she must have been inside Markus's shop, perhaps reporting the damage my voice had caused. And Markus, who accepted my so-called retarded condition, as well as my diamond voice, as the most natural thing in the world, would be wagging the tip of his tongue, so Oskar thought, and rubbing his yellow-white hands.
From the door of the shop I saw something that made me forget all my long-distance singshattering triumphs. Sigismund Markus knelt before my mama, and all the stuffed toys, bears, monkeys, dogs, even dolls with click-open eyes, fire engines, rocking horses, all the puppets hanging round guarding his shop, seemed about to kneel down with him. He, however, held Mama's two hands covered by his own, their backs showing lightly downed brownish spots, and he was crying.
Mama looked equally solemn and concerned by the situation. "Please, Markus," she said, "please, not here in the shop."
But Markus couldn't stop, and his words had an unforgettable cadence, pleading and overwrought at the same time: "Drop this Bronski business, with him and the Polish Post Office, it's bad I tell you. Don't bet on the Poles, if you got to bet on someone, bet on the Germans, they're going to be on top, sooner or later; they're partway there already, on their way up, and you're still betting on Bronski, Frau Agnes. Bet on Matzerath if you want, him you've got already. Or bet on Markus if you'd like, please, come with Markus, newly baptized and all. Let's go to London, Frau Agnes, I got people there and funds if you come, but if you won't come with Markus, if you despise him, then you despise him. But he's begging you, from his heart he's begging, please don't bet on this meshuge Bronski who sticks with the Polish Post Office when it's clear the Poles are finished once the Germans come."
Just as Mama, confused by so many possibilities and impossibilities, was about to burst into tears, Markus saw me in the shop door and, releasing one of Mama's hands, gestured toward me with five eloquent fingers: "Please, we'll take him with us to London. Like a prince he'll live, a prince!"
Now Mama looked at me too, and started to smile. Perhaps she was thinking of the paneless lobby windows of the Stadt-Theater, or felt good about the prospect of metropolitan London. But to my surprise she shook her head and said lightly, as if declining an offer to dance, "Thank you, Markus, but I can't, I really can't—on account of Bronski."
Taking my uncle's name as a cue, Markus rose at once, jackknifed a bow, and replied, "Forgive Markus, please, that's what he thought, that it wouldn't work on account of him."
As we left the shop in the Arsenal Arcade, Markus locked it from the outside, though it wasn't yet closing time, and walked with us to the stop for the Number Five line. Passersby and a few policemen were still standing outside the Stadt-Theater. I wasn't afraid, however, and scarcely recalled my triumphs over glass. Markus bent down to me, whispering more to himself than to us, "The things he can do, that Oskar. Beats his drum and raises a ruckus at the theater."
He calmed Mama's growing anxiety over the broken glass with soothing gestures, and as the tram arrived and we stepped into the second car, he implored her again softly, fearing he might be overheard, "Well, stick with Matzerath then, please, him you have, and don't bet on no more Poles."
When Oskar, lying or sitting on his metal bed today, drumming in either case, revisits the Arsenal Arcade, the words scribbled on the walls of the Stockturm's dungeons, the Stockturm itself with its oiled instruments of torture, the three lobby windows of the Stadt-Theater behind its columns, then returns to Arsenal Arcade and Sigismund Markus's shop to trace the details of that September day, he must, at the same time, seek the land of the Poles. How does he seek it? He seeks it with his drumsticks. Does he seek the land of the Poles with his soul as well? He seeks it with every organ of his being, but the soul is not an organ.
And I seek the land of the
Poles that is lost, that is not yet lost. Some say nearly lost, already lost, lost once more. Here in Germany they seek Poland with credits, with Leicas, with compasses, with radar, with divining rods and delegations, with humanism, with leaders of the opposition and clubs of exiles mothballing regional costumes. While they search for the land of the Poles with the soul in this land—some with Chopin, some with revenge in their hearts—while they dismiss plans one through four for partitioning the land of the Poles and sit down to work on a fifth, while they fly with Air France to Warsaw and place a wreath in remorse where the ghetto once stood, while they seek the land of the Poles with rockets someday, I search on my drum for the land of the Poles and drum: lost, not yet lost, lost once more, lost to whom, lost too soon, lost by now, Poland's lost, all is lost, Poland is not yet lost.
The Grandstand
In singshattering the lobby windows of our Stadt-Theater, I sought and found my first contact with the dramatic arts. Though she was deeply engaged with the toy merchant Markus, Mama must have noticed my direct tie to the theater that afternoon, for when the Christmas holidays came, she bought four theater tickets, for herself, for Stephan and Marga Bronski, and for Oskar, and took the three of us to the Christmas play on the last Sunday of Advent. We sat in the front row of the second balcony on the side. The fancy chandelier hanging over the orchestra section was doing its best. So I was glad I hadn't shattered it from atop the Stockturm with my song.
Even back then there were far too many children. More children than mothers sat in the balcony, while the ratio of mother to child in the orchestra, where the more prosperous and procreatively cautious sat, was fairly well balanced. Why can't children sit still? Marga Bronski, who was sitting between me and the relatively well-behaved Stephan, slipped off the folding seat, tried to climb back up, soon found it more fun to do gymnastics on the balcony rail, got caught in the folding mechanism of her seat, and began to scream, but no more loudly or lengthily than the screamers around us, because Mama stuffed her silly little mouth with candy. Sucking away and prematurely exhausted by all the struggles with her seat, Stephan's little sister fell asleep soon after the performance began and had to be awakened at the end of each act to clap her hands, which she did with great enthusiasm.
The play was Tom Thumb, a fairy tale that gripped me from the first scene and appealed to me for obvious reasons. It was done very cleverly, you never saw Tom Thumb, just heard his voice and saw the grownups chasing after the play's invisible but very active eponymous hero. There he was, ensconced in the horse's ear, there he was, being sold at a high price to two rascals by his father, there he was, strolling about on the brim of one rascal's hat, speaking down from above; later he creeps into a mouse hole, then into a snail's shell, joins a band of thieves, sleeps in the hay, winds up with the hay in a cow's stomach. But the cow is slaughtered because it speaks with Tom Thumb's voice. The cow's stomach is thrown on a dunghill with the little fellow trapped inside and gobbled up by a wolf. Tom Thumb, however, lures the wolf to the storeroom of his father's house with a few clever remarks, then raises a din just as the wolf gets going. It ended like the fairy tale: the father kills the big bad wolf, the mother cuts open the glutton's stomach with a pair of scissors, and out pops Tom Thumb, or at least you hear his voice cry, "Oh, Father, I was in a mouse hole, and a cow's stomach, and a wolf's belly; now I'm going to stay home with you."
The end moved me, and as I blinked up at Mama, I noticed she was hiding her nose in her handkerchief; like me, she had completely identified with the action on the stage. Mama was easily moved, and in the weeks that followed, especially during what remained of the Christmas holidays, she repeatedly hugged me and kissed me, calling Oskar, laughingly, wistfully, Tom Thumb. Or: my little Tom Thumb. Or: my poor, poor Tom Thumb.
It wasn't till the summer of thirty-three that I had another chance to attend the theater. Owing to a misunderstanding on my part, the affair went badly, but it had a lasting influence on me. Even now it sounds and surges within me, for it took place at the Zoppot Opera-in-the-Woods, where summer after summer, under the night sky, the music of Wagner poured forth to Nature.
Mama was the only one who cared at all for opera. Even operettas were too much for Matzerath. Jan followed Mama's lead, gushed over arias, yet despite his musical appearance he was tone-deaf to fine music. He made up for this by knowing the Formella brothers, former schoolmates at the middle school in Karthaus, who lived in Zoppot and were in charge of lighting the pier and fountain outside the spa and casino, as well as running the lights for festival performances at the Opera-in-the-Woods.
The way to Zoppot led through Oliva. A morning in Castle Park. Goldfish, swans. Mama and Jan Bronski in the famous Whispering Grotto. Then more goldfish and swans, working hand in glove with a photographer. Matzerath let me ride on his shoulders while the picture was taken. I propped my drum on top of his head, which elicited general laughter, both then and later, when the photo had been pasted in the album. Farewell to goldfish, swans, and the Whispering Grotto. It wasn't Sunday just in Castle Park, it was Sunday everywhere: outside the iron gate, in the streetcar to Glettkau, and at the Glettkau spa, where we had lunch while the Baltic, as if it had nothing else to do, kept on inviting us to bathe. As the beach promenade took us toward Zoppot, Sunday came out to meet us, and Matzerath had to pay admission for the lot of us.
We bathed on South Beach because it was supposedly less crowded than North Beach. The men changed on the men's side, Mama took me into a booth on the women's side; I was expected to go on the family beach naked, while she, already lushly overflowing her banks, poured her flesh into a straw-yellow bathing suit. To avoid exposing myself to all eyes on the family beach all too plainly, I held my drum before my private parts, then lay on my stomach in the sand, rejecting the inviting Baltic waters, hiding my shame in the sand instead, playing the ostrich. Matzerath and Jan Bronski looked so ridiculous and almost pitiful with their incipient paunches that I was glad when, late that afternoon, we returned to the bathing cabins, applied cream to our sunburns, and, Nivea-soothed, slipped back into our Sunday clothes.
Coffee and cake at The Starfish. Mama wanted a third helping of the five-story cake. Matzerath was against it, Jan in favor and against, Mama ordered, gave Matzerath a bite, fed Jan, satisfied both her men, then crammed the sugary sweet wedge spoonful by little spoonful into her mouth.
O holy buttercream, O clear to partly cloudy Sunday afternoon, dusted with powdered sugar! Polish nobles sat behind blue sunglasses and intense lemonades they didn't touch. The ladies played with violet fingernails and sent the insect-powder fragrance of the fur capes they'd rented for the season wafting toward us on the sea breeze. Matzerath thought they were silly. Mama would have loved to rent a fur cape like that, if only for a single afternoon. Jan claimed that the boredom of the Polish nobility had reached such heights that in spite of rising debts they no longer spoke French, but out of pure snobbishness, only the most ordinary Polish.
We couldn't just go on sitting in The Starfish staring at the blue sunglasses and violet fingernails of the Polish nobility. My mama full of cake needed some exercise. The spa park welcomed us, I had to ride on a donkey and pose for yet another photo. Goldfish, swans—the things Nature thinks of—then more goldfish and swans, enjoying the fresh water.
Between trimmed yews, which, however, did not whisper as people always claim, we met the Formella brothers, the same Formellas who served as lighting technicians for the Casino, and for the Opera-in-the-Woods. First the younger Formella had to deliver himself of all the jokes he'd heard on the job as a lighting technician. The elder Formella brother knew these jokes by heart and still managed to laugh infectiously at all the right places out of brotherly love, showing one gold tooth more than his younger brother, who only had three. We headed toward Springer's for a little Machandel. Mama said she preferred Kurfürsten. Then, still pulling jokes from his stockpile, the free-spending younger Formella invited us to dinner at The Parrot. There we met Tuschel,
and this Tuschel owned half of Zoppot, a share of the Opera-in-the-Woods, and five movie theaters. He was also the Formella brothers' boss, and was pleased, as we were pleased, to meet us, to meet him. Tuschel never tired of twisting a ring on his finger, which could not, however, have been a magic ring or wishing ring, for nothing at all happened except that Tuschel in turn started telling jokes, and in fact the same jokes we'd just heard from Formella, though more long-windedly because he had fewer gold teeth. Nevertheless the whole table laughed, because Tuschel was telling them. I alone remained solemn and tried to kill his punch lines by maintaining a straight face. Ah, how the salvos of laughter, even if false, spread coziness, like the bull's-eye panes on the glass partition of our little corner booth. Tuschel was visibly grateful, kept telling jokes, ordered Goldwasser liqueur, and suddenly, drifting happily in laughter and Goldwasser, twisted his ring a different way, and something actually happened. Tuschel invited us all to the Opera-in-the-Woods, since he owned a small share of the company; unfortunately he himself couldn't, a previous engagement etc., but he hoped we could still make use of his seats, the box was padded, the little fellow could sleep if he was tired; and he jotted down a few words in Tuschel's hand with a silver mechanical pencil on Tuschel's calling card that he said would open all doors—and so it did.
What happened can be told in a few words: a mild summer evening, the Opera-in-the-Woods sold out and full of foreigners. The mosquitoes had arrived early. But not until the last mosquito, trying as always to be fashionably late, had announced its arrival with a bloodthirsty buzz, did it well and truly start. It was a performance of The Flying Dutchman. A ship, looking bent more on poaching than on high-seas piracy, emerged from the woods that gave the opera company its name. Sailors sang to the trees. I fell asleep on Tuschel's padded cushions, and when I awoke, the sailors were still singing or had started up again, Helmsman keep watch ... but Oskar went back to sleep again, glad to see, as he was drifting off, that his mama was thoroughly taken with the Dutchman, floating on the waves, and breathing deeply in true Wagnerian spirit. She hadn't noticed that Matzerath and her Jan were sawing logs of various sizes, their hands shielding their faces, nor that Wagner kept slipping through my fingers too, till Oskar finally awoke for good because a woman was standing all alone in the middle of the woods screaming. She had yellow hair, and was screaming because one of the lighting technicians, probably the younger Formella, was blinding her with a spotlight, harassing her. "No!" she cried out, "Woe is me!" and "Who hath made me suffer so?" But the Formella tormenting her didn't switch off his spotlight, and the screams of the solitary woman, whom Mama later referred to as the soloist, modulated into a whimper that now and then rose as silvery foam to wilt the leaves on the trees of Zoppot Woods before their time but could not find and destroy Formella's spotlight. Her voice, though gifted, failed her. Oskar was forced to intervene, seek out the ill-bred source of light, and with one long-distance scream, undercutting the soft urgency of the mosquitoes, kill the spotlight.