The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

  We, however, left the Passion-filled pounding of carpets behind and seated ourselves in our customary arrangement—Mama, Matzerath, Jan Bronski, and Oskar—in the Number Nine streetcar, rode down Brösener Weg past the airfield, past the old and new drill grounds, then waited on a siding by Saspe Cemetery for the car coming from Neufahrwasser-Brüsen to pass. Mama used the stop as an occasion for lightly uttered yet gloomy observations. The small abandoned graveyard with its stunted shore pines and tilted, moss-covered tombstones from the previous century struck her as lovely, romantic, and charming.

  "I wouldn't mind lying there if they still used it," Mama said warmly. But Matzerath felt the soil was too sandy, complained about the rampant shore thistles and barren oats. Jan Bronski pointed out that the noise from the airfield and the shunting of streetcars near the cemetery might disturb the tranquility of the otherwise idyllic spot.

  The approaching streetcar shunted around us, the conductor rang the bell twice, and leaving Saspe and its cemetery behind, we headed for Brösen, a beach resort that at this time of year, toward the end of March, looked strange and desolate. The refreshment stands boarded up, the spa hotel shut tight, the pier bereft of flags, two hundred fifty empty booths lined up at the bathhouse. On the weather board traces of last year's chalk—air: twenty degrees centigrade; water: seventeen; wind: northeast; forecast: clear to partly cloudy.

  At first we all decided to walk to Glettkau, then, without discussing it, we turned in the opposite direction, toward the jetty. Broad and lazy, the Baltic lapped at the beach. As far as the harbor mouth, from the white lighthouse to the jetty with the sea marker, not a soul to be seen. Rain had fallen that morning, imprinting upon the sand a regular pattern we took pleasure in destroying, leaving our barefoot prints be hind. Matzerath sent smoothly polished disks of brick the size of gulden pieces skipping across the greenish water, trying to outdo the others. Jan Bronski, less skilled, searched for amber between throws, found a few chips and a piece the size of a cherry pit which he gave to Mama, who was walking along barefoot like me, constantly glancing over her shoulder, seemingly in love with her footprints. The sun shone cautiously. It was cool, windless, clear; you could see the strip on the horizon that was Hela Peninsula, two or three fading plumes of smoke, and the superstructure of a cargo steamer climbing over the horizon with a leaping motion.

  One after the other, at varying intervals, we reached the first granite blocks at the base of the jetty. Mama and I put our shoes and socks back on. She helped me tie them while Matzerath and Jan were already hopping along the rugged crest of the jetty from stone to stone toward the open sea. Damp beards of seaweed grew in disorderly fashion from the seams of the foundation. Oskar felt like combing them. But Mama took me by the hand and we followed the men, who were behaving like schoolboys up ahead. My drum banged against my knee at every step; even here I wouldn't let them take it from me. Mama wore a light blue spring coat with raspberry-colored lapels. The granite blocks were giving her high-heeled shoes trouble. As on all Sundays and holidays, I was in my sailor's jacket with its gold anchor buttons. An old ribbon from Gretchen Schemer's souvenir collection bearing the legend SMS Seydlitz encircled my sailor's cap and would have fluttered had it been windy enough. Matzerath unbuttoned his brown greatcoat. Jan, stylish as always, in his ulster with its shimmering velvet collar.

  We leapt along until we reached the sea marker at the end of the jetty. An elderly man with a docker's cap and padded jacket was sitting at the foot of the sea marker. Beside him lay a potato sack with something twitching and wriggling inside. The man, who probably lived in Brösen or Neufahrwasser, was holding the end of a clothesline. The line, matted with seaweed, disappeared into the brackish waters of the Mottlau, which, still muddy here at its mouth, slapped against the stones of the jetty without any help from the open sea.

  We wondered why the man in the docker's cap was fishing with an ordinary clothesline and apparently without a float. Mama asked him in a good-natured but teasing way, calling him Uncle. Uncle grinned, showed us the stubs of his tobacco-stained teeth, and with no further explanation, spat a long, lumpy stream of juice that tumbled in the air and landed in the slop between the tar-and-oil-covered granite humps below. The spittle rocked back and forth until a seagull arrived and, nimbly avoiding the stones, snatched it up in flight, drawing other screeching gulls in its wake.

  Just as we were about to leave, since it was cold on the jetty and the sun was no help, the man in the docker's cap began hauling the line in hand over hand. Mama still wanted to leave. Matzerath, however, wouldn't budge. Even Jan, who always granted Mama's slightest wish, offered no support this time. Oskar didn't care either way. But since we stayed, I watched. As the docker, pulling steadily hand over hand, gathered the line between his legs, stripping away the seaweed at each pull, I noted that the cargo steamer, which a mere half-hour ago had barely cleared the horizon with its superstructure, had now changed course and, lying low in the water, was heading for the harbor. Lying that low, she must be a Swede carrying ore, Oskar guessed.

  I turned away from the Swede as the docker rose with some effort. "Well now, let's just take a little look and see what we got." This he said to Matzerath, who had no idea what he was talking about but still concurred. Steadily repeating "let's just take" and "a little look," the docker kept hauling on the line, but with more effort now, then climbed down the stones alongside the line and thrust—Mama didn't turn away in time—thrust his whole arm into the blubbering bay between the granite stones, felt around, got hold of something, grabbed tight, pulled, and crying out to us to stand back, swung something upward, something heavy and dripping, a spraying, living clump, into our midst: a horse's head, a fresh head, a real one, the head of a black horse with a black mane, which only yesterday or the day before may still have been whinnying, for the head was not yet rotten, did not stink, smelled at most of the Mottlau, like everything else on the jetty.

  The man with the docker's cap, which was now pushed far back on his head, was standing over the horseflesh, from which small light green eels were furiously wriggling. The man had a hard time catching them, for eels move quickly and surely over smooth stone, especially when it's damp. Seagulls and the screech of seagulls were instantly above us. They pecked away, three or four of them easily handling a small to medium-sized eel, nor could they be driven off, for the jetty was their domain. Nevertheless the docker, thrusting his arm forcefully among the gulls and grabbing hold, managed to stuff perhaps two dozen smaller eels into his sack, which Matzerath, helpful as ever, held out for him. He was too busy to see Mama's face turn the color of cheese, as she laid first her hand and then her head on Jan's shoulder and velvet collar.

  But when the small and middle-sized eels were in the sack, and the docker, whose cap had fallen from his head as he went about his business, started squeezing thicker, darker eels from the cadaver, Mama had to sit down; Jan tried to turn her head aside, but she wouldn't allow it, staring steadily with large cow's eyes directly into the very middle of the docker's work as he wormed out the eels.

  "Take a little look!" he grunted now and then. "Let's just see!" He wrenched open the horse's mouth with the help of his rubber boot and forced a stick between the jaws, so that the great yellow horse teeth seemed to be laughing. And when the docker—you could see now that his head was bald and egg-shaped—reached into the horse's gullet with both hands and pulled out two at once, at least as thick as his arm and just as long, my mama's jaw dropped: she spewed her whole breakfast, clumps of egg white with yolk trailing threads among lumps of bread in a gush of coffee and milk, onto the stones of the jetty, and kept retching till nothing more would come, since she hadn't had much breakfast, for she was overweight and trying to slim down, had tried all sorts of diets, but could seldom stick to them—she snacked in secret—and the only thing she held to strictly were her Tuesday exercises with the Women's Association, though Jan and even Matzerath laughed at her when they saw her carrying her gym bag to join those
comical heifers and swing Indian clubs in her shiny blue outfit, and still she lost no weight.

  Mama spewed half a pound at most onto the stones, and no matter how hard she retched, she could lose no more. Nothing came but green phlegm—and the gulls. They came as soon as she started vomiting, circled lower, descending sleek and smooth, fought over my mama's breakfast with no fear of getting fat, could not be driven of—and certainly not by Jan Bronski, who was afraid of gulls and shielded his pretty blue eyes with his hands.

  Nor did they listen to Oskar, who weighed in against the gulls with his drum and battled their whiteness with a whirl of his sticks on white lacquer. But that didn't help, at most turned the gulls even whiter. Matzerath, however, was not worried in the least about Mama. He laughed and mimicked the docker, showed how strong his nerves were, and when the docker was practically done and with a final flourish pulled a huge eel out through the horse's ear, causing the white gruel of the horse's brain to dribble out with it, Matzerath's face too turned the color of cheese, but he still couldn't stop showing off, bought two medium-sized and two large eels from the docker for practically nothing, then tried to talk him down even further.

  I had to admire Jan Bronski. He looked as if he wanted to cry, but even so helped Mama to her feet, put one arm around her, held the other out before her, and led her away, which looked comical, Mama tottering in her high heels from one stone to the next toward the beach, one leg or the other giving way at every step, and still she never broke an ankle.

  Oskar remained with Matzerath and the docker, because the latter, having replaced his cap, was explaining to us why his potato sack was half-full of coarse salt. There was salt in the sack so the eels would wriggle themselves to death in the salt, so the salt would draw the slime from their skin and innards. Eels can't stop wriggling once they're put in salt, they keep squirming till they die and leave their slime in the salt. That's what you do if you want to smoke your eels afterward. Of course it's outlawed by the police and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but that doesn't stop the eels from squirming. How else are you supposed to get the slime off them, and out of them? Afterward the dead eels are wiped clean with dry peat and hung in a smoking barrel over beech wood.

  Matzerath felt it was just to leave the eels wriggling in salt. After all, they crawled into the horse's head, he said. And into human corpses too, said the docker. They say the eels were mighty fat after the Battle of Skagerrak. And just a few days ago a doctor here at the mental hospital told me about a married woman who tried to satisfy herself with a live eel. But the eel bit firmly into her; she had to be committed, and they say she could never have children after that.

  The docker closed the sack with the eels in salt and threw it over his shoulder as it continued to thrash about. He hung the coiled clothesline around his neck and trudged off, just as the cargo steamer was enter ing the harbor, heading toward Neufahrwasser. The steamer was about eighteen hundred tons and wasn't a Swede but a Finn, carrying not ore but lumber. The docker with the sack must have known a few men on the Finn, for he waved over at the rusty tub and yelled something. Those on the Finn waved and yelled something in reply. But why Matzerath waved and roared out something silly like "Ship ahoy!" was a mystery to me. As a native Rhinelander he didn't know the first thing about ships, nor did he know a single Finn. But he made it a habit to wave when anyone else did, and to yell, laugh, or clap whenever anyone else yelled, laughed, or clapped. That's why he joined the Party relatively early on, when it was still totally unnecessary, offered no advantages, and simply tied up his Sunday mornings.

  Oskar followed slowly behind Matzerath, the man from Neufahrwasser, and the overloaded Finn. Now and then I looked back, for the docker had left the horse head at the base of the sea marker. There was nothing to be seen of the head now, however, for it was powdered over with gulls. A white, weightless hole in the bottle-green sea. A freshly laundered cloud that might rise at any moment, clean and pure, into the air, screeching loudly, hiding a horse's head that did not whinny but screamed.

  When I'd had enough, I ran away from the gulls and Matzerath, striking my drum with my fist as I leapt along, passed the docker, who was now smoking a stubby pipe, and caught up with Jan Bronski and Mama at the head of the jetty. Jan was holding Mama just as he had been, but one hand had disappeared beneath her lapel. That Mama also had one hand in Jan's trouser pocket was something Matzerath could not see, for he was far behind us, wrapping the four eels the docker had stunned with a stone in a piece of newspaper he'd found among the rocks on the jetty.

  When Matzerath caught up with us, he waved the bundle of eels about and bragged, "One-fifty he wanted. But I gave him a gulden and basta!"

  Mama's face was looking better now, both hands were together again, and she declared, "Just don't think I'm going to eat any of that eel. I'm never eating another fish, least of all eel."

  Matzerath laughed. "Don't make such a fuss, girl. You've always known what eels do and you still ate them, fresh ones too. We'll see once your humble servant has cooked them just right with all the trimmings and a little salad."

  Jan Bronski, who had removed his hand in time from Mama's coat, said nothing. I drummed away steadily till we reached Brösen so they wouldn't start up about the eels again. At the tram stop, and inside the second car, I continued to prevent the three grownups from talking. The eels remained relatively still. No stop at Saspe, because the other tram had already arrived. Just beyond the airfield, in spite of my drumming, Matzerath started going on about how enormously hungry he was. Mama didn't react and stared past everyone till Jan offered her one of his Regattas. As he gave her a light and she adjusted the gold tip to her lips, she smiled at Matzerath, for she knew he didn't like to see her smoke in public.

  At Max-Halbe-Platz we got off, and despite everything Mama took Matzerath's arm and not, as I had expected, Jan's. Jan walked beside me, holding my hand as he finished Mama's cigarette.

  On Labesweg the Catholic housewives were still beating their carpets. While Matzerath was unlocking the door to the flat, I saw Frau Kater, who lived on the fifth floor next to the trumpeter Meyn, on the stairs. She was holding a rolled-up brownish carpet on her right shoulder with her powerful reddish blue arms. Her blond hair, matted and salty with sweat, blazed from both armpits. The carpet hung down both in front and behind. She could easily have been carrying a drunken man, but her husband was no longer living. As she lugged her fat self past me in a shiny black taffeta dress her effluvium struck me: ammonia, pickles, carbide—she must have been having her monthlies.

  Shortly thereafter the rhythmic blows of carpet beating rose from the courtyard and drove me through the flat, pursued me till I escaped at last by crouching in the wardrobe of our bedroom, where the dangling winter coats muffled the worst of the pre-paschal noise.

  But it wasn't just the carpet-beating Frau Kater who sent me scurrying to the wardrobe. Mama, Jan, and Matzerath had not yet removed their coats when they started arguing about the Good Friday meal. And it wasn't restricted to eels, I had to be trotted out again, with my famous fall down the cellar steps: "It's your fault, it was your fault too, I'm making eel soup, don't be such a sissy, cook what you want but not eel, there's plenty of canned goods in the cellar, bring up some mushrooms but shut the trapdoor so something like that doesn't happen again, forget that old song and dance, we're having eels and that's it, with milk, mustard, parsley, and boiled potatoes and a bay leaf on top and a clove, no, no, come on, Alfred, if she doesn't want any, now don't you stick your nose in, I didn't buy those eels for nothing, they'll be nicely cleaned and washed, no, no, we'll just see once they're on the table, we'll see who eats and who doesn't."

  Matzerath slammed the living room door behind him and disappeared into the kitchen, where we could hear him banging away. He killed the eels with a crosscut slice below the head while Mama, who had an overly lively imagination, had to sit down on the sofa, where she was quickly joined by Jan Bronski, and a moment later the
two were holding hands and whispering in Kashubian.

  When the three grownups had assumed their respective positions in the flat, I was not yet sitting in the wardrobe but still in the living room. There was a child's chair by the tile stove. There I sat swinging my legs, with Jan staring at me, and I could tell I was in the way, though they couldn't really do much, since Matzerath was right behind the living room wall, threatening them silently but unmistakably with half-dead eels that he swung like a whip. So they exchanged hands, squeezed and tugged on twenty fingers, cracked their knuckles, and drove me to distraction with their noise. Wasn't Frau Kater's carpet pounding in the courtyard enough? Didn't it penetrate every wall, drawing ever closer though it grew no louder?

  Oskar slid down from his little chair, crouched for a moment beside the tile stove, so that his departure would not be too obvious, and then, totally immersed in his drum, scooted across the threshold into the bedroom.

  To avoid making any noise, I left the bedroom door half-open, and noted with satisfaction that no one called me back. I was still trying to decide if Oskar should crawl under the bed or climb into the wardrobe. I chose the wardrobe because my nice navy blue sailor's uniform might have got dirty under the bed. I could just reach the wardrobe key, turned it once, pulled the mirrored doors apart, and used my drumsticks to push aside the hangers with coats and winter clothes lined up on the pole. To reach the heavy woolens and move them I had to stand on my drum. The gap left in the center of the wardrobe was not large, but it was big enough to accommodate an incoming and crouching Oskar. I even managed with some effort to pull the mirrored doors inward and, using the overlapping slat, to jam them with the help of a shawl I found on the cupboard floor in such a way that a finger-wide gap allowed me to see out if necessary and even let in some air. I placed my drum on my knee but didn't strike it, not even lightly, allowed myself instead to be enveloped and penetrated by the vapors of winter coats.