by Günter Grass
ROSWITHA: But I like it, and it's good for me. Oof! When I think of that cake with whipped cream the Luftwaffe served us in Copenhagen.
BEBRA: The Dutch chocolate in the thermos is still nice and hot.
KITTY: I just love these tins of American cookies.
ROSWITHA: Be sure and put this South African ginger marmalade on them.
OSKAR: Don't pile it on, Roswitha, please.
ROSWITHA: You've been taking inch-thick slices of that awful English corned beef yourself.
BEBRA: What about you, soldier? A paper-thin slice of raisin bread with yellow plum jam?
LANKES: If I wasn't on duty, sir ...
ROSWITHA: You have to give him an official order.
KITTY: Yes, an official order.
BEBRA: All right, Corporal, I hereby order you to take some raisin bread with French plum jam, a Danish soft-boiled egg, Soviet caviar, and a small cup of genuine Dutch chocolate.
LANKES: Yes, sir! Genuine Dutch chocolate! He joins them on top of the bunker.
BEBRA: Don't we have another cushion for the soldier?
OSKAR: He can have mine. I'll sit on my drum.
ROSWITHA: But don't catch cold, darling. Concrete is treacherous, and you're not used to it.
KITTY: He can have my cushion too. I'm going to knot myself up a little so the bread and honey goes down better.
FELIX: But stay over the tablecloth, let's not get honey on the concrete. That would weaken our defenses. Everyone giggles.
BEBRA: Ah, the sea air feels so good.
ROSWITHA: Yes it does.
BEBRA: The chest expands.
ROSWITHA: Yes it does.
BEBRA: The heart sheds its skin.
ROSWITHA: The heart indeed does.
BEBRA: The soul bursts forth from its cocoon.
ROSWITHA: How beautiful the sea air makes us look.
BEBRA: Sight is freed, takes wing ...
ROSWITHA: It flies...
BEBRA: Flaps away, across the sea, the endless sea ... Say, Corporal, I see something black down there on the beach, five of them.
KITTY: I do too. With five umbrellas!
FELIX: Six.
KITTY: Five! One, two, three, four, five!
LANKES: It's the nuns from Lisieux. They were evacuated with their kindergarten and shipped over here.
KITTY: But Kitty can't spot any children. Just five umbrellas.
LANKES: They always leave the children in the village, in Bavent, and come at low tide to gather shellfish and prawns caught in the Rommel asparagus.
KITTY: Poor things.
ROSWITHA: Should we offer them corned beef and a few cookies?
OSKAR: I suggest raisin bread with plum jam, since it's Friday and nuns can't eat corned beef on Friday.
KITTY: Now they're running. Sailing along with their umbrellas.
LANKES: They always do that when they've gathered enough. They start playing. Especially Agneta, the novice, a young thing who still doesn't know which way is up—got another cigarette, sir? Many thanks. And the one bringing up the rear, the fat one who can't keep up, that's the Mother Superior, Sister Scholastika. She doesn't want them playing on the beach, it might be against the rules of the order. Nuns with umbrellas run about in the background. Roswitha starts up the gramophone: "Sleigh Bells in St. Petersburg" rings out. The nuns dance to it and shout with joy.
AGNETA: Yoo-hoo! Sister Scholastika!
SCHOLASTIKA: Agneta, Sister Agneta!
AGNETA: Ha, ha, Sister Scholastika!
SCHOLASTIKA: Come back, my child. Sister Agneta!
AGNETA: I can't! I'm carried away.
SCHOLASTIKA: Then pray, Sister, for a conversion!
AGNETA: A sorrowful one?
SCHOLASTIKA: A merciful one.
AGNETA: A joyful one?
SCHOLASTIKA: Pray, Sister Agneta!
AGNETA: I'm praying, I keep onnn praying. But I'm still being carried away!
SCHOLASTIKA, her voice dying away: Agneta, Sister Agneta!
AGNETA: Yoo-hoo! Sister Scholastika! The nuns disappear. Now and then their umbrellas appear in the background. The phonograph record runs down. Beside the entrance to the bunker the telephone rings. Lankes springs down from the top of the pillbox, lifts the receiver; the others continue eating.
ROSWITHA: Even here, in the midst of boundless nature, there has to be a telephone.
LANKES: Dora Seven here. Corporal Lankes.
HERZOG enters slowly from the right with telephone receiver and cable, stops several times to speak into the phone: Are you asleep, Lankes? There's something moving in front of Dora Seven. Plain as day.
LANKES: Those are nuns, sir.
HERZOG: What do you mean, nuns? And what if they aren't nuns?
LANKES: But that's what they are. Plain as day.
HERZOG: Ever hear of camouflage? Fifth column? The English have been at it for centuries. Come with their Bibles and then suddenly all hell breaks loose.
LANKES: They're gathering prawns, sir ...
HERZOG: Clear the beach immediately, is that understood?
LANKES: Yes, sir. But they're just gathering prawns.
HERZOG: Man your machine gun, Lankes!
LANKES: But they're just looking for prawns, at low tide, for their kindergarten ...
HERZOG: I'm giving you an order...
LANKES: Yes, sir! Lankes disappears into the pillbox. Herzog exits right with the telephone.
OSKAR: Better hold your ears, Roswitha, there's going to be shooting, just like in the newsreels.
KITTY: Oh, how awful! I'll tie myself in a tighter knot.
BEBRA: I'm almost inclined to believe we'll hear something.
FELIX: We should turn on the gramophone again. That helps some. He turns on the gramophone: The Platters sing "The Great Pretender" The machine gun rattles in time with the slow, tragically drawn-out music. Roswitha holds her ears. Felix stands on his head. In the background five nuns with umbrellas fly heavenward. The record sticks, repeats itself, then silence. Felix ends his handstand. Kitty unties herself. Roswitha hastily clears away the tablecloth with the breakfast leftovers and puts them in the picnic basket. Oskar and Bebra help her. They leave the roof of the bunker. Lankes appears in the entrance.
LANKES: Got another cigarette, sir?
BEBRA, his frightened troupe behind him: Soldier, you smoke too much.
BEBRA'S TROUPE: Smoke too much.
LANKES: It's the concrete, sir.
BEBRA: And if there's no more concrete someday?
BEBRA'S TROUPE: No more concrete someday.
LANKES: It's immortal, sir. But we and our cigarettes ...
BEBRA: I know, I know, we vanish with the smoke.
BEBRA'S TROUPE, slowly exiting: With the smoke!
BEBRA: But they'll still be inspecting concrete a thousand years from now.
BEBRA'S TROUPE: A thousand years from now!
BEBRA: They'll find puppy bones.
BEBRA'S TROUPE: Little puppy bones.
BEBRA: And your oblique formations in concrete.
BEBRA'S TROUPE: Mystical, barbaric, bored!
Lankes, alone, smoking.
Though Oskar said little or nothing during that breakfast on the pillbox, he could not resist recording this dialogue on the Atlantic Wall, for such words were indeed spoken on the eve of the invasion; and we will run into our concrete artist Corporal Lankes again on another page, when we assess the postwar period and our now blossoming bourgeois era.
On the beach promenade the armored personnel car was still waiting for us. With long strides Lieutenant Herzog joined those entrusted to his care. Breathlessly he apologized to Bebra for the minor incident. "Off limits means off limits," he said, helped the ladies into the car, gave the driver a few final instructions, and back we headed for Bavent. We were in a rush, barely had time for lunch, for we had announced a show at two that afternoon in the grand hall of the charming little Norman château that lay behind poplars at the edge of the village.
That evening we repeated the performance for the officers and the telegraph girls from a communications center in Cabourg. Roswitha was a trifle nervous, though she made no mistakes, but in the midst of her routine donned a pair of blue-rimmed sunglasses, altered her tone of voice, and became more direct in her revelations, informing, for example, a somewhat pale, embarrassed, and therefore slightly snippy telegraph girl that she was having an affair with her commanding officer. This seemed to me in rather poor taste, but it drew plenty of laughs from the audience, since the officer in question was no doubt the one sitting next to the telegraph girl.
After the show the regimental staff officers, who were billeted at the château, gave a party. Bebra, Kitty, and Felix stayed on, but Raguna and Oskar quietly took their leave, went to bed, fell asleep quickly after such a busy day, and slept till five a.m., when the invasion woke us up.
What shall I tell you about the invasion? Canadians landed in our sector, near the mouth of the Orne. Bavent had to be evacuated. We'd already loaded our luggage. We were to withdraw along with the regimental staff. A steaming, motorized field kitchen had pulled up in the courtyard of the château. Roswitha asked me to bring her a cup of coffee, since she hadn't had breakfast yet. Slightly nervous, and worried that I might miss pulling out with the other trucks, I refused, and was even a trifle rude to her. Whereupon she jumped from the truck herself, ran over to the field kitchen in her high heels with the mess kit, and reached her hot morning coffee at precisely the same moment as an incoming naval shell.
O Roswitha, I know not how old you were, I only know that you were three foot three, that the Mediterranean spoke through you, that you smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg, that you could see into the hearts of men but could not look into your own, or else you would have stayed with me and not gone running after that coffee, which was all too hot.
In Lisieux, Bebra managed to get us marching orders for Berlin. When he emerged and rejoined us outside garrison headquarters, he spoke for the first time since Roswitha's passing: "We dwarfs and fools should not dance on concrete that's been poured and hardened for giants. If only we'd stayed under the grandstands, where no one suspected our presence."
In Berlin I parted from Bebra. "What will you do in all those air-raid shelters without your Roswitha?" he said with a smile as thin as a spider web, kissed me on the forehead, provided Kitty and Felix with travel papers to escort me to Central Station in Danzig, and presented me with the five remaining drums from the theatrical gear; and thus provided for, still armed with my book, I arrived on the eleventh of June in forty-four, the day before my son's third birthday, in my native city, which, still undamaged and medieval, rang forth the hours with bells of various sizes from church towers of various heights.
The Imitation of Christ
Ah, yes, the homecoming: At twenty-four minutes past twenty hundred hours the furlough train pulled into Danzig Central. Felix and Kitty accompanied me as far as Max-Halbe-Platz, said goodbye, with Kitty getting teary-eyed, then, shortly before twenty-one hundred hours, proceeded to the control station in Hochstrieß while Oskar plodded down Labesweg with his luggage.
The Homecoming. There's an unfortunate tendency nowadays to regard every young man who forges a small check, joins the Foreign Legion, then returns home in a few years, slightly older and full of stories, as a modern-day Ulysses. Some absent-minded fellow climbs onto the wrong train, winds up in Oberhausen instead of Frankfurt, has some sort of encounter on the way—how could he not?—and starts bandying about names like Circe, Penelope, and Telemachus the minute he gets home.
Oskar was no Ulysses, if for no other reason than that he found things unchanged at his homecoming. His beloved Maria, to whom the role of Penelope would have fallen, was not surrounded by lecherous suitors, she still had her Matzerath, whom she had chosen over Oskar long before his departure. And I do hope the more classically minded among you don't see my poor Raguna as a man-beguiling Circe simply because she was once a professional somnambulist. Finally, as far as my son Kurt is concerned, he didn't lift a finger to help his father, and so was certainly no Telemachus, even if he did fail to recognize Oskar.
If a comparison is necessary—and I understand that homecomers must put up with comparisons—then I prefer to be viewed as the Prodigal Son, for Matzerath opened the door and welcomed me like a fa ther, and not just a presumptive one. Yes, he showed such joy at Oskar's homecoming, shedding genuine, wordless tears, that from that day forth I no longer called myself exclusively Oskar Bronski but Oskar Matzerath as well.
Maria received me with less emotion but was by no means unfriendly. She was sitting at the table, pasting in food stamps for the Office of Economic Affairs, and had already stacked a few wrapped birthday presents for Kurt on a little side table. Practical as she was, the first thing she thought of was my physical well-being; she undressed me, bathed me as in days of old, ignoring my blushes, and sat me at the table in my pajamas, where Matzerath had meanwhile served up fried eggs and roasted potatoes. They gave me milk to drink too, and while I ate and drank, the questioning began: "Where were you, we searched everywhere, and the cops searched like mad, and we had to go to court and swear we hadn't bumped you off. Well, you're back now. But you made plenty of trouble for us, and more to come, because now we have to tell them you're back. Let's just hope they don't stick you in some home. That's what you deserve. Running away and not saying nothing!"
Maria proved to be right. There was plenty of trouble. An officer from the Ministry of Health arrived and spoke in private with Matzerath, but Matzerath cried out loudly enough so we could all hear, "It's out of the question, I promised my wife on her deathbed, I'm his father, not the health authorities!"
So I wasn't sent to a home. But from then on an official letter arrived every two weeks asking Matzerath for a simple signature; Matzerath refused to sign, but his face grew lined with care.
Oskar's getting ahead of himself, and must smooth Matzerath's face again, for the evening I arrived his face beamed; he was far less worried than Maria and asked fewer questions, just enjoyed my happy homecoming, behaved like a true father, and said, as I was taken up to a somewhat bewildered Mother Truczinski at bedtime, "Won't little Kurt be happy to have a little brother again. And just think, tomorrow is Kurt's third birthday."
On his birthday table my son Kurt found, in addition to the cake with three candles, a wine-red sweater knitted by Gretchen Scheffler to which he paid no attention. There was a nasty yellow rubber ball he sat on, then rode all about and finally punctured with a kitchen knife. Then he sucked from the rubber wound that sickeningly sweet fluid that gathers in all inflated balls. Scarcely had the ball been given its permanent dent than little Kurt began to unrig the sailboat and transform it into a shipwreck. A humming top and its whip lay untouched, but frighteningly close at hand.
From my theatrical gear, which I had stowed behind the roof tiles in the attic along with my large one-volume course of study, I fetched a shiny brand-new tin drum, resolved to offer my son the same opportunity—since none of the grownups would—that my poor mama, keeping her promise, had offered me on my third birthday.
Matzerath had once hoped that I would take over the grocery store, and since I'd let him down, I had good reason to believe that Matzerath now saw little Kurt as the future grocer. If I say that had to be prevented at all costs, please don't regard Oskar as an outright enemy of retail trade. I would have felt exactly the same way had either one of us been asked to take over a factory or inherit a kingdom with all its colonies. Oskar wanted no hand-me-downs, and he hoped his son would reject them too; I wanted him—and therein lay my logical error—to be a drummer eternally three years old, as if taking over a drum weren't just as revolting for a hopeful young man as taking over a grocery store.
Oskar sees that today. But back then he was consumed by one desire: to set a drumming son beside a drumming father, to drum as a duo looking up at the grownups from below, to establish a drumming dynasty capable of perpetuating itself, passing on his work from generation to generation on red and white lacquered tin.
What a life lay before us! Drumming away beside each other, but also in different rooms, side by side, but he at times on Labesweg, I on Luisenstraße, he in the cellar, I in the attic, little Kurt in the kitchen, Oskar in the toilet, father and son, here and there, and now and then in tandem, and should the fortunate occasion have arisen, we could both have slipped under the skirts of my grandmother and his great-grandmother Anna Koljaiczek to live and drum and breathe in the smell of slightly rancid butter. Crouching by her portal, I would have said to little Kurt, "Take a look inside, my son. That's where we come from. And if you're very, very good, we may be allowed to return there for a brief hour or so and visit those who await us."