by Günter Grass
I beat my drum a little, kept it cheery, and tried to dispel Herr Fajngold's gloomy thoughts. His brow remained furrowed, his gaze off somewhere, in distant Galicia for all I knew, but he didn't see my drum. Oskar gave up, and only the sound of Maria weeping and the rumbling of the wheels remained.
What a mild winter, I thought, as the last houses in Langfuhr fell away behind us, and took some notice of the budgie too, fluffing its feathers in response to the afternoon sun that stood over the airfield.
The airfield was under guard, the road to Brösen closed. An officer spoke with Herr Fajngold, who held his top hat between his outspread fingers during the interrogation and showed his thin, reddish blond hair, blown about by the wind. Rapping briefly on Matzerath's box as if to examine its contents, and teasing the budgie with his finger, the officer let us pass, but gave us two boys, who couldn't have been more than sixteen, with caps too small and tommy guns too large, as guards or escorts.
Old man Heilandt pulled without ever turning around. And he was even able to light a cigarette with one hand as he did so, without stopping the cart. Airplanes hung in the air. You could hear the engines so clearly because it was late February or early March. Only a few small clouds remained near the sun and gradually took on color. Bombers headed for Hela or returned from Hela Peninsula, where scattered units of the Second Army were still holding out.
The weather and the droning of the planes depressed me. There's nothing more tedious, nothing more tiring, than a cloudless March sky filled with the roar of airplanes swelling and dying. To make matters worse, the two Russian boys kept struggling in vain to march in step the whole way.
Perhaps a few boards of the hastily assembled crate had loosened during the journey, first over cobblestones and then on asphalt with potholes, and also we were heading into the wind; at any rate, it smelled of dead Matzerath, and Oskar was glad when we reached Saspe Cemetery.
We couldn't make it all the way to the wrought-iron gate because a burned-out T 34 was angled across the street just short of the cemetery, blocking it off. Other tanks advancing toward Neufahrwasser had been forced to detour around it and had left their tracks in the sand to the left of the street, flattening a portion of the cemetery wall. Herr Fajngold asked old man Heilandt to take the rear. They carried the coffin, which sagged slightly in the middle, along the tracks of the tank, hoisted it with some difficulty over the crumbling wall and, with what remained of their strength, a few steps on between the fallen and tilted gravestones. Old man Heilandt sucked greedily at his cigarette and blew the smoke toward the foot of the coffin. I carried the cage with the budgie on its perch. Maria dragged two shovels behind her. Little Kurt carried the pickax, or, rather, brandished it about, risking life and limb as he hacked away at the gray granite in the cemetery, till Maria took the pick away from him and, strong as she was, helped the two men dig.
It's a good thing the soil's sandy here and not frozen, I said to myself, and went looking for Jan Bronski's place on the other side of the north wall. It must have been here, or perhaps there. I could no longer tell for sure, for the changing seasons had softened the once telltale fresh whitewash to a crumbling gray that matched all the other walls in Saspe Cemetery.
I made my way back through the iron gate at the rear, glanced up at the stunted pines, and said to myself, trying to avoid idle thoughts: Now they're burying Matzerath too. I sought and found at least partial meaning in the fact that the two skat brothers, Bronski and Matzerath, now lay beneath the same sandy soil, even if my poor mama wasn't here to keep them company.
Funerals always make you think of other funerals.
The sandy soil didn't give in easily; no doubt it demanded more experienced gravediggers. Maria paused, leaned panting on the pickax, and started to cry again when she saw little Kurt throwing stones from some distance at the budgie in the cage. Little Kurt didn't score any hits, kept overthrowing it, while Maria wept loudly and sincerely because she'd lost Matzerath, because she'd seen something in Matzerath I don't believe was ever there, but which, in her eyes, would remain clear and worthy of love forever. Herr Fajngold offered her a few words of comfort and took the opportunity to pause briefly himself, since the work was wearing him down. Old man Heilandt seemed to be digging for gold, so steadily did he wield the shovel, tossing each shovelful behind him, expelling even his cigarette smoke in measured intervals. The two Russian boys sat on the cemetery wall a short distance away and chatted into the wind. Above, airplanes and a steadily ripening sun.
They may have dug down about a meter, while Oskar stood by idly and at a loss amid the old granite, amid the stunted pines, between the widow Matzerath and a little Kurt still throwing stones at the budgie.
Should I or shouldn't I? You're going on twenty-one, Oskar. Should you or shouldn't you? You're an orphan. It's high time you did. You've been a half orphan since your poor mama died. You should have made up your mind back then. Next they laid your presumptive father, Jan Bronski, just under the crust of the earth. That made you a presumptive full orphan, and you stood here on this sand called Saspe, holding a slightly oxidized shell in your hand. It was raining, and a Ju 52 was coming in for a landing. Wasn't "Should I or shouldn't I?" already clear, if not in the sound of the falling rain, then in the drone of the landing transport plane? You told yourself, it's the sound of the rain, it's the noise of the engines; any text could be read into that sort of monotony. You wanted it to be absolutely clear, and not just presumptive.
Should I or shouldn't I? Now they're digging a hole for Matzerath, your second presumptive father. To the best of your knowledge, you have no more presumptive fathers. So why keep juggling two empty glass-green bottles: Should I or shouldn't I? Who else is there to question? These stunted pines, themselves so questionable?
Then I found a slender cast-iron cross with crumbling ornaments and crusted letters that spelled Mathilde Kunkel—or Runkel. Then—should I or shouldn't I—in the sand between thistles and wild oats—should I—I found—or shouldn't I—three or four rusty, flaking metal wreaths the size of dinner plates, which at one time—should I—may have depicted oak leaves or laurel—perhaps I shouldn't—weighed them in my hand—perhaps I should—aimed—should I—at the top of the cross—or not—with a diameter of—should I—perhaps an inch and a half—or not—moved back about six feet—should I—and tossed—or not—missed—should I try again—the cross too far aslant—should I— Mathilde Kunkel, or was it Runkel—should I, Kunkel, should I, Runkel—took my sixth toss, took a seventh, and six times I should not, and threw a seventh—should!—looped it over—should!—wreathed Mathilde—should!—adorned with laurel Fräulein Kunkel—asked a young Frau Runkel should I—yes! Mathilde said; she died so young, at twenty-seven, born in sixty-eight. But I was nearly twenty-one when that seventh toss succeeded, when I reduced my "Should I, shouldn't I?" to a confirmed, wreathed, targeted, triumphant "I should!"
And as Oskar headed for the gravediggers with the new "I should!" on his tongue and "I should!" in his heart, the budgie squawked; little Kurt had struck home, and yellow-blue feathers flew. I wondered what question had moved my son to barrage a budgie with pebbles till one finally hit home and gave the answer.
They had moved the crate beside the pit, which was about four feet deep. Old man Heilandt was in a hurry, but had to wait because Maria was offering up Catholic prayers, while Herr Fajngold held his top hat to his chest with his eyes somewhere off in Galicia. Little Kurt came closer now too. He'd no doubt reached a decision after his direct hit and was approaching the grave with some purpose or other in mind, just as resolutely as Oskar.
The uncertainty was killing me. After all, this was my son who had decided for or against something. Had he decided to recognize and love me at last as the only true father? Or had he decided, now that it was too late, to take up the tin drum? Or was his decision: Death to my presumptive father Oskar, who killed my presumptive father Matzerath with a Party pin simply because he was fed up with fathers. Was he too onl
y able to express the childlike affection desirable between fathers and sons by an act of homicide?
While old man Heilandt dropped more than lowered the crate with Matzerath, the Party pin in Matzerath's windpipe, and the bullets of a Russian machine gun in Matzerath's belly, into the grave, Oskar confessed to himself that he had deliberately killed Matzerath because of the high probability that he was not only his presumptive father, but his real father as well; and because he was fed up with having to haul a father around with him all his life.
Nor was it true that the Party pin was open when I picked the bonbon up off the concrete floor. The pin was first opened within my closed hand. I passed the sticky bonbon on to Matzerath, pointed and jagged, so they would find the badge on him, so he would place the Party on his tongue, so that he would choke on it—on the Party, on me, on his son; for this had to stop!
Old man Heilandt began to shovel. Little Kurt helped him, awkwardly but eagerly. I never loved Matzerath. Sometimes I liked him. As a cook he took better care of me than as a father. He was a good cook. If I still miss Matzerath on occasion, it's his Königsberg dumplings, his pork kidneys in vinegar sauce, his carp with horseradish and cream, dishes like eel soup with dill, Kassler ribs with sauerkraut, and all his unforgettable Sunday roasts, which I can still feel on my tongue and between my teeth. They forgot to put a cook's spoon in the coffin of this man who turned feelings into soups. They forgot to put a deck of skat cards in his coffin. He cooked better than he played skat. But he still played better than Jan Bronski, and nearly as well as my poor mama. Such were his gifts, such was his tragedy. I could never forgive him for Maria, though he treated her well, never beat her and generally gave in when she picked a fight. Nor did he turn me over to the Reich Ministry of Health, and he hadn't signed the letter till they were no longer delivering the mail. When I was born beneath light bulbs he chose the shop as my career. To avoid standing behind a shop counter, Oskar spent over seventeen years behind a hundred or more drums lacquered red and white. Now Matzerath lay flat and could stand no more. Smoking Matzerath's Derby cigarettes, old man Heilandt was shoveling him in. Oskar was supposed to take over the shop. But in the meantime Herr Fajngold, with his large, invisible family, had done so. What remained fell to me: Maria, little Kurt, and the responsibility for them both.
Maria was still weeping and praying in true Catholic fashion. Herr Fajngold tarried in Galicia or solved knotty sums. Little Kurt was growing tired but kept right on shoveling. On the cemetery wall the Russian boys sat chatting. With morose regularity old man Heilandt shoveled the sand of Saspe Cemetery onto the margarine crate boards. Oskar could still make out three letters of the word Vitello, then took his drum from around his neck, dropped "Should I or shouldn't I?" said instead "It must be!" and threw his drum on top of the coffin, which was already sufficiently covered with sand that it made little clatter. I added the drumsticks as well. They stuck in the sand. My drum came from my Duster days. One of my Theater at the Front stockpile. Bebra gave me those drums. What would the Master have thought of my deed? Jesus had drummed on that tin, and a boxy Russian with large pores. There wasn't much life left in it now. But when a shovelful of sand struck its surface, it managed a sound. And at the second shovelful it made a slightly smaller sound. By the third shovelful it fell silent, just showing a small patch of white lacquer, till the sand covered that too with more sand, with more and more sand, sand gathered on my drum, piled higher, and grew—and I too began to grow, which was announced by a violent nosebleed.
Little Kurt was the first to notice the blood. "He's bleeding, he's bleeding!" he screamed, calling Herr Fajngold back from Galicia, pulling Maria from her prayers, even forcing the two Russian boys, who were still sitting on the wall, chatting in the direction of Brösen, to glance up startled.
Old man Heilandt dropped his shovel in the sand, took the pickax, and laid the back of my neck against the blue-black iron. The cold took effect. My nosebleed eased somewhat. Old man Heilandt went back to his shoveling, and there wasn't much sand left beside the grave when my nosebleed stopped entirely, though my growth continued, announcing itself to me by an inner grinding, popping, and cracking.
When old man Heilandt had finished the grave, he pulled a dilapidated wooden cross with no inscription from another grave and thrust it into the fresh mound somewhere halfway between Matzerath's head and my buried drum. "That's it!" the old man said, and picked up Oskar, who was unable to walk, in his arms, carrying him along and leading the others, including the Russian boys with the tommy guns, out of the cemetery, across the flattened wall, along the tank tracks to the cart on the streetcar rails where the tank was angled across the street. I looked back over my shoulder toward Saspe Cemetery. Maria was carrying the cage with the budgie, Herr Fajngold carried the tools, little Kurt carried nothing, the two Russians carried caps too small and tommy guns too large for them, and the beach pines too were bent over.
From the sand to the asphalt street. On the wrecked tank sat Crazy Leo. High overhead, planes coming from Hela, heading for Hela. Crazy Leo was being careful not to blacken his gloves on the charred T 34. The sun and its saturated little clouds descended on Turmberg near Zoppot. Crazy Leo slid down from the tank and stood at attention.
The sight of Crazy Leo amused old man Heilandt: "Did you ever see the like? The world's falling to pieces, but you can't keep Crazy Leo down!" He clapped his free hand good-naturedly on the black frock coat and explained to Herr Fajngold, "This here's our Crazy Leo. He's here to share our sorrow and shake our hands."
And so he was. Leo fluttered his gloves, drooled out his sympathy to each person present, as was his wont, and asked, "Did you see the Lord, did you see the Lord?" No one had seen Him. Maria gave Leo the cage with the budgie; why, I don't know.
When Crazy Leo approached Oskar, whom old man Heilandt had laid on the handcart, his face dissolved, and the wind billowed his clothing. A dance seized hold of his legs. "The Lord, the Lord!" he cried, and shook the budgie in its cage. "Look at the Lord, how He is growing, look at Him grow!"
He was tossed into the air along with the cage, and he ran, flew, danced, staggered, fell, fled with the screeching bird, himself a bird, taking wing at last, fluttering across the field toward the sewage farms. And you could hear him cry through the voices of both tommy guns, "He's growing, he's growing!" and screaming still as the two Russian boys were busy reloading, "He's growing!" And even as the tommy guns fired again, as Oskar plunged down stepless stairs into a growing, all-embracing faint, I could still hear the bird, the voice, the raven—Leo proclaiming: "He's growing, he's growing, he's growing..."
Disinfectant
Last night I was beset by hasty dreams. They were like friends on Visitors Day. Each dream held the door for the next and departed, having told me what dreams find worth telling: inane stories filled with repetitions, monologues you can't help listening to because they're declaimed so insistently, with the gestures of incompetent actors. When I tried to tell the stories to Bruno at breakfast, I couldn't rid myself of them because I had forgotten them all; Oskar has no talent for dreaming.
While Bruno cleared away breakfast, I asked, as if in passing, "My dear Bruno, how tall am I actually?"
Bruno placed the little dish of jam on top of my coffee cup and said in a worried voice, "But Herr Matzerath, you haven't touched your jam."
I'm all too familiar with this reproach. It's always trotted out after breakfast. Every morning Bruno brings me a dab of strawberry jam that I cover immediately by folding my newspaper into a tent over it. I can't stand the sight or taste of jam, and so I dismiss Bruno's reproach calmly and firmly: "You know how I feel about jam, Bruno—just tell me how tall I am."
Bruno has the eyes of an extinct octopod. The moment he's required to think, he trains his prehistoric gaze at the ceiling and speaks toward it for the most part, so that this morning too he said to the ceiling, "But it's strawberry jam!" Only after a long pause—for my silence kept the question of Oskar's height in p
lay—when Bruno's gaze had found its way back from the ceiling and was clinging to the bars of my bed, did I hear that I measured one meter and twenty-one centimeters, or just under four foot tall.
"Won't you please measure me again, dear Bruno, just to be sure?"
Without batting an eyelash, Bruno pulled out a folding rule from his hip pocket, threw back my covers with almost brutal force, pulled my tangled nightclothes down over my nakedness, unfolded the stark-yellow rule, broken off at one meter seventy-eight, held it up to me, adjusted it by hand and carefully, but with his gaze in the Saurian age, and finally, as if reading out the result, let the rule come to rest on me: "Still one meter and twenty-one centimeters."
Why does he have to make so much noise folding his rule and clearing away breakfast? Doesn't he like my height?