by Günter Grass
That this fine painting was subsequently given a different and quite misleading title was Raskolnikov's doing. I would have called it Temptation, because my painted right hand was holding a latch, pressing it down, and opening the door to a room in which the nurse was standing. Or it might simply have been called The Latch, for if I had to give a new name to temptation I'd recommend latch, since that handy protuberance cries out to be seized, and since the latch on the frosted-glass door to Sister Dorothea's room tempted me whenever I knew that Zeidler the Hedgehog was away for the day on business, that the nurse was at the hospital and Frau Zeidler in the office at Mannesmann.
Oskar would leave his room with the drainless tub, step into the corridor of Zeidler's flat, station himself outside the nurse's room, and try the latch.
Until around the middle of June, and I tried it almost every day, the door had not yielded. I had almost concluded that the nurse had been so schooled in orderliness by the responsibilities of her profession that it would be advisable to abandon all hope of a door left open by accident. Thus the mindless mechanical reaction that caused me to close it again immediately on the day I found it unlocked.
For what was surely several minutes, Oskar stood there, almost bursting at the seams, assailed by so many thoughts of the most varied origins simultaneously that his heart was hard-pressed to suggest even the hint of a plan.
It was only after I'd managed to graft other relationships to myself and my thoughts—Maria and her lover, I thought, Maria has a lover, the lover gives Maria a coffeepot, Maria and her lover go to the Apollo on Saturday night, Maria cozies up to her lover after hours, at work she calls him sir, he owns the business—not till I considered Maria and her lover from various angles did I manage to bring my poor brain into some sort of order—and I opened the frosted-glass door.
I had already pictured the room as windowless, for the dimly translucent upper section of the door had never betrayed a strip of daylight. Reaching to the right, just as in my room, I found the light switch. The forty-watt bulb was perfectly adequate for a chamber of this size, which was much too narrow to be called a room. I was annoyed to find myself immediately confronted by my upper half in a mirror. However, Oskar did not turn aside from this reversed image, though it told him so little; for the objects on the equally wide washstand before the mirror attracted him strongly, raised Oskar on tiptoe.
The white enamel of the washbowl showed chipped spots of bluish black. The marble washstand top in which the bowl was sunk up to its overlapping rim revealed some damage as well. The missing left corner of the marble top lay before the mirror, showing the mirror its veins. Traces of flaking glue on its broken edge testified to an awkward attempt at repair. My stonecutter's fingers itched. I thought of Korneff's homemade marble cement, which transformed even the most fragile Lahn marble into those durable tiles affixed to the facades of large butcher shops.
Now, after these familiar thoughts of limestone allowed me to forget my badly distorted image in that nasty mirror, I succeeded in naming the smell that had struck Oskar immediately upon entering the room.
It was vinegar. Later, till just a few weeks ago in fact, I justified the acrid odor by assuming that the nurse must have washed her hair the day before and added vinegar to the water before rinsing. True, there were no vinegar bottles on the washstand. Nor could I detect any vinegar in containers with other labels; nor, I kept telling myself, would Sister Dorothea heat water in Zeidler's kitchen, which would require advance permission on his part, and go to all the bother of washing her hair in her own room, when she had the most modern facilities at St. Mary's Hospital. Of course a general prohibition may have been issued by the head nurse or the hospital administration forbidding the nurses to use certain sanitary arrangements in the hospital, so that Sister Dorothea had no choice but to wash her hair in the enamel washbowl before that distorted mirror. Even if there was no vinegar bottle on the washstand, there were plenty of little jars and tins on the clammy marble. A package of cotton wool and a half-empty box of sanitary napkins discouraged Oskar from further investigation of the little jars and their contents. But I still believe today they contained only cosmetics, or at most harmless salves.
The nurse had stuck her comb in her hairbrush. It cost me some effort to draw it forth from the bristles and take a look. It's a good thing I did, for in that moment Oskar made his most important discovery: the nurse had blond hair, perhaps ash blond; but one should be cautious in drawing conclusions from dead hair on a comb, so let's just leave it at that: Sister Dorothea had blond hair.
In addition the comb's suspiciously abundant content implied that the nurse suffered from hair loss. I immediately placed the blame for this embarrassing condition, certainly distressing to any woman, on her nurse's caps, but did not indict them; you can't do without caps in a wellrun hospital.
As unpleasant as Oskar found the smell of vinegar, the fact that Sister Dorothea was losing hair aroused only anxious love in me, refined by sympathy. Indicative of my state and feelings, several products said to promote hair growth came to mind, ones I intended to give Sister Dorothea at some opportune moment. Already dreaming of this meeting—Oskar imagined it beneath a warm, windless summer sky, amid fields of waving grain—I stripped the leftover hair from the comb, bunched and tied it in a knot, blew off a little dust and dandruff from the bundle, and shoved it quickly into my wallet.
I'd placed the comb on the marble top to deal with my wallet, but once trophy and wallet were safe in my jacket, I picked up the comb again. I held it up to the naked light bulb so I could see through it, checked the two distinct rows of teeth, noted two teeth missing from the finer set, insisted on running the nail of my left index finger with a whir along the tips of the coarser ones, and delighted Oskar during the whole of this playful episode by bringing to light a few smaller hairs that I had deliberately neglected to remove so as not to arouse suspicion.
The comb sank back into the hairbrush once and for all. I turned away from the washstand, which was giving me far too one-sided a picture. On the way to the nurse's bed, I bumped against a kitchen chair to which a bra clung.
Oskar had nothing but his fists with which to fill the concavities of those cups, which were faded from repeated washing and discolored at the rims, but his fists failed to fill them, fidgeted about instead, alien and unhappy, too hard, too nervous in those bowls from which I would gladly have spooned a daily sustenance, even with the nausea it now and then would bring, for too much of any brew will make you retch at times, then turn sweet again, too sweet, so sweet it makes one relish retching, and puts true love to the test.
I thought of Dr. Werner and removed my fists from the bra. Dr. Werner faded at once and I was able to approach Sister Dorothea's bed. The nurse's bed. How often Oskar had pictured it, and now it was the same ugly bedstead, painted brown, that framed my own repose and intermittent insomnia. I would have wished for her a white-enameled metal bed with knobs of brass, the lightest, most delicate of railings, not this cumbersome, loveless fixture. Motionless, with heavy head, devoid of all passion, incapable even of jealousy, I stood for some time before an altar to sleep whose eiderdown might well have been of granite, then turned away, shunned that disconcerting sight. Never would Oskar have imagined Sister Dorothea and her slumbers in such an odious tomb.
As I was on my way back to the washstand, perhaps intending to open at last those jars that might hold salves, the wardrobe commanded me to note its dimensions, to call its paint black-brown, to trace the contours of its cornice, and, finally, to open it: for every wardrobe insists on being opened.
I turned the nail that held the doors closed to a vertical position: immediately and without any effort on my part the wooden panels swung open with a sigh and offered such a vista that I had to step back a few feet to regard it coolly above my crossed arms. Oskar had no desire to lose himself in detail as he had at the washstand, nor to pass a judgment burdened by prejudice, as he had with the bed; he wanted to approach the
wardrobe with total freshness, as on the first day of Creation, for the wardrobe was welcoming him too with open arms.
Nevertheless, Oskar, the incorrigible aesthete, could not totally forgo criticism: some barbarian had hurriedly sawed off the feet of the wardrobe, leaving splinters behind, and set it flat and disfigured on the floor.
The internal arrangement of the wardrobe was flawless. To the right, three deep compartments held lingerie and blouses. White and pink alternated with a light blue that was surely colorfast. Two red-and-green-checkered oilcloth pouches tied together hung by the linen compartments on the inside of the right-hand door of the wardrobe, the upper pouch holding the mended stockings, the lower one those with runs in them. Compared with the stockings Maria received, and wore, from her boss and lover, those in the oilcloth pouches seemed just as fine, but of a tighter and more durable weave. In the spacious area of the wardrobe to the left, dully gleaming starched nurse's uniforms dangled on clothes hangers. On the hat shelf above them perched a row of simple, pretty nurse's caps, fragile, shunning the touch of an inexpert hand. I cast only a cursory glance at the civilian clothes placed to the left of the linen compartments. The cheap, haphazard selection confirmed my secret hope: Sister Dorothea devoted only limited attention to this portion of her clothing. And the three or four pot-shaped items of head gear on the shelf by the caps, carelessly and loosely stacked atop one another, crushing their comical imitation flowers, gave the overall impression of a fallen cake. The hat shelf also held a scant dozen books with colored spines leaning against a shoebox filled with scraps of wool yarn.
Oskar tilted his head, had to step closer to read the titles. Smiling indulgently, I returned my head to the vertical position: our good Sister Dorothea read crime novels. But enough about the civilian sector of the wardrobe. Lured closer by the books, I maintained my favorable position and even leaned forward into the interior, no longer resisting the increasingly strong desire to take my place within, to join the contents of that wardrobe to which Sister Dorothea entrusted no small part of her outward appearance.
I didn't even have to move the sensible, low-heeled shoes that stood on the plank floor of the wardrobe, carefully polished and ready to go. The arrangement of the wardrobe, which seemed almost intentionally inviting, was such that Oskar had room, crouching on his heels and drawing up his knees, to take shelter in the middle, without crushing a single garment. And so, filled with anticipation, I climbed in.
Nonetheless my mind was not immediately at rest. Oskar felt he was being watched by the furniture and the light bulb. To make my stay inside cozier, I tried to pull the doors to the wardrobe shut. This proved difficult, for the hinges on the doors were worn and left a gap at the top: light entered, but not enough to disturb me. The smell, on the other hand, intensified. It smelled old and clean, no longer like vinegar, but unobtrusively of mothballs; it smelled good.
What did Oskar do while he sat in the wardrobe? He leaned his forehead against Sister Dorothea's nearest uniform, a sleeved smock that fastened about the neck, and the door to every room of hospital life opened at once before him—then my right hand, perhaps seeking support to lean back on, reached behind me, through the civilian clothes, groped its way, found no hold, grasped something, something smooth and flexible, then found at last—still gripping the smoothness—a supporting slat, and felt along a crossbar that was nailed horizontally and offered support both to me and to the back of the wardrobe; Oskar's hand returned to his side, he could now rest content, and I looked at what I'd found behind me.
I saw a black patent-leather belt, but I saw more than a belt, since in the wardrobe it was so dark that a belt could easily be something else, something equally smooth and long, something I stared at as a stalwart three-year-old drummer on the harbor jetty at Neufahrwasser: my poor mama in her navy blue spring coat with the raspberry-colored lapels, Matzerath in his overcoat, Jan Bronski with his velvet collar, Oskar's sailor's cap with its ribbon with SMS Seydlitz embroidered in gold, were all there, and overcoat and velvet collar jumped from stone to stone ahead of me and Mama, who because of her high heels couldn't jump, headed toward that sea marker with the man fishing at its foot with his clothesline, and a potato sack filled with salt and movement. Seeing the sack and the line, we asked the man sitting at the foot of the sea marker why he was fishing with a clothesline, but the fellow from Neufahrwasser or Brösen, wherever he was from, just laughed and spat a thick brown gob into the water, where it rocked back and forth by the jetty and didn't stir from the spot till a seagull carried it off; for a seagull will carry off anything, it's no squeamish dove, and certainly no nurse—tossing everything white into one basket, or into one wardrobe, is far too simple, and the same goes for black, for I did not yet fear the Black Cook back then, sat fearless in the wardrobe, then outside it too, stood fearless on the windless jetty at Neufahrwasser, held something else black and slippery, but not a belt, sat in the wardrobe, cast about for comparisons, for wardrobes force comparisons, tried the Black Cook by name, but she didn't make my skin crawl yet, white was what I thought about, could scarcely keep a gull and Sister Dorothea apart in my mind, but at last I shoved doves and all similar nonsense aside, for it was not Pentecost but Good Friday when we rode out to Brösen and walked to the jetty—and there were no doves circling the sea marker where the fellow from Neufahrwasser sat with his clothesline, sat and also spat. And when the fellow from Brösen hauled in the line, hauling until the line came to an end, and showed what made it so hard to pull from the brackish waters of the Mottlau, my poor mama laid her hand on Jan Bronski's shoulder and velvet collar, because her face had turned the color of cheese, because she wanted to leave and yet had to watch as the man slung the horse's head down on the stones, as the smaller, sea-green eels dropped from the matted mane, as he struggled to draw the larger, darker ones from the cadaver, as if they were screws he had to remove, and someone tore open a featherbed, which is to say that seagulls came and fell upon them, for three or more seagulls can easily handle a small eel, while the larger ones give them a harder time. But then the man pried open the horse's jaws, forced a stick between them, which made the horse laugh, and reached in with his hairy arm, groped for something, felt for some thing, just as I groped for something, felt for something in the wardrobe, so too did he, and pulled them forth, as I did the belt, but in his case two at once, and slung them in the air, slapped them on the stones, so that breakfast sprang from my poor mama's mouth, coffee and milk, egg white and yolk, a little jam and clumps of white bread, so copiously that the gulls angled down at once, descended one story, fell to with spread wings, I need hardly mention their screams, nor their well-known evil eyes, and could not be driven off, certainly not by Jan, who was afraid of the gulls and covered both his blue eyes, by now like saucers, nor did they listen to my drum but kept on gorging instead, while I, enraged and inspired, beat out a few new rhythms on tin, all of which meant nothing to Mama, totally occupied as she was with gagging and gagging, though no more came forth, she'd not eaten that much, wanted to stay slim, exercised twice a week at the Women's Association, though it did little good since she snacked in secret and always figured some way out, as did the fellow from Neufahrwasser who, casting all theory aside, when everyone was thinking, that's it, there's nothing more, finished by pulling an eel out through the nag's ear. Covered with white gruel it was, since it had been rummaging about in the horse's brain. He swung it about till the gruel flew off, till the eel showed its sheen and gleamed like a patent-leather belt, for what I'm trying to get at is this: Sister Dorothea wore a belt like that when she went out on her own, without the Red Cross pin.
But we headed home, though Matzerath wanted to stay longer because an eighteen-hundred-ton Finn was coming in and making waves. The man left the horse's head on the jetty. Soon after, the black horse was white and screaming. Not screaming as horses scream, but as a cloud screams that's white and loud and voracious, hiding a horse's head. Which was pleasant enough back then, for that meant w
e no longer saw the nag, even if we could imagine what lay behind the frenzy. The Finn diverted us too, now loaded with lumber and rusty as the graveyard gate at Saspe. My poor mama, however, did not turn to look at the Finn or the gulls. She had had enough. Although she once both played and sang "Fly, Little Seagull, Away toward Helgoland" on our piano, she no longer sang that little song, no longer sang anything, at first refused to eat fish as well, but one fine day she started in and ate so much fish, such oily fish, that in the end she could eat no more, wanted no more, had had enough, was sick not just of eels but also of life, and of men in particular, of Oskar too perhaps, at any rate, she, who never denied herself anything, suddenly turned frugal and abstemious and had herself buried in Brentau. I've probably inherited that from her, since I deny myself nothing and hardly need anything; the only thing I can't live without, regardless of the price, is smoked eel. I felt the same way about Sister Dorothea, whom I had never seen, whose patent-leather belt I found only moderately appealing—and yet I couldn't tear myself away from that belt, it was endless, it even multiplied, so that I unbuttoned my trousers with my free hand in order to picture once more the nurse whose image had been blurred by all those shiny eels and the Finn putting into port.
Oskar, repeatedly banished to the harbor jetty, gradually managed, with the help of the seagulls, to find his way back to the world of Sister Dorothea, at least to that half of the wardrobe that sheltered her empty but still alluring uniforms. As I finally felt that I saw her clearly again and recognized details of her features, the bolts slipped from the worn-out grooves: the wardrobe doors fell apart with a discordant groan, bright, annoying light flooded in, and Oskar had to take care not to soil Sister Dorothea's sleeved smock hanging next to him.
If only to provide a necessary transition and offer a playful denouement to my stay in the wardrobe, which had been more strenuous than I'd expected, I drummed a few random measures—something I hadn't done for years—more or less skillfully against the dry rear wall, then left the wardrobe, and checked again to be sure it was neat and clean—I couldn't really fault myself—even the belt had retained its sheen; no, a few dull spots had to be breathed on and rubbed until the belt became once more an object reminiscent of those eels caught on the harbor jetty at Neufahrwasser when I was a little boy.