by Günter Grass
We celebrated when he got back.
That must have been so lovely.
But I felt pretty low when I came crawling home …
Don’t be ridiculous. You were so happy to go back to school …
… though you got sick of it again before long.
Just like me. In that respect we had a lot in common.
Jasper was the only one who had no problems with school.
But you had other problems.
How come? What problems?
Let’s hear the story about your pal in Glückstadt now.
Let’s get to the rat first; that stupid business with me and my pal didn’t come out till weeks after Christmas. Up to then everything was okay. Taddel was back, Paulchen was roaming around the village or hanging out with Marie. Camilla was busy getting presents together. She wanted to surprise the old man. And sure enough, under the Christmas tree stood something he’d been wishing for for ages, something we considered one of his crazy notions but merely smiled at, nice kids that we could be when we wanted to: a cage with a full-grown rat inside.
Where did Camilla find the rat?
Certainly not in an ordinary pet store, the kind where you can get hamsters, songbirds, goldfish, and guinea pigs like Lara’s, maybe white mice with red eyes, but never …
She said she found a man in Giessen who raised snakes, and kept rats on the side to feed to the snakes.
Her only challenge was getting the rat to the village.
Well, the rat, which sat there peacefully in her cage, got the old man back on track with his writing. Put an end to his hanging around and brooding.
And that sent Mariechen off searching for motifs again with her Agfa.
But Paulchen, who was allowed into her darkroom, didn’t breathe a word about any of it, except to say that in the photos old Marie snapped of the creature, more and more rats were running around.
Taddel’s father had imposed a complete news blackout. But it’s all right for me to talk now: all the prints—and there were stacks and stacks of them—showed entire tribes of rats, along with creatures like in horror movies, half rat half human …
… which the old man drew or scratched onto plates with a stylus: running, burrowing, standing on their hind legs, more and more, and then becoming half rat half human, all of which appeared in his book, which turned out to be a pretty long one again.
We weren’t supposed to say a word.
It’s a secret, Paulchen said.
More than rats turned up in that book. Marie photographed an unrigged flatbottom boat for him, which the village dockers had put up on blocks for repairs. It was in such bad shape it could easily have been scrapped.
But in the photos lying around the darkroom the boat looked perfectly okay, as Paulchen whispered to me, and it was plying the Baltic with four women on board, until finally, near Usedom, where there were lots of jellyfish, which could sing …
And one of the women on board bore a certain resemblance to Camilla, who was the captain, of course. Another one could easily be recognized as Taddel’s mother. And—this I’m sure of, Nana and Lena—the third and fourth looked a lot like your mothers. One of them, I don’t remember which, was responsible for the engines, the other for jelly-fish research, because …
If I understand you correctly, it was a ship of women that old Marie’s bargain box …
Let’s see if I’ve got this right, Paulchen: the boat’s crew was made up exclusively of women our father had been involved with at some point, or still was …
… and our mother right there with them.
That I can hardly believe: my mother on a boat, and with Camilla in command, too.
It was all there in papa’s rat book. The story took a really bad turn at the end, when the four women put on their fanciest clothes and their jewels to seek refuge at the bottom of the sea in the legendary city of Vineta.
I had no clue. Not about the rat under the Christmas tree. Not about father’s four women on a cutter or flatbottom boat, whatever. I was far away. After I finished my apprenticeship on a Swiss farm, I went on to agricultural school in Celle, and then landed on an organic farm in Lower Saxony, where I was in charge of the milking and became politicized in my own way. But of what was happening with you in the village, with rats and such, I hadn’t a clue. You didn’t say a word either, Jorsch, about cloned rats running around as rat-men. Though after finishing your own apprenticeship you’d found your way back to the flatlands in the north where our father, Camilla, and the three boys …
That was because once I’d learned all they could teach me at West German Radio, they didn’t offer me a job. They were under a hiring freeze. Nothing to be done. I hung around for a while. Then father offered to have me come and stay with you in the country. That would be good for your little brother, he wrote, Taddel needs you. And because father had bought another house, this time the buildings that had once been part of a farm out in the Krempe marshland, I thought, This is a chance to get to know a different part of the country. So I moved to Elskop, which consisted of one street on the other side of the Stör, and, just like my twin, turned into a real country bumpkin. Out in front of the farmhouse stood a huge red beech. And there were all kinds of stables and barns. I lived there in a commune. The woman in charge always knew what was what, or should be. It was like a family for me, something I hadn’t had in a long time. And when I crossed the Stör on the ferry and came to visit you, it wasn’t just to see you, Taddel. I’d swing by and check out the she-rat in her cage in father’s studio. And of course old Marie, who seemed small and wizened, as if she’d shrunk somehow. I think she was glad to see me. My, but you’ve grown, Jorsch, she said. And then, because I had hair down to my shoulders, she snapped pictures of me with the rat. I’m ninety-nine per cent certain it was the bargain box for four reichsmarks from ’32 that she … And the rat was brown, not your typical white lab rat. I could imagine how those pictures would turn out. We were used to such things,—right, big brother?—from when we were little. But she didn’t tell any of us what was going on.
Nor me, either, when I came to visit. Right after my apprenticeship with the master on Dobersdorf Lake, who insisted that his apprentices not keep any secrets from him. He tried to make me read my diary out loud to him, in the morning at breakfast, no less, with everyone sitting around the table. I refused, but I didn’t tell a soul, not even Camilla, and certainly not my father, why I left and went to Kappeln on the Schlei, where I found another master and finished up my apprenticeship under more normal conditions. Then I found work in a little dump of a town in Hessia, but it was too factory-like—mass production. So I went back to Berlin, in the course of which I fell in love with the student who helped me with the move. But I don’t like to talk about that, how it turned out, I mean. My children can tell you later if they feel like it: how everything was quite happy at first in the marriage, but then went sour—no, Lena, I’m not going to talk about it—and how, much later, I remarried and my life improved. But I knew next to nothing about the rat and what my father intended to use her for, because he didn’t breathe a word about it, even when he came to Friedenau and visited me. A couple were living in the clinker house with whom he put out a journal that was supposed to advocate socialism, the proper democratic kind. Then that couple had children. It must have been the influence of that old house—having children, I mean. And in the city I shared a studio with other potters, and sometimes I got together with my younger sisters …
Oh, it was so nice when Lara came to visit me. I was still a child, and I thought it was totally cool when you sold your beautiful pottery at the weekly market in Friedenau—much too cheaply, my mother said. But otherwise I knew almost nothing about the rest of you, about what went on out in the country. All I knew about the rat business was that my father had always secretly wished for a rat, and had mentioned to me … But I had no inkling about the ship full of women who had once been his, or still were, in the case of Camilla.
Y
ou weren’t the only one, Nana; we were all clueless.
Because old Marie kept the whole thing a secret.
He always has something to hide.
That’s why no one knows what goes on in his head.
That’s complete rubbish. Doesn’t he say, Anyone who really looks can find me, hidden in sentences both short and long …
It may be true that you can find something of him in every one of his books.
That’s why they turn out so long …
… like the one about the rat.
I realized right away that it was going to be a long book, because Mariechen kept disappearing into the darkroom, and she let me come in once I’d washed my hands really well with soap. What I saw in there was crazy. Things you’d never see in reality: endless rat migrations, rat processions, a grisly rat crucifixion. In any case, no more humans, only rats, as Marie said when she pulled the prints out of the developer … I was shocked myself. But why would I have breathed a word to Taddel or Jasper? No one would have believed me when I told them what that Agfa could spit out. Jasper least of all. He only believed what he read in those potboilers of his. But when that crooked business, as he called the break-in, finally came to light, because Mariechen could prove with her box what had happened, he was totally shocked at first, but then …
Hey, hey! What’s this about a crooked business?
Sounds exciting!
Okay, Jasper, let’s hear!
Out with it!
We’ve heard more than enough about rats.
Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. But Taddel and Paulchen already know the story. It involved cigarettes. I’d hidden more than thirty packs in a plastic bag under my bed. I thought they were safe there. But then Camilla, who always finds everything, was vacuuming one day and bumped into the bag. That’s when the drama began: Where did you get these? You don’t even smoke. Tell me immediately where these came from. She took the plastic bag downstairs to the kitchen and threw it on the table so hard that a couple of packs popped out. And the interrogation began again: Where did these come from? Who gave them to you? How did you get them? At first I clammed up. Everyone was standing around the table—Camilla, Taddel, and Paulchen, and Jorsch was there, too, and—of course—Marie. Still, I kept my mouth shut. Didn’t want to rat on my pal. He was the only friend I had at the time. He was okay, but, let me put it this way, entirely different in temperament from me. It made a huge impression on me to see how he operated, completely fearless. But the more I kept silent, the harder Camilla went at me. Then Marie, who was still standing around the table with the rest of you, suddenly aimed her stupid box at those packs of cigarettes, and from a weird angle, too, holding the camera behind her back, and shot a whole roll, giggling. And she’d hardly finished shooting when the old man showed up, and asked: What’s going on here? Marie answered, That we shall soon see. Then she shot another roll, as if that were necessary, sometimes holding the camera at waist height, sometimes facing away, and sometimes stretched out flat on the table. She caught the packs that had slipped out of the bag from every angle. Then she said to you—Paulchen, remember?—and also to Camilla, as she winked at your father, I can’t wait to see what’s going to come to light.
We didn’t get so much as a glimpse of those pictures. No one knew what old Marie’s box supposedly revealed. And you just hemmed and hawed, Paulchen: It’s plain as day what those two … And my father, who did see the photos, just laughed afterwards: Nice job. You two pulled that off like real pros. You knew what you were doing.
Well, eventually it came out that Jasper and his pal, whose name he refused to divulge, had broken into a cigarette machine at a petrol station in Glückstadt when it was closed for the night. I must say, it was sheer madness the way you two pulled that off. Actually it was your pal who did the whole thing, as the prints showed, while you just watched or served as a lookout. But no one happened by. So the two of you had plenty of time to clean out the vending machine … no, not the coins, just the cigarettes. There were five different brands, maybe seven. And you shared them fifty-fifty. It was all there in the pictures.
And after that?
You must have got a good thrashing, no?
But not from Camilla!
Let me say this: it could have been worse. I had to pay for all the cigarettes from my allowance. It took months, but that was basically okay. Camilla settled the whole thing in her own way, without naming names. But the old man, your father, just laughed: I’m sure our Jasper won’t do that ever again. Let it go!
That’s how he is, my father. What’s past is over and done with. I recall when I was eleven or twelve and we were living in Friedenau. That was the period when old Marie kept moaning, Such a god-awful mess! and I couldn’t understand why everything in my family was in chaos … Well, my friend Gottfried and I pinched a few things in the Karstadt department store in Steglitz—a comb, a pocket mirror, some other little item. Gottfried took some nail scissors in a case. But the store detective caught us and immediately called the cops. They drove us home with blue lights flashing and siren blaring. Gottfried got a thrashing from his father, who was strict but also very good-natured. I could predict this would happen, so I said to my father, who’d never hit any of us, Please, please, make it look as if you’re spanking me, and do it right by the window, because the boys will be peeking over the fence to see what happens, and they’ll all think I’m getting a good beating like Gottfried. That’s exactly what he did, too, without any ifs, ands, or buts. He took me over to the window, laid me across his knee, and raised his arm … ten times or more. And because unlike normal families we didn’t have curtains, the boys outside thought I was getting a real beating. I also yelled bloody murder, so my friend Gottfried, who heard the story from the others, was sure my father …
And what happened with the cigarettes?
I don’t know. I left soon after that. I was fifteen, almost sixteen, when I went to America for a year as an exchange student, which was certainly okay for me, but not so much for Paulchen.
You want to bet old Marie puffed away Jasper’s share of those cigarettes, little by little?
I can picture that: at breakfast, with her holder.
My pal, by the way, ended up working for the tax collector’s office in Elmshorn or Pinneberg. That was much later, when I’d become a producer at Bavaria Film and had started a family. But in America, where my host family were Mormons …
At any rate, I stayed behind in the village with Taddel, and would have felt pretty lonely if I hadn’t had our dog, Paula, who gave birth to another litter, eight pups, of which all but two were taken by the vet, unfortunately, and put to sleep, no doubt …
… among the Mormons in America.
And my father spent most of his time in the house behind the dike, determined to finish that book of his, the one with the rat and the four women in the boat and all.
Those last two pups were called Plisch and Plum …
See, the Mormons have the custom of …
That’s why old Marie was completely underemployed. Probably started to drink again.
Eventually we gave Plisch and Plum away …
She would go over the dike towards Hollerwettern and back. If she took any pictures at all, they were only of clouds and dried cowpats. No matter what the weather—rain, snow, storm.
In school things went from bad to worse for Taddel and me.
Finally your Camilla put her foot down: Enough. We’re going to pack up and move to Hamburg.
Well, because there were supposed to be better schools there for kids with learning disabilities …
You see, all the Mormons …
It was a huge adjustment for us, and for my dog, too.
Father would have preferred to move back to Berlin, if we had to live in a city—to the old clinker house. The rest of us overruled him, though. He had to give in, as a good democrat, he said, though it can’t have been easy for him.
But for Nana and me it would have been so much ni
cer and maybe even positive if your family council had decided to move back to Friedenau …
… and be close to us, which I’d always secretly wished for but never got up my courage to demand, unfortunately.
No one asked us, however. No one ever said so, but we were illegitimate.
Beforehand, I mean before you all moved to Hamburg and Jasper went to spend his year with the Mormons, old Mariechen died …
… in the city …
Not true. That’s not what happened at all. I know what I’m talking about, because I was there.
Oh, come on, Paulchen. You’re just imagining it.
You dreamed it.
The end was completely normal, Camilla told us. She’d gone to Berlin to be with her, when …
Then I suppose you all know what killed her, right?
It was because you were moving away from the village, and she didn’t want to be left alone in the house behind the dike, with the frozen rat in the fridge.
No, no, she died because she was so old and weak that in the end she was just skin and bones.
A Masurian handful, as my father said.
But from a distance, when she went over the dike alone she still looked like a girl.
Besides, she’d been wanting to join her Hans in heaven for a long time. Or in hell, for all I care, as I often heard her say.
It was kidney failure, Camilla said.
You all have screws loose …
Now the father calls Mariechen back one more time before seeking a suitable ending for her: she stands there with her box at the ready, prepared to take the last snapshots.
Actually he wanted to have her death recounted in his children’s words, merely intervening cautiously now and then to impose his version, but because all his daughters and sons—and especially the twins—claim to have experienced Marie differently and seen her from close up, because Lara is worried that even more secrets could come to light, and because Nana, who had to wait on the sidelines too long and has wishes she would like to unload ex post facto, the daughters and the sons will chime in with alternative endings; as a father, after all, one is responsible only for cleaning up the leftovers.