by Günter Grass
How wonderful it is to rub shoulders with art and history! Still with Roswitha on my arm, I visited the Dôme des Invalides, thinking of the great Emperor and feeling very close to him, because, though great, he was not tall. Recalling how, at the tomb of Frederick the Great, himself no giant, Napoleon had said: “If he were still alive, we should not be standing here,” I whispered tenderly into my Roswitha’s ear: “If the Corsican were still alive, we should not be standing here, we should not be kissing each other under the bridges, on the quais, sur le trottoir de Paris.”
In collaboration with other groups, we put on colossal programs at the Salle Pleyel and the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. Oskar quickly grew accustomed to the theatrical style of the big city, perfected his repertory, adapted himself to the jaded tastes of the Paris occupation troops: No longer did I waste my vocal prowess on common German beer bottles; here, in the city of light, I shattered graceful, invaluable vases and fruit bowls, immaterial figments of blown glass, taken from French castles. My number was conceived along historical lines. I started in with glassware from the reign of Louis XIV, and continued, like history itself, with the reign of Louis XV. With revolutionary fervor I attacked the crockery of the unfortunate Louis XVI and his headless and heedless Marie Antoinette. Finally, after a sprinkling of Louis-Philippe, I carried my battle to the vitreous fantasies of the Third Republic.
Of course the historical significance of my act was beyond the reach of the field-grey mass in the orchestra and galleries; they applauded my shards as common shards; but now and then there was a staff officer or a newspapermen from the Reich who relished my historical acumen along with the damage. A scholarly character in uniform complimented me on my art when we were introduced to him after a gala performance for the Kommandantur. Oskar was particularly grateful to the correspondent for a leading German newspaper who described himself as an expert on France and discreetly called my attention to a few trifling mistakes, not to say stylistic inconsistencies, in my program.
We spent the whole winter in Paris. They billeted us in first-class hotels, and I shall not deny that all winter long Roswitha joined me in investigating the superior qualities of French beds. Was Oskar happy in Paris? Had he forgotten his dear ones at home, Maria, Matzerath, Gretchen and Alexander Scheffler; had Oskar forgotten his son Kurt and his grandmother Anna Koljaiczek?
Though I had not forgotten them, I missed none of them. I wrote no Army postcards, gave no sign of life, but on the contrary gave the folks at home every opportunity to live a whole year without me; for from the moment of my departure I had been resolved to return, whence it followed that I would have been rather interested to know how they were getting along in my absence. On the street or during performances, I sometimes searched the soldiers’ faces for familiar features. Perhaps, Oskar speculated, Fritz Truczinski or Axel Mischke has been transferred here from the Eastern Front, and once or twice he thought he had recognized Maria’s handsome brother amid a horde of infantrymen; but it wasn’t he; field-grey can be misleading.
Only the Eiffel Tower made me homesick. Don’t go supposing that I rode to the top and that remote vistas made me dream of home. Oskar had mounted the Eiffel Tower so often on postcards and in his thoughts that an actual ascension could only have brought him disappointment. As I stood or sat at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, but without Roswitha, alone beneath those towering girders flung upward by the pioneers of steel construction, the great vault, which seems so solidly closed despite spaces on all sides, became for me the sheltering vault of my grandmother Anna: sitting beneath the Eiffel Tower, I was sitting beneath her four skirts, the Champ de Mars was a Kashubian potato field, the Paris October rain slanted endlessly down between Bissau and Ramkau, and on such days all Paris, even the Metro, smelled of slightly rancid butter. I grew silent and thoughtful. Roswitha respected my sorrow and was very kind and considerate on these occasions; she was a sensitive soul.
In April, 1944—from all fronts came communiqués announcing that our lines had been successfully shortened—we were obliged to pack up and leave Paris for a tour of the Atlantic Wall. Our first stop was Le Havre. It seemed to me that Bebra was becoming taciturn and distraught. Though he never lost his grip during performances and still had the laughs on his side, his age-old Narses face turned to stone once the last curtain had fallen. At first I thought he was jealous, or, worse, that he had capitulated in the face of my youthful vigor. In whispers Roswitha dispelled my error; she didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she had noticed that certain officers were meeting with Bebra behind closed doors after the show. It looked as though the master were emerging from his inward emigration, as though, inspired by the blood of his ancestor Prince Eugene, he were planning some direct action. His plans had carried him so far away from us, had involved him in preoccupations so vast and far-reaching, that Oskar’s intimacy with his former Roswitha could arouse no more than a weary wrinkled smile. One day in Trouville—we were lodged at the Casino—he found us intertwined on the carpet of the dressing room he shared with us. Our impulse was to leap apart, but with a gesture he gave us to understand that there was no need to. Looking into his make-up glass, he said: “Enjoy yourselves, children, hug and kiss, tomorrow we inspect concrete, and the day after tomorrow it’s concrete you’ll have between your lips. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
That was in June, ‘44. By that time we had done the Atlantic Wall from the Bay of Biscay to Holland, but we spent most of our time inland and saw little of the legendary pillboxes. It wasn’t until Trouville that we played directly on the coast. Here we were offered an opportunity to visit the Atlantic Wall. Bebra accepted. After our last show in Trouville, we were driven to the village of Bavent near Caen, three miles behind the shore dunes. We were lodged with peasants. Pasture, hedgerows, apple trees. That is where the apple brandy called calvados is distilled. We had a drink of it and went to bed. Brisk air came in through the window, a frog pond croaked until morning. Some frogs are good drummers. I heard them in my sleep and said to myself: Oskar, you’ve got to go home, soon your son Kurt will be three years old, you’ve got to give him his drum, you’ve promised. Thus admonished, Oskar, the tormented father, awoke each hour, groped about in the darkness, made sure his Roswitha was there, breathed in her smell: Raguna smelled ever so slightly of cinnamon, crushed cloves, and nutmeg; even in summer she had that scent of Christmas, of cake spice.
In the morning an armored personnel carrier drove up to the farm. We stood in the doorway, chatting into the sea wind, all of us shivering a little. It was early and very chilly. We got in: Bebra, Raguna, Felix and Kitty, Oskar, and a Lieutenant Herzog who was taking us to his battery west of Cabourg.
To say Normandy is green is to disregard the spotted brown and white cows which were chewing their cuds on misty meadows, wet with dew, to the right and left of the straight highway, greeted our armored vehicle with such indifference that the armor plate would have turned red with shame had it not previously been daubed with camouflage paint. Poplars, hedgerows, creepers, the first hulking beach hotels, empty, their shutters clattering in the wind. We turned into the beach promenade, got out, and plodded along behind the lieutenant, who showed Captain Bebra a condescending yet properly military respect, across the dunes, against a wind full of sand and surf roar.
This wasn’t the mild, bottle-green Baltic, sobbing like a tenderhearted maiden as it waited for me to come in. It was the Atlantic carrying out its immemorial maneuver, pressing forward at high tide, receding at low tide.
And then we had our concrete. We could admire it and even pat it to our heart’s content; it didn’t budge. “Attention!” cried someone inside the concrete and leapt, tall as a mast, from the pillbox, which was shaped like a flattened-out turtle, lay amid sand dunes, was called “Dora Seven”, and looked out upon the shifting tides through gun embrasures, observation slits, and machine-gun barrels. The man’s name was Corporal Lankes. He reported to Lieutenant Herzog and at the same time to our Captain Bebra.
LANKES (saluting): Dora seven, one corporal and four men. Nothing special to report.
HERZOG: Thank you. At ease, Corporal Lankes. Did you hear that, Captain? Nothing special to report. That’s how it’s been for years.
BEBRA: There’s still the tide. Ebbing and flowing. Nature’s contribution.
HERZOG: That’s just what keeps our men busy. That’s why we go on building pillboxes one after another. They’re already in each other’s field of fire. Pretty soon we’ll have to demolish a few of them to make room for more concrete.
BEBRA (knocks on the concrete; the members of his troupe do likewise): And you have faith in concrete?
HERZOG: Faith is hardly the right word. We haven’t much faith in anything any more. What do you say, Lankes?
LANKES: Right, sir. No more faith.
BEBRA: But they keep on mixing and pouring.
HERZOG: Between you and me, Captain, we’re getting valuable experience. I’d never built a thing until I came here. I was in school when the war started. Now I’ve learned a thing or two about cement and I hope to make use of it after the war. The whole of Germany is going to have to be rebuilt. Take a good look at this concrete. (BEBRA and his troupe poke their noses into the concrete.) What do you see? Shells. We’ve got all we we need right at the doorstep. Just have to take the stuff and mix. Stones, shells, sand, cement… What else can I tell you, Captain, you are an artist, you know how it is. Lankes, tell the captain what we put in our cement.
LANKES: Yes, sir. I’ll tell the captain. Puppies, sir. Every one of our pillboxes has a puppy in it. Walled up in the foundation.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: A puppy?
LANKES: Pretty soon there won’t be a single puppy left in the whole sector from Caen to Le Havre.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: No more puppies.
LANKES: That’s what eager beavers we are.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: What eager beavers!
LANKES: Pretty soon we’ll have to use kittens.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Meow!
LANKES: But cats aren’t as good as dogs. That’s why we hope there’ll be a little action here soon.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: The big show! (They applaud.)
LANKES: We’ve rehearsed enough. And if we run out of puppies…
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Oh!
LANKES: …we’ll have to stop building. Cats are bad luck.
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Meow! Meow!
LANKES: Would you like me to tell you short and sweet why we put in puppies…
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Puppies!
LANKES: Personally I think it’s the bunk…
BEBRA’S TROUPE: For shame!
LANKES: But my buddies, here, are mostly from the country. And in the country when they build a house or a barn or a village church, it’s the custom to put something living in the foundations… and…
HERZOG: That’s enough, Lankes. At ease. As you’ve heard, sir, we’re given to superstition here on the Atlantic Wall. Like you theater people who mustn’t whistle before an opening night or spit over your shoulders before the curtain goes up…
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Toi-toi-toi! (Spit over each other’s shoulders.)
HERZOG: But joking aside, we’ve got to let the men have their fun. Recently they’ve started decorating the entrances to the pillboxes with improvisations in concrete or sea-shell mosaics, and it’s tolerated by order from way up. The men like to be kept busy. Those concrete pretzels get on our C.O.’s nerves, but what I tell him is: better pretzels in the concrete, sir, than pretzels in the head. We Germans are no good at sitting idle. That’s a fact.
BEBRA: And we, too, do our bit to distract the men who are waiting on the Atlantic Wall…
BEBRA’S TROUPE: Bebra’s front-line theater sings for you, plays for you, boosts your morale for the final victory.
HERZOG: Yes, you’ve got the right point of view. But the theater alone isn’t enough. Most of the time we have only ourselves to depend on, and we do our best. Am I right, Lankes?
LANKES: Right, sir. We do our best.
HERZOG: There you have it. And if you’ll excuse me now, sir, I’ve got to take a run over to Dora Four and Dora Five. Take your time, have a good look at our concrete. It’s worth it. Lankes will show you everything…
LANKES: Everything, sir.
(Lankes and Bebra exchange salutes. Herzog goes out right, Raguna, Oskar, Felix, and Kitty, who have thus far been standing behind Bebra, jump out. Oskar is holding his drum, Raguna is carrying a basket of provisions. Felix and Kitty climb up on the concrete roof of the pillbox and begin doing acrobatic exercises. Oskar and Raguna play with pails and shovels, make it plain that they are in love, yodel, and tease Felix and Kitty.)
BEBRA (wearily, alter examining the pillbox from all sides): Tell me, Corporal, what is your civilian occupation?
LANKES: Painter, sir, but that was a long time ago.
BEBRA: House painter?
LANKES: Houses too, but mostly pictures.
BEBRA: Hear, hear! You mean you emulated the great Rembrandt, or maybe Velasquez?
LANKES: Sort of in between.
BEBRA: Why, good God, man! Why are you mixing, pouring, guarding concrete? You ought to be in the Propaganda Company. Why, a war artist is just what we need!
LANKES: It’s not my line, sir. My stuff slants too much for present tastes. But if you’ve got a cigarette… (BEBRAhands him a cigarette.)
BEBRA: Slants? I suppose you mean it’s modern?
LANKES: What do you mean by modern? Well, anyway, before they started up with their concrete, slanting was modern for a while.
BEBRA: Oh.
LANKES: Yep.
BEBRA: I guess you lay it on thick. With a trowel maybe?
LANKES: Yeah, I do that too. I stick my thumb in, automatic like, I put in nails and buttons, and before ‘33 I had a period when I put barbed wire on cinnabar. Got good reviews. A private collector in Switzerland has them now. Makes soap.
BEBRA: Oh, this war! This awful war! And today you’re pouring concrete. Hiring out your genius for fortification work. Well, I’ve got to admit, Leonardo and Michelangelo did the same thing in their day. Designed military machines and fortifications when they didn’t have a madonna on order.
LANKES: See! There’s always something cockeyed. Every real artist has got to express himself. If you’d like to take a look at the ornaments over the entrance, sir, I did them.
BEBRA (after a thorough examination of them): Amazing! What wealth of form. What expressive power!
LANKES: Structural formations I call them.
BEBRA: And your creation, your picture, or should I call it a relief, has it a title?
LANKES: I just told you: Formations, or Oblique Formations if you like that better. It’s a new style. Never been done before.
BEBRA: Even so, you ought to give it a title. Just to avoid misunderstandings. It’s your work, after all.
LANKES: What for? What good are titles? Except to put in the catalog when you have a show.
BEBRA: You’re putting on airs, Lankes. Think of me as an art lover, not as an officer. Cigarette? (LANKES takes it.) Well then, what’s on your mind?
LANKES: Oh, all right, if. you put it that way. This is how I figure it. When this war is over—one way or another, it will be over some day—well, then, when the war is over, the pillboxes will still be here. These things were made to last. And then my time will come. The centuries… (He puts the last cigarette in his pocket.) Maybe you’ve got another cigarette, sir? Thank you, sir… the centuries start coming and going, one after another like nothing at all. But the pillboxes stay put just like the Pyramids stayed put. And one fine day one of those archaeologist fellows comes along. And he says to himself: what an artistic void there was between the First and the Seventh World Wars! Dull drab concrete; here and there, over a pillbox entrance, you find some clumsy amateurish squiggles in the old-home style. And that’s all. Then he discovers Dora Five, Six, Seven; he sees my Structural Oblique Formations, and he says to
himself, Say, take a look at that, Very, very interesting, magic, menacing, and yet shot through with spirituality. In these works a genius, perhaps the only genius of the twentieth century, has expressed himself clearly, resolutely, and for all time. I wonder, says our archaeologist to himself, I wonder if it’s got a name? A signature to tell us who the master was? Well, sir, if you look closely, sir, and hold your head on a slant, you’ll see, between those Oblique Formations…
BEBRA: My glasses. Help me, Lankes.
LANKES: All right, here’s what it says: Herbert Lankes, anno nineteen hundred and forty-four. Title: Barbaric, Mystical, Bored.
BEBRA: You have given our century its name.
LANKES: See!
BEBRA: Perhaps when they restore your work in five hundred or a thousand years, they will find a few puppy bones in the concrete.
LANKES: That will only give additional force to my title.
BEBRA (excited): What are the times and what are we, my friend, if our works… but take a look at Felix and Kitty, my acrobats. They are performing on the concrete.
(For some time a piece of paper has been passing back and forth between Roswitha and Oskar and Felix and Kitty, each pair writing on it by turns.)
KITTY (with a slight Saxon accent): Mr. Bebra, see what we can do on the concrete. (She walks on her hands.)
FELIX: Nobody ever did a back flip on concrete before. Not even a front flip. (He does both.)
KITTY: We oughta have a stage like this.
FELIX: It’s a bit too windy for me.
KITTY: But it’s not hot and stinky like the movie houses. (She ties herself into a knot.)
FELIX: And we’ve just composed a poem up here.
KITTY: What do you mean we? Oskarnello and Roswitha made it up.
FELIX: But we helped out when they were stuck for a rhyme.