by Günter Grass
That afternoon I was back in Bilk. I unloaded twelve cartons of Lucky Strikes, a fortune. I savored their amazement, thrust the mountain of blond tobacco at them, and said: this is for you. From now on I want you to leave me alone. It’s not too much to ask for all these cigarettes. Aside from that I want a lunchbox with lunch in it, beginning tomorrow. I hope you will be happy with your honey and flints, I said without anger or resentment; as for me, I shall practice another art, my happiness will be written, or to put it more professionally, incised on tombstones.
Korneff took me on as his helper for a hundred reichsmarks a month. Not much money, but I worked hard for it just the same. It was clear by the end of the first week that I was not strong enough for the heavy work. I had been given the job of embossing a slab of Belgian granite, fresh from the quarry, for a family vault. In an hour’s time I could scarcely hold the chisel and my mallet hand was numb. I also had to leave the blunt chiseling for Korneff, but thanks to my skill, I was able to take over the fine chiseling and scalloping, to square off the slabs, draw the lines for the four blows, and finish the dolomite borders. Sitting on an improvised stool, in my right hand the chisel and in my left, despite the objections of Korneff, who wished to make me right-handed, a pear-shaped wooden mallet or an iron bush hammer; metal rang on stone, the sixty-four teeth of the bush hammer bit simultaneously into the stone to soften it. Here was happiness; not my drum, to be sure, just an ersatz, but there is also such a thing as ersatz happiness, perhaps happiness exists only as an ersatz, perhaps all happiness is an ersatz for happiness. Here I was, then, in a storehouse of ersatz happiness: Marble happiness, sandstone happiness. Hard happiness: Carrara. Cloudy, brittle happiness: alabaster. The happiness of chrome steel cutting into diorite. Dolomite: green happiness; gentle happiness: tufa. Colored happiness from the river Lahn. Porous happiness: basalt. Cold happiness from the Eifel. Like a volcano the happiness erupted and fell in a layer of dust, of grit between my teeth. I proved most talented at cutting inscriptions. I soon outdid Korneff and he entrusted me with all the ornamental work, the acanthus leaves, the broken roses for those who died in their tender years, such Christian symbols as XP or INRI, the flutes and beads, the eggs and anchors, chamfers and double chamfers. Oskar provided tombstones at all prices with all manner of ornaments. And when I had spent eight hours clouding a polished diorite slab with my breath and incising an inscription such as: Here rests in God my beloved husband—new line—Our beloved father, brother, and uncle—new line—Joseph Esser—new line—b. April 3, 1885, d. June 22, 1946—new line—Death is the Gateway to Life—I was conscious, as I reread the text, of an ersatz happiness, that is, I was pleasantly happy. In gratitude to Joseph Esser, who had passed away at the age of sixty-one, and to the little green clouds of diorite raised by my chisel, I took special care with the O’s in Esser’s epitaph; Oskar was particularly fond of the letter O, and there was always a fine regularity and endlessness about my O’s, though they tended to be rather too large.
At the end of May I went to work as a stonecutter’s helper; at the beginning of October Korneff developed two new boils, and it was time to set up the travertine slab for Hermann Webknecht and Else Webknecht, née Freytag, in the South Cemetery. Until then Korneff, doubting my strength, had refused to take me with him to the cemetery. When he had a tombstone to haul and set up, he usually borrowed one of Julius Wöbel’s helpers, who was almost stone-deaf but otherwise a satisfactory worker. In return Korneff would give Wöbel—who employed eight men—a hand in emergencies. Time and time again I had offered my services for work at the cemetery; cemeteries had retained their attraction for me, though at the time there were no decisions to be made. Fortunately, the beginning of October was the rush season at Wöbel’s, he would need all his men until the frosts set in; Korneff had to fall back on me.
We put the travertine slab on hardwood rollers and rolled it up the ramp onto the back of the three-wheel truck. We set the pedestal beside it, cushioned the edges in empty paper sacks, loaded on tools, cement, sand, gravel, and the rollers and crates for unloading; I shut the tail gate, Korneff got in and started the motor. Then he stuck his head and boil-infested neck out of the cab and shouted: “Come along, boy. Get your lunchbox and pile in.”
We drove slowly round the City Hospital. Outside the main gate white clouds of nurses, including one I knew. Sister Gertrude. I waved, she waved back. Lucky seeing her like that, I thought, I ought to ask her out one of these days, even if she has disappeared now that we’ve turned off toward the Rhine, invite her to do something with me, heading for Kappeshamm; the movies maybe, or to the theater to see Gründgens; ha, there it is, that yellow brick building, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the theater, smoke rising from the crematory over autumnal trees, a change of surroundings might do you good, Sister Gertrude. Another cemetery, other makers of tombstones: Beutz & Kranich, Pottgiesser, natural stones, Bohm, mortuary art, Gockeln, mortuary gardening and landscaping; questions at the entrance, it’s not so easy to get into a cemetery: travertine for grave Number 79, Section Eight, Webknecht Hermann. Guard raises two fingers to his cap, leave lunchpails at the crematory to be warmed up, and in front of the ossuary stood Leo Schugger.
“The fellow with the white gloves,” I ask Korneff, “isn’t that Leo Schugger?”
Korneff, feeling his boils: “ No, no, never heard of any Leo Schugger. That’s Willem Slobber; he lives here.”
How could I have contented myself with this information? I myself, after all, had been in Danzig and now I was in Düsseldorf, but I was still called Oskar: “In Danzig there was a fellow who hung around the cemeteries and looked exactly like this fellow. His name was Leo Schugger; before he was in the cemeteries he was called just plain Leo and he was a student at the seminary.”
Korneff, left hand on his boils, right hand turning the wheel as we curved round the crematory: “I don’t doubt it. I know a whole raft of them that look the same, that started out at the seminary, and now they’re living in cemeteries under different names. This one here is Willem Slobber.”
We drove past Willem Slobber. He waved a white glove at us, and I felt at home at the South Cemetery.
October, cemetery paths, the world losing its hair and teeth, which is just another way of saying that yellow leaves kept falling from the trees. Silence, sparrows, people out for a stroll, our three-wheeler chugging along on its way to Section Eight, which is still far off. Here and there old women with watering cans and grandchildren, sun on black Swedish granite, obelisks, truncated columns—symbolic or real war damage—a tarnished green angel behind a yew tree or something that looked like a yew tree. A woman shading her eyes with a marble hand, dazzled by her own marble. Christ in stone sandals blessing the elm trees, and in Section Four another Christ, blessing a birch. Delicious daydreams on the path between Section Four and Section Five: the ocean, for instance. And this ocean casts, among other things, a corpse up on the beach. From the direction of the Zoppot beach promenade, violin music and the bashful beginnings of a fireworks display for the benefit of the war blind. Oskar, aged three, bends down over the flotsam, hoping it will prove to be Maria, or perhaps Sister Gertrude, whom I should ask out some time. But it is fair Lucy, pale Lucy, as I can see by the light of the fireworks, now hurrying toward their climax. Even if I couldn’t see her face, I’d recognize her by the knitted Bavarian jacket she always has on when she is planning evil. When I take it off her, the wool is wet. Wet too is the jacket she has on under the jacket. Another little Bavarian jacket. And at the very end, as the fireworks die down and only the violins are left, I find, under wool on wool on wool, her heart wrapped in an athletic jersey marked League of German Girls, her heart, Lucy’s heart, a little cold tombstone, on which is written: Here lies Oskar—Here lies Oskar—Here lies Oskar…
“Wake up, boy,” Korneff interrupted my daydreams, washed ashore by the sea, illumined by the fireworks. We turned left and Section Eight, a new section without trees and with but few tombstones,
lay flat and hungry before us. The graves were all alike, too fresh to be decorated, but the last five burials were easily recognizable: moldering mounds of brown wreaths with faded, rain-soaked ribbons.
We quickly found Number 79 at the beginning of the fourth row, adjoining Section Seven, which already had a more settled look with its sprinkling of young, quick-growing trees and its considerable number of tombstones, mostly of Silesian marble, arranged with a certain regularity. We approached 79 from the rear, unloaded the tools, cement, gravel, and the travertine slab with its slightly oily sheen. The three-wheeler gave a jump as we rolled the slab down on the crates waiting to receive it. Korneff removed the temporary cross, bearing the names of H. Webknecht and E. Webknecht, from the head end of the grave; I handed him the drill and he began to dig the two holes—depth five feet three inches, stipulated the cemetery regulations—for the concrete posts, while I brought water from Section Seven and mixed concrete. I had finished just as he, having dug five feet, said he had finished. I began to fill the holes with concrete while Korneff sat catching his breath on the travertine slab, reaching behind him and feeling his boils. “Coming to a head,” he said. “I can always feel it when they’re ready to bust.” My mind just about vacant, I rammed in the concrete. Coming from Section Seven, a Protestant funeral crawled through Section Eight to Section Nine. As they were passing three rows away from us, Korneff slid off the travertine slab and, in compliance with the cemetery regulations, we took our caps off for the procession from the pastor to the next of kin. Immediately after the coffin came, all alone, a lopsided little woman in black. Those who followed her were all much bigger and solidly built.
“Gawd a’mighty,” Korneff groaned. “I got a feeling they’re going to pop before we can get that slab up.”
Meanwhile the funeral party had reached Section Nine, where it arranged itself and poured forth the pastor’s voice, rising and falling. The concrete had contracted, and we could have put the pedestal on its foundations. But Korneff lay prone on the travertine slab. He slipped his cap under his forehead and pulled down the collar of his jacket and shirt, baring his neck, while the biography of the dear departed drifted over to us from Section Nine. I had to climb up on the slab and sit on Korneff’s back. I took in the situation at a glance; there were two of them almost on top of each other. A straggler with an enormous wreath hurried toward Section Nine and the sermon that was drawing slowly to an end. I tore off the plaster at one tug, wiped away the ichthyol salve with a beech leaf, and examined the two indurations. They were almost the same size, tar-brown shading into yellow. “Let us pray,” said the breeze from Section Nine. Taking this as a sign, I turned my head to one side and simultaneously pressed and pulled the beech leaves under my thumbs. “Our Father…” Korneff croaked: “Don’t squeeze, pull.” I pulled. “…be Thy name.” Komeff managed to join in the prayer: “…Thy Kingdom come.” Pulling didn’t help, so I squeezed again. “Will be done, on as it is in.” A miracle that there was no explosion. And once again: “ give us this day.” And again Korneff caught up the thread: “trespasses and not into temptation…” There was more of it than I had expected. “Kingdom and the power and the glory.” I squeezed out the last colorful remnant. “…and ever, amen.” While I give a last squeeze, Korneff: “Amen,” and a last pull: “ Amen.” As the folks over in Section Nine started on their condolences, Korneff said another amen. Still flat on the travertine slab, he heaved a sigh of relief: “Amen,” to which he added: “Got some concrete left for under the pedestal?” Yes, I had. And he: “Amen.”
I spread the last shovelfuls as a binder between the two posts. Then Korneff slid down off the polished inscription and Oskar showed him the autumnal beech leaves and the similarly colored contents of his boils. We put our caps back on, took hold of the stone, and, as the funeral in Section Nine dispersed, put up the slab that would mark the grave of Hermann Webknecht and Else Webknecht, née Freytag.
Fortuna North
In those days only people who left something valuable behind them on the surface of the earth could afford tombstones. It didn’t have to be a diamond or a string of pearls. For five sacks of potatoes, you could get a plain but good-sized stone of Grenzheim shell lime. A Belgian granite monument on three pedestals for a tomb for two brought us material for two three-piece suits. The tailor’s widow, who gave us the goods, still had an apprentice working for her; she agreed to make the suits in return for a dolomite border.
One evening after work Korneff and I took the Number 10 car out to Stockum, where we dropped in on the Widow Lennert and had our measurements taken. Absurd as it may sound, Oskar was wearing an armored infantry uniform with alterations by Maria. The buttons on the jacket had been moved, but even so, what with my peculiar build, it was impossible to button them.
The suit which Anton the apprentice proceeded to make me was dark blue with a pin stripe and light grey lining; it was single-breasted, adequately but not misleadingly padded at the shoulders: it did not conceal my hump, but made the most of it, though without exaggeration; cuffs on the trousers but not ostentatiously wide. My model, in matters of dress, was still Master Bebra, hence no loops for a belt but buttons for suspenders; vest shiny in back, subdued in front, lined with old rose. The whole thing took five fittings.
While Anton was still working on Korneff’s double-breasted and my single-breasted suit, a trafficker in shoes came to see us about a tombstone for his wife, who had been killed in an air raid in ‘43. First he tried to palm off ration coupons on us, but we demanded merchandise. For Silesian marble with fancy border plus installation Komeff obtained for himself one pair of dark-brown oxfords and one of carpet slippers and for me a pair of high, old-fashioned but wonderfully supple black shoes size five, which supported my weak ankles and, despite their archaic cut, had a pleasingly elegant look.
Laying a bundle of reichsmarks on the honey scales, I asked Maria to buy me two white shirts, one with pin stripes, and two ties, one light grey, the other dark brown. “The rest,” I said, “is for Kurt and for you, my dear Maria, who never think of yourself but only of others.”
While my giving spree lasted, I gave Guste an umbrella with a real bone handle and a deck of almost new skat cards, for she liked to lay out cards, but it pained her to borrow a deck from the neighbors every time she was curious to know when Köster would come home.
Maria carried out my commission without delay. With the money that was left—and there was quite a lot—she bought herself a raincoat and Kurt a school satchel of imitation leather, which was horrible to look upon but served its purpose for the time. To my shirts and ties she added three pairs of grey socks that I had forgotten to order.
When Korneff and Oskar called for our suits, we were embarrassed at our reflections in the glass, but quite impressed by one another. Korneff hardly dared to turn his ravaged neck. His arms hung forward from drooping shoulders, and he tried to straighten his bent knees. My new clothes give me a demonic, intellectual look, especially when I folded my arms over my chest, so adding to my upper horizontal dimension, and, supporting my weight on my feeble right leg, held out my left at a nonchalant angle. Smiling at Korneff and his astonishment, I approached the mirror, stood close enough to kiss my reverse image, but was satisfied to cloud myself over with my breath and said as though in passing: “Ho, there, Oskar. You still need a tie pin.”
When, one Sunday afternoon a week later, I visited my nurses in the City Hospital and not without vanity displayed my spruce, brand-new self, I was already in possession of a silver tie pin with a pearl in it.
The dear girls were speechless when they saw me sitting in the nurses’ room. That was late in the summer of ‘47. I crossed my arms over my chest in the traditional way and played with my leather gloves. For more than a year now I had been a stonecutter’s helper, a master at fluting and grooving. I crossed my legs, careful not to disturb the crease in my trousers. Our good Guste took care of my suit as though it had been made to order for Köster, whose hom
ecoming was going to change everything. Sister Helmtrud wanted to feel the material and of course I let her. In the spring of ‘47 we celebrated Kurt’s seventh birthday with home-mixed egg liqueur and homemade sand cake—take two pounds of butter. Take this, take that—and I gave him a mouse-grey loden coat. Meanwhile Sister Gertrude had joined the other nurses and I passed around some candy which, in addition to twenty pounds of brown sugar, we had been given for a diorite slab. Little Kurt, it seemed to me, was much too fond of school. His teacher, who was young and attractive and in no way resembled la Spollenhauer, spoke well of him; she said he was bright, though a trifle solemn. How gay nurses can be when you bring them candy. When left alone for a moment with Sister Gertrude, I inquired about her free Sundays.
“Well, today for instance, I’m off at five. But,” said Sister Gertrude with resignation, “there’s nothing doing in town.”