by Günter Grass
We found no guitarist at the Unicorn, but I got a certain amount of practice. What with my wartime theatrical experience, I would have gotten back into the swing of it very quickly if not for Sister Dorothea, who occasionally made me miss my cue.
Half my thoughts were still with her. That would have been all right if the rest had remained entirely on my drum. But as it worked out, my thoughts would start with my drum and end up with Sister Dorothea’s Red Cross pin. Klepp was brilliant at bridging over my lapses with his flute; but it worried him to see Oskar so half-immersed in his thoughts. “Are you hungry? I’ll order some sausage.”
Behind all the sorrows of this world Klepp saw a ravenous hunger; all human suffering, he believed, could be cured by a portion of blood sausage. What quantities of fresh blood sausage with rings of onion, washed down with beer, Oskar consumed in order to make his friend Klepp think his sorrow’s name was hunger and not Sister Dorothea.
Usually we left the Zeidler flat early in the morning and took our breakfast in the Old City. I no longer went to the Academy except when we needed money for the movies. The Muse Ulla, who had meanwhile become engaged for the third or fourth time to Lankes, was unavailable, because Lankes was getting his first big industrial commissions. But Oskar didn’t like to pose without Ulla, for when I posed alone, they would always distort me horribly and paint me in the blackest colors. And so I gave myself up entirely to my friend Klepp. I could still go to see Maria and little Kurt, but their apartment offered me no peace. Mr. Stenzel, her boss and married lover, was always there.
One day in the early fall of ‘49, Klepp and I left our rooms and converged in the hallway, not far from the frosted-glass door. We were about to leave the flat with our instruments when Zeidler opened the door of his living room by a crack and called out to us.
He was pushing a bulky roll of narrow carpeting and wanted us to help him lay it—a coconut-fiber runner it proved to be—in the hallway. The runner measured twenty-eight feet, but the hallway came to just twenty-five feet and seven inches; Klepp and I had to cut off the rest. This we did sitting down, for the cutting of coconut fiber proved to be hard work. When we were through, the runner was almost an inch too short, though the width was just right. Next Zeidler, who said he had trouble bending down, asked us to do the tacking. Oskar hit on the idea of stretching the runner as we tacked, and we managed to make up the gap, or very close to it. We used tacks with large, flat heads; small heads wouldn’t have held in the coarse weave. Neither Oskar nor Klepp brought the hammer down on his thumb; we did bend a few tacks, though. But it wasn’t our fault, it was the quality of the tacks, which were from Zeidler’s stock, that is to say, manufactured before the currency reform. When the runner was half in place, we laid down our hammers crosswise and gave the Hedgehog, who was supervising our work, a look which while not insolently demanding must surely have been wistful. He disappeared into his bed-living room and came back with three of his famous liqueur glasses and a bottle of schnaps. We drank to the durability of the carpet; the first glass drained, we remarked—and again our tone was more wistful than demanding—that coconut fiber makes a man thirsty. I feel sure those liqueur glasses must have been glad of the opportunity to hold schnaps several times in a row before being reduced to smithereens by one of the Hedgehog’s temper tantrums. When Klepp accidentally dropped an empty glass on the carpet, it did not break or even make a sound. We all sang the praises of the carpet. When Mrs. Zeidler, who was watching our work from the bed-living room, joined us in praising the fiber carpet because it protected falling liqueur glasses from harm, the Hedgehog flew into a rage. He stamped on the part of the runner that had not yet been tacked down, seized the three empty glasses, and vanished into the bed-living room. The china closet rattled—he was taking more glasses, three were not enough—and a moment later Oskar heard the familiar music: to his mind’s eye appeared the Zeidler tile stove, eight shattered liqueur glasses beneath its cast-iron door, Zeidler bending down for the dustpan and brush, Zeidler sweeping up all the breakage that the Hedgehog had created. Mrs. Zeidler remained in the doorway while the glasses went tinkle-tinkle and crash-bang behind her. She took a considerable interest in our work; during the Hedgehog’s tantrum we had picked up our hammers again. He never came back, but he had left the schnaps bottle. At first Mrs. Zeidler’s presence embarrassed us, as alternately we set the bottle to our lips. She gave us a friendly nod. That put us at our ease, but it never occurred to us to pass the bottle and offer her a nip. However, we made a neat job of it, and our tacks were evenly spaced. As Oskar was wielding his hammer outside Sister-Dorothea’s room, the panes of frosted glass rattled at every stroke. This stirred him to the quick and for an anguished moment he let the hammer drop. But once he had passed the frosted-glass door, he and his hammer felt better.
All things come to an end, and so did that fiber runner. The broad-headed tacks ran from end to end, up to their necks in the floorboards, holding just their heads above the surging, swirling coconut fibers. Well pleased with ourselves, we strode up and down the hallway, enjoying the length of the carpet, complimented ourselves on our work, and intimated just in passing that it was not so easy to lay a carpet before breakfast, on an empty stomach. At last we achieved our end: Mrs. Zeidler ventured out on the brand-new, virgin runner and found her way over it to the kitchen, where she poured out coffee and fried some eggs. We ate in my room; Mrs. Zeidler toddled off, it was time for her to go to the office at Mannesmann’s. We left the door open, chewed, savored our fatigue, and contemplated our work, the fiber runner running fibrously toward us.
Why so many words about a cheap carpet which might at most have had a certain barter value before the currency reform? The question is justified. Oskar anticipates it and replies: it was on this fiber runner that Oskar, in the ensuing night, met Sister Dorothea for the first time.
It must have been close to midnight when I came home full of beer and blood sausage. I had left Klepp in the Old City, still looking for the guitarist. I found the keyhole of the Zeidler flat, found the fiber runner in the hallway, found my way past the dark frosted glass to my room, and, having taken my clothes off, found my bed. I did not find my pajamas, they were at Maria’s in the wash; instead I found the extra piece of fiber runner we had cut off, laid it down beside my bed, got into bed, but found no sleep.
There is no reason to tell you everything that Oskar thought or revolved unthinking in his head because he could not sleep. Today I believe I have discovered the reason for my insomnia. Before climbing into bed, I had stood barefoot on my new bedside rug, the remnant from the runner. The coconut fibers pierced my bare skin and crept into my bloodstream: long after I had lain down, I was still standing on coconut fibers, and that is why I was unable to sleep; for nothing is more stimulating, more sleep-dispelling, more thought-provoking than standing barefoot on a coconut-fiber mat.
Long after midnight Oskar was still standing on the mat and lying in bed both at once; toward three in the morning he heard a door and another door. That, I thought, must be Klepp coming home without a guitarist but full of blood sausage; yet I knew it was not Klepp who opened first one door and then another. In addition, I thought, as long as you are lying in bed for nothing, with coconut fibers cutting into the soles of your feet, you might as well get out of bed and really, not just in your imagination, stand on the fiber mat beside your bed. Oskar did just this. There were consequences. The moment I set foot on the mat, it reminded me, via the soles of my feet, of its origin and source, the twenty-five-foot-six-inch runner in the hallway. Was it because I felt sorry for the cut-off remnant? Was it because I had heard the doors in the hallway and presumed, without believing, that it was Klepp? In any event, Oskar, who in going to bed had failed to find his pajamas, bent down, picked up one corner of the mat in each hand, moved his legs aside until he was no longer standing on the mat but on the floor, pulled up the thirty-inch mat between his legs and in front of his body, which, as we recall, measured four feet one. His
nakedness was decently covered, but from knees to collarbone he was exposed to the influence of the coconut fiber. And that influence was further enhanced when behind his fibrous shield he left his dark room for the dark corridor and set his feet on the runner.
Is it any wonder if I took hurried little steps in order to escape the fibrous influence beneath my feet, if, in my search for salvation and safety, I made for the one place where there was no coconut fiber on the floor—the toilet?
This recess was as dark as the hallway or Oskar’s room but was occupied nonetheless, as a muffled feminine scream made clear to me. My fiber pelt collided with the knees of a seated human. When I made no move to leave the toilet—for behind me threatened the coconut fibers—the seated human tried to expel me. “Who are you? what do you want? go away!” said a voice that could not possibly belong to Mrs. Zeidler. There was a certain plaintiveness in that “Who are you?”
“Well, well, Sister Dorothea, just guess.” I ventured a little banter which, I hoped, would distract her from the slightly embarrassing circumstances of our meeting. But she wasn’t in the mood for guessing; she stood up, reached out for me in the darkness and tried to push me out onto the runner, but she reached too high, into the void over my head. She tried lower down, but this time it wasn’t I but my fibrous apron, my coconut pelt that she caught hold of. Again she let out a scream—oh, why do women always have to scream? Sister Dorothea seemed to have mistaken me for somebody, for she began to tremble and whispered: “Oh, heavens, it’s the Devil!” I couldn’t repress a slight giggle, but it wasn’t meant maliciously. She, however, took it as the Devil’s sniggering. That word Devil was not to my liking and when she again, but now in a very cowed tone, asked: “Who are you?” Oskar replied: “I am Satan, come to call on Sister Dorothea!” And she: “Oh, heavens, what for?”
Slowly I felt my way into my role, and Satan was my prompter. “Because Satan is in love with Sister Dorothea!” “No, no, no, I won’t have it,” she cried. She tried again to escape, but once again encountered the Satanic fibers of my coconut pelt—her nightgown must have been very thin. Her ten fingers also encountered the jungle of seduction, and suddenly she felt faint. She fell forward; I caught her in my pelt, managed to hold her up long enough to arrive at a decision in keeping with my Satanic role. Gently giving way, I let her down on her knees, taking care that they should not touch the cold tiles of the toilet but come to rest on the fiber rug in the hallway. Then I let her slip down backward on the carpet, her head pointing westward in the direction of Klepp’s room. The whole dorsal length of her—she must have measured at least five feet four—was in contact with the runner; I covered her over with the same fibrous stuff, but I had only thirty inches available. First I put the top end under her chin, but then the lower edge came down too far over her thighs. I had to move the mat up a couple of inches; now it covered her mouth, but her nose was still free, she could still breathe. She did more than breathe; she heaved and panted as Oskar lay down on his erstwhile mat, setting all its thousand fibers in vibration, for instead of seeking direct contact with Sister Dorothea, he relied on the effects of the coconut fiber. Again he triad to strike up a conversation, but Sister Dorothea was still in a half-faint. She could only gasp “Heavens, heavens!” and ask Oskar over and over who he was and where he was from. There was shuddering and trembling between fiber runner and fiber mat when I said I was Satan, pronounced the name with a Satanic hiss, gave hell as my address, and described it with a picturesque touch or two. I thrashed about vigorously on my bedside mat to keep it in motion, for my ears told me plainly that the fibers gave Sister Dorothea a sensation similar to that which fizz powder had given my beloved Maria years before, the only difference being that the fizz powder had allowed me to hold up my end successfully, nay triumphantly, while here on the fiber mat, I suffered a humiliating failure. I just couldn’t throw anchor. My little friend who in the fizz powder days and frequently thereafter had stood erect, full of purpose and ambition, now drooped his head; here on the coconut fiber he remained puny, listless, and unresponsive. Nothing could move him, neither my intellectual arguments nor the heart-rending appeals of Sister Dorothea, who whimpered and moaned: “Come, Satan, come!” I tried to comfort her with promises: “Satan is coming,” I said in a Satanic tone, “Satan will be ready in a minute.” At the same time I held a dialogue with the Satan who has dwelt within me since my baptism. I scolded: Don’t be a kill-joy, Satan. I pleaded: For goodness’ sake, Satan, don’t disgrace me this way. And cajoled: It’s not a bit like you, old boy. Think back, think of Maria, or better still of the widow Greff, or of how you and I used to frolic with my darling Roswitha in gay Paree? Satan’s reply was morose and repetitious: I’m not in the mood, Oskar. When Satan’s not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Hasn’t even Satan a right not to be in the mood once in a while?
With these and similar saws, Satan refused me his support. I kept the fiber mat in motion, scraping poor Sister Dorothea raw, but I was gradually weakening. “Come, Satan,” she sighed, “oh, please come.” And at length I responded with a desperate, absurd, utterly unmotivated assault beneath the mat: I aimed an unloaded pistol at the bull’s-eye. She tried to help her Satan, her arms came out from under the mat, she flung them around me, found my hump, my warm, human, and not at all fibrous skin. But this wasn’t the Satan she wanted. There were no more murmurs of “Come, Satan, come.” Instead, she cleared her throat and repeated her original question but in a different register: “For heaven’s sake who are you, what do you want?” I could only pull in my horns and admit that according to my papers my name was Oskar Matzerath, that I was her neighbor, and that I loved her. Sister Dorothea, with all my heart.
If any malicious soul imagines that Sister Dorothea cursed me and pushed me down on the fiber runner, Oskar must assure him, sadly yet with a certain satisfaction, that Sister Dorothea removed her hands very slowly, thoughtfully as it were, from my hump, with a movement resembling an infinitely sad caress. She began to cry, to sob, but without violence. I hardly noticed it when she wriggled out from under me and the mat, when she slipped away from me and I slipped to the floor. The carpet absorbed the sound of her steps. I heard a door opening and closing, a key turning; then the six squares of the frosted-glass door took on light and reality from within.
Oskar lay there and covered himself with the mat, which still had a little Satanic warmth in it. My eyes were fixed on the illumined squares. From time to time a shadow darted across the frosted glass. Now she is going to the clothes cupboard, I said to myself, and now to the washstand. Oskar attempted a last diabolical venture. Taking my mat with me I crawled over the runner to the door, scratched on the wood, raised myself a little, sent a searching, pleading hand over the two lower panes. Sister Dorothea did not open; she kept moving busily between cupboard and washstand. I knew the truth and admitted as much: Sister Dorothea was packing, preparing to take flight, to take flight from me.
Even the feeble hope that in leaving the room she would show me her electrically illumined face was to be disappointed. First the light went out behind the frosted glass, then I heard the key, the door opened, shoes on the fiber runner—I reached out for her, struck a suitcase, a stockinged leg. She kicked me in the chest with one of those sensible hiking shoes I had seen in the clothes cupboard, and when Oskar pleaded a last time: “Sister Dorothea,” the apartment door slammed: a woman had left me.
You and all those who understand my grief will say now: Go to bed, Oskar. What business have you in the hallway after this humiliating episode? It is four in the morning. You are lying naked on a fiber rug, with no cover but a small and scraggly mat. You’ve scraped the skin off your hands and knees. Your heart bleeds, your member aches, your shame cries out to high heaven. You have waked Mr. Zeidler. He has waked his wife. In another minute they’ll get up, open the door of their bed-living room, and see you. Go to bed, Oskar, it will soon strike five.
This was exactly the advice I gave myself as I lay on the fiber run
ner. But I just shivered and lay still. I tried to call back Sister Dorothea’s body. I could feel nothing but coconut fibers, they were everywhere, even between my teeth. Then a band of light fell on Oskar: the door of the Zeidler bed-living room opened a crack. Zeidler’s hedgehog-head, above it a head full of metal curlers, Mrs. Zeidler. They stared, he coughed, she giggled, he called me, I gave no reply, she went on giggling, he told her to be still, she asked what was wrong with me, he said this won’t do, she said it was a respectable house, he threatened to put me out, but I was silent, for the measure was not yet full. The Zeidlers opened the door, he switched on the light in the hall. They came toward me, making malignant little eyes; he had a good rage up, and it wasn’t on any liqueur glasses that he was going to vent it this time. He stood over me, and Oskar awaited the Hedgehog’s fury. But Zeidler never did get that tantrum off his chest. A hubbub was heard in the stair well, an uncertain key groped for, and at last found, the keyhole, and Klepp came in, bringing with him someone who was just as drunk as he: Scholle, the long-sought guitarist.
The two of them pacified Zeidler and wife, bent down over Oskar, asked no questions, picked me up, and carried me, me and my Satanic mat, to my room.
Klepp rubbed me warm. The guitarist picked up my clothes. Together they dressed me and dried my tears. Sobs. Daybreak outside the window. Sparrows. Klepp hung my drum round my neck and showed his little wooden flute. Sobs. The guitarist picked up his guitar. Sparrows. Friends surrounded me, took me between them, led the sobbing but unresisting Oskar out of the flat, out of the house in Jülicher-Strasse, toward the sparrows, led him away from the influence of coconut fiber, led me through dawning streets, through the Hefgarten to the planetarium and the banks of the river Rhine, whose grey waters rolled down to Holland, carrying barges with flowing clotheslines.