The Call of the Toad

by Günter Grass

  Reschke said: “This kind of thing can be understood and thoroughly evaluated only from a distance in time.”

  Alexandra: “But history must be written now. Later will be too late. You must write it, Aleksander, how it all was.”

  Alexandra’s colleague Helena was of the same opinion. But my former classmate had no wish to become an author. Piątkowska claimed that all she could write was love letters. Did Reschke, immediately after this conversation, start looking for someone with the writing itch; or did he, the moment Wróbel suggested a history, already have me in mind, his classmate filtered out of his childhood memories?

  As though he had guessed the best way to snare me, he wrote in the letter enclosed with all his junk: “You’re the only one who can do it. You always enjoyed being more factual than the facts …”

  In conclusion Jerzy Wróbel is said to have made a speech, from which only this much is communicated: “Our friend said little about the wedding, but parting with Olek and Ola made him say a good deal, and movingly, about the many things that grieved him …”

  I, too, would be glad to take my leave now, and wish I could end my report at this point. Has everything, then, been said? How automatically the cemeteries of reconciliation fill up. The Germans return home as dead men and women. The future belongs to the bicycle rickshaw. Poland is not yet lost. Alexander and Alexandra are happily married. This ending would please me.

  But the two of them went off on their honeymoon. Where to? Here is her answer: “If all Poles now can go where they like without visa, I finally want to see Naples.”

  They had planned to go by way of Slovenia and Trieste; instead, warned by the latest news reports, they took the classical route across Brenner Pass and straight down the boot to Rome. I know that the new car in which they drove south was a Volvo 440. No stops in eastern Germany. Of course they visited Assisi and Orvieto. The Volvo, like all Swedish cars, is believed to be especially stable. Soon after the wedding, and shortly before the Polish Pope visited Poland in stormy weather and kissed without a moment’s delay the concrete runway over Polish soil, Alexander and Alexandra took off. There are photos only of their stays in Siena, Florence, and Rome, all alike, she no longer in a broad-rimmed hat but in a white kibbutz cap. Since he sent me his junk from Rome, I’m not sure whether they ever got to Naples. They probably left the Volvo in the hotel garage.

  In pictures snapped by obliging tourists, the couple look happy, even in front of the Pantheon. He had wanted to visit this dome-shaped edifice. And in the middle of the rotunda, with a view of the hemisphere all the way to the circular opening at the top, their hearts, Reschke writes, swelled. Not Raphael’s tomb but Hadrian’s temple had made them light, lifted them up.

  “Too many people of course, but no crowding. The noble magnitude of this idea-made-architecture dwarfs us humans, and yet an upward glance over the five tiers of coffered vault sets the spirit free; in the middle of this exhilarating space an elderly gentleman, obviously English, suddenly began to sing. His fine though slightly tremulous voice tested the dome, at first hesitantly, then boldly. He sang something by Purcell, and was applauded for it. Then a young Italian woman with a peasantlike charm sang with bravura, Verdi of course. She too was applauded. I hesitated a long while. Alexandra was plucking my sleeve, wanting to go. Then I stood under the dome, not to sing, I couldn’t do that; no, I released a single toad call into the opening of the dome—short long long, short long long. Over and over. The dome of the Pantheon was as if built for toad calls, perhaps because its height and diameter are equal. My performance, Alexandra told me later, reduced the tourists all around to silence, even the Japanese. Not a camera clicked. But I was not the caller, it was the toad from deep within me … I stood there like the statue of a caller, my head tilted far back, my mouth open, my hat held to one side, and the toad call was lifted up from me, high up into the opening of the dome and beyond. Alexandra put it all in her own words: “People were all struck dumb and didn’t even clap little.”

  Afterward they sat in a sidewalk café and wrote postcards to nobody. Reschke’s last entries reflect his condition, strained by time leaps: “Unfortunately many of the museums are closed. Since Alexandra is willing to visit ‘three churches per day, tops,’ where she would light asparagus-thin candles wherever possible, plenty of time is left for leisurely strolling and her beloved espresso. The Etruscan sarcophagi are always beautiful. With delight we both contemplate the wedded couples hewn in stone, lying on their sides, on the lids of stone coffins. In some of the couples we discover ourselves. What a privilege to lie like that! But Alexandra absolutely refuses to go near the catacombs. ‘No more death and skeleton bones,’ she exclaims. ‘From now on we just live.’ And so we live out our years. Interesting, how Rome has changed since our first visit. Even then we took a rickshaw for all our longer trips, across the Tiber to the Vatican. It was there, seven years ago, that she decided to stop puffing cigarettes and made her famous remark: ‘Is funny. Pope in Poland, and me looking up at St. Peter’s.’ At that time the inner-city traffic, in spite of the rickshaws, was still dominated by cars, but today we can say: Rome has no fumes, no constant honking, only the melodious sound of the three-note bells. Friend Chatterjee has won—and we with him …”

  In his covering letter, written on Roman hotel stationery, my classmate, apart from the date on the letter-head, dispensed with time leaps. Strictly factual, it gives a general outline of the submitted material and suggests that I write a history or report. “And please don’t let yourself be carried away by certain events that sound like fiction; I know you prefer to tell stories …” And then he appeals to my memories of shared schooldays. “Surely you remember the war years when our whole class was ordered to the Kashubian fields. No matter how much it rained, no one was allowed to come in from the field until he had filled three liter bottles to the brim with potato bugs …”

  Yes, Alex, I remember. You organized us. With you, we were successful. Your method of collecting was exemplary. We made a profit. And lazy dog that I was, always dreaming, you gave me a hand; often you even made me a present of my third bottle and helped top off my second. Those disgusting black-and-yellow striped bugs. It’s true, I’m in your debt. That is the only reason I’m writing this report to the end. That’s a fact. I tried to keep myself out of the story. I managed to skip the more romantic episodes. But did you absolutely have to go on that honeymoon, damn it?

  At the end of his covering letter, he writes: “We’re moving on tomorrow. Even though I warned her about conditions there, Naples remains Alexandra’s long-cherished wish. I fear she will be disappointed. As soon as we get back, you will hear from me …”

  That was the last I heard from him. The end, if there ever is an end, is documented. It happened on the way to Naples or on the way back. No, not in the Alban Hills. There’s plenty of room between Rome and Naples.

  Since it happened three days after their departure, I assume that Alexandra saw Naples, was shocked, and in a hurry to get back. On a winding stretch of road it must have thrown them off—but who is it? A sheer drop of a hundred feet—even for a Volvo that’s too much. Overturned several times. At the foot of the precipice, built on a rounded crest, there’s a village, and just outside it, in an open field, encircled by a wall and planted with cypresses, a cemetery.

  The police were helpful when I came to inquire and search. The priest, the mayor confirmed: the car a total wreck, the bodies charred. Nevertheless, the police report made it clear: it was a Volvo. Everything burned, even the papers in the glove compartment. Intact, because they had been thrown from the car when it turned over, and over, were a leather slipper and a crocheted string bag.

  I won’t give the name of the village in whose cemetery they lie right by the wall. I’m sure, as far as I can be sure, that Alexander and Alexandra lie there nameless. Only two wooden crosses mark their double grave. I won’t have them reburied. They were against reburial. From that village cemetery there is a long view
across the country. I thought I could see the sea. They are lying well there. There let them lie.

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  Copyright © Steidl Verlag, Göttingen, 1992

  Drawings copyright © Günter Grass, Berlin, 1992

  English translation copyright © 1992 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

  Günter Grass has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published in Great Britain in 1992 by Martin Secker & Warburg

  Minerva edition 1993

  Published by Vintage 2000

  Translated from the German Unkenrufe

  penguin.co.uk/vintage

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library