by Günter Grass
On the far shore, the black-leather motorcycle boys—“Boy, you’d think they’d suffocate!”—were throwing switch-blade knives at one another, aiming well for a bare miss. The silly fraternity students nearby—they, too, still in full regalia—hadn’t been able to think of anything better than bottoms-upping their beer while standing stiff and straight (with increasing difficulty), and snarling Old German and Latin toasts. A bald man in his mid-fifties, his head protected by a handkerchief knotted at the four corners, the eternal loner who always has his own little act, was squatting by the lake shore in the left foreground, fishing leeches out of the Grunewald sludge and placing them on his dismal, old-looking legs.
Why not? Why shouldn’t he, too, have his fun? Isn’t it a free society? Isn’t each one of us free to apply as many leeches as he pleases?
And then, availing herself of her freedom, Maxie decided to climb one of the straight and staunch Prussian pine trees. She tossed off her sandals, stationed herself at some distance, and took her measure of the chosen tree in the midst of the group. But she didn’t leap at it; no, she approached with a slow, springy step, playfully spreading and hooking her fingers as the big cats spread and hook their claws, and paused near the tree for a few seconds of meditation, perhaps to say a brief prayer; for Maxie, who had been raised a Catholic, had learned to appeal to Saint Anthony for help in drastic situations, for instance, when about to climb a pale mottled pine tree, because it looks easier from below than halfway up, where Maxie stopped to rest; foot after foot and hand over hand, scraping the skin off the edges of her feet and the palms of her hands, with no other reward for her trouble, danger, and pain than the resinous fragrance of the sticky bark. She was helped by the shouts of her friends Frankie and Siggie, whose jingle—“Stiff and straight, stiff and straight, like a soldier on parade!”—did more than spur her on. At first it only made her sad, but then, just before the knobby-tousled top of the phallic pine tree, it brought on an honest-to-goodness surge of desire, for which reason Maxie, in a state of supreme exaltation, had to pause again and press close to the vibrant wood, until a very natural and decidedly feminine moan came pouring out of her: ahahahah… .
After that Maxie had some difficulty in negotiating the remaining four or five feet. But she made it in the end. Her friends were far away. Applause from below. Those comical figures in absurd foreshortening. Naturally they’d noticed something; they were cracking silly jokes. Maxie was just a bit dizzy but happy all the same in the swaying treetop.
“So what!” came the cry from above. “Just jealous. You can do it, too, if you want to. There’s no shortage of trees. Come on, Billy. Old sourpuss. Lift your fat ass. Get a little tree between your thighs. Rub yourself up. Come on, come on. You going to be a stupid chick all your life, a crybaby bedwetter mama bigtit, a lie-still-and-take-it cunt?”
At that my Sibylle tried to fight back the tears, but they seemed to well up of their own accord, while high overhead the exalted Maxie did gymnastics, let out Iroquois war whoops, demanded full freedom to be different, reduced everything that was, is, and will be woman to a hair-haloed hole, and belittled men as stoppers: “I, Maximilian, am the new sex!” And from high in the treetop Maxie shouted into the well-advanced Father’s Day, “I will beget a son, beget a son. And shall call his name Emmanuel. Em-ma-nu-el!”
That sounded good down below, though kind of grisly and ripe for the nut house. “Come on down!” cried Frankie, and busied herself with the two stones that Billy had positioned as a fireplace. While Maxie slowly, cautiously, testing her footrests, descended from her Ascension pine tree, Frankie hauled the two stones, one under each arm, to the lake shore and there shot-put first one, then the other amazingly far out into the water. With consummate technique. Frankie, the man with the broad back and narrow hips. Splash and splash again went the Grunewaldsee, and put forth two circles, which grew and intersected until they may have represented roughly what Frankie had in mind—God knows with whom; for if Maxie seemed to be self-sufficient, Frankie still needed a partner: two stones, still hot on one side, wrenched away from the fire that had meanwhile burned down, that went splash splash and intermingled their waves.
The phallic pine, the splashing stones. “You two and your symbolic shit!” said Siggie, and she spat out her chawed cigar butt. “Now tell me, what does this mean? Here you see a trouser button. And here you see needle and thread. Good housewife, is that it? A screw loose somewhere? A button looking for the right buttonhole? Just a little patience. All honest and aboveboard. I’ll show you. Just keep quiet.”
And with even, parallel thrusts from the outside in, through all four little holes, Siggie, without a tremor or a moment’s hesitation, sewed the common trouser button to her left cheek. Not a drop of blood flowed. No jokes were cracked, not even by Maxie. Billy sweated with excitement, while Frankie stared at the sewed-on button as though more than a trouser button had come to rest on Siggie’s left cheek.
“There!” said Siggie after biting off the thread that protruded between her large, regular incisors. “Well? How does it look? Button on cheek. Doesn’t mean a thing. It’s not symbolic; it’s gratuitous, so to speak. Or would somebody like to tell a thoughtful little tale of love’s labor lost?”
Since in all situations Siggie (as did the feminist prosecutor Sieglinde Huntscha later on) displayed a face of strict classical beauty—Greek nose, high cheekbones, large hawk-eyes under boldly delineated eyebrows and chiseled forehead—the button on her narrow, tapering cheek did not look funny but seemed, rather, to intimate that her beauty (without a button) was perhaps excessive.
“Not bad,” said Frankie. Maxie pleaded, “Sew one on me. Please, please.” But when Billy cried, “Marvelous!” and produced a pocket mirror from somewhere—“Look; look how becoming it is!”—Siggie rejected this bit of feminine frippery. “I know what I look like. Nothing to get so excited about. A little joke among friends. So now I’ll wipe it off. OK, Billy, what have you got to offer?”
So then my poor Sibylle, who had always done everything wrong, decided as Billy to do something especially forceful and masculine. She suggested, seeing they were all friends, that they build a pyramid of friendship. She would be the bottom man, the base. On her right and left shoulders she would gladly support Frankie and Siggie. The athletic Maxie was invited to stand, balancing herself as she had learned to do, on Frankie’s left and Siggie’s right shoulder, so crowning the pyramid. And maybe Maxie could do a handstand on top. But first they would have to practice in a halfway position, that is, without Billy as bottom man. And oh yes, would they kindly do their climbing with bare feet. And maybe they could ask the solitary bald-headed leech-man down by the shore to snap a few souvenirs of the once completed friendship pyramid with Billy’s foolproof camera-mabubble. Because it would really be good. Something they’d like to look at later on. No, she’d manage all right as bottom man.
And, with interruptions and incidents, they did it. Maxie practiced her handstand on Frankie’s left and Siggie’s right shoulder until they had it down pat. Billy looked on while Frankie and Siggie took their boots and shoes off. Maxie trotted down to the lake and asked the solitary bald man if he’d mind snapping a few pictures. He said he’d be glad to, and pulled the last leeches off his legs. With taut thighs and rock-hard calves, Billy stood still while, with Maxie’s help, Frankie and Siggie climbed up. But then, suddenly capricious, Maxie refused to crown the pyramid. It was all a lot of nonsense, some shitty idea. Besides, Maxie wasn’t going to take orders from a femme. That would be the end. She’d rather climb the big, tall pine tree again.
So Frankie climbed down from Billy’s left shoulder, while Siggie stayed in position on the right. “Do as you’re told,” cried Frankie, “or you’ll catch it.”
“I ain’t takin’ orders from you,” Maxie whined. “I do my own thing.”
Whereupon Frankie gave it to Maxie in the face, one two, left and right: “How about it? Not yet? Bim bam. Better now? Or would you care for
a little more? OK, then.”
In the end Maxie stood weeping on the shoulders of Frankie and Siggie, who were both standing on the shoulders of my poor Sibylle, who was crying because she felt sorry for the slapped Maxie. Frankie and Siggie were looking grim. Maxie didn’t dare do her handstand. But even so, the picture, which the helpful baldy took after spoiling two exposures by jiggling the camera, was a success. Later on, when she had given up dog breeding and was free-lancing, Siggie had the picture of the pyramid of friendship blown up to enormous size and pinned it to one of her attic walls.
“Damn it all!” said Prosecutor Sieglinde Huntscha when asked about the meaning of the large, coarse-grained photograph. “It’s just a part of what our Billy had to put up with.”
Naturally, since the pyramid of friendship, with Billy as bottom man and Maxie, standing on the shoulders of Frankie and Siggie, as crown, was erected (and snapped) on Father’s Day, it was not only seen by the neighboring group of fraternity students in full regalia, but also attracted attention on the far shore of the Grunewaldsee, where the black-leather boys had stopped playing with their sharp knives and wanted at last to be doing something.
I don’t know if the boozing students belonged to a so-called dueling fraternity, whether the name of their club was Teutonia, Saxonia, Thuringia, Rhenania, Friesia, or just plain Germania. Nor have I any desire to read up on the subject and find out what tasks, duties, and rights fell to freshmen and full-fledged members. These boys had no dueling scars. Round faces and long faces, some with glasses. Anyway, they came closer while the pyramid was still standing and the pictures were still being taken. And the black angels from the far shore sent two motorized scouts, who took up positions on the lake-shore embankment, but too late; by then the pyramid had broken up. Never again would those four form such a tower. Never again would their friendship find so sturdy a bottom man. (Ah, Maxie, what has become of you? Giving physiotherapy treatments somewhere—in Wiesbaden, I think. And Frankie? High up in the real-estate business in Hamburg. And Billy? Ah, Billy! Only Siggie is still accessible to me, with her immoderate accusations… .)
But befuddled as they were from their bottoms-upping, the Teutonia or was it Rhenania brothers were still coming closer, whereas the black angels, on their motorcycles that lacked no accessory, kept as still in their seats as if they’d been turned to stone. The Saxons talked and talked. The black-leather boys didn’t say one word.
“Marvelous! Amazing! Sensational!” cried a Teuton in glasses.
Another shouted, “Encore! Encore!”
Then all the fraternity brothers wanted to see the pyramid of friendship rebuilt. “Gentlemen, if it’s not an imposition, we would be so delighted to witness your uncommonly extraordinary feat again.”
But Frankie waved them off. “Nothing doing. Show’s over. Beat it, kids. We want privacy.”
Was it instinct, was it insight? Had my curvaceous Billy opened their eyes? Suddenly the tone changed. “Why, they’re … This is too much! What insolence! Females! Common, vulgar females! Degrading Father’s Day with their obscenities!”
And a fat freshman in glasses thrust himself into the role of spokesman. “Ladies—or whatever you are. Your presence in general, and most particularly in this area, which today is reserved exclusively for the celebration of Father’s Day, inspires horror and protest in us, I repeat, protest. It would be no exaggeration to call it scandalous. We have here a monstrous infringement on ethical norms. Not that we are declared enemies of women. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary. Women, said Goethe, are silver plates upon or into which we men lay, as it were, golden apples. But today—with all respect for your acrobatic feats—that does not apply. Your presence here is an offense against all principle. It is our duty to put our foot down, and in no uncertain terms. We expect you to leave the area at once, but first we demand an explanation.”
Frankie, Siggie, Billy, and Maxie took a defensive stance. Frankie grabbed the poker. Siggie turned around her signet ring, which had a short, blunt knob on the palm side, transforming it into a knuckle-duster. Maxie armed herself with the four-legged iron grill. Only Billy stood facing the superior power of the fraternity brothers with bare hands, though well-armed tongue. “What’s this I hear? Throwing us out! Don’t make me laugh! Men? You bandy-legged curs call yourselves men? Queens with complexes, that’s what you are. Mamas’ darlings. Mass-produced Oedipuses. What’s the matter? Mommy take her breast away? Didn’t she let you suck enough when you were little? Did she leave you lying in your piss, screaming yourselves blue in the face? Did she give you too few strokes and too many clouts? And you, young man! Yes, you! Were you standing there in your nightshirt, peeking through the crack in the door, while Mama and Papa were doing awful things? Did a puppy ever lick you or you? And you over there! Was your big brother or your ugly little sister in the way, always in the way? Speak up. Let’s swap complexes. I’ve got plenty.”
They retreated. With and without glasses, they withdrew. No signet ring, iron grill, or poker drove the fraternity brothers from the field; no, what drove them was Billy’s direct discourse, her expostulation: “Jerks! Jerk-offs!”
And when my Sibylle suddenly turned around, peeled down her tight-fitting jeans, and showed the Teutons her Venus-white ass, whence a fart instantly escaped, the Saxons and other Germani were seized with panic terror. In full regalia, they withdrew, losing two or three pairs of glasses and a book of student songs, out of which Maxie later on sang “Gaudeamus igitur,” et cetera… .
What laughter! Frankie’s neighing wagoner’s laugh. Siggie, in laughing, showed two rows of clenched teeth. Maxie gasped, held her sides, and pressed her thighs together like a little girl who is having trouble holding it in. Billy stood straddle-legged, hurling volleys of laughter after the enemy. (Thus, in their days as Teutonic Knights, had they laughed in the winter camp at Ragnit while hunting down the heathen Lithuanians and Prussians. Thus, as Swedish cavalrymen, had they laughed at the fleeing imperial troops at Wittstock, before the papists, every last man of them, croaked in the Brandenburg swamps… .)
A dry, infectious laugh. And the contagion of the four heroes’ laughter seems to have carried a long way, for tatters of laughter blew across the lake from the far shore. And there was laughter on the shores of other lakes, under trees, and in club strength at tables, though for other reasons. Humor was the order of the day. Hearty male laughter. Slapped chests and thighs. Unrestrained belly-laughter. Don’t choke, old man. I could die laughing. At jokes. Rip-roaring men’s jokes. Heard this one? What’s the difference between …? Little Fritz goes to the goat barn and sees his father… . Count Bobby has an inflamed eye… . Moishe runs into Abie at the whorehouse… . Hitler and Stalin meet in hell… . So little Fritz says … Why, Moishe, says Abie… . Oh, cries Count Bobby, if it were only my eye… . Well, the difference between a coffee bean and … Oh, says Hitler to Stalin, if I’d only known… . But the goat isn’t to blame, says little Fritz’s mother… .
But loudly, softly, heartily, and tearfully as the ten, no, a hundred thousand men demonstrated their Father’s Day humor, the two black angels, who witnessed the big laugh astride their overbred motorcycles, were disinclined to join in the merriment, to laugh, to put on so much as a fleeting smile. In them no punch line released a catch. Nothing, but nothing whatever, struck them as funny. Not the slightest joke occurred to them. Seriousness was written all over their faces. Attentively, as though doing their professional duty, the two in black leather had registered the altercation with the fraternity brothers—every incendiary word. Those incredible insults. Those kicks in the ass of male dignity. Billy’s bare behind, which had put the students to flight, imprinted itself like a seal or a brand, deep on the minds of Herby and Ritchie, as the two black angels were called.
And no sooner had the laughter died down—only Maxie was still gasping—than the two motorcycles started howling chugging buzzing. After an ostentatious loop across the lake-shore meadow and impressive slaloming in
and out of the Prussian pines, the witnesses roared away to make their sensational report on the far shore.
“Hey, kids!” Billy shouted after them. “What’s the hurry?”
But when the men all around the Grunewaldsee, on the Wannsee, in the forests of Spandau and Tegel, had shown themselves and others what they could do (glass eating, stone putting, tug-of-warring, up-and-downing trees, bearing pain, lifting heavy weights overhead), when on Father’s Day, which falls on Ascension Day, achievement-proud male laughter had reached its climax, when all had laughed their fill in Lübars and Britz, in woods and meadows, and even Maxie could laugh no more—Frankie stationed himself in front of a chaste birch tree—one of several birches among the pines—and laughed, battering everything, yes everything, even himself in his absolute greatness, with laughter, until he had laughed the chaste birch tree bare. The old wagoner and veteran of all wars (he’d been at Tannenberg, Wittstock, and Leuthen) could laugh birch trees bare.
Frankie stood ten paces away, so that the tree was full in his line of fire, and shot off volleys of laughter both aimed and scattered—his great cynical laughter act. (Nothing was sacred to him.) He commanded the fresh, May-green leaves to fall as in November, and when Billy, Siggie, and Maxie shouted “More! More!” he defoliated the rest of the birches roundabout, the last one only half, for in the meantime the laughter between Spandau and Tegel and on the shores of the Grunewaldsee had shifted, as it does so often, to male mourning. From one extreme to the other.
Everything, even the monumental feat that only a moment before had aroused wonder and demanded to be photographed, rose up in a bitter belch. Even the recent, undeniable triumph of seeing Mama’s little fraternity darlings put to flight had the sour aftertaste of absurdity. The void shone through. Father’s Day hangover turned the flushed cheeks of the men, wherever they had established themselves in the greenery, ash-gray. Leaden melancholy mingled with every swallow of beer. Nausea. Existential belches, bitter as gall. Sighs rose from bottomless depths, climbed stairs, forced their way to the light: pallid, alcoholic ghosts, which, unable to bear the sharp scent of the Prussian pines for long, burst, dispersed, and fell all about like mildew, which didn’t make our Father’s Day men any more cheerful.