Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Jenny was a fat child. Even when Eddi Amsel was roaming around Jenny and Brunies, she seemed no slimmer. Amsel and his friend Walter Matern—they were both Dr. Brunies’ students—were said to have witnessed the miraculous finding of Jenny. In any case Amsel and Matern made up half of the group which elicited smiles in our Elsenstrasse and in all Langfuhr.

  For Tulla I am going to paint an early picture:

  I want to show you an elderly gentleman with a bulbous nose, innumerable wrinkles, and a broad-brimmed soft hat on ice-gray matted hair. He is striding along in a green loden cape. To the left and right of him two schoolboys are trying to keep up with him. Eddi Amsel is what is commonly known as a fatty. His clothes are full to bursting. His knees are marked with little dimples. Wherever his flesh is visible, a crop of freckles burgeons. The general impression is one of boneless waddling. Not so his friend: rawboned and masterful, he stands beside Brunies, looking as though the teacher, Eddi Amsel, and plump little Jenny were under his protection. At the age of five and a half the little girl is still lying in a large baby carriage, because she has walking difficulties. Brunies is pushing. Sometimes Eddi Amsel pushes, rarely the Grinder. And at the foot end lies a half-open crumpled brown paper bag. Half the kids in the neighborhood are following the baby carriage; they are out for candy, which they call “blubblubs.”

  But only when we reached the Aktienhaus, across the street from where we lived, did Dr. Brunies bring the high-wheeled carriage to a halt and distribute a handful from the brown bag to Tulla, myself, and the other children, on which occasion he never forgot to help himself as well, even if he hadn’t quite finished the vitreous remnant in his mumbling elderly mouth. Sometimes Eddi Amsel sucked a candy to keep him company. I never saw Walter Matern accept a candy. But Jenny’s fingers were as tenaciously sticky with rectangular cough drops as Tulla’s fingers with the bone glue which she rolled into marbles and played with.

  Dear Cousin,

  just as I am trying to gain clarity about you and your carpenter’s glue, so I am determined to get things straight about the Koshnavians, or Koschneiders as they are also called. It would be absurd to accept an allegedly historical but thus far undocumented explanation of the term “Koshnavian.” This so-called explanation is that during the Polish uprisings the Koshnavians had been stirred to acts of violence against the Germans, so that the collective noun “Koschneider” derives from the collective noun “Kopfschneider” (head cutter). Though I had good reason to adopt this exegesis—you, the scrawny Koshnavian maiden, had every aptitude for the head cutter’s trade—I shall nevertheless content myself with the unimaginative but reasonable explanation that in the year 1484 a starosty official in Tuchel, Kosznewski by name, signed a document officially defining the rights and obligations of all the villages in the region, and that these villages later came to be known as Kosznew or Koshnavian villages after him. A vestige of uncertainty remains. The names of towns and districts may lend themselves to pedantry of this kind, but Kosznewski, the methodical starosty official, is no help in deciphering Tulla, more a something than a girl.

  Tulla,

  tautly encased in white skin, could hang head downward from the carpet-beating rack—for half an hour—all the while singing through her nose. Bones bruised black and blue, muscles uncushioned and unimpeded by fat made Tulla into a perpetually running, jumping, climbing, in a word, flying something. Since Tulla had her mother’s deep-set, small-cut, narrow-placed eyes, her nostrils were the biggest thing in her face. When Tulla grew angry—and several times a day she became hard, rigid, and angry—she rolled her eyes so far back that her optical slits revealed nothing but white shot through with blood vessels. Her angry revulsed eyes looked like blinded eyes, the eyes of beggars and mountebanks who pass themselves off as blind beggars. When she went rigid and began to tremble, we used to say: “Tulla’s bashed in her windows again.”

  From the first I was always running after my cousin, or more precisely, I was always two steps behind you and your smell of glue, trying to follow you. Your brothers Siegesmund and Alexander were already of school age and went their own ways. Only Konrad the deaf-mute curlyhead went with us. You and he; I, tolerated. We sat in the woodshed under the tar roof. The planks smelled and I was turned into a deaf-mute; for you and he could talk with your hands. The pushing down or crossing of certain fingers meant something and aroused my suspicions. You and he told each other stories that made you giggle and him shake silently. You and he hatched plans, of which I was mostly the victim. If you loved anyone at all, it was he, the little curlyhead; meanwhile the two of you persuaded me to put my hand under your dress. It was under the tar roof in the woodshed. Acrid was the smell of the wood. Salty was the taste of my hand. I couldn’t get away, I was stuck; your bone glue. Outside sang the buzz saw, droned the power plane, howled the finishing machine. Outside whimpered Harras, our watchdog.

  Listen Tulla,

  that was him: a long-drawn-out black shepherd with erect ears and a long tail. Not a long-haired Belgian Groenendael, but a short-haired German shepherd. Shortly before we were born, my father the carpenter had bought him as a puppy, in Nickelswalde, a village on the Vistula delta. The owner, who also owned Queen Louise’s mill in Nickelswalde, asked thirty gulden. Harras had a powerful muzzle with dry, tight lips. Dark eyes set a little obliquely followed our steps. Neck firm, free from dewlap or throatiness. Barrel length two inches in excess of shoulder height: I measured it. Harras could bear scrutiny from all sides: legs always straight and parallel. Toes well closed. Pads thick and hard. Long, slightly sloping croup. Shoulders buttocks knuckles: powerful, well muscled. And every single hair straight, close to the body, harsh and black. Undercoat likewise black. No wolf colors, dark on a gray or yellow ground. No, all over him, even inside the erect slightly forward-tilted ears, on his deep crinkled chest, along his moderately coated hocks, his hair glistened black, umbrella-black, priest-black, widow-black, SS-black, blackboard-black, Falange-black, blackbird-black, Othello-black, dysentery-black, violet-black, tomato-black, lemon-black, flour-black, milk-black, snow-black.

  Harras searched, found, pointed, retrieved, and did trail work with his nose to the ground. In a herding contest on the Bürgerwiesen he proved a failure. He was a stud dog with his name in the studbook. Unsatisfactory on the leash: he pulled. Good at barking at intruders but only average at following strange tracks. My father had had him trained by the police in Hochstriess. They thrashed him till he stopped eating his dirt: a nasty habit with puppies. The number 517 was stamped on his dog tag: sum of digits thirteen.

  All over Langfuhr, in Schellmühl, in the Schichau housing development, from Saspe to Brösen, up Jäschkentaler Weg, down Heiligenbrunn, all around the Heinrich Ehlers Athletic Field, behind the crematory, outside Sternfeld’s department store, along the shores of Aktien Pond, in the trenches of the municipal police, on certain trees of Uphagen Park, on certain lindens of the Hindenburgallee, on the bases of advertising pillars, on the flagpoles of the demonstration-hungry athletic field, on the still unblacked-out lampposts of the suburb of Langfuhr, Harras left his scent marks: he remained true to them for many dog years.

  Up to the withers Harras measured twenty-five inches. Five-year-old Tulla measured three foot six. Her cousin Harry was an inch and a half taller. His father, the imposingly built carpenter, stood six foot two in the morning and an inch less at closing time. As for August and Erna Pokriefke, as well as Johanna Liebenau, née Pokriefke, none of them was more than five foot five: the Koshnavians are a short race.

  Dear Cousin Tulla,

  what would I care about Koshnavia if you, the Pokriefkes, were not from there? But as it is, I know that from 1237 to 1308 the villages of Koshnavia belonged to the dukes of Pomerelia. After they died out, the Koshnavians paid taxes to the Teutonic Knights until 1466. Until 1772 the kingdom of Poland absorbed them. In the course of the European auction Koshnavia fell to the Prussians. They kept order until 1920. As of February 1920 the villages of Koshnavia
became villages of the Polish Republic, until the autumn of 1933 when they were incorporated into the Greater German Reich as part of the Province of West Prussia-Danzig: Violence. Bent safety pins. Pennants in the wind. Billeting: Swedes Hussites Waffen-SS. Andifyoudon’t. Rootandbranch. Asoffourfortyfivethismorning. Circles described with compasses on military maps. Schlangenthin taken in counter-attack. Anti tank spearheads on the road to Damerau. Our troops resist heavy pressure northwest of Osterwick. Diversionary at tacks of the twelfth division of airborne infantry thrown back south of Konitz. In line with the decision to straighten the front, the so-called territory of Koshnavia is evacuated. Last-ditch fighters take up positions south of Danzig. Panic-makers, bogeymen, terrible jokesters are shaking the paper weight again, the fist…

  Oh Tulla,

  how can I tell you about Koshnavia, about Harras and his scent marks, about bone glue, cough drops, and the baby carriage, when I have this compulsion to stare at my fist!—Yet roll it must. Once upon a time there rolled a baby carriage. Many many years ago there rolled a baby carriage on four high wheels. On four old-fashioned high wheels it rolled, enameled black and hooded with cracking oilcloth. Dull-gray spots where the chromium-plated spokes of the wheels, the springs, the handle to push it by, had peeled. From day to day the spots grew imperceptibly larger: Past: Once upon a time. When in the summer of ‘33: in the days in the days when I was a boy of five, when the Olympic Games were being held in Los Angeles, fists were already being moved swift, dry, down to earth; and yet, as though unaware of the draft that was blowing, millions of baby carriages on wheels high and low were being propelled into the sunlight, into the shade.

  On four old-fashioned high wheels there rolled, in the summer of 1932, a black-enameled, slightly decrepit baby carriage which Eddi Amsel the high school student, who knew all the junkshops, had negotiated in Tagnetergasse. He, Dr. Oswald Brunies, and Walter Matern took turns at pushing the vehicle. The tarred, oiled, and yet dry boards on which the baby carriage was being pushed were the boards of the Brösen pier. The friendly seaside resort—where sea baths were taken as early as 1823—with its low-lying fishing village and dome-surmounted casino, its medium-high dunes and scrub pine forest, with its fishing boats, its hundred and fifty feet of pier, and its tripartite bathhouse, with the watch-tower of the German Lifesaving Society, was situated exactly halfway between Neufahrwasser and Glettkau on the shores of the Gulf of Danzig. The Brösen pier had two levels and branched off to the right into a short breakwater designed to resist the waves of the Baltic Sea. Sunday in Sunday out: the Brösen pier floated twelve flags on twelve flagpoles: at first only the flags of the Baltic cities—gradually more and more swastika flags.

  Under flags and over boards rolls the baby carriage. Dressed much too black and shaded by his soft hat, Dr. Brunies is pushing now and will be relieved by Amsel the fat or Matern the bullish. In the carriage sits Jenny, who will soon be six years old and is not allowed to walk.

  “Couldn’t we let Jenny walk a little? Please, sir. Just for a try. We’ll hold her on both sides.”

  Jenny Brunies mustn’t. “Do we want the child to get lost? To be pushed about in the Sunday crowd?” People come and go, meet separate bow, or take no notice of each other. They wave, take each other’s arms, point to the big break water, to Adlerhorst, feed gulls with food brought from home, greet, remind, are vexed. And all so well dressed: large flower patterns for the special occasion. The sleeveless get-ups of the season. Tennis dress and sailing togs. Neckties in the east wind. Insatiable cameras. Straw hats with new sweat-bands. Toothpaste-white canvas shoes. High heels dread the cracks between the boards. Pseudo captains aiming spy glasses. Or hands shading far-seeing eyes. So many sailor suits. So many children running, playing, hiding, and scaring each other. I see something you do not see. Eenymeenyminymo. Sour herring one two three. There’s Herr Anglicker from Neuer Markt with his twins. They’re wearing sailor ties and one as slowly as the other licking raspberry ice with pale tongues. Herr Koschnick from Hertastrasse with his wife and a visitor from Germany. Herr Sellke allows his sons, first one, then the other, to look through his spyglass: smoke trail, superstructure, the Kaiser is rising above the horizon. Herr and Frau Behrendt have used up their sea gull biscuit. Frau Grunau, who owns the laundry on Heeresanger, with her three apprentice girls. Scheffler the baker from Kleinhammerweg with giggling wife. Heini Pilenz and Hotten Sonntag without parents. And there’s Herr Pokriefke with his gluey fingers. Hanging on his arm, his shriveled little wife, who can’t stop moving her head this way and that with ratlike swiftness. “Tulla!” she can’t help crying. And “Come here, Alexander.” And “Siegesmund, keep an eye on Konrad!” For on the pier the Koshnavians don’t talk like Koshnavians, although Herr Liebenau and his wife are not present. On Sunday morning he has to stay in his shop, drawing up a work schedule, so the machinist will know on Monday what goes into the buzz saw. She doesn’t go out without her husband. But his son is there because Tulla is there. Though younger than Jenny, both are allowed to walk. Allowed to hop skip jump behind Dr. right up to where it ends in a sharp wind-swept triangle. Allowed down the steps, right left, to the lower story, where the fishermen Brunies and his mildly embarrassed students. Allowed on the pier, squat catching sticklebacks. Allowed to run sandal-swift along narrow runways and to dwell secretly in the framework of the pier, beneath five hundred pairs of Sunday shoes, beneath the gentle tapping of canes and umbrellas. It’s cool shady greenish down there. The water smells of salt and is transparent all the way down to the shells and bottles rolling about on the bottom. On the piles supporting the pier and the people on the pier beards of seaweed wave fitfully: back and forth sticklebacks busy silvery commonplace. Cigarette butts fall from the top deck, disintegrate brownish, attract finger-length fishes, repel them. Schools react spasmodically, dart forward, hesitate, turn, regather a floor lower, and emigrate someplace where other seaweed waves. A cork bobs up and down. A sandwich paper grows heavy, twists and turns. Between tarred beams Tulla Pokriefke hikes up her Sunday dress, it already has tar spots on it. Her cousin is expected to hold his open hand underneath. But he doesn’t feel like it and looks away. Then she can’t, doesn’t have to any more and jumps from crossed beams to the ramp and runs with clattering sandals, making pigtails fly and fishermen wake up, she’s already on the stairs to the pier, the stairs to the twelve flags, stairs to the Sunday forenoon; and her cousin Harry follows her glue smell, which uproariously drowns out the smell of the seaweed, the smell of the tarred and yet rotting beams, the smell of the wind-dry runways, the smell of the sea air.

  And you Tulla

  said one Sunday morning: “Aw let her. I want to see how she walks.”

  Wonder of wonders, Dr. Brumes nods and Jenny is allowed to walk on the boards of the Brösen pier. Some laugh, many smile, because Jenny is so fat and walks over the boards on two pillars of fat encased in white, bulge-surmounted knee socks and in buckled patent-leather shoes.

  “Amsel!” says Brunies under his black felt hat. “When you were little, say at the age of six, did you suffer from your, well, to put it bluntly, your corpulence?”

  “Not especially, sir. Matern always looked out for me. Only I had trouble sitting down in school, because the seat was too narrow.”

  Brunies offers candy. The empty baby carriage stands off to one side. Matern guides Jenny awkwardly carefully. The flags all strain in the same direction. Tulla wants to guide Jenny. If only the baby carriage doesn’t roll away. Brunies sucks cough drops. Jenny doesn’t want to go with Tulla, is on the verge of tears, but Matern is there, and Eddi Amsel quickly and accurately imitates a barnyard. Tulla turns on her heels. At the pointed pier end a crowd is gathering: there’s going to be singing. Tulla’s face turns triangular and so small that fury gains the upper hand. They are singing on the end of the pier. Tulla rolls her eyes back: bashed-in windows. Up front Hitler cubs are standing in a semicircle. Scrawny Koshnavian rage: Dul Dul, Tuller. The boys aren’t all in uniform, but all
join in the singing, and many listen and nod in approval: “Welovethestorms…” they all sing; the only nonsinger strains to hold a black triangular pennant with runic writing straight up in the air. Empty and forsaken stands the baby carriage. Now they sing: “Andtheearlymorningthatisthetimeforus.” Then something gay: “AmanwhocalledhimselfColumbus.” A fifteen-year-old curlyhead, who is wearing his right arm in a sling, possibly because he has really hurt it, invites the audience in a tone half of command, half of embarrassment, to join in singing the Columbus song, at least the refrain. Young girls who have taken their boy friends’ arms and enterprising husbands, among them Herr Pokriefke, Herr Berendt, and Matzerath the grocer, join in the chorus. The northeast wind aligns the flags and smooths out the false notes in the merry song. Anyone who listens closely can hear, now below now above the singing, a child’s tin drum. That must be the grocer’s son. He isn’t quite right in the head. “Gloriaviktoria” and “Wiedewiedewittjuchheirassa” is the refrain of the well-nigh intermin able song. Little by little it becomes imperative to join in: “Why isn’t he singing?” Sidelong glances: Herr and Frau Ropinski are singing too. Even old Sawatzki is with us, and he’s an out-and-out Socialist. So come on! Chin up! Aren’t Herr Zureck and Postal Secretary Bronski singing, though they both work at the Polish Post Office? “Wiedewiedewittbumbum.” And what about Dr. Brunies? Couldn’t he at least stop sucking that eternal cough drop and pretend? “Gloriaviktoria!” To one side and empty stands the baby carriage on four high wheels. It glitters black and de crepit. “Wiedewiedewittjuchheirassa!” Papa Brunies wants to pick up Jenny in his arms and unburden her pillars of fat in patent-leather shoes. But his students—“Gloriaviktoria!”—especially Walter Matern, advise him against it. Eddi Amsel joins in the singing: “Wiedewiedewittjuchheirassa!” Because he is an obese child, he has a lovely velvety boy soprano voice, which at certain points in the refrain, in the “juchheirassaaah” for instance, is a silvery bubbling. That’s known as descant singing. A number of people look around, curious to know where the spring is gushing.