Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Tulla dismissed the crows:

  on the north side of the Erbsberg they saw that the masked men had not only closed their circle around Eddi Amsel but had narrowed it. Nine loden capes trying to rub shoulders. Jerkily Amsel turns his glistening face from one to the next. He picks up his feet but makes no headway. His wool bunches up and has barbs. He conjures sweat from his smooth forehead. He gives a high-pitched laugh and wonders with nervous tongue between his lips: “What can I do for the gentle men?” Pitiful ideas come to him: “Would you like me to make you some coffee? There may be some cake in the house. Or how about a little story? Do you know the one about the milk-drinking eels; or the one about the miller and the talking mealworms; or the one about the twelve headless nuns and the twelve headless knights?” The nine black rags with eighteen eye slits seem to have taken a vow of silence. But when, possibly in order to put on water for coffee, he concentrates his spherical energies and tries to break through the circle of loden capes and pulled-down caps, he receives an answer: a bare, dry, unmasked fist: he falls back with his matted wool, pops quickly up again, begins to brush off the snow that is clinging to him. Then a second fist strikes and the crows rise up from the beeches.

  Tulla had called them

  because Jenny had had enough. After the second and third tumble she crawled over to us, a whimpering snowball. But Tulla wasn’t through. While we stayed where we were, she darted swift and trackless over the snow: toward the snow ball Jenny. And when Jenny tried to get up, Tulla pushed her back. No sooner did Jenny stand than she was lying down again. Who would have supposed that she was wearing a fluffy coat under the snow? We retreated toward the edge of the forest and from there saw Tulla at work. Above us the crows were enthusiastic. The Gutenberg monument was as black as Jenny was white. Tulla sent a bleating laugh with echo across the clearing and motioned us to come over. We stayed under the beeches while Jenny was being rolled in the snow. In utter silence she grew fatter and fatter. When Jenny had no legs left to get up with, the crows had done enough spying and projected themselves over the Erbsberg.

  Tulla had an easy time of it with Jenny;

  but Eddi Amsel, as the crows can bear witness, has to be answered with fists as long as he asks questions. All the fists that answer him are mute except for one. As this fist strikes him, it grinds its teeth behind a black rag. From Amsel’s red-foaming mouth, a question blows bubbles: “Is it you? Si ti uoy?” But the grinding fist doesn’t speak, it only punches. The other fists are taking a rest. Only the grinding one is working, bending over Amsel because Amsel refuses to get up any more. Several times, with downward thrust, it rams the red-gushing mouth. Possibly the mouth still wants to form the question: Isityou?—but all it can come up with is small, well-shaped pearly teeth: warm blood in cold snow, tin drums, Poles, cherries with whipped cream: blood in the snow. Now they’re rolling him as Tulla rolled the girl Jenny.

  But Tulla was finished with her snow man first.

  With the flat of her hands she beat him firm all around, set him upright, gave him a nose modeled with a few swift strokes, looked around, found Jenny’s woolen cap, stretched the cap over the snow man’s pumpkin-round head, scratched in the snow with the tips of her shoes until she found leaves, hollow beechnuts, and dry branches, struck two branches left right into the snow man, gave the snow man beechnut eyes, and stepped back to survey her work from a distance.

  Tulla might have drawn comparisons,

  for behind the Erbsberg, in Amsel’s garden, another snow man is standing. Tulla did not compare, but the crows compared. In the middle of the garden he reigns, while nine scarecrows, hung with brown-tattered burlap, stand dimly in the background. The snow man in Amsel’s garden has no nose. No one has put beechnut eyes in his face. There’s no woolen cap over his head. He cannot salute, wave, despair with fagot arms. But to make up for all that he has a red mouth that grows larger and larger.

  The nine men in loden capes are in more of a hurry than Tulla. Over the fence they climb and vanish into the woods, while we, with Tulla, are still standing by our sleds at the edge of the woods, staring at the snow man in Jenny’s woolen cap. Again the crows descend on the clearing, but instead of stopping in the beeches, they circle cacophonously unoiled over Gutenberg’s iron temple, then over the snow man. Kuddenpech breathes on us coolly. The crows in the snow are black holes. The sky is darkening on both sides of the Erbsberg. We run away with our sleds. We’re hot in our winter clothes.

  Dear Cousin Tulla,

  you hadn’t thought of that: with evening came a thaw. A thaw is said to set in. All right: a thaw set in. The air be came pliant. The beeches sweated. The branches gave up burdens of snow. Thudding sounds were heard in the woods. A warm breeze helped. Holes dripped into the snow. A hole dripped into my head, for I had stayed among the beeches. But even if I had gone home with the others and their sleds, a hole would have dripped into my head. No one, regardless of whether he stays or goes home, can get away from a thaw.

  The snow men were still standing—the one in Kuddenpech’s domain, the one in Amsel’s garden—motionless. The gathering dusk excepted a dim whiteness. The crows were somewhere else, telling about what they had seen somewhere else. The snowcap slipped off the cast-iron mushroom roof of the Gutenberg monument. Not only were the beeches sweating, so was I. Johannes Gutenberg, normally a dull cast iron, exuded damply and glittered amid shimmering columns. Above the clearing and also where the forest ends and borders on the gardens of villas, over Langfuhr, the sky moved several stories higher. Hurrying clouds drove in slovenly ranks toward the sea. Through holes the night sky dotted stars. And finally a puffed-up thawtide moon came out and shone with intermissions. It showed me, now through a good-sized hole, now with half its disk, now nibbled, now behind a brittle veil, what had changed in the clearing, in Kuddenpech’s domain, now that a thaw had set in.

  Gutenberg glistened alive, but stayed in his temple. At first it looked as though the forest were going to take a step forward; but then in the broad light it stepped back; stepped forward on a solid front as soon as the moon was shut off; stepped back again, couldn’t make up its mind, and with so much coming and going lost all the snow it had caught in its branches during the days of snow. Thus unburdened and with the help of the mild wind, it began to murmur. In league with the shivery moon, the agitated Jäschkental Forest and the cast-iron Johannes Gutenberg inspired me, Harry-in-the-Woods, with a sopping wet fear. I fled: Away from here! I stumbled up the Erbsberg. Two hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level.

  I slid down the Erbsberg with moving snow, I wanted to get away away away, but landed outside Amsel’s garden. I peered in through dripping hazelnut bushes and tart-smelling gorse under an absent moon. With thumb and forefinger, as soon as the moon permitted, I took the measure of the snow man in Amsel’s garden: he was shrinking but still sizable.

  Then I was seized with ambition to measure another snow man on the other side of the Erbsberg. Slipping time and again, I struggled up and in coasting down took care that no accompanying avalanche should carry me into the clearing, into Kuddenpech’s realm. A jump to one side saved me: I hugged a sweating beech tree. I let water run down over burning fingers. Now to the right, now to the left of the trunk, I peered into the clearing and, as soon as the moon took the measure of the clearing, took measuring fingers to the snow man outside Gutenberg’s temple: Tulla’s snow man was shrinking no faster than the snow man to Amselward of the Erbsberg; but he gave clearer indications: his fagot arms were drooping. His nose was falling off. It seemed to Harry-in-the-Woods that the beechnut eyes had come closer together, giving him a crafty expression.

  And once again, if I was to keep abreast of developments, I had to climb the shifting Erbsberg and coast down, braking, into the gorse: parched pods rustled. The scent of the gorse tried to make me sleepy. But gorse pods woke me up and compelled me, with thumb and forefinger, to keep faith with shrinking snow men. After a few more of my ups and downs both of them fell haltingly t
o their knees, which is meant to mean that they grew thinner up above, swelled into a mealy mass below the belt line, and stood on spreading feet.

  And once, to Amselward, a snow man slanted to one side, as though too short a right leg had made him slant. Once, in Kuddenpech’s realm, a snow man stuck out his belly and disclosed in profile a rachitic incurving of the spine.

  Another time—I was checking Amsel’s garden—the snow man’s right leg had grown back; that deplorable slant had straightened itself out.

  And once—I had just come back from Amsel’s garden and was clinging, wet-hot and wool-sticky, to my dripping beech tree—Gutenberg’s iron temple, as the moonlight proved, was empty: Horror! briefly the moon flared up: temple’s empty. And under the blacked-out moon: the temple an eerie shadow, and Kuddenpech at large: sweating, glittering cast iron with a curly iron beard. With open iron book, with angular iron script he was looking for me among the beeches, fixing to grab me with the book, to press me flat in the iron book, he was after me, Harry-in-the-Woods. And that rustling sound: was it the woods, was it Gutenberg with his rustling beard, whishing between beech trunks, whishing through bushes? Had he opened his book—a hungry maw—where Harry was standing? Now he’s going to. What is Harry looking for? Shouldn’t he go home to supper? Punishment. Poena. Cast iron. And one more demonstration of how terrifyingly deceptive the moonlight can be: when the clouds granted the deceiver a good-sized hole, the iron man was immutably in his house, emitting thawtide glitter.

  How glad I was not to be pasted in Gutenberg’s album. Exhausted, I slipped down along my dripping beech tree. I forced my tired, terror-popping eyes to be conscientious and go on watching the snow man. But they closed and opened, unfastened window shutters, at every gust of wind. Maybe they rattled. And in between I admonished myself, obsessed by the job I had taken upon myself: You mustn’t sleep, Harry. You’ve got to go up the Erbsberg and down the Erbsberg. The summit is two hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level. You’ve got to go into the gorse, through the parched pods. You’ve got to register any alterations the snow man in Amsel’s garden may have thought up. Arise, Harry. Ascend!

  But I stuck to the dripping beech and would surely, if not for the loud crows, have missed the moment when the snow man in Gutenberg’s realm fell apart. As they had done in the afternoon, so in the thickening night they an nounced the unusual by suddenly erupting and creaking un-oiled. Quickly the snow of the snow man collapsed. The crows winged their way, as though for them only one direction existed, across the Erbsberg, Amselward: there too, no doubt, the snow was rapidly collapsing.

  Who does not rub his eyes when he looks on at transmutations, but is unable to believe either his eyes or the snow miracle? Is it not strange that the bells always have to ring when snow men collapse: first the Church of the Sacred Heart, then Luther Church on Hermannshofer Weg. Seven strokes. At home dinner was on the table. And my parents in among the heavy carved and polished furniture—side board, buffet, glass cabinet—looked at my empty carved chair: Harry, where are you? What are you doing? What are you looking at? You’re going to make your eyes sore with all that rubbing.—There in the slushy, porous gray snow stood no Jenny Brunies, no frozen roly-poly, no ice dumpling, no pudding on legs, there stood a frail line, on which Jenny’s yellowish fluffy coat hung loose, as though shrunk after improper washing. And the line had a tiny doll-like face, just as Jenny’s face had been doll-like. But there stood a very different doll, thin, so thin you could easily have looked past her, and didn’t budge.

  Already the crows were returning loudly, plummeting down on the black forest. Assuredly they too had had to rub their eyes on the other side of the Erbsberg. There too wool had assuredly shrunk. A force drew me up the Erbsberg. Certainty seized me though I was reeling yet never slipped. Who had stretched a dry cable to pull me up? Who cabled me down without falling?

  His arms folded over his chest, well balanced on supporting leg and unweighted leg, a young man stood in the dingy snow. Skin-tight the woolen sweater: pink; many washings ago it must have been traffic-light red. A white, coarsely knitted muffler, such as Eddi Amsel had owned, was thrown negligently over his left shoulder, not crossed and held to gether by a safety pin in back. Gentlemen in fashion magazines tend to wear their mufflers thus asymmetrically. Hamlet and Dorian Gray were posing jointly. Mimosa and car nations mingled their aromas. And the pain around the mouth cleverly enhanced the pose, gave it counterweight, and raised the price. And indeed the young man’s first movement had to do with the painful mouth. Spasmodically, as though in obedience to an inadequately lubricated mechanism, the right hand climbed and fingered sunken lips; the left hand followed and poked around in the mouth: had the young man boiled-beef fibers between his teeth?

  What was he doing when he stopped poking and bent straight-kneed from the hips? Was the young man with his very long fingers looking for something in the snow? Beechnuts? A key? A five-gulden piece? Was he looking for goods of another, intangible kind? The past in the snow? Happiness in the snow? Was he looking in the snow for the meaning of existence, hell’s victory, death’s sting. Was he looking for God in Eddi Amsel’s thawing garden?

  And then the young man with the painful mouth found something, found something else, found four times, seven times, found behind before beside him. And as soon as he had found, he held his find out into the moonlight with two long fingers: it glistened, it shimmered, white as sea foam.

  Then I was drawn back up the Erbsberg. While he was looking, finding, and holding out into the moonlight, I coasted safely downhill, found my beech tree, and hoped to find the old familiar roly-poly Jenny in Gutenberg’s clearing. But still it was the whippety line, hung with Jenny’s shrunken coat, that cast a narrow shadow as soon as moonlight broke against it. But the line had meanwhile moved its arms sideways and turned out its feet, heel to heel. In other words, the line stood in the ballet dancer’s first position and embarked forth with, though without any visible exercise bar, on a difficult bar exercise: grand plié— demie-pointe— équilibre, bras en couronne, twice each in the first, second, and fifth positions. Next eight dégagés outstretched and eight dégagés en l’air with closed plié. Sixteen battements dégagés limbered the line up. In the rond de jambes à la seconde, ending in équilibre en attitude fermée, and in the grand port de bras en avant, puts en arrière, the line showed suppleness. Softer and softer grew the line. Marionettelike arm movements changed to fluid arm movements: already Jenny’s coat slipped from shoulders no broader than a hand. Exercise under lateral floodlight: eight grands battements en croix: long legs, not quite enough instep, but a line as if Victor Gsovsky had dreamed the line and the line’s line: Finir en arabesque croisée!

  When again I was drawn up the Erbsberg, the hard-working line was reeling off petits battements sur le cou-de-pied: fine sweeping arm movements that sprinkled innumerable classical dots on the soft thawing air.

  And the other side of the Erbsberg? With the moon looking on for a moment, I was ready to believe that the young man in Amsel’s garden not only had Amsel’s white muffler, but also Amsel’s red hair. But it didn’t stand up in flaming stubbles, it lay flat. Now he was standing to one side of a crumbling pile of snow. He had his back turned to the scarecrow group in burlap and brown rags, standing in the shadow of the woods: broad shoulders, narrow hips. Who had given him such ideal proportions? In the hollow of his right hand, held out to one side, lay something that was worth looking at. Supporting leg at a slant. Unweighted leg negligent. Bent neck line, part line, dotted line between eyes and the hollow of his hand: spellbound, ecstatic, photographed: Narcissus! I was already thinking of going up the mountain to watch the low pliés of the hard-working line, for nothing worth looking at was shown me in the hollow hand, when the young man acted: what he threw behind him glistened perhaps twenty or thirty-two times in the moonlight before raining down in the hazelnut bushes, in my gorse. I groped for it, especially as he had hit me with something that felt like pebbles. I found tw
o teeth: small, well cared for, with healthy roots; worth saving. Human teeth cast away with a gesture. He didn’t look behind him but strode springily across the garden. He took the steps to the terrace in one jump: gone with the moon. But a moment later a small light bulb, possibly veiled in cloth, showed him bustling about Amsel’s villa. A glimmer of light in one window, then in the next. Swift comings and goings. Something being carried, something else: the young man was packing Amsel’s suitcase and was in a hurry.

  I too in a hurry, climbing the Erbsberg for the last time. O everlasting two hundred and seventy-five feet above sea level. For to this day every third dream, I need only have eaten something heavy for dinner, makes me climb the Erbsberg over and over again until I wake: painfully up, wildly down, and then again, for ever and ever.

  From my beech tree I saw the line dancing. No more bar exercises, but a soundless adagio: solemnly arms are moved, rest on the air. Steps secure on insecure ground. One leg is enough, the other has been given away. Scales that tip slightly and go back to sleep, weightless. Turning, but not fast, in slow motion, a pencil could follow. It’s not the clearing that’s turning, but the line, turning two neat pirouettes. No lilting, no balloon flights through the air; Gutenberg should come out of his temple and play the partner. But he as I: audience, while lightfoot the line measures the clearing. Speechless the crows. The beeches weep. Pas de bourrée, pas de bourrée. Changing feet. Allegro now, because an allegro has to follow an adagio. Swift little feet. Échappé échappé. And out of the demi-plié burgeon the pas assemblés. What Jenny couldn’t quite manage: the merry pas de chat; the line wouldn’t want to stop on that, it leaps, lingers in the air and manages, while persevering in weightlessness, to bend its knees and touch toe to toe. Is it Gutenberg who, after the bright allegro, whistles an adagio as a finale? What a tender line. The line keeps listening. An accommodating line. Line can grow longer or shorter. A dash, drawn in one line. Line can do a curtsy. Applause. That’s the crows, the beeches, the thawtide wind.