Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Dear Tulla,

  in August 1939—the two battleships had already anchored off the Westerplatte; in our carpentry shop finished parts for army barracks and double- and triple-decker beds were being hammered together—on the twenty-seventh of August our Harras breathed his last.

  Somebody poisoned him; for Harras did not have distemper. Walter Matern, who had said: “The dog has distemper,” gave him As2O3: rat poison.

  Dear Tulla,

  you and I could have testified against him.

  It was a Saturday night: we’re sitting in the lumber shed, in your hiding place. How did you arrange, what with the constant coming and going of logs, planks, and plywood, to have your nest spared?

  Probably August Pokriefke knows his daughter’s hiding place. When shipments of lumber come in, he alone sits in the shed, directs the piling of the planks, and sees to it that Tulla’s hiding place is not buried. No one, not even he, dares to touch the furnishings of her hide-out. No one puts on her wood-shaving wigs, lies in her wood-shaving bed, and covers himself with plaited shavings.

  After supper we removed to the shed. Actually we wanted to take Jenny with us, but Jenny was tired; and we understand: after an afternoon of ballet practice and rehearsal, she has to go to bed early, for she has a rehearsal even on Sunday: they are working up The Bartered Bride, with all those Bohemian dances.

  So the two of us are huddled in the dark, playing silence. Tulla wins four times. Outside, August Pokriefke lets Harras off his chain. For a long while he scratches at the shed walls, whimpers softly, and wants to come in with us: but we want to be alone. Tulla lights a candle and puts on one of her wood-shaving wigs. Her hands around the flame are parchment. She sits behind the candle tailor fashion and moves her head with its dangling fringe of wood shavings over the flame. Several times I say “Cut it out, Tulla!” so she can continue her little tinder-dry game. Once a crisp shaving crackles, but no lumber shed goes up sky-high in flames, contributing an item to the local papers: Langfuhr carpenter shop a total loss.

  Now Tulla removes the wig with both hands and I have to lie down in the wood-shaving bed. With the plaited blanket—extra-long shavings that journeyman carpenter Wischnewski planes from long planks—she covers me up. I am the patient and have to feel sick. Actually I’m too old for this game. But Tulla likes to be a doctor and sometimes I get fun out of being sick. I speak in a hoarse voice: “Doctor, I feel sick.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Oh yes, Doctor, all over.”

  “All over where?”

  “All over, Doctor, all over.”

  “Maybe it’s the spleen this time.”

  “The spleen, the heart, and the kidneys.”

  Tulla with her hand under the wood-shaving blanket: “Then you’ve got diabetes.”

  Now I have to say: “And I’ve got hose fever too.”

  She pinches my watering can. “Is that it? Is that where it hurts?”

  In accordance with the rules and because it really hurts, I let out a scream. Now we play the game again, the other way around. Tulla crawls under the wood shavings and I, because she is sick, have to take her temperature with my little finger in her aperture. That too comes to an end. Twice we play stare and don’t blink. Tulla wins again. Then, because we can’t think of any other game, we play silence again. Once Tulla wins, and then I win, because in the middle of her silence Tulla explodes: out of her frozen face lit up from below, she hisses through ten bright-red paper fingers: “Somebody’s crawling on the roof, d’you hear?”

  She blows out the candle. I hear the crackling of the tar paper on the roof of the lumber shed. Somebody, possibly with rubber soles, is taking steps, pausing in between. Harras has started to growl. The rubber soles follow the tar paper to the end of the roof. We, Tulla in the lead, creep over the logs in the same direction. He’s standing right over the dog kennel. Under him there’s barely room for us between roof and piled logs. He’s sitting down, with his legs dangling over the gutter. Harras keeps growling, always in the same low register. We peer through the ventilation slit between the roof and the edge of the shed. Tulla’s little hand could slip through the slit if she liked and pinch him in either leg. Now he whispers: “Good boy, Harras, good boy.” We can’t see whoever is whispering “Good boy, Harras” and “Mum’s the word,” all we can see is his pants; but I bet the shadow he casts on the yard with the half-moon behind him is Walter Matern’s shadow.

  And what Matern throws into the yard is meat. I breathe in Tulla’s ear: “It’s poisoned for sure.” But Tulla doesn’t stir. Now Harras is nuzzling the chunk of meat while Matern on the roof encourages him: “Go on, eat. Eat, will you?” Harras tugs at the chunk of meat, tosses it up in the air. He doesn’t feel like eating, he wants to play, although he’s an old dog: thirteen dog years and a few months.

  Then Tulla says, not even quietly, but with just about her usual voice: “Harras!” through the slit between the roof and the wall of the shed: “Take it, Harras, take it.” And our Harras first tilts his head, then devours the meat, scrap by scrap.

  Above us rubber soles squeak hastily over the tar paper: heading for adjoining yards. I bet it’s him. Today I know it was he.

  Dear Tulla,

  we let ourselves into the house with your key. Harras was still busy with the meat and didn’t come bounding after us, as he usually did. In the stair well I brushed the sawdust and shavings off my clothes and asked you urgently: “Why did you let Harras eat it, why?”

  You were up the stairs before me: “Well, he wouldn’t have done it for him, would he?”

  I, ten steps behind you: “And suppose there was poison in it?”

  You, a landing higher: “Well, then he’ll kick off.”

  I over the rising banister: “But why?”

  “Because!” Tulla laughed through her nose and was gone.

  Dear Tulla,

  next morning—I slept heartlessly without any particular dreams—my father woke me. He was really crying and he said: “Our good Harras is dead.” And I was able to cry and dressed quickly. The vet came and wrote out a certificate: “The dog would certainly have lived another three years. Too bad.”

  My mother said it: “I wonder if it wasn’t the actor, that used to be a Communist and that’s always hollering in the yard.” Of course she was crying too. Somebody suspected Felsner-Imbs.

  Harras was buried in the police cemetery for dogs between Pelonken and Brennau, and his grave received regular visits. My father filed a complaint. He mentioned Walter Matern and the pianist. Imbs was questioned, but he had spent the evening playing chess with Dr. Brunies, looking at mica stones and drinking two bottles of Moselle. The proceedings against Walter Matern, who also had an alibi handy, bogged down: two days later the war began in Danzig, in Langfuhr, and in other localities as well. Walter Matern marched into Poland.

  Not you, Tulla,

  but I almost got to see the Führer. He announced his coming with crashing and pounding. On the first of September cannon were firing in just about every direction. Two of the carpenters took me up on the roof of our house. They had borrowed a spyglass from Semrau the optician: the war looked phony and disappointing. All I could ever see was shells being fired—Oliva Forest sent up little cottony clouds—I never saw them landing. Only when the dive bombers began to do acrobatics over Neufahrwasser, showing the spy glass luxuriant smoke trails where the Westerplatte must have been, did I believe that they weren’t playing. But as soon as I peered down from the roof into Elsenstrasse and on all ten fingers counted out housewives shopping and loafing kids and cats in the sunshine, I wasn’t so sure: Maybe they’re only playing and school will start again tomorrow.

  But the noise was tremendous. The dive bombers, the twelve knock-kneed howlers, would certanly have made our Harras bark himself hoarse; but our Harras was dead. Not of distemper; someone poisoned our shepherd with poisoned meat. My father wept manly tears and let his cigar dangle cold in his face. Forlorn he stood at his
drawing table with inactive carpenter’s pencil, and the German troops marching into town couldn’t comfort him. Even the news on the radio that Dirschau, Konitz, and Tuchel—all Koshnavia—were in German hands, brought him no consolation, although his wife and the Pokriefkes, all born Koshnavians, trumpeted the news across the yard: “Now they’ve occupied Petzin, and they’ve taken Schlangenthin, and Lichtnau and Granau. Did you hear that, Friedrich, they marched into Osterwick a few hours ago.”

  True consolation came to the carpenter only on September 3, in the form of a motorcyclist in uniform. The courier’s letter announced that the Führer and Chancellor was sojourning in the liberated city of Danzig and wished to make the acquaintance of deserving citizens, one of these being Friedrich Liebenau, whose shepherd dog Harras had sired the Führer’s shepherd dog Prinz. The shepherd dog Prinz was also sojourning in the city. Master carpenter Liebenau was requested to be at the Zoppot casino at such and such a time and report to SS Sturmbannführer So-and-so, the duty adjutant. It would not be necessary to bring the dog Harras, but a member of the family, preferably a child, would be admitted. Required: identification papers. Attire: uniform or well-pressed street clothes.

  My father selected his Sunday suit. I, the requisite member of the family, hadn’t been wearing anything but my Hitler Cub uniform for the last three days anyway, because something was always going on. My mother brushed my hair until my scalp tingled. Not a button was missing from father or son. When we left the house, the entrance was cramped with neighbors. Only Tulla was absent: she was collecting shell fragments in Neufahrwasser. But outside, every window was occupied with curiosity and admiration. Across the street in the Aktienhaus, a window was open in the Brunies apartment: wispy Jenny was waving to me excitedly; but Dr. Brunies didn’t show himself. I long missed his potato face: when we were seated in the open official car behind the uniformed driver, when Elsenstrasse ended, when we had Marienstrasse, Kleinhammerpark, and Kastanienweg behind us, when we were speeding first down Haupstrasse, then down Zoppoter Chaussee in the direction of Zoppot, I still missed the face with the thousand wrinkles.

  Not counting the bus, this was my first real ride in an automobile. During the ride my father leaned over and shouted in my ear: “This is a big moment in your life. Open your eyes wide, take it all in, so you can tell about it later on.”

  I opened my eyes so wide that the wind made them water; and even now as, quite in keeping with my father’s, not to mention Herr Brauxel’s wishes, I relate what I took in through wide-open eyes and stored up in my memory, my eyes grow strained and moist: at the time I feared that I might look upon the Führer through eyes blinded by tears, and today I have to make an effort to prevent the tears from blurring anything which was then angular, uniformed, beflagged, sun lit, world-shatteringly important, sweat-drenched, and real.

  The Zoppot casino and Grand Hotel made us very small as we climbed out of the official car. The casino gardens were cordoned off; they—the population!—were standing outside and were already hoarse. There were two sentries on the broad driveway leading to the entrance. The driver had to stop three times and wave a pass. I have forgotten to speak of the flags in the streets. Even in our neighborhood, on Elsenstrasse, there were swastika flags of varying lengths. Poor or thrifty people, who couldn’t or wouldn’t afford a proper flag, had stuck little paper pennants in their flowerpots. One flagpole was empty, cast doubt upon all the occupied flag poles, and belonged to Dr. Brunies. But in Zoppot, I believe, the whole population had put out flags; or at least so it seemed. From the round window in the gable of the Grand Hotel a flagpole grew at right angles to the façade. The swastika flag hung down over four stories, stopping above the main entrance. The flag looked very new and scarcely stirred, for that side of the hotel was sheltered from the wind. If I had had a monkey on my shoulder, the monkey could have climbed up the flag four stories high, until the flag had to give up.

  In the lobby of the hotel, a giant in uniform under visor cap that was much too small and squashed down on one side, took us in charge. Across a carpet that made me weak in the knees he led us diagonally through the lobby. Bustle: figures came, went, relieved one another, announced one another, delivered, took reception: oodles of victories, numbers of prisoners with lots of zeroes. A stairway led down into the cellar. An iron door opened for us on the right: in the air-raid shelter of the Grand Hotel several deserving citizens were already waiting. We were searched for weapons. I was allowed, after a telephonic inquiry, to keep my Hitler Cub knife. My father had to deposit the pretty little penknife with which he cut off the tips of his cigars. All the deserving citizens, among them Herr Leeb of Ohra, to whom the meanwhile deceased Thekla of Schüddelkau had belonged—Thekla and Harras parented Prinz—well, then, my father, Herr Leeb, a few gentlemen with gold Party badges, four or five young whippersnappers in uniform but older than I, we all stood in silence, steeling ourselves. Several times the telephone rang. “Yes, sir. Yes, Sturmführer, I’ll take care of it.” Some ten minutes after my father had given up his pen knife, it was returned to him. With an “All listen please!” the giant and duty adjutant began his explanation: “The Führer cannot receive anyone at the moment. Great tasks, decisive tasks require his attention. At such a time we can only stand back in silence, for on every front weapons are speaking for us all, and that means you and you and you.”

  Immediately and with a conspicuously practiced hand, he began to distribute postcard-size photographs of the Führer. The Führer’s personal signature made them valuable. We already had one such signed postcard; but the second post card, which we glassed and framed like the first, showed a more earnest Führer: he was wearing field gray and not any Upper Bavarian peasant jacket.

  Half relieved, half disappointed, the deserving citizens were crowding through the door of the air-raid shelter, when my father addressed the duty adjutant. I admired his spunk; but he was known for that: in the Carpenters’ Guild and in the Chamber of Commerce. He held out the ancient letter from the gauleiter’s office, written in the days when Harras was still eager to mate, gave the adjutant a brief and factual account of the events leading up to and following the letter, reeled off Harras’ pedigree—Perkun, Senta, Pluto, Harras, Prinz. The adjutant showed interest. My father concluded: “Since the shepherd dog Prinz is now in Zoppot, I request permission to see him.” Permission was granted; and Herr Leeb, who had been standing diffidently to one side, was also given permission. In the lobby the duty adjutant motioned to another colossus in uniform and gave him instructions. The second giant had the face of a mountain climber and said to us: “Follow me.” We followed. We crossed a room in which twelve typewriters were rattling and even more telephones were being used. A corridor showed no sign of ending. Doors opened. People streaming in our direction. Folders under arms. We stepped aside. Herr Leeb greeted everyone. In a vestibule six oval-backed chairs stood around a heavy oak table. The carpenter’s eyes appraised the furniture. Veneers and inlays. Three walls crowded with heavily framed assortments of fruit, hunt still lifes, peasant scenes—and the fourth wall is glazed and sky-bright. We see the Grand Hotel winter garden: insane incredible forbidden dangerous plants: they must be fragrant, but we smell nothing through the glass.

  And in the middle of the winter garden, drowsy perhaps from the emanations of the plants, sits a man in uniform, a little man compared to our giant. At his feet a full-grown shepherd is playing with a medium-sized flowerpot. The plant, something pale green and fibrous, is lying off to one side with its roots and compact soil. The shepherd rolls the flowerpot. We seem to hear the rolling. The giant beside us taps on the glass wall with his knuckles. Instantly the dog stands alert. The guard turns his head without moving his body, grins like an old friend, stands up, apparently meaning to come over to us, then sits down again. The outer glass front of the winter garden offers an expensive view: the terrace of the casino park, the big fountain—turned off—the pier, broad at the beginning, tapering down, fatter again at the end: many fl
ags of the same kind, but no people except for the sentries. The Baltic can’t make up its mind: now green, now gray, it tries in vain to glitter blue. But the dog is black. He stands on four legs, his head cocked. The spit and image of our Harras when he was young.

  “Like our Harras,” says my father.

  I say: “The spittin’ image of our Harras.”

  Herr Leeb remarks: “But he could have got his long croup from my Thekla.”

  My father and I: “Harras had that too: a long, gently sloping croup.”

  Herr Leeb admiringly: “How tight and dry the lips are—like my Thekla.”

  Father and son: “Our Harras was tight too. And the toes. And the way he holds his ears. The spittin’ image.”

  Herr Leeb sees only his Thekla: “I guess—of course I can be mistaken—that the Führer’s dog’s tail is the same length as Thekla’s was.”

  I put in for my father: “And I’m willing to bet the Führer’s dog measures sixty-four centimeters to the withers, exactly like our Harras.”

  My father knocks on the pane. The Führer’s dog barks briefly; Harras would have given tongue in exactly the same way.

  My father inquires through the pane: “Excuse me. Could you tell us how many centimeters Prinz measures to the withers?”

  “Centimeters?”

  “Yes, to the withers.”

  The man in the winter garden has no objection to telling us the Führer’s dog’s height to the withers: six times he shows ten fingers, once his right hand shows only four fingers. My father gives Herr Leeb a good-natured tap on the shoulder: “He’s a male after all. They come four or five centimeters taller.”