Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  But before Matern, the son with black dog, makes up his mind to give his father a hand, he wants to know, just in passing, whether the miller knows a man, a heavy smoker, called Goldmouth, and whether it mightn’t be possible to locate this Goldmouth with the help of the mealworms: “Whyn’t you ask them?”

  At this the miller turns to stone. The mealworms are silent in their safe: Krauss-Maffei. Only the parakeets—Gerling Corp.—go on chatting in their cage—Wintershall AG. Nevertheless, Matern Jr. stays on and hammers together a kennel for Pluto under the jack of the idle windmill. If there were a Vistula here and Vistula dikes from horizon to horizon, the village over yonder would be Schiewenhorst and here, where every morning except Thursday the coke barons and trustees drive up, would be Nickelswalde. Consequently the place will soon be called New Nickelswalde.

  Matern Jr. makes himself at home. Father and son sign a contract in due form. From this day on, it will be the duty of the dog Pluto to guard the mill with contents and announce business visitors by barking. One of the son’s duties will be to regulate the outward flow of the worm-guided economic process. As a superintendent receiving more than regulation wages, he arranges for a parking lot at the foot of the mill hummock, but refuses to have an Esso service station installed. While the gasoline pumps are relegated to the intersection of the driveway and the Düren highway, he allows the Federal Post Office department and Blatzheun Enterprises to build right here on the parking lot, flanking it on three sides, but only with one-story buildings, for he holds that the windmill—which has meanwhile become a national symbol, popularized in the form of lapel pins—must tower appropriately over the flourishing bustle down below. The telephone exchange and offices communicate and formulate worm instructions and worm logic. The main building harbors a relatively low-priced restaurant and provides twelve single and six double rooms for wormthinkers in need of sleep. The basement is the natural place for the bar, where in the late afternoon worm technocrats—nowadays they are called potential leaders—fasten themselves to bar stools. Over cold drinks, nibbling salted almonds, they develop the worm-promoted trend toward monopoly, discuss the worm-eaten competitive system, sell, pay dividends, support for the time being, mark time, fluctuate, depress, quote, record, rise sharply, and smile at a poster which Matern, the super, has hung up, white on red background, in the cellar bar:

  THE WHEELS WON’T GO—WHEN THE MEALWORM SAYS NO.

  For Matern Jr. joins in the conversation. Many of his sentences begin with the unvarying formula: “Marxism-Leninism has proved…” or: “On the wings of socialism the…”

  The worm technocrats—for they never became leaders—wince on their bar stools when super Matern points with Lenin’s famous gesture at the red-and-white poster and speaks of the mealworm collectivity, of the wormstructure of victorious socialism, and of history as a dialectical worm-process. While upstairs in the converted windmill the lop-sided miller, with the twenty-pound sack to his ear, helps the German postwar economy to gain world prestige—it is to his collaboration and tolerance that we owe the pioneering work by the economist W. Eucken: “The Tasks of Public-spirited Mealworms in a Constitutional State”—down below his son, the super, is lambasting monopolistic mealworm exploiters. Quotations crawl with worms. There are class-conscious and classless worms. Some practice collective self-education, others keep a brigade diary. Pioneering worms build the house of socialism. Under modified social conditions the capitalistic worm is converted to. They purge themselves, cast out, triumph. In the course of interminable conversations in the bar—upstairs Matern Sr. has long been asleep, dreaming of ivy-clogged cemeteries to the left and right of the Vistula estuary—Matern Jr., over gin and whisky, disseminates Marx-fed worm myths, which are made to sustain the theory of necessary development: “For there are worm planners and worm brigades, which on the wings of socialism have embarked on the path from the I to the We.” Matern, the super, isn’t a bad talker. In the smoke-filled bar, his head on the way to baldness directly under the ceiling light, he clutches his whisky glass, brandishes his tinkling drink, points with oft-painted Lenin finger at the future, and performs didactic plays for a theater-loving public. For those who huddle on stools, the worm technocrats Abs and Pferdmenges, the Thyssen ladies and Axel Springer, Blessing, the business leader, and Stein, the trustee, the associates with unlimited liability, and the chairmen of seven boards of directors—all play along, because each one of them—“That’s basic”—has a different opinion, which demands to be aired. Moreover, every one of them once upon a time in his youth—“cross my heart and hope to die!”—was somewhere on the left. After all, we’re among friends: “Krauss-Maffei and Röchling-Buderus!” You old ruffians: “Lübbert and Bülow-Schwante, Alfred’s witnesses and Hugo’s heirs!” All in all, decides Matern the super, these people are open-minded—after midnight. They aren’t all rolling in clover. Every one of them, even the widow Siemens, has his cross to bear. Every one of them, even the Gutehoffnung Foundry, had to start at the bottom of the ladder. Not a one of them, not even Phoenix-Rheinrohr, was built in a day. “But let’s get one thing straight, you reinsurance and hail-insurance companies, you coal-tar wizards and steel manufacturers, you widely ramified and well-connected moguls, you Krupps, Flicks, Stumms, and Stinneses: Socialism will triumph! Bottoms up! Let the mealworm provide! Prost, Vicco! Outlook favorable. You’re a good guy even if you were an SS leader. That’s water under the bridge. Weren’t we all? Each in his own way. Call me Walter!”

  But only at midnight are all men brothers beneath the converted windmill; in the daytime, while the parking lot is over crowded, the telephone exchange overloaded, and consultations at their peak, ideological guerrilla warfare prevails. No mysterious wirepullers finance the super; out of his own pocket he has leaflets printed, which serve a purpose thanks to their novel style.

  On the left side quotations from Marx alternate with data from the family history of the Materns; on the right, quickly reacting pencils note the predicted annual capacity of the projected Rourkela Plant in Orissa, India.

  On the left, class-struggle fighters Luxemburg and Liebknecht shower exclamation marks; on the right, a colon followed by the announcement that in a few years Opel will pay a superdividend of 66%.

  On the left, the bandits Simon and Gregor Materna found—in the sixteenth century, mind you!—brigades consecrated to collective endeavor; on the right, the Mining Union is formulated.

  On the left, anyone who is so inclined can read how the super’s great-grandfather, who believed in Napoleon but sold scaling ladders to the Russians, acquired, thanks precisely to this ambivalence, money that had previously belonged to militarists and capitalists; on the right are listed the investments and write-offs of the Baden Aniline and Soda works for the still remote year 1955.

  In short: while on the left side of his all-red leaflets super Matern makes himself known as someone who wishes to hasten the end of the decadent Western social order, the un-printed part of the same-leaflets is filled with: graphs of costs, stock-market quotations, antitrust regulations—what a visual anticipation of present-day coexistence!

  What gratuitous pleasure it would be, while this chronicle pauses for breath on its way to conclusion, to toss in an intermezzo or two; for who, in this day and age, hasn’t got anecdotes up his sleeve? What happened to the movie industry, for instance, which sent its agents to New Nickelswalde too late? Who hasn’t a lament to offer? About agriculture, for instance. Ah, what sins of omission, despite the fact that the mealworms, inspired by their environment, never cease to herald the impending agricultural crises. And who couldn’t compile an almanac of social gossip? The Hamburg alliances, for instance: Rosenthal-China-Rowohlt-Publishers. Springer’s grounds for divorce; tedious social criticism. We prefer to skip all this and to state succinctly: from March 1949 to summer 1953 Walter Matern, who had come to judge with black dog, serves as superintendent and insubordinate son to his father Anton Matern, who came to give advice with a whispering twe
nty-pound sack. This period has become generally known as the springtime of the economic miracle, whose germ-cell was New Nickelswalde. A good deal of what went on—rumors of wirepulling and international involvements—must and will remain in the dark. Matern, the super, for instance, never lays eyes on Goldmouth, though everybody knows who he and nobody knows where he—not even the mealworms. But they do leak the news of Stalin’s death before it is officially announced. A few weeks later Pluto, the watchdog, who is allowed to run loose at night, announces: Fire under the mill! The fire is quickly checked. Only four small struts in the jack frame have to be changed. The damage to the saddle and to the corner beams of the flour loft is insignificant. The Düsseldorf police president drives up. Definitely a case of arson. But all attempts to establish a connection between this incident and the undoubtedly successful assault on the mill which occurred shortly thereafter amount to pure imagination; for to this day proofs are still lacking. Similarly, all those who suspect a link on the one hand between Stalin’s death and the unsuccessful at tempt at arson, or on the other hand between the successful assault and the workers’ revolts in the Soviet-occupied zone, are indulging in unadulterated speculation. Nevertheless, Communists are still generally regarded as incendiaries and kidnapers.

  And so miller Matern’s son must submit to questioning over a period of weeks. But he knows the tune from the old days. He has always enjoyed games of question-and-answer. Every answer, he supposes, will bring him applause.

  “Trained for what trade?”

  “Acting.”

  “Present occupation?”

  “Up to the time of the assault on my father’s property, I was serving as superintendent.”

  “Where were you on the night in question?”

  “In the basement bar.”

  “Who can testify to that effect?”

  “Herr Vicco von Bülow-Schwante, chairman of the board of the Stumm Corporation; Herr Dr. Lübbert, partner in the firm of Dyckerhoff & Widmann; and Herr Gustav Stein, chief executive of the German Manufacturers’ Association.”

  “What were you discussing with the witnesses?”

  “First the tradition of the Uhlan regiment in which Herr von Bülow-Schwante served; then the part played by the firms of Lenz-Bau AG and Wayss & Freytag in the reconstruction of West Germany; finally, Herr von Stein explained to me the many characteristics that cultural leaders and business leaders have in common.”

  But obstinately as the guilty parties avoid the public eye, the fact remains: in spite of the Gehlen Organization and the triple cordon, persons unknown succeed, in the night of June 15, 1953, in abducting miller Anton Matern from his residence in a shut-down mill at New Nickelswalde. In addition to the miller, the following objects are found missing from the windmill on the morning of June 16: in the sack loft: a framed and glassed picture of former President von Hindenburg and a Grundig radio. In the flour loft: issues, covering a period of five years, of the radio magazine Tune In, two parakeets with cage, and a twenty-pound bag of wheat flour, which had been locked in a safe that the criminals—it is assumed that there was more than one—succeeded in opening without resorting to force.

  But since the abducted twenty-pound sack is a sack in which are living mealworms of East German origin and since by their central guidance these mealworms have ushered in a flowering of the West German economy, which, even now that its end is in sight, is still stimulating the market with its late bloom, the loss of the sack and of the miller who goes with it provokes extreme alarm. In the basement bar and on the parking lot, gentlemen who are not permitted to leave New Nickelswalde for the duration of the preliminary investigations, cast about for comparable disasters in the history of Germany and the Western world. The words Cannae, Waterloo, and Stalingrad are heard. With dark foreboding observers recall the dismissal of Bismarck as recorded in an English caricature of the time: “The pilot leaves the ship.” Those who feel that this caption doesn’t do justice to the situation intercalate an ominous adjective borrowed from a well-known adage about rats: “The pilot leaves the sinking ship!”

  But the public is not permitted to share the anguish of the business leadership. Although no one orders a news blackout on the occurrence in New Nickelswalde, not a single newspaper, not even the Bild-Zeitung, runs alarmist headlines: “Mealworms leave Federal Republic.” “Soviet Blow Against West German Economic Center!” “Germany’s Star on the Wane.”

  Not a word in Die Welt. Whatever calls itself a newspaper between Hamburg and Munich devotes its columns to the spreading revolt of the Berlin construction workers; but Ulbricht, supported by the sound of tanks, stays—while miller Matern vanishes without musical accompaniment.

  Whereupon all those who have been living by his dialect-tinged mealworm utterances, the Krupps, Flicks, Stumms, and Stinneses; all those who continue to sail a mealworm-plotted course, the Deutsche Länder Bank and Bahlsen’s Cookies; whereupon all who stood in line outside a converted windmill, holding companies and chambers of commerce, savings banks and government associations; whereupon all those who have listened respectfully to the worm, dismiss the consultations in miller Matern’s mill from their minds. Henceforth, at in augurations cornerstonelayings shiplaunchings, the word is no longer: “This prosperity was inspired by mealworm whispers. What we possess we owe to the miller and his public-spirited twenty-pound sack. Long live miller Matern!” Instead, former worm technocrats, now vainglorious public speakers, who in calm or windy weather sound off about German Ability. About the industrious German People. About the Phoenix risen from the ashes. About Germany’s miraculous rebirth. Or at best about the Grace of God, without which all effort is vain.

  One man alone has been thrown off by the miller’s departure. Matern, the former superintendent, grinds his way unemployed with black dog through the countryside. Every wave of prosperity ebbs in time. Every miracle can be explained. Every crisis has had its warning: “Don’t listen to the worm—there’s a worm in the worm.”

  THE EIGHTY-EIGHTH STERILE MATERNIAD

  Trend dull: meanwhile bald up top, sullenly grimly on the move, but strict with the dog. Pluto obeys and isn’t as young as he used to be. How strenuous to grow older; for every railroad station has bad things to say of the next. On every meadow others are already grazing. In every church the same God: Ecce Homo! Behold me: bald-headed inside and out. An empty closet full of uniforms of every color. I was red, put on brown, wore black, dyed myself red. Spit on me: clothing for every kind of weather, adjustable suspenders, bounceback man walks on leaden soles, bald on top, hollow within, outside bedecked with remnants: red brown black—spit on me! But Brauxel doesn’t spit, he sends advances, gives advice, speaks at random of export-import and the impending end of the world, while I grind: a bald-head demands justice. This is a question of teeth, thirty-two of them. So far no dentist has made a nickel on mine. Every tooth counts.

  Trend dull. Even the Cologne Central Station isn’t what it used to be. Christ, who can multiply loaves and turn off drafts, has had it glassed in. Christ, who has forgiven us all, has also had the bays of the men’s toilet freshly enameled. No more names charged with guilt, no more treacherous addresses. Everybody wants to be left alone and eat new potatoes every day; only Matern still feels drafts and painful names incised in heart, spleen, and kidneys, demanding to be crossed off, every last one of them. A beer in the waiting room. Once with dog around the cathedral, so he can piss on all thirty-two of its corners. Then another beer across the street. Conversations with bums who take Matern for a bum. Then a last try at the men’s toilet. The smell is still the same, although the beer used to be poorer and thinner. How absurd to buy condoms. With arched back and stallion-long: drainage and absolution in thirty-two bays, all nameless. Matern buys rubbers, ten packs. He decides to visit friends in Mülheim. “The Sawatzkis? They moved out long ago. Started a little business in Bedburg. Men’s suits and coats. Then they bought into the garment industry. I hear they’ve just opened a big fancy place in Düsse
ldorf. Two stories.”

  So far he had always managed to steer clear of this pest hole. Gone through on the train, never got out. Cologne? Sure. And Neuss with knitting needle. A week in Benrath. The coalfields, from Dortmund to Duisburg. Two days in Kaiserswerth one time. Aachen, a pleasant memory. A few nights in Büderich, but never at Hans’ Flophouse. Christmas in the Sauerland, but not at the Acrobats’ Hostel. Never in Düsseldorf. Krefeld, Düren, Gladbach, the country between Viersen and Dülken, where Papa worked wonders with mealworms, all that was bad enough, but nothing compared to this abscess taped over with bull’s-eye panes, this insult to a nonexistent God, this half-dried blob of mustard between Düssel and Rhine, this stories-high tub of stale, bitter beer, this monster that had come into the world after Jan Wellem straddled the Lorelei. City of art, they call it, city of expositions, city of gardens. Petit-bourgeois Babel. Fogbowl of the Lower Rhine and provincial capital. Godfather to the city of Danzig. Here Grabbe suffered and struggled. “He put up with the place. That makes us even. But in the end he cleared out.” For even Christian Dietrich Grabbe refused to conk out in this hole, and preferred Detmold. Grabbe laughter: “I could laugh Rome to death, why not Düsseldorf!” Grabbe tears. Hannibal’s ancient eye complaint: “It will do you good to cry, ye aficionados! At the most convenient time, when you’ve won all there is to win!” But without laugh-itch or bugs in his eyes, sober with black dog at heel, Matern comes to haunt the fair city of Düsseldorf, which at carnival time is governed by the blue-and-white Prince’s guard, where money burgeons, beer blooms, art foams, a city good to live in from cradle to grave: merry merry!

  But even at the Sawatzkis’ the trend is dull. Inge says: “Boy, are you bald!” They live on Schadowstrasse over the store, in five rooms at once, furnished in style. Standing beside the medium-sized built-in aquarium, Jochen speaks correct German now, isn’t it amazing? From the good old days in Mülheim—“Do you remember, Walter?”—they still have the encyclopedia in thirty-two volumes, which way back in Fliesteden the three of them never wearied of leafing through: A as in “Army.”—They don’t want you guys. B as in “Business.”—We started small in Bedburg, but then. C as in “Currency.”—Nowadays the mark isn’t worth fifty pfennigs. D as in “Dinner.”—Why don’t you have a bite with us? No trouble. We’ll just open a few cans. E as in “Easter.”—Just think of it. Walli will be going to school after Easter. It’s been a long time. F as in “Fanatic.”—Like you. They never get anywhere in life. G as in “Goods.”—Just feel it. No, it’s not Scotch. We make it ourselves. That’s why we can sell cheaper than. H as in “Harpsichord.”—This one’s Italian-made. We picked it up in Amsterdam. Pretty good buy. I as in “Igloo.”—We’re as snug as a bug in a rug. J as in “Journey.”—Last year we went to Austria. Burgenland. You need a change now and then. It’s dirt cheap and still so unspoiled. K as in “Kennel.”—When are you going to get rid of that dog? L as in “Life.”—This is the only one we’ve got. M as in “Maid.”—The one before last got fresh before the first week was out. N as in “Nature.”—The grounds include two acres of woods and a duck pond. O as in “Oskar.”—He’s from Danzig, too, he was putting on a show in the Onion Cellar for a while. P as in “Pearls.”—Jochen gave me these for our anniversary. Q as in “Qualm.”—At first the Chamber of Commerce had qualms about us, but when Jochen showed them our credentials. R as in “Raspberries.”—Raspberry jelly and yoghurt, that’s what we eat for breakfast now. T as in “Textiles.”—Goldmouth tipped us off. U as in “Underground.”—No, no idea where he is. V as in “Vanished.”—Oh well, maybe he’ll turn up one of these days. W as in “Walli.”—She’s our child, Walter. Don’t go making any claims. X as in “Xylophone.”—Or cymbal, that’s what they play at the Czikos. Should we drop in for a little while? Y as in “Yucatán.”—That’s another place we could go. Just been opened. Z as in “Zombie.”—No, that’s no good any more. Let’s go to the Morgue. You’ve really got to see it. It’ll shake you. Absolutely wild. The limit. Downright crazy. You’ll love it. Well, anyway it’s fun. You’lllaughyourselfsick. Medicalsotospeak. Nakednoofcoursenot. Everythingontop. Andsohighclass. Cutthroughthemiddle. Makesyouwanttothrowup. Sadistic bestial weird. Theyoughttocloseitdown. Buttheydon’t. We’ve been there millionsoftimes. Theygiveyouyamstoeat. It’sJochen’streat.