Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  Whereupon Matern turns and runs, across beer-sour saw dust. “What’s the hurry, man? A meeting like this wants to be celebrated!” The shooting match spews him out. O starry sky, with vanishing points! The tireless Inge and God in His heaven are waiting for him. In His hands and keeping, the Rhine Meadows are streaked with dawn by the time she has calmed him down—her teeth-chattering lover.

  THE NINETY-FIRST, HALFWAY SENSIBLE MATERNIAD

  What good is his cast-iron head if the walls to dash it against are made pervious on purpose? Is this an occupation: pushing revolving doors? Converting whores? Making holes in Swiss cheese? Who wants to tear open old wounds if the opening of wounds gives pleasure? Or dig a pit for the other guy so he can help you out of it afterward? Shadowboxing? Bending safety pins? Driving nails into solid-rubber enemies? Going through telephone directories or address books, name by name?—Call off the vengeance, Matern! Let Pluto rest by the fireside. Enough de-Nazification! Make your peace with this world; or combine your obligation to heed your heart, spleen, and kidneys with the security of a monthly income. Because you’re not lazy. You’ve always worked full time: making the rounds, crossing-off, making the rounds. You’ve often strained yourself to the limit and beyond: women to take with you, women to drop. What else can you do, Matern? What have you learned at the mirror and against the wind? To speak loudly and distinctly on the stage. Well then, slip into roles, brush your teeth, knock three times, and get yourself hired: as a character actor, phenotype, Franz or Karl Moor depending on your mood—and announce to all the loges and to the orchestra as well: “But soon I will come among you and hold terrible muster!”

  Too bad! Matern isn’t prepared yet to make a halfway profitable business of revenge. In Sawatzki’s easy chair he hatches out gaping nothings. He drags himself and his kidney stones from room-to room. Friends support him. His mistress takes him to the movies. When he goes walking, with dog and on business, no one dares to turn around. What hammer blow will have to stun him before he learns to steer clear of people who hear him, the Grinder, behind them.

  And then in 1955, when all the children born in ’45, the year peace set in, turn ten years old, a cheap, mass-produced article floods the market. Secretly, though not illicitly, a well-oiled and hence soundless sales organization functions. No newspaper ads herald this hit of the season; in no shop window does it bait the eye; in no toyshops or department stores does this article sell like hotcakes; no mail-order house sends it out postage paid. Instead, peddlers peddle it on fairgrounds, on playgrounds, outside school buildings; wherever children condense; but also outside vocational schools, apprentice-homes and universities, a toy intended for the generation between seven and twenty-one is obtainable.

  Not to make an additional mystery out of an already mysterious commodity, the object in question is a pair of glasses. No, not the kind of glasses through which you can study in decent goings-on in different colors and positions. No disreputable manufacturer is out to corrupt the West German postwar youth. No competent authorities or injunctions are called for or necessary. No pastor finds occasion to fling hair-raising parables from the pulpit. And yet the glasses that are offered for sale at strikingly low prices do not serve to correct the usual defects of vision. Glasses of a very different kind, which neither corrupt nor cure, approximately—we have only estimates to go by—one million four hundred thousand pairs of them, make their appearance on the market: price fifty pfennigs. Subsequently, after investigating commissions have had to concern themselves with this article in the provinces of Hesse and Lower Saxony, the official estimates are corroborated: a certain firm of Brauxel & Co., located in Grossgiessen near Hildesheim, has manufactured one million seven hundred forty thousand pairs of the wrongfully incriminated item and succeeded in selling exactly one million four hundred fifty-six thousand three hundred twelve of these mass-produced articles. Not a bad venture in view of the low production costs: crudely stamped plastic. Still, though the glasses are like windowpanes, without any special grind, they must have required long and painstaking research: Brauxel & Co. would seem to have employed the specialized skill of Jena-trained opticians, fugitives from the Democratic Republic. But Brauxel & Co.—a highly reputable firm I might add—is able to prove to both investigating commissions that no optician was working in the laboratory, but that a special mixture, patent applied for, had been brought to the melting point in the small glassworks connected with the enterprise: to the well-known mixture of quartz sand, sodium carbonate, sodium sulphate, and limestone is added a quantity, measured to the gram and therefore secret, of mica, such as may be gained from mica gneiss, mica slate, and mica granite. Thus no Devil’s broth, nothing of a forbidden nature, is brewed; scientific data are confirmed by the affidavits of well-known chemists. The proceedings initiated by the provinces of Lower Saxony and Hesse are quashed. And yet there must be something special about the things—caused no doubt by the little mica mirrors. But only the younger generation from seven to twenty-one respond to the gimmick, for there is, in those glasses, a gimmick to which grownups and younger children are impervious.

  What are the glasses called? Various names, not all of them developed by Brauxel & Co., are current. Originally the manufacturers present their article as a nameless toy, but once its appeal is obvious, they put out a name or two as slogans for vendors.

  Matern, who has gone for a stroll hand in hand with the now eight-year-old Walli, hears of the “miracle glasses” for the first time at the Düsseldorf Christmas fair on Bolkerstrasse. Between the potato pancake booth and a stand selling Christmas stollen, an unobtrusive little man, who might just as well be selling Christmas cookies or cut-rate fountain pens or razor blades, is holding out a half-filled cardboard box.

  But neither on the left where fat-saturated odors are meant to lure, nor on the right where powdered sugar is not being spared, are so many customers jostling as around the soon empty cardboard box. The vendor, doubtless a seasonal worker, doesn’t shout but whispers: “Miracle glasses. Try them. Look through ’em.” But for all its fairytale quality, the name is intended more for the grown-up pocketbook holders; for the nature of the miracle has got around among-the younger generation: thirteen-year-old boys and sixteen-year-old girls mostly call the glasses “recognition glasses”; students in their last year of high school, newly licensed automobile mechanics, and students in their first year at the university speak of “knowledge glasses.” Less current and probably not of juvenile origin are the terms: “father-recognition glasses” and “mother-recognition glasses” or “family unmaskers.”

  As the last names suggest, the glasses, which Brauxel & Co. has thrown on the market by the millions, enable the young to see through their families. The glasses uncover, recognize, worse, unmask father and mother, in fact, every adult who has reached the age of thirty. Only those who are not yet thirty or who are over twenty-one in the year ’55 remain indifferent and can neither unmask nor be unmasked by their younger brothers and sisters. Is this crude arithmetical hocus-pocus supposed to solve the problem of the generations? Are the indifferent—nine complete age groups—written off as incapable of essential knowledge? Has the firm of Brauxel & Co. ambitions; or is it not, quite simply, that modern market research has succeeded in spotting and satisfying the needs of the rising postwar generation?

  On this controversial point as well, the counsel of the firm Brauxel & Co. has been able to produce affidavits whose acuteness and sociological insight dissipate the misgivings of two investigating commissions. “The coincidence between product and consumer,” says one of these affidavits, “can be calculated only up to the moment of delivery, at which time the consumer begins to produce independently and to transform the acquired product into his means of production, in other words, into an inalienable possession.”

  Let skeptics hold their peace; for whatever motives may have been at work when it was decided to produce and distribute miracle glasses, the success of this passing fad is unquestionable and modified th
e social structure of West Germany considerably, regardless of whether the structural change, or consumer modification as Schelsky calls it, was intended or not.

  The young people acquire knowledge. Even if over half of all the glasses sold are destroyed shortly after purchase, because the parents suspect that there’s something fishy about these glasses, this leaves some seven hundred thousand eye glass wearers, who are able at their leisure to form a complete picture of their parents. Favorable moments arise, for instance, after supper, on family excursions, or while Papa is running around in circles with the lawn mower. The presence of miracle glasses is registered throughout the Federal Republic; but alarming concentrations occur only in the provinces of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, and Lower Saxony, whereas in the southwest and in Bavaria sales amount to no more than a steady but slow trickle. Only in the province of Schleswig-Holstein are there whole districts (Kiel and Lübeck are exceptions) which show no evidence of glasses, for there, in the districts of Eutin, Rendsburg, and Neumunster, the authorities have gone so far as to confiscate the glasses by the carton, straight from the wholesaler. An injunction was issued post factum. The firm of Brauxel & Co. was able to collect damages; but only in the cities and the vicinity of Itzehoe have the glasses found a clientele able and willing to form a picture, a picture of their parents.

  But what exactly is seen through the miracle glasses? Inquiries have thrown little light on the question. Most of the youngsters who have formed, or are still engaged in rounding out, a picture of their parents, are reluctant to talk. At the most they admit that the miracle glasses have opened their eyes. Interviews on athletic fields or outside movie houses tend to go roughly as follows: “Would you kindly tell us, young man, how our glasses have affected you?”

  “That’s quite a question. Well, after wearing the glasses a few times, I knew my old man pretty well.”

  “It’s the details we’re interested in. Please speak freely and without reservation. We are from the firm of Brauxel & Co. In the interest of our customers we should be glad to perfect our glasses…”

  “They don’t need any perfecting. They’re just fine. I looked through them a few times and now I know what’s what. Noth ing could be any clearer.”

  All those questioned answer evasively, but this much is certain: a young person sees his father differently with the naked eye and with an eye that takes aim through miracle glasses: the miracle glasses show youthful wearers varied images of their parents’ past, often, though it takes a little patience, in chronological sequence. Episodes which are kept from the younger generation for one reason or another are made palpably clear. Here again questioning by the agents of Brauxel & Co., or by the school authorities, has not proved very fruitful. Nevertheless all indications are that, surprisingly enough, no staggering quantities of erotic secrets are aired—little beyond the customary escapades. The scenes that recur over and over again in the twin spheres of the father-recognition glasses are acts of violence performed tolerated instigated eleven twelve thirteen years ago: murders, often by the hundreds. Aiding and abetting. Smoking cigarettes and looking on while. Certified decorated applauded murderers. Murder motives become leitmotives. With murderers at one table, in the same boat, bed, and officers’ club. Toasts, emergency directives. Record entries. Blowing on rubber stamps. Sometimes mere signatures and wastebaskets. Many roads lead to. Silence as well as words can. Every father has at least one to hide. Many lie buried curtained siloed, as if they had never happened until in the eleventh postwar year miracle glasses appear on the market.

  No isolated cases. Here and there a young person consented to the statistical use of his “knowledge” but sons and daughters alike kept the concrete details secret, just as fathers and mothers had been discreet even in their dreams. Feelings of shame may have inhibited the youngsters. A boy who resembles his father physically may fear that people will infer other similarities. Furthermore, students are disinclined to jeopardize their educational careers, financed by their parents often at a great sacrifice, by calling their parents to account. Surely not the firm of Brauxel & Co., but someone who developed the miracle glasses, who obtained mica mirrors from gneiss and added them to the usual glass mixture, may have expected and even hoped that the eyeglass campaign would bring radical results. But a revolt of the children against their parents did not materialize. Family feeling, instinct of self-preservation, cold self-interest, and for that matter blind love of those who had been exposed prevented a revolution which might have netted our century a few headlines: “New edition of children’s crusade!—Cologne Airfield seized by teen-ager organization!—Martial Law Decreed.—Bloody clashes in Bonn and Bad Godesberg.—Not until early morning did police detachments and Bundeswehr teams succeed in.—The Hessian Radio is still in the hands of.—To date, 47,000 young persons, including eight-year-old children, have been.—Suicide wave among youngsters cornered in the area of Lauenburg, Elbe.—France honors extradition treaty.—The fourteen- to sixteen-year-old ringleaders have already signed a confession.—Cleanup operations concluded. Tomorrow all stations will broadcast an address by.—The search for the Communist agents who instigated and led the uprising is being continued.—After an initial slump the stock market seems.—German securities again in demand in Zurich and London.—December 6 proclaimed a day of national mourning.”

  Nothing of the kind. Cases of illness are reported. The parental image is too much for a certain number of girls and boys: They leave home: emigration, Foreign Legion, the usual. Some return. In Hamburg four suicides are registered in rapid succession, in Hanover two, in Cassel six, causing Brauxel & Co. to suspend delivery of the so-called miracle glasses shortly before Easter.

  The past flares up for a few months and then blacks out—forever, it is to be hoped. Only Matern, who is here being spoken of in Materniads, sees the daylight in spite of inner resistance; for when at the Düsseldorf Christmas fair he buys his daughter Walli a pair of these miracle glasses, the child puts them right on: Walli had just been laughing and nibbling Christmas cookies, now she sees Matern through the glasses, drops cookies and gold-beribboned package, starts to scream, and screaming runs away.

  Matern with the dog after her. But both of them—for Walli sees the dog too accurately and terribly—become more and more terrifying in the eyes of the child, whom they overtake shortly before the Rating Gate. Passers-by feel sorry for the screaming little girl and demand that Matern identify himself as her father. Complications! Words begin to fall: “He was trying to rape the child, that’s a sure thing. Just look at him. It’s written over his face! Swine!” Then, at last, a policeman breaks up the crowd. Identities are established. Witnesses claim to have seen or not seen this and that. Walli is screaming and still has the glasses on. A patrol car deposits Matern, Pluto, and the horrified child at the Sawatzki residence. But even in the familiar apartment, surrounded by all her expensive toys, Walli doesn’t feel at home, for she still has the glasses on: Walli sees not only Matern and the dog, but also Jochen and Inge Sawatzki with new eyes, accurately and terribly. Her screaming drives Pluto under the table, turns the grownups to stone, and fills the nursery. Intermittent words, garbled by screams yet charged with meaning. Walli stammers something about piles of snow and blood dripping in the snow, about teeth, about the poor nice fat man, whom Papa and Uncle Walter and other men, who all look awful, are hitting, hitting the whole time with their fists, most of all Uncle Walter. The nice fat man; he’s not standing up any more, he’s lying in the snow, because Uncle Walter… “Don’t! It’s not right. Hitting and being cruel to people flowers animals. It’s forbidden. People who do that don’t go to heaven. God sees it all. Stop stop…”

  Only when Inge removes the glasses from the face of the delirious child does she calm down a little; but hours later, in her little bed and surrounded by all her dolls, she is still sobbing. Temperature is taken, she has a fever. A doctor is called. He speaks neither of incipient flu nor of the usual children’s ailments, but thinks the cri
sis must have been brought on by a shock, something impossible to put your finger on, she needs rest, the adults should keep away from her. If she doesn’t get better, she’ll have to be taken to a hospital.

  Which is just what happens. For two days the fever refuses to come down and indefatigably, without fear of repetitiousness, spawns the wintry scene: snow lies, blood drips, fists talk, fat man falls, tumbles time and again, into what? into the snow, because Uncle Walter and Papa too, into the snow and so many teeth are spat out, one two five thirteen thirty-two!—No one can bear to count them any more. And so Walli with her two favorite dolls is taken to St. Mary’s Hospital. The men, Sawatzki and Matern, don’t sit beside the intolerably empty child’s bed; they sit in the kitchen, drinking out of water glasses until they slide off their chairs. Jochen has retained his preference for the kitchen-livingroom environment: in the daytime he is a businessman, correctly clad in well-nigh wrinkleless material; in the evening he shuffles in bedroom slippers from icebox to stove and plucks at suspenders. In the daytime he speaks his brisk business German, to which vestiges of military jargon lend pithiness and time-saving succinctness: “Let’s cut the goldbricking, let’s wade in!” So, in his time, spoke Guderian, the military genius, and today Sawatzki takes a leaf from his book when he decides to flood the market with a certain single-breasted number; but toward evening, in kitchen and slippers, he eats crisp potato pancakes and speaks at great length and in broad dialect of the good old days and what it was like back home in the north. Matern too learns to appreciate the cozy warmth of the kitchen-livingroom. Tearfully two old buddies clap each other on the back. Emotion and unadulterated schnapps bring tears to their eyes. They push halfhearted feelings of guilt back and forth on the kitchen table, and quarrel only about dates. Matern says something or other happened in June ’37. Sawatzki disagrees: “That was exackly in September. Who’da suspected the end was gonna be so rotten.” But both are convinced that even then they were against it: “When you come right down to it, our sturm was kind of a hideout for the inner emikrashun. Don’tcha remember the way we slung the philosophy at the bar? Willy Eggers was there, the Dulleck brothers, naturally Franzchen Wollschlager, Bublitz, Hoppe, and Otto Warnke. And you went on gassing about Being, until we wuz all nuts. Shoilem boil ’em! And now? Now what? Now a guy’s own kid comes home saying: murderer murderer!”