by Günter Grass
and spooned, ate, shat, and slept.
MATERN :
The bolt struck low, I fell from the tower.
The pigeons were troubled not at all.
I was an epitaph, flat on the pavement,
an inscription read by passers-by:
CHORUS :
Here lies and lies and lies flat, lies he
who fell from above and here he lies;
no rain washes him, nor hail taps
or types his letters, eyelashes,
or open forums;
MATERN :
but comes Aurora on two legs
and blasts the pavement where I lie,
first stands the pecker, then the man,
and squirts and fathers and laughs himself sick.
CHORUS :
Shot he was, through and through;
a tunnel they had just been planning,
and through him, through him, freshly shot,
the railroad soon was running.
MATERN :
The special trains, the kings,
had to pass straight through me when
they wished to visit other kings
out past me, and the Pope
spoke in nine languages through the hole.
CHORUS :
He was funnel, tunnel, megaphone,
and green grew the customhouses on either end,
MATERN :
but when Aurora with the heavy
far-famed hammer of resurrection
plugged me up at both ends,
Matern, once freshly shot,
stood up and breathed spoke lived and hollered!
(Pause. Walli S. writes, “bounceback man” on the black board. )
DISCUSSION LEADER : And so I take it that you’re not afraid of death?
MATERN : Even bounceback men have their weak moments.
DISCUSSION LEADER : Then perhaps you wouldn’t like to live for a thousand years or more?
MATERN : Good God! You have no idea what a bother lead soles can be.
DISCUSSION LEADER : Well, should the occasion arise and supposing you had your choice between death in bed and death out of doors?
MATERN : Definitely in the open air.
DISCUSSION LEADER : Heart disease, accident, or war injury?
MATERN : I’d like to be murdered.
DISCUSSION LEADER : With knives or firearms? Would you like to be hanged or electrocuted? Suffocate or drown?
MATERN : I’d like to be poisoned and collapse in the presence of a first-night audience in an open-air theater. Suddenly. (He sketches the motion of collapsing.)
CHORUS : Listen to that. Poison! Matern swears by poison!
A BOY : What kind of poison?
A BOY : Old-fashioned toad’s eyes?
A BOY : Snake venom?
A BOY : Arsenic or poisonous mushrooms: death cup, sickener, jack-o’lantern, fly agaric, Satan’s boletus?
MATERN : Plain ordinary rat poison.
DISCUSSION LEADER : The chair wishes to put a question: When you poisoned the black shepherd Harras, what poison did you select?
MATERN : Plain ordinary rat poison!
CHORUS :
O strangest of men!
Rat poison again!
DISCUSSION LEADER (to Walli S.): Under “bounceback man” you’d better note: death urge, colon, poison. And branching off to the right: Harras’ dogdeath, colon, rat poison. (Walli S. writes in capitals.) But for the present, rather than follow up this first confirmation of “black shepherd” as a fixed point, I suggest a second exploratory question that will place the fixed point in a more general perspective.
A BOY : Under what constellation were you born?
MATERN : I haven’t the faintest idea. The date is April 19th.
WALLI S. : It is my duty as assistant to point out to the topic under discussion that false statements will result in immediate compulsory discussion: my uncle, that is, the topic under discussion, was born on April 20, 1917.
MATERN : That kid! That’s what it says in my passport, but my mother always insisted I was born on the nineteenth, at exactly ten minutes to twelve. The question is: Whom is the world going to believe, my mother or my passport?
A BOY : Nineteenth or twentieth of April, regardless, you were born in the sign of the Ram.
CHORUS :
Passport date or mother’s claim,
in either case the Ram’s the same.
A BOY : What famous men besides yourself were born when the sun was in the house of the Ram?
MATERN : How do I know? Professor Sauerbruch.
A BOY : Nonsense. Sauerbruch was Cancer.
MATERN : What about John Kennedy?
A BOY : A typical Gemini.
MATERN : His predecessor, then.
A BOY : I think it is generally known that General Eisenhower was born when the sun was in the sign of Libra?
DISCUSSION LEADER : Herr Walter Matern: Please concentrate. Who else was born in the sign of the Ram?
MATERN : You incompetents! You wisenheimers! This isn’t a public discussion, it’s degenerating into a witches’ sabbath. In the same month and, as it says in my passport, on the twentieth of April, Adolf Hitler, the greatest criminal of all time, was whelped.
DISCUSSION LEADER : Exception! Cognizance is taken only of the name, not of the irrelevant apposition. We have come here not to sling mud but to discuss. The chair takes note of the fact that Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, was born in the same sign and on the same date as Adolf Hitler, builder of the Reichsautobahn, a topic recently discussed by our group. Very well then: in the sign of the Ram.
A BOY : Have you anything else in common with the Ram-born Adolf Hitler?
MATERN : All men have something in common with Hitler.
A BOY : We wish to make it clear that the topic under discussion is not “all men,” and certainly not “mankind,” but you and you alone.
WALLI S. : I know something. Something I can testify to without having to put on the knowledge glasses. Something he even does in his sleep and when shaving. He doesn’t even have to suck a lemon to do it.
MATERN : Well, in school and later too, they called me “Grinder,” because sometimes when I don’t like the way things are going, I grind my teeth. Like this(he grinds long and loud into the microphone). And Hitler is also said to have ground his teeth now and then!
(Walli S. makes a note: “teeth grinding or the Grinder.”)
CHORUS :
Don’t turn around,
the Grinder’s around.
A BOY : Anything else in common with the builder of the Reichsautobahn?
CHORUS :
Don’t go to the woods,
in the woods are woods.
He who goes through the woods,
looking for trees.
seek him not in the woods.
A BOY : We wish to know whether the topic under discussion, Walter Matern, alias the Grinder, has other points in common with Adolf Hitler, topic of a previous discussion.
CHORUS :
Have no fear.
fear smells of fear,
He who smells of fear
will be smelled
by heroes who smell like heroes.
A BOY : The topic under discussion is moistening his lips.
CHORUS :
Don’t drink of the sea,
it whets the appetite.
If you drink of the sea
you’ll thirst eternally
for ocean.
A BOY : Dynamic compulsory discussion stands starkly menacing, without smoke trailer, on the horizon.
CHORUS :
Don’t build a home
or you’ll be at home.
If you’re at home,
you’ll expect
late visitors and open up.
A BOY : Walli S., our assistant, has already begun to remove documents from the document case: postcards, blood spots, certificates, specimens of feces, affidavits, neckties, letters�
�
CHORUS :
Don’t write letters,
letters are filed away.
When you sign a letter,
you’re signing
what you were yesterday.
A BOY : He who always stood central, whose phenotypes are the bounceback man and the Grinder, whose posthumous papers we will examine in his lifetime, thinks he still stands central.
CHORUS :
Don’t stand in the light,
the light can’t see you.
TWO BOYS :
Don’t have courage,
courage takes courage.
TWO GIRLS :
Don’t sing in the fire,
nobody sings in the fire.
TWO BOYS :
Don’t lapse into silence,
or you’ll break silence.
CHORUS :
Don’t turn around,
the Grinder’s around.
MATERN : To further your search for clarity, I’ll talk again. What is it you wish to know, hear, nibble on?
A BOY : Facts. Characteristics in common with that other Ram-born topic. We know you grind your teeth.
CHORUS : Don’t turn around.
MATERN : Always glad to oblige: this dog. Like me, Hitler was fond of black-haired German shepherds. And the black shepherd Harras, who belonged to a carpenter…
DISCUSSION LEADER : This definitely confirms the black-haired shepherd as our fixed point. Do any of our members, nevertheless and for safety’s sake, wish to ask further questions?
(Walli S. notes and underlines the “fixed point.”)
A BOY : The fixed point, German shepherd, should at least be tested from the erotic standpoint.
A BOY : Member No. twenty-eight is surely referring to the sexual implications of the fixed point.
DISCUSSION LEADER : The supplementary exploratory question is approved. Go ahead.
A BOY : With what famous women have you, or would you like to have had, sexual intercourse?
MATERN : In the year 1806 with Queen Louise of Prussia, twice in quick succession. She was in flight from Napoleon at the time and spent the night with me in my father’s windmill, which was guarded by a black shepherd by the name of Perkun.
A BOY : The queen in question is largely unknown to the members of this discussion club…
DISCUSSION LEADER : Nevertheless, Walli S., please make a note of the watchdog Perkun, but add the word “legendary” with a question mark.
MATERN : Furthermore, from late summer ’38 to spring ’39, I intercoursed fairly regularly with the Virgin Mary.
A BOY : Any good Catholic can re-enact fictitious intercourse with the Virgin Mary; moreover, the same re-enaction is open to every so-called unbeliever.
MATERN : Just the same, it was she who persuaded me to poison the black shepherd Harras with rat poison, because this Harras…
DISCUSSION LEADER : Very well, at the request of the topic under discussion please note in parentheses “Marianic influence” before the key phrase “Harras’ dogdeath by rat poison.”
A BOY : We still need something more definite, something that isn’t grounded in the irrational.
MATERN : All right, here’s your candy. I slept with Eva Braun at a time when she was already his mistress.
A BOY : Please describe the coitus in every detail.
MATERN : A gentleman doesn’t talk about his adventures in bed.
A BOY : The objection is unwarranted. After all, this is an open forum.
A GIRL : The topic’s obscene secretiveness is an insult to the female members of this discussion club.
CHORUS :
The discussion soon will be
made compulsory.
DISCUSSION LEADER : Objection from the chair. The topic under discussion has adequately answered the question about coitus with celebrated women. After legendary intercourse with the here largely unknown Queen Louise of Prussia, after fictitious intercourse with the Virgin Mary, he has admitted to coitus with Fräulein Eva Braun. Consequently questions concerning the details of this coitus are superfluous; at most the topic under discussion might be asked whether the sexual act between the sexual subjects Matern and Braun was or was not performed in the presence of spectators.
A BOY : For instance: was the builder of the Reichsautobahn present?
MATERN : He and his black and favorite dog Prinz, as well as the Führerphotographer Hoffmann.
DISCUSSION LEADER : The exploratory question has been an swered. The answer has confirmed the sexual implications of the “black-haired shepherd dog,” already recognized as a fixed point of discussion. We can manage without the photographer, I should think. (Walli S. makes a note.) Before we proceed to discuss the ownership status of the dog here present, who not only functions as our topic’s fixed point but is actually present at his feet, the topic under discussion is authorized to ask the members of our discussion club a question.
MATERN : What is all this? Why am I standing here in Johannes Gutenberg’s place? How can you call this public third degree a public discussion? How can you say it’s dynamic when I, talented and trained in dynamic striding, have to stand still between columns? For I, as actor and phenotype, as Karl Moor and Franz Moor: “Slavish wisdom, slavish fears!” hunger for pacings back and forth, for entrances sudden and unexpected, for phrases to hurl across footlights, exits that give promise of new and terrible entrances: “But soon I will come among you and hold terrible muster.”—Instead of all this, statics and question games. By what right are these know-it-all snot-noses questioning me? Or, to put it more politely: What is the purpose of this discussion?
DISCUSSION LEADER : The last question is in order.
A BOY : Through discussion we inform ourselves.
A BOY : Public discussion plays a legitimate role in every democracy.
A BOY : Lest there be any misunderstanding, I wish to point out that public discussion, precisely because it is carried on in public, differs fundamentally from the Catholic institution of confession.
A BOY : Nor is there any justification for analogies between our efforts and the so-called public confessions of countries under Communist rule.
A BOY : Neither in the secular nor in the religious sense does democratic discussion culminate in absolution; it ends without commitment. Or it might be more accurate to say that true discussion doesn’t end at all, for after every open forum we discuss our findings in small groups, and at the same time cast about for interesting topics to discuss in future open forums.
A BOY : When we have finished with topic Walter Matern, for example, we plan to discuss the denominational school, or we shall take up the question: Have savings encouraged by fiscal policy become of interest again?
A BOY : We recognize no taboos.
A BOY : Recently we discussed the philosopher Martin Heidegger, the man and his work. I feel justified in saying that this topic of discussion holds no further enigmas for us.
CHORUS :
Stockingcap croaks
metaphysical jokes.
A BOY : When you come right down to it, problems solve themselves. All you need is a little patience. Take the Jewish question. Such a thing could never happen in our generation. We’d have gone on discussing with the Jews until they emigrated of their own free will and conviction. We despise all violence. Even when we engage in compulsory discussion, the conclusion is in no way binding on the topic of compulsory discussion: when the discussion is over, he’s perfectly free to hang himself or to drink beer if he prefers. We’re living in a democracy after all.
A BOY : We live for discussion.
A BOY : In the beginning was discussion.
A BOY : We discuss in order not to have to soliloquize.
A BOY : For here and here alone are our social ties forged. Here no one is lonely.
A BOY : Neither class struggle ideology nor bourgeois political economy can replace the stratification mechanism of applied sociology, namely, free discussion.
A BOY : After all, t
he technical efficiency of our life apparatus depends on great social organizations such as the World League of Free and Discussion-welcoming Discussion Groups.
A BOY : To discuss is to master the problems of existence.
A BOY : Modern sociology has demonstrated that in a modern mass state free discussion alone offers the possibility of developing personalities mature enough for discussion.
CHORUS : We are one big happy public international independent dynamic discussion family.
TWO BOYS : If we didn’t welcome discussion, there would be no democracy, no freedom, and consequently no life in a free democratic mass society.
A BOY : Let us sum up:> (All stand up.) We have been asked by the topic under discussion why we discuss. Our answer is: We discuss in order to prove the existence of the topic under discussion; if we were silent, Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, would cease to exist!
CHORUS : Therefore we all agree: without us Matern would not be!
(Willi S. writes on the blackboard.)
DISCUSSION LEADER : The topic’s question has been answered. And now we ask: Do you wish to ask a supplementary question?
MATERN : Don’t mind me. I’m beginning to catch on, and I agree to play along—without reservation.
DISCUSSION LEADER : In that case let’s get back to the fixed point, the black shepherd, who has proved himself three times, the last time in his erotic significance.
MATERN (with pathos):
If you want me, friends, to spill
my guts, hold out the basin!
I’ll vomit up without restrain
peas spooned up dog years ago.
DISCUSSION LEADER : We shall now proceed to clarify and discuss the ownership status of a black shepherd.
MATERN :
Potatoes gobbled many dog years past
will demonstrate to you today
that even then potatoes grew.
Yesterday’s murder motives
are today’s leitmotives.
DISCUSSION LEADER : In other words, we shall check into a black shepherd who, present here in person, represents the fixed point of this discussion, which, as we have seen, is “black shepherd.”
