Dog Years

by Günter Grass

Roman nose,

  shits in his close.

  A BOY : But our topic’s friend, whom he insulted by calling him a sheeny, was fat.

  DISCUSSION LEADER : As we have seen in previous discussions, insulting epithets are not always used with the strictest logic. The Americans, for instance, call all Germans “krauts,” although not all Germans love sauerkraut or eat it regularly. Consequently, the term “sheeny” can also be applied to a Jew or—as in the present case—a half-Jew with a tendency to corpulence.

  A BOY : In any event we cannot fail to note our topic’s penchant for anti-Semitic utterances.

  MATERN : As a man and as a pronounced philo-Semite, I protest. Yes, I lost my temper now and then and said things I shouldn’t have said, but I always defended Eddi when other people called him a sheeny; when, for instance, you, Herr Liebenau, aided and abetted by your snotnose cousin, grossly insulted my friend in the yard of your father’s carpenter shop—for no reason at all, he was only sketching your watchdog Harras—I came to my friend’s defense and rebuffed your childish but slanderous remarks.

  A BOY : The topic under discussion apparently wishes to broaden the discussion by brining up episodes from the private life of our discussion leader.

  A BOY : He has called our discussion leader’s cousin a snot-nose.

  A BOY : He has dragged in the carpenter shop where, as we know, our discussion leader enjoyed a carefree childhood amid lumber sheds and gluepots.

  A BOY : He has likewise mentioned the carpenter’s watchdog Harras, who is identical with the black shepherd Harras, later poisoned by the topic under discussion.

  DISCUSSION LEADER : The chair can only interpret the unfair personal attacks to which it has just been subjected as a further indication of our topic’s uncontrolled reactions. We therefore ask a counterquestion: Was there any connection between the already-noted legendary dog Perkun, the likewise noted bitch Senta, who belonged to the father of the topic under discussion, namely, miller Matern, and the black shepherd Harras, who belonged to the discussion leader’s father, namely carpenter Liebenau—was there, I ask, any connection between them apart from the fact that the miller’s son Walter Matern on the one hand and on the other hand the carpenter’s son Harry Liebenau and his cousin Tulla Pokriefke called the topic’s friend a sheeny?

  MATERN : O ye dog years, biting each other’s tails! In the beginning there was a Lithuanian she-wolf. She was crossed with a male shepherd. The outcome of this unnatural act was a male whose name does not figure in any pedieree. And he, the nameless one, begat Perkun. And Perkun begat Senta…

  CHORUS : And Senta whelped Harras…

  MATERN : And Harras sired Prinz, who is living on my charity today. O ye dog years hoarse from howling! What guarded a miller’s mill, what watched over a carpenter shop, what in guise of favorite dog rubbed against the boots of your Reichsautobahn builder, attached itself to me, an antifascist. Have you fathomed the parable? Do your accounts of accursed dog years balance to the last decimal? Are you satisfied? Have you anything more to say? May Matern take his dog away and have a beer?

  DISCUSSION LEADER : Our public and dynamic discussion is hurrying to a close. But though we take justified pride in our partial findings, it is too soon to speak of full satisfaction. There are still a few threads left to tie. Let us recollect. (He points to the blackboard.) The topic under discussion has killed many animals…

  A BOY : He poisoned a dog!

  DISCUSSION LEADER : And yet claimed…

  A BOY : … to love animals…

  DISCUSSION LEADER : … to be an animal lover. So far we know that on the one hand the topic under discussion, who likes to speak of himself as an antifascist and philo-Semite, protected his friend, the half-Jew Eddi Amsel, from the persecutions of ignorant children, and on the other hand insulted him by calling him a sheeny. We therefore ask:

  CHORUS :

  Matern loves animals;

  does Matern also love the Jews?

  MATERN (with pathos): By God and the Nothing! The Jews have been gravely wronged.

  A BOY : Answer in so many words: Do you love the Jews as you love animals, or don’t you?

  MATERN : We have all of us gravely wronged the Jews.

  A BOY : That is generally known. The statistics speak for themselves. Reparation, a topic recently discussed by us, has been under way for years. But we are speaking of today. Do you love them today or haven’t you come around to it?

  MATERN : In an emergency I would defend every Jew with my life.

  A BOY : What does the topic under discussion mean by an emergency?

  MATERN : For instance, my friend Eddi Amsel was beaten up one cold day in January by nine SA men, and I was powerless to help him.

  A BOY : What were the names of the nine assaulting SA men?

  MATERN (in an undertone): As if names could stand for deeds! (Aloud) But never mind: Jochen Sawatzki. Paule Hoppe. Franz Wollschläger. Willy Eggers. Alfons Bublitz. Otto Warnke. Egon Dulleck and Bruno Dulleck.

  CHORUS (who have been counting on their fingers):

  We’ve counted only eight.

  What was the name of the ninth?

  Nine foes, nine crows,

  nine symphonies,

  and nine holy kings

  adoring on their knees!

  DISCUSSION LEADER : Though promised the names of nine thugs, our members have counted only eight names. May we, to obviate the need for dynamic compulsory discussion, assume that the topic under discussion was the ninth thug?

  MATERN : No! No! You have no right…

  WALLI S. :

  Aha, but we have the knowledge glasses! (She puts on the glasses and moves halfway to the temple.)

  Nine climbed the garden fence,

  my uncle was one.

  Nine trampled the January snow,

  my uncle in the snow was one.

  A black rag on every face,

  my uncle disguised was one.

  Nine fists battered a tenth face,

  my uncle’s fist was one.

  And when nine fists were tired,

  my uncle wasn’t done.

  And when all the teeth had been spat,

  my uncle stifled a cry.

  And sheeny sheeny sheeny was

  my uncle’s litany.

  Nine men escaped over the fence,

  my uncle was one.

  (Walli S. takes off the glasses, returns to the blackboard, and draws lines indicating nine little men.)

  DISCUSSION LEADER : We have only a few last questions:

  A BOY : Which SA strum?

  MATERN (crisply): Langfuhr-North, Eighty-four, SA Brigade Six.

  A BOY : Did your friend defend himself?

  MATERN : At first he wanted to make us coffee, but we didn’t want any.

  A BOY : What then was the purpose of your visit?

  MATERN : We wanted to teach him a lesson.

  A BOY : Why had you hidden your faces?

  MATERN : Because it’s the style: when you want to teach a lesson, you hide your face.

  A BOY : What form did this lesson take?

  MATERN : Hasn’t that been made clear enough?—The sheeny got beaten up. Shoilem boil ’em! He got it square in the puss.

  A BOY : Did your friend lose any teeth?

  MATERN : All thirty-two of them!

  CHORUS :

  To us the number isn’t new.

  We keep on hearing thirty-two.

  DISCUSSION LEADER : And so we find that the lucky and unlucky number obtained through our first series of exploratory questions is identical with the number of teeth that his friend Eddi Amsel had knocked out by nine disguised SA men. This, makes it clear that in addition to “black shepherd,” the personality of Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, has a second fixed point, which enables us to form a dynamic picture of him. This second fixed point is the number thirty-two. (Walli S. writes on the blackboard with capital letters.) The value of public discussion has again been fully confirmed.

&n
bsp; A BOY : How, in conclusion, shall we characterize the topic under discussion?

  DISCUSSION LEADER : How, if he were asked, would the topic under discussion characterize himself?

  MATERN : Shoot the shit, crack wise, do what you like! I, Matern, was and am an out-and-out antifascist. I’ve proved it thirty-two times over, and…

  DISCUSSION LEADER : Then we may characterize Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, as an antifascist who feeds Adolf Hitler’s legacy, the black shepherd Pluto—formerly Prinz. Our discussion has brought results. Let us then give thanks and pray (the boys and girls rise and clasp their hands): O Thou great Guide and Creator of everlasting dynamic world discussion, Thou who hast given us a discussion-welcoming topic of discussion and shown us the way to a universally valid conclusion, let us offer up a hymn of thanksgiving, singing two and thirty times the praises of the black-haired German shepherd. As he was, and as he is:

  CHORUS : Long-bodied, stiff-haired, with erect ears and a long tail.

  TWO BOYS : A powerful muzzle with dry tight lips.

  FIVE BOYS : Dark eyes slightly ovoid.

  A BOY : Erect ears tilted slightly forward.

  CHORUS : Neck firm, free from dewlap or throatiness.

  TWO BOYS : Barrel length two inches in excess of shoulder height.

  GIRLS : Seen from all angles, the legs are straight.

  CHORUS : Toes well closed. His long, slightly sloping croup. Pads good and hard.

  TWO BOYS : Shoulders hocks joints:

  A GIRL : powerful, well muscled.

  CHORUS : And every single hair: straight, smooth, harsh, and black.

  FIVE BOYS : And black too the undercoat.

  TWO GIRLS : No dark wolf markings on gray or yellow coat.

  A BOY : No, all over him to the erect, slightly forward-tilting ears, on his deep curled chest, on the slightly fringed legs, his hair glistens black.

  THREE BOYS : Umbrella-black, blackboard-black, priest-black, widow-black…

  FIVE BOYS : SS-black, Falange-black, blackbird-black, Othello black, Ruhr-black…

  CHORUS : violet-black, tomato-black, lemon-black, flour-black, milk-black, snow-black…

  DISCUSSION LEADER : Amen!

  (The discussion club disbands.)

  THE HUNDRED AND FIRST FUGITIVE MATEHNIAD

  Matern reads this final broadcasting script of an open forum in the canteen of the Radio Building. But twenty-five minutes later—the members of the discussion group haven’t yet reeled off their final prayer and the loudspeaker is summoning Matern to broadcasting room four—he leaves the brand-new Radio Building with Pluto. He doesn’t want to speak. His tongue doesn’t feel like it. He holds that Matern isn’t a topic to be publicly discussed. From eagerly contributed discussion material, gumshoes and wisenheimers have built him a watertight house, in which he absolutely refuses to live, not even for the time of a single broadcast; but he still has a fat fee, earned with his popular children’s-program voice, coming to him. The voucher, signature-blessed, may be presented at the cashier’s office: bills fresh from the bank crackle shortly before he leaves the Cologne Radio Building.

  In the beginning, when Matern was traveling to pass judgment, Cologne Central Station and Cologne Cathedral had been eloquent partners; now, with his final fee in his pocket and again in a mood for travel, he abandons the tension-charged triangle—Central Station, cathedral, Radio Building. Matern breaks away, withdraws, takes flight.

  And finds reasons aplenty for flight: first, that revolting dynamic discussion; in the second place, he’s had enough of the capitalistic, militaristic, revanchistic, and Nazi-logged West German rump state—he hears the call of the future-building, peaceloving, virtually classless, healthy, and East Elbian German Democratic Republic; and in the third place, Inge Sawatzki—the slut wants to divorce good old Jochen—has been getting flight-provokingly on his nerves.

  Farewell to the Gothic pigeon-nourishing double prongs. Farewell to the still drafty railroad station. There’s still time for a farewell glass of beer in Cologne’s holy waiting room between the penitent and the hardened of heart. Just time for a last leak in Cologne’s warm, tiled, sweet-and-pungent-smelling Catholic men’s toilet. Oh no! No sentimentalities! The Devil and his philosophical equivalents take all the names which, scribbled in enamel bays, once made his heart thump, his spleen swell, his kidneys ache! A phenotype demands to be relieved. A bounceback man wants to make a fresh bed for himself. A legacy administrator no longer feels responsible. Matern, who journeyed through the Western camp with black dog to judge, makes his way to the Eastern, peaceloving camp without dog: for he deposits Pluto, alias Prinz, with the station mission. Which mission? Two are in competition. But the Protestants are kinder to animals than the Catholics. Oh, Matern has meanwhile learned a thing or two about religions and ideologies. “Would you mind keeping this dog for me? Only for half an hour. I’m a war invalid. My certificate. I’m only passing through. I’ve got a business errand, and I can’t take the. God will reward you. A cup of coffee? Gladly and gratefully when I get back. Be a good boy, Pluto. I won’t be more than half an hour.”

  Parting of the ways. Heaves a sigh of relief in the hurried draft. Burns his ships in thought, word, and deed. Shakes off dust on the run: track four. The interzonal train via Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund, Hamm, Bielefeld, Hanover, Helmstedt, Magdeburg, to Berlin-Zoological Gardens and Berlin-East Station is about to pull out. All aboard!

  O pipe-smoking certainty. While Pluto is probably lapping up his milk in the Protestant mission, Matern rides away dogless and second class. Nonstop to Düsseldorf. Adopts a candid foreign look; faustball players, sharpshooters, members of the Sawatzki family might come in and compel him by their mere presence to get out. But Matern is able to keep his seat and to go on carrying his well-known character actor’s head unalienated on his shoulders. It’s none too comfortable sharing a compartment with seven interzonal travelers. All peace lovers, as he soon finds out. None of whom wants to stay in the West, though it’s ever so much cushier than.

  Because they all have relatives over there. “There” is always where you aren’t. “He was over there until last May, then he came over here. The people who stay over there have their reasons. And all the things you have to leave behind. Over here there’s Italian tomato paste, over there you can get the Bulgarian stuff now and then.” Conversations as far as Duisburg: palatal soft plaintive cautious. The one grandma from over there does all the complaining: “Over there at home they were out of brown thread for a while. So my son-in-law said: lay in a supply while you’re over here, heaven only knows when you’ll get another chance. At first I couldn’t get used to it over here. Everything is so crowded. And the advertisements. But then when I saw the prices. They wanted to keep me over here: Grandma, why don’t you stay? What’s the use of going back over there, when over here with us. But I said no. I’m only a burden to you, I said, and over there at home maybe things will gradually get better. Young people are more adaptable. Last time I came over here, I said: My, how quickly you’ve settled into the life over here. And my second daughter’s husband said: What do you think, Grandma. What kind of a life did we have over there? But neither of them thinks we’ll ever be reunified. My second daughter’s boss, who only came over four years ago, says when all’s told, the Russians and the Amis are in cahoots. But everybody says something different. Not just over there at home, over here too. And every year come Christmas I think: Well, next Christmas. And every fall when I put up fruit from the garden, I say to my sister Lisbeth, maybe we’ll all be peacefully unified by the time we have the plums for Christmas. Well, this time I brought two jars of preserves over. They were mighty pleased. Tastes like home, that’s what they said. Though over here they’ve got plenty of everything. Every Sunday pineapple!”

  This music in Matern’s ears while outside a film unrolls: an industrial landscape working to capacity under the sign of the free-market economy. No commentary. Chimneys speak for themselves.
Anyone who feels like it can count them. Not a one made of cardboard. All jutting skyward. Industry’s Song of Songs. Sustained dynamic solemn; blast furnaces are no joke. Legal wages, subject to revocation. Capital and labor, eye to eye. Coalandchemicals ironandsteel RhineandRuhr.—Don’t look out the window or, spooks is what you’ve got in store. The show begins in the coal basin and rises to a climax on the plains. In the smoking compartment plaintive palatal music: “My son-in-law over there says, and my second daughter over here wants to,” while outside—Don’t look out the window!—first from kitchen gardens, then from fields of spring-green grain, the uprising spreads. Mobilization—spook dynamics—scarecrow movements. They race along while the interzonal train runs on schedule. But they don’t overtake it. No spooks jumping aboard a moving train in defiance of regulations. Just continuous running. While in the smoking compartment the grandma says: “I didn’t want to come over without my sister, though she’s always saying: Go on over, who knows when they’ll close the border,” outside—Don’t look out the window—scarecrows tear themselves away from their fixed stations. Functionally dressed hatracks leave salad beds and knee-high wheat. Beanpoles buttoned up for winter start and take hurdles. What a moment before was blessing goose berries with wide-sleeved arms, says amen and trots off. But it’s not a flight, more like a relay race. It’s not as if they were all hightailing it eastward to the Peaceloving Camp; no, their purpose is to pass something on over here, some news or a watchword; for scarecrows uproot themselves from their vegetable gardens, hand on the baton with the terrible message rolled in it, to other scarecrows who have hitherto been guarding rye, and as the vegetable scarecrows are catching their breath in rye, the rye scarecrows sprint beside the interzonal train until, in a good stand of barley, they encounter scarecrows ready to start, who take over the spook post, relieve breathless rye scarecrows, and with bold checks and beanpole joints keep pace with the on-schedule train, until once again herringbone-patterned rye scarecrows take over. One two six scarecrows—for teams are battling for victory—carry six handily rolled letters, an original and five copies—or is the treacherous import of one and the same message conveyed in six different versions?—to what address? But no Zatopek takes the baton from a Nurmi. No athletic uniforms suggest that Wersten (blue-and-white) is leading but that the Unterrath Athletic Club is coming up, passing the Derendorf boys, fighting neck and neck with Lohhausen ’07. Distances are being devoured in civilian clothes of every conceivable style: under velours hats, night caps, and helmets of all sorts flutter coachmen’s capes, Prussian Army coats, and carpets—chewed by whom?—long strides are taken by trouser legs ending in galoshes and buckled shoes, army boots, and friar’s sandals. A duffel coat relays a Glasenapp Hussar. Loden passes on the baton to raglan. Rayon to muslin. Scarlet to synthetic fiber, poplin to herringbone, nankeen and piqué send brocade and chiffon on their way. Dutch bonnet and trenchcoat fall behind. A heavy ulster outdistances a wind-filled negligee and the Second Empire. Directoire and functional fashions are relayed by the twenties and by fusty furbelows. A genuine Gainsborough in collaboration with Prince Pückler-Muskau demonstrates the classical method of handing on the baton. Balzac catches up. Suffragettes hold their own. And then for quite some time a princess’ skirt is in the lead. O bold and muted colors: shot silks, pastel shades, rainbow! O you prints: millefleurs and modest stripes. O you changing trends: the neoclassical note gives way to the functional, the military to the casual. The waist moves down again. The invention of the sewing machine contributes to the democratization of ladies’ fashions. Crinolines have seen their day. But Makart opens the old chests, liberating velvet and plush, tassels and pompons: see how they run: Don’t look out the window or, spooks is what you’ve got in store!, while in the smoking compartment!—O story without end!—the grandma from over here and over there is still at it when the Westphalian landscape passes on the baton with scarecrow-ease to the incoming Lower Saxon landscape, speeding it on its way from over here to over there: for scarecrows know no borders: parallel to Matern, the scarecrow message journeys to the Peaceloving Camp, shakes off the dust, leaves capitalistic rye behind it, is taken up by class-conscious scarecrows in socialized oats: from over here to over there without customs inspection or pass; for scarecrows don’t, but Matern does have to show his papers, and so does the grandma, who was over there and is now coming back over here.