The Box: Tales From the Darkroom

by Günter Grass

  Everything is supposed to have been more painful, sometimes more embarrassing, sometimes less. This much is certain: up to the end, Marie snapped pictures from every possible angle, even in mid-leap. And had she and her box not existed, the father would know less about his children, would have lost the thread too often, would not have found his love through the back door, open just a crack—please, don’t slam it shut—and there would be no darkroom tales, including the most regressive one of all, up to now not spoken of, or only hinted at: that tale from the Stone Age, about twelve thousand years ago, when famine set in, and in eight little photos the sons and daughters came together in a horde and slew their father—presumably at his wish—with their flint axes and split him open lengthwise with wedges, removing his heart, his liver, his kidneys, his gallbladder, and his stomach, then his entrails, chopped him in pieces, and roasted the chunks slowly over glowing embers until they were cooked through and crisp, whereupon the last of the photos showed all of them looking well fed and contented.

  From Heaven Above

  PAULCHEN WAS THE last to invite his siblings, and they all came, punctually. Because he and his Brazilian wife, trained to design and sew flashy fashions, live in Madrid, which is too far away, he suggested they meet at a Portuguese restaurant near the harbour. Compared to other restaurants in Hamburg, it is very reasonable. He promised to reserve a table.

  Now they are all gathered. The meal consists of fresh sardines, grilled, with salad and bread. Those who don’t want vinho verde are drinking Sagres beer. They all admire Paulchen when he orders in what sounds like Portuguese. This early in the evening the place is not very busy. The walls are draped with fishing nets, in which dried starfish have arranged themselves decoratively. During the meal, Nana has described a complicated birth in excruciating detail: Finally the baby came, without a caesarean! In response to a question from Lara, Lena bemoans the budget cuts in the theatre world: But somehow we keep going.

  After coffee—Oitos bicas, faz favor! Paulchen calls to the waiter—Taddel, whose daughter was born only a few weeks before with Nana’s competent assistance, mimics the funny utterances of his little boy, who, Jasper claims, looks exactly like Taddel. Now everyone is begging him to perform his Clueless Rudi number, like back in the village, but he insists he is not in the mood, until he gives in at last and is roundly applauded.

  Now even Lara is willing to, on request, squeak like a guinea pig, just as in the old days. Nana laughs the longest and begs her to do it again. Only Paulchen remains solemn and collected, as if preparing for something that must come out but is not yet ready.

  Fortunately all the others want to have their say, Pat first of all. While Jorsch is setting up the microphones, for the last time, as they all agree, his twin brother asks which of the siblings has found it most annoying to have a famous father. No one wants to admit to having been excessively damaged or victimized by their father’s fame. Lara describes the incident in her childhood when she asked him for a dozen autographs: He gave them to me, shaking his head, on twelve pieces of paper, but then asked, Tell me, little one, why so many? And I told him, For twelve of yours I can get one of Heintje’s.

  She cannot recall whether her father was disappointed or amused by the swap. But he tried to sing Heintje’s tear-jerker, Mammy dear, get me a pony. And then he went back upstairs to his writing and his beloved Olivetti …

  With this reference Lara has given her brother Pat his cue.

  That’s just how he is. Always was. I have to work through it, he said. All of us witnessed how later in life he had to work through the stuff he’d experienced when he was a boy in shorts. All that Nazi shit, up one side and down the other. Everything he knew about war, the things that terrified him, and why he survived. Then, when the whole country was in ruins, how he had to clear rubble, and the gnawing hunger … Whether up in the attic of the clinker house in Friedenau or in the Junge House and the house behind the dike in the village, and now in his converted barn in Behlendorf, everywhere, I tell you, he scribbled away or pounded his Olivetti, always at that writing stand, paced back and forth, smoked his tobacco, earlier in hand-rolled cigarettes, later in a pipe, muttered words and tapeworm-long sentences, made faces, just as I make faces, and when he had something in the works again never noticed when one of us, my brother or me or you, Lara, or in the village you boys and Taddel, peeked in. Much later, even Lena and Nana realized what working it through meant in his case: one book after another. In between, shorter things, if he wasn’t off giving talks here and there. Or had to defend himself, because from the right or the far left … But when we went upstairs and asked him for something, he would act as if he were listening, to every one of us. Even gave us a proper answer. But you could sense that all he really heard was what was ticking away inside him. He told me, and the rest of you, too, no doubt, when you were little: We’ll play later, when I have time. Right now I have to work something through, something that can’t wait.

  That’s why he hardly flinched when the newspaper jackals jumped him, again and again …

  … almost every time he finished a book.

  Or he acted as though it didn’t get to him. All snows of yesteryear, he said.

  He remained famous in spite of everything, which was sometimes annoying, when people on the street …

  It could be embarrassing when teachers got snarky with us and said things like, On this subject your father has a very different opinion, as you should know.

  When we were living in the village he was actually harassed a couple of times, and not only by drunks, but also when he went shopping at Kröger’s …

  On the other hand, they seem to really like him abroad, even in China.

  And when the mob fell on him again, Mariechen exclaimed, Those filthy attack dogs. Let them bark. They won’t stop us.

  And she and her box kept supplying him with material.

  Right to the end.

  She even snapped pictures of his cigarette butts, and later, of his pipes and his ashtrays full of charred matches, which she arranged in a criss-cross pattern. Such objects, Jorsch and I heard her say, revealed far more of our father than he admits, or is willing or able to recognize.

  She had him take out his dentures and lay them conspicuously on a plate, so she could …

  She’d lie down on her stomach to get right up close to them with her Agfa Special or the bargain box …

  One time in Brokdorf—before they plunked down the nuclear monstrosity there—I saw him running barefoot along the bank of the Elbe at low tide while she photographed his footsteps in the sand. One step after another. A crazy sight.

  And when he peed Camilla’s name into the sand—out of pure infatuation, I assume—that provided an occasion for snapshots, too.

  Snap away, Mariechen!

  Because she was very dependent on him, not only financially, but also …

  … and because our father needed old Marie. Always did.

  Even before Camilla.

  Maybe even before our mother, when he was still on the prowl, so to speak.

  That’s what I was saying, brother. Mariechen might once have been his lover. But what difference does it make?

  Until just before the end, she still looked winsome.

  At any rate, he often commented, What would I do without Marie, which made us think, or me, anyway—Jorsch was less convinced—that maybe there was something between them. But our mother never noticed anything, or acted as though she didn’t, and neither did Camilla.

  Anyway, no one will ever know for sure what happened between the two of them.

  All I’m saying is, there could have been something. When I asked him about it—around the time when I was milking twenty cows on my organic farm and making cheese that I sold direct from the farm or at the weekly market in Göttingen—all he said was, This particular variant of love, which exists alongside others and doesn’t depend on sex, apparently turns out to be more durable.

  And when he visited me in Co
logne, maybe to check out what was going on with my apprenticeship, he said, Of all the women I’ve loved, or still love, Mariechen is the only one who doesn’t demand even a smidgen of me, but gives everything.

  Well, thank you very much. That was the pasha speaking again. As I was saying, Marie was extremely dependent on him. Unfortunately, I must add. He used her, even though he may not have had anything going with her, purely physically, I mean. She admitted to me, For your papa, Lena, I do everything. I’d snap a picture of the devil himself with my box, to show him that even the devil is just a person. The photos she took of me were perfectly ordinary publicity stills, by the way.

  Well, my image of old Marie is entirely different: when Camilla and father went off on one of their trips, and she was supposed to look after Jasper, Paulchen, and me, she let me have it while we were waiting for the school bus: You’re just as much of a devil as your father, you are! Always me, me, me! Other people can go jump in the lake for all you care.

  Well, that wasn’t the tone she took with me. When Joggi was still alive but had lost interest in Underground journeys because he was old and feeble and half-blind, Marie told me, Believe me, little Lara, your father promised my Hans on his deathbed that he’d take care of me, no matter what, even if stones rained from heaven.

  What a confusing picture. I don’t know what to think. Each of you tells such a different story. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see Marie very often. There was that time at the amusement park, which was so lovely. And later, when she photographed us right in front of the Wall. But my mother, who thinks she knows our papa, always felt old Marie was a kind of mother substitute for him, because his own mother …

  You’re all barking up the wrong tree. When I was in the darkroom with her and watched her developing pictures and so on, she told me plainly, The old man gets what he wants from his snap-away-Marie. But the only one I love is my Hans, still, even if he was a bastard like all the rest!

  Okay, okay! Keep up this childish speculation if you like … We have children of our own, a whole load. Lara alone has five. Let them be the ones to tell the rest of the story, after Mariechen’s death. I mean the bottom line: what’s turned out all right with us, what got screwed up.

  No doubt she could have said, Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, or What a god-awful mess.

  And I say you’re all talking total nonsense. You have no concept of what a real god-awful mess is like.

  Jorsch’s life, for instance, is perfectly normal, with his wife and the girls …

  At least that’s how it appears.

  And the same goes for you, Taddel.

  Wherever you look, strong women are running the show.

  It’s the same with Jasper. His Mexican makes sure everything stays on track.

  Just like Camilla with the old man.

  They have sixteen grandchildren now. Including Taddel’s youngest. And if Lena ever takes a break from acting and has a little one, and if Paulchen and Nana also have kids, imagine our children getting together to put us on the carpet some day, as Jasper’s suggested.

  No way. Spare us!

  Why not? All of them interrupting each other, like us.

  Except that our children don’t have an old Marie to snap pictures with a photo box of their most secret wishes, or of what once was and what will be in the future; think, for instance, of our papa’s wish that for his eightieth birthday we get together to record on tape, without sparing ourselves or him …

  Remember when he was around seventy and we all went to Stockholm with him, the boys in tuxes and starched shirts and the girls in ankle-length velvet and silk dresses? He told us then that he’d like us to let loose with our memories, without trying to be considerate.

  But none of us wanted to …

  What I remember is dancing with him as the band in the royal palace played Dixieland jazz …

  … but he also danced with Camilla …

  … right, to a blues …

  We were amazed that the two of them still …

  Too bad Mariechen couldn’t have been there.

  Yes, with her wishing box.

  Imagine the crazy snapshots she’d have produced, a danse macabre. All of us as skeletons, and Pat hopping along at the head of the procession.

  I’d like to know what became of all the negatives and the thousands of prints from her Agfa. If I add up all the rolls of Isochrom she shot of us, first on Karlsbader Strasse, then in the clinker house …

  There must have been well over a thousand.

  Supposedly father doesn’t have any. I asked him once, Wouldn’t they make a terrific family album? For instance, all the photos of Joggi on the Underground …

  … or the ones where we look like people from the Stone Age, all shaggy and gnawing on bones …

  … or Taddel as a cabin boy on a whaling cutter in rough seas …

  … or Jorsch with his flying-mobile high above the roofs of Friedenau …

  But then you should also include the lovely snapshots of me on the flying swings between my papa and my mama.

  Of course, Nana. Something representing what each of us wished for or dreaded.

  But also the series Marie snapped in the Wewelsfleth church of that old painting of the apple-shoot. And when she developed the photos, the boy from whose head the farmer Henning Wulf had to shoot the apple, because some crazy count insisted, looked for all the world like Paulchen.

  And Henning Wulf looked like father, and was holding a second arrow for his crossbow clenched between his lips …

  … that was intended for Count So-and-so, if the first arrow …

  I thought that was a northern version of the Wilhelm Tell story, wasn’t it?

  Bad guess, brother! Historically speaking, that happened a long time before the Swiss apple-shoot.

  And what became of all the rat photos, and the series of our mothers sailing around the Baltic looking for Vineta and finally, wearing all their jewels and their prettiest clothes …

  Father pooh-poohed my idea of a family album: Anything worth using I worked through, and as quickly as possible, because after a short while the prints started to fade and the negatives yielded less and less, till nothing was left—such a pity.

  He bemoaned the loss: I wish I had some of those prints. For instance, the early snapshots with the mechanical scarecrows. Or the series with the dog, showing him fleeing from east to west at the end of the war, and running, running. That would be something for my files.

  And when I kept pestering him, he said, Ask Paulchen. He was there with her in the darkroom to the end. Maybe Paulchen still has some usable material.

  There, you see?

  I was thinking the same thing.

  And you can tell us whether what our father speculated is true—that Mariechen would sometimes pour a little glass of her pee-pee into the developer tray, because only that way …

  Come on, Paulchen. Out with it.

  And none of that mumbo-jumbo about professional secrets.

  I don’t know a thing. I don’t have a thing. You’re all barking up the wrong tree. And the business about her piss—you don’t really believe that. It only occurred to your father because witches in the Middle Ages … Total idiocy. We used perfectly normal developer. Our Marie didn’t need tricks or dodges. But she destroyed any negatives from the past. It’s the devil’s handiwork! she exclaimed, and then, one Sunday when we were alone in the house behind the dike, she decided to toss everything, all the negatives, into a bucket and set fire to it. One flame shot up and the whole batch melted. That was exactly a day after it had been decided that we were moving to Hamburg, so Taddel and I could …

  Away from that dump at last.

  We were better off in Hamburg, no question. The work at school was manageable, at least for me, compared to Wilster.

  But Marie wasn’t up to moving. She got sick, looked positively anorexic.

  And then my papa donated the old Parish Overseer’s Residence to some cultural institution, so writers
could work there for a given period under the eaves or in the big room with the green and yellow tiles. That meant everything connected with us would be gone. Old Marie couldn’t adjust to all the changes, and practically fled from the village, back to the city, utterly alone in her much too big studio on the Kudamm till she got sicker and sicker, and finally …

  It was really bad, because her kidneys …

  She had to be hospitalized.

  Mariechen, of all people, who was never sick and described herself as a tough old bird …

  But Camilla made sure she got a single room.

  It was a Catholic hospital, with nuns as floor nurses, and apparently a crucifix on the wall above her bed.

  I heard that old Marie threw the cross at one of the nuns …

  … because she wanted to wash Mariechen’s feet, which would actually have been okay for a nurse to do.

  But supposedly the nun said, Now, now, we want to have clean feet when we go to meet our Lord, don’t we?

  And Marie flipped—completely lost control, tore the cross off the wall and almost decapitated the nun.

  Typical Mariechen.

  A crazy story, which she shared the next day with Camilla, hot off the press.

  And old Marie’s supposed to have said, What a pity. If I’d had my box with me, I would have caught the old bag buck-naked, as her Lord created her, in a few snapshots …

  She died a few days later.

  … with her feet still unwashed.

  She’s buried in the Grove Cemetery in Zehlendorf, next to her Hans, obviously.

  It’s so sad.

  So how old was our Mariechen?

  No one knew exactly, not even father.

  She could get really angry when something rubbed her the wrong way or one of you provoked her, just like Taddel.

  But Lena and I heard she had a peaceful death …