The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

  We waited, breathing heavily, till the night was once again devoid of incident, till the heavens closed once more, shut off that light which had persuaded a long-dead cavalry to mount one final attack. I rose first and congratulated Herr Matzerath on his great triumph, though without underestimating the influence of the moon. But he waved me off, tired and downcast: "Triumph, my dear Gottfried? I've had far too many triumphs in life. I'd like to fail for once. But that's hard to do and takes a great deal of work."

  I disliked this little speech, since I'm the hardworking type but have had no triumphs. Herr Matzerath seemed a bit ungrateful to me, and I told him so: "You're being arrogant, Oskar," I ventured, for we were on a first-name basis by then. "You're in all the newspapers. You've made a name for yourself. I'm not talking about money. But do you think it's easy for someone like me, who never even gets his name in the papers, to go around with someone famous like you? Just once I'd like to perform some deed, perform some great act, as you just have, all on my own, and be in the newspapers making headlines: Gottfried von Vittlar did that!"

  Herr Matzerath's laughter hurt my feelings. He lay on his back, burrowed his hump in the soft earth, tore up the grass with both hands, threw tufts of grass into the air, and laughed like an inhuman god who can do anything: "My friend, nothing could be easier. Here's my briefcase. It has miraculously escaped the hooves of the Polish cavalry. I give it to you, its leather harbors the jar with the ring finger. Take the whole thing, run back to Gerresheim, where the brightly lit tram will still be standing, get in, take my gift to the police station on Fürstenwall, turn me in, and tomorrow you'll find your name printed in every newspaper."

  At first I tried to refuse his offer, pointed out that he surely couldn't live without the finger in the jar. But he reassured me, said he was fed up with the whole finger business, and besides he had several plaster casts of it, and even one in pure gold, I might as well go ahead and take the briefcase, go back to the tram, take the tram to the police station, and turn him in.

  So I walked away, and could still hear Herr Matzerath laughing behind me. For he stayed there, savoring the night, tearing up grass and laughing as I jangled my way toward the city. But when I turned him in—which I did the following morning—I did indeed, thanks to Herr Matzerath's kindness, make it into the newspapers several times.

  Meanwhile I, Oskar, the kindly Herr Matzerath, lay laughing in the night-black grass outside Gerresheim, rolling with laughter beneath a few visible and deadly serious stars, burrowed my hump into the warm earth, thinking: Sleep Oskar, sleep, another hour or so, till the police awaken you. You'll never lie so free beneath the moon again.

  And as I awoke, I noticed, before I could notice it was broad daylight, that something, someone, was licking my face: warmly, roughly, evenly, damply licking.

  Surely that can't be the police, roused and sent here by Vittlar, licking you awake? Still, I was in no hurry to open my eyes, but let myself be licked awhile, warmly, roughly, evenly, damply, enjoying it, not caring who was licking: Either it's the police, Oskar figured, or a cow. Only then did I open my blue eyes.

  She was spotted black and white, lay beside me, breathed and licked me till I opened my eyes. It was broad daylight, clear to partly cloudy, and I said to myself: Oskar, don't linger with this cow, no matter how divinely she gazes at you, no matter how earnestly she soothes and weakens your memory with her rough tongue. It's broad daylight, flies are buzzing, you have to flee. Vittlar is turning you in, hence you must flee. A serious accusation deserves a serious flight. Let the cow moo, and flee. They'll catch you, here or somewhere else, but that hardly matters to you.

  And so, licked, washed, and combed by a cow, I made my getaway, burst out in a gale of bright morning laughter a few steps into my flight, and left my drum with the cow, who lay there mooing as I fled laughing.

  Thirty

  Ah yes, my flight. There's still that to tell you about. I fled to enhance the value of Vittlar's accusation. No flight without a goal, I told myself. And whither, Oskar, do you wish to flee? Political factors, the so-called Iron Curtain, ruled out the East. So I was forced to eliminate as a goal my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek's four skirts, still billowing protectively on Kashubian potato fields, though flight toward my grandmother's skirts, if flight there must be, was the only destination I felt held any real promise.

  Just in passing: today I celebrate my thirtieth birthday. At the age of thirty, one is obliged to speak about flight like a man and not like a boy. Maria, who brought me the cake with the thirty candles, said, "You're thirty now, Oskar, it's about time you started acting sensibly."

  Klepp, my friend Klepp, gave me some jazz records as always, and used five matches to light the thirty candles on my birthday cake: "Life begins at thirty!" said Klepp; he's twenty-nine.

  Vittlar, however, my friend Gottfried, who's dearest to my heart, gave me candy, leaned over my bedrails, and said in his nasal voice, "When Jesus was thirty years old, he went forth and gathered disciples."

  Vittlar has always loved to confuse me. I'm supposed to abandon my bed and gather disciples just because I'm thirty. Then my lawyer came in brandishing a document, trumpeted his congratulations, hung his nylon hat on my bed, and proclaimed to all and sundry: "What a happy coincidence! My client is celebrating his thirtieth birthday, and on this very same thirtieth birthday I've received word that the Ring Finger Case is being reopened, they have a new lead, this Sister Beate, you know her of course..."

  Thus, on my thirtieth birthday, the announcement arrives that I've feared for years, feared from the moment I fled: they've found the real murderer, they reopen the case, acquit me, discharge me from the mental institution, deprive me of my beloved bed, toss me out on the cold street, exposed to all the elements, and oblige a thirty-year-old Oskar and his drum to gather disciples.

  So now they say Sister Beate murdered my Sister Dorothea, out of yolk-yellow jealousy.

  Perhaps you still remember? A certain Dr. Werner, as happens all too often in films and in life, stood between two nurses. A terrible tale: Beate loved Dr. Werner. But Dr. Werner loved Dorothea. Dorothea meanwhile loved no one, except perhaps, in secret, little Oskar. Then Werner fell ill. Dorothea nursed him because his bed was in her ward. Beate could not stand this. So she talked Dorothea into taking a walk with her, and then, in a rye field near Gerresheim, killed her, or perhaps better, got rid of her. Now Beate was free to care for Dr. Werner undisturbed. But it seems he didn't recover under her care, far from it. Perhaps the love-crazed nurse said to herself: As long as he's ill, he's mine. Did she give him an overdose? Did she give him the wrong medicine? At any rate, Dr. Werner died, either from an overdose or the wrong medicine, though Beate confessed to neither, nor to the walk in the rye field that became Sister Dorothea's final stroll. Oskar, who likewise confessed to nothing but owned an incriminating finger in a canning jar, was found guilty of the rye-field deed, but since they were not sure he was all there, they placed me in a mental institution for observation. Of course Oskar fled before they found him guilty and committed him, for by my flight I hoped to enhance substantially the value of my friend Gottfried's accusation.

  I was twenty-eight when I made my getaway. Just a few hours ago, thirty glowing candles dripped calmly onto my birthday cake. It was September back then too, when I fled. I was born in the sign of Virgo. But it's my flight we're talking of here, not my birth beneath light bulbs.

  Since, as I've said, the escape route eastward toward my grandmother was closed, I was forced like everyone else these days to flee westward. If the world of high-level politics keeps you from your grandmother, Oskar, then flee toward your grandfather who lives in Buffalo, USA. Head for America: let's see how far you get.

  Grandfather Koljaiczek in America had come to mind while my eyes were still closed and the cow was licking me in the meadow near Gerresheim. It must have been around seven in the morning and I said to myself: The shops open at eight. I ran off laughing, leaving my drum by the cow, telli
ng myself: Gottfried's tired, he probably won't turn you in till eight or eight-thirty, take advantage of what little head start you've got. It took me ten minutes to raise a taxi by phone in the sleepy little suburb of Gerresheim. It carried me to Central Station. I counted my money on the way, miscounting several times because I kept bursting out in fresh gales of bright morning laughter. Then I leafed through my passport and found that, thanks to the good offices of the West Concert Agency, I had valid visas for both France and the United States; Dr. Dösch's fondest wish had always been to grant those countries a concert tour with Oskar the Drummer.

  Voilà, I said to myself, let's flee to Paris, it looks good, sounds good, could happen in the movies, with Gabin smoking his pipe and chasing after me good-naturedly. But who would play me? Chaplin? Picasso? Laughing and stimulated by these thoughts of flight, I was still slapping the thighs of my slightly rumpled trousers when the taxi driver asked me for seven marks. I paid and had breakfast in the station restaurant. I placed a railway schedule next to my soft-boiled egg, found a good train, had enough time after breakfast to buy some foreign currency, purchased a small suitcase of fine leather, filled it with expensive but ill-fitting shirts, since I was afraid to return to Jülicher Straße, packed a pair of pale green pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, and so on, bought a first-class ticket, since there was no need to economize, and was soon comfortably ensconced in a cushioned window seat: I was fleeing without having to run. The cushions aided my reflections: the moment the train pulled out and the flight proper began, Oskar cast about for something worth fearing; for not without reason did I say to myself: No fright, no flight! But what, Oskar, frightens you enough to make you flee, since the police only make you burst out in bright morning laughter?

  Today I am thirty, both flight and trial are behind me, but the fear I talked myself into when I fled remains.

  Was it the jolting of the tracks, was it the song of the train? The words emerged monotonously, I noticed them just short of Aachen, they took firm hold of me as I sank back on the cushions in first class, still gripped me, increasingly distinct and terrifying, beyond Aachen—we crossed the border about ten-thirty—so that I was glad when the customs officers, showing more interest in my hump than in my name and passport, provided some distraction—and I said to myself: That Vittlar, the sluggard! It's almost eleven and he still hasn't reached the police station with the canning jar under his arm, while I've been fleeing since the break of dawn for his sake, scaring myself to motivate my flight; what a fright I had in Belgium when the train sang out: Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  Today I am thirty, my trial will be reopened, the expected acquittal will force me back on my feet, riding trains, trams, exposed to those words: Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  Yet, apart from my dread of the Black Cook, whose terrifying arrival I expected at every station, the trip was pleasant enough. I had the whole compartment to myself—perhaps she was sitting in the one next to me—made the acquaintance of first Belgian, then French customs officers, dozed off for five minutes or so now and then, awoke with a small cry, and to provide some sort of shield against the Black Cook, leafed through the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which had been passed to me through the compartment window in Düsseldorf, amazed as always by the breadth of knowledge of the journalists, and even found a story on my manager, Dr. Dösch of the West Concert Agency, confirming what I already knew: Dösch's agency was supported by a single mainstay, Oskar the Drummer—not a bad photo of me. And so, all the way to Paris, Oskar the Mainstay contemplated the collapse of the West Concert Agency that would inevitably result from my arrest and the terrifying arrival of the Black Cook.

  Never in my life had I feared the Black Cook. It was not till my flight, when I wished to be frightened, that she crawled under my skin, and has remained there in various forms, sleeping for the most part, to this very day, on which I celebrate my thirtieth birthday: it may be the name Goethe, for instance, that makes me cry out and flee beneath the bedcovers in fear. No matter how carefully I studied the poet-prince, even as a boy, his Olympian calm always struck me as slightly sinister. And when he now stands by the rails of my bed disguised in black as a cook, no longer luminous and classical, but darker than any Rasputin, and says on my thirtieth birthday, "Better start running, the Black Cook's coming!" I'm terrified.

  Ha! Ha! Ha! sang the train that carried the fleeing Oskar toward Paris. I actually expected the Interpol agents at the Paris North station—Gare du Nord, as the Parisians say. But the only person who spoke to me was a porter who reeked so strongly of red wine that I couldn't for the life of me see him as the Black Cook, and so entrusted him with my suitcase as far as the gate. The Interpol agents and the Cook won't have wasted any money on a platform ticket, I told myself, they'll accost and arrest you outside the gate. You'd be wise to retrieve your suitcase before you pass through. So I wound up carrying my own suitcase as far as the metro, since not even the officials were there to take it from me.

  I won't go on about that world-famous metro smell. I read recently that you can buy it as perfume and spray yourself. I noticed that the metro sang about the Black Cook too, but in a different rhythm from the train, and I saw that those around me must know and fear the Black Cook as I did, for they exuded anxiety and dread. My plan was to take the metro as far as Porte d'Italie, and then a cab from there to Orly Airport; if I couldn't be arrested at the Gare du Nord, I thought the famous airport of Orly—with the Black Cook as airline hostess—would be an amusing and original spot. I had to change trains once, glad that my suitcase was so light, and then headed south on the metro as I pondered: Where will you get off, Oskar—my God, the things that can happen in a single day: this morning you were still being licked by a cow outside Gerresheim, fearless and cheerful you were, and now you're in Paris—where will you alight, where will she come toward you, black and terrible? Place d'Italie or not till the Porte?

  I got off one stop before the Porte, at Maison Blanche, thinking: They think, of course, that I think they'll be waiting for me at the Porte. But she knows what I think and what they think. Besides, I was fed up with the whole thing. My flight and the effort to keep up my fright had exhausted me. Oskar had lost all desire to go to the airport, now thought Maison Blanche would be more amusing than Orly Airport, and turned out to be right: for the metro station had an escalator that was to inspire several lofty notions in me, while adding its escalator clatter: "Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

  Oskar is somewhat at a loss. His flight is drawing to a close, and with it this report: Will the rattling escalator at the Maison Blanche metro station be high, steep, and symbolic enough to serve as a final image for his recollections?

  But now there is my thirtieth birthday. To all those who find the escalator too noisy, to those who don't find the Black Cook sufficiently frightening, I offer my thirtieth birthday as an ending. For of all birthdays, is not the thirtieth the most significant? It contains Three, and foreshadows Sixty, rendering it superfluous. As the thirty candles were burning on my birthday cake this morning, I could have wept for joy and rapture, but was ashamed to do so in front of Maria: at thirty a man may no longer weep.

  The moment I mounted the first step of the escalator—if an escalator can be said to have a first step—and it carried me upward, I burst out laughing. I laughed despite my fear, or because of it. Slowly, steeply I rose—and there they were, waiting at the top. There was still time for half a cigarette. Two steps above me a nonchalant pair of lovers were carrying on. A step below me stood an old woman, whom I suspected at first, for no reason at all, of being the Black Cook. She wore a hat decorated with artificial fruit. While I smoked, I tried my best to conjure up a whole range of escalator-related comparisons: first Oskar played the poet Dante, who returns from the inferno and is greeted at the top, where the escalator ends, by manic Spiegel reporters who ask, "Well, Dante, what was it like down there?" I went throug
h the same little scene as Goethe, prince of poets, and reporters for Der Spiegel asked how I liked it down below with the Mothers. Finally I grew tired of poets and said to myself: It's not reporters for Der Spiegel or men with tin badges in their coat pockets waiting up there, it's the Black Cook, the escalator rattled, the Black Cook's coming, and Oskar replied, "Better start running!"