The Tin Drum

by Günter Grass

  There was a normal flight of stairs next to the escalator. It led people from the street down into the metro. It must have been raining outside. The people looked wet. That worried me, because I hadn't had time to buy a raincoat in Düsseldorf. Glancing upward, however, Oskar saw that the men with the conspicuously inconspicuous faces were carrying civilian umbrellas—none of which cast any doubt on the existence of the Black Cook.

  What will I say to them? I wondered, slowly savoring my cigarette on a slowly rising escalator that lifted my emotions and enriched my knowledge: you grow younger on an escalator, you grow older and older on an escalator. The choice was up to me: I could step off the escalator at age three or age sixty, greet the Interpol agents as a child or an old man, fear the Black Cook at either age.

  It must be getting late. My metal bed looks so tired. And my keeper Bruno showed his anxious brown eye twice at the peephole. There, beneath the watercolor of the anemones, stands my uncut cake with its thirty candles. Maria may already be asleep. Someone, I think it was Maria's sister Guste, wished me luck for the next thirty years. I wish I could sleep like Maria. But what was it my son Kurt, the schoolboy, the model pupil, always first in his class, wished me on my birthday? When Maria sleeps, the furniture around her sleeps too. Now I have it: for my thirtieth birthday Kurt wished me a speedy recovery. But what I would like is a slice of Maria's sleep, for I'm tired and running out of words. Klepp's young wife made up a silly but well-intentioned birthday poem addressed to my hump. Prince Eugen was hunchbacked too, and yet he captured the city and fortress of Belgrade. Maria should know by now that a hump brings luck. Prince Eugen also had two fathers. I'm thirty now, but my hump is younger. Louis the Fourteenth was Prince Eugen's presumptive father. Beautiful women used to touch my hump on the open street to bring them luck. Prince Eugen was hunchbacked, that's why he died a natural death. If Jesus had been a hunchback, they could hardly have nailed him to the cross. Just because I've turned thirty, must I really go out into the world and gather disciples?

  But those were merely escalator notions. Higher and higher it bore me. Before and above me the nonchalant lovers. Behind and below the old woman with the hat. Outside it was raining, and above, at the very top, stood the agents from Interpol. Slats lined the escalator steps. When you're on an escalator, you should really reconsider everything: Where do you come from? Where are you going? Who are you? What's your name? What do you want? Smells assailed me: The vanilla of a young Maria. The sardine oil my poor mama warmed up and drank hot till she grew cold and lay beneath the earth. Jan Bronski, who sprinkled cologne so liberally, yet an early death still seeped through all his buttonholes. In Greff the greengrocer's storage cellar it smelled of winter pota toes. Once more the smell of dry sponges on the slates of first graders. And my Roswitha, redolent of cinnamon and nutmeg. I floated on a carbolic cloud as Herr Fajngold sprinkled his disinfectants over my fever. Ah, and the Catholicism of the Church of the Sacred Heart, all those unaired vestments, the cold dust, and I, at the left side-altar, loaning my drum, to whom?

  Yet those were merely escalator notions. Today they want to nail me down, they say: You're thirty. That means you have to gather your disciples. Think back to what you said when they arrested you. Count the candles on your birthday cake, leave your bed and gather disciples. But there are so many possibilities open to a man of thirty. For example, if they actually toss me out of the institution, I might propose a second time to Maria. My chances would certainly be better today. Oskar set her up in the delicatessen, he's well-known, he's still earning good money with his records and he's older, more mature. At thirty a man should marry. Or I might stay single, choose one of my professions, buy a good shell-limestone quarry, hire stonecutters, sell direct from the quarry to the builders. At thirty a man should start a career. Or—if prefabricated slabs for facades bored me to death in the long run—I could look up Ulla the Muse, serve the Fine Arts at her side as an inspiring model. I might even marry her one day, my Muse so often and so briefly engaged. At thirty a man should marry. Or if I grew tired of Europe I could emigrate, head for America, for Buffalo, my old dream: search for my grandfather, the millionaire and former arsonist Joe Colchic, formerly Joseph Koljaiczek. At thirty a man should settle down. Or I could give in and let them nail me down, go out, simply because I'm thirty, and play the Messiah they take me for, make more of my drum than it is, turn my drum, against my better judgment, into a symbol, found a sect, a party, or perhaps merely a lodge.

  In spite of the lovers above me and the woman with the hat below, these escalator notions arose in me. Did I say earlier that the lovers stood two steps above me, not one, and that I'd placed my suitcase between me and the lovers? Young people in France are very strange. As the escalator carried us upward, she unbuttoned first his leather jacket, then his shirt, and fondled his bare, eighteen-year-old skin. But she did this in such a businesslike manner and so unerotically that it aroused my suspicions: these young people were being paid by the government to act madly in love on the open streets so as to maintain the reputation of France's great city. When the couple kissed, however, my suspicions faded: he nearly choked on her tongue, and was still in the midst of a fit of coughing when I stubbed out my cigarette, preferring to greet the police agents as a nonsmoker. The old woman below me and her hat—her hat being level with my head, because my height made up the difference between the two steps—did nothing of note, except mumble a bit, grumbling to herself; but many old people do that in Paris. The rubber handrail of the escalator traveled upward with us. You could place your hand on it and let it ride along. I would have done so if I'd brought gloves on the trip. The tiles on the staircase walls each reflected a flicker of electric light. Pipes and bundles of thick cables kept cream-colored company with us as we rose. There was nothing infernal about the escalator's din. Instead it seemed gemütlich, despite its mechanical nature. In spite of the clattering lines about the terrifying Black Cook, the Maison Blanche metro station struck me as comfortable, almost cozy. I felt at home on the escalator, and would have counted myself happy, in spite of my dread and the bogeywoman, if instead of total strangers it had carried my friends and relatives, living and dead, upward with me: my poor mama between Matzerath and Jan Bronski; Mother Truczinski, the gray-haired mouse, with her children Herbert, Guste, Fritz, Maria; the greengrocer Greff and his slovenly Lina; Master Bebra of course and the graceful Roswitha—all those who framed my questionable existence, all those who had run aground on my existence—if I had only seen above, where the escalator ran out of breath, in place of agents of the law, the Black Cook's very opposite: my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek, resting like a mountain, receiving me and mine, upon our successful ascent, beneath her skirts, taking us into the mountain.

  But two men stood there, wearing American-style raincoats instead of wide skirts. And toward the end of my ascent, with all ten toes smiling in my shoes, I had to admit to myself that the nonchalant lovers above me and the mumbling old lady below were simply police agents.

  What more can I say: born beneath light bulbs, interrupted my growth at the age of three, was given a drum, sangshattered glass, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, stuffed Luzie with food, watched ants as they crawled, decided to grow, buried the drum, moved to the West, lost what was East, learned to carve stone and posed as a model, went back to my drum and inspected concrete, made money and cared for the finger, gave the finger away and fled as I laughed, ascended, arrested, convicted, confined, now soon to be freed, and today is my birthday, I'm thirty years old, and still as afraid of the Black Cook as ever—Amen.

  I stubbed out my cigarette and let it fall. It came to rest between the slats of the escalator step. After traveling heavenward for some time at a forty-five-degree angle, then horizontally three steps, following the nonchalant police lovers and preceding the police grandmother, Oskar let himself be carried from the slats of the escalator step onto a firmly fixed iron grid, and when the police agents identified themselves and addressed him a
s Matzerath, he said first in German, true to his escalator notions, "Ich bin Jesus!" repeated it in French, since he was facing Interpol agents, and finally in English: "I am Jesus!"

  Nonetheless I was arrested as Oskar Matzerath. Offering no resistance, I placed myself under the protection of the authorities and, since it was raining outside on the Avenue d'Italie, their umbrellas, but still glanced about nervously in fear, and saw several times—she can do that—the terrifyingly calm countenance of the Black Cook in the crowd on the street, and among those pressing around the police van.

  I've run out of words now, but still have to think over what Oskar's going to do after his inevitable discharge from the mental institution. Marry? Stay single? Emigrate? Model? Buy a stone quarry? Gather disciples? Found a sect?

  These days all the possibilities offered to a man of thirty must be considered, and how else but with my drum? So I'll drum out the little song that's become more and more real to me, more and more terrifying, I'll conjure up the Black Cook, consult her, so that tomorrow morning I can tell my keeper Bruno what sort of life the thirty-year-old Oskar plans to lead from now on in the shadow of an increasingly black bogeywoman; for what frightened me years ago on the stairs, what shouted boo in the cellar when I went to fetch coal, startling me to laughter, remained there forever, talking with fingers, coughing through the keyholes, moaning in the stove, screeching with the door, billowing up the chimney, when ships blew their horns in the fog, when a fly took hours to die between panes, when eels craved Mama, and my poor mama craved eels, when the sun vanished behind the Turmberg yet lived on as amber. Who did Herbert think of as he assaulted the wooden fig ure? Behind the high altar too—what would Catholicism be without the Cook who blackens every confessional? She cast her shadow as the toys of Sigismund Markus shattered, and the brats in the courtyard at the apartment building, Axel Mischke and Nuchi Eyke, Susi Kater and Hànschen Kollin, they declared it, they sang it, while brewing the brick powder soup: "Better start running, the Black Cook's coming! You're to blame, and you're to blame, and you are most of all. Better start running..." She was always there, even in the woodruff fizz powder, foaming so greenly and so innocently; in every wardrobe I ever crouched in, she crouched too, and later on she borrowed Luzie Rennwand's triangular fox face, ate sausage sandwiches, skin and all, and led the Dusters up the diving tower—Oskar alone remained, watched the ants, and knew: that's her shadow, multiplied, now seeking sweetness, and all the words: blessed, sorrowful, full of grace, virgin of virgins ... and all the stones: basalt, tufa, diorite, nests in the shell lime, alabaster so soft ... and all the songshattered glass, transparent glass, glass blown paper-thin ... and all the groceries: flour and sugar in blue pound and half-pound bags. Later on, four tomcats, one of them named Bismarck, the wall that had to be freshly whitewashed, Poles exalted in death, special communiqués, who sank what when, potatoes rattling down from the scales, everything that tapered toward the foot, cemeteries in which I stood, flagstones on which I knelt, coconut fibers on which I lay ... all things mixed in concrete, the juice of onions that called forth tears, the ring on the finger and the cow that once licked me ... Don't ask Oskar who she is. He's run out of words. For what was once behind my back, then kissed my hump, is now and forever coming toward me:

  Black was the Cook always somewhere behind me.

  And now she comes toward me at last all in black.

  Her words and her garments all twisted and black.

  And the debts she pays are all paid in black.

  And children who sang: Is the Black Cook coming?

  No longer need ask, they'd better start running.

  Better start running, the Black Cook's coming!

  Ha! Ha! Ha!

  * * *

  Translator's Afterword

  Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer

  be written, and then, behind your own back as it were,

  produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the

  last of the great novelists.

  When Ralph Manheim was asked to translate Die Blechtrommel in 1959, Günter Grass was a young man in his early thirties, largely unknown in the English-speaking world, who had written a novel so linguistically complex and innovative that even German readers found it difficult. Yet Manheim's English version was so successful that The Tin Drum became a runaway best-seller and catapulted its young German author to the forefront of world literature. Grass was well aware how much he owed to Ralph Manheim, both then and in the years to follow. So impressive was the novel, and its English counterpart, that from our present-day vantage point it remains the most important work of German literature since the Second World War.

  Nevertheless, Grass voiced his concerns about certain aspects of the English version soon after it appeared, and began, over thirty years ago, to inquire gently of Helen Wolff if a retranslation might be possible. In a letter to her of 20 December 1976, he raised the issue directly:

  I'd also like to bring Ralph around, given the distance of years now, and all the experience he's gained with my language, to rework and fill in his translation of Die Blechtrommel; after all, there are substantial omissions. I believe The Tin Drum has gained a firm place in English-language literature in the meantime, so that it could hold up happily and well under a revision.

  A week later, Helen Wolff replied briefly, and in passing: "I'll think about a new reworking of The Tin Drum." Although no revised version was ever undertaken, Grass never dropped the idea, and thirty years later, having obtained the rights to the novel from Pantheon, Harcourt finally commissioned one, with an eye toward the celebration that would mark the fiftieth anniversary of the original German publication.

  Ralph Manheim did not live to offer his own reworking of The Tin Drum, but I was privileged to know him in my early years as a translator, to spend time with him, both on my visits to Paris and on his first trip in many years to America, his homeland, and to learn from him. His tenacity in the face of difficult texts, the gifted nature of his solutions, and his enduring integrity were a constant inspiration to me, whether I experienced them face to face in conversation or saw them exemplified in the steady stream of major works he translated—not only from the German, but from French and other languages as well. This new translation is offered against that background, and in gratitude to him.

  Oskar Gets a New Tin Drum

  On a warm summer day in 2005, the citizens of Gdańsk, Poland, were treated to an unusual sight: one of their favorite sons, Günter Grass, had returned, and he appeared to be conducting a tour. As he pointed out the special features of historical buildings in the Altstadt, the dozen or so men and women gathered around him seemed to be paying unusually close attention. And well they might, for each of them was hard at work retranslating Grass's most famous novel, set in Danzig, into his or her respective language.

  The puzzled onlookers had no way of knowing the true nature of this tour. For over a week, the Nobel Prize-winning author had been conferring for hours each day with his translators, going over Die Blechtrommel page by page, then emerging from the workshop atmosphere to show them the heart and soul of the novel's geography and history—the potato fields of the Kashubian countryside, the beach and jetty at Neufahrwasser, the city and suburbs of Danzig, Oskar's home, the grocery store, the old city hall: in short, the still living features of his past.

  Grass first raised the idea of his now famous "Übersetzertreffen" (translators' meetings) in a letter to Helen Wolff in 1976:

  Not long ago I was in Bergneustadt (near Bonn) at a gathering of translators.... During the symposium an idea came to me: to arrange such a meeting of my translators three or four months after the appearance of a new text, one which I would attend as author for three or four days, making myself available, discussing the major problems, and helping to get this important process under way. Luchterhand and the foreign publishers could bear the cost.... What do you think of the idea?

  With his publishers' blessing, such gathe
rings, which soon achieved a certain fame of their own, were to become a regular feature of Grass's literary life, and have recurred with each new novel.

  Few authors have the power to generate financial support of this magnitude from their publishers, but, more significantly, few seem to care deeply enough about translation even to ask for it. Grass's desire to meet and discuss a new work with his translators sprang directly from a belief that rendering the style, substance, and linguistic complexity of his writing required a closer bond. And on that summer day in Gdańsk, translators both old and new had gathered once again with a special goal in mind—new translations to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Die Blechtrommel.

  Making It New

  The most common question I faced while working on the new Tin Drum was, "What was wrong with the old one?" This question reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of literary translation. It is precisely the mark of a great work of art that it demands to be retranslated. What impels us toward new versions is not the weakness of existing translations, but the strength and richness of certain works of literature. The works that are never retranslated are those we only care to read once.

  We translate great works because they deserve it—because the power and depth of the text can never be fully revealed by a single translation, however inspired. A translation is a reading, and every reading is necessarily personal, perhaps even idiosyncratic. Each new version offers, not a better reading, but a different one, one that foregrounds new aspects of the text, that sees it through new eyes, that makes it new.