The Box

by Günter Grass

  That’s why I pestered Marie: What’s the special device inside that box? But I couldn’t get a word out of her. I don’t want to know, Pat, she said. It’s a mystery, that’s all! The main thing is, my box can see what was, and what will be.

  That Agfa Special knew exactly what would happen later to our house. In the next war incendiary bombs would crash through the roof, dropped by the Brits or the Amis in vast numbers before they flattened everything with aerial mines and high-explosive bombs.

  But the fires were put out quickly, so when our father bought the clinker house all you could see were a few charred spots on the floor in his studio.

  Again the Agfa Special pulled off an accurate flashback.

  That’s right. You could see the bombs …

  They were stick-type incendiary bombs.

  … as I was saying, you could see them glowing, and someone—a different painter, who’d taken the place of the marine painter—tossing handfuls of sand from a bucket on the …

  In all the smoke you couldn’t make out the man with the bucket. But when our father told the story for what must have been the hundredth time, he commented, You mustn’t be surprised when the box shows things that happened in the past, Jorsch. It’s survived far worse: a total loss when Marie’s photography studio burned down. Not only her darkroom, but also all the stuff belonging to her and Hans.

  And he always added, When Hans was at the front, he photographed with his Leica the events of the moment. First blitzkriegs and advances, later nothing but retreats.

  That Leica still existed, as did the Hasselblad …

  But they couldn’t look back or ahead, not like the box. You saw it in action time and time again, and so did I: first with my guinea pig, then with Joggi. It even worked for Lena, when old Marie turned her into a comedy character onstage. Yet you liked performing in tragedies better, with tears, despair, and so forth.

  It must have been terrible for Jasper and Paulchen when she snapped pictures of the ship that later, in stormy seas …

  … as it was terrible for me when she showed me onstage as a comical old hag … No way! I had an entirely different vision of my career … For instance …

  My mother and I saw into the future, just as you did with the ship that went down, but in our case the experience was lovely. The kind of thing one could really wish for, because even though we got to know Mariechen only towards the end, when my papa brought her along on one of his far too short visits, she showed us what her photo box could foresee. It wasn’t just hindsighted, after all. So one time the four of us went for a walk on a beautiful sunny day along the Wall, which by that time was covered on our side with graffiti, odd symbols, and absurd figures. We walked to the place where you could see part of the Brandenburg Gate right on the other side of the Wall. But only after we passed that spot did your old Marie pose the three of us, my mother, my papa, and me in the middle—just what I’d always wished for—with the colourfully painted Wall behind us. She held the photo box far from her body and clicked and clicked. And my mother laughed and laughed. And then? A miracle! On my father’s next short visit he showed us what the photo box had made possible: in all the snapshots—unbelievable!—the Wall was torn down. In each picture a bit more, till in the last snapshot you could see the three of us, with me in the middle, standing in front of a gap as wide as a door. The sides of the gap were all jagged, with bent iron rods sticking out. Through the gap and past the three of us you could see straight across the death strip behind the broken-down Wall and far into the East. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? But Taddel refuses to believe it, and Jasper, too. We didn’t want to either, no matter how happy we seemed in the snapshots. Theoretically the political situation hadn’t reached that point. I can still hear my mother saying, Too good to be true. Unfortunately my papa took all the photos with him when he left. For my files, he maintained. I need them for when things reach that point. A few years later, the Wall was gone, and with it so much else, and old Marie with her box wasn’t there any more either. My papa already had in his head the torn-down Wall and a story that ranged far afield, and he said to me, That’s how it was, Nana, my child. Mariechen believed in her box because it knew what had been and what was to be, and what people wish for, such as the Wall torn down.

  She must have been plastered when she snapped those pictures.

  Things were going downhill with her by then.

  When did she start drinking?

  She’d always done it secretly.

  Maybe she hid the bottles in her darkroom.

  There’s no truth to that, Camilla says.

  I can hardly believe our old Marie was an alcoholic.

  But she was.

  And when Taddel got up his courage to ask, Well, Mariechen? One glass too many again? she’d reply, Not me! Not a drop. What are you thinking, you little brat?

  The father sees the situation quite differently: she loved all of you, not just Paulchen. She could salve Taddel’s pain with small-format snapshots. Lena shone in leading parts on stages large and small. In one photo series Pat, almost grown-up, could be seen smuggling parts of a dismantled copier into the East, which was strictly forbidden. Yes, indeed, for flyers! She cared deeply about him, about all of you. She tried in vain to find the damn needle in Nana’s leg, which was operated on several times, without success. And when Jorsch began to bite his nails …

  But I shielded you. I forbade Mariechen to show you even one of the grisly photos she snapped—at my direction, to be sure—of the two sleeping cupboards, the so-called alcoves. Her box could go back to the seventeenth century and show the people who had slept in those stuffy cupboards—sometimes with legs drawn up, sometimes half sitting, some in little bonnets and nightcaps—slept there without waking, frozen to death: hunched-over old women, toothless greybeards, also peaked little children, carried off by consumption, or later the Spanish flu. No, I told Mariechen, these snapshots with all the corpses are suitable only for private use.

  And not even Paulchen, who as her darkroom assistant knew more than he is willing to admit now, saw the alcove series in the developer tray. All those death-sleepers: parish overseers and their wives, the shipbuilder Junge, and finally his daughter Alma. Her store stocked liquorice laces and rock candy, which not only Lena, Mieke, and Rieke, but all the village children could buy for pennies …

  But this is not enough, or else too much, for all of you. Yes, children, I know: being a father is only an assertion, one that constantly has to be corroborated. That is why, to make you believe me, I must lie.

  Crooked Business

  ONCE UPON A time there were eight children. Now they are grown-up once and for all: taxpayers, like Pat and Jorsch, they count their grey hairs; like Lara, they will be grandparents, if not right away; like Jasper, they will have problems with tight deadlines. All eight of them now sit together at Lena’s. She has invited them between performances: We don’t have much time if we want to have this thing in the can by mid-October.

  And papa’s supposed to direct it all? He simply dreams us up! exclaims Nana.

  He puts words in my mouth I would never use, Taddel complains.

  It looks as though some of the siblings might refuse to cooperate. Pat mentions a boycott, but then Jorsch says, Let the old man have his way, and Paulchen promises absolutely crazy darkroom tales.

  Lena’s rented apartment in Kreuzberg is on the fifth floor of a renovated building from the turn of the previous century. Presumably this session will belong to Jasper, Paulchen, and Taddel, but Lara and Pat have travelled far to join them. Nana has taken a day off, because, as she says, It’s always a treat to hear the old stories that I would have loved to have been part of. Jorsch has brought new concerns. Equipped with technical details, he casts doubt on the box again: The crazy part is that Marie didn’t use the more sophisticated Agfa Special to take all those pictures but—I’m sure of this—the simplest model of all, the so-called bargain box. They called it that because it cost only four reichsmarks.
It came on the market in ’32, during the Depression. But close to nine hundred thousand units were sold.

  He describes at some length Agfa’s marketing strategy, which called for potential buyers to save one-mark coins stamped with the mint abbreviations A–G–F–A if they wanted to get the box at the bargain price. People were lining up!

  Then Taddel voices fundamental doubts: No matter what she snapped those pictures with, afterwards she used all kinds of tricks and dodges to draw us into her alternative reality.

  Silence follows, which Pat finally breaks by asking Nana why she changed schools a few years after the Wall came down, And from West to East Berlin, of all things. And then, to train as a midwife, you went even farther east, to study among the Saxons in Dresden. One of the sons—is it Taddel or Jasper?—cannot resist drawing the conclusion: You became a real Ossie. And Nana replies, Theoretically you could say that.

  Lena has set the table with a generous platter of cheeses, olives, and walnuts, with plenty of bread. Paulchen is un-corking bottles of white wine. All eight of them, who from now on don’t want to be grown-up, are eager to start.

  So when was it that our father received the rat as a gift?

  On his birthday, maybe?

  Supposedly he’d been wanting one for a long time.

  Worse than that. She was sitting in a cage under the Christmas tree.

  And my papa said to me, Clearly the rats are going to out-live us, the human race—that’s exactly how he expressed himself—if they can survive on the Bikini Atoll, contaminated with radiation …

  Another of his sayings.

  But it wasn’t Marie who finally got him the rat, but Camilla.

  And no sooner was the cage in his studio than Marie took her Agfa …

  Hold on, Paulchen. The rat can wait, no matter how cool that creature was. Let Jasper tell us first how old Marie found him out when he was in trouble.

  That’s something I don’t like to talk about. See, I had a hard time fitting in in the village. There was no one I could have a sensible conversation with, about books and films and such, I mean … That included the two of you. School wasn’t so bad, but otherwise, what a drag. You boys had all kinds of friends, including some great pals. You even got a kick out of the village festivals.

  And Taddel had a really nice girlfriend …

  And girls from Glückstadt were always waiting for you, Paulchen, at the bus stop across from our house. Some were good-looking, too.

  They cackled like hens and were crazy about you.

  To which our Paulchen paid no attention at all.

  You walked right by them, cool as you please.

  Anyway, you were always out with your dog, heading over the dike. Paulchen and Paula walking along the Stör towards Uhrendorf, Beidenfleth …

  He used to cut cattails and sell them for one pfennig apiece to the passengers at the ferry slip.

  Or he hung out at the house behind the dike with Mariechen, who let him into her darkroom without a moment’s hesitation.

  Things got ugly when the old bag agreed to watch us, because father was scheduled to go on a long trip again, to China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, somewhere else, and on to Singapore …

  He’d persuaded Camilla to go with him.

  That must have been before he got the rat.

  The two of them were gone for over a month.

  Right, the rat didn’t exist until much later; at most in my father’s head as a cherished wish.

  So much drama before they finally set out.

  I remember the phone ringing and Frau Engel, our cleaning woman, shouting, A call from China! Goodness me, a direct call from China!

  She raced through the house in a tizzy till she found Camilla: Come quick, please, come quick! Someone important’s calling from China.

  It was only the German ambassador, who happened to be a writer, too, and wanted my father to bring him some liverwurst, because you couldn’t get proper liverwurst anywhere in China.

  The village butcher, who was famous for the quality of his liverwurst, sealed up two rolls of smoked liverwurst for them, good long ones, too.

  And they went along on the trip?

  Packed among father’s socks and shirts, maybe?

  That’s how it was. And later the butcher received a letter on fancy stationery from the embassy in Beijing, thanking him.

  He framed it and hung it up in his shop, next to his master’s diploma.

  And shortly before our parents left on their trip, Mariechen snapped a couple of pictures of those liverwursts, because the old man …

  Paulchen had to arrange them first one way, then another. Side by side, then forming a cross. She put the lens right up to them, crawled across the table …

  And my father commented, I wonder what stories those liverwursts have to tell.

  As she snapped those pictures, she muttered something incomprehensible. It sounded like Chinese.

  But watching the three of us was too much for old Marie.

  Once she threw her shoe at Taddel for being cheeky. You devil! You little devil! she shouted.

  That’s what she always called you when she got mad at you for coming home late.

  She would flip out.

  Took to drinking when no one was watching.

  We didn’t let on that we noticed when she’d had a few too many.

  I was always up in my room, reading everything I could lay my hands on. Or was off in Glückstadt, where I had a friend who was into some shady stuff but was otherwise okay.

  What was his name?

  He was older than me. You don’t need to know his name. He made an impression on me because he was absolutely fearless. No, Pat, I said you don’t need to know his name. At any rate, there were repercussions, because my friend and I …

  But first father and Camilla came back from their trip. They brought presents for everyone, I don’t remember what.

  But Mariechen didn’t blab, that much you have to hand her, about all the things that had gone wrong, I mean. Especially with Taddel and me, stuff in school and such.

  That’s true, the old girl kept her mouth shut.

  In that respect she was okay.

  Not even pointed remarks about my girlfriend from the village, whose parents never went away and were perfectly normal. So different from my father. He came back from China with a crazy idea that had occurred to him there. He titled the new book Headbirths, and got to work on it right away. He based it on the notion that we Germans have no urge to have kids any more and are gradually dying out, while in China and elsewhere there are plenty of kids, actually far too many. It was supposed to be a short book.

  At any rate, he didn’t need Marie to help him with it.

  He could picture the whole thing himself, so for a while she didn’t have anything to do.

  But maybe the photos of those liverwursts she’d developed for his trip to China provided enough material for his new book, because he used those sausages …

  So Mariechen was unemployed. Spent her time running around on the dike. She had her Agfa round her neck and snapped a picture now and then, but mostly of clouds, or when the weather was nice she aimed it at the clear blue sky, where there was nothing to see.

  And that continued, because when father finished that book, in which the photographed liverwursts played an important supporting role, he took a long break.

  That we weren’t used to, and neither was Camilla.

  It seemed weird to have him hanging around the house behind the dike, just sculpting figures in clay.

  He was brooding.

  Maybe he sensed what lay ahead, I mean climate change or nuclear power or the future in general.

  Well, the hiatus dragged on. It lasted a year or more, while for me everything connected with school became problematic again. I stayed back, and was sent to the vocational school in Wilster, where I …

  But eventually you became a teacher, before you went into film-making, maybe because you …

&n
bsp; … and Taddel wanted to prove to us …

  You were well liked as a teacher, I hear, strict but fair.

  For a while you wanted to join the police—that’s what I heard on my farm. But I gather Camilla said, What will you do, Taddel, if we all run across the fields in a demonstration against that nuclear power plant they want to build right near here? I mean all your brothers: Jasper, Paulchen, and certainly Pat and Jorsch, too. Will you come along and beat us with your truncheon?

  That I couldn’t have done, absolutely not. Even though I had nothing against nuclear power … So I came up with the idea of going into the hospitality business. I even set out to try it.

  What a scene that was when Taddel left for Munich.

  At the railroad station in Glückstadt you would’ve thought everything was just fine with him. Marie made a point of coming along with her box, which she seldom did any more, and crouched down to snap a couple of pictures of you getting on the train.

  And when the train pulled out she ran alongside, still snapping pictures …

  And she called after you, You may be a little devil, Taddel, but I’m going to miss you!

  Goodbye pictures.

  We never got to see a single one.

  Not even me. It must have been something terrible, an utter catastrophe in instalments, that her Agfa foresaw.

  And sure enough, our Taddel had been gone for only a few days when the letters started to arrive, one every other day, all addressed to Camilla, none to his father.

  They were all tear-stained, that was how homesick you were.

  You poor thing.

  The adjustment must have been rough.

  Look, Nana’s about to cry, just from hearing …

  I want to come home, come home, you wailed, like E.T. in that film that came along later. The rubbery dwarf that kept wanting to use the phone, I mean.

  The old man commented, It’ll get better. This is something he has to get through. But then he agreed with what Camilla had already decided: Our Taddel has to come home. He’s not just pretending to be homesick. He needs the family. And Marie, who often butted heads with you, also thought it was the right thing.