The Box

by Günter Grass

  They say even in death she looked like a girl.

  Sadly not one of us was there when she died, the poor thing.

  Not even our papa.

  She was all alone …

  No, no, no. That’s not how it happened. It wasn’t in the city or in the village, either. It happened on the dike, and in the middle of a storm …

  All right, Paulchen, tell us …

  I was there. I kept shouting, Let’s turn back, Mariechen! But she rushed on, heading for Hollerwettern, towards the dike along the Elbe. The sky above the marsh was perfectly clear but the gale was force 10, if not 12. It was coming from the east rather than from the north-west, as it usually did. That’s enough, Mariechen! I shouted. But she looked as if she was enjoying it. Running in a gale. She was leaning into the wind. So was I, no doubt. The dog had had enough, though. We made it to the spot where the Stör dike meets the Elbe dike. But Paula had already turned back. It was high tide. Hardly any ships on the river, also because it was Sunday. I mentioned that she’d burned up the negatives in a bucket beforehand …

  Right, you said a flame shot up.

  But now the wind on the dike was gusting harder. At the same time, we had a clear view over the landscape and down the Elbe as far as Brokdorf, where the construction cranes had gone up for that atomic shit, a done deal. Then it became impossible to see, because the gusts were coming thick and fast. Mariechen, I shouted, you’re going to fly away on me! But she was already flying. Simply took off. It must have been a violent gust. And light as she was, it pulled her—no, she flew, climbed straight up over the dike, up and up, was only a thin line, then a dot, and finally she was gone, swallowed up by the sky … I’m telling you, it was blue, perfectly blue. Not a cloud. Swept clean and blue. And suddenly something fell. Fell right at my feet. Yes, straight down from the sky and landed at my feet. It was her box, complete with its strap. It lay there, well, as if descended from heaven. But nothing broken from the fall. It could have hit me as I stood there on the dike, gazing heavenwards, where our Mariechen had been just a line, then a dot, and was now gone …

  Typical Paulchen.

  A complete fabrication.

  You cooked up the whole thing.

  Or dreamed it.

  But it’s a lovely image, old Mariechen simply ascending to heaven …

  And then her box falls down …

  But one can certainly imagine her ascending in a storm …

  Light as a feather.

  Go on, Paulchen.

  Don’t let them distract you.

  Yes, please, Paulchen. What happened next?

  At first I was totally beside myself. I thought: You’re losing your mind. You dreamed the whole thing. But then I looked down and saw not only her Agfa lying on the dike but also her shoes, with her socks in them. I forgot to mention that as she lifted off, and I shouted, Mariechen! she called out, But with clean feet! At any rate, I saw her going up with bare feet, getting smaller and smaller. That’s how it was. What was I supposed to do? I bent down, picked up the shoes with the socks, and the Agfa box, hung it round my neck, and, with the wind at my back now, made my way to the village, not along the top of the dike but through the opening in the dike and then along the road, straight towards the church tower. And because I didn’t know what to do—Taddel was probably off somewhere with his girl-friend, Jasper was far away in America among the Mormons, and Camilla was in Holstein, campaigning with the old man—I went to the house behind the dike and straight to the darkroom. I wanted to see what was on the roll of film she’d loaded in the camera before she set out, saying to me, I just want to go over the dike for a bit, get some fresh air. It’s so magnificently stormy out. Want to come, Paulchen? Oh, well. Now I could see that the whole roll had been used. I developed it, as she’d taught me. At first I thought I’d really lost my mind or had done something wrong when I was developing the roll. Mariechen must have taken those shots barefoot from above, as she was flying. Eight snapshots, and all of them as sharp as could be. From way up high, then higher and higher, from a totally crazy vantage point.

  So? Could you see the village? The shipyard?

  The old Parish Overseer’s Residence, the cemetery behind it?

  What I saw was the future. Everything under water. The dikes, because they’d been overtopped, were no longer visible. Nothing left of the shipyard. All that was visible of the village was the very tip of the church spire. And of Brokdorf, only the top of a cooling tower. Otherwise nothing but water, with no ships anywhere, no nothing. Not even a raft with a few people clinging to it. You remember that series of photos Mariechen made of us, in which all eight of us—yes, Lena and Nana, you, too—are crouching on a raft, looking shaggy, and gnawing on huge bones and fish skeletons, because she’d transported us back to the Stone Age? That must have been a similar flood, which we survived with a bit of luck. But this time no one had escaped. Or all the people—you could only hope—had got away just in time, before the water rose and rose, and—as we’d experienced up to then only on TV—overtopped the dikes, so the entire marshland, including the Wilster Marsh and the Krempe Marsh, was flooded. It looked utterly desolate, those pictures Marie had snapped at the end. Standing there in her darkroom, I cried. I had to cry because now she was gone, ascended to heaven. Only the shoes remained, and her socks. Paula sniffed at them and then whimpered, because she’d turned back just before Hollerwettern and didn’t grasp what had happened. But maybe I also had to cry because in those last snapshots our future looked so dismal: nothing but water, water everywhere. After that I tidied up the darkroom, because Mariechen always wanted things to be orderly. And I cut up the photos, even the negatives. She would certainly have done the same, muttering, All devil’s handiwork. But I didn’t tell anyone about the ascent and those last photos, not even Camilla, not a word. Actually I don’t believe that it will turn out so badly …

  … or even worse: no water, and everything dried up, turned to desert, nothing but desert.

  Or none of it’s true and Paulchen just dreamed it.

  Just like the ascent.

  But what you see in a dream can still come true …

  You’re catastrophe addicts, all of you.

  … so if we survive at all, then only in Stone Age terms …

  And where’s the box now?

  Come on, Paulchen, what’s become of Mariechen’s box?

  And how about her shoes?

  Who has the box?

  You, maybe?

  Taddel means, what happened to Mariechen’s stuff after she died.

  … or who inherited what, after—let’s just assume it’s true—a powerful gust such as our Paulchen claims to have experienced helped her lift off and fly away …

  … to her Hans in heaven …

  … or in hell.

  That wouldn’t have made a bit of difference to her. The main thing was to be with her Hans.

  Camilla says: Whatever was left of Marie, of her estate, I mean, was seized by the tax people, because she refused to make a will.

  So everything’s gone: the Leica, the Hasselblad, whatever else she had?

  But surely not the box.

  Which in any case was just a piece of junk.

  So tell us, Paulchen, whether you …

  It’s quite all right for you to have it, since you’re a professional photographer, and certainly …

  It really would be okay if you …

  I’m not telling you. No one would believe me anyway.

  You want to bet he’s spirited the box away, maybe hidden it somewhere down in Brazil.

  Is that true, Paulchen?

  Maybe you wanted to use Mariechen’s box to snap pictures of the last Indians remaining in the rain forest, and whatever trees are still standing.

  All right, where is it?

  Right, where is it, damn it.

  Oh, stop it, all of you.

  Paulchen must know why he never breathed a word.

  Everyone has secrets.

  I
don’t tell the rest of you everything, either.

  No one tells everything.

  Least of all our father.

  Besides, there were no more darkroom revelations after Mariechen and her box were gone, and everything became very boring, completely normal.

  So this is a good place to end.

  Yes, this is the end.

  For me in any case, because I have to leave now and get to the hospital. I have night shift, like yesterday. We had five births last night, all of them uncomplicated. Only one of the mothers was German-born. The other four came from all over. I want to take snapshots of the five babies, by the way. I’m going to try to do that after every birth from now on. With a box I picked up at a flea market recently. It wasn’t that cheap, either, but it looks like old Marie’s. It even says Agfa. The mothers will certainly be pleased to have pictures of their infants. It’s good for the memories, but also useful professionally, and maybe it will help show what will become of the babies later, much later.

  Come on, big brother, switch off the microphones, otherwise we’ll go on and on …

  … because our father always wants one more tale …

  … because only he, never we …

  But he has nothing more to say. All grown-up now, the children assume stern expressions. They point their fingers at him. The father is at a loss for words. Loudly and emphatically the daughters and sons exclaim, All fairy tales, fairy tales … True, he murmurs in reply, but it was your fairy tales I let you tell.

  A quick exchange of glances. Partial sentences chewed and swallowed: assertions of love, but also reproaches, stored up over the years. Now the lives portrayed in snapshots are called into question. Now the children have reclaimed their real names. Now the father is shrinking, wants to vanish into thin air. Now the suspicion is voiced in whispers: he, and he alone, was Mariechen’s heir, and has the box stashed away somewhere, like other things: for later, because something is still ticking inside him that has to be worked through, as long as he is still here …

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  Copyright © Günter Grass 2008

  © Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2008

  English translation copyright © Krishna Winston 2010

  Günter Grass has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  First published with the title Die Box by Steidl Verlag, Göttingen in 2008

  First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker in 2010

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library