The Tin Drum d-1

by Günter Grass

  Taking my uncle’s name as a cue, Markus rose to his feet and bowed like a jackknife. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking all along. On account of him you couldn’t do it.”

  It was not yet closing time when we left the shop, but Markus locked up from outside and escorted us to the streetcar stop. Passers-by and a few policemen were still standing outside the theater. But I wasn’t the least bit scared, I had almost forgotten my triumph. Markus bent down close to me and whispered, more to himself than to us: “That little Oskar! He knocks on the drum and hell is breaking loose by the theater.”

  The broken glass had Mama worried and he made gestures that were intended to set her mind at rest. Then the car came and he uttered a last plea as we were climbing into the trailer, in an undertone for fear of being overheard: “Well, if that’s the case, do me a favor and stay by Matzerath what you got him already, don’t bet no more on that Polisher.”

  When today Oskar, lying or sitting in his hospital bed but in either case drumming, revisits Arsenal Passage and the Stockturm with the scribbles on its dungeon walls and its well-oiled instruments of torture, when once again he looks down on those three windows outside the lobby of the Stadt-Theater and thereafter returns to Arsenal Passage and Sigismund Markus’ store, searching for the particulars of a day in September, he cannot help looking for Poland at the same time. How does he look for it? With his drumsticks. Does he also look for Poland with his soul? He looks for it with every organ of his being, but the soul is not an organ.

  I look for the land of the Poles that is lost to the Germans, for the moment at least. Nowadays the Germans have started searching for Poland with credits, Leicas, and compasses, with radar, divining rods, delegations, and moth-eaten provincial students’ associations in costume. Some carry Chopin in their hearts, others thoughts of revenge. Condemning the first four partitions of Poland, they are busily planning a fifth; in the meantime flying to Warsaw via Air France in order to deposit, with appropriate remorse, a wreath on the spot that was once the ghetto. One of these days they will go searching for Poland with rockets. I, meanwhile, conjure up Poland on my drum. And this is what I drum: Poland’s lost, but not forever, all’s lost, but not forever, Poland’s not lost forever.

  The Rostrum

  It was in singing away the lobby windows of our Stadt-Theater that I sought and found my first contact with the Thespian art. Despite Markus’ attentions Mama must have observed my direct tie with the theater that afternoon, for when the Christmas holidays came, she bought four theater tickets, for herself, for Stephan and Marga Bronski, and for Oskar, and the last Sunday of Advent she took us to see the Christmas play. The fancy chandelier over the orchestra did its best to please, and I was glad I hadn’t sung it to pieces.

  Even in those days there were far too many children. In the balcony there were more children than mothers, while the balance was about even in the orchestra frequented by the more prosperous citizens, who were more cautious in their begetting and conceiving. Why can’t children sit still? Marga Bronski, who was sitting between me and the relatively well-behaved Stephan, slid off her seat that promptly folded up, made a stab at climbing back again, but found it more interesting to do gymnastics on the balcony rail, got stuck in her folding seat, and started to scream, though no louder than the other little demons around us and only briefly, because Mama wisely poured candy into her open mouth. Sucking candy and tuckered out by her struggles with her seat, Marga fell asleep soon after the performance began, but had to be awakened after each act to clap, which she did with enthusiasm.

  The play was Tom Thumb, which obviously had a special appeal for me and gripped me from the start. They did it very cleverly. They didn’t show Tom Thumb at all, you only heard his voice and saw the grownups chasing around after him. He was invisible but very active. Here he is sitting in the horse’s ear. Now his father is selling him to two tramps for good money, now he is taking a walk, very high and mighty, on the brim of one of the tramps’ hats. Later he crawls into a mousehole and then into a snail shell. He joins a band of robbers, lies down with them, and along with a mouthful of hay makes his way into the cow’s stomach. But the cow is slaughtered because she speaks with Tom Thumb’s voice. The cow’s stomach, however, with Tom inside it, is thrown out on the dump heap, and gobbled up by the wolf. Tom cleverly persuades the wolf to pillage his father’s storeroom and starts to scream just as the wolf is getting to work. The end was like the fairy tale: The father kills the wicked wolf, the mother cuts open the wolf’s stomach with her scissors, and out comes Tom Thumb, that is, you hear his voice crying: “Oh, father, I’ve been in a mousehole, a cow’s stomach, and a wolf’s stomach: now I’m going to stay home with you.”

  The end touched me, and when I looked up at Mama, I saw that she was hiding her nose in her handkerchief; like me, she had identified herself with the action on the stage. Mama’s feelings were easily stirred, and for the next few weeks, especially for the remainder of the Christmas holidays, she kept hugging and kissing me and, laughing or wistful, calling me Tom Thumb. Or: My little Tom Thumb. Or: My poor, poor Tom Thumb.

  It was not until the summer of ‘33 that I went to the theater again. Because of a misunderstanding on my part, the venture turned out badly, but it was a profound experience that stayed with me. The thundering surge still rings in my ears. No, I am not exaggerating, all this took place at the Zoppot Opera-in-the-Woods, where summer after summer Wagner was poured forth upon nature beneath the night sky.

  It was only Mama who actually cared anything about opera. Even operettas were too much for Matzerath. Jan took his lead from Mama and raved about arias, though despite his musical appearance he was completely tone deaf. However, he was friends with the Formella brothers, former schoolmates at Karthaus High School, who lived at Zoppot, had charge of the floodlights illuminating the lakeside path and the fountain outside the Casino, and also attended to the lighting effects at the Opera-in-the-Woods.

  The way to Zoppot led through Oliva. A morning in the Castle Park. Goldfish and swans. Mama and Jan Bronski in the famous Whispering Grotto. Afterward more goldfish and swans, obviously working hand in glove with a photographer. While the picture was being taken, Matzerath let me ride on his shoulders. I rested my drum on the top of his head, that was always good for a laugh, even later after the picture had been pasted in the album. And then good-by goldfish, good-by swans, good-by Whispering Grotto. Not only in the Castle Park was it Sunday but also outside the gate and in the streetcar bound for Glettkau, and in the Glettkau Casino, where we had lunch, while the Baltic, as though it had nothing else to do, held out an invitation to bathe; everywhere it was Sunday. As we approached Zoppot along the beach promenade, Sunday came out to meet us and Matzerath had to pay admission for the lot of us.

  We bathed at South Beach because it was supposedly less crowded than North Beach. The men undressed in the men’s cabins, Mama took me to a ladies’ cabin where she, who was already beginning to overflow her banks, poured her flesh into a straw-colored bathing suit. I was expected to go naked. To put off my encounter with the thousands of eyes on the beach, I shielded my private parts with my drum and later lay down on my belly in the sand. The waters of the Baltic were inviting but I had no desire to go in, preferring to play the ostrich and shelter my modesty in the sand. Both Matzerath and Jan Bronski looked so ridiculous verging on pathetic with their incipient potbellies that I was glad when, late in the afternoon, we returned to the bath houses and, having anointed our sunburns, slipped back into Sunday civilian dress.

  Coffee and cake at the Seestern. Mama wanted a third helping of the five-story cake. Matzerath was against, Jan was for and against. Mama ordered her cake, gave Matzerath a bite, fed Jan a spoonful, and, having provided for the well-being of her men, crammed the rest of the buttery-sweet wedge into her stomach, spoonful by spoonful.

  O sacred butter cream, O clear to slightly cloudy Sunday afternoon dusted with powdered sugar! Polish nobles sat behi
nd blue sunglasses and intense soft drinks that they did not touch. The ladies played with their violet fingernails and the sea breeze wafted over to us the mothflake smell of the fur capes they rented for the season. Matzerath thought the fur capes were idiotic. Mama would have loved to rent one, if only for a single afternoon. Jan maintained that the boredom of the Polish nobility had risen to such heights that despite mounting debts they had stopped speaking French and out of sheer snobbery taken to conversing in the most ordinary Polish.

  We couldn’t sit forever at the Seestern, studying the blue sunglasses and violet fingernails of the Polish nobility. Replete with cake, my mama needed exercise. We repaired to the Casino Park, where I had to ride a donkey and pose for another picture. Goldfish and swans—what nature won’t think of next—and more goldfish and swans, what else is fresh water good for?

  Amid clipped yew trees which, however, did not whisper as they are supposed to, we met the Formella Brothers, illuminators of the casino grounds and of the Opera-in-the-Woods. First the younger Formella had to reel off all the jokes that came his way in the course of his illuminating professional activities. The elder Formella brother knew all the jokes by heart but brotherly love made him laugh contagiously at the right places, showing one more gold tooth than his younger brother, who had only three. We went to Springer’s for a drop of gin, though Mama would have preferred the Kurfürst. Then, still dealing out jokes from an inexhaustible stock, the generous younger brother invited us all to dinner at the Papagei. At the Papagei we met Tuschel, who owned half of Zoppot, a share in the Opera-in-the-Woods, and five movie theaters. He was also the Formella brothers’ boss and was glad to make our acquaintance, just as we were glad to make his. Tuschel kept twisting a ring on his finger, but it couldn’t have been a wishing ring or a magic ring, for nothing happened at all, except that Tuschel in turn began telling jokes, the same Formella jokes we had heard before, though he made them more complicated because he had fewer gold teeth. Even so, the whole table laughed, because Tuschel was doing the telling. I alone remained solemn, trying to puncture his punch lines with the straightness of my face. Ah, how those salvos of laughter, like the bull’s-eye panes in the partition of our dining corner, fostered well-being, even if they were not genuine. Tuschel was visibly grateful, told a few more, ordered Goldwasser, and suddenly, floating in laughter and Goldwasser, turned his ring around a different way. This time something happened. Tuschel invited us all to the Opera-in-the-Woods; unfortunately he couldn’t attend, an appointment and that kind of thing, but would we kindly accept his seats, they were in a loge with upholstered seats, the little fellow could sleep if he was tired; and with a silver mechanical pencil he wrote a few words in Tuschel’s hand on Tuschel’s visiting card; it would open all doors, he said—and so it did.

  What happened next can be related in a few words: A balmy summer evening, the Opera-in-the-Woods was sold out, full of foreigners. Even before it started, the mosquitoes were on hand. And only when the last mosquito, which always comes a little late, just to be chic, announced its arrival with a bloodthirsty buzzing, did the performance really get under way. It was The Flying Dutchman. A ship, looking more like a poacher than a pirate, drifted in from the woods that had given the Opera-in-the-Woods its name. Sailors began to sing at the trees. I fell asleep on Tuschel’s upholstery, and when I woke up, the sailors were still singing, or maybe they were different sailors: Helmsman, keep watch… but Oskar fell asleep once more, happy even in dozing off that Mama, gliding with the waves and hearing in the true Wagnerian spirit, was taking so much interest in the Dutchman. She failed to notice that Matzerath and her Jan had covered their faces with their hands and were sawing logs of different thicknesses and that I too kept slipping through Wagner’s fingers. Then suddenly Oskar awoke for good, because a woman was standing all alone in the forest, screaming for all she was worth. She had yellow hair and she was yelling because a spotlight, probably manipulated by the younger Formelia, was blinding her. “No!” she cried. “Woe’s me!” and: “Who hath made me suffer so?” But Formelia, who was making her suffer, didn’t divert the spotlight. The screams of the solitary woman—Mama referred to her afterward as a soloist—subsided to a muffled whimper, but only to rise again in a silvery bubbling fountain of high notes which blighted the leaves of the trees before their time but had no effect at all on Formella’s spotlight. A brilliant voice, but its efforts were of no avail. It was time for Oskar to intervene, to locate that importunate source of light and, with a single long-distance cry, lower-pitched than the persistent buzzing of the mosquitoes, destroy it.

  It was not my plan to create a short circuit, darkness, flying sparks, or a forest fire which, though quickly put out, provoked a panic. I had nothing to gain. Not only did I lose my mama and the two roughly awakened gentlemen in the confusion; even my drum got lost.

  This third of my encounters with the theater gave my mama, who had begun, after that evening at the Opera-in-the-Woods, to domesticate Wagner in easy arrangements on our piano, the idea of taking me to the circus. It was put into effect in the spring of ‘34—Oskar has no intention of chewing your ear off about trapeze artists darting through the air like streaks of silver, about ferocious tigers or the incredible dexterity of the seals. No one fell headlong from the dome. Nothing was bitten off any of the animal-tamers. And the seals did just what they had been taught: they juggled with balls and were rewarded with live herring which they caught in mid-air. I am indebted to the circus for many happy hours and for my meeting, which was to prove so important in my life, with Bebra, the musical clown, who played “Jimmy the Tiger” on bottles and directed a group of Lilliputians.

  We met in the menagerie. Mama and her two cavaliers were letting the monkeys make monkeys of them. Hedwig Bronski, who for once had come along, was showing her children the ponies. After a lion had yawned at me, I foolishly became involved with an owl. I tried to stare him down, but it was the owl that stared me down. Oskar crept away dismayed, with burning ears and a feeling of inner hurt, taking refuge between two blue and white trailers, because apart from a few tied-up dwarf goats, there were no animals here.

  He was in suspenders and slippers, carrying a pail of water. Our eyes met as he was passing and there was instant recognition. He set down his pail, leaned his great head to one side, and came toward me. I guessed that he must be about four inches taller than I.

  “Will you take a look at that! “ There was a note of envy in his rasping voice. “Nowadays it’s the three-year-olds that decide to stop growing.” When I failed to answer, he tried again: “My name is Bebra, directly descended from Prince Eugene, whose father was Louis XIV and not some Savoyard as they claim.” Still I said nothing, but he continued: “On my tenth birthday I made myself stop growing. Better late than never.”

  Since he had spoken so frankly, I too introduced myself, but without any nonsense about my family tree. I was just Oskar.

  “Well, my dear Oskar, you must be fourteen or fifteen. Maybe as much as sixteen. What, only nine and a half? You don’t mean it?”

  It was my turn to guess his age. I purposely aimed too low.

  “You’re a flatterer, my young friend. Thirty-five, that was once upon a time. In August I shall be celebrating my fifty-third birthday. I could be your grandfather.”

  Oskar said a few nice things about his acrobatic clown act and complimented him on his gift for music. That aroused my ambition and I performed a little trick of my own. Three light bulbs were the first to be taken in. Bravo, bravissimo, Mr. Bebra cried, and wanted to hire Oskar on the spot.

  Even today I am occasionally sorry that I declined. I talked myself out of it, saying: “You know, Mr. Bebra, I prefer to regard myself as a member of the audience. I cultivate my little art in secret, far from all applause. But it gives me pleasure to applaud your accomplishments.” Mr. Bebra raised a wrinkled forefinger and admonished me: “My dear Oskar, believe an experienced colleague. Our kind has no place in the audience. We must perform, we must
run the show. If we don’t, it’s the others that run us. And they don’t do it with kid gloves.”

  His eyes became as old as the hills and he almost crawled into my ear. “They are coming,” he whispered. “They will take over the meadows where we pitch our tents. They will organize torchlight parades. They will build rostrums and fill them, and down from the rostrums they will preach our destruction. Take care, young man. Always take care to be sitting on the rostrum and never to be standing out in front of it.”

  Hearing my name called, Mr. Bebra took up his pail. “They are looking for you, my friend. We shall meet again. We are too little to lose each other. Bebra always says: Little people like us can always find a place even on the most crowded rostrum. And if not on it, then under it, but never out in front. So says Bebra, who is descended in a straight line from Prince Eugene.”

  Calling Oskar, Mama stepped out from behind a trailer just in time to see Mr. Bebra kiss me on the forehead. Then he picked up his pail of water and, swaying his shoulders, headed for his trailer.

  Mama was furious. “Can you imagine,” she said to Matzerath and the Bronskis. “He was with the midgets. And a gnome kissed him on the forehead. I hope it doesn’t mean anything.”

  To me that kiss on the forehead was to mean a good deal. The political events of the ensuing years bore him out: the era of torchlight processions and parades past rostrums and reviewing stands had begun.

  I took Mr. Bebra’s advice, and Mama, for her part, followed a part of the advice Sigismund Markus had given her in Arsenal Passage and continued to repeat every Thursday. Though she did not go to London with Markus—I should not have had much objection to the move—she stayed with Matzerath and saw Bronski only in moderation, that is, in Tischlergasse at Jan’s expense and over the family skat games, which became more and more costly for Jan, because he always lost. Matzerath, however, on whom Mama had bet, on whom, following Markus’ advice, she let her stakes lie though she did not double them, joined the Party in ‘34. But though he espoused the forces of order at a relatively early date, he never attained any higher position than unit leader. Like all unusual happenings, his promotion was the occasion for a family skat game. It was then that Matzerath introduced a new note of severity mingled with alarm into the warnings he had long been meting out to Jan Bronski on the subject of his activity in the Polish Post Office.