by Günter Grass
At first Oskar, too, tried to pray for some of the dead, but while praying to the Lord for his Roswitha, while trying to negotiate peace for her and admission to heavenly joys, he so lost himself in earthly details that in the end peace and heavenly joys settled down in a Paris hotel. Accordingly, I took refuge in the Preface, because here there is nothing much to pin you down; for all eternity I said, sursum corda, dignum et justum —it is just and right. Then I let well enough alone and took to watching Maria from the side.
Catholic prayer was becoming to her. She was pretty as a picture in her devotions. Prayer lengthens the lashes, lifts the eyebrows, inflames the cheeks, makes the forehead grave, lends suppleness to the neck, and makes the nostrils quiver. Maria’s features, flowering in sorrow, almost beguiled me into a display of affection. But one must not disturb those who are praying, one must neither seduce them nor let oneself be seduced by them, even if it is pleasant for those who pray and conducive to prayer, to know that someone considers them worth watching. Oskar slipped off the smooth bench and fled from Maria. My hands, under my smock, were still quietly folded over my drum, as we, my drum and I, made our way over the flags, past the stations of the Cross in the left aisle of the nave; we did not stop with St. Anthony—pray for us!—for we had lost neither a purse nor a house key, nor with St. Adalbert of Prague who was slain by the heathen Prussians. We did not halt until, hopping from flag to flag as over a checkerboard, we reached the carpeted steps to the left side-altar.
You will not doubt my word when I tell you that nothing had changed in the Neo-Gothic brick Church of the Sacred Heart or, a fortiori, on the left side-altar. The boy Jesus still sat pink and naked on the Virgin’s pink thigh—I shall not call her the Virgin Mary for fear of confusion with my Mary, my Maria, then busy with her conversion. Young John the Baptist, scantily clad in the same old shaggy, chocolate-colored pelt, was still pressing against the Virgin’s right knee. She herself was still pointing her left forefinger at Jesus, but looking at John.
Yet even after years of absence, Oskar was less interested in the Virgin’s maternal pride than in the constitutions of the two boys. Jesus was about the size of my son Kurt on his third birthday, in other words, he was about an inch taller than Oskar. John, who according to the documents was older than the Nazarene, was my size. But both of them had the same precocious expression as I, the eternal three-year-old. Nothing had changed. They had had that same sly look on their faces years before, in the days when I had frequented the Church of the Sacred Heart with my poor mama.
Climbing the carpeted steps, though without saying the Introit, I examined every fold in the drapery; slowly, carefully, I explored the painted plaster exterior of those two little nudists with my drumstick, which had more feeling than all my fingers together; omitting nothing, I covered the thighs, the bellies, the arms, taking in every crease and dimple. Jesus was the spit and image of Oskar, my healthy-flesh, my strong, rather plump knees, my short but muscular drummer’s arms. And the little rascal’s posture was that of a drummer too. He sat on the Virgin’s thigh, arms and fists upraised as though he were planning to beat a drum, as though Jesus, not Oskar, were the drummer, as though he were just waiting for my drum, as though this time he seriously intended to imprint some charming rhythm on the drum for the benefit of the Virgin, John and myself. I did what I had done years before; I removed the drum from my belly and put Jesus to the test. Cautiously, careful not to harm the painted plaster, I set Oskar’s red and white drum on his pink thighs. This time, however, I was driven by sheer malice, I had lost my idiotic faith in miracles, all I wanted was to show him up. For though he sat there with upraised fists, though he had my dimensions and rugged build, though he was a plaster copy of the three-year-old that I—by dint of what effort, what privations!—had remained, he could not drum, he could only give himself an air of knowing how to drum. If I had one, I could do it, he seemed to be thinking; ha-ha, I said, now you’ve got one, what are you going to do? Shaking with laughter, I pressed both sticks into his little sausage fingers, ten of them—sweet little plaster Jesus, go on and drum! Oskar steps back, descends three steps; he leaves the carpet for the flags, go on and drum, little boy Jesus. Oskar takes a long step backward for detachment. Oskar begins to laugh himself sick, because all Jesus can do is sit there, unable to drum, though maybe he’d like to. Boredom is beginning to gnaw at me as a mouse gnaws at a side of bacon when—I’m damned if he doesn’t begin to drum.
While round us nothing stirred, he started in with his right stick, then a tap or two with the left, then both together. Blessed if he isn’t crossing his sticks, say, that roll wasn’t bad. He was very much in earnest and there was plenty of variety in his playing. He did some very complicated things but his simple rhythms were just as successful. There was nothing phony about his playing, he steered clear of gimmicks and just played the drum. His style wasn’t even religious, and there was no military vulgarity about it. He was a musician through and through, but no snob. He knew all the hits. He played “Everything Passes,” which everyone was singing at the time, and, of course, “Lili Marlene.” Slowly, a little jerkily perhaps, he turned his curly head with the blue Bronski eyes toward me, smiled, rather arrogantly it seemed to me, and proceeded to weave Oskar’s favorites into a potpourri: it began with “Smash a Little Windowpane” and there was a bare suggestion of “The Schedule”; just like me, the little scoundrel played off Rasputin against Goethe; he climbed up the Stockturm with me, crawled under the rostrum with me, caught eels on the breakwater, walked with me behind the coffin, tapered at the foot end, of my poor mama, and, what flabbergasted me most of all, took refuge again and again beneath the four skirts of my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek.
Oskar stepped closer. Something drew him forward. He wanted to be on the carpet, he didn’t want to stand on the flags any more. One stair sent him up the next. I climbed up, though I would rather have had him climb down. “Jesus,” I said, summoning up what little voice was left me, “that wasn’t our bargain. Give me back my drum this minute. You’ve got your cross, that should do you.” He stopped playing, but gently, without abruptness, crossed the sticks over the drum with exaggerated care, and without a word of discussion returned what Oskar had unthinkingly lent him.
I was on the point of racing down the steps without thanks, of running away from Catholicism as fast as my legs would carry me, when a pleasant though imperious voice touched my shoulder: “Dost thou love me, Oskar?” Without turning, I replied: “Not that I know of.” Whereupon he, without raising his voice: “Dost thou love rne, Oskar?” This time my tone was more biting: “Sorry, old man, I’m afraid not.” For the third time he came at me with that irritating voice of his: “Oskar, dost thou love me?” I turned around and looked him full in the face: “You bastard, I hate you, you and all your hocus-pocus.”
Strange to say, my hostility, far from getting him down, was his occasion to triumph. Raising his forefinger like a lady schoolteacher, he gave me an assignment: “Thou art Oskar, the rock, and on this rock I will build my Church. Follow thou me!”
You can imagine my indignation. I had gooseflesh with rage. I broke off one of his plaster toes, but he didn’t budge. “Say that again,” Oskar hissed, “and I’ll scratch the paint off you.”
After that, not a single word came forth; what came, as always, was the old man who is forever shuffling about all the churches in the world. He cast a glance at the left side-altar but failed to see me, and shuffled on. He had already reached St. Adalbert of Prague when I stumbled down the steps, passed from the carpet to the flags, and, without looking back, crossed the checkerboard pattern to Maria, who just then crossed herself correctly in accordance with my instructions.
I took her by the hand and led her to the holy water font; just before the door, I bade her cross herself again in the direction of the high altar, but I did not join in, and when she wanted to genuflect, I pulled her out into the sunlight.
It was late in the afternoon. The Ukrainian w
omen were gone from the railroad tracks. In their place, a freight train was being shunted about, not far from Langfuhr Station. Clusters of gnats hung in mid-air. From overhead came the sound of bells, mingling with the railroad noises. The gnats still hung in clusters. Maria’s face was wet with tears. Oskar would have liked to scream. What was I going to do about Jesus? I felt like loading my voice. What had I to do with his Cross? But I was perfectly well aware that my voice was powerless against the windows of his church. Let him go on building his temple on people called Peter. “Watch out, Oskar, leave those church windows alone,” Satan whispered within me. “One of these days that fellow’s going to ruin your voice.” I cast one solitary glance upward, took the measure of one of those Neo-Gothic windows, and wrenched myself away. I did not sing, I did not follow Him, I just trotted along by Maria’s side to the underpass in Bahnhofstrasse. Through the oozing, dripping tunnel, up the hill to Kleinhammer-Park, right turn into Marienstrasse, past Wohlgemuth’s butcher shop, left turn into Elsenstrasse, across the Striessbach to the Neuer Markt, where they were building a water tank for the air-raid defense. Labesweg was endless, but then we were home. Leaving Maria, Oskar climbed over a hundred steps to the attic. Bed sheets had been hung up to dry; behind the bed sheets a mound of air-defense sand; behind sand and buckets, behind bundles of newspaper and piles of roofing tiles, were secreted my book and my supply of drums. But there was also a shoe box containing several burned-out, but still pear-shaped light bulbs. Oskar selected one and sang it to pieces; he took another, turned it to pulverized glass, cut a third neatly in two. Upon a fourth his voice inscribed JESUS in Sütterlin script, then pulverized both bulb and inscription. He wanted to do it again, but there were no more bulbs. Exhausted, I sank down on the air-defense sand: Oskar still had his voice. Maybe Jesus had a disciple. As for me, my first disciples were to be the Dusters.
The Dusters
Oskar was not cut out to be a follower of Christ; for one thing, he has no aptitude for enlisting disciples. Nevertheless Christ’s “follow thou me” found its way indirectly, circuitously, to my heart and I became his follower though I did not believe in him. But, as they say, he who doubts, believes, and it is the unbeliever who believes longest. Jesus had treated me to a little private miracle in the Church of the Sacred Heart and I was unable to stifle that miracle under my doubts; quite on the contrary, I did all I could to make Jesus put on a repeat performance.
After that Oskar returned to Sacred Heart a number of times without Maria. It was not very difficult to slip away from Mother Truczinski, who was glued to her chair. What had Jesus to offer me? Why did I spend half the night in the left-hand aisle of the nave and let the sacristan lock me in? Why did Oskar stand at the left side-altar until his limbs congealed and his ears were frozen stiff? For with all my crushing humility and no less crushing blasphemies, I never got to hear either my drum or Jesus’ voice again.
Miserere. Never in all my life have I heard my teeth chatter as they did in those midnight hours in Sacred Heart. What jester could ever have found a better rattle than Oskar? I sounded like a machine-gun nest, I had a bevy of typists between my upper and lower jaws. My teeth chattered in all directions, calling forth echoes and applause. Pillars shivered, arches had gooseflesh, and when my teeth weren’t chattering, I coughed. My cough hopped over the checkerboard pattern of the flags, down the transept, up the nave, hoisted itself into the choir. Multiplied by sixty, it organized a Bach society that did not sing but specialized in coughing, and just as I was beginning to think that Oskar’s cough had crawled away into the organ pipes and wouldn’t be heard again until the Sunday chorale, a cough rang out in the sacristy, and another from the pulpit, until at length the cough died down, coughed out its soul behind the high altar, not far from the Athlete on the Cross. It is accomplished, said my cough; but nothing was accomplished. The boy Jesus sat there stiff and proud, holding my drumsticks and my drum, but drum he would not, he refused to confirm my mission. For Oskar wanted to have it in writing.
A sorry habit has remained with me from that period. Whenever I visit a church or even a famous cathedral I begin to cough. Even if I am in the best of health. The moment I set foot inside, I embark on a sustained cough which takes on a Gothic, Romanesque, perhaps even a Baroque character according to the style of the church. I feel certain that years hence I shall still be able to give you a drum rendition of Oskar’s cough in the Cathedral of Ulm, or of Speyer for that matter. At that time, however, in the days when I was suffering the effects of the most glacial Catholicism in mid-August, there was no opportunity to visit churches in distant lands, unless you happened to be a soldier participating in the planned withdrawals of the Reichswehr, noting perhaps in your diary: “Evacuated Orvieto today; wonderful church, must come back with Monica after the war and look at it properly.”
It was easy for me to become a churchgoer, for there was nothing to keep me at home. There was Maria. But Maria had Matzerath. There was my son Kurt. But he was getting more and more insufferable, throwing sand in my eyes and clawing me so ferociously that his fingernails broke off in my parental flesh. Moreover, my son showed me a pair of fists with knuckles so white that the mere sight of them sent the blood gushing from my nose.
Strange to say, Matzerath defended me, awkwardly perhaps but not without tenderness. In his surprise, Oskar would allow this man, who had never meant a thing to him, to pick him up on his lap, hug him, gaze at him, and once even to kiss him. With tears in his eyes Matzerath had said, more to himself than to Maria: “It’s impossible. I can’t send my own son away. The doctors can say what they like. They don’t stop to think. I bet they have no children of their own.”
Maria, who was sitting at the table, pasting food stamps in ledgers as she did every evening, looked up: “Take it easy, Alfred. You talk as if I didn’t care. But when they say it’s the modern way to do, I don’t know what to think.”
Matzerath pointed at the piano, which had produced no music since the death of my poor mama: “Agnes would never have done that, she’d never have allowed it.”
Maria cast a glance at the piano, shrugged her shoulders, and let them drop back into place only when she opened her mouth to speak. “Of course not, she was his mother, she kept hoping he’d get better. But you see how it is: nothing has happened, he’s always being pushed around, he don’t know how to live and he don’t know how to die.”
Was it the likeness of Beethoven, who still hung over the piano, glumly mustering the glum Hitler, who gave Matzerath the strength? “No,” he shouted. “Never!” and banged his fist on the table and its damp sticky papers. He asked Maria to hand him the letter from the institution, he read it and read it again, then tore it up and scattered the scraps among the bread stamps, fat stamps, food stamps, travel stamps, heavy-labor stamps, extra-heavy-labor stamps, and the stamps for pregnant women and nursing mothers. Though, thanks to Matzerath, Oskar never fell into the hands of those doctors, he beheld a vision, and to this day, whenever he lays eyes on Maria, he beholds a vision of a beautiful clinic situated in the mountain air, of a light, airy, friendly, and modern operating room; outside its padded door, Maria, shy but smiling, hands me over confidently, to a group of first-class physicians, who are smiling too and ever so confidence-inspiring, and holding first-class, confidence-inspiring and immediately effective syringes behind their white, sterile aprons.
The whole world had forsaken me and it was only the shadow of my poor mama, falling across Matzerath’s fingers and paralyzing them whenever he thought of signing the authorization form drawn up by the Ministry of Public Health, that kept me alive.
Oskar would not like to seem ungrateful. I still had my drum. I still had my voice, which is of no use to you now that you have heard all about my triumphs with glass and is probably beginning to bore the lovers of novelty among you—but to me Oskar’s voice, even more than his drum, was proof of my existence and as such forever new; for as long as I sang glass to pieces, I existed.
In tha
t period, Oskar sang a good deal. He sang with an energy born of desperation. Every time I left the Church of the Sacred Heart at a late hour, I sang something to pieces. I did not go looking for targets of particular interest. On my way home, I would select an attic window that hadn’t been properly blacked out or a street lamp painted regulation blue. Each time I went to church, I chose a different way home. One evening Oskar would take Anton-Möller-Weg and Marienstrasse. Another, he would pass by the Conradinum and shatter the glass in the main entrance. One day toward the end of August, I reached the church too late and found the door locked. Wishing to walk off my fury, I picked a particularly circuitous way home. I started off on Bahnhofstrasse, where I demolished every third street lamp, passed the Film-Palast and turned right into Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. I ignored the windows of the infantry barracks, but vented my rage on an almost empty streetcar coming toward me from Oliva, stripping one side of it of all its lugubrious blackout glass.
Brakes screeched, the car stopped, the people got out, cursed a while, and got back in again. A triumph, if you will, but Oskar gave it little thought. He started off in search of a dessert for his rage, a tasty morsel in that period so poor in tasty morsels, and did not stop until, approaching Langfuhr, he saw the Baltic Chocolate Factory spread out in the moonlight between Berendt’s carpentry shop and the spacious hangars of the airfield.
By this time, however, my rage had lost some of its intensity. Instead of introducing myself to the factory at once, I took my time and counted the moonlit windows. That done, I was just about ready to introduce myself, but first wanted to find out what the youngsters who had been following me from Hoch-striess, and perhaps all the way from Bahnhofstrasse, were up to. Six or seven of them were standing by the shelter at the nearby streetcar stop, and I could make out five more behind the trees on the avenue.
