by Günter Grass
What more shall I say: born under light bulbs, deliberately stopped growing at age of three, given drum, sang glass to pieces, smelled vanilla, coughed in churches, observed ants, decided to grow, buried drum, emigrated to the West, lost the East, learned stonecutter’s trade, worked as model, started drumming again, visited concrete, made money, kept finger, gave finger away, fled laughing, rode up escalator, arrested, convicted, sent to mental hospital, soon to be acquitted, celebrating this day my thirtieth birthday and still afraid of the Black Witch.
I threw away my cigarette. It fell in one of the grooves in the escalator step. After riding upward for some distance at an angle of forty-five degrees, he traveled three more steps on the horizontal; then he let the brazen detective lovers and the detective grandmother push him off the escalator onto a stationary platform. When the gentlemen from the Interpol had introduced themselves and called him Matzerath, he replied, in obedience to his escalator idea, first in German: “Ich bin Jesus,” then, aware that these were international agents, in French, and finally in English: “I am Jesus.”
Nevertheless, I was arrested under the name of Oskar Matzerath. Offering no resistance, I put myself under the protection and, since it was raining on the Avenue d’Italic, the umbrellas, of the Interpol men. But I was still afraid. Several times I looked I anxiously around and several times, here and there—yes, that is one of her talents—I saw the terribly placid countenance of the Black Witch among the passers-by on the avenue and then in the crowd that gathered round the paddy wagon.
I am running out of words, and still I cannot help wondering what Oskar is going to do after his inevitable discharge from the mental hospital. Marry? Stay single? Emigrate? Model? Buy a stone quarry? Gather disciples? Found a sect?
All the possibilities that are open nowadays to a man of thirty must be examined, but how examine them if not with my drum? And so I will drum out the little ditty which has become more and more real to me, more and more terrifying; I shall call in the Black Witch and consult her, and then tomorrow morning I shall be able to tell Bruno my keeper what mode of existence the thirty-year-old Oskar is planning to carry on in the shadow of a buggaboo which, though getting blacker and blacker, is the same old friend that used to frighten me on the cellar stairs, that said boo in the coal cellar, so I couldn’t help laughing, but it was there just the same, talking with fingers, coughing through the keyhole, moaning in the stove, squeaking in tune with the door, smoking up from chimneys when the ships were blowing their foghorns, when a fly buzzed for hours as it died between the double windows, or when eels clamored for Mama and my poor mama for eels, and when the sun sank behind Tower Mountain but lived on as pure sunlit amber. Whom was Herbert after when he assaulted the wooden statue? And behind the high altar—what would Catholicism be without the Witch who blackens every confessional with her shadow? It was her shadow that fell when Sigismund Markus’ toys were smashed to bits. The brats in the court of our building, Axel Mischke and Nuchi Eyke, Susi Kater and Hänschen Kollin, they knew: For what did they sing as they cooked their brick-meal soup: “Where’s the Witch, black as pitch? Here’s the black wicked Witch. Ha, ha, ha! You’re to blame. And you are too, You’re most to blame. You! you! you! Where’s the Witch, black as pitch?…” She had always been there, even in the woodruff fizz powder, bubbling so green and innocent; she was in clothes cupboards, in every clothes cupboard I ever sat in; later on, she borrowed Lucy Rennwand’s triangular fox face, ate sausage sandwiches skins and all and sent the Dusters up on the diving tower: Oskar alone remained, he watched the ants, and he knew: it’s her shadow that has multiplied and is following the sweetness. All words: blessed, sorrowful, full of grace, virgin of virgins … and all stones: basalt, tufa, diorite, nests in the shell lime, alabaster so soft … and all the shattered glass, glass transparent, glass blown to hair-thinness … and all the groceries, all the flour and sugar in blue pound and half-pound bags. Later on four tomcats, one of whom was called Bismarck, the wall that had to be freshly whitewashed, the Poles in the exaltation of death, the special communiqués, who sank what when, potatoes tumbling down from the scales, boxes tapered at the foot end, cemeteries I stood in, flags I knelt on, coconut fibers I lay on… the puppies mixed in the concrete, the onion juice that draws tears, the ring on the finger and the cow that licked me… Don’t ask Oskar who she is! Words fail me. First she was behind me, later she kissed my hump, but now, now and forever, she is in front of me, coming closer.
Always somewhere behind me, the Black Witch.
Now ahead of me, too, facing me. Black.
Black words, black coat, black money.
But if children sing, they sing no longer:
Where’s the Witch, black as pitch?
Here’s the black, wicked Witch.
Ha! ha! ha!
Glossary
Bollermann and Wullsutski: popular characters, symbolizing German and Polish elements, frequent in Danzig jokes or stories.
Burckhardt, Carl Jacob: Swiss diplomat and historian who served as League of Nations High Commissioner of Danzig, 1937-1959.
Cold Storage Medal: the colloquial name given to the medal for service in the German army on the arctic front.
Currency Reform: the West German monetary policy established in 1948. The introduction of the Deutsche mark to replace the inflated reichsmark had a highly beneficial psychological effect on German businessmen and is considered the turning point in the postwar reconstruction and economic development of West Germany.
Draussen vor der Tür: a drama by Wolfgang Borchert describing the hopeless situation of the returning prisoner of war after World War II.
Edelweiss Pirates of Cologne: the most notorious of the armed bands of youths which appeared in Germany toward the end of World War II.
Forster, Albert: Gauleiter, or Nazi district leader, of Danzig from 1930. On September 1, 1939, Forster declared the Free City Treaty provisions null and void, suspended the constitution, and proclaimed the annexation of Danzig to the German Reich with himself as sole administrator.
Frings, Joseph Cardinal: Cardinal of Cologne, today the official leader of all German Catholics.
Greiser, Arthur: President of the Danzig Senate from 1934 who signed a treaty with the Nazis regularizing Polish-Danzig relations. After World War II he was condemned to death in Poland as a war criminal.
Hartmannsweilerkopf: Vosges Mountain peak fiercely contested by the French and the Germans in World War I.
Hitler Youth Quex and SA-Mann Brand: leading characters in popular books and propaganda films who represent ideal members of the Hitler Youth and the SA and who become martyrs for the Nazi cause. Quex, for example, is murdered by Communists. On his deathbed he converts his father, who is a Communist, to National Socialism.
Jan Wellem: popular name for the elector palatine Johann Wilhelm (1679-1716), whose monument still stands today in Düsseldorf.
July 20th conspirators: a group, led by high-ranking German generals, who made an attempt on Hitler’s life in 1944.
Kashubes: a Germanized West Slavic people living in the northwestern part of the earlier province of West Prussia and in northeastern Pomerania. Until 1945, some 150,000 people spoke Kashubian as their mother tongue. The language forms a transitional dialect between Polish and West Pomeranian.
Kasperl: a popular puppet character, similar to Punch.
Käthe-Kruse dolls: individually designed, handmade cloth dolls from the workshop of Käthe Kruse, one-time actress.
Kyfhäuser Bund: a right-wing, monarchist, ex-serviceman’s association of a paramilitary nature founded in 1900. Its merger with other servicemen’s groups after World War I resulted in a combined membership of over four million.
Matka Boska Czestokowa: an icon representing the Virgin Mother which hangs in a monastery church in Czestokowa and is traditionally believed to have been painted by St. Luke. Its miraculous power is said to be responsible for the lifting of a Swedish siege in the seventeenth century. One of the most fam
ous religious and national shrines in Poland; still visited anually by throngs of pilgrims.
Niemoller, Pastor Martin: a Protestant clergyman and the leading figure in the anti-Nazi Confessional Church who spent seven years in a concentration camp.
Organisation Todt: the organization directed by engineer Fritz Todt which conscripted forced labor—often children—for construction work, notably on the fortification of the West Wall in 1938 and the Atlantic Wall in 1940.
Pan Kichot: Polish for Don Quixote.
pay book: unlike American soldiers, who carry no identification but their dogtags, the German soldiers carried a booklet containing full information as to their vital statistics, military history, and pay.
Poland is not yet lost, etc.: in reference to the Polish national anthem (Jeszcze Polska Nie Zginela ).
Rauschning, Hermann: President of the Danzig Senate 1933-1934. Rauschning ended his association with Hitler and the National Socialists in 1934 when he became opposed to the policies of the Danzig Gauleiter Forster. He fled from Germany in 1936 and subsequently wrote several books criticizing the Nazi regime.
Rentenmark: the temporary currency established in 1923 to stabilize money during the inflationary period in Germany following World War I.
Sauerbruch, Professor Ferdinand: a famous German surgeon (1875-1951).
Speicherinsel: an island formed by the Mottlau River in the middle of Danzig, so-called because of its famous half-timbered grain warehouses.
Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude): a Nazi organization which provided regimented leisure for members of the German working class. It provided theaters, sports, travel, and vacation opportunities at reduced prices. No organized social or recreational group was allowed to function in Germany except under the control of this official, all-embracing organization.
S ütterlin script: the standard German script developed by Ludwig Sütterlin and taught in schools from 1915 to 1945.
Winter Aid (Winterhilfe): the major Nazi charity, set up under the slogan “War on Hunger and Cold,” to which the German people made compulsory contributions.
ZOB: Zydowska Organizaqa Bojowa, or Jewish Combat Organization, an underground movement formed in the ghetto in 1942-1943.
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