The Call of the Toad

by Günter Grass

  Daily association with the astronomical clock may have made the otherwise down-to-earth gildress reflective, for in her first March letter she writes: “We must move. Or time runs out. Not only because Germans soon unite and will not want to think about cemetery, but because also general shortage. I mean time shortage, same as meat shortage and sugar shortage used to be. Now in stores there is too much, only too expensive, because money is short. Time runs out if we do not move …”

  This was in line with Reschke’s own fears, though he was less concerned about the passage of time than about the weather. “On January 25, the first storm, coming from England across Belgium and northern France, caused considerable damage. There were fatalities. And this storm was followed by five more, which created a hopeless chaos in our already ailing forests. Fear is widespread. In Düsseldorf and elsewhere, the Monday carnival procession had to be called off; that never happened before. To make matters worse, the weather is mild between storms, too mild for February. We haven’t had a normal winter for years. Since the middle of the month, crocuses and other flowers have been blooming in front gardens and parks. Take my word for it, Alexandra, I’m not alone in worrying about the present climatic changes; in spite of the caution that science imposes on us all, a number of university colleagues working in this field regard the so-called greenhouse effect as the cause of the violent storms we have been having. I’m sending you under separate cover some articles on the subject, because I don’t know whether or to what extent your newspapers report on changes in climate. Here, in any case, we fear the worst, but I suspect that you have other worries …”

  Reschke and the university. Perhaps I should try to give a more rounded picture of my former classmate than can be pieced together from his letters. Some information comes from the material he left with me. Other information I have gathered through inquiries. I vaguely remember our shared schooldays. Two Hitler Youths on the same school bench but not in the same troop, parading in columns at morning festivities or in front of the rostrum on the Maiwiese, as the Small Drillground beside the stadium came to be called …

  He studied in Heidelberg and took his degree in Hamburg, where his father, soon after fleeing, found work in the post office. Alexander Reschke got tenure late, at the age of forty. That was at the Ruhr University in Bochum. The political changes in the late sixties may have helped; quite a few assistants, instructors, and chairless professors managed to wangle careers at that time. In any case, his ideas—on university reform, on student participation in decision making, and particularly on the interpretation of art history—were timely and not devoid of radicalism. He called for the study of the workaday world as reflected in the industrial as well as the fine arts. His doctoral dissertation on memorial slabs reads like a draft of his later theses. Burial customs and the social distinctions revealed by them are treated at length: the gradient between the paupers’ cemetery and the burial vault of princes.

  But Reschke was only moderately radical. As a faculty member and as an individual in the sit-ins common at the time, he opposed the formulating of excessively revolutionary aims. After a certain amount of to and fro, which for a while brought him close to a Communist splinter group, he adopted a left-liberal position which in the course of two decades underwent some change but remained recognizable. He was not the only one to justify his inconsistency by the well-known adage that life goes on.

  In the eighties his views were enriched by contact with new generations of students, with the result that to what remained of his left-liberal views he added ecological convictions. The broad range of his opinions often brought him into conflict with himself. He complained about narrowness and stuffiness, for like other professors he had acquired, from exchange professorships overseas and periods of study in London and in Uppsala, the degree of cosmopolitanism that enables one to regard one’s home as provincial.

  Popular with his students, but also ridiculed as a veteran of ’68 by some who thirsted for a more authoritarian system, Reschke felt himself, in the early days of the correspondence between widower and widow, to be “profoundly split and without perspective.” The university and, as he wrote Piątkowska, “even more so the teaching routine” disgusted him. Small wonder that the idea born in an abandoned cemetery appealed to him at once. Though at first limiting it to one region, he soon endowed it with global significance. Later, Reschke spoke of an “epiphany”; he tended to construct lofty concepts as pedestals not only for objects but also for feelings, daydreams, mere coincidences, even mirages.

  A woman student, who had attended his seminar on baskets, string bags, and plastic bags, said to me: “He cut a fairly melancholy figure with his everlasting beret, but he wasn’t unattractive, you know, only kind of old-fashioned, the way he’d shift his thousands of details around like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. On the whole, we liked him. What more can I say? Sometimes he stood around like a spare prick at a wedding, and he kept shooting his mouth off rather negatively, about the future, the weather, the traffic, reunification, and so on. He was right in a way, don’t you think?”

  What Professor Alexander Reschke didn’t know: the students had a nickname for him. They called him Jeremiah.

  To sum up, he seems to have been divided, incapable of linear action, a shillyshallying Reschke wasting his energy, reacting to every topic like a jumping jack. On the question of unification he was able to line up as many pros as cons; on the one hand, it was “desirable from a purely emotional point of view”; on the other hand, he feared German immoderation and—as he writes in a letter to a newspaper—“This colossus in the center of Europe oppresses me like a nightmare.”

  The fact that after the Second World War millions of Germans were driven from their homeland—Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia, the Sudetenland, and (like his parents and mine) the city of Danzig—also divided his mind, though without tearing it apart; for if Reschke suffered from feeling that he had “two souls in one breast,” it also would have left him soulless had one of them been surgically removed. In a letter to Piątkowska he confessed to being a “German Hamlet”; this made him feel justified in saying one thing and something entirely different in the same breath. He spoke alternately of “being driven out” and of “resettlement,” whereas Piątkowska spoke of Poles and Germans, regardless of whether they had been driven out of Wilno or Danzig, as “poor refugees, the lot of them.”

  After stumbling over these contradictions in his diary and in his unpublished memoir, “The Century of Expulsions,” I couldn’t help but wonder: How could this split Reschke become obsessed with an idea that exhorted him night and day to carry it out unswervingly and without misgiving? What transformed him, the procrastinator, the Jeremiah, into a man of action?

  My research informs me now that once, in the course of his academic career some time ago, he had an idea that he put through obstinately, ruthlessly in fact, despite the opposition of colleagues in other fields. This idea advocated a “praxis-oriented” course of study for art historians. Basing himself on statistics, Reschke demonstrated that many students left the university unprepared for professional life. Why? Because, he argued, they were without practical experience. Since museum jobs were rare, art-book publishers reluctant to spend money on readers and editors, and since as a rule the municipal authorities picked their cultural advisors on a political basis, the art historian of the future had to find new ways to plan his career.

  Reschke’s curriculum provided for courses in adult education, mass tourism, leisure activities, and cultural guidance for senior citizens. Experts, such as the manager of a travel bureau, the female manager of an amusement park frequented by millions, and the program director of a so-called summer academy, were invited to give talks. The cultural needs of hotel chains, golf clubs, and old people’s homes were explored.

  He was successful. His praxis-oriented courses were called exemplary. When Reschke’s idea had acquired a well-funded place in the university budget, the minister of education for North Rh
ineland–Westphalia, a woman, spoke of “an act of social responsibility …” In the press a good deal of praise and a corresponding amount of criticism: some spoke of the leveling of university studies. The university should not become an employment agency. And so on.

  But Reschke won out. His praxis-oriented course for art historians was copied at other universities. I am beginning to see my former classmate more clearly in retrospect. Wasn’t it he who during the war organized the compulsory campaigns against potato bugs and achieved success by devising an effective method of rounding up those noxious insects? It seemed that Reschke, the split Alexander Reschke, could act with a sense of purpose, aggressively tackle reality, and creatively turn ideas into facts.

  Thus I am not surprised to read in a letter dated early March that on the basis of his forecasts of “declared and undeclared burial-readiness” he had scheduled meetings with former refugees in Bonn, Düsseldorf, and Hannover. Interest was shown. A German-Polish relaxation of tension, if not outright reconciliation, was seen in the idea. His plan was characterized as constructive and worthy of encouragement. A long-term program of this kind, it was thought, might even act as a kind of flanking movement in support of reunification. A clause to that effect should not be absent from the boundary treaty with Poland, a treaty that could no longer be postponed. Now the unavoidable concessions had to be put to profitable use.

  Official documents confirm that Reschke was able to suggest to all burial-ready persons the possibility that the initial deposit of DM 1000 might be tax-deductible. He enclosed proof of this in his letter. “You see, dear Alexandra, our cause is making headway. Even in my correspondence with the central office for Danzig affairs in Lübeck I can speak openly. There and elsewhere, no reservations. Furthermore, conversations with the management of two reputable funeral companies have shown me that large-scale operations are receptive to new methods; one has already entered into negotiations with a firm in the GDR which, in line with the local linguistic usage, calls itself the People-Owned Earth Furniture Consortium and produces cheap coffins. Soon, that is, after the conclusion of the currency union, this enterprise too will be faced with marketing problems. If our Cemetery Association were already in existence, I would be tempted to invest in the production of ‘earth furniture.’ It would never have entered my head that putting our idea into practice—computing transportation costs, drawing up plans for future cemeteries, studying coffin catalogues, and preparing for discussions with so-called professional refugees—would amuse me so much, no, would give me such moral satisfaction. Incidentally, both funeral companies are interested in working with a Polish establishment in a joint venture. Also—if and when the time comes—in transportation from Gdańsk to Wilno …”

  From Wilno Piątkowska had received bad news. In principle, of course, they were interested in transactions that would pay them in hard currency. On second thought, however, they decided that the whole enterprise was not practicable. Alexandra writes: “No go in Wilno, because Lithuanians want own state first. I see their point; they want to be out of Soviet Union first. You report fine first success, and here I must wait until politics says yes. But let’s start anyway German-Polish Cemetery Association. Here many people want to talk to you. Sad part is we depend on Soviets still. Even people from województwo and Church. Even assistant director of National Bank don’t want to wait no more. You must come, my Aleksander. With all my heart I want you here soon …”

  But before his next trip to Gdańsk they met in Hamburg’s Fuhlsbüttel Airport. After a congestion-impeded taxi ride to Central Station they took the next train to Lübeck. There Reschke had reserved in the Hotel Kaiserhof two adjoining rooms with a view of the nearby Mühlentor and the city’s towers. I got all this from the hotel bill, which is on my desk along with xerox copies of the air tickets, the railroad tickets, several taxi receipts, and other documents. Reschke got receipts for everything, even their stand-up snack at the Hamburg station.

  They had arranged their meeting by phone. Apart from the date, March 15, I don’t know much. Certain assumptions can be made from letters written later. It is certain that the day after their arrival and their night at the hotel (in adjoining rooms), they visited the city, the Behn-Haus, the cathedral and its astronomical clock, then took lunch in the Maritime Club and kept an appointment that afternoon in the “Angel’s Den,” a room in the House of the Hanseatic City of Danzig and the headquarters of the Homeland Association, “with a number of leading citizens of both sexes.”

  Between lunch and appointment there may have been time for a visit to St. Mary’s, where Reschke may have told Piątkowska the story of Malskat, the art forger, and explained the scrubbed and derisively empty perspective plane high up in the choir. I hear him talking and talking: his old-fashioned diction, with its tinge of hurt feelings, his digressions … Authenticated is Piątkowska’s only comment on the Malskat case. “Why wipe it all off if beautiful? We painted on façades lots of things never there before. Isn’t art always forgery a little? But German art, of course, has to be one hundred percent always.”

  Apart from the receipt, my only record of the lunch at the Maritime Club, a restaurant where the customers sit on long benches under authentically rigged models of ships, is a menu, in the margin of which Reschke wrote in a small, neat hand: “Alexandra wanted to eat something exotically North German: Labskaus, a seaman’s dish. She tasted my matjes herring and liked it better; she also liked the rote Grütze we had for dessert …”

  I assume that our couple scarcely touched on politics at table, though at that time carloads of visitors from Schwerin and Wismar were coming across the nearby border, now open, more to see than to buy—what would they buy with? Actually, I wished the two of them at the long table hadn’t restricted their conversation to private matters, especially since the newspapers were already carrying stories about xenophobia, in particular hatred for Polish border crossers. No, the couple were still savoring their night in the Hotel Kaiserhof, the visits from room to room, the return of their stored-up passion. In all likelihood it was only after the rote Grütze that Alexander and Alexandra began to discuss political developments—he the impending Volkskammer vote in the GDR, she the high cost of living in Poland—and finally their forthcoming appointment in the House of the Hanseatic City of Danzig.

  Though subsequent letters yield few details concerning their second night together—who cares how pleased they were with the hotel, which Piątkowska recalls was “all nice and clean and smelled good”?—they both comment in detail on their afternoon appointment. After going on at length about an exhibition of old prints, panoramic views, and faded documents in vitrines, he writes: “We have taken a not inconsiderable step forward,” and she: “I wouldn’t think your officials could be so polite and talk not least bit revanchist …”

  That doesn’t tell us a lot, but this much is certain: Reschke was able to display not only his computer’s diligence in spreadsheets and extrapolations but also commitments from funeral companies and burial funds, plus letters of approval from high-ranking government officials, fiscal affidavits, and a blueprint of the future cemetery. Piątkowska produced letters from the województwo, from the Gdańsk branch of the Polish National Bank, from two deputies of the Sejm, and from the diocese. Add to this Reschke’s practiced delivery: eloquently he populated the former United Cemeteries, row upon row, all in accordance with the German Cemetery Regulations.

  I found out later that the refugees’ association, officially the League of Danzigers, Inc., had promised discreet support, consisting apparently of making their membership list available. Staff collaboration was an item under discussion, with the understanding that no further entitlements were to be expected. No one was to profit personally from the philanthropic community work of the German-Polish Cemetery Association. A certain Frau Johanna Dettlaff said: “We are interested only in this modest patch of home soil.” All were agreed that the proceedings would further peace and understanding among nations.

>   The diary contains complete minutes, recording even the coffee, the Bahlsen biscuits, a few little glasses of aquavit served during the session, and the fact that Frau Dettlaff, a sturdy woman in her middle sixties, was adorned with a necklace of outsized amber beads. Finally, Piątkowska’s gift to the League, a copy of a mug, partly gilded and of beaten silver, of the Danzig Brewers’ Guild, with a dedication dated 1653; and the League’s gift to Piątkowska, a copy of the Selected Etchings of Daniel Chodowiecki, published by Velhagen and Klasing in 1907, a book no doubt mischievously suggested by Reschke.

  They left in the late afternoon. A bill documents the fact that they spent the night of March 17 at the Hotel Prem in Hamburg, this time in a double room. Their visit to the large, parklike Ohlsdorf cemetery is also a certainty, for Piątkowska exclaimed later with enthusiasm: “So glad I am to see that! German cemetery in Gdańsk must be made lovely as Ohlsdorf. Naturally not so big, but kept well to make it pleasure to go for stroll, to look for last resting place …”

  After that the pair spent several days settling down in Bochum. There is no record of further visits to cemeteries. A brief note on the results of the Volkskammer election, which Reschke calls “a Pyrrhic victory for the coalition parties.” Nothing about the Ruhr District, but the widow must have liked the widower’s apartment, because immediately after she returned home, she wrote: “Real surprise it was to see my Aleksander’s apartment so neat, not just books, everything, towels, sheets. Hard to believe he is bachelor …”