The Tin Drum (53 page)

I still have a habit, a bad one, left over from those days: in spite of the strongest of constitutions, the moment I touch the flagstones of a church, or even the best known of cathedrals, I break out in a persistent cough, which, depending on the style, height, and breadth of the church in question, turns Gothic or Romanesque, Baroque as well, and permits me even after many years to allow those coughs from the cathedrals of Ulm, Munster, or Speyer to echo again on Oskar's drum. But back then, as I submitted to the sepulchral chill of Catholicism in mid-August, trips to churches in foreign climes were only possible if you were in uniform and part of planned withdrawals, noting perhaps in the little diary one always carried along: "Withdrew from Orvieto today, fantastic church, come back with Monika when the war's over and take a closer look."

I found it easy 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 the rascal was becoming more and more unbearable, threw sand in my eyes, and clawed me so hard his fingernails broke off in my parental flesh. In addition, my son showed me a pair of fists with knuckles so white that the mere sight of that pugnacious twin made blood gush from my nose.

Strangely enough, Matzerath defended me, somewhat awkwardly but nevertheless with feeling. Astonished, Oskar let this man, who had never meant anything to him, draw him onto his lap, hug him, gaze at him, even kiss him once, going all teary-eyed and saying more to himself than to Maria, "I just can't do it. Not to my own son. Even if he goes ten times and the doctors all say the same. They just jot those things down. Probably don't have any kids of their own."

Maria, who sat at the table pasting food stamps onto sheets of newspaper as she did every evening, looked up. "Calm down, Alfred. You're acting like I don't care. But if they say that's how it's done these days, I just don't know what to think."

Matzerath pointed at the piano, which had produced no music since my poor mama's death: "Agnes would never have done it or allowed it!"

Maria glanced over at the piano, lifted her shoulders, and let them fall again as she spoke: "Well, you can understand that, her being the mother and all, always hoping he might get better. But you can see he's not, he's just shoved here and there and don't know how to live or how to die!"

Was it the portrait of Beethoven, which still hung above the piano, gloomily staring at a gloomy Hitler, that gave Matzerath his strength? "No," he cried, "never!" and banged his fist on the table, on damp, sticky pages of stamps, had Maria pass him the letter from the institute, read it, read and read and read, then tore it up and threw the pieces among the bread stamps, lard stamps, grocery stamps, travel stamps, heavy-labor stamps, extra-heavy-labor stamps, and stamps for expectant and nursing mothers. Though Oskar, thanks to Matzerath, did not fall into the hands of those doctors, a vision arose before him—and still does today, whenever he lays eyes on Maria—of a beautiful clinic located in the finest mountain air, and within this clinic a bright, modern, cheerful operating room, where, outside its padded door, a shy but trusting Maria hands him over with a smile to first-class doctors who are smiling too, inspiring trust, while behind their white, sterile aprons they hold first-class, trust-inspiring, instantly effective syringes. So the whole world had forsaken me, and on several occasions only the shadow of my poor mama, which fell with paralyzing force on Matzerath's hand whenever he started to sign a document from the Reich's Ministry of Health, prevented me, the forsaken, from forsaking this world.

Oskar does not wish to seem ungrateful. I still had my drum. And I still had my voice, which hardly offers you anything new, since you know all about my triumphs over glass, and may even bore those of you who like a change of pace—but to me Oskar's voice above his drum was eternally fresh proof of my existence, for as long as I sangshattered glass I existed; as long as my focused breath could knock the breath out of glass, there was life still left in me.

Oskar sang a lot back then. He sang with a desperate edge. Whenever I left the Church of the Sacred Heart at some late hour I would singshatter something. I headed for home, picked some target at random, a poorly blackened window beneath a mansard roof or a street-lamp painted a proper air-defense blue. Each time I went to church I chose a different way home. Once Oskar walked along Anton-Möller-Weg to Marienstraße. Another time he trudged up Uphagenweg, circled the Conradinum, splintered the glass in the school door, and reached Max-Halbe-Platz by way of Reichskolonie. One day toward the very end of August, when I arrived late at the church and found the door locked, I decided to take an even longer detour to walk off my rage. I strode along Bahnhofstraße killing every third streetlamp, turned right behind the Film-Palast onto Adolf-Hitler-Straße, spared the windows of the infantry barracks, but cooled my little bout of rage on a nearly empty tram coming toward me from Oliva by stripping its left side of all its dreary, blackened panes.

Oskar barely noted his triumph, let the tram screech to a halt, let the passengers get out, curse, and get on again, then set out in search of a dessert for his rage, some tasty morsel in those times so poor in tasty morsels, and didn't stop in his laced-shoe tracks till he'd reached the outskirts of suburban Langfuhr and saw, between Berendt's carpentry shop and the spacious hangars of the airfield, the headquarters of the Baltic Chocolate Factory lying in the moonlight.

My rage having cooled somewhat, I did not immediately introduce myself to the factory in my customary manner. I took my time, counted the windows the moon had counted before me, reached the same result as the moon, and felt ready to begin introductions, but first I wanted to know what those youngsters were up to who had been following me since Hochstrieß, perhaps even beneath the chestnut trees on Bahnhofstraße. Six or seven of them were standing around or inside the tram shelter at the Hohenfriedberger Weg stop. Five more I could make out behind the trees on Zoppoter Chaussee.

I was about to postpone my visit to the chocolate factory, make a wide detour around them, and sneak across the railway bridge, past the airfield, and through the allotment gardens to the Aktien Brewery on Kleinhammerweg, when Oskar heard an exchange of whistled sig
nals, some coming from the bridge. There was no longer any doubt: the troops were being deployed with me in mind.

In such situations, in the short span of time when the pursuers have been spotted but the chase has not yet begun, one runs through the remaining chances to save oneself with particular pleasure: Oskar could have yelled for his mama and papa. I could have drummed up who knows what, possibly a policeman. I could certainly have sought help from grownups, given my stature; but I rejected—principled as Oskar could be on occasion—the help of passing grownups, or the intervention of a policeman, and spurred by curiosity and self-confidence, having decided to let things take their course, did the dumbest of all possible things: I scanned the tarred fence of the chocolate-factory grounds for a hole, found none, saw the youngsters leave the shelter, the shade of the trees on Zoppoter Chaussee, Oskar moving on, along the fence, now they were coming from the bridge too, and still the board fence had no hole, they weren't moving quickly, just strolling along, one by one, Oskar could look a bit longer, they gave me just enough time to find a hole in the fence, but when I finally found one single plank missing and, feeling something snag and tear, squeezed through the gap, there were four of them standing before me in windbreakers on the other side, their paws bulging in the pockets of their ski pants.

Since I quickly realized there was no way out of my situation, I felt for the snag I'd torn in my clothes squeezing through the gap in the fence. It was on the right rear of my trousers. I measured it with two spread fingers, found it annoyingly large, put on a show of indifference, and waited to look up till all the boys from the tram shelter, the Chaussee, and the bridge had clambered over the fence, for the hole in the fence was too small for them.

This happened toward the very end of August. The moon veiled itself now and then with a cloud. I counted around twenty. The youngest was fourteen, the oldest sixteen, going on seventeen. The summer of forty-four was hot and dry. Four of the taller boys were wearing Air Force Auxiliary uniforms. Forty-four was a good year for cherries, I remember. They stood around Oskar in small groups, talking in undertones, using a jargon I didn't even try to understand. They called one another by odd names, only a few of which I caught. One, a little fifteen-
year-old with slightly hazy doe eyes was called Jackrabbit, or sometimes Thumper. The one next to him was PuttPutt. The smallest, but surely not the youngest, with a protruding upper lip and a lisp, they called Pinchcoal. An Air Force auxiliary answered to Mister, and another, aptly enough, to Chickenface; there were historical names too: Lionheart, a milk-faced Bluebeard, names I knew well like Totila and Teja, two even had the impudence to call themselves Belisarius and Narses; Störtebeker, who wore a raincoat that was too long for him and a genuine velour hat with its crown dented into a duck pond, I examined more closely: in spite of being only sixteen, he was the leader of the gang.

They paid no attention to Oskar, probably trying to soften him up, and so, with weary legs, half amused, half annoyed with myself for getting involved in what was clearly some sort of adolescent romanticism, I sat down on my drum, looked up at the nearly full moon, and tried to dispatch a portion of my thoughts to the Church of the Sacred Heart.

Perhaps he'd drummed today, even said a word or two, and here I was sitting in the yard of the Baltic Chocolate Factory playing cops and robbers. Perhaps he was waiting for me, perhaps he planned, after a brief introductory drum solo, to open his mouth again, to clarify what it meant to imitate Christ, and was disappointed that I hadn't come, perhaps he was raising his eyebrows with customary arrogance. What would Jesus have thought of these brats? What was Oskar, his likeness, his follower and vicar, supposed to do with this horde? Could he have addressed the words of Jesus, "Suffer the little children to come unto me!" to a gang of teenagers who called themselves PuttPutt, Thumper, Bluebeard, Pinchcoal, and Störtebeker?

Störtebeker approached. Beside him, Pinchcoal, his right-hand man. Störtebeker: "Stand up!"

Oskar's eyes were still on the moon, his thoughts still at the left side-altar of the Church of the Sacred Heart, he did not stand, and at a sign from Störtebeker, Pinchcoal kicked the drum out from under me.

As I stood up I pulled the drum to me to protect it from further harm, and put it under my smock.

A handsome rascal, this Störtebeker, thought Oskar. Eyes a bit too deep-set and narrow, but the mouth lively and imaginative.

"Where are you from?"

The interrogation was under way, then, and since I didn't like his
greeting, I turned back to the disk of the moon, imagined the moon—which puts up with anything you care to imagine—as a drum, and smiled at my harmless megalomania.

"He's grinning, Störtebeker."

Pinchcoal looked me over, suggested something to his chief called "a dusting." Others in the background, the pimply Lionheart, Mister, Thumper, and PuttPutt, also favored a dusting.

Still with the moon, I spelled out the word dusting. A pretty little word, but it surely did not stand for anything pleasant.

"I'll decide when it's time for a dusting!" Störtebeker said, bringing the murmurs of his gang to an end, then turned to me again: "We've seen you plenty of times on Bahnhofstraße. What are you doing there? Where you coming from?"

Two questions at once. Oskar had to answer at least one of them if he wanted to maintain control of the situation. So I turned my gaze from the moon, looked at Störtebeker with my persuasive blue eyes, and said quietly: "I'm coming from church."

Murmuring behind Störtebeker's raincoat. They filled in my answer. Pinchcoal figured out that by church I meant the Church of the Sacred Heart.

"What's your name?"

This question was bound to come up. It lay in the very nature of the encounter. This particular formulation plays an important role in human conversation. Answering that question provides the substance of entire plays, both short and long, as well as whole operas—see
Lohengrin.

I waited for the moonlight to emerge between two clouds, let it shimmer in the blue of my eyes and work on Störtebeker for the length of three spoonfuls of soup, then spoke, named myself, envious of the word's effect—for the name Oskar would only have made them laugh—"My name is Jesus," Oskar declared; a long silence followed this confession, till Pinchcoal cleared his throat and said, "We really have to dust him, Chief."

Pinchcoal wasn't the only one in favor of dusting him. Störtebeker gave his permission with a snap of his fingers and Pinchcoal grabbed me, ground his knuckles into my upper right arm, rubbed them rapidly, dry, hot, and painful until Störtebeker signaled stop with a second snap of his fingers—so that was dusting.

"Now what was that name?" The chief in his velour hat acted bored, shot his right arm out like a boxer, pulling back the overly long sleeve of his raincoat, showed his wristwatch in the moonlight, and whispered past me to my left, "You've got one minute to think it over. Then I close up shop."

For another full minute Oskar could gaze at the moon with impunity, search for refuge in its craters, and question the decision he once made to follow in Christ's footsteps. Because I didn't like the sound of the phrase close up shop, and because I had no intention of allowing these brats to patronize me with their deadlines, after about thirty-five seconds Oskar declared, "I am Jesus."

What happened next was very effective, though I hadn't planned it. The moment I repeated my confession as Christ's follower, and before Störtebeker could snap his fingers or Pinchcoal could start dusting—an air-raid siren sounded.

Oskar said, "Jesus," took another breath, and the word was confirmed one after the other by the sirens at the nearby airfield, the siren at the headquarters of the infantry barracks in Hochstrieß, the siren on the roof of the Horst Wessel School just outside Langfuhr Forest, the siren on Sternfeld's department store, and far in the distance, from Hindenburgallee, the siren at the School of Engineering. It was some time before all the sirens in the suburb, like a choir of long-winded and emphatic archangels, took up the message I had delivered, set the night rising and falling, caused dreams to flicker and break, crept into the ears of the sleeping, and gave the moon, which was beyond all influence, the terrible significance of a heavenly body that could not be blacked out.