Dog Years (74 page)

MATERN:
The dog is well treated. Correctly and when the occasion arises firmly.

A GIRL:
It seems hardly necessary to repeat, but I'll do it just the same: Do you love animals?

MATERN:
Take a look, young lady. What do you see? An elderly, half-blind dog, hard to feed, because his scissors bite is, to say the least, incomplete, and yet. . .

A GIRL:
Do you love animals?

MATERN:
This dog. . .

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Ruling from the chair. In view of the topic's obvious and deliberate evasiveness, appropriate subquestions will be permitted within the framework of the supplementary question. Questions, please!

A BOY:
Did you ever kill an animal with your bare hands?

MATERN:
Admitted: a canary with this hand, because the bird's owner -- that was in Bielefeld -- was an old-time Nazi and I as an antifascist. . .

A BOY:
Did you ever shoot an animal?

MATERN:
In the Army: rabbits and crows, but during the war everybody shot at animals, and those crows. . .

A BOY:
Did you ever kill any animals with a knife?

MATERN:
Like every boy who lays his hands on a pocket-knife: rats and moles. A friend gave me the knife and with that knife we both of us. . .

A BOY:
Did you ever poison an animal?

MATERN
(pause):
Yes.

A BOY:
What kind of animal?

MATERN:
A dog.

CHORUS:
Was he white, blue, or purple?

Red, green, yellow, or purple?

MATERN:
It was a black dog.

CHORUS:
Was it a spitz, dachshund, or pekinese?

A St. Bernard, boxer, or pekinese?

MATERN:
It was a black-haired German shepherd answering to the name of Harras.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
The supplementary question, supported by appropriate subquestions, has shown that Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, has killed a canary, several rabbits, a number of crows, moles, rats, and a dog; I therefore repeat the supplementary question based on thirty-two, every, and God: Do you love animals?

MATERN:
Believe it or not: yes.

DISCUSSION LEADER
(motions to Walli, the assistant. She writes "loves animals" on the blackboard):
We note that on the one hand the topic under discussion has poisoned a black shepherd, and that on the other hand he takes excellent care of a black shepherd. Since he professes to love animals, dogs -- as such and in this case a black shepherd -- seem to become the fixed point of discussion in reference to the topic under discussion. For safety's sake may I request exploratory questions calculated to check the unquestionably dynamic result of our exposition, namely, a black-haired German shepherd, possibly the fixed point of this whole discussion.

(
Walli S. writes "black-haired German shepherd" on the blackboard.)

A BOY:
For example: Are you afraid of death?

MATERN:
I'm a bounceback man.

A BOY:
Then perhaps you'd like to live a thousand years?

MATERN:
A hundred thousand, because I'm a bounceback man.

A BOY:
In case you should die notwithstanding, would you prefer to die in your room, in the open, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, or in the cellar?

MATERN:
A bounceback man couldn't care less.

A BOY:
What would you prefer: illness or traffic accident? Or do you favor battle, the duel as a form of existence, war as casualty, revolution as potentiality, or a good honest free-for-all?

MATERN
(good-humoredly):
My good friend, for a bounceback man like me, all those are mere opportunities of showing what a bounceback man can do. You can discuss me to death with knives and firearms; you can hurl me from television towers; and even if you bury me fathoms deep and weigh me down with arguments as hard as granite -- tomorrow I'll be standing on my lead soles again. Bounceback man, bounce!

CHORUS:
Buried below and gladly we

will take the bet: what's buried below

comes out no more to the light, the sparkle,

and stirs no more nor spoons;

MATERN:
for the spoon too lay in the cellar

melted down, but when outside

Aurora with policeman's whistle

blew back the darkness, Matern

CHORUS:
stood on molded leaden soles

with heart spleen kidneys, was hungry

and spooned, ate, shat, and slept.

MATERN:
The bolt struck low, I fell from the tower.

The pigeons were troubled not at all.

I was an epitaph, flat on the pavement,

an inscription read by passers-by:

CHORUS:
Here lies and lies and lies flat, lies he

who fell from above and here he lies;

no rain washes him, nor hail taps

or types his letters, eyelashes,

or open forums;

MATERN:
but comes Aurora on two legs

and blasts the pavement where I lie,

first stands the pecker, then the man,

and squirts and fathers and laughs himself sick.

CHORUS:
Shot he was, through and through;

a tunnel they had just been planning,

and through him, through him, freshly shot,

the railroad soon was running.

MATERN:
The special trains, the kings,

had to pass straight through me when

they wished to visit other kings

out past me, and the Pope

spoke in nine languages through the hole.

CHORUS:
He was funnel, tunnel, megaphone,

and green grew the customhouses on either end,

MATERN:
but when Aurora with the heavy

far-famed hammer of resurrection

plugged me up at both ends,

Matern, once freshly shot,

stood up and breathed spoke lived and hollered!

(Pause. Walli S. writes, "bounceback man" on the black board. )

DISCUSSION LEADER:
And so I take it that you're not afraid of death?

MATERN:
Even bounceback men have their weak moments.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Then perhaps you wouldn't like to live for a thousand years or more?

MATERN:
Good God! You have no idea what a bother lead soles can be.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Well, should the occasion arise and supposing you had your choice between death in bed and death out of doors?

MATERN:
Definitely in the open air.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Heart disease, accident, or war injury?

MATERN:
I'd like to be murdered.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
With knives or firearms? Would you like to be hanged or electrocuted? Suffocate or drown?

MATERN:
I'd like to be poisoned and collapse in the presence of a first-night audience in an open-air theater. Suddenly.
(He sketches the motion of collapsing.)

CHORUS:
Listen to that. Poison! Matern swears by poison!

A BOY:
What kind of poison?

A BOY:
Old-fashioned toad's eyes?

A BOY:
Snake venom?

A BOY:
Arsenic or poisonous mushrooms: death cup, sickener, jack-o'lantern, fly agaric, Satan's boletus?

MATERN:
Plain ordinary rat poison.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
The chair wishes to put a question: When you poisoned the black shepherd Harras, what poison did you select?

MATERN:
Plain ordinary rat poison!

CHORUS:
O strangest of men!

Rat poison again!

DISCUSSION LEADER
(to Walli S.):
Under "bounceback man" you'd better note: death urge, colon, poison. And branching off to the right: Harras' dogdeath, colon, rat poison.
(Walli S. writes in capitals.)
But for the present, rather than follow up this first confirmation of "black shepherd" as a fixed point, I suggest a second exploratory question that will place the fixed point in a more general perspective.

A BOY:
Under what constellation were you born?

MATERN:
I haven't the faintest idea. The date is April 19th.

WALLI S.:
It is my duty as assistant to point out to the topic under discussion that false statements will result in immediate compulsory discussion: my uncle, that is, the topic under discussion, was born on April 20, 1917.

MATERN:
That kid! That's what it says in my passport, but my mother always insisted I was born on the nineteenth, at exactly ten minutes to twelve. The question is: Whom is the world going to believe, my mother or my passport?

A BOY:
Nineteenth or twentieth of April, regardless, you were born in the sign of the Ram.

CHORUS:
Passport date or mother's claim,

in either case the Ram's the same.

A BOY:
What famous men besides yourself were born when the sun was in the house of the Ram?

MATERN:
How do I know? Professor Sauerbruch.

A BOY:
Nonsense. Sauerbruch was Cancer.

MATERN:
What about John Kennedy?

A BOY:
A typical Gemini.

MATERN:
His predecessor, then.

A BOY:
I think it is generally known that General Eisenhower was born when the sun was in the sign of Libra?

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Herr Walter Matern: Please concentrate. Who else was born in the sign of the Ram?

MATERN:
You incompetents! You wisenheimers! This isn't a public discussion, it's degenerating into a witches' sabbath. In the same month and, as it says in my passport, on the twentieth of April, Adolf Hitler, the greatest criminal of all time, was whelped.

DISCUSSION LEADER:
Exception! Cognizance is taken only of the name, not of the irrelevant apposition. We have come here not to sling mud but to discuss. The chair takes note of the fact that Walter Matern, the topic under discussion, was born in the same sign and on the same date as Adolf Hitler, builder of the Reichsautobahn, a topic recently discussed by our group. Very well then: in the sign of the Ram.

A BOY:
Have you anything else in common with the Ram-born Adolf Hitler?

MATERN:
All men have something in common with Hitler.

A BOY:
We wish to make it clear that the topic under discussion is not "all men," and certainly not "mankind," but you and you alone.

WALLI S.:
I know something. Something I can testify to without having to put on the knowledge glasses. Something he even does in his sleep and when shaving. He doesn't even have to suck a lemon to do it.

MATERN:
Well, in school and later too, they called me "Grinder," because sometimes when I don't like the way things are going, I grind my teeth. Like this
(he grinds long and loud into the microphone).
And Hitler is also said to have ground his teeth now and then!

(Walli S. makes a note: "teeth grinding or the Grinder.")