The Tin Drum (24 page)

Mama could be very cheerful. Mama could be very timid. Mama forgot things quickly. Mama nonetheless had a good memory. Mama threw me out with the bathwater yet sat in the tub with me. Mama was sometimes lost, but I always found her. When I sangshattered glass, Mama sold lots of putty. She sometimes put her foot in it when she could have put her foot down elsewhere. Even when Mama buttoned up, she stayed an open book to me. Mama feared drafts but generated storms. She lived on what she charged but hated paying taxes. I was the flip side of her top card. When Mama played a heart hand, she always won. When Mama died, the red flames on my drum turned pale; but the white lacquer grew whiter, so dazzling that, blinded, even Oskar had to shut his eyes.

My poor mama was not buried at Saspe Cemetery, as she had sometimes wished, but in the small, peaceful cemetery in Brentau. Her stepfather, the gunpowder miller Gregor Koljaiczek, who died of influenza in nineteen-seventeen, lay there too. There was a large crowd of mourners, as might be expected at the funeral of a popular grocer; the faces of her steady customers appeared, of course, but also salesmen from various wholesale houses and even a few competitors, like the grocer Weinreich and Frau Probst from the store over on Hertastraße. The chapel of Brentau Cemetery couldn't hold the crowd. It smelled of flowers and black clothing in mothballs. In the open coffin my poor mama's face was yellow and worn. During the interminable ceremony I couldn't shake the feeling: Her head is going to bob up, she'll have to vomit again, something inside her still wants out—not just the three-month-old fetus who, like me, doesn't know which father to thank, who wants to come out and ask for a drum as Oskar did, and not just the fetus, there's still fish in there, not sardines, and I don't mean flounder, I mean a small chunk of eel, a few greenish white tendrils of eel meat, eel from the naval battle at Skagerrak, eel from the harbor jetty at Neufahrwasser, Good Friday eel, eel that sprang from the head of the horse,
perhaps even eel from Joseph Koljaiczek her father, who slipped under a raft and fell prey to the eels, eel of thine eel, for eel thou art, and to eel returnest...

But she did not retch. She kept it down, took it with her, was going to bury the eel beneath the earth, so there might at last be peace.

When the men lifted the coffin lid and started to cover my poor mama's nauseated yet resolute face, Anna Koljaiczek held the men back and, trampling the flowers beside the coffin, threw herself across her daughter and wept, tearing at the expensive white shroud and wailing in Kashubian.

There were many who later said she cursed my presumptive father Matzerath and called him her daughter's murderer. There was also talk of my fall down the cellar steps. She took the tale over from Mama and never allowed Matzerath to forget his supposed guilt for my supposed accident. Again and again she accused him, even though Matzerath, in spite of his politics, showed an almost grudging reverence for her, and kept her stocked throughout the war years with sugar and synthetic honey, with coffee and kerosene.

The greengrocer Greff and Jan Bronski, who was weeping in a high-pitched feminine register, led my grandmother away from the coffin. The men could now fasten the lid and assume at last the faces pallbearers always assume when they take up their positions beneath the coffin. At the semirural cemetery at Brentau, with its two fields on either side of the avenue lined with elms, with its little chapel that looked like a pasteboard set for a Nativity play, with its draw-well, with its quick and lively bird world, on the neatly raked cemetery lane, right behind Matzerath at the head of the procession, I took pleasure for the first time in the coffin's shape. Since then I've often had occasion to let my gaze glide over the black or dark brown wood employed for ultimate ends. My poor mama's coffin was black. It tapered in a wonderfully harmonious way toward the foot. Is there any other shape in the world so admirably suited to the human form?

If only beds narrowed like that toward the foot. If only all our familiar and occasional couches tapered so clearly toward the foot. For we can strut about all we like; in the end, the broad expanse of the head, shoulders, and torso always tapers down to the narrow base of our feet.

Matzerath walked directly behind the coffin. He carried his top hat
in his hand and did his best, in spite of his sorrow, to hold himself erect during the slow march. Whenever I looked at his neck I felt sorry for him: the bulge at the back of his head and those two rigid tendons that climbed from collar to hairline.

Why was it Mother Truczinski who took my hand and not Gretchen Schemer or Hedwig Bronski? She lived on the second floor of our building, apparently had no first name; everyone called her Mother Truczinski.

Ahead of the coffin, Father Wiehnke with acolytes and incense. My gaze slipped from Matzerath's neck to the crisscrossed furrows of the pallbearers' necks. Oskar had to fight a wild desire: to climb up on the coffin. To sit right on top and drum. To drum with his sticks on the lid of that coffin and not on his drum. To ride on the top as they carried it swaying. While the Right Reverend followed in prayer from behind, Oskar would lead by drumming in front. As the coffin was placed over pit, planks, and ropes, he would keep calmly poised on the wood. Midst sermon, incense, holy water, and bells he'd drum out the Latin on top of the wood and stay as they lowered both him and the box by the ropes. Would descend to the grave with Mama and fetus. Would stay down below while those left behind cast handfuls of earth, and not come back up, but sit on the tapered foot drumming, even under the earth if he could, just keep right on drumming, till the sticks in his hands, the wood of his sticks, till his Mama for him, till he for her, till each for the other, had rotted away, given their flesh to the earth and its tenants; and Oskar would gladly have played something more with his little knuckles for the tender cartilage of the fetus, had that only been possible and permitted.

No one sat on the coffin. It swayed bare beneath the elms and weeping willows of Brentau Cemetery. Among the graves, the sexton's speckled hens, pecking for worms, reaping though they had not sown. Then through the birches. I behind Matzerath, holding Mother Truczinski's hand, Grandmother right behind me—Greff and Jan escorting her—Vinzent Bronski on Hedwig's arm, little Marga and Stephan hand in hand ahead of the Schefflers. Laubschad the clockmaker, old Herr Heilandt, Meyn the trumpeter, but without his instrument and relatively sober.

Not till it was all over and people began offering their condolences did I notice Sigismund Markus. Dressed in black and embarrassed, he
joined those who wanted to shake hands with Matzerath, me, my grandmother, and the Bronskis, and murmur something. At first I didn't understand what Alexander Schemer wanted of Markus. They hardly knew each other, perhaps they'd never even met. Finally Meyn the musician joined in and said something to the toy merchant. They stood behind a waist-high hedge of the sort of greenery that leaves a stain and tastes bitter when you rub it between your fingers. Frau Kater with her daughter Susi, who had grown somewhat too quickly and was grinning behind her handkerchief, were expressing their condolences to Matzerath and didn't miss the chance to pat me on the head. The altercation behind the hedge grew louder but remained indistinct. The trumpeter Meyn poked Markus on his black suit with his index finger, pushed him backward, then took Sigismund's left arm while Schemer linked arms on the right. Both were careful to see that Markus, who was stepping backward, didn't stumble over the borders of the graves, pushed him onto the main path, and showed Sigismund the way to the cemetery gate. He appeared to thank them for the information, walked away toward the exit, putting on his top hat as he did so, and did not look back, as Meyn and the baker watched him.

Neither Matzerath nor Mother Truczinski noticed that I had evaded them and the condolences. Acting like a little boy who has to go, Oskar sneaked off past the gravedigger and his helper, then ran, with no regard for the ivy, and reached both the elms and Sigismund Markus at the exit.

"Little Oskar!" Markus said in surprise. "Why are they treating Markus like this? What's he done to deserve it?"

I didn't know what Markus had done, took him by his hand, clammy with sweat, led him through the wrought-iron cemetery gate, which stood open, and the two of us, the keeper of my drums and I, the drummer, possibly his drummer, ran into Crazy Leo, who shared our belief in paradise.

Markus knew Leo, for Leo was well-known around town. I had heard of Crazy Leo, knew that one sunny day, while he was still at the seminary, the world, the sacraments, the confessions, heaven and hell, life and death, had driven him so mad that from then on Leo's world-view, though mad, was radiant with perfection.

Crazy Leo's occupation was to turn up after every funeral—and no
one took leave without his knowledge—wearing white gloves and a shiny black suit several sizes too big for him, to await the mourners. Markus and I both understood that he was standing there at the wrought-iron gate of Brentau Cemetery in a professional capacity, his glove oozing sympathy, his watery eyes crazed, his drooling mouth drooling toward the mourners.

Mid-May: A bright, sunny day. Hedges and trees filled with birds. Cackling hens, symbolizing immortality by and through their eggs. Humming in the air. A fresh coat of green without dust. Crazy Leo carried his faded silk hat in his gloved left hand, approached lightly, like a dancer, for he was truly touched by grace, with five mildewed glove fingers thrust forth toward Markus and me, then stood before us, leaning to one side as if in a wind, though not the slightest breeze stirred, tilted his head and babbled, dribbling threads, as Markus, hesitantly at first and then firmly, placed his bare hand in the clutching glove: "What a beautiful day. Now she's where everything's cheap. Did you see the Lord?
Habemus ad Dominum.
He passed by in a hurry. Amen"

We said amen, and Markus assured Leo the day was beautiful, even said he'd seen the Lord.

Behind us we heard the approaching hum of the mourners from the cemetery. Markus let his hand fall from Leo's glove, still found time for a tip, gave me a Markus look, and scurried off to the taxi waiting for him outside the Brentau post office.

I was still watching the cloud of dust that cloaked a disappearing Markus when Mother Truczinski took me by the hand again. They arrived in larger and smaller groups. Crazy Leo offered his condolences to all, called their attention to the beautiful day, asked them if they had seen the Lord, and received, as usual, larger or smaller tips, or none at all. Matzerath and Jan Bronski paid the pallbearers, the gravedigger, the sexton, and Father Wiehnke, who with an embarrassed sigh allowed Crazy Leo to kiss his hand, and with kissed hand sent gestures of blessing after the slowly dispersing crowd of mourners.

Meanwhile we—my grandmother, her brother Vinzent, the Bronskis with their children, Greff without his wife, and Gretchen Scheffler—seated ourselves in two one-horse box carts. We were taken past Goldkrug through the forest and across the nearby Polish border to Bissau-Abbau for the funeral banquet.

Vinzent Bronski's farmyard lay in a hollow. Poplars stood before it to ward off lightning. They took the barn door off its hinges, laid it across wooden trestles, and spread tablecloths over it. More people came from the surrounding area. The meal lasted a long time. We banqueted in the entrance to the barn. Gretchen Schemer held me on her lap. The food was greasy, then sweet, then greasy again, potato schnapps, beer, a goose and a piglet, cake and sausage side by side, pumpkin in vinegar and sugar, red fruit jelly with sour cream, toward evening a breeze through the open barn, mice rustled, as did the Bronski children, who in league with the neighborhood brats took over the farmyard.

With the oil lamps the skat cards appeared on the table. The potato schnapps stayed. There was also eggnog, homemade. That cheered things up. And Greff, who didn't drink, sang songs. The Kashubes sang too, and Matzerath dealt first. Jan was second and the foreman from the brickworks third. Only then did I truly realize poor Mama was gone. They played well into the night, but none of the men could win a heart hand. When Jan Bronski inexplicably lost a heart hand without four, I heard him say to Matzerath in a low voice, "Agnes would have won that for sure."

With that I slipped from Gretchen Schemer's lap and found my grandmother and her brother Vinzent outside. They were sitting on a wagon shaft. Vinzent was muttering to the stars in Polish. My grandmother could cry no more but let me under her skirts.

Who will take me under her skirts today? Who will switch off the daylight and lamplight for me? Who will give me the smell of that yellow, slightly rancid melted butter that my grandmother stockpiled, sheltered, and seasoned as fare for me under her skirts and gave me once upon a time, a fare I liked, and came to long for.

I fell asleep beneath her four skirts, close to my poor mama's beginnings, and found a peace almost as still, if not as breathless, as she found in that box which tapered toward the foot.

Nothing can take a mother's place, they say. Soon after Mama's burial I began to miss my poor mama. The Thursday visits to Sigismund Markus stopped, I was no longer taken to Sister Inge's white uniform, and Saturdays in particular brought home my mama's death with painful clarity: Mama no longer went to confession.

So I was cut off from the Altstadt, the office of Dr. Hollatz, the Church of the Sacred Heart. I'd lost all interest in rallies. And how was I supposed to lure passersby to shop windows when even the tempter's trade now seemed bland and insipid to Oskar? There was no more Mama to take me to the Stadt-Theater for the Christmas play, or to the Krone or Busch circus. Conscientiously if somewhat morosely, I pursued my studies on my own, tediously tracing the rectilinear streets of the suburb toward Kleinhammerweg to visit Gretchen Scheffler, who told me of Strength through Joy trips to the Land of the Midnight Sun, while I kept on comparing Goethe with Rasputin, never coming to the end of such comparisons, escaping that constant cycle of radiance and darkness most often through historical studies.
A Struggle for Rome,
Keyser's
History of the City of Danzig,
and Köhler's
Naval Calendar,
my old standard works, gave me a worldwide half knowledge. To this very day I can give you precise details on the armor, firepower, launching, manufacture, and crew strength of every ship that participated, sank, or was damaged in the Battle of Skagerrak.