The Tin Drum (25 page)

I was almost fourteen, loved solitude, and often went on walks. My drum came along, but I plied its tin sparingly, for Mama's departure called into question the timely delivery of drums both then and in the future.

Was it in the fall of thirty-seven or the spring of thirty-eight? At any rate I was tripping along Hindenburgallee toward the city, had just about reached the Café Vierjahreszeiten, leaves were falling, or buds were bursting, at any rate Nature was up to something, when I ran into my friend Master Bebra, who was a direct descendant of Prince Eugen and consequently of Louis the Fourteenth.

We hadn't seen one another in three years, and yet we recognized each other at twenty paces. He was not alone; on his arm hung a dainty southern beauty almost an inch shorter than Bebra, three finger-breadths taller than me, whom he presented in the course of the introductions as Roswitha Raguna, Italy's most famous somnambulist.

Bebra invited me for a cup of Mocha at the Café Vierjahreszeiten. We sat in the Aquarium Room, and the coffee-drinking biddies hissed, "Look at the midgets, Lisbeth, did you see? Do you think they're at Krone's circus? We ought to try and go."

Bebra smiled at me and showed a thousand barely visible tiny wrinkles.

The waiter who brought our Mocha was very tall. As Frau Roswitha ordered a small tart she gazed up at the towering man in tails.

Bebra looked me over: "He doesn't seem to be doing so well, our glass slayer. What's wrong, my friend? Is the glass unwilling, or is the voice a little too weak?"

Young and impetuous as I was, Oskar wanted to give a little sample of his still vibrant art then and there. I looked about me and focused on the large glass surface of the aquarium with its ornamental fish and aquatic plants, but Bebra spoke up before I could break out in song: "Hold on, my friend! We believe you. Let's not destroy anything, please, no floods, no dying fish."

Shamefaced, I apologized, particularly to Signora Roswitha, who had pulled out a miniature fan and was agitatedly stirring up a breeze.

"My mama died," I tried to explain. "She shouldn't have done that. I'm very upset with her. People always say that a mother sees all, feels all, forgives all. Mother's Day clichés. She saw me as a midget. She would have done away with me if she could. But she couldn't do away with me, since children, even midgets, are recorded and you can't just get rid of them. Then too, I was
her
midget, if she'd done away with me she would have done away with herself, and that would have stopped her. It's either
me or the midget, she said to herself, then ended it all, ate nothing but fish, not even fresh fish, took leave of her lovers, and now that she's lying in Brentau they all say, all the lovers, all the customers at the store: The midget drummed her to her grave. She didn't want to go on living because of little Oskar, he killed her!"

I was exaggerating wildly, perhaps in hopes of impressing Signora Roswitha. After all, most people blamed Matzerath, and especially Jan Bronski, for Mama's death. Bebra saw right through me.

"You're exaggerating, my good friend. You're upset with your dead mama out of pure jealousy. You feel slighted because it wasn't you but those tiresome lovers who sent her to her grave. You're wicked and vain, as befits a genius."

Then, after a sigh and a sidelong glance at Signora Roswitha: "It's not easy to persevere in life when you're our size. To remain human without growing visibly, what a task, what a calling!"

Roswitha Raguna, the Neapolitan somnambulist with the smooth yet wrinkled skin, whose age I put at eighteen springtides and in the next breath admired as an old woman of eighty or perhaps ninety years, Signora Roswitha stroked Herr Bebra's elegant tailored suit, cut in the English style, then projected her cherry-black Mediterranean eyes at me, while her dark voice filled with the promise of fruit moved me, yet chilled me too:
"Carissimo,
Oskarnello! How I understand that pain!
Andiamo,
come with us: Milano, Parigi, Toledo, Guatemala!"

My head began to reel. I seized Raguna's ancient, childlike hand. The Mediterranean beat against my coast, olive trees whispered in my ear: "Roswitha will be your mama, Roswitha will understand. She, the great somnambulist, who sees through everyone, knows everyone, except herself,
mammamia,
except herself.
Dio!"

Oddly enough, Raguna had barely begun to see through me and illuminate me with her somnambulistic gaze when she jerked her hand back in fright. Had my hungry fourteen-year-old heart terrified her? Had she grasped that Roswitha was still Roswitha to me, be she girl or old woman? She whispered in Neapolitan, trembled, crossed herself so often it seemed the terrors she read in me were endless, then disappeared without a word behind her fan.

Confused, I sought an explanation, asked to have a word with Bebra. But even Bebra, in spite of his direct descent from Prince Eugen, had
lost his composure, stammered, till I finally understood: "Your genius, my young friend, the divine but certainly devilish nature of your genius, has confused my good Roswitha somewhat, and I too must confess that a certain wild abandon that erupts in you is foreign to me, though not entirely incomprehensible. But"—Bebra gathered himself—"regardless of the nature of your character, come with us, perform in Bebra's Miracle Show. With a little self-discipline and moderation you should be able to find an audience, even in the present political circumstances."

I understood at once. Bebra, who'd advised me always to be on the grandstands, not standing in front of them, had taken his place among the rank and file, even if he continued to perform in the circus. So he wasn't at all disappointed when I declined his offer with polite regret. And the Signora released an audible sigh of relief behind her fan and showed me her Mediterranean eyes once more.

We chatted for another hour or so, I asked the waiter to bring me an empty glass, sang a heart-shaped opening into it, sang a curving inscription with flourishes beneath,
From Oskar to Roswitha,
gave her the glass, which pleased her, Bebra paid, and added a large tip before we left.

They both accompanied me to the Sporthalle. I pointed with my drumstick toward the naked grandstand at the other end of the Maiwiese and—now I remember, it was in the spring of thirty-eight—told Master Bebra about my career as a drummer under grandstands.

Bebra gave an embarrassed smile, Raguna's face was stern. And while the Signora stood a few paces off to the side, Bebra whispered in my ear as he took his leave: "I've failed, my friend, how could I be your teacher now? Oh, the dirty politics."

Then he kissed me on the forehead, as he had years ago when I met him among the circus wagons, Lady Roswitha held out a hand like porcelain, and I bent politely, almost too smoothly for a fourteen-year-old, over the fingers of the somnambulist.

"We'll meet again, my son!" Herr Bebra winked. "Regardless of the times, people like us don't lose each other."

"Forgive your fathers!" the Signora admonished me. "Accustom yourself to your own existence, so that your heart may be at peace and Satan discomforted!"

I felt as if the Signora had baptized me a second time, but once again in vain. Satan, depart—but Satan did not depart. I looked after them
sadly and with an empty heart, waved as they entered a taxi and disappeared within, for the Ford was built for grownups and looked empty, as if cruising for customers, as it roared away with my friends.

I tried to get Matzerath to take me to the Krone circus, but Matzerath could not be moved, he was devoting himself entirely to mourning my poor mama, whom he had never possessed entirely. But who had possessed Mama entirely? Not even Jan Bronski, if anyone me, Oskar, for Oskar suffered most from her absence, which upset his daily life, even called it into question. Mama had cheated me. I could expect nothing from my fathers. Master Bebra had found his own master in Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda. Gretchen Schemer was spending all her time in Winter Aid work. Let no one go hungry, let no one be cold, that was the watchword. I turned to my drum and perfected my loneliness on its once white tin, now drummed thin. In the evenings Matzerath and I sat across from each other. He leafed through his cookbooks, I lamented on my instrument. Sometimes Matzerath wept and hid his head in the cookbooks. Jan Bronski's visits to the house were more and more infrequent. In light of the political situation, both men agreed caution was called for, you never knew which way the rabbit might jump or the wind might blow. Skat games with various third partners grew increasingly infrequent, and when they did take place it was late at night, in our living room, under the hanging lamp; all mention of politics was avoided. My grandmother Anna no longer seemed to find her way from Bissau to our place on Labesweg. She held a grudge against Matzerath, perhaps against me too; after all, I'd heard her say, "My Agnes died because she couldn't stand the drumming no more."

Even if I did cause my poor mama's death, I clung all the more tightly to my despised drum, for it didn't die as a mother does, you could buy a new one, have it repaired by old man Heilandt or Laubschad the clockmaker, it understood me, always gave the right answer, it stuck with me, and I stuck with it.

If the apartment grew too cramped for me back then, the streets too short or too long for my fourteen years, if by day there was no chance to play tempter at shop windows, and the temptation not strong enough when evening came to stand as a plausible tempter in darkened doorways, I would stomp up the four flights of stairs, beating out the time, counting one hundred sixteen steps, pause on each landing, and breathe
in the smells that seeped through the five apartment doors on every floor, since the smells, like me, found the two-room flats too cramped.

At first I had occasional luck with Meyn, the trumpeter. Drunk, lying among the bedsheets hung out to dry in the attic, he could still blow his trumpet with amazing musical feeling and bring joy to my drum. In May of thirty-eight he gave up Machandel and told everyone, "I'm starting a new life!" He joined the Mounted SA to play in the band. In boots and leather-seated breeches, cold sober, I saw him taking the steps five at a time from then on. He kept his four cats, one of them named Bismarck, because, as you might expect, the Machandel gained the upper hand now and then and brought out his musical side.

I seldom knocked at the door of Laubschad the clockmaker, a silent man among a hundred noisy clocks. I couldn't stand the excessive wear and tear of time more than once a month.

Old man Heilandt still had his shed in the courtyard of the apartment house. He still hammered crooked nails straight. And there were rabbits, and rabbits from those rabbits, as in the old days. But the brats in the courtyard had changed. Now they wore uniforms and black ties, and were no longer brewing brick-dust soup. What grew there, towering above me, I scarcely knew by name. It was a new generation, while my generation had finished school and were now apprentices: Nuchi Eyke was at a barber's, Axel Mischke wanted to be a welder at Schichau, Susi Kater was training as a salesgirl in Sternfeld's department store and had a steady boyfriend. How things can change in three or four years. The old carpet rack was still there and the house rules still read,
Tuesdays and Fridays—carpet beating,
but the blows resounded only occasionally on those two weekdays, and with a hint of embarrassment: since Hitler had come to power there were more and more households with vacuum cleaners; the carpet racks grew lonely and served only the sparrows.

All that was left to me were the stairwell and the attic. Beneath the roof tiles I studied my trusty reading material, in the stairwell I knocked at the first door on the left on the second floor whenever I felt the need for human company. Mother Truczinski always answered. Ever since taking my hand at Brentau Cemetery and leading me to my poor mama's grave, she opened up whenever Oskar signaled on the door with his drumsticks.

"Don't drum so loud, little Oskar. Herbert's still sleeping, he had a
rough night again and they had to bring him back in the car." Then she pulled me into the flat, poured me some barley coffee and milk, and added a stick of brown rock candy on a string to dip in it and lick. I drank, sucked away on the candy, and gave my drum a rest.

Mother Truczinski had a small round head, covered so transparently with thin ash-gray hair that her pink scalp showed through. The sparse strands all strove toward the farthest point at the back of her head where they formed a bun, which in spite of its modest size—it was smaller than a billiard ball—could be seen from all sides, no matter which direction she turned. Knitting needles held the bun together. Each morning Mother Truczinski rubbed her round cheeks with red paper from chicory packages till they seemed pasted on her face when she laughed. She glanced about like a mouse. Her four children were named Herbert, Guste, Fritz, and Maria.

Maria was my age, had just finished grade school, and lived as an apprentice housekeeper with a family of civil servants in Schidlitz. Fritz, who worked in the railroad-car factory, was seldom seen. He had two or three young women he danced with at The Racetrack in Ohra, who took turns making his bed. He kept rabbits, Vienna Blues, in the apartment-house courtyard, but Mother Truczinski had to feed them, since Fritz had his hands full with his girlfriends. Guste, a calm young woman around thirty, was a waitress at the Eden Hotel by the railroad station. Still unmarried, she lived on the top floor of the Eden, along with the rest of the staff of that first-class hotel. Herbert, the oldest and the only one living with his mother—if one leaves aside an occasional overnight visit from Fritz the mechanic—worked as a waiter in the waterfront suburb of Neufahrwasser. He's the one I want to tell you about. After the death of my poor mama, for a brief but happy period Herbert Truczinski was the goal toward which I strove: to this day I call him my friend.

Herbert worked as a waiter for Starbusch. That was the name of the host and owner of the Swedish Bar. It lay opposite the Protestant Seaman's Church, and the customers—as can be easily guessed from its name—were mostly Scandinavians. But a few Russians came too, Poles from the Free Port, dockers from Holm, and sailors from German warships that had dropped in for a visit. Being a waiter in this truly European bar was not without its dangers. Only the experience he'd gained at The Racetrack in Ohra—Herbert had worked as a waiter in the third
class dance bar before going to Fahrwasser—enabled him to rise commandingly above the bubbling confusion of tongues he encountered in the Swedish Bar with his suburban Plattdeutsch, interspersed with scraps of English and Polish. Even so, once or twice a month an ambulance would bring him home, against his will but free of charge.