The Tin Drum (30 page)

But once belief in Santa Claus turned out to be faith in the Gasman, they tried love, abandoning the order of things in Corinthians: I love you, they said, oh, I love you. Do you love yourself too? Do you love me, tell me, do you really love me? I love myself too. And out of sheer love they called each other little radish, loved little radishes, bit into each other, one little radish biting off the other's little radish in love. And told one another stories of wonderful heavenly love among little radishes, and earthly love too, and whispered just before biting down, fresh, hungry, and sharp: Tell me, little radish, do you love me? I love myself too.

But after they had bitten off each other's little radishes out of love, and faith in the Gasman was proclaimed the state religion, after faith and pre-anticipated love, there remained only the third white elephant from the Epistle to the Corinthians: hope. And while they still had little radishes, walnuts, and almonds to nibble on, they hoped that it would soon end, so they could start anew or continue, after the final fanfare or even during the final fanfare, that the end would soon come. And still didn't know what it was that would end. Just hoped it would soon end, end tomorrow, but, they hoped, not today; for what would they do, how begin anew, if it ended so suddenly? And when the end came, they quickly turned it to a hopeful beginning; for in our country an end is always a beginning and there is always hope in any end, even the most definitive of ends. And so it is written: As long as man hopes, again and again he will begin anew with endings full of hope.

As for me, I just don't know. I don't know, for example, who hides behind Santa Claus beards today, don't know what Ruprecht his helper has in his sack, don't know how to wring the necks of gas cocks, nor how to choke them off, for Advent is flowing forth again, or flows forth still, and I don't know if it's some trial run, don't know for whom, don't know if I believe in all good faith that they are polishing those gas cocks, one hopes with love, so they will crow, on what morn or eve I do not know, nor if it matters what hour of day; for Love knows no hour, and Hope knows no end, and Faith knows no boundaries, but knowing and not knowing are bound by time and boundaries, and generally end before their time with beards, and sacks on back, and almonds that crack, so I say again: I just don't know, don't know, for example, what's in those
sausage casings, whose guts they need to fill, don't know, though the price of fillings, coarse or fine, is clearly marked, what all's included in the price, don't know which dictionaries they filch the names of fillings from, don't know what fills those dictionaries, fills those casings, don't know what flesh, don't know what tongue: a word has a meaning, a butcher is silent, I cut slices off, you open books up, I read what I like, you don't know what you like: slices of sausage and quotes from those casings and books—and we'll never know who had to fall silent, to say not a word, so guts could be filled and books could be heard, stuffed tight, jam-packed, thickly written, and still I don't know, and yet I sense it darkly: the same butchers fill both dictionaries and guts with language and sausage, and there is no Paul, the man was called Saul, and Saul he remained and wrote as Saul to the people of Corinth in praise of those amazingly low-priced sausages he called Faith, Hope, and Love, so easy to digest, which, in the ever changing form of Saul, he palms off on mankind to this very day.

As for me, they took away my toy merchant, tried to banish all toys from the world along with him.

Once upon a time there was a musician named Meyn, and he played the trumpet too beautifully for words.

Once upon a time there was a toy merchant named Markus, and he sold white and red lacquered tin drums.

Once upon a time there was a musician named Meyn, and he had four cats, one of them named Bismarck.

Once upon a time there was a tin-drummer named Oskar, and he depended on the toy merchant.

Once upon a time there was a musician named Meyn, and he slew his four cats with a poker.

Once upon a time there was a clockmaker named Laubschad, and he belonged to the SPCA.

Once upon a time there was a tin-drummer named Oskar, and they took away his toy merchant.

Once upon a time there was a toy merchant named Markus, and he took along all the toys when he left this world.

Once upon a time there was a musician named Meyn, and if he's not dead, he's still alive today, playing his trumpet again, too beautifully for words.

Visitors day: Maria brought me a new drum. She passed the drum over the bed rails and was about to hand me the receipt as well, but I waved it off and pressed the button at the head of my bed till Bruno, my keeper, arrived and did what he always does when Maria brings me a new tin drum wrapped in blue paper. He undid the string on the package, let the wrapping paper fall open, lifted out the drum with almost ceremonial solemnity, and carefully folded the paper. Only then did Bruno stride—and when I say stride, I mean stride—to the washbasin with the new drum, run hot water, and without scraping the white and red lacquer, carefully loosen the price tag from the frame.

When, after a brief and not overly tiring visit, Maria prepared to depart, she took along the old drum I'd battered to death during my description of Truczinski's back, the galleon's wooden figurehead, and my somewhat overly personal interpretation of the First Letter to the Corinthians, to store it in our cellar with all the other worn-out instruments that had served both my professional and private needs.

Before Maria left, she said, "The cellar's getting mighty crowded. Just where am I supposed to put the winter potatoes?"

Smiling, I ignored this complaint from the housewife in Maria and asked her to duly record the retired drum by numbering it in black ink and entering the data and concise details concerning its career, which I'd indicated on a slip of paper, in the log that's been hanging on the inside of the cellar door for some years now and which knows all about my drums from nineteen forty-nine on.

Maria nodded in resignation and kissed me goodbye. She still finds my sense of order incomprehensible and somewhat weird. Oskar can
well understand Maria's reservations; indeed, he hardly knows himself why this odd pedantry has led him to collect worn-out tin drums. He doesn't want to lay eyes again on that pile of scrap metal in the potato cellar of the Bilk apartment for as long as he lives. He knows from experience that children scorn their fathers' collections, and that one day, when his son Kurt inherits all those unfortunate drums, he won't give a rap for or on them.

What drives me then, every three weeks, to issue instructions to Maria which, if regularly followed, will one day fill our cellar and leave no room for winter potatoes?

Not until several dozen drums had already been stored in the cellar did the idée fixe seize me that some museum might eventually find my disabled drums of interest, an idea that flares up less and less frequently these days. So that can't have been the source of my passion for collecting. Rather—and the more I think about it, the more likely this seems—the source of this passion for collecting has a simple psychological explanation: that there might be a shortage of tin drums someday, that they might become rare, be banned, fall prey to total destruction. That someday Oskar might find himself forced to have a few of the less damaged ones repaired by a tinsmith, so that with the aid of those patched-up veterans I might survive a drumless and terrible era.

The doctors at the mental institution say much the same thing about the source of my obsession, though they use different terms. Fräulein Dr. Hornstetter even wanted to know the exact date of the birth of my complex. I could tell her with some precision: it was the tenth of November in thirty-eight, for that was the day on which I lost Sigismund Markus, the custodian of my storehouse of drums. Even though it had been difficult to procure new drums in a timely fashion following my poor mama's death, which of necessity brought the Thursday visits to the Arsenal Arcade to an end, while Matzerath was slipshod at best about my drums and Jan Bronski came by our place less and less often, my situation became all the more hopeless when the toy merchant's shop was destroyed and the sight of Markus sitting at his bare desk made perfectly clear: Markus won't be giving you drums anymore, Markus no longer deals in toys, Markus has broken off all business relations with the firm that used to manufacture and deliver beautifully lacquered red and white tin drums to you.

Nevertheless I refused to believe back then that the toy merchant's end meant the end of my early, relatively cheerful era of drumming, and instead grabbed from the rubble that was now Markus's shop one unscathed drum and two whose rims were merely dented, carried this booty back home, and felt I'd made provisions for the future.

I treated these pieces with care, drummed only occasionally, as a last resort, denied myself entire drummer-boy afternoons and, quite reluctantly, the drummer-boy breakfasts that made my whole day bearable. Oskar practiced asceticism, lost weight, was taken to Dr. Hollatz and his increasingly bony assistant Sister Inge. They gave me sweet, sour, bitter, and tasteless medicine and declared my glands at fault, which in Dr. Hollatz's opinion were damaging my health by alternating between un-deractivity and overactivity.

To escape Dr. Hollatz, Oskar moderated his asceticism, started gaining weight again, and by the summer of thirty-nine was his former three-year-old self, having won back his chubby cheeks at the cost of the complete destruction of the last of Markus's drums. The tin gaped, flapped, shed white and red lacquer, rusted, and hung discordantly at my tummy.

There was no point in appealing to Matzerath for help, though he was helpful by nature, and even kindly. Since my poor mama's death the man thought of nothing but Party business, passed his time at Party meetings, or, toward midnight, after a good deal of alcohol, engaged in loud but intimate conversations with the black-framed portraits of Hitler and Beethoven in our living room, letting the Genius of Destiny and the Führer of Providence speak their minds, and in a sober state saw collecting for Winter Aid as his providential destiny.

I don't like to recall those collection Sundays. On one such day I made a futile attempt to obtain a new drum. Matzerath, who had collected money that morning outside the art cinema on Hauptstraße, and outside Sternfeld's department store, came home at noon and warmed up some Königsberg meatballs for himself and me. After the meal, which I still recall was a tasty one—even as a widower, Matzerath loved to cook and did so splendidly—the weary collector lay down upon the sofa to take a little nap. No sooner did his breathing suggest sleep than I grabbed the half-full collection box from the piano, disappeared under the shop counter with the thing, which was shaped like a tin can, and
violated that most preposterous of all tin cans. Not that I wanted to enrich myself with those pennies. My absurd idea was to try the thing out as a drum. No matter how I struck it and plied the sticks, it always gave the same answer: Give a little something to Winter Aid. Let no one be hungry, let no one be cold. Give a little something to Winter Aid!

After half an hour I gave up, fished five pennies from the shop till, gave them to the relief fund, and returned the collection box thus enriched to the piano so Matzerath could find it and kill the rest of his Sunday rattling it for the cold and hungry.

This misguided attempt cured me forever. Never again did I make a serious effort to use a tin can, an overturned bucket, or a washtub bottom as a drum. And if I did, I try to forget those inglorious episodes, and have conceded them little or no space in these pages. A tin can is no tin drum, a bucket is a bucket, and a washtub is for washing yourself or your socks. Just as there's no substitute today, there was none back then; a tin drum with red and white flames speaks for itself and needs no spokesman.

Oskar was alone, betrayed and sold out. How could he preserve his three-year-old face over time when he lacked the most basic necessity, his drum? All the deceptions I'd attempted over the years—my occasional bed-wetting, the babbling of childish prayers each evening, my fear of Santa Claus, whose real name was Greff, the tireless repetition of typically droll three-year-old questions: why do cars have wheels?—all the rubbish grownups expected of me, I now had to handle without my drum, and so, nearly ready to give up, I sought in my despair the man who was not my father but who had most likely begotten me: Oskar waited near the Polish settlement on Ringstraße for Jan Bronski.

In spite of their beautiful shared memories, the relationship, verging at times on friendship, between Matzerath and my uncle, who had been promoted to post office clerk in the meantime, loosened and dissolved after my poor mama's death, not suddenly or all at once, but gradually and with finality as political conditions became increasingly critical. With the disintegration of my mama's slender soul and voluptuous body, the friendship of the two men, who had been mirrored in that soul and nourished by that flesh, also disintegrated, and lacking the nourishment and the convex mirror, the two were reduced to the companionship of their politically opposed groups, who had nothing
in common but the brand of tobacco they smoked. However, the Polish Post Office and shirtsleeve Party meetings could not replace a beautiful woman who had been tenderhearted even in adultery. With appropriate caution—Matzerath had to consider his customers and the Party, Jan the postal administration—my two presumptive fathers met several times between the death of my poor mama and the end of Sigismund Markus.

Two or three times a month, around midnight, Jan's knuckles could be heard on the panes of our living room window. Matzerath would draw back the curtain and open the window a crack, leaving both men thoroughly embarrassed, till one or the other would break the ice and suggest a late-night game of skat. They would fetch Greff from his greengrocery, and if he declined because of Jan's presence, since as a former scoutmaster—he'd disbanded his troop in the meantime—he had to be careful, and was a poor player who didn't like skat all that much anyway, then it was mostly Alexander Scheffler, the baker, who sat in as third man. It's true the master baker didn't like sitting at the same table with my uncle Jan either, but a certain attachment to my poor mama, transferred like an heirloom to Matzerath, as well as Scheffler's maxim that retailers had to stick together, caused the short-legged baker to hurry over from Kleinhammerweg whenever Matzerath called, take his place at our living room table, shuffle the cards with his pale fingers dusted with worm-eaten flour, and deal them out like buns to the hungry multitude.