The Tin Drum (41 page)

"Why do you keep turning those knobs, keep listening to that radio, as if you have a mad passion for special communiques?"

It's hard to experiment on my drum's white disk. I should have known that. My tin always wants the same wood. It wants to be asked striking questions and give striking answers, or be plied with easy, conversational rolls that leave both question and answer open. My drum is neither a frying pan that startles raw meat with artificial heat nor a dance floor for couples who aren't sure if they belong together. So even in his loneliest hours Oskar has never sprinkled fizz powder on his drum, added his spit, and put on a show he's not seen for years, one I sorely miss. It's true that Oskar could not entirely forgo an experiment with said powder, but he proceeded more directly and left his drum out of it; and in doing so I exposed myself, for without my drum I'm always defenseless and exposed.

It was hard to get hold of fizz powder at first. I sent Bruno to every grocery store in Grafenberg, had him take the tram to Gerresheim. I asked him to try in the city too, but even at refreshment stands like the ones in tram terminals Bruno couldn't find any fizz powder. The younger salesgirls had never heard of it, older shopkeepers recalled it long-windedly, rubbed their foreheads pensively—as Bruno reported—and said, "Man, what's that you want? Fizz powder? Long time back that was, when you could get it. Back in Wilhelm's day, and early on under Adolf, in shops. Those were the days! But how about a soda or a cola?"

My keeper drank several bottles of soda and cola at my expense but couldn't find what I wanted, yet Oskar received help in the end. Bruno proved relentless: yesterday he brought me a little white packet without a label; the lab technician at the mental institution, a certain Fräulein Klein, was very understanding and agreed to open her contain
ers, drawers, and reference books to take a few grams of this and a few grams of that, and finally, after several trials, produced a fizz powder that, Bruno reported, fizzed, prickled, turned green, and tasted very discreetly of woodruff.

And today was Visitors Day. Maria came. But Klepp arrived first. We spent almost three-quarters of an hour laughing about something forgettable. I spared Klepp and his Leninist leanings, didn't bring up current events, didn't mention the special communiqué I'd heard on my little portable radio—Maria gave it to me a few weeks ago—reporting Stalin's death. But Klepp seemed to know all about it, for awkwardly sewn on the sleeve of his brown-checked overcoat was a black band. Then Klepp arose and Vittlar came in. The two friends were apparently quarreling again, for Vittlar greeted Klepp with a laugh and made devil's horns with his fingers: "Stalin's death caught me by surprise while shaving this morning!" he taunted and helped Klepp on with his coat. With unctuous piety shining on his broad face Klepp lifted the black band on his sleeve. "That's why I'm in mourning," he sighed, and imitating Armstrong's trumpet, he intoned the funereal opening bars of the New Orleans Function—trrrah trahdada traah dada dadada—then slipped out the door.

Vittlar stayed, however, refused to sit down, danced about instead in front of the mirror, and we smiled at each other knowingly for about a quarter of an hour without mentioning Stalin.

I don't know if I wanted to confide in Vittlar or if I meant to drive him away. I motioned him over to my bed, motioned his ear closer, and whispered into his large-lobed spoon, "Fizz powder! Do you know what that is, Gottfried?"

A horrified leap carried Vittlar back from my crib; he assumed his accustomed air of theatrical pathos, thrust his index finger toward me, and hissed, "Wilt thou seduce me, Satan, with fizz powder? Dost thou not yet know I am an angel?"

And like an angel Vittlar winged away, but not before checking himself once more in the mirror over the washbasin. The young people outside this mental institution are quite odd and affected.

And then Maria arrived. She's had a new spring suit tailor-made and is wearing an elegant mouse-gray hat with a refined touch of straw-yellow trim, a creation she does not remove even inside the room. She
gave me a cursory greeting, proffered her cheek, and turned on the portable radio, which she had, in fact, given to me but seemed to reserve for her own use, for that vile plastic box always replaces a part of our conversation on visiting days. "Did you hear the communiqué this morning? That's really something. Or did you miss it?" "Yes, Maria," I replied patiently. "They weren't hiding Stalin's death from me, but please, turn off the radio."

Maria obeyed without a word and sat down, still wearing her hat, and we talked as usual about little Kurt.

"Just think, Oskar, the little rascal don't want to wear long socks no more, and it's March and getting colder, they said so on the radio." I tuned out the weather report but sided with little Kurt about the long socks. "The boy's twelve years old, Maria, he's ashamed to wear wool socks around his school chums."

"Well, it's his health I'm worried about, and he's wearing those socks till Easter."

This appointed date was stated so firmly that I gingerly offered a compromise: "Then you should buy him ski pants, because those long wool socks are really ugly. Just think back when you were his age. In the courtyard on Labesweg? What did they do to Little Cheese, who had to wear long socks till Easter? Nuchi Eyke, who fell on Crete, Axel Mischke, who got his in Holland right near the end, and Harry Schlager—what did they do to Little Cheese? They smeared those long wool socks of his with so much tar they stuck to him and he had to go to the hospital."

"That was Susi Kater's fault, she's to blame and not the socks!" Maria burst out angrily. Even though Susi Kater had joined the women's telegraph corps at the very start of the war and supposedly got married in Bavaria later on, Maria bore the sort of grudge against Susi, who was a few years her senior, that only women seem able to sustain from childhood to grannyhood. Nevertheless my reference to Little Cheese's tar-smeared wool socks had some effect. Maria promised to buy little Kurt ski pants. Our conversation could take another turn. There was praise to report for our Kurt. Principal Kônnemann had offered a few words of recognition at the last parents' meeting. "Just imagine! He's second in his class. And he helps me in the shop, I can't tell you all he does."

I nodded approvingly, listened as she described her newest pur
chases for the delicatessen. I encouraged Maria to open a branch in Oberkassel. Times are favorable, I said, and the economic outlook is good—I'd picked that up from the radio, by the way—and then I decided it was time to ring for Bruno. He came in and handed me the little white packet containing the fizz powder.

Oskar had thought out his plan. Without explanation of any kind I asked Maria for her left hand. First she gave me her right, then corrected herself, offered the back of her left hand, shaking her head and laughing, probably expecting me to kiss it. She showed no surprise till I turned her palm toward me and poured powder from the little packet into a little pile between the Mound of the Moon and the Mound of Venus. She allowed this, however, and was startled only when Oskar bent over her hand and let his spittle flow freely over the fizz-powder mound.

"Stop that foolishness, Oskar!" she said indignantly, jumped up, stepped back, and stared in dismay at the bubbling, frothy green foam. Maria blushed from her forehead down. I was just starting to hope when she reached the washbasin with three quick strides, turned on the tap, and let water, disgusting water, first cold, then warm, flow over our fizz powder, then washed her hands with my soap.

"You're really impossible sometimes, Oskar! What will Herr Münsterberg think of us?" Pleading for him to be lenient with me, she looked at Bruno, who had taken a stand at the foot of the bed during my attempt. To spare Maria any further embarrassment, I sent my keeper from the room, and as soon as he'd closed the door behind him, called Maria back to the bed: "Don't you remember? Please, surely you remember. Fizz powder. Three pfennigs a packet. Just think back: woodruff, raspberry, how beautifully it foamed and fizzed, and that feeling, Maria, that feeling!"

Maria didn't remember. She was silly enough to be afraid, trembled a little, hid her left hand, tried desperately to change the topic, told me again about little Kurt's success in school, about Stalin's death, about the new icebox at Matzerath's delicatessen, about plans for the new branch in Oberkassel. But I remained true to the woodruff: fizz powder, I said, she stood up, fizz powder, I begged, she said a quick goodbye, plucked at her hat, unsure if she should leave, twisted the radio's dial, the radio blared, I shouted above it: "Fizz powder, Maria, surely you remember!"

Then she stood in the doorway, wept, shook her head, left me alone with the blaring, whistling radio, closed the door so quietly she might have been leaving a dying man.

So Maria no longer remembers fizz powder. But for me, as long as I can breathe and drum, that fizz powder will never stop foaming; for it was my spittle in the late summer of nineteen-forty that brought woodruff and raspberry to life, awakened the feelings that sent my flesh out questing, that made me a gatherer of chanterelles, morels, and other mushrooms as yet unknown to me but no doubt equally edible, that made a father of me, yes, a father, so young a father, from spittle to father, awakening feelings, a father, gathering and begetting; for by early November there was no room for doubt, Maria was pregnant, Maria was in her second month, and I, Oskar, was the father.

I believe it to this very day, for the business with Matzerath occurred much later; it was two weeks, no, ten days after I had impregnated a sleeping Maria in her richly scarred brother Herbert's bed, in that darkened room, between walls and blackout paper, and in full view of the postcards from her younger brother, the airman second class, that I found a Maria no longer sleeping but instead busily gasping for air on our sofa; she lay beneath Matzerath and Matzerath lay on top of her.

Oskar, who'd been meditating in the attic, stepped from the hallway into the living room with his drum. The two of them didn't notice me. Had their heads toward the tile stove. Hadn't even undressed properly. Matzerath's shorts were hanging about his knees. His trousers in a pile on the carpet. Maria's dress and slip had rolled up over her bra to her armpits. Her panties were dangling from her right foot, which, along with her leg, hung twisted at an ugly angle from the sofa. Her left leg lay hooked over the backrest, as if it weren't involved. Between her legs Matzerath. With his right hand he turned her head aside, the other widened her opening to guide him on his way. Through Matzerath's spread fingers Maria stared sideways at the carpet and seemed to follow its pattern under the table. He'd bitten down on a velvet-covered cushion and only let up on the velvet when they talked. For sometimes they talked, without interrupting their labors. Only when the clock struck three-quarters did they both hesitate for as long as it took the chimes to do their duty, and he said, working away as he had before the chimes began, "It's a quarter of." And then he wanted to know from her if it was
good that way, how he was doing it. She said yes several times and asked him to be careful. He promised her he would. She told him again, urged him to watch it this time. Then he asked if she was nearly there. And she said: I'm nearly there. Then she must have had a cramp in the foot hanging from the sofa, for she thrust it into the air, with her panties still clinging to it. Then he bit into the velvet cushion again and she cried out go away, and he tried to but could not, because before he was away Oskar was on top of them both, because I'd plunked my drum down on the small of his back and my drumsticks on the tin, because I could no longer stand to hear go away, because my drum drowned out her words, because I could not let him leave as Jan Bronski always left Mama; for Mama too had always cried to Jan to go away, had cried to Matzerath, go away. Then they would fall apart and let the snot splat down somewhere, onto a towel they'd brought, or if they couldn't reach that, onto the sofa or even on the carpet. But I couldn't bear to see that. After all, I hadn't gone away. And I was the first one not to, so I'm the father and not Matzerath, who believed to the very end he was my father. And yet Jan Bronski was. And that's something I inherited from Jan, that I was there before Matzerath and didn't go away, that I stayed in, let go inside; and what came out was my son, not his. He didn't have a son. He was no real father. Even if he married my poor mama ten times over and married Maria too, because she was pregnant. And that's what people in our building and on our street will surely think. Of course they thought: Matzerath's knocked up Maria and now he's marrying her, with her only seventeen and a half and him forty-five. But she's a hard worker for her age, and as for little Oskar, he should be happy to have her for a stepmother, Maria's more than a stepmother to the poor child, she's like a real mother, though Oskar's not quite right in the head and should really be in an institution, like Silberhammer or the one in Tapiau.

On Gretchen Schemer's advice, Matzerath decided to marry my beloved. So if I call my presumptive father my father, it follows that my father married my future wife, called my son Kurt his son Kurt, expected me to acknowledge his grandson as my half brother, to accept my beloved vanilla-scented Maria as my stepmother, and to tolerate her presence in his bed, which stank of fish roe. When, however, I realized: this fellow Matzerath is not even your presumptive father, he's a complete
stranger, deserving neither sympathy nor antipathy, a good cook, who while cooking well has cared for you after a fashion up till now in your father's place, because your poor mama left you in this man's care, who has now snatched from you, of all people, the best of all women, making you witness a wedding and five months later a baptism as a guest at two family celebrations you yourself should have been hosting, for you should have been the one taking Maria to the registry office, you should have chosen the godparents—when, therefore, I regarded the major roles in this tragedy and was forced to note that the performance suffered from a total miscasting of the lead role, I despaired of the theater: for Oskar, the true character actor, had been assigned the role of an extra, one that could easily have been dispensed with altogether.