The Tin Drum (57 page)

So the door to the bedroom was lifted off its hinges. Old man Heilandt fetched his tools and a few crate boards from his workshop. Smoking Derby cigarettes that Matzerath had given him, he started taking measurements. Oskar helped him with his work. The others disappeared into the cellar because the artillery had started firing again from the heights.

He meant to do the job quickly and construct a simple, untapered box. But Oskar preferred the traditional form of the coffin, refused to relent, and held the boards so firmly in place beneath the saw that Heilandt finally decided to taper it toward the foot after all, giving it the shape every human corpse has the right to demand.

The coffin ended up fine. Lina Greff washed Mother Truczinski, took a freshly laundered nightgown from the wardrobe, trimmed her fingernails, arranged her bun, and gave it the support it needed with three knitting needles; in short, she made sure that in death as in life, Mother Truczinski looked like a gray mouse who liked to drink barley coffee and eat potato pancakes.

But since the mouse had stiffened in her chair during the air raid and couldn't fit in the coffin with her knees drawn up, old man Heilandt waited until Maria had left the room for a few minutes with little Kurt in her arms, then broke both legs so the coffin could be nailed shut.

Unfortunately we had no black paint but only yellow. So Mother Truczinski was carried out of her flat and down the stairs in unpainted
boards, which, however, tapered toward the foot. Oskar carried his drum behind and examined the coffin lid, which read
Vitello-Margarine—Vitello-Margarine—Vitello-Margarine
—three times in succession, evenly spaced, in posthumous confirmation of Mother Truczinski's taste. During her lifetime she had preferred good old Vitello Margarine made from pure vegetable oil to the finest butter, because margarine is wholesome and nutritious, stays fresh, and lifts the spirits.

Old man Heilandt loaded the coffin onto a flatbed cart from Greff's vegetable shop and pulled it down Luisenstraße, Marienstraße, along Anton-Möller-Weg — where two houses were on fire — toward the Women's Clinic. Little Kurt stayed in our cellar with the widow Greff. Maria and Matzerath pushed, Oscar sat on the cart, would have liked to climb up on the coffin, but wasn't allowed to. The streets were clogged with refugees from East Prussia and the Delta. It was almost impossible to get through the railway underpass by the Sporthalle. Matzerath suggested digging a grave on the school grounds at the Conradinum. Maria was against it. Old man Heilandt, who was Mother Truczinski's age, waved it off. I was opposed to the school grounds too. We had to forgo the city cemetery, though, since from the Sporthalle on, Hindenburgallee was closed to all but military traffic. So we couldn't bury the mouse next to her son Herbert, but did find a place for her beyond the Maiwiese in Steffenspark, which lay across from the city cemetery.

The ground was frozen. While Matzerath and old man Heilandt took turns plying the pickax and Maria tried to dig up some ivy from around the stone benches, Oskar slipped off to be on his own and was soon among the tree trunks on Hindenburgallee. What traffic! The tanks retreating from the heights and the Delta were towing one another off. From the trees — lindens, if I remember rightly — dangled Volkssturm men and soldiers. Cardboard signs on their uniform jackets were fairly legible and indicated that the men hanging from the trees, or lindens, were traitors. I stared into the strained faces of several hanged men, made a few general comparisons, then specific ones with the hanged greengrocer Greff. I also saw clusters of youngsters strung up in uniforms too large for them, kept thinking I saw Störtebeker — though all hanged youngsters look alike — and said to myself: So now they've hanged Störtebeker — I wondered if they've strung up Luzie Rennwand?

This thought gave Oskar wings. He searched the trees left and right
for a skinny dangling girl, ventured between the tanks to the other side of the avenue, but found only doughboys, elderly Volkssturmers, and youngsters who looked like Störtebeker. Disappointed, I searched along the avenue up to the half-demolished Café Vierjahreszeiten, returned only reluctantly, and when I stood once more at Mother Truczinski's grave, strewing ivy and foliage over the mound with Maria, I still retained the clear and detailed image of a dangling Luzie.

We didn't return the widow Greff's cart to the vegetable shop. Matzerath and old man Heilandt took it apart but stowed the pieces by the shop counter, and the grocer said as he stuck three packets of Derby cigarettes in the old man's pockets, "We may need the cart again. At least it's fairly safe here."

Old man Heilandt said nothing, but helped himself to several packages of noodles and two bags of sugar from the nearly empty shelves. Then he shuffled out of the shop in the same felt slippers he'd worn at the burial and all the way there and back, leaving it to Matzerath to clear his meager remaining stock from the shelves and carry it to the cellar.

Now we seldom emerged from our hole. The Russians were said to be in Zigankenberg and Pietzgendorf and on the outskirts of Schidlitz. In any case they must have occupied the heights, for they were firing straight down on the city. Rechtstadt, Altstadt, Pfefferstadt, Vorstadt, Jungstadt, Neustadt, and Niederstadt, built up over the past seven hundred years, burned to the ground in three days. But it wasn't the first time Danzig had been put to the torch. Pomerelians, Brandenburgers, Teutonic Knights, Poles, Swedes and Swedes again, French, Prussians and Russians, Saxons too, making history, had found the city worthy of burning every few decades—and now it was the Russians, Poles, Germans, and English who were baking the Gothic bricks for the hundredth time, without improving the baker's art. Häkergasse, Langgasse, Breitgasse, Große and Kleine Wollwebergasse, were burning, Tobiasgasse, Hundegasse, Altstädtischer Graben, Outer Graben, the ramparts burned, as did Lange Brücke. Crane Gate was made of wood and burned beautifully. On Tailor Lane the fire had itself measured for several flashy pairs of trousers. St. Mary's Church burned from the inside out, its lancet windows lit with a festive glow. Those bells that had not yet been evacuated from St. Catherine's, St. John's, Saints Brigitte, Barbara, Elisabeth, Peter, and Paul, from Trinity and Corpus Christi, melted
in their tower frames, dripping without song or sound. In the Great Mill they were grinding red wheat. Butchers Lane smelled of burned Sunday roast. At the Stadt-Theater
Dreams of Arson,
a one-act play of ambiguous import, was given its world premiere. The town fathers in Rechtstadt decided to raise the firemen's wages retroactively after the fire. Holy Spirit Lane blazed in the name of the Holy Spirit. The Franciscan monastery blazed joyfully in the name of St. Francis, who loved fire and sang hymns to it. The Lane of Our Lady glowed for Father and Son alike. Needless to say, the Hay Market, Coal Market, and Lumber Market burned to the ground. In Bakers Lane the buns never made it out of the oven. In Milk Churn Lane the milk boiled over. Only the West Prussian Fire Insurance building, for purely symbolic reasons, refused to burn down.

Oskar never had much interest in fires. So I would have stayed in the cellar when Matzerath bounded up the steps to watch Danzig burn from the attic windows, had I not been thoughtless enough to store my few, highly flammable possessions in that same attic. It was a matter of saving the last of the drums from my Theater at the Front stockpile and my Goethe and Rasputin. I also kept a paper-thin, delicately painted fan between the pages of my book, one that my Roswitha, La Raguna, had wielded gracefully in her lifetime. Maria remained in the cellar. But little Kurt wanted to come up to the roof with Matzerath and me and watch the fire. Though my son's uncontrolled enthusiasm annoyed me, Oskar told himself the boy must get that from his great-grandfather, my grandfather Koljaiczek, the arsonist. Maria kept little Kurt below while I went up with Matzerath, gathered my things, glanced out the attic window, and was amazed to see the scintillating burst of vitality our venerable old city had managed to summon up.

When shells began landing nearby, we left the attic. Matzerath wanted to go up again later, but Maria wouldn't let him. He caved in, and wept as he gave a detailed account of the fire to the widow Greff, who had remained below. He went back to the flat again and turned on the radio, but there was no longer any signal. You couldn't even hear the crackle of the flames at the burning station, let alone a special communiqué.

Matzerath stood in the middle of the cellar, as hesitant as a child who isn't sure if he should go on believing in Santa Claus, tugged at his suspenders, expressed doubt for the first time about the final victory,
and on the widow Greff's advice, removed his Party pin from his lapel, then didn't know what to do with it, since the cellar had a concrete floor, Lina Greff wouldn't take it, and Maria said he should bury it among the winter potatoes, but the potatoes didn't seem safe enough to Matzerath and he didn't dare go back upstairs, for they were bound to arrive soon, if they weren't already there, he'd seen them fighting in Brentau and Oliva from the attic, and he kept wishing he'd left the little bonbon up there in the air-defense sand, because if they found him holding it down here—then he dropped it on the concrete, was about to stamp on it, a man of action, but little Kurt and I both pounced on it, I got to it first and held tight as little Kurt started hitting the way he always did when he wanted something, but I wouldn't give my son the Party pin for fear of endangering him, because you didn't fool around with the Russians. Oskar remembered that from reading Rasputin, and I wondered, as little Kurt flailed away at me and Maria tried to separate us, whether it would be White Russians or Great Russians, Cossacks or Georgians, Kalmucks or Crimean Tartars, Ruthenians or Ukrainians, or maybe even Kirghizes, who would find the Party pin on little Kurt if Oskar relented beneath the blows of his son.

When Maria pulled us apart with the help of the widow Greff, I clutched the little bonbon victoriously in my left fist. Matzerath was glad to be rid of his badge. Maria was tending to the howling Kurt. The open pin was sticking into my palm. As usual, I just couldn't acquire a taste for the thing. But just as I was trying to pin Matzerath's bonbon on the back of his jacket—after all, what did I care about his Party—they were in the shop above us, and to judge by the screaming women, most likely in the adjoining cellars as well.

When they lifted the trapdoor, the open pin was still pricking me. What else could I do but crouch at Maria's trembling knees and watch ants as they crawled along an army trail leading diagonally from the winter potatoes across the concrete floor of the cellar to a sack of sugar. A mixed assortment of totally ordinary Russians, I judged, a half-dozen or so crowding down the cellar steps with big eyes above their tommy guns. In the midst of all the screaming, it was reassuring to see that the ants were unmoved by the arrival of the Russian Army. They were thinking only of potatoes and sugar, while those holding the tommy guns had other conquests in mind. It struck me as perfectly normal that
the grownups raised their hands. I knew that from newsreels, and I'd seen a similar show of submissiveness following the defense of the Polish Post Office. But it wasn't at all clear to me why little Kurt aped the grownups. He should have taken his example from me, his father—or if not from his father, then from the ants. Since three of the boxy uniforms instantly warmed toward the widow Greff, a little life was introduced into the somewhat stiff company. Lina Greff, who was hardly expecting such a spirited throng after her long widowhood and the lean years that preceded it, let out a few screams of surprise at first, but soon reaccustomed herself to that almost forgotten position.

I had read in Rasputin that Russians love children. In our cellar I saw it firsthand. Maria, trembling needlessly, couldn't understand why the four men who weren't busy with the widow Greff allowed little Kurt to remain sitting on her lap instead of taking their own turns at it; on the contrary, they fondled little Kurt, said dadada to him, patted his cheek and Maria's too.

Someone picked me and my drum up off the concrete floor and thus prevented me from continuing my observation of the ants, comparing and gauging the march of events by their resolute diligence. My drum dangled at my belly, and the brawny fellow with large pores tapped out a few beats with his fingers, not at all badly for a grownup, to which we might have danced. Oskar would have been glad to reply in kind, would gladly have offered a few examples of his art on tin, but couldn't because Matzerath's Party pin was still sticking into his left palm.

Things grew almost calm and cozy in our cellar. La Greff lay with increasing composure beneath the three men taking turns, and when one of them had had enough, my talented drummer handed Oskar over to a sweaty, slightly slant-eyed fellow I assume was a Kalmuck. Holding me with his left hand, he buttoned his trousers with his right, and took no offense when his predecessor, my drummer, did the reverse. For Matzerath, however, nothing had changed. He was still standing in front of the shelf filled with tins of Leipzig Mixed Vegetables, his hands in the air, displaying his lined palms, which no one cared to read. The women, meanwhile, proved to be remarkably quick learners: Maria was picking up her first few words of Russian, her knees no longer trembled, she even laughed and would have played her harmonica, had it been at hand.

Oskar couldn't adjust that easily, however, and looking about for something to take the place of his ants, shifted his attention to several flat, grayish brown creatures strolling along the edge of my Kalmuck's collar. I wanted to catch one and examine it more closely, for I'd read a good deal about lice, not so much in Goethe, but relatively often in Rasputin. Since I was having a hard time catching the louse with one hand, I decided to get rid of the Party pin. And to explain my conduct, Oskar says: Since the Kalmuck already had several medals on his chest, I held out the bonbon that had been pricking me and keeping me from catching a louse to Matzerath, who was standing beside me, keeping my hand loosely closed all the while.