The Tin Drum (62 page)

As far as my patient can recall, the trip was uneventful as far as Gdynia, which had been called Gotenhafen for the past four and a half years. Two women from Oliva, several children, and an elderly gentleman from Langfuhr cried all the way past Zoppot, while the nuns withdrew into prayer.

The train had a five-hour layover in Gdynia. Two more women and their six children were ushered into the car. The Social Democrat protested because he was ill and, as a prewar Social Democrat, felt he deserved special treatment. But the Polish officer in charge of the convoy boxed him on the ear when he refused to make room, and told him in fluent German that he wasn't familiar with the term Social Democrat. He'd been forced to spend a good deal of the war in various parts of Germany, he said, and he'd never heard the words Social Democrat. The Social Democrat with stomach problems never managed to explain the aims, nature, and history of the German Social Democratic Party to the Polish officer, because the officer left the car, shoved the doors closed, and bolted them from the outside.

I've forgotten to write that everyone was sitting or lying on straw. As the train pulled out late that afternoon a few women cried, "We're going back to Danzig!" But they were mistaken. The train was only shunted onto another track, then headed west toward Stolp. It took four days to reach Stolp, I'm told, because the train was constantly being stopped in the open countryside by former partisans and bands of Polish youths. The youths opened the sliding doors of the boxcar, letting a little fresh air in and a little stale air out, along with a portion of the travelers' luggage. Whenever the youths entered Herr Matzerath's boxcar, the four
nuns would stand up and hold their crosses high on their chains. The four crucifixes made a deep impression on the young men. They always crossed themselves before throwing the backpacks and suitcases of those on board onto the railway embankment.

When the Social Democrat showed the boys the paper from the Polish authorities in Danzig or Gdańsk certifying that he had been a dues-paying member of the Social Democratic Party from thirty-one to thirty-seven, the young men didn't cross themselves but instead knocked the papers from his hands and seized his two suitcases and his wife's rucksack; the fine winter coat with the large checks, on which the Social Democrat was lying, was also carried out into the cool Pomeranian air.

Nevertheless, Herr Oskar Matzerath maintains that the boys seemed well disciplined and made a favorable impression on him. He attributes this to the influence of their leader, who despite his tender age of barely sixteen springs, already showed a strong personality that reminded Herr Matzerath, to his pleasure and sorrow, of Störtebeker, the leader of the Dusters.

The young man who so resembled Störtebeker was trying to pry the rucksack from Maria Matzerath's hands and finally did so, but not before Herr Matzerath had seized the photo album, which luckily was lying on top. The gang leader was about to fly into a rage. But when my patient opened the album and showed the boy a photo of his grandmother Koljaiczek, he dropped Frau Maria's rucksack, probably thinking of his own grandmother, touched two fingers to the brim of his pointed Polish cap, turned toward the Matzerath family, said "Do widzenia!" and having grabbed some other traveler's suitcase in place of the Matzerath rucksack, left the car with his men.

Inside the rucksack, which thanks to the family photo album remained in the family's possession, were, in addition to a few items of underwear, the account books and tax returns for the grocery store, their bankbooks, and a ruby necklace that had once belonged to Herr Matzerath's mother, which my patient had hidden in a package of disinfectant; the educational tome, composed half of extracts from Rasputin and half of selections from Goethe, also traveled along on the trip westward.

My patient maintains that he kept the photo album on his knees for most of the trip, and now and then his educational tome, leafed through them both, and although he suffered extreme pain in his joints, both
books are said to have afforded him many pleasant though sobering hours of reflection.

Moreover, my patient would like to state that all the jolting and shaking, the switches and intersections crossed while he lay at full length on the constantly vibrating front axle of the boxcar, furthered his growth. He no longer grew wider, he says, but now gained in height. His swollen but not inflamed joints had a chance to loosen. Even his ears, nose, and male member, I'm told, grew perceptibly, aided by the pounding of the rails. As long as the convoy's journey was unimpeded, Herr Matzerath evidently felt no pain. Only when the train came to a stop for another visit by partisans or some gang of youths did the stabbing, cramping pains return, which he countered, as noted, with the soothing effects of the photo album.

In addition to the Polish Stórtebeker, several other young bandits took an interest in the family photos, as did an older partisan. The old warrior even sat down, pulled out a cigarette, and leafed thoughtfully through the album without omitting a single rectangle, starting with the picture of Grandfather Koljaiczek, and following the photo-rich rise of the family through to the snapshots showing Frau Maria Matzerath with her one-, two-, three-, and four-year-old son Kurt. My patient even saw him smile now and then at an idyllic family scene. Only a few all too evident Party insignias on the suits of the deceased Herr Matzerath and the lapels of Herr Ehlers, who was Party leader of the Local Farm Association and married the widow of Jan Bronski, the defender of the post office, met with the partisan's disapproval. With the point of a breakfast knife, my patient tells me, before the man's critical eyes and to his evident satisfaction, he scratched off the Party insignias from each photo.

This partisan—Herr Matzerath now sees ht to inform me—was an authentic partisan, as opposed to many who are inauthentic. For he maintains there is no such thing as a part-time partisan, true partisans are always and forever hoisting fallen governments back into the saddle and, with the aid of other partisans, pulling the governments they've helped up into the saddle back down again. Incorrigible partisans, constantly infiltrating one another's groups, are, according to Herr Matzerath's thesis—which I actually thought made sense—the most artistically gifted of all politicians, for they immediately reject whatever they have just created.

My own situation is somewhat similar. Are not my own knotted figures, barely hardened in plaster, often smashed with a blow of my fist? I'm thinking in particular of a work my patient commissioned a few months ago, a figure in ordinary string who was to combine Rasputin, the faith healer, and Goethe, the German prince of poets, into a single person who, moreover, would bear a striking resemblance to himself. I don't know how many kilometers of string I've already knotted to combine these two extremes into a single satisfactory knotwork. Yet like the partisan Herr Matzerath praises as a model, I remain restless and dissatisfied; what I knot with my right hand, I undo with my left, what my left hand forms, my right fist destroys.

But Herr Matzerath can't keep his story moving in a straight line either. Aside from the four nuns he sometimes calls Franciscans and sometimes Vincentians, it's that young thing with her two names and her one face he claims is triangular and foxlike which keeps throwing the story off, so that in retelling it, I should really record two or more versions of that trip from the East to the West. But that's not my job, so I'll stick with the Social Democrat, who never altered his face throughout the journey, or indeed, my patient tells me, the story he told several times before reaching Stolp, that until the year thirty-seven he'd spent his free time as a partisan of sorts, pasting up posters, risking his health, for he was one of the few Social Democrats who pasted up posters even when it rained.

He is said to have been telling this story yet again when the convoy was stopped for the umpteenth time just outside Stolp for another large gang of youths who wished to pay a visit. But since there was almost no luggage left, the boys started taking the clothes of those on board. Sensibly, they stuck to male outer garments. The Social Democrat failed to understand why, however, maintaining that a clever tailor could make several excellent suits from the flowing habits of the nuns. The Social Democrat was, as he proclaimed in the voice of a true believer, an atheist. But the young bandits, without proclaiming themselves true believers, were partial to the one true Church, and bypassed the nuns' ample wool robes for the single-breasted suit of the atheist, even though it contained a good dose of wood fiber. But he did not wish to remove his jacket, vest, and trousers, repeating instead the tale of his brief but brilliant career as a Social Democratic poster-paster, and when
he wouldn't stop talking and proved reluctant to remove his suit, he was kicked in the stomach with a boot formerly belonging to the German Wehrmacht.

The Social Democrat vomited long and hard, finally coughing up blood. He had no thought for his suit and the boys lost all interest in the stained garment, although it could have been saved with a thorough dry cleaning. Turning from men's garments, they removed a light blue artificial silk blouse from Frau Maria Matzerath and a knitted Berchtesgaden jacket from the young woman whose name was not Luzie Rennwand but Regina Raeck. Then they shoved the boxcar doors closed, but not completely, and the train pulled off while the death of the Social Democrat got under way.

Two or three kilometers outside Stolp the train was shunted onto a siding and remained there throughout the night, which was clear and starry, I'm told, but cool for the month of June.

That night—Herr Matzerath reports—indecently, cursing God loudly, urging the working class to arise, toasting freedom with last words he'd probably heard at the movies, then falling prey to a fit of coughing that horrified the whole boxcar, the Social Democrat who was all too strongly attached to his single-breasted suit died.

This did not occasion any outbreak of weeping, my patient says. The boxcar fell silent and remained so. The only sound came from the chattering teeth of Frau Maria, who was freezing without her blouse, and had laid what underclothing remained over her son Kurt and Herr Oskar. Toward morning two plucky nuns took advantage of the open door to clean out the boxcar, throwing damp straw, the feces of children and grownups, and the vomit of the Social Democrat out onto the embankment.

In Stolp the train was inspected by Polish officers. At the same time, warm soup and a drink resembling barley coffee were distributed. The corpse in Herr Matzerath's car was seized for fear of contagion and carried off on a scaffold plank by medical orderlies. At the nuns' request a superior officer allowed the family to offer a brief prayer. They were also allowed to remove the dead man's shoes, socks, and suit. During the stripping of the garments—the corpse on the plank was later covered with empty cement sacks—my patient observed the stripped man's niece. Even if her name was Raeck, she still reminded him, with loath
ing and fascination, of Luzie Rennwand, whose image in knotted string I have entitled The Sausage Sandwich Eater. The girl in the boxcar, it's true, did not reach for a sausage sandwich and eat it skin and all in front of her pillaged uncle, but instead joined in the pillage, inheriting her uncle's vest, which she pulled on in place of her stolen knitted jacket; then she checked out her new look, which was not at all unbecoming, in a pocket mirror, and in that same mirror, my patient says—arousing a panic he still feels today—captured him and his resting place, and, mirrored and smooth, coolly observed him from eyes that were slits in a triangle.

The trip from Stolp to Stettin took two days. There were frequent involuntary stops, to be sure, and more visits, which were slowly becoming a habit, from teenagers armed with paratroopers' knives and tommy guns, but the visits grew shorter and shorter, since there was almost nothing left to take from those on board.

My patient claims that during the trip from Danzig-Gdańsk to Stettin, within a single week, he grew three and a half to four inches. His upper and lower legs stretched out, while his chest and head barely changed. On the other hand, though my patient lay on his back throughout the trip, he could not prevent the growth of a hump, rather high up and slightly displaced to the left. Herr Matzerath also admits that beyond Stettin—German railway staff had taken over the convoy in the meantime—the pain increased and could no longer be forgotten by simply leafing through the family photo album. He screamed aloud and at length on several occasions, but did not damage any train station windows with his screams—Matzerath: My voice had lost its glass-slaying power—but his screams did summon up the four nuns, who gathered about his resting place and remained in a state of constant prayer.

A good half of his fellow travelers, among them the Social Democrat's family along with Fräulein Regina, left the convoy in Schwerin. Herr Matzerath was sorry to see them go, for the sight of the girl had become so familiar and necessary to him that once she was gone, he was overcome by violent, convulsive fits accompanied by a high fever that left him shaken. According to Frau Maria Matzerath, he cried out desperately for someone named Luzie, called himself a mythical beast, a unicorn, and seemed frightened of falling, wanted to fall, from a ten-meter diving board.

In Lüneberg Herr Oskar Matzerath was taken to a hospital. There he
made the acquaintance of a few nurses in his fevered state, but was soon transferred to the university clinic in Hanover. There they managed to lower his fever. Herr Matzerath saw Frau Maria and her son Kurt only rarely, and not on a daily basis until she found a job as a cleaning lady at the clinic. Since there was no place for Frau Maria and little Kurt to stay at the clinic, or even in the neighborhood, and because life in the refugee camp was becoming increasingly unbearable—Frau Maria had to travel three hours a day in overcrowded trains to reach the clinic, often standing on the running board—the doctors agreed, in spite of grave misgivings, to transfer the patient to City Hospital in Düsseldorf, especially since Frau Maria could produce a residence permit: her sister Guste, who had married a headwaiter living there during the war, had made one room of her two-and-a-half-room apartment available to Frau Matzerath, since the headwaiter wasn't taking up any space; he was currently in a Russian prison.