The Tin Drum (70 page)

Zeidler himself opened the door when I rang. Short, squat, breathless, and hedgehoggy, he stood in the doorway wearing thick glasses, the lower half of his face hidden beneath fluffy shaving lather, holding the brush to his cheek with his right hand, looked like an alcoholic and sounded like a Westphalian.

"If you don't like the room, just say so. I'm shaving and I've still got to wash my feet."

Zeidler didn't stand on ceremony. I looked at the room. I could hardly like it, since it consisted of a nonfunctioning bathroom half-tiled in turquoise green, with the rest uneasily wallpapered. Nevertheless I didn't say I didn't like it. Disregarding Zeidler's drying lather and unwashed feet, I rapped on the bathtub and asked if we couldn't just as well dispense with it, since it had no drainpipe in the first place.

Smiling, Zeidler shook his gray hedgehog head and tried in vain to whip up more lather with his brush. That was his reply, whereupon I declared myself willing to take the room and tub for forty marks a month.

When we stood once more in the dimly lit, tubular corridor, lined with several doors painted various colors, some partly glassed, I asked who else lived in Zeidler's flat.

"Wife and lodgers."

I tapped on the frosted-glass door in the middle of the corridor, which could be reached with a single step from the entrance to the flat.

"The nurse lives there. But that's no concern of yours. You'll never see her anyway. She only sleeps here, and sometimes not even that."

I won't say Oskar gave a start at the word "nurse." He nodded, didn't dare ask about the other rooms, knew about his own room with tub; it was on the right, behind the door at the end of the hall.

Zeidler tapped me on the lapel: "You can cook in your room if you've got an alcohol stove. And use the kitchen now and then for all I care, if the stove's not too high for you."

That was his first allusion to Oskar's stature. He took a cursory glance at my letter of recommendation from the Art Academy, which did its job, since it was signed by the director, Professor Reuser. I responded to all his do's and don'ts with yes and amen, noted to myself that the kitchen was on the left next to my room, and promised to have my laundry done elsewhere, since he was worried the steam might damage the bathroom wallpaper, a promise I could make with some assurance, for Maria had agreed to do my washing.

I should have left then, fetched my luggage, filled out the change-of-residence forms. But Oskar didn't do so. He couldn't bear to leave the flat. For no reason at all, he asked his future landlord where the toilet
was. The latter gestured with his thumb toward a plywood door reminiscent of the war years and their aftermath. As Oskar prepared to make immediate use of the toilet, Zeidler, starting to itch from the lather now crumbling on his face, switched on the light in the little room.

Once within I was irked, for Oskar felt no need at all to go. I waited stubbornly, however, till I could pass a little water, trying hard not to wet the seat or tile floor in the cramped space, which was difficult, given my insufficient bladder pressure, and because the wooden seat was so near. My handkerchief dabbed traces from the worn-down wood; the soles of Oskar's shoes had to efface a few unfortunate drops on the tiles.

In spite of the unpleasantly hardened soap on his face, Zeidler had not sought a shaving mirror and hot water in my absence. He was waiting in the corridor, seemed to have taken a fancy to the joker he sensed in me. "You're really something. Haven't even signed the lease and already using the john!"

He approached me with a cold, crusty shaving brush, probably planning some silly joke, but then, without pestering me, opened the door leading out of the flat. While Oskar backed past the Hedgehog into the stairway, keeping an eye on him as he did so, I noticed that the door to the toilet was located between the kitchen door and the one with frosted glass, behind which, from time to time, on an irregular basis, a hospital nurse bedded down for the night.

When Oskar rang again at Zeidler's flat late that afternoon with his luggage, including the new tin drum given to him by Raskolnikov, painter of madonnas, and brandished his change-of-residence papers, a freshly shaved Hedgehog, who by now had no doubt washed his feet as well, ushered me into his living room.

It smelled of cold cigar smoke. Of cigars lighted several times. To which was added the effluvia of several possibly quite valuable carpets piled on top of one another and rolled up in the corners of the room. It also smelled of old calendars. I saw no calendars, however; the smell came from the carpets. Strangely enough, the comfortable leather-upholstered chairs had no smell at all. That disappointed me, for Oskar, who had never sat in a leather chair, nonetheless had so vivid a notion of the redolent leather on which one sat that he suspected the leather on Zeidler's armchairs and side chairs of being artificial.

In one of these smooth, odorless, and, it later turned out, genuine
leather armchairs sat Frau Zeidler. She wore a gray, sportily tailored outfit that didn't quite fit her. She'd let her skirt scoot up over her knees and showed three fingers' worth of slip. Since she didn't adjust her dress and—it seemed to Oskar—had been crying, I didn't risk introducing myself and greeting her. My bow remained silent and was already turning in its final stages toward Zeidler, who introduced me to his wife by jerking his thumb toward her and briefly clearing his throat.

The room was large and square. The dark shadow of the chestnut tree in front of the building enlarged and diminished the space by turns. I left my suitcase and drum by the door and carried my registration papers over to Zeidler, who was standing between the windows. Oskar could not hear his own footsteps, for he was walking on four—I counted them later—superimposed carpets, each smaller than the one beneath, their fringed or fringeless borders of differing hues forming a multicolored staircase, the lowest step of which began near the wall in reddish brown and disappeared under the next, more or less green step, covered for the most part with furniture such as the heavy sideboard, the display cabinet filled with liqueur glasses, dozens of them, and the spacious marriage bed. Even the border of the third carpet, in a blue pattern, lay in full view from corner to corner. To the fourth carpet, a wine-red velour, fell the task of supporting the round pull-out table protected by oilcloth, and four leather-covered chairs with evenly spaced metal studs.

Since several more carpets that weren't tapestries hung on the walls or slouched in corners rolled up, Oskar assumed the Hedgehog had traded in rugs prior to the currency reform and was stuck with them afterward.

The only picture was a framed and glazed portrait of Prince Bismarck hanging between two small rugs of an Oriental cast on the window wall. The Hedgehog sat in a leather armchair, beneath the Chancellor, with whom he shared a certain family resemblance. As he took the change-of-residence form from my hand and studied both sides of the preprinted document carefully, critically, and impatiently, his wife's whispered query if anything was wrong threw him into a rage that made him look even more like the Iron Chancellor. The armchair spewed him forth. He stood on four carpets, held the form to one side, filled him
self and his waistcoat with air, reached the first and second carpet with a single bound, and showered his wife, who had bent over her sewing again, with a sentence that ran somewhat as follows: Youshutyour-mouthwhenyourenotaskedandkeepitclosedilldothetalkinghereandnobodyelsesee! Notanotherword!

Since Frau Zeidler restrained herself nicely, didn't say another word and stuck to her sewing, the problem the Hedgehog faced as he stood impotently kicking the carpets was how to allow his rage to reverberate and fade in a credible manner. He took one stride to the display case, rattled it open, reached in cautiously with outspread fingers, grasped eight liqueur glasses, withdrew his overloaded hands from the case, leaving all within intact, tiptoed—like a host planning to divert himself and seven guests with an exercise in dexterity—toward the green-tiled slow-combustion stove, and flung the fragile freight—casting all caution now to the wind—against the cold cast-iron door of the stove.

Amazingly enough, throughout this scene, which required a certain accuracy, the Hedgehog managed to keep his bespectacled eye on his wife, who had arisen and was trying to thread a needle by the right-hand window. An instant after he had shattered the glasses, she brought this delicate task, which required a steady hand, to a successful conclusion. Frau Zeidler returned to her still warm chair and sat down in such a way that her dress scooted up again, clearly revealing three fingers' breadth of her pink slip. Bent forward, with a critical yet submissive eye, the Hedgehog had followed his wife's trip to the window, the needle threading, and her return. She was scarcely seated again when he reached behind the stove, pulled out a dustpan and whiskbroom, swept up the shards, and shook the sweepings onto a newspaper that was already half-covered with shattered liqueur glasses and would be hard-pressed to hold a third outburst of glass-breaking wrath.

If the reader now asserts that Oskar recognized in this glass-smashing Hedgehog a version of the Oskar who sangshattered glass over the years, I can't say you're entirely wrong; I too once loved to transform my rage into shards of glass—but no one ever saw me reach for a dustpan and brush.

Once Zeidler had cleared away the traces of his wrath he returned to his armchair. Once more Oskar handed him the registration form,
which the Hedgehog had dropped when he reached into the display cabinet with both hands.

Zeidler signed the form and gave me to understand that he ran an orderly house, where would we be otherwise, after all, he'd been a salesman for fifteen years, sold hair clippers in fact, did I know what hair clippers were?

Oskar knew what hair clippers were, and made a few explanatory motions in the air from which Zeidler could infer that I was au courant with regard to hair clippers. His neatly clipped crew cut showed he represented his product well. After explaining his work schedule to me—one week on the road, two days at home—he lost all interest in Oskar, just rocked hedgehoggishly in the creaking light brown leather, glared through his glasses, and kept repeating apropos of nothing: jajajajajaja—it was time for me to go.

Oskar took his leave of Frau Zeidler first. She had a cold, boneless, but dry hand. The Hedgehog gestured from his chair, waving me toward the door, where Oskar's luggage stood. My hands were already full when his voice sounded: "What have you got there hanging on your suitcase?"

"My tin drum."

"You plan on drumming here?"

"Not necessarily. I used to play it a lot."

"That's fine with me. I'm never home anyway."

"It is unlikely I shall ever drum again."

"And why are you still so small, huh?"

"An unfortunate fall stunted my growth."

"Just don't give me any trouble with fits and all."

"The state of my health has improved steadily over the past few years. Just look how nimble I am." Then Oskar performed a few flips and semi-acrobatic exercises he'd learned back when he was with the Theater at the Front, reducing Frau Zeidler to giggles and leaving the Hedgehog still slapping his thighs as I entered the hall and carted my luggage and drum past the nurse's frosted door, the toilet, the kitchen, and into my room.

That was early May. From that day forward, I was tempted, possessed, overwhelmed by the mystery of the hospital nurse: nurses made me ill, perhaps incurably so, for even today, when all that is behind me,
I still contradict my keeper Bruno, who flatly maintains that only men can be proper nurses, the patient's addiction to female nurses being simply one more symptom of the disease; while the male nurse conscientiously cares for the patient and sometimes cures him, the female nurse follows the feminine path: she seduces the patient toward recovery or toward death, which she imbues with a tinge of eroticism that renders it palatable.

Thus says my keeper Bruno, whose view I am reluctant to support. Whoever needs to have his life reconfirmed by hospital nurses every other year or so, as I do, maintains his gratitude, and is not so quick to allow a grumpy if likable keeper filled with professional envy to alienate him from his Sisters.

It began with my fall down the cellar steps on the occasion of my third birthday. I think she was called Sister Lotte and came from Praust. Sister Inge was with me for several years at Dr. Hollatz's. After the defense of the Polish Post Office I fell into the hands of several nurses at once. I recall only one of them by name: Sister Erni or Berni. Nameless nurses in Lüneberg, at the university clinic in Hanover. Then the sisters of City Hospital in Düsseldorf, first and foremost Sister Gertrud. But then she came along, and I didn't even have to visit a hospital. While in perfect health, Oskar succumbed to a nurse who, like him, lived as a lodger in Zeidler's flat. From that day on my world was filled with nurses. When I left for work early each morning to carve inscriptions for Korneff, my tram stop was at St. Mary's Hospital. Nurses came and went outside the brick gateway and in the flower-laden forecourt of the hospital. Sisters with their strenuous work before or behind them. Then the tram arrived. I often found myself sitting in the same rear car with several of the exhausted or at least weary nurses with worn faces, or standing on the car's platform with them. At first I inhaled their scent reluctantly, then soon sought it out, stationing myself near or even among their uniforms.

Then Bittweg. I worked outside in good weather, carving letters among the gravestones on display, saw them passing by, arm in arm, two by two or four by four, on their break, chatting, forcing Oskar to look up from his diorite, to neglect his work, for every upward look cost me twenty pfennigs.

Movie posters: there had always been plenty of films in Germany
about nurses. Maria Schell lured me into the movie houses. She wore a nurse's uniform, laughed, cried, nursed selflessly, smiling and still in her nurse's cap, played somber music, then in a fit of despair nearly tore her nightgown, renounced her love after her attempted suicide—Borsche played the doctor—stayed true to her profession, retained her cap and Red Cross pin. While the upper and lower levels of Oskar's brain laughed and wove a steady stream of smutty remarks into the film, Oskar's eyes wept tears, I wandered half-blind through a desert of anonymous good Samaritans in white, seeking Sister Dorothea, of whom I knew only this: she had rented the room behind a frosted-glass door at Zeidler's.