The Tin Drum (84 page)

Herr Matzerath also introduced me to a few of his former colleagues, mostly jazz musicians. Though Herr Münzer, whom the accused calls Klepp, struck me as cheerful and easygoing, to this day I've had neither the heart nor the will to develop these contacts further.

Even though, thanks to the generosity of the accused, I had no need to continue my career as a window dresser, I still decorated a few shop windows whenever we returned from a tour, out of sheer love for the profession. The accused was kind enough to take a personal interest in my craft, often standing on the street late into the night, and never tired of providing an audience for my modest talents. Now and then, when my work was finished, we would stroll through nighttime Düsseldorf, avoiding the Altstadt, since the accused didn't like the sight of bull's-eye windows and old-fashioned German tavern signs. One such post-midnight stroll through nighttime Unterrath—and here I come to the final portion of my statement—led us to the tram depot.

We stood side by side, at peace with the world, watching the last
of the scheduled trams arrive. It was a pleasant show. The darkened city about us. In the distance, since it's Friday, a drunken construction worker roars. Otherwise all is silent, for the last trams, even if they jangle and make the curved rails squeal, are silent. Most of the trams continued directly into the depot. A few, however, sat there pointing in different directions, empty, but festively lit. Whose idea was it? We both had it, but I was the one who said, "Well, my friend, what do you think?" Herr Matzerath nodded and we boarded without haste, I took over the driver's stand, settled in at once, took off gently, quickly gaining speed, proved to be a skilled motorman, as Herr Matzerath—the brightly lit depot already behind us—acknowledged with these friendly words: "You must surely have been baptized a Catholic, Gottfried, or you couldn't drive a tram so well."

I did indeed enjoy this little part-time job. Apparently the depot had not noted our departure, for no one came after us, and they could easily have ended our journey by simply cutting off the power. I headed the tram toward Flingern, passed right through it, considered turning left at Haniel's for Rath and Ratingen, but Herr Matzerath suggested the stretch toward Grafenberg and Gerresheim. Though I feared the hill at the Löwenburg dance hall, I acceded to the accused's wishes, made it up the hill, and had left the dance hall behind when I had to hit the brakes; three men were standing on the line, not so much requesting as forcing us to stop.

Shortly after Haniel's, Herr Matzerath retired to the interior of the car to smoke a cigarette. So it was I, as motorman, who had to call out, "All aboard, please!" I noticed that the third, hatless man, whom the two others, both in green hats with black bands, held between them, kept missing the running board, either because he was clumsy or had poor eyesight. His companions, or guards, guided him almost brutally onto my driver's platform, and from there into the car.

I had started off again when I heard behind me, from the interior of the car, a pitiful whimpering and what sounded like someone being slapped, then, to my reassurance, the firm voice of Herr Matzerath, admonishing the newly arrived passengers, warning them not to strike an injured, half-blind man who had lost his glasses.

"You stay out of this," I heard one of the green hats roar. "He's going to get what's coming to him now. It's taken long enough."

As I continued on slowly toward Gerresheim, my friend Herr Matzerath asked what the poor man had done wrong. The conversation quickly took a strange turn: within two sentences they were back in the war, or more specifically at its outbreak, on the first of September in thirty-nine; it seems the half-blind man was an irregular who had illegally defended a Polish post office. Strangely enough, Herr Matzerath, who couldn't have been more than fifteen at the time, knew all about it, and even recognized the man as Viktor Weluhn, a poor, nearsighted fellow who had carried money orders for the post office, lost his glasses in the course of the fighting, fled without them, and escaped the bloodhounds, who had never given up, however, but pursued him instead till the end of the war, even into the postwar years, and now produced a document issued in thirty-nine ordering his death by firing squad. We've finally caught him, one of the green hats shouted, and the other one said he was damned glad to see this account settled. It seems he'd devoted all his free time, including holidays, to making sure a document issued in thirty-nine was finally enforced; he had his own job as a salesman, and his friend, an Eastern refugee, had his troubles too, since he'd lost a successful tailoring business back East and had to start life all over again, but now their work was done and they could relax; we'll carry out that order and put paid to the past tonight—good thing we caught this last tram.

So, against my will, I became the motorman on a tram carrying a condemned man and two executioners with an order for death by firing squad toward Gerresheim. When I reached the deserted, somewhat irregularly shaped marketplace in the suburb, I turned right, heading for the terminal near the glassworks, where I planned to drop off the green hats and the half-blind Viktor, then return home with my friend. Three stops before the terminal Herr Matzerath left the car and placed his briefcase, in which, as I knew, the jar stood upright, on the spot where professional motormen usually keep lunch boxes with their sandwiches.

"We've got to save him. It's Viktor, poor Viktor!" Herr Matzerath was clearly upset.

"He still hasn't found glasses that fit. He's very nearsighted. He'll be looking the wrong way when they shoot him." I thought the execution
ers had been unarmed. But Herr Matzerath had noticed bulges in the coats of both green hats.

"He delivered money orders for the Polish Post Office in Danzig. He's doing the same thing now in the Federal Republic. But they hound him after working hours because they still have an order to shoot him."

Though I couldn't follow everything Herr Matzerath said, I promised to be at his side at the execution and, if possible, help him prevent it.

Beyond the glassworks, just before the first of the allotment gardens—I could have seen my mother's garden with its apple tree in the moonlight—I stopped the tram and called into the interior: "All out, end of the line." They emerged at once with their green hats and black hatbands. The half-blind man had trouble with the running board again. Then Herr Matzerath got off, first pulling his drum from under his overcoat, and asked me as he descended to bring along his briefcase with the canning jar.

We left the tram glowing brightly far behind us and stuck to the heels of the executioners and their victim.

We passed along garden fences. I was getting tired. When the three men came to a stop ahead of us, I noticed they had chosen my mother's garden as the execution site. Herr Matzerath and I both protested. They paid no attention, knocked down the fence, which was rotten anyway, bound the half-blind man Herr Matzerath called poor Viktor to the apple tree beneath my fork, and, since we kept up our protest, showed us again by flashlight the tattered execution order signed by a military court officer named Zelewski. It was dated, as I recall, Zoppot, the fifth of October, thirty-nine, the stamps seemed right too, there was little we could do; nevertheless we talked about the United Nations, democracy, collective guilt, Adenauer, and so on; but one of the green hats swept all our objections aside with the remark that we had no right to get mixed up in this, there was still no peace treaty, he'd voted for Adenauer just like us, but the order was still valid, they'd taken the document to the highest authorities, consulted with them, they were doing their damned duty, and we should just leave.

We didn't leave. Instead Herr Matzerath lifted his drum as the green hats opened their coats and swung out their tommy guns—at that same
moment a nearly full moon with only a slight dent broke through the clouds, causing the edges of the clouds to gleam metallically like the jagged edge of a tin can—and Herr Matzerath began desperately stirring his sticks on similar but undamaged tin. It sounded strange and yet familiar. Again and again the letter O rounded itself: lost, not yet lost, is not yet lost, Poland is not yet lost! But that was poor Viktor's voice, he knew the words to Herr Matzerath's drum: Poland is not yet lost, as long as we still live. And even the green hats seemed to know that rhythm, for they cowered behind their metal guns outlined in moonlight, as well they might, since the march Herr Matzerath and poor Viktor struck up in my mother's garden plot awakened the Polish cavalry. The moon may have helped as drum, moon, and the cracked voice of the nearsighted Viktor called forth all those stamping horsemen from the soil: hooves thundered, nostrils snorted, spurs jingled, stallions whinnied, hurrah, hooray!...but not in the least, nothing thundered, snorted, jingled, whinnied, nothing cried hurrah, hooray; silently they glided over the harvested fields outside Gerresheim, yet still it was a squadron of Polish uhlans, for red and white like Herr Matzerath's lacquered drum the pennants tugged at their lances, no, didn't tug, but floated instead, just as the whole squadron floated beneath the moon, perhaps came from the moon, wheeled to the left toward our garden, floated, seemed neither flesh nor blood, yet floated, like homemade toys for children, conjured up, akin perhaps to the knotworks Herr Matzerath's keeper makes from string: a knotted Polish cavalry, silent yet thundering, bloodless, flesh-less, yet Polish and unbridled, heading right toward us, so that we threw ourselves to the ground, submitted to the moon and Poland's squadron as they swept over my mother's garden, over all the other carefully tended gardens, but laying waste to none, took only poor Viktor and his executioners, and were lost in the open fields beneath the moon—lost, not yet lost, riding off eastward, toward Poland, toward the far side of the moon.

We waited, breathing heavily, till the night was once again devoid of incident, till the heavens closed once more, shut off that light which had persuaded a long-dead cavalry to mount one final attack. I rose first and congratulated Herr Matzerath on his great triumph, though without underestimating the influence of the moon. But he waved me
off, tired and downcast: "Triumph, my dear Gottfried? I've had far too many triumphs in life. I'd like to fail for once. But that's hard to do and takes a great deal of work."

I disliked this little speech, since I'm the hardworking type but have had no triumphs. Herr Matzerath seemed a bit ungrateful to me, and I told him so: "You're being arrogant, Oskar," I ventured, for we were on a first-name basis by then. "You're in all the newspapers. You've made a name for yourself. I'm not talking about money. But do you think it's easy for someone like me, who never even gets his name in the papers, to go around with someone famous like you? Just once I'd like to perform some deed, perform some great act, as you just have, all on my own, and be in the newspapers making headlines: Gottfried von Vittlar did that!"

Herr Matzerath's laughter hurt my feelings. He lay on his back, burrowed his hump in the soft earth, tore up the grass with both hands, threw tufts of grass into the air, and laughed like an inhuman god who can do anything: "My friend, nothing could be easier. Here's my briefcase. It has miraculously escaped the hooves of the Polish cavalry. I give it to you, its leather harbors the jar with the ring finger. Take the whole thing, run back to Gerresheim, where the brightly lit tram will still be standing, get in, take my gift to the police station on Fürstenwall, turn me in, and tomorrow you'll find your name printed in every newspaper."

At first I tried to refuse his offer, pointed out that he surely couldn't live without the finger in the jar. But he reassured me, said he was fed up with the whole finger business, and besides he had several plaster casts of it, and even one in pure gold, I might as well go ahead and take the briefcase, go back to the tram, take the tram to the police station, and turn him in.

So I walked away, and could still hear Herr Matzerath laughing behind me. For he stayed there, savoring the night, tearing up grass and laughing as I jangled my way toward the city. But when I turned him in—which I did the following morning—I did indeed, thanks to Herr Matzerath's kindness, make it into the newspapers several times.

Meanwhile I, Oskar, the kindly Herr Matzerath, lay laughing in the night-black grass outside Gerresheim, rolling with laughter beneath a
few visible and deadly serious stars, burrowed my hump into the warm earth, thinking: Sleep Oskar, sleep, another hour or so, till the police awaken you. You'll never lie so free beneath the moon again.

And as I awoke, I noticed, before I could notice it was broad daylight, that something, someone, was licking my face: warmly, roughly, evenly, damply licking.

Surely that can't be the police, roused and sent here by Vittlar, licking you awake? Still, I was in no hurry to open my eyes, but let myself be licked awhile, warmly, roughly, evenly, damply, enjoying it, not caring who was licking: Either it's the police, Oskar figured, or a cow. Only then did I open my blue eyes.

She was spotted black and white, lay beside me, breathed and licked me till I opened my eyes. It was broad daylight, clear to partly cloudy, and I said to myself: Oskar, don't linger with this cow, no matter how divinely she gazes at you, no matter how earnestly she soothes and weakens your memory with her rough tongue. It's broad daylight, flies are buzzing, you have to flee. Vittlar is turning you in, hence you must flee. A serious accusation deserves a serious flight. Let the cow moo, and flee. They'll catch you, here or somewhere else, but that hardly matters to you.

And so, licked, washed, and combed by a cow, I made my getaway, burst out in a gale of bright morning laughter a few steps into my flight, and left my drum with the cow, who lay there mooing as I fled laughing.

Ah yes, my flight. There's still that to tell you about. I fled to enhance the value of Vittlar's accusation. No flight without a goal, I told myself. And whither, Oskar, do you wish to flee? Political factors, the so-called Iron Curtain, ruled out the East. So I was forced to eliminate as a goal my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek's four skirts, still billowing protectively on Kashubian potato fields, though flight toward my grandmother's skirts, if flight there must be, was the only destination I felt held any real promise.