The Tin Drum (21 page)

Circumcised or not, I let things rest there, pulled the drum from under my sweater, removed it from my neck, and hung it, without damaging his halo, around Jesus. That was somewhat difficult for me given my size. I had to climb up on the sculpture so that, from the cloud bank that served as a pedestal, I could provide Jesus with an instrument.

Oskar didn't do this in January of thirty-seven, on his first visit to church after being baptized, but during Holy Week that same year. All that winter his mama had been hard-pressed to stay on top of her affair with Jan Bronski in the confessional. So Oskar found ample time on Saturdays to work out his plan, reject it, justify it, plan it anew, examine it from every angle, and then at last, casting aside all prior plans, simply, directly, and aided by the prayers at the foot of the altar on Passion Monday, carry it out.

Since Mama needed to confess before the high point of the Easter doings, she took me with her on the evening of Passion Monday, leading me by the hand along Labesweg, past Neuer Markt corner, down Elsenstraße, Marienstraße, past Wohlgemut's butcher shop, turning left at Kleinhammerpark, through the railway underpass, which was oozing nasty yellow stuff as always, to and into the Church of the Sacred Heart across from the railway embankment.

It was late when we arrived. Only two old women and an embarrassed young man still waited outside the confessional. While Mama was searching her conscience — she was leafing through the Mirror of Confession, licking her thumb as if going through a business ledger or concocting a tax return — I slipped down from the oak pew and, without passing beneath the eyes of the Sacred Heart or the gymnast on the cross, sought out the left side-altar.

Though it had to be done quickly, I did not omit the Introitus. Three steps:
Introibo ad altare Dei.
To God, who giveth joy to my youth. The drum removed from my neck, drawing out the Kyrie, up to the cloud bank, no lingering now by the watering can, no, just before Gloria, the drum around Jesus' neck, watch out for the halo, down from the cloud bank, remission, pardon, forgiveness, but first the sticks in those hands just made for them, one, two, three steps, I lift my eyes unto the hills, a little more carpet, the flagstones at last and a prayer stool for Oskar, who knelt down on the cushion and folded his drummer-boy hands at his face —
Gloria in excelsis Deo
— looked up past his folded hands toward Jesus and his drum and awaited the miracle: will he drum now, or can't he drum, or isn't he allowed to drum, either he drums or he's no real Jesus; if he doesn't drum now, Oskar's more Jesus than Jesus is.

If you want a miracle, you have to be patient. So I waited, patiently at first, perhaps not patiently enough, for the longer I kept repeating the text "All eyes attend thee, O Lord," replacing eyes with ears to match the situation, the more disappointed Oskar found himself on his prayer stool. He gave the Lord every chance, closed his eyes so the Lord might decide, since no one was looking, to make a start, even if somewhat awkwardly, but at last, after the third Credo, after Father, maker, visible and invisible, and the only begotten Son, of the Father, very of very, begotten, not made, being of one with the, by whom, for us and for our, came down, was incarnate, was made, was also, for, under, was buried,
rose again, according to, ascended into, sitteth on the, shall come, to judge, and the dead, no end, I believe in, with the, together, spake by, believe in one holy catholic and...

No, all that remained for me of Catholicism was its smell. One could no longer speak of faith. Nor did I care about the smell, I was looking for something else: I wanted to hear my drum, wanted Jesus to oblige me with a little something, a small, quiet miracle. It wouldn't have to be anything resounding, with Vicar Rasczeia rushing in, Father Wiehnke laboriously lugging his flabby flesh to the miracle, with protocols to the Bishop's seat in Oliva and bishopric reports headed for Rome. No, I wasn't in the least ambitious, Oskar had no desire to be canonized. He just wanted a small private miracle, something he could see and hear, something to clarify once and for all if Oskar should drum for or against, something to proclaim which of the two blue-eyed, identical twins would henceforth have the right to call himself Jesus.

I sat and waited. Meanwhile I began to worry: Mama should be in the confessional by now and might have already finished the sixth commandment. The old man who is always tottering through churches tottered past the high altar and finally reached the left side-altar, greeted the Virgin and the boys, may have seen the drum but failed to register it. He shuffled on, growing older.

Time passed, I say, but Jesus did not beat the drum. I heard voices from the choir. I hope no one starts playing the organ, I thought anxiously. They'll start up rehearsing for Easter and create a clamor that drowns out the first paper-thin drumroll of the boy Jesus.

They didn't play the organ. Jesus didn't drum. There was no miracle, and I rose from the cushion, my knees cracking, and led myself by the nose, bored and morose, across the carpet, pulled myself up step by step, skipping all known prayers at the foot of the altar, mounted the plaster clouds, knocking over flowers in the mid-price range, and was about to remove my drum from that dumb naked child.

I admit it openly and always will: it was a mistake to try to teach him. Why did I have to take the sticks from him, leaving him the drum, then drum something for him, drumming softly at first, but then like an impatient teacher, show this false Jesus how to drum, then thrust the sticks back into his hands so he could show what he'd learned from Oskar?

Before I could take the sticks and drum away from this most stubborn of pupils, with no thought for his halo, Father Wiehnke was behind me—my drumming had tested the height and breadth of the church—Vicar Rasczeia was behind me, Mama behind me, the old man behind me, and the Vicar grabbed me, and the Right Reverend smacked me and Mama wept at me, and the Right Reverend whispered to me, and the Vicar fell to his knees and leapt up and snatched the sticks from Jesus, knelt again and jumped up for the drum, took the drum from him, snapped the halo, bumped his watering can, chipped off a bit of cloud, and fell back onto the steps, one knee, the other knee, refused me the drum, made me even angrier, made me kick the Right Reverend and put Mama to shame, and she was indeed ashamed when I kicked and bit and scratched and tore myself free from the Right Reverend, Vicar, old man, and Mama, stood at the high altar, felt Satan hopping up and down in me, and heard him as I had at my baptism: "Oskar," Satan whispered, "look around, windows everywhere, all glass, all glass."

And past the gymnast on the cross, who didn't twitch, who kept his silence, I sang at the three high windows of the apse depicting the twelve apostles in red, yellow, and green on blue. But it was not at Mark or Matthew that I aimed. I aimed at the dove standing on its head above them celebrating Pentecost, aimed at the Holy Spirit, began to vibrate, pitted my diamond against the bird and—was it my fault? Was it the gymnast, who, by not twitching, intervened? Was this the miracle, and no one knew it? They saw me trembling, soundlessly pouring forth toward the apse what everyone but Mama took for prayers, though it was broken glass I sought; but Oskar failed, his time had not yet come. I fell to the flagstones and wept bitterly, because Jesus had failed, because Oskar had failed, because the Right Reverend and Rasczeia misunderstood me and even babbled of my repenting. But Mama did not fail. She understood my tears, though she was surely glad there'd been no broken glass.

Then Mama took me in her arms, recovered the drum and sticks from the Vicar, promised the Right Reverend to pay for the damage, and received belated absolution from him, since I had interrupted her confession; Oskar received his share of the blessing too, but it meant nothing to me.

As Mama carried me from the Church of the Sacred Heart, I ticked off on my fingers: Today is Monday, tomorrow Tuesday, then Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, then it's all over for that character who can't even drum, who won't even treat me to a little broken glass, who looks like me yet is false, who must descend to the grave while I keep on drumming and drumming but will never again ask for a miracle.

Ambivalent: that might be the word for my feelings between Passion Monday and Good Friday. On the one hand, I was annoyed by that plaster boy Jesus who refused to drum; on the other, the drum was now reserved for me alone. If, on one side, my voice failed vis-à-vis the church windows, on the other, the intact and colorful glass allowed Oskar to retain that remnant of Catholic faith which was later to inspire him to any number of desperate blasphemies.

Yet a further ambivalence: if I succeeded, on one hand, in singshattering a mansard window to test my powers on the way home from the Church of the Sacred Heart, on the other the feat my voice performed vis-à-vis the profane made me keenly aware from then on of my defeats in the sacred sector. Ambivalent, I say. This cleavage remained, could not be healed, and remains open to this day, since I am at home in neither the sacred nor the profane, and in consequence am housed on the fringes, in a mental institution.

Mama paid for the damage to the left side-altar. Business was good that Easter, even though, at the insistence of Matzerath, who was Protestant, the shop had to be closed on Good Friday. Mama, who generally had her way in most matters, gave in on Good Fridays and closed the shop, demanding in return the right on Catholic grounds to close the shop for Corpus Christi, to replace the boxes of Persil and display packages of Kaffee-Hag in the window with a small, colorful picture of Mary, illuminated with electric lights, and to take part in the procession in Oliva.

There was a cardboard sign that read on one side:
Closed for Good Friday.
The other side of the card stated:
Closed for Corpus Christi.
On
the Good Friday that followed that drumless and voiceless Passion Monday, Matzerath hung the card with
Closed for Good Friday
in the shop window, and shortly after breakfast we mounted the tram for Brösen. To stay with our word: Labesweg behaved ambivalently. The Protestants went to church, the Catholics washed their windows and beat anything that even vaguely resembled a carpet so vigorously and resoundingly in their backyards that it sounded as if biblical workers were nailing multiple saviors to multiple crosses in the courtyards of every building in the neighborhood.

We, however, left the Passion-filled pounding of carpets behind and seated ourselves in our customary arrangement—Mama, Matzerath, Jan Bronski, and Oskar—in the Number Nine streetcar, rode down Brösener Weg past the airfield, past the old and new drill grounds, then waited on a siding by Saspe Cemetery for the car coming from Neufahrwasser-Brüsen to pass. Mama used the stop as an occasion for lightly uttered yet gloomy observations. The small abandoned graveyard with its stunted shore pines and tilted, moss-covered tombstones from the previous century struck her as lovely, romantic, and charming.

"I wouldn't mind lying there if they still used it," Mama said warmly. But Matzerath felt the soil was too sandy, complained about the rampant shore thistles and barren oats. Jan Bronski pointed out that the noise from the airfield and the shunting of streetcars near the cemetery might disturb the tranquility of the otherwise idyllic spot.

The approaching streetcar shunted around us, the conductor rang the bell twice, and leaving Saspe and its cemetery behind, we headed for Brösen, a beach resort that at this time of year, toward the end of March, looked strange and desolate. The refreshment stands boarded up, the spa hotel shut tight, the pier bereft of flags, two hundred fifty empty booths lined up at the bathhouse. On the weather board traces of last year's chalk—air: twenty degrees centigrade; water: seventeen; wind: northeast; forecast: clear to partly cloudy.

At first we all decided to walk to Glettkau, then, without discussing it, we turned in the opposite direction, toward the jetty. Broad and lazy, the Baltic lapped at the beach. As far as the harbor mouth, from the white lighthouse to the jetty with the sea marker, not a soul to be seen. Rain had fallen that morning, imprinting upon the sand a regular pattern we took pleasure in destroying, leaving our barefoot prints be
hind. Matzerath sent smoothly polished disks of brick the size of gulden pieces skipping across the greenish water, trying to outdo the others. Jan Bronski, less skilled, searched for amber between throws, found a few chips and a piece the size of a cherry pit which he gave to Mama, who was walking along barefoot like me, constantly glancing over her shoulder, seemingly in love with her footprints. The sun shone cautiously. It was cool, windless, clear; you could see the strip on the horizon that was Hela Peninsula, two or three fading plumes of smoke, and the superstructure of a cargo steamer climbing over the horizon with a leaping motion.

One after the other, at varying intervals, we reached the first granite blocks at the base of the jetty. Mama and I put our shoes and socks back on. She helped me tie them while Matzerath and Jan were already hopping along the rugged crest of the jetty from stone to stone toward the open sea. Damp beards of seaweed grew in disorderly fashion from the seams of the foundation. Oskar felt like combing them. But Mama took me by the hand and we followed the men, who were behaving like schoolboys up ahead. My drum banged against my knee at every step; even here I wouldn't let them take it from me. Mama wore a light blue spring coat with raspberry-colored lapels. The granite blocks were giving her high-heeled shoes trouble. As on all Sundays and holidays, I was in my sailor's jacket with its gold anchor buttons. An old ribbon from Gretchen Schemer's souvenir collection bearing the legend
SMS Seydlitz
encircled my sailor's cap and would have fluttered had it been windy enough. Matzerath unbuttoned his brown greatcoat. Jan, stylish as always, in his ulster with its shimmering velvet collar.

We leapt along until we reached the sea marker at the end of the jetty. An elderly man with a docker's cap and padded jacket was sitting at the foot of the sea marker. Beside him lay a potato sack with something twitching and wriggling inside. The man, who probably lived in Brösen or Neufahrwasser, was holding the end of a clothesline. The line, matted with seaweed, disappeared into the brackish waters of the Mottlau, which, still muddy here at its mouth, slapped against the stones of the jetty without any help from the open sea.