The Tin Drum (43 page)

Oskar has no wish to send wintry shivers up and down your spine. Let me be brief: During the winter months the greengrocer Greff bathed
twice weekly in the Baltic. On Wednesdays he bathed alone at the crack of dawn. He left around six, was there around six-thirty, hacked out the hole by seven-fifteen, flung off his clothes with quick, exaggerated movements, rubbed himself down with snow, jumped in the hole, began to shout, and at times could be heard singing: "Wild geese are flying through the night" or "Oh, how we love the storm...," he sang, bathed, shouted for two or at most three minutes, then with a single leap he stood terrifyingly distinct on the surface of the ice: a mass of steaming, crab-red flesh racing around the hole, still shouting, still glowing, then back in his clothes at last and onto the bike. Shortly before eight Greff was at Labesweg again and opened his shop right on time.

Greff took a second ice bath on Sundays, in the company of several boys. Oskar makes no claim to have ever seen this, nor did he. But word got around. Meyn the musician told stories about the greengrocer, trumpeted them through the whole neighborhood, and one of those trumpet-tales ran like this: Each Sunday during the roughest winter months, Greff would bathe in the company of several boys. But even Meyn didn't claim that the greengrocer forced the boys to jump into the ice hole naked, as he did. He was satisfied if they frolicked around on the ice, sinewy and tough, half-naked or nearly naked youths, and rubbed each other down with snow. Indeed, the boys in the snow gave Greff so much pleasure that before or after bathing he often frolicked with them, helped rub down one or two, and let the whole horde rub him down; and Meyn the musician claims that in spite of the coastal fog, he saw from the Glettkau beach promenade an appallingly naked, singing, shouting Greff pull two of his naked pupils to him, lift them up, and naked bearing the naked, tear off across the thick Baltic ice like a shouting, runaway troika.

As you might imagine, Greff was no fisherman's son, though there were lots of fishermen in Brôsen and Neufahrwasser named Greff. Greff the greengrocer hailed from Tiegenhof, but Lina Greff, née Bartsch, met her husband in Praust. He was helping an enterprising young vicar there run the Catholic journeymen's club, and Lina was drawn to the parish house each Saturday by same vicar. A photo she must have given me, for it's still pasted today in my photo album, shows the twenty-year-old Lina as strong, plump, merry, good-natured, flighty, dumb. Her father ran a good-sized fruit and vegetable farm in Sankt Albrecht. She was
twenty-two and, as she always swore later, totally inexperienced when she followed the vicar's advice and married Greff, then opened the vegetable shop in Langfuhr with her father's money. Since they got a large part of their produce—almost all their fruit, for example—at low cost from their father's farm, the business practically ran itself, and Greff could do little damage.

In fact if it hadn't been for the greengrocer's childish tendency to tinker with things, the shop could easily have turned into a gold mine, for it was favorably located in a suburb swarming with children and far removed from competitors. But when an inspector from the Bureau of Weights and Standards appeared for the third or fourth time to examine the scales, then confiscated the weights, locked the scales, and imposed assorted fines on Greff, a number of regular customers turned elsewhere, bought at the weekly market, and passed the word: the produce at Greff's is always high quality, and the prices aren't bad, but something fishy is going on; the people from Weights and Standards were there again.

Yet I'm sure Greff wasn't trying to cheat anyone. What happened was that the large potato scales were weighing to Greff's disadvantage after the greengrocer had made a few adjustments. So shortly before the war he built a set of chimes into the scales that would play a little tune depending on the weight of the potatoes. With twenty pounds of potatoes the customer was regaled, as a sort of bonus, with "On the sunny shores of the Saale," fifty pounds of potatoes got you "Always true and honest be," a hundred pounds of winter potatoes lured from the chimes the naively bewitching tones of the little song "Annchen von Tharau."

Though I could see how the Bureau of Weights and Standards might not like such musical pleasantries, Oskar himself was in tune with the greengrocer's flights of fancy. Lina Greff too indulged her husband's eccentricities, for the Greffs' marriage was founded precisely on the mutual indulgence of such eccentricities. In this sense the Greffs' marriage was a good one. The greengrocer didn't beat his wife, never cheated on her with other women, was neither a drunkard nor a glutton; instead he was a cheerful, respectably dressed man who was well liked for his affability and helpful nature, not only by young boys but also by those of his customers who bought his music along with his potatoes.

So Greff too watched calmly and indulgently from year to year as his Lina turned into an increasingly foul-smelling slattern. I saw him smile when people who meant well called her that. Blowing on his hands, which were well kept in spite of the potatoes, and rubbing them together, I sometimes heard him say to Matzerath, who disapproved of Greff's wife, "Of course you're perfectly right, Alfred. She is a bit slovenly, our good Lina. But don't you and I have our faults too?" If Matzerath didn't let up, Greff would end such discussions in a firm yet friendly manner: "You may be right on the whole, but still she has a good heart. I know my Lina."

And he may indeed have known her. But she hardly knew him at all. Like the neighbors and customers, she never saw anything more in Greff's relations with the young boys and striplings who visited him so often than their youthful enthusiasm for a nonprofessional yet ardent friend and mentor of the young.

As for me, Greff neither roused my enthusiasm nor served as my mentor. Nor was Oskar his type. Had I chosen to grow, I might have grown into his type, for my son Kurt, who's now around thirteen, embodies in all his bony lankiness exactly what Greff liked, even though he takes after Maria on the whole, bearing little resemblance to me and none whatever to Matzerath.

Greff and Fritz Truczinski, who was home on leave, served as witnesses at the wedding of Maria Truczinski and Alfred Matzerath. Since Maria, like her bridegroom, was Protestant, they simply went to the registry. This was in mid-December. Matzerath said his I do in Party uniform. Maria was in her third month.

The stouter my beloved grew, the more Oskar's hate mounted. I had nothing against her pregnancy. But the fact that the fruit of my loins would one day bear the name of Matzerath destroyed any pleasure in my future son and heir. So when Maria was in her fifth month, much too late of course, I made my first attempt at an abortion. It was around Carnival time. Maria wanted to attach a few paper streamers and two clown masks with bulbous noses to the brass rod over the counter hung with sausages and bacon. The ladder, which normally leaned firmly against the shelves, was placed precariously against the counter. Maria far above, with her hands among the streamers, Oskar far below, at the foot of the
ladder. Using my drumsticks as a lever, and helping with my shoulder and the firmest resolve, I lifted the steps up and to the side: Maria gave a soft and terrified cry from among the streamers and masks, the ladder swayed, Oskar sprang aside, and Maria, brightly colored streamers, sausage, and masks all came tumbling down.

It looked worse than it was. She had only sprained an ankle, had to lie in bed and take it easy, but had suffered no other injury, grew bulkier still, and didn't even tell Matzerath who had helped her sprain her ankle.

It wasn't till May, about three weeks before she was due, after I made a second try at abortion, that she spoke to her husband Matzerath, without revealing the full extent of the truth. At table, and in my presence, she said, "Little Oskar's so rough lately when he plays, and hits me in the belly sometimes. Maybe he should stay with Mama till the baby comes, she's got lots of room."

Matzerath heard it and believed it. In reality a fit of murderous rage had led to a very different sort of encounter with Maria.

She was lying on the sofa during the noon break. Having washed the lunch dishes, Matzerath was in the shop arranging the window display. All was silent in the living room. A fly perhaps, the clock as usual, the radio turned low, reporting the exploits of paratroopers on Crete. I pricked up my ears only when they put on the great boxer Max Schmeling. From what I could gather, he had sprained his world-champion ankle when he parachuted onto Crete's rocky soil, and had to lie down and take it easy now—like Maria, who had to take to bed after her fall from the ladder. Schmeling spoke calmly, modestly; then less prominent paratroopers came on and Oskar stopped listening: silence, a fly perhaps, the clock as usual, very low the radio.

I sat by the window on my little bench and watched Maria's belly on the sofa. She was breathing heavily and had closed her eyes. From time to time I plied my drum morosely. She didn't stir, but still forced me to breathe in the same room with her belly. Of course there was still the clock, the fly between pane and curtain, and the radio with the rocky island of Crete in the background. All of that faded for me in a split second, I could see nothing but her belly, knew neither in what room that belly swelled nor to whom it belonged, scarcely knew who'd made that belly so big, knew only one desire: That belly has to go, it's a mistake, it's
blocking your view, you've got to stand up and do something. So I stood up. You've got to see what can be done. So I went over to the belly and took something with me as I went. You need to let a little air out there, that's a bad case of flatulence. Then I raised what I'd brought with me and sought a spot between Maria's little paws as they breathed along on her belly. You've got to decide once and for all, Oskar, otherwise Maria is going to open her eyes. I could already sense I was being watched, but kept my eyes on Maria's slightly trembling left hand, noticed that she'd drawn back her right hand, that her right hand was planning something, and was not particularly astonished when Maria twisted the scissors from Oskar's grip with her right hand. I may have remained standing there for a few seconds with raised but empty hand, heard the clock, the fly, the announcer's voice on the radio concluding the report from Crete, then I turned and, before the next program could begin—light music from two to three—left our living room, which in view of that space-filling belly was now too crowded for me.

Two days later Maria bought me a new drum and took me up to Mother Truczinski's second-floor flat, smelling of ersatz coffee and fried potatoes. At first I slept on the sofa, since Oskar declined to sleep in Herbert's former bed, which I feared might still bear traces of Maria's vanilla scent. A week later old man Heilandt lugged my wooden cot up the stairs. I let them set it beside the bed that had remained still and silent beneath me, Maria, and our shared fizz powder.

Oskar grew calmer, or more apathetic, at Mother Truczinski's. After all, I no longer saw that belly, for Maria shied away from climbing stairs. I avoided our ground-floor flat, the shop, the street, even the courtyard of our building, where, as food shortages became increasingly serious, rabbits were again being raised.

For the most part Oskar sat with the postcards Airman Second Class Fritz Truczinski sent or brought with him from Paris. They gave me various ideas about Paris, and when Mother Truczinski handed me a postcard of the Eiffel Tower, I began to drum up Paris, entering into the bold ironwork of that construction, began to drum a musette without ever having heard one.

On the twelfth of June, fourteen days early, according to my calculations, in the sign of Gemini, and not as I had expected in the sign of Cancer, my son Kurt was born. The father in a Jupiter year, the son in
a Venus year. The father ruled by Mercury in Virgo, which made him skeptical and ingenious; the son likewise ruled by Mercury, but in the sign of Gemini, endowed with a cold, ambitious intelligence. What in my own case was tempered by Venus with Libra in the house of the ascendant, was aggravated in my son by Aries in the same house; I would come to feel his Mars.

Mother Truczinski delivered the news like an excited mouse: "Just think, little Oskar, the stork's brought you a little brother. And just when I was thinking, man, just so it's not a lass, with all sorts of trouble later." I scarcely interrupted my drumming on the Eiffel Tower and a newly arrived view of the Arc de Triomphe. Even now that she was Grandma Truczinski, Mother Truczinski didn't seem to expect me to congratulate her. Though it wasn't Sunday, she decided to put on a little rouge, reached for the good old chicory paper, rubbed it on her cheeks to color them, left her rooms freshly rouged, and went down to the ground floor to help Matzerath, the presumptive father.

As I've said, it was June. A deceptive month. Victories on every front—if you want to call victories in the Balkans victories—but even greater victories lay ahead in the east. A massive army was advancing there. The railroads were kept busy. Even Fritz Truczinski, who had been having such a good time in Paris, had to set out on a journey eastward that would not soon end and could not possibly be mistaken for leave. But Oskar sat quietly before the shiny postcards, lingering in a mild, early-summer Paris, casually drumming "Trois jeunes tambours," with no connection to the German occupation army, and thus with nothing to fear from the partisans who might think of throwing him off the bridges of the Seine. No, clad as a civilian I climbed the Eiffel Tower with my drum, enjoyed the vista from the top as expected, felt so good and, in spite of the tempting height, so free from bittersweet thoughts of suicide, that it was only on descending, when I stood three foot one at the base of the Eiffel Tower, that I remembered the birth of my son.

Voilà, a son! I thought to myself. When he's three years old, he'll get a tin drum. We'll see who the father is—this Herr Matzerath or me, Oskar Bronski.

In the heat of August—I believe the successful conclusion of another encircling action had just been announced, at Smolensk this time—my son Kurt was baptized. But how did my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek
and her brother Vinzent Bronski come to be invited? If I accept once more the version where Jan Bronski is my father, and the calm and increasingly eccentric Vinzent my grandfather on my father's side, there were ample grounds for the invitation. After all, my grandparents were the great-grandparents of my son Kurt.