The Tin Drum (49 page)

Lankes: Personally I think it's all bunk ...

Bebra's Troupe: Phooey!

LANKES
: But most of my comrades are country boys. And even today, when they build a house or a barn or a village church, they feel they have to wall in something living, and...

HERZOG
: That will do, Lankes. At ease. As you've heard, Captain, we indulge in what you might call superstition here on the Atlantic Wall. Just like you people in the theater, where you don't dare whistle before an opening night, and actors spit over their shoulders before the curtain goes up...

BEBRA'S TROUPE
: Toi, toi, toi!
They spit over each other's shoulders.

HERZOG
: But all joking aside. You have to let the men have their fun. And even the little seashell mosaics and concrete decorations they've started adding to pillbox entrances are tolerated by orders from the very top. People need to keep busy. And so I always say to our CO, who doesn't like the concrete curlicues: Better curlicues in concrete than in their brains, Major. We Germans like to tinker. What can you do.

BEBRA
: Well, we're trying to do our bit too, entertaining the waiting army at the Atlantic Wall ...

BEBRA'S TROUPE
: Bebra's Theater at the Front sings for you, plays for you, rallies you to final victory!

HERZOG
: You're certainly right about that, you and your troupe. But the theater alone is not enough. We're on our own for the most part, so we do what we can. Right, Lankes?

LANKES
: Yes, sir! We do what we can!

HERZOG
: You see. And now if you'll excuse me, sir. I have to go over to Dora Four and Dora Five. Take your time looking over the pillbox, it's worth it. Lankes will show you everything...

LANKES
: Everything, sir!
Herzog and Bebra exchange salutes. Herzog exits right. Raguna, Oskar, Felix, and Kitty, who had been standing behind Bebra, spring forward. Oskar holds his tin drum, Raguna carries a picnic basket, Felix and Kitty climb up onto the concrete roof of the pillbox, start practicing their acrobatic exercises. Oskar and Roswitha play in the sand beside the bunker with a little pail and shovel, make it plain they're in love, call out happily, and tease Felix and Kitty.

BEBRA
,
offhandedly, after he has inspected the pillbox from all sides:
Tell me, Lankes, what do you do for a living?

Lankes: I'm a painter, sir. But that was long ago.

Bebra: You paint houses?

LANKES
: Houses too, sir, but more in the way of art.

Bebra: Hear, hear! So you emulate the great Rembrandt, or Velázquez perhaps?

LANKES
: Sort of in between the two.

BEBRA
: But my God, man! Why are you mixing, pouring, and guarding concrete? You should be in the Propaganda Corps. War artists are what we need!

LANKES
: Haven't got it in me, sir. My stuff's too oblique for present tastes. Got a cigarette, sir?
Bebra hands him a cigarette.

BEBRA
: Oblique? You mean modern?

LANKES
: Who knows what's modern? Before these people turned up with their concrete, oblique was modern for a while.

BEBRA
: It was?

LANKES
: Yep.

BEBRA
: Do you lay it on thick? With a spatula, maybe?

LANKES
: That too. And I work with my thumb, just press it in and stick in nails and studs, and before thirty-three I stuck barbed wire on cinnabar for a while. Got good reviews. A private collector in Switzerland has them now, soap manufacturer.

BEBRA
: This war, this terrible war! And now you're pouring concrete. Hiring out your genius for fortification work. Well, I must admit that Leonardo and Michelangelo did the same in their day. Designed mechanical swords and erected bulwarks when they didn't have a Madonna on commission.

LANKES
: You see! There's always a niche somewhere. A true artist has to express himself. Take a look at those ornaments over the bunker entrance, sir. I did them.

BEBRA
,
after thorough study:
Amazing! What richness of form, what rigorous power of expression!

LANKES
: You could call the style Structural Formations.

BEBRA
: And does your creation, this relief, this image, have a title?

LANKES
: Like I said: Formations, or Oblique Formations, if you like. A new style. No one's ever done it before.

BEBRA
: But that's just it, you're the creator, you should give the work a distinctive title...

LANKES
: Titles, what's the point of titles? If it weren't for exhibition catalogues they wouldn't exist.

BEBRA
: Now don't put on airs, Lankes. Think of me as an art lover, not an officer. Cigarette?
Lankes takes it.
Well?

LANKES
: Well, if you put it that way. What I thought to myself was this: When this is all over—and it will be over someday, one way or the other—these pillboxes will still be standing, because pillboxes always remain standing, even when everything else collapses. And then Time will come into play. The centuries will pass, I mean—
He tucks away the last cigarette.
Got another cigarette, sir? Much obliged! And the centuries will come and go as if they're nothing. But the pillboxes will remain, just as the pyramids have always remained. And one fine day a so-called archaeologist will arrive and say to himself, What an artistically impoverished age that was back then, between the first and the seventh world wars: dull gray concrete, a few amateurish, awkward curlicues in folk style over
bunker entrances—and then he'll run across Dora Four, Dora Five, Six, Dora Seven, he'll see my structurally oblique formations, and say to himself: Let's have a look at this. Interesting. One might almost say magical; menacing, yet imbued with striking spirituality. A genius, perhaps the only genius of the twentieth century, expressed himself here clearly, and for all time. Does the work bear a title? Did the master reveal himself through a signature? And if you'll look closely, sir, and tilt your head at an oblique angle, then between these rough Oblique Formations ...

BEBRA:
My glasses. Help me, Lankes.

LANKES:
All right, here's what it says: Herbert Lankes, anno nineteen hundred and forty-four. Title: Mystical, barbaric, bored.

BEBRA:
You have given our century its name.

LANKES:
You see!

BEBRA:
Perhaps five hundred or a thousand years from now, when restoration work is under way, they will find a few puppy bones in the concrete.

LANKES:
Which will only reinforce my title.

BEBRA,
excited:
What is our age, and what are we, dear friend, if not our works ... but look: Felix and Kitty, my acrobats, are doing gymnastics on the pillbox.

KITTY
For some time now a piece of paper has been passing back and forth between Roswitha and Oskar, between Felix and Kitty, all of whom have been writing on it. Kitty, in a slight Saxon accent:
See, Herr Bebra, what you can do on concrete.
She walks on her hands.

FELIX:
And nobody ever did a
salto mortale
on concrete before.
He does a somersault.

KITTY
: We need a real stage like this.

FELIX:
Though it's a bit windy up here.

KITTY
: But it's not as hot and smelly as those stupid movie houses.
She ties herself in knots.

FELIX:
And we even wrote a poem up here.

KITTY:
What do you mean, we? Oskar made it up, and Signora Roswitha.

FELIX:
Well, we helped when they needed a rhyme.

KITTY:
Just one more word and it's done.

FELIX:
Oskar wants to know what those spikes on the beach are called.

KITTY:
He has to put them in the poem.

FELIX:
They're too important to leave out.

KITTY:
So tell us, soldier, what are those spikes called?

FELIX:
Maybe he can't, because enemy ears are listening.

KITTY:
We won't tell anyone.

FELIX:
Otherwise it won't scan right.

KITTY:
He's worked so hard, has Oskarnello.

FELIX:
And he can write so beautifully, in Sütterlin script.

KITTY:
I wonder where he learned it.

FELIX:
The only thing he doesn't know is what those spikes are called.

LANKES:
Do I have your permission, Captain?

BEBRA:
Unless it's some vital military secret.

FELIX:
Oskar really wants to know.

KITTY:
The poem won't work without it.

ROSWITHA:
We're all so curious to know.

BEBRA:
I'm making it an order.

LANKES:
All right, we put them up to ward off tanks and landing craft. And we call them Rommel asparagus, because that's what they look like.

FELIX:
Rommel...

KITTY:
...asparagus? Does it fit, Oskarnello?

OSKAR:
It fits!
He writes the words on the paper, hands the poem to Kitty on the bunker. She ties herself into a tighter knot and recites the following lines like a school poem.

KITTY:

O
N THE
A
TLANTIC
WALL

Still staring from guns, with camouflaged teeth,
Rommel asparagus, poured concrete,
we're already off to the Land of Slippers,
with scrambled eggs and Friday's kippers,
and Sunday's roast with leaves of bay:
The bourgeois life is on its way!

Still sleeping in snarls of sharp barbed wire,
We plant our mines in latrine mire

while dreaming above of garden bowers,

of bowling teams and lovely flowers,

of pretty gargoyles, birds in May:

The bourgeois life is on its way!

Though Death has many still to take,

and many a mother's heart must break,

at least Death's always nicely dressed

in parachute silk that's properly pressed,

ruffled with feathers of peacock and jay:

The bourgeois life is on its way!

Everyone applauds, including Lankes.

LANKES:
It's low tide now.

ROSWITHA:
Then it's time we had breakfast!
She swings the large picnic basket, which is decorated with bows and artificial flowers.

KITTY:
Yes, let's picnic outside.

FELIX:
Nature whets the appetite.

ROSWITHA:
O sacred ritual of dining, which binds all nations, as long as men eat breakfast.

BEBRA:
Let's have our feast on concrete. It will provide the proper foundation!
Everyone except Lankes climbs up on the bunker. Roswitha spreads out a bright, flowered tablecloth. She pulls small cushions with tufts and fringes from the bottomless basket. A parasol, pink and bright green, is opened, a tiny gramophone with speaker is set up. Little plates, little spoons, eggcups, napkins are distributed.

FELIX:
I'd like some of that pâté de foie gras.

KITTY:
Is there any of that caviar we rescued from Stalingrad?

OSKAR:
Don't spread the Danish butter on too thick, Roswitha.

BEBRA:
That's right, son, watch out for her figure.

ROSWITHA:
But I like it, and it's good for me. Oof! When I think of that cake with whipped cream the Luftwaffe served us in Copenhagen.

BEBRA:
The Dutch chocolate in the thermos is still nice and hot.

KITTY:
I just love these tins of American cookies.

ROSWITHA:
Be sure and put this South African ginger marmalade on them.

OSKAR:
Don't pile it on, Roswitha, please.

ROSWITHA:
You've been taking inch-thick slices of that awful English corned beef yourself.

BEBRA:
What about you, soldier? A paper-thin slice of raisin bread with yellow plum jam?

LANKES:
If I wasn't on duty, sir ...

ROSWITHA:
You have to give him an official order.

KITTY:
Yes, an official order.

BEBRA:
All right, Corporal, I hereby order you to take some raisin bread with French plum jam, a Danish soft-boiled egg, Soviet caviar, and a small cup of genuine Dutch chocolate.

LANKES:
Yes, sir! Genuine Dutch chocolate!
He joins them on top of the bunker.

BEBRA:
Don't we have another cushion for the soldier?

OSKAR:
He can have mine. I'll sit on my drum.

ROSWITHA:
But don't catch cold, darling. Concrete is treacherous, and you're not used to it.

KITTY:
He can have my cushion too. I'm going to knot myself up a little so the bread and honey goes down better.

FELIX:
But stay over the tablecloth, let's not get honey on the concrete. That would weaken our defenses.
Everyone giggles.

BEBRA:
Ah, the sea air feels so good.

ROSWITHA:
Yes it does.

BEBRA:
The chest expands.

ROSWITHA:
Yes it does.

BEBRA:
The heart sheds its skin.

ROSWITHA:
The heart indeed does.