The Tin Drum (74 page)

We struck up a conversation, but took pains to keep to small talk at first. We touched on the most trivial of topics: I asked if he thought the fate of man was unalterable. He thought it was. Was he of the opinion that all men must die, Oskar asked. The death of all men he thought certain too, but was by no means sure that all men must be born, spoke of his own birth as a mistake, and once again Oskar felt a kinship with him. We both believed in heaven—but when he said heaven he gave a nasty little laugh and scratched himself under the bedclothes: one could assume Herr Klepp was planning indecent acts in the here and now that he would carry out in heaven. When we came to politics, he waxed almost passionate, named over three hundred German noble houses he would immediately grant title, crown, and power; the Duchy of Hanover he ceded to the British Empire. When I asked about the fate of the former Free City of Danzig he was sorry to say he didn't know the place, but had no problem naming a count from the Bergisches Land, who, as he said, descended in a more or less direct line from Jan Wellem, as prince of the little city he was sorry to say he'd never heard of. Finally—we were engaged in defining the concept of Truth, and making good progress—I skillfully interpolated a few questions into the conversation from which I learned that Herr Klepp had been paying rent to Zeidler as a lodger for three years now. We expressed our regrets at not having met sooner. I blamed the Hedgehog for failing to provide me with sufficient information about this man who was tending his bed, just as it had not occurred to him to convey more about the nurse than the paltry comment: A nurse lives behind this frosted-glass door.

Oskar didn't want to start right in burdening Herr Münzer or Klepp with his troubles. So instead of seeking information about the nurse, I expressed my concern for him: "Apropos of health," I threw in, "aren't you well?"

Klepp again raised his upper body a few degrees, then, realizing he would never make it to a right angle, sank back again and informed me that in fact he was lying in bed in order to find out whether his health was good, middling, or poor. He hoped within a few weeks to discover that it was middling.

Then what I'd feared might happen did, something I'd hoped to avoid by an extended and wide-ranging conversation. "My dear sir, do join me in a plate of spaghetti." So we ate spaghetti cooked in the fresh water I'd brought. I wanted to ask him for the sticky pot, so that I could take it to the sink and give it a thorough washing, but didn't dare. Turning on his side, Klepp cooked our meal in silence with the sure motions of a somnambulist. He drained the water carefully into a large tin can, then, without noticeably altering the position of his upper body, reached under the bed and pulled out a greasy plate crusted with tomato paste, seemed to hesitate a moment, then fished around under the bed again and brought to light a wad of newspaper, wiped the plate with it, tossed the wad back under the bed, breathed on the smeared platter as if to remove a final speck of dust, then, with an almost noble gesture, handed me the most loathsome plate I'd ever seen, and invited Oskar to help himself.

After you, I said, hoping he would go first. Having provided me with a fork and spoon so greasy they stuck to my fingers, he heaped a huge portion of the spaghetti onto my plate with a soup spoon and fork, then, with elegant motions, squeezed a long worm of tomato paste in decorative patterns onto it, added a generous portion of oil from the can, did the same for himself, sprinkled pepper over both plates, stirred up his share, and with a glance urged me to do the same. "Ah, dear sir, forgive me for not having grated parmesan in the house. Even so,
bon appétit!"

To this day Oskar doesn't know how he summoned up the courage to ply fork and spoon. Amazingly, it tasted good. In fact Klepp's spaghetti set a culinary standard against which, from that day on, I measured every menu set before me.

During the meal I had time to appraise the bedkeeper's room discreetly. The main attraction was a round hole for a stovepipe just below the ceiling, breathing darkly from the wall. It was windy outside. Apparently it was the gusts of wind that puffed occasional clouds of soot through the hole into Klepp's room. The clouds settled evenly on the furnishings, conducting a burial rite. Since those furnishings consisted only of the bed in the middle of the room and a few of Zeidler's rolled-up rugs covered with wrapping paper, it was safe to say that nothing in the room was blackened more thoroughly than the once-white bedsheet, the pillow beneath Klepp's head, and a hand towel the bed
keeper spread over his face whenever a gust of wind ushered a cloud of soot into the room.

The room's two windows, like those in Zeidler's bed-sitting room, looked out on Jülicher Straße, or, more precisely, out into the leafy gray-green garb of the chestnut tree outside the building. The only picture gracing the room hung between the two windows, fastened with thumbtacks, a color photo, probably taken from some magazine, of Elizabeth of England. Beneath the picture, hanging from a hook, was a set of bagpipes, its Scottish plaid barely discernible beneath a layer of soot. As I gazed at the color photo, thinking less of Elizabeth and her Philip than of Sister Dorothea, standing, perhaps in despair, between Oskar and Dr. Werner, Klepp explained to me that he was a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of the English royal family, and had even taken bagpipe lessons from the pipers of a Scottish regiment in the British Army of Occupation, since Elizabeth commanded the regiment; he, Klepp, had seen her in the weekly newsreel, in Scottish kilts, plaid from top to toe, reviewing the regiment.

Strangely enough, the Catholic in me rose up at this point. I said I doubted that Elizabeth understood the first thing about bagpipes, and added a few comments about the disgraceful end of the Catholic Mary Stuart; in short, Oskar let Klepp know that he considered Elizabeth tone-deaf.

Actually I had expected an angry outburst from the Royalist. Instead he gave a superior smile and asked me why he should give any weight to what such a little man—that's what the fat fellow called me—had to say about music.

Oskar stared steadily at Klepp for some time. He had spoken to me without knowing that he spoke to something deep within me. A shiver ran through my head to my hump. It was as if all my old, battered, worn-out tin drums were celebrating Judgment Day on their own. A thousand drums I had thrown on the scrap heap and the one drum that lay buried in the cemetery at Saspe rose up, rose renewed, were resurrected whole and intact, sounded forth, filled me with their resonance, boosted me from the edge of the bed, pulled me, as I begged Klepp to excuse me for a moment, from the room, drew me past Sister Dorothea's frosted-glass door—the half-covered rectangle of the letter still lay on the hall
floor—whipped me along toward my room and the drum Raskolnikov had given me while painting
Madonna 49;
and I seized the drum, held it and both drumsticks in my hands, turned or was turned, left the room, sprang past that cursed chamber, entered Klepp's spaghetti kitchen like a man who has survived long wanderings, and without further ado, seated myself on the edge of the bed, adjusted my red and white lacquered tin, dallied in the air with the drumsticks, still a little embarrassed no doubt and looking past an astonished Klepp, then let one stick fall, as if at random, on the tin, and ah, the tin replied to Oskar, who quickly followed with the second stick; and I began to drum, told it all in order, in the beginning was the beginning: the moth between the light bulbs drummed out the hour of my birth; I drummed the cellar stairs with their sixteen steps and my fall down those steps during the celebration of my legendary third birthday; I drummed the schedule at the Pestalozzi School from top to bottom, climbed the Stockturm with the drum, sat with it beneath political grandstands, drummed eels and gulls, and carpet beating on Good Friday, sat drumming on my poor mama's coffin that tapered toward its foot, then used the scar-studded back of Herbert Truczinski as a score, and noticed, as I drummed up the defense of the Polish Post Office on Heveliusplatz, as if from a great distance, a movement at the head of the bed on which I sat, saw with half an eye a Klepp now sitting up, pull from beneath his pillow a ludicrous wooden lute, place it to his lips, and bring forth tones so sweet, so unnatural, so attuned to my drumming, that I could lead him through Saspe Cemetery to Crazy Leo, that I could, once Crazy Leo was done with his dance, let the fizz powder of my first love foam up before him, for him, and with him; I even led him into the jungles of Frau Lina Greff, let the seventy-five-kilo counterweight drum machine of the greengrocer Greff whir and run down to silence, had Klepp join Bebra's Theater at the Front, let Jesus speak on my drum, drummed Störtebeker and all the dusters off the diving board—while Luzie sat below—but I let ants and Russians take over my drum, though I didn't lead Klepp back to Saspe Cemetery, where I threw my drum into Matzerath's grave, but instead took up my never-ending theme: Kashubian potato fields in October rains, there sits my grandmother in her four skirts; and Oskar's heart almost turned to stone when I heard October rain drizzling from Klepp's lute, as, be
neath the rain and her four skirts, Klepp's lute found my grandfather, Joseph Koljaiczek, the arsonist, and both demonstrated and celebrated my poor mama's hour of conception.

We played for several hours. After multiple variations on the flight of my grandfather across the timber rafts, we brought the concert to a close, slightly exhausted but happy, with a hymnlike intimation of a possible miraculous rescue of the vanished arsonist.

With the final note still half in his flute, Klepp sprang forth from his form-furrowed bed. Cadaverous smells clung to him. He threw open the windows, stuffed newspaper in the chimney hole, tore the color photo of Elizabeth of England to shreds, declared an end to the Royalist Era, let water gush from the tap into the sink, and washed himself: he washed himself, Klepp did, he washed everything away boldly, this was no mere washing, it was a purification, he was washing himself clean; and as the purified man turned from the water and stood before me, fat, dripping, naked, nearly bursting, his unsightly member hanging at an angle, and lifted me, lifted me up in his outstretched arms—for Oskar was and still is a lightweight—as the laughter erupted from him, poured forth and dashed against the ceiling, I realized that Oskar's drum was not alone in being resurrected, that Klepp too had risen from the dead—and so we congratulated each other, kissed each other on the cheek.

That same day—we went out toward evening, drank beer, ate blood sausage with onions—Klepp suggested we form a jazz band. I asked for time to think it over, but Oskar had already made up his mind, not only to give up carving inscriptions for Korneff the stonecutter, but to stop modeling with Ulla the Muse and become the percussionist in a jazz band.

So Oskar supplied his friend with reasons for getting out of bed. Though Klepp sprang joyfully from the musty bedclothes, even let water touch him, and became the sort of man who says Let's go! and I'll take on the world!, I would claim today, when Oskar's the one keeping to his bed, that Klepp is taking his revenge, wants to spoil my bed for me at the mental institution the way I spoiled his for him in the spaghetti kitchen.

Once a week I have to put up with his visits and listen to his upbeat jazz tirades, his musico-Communist manifestos, for no sooner had I deprived him of his bed and his bagpiping Elizabeth than this bedkeeper who styled himself a true Royalist and devotee of the English monarchy became a dues-paying member of the German Communist Party, an illegal hobby he pursues to this day by drinking beer, devouring blood sausage, and holding forth about the benefits of collectives like a fulltime jazz band or a Soviet kolkhoz to the harmless little men who stand at bars and study the labels on bottles.

These days there aren't many possibilities left for a dreamer who's been startled awake. Once alienated from his form-furrowed bed, Klepp could become a Communist comrade—illegally, which further increased its appeal. Jazz was the second religion open to him. Third, as a baptized Protestant, he could convert to Catholicism.

You have to hand it to Klepp: he kept all religious avenues open. Caution, his heavy, glistening flesh, and a humor that feeds on applause inspired in him a recipe that, with a peasant's practical wit, combined the teachings of Marx and the mythos of jazz. If one day he runs into a left-wing priest catering to the working class who also owns a collection of Dixieland records, a jazz-ruminating Marxist will start receiving
the sacraments on Sundays from then on, mingling the body odor described above with the effluvia of a Neo-Gothic cathedral.

May my bed, from which this fellow tries to lure me by promises warm with life, protect me from that fate. He submits petition after petition to the court, works hand in hand with my lawyer, demands a retrial: he wants to see Oskar acquitted, to see Oskar free—get our Oskar out of that place—and all simply because Klepp begrudges me my bed.

Nonetheless I'm not sorry that while lodging with Zeidler I transformed a recumbent friend into a standing, stomping-about, and sometimes even walking friend. Apart from the strenuous hours I devoted to Sister Dorothea, deep in thought, I now had a carefree private life. "Hey, Klepp!" I would clap him on the shoulder. "Let's start a jazz band." And he would fondle my hump, which he loved almost as much as his own belly. "Oskar and I are starting a jazz band," Klepp announced to the world. "All we need is a decent guitarist who can handle the banjo too."

A second melodic instrument is indeed needed with a drum and flute. A plucked bass would not have been bad, even in purely visual terms, but bass players were always hard to come by, even in those days, so we undertook an eager search for the missing guitarist. We frequented the movie houses, had our photographs taken twice a week as you may remember, and played all sorts of silly tricks with our passport photos over beer, blood sausage, and onions. Klepp met Red Ilse back then, thoughtlessly gave her his photo, and for that reason alone had to marry her—but we couldn't find a guitarist.