Danzig - The Tin Drum Part 16

I remember well the mechanic, recently transferred to Schichau from the Deutsche Werke at Kiel, who came to see us in our cellar shortly before the split. Erich and Horst Pietzger, the sons of a longsh.o.r.eman in Fuchswall, had brought him. He inspected our storehouse with a professional air, deplored the absence of any weapons in working order, but uttered a few grudging words of approval. When he asked to speak to the chief, Stortebeker promptly, and Moorkahne with some hesitation, referred him to me. Thereupon he flew into a gale of laughter so long and so insolent that Oskar came very close to handing him over to the dusters for a dusting.

"What kind of a sawed-off runt do you call that?" he said to Moorkahne, pointing his thumb at me over his shoulder.

Moorkahne smiled in visible embarra.s.sment. Before he could think of anything to say, Stortebeker replied with ominous calm: "He is our Jesus."

That was too much for the mechanic, whose name was Walter; he took it on himself to insult us right there in our own headquarters. "Say, are you revolutionaries or a bunch of choirboys getting ready for a Christmas play?"

The blade of a paratrooper's knife popped out of Stortebeker's sleeve; he opened the cellar door, gave Firestealer a sign, and said, more to the gang than to the mechanic: "We're choirboys and we're getting ready for a Christmas play."

But nothing drastic happened to the mechanic. He was blindfolded and led away. A few days later this same Walter organized the dockyard apprentices into a club of their own, and I am quite sure it was they who set the training sub on fire.

From my point of view Stortebeker had given the right answer. We were not interested in politics. Once we had so intimidated the Hitler Youth Patrols that they scarcely left their quarters except occasionally to check the papers of flighty young ladies at the railroad stations, we s.h.i.+fted our field of operations to the churches and began, as the Communist mechanic had put it, to occupy ourselves with Christmas plays.

Our first concern was to find replacements for the invaluable Schichau apprentices. At the end of October, Stortebeker swore in the brothers Felix and Paul Rennwand, both choirboys at Sacred Heart. Stortebeker had approached them through their sister Lucy, a girl of sixteen who, over my protest, was allowed to attend the swearing-in ceremony. Setting their left hands on my drum, which the boys, incurable Romantics that they were, liked to think of as some sort of symbol, the Rennwand brothers repeated the oath of allegiance, a text so absurd and full of hocus-pocus that I can no longer remember it.

Oskar watched Lucy during the ceremony. In one hand she held a sandwich that seemed to quiver slightly, she shrugged her shoulders and gnawed at her lower lip. Her triangular fox face was expressionless, and she kept her eyes riveted on Stortebeker's back. Suddenly I had misgivings about the Dusters' future.

We began to redecorate our bas.e.m.e.nt. In close collaboration with the choirboys, I oversaw the acquisition of the required furnis.h.i.+ngs. From St. Catherine's we took a sixteen-century half-length Joseph who turned out to be authentic, a few candelabra, some chalices, patens, and cruets, and a Corpus Christi banner. A night visit to the Church of the Trinity brought us a wooden, trumpet-blowing angel of no artistic interest, and a colored tapestry, copied from an older original, showing a lady who seemed ever so prim, prissy, and deceitful, and a mythical animal known as a unicorn, who was obviously very much under her influence. The lady's smile, as Stortebeker observed, had the same playful cruelty as that which predominated in Lucy's fox face, and I hoped my lieutenant would not prove as submissive as the unicorn. We hung the tapestry on the rear wall of our cellar, formerly decorated with death's heads, black hands, and other such absurdities, and soon the unicorn motif seemed to dominate all our deliberations. Meanwhile Lucy had made herself at home in our midst, coming and going as she pleased and sn.i.g.g.e.ring behind my back. Why then, I asked myself, did we have to bring in this second, woven Lucy, who is turning your lieutenants into unicorns, who alive or woven is really out to get you, Oskar, for you alone of the Dusters are truly fabulous and unique, you are the human unicorn.

But then Advent was upon us, and I was mighty glad of it. We began to collect Nativity figures from all the churches in the neighborhood, and soon the tapestry was so well hidden behind them that the fable -- or so I thought -- was bound to lose its influence. In mid-December Rundstedt opened his offensive in the Ardennes and we completed preparations for our major coup.

Several Sundays running I attended ten o'clock Ma.s.s with Maria, who, to Matzerath's chagrin, had become thoroughly immersed in Catholicism. The Dusters, too, at my behest, had become regular churchgoers. This was our way of casing the joint. Finally, on the night of September 18, we broke into the Church of the Sacred Heart. "Broke" is a manner of speaking. Thanks to our choirboys, there was no need to break anything, not even for Oskar to sing at any gla.s.s.

It was snowing, but the snow melted as it fell. We stowed the three handcarts behind the sacristy. The younger Rennwand had the key to the main door. Oskar went in first, led the boys one by one to the holy-water font, where at his bidding they genuflected toward the high altar. Then I had them throw a Labor Service blanket over the statue of Jesus bearing his Sacred Heart, lest his blue gaze interfere with our work. Bouncer and Mister carried the tools to the scene of action, the left side-altar. The manger with its Nativity figures and evergreen boughs had to be cleared out of the way. We already had all the shepherds and angels, all the sheep, a.s.ses, and cows we needed. Our cellar was full of extras; all that was lacking were the central figures. Belisarius removed the flowers from the altar. Totila and Teja rolled up the carpet. Firestealer unpacked the tools. Oskar, on his knees behind a pew, supervised the operations.

The first to be sawed off was little John the Baptist in his chocolate-colored pelt. Luckily, we had a metal saw, for inside the plaster there were metal rods as thick as your finger connecting the boy Baptist with the cloud. Firestealer did the sawing. He went about it like an intellectual, that is to say, clumsily. Once again the Schichau apprentices were sorely missed. Stortebeker relieved Firestealer. He was somewhat handier and after half an hour's rasping and squeaking we were able to topple the boy Baptist over and wrap him in a woolen blanket. Then for a moment we breathed in the midnight ecclesiastical silence.

It took a little longer to saw off the child Jesus, whose whole rear end rested on the Virgin's thigh. Bouncer, the elder Rennwand, and Lionheart were at work for fully forty minutes. But where, I wondered, was Moorkahne? His idea had been that our movements would attract less attention if he and his men came directly from Neufahrwa.s.ser and met us in the church. Stortebeker seemed nervous and irritable. Several times he asked the Rennwand brothers about Moorkahne. When at length, as we all expected, Lucy's name came up, Stortebeker stopped asking questions, wrenched the metal saw out of Lionheart's unpracticed hands, and working feverishly gave the boy Jesus the coup de grace.

As they laid Jesus down, his halo broke off. Stortebeker apologized to me. Controlling myself with some difficulty -- for I too was succ.u.mbing to the general irritability -- I told them to pick up the pieces, which were gathered into two caps. Firestealer thought the halo could be glued together again. Jesus was bedded in cus.h.i.+ons and wrapped in blankets.

Our plan was to saw off the Virgin at the waist, making a second cut between the cloud and the soles of her feet. We would leave the cloud where it was and take only the figures, Jesus, the two halves of the Virgin, and the boy Baptist if there was still room in one of the carts. The figures, as we were glad to discover, weighed less than we had expected. The whole group was hollow cast. The walls were no more than an inch thick, and the only heavy part was the iron skeleton.

The boys were exhausted, especially Firestealer and Lionheart. Operations had to be suspended while they rested, for the others, including the Rennwand brothers, could not saw. The gang sat s.h.i.+vering in the pews. Stortebeker stood crumpling his velours hat, which he had removed on entering the church. The atmosphere was not to my liking. Something had to be done. The boys were suffering the effects of the religious architecture, full of night and emptiness. Some were worried about Moorkahne's absence. The Rennwand brothers seemed to be afraid of Stortebeker; they stood to one side, whispering until Stortebeker ordered them to be still.

Slowly, I seem to remember, slowly and with a sigh, I rose from my prayer cus.h.i.+on and went straight up to the Virgin, who was still in her place. Her eyes, which had been turned toward John, were now resting on the altar steps, white with plaster dust. Her right forefinger, hitherto aimed at Jesus, pointed into the void, or rather, the dark left aisle of the nave. I took one step after another, then looked behind me, trying to catch Stortebeker's attention. His deep-set eyes were far away until Firestealer gave him a poke. Then he looked at me, but with a lack of a.s.surance such as I had never seen in him. At first he failed to understand, then he understood, or partly so, and stepped slowly, much too slowly forward. However, he took the altar steps at one bound and then lifted me up on the white, jagged, incompetent saw cut on the Virgin's thigh, which roughly reproduced the imprint of the boy Jesus' behind.

Stortebeker turned back at once and with one step he was back on the flags. He almost fell back into his reverie, but then he gave himself a jolt, and his eyes narrowed. No more than our henchmen in the pews could he conceal his emotion at the sight of me sitting so naturally in Jesus' place, all ready to be wors.h.i.+pped.

He soon saw what I was after and even gave me more than I had bargained for. He ordered Na.r.s.es and Bluebeard to s.h.i.+ne their Army flashlights upon me and the Virgin. When the glare blinded me, he told them to use the red beam. Then he summoned the Rennwand brothers and held a whispered conference with them. They were reluctant to do his bidding; Firestealer stepped over to the group and exhibited his knuckles, all ready for dusting; the brothers gave in and vanished into the sacristy with Firestealer and Mister. Oskar waited calmly, moved his drum into position, and was not even surprised when Mister, who was a tall, gangling fellow, came back attired as a priest, accompanied by the two Rennwand brothers in the red and white raiment of choirboys. Firestealer, wearing some of the vicar's clothing, brought in everything needed for Ma.s.s, stowed his equipment on the cloud, and withdrew. The elder Rennwand bore the vestments, Mister gave a fair imitation of Father Wiehnke. At first he performed with a schoolboy's cynicism, but then, letting himself be carried away by the words and gestures, offered us all, and myself in particular, not a silly parody, but a Ma.s.s which even at our trial was consistently referred to as a Ma.s.s, though a black one to be sure.

The three of them began with the gradual prayers; the boys in the pews and on the flags genuflected, crossed themselves, and Mister, who knew the words up to a point, embarked on the Ma.s.s with the expert support of the two choir boys. I began to drum, cautiously in the Introit, but more forcefully in the Kyrie. Gloria in excelsis Deo -- I praised the Lord on my drum, summoned the congregation to prayer, subst.i.tuted a drum solo of some length for the Epistle. My Halleluia was particularly successful. In the Credo, I saw that the boys believed in me; for the Offertory, I drummed rather more softly as Mister presented the bread and mixed wine with water. Sharing a whiff of incense with the chalice, I looked on to see how Mister would handle the Lavabo. Orate, fratres, I drummed in the red glow of the flashlights, and led up to the Transubstantiation: This is My body. Oremus, sang Mister, in response to orders from above -- the boys in the pews offered me two different versions of the Lord's Prayer, but Mister managed to reconcile Protestants and Catholics in one Communion. Even before the meal was over, my drum introduced the Confiteor. The Virgin pointed her finger at Oskar, the drummer. I had indeed taken the place of Christ. The Ma.s.s was going like clockwork. Mister's voice rose and fell. How splendidly he p.r.o.nounced the benediction: pardon, absolution, and remission. "Ite, missa est -- Go, you are dismissed." By the time these words were spoken, every one of us, I believe, had experienced a spiritual liberation. When the secular arm fell, it was upon a band of Dusters confirmed in the faith in Oskar's and Jesus' name.

I had heard the motors during the Ma.s.s and Stortebeker too had turned his head. We alone showed no surprise when voices were heard and heavy heels converged on us from the front and side doors and from the sacristy.

Stortebeker wanted to lift me down from the Virgin's thigh. I motioned him away. He understood, nodded, and made the boys keep kneeling. There they remained, waiting for the police. They trembled, a few lost their balance, some dropped on two knees, but they waited in silence until the law, converging in three groups, had surrounded the left side-altar.

The police had flashlights too, but favored a white beam. Stortebeker arose, crossed himself, stepped forward into the light, and handed his velours hat to Firestealer, who was still kneeling. Moving quickly around a bloated shadow without a flashlight -- Father Wiehnke -- Stortebeker seized a thin figure that thrashed about and tried to defend itself -- Lucy Rennwand. He slapped and punched the pinched triangular face under the beret until a blow from one of the policemen sent him rolling among the pews. Still perched on my Virgin, I heard one of the cops exclaiming: " Good G.o.d, Jeschke, that's the boss's kid."

To Oskar it was a source of modest satisfaction to learn that my excellent lieutenant had been the son of the chief of police. I offered no resistance, but stepped automatically into the role of a sniveling three-year-old who had been led astray by gangsters. All I wanted was to be comforted and protected. Father Wiehnke picked me up in his arms.

Everyone was quiet except for the policemen. The boys were led away. Father Wiehnke felt faint and had to sit down, but first he deposited me on the floor not far from our equipment. Behind hammers and crowbars, I found the basket full of sandwiches that Bouncer had made before we started on our expedition.

I took the basket, went over to Lucy, who was s.h.i.+vering in her light coat, and offered her the sandwiches. She picked us both up, Oskar and basket. A moment later she had a sandwich between her teeth. I studied her flaming, battered, swollen face: restless eyes in black slits, a chewing triangle, a doll, a wicked witch devouring sausage and, even as she ate, growing skinnier, hungrier, more triangular, more doll-like. The sight set its stamp on me. Who will efface that triangle from my mind? How long will it live within me, chewing sausage, chewing men, and smiling as only triangles, or lady unicorn-tamers on tapestries, can smile.

As he was led away between two inspectors, Stortebeker turned his blood-smeared face toward Lucy and Oskar. I looked past him. I recognized him no longer. When all my erstwhile followers had left, I too was led away, still in the arms of the sandwich-eating Lucy.

Who stayed behind? Father Wiehnke with our flashlights, still s.h.i.+ning red, and the vestments hurriedly shed by Father Mister and his a.s.sistants. Chalice and ciborium lay on the steps to the altar. The sawed-off John and the sawed-off Jesus were still there with the Virgin, who was to have formed a counterweight to the lady with the unicorn in our cellar headquarters.

Oskar, however, was carried away to a trial that I still call the second trial of Jesus, a trial that ended with the acquittal of Oskar, hence also of Jesus.

The Ant Trail

Imagine, if you please, a swimming pool lined with azure-blue tiles. Quite a few sunburned, athletic young people in the water, and more sunburned young men and women sitting or reclining on the tiles round the edges. Perhaps a bit of soft music from the loudspeaker. Healthy boredom and a mild, noncommittal s.e.xuality. The tiles are smooth, but no one slips. Only a few signs prohibiting anything; no need of them, the bathers come only for an hour or two and have other places to do what is forbidden. Now and then someone dives from the ten-foot springboard but fails to attract the attention of those in the water, or to lure the eyes of those reclining on the tiles away from their ill.u.s.trated weeklies. Suddenly a breeze! No, not a breeze, but a young man who slowly, resolutely; reaching from rung to rung, climbs the ladder to the thirty-foot diving tower. Magazines droop, eyes rise, rec.u.mbent bodies grow longer, a young woman shades her forehead, someone forgets what he was thinking about, a word remains unspoken, a flirtation, just begun, comes to a sudden end in the middle of the sentence -- for there he stands virile and well built, jumps up and down on the platform, leans on the gently curved tubular railing, casts a bored look downward, moves away from the railing with a graceful swing of the haunches, ventures out on the springboard that sways at every step, focuses his eyes on an azure-blue, alarmingly small swimming pool, full of intermingling bathing caps: yellow, green, white, red, yellow, green, white, red, yellow, green. . . . That's where his friends must be sitting, Doris and Erika Schiller, and Jutta Daniels with her boy friend, who isn't right for her. They wave, Jutta waves too. Rather worried about his balance, he waves back. They shout. What can they want? He should go ahead, they shout, dive, cries Jutta. But he had climbed up with no such intention, he had just wanted to see how things looked from up here, and then climb down, slowly, rung by rung. And now they are shouting so everybody can hear: Dive! Go ahead and dive! Go ahead.

This, you will admit, though a diving tower may be a step nearer heaven, is a desperate plight to be in. In January, 1945, the Dusters and I, though it was not the bathing season, found ourselves in a similar situation. We had ventured high up, we were all crowded together on the diving tower, and below, forming a solemn horseshoe round a waterless pool, sat the judges, witnesses, and court clerks.

Stortebeker stepped out on the supple, railingless springboard.

"Dive!" cried the judges.

But Stortebeker didn't feel like it.

Then from the witnesses' bench there arose a slender figure with a grey pleated skirt and a little Bavarian-style jacket. A pale but not indistinct face which, I still maintain, formed a triangle, rose up like a target indicator: Lucy Rennwand did not shout. She only whispered: "Jump, Stortebeker, jump!"

Then Stortebeker jumped. Lucy sat down again on the witnesses' bench and pulled down the sleeves of her Bavarian jacket over her fists.

Moorkahne limped onto the springboard. The judges ordered him to dive. But Moorkahne didn't feel like it; smiling in embarra.s.sment at his fingernails, he waited for Lucy to pull up her sleeves, let her fists fall out of the wool, and display the black-framed triangle with the slits for eyes. Then he plunged furiously at the triangle, but missed it.

Even on the way up, Firestealer and Putty hadn't been exactly lovey-dovey; on the springboard they came to blows. Putty was dusted, and even when he plunged, Firestealer wouldn't let him go.

Bouncer, who had long silky eyelashes, closed his deep, sad doe's eyes before taking the leap.

The Air Force Auxiliaries had to take off their uniforms before plunging.

Nor were the Rennwand brothers permitted to take their heavenward plunge attired as choirboys; that would have been quite unacceptable to their sister Lucy, sitting on the witnesses' bench in her jacket of threadbare wartime wool and encouraging young men to dive.

In defiance of history, Belisarius and Na.r.s.es dove first, then Totila and Teja. Bluebeard plunged, Lionheart plunged, then the rank and file: The Nose, Bushman, Tanker, Piper, Mustard Pot, Yatagan, and Cooper.

The last to jump was Stuchel, a high school student so crosseyed it made you dizzy to look at him; he had only half belonged to the gang and that by accident. Only Jesus was left on the platform. Addressing him as Oskar Matzerath, the judges asked him to dive, but Jesus did not comply. Lucy, the stern and unbending, Lucy with the scrawny Mozart pigtail hanging between her shoulders, rose from the witnesses' bench, spread her sweater arms, and whispered without visibly moving her compressed lips: "Jump, sweet Jesus, jump." At this moment I understood the fatal lure of a thirty-foot springboard; little grey kittens began to wriggle in my knee joints, hedgehogs mated under the soles of my feet, swallows took wing in my armpits, and at my feet I saw not only Europe but the whole world. Americans and j.a.panese were doing a torch dance on the island of Luzon, dancing so hard that slant-eyes and round-eyes alike lost the b.u.t.tons off their uniforms. But at the very same moment a tailor in Stockholm was sewing b.u.t.tons on a handsome suit of evening clothes. Mountbatten was feeding Burmese elephants sh.e.l.ls of every caliber. A widow in Lima was teaching her parrot to say "Caramba". In the middle of the Pacific two enormous aircraft carriers, done up to look like Gothic cathedrals, stood face to face, sent up their planes, and simultaneously sank one another. The planes had no place to land, they hovered helplessly and quite allegorically like angels in mid-air, using up their fuel with a terrible din. This was all one to the streetcar conductor in Haparanda, who had just gone off duty. He was breaking eggs into a frying pan, two for himself and two for his fiancee, whom he was expecting any minute, having planned the whole evening in advance. Obviously the armies of Koniev and Zhukov could be expected to resume their forward drive; while rain fell in Ireland, they broke through on the Vistula, took Warsaw too late and Konigsberg too soon, and even so were powerless to prevent a woman in Panama, who had five children and only one husband, from burning the milk she was warming up on her gas range. Inevitably the thread of events wound itself into loops and knots which became known as the fabric of History. I also saw that activities such as thumb-twiddling, frowning, looking up and down, handshaking, making babies, counterfeiting, turning out the light, brus.h.i.+ng teeth, shooting people, and changing diapers were being practiced all over the world, though not always with the same skill. My head swimming at the thought of so much purposive movement, I turned back to the trial which was continuing in my honor at the foot of the diving tower. "Jump, sweet Jesus, jump," whispered Lucy Rennwand, the witness and virgin temptress. She was sitting on Satan's lap, and that brought out her virginity. He handed her a sandwich. She bit into it with pleasure, but lost none of her chast.i.ty. "Jump, sweet Jesus," she chewed, offering me her triangle, still intact.

I did not jump, and you will never catch me jumping or diving from a diving tower. This was not to be Oskar's last trial. Many attempts have been made, one very recently, to persuade me to jump. At the ring-finger trial -- which I prefer to call the third trial of Jesus -- there were again plenty of spectators at the edge of the waterless swimming pool. They sat on witnesses' benches, determined to enjoy and survive my trial.

But I made an about-face, stifled the fledgling swallows in my armpits, squashed the hedgehogs mating under the soles of my feet, starved the grey kittens out from under my kneecaps. Scorning the exaltation of plunging, I went stiffly to the railing, swung myself onto the ladder, descended, let every rung in the ladder reinforce my conviction that diving towers can not only be climbed but also relinquished without diving.

Down below, Maria and Matzerath were waiting for me. Father Wiehnke gave me his blessing though I hadn't asked for it. Gretchen Scheffler had brought me a little winter coat and some cake. Kurt had grown and refused to recognize me either as a father or as a half brother. My grandmother Koljaiczek held her brother Vincent by the arm. He knew the world and talked incoherent nonsense.

As we were leaving the courthouse, an official in civilian clothes approached Matzerath, handed him a paper, and said: "You really ought to think it over, Mr. Matzerath. You've got to get the child off the streets. You see how helpless and gullible he is, always ready to be taken in by disreputable elements."

Maria wept and gave me my drum, which Father Wiehnke had taken care of during the trial. We went to the streetcar stop by the Central Station. Matzerath carried me the last bit of the way. I looked back over his shoulder, searching the crowd for a triangular face, wondering whether she too had had to climb the tower, whether she had jumped after Stortebeker and Moorkahne, or whether like me she had availed herself of the alternative possibility, of climbing down the ladder.

To this day I have not been able to dispel the habit of looking about in streets and public places for a skinny teen-age girl, neither pretty nor ugly, but always biting men. Even in my bed in the mental hospital I am frightened when Bruno announces an unexpected visitor. My nightmare is that Lucy Rennwand will turn up in the shape of a wicked witch and for the last time bid me to plunge.

For ten days Matzerath pondered whether to sign the letter and send it to the Ministry of Public Health. When on the eleventh day he signed and mailed it, the city was already under artillery fire, and it was doubtful that his letter would cover much ground. Armored spearheads of Marshal Rokossovski's army reached Elbing. The German Second Army, commanded by Weiss, took up positions on the heights surrounding Danzig. Like everyone else, we began to live in the cellar.

As we all know, our cellar was under the shop. You could reach it by way of the cellar door in the hallway across from the toilet; you went down eighteen steps, past Heilandt's cellar and Kater's cellar, but before Schlager's. Old man Heilandt was still in the house. But Mrs. Kater, Laubschad the watchmaker, the Eykes, and the Schlagers had slipped away with a few bundles. Later the story went round that they, and with them Alexander and Gretchen Scheffler, had managed at the last minute to board a Strength through Joy s.h.i.+p which had either reached Stettin or Lubeck or struck a mine; in any case over half of the flats and cellars were empty.

Our cellar had the advantage of a second entrance which, as we also all of us know, consisted of a trap door behind the counter of our shop. Consequently, no one could see what Matzerath put into the cellar or removed from it. Otherwise Matzerath's acc.u.mulation of provisions during the war years would never have been tolerated. The warm, dry room was full of dried peas and beans, noodles, sugar, artificial honey, wheat flour, and margarine. Boxes of Swedish bread rested on cases of Crisco. Matzerath was clever with his hands. He himself had put up shelves, which were well stocked with canned fruit and vegetables. Thanks to a few uprights which Matzerath, at Greff's instigation, had wedged between floor and ceiling toward the middle of the war, the storeroom was as safe as a regulation air-raid shelter. On several occasions Matzerath had thought of removing the uprights, for there had been no heavy air raids. But when Greff the air-raid warden was no longer there to remonstrate with him, Maria insisted that he leave the props in place. She demanded safety for little Kurt, and occasionally even for me.

During the first air raids at the end of January, old man Heilandt and Matzerath joined forces to remove Mother Truczinski and her chair to our cellar. Then, perhaps at her request, possibly to avoid the effort of carrying her, they left her in her flat, sitting beside the window. After the big raid on the inner city, Maria and Matzerath found the old woman with her jaw hanging down, squinting as though a sticky little gnat had got caught in her eye.

The door to the bedroom was lifted off its hinges. Old man Heilandt brought his tools and a few boards, mostly disa.s.sembled crates. Smoking Derby cigarettes that Matzerath had given him, he took measurements. Oskar helped him with his work. The others vanished into the cellar, for the artillery sh.e.l.ling had started in again.

Old man Heilandt was in a hurry, he had in mind a simple rectangular box. But Oskar insisted on the traditional coffin shape. I held the boards in place, making him saw to my specifications, and the outcome was a coffin tapered at the foot end, such as every human corpse has a right to demand.

It was a fine-looking coffin in the end. Lina Greff washed Mother Truczinski, took a fresh nightgown from the cupboard, cut her fingernails, arranged her bun and propped it up on three knitting needles. In short, she managed to make Mother Truczinski look, even in death, like a grey mouse who had been given to potato pancakes and Postum in her lifetime.

The mouse had stiffened in her chair during the bombing and her knees refused to unbend. Before he could put on the coffin lid, old man Heilandt was obliged, when Maria left the room for a few moments, to break her legs.

Unfortunately there was no black paint, only yellow. Mother Truczinski was carried out of the flat and down the stairs in boards unpainted, but properly tapered at the foot end. Oskar followed with his drum, reading the inscription on the coffin lid: Vitello Margarine -- Vitello Margarine -- Vitello Margarine: evenly s.p.a.ced and thrice repeated, these words bore witness to Mother Truczinski's taste in household fat. For indeed she had preferred that good Vitello Margarine, made exclusively from vegetable oils, to the best b.u.t.ter, because margarine stays fresh, is wholesome and nutritious, and makes for good humor.

Old man Heilandt loaded the coffin on the handcart belonging to Greff's vegetable shop, and pulled it through Luisenstra.s.se, Marienstra.s.se, down Anton-Moller-Weg, where two houses were burning, toward the Women's Clinic. Little Kurt had remained with the widow Greff in our cellar. Maria and Matzerath pushed, Oskar sat in the cart beside the coffin, he would have liked to climb on top, but was not allowed to. The streets were clogged with refugees from East Prussia and the Delta. It was just about impossible to get through the underpa.s.s by the Sports Palace. Matzerath suggested digging a hole in the park of the Conradinum. The idea did not appeal to Maria or to old man Heilandt, who was the same age as Mother Truczinski. I too was opposed to the school park. Still, there was no hope of reaching the city cemetery, for from the Sports Palace on, Hindenburg-Allee was closed to all but military vehicles. And so, unable to bury the mouse beside her son Herbert, we chose a place for her in Steffens-Park, not far from the Maiwiese.

The ground was frozen. While Matzerath and old man Heilandt took turns with the pickax and Maria tried to dig up some ivy beside the stone benches, Oskar slipped away to Hindenburg-Allee. What traffic! Tanks retreating from the heights and the Delta, some being towed. From the trees -- lindens if I remember rightly -- dangled soldiers and Volkssturm men. To their jackets were affixed cardboard signs identifying them quite legibly as traitors. I looked into the convulsed faces of several of these hanging men and drew comparisons -- with other hanged men as such and in general and with Greff the greengrocer in particular. There were also whole cl.u.s.ters of youngsters strung up in uniforms that were too big for them, and several times I thought I recognized Stortebeker -- but youngsters at the end of a rope all look alike. Nevertheless, I said to myself: so now they've hanged Stortebeker, I wonder if they've strung up Lucy Rennwand.

That thought gave Oskar wings. He searched the trees to left and right for a skinny, dangling girl, and even crossed the street in between the tanks, but there too he found only soldiers, old men in Volkssturm uniforms, and youngsters who looked like Stortebeker. Disappointed, I trotted along as far as the half-demolished Four Seasons Cafe, and turned back only reluctantly. As I stood by Mother Truczinski's grave, helping Maria to strew ivy and leaves over the fresh earth, the vision, clear in every detail, of a dangling Lucy was still with me.

We didn't return the cart to the vegetable shop. Matzerath and old man Heilandt took it apart and piled up the pieces by the counter. "Maybe we'll be needing the cart again," said Matzerath. "Here it's fairly safe." Then he gave the old man three packs of Derby cigarettes.

Old man Heilandt said nothing but helped himself to several packages of noodles and two bags of sugar from the near-empty shelves. Then he shuffled off in his felt slippers, which he had worn for the funeral, leaving Matzerath to remove what little remained of his stock from the shelves and carry it down to the cellar.

After that we seldom emerged from our hole. The Russians were said to be in Zigankenberg, Pietzgendorf, and on the outskirts of Schidlitz. There was no doubt that they occupied the heights, for they were firing straight down into the city. Inner City and Outer City, Old City, New City and Old New City, Lower City and Spice City -- what had taken seven hundred years to build burned down in three days. Yet this was not the first fire to descend on the city of Danzig. For centuries Pomerellians, Brandenburgers, Teutonic Knights, Poles, Swedes, and a second time Swedes, Frenchmen, Prussians, and Russians, even Saxons, had made history by deciding every few years that the city of Danzig was worth burning. And now it was Russians, Poles, Germans, and Englishmen all at once who were burning the city's Gothic bricks for the hundredth time. Hook Street, Long Street, and Broad Street, Big Weaver Street and Little Weaver Street were in flames; Tobias Street, Hound Street, Old City Ditch, Outer City Ditch, the ramparts and Long Bridge, all were in flames. Built of wood. Crane Gate made a particularly fine blaze. In Breechesmaker Street, the fire had itself measured for several pairs of extra-loud breeches. The Church of St. Mary was burning inside and outside, festive light effects could be seen through its ogival windows. What bells had not been evacuated from St. Catherine, St. John, St. Brigit, Saints Barbara, Elisabeth, Peter, and Paul, from Trinity and Corpus Christi, melted in their belfries and dripped away without pomp or ceremony. In the Big Mill red wheat was milled. Butcher Street smelled of burnt Sunday roast. The Munic.i.p.al Theater was giving a premiere, a one-act play ent.i.tled The Firebug's Dream. The town fathers decided to raise the firemen's wages retroactively after the fire. Holy Ghost Street was burning in the name of the Holy Ghost. Joyously, the Franciscan Monastery blazed in the name of St. Francis, who had loved fire and sung hymns to it. Our Lady Street burned for Father and Son at once. Needless to say the Lumber Market, Coal Market, and Hay Market burned to the ground. In Baker Street the ovens burned and the bread and rolls with them. In Milk Pitcher Street the milk boiled over. Only the West Prussian Fire Insurance Building, for purely symbolic reasons, refused to burn down.

Oskar has never been very much interested in fires. I would have stayed in the cellar when Matzerath ran up the stairs for a view of Danzig in flames, if I had not improvidently stored my few, highly inflammable belongings in the attic. I was determined to save the last of the drums Bebra had given me and my volume of Goethe-Rasputin. Between the pages of the book, I had been saving a fan, light as gossamer and delicately painted, that my Roswitha had wielded, so gracefully, so graciously, in her lifetime. Maria remained in the cellar. But little Kurt wanted to go up on the roof with me and Matzerath, to see the fire. Though irritated by my son's uncontrollable enthusiasm, Oskar told himself that Kurt must have inherited his interest in fire from his great-grandfather, my grandfather, Koljaiczek the firebug. Maria kept Kurt downstairs, I was allowed to go up with Matzerath. I took my belongings, cast a glance through the window of the loft, and was amazed to see what a burst of vitality our venerable old city had been able to summon up.

When sh.e.l.ls began to land nearby, we went downstairs. Later on, Matzerath wanted to go up again, but Maria wouldn't let him. He gave in and burst into tears while giving a detailed description of the fire to the widow Greff, who had remained below. Once more he returned to the flat and turned on the radio, but nothing came out. You couldn't even hear the crackling flames of the burning radio station, let alone a special newscast.

Matzerath stood there in the middle of the cellar, tugging at his suspenders, as bewildered as a child who can't make up his mind whether to go on believing in Santa Claus, and for the first time expressed doubts about the final victory. On the widow Greff's advice, he removed his Party pin from his lapel, but couldn't figure out what to do with it; for the cellar had a concrete floor, Lina Greff was unwilling to take it, Maria said he should bury it in the winter potatoes, but the potatoes didn't seem safe, and he was afraid to go upstairs, because they were bound to come soon, they were on their way, they had already reached Brenntau and Oliva when he had looked from the attic, and he was sorry now that he hadn't left it up there in the air-defense sand, for it would be a fine kettle of fish if they found him with the thing in his hand. He dropped it on the concrete, meaning to stamp on it, to grind it to powder, but Kurt and I leapt at it both together. I had it first and I kept my hold on it when Kurt began to punch as he always did when he wanted something, but I wouldn't give my son the Party badge for fear of endangering him, because you didn't joke with the Russians. Oskar remembered that from his readings in Rasputin, and I wondered, while Kurt pummeled me and Maria tried to separate us, whether it would be White Russians or Great Russians, Cossacks or Georgians, Kalmucks or Crimean Tartars, Ruthenians or Ukrainians, or maybe even Kirghizes who would find the Party badge on Kurt if Oskar were to give way under his son's blows.

When Maria with the widow Greff's help parted us, I was clutching the pin victoriously in my fist. Matzerath was glad to be rid of it. Maria was busy with Kurt, who was bawling. The open pin p.r.i.c.ked my hand. I had never liked the thing much and I still didn't. But just as I was trying to pin it to the back of Matzerath's jacket -- what business of mine, after all, was that Party of his? -- they were in the shop over our heads and, to judge by the screaming women, in the neighboring cellars as well.

When they lifted the trap door, the pin was still sticking into me. There was nothing to do but sit down by Maria's trembling knees and watch the ants which had laid out a military highway running from the winter potatoes, across the concrete floor, to a sack of sugar. Perfectly normal Russians, slight racial mixture, I said to myself, as six or seven of them appeared on the stairs with big eyes and tommy guns. Amid all the screaming it was rea.s.suring to note that the ants were in no way affected by the arrival of the Russian Army. They still had the same interests -- potatoes and sugar -- despite the men with the tommy guns who put other conquests first. It struck me as perfectly normal that the grownups should put up their hands. I knew about that from the newsreels, and I had witnessed the same gesture of submission after the fall of the Polish Post Office. But why Kurt should ape the grownups was more than I could see. He should have taken an example from me, his father -- or if not from his father, then from the ants. Instantly three of the rectangular uniforms turned their attentions to Lina Greff, and that put some life into the hitherto static ensemble. La Greff, who after her long widowhood and the lean years preceding it, had scarcely expected such sudden popularity, let out a few screams of surprise but soon reaccustomed herself to an occupation she had almost forgotten.

I had read in Rasputin that the Russians are great lovers of children. This, as I was soon to learn, is perfectly true. Maria trembled needlessly. She failed to understand why the four Ivans who were not busy with la Greff left Kurt sitting on her lap instead of taking turns at it themselves; she was amazed to see them fondle him and say dadada, and pat him on the cheeks with an occasional pat for herself.

Someone picked up me and my drum from the floor; I could no longer observe the ants and judge the life of my times by their purposeful industry. My drum hung on my belly, and with his thick fingers the big Russian with the dilated pores tapped out a few measures one might have danced to; not bad for a grownup, I thought. Oskar would have liked to show off his own talents, but that was impossible because Matzerath's party pin was still sticking into his hand.

A peaceful atmosphere, one would almost have called it cozy, settled on our cellar. More and more calmly la Greff lay spread out beneath one after another of the three Ivans. When one of them decided to call it a day, my gifted drummer handed Oskar on to a sweating young fellow with slanting eyes, a Kalmuck no doubt. Holding me with his left hand, he b.u.t.toned his fly with his right, while his predecessor, the drummer, did the exact opposite. For Matzerath, however, nothing had changed. He was still standing by the shelf full of Leipzig stew with his hands up, clearly displaying their lines; but n.o.body wanted to read his palms. The women meanwhile showed a remarkable apt.i.tude for adjustment: Maria learned her first words of Russian, her knees stopped shaking, she even laughed, and would have played her harmonica had it been within reach.

Oskar, who was less adaptable, looked about for something to take the place of his ants and discovered a colony of flat greyish-brown insects that were strolling about on the edge of my Kalmuck's collar. I wanted to catch one of them and examine it, for I had read a good deal about lice, not so much in Goethe but all the more in Rasputin. However, it is difficult to chase lice with one hand, so I decided to get rid of the Party pin. Oskar feels that he ought to explain his behavior at this point. Well, this is the best he can do: This pin was sticking me and preventing me from catching lice. The Kalmuck's chest was already covered with medals and insignia. So I held out my loosely closed hand to Matzerath, who was standing beside me.

You may say that I shouldn't have done it. But perhaps I am ent.i.tled to reply that Matzerath shouldn't have grasped at my hand.

Anyway, he grasped. I was rid of the thing. Little by little, fear took possession of Matzerath as he felt the emblem of his Party between his fingers. Now that my hands were free, I didn't want to see what Matzerath did with the pin. Too distraught to pursue the lice, Oskar tried to concentrate on the ants, but couldn't help taking in a swift movement of Matzerath's hand. Unable to remember what I thought at the time, I can only say in retrospect that it would have been wiser of him to keep the little colored lozenge in his hand.

But he wanted desperately to get rid of it, and despite the rich imagination he had shown as a cook and window dresser, he could think of no other hiding place than his mouth.

How important a trifling gesture can be! That little move from hand to mouth was enough to startle the two Ivans who had been sitting peacefully to left and right of Maria and make them jump up from the air-defense cot. They thrust their tommy guns at Matzerath's belly, and it was plain for all to see that Matzerath was trying to swallow something.

If only he had first, with an adroit finger maneuver, closed the pin. As it was, he gagged, his face went purple, his eyes stood out of his head, he coughed, cried, laughed, and all this turmoil made it impossible for him to keep his hands up. But on that point the Ivans were firm. They shouted at him, they wanted to see the palms of his hands. Matzerath, however, was preoccupied with his windpipe. He couldn't even cough properly. He began to dance and thrash about with his arms and swept a can of Leipzig stew off the shelf. My Kalmuck, who until then had been quietly looking on, deposited me carefully on the floor, reached behind him, brought something or other into a horizontal position, and shot from the hip. He had emptied a whole magazine before Matzerath finished suffocating.

What strange things one does at the moments when fate puts on its act! While my presumptive father was swallowing the Party and dying, I, involuntarily and unaware of what I was doing, squashed between my fingers a louse I had just caught on the Kalmuck. Matzerath had fallen across the ant highway. The Ivans left the cellar by way of the stairs leading to the shop, taking with them a few packages of artificial honey. My Kalmuck went last, but he took no honey, for he had to change the magazine of his tommy gun. The widow Greff lay disheveled and undone between the margarine crates. Maria clutched little Kurt to her as though to crush him. A phrase from Goethe pa.s.sed through my mind. The ants found themselves facing a new situation but, undismayed by the detour, soon built a new highway round the doubled-up Matzerath; for the sugar that trickled out of the burst sack had lost none of its sweetness while Marshal Rokossovski was occuping the city of Danzig.

Should I or Shouldn't I?

First came the Rugii, then the Goths and Gepidae, then the Kashubes from whom Oskar is descended in a straight line. A little later the Poles sent in Adalbert of Prague, who came with the Cross and was slain with an ax by the Kashubes or Borussians. This happened in a fis.h.i.+ng village called Gyddanyzc. Gyddanyzc became Danczik, which was turned into Dantzig, later written without the t, and today the city is called Gdansk.

But before this orthographic development and after the arrival of the Kashubes, the dukes of Pomerelia came to Gyddanyzc. They bore such names as Subislaus, Sambor, Mestwin, and Swantopolk. The village became a small town. Then came the wild Borussians, intent on pillage and destruction. Then came the distant Brandenburgers, equally given to pillage and destruction. Boleslaw of Poland did his bit in the same spirit and no sooner was the damage repaired than the Teutonic Knights stepped in to carry on the time-honored tradition.

The centuries pa.s.sed. The city was destroyed and rebuilt in turn by the dukes of Pomerelia, the grand masters of the Teutonic Order, the kings and antikings of Poland, the counts of Brandenburg, and the bishops of Wloclawek. The directors of the building and wrecking enterprises were named Otto and Waldemar, Bogussa, Heinrich von Plotzke -- and Dietrich von Altenberg, who built the fortress of the Teutonic Knights on the spot which became the Hevelius-Platz, where in the twentieth century the Polish Post Office was defended.

The Hussites came, made a little fire here and there, and left. The Teutonic Knights were thrown out of the city and the fortress was torn down because the townspeople were sick of having a fortress in their city. The Poles took over and no one was any the worse for it. The king who brought this to pa.s.s was Kazimierz, who became known as the Great, son of Wladyslaw the First. Then came Louis of Hungary and after Louis his daughter Jadwiga. She married Jagiello of Lithuania, founder of the Jagellon dynasty. After Wladyslaw II came Wladyslaw III, then another Kazimierz, who lacked the proper enthusiasm and nevertheless, for thirteen long years, squandered the good money of the Danzig merchants making war on the Teutonic Knights. The attentions of John Albert, on the other hand, were more taken up by the Turks. Alexander was followed by Zygmunt Stary, or Sigismund the Elder. After the chapter about Sigismund Augustus comes the one about Stefan Batory, for whom the Poles like to name their ocean liners. He besieged the city and shot cannon b.a.l.l.s into it for Lord knows how long (as we may read in our books), but never succeeded in taking it. Then came the Swedes and continued in the same vein. They got so fond of besieging the city that they repeated the performance several times. In the same period, the Gulf of Danzig also became exceedingly popular with the Dutch, Danes, and English, and a number of these foreign sea captains came to be heroes of the sea just by cruising around the Danzig roadstead.

The Peace of Oliva. How sweet and peaceful it sounds! There the great powers noticed for the first time that the land of the Poles lends itself admirably to part.i.tion. Swedes, Swedes, and more Swedes -- Swedish earthworks, Swedish punch, Swedish gallows. Then came the Russians and Saxons, because Stanislaw Leszczynski, the poor King of Poland, was hidden in the city. On account of this one king, eighteen hundred houses were destroyed, and when poor Leszczynski fled to France because that's where his son-in-law Louis was living, the people of Danzig had to cough up a round million.

Then Poland was divided in three. The Prussians came uninvited and painted the Polish eagle over with their own bird on all the city gates. Johannes Falk, the educator, had just time to write his famous Christmas carol "O Du frohliche. . ." when the French turned up. Napoleon's general was called Rapp and after a miserable siege the people of Danzig had to rap out twenty million francs to him. The horrors of the French occupation should not necessarily be held in doubt. But it lasted only seven years. Then came the Russians and the Prussians and set the Speicherinsel on fire with their artillery. That was the end of the Free State that Napoleon had dreamed up. Again the Prussians found occasion to paint their bird on all the city gates. Having done so with Prussian thoroughness, they proceeded to establish a garrison consisting of the 4th Regiment of Grenadiers, the 1st Artillery Brigade, the 1st Battalion of Engineers, and the 1st Regiment of Leib-Hussars. The 30th Infantry Regiment, the 18th Infantry Regiment, the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, the 44th Infantry Regiment, and the 33rd Regiment of Fusiliers were all at one time or another garrisoned in the city, though none of them for very long. But the famous 128th Infantry Regiment did not leave until 1920. For the sake of completeness it may be worth mentioning that in the course of the Prussian period the First Artillery Brigade was expanded to include the 1st Battalion of Fortress Artillery, the 2nd Infantry Battalion, the 1st East-Prussian Artillery Regiment, and later the 2nd Pomeranian Foot Artillery Regiment, which was subsequently replaced by the 16th West Prussian Foot Artillery Regiment. The 1st Regiment of Leib Hussars was succeeded by the 2nd Regiment of Leib Hussars. The 8th Regiment of Uhlans, on the other hand, spent only a brief time within the city's walls, while the 17th West-Prussian Quartermaster Battalion was stationed outside the walls, in the suburb of Langfuhr.

In the days of Burckhardt, Rauschning, and Greiser, German authority was represented in the Free State only by the green-uniformed security police. This changed in '39 under Forster. The brick barracks filled rapidly with happy lads in uniform, who juggled with every known weapon. We might go on to list all the units that were quartered in Danzig and environs from '39 to '45 or s.h.i.+pped out from Danzig to fight on the Arctic front. This Oskar will spare you and merely say: then, as we have already seen, came Marshal Rokossovski. At the sight of the still intact city, he remembered his great international precursors and set the whole place on fire with his artillery in order that those who came after him might work off their excess energies in rebuilding.

This time, strange to say, no Prussians, Swedes, Saxons, or Frenchmen came after the Russians; this time it was the Poles who arrived.

The Poles came with bag and baggage from Vilna, Bialystok, and Lwow, all looking for living quarters. To us came a gentleman by the name of Fajngold; he was all alone in the world, but he behaved as though surrounded by a large family that couldn't manage for one minute without his instructions. Mr. Fajngold took over the grocery store at once and proceeded to show his wife Luba, who remained invisible and unresponsive, the scales, the kerosene tank, the bra.s.s rod to hang sausages on, the empty cash drawer, and with the utmost enthusiasm, the provisions in the cellar. He engaged Maria as salesgirl and introduced her very verbosely to his imaginary Luba, whereupon Maria showed Mr. Fajngold our Matzerath, who had been lying in the cellar for three days under a square of canvas. We had been unable to bury him because the streets were swarming with Russians avid for bicycles, sewing machines, and women.

When Mr. Fajngold saw the corpse, which we had turned over on his back, he clapped his hands over his head in the same expressive gesture as Oskar had seen Sigismund Markus, his toy dealer, make years before. He called not only Luba his wife, but his whole family into the cellar, and there is no doubt that he saw them all coming, for he called them by name: Luba, Lev, Jakub, Berek, Leon, Mendel, and Sonya. He explained to them all who it was who was lying there dead and went on to tell us that all those he had just summoned as well as his sister-in-law and her other brother-in-law who had five children had lain in the same way, before being taken to the crematoria of Treblinka, and the whole lot of them had been lying there -- except for him because he had had to strew lime on them.

Then he helped us to carry Matzerath upstairs to the shop. His family was about him again, and he asked his wife Luba to help Maria wash the corpse. She didn't stir a finger, but Mr. Fajngold didn't notice, for by now he was moving supplies from the cellar up to the shop. This time Lina Greff, who had washed Mother Truczinski, wasn't there to help us; she had a houseful of Russians and we could hear her singing.