Part 25 (1/2)

”We've got to save him. It's Victor, poor Victor! ” Mr. Matzerath was very upset.

”He still hasn't found gla.s.ses to fit him. He's terribly nearsighted, they'll shoot him and he'll be looking in the wrong direction.” The executioners looked unarmed to me. But Mr. Matzerath had noticed the ungainly lumps in their coats.

”He carried money orders at the Polish Post Office. Now he has the same job at the Federal Post Office. But they hound him after working hours; they still have an order to shoot him.”

Though I could not entirely follow Mr. Matzerath's explanations, I promised to attend the shooting with him and help him if possible to prevent it.

Behind the gla.s.sworks, just before the first gardens -- if the moon had been out I could have seen my mother's garden with its apple tree -- I put on the brakes and shouted into the car: ”Last stop! All out!” And out they came with their green hats and black hatbands. Again poor Victor had trouble with the running board. Then Mr. Matzerath got out, but first he pulled out his drum from under his coat and asked me to take care of his briefcase with the jar in it.

We followed the executioners and their victim. The lights of the car were still on, and looking back we could see it far in the distance.

We pa.s.sed along garden fences. I was beginning to feel very tired. When the three of them stopped still ahead of us, I saw that my mother's garden had been chosen as the execution site. Both of us protested. Paying no attention, they knocked down the board fence, not a very difficult task for it was about to collapse of its own accord, and tied poor Victor to the apple tree just below my crook. When we continued to protest, they turned their flashlight on the crumpled execution order. It was signed by an inspector of courts-martial by the name of Zelewski and dated, if I remember right, Zoppot, October 5, 1939. Even the rubber stamps seemed to be right. The situation looked hopeless. Nevertheless, we talked about the United Nations, collective guilt, Adenauer, and so on; but one of the green hats swept aside all our objections, which were without juridical foundation, he a.s.sured us, because the peace treaty had never been signed, or even drawn up. ”I vote for Adenauer just the same as you do,” he went on. ”But this execution order is still valid; we've consulted the highest authorities. We are simply doing our duty and the best thing you can do is to run along.”

We did nothing of the sort. When the green hats produced the machine pistols from under their coats, Mr. Matzerath put his drum in place. At that moment the moon -- it was almost full, just the slightest bit battered -- burst through the clouds. And Mr. Matzerath began to drum. . . desperately.

A strange rhythm, yet it seemed familiar. Over and over again the letter O took form: lost, not yet lost, Poland is not yet lost! But that was the voice of poor Victor, he knew the words to Mr. Matzerath's drumming: While we live, Poland cannot die. The green hats, too, seemed to know that rhythm, I could see them take fright behind their hardware in the moonlight. And well they might. For the march that Mr. Matzerath and poor Victor struck up in my mother's garden awakened the Polish cavalry to life. Maybe the moon helped, or maybe it was the drum, the moon, and poor, nearsighted Victor's cracking voice all together that sent those mult.i.tudes of hors.e.m.e.n springing from the ground: stallions whinnied, hoofs thundered, nostrils fumed, spurs jangled, hurrah, hurrah!. . . No, not at all: no thundering, no jangling, whinnying, or shouts of hurrah; silently they glided over the harvested fields outside of Gerresheim, but beyond any doubt they were a squadron of Polish Uhlans, for red and white like Mr. Matzerath's lacquered drum, the pennants clung to the lances; no, clung is not right, they floated, they glided, and indeed the whole squadron floated beneath the moon, coming perhaps from the moon, floated off, wheeled to the left, toward our garden, floated, seemingly not of flesh and blood, floated like toys fresh out of the box, phantoms, comparable perhaps to the spooklike figures that Mr. Matzerath's keeper makes out of knotted string: Polish cavalry of knotted string, soundless yet thundering, fleshless, bloodless, and yet Polish, down upon us they thundered, and we threw ourselves upon the ground while the moon and Poland's hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed over us and over my mother's garden and all the other carefully tended gardens. But they did not harm the gardens. They merely took along poor Victor and the two executioners and were lost in the open fields under the moon -- lost, not yet lost, they galloped off to the east, toward Poland beyond the moon.

Panting, we waited for the night to quiet down, for the heavens to close again and remove the light that alone could have persuaded those riders long dead, long dust, to mount a last charge. I was first to stand up. Though I did not underestimate the influence of the moon, I congratulated Mr. Matzerath on his brilliant performance; a triumph I called it. He waved me aside with a weary, dejected gesture: ”Triumph, my dear Gottfried? I have had too many triumphs, too much success in my life. What I would like is to be unsuccessful for once. But that is very difficult and calls for a great deal of work.”

This speech was not to my liking, because I am the hardworking, conscientious type and have never met with the least success, let alone a triumph. It seemed to me that Mr. Matzerath showed a lack of grat.i.tude, and I told him as much. ”You are being very arrogant, Oskar,” I ventured -- by then we were calling each other by our first names. ”All the papers are full of you. You've made a name for yourself. I'm not thinking of money. But do you suppose that it is easy for me, whom no newspaper has ever so much as mentioned, to live side by side with a darling of fame like you. Oh, how I long to do something big, unique, spectacular like what you have just done, to do it all by myself and get into the newspapers, to appear in print: This was the achievement of Gottfried von Vittlar.”

I was offended at Mr. Matzerath's laughter. He lay on his back, rolling his hump in the loose earth, pulling out clumps of gra.s.s with both hands, tossing them up in the air, and laughing like an inhuman G.o.d who can do anything he pleases: ”Nothing could be simpler, my friend. Here, take this briefcase. Luckily, the Polish cavalry hasn't crushed it. I make you a present of it; it contains a jar with a ring finger in it. Take it; run to Gerresheim, the streetcar is still there with all the lights on. Get in, drive to the Furstenwall, take my present to Police Headquarters. Report me, and tomorrow you'll see your name in all the papers.”

At first I rejected his offer; I argued that he wouldn't be able to live without his jar and his finger. But he rea.s.sured me; he said he was sick of the whole finger business, besides he had several plaster casts, he had even had a gold cast made. So would I please make up my mind, pick up the briefcase, get in that car, and go to the police.

So off I went. I could long hear Mr. Matzerath laughing behind me. He stayed there, lying on his back, he wanted to savor the charms of the night while I rode off ting-a-ling into town. I didn't go to the police until the following morning, but my report, thanks to Mr. Matzerath's kindness, brought me quite a lot of attention in the papers.

Meanwhile I, the kindly Mr. Matzerath, lay laughing in the night-black gra.s.s outside Gerresheim, rolled with laughter within sight of several deadly serious stars, laughed so hard that I worked my hump into the warm earth, and thought: Sleep, Oskar, sleep a little while before the police come and wake you up. Never again will you lie so free beneath the moon.

And when I awoke, I noticed, before noticing that it was broad daylight, that something, someone was licking my face: the quality of the sensation was warm, rough but not very, and moist.

Could that be the police so soon, awakened by Vittlar and now licking you awake? Nevertheless, I was in no hurry to open my eyes, but let myself be licked a while: warmly, moistly, not too roughly, it was quite pleasant. I chose not to care who was licking me: it's either the police, Oskar conjectured, or a cow. Only then did I open my blue eyes.

Spotted black and white, she breathed on me and licked me until I opened my eyes. It was broad daylight, clear to cloudy, and I said to myself: Oskar, don't waste your time on this cow even if there is something divine in her way of looking at you. Don't let that rasping-soothing tongue of hers tranquilize you by shutting off your memory. It is day, the flies are buzzing, you must run for your life. Vittlar is turning you in; consequently, you must flee. You can't have a bona fide denunciation without a bona fide flight. Leave the cow to her mooing and make your getaway. They will catch you either way, but why let that worry you?

And so, licked, washed, and combed by a cow, I fled. After the very first steps of my flight, I burst into a gale of fresh, early-morning laughter. Leaving my drum with the cow, who lay still and mooed, I embarked, laughing, upon my flight.

Thirty.

Ah, yes, my flight, my getaway. There's still that to tell you about. I fled in order to enhance the value of Vittlar's denunciation. A getaway, I said to myself, requires first of all a destination. Whither, O Oskar, will you flee? Political obstacles, the so-called Iron Curtain, forbade me to flee eastward. It was not possible to head for my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek's four skirts, which to this day billow protectively in the Kashubian potato fields, although I told myself that if flight there must be, my grandmother's skirts were the only worthwhile destination.

Just in pa.s.sing: today is my thirtieth birthday. At the age of thirty, one is obliged to discuss serious matters like flight as a man and not as a boy. As she brought in the cake with the thirty candles, Maria said: ”You're thirty now, Oskar. It's time you were getting some sense into your head.”

Klepp, my friend Klepp, gave me as usual some jazz records and used five matches to light the thirty candles on my cake: ”Life begins at thirty!” said Klepp; he is twenty-nine.

Vittlar, however, my friend Gottfried, who is dearest to my heart, gave me sweets, bent down over the bars of my bed, and whined: ”When Jesus was thirty years of age, he set forth and gathered disciples round him.”

Vittlar has always liked to mess things up for me. Just because I am thirty, he wants me to leave my bed and gather disciples. Then my lawyer came, brandis.h.i.+ng a paper and trumpeting congratulations. Hanging his nylon hat on my bedpost, he proclaimed to me and all my birthday guests: ”What a happy coincidence! Today my client is celebrating his thirtieth birthday; and just today I've received news that the Ring Finger Case is being reopened. A new clue has been found. Sister Beata, her friend, you remember. . .”

Just what I have been dreading for years, ever since my getaway: that they would find the real murderer, reopen the case, acquit me, discharge me from this mental hospital, take away my lovely bed, put me out in the cold street, in the wind and rain, and oblige a thirty-year-old Oskar to gather disciples round himself and his drum.

So apparently it was Sister Beata who murdered my Sister Dorothea out of festering green jealousy.

Perhaps you remember? There was this Dr. Werner who -- the situation is only too common in life as it is in the movies -- stood between the two nurses. A nasty business: Beata was in love with Dr. Werner. Dr. Werner was in love with Dorothea. And Dorothea wasn't in love with anyone, unless it was secretly, deep down, with little Oskar. Werner fell sick. Dorothea took care of him, because he was put into her section. Sister Beata couldn't bear it. She inveigled Dorothea into taking a walk with her and killed or, if you prefer, did away with her in a rye field near Gerresheim. Now Beata was free to take care of Dr. Werner. But it seems that she took care of him in a special way, so much so that he did not get well; just the opposite. Perhaps the love-crazed nurse said to herself: As long as he is sick, he belongs to me. Did she give him too much medicine? Did she give him the wrong medicine? In any case, Dr. Werner died; but when she testified in court, Sister Beata said nothing about wrong or too much, and not one word about her stroll in the rye fields with Sister Dorothea. And Oskar, who similarly confessed to nothing, but was the owner of an incriminating finger in a preserving jar, was convicted of the crime in the rye field. But esteeming that Oskar was not fully responsible for his actions, they sent me to the mental hospital for observation. Be that as it may, before they convicted him and sent him to the mental hospital, Oskar fled, for I wished, by my disappearance, to heighten the value of my friend Gottfried's denunciation.

At the time of my flight, I was twenty-eight. A few hours ago thirty candles were still dripping phlegmatically over my birthday cake. On the day of my flight it was September, just as it is today. I was born in the sign of Virgo. At the moment, though, it's my getaway I'm talking about, not my birth beneath the light bulbs.

As I have said, the eastward escape route, the road to my grandmother, was closed. Accordingly, like everyone else nowadays, I saw myself obliged to flee westward. If, Oskar, I said to myself, the inscrutable ways of politics prevent you from going to your grandmother, why not run to your grandfather, who is living in Buffalo, U.S.A.? Take America as your destination; we'll see how far you get.

This thought of Grandfather Koljaiczek in America came to me while my eyes were still closed and the cow was licking me in the meadow near Gerresheim. It must have been about seven o'clock and I said to myself: the stores open at eight. Laughing, I ran off, leaving my drum with the cow, saying to myself: Gottfried was tired, I doubt if he goes to the police before eight or maybe half-past. Take advantage of your little head start. It took me ten minutes, in the sleepy suburb of Gerresheim, to get a cab by telephone. The cab carried me to the Central Station. On the way I counted my money; several times I had to start counting all over again, because I couldn't help laughing, sending out gales of fresh early-morning laughter. Then I leafed through my pa.s.sport and found that, thanks to the efforts of the West Concert Bureau, I possessed visas for France as well as the U.S.; Dr. Dosch had always hoped that one day Oskar the Drummer would consent to tour those countries.

Voila, I said to myself, let us flee to Paris, it looks good and sounds good, it could happen in the movies, with Gabin smoking his pipe and tracking me down, inexorably but with kindness and understanding. But who will play me? Chaplin? Pica.s.so? Laughing, stimulated by my thoughts of flight, I was still slapping the thighs of my slightly rumpled trousers when the driver asked me for seven DM. I paid up and had breakfast in the station restaurant. I laid out the timetable beside my soft-boiled egg and found a suitable train. After breakfast I had time to provide myself with foreign exchange and buy a small suitcase of excellent leather. Fearing to show myself in Julicher-Stra.s.se, I filled the suitcase with expensive but ill-fitting s.h.i.+rts, a pair of pale-green pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, and so on. Since there was no need to economize, I bought a first-cla.s.s ticket, and soon found myself in a comfortable, upholstered first-cla.s.s window seat, fleeing without physical effort. The cus.h.i.+ons helped me to think. When the train pulled out, inaugurating my flight proper, Oskar began casting about for something to be frightened of; for not without reason I said to myself: you can't speak of a flight without fear. But what, Oskar, are you going to fear? What is worth running away from if all the police can wring from you is fresh, early-morning laughter?

Today I am thirty; flight and trial are behind me, but the fear I talked myself into during my flight is still with me.

Was it the rhythmic thrusts of the rails, the rattling of the train? Little by little the song took form, and a little before Aachen I was fully conscious of it. Monotonous words. They took possession of me as I sank back in the first-cla.s.s upholstery. After Aachen -- we crossed the border at half-past ten -- they were still with me, more and more distinct and terrible, and I was glad when the customs inspectors changed the subject. They showed more interest in my hump than in my name or pa.s.sport, and I said to myself: Oh, that Vittlar! That lazybones. Here it is almost eleven, and still he hasn't got to the police with that preserving jar under his arm, whereas I, for his sake, have been busy with this getaway since the crack of dawn, working myself up into a state of terror just to create a motive for my flight. Belgium. Oh, what a fright I was in when the rails sang: Where's the Witch, black as pitch? Here's the black, wicked Witch. Ha, ha, ha. . .

Today I am thirty, I shall be given a new trial and presumably be acquitted. I shall be thrown out in the street, and everywhere, in trains and streetcars, those words will ring in my ears: Where's the Witch, black as pitch? Here's the black, wicked Witch.

Still, apart from my dread of the Black Witch whom I expected to turn up at every station, the trip was pleasant enough. I had the whole compartment to myself -- but maybe she was in the next one, right behind the part.i.tion -- I made the acquaintance first of Belgian, then of French customs inspectors, dozed off from time to time, and woke up with a little cry. In an effort to ward off the Witch, I leafed through Der Spiegel, which I had bought on the platform in Dusseldorf; how they get around, how well informed they are, I kept saying to myself. I even found a piece about my manager. Dr. Dosch of the West Concert Bureau, confirming what I already knew, namely, that Oskar the Drummer was the mainstay and meal ticket of the Dosch agency -- good picture of me too. And Oskar the Mainstay pictured to himself the inevitable collapse of the West Concert Bureau after my arrest.

Never in all my life had I feared the Black Witch. It was not until my flight, when I wanted to be afraid, that she crawled under my skin. And there she has remained to this day, my thirtieth birthday, though most of the time she sleeps. She takes a number of forms. Sometimes, for instance, it is the name ”Goethe” that sets me screaming and hiding under the bedclothes. From childhood on I have done my best to study the poet prince and still his Olympian calm gives me the creeps. Even now, when, no longer luminous and cla.s.sical but disguised as a black witch more sinister by far than any Rasputin, he peers through the bars of my bed and asks me, on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday: ”Where's the Witch, black as pitch?” -- I am scared stiff.

Ha, ha, ha! said the train carrying Oskar the fugitive to Paris. I was already expecting to see the International Police when we pulled in to the North Station, the Gare du Nord as the French call it. But there was no one waiting for me, only a porter, who smelled so rea.s.suringly of red wine that with the best of intentions I couldn't mistake him for the Black Witch. I gave him my suitcase and let him carry it to within a few feet of the gate. The police and the Witch, I said to myself, probably don't feel like wasting money on a platform ticket, they will accost you and arrest you on the other side of the gate. So you'd better take back your suitcase before you go through. But the police weren't there to relieve me of my suitcase; I had to haul it to the Metro my very own self.

I won't go on about that famous Metro smell. I have recently read somewhere that it has been done into a perfume and that you can spray yourself with it. The Metro also asked about the whereabouts of the Black Witch, though in a rhythm rather different from that of the railroad. And another thing I noticed: the other pa.s.sengers must have feared her as much as I did, for they were all asweat with terror. My idea was to continue underground to the Porte d'Italie, where I would take a cab to Orly Airport. If I couldn't be arrested at the North Station, it seemed to me that Orly, the world-famous airport -- with the Witch done up as an airline hostess -- would do very nicely, that it was an interesting place to be arrested in. There was one change of trains, I was glad my suitcase was so light. The Metro carried me southward and I pondered: where, Oskar, are you going to get off? Goodness me, how many things can happen in one day, this morning a cow licked you not far from Gerresheim, you were fearless and gay, and now you are in Paris -- where will you get off, where will she come, black and terrible, to meet you? At the Place d'Italie? Or not until the Porte?