A bright, pleasant room with cheery wallpaper, which had unfortunately been wounded here and there by stray bullets. In more peaceful times one could have stood at the double windows enjoying the view onto Heveliusplatz. A rocking horse, as yet unwounded, a variety of balls, a medieval castle full of toppled tin soldiers, on foot and on horseback, an open cardboard box full of railroad tracks and miniature boxcars, several dolls looking more or less the worse for wear, dollhouses in which disorder reigned—in short, a plethora of toys revealed that Postmaster General Naczelnik must have been the father of two thoroughly spoiled children, a boy and a girl. How fortunate that the brats had been evacuated to Warsaw, that I was spared an encounter with a pair of siblings of the sort I already knew from the Bronskis. A gentle schadenfreude ran through me as I imagined how painful it must have been for the postmaster general's little rascal to bid farewell to his childhood paradise full of tin soldiers. Perhaps he stuck a few uhlans in his pocket to reinforce the Polish cavalry later on at the battle for Modlin Fortress.
Oskar is talking too much about tin soldiers and still can't squeeze his way past a confession: on the top shelf of a rack for toys, picture books, and parlor games stood a row of toy musical instruments. A honey-yellow trumpet stood soundlessly beside a glockenspiel that was participating in the hostilities, that is, it chimed every time a shell struck. On the outer right a brightly painted accordion dangled crookedly. The parents had even been crazy enough to give their offspring a real little violin with four real strings. Next to the violin, displaying its white, undamaged circle, held in place by a few building blocks so it wouldn't roll off, stood—you won't believe it—a red and white lacquered tin drum.
I didn't even try to pull the drum down from the rack on my own. Oskar was well aware of his limited reach, and in cases where his gnome-like stature resulted in helplessness, took the liberty of soliciting favors from grownups.
Jan Bronski and Kobyella lay behind sandbags that blocked the lower third of the tall windows. Jan had taken the left window. Kobyella was on the right. I realized immediately that the janitor would have no time to retrieve and repair my drum, which lay beneath the wounded man who was spitting blood, and was undoubtedly being crushed flat, for Kobyella was fully occupied: he was firing his rifle at regular intervals through a gap in the sandbag wall across Heveliusplatz toward the corner of Schneidemühlengasse, where an antitank gun had taken up position just short of Radaune Bridge.
Jan lay cowering, hiding his head and trembling. I recognized him only by his elegant dark gray suit, now dusted with chalk and sand. The lace of his right shoe, gray as well, had come undone. I bent down and tied it in a bow for him. As I pulled the knot tight, Jan twitched, raised his far too blue eyes above his left sleeve and turned an incredibly blue and watery gaze upon me. Though not wounded, as Oskar ascertained with a quick inspection, he was weeping silently. Jan Bronski was frightened. I ignored his blubbering, pointed toward the tin drum of Naczelnik's evacuated son, and with crystal-clear gestures asked Jan to make his way, as carefully as possible, taking advantage of the dead corner of the nursery, to the rack and hand the drum down to me. My uncle didn't understand. My presumptive father didn't see what I was driving at. My poor mama's lover was so busy with his fear, so filled with it, that my pleading gestures had no effect but to increase that fear. Oskar wanted to scream at him but was worried he might be discovered by Kobyella, who seemed to be listening only to his rifle.
So I lay down with Jan behind the sandbags, pressed myself against him, trying to transfer some portion of my customary sang-froid to my unhappy uncle and presumptive father. Soon he seemed somewhat calmer.
My steady breathing helped to restore a degree of regularity to his pulse. When I then drew Jan's attention once again to Naczelnik junior's tin drum, all too soon of course, by trying to turn his head, slowly and gently but still insistently, in the direction of the wooden rack loaded with toys, Jan still didn't understand. Fear invaded him from head to toe, surged back from toe to head, encountered such strong resistance below, perhaps because of the inner soles, that it tried to vent itself, but was flung back, fleeing past stomach, spleen, and liver, occupying his poor head so that his blue eyes bulged and the whites disclosed intricate little veins that Oskar had never before had the opportunity to observe in the eyes of his presumptive father.
It cost me time and effort to drive my uncle's eyeballs back in place, to make his heart behave itself. All my diligence in the service of aesthetics was in vain, however, when the Home Guard employed their midrange field howitzers for the first time, and firing directly at the iron fence in front of the post office, sighting through a scope, laid it flat with admirable precision, revealing a high level of training, blasting away at the knees of one brick pillar after another until they were forced to kneel once and for all, dragging the iron fence with them. My poor uncle Jan felt the collapse of each of the fifteen to twenty pillars with heart and soul, and was so passionately stricken one would have thought those weren't just pedestals being reduced to dust, but that along with those pedestals, standing upon them, imaginary statues of gods were being cast down, gods my uncle knew intimately and without whom he could not live.
This alone can explain why each time a howitzer hit, Jan responded with a shrill scream that, had it only been shaped and aimed more consciously, would, like my glass-slaying scream, have had the glass-cutting virtue of a diamond. Jan screamed fervently but to no purpose, merely causing Kobyella to throw his bony, disabled janitor's body over toward us, lift his lean, lashless bird's head, and scan our mutual-aid society with watery gray pupils. He shook Jan. Jan whimpered. He unbuttoned his shirt, checked Jan's body hastily for wounds—I almost had to laugh—then, having failed to find the slightest scratch, turned him on his back, seized Jan's chin, jerked it around so hard that it cracked, forced Jan's blue Bronski eyes to endure the watery gray flare of Kobyella's predatory gaze, cursed him in Polish, spraying saliva in his face as he did so, then finally tossed him the rifle that Jan had so far left untouched at his own loophole; the safety hadn't even been released. The rifle butt struck Jan's left kneecap dully. The brief pain, the first physical pain he'd felt after so much mental torment, seemed to do him good, for he seized the rifle, took fright as he felt the cold gunmetal in his fingers and soon thereafter in his blood, but then, urged on by a cursing, coaxing Kobyella, crawled to his post.
For all the tender lushness of his imagination, my presumptive father had such a detailed and realistic concept of war that he found it difficult, even impossible, to be brave. Without surveying the field of fire or selecting a worthwhile target through his loophole, holding his rifle at an angle and at arm's length, he fired away blindly across the rooftops of the buildings on Heveliusplatz, quickly emptied his magazine, then crawled back empty-handed to hide behind the sandbags. The sheepish look Jan gave the janitor from his hiding place, imploring his forgiveness, seemed that of a sulky and embarrassed schoolboy admitting he hadn't done his homework. Kobyella worked his lower jaw several times, laughed loudly and seemingly uncontrollably, then broke off with frightening abruptness, kicked Jan Bronski, a postal clerk who was after all his superior, three or four times in the shins, drew back his bulky laced shoe to deliver a blow to Jan's ribs, but then, as machine-gun fire ticked off the remaining upper panes of the nursery one by one and roughed up the ceiling, lowered his orthopedic shoe, threw himself behind his rifle, and as if trying to make up for the time he'd wasted on Jan, started firing grouchily and hastily, shot after shot—all of which added to the ammunition consumed during the Second World War.
Hadn't the janitor noticed me? He, who was otherwise so severe and unapproachable, who demanded the sort of respectful distance only disabled war veterans can, allowed me to remain in this drafty den, where the air was so rich in iron. Did Kobyella say to himself: It's a nursery after all, so why shouldn't Oskar stay here and play during lulls in the battle?
I don't know how long we lay that way: I between
Jan and the left wall of the room, both of us behind the sandbags, Kobyella behind his rifle, shooting for two. Around ten o'clock the firing died down. Things got so quiet I could hear flies buzzing, caught voices and commands coming from Heveliusplatz, and now and again lent an ear to the dull drone of the battleships at work in the harbor. A clear to partly cloudy September day, the sun coating everything in antique gold, paper-thin, sensitive, yet still hard of hearing. My fifteenth birthday was coming up in a few days. And as I did every year in September, I wanted a tin drum, nothing less than a tin drum; renouncing all the treasures of this world, my mind was set only and forever on a tin drum, lacquered red and white.
Jan didn't stir. Kobyella wheezed so evenly that Oskar assumed he was asleep, taking advantage of the short break in the action for a little nap, for don't all men, even heroes, need a refreshing little nap now and then? I alone was wide awake and focused on that drum with all the stubbornness of youth. It was hardly as if Naczelnik junior's tin drum had come to mind again just now, amid the growing stillness and dying buzz of a fly wearied by summer. Throughout the fighting, with the roar of battle about him, Oskar had never let it out of his sight. Now, however, an opportunity presented itself which my every thought urged me not to waste.
Oskar got up slowly and, avoiding the shattered glass, moved quietly but single-mindedly toward the wooden rack with the toys, mentally constructing a pedestal of boxes on a nursery chair, tall and stable enough to make him the owner of a brand-new tin drum, when Kobyella's voice and then the janitor's horny hand caught up with me. I pointed to the drum in despair. Kobyella pulled me back. I stretched both arms out toward the drum. The disabled man was already weakening, was about to stretch forth his hand and grant me happiness, when machine-gun fire entered the nursery and antitank shells exploded at the main entrance; Kobyella flung me into the corner with Jan Bronski, flung himself behind his gun, and loaded for a second time while my eyes remained fixed on the tin drum.
There lay Oskar, and Jan Bronski, my sweet blue-eyed uncle, didn't even lift his nose when the bird-head with the clubfoot and the watery eyes with no lashes brushed me aside just short of my goal and shoved me into the corner behind the sandbags. But Oskar didn't cry. Rage bred within me. Fat, bluish white, eyeless maggots multiplied, searching for a worthwhile corpse: What did Poland mean to me? Or the Poles, for that matter? They had their own cavalry. Let them mount up. They kissed the ladies' hands and always realized too late that those weren't the languid fingers of a lady but the unrouged muzzle of a field howitzer. By then she'd already vented her feelings, that virgin from the house of Krupp. She smacked her lips in a poor yet convincing imitation of the sounds of battle heard in weekly newsreels, peppered the main entrance of the post office with inedible exploding bonbons, tried to open a breach, opened a breach through the ruptured main hall and nibbled away at the staircase so no one could go up or down anymore. And her retinue behind the machine guns and in the elegant armored scout cars painted with pretty names like "Ostmark" and "Sudetenland" just couldn't get enough, rolled back and forth outside the post office, clattering, armored, scouting: two studious and cultured young ladies who wished to visit the castle, but the castle was still closed. Then the spoiled young beauties grew impatient, couldn't wait to get in, began casting lead-gray, penetrating glances, all of the same caliber, toward every chamber of the castle they could see into, making things hot, cold, and uncomfortable for the castle stewards.
One of the armored scout cars—I think it was the "Ostmark"—was just rolling toward the post office again from Rittergasse, when my uncle Jan, who'd been totally lifeless for some time, shoved his right leg up to the loophole and lifted it in hopes that the scout car might spot it and take a shot at it, or that some stray bullet would take pity on him and graze his calf or heel, providing the wound that lets a soldier retreat with an exaggerated limp.
This leg posture must have been hard for Jan Bronski to hold for very long. He was forced to abandon it from time to time. Not until he rolled onto his back did he find sufficient strength, propping his leg up with both hands at the knee, to offer calf and heel more steadily, and with more hope of success, to aimed or errant bullets.
No matter how deeply I sympathized with Jan, both then and today, I could well understand Kobyella's rage when he saw his superior, Postal Clerk Jan Bronski, in such a miserable and desperate posture. With one leap the janitor was on his feet, with the second beside us, over us, had grabbed hold, seized Jan's jacket and with the jacket Jan, raised the bundle up, smashed it down, grabbed it again, banged it down, hauled off with his left, held back with his right, hauled off with his right, then dropped his left, caught hold of his right with his left in flight, made one great fist of left and right, drew back for the one great blow that would lay my uncle Jan Bronski low, lay Oskar's presumptive father low—when something whirred, as angel wings may whir to honor God, something sang, as radios sing through the ether, but did not strike Jan Bronski, struck Kobyella instead, a shell had delivered a colossal joke and bricks now laughed themselves to chips, shards to dust, plaster to flour, wood found its ax, the whole droll nursery hopped on one leg, Käthe Kruse dolls split their sides, the rocking horse bolted and longed for a rider to throw, faulty structures arose from Märklin block boxes, Polish uhlans occupied all four corners of the room—and finally the toy rack toppled: the glockenspiel rang Easter in, the accordion cried out, the trumpet may have blown something or other, all sounded their keynotes at once, like an orchestra tuning up; screaming, splitting, neighing, ringing, smashing, bursting, gnashing, screeching, chirping on high yet unearthing our deepest foundations below. But finding myself, as befits a three-year-old, in the guardian-angel corner of the nursery right under the window when the shell struck, the drum, the drum made of tin fell to me—no holes at all and scarcely a crack, Oskar's new tin drum.
When I looked up from my newly won prize, which had rolled to my feet in the blink of an eye, I saw I'd have to help Jan Bronski. He was having trouble shifting the janitor's heavy body off him. At first I thought Jan had been hit too, for he was whimpering very realistically. When we finally managed to roll Kobyella, whose moans were equally realistic, to one side, Jan's bodily injuries proved negligible—splintered glass had scratched his right cheek and the back of one hand. A quick comparison allowed me to note that my presumptive father's blood was paler than the janitor's, whose trousers were stained at the thighs with a dark sap.
It was of course no longer clear who had ripped and twisted Jan's elegant gray jacket. Was it Kobyella or the shell? It hung in tatters from his shoulders, the lining had been loosened, the buttons freed, the seams split, and the pockets turned inside out.
I hope you'll excuse my poor Jan Bronski for scraping together everything that had been shaken from his pockets by that rough storm before dragging Kobyella out of the nursery with my help. He recovered his comb, the photos of his loved ones, including a half-length portrait of my poor mama; his coin purse hadn't even come open. The only difficulty he had, and one that was not without its dangers, since the protective sandbags had been partly swept away, was gathering up the skat cards scattered all over the room; he wanted all thirty-two of them, and was desperately unhappy when he couldn't find the thirty-second; when Oskar found it, found it between two devastated dollhouses, and handed it to him, he smiled, even though it was the lowly seven of spades.
After we'd dragged Kobyella from the nursery and finally got him into the corridor, the janitor found the strength to utter a few words that Jan Bronski managed to make out. "Is everything still there?" he asked with concern. Jan reached into the man's trousers, between his old man's legs, found a handful, and nodded to Kobyella.
We were all happy: Kobyella had kept his pride, Jan Bronski had found all thirty-two skat cards, including the seven of spades, and Oskar had a new drum that banged against his knee at every step while Jan and a man Jan called Viktor carried the janitor, weakened by loss of blood, down one floor and into the
dead-letter room.
House of Cards
Viktor Weluhn helped us move the janitor, who, though steadily losing blood, grew heavier and heavier. Viktor, who was very nearsighted, still had his glasses at the time and didn't stumble on the stone steps. Strange as it sounds for someone as nearsighted as Viktor, he delivered money for the post office. Today, whenever Viktor's name comes up, I call him poor Viktor. Just as my mama became my poor mama after a family outing to the harbor jetty, Viktor, who delivered money orders, became poor Viktor when he lost his glasses—though other factors came into play as well.
"Have you ever run into poor Viktor again?" I always ask my friend Vittlar on Visitors Day. But since that streetcar ride from Flingern to Gerresheim—I'll speak of that later on—Viktor Weluhn has been lost to us. We can only hope that the bloodhounds who are after him are having an equally difficult time, that he's found his glasses or at least a suitable substitute and is now delivering money orders as before, if not for the Polish Post Office, then for the Federal Republic, nearsighted but bespectacled, blessing people with colored banknotes and hard coins.
"Isn't it awful?" panted Jan, who had grabbed Kobyella on his left.
"And what if the English and the French don't come?" said Viktor with concern, bearing the janitorial load on the right.
"They'll come all right. I heard Rydz-Śmigły just yesterday on the radio saying we have their pledge: if it kicks off, the whole of France will rise as one man." Jan had difficulty maintaining his conviction to the end of the sentence, for though the sight of his own blood on the back of his scratched hand did not in itself call the Polish-French treaty into question, it did raise the possibility that he might bleed to death before the whole of France rose up as one man and, true to their pledge, overran the Siegfried Line.