Oskar stepped nearer. Something drew him forward. He wanted to stand on the carpet, not the flagstones. One altar step passed him on to the next. So I climbed up, though I would rather have seen him climb down. "Jesus"—I scraped together the remnants of a voice—"that wasn't our bargain. Give me back my drum right now. You have your cross, that's all you need!" Though he didn't break off abruptly, he ended his playing, crossed the sticks on the drum with exaggerated care, and without a word of objection handed me what Oskar had so thoughtlessly loaned him.
I was ready to run like ten devils down the steps with no thanks and away from Catholicism when a pleasant but imperious voice touched my shoulder: "Dost thou love me, Oskar?" Without turning I responded, "Not that I know of." And he in the same voice, without raising it in the least: "Dost thou love me, Oskar?" Crossly I replied, "Sorry, no, not at all!" Then he needled me a third time: "Oskar, dost thou love me?" Now Jesus saw my face: "I hate you, little fellow, you and your bag of tricks!"
Strangely enough, my hostility lifted him to vocal triumph. He raised his forefinger like a lady schoolteacher and gave me an assignment: "Thou art Oskar, the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church. Follow thou me!"
You can imagine my indignation. Rage turned my skin to soup chicken flesh. I broke off one of his plaster toes, but he no longer moved. "Say that again," Oskar hissed, "and I'll scratch the paint right off you!"
Not another word came, nothing came but the old man who now and forever is shuffling through churches. He bowed to the left side-altar, took no notice of me, shuffled onward, and had already reached Adalbert of Prague when I too stumbled down the steps from carpet to flagstones and, without looking back, made my way across the chessboard pattern to Maria, who just then made the Catholic cross correctly in accordance with my instructions.
I took her by the hand, led her to the holy-water font, and when she had almost reached the portal, had her cross herself once more toward the high altar from the rear of the church but did not join in, pulling her instead, just as she was about to kneel, out into the sun.
It was early evening. The women laborers from the east had disappeared from the embankment. In their place a freight train was being shunted just outside the local station at Langfuhr. Clusters of gnats hung in the air. Bells rang down from above. The sounds of shunting cars absorbed their ringing. The gnats still hung in clusters. Maria's face was tear-stained. Oskar wanted to scream. What should I do about Jesus? I felt like loading my voice. What did I have to do with his cross? But I knew that my voice was no match for his church windows. Let him keep building his temple on people named Petrus, or Petri, or East Prussian Petrikeit. "Watch out, Oskar, don't break those church windows!" Satan whispered inside me. "He'll ruin your voice if you do." And so I cast one solitary glance upward, took the measure of one of those Neo-Gothic windows, and then tore myself away, didn't sing, didn't follow Him but instead trotted along beside Maria to the underpass on Bahnhofstraße, through the dripping tunnel, up the hill to Kleinhammerpark, right onto Marienstraße, past Wohlgemuth's butcher shop, left onto Elsenstraße, across Strießbach to Neuer Markt, where they were building a water tank for air-raid defense. Labesweg seemed endless, and then, at last, we were there: Oskar left Maria, climbed over ninety steps to the attic. Bedsheets were hanging there, and behind the sheets a mound of air-defense sand, and behind sand and buckets, behind bundles of newspapers and stacks of roof tiles, my book and my store of drums from the Theater at the Front days. And, in a shoebox, a few burned-out but still bulbous light bulbs. Oskar took the first of these, sangshattered it, took the second, reduced it to glassdust, sliced off the plumper half of the third quite neatly, sangscribed the calligraphic letters JESUS on the fourth, then pulverized both bulb and script, and was about to repeat the exercise when he saw he was out of light bulbs. Exhausted, I sank down on the air-defense sand: Oskar still had his voice. Jesus may have had a follower. But as for me, the Dusters would be my first disciples.
The Dusters
Oskar was not cut out to follow in Christ's footsteps, if only because gathering disciples presented me with insuperable difficulties, but the call reached my ear by various circuitous routes and turned me into his follower, though I did not believe in my predecessor. Yet true to the rule, He who doubts believes, and the unbeliever believes longest, I did not manage to bury the small miracle offered to me in private inside the Church of the Sacred Heart beneath my doubts, but tried instead to persuade Jesus to repeat his performance.
Oskar returned to the brick church several times without Maria. I could always slip away from Mother Truczinski, who was after all stuck in her chair and couldn't get at me. What did Jesus have to offer me? Why did I remain half the night in the left nave of the church and let the sexton lock me in? Why did Oskar stand at the left side-altar till his ears turned brittle and his limbs grew stiff? For in spite of my crushing humility and my equally crushing blasphemies, I never got to hear my drum or the voice of Jesus again.
Miserere! Never in all my life have I heard my teeth rattle as noisily as they did in those midnight hours on the flagstones of the Church of the Sacred Heart. What jester could ever have found a better rattle than Oskar? I imitated an entire frontline sector of freewheeling machine guns, had a whole insurance office full of secretaries and typewriters lodged between my upper and lower jaws. Back and forth it resounded, drawing echoes of applause. Columns shivered, vaulted grottos got goose-flesh, then my cough hopped one-legged across the flagstone chessboard, down the way of the cross in reverse, up the central nave, hoisted itself to the choir, coughed sixtyfold—a Bach society that didn't sing but had been trained to cough instead—and just when I was hoping that Oskar's cough had crawled into the organ pipes and wouldn't be heard from again till the Sunday chorale—a cough came from the sacristy, then from the chancel, and finally died down, still coughing, behind the high altar, behind the gymnast on the cross—where it quickly coughed up its soul. It is finished, coughed my cough; but nothing was finished. The boy Jesus held my drumsticks stiffly and impudently, immune to the cold, held my drum on rosy plaster and would not drum, would not confirm me as his follower. Oskar wished he had it in writing, that command to follow Christ.
I still have a habit, a bad one, left over from those days: in spite of the strongest of constitutions, the moment I touch the flagstones of a church, or even the best known of cathedrals, I break out in a persistent cough, which, depending on the style, height, and breadth of the church in question, turns Gothic or Romanesque, Baroque as well, and permits me even after many years to allow those coughs from the cathedrals of Ulm, Munster, or Speyer to echo again on Oskar's drum. But back then, as I submitted to the sepulchral chill of Catholicism in mid-August, trips to churches in foreign climes were only possible if you were in uniform and part of planned withdrawals, noting perhaps in the little diary one always carried along: "Withdrew from Orvieto today, fantastic church, come back with Monika when the war's over and take a closer look."
I found it easy to become a churchgoer, for there was nothing to keep me at home. There was Maria. But Maria had Matzerath. There was my son Kurt. But the rascal was becoming more and more unbearable, threw sand in my eyes, and clawed me so hard his fingernails broke off in my parental flesh. In addition, my son showed me a pair of fists with knuckles so white that the mere sight of that pugnacious twin made blood gush from my nose.
Strangely enough, Matzerath defended me, somewhat awkwardly but nevertheless with feeling. Astonished, Oskar let this man, who had never meant anything to him, draw him onto his lap, hug him, gaze at him, even kiss him once, going all teary-eyed and saying more to himself than to Maria, "I just can't do it. Not to my own son. Even if he goes ten times and the doctors all say the same. They just jot those things down. Probably don't have any kids of their own."
Maria, who sat at the table pasting food stamps onto sheets of newspaper as she did every evening, looked up. "Calm down, Alfred. You're acting like I don't care. But if t
hey say that's how it's done these days, I just don't know what to think."
Matzerath pointed at the piano, which had produced no music since my poor mama's death: "Agnes would never have done it or allowed it!"
Maria glanced over at the piano, lifted her shoulders, and let them fall again as she spoke: "Well, you can understand that, her being the mother and all, always hoping he might get better. But you can see he's not, he's just shoved here and there and don't know how to live or how to die!"
Was it the portrait of Beethoven, which still hung above the piano, gloomily staring at a gloomy Hitler, that gave Matzerath his strength? "No," he cried, "never!" and banged his fist on the table, on damp, sticky pages of stamps, had Maria pass him the letter from the institute, read it, read and read and read, then tore it up and threw the pieces among the bread stamps, lard stamps, grocery stamps, travel stamps, heavy-labor stamps, extra-heavy-labor stamps, and stamps for expectant and nursing mothers. Though Oskar, thanks to Matzerath, did not fall into the hands of those doctors, a vision arose before him—and still does today, whenever he lays eyes on Maria—of a beautiful clinic located in the finest mountain air, and within this clinic a bright, modern, cheerful operating room, where, outside its padded door, a shy but trusting Maria hands him over with a smile to first-class doctors who are smiling too, inspiring trust, while behind their white, sterile aprons they hold first-class, trust-inspiring, instantly effective syringes. So the whole world had forsaken me, and on several occasions only the shadow of my poor mama, which fell with paralyzing force on Matzerath's hand whenever he started to sign a document from the Reich's Ministry of Health, prevented me, the forsaken, from forsaking this world.
Oskar does not wish to seem ungrateful. I still had my drum. And I still had my voice, which hardly offers you anything new, since you know all about my triumphs over glass, and may even bore those of you who like a change of pace—but to me Oskar's voice above his drum was eternally fresh proof of my existence, for as long as I sangshattered glass I existed; as long as my focused breath could knock the breath out of glass, there was life still left in me.
Oskar sang a lot back then. He sang with a desperate edge. Whenever I left the Church of the Sacred Heart at some late hour I would singshatter something. I headed for home, picked some target at random, a poorly blackened window beneath a mansard roof or a street-lamp painted a proper air-defense blue. Each time I went to church I chose a different way home. Once Oskar walked along Anton-Möller-Weg to Marienstraße. Another time he trudged up Uphagenweg, circled the Conradinum, splintered the glass in the school door, and reached Max-Halbe-Platz by way of Reichskolonie. One day toward the very end of August, when I arrived late at the church and found the door locked, I decided to take an even longer detour to walk off my rage. I strode along Bahnhofstraße killing every third streetlamp, turned right behind the Film-Palast onto Adolf-Hitler-Straße, spared the windows of the infantry barracks, but cooled my little bout of rage on a nearly empty tram coming toward me from Oliva by stripping its left side of all its dreary, blackened panes.
Oskar barely noted his triumph, let the tram screech to a halt, let the passengers get out, curse, and get on again, then set out in search of a dessert for his rage, some tasty morsel in those times so poor in tasty morsels, and didn't stop in his laced-shoe tracks till he'd reached the outskirts of suburban Langfuhr and saw, between Berendt's carpentry shop and the spacious hangars of the airfield, the headquarters of the Baltic Chocolate Factory lying in the moonlight.
My rage having cooled somewhat, I did not immediately introduce myself to the factory in my customary manner. I took my time, counted the windows the moon had counted before me, reached the same result as the moon, and felt ready to begin introductions, but first I wanted to know what those youngsters were up to who had been following me since Hochstrieß, perhaps even beneath the chestnut trees on Bahnhofstraße. Six or seven of them were standing around or inside the tram shelter at the Hohenfriedberger Weg stop. Five more I could make out behind the trees on Zoppoter Chaussee.
I was about to postpone my visit to the chocolate factory, make a wide detour around them, and sneak across the railway bridge, past the airfield, and through the allotment gardens to the Aktien Brewery on Kleinhammerweg, when Oskar heard an exchange of whistled sig nals, some coming from the bridge. There was no longer any doubt: the troops were being deployed with me in mind.
In such situations, in the short span of time when the pursuers have been spotted but the chase has not yet begun, one runs through the remaining chances to save oneself with particular pleasure: Oskar could have yelled for his mama and papa. I could have drummed up who knows what, possibly a policeman. I could certainly have sought help from grownups, given my stature; but I rejected—principled as Oskar could be on occasion—the help of passing grownups, or the intervention of a policeman, and spurred by curiosity and self-confidence, having decided to let things take their course, did the dumbest of all possible things: I scanned the tarred fence of the chocolate-factory grounds for a hole, found none, saw the youngsters leave the shelter, the shade of the trees on Zoppoter Chaussee, Oskar moving on, along the fence, now they were coming from the bridge too, and still the board fence had no hole, they weren't moving quickly, just strolling along, one by one, Oskar could look a bit longer, they gave me just enough time to find a hole in the fence, but when I finally found one single plank missing and, feeling something snag and tear, squeezed through the gap, there were four of them standing before me in windbreakers on the other side, their paws bulging in the pockets of their ski pants.
Since I quickly realized there was no way out of my situation, I felt for the snag I'd torn in my clothes squeezing through the gap in the fence. It was on the right rear of my trousers. I measured it with two spread fingers, found it annoyingly large, put on a show of indifference, and waited to look up till all the boys from the tram shelter, the Chaussee, and the bridge had clambered over the fence, for the hole in the fence was too small for them.
This happened toward the very end of August. The moon veiled itself now and then with a cloud. I counted around twenty. The youngest was fourteen, the oldest sixteen, going on seventeen. The summer of forty-four was hot and dry. Four of the taller boys were wearing Air Force Auxiliary uniforms. Forty-four was a good year for cherries, I remember. They stood around Oskar in small groups, talking in undertones, using a jargon I didn't even try to understand. They called one another by odd names, only a few of which I caught. One, a little fifteen- year-old with slightly hazy doe eyes was called Jackrabbit, or sometimes Thumper. The one next to him was PuttPutt. The smallest, but surely not the youngest, with a protruding upper lip and a lisp, they called Pinchcoal. An Air Force auxiliary answered to Mister, and another, aptly enough, to Chickenface; there were historical names too: Lionheart, a milk-faced Bluebeard, names I knew well like Totila and Teja, two even had the impudence to call themselves Belisarius and Narses; Störtebeker, who wore a raincoat that was too long for him and a genuine velour hat with its crown dented into a duck pond, I examined more closely: in spite of being only sixteen, he was the leader of the gang.
They paid no attention to Oskar, probably trying to soften him up, and so, with weary legs, half amused, half annoyed with myself for getting involved in what was clearly some sort of adolescent romanticism, I sat down on my drum, looked up at the nearly full moon, and tried to dispatch a portion of my thoughts to the Church of the Sacred Heart.
Perhaps he'd drummed today, even said a word or two, and here I was sitting in the yard of the Baltic Chocolate Factory playing cops and robbers. Perhaps he was waiting for me, perhaps he planned, after a brief introductory drum solo, to open his mouth again, to clarify what it meant to imitate Christ, and was disappointed that I hadn't come, perhaps he was raising his eyebrows with customary arrogance. What would Jesus have thought of these brats? What was Oskar, his likeness, his follower and vicar, supposed to do with this horde? Could he have addressed the words of Jesus, "
Suffer the little children to come unto me!" to a gang of teenagers who called themselves PuttPutt, Thumper, Bluebeard, Pinchcoal, and Störtebeker?
Störtebeker approached. Beside him, Pinchcoal, his right-hand man. Störtebeker: "Stand up!"
Oskar's eyes were still on the moon, his thoughts still at the left side-altar of the Church of the Sacred Heart, he did not stand, and at a sign from Störtebeker, Pinchcoal kicked the drum out from under me.
As I stood up I pulled the drum to me to protect it from further harm, and put it under my smock.
A handsome rascal, this Störtebeker, thought Oskar. Eyes a bit too deep-set and narrow, but the mouth lively and imaginative.
"Where are you from?"
The interrogation was under way, then, and since I didn't like his greeting, I turned back to the disk of the moon, imagined the moon—which puts up with anything you care to imagine—as a drum, and smiled at my harmless megalomania.
"He's grinning, Störtebeker."