The Tin Drum (28 page)

And so things remained, till Herbert Truczinski, who no longer wanted to be a waiter and least of all to work for customs, donned the mouse-gray uniform of a museum guard and took his place on the leather chair by the door of the room popularly known as "the green maiden's parlor."

On his very first day at work, I followed Herbert to the tram stop on Max-Halbe-Platz. I was worried about him.

"Go home, little Oskar. I can't take you along." But I stood so steadfastly before my big friend with my drum and drumsticks that Herbert said, "Well, come along then as far as Hohes Tor. And then be a good boy and go home." At Hohes Tor I refused to get on the Number Five; Herbert took me along to Heilige-Geist-Gasse, tried to get rid of me again on the museum steps, sighed, and bought me a child's ticket at the desk. I was fourteen and should have paid full price, but that was no business of theirs.

We had a pleasant, quiet day. No visitors, no supervisors. Now and then I would drum for a half-hour or so, now and then Herbert slept for about an hour. Niobe gazed ahead with amber eyes and strove double-breasted toward some goal that was not our goal. We paid scant attention to her. "Not my type anyway." Herbert gestured dismissively. "Take a look at those rolls of fat and that double chin."

Herbert tilted his head and let his mind roam: "And those hips, like a barn door. Herbert's more for dainty little doll-like creatures."

I listened as Herbert described his type of woman at length and in detail, and watched his powerful shovel-hands knead and mold the contours of a graceful feminine figure that long remained, in fact remains to this day, even when camouflaged beneath a nurse's uniform, my ideal of womanhood.

By the third day of our museum sojourn we ventured forth from the chair by the door. Under the pretext of tidying the room, which really did look bad, we made our way, wiping things off, sweeping cobwebs and daddy longlegs from the oak paneling, turning the room in the literal sense into a true "green maiden's parlor," toward the light-flooded, shadow-casting, green wooden body. I can't say that Niobe left us entirely cold. She bore her ample but by no means shapeless beauty before her all too clearly. We didn't just enjoy this sight with the eyes of someone who wished to possess her. We cultivated instead the objective vi
sion of connoisseurs making a detailed appraisal. Herbert and I, two cool-headed, soberly intoxicated aesthetes, took the measure of female proportions, our thumbs moving up and down, finding in the classic eight head-lengths a measure to which Niobe, with the exception of her too short thighs, conformed, while all that was broad about her, her pelvis, shoulders, and chest, demanded a standard more Dutch than Greek.

Herbert let his thumb fall: "She'd be too busy in bed for me. Herbert's had plenty of wrestling matches in Ohra and Fahrwasser. I don't need no woman for that." Herbert's fingers had been burned. "If she was just a handful, a delicate little thing you had to be careful with because of her size, Herbert wouldn't mind at all."

Of course if it came right down to it, we wouldn't have had anything against Niobe or her wrestler's body either. Herbert was well aware that the passivity or activity he sought from naked or half-clad women wasn't offered just by the slim and graceful or withheld by the shapely and voluptuous; there are gentle girls who can't lie still, and women who can take on five men at a time and, like some sleepy inland waterway, scarcely betray a current. We were intentionally oversimplifying, reducing everything to a pair of common denominators, deliberately insulting Niobe in a manner that became increasingly inexcusable. Herbert lifted me up in his arms so I could beat on the woman's breasts with my drumsticks till absurd little puffs of sawdust rose from her treated and thus untenanted but numerous wormholes. As I drummed, we stared into those amber stones that simulated eyes. Nothing twitched, twinkled, teared, or overflowed. Nothing narrowed to menacing eye slits discharging hatred. Both polished drops, more yellow than reddish, reflected, in convex distortion, the entire contents of the exhibition room and a portion of the sunlit windows. Amber is deceptive, we all know that. And we know about the treacherous ways of this resin product elevated to the rank of jewelry. Nevertheless, continuing in our obtuse masculine fashion to divide all things womanly into active and passive, we interpreted Niobe's apparent indifference in our own favor. We felt safe. Chuckling sardonically, Herbert pounded a nail into her kneecap: my knee smarted at every blow, but she never lifted an eyebrow. We engaged in all sorts of horseplay right under the eyes of the green, swelling wood: Herbert threw on the coat of an English admiral, armed him
self with a spyglass, donned the admiral's matching hat. With a little red waistcoat and an allonge wig I turned myself into an admiral's page. We played Trafalgar, bombarded Copenhagen, scattered Napoleon's fleet at Abukir, rounded this and that cape, assumed historical poses, then contemporary ones, all this before a figurehead with the proportions of a Dutch witch, who, we felt, either approved of everything we did or paid no attention at all.

Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings. It's not God in his heaven who sees everything. A kitchen chair, a clothes hanger, a half-filled ashtray, or the wooden replica of a woman named Niobe can serve perfectly well as an unforgetting witness to our every deed.

For fourteen days or more we performed our duties at the Maritime Museum. Herbert gave me a drum as a present and brought home his weekly wages to Mother Truczinski for a second time with an added hazard bonus. One Tuesday, for the museum was closed on Mondays, the cashier refused to issue me a child's ticket, nor would he let me enter. Herbert wanted to know why. The cashier, grouchy but well-intentioned, told us that an official request had been submitted, and children were no longer let in. The boy's father had objected, he didn't mind if I stayed below at the cashier's desk, since as a businessman and widower he didn't have time to take care of me himself, but I was no longer allowed in the gallery, in the green maiden's parlor, because I was irresponsible.

Herbert was ready to give in, but I poked and prodded him, and he told the cashier that while all that was true, I was still his good-luck charm, his guardian angel, spoke of childish innocence that would protect him; in short, Herbert practically made friends with the cashier and managed to get me into the Marine Museum for what the cashier said was one last time.

And so, holding my big friend's hand, I mounted once more the ornate, always freshly oiled spiral staircase to the second floor, where Niobe lived. It was a peaceful morning and an even more peaceful afternoon. Herbert sat with half-closed eyes on the leather chair with the yellow studs. I crouched at his feet. My drum stayed voiceless. We blinked up at the cogs, the frigates, the corvettes, at the five-masters, the galleons and sloops, the coastal sailing vessels and clippers dangling from the
coffered oak ceiling, awaiting a favorable wind. We mustered the model fleet, watched with them for a fresh breeze, dreaded the doldrums of the parlor, and all just to avoid gazing at Niobe in fear. What we would have given for the sound of a woodworm at work, for proof that the interior of the green wood was slowly but surely being penetrated and hollowed out, that Niobe was perishable. But no worm ticked. The conservator had wormproofed the wooden body and rendered it immortal. So we were left with the model fleet and the foolish hope for a fair wind, playing an eccentric game with our fear of Niobe, whom we shunned, strenuously ignored, and might well have forgotten had not the afternoon sun suddenly scored a direct hit on her left amber eye and set it ablaze.

And yet that inflammation should scarcely have surprised us. We knew those sunny afternoons on the second floor of the Maritime Museum, knew what hour had struck or would strike when the light fell from the cornice and boarded the cogs. The churches of Rechtstadt, Altstadt, Pfefferstadt did their bit too, striking the passing hours of dust-whirling sunlight and adding the sounds of historical bells to our collection of historical objects. Small wonder then if the sun itself seemed part of history, ripe for exhibition, suspiciously in league with Niobe's amber eyes.

On that afternoon, however, when we had neither the desire nor the courage for games or provocative nonsense, the blazing eye of the otherwise dull woodcarving struck us with redoubled force. Dejectedly we waited through the final half-hour that faced us. At five sharp the museum closed.

The next day Herbert took up his post alone. I accompanied him to the museum but didn't feel like waiting by the cashier, and instead found a place opposite the old patrician mansion. I sat with my drum on a granite ball, from the back of which a tail grew that grownups used as a banister. It goes without saying that the other side of the stairs was guarded by a similar ball with the same cast-iron tail. I drummed only occasionally, but then terribly loudly, protesting against the mostly female passersby, who seemed to enjoy pausing beside me, asking my name, and patting my beautiful, short but slightly curly hair with their sweaty hands. The morning passed. At the end of Heilige-Geist-Gasse the brick hen of St. Mary's, red-black and green-steepled, brooded be
neath its fat, overgrown tower. Pigeons pushed one another repeatedly from gaps in the tower walls, settled nearby, talked all sorts of nonsense, and hadn't the faintest idea how long she would be brooding, what she was hatching, or whether, after all these centuries, brooding had not become an end in itself.

At noon Herbert came out onto the street. From his lunch box, which Mother Truczinski had stuffed so full that it could not be closed, he fished out a sandwich with dripping and finger-thick blood sausage and handed it to me. When he saw I didn't want it, he nodded mechanically to encourage me. In the end I ate it, and Herbert, who ate nothing, smoked a cigarette. Before the museum swallowed him up again, he disappeared into a pub on Brotbânkengasse for two or three Machandels. I watched his Adam's apple as he tipped the glasses. I didn't like the way he was tossing them down. Long after he'd mounted the museum's spiral staircase again and I was sitting once more on my granite ball, Oskar could still see the Adam's apple of his friend Herbert jerking.

The afternoon crept across the pale, polychromatic façade of the museum. It swung from curlicue to curlicue, rode nymphs and horns of plenty, devoured plump angels plucking flowers, ripened ripely painted grapes beyond their prime, burst into the midst of a country fête, played blindman's buff, swung in a swing of roses, ennobled burghers bargaining in baggy breeches, caught a stag the dogs were after, and reached at last that second-story window through which the sun, briefly yet forever, illuminated an amber eye.

Slowly I slid from my granite ball. My drum banged hard against the hammered stone. Lacquer from the white casing of the drum and a few flakes of lacquered flame sprang off and lay white and red on the stone steps of the porch.

I may have recited something, rattled off a prayer, run through a list: shortly thereafter the ambulance pulled up in front of the museum. Passersby flanked the entrance. Oskar managed to slip into the building with the emergency team. I made my way up the stairs more quickly than they did, though they must have known the museum's layout from earlier accidents.

I had to laugh when I saw Herbert. He was hanging from the front of Niobe, he had tried to mount the wooden statue. His head covered hers. His arms clung to her raised, crossed arms. He had no shirt on. It
was later found neatly folded on the leather chair by the door. His back displayed all its scars. I read that script, counted the letters. Not one was missing. But not even the start of some new mark could be seen.

The emergency team who came rushing into the room not far behind me had a hard time dislodging Herbert from Niobe. In a frenzy of lust he had torn a short, double-edged ship's ax from its security chain, pounded one blade into Niobe's wood, then drove the other into his own flesh as he assaulted the woman. In spite of the perfect bond above, he had been unable, below, where his trousers gaped open, where he still thrust forth, stiff and at a loss, to find ground for his anchor.

As they spread a blanket bearing the words
Municipal Emergency Service
over Herbert, Oskar found his way back, as always when he'd lost something, to his drum. He was still beating on it with his fists as members of the museum staff led him out of the green maiden's parlor, down the stairs, and finally home in a police car.

Even now, in the institution, as he recalls this attempt at love between wood and flesh, he must work with his fists to wander once more through the labyrinth of scars on Herbert Truczinski's back, puffy, multicolored, hard and sensitive, foretelling all, anticipating all, surpassing all in hardness and sensitivity. Like a blind man he reads the script of that back.

Only now, when they have taken Herbert down from his loveless carving, does Bruno, my keeper, arrive with his desperate pear-shaped head. Gently he removes my fists from the drum, hangs the drum over the left bedpost at the foot of my metal bed, and smooths the blanket over me.

"Herr Matzerath," he admonishes me, "if you keep drumming so loudly, others are bound to hear that someone's drumming too loudly. Won't you stop for a while, or drum more quietly?"

Yes, Bruno, I will try to make the next chapter I dictate to my drum a quieter one, though its theme cries out for a roaring, ravenous orchestra.

Once upon a time there was a musician named Meyn, and he played the trumpet too beautifully for words. He lived on the fourth floor of an apartment house, just under the roof, kept four cats, one of them named Bismarck, and drank from morning till night from a bottle of Machandel gin. This he did till disaster struck and sobered him up.

Even today, Oskar doesn't truly believe in omens. Nevertheless, there were plenty of omens of a disaster that was donning larger and larger boots, taking longer and longer strides in those larger and larger boots, and had every intention of spreading. Then my friend Herbert Truczinski died from a chest wound inflicted by a wooden woman. The woman didn't die. She was put under seal and stored in the cellar of a museum, supposedly for restoration. But disaster can't be sealed in a cellar. It drains through the pipes with the sewage, it seeps into gas lines, invades every household, and no one who sets his kettle of soup on bluish flames suspects in the least that disaster is bringing his grub to a boil.