my mama's dress.
Clear to partly cloudy. Occasional light showers in the afternoon. Jan Bronski came back the very next day, picked up the birthday gift he'd given me, the sailing ship, exchanged that pitiful plaything for a tin drum at Sigismund Markus in the Arsenal Arcade, returned to our flat, slightly rain-spattered, late that afternoon with the old familiar drum with its red and white pattern of flames, held it out to me, and grasped at the same time my trusty tin wreck, on which only traces of red and white lacquer remained. And while Jan clutched the worn drum and I the new one, all eyes—Jan's, Mama's, and Matzerath's—remained fixed on Oskar; I almost had to laugh—did they think I was bound to the past, that I nourished principles in my breast?
Without letting out the scream they all expected, without sounding the glass-slaying song, I relinquished the scrap-metal drum and turned at once with both hands to my new instrument. After two hours of intense drumming I hit my stride.
But not all the grownups around me proved as perceptive as Jan Bronski. Shortly after my fifth birthday, in nineteen twenty-nine—there was a good deal of talk about a stock-market crash in New York, and I wondered if my grandfather Koljaiczek, with his lumber business in far-off Buffalo, had suffered any losses—Mama, worried by my lack of
growth, which was now clearly evident, took me by the hand and began our Wednesday visits to Dr. Hollatz on Brunshüferweg. I put up with these thoroughly annoying and endlessly protracted examinations because even at that age the pleasing white uniform worn by Sister Inge, who assisted at the side of Dr. Hollatz, attracted me, reminded me of the photo of Mama's days as a nurse during the war, and enabled me, by concentrating intently on the constantly changing folds of her nurse's uniform, to ignore the bellowing flood of words, by turns strongly authoritative and unpleasantly avuncular, gushing from the doctor.
His spectacles reflecting the office furnishings—there was a good deal of chrome, nickel, and polished enamel; and also shelves and glass cabinets in which stood neatly labeled jars containing snakes, newts, and toads, as well as pig, ape, and human embryos—capturing these fetuses in alcohol with his spectacles, after each examination, Hollatz would shake his head gravely as he leafed through the record of my illness, have Mama tell him yet again about my fall down the cellar stairs, and calm her as she heaped endless reproaches on Matzerath, who had left the trapdoor open, declaring him guilty now and for all time.
When, on one such Wednesday visit months later, no doubt to prove to himself, and possibly to Sister Inge as well, the success of his treatment thus far, he tried to take away my drum, I destroyed the larger part of his snake and toad collection, as well as every conceivable embryo.
Except for full glasses of beer still covered with coasters, and Mama's perfume bottle, it was the first time Oskar had tested himself on a number of full and carefully sealed glass containers. My success was unique and overwhelming, a surprise to all concerned, even to Mama, who was well aware of my relationship to glass. With my very first carefully clipped note I sliced the cabinet in which Hollatz kept his loathsome curiosities wide open, and sent a nearly square pane of glass toppling from the display side of the cabinet to the linoleum floor, where, retaining its square shape, it smashed into a thousand pieces; then, giving my scream a sharper profile and an almost profligate intensity, visited that rich note upon one jar after another.
The glass jars shattered. The greenish, partly coagulated alcohol sprayed, flowed forth, carrying its preserved, pale, somewhat gravely staring contents across the red linoleum floor of the office and filling the room with a stench so tangible, if I can use that word, that Mama
got sick and Sister Inge had to open the window onto Brunshüferweg. Dr.
Clear to partly cloudy. Occasional light showers in the afternoon. Jan Bronski came back the very next day, picked up the birthday gift he'd given me, the sailing ship, exchanged that pitiful plaything for a tin drum at Sigismund Markus in the Arsenal Arcade, returned to our flat, slightly rain-spattered, late that afternoon with the old familiar drum with its red and white pattern of flames, held it out to me, and grasped at the same time my trusty tin wreck, on which only traces of red and white lacquer remained. And while Jan clutched the worn drum and I the new one, all eyes—Jan's, Mama's, and Matzerath's—remained fixed on Oskar; I almost had to laugh—did they think I was bound to the past, that I nourished principles in my breast?
Without letting out the scream they all expected, without sounding the glass-slaying song, I relinquished the scrap-metal drum and turned at once with both hands to my new instrument. After two hours of intense drumming I hit my stride.
But not all the grownups around me proved as perceptive as Jan Bronski. Shortly after my fifth birthday, in nineteen twenty-nine—there was a good deal of talk about a stock-market crash in New York, and I wondered if my grandfather Koljaiczek, with his lumber business in far-off Buffalo, had suffered any losses—Mama, worried by my lack of
growth, which was now clearly evident, took me by the hand and began our Wednesday visits to Dr. Hollatz on Brunshüferweg. I put up with these thoroughly annoying and endlessly protracted examinations because even at that age the pleasing white uniform worn by Sister Inge, who assisted at the side of Dr. Hollatz, attracted me, reminded me of the photo of Mama's days as a nurse during the war, and enabled me, by concentrating intently on the constantly changing folds of her nurse's uniform, to ignore the bellowing flood of words, by turns strongly authoritative and unpleasantly avuncular, gushing from the doctor.
His spectacles reflecting the office furnishings—there was a good deal of chrome, nickel, and polished enamel; and also shelves and glass cabinets in which stood neatly labeled jars containing snakes, newts, and toads, as well as pig, ape, and human embryos—capturing these fetuses in alcohol with his spectacles, after each examination, Hollatz would shake his head gravely as he leafed through the record of my illness, have Mama tell him yet again about my fall down the cellar stairs, and calm her as she heaped endless reproaches on Matzerath, who had left the trapdoor open, declaring him guilty now and for all time.
When, on one such Wednesday visit months later, no doubt to prove to himself, and possibly to Sister Inge as well, the success of his treatment thus far, he tried to take away my drum, I destroyed the larger part of his snake and toad collection, as well as every conceivable embryo.
Except for full glasses of beer still covered with coasters, and Mama's perfume bottle, it was the first time Oskar had tested himself on a number of full and carefully sealed glass containers. My success was unique and overwhelming, a surprise to all concerned, even to Mama, who was well aware of my relationship to glass. With my very first carefully clipped note I sliced the cabinet in which Hollatz kept his loathsome curiosities wide open, and sent a nearly square pane of glass toppling from the display side of the cabinet to the linoleum floor, where, retaining its square shape, it smashed into a thousand pieces; then, giving my scream a sharper profile and an almost profligate intensity, visited that rich note upon one jar after another.
The glass jars shattered. The greenish, partly coagulated alcohol sprayed, flowed forth, carrying its preserved, pale, somewhat gravely staring contents across the red linoleum floor of the office and filling the room with a stench so tangible, if I can use that word, that Mama
got sick and Sister Inge had to open the window onto Brunshüferweg. Dr.
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