An excerpt
From Günter Grass's The Tin Drum, Book 1, Chap. 9 'The Rostrum':We met in the menagerie. Mama and her two cavaliers were letting the monkeys make monkeys of them. Hedwig Bronski, who for once had come along, was showing her children the ponies. After a lion had yawned at me, I foolishly became involved with an owl. I tried to stare him down, but it was the owl that stared me down. Oskar crept away dismayed, with burning ears and a feeling of inner hurt, taking refuge between two blue and white trailers, because apart from a few tied-up dwarf goats, there were no animals here.
He was in suspenders and slippers, carrying a pail of water. Our eyes met as he was passing and there was instant recognition. He set down his pail, leaned his great head to one side, and came toward me. I guessed that he must be about four inches taller than I.
"Will you take a look at that!" There was a note of envy in his rasping voice. "Nowadays it's the three-year-olds that decide to stop growing." When I failed to answer, he tried again: "My name is Bebra, directly descended from Prince Eugene, whose father was Louis XIV and not some Savoyard as they claim." Still I said nothing, but he continued: "On my tenth birthday I made myself stop growing. Better late than never."
Since he had spoken so frankly, I too introduced myself, but without any nonsense about my family tree. I was just Oskar.
"Well, my dear Oskar, you must be fourteen or fifteen. Maybe as much as sixteen. What, only nine and a half? You don't mean it?"
It was my turn to guess his age. I purposely aimed too low.
"You're a flatterer, my young friend. Thirty-five, that was once upon a time. In August I shall be celebrating my fifty-third birthday. I could be your grandfather."
Oskar said a few nice things about his acrobatic clown act and complimented him on his gift for music. That aroused my ambition and I performed a little trick of my own. Three light bulbs were the first to be taken in. Bravo, bravissimo, Mr. Bebra cried, and wanted to hire Oskar on the spot.
Even today I am occasionally sorry that I declined. I talked myself out of it, saying: "You know, Mr. Bebra, I prefer to regard myself as a member of the audience. I cultivate my little art in secret, far from all the applause. But it gives me pleasure to applaud your accomplishments." Mr. Bebra raised a wrinkled forefinger and admonished me: "My dear Oskar, believe an experienced colleague. Our kind has no place in the audience. We must perform, we must run the show. If we don't, it's the others that run us. And they don't do it with kid gloves."
His eyes became as old as the hills and he almost crawled into my ear. "They are coming," he whispered. "They will take over the meadows where we pitch our tents. They will organize torchlight parades. They will build rostrums and fill them, and down from the rostrums they will preach our destruction. Take care, young man. Always take care to be sitting on the rostrum and never to be standing out in front of it."
Hearing my name called, Mr. Bebra took up his pail. "They are looking for you, my friend. We shall meet again. We are too little to lose each other. Bebra always says: Little people like us can always find a place even on the most crowded rostrum. And if not on it, then under it, but never out in front. So says Bebra, who is descended in a direct line from Prince Eugene."
Calling Oskar, Mama stepped out from behind a trailer just in time to see Mr. Bebra kiss me on the forehead. Then he picked up his pail of water and, swaying his shoulders, headed for his trailer.
Mama was furious. "Can you imagine," she said to Matzerath and the Bronskis. "He was with the midgets. And a gnome kissed him on the forehead. I hope it doesn't mean anything."
posted by paul bowman @ 8:55 PM
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