Chapter 5 moth and light bulb

A man who left everything, crossed the ocean, arrived in the United States, and made a fortune.About my grandfather, I think, that's enough.As for whether he is now using the Polish name Goljacek, or Kashube's name Koljacek, or the American name Joe Kolchik, it doesn't matter. Beating a simple tin drum, which can be bought in any toy store and store, it is very difficult to ask about the river covered with rafts, one after another, stretching to the horizon.Still, I beat the drum and asked all over Timber Harbor, all the driftwood bobbing in the bends and tangled in reeds, and with less effort I asked about the Shelhau Dockyard, the Kravettel Dockyard, and many more The slipway of an unbuilt marina, the scrapyard of a vehicle factory, the rancid copra stack of a margarine factory, and any dark corner I know of in such places.He must be dead, and did not answer me.He was not at all interested in the launching ceremony of the emperor's steamship, in the rise and fall of the ship, which often lasted for decades from the time it was launched.I am referring here to the history of the rise and fall of the Columbus, once called the pride of the fleet, sailed America of course, but sank, or scuttled itself, and was perhaps salvaged again and refurbished. New, named again, maybe dismantled into a pile of scrap metal.It, the USS Columbus, may have merely been submerged, following my grandfather's example, and to this day the 40,000-ton ship, with its dining room, marble gymnasium, swimming pool and massage parlor, is still in Philippine waters or Egypt. You can read about these things in the "Weir" ② or in the "Ship Year Book"-in my opinion, the first or second "Columbus" was Self-scuttled, because the captain would not live with some war-related disgrace.

-------- ①The "Columbus" sank on December 19, 1939 when it learned of the outbreak of World War II during the voyage. ② "Weil" refers to the "German Warship Handbook" edited by Bruno Weil, compiled from 1900 to 1940. I read a passage about the raft to Bruno, then asked my questions and asked him to give objective answers. "A wonderful death!" Bruno said enthralled, and immediately began to weave the image of my drowned grandfather with the thread.I couldn't help being satisfied with his answer, and gave up the rash idea of ​​going to America to get an inheritance.

My friends Klepp and Vitra came to visit me.Klip brought a jazz record with Kim Oliver on both sides, and Vitra coyly handed me a chocolate heart tied on a pink ribbon.They made all kinds of ugly things and parodied scenes from my studies.To please them, I put on a cheerful face, as I do on visiting days, and smile even at the most dull jokes.It stayed like this for a while, before Klepp started his platitudes about the relationship between jazz and Marxism, and I preempted my story.It happened in 1913, and a man got under a raft of inexhaustible regeneration before someone shot him, and never came up again, and his body was never found.

I asked them casually and with feigned annoyance.Klepp turned despondently on his fat neck, unbuttoned it, and refastened it, swimming as if he himself were at the bottom of the raft.In the end, he shook his head and refused to answer my question, saying that it was just after noon and it was too early to think about it. Vitra sat upright, her thighs raised, careful not to crease the creases of her trousers.Like those pinstriped trousers, he said, with that queer haughty look that only he and the angels in heaven have: "I'm on the raft. It's nice on the raft. Mosquitos bite me so bad.— I stay under the raft. It's nice down there. It's nice not to get bitten by mosquitoes. I think it's nice to live under a raft, if you don't plan to stay on top of the raft and get bitten by mosquitoes."

Vitra paused for a moment—a tactic he had tried and tested to be effective—and looked at me, raising his naturally high eyebrows as he usually did when he was about to assume the owl look. "I imagine that this drowned man, this man at the bottom of the raft, was your uncle, if not your grandfather. He died because he felt that being your uncle Duty to you, my lord; and all the more so if he were your grandfather; for nothing is more a burden to you than a living grandfather. So you are not only Your uncle's murderer, and your grandfather's murderer! But, as all true grandfathers love to do, your grandfather will punish you to some extent, not to satisfy your grandson, to keep you from being proud Pointing to the swollen corpse of a drowned man, he said: Behold, my drowned grandfather. He was a hero! He would rather dive than fall into their hands when they hunted him down. . . . Your grandfather hid the body and did not leave it to the world and his grandchildren. In this way, the people of later generations and his grandchildren will have to worry about him and worry about him for a long time.” Then, he began to pity One side suddenly turned to sympathize with the other, and he leaned forward slightly, put on a sly face, and played mediating tricks: "America! Take heart, Oscar! You have a purpose and a calling. You will be judged." Not guilty, I set you free. If you are not going to the United States, where are you going? You can find everything you lost in the United States, and even find your missing grandfather!"

Although Vitra's answer was ironic and piercing, leaving lasting scars, it was far more affirmative than my friend Klepp and my orderly Bruno.Klepp frowned, and refused to answer whether the man was alive or dead; Bruno said that my grandfather's death was wonderful, just because his Majesty's ship "Columbus" was launched and advanced through the waves just after he died.God bless the America Vitra spoke of, the place where my grandfathers were preserved, the imaginary goals and ideals I could rest on if I got tired of Europe and wanted to lay down my drum and pen. "Go on, Oscar! Go on for your grandfather! For this Koljacek, a lumber businessman in Buffalo, USA, who is rich and rich now, but tired of life, playing in his own skyscraper matches!"

Klepp and Vitra finally left, and Bruno came in to ventilate, using a strong air flow to expel the disturbing smell of his friends from the outside.Then I took up my drum again, but instead of the logs of the raft that had been called to cover the dead, I struck out that rapid, unsteady rhythm.Since August 1914,1 everyone has had to move to this rhythm.I can, therefore, give only a brief account of the family that my grandfather left to weep and mourn in Europe, and of the course of their life up to the time of my birth. -------- ① Refers to the outbreak of the First World War. My grandmother, her daughters Agnes, Vincent Bronski, and his seventeen-year-old son Jan were standing on the sawmill pier when Koljacek disappeared under the raft Among the families of the raftmen, there was grief.A little to the side stood Gregor Koljacek.He was Joseph's brother, and had been sent to the city for questioning.That Gregor always replied to the police with only the same words: "I don't know my brother at all. I only know his name is Joseph. The last time I saw him he was ten or twelve. He Shine my shoes, and send him for beer if mother and I want beer."

As can be seen from Gregor Koljacek's reply, my maternal great-grandmother drank beer, but that doesn't help the police department at all.Having such an eldest son in the Koljacek family was a great help to my grandmother Anna.Gregor spent some years in Szczecin, Berlin, and then Schneidermeer, and finally settled in Danzig, where he found work in a gunpowder factory near Kaninching Bastion.A year later, after all the troubles like marrying the fake Wranka were settled or put aside, he married my grandmother, and she decided to go with the Koljaceks.If Gregor hadn't been named Koljacek, she probably wouldn't have married him, at least not so soon.

Since Gregor worked in the powder factory, he was not required to serve in the army, neither in peacetime nor in the period of ensuing war.The three of them still lived in the one and a half house that had been the arsonist's shelter.But it was obvious that this Koljaiczek would no longer have to live as quietly as the previous one.So after only one year of marriage, my grandmother had to rent a newly vacated cellar shop in an apartment in Troyer, selling groceries such as pins and vegetables, and earning money to support the family, because although Gregor The gunpowder factory made a lot of money, but it was spent on drinking, and the money brought home was not enough for daily necessities.Unlike my grandfather Joseph, who drank an occasional shot of schnapps, Gregor was a heavy drinker, probably inherited from my great-grandmother.Gregor wasn't drinking to drown his sorrows.Melancholy by nature, he seldom showed signs of joy, but even when he was, he did not drink out of pleasure.The reason why he drinks is because he is a person who wants to get to the bottom of everything, so of course he will not stop until the bottom of the bottle is turned upside down for the contents of the glass.In all his life Gregor Koljacek was never seen drinking more than half a glass of gin.

My mother was fifteen years old, a plump girl, very capable, and besides doing housework, she also helped in the store.She put food stamps on the ledger, made deliveries on Saturdays, and wrote reminder letters, imaginative if unsophisticated, reminding customers who were on credit to come and pay them back.Regrettably, I have not preserved even one of these letters.Here, if one could quote a few half-childish, half-girlish lamentations from the letters of a half-orphan (for Gregor Koljacek did not fulfill his duties as a stepfather at all), then How wonderful it would be.My grandmother's and her daughter's cash boxes were made of two tinplate plates, usually more copper and less silver.Both of them took pains to hide the cash box from the somber eyes of the ever-thirsty gunpowder factory worker.By 1917, Gregor Koljacek was suffering from influenza.Since then, the profits of the grocer have increased, but they are still very limited; for what was there to sell in 1917?

After the death of the gunpowder factory worker, the one-and-a-half one-and-a-half-bedroom house stood vacant because my mother didn't want to move in because she was afraid of ghosts, and then Jan Bronski moved in.My mother's cousin was about twenty years old at the time.He left Bissau and his father Vinzent, took his diploma at Carterhouse High School with honors, finished his apprenticeship at the post office in the small county town, and now took a job as a middle-level manager at the Danzig General Post Office. .Jan came to his aunt's house with his ostentatious stamp album besides his suitcase.He had collected stamps from an early age, so he not only had a professional interest in the post office, but also carefully maintained a personal relationship.This frail, stooped young man had an oval face, good looks, maybe a little too sweet, and a pair of blue eyes, which was enough to make my seventeen-year-old mother fall in love with him.Young had been called up three times for a medical examination, each of which resulted in him being suspended for being too ill; that said a lot about Jan Bronski's physical condition, because at that time, anyone who could stand more or less straight The men were all sent to Verdun to change from an upright state to an eternal recumbent state on French soil. -------- ①From February to July 1916, the German army attacked Verdunvik on the western front. From July to August, the British and French troops launched a campaign on the Somme to contain the German troops at Verdun.Neither side made significant progress, but casualties were heavy, with the Germans alone losing 600,000.This metaphor is fatal. The two of them had flirted with each other, which logically began when they were looking at stamp albums together, head to head, checking that the perforations of the particularly precious stamps were intact.But the actual start, or outburst, was the day Young was called in for a medical for the fourth time.My mother had something to go to the city, so she accompanied him to the headquarters of the military region and waited for him by the guard box where the militiamen ① stood guard.Both she and Yang believed that this time Yang must go to France, where he could take advantage of the iron and lead-containing air to heal his underdeveloped chest cavity.My mom counted militia buttons over and over again, with different results each time.I can imagine that all uniform buttons are nailed to that size, and whichever one you end up with means either Verdun, or one of the countless Hartmannsweilerkopfs, or Means a certain little river: the Somme or the Marne. -------- ① Militia, part of the German Wehrmacht, a reserve army composed of men aged seventeen to forty-five who are obliged to perform military service, established in 1913 and disbanded in 1918 in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. ②Hartmannsweilerkopf, a peak in the South Vosges.In the First World War, the German and French armies competed fiercely here.The plural is used here to describe similar highlands. ③ From September 5th to 10th, 1914, the German and French armies fought in the Marne River. The two sides invested a total of more than 1.5 million troops. The German army was defeated and retreated to occupy the Aine River, forming a confrontation.For the Somme see supra note. Just an hour later, the young man who was undergoing the fourth medical examination squeezed out the gate of the military district headquarters, staggered down the steps, threw himself on my mother Agnes, put his arms around her neck, put his hands on her ears, The buzzword of the day whispered, "They don't want my neck, and they don't want my ass, a year's reprieve!" My mother hugged Jan Bronski for the first time, and I don't know if she's ever been happier since over him. I do not know the details of the love between the young couple during the war.My mother was pretty, well-groomed, dressy, and expensive.To satisfy her extravagance, Young sold some of his stamp collection.It is said that he wrote a diary at that time, but it was lost later.It seems my maternal grandmother tolerated the relationship between these two youths It can be said that the relationship between cousins ​​​​has gone beyond, because Jan Bronski lived in the one-and-a-half house in Troyer until after the war, until the presence of a Mr. Matzerath Yang moved away when it was undeniable and even recognized.My mother must have known the gentleman in the summer of 1918, when she was working as an assistant nurse at the Silverhammer Army Hospital near Oliwa.Alfred Matzerath was a Rhinelander. He was recuperating in the hospital with a bullet through his thigh. Because of his Rhinelander optimism, he soon became the favorite of all the female nurses. Nurse Agger Ness is no exception.He was half-wounded, limping in the halls with the help of one or another nurse, and helping Nurse Agnes in the kitchen, because she wore a nurse's cap that matched her little round face, And also because he's a passionate cook with a knack for turning emotion into puree. Alfred Matzerath stayed in Danzig after recovering from a leg injury and found work immediately.Before the war he worked for a large company in the Rhineland paper processing industry and is now the company's agent in Danzig.The war wears off gradually.A peace treaty was signed in vague terms, creating a new cause for future wars, and the area around the mouth of the Wexel River was declared a free state, under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations.This area starts roughly from Vogelsang on the headland, along the Nogat River to Pieker, then along the Wexel River to Chatkoll, turns left to Schönfries to form a right angle, and then around The Saskatchewan Forest formed a bulge up to Lake Otomin, keeping Matern, Ramkau, and my grandmother's Bissau out of bounds.This line ends at the Baltic Sea near Klein-Katz.In the original urban area, Poland received a free port, Westerplatte including the arsenal, the Railway Administration, and the Polish Post Office on Hevelius Square. The stamps of the Free State bear the red and gold heraldic emblem of the Hanseatic League; the Polish stamps, in dispirited purple patterns, depict the historical facts of Casimir and Bathory. -------- ① Casimir III (1310-1370), King of Poland (since 1333); Stefan IV (1533-1586) of the Bathory royal family, King of Poland (since 1576). Jan Bronski entered the Polish post office.He changed his job organization and chose Polish citizenship, which seems to be an impulsive decision.Many people believe that he chose Polish citizenship because of my mother's infidelity to him.In 1920, Marcelek Bilsudski repelled the Red Army from Warsaw.The miracle on the Weixel is said to have been blessed by the Virgin Mary by people like Vinzent Bronski, while military experts attribute it either to General Sikorsky or to General Sikorsky. It is a tribute to General Weygand ③.During this Polish year my mother became engaged to Matzerath, a citizen of the German Empire.I am more convinced of this theory: my grandmother Anna, like Jan, disagreed with their engagement.She left her daughter to run the small cellar shop in Troyer, which had improved slightly during this period, and moved back to Bissau herself, that is to say, to her brother Vinzent in Poland, like a married woman. Koljacek, as before, took over the estate, the turnip and potato fields, and left her brother, who was increasingly fascinated by grace, to deal and talk with the Virgin and Queen of Poland.She herself wears four skirts, squatting behind the fire of potato seedlings in autumn, looking at the horizon that has always been divided into strips by telephone poles, and she also enjoys herself. -------- ① Marcelek Birsudski (1867～1935), the head of Poland since 1918. ② Sikorski (1881~1945), served as Prime Minister of Poland from 1922 to 1923. ③Weygand (1867～1965), the official representative of France in Bilsudski, Poland in 1920. Jan Bronski and my mother reconciled after Jan found his Hedwig and married her.Hedwig is from Kashube and lives in the city, but still has farmland in Ramkau.They met by chance at a dance at the Voick Café, and my mother is said to have introduced Jan to Matzerath.Although these two gentlemen have the same feelings for my mother, they have different personalities, but they hit it off and are very speculative. Although Matzerath bluntly said in a Rhine accent that Jan went to work in the Polish post office, this The idea is absurd.Jan danced with my mother, and Matzerath kept company with the big-boned, tall Hedwig.Her gaze was as elusive as a cow's. When people saw her, they always thought she was a pregnant woman.Everyone still dances warmly, you invite me, I invite him, one dance is not in full swing, the idea has already moved to the next one, the polka dance is ahead, the English waltz is behind, and finally the Charleston dance When he was full of self-confidence, when he danced the slow foxtrot, he felt an almost religious desire.In 1923, papering a bedroom was equivalent to buying a box of matches, almost costing nothing.In this year, Alfred Matzerath married my mother, one of the witnesses was Jan, and the other was the owner of a colonial merchandise store named Mirren.Not much can be written about that Mirren.He is worth mentioning only because my mother and Matzerath sold his colonial goods store at the same time as the real estate mortgage mark.The store, opened in the suburb of Longfurt, went bankrupt because of credit owed by customers.While running the cellar shop in Troyer, my mother learned a fine art of dealing with all kinds of customers on credit.In addition, she is a natural businessman, quick-witted, eloquent, and clever.Therefore, in a short period of time, she made this stagnant business flourish again.Even Matzerath resigned as an agent and came to the store to help, anyway, the paper market was oversupplied at the time. -------- ① Temporary currency issued from October 1923 to August 1924 to stabilize the value of the currency during the German inflation period after the First World War. The couple, learning from each other's strengths and complementing each other's weaknesses, is wonderful.My mother had a knack for sitting behind the counter and socializing with customers, Matzerath had a knack for dealing with retailers and wholesalers.In addition, Matzerath likes to wear the cook's apron, and loves to do kitchen work, including washing, which just relieves my mother's burden, because she has no cooking talent. The houses adjoining the shops were small and poorly built, but compared with the living conditions in Troyer (which I only knew from what I heard), they were petty bourgeois enough.So, at least for the first few years of our marriage, my mother must have been quite happy with her life on Rue Labes. Except for the long and winding aisle that is often stacked with packs of Portsil washing powder, there is a spacious kitchen, but more than half of the space is also piled with goods, such as cans, flour bags, oatmeal packets, etc.The living room was the best room on the ground floor, with two windows looking out onto the small garden and the avenue, which in summer were covered with Baltic shells.Wine red wallpaper, almost purple sofa cover, a dining table with four rounded corners that can be pulled apart, four black leather chairs, a small round table with ashtrays, which needs to be moved frequently, and a bed on the floor. with blue carpet.Between the two windows is a black and gold wall clock.Next to the purple sofa is a black piano, which was first rented, then slowly paid for, and bought. There is also a revolving piano bench covered with a piece of yellow-white long-haired animal skin.Opposite the piano is a sideboard.The black sideboard has polished glass sliding doors surrounded by black egg-shaped decorations, the lower door locks the cutlery and tablecloths, the door has a dark black fruit relief, the black cabinet legs are in the shape of claws, and the black carved cabinet top There are crystal bowls with fake fruit and a green trophy from a winning lottery.The gap between the two items was later filled by a light brown radio, thanks to my mother's business savvy and her knack for making money. The bedroom is yellow and overlooks the courtyard of the four-storey apartment.Please take my word for it, the canopy of the Heyi castle, that is, the wedding bed, is sky blue.A painting over the bed, framed in glass, bathed in sky blue light.It depicts a flesh-colored prostitute in penitence.She was lying in the cave, looking at the upper right corner of the painting and sighing repeatedly.There are so many fingers on her chest, people always think there are more than ten, so they can't help counting over and over again.Opposite the Xi bed is a white lacquered wardrobe with a mirrored door, a dressing table on the left of the wardrobe, a small marble-topped chest of drawers on the right, and a bedroom lamp suspended from the ceiling.It was not covered with satin like the one in the living room, but hung from two brass rods under a round rose-coloured porcelain shade.Two light bulbs protrude and shine brightly. Today, I played the drum all morning, asking questions of my drum and wondering if the light bulb in my bedroom was forty watts or sixty watts.It's not the first time I've asked this question to myself and my drums, because it means a lot to me.It often takes me hours to recall those two light bulbs.Because I have been in and out of many houses, and have turned on and off thousands of electric lights, I must first forget them all, and I must beat my drum without any pattern, passing through the lights of this uniform lighting body. Forest, to recall the two light bulbs in my bedroom on Labes Road. My mother gave birth at home.She was still in the store when the labor pains hit, filling the blue one-pound and half-pound sacks with sugar, and it was too late to take her to the maternity hospital.So an elderly midwife, who had seldom carried a suitcase in her profession, was brought in from Rue de Huerta.In my bedroom, she helped me out of my mother's womb. The light I first saw in this world was emitted by two sixty-watt bulbs.Therefore, the sentence in the "Bible" "Let there be light, and there was light" ①, to this day, I still think it is the most successful advertising phrase of Oslam Company.Labor went well until the normal perineum ruptured.I was effortlessly released from the head-down position, a normal position that benefits both mothers, fetuses, and midwives, so everyone agrees. -------- ① What God said when he created the heaven and the earth in the first chapter of "Bible·Old Testament·Genesis". I can go on to say this: I am one of those infants with superhuman hearing whose mental abilities have been fully developed in the womb and have only to be proven later.I only hear my own movements in the womb, and only pay attention to my own play in the amniotic fluid, without any external influence.So all my life I listened critically to my parents' instinctive opinions under a light bulb.My ears are very pointed.It was a pair of little drooping ears, sticky but endearing nonetheless.However, I heard every word they said, and these words expressed their first impressions, so they were of the utmost importance to me.My brain is small, but it is as sharp as my ears.I considered everything I had heard, and made up my mind what to do, and what to leave. "A boy," said Mr. Matzerath, who unfoundedly thought he was my father, "who will inherit the shop when he grows up. Now we finally understand what we have worked so hard for." Mom wasn't thinking about the store, but about her son's equipment: "Hey, I knew it was a kid, even though there were a few times when I talked about the possibility of a girl." In this way, I understood the logic of women prematurely, and then I heard her say: "When little Oscar turns three years old, buy him a tin drum." For a long time I weighed and compared the promises of my mother and my father, watching and listening to a moth that strayed into the house.This moth is medium-sized and hairy. It is chasing the two 60-watt light bulbs. It casts a shadow that is many times larger than its spread wings. It moves tremblingly, covering the room and Stayed indoors with furniture.What impresses me is not the flickering projection game, but the noise made by the conversation between the moth and the light bulb.The moth chattered endlessly, as if it was going to pour out everything it knew, as if it would never have time to talk to the light source again, as if this conversation between the moth and the light bulb was the moth’s last confession, And judging from the way the light bulb absolves its sins, it is not allowed to commit crimes and debauchery any more. Today Oscar can put it plain and simple, the moths are beating the drums.I've heard rabbits and foxes and dormouse drumming.Frogs can beat a drum to summon a storm.They say woodpeckers beat worms out of their holes by beating their drums.Men beat on plates, iron pots, timpani and snare drums.We say that the drum-magazine revolver beats like a drum, people get up, drum up, drum into the grave.This is what drummers and drummers do.There are also composers who wrote concertos for string orchestra and percussion.I even think of the long and short Homecoming, and mention Oskar's own drumming so far; all this is not unrelated to the beating ceremony performed by the moth at the time of my birth, which beats It was not a musical instrument, but two ordinary sixty-watt light bulbs.Perhaps among the Negroes of the darkest Africa, among the Negroes of America who have not yet forgotten Africa, there will be those who, with their gifted sense of rhythm, can likewise or similarly imitate my moths or African moths— — they are known to be bigger and fancier than Eastern European moths, drumming both prim and bohemian; but I will follow my Eastern European standards, so I will also respect the medium-sized moth that flew to me when I was born. The brown meal moth asks for advice and calls it Oscar's master. It was the beginning of September.The Sun is in Virgo.During the night, a late-summer storm approached from a distance, and the wind gusts caused the cage furniture to shift its position.Mercury makes me critical, Uranus makes me imaginative, Venus makes me believe in my little blessings, and Mars makes me believe in my aspirations and ambitions.With Libra rising in the house of fate, it determines that I am naturally sensitive and exaggerated.Neptune's entry into the tenth house—the house of middle-aged destiny—puts me somewhere between believing in miracles and being duped.Saturn in the third house opposed Jupiter, making my parentage a mystery.But who sent the moth, and who allowed it, together with the late-summer thunderstorm sound like a high school principal's thunderstorm, made me more and more interested in the tin drum promised by my mother, and made me more and more interested. The more anxious you want to get this musical instrument? Outwardly, I pretended to be a fresh-flesh baby, crying and screaming, but inwardly I made up my mind to reject my father's advice to let go of everything connected with the colonial goods store, and at the same time test my mother out of good intentions. When that day comes, that is, when it is my third birthday, will I fulfill her wish. In addition to all the above-mentioned speculations about my future, I learned that neither mother nor father Matzerath had the organ to understand what I opposed and what I approved, and thus respect my decisions as much as possible.Oskar lies under the light bulb, alone and incomprehensible.He figured things would go on like this until sixty or seventy years later, a once-for-all short circuit knocked out all the light sources.So he had already lost his enjoyment of this life before he began to live it under the light bulb; at that time, only the tin drum in the distance prevented me from expressing more strongly the return to the mother's womb head down. location desires. Plus, the midwife had already cut my umbilical cord; there was nothing left to do.