Chapter 12 window

For a long time, until November 1938, to be exact, I always took my drum, squatted under the podium, watched more or less successful parades, broke up rallies, and made Speakers stuttered and incoherent, turning marches and carols into waltzes and foxtrots. All this is a thing of the past.Although I have always been keen to relive old dreams, it is after all cold iron, and it is difficult to reforge.Today, I am a self-funded patient in a nursing home, and I can put into perspective the behavior of beating the drum under the podium back then.I never thought of myself as a resistance fighter, since I had disrupted half a dozen rallies and disrupted three or four parades.Today, the word "revolt" has become very fashionable.You can hear people talking about "rebel spirit" and "rebel groups" everywhere.People can even turn resistance into "internalization", euphemistically called "inner exile".Not to mention those decent gentlemen who can be listed in the Bible.During the war, due to their negligence, they forgot to close the bedroom windows with air-raid curtains. They were discovered by the air-raid duty officer and fined once.Let us review the Oscars under the podium again!Did Oscar ever prophesy to the people with the sound of drums?Did he ever heed the advice of his teacher Bebra, master the process of action himself, and let the people in front of the podium dance?Did he ever get so glib and sophisticated the District Dean of Students, Lebzak, out of his wits?Did he ever tap his red-and-white face, but not Tin drums made in Poland to break up meetings of those in brown uniforms?

-------- ①This is to satirize the phenomenon that some people who had supported or cooperated with the Nazi Party cleaned themselves up after the war. "Inner exile" was an excuse for a group of intellectuals who stayed in Germany after the Nazis came to power. ②In order to step up preparations for war, Nazi Germany called on residents to save money. I have done all of these, and you have to admit it.Could it be that I am now a patient in a sanatorium and nursing home, a resistance fighter?To this question, I answer no, and I ask you, who are not sanatorium and nursing home patients, to just see me as a slightly paranoid eccentric.For personal as well as aesthetic reasons, he took to heart the teachings of his teacher, Bebra, and rejected the color and cut of uniforms, and the beat and loudness of pop music on the podium, so that he was only a child's toy on the one hand. On the drum, there were some protesting sounds.

At that time, a mere tin drum could be used against the people above and in front of the podium, and besides, I must add, my stage skills were as perfect as my skills of singing broken glass at a distance.I'm not just beating the drum against a brown rally.When the Reds and the Blacks, the Boy Scouts and the YMCA in spinach shirts, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Keifheusers, the Vegetarians and the Polish youths of the Clean Air movement, Oskar squatted at their rallies Under the podium.What they should sing, what they should play, what they should pray for, what they should proclaim, my drum knows better.

-------- ①The Kiefer Heuser Regiment, a veterans' federation established in 1900, is a semi-military organization that supports the monarchy and belongs to the right wing.After the First World War, it merged with other veterans' organizations to form a large federation with a large number of members. Yes, my career is destructive.What I can't beat with drums, I kill with sound.So, in addition to destroying the symmetry of the podium during the day, I started my nocturnal activities: playing the seducer, during the winter between 1936 and 1937.I first learned how to seduce my own kind from my grandmother Koljacek.In the harsh winter of that year, she set up a fixed stall at the Longfur weekly market. In other words, she wore four skirts, squatted behind the stall, and groaned in a voice like a lament: "Fresh eggs, golden butter , goose, neither fat nor thin!" Every Thursday is the market day.She took a small narrow-gauge train from Fairacre, and when she was approaching Langfurt, she took off the felt boots she wore on the train, put on overshoes with no style, and got off the train. Fixed stalls to walk around.A small sign hung on the stall: "Anna Koljacek, Bissau."How cheap eggs were back then!A shield can buy fifteen or sixteen.Butter from Kashube is cheaper than margarine.My grandmother crouched between two fisherwomen who cried, "Fresh flounder!" ; the severe cold also makes a man work and money.His name was Schwertfeger, and he was one-eyed.He built a fire of charcoal, heated the bricks on the fire, wrapped them in newspapers, and rented them out to market women.

My grandmother made Schwertfeger push a hot brick with a rake every hour under four of her skirts, every second.As soon as she lifted her skirt, Schwertfeger stuffed a steaming paper brick into it, and with two movements, one unloaded and one loaded, and then his iron rake lifted the almost cooled brick from my grandmother's Dragging out from under the skirt. How jealous I am of paper-wrapped bricks that store and radiate heat!Today, I still hope that I will be put under my grandmother's skirt like a hot brick, and I will replace myself forever.You may ask: What is Oscar looking for under his grandmother's skirt?Was he going to behave like his grandfather, Koljacek, with the old woman?Was he looking for oblivion, homeland, and the ultimate nirvana?

Oscar replied: I will go under my skirts to find Africa, and if possible, Naples; if you don't visit here, you will waste your life, everyone says so.Here is the Divide, the confluence of the rivers; here the wind is peculiar, or there is no wind at all; here the rain drizzles, but you sit in the rain without your clothes getting wet; here the ships are tied and anchored; here, Loving God sits beside Oscar, who always loves warmth; here, the devil is cleaning his telescope, and the cherubs are playing hide-and-seek; under my grandmother's four skirts, it's always summer, whether it's when the Christmas tree is lit, or Oscar When looking for Easter eggs or worshiping Halloween①.Beneath my grandmother's four skirts, I could live my days in peace according to the calendar like nowhere else.

-------- ①Christmas (Jesus' birthday) is December 25th, Easter is on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox and full moon every year, and Halloween refers to Halloween (November 1st).Here three Christian festivals are used to represent the three seasons of winter, spring and autumn. She seldom let me get under her skirts, never at all at the Sunday fair.I squatted on the small wooden box beside her, and she put her arms around me to keep me warm.I watched hot bricks come in and cool ones dragged away, and learned the art of seduction from my grandmother.She tied Vinzent Bronski's old purse to a string and dropped it on the trampled snow of the sidewalk.The bait was so dirty that only my grandmother and I could see the string.

Housewives come and go, and although everything is cheap, they don't want to buy anything, perhaps for free, or for some extra money.A lady, with this in mind, stooped to pick up Vinzent's purse thrown on the ground, and as soon as her fingers touched it, my grandmother took the bait together with this well-dressed, somewhat awkward-looking lady. Come up, lure the live fish to the side of the box, and say to her very politely: "Oh, madam, buy some butter, golden, or some eggs, fifteen or sixteen a shield, will you?" Anna Koljacek sold her property in this way.I, for my part, learned this art of seduction, but not the one the fourteen-year-old boy in our building tricked Suzie Carter into playing doctor and patient in the cellar.That kind of thing doesn't tempt me, I hide when I see it, because once, the naughty boys in our apartment, Axel Mischke and Nushi Aik, were blood donors, and Suzy Carter was the lady doctor, and they They dragged me into being a patient and forced me to take medicine. Although this medicine was not full of sand like the brick soup last time, what remained in my mouth was the stench of rotten fish.My seduction technique is almost non-physical, and I keep a certain distance from the deceived.

Night had already fallen, and the shops had been closed for an hour or two.I slipped away from Mama and Matzerath and stood in the midwinter night.The street is quiet, almost no pedestrians.From the recessed recess in the draft wall of the doorway, I looked across the street at the windows of shops—delicatessen, haberdashers, shoe stores, watch shops, jewelry stores—displays both mouth-watering and easy to pick up.Not all windows are lit.I would even rather have the display in the semi-darkness of the street lamps at the front of the shop, for the light attracts all, even the most ordinary, but the semi-darkness keeps the extraordinary there. .

I am not interested in passers-by who either glance at the assortment of shop windows (at the price tags rather than at the merchandise) or use the windows as mirrors to see whether their hats are correct.In dry and cold weather without wind, in the silently falling goose feather snow, or under the bright moon that grows thicker and rounder, I am waiting for those customers who seem to be called to stand in front of the window. Browsing aimlessly, but staring at a certain exhibit after a few glances or as soon as it comes up. My plan is a hunter's hunting plan.It takes patience, ruthlessness, and a dependably keen eye.With these prerequisites, my voice can play a role, killing beasts and seducing others in a painless and bloodless way.What are you doing to seduce others?theft.With a silent cry I cut a circular opening in the window just where the lowest display was, facing as much as possible the object that others were staring at, and with a raised tail I cut the circular opening. The glass crashed into the window, making a sound that quickly disappeared.It wasn't the sound of glass breaking, even Oscar couldn't hear it because he was far away.But the young woman heard it. She was wearing a brown winter coat with a rabbit fur collar that must have been turned inside out once.She was so startled that even the rabbit fur on her collar trembled.She wanted to leave, but stood still, maybe because it was snowing, maybe because there were no taboos when it was snowing, and of course this had to be in the case of heavy snow.However, she still looked around, distrusting the flying snowflakes, as if behind the snowflakes was not snowflakes but something else.She turned her head and looked around, but her right hand had already slipped out of the rabbit fur muff!She no longer looked back, but put her hand into the round hole, first pushed aside the glass that had fallen and pressed on the things she coveted, and then pushed the pair of light black high heels out of the window one by one. She took it out of the round hole without damaging her heel, and her hand was not cut by the sharp cut.The shoes went into the coat pocket, one on the left and one on the right.Oskar saw her beautiful, but expressionless profile for only a split second, the time it took for five snowflakes to fall, and the thought flashed through her mind that this might be a fashion model for Sternfeld's store, and she wondered inconceivably. Gone, lost in the dense blizzard, and reappeared in the dim yellow light of the next street lamp.Afterwards, whether she was a newlywed young woman or a fashion model liberated from the window, she stepped out of the cone-shaped beam of light and drifted away.

It's all done—watching, spying, banning drums, singing, and cutting ice-hard glass—it was hard work—and I returned home with a heart that was half hot and half cold like the thief. , just no swag. My seduction spells have not always been 100% successful like the ones above.One of my goals is to turn a couple into a pair of thieves, but it keeps failing.Either neither of them will do it, or the woman pulls his hand back as soon as the man stretches out his hand, or the woman is full of courage, but the man kneels down and begs until the woman obeys. , but despised him ever since.I once seduced a particularly young couple in front of a cosmetics store on a snowy day.The man acted as a hero and snatched a bottle of cologne.The woman cried and said that she didn't want any perfume.The man asked her to smell her fragrance, insist on her own opinion, and walked to the first street light.But the girl seemed to be trying to annoy me, and she stood on tiptoe in the light and kissed him affectionately until he ran back in his own tracks and returned the cologne to the window. I have sometimes had a similar case with older gentlemen.I expected more from them than brisk walks on winter nights.They stood intently in front of the windows of the cigar shop, but their minds were on Havana, Brazil, and Brissago Island.And when my voice was cut according to a certain size, and the cut glass fell on the small box of "Black Wisdom", the hearts of those gentlemen also jumped, and they snapped shut like a jackknife. superior.They turned, waved their canes, crossed the road, and hurried past me and my gate without seeing me.Oscar couldn't help laughing to himself when he saw these old gentlemen's faces were pale and panicked, as if they had bumped into a devil.There is a slight worry in this smile, because these gentlemen are not only old smokers of cigars, but also have reached the end of their lives. They sweat cold and hot, especially in the changing weather, they are very likely to catch a cold danger. -------- ① These three places are famous for producing cigars. That winter, most of the shops in our suburbs that had been insured against theft suffered considerable losses, and the insurance company had to pay compensation.Although I have never caused a large-scale theft, and I have consciously limited the size when cutting the windows, allowing others to take only one or two displays, these cases of so-called broken doors and windows have accumulated and increased in number over time. , which made the criminal police restless, and was scolded by the press as a rice bucket.Between November 1936 and March 1937, during the period when Colonel Kok formed a National Front government in Warsaw, sixty-sixty of these attempted burglaries Four cases, twenty-eight of which have become facts.Of course, some of these middle-aged women, young overdressed shop assistants, maids, and pensioned school teachers did not intend to be thieves, and the criminal police soon solved the case and confiscated their stolen goods; Some amateur thieves, after getting what they dreamed of, can't sleep all night, thinking about it, and then go to the police station the next day and say, "Oh, please forgive me. I promise I won't do it again. .Last night I was standing in front of the window when suddenly a hole appeared in the glass. I finally calmed down halfway, but there were three crossroads away from the window. Only then did I realize that I put on an excellent, not to mention Unaffordable and certainly expensive men's tan leather gloves were stuffed illegally in the left coat pocket." The police department does not believe in miracles.Therefore, all the people, whether they were caught or surrendered themselves, were all sent to jail, and their sentences ranged from four weeks to two months. I myself was sometimes locked up at home, because my mother naturally guessed that my harder-than-glass voice had something to do with the crime, although she kept it quiet and was wise enough not to confess it to the police. Matzerath, on the other hand, pretended to be law-abiding, put on a serious face, and wanted to interrogate me.I refused to admit it at all, and used my tin drum as a talisman and my eternal three-year-old stature as a shield with increasing skill.Whenever Matzerath finished his interrogation, his mother would always yell like this: "It's the little guy's fault, that's him. He kissed Oscar's forehead. I had a hunch at the time that this was not a good thing, because Oscar used to Not at all." I admit that I have been influenced by Mr. Bebra, although the influence is not great, but it lasts for a long time.Even home confinement can't control me, I always have a few good opportunities to sneak out for an hour without anyone questioning me.Then I used my singing to cut a notorious round hole in the window of the sewing supply store, so that a promising young man who took a fancy to something displayed in the window got a silk purple tie.If you ask me, I cut a hand-sized round hole in a polished window, the temptation is already quite strong, is there any evil around me to increase this temptation?Oscar's answer was: yes, evil.The mere fact that I stand at the gate of the black hole proves that I am swayed by evil.Because we all know that the doorway is the place where the evil loves to stay.On the other hand, I also don't want to minimize the sinister nature of this seduction technique.So today, when I have neither the opportunity to seduce nor the inclination to do so, I must say to myself and to my caregiver, Bruno: Oscar, you not only satisfy all you keep silent but love yourself deeply. The small and medium wishes of those winter pedestrians of the object, but also make the people standing in front of the window know themselves.Some respectable, smartly dressed ladies, some well-behaved old gentlemen, some old ladies who are religious to keep their youth, would never have known themselves had they not been tempted to steal by your voice. You still have the instincts of a thief, not to mention the transformation of those gentlemen who, before being tempted by you, regard even a petty pickpocket as a dangerous guy who deserves to die. There was a man whom I ambush to spy on every night. He also refused to steal three times, but finally did it and became a thief who has never been discovered by the police.That man was Dr. Erwin Scholtis, the prosecutor, the most feared prosecutor in the state superior court.He has become a gentle, tolerant, almost humane judicial officer in sentencing, because he has dedicated himself to me, the little demigod of thieves, and snatched a real-haired shaving brush. Once in January 1937, I stood in the cold for a long time opposite a jewelry store.This shop opened on a forest avenue on the outskirts of the city - the plants usually planted with mechanical trees.Despite the remote location, the sign is loud.There are so many seductive objects in the jewelry and watch windows, and if they stand in front of the displays of other shops, such as women's stockings, rabbit fur hats, liqueurs, etc., I will sooner. I cast my spell without hesitation. This is the impact jewelry has on people.When a person sees jewelry, his temper slows down and he becomes picky, like looking at a pearl necklace, and he can turn around to look at it endlessly.I also stopped counting minutes and seconds by "year of the pearl" because I considered that pearls last longer than necks, that it is not bracelets but wrists that rot, and that rings are not fingers but dug up in graves; in a word , I am also choosing slowly, thinking that the person who looks at the window is too rich and old, so he is not worthy of wearing jewelry, and I think that the person is too petty. The jeweler Banzemer's window display is not much.A few selected watches, Swiss quality, several wedding rings of the same design on sky-blue velvet, in the center of the window, six, to be exact, seven selected exhibits: one coiled three times The serpent is made of different colors of gold, and the finely carved snake head is set with a topaz, two diamonds, and two sapphires for eyes, so it is extraordinarily valuable.I don't like black velvet, but it fits perfectly under this snake from Jeweler Banzemer.Similarly, Murakami's gray velvet beneath the silver objects, which are charming in their simplicity and eye-catching in their symmetry, will produce a sense of tranquility that whets the viewer's appetite.A ring, set with a gem so lovely that it is known at a glance that this ring will wear out the fingers of equally lovely women, while it itself becomes more and more lovely until it reaches immortality, Immortality is exclusive to jewels.A small necklace that will suffer for anyone who wears it.A necklace that wears down the neck of anyone who wears it.There was also a lightweight necklace hung from a buff velvet cushion that roughly mimicked the skin tone at the base of the neck.A finely woven web, weaved and torn, torn and woven.What kind of spider is this, that secretes golden threads to house six small and one larger ruby?Where do spiders lurk?What is it waiting for?It's not waiting for more rubies, of course, but for someone whose eye is caught by rubies that seem to congeal into grains of blood in a web—in other words, the necklace does what I mean, or According to the meaning of the golden spider, who should it be given to? On January 18, 1937, on the crunching snow, on a night that smelled of more snow, on a night where one could hope to push everything to the snow In the dark night when I was in charge, I saw Jan Bronski crossing the road on the right side of my ambush, walked past the jewelry store without looking up, then hesitated, no, it was better to say that he stopped at someone's call down.He turned around, or rather, he was turned around by some force.Just like that, Yang stood among several snow-covered, silent trees in front of the window. This handsome, always a little moaning, obedient at work, full of energy in love, half-fool, half-obsessed with beauty Jan Bronski, who lives on my mother's body and uses Matzerath's Jan, who gave birth to me in name (I still half-believe it), at this very moment, in a fashionable winter coat, probably made by some Warsaw tailor, stands in front of the window, motionless, like a stone statue .His eyes were fixed on the rubies in the gold necklace, like Parsdale standing in the snow, staring at the blood on the snow. -------- ①Parsival, the legendary hero of Brittany.This refers to the protagonist in Wagner's opera "Parceval". I could have called him away, or drummed him away.I carry a tin drum.It's in my coat.I only need to undo a button, and it can leap out into the cold night.All I have to do is reach into my coat pocket and get the sticks.Didn't the hunter Hubertus, seeing a very curious deer within his range, shoot his arrow?Saul was converted to become Paul.Pope Leo held out his ring finger, and when Attila saw it, he turned his horse and withdrew his troops.But I still shoot arrows as usual, I don’t change my beliefs, I don’t withdraw my troops, I’m still a hunter.Oscar wants to achieve his goal, not to unbutton his coat, not to let the tin drum dance into the cold night, not to beat the winter-like white iron with a drum stick, not to let the January night become a drummer's night, but to ring silently A cry, perhaps like a star, or like a fish in the bottom of the sea, first breaks the structure of the cold night, causing it to finally shed fresh snow, and then transmits the sound to the glass, to the thick glass, On the precious glass, on the cheap glass, on the transparent glass, on the glass that divides the world into two, on the glass of the Virgin, on the mystical glass, on the window glass between Jan Bronski and the ruby ​​necklace, cut open A hole, just the size of the Jan's glove I was familiar with, allowed the cut glass to fall like a trap door, both a gate to heaven and a gate to hell.At this time, Jan did not shrink back, but stretched out his hand wearing a tanned leather glove from the pocket of his coat, and reached into heaven. The glove left hell, and took a necklace from heaven or hell. Rubies make all angels smile, including the deceased.He put his hands holding the rubies and gold back into his pockets, but he still stood before the open window, though it was dangerous to stand there, even though there were no bloody rubies to demand his or Parcival's. His eyes were fixed on that direction. -------- ①Hubertus, bishop of Liege, protector of hunters.According to legend, during a hunt, he saw a golden cross between the horns of a deer and repented of his hunting. ②Paul, named Saul in Hebrew, originally opposed Jesus Christ, and later became his disciple, called the apostle Paul.Here is the meaning of changing evil and doing good. ③ Attila (approximately 406-453), king of the Huns, attacked Italy in 452, and Pope Leo I (reigned 440-461) signed a peace treaty with him.The text described is a legend. Father, Son, Holy Spirit!It's time for the Holy Spirit to show his powers, otherwise the Holy Father, Jan, will suffer.The holy son, Oscar, unbuttoned his coat, quickly took out his drumsticks, and knocked on the iron sheet: Father, father!Until Jan Bronski turned around and crossed the road very slowly—oh, so slowly, he found me at the door, Oskar. When I was still in a daze but was about to wake up and looked up at me, the sky began to snow again. What a beautiful moment!He stretched out a hand, but did not wear the glove that had touched the ruby, and helped me go home silently but not in a sad mood.At home, my mother was worried about me, and Matzerath was still the same, stern, and threatened me to call the police, but he was not serious.Jan didn't explain, didn't stay long, and even though Matzerath had put the beer on the table and asked him to play schkatter, he took his leave.Before he left, he stroked Oscar's head, and I was puzzled. Did Jan want me to keep the secret, or did he want my friendship? Jan Bronski gave the necklace to my mom shortly thereafter.She must have known the history of the piece, so she only wore it to admire it when Matzerath was away, or for Jan Bronski, or for me. Shortly after the war, I exchanged this necklace for twelve American cigarettes of the "Lucky" brand and a briefcase on the black market in Düsseldorf. -------- ① refers to the Second World War.