Chapter 22 he lay in saspe

I just read the last paragraph again.Although I am not satisfied, this is more like a text from Oscar's pen.In order to write concisely, his pen sometimes exaggerates, if not lies, according to the requirements of deliberately concise articles. However, I want to stick to authenticity and give Oscar's pen a surprise, so I'll add two points here.For one thing, Young's last hand, the one he regrettably failed to finish and could win, was not a blank, but a diamond short of two aces.Second, when Oskar left the mail room, he took not only the new drum, but the cracked old drum as well.It was dumped from the basket with the dead man without the straps and the letters.Also, one more thing to add.At that time, the militiamen kept shouting: "Come out!" With flashlights on and submachine guns under pressure, Yang and I had no choice but to walk out of the letter storage room.As soon as we went out, Oscar stood between two militiamen for protection.He felt that these two were kind-hearted like his cousins, and pretended to weep, pointing at Jan, his father, and complaining with gestures, comparing the poor man to a vicious man, who was he, Drag an innocent child into the Polish post office, use the child as a bulletproof shield in the inhumane way of the Poles.

Oscar was counting on playing Judas to keep his good and bad drums, and he got his wish.The militiamen kicked Yang in the back and beat him with the butt of his gun, but let me hold two drums.A middle-aged militiaman, with wrinkles around his nose and mouth from the worries of the head of the family, stroked my face.Another guy with blond hair, he kept laughing and squinting his eyes so people couldn't see the color of his eyes.He picked me up, much to my discomfort and embarrassment. -------- ①It is written here that Oscar, like the thumb in the fairy tale, often partners with the enemy, and even plays the role of Judas who betrayed Jesus.

Today, I am ashamed of this indecent gesture from time to time, so I always say: Jan didn't realize it then, his heart was still on the cards, and it was the same later, no matter what tricks the militiamen came up with, teasing, cruel No matter how you treat him, you can't draw him away from the Shikat card.While Jan had entered the eternal kingdom of houses of cards, and lived happily in such a castle in the air, we, the militia and I—for Oskar was among the militia—were standing between the brick walls, On the flagstone floor of the portico, under the ceiling with plaster frieze.The ceiling gnawed at the outer walls and partitions, and yet it is terrifying to think of the worst events that happened in those days, for all this patchwork of what we call architecture, in one way or another In this case, their cohesion will be lost.

Of course, this kind of view above is only in the future, and it does not excuse my guilt.This is not least because the belief in the house of cards as the only dwelling worthy of human dignity was not foreign to me at the time—today, when I see scaffolding, I associate it with demolition.In addition, there is another factor, that is, he is afraid that he will be implicated because he is Yang's relative.That afternoon, I was convinced that Jan was not just my cousin, my imaginary father, but my real father.This put Jan in the lead and forever distinguished him from Matzerath, who was either my father or nothing.

On September 1, 1939—and I assume the reader has admitted on that unfortunate afternoon that the unfortunate card-playing Jan Bronski was my father—on that day I committed my first crime. Two great sins. As much as I regret for the rest of my life, I cannot deny that my drums, no, myself, Oskar the drummer, first buried my poor mother and then Jan Bronski - my uncle and father - to the grave . However, in those days, a sense of guilt lingered in my heart, and I couldn't get rid of it.It unceremoniously forced me to bury my head in the pillow of a hospital bed, and I, like everyone, excused my ignorance.Ignorance was fashionable in those days, and it still wears on some people's heads like a fashionable little hat to this day.Oskar, a cunning ignorant, an innocent victim of Polish atrocities, was admitted to the municipal hospital with a high fever and nervous inflammation.They informed Matzerath.That night he had reported me missing to the police, though it was never decided whether I was his property or not.

The thirty, plus Jan Bronski, with their arms raised and hands on the back of their necks, were taken, after the newsreel, to the evacuated Viktoria school and then to Sisstein Gale Prison, finally, at the beginning of October, handed them over to the soft sand behind the walls of the old abandoned Saspe cemetery. Where did Oscar know about it?I got it from Sugar Leo.Naturally, the authorities will not announce where on the sandy soil, under which wall, these thirty-one men were shot, and how they were buried in what kind of sandy soil. Hedwig Bronski had first received a notice ordering her to move out of the Ring Road apartment to the family of a senior Air Force officer.With Stefan's help, she packed her boxes and was ready to move to Ramkau, where she had several hectares of land and forest, and her tenants' houses were also hers.At this moment, the authorities sent another official document to the widow.Her eyes reflected the pain of the world, but could not comprehend it.With the help of her son Stefan, she slowly figured out the meaning of the black and white words on the white paper.

The notification is as follows: Office of the Court Martial, Eberhart St. L. Group 41/39 Mrs. Hedwig Bronski: Bronski, Jan, court-martialed for participating in guerrilla activities Sentenced to death and has been executed, you are hereby notified. Chief of Military Law Zelevski Sopot, October 6, 1939 As the reader will see, Saspe is not mentioned in the notice.They sympathized with their families and exempted them from the cost of repairing the tomb.It was a joint burial tomb, the tomb was huge, and countless flowers needed to be dropped.Burial costs, and perhaps even transportation, were covered by the authorities themselves.They leveled the sandy ground at Saspe and picked up the bullet casings—except for one, which remained in the field—because a litter of bullet casings would spoil the appearance of a decent cemetery, even though it had long since Obsolete.

However, this bullet casing that has always been there and has a lot to do with us was found by Sugar Leo.No matter what kind of funeral, even if it is strictly kept secret, it cannot be hidden from him.This man knew me when I buried my poor mother, my scarred friend Herbert Truczynski.He must also know where they buried Sigismund Markus, but I never asked him.At the end of November, just after I was released from the hospital, he met me.He was delighted, almost to the point of ecstasy, at being able to hand me the telltale bullet casing. Before I take that bullet casing (whose lead may have been put on by Jan), follow Sugar Leo, and lead you, readers, to Saspe Cemetery, I have to first Please compare the metal beds in the pediatric ward of the Danzig Municipal Hospital with the metal beds in the convalescent and nursing home here.Both beds are painted in white enamel, however there are still differences.If you use a folding ruler to measure, the beds in the pediatric ward are relatively short, but the bed rails are relatively high.Although I would rather sleep in the short and high cage of 1939, I still achieve a state of inaction in this bed for adults today.For months I had been asking for a metal bed with higher rails and the same white enamel paint, but I left it to the nursing home leadership to decide whether to agree or not.

Today, there are almost no barriers between me and my clients.However, when I was in the pediatric ward, on visiting days, the towering fence separated me from Matzerath, the visitor, and Greve and the Scheffler couple.By the time I was almost out of the hospital, my bed rail was still dividing into several pieces the moving, four-skirted mountain named after my grandmother Anna Koljacek.She came, anxious, sighing, breathing hard, now and then raising her large, wrinkled hands, spreading the pink chapped palms, then timidly lowering her palms, dropping them, and slapping herself on the thigh.This sound still echoes in my ears today, but I can only imitate a rough idea on the drum.

On her first visit she brought her brother Vincent Bronski along.Vinzent clutched the bed rail and sang, sang, and sang endlessly about the Queen of Poland, the Virgin Mary, in a small but aggressive voice.Oscar really wanted a nurse to stay with the two old men.Because the two of them accused me, fixed me with Bronski's piercing eyes, and in spite of the headache and fever I was suffering from skat at the Polish post office, expected me to make a statement, to say a word of comfort to them, to tell They, Jan had spent the last hours playing skat and being timid.They wanted me to testify that Young was innocent, as if I could exonerate Young, as if my testimony would have weight and convincing power.

How should I write such a report to the court-martial of the Eberhardt Group?I, Oskar Matzerath, confessed that I had watched Jan Bronski on his way home on the eve of September 1st, luring him to that Polish post office with a drum in desperate need of repair, Jan Bronski Lai has left that post office because he doesn't want to guard it. Oscar did not write such testimony to exonerate his supposed father.When he decided to tell the two old men what had happened, he began to convulse, so that the head nurse had to shorten the visit and forbade his grandmother Anna and his imaginary grandfather Vincent to come to the hospital again. These two old men - they walked here from Bissau and brought me apples - left the pediatric ward.They are country folks, walking cautiously and bewildered.My grandmother's fluttering four skirts and her brother's cow-dung-smelling Sunday suit grew farther and farther away, and my guilt, my great guilt, grew bigger and bigger. So many things happening all at once.When Matzerath, the Greffs, and the Schefflers flocked to my bed with fruit and snacks, when my grandmother and her brother Vinzent were not connected because the railway from Katterhaus to Langfurt was still unavailable, I walked from Bissau via Goldkrug and Brentau to me, when the nurses, dressed in sensory-numbing whites and babbling hospital gossip, took the place of the angels in the pediatric ward At that time, Poland had not been lost, but it will soon be lost.In the end, after the world-famous eighteen days, Poland was lost, although it soon proved that Poland was not lost; the same is true today, against the wishes of her Silesian and East Prussian compatriots. -------- ①This is what Hitler said during his speech in Danzig. On September 17, 1939, the Polish government and military department withdrew to Romania, and the Polish army resisted until October. Ah, you mad cavalry! —Plucking the purple and black berries of the black rice tree on horseback.Holding a long gun decorated with red and white flags.Melancholic cavalry squadron, a long-traditional cavalry squadron.Offense in the picture book.Cross the battlefield near Rhodes and Kutno.Replaces Magdalen in Stronghold.Ah, riding a horse gallops, what a superb riding skill!Been waiting for sunset.When both the foreground and the background can be painted, the cavalry begins to attack ①—because the battle can be painted, and the god of death is a model for the painter—keep balancing while galloping, and then fall down, stealing the purple and black of the black rice tree The berries, the rose hips, crackle and burst to tickle the cavalry, who would never have jumped otherwise.Gun chair soldiers, they are itching again, horses and men rolling in haystacks - this is another picture - they gather behind a man, in Spain, his name is Don Quixote, in Poland , his name is Pankihot, a pure-blooded Pole, a pathetic figure of nobility, who once taught the Lancers how to kiss a woman's hand on horseback, so now they are kissing the hand of Death again and again in a dignified manner, as if Death were Your Madam.However, before that, they must first gather, with the sunset in the background - because the romantic mood is their backing - in front of the German tanks, Krupp von Bollen and Halbach ② The horses in the horse farm A stallion, a thoroughbred horse like no other in the world.However, that half-Spanish, half-Polish knight who mistook Death for a noble lady, the genius Pankihot, is really too much of a genius!The spear with a small flag in his hand fell to the ground, white and red.He called his men to kiss the lady's hand.Standing on the roof, white and red, sunset, cherries spit out pits, white and red, Pankihot called to the cavalry: "Noble Poles on horseback, that's not a steel armored tank, that's just a wind mill, or It's a flock of sheep, I invite you to kiss the back of your lady's hand!" -------- ① Refers to an attack by Polish cavalry on German tanks stopped due to lack of gasoline. ②Berno Krupp, the third-generation heir of the Krupp factory, married Gustav von Bohlen and Halbach, the former Pope’s legation counselor, who was renamed Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Halbach. So, the cavalry squadron rushed to the flanks of the soil-gray steel armored tanks, adding more reddish brilliance to the sunset.Oscar hopes readers will forgive him for the poetic effect he employs in describing the battle.Perhaps a more correct approach would be to enumerate Polish cavalry casualties for a baba but convincing statistic commemorating the so-called Polish campaign.Another way is to keep the poetry, but add a footnote. Until around September 20th, when I was lying in the hospital bed, I could still hear the roar of the cannons erected on the highlands of the Yeshken Valley Forest and the Oliwa Forest.Then, the Hella Peninsula, the last stronghold of resistance, surrendered.So Danzig, the free city of the Hanseatic League, can celebrate the incorporation of its Gothic brick buildings into the Greater German Reich and cheer at the sight of the man standing tirelessly in his black Mercedes, barely The blue eyes of the constantly saluting Führer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler have one thing in common with Jan Bronski's: success in women. -------- ① Hitler went to Danzig on September 19, 1939 and gave a speech. In mid-October, Oscar was released from the municipal hospital.I am so attached to the nurses.When a nurse (her name was either Berni or Erni, I think), when Erni or nurse Berni handed me my two drums, one broken, it made me guilty, the other The perfect drum, which I had during the defense of the Polish post office, when I realized that I had been leaving the tin drum behind me for weeks, so that in this world nothing but the tin drum , for me, there is one more thing: nurses! I left the municipal hospital with my instrument and with my newfound knowledge in my arms.Since my three-year-old was still a little unsteady on his feet, Matzerath took my hand and went back to Labeserasse.Here came the daily routine of the first year of the war, the boredom of the weekdays and the even more boring Sundays. On a Tuesday in late November—the first time I hit the streets after weeks of convalescence—Oscar beat his drum morosely, despite the cold and wet weather, on the corner of Max Halbeplatz and Bressenstrasse. To former seminary student Sugar Leo. We stood face to face for a while, smiling awkwardly, and when Leo took out soft sheepskin gloves from his eye pocket and put the yellowish-white, skinlike covering over his fingers and palm, I It was only then that I realized who I had met, and realized what this meeting would bring me—Oscar was so frightened that his heart pounded. We also looked at the windows of the Kaiser Café and Food Store, watched several trams No. 5 and No. 9 crossing on Max Halbe Square, and then walked around the houses of the same style along Bresenstrasse. I walked around an advertisement post on the street for a few times, carefully read the notice announcing the replacement of Danzig shields with Reichsmarks, scratched a Bezier washing powder advertisement with my fingernails, and saw a little red under the blue and white, which Satisfy our hearts.Just as he was about to return to the plaza, Sugar Leo pushed Oscar into a doorway with his gloved hands, grabbed behind him with his gloved left hand, then reached under the hem of his gown, into his trouser pocket, and took out a , found something, fumbled for what he found in his pocket, and decided it was what he was looking for, so he held it in his hand, stretched his hand out of his pocket, let his back swing drop, and slowly extended his gloved fist forward, a Stretching forward, he pushed Oscar against the wall of the doorway, his arms were really long, but the wall wouldn't budge - before he spread his gloved hand, I almost thought his arm would fall from his shoulder Knuckles popped out, punched itself toward my chest, pierced it, passed between my collarbones, and burrowed into the wall of the musty doorway, and Oscar would never see Leo in his hands What is pinched, I just remember the house rules on Bressen Road on the wall, which are similar to the house rules on Labes Road. Leo's hand was about to touch my sailor coat, and when it touched an anchor button on the coat, he spread his hand quickly.All I heard was the crackling of his knuckles, and suddenly I saw a bullet casing on the musty, shiny glove protecting his hand. When Leo clenched his fist again, I was determined to go with him.This little piece of metal spoke directly to me.We walked side by side along Bresenstrasse, Oskar was on the left of Leo, neither shop windows nor advertising pillars could stop us, we crossed Magdeburgstrasse, and at the end of Bresenstrasse two tall box-shaped buildings fell. behind us.On both buildings, warning lights were illuminated at night to indicate aircraft taking off and landing.We first walked hard on the edge of the airport surrounded by barbed wire, and finally got on the relatively dry asphalt road, and followed the No. 9 tram track leading to Bresen. We didn't speak a word, but Leo kept the bullet casings in his glove.Because the weather was wet and cold, when I hesitated to stop and go back, he spread his hand again, letting the piece of metal dance in the palm of his hand, luring me to take a hundred steps forward.Approaching the municipal estate Saspe, when I really made up my mind to turn around and walk back, he even turned to music to keep me back.He hit the heel, turned around, put the empty end of the cartridge case up, and pressed it like the side of a flute to his protruding, salivating lower lip, and blew a shrill note through the rain that was beginning to fall. , sometimes trembling, sometimes like a sound suppressed by dense fog.Oskar was shivering, not only from the music blowing from the bullet casings, but also from the bad weather - which seemed prearranged and made worse by the particular occasion - so I didn't want to Take the effort to hide your embarrassment from the cold. What lured me to Bresen?Yes, it was Leo the Ratcatcher, Leo blowing the bullet casings.But that was not the only sound that reached my ears.From the anchorages, from the new shipping lanes under the November mist, came the steamer's whistle and a torpedo that came to us via Scotland, Shermere, and the Empire, now entering or leaving port The speedboat howled like a wolf.Therefore, Leo easily dragged the frozen Oscar along with him with the help of the fog signal, the siren and the squeal from the bullet casings. A barbed wire fence turning in the direction of Peranken separated the airfield from the new training ground and the Qingergou.Right there on the high ground, Sugar Leo stopped, tilted his head, drooling, and looked at my trembling body for a long time.He sucked the bullet casing and pressed it with his lower lip, as if he had an idea, he stretched out his arm suddenly, took off the barbecue-colored tuxedo, and put this heavy clothes that smelled of wet earth on my head and shoulders. We're on the road again.I don't know if Oscar isn't shivering so much.Sometimes Leo jumped five paces and then stopped.He wore a very white shirt full of pleats, like a man who would risk his escape by jumping from a medieval keep or tower, and the sparkling white shirt on him should prescribe the fashion of the mentally ill.Whenever Leo's eyes caught Oscar, who was staggering along in a barbecue-colored dress, he would burst into a maniacal laugh and stop the laughter by flapping his wings like a croaking crow.In fact, I must have looked like a ridiculous bird myself, less like a raven than a crow.Also, the hem of the jacket trailed behind me like a skirt sweeping asphalt.I left a wide trail like His Majesty, and Oscar looked back for a second, feeling proud.This wake, if not symbolic, hinted at the tragic fate of the half-sleeping, not yet full-term labor in him. Still on the Max Halberplatz, I already had a hunch that Leo didn't want to take me to Bresen or the Neue Fürne.I knew very well from the beginning that our walking destinations could only be the Saspe Cemetery and Qingergou, because next to it was a modern shooting range for the security police. From the end of September to the end of April, the tram along the beach runs every 35 minutes.As we passed the last row of houses on the outskirts of Longfur, a tram without a trailer came oncoming.Then another tram, which was waiting for an oncoming train to arrive at a fork in the streets of Magdeburg, passed us.There is also a turnout near Saspe Cemetery.As we approached the cemetery, a tram drove us from behind, and then another trolley came oncoming.We've seen it waiting in the fog early on, with a wet yellow light in front of it because we can't see the road. While the apparently sad face of the driver in the oncoming car was still reflected in Oscar's eyes, Sugar Leo had already dragged Oscar from the asphalt road to the soft sandy soil, which made people feel ashamed when they stepped on it. Guess it's the sand on the beach.The cemetery is square and surrounded by a wall.There is a small door facing south. There are many rusty cursive characters on the door, which seem to be locked but not locked, so we pushed the door and entered.The tombstones are hewn from Swedish black granite or adiosite, with polished fronts and rough backs and sides.It's a pity that Leo didn't give me time to watch it carefully.There are very few trees in the cemetery, only half a dozen decayed, crooked beach pines.Mama had said on the tram when she was alive that no other quiet place was as good as this little deserted place.Now she lies in Brentau.The land there is richer than here, with elms and mecha trees growing. In this romantic barren mound, I have a lot of thoughts.Before I could tidy up, Leo led me out of the cemetery through an open, unbarred gate in the north wall.We stood on the flat sand beyond the wall.A field of gorse, dwarf pine, and briar bushes stretched toward the shore in the steaming mist.When I looked back at the cemetery, I saw at a glance that a section of the north wall had been freshly plastered. Leo was busy in front of this white gray wall that looked new and was as dazzling as his crumpled shirt.He strode hard, as if he was measuring his feet.He counted aloud, and Oscar still remembers that he said it in Latin today.He also sang scriptures, no doubt learned in seminary classes.About ten meters from the wall, Leo plugged a log, and then plugged another log not far in front of the newly painted, and I remember even the plaster, freshly filled wall.He did all this with his left hand, as his right still held the cartridge case.He measured for a long time, and finally placed the bullet case next to the piece of wood farther from the wall.This piece of hollow metal is slightly narrower at the front, where a lead once lived, and then someone bent his index finger and knocked a dimple on the butt of the bullet casing, but did not penetrate, so as to point to the lead. Zi'er announced that the contract of its housing was terminated, it was ordered to move, and another person was brought to death. We stand, stand.Drool flowed from Sugar Leo's mouth, hanging down in a thread.He clasped his gloved hands, sang a few words in Latin at first, and then fell silent, for there was no one here who could sing the answer to the litany.Leo turned and looked angrily and impatiently over the wall towards the Bressen road, and whenever the trams, mostly empty of passengers, came in and went out, they drove close together at the switch with the bell ringing. When time passed, he turned his head in that direction again.Leo might be the one waiting for the funeral.But no one got off the tram, no one came on foot, no one came who Leo could offer his condolences to with a white glove. Several planes preparing to land roared overhead.Instead of looking up, we endured the noise of the engines, not wanting to convince ourselves with certainty that the three planes with flashing wing-tip lights preparing to land were Junkers 52s. Not long after the plane had left us (the silence was excruciating, like the white wall in front of us), Sugar Leo pulled something out of his shirt, stood next to me, and ripped off Oscar's shoulders. Putting on his raven plumage, he hopped toward the gorse and rosehips and scrub pine bushes, toward the sea.While jumping away, he dropped something, and the movement of his hand was deliberately conspicuous so that others could pick it up. Leo wandered in my field of vision like a ghost, before being swallowed up by a milky mist that stuck to the ground.When he finally disappeared and I was left alone in the rain, I picked up the cardboard stuck in the sand: it was the Schkatter Seven of Spades. -------- ① Refers to the last card in Jan Bronski's hand. "Seven of Spades" means "a useless person" in the common saying. Not many days after my visit to the Saspe cemetery, I met my grandmother, Anna Koljacek, at the weekly market in Langfur.There were no checkpoints in the Bissau area, and she could go to the market again to sell eggs, butter, green vegetables, and apples that could be stored for the winter.People are scrambling to buy, because the necessities of life will soon be managed by the state, and everyone wants to get something to store.The moment Oscar saw his grandmother squatting behind the booth, he felt the skat card hidden under his coat, pullover, and undershirt.I was on the tram that day—a conductor offered me a free ride home—from Saspe back to Max-Halbe-Platz, and I was going to rip off the seven of spades. Oscar didn't rip the card off.He gave it to his grandmother.The grandmother squatting behind the pile of green vegetables was startled when she saw Oscar coming.Maybe she thought so in her heart, nothing good happened when Oscar came.Still, she beckoned the three-year-old who was half-hidden behind the fishbasket to come to her.Oscar dawdled for a while. He first looked at a live cod about one meter long on the wet seaweed, and then he looked at the crabs caught from Lake Ottomin. Crawling around in a small basket.Oscar also walked sideways like a crab, with the back of his sailor coat facing his grandmother, and slowly approached her stall until he bumped into a wooden shelf of the stall, causing the apples to roll back and forth. golden anchor button. Schwertfeger brought a hot brick wrapped in newspaper, pushed it under my grandmother's skirt, hooked the cold brick out with a rake as in the past, drew a horizontal line on the stone slab hanging around her neck, and turned around. Go to a stall next door.My grandmother handed me a yellow apple. She gave him an apple, what could Oscar give her?He handed her the skat card first, and then the bullet casing—which he, too, didn't want to leave in the Saspe cemetery.Anna Koljacek stared at these two irrelevant things for a long time, really confused.At this moment, Oskar put his mouth close to the cartilage ear of her turbaned old woman, and at the same time thought of Jan's pink, long earlobes, small and fat ears, no longer carefully disguised, and whispered to her: "He's lying in Saspe." After saying that, Oscar ran away, knocking over a basket of vegetables.