Chapter 26 Bring the swoon to Mrs. Greve

I don't like him, Greve.He, Greve, doesn't like me either.Later, Greve made me a drum machine, but I still didn't like him.It takes perseverance to sustain a dislike for someone.Although Oscar didn't have this kind of perseverance, he still didn't like him to this day, even though he no longer existed. Greve is a greengrocer.Readers please do not misunderstand.He is neither a believer in potatoes nor savoy cabbage, but he has extensive knowledge of vegetable growing and likes to put on the face of a gardener, friend of nature and vegetarian.Just because Greff doesn't eat meat, he's not really a greengrocer.He can't talk about produce the way he talks about produce. "Look at this extraordinary potato," I often heard him say to customers, "look at this plump, plump flesh that has been redesigned into new shapes and yet is so innocent. I love potatoes , because it belongs to me!" Naturally, a real greengrocer would never embarrass a customer by saying such a thing.My grandmother, Anna Koljacek, who grew up in potato fields, would not have said in the best years of the potato crop: "This year's potatoes are a little bigger than usual." Besides, Anna Koljacek and her brother Vincent Bronski lived entirely off the potato harvest.Not so with Greve the greengrocer, who often makes up for his losses in a poor year of potatoes by a good year of plums.

Greve exaggerates everything.Did he have to wear a green apron when he was in the shop?With a big smile on his face, he cleverly calls this spinach green bib in front of customers, "Dear God's green gardener's apron", what an arrogance!Besides, he couldn't let go of the Boy Scouts thing.Although he had to disband his group in 1938 and the boys had been dressed in brown shirts and fitted black winter uniforms, Boy Scouts who used to wear uniform or civilian clothes still often regularly visit their former Scout guides.Greve, in his dear God-given gardener's apron, plucks his guitar, and joins them in singing Morning Song, Evening Song, Wandering Song, Hire Song, Harvest Song, Virgin's Song, Home Folk Song, and Foreign Folk Song .In time, Greff was transformed into a member of the Nazi motorcycle team, and from 1941 he claimed not only to be a greengrocer but also to be a member of the Air Raiders.In addition, there are two former boy scouts who can be his backers. These two people became a bit of a limelight among young people and became the banner captain and squad leader of the Hitler Youth League. Therefore, in Greve's potatoes The singing evening held in the cellar can be regarded as approved by the local branch of the Hitler Youth League.The district director of training, Lebzak, had also asked Greif to organize singing evenings during the training sessions at the training castle in Yenkau.At the beginning of 1940, Greve, together with a national primary school teacher, was commissioned to compile a youth songbook entitled "Everyone Sings" for the Danzig-West Prussian district.This collection of songs is well done.Greve, the greengrocer, receives a letter from Berlin signed by the Reich youth leader, inviting him to attend a meeting of the chanting captains in Berlin.

So, Greve is a capable man.Not only did he know all the songs and all the words, but he could pitch a tent and light and put out a campfire without starting a forest fire.He can march to the finish line with a compass and call out the names of all the stars visible to the naked eye. Materialism and atheism combine to become the most perfect form of mechanical materialism.Ken, who is good at telling anecdotes and adventure stories, is familiar with the legends of the Wicksell River area, can make a report entitled "Danzig and the Hanseatic League", listing all the leaders of the Knights and various dates related to them one by one.But he was not satisfied with this, and went on to talk about the divine mission of the German nation within the territory of the Knights, and rarely mixed the familiar Boy Scout terminology into his reports.

Greff loved young people.He loves boys more than girls.He really doesn't like girls at all, but only boys.His love for boys goes beyond what he expresses in his singing.His wife, Mrs. Greve, was a scruffy woman with a greasy bra and holey stockings.It may be for this reason that Greve is driven to seek pure love among strong, neat boys.There may be another reason why Mrs. Greve's underwear is so dirty all year round.I mean, Mrs. Greve got scruffy because Greve, the greengrocer and Air Raid Civil Guard, didn't fully appreciate her unrestrained, lumbering fat body. Greff loved strong, muscular, exercised people.When he said the word "natural," he had "abstinence" in mind.When he speaks of the word "abstinence," he means a particular method of physical exercise.Greve is good at physical exercise.He went to the trouble of exercising his body, subjecting it to sun exposure and severe cold, the latter being especially creative.Oscar can use short-range and long-range effects to shatter the glass, and occasionally melt the ice flakes on the glass, causing the icicles to fall off and make a crisp sound when they fall to the ground. Ice man.

Greff would dig holes in the ice.In December, January and February, he dug holes in the ice with an axe.Early in the morning, before dawn, he carried the bicycle out of the cellar, and wrapped the reflection of the ax in the human brain in a sack filled with onions.The basic law of materialist dialectics is: the law of the unity of opposites, and then ride through Saspe to Bresen, and then pedal from Bresen along the snow-covered seaside boulevard towards Gretka, at Bresen and Grete Get off between exams.At this time, the sky slowly dawned.Pushing his bicycle with an ax wrapped in a sack filled with onions, he walked across the frozen beach, and then walked two to three hundred meters on the frozen Baltic Sea.There, there is a dense fog on the coast.Looking from the shore, no one could see how Greff put down the bicycle, opened the onion pocket and took out the axe, stood suspiciously motionless for a moment, listening to the fog horn of the frozen freighter on the mooring, Then, I took off my short coat and did some gymnastics.At last he began to snatch the ax vigorously and evenly, and hewed a circular hole in the Baltic Sea.

It took Greff a full three quarters of an hour to make his hole.Gentlemen, please do not ask me how I learned all this.Oscar knew pretty much everything at the time.So, I also know how long it takes Greff to carve his hole in the ice.He was sweating, beads of sweat ricocheting salty from his high arched brow into the snow.He did it skilfully, hewed a deep circular groove in the ice with his axe, and when the two ends of the circle joined, he took off his gloves, and from a wide, The La Peninsula even pulled ice about 20 centimeters thick from the ice sheet that extended into Sweden.The water in the cave is old, dark in color, and floating with ice balls.Steam came out of the hole, but it wasn't a hot spring.The holes attract fish.I mean, ice holes are said to attract fish.Now Greve might catch a lamprey or a twenty-pound cod.But instead of fishing, he began to undress, and got naked, for Greff either stayed undressed or had to be undressed when he did.

Oscar doesn't want readers to have winter chills.So, a brief report: Greve the greengrocer bathes twice a week in the Baltic Sea during winter.Every Wednesday, he goes to take a shower alone early in the morning.He set out at six o'clock, arrived there at half past six, dug the hole at quarter past seven, took off his clothes, and moved quickly and exaggeratedly, rubbing his body with snow first, then jumping into the hole and shouting in the hole.Sometimes I hear him singing "Wild Geese Fly Across the Night," or: "We Love Storms..." He takes a bath singing, howling for two minutes, three minutes at the most, and jumping onto the ice Layers, with a vivid image: steaming, cooked shrimp-like red mass, running wildly around the ice hole, roaring non-stop, radiant.Finally, he put on his clothes and stepped onto his bike.Just before eight o'clock, Greff was back on the Rabes Road, and his greengrocer opened just in time.

Greve's second bath was on a Sunday, accompanied by several boys.Oscar didn't want to say that he had seen that scene, but in fact he hadn't.Later, everyone talked about it.The musician Maien knew all kinds of things about the vegetable merchants. He played the trumpet to stop the wars between Chu, Wei, and Wei many times.Proposed "Loving together, fellowship, making these things household names throughout the neighbourhood. One of these trumpeted anecdotes states that every Sunday in winter, Greff was accompanied by several boys to Take a bath. But even Meyn didn't say that Greve the greengrocer used to force boys like him to jump naked into holes in the ice. Seeing these half-naked or almost naked children, all muscular, Strong-willed, frolicking on the ice and rubbing each other's bodies with snow, Greff should have been content. Yes, these children in the snow really cheered Greff up. He couldn't help but often romping with them before or after his bath too. , help this or that child rub his body with snow, and let this group of children rub his body. Musician Mayne claims that despite the dense seaside fog, he has seen it from the seaside avenue in Gretka : Naked Greve, singing and roaring, dragged his two naked apprentices to him, lifted them up, loaded one on top of the other, like a screaming runaway The troika of horses galloped across the thick ice of the Baltic Sea.

Greve was not a fisherman, it was not difficult to guess, although there were many fishermen named Greve in Bresen and the new channel.Greve the greengrocer was Mrs. Tegenhauer, but Lena Greve, née Brasch, had known her husband at Proust.There he assisted an enterprising young archdeacon in running the Society of Catholic Apprentices, and it was on account of the archdeacon that Lena visited the parish house every weekend.Judging from a photograph—which Mrs. Greve must have given me, because it is still posted in my photo album—Lena was then twenty years old, strong, plump, happy, Comfortable, flippant, stupid.Her father had a larger garden in St. Albrecht.She married Greve at the age of twenty-two, when, as she repeatedly claimed, she was completely inexperienced and had only followed the advice of the archdeacon.She also opened a vegetable shop in Longfur with her father's money.Most of the vegetables she sold, and almost all the fruit, were provided at low prices by her father's garden, so the business was doing well without much effort, and Greff didn't tear down any walls.

If Greve the Greengrocer hadn't had that boyish penchant for inventing mechanisms, he could have turned the greengrocer into a gold mine.Because it has good conditions, it is located in the outskirts of the city, there is no competition, and there are so many children there.However, when Bureau of Measures officials went there for the third and fourth time to inspect the vegetable scales, confiscated the weights, banned the use of the scale, and made Greff pay large and small fines, some of the regular customers stopped. Go to the door, and go to the weekly market to buy.They said that although the stuff in Greve's was always top quality and cheap, but, lo and behold, the inspector was at his place again, and there must be something in it!

I am sure, however, that Greve had no intention of cheating.The actual situation is that the vegetable merchant refitted the large potato scale, and published articles in newspapers and magazines where the scaled weight was lower than the actual weight, hence the name.They criticized him from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie, but it made him suffer.So shortly before the war broke out, he installed a carillon mechanism in that scale.It plays different ditties according to the weight of the potatoes weighed out.For example, if you weigh 20 pounds of potatoes, customers can hear a piece of "Sunny Bank of the Saale", which is counted as a kind of head; Potatoes can induce the glockenspiel to play the innocent and charming melody of "Little Anna of Tarau". While I knew the Bureau of Measures wouldn't like such musical jokes, Oskar himself appreciated the greengrocer's eccentricity.Lena Greve also forgives her husband for these eccentricities, for the Greffs' marriage consists precisely in the ability of the husband and wife to forgive any eccentricity in the other.Therefore, it can be said that the marriage of the Greves is a happy marriage.The greengrocer never beat his wife, never cheated on her and went out with other women.He was neither a drunkard nor a spendthrift, but a jovial, well-dressed man, not only in the eyes of the youth, but also among the customers who came to buy potatoes and listen to a piece of music.These customers liked him very much because of his gregarious and helpful nature. In this way, Greve watched his Lena become a sloppy woman with a nonchalant attitude of understanding.She smelled worse every year.I saw him always laugh it off when those he knew called Lena a slob.I have sometimes heard his conversations with Matzerath.Matzerath was disgusted with Mrs. Greve, and Greve sighed at his well-kept hands despite the old potatoes, then rubbed them again, and then said: "Alfred, you Of course what you said is absolutely correct. She is a bit sloppy, this is good Lina. But, you and I, don't we have shortcomings?" When Matzerath still insisted on his own opinion, Greve ended in a firm and friendly tone This discussion: "You may be right in some ways, but she has a good heart. I know my Lena." He understands her, it's possible.However, she didn't know him very well.She, like her neighbors and customers, saw Greve's relationship with the boys and young men who frequented him as nothing more than a young man's passionate admiration for an amateur but dedicated educator and friend of youth. . Greve neither inspires me nor educates me.Oscar was not his type either.If I set my mind on growing taller, I might grow into his type, because my son Kurt—he's about thirteen now—is Gray in his lanky form. The type of husband, although he is very similar to Maria and not much like me, but he has nothing in common with Matzerath. Greve and Fritz Truczynski, who was on leave home, were witnesses at the wedding between Maria Truczynski and Alfred Matzerath.Since Maria and her husband were both Protestant, it was only necessary to go to the registry office.It was mid-December.Matzerath said his vows in party uniform.Maria is already three months pregnant. The bigger my lover's belly, the deeper Oscar's hatred.I have nothing against her being pregnant.Just because the fruit I bear will one day bear the name Matzerath deprives me of all the joy I had hoped my heir would bring.So when I first attempted to abort Maria when she was five months pregnant, it was too late.It was during Maslenitsa.Maria wanted to tie some paper snakes and two big-nosed clown masks to the brass rod above the counter where the sausages and bacon hung.The ladder, which usually leaned steadily on the bookshelf, now leaned precariously on the counter.Maria is at the top of the ladder, tying paper snakes with her hands, and Oscar is down by the legs of the ladder.Using my sticks as leverage, my shoulders and my firm determination, I pried up the rungs, then tipped the ladder to one side: Maria, between the paper snake and the clown mask, exclaimed, but faintly.At this time, the ladder was already shaking, and Oscar jumped aside.Then Maria fell beside him, grabbing confetti, sausages and a mask. The reality is not as bad as it appears.She had only sprained her foot and had to stay in bed, but was otherwise unharmed.She was getting out of shape, but she never told Matzerath who had sprained her foot. In May of the following year, about three weeks before the due date, I attempted to abort her a second time.She told her husband Matzerath, but not the whole truth.During the meal, she said in front of my face: "Little Oscar has been playing wild recently and beat my stomach a few times. Before the baby is born, let's let him live with my mother! She has a room there." After hearing this, Matzerath believed it.The truth is, a murderous thought set Maria and me into an encounter quite different from what she had described. During lunch break, she lay on the sofa.After Matzerath had washed the lunch dishes, he was decorating the windows of the shop.The living room was quiet.Maybe there was a fly, the clock was as usual, and the radio was whispering that the paratroopers had landed successfully on Crete.When they got the great boxer Max Schmeling to talk, I pricked up my ears.As far as I can understand, the world champion sprained her foot during a parachute landing onto the solid rock of Crete and is now in bed; exactly like Maria, she also suffered from a fall from a ladder. Bed ambulatory.Schmeling spoke calmly, in a level voice, and then he told about the deeds of the lesser-known paratroopers, and Oskar stopped listening: it was very quiet, maybe there was a fly, the clock was as usual, the radio was very loud. Very light. -------- ① At the end of May 1941, the German army used paratroopers to attack and captured Crete from the British army. I sat on my little bench by the window and watched Maria's belly on the couch.She was breathing with difficulty and her eyes were closed.I beat the tin drum a few times sullenly.But she didn't move, and forced me to breathe with the rising and falling of her belly in the same room.Yes, there were clocks, flies caught between window panes and curtains, and radio broadcasts against the rocky islands of Crete.Moments later, none of that existed for me.All I see is that belly, I don't know what room it grew in, or who it belongs to, I don't even know who made it that big, and there's only one wish : Gotta get rid of it, this belly, it's a mistake, it's blocking your view, you gotta get up and do something!So, I stood up.You have to see what action can be taken.So, I walked towards the belly, and as I walked, I picked up an object.It's a malignant bloat, and you should give it some air.So, I picked up the object I had picked up when I approached, and looked for a place between Maria's small breathing hands resting on her stomach.You should make up your mind now, Oscar, or Maria will open her eyes.I already felt that I was being watched, but I continued to stare at Maria's slightly trembling left hand, although I noticed that she had pulled away her right hand, which was ready to make a move. When Maria used her right hand to twist away the scissors that Oscar was holding, I wasn't particularly surprised either.I might have stood for a few seconds with empty fists in my hands, listening to the clock, the flies, the announcer on the radio reporting the end of the Crete story, then turned away, and on the next program— — soft music playing from 2 to 3 — before it started, leaving our living room with a big belly filling the space, I felt the room had grown too cramped. Two days later Maria bought me a new drum and took me three floors up to Mrs. Truczynski's house, where the whole room smelled of substitute coffee and fried potatoes.At first I slept on the sofa, for Oskar refused to sleep in the same bed that Herbert had slept in, and I feared that the bed still smelled of Maria's vanilla.A week later, old Highlander carried my little wooden bed upstairs.I agree to place it next to the bed that once harbored me, Maria, and our shared soda powder. At Aunt Truczynski's house, Oskar calmed down, or rather, became indifferent.I can't see that belly now because Maria is afraid of stairs.I also didn't go to the ground floor rooms, the shops, the street, or even the apartment yard, where rabbits were growing again because the food supply was getting worse. Oskar sat there most of the time looking at the postcards that Non-commissioned Officer Fritz Truczynski had sent or brought back from Paris.I have this or that impression of the city of Paris.Madam Truczynski handed me a postcard with a view of the Eiffel Tower.I agreed to study the iron structure of this daring building, and began beating the drums to represent Paris, beating a Messite, though I had never heard it played before.On June 12th (fourteen days earlier by my reckoning), in Gemini (not in Cancer, as I had reckoned), my son Kurt was born.The father was born in the year of Jupiter, and the son was born in the year of Venus.The father is ruled by Mercury in Virgo, which makes him suspicious and imaginative; the son is also ruled by Mercury, but Mercury is in Gemini, which makes him cool-headed and aggressive.Certain qualities in me, weakened by Venus in Libra in my natal house, are exacerbated in my son by Aries in his natal house; I will feel Mars in his natal house in the future the consequences. -------- ① Messette, a ditty that imitates the bagpipe tone. Madame Truczynski told me the news, chattering like a mouse with excitement: "Just imagine, little Oskar, that the stork in the sky has brought you a little brother. I've already thought about it." , as long as it's not a girl, if it is a girl, it will bring trouble later!" I barely stopped drumming to recreate the scene of the Eiffel Tower and the newly added Arc de Triomphe.Madame Truczynski felt that even if she put on the face of Grandmother Truczinski, she would not be able to expect congratulations from me.Although today is not Sunday, she made up her mind to put on some red color, so she grabbed the endive root wrapping paper she always had, rubbed it on her cheeks like rouge, and went out brightly, went downstairs, to The bottom layer helped the so-called father Matzerath. -------- ①The Western proverb "Xiang stork coming to the door" means that a child is born. As I said just now, it was June.A deceitful month.Everywhere on the front - if the Balkans are victories ① also called victories - in the East ② even greater victories are expected.There, a huge army is advancing.Rail traffic is busy.Even Fritz Truczynski, who had been enjoying himself in Paris, had to embark on a journey towards the east.This trip will not stop immediately and should not be confused with a vacation trip to the front.However, Oskar sat quietly, facing those bright postcards, lingering in the gentle, early summer Paris, gently tapping "Three Young Drummers", he had nothing to do with the German occupation forces, so he didn't have to worry about guerrillas The team would push him off the bridge of the Seine into the water.Isn’t it true that I climbed up the Eiffel Tower in civilian clothes and with my drums. At the top of the tower, I naturally enjoy the pleasure of overlooking the wilderness, and I am relaxed and happy.Although being on a high place tempted me to contemplate suicide, I was able to get rid of this bittersweet thought.After I got down, when I was standing at the foot of the Eiffel Tower with a height of ninety-four centimeters, I turned around and realized that my son had been born. -------- ① Refers to the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941. ② Refers to the invasion of the Soviet Union. There, a son!I thought to myself.When he is three years old, he shall get a tin drum too.Let's see who is the father here—that Herr Matzerath or me, Oskar Bronski. In the heat of August—as I recall, at the time when the radio successfully ended another encirclement campaign, the one at Smolensk—my son Kurt was christened.My grandmother Anna Koljacek and her brother Vinzent Bronski were also invited to the christening. How did that happen?If I stick to the statement that Jan Bronski is my father and the silent and increasingly eccentric Vinzent is my grandfather, then the reason for inviting them to the christening is very full.In this way, my grandparents are my son Kurt's great-grandparents. Naturally, Matzerath would never have thought of making such inferences, even though he had invited them.Even in his most uncertain moments, such as after losing a crushing defeat at Skater, he still considers himself a double father: a biological father and a nurturing father.Oscar saw his grandparents again for other reasons as well.They have Germanized these two lovely old men.They are no longer Poles, but dreaming of Kashube dreams.They are called the Germans of the Third National Group.In addition, Jan's widow, Hedwig Bronski, married a Baltic German, local head of the Peasants' Union Ramkau.A number of bills are under consideration and, once approved, both Marga Bronski and Stefan Bronski will have to change their surname to that of their stepfather Ehlers.Seventeen-year-old Stefan voluntarily enlisted in the army, and is now receiving infantry training at the Grossbosch Poll military training camp, with great hopes of going to the theater of war in Europe.Oscar, though about to be old enough to join the army, had to wait behind his drum until the Army or Navy or even the Air Force needed a three-year-old tin drummer. Ehlers, head of regional farmers, made the start.Fourteen days before the christening, he came to the Labes-Rae, sitting in the seat of a hansom with Hedwig at his side.Ehlers was bow-legged and had a stomach bug and was no match for Jan Bronski.He sat at the living room table, a head shorter than the bull-eyed Hedwig next to him.Even Matzerath was surprised by his visit.I don't know what to talk about for a while.So first the weather, and then all the things that were happening in the East, where the army was advancing nervously, better than in 1915, Matzerath recalled, when he was there.They took pains to avoid talking about Jan Bronski.In the end, I put an end to their evasive plan, made the funny mouth shape of a child, and called Oscar's uncle Jan repeatedly.Matzerath bit the bullet and said a few good words for his former friend and rival in love, and said a few thought-provoking words.Ehlers immediately chimed in, talking a lot, even though he had never met his ex.Hedwig even found a few genuine tears, which trickled slowly down his face.Finally, she found something to end the conversation about Jan: "He's a good man. He wouldn't hurt a fly. Who would have expected him to go to the bottom of the world like this, where he Will be scared, will be scared to death for no reason." -------- ① Refers to the German-Russian War in World War I. After the conversation, Matzerath asked Maria standing behind him to get a bottle of beer, and then asked Ehlers if he would play Schkatter.Ehlers won't, I feel very sorry, but Matzerath is quite generous and doesn't care about such a small shortcoming as the head of the farmers in the area.He even tapped Ehlers on the shoulder and said—by this time the beer was poured—that it didn’t matter if he didn’t know anything about Schkatter, he could still be a good friend. In this way, Hedwig Bronski came to our house again in the form of Hedwig Ehlers, with her former father-in-law Wenzent and his His sister Anna came to the baptism together.Matzerath seemed to know, he stood under the window of the neighbor's house on the street, greeted the two old people with a friendly voice, and entered the living room.When my grandmother took out her christening gift from under her four skirts—a fattened goose—Matzerath added: "That's not necessary, mother. I'd be happy if you shared it empty-handed." My grandmother doesn't like to hear these words, she wants to know how people evaluate her geese.She patted the fat goose with a big slap, and protested: "Don't make a fuss, Alfred. This is not a Kashukou fat goose, it is a German national poultry, and it tastes exactly like it did before the war." !" In this way, all the national problems were solved, only some troubles arose before the baptism, because Oskar did not want to go to the Protestant church.They took my drum out of the taxi and lured me with the tin drum, telling me over and over again that anyone can openly bring a drum into a Protestant church.However, I still stand by my most committed Catholic position.I would rather have a succinct confession in the ear of Father Wienck than hear a baptismal sermon from a Protestant priest.Matzerath backed down.He was obviously afraid of my voice and the damage it caused and claims for damages.So, when the baptism was held in the church, I stayed in the taxi, looking at the back of the driver's head, looking at Oscar's face reflected in the mirror, thinking about my own christening some years ago and the story told by Father Wienke. Attempts to drive Satan away from baptized baby Oscar. After the baptism, there is a feast.They put two tables together.First came the fake soft-shelled turtle soup made from calf's head.Spoons and soup bowls.The country visitors began to sip their drinks.Greff raised his little finger.Gretchen Scheffler drank and chewed.Gust held the spoon and grinned widely.Eisler was still talking with the spoon in his mouth.Wen Cent's hands trembled, looking for something that Yang Key hadn't caught.Only two old ladies, Grandmother Anna and Madame Truczynski, stuck their heads in the spoon.Oscar, let's just say, fell out of the spoon.He slipped away while the others were drinking soup, and went into the bedroom to look for his son's cradle, for he had to think about his son, and those who carried the spoons, though spoonfuls poured Soup, but my mind was hollowed out, and my thoughts became more and more dry. Over the cradle on wheels hung a sky of pale blue silk.Because of the high rim of the cradle, I saw only blue-red wrinkled things at first.I put the drum under my feet so I could get a good look at my son.He fell asleep, twitching nervously in his sleep.O father's pride, which is always in search of great words!Looking at the baby, I couldn't think of anything else to say but that short sentence: When he's three years old, he too deserves a tin drum.My son doesn't let me know about his mental state.I just had to hope he was one of those acute hearing babies that I was.So I promised him again and again to give him a tin drum on his third birthday, and then I got off my tin drum and went to join in the fun with the grown-ups in the living room.Over there, they just finished drinking the fake turtle soup.Maria served canned peas in green, sweet cream.Matzerath, who was in charge of roasting the piglets, personally served the big plate.He took off his jacket, only his shirt, and sliced ​​one piece after another, making such an unnaturally gentle face at the soft, juicy meat that I had to turn my head to look away. Greve the greengrocer gets a special supply.He was given canned asparagus, hard-boiled eggs, and radishes in crème fraîche, since vegetarians don't eat meat.But, like everyone else, he took a tablespoonful of mashed potatoes and ate it not with gravy but with hot butter in a small, still sizzling bowl that Maria carefully picked up from the kitchen. It was brought to him.The others drank beer, and Greff's glass contained sweet fruit juice.They talked about the siege of Kyiv and counted the prisoners on their fingers.Ehlers, a German from the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, was particularly clever in this matter. He raised up a finger every time he counted 100,000 people, and when all ten fingers were raised up, it meant that there were a million people. Another finger bent down one after another, and continued to count.The Russian prisoners of war are becoming less and less worthless and less and less interesting because of their increasing numbers.They finally got tired of talking about this topic, and Scheffler started talking about the submarine in Goten Harbor.马策拉特对着我外婆安娜的耳朵小声说，在席哈乌每周有两艘潜艇从船台下水。蔬菜商格雷夫接着向所有来庆贺洗礼的客人解释，为什么潜艇是横着从船台上下水的而不是船尾先下水。他想让人一听就明白，便一边讲，一边打手势比划。一部分被潜艇制造迷住了的客人全神贯注地却又笨拙地摹仿着他的手势。文岑特·布朗斯基正用左手比作一艘冒出水面的潜艇时，却碰翻了他的啤酒杯。我的外婆正要骂他一通时，玛丽亚过来打圆场，连声说没关系，桌布明天反正是要洗的；洗礼聚餐时，桌布上有油迹污斑是很自然的事情。特鲁钦斯基大娘拿来一块大抹布，擦掉那一大滩啤酒。她左手端着一个大水晶碗，里面盛的是杏仁屑巧克力布丁。 唉，巧克力布丁如果根本不加调味计或者加上别的调味汁该多好啊！可是偏偏加了香草调味汁。黄色的、默而稠的香草调味汁。一种极平常、极普通然而又极独特的香草调味汁。在这个世界上，再没有比香草调味汁更加快活和更加悲哀的东西了。柔和的香草味飘散开去，把我团团围住，使我陷在玛丽亚的气味中，因为她是一切香草味的发源地，而她却坐在马策拉特身边，手握着他的手，我再也不能看下去，再也忍不住了。 奥斯卡从他那张儿童小椅子上滑下去，一把抓住格雷夫太太的裙子，躺倒在正吃着布丁的格雷夫太太的脚下，头一回领教了莉娜·格雷夫所特有的难闻气味，这股气味立即压倒、吞没、消灭了所有的香草味。 尽管我闻到一股酸味，但我仍然坚持迎向这股新的气味，直到我觉得一切同香草味有联系的记忆都被麻醉为止。一阵起解脱作用的恶心向我袭来，缓慢地，既不发出声音，也没有使我痉挛。当假甲鱼汤、成块的烤猪肉、几乎是完整无损的罐头豌豆以及那几小匙香草调味汁巧克力布丁从我的嘴里吐出来时，我才明白我昏厥了。我在昏厥中游泳，奥斯卡的昏厥扩展到莉娜·格雷夫的脚下——于是，我打定主意，从今以后我每天都要把昏厥带给格雷夫太太①。 -------- ①前一章末尾说：“爱已经变成了昏厥”。