Chapter 31 Ashes

To gather disciples, Oscar will encounter insurmountable difficulties.Based on this alone, I am not suitable to succeed Jesus.But then, by this and that crooked way, Providence found my ears, and made me an heir, though I did not believe in my predecessor.But, as the canon says: doubters believe, and unbelievers last longest.Jesus showed me a small miracle personally in the Church of the Sacred Heart, and I couldn't bury it in doubt, instead I tried to get Jesus to repeat a drumming performance. Oscar went to the brick church many times without Maria.I kept slipping away from Madam Truczynski, who sat rigidly in her chair and could not stop me.What did Jesus show me?Why am I still in the left transept of the church in the middle of the night and let the sexton lock me in there?Why did Oscar let himself stand in front of the altar on the left so that his limbs were frozen and his ears were as hard as glass?Whether I rattle my teeth to flatter or rattle my teeth to curse, I will never hear my drumbeat, nor the voice of Jesus.

Miserable!At midnight, on the pavements of the Sacre Coeur, my teeth chatter like never before in my life!What fool could find a better rattle than Oscar?Mimicking a section of a machine gun full of spare ammunition, I set up an insurance company manager's office with office girls and typewriters between the upper and lower jaws.The rattling of my teeth echoed and applauded in all directions.Columns shiver, vaults goosebumps, my cough jumps over the tiled chessboard with one leg, walks back to the crossroads, ascends the nave, flies to the choir, coughs sixty times, like a Bach association , not singing, but coughing in rehearsal.I was hoping that Oskar's cough would slip into the pipes of the organ and be silent until Sunday's chorale, when a cough came from the sacristy, followed by It came from the pulpit again, and finally disappeared behind the main altar, behind the gymnast on the cross.It coughs up its soul very quickly.I coughed and said: "Everything has been done, in fact, nothing has been done."The boy Jesus was not frozen, but he held my drumstick stiffly, held my iron sheet on his pink plaster thigh, did not beat the drum, did not confirm my inheritance.Oscar would have liked to have had a written statement that he had commanded me to succeed Christ.

-------- ① Word games.The rattle is Klapper, which becomes a verb klappern, which means rattle. ②This is what Jesus said before he was crucified on the cross, see "The Bible·New Testament·Gospel of John". The habits or bad habits of that time are still with me today.When visiting churches, and even the most famous cathedrals, as soon as I set foot on a paved floor, even in the best of health, I would cough loudly and persistently, according to Gothic, Gothic, Spread out in Romanesque or Baroque style, height and width.In a few years, I will have Oskar's drums echo my coughs in Ulm and Speyer Cathedral.But then, when I let the tomb-cold Catholic spirit take hold of me in mid-August, it would not have occurred to me to travel to faraway lands and visit churches.Unless I was a man in uniform and participated in a planned retreat, then it would be possible to write in the small diary I carried with me: "Withdrawing from Orvieto today, the facade of the church is wonderful. Let’s go here again with Monica and watch carefully.”

Becoming a churchgoer wasn't difficult for me because nothing tied me down to the house.There is Maria at home.But Maria has Matzerath.We have my son Kurt at home.However, this little rascal was becoming more and more unbearable.He threw sand into my eyes, scratched me, and broke his fingernails in my father's flesh.My son still shakes his fist at me, knuckles so white that blood gushes from my nose whenever I see the nimble twins. -------- ① Refers to Kurt's pair of fists. Strangely, Matzerath cared for me, clumsily as it was, but genuinely.Oscar was surprised, so he let this person whom he always considered dispensable hold him in his arms, hugged him tightly, looked at him carefully, once even kissed him, and at the same time burst into tears. Maria said to herself rather: "It's impossible. I can't send my son away, even if the doctor said it ten times, and all the doctors said it. Let them Get on with it. They sure don't have kids of their own."

Maria sat at the table, affixing food prints to the cutouts of newspaper as she did every night.She looked up and said, "Don't worry, Alfred. You talk like it's none of my business. But if they say that's the way to go today, I don't know." Exactly what to do." Matzerath pointed his index finger at the piano which hadn't played music since my poor mother's death, and said: "Agnes would never do that, and she won't allow it!" Maria glanced at the piano, shrugged her shoulders, and didn't put it down again until she spoke: "Naturally, she is his mother, and she always hoped that he would get better. But you have seen that he is not getting better, and he is bullied everywhere , I don’t know how to live, and I don’t know how to die!”

Beethoven's portrait hangs above the piano all the time, and he looks sullenly at the gloomy Hitler.Didn't Matzerath draw strength from Beethoven's portrait? "No!" he yelled, "Never!" He pounded his fist on the table, on the wet, sticky stamped paper, and told Maria to hand him the letter from the Sanitarium Administration and read it. Read and read and then tear up the letter and throw the pieces between bread stamps, fat meat stamps, food stamps, travel stamps, heavy labor stamps, extra heavy labor stamps, to pregnant mothers and nursing mothers between the prints.Although it was thanks to Matzerath that Oskar did not fall into the hands of those doctors, he has since seen one thing - and still sees it today - as soon as Maria appears under his nose, He would see a beautiful sanitarium with bright, friendly, modern operating rooms in the best mountain air.In front of the padded door of the operating room, Maria, smiling shyly but trustingly, handed me over to a first-class doctor.They also evoke a trusting smile, and they hold a first-class, trust-evoking, instant-acting syringe in their hand behind their white, sterile smock.In this way, everyone deserted me. Whenever Matzerath wanted to sign a letter from the Imperial Ministry of Health, only the shadow of my poor mother made him unable to move his fingers and stopped me many times. A forsaken person leaves this world①.

-------- ①During the period of Nazi Germany, according to Hitler's written orders, patients such as mentally ill patients were exterminated, including imbecile and deformed children. Oscar was no ungrateful man.My drum is still there.My voice is still there.Readers know all the results of my battle with glass, but my voice can't show you anything new, and some of you who like to change tricks will find it boring.However, for me, Oscar's voice is the proof of my existence, the proof of eternal freshness, which my drums can't match.As long as I can sing broken glass, I exist, as long as my directed breath can take away the breath of glass, life is still in me.

At that time, Oscar sang so much.Much of what he sang was out of desperation.Whenever I leave the Sacre Coeur very late, I always have to sing something.I headed toward the house, never looking for a particular target, but picking out the window of a mansard-roofed attic whose light was not fully blocked, or a flickering street lamp painted blue for air defense.Every time I go to church, I always have to choose another way home.This time Oskar crossed the Anton Möllerstrasse to the Marienstrasse.That time he walked up the Ulfagenstrasse, bypassed the Konrad School, let its glass doors jingle, and walked through the Imperial Colony to Max Halbeplatz.One day at the end of August, it was too late for me to go to church.The gates were locked, and I decided to take a long detour to cool off my anger.I walk on Bahnhofstraße, let it clang at the third streetlight, turn right after the cinema into Adolf Hitlerstrasse, let the street windows of the infantry barracks on the left lie down, and let a car drive in from the direction of Oliva The tram came to cool my heart, almost empty, and I took all the darkened glass on the left side of the tram.

The tram screeched to a halt, and several people got off, shouted and cursed, and got on again.Oscar didn't pay attention to this point of victory. In order to relieve his anger, he was looking for an after-dinner snack. Looking for delicious sweets in those years when there was such a lack of delicious sweets, when he was at the outermost edge of Longfur District, Berente Furniture Workshop He stopped his lace-up shoes when he saw the main building of the Baltic Chocolate Factory lying across the moonlight next to him, in front of the large wooden camp of the airfield. However, I was not so angry anymore, so I didn't immediately introduce myself to the chocolate factory in the traditional way.I took my time and counted the glasses that the moon had already counted, and the total I got matched the moon's. If only I could start introducing myself now!But first, I have to figure out what's going on with those semi-adults.They started following me from the Hoochstrasse, perhaps under the chestnut trees on the Bahnhofstrasse.There were half a dozen lads standing in front of or in the shelter by the Hohenfriedbergstraße tram stop, and five more could be seen standing behind the first trees of the road to Sopot.

I had decided to postpone my visit to the chocolate factory, to give way to the lads, to take a detour and slip along the railway bridge next to the airfield, through the Rauben Colony to the Share Brewery on Little Hammer Road.At this moment, Oskar heard their signal-like whistles coming from the railway bridge.There was no longer any doubt: they were coming for me. In such a situation, during the time between the stalker's appearance and the pursuit, one would slowly and carefully enumerate the last remedies: Oskar could call Mama and Papa.I could summon someone with a drum, maybe a policeman.My figure can definitely be supported by adults, but Oscar has his own principles, so he refuses the help of adult passers-by and the mediation of the police, but he is entangled by curiosity and self-confidence. He wants to see the development of the situation, so he does it. A stupid thing happened: I looked for a gap in the asphalt fence in front of the chocolate factory, couldn't find it, and saw half-adults leaving the shelter of the tram station and the shadows of the trees on the Sopot road.Oscar walked along the fence, and a few people from the railway bridge also came, but the wooden fence still had no holes.They didn't come very fast, instead they wandered around and scattered.Oscar could still look for a while longer, and the time they gave me was exactly what it took to find a gap in the fence, and finally there was a piece of wood missing, so I slipped through the gap, and the clothes got caught in a corner somewhere .On the other side of the fence, four boys in windbreakers stood right in front of me, all with their hands in the pockets of their ski pants.

I immediately understood that there was no way to change my situation, so I first searched for the corner of my clothes that was caught when I passed through the gap in the fence.Found it, on the right trouser leg.I split my fingers and measured it. It was really annoying, the hole was quite big, but I pretended to be indifferent, so I looked up at the sky, waiting for someone coming from the tram station, the road, or the railway bridge. The boys climbed over the fence because the gap in the fence didn't fit them. It happened one day in late August.The moon is obscured by clouds from time to time.I counted the lads, there were twenty in all.The youngest is fourteen years old, and the oldest is sixteen or seventeen.In 1944 we had a hot, dry summer.Four older troublemakers in Air Force auxiliary uniforms.Now that I remember, 1944 was a good year for cherries.They stood in twos and threes around Oscar, chatting in low tones, using a kind of incision, but I had no trouble getting it.They called each other odd names, and I only remember a few of them.For example, there is a fifteen-year-old boy with a pair of fuzzy eyes. He is called Lizhitu, and sometimes he is also called Delizhitu.The one next to him, they call him the Shirtless Angel.The youngest, but certainly not the youngest, rogue, with a protruding upper lip and a tongue-biter, was called Coalpaw.An Air Force auxiliary, known as Mr. Meister, and another guy, quite aptly, Soup Hen, and the name of a historical figure: Lionheart.Bluebeard is a boy with a fair and tender face.It was presumptuous to have names I knew - Totila and Thayer, and two others called Belissar and Nasses.I looked at Steuterbeck more carefully.He wore a real felt hat, dimpled like a duck pond, and a long raincoat, and despite being only sixteen, he was the ringleader of the gang. They didn't look at Oscar and wanted to wait for him to give in, so I sat on my drum.Two legs are so tired, I'm half happy and half annoyed at myself, it's clearly a kids' romance, how did I get into it?I was looking at the almost full moon, and I was going to turn some of my thoughts to the Sacred Heart Church. Today Jesus may have played the drum and also spoken.And I sat in the courtyard of the Baltic Chocolate Factory, taking part in a game of knights and robbers.He might have waited for me, intending to beat the drum a bit before he spoke, and definitely let me succeed Christ, but he was disappointed that I didn't go, and must have raised his eyebrows haughtily again.How would Jesus value these lads?How should Oscar, his similar appearance, his successor and representative, deal with these children?Can he greet these half-adults who call themselves Shirtless Angels, Derich Rabbits, Bluebeards, Coalpaws, and Steuterbecks with the words of Jesus, "Let the little ones come to me!"?Stuartbeck stepped forward.Cinderpaw was at his side, his right-hand man.Steutbeck said, "Stand up!" -------- ① These are the words of Jesus in the Bible New Testament Matthew. Oscar was still looking at the moon, and his mind was still in front of the left altar of the Sacred Heart Church.I didn't get up, Steuterbeck gave me a wink, and Cinderpaw kicked the drum from under my ass. I stood up, picked up the iron sheet, and put it under the coat to protect it from further suffering. A handsome boy, this Stuartbeck, Oskar thought.The eyes are set too deep and too close to each other, and the mouth gives an impression of life and imagination. "Where are you from?" The cross-examination began.I didn't like to greet me like this, so I raised my head to look at the bright moon. It never picks up, so I imagined the moon as a drum, and laughed at my arrogance, unconsciously smiling. "He's grinning, Stuitbeck!" Cinderpaw watched me as he suggested to his boss a move he called "spreading ashes."The rest of the group behind, the pustular-faced Lionheart, Mister, Delici, and Shirtless Angel, also agreed with the ashes. I still looked at the bright moon and spelled out the word "scattering ashes" letter by letter in my heart.What a beautiful word, but certainly not a pleasant name. "It's up to me when the ashes are thrown!" Steuterbeck, ending the muttering of his gang, turned to me again. "We used to see you on Bahnhofstrasse. What are you doing there? Are you from Where did it come from?" Ask two questions at the same time.Oscar made up his mind, if he wanted to control the situation, he had to at least give an answer.So I turned my face away from the moon, looked at Steutbeck with my powerful blue eyes, and said calmly: "I'm from the church." There was another muttering from the back of Stuitbeck's raincoat.They are supplementing my answer.Cinderpaw finds out that the church I'm talking about is the Sacred Heart. "What's your name?" This question must come.That's what people ask when they meet each other.This question occupies an important place in human-to-human conversation.Many plays exist by answering this question, long ones, short ones, operas, for example, Lorhengrin. -------- ① Opera by German composer Richard Wagner. I waited for the moonlight to break through between two clouds, illuminate my blue eyes, and then reflect the light on Steuterbeck's face for three spoonfuls of soup, before opening my mouth and announcing my name.Because they would laugh out loud when they heard the name Oscar, so I looked forward to the effect of the words I was about to say with jealousy. Therefore, Oscar said: "My name is Jesus." This confession attracted people. There was a long silence.Finally, Cinderpaw cleared his throat and said, "He must be dusted, sir." It's not just coal claws advocating dusting.Stuartbeck also twirled his fingers, approving the removal of the ashes with a snap.Coal Claw grabbed me, pressed his knuckles against my right upper arm, drilled quickly, chiseled dryly, it was hot and painful, and he didn't stop until Stuartbeck snapped his fingers again and ordered him to stop .It turns out that this is called ashes! "Tell me, what's your name?" The leader wearing a felt hat pretended to be impatient, and punched to the right, letting the overly long raincoat sleeves slide back, revealing his watch in the moonlight, and I whispered to my left, "Consider it for a minute. Then I, Stuitbeck, will let go." For a minute, after all, I could look up at the moon with impunity, find excuses in its craters, and question the decision I had made to succeed Christ.I don't like to let go of such words, and I am determined not to let these boys use time to restrain me.So, after about thirty-five seconds, Oscar said, "I am Jesus." What happens next is remarkable, but it wasn't directed by Oscar.After I professed to succeed Jesus again, Steutbeck twitched his fingers, but before the coal claws could throw ashes, the air raid sirens went off. Oscar said the word "Jesus" and took a breath. Sirens sounded one after another to prove my identity.The siren on the nearby airfield, the main building of the Hochstris Infantry Battalion, the siren on the roof of the Horst-Wessel Lyceum in front of the Langfur Forest, the siren above the Sternfeld department store, and From far away, from the Hindenburger Strasse, the sirens of the Technical Higher School.After a while, all the sirens in the suburbs, like the long and earnest chorus of archangels, accepted the gospel I proclaimed, making the night swell and collapse, making sleep tremble and burst, and piercing into the ears of sleepers, The unaffected moon appears terrifying, as it is a celestial body that cannot be blocked by the black curtain. Oskar understood that the air-raid siren was entirely on his side, whereas the sound of the siren made Stuitbeck nervous.The alarm immediately called some of his men to duty.He had to let the four air auxiliaries climb over the fence and return to the company, to the 88mm artillery battery between the tram parking lot and the airfield.Three of his other men, among them Belissar, who was on anti-aircraft post at the Conrad School, had to leave immediately.He gathered the remaining fifteen boys together, and since nothing happened in the sky, he began the interrogation again: "So, if we heard correctly, you are Jesus. - Well! Another question: who How did you break the street lamps and window panes? Don't shy away, we know all too well!" These lads don't know.At most they have seen one or another of the victories of my voice.Oscar ordered himself to be tolerant towards these underage children. Today, people would simply call them hooligans.They have goals, but their methods are too direct, and some are too unintelligent.I'm going to forgive them and take a mildly objective approach.These were the attention-seekers who had been talking about the town for weeks, a gang of youths, and numerous patrols from the Criminal Police and the Hitler Youth were following them.As it later turned out, they were pupils at Conrad School, St. Peter's School and Horst-Wessel School.There is a second gang of Ash-Scatterers at the New Channel, led by high school students but two-thirds of its members are apprentices from the Siharu Shipyard and the Rolling Stock Works.The two factions seldom cooperated, except on occasions when they set out at night from Schauergasse to round up the captains of the League of German Girls in Steffengarten and Hindenburger Strasse, who were finishing their evening hours. Training goes home from the youth hostel at Bishop Hill.The two factions avoided conflict with each other and precisely demarcated areas of operation.Stuartbeck regarded the leaders of the New Channel faction not as rivals but as friends.The Ash-Scatterers gang is against everything.They ransacked the duty station of the Hitler Youth, took the medals and rank badges of the front-line leavers who made love to girls in the park, stole weapons, ammunition and gasoline from the anti-aircraft artillery batteries with the help of recruited Luftwaffe auxiliaries , From the very beginning, a large-scale attack on the Economic Bureau was planned. At that time, Oscar knew nothing about the organization and plans of the Ash-Scatterers.He felt quite alone and unfortunate, and wanted a sense of security in these semi-adult circles.I've secretly made myself one of these lads.Although I am almost twenty years old, I have already fallen on deaf ears to the words that I am too different from them in age.I blamed myself and said: why don't you show your art to these lads?Young people's thirst for knowledge is always strong!Show them an example, and show them something to open their eyes!They will admire you and may follow you.You can exert influence over them, and this is enriched by your vast experience and wisdom.Now, submit to God's will, gather disciples, and succeed Christ! Perhaps Stuartbeck had a hunch that my meditations were justified.He gave me time, and I thank him for that.At the end of August, a moonlit night with few clouds.Air raid siren.Two or three searchlights along the coast.Probably a reconnaissance plane.In those days, Paris had given up.In front of me is the main building of the Baltic Chocolate Factory with its many windows.Army Group Center stopped at the Weixel after a long race.The Baltic factory is no longer producing chocolate for retailers but for the Air Force.And Oscar had to get acquainted with the vision of General Patton's soldiers strolling under the Eiffel Tower in their American uniforms.This was painful for me, so Oscar held up a drumstick.Those moments spent with Roswitha!The Stuartbeck party noticed my expression and let his eyes follow my drumsticks to the chocolate factory.Under the brightest moonlight, a small island in the Pacific was wiped out of the Japanese army.Here, the moon is lying on all the windows of the chocolate factory at the same time.Oscar told anyone who wanted to hear him: "Jesus is going to sing about broken glass now." -------- ① General Patton, a famous American general in World War II. Before I could finish off the first three panes of glass, I suddenly noticed a fly buzzing far above my head.As the other two panes gave up the moonlight, I thought: This must be a dying fly, buzzing so loudly.I went on to paint the remaining windows of the factory's top floor black.So many searchlights, so pale, I thought to myself.I then took from many of the windows in the middle and bottom floors of the factory the reflections of lights that might have come from the anti-aircraft battery next to the Narvik barracks.First, the coastal anti-aircraft artillery battery fired, and then Oscar completely solved the glass on the middle floor.Immediately afterwards, the anti-aircraft batteries of Old Scotland, Peranken, and Shermere were ordered to fire.These are the three windows on the ground floor - this is the Night Fighter, taking off from the airfield and skimming over the roof of the factory.Before I could clear the ground floor, the anti-aircraft guns stopped firing, leaving the night fighters to shoot down a long-range bomber ceremoniously greeted by three searchlights at the same time over Oliva. At first, Oskar worried that his performance, going on at the same time as the effective air defense work, would distract the boys, and even lure their attention away from the factory and into the night sky. The work was finished, and I was especially surprised that the whole gang was still looking at the chocolate factory with all the window panes gone.From the nearby Hornfried Road there were hollers and applause, and, as in a theatre, it turned out that the bomber had been hit.It burns, attracts men, and probably falls rather than lands in the forests of the Yashken Valley.Even then, only a handful of gang members, among them the gaze of a shirtless angel, are dragged away from the glassless factory.However, Steutbeck and Coalpaw didn't care about shooting down the plane, and these two people mean a lot to me! -------- ① This is a sentence in the "Bible·Old Testament·Genesis" after God created all things.There are many such comical imitations of the language of the Bible, so I will not add them one by one. Then, just like before the incident, only the moon and the trivial things of the stars remained in the sky.Night fighters landed.The sound of a fire engine sounded in the distance.At this moment, Steutbeck turned around so that I could see his mouth still pursed in contempt, made a fisting movement, revealed the watch under the sleeve of the overlong raincoat, took it off, handed it to me, but gasped for words, had to wait for the all-clear to pass, and finally, to the applause of his children, said to me, "Yes, Jesus. If you will; Just accept you, you can work together. We are ashes, I hope you find this interesting!" Oscar weighed the watch, and then gave the young man Coalpaw this rather delicate object with luminous hands and the time on it—twenty-three minutes past zero.He cast a questioning look at his leader.Stuartbeck nodded in agreement.As Oscar prepared to hit the road home, he moved the drum into a comfortable position and said, "Jesus goes before you! You follow me!"