Chapter 47 Sealed glass jar for the last tram or pilgrimage

His voice alone was enough for me: the haughty, posturing nasal key.Again, he was lying on the branch of an apple tree and said: "You have a capable dog, sir!" I was a little overwhelmed and said, "What are you doing on the apple tree?" He was coy on the branch, and his long upper body was owed to him. "It's just sour apples, don't be afraid." I had to make him behave: "What have your sour apples to me? What have I to fear?" "Okay," he stuck out his tongue and retracted it. "You may think of me as the snake in Paradise, for there were already sour apples then, too."

I got angry: "For example, it's not good or bad!" He is extremely cunning: "Perhaps you think that only the fruits on the banquet are worth committing a sin to eat?" I'm leaving already.At that moment, nothing could be more intolerable to me than to discuss the species of the fruit in Paradise.At this time, he was going to meet me face to face.He quickly jumped down from the branch and stood by the fence, tall and flirtatious: "What did your dog get from the rye field?" I just replied, "It brought a stone in its mouth." It became an interrogation: "You put the stone in your pocket?"

"I'd rather put the stone in my pocket." "I think what the dog brings to you is more like a stick." "I insist it's a rock, even though it is or could be a stick." "So it's just a stick?" "As I see it, sticks and stones, sour apples and banquet fruits..." "Is it a moving stick?" "It's time for the dog to go home, I'm leaving!" "Is it a flesh-colored stick?" "You might as well go and tend your apples!—Come on, Lukes!" "Is it a flesh-coloured, moving stick with a ring on it?"

"What do you want? I hired a dog for a walk." "You see, I was thinking of borrowing something too. Can I put that beautiful ring on my little finger for a second? Just to shine on that little stick and turn it into a That ring that forms a ring finger. — Vitra, my name. Gottfried von Vitra. I am the last of my family." In this way, I made the acquaintance of Vitra, and I formed a friendship with him that day, and I still call him my friend today.So a few days ago, when he came to visit me in the nursing home, I said to him: "I'm very happy, my dear Gottfried, it was you, my friend, who went to the police to denounce you, not Anyone."

If there were angels, they must have looked like Vitra: tall, frivolous, lively, sprawling, and would rather embrace the most sterile of all lampposts than a soft, warm one. girl. Vitra is not immediately discovered.He only shows a certain side, and depending on the environment, he will turn into a thread, a scarecrow, a coat hanger, a horizontal tree branch, and so on.So I didn't notice him when I was sitting on the cable drum.Not even the dog barked, for the dog could neither smell nor see the angel nor bark at him. "If you please, my dear Gottfried," I begged him the day before yesterday, "send me a copy of the indictment which you read in court two years ago which gave rise to my case. one serving."

A copy is here.Now let Vitra, who accuses me in court, read it! I, Gottfried von Wietra, was lying on the fork of an apple tree in my mother's small vegetable orchard that day.The tree produces so many sour apples each year that it makes just enough applesauce to fill my seven airtight mason jars.I was lying on my side on a branch with my left hip resting on the lowest mossy point of the branch.My feet are facing the glassworks in Gresheim.I look, where am I looking?I look straight ahead.I watched and waited for what would happen within my field of vision. The defendant, now my friend, came into my view.A dog accompanied him, and circled about him, and behaved like a dog, as the accused later revealed to me, was Lukes, a Rottweiler, who lived near the Rohus church. You can rent it from dog rental stores.

The defendant sat down on the empty cable reel.It has stood in front of my mother Alice von Vitra's vegetable orchard since the end of the war.As the court was aware, the accused was short and deformed.This caught my attention.The behavior of this well-dressed little gentleman especially struck me as peculiar.He beat a drum on a rusty cable drum with two dry twigs.If it is considered that: 1. the defendant was a drummer by profession; 2. as the facts show, he practiced professionally wherever he went; When the drum beats; it is justified, then, that the defendant Oskar Matzerath was on a cable drum in front of Alice von Witra's large vegetable orchard on a sweltering summer day before a thunderstorm. Sitting down, I made a rhythmic noise with two dry poplar branches of different lengths.

I went on to confirm that the dog, Lukes, had spent an extended period of time burrowing into fields of rye ripe for cutting.If you ask how long it is, I can't answer it, because as soon as I lie down on the branch of my apple tree, I lose the concept of time.If I say the dog disappeared for a long time, it means that I miss the dog because I like it with its black fur and wide-brimmed ears. However, I believe I can say this: the defendant was not thinking about the dog. Lukes came back from a field of rye ripe for cutting with something in his mouth.I didn't see clearly what was in the dog's mouth.I think it was a stick, a rock, a tin can or a tin spoon.When the defendant took the facts of the crime from the dog's mouth, I saw what it was.From the moment the dog rubbed its mouth with its mouth on the defendant's - I think it was - left trouser leg, until the moment the defendant reached for possession - unfortunately it is impossible to determine the exact time - discreetly Say, there are always many minutes.

-------- ① The original text is Latin. Despite the dog's desperate efforts to get the attention of its renter, the latter beats his drum in a monotonous, memorable and incomprehensible way, like a child beating a drum.The defendant dropped two poplar twigs and - I don't remember exactly - kicked him with his right foot, when the dog, in a naughty gesture, ran its wet mouth between the defendant's legs.The dog made a half-circle, approached again humbly and trembling, and raised its mouth with something in its mouth.The defendant did not stand up, that is, he was sitting, this time reaching between the dog's teeth with his left hand.Lukes retreated a few meters after the object it had picked was taken away.However, the defendant was still sitting, holding the picked object in his hand, pinching his hands together, spreading them out again, pinching them again, and spreading them out again, something flickered on the picked object.After the defendant got used to looking at the picked object, he pinched it vertically with his thumb and forefinger and lifted it up and down his eye sockets.

Only then did I justify the name of the thing I picked up and call it a finger, and because of the flickering thing, I expanded the concept and called it the ring finger, but I didn't expect that I would replace it with it. One of the most interesting postwar criminal proceedings has a name: the ring finger suit.Finally, I, Gottfried von Wietra, have been called the most important witness in the case. The defendant was sedated, and so was I.True, the defendant's composure passed to me.As the defendant carefully wrapped the ring finger with the little handkerchief which had formerly adorned his breast pocket like a knight, I took a liking to the man on the cable reels.A decent gentleman, I thought, and I want to make my acquaintance.

So I called to him, and he was leaving with the borrowed dog, heading towards Gersheim.But his reaction was at first annoyed, almost arrogant.I still cannot understand to this day why he took me as a symbol of the snake just because I was lying on the apple tree.He also had doubts about my mother's sour apples, saying they were undoubtedly the ones in Paradise. It is indeed a habit of the devil to like to lie on the branches of trees.But it is boredom that drives me to lie down in the apple tree several times a week.It's like an epidemic, and I caught it effortlessly.What, then, drove the accused to come outside Düsseldorf?It was loneliness, he told me later.Aren't loneliness and boredom two sisters?I think this way to clarify for the defendant, not to accuse him.It was his drumming that made me feel good about him, talk to him, and finally form a friendship.He turns demons into rhythms, and his drumming itself is a variant of demons.The indictment, which brought me as a witness and him as a defendant, was also a game invented by the two of us, a small means of eliminating and sustaining our boredom and loneliness.In view of my request, the defendant, after a moment's hesitation, removed the ring from his ring finger - which was convenient - and put it on the little finger of my left hand.It fits right, I'm happy.It goes without saying that I had slipped off the branch of the tree I was lying on before I tried on the ring.We stood on both sides of the fence, exchanged names, talked, touched on some political topics, and he gave me the ring.The fingers are kept by him, and he holds them carefully.We agreed that it was a woman's finger.While I was wearing the ring and letting the sunlight hit it, the defendant struck a dance-like, snappy rhythm on the wooden fence with his free left hand.The wooden fence in my mother's vegetable orchard, the unsupported kind, clattered and trilled at the drummer's behest.I can't remember how long we stood like this and looked at each other.We have a similar taste for the most innocuous of games.At this moment, at medium altitude, a plane heard the sound of its engine.The plane was about to land at Lohausen.While we both wondered if the twin-engine or quad-engine plane was starting to land, we still didn't let the daylight leave each other and ignore the plane.From time to time we later found occasion to play this game and call it the Penance of Sugar Leo; Sugar Leo was a friend of the defendant's years ago, and the two of them used to play in the cemetery This kind of game. I returned the ring to him when the plane—whether it was a twin or a quad—had found its landing field, indeed.The defendant put the ring on that ring finger, again using his small handkerchief as wrapping material.Then he asked me to go with him. It was July 7, 1951.When we arrived in Gersheim, we took a taxi instead of a tram at the tram terminal.The defendant also had frequent occasions to show his generosity to me afterwards.We drove into town, had the taxi wait in front of the dog rental shop next to Rohus Church, returned Lukes, got in the taxi again, and drove across town via Birke, Upper Birke to Weil Stern Cemetery.Herr Matzerath paid more than twelve marks for the carriage, and then we went to the mason Konev's tombstone shop. It's dirty there.I was delighted when the stonemason did what my friend asked him to do in just one hour.While my friend kindly explained to me the kinds of tools and stones, Mr. Konev made a plaster copy of the finger (without the ring).He didn't ask a word about the finger.I just watched him work incidentally.The fingers had to be treated first, that is to say, first greased, wound with strands, then plastered, and before the plaster hardened, the mold with the strands was cut in half.I am a decorator by trade and making plaster casts is nothing new to me.But as soon as that finger was in the stonemason's hand, something disgusting was added to it.These disgusting elements were not removed until the reproduction was made, and the defendant took his finger, wiped off the grease, and wrapped it in his little handkerchief.My friend paid the stonemason.He refused at first because he regarded Mr. Matzerath as a colleague.He also said that Mr. Oscar had squeezed boils for him before, also for nothing.The plaster poured into the mold hardened, and the mason opened the mold, took out the replica, promised to make more replicas from the mold in a few days, and accompanied us through his display of tombstones , until Bit Road. The second time we took a taxi to the train station.The defendant invited me to dinner at the tidy station restaurant, which dragged on for a long time.He talked casually with the waiter, and I concluded from this that Herr Matzerath must be a regular customer of the railway station restaurant.We had breast of ox with fresh turnips and salmon from the Rhine, cheese, and drank a small bottle of champagne.As we returned to the finger, I advised the defendant to consider the finger someone else's property and to turn it in to the Lost and Found, especially since he already had a plaster replica.The defendant asserts firmly and positively that he considers himself the rightful owner of the finger, since he was promised a finger at his birth, though it was coded and represented by a drum.He could also point to the scars on the back of his friend Herbert Truczynski, those finger-length scars that also predicted the ring finger.Then there was the empty cartridge case he picked up in the Saspe cemetery, which also had the size and meaning of a future ring finger. At first I could only smile at the testimonials my new friends cite.But I must admit that a non-conservative person must have no trouble understanding this set of interrelated words: drum stick, scar, bullet casing, ring finger. After dinner, a third taxi took me home.We say goodbye.Three days later, I went to visit the defendant as promised, and he had already prepared the next amazing thing for me. He first showed me his apartment, that is, his room, because Mr. Matzerath was the third tenant.At first he only rented a rather modest room, which was originally a bathroom; later, when his drumming brought him fame and wealth, he paid rent for a small windowless room which he called Sister Dorothea. small room; he also pays a large rent for the third room with indifference.This room was formerly occupied by a Mr. Münzel, a musician and colleague of the accused.The second landlord, Mr. Zeidler, knew that Mr. Matzerath was rich, so he shamelessly raised the rent. In the so-called Sister Dorothea's cell, the defendant prepared the next surprise for me.On the marble slab of a mirrored dresser stood a airtight glass jar the same size as the one my mother Alice von Vitra used to store the applesauce made from our sour apples.However, what is contained in this big mouth bottle is the ring finger swimming in alcohol.The defendant proudly pointed out to me a number of large scientific works, which taught him the basics of finger preservation.I have only skimmed through these books, hardly even looking at the illustrations, but I admit that the accused succeeded in preserving the appearance of the fingers.In addition, glass bottles and their contents look beautiful in front of the mirror and are interesting decorations, as I can attest time and time again as a professional decorator. The defendant, noticing that I liked the look of the glass bottle, confided to me that he sometimes worships it.I was curious, and a bit rashly asked him to demonstrate it right away.He asked me for help in reverse, giving me paper and pen, asking me to write down his prayers, and also to ask questions about the fingers, which he would answer honestly as he prayed. Here, I present the defendant's words, my questions and his answers as testimony as follows: Qibla seals the jar.I worship.Who am I referring to?Oscar or me?I'm devout, Oscar is absent-minded.Single-minded, uninterrupted, not afraid of repetition.I am clear-headed because I have no memories in my mind.Oscar, with a clear head, because his heart is full of memories.Me, cold, hot, warm.Guilty when questioned.Not guilty without questioning.Guilty because, fall because, become guilty despite, declare me innocent, pass on, clench my teeth, make me prevent, mock, laugh right, laugh because of, cry for, cry right, cry without, talk Blasphemy, silence in profanity, no words, no silence, prayer.I worship, what?Glass.What glass?Airtight glass jar.What is the glass bottle sealed in?The glass bottle seals the finger.What finger?ring finger.whose finger?Blonde.Who is the blond hair?Medium build.One meter sixty?One meter six three.What are the characteristics?Liver nevus.Where did you grow up?Inside the upper arm.Right arm left arm?right arm.Which hand is the ring finger on?left hand.engaged?Yes, but still single.Belief?Protestant.Virgin?Virgin.When were you born?have no idea.when?near Hannover.when?December.Sagittarius or Capricorn?Sagittarius.character?timid.good temper?Diligent and talkative.cautious?Frugal, pragmatic, and cheerful.shy?Sweet tooth, righteous, overly religious.Pale, mostly dreaming of travelling.Irregular menstrual periods, slow, bear but speak out, unimaginative, passive, patient, listen quietly, nod in agreement, fold arms, droop eyelids when speaking, open eyes when greeted , light gray, brown near pupils, got a ring from a married boss, refused to accept it, then accepted it, terrible experience, fiber, satan, many whites, run away, moved, came back, can't get rid of it, jealous but And for no reason, disease is not a disease of oneself, death is not a death of one's own choosing, no, I don't know, and I don't want to, I am picking cornflowers, that one came, no, I was with you beforehand, and I can no longer ……Amen?Amen. I, Gottfried von Vitra, add this prayer note to my testimony before the court only because this statement about the mistress of the ring finger, although it reads ambiguously , but largely matched the court report of the murdered woman, nurse Dorothea Kengate.It is not my job to doubt the defendant's testimony that he neither murdered the nurse nor met her face to face. However, I still think today that my friend was sincere and sincere when he knelt before the jar he placed on the chair and beat the tin drum he held between his knees. A proof in favor of the accused. For more than a year, I also had frequent occasions to witness the defendant praying and drumming, for he asked me to be his traveling companion and paid me generously to take me with him on the The traveling performance resumed shortly after picking up the ring finger.We traveled all over West Germany and got offers to go to East Germany and even to foreign countries.However, Mr. Matzerath would rather stay within the borders, as he said, than join in the excitement of popular traveling shows.He never drummed a prayer over a mason jar before a performance.After he came on stage, after a long-drawn-out dinner, and we returned to our hotel room, he beat the drums and prayed, and I asked questions for the record.Afterwards, we compare this prayer with the prayers of previous days or weeks.There are long and short prayers.The words of seeking are sometimes very contradictory, but the next day they become clear and lengthy and detailed.However, none of the prayer notes collected by me and hereby submitted to the court contain more than that first note which I have attached to my testimony. During this year, I got to know some acquaintances and relatives of Matzerath in general between traveling performances.For example, he introduced me to his stepmother, Frau Maria Matzerath.The defendant admired her very much, but restrained himself.That afternoon I met the defendant's half-brother, Kurt Matzerath, an eleven-year-old well-educated liberal arts student.Frau Maria Matzerath's sister, Frau Gust Kester, also made a good impression on me.The accused told me that in the first years after the war his family relations were damaged.It was not until Mr. Matzerath opened a large-scale gourmet shop for his stepmother that also imported southern fruits, and when the shop encountered difficulties and he continued to fund it, the friendship between the stepmother and the stepson was not formed. alliance. Mr. Matzerath also introduced me to several of his former colleagues, mainly jazz musicians.As cheerful and easy-going as I found Mr. Münzel—Klepp, as the defendant affectionately called him—I have not yet had the courage or desire to continue this connection. Due to the generosity of the defendant, it was not necessary for me to continue my career as a decorator.However, when we returned home from our traveling gigs, I was commissioned to decorate some window displays for the pleasure of my profession.The defendant was friendly and interested in my workmanship, and many times stood in the street in the middle of the night, tirelessly serving as a spectator of my mediocre workmanship.Sometimes, after the work was done, we wandered around Düsseldorf in the dead of night, avoiding the Old Town, because the defendant didn't like the sight of bull's-eye glass and old German shop signs.And so - and I now come to the last part of my testimony - a walk after midnight led us through Lat to the front of the tram car park. We stopped in tacit understanding, watching the last tram pull into the parking lot.Such a scene is really beautiful.Surrounded by the dark city, in the distance, a drunk construction worker sings strangely because it's Friday.Otherwise, there was silence, not loudness, although the bells of the last trams coming in jingled and rattled the curved tracks.Most of the trams pulled into the stops, but there were also a few empty ones, parked here and there on the tracks, their lights lit up like a festival.Who came up with the idea?is our idea.However, it was I who said first: "How is it, dear friend?" Mr. Matzerath nodded, and we got into the car without haste.I stood on the driver's platform, felt the doorway, started steadily, accelerated slowly, and behaved like a good streetcar driver.When we had left the bright parking lot behind, Herr Matzerath applauded my performance with these words: "You must be a baptized Catholic, Gottfried, or you would drive The trams don't run so well." To be honest, this little temporary job gave me a lot of fun.Apparently, the people in the parking lot didn't notice that we had driven off.No one is chasing us.Besides, they could turn off the power and stop us with little effort.I was driving the tram in the direction of Flingern, passing through Flingern, and was considering whether to turn off near Hannier in the direction of Rath, Rattingen, when Herr Matzerath asked me to drive Access to Earl's Hill, Gresheim tracks.Although I was afraid of the uphill road below the Lion Castle Ballroom, I still complied with the defendant's wishes and broke through the uphill road and passed the ballroom.At this point, I had to brake because three men were standing on the tracks, forcing me to stop rather than begging me. Immediately after Haniel, Herr Matzerath went into the compartment to smoke a cigarette.As the driver, I had to say loudly: "Please get in the car!" I noticed the third person who was not wearing a hat.Sandwiched between two men wearing green hats with black laces, he got into the car awkwardly or with his eyes blocked, missing the pedal several times.His two escorts or guards helped him to the driver's box rather roughly, and then went into the car. When I drove away again, I heard a miserable whimper in the back compartment, followed by several slaps.Then, it was Mr. Matzerath's firm voice, and I was relieved after hearing it.He reprimanded the two who had just come up, warning them not to beat a wounded, half-blind man suffering from the loss of his glasses. "Mind your own business!" I heard one of the cuckolds snarl. "He's going through something he can't even imagine today! Well, it's been long enough." My friend Herr Matzerath wanted to know what crime the poor half-blind man had committed as I drove slowly towards Gressheim.Their conversation immediately turned to strange topics.After just two sentences, everyone was in the war period, or in other words, reversed to September 1, 1939.War broke out, and the half-blind man was, they said, a Zouaves soldier who had illegally defended a Polish post office building.The strange thing is that Mr. Matzera, although only fifteen years old at the time, knew the half-blind man and called him Victor Veluen in the course of the conversation.The poor, short-sighted postman who delivered the money order lost his glasses during the battle, and fled without them, escaping the hands of the executioners.They did not let up, however, and pursued him until the end of the war, and even afterward.They took out a piece of paper, which was a shooting order issued in 1939.The middle of the two cuckolds yelled that they finally got him.Another cuckold said he was glad that the old scores of history were now finally being settled.He had sacrificed his spare time, even his vacations, to carry out the execution order of 1939, since he still had his job, after all, as a business representative.His comrade-in-arms was also in trouble, a refugee from the East who had lost his thriving tailor shop there and had to start all over again, but things were coming to an end now.Orders will be carried out tonight, to put an end to the past.Not bad, and took the last train. It would be against my will to be the driver of a man condemned to death and two executioners with orders to shoot to Gersheim.On the deserted, slightly sloping market square in the suburbs, I turned right to head towards the terminus near the glassworks, where I let the two cuckolds and half-blind Victor get off and meet me again. friends on their way home.With three stops to go to the terminal, Herr Matzerath got out of the carriage and put his briefcase where the professional drivers kept their bread-and-butter lunchboxes.I know that he has the airtight carafe standing upright in his briefcase. "We have to save him, he's Victor, poor Victor!" Herr Matzerath was visibly agitated. "He hasn't found a pair of glasses that fit. He's very nearsighted, and they're going to shoot him, and he's going to look in the wrong direction." I don't think the executioner was armed.However, Mr. Matzerath has noticed that the coats of the two green hats are bulging and getting in the way. "He was a postman delivering money orders at the Polish Post Office in Danzig. Now he's doing the same thing at the Bundespost. But after get off work they're after him because the order to shoot is still there." Although I don't fully understand Mr. Matzerath's intentions, I still promise him to stay by his side during the shooting and, if possible, to go with him to prevent the shooting. After passing the glass factory, not far from the first row of small vegetable orchards—in the moonlight, I saw my mother’s garden and the apple tree—I stopped the tram, and shouted to the car: “Please get off. Car, the terminal is here!" The two men in black and green hats got out of the car immediately.The half-blind man struggled to find the running board again.Mr. Matzerath then got out of the car and took his drum from under his coat.When we got out of the car, he asked me to take his briefcase and carafe. We left the streetcar, which was still lit, and stared at the two executioners and the victim. We walked along the vegetable orchard fence.I am tired from walking.When the three people in front stopped, I realized that they had chosen my mother's vegetable orchard as the shooting site.Not only Mr. Matzerath, but I also protested.They ignored it, pulled down the rotting wooden fence, and tied the half-blind man whom Herr Matzerath called poor Victor under my branch in the apple tree.As we continued to protest, they showed us with flashlights the crumpled execution order signed by an army attorney general named Zelewski.I remember that the date column reads: October 5, 1939 in Sopot, and the seal is correct, it seems that there is no hope.However, we talked about the United Nations, we talked about democracy, collective guilt, Adenauer and so on.However, the one in the middle of the green hat blocked all our objections with one sentence.He said that the peace treaty has not yet been drafted and signed, so we should not interfere in this matter.He said he elected Adenauer as we did, and as for the shooting order, it remains in force.They've gone to the highest authorities with this order, asked the authorities to make up their minds, and in the end, they still have to perform their damned duties.So, he said we'd better go away. -------- ① Refers to the fact that a peace treaty has not yet been signed with Germany after the end of World War II. We didn't go.When the two green hats unbuttoned their coats and let the machine gun stick out, Mr. Matzerath also straightened his drum.At this moment, the moon came out of the clouds, and it was full circle with only a little missing.It gave the edge of the cloud a metallic sheen like the toothed rim of a can.Mr. Matzerath picked up two drumsticks and started wrestling on a similarly shaped but round tin drum.He beat the drum in despair.The sound of the drum sounded strange, but it was familiar to me.The letter "O" is formed again and again: dead, not dead, not dead, Poland not dead!But that was poor Victor's voice already.He knew the words of Herr Matzerath's drumbeat: Poland is not dead, as long as we live.It seems that the two green hats are also familiar with this rhythm.They held machine guns drawn by moonlight, and their bodies were twitching.The march played by Herr Matzerath and poor Victor in my mother's vegetable orchard prompted the Polish cavalry to move.It may have been the help of the moonlight, or it may have been the drums, the moonlight, and the hoarse voice of the near-sighted Victor who conjured up many cavalrymen from the ground, rumbling hooves, snorting, spurs clanging, stallions neighing, Whoops, whoops, whoops... no, nothing, nothing booming, whooping, clanging, neighing, shouting and smacking, but red and white, like Herr Matzerath oil Painted drums.Therefore, a squadron of Polish Lancers, gliding silently across the harvested fields outside Gersheim, the small flags on the lances dragging, no, dragging is not correct, but swimming, just like the entire squadron of cavalry. Swimming under the moon, probably from the moon, swimming, turning left toward my vegetable orchard Swimming, looks neither flesh nor blood, yet swimming, made like a toy, like a ghost Perhaps it can be compared with the image of Mr. Matzerath's orderly weaving with thread.A formation of Polish cavalry, noiseless but rumbling, no flesh, no blood, yet Polish, came unrestrained towards us.We fell to the ground, enduring the moonlight and the Polish cavalry.They rushed to my mother's vegetable orchard, to all the other well-planted vegetable orchards, and yet they did not trample on a single one.They took only poor Victor and the two executioners, and galloped across the open fields under the moon, not dead, not dead yet, galloping eastward, toward Poland, toward the back of the moon. We waited, breathless, until the night became the night of no event again, and the sky closed again, withdrawing the moonlight that spoke of the last attack of the long-rotting cavalry.I stood up and congratulated Mr. Matzerath on his great success without underestimating the influence of the moonlight.Wearily and rather despondently, he waved his hand in refusal: "Success, my dear Gottfried! I have had too many successes in my life to count. I wish I hadn't succeeded once. But it was very Difficult and requires a great deal of labor." I don't like to hear that from him, because I'm one of those hard-working people who haven't succeeded.Mr. Matzerath didn't seem to want to accept my favor, so I scolded him and said: "You are exaggerating, Oskar!" I dared to go straight to the point because we were already called "you" at that time. "All the papers are talking about you. You've got fame. Not to mention the money. But you think, for me, a man who's never been mentioned in the papers, that in your highly praised Is it easy to stick around? How I would like to be alone in something unique like the one you just did so I could be in the paper too , will be printed in large type: Gottfried von Vitra did it!" Herr Matzerath's smile broke my heart.He was lying on his back, hunched in the soft soil, pulling weeds with both hands, throwing handfuls of grass high up, laughing like an almighty inhuman god: "My friend, this种事再容易不过了！这儿，公事皮包！它没有落到波兰骑马的马蹄下去，真是奇迹。我把它送给你，皮包里藏着那个密封大口玻璃瓶和那个无名指。全都拿去吧！去格雷斯海姆，那辆亮着灯的有轨电车还停在那儿呢。上车，带着我的礼物开车到君主壁垒，去警察总局，告发，明天你就能在各种报纸上读到你的大名了。” 我起先还拒绝这一建议，没有玻璃瓶里的手指，他肯定活不下去。但他安慰我说，对于这段手指插曲他已经完全厌烦了。此外，他有许多石膏复制品，还让人制作了一个纯金复制品。我现在可以把皮包拿走了，回去找到那辆电车，开着它去警察局，进行控告。 就这样，我走了，还听见马策拉特先生在哈哈大笑。他仍旧躺着，当我踩着铃铛向市内驶去时，他要让黑夜来摆布他，拔草，大笑。我第二天早晨才去告发。感谢马策拉特先生的一番好意，我的控告使我的名字多次出现在报纸上。 而我呢，奥斯卡，好心的马策拉特先生，笑着躺在格雷斯海姆附近夜间黑色的草丛中，在若干可见的、死神般严肃的星星下面笑着翻滚，把我的驼背钻进温暖的泥土王国中去，想道：睡吧，奥斯卡，在警察醒来之前再睡上一小时。你再也不会这样自由地躺在月光下面了。 当我醒来时，在我发现天已大亮之前，我发现有什么东西，有什么人在舔我的脸，温暖、生硬、均匀、潮湿地舔着。 这会不会是被维特拉叫醒并带到此地来的警察正在用舌头把你舔醒呢？然而，我并没有马上睁开眼睛，而是再让我被这样温暖、生硬、均匀、潮湿地舔上一会儿，享受着，是谁在舔我，我都无所谓。奥斯卡猜着，不是警察，便是母牛。随后，我才睁开我的蓝眼睛。 它，黑白相间，伏在我身边，呼吸着，舔着我，直到我睁开眼睛。天亮了，多云转晴。我暗自说，奥斯卡，可别待在这头母牛身边，尽管它像天仙般地瞧着你，尽管它如此勤快地用粗糙的舌头平息和减弱你的记忆。天亮了，苍蝇嗡嗡叫，你得逃走。维特拉去告发你，接下来你必须逃走。你若不真正逃跑，那控告也不会是真的。让母牛哞哞叫去吧，你只管逃走吧！他们会在这里或那里逮捕你，但这对于你来说是无所谓的。 就这样，一头母牛舔了我，给我洗了脸，梳了头，我就拔腿逃跑了。刚跑几步，我就爆发出早晨清脆的笑声。母牛伏着哞哞叫，我把鼓留在它身旁，我笑着逃之夭夭。