Chapter 48 thirty years old

Yes, run away!There are a few words still to be said.I ran away to increase the value of Vitra's accusation.An escape has to have a purpose, I think.Where are you running, Oscar?I asked myself.Political events, the so-called Iron Curtain, forbade my escape to the East.The four skirts of my grandmother Anna Koljacek still bulge out of Kashube's potato fields for protection.But for me, I can't think of it as an escape destination, although if I had to escape, I think the only hope is to escape under my grandmother's skirt. A side note: Today, I celebrate my thirtieth birthday.A man of thirty has an obligation to speak of escape as a man, not as an apprentice.Maria, she brought me cake and thirty candles and said, "Now you're thirty, Oscar. Now, your time to be sensible is slowly coming!"

Klepp, my friend Klepp, sent me jazz records as usual, and brought five matches to light the thirty candles on my birthday cake. "Life begins at thirty!" said Klepp, himself twenty-nine. Vitra, my friend Gottfried, who knows my heart best, gives me sweets, and leans over my bed rail to continue the collection of books by Ming Li Zhi.It is the sequel to "Book Collection".A total of twenty-seven volumes.Take, said with a nasal voice: "When Jesus was thirty years old, he went out on the road and gathered his disciples around him." Vitra has always loved to confuse me.He thought I should leave this bed and gather disciples just because I was thirty.Next came my attorney, waving a piece of paper, shouting congratulations, hanging his nylon cap on my bed, and announcing to me and to the entire birthday party, "I say this is a lucky coincidence. Today, my client Celebrating his thirtieth birthday. And today, on his thirtieth birthday, I got news that the ring finger case will be reopened, and new clues have been found, Sister Beater, everyone knows..."

What I've feared for years, what I've feared since I ran away, is coming today, on my thirtieth birthday: the real culprit is found, the trial is reopened, I'm acquitted, I'm free Released in a sanatorium and nursing home, robbed me of my sweet bed, put me on the cold, weather-exposed streets, forced thirty-year-old Oscar to gather his disciples around himself and his drum. She, Sister Beater, was said to have been obsessed with jealousy, and murdered my Sister Dorothea. Readers may remember it.There was Dr. Werner, who, as often happens in movies or in life, was caught between two nurses.A nasty story: Beate loves Werner.Werner loves Dorothea.Dorothea loves no one, or secretly loves little Oscar.Werner fell ill.Dorothea took care of him because he happened to be in her ward.Beata couldn't stand it and couldn't tolerate it.It is said that she therefore coaxed Rothea to go for a walk, and killed her, or rather got rid of her, in the rye field near Gersheim.As a result, Kouart could watch over Werner undisturbed.She nursed him, it is said, not to restore him to health, but to the contrary.The female nurse who loved him obsessively might say to herself: As long as he is sick, he belongs to me.Had she overdosed on him, or had she given him the wrong medicine?Dr. Werner was dead anyway, from an overdose or the wrong drug.But Beate admitted in court neither to giving him the wrong or overdose of the drug, nor to the walk in the rye field that became Sister Dorothea's last.Oscar didn't admit anything, but he had the incriminating finger in the jar.They sentenced him for having been in the rye fields, and didn't take him seriously, but put me in a sanatorium and nursing home for observation.Before that, Oskar fled, because by running away I would greatly increase the value of my friend Gottfried's accusation.

I was twenty-eight years old when I ran away.Thirty candles were burning on my birthday cake a few hours earlier, dripping calmly.It was September when I ran away.When I was born, my life star was in Virgo.However, what is going on here is not my birth under the light bulb, but my escape. As I have already said above, there was no way to escape to the East, to my grandmother.Like anyone today, I had to flee west.You can't go to your grandmother's for political reasons, so, Oscar, run away to your grandfather's.He lives in Buffalo, in the United States.Escape to America and see how far you can escape!

When the cows were licking me in the meadow near Gersheim and my eyes were closed, I suddenly thought of my grandfather Koljacek in America.It might be seven o'clock in the morning, I said to myself: the shops open at eight.I laughed and ran away, leaving the drum beside the cow, thinking: Gottfried is tired, he may not be reporting until eight or eight-thirty, I'm going to take advantage of this lead.It took me ten minutes to ring up a taxi in the sleepy suburb of Gresheim.A taxi took me to the train station.On the way, I counted the bills and often made mistakes because I had to laugh as crisply as I did in the morning.Then, I looked through my passport. Due to the arrangement of the "Western" concert management office, there was a valid visa for France and a valid visa for the United States.It was originally Dr. Diusch's long-cherished wish to let those countries have a taste of drummer Oscar's traveling concert.

Oh①, I said to myself, let's run away to Paris, that's good, it sounds reasonable, it's going to be in the movies, and there's that Garbin who smokes his pipe and hunts me down with a good heart.So, who will play me?Chaplin?Picasso? ——When the taxi driver asked me for seven marks, I was still laughing, excited by the idea of ​​running away, and repeatedly slapped my slightly wrinkled trousers.I paid and went to the station restaurant for breakfast.Next to the soft-boiled eggs lay the Federal Railroad timetable.I found a suitable train number, and I still had time after breakfast, so I went to exchange foreign currency and bought a small leather case.I dared not go back to Rue Jülich, so I bought an expensive but ill-fitting shirt, a light green pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc., and put them all in a suitcase.I didn't need to economize, so I bought a first-class ticket, and before long I was enjoying the comfort of the upholstered window seat.I ran away, but didn't have to run on two legs.The upholstery also helps me think.As the train moved and the escape began, Oscar began to think about what there was to be afraid of.I said to myself not without reason: there is no flight without fear!Oscar, if the police station can only help you laugh crisply in the morning, then what is there to be afraid of and run away from?

-------- ①The original text is French. Today, I am thirty years old, and escape and judgment are a thing of the past.But the fear I had persuaded myself to believe during the flight remained. Is this the crackling of the rails, a little train song?The lyrics came, monotonous, and I didn't notice until almost Aachen.The lyrics, entrenched in me as if I were stuck in the upholstery of a first-class car, crossed Aachen—we crossed the border at about ten-thirty—and it was evidently still there, increasingly frightening.So I was glad when the customs officers distracted me, more interested in my hunchback than my name and passport.I therefore said to myself: this Vitra, this snooze!It was almost eleven o'clock, and he hadn't gone to the police station with the jar under his arm, but I was already on the run early in the morning, trying to convince myself of a fear that would make my escape a little bit longer. motivation.In Belgium, the train sings: Black Cook, are you there?Yes!Black Cook, are you there?Yes, yes... At this time, I was really scared.

Today, I am thirty years old, the case will be reopened, and the acquittal is just around the corner.I will run around again, on the train, on the tram, and this lyrics will also echo in my ears: $Cook, are you there?Yes! However, apart from my fear of the black cook, the escape trip was beautiful, although at every stop I waited with trepidation for the black cook to show her face.I'm sitting alone in my car, and she's probably next door.I got acquainted first with the Belgian customs officer and later with the French customs officer, sometimes taking a five-minute nap and waking up with a scream.In order not to leave myself undefended at the mercy of the black cook, I leafed through Der Spiegel, which had been handed to me in the carriage when I was in Düsseldorf.I have repeatedly been amazed by the breadth of knowledge of the journalists.I even came across a short review of my manager, Dr. Düsch of the "Western" concert agency, which confirmed what I already knew: Düsch's agency had only one pillar, Oscar the drummer.On the right side of the comment is my photo, which is pretty good.And so, until I almost arrived in Paris, I kept imagining the bankruptcy of the "Western" concert management due to my arrest and the horrific appearance of the black cook.

I was never afraid of the black cook in the old days.It was only on the run, when I needed something to scare me, that she crawled into my shell and stayed there, mostly sleeping there, but after all until today when I celebrate my thirtieth On birthdays, and presents a variety of different images.For example, she may appear as the name "Goethe", and when I hear it, I will cry out and hide under the covers in fear.Ever since I was a boy, I have tried to study the poet's works, but his Olympian detachment has always struck me as ominous.Today, he changed his clothes, dressed in black, pretending to be a cook, no longer bright and classic, but surpassing the eerie darkness of Rasputin, standing in front of my railing bed, borrowing my thirtieth birthday At this moment, I asked me, "Ms. Black Cook, is she there?" At this moment, I was really scared to death.

Yes!The train replied that it was carrying the escaped Oskar to Paris.I had expected to meet officers from the International Police Service at the Gare du Nord, or Gare du Nord in French.But only one porter greeted me.He smelled of red wine, and I would never take him for a black cook.I trusted him with my small suitcase and let him carry it to the ticket gate.But, I thought, maybe the police officers and the cooks don't want to waste the money on platform tickets, they'll stop you outside the check-in and arrest you.Therefore, it is smarter to bring the suitcase over and carry it yourself before the ticket gate.In this way, I had to drag the box all the way to the subway because I didn't meet the police and they didn't take my box.

I do not wish to describe to my readers the smell of the world-famous Underground Railroad.I recently read that this fragrance can be bought and sprayed on yourself.What caught my attention: firstly, the subway asked for the presence of the black cook just like the train, although the rhythm was different; It's fear and dread.My plan is to take the metro to Porte d'Italia and from there take a taxi to Orly airport.I imagined the scene of being arrested. Since it didn't appear at Gare du Nord, it should be at the famous Orly Airport. The black cook dressed up as a stewardess, how exciting and ingenious the scene was.I had to do a car transfer, luckily my little case was light.As I let the subway hijack me and drive south, I thought: Oscar, where are you going to get off? —My God, how much can happen in a day!A cow is still licking you near Gersheim this morning, and you are happy and not afraid.Now, you're in Paris—where do you get off?Where will she meet you, darkly and frighteningly?In Piazza Italia or Porta Italia; I got off at the White House, one stop before the Italian Gate, because I thought in my heart: they are naturally thinking, and I am thinking too, and they will wait by the Italian Gate.But the black cook also knew what I was thinking and what they were thinking.Besides, I've had enough.Running away, struggling to maintain the fear in my heart, exhausted me.Oscar doesn't want to go to Orly Airport, he thinks the White House is more authentic than Orly Airport, and he is right to do so, because there are escalators in that metro station.It cheers me up and makes me hear the rattle of the escalator: Black Cook, are you there?Yes! On the contrary, Oscar was in a dilemma.His escape is drawing to a close, and his reporting will end with it.However, is the escalator in the white room of the subway station so high, so steep, and so symbolic, that it can rattle and become the final picture of his series of narratives? At this time, I suddenly thought of my thirtieth birthday today.I would like to dedicate my thirtieth birthday to all those people who find the escalator just too noisy and the Black Cookmaid not to terrify them.For, of all other birthdays, is not the thirty birthday the most singular and definite?It contains the word "three", which gives people a premonition of sixty and makes sixty redundant.When thirty candles burned on my birthday cake this morning, I was so happy that I wanted to cry because I felt embarrassed in Maria's presence: Thirty people shouldn't cry La! As soon as the first step of the escalator—if the escalator has a first step—takes me away, I can't stop laughing.I laughed out loud in spite of, or rather because of, my fear.Rising steeply and slowly to the heights on which they stood.There's still time for half a cigarette.Two levels above me, an uninhibited couple was messing around.One step below me was an old woman, and at first I suspected, without grounds, that she was a black cook.She wears a hat with floral decorations that mean fruit.While I was smoking, I tried to think about the possible things that might happen with the escalator.Therefore, Oskar first plays the role of the poet Dante, who has just returned from hell, and above, at the end of the escalator, is the clever reporter of Der Spiegel waiting for him.They asked: "Hello, Dante, how's it going down there?"—I played the same skit again as the poet Goethe, and let the reporter of Der Spiegel ask me, down there, with the mothers, how life is going How are you doing.Finally, tired of the poets, I said to myself, there are neither Der Spiegel reporters nor gentlemen with metal badges in their overcoat pockets, but there she is, the cook, and the escalator rattles: black Cook, are you there?Oscar replied, "Yes, yes!" -------- ① Refers to plainclothes police. Next to the escalator there is an ordinary staircase.This is the passage for pedestrians on the street to get off the subway station.It looks like it's raining outside.Pedestrians were all drenched.This disturbs me because I don't have time in Düsseldorf to buy an umbrella.Glancing upwards, Oscar saw the inconspicuous but eye-catching faces of those gentlemen, all of whom were wearing civilian umbrellas, however, this did not make people suspect the existence of the black cook.How do I greet them?I was getting worried, smoking slowly, enjoying myself, standing on the escalator.It is slowly raising my excitement and enriching my knowledge.Standing on the escalator will make you younger, and standing on the escalator will make you old, getting older and older.I was left with the choice: to be a three-year-old or to be a sixty-year-old, and then to walk off the escalator and face the officers of the International Police Department, to be terrified of black cooks of one age or another. It must have been late.My metal bed looks tired.Bruno, my orderly, has also shown his worried brown eyes through the peephole twice already.Here, under the watercolor of the anemone, stands the uncut birthday cake with thirty candles.Maria is probably asleep by now.Someone, I think Maria's sister Gust, wished me happiness for the next thirty years.Maria sleeps so soundly and enviably.My son Kurt, liberal arts middle school student, model student and honor student, what is his birthday wish for me?When Maria slept, so did the furniture around her.Now that I think about it, Kurt Jr. wished me back to health on my thirtieth birthday.However, I wish I could sleep soundly like Maria, because I am tired and have almost nothing to say.Klepp's young wife made a childish but well-intentioned birthday poem about my hunchback.Prince Eugen was also a hunchback, nevertheless, he captured the city and fortress of Belgrade.Maria would eventually understand that a hunchback brings good luck.Prince Eugen also has two fathers.Now I'm thirty, but my hunchback is younger than me.Louis XIV was an assumed father of Prince Eugene.In the past, beautiful women often touched my hunchback on the street for good luck.Prince Eugen was hunchbacked, so he died of natural causes.If Jesus also had a hunchback, it would be difficult for people to nail him to the cross.Just because I'm thirty, do I really have to go out into the world now and gather disciples around me? It was just a sudden thought on the escalator.Above my front is a no-holds-barred couple.Below my back is the old woman with the hat.It was raining outside, and above, at the end of the stairs, stood the gentlemen of the International Police.The escalator has slatted lattice mats.When you stand on the escalator, you should think about everything again: where are you from?where are you going?who are you?May I have your name?What do you want to do?Various smells hit the nostrils: the vanilla smell of Maiden Maria.The oily smell of sardines in oil, which my poor mother boiled and drank while it was hot, cooled itself, under the dirt.Jan Bronski, who wastes cologne again and again, and yet death breathes prematurely through all his buttonholes.Greengrocer Greve's cellar smells of winter potatoes.And the smell of dry sponge next to the first grader's slate.My Roswitha, she smells of cinnamon and nutmeg.I floated on a cloud of carbolic acid while Mr. Feingold poured disinfectant on my chilly fever.Ah, the Catholic spirit of the Sacred Heart Church, so many clothes that have not been dried to remove the dirty smell, cold dust, who did I give the drum to in front of the altar on the left? However, this is just a sudden thought on the escalator.Today, people want to crucify me and say: You are thirty years old.Therefore, you must gather disciples.Think back to what you said when they arrested you.Count the candles on your birthday cake, get out of your bed, and gather disciples.There are so many opportunities for a thirty-year-old.For example, if I was actually kicked out of the nursing home, I could propose to Maria a second time.I will definitely have more opportunities today.Oscar had set up shop for her, he had a name and continued to make good money from his records.He also matured in the meantime, a bit older.Thirty-year-olds should get married!Otherwise, I would still be a bachelor, choose one of my trades, buy a quarry of high-quality limestone, hire stonemasons, and process the quarried stone directly into building materials.At the age of 30, it's time to start a business!If the work of slates on the facades of prefabricated houses wears me out over time, I can visit Ulla the Muse, and with her, by her side, serve as an inspiring model for the art of beauty.Someday, if possible, I might even marry her, the muse who frequently gets engaged to other people for short periods of time.Thirty-year-olds should get married!If I get tired of Europa, I can go abroad, to America, to Buffalo, this is my old dream, to my grandfather, the millionaire and ex-arsonist Joe Kolchik, formerly known as Joseph Cole Jacek.Thirty-year-olds should settle down!Then again, I gave in and let them crucify me and go out into the world.Just because I'm thirty and they see me as a messiah, I'm pretending to be a messiah in front of them, pushing my descriptive drum beyond its capacity, becoming symbols, establishing A sect, a party, or just a chapter. This sudden thought on the escalator still came to me despite my lovers before me and the old woman in the hat behind me.That couple was two levels above me instead of one, and between them and me I kept my little case.Did I mention this?French youth are very special.As the escalator carried us all up, she unbuttoned his leather jacket, then his shirt, fondling his eighteen-year-old skin.But she did it very quickly, and her movements were not at all sexual but business, so I became suspicious.It is possible that these young men took official money to show the madness of love in the streets, so that the French metropolis would not lose its reputation.My suspicions vanished, however, when the young couple kissed, nearly choking him with her tongue, coughing, and I had stubbed out my cigarette in the name of a non-smoker. The identity greets the criminal police.The old woman under me and the hat—that is to say, her hat was exactly as high as my head, since I was the height of two steps of the escalator—did nothing remarkable, Although she was muttering and cursing.That's true of many older people in Paris, though.The rubber-covered handrails of the escalator climbed with us.Pedestrians can put their hands on it and let the hands rise together.I would do the same if I brought the gloves with me on the trip too.Each of the tiles in the stairwell reflected a little bit of electric light.Creamy pipes and fat bundles of cables accompany us up.The escalator didn't make hellish noises.Although it is a mechanical, it gives a sense of comfort.Despite the rattling verse about the dreaded black cook, I find the White House subway station comfortable, almost livable.I felt right at home on the escalator despite the fear and fear of children.I would have been happy if it had carried me up not with strangers, but with my friends and relatives, living and dead: my poor mother caught between Matzerath and Jan Bronski , Mrs. Truczynski the gray-haired mouse with her children Herbert, Gust, Fritz and Maria, Greve the greengrocer and his sloppy wife Lena, and of course Master Bebra and the elegant Lo Sveta—all these people surround my questionable existence and suffer because of my existence.But above, where the escalator leads to the outside, I hope to replace the criminal police with the antithesis of the dreaded black cook: my grandmother Anna Koljacek.She stood tall like a mountain, taking me and my entourage into her skirts, into the mountain after my blissful ascent. However, the two gentlemen standing there were not wearing loose skirts, but American-style raincoats.At the end of my ascent, I admitted with a smile, along with ten toes in my shoe, that the free-spirited couple above me and the old woman in the hat below me were dumb police spies. What more can I say?Born under a light bulb, interrupted growth on purpose at age three, got drums, sang broken glass, smelled vanilla, got whooping cough, fed Luzzi, watched ants, decided to grow, buried drums, rode west, lost east, learned stonemasonry craft, model, get back to tin drum, visit cement, make money, protect finger, give finger away, run away laughing, rise, get arrested, sentenced, sent to nursing home, soon to be acquitted, celebrated today On my thirtieth birthday, I was always afraid of the black cook——Amen. I throw away the stubbed cigarette.It found its home among the slatted cushions of the steps of the escalator.After ascending towards the sky along the sloping edge at a forty-five degree angle for a long time, Oscar took three small steps vertically. There was an unrestrained police couple in front, and a police granny in a cap behind. The mat was moved to a fixed iron grid mat.At this time, the criminal policeman introduced himself and called him Matzerath.Oscar followed his thoughts on the escalator, and blurted out in German: "I am Jesus!" Since he saw the international criminal police officer standing opposite him, he repeated it in French, and finally , and said in English: "I am Jesus!" However, I was arrested as Oskar Matzerath.I did not resist, trustingly under the protection of the umbrella of the criminal police, because outside, on the Italian boulevard, it was raining, but still I searched and looked around with anxiety and fear, and in the boulevard of Italy In the crowd above, in the crowd crowded around the boxcar of the police station, the black cook's frighteningly calm face was seen many times--it was just what she was capable of. Now, I have nothing more to say.However, I have to think about it. It is inevitable that Oscar will be released from the convalescent and nursing home. After that, what exactly does he want to do?marry?Celibacy?go abroad?Be a model?Buy a quarry?Gather disciples?Form a sect? Today, every opportunity offered to a thirty-year-old must be tested, and if not my drum, what is the test?So I'll strike that ditty on my tin.I think it's getting more and more vivid, and it's getting more and more frightening.I will call the black cook and ask her.That way, tomorrow morning I can tell Bruno, my orderly, what life Oscar, thirty, will lead under the shadow of the fear of the darkening children who used to frighten me on the stairs when I It was always the same thing that made me laugh out loud when I went to fetch coal in the cellar.It talks with its fingers, coughs through keyholes, sighs in the fire, and shouts through doors.It rises from its funnel as ships blow their whistles through the fog.When a dying fly buzzes for hours between the double windows, when the eels are going to take my mother or my poor mother is going to eat the eels, when the sun goes behind Tower Hill and is alone like amber It's always there.What was behind Herbert as he lunged at the woodcarving?Isn't it also behind the altar?What would Catholicism be without the cook who blacked out all the confessionals?When Sigismund Marcus's toys fell together, she cast a shadow again.The kids in the apartment yard, Axel Mischke and Nushi Aike, Susie Carter and Hans Colin Jr., they talked it out, they sang when they cooked the brick powder soup Come out: "Black cook, are you there? Yes, yes! You are guilty, you are guilty, your sin is the greatest. Black cook, are you there..." She is everywhere, even in geranium soda powder , despite its frothy greenness to such an innocent degree.Of all the closets I've ever squatted, she's squatted too.She later lent the triangular fox face to Luzy Lenwand, devoured the sandwich bread, skin on, and led the ashes-scatterer to the diving platform—only Oscar survived.He looked at the ant and understood: this is her shadow too, duplicated, followed by something sweet, and all the words: Blessed, full of pain, blessed with bliss, virgin of virgins... all stones: Basalt, tuff, diabase, nests in shell limestone, alabaster so soft...all shattered glass: clear glass, glass blown to the thinnest...and colonial wares: a pound or a half Flour and sugar in pound blue pockets.Then there were four cats, one of them named Bismarck, the fence that had to be repainted, the Poles who stalked to death, and who sank when special news, potatoes thumping from the scales, a small thing , the cemetery where I stood, the brick floor where I knelt, the coconut fiber where I lay... Please don't ask Oscar, who is she!Oscar was at a loss for words.For she once sat on my back, then kissed my hunchback, and now and always will come towards me: The cook who has been behind my back is really dark. Now she's walking towards me, so dark. Speech, the inside of the coat was turned around, it was really black. Pay with black market currency, really black. If the children sing, they don't sing: Black Cook, are you there?Yes!