Günter Grass
TALES FROM THE
DARKROOM
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
KRISHNA WINSTON
ALSO BY GÜNTER GRASS
The Tin Drum
Cat and Mouse
Dog Years
The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising
Four Plays
Speak Out!
Local Anaesthetic
From the Diary of a Snail
Inmarypraise
In the Egg and Other Poems
The Flounder
Meeting at Telgte
Headbirths
Drawings and Words 1954–1977
On Writing and Politics 1967–1983
Etchings and Words 1972–1982
The Rat
Show Your Tongue
Two States – One Nation?
The Call of the Toad
My Century
Too Far Afield
Crabwalk
Peeling the Onion
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VINTAGE
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London SW1V 2SA
Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Günter Grass 2008
© Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2008
English translation copyright © Krishna Winston 2010
Günter Grass has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published with the title Die Box by Steidl Verlag, Göttingen in 2008
First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker in 2010
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
About the Book
In this delightful sequel to Peeling the Onion, Günter Grass writes in the voices of his eight children as they record memories of their childhoods, of growing up, of their father, who was always at work on a new book, always at the margins of their lives. Memories contradictory, critical, loving, accusatory – they piece together an intimate picture of this most public of men.
To say nothing of Marie, Grass’s assistant, a family friend of many years, perhaps even a lover, whose snapshots taken with an old-fashioned Agfa box camera provide the author with ideas for his work. But her images offer much more. They reveals a truth beyond the ordinary details of life, depict the future, tell what might have been, grant the wishes in visual form of those photographed. The children speculate on the nature of this magic: was the enchanted camera a source of inspiration for their father? Did it represent the power of art itself? Was it the eye of God?
About the Author
Günter Grass (1927–2015) was Germany’s most celebrated post-war writer. He was a creative artist of remarkable versatility: novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, graphic artist. Grass’s first novel, The Tin Drum, is widely regarded as one of the finest novels of the twentieth century, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Günter Grass
Dedication
Title Page
LEFTOVERS
NO FLASH
MIRACLE-WISE
GOD-AWFUL MESS
MAKE A WISH
LOOKING BACK
SNAPSHOTS
CROOKED BUSINESS
FROM HEAVEN ABOVE
Copyright
In Memory of Maria Rama
ONCE UPON A time there was a father, who, having grown old in years, called together his sons and daughters—four, five, six, eight in all. For a long time they resisted, but in the end they granted his wish. Now they are seated round a table and all begin to talk at once, all products of their father’s whimsy, using words he has put in their mouths, yet obstinate, too, determined not to spare his feelings despite their love for him. They are still batting around the question: Who’s going to start?
The first to come along were two-egged twins. For the purposes of this story they will be called Patrick and Georg, nicknamed Pat and Jorsch, though their real names are different. Then a girl arrived to gladden her parents’ hearts; she will answer to Lara. These three children enriched our overpopulated world at a time when the Pill was not yet available, before contraception became the norm and families were planned. Not surprisingly, another child arrived to join the others, unbidden, a gift of capricious chance. The name given him is Thaddeus, but all those seated round the table call him Taddel: Quit your clowning, Taddel! Don’t trip on your shoelaces, Taddel! Come on, Taddel, let’s hear you do your Clueless Rudi number again!
Although grown-up now, with jobs and families of their own, the daughters and sons speak as if bent on regressing, as if they could capture and hold fast the shadowy outlines of the past, as if time could stand still, as if childhood never ended.
From the table, distracted glances can be cast out of the window at the rolling landscape to either side of the Elbe-Trave Canal, lined with poplars, trees that are condemned to be cut down in the near future, having been officially categorized as a non-native species.
In a large pot a hearty stew is steaming, lentils with lamb chops, which the father has set on a low flame to simmer invitingly and seasoned with marjoram. That is how it has always been: father loves to cook for a crowd. Being the provider is what he calls this tendency towards epic generosity. Wielding his ladle equitably, he fills bowl after bowl, each time murmuring one of his sayings, such as Don’t forget that the biblical Esau sold his birthright for a mess of lentils. After the meal he will withdraw to his studio, there to plunge back in time, or he may sit on the garden bench with his wife.
Outdoors, spring has come. Indoors, the heat is still on. Once they have spooned up their lentils, the siblings can choose between bottled beer and cloudy cider. Lara has brought along photos, which she is trying to organize. Something is still missing: Georg, who answers to Jorsch and has professional training in such matters, hooks up the table microphones, because the father insists on having everything recorded. Jorsch asks the others to test the mikes, and finally declares himself satisfied. From now on, the children have the floor.
You start, Pat! You’re the eldest.
You showed up a good ten minutes before Jorsch.
Oh, all right, whatever. For a long time it was only us. To my mind, four would’ve been plenty, especially since no one thought to ask us whether we wanted to be more than two, three, then four. Even when it was just us twins, we took turns feeling that there were too many of us.
And later on, Lara, all you wanted was a puppy; I’m sure you would’ve been perfectly content to be the last daughter.
Which I was, for years, though at times I did long for a little sister, as well as a puppy. Then one actually came along, as not much was happening between our mother and our father, and—I assume—he needed someone else, as in fact she found someone else.
And because he and the new woman wanted something they could share and decided they could dispense with the Pill, they had you, another girl, named after father’s mother, but now you want to chime in as Lena, the name you’ve picked for yourself.
No, there’s no rush. You two go first. I can wait. That’s something I’ve had to learn. I’ll get my time in the limelight.
Pat and Jorsch were almost sixteen, I was thirteen, and Taddel was about nine when we had to get used to a little sister.
And to having your mother around, too, who brought more children, two more girls.
But because our father was still restless, he ran out on his new woman, and that left him at a loose end with the book he was working on, and he would crash wherever he could to type away on his Olivetti.
And while he was roaming, another woman presented him with a girl.
Our beloved Nana.
Whom sadly we didn’t get to see till later, much later.
The king’s youngest daughter …
Make fun of me if you will! But instead of my real name, I want the name of that doll whose life my papa once described in a long poem in doggerel that begins …
At any rate, you stayed the youngest. And not long after that father finally settled down, with yet another woman. She brought along you two boys, both younger than Taddel. We’ve decided to call you Jasper and Paul.
Shouldn’t you ask them whether they even like those names?
No problem.
Our real names are completely different, of course …
… as are yours.
You were older than Lena and much older than Nana, but family-wise you fitted in, so from then on there were eight of us. Take a look at these pictures—I brought them along especially—here we are, either singly or in various groupings, or here—much later—all of us together …
… getting bigger and bigger. Here I am, and look at Jorsch’s hair, short, then long, and in this one he’s making faces …
… or me putting on a show for the camera, looking bored.
Here’s Lara nuzzling her guinea pig.
And there’s Taddel moping around in front of the house with his shoelaces trailing.
There’s Lena, looking sad.
I bet you’d find pictures exactly like these in most family photo albums. Ordinary snapshots.
Maybe so, Taddel. But sadly, a lot of photos that were anything but ordinary disappeared at some point, and it’s a real pity, because …
For instance, the photos of Lara’s dog.
Or all the shots of me sailing through the air between my papa and my mama on the flying swings, which was something I always secretly wished for. Such a treat.
Or the photo with Taddel’s guardian angel.
Or the series showing Paulchen on crutches.
The fact is, all the ordinary pictures, as well as the ones that disappeared, were taken by good old Marie, because she was the only one who …
Let me be the one to talk about Mariechen. It began like a fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a photographer. Some called her good old Marie, Taddel called her dear old Marie, but I called her Mariechen. She was part of our patchwork family from the very beginning. Marie was always there, first when we lived in the city, then with you out in the country, also in various places where we went for the holidays, because she clung to father like a burr—that’s how she was—and possibly …
But also to us, because whenever we wished for something …
That’s what I’m saying. From the start, when we were only two, then three, then four, she took photos of us or snapped us, whenever father said, Snap away, Marie!
And when she was in a lousy mood—and she could be moody—she’d say, That’s all I am, your snap-away-Marie!
But it wasn’t just us children she’d snap. She took on father’s women, one after the other: first our mama, who looks in every picture as if she’s about to leap and pirouette, then Lena’s mother, who always has a pained expression, then the next one, Nana’s mother, who’s forever laughing at god only knows what, and then the last of the four women, Jasper’s and Paulchen’s mother, whose ringlets are often fluttering in the wind …
And in whose arms our father finally found peace.
But even if a group portrait with his four strong women was something he wished for—and I have to agree with Jorsch: a picture of him as a pasha surrounded by his harem must have been high on his wish list—Mariechen insisted on taking them on one at a time. Look here: each in her proper place in the sequence.
But when it came to us, she snapped pictures as if we’d tumbled out of a dice cup. That’s why we have all these photos spread out on the table here, which we can arrange and rearrange—hey there, Nana, stop fooling around with the mike.
But father also wants us to remember all the snapshots that have gone missing, the images Mariechen created of us once she disappeared with those rolls of film into her darkroom.
You need to be more precise, Pat: she took photographs with the Leica, and sometimes with the Hasselblad, but the snapshots were all taken with the box. It was the box, nothing but the box, with which she hunted for images father could use to stoke his imagination. And there was something special about that box, even though it was just an old-fashioned box camera, manufactured by Agfa, which also supplied the rolls of Isochrom B2.
Whether it was the Hasselblad, the Leica, or the box, she always had a camera dangling round her neck.
They all belonged to my Hans, old Marie would explain to anyone who admired her cameras. More than those he didn’t need.
But only Pat and Jorsch remember what her Hans looked like. You, Pat, said he was a stocky guy with a knobby forehead. And you, Jorsch, said he always had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip.
The two of them had their attic studio on the Kurfürstendamm, between Bleibtreustrasse and Uhland. They specialized in studio portraits of actors and long-legged ballerinas. But also fat vice-presidents from Siemens, complete with wives wearing massive rocks round their necks. And then the brats of filthy-rich folks from Dahlem and Zehlendorf. In their expensive gear, they sat at a slight angle to a backdrop, grinning idiotically or trying to look serious.
Marie was responsible for all the technical stuff—setting up special lights and anything else that had to be done: developing the film, making copies and enlargements, retouching photos to eliminate warts, pimples, lines and wrinkles, double chins, freckles, hairs sprouting on noses.
All in black and white.
Colour didn’t exist for her Hans.
For him, there were only shades of grey.
We were young in those days, but I can still hear her saying, when she was in the mood, I was the only one who learned all that stuff from the ground up. Even so, my Hans, who was self-taught, was the one who got to shoot all those folks … The darkroom was my department. My Hans hadn’t a clue.
Sometimes she’d talk about her apprenticeship in Allenstein. She didn’t waste words …
… that’s a village in the Masurian part of East Prussia, father explained.
In Polish it’s called Olsztyn now.
That’s far off in my freezing homeland, Marie always said, way out east. All gone to the dogs.
Father and mother were very chummy with Hans and Mariechen. They used to sit around drinking a lot and laughing loudly, usually till late at night, telling stories from long ago, when they were young.
Hans also took pictures of father and mother, in front of a white screen. Always with the Hasselblad or the Leica, never with the Agfa Box No. 54, which was also called Box I and was a huge hit when it first came on the market, till Agfa brought out other models, for instance the Agfa Special with a meniscus lens and …
When Hans died unexpectedly, he was buried in the Grove Cemetery in Zehlendorf.
I still remember it. They wouldn’t let a priest come and speak, but lots of birds were singing.
The sun was shining right in our eyes. Jorsch and I stood on mother’s left, and she stood next to Mariechen. Father was the only one who spoke, over the open grave, about his friend Hans, the black-and-white photographer, and how he’d promised to look after Mariechen, and not only financially.
He spoke softly at first, then louder.
And finally father reeled off the names of all the brands of schnapps his friend Hans had enjoyed.
As you can imagine, the men who’d rolled the coffin out of the chapel and then carried it to the grave—there were four of them, I think—where they lowered it on ropes, worked up quite a thirst as father listed every brand of schnapps, pausing after each one.
That must have sounded pretty solemn.
Like an incantation.
We were squirming; there seemed to be no end in sight.
Let’s see if I can remember some of them: Pflümli, Himbeergeist, Mirabell, Moselhefe, or something like that.
One was called Zibärtle—that’s from the Black Forest, near where I live.
Kirschwasser was another.
It must have been some time after the Wall went up. We twins were just six then, and you were only two, Lara. You wouldn’t remember a thing.
And you weren’t even conceived, Taddel.
It must have been in the autumn. Mushrooms everywhere. Under the trees in the cemetery. Growing singly and in clumps. In the underbrush. Behind gravestones. Father’s always been crazy about mushrooms and prides himself on knowing every variety. On the way back from the funeral he scooped up all the ones he thought edible.
Filled his hat, as I recall.
And made a pouch out of his handkerchief.
At home we had them with scrambled eggs.
As a funeral repast, he’s supposed to have said.
At the time of Hans’s funeral, we were still living on Karlsbader Strasse, in a semi-ruin, left over after the bombing.
But when Mariechen found herself all alone in that big studio, she didn’t know what to do. Not till father talked her round—he is good at that—did she start taking pictures for him, first with the Leica, then with the Hasselblad, and eventually with the box, almost exclusively with the box: particular items and objects, like the shells he brought back from his travels, also broken dolls, bent nails, the bare stone wall of a building, snail shells, spiders in their webs, squashed frogs, even dead pigeons that Jorsch dragged home.
And later on, fish at the outdoor market in Friedenau …
Also heads of cabbage sliced in half …
She started snapping those pictures for him while we were still living on Karlsbader Strasse.
Right. It began when father had that book about dogs and scarecrows in the works. It was far from being finished, but he eventually made so much money from it that he could buy that clinker-brick house in Friedenau for us.
And then old Marie visited us there on Niedstrasse to snap pictures of all kinds of things for him …
… and of us kids. As we got bigger, she lined us up in front of her magic wish box. And for me, only for me, when my guinea pig started getting fatter and fatter, she …
That was later, Lara. Jorsch and I come first, because we …
I can still see her standing in front of the half-ruined building with her shoulders hunched, the box at waist height, her head bent, as if she were peering into the finder.
But she always shot by feel, often looking in a different direction entirely.
And she had this weird haircut. A bob, father called it.
She looked like a young girl with wrinkles, scrawny and flat-cheated. And the box, which hung on a strap, and which she used to …
Come on, Pat, you need to be more specific. Let’s get the facts straight first. The Agfa box came on the market in 1930 but it wasn’t the first box camera. Naturally, the Americans had one even before 1900, the Brownie, which Eastman Kodak sold en masse. But Agfa introduced the six-by-nine format that was later picked up by Zeiss-Ikon’s Tengor and Eho’s so-called People’s Camera. The Agfa box was the first camera bought by ordinary Germans, when its slogan Get more out of life with photography …
That’s what I was about to say. It was that very box, which Mariechen was given by an uncle or aunt when she was still a young thing and had just started, or maybe just finished, her apprenticeship back in Allenstein.
And that Agfa box came with two rolls of Isochrom and a beginner’s instruction booklet, all for sixteen reichsmarks—I looked it up.
And that was the same box she used later to snap pictures of you, Taddel, burying Jorsch’s Matchbox cars in the sandbox, and then of my guinea pig when she was …
But mostly the two of us, doing flips on the horizontal bar behind the house.
She also snapped pictures of our father on the bar, because when friends came over he always wanted to demonstrate that gymnastics-wise he could pull off an upward circle or sometimes even a full circle with the best of them.
But much later, when Mariechen took pictures of me, though sadly that didn’t happen often, she was completely unobtrusive. She would stand off to one side, looking somehow lost, skinny as she was. She seemed alone, not mournful, exactly, which theoretically would have been understandable, more like absent. I’m just a leftover, she told me when she came with my papa, my mother, and me to the Franco-German folk festival in Tegel, where we rode the flying swings, soaring through the air. Such a treat.
Exactly, Nana. She said the same thing about her Agfa box, which looked battered, its corners all dented: This is the only thing left over from all the stuff my Hans and I had, and that’s why it means so much to me.
When we asked her, What are you left over from? she would always bring up the war.
Not her Hans’s experiences in the war, only the things she considered important. My Hans, she told our father, didn’t get home often, except when he had leave or was travelling on assignment. He must have seen awful things at the front. In the east, I mean, and everywhere. Indescribable. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Her studio must have been somewhere else at the time, still on the Kudamm, but more out towards Halensee.
Father got to hear a long story about that, and Pat and I eavesdropped: Towards the end there, we were bombed out. A good thing my Hans was off at the front and had the Leica and the Hasselblad with him. Not a thing left. The whole kit and caboodle burned to a crisp, while down in the cellar I …
Our entire collection of negatives just melted. Nothing left of the lights but scrap. Only the box survived, who knows why. Just singed a bit, especially the leather case it came in.
And then she added, My box takes pictures of things that aren’t there. And it sees things that weren’t there. Or shows things you’d never in your wildest dreams imagine. It’s all-seeing, my box. Must be a result of the fire. It’s acted crazy ever since.
Sometimes she’d say, That’s how it is, children, when you’re left over. You hang around with some screws loose.
We never knew just who or what had screws loose. She or the box, or both.
As for the Hasselblad and the Leica, father told me what happened to them—he’d heard the story several times: My Hans managed to get them through the war. Even though he was a soldier, he never had to fire a gun, just took pictures at the front. That’s what he came back with. He also had unused rolls of film, a whole knapsack full. Those were our capital after the war. That’s how we got started the minute we heard: Peace is here, finally.
In the beginning her Hans photographed only the occupation forces, mostly Amis, also an English colonel.
Then even a French general sought them out. He paid with a bottle of cognac.
And one time three Russkies made their way up the stairs. With vodka, of course.
The Amis brought cigarettes.
And the Tommies gave them tea and corned beef.
And Mariechen told us one time, No, no, children, we never used the box to snap pictures of the occupation soldiers. My Hans used only the Leica, and sometimes the Hasselblad. To him the box was a reminder of before, when the two of us still had fun together. Besides—but you know this—it has some screws loose, the box. Only when my brother—Jorsch, I mean—refused to let the subject drop …
Right, I wanted to know what the deal was …
… and asked, What does that mean, has some screws loose? she promised, One of these days I’ll show you boys what happens when you’re left over, have screws loose, and see things that aren’t there, or aren’t there yet. Besides, you two are still too little and too cheeky, and don’t believe the things my box spits out when it’s having a good day. It has seen things ahead of time, ever since it survived the fire.
When we went with father to visit her, the two would start whispering the minute she emerged from her darkroom.
She’d send us out on the balcony or give us empty film canisters to play with.
The two of them never told us what was going on, just dropped hints, acting all mysterious. Still, we could guess it always had something to do with that long book of father’s, with dogs and mechanical scarecrows. When it was finished, the cover had a hand forming a shadow that looked like a dog’s head.
But when we asked him about Mariechen’s photos, all father said was, You’re not old enough to understand. And to mother he said, It’s probably because she comes from Masuria. What our Mariechen sees is far more than we ordinary mortals can see.
And it wasn’t till then, but before he’d finished typing his Dog Years, that you came along, Lara.
On a Sunday, no less.
Now we finally get to hear about the guinea pig …
Hold on, Nana, we aren’t done yet.
Somehow our little sister wasn’t exactly what we’d expected.
Even before she learned to walk, Lara would only smile tentatively, as father put it.
That hasn’t changed.
And then, once she was walking, she’d always veer off to one side—right, Jorsch?
Or you trailed along behind us, never raced on ahead.
Whenever father or mother wanted to take you by the hand, when we went for a Sunday stroll from Roseneck to the Grunewald, you’d clasp your hands behind your back.
And you didn’t laugh properly till later, when you got a guinea pig, and then only when the guinea pig squeaked.
You could even imitate the squeaking.
I still can. Want to hear?
And because our Lara never smiled for the camera, good old Marie snapped picture after picture of her.
First on Karlsbader Strasse, then in Friedenau, on the swing at the back of the house, or at the table, with her empty dessert plate in front of her …
And again and again with her guinea pig.
Then one time you let her play with the neighbours’ guinea pigs, and one of them must have been a male, because before we knew it …
That was what I’d been longing for. See, when Taddel came along, and turned out to be a little devil, and there I was, stuck between three brothers, and all I heard was Taddel this and Taddel that, because you were so-o-o little and so-o-o darling, and no matter what got broken, it was never your fault—shut up, Taddel, my turn!—well, Mariechen took pity on me, and with that old-fashioned box of hers snapped pictures for me, pictures of my guinea pig as her belly got rounder and rounder. She’d shoot an entire roll, again and again. And I was the only one she showed the pictures to, not the rest of you. Now that made me laugh. But none of you—not you twins, and certainly not you, Taddel—would believe me when I told you what was in those little pictures she conjured up in her darkroom. I’m not kidding: in each one you could plainly make out three adorable newborn guinea pigs. So sweet, nursing from their mother. The box could predict such things—that there’d be exactly three. And when they were born, it actually was a litter of three. One more adorable than the next. No, all equally adorable. But I hid those photos. Now I had four guinea pigs. That was too many, of course, so I had to give two of them away. By then I was secretly wishing for a puppy—because guinea pigs aren’t really that interesting. All they do is guinea pig stuff, eating and squeaking, which stops being fun after a while. But the rest of the family were against a puppy. A dog in the city, where it has no room to run free—what good is that? mama said. Our father didn’t really mind, but he delivered one of his pronouncements: There are already more than enough dogs in Berlin. Marie was the only one in favour. So one day, when all the others were busy in the house, she took pictures of me under the apple tree, muttering under her breath old-fashioned words like balsam and salve and emollient. Then she whispered, Make a wish, little Lara, wish for something nice! And when she showed me the pictures a few days later—there were eight—each picture had a tousled puppy in it, sitting on my left or my right, jumping on me, begging, licking, offering me its paw, or giving me a kiss. It had a curly little tail and was clearly a mutt, just like Joggi, when I got him a few years later. But this is our little darkroom secret, Marie said, and she kept all the photos, because, as she said, No bugger will ever believe us.
That’s not true—we all believed …
You, Taddel, were the only one who didn’t, in the beginning …
You thought we were off our rockers.
So did you, Jasper, at least at first …
… but then you had to believe it, when that business with you and your pal turned out to be true.
Do you have to bring that up, Paulchen?
But when Lena and I joined the family much later, we never doubted your Mariechen for a moment, because sometimes she could fulfil our secret wishes, just as she did for you—I mean, we both wished we could have our papa all to ourselves, not just now and then.
Okay, okay, but no one has any proof …