I look for the land of the Poles that is lost to the Germans, for the moment at least. Nowadays the Germans have started searching for Poland with credits, Leicas, and compasses, with radar, divining rods, delegations, and moth-eaten provincial students’ associations in costume. Some carry Chopin in their hearts, others thoughts of revenge. Condemning the first four partitions of Poland, they are busily planning a fifth; in the meantime flying to Warsaw via Air France in order to deposit, with appropriate remorse, a wreath on the spot that was once the ghetto. One of these days they will go searching for Poland with rockets. I, meanwhile, conjure up Poland on my drum. And this is what I drum: Poland’s lost, but not forever, all’s lost, but not forever, Poland’s not lost forever.
The Rostrum
It was in singing away the lobby windows of our Stadt-Theater that I sought and found my first contact with the Thespian art. Despite Markus’ attentions Mama must have observed my direct tie with the theater that afternoon, for when the Christmas holidays came, she bought four theater tickets, for herself, for Stephan and Marga Bronski, and for Oskar, and the last Sunday of Advent she took us to see the Christmas play. The fancy chandelier over the orchestra did its best to please, and I was glad I hadn’t sung it to pieces.
Even in those days there were far too many children. In the balcony there were more children than mothers, while the balance was about even in the orchestra frequented by the more prosperous citizens, who were more cautious in their begetting and conceiving. Why can’t children sit still? Marga Bronski, who was sitting between me and the relatively well-behaved Stephan, slid off her seat that promptly folded up, made a stab at climbing back again, but found it more interesting to do gymnastics on the balcony rail, got stuck in her folding seat, and started to scream, though no louder than the other little demons around us and only briefly, because Mama wisely poured candy into her open mouth. Sucking candy and tuckered out by her struggles with her seat, Marga fell asleep soon after the performance began, but had to be awakened after each act to clap, which she did with enthusiasm.
The play was Tom Thumb, which obviously had a special appeal for me and gripped me from the start. They did it very cleverly. They didn’t show Tom Thumb at all, you only heard his voice and saw the grownups chasing around after him. He was invisible but very active. Here he is sitting in the horse’s ear. Now his father is selling him to two tramps for good money, now he is taking a walk, very high and mighty, on the brim of one of the tramps’ hats. Later he crawls into a mousehole and then into a snail shell. He joins a band of robbers, lies down with them, and along with a mouthful of hay makes his way into the cow’s stomach. But the cow is slaughtered because she speaks with Tom Thumb’s voice. The cow’s stomach, however, with Tom inside it, is thrown out on the dump heap, and gobbled up by the wolf. Tom cleverly persuades the wolf to pillage his father’s storeroom and starts to scream just as the wolf is getting to work. The end was like the fairy tale: The father kills the wicked wolf, the mother cuts open the wolf’s stomach with her scissors, and out comes Tom Thumb, that is, you hear his voice crying: “Oh, father, I’ve been in a mousehole, a cow’s stomach, and a wolf’s stomach: now I’m going to stay home with you.”
The end touched me, and when I looked up at Mama, I saw that she was hiding her nose in her handkerchief; like me, she had identified herself with the action on the stage. Mama’s feelings were easily stirred, and for the next few weeks, especially for the remainder of the Christmas holidays, she kept hugging and kissing me and, laughing or wistful, calling me Tom Thumb. Or: My little Tom Thumb. Or: My poor, poor Tom Thumb.
It was not until the summer of ‘33 that I went to the theater again. Because of a misunderstanding on my part, the venture turned out badly, but it was a profound experience that stayed with me. The thundering surge still rings in my ears. No, I am not exaggerating, all this took place at the Zoppot Opera-in-the-Woods, where summer after summer Wagner was poured forth upon nature beneath the night sky.
It was only Mama who actually cared anything about opera. Even operettas were too much for Matzerath. Jan took his lead from Mama and raved about arias, though despite his musical appearance he was completely tone deaf. However, he was friends with the Formella brothers, former schoolmates at Karthaus High School, who lived at Zoppot, had charge of the floodlights illuminating the lakeside path and the fountain outside the Casino, and also attended to the lighting effects at the Opera-in-the-Woods.
The way to Zoppot led through Oliva. A morning in the Castle Park. Goldfish and swans. Mama and Jan Bronski in the famous Whispering Grotto. Afterward more goldfish and swans, obviously working hand in glove with a photographer. While the picture was being taken, Matzerath let me ride on his shoulders. I rested my drum on the top of his head, that was always good for a laugh, even later after the picture had been pasted in the album. And then good-by goldfish, good-by swans, good-by Whispering Grotto. Not only in the Castle Park was it Sunday but also outside the gate and in the streetcar bound for Glettkau, and in the Glettkau Casino, where we had lunch, while the Baltic, as though it had nothing else to do, held out an invitation to bathe; everywhere it was Sunday. As we approached Zoppot along the beach promenade, Sunday came out to meet us and Matzerath had to pay admission for the lot of us.
We bathed at South Beach because it was supposedly less crowded than North Beach. The men undressed in the men’s cabins, Mama took me to a ladies’ cabin where she, who was already beginning to overflow her banks, poured her flesh into a straw-colored bathing suit. I was expected to go naked. To put off my encounter with the thousands of eyes on the beach, I shielded my private parts with my drum and later lay down on my belly in the sand. The waters of the Baltic were inviting but I had no desire to go in, preferring to play the ostrich and shelter my modesty in the sand. Both Matzerath and Jan Bronski looked so ridiculous verging on pathetic with their incipient potbellies that I was glad when, late in the afternoon, we returned to the bath houses and, having anointed our sunburns, slipped back into Sunday civilian dress.
Coffee and cake at the Seestern. Mama wanted a third helping of the five-story cake. Matzerath was against, Jan was for and against. Mama ordered her cake, gave Matzerath a bite, fed Jan a spoonful, and, having provided for the well-being of her men, crammed the rest of the buttery-sweet wedge into her stomach, spoonful by spoonful.
O sacred butter cream, O clear to slightly cloudy Sunday afternoon dusted with powdered sugar! Polish nobles sat behind blue sunglasses and intense soft drinks that they did not touch. The ladies played with their violet fingernails and the sea breeze wafted over to us the mothflake smell of the fur capes they rented for the season. Matzerath thought the fur capes were idiotic. Mama would have loved to rent one, if only for a single afternoon. Jan maintained that the boredom of the Polish nobility had risen to such heights that despite mounting debts they had stopped speaking French and out of sheer snobbery taken to conversing in the most ordinary Polish.
We couldn’t sit forever at the Seestern, studying the blue sunglasses and violet fingernails of the Polish nobility. Replete with cake, my mama needed exercise. We repaired to the Casino Park, where I had to ride a donkey and pose for another picture. Goldfish and swans—what nature won’t think of next—and more goldfish and swans, what else is fresh water good for?