“That wasn’t the fault of the stockings, Susi Kater was to blame,” cried Maria furiously. Although Susi had joined the Blitz Girls at the very beginning of the war and was rumored to have married in Bavaria later on, Maria bore Susi, who was several years her senior, a lasting grudge such as women and only women can carry with them from childhood to a ripe old age. Even so, my allusion to Shorty’s tar-daubed stockings produced a certain effect. Maria promised to buy Kurt ski pants. We were able to go on to something else. There was good news about Kurt. The school principal had spoken well of him at the parents’ and teachers’ meeting. “Just imagine. He’s second in his class. And he helps me in the shop, I can’t tell you what a help he is to me.”

I nodded approval and listened as she described the latest purchases for the delicatessen store. I encouraged Maria to open a branch in Oberkassel. The times were favorable, I said, the wave of prosperity would continue—I had just picked that up on the radio. And then I decided it was time to ring for Bruno. He came in and handed me the little white package containing the fizz powder.

Oskar had worked out his plan. Without explanation I asked Maria for her left hand. She started to give me her right hand, but then corrected herself. Shaking her head and laughing, she offered me the back of her left hand, probably expecting me to kiss it. She showed no surprise until I turned the hand around and poured the powder from the package into a pile between mound of the Moon and mound of Venus. But even then she did not protest. She took fright only when Oskar bent down over her hand and spat copiously on the mound of fizz powder.

“Hey, what is this?” she cried with indignation, moved her hand as far from her as possible, and stared in horror at the frothing green foam. Maria blushed from her forehead down. I was beginning to hope, when three quick steps carried her to the washbasin. She let water, disgusting water, first cold, then hot, flow over the fizz powder. Then she washed her hands with my soap.

“Oskar, you’re really impossible. What do you expect Mr. Münsterberg to think of us?” She turned to Bruno, who during my experiment had taken up a position at the foot end of the bed, as though pleading with him to overlook my insane behavior. To spare Maria any further embarrassment, I sent the keeper out of the room, and as soon as he had closed the door behind him, called her back to my bedside: “Don’t you remember? Please remember. Fizz powder! Three pfennigs a package. Think back! Woodruff, raspberry, how beautifully it foamed and bubbled, and the sensation, Maria, the way it made you feel.”

Maria did not remember. She was taken with an insane fear of me, she hid her left hand, tried frantically to find another topic of conversation, told me once again about Kurt’s good work in school, about Stalin’s death, the new icebox at Matzerath’s delicatessen, the projected new branch in Oberkassel. I, however, remained faithful to the fizz powder, fizz powder, I said, she stood up, fizz powder, I begged, she said a hasty good-by, plucked at her hat, undecided whether to go or stay, and turned on the radio, which began to squeak. But I shouted above it: “Fizz powder, Maria, remember! “

Then she stood in the doorway, wept, shook her head, and left me alone with the squeaking, whistling radio, closing the door as cautiously as though she were leaving me on my deathbed.

And so Maria can’t remember the fizz powder. Yet for me, as long as I may breathe and drum, that fizz powder will never cease to fizz and foam; for it was my spittle which in the late summer of 1940 aroused woodruff and raspberry, which awakened feelings, which sent my flesh out questing, which made me a collector of morels, chanterelles, and other edible mushrooms unknown to me, which made me a father, yes indeed, young as I was, a father, from spittle to father, kindler of feelings, gathering and begetting, a father; for by early November, there was no room for doubt, Maria was pregnant, Maria was in her second month and I, Oskar, was the father.

Of that I am convinced to this day, for the business with Matzerath happened much later; two weeks, no, ten days after I had impregnated the sleeping Maria in the bed of her brother Herbert, rich in scars, in plain sight of the postcards sent by her younger brother, the corporal, and then in the dark, between walls and blackout paper, I found Maria, not sleeping this time but actively gasping for air on our sofa; under Matzerath she lay, and on top of her lay Matzerath.

Oskar, who had been meditating in the attic, came in from the hallway with his drum and entered the living room. The two of them didn’t notice me. Their heads were turned toward the tile stove. They hadn’t even undressed properly. Matzerath’s under-drawers were hanging down to his knees. His trousers were piled up on the carpet. Maria’s dress and petticoat had rolled up over her brassiere to her armpits. Her panties were dangling round one foot which hung from the sofa on a repulsively twisted leg. Her other leg lay bent back, as though unconcerned, over the head rest. Between her legs Matzerath. With his right hand he turned her head aside, the other hand guided him on his way. Through Matzerath’s parted fingers Maria stared at the carpet and seemed to follow the pattern under the table. He had sunk his teeth into a cushion with a velvet cover and only let the velvet go when they talked together. For from time to time they talked, though without interrupting their labours. Only when the clock struck three quarters did the two of them pause till the last stroke, and then, resuming his efforts, he said: “It’s a quarter of.” Then he wanted to know if she liked it the way he was doing it. She said yes several times and asked him to be careful. He promised. She commanded, no, entreated him to be particularly careful. Then he inquired if it was time. And she said yes, very soon. Then she must have had a cramp in her foot that was hanging down off the sofa, for she kicked it up in the air, but her panties still hung from it. Then he bit into the velvet cushion again and she screamed: go away, and he wanted to go away, but he couldn’t, because Oskar was on top of them before he could go away, because I had plunked down my drum on the small of his back and was pounding it with the sticks, because I couldn’t stand listening any more to their go away go away, because my drum was louder than their go away, because I wouldn’t allow him to go away as Jan Bronski had always gone away from my mother; for Mama had always said go away to Jan and go away to Matzerath, go away, go away. And then they fell apart. But I couldn’t bear to see it. After all, I hadn’t gone away. That’s why I am the father and not this Matzerath who to the last supposed himself to be my father. But my father was Jan Bronski. Jan Bronski got there ahead of Matzerath and didn’t go away; he stayed right where he was and deposited everything he had; from Jan Bronski I inherited this quality of getting there ahead of Matzerath and staying put; what emerged was my son, not his son. He never had any son at all. He was no real father. Even if he had married my poor mama ten times over, even if he did marry Maria because she was pregnant. That, he thought, is certainly what the people in the neighborhood think. Of course they thought Matzerath had knocked up Maria and that’s why he’s marrying her though she’s only seventeen and he’s going on forty-five. But she’s a mighty good worker for her age and as for little Oskar, he can be very glad to have such a stepmother, for Maria doesn’t treat the poor child like a stepmother but like a real mother, even if little Oskar isn’t quite right in the head and actually belongs in the nuthouse in Silberhammer or Tapiau.

On Gretchen Scheffler’s advice, Matzerath decided to marry my sweetheart. If we think of this presumptive father of mine as my father, it follows inevitably that my father married my future wife, called my son Kurt his son Kurt, and expected me to acknowledge his grandson as my half-brother, to accept the presence of my darling vanilla-scented Maria as a stepmother and to tolerate her presence in his bed, which stank of fish roe. But if, more in conformance to the truth, I say: this Matzerath is not even your presumptive father, he is a total stranger to you, deserving neither to be liked nor disliked, who is a good cook, who with his good cooking has thus far been a father of sorts to you, because your poor mother handed him down to you, who now in the eyes of all has purloined the best of women away from you, who compels you to witness his marriage and five months later a baptism, to play the role of guest at two family functions where you should properly have been the host, for you should have taken Maria to the City Hall, you should have picked the child’s godfather and godmother. When I considered the miscasting of this tragedy, I had to despair of the theater, for Oskar, the real lead, had been cast in the role of an extra, that might just as well have been dropped.