We spent the whole winter in Paris. They billeted us in first-class hotels, and I shall not deny that all winter long Roswitha joined me in investigating the superior qualities of French beds. Was Oskar happy in Paris? Had he forgotten his dear ones at home, Maria, Matzerath, Gretchen and Alexander Scheffler; had Oskar forgotten his son Kurt and his grandmother Anna Koljaiczek?

Though I had not forgotten them, I missed none of them. I wrote no Army postcards, gave no sign of life, but on the contrary gave the folks at home every opportunity to live a whole year without me; for from the moment of my departure I had been resolved to return, whence it followed that I would have been rather interested to know how they were getting along in my absence. On the street or during performances, I sometimes searched the soldiers’ faces for familiar features. Perhaps, Oskar speculated, Fritz Truczinski or Axel Mischke has been transferred here from the Eastern Front, and once or twice he thought he had recognized Maria’s handsome brother amid a horde of infantrymen; but it wasn’t he; field-grey can be misleading.

Only the Eiffel Tower made me homesick. Don’t go supposing that I rode to the top and that remote vistas made me dream of home. Oskar had mounted the Eiffel Tower so often on postcards and in his thoughts that an actual ascension could only have brought him disappointment. As I stood or sat at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, but without Roswitha, alone beneath those towering girders flung upward by the pioneers of steel construction, the great vault, which seems so solidly closed despite spaces on all sides, became for me the sheltering vault of my grandmother Anna: sitting beneath the Eiffel Tower, I was sitting beneath her four skirts, the Champ de Mars was a Kashubian potato field, the Paris October rain slanted endlessly down between Bissau and Ramkau, and on such days all Paris, even the Metro, smelled of slightly rancid butter. I grew silent and thoughtful. Roswitha respected my sorrow and was very kind and considerate on these occasions; she was a sensitive soul.

In April, 1944—from all fronts came communiqués announcing that our lines had been successfully shortened—we were obliged to pack up and leave Paris for a tour of the Atlantic Wall. Our first stop was Le Havre. It seemed to me that Bebra was becoming taciturn and distraught. Though he never lost his grip during performances and still had the laughs on his side, his age-old Narses face turned to stone once the last curtain had fallen. At first I thought he was jealous, or, worse, that he had capitulated in the face of my youthful vigor. In whispers Roswitha dispelled my error; she didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she had noticed that certain officers were meeting with Bebra behind closed doors after the show. It looked as though the master were emerging from his inward emigration, as though, inspired by the blood of his ancestor Prince Eugene, he were planning some direct action. His plans had carried him so far away from us, had involved him in preoccupations so vast and far-reaching, that Oskar’s intimacy with his former Roswitha could arouse no more than a weary wrinkled smile. One day in Trouville—we were lodged at the Casino—he found us intertwined on the carpet of the dressing room he shared with us. Our impulse was to leap apart, but with a gesture he gave us to understand that there was no need to. Looking into his make-up glass, he said: “Enjoy yourselves, children, hug and kiss, tomorrow we inspect concrete, and the day after tomorrow it’s concrete you’ll have between your lips. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

That was in June, ‘44. By that time we had done the Atlantic Wall from the Bay of Biscay to Holland, but we spent most of our time inland and saw little of the legendary pillboxes. It wasn’t until Trouville that we played directly on the coast. Here we were offered an opportunity to visit the Atlantic Wall. Bebra accepted. After our last show in Trouville, we were driven to the village of Bavent near Caen, three miles behind the shore dunes. We were lodged with peasants. Pasture, hedgerows, apple trees. That is where the apple brandy called calvados is distilled. We had a drink of it and went to bed. Brisk air came in through the window, a frog pond croaked until morning. Some frogs are good drummers. I heard them in my sleep and said to myself: Oskar, you’ve got to go home, soon your son Kurt will be three years old, you’ve got to give him his drum, you’ve promised. Thus admonished, Oskar, the tormented father, awoke each hour, groped about in the darkness, made sure his Roswitha was there, breathed in her smell: Raguna smelled ever so slightly of cinnamon, crushed cloves, and nutmeg; even in summer she had that scent of Christmas, of cake spice.

In the morning an armored personnel carrier drove up to the farm. We stood in the doorway, chatting into the sea wind, all of us shivering a little. It was early and very chilly. We got in: Bebra, Raguna, Felix and Kitty, Oskar, and a Lieutenant Herzog who was taking us to his battery west of Cabourg.

To say Normandy is green is to disregard the spotted brown and white cows which were chewing their cuds on misty meadows, wet with dew, to the right and left of the straight highway, greeted our armored vehicle with such indifference that the armor plate would have turned red with shame had it not previously been daubed with camouflage paint. Poplars, hedgerows, creepers, the first hulking beach hotels, empty, their shutters clattering in the wind. We turned into the beach promenade, got out, and plodded along behind the lieutenant, who showed Captain Bebra a condescending yet properly military respect, across the dunes, against a wind full of sand and surf roar.

This wasn’t the mild, bottle-green Baltic, sobbing like a tenderhearted maiden as it waited for me to come in. It was the Atlantic carrying out its immemorial maneuver, pressing forward at high tide, receding at low tide.

And then we had our concrete. We could admire it and even pat it to our heart’s content; it didn’t budge. “Attention!” cried someone inside the concrete and leapt, tall as a mast, from the pillbox, which was shaped like a flattened-out turtle, lay amid sand dunes, was called “Dora Seven”, and looked out upon the shifting tides through gun embrasures, observation slits, and machine-gun barrels. The man’s name was Corporal Lankes. He reported to Lieutenant Herzog and at the same time to our Captain Bebra.

LANKES (saluting): Dora seven, one corporal and four men. Nothing special to report.

HERZOG: Thank you. At ease, Corporal Lankes. Did you hear that, Captain? Nothing special to report. That’s how it’s been for years.

BEBRA: There’s still the tide. Ebbing and flowing. Nature’s contribution.

HERZOG: That’s just what keeps our men busy. That’s why we go on building pillboxes one after another. They’re already in each other’s field of fire. Pretty soon we’ll have to demolish a few of them to make room for more concrete.

BEBRA (knocks on the concrete; the members of his troupe do likewise): And you have faith in concrete?

HERZOG: Faith is hardly the right word. We haven’t much faith in anything any more. What do you say, Lankes?

LANKES: Right, sir. No more faith.

BEBRA: But they keep on mixing and pouring.

HERZOG: Between you and me, Captain, we’re getting valuable experience. I’d never built a thing until I came here. I was in school when the war started. Now I’ve learned a thing or two about cement and I hope to make use of it after the war. The whole of Germany is going to have to be rebuilt. Take a good look at this concrete. (BEBRA and his troupe poke their noses into the concrete.) What do you see? Shells. We’ve got all we we need right at the doorstep. Just have to take the stuff and mix. Stones, shells, sand, cement… What else can I tell you, Captain, you are an artist, you know how it is. Lankes, tell the captain what we put in our cement.