Read Online The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, Breon Mitchell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Günter Grass, Breon Mitchell
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process, we handed him the photo.
Oskar never gave a photo to the waitress at the counter or to the foxy young redhead with the cigarette tray, for women shouldn't be given photos—they always mistreat them. Klepp, however, who, for all his portliness, could never stop showing off for the ladies, was communicative to the point of folly, and was ready to bare his chest and heart to any of them, must have given a photo to the cigarette girl one day without my knowledge, for he got engaged to the saucy green slip of a thing, and even married her, because he wanted his photo back.
I've got ahead of myself and devoted too many words to the final pages of my album. Those stupid snapshots aren't worth it, except to make clear by way of comparison how grand and unrivaled—yes, even artistic—the portrait of my grandfather Koljaiczek on the first page of the album appears to me to this day.
Short and stout he stands beside a small, elaborately carved table. Unfortunately he had himself photographed as Wranka the volunteer fireman, not as the arsonist. So he's missing his mustache. But the tautly stretched fireman's uniform with its medal for bravery and the
fireman's helmet transforming the table into an altar almost compensate for the arsonist's whiskers. How gravely he gazes out, how deeply aware of all that turn-of-the-century suffering. That look, proud though tragic, seems to have been both beloved and common during the Second Reich, for Gregor Koljaiczek, the drunken gunpowder maker, who appears relatively sober in his pictures, sports it too. More mystic in tone, having been taken in Częstochowa, is the image captured of Vinzent Bronski, who holds a votive candle. A youthful portrait of the slender Jan Bronski bears witness to a consciously melancholy manliness, captured by means of early photography.
The women of that period were seldom as successful at finding a look that matched their demeanor. Even my grandmother Anna, who, God knows, was a real person, sits primly behind a silly, pasted-on smile in pictures taken prior to the outbreak of the First World War, offering no hint of the breadth of her four cascading skirts and the refuge they offered.
Even during the war years women were still smiling at the photographer as he danced about under his black cloth, snapsnapping away. I have another photo, double postcard size on stiff cardboard, showing twenty-three nurses in the Silberhammer Military Hospital, Mama among them as an auxiliary nurse, timid, clustering around the staff doctor, who offers a point of support. The hospital ladies seem slightly more relaxed in a posed shot at a costume ball in which convalescent warriors also appear. Mama ventures a wink, pursing her lips for a kiss that in spite of her angel wings and tinseled hair seems to say: Even angels have a sex. Matzerath, kneeling before her, has chosen a costume he would all too happily wear in daily life: he appears as a cook in a starched chef's hat, brandishing a spoon. In uniform, on the other hand, decked out with the Iron Cross Second Class, he too, like the Koljaiczeks and Bronskis, gazes out with a knowingly tragic look, and is superior to all the women in the photos.
After the war people wore a different look. The men appear slightly demobilized, and now it's the women who know how to pose for photos, who have reason to gaze out gravely, who, even when smiling, make no effort to conceal an undertone of the sorrows they've suffered. It was quite becoming, that melancholy air of women in the twenties. Did they not manage, sitting, standing, and half reclining, with the crescents of
their little black spit curls pasted to their temples, to fashion a harmonious blend of Madonna and harlot?
The picture of my twenty-three-year-old mama—it must have been taken shortly before she became pregnant—shows a young woman who bows her round, smoothly shaped head slightly forward on her firm, fleshy neck, yet looks directly at the viewer, belying the
Oskar never gave a photo to the waitress at the counter or to the foxy young redhead with the cigarette tray, for women shouldn't be given photos—they always mistreat them. Klepp, however, who, for all his portliness, could never stop showing off for the ladies, was communicative to the point of folly, and was ready to bare his chest and heart to any of them, must have given a photo to the cigarette girl one day without my knowledge, for he got engaged to the saucy green slip of a thing, and even married her, because he wanted his photo back.
I've got ahead of myself and devoted too many words to the final pages of my album. Those stupid snapshots aren't worth it, except to make clear by way of comparison how grand and unrivaled—yes, even artistic—the portrait of my grandfather Koljaiczek on the first page of the album appears to me to this day.
Short and stout he stands beside a small, elaborately carved table. Unfortunately he had himself photographed as Wranka the volunteer fireman, not as the arsonist. So he's missing his mustache. But the tautly stretched fireman's uniform with its medal for bravery and the
fireman's helmet transforming the table into an altar almost compensate for the arsonist's whiskers. How gravely he gazes out, how deeply aware of all that turn-of-the-century suffering. That look, proud though tragic, seems to have been both beloved and common during the Second Reich, for Gregor Koljaiczek, the drunken gunpowder maker, who appears relatively sober in his pictures, sports it too. More mystic in tone, having been taken in Częstochowa, is the image captured of Vinzent Bronski, who holds a votive candle. A youthful portrait of the slender Jan Bronski bears witness to a consciously melancholy manliness, captured by means of early photography.
The women of that period were seldom as successful at finding a look that matched their demeanor. Even my grandmother Anna, who, God knows, was a real person, sits primly behind a silly, pasted-on smile in pictures taken prior to the outbreak of the First World War, offering no hint of the breadth of her four cascading skirts and the refuge they offered.
Even during the war years women were still smiling at the photographer as he danced about under his black cloth, snapsnapping away. I have another photo, double postcard size on stiff cardboard, showing twenty-three nurses in the Silberhammer Military Hospital, Mama among them as an auxiliary nurse, timid, clustering around the staff doctor, who offers a point of support. The hospital ladies seem slightly more relaxed in a posed shot at a costume ball in which convalescent warriors also appear. Mama ventures a wink, pursing her lips for a kiss that in spite of her angel wings and tinseled hair seems to say: Even angels have a sex. Matzerath, kneeling before her, has chosen a costume he would all too happily wear in daily life: he appears as a cook in a starched chef's hat, brandishing a spoon. In uniform, on the other hand, decked out with the Iron Cross Second Class, he too, like the Koljaiczeks and Bronskis, gazes out with a knowingly tragic look, and is superior to all the women in the photos.
After the war people wore a different look. The men appear slightly demobilized, and now it's the women who know how to pose for photos, who have reason to gaze out gravely, who, even when smiling, make no effort to conceal an undertone of the sorrows they've suffered. It was quite becoming, that melancholy air of women in the twenties. Did they not manage, sitting, standing, and half reclining, with the crescents of
their little black spit curls pasted to their temples, to fashion a harmonious blend of Madonna and harlot?
The picture of my twenty-three-year-old mama—it must have been taken shortly before she became pregnant—shows a young woman who bows her round, smoothly shaped head slightly forward on her firm, fleshy neck, yet looks directly at the viewer, belying the
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