Gunter Grass

We  hear  about it on the radio,  unsure of the geography  or  the
national identities involved.  A large middle European population,
proud  of  the postwar recovery, an industrial miracle,  is  angry
still  about  about the  territorial concessions  and  reparations
after the last one. At home in the Windy City on the Great  Lakes,
I have my own life and I feel safe at the bottom of the barrel.

With a pretty shiksah and a gentile job at a major pharmaceutical,
I get in the Buffalo Athletic Club. On detail,  I'm well  received
with  my  good  looks  and  Anglo  dress  and  manners.  Marketing
Milltown,  a  sleeping pill,  I present the research  reports  and
medical indications,  but I pitch ordinary stress,  a new   market
with big potential.  Weekends we go by the docks to a neighborhood
for oldstyle food shops,  and biergarten fun with homebrew pilsner
and  beef  on weck. The narrow beach is trash but we motor over to
the wide sand and bathing cabanas of nearby Ontario.
 
When  my  Home Guard unit is called up I bring along a  bagful  of
samples for my kid sister with bad nerves from a  miscarriage.  On
screening I'm 4F but I need war-related employment. She puts me in
touch  with a nephew and I get a job at a Brooklyn shipyard.  He's
outfitting  Liberty ships with cabinets and desks out  of  plywood
and green linoleum. I punch in every day. When a bag breaks on the
docks I bring back stick cinammon from Jamaica and scrounge  scrap
materials  for her kid to build a chemistry lab in the  cellar.  I
get the maids room across the kitchen for the duration.

Momma  is in a walkup on Neptune by Sheepshead Bay the girls  find
for  her.  Near constellations each with a new center  of  gravity
they're close enough for weekly visits.  Away in Navy,  Louie  has 
the extra room, the only one not on his own, except for me. I take
her to the shops on Brighton Beach. They're all right off the boat
with  their  own  language and institutions.  I  treat  her  to  a
boardwalk  tour on a wicker stroller and later sit  on a bench  at
the edge. It's all sand from the glacier with no bedrock.  The sun
is  sharp  and the sound is surf,  a salt smell,  and  gulls  dart
gracefully  above  the white lines that approach,  peak  and  then
dissolve.  She makes an effort  to describe the hard Baltic  coast
of her childhood. 
 
I  live  for  a  while  in  a  free  city,   at  a  working  class
neighborhood,  not well off,   just a room.  A rough tavern in the
storefront below never shuts down.  There's a hubub in the  street
at  night which doesn't quiet down till morning.  Doors in a  long
row line the sidewalk, with hidden alcoves, dark alleys.  Interior
walls  are paint,  soiled by time, under the perpetual glare of  a
bare ceiling light.  I go to the toilet under the stairs and  it's
full  of  turds that won't flush. I hang toilet paper  across  the
door as an "out of service" notice.

I  date  a  dark Kashubian girl I  like.  She's  small,  but  well
proportioned,  and does things the girls at home won't.  Splurging
for a night out,  I check the scalper shops.  The legitimate stage
is  shut  down.  The theater shows a prewar romantic  comedy  with
Movietone news, confused action, a sea of waving arms and a  voice
over  certain  of  victory.  A  little  restaurant  opens  to  the
sidewalk. The glass doors have been removed, so you can't see.  At
a small table I peer over a single flower smack in the middle  and
pop the question. Comfortable with the present uncertainties,  she
won't come stateside with me no matter the advantages. 
          
By the time it's over the world is in ruins, overrun by Asians out
of control.  We get a resettlement notice. The old camp transports
are put back in service, and from Silesia, Pomerania and Slovakia,
our  home for centuries, we're packed out with just a suitcase.  A
piece  of  good  luck I contact a cousin in a  backwater  town  on
Chesapeake Bay North of the capital.  The place saw little  damage
from the fighting and he's happy to have my help with his ice  and
coal business which is thriving. 

He  lives  in a poor frame structure with faux  brick  composition
siding,  a  tilted porch and architectural detail here  and  there
from it's prime. Surprised, up a small flight of stairs with large
windows  in front on the treelined street,  he gives me  the  best
room.  The floors are pine plank with a shine and the  large  iron
bed has an antique  chenille cover.  I get back from the shop  and
shake  the  stove  in the kitchen with  high  ceilings  and  white
cupboards all around.  When he gets in we eat there together,  two
bachelors, flotsam adrift.

Rummaging in the old carriage barn on the alley in back I find the 
shovels, hoes and rakes I need to grow a victory garden.  Mornings
at  the  sidearm water heater by the back door I watch  the  green
bunches  in rows on the black dirt.  At the fence I  speak  warmly
with the neighbor,  an older lady. She takes me to her place where
she gives me a basket of greens and shows me how to fry it up with
bacon  Maryland  style.  Weekends we follow the wide  canal  to  a
country butcher for fresh calle, sulze and spicy scrapple.

Tha  drama  department at the local high school plans  an  antiwar
piece  about the aftermath and recovery. They get an idea  from  a
major  TV  series and look around for survivors.  I tell  them  my
story in the little front parlor with faded flowers off the porch.
A boy,  a girl,  a faculty advisor with an eye out,  the three  of
them  are  on the overstuffed sofa and I'm across from them  on  a
wooden straight-back chair with stamped decorations. It plays in a
huge  amphitheater  where the stage is small and I can't  make  it
out.  The couple next to me however is altogether taken in by  the
performance  and a big guy applauds noisily at the marching  music
rising up from the orchestra at intervals.

Next day there's a notice in the paper.  The hardships and  losses
not  trivialized  but  presented  in a  popular  style.  A   movie
director with credentials expresses interest. I stick at the sharp
OSS  agent,  his daring undercover exploits behind the lines.  I'm
angry  with  the license taken. Caught in the  general  compulsory
conscription in the last days, I'm sent to tank gunnery school,  a
mere boy.  Lucky for me I'm rounded up with the rest of them  when
our squadron runs out of gas on a milk farm by the Elbe. The Amies
build  a POW Camp for us and take care for our  safety.  Elsewhere
there's been a bank robbery in Baltimore,  the manager  kidnapped,
anarchists claim responsibility.

For the last scene the wall color is light blue,  a large  picture
window,  blinds covering,  fixtures all chrome.  We've been out of
touch but she hears about it from the book and comes to visit with
her  son.  They've whitened her hair a bit and done the makeup  so
she  looks the part.  I'm very tired and just lie there  with  the
plastic hose in my mouth.  The drip bottle on a pedestal blocks  a
full view and there are no closeups till the end.  She talks a lot
in a soft voice about the old days when we are kids at play by the
privet fence and stoop in front and later when I live at her place
on the Island during the conflict and we shmooze all night at  the
table  in the breakfast room by the garden.  Her husband  and  the
kids are asleep.  There are flashbacks with fades.  I get very few
lines  but  it's all in the expression.  Her son listens  and  the
camera is on him for the credits.

1/15/10 Havre de Grace MD