I have just described a photograph showing Oskar full length with drum and drumsticks, and at the same time disclosed what decisions, having had three years in which to mature, were definitely taken by Oskar as he was being photographed at his birthday party, not far from a cake with three candles. But now the album lies silent beside me, and I must speak of certain events about which it has nothing to say. Even if they do not explain why I continued to be three years old, there is no doubt that they happened, and what is more, that I made them happen.

From the very beginning it was plain to me: grownups will not understand you. If you cease to offer them any discernible growth, they will say you are retarded; they will drag you and their money to dozens of doctors, looking for an explanation if not a cure for your deficiency. Consequently I myself, in order to keep the consultations within tolerable limits, felt obliged to provide a plausible ground for my failure to grow, even before the doctor should offer his explanation.

A sunny day in September, my third birthday. An atmosphere of late summer reverie; even Gretchen Scheffler’s laughter was muffled. Mama at the piano intoning airs from the Gypsy Baron, Jan standing behind her, his hand grazing her shoulder, giving himself an air of following the music. Matzerath in the kitchen, already getting supper. Grandma Anna with Hedwig Bronski and Alexander Schleffler moving over to sit with Greff, because the greengrocer always knew stories, boy-scout stories full of loyalty and courage; and in the background, the upright clock which didn’t miss a single quarter-hour of that finespun September day.

And since, like the clock, they were all so busy, and since a line ran from the Gypsy Baron’s Hungary by way of Greff’s boy scouts (who were touring the Vosges Mountains), past Matzerath’s kitchen, where Kashubian mushrooms with scrambled eggs and tripe were sputtering in the frying pan, down the hallway to the shop, I, vaguely improvising on my drum, followed it. Soon I was in the shop, standing behind the counter—piano, mushrooms, and Vosges already far behind me. There I noticed that the trap door leading to the cellar was open; Matzerath, who had gone down to get a can of mixed fruit for dessert, must have forgotten to close it.

It was a moment before I realized what that trap door demanded of me. Not suicide, certainly not. That would have been too simple. The alternative, however, was difficult and painful; it demanded sacrifice, and even then, as has been the case ever since when a sacrifice has been required of me, such an idea brought the sweat to my forehead. Above all, no harm must come to my drum; I would have to carry it carefully down the sixteen worn-down steps and lodge it among the flour sacks, so motivating its unharmed condition. Then back up again as far as the eighth step, no, the seventh, no, actually the fifth would do just as well. But from that height it would be impossible to combine safety with plausible injury. Back up again, too high this time, to the tenth, then finally, from the ninth step, I flung myself down, carrying a shelf laden with bottles of raspberry syrup along with me, and landed head first on the cement floor of our cellar.

Even before the curtain passed over my consciousness, I registered the success of my experiment: the bottles of raspberry syrup which I had intentionally taken with me in my fall made clatter enough to bring Matzerath from the kitchen, Mama from the piano, and the rest of the birthday party from the Vosges, all running into the shop, to the open trap door, and down the stairs. Before they arrived, I had time to enjoy a whiff of the raspberry syrup, to observe that my head was bleeding, and to wonder—by now they were already on the stairs—whether it was Oskar’s blood or the raspberries that smelled so sweet and sleepy-making, but I was delighted that everything had gone off smoothly and that, thanks to my foresight, the drum had suffered no injury.

I think it was Greff who carried me upstairs. It was only in the living room that Oskar emerged from a cloud which consisted no doubt half of raspberry syrup and half of his juvenile blood. The doctor had not arrived yet; Mama was screaming and flailing out at Matzerath, who was trying to pacify her, striking him in the face, and not just with her palm but with her knuckles as well, calling him a murderer.

And so with a single fall, not exactly without gravity but its degree of gravity calculated by myself in advance, I not only supplied a reason—repeatedly confirmed by the doctors and in general satisfactory to the grownups who simply have to have their explanations for things—for my failure to grow, but in addition and without any real intention on my part, transformed our harmless, good-natured Matzerath into a guilty Matzerath. He had left the trap door open, my mother put all the blame on him, and for years to come he incurred Mama’s merciless, though not too frequent reproaches.

My fall brought me four weeks in the hospital and after that, apart from the weekly visits to Dr. Hollatz later on, relative peace from the medical profession. On my very first day as a drummer I had succeeded in giving the world a sign; my case was explained even before the grownups so much as suspected the true nature of the condition I myself had induced. Forever after the story was: on his third birthday our little Oskar fell down the cellar stairs, no bones were broken, but he just wouldn’t grow any more.

And I began to drum. Our apartment house had four stories. From the ground floor to the attic I drummed up and down stairs. From Labesweg to Max-Halbe-Platz, thence to Neuschottland, Marienstrasse, Kleinhammer Park, the Aktien Brewery, Aktien Pond, Fröbel Green, Pestalozzi School, the Neue Markt, and back again to Labesweg. The drum stood up well under the strain, the grownups around me not quite so well, they were always wanting to interrupt my drum, to cross it up, to crimp my drumsticks—but nature looked out for me.

The ability to drum the necessary distance between grownups and myself developed shortly after my fall, almost simultaneously with the emergence of a voice that enabled me to sing in so high-pitched and sustained a vibrato, to sing-scream so piercingly that no one dared to take away the drum that was destroying his eardrums; for when the drum was taken away from me, I screamed, and when I screamed, valuable articles burst into bits: I had the gift of shattering glass with my singing: my screams demolished vases, my singing made windowpanes crumple and drafts prevail; like a chaste and therefore merciless diamond, my voice cut through the doors of glass cabinets and, without losing its innocence, proceeded inside to wreak havoc on harmonious, graceful liqueur glasses, bestowed by loving hands and covered with a light film of dust.

It was not long before my talents became known the whole length of our street, from Brösener-Weg to the housing development by the airfield. Whenever I caught the attention of the neighborhood children, whose games—such as “Pickled herring, one, two, three” or “Where’s the Witch, black as pitch?” or “I see something you don’t see”—didn’t interest me in the slightest, the whole unwashed chorus of them would begin to squeal:

It was a silly, meaningless jingle and troubled me very little; I took up the simple rhythm, which was not without charm, and drummed my way from start to finish, through the little pieces and through Mrs. Biddle. Thus drumming, I marched down the street and though I was not the Pied Piper, the children followed in my wake.