As I have said, the eastward escape route, the road to my grandmother, was closed. Accordingly, like everyone else nowadays, I saw myself obliged to flee westward. If, Oskar, I said to myself, the inscrutable ways of politics prevent you from going to your grandmother, why not run to your grandfather, who is living in Buffalo, U.S.A.? Take America as your destination; we’ll see how far you get.

This thought of Grandfather Koljaiczek in America came to me while my eyes were still closed and the cow was licking me in the meadow near Gerresheim. It must have been about seven o’clock and I said to myself: the stores open at eight. Laughing, I ran off, leaving my drum with the cow, saying to myself: Gottfried was tired, I doubt if he goes to the police before eight or maybe half-past. Take advantage of your little head start. It took me ten minutes, in the sleepy suburb of Gerresheim, to get a cab by telephone. The cab carried me to the Central Station. On the way I counted my money; several times I had to start counting all over again, because I couldn’t help laughing, sending out gales of fresh early-morning laughter. Then I leafed through my passport and found that, thanks to the efforts of the West Concert Bureau, I possessed visas for France as well as the U.S.; Dr. Dösch had always hoped that one day Oskar the Drummer would consent to tour those countries.

Voilà, I said to myself, let us flee to Paris, it looks good and sounds good, it could happen in the movies, with Gabin smoking his pipe and tracking me down, inexorably but with kindness and understanding. But who will play me? Chaplin? Picasso? Laughing, stimulated by my thoughts of flight, I was still slapping the thighs of my slightly rumpled trousers when the driver asked me for seven DM. I paid up and had breakfast in the station restaurant. I laid out the timetable beside my soft-boiled egg and found a suitable train. After breakfast I had time to provide myself with foreign exchange and buy a small suitcase of excellent leather. Fearing to show myself in Jülicher-Strasse, I filled the suitcase with expensive but ill-fitting shirts, a pair of pale-green pajamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, and so on. Since there was no need to economize, I bought a first-class ticket, and soon found myself in a comfortable, upholstered first-class window seat, fleeing without physical effort. The cushions helped me to think. When the train pulled out, inaugurating my flight proper, Oskar began casting about for something to be frightened of; for not without reason I said to myself: you can’t speak of a flight without fear. But what, Oskar, are you going to fear? What is worth running away from if all the police can wring from you is fresh, early-morning laughter?

Today I am thirty; flight and trial are behind me, but the fear I talked myself into during my flight is still with me.

Was it the rhythmic thrusts of the rails, the rattling of the train? Little by little the song took form, and a little before Aachen I was fully conscious of it. Monotonous words. They took possession of me as I sank back in the first-class upholstery. After Aachen—we crossed the border at half-past ten—they were still with me, more and more distinct and terrible, and I was glad when the customs inspectors changed the subject. They showed more interest in my hump than in my name or passport, and I said to myself: Oh, that Vittlar! That lazybones. Here it is almost eleven, and still he hasn’t got to the police with that preserving jar under his arm, whereas I, for his sake, have been busy with this getaway since the crack of dawn, working myself up into a state of terror just to create a motive for my flight. Belgium. Oh, what a fright I was in when the rails sang: Where’s the Witch, black as pitch? Here’s the black, wicked Witch. Ha, ha, ha…

Today I am thirty, I shall be given a new trial and presumably be acquitted. I shall be thrown out in the street, and everywhere, in trains and streetcars, those words will ring in my ears: Where’s the Witch, black as pitch? Here’s the black, wicked Witch.

Still, apart from my dread of the Black Witch whom I expected to turn up at every station, the trip was pleasant enough. I had the whole compartment to myself—but maybe she was in the next one, right behind the partition—I made the acquaintance first of Belgian, then of French customs inspectors, dozed off from time to time, and woke up with a little cry. In an effort to ward off the Witch, I leafed through Der Spiegel, which I had bought on the platform in Düsseldorf; how they get around, how well informed they are, I kept saying to myself. I even found a piece about my manager. Dr. Dösch of the West Concert Bureau, confirming what I already knew, namely, that Oskar the Drummer was the mainstay and meal ticket of the Dösch agency—good picture of me too. And Oskar the Mainstay pictured to himself the inevitable collapse of the West Concert Bureau after my arrest.

Never in all my life had I feared the Black Witch. It was not until my flight, when I wanted to be afraid, that she crawled under my skin. And there she has remained to this day, my thirtieth birthday, though most of the time she sleeps. She takes a number of forms. Sometimes, for instance, it is the name “Goethe” that sets me screaming and hiding under the bedclothes. From childhood on I have done my best to study the poet prince and still his Olympian calm gives me the creeps. Even now, when, no longer luminous and classical but disguised as a black witch more sinister by far than any Rasputin, he peers through the bars of my bed and asks me, on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday: “Where’s the Witch, black as pitch?”—I am scared stiff.

Ha, ha, ha! said the train carrying Oskar the fugitive to Paris. I was already expecting to see the International Police when we pulled in to the North Station, the Gare du Nord as the French call it. But there was no one waiting for me, only a porter, who smelled so reassuringly of red wine that with the best of intentions I couldn’t mistake him for the Black Witch. I gave him my suitcase and let him carry it to within a few feet of the gate. The police and the Witch, I said to myself, probably don’t feel like wasting money on a platform ticket, they will accost you and arrest you on the other side of the gate. So you’d better take back your suitcase before you go through. But the police weren’t there to relieve me of my suitcase; I had to haul it to the Metro my very own self.

I won’t go on about that famous Metro smell. I have recently read somewhere that it has been done into a perfume and that you can spray yourself with it. The Metro also asked about the whereabouts of the Black Witch, though in a rhythm rather different from that of the railroad. And another thing I noticed: the other passengers must have feared her as much as I did, for they were all asweat with terror. My idea was to continue underground to the Porte d’Italie, where I would take a cab to Orly Airport. If I couldn’t be arrested at the North Station, it seemed to me that Orly, the world-famous airport—with the Witch done up as an airline hostess—would do very nicely, that it was an interesting place to be arrested in. There was one change of trains, I was glad my suitcase was so light. The Metro carried me southward and I pondered: where, Oskar, are you going to get off? Goodness me, how many things can happen in one day, this morning a cow licked you not far from Gerresheim, you were fearless and gay, and now you are in Paris—where will you get off, where will she come, black and terrible, to meet you? At the Place d’Italie? Or not until the Porte?

I got off at Maison Blanche, the last station before the Porte, thinking: they must think I think they are waiting at the Porte. But She knows what I think and what they think. Besides, I was sick of it all. My getaway and the pains I had taken to keep up my fear had been very tiring. Oskar had lost all desire to go on to the airfield; Maison Blanche, at this point, struck him as more original than Orly. He was right too. Because this particular Metro station has an escalator. An escalator, I said to myself, can be counted on to inspire me with a lofty sentiment or two, and the clatter will be just right for the Witch. “Here’s the black, wicked Witch. Ha, ha, ha!”