O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was high time the spirit moved, or it would be all up with Jan, the father. Oskar the son unbuttoned his coat, reached quickly for his drumsticks, and made his drum cry out: Father, father, until Jan Bronski turned and slowly, much too slowly, crossed the street, and found me, Oskar, in the doorway.

How wonderful it was that just as Jan, still frozen in his trance but about to thaw, turned to look at me, snow began to fall. He held out a hand, but not the glove that had touched the rubies, to me and led me silent but undismayed home, where Mama was worrying about me, and Matzerath, not quite seriously but with his usual show of severity, was threatening to call the police. Jan offered no explanation; he did not stay long and was disinclined to play skat, though Matzerath put beer on the table and invited him. In leaving, he caressed Oskar and Oskar was at a loss to know whether it was discretion or friendship he was asking for.

A few days later Bronski gave my mother the necklace. Surely knowing where it came from, she wore it only when Matzerath was absent, either for herself alone or for Jan Bronski, and possibly for me.

Shortly after the war I exchanged it on the black market in Düsseldorf for twelve cartons of Lucky Strikes and a leather briefcase.

Today as i lie here in my mental hospital, I often regret the power I had in those days to project my voice through the wintry night to thaw frost flowers on glass, cut holes in shopwindows, and show thieves the way.

How happy I should be, for example, to unglass the peephole in my door so that Bruno my keeper might observe me more directly.

How I suffered from the loss of this power during the year before my commitment to the hospital! From time to time I would dispatch a cry into the wretched Düsseldorf suburb where I was living. When despite my eagerness for success nothing happened, I, who abhor violence, was quite capable of picking up a stone and flinging it at a kitchen window. I would have been so glad to put on a show, especially for the benefit of Vittlar the window dresser. It was past midnight when I saw him behind the plate-glass window of a men’s fashions store or perhaps of a perfumer’s shop. From the waist up he would be hidden by a curtain, but I recognized him by his green and red socks. And though he is or might be my disciple, I desired passionately to sing his window to pieces, because I did not know then and still do not know whether to call him John or Judas.

Vittlar is noble and his first name is Gottfried. When after my humiliating vain vocal effort I called his attention to myself by drumming lightly on the unharmed plate glass and he stepped outside for a few minutes to chat with me and make light of his decorative abilities, I was reduced to calling him Gottfried because my voice could not perform the miracle that would have entitled me to call him John or Judas.

The exploit of the jewelry store, which made Jan Bronski a thief and my mama the possessor of a ruby necklace, put a temporary end to my singing outside of shopwindows with desirable displays. Mama got religion. How so? No doubt it was her association with Jan Bronski, the stolen necklace, the delicious misery of an adulterous woman’s life, that made her lust after sacraments. How easily the routine of sin establishes itself. Ah, those Thursdays: rendezvous in town, deposit little Oskar with Markus, strenuous exercise, usually satisfactory, in Tischlergasse, mocha and pastry at the Café Weitzke, pick up the boy along with a few of Markus’ compliments and a package of sewing silk, sold at a price which made it more a present than a purchase, and back again to the Number 5 streetcar. Smiling and far away in her thoughts, my mama enjoyed the ride past Oliva Gate through Hindenburg-Allee, scarcely noticing the Maiwiese where Matzerath spent his Sunday mornings. She gritted her teeth on the curve round the Sports Palace—how ugly that boxlike structure could be immediately after a beautiful experience!—another curve and there behind dusty trees stood the Conradinum with its red-capped schoolboys—how lovely if little Oskar could have been there in a red cap with a golden C; he would be twelve and a half, in the first year of high school, just starting in on Latin, cutting the figure of a regular little Conradinian, a good student, though perhaps a bit cocky.

After the underpass, as the car moved on toward Reichskolonie and the Helene Lange School, Mrs. Matzerath’s thoughts of the Conradinum and her son Oskar’s lost opportunities seeped away. Another curve to leftward, past Christ Church with its bulbiform steeple. Then at Max-Halbe-Platz, we would get out, just in front of Kaiser’s grocery store. After a glance into the competitor’s window, my mama turned into Labesweg, her calvary: what with her nascent ill humor, this freak of a child, her troubled conscience, and her impatience to begin all over again, my mama, torn between not enough and too much, between aversion and good-natured affection for Matzerath, plodded wearily down Labesweg with me and my drum and her package of dirt-cheap silk thread, toward the store, toward the rolled oats, the kerosene by the herring barrel, the currants, raisins, almonds, and spices, toward Dr. Oetker’s Baking Powder, toward Persil Washes White, Maggi and Knorr, Kaffee Hag, Kühne’s Vinegar, and four-fruit jam, toward the two strips of flypaper, buzzing in different keys, which hung honeysweet over our counter and had to be changed every other day in the summer, whereas Mama, always with the same honeysweet soul, which summer and winter, all year long, attracted sins buzzing high and buzzing low, repaired each Saturday to the Church of the Sacred Heart, where she confessed to the Right Reverend Father Wiehnke.

Just as Mama took me with her to the city on Thursday to share as it were in her guilt, she led me on Saturday over cool and Catholic flagstones through the church door, having previously stuffed my drum under my sweater or overcoat, for without my drum I would not budge, and without my drum I should never have touched my forehead, chest, and shoulders, making the Catholic cross, nor should I ever have bent my knees as though to put on my shoes and, with holy water slowly drying on the bridge of my nose, sat still and behaved on the polished wooden bench.

I could still remember this church from my baptism: there had been trouble over the heathen name they were giving me, but my parents insisted on Oskar, and Jan, as godfather, took the same position. Then Father Wiehnke blew into my face three times—that was supposed to drive Satan out of me. The sign of the cross was made, a hand was imposed, salt was sprinkled, and various other measures were taken against Satan. At the baptismal chapel the party stopped again. I kept still while the Credo and the Lord’s Prayer were dished out to me. Afterward Father Wiehnke saw fit to say another “Satan depart”, and touched my nose and ears, fancying that by so doing he was opening up the senses of this child, Oskar, who had known what was what from the very first. Then he wanted one last time to hear it loud and plain and asked: “Dost thou renounce Satan? And all his works? And all his pomp?”

Before I could shake my head—for I had no intention whatsoever of renouncing—Jan, acting as my proxy, said three times: “I do renounce.”

Without my having said anything to spoil my relations with Satan, Father Wiehnke anointed me on the breast and between the shoulder blades. By the baptismal font another Credo, then at last I was dipped thrice in the water, my scalp was anointed with chrism, they clothed me in a white dress to make spots on, the candle for dark days was bestowed on Uncle Jan, and we were dismissed. Matzerath paid, Jan carried me outside the Church, where the taxi was waiting in fair to cloudy weather, and I asked the Satan within me: “Did you get through it all right?”