You will not doubt my word when I tell you that nothing had changed in the Neo-Gothic brick Church of the Sacred Heart or, a fortiori, on the left side-altar. The boy Jesus still sat pink and naked on the Virgin’s pink thigh—I shall not call her the Virgin Mary for fear of confusion with my Mary, my Maria, then busy with her conversion. Young John the Baptist, scantily clad in the same old shaggy, chocolate-colored pelt, was still pressing against the Virgin’s right knee. She herself was still pointing her left forefinger at Jesus, but looking at John.

Yet even after years of absence, Oskar was less interested in the Virgin’s maternal pride than in the constitutions of the two boys. Jesus was about the size of my son Kurt on his third birthday, in other words, he was about an inch taller than Oskar. John, who according to the documents was older than the Nazarene, was my size. But both of them had the same precocious expression as I, the eternal three-year-old. Nothing had changed. They had had that same sly look on their faces years before, in the days when I had frequented the Church of the Sacred Heart with my poor mama.

Climbing the carpeted steps, though without saying the Introit, I examined every fold in the drapery; slowly, carefully, I explored the painted plaster exterior of those two little nudists with my drumstick, which had more feeling than all my fingers together; omitting nothing, I covered the thighs, the bellies, the arms, taking in every crease and dimple. Jesus was the spit and image of Oskar, my healthy-flesh, my strong, rather plump knees, my short but muscular drummer’s arms. And the little rascal’s posture was that of a drummer too. He sat on the Virgin’s thigh, arms and fists upraised as though he were planning to beat a drum, as though Jesus, not Oskar, were the drummer, as though he were just waiting for my drum, as though this time he seriously intended to imprint some charming rhythm on the drum for the benefit of the Virgin, John and myself. I did what I had done years before; I removed the drum from my belly and put Jesus to the test. Cautiously, careful not to harm the painted plaster, I set Oskar’s red and white drum on his pink thighs. This time, however, I was driven by sheer malice, I had lost my idiotic faith in miracles, all I wanted was to show him up. For though he sat there with upraised fists, though he had my dimensions and rugged build, though he was a plaster copy of the three-year-old that I—by dint of what effort, what privations!—had remained, he could not drum, he could only give himself an air of knowing how to drum. If I had one, I could do it, he seemed to be thinking; ha-ha, I said, now you’ve got one, what are you going to do? Shaking with laughter, I pressed both sticks into his little sausage fingers, ten of them—sweet little plaster Jesus, go on and drum! Oskar steps back, descends three steps; he leaves the carpet for the flags, go on and drum, little boy Jesus. Oskar takes a long step backward for detachment. Oskar begins to laugh himself sick, because all Jesus can do is sit there, unable to drum, though maybe he’d like to. Boredom is beginning to gnaw at me as a mouse gnaws at a side of bacon when—I’m damned if he doesn’t begin to drum.

While round us nothing stirred, he started in with his right stick, then a tap or two with the left, then both together. Blessed if he isn’t crossing his sticks, say, that roll wasn’t bad. He was very much in earnest and there was plenty of variety in his playing. He did some very complicated things but his simple rhythms were just as successful. There was nothing phony about his playing, he steered clear of gimmicks and just played the drum. His style wasn’t even religious, and there was no military vulgarity about it. He was a musician through and through, but no snob. He knew all the hits. He played “Everything Passes,” which everyone was singing at the time, and, of course, “Lili Marlene.” Slowly, a little jerkily perhaps, he turned his curly head with the blue Bronski eyes toward me, smiled, rather arrogantly it seemed to me, and proceeded to weave Oskar’s favorites into a potpourri: it began with “Smash a Little Windowpane” and there was a bare suggestion of “The Schedule”; just like me, the little scoundrel played off Rasputin against Goethe; he climbed up the Stockturm with me, crawled under the rostrum with me, caught eels on the breakwater, walked with me behind the coffin, tapered at the foot end, of my poor mama, and, what flabbergasted me most of all, took refuge again and again beneath the four skirts of my grandmother Anna Koljaiczek.

Oskar stepped closer. Something drew him forward. He wanted to be on the carpet, he didn’t want to stand on the flags any more. One stair sent him up the next. I climbed up, though I would rather have had him climb down. “Jesus,” I said, summoning up what little voice was left me, “that wasn’t our bargain. Give me back my drum this minute. You’ve got your cross, that should do you.” He stopped playing, but gently, without abruptness, crossed the sticks over the drum with exaggerated care, and without a word of discussion returned what Oskar had unthinkingly lent him.

I was on the point of racing down the steps without thanks, of running away from Catholicism as fast as my legs would carry me, when a pleasant though imperious voice touched my shoulder: “Dost thou love me, Oskar?” Without turning, I replied: “Not that I know of.” Whereupon he, without raising his voice: “Dost thou love rne, Oskar?” This time my tone was more biting: “Sorry, old man, I’m afraid not.” For the third time he came at me with that irritating voice of his: “Oskar, dost thou love me?” I turned around and looked him full in the face: “You bastard, I hate you, you and all your hocus-pocus.”

Strange to say, my hostility, far from getting him down, was his occasion to triumph. Raising his forefinger like a lady schoolteacher, he gave me an assignment: “Thou art Oskar, the rock, and on this rock I will build my Church. Follow thou me!”

You can imagine my indignation. I had gooseflesh with rage. I broke off one of his plaster toes, but he didn’t budge. “Say that again,” Oskar hissed, “and I’ll scratch the paint off you.”

After that, not a single word came forth; what came, as always, was the old man who is forever shuffling about all the churches in the world. He cast a glance at the left side-altar but failed to see me, and shuffled on. He had already reached St. Adalbert of Prague when I stumbled down the steps, passed from the carpet to the flags, and, without looking back, crossed the checkerboard pattern to Maria, who just then crossed herself correctly in accordance with my instructions.

I took her by the hand and led her to the holy water font; just before the door, I bade her cross herself again in the direction of the high altar, but I did not join in, and when she wanted to genuflect, I pulled her out into the sunlight.

It was late in the afternoon. The Ukrainian women were gone from the railroad tracks. In their place, a freight train was being shunted about, not far from Langfuhr Station. Clusters of gnats hung in mid-air. From overhead came the sound of bells, mingling with the railroad noises. The gnats still hung in clusters. Maria’s face was wet with tears. Oskar would have liked to scream. What was I going to do about Jesus? I felt like loading my voice. What had I to do with his Cross? But I was perfectly well aware that my voice was powerless against the windows of his church. Let him go on building his temple on people called Peter. “Watch out, Oskar, leave those church windows alone,” Satan whispered within me. “One of these days that fellow’s going to ruin your voice.” I cast one solitary glance upward, took the measure of one of those Neo-Gothic windows, and wrenched myself away. I did not sing, I did not follow Him, I just trotted along by Maria’s side to the underpass in Bahnhofstrasse. Through the oozing, dripping tunnel, up the hill to Kleinhammer-Park, right turn into Marienstrasse, past Wohlgemuth’s butcher shop, left turn into Elsenstrasse, across the Striessbach to the Neuer Markt, where they were building a water tank for the air-raid defense. Labesweg was endless, but then we were home. Leaving Maria, Oskar climbed over a hundred steps to the attic. Bed sheets had been hung up to dry; behind the bed sheets a mound of air-defense sand; behind sand and buckets, behind bundles of newspaper and piles of roofing tiles, were secreted my book and my supply of drums. But there was also a shoe box containing several burned-out, but still pear-shaped light bulbs. Oskar selected one and sang it to pieces; he took another, turned it to pulverized glass, cut a third neatly in two. Upon a fourth his voice inscribed JESUS in Sütterlin script, then pulverized both bulb and inscription. He wanted to do it again, but there were no more bulbs. Exhausted, I sank down on the air-defense sand: Oskar still had his voice. Maybe Jesus had a disciple. As for me, my first disciples were to be the Dusters.