On the Coco Rug

So Oskar supplied his friend with reasons for getting out of bed. Though Klepp sprang joyfully from the musty bedclothes, even let water touch him, and became the sort of man who says Let's go! and I'll take on the world!, I would claim today, when Oskar's the one keeping to his bed, that Klepp is taking his revenge, wants to spoil my bed for me at the mental institution the way I spoiled his for him in the spaghetti kitchen.

Once a week I have to put up with his visits and listen to his upbeat jazz tirades, his musico-Communist manifestos, for no sooner had I deprived him of his bed and his bagpiping Elizabeth than this bedkeeper who styled himself a true Royalist and devotee of the English monarchy became a dues-paying member of the German Communist Party, an illegal hobby he pursues to this day by drinking beer, devouring blood sausage, and holding forth about the benefits of collectives like a fulltime jazz band or a Soviet kolkhoz to the harmless little men who stand at bars and study the labels on bottles.

These days there aren't many possibilities left for a dreamer who's been startled awake. Once alienated from his form-furrowed bed, Klepp could become a Communist comrade—illegally, which further increased its appeal. Jazz was the second religion open to him. Third, as a baptized Protestant, he could convert to Catholicism.

You have to hand it to Klepp: he kept all religious avenues open. Caution, his heavy, glistening flesh, and a humor that feeds on applause inspired in him a recipe that, with a peasant's practical wit, combined the teachings of Marx and the mythos of jazz. If one day he runs into a left-wing priest catering to the working class who also owns a collection of Dixieland records, a jazz-ruminating Marxist will start receiving the sacraments on Sundays from then on, mingling the body odor described above with the effluvia of a Neo-Gothic cathedral.

May my bed, from which this fellow tries to lure me by promises warm with life, protect me from that fate. He submits petition after petition to the court, works hand in hand with my lawyer, demands a retrial: he wants to see Oskar acquitted, to see Oskar free—get our Oskar out of that place—and all simply because Klepp begrudges me my bed.

Nonetheless I'm not sorry that while lodging with Zeidler I transformed a recumbent friend into a standing, stomping-about, and sometimes even walking friend. Apart from the strenuous hours I devoted to Sister Dorothea, deep in thought, I now had a carefree private life. "Hey, Klepp!" I would clap him on the shoulder. "Let's start a jazz band." And he would fondle my hump, which he loved almost as much as his own belly. "Oskar and I are starting a jazz band," Klepp announced to the world. "All we need is a decent guitarist who can handle the banjo too."

A second melodic instrument is indeed needed with a drum and flute. A plucked bass would not have been bad, even in purely visual terms, but bass players were always hard to come by, even in those days, so we undertook an eager search for the missing guitarist. We frequented the movie houses, had our photographs taken twice a week as you may remember, and played all sorts of silly tricks with our passport photos over beer, blood sausage, and onions. Klepp met Red Ilse back then, thoughtlessly gave her his photo, and for that reason alone had to marry her—but we couldn't find a guitarist.

Even though modeling at the Art Academy had familiarized me to some extent with Düsseldorfs Altstadt, with its bull's-eye windowpanes, its mustard and cheese, its beery atmosphere and Lower Rhenish coziness, I first came to know it well at Klepp's side. We looked for guitarists all around St. Lambert's Church, in all the taverns, and in particular on Ratinger Straße at The Unicorn, because Bobby, who led the dance band there, let us join in on flute and tin drum at times and praised my playing, though Bobby himself was an excellent percussionist, unfortunately missing a finger on his right hand.

Though we didn't find a guitarist at The Unicorn, I picked up a few routines, and with my own experience in the Theater at the Front, I would soon have passed for a fair percussionist had not Sister Dorothea made me miss my cue now and then.

Half my thoughts were always with her. I could have endured that if the other half had remained totally focused from one note to the next in the vicinity of my tin drum. Instead a thought would start out with my drum and wind up at Sister Dorothea's Red Cross pin. Klepp, who managed to bridge my lapses brilliantly on his flute, was worried each time he saw Oscar half-submerged in thought. "Are you hungry, shall I order some sausage?"

Klepp sensed a wolfish hunger lurking behind each of the world's sorrows, and thought that any sorrow could be cured by a helping of blood sausage. Oskar ate great quantities of fresh blood sausage with onion rings and washed them down with beer back then, just so his friend Klepp would think his sorrow was named hunger and not Sister Dorothea.

We generally left Zeidler's flat on Jülicher Straße early in the morning and had breakfast in the Altstadt. I only went to the Academy when we needed money for the cinema. Ulla the Muse was engaged to Lankes for the third or fourth time, and thus unavailable, since Lankes was receiving his first major industrial commissions. But Oskar didn't like to pose without the Muse—they were totally distorting him again, painting him in the blackest of colors, and so I devoted myself entirely to my friend Klepp; for I found no peace at the flat with Maria or with little Kurt. Her boss and married lover Stenzel was installed there every evening.

One day in the early fall of forty-nine, as Klepp and I stepped out of our rooms and met in the hall near the frosted-glass door to leave the flat with our instruments, Zeidler called out to us from the door of his bed-sitter, which he had opened a crack.

He shoved a narrow but bulky roll of carpet toward us and asked us to help him install it. It was a coco runner. The runner was eight meters twenty long, or about twenty-seven feet. Since the corridor in Zeidler's flat was only twenty-four feet six inches long, Klepp and I had to cut seventy-five centimeters, or about thirty inches, off the runner. We did this sitting down, for cutting through the coco fibers proved hard work. When we were finished, the runner was short by about an inch. Since the runner matched the width of the corridor, Zeidler, who supposedly had trouble bending over, asked us to nail it to the floorboards. It was Oskar's idea to stretch the runner as it was being nailed. In this way we managed to wrangle the missing inch from it, leaving only a small gap. We used broad, flat-headed nails, because small-headed ones would not have held the coarsely woven coco runner. Neither Oskar nor Klepp hit his thumb. Of course we did bend a few nails. But that was due to the quality of the nails, which came from Zeidler's stock and pre-dated the currency reform. After we had fastened the runner halfway down the hall, we crossed our hammers and looked up, not insistently but expectantly, at the Hedgehog, who was supervising our work. He disappeared into his bed-sitter, returned with three liqueur glasses from his liqueur-glass store and a bottle of Doppelkorn. We drank to the runner's durability, then pointed out, again not insistently but expectantly, that coco fibers made a man thirsty. Perhaps the Hedgehog's liqueur glasses were happy that they held several more rounds of Doppelkorn before a familiar temper tantrum from the Hedgehog reduced them to shards. When Klepp accidentally knocked over an empty liqueur glass on the coco runner, the little glass neither broke nor made a sound. We all praised the runner. When Frau Zeidler, who was watching our work from the door of the bed-sitter, joined us in praising the runner for protecting falling liqueur glasses from harm, the Hedgehog flew into a rage. He stamped on the still unfastened portion of the runner, seized the three empty liqueur glasses, disappeared thus burdened into the Zeidlers' bed-sitter, the glass doors of the display case rattled—he was grabbing more glasses, since three weren't enough for him—and soon thereafter Oskar heard a familiar tune: in his mind's eye he saw Zeidler's slow-combustion stove, eight shattered glasses lay at its foot, and Zeidler was bending over for the dustpan and brush, sweeping up the shards Zeidler had produced as the Hedgehog. Frau Zeidler, however, remained standing in the doorway while all the scraping and tinkletinkle went on behind her. She took a considerable interest in our work, for we had picked up our hammers again following the Hedgehog's angry outburst. He didn't return, but he'd left the bottle of Doppelkorn with us. At first we felt awkward as we took turns tipping the bottle to our mouths in Frau Zeidler's presence. But she gave us a friendly nod, though it couldn't induce us to pass her the bottle for a nip. Nevertheless we worked neatly, hammering nail after nail into the runner. As Oskar nailed down the runner outside the nurse's chamber, the frosted-glass panes rattled at each blow of the hammer. That caused him pangs of anguish, and for an anguished moment he let the hammer drop. As soon as he was past Sister Dorothea's frosted-glass door, however, both he and his hammer felt better. As all good things must come to an end, so too the nailing down of the runner. The nails ran from one end to the other with their broad heads, stood up to their necks in the floorboards and held their heads just barely above the flowing, swirling, whirlpool-forming coco fibers. Pleased with ourselves, we strode up and down the corridor, enjoyed the full length of the carpet, praised our own work, pointed out that it was no mean task to lay down a coco runner and nail it fast on an empty stomach, and at last induced Frau Zeidler to venture out upon the brand-new, virgin coco runner, make her way along it to the kitchen, pour us coffee, and fry us eggs. We ate in my room, Frau Zeidler toddled off, since she was due at the Mannesmann office, we left the door open, and chewing and pleasantly weary, contemplated our work, the coco runner flowing toward us.

Why so many words about a cheap rug, which at most might have had some barter value prior to the currency reform? Oskar anticipates this legitimate question and answers it in advance: upon this coco runner, in the course of the following night, I first met Sister Dorothea.

I came home late, toward midnight, full of beer and blood sausage. I'd left Klepp behind in the Altstadt. He was looking for the guitarist. I found the keyhole of the Zeidler flat, found the coco runner in the hall, found my way past the dark frosted glass to my room, found my way to my bed, after first finding my way out of my clothes, but found I couldn't find my pajamas—they were in the laundry at Maria's—found the thirty-inch-long piece of coco runner we'd cut from the overly long carpet, placed it beside the bed as a bedside rug, found my way into bed, but found no sleep.

There's no point in telling you everything that went through Oskar's mind, consciously or unconsciously, because he couldn't fall asleep. Today I think I know why I couldn't sleep. Before climbing into bed I'd stood barefoot on my new bedside rug, the remnant from the runner. The coco fibers pressed against my bare feet, penetrated my skin, and entered my blood: long after I had gone to bed, I was still standing on coco fibers and thus could not drift off; for nothing is more stimulating, sleep-dispersing, and thought-provoking than standing barefoot on a coco fiber mat.

Long after midnight, till almost three in the morning, Oskar was still standing and lying sleepless on the mat and the bed, at one and the same time, when he heard a door and then another door in the corridor. That must be Klepp, I thought, coming home without a guitarist but stuffed with blood sausage, yet I knew it wasn't Klepp opening first one door and then the other. And I had a further thought: if you're lying in bed for no reason anyway, feeling those coco fibers pricking the soles of your feet, you might as well get up and actually stand on the mat by your bed instead of just imagining it. Oskar did just that. This had consequences. I had barely set foot on the mat when the thirty-inch-long remnant reminded me via my soles of its source, the twenty-four-foot-five-inch coco runner in the corridor. Whether it was because I felt sorry for the cut-off remnant, or because I'd heard the doors in the corridor and assumed, without believing it, that Klepp had returned, Oskar bent down, and, having failed to find his pajamas when he went to bed, took one corner of the bedside rug in each hand, spread his legs till he was no longer standing on the fibers but on the floorboards, pulled the mat high between his legs, held its thirty inches in front of his bare body, which measured four feet, thus covering his nakedness decently, but exposing himself to the sensation of the coco fibers from his collarbone to his knees. This sensation was further intensified as Oskar, shielded by his fibrous garment, passed from his dark room into the dark corridor and thus onto the coco runner.

Small wonder, given the fibrous encouragement of the runner, that I took quick little steps, tried to escape the sensation beneath me, to save myself, that I strove to reach the one place where no coco fiber covered the floor—the toilet.

The toilet was dark, like the corridor and Oskar's room, yet occupied. A small, feminine shriek told me so. My coco-fiber pelt also knocked against the knees of someone seated. Since I made no move to leave the toilet—for the coco runner threatened behind me—the person sitting before me tried to order me out of the toilet: "Who are you, what do you want, go away!" came the command, in a voice that could not possibly be that of Frau Zeidler. Somewhat plaintively: "Who are you?"

"Well, Sister Dorothea, take a guess," I said, venturing a joke intended to ease our slightly embarrassing encounter. But she wasn't in the mood for guessing, stood up, reached for me in the dark, tried to push me from the toilet onto the runner in the hall, but reached too high, into the void over my head, tried lower down, but grabbed not me but my fibrous apron instead, my coco-fiber pelt, shrieked again—why do women always have to shriek first thing?—and mistook me for someone else, for Sister Dorothea began to tremble and whispered, "Oh God, it's the devil!" which drew a small giggle from me, but one without malice. Nevertheless she assumed it was the devil's giggle, but that little word devil was not to my liking, and when she asked again, but now quite timorously, "Who are you?" Oskar replied, "I am Satan, come to call on Sister Dorothea." And she: "Oh God, but why?"

Slowly feeling my way into the role and using the Satan in me as a souffleur, I replied, "Because Satan loves Sister Dorothea." "No, no, no, I don't want that," she burst out, then tried to break away, but encountered the satanic fibers of my coco pelt again—her nightgown must have been quite thin—and her ten little fingers too encountered that seductive jungle, and she went weak, could hardly stand. A slight faint caused Sister Dorothea to sink forward. I caught the falling woman with my pelt, which I lifted away from my body, held her long enough to make a decision in keeping with my satanic role, released her gently so that she fell to her knees, but made sure that her knees did not touch the cold tiles of the toilet and came to rest instead on the coco runner in the hall, then let her glide onto her back lengthwise, with her head pointing west, toward Klepp's room, and since her body was in contact with at least five foot three of the coco runner, covered her with the same fibrous material, of which I had only thirty inches of course, pulled it up under her chin, then found that the other end came too far down over her thighs, pulled the mat up another three or four inches, over her mouth, but with Sister Dorothea's nose uncovered, so she could breathe; and she was panting hard as Oskar now lay down upon his erstwhile bedside mat, set a thousand fibers quivering, but sought no direct contact with Sister Dorothea, let the coco fibers do their work, struck up another conversation with Sister Dorothea, who was still feeling slightly faint and whispered, "Oh God, oh God," kept asking Oskar who he was and where he came from, shuddering between the coco runner and the mat when I said I was Satan, pronounced the word Satan with a satanic hiss, sketched Hell as my home with a bold stroke or two, and bounced all the while on my bedside mat, keeping it in motion, for I couldn't help hearing that the coconut fibers were giving Sister Dorothea a feeling much like the feeling fizz powder had given my beloved Maria all those years ago, except that the fizz powder allowed me to hold up my end fully and triumphantly, while here on the coco mat I was a total and humiliating flop. I just couldn't cast anchor. What had been stiff and purposeful in those fizz-powder days, and often enough thereafter, hung its head under the sign of the coco fibers, remained listless, puny, with no goal in mind, responding neither to my purely cerebral persuasive skills nor to the sighs of Sister Dorothea, who whispered, moaned, and whimpered, "Come, Satan, come!" as I tried to calm and comfort her: "Satan's coming, Satan's almost there," I murmured in my most satanic tone, all the while conversing with the Satan who had dwelt within me since baptism—and was still lodged there—growled at him: Don't be a killjoy, Satan! Pleaded: Please, spare me this disgrace. Cajoled: This is not at all like you, Satan, remember Maria, or better yet the widow Greff, or how we made merry with lovely Roswitha in gay Paree. But he replied morosely, without worrying about repeating himself: I'm not in the mood, Oskar. When Satan's not in the mood, virtue triumphs. Even Satan has the right not to be in the mood every now and then.

So, rattling off these and similar old saws, he refused to support me, while, slowly tiring, I tried to keep the coco-fiber mat in motion, chafing and tormenting the flesh of poor Sister Dorothea, and finally responded to her thirsting "Come, Satan, please come!" with a desperate, absurd, utterly unmotivated assault beneath the coco fibers: I aimed an unloaded gun at the bull's-eye. She tried to help her Satan, drew her arms from under the coco mat, tried to wrap them around me, managed to do so, found my hump, my warm, human, and by no means fibrous skin, failed to find the Satan she sought, ceased murmuring "Come, Satan, come," cleared her throat instead, and repeated her original question in a new tone of voice: "For heaven's sake, who are you, what do you want?" I was forced to draw in my horns, admit that according to my official papers I was Oskar Matzerath, that I was her neighbor, and that I loved her, Sister Dorothea, from the depths of my heart.

To those now enjoying my discomfort who think that Sister Dorothea lung me down on the coco runner with a curse and a clout, Oskar reports, sadly but with a certain satisfaction, that Sister Dorothea removed her hands and arms slowly, one might almost say reluctantly and thoughtfully, from my hump, in what seemed like an infinitely sad caress. And when soon thereafter the sound of her weeping and sobbing arose, it too lacked all violence. I hardly noticed it when she wriggled out from under me and the mat, let me slip to the floor, and slipped away herself, her steps absorbed by the rug on the floor. I heard a door open and close, a key turned, and all at once the six frosted-glass panes of Sister Dorothea's chamber glowed with inner light and reality.

Oskar lay there and covered himself with the mat, which still retained some warmth from that satanic game. My gaze was held by the glowing rectangles. Now and then a shadow crossed the frosted glass. Now she's going to the wardrobe, I told myself, now she's going to the washstand. Oskar tried a canine, cringing approach. Taking my mat with me, I crept along the runner to her door, scratched at the wood, pulled myself up partway, sent a seeking, imploring hand wandering across the two lower panes; but Sister Dorothea didn't open up, moved tirelessly between the wardrobe and the washstand with its mirror. I knew it and would not admit it: Sister Dorothea was packing her things, fleeing, seeing from me. Even the feeble hope that she would show me her electrically illumined face as she left her chamber was to be buried. First, things went dark behind the frosted glass, then I heard the key, the door opening, shoes on the coco runner—I reached for her, struck a suitcase, a stockinged leg; then she kicked me in the chest with one of those sturdy hiking shoes I'd seen in her wardrobe, throwing me onto the runner, and as Oskar pulled himself back together and pleaded, "Sister Dorothea," the door to the flat slammed shut: a woman had left me.

Now you and all those who understand my grief will say: Go to bed, Oskar. What business do you have in the corridor after this shameful episode? It's four o'clock in the morning. You're lying naked on a coco runner, barely covered by a fiber mat. You've scraped your hands and knees raw. Your heart bleeds, your member aches, your disgrace cries out to high heaven. You've awakened Herr Zeidler. He's awakened his wife. They're going to get up, open the door of their bed-sitter, and see you. Go to bed, Oskar, it will soon strike five.

I gave myself that exact advice back then lying on the runner. But I just lay there and shivered. I tried to call back Sister Dorothea's body. I felt nothing but coconut fibers, even had a few caught in my teeth. Then a strip of light fell on Oskar: the door to Zeidler's bed-sitter fell open a crack. Zeidler's hedgehog head, above it a head full of metal curlers, Frau Zeidler. They stared, he coughed, she giggled, he called out, I didn't reply, she giggled again, he shut her up, she asked me what was wrong, he said it wouldn't do, she said this was a decent house, he threatened to evict me, but still I lay silent, for my cup was not yet full. The Zeidlers opened their door, and he switched on the light in the hall. They came toward me, giving me little tiny nasty looks, and this time he wasn't going to vent his anger on liqueur glasses, he stood over me, and Oskar awaited the Hedgehog's rage—but Zeidler could not vent his rage, for just then a commotion came from the stairwell, a shaky key sought the door to the flat, found it at last, and Klepp entered, bringing with him someone equally drunk: Scholle, the long-sought guitarist.

The two of them calmed Zeidler and his wife down, bent over Oskar, asked no questions, picked me up, carried me and the satanic scrap of coco runner back to my room.

Klepp rubbed me warm. The guitarist brought me my clothes. Together they dressed me and dried my tears. Sobs. Morning arrived outside the window. Sparrows. Klepp hung my drum around me and brought out his little wooden flute. Sobs. The guitarist shouldered his guitar. Sparrows. Friends surrounded me, took me between them, led a sobbing but unresisting Oskar out of the flat, out of the house, onto Jülicher Straße and to the sparrows, led him forth from the influence of coconut fibers, led me down dawning streets, through the Hofgarten to the Planetarium and the banks of the river Rhine, wending its way grayly toward Holland, bearing barges on which washing fluttered.

From six till nine on that misty September morning the flautist Klepp, the guitarist Scholle, and the percussionist Oskar sat on the right bank of the river Rhine making music, getting in a groove, drinking from the same bottle, squinting off toward the poplars on the other bank, regaling barges on their way upriver, having taken on coal in Duisburg, with the hot and happy, sad and slow music of the Mississippi, and tried to think of a name for their newly formed jazz band.

When a bit of sun began to tint the morning mist, and the craving for a leisurely breakfast crept into our music, Oskar, having put his drum between himself and the preceding night, arose, took money from his coat pocket, which meant it was time to eat, and announced to his friends the name of their newborn band: "The Rhine River Three," we called ourselves, and headed off for breakfast.