The Tin Drum Read Online Free PDF

direction, deftly avoiding sandbanks with the aid of constantly changing pilots. To right and left, beyond the dikes, the same flat landscape with occasional hills, already harvested. Hedges, sunken lanes, a hollow basin with broom, a level plain between the scattered farms, just made for cavalry attacks, for a division of uhlans to wheel in from the left onto the sand table, for hedge-vaulting hussars, for the dreams of young cavalry officers, for battles long past and battles yet to come, for an oil painting: tartars leaning forward, dragoons rearing up, Brethren of the Sword falling, grandmasters staining their noble robes, not a button missing from their cuirasses, save for one, struck down by the Duke of Mazowsze, and horses, no circus has horses so white, nervous, covered with tassels, sinews rendered with precision, nostrils flaring, crimson, snorting small clouds impaled by lowered lances decked with pennants, and parting the heavens, the sunset's red glow, the sabers, and there, in the background—for every painting has a background—clinging tightly to the horizon, with smoke rising peacefully, a small village between the hind legs of the black stallion, crouching cottages, moss-covered, thatched, and inside the cottages, held in readiness, the pretty tanks, dreaming of days to come when they too would be allowed to enter the picture, to come out onto the plain beyond the Vistula's dikes, like slender colts among the heavy cavalry.
    At Włocławek, Dückerhoff tapped Koljaiczek on the jacket: "Say, Wranka, didn't you work at the mill in Schwetz a few years back? The one that burned down afterward?" Koljaiczek shook his head slowly, as if he had difficulty turning it, and his eyes were so sad and tired that Dückerhoff, exposed to that look, kept any further questions to himself.
    When Koljaiczek, as all raftsmen used to do, leaned over the railing at Modlin and spat three times into the Bug as the
Radaune
entered the Vistula, Dückerhoff was standing beside him with a cigar and asked for a light. That little word, like the word match, got under Koljaiczek's skin. "You don't have to blush when I ask for a light, man. You're not some little girl, are you?"
    Modlin was far behind them before Koljaiczek's blush faded, which was not a blush of shame but the lingering glow of sawmills he'd set on fire.
    From Modlin to Kiev—up the Bug, through the canal linking the Bug and the Pripet, till the
Radaune,
following the Pripet, made its way to the Dnieper—nothing passed between Koljaiczek-Wranka and Dückerhoff that could be recorded as an exchange. It's of course possible that things happened on the tug, among the raftsmen, between the raftsmen and the stokers, between the stokers, the helmsman, and the captain, between the captain and the constantly changing pilots, as one assumes, perhaps rightly, they always do among men. I could imagine disputes between the Kashubian raftsmen and the helmsman, who came from Stettin, perhaps even the beginnings of a mutiny: a meeting in the galley, lots drawn, passwords given out, frog stickers sharpened.
    But enough of that. There were no political disputes, no knife fights between Germans and Poles, nor a true mutiny born of social injustice to add local color. The
Radaune
chugged along eating her coal like a good girl, got hung up on a sandbank once—just beyond Ploch, I think it was—but freed herself under her own power. A brief but bitter exchange between Captain Barbusch from Neufahrwasser and the Ukrainian pilot, that was about it—and the log had little more to add.
    But had I wanted or needed to keep a log of Koljaiczek's thoughts, or perhaps even a journal of Dückerhoff's inner life as a master miller, there would have been plenty of incidents and adventures to describe: suspicions aroused, suspicions confirmed, distrust, and distrust quickly quelled. They were both afraid. Dückerhoff more than Koljaiczek: for now they were in Russia. Dückerhoff could have gone