The Tin Drum Read Online Free PDF Page B

overboard, as poor Wranka once had, or—by now we are in Kiev—in lumberyards so vast and confusing that a man can lose his guardian angel in the wooden labyrinth and wind up under a pile of suddenly shifting logs that can no longer be held back—or instead be saved. Saved by Koljaiczek, first
to fish the mill master from the Pripet or the Bug, or, in that Kiev lumberyard bereft of guardian angels, yank Dückerhoff back in the nick of time from an avalanche of logs. How touching it would be if I could now report that a half-drowned or nearly crushed Dückerhoff, still breathing heavily, the lingering trace of death in his eyes, whispered in the ear of the ostensible Wranka, "Thanks, Koljaiczek, thanks, old man!" and then, after the obligatory pause, "We're quits now—the slate's clean."
    And with gruff bonhomie, smiling awkwardly into each other's manly eyes, blinking back what might have been a tear, they exchange a shy but callused handshake.
    We know this scene from magnificently filmed movies, when directors decide to turn two finely portrayed rival brothers into steadfast comrades, who now make their way together through thick and thin to face a thousand adventures.
    Koljaiczek, however, found neither the opportunity to drown Dückerhoff nor to snatch him from the claws of death-dealing logs. Ever attentive and alert to his firm's advantage, Dückerhoff bought lumber in Kiev, oversaw the assembly of the nine rafts, distributed, as was customary, a large sum of Russian pocket money for the trip downriver, then boarded the train that took him by way of Modlin, Deutsch-Eylau, Marienburg, and Dirschau back to his firm, whose sawmill lay in the timber port between the shipyards of Klawitter and Schichau.
    Before I bring the raftsmen, after weeks of grueling toil, from Kiev back down the rivers, through the canal, and finally into the Vistula, I ask myself if Dückerhoff had positively identified Wranka as the arsonist Koljaiczek. I would say that as long as the mill master was sitting on a steamer with the harmless, good-natured, somewhat slow-witted but generally well-liked Wranka, he hoped his traveling companion was not the hot-blooded criminal Koljaiczek. He only relinquished this hope once he had settled back into the cushions of his train compartment. And by the time the train reached its destination and rolled into Central Station at Danzig—there, now I've named it—Dückerhoff had reached the Dückerhoff Resolutions, had his luggage loaded onto a carriage, sent it rolling homeward, strode briskly, relieved of that luggage, to the nearby police station on Wiebenwall, sprang up the steps to the main entrance, and, after a brief and focused search, found the office, which functioned well enough to wring from Dückerhoff a brief report
of the basic facts. Not that the mill master issued a formal complaint. He simply requested that they look into the Koljaiczek-Wranka case, which the police promised to do.
    Over the following weeks, as the logs slowly glided downstream with their reed huts and raftsmen, paperwork flowed through various offices. There was the military record of Joseph Koljaiczek, a private in the such-and-such West Prussian Field Artillery Regiment. Twice the unruly private had served the standard three days in the guardhouse for shouting anarchist slogans, half in Polish, half in German, at the top of his lungs while in a state of intoxication. Those were stains not to be found on the papers of Private First Class Wranka, who had served in the Second Leib-Hussar Regiment in Langfuhr. Wranka had performed admirably, making a favorable impression on the Crown Prince during maneuvers as a battalion dispatch runner, and receiving from the Prince, who always carried a few thalers in his pocket, one Crown Prince thaler as a reward. The thaler in question was not, however, mentioned in the military record of Private First Class Wranka, but was instead reported by my loudly complaining grandmother Anna as