As soon as The Onion Cellar was filled with guests—half-full counted as full—Schmuh, the host, would don his shawl. The shawl, a cobalt-blue silk, was printed with a special pattern, and is mentioned because donning the shawl had a particular meaning. The pattern could be called Golden-Yellow Onions. Only when Schmuh wrapped his shawl about him could one truly say that The Onion Cellar had opened.
The customers: businessmen, doctors, lawyers, artists, actors, journalists, film people, well-known athletes, high-ranking officials from provincial and municipal government, in short, all those who call themselves intellectuals nowadays, sat on burlap-covered crates and talked with their spouses, girlfriends, secretaries, arts-and-crafters, and male mistresses too, their conversations subdued, slightly hesitant, almost forced, as long as Schmuh had not yet donned his shawl of golden-yellow onions. They've tried to start up conversations but failed, tried their best but talked around their true problems, tried to air things, get things off their chests, talk freely and openly, spill their guts, speak straight from the heart, tried to stop thinking and just let go, face the bloody truth, stand there naked and human—but they can't. Here and there hints of a botched career, a broken marriage. That gentleman with the massive head, the intelligent face, and soft, almost delicate hands seems to be having problems with his son, who doesn't approve of his father's past. The two women in mink, shown off to advantage by the carbide lamps, claim they've lost their faith: in what, remains an open question. We still know nothing of the past of the gentleman with the massive head, nor what problems he faces with his son because of that past; it's like—forgive Oskar for this comparison—trying to lay an egg: you push and push...
Those in The Onion Cellar pushed in vain till Schmuh, the host, suddenly appeared with his special shawl, graciously accepted their joyful cry of "Ah," disappeared for a few minutes behind a curtain at the end of the cellar where the toilets and a storeroom were located, and then returned.
But why is the host greeted with an even more joyful, half-relieved "Ah" when he reappears before his guests? The owner of a successful nightclub vanishes behind a curtain, gets something from the storeroom, aims a few harsh words in a low voice at the washroom attendant, who's sitting there reading a magazine, steps back outside the curtain, and is greeted like the Savior, like a long-lost rich uncle.
Schmuh moved among his guests with a little basket on his arm. This little basket was covered with a blue-and-yellow-checkered cloth. On the cloth lay a number of small wooden boards, shaped like pigs or fish. Schmuh distributed these nicely polished boards among his guests. He handed them out with little bows and compliments that revealed a youth spent in Budapest and Vienna; Schmuh's smile looked like the smile on a copy of a copy of what was presumably the real Mona Lisa.
The guests, however, received these small wooden boards with a grave air. Some people traded with each other. One preferred the pig shape, while another—man or woman, as the case might be—preferred the more mysterious fish to the ordinary domestic pig. They sniffed at the little boards, passed them around, and Schmuh the host waited, having served the guests in the gallery as well, till every board had come to rest.
Then—and every heart was waiting—he pulled away the cloth as a magician might: to reveal a second cloth still covering the basket. But on this cloth, though difficult to recognize at first, lay kitchen knives.
As with the boards, Schmuh now handed out the knives. But at this point he made his rounds more quickly, increased the tension that increased his prices, paid no compliments, left no time for trading knives, made each move with measured haste, cried, "Ready, set, go!" and whipped the cloth from the basket, reached in and doled out, dispensed, distributed among the multitude, giver of alms, host to his guests, gave them all onions, like the slightly stylized, golden-yellow onions on his shawl, plain ordinary onions, onion bulbs, not tulip bulbs, onions such as housewives buy, onions women sell at market, onions farmers and their wives or hired farm girls plant and harvest, the onions one sees, more or less faithfully portrayed, in the still lifes of Dutch miniature masters, such were the onions Schmuh gave to his guests, till all had onions, and no sound was heard but the roar of round stoves and the song of the carbide lamps. Such was the silence that followed the grand distribution of the onions—when Ferdinand Schmuh cried, "Ladies and gentlemen, help yourselves!" and threw one end of his shawl across his left shoulder like a skier set to take off, which was their signal.
The guests peeled their onions. An onion has seven skins, they say. The ladies and gentlemen peeled their onions with the kitchen knives. They removed the first, third, blond, golden-yellow, rust-brown, or, better still, onion-colored skin, peeled till the onion turned glassy, green, whitish, moist, sticky-watery, till it smelled, smelled like an onion, then they sliced it the way onions are sliced, sliced awkwardly or deftly on little chopping boards the shape of pigs or fish, sliced this way and that, the juice spattering or spraying into the air above the onion—the older men who weren't used to handling kitchen knives had to take care not to cut their fingers, but a few did anyway and didn't notice—the women were more efficient, not all of them, but those who played housewife at home, and so knew how to slice onions for hash-brown potatoes, or liver with apple and onion rings; but Schmuh's Onion Cellar had neither, there was nothing whatever to eat, and those who wanted something to eat had to go somewhere like The Little Fish, for at The Onion Cellar you simply sliced onions. And why was that? Why, because the cellar was a hot spot and offered something special, because onions, sliced onions, if you looked at them carefully ... but no, Schmuh's guests no longer saw anything, or some no longer saw anything, their eyes were overflowing, but not because their hearts were full; for the heart that's full to overflowing does not always make the eye flow, some never manage it at all, particularly in the last ten years or past few decades, so that in times to come our century, though filled with so much pain and sorrow, will be called the tearless century—and it was precisely this lack of tears that led those people who could afford it to Schmuh's Onion Cellar, where the host handed them a small chopping board—pig or fish—a kitchen knife for eighty pfennigs, and an ordinary field-garden-and-kitchen-variety onion for twelve marks, which they sliced into smaller and smaller pieces till the juice brought forth—brought forth what? Brought forth what the world and the world's suffering could not: a round, human tear. People wept. At long last, people wept again. Wept openly, wept without restraint, wept honestly. The tears flowed and washed everything away. The rains came. The dew fell. Oskar sees floodgates opening. Dams bursting in spring tide. What's the name of that river which floods each year and the government does nothing about it? And following this natural phenomenon for twelve marks eighty, human beings who had cried themselves out talked to one another. Hesitantly at first, astonished by the nakedness of their own words, the guests of The Onion Cellar, having sliced their onions, turned to their neighbors on the uncomfortable burlap-covered crates and answered every question, let themselves be turned inside out like a coat. Oskar, however, who along with Klepp and Scholle sat tearless beneath the quasi hen-house ladder, will be discreet; from among all the revelations, self-accusations, confessions, exposures, and admissions, he will relate only the story of Fräulein Pioch, who lost her Herr Vollmer many times over, and so acquired a heart of stone and a tearless eye, forcing her to pay repeated visits to Schmuh's expensive Onion Cellar.
We met, Fräulein Pioch said when she had finished crying, on the tram. I was coming home from work—she owns and operates an excellent bookstore—the car was full, and Willy—that's Herr Vollmer—stepped hard on my right foot. My knees went weak, it was love at first sight. Since I couldn't walk, he offered me his arm, practically carried me home, and from that day on cared lovingly for the toenail that had turned black and blue beneath his heel. Nor did he fail to love the rest of me, till the nail fell off my right big toe and no longer blocked the growth of a new one. The day the dead toenail fell off, his love began to co
ol. We both suffered from this loss. Then, since he was still attached to me, and because we had so much in common, Willy made a shocking suggestion: Let me step on your left big toe, he said, till the nail turns blue, then black and blue. I gave in and he did. Again I enjoyed the full benefits of his love, and continued to enjoy them till the left nail of my big toe fell like a withered leaf, and it was autumn again for our love. Now Willy wanted to step on my right big toe, where the nail had grown back, to love and care for me once more. But I wouldn't let him. If your love is true and deep, I said, it should outlast a toenail. He didn't understand, and left me. Several months later we met at a concert. After the intermission he sat down beside me without asking, since the seat was empty. When the chorus sounded in the Ninth Symphony, I stuck out my right foot, from which I had removed my shoe. He stepped down, and I managed not to disturb the concert. Seven weeks later, Willy left me again. Twice more we managed a few weeks together, since I held out first my left, then my right big toe. Today both toes are maimed. The nails won't grow back. Willy visits me now and then, sits at my feet on the carpet, shaken, filled with pity for the two of us, but without love or tears, and gazes at the two nailless victims of our love. At times I say to him: Come on, Willy, let's go to Schmuh's Onion Cellar and have a good cry. But so far he's never come. The poor man has no idea what comfort tears can offer.
Later—and Oskar discloses this merely to satisfy the curious among you—Herr Vollmer, who sold radios by the way, did visit The Cellar. They wept together and, as Klepp told me yesterday during visiting hours, are said to have recently married.
Although the true tragedy of human existence was spread fully before us after onions on Tuesday through Saturday—The Onion Cellar was closed on Sunday—Monday's guests, while not the most tragic of weepers, were certainly the most intense. Prices were lowered on Mondays. Schmuh handed out onions at half price to students. For the most part these were medical students, both male and female. And students from the Art Academy, particularly those who wanted to be drawing instructors, spent part of their stipends on onions. But I still wonder where all those schoolboys and schoolgirls got the money for onions.
Young people have a different way of crying. Young people have completely different problems. And they don't always involve exams or school. Of course there were father-son stories in The Onion Cellar, and mother-daughter tragedies as well. Though the young felt misunderstood, they hardly found it worth crying about. Oskar was pleased to see that the young still wept for love, and not just love of a sexual nature. Gerhard and Gudrun: at first they always sat down below, only later did they weep side by side in the gallery.
She was tall and strong, played handball, studied chemistry. She knotted her hair at the back. Gray-eyed and maternal, the type you used to see for years in Women's Association posters before the war ended, staring straight ahead with a clear, forthright gaze. Though the curve of her brow was creamy, smooth, and healthy, she bore her misfortune clearly on her face. From her Adam's apple past her round, strong chin, including both her cheeks, a manly growth of beard, which the poor girl kept trying to shave, left its distressing traces. Her tender skin suffered from the razor. Gudrun wept for this reddened, cracked, pimply disaster in which the beard kept growing back. It was only later that Gerhard started coming to The Onion Cellar. The two didn't meet on the tram, like Fräulein Pioch and Herr Vollmer, but on the train. He sat across from her, they were both coming back from semester break. He fell in love with her at once, in spite of her beard. Because of her beard, she didn't dare love him, but admired the very feature that caused him so much unhappiness—Gerhard's chin, smooth as a baby's bottom; the young man couldn't grow a beard, which made him bashful around young women. Nevertheless Gerhard spoke to Gudrun, and by the time they got off at the station in Düsseldorf, they were at least friends. From then on they saw each other daily. They spoke of this and that, shared most of their thoughts, but never alluded to the missing beard or the one that kept growing. Gerhard tried to spare Gudrun and, knowing how sensitive her skin was, never kissed her tormented face. Thus their love remained chaste, though neither set much store by chastity, for she was committed to chemistry and he to medicine. When a mutual friend suggested they try The Onion Cellar, they both smiled disdainfully, with that skepticism so often found in doctors and chemists. But they went in the end, just for purposes of research, as they assured themselves. Oskar has seldom seen young people cry like that. They came again and again, went without food to pay their six marks forty, wept over the missing beard, over the beard laying waste to the young girl's tender skin. Sometimes they tried to stay away from The Onion Cellar, even missed a Monday once, but were there again the following Monday, rubbing chopped onion between their fingers, admitting through tears that they'd tried to save the six marks forty by experimenting with a cheap onion in her room, but it wasn't the same as in The Onion Cellar. You needed an audience. It was easier to cry in company. A true community formed when, to your left and right, fellow students from all fields, even artists and schoolboys, were weeping with you.
The case of Gerhardt and Gudrun too resulted not only in tears, but little by little in a cure. The eyewash must have washed away their inhibitions. They drew closer, as they say. He kissed her flayed skin, she delighted in his smooth one, and one day they stopped coming to The Onion Cellar, no longer needed it. Oskar ran into them months later on Königsallee and hardly recognized them at first: he, Gerhardt the glossy, was sporting a full reddish blond beard that practically rustled in the wind; she, Gudrun the granular, showed only a faint brownish down on her upper lip that looked good on her. Gudrun's cheeks and chin gleamed, without a sign of vegetation. They looked like a pair of married students—Oskar hears them fifty years hence telling their grandchildren: Gudrun—"That was back before your grandpa had a beard." Gerhardt—"That was back when your grandma still suffered from facial hair and we went to The Onion Cellar every Monday."
But why, you ask, are three musicians still sitting under the ship's gangway or hen-house ladder? Given all the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, did the onion shop really need live music on a regular basis?
Once the guests had cried and talked themselves out, we took up our instruments and provided a musical transition to more mundane conversations, made it easier for them to leave The Onion Cellar so new customers could take their place. Klepp, Scholle, and Oskar didn't like onions. There was also a clause in our contract forbidding us from using onions the way customers did. But we had no need of onions. Scholle, the guitarist, had nothing to complain about, he always looked happy and content, even when two strings on his banjo snapped at the same time in the middle of a rag. My friend Klepp confuses the notions of crying and laughing to this very day. He finds tears funny; I've never seen him laugh as hard as he did at his aunt's funeral, the one who used to wash his shirts and socks before he got married. But what of Oskar? Oskar had good reason to cry. Didn't he need to wash away Sister Dorothea, and that long, futile night on an even longer coco runner? And my Maria, did she not offer grounds for sorrow? Was not her boss, Stenzel, passing freely in and out of the flat in Bilk? And little Kurt, my son, was he not calling the delicatessen owner and part-time Carnival worker first "Uncle Stenzel," then "Papa Stenzel"? And behind my Maria, lying beneath the loose, distant sand of Saspe Cemetery, the clay of Brentau Cemetery, my poor mama, the foolish Jan Bronski, Matzerath the cook, who could express his emotions only in soup—did they not all require my tears? But Oskar belonged to the fortunate few who could still cry without onions. My drum helped me. Just a few specific drumbeats and Oskar was in tears, no better or worse than the expensive tears of The Onion Cellar.
Nor did Schmuh abuse the onions. The sparrows he shot from the hedges and bushes in his free time were all he needed. Often enough after hunting, Schmuh would lay out the twelve sparrows he'd shot on a newspaper, sometimes shedding tears over the little feathered bundles, still lukewarm, and with tears in his eyes scatter birdseed over the
Rhine meadows and riverbank stones. In the onion shop he'd found yet another way to vent his sorrow. He'd fallen into the habit of giving the washroom attendants a tongue lashing once a week, using strangely old-fashioned terms of abuse: hussy, harlot, wench, jade, stew. "Out!" Schmuh would shriek. "Depart from my sight, you harridan!" He would fire these women on the spot and hire new ones, but that proved difficult after a time, for he couldn't find any more, and so had to rehire those he had already thrown out once or twice. These washroom attendants returned to The Onion Cellar gladly, since they hadn't understood most of the names they'd been called, and earned good money. Tears drove more guests to the facilities than in other nightclubs, and a crying man tends to be more generous than one with dry eyes. Particularly the gentlemen who disappeared "in the back" with streaming faces swollen and inflamed reached deeply and gladly into their purses. The women who tended the washrooms also sold customers the famous onion-print handkerchiefs with The Onion Cellar printed diagonally across them. These looked quite cheerful, and could be used both to dry tears and as headscarves. Male guests at The Onion Cellar had the colored rectangles sewn into triangular pennants and hung them in the rear windows of their cars, carrying Schmuh's Onion Cellar with them on holiday to Paris, the Côte d'Azur, to Rome, Ravenna, Rimini, even to far-off Spain.
Our band and music served yet another function: occasionally some of the guests would slice two onions in succession; then there were eruptions that could all too easily have degenerated into orgies. Schmuh disliked this final loss of restraint, and the moment a few gentlemen started loosening their ties and a few ladies began fumbling at their blouses, he would order us to strike up the music to counteract these stirrings of lewdness, yet it was Schmuh himself who repeatedly paved the way toward an orgy by providing particularly susceptible customers with a second onion.