The Tin Drum Chapter 16: Faith, Hope, Love

At Herbert's funeral, Leo Schugger again offered his condolences to the assembly at the cemetery. Meyn the trumpeter went back to drinking gin and played the trumpet beautifully over Herbert's grave. Leo Schugger neglected to give Meyn his sympathies, but rather cried in fear at seeing him. Once home, Meyn found his four cats, who he fed herring heads. The stench of the cats, however, became unbearable to him. He reached for the poker that sat by his stove and flailed out at the cats until they were dead. He put the cats into a potato sack and took them downstairs to dump them in the trash, but neglected to notice that the sack was not blood-proof - it began to drip as he went down the stairs. The garbage can was full and the lid would not stay on well - after Meyn dumped his cats, the lid began to move. The cats were not quite dead. In his house, Laubschad the watchmaker, a member of the local SPCA, saw the garbage lid moving. He went out, took out the cats, and took care of them until they died the following night. He complained to the SPCA and Meyn was fined and kicked out of the SA - even his observed bravery in setting fore to a local synagogue could not save him.

Across from the burning synagogue, which Alfred and Oskar had watched burn, Oskar slipped away to Sigismund Markus' toy store. The Nazis had painted "Jewish Sow" across the store window in Sütterlin script. They had kicked in the window, and several soldiers had defecated inside the store. The soldiers broke into Markus' office, where they found him with an empty water glass. Oskar worried for his drum - he left the store quickly, taking three drums with him. Outside several women were handing out religious tracts from between a banner that read "Faith... hope... love," from Corinthians, chapter 13. Oskar says we are waiting for the Savior, but that the savior is really the gasman, offering special rates on the gas of the Holy Ghost, which lets you cook. The Savior, the gasman, became Santa Claus -- Oskar himself questions these imaginative answers, listing a number of things he doesn't understand.