Chapter 27, Inspection of Concrete, or Barbaric, Mystical, Bored Summary

The troupe entertains for three weeks in Metz and near Rome. During his act, Oskar learns to destroy increasingly beautiful and expensive glassware, from relics of Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette, finally concluding with the Third Reich. Only the Eiffel tower makes Oskar homesick. Its slanting girders remind him of sheltering beneath his grandmother's skirts. Bebar emerges from his inward emigration. The troupe travels to Normandy, where they are given a tour of the concrete reinforcements. The soldiers, who are continually building more pillboxes, confide that they seal a live puppy inside the walls of each, for good luck. The men have also begun decorating the exteriors of the pillboxes. One man, a painter, calls his work Structural Oblique Formations, or Barbaric, Mystical, Bored.

The troupe retreats to the...