Chapter 34, Growth in a Freight Car Summary

In the asylum, Oskar's joints are too painful for him to drum or write, so he dictates to his male nurse, Bruno. There were thirty-two other people in the freight car headed west, including four nuns. One of the passengers is a girl with a triangular face that Oskar insists on calling Lucy, although that was not her name. Over the next four days, they are stopped repeatedly and robbed by young Polish hoodlums, who finally take all their luggage except a single knapsack. They would have taken the knapsack as well, but Oskar pulled the family photo album from it. He showed the young hooligans the photo of his grandmother, obviously Polish, and they let him keep the pack.

Along the way, Oskar grows three or four inches, but the jarring of...