The pushing in the Onion Cellar brought meagre results until Schmuh appeared in his special shawl. Having been welcomed with a joyful 'Ah!' for which he thanked his kind guests, he vanished for a few minutes behind a curtain at the end of the Onion Cellar, where the toilets and the storeroom were situated.
[...]
Schmuh came back with a little basket on his arm and moved among the guests. The basket was covered with a blue-and-yellow- checked napkin. On the cloth lay a considerable number of little wooden boards, shaped like pigs or fish. [...]
Then - and every heart was waiting - he removed the napkin, very much in the manner of magician: beneath it lay still another napkin, upon which, almost unrecognizable at first glance, lay the paring knives.
These too he proceeded to hand out. [...] 'On your mark, get set,' he shouted. At 'Go' he tore the napkin off the basket, reached into the basket, and handed out, dispensed, distributed among the multitude... onions - onions such were represented, golden-yellow and slightly stylized, on his shawl, plain ordinary onions, not tulip bulbs, but onions such as women buy at the market, [...]
For the grand distribution of onions was followed by silence. Into which Ferdinand Schmuh cried: 'Ladies and gentlemen, help yourselves.' And he tossed one end of his shawl over his left shoulder like skier just before the start. This was the signal.
The guests peeled the onions. Onions are said to have seven skins. The ladies and gentlemen peeled the onions with the paring knives. They removed the first, third, blond, golden-yellow, rust-brown, or better still, onion-coloured skin, they peeled until the onion became glassy, green, whitish, damp, and watery-sticky, until it smelled, smelled like onions. [...]
Schmuh's guests had stopped looking, they could see nothing more, because their eyes were running over and not because their hearts were full. [...] What did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrow of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they were able to cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away. [...]
[...]
Schmuh came back with a little basket on his arm and moved among the guests. The basket was covered with a blue-and-yellow- checked napkin. On the cloth lay a considerable number of little wooden boards, shaped like pigs or fish. [...]
Then - and every heart was waiting - he removed the napkin, very much in the manner of magician: beneath it lay still another napkin, upon which, almost unrecognizable at first glance, lay the paring knives.
These too he proceeded to hand out. [...] 'On your mark, get set,' he shouted. At 'Go' he tore the napkin off the basket, reached into the basket, and handed out, dispensed, distributed among the multitude... onions - onions such were represented, golden-yellow and slightly stylized, on his shawl, plain ordinary onions, not tulip bulbs, but onions such as women buy at the market, [...]
For the grand distribution of onions was followed by silence. Into which Ferdinand Schmuh cried: 'Ladies and gentlemen, help yourselves.' And he tossed one end of his shawl over his left shoulder like skier just before the start. This was the signal.
The guests peeled the onions. Onions are said to have seven skins. The ladies and gentlemen peeled the onions with the paring knives. They removed the first, third, blond, golden-yellow, rust-brown, or better still, onion-coloured skin, they peeled until the onion became glassy, green, whitish, damp, and watery-sticky, until it smelled, smelled like onions. [...]
Schmuh's guests had stopped looking, they could see nothing more, because their eyes were running over and not because their hearts were full. [...] What did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrow of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they were able to cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away. [...]
After this cataclysm at twelve marks eighty, human being who have had a good cry open their mouth to speak. Still hesitant, startled by the nakedness of their own words, the weepers poured out their hearts to their neighbours on the uncomfortable, burlap-covered crates, submitted to questioning, let themselves be turned inside-out like overcoats.
Gunter Grass. The Tin Drum. 1959
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