A case of overexposure

The subtitle of The Box, the oddly compelling novella Günter Grass wrote when he reached 80, is ‘Tales from the Darkroom’.

The subtitle of The Box, the oddly compelling novella Günter Grass wrote when he reached 80, is ‘Tales from the Darkroom’. The darkroom, in this circumstance, is both a place where photographs are developed and the habitat of the famous writer’s imagination. The box in question is an Agfa box camera, producing snapshots of a six-by-nine format, which was purchased for a few marks in 1932 and has been in use for decades since. Its sole user is Marie, or Mariechen, the widowed friend of the Grass family in its various manifestations, the novelist’s assistant and at some time (his eight children suppose) his lover. That she is a mysterious, and slightly disturbing, presence in the narrative is seldom in doubt. She alone survives Grass’s divorces, changes of address, constant travels and domestic crises. It is even suggested that she will only die when Grass does.

Marie is no ordinary photographer, despite her amateur status. Her pictures span centuries past and can foresee the future. If Grass tells her he intends to write about the Huguenots or the Thirty Years War, she will supply him with appropriate images.

She is a dab hand with battles and storms at sea and has it in her magic power to delight Grass’s children, Pat, Jorsch, Lara, Taddel, Lena, Nana, Paulchen and Jasper by showing them in unlikely situations, in front of improbable backdrops. It is her purpose to contradict the old saw that the camera doesn’t lie, fulfilling it with skill and panache. There is nothing her old-fashioned Agfa can’t or won’t do for her: she can take it anywhere, make it capture anything.