Gunter Grass - The Flounder

But Maxie didn't want any fish, no matter how it was cooked, not even a la Billy. No sooner had Siggie pulled the nail scissors out of the bulge in the Flounder's upper lip than Maxie wanted to throw him back into the murky Baltic. "That shifty, vicious look. Bound to bring bad luck. His blood is so red and human-looking. That's not what we wanted to catch. That's no fish; it only looks like one." Then spake the Flounder.

Not in a loud voice, more in a conversational tone, he said, "What an odd happenstance!" He could just as well have said, "What time is it?" Or, "Who's leading in the Federal League?"

Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie were, in a manner of speaking, dumbstruck. It wasn't until later, when the Flounder started spouting, that Maxie managed to squeeze out, sotto voce, such exclamations as "This is a howler! Incredible! Boy oh boy! If only our Billy coulda been here!"

But Frankie and Siggie were silent. Their two minds went to work on this Sunday-afternoon episode, determined to confute the Flounder's allegation of chance, to anchor the

irrational occurrence in reason and discover the rational underpinning of its innocent fairy-tale logic — for the Flounder had introduced himself as follows: "Surely, dear ladies, you are familiar with the fairy tale of 'The Fisherman and His Wife'?" These were the questions to be resolved: Who was speaking here and for what purpose? What would they have to explain first? The fact that the Flounder could talk or the substance of what he was saying? Was this a late reactionary attempt on the part of medieval Scholasticism to prove that evil could take the form of a fish? Was this Flounder a personification of capitalism? Or — an even greater contradiction — might he be an embodiment of Hegel's Weltgeist}

"Who are you?" cried Franziska Ludkowiak, commonly known as Frankie, breaking into one of the Flounder's involved periods and seizing Siggie's now idle fishing pole, the metal-ringed walking stick, with the evident intention of dis-inviting the uninvited guest. He reminded her of the films in which slightly distorted madmen peered out of cracked mirrors; she felt sure he had come from the shadow realm of the unconscious and would induce schizophrenia. (Much as she liked Maxie to tell her fortune with cards, Frankie detested all irrationality.)

The question "Who are you?" has been asked on many such astonishing occasions. Most often it has been answered in a cryptic whisper or not at all. But the Flounder didn't go in for mystery. First he asked them to pour water over him from time to time — Siggie obliged with an empty tin can-then he asked them to dab his still-bleeding upper lip with Kleenex — which Siggie did. Then at last he explained himself without ifs or buts.

After a brief account of the neolithic situation and an objective picture of the fatherless matriarchate, he introduced me, the ignorant fisherman, and set forth his reasons for squeezing into my eel trap and contracting to serve as my adviser.

He termed me a neolithic dolt and mediocrity, incapable, because of the state of dependence in which I was kept, of seeing through the system of total care at the base of the matriarchate, let alone destroying it. "Only his artistic gift," so the Flounder went on, "only his obsessive urge to scratch signs, ornaments, and figures in the sand led me to hope that

with my advice he might lay the groundwork for a gradual" — "evolutionary" was the word he actually used—"liberation of men from the rule of women. It happened, too, though in the Vistula region, with a delay of two thousand years. But even then I had my troubles with him. In all his time-phases, during the High Gothic period, in the century of the Enlightenment, he was a failure. Passionately and single-mind-edly as I have devoted myself to the male cause, I now feel that there's nothing more to be gained from it. But that's the way I am; I always have to experiment. Creation cannot be regarded as complete; on that score I'm in full agreement with Ernst Bloch, the old heretic." (Here he threw in a quotation from the philosopher: "I am. But I do not have myself. Therefore we are still in the process of becoming.") "Now you will surely understand — by the way, just call me Flounder — why I've decided to usher in a new phase in human development. The male cause is washed up. A world crisis will soon signal the end of male domination. The guys are bankrupt. Abuse of power has exhausted them. They've run out of inspiration, and now they're trying to rescue capitalism by means of socialism, which is absurd. From now on I'm only going to help the female sex. Not that I mean to stay on land. Water, after all, is my element. But I feel certain that three ladies who have become hopelessly bored with the stupid old man-woman relationship will appreciate my elementary needs.

"In short," said the Flounder in conclusion, "you, dear ladies, set me free; and I shall advise you on every situation as it comes up, but also on overall policy. Let this day mark the beginning of a new era. Let power change its sex — that is my fundamental principle. Let the women take over. There's no other way of giving the world, our poor world, which has lost all hope and become the plaything of enfeebled and degenerate males, a new direction — why not say it? — a feminine direction. All is not lost."

Obviously Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie did not simply cry out, "OK! Terrific! It's a deal!" Because if the three of them had taken up the Flounder's proposition without further ado, had put him back in the Baltic Sea and secured his advice with a handshake, the long story of my time-phases down through the millennia would have remained hidden; but

because the Flounder, instead of being set free, had water poured on him, had his bleeding lip dabbed with Kleenex, and was finally brought ashore, everything came to light, the Vistula estuary became an exemplary place, and I an exemplary individual; because the Flounder was not set free I must make a clean breast, confess to Ilsebill, and write it all down.

Sieglinde Huntscha, who had a law degree, explained her position succinctly: "Your offer is interesting, but we can't accept or reject it without consulting the executive committee of our organization. Didn't you yourself just say that the days of masculine, in other words individual, decisions are over? You must be aware that your partial confession raises questions that can hardly be settled aboard a rented yawl. Consider yourself under arrest pending investigation. I personally guarantee that you will be well treated." To which Frankie added, "Dontcha like our company?"

The Flounder replied coldly at first but then with a threatening note. "Dear ladies! I put myself in your power of my own free will. My loyal offer to stop promoting the male cause and to support the women's movement from this moment on, to help the many desperately resolute, but also perplexed and still mommy-minded Ilsebills, stands. But should it be your intention to make a public example of my floundery existence, of an existence harking back to the primordial darkness, I shall know how to defend myself with, shall we say, masculine ruthlessness. I shall strike back without mercy. To have me as an adversary is no joke. If you decide to put me on trial, no sociological arguments or legalistic hairsplitting will get you anywhere. No human law relates to me. Yet you have every reason to fear me."

Maxie was indeed rather frightened. "He means what he says." But Siggie and Frankie stood firm, for they remembered the precepts of their organization: Don't let them frighten you with threats. We know the song and dance. God the Father and that kind of stuff. Male arrogance, that's what it is!

Now, as might have been expected, a fresh breeze came up. It blew them straight to Cismar, an East Holstein village with a monastery featured in the guidebooks. Back at their thatched farm hand's hovel, Frankie lodged the Flounder in a zinc bathtub and hauled several loads of sea water in oil