Gunter Grass - The Flounder

of the Body Hussars, and liberal schoolteachers — were lovers of travel and fireside escapism. And of course there were also shriveled old people, like Sophie and me, who took some of our fly agaric — which also had its beauty — because they wanted their time paid back in images.»

Then, as three of us (but along with many more) ate my jellied calf's head, Griselde Dubertin (and the other associate judges) reported the day-to-day happenings at the Women's Tribunal. Tales of the feminist movement's internal tensions were told out of school. The Flounder Party was vilified, and increasing collusion, possibly a conspiracy, between the accused Flounder and Sieglinde Huntscha, the prosecutor, was hinted at. Once again strife was in the cards. At issue (between Griselde and Osslieb) was the Flounder's assertion that Sophie Rotzoll and her friend Friedrich Bartholdy had all their lives been addicted to fly agaric, and moreover that Sophie had done a thriving trade — even by mail and through middlemen — in powdered fly agaric.

This assertion had provoked a tumult at the Tribunal. The Flounder's testimony about Sophie's "trips" had been corroborated by a special affidavit on "The Stimulating Effects of Fly Agaric"; and this affidavit would have been publicly read but for the objection of Ms. Schonherr, the presiding judge. "Schonherr was perfectly right," cried Griselde. "Fly-agaric trips might have become fashionable. The bourgeois press is just waiting for us to lay ourselves open. And I'm sure Sophie would have been against it, too."

Then they all got together and concentrated on me. They agreed that I'd been neither Sophie's Fritz, nor Pastor Blech, nor Governor Rapp; no, I—"the shit!" — had actually been Sophie's father, an itinerant schnapps dealer, who had cheated the poor Kashubian countryfolk and in passing, so to speak, knocked up Amanda Woyke's youngest daughter. "The heel!" I was the one and only villain. "Hateful! Worthless! Lousy! Superfluous!" And Dubertin shouted, "Let's show him! Let's show the bastard!"

Already the girls were assuming menacing postures. Already I was invaded by fear. Already all escape was barred.

Already I was expecting to be drawn and quartered. Pins and needles in the groin. (Didn't Simoneit cry out, "Quick, the carving knife!"?) And then I was saved by fly agaric.

For in the meantime, thanks to the special ingredient, our meal for three had taken on a new dimension. Not only were the complete Flounder Party — so it seemed to me — and Schonherr, the personified authority of the Women's Tribunal, sitting at the table along with Paasch, Osslieb, and Witz-laff; in addition, Agnes Kurbiella and Amanda Woyke, Mother Rusch, Saint Dorothea, and Sophie Rotzoll had escaped from their time-phases. The morose Wigga sat facing Paasch. My Mestwina was comforting Ruth Simoneit. All had their doubles and vice versa. The table had grown. And, miraculously multiplied, my jellied calf's head filled several bowls. And always there was more. Time-suspending talk. Witzlaff's laugh mingled with Mother Rusch's laughter. And somewhere, no, everywhere, was Awa, the three-breasted principle, just as Ms. Schonherr was everywhere with her tender loving care. It was she who saw to it that no harm befell me. She allowed no quarrel to rise among the women, though the air still crackled alarmingly where Huntscha and Dorothea were sitting side by side. Only a moment before, Sophie or Griselde had been about to assault if not me, then gentle Agnes or poor Bettina von Carnow. Hadn't I seen scratch marks? Weren't there tufts of hair — blond, peat-brown, curly, waved — lying between the half-empty plates? (Witzlaff and Mother Rusch stood there like flaming Furies, determined to protect me.)

But then, after a few tears had flowed, female solidarity won out. Sisterly chitchat about potato prices in one epoch or another. They bemoaned the high price of Scania herring and the perpetual shortage of millet. And they tested their wit on me, the kindly paterfamilias, the dope, the provider, the eternal braggart. And suddenly an organ, or better still a kitchen-living room harmonium, was there beside the table. And Witzlaff was pulling the stops while Mother Rusch sang with Agnes and Sophie, "King of heaven, we welcome Thee." My Mestwina was passing amber charms around. And the Flounder was there, too. Splashing in the kitchen sink, beside the dishwasher. Nasally pontificating: "In short, dear ladies,

before male hegemony, which has seen its day, is replaced by female management…"

Time paid itself back. Images flowed free. Awa bowed down. And I, the male, the priceless individual, was sheltered in loving care. I lay in*the bosom of my pregnant Ilsebill and sucked at her big breasts; sated, at peace, safe, happy, wishless as never before. .

But when the fly agaric withdrew its effects, when happiness had lost its afterglow, when from our respective time-phases we relapsed into the flat present, when we sat shivering in the real world and all our dreams were spent, nothing was left of the jellied calf's head. In a bad humor again, my Ilsebill (in red) wanted nothing but a hot bath. Griselde Dubertin (in green) looked severe and spinsterish. Again they talked past me as if I'd been nothing, though they were referring to me when they said, "He's thought it all out, but he's got another think coming. He wants to cook us all up in jelly. We'll have to keep a tight rein on him. A little reminder, that's what he needs. We'll make him pay for all this. And no shilly-shallying. The first of every month."

When I tried to conclude the meal with a little conciliatory speech—"My dear sisters of one century after another, I've really enjoyed cooking my special calf's head for you and. ." — Ilsebill coldly cut my thread: "If cooking gives you such fiendish pleasure, you can load the dishwasher, too."

So I loaded the dishwasher. There were more than three plates. More than a dozen knives and forks. No end of dishes. And thirteen glasses with small amounts of cider swishing around in them. Griselde gave me token help. The dishwasher was almost full. (Incidentally, I died before Sophie, in the revolutionary year 1848, without knowing which freedom it was all about that time.)

When, toward the end of the debate on the case of Sophie Rotzoll, because Associate Judge Griselde Dubertin had

maintained that Sophie had died a virgin, the Flounder was questioned by Ms. Schonherr, the presiding judge, more in jest than in serious quest of information, concerning the difference between the sexes, the flatfish, without stirring from his sand bed, replied at length:

"It's an old story, dear ladies. Women conceive, bear, suckle, rear, see one out of six children die, get stuck with a new one before they know it, bear it with the usual pain, suckle it with this breast and that breast, teach it to say 'Mama' and to walk. Then after a while the girls — and for the moment I'm thinking only of the daughters — spread their legs for some man and as always conceive something that only a mother can bring into the world.

"How poorly men are equipped by comparison. All they can conceive is absurd ideas. And all they can bear is arms. The fruits of their labor are things like the Strassburg Cathedral, the diesel engine, the theory of relativity, Liebig's bouillon cubes, the gas mask, the Schlieffen Plan. Thousands of these famous achievements are known to us. Nothing has been impossible for their lordships. The north wall of the Eiger had to be conquered, the sea route to India discovered, the sound barrier broken, the atom split, the tin can and the breach-loading rifle invented, the ruins of Troy and Knossos excavated, and nine symphonies finished. Because men cannot conceive and bear naturally, because even their blind and frenzied acts of impregnation spring from a dubious momentary caprice, they have to do clever little tricks, climb icy north walls, break sound barriers, pile up pyramids, dig Panama Canals, dam up valleys, experiment obsessively until everything on earth is synthetic, have to keep asking about the ego, about being, meaning, the why, whither, and wherefore in images, words, and tones, have to run themselves ragged on the treadmill known as history to make it spit out certified male products such as dated victories and defeats, church schisms, partitions of Poland, records, and monuments. Mark my words, dear ladies: Mr. Nixon will have to resign soon. A little man by the name of Guillaume made history the day before yesterday. And in Portugal generals keep deposing one another.