Gunter Grass - The Flounder

When the verdict was announced, when the Flounder-thanks to the intervention of the Flounder Party — was declared only "ideationally" guilty and the Sophie cult had replaced the Amanda cult, the flatfish left his sand bed to speak a final word in honor of the revolutionary Sophie Rotzoll. As though to shame the predominantly female public, he cried: "This much is certain, dear ladies: Sophie let no one get near her! While Saint Dorothea of Montau conceived and bore nine times, while the abbess Rusch, in contravention of her vow of chastity, bore, it is true, only two children, but familiarized a good three dozen men of various religions with her flesh before, between, and after her confinements, Sophie Rotzoll kept closed without taking vows, even if it amused her to throw kisses at Polish uhlans, for which reason the burghers and burgheresses of Danzig regarded her as a whore. Ah, dear ladies, if only you, who sit so sternly in judgment and condemn the male cause, were closed like Sophie. If only each one of you were sealed up for good. Wouldn't it be in your power to put an end to all conceiving and bearing? Isn't it high time to give up inter-

t course, to dispense with sons and daughters, to stop having

babies, and to grant humanity a thoughtful demise? I have statistics here that give me hope. They speak of two-child, then one-child, then zero-child marriages. No more history. No more growth rate. A gradual aging, then a quiet, uncomplaining fade-out. Nature would owe you a debt of thanks. Our planet would have a chance to regenerate. How soon the earth would be reclaimed by steppe forest wilderness. Once again, at long last, rivers would be allowed to overflow their banks. Once again the oceans would breathe easy. I'm saying this off the cuff, apart from my legend, speaking as a plain fish."

But when I listed all the daughters of the cooks inside me to Ilsebill, mentioned a few daughters' daughters, reeled off the story of Sophie the exception, reported the Flounder's suggestion as my own, and called it ''at least arguable," she countered with an assurance rooted in her pregnancy: "I still say it'll be a boy this time."

A thought depopulates. Ratless it rolls off to one side.

The counterwitness appears.

Bottom wants to be top.

Not no order; no, the other order.

The mushroom stands

umbrellawise,

lays bare its root.

For when the final lopping off? Yet you, too, remain astounded and open.

Beget — bite off.

But so far

it's only a dangerous game.

you can go through fire and water. Now in her seventh month and conspicuously pregnant, she wants to prove it, even if you're not in the mood to go through fire or water. "I'm your best pal, somebody you can count on if the going gets tough."

She longs for emergencies. She provokes emergencies. A pioneer woman on a wide screen, dreaming of danger on horseback. Go west! Danger on the prairies. Wind in her skirts. Wind-blown hair. Unblinking eyes take possession of new lands.

But we aren't new settlers. The house is threatened neither by Indians nor by desperadoes. Not even by mortgages. (Yes, yes, the recent flood, when the dike gates were closed and the ferry didn't run. But the waters subsided, and the insurance covered the storm damage — a couple of broken windows.)

But my llsebill can't live without danger, which she

faces or averts" or invents. Since the oil crisis made everything more expensive, she has been saying first thing in the morning, "It doesn't scare me. We'll just have to stick together, stick together."

She always wants to go through thick and thin with somebody, with you, with me, come what may. She protects you against undesirable relatives, but also against your best friends, whom she qualifies succinctly as "bad company"; in fact, she'll protect you against life and all its horseflies. "Those crooks, those spongers! All they want is your money; anyway, they've got something up their sleeve."

Ilsebill lies vigilantly across the threshold, scaring all temptations away with her bark. If you're in a sweat, she casts a spacious shadow around you. Whenever you climb into seven-storied abstractions, she stands watch. When garishly painted, wildly tattooed doubts start creeping up on you, she lets out a warning whistle. She lets her golden hair down into deep dungeons to save you. When you torture her curiosity, she keeps quiet. She never betrays the fact that you've been betraying her for quite a while. She keeps her mouth shut, closely shut: no view allowed into imaginary distance.

She never complains. My heroine suffers in silence and is painted in heroic stance against a black sky (the children to the right and left of her). Woman amid ruins. The Gleaner. The Always Pregnant One. Dame Care. Filching coal. Bartering the last of the family silver for beet syrup. Staunchly at her post when all is lost. By sheer force of will compelling sick people to live, and no back talk. She makes you sick so she can sacrifice herself in caring for you. Once you're sick, she perks up. If you wanted to die, she'd play the whore with death to get a postponement and still another postponement. Nothing can hold her back. If necessary, she'll run through all your money, just to show you that poverty brings out the best in her. She'll let you fall off a precipice just for the pleasure of teaching you, ever so gently, to walk again (on crutches). It's only when you're suffering — and she'll help you do that, too — that you'll appreciate the full measure of her sympathetic love. ("Can I help you? Isn't there something I can do? You're sure to need my help someday. Desperately. And then it may be too late.") When

she puts your eyes out, you can be sure she'll guide you (even through heavy traffic).

In a word — you can rely on Ilsebill. She has perjured herself for me. When I was caught running out on the check, she ransomed me. She transfigured my leavings, many little piles of dirt. She always saw to it that my picture hung straight and dustless over the sofa. Thanks to Ilsebill, I am remembered: "Otto, oh yes, he was really a great guy." Otto was my name at the time. And my Ilsebill, who protected my reputation so fiercely, was called Lena.

Lena Stubbe had me twice as a husband. And it took enemy action to free her from both marriages. In the Franco-Prussian War, after I had been shooting my big mouth off for twenty-eight years, French shrapnel put an end to my bragging. And when in the winter of 1914 the Landsturm was called up to stop the Russian invaders, I died a second soldier's death at Tannenberg after fifty-five years of uninterrupted boozing. Lena put up with me throughout the one and the other marriage and would have survived me a third time.

Lighthouse, bulwark, haven, the thick-and-thin woman. How she put up with my beatings in silence, knowing them to be bungled caresses. How with her kindly encouragement she helped me, ordinarily a failure in bed, to achieve little weekend successes. How when I robbed the strike fund, she made good my theft by working as a toilet attendant at the Hotel Kaiserhof. How she translated my socialist Sunday talk into workaday action. How, when they were going to expel me from the party, she spoke to the comrades and wouldn't let them speak any harm of "her Otto." How she went to the police station for me. And all the times she washed my vomit off the floor. And took a knife and cut me down from the nail where I was dangling. You could always rely on Lena. You could go through fire and water with Lena. Same as you could with Ilsebill.

But I don't want to go through fire and water. I don't want to be saved. I like being led into temptation. And most of all, I like going astray. No sense in her sacrificing herself for me, no matter where; it doesn't pay. Tomorrow, in a pinch, as a favor to Ilsebill, I could be a little sick, weak, fragile, pathetic, a sad case, just barely rescuable. I could lie