Gunter Grass - The Flounder

still and cry "Mama" in my sleep. But if Lena hadn't mothered me so mercilessly, hadn't maintained me so deliberately in infancy with her mumbling of "Now, now, it's all right; you'll be better soon," I'd never have become a soldier and (out of sheer fear) a hero.

Out of deep kettles

with limp cabbage or barley floating in them or potatoes and rutabaga cooked to a mash and the barest rumor of meat— unless some tripe had come her way or a horse had passed on and the price was right-Lena ladled mealy peas boiled down to the husks and gristle and small bones which had once been a pig's foot,

and which now in the kettle, when Lena stirred deep, clinked as those standing in line before the kettle clinked with their tin bowls.

Never blindly, or fishing about with her ladle.

Her way of dishing out soup was famous.

And when she stood upraised behind her kettle,

with her left hand lining up tally marks on the blackboard,

with her right hand stirring, then ladling exactly half a liter

into bowl after bowl

and out of her wrinkled winter-apple face looking

not into the kettle,

but, as though seeing something, into the future,

one might have hoped, hoped for something or other.

At the same time she saw behind her,

saw herself ladling past soups,

before, after, and during wars,

and lastly she saw herself young beside the kettle.

But the bourgeois,

as they stood off to one side in their overcoats

and saw Lena upraised,

were afraid of her enduring beauty.

They therefore decided

to give poverty a higher meaning:

there lay the answer to the social problem.

As the Flounder testified before the Women's Tribunal: "Often as this Lena Pipka, whose married name was Stobbe and whose remarried name was Stubbe, found herself at the center of regional events, she was and remained a simple, though not simple-minded woman. If the High Court regards the career of Lena Stubbe as exemplary and therefore resolves to examine it here in the presence of a select public, my share in this proletarian destiny will prove to be slight; for since the Great Revolution, history has confronted me with gigantic tasks, transcending all regional boundaries; the era of world politics has dawned. Controversial issues, whichever way you look. Freedom, equality, and so on. Because my services have been everywhere in demand, I've been able to give the Baltic region only routine attention. Since my recent promotion to the rank of Weltgeist, the demands made on me have sometimes overtaxed me as a Flounder (and principle). I seldom find time to examine individual cases like the one now under discussion as carefully as they deserve. Still, it will give me pleasure to answer the knowledgeable questions of the esteemed prosecution, all the more so as Lena Stubbe, perhaps by reason of her very simplicity, was a significant woman: the early history of the German Socialist Movement would be unthinkable without her, though her name is nowhere recorded, though no street, avenue, or obscure square has been named after her."

When the presiding judge read the biographical data of Lena Stubbe, n6e Pipka, the impression made was one of long-drawn-out monotony, for apart from her conversation with August Bebel in May 1896 and a train trip to Zurich,

the only noteworthy feature seemed to be her biblical age-she lived to be ninety-three. Twice married. One child by her first marriage. Three children by her second marriage. And yet the events of her life just happen to run parallel to the history of the working-class movement. Third daughter of a brickyard worker, born the year after the Revolution of 1848 in Kokoschken, Karthaus district, found work at the age of sixteen at the Danzig-Ohra soup kitchen, married the anchor maker Friedrich Otto Stobbe a year later, soon became, like him, a member of the German Workers' Association, joined the Social Democrats after the so-called unification congress at Eisenach, was widowed for the first time in 1870 at the very start of the Franco-Prussian War, ran the soup kitchen on Wallgasse for ten years, married the anchor maker Otto Friedrich Stubbe soon after the promulgation of the Socialist Laws, took charge of the strike fund when the workers struck the Klawitter Shipyard in the fall of 1885, supplemented her earnings by serving meals on Saturdays, received a visit from her party chairman a few years after the abrogation of the Socialist Laws but found no publisher for her "Proletarian Cook Book," exhausted her savings on a trip to Zurich in the summer of 1913, was widowed for the second time at the very start of the war that broke out in the following year, worked in various soup kitchens all through the war, after the war at Workers' Aid kitchens, then in a settlement-house kitchen, then in a Winter Aid kitchen, then in an emergency kitchen set up by the Jewish community, and, lastly, ladled out soup in the kitchen of the Stutthof concentration camp. She outlived not only her husbands, but her four daughters as well.

After reading this bare summary and praising Lena Stubbe as a passive, but for her time exemplary heroine, the presiding judge of the Women's Tribunal called on all those present to rise in her honor; the Flounder, too, left his sand bed and with a gentle motion of his fins kept himself for one minute hovering in mid-water.

Then the prosecutor spoke. She reproached the Flounder for having, in his (to be sure, more and more neglected) capacity as adviser to the male cause, failed to keep either Friedrich Otto Stobbe or Otto Friedrich Stubbe from beating Lena when drunk. Perhaps, she intimated, he had even

recommended beatings. One could easily imagine the male Zeitgeist of the nineteenth century speaking out of his mouth: his pertinent quotations from Nietzsche, his master-of-the-household attitude. His ironic references to the weaker sex. His pedagogic jokes. The male folk-belief that women thrive on beatings.

"Only the other day," said Sieglinde Huntscha, "a man had the gall to sing that song to me. Listen to what the swine said: 'You want me to sock you, don't you? I can tell by looking at you. Square in the face. Maybe you'd like me to give you a black eye to show around. Well, I'm not going to. Not if you beg me on bended knee. You want me to act like a typical male, that's what. You need it for your emancipation crap — the incorrigible male brute.' And this fine gentleman — I'm not mentioning any names — is sitting right here in the courtroom, putting all his trust in the Flounder: 'He'll talk us men out of this. He knows that beatings have always been necessary. He has always been in favor of striking arguments. We can count on the Flounder.' And the guy calls himself a liberal."

After the public had let off steam with shouts of "Boo!" and glared at the few men in the hall (including me) with knowing hostility, the Flounder, now back on his sand bed, spoke. "Esteemed prosecutor, you know as well as I do that corporal punishment has always been an expression of male weakness. Disappointing as your personal experience may be — you speak of a man steadfastly refusing to give you a beating you had provoked — at that time, in Lena Stubbe's day, the female sex was maltreated with an abysmal lack of restraint. In all classes. Not excepting the nobility and the bourgeoisie. But working-class women were beaten more regularly, every Friday to be exact, because the workers knew of no other way to bolster up their insecure egos on payday. Yes, yes, even the organized workers, even the members of the Socialist Party laid it on with a heavy hand every Friday. So it needn't surprise you that Friedrich Otto Stobbe and Otto Friedrich Stubbe beat their Lena, especially if you bear in mind that, rousing agitators though they both were, their vigor and dash were all on the outside; around the house, in their suspenders, they didn't amount to much. Lena, the punctually beaten Lena, was always, even when suffering in silence, the stronger. She'd have worn out ten strongmen. She accepted beatings in the dismal knowledge that a man's tenderness often goes too far. She never defended herself, with the poker, for instance. She knew that when it was over her Friedrich Otto or Otto Friedrich would be an exhausted, humiliated little man, contrite and tearful. And if, esteemed Ms. Huntscha, this anonymous gentleman in the audience who recently refused you a beating had lived in Stobbe's or Stubbe's time, he would undoubtedly have laid it on with a heavy hand. I know the gentleman and his pathetic demonstrations of love."