Gunter Grass - The Flounder

"Marvelous! Amazing! Sensational!" cried a Teuton in glasses.

Another shouted, "Encore! Encore!"

Then all the fraternity brothers wanted to see the pyramid of friendship rebuilt. "Gentlemen, if it's not an imposition, we would be so delighted to witness your uncommonly extraordinary feat again."

But Frankie waved them off. "Nothing doing. Show's over. Beat it, kids. We want privacy."

Was it instinct, was it insight? Had my curvaceous Billy opened their eyes? Suddenly the tone changed. "Why,

they're. . This is too muchl What insolence! Females! Common, vulgar females! Degrading Father's Day with their obscenities!"

And a fat freshman in glasses thrust himself into the role of spokesman. "Ladies — or whatever you are. Your presence in general, and most particularly in this area, which today is reserved exclusively for the celebration of Father's Day, inspires horror and protest in us, I repeat, protest. It would be no exaggeration to call it scandalous. We have here a monstrous infringement on ethical norms. Not that we are declared enemies of women. On the contrary. Very much on the contrary. Women, said Goethe, are silver plates upon or into which we men lay, as it were, golden apples. But today — with all respect for your acrobatic feats — that does not apply. Your presence here is an offense against all principle. It is our duty to put our foot down, and in no uncertain terms. We expect you to leave the area at once, but first we demand an explanation."

Frankie, Siggie, Billy, and Maxie took a defensive stance. Frankie grabbed the poker. Siggie turned around her signet ring, which had a short, blunt knob on the palm side, transforming it into a knuckle-duster. Maxie armed herself with the four-legged iron grill. Only Billy stood facing the superior power of the fraternity brothers with bare hands, though well-armed tongue. "What's this I hear? Throwing us out! Don't make me laugh! Men? You bandy-legged curs call yourselves men? Queens with complexes, that's what you are. Mamas' darlings. Mass-produced Oedipuses. What's the matter? Mommy take her breast away? Didn't she let you suck enough when you were little? Did she leave you lying in your piss, screaming yourselves blue in the face? Did she give you too few strokes and too many clouts? And you, young man! Yes, you! Were you standing there in your nightshirt, peeking through the crack in the door, while Mama and Papa were doing awful things? Did a puppy ever lick you or you? And you over there! Was your big brother or your ugly little sister in the way, always in the way? Speak up. Let's swap complexes. I've got plenty."

They retreated. With and without glasses, they withdrew. No signet ring, iron grill, or poker drove the fraternity brothers from the-field; no, what drove them was Billy's direct discourse, her expostulation: "Jerks! Jerk-offs!"

And when my Sibylle suddenly turned around, peeled down her tight-fitting jeans, and showed the Teutons her Venus-white ass, whence a fart instantly escaped, the Saxons and other Germani were seized with panic terror. In full regalia, they withdrew, losing two or three pairs of glasses and a book of student songs, out of which Maxie later on sang "Gaudeamus igitur," et cetera. .

What laughter! Frankie's neighing wagoner's laugh. Siggie, in laughing, showed two rows of clenched teeth. Maxie gasped, held her sides, and pressed her thighs together like a little girl who is having trouble holding it in. Billy stood straddle-legged, hurling volleys of laughter after the enemy. (Thus, in their days as Teutonic Knights, had they laughed in the winter camp at Ragnit while hunting down the heathen Lithuanians and Prussians. Thus, as Swedish cavalrymen, had they laughed at the fleeing imperial troops at Wittstock, before the papists, every last man of them, croaked in the Brandenburg swamps. .)

A dry, infectious laugh. And the contagion of the four heroes' laughter seems to have carried a long way, for tatters of laughter blew across the lake from the far shore. And there was laughter on the shores of other lakes, under trees, and in club strength at tables, though for other reasons. Humor was the order of the day. Hearty male laughter. Slapped chests and thighs. Unrestrained belly-laughter. Don't choke, old man. I could die laughing. At jokes. Rip-roaring men's jokes. Heard this one? What's the difference between. .? Little Fritz goes to the goat barn and sees his father. . Count Bobby has an inflamed eye. . Moishe runs into Abie at the whorehouse. . Hitler and Stalin meet in hell… So little Fritz says. . Why, Moishe, says Abie. . Oh, cries Count Bobby, if it were only my eye. . Well, the difference between a coffee bean and. . Oh, says Hitler to Stalin, if I'd only known. . But the goat isn't to blame, says little Fritz's mother. .

But loudly, softly, heartily, and tearfully as the ten, no, a hundred thousand men demonstrated their Father's Day humor, the two black angels, who witnessed the big laugh astride their overbred motorcycles, were disinclined to join in the merriment, to laugh, to put on so much as a fleeting smile. In them no punch line released a catch. Nothing, but

nothing whatever, struck them as funny. Not the slightest joke occurred to them. Seriousness was written all over their faces. Attentively, as though doing their professional duty, the two in black leather had registered the altercation with the fraternity brothers — every incendiary word. Those incredible insults. Those kicks in the ass of male dignity. Billy's bare behind, which had put the students to flight, imprinted itself like a seal or a brand, deep on the minds of Herby and Ritchie, as the two black angels were called.

And no sooner had the laughter died down — only Maxie was still gasping — than the two motorcycles started howling chugging buzzing. After an ostentatious loop across the lake-shore meadow and impressive slaloming in and out of the Prussian pines, the witnesses roared away to make their sensational report on the far shore.

"Hey, kids!" Billy shouted after them. "What's the hurry?"

But when the men all around the Grunewaldsee, on the Wannsee, in the forests of Spandau and Tegel, had shown themselves and others what they could do (glass eating, stone putting, tug-of-warring, up-and-downing trees, bearing pain, lifting heavy weights overhead), when on Father's Day, which falls on Ascension Day, achievement-proud male laughter had reached its climax, when all had laughed their fill in Liibars and Britz, in woods and meadows, and even Maxie could laugh no more — Frankie stationed himself in front of a chaste birch tree — one of several birches among the pines— and laughed, battering everything, yes everything, even himself in his absolute greatness, with laughter, until he had laughed the chaste birch tree bare. The old wagoner and veteran of all wars (he'd been at Tannenberg, Wittstock, and Leuthen) could laugh birch trees bare.

Frankie stood ten paces away, so that the tree was full in his line of fire, and shot off volleys of laughter both aimed and scattered — his great cynical laughter act. (Nothing was sacred to him.) He commanded the fresh, May-green leaves to fall as in November, and when Billy, Siggie, and Maxie shouted "More! More!" he defoliated the rest of the birches roundabout, the last one only half, for in the meantime the laughter between Spandau and Tegel and on the shores of the Grunewaldsee had shifted, as it does so often, to male mourning. From one extreme to the other.

Everything, even the monumental feat that only a moment before had aroused wonder and demanded to be photographed, rose up in a bitter belch. Even the recent, undeniable triumph of seeing Mama's little fraternity darlings put to flight had the sour aftertaste of absurdity. The void shone through. Father's Day hangover turned the flushed cheeks of the men, wherever they had established themselves in the greenery, ash-gray. Leaden melancholy mingled with every swallow of beer. Nausea. Existential belches, bitter as gall. Sighs rose from bottomless depths, climbed stairs, forced their way to the light: pallid, alcoholic ghosts, which, unable to bear the sharp scent of the Prussian pines for long, burst, dispersed, and fell all about like mildew, which didn't make our Father's Day men any more cheerful.