Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Still, tongues were loosed. Men unburdened themselves. The misery of the centuries — just among men, after all — was avowed. ("Be honest for once, old boy. Why pretend? Out with the truth, the whole, unvarnished truth. It's the only way.") All the defeats, historical and present, notched on a long pole. Coiled omissions that, when uncoiled, yield thread enough to embroider a shroud for the male and his categorical greatness.

"The truth," said Siggie, "is that we're through. Completely washed up and useless. We men just don't want to admit it. From the standpoint of history, the one thing men were good for, we've failed. Or politically speaking, all we are these days is custodians of bankruptcy, trying to postpone the crisis and prevent the worst. The atomic deterrent. And what about the Wall? It stinks. Everything stinks!"

And Frankie's analysis—"Since the end of the Stone Age, when the future started with copper, bronze, and iron, we men have done nothing but build shit!" — rose up into the air like skywriting. "Failures! We're failures!" Even Maxie confessed that she'd come to the end of her masculine rope. "Sometimes I wonder if it was right to take full responsibility for everything, for every little problem. The strain has been too great. Down through the years. On every man jack of us. Why shouldn't the women, once in a while? They'll see what it is to have to take the rap for everything. Anyway, I'm sick of it. No more ideas. I could use a rest. I wouldn't mind being dependent for five or six centuries, as long as I'm taken care of. Has its points, playing the little woman and nothing

else. Nothing to do but flicker my eyelashes and hold out my cunt. Get a kid now and then. Look forward to Mother's Day. Read trashy novels and run the dishwasher when I'm in the mood. Wouldn't that be a ball!"

"All right, Maxie," said Billy. "You can start right in. Complaining won't get us anywhere. The dishes are still lying around unwashed. OK, get going. With sand and lake water. Ugh, they're all full of ants. Never mind, I'll give you a hand. I'll dry." Billy had even (with tender loving care) put a checked kitchen towel into the food basket.

But Maxie wasn't in the mood for anything. And certainly not for dishwashing. Or not yet. Not in this century. "Leave the ants be. They'll do it. They've cleaned bigger dishes than these. Besides, I've got to think. Well, about this and that and the meaning of it all."

But when Billy insisted on the dishwashing and said, "You can think later, my son," Frankie awoke from well-deep melancholy and said with a certainty grounded in equal depths, "What do you mean, 'my son'? If any of us is Maxie's father, it's me. And to make myself perfectly clear, let me add: my son does not wash dishes. And certainly not on Father's Day."

"Exactly," said Maxie to Billy. "My daddy's name is Frankie, and you're just a femme. So get going! Wash up the shit yourself. And don't bother us."

"But," said Billy, again on the verge of tears, "you can't push me around all the time and treat me like a maid. I cook and clean and slave. But why only me? I'm not your dishrag. I demand equal rights. I have my pride, too."

Here Siggie broke in. "Like women. Fighting just like women. I thought we'd left all that behind us. It's either all four of us or none. I say, let's celebrate Father's Day. In peace. Get me?"

"Exactly," said Frankie sternly to Maxie. "Hear that, my son?"

"But then you have no right to treat me like a femme," cried Billy, sobbing.

"But that's what you are. A femme and a weeping willow," cried Maxie. "Sob sob! Drip drip!"

"You're hopeless," said Siggie, giving Maxie a swift one-two in the face. Whereupon Frankie bellowed, "Nobody clouts my son but me, nobody!" and kicked Siggie in the

shins. Whereupon Maxie — while Siggie was aiming a straight right at Frankie — spat in Billy's tear-stained face. Whereupon Billy dug both hands into Maxie's crew cut. And already the melee was exactly the same as long years ago when, after the Saxons capitulated at Pirna, the spoils were being divided and Frankie fought with Siggie over a box of sweets in which the farm cook Amanda Woyke was later to keep her correspondence with Count Rumford — the nut. (And on another historic occasion — at the very start of the migrations — there had been another argument over nothing, until only fists. .)

From a certain distance — a stone's throw — the students in full regalia were watching. And two black-leathered scouts on motorcycles were again within earshot. Maxie's nose was genuinely bloody. Siggie gave Frankie a shiner. Frankie twisted Siggie's arm out of joint. But it was Billy who took the most punishment, for when Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie had made up and were wiping one another's noses, putting the arm back in joint, and cooling the shiner, the butterball was still weeping for all she was worth, and the news was carried around the lake by the two motorcycle scouts. (As the police reported the next day, harmless roughhouses but also serious fights were taking place in other spots, wherever Father's Day was being celebrated: a hundred and twelve calls went out to police cars. Property was damaged. Eighty-seven injuries were enumerated, among them nineteen serious cases and one death. .)

Oh, ye warriors for the cause. Ye dreamers, dreaming of the great day. Ye heroes always ready to antedate your death. Ye battlers for justice. Ye victors over life. Attackers and defenders. Ye death-despising men.

And then a great weariness descended on the warriors. And elsewhere as well, the ten, the hundred thousand men thought they'd take a little nap because they'd pretty well knocked themselves out. Frankie was snoring first. Then, lying on her belly, all four limbs outstretched, Siggie fell asleep. But when Billy couldn't stop sobbing, Maxie sat down beside her and said: "All right, butterball, just go to sleep. We mussed you up pretty bad, didn't we? Why did you start in with that stupid dishwashing business? You should have

brought paper plates. But really, there's nothing to cry about. Oh my, oh my. Still a few tears. Just go to sleep. Or say: They can kiss my… Or think of something pleasant. Or I'll tell you a story to put you to sleep. A story about prehistoric times when all the women had three tits. Or something else. The story of the Flounder, for instance. .

"There was once a butterball. Her name was — hey, what was her name? — Ilsebill. She had a man, and his name was Max. She sat home all the time, painting her nails with green polish. He always went fishing on weekends, off the harbor mole. And while Max fished and fished, his butterball wife would paint her fingernails green, and then she'd lie all alone in her pisspot, wishing this, that, and some other guy into her bed.

"So one afternoon when Max was fishing off the mole, a Flounder bit. That's a flatfish. His popeyes are out of line with his blubbery mouth. He happens in a fairy tale, so naturally he could talk, and he said to Max, 'Set me free and you can make a wish.'

"So Max took the Flounder off the hook, threw him back into the sea with a splash, and said: 'Oh, Flounder. My Ilsebill is just a cuddly little wife; all she wants to do is kiss and cuddle, fuck and be fucked, by this one and that one and that one and this one. With me she's never satisfied. She always wants to be banged by some guy that's not me. She thinks my stinkhorn stinks. What should I do, oh, what should I do?'

' 'So what kind of a guy does she want to do it with?' asked the Flounder, giving him a crooked look from the water.

' 'Well, with a fire chief in uniform, for instance,' said the fisherman, looking out over the smooth sea, 'cause he was fishing in the Baltic.

" 'You're a fire chief already, with braid and buttons,' said the Flounder and dove under.