Gunter Grass - The Flounder

In any case the trial continued. The Flounder remained under arrest, but more and more his responses were limited to the one word "unwell." To spare his voice, a no-smoking rule was imposed at the behest of the defense.

After that the trial ran smoothly for three or four days. The Flounder testified quite willingly concerning my neolithic time-phase — amusing little anecdotes. The public was intensely curious about the loving-caring stratagems that Awa used to keep us men in a state of servitude for thousands of years. When the Flounder cited neolithic dishes — curds with flatbread made of acorn and manna meal, wild goose baked in a shell of clay — the pencils of those present scribbled feverishly. Awa's recipes were reprinted in the women's pages of several daily newspapers: "Mushrooms a la Awa, baked on a bed of hot ashes."

Only when the Flounder started referring more and

more frequently to the three-breasted Awa, to the myth of the third breast, did his listeners grow restless. Questions were raised during recesses: "Is a third breast indispensable to the establishment of women's rule? Can it be that we women are short of something?"

The first drawings evoking the principle of three-breasted hegemony made their appearance on the toilet walls of the erstwhile movie house. (Later the mammary triad filled unoccupied advertising space in subway stations. A primordial masculine desire expressed itself with sweeping brush strokes on hoardings and walls.) When the Flounder claimed that the end of total matriarchy had been brought about not by his advice, but by the sudden disappearance of the third breast — a phenomenon that even he was at a loss to explain — it was once again necessary to recess the Women's Tribunal.

"The Neolithic era," said Ms. Huntscha, "is behind us; in the opinion of the prosecution, the Flounder's guilt has been proved. But before sentence can be pronounced, certain material still remains to be examined, especially the following allegations of the Flounder: (1) there were three-breasted women in the Neolithic era; (2) only thanks to the third breast were women able to repulse the male claim to power; (3) only three-breasted women can possibly restore the matriarchate. Furthermore, the court must determine whether or not, after the alleged disappearance of the alleged third breast, the Awa cult, as it continued to be practiced during the Bronze and Iron Ages, was able to preserve certain vestigial matriarchal rights. And lastly, the Flounder's contention that — masked as the cult of the Virgin — the Awa cult remained in force through the first centuries of Christianity, cannot be passed over in silence. On the contrary, our movement must investigate, or appoint a special commission to investigate, the question whether the third breast should be regarded as an essential feature of early matriarchy. If the answer is yes, then we must keep faith with our prehistoric past and renew the neolithic three-breast cult. Experts must be consulted. But even now shouldn't sex-conscious woman artists be encouraged to work out a modern formulation for the Awa cult? On the other hand," she concluded on a note of warning, "it's a tricky legend, and if

we're not careful it will make fools of us all. Perhaps in reproducing the myth of the three breasts, we shall only be falling in with the male chauvinist's wish dream of tits, tits, and more tits. For — as you must all be aware — men have never been satisfied with two breasts."

To make a long story short, the Women's Tribunal resolved after long tergiversation — accompanied by the usual factional fights — to dismiss the third breast as a real or conceivable possibility. Ms. Schonherr (who, incidentally, is ideologically close to my Awa) cast the one unavailing contrary vote. The graffiti on the walls of the movie-house toilet were covered over with whitewash. A wasted effort, of course. Time and time again, ball points and magic markers were exercised. Flamboyant posters appeared on the market. Even schoolchildren, egged on by their teachers, seem to have daubed Awa's opulence in exuberant size and color. A baker in Tempelhof started baking Awa-shaped buns, and they sold like hot cakes.

After so much public mischief, the verdict, as read by the presiding judge, was bound to be severe: "The Flounder is found guilty. His one-sided advice benefited the male cause alone. With ruthless single-mindedness he worked for the introduction of patriarchy. Though for many centuries his efforts were fruitless, his misogynistic purpose must be counted against him. In framing this judgment the Tribunal has seen no reason to take neolithic woman's alleged three breasts into account."

Would you have said that? Oh, Ilsebill! It was all so different. Important as breasts, two or three, are and have been, devotedly as I scratched the three-breasted Awa in the sand, kneaded her in clay, carved her in wood, scraped her out of a lump of amber, the only really crucial question was this: who, when we were shivering, who, when we had only raw food to eat, stole fire from the sky?

And you, friend Flounder? Why didn't you tell the Tribunal that it wasn't any man but our Awa who stole fire from the old Sky Wolf? You don't seem to find it convenient to remember how often, in our many conversations on the sands of the estuary, I laughed at your Prometheus story.

What was it again that you said? "Fire is masculine thought and action in one." Your cock-and-bull story was supposed to boost our morale. No, friend Flounder. As well you know, it wasn't a man, it was Awa who went to the Sky Wolf who guarded the fire, and lay with him. You didn't want to believe it. And now the women's libbers have put you on trial. The Ilsebills of the world are pointing their fingers at you. Tell them who brought fire to the earth, admit it. Tell them — because they don't know — where Awa hid those three little coals. Because the consequences were far from negligible. Tell them the whole story, friend Flounder. The Ilsebills need to know. Every teensy-weensy detail.

Raw rotten deep-frozen boiled.

Supposedly the Wolf (elsewhere the Vulture)

was the first custodian of fire.

In all the myths the she-cook was crafty:

while the Wolves slept (the Vultures

were deep in cloud) she hid

the coals in her moist pouch.

She stole the fire from the sky.

No longer cutting sinews with long teeth. No longer foretasting the aftertaste of carrion. Softly the dead wood called, wanting to burn. Once we had assembled (for fire is an assembler) plans kindled, thoughts crackled, sparks rose up and names for raw and cooked.

When liver shriveled over the fire,

boars' heads were baked in clay,

when fish were lined up on a green branch

or stuffed guts were bedded in ashes,

when bacon sizzled on hot stones

and stirred blood turned to pudding,

then fire triumphed over rawness,

then we men among ourselves discussed taste.

The smoke betrayed us,

we dreamed of metal,

and that was the (foreshadowed) beginning of history.

In our early myths there was no fire. Lightning struck, moors burst into flame of their own accord, but we never succeeded in holding on to the fire; it always died out. And so we ate our badger, elk cow, and grouse raw or dried on stones. And we huddled shivering in the darkness.

Then the dry wood said to us, "Someone whose flesh is also a pouch must climb up to the Sky Wolf. He is the keeper of the primal fire, whence comes all other fire, including the lightning."

It had to be a woman, because the male has no pouch in his flesh. So a woman climbed up by the rainbow and found the Sky Wolf lying beside the primal fire. He had just been eating a crispy brown roast, and he gave the woman what was left of it. Before she had finished chewing, he said sadly, "I know you've come for fire. But have you a pouch?"