Gunter Grass - The Flounder

We made our way between perrons to Our Lady's Gate and the Mottlau. Frauengasse is a street that takes a lifetime to walk down. I'd have liked to buy Maria an amber necklace in one of the many shops on the perrons. She said she didn't wear jewelry any more. We went to an old barge tied up near the Long Bridge (Dlugie Pobrzeze) that operated as a snack bar and, standing at narrow little tables, ate fried codfish from paper plates. I asked to know more of Maria's daughters than just their names. The girls, she told me, were staying with Jan's mother. She had pictures on her. When she asked the name of my daughter, I lied and said Agnes. I had no pictures on me. Maria went to get paper napkins. There'd been a dollop of ketchup with the codfish. The Mottlau smelled stronger than the fried fish. Not a word about Jan. But when we had left and were arranging to meet the next day, Maria said suddenly, "He came from Warsaw. His name is Kociolek. He gave the order. So then they fired. He's out of the country now. In Belgium. In charge of the embassy there."

At last it was all confirmed. Fairy tales only stop for a time, or they start up again after the end. The truth is told, in a different way each time.

Next day we shot Saint Bridget's, the Radaune, a muddy little river, the Big Mill, and the pinnacles sitting on blocks and waiting to be mounted on Saint Catherine's. For forty seconds I spoke sentences to end the film with.

In the late afternoon I called for Maria at the shipyard gate. In her plastic bag she had a dinner pail full of pork and cabbage. It was still warm, she said. She had also brought spoons. They rattled. The square outside the shipyard showed no sign of anything. In passing, Maria pointed to an undistinguished part of the asphalt roadway: "That's where he lay, over there."

We took the streetcar to Heubude, a fishing village now called Stogi that is still a popular bathing beach, equipped with bathhouses. We rode along the Outer City Ditch, across the Old Mottlau, Warehouse Island, the New Mottlau, through the Lower City, turned off to the left after Island Gate, crossed the Dead Vistula, and didn't say one word until we got to Heubude.

Of course that sentence isn't true. Heubude was the last stop. We walked through the shore woods on sandy paths. It was one of those early-September days when the light becomes ambiguous. We walked side by side, then in single file, first Maria, then me. From then on, her back: unfriendly, round.

Once out of the woods, Maria took her shoes off. I took mine off, too, and my socks. That was something I knew— walking barefoot through beach grass in the dunes. We heard faint waves lapping against the beach. To the west, you could see the installations of the new oil port. On the last dune, which sloped gently down to the shore, Maria stood still. The beach was deserted except for a few figures receding in the distance. Maria let herself slip down into a hollow and took off her jeans and panties. I dropped my trousers. She helped me until my member stood erect. I don't know how long I took, or whether she finished. She didn't want any kissing, just the one thing, quickly. As soon as I came, she tipped me out and pulled on her panties and jeans. The distant figures on the beach had receded still farther.

After that we took the tin spoons and ate the lukewarm pork and cabbage out of the dinner pail. Maria chattered about her daughters and about the car she'd made a down payment on, a Fiat. The pork and cabbage reminded me. When the dinner pail was empty, Maria jumped up and ran across the beach to the sea. I stayed behind and saw her running: her back again.

The sea lay smooth, licking the beach. Maria went in up to her knees in her jeans. After standing there a while, she shouted a Kashubian word three times and held out her arms like a bowl. And then the Flounder, the flat, age-old, dark, wrinkled, pebbly-skinned Flounder, no, my Flounder no longer, her Flounder, leaped as though brand-new out of the sea and into her arms.

I heard them talking. I heard them both talking. They talked a long time, she questioning with strident emphasis, he fatherly and reassuring. Maria laughed. I understood nothing. Time and time again the Flounder. I could guess at those categorical finalities. She who never laughed was laughing, laughing up to her knees in water. How deserted the beach was. How far away I was sitting. Good that she was able to laugh again. About what? About whom? I sat beside the empty dinner pail. Fallen out of history. With an aftertaste of pork and cabbage.

It was starting to get dark when Maria finished talking with the Flounder. And when she had given him back to the sea, the evening breeze ruffled the Baltic. She stood for a while, showing me her back. Then slowly she came to meet her footprints. But it wasn't Maria who came back. It must be Dorothea, I thought with alarm. As step by step she grew larger, I began to hope for Agnes. That's not Sophie's walk. Is Billy, my poor Sibylle, coming back?

Ilsebill came. She overlooked me, overstepped me. Already she had passed me by. I ran after her.