Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Perhaps, Ilsebill, you should know that our region was then relatively new. It hadn't come into being until after what we like to think of as the last ice age, when, as the waters receded, the Baltic coast took on its present contours. Before that, in the Riss-Wurm interglacial era, there was nothing, only time and glacier. It was only after the Wurm period, when elsewhere idols were being carved and cave drawings scratched, that our paleolithic ancestors followed the receding ice. They found an inhospitable region. For in their advance and withdrawal the glaciers had planed the tops off the Kashubian mountains. Their line of flight was marked by glacial rubble and deep Eocene valleys.

On our way, we seven whistling plainsmen found crudely hewn hand axes, bearing witness to the existence of the primordial horde at a time when the Sky Wolf still kept guard over his fire, when raw food was eaten day after day and our Awa had not yet come into her own; what's more (I'm pretty sure) there was no Flounder at that time, either.

After the provisional withdrawal of the glaciers (they will come again, they always do) our region seems to have consisted exclusively of windy steppe, hills covered with glacial rubble, gurgling swamps, and restless rivers that kept seeking new beds. Only as the climate grew warmer did the forests start to grow. The reindeer, elk, and water buffalo retreated to the river deltas, which remained primordial swamp country. But in the wooded hills, apart from wolves and bears, which we knew and avoided, there were new animals to frighten us — wild horses, lynxes, and hoot owls, for instance. We stayed as close as possible to our homeward-flowing Ra-dune and whistled more and more intricate tunes to ward off

fear. Thus and thus alone, pursing his lips in response to fear, did man invent music, though the Flounder insists on the spiritual source of all the arts.

After the third day of our forbidden journey, we seven hunters of swamp and moor found ourselves confronting, a stone's throw away in the ferns, seven forest hunters. Between us: smooth beech trees; mushrooms singly or in magic circles; a busy anthill; filtered, obliquely falling light.

Believe me, Ilsebill, they were as scared as we were. (You could have heard the strangers whistling softly between their teeth, just like us.) Naturally the first thing we did as we approached one another was to compare their stone axes, spears, and arrowheads with our own equipment. We favored pieces of flint, which we picked up on a stretch of steep shore bordered with chalk cliffs, later known as Adlershorst. The forest hunters had no flint and made do with quartzite and touchstone. Though the sharpness of our flint blades seemed at first glance to give us an edge, we soon saw that the forest hunters carried heavy stone axes which were not only hewn but also polished, with handles that were fitted into a bored hole-but how had they bored those holes? We still tied our axes and hatchets to their forked handles. Quite possibly our tapering flint arrowheads aroused the curiosity of the forest hunters in equal measure. In any case we showed each other our equipment and made menacing gestures but took no action, because in the absence of Awa no decision was possible. Although the impulse to bludgeon and pierce literally made our muscles quiver, we kept our distance; and our opposite numbers also fidgeted indecisively.

Well, Ilsebill, I was known as a fast runner, so my companions sent me to the coast to consult Awa, and one of the seven woodsmen was sent into the bush. As though pursued by demons, I ran through the terrifying woods, where lived not only the lynx and the hoot owl, but the fabulous unicorn as well. My adventures on the way — two wolves strangled with my bare hands, a brown bear spitted through and through with my spear, a lynx struck with an arrow between its glittering eyes (at night, what's more!), the unicorn fooled, made to ram his horn into a beech, elm, maple, no, an oak — all that is irrelevant, beside the point, for only my mission mattered.

Toward the end I jumped onto the back of a wild horse

and rode the last stretch of the way. I enjoyed riding. Only when the woods thinned as I was crossing our flat country and approaching the mouths of the Radune Mottlava Vistula, the always hazy moors, the ridge of dunes, the white beeches, and the Baltic, did the mare throw me. For two days and a night I ran and rode, toward the end singing at the top of my lungs because I was on horseback, exultant.

After listening to my breathless report, Awa held a women's council from which I was excluded, came back with two women who loaded a fully packed basket on my back, and gave the horde she was leaving behind her ever-caring instructions; then off we started, she and I and her companions — two three-breasted young women — on our arduous journey.

This time no lynx frightened us. No unicorn stood shimmering in the ferns. The forest primeval was already known to me. One did not whistle in Awa's presence. I speared lying pike in the Radune. Where familiar mushrooms grew, we bivouacked. Our baggage included a small pot of fire bedded in ashes. Plump frogs, wild strawberries bigger than we had ever dreamed of. I, the guide, was well treated, suckled by all three women. When frightened wild horses rushed from a beech thicket, Awa seemed delighted; I'd have liked to show her my prowess as a horseman.

And then we came and saw: of our six men one was seriously, two slightly injured; our opposite numbers had four slightly injured, who were lying in the ferns beside our wounded. All were being cared for by the Awa of the forest horde and her women. Remedies well known to us: sorrel, nettles, and moneywort. The other Awa and her companions, who, however, were not called Awa but Ewa, also had three breasts, and like our Awa ruled by all-embracing care. The system was already well known to us.

A while ago I deplored the lack of solidarity among the women of our region (and everywhere else, for that matter). Now I have something more gratifying to report: naturally the two Awas understood each other splendidly. How they giggled as they ran their fingers over each other's dimples, how they sniffed at each other and squealed in high-pitched gutturals. Off to one side of our damaged males they held a

women's council. Invitation and return invitation were soon exchanged by Awa and Ewa. No war was declared; instead hospitality was offered. That very evening we and our wounded were the guests of the neighboring horde, who had settled nearby between two lakes, water holes left over from the ice age. I was soon deep in conversation with the fishermen of the neighboring horde. In addition to traps, they already had nets. I showed them how the wishbone of the wood pigeon could be made to serve as a fishhook.

We gobbled to the bursting point. Of course the women ate separately and had special food. But we, too, enjoyed new taste sensations. While at the women's board bleak baked over hot stones was followed by steamed wild-horse liver with flat-bread made of honeysweet acorn flour, we Edeks were regaled with roasted chunks of the horsemeat, also accompanied by bittersweet flatbread. I forgot to tell you that each of the Ewas and Ludeks, as the men of the neighboring horde were called, like each of our Awas and Edeks, ate singly, averting his eyes from the others. They didn't brighten up until later, when the whole horde got together for a collective shit. But I'll come back to that later on: how in our neolithic time-phase we ate by ourselves but contemplated our excrement in social groups.

After the feast Awa unpacked the basket. I was called and honor was shown me, for the women had packed my ceramics as presents — a few Glumse bowls, which when testifying before the court the Flounder magnanimously attributed to the bell-beaker culture. Three fireproof pots of the kind in which Awa boiled the stomach walls of an elk cow, just as today we simmer beef tripe for four and a half hours. The basket also contained eight clay figurines that had been molded around the middle finger of my left hand-sturdy three-breased Awas, such as we used in our cult. My flounder-headed idols, which Awa disliked but had not prohibited, were not represented; nor, it goes without saying, was there a single elk's pizzle.