Gunter Grass - The Flounder

The Ewas petted and praised me. The potter's art was still unknown to them. The artist of the neighboring horde, a fisherman whom I later took to calling Lud, was summoned. He listened to my short lecture about pottery but showed little interest, a truculent fellow who was to become my friend off and on in the course of my various time-phases.

Ah, Lud! How we drank black Danzig beer in the High Gothic eral How we argued about the sacraments! How we ate cheese with our knives in the Baroque vale of tears! And how in period after period we talked art to death! Only recently Lud died again. How I miss him! I shall honor him with an obituary. Later.

And that night the unharmed Edeks and Ludeks, as well as those who had suffered only slight injuries in their ears or noses, were exchanged. My Awa took the truculent Lud for herself, and I found a replica of my loving-caring Awa in Ewa: every bit as rich in dimples, as soft, as basic, and as radically, thoroughly, consummately head-emptying.

Believe me, Ilsebill, I'll never forget it. I will always be looking for Awa and Ewa when I'm with you. And sometimes when I lie with you I find them both. If one pushes me out, the other takes me in. I'm never entirely without a refuge. With Awa and Ewa I always have a cozy-warm home. No need to lie with strangers. That is how Awa as Ewa and Ewa as Awa enslaved me. Because just imagine: Ewa returned our visit, with her companions and a full-packed basket.

According to modern time-reckoning, they turned up three weeks later, with the seven forest hunters and the still-truculent Lud in their train.

We served them what we had on hand, sturgeon roe, manna grits cooked in reindeer milk, chunks of water-buffalo fillet spitted on damp willow sticks and roasted like shashlik. And for dessert our Glumse mixed with juniper berries. The meal went over big with the Ewas and Ludeks. And we were pleased with their presents.

From granite-hard stone Lud the net fisher and artist had hewn (with what, I wonder) mortars and pestles for grinding acorn meal; his production further included stone axes with holes bored in them, a fish net (to serve us as a model), and various fertility idols carved in white limestone. These idols, however, represented not three-breasted Awas or Ewas, but oval, broad-lipped twats with open, deep-bored clefts. The openings had been polished smooth and were shaped like mouthpieces, so that these conveniently sized stone vaginas could serve as drinking cups for water, berry

juice, mead, sour elk's milk, and other beverages, notably the skimmed, fermented, succulent, heady mare's milk that was the favorite drink of our neighboring horde, who kept herds of wild horses just as we had domesticated elks and water buffaloes. Dogs and their barking were common to both our hordes.

After this return invitation, good neighborly relations developed between the two hordes. By watching Ewa's people we learned to knot fish nets, to bore holes in stone axes, and to bake flatbread, while they learned from us to make Glumse, to fish with hooks, and to fashion pottery. And just as the Flounder had wished, there was communication in other respects as well. The exchange of males between the hordes soon became customary, even though it created little problems, for we Edeks and Ludeks were not consulted; like it or not, we had to oblige.

You can see that, Ilsebill; with some of the Ewas we just couldn't do it. And our Awas came away empty now and then, too; the oldtimer just wouldn't oblige. There are early afternoons when a man would rather play with pebbles, take it easy by himself, pick his nose without a desire in the world, let his cock dangle. Sometimes a man's cock is a plain nuisance, an obtrusive stranger, a bothersome appendage between his legs. And so we experienced failure (and the idiotic shame a man feels when he's a flop). Complaints passed from horde to horde. For a time our neighborly relations were impaired. Blows were struck between Edeks and Ludeks, between Lud and myself. We had to supply them with arrowheads hewn from flint; in exchange they offered only raw material (hard rock, unpolished and unbored). Lud disparaged my ceramic articles as cute; I countered by ridiculing his stone twats: couldn't he think of anything else? Bad blood. Brawling and bellowing. But it never got to the point of war. Men continued-though less and less enjoyably — to be exchanged. Awa and Ewa saw to that. They always came to terms. What interested them most was the principle of the thing. Gradually the two hordes merged into a clan; later we became a tribe.

And on addressing the Women's Tribunal, the Flounder,

too, despite his higher misgivings and critical objections to the principle of ever-loving care, called the exchange of men a sensible arrangement, because it enabled the two neighboring hordes to escape the dangers of stultifying incest.

"Of course," he declared, "men should be allowed to choose their sexual partners, but even so, my advice put an end to isolation, fostered communication, prevented degeneration, and promoted the development of a Pomorshian nation."

Three of the eight associate judges supported this view. Unfortunately, Ms. Schonherr, the presiding judge, abstained from voting, and Sieglinde Huntscha, the prosecutor, said, "Promiscuous fucking may be acceptable for men, but a woman has no business settling for the first pair of pants that comes along."

How about you, Ilsebill? What do you think? Suppose you had to do it with every man who felt like it or even half felt like it? Now that you're pregnant as a result of our free choice, you must understand my disgruntlement at the time. Admit it was oppressive, exchanging us like that from horde to horde, without consulting us, whenever the women were in the mood. They called it hospitality, but really!

What's wrong?

Something missing?

Your breath down my neck.

Something that sucks chews licks.

The calf's tongue, the mouse's teeth.

A desire is going around the world for mumbled words

that yield no meaning.

Children lisp it, and so do old men all alone

under the covers with their thumbs.

And questioned now, your skin shrinks away from the test:

modesty, which in the darkness (when company was gone)

was not cast off.

Someone is called Dr. Affectionate

and he still lives in forbidden concealment.

Exact science classifies what's missing

as caress units,

for which thus far

no substitute has been found.

My mother's breasts were large and white.

Snuggle up to her tits.

Make the most of them before they give way to bottle and

pacifier. Threaten with stuttering and complexes if they should be withheld. Don't just whine.

Let the milk include clear beef broth

or cloudy soup of codfish heads boiled

till blinded eyes roll

approximately in the direction of happiness.

Men don't give suck.

Men squint homeward when cows

with heavy udders cross

the road, blocking the traffic.

Men dream of the third breast.

Men envy the suckling babe

and always miss something.

Our bearded breastlings who provide for us with their tax payments smack their lips between appointments and comfort themselves with cigarettes.

After forty men should start being suckled again publicly and for a fee

until they are sated and wishless and stop crying, stop having to cry in the John — all alone.

And then the third breast disappeared. I don't know the details — I wasn't around just then, I think it was after the hundred and eleventh generation of Awas. Anyway, Ilsebill, it was gone. It doesn't seem to have wasted slowly away; rather, one day it was just suddenly missing. No, not because the women were sick of suckling us, but because the Flounder wanted to be God to us Edeks!