Gunter Grass - The Flounder

"Typical!" you say. But at that time there was a growing need for compensation, for a bit of male divinity. We didn't want the Flounder to be the only god, just an associate god. And at some time or other, one of the still three-breasted priestesses of Awa, besieged with petitions by us men, consented: she lay with the Flounder in the rushes, or on a bed of leaves, or on a compromise bed of rushes and leaves, and came back the next day without a middle breast.

Or was it entirely different? Because nothing was happening, we Edeks thought we'd have a little fun and give the women a bit of a scare, just as I recently gave you a bit of a shock. "Oh! Something slippery-slimy! Eek!" you screamed and kicked the covers off: arm-long, in coiling beauty, it lay between us on the sheet. Irresponsible of me, I admit. Now that you're pregnant, the Lord knows what that eel in the bed might have done.

Then, during the hundred and eleventh generation of Awas, I secretly molded clay into a life-sized man, with an extra penis growing out of each buttock, so he could have pleasured three Awas at once. One moonless night we stationed this monstrosity outside the women's lodge. And the next morning (seen through sleepy eyes) my super-Edek was taken for real. In any case the women, some of whom were pregnant, screamed; but miscarriages were not the only consequence. Or did some other, comparable shock make the third breast fall off like a wart? It simply disappeared. High time.

Or it was something else again. The decisive step came

much later. Even Wigga still had the third breast Pomorshian men required. We had scarcely modified our needs. Why should we have? (We were damn well off.) But when Wigga, in a series of major campaigns, had the so-called dream wurzel, a very special multipurpose root, exterminated as a public enemy, when she deprived us of the wishing weed, the plug we had chewed for thousands of years, which brightened our dreams, assuaged our fears, and appeased our yearnings, we no longer knew exactly what we desired.

The film of our vivid imagining broke off. We lost our innocence. Gone was the third breast. No longer palpable because no longer dreamed. Unsuckled, we reached into the void from that day on. Dull reality had made us poor. Believe me, Ilsebill, it was sad, though having ceased to wish (because we had ceased to dream), we could no longer realize what we had lost.

After that we grew restless. Dissatisfaction set in. Later (up to Sophie's time) we compensated for our loss by chewing fly agaric-not to mention various substances that today are kiffed and hashed, steeped with tea, or shot into the veins. But nothing could or can equal our (exterminated) wishing wurzel.

And addressing the Women's Tribunal, the Flounder, who had never heard of our primordial drug, said: "Well, ladies, that's the way it was, the three-breasts hoax was finally exploded-during Wigga's Iron Age, to be exact. At last the men developed a sense of reality, and the fiction of the triune primal mother went up in smoke. All at once-demystified by what lightning flash we do not know — good old Wigga was standing there with two plain, ordinary tits. It may have been the ensuing disenchantment that led a few Pomorshian men to experiment with the migrations. Nothing unusual. Dreams of primal mothers had faded long before in other places. True, the Cretan goddess Hera, famous in her day as the best of Minoan earth mothers, had not abdicated, but she had been forced to marry-yes, marry! — the god Zeus, and to share her hegemony. I myself was obliged to take on the function of god for a time, in order to compensate just a little for the power of the primal mothers, who despite the lost breast went right on tyrannizing men with their loving care. I was under pressure. Despite my failures, my millennial efforts in the male cause had not been forgotten. Through a division of labor, I was put in charge of everything connected with oceans, rivers, and fishing. My role was comparable to that of Poseidon in relation to the Pelasgian Athene — I was expected to assert myself alongside the Awa cult, which continued to linger on. Naturally conflicts were inevitable — in Athens and elsewhere. As you can imagine, ladies, the replacement of mother right by the rational though in a sense fictitious father right resulted in several counterrevolutions. Need I remind you of the Bacchantes, Amazons, Erinyes, Maenads, Sirens, and Medusas? The battle of the sexes in ancient Greece was rough, really rough. By comparison nothing much happened on the banks of the Vistula. Apart from the sudden disappearance of the third breast, there is little to report. No material for tragedies, though at that very time the restless Goths were taking a rest in the region of the Vistula estuary, for, eager as they were to perform heroic feats, they couldn't make up their minds whether to return northward or to pursue their southward course. Among the Pomorshians, timeless matriarchy continued, though somewhat mitigated by me, the associate fish god. Even three-breastedness lived on, in small ceramic artifacts. No question of a new era, or at the most this: beginning with Wigga, root plants were grown for food. She was a true wurzel mother; she even looked like a mangel-wurzel."

With Wigga farming became drudgery. As long as one of the long line of Awas dealt out loving care, there was a limit to the amount of barley, spelt, and oats grown, we retained our independence as fishermen and hunters; most of our time was spent beyond hailing distance in the reeds or underbrush, on moors or remote beaches, and though oppressed we were able to enjoy life. It was Wigga who first harnessed us to wooden plows and sent us out to the beet fields. We had to gather the seeds of wild root plants, for in her garden-sized experimental field Wigga sowed rows of charlock and mangel (Beta vulgaris), bred the precursors of the radish, or salsify, and of the beets with which at a much later date Amanda Woyke cooked beet and dill soup for the farm hands of the Royal Prussian State Farm at Zuckau. On

hot August days it was carried to the fields and dished out to them cold.

In any case the Goths despised us as root eaters, while we called them fire-eaters, for the Goths, like those other Germanic tribes that Tacitus observed, were too lazy to bend over for roots. They preferred to dream of faraway places.

We always liked to nibble roots. I remember juicy wild roots that brought tears to the eyes and, though tough, could be softened by long chewing. In Awa's time only the women were allowed to grow them. And after Wigga's first attempts to breed root plants, which did not bring results until Mest-wina's time (the radish), Dorothea of Montau in her Lenten garden, the nun Margarete Rusch in the garden of Saint Bridget's Abbey, and Agnes Kurbiella in her diet garden raised a root plant related to our carrots, celery, and those delicate little Teltow turnips. Still later rutabaga, bred from rape, came to us from Bavaria by mail. Amanda Woyke gave it the apt name of Wruke, and Lena Stubbe, in times of early capitalist famine, cooked tons of it in soup kitchens (her response to the social question). The war and influenza year 1917 bequeathed us the expression "rutabaga winter."

I have nothing against rutabaga, but here I'm thinking of its primal form, which was long and firm, covered with wrinkles and grimaces, with protuberances all around it. It tapered to a point amid curling root threads, or else a few wisps dangled from its rounded head. Where the roots grew too close together in the glacial rubble, they clutched one another with many fingers. We ate them as we found them, straight or crooked. Except when the ground was covered with snow and everything looked alike, we pulled up roots day in, day out; believe it or not, they were as long as your arm. They tasted best raw. It was the women's privilege to bite off the tip; we Edeks were given what they left, but we, too, had a privilege, however questionable: we were allowed to sample dubious mushrooms first.