Gunter Grass - The Flounder

By then the zealous missionary had been with us for weeks. We Pomorshians were still heathen, though I, during my time as a shepherd, carved linden wood into handy little Blessed Virgins-who, to be sure, had three breasts under their drapery. (Take my word for it, Ilsebill; even as a missionary on the one hand and a shepherd on the other, I remained an artist.)

And once when Mestwina, who lived with us in the Wicker Bastion on Fisherman's Island in the middle of the Mottlava, was making fish soup for the bishop from five pop-

eyed codfish heads, her necklace of uncut amber tore just as she was taking the heads, which were about to disintegrate, out of the broth. As she bent over the steaming kettle, the waxed string came open and slid unaided over the rounded nape of her neck. Though Mestwina raised her hand quickly and tried to catch hold of the open string, nevertheless nine or seven pieces of amber, pierced (by me) with hot wire, slipped into the pot, where they dissolved in the foaming soup and gave the Christian Lenten fare the pagan strength which has resided in amber since the earliest times. Its effect so transformed, nay, revolutionized, the chaste Adalbert that no sooner had he spooned up the soup than he clutched my Mestwina like a madman and kept at it all that night (which had already begun to fall) and the following day. Time and time again the ascetic penetrated her flesh with his by now utterly unrepentant gimlet. Just as a Pomorshian might have done, but with more religious zeal and dialectical contradiction, he exhausted himself inside her, all the while mumbling his Church Latin, as though he had discovered a new way of pouring out the Holy Spirit. For we of the Wicker Bastion had not yet been baptized.

That brought dependence. From then on the bishop ordered Mestwina's amber-seasoned fish soup once a week. No wish could have been easier to satisfy. Never, even in the winter, was there any shortage of fish. Along with oatmeal, barley and manna porridge, root vegetables, and mutton, fish was the staple food of the Pomorshians. That was why we had recently taken to worshiping a certain fish along with the traditional earth goddess Awa. And Mestwina — as cook and priestess — sacrificed to the god Ryb, who was flat of body, flat of head, and crooked of mouth; in other words, he looked very much like the talking Flounder.

True, there was strife among the people of the Pomorshian coast when, flouting the women's will, the fishermen put through the cult of the flounder-headed god, but Mestwina amalgamated the new cult with traditional rites. She knew of legends to the effect that every spring the flounder god shared a bed made half of rushes and half of forest leaves with the three-breasted Awa. True, said Mestwina, they often quarreled, but Awa wouldn't mind if a small share in the

cult were devoted to her fish bedfellow. After all, he had been useful in his way, providing for full nets and calm seas; it was he who appeased the Vistula in time of flood, and he who had endowed amber with certain powers.

This was why the children of the Wicker Bastion carried sturgeon and codfish heads, the head of the silvery Vistula salmon, and the venerable gray head of the sheatfish on long branches cut from the willows that grew along the banks of the Radune, in a procession that followed the banks of the dikeless river mouths to the sea. And in the lead they carried crooked-mouthed, slant-eyed flounder heads. The idea was for the fish — the pike and the perch, the bass and the cod — to see the rivers and the Baltic Sea once again, and for the young god Ryb to be worshiped and appeased in his flounder form. (Even then the legend was going around that the Flounder — one had only to call him — would grant wishes and give advice, that he was especially devoted to fishermen and most remarkably intelligent.) "Flounder, O Flounder!" cried the children of the Wicker Bastion, festooned with old nets and rotting fish traps. And even after Mestwina's death, when they turned us into Christians, we continued to be good heathens. At Easter time — why not at Easter time? — after lashing ourselves with willow switches on the bank of the Radune, we showed the fish the rivers and the sea in a solemn procession, led by a priest with the cross and six choir boys with little bells. Incense was provided by ground amber, swung in bowls. Pomorshian prayers for a good catch were chanted. But also in evidence were the taut pigs' bladders that the girls tied on, three each, in memory of Awa. Only the litany was Catholic. For the dead eyes of the fish glittered unbaptized. Congealed eyes raised heavenward. Mouths ready to bite. Pectoral fins spread-eagled.

Toward evening the willow branches with the heads on them were planted like a fence in the road of logs leading to Fisherman's Island. Screaming, the children of the Wicker Bastion ran away. The gulls dove down. As far as the road they had followed the procession with shrill cries but remained at a distance. Now they fell to, starting on the eyes, and battled one another until the willow branches were bare. And once in the spring, I recall, a porpoise, a small member of the whale family, was thrown up on the beach. Its head

was placed in a leather holder fastened to the end of a long pole, which two young fellows took turns carrying in the middle of the procession, right after the effigy of Saint Barbara. And later, much later, when the Old City was founded in accordance with Culm law and the Charter City in accordance with Liibeck law, and I as a swordmaker was at last admitted to a guild, the children of the Wicker Bastion — among them my daughters by Dorothea — made fish heads of colored paper, put lamps inside them, and carried them around on poles. A pleasant sight in the evening, though it always made me rather sad — yes indeed, Ilsebill— because Mestwina was no longer with us.

And because of those fish heads, which boisterous children carried along the log road and into the Christian-Bohemian camp, Bishop Adalbert, who was later to be numbered among the martyrs, flew into a rage and waxed obscene in Latin. With holy water he armed himself against the devil's artifices. The innocent codfish heads made hellish faces at him. Especially the slant-eyed Flounder, as seen by the bishop, had Satan's ironic, disruptive look. Against that look he raised the cross aloft. With a wave of his hand he commanded his mercenaries to behead the fish heads once again. Snick-snack, it was done, and that infuriated Mestwina, for from her priestess's point of view, more was hacked off those willow branches than the ascetic dreamed of. What could he know of Awa and the recent male deity who went by the name of Ryb?

Mestwina knew. She knew and suffered. Small and round as she was, she grew a little. But she said nothing. She stored it all up, Pomorshian-style. Later she drank fermented mare's milk in tiny sips. It was almost evening before she had worked herself into the right state. And by the time the ascetic came as usual to visit Mestwina on her bed of leaves, her fury had taken on body and purpose.

Her hut was walled with plaited willow withes, plastered with mud thrown from outside. A comfortable room. Adalbert came in with a pious greeting, but he also brought his dialectical contradiction. Though carnal lust lifted his cowl like a mighty tent pole, Mestwina did not appease him on

a short-term basis, but for all time. He didn't even get a chance to discharge. Promptly and vigorously she bashed him again and again on his Bohemian head with a cast-iron cooking spoon, and in her fury avenged the cod and the sturgeon, the perch, the pike, the silvery salmon, the reddish bass, and repeatedly the flounder god of the Pomorshian fisherfolk.

The only sound out of Adalbert was a brief sigh. But his adversary stood unbowed, stood valiantly for its own sake. Even when the bishop was already dead and a martyr, it refused to bow down.