Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Ms. Ruth Simoneit is obviously an alcoholic. On several occasions she disturbed the discussion of the Mestwina epi-

sode with babbling, compulsive headshaking and intermittent swigs from her private flask, and finally, when Mestwina's decapitation was brought up, with tragic sobs and loud howls, with the result that Ms. Schonherr was obliged to escort the besotted and hypersensitive associate judge out of the movie house with motherly firmness. (And later on I myself took a certain interest in the poor, unfortunate spinster.) She started before noon on Remy Martin. And she never ate properly. And the record player was always running in her two-and-a-half-room apartment: tragic tear-jerkers, professional screamers. But she wants to become a teacher. Incidentally, Ruth is the only one of the eight associate judges who, though drunk at the time, inquired about me: "And what became of the shitass who buried the cast-iron spoon?"

Because, to tell the truth, Ilsebill, the action always revolved around me. I made messes and squirmed out of trouble with lies. I repressed and forgot. How gladly, there in the presence of Ms. Schonherr, or Helga Paasch, or Ruth Simoneit, I'd have confessed that I was to blame for everything: I did that. And that. Chalk Mestwina up to me. I and I alone am responsible. I still take the blame. Here I stand, yes, here I stand, a man, though damaged and since then intimidated by history. .

In mirror reversal, more obviously crooked.

The upper lids beginning already to sag.

The one eye tired, drooping, the other crafty, awake.

So much insight and inwardness

after all my loud and repeated

barking at power and those who wield it.

(We will! It shall! It must!)

Look at the pores in the cheeks. I am still or again good at blowing feathers, and like to make definite statements about matters that are still up in the air.

The chin would like to know when at last it will be allowed

to tremble. The forehead holds firm; what the whole thing lacks is an

idea. Where, when the ear is covered or committed to other images, do crumbs of laughter nestle?

The whole is shaded, darkened with experience.

I have put my glasses aside.

Only from habit does my nose sniff.

On the lips

that are still blowing feathers

I read thirst.

Under the udder of the black-and-white cow

I see myself drinking

or snuggled against you, O cook,

after your bosom hung

dripping over the fish stew;

you think I'm handsome.

Now that you're burgeoning. Though there's still nothing to see. But even now my mouth is filled with intimation. I have a foretaste. We might, you and I, that is — for I am burgeoning with you — two gourds — make plans. A future for three and more. Wishes. Who hasn't got wishes? You need a noiseless dishwasher. Good. I'll buy you one. And travels, of course. Why not? To the West Indies, like it says in the folder. And right after the event — end of June, you say— fluttery dresses, the kind that wrinkle and don't drip dry, outrageous pants, sexy sweaters. Everything you want. No more dishwashing problems. And in the garden (next to the graveyard) I'll grow a gourd-vine arbor for us, like the one that throve for three summers during the Thirty Years' War on Konigsberg's Pregel Island, across the way from the tavern. In it sat my friend Simon Dach when he wrote to me (Opitz

von Boberfeld) in delicate rhymed verses, "Here let me live at ease amid the beans and peas. Breathing fresh air I lie. Peering through vines, as clouds pass swiftly by. ."

A gourd-vine arbor would give us and our little boy when he gets here a place to think in without having to travel, because a gourd-vine arbor would be just perfect for you and me. And they grow quickly. And I with a kitchen knife will — as Simon Dach wrote, "I used to carve my sweetheart into the gourd" — scratch your fairy-tale name in a still-tiny (but soon, with you, to burgeon, Ilsebill) gourd. There in the twining arbor we shall read the papers to see what a mess the world is making of itself: on the Golan Heights, in the Mekong Delta, and now, too, in Chile, where there was a glimmer of hope. Thus camouflaged with gourd leaves and biblically secure, I could commit my lamentations about the rising price of copper and the Yom Kippur War to writing; just as my friend Dach wept aloud in his gourd-vine arbor when Field Marshal Tilly broke all records in the field of Catholic atrocities: "O Magdeburg, shall I keep silent now! Of all thy splendor what remains to show?" If the truth be known, the Thirty Years' War — as seen from a gourd-vine arbor — has never stopped, because a gourd-vine arbor, though — as the prophet Jonah found out — it doesn't amount to much, is nevertheless a fit place from which to see the world as a whole with all its changing horrors. That lovely vale of tears.

No, Ilsebill, no need to travel. We can stay right here and, as soon as I've bought gourd seeds at Kroger's next door and planted them in mid-April as per instructions, bring the whole world into our arbor and think it over thoroughly. The soft facts and the dreams hewn in stone.

Even the past will cast shadows as the plant shoots up, so that, while you are burgeoning along with the gourds, I shall be able to tell you about Awa Wigga Mestwina, with whom, though the gourd was then unknown in our country, I often sat in similar twining arbors: with Awa under giant ferns tied together to form a sunshade (how I counted and re-counted her hundred and eleven dimples), with Wigga under a roof plaited from willow withes (how I had to tell her over and over again about my brief participation in the Gothic migrations). And when I visited my Mestwina in her little kitchen garden, we sat among broad beans whose ten-

drils entwined lasciviously above us. We drank fermented mare's milk with Glumse, and ate flatbread and smoked codfish roe. And Simon Dach lived in much the same way with his friends Albert, Fauljoch, Blum, and Roberthin in the gourd-vine arbor on Pregel Island: "Good Lord, how oft we sat up late eating choice morsels off a plate, drinking and singing. . "

Let's do just that, Ilsebill: eat Wilster Marsh cheese off our knives, wash down the dry rye bread with red Palatinate wine, as night falls and I squeeze a swelling gourd with my right hand and with my left hand your body. Later on I could sing to our little fellow, if it's a boy, "Pray, baby, pray, the Swedes are due today." And never again would I run out on you in the stupid way men have; no, never, because there'll be no more quarreling and no dishwashing problem, but only loving kindness creeping up the latticework. Happiness as fragile as the prophet's gourd, which God — it might also have been the Flounder — caused to be gnawed by a worm. Our happiness, Ilsebill, will last all summer. And the summer after. And every summer: we with the little fellow — he'll soon be walking — happy, at peace, shaded by the past, far from the world, and therefore seeing it as a whole with its horrors and counterhorrors, as friend Dach saw Magdeburg — the defoliated Mekong Delta, the empty shoes in the Sinai desert, the daily terror in Chile; but grateful, because the fragility of the gourd-vine arbor protects us, and because you can safely bear the fruit that is rounding out your belly.

But you don't want to be twined with me, hedged in by me. "You and your shitty idyll!" you say. "You and your fancy subterfuges. Wouldn't it just suit you! To grab me out of the nest like a bird's egg whenever you need me. And expect me to be fascinated by your eternal contemplation of your navel. Have I," you say, "studied like mad so I could live out here in the country with kids and cooking in a gourd-vine arbor, even if it does amuse me once in a while to shake out your pillow? No!" you say. You want to travel. The Lesser Antilles and other travel folders. Visit London and Paris and meet interesting people who have met interesting people in Milan and San Francisco. Discuss the liberation of