Gunter Grass - The Flounder

the sexes are being discussed.

Finish I Let me finish.

You've had your say.

You've been talking for centuries.

We'll simply cut off your sound.

You've got no words.

You aren't even funny.

Libber, Libber! the children call

as the fairy-tale Ilsebill passes.

She has smashed what is dear and precious.

With a dull ax she has

destroyed our bit of one-and-only.

She wants to be independent, entirely on her own,

no more joint bank account.

And yet there used to be a we — you and I,

with a double Yes in our glance.

A shadow in which, exhausted,

we were many-limbed, yet one sleep,

and on a photograph true to each other.

Hate forms sentences. How she settles accounts, does me in, grows out of her role, towers above me, and has the last word! Finish! Let me finish! And stop talking about Us and We.

Libber, Libber! said the signs incised on clay tablets,

Minoan finds (Knossos, first palace period)

which for long years were undeciphered,

mistaken for household accounts

or fertility formulas,

matriarchal trivia.

But from the very first (long before Ilsebill) the goddess was agitating.

Whether I rub against Ilsebill until she is pregnant, or meet Sieglinde Huntscha after a trying day in court — once again the Flounder has been floating belly up in protest — for a beer and so on, or whether with the help of my portable typewriter I finally liberate myself from Dorothea, it is always the same type that makes me weak and fluttery, that I fall for, that reduces me to strictly nothing.

The other day, while the Women's Tribunal was discussing my questionable behavior in connection with the uprising of the guilds against the patricians, I took out a soft pencil and drew in my sketchbook pictures of the prosecutor, first in profile while she was accusing the Flounder of having stood foursquare behind the hegemony of the patricians, then in three-quarter view, and finally fullface, in order to provide myself with a portrait of Dorothea. But all my sketches insisted on looking like Ilsebill: always that terrifying narrow

face, dominant and ineradicable, as though their fathers, instead of being an Island peasant, an engineer, and (like Gerhard Huntscha, who was killed in North Africa) a career officer, had all been diabolical he-goats from Ashmodai's stable.

And if among the associate judges of the Tribunal I recognized my morose Wigga in Ms. Helga Paasch, and in the always crocked Ruth Simoneit my mare's-milk-guzzling Mestwina, then I can also be certain that the prosecution not only is being represented by Sieglinde Huntscha (and by you, Ilsebill), but is in addition giving my Dorothea certain advantages, which to be sure are counterbalanced by the eminently fair presiding judge, Ms. Schonherr. A mother figure with no smell of the stable about her. She who with few gestures transforms a madhouse, as the movie theater often becomes, into the best behaved of kindergartens reminds me time and again of my primal mother, Awa. In any event, she admonished the prosecution when Sieglinde Huntscha accused the Flounder of "playing the lackey to the ruling class of the moment."

The prosecutor was of the opinion that the Flounder had made use of me, Albrecht Slichting the irresolute sword-maker, to sow discord in the ranks of the guilds after they had resolved to fight the patricians. According to her, it was I who at the Flounder's suggestion had termed the grievance about the importation of beer from Wismar a problem that could bother only the city brewers and, in a pinch, the coopers' guild.

Sieglinde Huntscha spoke as if she had been there. In her version, swordmaker Slichting, shaken by the Flounder, had declared: "Of course I can't speak for the anchor makers, bucket makers, pitcher makers, and blacksmiths, but I find myself in duty bound to tell you that at their guild meetings, and those of the Scania mariners as well, I discerned no great eagerness to oblige the rich brewers, who are selling plenty of their black beer despite the competition from Wismar, by marching on the Rathaus with crowbars and sledge hammers. And as for the political demand for an equal voice in the decisions of the seated council, the general council, and the nine-man court of aldermen, you make me laugh. Trust a man who has traveled widely — such an arrangement exists

nowhere. Would a tailor, for instance, claim to be a master of the diplomacy needed to defend the city's interests at the Hanseatic Council in Liibeck? And who will stand up more boldly to the Teutonic Knights, to that old fox Kniprode, for instance? Will it be the patrician Gottschalk Nase, who has been traveling from Bruges to Novgorod for years on the city's business, or Tile Schulte the butcher, who is incapable of even writing his name, let alone of defending the Danzig trading post in Falsterbo and the rights of the Scania mariners with sign and seal? Why, all this agitation is only a trick of the rich coopers, who are trying to worm their way into the city council. With the help of the guilds, of course. But once they're elected, you'll see them striding through Koggen Gate more arrogantly than the patricians. My advice, in short, is to keep out of it. The charter granted in accordance with Culm law has proved satisfactory. Rebellion won't get us anything but harsher tyranny."

The prosecutor called it a "triumph of the medieval proletariat" that the uprising had nevertheless taken place, even though it was led by a profligate patrician, the wood carver Ludwig Skriever.

"Poor, deluded proletariat," the Flounder scoffed. "No, dear ladies, my protege, the not only honest but also experienced swordmaker Slichting, was right in eschewing acts of violence. I was not the only one to confirm him in his misgivings; his wife, Dorothea, who knew nothing of politics but made up for it in instinctive wisdom, gave him the same advice. 'Don't follow like a dumb sheep.' That's what she said. And consider what happened: Barrels of Wismar beer were emptied into the street. Ludwig Skriever, motivated by thoughts of private vengeance — the patrician Gottschalk Nase had termed Skriever's daughter a 'poor match' for his son because her dowry seemed insufficient — tried to incite the rebellious guildsmen to murder the town councilors and aldermen. And the patricians, who had the bargemen and carters with them, counterattacked. Even before Tile Schulte and six other ringleaders, including a miller's helper from the Old City, were executed, wood carver Skriever decamped. Long prison sentences were meted out. But the council wisely voted against importing Wismar beer. Whereupon the journeymen brewers presented Saint Mary's with a side altar and

some silver liturgical vessels. And everything was hunky-dory. I'm sorry. Especially for our prosecutor's sake. Because to tell you the truth, the patrician order was vitiated by nepotism. A little new blood would have helped, a few representatives of the guilds — in the court of aldermen, for instance."

Sieglinde Huntscha sat as though sealed up. Sickened by so much half-truth. Only intense concentration could offer resistance to so-called reality and its stinking facts. That is how it was when a gray veil cloaked Dorothea's eyes; and that's how it is when Ilsebill, whose gaze is normally greenish, suddenly, as soon as reality makes its petty demands, exchanges her optical organs for glass eyes. At such times she says, "I'm afraid I don't see it that way. Just count me out." And as for Dorothea, whenever I mentioned the enshamble-ment of our household, her eyes looked far into the distance and her speech reduced itself to verses rhyming "Jesu dere" with "joy ant fere." And Sieglinde Huntscha spoke in rebuttal as softly and tonelessly as if she had wanted to prove that the art of speaking with sealed lips was still an art.