Gunter Grass - The Flounder

"Yes, defendant Flounder, you win. All the facts are on your side. In addition to Slichting, the appeaser trained by you, there was the provocateur Skriever, who, come to think of it, seems to have been friends with Slichting. The proletariat of the Middle Ages fell for your smooth talk. The time wasn't ripe yet. And your argument, which I can already hear coming—'the time is never ripe, not even today'—is irrefutable. If we look from the medieval uprising of the artisans against the patrician order to the uprising of the Polish shipyard workers against bureaucratic Communism, we cannot help seeing that then as now the time is always unripe. And yet, defendant Flounder, you're wrong. I won't say that the ludicrous gains achieved then and now — the council's decision not to import beer from Wismar, the rescinding of the rise in the prices of staple foods — refute your reactionary pessimism; no, what sweeps away your stupid facts is the proletarian principle of hope. Hope clears away the rubble from history. Hope frees the road we call progress from time-conditioned encumbrances. Hope springs eternal. For it alone is real."

These evergreen words were not red enough for the audience. Giggles were barely repressed. Someone called out,

"Amen!" And if the Flounder had had shoulders, he would have shrugged them. As it was, he only said, "A respectable, ethically tenable view. You'll find similar ideas in Augustine and Bloch, both of whom I highly respect. You remind me, dear prosecutor, most charmingly of the High Gothic Dorothea of Montau. She, too, never ceased to hope for freedom, until at last, immured in her cell, removed from the world and its contradictions, she found freedom as she saw it."

Tumult in the movie house. Catcalls addressed more to Sieglinde Huntscha than to the cynical flatfish. Ms. Schonherr cast glances of ur-motherly appeasement. She said: "An interesting argument. It's true. What would become of us women if hope did not sustain us. But perhaps we should ask the Flounder to tell us why Dorothea Slichting, nee Swarze, found freedom only in a cell removed from the world. Can it be that the patriarchal invention of marriage offered women no freedom? And when the Flounder recommended marriage, was he not aiming precisely at such deprivation of freedom? Was it not the Flounder who drove poor Dorothea into the one area of freedom that was open to her, namely, religious madness? Later on, men tried to make a saint of her, but for this there were purely practical reasons; it so happened — to mention the other form of freedom then available to women — that it would have been impolitic to burn her at the stake. The Flounder's main guilt had nothing to do with his part in that preposterous uprising of brewers and coopers; your principal crime, defendant Flounder, consists in what you did to our sister Dorothea. Since Dorothea men have tried either to canonize women's desire for freedom or to laugh it off as typically womanish foolishness. Before sentence is pronounced, does the defendant wish to reply?"

The Flounder abstained. The atmosphere in the movie house recovered its bounce. Only Sieglinde Huntscha seemed downcast. How listlessly she rebutted the arguments of Ms. von Carnow, the court-appointed defense council.

Before the judges had finished deliberating, the Flounder began to wobble, and it wasn't long before he turned over and was floating moribundly belly up. When the court pronounced him guilty of helping to enslave women by promoting the institution of marriage, of ruining the life of Dorothea of Montau, and of urging her immurement and

canonization for the sole purpose of providing the Teutonic Knights with a propaganda pinup in their war against Poland, the Flounder maintained his protest posture and gave no sign of concern.

I waited for Sieglinde outside the former movie house. I felt sorry for her. Or, rather, I wanted something. To tell the truth, my sympathy was real, but I also wanted to exploit it. "Join me for a beer?" Sieglinde joined me.

No, Ilsebill, I am not "talking like a typical male again." She could have said no. But she needed my sympathy, and she also knew that I wanted something.

We went to the Bundeseck cafe and had a few beers and a few schnappses. Not a word about Dorothea. First we talked at random of current events. Then we went back to the early days of our acquaintance. We've known each other quite a while. When I first met her, I was engaged to Sibylle Miehlau. And Siggie — as Sieglinde called herself in the early sixties-had hot pants for Billy, as Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie called Sibylle. They all had a thing about lesbianism, and they shook me off. The whole thing ended tragically with Billy's death. On Father's Day, '63.

So over beer and schnapps we talked of the old days. We could see them in perspective now. "We had no political ideas. Only a suspicion that things could be done differently. We tried desperately. Today I know better. I'm still in touch with Frankie and Maxie. But it's not the same. We've grown apart. Frankie still reels off her Stalinist slogans. Maxie used to be a Sponti; now she's on an anarchist trip. And me? That kind of childishness makes me sick. When, pretty much by accident, the three of us caught the Flounder last summer, we were still all right together. It was then that things got difficult. The Tribunal came between us. Frankie didn't see how I could cooperate with a liberal like Schonherr. If you ask me, she's been doing all right so far. At least she keeps things moving. And the way she came to my rescue just now when the Flounder was putting me down was tops. The way she swept that whole shitty artisans' uprising aside and brought Dorothea back into the picture. Yes, she's married. Three children. Even said to be happy. But what about you?

What are you up to? So I've heard. A big blonde? Always looks kind of frantic? Yes, I think I know her. Well, let's hope your Ilsebill can put you in your place."

We drank a few more beers and schnappses. To Sieg-linde's question "What are you working on now?" I replied very cautiously: "This Tribunal interests me. The whole subject interests me, not only as a writer, but as a man as well. Makes me feel somehow guilty. Comes in handy in a way. At first I was only going to write about my nine or eleven cooks, some kind of a history of human foodstuffs— from manna grass to millet to the potato. But then the Flounder provided a counterweight. He and his trial. Too bad they turned me down as a witness. The ladies disposed of my experience with Awa, Wigga, Mestwina, and Dorothea as ridiculous, if it wasn't pure fiction. You just turned me down flat. So what can I do but write write write as usual?"

She seemed to have stopped listening. She sat hunched over, smoking as if it were required, and slipping more and more into the cell of solitude, which Dorothea was seeking when as a child she spent her days in hollow willow trees, and which still helps Ilsebill to make, express, and carry out wild decisions in no time at all. Anyway, speaking out of her solitude after a last swallow of beer, Sieglinde suddenly said, "Come on. Let's go to bed."

Sieglinde lives on Mommsenstrasse. Two hours later we took a cab to Steglitz after what I wanted of her—"You've got the key to the movie house. I want a word with the Flounder" — had popped outTin two sentences. She can't have been very much surprised. "I thought there'd be a little something else. One last fart, kind of." She had no objection and called the cab. No, Ilsebill, she wasn't pissed off or disappointed.

I'd expected it to be much more complicated. An alarm system, a room like a safe-deposit vault. But with two common keys Sieglinde unlocked the doors and locked them again behind us. Then she sat down in the former ticket office and said, "I'll wait here till you're through. Got two mark pieces? I'm running out of butts."