Gunter Grass - The Flounder

I gave her a pack of Lord Extra Longs, said, "See you

later," and stepped into the dark hall, which did not smell of males. Only two red emergency lights to the left and right of the tub showed where the Flounder was spending his night. I groped my way forward as one does at the movies when the film has already started.

"Flounder," I said. "Maybe you remember. It's me. Me again. I caught you on a partly cloudy neolithic day. Oddly enough, in an eel trap. We made a pact: I set you free, and you promised to advise me, to help men out of their dependency, to serve the male cause and only the male cause. I'm sorry they've haled you before this preposterous Tribunal on that account. Unfortunately the girls wouldn't admit me as a witness. I'd have spoken in your favor. I'd be willing any time to argue for the historic necessity of your contradictory existence. If there is a Weltgeist, it's you. Great, the way you told those females off again today. The prosecutor was speechless. And take it from me, it's really something to stop the mouth of Sieglinde Huntscha. But that's just the type I keep falling for. Like that rotten bitch Dorothea some centuries ago. Right now a certain Ilsebill is doing me in. The stupid piece. Never satisfied. Always wanting something. That fight the other day about the dishwasher. And now she wants a second apartment in town. And what she has she doesn't want. And what she gets she doesn't like. Sure, but we both wanted her to be pregnant, we both wanted a child together, a quick-growing gourd-vine arbor. But I haven't come here to weep on your shoulder. I admit that you warned me and I fell in love with the witch from Montau all the same. Because she attracts me with her indolent, seemingly untapped vitality. I mean my present Ilsebill. You know how restless I am. How I need a pole to revolve around. A stationary pole. But she wants to move around, too. It won't do! Same with Dorothea, never gave us a moment's peace. Always pilgrimages. What was there for me to do in Aachen or a Swiss dump like Einsiedeln! Same with Ilsebill — always wanting to go places. The Lesser Antilles! 'Can't you be pious right here?' I'd say to Dorothea. Oh no. They all want to be free and independent. Or, like Dorothea, belong to no one but their sweet Jesus. As if there were such a thing as independence. I, at all events, have always had to slave for other people.

The dear kiddies, for instance. It wears a man out. Uses him up. Flounder, I'm done for. Somewhere along the way we must have done something wrong. The women are getting so aggressive. Dorothea was already that way. And when Ilsebill lifts her voice to a heroic pitch, it literally makes me sick. Gives me the gollywobbles. Say something, Flounder! Look, I'm writing a book about you, for you. Or aren't we friends, aren't I allowed to call you Father any more?"

Of course I'd meant to be a lot calmer and more collected in addressing the legendary flatfish. But I was carried away, because the pressure had been mounting of late, no, for centuries, ever since my first marriage, to Dorothea Swarze. Even when I managed to evade marriage, the pressure had mounted from woman to woman. It had to come out some time.

The two red lights to the right and left of the zinc tub sufficed to show me that the Flounder had completely buried himself in the sea sand. Only his crooked mouth and slanting eyes were uncovered. Oh, how he had used to jump — I had only to call — up onto the palms of my hands! And oh, how he had spoken, advised, commanded, lectured, instructed me, what sermons he had preached to me: Do this, don't stand for that, listen to me, watch your step, don't pin yourself down, make them give you that in writing. Your profit, your privilege, your manly duty — you must continue to find them all in the male cause. .

Slowly the movie house with its challenging smell grew into an empty speech-balloon. I was on the point of leaving, no, taking flight. Then spake the Flounder.

Without modifying his position of repose in his bed of sand, he moved his crooked mouth. "I can't help you, my son. I can't even offer you mild regrets. You have misused all the power I gave you. Instead of turning the rights bestowed upon you to caring, charitable use, you have let hegemony degenerate into repression and power become an end in itself. For centuries I did my best to hush up your defeats, to interpret your wretched failure as progress, to hide your now obvious ruin behind big buildings, drown it out with symphonies, beautify it in panel paintings on a golden background, or talk it away in books, sometimes humorously,

sometimes elegiacally, and sometimes, as a last resort, only intelligently. To prop up your superstructure I have even, in my desire to be helpful, invented gods, from Zeus to Marx. Even in the modern age — which for me is only a second in world history — I am obliged, as long as this all in all entertaining Tribunal goes on, to season your masterful absurdities with wit and squeeze some meaning out of your bankruptcy. That is hard work, my son. Even for the much-invoked Weltgeist, there's not much fun in it. On the other hand, I'm coming more and more to like these ladies who are judging me. It never bores me to listen to Ms. Huntscha, my esteemed prosecutor. In retrospect I recognize — acknowledging my error in this point — Dorothea's solitary greatness. Ah, how she cried, "Flunder, cum oute, ich wol kisse thy snoute." What could she do but get rid of you? What but religious exaltation could have raised her above the monotony of marriage? Another baby, and still another! And what you tell me about your Ilsebill, how she puts you down and shakes you up, I like it, yes, I like it. She's amazing. All that untapped will to power — it gives me food for thought. Give her my regards. No, my erring son, you can't expect any comfort from me. Your account is overdrawn. Slowly, a little late perhaps, I have discovered my daughters."

I sat there for another short while. I probably said something; confessions, promises to reform, the usual male self-pity. But not another word out of the Flounder. He seemed — if that is possible — to be asleep. Groping like someone who walks out in the middle of a film, I left the former movie house and its smell.

Sieglinde said, "At last! Finished shooting the shit? He's a shrewd article, all right. But I'll put him down yet."

I revealed nothing but called the attention of my friend Siggie (honestly, Ilsebill, it's not a relationship to be taken seriously) to the absence of security measures. "There's every reason for your Tribunal to go on. You haven't half exhausted the case of Dorothea of Montau. But what will you do if somebody walks off with the Flounder?"

As she was double-locking the former movie house from outside, Sieglinde promised to do something about it. "You men think of everything," she said.

A woman who strokes her hair

or leafs quickly through her loves

and can't remember.

She'd like to be a redhead for a while

or slightly dead or play a minor part

in some other film.

Now she disintegrates into fabrics and cutouts.

A woman's leg taken by itself.

She doesn't want to be — but to be made — happy.

She wants to know what he's thinking now.

And she wants to cut the other woman,

if there is one, right out of the film: snippety-snip.

The action proceeds: body damage, rain,

suspicion in the trunk.

Weekends leave imprints of men's shorts.

Hairy — hairless. Limbs limbs limbs.

A slap in the face promises something that later sounds real.

Now she wants to get dressed again, but first be born out of foam and stop smelling outlandish. Skinny from eating too much yogurt, Ilsebill weeps in the shower.