Gunter Grass - The Flounder

When Walrabe termed Dorothea's demise conducive to the welfare of the Teutonic Order and therefore a necessity, and offered in hardly veiled language to promote said demise, possibly with Dominican help, the monk Nikolaus managed a show of indignation: No no no! Out of the question! In a pinch Dorothea could be sent on a pilgrimage to Rome, where the Swedish Birgitta had met her death and been promptly canonized. The soil of the Eternal City, drenched as it was with martyrs' blood, and the unhealthy climate both gave ground for hope. And besides, the papal canonization commission tended to be favorably impressed when prospective saints chose Rome as their last dwelling place. Of course it would be necessary to wait for a jubilee year. And as far as the Dominican knew, there mightn't be one for some time.

The commander refused to be put off. Apparently, he remarked, the monk had no objection to being ruled by Polacks. The war, in any case, would not wait. And what if this indestructible Dorothea went to Rome and survived the feverish climate? No, not at all. He didn't suspect the Dominican brothers' loyalty to the Teutonic Order. Not for the moment, at least.

After a long enough pause to conjure up a more favorable view of the commander's project — the tin-jangling bucket makers could be heard again — Abbot Johannes promised to do his utmost. Since, as they all knew, Dorothea desired a hermit's existence and looked upon withdrawal from the world as freedom, it might, he thought, be possible to accommodate her in Marienwerder Cathedral. True, it was not the custom of the country to immure pious hermits and lady penitents, and elsewhere as well the custom was falling more and more into disuse, but with the support of the bishop it would no doubt be possible to make an exception. And once immured, her mortal envelope was bound to dissolve soon enough.

The four dignitaries had hardly finished discussing the possibilities and possible setbacks — What if she's caught practicing witchcraft? — when Dorothea, now properly setting one foot in front of the other on the floor boards, entered carrying the Scania herrings on a platter.

They can be used fresh, salted, smoked, or marinated. They can be boiled, baked, fried, steamed, filleted, boned and stuffed, rolled around gherkins, or placed in oil, vinegar, white wine, and sour cream. Boiled with onions in salt water, they went well with Amanda Woyke's potatoes in their jackets. Sophie Rotzoll laid them on strips of bacon, sprinkled them with bread crumbs, and popped them into the oven. Margarete Rusch, the cooking nun, liked to steam sauerkraut with juniper berries and throw in small, boned Baltic herrings toward the end. Agnes Kurbiella served tender fillets steamed in white wine as diet fare. Lena Stubbe rolled herrings in flour, fried them, and set them before her second husband. But when Dorothea had the four dignitaries at her table, she prepared Scania herrings salted down and shipped in crates from the Danzig trading post in Fal-sterbo-for which reason the crate makers and the sailors of the Scania fleet, though belonging to separate guilds, had joined forces to provide Saint John's with a Lady altar and silver utensils — in accordance with her usual Lenten rules. After carefully washing them in fresh water, she bedded twelve Scania herrings on ashes strewn over the coals, so that without oil, spices, or condiment of any kind, their eyes whitened and they took on the taste of cooked fish. Before setting the herrings down on the platter-side by side, alternating head and tail-she blew the bulk of the ashes off each one, but a silvery-gray film remained, so that no sooner had Dorothea left the room than the four gentlemen could not help asking what kind of wood the Lenten cook had burned to ashes.

After a short prayer, spoken at Johannes's request by Dorothea's Dominican confessor, the four gentlemen hesitated briefly and fell to. All agreed that Scania herring prepared in this way was singularly tasty. Not one of them wished to look more deeply into the origin of the ashes. All four, even the refined Roze, propped their elbows on the table, held their herrings by the head and tail, and ate them — the monk Nikolaus with rotting teeth-off both sides of the backbones, which they then set down in the original order, head beside tail, whereupon each one took his second and then his third herring off the platter. Only Commander Wal-

rabe bit the crispy tips off his herring tails. Abbot Johannes ceded his third herring to the Dominican monk. As long as they were eating, all four were silent, except that the vicar of Saint Mary's muttered something in Latin between the first and second and the second and third herrings.

When at last the twelve backbones lay neatly side by side, the abbot, the commander, the doctor of canon law, and the Dominican returned to their subject. It was decided that on the occasion of the next jubilee — which Pope Boniface was not to proclaim until 1390—Dorothea would be provided with the pilgrim's pence and dispatched to Rome under the escort of Frau Martha Quademosse, a Dominican agent. Then they would wait and see whether the pilgrim survived the rigors of the journey and the unaccustomed climate. Frau Quademosse would send reports.

Dorothea did indeed fall seriously ill when shown the Veil of Veronica, the famous relic preserved at Saint Peter's in Rome, but she recovered miraculously in spite of Frau Quademosse's ministrations and was in the pink of health when, along with other pilgrims, she entered Danzig through Jacob's Gate on the Sunday after the Ascension.

With her aged husband's consent, the four dignitaries had decided that in the event of her returning alive they would announce his death and let it be known that the child Gertrud had been entrusted to the care of the Benedictine nuns in Culm. The house on Bucket Makers' Court had belonged to the Dominicans since Dorothea's pilgrimage, and the indebted swordmaker had to pay rent to the monks.

This, too, was done. Pronounced dead (an empty coffin was buried in the graveyard of Saint Catherine's), swordmaker Slichting was glad to be relieved of his debts and free at last from the cross of his marriage. Three days before Dorothea, surrounded by the throng of pilgrims announced by Frau Quademosse, paid her first visit to the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary, father and daughter moved secretly, with the help of the Dominicans, to Konitz, where Slichting joined the guild under another name and, since a war was on, became a wealthy man again, married Gertrud to a swordmaker, and lived to a ripe old age, old enough to take cognizance of the fulfillment of Dorothea's prediction that the Teutonic Knights would be defeated at Tannenberg.

Once the preparations decided on at table were complete, Abbot Johannes declared that he was now prepared to have the widowed Dorothea immured under her maiden name of Swarze in Marienwerder Cathedral.

This was done, after some delay (resulting perhaps from Polish intrigues) in obtaining the bishop's consent. In a solemn ceremony, the pious penitent was removed from the world on May 2, 1393, in the presence of the four forward-thinking dignitaries, and lodged under the southern staircase, which led to the choir loft. Each brick was blessed. The wool of the divine lamb was mixed into the mortar. At last Dorothea had won her freedom. Only one small opening remained, through which she could breathe, receive small amounts of Lenten fare, pass out her meager feces, follow the Mass in the cathedral, take daily Communion, and confess her holy progress to Johannes Marienwerder, who proceeded to write her life story in Church Latin; but there was no possibility of publishing it until 1492, when it was printed by Jakob Karweysse, Danzig's first book printer.

The four dignitaries also swore over the platter where the backbones of twelve Scania herrings lay alternating head and tail in their original order, that in case Dorothea Swarze, known as Dorothea of Montau, should be immured, they would institute canonization proceedings immediately after her death — they gave her six months.