Gunter Grass - The Flounder

This, too, was done. But the immured woman lasted longer than expected. She died on June 25, 1394. Whereupon her cell, after numerous believers in miracles had looked in through the opening and gazed for a moment at the corpse stretched out on the floor, was sealed up tight. True enough, canonization proceedings were initiated without further delay, and Grand Master von Jungingen of the Teutonic Order communicated his special interest in a Prussian saint to the canonization commission. But unfortunately the disorders attendant on the Great Schism obliged the postulator to transfer the file to Bologna for safekeeping, and there it was lost. So nothing came of the proceedings. The Teutonic Knights didn't get their saint. And if, on the basis of the sparse evidence now available, the canonization proceedings resumed in 1955 should be carried to a successful conclusion, I doubt if anyone will derive real pleasure from this late tri-

umph of Catholic infallibility except my onetime Latin teacher, Monsignor Stachnik, who has always taken a pious interest in Dorothea.

The four dignitaries soon left the swordmaker's house. No more work sounds rose up from Bucket Makers' Court. Now the swift-flowing Radaune could be heard. A Baltic twilight was falling. The four were of good cheer, for they felt sure that their manly good sense had led them to plan wisely. Roze expressed his conviction that the canonization of Dorothea would swell the collections for additions to Saint Mary's. Only Commander Walrabe von Scharfenberg expressed concern lest with Satan's help this woman, who might be a witch after all, live longer in her immurement than they had so carefully planned.

When on their way out the four dignitaries cast a last glance into the smoky kitchen, they saw the child Gertrud playing with moldy graveyard wood. Old Slichting sat by the fire as though forgotten. Dorothea was kneeling as usual on dried peas, which she was planning to cook, thus softened, the next day. They heard her praying:

"What blissful pain thy spere Doth giv me, Jesus dere…"

Dinner is getting cold.

I'm not punctual any more.

No "Hello, here I am!" pushes the accustomed door.

Trying to approach you indirectly,

I've gone astray — up trees, down mushroomy slopes,

into remote word fields, garbage dumps.

Don't wait. You'll have to look.

I could keep warm in rot.

My hiding places have three exits.

I am more real in my stories

and in October, our birthday time,

when the sunflowers stand beheaded.

Since we are unable to live

today's day and the bit of night

I offer you centuries,

the fourteenth, for instance.

We are pilgrims on our way to Aachen,

feeding on pilgrim's pence.

We've left the plague at home.

This on the Flounder's advice. In flight again. But once — I remember-in the middle of a story that was headed for some entirely different place, across the ice to Lithuania, you found me with you: you, too, a hiding place.

One who remembers Dorothea and sets out to record her Lenten soups, or even to oppose a diabolical or High Gothic antitype to the sublimity of the (still-uncanonized) saint, is bound to come up against your more pious than secure erudition, can be certain of your criticism, and will have to reckon with your Catholic indignation; for you have appropriated Dorothea, every bit of her.

When you were still (with small success) my Latin teacher and I a dull-witted Hitler Youth, you were already specializing in Dorothea of Montau and the fourteenth century, although the times (the war years) offered small opportunity for escapism. After all, you had been the local chairman of the Center Party (until it was prohibited in 1937) and its deputy in the Danzig Volkstag. As a tacit opponent of National Socialism, you had to be careful. And yet Nazi persecution followed you even to our musty schoolroom, though it hardly made a dent in the thick heads of your students.

With your Latin rigor you remained a stranger to us students, a freak who — let Stalingrad fall or Tobruk be lost— didn't really care about anything but grammar. Only when you indulged in a bit of naive Catholicism, only when you spoke (with discernible affection) of the blessed Dorothea and her impending canonization, were you able to win my heart

and stir my imagination; at the age of thirteen, in any case, I had a crush on a little girl who must have resembled Dorothea — I remember blue veins in white temples. Of course I had no tangible success. She had black hair. But you and I are certain that Dorothea of Montau's hair was the color of wheat. Maybe we also agree that her beauty had no use value. And I join you in the belief that she was unfit for marriage, though you insist in your writings that Dorothea tried to be a good housekeeper and wife to swordmaker Al-brecht Slichting. (You point out, for example, that she often washed the dishes when unable to sleep at night.)

In your last letter you write, "If I have come out strongly for our home saint, the patron saint of Prussia, and am still working in her behalf, it is because, as I am sure you recognize, Dorothea was an extraordinary creature. I regard her as intellectually, morally, and spiritually the most outstanding woman of Prussia during the period of the Teutonic Knights." Here I cannot follow you, for while I agree that Dorothea was extraordinary, I can find no trace of saintliness in her makeup.

In your letter you refer to testimonies presented to the canonization commission of the time. You cite Jungingen and other such ruffians from among the Teutonic Knights, build your case in part on Dorothea's biographer, Johannes Marienwerder, and recommend the study of his great trilogy, Vita venerabilis dominae Dorotheae. But it is not only my scant knowledge of Latin that turns me away from the onetime Prague professor of theology and later dean of Marienwerder Cathedral. Johannes was too deeply involved, too intent on producing a saint for the Teutonic Order. I prefer to rely — since I, like you, my dear Herr Stachnik, am at home in imaginary worlds — on my personal memories, on my own painful experience with Dorothea, for before, during, and after the Black Death, I was the swordmaker Albrecht, eight out of nine of whose children died, whose bit of hard-earned prosperity was dissipated by Dorothea's openhandedness at church doors, who was the laughingstock of the gold- and coppersmiths, of whom, in short, she (the pious bitch) made a fool. Oh, if I had only consented to a separation in Ein-siedeln, when she wanted to throw me and her last child overboard like ballast.

Perhaps you will argue: what do my domestic troubles and years of sexual privation (because she stopped doing it, she wouldn't let me in) amount to, measured against Dorothea's ecstasies and illuminations; how insignificant was my squandered fortune weighed against what Dorothea gained each day by pleasing God with her (bloody) flagellation; what did the loss of eight children (at a time of high infant mortality) signify if through the Lord Jesus (with whom she communed daily) she became a true child of God; and how could I think of demanding retribution for earthly trouble now that after almost five hundred years' patience the heavenly reward was at last on the point of being paid out — any day nowl

If you look at it that way, you are right — my High Gothic family-man troubles shrink to nothingness in the light of your joyful expectation. Triumphantly you write, "As the relator general of the canonization commission recently informed me, the 'Confirmatio cultus Dorotheae Montoviesis, Beatae vel Sanctae nuncupatae' will probably be announced before the year is out in an apostolic brief, so bringing the canonization proceedings to a successful conclusion."