Gunter Grass - The Flounder

That I am quite prepared to believe, for I am still Catholic enough to tremble at the power of the True Church to suspend time. I know that faith, however darkly it may err, outshines the pathetic lamp of reason. And yet I take the liberty of putting a different, more earthly interpretation on the impending canonization not only of your, but also of my Dorothea: Dorothea was the first woman (in our region) to rebel against the patriarchal tyranny of medieval marriage. Soon after her father's death, her eldest brother, without consulting her (she was then sixteen), married her to an elderly man (me). What did I do? I made the frail child one brat after the other, dragged my expensively dressed Dorothea to boring guild dinners, showed her what a coward I was through my half-hearted participation in a ridiculous artisans' uprising (what did I care about the interests of the brewers or coopers?), and beat her with my hard swordmaker's hand or — as on the return journey from Einsiedeln — threw stones at her because I hated her and her witching ideas of freedom.

Because that was all she wanted — to be set free. Free

from the prison of marriage. Free from sexual duty. Free from domestic trivia. Free for what?

You, my dear Herr Stachnik, will say: Free for God! Free for the love of God! But when the case of Dorothea of Mon-tau was debated before the Women's Tribunal in Berlin — you must have read about it in the papers — the presiding judge said: "Dorothea Swarze wanted freedom for herself. Religion and Jesus were only a means, the one permissible agency through which to press her demand for emancipation and escape the all-engulfing power of men. Since she had no other choice than to be burned as a witch or immured as a saint, she decided — for the sake of her freedom — to serve a halfway credible legend up to the dean of Marienwerder Cathedral. A case typical of the Middle Ages, but not without relevance to the present day. We women of today have every reason to look upon Dorothea Swarze as a precursor. Her attempt at self-liberation — bound as it was to end tragically — obliges us to take a sisterly view of her affliction, to evaluate her Godforsaken! — yes, Godforsaken! — failure as a call addressed to us, and to hold her name in honor."

I feel sure, my dear Monsignor Stachnik, that if all this feminist gush calls forth any reaction in you, it will be the stoical smile of the Latinist. And yet I beg you to consider my compromise proposal, halfway between the Catholic and the feminist positions.

I will never again — though I could furnish proof — call Dorothea a witch; you for your part will stop harping— though she had the makings of a saint — on her impending canonization. We both agree that Dorothea Swarze was an unfortunate woman who suffered under the servitudes of her times — more foolish than clever, tormented by insomnia and migraine, a slovenly housekeeper, yet remarkably efficient when it came to organizing processions of flagellants, a woman of gaunt beauty and ruthlessly strong will, despite her hours of convulsive ecstasy unable to think up appealing miracles, endowed with a slight lyrical gift, sluggish in bed but energetic with the scourge, a good walker, hence adept at pilgrimages, cheerful only in the company of wandering penitents and other nuts, rich in extravagant desires, but practical and innovative in devising her ego-related Lenten

cookery: it was really good! Ah, her manna grits with sorrel! Ah, her Scania herring! Ah, her dried peas! Ah, her codfish roe on buckwheat cakes! Ah, her Glumse with herbs!

You have no doubt noticed, my dear Herr Stachnik, that like you (though without heavenly reward) I, too, loved Dorothea. But she kissed the Flounder, a matter on which her biographer, Johannes Manenwerder, wasted not so much as a word. To be sure, after that kiss (and her fornication with the fish, to be sure) her mouth slipped out of shape, but even crooked of mouth and slanting of eye she was still beautiful. The mass of her hair. Her scourged and bleeding flesh. I even liked her rhymes, her "herte" and "smerte." * And her habit of stirring ashes into all her soups. And she could really hover two feet above the ground — I saw her do it several times (and not only out of doors in the fog).

My Ilsebill, who sends you her regards, doesn't believe all this. Every day she cries out, "You with your historical excuses and your stories that are all lies!" Ilsebill only believes what she reads in the paper. You and I, however, know that stories can't help being true, but never twice in the same way. As my Latin teacher, you were a failure, but you infected me for good with the Dorothean poison. And so I write to you, in esteem and bitter doubt. After all, neither of us knows what Dorothea wanted. .

Or frozen jubilation

that I've collected, collected to look at.

The glasses on my shelf

like side light; all are not Bohemian.

Two each day are special.

So much love, ready for the dustbin.

Breath from afar, that hasn't shattered. Thus, nameless, survive

air and its surplus value:

glass blowers, we read, did not grow old.

• Smerte: "pain," "sorrow." — trans.

When the Women's Tribunal met for the first time, four working women rolled the Flounder into the courtroom in a flat, roughly five-by-seven-foot tub. He was illumined by an overhead light. It was the kind of tub that might just as well have kept carp alive from Christmas to New Year's Day. While the bill of indictment was being read, the Flounder lay motionless on the bottom of the tub, as though the accusation — that he had served the male cause in an advisory capacity since the late Neolithic, well knowing that his advice redounded to the detriment of the female sex — did not concern him. It was not until Ms. Ursula Schonherr, the presiding judge, asked him if he wished to comment on the indictment that his voice was heard over the loudspeaker, and then only to say that he would say nothing as long as he was obliged to lie in Baltic Sea water, which, in addition to being disgustingly stale, was polluted with mercury. Ignoring his court-appointed counsel, the Flounder declared, "This borders on the only-too-notorious methods of torture practiced by the modern system of class justice, which it is

incumbent on all, including the feminist movement, to combat. And moreover," he added, "this overhead light is an instrument of discrimination; I demand that it be switched off immediately."

The court was obliged to adjourn. From then on canisters of fresh North Sea water were flown in daily via British Airways. The changes of water were supervised by Beate Hagedorn, one of the associate judges, who was employed as a marine biologist by the aquarium of the Berlin Zoo.

No longer illumined from above, the Flounder became cooperative. But before the court had finished debating the neolithic phase of the legendary fish and the three breasts of the reigning goddess Awa, the defendant in his zinc tub lodged a new protest — accustomed as he was to lying flat, he declared the zinc floor of his tub to be prejudicial to his health and well-being. It so happened that his soft and sensitive underside was allergic to zinc. How, under these circumstances, could he be expected to concentrate on the proceedings? Water was not his only element. He needed sand to bed himself in, and specifically, Baltic Sea sand. "That and no other," he concluded. "Until I am provided with an environment compatible with my needs, I cannot cooperate in this otherwise epoch-making trial. I regard the conditions of my detention as unacceptable. Is this a fascist court martial?"

Another adjournment. Baltic Sea sand was flown in. But during the next phase of the trial, from the Bronze and Iron Ages down to the advent of Christianity — the Wigga and Mestwina cases — the defendant had a further complaint: he was sick of being fed dried flies and prepared fish food like a goldfish, and "How do I know that I'm not being shamefully and criminally drugged? I need fresh food. If this is beyond the powers of our esteemed marine biologist, why not enlist the help of the fishery school in Cuxhaven or Kiel?" And he wound up, "I am asking no more than my rights."