Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Mother Margarete Rusch boiled up a (tough, year-old) pheasant with lentils to make him a Polish-style soup.

With a bagful I walked without fear. Since me, birthrights have been available. Paid off, I live by lentil law. My little brother has a tough time of it.

First built in 1346 as a bastion to the High Gate and subsequently enlarged as the need for prison cells, torture chambers, and business premises increased, the Stockturm, whose dungeon keeps were reputed to be dry, was rebuilt in 1509, when city architects Hetzel and Enkinger added two stories and capped the tower. Thereafter it stood empty and unused until King Sigismund of Poland, responding in April 1526 to the call of Mayor Eberhard Ferber, occupied the city, posted Counter Reformation statutes in the seven principal churches, and haled all the leaders of the uprising against the patrician council, except for the fugitive preacher Hegge, before a court of aldermen, which sentenced the six ringleaders to death by beheading, including the blacksmith Peter Rusch, whose daughter had recently been appointed abbess of Saint Bridget's — an imposing woman of controversial reputation who flattered the taste of all parties with her conventual cookery, took her cut on every transaction, and even in times of general ruin (war, plague, and famine) made a profit.

And because Mother Rusch was not without influence, she was able to obtain, if not her father's pardon, at least the right to cook one last meal for him. Highly placed persons accepted her invitation. Mayor Ferber, deposed and banished to his starosty in Dirschau by the rebellious guilds but now restored to office, and Abbot Jeschke of the Oliva Monastery repaired to the Stockturm in fur-trimmed bra-bant, quite willing to join blacksmith Rusch in spooning up his favorite dish. Executioner Ladewig was also invited, and came. The cooking abbess had put her full kettle on the hearth the night before in the kitchen of the executioner (and knacker), and the smell penetrated to every last dungeon of the now fully occupied Stockturm.

Who will join me in a dish of tripe? It soothes, appeases the anger of the outraged, stills the fear of death, and reminds us of tripe eaten in former days, when there was

always a half-filled pot of it on the stove. A chunk of the fat paunch and the limp, honeycombed walls of the second stomach — four pounds for three fifty. It's the widespread distaste for innards that makes beef heart and pork kidneys, calf's lung and tripe cheap.

She took her time. She pounded the pieces and brushed them inside and out, as though some beggar's sweaty rags had found their way to her washboard. She removed the wrinkled skin, but she spared the belly fat, for tripe fat has a special quality — instead of hardening into tallow, it dissolves like soap.

When a last meal was prepared for blacksmith Rusch and his guests, seven quarts of water seasoned with salt, caraway seed, cloves, ginger root, bay leaf, and coarsely pounded peppercorns were set over an open fire. The limp pieces, cut into finger-long strips, were added until the pot was full, and when the water came to a boil the scum was skimmed off. Then the daughter covered her father's favorite dish and let it boil for four hours. At the end she added garlic, freshly grated nutmeg, and more pepper.

The time it takes. Those are the best hours. When the tough has to be made tender, but can't be hurried. How often Mother Rusch and I, while the billowing tripe kept the kitchen stable-warm, sat at the table pushing checkers over the board, discovering the sea route to India, or catching flies on the smooth-polished table top, and telling each other about the tripe of olden times, when we were Pomor-shian and still heathen. And about older than olden times, when elk cows were the only source of meat.

Later on, after the daughter had cooked her father's last dish of tripe, she cooked for rich coopers at guild banquets, for Hanseatic merchants who cared about nothing but Ore-sund tolls, for fat abbots and King Stephen Batory, who wanted his tripe sour and Polish. Still later Amanda Woyke, in her farm kitchen, cooked up tripe with turnips and potatoes into a soup that she seasoned with lovage. And still later Lena Stubbe taught the patrons of the Danzig-Ohra soup kitchen to enjoy proletarian cabbage soups made with (cut-rate) tripe. And to this very day Maria Kuczorra, canteen cook at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, makes a thick soup once a week out of kaldauny (tripe).

When you are feeling cold inside — try the walls of the cow's second stomach. When you are sad, cast out by all nature, sad unto death, try tripe, which cheers us and gives meaning to life. Or in the company of witty friends, godless enough to sit in the seat of the scornful, spoon up caraway-seasoned tripe out of deep dishes. Or cooked with tomatoes, Andalusian-style with chickpeas, or a la Portugaise with kidney beans and bacon. Or if love needs an appetizer, precook tripe in white wine, then steam it with diced celery root. On cold, dry days, when the east wind is banging at the window-panes and driving your Ilsebill up the wall, tripe thickened with sour cream and served with potatoes in their jackets will help. Or if we must part, briefly or forever, like the time I was a prisoner in the Stockturm and my daughter served me a last meal of peppered tripe.

Because the execution was to take place next day in the Long Market, in the presence of the king of Poland, of the seated and standing councils, of the aldermen and various prelates and abbots, the abbess of Saint Bridget's had invited the guests to her father's dungeon for an early evening meal. Torches on the walls provided light. A basin of coals under the barred window hole kept the pot of tripe warm. Mar-garete Rusch tasted for seasoning, and after that she didn't touch another mouthful. She said grace, appending a prayer for the condemned blacksmith, then served her father and his guests. But while the men were spooning up their tripe out of earthenware bowls, and while she was pouring black beer into mugs, she spoke. She spoke and her words passed over the autocratic head of the patrician, over the sleek, round head of the abbot, over the bald pate of the executioner, and over her father's head, which he had lowered into his bowl. She spoke without paragraphs or punctuation of any kind.

Margarete Rusch was known for that. When the soup was too hot, while the men were gnawing at goose drumsticks, before fish was served on Friday (mackerel bedded on leeks), but also over tables eaten bare, the abbess spoke to all those she cooked for, with a broad accent that brooked no interruption. She could reel off several stories (or instructive disquisitions) at once without dropping a thread. From

sheep raising on the Island, from the sewage sludge in the Mottlau, she would ramble on to Councilor Angermunde's daughters, but without failing to bring in price increases that the Danes had clapped on Scania herring, to get the latest joke about Preacher Hegge off her chest, to mention the continued interest of the Brigittine nuns in certain Old City real estate; yet with it all she found breath to spin out her favorite topic — larded with pious invocations of all the archangels from Ariel to Zedekiel — namely, the necessity of establishing a pepper depot in Lisbon (with a warehouse on the Malabar Coast of India), spinning out every detail of the commercial law involved.

Regardless of whom she cooked for, her table talk was thrown in — a subliminal mumbling with subplots as intricate as the politics of her time. She spoke as if to herself, but loud enough for the bishop of Leslau, who was dipping his bread into Margarete's hasenpfeffer, or for Councilors Angermunde and Feldstadt, who were shoveling in her beef hock with millet, to detect the purpose behind her chatter, although it was never certain whether Mother Rusch favored the patrician council or the lower trades, whether she was agitating for the Hanseatic League and against the Polish crown, and whether or not she was outwardly Catholic but contaminated through and through with Lutheranism. And yet her table speeches captured all ears with their ambiguities. They put this one in the right, injected that one with doubt, supplied tactical pointers, and in the long run brought benefit only to the Abbey of Saint Bridget, which obtained profitable fishing rights (Lake Ottomin), indentured leases (the Schar-pau, the sheep farms of Schiedlitz and Praust), and property in the Old City (on the Rahm, in Peppertown), and an episcopal letter safeguarding the abbey against Dominican snooping.