Gunter Grass - The Flounder

And so, when the abbess Margarete Rusch served up the last dish of tripe to her father and his guests, her tongue wagged as usual. That was her way. Always, along with her cookery, she apportioned her subtly balanced interests.

At first the men at the table sat silent. The only sound was the jangling of Peter Rusch's irons, for the blacksmith ate in fetters. And outside the barred window hole, the tower

pigeons clamored. Guzzling and gulping. The executioner's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.

Yet it was not at all certain that the king of Poland had intended so harsh a sentence. Jeschke and Ferber had worked on the judge and on the aldermen. Ferber, who spoke first, admitted as much; law and order, he said, must be manifested visibly. True, the abbot conceded, the blacksmith might have been spared (and merely blinded) if Hegge, that minion of Luther, had not escaped. He had a pretty good idea, said the wealthy Ferber, bending over his tripe in his fur-trimmed broadcloth, who had helped Hegge escape from the blocked-off city. That, said the abbot, all the while plying his spoon, was known to all, though no one could prove it. Executioner Ladewig gave assurance that the scrawny neck of the escaped Dominican would have been far more welcome to him in the morning than that of a blacksmith. When Peter Rusch lifted his head out of the bowl and said, more in resignation than in protest, that he, too, was not unaware who had helped Preacher Hegge, spiritual head of the burghers' uprising, to escape from the beadles of the patrician order, Ferber said harshly, while holding out his bowl to the abbess to refill, "Then you also know whom you can thank for your death sentence." "Yes, indeed," said Jeschke. "Things have come to a pretty pass when a father can expect no mercy from his child. That's what happens when the pulpit is opened up to heresy." Here he threw in a bit of information, namely, that Hegge had apparently escaped to Greifswald and was going right on with his preaching.

Then Mother Rusch laughed so resoundingly, with every ounce of her flesh, that the walls expanded, and, pouring black beer, said casually: Yes, yes, she supposed all these insinuations were aimed at her. And maybe there was some truth in them. For one night in April, after it had pleased His Polish Majesty to occupy the city, she had seen a man in woman's skirts clinging to the town wall, in a place where it's low, not far from Jacob's Gate. Trying to climb over it, but he didn't have the strength. His misery had cried out for help, and she had helped. She had reached under his skirts, and when all her pushing and puffing had gone for nothing, had bitten off his left or right testicle. After that he had literally flown over the wall. Maybe the man had been

Peter Hegge. But how could one be sure? Because, in her fright, she, Margarete Rusch, had swallowed this left or right ball. To tell the truth, she had been feeling pregnant ever since — this was the third month. But by whom? That was the question. If he was so inclined, Ferber could go to Greifs-wald, taking Jeschke with him, and they could reach between the still-eloquent Hegge's legs. Then they'd know more.

At that blacksmith Rusch and the bald-headed Ladewig laughed. Then, apart from the chains, nothing could be heard but the spoons in the bowls, the sound of chewing and swallowing, and the pigeons in the window hole. And when she saw the men so deeply immersed in their tripe, Mother Rusch started in again with her ambiguous mumbling; for the abbess spoke freely and frankly only in the refectory of Saint Bridget's, where at vespers and in the evening hours the nuns and novices forgathered around the long oak table.

In troubled times — everywhere monks and nuns were escaping from their cloisters to risk the perils of secular life-it was often difficult to hold pious girls to their vows. They fidgeted, they wanted out, they wanted a man in breeches, wanted to be married, to bear children by the dozen, to walk in silk and satin and try to keep up with the town fashions.

And so, while the sweet millet porridge diminished on the long table, the abbess told her little nuns, whose asses were itching for life, what life is and how quickly it crumbles away. She listed the freedoms of the nunnery and, in the debit column, the arduous duties of the married woman. While buckwheat piroshki filled with bacon and spinach were being enjoyed on both sides of the long table, the abbess explained the male build to her man-crazy women with the help of the vegetable course, buttered (and parsleyed) carrots, which with their varied shapes provided a graphic illustration of what a man is good for. How deeply penetrating he can be and how knobby. How soon he gives out and starts drooping pathetically. How brutal he becomes when he can't get it up. How unprofitable this quick fucking is to women. How all he wants is children, especially sons. How soon he looks for variety in other beds. But how his spouse must never wander, never lust for other carrots. How hard

his hand strikes. How suddenly he withdraws his favor and gets his carrot cooked soft away from home.

But when the nuns, and especially the novices, kept squirming on their stools and persisted in seeing harder and more lasting promise in their buttered carrots, the abbess gave them permission to receive visitors through the back door of the convent, and also to range freely outside the cloister, thus acquainting them with the pleasures of the flesh and making them better able to resist the seductions of married life.

Before saying grace and dismissing her charges, the abbess gave them further bits of advice: Let no quarrel over a codpiece ever disturb their monastic tranquillity. Let them always remain good sisters to one another. Let them not content themselves with holding still, but ride with and against. A man's thanks should always be weighable in silver. And never, never, never, must they succumb to weepy, gushy love.

Though not yet thirty, Mother Rusch had been abbess of Saint Bridget's for over a year, having, as nun in charge of the kitchen, shown accomplishments of many kinds. And the accomplished abbess succeeded in holding her nuns, whereas the monks and nuns of the Dominican, Beguin, Franciscan, and Benedictine orders were running away to Luther. The consequence was unrest, uprisings of the guilds, iconoclast riots, alarums, and excursions, followed by little change or at the most by Royal Polish punitive expeditions. Preacher Hegge, to be sure, had managed to escape, but blacksmith Rusch and five other artisans, all poor devils, members of the lower trades, were condemned to death. And that is why a daughter served her father his last dish of tripe, which, since beginning to feel pregnant — most likely the work of Hegge shortly before his flight — she had taken to peppering excessively.

And after she had filled her guests' bowls for the third time, pepper kept cropping up in her talk.

That was her obsession. Fat Gret had a thing about pepper. It sharpened her wit, she thought, it did wonders. It tormented her to think that all the new sea-borne pepper

— the overland pepper that traders had been bringing in from Venice as long as anyone could remember was so fearfully expensive — passed through Lisbon. True, the Augsburgers maintained a depot there, where they hoarded pepper to keep the price up, but the Hanseatic towns let the trade slip through their fingers. Which explains why for some years Mother Rusch was impelled, by political ambition as well as the normal concerns of the kitchen, to take a hand in international politics. Much as she hated the patrician Ferber, she was determined to harness the experienced merchant and still actively seafaring admiral to her plans.

After dishing out a third helping of tripe for her father and his guests, she let her table talk drift overseas. It wouldn't do to leave the New World to the Portuguese and Spaniards. The Dutch and English were already coming in on a large scale. The only bankers engaged in the pepper trade were the Fuggers. But the Hanseatic League was shortsightedly confining its operations to the lesser seas, squabbling to no effect (as it had done only last year) with the Danes over Oresund tolls and herring silver, spitefully competing with one another (witness Liibeck and Danzig), sticking to wood, cloth, grain, dried codfish, and salt, refusing to take over the pepper trade, and neglecting to fit out ships for the longer voyage, too small-minded to establish a trading post on the pepper coast of India, as the Portuguese had done in Goa and Cochin, and preferring to engage in divisive religious quarrels and chop off the heads of good men like her father.