Gunter Grass - The Flounder

She went on to discuss the principal pepper varieties most knowledgeably, their moist and dry weight, how stored and marketed; undertook, if an overseas expedition should be organized, to lure certain Arab helmsmen away from the Portuguese caravels; predicted spice wars between Spain and England; and even professed her eagerness — provided Jeschke would come along — to embark her own full weight on a vessel bound for India, there to propagate the Catholic faith, if only Ferber would consent to throw off his weariness, stop toadying to the Polish court, and at last start commissioning navigation charts.

But Ferber remained indifferent over his tripe. Jeschke only sighed: pleasing as such a mission would be to God, he

feared the Indian climate. Blacksmith Rusch said nothing. Executioner Ladewig had other dreams. And when the patrician leaned back, after spooning up the last bowl of tripe, his answering speech was uncompromising.

He knew the world. He was a humanist and spoke five languages. Everywhere things were the same as in the Baltic area. Trading posts and warehouses in distant places could never be maintained for long; great losses were a certainty. Novgorod was giving them trouble enough. Falsterbo cost more than it brought in. Goal It would cost the Portuguese dearly one of these days. As for the English, they seemed to have no inkling of what a burden India might well become to them. Trading posts in India. Ridiculous. Now, after last year's futile war, did we want to pay the Danes pepper fees along with their herring silver? Hamburg in a pinch could afford such an undertaking. To maintain colonies you need an open coast. Danzig's motto remained: Moderation in all things. No, he had no use for adventures. And speaking of his weariness: despite the ingratitude of the local rabble, he had earned the right to rest. Immediately after the morrow's execution, he would divest himself of his chain of office and retire to his starosty for a quiet old age. Yes indeed! He would collect paintings from Antwerp. Musicians would play the lute for him and sing Italian songs. If the abbess wished, she could follow him to Dirschau, but not — by God! — to India. What was to keep him from financing a branch of the pious Brigittines in Dirschau? There'd always be plenty of pepper for her kitchen.

Thereupon Mother Rusch, for the fourth time, filled first her father's bowl, then the bowls of the guests with tripe. Even as she wielded the ladle, she cursed men for hopeless stay-at-homes. Then she fell silent, and the executioner spoke his mind. Ladewig complained about the wretchedness of his job. Luckily horse flaying brought in a little extra money. They wouldn't pay him to kill stray dogs. And the city was drowning in shit and piss.

Ladewig, whose meticulous, unhurried methods in the torture chamber allowed of no premature confessions, outlined an exemplary system of sanitation for the walled city, but only the blacksmith was listening. Here again Ferber was shortsighted, or he might have commissioned the execu-

tioner to keep the city clean, catch ownerless dogs, take measures against the plague, and, for suitable fees, clean out the sludge boxes of all premises adjoining the Mottlau (thereby anticipating the "Newly Revised Ordinance" of 1761 by a good two centuries).

Sensibly as Ladewig spoke and hard as he tried to win the patrician's approval, Ferber's mind, as he spooned up tripe, was already on his retirement in Dirschau. Still deeply immersed in his tripe, Abbot Jeschke dreamed himself and his benefices into a perfect world, undarkened by heresy. But though reacting with resolute silence to the cleansing of the city, Mother Rusch would not desist from Indian pepper. And because she was pregnant, her hope grew and grew.

It will be a girl! And a girl it was. She was named Hed-wig, brought up by Fat Gret's aunts in the Wicker Bastion, and seventeen years later married the merchant Rodrigues d'Evora, a Ximines of the big Portuguese spice-trading family, who opened a trading post in Cochin on the Malabar Coast of India. Twice a year, for the feasts of Saint John and Saint Martin, the son-in-law honored the marriage contract (for Hedwig's body was beautiful, in a Baltic sort of way) by sending a keg of ginger, two bales of cinnamon, a ship's pound of saffron, two crates of bitter orange peel, a sack of almonds, a sack of grated coconut, specified amounts of cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg, five barrels containing Mother Rusch's weight (at the time of the marriage contract) in black and white pepper, and one barrel of moist green pepper.

After merchant d'Evora, his wife, and four of his daughters died of the fever in Cochin, the one surviving daughter, who later married the Spanish pepper magnate Pedro de Malvenda, is believed to have kept up the pepper shipments to Mother Rusch as long as she lived. Isabel de Malvenda lived in Burgos, then in Antwerp, from where, after her husband's death, she corresponded with Martin Enzesperger, the Fuggers' pepper agent, and established her contractors as far afield as Venice.

By then London and Antwerp had taken a hand in the trade. Hamburg, which like all the Hanseatic towns was hostile to anything foreign, maintained a pepper trading post

for only a few years. Several spice wars contributed dates to history, and in one of them Spain lost its Armada.

Even when the bowls were empty for the fourth time, the blacksmith and his guests had not yet spooned up sufficient peppered and caraway-seeded tripe. Accordingly Mother Rusch ladled fifth helpings out of her deep kettle and poured black beer into mugs. She also went on mumbling her table talk: hints smothered in local gossip, threats stirred into her usual nunnish chatter. But if patrician Ferber and Abbot Jeschke had not been too stuffed to listen, they might have had something to think about, for Mother Rusch quite transparently detailed her plans for settling accounts with both of them. Which plans she also carried out, for three years later she smothered the rich Eberhard Ferber in bed under her double hundredweight; and fifty years later-for Fat Gret lived to a ripe old age for her vengeance-she fattened Abbot Jeschke to death: he died over a bowl of tripe.

Blacksmith Rusch may have gathered the gist of his daughter's projects from her table talk and understood how she meant to avenge his death, for the poor devil grinned broadly over his empty bowl. Indeed, something more than the warm feeling of having filled his belly one last time may have accounted for his satisfaction. He sang his daughter's praises, and there his talk became rather confused, for he brought in a fish, whom he referred to as the "Flounder in the sea," and thanked him for having advised him, at a time when his hair was still brown, to send his youngest daughter, whose mother was dying of the fever, to a convent, for there, so the Flounder had assured him, she would become shrewd and crafty, so as to manage her female flesh independently and have hot soup in daily readiness for her father in his old

Then he, too, fell silent, replete with tripe. After that, belches were accompanied only by an occasional word or half sentence. Ferber dreamed of his life in the country; far from all strife, he would live in the midst of his art collection, culling wisdom from books. After eating so much tripe, Abbot Jeschke could think only of the tripe he hoped to spoon up in the future, peppered just the way the abbess did it. But

by then Lutheranism would — by drastic measures if necessary — have been eradicated from the world. Executioner Ladewig anticipated several articles of the "Newly Revised Ordinance." He would have liked to place with the local coopers an order for the barrels needed to clean up the city. For every barrel emptied he would charge only ten groschen. Blacksmith Rusch, on the other hand, predicted that the patrician council would be faced forever and ever with unrest and insurrectionary demands on the part of the guilds and lower trades, and his prophecy came true in December 1970. The lower orders have never ceased to rebel against patrician authoritarianism and to risk their necks for a little more civil rights.