Gunter Grass - The Flounder

So it came about that soon after his return he thundered from the pulpit of Danzig's Saint Mary's Church, which offered plenty of room for a populace intent on murder, "The gray monks wear cords around their waists. Better if they wore them around their necks."

Words easily transposed into action: the next day several Dominicans were dangling from their cords. And Hegge let further phrases escape him, for fume as he might against all images, he knew the power of imagery. "I want," he cried, "to see all these churches cleared and whitewashed." And again the populace took him at his word, cleaned up Saint Mary's, Saint Catherine's, and Saint John's most radically smashed pictures, statues, and carvings, disposed of altars as useless encumbrances, and, still not content, set out to clean up the Old City Church of Saint Bridget.

By way of tranposing one of Hegge's favorite phrases-

To the pillory with him!"_into action, some soapmakers

had already dragged the wooden statue of Saint Nicholas out

of Saint Bridget's, with the intention of placing the brightly

painted saint in the town pillory, when Abbess Margarete

intervened with her twenty-seven nuns and novices. The sisters fought with a will. Saint Nicholas was rescued. Hegge was seized and led away to the nearby Convent of Saint Bridget amid the laughter of his fickle following.

What happened to him during the night I don t know. The usual, I suppose. In the daytime, at all events he was punished in accordance with the rules of Fat Grets kitchen^ Three hundred and eleven little cakes, which she herself had baked from lard dough, were coated with colored frosting and shaped into a Saint Nicholas closely resembling the wood carving, and the preacher was obliged to chew, rechew and swallow him, from the wafer-thin halo to the bread-dough pedestal To top it all, the nuns had filled this pastry Saint Nicholas with peppery blood sausages and tripe sausages, every last one of which had to be eaten.

For three whole days Hegge munched. He washed the pepper down with water. He rammed the little cakes down with raisin-flavored blood sausages and shoved in more little cakes after the marjoram-spiced tripe sausage. At first he seems to have listed all the devils from Ashomath to Zaroe. Then the battler with words fell silent. Later, his insides thoroughly greased and peppered, he seems to have shat m his pants. The blood sausages and tripe sausages, it was reported, came out unchewed, after which he invoked hell and the Devil with only moderate gusto.

The following year, when King Sigismund of Poland occupied the rebellious city with eight thousand men and ordered the rebels punished, Jakob Hegge fled, disguised in a woman's skirts. Abbess Margarete Rusch seems to have helped him get away. Hegge was thought to have found a haven in Greifswald and there to have lived a life of pure contemplation.

Every sixth of December since then, however, the people, both Catholic and Protestant, have baked up Saint Nicholas in plenty of lard-though smaller, much smaller, and without sausage filling-and in general Mother Rusch's cookery was adopted by the whole population both of the city and ot the Kashubian countryside.

If you want to cook in her footsteps today, to cook field-fare-for instance, the thrush with the ash-gray head-then

bard the little birds with thin strips of lard, stuff them with the tiny livers and plenty of juniper berries, and roast half a dozen of them on a spit over glowing charcoal. But don't invite any bird lovers to dinner. I myself, the runaway Franciscan monk, felt sorry for the succulent little birds when Fat Gret stuffed them as an appetizer for King Sigismund's banquet, all the while imitating bird calls: the bleating of the snipes, for instance, because of which these swamp birds are also known as sky-goats.

But if you are counting on guests with an ear for tall tales, then brown the feet, halved heads, ribs, lungs, and liver of a hare in lean bacon, as Fat Gret did, throw in a handful of previously soaked raisins, and simmer briefly. Heat the whole with crushed black pepper, deglaze the pan with red wine, bring to a boil, and let the hasenpfeffer simmer for an hour over medium heat-or longer, if your guests are late, as happened once upon a time when on his way back to Oliva the bishop of Leslau lost his way in the trackless beech forest and was frightened by an apparition, of which he spoke with easy good humor afterward. Humming into the air but inwardly rich in figures, he had been riding through the forest when a hare had peered out of a cleft tree and, speaking in flawless Latin though with a Kashubian accent, had prophesied that before the day was out the bishop would meet a second hare, who would be steeped in wine. "Give him my regards! Do give him my regards!" the Latinizing hare had said, and to this request the bishop of Leslau acceded, before the prelates, over the steaming stew, embarked on their discussion of the grave political situation.

But if you want to surprise your guests as Fat Gret surprised Stephen Batory, king of Poland, on December 12, 1577, when inside a pig's head she served him a sheep's head from which, when it was cut open, fell the intricately webbed key of the besieged city, which had now surrendered, then take a short knife, bone a pig's head and then a sheep's head without injuring the fatty casing, sprinkle the inside of the pig's head with fresh marjoram, and insert the sheep's head. Your guests will get a good surprise if the incision has been carefully sewed up. When after an hour and a half the pig's head with the sheep's head in it emerges from the oven and is cut open, the guests must be expected to exclaim "Ah!"

because something will shimmer and fall out, something strange, beautiful, hard, miraculous, and ambivalent, that may signify happiness and may signify something else-for instance, a little gilded box containing, folded small, a savings and loan association's home-construction loan, or whatever else my Ilsebill's heart may desire.

And if you still want to cook in Fat Gret's footsteps and have a reason such as she had when I, her bed companion at the time, became listless, lost all desire to partake of her flesh, and lounged about with my cock dangling, good for nothing but world-weary questions about the meaning of it all — then try the following recipe:

Take twelve to seventeen cockscombs, soak them in warm milk until the skin can be easily removed, wash them in cold water until the red pales to a surprising white, sprinkle them with lemon juice (Margret used pickling liquor), roll the cockscombs in beaten egg, fry them briefly on both sides, and serve them, on rounds of celery root previously sauteed in butter, to any male who, as I did then, has trouble getting and keeping it up and displaying a cocky virility even when he has good reason to hang his head. For it wasn't easy living in her shadow. That cook had no use for a lazybones. Time and time again, Fat Gret revived my bludgeon. You'll find it worth your while to cook in her footsteps.

That no doubt explains why, while the case of Margarete Rusch was being debated before the Women's Tribunal, I saw members of the public diligently taking down recipes. When tripe and chopped lung came up in the proceedings, only Associate Judge Ulla Witzlaff laughed, laughed all over as only Fat Gret could laugh, and pronounced a warning against excessive use of pepper, which, so she said, gave promise of more ardor than the ingester could supply and should have been left growing where it grows, for far from bringing out flavors it shouts them down, frazzles the nerves, and causes people, especially women, to be in too much of a hurry. .

An organist by profession, Ulla Witzlaff is as imperturbable as Mother Rusch. She comes from the island of Riigen and knows lots of island tales. One of her great-grand-