Gunter Grass - The Flounder

The public was floored, too weak even for indignation. The most they could summon up was one long sigh. Only Ms. von Carnow, the court-appointed defense counsel, spoke. "How awful," she gasped.

Then silence invited the Flounder to say more. "Without trying to attenuate my 'Yes,' I would like to praise woman's power to serve as a Muse by telling you about Agnes. She was more than Moller and Opitz together. Not even a Rubens, not even a Holderlin could have used all she had to offer. My mistake was to bury two worn-out talents under her superabundance. No, Agnes produced no art. But she was a source for all the arts: her fluid form, her epic silence, her thinking in which nothingness spoke, her ambiguity, her moist warmth. Only in her cooking was she creative, when she coddled Opitz's sick stomach with potted calves' brains and asparagus tips, all the more creative because she sang over her cook pots, always in one and the same tone, which was quite sufficient, because it was richer than any melodic development. Mostly she sang brief ditties in which the Swedes had forced all the horrors of war into rhyme. Here I must tell you that in the spring of 1632 Agnes, then thirteen, had been made a full orphan and used as a knothole

on the Hela Peninsula by some Swedish cavalrymen belonging to Oxenstierna's occupation regiment, and that the experience had scrambled her wits. Sometimes she talked about someone called Axel. He must have been one of the cavalrymen. He alone seems to have penetrated her lastingly.

"So much, esteemed court, for Agnes Kurbiella. Yes, I say, yes and again yes. Agnes had no need to produce, to create. She had no need to be creative. Because she was a creature — and perfect as such."

Though the Flounder's speech, gradually swelling to the old deep organ tones, was undoubtedly conveyed to the ears of the judges and of the public as well, the verdict went against him. He was found guilty of encouraging two worn-out old men to derive stimulation from their abuse of a child who was already addled as a result of male war crimes. Something was said of male pimping. In reading the court's opinion, the presiding judge smiled as though finding savor in bitter almonds and conceded that a certain indulgence was warranted in view of the defendant's limited male intelligence. "The lords of creation just can't help it," she declared. "They can't do without their monopoly on creativity. We women have to be creatures — perfect creatures, what's more. Thanks be to the Swedish cavalrymen, especially to the sinister Axel, for driving the childlike Agnes crazy in a manner so conducive to art. Slightly batty women make excellent Muses. We are looking forward to the next session, when the defendant will speak fishily on love."

When the Flounder's court-appointed counsel stood up to plead in his defense, a good part of the public walked noisily out of the former movie house. Nor was the Revolutionary Advisory Council interested in listening to Ms. von Carnow. I myself found her plaintive, whining, piping monotone hard to bear, even though Bettina — outwardly an attractive young woman, inwardly a plucked angel — may have resembled my Agnes: the curly, rust-colored hair, the steadily blinking eyes, the smile that nothing could efface, the high-arched, childlike forehead.

Only a few heard Ms. von Carnow's anachronistic plaint: "But is it not fitting and proper for a woman to be an artist's

Muse, his cracked glass, his bed of moss, his primal form? Haven't all great things come into being in this and only this way, through the quiet influence of inspiring women? Are we women to walk out on this magnificent job and seal off the wellsprings of the arts? Is devotion not the best proof of womanly strength? Do we want to harden ourselves to the point of insensibility? And what, I ask you, what is to become of the Eternal Womanly?"

"OK, OK!" the Flounder interrupted. "Your little questions move even me to tears. But my dear lady, you're behind the times, and nothing worse can happen to a woman. I'm afraid you would even be capable, like little Agnes, whose case is here under discussion, of giving your love unconditionally. Good Lord! Nobody could put up with that in this day and age."

(Then I, too, walked out, much as Bettina von Carnow attracted me by awakening memories.) Oh, Agnes! Your boiled fish. Your meaningless smile. Your bare feet. Your sleepy hands. Your soporific voice. Your never-to-be-filled emptiness. There was always fresh dill in the house: your love, which always and always grew back. .

I know nature only insofar as it shows itself.

With groping fingers

I see it in fragments,

never,

or only when luck strikes me,

as a whole.

What so much beauty, manifested bright and early in my feces, signifies or intends, I do not know.

Therefore I go to bed reluctantly,

for dreams give objects fluidity and talk meaning into them.

I try to stay awake.

Maybe the stone will move

or Agnes come,

bringing me what makes me sleep:

caraway seeds and dill.

He talked us men into it (and prescribed it for all Ilsebills as a pacemaker). For in the beginning, when Awa ruled, when all women were called Awa and all men Edek, we didn't have love. It wouldn't have entered our heads to single out any particular Awa as something special. We had no chosen one, though we did have the Superawa, who was later worshiped as a mother goddess and who, because I was able to scratch figures with her proportions in the sand or knead them in clay, always favored me just a little. But crazy, mad about, in love with each other we were not.

By the same token there was no hatred. In the customary life of the horde no one was pushed aside, except perhaps the poor devils who were individually excluded and driven into the swamps, for infringing on some taboo. Taboo, for instance, were garrulous group eating and solitary shitting. And undoubtedly our Superawa would have sternly tabooed love between two individuals-if such madness had ever cropped up among us-and banished the offending pair. Such things are believed to have happened-somewhere else.

Not among us. To us the individual meant nothing. One Awa was as fat as another. And we Edeks were taken wherever we fitted in. Of course there were differences. Of course there were little preferences. Don't go thinking we were a shapeless neolithic mass. Not only age groups but also groupings based on the division of labor determined the sociological makeup of our horde. Some of the women gathered mushrooms; in the beech woods they came into contact with the male group that had specialized in hunting bear but

mostly speared badgers. Since I was numbered among the fishermen — though I preferred to fish by myself, which was not taboo — the women who plaited eel traps made more use of me than did the mushroom gatherers. But this had nothing to do with love, not even with group love. Still, we were buoyed by a strong feeling, which might have been called tender loving care.

When, no sooner had I caught him and set him free, the Flounder questioned me about my life in the horde, he was curious to know what three-breasted Stone Age woman liked me best, whose pussy I serviced with Stakhanovite enthusiasm, which basket plaiter or otherwise occupied Use-bill I tried to madden with love: "So tell me, my son, which of these women's heads have you turned?"

By way of an answer, I explained our system of horde care. "We care first for our mothers and mothers' mothers. Then we care for their daughters and daughters' daughters. Then, if any of our men have been eliminated by work accidents, for our mothers' sisters and their daughters and daughters' daughters. The products of our care — game, fish, elk cow's milk, honeycomb, nuts, berries, et cetera — are distributed by the mothers' mothers in accordance with the Superawa's instructions. So the products of our care-work revert to us in the end, for the old men are served first."