Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Later on, when Amanda Woyke entered into correspondence with Count Rumford, inventor of the slow-combustion stove and of the poor man's soup that bears his name, a change occurred — not in her style, for she still told all her stories while peeling potatoes, but in her tenses, for now she anticipated the future. She told of giant kitchens that would feed the whole world. From the reality of the farm kitchen she derived a Utopian West Prussian potato soup that would be dispensed the world over. In her giant kitchen there would always be enough. Her pots would always have room for seconds. She would drive hunger from the world. She spoke with loving concern of well-fed "Moors and Mamelukes." Her giant kitchen would be just the thing even for Eskimos and the savages of Tierra del Fuego. And with the earnestness of the technician — here the influence of the inventive Rumford was discernible — she detailed the qualities of the future potato-peeling machine: "Won't be nothing to it. You'll empty a basket like this in no time flat."

But what will become of remember-the-time-when and one-fine-spring-day? Our guests, who had enjoyed Amanda's potato soup until the pot was empty, shared my opinion that

work norms and conveyor belts do not admit of storytelling. Even if Mestwina were semiautomatically packaging wheat flour, even if Fat Gret were employed in a poultry-processing factory, vacuuming the last feathers off scalded, hormone-fed geese while the hooked conveyor belt carried them past, even if Amanda Woyke were alive today, deftly imprisoning (at union scale) uniformly peeled potatoes in tin cans, there wouldn't be time during packaging, vacuuming, canning, to tell the necessary stories in all their length and breadth, not even to relay the latest gossip (and anyway, to whom?).

"That's true!" said Ilsebill. "But we women will never again consent to pound acorns into flour. I prefer to buy my geese already plucked. And the few potatoes we eat are no trouble at all to peel; I can even smoke. You'd like to see us sitting at spinning wheels, wouldn't you? Nostalgic for the treadle sewing machine, aren't you? I guess you're tired; I guess you miss the old stove bench."

At that she fell into a resolute silence. And I wandered off into the next story.

When all three of her babies—

their names were Stine Trude Lovise—

died on her because

the stalks had been rotted by rain, battered by hail,

gnawed by drought and mice,

so that nothing was left after threshing,

no millet grained, no gruel stuck to palates,

no porridge was sweetened nor flatbread soured.

Before two March dusks had fallen

they died all three. Also because the goat

had run afoul of a Cossack's knife,

the cow had been led away by foraging Prussians,

no chickens scratched the yard, of the pigeons

nothing remained but pigeon droppings,

and on top of it all the man with the twirly mustache,

who with his tool had made her — nothing to it—

those little babies Stine Trude Lovise

because Amanda spread her legs for him every time,

was gone again for the enlistment bounty

to Saxony, Bohemia, Hochkirch

because the king, the king had called.

So when the three rag dolls

named Stine, Trude, Lovise

went limp in her arms,

Amanda wouldn't believe it

and wouldn't let go.

And when the little girls, pale, blue, and gnarled with hunger, cranky old women in arms-just born, barely weaned, and Lovise would have been wanting to walk soon — were laid in a box, nailed shut, and shoveled over, Amanda complained aloud,

sustained a tone that was something more than a whimper, a trembling wail,

a long-threaded sound somewhere between euhhh and euiihh, yet admitting of sentences (such things as people say in grief): More than a body can bear; The devil himself could weep; Who'll speak of justice now; How can the sweet Lord stand it; I'll scream and yell forever; There is no sweet Lord, no matter what the Book says. .

Three whole bright-blustery days in March she screamed,

till, finely sifted, her plaint reduced itself to eeeee.

(And in other cottages

in Zuckau, Ramkau, Kokoschken,

the mourners screamed eeeee. .)

Nobody paid attention.

As if nothing were wrong, the elders burst into bud.

Buckwheat and oats filled out.

Plenty of plums to dry.

Gathering mushrooms was worthwhile.

And leading a cow on a rope, the twirly man came back

from winter quarters, this time as usual invalided.

Since Zorndorf he'd had two fingers less,

after Torgau he'd come home one-eyed, laughing.

Now after Hochkirch there was a scar on his crown

that made him dopier than ever.

But all the same, because she lay still,

he readied his tool

to make her — nothing to it — baby girls

who were named Lisbeth, Annchen, Martha, and Ernestine,

and lived.

So that the sweet Lord was good for a prayer again:

He must have had His reasons for so much suffering.

He had His cross to bear forever and ever.

He rewarded toil

and had so much love, heavenly flour bins full of it. .

There was lots of kingdom and power in it,

later a handy rhyme for potato flower—

and just a grain of hope

that Stine Trude Lovise were angels by now, and

getting plenty to eat.

Patata, potato, tartuffel, pomme de terre, spud. . Raleigh or Drake is supposed to have brought them to Europe. But since they come from Peru, it must actually have been Spanish contemporaries of the abbess Margarete Rusch. Shakespeare must have known them as objects of religious awe, for he makes Falstaff say, "Let the skie raine Potatoes!" — though here it needs to be pointed out that Shakespeare was thinking of the sweet potato, a delicacy that was already being sold for high prices when our common potato, like all exotic Solanaceae (tomato, eggplant, et cetera), was still under suspicion, put to the question by the Inquisition, condemned, burned at the stake, and even despised as cattle feed.

First to plant them were the starving Irish. Parmentier

gave them to France, whereupon Queen Marie Antoinette decked herself out with potato blossoms. Count Rumford taught the Bavarians to grow them. And who helped us Prussians?

Today we eat mealy boiled potatoes, grated raw potatoes, parsley potatoes, or plain potatoes in their jackets with cottage cheese. We know steamed potatoes with onions or in mustard sauce, buttered potatoes, potatoes au gratin, mashed potatoes, potatoes boiled in milk, baked in aluminum foil, old potatoes, new potatoes. Or potatoes in green sauce; or mashed potatoes with poached eggs. Or Thuringia, Vogtland, or Henneberg potato dumplings in cream sauce, with bread crumbs. Or sprinkled with cheese in flameproof-glass pannikins, or, as the Nostiz brothers made them, dotted with crayfish butter and baked. Or (in wartime) potato marzipan, potato cake, potato pudding. Or potato schnapps. Or my Amanda's mutton with potatoes, when (on holidays) she browned flank of mutton in kidney fat, added quartered potatoes, filled the kettle with water, simmered until the broth was soaked up, and only then moistened with dark beer. Or her potato soup, which the domestics of the Royal Prussian State Farm at Zuckau spooned up evening after evening, as the sky poured forth its ink and the forest moved closer and closer.

That was after the second partition of Poland. The farm was expected to become different in every way, more orderly, more profitable, in short, Prussian. The mismanaged conventual estate (founded in 1217 by Mestwina's daughter Damroka) had been secularized and turned into a state farm. This was termed progress, and progress had to be inspected and supervised — by Him in person.