Gunter Grass - The Flounder

The first letter was written in Munich on October 4, 1784. The last is dated Paris, September 12, 1806. Up to the summer of 1792 all the letters are signed "Your sincere friend, Benjamin Thompson"; thereafter, having been made a count of the Holy Roman Empire, he signed "Sincerely, Count Rumford."

In all I found twenty-nine letters in Amanda's cardboard box. And since exactly twenty-nine letters signed by Amanda in purple ink were discovered among the papers of Rum-ford's daughter Sally after her death, we may assume that not one thought was lost, especially as the letters connect up perfectly, each relating to the last. In the revolutionary year 1789, when Rumford (still under the name of Benjamin Thompson) wrote from Munich, giving a detailed account of the newly laid-out English Gardens and of the light-hearted atmosphere at the opening ceremonies, Amanda inquired in her answer how big the gardens were, and whether the soil was rich or clayey, and the ensuing letter cites the figure of 612 acres of unfilled land. "Good pasturage," Thompson wrote. "Here, apart from the public park, we shall breed bovines from Holstein, Flanders, and Switzerland on a model farm, thus improving the now wretched quality of Bavarian livestock and setting the whole world a veterinary example."

After my death as Romeike the correspondence was lost and has never come to light. No biography of Count Rumford mentions Amanda Woyke. And out of jealousy or stupidity, Sally Thompson also helped to suppress her father's exchange of ideas with a Kashubian cook, though Sally cites in her memoirs certain ideas her father imparted to Amanda, such as "registration forms to be filed with the police will help us to keep track of foreign visitors."

All this, Ilsebill, must now be revised, for the lost cor-

respondence has been found. In Amsterdam, where everything comes to light. A secondhand-book dealer unearthed it. At the very start of the trial, the Flounder made inquiries. (He has his agents, you know.) As a result, quotations from letters played a crucial role throughout the deliberations on the case of Amanda Woyke. I was mentioned only marginally, although, on the Flounder's advice, I had perpetuated serfdom on all the state farms under my supervision by interpreting the king's edicts and the liberalized provincial law in my own ingenious way, abolished hereditary serfdom only in rare cases, and preferred to issue new regulations that restored it in its older form. In short, I had been a hardhearted inspector, hated throughout Prussia. Even Amanda had died a serf.

The Flounder admitted in court that he had used me as an instrument of reaction. The East Elbian rural populations, he maintained, were not ripe for reforms; considering themselves members of a big family, the serfs felt sheltered, secure, and hence relatively happy. The Polish day laborers were a lot worse off, except in the harvest season, when if nothing else they had enough to eat in Zuckau and elsewhere. And the Tribunal could hardly deny that despite the lack of freedom characteristic of her times, the farm cook Amanda Woyke had been capable of grandiose ideas, which to be sure found their public expression in Munich, London, or Paris, that out of naive affection she had made use of a certain Benjamin Thompson as their channel. He, the Flounder, so he declared, knew more than was on public record or thought fit for schoolbooks. Therefore, with the help of the recovered letters, he wished to erect a monument not only to a certain Thompson, but also and in equal measure to the farm cook Amanda Woyke.

"A female biography," said the Flounder, "that, I believe, the feminist movement should take as an example. Amanda Woyke not only gave taste to our potatoes; with her big farm kitchen she also provided a harbinger of the future, already burgeoning Chinese world food solution. ("And when they really get it working," I said maliciously to Ilsebill, "where will you be with your wishes?")

The said Benjamin Thompson was born in 1753 in the

British colony of Massachusetts. His father died when he was still a child, and was replaced by a stepfather — or, as Thompson wrote to Amanda, "by my poor mother's tyrannical husband." While apprenticed to a merchant, Thompson became interested in methods of storing and shipping salt fish. (In addressing the court, the Flounder did not deny that he had advised the young man—"directly or indirectly; after all, I'm at home in all seven seas.")

Boston just then was aboil with anti-British sentiment. While tinkering with fireworks designed to celebrate a victory of the American colonists over the colonial administration — the Whigs had just defeated the so-called Stamp Act in the British Parliament — Thompson suffered an accident. From that time on he sided with the colonial power, became a spy for the British, and as such tested his latest invention, an invisible ink that showed up after a certain lapse of time.

After his burns had healed, he studied at Harvard College during his spare time and became a schoolmaster at Concord, New Hampshire, which had previously borne the name of Rumford. A rich widow soon took the young teacher as her husband, an event that seems to have had the effect of another premature explosion of fireworks, for he enlisted in the army, was appointed a major in the second New Hampshire regiment, wore a scarlet coat, and looked upon himself for a short time as the father of his daughter Sally. Then, despised by his countrymen, he fled, was arrested by the so-called Minutemen, tried by a Concord court, and released, though still under suspicion of having served the British as a secret agent and written the British governor coded letters in his invisible ink.

On the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Thompson took the last ship out of besieged Boston. Before the Women's Tribunal, the Flounder justified this flight on the strength of youthful ambition. Thompson, so he claimed, had sought broader fields for his talents. In the Old World, strange to say. In London he was appointed secretary of the colony of Georgia. Regrettably, Thompson had been responsible for suggesting the use of Hessian mercenaries; he had also recruited them and organized their crossing. Still,

his election to the Royal Society shows that he had engaged in scientific activity as well.

To which the prosecutor replied, amid general laughter: "Scientific activity! Let's call it by the right name. Mr. Thompson improved the construction of muskets by figuring out the best place to put the vent. From childhood on he had a thing about gunpowder. When he grew up, he still wanted to play at war. He set up a regiment in New York, though the war was already lost. And let me tell you about his one act of heroism: building a fort in the graveyard at Huntington. Do you know what he built it with? Tombstones Even the oven was made of tombstones. Later on the incised names of the departed-Josiah Baxter, John Miller, Timothy Vanderbilt, Abraham Wells, and so on-could be read in raised mirror-writing on the freshly baked loaves, so bearing witness to Colonel Thompson's scientific enterprise. In recognition of this grandiose achievement, he was pensioned for life at half a lieutenant colonel's pay the moment he arrived back in England. When they wouldn't let him play war games in India, he crossed over to the continent in the hope of European wars. He had his riding horses with him. As ridiculous as ever in a scarlet uniform. Went to Vienna via Strassburg and Munich. Cut a figure wherever he went. But nothing came of the war against the Turks. After getting himself knighted in England, he entered the service of Maximilian, elector of Bavaria, and settled in Munich as

Sir Benjamin.

"So much, defendant Flounder, for the early life of your magnificent protege Mr. Thompson. A hidebound reactionary. A spy. An adventurer and a charlatan. A conceited fop. A morose philanthropist, morose because he'd been deprived of his war games; not untalented, quick to learn languages, for by the autumn of his first year in Bavaria he wrote the farm cook Amanda Woyke a stilted letter asking for advice: how, he asked, might the benefits of potato culture, as exemplified in Pomerania and West Prussia, be conferred upon the people of Bavaria?" The prosecutor quoted: " 1, no, the world knows of your agronomic achievements, thanks to which war-sick Prussia has recovered so admirably.' "