Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Believe me, Ilsebill, it wasn't the Flounder, it was I who gave Thompson Amanda's address. But since the Women's Tribunal recognized only my particular incarnations and not my obstinate survival, I was not allowed to appear as a witness. Too bad. I'd have told the girls a thing or two. They wouldn't have cut me down to manikin size. Why, it was me with my dragoons who brought seed potatoes to the state farms in West Prussia at the king's orders. Whereupon I (as a nine-times-wounded veteran) was appointed inspector. I invigorated Prussia with potatoes. I organized the transportation and marketing of the surpluses. I brought order into the Polish economy. My balance sheets were mentioned with praise at the Chamber of Crown Lands. I traveled widely; why, I went as far as Hanover. And at meetings with fellow veterans I discussed Thompson's experiments with gunpowder to measure recoil and muzzle velocity and determine the best place to put the vent in the common musket.

So I wrote to the Royal Society. (Or a soldier friend who knew English wrote.) And Thompson answered from Munich. Promising precise data on vents for Prussian muskets, he asked in return for information about potato culture in Kashubia after the partitions of Poland. So then, in addition to pointers on farm management, I was so foolishly kind as to send him Amanda's address. By return mail he told me how to improve our musket. Their high-and-mightinesses in Potsdam failed, however, to act on his advice — a bit of negligence that was to be dearly paid for at Jena and Auerstedt. But nobody would ever listen to me. They all ran to her. She knew. She remembered. She prophesied. She saw the future. She had visions.

Unfortunately, I lost all my baggage, including Thompson's letters, after a solid night's drinking in Leipzig, where I had gone for the Fair. Only his letters to Amanda and her answers were quoted before the Women's Tribunal. When asked to account for this correspondence, the Flounder explained that through intermediaries he had sent Sir Benjamin a detailed account of the king of Prussia's October 1778 visit to the state farm at Zuckau. That was how the British American in the service of Bavaria had learned of the memorable

conversation between the Kashubian farm cook and Frederick II of Prussia. Indeed, Thompson speaks of the meeting in his first letter to Amanda: "It has come to our attention, honored friend of the useful potato, with what admiration His Majesty has spoken of your accomplishments. In the document before me, the Great Frederick writes, 'A Kassu-bian female cooks a potato potage, which should make peace delicious for our peoples.' But what amazes me, dear friend, is how quickly you have succeeded. How were you able in so short a time to move the countryfolk to grow potatoes? Here superstition and Catholic fears prevail. Our beneficial tuber is said to induce rickets and consumption, leprosy and cholera. Can you perchance advise me? By the elector's favor I am in command of a cavalry regiment consisting of young peasants impressed into military service. They are lying about on garrison duty, doing nothing, for since the curious War of the Austrian Succession, here known as the 'Potato War,' nothing has happened in Bavaria; only the curse of beggary has increased."

Addressing the Tribunal, the Flounder was able to prove that Amanda's advice, as adapted by Sir Benjamin Thompson, had provided the impetus for the introduction of potato culture in Bavaria. The land donation wrested from the Crown Lands Administration (and from me), the leasing of plots of fallow land to the landless serfs of the Zuckau farm on condition that they grow nothing but potatoes — presents I later took back — all these ideas were adopted by Thompson, who divided the wasteland that was later to become the English Gardens into military garden plots. Every private soldier and corporal, during his period of service, enjoyed the use of 365 square feet of potato field. The harvest belonged to him alone, and every discharged peasant returned home with sacks full of seed potatoes, to the amazement of his fellow villagers. (When I took the serfs' plots away from them so we could plant on a large scale, Amanda said, "The sweet Lord won't like it.") She also communicated her panacea for plague, cholera, and leprosy — rubbing the whole body with potato flour — to her pen pal, who must have smiled.

Late in the summer of 1788, Thompson was appointed

Bavarian minister of war and police, made a member of the Privy Council, and promoted to the rank of major general. After listing these titles, the Flounder declared to the Women's Tribunal: "That kind of thing probably doesn't mean much to the ladies. I can already hear you saying, 'A typical male career!' Maybe so. Thompson's ambition sometimes went to ridiculous lengths. And yet his correspondence with the farm cook Amanda Woyke made a great change in him, the kind of change that is ordinarily produced only by love letters. It is indeed my contention that Amanda, then a sturdy forty-five, and our American, some ten years her junior, were impelled by passionate reason to write each other love letters revolving around the problems of human nutrition. For once no soul music, no sob stuff, no pens dipped in heart's blood. Listen to what he wrote to Zuckau:

" 'To you alone, esteemed friend and benefactress, I owe the great, the crucial insight that no political order can be truly good unless it redounds to the common weal. I have undertaken to combine the interests of my regiment with those of the civilian population and to make our military might serve the public welfare even in time of peace, by seeing to it that every garrison in Bavaria maintains soldiers' gardens and therein, apart from the estimable potato, cultivates not only rutabaga but also, by way of crop rotation, clover for cattle feed. I take the liberty of sending you, my friend and benefactress, a few seeds and young rutabaga plants by the same post. This highly nutritious root plant has, not without my help and advice, been bred from rape. Rest assured that only my diplomatic tact deters me from proclaiming to the Bavarian people what my heart knows full well, to wit, that they are indebted to an estimable Prussian woman not only for the potato, but for the potato dumpling as well. In conclusion: do you know of a rational way of eradicating the plague of beggary with which Munich is now afflicted? A mere police action would accomplish nothing.' "

Here I must interpolate the fact that thanks to Thompson's express package, rutabaga took hold in West Prussia and soon gained popularity under the name of Wruke: Wruken with Ganseklein, flank of mutton with Wruken,

tripe stewed with Wruken. But also, in the rutabaga winter of 1917, Wruken cooked with nothing at all.

Of that the Flounder made no mention before the Tribunal. But Thompson's great achievement — suddenly arresting all the beggars in Munich, registering them, and moving them to a workhouse — was celebrated in quotations from letters which made it clear that the minister of war and police had derived his inspiration from Amanda. For this is what she wrote Thompson: "My dear Sir: If enny tramps or beggars turn up here in Zuckau, they haff to chop wud and unravvel nitted yarn in the junkroom if they want enny of my potato soup."

This little hint sufficed to start Thompson off in the right direction. He replied: "Ah, dearest friend. If you could see how ubiquitous the crime of beggary is here. Parents put little children's eyes out or maim their limbs so as to arouse pity by exhibiting them. The situation is generally thought to be hopeless. Thoughtful persons have come to regard beggary as an intrinsic feature of our social order. It is widely held that wicked persons must first be made virtuous before they can be made happy. But why, in response to your excellent advice, should I not attempt to reverse the order? Made happy by work, my sinners will become virtuous."