Gunter Grass - The Flounder

The Flounder hastened to corroborate the presiding judge's assumption. Quickly he cited pertinent passages from the letters. "Listen, if you please, to what Amanda has to say about it: 'And someday there won't be nothing but farm hands and farm hands' kitchens.' And listen to Rumford: 'Just as today the sons of peasants are impressed into military idleness, no later than tomorrow armies of peasants will be in a position to till and at the same time defend the fields.' They both had quite a gift of prophecy, though they could hardly foresee that this High Court would for the first time attach to their letters the importance that I, too, for all the skepticism of which I am capable, believe to be their due."

Who would have thought it possible. The Flounder Party in the Revolutionary Advisory Council gained new support. (You too, Ilsebill, are hesitating.) Those clever girls let the Flounder sell them an image of Rumford as a "restlessly questing spirit" and of my good-as-gold Amanda as a "sand-colored potato heroine." Even the prosecutor withheld her barbs as the discussion of the Amanda Woyke case neared its positively touching conclusion. There were stirrings of pity for Rumford, whose beastly wife, widow of the guillotined physicist Lavoisier, drove him half mad with her turbulent social life; yet even Amanda's purple-inked warnings—"a quarrelsome devil she is for sure, a living Ilsebill, a powder-puffy bitch" — had been powerless to talk him out of the rich match. Even Rumford's opportunism met with the prosecutor's understanding; his move from menaced England to Napoleonic France was justified as evidence of scientific neutrality, though Amanda expressed herself on the subject in

no uncertain terms: "And speaking of Napolyon, I wouldn't keep no soup warm for that man."

After the controversial condemnation of the Flounder in the case of Agnes Kurbiella, the Women's Tribunal had resolved to make a show of objectivity. It was conceded that the accused had meant to serve the cause of the Enlightenment. The count and the farm cook, for example, were termed pioneers in the field of equal rights; the final summation even made mention of the "pre-Maoist component" in their thinking, and no objection was raised to the fable woven by the Flounder as a funeral wreath for Amanda. Immediately after the disastrous battles of Jena and Auerstedt, so his story went, Count Rumford, seized with foreboding, had left Paris and traveled to West Prussia via Munich. He had had the good fortune to reach the Kashubian hamlet of Zuckau before the arrival of Napoleon's marauding army (and the siege of Danzig). And before dying in his arms, the desperately weary Amanda had been able to tell one last time her dream of community kitchens that would conquer hunger the world over. The dying cook seems even to have forgiven the count for his repulsive, stomach-gluing Rumford soup. Not a blessed word about me, the one-man funeral procession who buried Amanda in the former convent graveyard after my hurried return from Tuchel. Only a touching holding of hands up to the reason-transfigured end.

The next day the Tagesspiegel commented on the atmosphere in the courtroom. The Women's Tribunal, according to that worthy organ, had shown indications of deep emotion. The gaze of the usually cold-eyed prosecutor had clouded over. The public, consisting for the most part of women itching to mount the barricades, had actually sobbed. More solemnly than triumphantly, a small group, later joined by the majority, had intoned "We Shall Overcome." But then the Flounder, though deeply embedded in sand, had sent up a last speech balloon: "After Amanda's death darkness descended on Europe."

That was in November. Three months later, on February 24, 1807, when the Prussians had been defeated at Dir-schau and the flames of the pillaged city could be seen as far as Kashubia, French grenadiers belonging to the army

of Marshal Lefebvre occupied the Zuckau state farm and gobbled up our seed potatoes.

When Amanda Woyke died, she took nothing with her but her spectacles. She looked all over heaven for the sweet Lord. He had hidden, for he was afraid of Amanda, who wanted to give him a piece of her mind about the lack of justice, and what kind of a sweet Lord was he anyway, and maybe he didn't even exist. In the halls of heaven she met lots of old friends from Zuckau, Viereck, Kokoschken, and Ramkau. None of them had the slightest idea where the sweet Lord was keeping himself, and they were all standing around looking pretty anemic, because all they had to live on was memory. It wasn't till she got to the heavenly flour bin, which, however, hadn't a bit of flour in it, that Amanda found her three girls Stine Trude Lovise, who had died of starvation on earth because King Ole Fritz had kept up his war for seven years, and Pandours, Cossacks, and Prussian grenadiers in turn had eaten the bit of buckwheat and oats grown in Kashubia straight off the stalk.

Stine Trude Lovise, who had turned to meal worms in the heavenly flour bin, cried out, "The bin is empty. Nothing here. Oh, bring us oatmeal, Mother dear!" So Amanda clapped the lid of the flour bin shut and, pushing it ahead of her with a terrible din, went looking for the sweet Lord in all the halls of heaven.

On her way she met King Ole Fritz. He was playing with brightly painted tin soldiers. He still had plenty of ammunition, for he had brought a little sack of black peppercorns with him from down below. With the fingers of his left hand he flipped the peppercorns off the palm of his right hand, hitting Pandours, Cossacks, and white-enameled Austrian foot soldiers until he had finally won the Battle of Kolin. Amanda was furious. "It's high time you made peacel" she cried and threw all the tin soldiers and the black peppercorns into the empty flour bin, where the three little meal

worms Stine Trude Lovise now had company. Then she harnessed the king to the bin like a draft horse. And so with a terrible din, he pulling, she pushing, they continued on through the overpopulated but seemingly empty halls of heaven, looking for the sweet Lord.

On the way they met Count Rumford, who in the meantime had died of a sudden fever in far-off Paris. He was glad to see Amanda and showed her his latest invention: a tiny, shiny, softly purring machine. Pointing to the fiery-red gate of hell, he said: "Just imagine, dear friend, I've finally succeeded, with this little machine, in storing up hell-fire, the primal heat, that shameful waste of fuel, compressing it into tablets, and making it available for beneficial use. Down with superstitions! Now at last we can carry out your pet project and set up a giant Kashubian farm kitchen here in the halls of heaven. Now, with the help of hell-fire, dreams will become reality. You and I know what the world needs: the maximum within the minimum. Let us, you and I together, get to work on world nutrition. Unfortunately we still lack the ingredients for your excellent soup, first and foremost our belly-filler: the potato."

Amanda thought they ought first to ask the sweet Lord's permission; maybe in return for a moderate amount of corvee labor he'd lease them a few heavenly acres. She'd be glad to dig potatoes. She put the hell-fire utilization machine and the first dozen heat tablets into the flour bin along with the three little meal worms Stine Trude Lovise, the brightly painted tin soldiers, and the black peppercorns, harnessed Count Rumford to the bin alongside of Ole Fritz, and, they pulling, she pushing, they moved on through the halls of heaven with a terrible din, looking for the sweet Lord.

On the way they met me, war veteran and Inspector of Crown Lands August Romeike, who in between the battles of the Seven Years' War had made Amanda seven children, three of whom had died of starvation and now as meal worms had company in the flour bin. When Napoleon's Grand Army, returning sorely battered from Russia, reached Kashu-bia, a gang of looting grenadiers from whom I was trying to save our seed potatoes shot me dead. All I could bring with me to this other world was one sack of spuds, on which I