Gunter Grass - The Flounder

Two days later the French under Marshal Lefebvre, the Poles under Prince Radziwill, and the Badeners commanded by the hereditary prince were firmly established in Sankt Albrecht, Wonneberg, Ohra, and Wotzlaff on the perimeter of the city. The ring around the city had only one opening, across the sand spit at the mouth of the Vistula, and here Count Kalckreuth, the newly appointed commander of the garrison, was able to make his entrance. At length the Cossacks arrived and were much gaped at.

All that was no help. The sand spit was sealed off; the

ring was drawn steadily tighter. The Russians lost the Holm. An English corvette bringing in ammunition was lost. Thereupon, after heavy losses on both sides, a first parley was held at Oliva Gate. The capitulation of March 24 provided for the honorable withdrawal of the garrison, but the local population had once again to put up with unwanted guests: Marshal Lefebvre marched in with the French regiments, Saxon and Badener troops, and Polish uhlans. Homes had to be evacuated wholly or in part. The parsonage was soon short of space. But Sophie sang once more in the kitchen, in the stairwell, and in the herb garden, for she thought freedom had been billeted on* the parsonage.

In June the one-time general, then consul, now emperor Napoleon Bonaparte rode through the High Gate under a braidless hat, trotted across the Long Market reviewing his victorious troops, then moved into Allmond House on the Long Garden, which had been requisitioned for his use. And when, on the following day, he imposed a "contribution" of twenty million francs on the merchants and town councilors who had been summoned to pay their respects, Sophie, along with several other kitchenmaids, was called in to serve at the reception.

And so it came about that she saw the emperor (standing as solitary as an imperial mushroom). He spoke in terse commands. His gestures wiped everything imaginary off the table. At every turn he had to create facts. Comical to see how he treated those little merchants. His knowledge of the city's finances was staggering. His gaze, addressed to all, including Sophie. While serving the restless man — he ate standing up — canapes of smoked Vistula salmon, she curtseyed and begged mercy for her imprisoned Fritz, whereupon the emperor uttered a sharp command, and she was taken aside by General Rapp, his aide-de-camp.

Rapp, who had just been appointed governor of the Republic of Danzig, gave Sophie his promise — he would look into the matter quickly. He tried his Alsatian wit on her, was pleased with her replies, salted as they were with seaport wit, and offered to put her in charge of his, the governor's, kitchen. That, he intimated, would make it so much simpler to help her Fritz.

From then on Sophie cooked not for Pastor Blech but

only for Rapp (who, however, was also me) and for Rapp's guests. And because Rapp was wild about mushrooms, she gathered mushrooms for Rapp alone when the summer egg mushrooms sprouted and later when the autumn chestnut mushrooms and greenies shot up in mounds and the imperial mushroom stood solitary. But in among beech trees or on the pine-needle floors where she found puffballs and orange agaric, Sophie thought fondly and exclusively of me, her Fritz.

Our love, Ilsebill, all the things we've whispered with tightened throats, tucked away in letters, trumpeted down from towers or over the telephone, outroaring the sea or stiller than thought, our love, which we've fenced about so securely, packed up so secretly in hatboxes with all sorts of trifles, which was once as conspicuous as a missing button, and incised under varying names in the bark of every tree, it, our love, which only yesterday was palpable, an object of daily use, our all-purpose glue, our slogan, our bathroom motto, our flickering silent film, our evening prayer spoken as we shivered in our nightshirts, our love, a push button that would play our sweet pop song over and over again, our love, which ran barefoot through the quaking grass, our love, that (almost intact) brick in a ruined wall, our love, which we lost while housecleaning and looking for something else, and found among the usual justifications disguised as a pencil sharpener, our love, which never expected to die, is no more, Ilsebill. Or it consents to be possible (or to exist) only under certain conditions. Or it still exists — but somewhere else. Or it never was and for that very reason is still thinkable. Or suppose, like Sophie and me, we go gathering mushrooms again and look for it deep in the woods. (But when an imperial mushroom stood solitary, beyond compare, and was found by you or you, you never had me in mind.)

So much has been written about it. They say it hurts. They say it tinges everything blue. They say it's the one thing that can't be bought. Where it's lacking, there's a hole, a heart-shaped hole. No one can deliberately turn it on or off. It's always undivided. But Agnes the kitchenmaid loved me and also me. And when Mother Rusch sapped Preacher Hegge's strength, she seems to have had me, too, in mind. While Ilsebill recognizes herself in my High Gothic Doro-

thea or mistakes me for her wishes. But Sophie, whom I loved as Pastor Blech and as Governor Rapp, loved only and undividedly me, her Fritz, who spent his life in fortress arrest, faraway and unerodable, while Sophie went gathering mushrooms for others (first for Blech, then for Rapp), always with freedom, the beautiful idea, in mind when she found, announced or betrayed by fly agaric, the imperial mushroom standing solitary.

From the early summer of 1807 to the fall of 1813, Sophie Rotzoll cooked for the governor of the Republic of Danzig and his numerous guests. (In the meantime her grandmother had died, and shortly thereafter her mother, of grief, so it was said, at hearing her daughter decried as the governor's whore.)

This is what Pastor Blech, deacon of Saint Mary's, had to say of Jean Rapp, his rival for Sophie's affections: "A young man of about thirty, a child of fortune who like his master had risen quickly from the obscure middle class to a high military rank, sporting several medals on the costly uniform of a general and an aide-de-camp, he almost led me, with his smiling face and not unfriendly gestures, to mistake him for a benevolent spirit. But just as his good qualities were not grounded in sound principles of virtue, so his faults did not emanate from an inherently evil nature; all his faults and all his virtues were, rather, those of an impetuous weakling, a plaything of circumstances and conditions, moods, fancies, and passions. Hence his easily wounded pride and his increasing love of ostentation; hence his tendency to lend ear to every wretched purveyor of gossip and make sudden decisions that have brought untold harm to many an innocent; hence the thoughtless mockery with which he often receives the most just complaints; hence the abandon that has often led him to make the most sacred promises and fail to keep them; hence, finally, his lechery, which he has not always shamed to display in public. ." When I think of myself today as Rapp, I cannot help agreeing with what I, as Pastor Blech, said about him. Oh, how that generous and at the same time rapacious man, now playfully gallant, now bestially lecherous, tortured poor Sophie over the years with his constantly reiterated promises

to help the imprisoned Fritz; how often his love, rather touching in itself and made more so by his awkwardness and bashfulness, became brutal and importunate; and how often his cynical abuse of power and contempt for the common man's aspiration to freedom offended Sophie's still-childlike faith in the beautiful idea, with the result that, as the French occupation went on, she began first to suspect, then to dislike, and finally to detest everything connected with Napoleon.

And when, after five and a half years, history went into reverse and the Grand Army was decimated in Russia, when Rapp, who on the emperor's order had taken part in the campaign, tried to compensate with ill humor for the frost damage he had incurred, Sophie had grown up to be his enemy who, when gathering mushrooms, considered not only the edible varieties but also those that can be politically effective.