Gunter Grass - The Flounder

In January 1813, hard pressed by Cossacks, the Grand-jean, Heudelet, Marchand, and Cavaignac divisions took refuge behind the city walls. The garrison was reinforced by Polish legionaries, Westphalians from the Rhenish Confederation, a regiment of Bavarians, three regiments of Neapolitans, and a certain number of French chasseurs and cuirassiers. By the time the warehouses on Warehouse Island were freshly stocked with provisions, the bastions were equipped with additional cannon, and the Russo-Prussian siege army had at last closed the ring around the city, Sophie's plan was ready; but then, at the beginning of March, there were no suitable mushrooms.

After daily skirmishes and foraging expeditions up to Schiedlitz and onto the Island, after the first utilization of Congreve rockets, after extensive fires and epidemics, when, after six months of unremitting hunger, the midsummer floods surpassed all bounds, because heavy rainfall had so swollen the Vistula that the dikes from Schwetz to Montau Point burst in seven places and the lowlands were under water as far as the city bastions, that all the outworks, Fort Napoleon, and Fort Desaix were cut off, that palisades went drifting through the flooded streets along with household wares, and fish could easily be caught in large quantities by

anyone with a net — a miracle that fed the whole population — when, in short, the midsummer floods had completely fouled the military plans of besieged and besieger alike, and peasants fleeing from the Island managed to pass through the siege ring and into the city by water, foodstuffs that had become rare, such as fruit, vegetables, eggs, and Glumse, reappeared in the half-starved city; and early in September Sophie began to hope that certain mushrooms she had ordered would be delivered. Her hate had boiled down to a recipe.

Yes, Ilsebill. We, too, know- that. When we wear love with the lining on the outside. When at last we cut holes in, and therefore see through each other. When everything and its opposite narrow down to a single point. When we— repairing to the woods again — look no longer for the incomparably beautiful idea but for its opposite, which also has its beauty — hate disguised as a mushroom stands on a moss floor and under oaks — quite unmistakable.

And incidentally the Flounder, called by Rapp when the midsummer floods reached the city, is believed to have warned the governor of the dying Republic of Danzig, "My son! Careful at the table. All calf's-head stuffing is not equally wholesome."

A litter of puffballs successfully found, close by.

When I was proved right, I gave up everything else for lost.

This hat fits a head shorter to a T.

Take it diffusely;

even the light

will swindle its way through.

True, they are puffballs, but the wrong ones exactly.

One March evening, though a northwesterly wind, blowing in squalls of up to hurricane force, was battering at the house, we had invited guests, failing to suspect that the ferry service across the Stor might be suspended. Only when the village siren reminded us of wartime and we saw the volunteer firemen bucking the wind, when the openings in the dikes, including the big gate leading to the ferry, were closed, when the old-timers in Kroger's store said high tide might bring something as bad as in '62, when under low-racing clouds the village cowered behind the dikes, because the wind squalls were rising to hurricane force, making the light flicker and cutting the electric stove off for minutes at a time, only when one of the young birches in the garden snapped, did my Ilsebill realize that we had put on three plates too many.

Already she was making a face as though behind closed shutters. Already, as a feminine answer to nature's apocalyptic mood, a house-filling migraine, a shattering of glasses, seemed to be in the offing. New, hair-thin cracks in the plaster. Our guests phoned to say they couldn't come. Storm warnings on the radio. Road cut off at Wedel. Damn shame. They'd been looking forward.

We'd been going to have potatoes and rutabaga with flank of mutton, a dish into which Amanda Woyke (and later Lena Stubbe) liked to stir diced sweet-and-sour squash at the end. Crushed pepper, allspice, fresh marjoram, and three cloves of garlic go into this one-dish meal for damp, cold days.

Already feeling very lonely among the gleaming plates, I consoled myself — or was it the Flounder who spoke to me?

"Come on," he said. "Stormy weather and migraine are only half the story. How often the Vistula used to flood. Why shouldn't the Elbe and the Stor? Let your Ilsebill lie in a half-darkened chamber and shroud herself in gloom. Even without ferry service, guests come from afar. In Awa's day the women of the neighborhood came with honeycombs and dried morels. When Wigga cooked manna grits for the Goitches, as you used to call the Goths, until they were fed up and shoved off on their so-called migration. And when the Bohemian prelates and Polish knights were treated to wild boar with cranberries. When Dorothea served Scania herring to the four dignitaries, though it wasn't Friday. When Sophie seasoned the meal she prepared for the governor's guest with political mushrooms: what a feast! Not one of the guests left as he had come. Just keep open house, my son, for new guests will come, even if the ferry isn't running. Stiff-legged, with creaking sound effects, they are leaving mass graves, archives, and altars. Pleasantly hungry they are, and fat with stories. Mother Rusch has just roasted seventy-nine Easter lambs from the sheep farms of Schiedlitz and Scharpau over charcoal for Ferber the rich patrician, who has invited abbots, Polish nobles, and others. You'd better warm the plates, because mutton fat leaves a film in cooling. But quietly, so as not to disturb your Ilsebill in her torture chamber. ."

He talks in pious adages. "Guests," he says, "are nothing more than stretched soups, spice of sorts, the unavoidable extra helping; it's the stupider ones who come too late."

Thinking up guests: historical, contemporary, future. When Agnes cooked for Opitz, and the Silesian refugees sat starved at his table, babbling vale-of-tears poetry. One time Amanda cooked a mountain of mashed potatoes for me and my last remaining war comrades and sprinkled bits of bacon out of the pan over them: a meal for old soldiers. And one day (without exactly consulting Ilsebill) I will invite Associate Judge Griselde Dubertin of the Women's Tribunal for a mushroom dish. And in our present situation the manna grits of famine days might come in. .

Outside, the hurricane squalls began to lose heart. The wind shifted to the west. March rain. Warm with schnapps, the volunteer firemen came from the dike gates. My Ilsebill

doffed her migraine, clothed herself festively in fly-agaric red, and said: "Let's eat by ourselves. What do we need guests for? Can't we manage, just you and me? Does there always have to be a big crowd, followed by two full dishwashers? Those neurotic city slickers. With their everlasting marriage and tax problems. Let 'em stay in Hamburg. I'd rather you told me about Sophie."

This was her plan: to serve up a calf's head stuffed with mushrooms. She was famous for her stuffed calf's head. And over the years Governor Rapp's regular guests had come to trust the dishes she made with honey tufts, millers, egg mushrooms, milk caps, and imperial mushrooms. Unsuspectingly they spooned up dark mushroom soups with rabbits' innards and even abandoned the precaution — after all, they were deep in enemy territory — of having the domestics taste their food for them.

Sophie got the calf's head from the allied Westphalian troops, whose stables were situated in Kneipab, beyond range of the Prussian batteries and protected by the Bear and Renegade bastions. The quartermasters never protested, for the governor's kitchen squad was entitled to requisition from army units as well as from the civilian population. After all, Westphalian and Polish officers were among the regularly invited guests.