Gunter Grass - The Flounder

now this! That's why you're always going away. Back and forth, back and forth. I want a talk with her. Right away. Woman to woman. To get things straight. See?"

Resistance was unthinkable. "All right. We'll invite her. I'll cook something. Big three-way discussion. If she'll come. Ridiculous, this jealousy! When you know I'm always thinking of you. ."

And so, because Ilsebill badgered me and wanted to get things straight "once and for all," I invited Griselde Dubertin (a Huguenot family from way back) to join us in a jellied calf's head: "Oh, come on. I'll pay for the plane and the train, too. You'll have to get acquainted some time." While I was at it, I should have crowded the whole lot of them around our table, Osslieb and Helga Paasch and even Ms. Schonherr and — so Ilsebill could finally get everything straight — Ulla Witzlaff as well; the expense be damned. I said as much to Ilsebill: "Why just Dubertin? That's water under the bridge. Why not Carnow and Paasch? All in the same dishwasher, Ilsebill! So you'll finally get it all straight!"

But she wanted to keep it intimate. We were three at table. Griselde came over the weekend. Just that Friday she had pronounced the Flounder guilty as a traitor and counterrevolutionary. Whereupon he once again played dead and (belly up) forced an adjournment of the Tribunal. The Flounder Party protested and demanded affidavits concerning the admissibility of special mushrooms as political weapons in the struggle for emancipation.

I asked Griselde to come in mystic green, because Ilsebill could be expected to wear fly-agaric red. I was looking forward to the discussion. And I was determined to make my jellied calf's head "a la Sophie" something special. But to tell the truth, I'd rather have hidden away in the kitchen with Witzlaff, within earshot of her serenely clicking knitting needles (knit two, purl two). Or concealed myself behind her church organ and had a real good cry, while she cut loose at the keys: "Out of the depths to Thee I cry. . " Or her voice — Lord, what a voice she has! — might have carried me over the Jordan: "Bitter tears and sorrow's breath, anguished yearning, fear and death. ." For the business with Ruth Simoneit is still on my mind. Maybe she did start

swilling vermouth on my account. And all I do with Griselde is talk and argue about the old days. And with Ilsebill, too, things are getting more and more difficult — these daily quarrels! The pleasure she takes in demolishing the man she loves. Her fury that redoubles after a brief pause, and all because she couldn't manage to get pregnant by herself (without male help). And yet, as far as I'm concerned, now and forever, there's no one but Ilsebill Ilsebill. .

And then we were three at table. (As a present for Ilsebill, Griselde brought a whole pile of women's lib books: instructions for the new pecking order. For me she brought potholders: "For the cook!")

Much as I'd been looking forward to it, I did not enjoy that meal. The two of them hit it off on sight. They harmonized in color and voice. Before I brought on the jellied calf's head in its bowl and unmolded it unharmed onto a platter — how it shivered, how it shook! — the two of them had agreed that I never gave any more than a small fraction of myself. I could never fully make up my mind. I always had something else in view. "Subterfuges. His everlasting subterfuges! Right now, for instance! He's at it again!" cried Ilsebill. "Just look at him, Griselde. That snotty look on his face! He's not here at all. He's miles away. He's always got company in the back of his mind."

Nothing's allowed. Strict supervision. Stick to the point, don't digress, don't go into quick motion. But I refuse to sit here forever, in the present or immediate future. I've been invited to clear out, to chuck all this momentary crap, or, as Ilsebill puts it: "I guess you want to split again. To take a powder. I guess you're sick of me. And look at Griselde, who's taken this long trip just on your account; I guess you've had enough of her, too. I guess you've got a yen for something or somebody else."

The siege of the city, as Sophie wrote me in the fortress of Graudenz, where I had been imprisoned for sixteen years, had ended on November 29, although the occupying troops were staying on for another four weeks as a point of honor. Consequently the encirclement would also continue. But the most urgent necessities — syrup, potatoes, bacon, and

manna grits — were being smuggled in at outrageous prices by way of the Prussian advance post on the Zigankenberg. Unfortunately the mushroom season was over. Yes, she'd been cooking for Rapp again lately, though without enthusiasm. After that dreadful massacre — even now no one could say what the fight had been about — she'd been pretty badly shocked at the sight of so much blood. ("Such young fellows they were.") So she'd given notice and gone to live in the Wicker Bastion. A little later all the French stores had caught fire. Exactly 197 warehouses had gone up in flames. An amazing sight. And a rumor was still going around that it was not enemy guns but patriots that had kindled the fire on Warehouse Island. She, too, Sophie, was under suspicion, but they had no proof. Evidently Rapp didn't want to lose her (as his cook). She was making big dinners again. The negotiations for the capitulation and the resulting festivities had brought Russian and Prussian officers to the house. Friend and foe were as gay as if 12,640 howitzer shells, Congreve rockets, and canisters of shot had been exchanged for the fun of it, as if half the garrison had not been carried off by epidemics or bullets. But since she often made jellied calf's head for these banquets, they yielded plenty of rich, meaty soup for the children of the Wicker Bastion. If only there were mushrooms. She'd have been only too glad to serve Rapp a last portion of good stuffing.

Then Sophie told me not to give up hope, for as soon as the city was liberated from the French, she would write a petition with her heart's blood: May the queen, who has known suffering, be merciful and release her dearly beloved Fritz from the damp, cold fortress where he's already been missing out on his youth for sixteen years, for he has long since repented. It was all a childish mistake. They'd been thinking of an entirely different freedom. .

But I was obliged to spend many another mushroom season in that damp, cold hole. (In the meantime I'd forgotten what for.) And to Griselde Dubertin I said, "I've cooked this jellied calf's head in honor of Sophie Rotzoll and let it gel all by itself, without gelatin." (No, no! I don't

want to have been her conspiratorial Fritz, condemned to life imprisonment in the fortress.) To Ilsebill I said, "This Sophie was a really interesting case. Worked with mushroom poison, as the Flounder was able to prove." (I'd rather be Governor Rapp, who survived the stuffed calf's head and kept order to the end.) The pharmacist in Griselde now spoke. She expatiated on bacterial, vegetable, and animal poisons, so-called toxins: "Especially the mushroom poison muscarine, a small quantity of which is also present in fly agaric…" (Anyway, Rapp survived. And Pastor Blech wrote: "On January 2, the departure of the Poles was followed by that of the French, Neapolitans, Bavarians, and Westphalians. Still 9,000 strong, with 14 generals. Over 1,200 sick remained in the city. The officers kept their swords and equipment. At Oliva Gate the Bavarians, Westphalians, and Germans stepped out of the ranks and begged leave to return to the fatherland, there to fight against the common foe, which was granted them. . ") And speaking (past me) to Ilsebill, Griselde repeated what she had said at the Women's Tribunal: "The Flounder betrayed Sophie. Rapp would never have survived the Amanita phalloides. The amanita toxin specific to it destroys the liver, kidneys, and red blood corpuscles, attacks the heart muscle. . " No, I don't want to have been Rapp, either. I'd rather just be Sophie's fatherly friend. When the terrible French period was over, she cooked for Pastor Blech again, cooked for him for twenty-five years, until the deacon died of old age. I wasn't Rapp (the traitor). And after Sophie had served me (the kindly pastor) jellied calf's head with tongue, sweetbreads, and capers, I wrote in celebration of a special day, "On March 29, the Royal Provincial and Municipal Court was established here; its first promulgation was an edict abolishing Napoleonic law."