The Flounder

by Günter Grass

  “High Female Court!” cried the Flounder. “When during the last phase of the Neolithic a fisherman, comparable to the fisherman in the tale, caught me in an eel trap and gave me back my freedom, it seemed to me that the young man’s magnanimity put me under obligation to help him with my advice. Lord, how stupid he was! Yes, there was something terrifying about the ignorance of Stone Age men. They seldom acted, and when they did, their motive was nothing better than vague feeling. Sniveling, garrulous creatures, in dread of the cold, they wanted above all to feel sheltered. No trouble at all for the women to keep their little Stone Age men in a state of idiocy. The women, for instance, were quick to discover (at the very latest when they began to domesticate animals) that elk cows, wild sows, and consequently human women did not conceive their young unaided, but had to be inseminated by a male elk, a boar, a man, and so on. But the ladies didn’t breathe a word; they craftily kept this knowledge to themselves and ignored the possible rights of fatherhood. They simply kept the men in the dark, allegedly for their own good. And so for thousands of years the men remained dependent, in seeming security. In modern terms you might say, ‘The women ruled because they were better informed.’”

  A few members of the audience—the trial was open to the public—tittered for a moment and then stopped themselves, as though frightened at their audacity. When the laughter had died down, the Flounder continued. “Most prominent among the ruling women was a certain Awa, who had three breasts and was idolized. This Awa put a taboo on those impulses that later, possibly encouraged by my advice, led to all the manifestations we casually refer to as culture. You most of all, my esteemed prosecutor, must realize that it was necessary to counter this state of total dependence with a liberation movement. At the very least I was under obligation to help my magnanimous fisherman.”

  “By substituting the rule of men for that of women?”

  “That,” said the Flounder, “sounds to me like a leading question.”

  The prosecutor stuck to her guns. “Are you then of the opinion that male informational superiority, having replaced female informational superiority, should remain the norm?”

  He answered irritably. “The women’s historically conditioned loss of power has been widely overestimated. Since the early Middle Ages, home and kitchen, the bed and hence the realm of dreams, child rearing, Christian morality, and the all-important household treasury, have been the preserve of the female sex. And what of woman’s intuition, the tyrannical little caprices, the sweet secrets, the old habit of saying no and meaning yes, the pious lies, the stylish games, those glances that mean everything and nothing, the desires so quick to sprout regardless of the season, the charming but expensive follies. Think how often a single, never to be repeated smile has been paid for with life imprisonment! In short: the women retained plenty of power …”

  Here the speaker was cut short. “The Women’s Tribunal,” said Ms. Schönherr, the presiding judge, “has heard enough of your platitudes. We have only to open a book to see that all history has been made and interpreted by men. A cursory glance at current affairs shows that all positions of power are occupied by men. It’s common knowledge.”

  When the Flounder, visibly agitated, broke in with, “What about Cleopatra? And Lucrezia Borgia? And Pope Joan? And Joan of Arc? And Marie Curie? And Rosa Luxemburg? And Golda Meir? Or right now the president of the Bundestag?”—his list was brusquely cut off by Ms. Huntscha, the prosecutor. “All exceptions that prove the male-chauvinist rule. The usual concessions. Tell me this, defendant Flounder: did you advise the men to treat history and hence also politics as a purely male affair?”

  “You could call it division of labor. The small change of politics; the so-called dirty work, as well as military affairs with all their dangers, was left to the men, whereas the women …”

  “Stick to the point! Defendant! You have been asked a question.”

  “I admit that on my advice the oppressed male terminated many thousands of years of historyless female domination by resisting the servitude of nature, by establishing principles of order, replacing incestuous and therefore chaotic matriarchy with the discipline of patriarchy, by introducing Apollonian reason, by beginning to think up utopias, to take action, and to make history. Often, I have to admit, he has been too intent on power. He has become increasingly petty about safeguarding property rights. Much too reluctant to attempt anything new. I tried to compensate for his abuses with my advice, but time and time again he rejected it. For in principle I stand for equality between the sexes. Always have. Always will. But when I was caught during the late Neolithic, I had no other choice. If a woman had caught me and not a fisher-man, I would not have been set free—I’d have been cooked over the fire in accordance with the precepts of neolithic cookery. What do you think? Probably with sorrel and manna grits. Well, there you have it. The consequences are almost unthinkable. To tell you the truth, I could easily have been won over to a perpetuation of ever-loving care. And I’d have known how to promote it. Too bad a man had to catch me. But just supposing. Supposing you, esteemed prosecutor, had caught me not just recently in Lübeck Bay, but once upon a time in the unruffled waters of the Vistula estuary, set me free, and given me a long-term contract as your adviser? Ah, the possibilities! Who knows, who knows! History would undoubtedly have taken a different course. Possibly there wouldn’t be any dates. Unquestionably our world would be—well, closer to paradise. I wouldn’t be lying in a zinc tub, breathing in the nicotine-containing fug of an assembly that calls itself a tribunal. The Ilsebills of the world would all be grateful to me. But sad to say, I was caught by a stupid though not ungifted young fellow, who refused to understand whom he had caught.”

  Thereupon the Women’s Tribunal adjourned, but not before Ms. von Carnow, the defense counsel, had demanded the appointment of two commissions, one to determine under what conditions a neolithic woman would have set the flatfish free and signed him up as an adviser, and the other to draw up a brief outline of the course human development would have taken from neolithic times to the present if the matriarchate had been retained. “If the Women’s Tribunal wishes to guarantee a fair trial,” cried Ms. von Carnow, “it must be willing to project convincing alternatives.”

  Frankly, Ilsebill, nothing much came of it. The nine Berlin women’s groups met among themselves. Sketches of regressive utopias were drafted. Nine women’s paradises were described. But when the drafts were compared in an attempt to work out a unified concept, war broke out among the groups. Pathetic! The League of Socialist Women refused to take seriously what they called the “sexual pecking order” of Lesbian Action, while the liberal-extremist Bread and Roses group condemned the contribution of the “debating societies” as “social romanticism.” The Ilsebill Women’s Collective was accused of planning a “shitty beehive state with queen, workers, and drones.” The August Seventh Feminist Initiative Group—August 7 was the date on which the Flounder had been caught for the second time—covered itself with ridicule by predicting that thanks to certain genetic manipulations future generations of males would menstruate, bear children, and even suckle them. And when the presumably Maoist Red Pisspot faction, a split-off from the League of Socialist Women, put forward a utopian vision of radical return to neolithic conditions, its members were suspected of being CIA agents or worse.

  All this of course gave the press a field day. Sardonic remarks in all the gossip columns. Ms. Schönherr, as presiding judge, was hard put to it to keep the Tribunal together and get on with the trial. In the end, her compromise formulation was approved by all the warring groups and factions. Ursula Schönbart read the succinct formulation: “In the opinion of the Women’s Tribunal, any answer to the Flounder’s question—how human society would have developed if matriarchy had not succumbed to the patriarchate—must perforce be hypothetical. It nevertheless seems safe to say that mankind would be more pacific, more sensitive, more creative though free from individual aspirations, more affectionate, more just desp
ite abundance, and thanks to the absence of male ambition less hectic and more serene; moreover, there would be no state.”

  In any case the trial continued. The Flounder remained under arrest, but more and more his responses were limited to the one word “unwell.” To spare his voice, a no-smoking rule was imposed at the behest of the defense.

  After that the trial ran smoothly for three or four days. The Flounder testified quite willingly concerning my neolithic time-phase—amusing little anecdotes. The public was intensely curious about the loving-caring stratagems that Awa used to keep us men in a state of servitude for thousands of years. When the Flounder cited neolithic dishes—curds with flatbread made of acorn and manna meal, wild goose baked in a shell of clay—the pencils of those present scribbled feverishly. Awa’s recipes were reprinted in the women’s pages of several daily newspapers: “Mushrooms à la Awa, baked on a bed of hot ashes.”

  Only when the Flounder started referring more and more frequently to the three-breasted Awa, to the myth of the third breast, did his listeners grow restless. Questions were raised during recesses: “Is a third breast indispensable to the establishment of women’s rule? Can it be that we women are short of something?”

  The first drawings evoking the principle of three-breasted hegemony made their appearance on the toilet walls of the erstwhile movie house. (Later the mammary triad filled unoccupied advertising space in subway stations. A primordial masculine desire expressed itself with sweeping brush strokes on hoardings and walls.) When the Flounder claimed that the end of total matriarchy had been brought about not by his advice, but by the sudden disappearance of the third breast—a phenomenon that even he was at a loss to explain—it was once again necessary to recess the Women’s Tribunal.

  “The Neolithic era,” said Ms. Huntscha, “is behind us; in the opinion of the prosecution, the Flounder’s guilt has been proved. But before sentence can be pronounced, certain material still remains to be examined, especially the following allegations of the Flounder: (1) there were three-breasted women in the Neolithic era; (2) only thanks to the third breast were women able to repulse the male claim to power; (3) only three-breasted women can possibly restore the matriarchate. Furthermore, the court must determine whether or not, after the alleged disappearance of the alleged third breast, the Awa cult, as it continued to be practiced during the Bronze and Iron Ages, was able to preserve certain vestigial matriarchal rights. And lastly, the Flounder’s contention that—masked as the cult of the Virgin—the Awa cult remained in force through the first centuries of Christianity, cannot be passed over in silence. On the contrary, our movement must investigate, or appoint a special commission to investigate, the question whether the third breast should be regarded as an essential feature of early matriarchy. If the answer is yes, then we must keep faith with our prehistoric past and renew the neolithic three-breast cult. Experts must be consulted. But even now shouldn’t sex-conscious woman artists be encouraged to work out a modern formulation for the Awa cult? On the other hand,” she concluded on a note of warning, “it’s a tricky legend, and if we’re not careful it will make fools of us all. Perhaps in reproducing the myth of the three breasts, we shall only be falling in with the male chauvinist’s wish dream of tits, tits, and more tits. For—as you must all be aware—men have never been satisfied with two breasts.”

  To make a long story short, the Women’s Tribunal resolved after long tergiversation—accompanied by the usual factional fights—to dismiss the third breast as a real or conceivable possibility. Ms. Schönherr (who, incidentally, is ideologically close to my Awa) cast the one unavailing contrary vote. The graffiti on the walls of the movie-house toilet were covered over with whitewash. A wasted effort, of course. Time and time again, ball points and magic markers were exercised. Flamboyant posters appeared on the market. Even schoolchildren, egged on by their teachers, seem to have daubed Awa’s opulence in exuberant size and color. A baker in Tempelhof started baking Awa-shaped buns, and they sold like hot cakes.

  After so much public mischief, the verdict, as read by the presiding judge, was bound to be severe: “The Flounder is found guilty. His one-sided advice benefited the male cause alone. With ruthless single-mindedness he worked for the introduction of patriarchy. Though for many centuries his efforts were fruitless, his misogynistic purpose must be counted against him. In framing this judgment the Tribunal has seen no reason to take neolithic woman’s alleged three breasts into account.”

  Would you have said that? Oh, Ilsebill! It was all so different. Important as breasts, two or three, are and have been, devotedly as I scratched the three-breasted Awa in the sand, kneaded her in clay, carved her in wood, scraped her out of a lump of amber, the only really crucial question was this: who, when we were shivering, who, when we had only raw food to eat, stole fire from the sky?

  And you, friend Flounder? Why didn’t you tell the Tribunal that it wasn’t any man but our Awa who stole fire from the old Sky Wolf? You don’t seem to find it convenient to remember how often, in our many conversations on the sands of the estuary, I laughed at your Prometheus story. What was it again that you said? “Fire is masculine thought and action in one.” Your cock-and-bull story was supposed to boost our morale. No, friend Flounder. As well you know, it wasn’t a man, it was Awa who went to the Sky Wolf who guarded the fire, and lay with him. You didn’t want to believe it. And now the women’s libbers have put you on trial. The Ilsebills of the world are pointing their fingers at you. Tell them who brought fire to the earth, admit it. Tell them—because they don’t know—where Awa hid those three little coals. Because the consequences were far from negligible. Tell them the whole story, friend Flounder. The Ilsebills need to know. Every teensy-weensy detail.

  Meat

  Raw rotten deep-frozen boiled.

  Supposedly the Wolf (elsewhere the Vulture)

  was the first custodian of fire.

  In all the myths the she-cook was crafty:

  while the Wolves slept (the Vultures

  were deep in cloud) she hid

  the coals in her moist pouch.

  She stole the fire from the sky.

  No longer cutting sinews with long teeth.

  No longer foretasting the aftertaste of carrion.

  Softly the dead wood called, wanting to burn.

  Once we had assembled (for fire is an assembler)

  plans kindled, thoughts crackled,

  sparks rose up and names for raw and cooked.

  When liver shriveled over the fire,

  boars’ heads were baked in clay,

  when fish were lined up on a green branch

  or stuffed guts were bedded in ashes,

  when bacon sizzled on hot stones

  and stirred blood turned to pudding,

  then fire triumphed over rawness,

  then we men among ourselves discussed taste.

  The smoke betrayed us,

  we dreamed of metal,

  and that was the (foreshadowed) beginning of history.

  Where the stolen fire was briefly hidden

  In our early myths there was no fire. Lightning struck, moors burst into flame of their own accord, but we never succeeded in holding on to the fire; it always died out. And so we ate our badger, elk cow, and grouse raw or dried on stones. And we huddled shivering in the darkness.

  Then the dry wood said to us, “Someone whose flesh is also a pouch must climb up to the Sky Wolf. He is the keeper of the primal fire, whence comes all other fire, including the lightning.”

  It had to be a woman, because the male has no pouch in his flesh. So a woman climbed up by the rainbow and found the Sky Wolf lying beside the primal fire. He had just been eating a crispy brown roast, and he gave the woman what was left of it. Before she had finished chewing, he said sadly, “I know you’ve come for fire. But have you a pouch?”

  When the woman showed him her pouch, he said, “I’m old, I can’t see any more. Lie down with me and let me test you.”

  The
woman lay down with him, and he tested her pouch with his Wolf’s member until he was all worn out and fell asleep on her flesh. After waiting a little while and another little while, she let his tester slip out of her pouch, tipped him—remember, he was lying on top of her—off to one side, sprang to her feet, and shook herself a little. Then she took three glowing bits of charcoal from the primal fire and hid them in her pouch, where they instantly seized on the Wolf sperm and made it hiss.

  Thereupon the Wolf woke up, for he must have heard or sensed that the fire was consuming his seed in the woman’s pouch. “I’m too exhausted,” he said, “to take back what you’ve stolen. But let me tell you this: The primal fire will make its mark at the opening of your pouch, and the mark will leave a scar. Your scar will itch and itch. And because it itches, you will wish for someone to come and take the itch away. And when it doesn’t itch, you will wish for someone to come and make it itch.”

  The woman laughed, for her pouch was still moist and the glowing charcoal hadn’t yet started to burn her. She laughed so hard she had to hold herself in. And, laughing, she said to the exhausted Wolf, “You old wreck. Don’t make up stories about my pouch. I’ll show you what else I can do. You’ll be amazed.”