by Günter Grass
The prosecutor was of the opinion that the Flounder had made use of me, Albrecht Slichting the irresolute swordmaker, to sow discord in the ranks of the guilds after they had resolved to fight the patricians. According to her, it was I who at the Flounder’s suggestion had termed the grievance about the importation of beer from Wismar a problem that could bother only the city brewers and, in a pinch, the coopers’ guild.
Sieglinde Huntscha spoke as if she had been there. In her version, swordmaker Slichting, shaken by the Flounder, had declared: “Of course I can’t speak for the anchor makers, bucket makers, pitcher makers, and blacksmiths, but I find myself in duty bound to tell you that at their guild meetings, and those of the Scania mariners as well, I discerned no great eagerness to oblige the rich brewers, who are selling plenty of their black beer despite the competition from Wismar, by marching on the Rathaus with crowbars and sledge hammers. And as for the political demand for an equal voice in the decisions of the seated council, the general council, and the nine-man court of aldermen, you make me laugh. Trust a man who has traveled widely—such an arrangement exists nowhere. Would a tailor, for instance, claim to be a master of the diplomacy needed to defend the city’s interests at the Hanseatic Council in Lübeck? And who will stand up more boldly to the Teutonic Knights, to that old fox Kniprode, for instance? Will it be the patrician Gottschalk Nase, who has been traveling from Bruges to Novgorod for years on the city’s business, or Tile Schulte the butcher, who is incapable of even writing his name, let alone of defending the Danzig trading post in Falsterbo and the rights of the Scania mariners with sign and seal? Why, all this agitation is only a trick of the rich coopers, who are trying to worm their way into the city council. With the help of the guilds, of course. But once they’re elected, you’ll see them striding through Koggen Gate more arrogantly than the patricians. My advice, in short, is to keep out of it. The charter granted in accordance with Culm law has proved satisfactory. Rebellion won’t get us anything but harsher tyranny.”
The prosecutor called it a “triumph of the medieval proletariat” that the uprising had nevertheless taken place, even though it was led by a profligate patrician, the wood carver Ludwig Skriever.
“Poor, deluded proletariat,” the Flounder scoffed. “No, dear ladies, my protégé, the not only honest but also experienced swordmaker Slichting, was right in eschewing acts of violence. I was not the only one to confirm him in his misgivings; his wife, Dorothea, who knew nothing of politics but made up for it in instinctive wisdom, gave him the same advice. ‘Don’t follow like a dumb sheep.’ That’s what she said. And consider what happened: Barrels of Wismar beer were emptied into the street. Ludwig Skriever, motivated by thoughts of private vengeance—the patrician Gottschalk Nase had termed Skriever’s daughter a ‘poor match’ for his son because her dowry seemed insufficient—tried to incite the rebellious guildsmen to murder the town councilors and aldermen. And the patricians, who had the bargemen and carters with them, counterattacked. Even before Tile Schulte and six other ringleaders, including a miller’s helper from the Old City, were executed, wood carver Skriever decamped. Long prison sentences were meted out. But the council wisely voted against importing Wismar beer. Whereupon the journeymen brewers presented Saint Mary’s with a side altar and some silver liturgical vessels. And everything was hunky-dory. I’m sorry. Especially for our prosecutor’s sake. Because to tell you the truth, the patrician order was vitiated by nepotism. A little new blood would have helped, a few representatives of the guilds—in the court of aldermen, for instance.”
Sieglinde Huntscha sat as though sealed up. Sickened by so much half-truth. Only intense concentration could offer resistance to so-called reality and its stinking facts. That is how it was when a gray veil cloaked Dorothea’s eyes; and that’s how it is when Ilsebill, whose gaze is normally greenish, suddenly, as soon as reality makes its petty demands, exchanges her optical organs for glass eyes. At such times she says, “I’m afraid I don’t see it that way. Just count me out.” And as for Dorothea, whenever I mentioned the enshamblement of our household, her eyes looked far into the distance and her speech reduced itself to verses rhyming “Jesu dere” with “joy ant fere.” And Sieglinde Huntscha spoke in rebuttal as softly and tonelessly as if she had wanted to prove that the art of speaking with sealed lips was still an art.
“Yes, defendant Flounder, you win. All the facts are on your side. In addition to Slichting, the appeaser trained by you, there was the provocateur Skriever, who, come to think of it, seems to have been friends with Slichting. The proletariat of the Middle Ages fell for your smooth talk. The time wasn’t ripe yet. And your argument, which I can already hear coming—’the time is never ripe, not even today’—is irrefutable. If we look from the medieval uprising of the artisans against the patrician order to the uprising of the Polish shipyard workers against bureaucratic Communism, we cannot help seeing that then as now the time is always unripe. And yet, defendant Flounder, you’re wrong. I won’t say that the ludicrous gains achieved then and now—the council’s decision not to import beer from Wismar, the rescinding of the rise in the prices of staple foods—refute your reactionary pessimism; no, what sweeps away your stupid facts is the proletarian principle of hope. Hope clears away the rubble from history. Hope frees the road we call progress from time-conditioned encumbrances. Hope springs eternal. For it alone is real.”
These evergreen words were not red enough for the audience. Giggles were barely repressed. Someone called out, “Amen!” And if the Flounder had had shoulders, he would have shrugged them. As it was, he only said, “A respectable, ethically tenable view. You’ll find similar ideas in Augustine and Bloch, both of whom I highly respect. You remind me, dear prosecutor, most charmingly of the High Gothic Dorothea of Montau. She, too, never ceased to hope for freedom, until at last, immured in her cell, removed from the world and its contradictions, she found freedom as she saw it.”
Tumult in the movie house. Catcalls addressed more to Sieglinde Huntscha than to the cynical flatfish. Ms. Schönherr cast glances of ur-motherly appeasement. She said: “An interesting argument. It’s true. What would become of us women if hope did not sustain us. But perhaps we should ask the Flounder to tell us why Dorothea Slichting, née Swarze, found freedom only in a cell removed from the world. Can it be that the patriarchal invention of marriage offered women no freedom? And when the Flounder recommended marriage, was he not aiming precisely at such deprivation of freedom? Was it not the Flounder who drove poor Dorothea into the one area of freedom that was open to her, namely, religious madness? Later on, men tried to make a saint of her, but for this there were purely practical reasons; it so happened—to mention the other form of freedom then available to women—that it would have been impolitic to burn her at the stake. The Flounder’s main guilt had nothing to do with his part in that preposterous uprising of brewers and coopers; your principal crime, defendant Flounder, consists in what you did to our sister Dorothea. Since Dorothea men have tried either to canonize women’s desire for freedom or to laugh it off as typically womanish foolishness. Before sentence is pronounced, does the defendant wish to reply?”
The Flounder abstained. The atmosphere in the movie house recovered its bounce. Only Sieglinde Huntscha seemed downcast. How listlessly she rebutted the arguments of Ms. von Carnow, the court-appointed defense council.
Before the judges had finished deliberating, the Flounder began to wobble, and it wasn’t long before he turned over and was floating moribundly belly up. When the court pronounced him guilty of helping to enslave women by promoting the institution of marriage, of ruining the life of Dorothea of Montau, and of urging her immurement and canonization for the sole purpose of providing the Teutonic Knights with a propaganda pinup in their war against Poland, the Flounder maintained his protest posture and gave no sign of concern.
I waited for Sieglinde outside the former movie house. I felt sorry for her. Or, rather, I wanted something. To tell the truth, my sympathy was real, but
I also wanted to exploit it. “Join me for a beer?” Sieglinde joined me.
No, Ilsebill, I am not “talking like a typical male again.” She could have said no. But she needed my sympathy, and she also knew that I wanted something.
We went to the Bundeseck café and had a few beers and a few schnappses. Not a word about Dorothea. First we talked at random of current events. Then we went back to the early days of our acquaintance. We’ve known each other quite a while. When I first met her, I was engaged to Sibylle Miehlau. And Siggie—as Sieglinde called herself in the early sixties—had hot pants for Billy, as Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie called Sibylle. They all had a thing about lesbianism, and they shook me off. The whole thing ended tragically with Billy’s death. On Father’s Day, ’63.
So over beer and schnapps we talked of the old days. We could see them in perspective now. “We had no political ideas. Only a suspicion that things could be done differently. We tried desperately. Today I know better. I’m still in touch with Frankie and Maxie. But it’s not the same. We’ve grown apart. Frankie still reels off her Stalinist slogans. Maxie used to be a Sponti; now she’s on an anarchist trip. And me? That kind of childishness makes me sick. When, pretty much by accident, the three of us caught the Flounder last summer, we were still all right together. It was then that things got difficult. The Tribunal came between us. Frankie didn’t see how I could cooperate with a liberal like Schönherr. If you ask me, she’s been doing all right so far. At least she keeps things moving. And the way she came to my rescue just now when the Flounder was putting me down was tops. The way she swept that whole shitty artisans’ uprising aside and brought Dorothea back into the picture. Yes, she’s married. Three children. Even said to be happy. But what about you? What are you up to? So I’ve heard. A big blonde? Always looks kind of frantic? Yes, I think I know her. Well, let’s hope your Ilsebill can put you in your place.”
We drank a few more beers and schnappses. To Sieglinde’s question “What are you working on now?” I replied very cautiously: “This Tribunal interests me. The whole subject interests me, not only as a writer, but as a man as well. Makes me feel somehow guilty. Comes in handy in a way. At first I was only going to write about my nine or eleven cooks, some kind of a history of human foodstuffs—from manna grass to millet to the potato. But then the Flounder provided a counterweight. He and his trial. Too bad they turned me down as a witness. The ladies disposed of my experience with Awa, Wigga, Mestwina, and Dorothea as ridiculous, if it wasn’t pure fiction. You just turned me down flat. So what can I do but write write write as usual?”
She seemed to have stopped listening. She sat hunched over, smoking as if it were required, and slipping more and more into the cell of solitude, which Dorothea was seeking when as a child she spent her days in hollow willow trees, and which still helps Ilsebill to make, express, and carry out wild decisions in no time at all. Anyway, speaking out of her solitude after a last swallow of beer, Sieglinde suddenly said, “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
Sieglinde lives on Mommsenstrasse. Two hours later we took a cab to Steglitz after what I wanted of her—“You’ve got the key to the movie house. I want a word with the Flounder”—had popped out in two sentences. She can’t have been very much surprised. “I thought there’d be a little something else. One last fart, kind of.” She had no objection and called the cab. No, Ilsebill, she wasn’t pissed off or disappointed.
I’d expected it to be much more complicated. An alarm system, a room like a safe-deposit vault. But with two common keys Sieglinde unlocked the doors and locked them again behind us. Then she sat down in the former ticket office and said, “I’ll wait here till you’re through. Got two mark pieces? I’m running out of butts.”
I gave her a pack of Lord Extra Longs, said, “See you later,” and stepped into the dark hall, which did not smell of males. Only two red emergency lights to the left and right of the tub showed where the Flounder was spending his night. I groped my way forward as one does at the movies when the film has already started.
“Flounder,” I said. “Maybe you remember. It’s me. Me again. I caught you on a partly cloudy neolithic day. Oddly enough, in an eel trap. We made a pact: I set you free, and you promised to advise me, to help men out of their dependency, to serve the male cause and only the male cause. I’m sorry they’ve haled you before this preposterous Tribunal on that account. Unfortunately the girls wouldn’t admit me as a witness. I’d have spoken in your favor. I’d be willing any time to argue for the historic necessity of your contradictory existence. If there is a Weltgeist, it’s you. Great, the way you told those females off again today. The prosecutor was speechless. And take it from me, it’s really something to stop the mouth of Sieglinde Huntscha. But that’s just the type I keep falling for. Like that rotten bitch Dorothea some centuries ago. Right now a certain Ilsebill is doing me in. The stupid piece. Never satisfied. Always wanting something. That fight the other day about the dishwasher. And now she wants a second apartment in town. And what she has she doesn’t want. And what she gets she doesn’t like. Sure, but we both wanted her to be pregnant, we both wanted a child together, a quick-growing gourd-vine arbor. But I haven’t come here to weep on your shoulder. I admit that you warned me and I fell in love with the witch from Montau all the same. Because she attracts me with her indolent, seemingly untapped vitality. I mean my present Ilsebill. You know how restless I am. How I need a pole to revolve around. A stationary pole. But she wants to move around, too. It won’t do! Same with Dorothea, never gave us a moment’s peace. Always pilgrimages. What was there for me to do in Aachen or a Swiss dump like Einsiedeln! Same with Ilsebill—always wanting to go places. The Lesser Antilles! ‘Can’t you be pious right here?’ I’d say to Dorothea. Oh no. They all want to be free and independent. Or, like Dorothea, belong to no one but their sweet Jesus. As if there were such a thing as independence. I, at all events, have always had to slave for other people. The dear kiddies, for instance. It wears a man out. Uses him up. Flounder, I’m done for. Somewhere along the way we must have done something wrong. The women are getting so aggressive. Dorothea was already that way. And when Ilsebill lifts her voice to a heroic pitch, it literally makes me sick. Gives me the gollywobbles. Say something, Flounder! Look, I’m writing a book about you, for you. Or aren’t we friends, aren’t I allowed to call you Father any more?”
Of course I’d meant to be a lot calmer and more collected in addressing the legendary flatfish. But I was carried away, because the pressure had been mounting of late, no, for centuries, ever since my first marriage, to Dorothea Swarze. Even when I managed to evade marriage, the pressure had mounted from woman to woman. It had to come out some time.
The two red lights to the right and left of the zinc tub sufficed to show me that the Flounder had completely buried himself in the sea sand. Only his crooked mouth and slanting eyes were uncovered. Oh, how he had used to jump—I had only to call—up onto the palms of my hands! And oh, how he had spoken, advised, commanded, lectured, instructed me, what sermons he had preached to me: Do this, don’t stand for that, listen to me, watch your step, don’t pin yourself down, make them give you that in writing. Your profit, your privilege, your manly duty—you must continue to find them all in the male cause… .
Slowly the movie house with its challenging smell grew into an empty speech-balloon. I was on the point of leaving, no, taking flight. Then spake the Flounder.
Without modifying his position of repose in his bed of sand, he moved his crooked mouth. “I can’t help you, my son. I can’t even offer you mild regrets. You have misused all the power I gave you. Instead of turning the rights bestowed upon you to caring, charitable use, you have let hegemony degenerate into repression and power become an end in itself. For centuries I did my best to hush up your defeats, to interpret your wretched failure as progress, to hide your now obvious ruin behind big buildings, drown it out with symphonies, beautify it in panel paintings on a golden background, or talk it away in books, sometimes humo
rously, sometimes elegiacally, and sometimes, as a last resort, only intelligently. To prop up your superstructure I have even, in my desire to be helpful, invented gods, from Zeus to Marx. Even in the modern age—which for me is only a second in world history—I am obliged, as long as this all in all entertaining Tribunal goes on, to season your masterful absurdities with wit and squeeze some meaning out of your bankruptcy. That is hard work, my son. Even for the much-invoked Weltgeist, there’s not much fun in it. On the other hand, I’m coming more and more to like these ladies who are judging me. It never bores me to listen to Ms. Huntscha, my esteemed prosecutor. In retrospect I recognize—acknowledging my error in this point—Dorothea’s solitary greatness. Ah, how she cried, “Flunder, cum oute, ich wol kisse thy snoute.” What could she do but get rid of you? What but religious exaltation could have raised her above the monotony of marriage? Another baby, and still another! And what you tell me about your Ilsebill, how she puts you down and shakes you up, I like it, yes, I like it. She’s amazing. All that untapped will to power—it gives me food for thought. Give her my regards. No, my erring son, you can’t expect any comfort from me. Your account is overdrawn. Slowly, a little late perhaps, I have discovered my daughters.”
I sat there for another short while. I probably said something; confessions, promises to reform, the usual male self-pity. But not another word out of the Flounder. He seemed—if that is possible—to be asleep. Groping like someone who walks out in the middle of a film, I left the former movie house and its smell.