The Flounder

by Günter Grass

  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.”

  We were three at table. Two women, one in her middle, the other in her late thirties, sat facing each other on the long sides, while I, after picking up the bowl and unmolding the jellied calf’s head onto a platter, seated myself at one narrow end. (A triangle situation, they call it.)

  Once the two of them had smilingly appraised each other and exchanged their first remarks about me, it became evident that I had (once again) bitten off more than I could chew. Where I sat there was obviously nothing, or possibly a hole, or, if you prefer, an exemplary something, which bore my name but was discussed for an hour and a half as an anonymous “case,” now with kindly forbearance—“It must have been the war years that brutalized him so”—now with severity—“He really belongs in an institution!” Every time agreement was expressed, mystic green and fly-agaric red harmonized, Griselde and Ilsebill touched fingertips or exchanged glances as though exchanging mother-of-pearl buttons. No loud effusions, but quiet, affectionate solidarity. How fervently they spoke: “Oh, how well I understand you! You’ve taken the words out of my mouth.” “Oh, Griselde, your words are balm to my soul.” “Oh, Ilsebill, how strong you are in your pregnancy.”

  Only cider and black bread were served with the calf’s head, which was praised, to be sure, but without direct mention of the cook. I refilled glasses, dished out, and kept silent, busy with thoughts of Sophie, of how her room under the eaves of Allmond House became a little temple to her hero Napoleon, where she worshiped him as she had previously worshiped Reason and Universal Enlightenment. (I had some difficulty in repressing a wish that Paasch might be sitting, peevish but just, across from me, or Witzlaff with her knit-two-purl-two stocking.)

  I had made my dish with a halved calf’s head, the calf’s tongue and sweetbread, seasonings, and a special spice. In the cupboard I found two young, dried specimens of fly-agaric mushrooms left over from the previous fall. These I placed in a mortar and pounded to a powder, meanwhile lisping wishes, spitting out curses, and running in a zigzag (down the stairs of history): You won’t destroy me, no, not me… .

  When they had finished trying me, as it were, in absentia, the two women started in, both at once, on child rearing and the inadequacies of their dishwashers. Ilsebill called hers a bad buy. Griselde had (and expressed) her doubts about all pedagogy. I kept silent in thoughts of Sophie, who never stopped loving me, her Fritz, for immediately after the War of Liberation (which did nothing for me) she started petitioning for my pardon and kept sending me little packages of honey cake, into which she had baked finely ground fly agaric to cheer me up.

  Then I served Ilsebill and Griselde another helping of quivering jelly. They agreed that though their dishwashers undoubtedly had their faults and though they’d obviously been had by the manufacturers, they would never, under any circumstances, go back to washing dishes by hand. They further agreed that anti-authoritarian methods of child rearing must, in principle, be retained. For one thing, there were no more authentic father figures. “How true!” That was my contribution, which went unheard.

  No vinegar had gone into my jellied calf’s head, only lemon. I boiled the halved head for a good two hours, the tongue for almost an hour and a half, and the sweetbread for just half an hour over medium heat. Only at the end, after detaching the meat from the bone, dicing it along with the tongue and sweetbread, and stirring capers, dill, and lemon juice into the broth, did I mix in the powdered fly agaric: an old Siberian recipe, known also to the I
ndo-Iranian conquerors of Dravidic India and to the Vikings. (Soon after the Mestwina period, for instance, the Varangians, before attacking the Prussians on the Hagelsberg, drank mares’ urine after mixing fly agaric with the beasts’ fodder; this is believed to have helped them to think up myths while the battle was still in progress; and similarly, the Indian Vedas were written under the influence of Soma, the mushroom of immortality, for fly agaric encourages travel, suspends time, removes all inhibitions, and makes us more real than we thought… .)

  After the dishwasher as such and pedagogy in general had been disposed of, I again became a topic, though without being mentioned by name. It was always just “he.” What he had done again. He always wants to. He thinks he’s the only one who can. He regards himself as irresistible. He must, he is, he will, his big mistake is, he lacks all …

  They put down my talent—which they did not question—to a congenital failing (and extenuating circumstances): “It’s none of his doing. Something just keeps coming out of him. Even if it’s only ironic or cockeyed. You should hear him talk about nature. Just no feeling for it. As far as he’s concerned it’s a catastrophe. And when something goes wrong—the other day we were out of toilet paper, for instance—he thinks it’s the apocalypse. Just like a man.”

  Then my political work was judged: all the projects I (he) had bungled despite the best of intentions. Which was only natural since I (he) could never make up my (his) mind; it was always on the one hand and on the other hand. My (his) absurd dislike of ideology had become an ideology with me (him). “Too bad. You know, Griselde, one really can’t help feeling sorry for him, the way he shilly-shallies and doesn’t know how or what, and casts about helplessly for excuses, mostly historical. If I, for instance, say ‘dishwasher,’ he says, ‘But in the fourteenth century …’”

  After that they agreed that because of my talent on the one hand—“He’s always got to be doing something!”—and my political excursions on the other—“He was always away, on the road somewhere!”—his (my) children were neglected, always had been. Then for the first time (when the fly agaric had gently dispatched me on voyages) they both began charging me with long-past crimes, holding me responsible for the Baroque poet Opitz’s illegitimate brats (the unpaid alimony) and for the death from starvation of the farm cook Amanda Woyke’s babies during the Seven Years’ War. “No wonder,” said Griselde or Ilsebill, “that he got to be interchangeable as a male partner. The nun, for instance, only tolerated him in her bed and kitchen as a visitor who’d have to take flight any minute.”

  When the two of them had reconstructed their and other women’s present and past relations with me, Ilsebill said, “He hasn’t changed much.” And Griselde Dubertin, who had known me longer than Ilsebill likes, said, “He’ll never change.”

  That’s a fact. It’s that early imprinting. Anyone who has learned fear from Dorothea of Montau, anyone who has been immersed in Fat Gret’s stable-warmth will fear for all time, will look for all-embracing warmth, if only in the chaotic kitchen of an otherwise well-tempered organist.

  My jellied calf’s head was also the consequence of early imprinting—by Sophie Rotzoll, who cooked it for me to build me up when at last I was released from the fortress of Graudenz in the early summer of 1835. I was still in my fifties, but already an old man. Fräulein Rotzoll, on the other hand, was still in many ways a young girl. And like Sophie I seasoned my jelly with capers, gherkins, dill, and lemon, and with a bit of powder made it—for we now know what fly agaric can do—deeply meaningful and hallucinogenic. You observe yourself. Wide awake, you lie side by side with yourself. You are sheltered in Awa. And around you moist and warm the cavern arches… .

  Was it Ilsebill or Griselde who first brought up my mother complex? (Or was it Paasch who peevishly, Osslieb who sleepily, Huntscha who snottily, Ruth Simoneit who drunkenly butted in, as though invited to share in the calf’s head?) Anyway, Ilsebill said, “He’s got one, all right. It’s gilt-edged.”

  After Helga Paasch (with Iron Age arguments) had uncovered this aspect of my existence, Griselde Dubertin—at variance with Witzlaff, who had said, “So what!”—disposed of me once and for all: “In any case, just about everything in his character can be laid to his extreme mother fixation. Just look at him. He’s getting wrinkles, but he’s still the same breast-fed baby.”

  Ulla Witzlaff, supported by Osslieb and Helga Paasch (and wasn’t Ms. Schönherr also at the table?), pointed out that my undeniable talent necessitated a neurotic hang-up of this kind. Bettina von Carnow listed artists with similar complexes: “The great Leonardo was suckled by a goat!” Ruth Simoneit babbled, “Aren’t we all sucking babes?” But Ilsebill and Sieglinde Huntscha cried, “He’s still attached to his umbilical cord! It’s got to be cut!”

  And then this Griselde Dubertin, in whom I had foolishly looked for my Sophie, blabbed what I (like an idiot) had said to her in confidence: “Him? He’ll never go to a psychiatrist. He told me so last week. He was foaming at the mouth: ‘He’ll never get me on his couch. Nobody but me is going to cash in on my mother complex! I’m going to put that in my will. I mean to die uncured. And on my tombstone they can write: Here lies So-and-so with his mother complex!’”

  Everybody at the table laughed at me. Typical, said Islebill. Witzlaff smiled because she knew more. Dubertin said, “Why not, if that’s what he wants.” And Ms. Schönherr, who, I’m sure, was also enjoying my special jellied calf’s head, spoke for the lot of them (I know, because Osslieb and Witzlaff nodded) when she said, “A common case of arrested development.”

  Then I spoke up. The Devil in the form of fly agaric must have got into me, for suddenly I broke the silence that had been imposed on me and said, more to Ms. Schönherr than to Griselde Dubertin, though I was thinking of Witzlaff, even if I looked my Ilsebill square in the eye (and under the table fished for Ruth Simoneit with my left foot, to which Osslieb responded): “Actually, dearest Ilsebill, Sophie Rotzoll, to whom I am indebted for our jellied calf’s head, never gave up. Year after year, whenever she could get permission, she went to Graudenz and pleaded with her Fritz to stick it out. She sent gingerbread and honey cake with love letters baked in. She sent petitions to Queen Luise. She pleaded on bended knee, she did everything in her power, until at last he was free. And then she cared for me and went mushrooming with me, as in our early youth, when I still had an idea… .”

  I don’t believe the far too many women at the table were listening. Still laughing at me—“There is something lovable about his childishness”—they confirmed one another in their opinions: He’s always kidding himself; his dread of conflict keeps him from working out his conflicts; that’s why his stomach is starting to rumble again; he’s always making part payments, never the whole amount; now the poor fellow has again bitten off more than he can chew (Griselde); he can’t bear to lose anything or any one of them (not even Ruth Simoneit), he wants to keep them all, even Helga Paasch, same as those glasses he collects; in short, he’s impossible, a typical male.

  Then, as sisterly as could be, they drank my health and, this time mentioning the cook by name, praised my jellied calf’s head; it was really something special, they agreed.

  By way of enriching the potato-fixated Amanda cult, Therese Osslieb promised to add jellied calf’s head à la Sophie to the menu of her restaurant. At that Ilsebill asked the assembled associate judges of the Women’s Tribunal for the latest news of the Sophie Rotzoll case: “He only tells me the parts he figures in. Couldn’t you give me a little inside dope? I’m so curious. Tell me, Griselde, will the Flounder get his comeuppance this time?”

  Although she has children by her husband, from whom she lives separated by the distance between two different neighborhoods of the same city, and although she has had a succession of short-term affairs with other men, there is something virginal about her. That’s why I felt called upon to look for Sophie in her, not the childlike Sophie (grave face under mushroom hat), but the slightly wrinkled kitchenmaid afte
r her return to the parsonage. Sophie was then in her early thirties, unhinged by her experiences of the French period; there was often a look of dread in her eyes, as though she kept seeing horrible things, and in that she resembled Griselde Dubertin, pharmacist and associate judge of the Women’s Tribunal, who had also been terrified (by some private experience), for which reason she often lost the thread and now fed Ilsebill’s hunger for information with contradictory statements, which were interrupted by Helga Paasch and Ruth Simoneit.

  She was talking about the poisonous sulfur tuft and the deadly amanita. On the one hand she firmly rejected political murder by toxins as a means of female emancipation; then, in the next breath, she recommended a politically effective mushroom dish as an instrument of feminine self-liberation. “But not in the hands of a bungler like Rotzoll,” Sieglinde Huntscha carped. And Ruth Simoneit snarled, “I’m for firearms. Out in the open! Bang bang!”

  When Paasch called Sophie a silly goose with nothing in her head but her Fritz, Griselde stared at me as though seeing me in the governor’s uniform and cried, “Poison’s the only way! If I had a Fritz in prison, I’d take up mushroom lore myself. But I wouldn’t bungle!” And then she protested that despite this Sophie’s patent servitude, her act had advanced the cause of freedom. “Why, even the Flounder doesn’t deny that; in fact, he takes all the blame on himself. The rotter!” To avoid worse disasters, he had caused the Jacobin Club on Beutlergasse to be raided. “The traitor!” And at his instigation, Pastor Blech had informed the town constables.