The Flounder

by Günter Grass

  After listening to my breathless report, Awa held a women’s council from which I was excluded, came back with two women who loaded a fully packed basket on my back, and gave the horde she was leaving behind her ever-caring instructions; then off we started, she and I and her companions—two three-breasted young women—on our arduous journey.

  This time no lynx frightened us. No unicorn stood shimmering in the ferns. The forest primeval was already known to me. One did not whistle in Awa’s presence. I speared lying pike in the Radune. Where familiar mushrooms grew, we bivouacked. Our baggage included a small pot of fire bedded in ashes. Plump frogs, wild strawberries bigger than we had ever dreamed of. I, the guide, was well treated, suckled by all three women. When frightened wild horses rushed from a beech thicket, Awa seemed delighted; I’d have liked to show her my prowess as a horseman.

  And then we came and saw: of our six men one was seriously, two slightly injured; our opposite numbers had four slightly injured, who were lying in the ferns beside our wounded. All were being cared for by the Awa of the forest horde and her women. Remedies well known to us: sorrel, nettles, and moneywort. The other Awa and her companions, who, however, were not called Awa but Ewa, also had three breasts, and like our Awa ruled by all-embracing care. The system was already well known to us.

  A while ago I deplored the lack of solidarity among the women of our region (and everywhere else, for that matter). Now I have something more gratifying to report: naturally the two Awas understood each other splendidly. How they giggled as they ran their fingers over each other’s dimples, how they sniffed at each other and squealed in high-pitched gutturals. Off to one side of our damaged males they held a women’s council. Invitation and return invitation were soon exchanged by Awa and Ewa. No war was declared; instead hospitality was offered. That very evening we and our wounded were the guests of the neighboring horde, who had settled nearby between two lakes, water holes left over from the ice age. I was soon deep in conversation with the fishermen of the neighboring horde. In addition to traps, they already had nets. I showed them how the wishbone of the wood pigeon could be made to serve as a fishhook.

  We gobbled to the bursting point. Of course the women ate separately and had special food. But we, too, enjoyed new taste sensations. While at the women’s board bleak baked over hot stones was followed by steamed wild-horse liver with flatbread made of honeysweet acorn flour, we Edeks were regaled with roasted chunks of the horsemeat, also accompanied by bittersweet flatbread. I forgot to tell you that each of the Ewas and Ludeks, as the men of the neighboring horde were called, like each of our Awas and Edeks, ate singly, averting his eyes from the others. They didn’t brighten up until later, when the whole horde got together for a collective shit. But I’ll come back to that later on: how in our neolithic time-phase we ate by ourselves but contemplated our excrement in social groups.

  After the feast Awa unpacked the basket. I was called and honor was shown me, for the women had packed my ceramics as presents—a few Glumse bowls, which when testifying before the court the Flounder magnanimously attributed to the bell-beaker culture. Three fireproof pots of the kind in which Awa boiled the stomach walls of an elk cow, just as today we simmer beef tripe for four and a half hours. The basket also contained eight clay figurines that had been molded around the middle finger of my left hand—sturdy three-breased Awas, such as we used in our cult. My flounder-headed idols, which Awa disliked but had not prohibited, were not represented; nor, it goes without saying, was there a single elk’s pizzle.

  The Ewas petted and praised me. The potter’s art was still unknown to them. The artist of the neighboring horde, a fisherman whom I later took to calling Lud, was summoned. He listened to my short lecture about pottery but showed little interest, a truculent fellow who was to become my friend off and on in the course of my various time-phases. Ah, Lud! How we drank black Danzig beer in the High Gothic era! How we argued about the sacraments! How we ate cheese with our knives in the Baroque vale of tears! And how in period after period we talked art to death! Only recently Lud died again. How I miss him! I shall honor him with an obituary. Later.

  And that night the unharmed Edeks and Ludeks, as well as those who had suffered only slight injuries in their ears or noses, were exchanged. My Awa took the truculent Lud for herself, and I found a replica of my loving-caring Awa in Ewa: every bit as rich in dimples, as soft, as basic, and as radically, thoroughly, consummately head-emptying.

  Believe me, Ilsebill, I’ll never forget it. I will always be looking for Awa and Ewa when I’m with you. And sometimes when I lie with you I find them both. If one pushes me out, the other takes me in. I’m never entirely without a refuge. With Awa and Ewa I always have a cozy-warm home. No need to lie with strangers. That is how Awa as Ewa and Ewa as Awa enslaved me. Because just imagine: Ewa returned our visit, with her companions and a full-packed basket.

  According to modern time-reckoning, they turned up three weeks later, with the seven forest hunters and the still-truculent Lud in their train.

  We served them what we had on hand, sturgeon roe, manna grits cooked in reindeer milk, chunks of water-buffalo fillet spitted on damp willow sticks and roasted like shashlik. And for dessert our Glumse mixed with juniper berries. The meal went over big with the Ewas and Ludeks. And we were pleased with their presents.

  From granite-hard stone Lud the net fisher and artist had hewn (with what, I wonder) mortars and pestles for grinding acorn meal; his production further included stone axes with holes bored in them, a fish net (to serve us as a model), and various fertility idols carved in white limestone. These idols, however, represented not three-breasted Awas or Ewas, but oval, broad-lipped twats with open, deep-bored clefts. The openings had been polished smooth and were shaped like mouthpieces, so that these conveniently sized stone vaginas could serve as drinking cups for water, berry juice, mead, sour elk’s milk, and other beverages, notably the skimmed, fermented, succulent, heady mare’s milk that was the favorite drink of our neighboring horde, who kept herds of wild horses just as we had domesticated elks and water buffaloes. Dogs and their barking were common to both our hordes.

  After this return invitation, good neighborly relations developed between the two hordes. By watching Ewa’s people we learned to knot fish nets, to bore holes in stone axes, and to bake flatbread, while they learned from us to make Glumse, to fish with hooks, and to fashion pottery. And just as the Flounder had wished, there was communication in other respects as well. The exchange of males between the hordes soon became customary, even though it created little problems, for we Edeks and Ludeks were not consulted; like it or not, we had to oblige.

  You can see that, Ilsebill; with some of the Ewas we just couldn’t do it. And our Awas came away empty now and then, too; the oldtimer just wouldn’t oblige. There are early afternoons when a man would rather play with pebbles, take it easy by himself, pick his nose without a desire in the world, let his cock dangle. Sometimes a man’s cock is a plain nuisance, an obtrusive stranger, a bothersome appendage between his legs. And so we experienced failure (and the idiotic shame a man feels when he’s a flop). Complaints passed from horde to horde. For a time our neighborly relations were impaired. Blows were struck between Edeks and Ludeks, between Lud and myself. We had to supply them with arrowheads hewn from flint; in exchange they offered only raw material (hard rock, unpolished and unbored). Lud disparaged my ceramic articles as cute; I countered by ridiculing his stone twats: couldn’t he think of anything else? Bad blood. Brawling and bellowing. But it never got to the point of war. Men continued—though less and less enjoyably—to be exchanged. Awa and Ewa saw to that. They always came to terms. What interested them most was the principle of the thing. Gradually the two hordes merged into a clan; later we became a tribe.

  And on addressing the Women’s Tribunal, the Flounder, too, despite his higher misgivings and critical objections to the principle of ever-loving care, called the exchange of men a sensible arrangement, because it enabled
the two neighboring hordes to escape the dangers of stultifying incest.

  “Of course,” he declared, “men should be allowed to choose their sexual partners, but even so, my advice put an end to isolation, fostered communication, prevented degeneration, and promoted the development of a Pomorshian nation.”

  Three of the eight associate judges supported this view. Unfortunately, Ms. Schönherr, the presiding judge, abstained from voting, and Sieglinde Huntscha, the prosecutor, said, “Promiscuous fucking may be acceptable for men, but a woman has no business settling for the first pair of pants that comes along.”

  How about you, Ilsebill? What do you think? Suppose you had to do it with every man who felt like it or even half felt like it? Now that you’re pregnant as a result of our free choice, you must understand my disgruntlement at the time. Admit it was oppressive, exchanging us like that from horde to horde, without consulting us, whenever the women were in the mood. They called it hospitality, but really!

  Dr. Affectionate

  What’s wrong?

  Something missing?

  Your breath down my neck.

  Something that sucks chews licks.

  The calf’s tongue, the mouse’s teeth.

  A desire is going around the world for mumbled words

  that yield no meaning.

  Children lisp it, and so do old men all alone

  under the covers with their thumbs.

  And questioned now, your skin shrinks away from the test:

  modesty, which in the darkness (when company was gone)

  was not cast off.

  Someone is called Dr. Affectionate

  and he still lives in forbidden concealment.

  Exact science classifies what’s missing

  as caress units,

  for which thus far

  no substitute has been found.

  Fed

  My mother’s breasts were large and white.

  Snuggle up to her tits.

  Make the most of them before they give way to bottle and pacifier.

  Threaten with stuttering and complexes

  if they should be withheld.

  Don’t just whine.

  Let the milk include clear beef broth

  or cloudy soup of codfish heads boiled

  till blinded eyes roll

  approximately in the direction of happiness.

  Men don’t give suck.

  Men squint homeward when cows

  with heavy udders cross

  the road, blocking the traffic.

  Men dream of the third breast.

  Men envy the suckling babe

  and always miss something.

  Our bearded breastlings

  who provide for us with their tax payments

  smack their lips between appointments

  and comfort themselves with cigarettes.

  After forty men should start being suckled again

  publicly and for a fee

  until they are sated and wishless and stop crying,

  stop having to cry in the john—all alone.

  The wurzel mother

  And then the third breast disappeared. I don’t know the details—I wasn’t around just then, I think it was after the hundred and eleventh generation of Awas. Anyway, Ilsebill, it was gone. It doesn’t seem to have wasted slowly away; rather, one day it was just suddenly missing. No, not because the women were sick of suckling us, but because the Flounder wanted to be God to us Edeks!

  “Typical!” you say. But at that time there was a growing need for compensation, for a bit of male divinity. We didn’t want the Flounder to be the only god, just an associate god. And at some time or other, one of the still three-breasted priestesses of Awa, besieged with petitions by us men, consented: she lay with the Flounder in the rushes, or on a bed of leaves, or on a compromise bed of rushes and leaves, and came back the next day without a middle breast.

  Or was it entirely different? Because nothing was happening, we Edeks thought we’d have a little fun and give the women a bit of a scare, just as I recently gave you a bit of a shock. “Oh! Something slippery-slimy! Eek!” you screamed and kicked the covers off: arm-long, in coiling beauty, it lay between us on the sheet. Irresponsible of me, I admit. Now that you’re pregnant, the Lord knows what that eel in the bed might have done.

  Then, during the hundred and eleventh generation of Awas, I secretly molded clay into a life-sized man, with an extra penis growing out of each buttock, so he could have pleasured three Awas at once. One moonless night we stationed this monstrosity outside the women’s lodge. And the next morning (seen through sleepy eyes) my super-Edek was taken for real. In any case the women, some of whom were pregnant, screamed; but miscarriages were not the only consequence. Or did some other, comparable shock make the third breast fall off like a wart? It simply disappeared. High time.

  Or it was something else again. The decisive step came much later. Even Wigga still had the third breast Pomorshian men required. We had scarcely modified our needs. Why should we have? (We were damn well off.) But when Wigga, in a series of major campaigns, had the so-called dream wurzel, a very special multipurpose root, exterminated as a public enemy, when she deprived us of the wishing weed, the plug we had chewed for thousands of years, which brightened our dreams, assuaged our fears, and appeased our yearnings, we no longer knew exactly what we desired.

  The film of our vivid imagining broke off. We lost our innocence. Gone was the third breast. No longer palpable because no longer dreamed. Unsuckled, we reached into the void from that day on. Dull reality had made us poor. Believe me, Ilsebill, it was sad, though having ceased to wish (because we had ceased to dream), we could no longer realize what we had lost.

  After that we grew restless. Dissatisfaction set in. Later (up to Sophie’s time) we compensated for our loss by chewing fly agaric—not to mention various substances that today are kiffed and hashed, steeped with tea, or shot into the veins. But nothing could or can equal our (exterminated) wishing wurzel.

  And addressing the Women’s Tribunal, the Flounder, who had never heard of our primordial drug, said: “Well, ladies, that’s the way it was, the three-breasts hoax was finally exploded—during Wigga’s Iron Age, to be exact. At last the men developed a sense of reality, and the fiction of the triune primal mother went up in smoke. All at once—demystified by what lightning flash we do not know—good old Wigga was standing there with two plain, ordinary tits. It may have been the ensuing disenchantment that led a few Pomorshian men to experiment with the migrations. Nothing unusual. Dreams of primal mothers had faded long before in other places. True, the Cretan goddess Hera, famous in her day as the best of Minoan earth mothers, had not abdicated, but she had been forced to marry—yes, marry!—the god Zeus, and to share her hegemony. I myself was obliged to take on the function of god for a time, in order to compensate just a little for the power of the primal mothers, who despite the lost breast went right on tyrannizing men with their loving care. I was under pressure. Despite my failures, my millennial efforts in the male cause had not been forgotten. Through a division of labor, I was put in charge of everything connected with oceans, rivers, and fishing. My role was comparable to that of Poseidon in relation to the Pelasgian Athene—I was expected to assert myself alongside the Awa cult, which continued to linger on. Naturally conflicts were inevitable—in Athens and elsewhere. As you can imagine, ladies, the replacement of mother right by the rational though in a sense fictitious father right resulted in several counterrevolutions. Need I remind you of the Bacchantes, Amazons, Erinyes, Maenads, Sirens, and Medusas? The battle of the sexes in ancient Greece was rough, really rough. By comparison nothing much happened on the banks of the Vistula. Apart from the sudden disappearance of the third breast, there is little to report. No material for tragedies, though at that very time the restless Goths were taking a rest in the region of the Vistula estuary, for, eager as they were to perform heroic feats, they couldn’t make up their minds whether to return northward or
to pursue their southward course. Among the Pomorshians, timeless matriarchy continued, though some-what mitigated by me, the associate fish god. Even three-breastedness lived on, in small ceramic artifacts. No question of a new era, or at the most this: beginning with Wigga, root plants were grown for food. She was a true wurzel mother; she even looked like a mangel-wurzel.”

  With Wigga farming became drudgery. As long as one of the long line of Awas dealt out loving care, there was a limit to the amount of barley, spelt, and oats grown, we retained our independence as fishermen and hunters; most of our time was spent beyond hailing distance in the reeds or underbrush, on moors or remote beaches, and though oppressed we were able to enjoy life. It was Wigga who first harnessed us to wooden plows and sent us out to the beet fields. We had to gather the seeds of wild root plants, for in her garden-sized experimental field Wigga sowed rows of charlock and mangel (Beta vulgaris), bred the precursors of the radish, or salsify, and of the beets with which at a much later date Amanda Woyke cooked beet and dill soup for the farm hands of the Royal Prussian State Farm at Zuckau. On hot August days it was carried to the fields and dished out to them cold.

  In any case the Goths despised us as root eaters, while we called them fire-eaters, for the Goths, like those other Germanic tribes that Tacitus observed, were too lazy to bend over for roots. They preferred to dream of faraway places.

  We always liked to nibble roots. I remember juicy wild roots that brought tears to the eyes and, though tough, could be softened by long chewing. In Awa’s time only the women were allowed to grow them. And after Wigga’s first attempts to breed root plants, which did not bring results until Mestwina’s time (the radish), Dorothea of Montau in her Lenten garden, the nun Margarete Rusch in the garden of Saint Bridget’s Abbey, and Agnes Kurbiella in her diet garden raised a root plant related to our carrots, celery, and those delicate little Teltow turnips. Still later rutabaga, bred from rape, came to us from Bavaria by mail. Amanda Woyke gave it the apt name of Wruke, and Lena Stubbe, in times of early capitalist famine, cooked tons of it in soup kitchens (her response to the social question). The war and influenza year 1917 bequeathed us the expression “rutabaga winter.”