The Flounder

by Günter Grass

  So she kept after me, and I clung to her. The fortitude with which she endured my infidelities and brutalities had its equal only in the weakness that obliged me to prove myself by beating her. I wasn’t sure of myself as I am now, when my Ilsebill or Sieglinde Huntscha can try all day to provoke me with women’s lib slogans and I still don’t take a poke at them. I prefer to roll myself a cigarette and say, “No, Siggie. It’s no go. I am not going to hit you. You’d like me to, wouldn’t you? You think we’d have more fun in bed afterward. So you can call me a ‘typical male.’ Try it on the Flounder some time. He dotes on silly slogans.”

  Over the intercom system of the Women’s Tribunal—which for the past week had been giving its attention to the case of Lena Stubbe, to her special achievement, the “Proletarian Cook Book,” and the brutality of her two husbands—the Flounder said: “Esteemed High Court, here’s the way it was. Lena ruled. Her husbands were nothing but jumping jacks. Both with their everlasting love affairs. Dragging their incapacity from bed to bed. And by contrast Lena’s inexhaustible love, which resembled the never-empty soup pot in her kitchen-living room, because Lena never let the beef broth she made from cheap bones run out or get cold, for she was always making provision for even poorer days. While her Friedrich Otto and Otto Friedrich spent and squandered until nothing was left, empty husks both of them, fiabbycocks, barely good enough to shout hurrah. No use my giving them any advice.

  “The most I could do was turn contemporary history to Lena’s advantage by making use of first one war, then the other. When the French war started up in 1870, Friedrich Otto Stobbe, a strapping young fellow with a twirly mustache, ran down to the Baltic Sea at East Neufähr and shouted: ‘War! Hey, Flounder, heard the news? War! At last things are moving! No more woolen socks home-fried potatoes sewing box apron strings. The First and Second Body Hussars have moved out. So have the West Prussian Field Artillery. Only the Fifth Grenadiers are still here, on garrison duty. Flounder, what should I do? Go on being an anchor maker and keeping my Lena warm? That can’t be the whole story. That’s not enough to fill a life. I’m still young.’

  “So I advised him to go with the Fifth Grenadiers, whereupon he promptly—after two or three acts of bravery—died a soldier’s death at Mars-la-Tour.

  “In 1914, when the First World War, that masterpiece of European manhood, began simultaneously on several fronts, Otto Friedrich Stubbe, who at fifty-four thought of himself as a still-vigorous man, came running to the harbor mole in Neufahrwasser and shouted over the Baltic Sea: ‘Flounder! The Russians are coming! They’ve invaded Masuria. Murdering and burning. The fatherland is in danger. Every manly hand is needed. What use am I here? A foreman in the anchor shop. They’re recruiting for the Landsturm. We socialists have no right to stand aside. At a time like this the kaiser knows no parties. Should I, Flounder? Should I go and fight the Russians?’

  “And him, too, High Court, him, too, I encouraged. At Tannenberg, where German arms triumphed under Hindenburg, he, quite logically, died for the fatherland. Two exemplary men.

  “Ah, High Court, how sick I was of the male cause even then! How fed up with this incorrigible forward-mentality. What was I to do when every male folly was so quick to involve international complications. Participating more with negative than with positive advice, I soon became aware that the male principle was manifesting itself more and more incompetently in bed and more and more monstrously on the stage of history. And so, at the turn of the century, when women—Lady Pankhurst and her daughters—took to the streets for the first time, I was favorably disposed toward them and tried to make contact. Unsuccessfully, I regret to say. The suffragettes rebuffed me. My offer came too soon. Time would be needed. Male madness hadn’t yet reached its apogee. I could only look on as it rose to unprecedented heights. But it will not have escaped the High Court that I at least succeeded in liberating our Lena Stubbe from her increasingly useless husbands. After the heroic death of her second husband, she was an emancipated woman; in the war winter of 1917 Lena Stubbe spoke loudly, while ladling out cabbage soup at the Wallgasse soup kitchen, against the war credits, and was far to the left in all other questions as well.”

  Is that right, Flounder? Is that why you twice sent me to the firing line? Had I been written off so soon? Had you begun even then to change sides, to turn traitor?

  When the Tribunal was adjourned—affidavits were needed concerning proletarian cookery in the nineteenth century—I went out (in a strictly private capacity) for a beer with Sieglinde Huntscha. Then she (as usual) led me up four flights to her attic apartment, where we first talked about the Tribunal in general and then picked Ms. Schönherr and all the associate judges to pieces. When that was done, Siggie directed her attention to me. “You know what, you may not think so, but you’ve got a Stobbe or Stubbe inside you. You’d like to, but you don’t dare. You know what I mean, slap batter punch. Poke me or your Ilsebill in the jaw. And say, wasn’t the little Nöttke girl looking kind of weepy yesterday? Your doing, I bet. Playing the he-man. Bim-bam. Keep women in their place. All right! Go ahead. I need it. I need it, I tell you. So let loose, and don’t stand there like a hypocrite.”

  But I refused (on principle) to deliver blows. I never wanted to be Stobbe or Stubbe again. “Look here, Siggie. That’s all over and done with. We can make love without it. You just want me to react typically again. But you don’t need it. We don’t need it.”

  And true enough, we did all right without it. It was strictly private, and we were both affectionately distraits. (And I straightened out the business with Erika Nöttke: “That’s more of a paternal thing. She’s been crying for entirely different reasons. Overworked and so forth. The Tribunal has also been a strain on her. She’s just too young for it, I tell you, much too young.”)

  Afterward Sieglinde said, without poison in her fangs, “You probably want to, at that. Even now. You just force yourself to be rational. But then I don’t always know what I want, either. Why don’t you caress me? Go on! Quick! Caress me!”

  Then (as usual) we took a cab out to Steglitz. She led me into the former movie house with her key. But this time she wanted to be present when I talked to the Flounder. He had no objection. He rose with animation from his sand bed and gave us a demonstration of fin play. He welcomed the change and paid Siggie old-fashioned compliments. Then we talked about my time-phase with Lena Stubbe. He reminded me of a few dismal love affairs that still set my teeth on edge. Then he mentioned what had only been hinted at in the court proceedings: my theft from the strike fund and Lena’s nail-and-rope soup. I promised to write about all that. All of a sudden he said: “Oh yes, the book. Is it definitely going to be called ‘The Flounder’? I insist. And you, too, Sieglinde—may I call you Sieglinde?—I want you to make sure he keeps this simple title, as the Women’s Tribunal would wish. We are gradually approaching the great historical accounting. My son, it’s time you drew up a balance sheet—take a special chapter for it. When you’ve finished with Lena Stubbe’s death, have them all die again in their time-phases: Awa, Wigga, Mestwina, the High Gothic Dorothea, and, gruesomely, your Fat Gret. Agnes died horribly, Amanda peacefully, Sophie quietly and alone… .” Then he gave me literary advice. He told me to write at length about “Nail and Rope,” then about “Bebel’s Visit.” “But don’t forget, my son: no complications. Don’t lose yourself in socialist theory. Even when writing about revisionism, always keep it simple. Like Lena Stubbe. She was no Clara Zetkin. She was a simple woman.”

  Sometimes late at night she goes to the station restaurant, which is still open, and eats a jellied cutlet. It’s not yet certain whether Margaret, Amanda Woyke, or Lena steps through the revolving door. She doesn’t want to be a cook any more, seasoning soups, rolling dumplings, sizzling herrings in skillets, head next to tail, always pondering what to put in last. She no longer wants to inspire praise and comparisons in her guests—in rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. She no longer wants to flatter any palate. Nor does she want ever aga
in to force children to eat spinach. She wants to chastise her palate. Never again cook for any man, let the kitchen fire go out. She wants to take her distance from herself as she sits inside me or as, expressed by me, she becomes history. Her dated recipes: hasenpfeffer and Gänseklein, codfish in dill sauce, beef hearts in dark beer, Amanda’s potato soup, Lena’s pork kidneys in mustard sauce. None of these are obtainable nowadays, they are obsolete; in a station restaurant that’s open late at night she wants to apologize (as though palateless) to a jellied cutlet with its chemical freshness.

  Lena, Amanda, Fat Gret? There she sits in her skimpy coat and cuts herself piece after piece. Late trains are called out. (Rhenish, Hessian, Swabian voices.) In the station restaurant of Bielefeld, Cologne, Stuttgart, Kiel, or Frankfurt am Main, regardless, she motions to the waiter, who slowly, as though wishing to delay her century, appears between the empty tables and finally (it’s me) gets there.

  A second jellied cutlet without potato salad, bread, or beer. (Could it be Mother Rusch, cleverly disguised?) Questioned, I tell her the name of the preservative. She cuts, spears a piece with her fork, and shovels it in, as though driven to discharge a debt or fill up a hole or destroy someone (still Abbot Jeschke?) who has disguised himself as a jellied cutlet of the quality served in station restaurants that are open late at night.

  I’m not sure whether I’m waiting on Amanda or Lena. The only one I would recognize (with dread) is Dorothea. Sometimes in serving I try to catch her with words like ‘sweet Lord” or “nail and rope.” But she doesn’t hear me; she just goes on cutting her meat. When Lena or Amanda comes to our restaurant and gives her order, I get sensitive: I notice the draft that makes all food-serving waiting rooms wide open and timeless. There she sits alone. A simple woman who has seen plenty of trouble (including repeatedly me).

  I bring Lena a third cutlet trembling in gelatin—there’s no shortage—and zigzag between the empty, spotted tables, in order that she, entirely outside me, may have time to see me coming, each time by a different itinerary. (When we were young and apples crunched under our bite. When without a word she let me march off with the Fifth Grenadiers. When they struck the Klawitter Shipyard. When she caught me in the kitchen with Lisbeth. When I beat her every Friday with my razor strop. When I hung from the nail and the rabbits were so scared that …)

  Before we have to close—because even station restaurants close some time—she’ll want a fourth jellied cutlet without garnish, wrapped in a paper napkin to take out—where to? When she leaves in her skimpy coat—how round her back is—and vanishes into the revolving door, I wonder why she never gives me a tip. Can it be that Lena respects me in spite of everything that has happened and is yet to happen?

  All

  With Sophie,

  so my poem begins,

  I went gathering mushrooms.

  When Awa gave me her third breast,

  I learned to count.

  When Amanda peeled potatoes,

  I read the progress of my story

  in the flow of her peelings.

  Because Sibylle Miehlau wanted to celebrate Father’s Day,

  she came to a bad end.

  Actually Mestwina wanted only to love

  Saint Adalbert, just to love him forever.

  While Abbess Rusch plucked Polish geese,

  I mischievously blew downy feathers.

  Agnes, who never slammed a door,

  was always gentle and only half there.

  The widow Lena attracted distress,

  that’s why her place smelled of cabbage and rutabaga.

  Wigga, the haven I ran away from.

  Beautiful as an icicle was Dorothea.

  Maria is still alive, getting harder and harder.

  But—said the Flounder—one is missing.

  Yes—said I—beside me

  Ilsebill is dreaming herself away.

  Nail and rope

  I’ve eaten apples with all of them, on the garden bench, standing face to face at the kitchen table or under a tree, made tipsy by the fermenting windfalls—with Agnes before the plague carried me off, with Margret when Hegge came back from Wittenberg and tried to teach us religious fury, with Sophie when, still childlike, we played at revolution. We crunched the apples, exchanged significant looks as we bit, looked past each other (Dorothea and I on our pilgrimage to Aachen) in biting, or bit standing back to back, at which time Amanda, who was built like a guardsman, overtowered me by a head.

  Sometimes we crunched our apples in adjoining rooms—Lena in the kitchen, I in the parlor. But wherever and however we were placed, in whatever century, a comparison always followed. By matching up our apples, bite against bite, we tested our love.

  Other methods—dangerous ones—are known. Ours was harmless, and I can recommend it. By the imprints of our teeth we recognized how different, in spite of everything, we remained, what strangers to each other. I held the apple with the stem pointing heavenward and bit down toward the small end; Sibylle Miehlau (later called Billy) held the apple, before biting, by both ends. That way we blunted our teeth. That way we bore witness. That way cocooned feeling was made manifest. The surface: love; the inner lining: hate. Crosswise and lengthwise we bit, and heard ourselves biting.

  It had to be quiet in our kitchen or in the garden. At most the beef-bone soup simmering in the kettle. Or wormy apples falling with a dull thud on rotting apples in which wasps were getting too much sweetness. We never bit into apples as we lay on the creaking bed in the dark, and never while the wall clock was striking. Never did anyone watch us at it. Often we delayed our comparison until her bite and mine discolored, until our teeth marks turned significantly brown. But without words. Love tested.

  So Lena and I were standing in our little garden behind the tarpaper-roofed workers’ houses and rabbit hutches on Brabank, across from Strohdeich, on the opposite bank of the Mottlau, with the port and shipyard behind us. But no riveting hammers. Because we at the Klawitter Shipyard had already been on strike for four weeks. Lena, now six months gone, was standing under our Boskop apple tree. That morning I’d been agitating and distributing leaflets, which was forbidden, outside the rifle factory in the Lower City. Lena’s early-socialist soup-kitchen face. Though the harm was already done and couldn’t be undone, though the theft was already behind me, I looked her full in the face while I bit and heard her bite.

  Quickly discoloring, our apples lay bite to bite on the pile of driftwood that Ludwig Skröver and I had rafted from the Dead Vistula at night. Lud was my friend. Boskop apples are the most suitable. After testing our love, which was strong in spite of it all, Lena said, as though suspecting nothing, “I’ll take some of these windfall apples and make us pancakes and put on a little cinnamon.” Or maybe she noticed something? I tossed my bitten apple in with the windfalls in Lena’s apron. In the autumn of 1885, at a time when Bismarck’s Socialist Laws were in force, the workers struck the Klawitter Shipyard. Otto Friedrich Stubbe, a dashing young fellow and a rousing agitator, was a member of the strike committee, while Lena Stubbe, because she had formerly been a cook at the Wallgasse soup kitchen, was drafted, despite her advanced state of pregnancy, to cook cabbage and barley soups in an unused laundry for the hundred and seventy-eight striking shipyard workers and their many-mouthed families. At the same time, she took charge of the strike fund.

  The usual incidents. Fights with scabs outside the shipyard gate in Strohdeich. Mounted police joining the melee with their clubs. The injured—bruises and abrasions, for the most part—were all workers. Socialist meetings, at which not only speeches but also leaflets in bold-faced type called upon the sawmill workers in the timber port, the stevedores on Warehouse Island, the well-organized printers and typographers at the Kafemann Print Shop, and the bakers at the Germania Bread Factory to join in a solidarity strike, were broken up by the police, who confiscated the leaflets.

  When work stoppages nevertheless occurred in the port, in the railroad-car factory, even at the rifle factory
and the Imperial Naval Shipyard, eleven party functionaries were arrested and—as the laws provided—exiled. A few, among them Otto Friedrich Stubbe’s friend Ludwig Skröver, emigrated to America. But the strike went on and might possibly, after six or seven weeks, have forced the introduction of the ten-hour day and a reduction of the work load if, during the fourth week, the strike fund had not been robbed.

  Lena Stubbe immediately reported the theft to the strike committee, promised to replace the stolen sum—seven hundred and forty-five marks were missing—but expressed no suspicion, though there were some who in whispers suspected Lisbeth, her sixteen-year-old daughter by her first marriage, and though Lena knew perfectly well that her Otto, who accused and thrashed all the children, had laid hands on the strike fund. Immediately after Lena’s confinement in November, the newborn girl child (Martha), the five-year-old Luise, and the five-year-old Ernestine were given over to Lisbeth’s care. Lena took a job as toilet attendant at the Hotel Kaiserhof. And in the spring of the following year, when Otto Friedrich Stubbe was brought up on charges though more than half the stolen sum had been worked off, Lena went to the comrades, spoke in defense of her husband, and got the charges withdrawn. “I know my Otto,” she said. “He’d never do such a thing.” The comrades apologized to Comrade Stubbe.

  But hard as Lena tried to hush up the theft, to fill the hole in the strike fund by nightwork, and to make her Otto think she suspected nothing, he knew she knew. And because he was humiliated by her forbearance, he got drunk on potato schnapps every Friday and beat her regularly every Friday in the presence of the whimpering children. Lisbeth would run out of the house. And every time Otto Stubbe beat his Lena with a heavy hand or with his razor strop, he cried about himself, and Lena, who didn’t cry, had to comfort him. And how, indeed, could she have stood there with her hands folded while a grown man cried his eyes out as if he had nothing but his suspenders to hold him up.