serving the dessert — stewed Boskop apples with whipped cream — Lena Stubbe, who did not sit at the table but waited on the men as a simple matter of course, quoted from her favorite book, Bebel's Woman and Socialism. In conclusion she said, "All you men do is talk. But there's got to be action, too."
In any case the party ended happily with effusions of brotherly feeling. Karlchen Klawitter and the ex-lieutenant fell into each other's arms. The department head, Otto Stubbe, and the manufacturer Levin sang "Heil dir im Sie-gerkranz" and "Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation!" Lena patted the bemused Scheerbart and was happy because nothing was left of the suckling pig. In among prune pits and gnawed bones the slightly bent blacksmith's nail and the calf's tether in noose formation lay grease-coated and shiny. For all their exuberance, the guests, before taking their leave and drinking a last toast of cider in water glasses to friendship, progress, and life, did not neglect to cast a thoughtful glance at the rope and nail, each in his own way assuming a meditative attitude. (Afterward the well-boiled rope went into the garbage; the nail, however, was washed, dipped in linseed oil to keep it from rusting, and enshrined and locked in an ebony casket, which porter Kabrun had made with his own hands and donated in token of his gratitude for free meals, there to remain until the following Saturday.)
And so it went for many years, for Stubbe — now an anchor maker at the Schichau Shipyard and up to his neck in the (to this day unabated) revisionism controversy since the Erfurt party congress, where he as a delegate had voted now against Kautsky and now against Bernstein — was still a risk, as were all the other men, regardless of class. Under his Lena's consolations, Otto Friedrich never ceased to mumble: "I'll take a rope. I'll find me a nail. And that'll be the end. And this one won't break. Through with the whole business. Too much for one man. All by myself it's out of the question. What do you mean, why? Ain't it enough? No no no. I refuse to be mothered. I'll do it if it kills me. Wash my neck first, that's it. With a calf's tether I'll do it. And I know a good reliable nail. No later than tomorrow, if not. ."
Against which, as we know, Lena Stubbe had a recipe.
And when, shortly before Chairman August Bebel came to Danzig — that was in May 1898—she finished collecting the recipes that would make up her "Proletarian Cook Book," she had clearly described the preparation of all her dishes and accompanied them with class-conscious commentaries (omitting the nail and the rope, however), for Lena was opposed to bourgeois cookery and its "take-a-dozen-eggs" ideology. In her introduction she wrote, "Such pretentious extravagance confuses the cooking workingman's wife, encourages her to live beyond her means, and alienates her from her class." Her reason for not including her nail-and-rope soup in her collection of proletarian recipes was probably that this dish was dedicated to the desperate of all classes and walks of life.
But on the day when she received Comrade Bebel in the parlor and submitted her class-conscious cook book to him in manuscript after her proletarian festive meal — pork kidneys in mustard sauce — she served him, before the main dish, a broth made from beef bones, in which she had (secretly) boiled the bent nail and the rope with a noose at the end, for at that time a rumor was going around that the chairman of the Social Democratic Party was feeling tired. People were saying that his never-ending struggle for just a little more justice had exhausted his store of hope, that he no longer had an answer to the question why, that he was profoundly depressed by the inner-party conflict between the reformist and revolutionary wings, that he often stared unseeing or muttered fatalistic words. That doubt was becoming a principle with him. And that, short of a miracle, the worst was to be feared. .
Home-fried potatoes
Mine with lard.
It's got to be old ones with curling sprouts
that have wintered on a dry wooden rack
in a cellar where the light
is never more than a far-off promise.
Long ago, in the century of suspenders,
when Lena was almost six months gone and still
carrying the strike fund under her apron.
With onions and remembered marjoram I
would like to make a silent movie in which Grandfather,
I mean the Sozi who fell at Tannenberg,
curses before bending over his plate
and cracks each one of his finger joints.
But only with lard and in cast iron.
Home-fried potatoes with
black pudding and suchlike myths.
Herrings that roll themselves in flour
or quivering meat jelly in which diced gherkins
keep their natural beauty.
For breakfast, before he went on the morning shift at the shipyard, Grandfather Stubbe ate a whole plateful. The sparrows outside the casement curtains were class-conscious proletarians even then.
Bebel's visit
Not another word of table eloquence. No argument, no counterargument. Never again disruptive, irrelevant talk over the heads of the stiffly attentive comrades. Because the pigs' feet in the big kettle, with every little bone still embedded, have boiled for two hours in their broth with bay leaves, cloves, and crushed black pepper, with onions (but without nail and rope), because they are done at present and reduce us all, who have talked everything and the future as well to tatters, to silence.
In deep soup dishes, broth that has been seasoned at the end with vinegar. For each guest a halved pig's foot split between the toes and up to the cartilage of the hock. On the edge of the plate a dab of mustard. Rye bread to dip in the sauce. No knife, no fork. With soon jellied fingers, with teeth that remember long and still longer ago, that remem-
ber Lena Stubbe's special pigs' feet, we sit between and across from strangers, the old comrades, who quarreled and talked themselves apart until nothing was left but faded, blue-tinged hope, and who are now gnawing bone after bone bare, biting into the cartilage, tugging at sinews, lapping up marrow, chewing away on the soft, rubbery skin, and are needful of a second, a third half pig's foot. Without a word, each for himself as though alone at the table, eyes narrowed to sight slits between propped elbows, everything taken back, until, united by sounds, we are restored to our old solidarity.
Pigs' feet have always been cheap. Right now three pounds for one fifty. Now we're full, holding our beer glasses with sticky fingers. The silence is fenced around with sighs. We're sitting in jelly. Sucking gaps between teeth. Belches rise up and the first fuzzy words: "Hey, that wasn't bad. Brings back the old days." We chat, we agree with one another. Determined to be reasonable, for a change. And to stop snarling. A simple meal, all it takes to bring peace. We see one another with friendly eyes. Great piles of bones. Ah yes, there were dill pickles on the side. Someone — probably me — wants to make a speech and praise the socialist cook Lena Stubbe, who silenced all the contentious comrades of her day with a kettle full of pigs' feet, defeated them for the time of a brief kindness, for which reason she included "halved pigs' feet with rye bread and dill pickles" in the "Proletarian Cook Book," which she submitted to the unforgettable Comrade Bebel when party business brought him to our part of the country and he called on Lena one afternoon in person.