The sea lay smooth, licking the beach. Maria went in up to her knees in her jeans. After standing there a while, she shouted a Kashubian word three times and held out her arms like a bowl. And then the Flounder, the flat, age-old, dark, wrinkled, pebbly-skinned Flounder, no, my Flounder no longer, her Flounder, leaped as though brand-new out of the sea and into her arms.
I heard them talking. I heard them both talking. They talked a long time, she questioning with strident emphasis, he fatherly and reassuring. Maria laughed. I understood nothing. Time and time again the Flounder. I could guess at those categorical finalities. She who never laughed was laughing, laughing up to her knees in water. How deserted the beach was. How far away I was sitting. Good that she was able to laugh again. About what? About whom? I sat beside the empty dinner pail. Fallen out of history. With an aftertaste of pork and cabbage.
It was starting to get dark when Maria finished talking with the Flounder. And when she had given him back to the sea, the evening breeze ruffled the Baltic. She stood for a while, showing me her back. Then slowly she came to meet her footprints. But it wasn't Maria who came back. It must be Dorothea, I thought with alarm. As step by step she grew larger, I began to hope for Agnes. That's not Sophie's walk. Is Billy, my poor Sibylle, coming back?
Ilsebill came. She overlooked me, overstepped me. Already she had passed me by. I ran after her.