Wigga invited the Gothic chieftains to a starvation meal and persuaded them to go.
That was after an overlong winter and a rainy summer, when the barley rotted on the stalk and the only beets to be had were moldy. The herring and flounder had stayed away, too, and the fish perished in the rivers as if the country had been cursed: perch, bass, roach, and pike were seen drifting belly up. We would have come through the winter even so, but, accustomed as they were to sponging on others, our Gothic guests had nothing to fall back on when their cattle were carried away by a plague, so we were forced to slaughter our last remaining reindeer and water buffaloes. True, the Goitches still had horses (though they creaked at the joints), but their horses were sacred to them and were never slaughtered, not even in times of famine.
So Wigga invited the Gothic chieftains to a special kind of noonday meal. She had decided to serve her guests the only food which we Pomorshians still had and which, though in short supply, we would continue to have throughout the coming winter. The guests were Ludolf, Luderich, Ludnot, and my friend Ludger, all of them hulking fellows with a studied truculent glare. For once all four were unarmed. Possibly they were so weak that the sheer weight of the iron would have been too much for them. It had rained all summer, and now in the fall it was still raining. So Wigga had invited the visitors to her hut, where it was smoky but cozy. They all sat on sheepskins, their watering blue eyes magnified by hunger. Luderich chewed his red beard. Ludnot gnawed his fingernails. Nevertheless Wigga, before bringing in the steaming bowl, delivered a brief but instructive lecture about the one dish she had provided, which later, after it had
produced its effect, we named "Wigga's Gothic mash." She spoke about manna grass and manna grits.
Now, sometimes because there was nothing else to eat and sometimes because of the pleasant taste, the seeds of manna grass (Glyceria fluitans L.), known in my part of the country as wild grass, have been gathered and ground from the earliest times down to the twentieth century — during the First World War, for instance, or in 1945, the year of mass flight. This local grain has been called Schwade or wild millet or heaven's bread, or by the Prussians simply manna.
It was not easy to gather the manna grains, because when ripe they hung loosely from the stalks. For this reason we gathered the grain in the morning dew with the help of taut, flat bags that were fastened to the ends of sticks and moved through the grass. Later on we used manna-grass combs. And in the nineteenth century, when more and more of the land was cultivated and the wild grass was rarely seen outside of marshy areas, manna-grass sieves were attached to poles that were often as much as twelve feet long. (Perhaps I should tell you that manna grain was gathered almost exclusively by men, whereas the gathering of mushrooms, berries, wild sorrel, and roots has been women's work since time immemorial. That's why the Flounder actually tried to get the Women's Tribunal to characterize the use of manna grits for emergency food as a male achievement.)
Pounded manna seeds were so popular that in the eighteenth century (before the introduction of the potato) they figured among the region's exports. Even the serfs had to supply manna grits to their owners, along with other produce. And before cheap Carolina rice appeared on the market in the nineteenth century, sweet manna porridge cooked in milk and seasoned with cinnamon was served at peasant weddings instead of the usual wedding millet. Because of their digestibility, manna grits were prized as food for the aged, and West Prussian cottagers, on retiring, stipulated a certain measure of manna grits as part of their reserved rights.
Of course we gathered other wild grasses in times of famine, wild millet {Milium effusum), for instance, or the red cowwheat (Melampyrnum arvense), from which a rather bitter but wholesome bread could be baked. And when the harvest
was poor, lyme grass was used to stretch our supply of cultivated grain. But of all the wild grains that helped us to get through the winters, our favorite was manna grass, or "Prussian manna." And that was why, when Wigga wanted to get rid of the Goths, she served them a "Gothic mash" of manna grits — plenty of them, with nothing much added. Only a few sunflower seeds were mixed with the grain before it was crushed in a mortar.
The Goths didn't care for our manna. Ludolf, Luderich, Ludnot, and my friend Ludger were meat eaters. They would eat fried fish in a pinch, but as a rule resigned themselves to porridge only as a filler. True, they shoveled it in from the deep bowl that Wigga had set down in their midst, but the prospect of living a whole winter and more on grits (and woody mangel-wurzels) took their appetites away. My friend Ludger looked as if he had been asked to eat toads. To make matters worse, Wigga, in her instructive lecture about the difficulty of gathering the seeds (definitely man's work), mentioned our meager Pomorshian stocks but made it clear that the place where they were stored was secret and inaccessible.
It was my friend Ludger who humbly (all the hauteur had gone out of him) asked for advice. Luderich and Ludnot also asked what was to be done. Finally, when Wigga remained silent, Prince Ludolf, a handsome, monumental man who not only was the father of Ludger, Luderich, and Ludnot but also was thought to have begotten Wigga, asked simply and directly what this foggy marshland between rivers had to offer the Goths, apart from not enough manna grits.
"Nothing," said Wigga. And, rather harshly, "You'll just have to shove off. Either to the north, where you came from. Or to the south, where everything is supposed to be better." And she proceeded to vaunt the southland to her guests: Every day spitted bullocks and sheep. Mead awaited them in never empty pitchers. Never a foggy day. The rivers were never clogged with ice. You were never snowed in for weeks on end. And to top it all, the south promised the brave victory, honor, and posthumous fame. If people wanted to make history, she went on, there was no point in their settling down as if the beet culture were the only possible advance; no, they
must indefatigably conquer new horizons. "So pack your stuff and beat it!" she cried, pointing her long arm southward.
Thereupon Ludolf, Luderich, Ludnot, and my friend Ludger shoveled in the rest of the grits to fortify themselves for the next day. As Wigga had advised them, they shoved off southward and started on their migration. The outcome is known to every schoolboy. It's true, they went far.
In our country, on the other hand, centuries went by without noticeable change. Only the weather varied. Until Bishop Adalbert arrived with the cross.
Demeter
With open eyes the goddess sees how blind the heavens are.
Petrified eyelashes cast shadows all around. No lid consents to fall and bring sleep.
Always horror
ever since she saw the god
here in the fallow field
where the plowshare was engendered.
Willingly the mule goes round and round over his barley. That hasn't changed.
We who have fallen out of the cycle take an overexposed photograph.
What a cast-iron spoon is good for
Adalbert came from Bohemia. All his books (as well as his crosier) had stayed in Prague. Because he was at the end of
his scholastic wisdom, he decided to abandon theory for practice, that is, to convert the heathen and spread the one true faith in our country, the region of the Vistula estuary. (Today they call it "working with the masses.")
Wladislaw, king of Poland, had signed him on as a propagandist. He arrived with a Bohemian retinue under Polish protection. His actual purpose was to indoctrinate the Prussians, because the king of Poland wanted to extend his power to the east bank of the Vistula. But since the Prussians had a reputation for ferocity, his Bohemian retinue advised him to start by practicing on us, the rather dull-witted but good-natured Pomorshians. (Build up experience, inspire confidence, do good, get acquainted with the foreign economy, said the prelate Ludewig.)