had no desire to stop and briefly honor his memory. "But Maria," I said, "he was so gloriously mad. To this day no one has disproved his thesis that right after the final curtain of Shakespeare's Hamlet, Fortinbras led his troops to Kashu-bia and was defeated by Swantopolk!"
But Maria said only, "Today it was pork and cabbage." She was carrying a dinner pail along with her vinyl handbag. We went to the central station and took the streetcar to Heubude. There wasn't much doing on the beach. We headed eastward and made barefoot tracks. The usual halfhearted waves. I found a few crumbs of amber in the seaweed. Then we sat down in the dunes and spooned up the lukewarm pork and cabbage. Like the rest of the shipyard workers, Jan had this same dish, cooked as usual with caraway seed, in his belly when, on December 18, 1970, the police shot him square in the belly.
"Those idiots," said Maria, "thought they could raise the food prices before Christmas." She showed me a photo of her girls, Damroka and Mestwina: pretty. Then we fell silent, each on a different subject, until Maria suddenly stood up, ran across the beach to the Baltic Sea, and three times shouted the same Kashubian word, whereupon the Flounder jumped out of the smooth sea and landed on her outspread palms. .
Quarrel
Because the dog, no, the cat
or because the children (yours and mine)
are unhousebroken, making them the scapegoats,
because visitors have left too early
or peace gone on too long
and all the raisins tend to be. .
Words that are wedged into drawers
and are hooks and eyes for Ilsebill.
She wishes for something, wishes for something.
Now I am going.
Making the rounds of the house.
Boiled beef is stringy between the teeth. Sky Night Air.
Someone far away, who is also making the rounds of the house. Again.
Only the pensioner and his wife who live in the pisspot next door have gone to sleep without a word too many.
Ah, Flounder! Your story has a dismal ending.
Dishwashing
My glasses are afraid of Ilsebill. When, for no reason at all, or because the weather had changed, or because I had emptied her pickle vinegar, which she sopped up as if she was hooked, down the toilet, when suddenly something snapped and sent her into a cold, jellied rage — how she trembled and what an aftertremor went through her when it was over— and with furious hand, no, with a dry dishcloth, swept my whole collection of glasses off the shelves, or because I had said, "The trip to the West Indies is off," because it so happens that pregnant women are entitled to drink pickle vinegar and a case of migraine was brought on by a Scandinavian high-pressure zone, I, the collector, looked calmly on as more and more of my glasses, including special favorites, were dashed to splinters, for Ilsebill had stopped sweeping away the entire fine-blown contents of a shelf at one stroke with a rag, and instead, while the slanting rays of the afternoon sun played over the shards, was picky-choosily smashing one glass at a time, because, to spare my sensitive glassware, I had said an unequivocal no to a Bosch or Miele dishwasher with six control knobs and a guarantee of minimal noise. "Not in my house!" I had cried.
One more example of how firmness persists (until it is heroically abandoned). More and more serenely I watched Ilsebill. Because I was liberated at last from my collector's obsession, I slipped into a speculative mood and wondered
whether apart from obvious causes — the pickle vinegar, the trip to the West Indies, the Scandinavian high-pressure zone, the dishwasher — there might not be other, more obscure reasons for this clean sweep, this heroic housecleaning, for it seemed possible that Ilsebill's rage was High Gothic in origin and had been storing up ever since I exchanged her little silver scourge — a fine piece of swordmaker's craftsmanship — for a Venetian (Murano) goblet. This beautifully blown piece, which would have cost a fortune today, was the last to be shattered by Ilsebill.
"Trying to make a witch or a saint out of me, whatever serves your purpose at the moment. This isn't the Middle Ages!" she cried as she hurled. She was as terrifying as that Dorothea who has been pressing against my gall bladder since the fourteenth century, and it's high time for her to come out, the bitch!
Freed from my glasses, I considered the purchase of a dishwasher with a Super-55 control panel. After twenty washings the supply of special soap must be renewed. Atlantic low-pressure fronts countered the migraine effect of the Scandinavian high-pressure zone. All you have to do is load and unload. Not even the Bosch company can guarantee that the purchase of a dishwasher will put an end to our dishwashing problem. Who's going to load and unload? I? Me?
Certain kinds of glass (hand-blown) are likely to cloud after three washings. Never again, as long as my Ilsebill is pregnant, will I throw pickle vinegar down the toilet. I put all the shards — Bohemian, Venetian, lots of English Regency — back on the shelves. As for our trip to the West Indies, travel folders came into the house: White, unpolluted beaches. Coconut palms. Ice-cold fruit juice. Dark-skinned people and their carefree laughter. Happiness included in the purchase price. And there's Ilsebill stepping out of a charter plane, and blondly she moves about in the range finder of an adman's movie camera that is blind to anything but blond.
Actually my glasses are still beautiful as shards. Even broken they are sounder than we are. And to Ilsebill I said: "This Dorothea — if you care to remember — owned a scourge plaited from silver wire, which, when she was still a child, was given to her by the swordmaker Albrecht Slichting.
Probably on the Flounder's advice, because at the Women's Tribunal this High Gothic utensil, with which Dorothea approached her Lord Jesus in times of migraine, has been repeatedly characterized as an instrument of oppression invented by men and therefore typical. Do you, too — tell me frankly, Ilsebill — sometimes feel like inflicting, let's say, moderate pain on yourself with a little silver scourge? Or does smashing glasses satisfy you? You seemed really liberated when you were through. Free, yet affectionate. We can buy new ones any time. I saw two Baroque, ostensibly Danish glasses in Hamburg — sinfully expensive, but what does it matter? They were related like you and me, irregular in different ways but harmonious. What do you say?"
No, says Ilsebill, meaning yes. Both glasses are still harmoniously safe and sound. It will be some time before the next Scandinavian high-pressure zone comes around. Sour pickles are no longer in demand. At the moment it's sauerkraut, raw, and plenty of it. The extreme humidity in the West Indies is said to keep migraine away. But the claim that the dishwasher — there it is at last, running full tilt-makes next to no noise is a swindle, Ilsebill, a pure swindle. And our dishwashing problem, the sum of all problems since Dorothea, remains unsolved. Your turn and my turn refuse to become our turn.
"No, friend Flounder," I said later, "that Dorothea I saddled myself with in the year 1356 was an ill-tempered bitch, and her way of doing me in is still in force; for my Ilsebill, now in her second month of pregnancy, is still capable of the same infectious moods. When angry she has only to pass an open bowl of milk and it turns. She casts her shadow, and good, solid glassware cracks. Stands mutely behind our guests, whose laughter has been bouncing around the circle as gaily as a ball, and the merriment seeps away, the ball springs a leak, the children are gathered up, in a muffled, time-to-go-home atmosphere someone starts looking for the ignition key, a dispirited voice says, 'OK, we'll be seeing you.'