canonization for the sole purpose of providing the Teutonic Knights with a propaganda pinup in their war against Poland, the Flounder maintained his protest posture and gave no sign of concern.
I waited for Sieglinde outside the former movie house. I felt sorry for her. Or, rather, I wanted something. To tell the truth, my sympathy was real, but I also wanted to exploit it. "Join me for a beer?" Sieglinde joined me.
No, Ilsebill, I am not "talking like a typical male again." She could have said no. But she needed my sympathy, and she also knew that I wanted something.
We went to the Bundeseck cafe and had a few beers and a few schnappses. Not a word about Dorothea. First we talked at random of current events. Then we went back to the early days of our acquaintance. We've known each other quite a while. When I first met her, I was engaged to Sibylle Miehlau. And Siggie — as Sieglinde called herself in the early sixties-had hot pants for Billy, as Siggie, Frankie, and Maxie called Sibylle. They all had a thing about lesbianism, and they shook me off. The whole thing ended tragically with Billy's death. On Father's Day, '63.
So over beer and schnapps we talked of the old days. We could see them in perspective now. "We had no political ideas. Only a suspicion that things could be done differently. We tried desperately. Today I know better. I'm still in touch with Frankie and Maxie. But it's not the same. We've grown apart. Frankie still reels off her Stalinist slogans. Maxie used to be a Sponti; now she's on an anarchist trip. And me? That kind of childishness makes me sick. When, pretty much by accident, the three of us caught the Flounder last summer, we were still all right together. It was then that things got difficult. The Tribunal came between us. Frankie didn't see how I could cooperate with a liberal like Schonherr. If you ask me, she's been doing all right so far. At least she keeps things moving. And the way she came to my rescue just now when the Flounder was putting me down was tops. The way she swept that whole shitty artisans' uprising aside and brought Dorothea back into the picture. Yes, she's married. Three children. Even said to be happy. But what about you?
What are you up to? So I've heard. A big blonde? Always looks kind of frantic? Yes, I think I know her. Well, let's hope your Ilsebill can put you in your place."
We drank a few more beers and schnappses. To Sieg-linde's question "What are you working on now?" I replied very cautiously: "This Tribunal interests me. The whole subject interests me, not only as a writer, but as a man as well. Makes me feel somehow guilty. Comes in handy in a way. At first I was only going to write about my nine or eleven cooks, some kind of a history of human foodstuffs— from manna grass to millet to the potato. But then the Flounder provided a counterweight. He and his trial. Too bad they turned me down as a witness. The ladies disposed of my experience with Awa, Wigga, Mestwina, and Dorothea as ridiculous, if it wasn't pure fiction. You just turned me down flat. So what can I do but write write write as usual?"
She seemed to have stopped listening. She sat hunched over, smoking as if it were required, and slipping more and more into the cell of solitude, which Dorothea was seeking when as a child she spent her days in hollow willow trees, and which still helps Ilsebill to make, express, and carry out wild decisions in no time at all. Anyway, speaking out of her solitude after a last swallow of beer, Sieglinde suddenly said, "Come on. Let's go to bed."
Sieglinde lives on Mommsenstrasse. Two hours later we took a cab to Steglitz after what I wanted of her—"You've got the key to the movie house. I want a word with the Flounder" — had popped outTin two sentences. She can't have been very much surprised. "I thought there'd be a little something else. One last fart, kind of." She had no objection and called the cab. No, Ilsebill, she wasn't pissed off or disappointed.
I'd expected it to be much more complicated. An alarm system, a room like a safe-deposit vault. But with two common keys Sieglinde unlocked the doors and locked them again behind us. Then she sat down in the former ticket office and said, "I'll wait here till you're through. Got two mark pieces? I'm running out of butts."
I gave her a pack of Lord Extra Longs, said, "See you
later," and stepped into the dark hall, which did not smell of males. Only two red emergency lights to the left and right of the tub showed where the Flounder was spending his night. I groped my way forward as one does at the movies when the film has already started.
"Flounder," I said. "Maybe you remember. It's me. Me again. I caught you on a partly cloudy neolithic day. Oddly enough, in an eel trap. We made a pact: I set you free, and you promised to advise me, to help men out of their dependency, to serve the male cause and only the male cause. I'm sorry they've haled you before this preposterous Tribunal on that account. Unfortunately the girls wouldn't admit me as a witness. I'd have spoken in your favor. I'd be willing any time to argue for the historic necessity of your contradictory existence. If there is a Weltgeist, it's you. Great, the way you told those females off again today. The prosecutor was speechless. And take it from me, it's really something to stop the mouth of Sieglinde Huntscha. But that's just the type I keep falling for. Like that rotten bitch Dorothea some centuries ago. Right now a certain Ilsebill is doing me in. The stupid piece. Never satisfied. Always wanting something. That fight the other day about the dishwasher. And now she wants a second apartment in town. And what she has she doesn't want. And what she gets she doesn't like. Sure, but we both wanted her to be pregnant, we both wanted a child together, a quick-growing gourd-vine arbor. But I haven't come here to weep on your shoulder. I admit that you warned me and I fell in love with the witch from Montau all the same. Because she attracts me with her indolent, seemingly untapped vitality. I mean my present Ilsebill. You know how restless I am. How I need a pole to revolve around. A stationary pole. But she wants to move around, too. It won't do! Same with Dorothea, never gave us a moment's peace. Always pilgrimages. What was there for me to do in Aachen or a Swiss dump like Einsiedeln! Same with Ilsebill — always wanting to go places. The Lesser Antilles! 'Can't you be pious right here?' I'd say to Dorothea. Oh no. They all want to be free and independent. Or, like Dorothea, belong to no one but their sweet Jesus. As if there were such a thing as independence. I, at all events, have always had to slave for other people.
The dear kiddies, for instance. It wears a man out. Uses him up. Flounder, I'm done for. Somewhere along the way we must have done something wrong. The women are getting so aggressive. Dorothea was already that way. And when Ilsebill lifts her voice to a heroic pitch, it literally makes me sick. Gives me the gollywobbles. Say something, Flounder! Look, I'm writing a book about you, for you. Or aren't we friends, aren't I allowed to call you Father any more?"
Of course I'd meant to be a lot calmer and more collected in addressing the legendary flatfish. But I was carried away, because the pressure had been mounting of late, no, for centuries, ever since my first marriage, to Dorothea Swarze. Even when I managed to evade marriage, the pressure had mounted from woman to woman. It had to come out some time.
The two red lights to the right and left of the zinc tub sufficed to show me that the Flounder had completely buried himself in the sea sand. Only his crooked mouth and slanting eyes were uncovered. Oh, how he had used to jump — I had only to call — up onto the palms of my hands! And oh, how he had spoken, advised, commanded, lectured, instructed me, what sermons he had preached to me: Do this, don't stand for that, listen to me, watch your step, don't pin yourself down, make them give you that in writing. Your profit, your privilege, your manly duty — you must continue to find them all in the male cause. .