My Ilsebill, who sends you her regards, doesn't believe all this. Every day she cries out, "You with your historical excuses and your stories that are all lies!" Ilsebill only believes what she reads in the paper. You and I, however, know that stories can't help being true, but never twice in the same way. As my Latin teacher, you were a failure, but you infected me for good with the Dorothean poison. And so I write to you, in esteem and bitter doubt. After all, neither of us knows what Dorothea wanted. .
Surplus value
Or frozen jubilation
that I've collected, collected to look at.
The glasses on my shelf
like side light; all are not Bohemian.
Two each day are special.
So much love, ready for the dustbin.
Breath from afar, that hasn't shattered. Thus, nameless, survive
air and its surplus value:
glass blowers, we read, did not grow old.
• Smerte: "pain," "sorrow." — trans.
The Third Month
How the Flounder was protected against aggression
When the Women's Tribunal met for the first time, four working women rolled the Flounder into the courtroom in a flat, roughly five-by-seven-foot tub. He was illumined by an overhead light. It was the kind of tub that might just as well have kept carp alive from Christmas to New Year's Day. While the bill of indictment was being read, the Flounder lay motionless on the bottom of the tub, as though the accusation — that he had served the male cause in an advisory capacity since the late Neolithic, well knowing that his advice redounded to the detriment of the female sex — did not concern him. It was not until Ms. Ursula Schonherr, the presiding judge, asked him if he wished to comment on the indictment that his voice was heard over the loudspeaker, and then only to say that he would say nothing as long as he was obliged to lie in Baltic Sea water, which, in addition to being disgustingly stale, was polluted with mercury. Ignoring his court-appointed counsel, the Flounder declared, "This borders on the only-too-notorious methods of torture practiced by the modern system of class justice, which it is
incumbent on all, including the feminist movement, to combat. And moreover," he added, "this overhead light is an instrument of discrimination; I demand that it be switched off immediately."
The court was obliged to adjourn. From then on canisters of fresh North Sea water were flown in daily via British Airways. The changes of water were supervised by Beate Hagedorn, one of the associate judges, who was employed as a marine biologist by the aquarium of the Berlin Zoo.
No longer illumined from above, the Flounder became cooperative. But before the court had finished debating the neolithic phase of the legendary fish and the three breasts of the reigning goddess Awa, the defendant in his zinc tub lodged a new protest — accustomed as he was to lying flat, he declared the zinc floor of his tub to be prejudicial to his health and well-being. It so happened that his soft and sensitive underside was allergic to zinc. How, under these circumstances, could he be expected to concentrate on the proceedings? Water was not his only element. He needed sand to bed himself in, and specifically, Baltic Sea sand. "That and no other," he concluded. "Until I am provided with an environment compatible with my needs, I cannot cooperate in this otherwise epoch-making trial. I regard the conditions of my detention as unacceptable. Is this a fascist court martial?"
Another adjournment. Baltic Sea sand was flown in. But during the next phase of the trial, from the Bronze and Iron Ages down to the advent of Christianity — the Wigga and Mestwina cases — the defendant had a further complaint: he was sick of being fed dried flies and prepared fish food like a goldfish, and "How do I know that I'm not being shamefully and criminally drugged? I need fresh food. If this is beyond the powers of our esteemed marine biologist, why not enlist the help of the fishery school in Cuxhaven or Kiel?" And he wound up, "I am asking no more than my rights."
Once the suggested contacts had been established, the Flounder was provided with algae, insects, and similar fresh food, and the trial went along smoothly until the case of the Lenten cook Dorothea of Montau was nearing its summation.
The probable reason for the agitation in the hall was that the defendant had managed to bring in certain particulars which, taken in conjunction with certain acknowledged facts, added up to a historical picture that mitigated his guilt (Dorothea's services as a spy for the Dominicans). In any event, some member of the public threw a fist-sized stone, which missed the zinc tub but might have hit it. The public was excluded from the hall. With the Flounder's consent, workmen (males) covered his tub with fine-meshed wire. The optical effect was unfortunate. The defendant could hardly be seen. The word "cage" kept cropping up in the news stories.
When the public was readmitted, further assaults were made. The public consisted mostly of young women, and when the Flounder set forth his cynical migraine theory in speaking of Dorothea of Montau, one of these young women threw a small bottle, which landed on the protective wire. The Flounder demanded to be informed of the contents, but refrained from any comment derogatory to the women's movement when the words "potassium cyanide" were pronounced.
Again the trial was adjourned; again the public was excluded. Specialists (male) required a whole week, first to seal off the zinc tub with a pane of bulletproof glass, second to equip the tub with an oxygen tank, and third to install an intercom system. When the trial started up again, the Flounder sounded weird, very much (to High German ears) as in the fairy tale that made him a popular legend: "Vot does she vont now?" He was evidently aware of the acoustic effect, for he occasionally sprinkled his usual exaggeratedly involved and old-fashioned sentences with Low German flourishes, charmingly vulgar expletives, and puns on the name Ilsebill. The intercom system seemed to amuse him.
But at the very start of the debate on the case of Mar-garete Rusch, when the Flounder had just admitted to the Tribunal that it was he who had advised putting little Margret in a convent, or, more exactly, right after the accused fish had illustrated convent life with a few anecdotes, and had imitated Fat Gret's nun's farts with a remarkable vocal virtuosity, someone in the public took aim at the Flounder and fired. The bullet — fired as it later turned out
by an old lady, a librarian by trade — struck the hind end of the zinc tub. She had fired standing in the eleventh row. The bullet passed clean through the metal and came to rest in the Baltic Sea sand. But the hole was large enough to provide passage for a finger-thick stream of North Sea water. The prosecutor herself, Ms. Sieglinde Huntscha, tried to stop the hole with a Kleenex. The marine biologist was in despair. A plumber was called. The Flounder could be heard laughing raucously over the loudspeaker: "Hey, there, that's a new way to fart. That must have been a cowboy and no Ilsebill. Going after the poor Flounder with a Colt. Why not a cannon?"
Only a four-day adjournment was needed for the installation of a man-high tank of bulletproof glass, as long and wide as the retired zinc tub but filled to half its height with Baltic Sea sand. It goes without saying that the glass house was provided with the necessary technical equipment. The Flounder could now be seen much more clearly. One could even distinguish his archaic stony protuberances, except when he buried his whole flat body in the sand, showing only his crooked mouth and slanting eyes. But now no one could endanger his life by aiming stones or bullets at him or pouring poison in his water. His security had been provided for.