Awa's tutelage forever — we fitted a second and then a third basket, so as to make it harder for the eels to escape. Long, supple willow withes forced into a complicated mesh: an early craft. Something that could be done without Awa.
Good catches ever after. More than we needed. First attempt at smoking in hollow willow trees. The words "eel" and "trap" became a hallowed pair, which I, with my obsessive drive to leave my marks wherever-1 went, converted into an image. Before leaving the beach after setting the traps, for instance, I would draw in the wet sand, with the sharp edge of a shell, a picture of wriggling eels behind intricate wickerwork. If instead of being flat and swampy, our region had been mountainous and honeycombed with caves, I would undoubtedly have bequeathed a cave painting of a trapped eel to posterity. In his mid-twentieth-century time-phase the Flounder would pontificate, "Neolithic graffiti originating in northeastern European fish culture, related to the southern Scandinavian Maglemose drawings on bones and amber." The Flounder has always been hooked on culture.
One thing Awa couldn't do was set signs, draw a likeness. She admired the pictures I scratched in the sand and found them useful for ritual purposes; she liked my palpable representations of herself and her three breasts; but when, just for the fun of it, I drew on the sandy beach a trap consisting of five tapered baskets, she instantly forbade both the drawing and the fivefold trap itself. The basic value, three, as established by Awa and her breasts, could not be exceeded. And again I was sharply called to order when I drew a picture of the Flounder, who had been caught in an eel trap. Awa exploded in mother-goddessly wrath: she had never seen such a thing, and because she had never seen such a thing, it couldn't exist. It was mere invention and therefore untrue.
Threatening punishment, Awa and the whole council of women forbade rhe ever again to draw pictures of a flounder caught in an eel trap. Nevertheless, I kept doing so in secret. For, much as I had learned to dread the withholding of the breast that suckled me thrice daily, the Flounder was stronger, especially since he spoke to me whenever I wished: I had only to cry out "Flounder, Flounder." "All she wants,"
*
he said, "is constant self-affirmation. Everything outside of her is ruled out. But art, my son, refuses to be ruled out."
Toward the end of the third millennium before the incarnation of our Lord (or, as a computer has computed, on May 3, 2211 b.c, a Friday, so it seems), on a neolithic day-east wind, loosely knit cloud formation — an event occurred which later, for reasons of patriarchal self-justification, was falsified, twisted into a fairy tale that still sends my Ilsebill up the wall.
I was young but already bearded. Late in the afternoon I pulled in my thrice-tapered eel trap, which I had set out early in the morning before the day's first suckling. (My favorite eel-catching spot was on or near the site of Heubude, the popular beach resort that long centuries later could conveniently be reached by streetcar number 9.) Because of my talent for drawing, Awa, in her ever-loving care, had favored me with an extra, out-of-turn suckling. Consequently, when I saw the Flounder in the eel trap, my first thought was: I'll bring him to Awa. She'll wrap him in moist lettuce leaves as usual and bake him in hot ashes.
Then the Flounder spoke.
I'm not sure that I was any more amazed at his crooked-mouthed speech than at the mere fact of having caught a broad-beamed flounder in an eel trap. In any event, I did not respond to the words "Good afternoon, my son!" with a question about his astonishing gift of speech. What I did ask was why he, a flatfish, had chosen to force his way, through all three narrowings, into a trap.
The Flounder replied. From the very start his know-it-all superiority made him garrulous despite his categorical finalities, now nasally professorial, now infuriatingly paternal. His purpose, he said, had been to join conversation with me. He had been motivated not by foolish (or did he already say "feminine"?) curiosity, but by the well-matured decision of a masculine will. There existed, so he said, certain information pointing beyond the neolithic horizon, and he, the sapient Flounder, wished to communicate this information to me, the dull-witted fisher, kept in a state of infantilism by total female care. To prepare himself, he had learned
the dialect of the Baltic coast, a language of few words, a wretched stammering that named only the strictly necessary. In a relatively short time he had mastered the speech defect that broadened all our sounds. Language, he assured me, would be no obstacle in our dialogue. But in the long run he would feel cramped in this wicker basket.
I had scarcely freed him from the tripartite trap and set him down on the sand when he said first, "Thank you, my son!" and then: "Of course I am aware of the dangers to which my decision exposes me. I know I taste good. I've heard about all the different ways your women, who rule through ever-loving care, have of grilling roaches on a willow spit, of baking eel, pike, perch, and hand-sized sole on well-heated stones, or of wrapping larger fish like myself in leaves and bedding us in hot ashes until we are cooked through, but still succulent. Bon appetit. It's flattering to be considered tasty. All the same, I'm sure my offer to serve forever as an adviser to you, that is, to the male cause, outweighs my culinary value. In short, my son: set me free and I will come whenever you call me. Your magnanimity puts me under obligation to supply you with information gathered in every corner of the world. We flounders, you see — and related species — are at home in every ocean and on every coast. I know what kind of advice you need. Deprived as you are of every right, you Baltic men will need my encouragement. You, an artist, able in your affliction to set down signs and symbols, a man in quest of enduring, meaning-charged form, must realize that my timeless promise is worth more than a few mouthfuls of baked fish. And in case you doubt my trustworthiness, allow me, my son, to divulge my motto and first principle: 'A man's word is his bond!' "
Fact: I fell for him. His talking to me like that gave me a sense of importance. Of significance. Of inner growth. Self-awareness was born. I began to take myself seriously. And yet — believe me, Ilsebill! — my doubts were far from dispelled. I'd have to put this talking Flounder, who had promised me so much, to the test. No sooner had I tossed him into the smooth water than I called after him: "Flounder! Come back! There's something I've got to ask you."
In the exact place where I had dropped him, he jumped
out of the Baltic Sea and landed on my two palms. "What is it, my son? Always at your service. Even, I might add, in surf and storm."
"But suppose," I said to the Flounder, "suppose we're not unhappy under Awa's ever-loving care? Suppose we're doing all right and have no complaints? I mean it! Because we get everything we need. Yes, indeed, we want for nothing. The breast is seldom withheld, only when we're fractious. Three times a day we get suckled. Even doddering old men can count on it. It's always been that way. Since paleolithic times. Anyway, since the end of the last ice age. Breast feeding is right for us. We feel contented and sheltered. We're always kept warm. We never have to decide for or against anything. We live as we please, without responsibility. Yes, of course, we're a bit restless now and then. We get to wondering where the river comes from. Or whether something's going on behind the river where the sun rises. I'd also like to know if it's possible to count higher than we're allowed to. And then the question of meaning, that is, whether the things we do, which are always the same, might not point to something else in addition to what they are. Awa says they are what they are, and that's that. Whenever we start fidgeting and doubting, she gives us the breast. Which is an excellent remedy. . for what? Well, for restlessness and asking questions. Whereas you, friend Flounder, make me nervous. You're so ambiguous. What is this information you speak of? Just tell me this: Where does the river come from? Is there some other place where people are allowed to make eel traps with more than three baskets? And do existing things also mean something else? Fire, for instance. All we know is that soon after the last ice age Awa brought three pieces of glowing charcoal down from the sky for us. She says fire is good for cooking meat, fish, roots, and mushrooms, or for keeping us warm when we sit around it chewing the fat. I ask you, friend Flounder: what else can fire do?"