And the Flounder replied. He told me about hordes on both sides of the river who also had their Awa, even if they called her Ewa or Eia. He told me about other rivers and about the ocean, which is much larger. Like a swimming newspaper he brought me news, reported all sorts of heroic
and mythological gossip. A god named Poseidon had commented on some quotations from Zeus, and the Flounder now commented on the commentaries. He supplied glosses on female deities — one was called Hera. But even when he stuck to cold facts I didn't understand very much. He told me for the first time about the metal that can be smelted out of rock with the help of fire and poured into sand molds to cool and harden. "Bear in mind, my son! Metal can be forged into spearheads and axes."
After his crooked mouth had proclaimed the end of the hand-ax era, he told me about the hilly region, a short way inland, that came to be known as the Baltic Ridge, and assured me that small amounts of metal-containing rock were to be found there. And three days later, when as agreed I called him again—"Flounder, Flounder in the sea" — he brought me, probably from Sweden, an ore specimen, tucked away in one of his branchial sacs.
"Take heart!" cried the Flounder. "Smelt down this and more like it and you will have not only acquired copper but also given fire a new, progressive, incisive, decisive, and masculine significance. Fire is something more than warmth and cookery. In fire there are visions. Fire cleanses. From fire the sparks fly upward. Fire is idea and future. On the banks of other rivers, the future is already under way. Resolute men are making themselves masters of it, without so much as asking their Awas and Ewas. It's only here that men are still letting themselves be suckled and lulled to sleep. Even your old men are babes in arms. Like Prometheus you must take possession of fire. Don't content yourself with being a fisherman, my son; become a blacksmith."
(Ah, Ilsebill, if only that metal had stayed in the mountains!) While allegedly hunting in the hills that later became known as the Ziganken Mountains — and we did actually spear a wild boar — we found confirmation of the ore specimen the Flounder had brought me. Soon we had a copper ax, some blades, and a few metal spearheads, which we boastfully exhibited. The women shuddered and giggled as they touched the new material. I started taking orders for ornaments. But then Awa put her foot down.
She flew into a rage and threatened to withhold her breast. We Edeks were subjected to niggling interrogations. How had we, who had never before conceived a useful idea, come by this sudden knowledge? It was up to her, the supreme Awa, and nobody else, to decide what uses fire could be put to. Not that she questioned the utility of the new metal objects — among them my own creation, the first kitchen knife — but this sudden independence was too much of a good thing.
All her suspicions came to rest on me, because the other Edeks had mentioned me in their confessions. I invented accidental occurrences and didn't betray the Flounder. The women, the whole lot of them, punished me by denying me their breasts and cozy comforts for the duration of the hard winter. Metal was strictly prohibited. It was forbidden to divert fire from its proper purposes. After a stamping round-dance centered on Awa's three breasts, which I had drawn in the sand and incrusted with shells, the copper ax and the few blades and spearheads were thrown into the Radune River amid screams of abjuration. (Believe me, Ilsebill, having to go back to the hand ax was no joke.)
But when in my despair I summoned the Flounder out of the sea, he shouted above the seething, churning waves: "Nothing to get so excited about. Has it escaped your notice, my son, that despite her autocratic condemnation of all metal, your Awa, your three-breasted paragon of historyless femininity, your all-devouring megacunt, in short your mother goddess, has hidden the copper kitchen knife, which you forged, tempered, and sharpened for her pleasure, in with the elk bones she uses as kitchen utensils? She uses it in secret. Just as you, despite the prohibition, secretly draw my picture in the sand. She's a shrewd article, your loving-caring Awa! It's time for you men to cut loose! How? With the kitchen knife. Kill her, my son. Kill her!"
(No, Ilsebill. I didn't do it. She was struck down later on, but not by me. I've always been faithful to Awa; I still am.)
She stopped the passage of time. She was the sum of our knowledge. Indefatigably she thought up new ritualistic
pretexts for solemn processions in consecration of things as they were, and the dimensions of her body determined the form of our neolithic religion. Apart from Awa, we sacrificed only to the Sky Wolf, from whom a woman of our primordial horde — the ur-Awa — had stolen three little pieces of glowing charcoal. Everything came from her, not just the eel trap and the fishhook.
Perhaps to deter us Edeks from further abuse of fire, or perhaps only to improve her cooking, Awa established the potter's craft in our territory. It began with her wrapping swamp birds and their feathers or hedgehogs and their quills in a thick layer of clay, and setting them down thus protected in coals and hot ashes. It seems conceivable that when the clay envelopes, with feathers or quills still embedded in them, were broken open, the possibility of using them as receptacles was recognized. In any event, Awa taught me to knead clay and to build an oven from glacial rubble. Heaping up glowing coals around its protective walls, I baked not only bowls and pots in it but also primitive little artworks. This was the origin of the three-breasted idols that have today become museum pieces.
When I told the Flounder about all this, he must have noticed the pleasure I took in modeling Awa's flesh, her bulges and dimples, in clay. "Well then," he asked me, "how many dimples has she got?"
So then the Flounder taught me to count. Not days, weeks, or months, not lampreys, snipe, elk, or reindeer, but Awa's dimples, which took me up to a hundred and eleven. I fashioned a three-breasted clay idol with a hundred and eleven dimples, and our Awa, who thereupon learned to count up to a hundred and eleven, really liked that idol — all the more so since the other women (counting became a favorite pastime of our horde) never got anywhere near a hundred. Awa (like yourself, Ilsebill) had the most dimples in her winter pillow, her buttocks, thirty-three of them.
The Flounder was triumphant: "Splendid, my son. Even if we haven't succeeded just yet in ringing in the Bronze or even the Copper Age, the hour of algebra has struck. From now on there will be counting. Counting leads
to calculation. And calculation leads to planning. Look at the Minoans, who have recently taken to scratching their household accounts on clay tablets. Practice your figures in secret and the women won't be able to outreckon you later on. Soon you'll be able to measure time and to date events Soon you'll be exchanging counted things for counted things Tomorrow or the day after you'll get paid, and you in turn will pay, pay, pay. First with shells but then, in spite of Awa though perhaps long after Awa, with metal coins. Here's' one. Attic silver, still in circulation. I found it on board a ship that had run aground off the coast of Crete after a seaquake. But why am I telling you about Crete and sailing ships? What do you know of King Minos? You lummoxes cling to your women's tits as if you'd been bewitched and let your Awa with her hundred and eleven dimples make fools of you."