When the sentence had been announced, it was arranged that Associate Judge Ulla Witzlaff should take charge of its implementation. Even before completing his long peroration on the warlike character of men and on women's capacity for
suffering, the Flounder, because someone, Ruth Simoneit, I think, was talking some sort of rubbish about the end of the world, had illustrated with examples how prone to catastrophe the earth was and dated the next ice age as "any day now." But while still engaged in spiriting ten thousand years away in a twinkling, he could be heard, in an aside, expressing the wish that he, the evildoer, conscious of his guilt and bowing to his sentence, might, to enable him to expiate most usefully, be set free in his favorite body of water, namely, the western Baltic. There, he informed the court, he knew an island the east coast of which consisted of steep chalk cliffs, from the top of which on a clear day one could with the naked eye see the similarly shaped island where the tale of "The Fisherman and His Wife" was put into circulation. "Two picturesque spots that are connected geologically and in other ways as well," said the Flounder, and explained that immediately after the last glacial age—"which really wasn't so long ago!" — the floor of the Baltic had formed between these islands. Flint could be found at the foot of the cliffs and interesting petrifactions as well, such as sea urchins and the tentacles of octopuses: "For the space of a cosmic half hour, the young Baltic was characterized by a Mediterranean warmth." That was where he wished to be set free. With that as a base he would get on with his new duties — for the advancement of the female cause.
"He means the island of M0n," said Ulla Witzlaff to her fellow associate judge Helga Paasch, who was sitting beside her. Ulla had spent her childhood on Rugen and attended the School of Church Music in Greifswald before crossing over to the West when the Wall was built in Berlin. Thus she was eminently suited to carry out the Womenal's sentence and set the Flounder free in the place he had chosen, particularly since Ulla was able to assure the court that the mercury content of the Baltic Sea was minimal at that spot.
Because the authorities of the German Democratic Republic refused permission to cross its territory by train or Volkswagen bus to Rostock-Warnemunde, whence a ferry ran to Gedser in Denmark (the officials never mentioned the Flounder by name, but merely designated him as a "subver-
sive element" or "reactionary individual," for the republic of workers and peasants lived in fear of the flatfish), it was necessary to fly the condemned Flounder to Hamburg in the strictest secrecy and under close guard, to forestall terrorist acts by Griselde Dubertin's radical group.
From there he was taken to Travemunde by car. From there the party crossed over to Gedser by the regularly scheduled ferry. There Danish feminists took charge, and the party traveled via Vordingborg to Kalvehave and thence across the bridge to the island of M0n. As it was late afternoon when they arrived, the party stopped for the night at an inn not far from the chalk cliffs.
The Flounder in his special traveling tank had come through the journey in good shape. As though in anticipation of the joyous event, he had lost some of his transparency. His pebbly skin had got back some of its color. Yet despite his cheerful fin play, he remained mute.
And I was there. (Naturally Ilsebill was furious at my wanting to prolong my absence so soon before her confinement. "You don't give a hoot about the child!" she screamed when I asked for permission over the phone.)
After Ulla Witzlaff, Therese Osslieb, and Helga Paasch had approved my request to travel with them, I was accepted as a helper. In addition to the women already mentioned, our party included Erika Nottke (the gray mouse) and Ms. von Carnow, the Flounder's court-appointed counsel (all in sky-blue silk). Allegedly Sieglinde hadn't wanted to come. Ms. Schonherr thought her presence at the execution of sentence not absolutely called for.
We had good reason to ask the Danish delegation to take security measures that night and the next day, for Ruth Simoneit had joined Griselde Dubertin's radical opposition group, and both of them had spoken up (before the verdict) in favor of the death penalty, so that obstructive action if not actual violence was to be feared during the release of the Flounder. The seventh and eighth associate judges of the Womenal, the full-blown housewife Elisabeth Giillen and the biochemist Beate Hagedorn, who reminded me remotely of my Sibylle and Maria Kuczorra, were thought to be radical
and suspected of terrorism, especially since they had been absent from the proceedings during the final pleas; only at the great flounder dinner had they been silently present.
The next morning the Flounder had to be carried on foot through a beech forest to the coast. The task fell to me. The tank hung from my neck by two straps like a peddler's tray. Looking through the glass wall of the tank, I could see the Flounder trying with deft fin play to compensate for my uneven gait. First we took a dirt road, then a narrow path through the woods. Ahead of me (and the Flounder) went the Danish delegation and the few newspaperwomen who had been authorized to accompany us. Behind us, Witzlaff and Osslieb, Helga Paasch and Erika Nottke. Ms. von Carnow had pronounced the walk too much for her and stayed behind at the hotel.
Of course I attempted a last conversation with the Flounder. As soon as the women ahead of us and behind us were far enough away, I whispered, "For God's sake, Flounder, say something. Anything, just a word. Is it really all over between us? Have you really written me off? Aren't you going to advise anyone but those stupid women? Flounder, what's to become of me? Flounder, say something! I'm completely at a loss!"
But the Flounder's silence remained unbroken. I carried him as if, along with my burden, I were carrying myself and my historic mission, the male cause, to the grave. Before and behind me the women were chatting merrily. How airily their dresses with their large-flower prints took in the breeze. A Dutch television team shot us for the news. Erika Nottke gathered a bunch of flowers. There was flint all about, and Paasch picked up a few handy-sized pieces to keep as souvenirs. Ulla Witzlaff, with her clarion voice, sang a Christian hymn, "This day so full of joy. ." And in a spirit of sisterhood, Osslieb joined in.
When we came to the unprotected edge of the cliff and were able, since the weather (as promised) was fine, to make out the chalk cliffs of the isle of Riigen, the temptation rose up in me to unbuckle the Flounder in his glass tank (my peddler's tray) and hurl him down onto the flinty beach (three hundred and fifty feet below), or, rather, I was
tempted to leap to my death from the cliff — after all, I'm done for! — with the Flounder still buckled to me, if possible crying aloud, "Long live the male cause!" — or perhaps just to fling myself alone, sparing the Flounder and the future, or pulling perhaps not Osslieb but then Ulla with me-lovingly united in death.
But already Erika Nottke was anxiously at my side. "I'm worried," she said. "Don't you think the sudden change may be too much for the Flounder? For nine months his water has been changed frequently, he has been adequately provided with oxygen and fed regularly, in other words, safeguarded against environmental hazards. Don't you think the Baltic, with its pollution and supersaturation with algae, might be dangerous for him? In the last few weeks, it's true, we've tried to prepare him by gradually increasing the chemical adulteration, but it will be a shock all the same, possibly too great a one. Think how he has changed in captivity. Look how pale he is, how transparent, almost glassy. Oh, I do hope the Flounder outlives us."
Helga Paasch was worried, too. But Osslieb reassured Erika Nottke, saying the change wouldn't hurt the Flounder, he was a tough customer, sure to live through the next ice age. A few blobs of tar and a bit of mercury wouldn't mean a thing to him, he'd adapt: if only for the principle of the thing, he'd go on living. "Just look at him!" cried Ulla. "He's getting his color back. He'll soon be in the pink!"