Grass’s picnic in The Flounder is among the worst. Not only does he mock the accepted idea of a picnic, but he turns it topsy-turvy. It’s an ugly episode in which Sybille, aka Billie, is a variation of the Greek oracle/prophetess Sybil. According to Grass’ version, Sybille’s friends rape her. When she finally stumbles away, she’s raped again and murdered by men dressed in black leather, who are supposed to suggest modern-day Furies. It’s a complex message exposing a rampant demonic urge in German civilization that the novel’s narrator refers to as “gruesome.”
The picnic takes place in May on Ascension Day when Jesus ascended to heaven in the presence of the Apostles. For all Germans, it’s Father’s Day, a national day of misogyny when men leave home, leave women, and get drunk. The narrator describes it as tumultuous: “From early morning, beer-tipsy hordes are on the move, crowding into subway and elevated trains. Double-decker buses jam-packed with singing men. Swarms of teenagers on motorcycles: leather-jacketed, swathed in their noise.”
Into this seething mass of a hundred thousand men in the Grunewaldsee, four lesbians, Sybille, Maxie, Frankie, and Siggie, dressed in men’s clothing, tempt their fate. Arrogantly unpack picnic gear, food, cases of beer, and an ice bucket. Grass means their food is symbolically masculine, the kind of feast Homer describes—one-foot-long inch-thick steaks and lamb kidneys grilled with oil, thyme pepper, and other spices. The women bicker about how women and men cook differently in the open. But Sybille, the cook, says there is no difference and that cooking over any fire is primordial.
When the food is eaten and the beer consumed, the women sleep, but not for long. Awakened, “The Hour of Pan” arrives, awakened by lust, Maxie, Siggie, and Frankie take turns raping Sybille. Wounded physically and psychologically, Sybille manages an escape, but stumbling through the woods, she is tracked by a pack of “leather boys,” men dressed in black leather riding motorcycles. Bored of food and drinking, they are randy and believe, “A day like this with no fucking is worthless.” Unable to evade them, Sybille is raped and then run over by their motorcycles until “mangled, mashed, [and] no longer human.” Anonymously, they call the police and leave. Natter-of-factly, the narrator says, “After that, life went on.”
Featured Image: Gruesome. Would you kiss this man? Grass’ self-portrait was published 1977, the same year as The Flounder.
See Grass, Günter. The Flounder [Der Butt]. Translated by Ralph Mannheim. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977