fish lips

From "The Flounder" by Gunter Grass:

"'All a lot of subterfuges!' you say, looking sternly out of the window into present January. But how do you expect us to live without subterfuges! You yourself are a subterfuge. That's why Agnes never closed doors. Always left them ajar. No hesitations between her comings and goings. Often she was there, but I noticed only myself, whereas someone else (Möller) noticed her even though she was with me. Her love was placeless. That's why I was never able to perceive her presence: what I missed was there. And even the Flounder, for whom everything, like his backbone, tapers down logically to a tail fin, couldn't understand that what she never ran out of was dill. He thought love must work like a mousetrap and that she must have fallen for Möller and me. Actually it was one of four or five Swedes whose regiment was occupying Putzig, and they'd only wanted to go for a ride and hunt rabbits in the dunes when they came across Agnes, who was sitting curly-haired in the beach grass. She was tending her geese, and all of a sudden she had all four on top of her, one after another, it didn't take long. But only the first really counted. He was closer to her than Möller and Opitz later on. It seems his name was Axel. And it seems his downy boyish beard was blond. And his brittle, commanding voice lingered on. He never came back, and he was always near her while I, sitting over blank paper as Agnes passed through the room, traveled to Zlatna, where in my days as a young teacher in Transylvania I was surprised by a young kitchen maid who never cooked for me - just as you listen when I'm with you to see if someone else is coming. When actually I've been gone for ages and I'm just smoking.

My subterfuges - yours. I suggest we meet where the Striessbach flows into the Radaune and the Radaune flows into the Mottlau and the Mottlau flows into the Vistula and all these rivers empty into the Baltic Sea. And there I will tell you how it was with Agnes, whom I also have in mind when I come to you and absent-mindedly - which always makes for a fight - call you Agnes."