Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

In dreams or drug trips, events occur without apparent connection, and very quickly. They cut to the chase, without small talk—and that’s what happened here. Within a short time we were getting personal in a mixture of English and German, a language I was still learning.

“Warum?” Why? Why was I traveling?

“Ein mann,”—the truth, just to stave off any possible pass.

“And what sort of man, to take you half the length of the world?”

“Ein musik-mann.”

He emitted a soft laugh, breathy, harsh and nasal, and with more wryness than mirth in it.

“Nobody you’d know. He plays classical, and conducts a small avant-garde consort at the Music School in Bremen.” I pronounced it the correct German way, Bray-men.

“Donkey,” he said.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Katz.”

“Yes, I’m Jane Katz,” I said. Had he been ever a client, in some previous band incarnation?

That laugh again, but less wry than simply pleased. “Donkey, katz,” he repeated. “And hund. And rooster.”

“Oh,” I said, catching on. “Well, Grimm to you too!” I had just read the story, on the E-book, and it was fresh in my mind. On the first day of Christmas my truelove had even sent to me a stuffed toy, the tourist symbol of the city, a donkey with a dog on its back, on the dog a cat, on the cat a rooster. The Four Musicians of Bremen, made in China.

“That’s an interesting story, more than it seems. Like most of Grimm.”

“It begins with a donkey,” I said.

“Too old to work on the farm anymore.”

“And rather than die for the only thing valuable left on him, his skin, he gallops away, down the road to Bremen.”

“And there I think is an in-joke. Why does the donkey head for Bremen? To be town-musician. Which indicates the Bremen musicians had the reputation of being worse than donkeys.”

“Interesting,” I said. “He says he can play the lute.”

“How can a donkey play the lute?”

I considered this. “With his teeth, like Hendrix. Or using one hoof on the fret, like a bottleneck or slide.”

“Vir gut,” he said. Very good.

“The hound says he can play kettledrum,” I said, leaping ahead to the next character. “Maybe with the stick tied to his tail.”

“To show you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

“He too has run away, because he is too old to hunt, and his master has nearly beaten him to death.”

“Then they meet a cat.”

“Wet through and thoroughly pissed-off.”

“Escaped from drowning.”

“Because she is too old a hunter, even for mausen.”

“What does the cat play?”

I thought again. “Probably some kind of string instrument. With those plucking claws.”

“They’ve already got a guitarist.”

“Bass, then.” I had dabbled at bass, like various girls in ’80s bands. When I got beside rather than on the stage I gave it up, but still harboured respect for the bassists I encountered. They were cool cats mostly, especially the jazzers.

“And the last one,” he said. “The rooster.”

“Crowing as loud as it can.”

“The phrase is ‘through marrow and bone.’ Vir gut, very creepy.”

As is your being word-perfect in a story I only just read, I nearly said. Odd little doubts stir below the surface of dreams, but are never expressed.

“His fate is to be made into soup.”

“That’s farm economics,” I said. “Utterly unsentimental and practical. I grew up on a farm.” And got as far away from it as I possibly could.

“And so the rooster completes the band,” he said.

“As lead singer, with his penetrating voice.”

“All of them seeking in Bremen ‘something better than death,’ as the Esel, the donkey says.”

Now that really was creepy. If there is something that everybody fears, and avoids as hard as they can, it is growing old, finding yourself beyond a useful date, and the end nearing. Old boiler, that’s what they say of women, only suitable for soup, like Grimm’s rooster.

I think at that point I returned to my seat, too unsettled to continue. Next thing I was waking from a totally unrestful doze, with the cabin lights on for the descent into Changi. There I used the free internet, to send a message to Bremen, and because the line about something better than death was really getting to me, some Duty-free but still expensive night cream. At the bar, I encountered the band again, looking thoroughly unslept—and noticed no Mohawks. Nor were any of them particularly big. And, I suddenly realised, whoever I was talking to, he was older, because he kept emphasizing the animals’ age. A young man wouldn’t do that, they believe they’re immortal. Get off that fire escape now, drink this water, no, don’t try and snort wasabi… all from days when my promo work shaded into nannying.

Who was my conversationalist of the night-flight? Someone out of the common, certainly unlike the fellow passengers lining up for airport security yet again, in their tracksuits and jeans, the children clutching Harry Potter . He must be on the German-bound flight, he spoke German to me. I scanned the line of passengers, but drew a blank.

No matter, I was really tired now. I wrapped myself in blanket, closed my eyes—and kept waking every fifteen minutes or so, all the way to Hamburg. Mein mann had told me of a spot, hidden but known by seasoned travelers, where you could sit in reclining chairs and watch the take-offs. I found it, but still couldn’t relax before my connecting flight to Bremen.

The flight was full of German business-folk, who disembarked with their briefcases, or waited somberly by the carousel for their suitcases. There the strangeness started again: I swear I saw a sniffer dog leap onto the carousel. Oho, a drug bust! I thought, glad this time I wouldn’t be getting any client out of trouble. Instead the dog took hold of a suitcase handle in its mouth, and dragged it off the carousel, for the benefit of a man who merely picked it up, and walked away, the dog trotting briskly at his heels. The things they teach seeing-eye dogs these days! I thought.

I found that Germans took dogs everywhere: into department stores, museums, so a dog in an airport soon seemed not so strange. Not as strange as the new country, even with a native guide in the shape of the musik-mann. How to describe him, except in terms of the stereotypes of love, of race? He was tall, blonde, blue-eyed, handsome (natch!), earnest, methodical, serious. Reader, I fucked him—as soon as we got back to his tidy apartment. Then I slept, despite my resolve to stay up until I was in sync with the local time. Sex does that to me, even earnest, methodical, serious sex. I woke, to find him dressing for a class he had to teach. Why didn’t I come and take a look around the wintermarket while he worked, see the Christmas schmuck (baubles), and drink Lumbaba (coffee with rum)?

So, not long afterwards, I was alone in Germany, in below zero cold, bundled up in woollens, at a Christmas funfair. Here were mistletoe branches, the first time I had seen them in their cold green actuality, there were merry-go-rounds, plywood silhouettes cut into Christmas scenes, gingerbread hearts. It was a festival that said: Be merry and keep the frost giants away!

“Ich möchte ein Kaffee,” I said carefully to the man at the Schmaltzküchen. Then, “Danke Schon,” when I got the coffee.

It raised my body temperature a notch. But still I felt the chill penetrate the sleeves of my coat, cutting through to the marrow and bone of my forearms. Looking around for something to do, preferably warm, I saw a tour for the historic Rathaus, that’s Ratehouse (Townhall) auf Deutsch and in English.