Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

RH: What a monster.

GD: As I’ve said, what else can be expected of a man who dislikes beer? After that, it amused him to invite the rest of his subjects to drink all the rotten grain and bitter, spoiled water they wished—which is, ostensibly, how the limitations on retention of certain staples became so liberalized. ‘If these ungrateful subjects find my provision for them insufficient,’ Mad Gus is said to have announced, ‘then they may drink all the bread they want.’

RH: Er… Well, all right. But it could not have taken long for him to notice that they liked the stuff. Wouldn’t he have changed his mind then?

GD: Oh, they were no doubt careful to pretend dislike of this new concoction, and that they drank it purely out of dietary desperation—as may well have been the case at first. But I suspect the real reason they persisted in drinking it, and the real reason Mad Gus went on letting them, were one and the same: beer’s effect . Left so little else to eat, they must have pinched their noses and endured this new ‘liquid bread’ for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, ja ? No doubt they found the drunken state this left them in as… engaging , shall we say, as so many of us still do. But can you not see how useful Mad Gus may have found this unintended consequence as well?

RH: I’m… not sure I can. Assuming most of them were happy drunks, I’d still expect a man like that to have put a stop to it, just on principle.

GD: Think of them not as ‘happy,’ Herr Halifax, but as ‘pacified,’ for I suspect that is how Mad Gus saw them. He must have known—as you yourself have pointed out—that he was in danger should they ever decide they’d had enough. But while a people always pleasantly drunk or at least partially hung over may clearly still get angry, they are far less likely to get very motivated, much less organized , ja ? (25)

RH: Why, that’s… diabolical. Your father told you all this?

GD: The outlines, young man, the outlines… And this is where my story really starts. Or where the story starts being mine, at any rate. My family’s ancestral founder was a man named Gundar Dourtmund. The schtradel portion of our surname was not added until many centuries later. Young Gundar was technically a barley farmer in Durn, though, like all the others in that benighted valley, he lived as little more than a miserable serf. He too had lost crops, cattle, property, and family members to Mad Gus’s vindictive whims. But he too subsisted largely on beer, and so had simply drifted like the others into a state of muddled resignation.

One autumn morning, as he was pulling a great cart of freshly harvested barley from his fields through the village on his way to Mad Gus’s castle granaries—without benefit of any oxen, for his only animals had been stolen by Mad Gus’s men the previous week (26)—he chanced to see his good friend, Horning Brock, the village innkeeper, standing outside his establishment. After more than a millennium, of course, none can say exactly what passed between them there, but one can well imagine how their conversation must have gone.

“Where are your oxen?” Brock would surely have asked.

“Where do you suppose?” Gundar probably replied.

They would likely have glanced up wearily at Mad Gus’s hulking manse.

“Ah,” Brock sighs. “Just so with my dear Marya.”

“No!” Gundar gasps. “They took your wife?”

Brock nods sadly. “Two weeks ago. And my sweet daughter, Hester, just last Tuesday. Had you not heard?”

“Sadly, no,” Gundar answers. “I’ve been busy in the fields with harvest for some weeks now, as you see.”

“And poor Lily just last night.”

“Your five-year-old?!” Gundar gasps. “Whatever have you done to piss them off so, Horning?”

“They’ve not told me yet,” Brock answers. “They’re clearly very busy at the moment, but I’m sure they’ll get around to explanations just as soon as there’s a lull in all this kidnapping.” The two men likely turned another wistful glance up at the tyrant’s fort. “At least they’ve left my little Kamber,” Brock adds, trying to seem stoic. “It’s true he’s only three; but he can fair well reach the stove already, if he stands upon a box. Should they come for me as well, I’m sure he’ll make a fine innkeeper just as soon as he can lift more than his nose above the counter from behind the bar.” (27)

Or, if not these words exactly, I am sure their conversation would have been something very like this. It’s how things were in Durn back then.

At any rate, it is passed down that Brock invited Gundar inside to share a stein of beer; and given all the sadness both men had to process, it would have been extremely rude of Gundar to refuse him. He removed the yoke from his shoulders, and left his barley wagon in the street.

It is never a good idea to drink beer quickly, of course. There were no antacids in those days. (28) So they lingered over that first stein, as one does. It turned out that many other calamities had been suffered recently by various townsfolk, of which Gundar had heard nothing, being preoccupied with harvest. So another stein or two were had as Brock brought Gundar up to date on all of Gus’s latest shenanigans.

To that point, they had been drinking a light and pleasant lager, (29) as one did then in the mornings after breakfast, but before they knew it, lunchtime had arrived, and being an hospitable man by both trade and nature, Brock could hardly have sent Gundar back to his long slog without some meal to sustain him. So he brought out a potato, (30) and poured them each a pint of pale ale(31) to wash it down with. Of course, Gundar was not the sort of man to accept another fellow’s largess and then just rush off without so much as a fare-thee-well. Even peasant manners dictate that one linger after such a meal for at least the minimal pleasantries and small talk.

This courtesy occasioned another stein or two, and, it being afternoon by then, they moved to hearty oatmeal stout.(32) As the sun slanted lower through the inn’s bottle-glass windows, and the air began to chill, the two men finished off their very satisfying visit with a pint or two, or five perhaps, of Brock’s fine late-season porter.(33) Then Gundar stood at last, with relatively minor difficulty, and thanked Brock warmly, while insisting that he really must be off to finish his delivery.

They stumbled outside together, and soon had the barley wagon’s yoke untangled from the ground and firmly settled onto Brock’s stout shoulders. It took just a minute more to have it off again, and onto Gundar’s shoulders. Then, with a determined heave or two, my many-times great-grandfather was off again toward Mad Gus’s hilltop granary—even by Durn’s standards, quite profoundly ‘shitfaced’, as you Americans say. Little did he know what was about to come of such a mundane visit with his friend.

RH: Herr Dourtmundschtradel, I really must congratulate you on such clarity of memory at your age. (34) How long has it been since you last heard this tale from your father?

GD: It is difficult to be certain. He told it to me many times, but the last I can recall was during a long train ride to visit one of his mistresses when I was… eight years old, perhaps. He died not long after that. Of a gunshot wound. To the back. Quite a tangle at the time…

RH: My condolences, Herr Dourtmundschtradel.

GD: Thank you, Herr Halifax, but I assure you it is all ancient history to me now.

RH: Well, I must say, this tale of yours is really… very long. Perhaps I ought to change the tape before we go further.

(Tape two)

RH: All right. I think we’re ready to continue. You were saying…?

GD: Yes. Well. By all accounts, Gundar was so drunk, the fact he ever even reached the granary gates is yet another sign of divinity’s hand in this affair. It was near twilight when Gundar finally wheezed and wobbled to a halt within the castle courtyard. And who was he astonished and dismayed to find there waiting for him, but Mad Gus himself.