Дэвид Нордли - How Beer Saved the World

“Same with my tanning shed!” complains the village taxidermist.

“They’ve made a beer vat from your tanning shed ?” someone asks, aghast.

“He’s poured all our different kinds of beer into a single vat ?” gasps the man behind him.

“Has he no conscience?” cries a balding man with bandied legs.

“Has he no taste buds?” demands another.

“He has no soul! ” booms out a third.

“It’s… sacrilege! ” sputters a fourth.

“It’s psychotic sociopathy!” shrills a fifth. (40)

“It’s just too much!” shouts a nearly toothless geezer near the front. “For decades now, that monster steals our cattle with impunity! He burns our barns and houses! He drags our very wives and children from their beds at night and sells them into slavery! Okay, we can live with that stuff; life is never easy. But marching in and grabbing our beer ? That crosses the line! I say the time —has come —to take —this FÜCHENMEISTER (41) DOWN!!!”

( Sudden silence, punctuated after some time by a spate of quiet throat clearing from Mr. Dourtmundschtradel .)

My… apologies, Herr Halifax, for that… outburst. Always, at this point in the story, I… This is the moment of liberation awaited by my longsuffering forefathers since even before their own births. The emotion… It is… rather distressing, ja ? I… hope you will consider, possibly, deleting this embarrassing lapse in discipline from your recording?

RH: I will certainly consult my superiors, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I assure you, there’s no need of apology. I sympathize completely. (42)

GD: Danke , (43) Herr Halifax. Your understanding does you credit.

RH: The honor is mine, sir. Shall we continue?

GD: Of course, of course. Where were we?

RH: Er… at the, uh, dawn of Durn’s liberation, I believe?

GD: Ja, ja . Well. A respectable civic leader like Herr Brock would, of course, have found that old man’s disturbing emotional outburst as unseemly as you and I do, Herr Halifax, and perhaps have worried also about potential consequences for himself and his establishment should any of Mad Gus’s men happen to be lurking near enough to overhear the indecorous display of seditious sentiment developing inside. He quite properly insisted that the discussion be suspended immediately and taken “ elsewhere .”

Now, everyone in Durn, except, of course, for Mad Gus and his various agents, knew very well what ‘ elsewhere ’ meant. In times of extremis, one was likely to hear that so-and-so had gone ‘ elsewhere ’ for a while, or that ‘the thing in question’ might be looked for ‘ elsewhere .’ In Durn, elsewhere meant that secret second cellar, which I have mentioned, underneath Herr Brock’s inn. Thus, with knowing looks and crafty nonchalance, the hysterical mob sidled furtively down Brock’s cellar stairs, and passed in single file through the slyly sequestered slot behind the curtain, cleverly concealed inside a false-backed barrel into Brock’s secret second cellar to resume their rabble-rousing in greater safety.

Unfortunately, this space is said to have been no larger than eight feet in any direction, so one must assume the hysterical mob was packed inside quite tightly. The smell alone of all those rustic fellows jammed together in the darkness must have been appalling, (44) though they were likely far too angry at that moment to care much about such trivialities, ja ?

At any rate, once all were pressed inside, their rebellious conversation was resumed.

“So,” Brock commences sensibly, “how exactly do you bravos think that we, without any weapons, can hope to overthrow Mad Gus with all his henchmen and that cannon he is always polishing?” (45)

“Anybody ever seen him fire it?” asks a voice from near the back. “I’ll bet it doesn’t even work, or he’d have fired it at us long ago.”

“You are volunteering, then,” Brock counters, “to stand between it and the rest of us while we find out?”

“Our cause is just!” cries the old man with hardly any teeth. “God will surely supply us with whatever weapons are required.”

I do not doubt Brock rolled his eyes, though no one would have seen it in the darkness. “And what kind of weapons do you imagine God would send us?” he asks wearily, having watched this kind of theater come and go in Durn too many times before.

A consternated silence fills their crowded refuge.

“Beehives!” someone exclaims.

“Beehives?” Brock asks. “Mad Gus’s beekeepers will have many more of those up at the castle than we’re likely to assemble here. What would we do with them anyway?”

“Doesn’t matter,” says another voice. “Don’t need the hives—just a couple tubs of honeycomb, and take it to the castle as an offering to make amends for Gundar’s blunder.”

“I told you,” Gundar protests. “I did nothing!”

“Hold your tongue, Gundar,” scolds the first voice. “I’m not finished yet. Being such greedy bastards, I bet they’ll tear into that honey right in front of us and shove it all into their faces while we look on, hungry, ja ?”

“Which will accomplish what of any help to us?” asks someone else.

“Nothing,” says the first voice, ‘‘til we set the bears loose on them!”

“What bears?” asks Gundar, backed by many a concurring grunt.

“The woods are full of hungry bears this close to winter,” he replies. “We just catch five or six of them, and sic ‘em on Mad Gus and his collaborators when their greedy faces are all covered in our honey. They’ll be torn to pieces.”

“How are we to trap these bears without being mauled ourselves?” scoffs Gundar.

“And how are we to sneak them up into the castle?” asks another voice as scornfully. “Shall we hide them in our breeches while presenting Mad Gus with the honey, or just whistle for them once he has indulged this bestial sweet tooth you describe?”

“We could use weasels, then,” says a new voice. “They’re easier to catch, and small enough to hide—even in our breeches, if we have to.”

“Are you seriously proposing that we kill Mad Gus with weasels?” Brock asks crossly.

“Just ‘cause they’re small don’t mean their claws and teeth aren’t just as sharp as any bear’s,” says this latest idiot, near drowned out by boos and raspberries from the others.

“Weasels care for sausage, not for honey,” Gundar laughs. “So I think we know what they will use their teeth on first if any of us tries hiding them inside their pants.” (46)

“A peace offering of goats then,” says yet another voice, “with beehives stuffed inside them, (47) so that when the castle butcher cuts them open—”

“—all the kitchen staff is stung to death!” Gundar roars with mirth. “That will show Mad Gus who’s boss in Durn. And how are we to get these beehives into goats?”

“Just wrap them up in trash, and leave them in the goat pen,” says yet another man. “There’s nothing goats won’t eat.” (48)

“Are we finished with this nonsense?” Brock snaps. “It’s getting rather close in here.”

But they weren’t even near to finished, Herr Halifax. Someone next suggested they send a cauldron of soup up to Mad Gus, filled with poisoned parsnips, but everyone agreed that no one in the valley, least of all Mad Gus, could stand parsnips, (49) so not only would Mad Gus not eat them, but the village would be punished further just for sending him such an insulting vegetable. Another man suggested they persuade Mad Gus’s own henchmen to insurrection by offering up the village women as a bribe. But a brace of others reminded him that the only women in their village not already kidnapped were the very ugly ones, suggesting he’d have thought of that if his own wife were not still safe at home.