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.
RH: Uh-oh.
GD: (Wheezy laughter, followed by a fit of coughing.) The brevity of which your language is so capable never ceases to astonish me, Herr Halifax. It is just so… laughable. (35)
But yes. Just as you say, ‘Uh-oh.’ From what my father handed down to me, the ensuing conversation between Mad Gus and Gundar went something more or less like this:
Mad Gus says, “You’re late, you drunken sot! We’ve been waiting for you here all afternoon and into dinner!”
All Gundar’s inebriated brain can manufacture in reply is, “Why?”
“You dare ask me WHY?!” Mad Gus bellows. “What an impertinent question! Are you too drunk to see who stands before you?”
“Before me?” Gundar looks around, bewildered. “I didn’t mean to cut in line. If someone was here first, I’m glad to wait.”
“I’m talking about ME, Barrel Brains!” says the tyrant. “Your KING stands before you—WAITING for a wagonload of barley that should have been here before lunch!”
“You’re before me?” asks Gundar, even more confused. “But… why would you be made to wait in line… in your own courtyard? You’re the king.”
“There is no line, you idiot!” Mad Gus shouts. “You’re the only one in line!”
“Then… what’s the problem?” Gundar pleads.
“YOU’RE LATE!!!” screams the tyrant.
“For what?” whines Gundar. Even he can tell this isn’t being managed well, but granary deliveries were never ‘by appointment.’ If there’d been some schedule here, he had never been informed of it… Then again, his friend, Brock, still hadn’t been informed of why they’d kidnapped his two daughters and his wife…
“I sent men to your farm this morning for the barley,” Mad Gus growls, (36) clearly struggling to regain his composure. “They were informed by a neighbor of yours—since imprisoned—that you’d already left to drag your little wagon here—where we’ve been WAITING for you all damn day!”
“Waiting?” Gundar asks again. “For a cart-full of barley…?”
“When you failed to show up as expected, I’d have bet my second pair of pants that you were trying to flee the valley with my barley! In fact, I still think that’s what you tried to do. So what went wrong, dummkopf?”
“I wasn’t trying to flee anywhere,” Gundar protests. “You know the only way out of Durn leads right through here. Where else could I have gone? Up a cliff? With a cartload of barley?”
“Call me stupid one more time,” says Gus, “and you can laugh it up down in my dungeons with your insolent neighbor. If you weren’t trying to run away, where have you been all day? It should not have taken you two hours to get here from your pathetic little farm.”
Gundar opens his mouth to say he’d just been visiting with Brock, but some lonely, semi-lucid synapse in his finally sobering mind suggests that Brock has already suffered too much at Gus’s hands. Sadly, this brief window of lucidity then closes up again as quickly as it had popped open, and Gundar is so pie-eyed that he can’t quite distinguish at that moment between thoughts and words—which is how the thought, I should just have turned this Gottdamn (37) barley into beer, (38) becomes so inconveniently audible.
“You should have… what?” says Mad Gus very quietly.
“What?” Gundar replies, still only half aware that he had thought aloud.
“Leave your wagon when you go, cur,” Mad Gus tells him, very quietly indeed. “I will have that with the barley for your insolence.”
“But… but without the cart, how am I to bring you next year’s harvest?” Gundar stammers.
“Shut your bung hole, peasant,” Mad Gus answers as quietly as Gundar has ever heard him speak, “and leave here. Now. Or I will have your worthless head to decorate the cart with.”
Well, as you might imagine, Herr Halifax, all this distressing banter had finally cleared Gundar’s mind enough to understand that it was time to run—and not back to his farm where who knew what fate might await him. Where Mad Gus was concerned, displays of quiet restraint were never known to be propitious.
RH: Very ominous indeed. But since you’re here today, I must assume your ancestor survived this misstep.
GD: Indeed, for, though Gundar did not realize it, he had just induced Mad Gus to a commit an even greater misstep of his own.
Unsure that anywhere within the village would be safe for him, Gundar slept out in the forest, wrapped in his cloak against the cold. Early the next morning, he snuck back, hoping to find sanctuary underneath the inn kept by his friend Horner Brock. There was a secret second cellar there, you see, dug out just spoonfuls of dirt at a time over many years by a wide conspiracy of barroom patrons. This small space was used to hide important things or people in times of extraordinary need if Brock deemed it could be done without arousing suspicion in the castle. We will never know whether Brock would have deemed Gundar’s need qualified, for he arrived to find an hysterical mob gathered in Brock’s barroom.
“Gus’s men have emptied all the brewing vats, and carted off the beer!” they cry when Gundar enters. “Every barrel, bottle, and bota bag in the entire village!”
“Gott in Himmel!” (39) Gundar exclaims, quite hungry by that hour, and having hoped to get a stein or two of breakfast there, if not even a potato to scrub it down with. “Why would they do such a thing?”
“They came last night,” he is angrily informed, “claiming you’d spat into Mad Gus’s face and told him no one ought to pay his grain tax anymore! He thinks we are ungrateful now!”
Gundar gapes at them in utter disbelief, then slaps his forehead.
“Can this be true, Gundar?” Brock asks him. “Were you so insane?”
“I do vaguely remember that Mad Gus and I misunderstood each other when I went to offer up my harvest,” Gundar tells them. “That much is true, I think. But if I’d spit at any part of him, would I be living now to speak of it? And why would I have dragged a whole cart full of barley up that Gottdamn hill just to tell him I’d not pay his tax? I was certainly not that drunk.”
“It does sound hard to swallow,” someone in the mob concedes.
“Everything is hard to swallow now,” someone else complains, “without our beer.”