How Beer Saved the World Read online

  RH: You’re not telling me that no one had ever been drunk before this, are you?

  GD: Not in Durn, they hadn’t. And no one ever anywhere, not from beer. (22)

  RH: Good heavens.

  GD: Indeed. The urn was apparently large enough to provide a bit more of the miraculous substance to share with neighbors, who, in exchange for this transcendent experience, gave him enough food to delay his death from excessive starvation for several more weeks.

  RH: He still died—after all that?!

  GD: Alas. It seems he did. Martyred to bring beer into the world. I am told that one could find shrines dedicated to him throughout Schkerrinwald for centuries afterward.

  RH: I’m sorry, Herr Dourtmundschtradel, but I feel compelled to ask: does this story of yours get any happier?

  GD: Has beer ever made you... happy, Herr Halifax?

  RH: Well... er... I suppose it... may have... Once or twice.

  GD: Then you have your answer. This is the story of beer, young man, which has not just one, but many millions of happy endings. (23)

  RH: I’m not sure that’s exactly what I—

  GD: Returning to the point, however, they say that when Mad Gus was informed of the poor man’s struggle to survive on rotted grain in spoiled water, he laughed long and loud, then ordered one of his henchmen to bring him a small flask of the substance to examine. It is further said that he found the sample so revolting, he killed the man who’d brought it to him. (24)

  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. Littl
e 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.

  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.”

  “They burned your farm last night, you know,” Brock tells Gundar gently.

  “I’m not surprised,” sighs Gundar.

  “Well, we’re not just going to stand for it, are we?” someone else insists.

  “Please, don’t cause yourselves more trouble on my account,” Gundar replies stoically. “Winter’s not for several weeks yet. I can build another farm.”

  “Who cares about your farm?” protests the other man. “I meant our beer! Winter’s only weeks away, as Herr Barrel Mouth has just observed, and that beer’s all we h
ad to eat!”

  This remark is met with cheers of outrage from the mob.

  “With winter upon us and all our grain already tucked away up in the castle granaries, we have no way of brewing more!”(39) complains a third man.

  “And even if we could,” a fourth man groans, “how would we survive the months required to brew it?”

  “Where’s he keeping it all?” asks someone else. “That’s what I want to know. Mad Gus can’t stand beer, so he won’t have many barrels up there.”

  “I have it from Hans Schloser, the carpenter,” confides a fifth man, “that Mad Gus has turned one of his granaries into a giant vat!”

  “So that’s why they tore down my barn last night!” exclaims another fellow. “Without a word of explanation when they carted off the lumber!”

  “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!!!”