OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 17: Die Jaegers

Part 17:   Die Jaegers


On the cusp of an Autumnal Hessian dawn... "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." Sebastian (the Fisher-King), Herr Graff, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen and "I" sip coffee, chew on schinken, black bread smothered in "sharfer senf" (hot mustard)...
Conversation is minimal ("pass the sugar").
You can feel the tension in the air.

The night before: mucho Bitburgers, Schapps, obscene drinking songs, rowdy, sometimes rowing. There was a Dumpling fight in the kitchen.
One of the Count's retainers must have cleaned up the mess as the room is now spotless.
....but I digress.

Now is all tension, repressed fever, repressed hangovers; we are alert, a trifle anxious, filled with anticipation for the morning's Hunt.
A feeling of dread. Nature's World. We will drink a "hair of the dog (that bit you)" before -with intent exageration - saunter out from the warm Schloss into the damp morning fog, before treading deep, then deeper into the surrounding dense forest of this world of Tannus. -where! (hark!) -if you halt in the thicket, wrapped in the veils of mist, you can still - though you must listen very hard! - echoes of the War cries of ancient Barbarians and the chants of Roman Legions, banging sword on shield: "Victa-Victorix-Victoric!"

After an hour or so of foot slogging, the Count (Herr Graff) and the "Fisher-Kaiser" are soon 100's of yards ahead of me, intent on stalking their prey...with a precision and sense of exactitude that non-Germanic people's can never understand... So! Finding a "designer" tree stump aside another that will do as a makeshift seat and writing desk, I establish myself: beer, cigarette, notebook, pen...and decide which parcel of ground will be my ashtray & "pissoir", respectively.
Thus, I crack a Bitburger (BB), smoke a "fag" and - for a while - enjoy the forest's primaevil tranquility, which (alas) is constantly shattered by groups of school children out hiking, yakking and enjoying the mountain forest - early morning - echoes
WHICH
...they swamp with a string of inane banalities;

"ECHO!!!"
Good.
Glad they got THAT one out of the way.
"EEEE-OH!!!"
And so on.

Thus the World's Future parcels by. (many groups)
Some, respectful.
"Guten tag."
Others, with looks of disdain at my smoking and early morning drinking. Nevertheless, the whole FUTURE WORLD parades by. The intelligent. The mischievous. The dullards. The athletic. The, sadly, kids born into drug abuse OR obesity! -one kid in particular, it's plain to see, will...after 20 years on the day shift at the Post Office, eat his 50,000 pasta dish, burp, then keel over backwards in his dinning chair and...be quite dead!
(Mr Creasote)

And then there's the "straggler", the Poet, the Outsider, the lonely kid, who drags his/her feet near my presence, unconsciously, yet accutely...aware in the fog of human awakening, he (or she) too, will one day sit in my place, with the potential to KNOW everything; the Universal glory of Being.

(Swallow hard, People)

...At some point (3 BB's later) the Fisher-King (Sebastian) returns from the advance to find me as he and the Count (Yup. Herr Graff) will go "off-track" to follow secret ways the forest hosts and which few mortals know. These lads, of course, have played here as children; they have carved their Sweethearts names on trees.

And so the Hunt continues...and the day, like (ahem!) a River of Time...that, initially babbles, brooks, falls, swirls, now opens up into a deep slow flow, rich & verdant; a breeze appears, though the fog does NOT clear. The dew soaked soil & foilage; it glistens.
And the fauna?
-Tuxedoed!

We cross the ancient Roman road, now known as RENN Strasse. The care-laden stones and traction, 2000 years old, still serving their purpose. We traverse "Alte Konig", the "Old - Celtic - King"-forrested mountain top, ringed by stone defense-parrapets. Once, headquarters to Amenius (Herman) the Etruscian, famed in history for anhiliating Octavian-Caesar's Legions at the massacre in the Tutterberg forest, further to the North.
....All this, and through which, with little regard, we trek; incidental tourists in Time's incomprehensible tapestry...but we are Hunters (Jaegers!) and LIKE Hunters we are intent only on the hunt...and closing in on  the kill.

The silence is electric.
Squirrels have ceased their play.
The wild Boar, sniffing the air.
Deer; pensive, indecisive. Do they bolt or graze?
Lesser mammals retreat to their dens.
The Fisher-Kaiser, finger on mouth: "SSSSSCHHHHHSSSSSSS!!!!"
The Count, running fingers along his knife's cold blade.

"THERE!" shouts Sebastian.
The Count lets out a blood curdling scream!
"Victor-Victorix." I whisper.

And there, before us, like deer, naked, vulnerable, innocent, caught in the glare of a car's HI-beams, our prey, quite defenseless, nevertheless bold and bravely...face their fate. We have them surrounded, for these are the Mushrooms we have sought.


2010. At the Black Pearl/Nicky batending/Usingen/dave delacroix/our man in europe