The Fox Knows Many Things: An Athena Fox Adventure

by Mike Sweeney

I sat back again, musing on the craziness again. I thought I understood the unwelcome visitors at Xander’s dig. He’d probably announced his “discovery” somewhere on social media. His Facebook page, perhaps. Sharpe had a following, probably had that following for decades. Subtler racists, not the kind that went for shaved heads and screaming but the kind that liked to quote from The Bell Curve and post long tendencious posts whenever Hollywood dared cast a non-white actor in anything heroic.

  The kind that were literate and tech-savvy and often worked in the industry. And had money. Because someone had paid to get people with opinions and the cameras to capture them out where Xander could wave his swastika-covered potsherd.

  And what did the heathenists get out of it? I looked up, trying to attract my new friend’s attention. “I didn’t even get your name,” I said.

  “Robert.”

  “Penny,” I said. “Short for Penelope.” And that wasn’t something I shared with many people. “How are you about folk music circles? Well anyway, I have a question and I hope it isn’t awkward. What does Völkisch mean?”

  It had been an awkward question. “That’s not a word that gets used much anymore,” Robert said at last.

  Oh, I knew that phrase. He meant it was too closely associated with the Nazis. Which was about what I had started to suspect.

  “It is hard to translate. Basically, it is the idea of the German people as belonging to the land of Germany. On the one side, a neo-pagan idea of a special connection to the spirits of rock and tree and water. On the other side, it is…”

  “Kinda racist,” I finished for him. “Sorry.”

  “You asked about folk music. There’s a big split in music. Just as there is in the pagan community. You almost have to go band by band to find out where their beliefs are. There’s good bands and bad bands in everything from Viking Metal to Elf-Rock.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I knew a skinhead who was in Antifa.”

  “People are people,” Robert said. “Never just a label.”

  I took his point. American labels weren’t helpful in navigating German socio-politics. The concepts didn’t map the same, and there was no way for an outsider to figure out the purpose and philosophy of a group just by its name.

  Just like it was anywhere, really. You couldn’t slap one name on a social trend. Vash was…Vash. He was spouting a lot of emotional words, hitting a lot of handy buttons. You couldn’t characterize his likers and followers as a social movement. Just a disorganized blob of formless fear and resentment with a strong feeling that if those Other People would just vanish everything would be magically better for them.

  I let my head fall back, but I didn’t close my eyes. Those Wicker Man fantasies were still ridiculous. But getting chased by Illinois Nazis was more ridiculous than that. I don’t care if I was wearing an Indiana Jones hat and Nazis came with the territory. That sort of shit didn’t happen outside of a Blues Brothers movie.

  I still had no idea what was actually going on, though. As much as I trusted Robert there was no way in hell I was going to sleep until I was in a reputable hotel with solid locks on the door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WELL.” GERTA LOOKED me up and down with a clinical gaze. “This will be fun. Green, I think, with your coloring.”

  I grinned. I found her attitude refreshing. Actually, I found it familiar. It took me back to high school theatre; harried costumers, noisy fitting rooms and noisier dressing rooms.

  “Yeah, genetics are funny,” I told her. “You should see my sister.” Dad’s a hulking Minnesota Swede, Mom is small, dark, intense and came out of the Polish quarter in New York. So my older sister turned into a towering blond goddess with the chiseled features and classic proportions of a '50s pinup.

  I came out with that Eastern European skin, thick black hair that tangled and curled and refused all attempts to manage it, and a wide-mouthed, heart-shaped face that owed nothing to any ancestor we’d been able to name.

  It was a face made for urchin grins, not smoldering looks. At least I’d lost the chipmunk cheeks (they had let me get away with so much as a child). And it didn’t matter how much salt spray I used, my hair would not do bedroom hair. But braids I could do. And it did so suit the look.

  My long journey through the night was over. I was clean and rested and tomorrow I’d be in Italy. The sherd was in the hotel safe, the Athena Fox outfit was going into a drop-off and pick-up laundry, and a new pair of Nike’s I’d found at Kickz were on my feet.

  The last was because boots didn’t work with a dirndl. Which is where I was now. Even with a reservation, I was getting a really good deal. It was getting easier to find a dirndl in September, apparently, but you were still going to end up with inflated prices, shoddy construction, or both. Or so Gerta had said when I stepped in, and I wasn’t about to doubt her, she being in the business of renting the things and all.

  Gerta came out with one that had a dark green skirt and patterned bodice, with a lighter apron. She held it up on me to make sure it landed no higher than just above the knee. “Those t’ings w’ the skirts up around here?” she said around a mouthful of pins. “We call ‘em porno dirndl. Not in my shop.”

  “So is this traditional?”

  “Define traditional,” she said. “Is it traditional peasant wear? Hell no. Is it traditional dirndl as worn to Oktoberfest in München? You be’cha. The big revival in dirndl was in t’e thirties,” she elaborated. “You’ll still see the older styles in some small town. The big difference is that the modern one is more of a party dress. Tighter, cut higher, and the bodice is low on the breasts.”

  “Yeah, um, speaking of that.” I loved sports bras. I was glad to be a girl; I’d seen what male dancers had to go through to support the dangly bits. But a dirndl called for a different kind of support. It was get out there and show the flag time.

  “BH are on the shelves to your right,” Gerta said over her shoulder. “Try the Susa 8864.”

  They really were a full-service shop.

  I loved the blouse, too. It was a lot shorter than I thought, barely making it inside the bodice. Sweetheart neck with a stand-up ruffle and oh, boy. Hell with renting, I wanted to buy this thing and wear it always.

  I reflected I was getting a growing interest in living history. In cultural events, in re-enactment, maybe even experimental archaeology. And wasn’t that what my trip had been about in the first place? To go stand upon those stones of which I had read so much?

  I started to help with the apron and she slapped my hands away. “In the center?” she said. “Really?”

  “More tradition?” I guessed.

  “Traditional to Oktoberfest. There’s no basis in folk custom.”

  She explained and I quickly tied the bow on the left. Centered was for little girls. On the right meant you were spoken for.

  Left was hunting.

  “This ith your firtht, right?” The pins were back in the mouth.

  I nodded.

  “Bring cash. Make sure to eat. If you overdo it, get outside a’fore they t’row you out. Vomit hill is where the Bierleichen end up.”

  “Beer…what?”

  “Beer corpses. It’s okay. You don’t need much German to enjoy. Just “Ein Maß,” to order, and “Ist hier noch frei?” if you see an empty space on the bench and want to sit down. Oh, and you are going to want to learn the lyrics to “Ein prosit…”

  “Danke schön,” I said quickly. “Leave me some surprises to discover on my own.”

  “Tschüss, then! Have fun, be careful.” And last, in a perfect dead-pan, “And good hunting.”

  After the laundry I joined the crowd heading for the Theresienwiese. Was that…horses? Yes it was, ginormous ones, hair soft and grey as Eeyore’s pelt, wearing enough fancy tack to qualify as Oblivion horse armor, and hauling a cart filled with beer barrels.

  Whoa! I jumped sideways off the path I was on and a bicyclist hurtled past, shouting something harsh and incomprehensible. “Same to you!” I shouted a
ngrily at his retreating back.

  Wait. Path. Smooth, bordered. Stop. Watch what others were doing.

  There were no other pedestrians on the paths. None at all. Right, so Germany, the bike paths must be verboten. And I was in the wrong. Whoops. I quickly got back to the proper sidewalk. “Sorry!” I mouthed towards the long-gone cyclist.

  Just past the stern-looking security with their yellow safety vests and their metal detectors, I started to veer for the geldautomat. That’s what it said on the signs and the meaning was pretty clear. The joys of speaking another Germanic language.

  Except. I still had Ariadne’s envelope. It felt wrong. It felt like I hadn’t actually done the job she was hired me for. But doing that job had stranded me in the middle of Europe and I needed cash to get around. Yes, but did that excuse buying beer with it? Fine. I’d compromise by keeping the envelope. Maybe, in some other world where miracles occurred, I could fill it back up and return it to her.

  Okay, so I had cash. I had so very many questions left.

  Like, was it actually just a giant frat party, full of mostly foreigners? Well, I could see older people and children already, so no. And I still wasn’t hearing a lot of English. I guess I felt relieved. Did that make me old? It hadn’t been that many years since college, had it?

  It had rides. Absolutely humongous rides, covered with LEDs and throwing people through the air on the end of long steel arms. Oh, boy. I would have to try that. And from the look of it, before the drinking, not after. Remind me not to stand directly underneath.

  I hit the first tent after a round on the bumper cars. Tent was really not the word. It was tall and massive and permanent-looking and could fit thousands of people. This was the Löwenbräu Festzelt.

  “LOOOOWVRENBRAAAIII!” a massive voice corrected from the fifteen-foot tall animatronic lion. If it hadn’t made a preparatory roar first, it would have scared me right out of my new shoes.

  Inside, it had a curved roof of warm amber bands that let lots of outside light in, giant green candelabra rings that looked like grass but were probably hops or something else beer-related, and a central stage for the band that was shaped like half a giant beer keg.

  And that was pretty much the best parts. It wasn’t crowded this early in the day, but what there was, was mostly young and male. I could smell spilled beer that no amount of mopping was going to be able to get out; that and a faint odor of sweat and sick hung in the air from the opening weekend. Which had been yesterday.

  The band had already switched to pop music. Robert had told me most of the tents were traditional until the afternoon, tubas all the way. Wait. Was that “Hey, Jude?” There were some cute guys at the table nearest to me, but they were already plastered. Right, so this was the tent to get a serious drunk on. I bet this one was insane by evening. That’s when I’d be back.

  Outside again. It was still barely ten degrees — fifty for those of us who hadn’t made the conversion to celsius — and I sort of wish I had gone with tights. The place was huge, and busy, stands and rides spread across the concrete like a giant version of a county fair. There were a few people in weird and flashy costumes, but that was an unexpected advantage of the Trachten. It worked almost like some people thought school uniforms should work. But was a lot more flattering.

  I liked the look of guys in it. And the look of girls. But back to serious partying. I needed to see the sights, ride the rides, and most importantly drink the beer. And Vash was somewhere, here in this huge crowd. Couldn’t forget that.

  The next tent was blue and white and huge and a red-faced angel in a mailman hat floated above the crowd. I squinted. He was wearing someone’s bra; it had caught on his harp. There was a dance floor in front of the band and they were all brass and oom-pa-pa’ing up a storm.

  I pointed at a spot on the first bench I saw. “Ist hier noch frei?”

  “Yah, yah!” an angular sun-burned young man in tight lederhosen said.

  “Ich bin David!” another greeted me. “Goot day!” I couldn’t decide from the accent if they were Austrian or Australian. Maybe both. The Hofbräu-Festzelt, Robert had said, was popular with visitors from the English-speaking parts of the world.

  A server was already there. “Eine Maß, bitte!” I quickly added to the order. Which pretty much wiped out the Oktoberfest phrases I’d learned. This wasn’t going to be much of a party if I couldn’t talk to anyone.

  One of the boys solved that problem for me. “Hey, Kaylah,” he called across the table. “What’s with this ruddy postman hanging over our ‘eads?”

  “That’s Aloisius,” the girl to my right laughed. She was small and curved and dusky, with reddish-brown hair. “He was from Munich and he hated Heaven. Too much harp playing and no beer. He made so much fuss Saint Peter made him an official messenger to the Bavarian government. So he flies here and…well here he still is!”

  “You looked that up!” the boy accused.

  “Of course I did!” Kaylah grinned.

  I turned to her. “Soulmate!” I said and offered a fist. She bumped it instantly.

  Kaylah introduced me to the rest of the table. Luke, the boy rocking those leather pants, let me lead him to the dance floor while my beer was arriving. Over half the table were local boys, and there were a couple of forlorn-looking Italians; apparently the big national contingent was due next week when the holidays started there.

  Kaylah challenged me to guess her accent, but I’d been through this routine before.

  “I’m supposed to say you sound Australian,” I said. “So that makes you a kiwi. Wait…do they still say that? Is it polite?”

  “We do,” she said, “and oddly enough, it is.”

  I danced with Klaus while she watched my beer. Then she danced with the Italians while I watched hers. Both. And they were fantastic dancers. This was apparently the only tent with a full dance floor, and it would be a shame not to make use of it. “Slower,” Kaylah gestured at my Maß when she returned. “The party is only started.”

  “This thing’s so heavy I had to empty it some!” And at twelve euros with tip, it had better be.

  “Oh, here it comes again.” The band had played what had fast become a familiar ditty.

  We stood on the benches, shoulder to shoulder, Maß held high. “Ein prosit, ein prosit…!”

  “Prost!” David called after we had sat again. We clinked mugs, bottom first. “Um, eyes?”

  “Eh?”

  “You must make eye contact, otherwise, err, otherwise…” he trailed off, embarrassed.

  “Otherwise seven years of bad sex!” Kaylah finished for him.

  “Oh, we can’t have that!” I dimpled and batted eyes. He sunk below the table as his friends laughed.

  At bathroom break Kaylah stood up quickly and followed. “They recycle you know,” she said from the next stall. “Or was that one of the other tents? The dishwater goes to the toilets,” she hurriedly added. “Not the other way around.”

  As we touched up she told me about Sichere Wiesn. “Oktoberfest is very safe,” she said. “But things happen. If you need it, there is a Security Point just for girls and women. East of the Statue of Bavaria, right by the Red Cross.”

  “You didn’t just tell me that because I’m a woman.”

  “No. I notice things. You marked the exits. You sat on the outside. And you jumped when that guy dropped his mic.”

  “Thank you,” I said. She gave me a challenging look. Then shrugged, accepting that I wasn’t going to explain.

  I wished I could have toured the whole place with them. With her. This really wasn’t as much fun alone. That was another thing I’d have to get used to about traveling. That you could meet someone, spend time with them, hit it off, then a few hours later part to never see them again. We swapped numbers, knowing we’d probably never follow up.

  Well, it wasn’t like that didn’t happen all the time. And, really, in this day of airplanes and internet, did it make that much difference whether this was someone you’d
met in town, or someone who would soon be a thousand miles away?

  Yeah, it did.

  For a moment I felt overwhelmed by it all. This was the Romans again. Germany. Or Bayern. Or just Munich. Or just the life of one person. You wanted to know it, you wanted to know what they ate and how they felt about it. You wanted to know their history. You wanted to know their dreams. But there was too much to grasp and time was too short to grasp it all.

  No matter how much we tried, we always ended up outsiders. Prisoners of our own skulls. The best you could do is embrace everything, every experience, every moment of sharing. To hold the Other close until they became, if only for that moment, a part of yourself.

  I shook off the mood, stopped at a stall, and got a flower crown for my hair. And I wasn’t even going back to San Francisco. Not for what was starting to look like a very long time.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HE WASN’T IN the Marstall, the horse-themed, family-friendly tent with the good food. Or the “Schott’n,” oldest of the tents and where the Mayor of Munich would tap the first keg each year.

  I stopped at Skyfall, which was decorated with what looked like illustrations of Master Chief, and played operatic singing as we ascended. The view from the top of the ride was absolutely incredible. It turned, slowly, like one of those sky restaurants. Good thing I had no fear of heights. I could totally handle this.

  The alarm went off and the seats dropped for the ground in terrifying free-fall. I screamed as shrill as a startled tween and squeezed my eyes shut. Right, right, I told my fast-beating heart. Heights I can handle. It is the coming back down that gives me trouble.

  Next of course had to be the Teufelsrad. Devil’s Wheel indeed. A man with a magnificent mustache and a rough voice called out each ride. I heard “Alle Mädchen ab achtzehn im Dirndl!” I guessed at the meaning and followed other young women out and we scrambled to find a spot on the polished disk. I’d been a little slow — I was stuck way out on the outside.