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The workshop fills with the warm scent of wort and grain; it curls through the air like scraped wood, nearly suffocating—but only nearly. They opened the windows as one last gasp before autumn starts to truly claw its way in.
“It makes for a better brew,” Baltasar explains, peering into the vat. “That fresh mountain air—it’s an ingredient unto itself! It should speed things up nicely.”
“Better yet, it’s free.” Gnaziu rests his hands on the windowsill. His fingers trace lines in the sawdust as he breathes. “How much does all of this cost?”
“Hardly anything,” he answers reassuringly. “I even got a good deal on the grain from our neighbors.”
“Our neighbors?” Gnaziu asks, amused as he looks over his shoulder.
“The widow Albanyn,” Baltas says, matter-of-fact. “The baker. I convinced her to part with some of her supply. It’s an investment, after all—she’ll enjoy it at Christmas, just like everyone else, and it’s better than it all going to spoil…”
“I more mean that she isn’t my neighbor. My neighbors are in Genoa. Is the grain really at that much risk of spoiling, in these conditions? It seems they shouldn’t have much to spare.”
Baltas makes a noise of polite disinterest in Genoa as he dips a wooden spoon into the rolling boil of wheat and barley. It’s more than he usually gives to things outside of his attention.
“Though I suppose Sister Gertrude won’t partake, so that was out of mere Christian kindness,” he continues thoughtfully. “Oh—it was her who provided most of the herbs for the gruit. The local herbs, that is. You’ve met Sister Gertrude,” he adds, ostensibly a question with no real options for an answer.
“I haven’t. Most of the herbs,” Gnaziu repeats, turning around to lean his back against the wall, away from the sun through the window. “The rest you found elsewhere, correct?”
“Well, it needs a little exotic touch,” Baltas explains. “I sent for them. The cinnamon comes from the islands, I’m told.”
“How much did that cost?”
“Sister Gertrude’s were a gift freely given.”
“You are keeping track of how much all of this costs?” Gnaziu asks, ostensibly a question with only one real option for an answer.
“You’ll see at Christmas. It’s all well worth the price,” Baltas reassures.
“I won’t be here at Christmas,” Gnaziu reminds him. “I’ll leave well before the snow starts.”
“Certainly. Here, come and really smell that cinnamon. It’s exceptional.”
“Some think that our world is like a vat of beer being prepared by God,” Gnaziu says conversationally, and Doctor Stolz groans.
“Tell your houseguest that I find no joy in entertaining heresies,” he orders Baltas, even as he rather graciously accepts a smooth metal cup of what is supposed to be beer, or become it, or at least approach it someday.
It’s hard to taste this slurry and imagine what it’s going to be, but Baltasar insisted on it as a matter of thorough experimentation. It smells of rot and medicine, more than the doctor’s home already smells of rot and medicine. Werner wrinkles his nose.
“This is foul,” he says.
“It’s beer,” Baltas explains, a little condescending—but kind enough. “All beer looks like this before it’s processed. What were you saying about God?”
“Shut up about God,” Werner sighs. “I won’t be party to any more of this baseless speculation.”
“The universe is the water and the grain, and like them is imbued with life.” Gnaziu sips on his own cup of half-fermented slurry. He’s restrained enough not to gag. “All of God’s creatures are the foam.”
“Heretical,” Werner sniffs.
“Consider it a parable.”
“It’s heretical. You’re comparing this idiot—” Werner gestures at Baltas with his free hand, “to the Creator?”
“He is?” Baltas sounds irritatingly flattered.
“I’m not saying that I agree with it,” Gnaziu answers mildly. “You just hear all sorts of things in travel. This has potential,” he adds, swirling the liquid around the cup in his hands. “Though I find it difficult to judge what it’s actually going to end up tasting like.”
“You’ll get a sense for it!” Baltas tastes it, and is not restrained enough to not make a face at his own creation. “All of the notes are there, but they’ll be made subtler over time.”
“I’ll leave once I’m done with your records,” Gnaziu reminds him. “In the next few days at the latest.”
“And not soon enough,” Werner adds sourly. “It’s too herbal, that’s the problem. You can hardly taste the grain. It’s barely beer at all.”
“It’s a spiced ale. For Christmas!” Baltas smiles. “You’ll like the final product, I assure you.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Gnaziu says.
Discussion floats up from the party like smoke from a distant fire. There’s laughter, which is novel in a time such as this, but that could be said for any time in the last twenty years, or the last fifty, or since Adam and Eve were cast weeping and ashamed from Paradise. Tassing isn’t Eden. It’s barely Gethsemane. All the same, they cling to the garden, to warmth and bounty and indulgence. It’s a tradition as true as gospel. Conjure it for a night: only a night. Tomorrow it will only be winter again, but drink well and be merry. Winter will come either way.
“Jorg gave a good speech earlier,” Baltas says, in a half-hearted attempt at reviving the conversation that’s petered out over the course of a night. Stolz leans back against his chair like he’d really rather be lying down. In contrast, Gnaziu leans forward, arms on the table, trying vaguely to remember which one Jorg is, and if this Big Jorg he’s met is someone different.
“He’d give a much worse one without five steins of beer,” Werner sighs. “Even then, I’d hardly call it eloquent.”
“The beer helps everyone else judge it more permissively,” Gnaziu suggests. “I’m going to have a hell of a headache come morning.”
“Fortified wine,” Werner advises, chair tipped precariously backwards. “As soon as you wake up. It clears your body and sharpens your senses.”
“Personal experience, Doctor?”
“Professional,” he answers tersely.
“Well, I thought it was lovely,” Baltas continues, like nothing was said at all. “Things have been so chaotic lately with all of this mess, so having a good leader like him really benefits people. The beer turned out well, too!”
“Better than I thought,” Werner admits. Gnaziu gets the impression that it’s something akin to pulling teeth for the doctor to cede an argument.
“The spices really do make it,” Gnaziu adds. He’s a lot less stubborn, but he’s stubborn enough that he has to continue. “Whether they’re worth the expense, however…”
“Oh, worth every cent,” Baltas says, nodding emphatically. “Though I’ll tweak the recipe for the next time we try a Christmas ale.”
“I hope that turns out well for you,” Gnaziu says politely.
“With your expert assistance, I’m not at all worried!”
“I’m not an expert,” he objects, before shaking his head. “And I’m leaving when the snow melts. Perhaps I’ll travel with those musicians from, er…” He waves a hand.
“Salzburg,” Baltas suggests.
“Würzburg,” Werner corrects. “And that’s if this damn snow ever melts.”
“It can’t last forever,” Gnaziu says, shrugging. “Nothing will.”
The ground is still too hard to till in February, in those dark days of Lent, but the picturesque peasants of Tassing are industrious enough. Baltasar magnanimously offers to repair tools in the effort to prepare for spring, sequestered away in his workshop, heated marvelously by the stove.
“They’re expecting a good harvest this year,” he says, scraping rust away from the metal edge of a spade. “Enough to go around, at the very least.”
“I take it that means you’re plotting the next ale.” Gnaziu is in his customary spot by the window, though he at least makes an effort to seem productive in sweeping the permanent dust around on the floor.
“Perhaps! But perhaps I’ll first return to an old draft for a mechanized harvester, to aid their labors. I’ll have to enlist my brilliant Magdalena before she leaves—it’ll probably be suitable weather for travel in a month or two, by my calculations.”
It’s the only open door Baltas has acknowledged, however absentmindedly, in months. Gnaziu should walk through. He is, after all, leaving: he has a job, a family, a life far removed from quaint Tassing and its fields of wheat. The days grow longer. The world grows greener. Nothing will last forever. Nothing can. Perhaps, though—
“So it will,” Gnaziu agrees, eyes fixed on the shifting pile of rust and sawdust beneath the broom. “She’ll have to have her assets transferred to Prague, won’t she?”
“Oh, certainly,” Baltasar answers idly. “Her father’s estate, and the proceeds from selling all that equipment. I ought to send something with her, too…”
Gnaziu sighs, mostly at himself.
“I’ll ask her about her bank,” he offers.
Perhaps, he decides, it can last until next winter.