Blow-up

by Veronika Groke

Hubertus slammed his notebook shut. “I say, we just do it,” he said, addressing the members of the Rottberg Musikverein who had gathered for their customary end-of-year meeting. “If they can lump us together with Felddorf in the same pastoral district, I’d say we have every right to do the same. Times are hard, and we all have to look out for ourselves.”

“But it’s not really the same, though,” Karin countered, fiddling with the keys on her clarinet. “The pastoral districts are the result of them having too few priests, but there are loads of musicians now, a lot more than there used to be. I can remember, even when I was little, there wasn’t even a Musikverein in Rottberg at all.”

“Exactly! And that’s exactly why we need to expand our area of interest,” Hubertus replied smoothly. “It’s going to get more and more important for associations like ours to take advantage of all the resources at our disposal.”

With the scraping of wooden chair legs on floor tiles, Gitti rose from her seat. “No offense, Hubert,” she said, “but you’re talking rubbish. There are legal regulations for where the Verein can organize a fundraiser, namely, within our local municipality. And we haven’t quite been annexed by Felddorf yet.”

There were a few laughs from the other members, but Hubertus wasn’t to be discouraged. “I’d say, that’s a question of interpretation,” he said. “We’re practically the same parish now—”

“No, that’s not true, Rottberg is a parish of its own. We’re in the same pastoral district as Felddorf, that’s different.”

“Well exactly, the same pastoral district. So why shouldn’t we use that to our advantage? And if some stickler decides they want to challenge us on it, this whole pastoral district thing is so new, I think they’d have a job making it stick. Who knows, we could even set a precedent.”

“I think your grasp of all this is very simplistic. But alright, let’s say there’s no legal problem with doing a fundraiser in Felddorf – what do you think the Felddorfers are going to tell you if you rock up with a troupe from here to ask them for donations? What about their own Musikverein, their star singers, and the volunteer fire brigade? What should we expect if we all come begging around the same time?”

“We just have to make sure we’re first.”

Gitti put her hands on her hips. “You can forget that. Their Musikverein does its collection on the 26^th; there’s no way you can go before that; no one’s going to let you in on Christmas Day. Besides, it’s all in the calendar by now, everyone knows exactly who’s coming on what day.”

“So – we have to make sure we’re the first ones on the 26^th,” Hubertus said. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world; nothing ventured, nothing gained. But I’m not going to strongarm anyone, so let’s have a vote, all democratic. All those in favor of extending our yearly collection to include Felddorf, please raise your hands.”

All over the hall, hands went up in the air. Hubertus counted them conscientiously.

“That’s thirty-four in favor. And now, all those against. – I’m counting twenty-seven, is that right? Yes? Right then, the proposal’s been accepted thirty-four to twenty-seven. Let’s do this, boys! – And girls,” he added quickly, noticing some raised eyebrows in the audience.

Gitti gave a performative shrug, slapping her hands against her thighs in resignation before sitting down again. “Rubbish,” she muttered to the person next to her. “But Herr Hubertus knows better, as usual. Just don’t anyone say later I didn’t warn you.”

***

I’d set my alarm for 5:30 am. Mama thought it was too early, but I needed to be sure I had time for breakfast and a shower and to get the trumpet ready before meeting up with the others at 6:30 am. I didn’t have far to go, only to the church square, which is literally up the road from us; but this was my first time taking part in the Felddorf Musikverein’s New Year’s greeting, and I was anxious to get it all right.

There were some ten people already waiting in front of the church when I got there, dressed sensibly in boots, hats and winter jackets. It was cold this morning, and I was glad that Jürgen, our Kapellmeister, hadn’t insisted on everyone wearing their uniforms. A few of the others came over to wish me luck, ask me if I was nervous and so on. We stood and chatted and fiddled with the score clamps on our instruments until the full fourteen of our group had arrived: two clarinets, two saxophones, three trumpets (including me), a trombone, flugelhorn, French horn, and a tenor horn, drum and cymbals. And Jürgen himself on the tuba, of course.

There would be three groups of musicians going round the village this morning to make sure each household got their well wishes for the New Year – and that the Musikverein got its donations from each household. We set off down the back of Church Square and across the river to reach the Holzbauers’ farm, the first stop on our route. In the Holzbauers’ yard, we arranged ourselves in a semicircle as we’d practiced, and Jürgen counted out the rhythm to start us off on “Eagle of Tyrol,” our first march of the day. Right at the start, I managed to produce a croaky, tuneless elephant noise like a total beginner, and for a brief moment I panicked; but soon the energetic dipping and surging of the volume, kept in time by the militant staccato of Jürgen’s tuba, swept me along, and I finished the piece on a high.

We had just lowered our instruments when the door of the Holzbauers’ house opened a crack and their son Leo peeked out, wrapped in a fluffy pink dressing gown I suspected he must have borrowed from his mother. At the sight of him, Jürgen launched into the beginning beats of the Musikverein’s very own New Year’s song (music: Jürgen; lyrics: Verena, Jürgen’s wife and one of the clarinets). Leo watched us bleary-eyed as we played and then sang:

We’re coming to bring you

Much joy and much cheer

The old year is ending

The new year is near

To all in the household

Our music we bring

To wish you much fortune

And ev’ry good thing

When we’d finished, Jürgen approached Leo, who started shaking his head at him.

“We’ve already donated,” he said.

Jürgen stopped short. “How have you already donated? Did one of the others come round here?”

Leo nodded. “Yes, they’ve already been here, and I gave them the money my Mama left on the chest in the hallway last night.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“Well, yeah – they said, from the Musikverein.”

Jürgen briefly turned to us to give us a puzzled frown.

“Tell your Mama we say thank you for the donation,” he said to Leo. “And we wish her and your Papa and all of you a happy New Year.”

“I’ll tell them,” Leo said before pushing the door shut.

We got going again.

“Looks like one of the other groups got confused about their route,” Jürgen said. “I wonder which one – it should all have been clear.”

“I bet it’s Friedl’s group,” Verena said. “He always says yes yes yes to everything, and then it turns out he wasn’t listening properly.” (Verena doesn’t like Friedl much.)

“Well, we’ll see,” Jürgen said.

Our next stop was Frau Zweigl’s house. She’s an elderly lady who lives on her own, and she gets very bored as a result; so it wasn’t that surprising that she’d seen us coming before we even started playing. She awaited us in front of her door dressed in a coat and slippers and bearing a tray with schnapps glasses and a long-necked bottle on it. As we approached, she came shuffling to meet us in little, animated steps, calling across at us: “You’re too late, the others have already been! But you’re in luck, I’ve still got my schnapps left; they ran off straight away as soon as they were done, they were in a right rush!” She chuckled.

I felt disappointed; we’d prepared “Vindobona” for her, which I thought I was quite good at, so I’d been looking forward to playing it.

Jürgen, however, seemed positively alarmed. Though his back was turned to me, I could virtually hear his frown when he asked, “What? Which others have been here already? You mean another group from the Musikverein?”

“Well, yes,” Frau Zweigl said. “Those ones from Rottberg, Hubertus Wiesegger and them. They said they’re helping you out this year because there are so many new houses one Musikverein can hardly get round them all anymore.”

“He said what?” Jürgen looked at us. “Did any of you know anything about this?”

“No.”

“First I’m hearing about it.”

“Not me!” I glanced around at my fellow group members, who were all shaking their heads and looking as confused as I felt.

Verena stepped forward. “So… Did you give them a donation, then?”

“Well yes, of course!” Frau Zweigl said proudly. “I always give something for the Musi, every year.”

Jürgen grabbed the bottle, poured himself a shot and downed it in one go, then repeated the whole procedure a second time.

“Just you wait,” he mumbled, “if I get a hold of you…”

“Is there a problem?” Frau Zweigl asked.

“No, no problem. Just… if the Rottbergers ever come here collecting again, you tell them to go to the Devil!” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and strode off. “Let’s go!”

We scrambled to follow, accompanied by Frau Zweigl’s excited chuntering for quite some time.

When the next house on our route yielded the same result, Jürgen made us pause so he could check in with the other groups. From the Hofthalers’ warm kitchen, he called their leaders Paula and Friedl on their mobiles while the rest of us warmed our hands on hot mugs of coffee our hosts had very kindly made for us. With incredulity, we listened to Jürgen’s more and more agitated responses as both Paula and Friedl told him they’d had the exact same experience: each house on their route had already been visited by a group from the Rottberg Musikverein. There was only a single case in which the Rottbergers hadn’t managed to get a donation, which had been due to the house’s occupant being too hungover to make it to the door in time for the first round. A couple more families had very generously forked out a second time when it became apparent that the Rottbergers were on a rogue fundraiser of their own and not, as they were clearly making people believe, singing in collaboration with Felddorf. After over an hour of house visits, the total raised by all three of our groups was fifty euros. Considering that the year before, the Musikverein had made over 1,700, it wasn’t surprising that this result set a vein in Jürgen’s forehead throbbing.

“Well, this is a downright disaster,” Verena said. “What do you want to do? Shall we give up for today?”

Jürgen’s scowl was so deep now his brows were almost covering his eyes. “No way,” he said grimly. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll go to the most remote houses, right now. With any luck, the damn Rottbergers won’t have got there yet. And then, after the holidays, I’m getting in touch with both mayors, and they’ll have to help us sort this shit out. The Rottbergers stole our donations, and they need to give them back.”

There were shouts of “Right on!” and “We’ll show them!” as determined fists were banged on the table.

One of the other trumpets clapped me on the shoulder sympathetically: “I bet this wasn’t how you imagined your first fundraiser, Walter, huh?”

We power-marched out to the Eckers’ old farm, the one with the dried sunflowers out front just beyond the sign marking the village limit, which was really meant to have been at the end of our route. By the time we got to the door, we had to take a moment to catch our breath before the wind instruments were ready to launch into “Woodcutter Boys.” For once, everything went according to plan: Frau Ecker came out to energetically conduct along with our playing, and when we had finished the New Year’s song, she rewarded us with a donation of twenty euros.

We traced our route back in the opposite direction, and for the next three houses, everything went smoothly. We were walking back along the river, about to pass the Hügellandstüberl inn, when Susanne, our drummer, suddenly pointed ahead of us, calling, “Look!”

Heading towards us we could see a group of a dozen-odd people dressed in winter clothes, all of whom were carrying musical instruments. I didn’t recognize any of them – except for the tall man walking right at the front, whose picture had been in an article on the various regional Christmas concerts in the Felddorfer Pfarrblatt recently. It was Hubertus Wiesegger, Kapellmeister of the Rottberg Musikverein, tuba strapped to his front and grinning broadly.

“Shit a brick,” Susanne mumbled.

Unsure about what we should do, we stopped.

The Rottbergers stopped, too.

For a moment, no one moved as we sized each other up, the silence so dense you could have heard a guitar pick fall. Jürgen cleared his throat and pulled the brim of his Steirerhut lower on his forehead. Then a couple of ducks came waddling up from the riverbank, quacking inquisitively.

As if this had been his cue, Hubertus started towards us, seemingly unfazed, hand raised in greeting. “Morning!” he called.

This much impertinence proved too much for Jürgen. Pointing a stabbing forefinger at Hubertus, he stomped ahead with a furious shout of “You!”, as if it was the worst insult he could think of just then.

Hubertus raised a second hand in a gently mocking defensive gesture. “Hey now! No need for aggression! Come on, we’ll go back to the Hügellandstüberl and I’ll buy you a beer, and we can—”

That was as far as he got. A deep booming sound like a ship horn filled the air, drowning out Hubertus’s voice completely, sending a buzzing through my entire body. For a split second I felt thoroughly disorientated; then I noticed that Jürgen had raised his tuba to his face, and that this was indeed where the terrible sound was originating.

Hubertus squinted, his eyes half-shut, like that would somehow help him keep the noise out while he waited for Jürgen to stop blowing. “Okay, okay,” he said once Jürgen had lowered his instrument. “You’re angry, I get it. But if you just let me—”

BAAAAAWW

“Very funny. But we won’t—”

BWAAAAAAAW

“Jürgen!!”

Oomp oomp oomp baaaaaaaaaaw

A redness that wasn’t from the cold spread across Hubertus’s face. In an irate movement, he yanked his own tuba up and started blowing into it full force, lips trembling to produce a sound even deeper and louder than Jürgen’s.

Jürgen moved closer, oomping furiously. For a while they stood like that, barely a hand’s breadth away from each other, the terrifying sounds from their tubas overpowering all others. As they started to get more breathless, and the notes they produced were getting shorter and shorter, I thought I noticed a kind of rhythm creeping in, almost as if they were playing with instead of against one another.

Tarratt tarratt tarrattattatt

I turned to my side. Susanne, who had clearly had a similar thought, had started up an accompanying beat on her snare drum. It sounded good – not like any particular piece, or even style, but it was catchy. I could feel my whole body starting to nod along. Before I knew what I was doing, my trumpet was up against my lips, releasing notes I’d never played before. Vaguely amazed at my own boldness, I let them flow as they came, carried by the assured rattattatt of the drum, the oomp oomp of the two tubas. I felt like all my anxieties about going on my first New Year’s greeting, all the tension that had been created by the Rottbergers’ stunt, were being released with the music, like it was quite literally clearing the air.

I stopped when the tune seemed to reach its natural end. It was only when I noticed people lowering their instruments all around that I realized Susanne and I hadn’t been alone: by the time we finished, a whole orchestra, composed of musicians from both sides, had been playing together, improvising what at least to me had sounded like a wonderful and unique piece of freestyle marching music.

It took a moment for everyone to snap out of their revelry – and for our combative leaders to stop panting. Eventually, one of the Rottberg saxophones stepped forward to address Hubertus: “Hubert, can we go home now, please? My fingers are starting to freeze off.”

Hubertus only nodded, too winded to reply. The whole group slowly turned and walked away, shooting us the occasional backward glance like they thought we might come after them.

Way too exhausted to stop them, Jürgen gathered up just enough breath to shout after them: “Oi, Hubertus! This isn’t over!”

“Leave it be now.” Verena slipped her arm through his. “Let’s all go home; I think we could all do with some rest and some hot cocoa. – Or something a bit stronger,” she added under her breath.

Watching them plod away like soldiers from a battle, I found myself surrounded by a few of the other wind instruments with Susanne.

“That was totally super, what you played just there,” Susanne said appreciatively. The others made concurring noises.

I scratched my head underneath my woolly hat, feeling a little awkward. “Nah, come on, I was only following you.”

“Well, both of you,” the tenor horn said. “What are you, some kind of secret jazz duo?”

The flugelhorn put his hand on the tenor horn’s shoulder. “You know, Gustl, you’ve said stupider things before. This gives me an idea…”

***

The inaugurating spring concert of the newly founded Felddorf-Rottberg Jazz Orchestra was a huge success. They had to play three encores, then improvise a fourth because the audience kept demanding more. Their young trumpet soloist Walter was celebrated like a pop star, and several people even asked him for his autograph. In the weeks that followed, there were pictures of him all over social media, as well as one in the April edition of the Felddorfer Pfarrblatt – right underneath a big one of the two Kapellmeister, Jürgen and Hubertus. In their similar red uniform vests and with mirroring toothy grins on their faces, they almost looked like slightly manic brothers as they shook hands above a caption reading, “Two become one: former rivals join as new project turns feud into partnership.” The proceeds from the concert were enough for the Rottbergers to fully compensate the Felddorfers for the loss of their donations the previous December and still make a good amount for their own Musikverein. According to the two Kapellmeister, the next concert was already being planned, though there were rumors that the Orchestra’s star musician might not be participating, having (so it was said) recently started a side project of his own: a freestyle marching music duo made up of only him and a drummer.