Hühnesuppe

We live right on the border between the part of town your can't afford to live in, and the part of town you don't want to live in. Coming back from the post office today I see a billboard at the local hospital that says "This is the hospital for people who don't like hospitals." I presume that what this means is that, contrary to federal law, they don't report gunshot wounds. After all, who likes hospitals?

Catalina was down today with a touch of the same Bangali death flew that had me clutching the porcelain god for mercy last week. I stepped to the plate and took over Zoogle duties in the morning. Around 2 o'clock Zoogle and I both had cabin fever, so we decided to make a run on the market, get ourselves a little chicken, see if together we couldn't produce a little of that famed Toews' Hühnesuppe for the missus. So I plop Z. in the carseat, and feeling a little waggish, I decide to leave all baby accessories at home, just head off, Vater und Sohn, into the vast unknown, alone and without resources. (For those who have never attempted this, incidentally, let me highlight the magnitude of the consequences should the wee one get hungry. It is an act of recklessness on par with Tchaikovsky's swilling of tap water in a time of cholera, or Byron's relentless bedding of prostitutes in a time of galloping syphillus.)

We come screeching into the parking lot and as I try to barrel through the double glass doors with the child in the carrier, my way is blocked by two elderly Krumpelfrauen standing in the middle of the passage, arguing in German about the proper use of the handcart. Though it is raining, and cold as hell, I bide my time. They eventually see me, nod curtly, and allow me to pass. I smile.

With the baby-clock ticking, I have only a few moment to choose my route, my groceries, and my checkout line. I make commendable time in the fruit department, instantly spotting organic Braeburn apples at $1.69, choosing six at random, and, with leaderly coldness, squashing all further interest in matters vegetative. There is the matter of salad fixings, however.... Just as I swoop on a head of purple cabbage and prepare to sprint to the meat counter, a young black man with crooked teeth, who has hitherto been unobtrusively stacking cucumbers, takes a look inside my car seat and says, in a heavy foreign accent, "great baby." I agree. He tells me his name is Daniel, comes from Sudan, and would like to have ten children. "Because when you are old, it is like having ten versions of yourself," he explains. I don't mention overpopulation, I don't mention Darfur, I don't mention that I don't have a bottle, but I do mention that Benjamin is too young to respond to his playful teasing, so he shouldn't take it personally. "No, yes, too young. Of course. No problem. Maybe when he grow up he come here work with me." We smile, I pocket the cabbage, we're off.

At the meat counter whom should I encounter but the Krumpelfrauen. This time they are discussing the price of veal, and trying to understand it in terms of Kilos instead of pounds. My sprachlust gets the better of me, and I astutely announce, in strongly accented but intelligible German, that they, in fact, are German. "Ja", they reply, smiling. Ja. I smile back. "Schönes kind", says the one, and I agree, he is a beautiful boy. And we talk about the vaterland and the family and the difference between this dry amerikan wurst and the real, juicy, blood-and-guts german sort, when out of left field the lady comments, "er sieht ja ein bischen ueberfuttert aus", which, loosely translated, means it looks like you've been feeding your little piggy too much corn. I etch a german smile on my face, and with clinical dexterity explain the benefits of being fat when one is young. She nods sagely. And then from even further out in left field: "Er ist denn gestillt?", which I misunderstood to be "Er ist denn gestollen?", which means "He is of course stolen, right?" And when I ask how she knew, she says yeah, you know, from the mother. At which point my confusion my have been quite palpable, for her partner quickly steps in and, in perfect English, explains that while gestohlen (from stehlen) does indeed mean stolen, gestillt (from stillen) means breastfed.

Past the cheese, then, ducking below the dairy cabinet when I see the Krumpelfrauen coming the other way, deftly resisting the olive bar, and I'm done, chickenfleisch, a few onions, a couple of potatoes, and all the other secret ingredients that go into the Welt-famous Toews Huhnesuppe splayed out on the checkout counter. One slow-poke lady in front of me, don't look but there are the Frauen in next line over, come on dude, do you really need to change your drawer? Of course he does. Five minutes tick by as the Chuck the Checkout Guy counts his quarters and Zoogle sings increasingly frenzied arias from Don Giovanni. On the way out I dodge the Krumpelfrauen one last time, wave goodbye, hit the car at a dead run, gun the engine, and I am back at the house just as Zoogle passes into a hypoglycemic coma.

Catalina ended up making her own damn Weltberuhmtetoewshuehnesuppe, naturally.