Chapter XII Ada Gottliebs reflection nervously picked at a makeup brush in her dressing room mirror.

Siegfrieds Prelude had just become Scene One and Gottlieb could make out Mimes muffled hammering and whining out on the Festspielhaus stage. Her painted face looked cartoonish under the incandescent lights above the mirror, and she took care to avoid looking too deeply at her reflected countenance, lest the anxiety increase. It was nearly time for her to warm up, though she wouldnt have to lie down on stage for another two hours. Something about this evenings performance was giving her a ferocious case of stage fright. A usually confident performer, she wondered what was causing her to lose her calm of late. To begin with, she thought, every performance of this cycle so far had been rough. To say the least. In fact, nothing had gone smoothly since the festival directors selection of stage director and conductor had generated enormous controversy just under a year before the festival. Reinhold Schlagen, the cycles director, was a notoriously disagreeable German avant-garde stage director and performance artist, whose past projects had included a mostly nude production of Shakespeares Titus Andronicus in Russian Sign Language that had never, not once, been performed to completion due to the refusal of audiences to sit through the excruciatingly lackadaisical second masturbation scene. The cycles conductor was Yuri Bergner, the Israeli radical, who had replaced the Wagner tubas with Sousaphones and who would sort of sing-squeal along with the orchestra in a warbling and always audible falsetto. He claimed it was an involuntary tic. This pair had enraged many devoted Wagneritesincluding a number of the festivals major benefactorsand had been persistently arrogant, aloof, and abusive during rehearsals and performances, taking a substantial toll on many of the performers confidence, and on what a New Ageier person might call their mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. Then there was the issue of the staging itself. Schlagen had distorted the Ring beyond all recognition (the Sddeutsche Zeitung). He had set the cycle in Manhattan, placing most of the action in a Jewish deli. All the human characters were costumed as Orthodox Jews, and were lovingly outfitted with headscarves and yarmulkes by Mr. Cohen, an adorably senile tailor whod been flown in from Brooklyn and who had believed he was designing costumes for a Bayreuth production of Fiddler on the Roof, and everyone had been damned if they were to tell him otherwise. The dwarves were costumed (though not by Mr. Cohen) as neo-Nazi skinheads, and were all played by actual dwarves. The parts of the giants were sung from the orchestra pit, and were represented onstage by giant goose-stepping robots in Gestapo officer garb, which robots malfunctioned frequently and which were described by one critic as frankly an embarrassment not only to the operatic tradition, but to theater itself as a human institution. Valhallas denizens were mostly depicted as dark-suited Wall Street or corporate types, which was generally considered a banal and uninspired choice on Schlagens part. Even worse was that the Valkyries had actually been costumed as topless lesbian bikers, which Gottlieb found unbecoming of the dignity of great musicians such as herself, but which had at least provided some incentive for heterosexual men in the audience not to leave until the final act of the previous nights performance of Die Walkre. Then of course there was the dragon Fafner, whom Schlagen had replaced with

an enormous mechanical pig called Das berschwein, and which was so widely publicized and excoriated prior to the premiere that by this point most critics didnt even bother mentioning it. This did not constitute an especially reassuring background against which an upand-coming star soprano was to banish her nerves and convince herself that her career and reputation would in no way be tarnished by her forthcoming performance of one of the most difficult roles in all of operatopless, no less, and in studded leather pants and a horned biker helmetbefore an increasingly hostile and disgruntled audience. Still, shed performed in this cycle before, and had handled the situation as professionally as possible, and without such serious pre-performance jitters. Shed dismissed the idiosyncrasies of the staging and orchestra as the theatrical fashions of the day, which all performers are subject to. Shed ignored the scathing reviews and the fugitive audiences. She had even hired a personal secretary to write perfunctorily apologetic replies to the many irate letters from various anti-defamation and Jewish organizations, which were almost universally outraged by the production. But the prospect of this evenings performance in particular induced a distinctly apprehensive feeling. Gottlieb searched her mind for the source of the feeling. Sure, there was the effluvium of ethanol that hovered in the air around Yuri Bergner and seemed to grow stronger every night. There were the Institut fr Kleine Menschen protesters that had all but obstructed the entrance tothough not the view ofthe Festspielhaus. There were the ticketholders attempting to resell their tickets on the streets for petty cash or dime bags of dank Bayreuth bud. And of course there was the vague guilt that haunted a character in a novel that had shamelessly deployed ethnic insensitivity for cheap laughs time and time again, and which insensitivity threatened to rear its repugnant noodle yet once more in the form of what was shaping up to be a running Wagner-and-the-Jews gag. But on this particular evening, it was perhaps the unignorably simian portion of the audience that had Gottlieb especially worried. The festivals directors had initially said that no, there was absolutely no way that non-human primates would be allowed into the Festspielhaus. But as the audiences grew thinner and more and more ticketholders sold their seats for little dime bags filled with redolent, crystalline nugs or just left them on the ground in parking lots and train stations or stood outside the Festspielhaus alongside Jewish and/or short statured protesters shouting Tickets! Get your tickets here! the directors grew more lax with regard to their usually quite strict no-nonhuman-mammals-admitted policy. Furthermore, the human leader of a large troop of simians had made an impassioned case for the admittance of his hirsute companions, arguing that really this sort of discrimination was precisely the kind of attitude that had led to the festivals own sordid history of ugly hatred and chauvinism, a history that he was sure he need not remind everyone was still very much with the festival today, and which would indeed take many decades yet to overcome, but which was certainly only worsened by the continued enforcement of the very same retrograde and hateful and frankly speciesist policy that prevented him from entering the Festspielhaus with his primate followersnay, colleagues. The festivals directorswho were apparently way beyond objecting to Comrade Molotovskys having obtained his tickets on the street in exchange for a few grams of hydroponic dopeapparently found this line of reasoning compelling, and one of them is even said to have shed a single tear as the haggard Russian made his case. But the decision to admit non-human primates to

the opera on the grounds of a comparison between speciesism and racism was regarded as an outrage by most civil rights organizations and was described by one leader in the Jewish community as the most abject misuse of public reason since Mein Kampf. In the midst of the speciesism controversy, it apparently didnt occur to anyone to speculate as to why the notorious leader of a neo-Stalinist cell was suddenly so keenly interested in the work of Richard Wagner. And so it came to pass that two nights earlier, Molotovsky had entered the Festspielhaus with a coterie of around 20 monkeys and apes of various genera. Among their company were other humans: a male Zeppelin operator and a female keeper of deadly words, who were kept close to Molotovsky at all times and who were tied up and gagged. This latter aspect of the situation made several people uncomfortable, and a few of them even considered doing or saying something about it, but each had privately decided that this was probably some sort of performance art and none wanted to risk looking unhip by mentioning or objecting to it. The troupe of primates had also included a presumably blind baboon in dark glasses who had entered the theater with the assistance of a seeing eye dog, and although dogs were not allowed in the theatereven under the new provisions allowing for the admittance of non-human primatesthe ushers and operagoers found the sight of a dog guiding a baboon so lachrymosely adorable that it never even occurred to anyone to enforce the rule. Nor did it strike anyone as unconventional to use a Chihuahua as a guide dog. On the first night of the four-night sequence, the primates had been more or less well behaved throughout the first two scenes of Das Rheingold, but during the third scene one of the macaques defecated in its seat and began to howl and throw feces at the stage. The macaque was strongly encouraged to leave the theater, and the next night all of the monkeys were required to wear diapers. The monkeys picked at their diapers throughout Die Walkre, which was irritating to the performers until the third act, during which a number of the men in the audience were actually more poorly behaved than their less evolved fellow operagoers and effectively transferred most of the performers annoyance from the simians to themselves. Gottlieb decided that it was definitely the apes and monkeys that were making her anxious. She felt uneasy on the high art stage, gazing out at a half-empty auditorium consisting partially of gibbons and chimps, as if she were on the wrong side of the cage at the zoo, being gawked at by animals. It certainly didnt bode well for her career, she felt. She barely recognized herself in the mirror, with vulgar makeup and temporary tattoos and a bandana tied around her head. She would sweat profusely into the bandana until Siegfried (tenor Manfred Wolff, with beard and yarmulke) rescued her from the flaming office cubicle and removed her helmet. Lesbian and feminist activists had objected to the lesbian-turned-straight-by-the-protagonist theme of Schlagens production, but were for the most part unnoticed and lost in a sea of miscellaneous outrage and offense. It was time for Gottlieb to start warming up her voice. She readjusted the bandeau that she would have to remove before she went onstage.

A drunken flourish of Yuri Bergners baton summoned forth the ominous Prelude to Act Two. In a seat in the middle of row 13 sat a neo-Stalinist militant, forced to flee his motherland after a series of Perestroika-related mishaps. To his left and right sat the bound and gagged Heinrich and Winifred, and flanking them were two enormous gorillas, as well as the bespectacled baboon who was petting an extremely confused Chihuahua. Other primates were stationed at various positions around the auditorium. Yuri Bergner was waving his arms around wildly and looked like he might stumble off the podium at any moment. Alberich, the neo-Nazi skinhead dwarf, paced across the stage as the curtain opened. His black Dr. Martens boots clacked against the floor in front of the prominent Ritas Kosher Deli set, the luminous sign of which was lettered in a font that resembled Hebrew. Comrade Molotovsky looked over his shoulder and exchanged a glance with the chimpanzee in row 17. The time for action was nigh. In the second scene of this act, Das berschwein would crawl onstage with blazing eyes and smoking nostrils. Then, Molotovsky and the simians that had been so assiduously trained for this operation would charge the stage, hijack Das berschwein, and pilot it out of the theater and into the dark Bavarian night, eventually heading west to Baden-Wrttemberg, where they would retreat to their Black Forest lair with as much stealth as a group of more than twenty human and non-human primates in and around a truly gigantic coal-powered robotic pig could manage. (Contrary to certain rumors regarding the location of Molotovskys hideout, Molotovsky has never been to Venice. The origin of these rumors is unknown, but experts agree that they are mostly believed by the clinically stupid and mentally deranged.) Molotovsky wanted to possess Das berschwein for reasons that were nefarious but vague, though his subordinate apes suspected that he intended to outfit the great hog with arms and armor and use it to haphazardly militate against global capitalism. Alberichs voice rang out, plangent and profound, anxious for the slayer of Das berschwein to arrive. Molotovsky removed a schematic from his pocket and gave it one final looking over. It was a mechanical diagram for Das berschwein, which some of Molotovskys monkeys had stolen from Johnny Banes, the American theater props designer whom Schlagen had hired to build the hog. Das berschwein was a typically Banesian prop; Banes had cultivated a reputation as the premier creator of high-budget special effects for the theater, a sort of George Lucas or Michael Bay of the stage. His past projects had included a spectacular fiber optic Bodhi Tree that hed designed for the Bangkok Theater Companys production of Waiting for Godot, and a mechanical realization of Drers Rhinoceros that hed created for Ionescos Rhinoceros. Molotovsky wanted to be sure that he had mastered the rather intricate subtleties of the hogs controls before he attempted to pilot it out of the Festspielhaus and into the night before the authorities arrived. Hed memorized every detail of the schematic, but he wanted to mentally rehearse the procedure once more. The hog, it seemed, would initially be activated by a single control lever. Pulling this lever would open a valve on the boiler, releasing the steam that would power the engine. Molotovsky wouldnt have to worry about shoveling coal into the firebox, since the stagehands would have already taken care of that. The coal should last at least until they escaped the theater, he thought. After that he would need to activate a series of alternate power sources, specified on the diagram as the auxiliary, secondary, emergency,

and supplementary power sources, or pedal power, rowing (which Molotovsky found puzzling), hamster power, and the organ of power (asterisk-footnote: Zee Maestro), respectively. A note on the schematic indicated that the design for Das berschwein had been adapted from an earlier design for a submarine (a watercraft, not a sandwich) that Banes had intended for use in a never realized underwater production of the Saga of Erik the Red. After reviewing the schematic thoroughly, Molotovsky carefully folded it up and tucked it back into his trouser pocket. The one-eyed corporate Wanderer had entered the stage, and was now discoursing with Alberich between bites of a corned beef sandwich. It required Molotovskys utmost concentration to suppress a villainous cackle as he anticipated the moment when he would give the signal to attack.

People not intimately acquainted with stage fright, or performance anxiety, often do not realize the extent of its debilitating effects. Symptoms include sweating (especially of the palms), increased heart rate, blushing, tremors, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (see your doctor if symptoms persist for more than a few hours), and the desire to abscond from public life and live out the rest of your days in a lonely cabin somewhere, wearing animal pelts and living off the fruit of the earth. Ada Gottlieb was experiencing several of these symptoms in the backstage Toilette. She was now trembling and empty-stomached, and had not yet begun to warm up her voice, with less than an hour before she was due to go onstage. Shed tried to sip some Schnaps to calm the nerves, but she couldnt keep it down. This occasion required a more drastic pharmacological intervention. Gottliebs young colleague, Elisabeth Knig, was widely known to inhale the fumes of some top-shelf medical cannabis before a performance. She possessed an expensive hot air convection vaporizer, which she used to inhale THC with minimal voice-destroying smoke particles and plant debris. All vocal coaches strongly discourage this, for reasons related to the effects of smoke on the respiratory system, of THC on the humidity of the human oral cavity, and of ones mind twisting about weirdly on ones stage presence. Nevertheless, a quick vape was Knigs favored pre-performance ritual, and one which she had tended to favor all the more enthusiastically in preparation for her performances in this latest disastrous production. In part this was because she needed some nepenthe to obliviate the humiliations of the spectacle in which she was participating (those are her high words), but it was also surely because she sang the part of the woodbirdwhich is sung from beyond the audiences viewa part more conducive to blazed interpretations than most of those in the canonical opera repertoire. Knig had also come to genuinely enjoy singing the part while high. She would lose herself in the role more completely than a sober person might; she became the woodbird, diving and fluttering among the leafy boughs, to the accompaniment of the woodland murmurs, which shimmering sounds radiated from the thoroughly bored and sober violins. She found this experience like, borderline ecstatic, as she once tried to explain to Gottlieb after a performance. She would occasionally even flap her arms as she sang from behind the Ritas set, inducing a stagehand to audibly snort on more than one occasion.

Gottlieb was by no means a regular smoker, but this was by no means a regular occasion. At the very least, she thought, a little THC would palliate the nausea and allow her to do her warm up routine. She would just do one hit. Maybe two. But that was it. No big deal. She flushed her mouth with water from the sink, exited the Toilette, and rushed down the hall to Knigs dressing room. She knockedno answer. She knocked again nothing. This was strange, since Knig wasnt needed backstage quite yet. She turned the latch on the door and gently cracked it open, while lightly knocking with her sweaty knuckle. No sign of Knig through the slit. She opened the door all the way. There was Frau Knig, lying supine on the tile floor in a black concert gown, still clutching a plastic bag filled with bluish smoke. The vaporizer was on the counter in front of the mirror. Elisabeth? Who? Elisabeth, are you okay? What happened to time? Oh my God. Gottliebs stage fright was immediately surmounted by the sheer urgency of the situation. She fled Knigs room and raced down the hall sounding the alarm and announcing that Knig was in another dimension and that her understudy would have to sing her part. Everyones attention was aroused; someone was sent to notify Florian Prinz, the stage manager. Singers and stagehands flooded into the hall. Gottlieb, Frederick and Jrgen Weiss (two dwarf understudies, twins), Monika Blomgren (who sang Erda in a flower child costume), Marielle Gardinier (makeup artist), and several stage hands crowded around the door to the dressing room of Angela Hill, Knigs understudy. Someone may have made some effort at knocking, but they pretty much just charged into the room, which was forebodingly dark. Angela? Angela! Where are you? Its your special day! Your grand premiere! Youre going to be a legend! A star! Knigs baked! Superlunary. Shes ceased to intuit the world through forms of space and time. Your services are needed! We require your expertise. Angela? Will someone turn on a light? Please? Someone turned on a light. No Angela Hill was in sight. A moment of silence. Well. This is a thing.

Ada Gottlieb rushed out of the room, presumably in the direction of the nearest Toilette. Marielle Gardinier was sent to retrieve Knigs cell phone, so that they could call Hill. Monika Blomgren was hyperventilating and Frederick and Jrgen were wringing their hands, but one could tell that some of the stagehands were amused. The woodbird needed to be chirping in a mere twenty minutes. Where was Florian Prinz? They decided to migrate en masse to the Prinzs usual location behind the curtain. The very silly party dashed down the hall and towards the double doors that led backstage. Blomgren positively threw open both doorsthrew them directly into a stagehand who had been pushing a large wheelbarrow full of coal for Das berschwein. The stagehand and wheelbarrow went airborne and a hailstorm of coal rained down on the resonant wooden floor. Then came the pots-and-pans clatter of a rolling wheelbarrow and the stagehands impeccable imitation of the Wilhelm scream. Florian Prinz, who had already been rushing towards the door with the stagehand who had brought him the news about Knig danced about wildly, pulling his hair and kicking his legs and valiantly suppressing his urge to curse repeatedly.

Onstage, a yarmulked Siegfried looked over his shoulder in search of the source of the ruckus. Yuri Bergner grunted and the audience murmured. Molotovsky suddenly sat erect and perked his ears.

We cant find Hill! whispered Blomgren frantically. Prinz suspended his agitated kicking and hair pulling. I dont have time to deal with this right now! The hog is down, do you hear me? The hog is down! The hog, which needs to be onstage in ten minutes! Blomgren and the Weiss twins turned to look at Das berschwein. The hog was surrounded by frenzied mechanics and technicians. A mechanic with a clipboard was inspecting each hinge with a magnifying glass and taking diligent notes. An electrician was repeatedly conjoining the ends of two exposed wires, launching blue sparks in all directions. A stagehand was shoveling coal into the firebox with cartoonish efficiency, while a technician pumped a bellows into the same firebox with the urgency and seriousness of someone doing life-saving chest compressions. But we have no one to sing the woodbird! Hill is absent and Knig may as well be! Youre just going to have to figure something out! Theres something wrong with the hogs engine and I cant find the schematic anywhere! Ask Gottlieb if she can sing the woodbird or grab a score and sing it yourself! Now get out of the way before you kill another member of my crew! Blomgren and the dwarves rushed back through the double doors and down the hall to the dressing rooms. Marielle Gardinier stepped out of Knigs dressing room, clutching the cell phone. Did you get in touch with Hill? Yes

Well? Shes leaving opera forever. Can she leave opera forever tomorrow morning? Shes poolside in Aruba, sends her best wishes. Shit. They needed to find Gottlieb. She was their only chance on such short notice. Where was she? Not in her dressing room. A retching sound from the Toilette. Ada? Open up! Gottlieb stopped retching into the sink and looked at her sorry visage in the mirror. Her makeup was running. She knew that she would have to sing the woodbird. No one else could do it. But she wanted to make sure that everyone knew just how much she didnt want to. She rinsed her mouth and opened the door. Ada can you sing the woodbird? What are you crazy? Can you? I know the part. But cant you sing it? There are no contralto woodbirds. I havent even warmed up yet. Well the woodbird is going to be your warm up. How bad is Elisabeth really? They peered across the hall into Knigs room. Knig had kicked her shoes off and was fetally clutching her knees under her concert gown. She was attempting to sing the Habanera aria from Carmen. This was pretty clearly the end of Elisabeth Knigs career. Gottlieb wasnt about to let it be the end of hers. Alright. Ill do the woodbird. Good. Warm up for a minute and then get backstage ASAP. Theyll put you behind the Deli during the hog scene, if they ever get the thing working. Gottlieb ducked into a warm-up room to sing some arpeggios, beginning with C major and then moving up in half steps. Shed barely reached F# when she heard another terrible commotion out in the hall. She had to be backstage in a matter of minutes. She opened the door. People were running in circles with their hands in the air. Someone was breathing out of a paper bag. There was that distinctive sound of dwarves running around in steel-capped boots (you know the one). A voice shouted from down the hall. All hands on deck! I repeat: all hands on deck! Now what? Florian needs everyone backstage. Its something about the hog. Come on! Gottlieb was actually beginning to calm down. At this point, no slip-up could really be construed as her fault. She was in the midst of a category five operatic catastrophe. Now she was mostly concerned about harming her voice with the vomiting and the inadequate warm up. She figured shed half-ass the woodbird, ask for an extralong intermission between acts two and three, and use the time to warm up properly before she went onstage. If there was even going to be an act three, that is. She followed the rest of the singers and stagehands backstage. Florian Prinz stood in the middle of the semicircular meeting he had convoked. The group included Heinrich Schultz (Mime), Robert Rorty (Alberich), Dorian Becker (Wotan/Wanderer), Wolfgang Haupt (the voice of Das berschwein), Gottlieb,

Blomgren, Gardinier, and assorted understudies, stagehands, and technicians. Prinz addressed the congregation in an urgent whisper. The hogs coal engine is shot. Thank God one of our mechanics has discovered the auxiliary power source. I cant imagine what happened to that schematic; I could swear that Johnny left it with me. Anyway, it turns out that the auxiliary power source is pedal power. And were going to need every pair of feet weve got if were going to get the hog moving fast enough. That means me; that means each and every one of you. Pedal power doesnt make any goddamn sense for a thing like this. Its like Johnny thought he was designing a boat. I dont get it. But were not going to make it out in time regardless. I told Yuri whats up and hes going to keep the tempo slow until we get the hog going. But someone needs to tell Manfred to proceed with Operation Fiddleschtick. Adaare you singing the woodbird? Yes. It should be you then. Youre exempt from hog duty. Can you tell Manfred? Tell him what? To commence Operation Fiddleschtick. Whats Operation Fiddleschtick? I dont know; its what Yuri told Lang to tell me to tell someone to tell Manfred. Its apparently a thing that he and Manfred arranged, a contingency plan. What, you mean like run out on stage and tell him? Yes. I cant do that! Im Brnnhilde! Dont you think it would be kind of strange if Brnnhilde escapes from the fiery cubicle on her own somehow and whispers something about Fiddleschticks to Siegfried, only to be imprisoned again in the next act? Thats why youre not going to be dressed as Brnnhilde. Well whom am I going to be dressed like? A U.S. Vice Presidential candidate? A bird will whisper something in his ear. You want me to dress up as a bird. Put this bird costume on. Thats a chicken suit. No, its a bird costume. Florian, I know a chicken suit when I see one. If you want me to wear the chicken suit I will. But can we please be honest about what youre asking me to do. Fine. How long do I have. About 20 measures. Largo. Youd better get going. Put that on and get out there. Then get behind the Deli and prepare to sing the woodbird. The rest of you follow me. Were getting in the hog and youll each be assigned a pedaling station. Well keep the coal going for the fire and smoke effects. Now get moving. Break a leg! Heiayaheia!

Manfred Wolff was alone onstage, singing Siegfrieds speculations about the possibility of human-avian communication. The tempo had fallen to a languorous lento assai. Bergner was making desperate hand signals at Wolff with his left hand, while his right hand appeared to be dragging a baton through molasses. Wolff was nearly out of

breath, as the languid tempo forced him to suspend each note over superhuman stretches of time. He wondered if he was crazy, if time had slowed down. For a moment he suspected that someone had covertly slipped him some edibles laced with Knigs weed, but Bergners rapidif unintelligiblehand gestures seemed to refute that hypothesis. What the hell was Bergner trying to tell him? And what was all that chaos backstage? Molotovsky was becoming apprehensive. His cue to signal the attack was swiftly approachingor at least it was supposed to be swiftly approaching. Instead the whole orchestra seemed to be slowing to a near standstill, just before his cue. Did they know? Had there been some lapse in his secrecy measures or in his minions loyalty? Had some monkey squealed? He decided it was impossible, that no one could possibly have suspected that he was planning to steal Das berschwein. But then why this maddening delay? Men in the audience began to check the second hands of their watches to verify that their perception of time had not been altered. The audible clamor backstage contributed to everyones bewilderment. The opera critics in attendance began to scribble furiously in their notebooks. Several mouths were agape, and musicians in the audience leaned forward in their seats and touched their folded hands to their mouths, in postures of trepidation on behalf of the performers, whose performance seemed about to freeze in solid time. This was the middle of Act Two, Scene Two, where Siegfried uses his horn to summon woodland creatures, but summons Das berschwein instead. Schlagen and Bergner had made some changes here. Theyd replaced the horn with a clarinet, and inserted a couple anti-Wagnerian lines about the superiority of reeds over horns. Here was Wolff, with beard and yarmulke and black overcoat, pretending to play the clarinet, while in the pit the color of a clarinet players face was rapidly shifting towards the shorter-wavelength end of the spectrum as he held out each note of Siegfrieds horn motif for what felt like minutes. Another clarinetist took over for him when he nearly passed out from oxygen deficiency. Just as the time vortex approached absolute zero, the scene was interrupted by the opening door of Ritas Kosher Deli. A woman in a chicken suit dashed through the door and ran towards Siegfried. The audience gasped. The critics pencil tips were virtually smoking. Cluck! Cluck! Operation Fiddleschtick! Cluck-CAW! The chicken woman circumnavigated Siegfried a couple times before dashing back to Ritas, slamming the door behind her. Seeing that Wolff had been informed, Bergner gave a quick nod to the orchestra and counted off a rapid tempo. With little hesitation, a clarinetist, two violins, a cellist, a percussionist, and an accordion player (who appeared from somewhere) abruptly launched into an upbeat Klezmer tune. Onstage, Wolff followed along, miming playing his clarinet and making an attempt at the step-and-kick dancing one sees at Orthodox Jewish weddings. He danced and stomped in time to the accordion and cellos brisk oompah background, while the clarinet player improvised Klezmerized mutations of Wagners leitmotifs. Operation Fiddleschtick had evidently been a sort of in-joke among the musicians prior to its emergency debut. Bergner livened up considerably and one could tell that he had wanted to do this for weeks.

Some in the audience laughed. Others cried out For shame! A couple of the critics took out their phones and made urgent calls to New York or Stockholm. Molotovsky was now thoroughly disturbed. This was precisely the moment at which Das berschwein was supposed to enter. Instead they were being presented with this possibly offensive farce. Was he being mocked? How could they have known his intent? He would have to figure that out and terminate the parties responsiblebut all in due time. For now he had no choice but to sit and wait out the charade.

The sun had set behind the Festspielhaus and a rising tide of outrage began to threaten the front gates. The Institut fr Kleine Menschen protestors had bussed in reinforcements from all over Germany. The short-statured newcomers stood alongside the protestors from the Anti-Anti-Semitism League. There was also a new group of activists from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Experimenting, Confused, Lost, or Outright Sexually Unclassifiable Alliance (LGBTQIAECLOSU), as well as an assembly of Eastern European feminists, who were topless for some reason. Several fellows from the conservative Schiller Society for the Prevention of Cultural Degradation had just arrived, though they kept their distance from the other groups. The SSPCD fellows were joined on the sidelines by miscellaneous Japanese, Italian, and Native American protestors who had been offended by chapters earlier in the novel, and who werent quite sure where else to go. Journalists had begun showing up to cover the protests. Ushers and security guards stood nervously in the vestibule, watching as the protesters grew ever more unruly. Several sign-carrying demonstrators pressed their faces up against the windows and began to shout at those inside. Pro-Wagner is Anti-Jewish! Our culture is not a prop! Gay is not a phase! Say no to Nazi music! Lesbian for life! We are not savages! Little people have big souls! Hitler and Schlagen sitting in a tree! K--S-S-E-N! Women are not props! Jews are people too! Love is a human right! Dwarf Nazis are historically inaccurate! Labeling is fascism! Wheres-a my spaghetti? You cant legislate love! I have a God. Damn. Right. The sexual binary is sexual slavery! Im confused! We are a noble people! We may be short but we can still stand tall!

Schlagen is a Nazi! Dont like dykes? Take a hike! Okay, could you stop making blithe Nazi accusations? Its kind of offensive. What do we want? Illusionistic realism! When do we want it? Well, youre offensive. Equality now! Is that Confucius? We may be Japanese but we still have rights! I just ate something that was kind of crusty. We are Jewsand people too! Thats definitely Confucius. Patriarchy is hate-riarchy! I cant believe how offensive youre being right now. We didnt choose gay, we were born this way! Like, I just cant believe you would say something so bigoted, and offensive, and just so intolerant. They call them the humanities for a reason; end monkey admittance! We have rights! We have rights! Thats ignorant. End unattributed dialogue! Some of the protesters began to bang their fists against the doors, prompting security to chain them shut from the inside. Kurt, the head of security at the Festspielhaus, had heard the commotion from upstairs and had rolled his chair over to the window where he could get a better view. Some of the dissenters were gathered around an LGBTQIAECLOSU bus and were unloading what appeared to beand indeed in all probability wasa battering ram. Kurt picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the Bayreuth chief of police. Hello? Hi, this is Kurt. Yes. Were going to need some reinforcements here.

Everybody, get to your stations! Haupt will stay up front. Monika, you pedal there, by the back. Marie, use the station next to me. The rest of you get in place and start pedaling! It hadnt occurred to Florian until he examined the pedaling stations for himself that people under five feet tall wouldnt be of much use on them, which unfortunately ruled out nearly half the singers and understudies. Then he had lapsed into another hairpulling fit when Gottlieb had actually clucked onstage. But now he had directed all his focus to getting the hog out there before the Klezmer routine became more of a travesty than it already was. Hed put Schultz, Rorty, and the Weiss twins in charge of coal and bellows and was depending mostly upon stagehands to do the pedaling. The hog would be piloted by the mechanic, and Haupt would sing Das berschweins lines through the grating in the hogs mouth as usual.

They had entered the hog through a rather anal aperture in its rear. This was the only way in or out. The pigs mouth was huge and gaping, but it was closed off on the inside by a lattice of metal bars. The interior was mostly wood, and there were now around 15 people inside, far more than it was capable of comfortably accommodating. Blomgrens knees were jabbing into the understudy in front of her as she pedaled. The combined heat of a coal fire plus 15 bodies pedaling minimalistic stationary bikes was pretty excruciating. Blomgren was sweating through her floral shirt and bellbottoms, and her annular Joplin glasses were fogging up. This was not the life she had envisioned when she matriculated at the Royal College of Music. The pedal-powered boar did at least appear to be up and running. The mechanic pulled the control level and the body of the pig lifted off the ground as its legs straightened. Pipes from the firebox were effectively distributing sparks to the eyes and smoke to the nose, and Das berschwein was looking admittedly fearsome. Florian gave the command and the mechanic tilted the steering stick forward. There was a whir of gears and the hog began to walk forward with leg movements that looked somehow insectile. Haupt and the mechanic could see where they were going through the grating in the mouth. They could now discern the glare of stage lights. The show would go on.

The Klezmer interlude had prompted several early departures from the theater. Those who had stayed, however, were now being rewarded by the impressive sight of Das berschwein, whose conflagrant eyes pierced a miasma of dark smoke. The hog, it seemed, had finally been summoned by the call of the clarinet. Seeing the approaching over-swine, Bergner swished and lowered his baton, bringing the Klezmer tune to a degenerative halt that brought to mind a vinyl record being slowed to a stop. He looked toward the brass and raised his baton again, ushering in the return of Wagners ominous dragon motif. Siegfried ceased dancing, allowed the clarinet to hang on its neck strap, and drew Nothung, his mighty sword. Herman Heinz, a theater scholar, and Yehuda Jacobs, a heterodox theologian, had co-written an article on Schlagens Siegfried and berschwein scene, in which they claimed that the scene was an allusion to the ancient enmity between the Hebrews and the Philistines, the latter of whom ate pigs and drank blood and generally disgusted the Hebrews. According to Heinz and Jacobs, Das berschwein is an avatar of the Philistine god Beelzebub, and the fight with Siegfried is an allegory for the struggle against uncleanliness. Needless to say, the Anti-Anti-Semitism League was not convinced. Comrade Molotovsky once again had to restrain himself in order not to leap from his seat. He had nearly resigned himself to temporary defeat when suddenly his prize appeared. The cue to attack was mere seconds away. He quickly eyed each of his simian soldiers as he visualized the charge. Haupt sang warbling, spectral cries from within the hog as it approached. Something about the sudden appearance of the giant pig had added to its theatrical power, and much of the audience was now genuinely gripped by the suspense. Siegfried sang a fearless, mocking line. One critic scribbled, There is something essentially un-Jewish about Siegfried. The timpani pounded out alternating tritone beats. Then the basso profondo Haupt, as Das berschwein, sang his first line:

Was ist da? That was the cue. Molotovsky jumped into the air and shouted his villainous command: For Motherland! For Stalin! Comradesattack! In ordinary life, we often use certain words without ever having experienced anything close to what they actually denote. Chaos, for instance. Or bewilderment, or surreal. However, on this most unusual evening, the operagoers in the Festspielhaus auditorium made the rare and unforgettable acquaintance of these hitherto unfathomable signifieds. Diapered primates dashed into the aisles from every section of the theater, howling and chest-thumping as they went. The gorillas nearest to Molotovsky grabbed Heinrich and Winifred and dragged them along. The reaction from the audience was mixed, as it always is on such occasions, or rather, as it always would be on such occasions if there were more than one such occasion. Most sat paralyzed in their chairs, jaws aslack in stupid shock and awe. A minority panicked, jumping up and down and shouting oh God! and somebody do something! A few had the sense to slip out the emergency exits. A distinctive feature of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus is that the orchestra pit is partially covered by a hood, rendering the musicians invisible to the audience and vice versa. Bergner thus had no idea what was going on, and with drunken resolve he went on conducting, although most of the musicians had stopped playing. Wolff had abandoned his character and was now facing the audience, with his sword raised in an almost pitifully sincere en garde posture. Haupt and the berschwein mechanic peered through the grating and attempted to see what was going on, but their view was obscured by the veil of stage lights, and they were only able to discern vague outlines. The Festspielhaus stage, being separated from the auditorium by a moat of orchestra pit, is among the hardest stages to take by a coup de main. Molotovsky was aware of this problem and had prepared for it. Thus one of the apes produced a small trampoline from somewhere and placed it just in front of the orchestra pits hood. The smaller species of monkey were the first to leap on to the trampoline and clear the gulf. All the simians had meticulously practiced this jump, using a training platform that Molotovsky had built to the exact measurements of the Festspielhaus pit and stage. The first monkeys to reach the stage orbited Wolff, distracting him and drawing him away from their landing area. Wolff waved at them sloppily with his sword, but soon realized that stage combat is a rather poor preparation for the real thing. Bergner noticed the simians flying repeatedly over his head and stopped conducting and fainted. Its not clear which happened first, but it was surely to his benefit that he spent the next several minutes unconscious. The musicians ducked and cowered under their chairs, bomb-drill style. The aisles were now crowded with people trying to flee or to merely panic aimlessly. Nearly all the primates had now cleared the gulf. The baboon that may or may not have been actually blind carried Pedro, who was severely afflicted with PTSD (or its Chihuahua equivalent). A gorilla made the leap with Heinrich in hand, and another transported Winifred. Comrade Molotovsky rode across the pit on a chimpanzees back. Molotovskys entire retinue had made it onto the stage, and there was no Homo sapiens

present that was capable of making such a jump, meaning that the audience was now powerless to intervene. Molotovsky may have been a maniac, but he was no fool. Haupt and the mechanic could now make out pretty clearly what was going on. Wolff had been disarmed and a gorilla was now tossing him into the orchestra pit. A Wilhelm scream, a bowling strike sound of chairs and bodies, violin strings snapping and twanging, several oofs. Molotovsky and company now approached the pig. Florian stopped pedaling and rushed to the mouth to look. So, theyre after my swine, are they? Well I, for one, am not prepared to let it go without a fight! Prepare to die, Russian monkeys, youll soon see that youre no match for a German hog! Whos with me? Not I! Nor I. Certainly not. Hell no. Ive already surrendered. Oh come on, wheres your pride? Wheres your spirit? Are you about to let a rabble of Russians step all over you and take what is rightfully yours? You know Flo, Im feeling extremely ready to do that. Yeah Flori, Ive got to say that in this cosmopolitan age Im finding it very difficult to conjure up that level of nationalistic zeal. Frankly I dont care if theyre Russians or Frankfurters or whatever. I have no stake in this. Ive got nothing against Russiansa stalwart people. I think were done here. Shows over Flo, time to go home. Mutiny! Treason! I for one am going to put an end to this affront against the dignity of culture, if not in the name of my nation, then at least in the name of my species! En garde, ape-monkeys! Prepare to perish promptly, pernicious primates! Dont pay any heed to him! We surrender! Oh God we surrender completely! The sinister simians had surrounded Das berschwein and Molotovsky now stood with his face up against the grating of the mouth. Stand and deliver! Vacate the pig, capitalist swine! And whypray tell!should we do that, red villain? Because Im going to throw this grenade inside in ten seconds if you dont. I see. Well well just be going then. We certainly dont want any trouble here. No sir, not us. The mechanical pig explosively evacuated its enema of human beings. Blomgren was the first to burst from the rear orifice, and the rest swiftly followed, fists clenched, arms swinging, knees lifted high in gestures of exaggerated retreat. The fleeing singers and stagehands rushed backstage to escape, hide, or book plane tickets to Aruba. Molotovsky now walked to the other side of the hog, and bade his highest-ranking cronies follow him inside. Larger apes positioned themselves at the pedals and began to generate power. Molotovsky manned the controls and attempted to steer the hog, going through the motions he had rehearsed with the schematics assistance. Some of the

smaller monkeys climbed on top of the hog and clung to its back and head. Molotovsky began to pilot the machine awkwardly and languidly around the stage. The musicians had fled the orchestra pit, leaving through heavy doors on either side, which they had locked and barricaded. A percussionist had dumped Yuri Bergner into the copper bowl of a broken kettledrum and pushed him away. Large portions of the audience had now recovered from their dreamy stupor and were heading for the emergency exits, assisted by the ushers who were making their best efforts to implement emergency evacuation procedures. Armed security guards were entering the auditorium from multiple side doors, fighting against the flow of outbound traffic. Several guards had their guns pointed at Das berschwein and the monkeys that covered it, but they were too concerned about the possibility of hostages to seriously consider firing. Molotovsky was shouting something about a grenade from inside the hog, providing a further disincentive to armed resistance. Molotovsky intended to leave the theater via backstage passagesthe alternative being to devise some zany scheme to get the hog over the orchestra pit. He was concerned about the size of the pig, but figured he could blow apart any narrow doorways with grenades, if necessary. A considerable multitude of armed guards now stood at the threshold of the orchestra pit. They brandished their guns and shouted Halt! and I order you to stop! and Youre under arrest! None of them was really equipped to deal with a grenade launching berschwein, however, and their attempts to at least go through the motions of lawful laying down the line seemed increasingly empty and impotent. Das berschwein turned to face them, eyes still burning menacingly. Go away! This does not concern you, opera house security persons! The guards stood their ground but were clearly feeling rather useless. Their brandishing of arms became halfhearted and perfunctory where it hadnt ceased altogether. Now put down your weapons, or I shall throw a grenade at you! The guards realized there was nothing to be done. They sheepishly placed their weapons on the floor. All is lost! lamented a melodramatic guard. It was at that moment that a chicken wielding a spear leaped out from behind Ritas Kosher Deli, presumably with the intention of melodramatically defying the melodramatic guards melodramatic lamentation that quote all unquote was quote lost unquote. Heiaha! belted the soprano chicken, holding her spear aloft. Molotovsky shoved the steering stick to the right, rotating the hog to face its new foe. The apes seemed to be struggling to generate enough power to get the gears moving quickly. It turns out that gorillas arent anatomically very well equipped to pedal. When the enemy was in sight, Molotovsky shouted another warning: Go away, chicken lady! This does not concern you! I am no chicken lady! I am Brnnhilde! Gottlieb tore off her chicken suit and tossed it aside, revealing her Brnnhilde costume in all its bare-breasted splendor. She took several running steps, helmet wings fluttering, breasts aflop, and threw her javelin with Olympic grace. The spear pierced the

back of Das berschwein, and the shaft vibrated with that satisfying spronggg noise that spears sometimes make when you throw them into things. Das berschwein reeled back slightly. The monkeys howled and stomped. A grenade flew out of the hogs mouth and smashed through the Ritas window. Gottlieb sprinted offstage, away from Ritas, and the security guards hit the ground with reflexive speed, hands on heads. A moment later an eruption of fire and smoke heralded the end of Ritas Kosher Deli, and pieces of flaming matzah were launched all the way to the back of the auditorium. All is lost! the melodramatic security guard re-lamented, still lying on the floor. It has all come to naught! lamented another. Woe! Alas! Oh unhappy fate! Miserable fortune! Oh cruel, cruel chances hand! What hath these monkeys wrought? And wherefore? Such calamity! Such sadness! The humanity! What badness! An end most foul resolves the fray! This is indeed our darkest hour! Oh sin! Oh spite! Ill rue the day! Our downfalls taste is harsh and sour! Shut up! Molotovsky barked. Having crushed the opposition, he was attempting to devise a plan to quickly boost the hogs power supply so that he could escape the Festspielhaus. He clutched his forehead in frustration. He was going over the pigs schematic in his mind but had found it difficult to concentrate with so many melodramatic lamentations assailing his eardrums. Most of the audience had fled the auditorium and the theater had quieted down considerably. Ada Gottlieb was on the phone somewhere backstage, booking tickets to Aruba and packing weed into a hot air convection vaporizer. Molotovsky had just pulled the schematic out of his pocket when he was again distracted by a great commotion. Several of the auditoriums side doors had been unnecessarily bashed in by battering rams, and sign-bearers of various politico-sexual persuasions began to flood into the theater. Molotovsky turned the hog to face the rows of seats once more. A multitude of fractious dissidents was filling the aisles and marching toward the stage with bobbing signs and clenched fists raised. Various factions of protestors began to chant their demands, adding their voices to the din of melodramatic security guards, who resumed their lamentations. We want respect! Gloom betides us! We want freedom! Our spirits are broken! We want answers!

God has forsaken us! We want dignity! The end is surely nigh! We want rights! Be this the last of days? End anti-Semitism! Oh break, my heart! End heterosexism! Dear ruins of my dreams! End heightism! I shall neer have peace nor hope again! End Regietheater! Kill me softly, mortal anguish! End crude cultural stereotypes! The end is nigh! I die! I die! I die! Adieu! End this chapter already, its getting preposterous! Bring back speciesism! Just because were Japanese doesnt mean we cant be Italian! It has been many moons since my people were subjected to such heap crass stereotypes. Just-a because were Italianos doesnt mean we all-a talk like-a this! My true name is Kongzi, but you may call me Great Sage. It upsets my followers very much that you have represented me as confused, as you say. You have written a story about us, the protesters of an offensive opera. Are we not the voices of your own guilty conscience, writer of insensitive novels? End this cheap metafictional ruse! Now its a bistratified metafictional ruse. Tristratified. Christ. Molotovsky felt like his brain was swelling. He couldnt stand the whining any longer. He tore the schematic to pieces and kicked a big red button that the now disintegrated diagram had indicated as the switch to activate the secondary auxiliary power source. Das berschweins legs went flaccid and its body fell to the floor with a rumble and crash. Oars sprung out of oar holes on the great boars sides. Apes and monkeys tumbled over each other and Molotovsky clung to the control lever. When the falls repercussions had subsided, Molotovsky climbed to his feet and gave an order, which the part of his brain that knew better would have vetoed had it not been malfunctioning under stress. Row, you fools! Row for the hills! Molotovskys monkeys were not hindered by any strain of independent thinking. They manned, or rather, they monkeyed and aped the oars and began to row for their lives. The protesters stopped protesting for a moment to gape at the sad sight onstage: a beached mechanical pig, legs flopping uselessly beneath it, oars swinging up and down wildly, making a terrible racket as the oars heads struck the stage, cracking oars and floor alike, and sending splinters and paint chips flying in stochastic trajectories. Molotovsky adopted a swashbuckling, forward-leaning posture at the controls.

Avast maties! These be the high seas of global communism! He abruptly stood, and began to march in place, hand raised to his brow in a salute to no one in particular, and sang the Internationale. Debouuuuuuut, les damns de la terrrrrre. The apes knew to some extent that what they were doing was utterly futile, but their devotion to their leader and inability to engage in conceptual thought left them with no resources to resist. Many of them howledone could even imagine that they howled plaintivelywhile they exerted their full strength to perform the task their leader had assigned them. The oars clattered about uselessly, and many of them were now broken as a result of the force with which the apes were boldly slamming them against the stages floor. This continued for several minutes. Then another bang, another gasp. An explosive blast destroyed the locked door to the orchestra pit. Kurt leapt down the stairs into the trench, followed by the security reinforcements, who had finally arrived. Kurt hesitated, as he tried to decide whom to address first: Molotovsky, the protestors, or the useless security forces who were lying across the hood above him, and whose melodramatic lamentations mingled with the cries of the protesters and the clamor of the hogs oars. He decided to begin with his own inept men. Stop lamenting, you melodramatic nitwits! Theres a battle to be fought! Molotovsky tossed a grenade into the orchestra pit. Kurt and the reinforcements backtracked at a near supersonic speed, lamenting, All is lost! as they fled. The grenade detonated, sending the orchestral hood and several melodramatic security guards airborne. Alas. Fuckin pigs, contributed a protester. Molotovsky was running out of time before military-grade law enforcement arrived. He snapped his fingers. Hamster wheels emerged from covered recesses in the walls, and little furry rodents began to run on them. Gears began to hum. Das berschweins legs stiffened, and the hogs body was raised up again. The oars no longer struck the floor, and instead undulated silently, as if caught in the wind. Molotovsky nudged the steering stick forward and the hog began to crawl offstage. His demeanor now betrayed a kind of stoic concentration. He snapped his fingers, clapped his hands, and imitated a mourning dove, a waxwing, and a skylark. A portion of the interior wall by the firebox rotated and a pipe organ flipped into view, complete with multi-manual keyboard and pipes resembling those that relayed the steam from the boiler. Molotovsky removed several of the floorboards by the control lever. Jeeves climbed out from under the floorboards, sporting his bowtie and coattails, and bowed deeply before Molotovsky and the simian oar slaves. Poco molto sono inglese. Jeeves traversed the interior of the hog, taking his seat at the Almighty Organ of Power. There he commenced his performance of Bachs Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor. The soft hum of the gears became a robust whir. Das berschwein departed the theater, with the assistance of a few more grenades, and ventured out into the cool Teutonic night.