As they watched the fire slowly heat from yellows and reds to greens and gradually to blues, Maria began quietly, "Mama said God delivered the meat. She said He likes us. Then you said, She likes us. I've always heard God was a He. I'm confused."
"God is all of us, all of life. Everything," David replied. "We're all part of reality. Not only He, not only She, but Us — all of us working in harmony. This is being demonstrated right here in this situation. Here we are, three people who have known each other for three days, maybe four. It doesn't matter. We've known each other for only a short time, but working together, working in harmony, each adding to the equation, we are so much stronger than the three of us acting individually." He looked into Maria's and Rachel's eyes.
"It's the greedy ones who create gods and add the confusion, add the complications. It's the greedy ones who try to get others to support them. The greedy ones distort the reality by setting up and maintaining religions so they can sit back. Sit back and be supported by the weaker ones they've scared and enslaved."
"So, the rabbis, the priests, the ministers, the preachers — they're all on the take, all gathering feathers for their nests?" Maria asked.
"Not all." He shook his head. "Not all. Some are genuinely offering their finest, offering from their reality. There was a padre I spent a lot of time talking with outside Ypres as I waited to go to the trenches again. He understood reality, dismissed the hocus-pocus, the flimflam manipulation of religion, and he agreed that many religions enslave people by preying on the weak, on the vulnerable by using emotions and guilt. Many religions seem to be little more than a way to suck the last few remnants of wealth from the weak."
"I sense you're not listed among the supporters of religion," Rachel said, "but I saw that from the beginning. You're much too free, much too open-minded, much too creative to be ensnared in those webs."
"You see clearly," he smiled, then pointing above the racks, he asked, "Do the ribs need turning? They're just starting to smoke."
Maria got up with David and they flipped the ribs, adjusted the supports and sat again.
"I love the harmony, the coordination, the acting together. No words needed. Just simply doing it together. Together. That's the power. Together. Focused and cooperating." Rachel said as she swirled the wine in her glass and looked deeply into it.
"This wine, this best barrel from the 1911 harvest, this was a great exercise in cooperation, in working together. It was a difficult harvest, ducking between the thunderstorms. Appraising the right moment for each plot, each row. Gambling together to hold out another day for the western slope, picking into the night on the Terrassen. Together."
"I've never had a taste so splendid," he said, rolling his glass under his nose. "I don't at all understand the complexity of what I'm tasting. It overpowers me, leaves me without vocabulary to describe it. The aroma takes me into realms I've never before been. I must learn more about wine. I must learn more about what it takes to produce it."
They sat almost mesmerised by the flames of the fire as they sipped their Gewürztraminer and quietly spoke, all of them offering.
David quietly added, "Here we are, calmly waiting for venison to sear by a fire on the southern slopes of the Schwarzwald. This would have been such an idyllic setting a year ago. Now we're doing it surreptitiously, close under the nose of the enemy, casually watching a large pan of pleurottes and morels cook in butter. We could be cowering in fear. I prefer not to."
"It's still an idyllic setting," Rachel said as she got up to give the pan of mushrooms a shake and a toss. "How far away is Fritz?"
"At least a quarter mile. The soldiers who shot the doe and fawn were about that far when I last saw them, carrying their meat away from the fire scar, away from us. They angled slightly upward, almost in line with the fire, so now the smoke and lingering flames up there are almost directly between them and us, and the smell of that fire will hide the aromas of our dinner... So, explain the pieces of meat you cut from the carcass."
"These two pieces are the tenderloins, the ones I told you do the pelvic thrust, the love thrust. They're wonderfully tender and deliciously flavoured. Those two larger, flatter pieces, hanging the other side of the fire, those are the backstraps. They sit on the outside of the back, run along each side of the spine. They're also nicely tender. We'll cook them a bit longer, let them cool and cut them for later. The ribs, of course, you recognise. We'll roast them even longer, make the meat between them tender, then also cut them up for later."
"What about the rest of the animal, the shoulders, the hips?"
"That's tougher meat. The muscles there get used so much more. Most of it needs braising or stewing. Long, slow cooking. We don't have the time to do that. I did skin a ham, and it's hanging in the cool little notch over by the waterfall. It will tenderise and mellow like that for two weeks or more, in case we're stuck here that long. We'll be in Switzerland long before then..."
"Mama and I dragged the rest of the carcass along the stream and flipped it over the falls. That's three dead down there in three days. I hope that's the end of it."
Rachel got up again and placed the tenderloins in the pan with the mushrooms and moved them around to the bottom. "These won't take long. Three to four minutes between each turn, three turns, twelve minutes, a quarter hour. How are the carrots, Maria?"
"Looking good, Mama, just about ready to start to sizzling."
"I've not seen carrots done that way, cooked without water."
"It's my favourite way to cook them. Quartered into fingers and put in a covered pot with a bit of butter. Shake it from time to time to keep them from scorching. They steam in their own juices."
She took a small stick and turned the potatoes in the coals. "These are nearly ready. They'll be done when the tenderloins are."
A dozen minutes later Rachel cut one of the tenderloins in half, looked at the deep pink colour and placed the halves on two plates then put the whole tenderloin on the third plate. Maria rolled the three potatoes out of the coals and across the slab, knocking most of the ashes off the crusted skin as they tumbled. She stabbed one with a fork and handed it to David. "Blow these off and put them on the plates, I'll get the carrots."
Rachel spooned the mushrooms over the meat, paused to cut the potatoes and poured the remaining pan juices into them as Maria forked carrots from the pot to the plates and poured the remaining butter over the potatoes.
"I have rarely dined this well at home. I can't remember such a fine looking meal in the mountains," he said as Rachel handed him his plate. "That's a big piece of meat."
"You should have no trouble with it." Rachel giggled. "From what I've seen, you're very adept at handling big meat."
"I've had venison before, but never this tender, never so wonderfully flavoured. It's always tasted gamier than this. Probably a different breed of deer from those back home."
"More to do with the season," Rachel said. "The meat is wilder, gamier in the autumn, in the mating season."
"The carrots are so sweet done this way and the mushrooms are so delicious, they add a wonderful flavour to all butter they absorbed. I've not previously had pleurottes or morels. I was too busy with the firewood to see how you prepared them for the pan."
"Morels are a bit difficult to clean. There's often grit in the folds and the grooves. For me, the easiest way is to slosh them around in a pan of water. Two or three changes of water, then toss them around in a cloth and let them dry. You still need to flick out the last few bits of dirt..." She paused to take another bite.
When she had finished savouring it, she looked up and continued. "The pleurottes are much cleaner. A few of them will need a little wipe. I like to tear them into thin strips. They tear easily and straight, starting at the rounded edge and tearing toward the stem. In strips, they crisp wonderfully in butter. The morels are..."
Maria put up her hand, pointed to the brink of the slab. They all heard it now — the growling and snarling.
"Animals fighting over the carcass," David said after a few moments of silence. "We won't be able to see them. Too dark now. What carnivores are there up here?"
"Besides us, you mean?" Rachel asked with a giggle. "There used to be wolves, some say there still are, though others dismiss sighting reports as packs of stray dogs. There are Wildkatzen, wildcats and foxes, I'm not sure what else."
David looked at his watch, "2110... Ten past nine. The moon is still big, but it won't rise until shortly past midnight. It should start lighting the gully a couple hours after that. Listening to the noise down there, most of the bones will be clean by then."
"Speaking of bones," Maria pointed toward the fire. "The racks of ribs need another turning and we can take the backstraps down and let them start cooling."
"Finish your dinner, Sweetheart," Rachel said, "another few minutes won't matter. This is too delicious to interrupt."
"I wonder what Fritz is eating up there tonight. Some of the stuff they fed us on exercise would better have been left for the scavengers, like those below." David chuckled. "But then, were scavengers ourselves, aren't we? Scavenging here below Fritz."
"Below Fritz only geographically," Maria added. "Far above them in every other way."