SIEBENUNDDREIβIG
Postludium
Seven weeks later, somewhere over Africa
Swaying ever so slightly back and forth with the ebb and flow of the wind, Hermann made his way past a mountain range and over a set of crisscrossing rivers. He had been travelling for a day and a half now, resting at night and going on as soon as the sun broke the horizon, but at long last, his surroundings began to tell him that the destination point was near. He had but one more stop to make: an airstrip in Tanzania with a refueling station. From there, it would be visual flight rules, direct vector to Pride Rock…or where he thought Pride Rock would be. Hermann tried not to think about the unavoidable possibility of getting lost in Kenyan airspace as he gently set his plane down and taxied over to a small hangar.
Hermann climbed out of the cockpit, bracing himself with the same flame-decorated cane from Anatoly's shop in Stuttgart. "I need some fuel for my plane," he said to an attendant—the only person who appeared to be on the premises—only to get a confused stare in return.
"Do you speak English?" Again, nothing, just a look of apologetic confusion. This man obviously wanted to be of assistance, but the language barrier made communication almost impossible. Indeed, gestures might have sufficed as a last-ditch effort, but resorting to exaggerated hand movements seemed a bit disrespectful to Hermann. If there was any way at all to use words in this exchange, he was determined to find it.
"Sprichst deutsch?" Hermann asked, trying the only remaining linguistic long shot he could think of.
"Deutsch?"
Surprisingly, Hermann seemed to have struck a chord. The man said something in an African language, made a 'wait here' gesture, and disappeared into a nearby hangar. A few moments later, he re-emerged with another man at his side. "Deutsch," the first person said, pointing to the other.
"Do you…speak German?" Hermann asked the newcomer slowly.
"Yes, what can I do for you?" The man's speech was immaculate.
"How do you—
"How do I speak your language? Surely you remember which country this land was a colony of before it gained its independence, no?"
"That's right; I completely forgot…Tanzania was a German territory. But you were born before the 1960s, weren't you? At least, you don't look like you were…"
"No, you're correct," the man said with a smile. "I was born after our independence. And the Germans actually left in 1919; it was the British who took over until the date you're thinking of. Still, someone in every generation of my family since then, sometimes more than one person in fact, has always learned German; it's just one of those weird traditions there's no use in arguing against. Guess who drew the short straw?"
"I'm so very glad it was you, otherwise, I'd be out of gas. Can you fill the plane up? And I'll need a receipt; a written one will do fine, but without some sort of record, the hospital won't reimburse me. The finance office people get really sore if you try to ask for money without a charge slip."
"A hospital, you say…so you're a doctor, then?"
"Indeed I am. I'm heading to Kenya on research fellowship."
"What happened to your leg? You don't look old enough to need a cane."
"Football injury. That's where I drew the short straw, and I've got the scars to prove it."
"Ouch. Let me get that fuel started for you; I don't want to keep you waiting."
The small plane was refueled in short order, and with his tanks full once again, Hermann thanked the two men and got back into the left seat. "By the way," he said to the German-speaking worker, "I know this is an outside chance, but do you happen to know anything about a place called 'Pride Rock'? I'm supposed to head for it, but my chart doesn't have an exact location; all I've got to work with is the cockpit compass and an educated guess."
"Let me see your map."
Hermann handed the paper over through the open door.
"I see…well, you were close, very close in fact—you might even have caught a glimpse out the window as you flew by—but probably not close enough to run straight into it. Pride Rock is thirty kilometers west of that bend in the river, not east. Stay too far to the east, and you could be in the next country before you realize you've gone wrong."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive; I've gone by that spot myself. You should know, though, not everyone calls it 'Pride Rock'. There is a pride of lions that lives there, but just as many people know those rocks as 'The Giant L'. Not very creative, but it gets the point across…still, whichever name you prefer, it's impossible to miss from close by, especially given the recent improvements there."
"Why? What's been improved?"
"Apparently, Pride Rock has been…annexed," the man laughed. "You'll never believe this until you see it for yourself, but someone actually climbed to the very top and stuck a German flag there. Don't ask me how he managed it without turning into dinner, but there was only a report of a flag, not a flag and a pile of bones."
"You'd need to be half out of your mind to do that," Hermann said, knowing that the person behind the 'annexation' fit that description rather well. "Thanks for the advice."
"Don't mention it. Fly safe; you can always come back here if the weather turns on you. The turbulence over that valley can take on a mind of its own sometimes."
"I'll keep that in mind. Clear props!"
One propeller starting spinning, followed by the other. A two-minute taxi, a quick check of the control surfaces and a forward shove of the throttle, and Hermann was off the ground once more. This would be the last leg of his trip; he would either find Pride Rock, assuming the other gentleman's directions were accurate, or spend hours circling the same bit of land, watching in vain for a cluster of gray stones that wasn't there. In such a case, he would eventually have to divert back to this same airstrip to re-group and try to get his bearings once more—certainly not an end-of-the-world scenario, considering the airstrip had a pump to replenish the drained fuel tanks—but little about this option was appealing to Hermann. No differently than if he were performing some sort of medical procedure at the hospital, he wanted to get everything right on take one.
The altimeter spun through five thousand feet, and Hermann leveled off. Next stop, Kopa, he thought. I can't wait to see what he does when this big bird shows up on his doorstep.
Three hours later
The landscape spilling out in all directions below was not a new sight to Hermann; he had seen it on the flight into Nairobi, the return trip to Berlin, and his three weeks at Pride Rock. This view, however, was new: never before had he taken in the sights of what he now knew to be the outer edge Pride Lands—which, if he remembered correctly, began after his last river crossing—from the front seat of an airplane, never mind one that he himself was piloting.
As the familiar set of rocks grew close, just as the man at the airstrip had said they would, Hermann eased the throttles back and began to scan the ground for a suitable place to set down. The infamously rocky ride all but promised him before his last take-off was thankfully absent for the time being; Hermann assumed that like many tales he had already heard about exaggeratedly bad weather, this, too was more of a fish story than anything else.
Not until Hermann was practically over the top of Pride Rock, low enough for him to see clearly but high enough to keep the engine noise to a minimum, was he able to pick out a relatively clear tract of open ground on the other side of the rocks. There were a few unfriendly aspects to this site that merited special consideration— stands of trees on the left and water on the right—but most concerning was the actual flight path. By the time he reached this point again on his approach, Hermann reasoned, he would be passing only meters above the long, horizontal section of the L. Too high, and he wouldn't have enough time to lose the extra altitude before arriving at the edge of his landing strip; too low, and the entire affair would disintegrate into a horrific episode of airplane versus solid rock. It was by no means an ideal set of circumstances, but Hermann didn't seem to have much of a choice. He could either land here, and trust that he had been trained well enough to attempt it, or spend hours looking for another suitable spot which, for all he knew, was hours away on foot or didn't even exist in the first place. Throw in what looked like an approaching storm off to the east—maybe the flying conditions weren't so exaggerated after all—and Hermann's mind was all but made up for him.
Hermann pushed the stick left and let more power off, dropping height and speed as he made a large oval and began setting up to bring the Beechcraft in. If his estimations were correct, any lion sitting on the rocks in about three minutes would be able to count the treads on the airplane's tires.
"One thousand," a mechanical-sounding voice said as pilot and airplane slowly came out of the turn. They might not have noticed me the first time around, Hermann thought, but there's no way they'll miss me now.
At that same moment, Kopa was looking out over the plains, watching the wind blow the tall grass from side to side. He had a few residual scars on one side and on part of his neck from where his injuries had healed over, but other than that, he was no worse off than he had ever been before. Vitani was lying next to him on her back, batting at the occasional grasshopper that flew by. For miles around, all was completely quiet, and then came a sound that no one in the pride had ever heard before. It was a low, distant hum, something of a cross between a herd of animals running by and a thunderclap, only thunder rumbled itself out after a few seconds, and there were no other animals in sight. And the sound was slowly but steadily getting louder.
"You hear that?" Vitani asked. "What's making that noise?"
"I don't know," Kopa replied, eyes half-closed. "Crickets."
"Crickets? What kind of crickets have you been hanging around?"
"I said I don't know…why are you so worried? It's just a noise."
"Five hundred."
"Kopa…you don't think it's a stampede, do you?"
"If it is, we'll still be safe up here. I don't think a bunch of angry wildebeest are going to go out of their way just to run us over, do you?"
"No, you're right. I don't see even see anything."
"Yep. Just the trees and the sky and the clouds, and that bird over there.
"Three hundred."
"What bird?"
"That one, on your right. See it?"
"I can see it, but I don't think it's a bird. Since when do birds not flap their wings?"
"Vultures don't flap, they glide. Maybe it's a vulture."
"Two hundred."
"Hate to break it to you, but that doesn't look like any vulture I've ever seen, and where I used to live, you got to see plenty of those guys every day. And…oh crap…"
"What?"
"It's freakin' huge!"
"The noise…it's getting louder."
"Forget the noise; that thing is headed straight for us! Get inside!"
"One hundred."
Kopa and Vitani both sprinted away to the safety of the cave, the growl from the twin engines growing stronger all the while. Hermann thundered past only feet above the sloping ledge, glad that he could not see anyone outside at that moment; little did he know that one of the cubs he was most anxious to see again had been watching until only seconds ago. The plane had come in so close, in fact, that the tallest part of Pride Rock, complete with 'improvement', was actually above Hermann's head as he went by. From inside the cave, the two cubs could still hear the rumbling sound; at first it sounded as if it were going further away, then it appeared to be closing in yet again before winding down to a low sputter and then to nothing at all.
"Should I go find mom and dad?" Kopa asked nervously.
"No, you can't go outside!" Vitani said. "Don't you see? Whatever that was, it's seen us here, and now it's sitting outside, waiting. One wrong move and the both of us are toast!" Unbeknownst to Vitani, of course, the mystery creature wasn't even alive. But her curiosity quickly got the better of her, and she cautiously poked hear head out to have a look.
"What is it?" Kopa said. "Can you see anything out there?"
"It's gigantic!" Vitani answered in a frantic whisper. "And it's not moving anymore."
"It's probably asleep."
"See, that's why you'd never survive in the Outlands; it's just trying to trick us into thinking it's asleep! There's no way I'm going to fall for that one, no, sir."
"Well what does it look like? Is it a vulture?"
"Not a vulture! It's got three legs!"
"What else?"
"A huge tail with green stripes, and a set of wings with two great big shiny noses…it's probably smelling us out right now!"
"Oh, man, where's Roberto when you need him?"
"He's right next door, remember? He moved in after we took care of Zira."
"Well why hasn't someone gone and got him?"
"Forget it, Kopa, even Roberto couldn't take this one on. It's bigger than he is.'' Vitani saw someone's shadow—she couldn't tell who it belonged to—run by outside in the direction of the noise. "Hey, you," she called, "stop! Please! Something's out there!" A set of feet skidded to a stop. "Simba? Is that you?"
Vitani had guessed right. "Are you guys OK?" Simba asked as he came inside, panting a bit from his run. "What the heck was that?"
"We're OK," Vitani answered, "we got out of the way just in time. Luckily, it hasn't moved since it showed up."
"So you don't know what it is either?" And then, Simba was unexpectedly joined by a rather panicked fourth:
"¡Señor! ¡Su Majestad! Dormía en las rocas cuando oí este soni—
"English, Roberto!" Simba begged. "English!"
"Sorry…I said I was asleep, and I hear this incredible noise, it comes from straight overhead. Do you know—
"We were hoping you would know what it was."
"Ni idea. No clue."
"Well whatever it is," Kopa said, looking at the spot where the airplane was sitting, "it's right over there."
"My God…" Roberto said when he saw the contraption for himself, "I think that is what the people call 'avión' in Barcelona; I do not know the word in English."
"Are these things dangerous?"
"Oh, very. They are bird hunters, I hear; any bird in the sky, no matter how big. Perhaps if we are diplomatic, we can convince it to leave…"
"You're right, we have to try and get rid of it. I can't put my pride's safety and well-being at stake." Simba started to walk towards the plane, but halted his stride after a few steps. "Roberto," he said, looking back at the crocodile, "I know it's asking a lot, but would you mind coming with us? If diplomacy fails, we'll need all the help we can get; you'd be doing us a huge favor. Again."
"Save me a piece of the gazelle from this morning, and you have a deal."
"Good; Kopa and Vitani, you two follow us and stay next to me. We can't leave anyone behind on their own."
In a long line, eighteen lions, seven cubs—Kopa, Vitani, Wolfgang, Lied, and three additional arrivals since Hermann's departure—and one croc advanced on the strange newcomer. I see they've brought out the welcoming committee, Hermann thought as he peeped backwards over the headrest. Perhaps I'll have a bit of fun with this. Crouching as low as he could, under the bottom of the windows, he waited and listened.
Roberto was the first to say anything once the line had formed a semicircle around the new arrival: "¡En el nombre del Rey de las Tierras Manadeñas, te mando que nos digas quién eres!"
"Roberto," Kopa whispered, "I don't think it's going to understand—
Just then, part of the tail wagged back and forth as Hermann pushed the rudder pedals with his hand. "It moved!" everyone whispered.
"See, I told you it wasn't asleep," Vitani said proudly. "I bet it's scared senseless now. Watch this!" She took off running straight towards the parked plane, at which point Hermann turned on every flashing light he could find. Vitani's courage quickly devolved into everything but:
"Aaaugh! Help! It's gonna eat me!"
The lights went off. "Who are you?" Simba said. "What do you want?" He was still concerned, but he couldn't help but be a little bit amused by Vitani's sudden change of heart. Inside the cockpit, Hermann decided his little prank had run on for long enough. From where they were standing, the group of lions saw a door swing open and a hand with a cane emerge.
"Who am I?" a well-known accented voice asked. "Only one who seeks to prove a point: as I believe it was told to one of you before, 'Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz doesn't break his promises'."
"Hermann?" Kopa gasped. "Is that you?"
"What do you think?" Hermann was still only one-quarter visible as he tried to extricate himself from the cockpit, no small undertaking with his disability.
"If you're Hermann," Kopa said, nearly ecstatic, "where did you grow up, what's my name, and how many sharps are in the key of A minor?"
"Stuttgart, Kopa…and zero," Hermann said as he finally wrestled himself out of the airplane and stood up as straight as he could to face the pride. "Surely you didn't think I'd fall for something that elementary, did you? The last part is a trick question: A minor is relative to C major, and as such, it has no sharps at all." Hermann took a quick look at the group of familiar faces on each side of him, which was a big mistake: with his head turned to the left, he couldn't see Kopa bounding towards him until too late, at which point he was flat on his back with Kopa prancing around on top of him.
"Hermann's back! Hermann's back! Dad, look, it's Hermann!"
"I told you I'd come back, didn't I?" Hermann said, not daring to stand up again lest he get reintroduced to the ground.
"I knew you'd come back again, I knew it!" Kopa looked like he was fit to burst. "You made it, you're finally…is that cane new?"
"Oh, you noticed that, did you? Yes, I bought it when I got back home. Do you like the flames?"
"Yeah, it makes you look like you're going fast! Is he yours too?"
"Is who mine?"
"Him," Kopa said, looking at the plane. "Or is it a 'her'? I can't tell."
"Ah, you mean my ride? It's actually not alive; it's an airplane. We talked about those before I went back to Germany, remember?"
"This is an airplane? I thought you said they were as big as Pride Rock."
"The biggest ones are. This one, however, is just sized for two people."
"But if it's not alive, then why does it have two noses and a set of wings?"
"They're propeller spinners, not noses; perhaps I should just show you how everything works. Go ahead and get in; there's a pair of seats, just like the car I had."
Kopa looked back at his mother, who nodded in the direction of the plane, for approval. "He's not in any danger, is he?" Nala asked Hermann.
"Remember that old Mercedes that Markos and I were in last time?"
"Yes. What about it?"
"You're hundreds of times more likely to get hurt driving in one of those than flying in that airplane. He'll be fine; I'll just take him for a quick ride, and then we can all—
"A ride…you mean you're going to make it fly? I thought he was just going to sit inside while it's on the ground."
"Well we could just stand here and look at it all day, but to be honest, I rather had something else in mind. Don't worry, I have my license!"
"I don't know about this…Simba, what do you think?" Nala was expecting nothing less than a grounding order, but that was not at all what she got.
"Be careful up there, Hermann."
"Sometimes you just amaze me, and not in a good way," Nala groaned. Simba could only look at her and laugh.
"Don't worry," Hermann said, "I know what I'm doing. We'll be back in ten minutes, not a second more."He got back in his seat and started turning knobs and switches, with Kopa looking on in excitement.
"See that button right there?" he asked Kopa, pointing at a spot on the panel. "Press it."
"Are you sure? What does it do?"
"You'll see. Everyone clear the props!"
From well to the side of the plane, Simba and Nala watched as the propellers started to rotate. Even with all of Hermann's stories and oddities from Germany, they had never seen or even heard of anything quite like the flying machine that had swooped in minutes ago.
"Ready to go for a spin?" Hermann said over the propeller noise.
"Yeah!" Kopa answered. "Is it supposed to be this loud? I can barely hear you!"
"Trust me, this is nothing! OK, give me a countdown from ten…we go on one."
"Ten, nine—
"Um, excuse me, what language is that?" Hermann said in German. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're saying." Kopa understood.
"Zehn! Neun!"
"Do you think he really knows what he's doing?" Nala said to Simba. "Even if the 'government' has to license him to sit in that thing, there's something about it that leaves me nervous."
"Acht! Sieben!"
"From what I've seen of him," Simba replied, "I think Hermann's always trended towards humility. He always talked about how there were better doctors, better singers…"
"Sechs! Fünf!"
"So what's your point?"
"Vier! Drei! Zwei!"
"The point is, if he actually tells you straight up that he knows his stuff, we can probably assume that's an understatement as well…which means there isn't much reason to doubt him in that regard, is there?"
"EINS! Go, Hermann! Make it fly!"
Hermann firewalled the engines and started the plane hurtling down the stretch of grass, while Kopa watched out the window, bug-eyed, as the ground suddenly shrank away.
"Come to think of it," Nala said as she watched the plane lift off, "even if we did have reason to doubt his expertise, what kind of chances do you think would we have had of talking him out of it?"
"A million to one."
"Kind of generous, don't you think?"
Friedrich Johann Ross was buried with full honors shortly after his death. The hospital rebuilt the damaged part of the building, and a new professorship of internal medicine now exists in his name at Universität Stuttgart. At Hermann's request, a few of his personal effects were placed into the hospital's ownership, and his extensive music collection was donated to the University; his diploma, lab coat, and nameplate still hang proudly on the walls in Hermann's hospital office.
Markos Wilhelm Schreiber now resides in Mannheim, not content to leave Southern Germany for at least the time being, working as attending physician in the city's emergency room. He has been banned from the local watering hole after celebrating a bit too much when the Stuttgart Football Club won the Bundesliga Championship; the police report filed after the outside of the bar was covered in toilet paper and chalked on all sides with the winning team's insignia states that "alcohol may have been a factor". Markos remains completely tone-deaf, and has yet to live down his reputation for getting stuck in trees after one too many drinks.
Wolfgang finally got a chance to enjoy the childhood he never would have had. Vitani, as his older cousin, personally undertook the task of teaching him the best ways to cause mischief without getting caught. She is still best friends with Kopa.
Roberto the crocodile was personally offered a large pond directly adjacent to Pride Rock for his services to the pride. He found a companion shortly after moving in, and now has a family of five to look after: Inez, Diego, Esteban, Marisol, and José María. Roberto has promised to not engage in any more ear biting and has proven himself an invaluable asset in hyena control; so far, the only hyena brave (or stupid) enough to get near Pride Rock ended his wayward journey from the Outlands as an aperitif. As a gesture of gratitude, Roberto and his family were all designated independent; they are the only animals in the kingdom to ever enjoy this distinction.
The Outlanders from Zira's pride quickly settled into their new lives. After Hermann returned to Germany for the first time, the newest cubs to be born made sure that the soccer ball he left behind didn't last more than a few days. They have recently taken to pouncing on Kopa's tail for amusement, often finding themselves on the receiving end of some harsh-sounding foreign words as a result. Much to Kopa's dismay, the cubs, in typical youngster fashion, appear to have no plans to stop torturing him, no matter how scary he makes himself sound in response to their antics.
Kopa never spent one day without thinking of his human friends in Germany, whether he was standing at his side, cane and all, or thousands of miles away in another country. He takes care of Hermann's old songbook as if the well-being of the world depended on it.
Although the adults have occasionally spoken about him and Vitani becoming a pair in the far-off future, he believes the entire concept to be rather odd; when questioned once about his feelings regarding the subject, he only responded with a few choice words in German, intentionally switching languages so that everybody else would have to figure it out on their own. Kopa spends his free time playing with Vitani and relaxing with his parents when not looking after Wolfgang, and always remembers who he has to thank for the ability to do so. Much to his dismay, Simba and Nala continually describe him as having 'a heart of gold', which provides Vitani with an almost-endless source of amusement.
Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz, once back in Stuttgart, found that he treated patients much differently than he had before, especially the younger visitors to the hospital. The fact that he was now in a higher position at work had nothing to do with this transformation; the time spent looking after Kopa bore one hundred percent of this responsibility. From time to time, passersby would mention that they thought they heard the faint sound of a guitar or singing coming from one of the rooms; Hermann always played the fool when questioned, saying he had no idea what any of these people were talking about—perhaps the fumes from the hospital disinfectant were getting to their heads—but the shiny new six-string in the trunk of his car begged to differ. Perhaps to Hermann's advantage, such inquiries into the mystery music were few and far between, due to the fact that most of the time, nobody except an occasional security guard or custodian was around to hear anything in the first place: the majority of these impromptu performances took place late at night in the children's ward, where long after clocking out for the day, a white-coated man would walk from bedside to bedside with an acoustic guitar hung over his shoulder and a cane in his right hand, strumming out melodies for those who couldn't get to sleep on their own.
And so Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz returned to Kenya, to Kopa's family, to the one place he considered as much of a home as Germany. He brought cameras, books with pictures from all over Europe and North America, a new song book, a music player with speakers…anything and everything he could think of that might pique Kopa's interest. He could never stay as long as he wanted to, but every time he returned home, he came back a few months later, just as he always promised. Finding Pride Rock was always as task for him in and of itself, as the exact location has never been plotted on any map, and some wonder if the prolific structure is even in Kenya at all. But regardless of its exact location, one fact remains for certain, confirmed time and again by those who have passed by the spot. To this day, from the highest point on the highest rock, the national flag of Germany still flies proudly over the surrounding plains. Lest any one of them forget the heroic actions of a certain pair of men, neither Simba, nor Nala, nor Kopa nor Vitani have any intention of ever taking it down.
Schmeichelnd hold und lieblich klingen
Graceful, charming and sweet is the sound
Unseres Lebens Harmonien,
Of our life's harmonies,
Und dem Schönheitssinn entschwingen
And from a sense of beauty arise
Blumen sich, die ewig blühn.
Flowers which eternally bloom.
Fried und Freude gleiten freundlich
Peace and joy advance in perfect concord,
Wie der Wellen Wechselspiel.
Like the changing play of the waves.
Was sich drängte rauh und feindlich,
All that was harsh and hostile,
Ordnet sich zu Hochgefühl.
Has turned into sublime delight.
Wenn der Töne Zauber walten
When music's enchantment reigns,
Und des Wortes Weihe spricht,
Speaking of the sacred word,
Muss sich Herrliches gestalten,
Magnificence takes form,
Nacht und Stürme werden Licht.
The night and the tempest turns to light:
Äuss're Ruhe, inn're Wonne
In outward peace and inward bliss
Herrschen für den Glücklichen.
Reign the fortunate ones.
Doch der Künste Frühlingssonne
All art in the spring's sun
Lässt aus beiden Licht entstehn.
Lets light flow from both
Christoph Kuffner
Vienna, 1808
ENDE