Fish Market Fear Factor

I've been ready for Tales of Hoffmann to open now for about three weeks. It's frustrating that we've needed so many rehearsals, but our leading man has been under-prepared since day one and his delinquency has taken its toll on the rest of us. Late night rehearsals have been with Orchestra for the last two weeks. Costumes are full of technical problems. Quick changes aren't quick enough. I've had to buy new underwear because two of my costume changes are backstage and I want to look my best when wearing next to nothing in front of all the tekkies.

Last weekend, Klosterneuburg had a fish market in the downtown Rathausplatz. There were live fish, dead fish, cooked fish and large German men wearing body mics selling house plants and home furnishings out of their truck trailers.

During our dinner break, my friend Alex and I were starving. As it was a Sunday, stores and restaurants were closed, so our only choice was "Der Fisch Markt." We lined up at, what we thought, looked like the most sanitary kiosk and took a peek at all the choices. An assortment of precooked fish and other fruits of the sea were arranged in neat rows beneath the presentation glass. I remember that there were cooked eels, each about a metre long. It seemed the most exotic and unsafe choice, but in retrospect, that probably would have been Valhalla compared to my selection. Alex and I decided on the perch. They looked relatively small and harmless, sort of like lake trout, each about 25-30 cm in length with bronze scales. They weren't filets, nor had they seen a knife at all because the heads were still very much intact and there were no incisions to their underbellies. In fact, they looked like they had been plucked from the water to immediately suffer a paralyzing death by intense fire. Indeed, the one I chose had sort of a stiffened swishing motion to its tail as though it had made every last effort to escape the grill before giving up the ghost. Further evidence of its whole cooked-ness, was the burnt out eyes; a rather humane consequence as I would rather not have my dinner looking at me while I ate its body.

Upon verifying my victim, the server took my selection, weighed it, put it on a paper plate, added sautéed potato slices and quoted the price. I was surprised at his pleasant demeanor when I was the third customer in a row to pay for a five-euro fish with a fifty-euro bill, but I did get a pocket FULL of coins in return.

Before I go further, let me introduce Alex. He's also in the Hoffmann with me, playing the parts of Nathanael and Spalanzani with a good high, lyric baritone voice (those parts are usually sung by tenor). Although a native Wiener, his mother is American and he earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Ohio. He looks and talks very American. He and I occasionally go rock climbing. Next week we're doing a multi-pitch route in Vachau, but more on that later…

Okay, so, Alex and I sat at a picnic table, added generous sides of ketchup to our entrées and began the feed. I was shocked that my fish was cold, but passed it off as a cultural bias. However, discomfort quietly returned when Alex expressed the same surprise. I had taken comfort in the fact that, as a local, he had done this sort of thing before – (the equivalent, perhaps, of a Fish Fry to the Floridians). 'Apparently not. Remember, that Vienna is very much inland. No oceans nearby. No eel in the Danube, if you catch my drift.

Though cold, the fish were tender enough to open with our bare fingers. At least, I used my fingers; Alex, a knife and fork. We had to work our way around the translucent skeleton to extract the meat and then had to pick out the occasional costal bone from our mouths before swallowing. The meat was tasteless except for the aftertaste, which was… fishy.

My fish was a female. There was no doubt about it. 'Want to know how I know? Eggs. Lost of roe. She was pregnant with five cubic centimeters of brown perch caviar. She was home to, perhaps, schools of potential perch neatly tucked away to surprise a naïve Auslander like me. Alex's fish was void of offspring so, assuming that his was male, we mused on the possibility that our meals were lovers; a Romeo and Juliet, swearing undying love to one another, and fatefully remaining united even beyond death; having shared, not only the bittersweet ecstasy of spawning in secret and the consequent family betrayals, their flight from the conforming Schools, the fisherman's pursuit, the nets and the grills, but now, also the simultaneous consuming of their bodies by their captors' clients!

Alex dared me to eat the eggs. I did. They tasted nothing like the good black or red stuff in tiny jars you get at the deli. Instead they tasted the same as the fish meat: bland and cold with that same piquant, depths-of-the-sea aftertaste. I looked at Alex's plate. There was a long tubular organ he'd just cut into.
"What do you think this is?" he asked.
"Liver" I replied.
"'Looks kinda big to be a liver."

He asked me if I wanted half. I had just finished consuming a mother and her children and found nothing morally inconsistent with a little liver to top it off. It was spongy and even blander than what I had previously taken in.
"Yep. It's a liver."

Looking down at the sad, brown puréed mess book ended by the head and tail on my plate, I said to Alex, "Let's go the pub and see the soccer game." We went and caught all but the last two minutes of overtime of the frustrating game between England and Portugal (which Portugal won with a field goal).

As a final non sequitur to this posting, I must express how disappointed I am that the three best riders in this year's Tour de France have been disqualified on doping charges. It really has taken the wind out of everyone's sails (at least the cycling fans). I was really banking on Ivan Basso to win and I was hoping for a showdown between him and Jan Ulrich. I cry foul play by the doctors!