The Attempted Destruction of Herr Neumann

His medical condition is light banter, however, compared to the subject of his two sons, whom he yammers about even more frequently than his ailments. The sons live off the dole and redirect their welfare payments into precision re-enactments of the US Civil War. On weekends they go out to the forests south of Dresden and pretend to be Confederate soldiers in the Kavalleriekorps of the Army of Northern Virginia, wearing stinking, scratchy uniforms made of untreated natural fibers. Their wives wear calico dresses and lacy bonnets. Rudolf always complains that his sons have inherited his love of things past but do not know how to apply it. Worse, he says, they are so hung up on maintaining 1860s verisimilitude that they don’t know how to turn it off when they return from the forests. Rudolf asks me have I noticed that they haven’t been here at Karl’s for quite some time? I say I have never seen them and he says that just proves how long they’ve been gone, because before the Civil War nonsense they used to come around all the time to drink a few pints with their old man. These days, he explains, Karl’s Kneipe is too modern for them, and they only take their whiskey from the bladder of a...