This is both something more and something less than the truth. Western Bavarians and those inhabitants of southern Germany living between the Rhine and the Moselle would consider such an answer reticent to the point of being misleading. On the other hand, there is in fact no English equivalent of Fasching. Which large numbers of Anglo-Saxons think a shame.
Carnival it is in the sense that it is a traditional celebration held at the same time, and stemming from the same roots as the Central and South American Mardi Gras. Traditional it is in the sense that, as in France, Italy and many other Catholic countries, it is an ancient pagan festival adopted by the church and religiously observed through many centuries. But the way in which it is celebrated is something the Germans have made peculiarly their own.
Perhaps as a relief after the bitter winters of the region, perhaps as a necessary safety valve to balance the staunchly enforced day-to-day ethos of the community and its pastors, perhaps even as a salute to the coming rebirth of the Spring, the season of Fasching has developed into a period of total license.
To put it more bluntly, it's a sexual free-for-all.
Certainly there are masked balls and special masses, fairs and fetes, speeches and street parades… but the really important thing about it, for those who observe it, is the fact that you can do what you like, with whom you like, wherever you like, and nobody in the world has the right to reproach you for it afterwards!
For one week at the end of the winter, the towns and villages of the region – especially the smaller ones – shut up shop and have themselves a ball!
Ideally, at the beginning of that week, the stores put up their shutters (for there IS a great deal of wine and beer drunk and a certain amount of rowdiness results), the office workers leave their desks, the farm workers come in from the country, and husbands and wives, bidding each other an affectionate farewell, arrange to meet again in seven days' time. What happens in between is nobody's business but their own – and there are no recriminations. The whole population sets out to join in the merriment, spending the time with the partner or partners of their choice.
In practice, of course, it is by no means as clear-cut or as simple as that. The custom is not universally followed, for only thing. For another the complexities of modern life have inevitably modified the original romantic conception. But the fact remains – in that part of Germany, at that time of year, ladies requiring a temporary change of mate and gentlemen out for an easy lay have it all their own way, married or unmarried.
Which explains why sixteen year old Susan Templar, running away from the American hospital that rainy evening in late February, found the village of Siegsdorff in a state of suppressed excitement bordering on hysteria.
The street lamps at the entrance to the village were unlit and the shop fronts shuttered and barred, but there were floodlights illuminating the steeply gabled gingerbread houses ground around the cobbled central platz, and over the drumming of the rain a big brass band blared bravely through the open doors of a flag-decked Town Hall. A car passed Susan just before she reached the square, spraying a fan of water over her from a huge puddle in the road, but otherwise there was no traffic to be seen.
Groups of villagers with linked arms ignored the rain to surge across the shining cobbles laughing and singing. Through the leaded windows of the gasthaus and two beer-gardens on opposite corners of the square, a high-pitched roar of conversation penetrated the night. And amongst the crowd, masked revelers in costume darted maniacally, whooping, and giggling.
Susan pulled up short as soon as she reached the fringe of the illuminations, astonished by what she saw. She had forgotten it was the week of Fasching. Two hussars and a black-bearded pirate, accompanied by a Gretchen whose cotton bodice was plastered to her taut-nippled breasts by the rain, bore down on her shouting. "Thursday night, Fraulein, and still alone?" the pirate called. "A kiss on those young lips, and you'll know what to do with the rest of the week!"
Laughing foolishly, the others danced around her, crowding her against the wall as he pushed the domino mask up on to his forehead and seized her familiarly around the waist. She twisted out of his winey embrace and ducked hastily into the open door of a biergarten on her left.
The place was a bedlam of frenetic activity. Beneath the low-beamed ceiling, waiters in white coats swooped bearing trays laden with bottles and glasses. Among the crowded tables an accordion player in lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat tried vainly to make himself heard above the waves of drunken chatter that crashed off the walls. At the far end of the smoke-filled room red-faced men stood four deep around the bar shouting their orders. The overheated atmosphere was heavy with the smell of damp clothes and cheap cigars.
He was sitting, miraculously alone, at a small table not far from the door.
"Stefan!" she cried excitedly. "What on earth are you doing here?"
"Susan! What a splendid surprise!"
He rose to his feet, his slim body lithe in its roll-neck sweater and jeans, the narrowed eyes beneath the thatch of blond hair as compelling as ever. "Sit down," he said. "What can I get for you?"
She let herself drop gratefully into the vacant chair. And all at once she was agonizingly conscious that she was faint with hunger. "I think… Could I possibly have… Could you get me something to eat?" she asked weakly. "Oh Stefan, I am glad to see you!"
"But, my dear, of course." Effortlessly, he secured the attention of a perspiring waiter, ordered her hot sausages and beer, smiled at her invitingly over the table. "And what happy wind blows my little Susan into Siegsdorff, of all places?"
"I've just been… I had to… I've been visiting at the American hospital," the exhausted girl said awkwardly.
"You're here with your parents, then?"
"Er – no. I came on my own."
The boy raised his eyebrows. "On your own?" he repeated. "But how? By bus? No… you're soaking wet. On some kind of bicycle? A motor bike? And how are you going to get back?"
"I'll manage," Susan said, wondering how she would or if she even wanted to try. By now her father would be home and she would be missed. What would they do?
Stefan shot her a look from under his eyebrows. "How? In this rain? There are no more buses. And don't forget the Fasching. You may not find a car so easily on the way back, or if you do it may be too easy!"
The girl looked up suddenly. Her mouth was full of sausage and her spine was still shivering under the impact of his look.
"How d'you know hitched here?" she demanded.
"Simple deduction," he said easily. "How else could you have gotten here? No – I think you'd better let me take you home. But first there's a little place around the corner I'd like you to see."
"Oh, Stefan, would you really? That would be wonderful!" Susan's eyes were shining. She'd even be prepared to go home and face the music, she could worry about her attitude to what she had seen when she got there, if Stefan was going to take her!
"What did you say about some other place?"
"I'll take you there as soon as you're through," he said.
When they got outside, the rain had eased off a little and the square was crowded. They were threading their way through the jostling throng by the Rathaus when Susan was suddenly seized around the waist and dragged off to one side in the middle of a group of whooping students in costume. She called for Stefan, but the crowd closed in behind her and cut him off. Struggling ineffectually, she saw that her captors were the pirate and the two hussars she had escaped from before she went into the biergarten. "Put me down!" she cried. "Let go of me this minute!"