Eternal Life (11 page)
Authors: Wolf Haas
“Why won’t you sit down?”
“I prefer to stand,” Brenner says.
“Are you afraid of sitting?” Vergolder says. “Are you afraid you’ll have to move out of your civil service apartment?”
“You know all sorts of things about me,” Brenner says.
“That you want to pin my in-laws’ murder on me, for example. If Nemec hadn’t been there. You probably would’ve put me in prison.”
Needless to say, this was nonsense. Nemec was the one who’d wanted to dunk Vergolder. And it was Nemec, too, who gave Brenner the investigation orders at the time.
And just when it became clear that it wasn’t going anywhere, Nemec nudged it over to Brenner. But it didn’t matter to Brenner. That was just the last straw. When he said to himself, There’s no point anymore, and then he chucked his badge at them. Although, I’ll say it again and again, these days, when you’re forty-four, well, hats off to a thing like that.
And all that about the civil service apartment. That had Brenner thinking all over again, Maybe there’s a possibility that his classmate Schwaighofer could get him a one- or two-year deferral.
“You don’t know about everything as much as I thought you did,” Brenner says. “You don’t even know that Lorenz doesn’t even need an alibi from you because he’s already got one! Lorenz thinks he has to lie for your sake.”
“All the better,” Vergolder says.
“Just tell the truth finally. It’s all a huge misunderstanding. Lorenz believes he has to protect you and you believe you have to protect Lorenz.”
“All the better for me and Lorenz,” Vergolder says.
With that, though, he promptly rang for the maid. She saw the guest out, and Brenner lost all sense of where he was again because it was only a few steps to the front door, and before, he’d had to follow Vergolder up stairs and through hallways.
It seemed to him like in those pictures, maybe you know them, where the people are going up a staircase, up and up, but suddenly they’re back where they started, so, what’s there can’t actually be real because—constantly going up and suddenly right back at the bottom. There’s a painter who does that kind of thing, makes you real nervous. But it was actually calming Brenner down now since it meant he’d caught on to Vergolder’s human weakness. That he was an antiques show-off and had schlepped Brenner through half his castle.
But the maid seemed to take notice that he didn’t know where he was anymore, and she couldn’t help but smile a little. Now, she had a painted incisor. A kind of neon color she had on it, on one of her incisors. Needless to say, Brenner recognized Clare Corrigan right away now.
Her name was actually Elfi Lohninger. Engljähringer told him that she’d dropped out of school. And that the people were talking about her being one of Vergolder’s
“Nebenzu,”
she told him that, too. But, the fact that Clare was
now working as a maid at Vergolder’s, well, she didn’t tell him that.
Kati just gave him Elfi’s composition book to take with him. But then Mandl showed up and sent Brenner off packing to Vergolder’s. And now the book was just lying in his room at the Hirschenwirt, and he still hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet.
“6th Grade,” it said on the book. “Clare Corrigan.” But the name was crossed out, and in somebody else’s handwriting it said: Lohninger, Elfriede. The last composition in the book was on the theme: The Significance of Our Reservoir as a National Symbol.
But you almost couldn’t read the composition anymore, because it’d been marked up in red all over the place. And written at the end:
“Unsatisfactory!”
And now, this was the same handwriting that wrote “Lohninger, Elfriede” on the cover, namely, Engljähringer’s handwriting.
“Completely off topic!” Engljähringer scrawled on, but for Brenner it was the complete opposite, for him, of course, the topic was spot-on:
“I’d like to write a little bit about a company that’s played an important role in the building of the dam.”
That’s how she started off. And the very first word, Engljähringer the schoolteacher had scribbled under it in red—must’ve been because maybe you don’t begin a composition with “I,” like they used to say about letter-writing.
But Brenner was reminded of another scribbly red line now, the one that was the wrinkle in Mandl’s furrowed forehead when he found Brenner on Engljähringer’s couch.
“The company was an American chemical company. It provided the Austrian companies with the necessary know-how for them to manufacture high-grade concrete for the three dam walls.”
Engljähringer the schoolteacher had put the American know-how in brackets and written the more domestic
Fachwissen
above it.
“I would like to write about what this company did beforehand in America. Maybe I should write about why I know about it. My father married the boss’s daughter. I’m not from this marriage, though, I’m a secret. This is why secrets have always interested me more than the official story, because I myself am a secret. So, I would prefer to write about what I know about the company, because the dam, well, what’s there to say about it except for it produces electricity.”
“Far too long of an introduction!!!” Engljähringer the schoolteacher wrote in the margin of this paragraph. And everywhere else, too—the page was just teeming with red marks. Brenner refused to believe that this was one and the same hand now. That the hand of Engljähringer, translucent freckles crawling all the way up to the fingernails, had caused this massacre. And even thundering out three exclamation marks with that red pen of hers.
“My father married the daughter of the boss of this American chemical company. I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that my father was a gilder and the company in America manufactured glow-in-the-dark watch faces. But it fits somehow, gold and glow-in-the-dark paint, I think, the one shines by day, the other by night. And the boss’s father, he was the founder of the company. His name was Parson, and the company was called Parson Radium, and the luminous paint that made him extremely rich, was called “Light Night.”
“Why so wordy?” the red pen of Engljähringer the schoolteacher asked, but Brenner wasn’t letting it distract him anymore now.
“Soon, old man Parson had two hundred dial painters working for him. This was around 1915. Above all, young women. They had to lick their brushes so that they could shape them into a fine enough tip to paint the tiny watch numerals. Sometimes the painters would paint their fingernails or teeth just for fun because, then, they would light up in the dark, too. Unfortunately, one after another, they died. So, there was an investigation.”
This was now the point where the phone rang in Brenner’s hotel room, it must’ve been around two in the afternoon. But he didn’t get it. But then it wouldn’t quit ringing, so then he did go get it.
“Brenner here.”
At that exact moment, though, the caller hung up.
“Son of a …” Brenner grumbled, then sat back down again with the composition book.
He couldn’t find his place again right away, and so he picked it up a little too far down. And so, he read that the results of the investigation were kept a secret. He didn’t know what all that about the results was about, though, because that was in the paragraph that he’d skipped over. Needless to say, now he’s curious and backs up to read:
“So, there was an investigation. The investigation was secret. The doctors observed the workers in a dark room. There, the hair, faces, arms, necks, clothes, and undergarments of the dial painters glowed in the dark. Even the dial painters’ breath glowed in the dark.”
Now Brenner was back where he was before. It struck him that, there on the second page, there were almost no red marks anymore.
Needless to say, two possibilities. Either Engljähringer had become exactly as enthralled by the story as he himself was now and completely forgot about marking it while she read. Or, it was already clear by this point that there was nothing but an F in it for Clare, and Engljähringer thought, Off-topic, and why should I bother correcting one page more?
“Parson kept the results of the investigation secret. The work conditions for the painters remained the same for years. Until there got to be so many victims that Parson
had to appear in court. But he was found not guilty. Thanks to the victims being in apparent good health. That is, at the onset of contamination the victims felt better than usual. This was because the body produces an especially large number of blood cells as resistance. Red probably. And then, suddenly it stops doing that. That’s why the epidemic went unnoticed for years. But according to the law, any lawsuits seeking reparations must be brought within two years, at the latest, from the onset of the illness. And the epidemic was triggered by “Light Night” much earlier than that. For example, on November 16, 1922, one of the painters was on her way to work at the glow-in-the-dark factory. She felt perfectly healthy. Her bones were so brittle, though, that her leg broke while she walked. One week later, she died. She was twenty-seven years old. Her name was Clare Corrigan.”
Now, though. The teacher had finally given up on correcting. The last two pages, she just, pffffffffffffffffft, got it? Top to bottom, I’m talking diagonal, crossed out. Those were the pages where Clare described how the company’s history carried on.
First, Parson developed a non-hazardous glow-in-the-dark type of manufacturing, then, WWII, so he sold the glow-in-the-dark fittings to the Americans for their planes. Needless to say, that was a huge deal, because nobody else could have delivered that. Millions, boy, I don’t need to tell you.
And after the war, immediately switched saddles to erector chemistry, in other words, construction materials. Because they were thinking, after the war, people are building, and so they specialized in high-grade concrete mixtures.
Brenner, now: Aha! effect. Because what do you need for a dam, high-grade concrete, of course, and where do the Zellers get their high-grade concrete from right after the war. Now, the Zellers got a bit of a leg up there from the Americans. That was still Parson junior, though, who got that all set up. Not too far from the place where just fifty years later he’d be found on a ski lift.
Brenner had to read her scribbling a few more times before, little by little, he could make sense of it. And he needed the most time for the last few sentences. Because Clare had literally filled her composition book, I mean, full up to the last page. And then she still wasn’t done. She wrote the conclusion on the inside of the back cover. The cover was blue, though, so it was blue written on blue now.
“Parson expanded to Europe. And to Zell, a huge contract, where during the war hundreds of prisoners of war built (DIED) the dam. And now the Americans sent their own prisoners of war (US) up there, dying by the dozens, too. And 1951, the Symbol of the Republic, finally complete.”
Brenner stared out at the lake a few minutes, but then—all of the sudden the room felt too small to him. Put his shoes on and wanted to walk down to the lake. But once he set foot on the street, he went the opposite direction. Not down to the lake but up to Dreifaltigkeitsgasse. And, goes without saying, at the end of Dreifaltigkeitsgasse was the Feinschmeck Café.
Interesting, though. Someone must’ve run electricity through the Feinschmeck’s door handle just for kicks. Alright, don’t get me wrong now. Brenner had the door to the Feinschmeck open just a crack—immediately sees Nemec sitting there. Needless to say, electroshock. Shut the door immediately, of course. But, interesting! From the shock, he lost control of his muscles. Needed a few seconds before the glass door, which weighed a ton, would finally shut.
Maybe, though, this was only on account of the hydraulic door-closer that was there to keep the door from slamming. That must’ve been it. This is what Brenner was preoccupied with as he walked back down Dreifaltigkeitsgasse. Because he didn’t want to think about what kind of business Nemec suddenly had back in Zell. And he didn’t want to know why Nemec had called him earlier. Because suddenly Brenner was quite certain now that it could only have been Nemec. Who else would let the phone ring till it won’t ring anymore.
But he couldn’t think about the hydraulic door-closer and the telephone ringing forever. Another distraction’s needed now. Brenner buys himself the
Pinzgauer Post
and takes it down to the lake. But instead of reading the paper, he does something completely different. Because when you’ve had a shock, you’re often capable of things in the moment that you normally wouldn’t be. Like a bolt of lightning now, Brenner makes a decision, and he makes his way to Perterer Jr.’s for the Walther.
But one thing you can’t forget. Brenner was still a ditherer, through and through.
He had another reason for not deciding on a gun for
months now. Perterer Sr. shot himself not quite two months before the lift scandal. So every time Brenner was in the gun shop, he thought: Maybe it wouldn’t hurt any if I get to talking one more time with Perterer Jr. a little.
“The Walther it is,” Perterer Jr. said with a smile. But you could tell he hadn’t been a salesman very long. Because now that Brenner’s finally come to a decision, Perterer Jr. says:
“Although. The Glock has its advantages, too, of course.”
“The Glock, yes, and to think, it was almost the Glock.”
“All synthetic. No rust, no mess, no nothing. And if you throw it in the water, it still works.”
“Or in the snow.”
“The American police sure know why they’ve got the Glock.”
“The police don’t know everything.”
“No, especially ours,” Perterer Jr. said, laughing, because he was the kind of guy, if something amused him—instantly laughed his head off. But, then, kept right on talking in all seriousness:
“One thing I’d be interested in. In a case like this, what did the police do exactly with their binoculars?”
Now, in twenty years on the force, Brenner had never had binoculars. A gun, always, but never binoculars. For a moment he thought Perterer Jr. was just such an inexperienced salesman that he thought he could possibly peddle binoculars to the police. Because it’s not just pistols and rifles in a gun shop. They’ve also got scopes and perfectly ordinary field glasses on display at Perterer’s.