Eternal Life (16 page)

Now, surrounding the glass coffee table was an honest-to-goodness sectional, so, plenty of room. On one section sat the German, and next to her was Andi, so they were facing the door that Brenner came in through. Clare was sitting with her back to the window, because, across from the window, the TV was on with the sound off. Briefly he wondered how Clare would react if he were to sit directly across from her so that she couldn’t see the TV. But then he said:

“I prefer to stand.”

“Would you care for something to drink?”

The migraine pills always made him terribly thirsty, he’d often drink five, six liters of water in a day. And today, three pills and practically no water, so you can imagine just how thirsty he was.

“No thanks, not thirsty.”

The German got a little irritated now, in a way that Brenner had never cared for. “Do sit down!”

He just couldn’t stand this tone. When somebody got snippy with him. And especially when it’s an old woman, he was particularly sensitive. Psychological, maybe.

Adults used to always take this righteous tone when they were saying something about your hair, back when Brenner still had long hair, i.e. the sixties. He was briefly reminded of this understated aggression now. That it’s just not natural for you not to go to the barber.

That was a long time ago. Over twenty years ago he’d cut it. At first people didn’t recognize him. Even his best friends were startled a second before they were able to tell who he was.

“I prefer to stand.”

“As you wish. Why are you—to what do I owe the honor? Can I help you in some way?”

“It’s not you that I’m here about, actually.”

Now Brenner looks at Andi, next to the German, and says:

“I’m sorry. But Lorenz is dead.” Needless to say, now, the German, biblical wrath: “Are you trying to torment us? Two days after the funeral you’re making jokes about it?”

Because she couldn’t have known. But Andi, of course, you almost couldn’t see him anymore, he’d sank so deep into the couch. Because the sectional was beige, and so was Andi now—so beige that he almost blended into the sectional. Just his aqua-blue eyes stared out from the sectional, all the more scared.

Czech eyes, Brenner thought, and said:

“Last night Lorenz turned up at a pub in Kaprun. Poisoned himself with a bottle of rum. And early this morning the owner found him dead.”

But the German refused to believe it:

“And who identified him?”

“I did,” Brenner says.

“In what pub, then?” the German says. But not quite as resolute now.

“Actually I wanted to ask you something,” Brenner says.

Andi just nodded in silence. Because, needless to say, Andi knew what was coming.

“Would you prefer to talk in private?” Brenner says.

No, Andi indicated.

“You told everybody that Lorenz died in the fire with Vergolder. Even though you saw with your own eyes that Lorenz got away.”

Brenner looked Andi in the eyes. Well, the two light-blue studs that were spaced a few centimeters apart and riveted to the beige back of the couch. From his eyes, you couldn’t have detected the slightest sign that Andi was about to say something. But all of the sudden he says:

“Lorenz ran down to the lake with me. I said, we’ll make it out to be an accident. Or better yet, it was! Vergolder’s the guilty one, I say to Lorenz. If he gasses up with a cigarette in his mouth. Everybody will see it like that, I say. The police, the insurance, everybody will see it like that, I say. We just have to give the same exact statement, I say to Lorenz. That Vergolder—”

As Andi fell silent, Brenner didn’t think he’d say another word. Because he believed he was dissolving into the sectional with each passing moment, and only the glassy studs in the beige couch-back would be left. But then Andi said:

“Lorenz didn’t want to know anything about it. He shouted at me that on no condition was I to say it was an accident. Because everybody absolutely needed to know that he’d had it with Vergolder. Officially had it. Just like my boss always yells when a customer pisses him off: I’ve had
it with you. Lorenz yelled, I have to tell everybody that he’s officially had it with his uncle.”

“So why didn’t you do it?”

“But I did, right from the start! I told everybody that Lorenz had done it on purpose.”

Andi sits up so straight on the sectional now, you’d have thought he felt the need to justify to Lorenz, not Brenner, why he’d given a false statement.

“And that Lorenz died in the fire? Did you come up with that one, too?”

“It’s not a shame about Vergolder. It is a shame about Lorenz.”

That was the German there, chiming in again now. She’d taken her thick glasses off and was rubbing her eyes with her arm-stumps. Because, needless to say, she wants to rub her eyes just as much as the next person when she’s tired. But people are often weird about things like this, and it was uncomfortable for Brenner to watch her do it.

Five, six times in a row she made the exact same movement. With her right arm-stump, vigorously across the forehead and then down along the outer edge of the nose and around the eye—you’d have thought she was trying to press her eyeball right into her skull. Then, across the forehead again and over to the other eye.

Like I said, it made Brenner uncomfortable, but in spite of this, he found it impossible to look away. Now, pay attention, because it wasn’t because of the arm movements, okay, arm-stumps—no, it was because of the German’s eyes. For the first time, he truly saw her eyes, because normally they
were always magnified and distorted humongously big by the thick bifocals, like a fish, you’d have thought, or how you sometimes see in a nature museum, sort of like an extinct animal.

Needless to say, the German had much smaller eyes in reality. But it wasn’t that. Something else about her eyes was bothering Brenner. But now he’s thinking, Maybe it’s just the liveliness of hers compared to the glassiness of Andi’s doll-eyes.

Then she put her glasses back on, and softly she said: “It’s so typical of all of you. Blaming the Americans’ murder on Lorenz.”

“That’s how the police see it anyway.”

“And how do you see it?”

“Well, how do you see it?” Brenner asks. But he was thinking about something else completely. Or better put, not thinking. You’ve got to picture it like when there’s a word on the tip of your tongue. And it just doesn’t come to you, even though you can feel it there on your tongue. Except that it wasn’t a word that Brenner was searching for.

Now, easier said, of course, like people always say: Don’t think about it and it’ll come to you. Because how are you supposed to not think about it when you absolutely want to know it. And that’s exactly what was going on with Brenner, he couldn’t do anything else but stare intently through the thick bifocal lenses and into the eyes of the German.

But not what you’re thinking, that it was something weird that had him so preoccupied. No, something familiar is what it was. It had him feeling, how should I put it,
uneasy. Or should I say: scared. But these weren’t the words that he was looking for on the tip of his tongue now. I mean, practically speaking, it wasn’t his tongue at all where he was looking. Not on the tip of his tongue, but in the eyes, as it were, because it was an image that he was searching for this whole time. What kind of image, though? Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

“Vergolder,” the German says. Because that was her answer to his question, of course, who, in her opinion, killed the Americans. But that was just the same old story and Brenner wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing it now.

But pay attention. Because for one whole second, well, maybe it’s just like with downhill skiing, when the victor wins by a thousandth of a second. So for only a thousandth of a second, the detective thought of something else altogether now.

How he took the subway for the first time. He was eighteen at the time, went to London after his high school graduation. And when you’re waiting there on the platform, you know, here comes the train, before you even see it or hear it. Because you feel the draft from the station before yours, because the train’s practically ramming an air cushion.

“Say that again,” Brenner says.

“Vergolder,” the German says again.

“I have a favor to ask,” the detective says.

“If I can be of help to you,” the German says, and even smiled as she did so.

“Would you mind taking your glasses off again?”

Now, it wouldn’t have been conspicuous in and of itself
for the old woman to have so many wrinkles around her eyes. But this was a real aureole. And it reminded Brenner of the millions of fine crows’ feet that, in old age, his Aunt Klara had got on her upper lip.

She’d stubbornly insisted to everybody that it was from smoking, because she’d been a heavy smoker, and she imagined, when you take a drag on a cigarette, these concertina folds form on your upper lip. But, then, her half-sister got the exact same wrinkles in old age, too, and that was Brenner’s mother, and her whole life long she never smoked.

And Brenner says to Handless now:

“I always thought it was from the eye surgery. Your brother’s eyes were always so squinty like he was looking at the sun. And millions of crow’s feet around the eyes. I automatically thought it was from the surgery.”

“No, no, it’s not because of the surgery,” Vergolder’s sister said, completely calm now, “it runs in our family. Our mother also had a kind of wreath around her eyes, not just in old age—started when she was forty. A leathery, wrinkly skin, like a dried-up leather apple. Are you familiar with leather apples?”

“Fifty years after you disappeared from Zell, you return. Only to take revenge on your brother.”

Brenner even surprised himself when his voice trembled there. As if he was afraid that the obvious similarity between Handless and her brother, Vergolder, might suddenly dissolve.

“Leather apples have a thick, leathery skin. Often people call them cooking apples, because you cook them and use
them for apple sauce. Or for apple strudel. But if you peel them, they taste good raw, too.”

“Weren’t you worried that somebody in Zell would recognize you again?”

Now Handless got up and went over to the TV. Above the TV was a bookshelf, and on it was a small picture frame.

Now, maybe you’re familiar with this, when you go to an old person’s apartment, hanging all over the place are these ancient black-and-white photos: the grandfather of the grandfather, from the First World War or even earlier, or these retouched portraits that make you think, centuries old.

“That’s what I looked like, you see, when they chased me away. Do you see any similarity?”

Brenner didn’t know what he should say. But Handless sure knew what to say:

“Nobody in Zell would’ve recognized me, even if I weren’t fifty years older and fifty kilos heavier. Even if I looked exactly like I did back then, still not a soul would’ve recognized me again. Forgetting is a kind of mercy, you have to know that. And God showed mercy upon the Zellers—in spades.”

“And your own brother? You had to run into him.”

“Like I said: mercy.”

“But you know no mercy. That community theater of yours—you didn’t perform in a theater.”

“No, but we did perform in the community,” Vergolder’s sister says, as if she were saying the most normal thing in the world.

“And you put it on with real people. Lorenz and Clare
and Andi were your marionettes. They didn’t realize at all that you’d been playing out your own drama with them for some time. That you only needed a couple of dummies that could be useful—that could be turned against Vergolder, easy.”

“At first I only wanted to mess with him a little. I gave Elfi the book about the dial painters to read. Very interesting. She identified quite strongly by then with Clare Corrigan, the dial painter who died. And then the idea with the community theater. Lorenz and Andi were completely wild about the idea of sticking it to Vergolder.”

“At the theater. Except that you actually approached Vergolder’s stepfather.”

“No, no, it was the American who approached me.”

Brenner didn’t understand how he was making it rain just now, I mean, why now, you’ve got to picture it like an ATM that suddenly starts spitting out coins. Like his brain was spitting out explanations all at once now, after being here three-quarters of a year for nothing. Well, isn’t this just the way it always goes for me, Brenner thought. Now, where it’s too late, where Handless’s eyes have told me everything anyhow, it’s now that I notice the things that somebody else would’ve noticed much sooner.

But he was being unfair to himself there. Because, who knows if he would’ve noticed that bit about the eyes if he didn’t already have the other things somewhere in the back of his mind? And he says to Handless now:

“I thought as much: the binoculars that the American bought from Perterer Jr., they couldn’t be the whole
surprise for their sixtieth anniversary. And even before then I thought, there’s just no two ways about it, they must’ve got on the lift willingly.”

In three-quarters of a year, though, you get to thinking quite a bit. And he himself wasn’t even certain now if he’d come up with the bit about the
Vormachen
. It seemed to him as if it’d been going around in his head the whole time. He knew that the Americans had met while skiing. Now, of course, he could make sense of it quite easily:

“The American buys the binoculars because, for their anniversary, he wants to give his wife a nighttime
Vormachen
in the ski lift. He commissions you to perform with your would-be theater group. And in order for the two of them to be able to sit next to each other in a single-chair lift, she gets on at the top and him at the bottom so that they can meet in the middle. Except that you and your
Vormachen
group don’t show up. No, the two eighty-year-olds are left sitting in their box seats, twenty meters in the air.”

But Handless, now, quite insistent:

“Lorenz, Clare, and Andi didn’t do anything. I persuaded the American that it would be the greatest show if his wife rode the lift down and watched through the binoculars as he rode up to her. And the moment they were at a certain height, the lift would stay put. As if by magic.”