Eternal Life (17 page)

“And then it just sat there, the lift. And then you really didn’t do anything, either.”

“Nothing at all,” Handless smiled.

Now, end of September, almost thirty degrees Celsius. Brenner gets a slight chill. The question momentarily
escapes him, why the Americans of all people got the kiss of death. Why not the despised brother himself. There are these moments, though, where things occur to you that don’t otherwise occur to you over the course of weeks and months, not until now, at these moments. And now Brenner says:

“That’s why the Americans were so excited about this
Vormachen
, because they’d liked it so much back then, after the war, at their daughter’s wedding to Vergolder. You told me that Vergolder had been offended at the time. Because of the story with the nurse. But this nurse that the
Vormachen
had hinted at—”

“—wasn’t a nurse at all, of course. But just a sister,” Vergolder’s sister finished, perfectly calm now. And then she said:

“The Americans had impressed upon me: it has to be every bit as amusing as the story about the sister was back then. And how else was I supposed to make it every bit as amusing?”

Needless to say, Brenner was glad that he wasn’t expected to give an answer now. Vergolder’s handless sister sat back down on the couch again. She set the photo on the glass coffee table in front of her and looked at it so intently that you’d have thought she was seeing it for the first time.

“Have you ever noticed how many melancholiacs there are in Zell? In nearly every family, there’s either an imbecile or a melancholiac. And more often than not, both.”

People often say, I’m shocked, but it goes without saying, they’re just saying that, and really they only mean that
something’s come as a shock to them, no talk of actual shocking. But if the doctor were to place a couple of electrodes on the side of your head and give you a dose of electricity, that’s roughly how Brenner felt right now. As Vergolder’s handless sister suddenly dispensed with her perfect High German. And instead lapsed into her obsolete dialect, full of old-fashioned words:

“Loads of melancholiacs.”

The word itself was making Brenner a bit melancholy.

“And loads of imbeciles. Too many mountains, the valleys all too narrow, villages too small. When I got pregnant, I went to the priest. A nice priest, Father Reiter. He said: Zell has always been a den of incest.”

“Lorenz, that was your child. And your brother, Vergolder, was Lorenz’s father.”

“I wouldn’t have named him Lorenz. By the time of the baptism, though, they’d already got rid of me.”

“But they used to baptize the children right away back then, within just a few days of the birth.”

“They’d already got rid of me.”

“And you never saw your child again?”

“Not until a year and a half ago, when I returned to Zell. Then I got to know him.”

“And then you told him your story and he couldn’t cope with it and put three people in their graves.”

“I didn’t tell him anything. Just got to know him, but told him nothing. Lorenz didn’t know anything. And he didn’t kill anybody, either.”

“Except his father.”

“That used to be completely normal.”

“Lighting your father on fire?”

“The only thing that wasn’t normal was my love for my brother. Him getting me pregnant, maybe that didn’t used to be normal exactly, either, but it happened often enough. But me, of course. I had to go and love him. He was twenty-four, and I was seventeen. Needless to say, young. I just had to love him. Around the time I got pregnant, he met that American. Once the child was born, they took it away from me. Another brother who was already married. He took it. So, I had to leave. Home from the hospital and gone in the night. Because I had to have the child at the hospital—bring no disgrace on the home. The people believed I left because I’d brought home an illegitimate child. Believed I walked into the lake. But I didn’t walk into the lake. I went to Germany to be a waitress. It wasn’t much better. I lay down on the train tracks. But, then, at the last moment. Only, my hands, I was too slow.”

“And after fifty years you came back and got your son to kill his father.”

“He didn’t even know that he was his father. Or me, his mother.”

“But the hatred that you drummed into him was enough to—”

“—he had his own reasons for hating him. Every year, a passbook. Otherwise, nothing but contempt. I didn’t have to talk Lorenz into anything. We always had an unspoken bond. Mother and son. It all came about on its own.”

“And the checks just falsified themselves?”

“That was just foolish of Lorenz. He went and signed the checks instead of coming to me when he needed money.”

“And Elfi stole them for him up at Vergolder’s castle. Just like she did with the keys to the lift for you.”

“It’s Clare,” Clare said.

That was all of it. Then, nobody said anything else. All four sat there in silence, and the TV played on with the sound off. And just as Brenner had collected himself, just as he was about to ask that one last question, it was already too late. A cruel buzzing startled them, prodding them out of their lethargy. And the person doing the buzzing didn’t take his finger off the buzzer until Handless buzzed him in.

A moment later two police officers stormed in: Kollarik in the lead, Hochreiter taking up the rear. And weren’t even all the way in the apartment yet before Kollarik started shouting his head off. Like that even works—that you can shout your one and only head off, over and over again. Because Kollarik, the Zellers always called him “Choleric.”

Now, what was he shouting at Brenner for. Brenner only understood as much as Goggenberger the cabbie had tipped him off to. Now, Hochreiter had one less star on his uniform than Kollarik did. But while Kollarik was still blowing his top, Brenner put a word in police inspector Hochreiter’s ear.

Hochreiter’s skin was so red, you could tell right away: sailing or glacier skiing. Nevertheless, though. With each word from Brenner, his face just got redder. And then, needless to say, the contrast with the blue uniform. Kollarik even quit shouting when he saw Hochreiter turn red.

Then, it went fast. Because these kinds of things, at first
they take months and years, and then, once it gets to a certain point, it goes so fast that you almost miss it.

Because Handless made no effort to deny anything. And Hochreiter says—interesting, though, the degree of respect in his voice:

“Hopefully, you are aware, Frau Antretter, that we’re going to have to take you in.”

And that, of course, that was Kollarik’s moment. He’d been so furious that he’d only made himself look ridiculous with all his shouting anyway. “Take you in,” though, that was his cue. You couldn’t have looked fast enough, already there in front of Vergolder’s sister with the handcuffs out.

But Handless just made an embarrassed gesture and, pityingly, said:

“Now you don’t know where you’re supposed to put the handcuffs on me.”

When Brenner unlocked the door to his civil service apartment, it felt like he’d truly been away for three-quarters of a year. Even though he had, in fact, come back now and then just to check that everything was copacetic.

Somehow sentimental, though, because Zell,
finito
, and what’s to become of Brenner now. One thing you can’t forget, a sheer stroke of luck that he even got the job, and just as he was leaving the force, too.

Still one thing to do, though. Because he still had to write that report for the Meierling Detective Agency, once and for all. And because he knew for a fact, If I don’t write it now, I never will, he fixed himself a cup of coffee. Popped a quick pill, because the first one he’d taken on the train hadn’t done anything at all. But then, pronto, the typewriter, unpacked, time to hop to it.

But just as he was typing the date, the phone rang.
Now, should I get it, or should I not get it
, but it wouldn’t stop ringing, so he gets it:

“Yeah, Brenner here.”

“Brennero! A real honor.”

“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number, this is the automated answering machine.”

“So modest! You can afford it! This is the automated questioning machine, Monsieur Mandl!”

“Unfortunately I share a line with three other people, Mandl. The neighbors will be wanting to make a phone call.”

“You can’t hook up an answering machine to a party line. Why, this wouldn’t be Brenner himself speaking, would it?”

“What do you want, Mandl?”

“Interview with the cunning secret agent.”

“Talk to Nemec, he likes that kind of thing.”

“That’s an obstruction of my work, Brenner. And if you go on the dole now, who’s going to pay your unemployment if I’m not working?”

“I’m not going on the dole.”

“The next case awaits our cunning secret agent! That’s something even our last reader can accept.”

“No next case.”

“Top-secret, though, he’s not allowed to speak about it! Our last reader will have complete sympathy!”

“Listen, Mandl, either talk like a normal person—”

“Or you tell me how you figured it out.”

“Figured what out, Mandl?”

“How the German with no hands on her is Vergolder’s sister.”

“That was your job, Mandl.”

“Hey, that doesn’t surprise me one bit now.”

“When the forged checks turned up, the ones that

Lorenz signed with the names of both Parsons.”

“When it came to drawing, one of a kind talent, Lorenz. So a signature’s nothing.”

“And surely you remember the headline of your article, too.”

“When it comes to writing, one of a kind talent, Mandl. One of a kind! But you’re going to have to jog my memory on this one now.”

“Resurrection of the Dead.”

“Yeah, yeah, even though it wasn’t even Easter.”

“What did you actually mean by that at the time?”

“Well, if the Parsons were issuing checks after their deaths. For all intents and purposes, they’d have to be resurrected. It was no different for Jesus, either.”

“So, plural: the dead. Possessive: of the dead.”

“Yeah, say, Brenner!”

“But for Jesus, it’d be singular: Resurrection of the dead.”

“Yeah, say, Brenner, what are you asking me all this for?”

“For what, Mandl, it’s: for what are you asking me all this. And what is it when Vergolder’s sister is resurrected?”

“It’s—aha! Yet again, Resurrection of the dead.”

“Exactly. Because that’s what we’ve got uncountable nouns for.”

“ ‘The Grammar Gumshoe!’ Our last reader will be proud of you, Brenner. And the dead, resurrected after fifty years, just so she could bring two others to their deaths. Rather un-Christian, so far as resurrection goes.”

“Maybe she just wanted to make her brother nervous.”

“ ‘Paranormal Trickery!’ Didn’t pull it off, though. She turns back up after fifty years, but the Zellers simply aren’t
scared. Ghost completely forgotten. Had to stir things up a little in Zell. Get some stories buzzing around. Get people excited about the Heidnische Kirche.”

“But you guys still weren’t scared.”

“Exactly, we don’t scare that easy. So, the ghost had to stir things up a little more.”

“But you guys still weren’t scared. Exactly, Mandl.”

“But we were! Me and my reader, we were scared that there were dead people hopping the ski lift.”

“But only because they didn’t have a day pass.”

“Eh, Brenner, what good’s a day pass at night. But one thing you still have to explain to me. Why did the ghost go to such lengths? Normally, a ghost like that would just get a revolver. Not a ski lift, though.”

“Except the ghost didn’t have any hands.”

“Logical, except the ghost didn’t have any hands. So, better off with the big, blunt lever on the lift.”

“That’s it, Mandl.”

“But how does a ghost like that get you to sit on a ski lift all night? How does she lure you there?”

“Very simple.”

Brenner hadn’t quite noticed. In his left hand, he was holding the receiver, but his right index finger, well, it was like it had a will of its own. Simply pressed the button on the cradle and away with Mandl.

It has to be said, Mandl simply had no knack for journalism. Every detail interested him. But how Lorenz got rubbed out by his own parents, Vergolder and Vergolder’s
sister, one more brutal than the next. Mandl would’ve made a tragedy out of it, practically Greek. But, no.

Now, maybe telepathy does exist or something, because at that moment, where Brenner’s thinking, A pity about Kati Engljähringer, and maybe I’ll try giving her another call, I’ve got the time now—the phone rings again, and needless to say, Mandl again:

“Antretter’s sister told the police that it was Lorenz who orchestrated the keys to the lift and the checks from his uncle’s.”

“Must’ve been,” Brenner says.

Because Elfi, she now had a dead father who’d never even officially been her father. And she’d dropped out of school. And her job, of course, you can scratch that, too. And Lorenz, dead. And the only person who’d ever took any care of her, in prison. And Brenner thought, Elfi’s stuck in Zell, and that’s punishment enough. But Mandl says:

“Now, I’ve got a freshly typed article lying here that’ll make Mandl famous. Because he uncovers that Elfi must’ve been responsible for the keys to the lift. Besides which, she helped the old American into the chair lift up at the terminal station, while Handless was waiting down at the valley station with the other American.”

“How are you able to shave when you’re constantly retching into the mirror?”

“Electric, Brenner. With the Phili-shaver. I’m a pro at shaving. But good ol’ Mandl’s got a little deal to strike with you now. A deal, Brenner.”

“A deal for who?”

“For little Elfi Lohninger, alias Clare Corrigan, a deal. Because I’m just going to put this article in my drawer for now. And that’s where it’ll stay. Until the moment where you get the big idea of calling—or in any other way contacting—the lovely schoolteacher, Frau Kati Engljähringer.”

“You’re a real mensch, Mandl. Then, please give my regards to Engljähringer, unless that falls under ‘contact,’ too.”