Eternal Life (2 page)

“That’s when I could tell that it wasn’t just some empty case of beer from New Zealand, the ski disco, like I thought at first. But then,” as Alois the Lift told it at the
Rainerwirt
on the twenty-second—and then, on the twenty-third, in nearly the same words, all over again at the
Hirschen
:

“But that’s when I realized.”

Forty years Alois the Lift had been stationed on the lift, and countless serious accidents had happened on the slopes in that time. Often enough Martin the helicopter had to come—twice somebody fell out of the chair. There’d actually been so many deaths that, over the years, they all ran together in Alois’s mind.

Not to mention New Zealand’s victims, who got crushed beneath the snowcat in the dark. See, the drunks fall down in the snow and then are too tired to get back up. And when
you’re drunk, the snow seems so warm to you. So they just lie there in the warm snow and get a little shut-eye. Next morning, all you can do is send the corpses back to Germany.

But a dead body in a lift seat on the morning line-check, well, Alois the Lift had never had that happen before.

“What in god’s name!” Alois the Lift yelled out.

Now, you should know. For years, Alois had acted in his community theater troupe. The community theater troupe was founded in the mid-sixties by the tourism bureau. It goes without saying, though, billed to the tourists as some relic out of the Stone Age. This winter they put on
The Truth about Moser Gudrun
. A play in three acts, it said on the posters, by Silvia Soll. And among the actors listed on the posters, Alois the Lift came in third: “Alois Mitteregger (Alois the Lift).”

Alois the Lift was a real darling among community-theater-goers. But when he described the incident from the valley station at the Rainerwirt that night, well, community theater doesn’t come close.

“What in god’s name, I cried out,” he cried out—and so loud that everybody in the whole bar could understand. “I switched that lift off as fast it’d go to Off. Even though it was obvious that there was nothing left to do. But when you’re scared, you do it as fast as you can. Even if there’s no point. Because, if, first thing in the morning, somebody’s sitting on the lift, then he’s been sitting there all night. Since we don’t run it in between,” Alois the Lift says.

“It gave me a scare, of course, so I brought the lift to a halt a.s.a.p. We’ve had first aid, you know, mouth-to-mouth.
But you’ll be doing mouth-to-mouth a long time with fifteen centimeters of snow between you and the body. Even though it’d just started snowing that morning. Been a clear starry sky that night. I took the dog out after the eight o’clock movie, and it was clear. And when it’s starry like that here, end of December, it’s at least seven degrees in the dead of night,” Alois the Lift says.

“Seven below,” Alois the Lift says, and looks at his listeners just long enough for them to get a little nervous. Just one of the pauses that they’re always rehearsing at the community theater. And before anyone could interrupt him like a bad theater prompter, Alois the Lift says:

“I’m in shock. I’m running so fast to the emergency brake that it nearly does me in. Even though I could tell right away it’s no use. But I’m running and I’m slipping on the fresh fallen snow. Underneath it’s a plate of ice—don’t budge all winter long. That’s where the load line snakes around, and up you go, easy, since they’re always polishing it with those sharp edges of theirs, all year long, pure formica. Now, I know this—I know every one of the ice sheets around the lift, and I haven’t gone down in years. Ha! They’re always falling all over the place there, the Dutch girls, because you don’t see the crust under the dust. But I do, of course, I know it. But now, I’m so scared that I’ve forgot. Could’ve turned out not too pretty, but I just barely catch hold of the emergency brake—and caught myself, too, right on the red emergency brake. That’s when it stopped, the lift,” Alois the Lift says.

“And I was still standing, too. I walk back to the chair
where the body is, a little shaky in the knees from the shock—nearly took me down. But before I could get to knocking the snow off the corpse, the phone in the cabin starts ringing. Now I don’t know: should I knock the snow off the corpse or should I go in and get the phone. But the phone don’t stop, and because it’s too late anyway, I hurry up and go in.”

Maybe the lift operator was exaggerating a little with the pauses, because he raised his beer at this point and took an abnormally long sip.

“Meanwhile, Wörgötter’s made it to my lift terminal up top. An old fox, too, that one,” Alois the Lift says, smiling.

“But now he’s yelling, all excited and beside himself, saying that a body’s just come in on the chairlift up there. And right at that moment, when it’s at the very tiptop, that’s when the lift comes to a halt.”

As far as America goes, Zell’s a tiny speck. But so far as Pinzgau’s concerned: forty hotels, nine schools, thirty mountains over 3,000 meters high, fifty-eight ski lifts, one lake, one detective.

The detective doesn’t actually belong to Zell, though. He was only there, of course, on account of the lift scandal. The two Americans froze to death on the chairlift in Zell at the end of December. And here it is, beginning of September, and the detective’s still here. He was slowly starting to get the feeling that he wouldn’t be getting out of here any time soon.

Like it creeps up on you, that kind of feeling. Or like when you get lost in a labyrinth or you get married and have kids. This is that detective, Brenner’s his name. Woke up in a panic a few nights already. Because he dreamed he was prohibited from leaving Zell until he’d solved the hopeless case of the two Americans.

But then he did solve it, even though it’d seemed hopeless to everybody. Now, it was a good three-quarters of a year after the fact, you’ve got to keep that in mind. Last December, the corpses, and now the next winter season’s
already at the door. The police gave up before the month of January was out.

Brenner was still on the police force back then. They’d popped up from the city end of December, made a mess out of everything, and by the end of January they’d split again. Nothing and hopeless. Only the
Pinzgauer Post
stayed on it a little while longer. Till mid-February maybe. But, then, done and forgotten.

And beginning of March, all the sudden Brenner turns back up again. But not as police, no, as a detective. Thanks to the insurance company. The deceased were the American in-laws of Vergolder Antretter. About them, you should know, they were stinking rich. Both in their eighties and just filthy rich. Vergolder himself’s stinking rich—far and away the richest man in Zell, way above Eder, way above the mayor, leagues above Fürstauer. But, next to his in-laws, a penniless bum.

Needless to say, the Zellers were surprised. First he takes off as police—Brenner, I mean—and then turns back up three weeks later a private detective. Then it comes to light that it’s an insurance story, on the Americans’ end of things, because for them what it was about was a whole lot of money. Yeah, what do you know. The insurance company doesn’t send over their own detective from America, though, because A of all, language problems, and B of all, just easier not to. And cheaper and more efficient and—anyway, they hire a local detective agency. So, they contracted with a detective agency in Vienna. Meierling Detective Agency, it was called.

Now, coincidentally, it turns out that police officer Simon Brenner, Detective Inspector, or whatever his rank was, has quit the police. Now, you should know, he’d been on the force nineteen years. Because he was twenty-five when he started and now he’s forty-four. But he never really got anywhere with the police. That wasn’t the real reason why he quit, though, because he’d never been especially ambitious. More the quiet type. A nice guy, actually, I’ve got to admit.

Now, about three years ago, he gets a new boss—Nemec, who turned up here in Zell back in January, too. And him I wouldn’t necessarily have wanted for a boss, either. Me, personally, I don’t have anything against Wieners—you know, the Viennese—they’ve got nice ones down there, too, and there are so-and-so’s everywhere you go. But he was just such a typical Wiener. Anyway, the two of them just didn’t get along at all. Nemec was young and ambitious, and his department just had to be the absolute best. And Brenner, what can I say. Not that he was a bad police officer, certainly not. But, more quieter, low-key, and, well, right off the bat, Nemec just wasn’t having it.

He started in on the comments Day One—this was three years ago now—and here in Zell where the whole month of January—well, nothing was going anywhere, so Nemec tries to pin the blame on Brenner. Then, Brenner thinks it over and throws in the towel, by which I mean, his job.

Nowadays when you’re forty-four and have spent nineteen of those years on the force, then, a thing like this, you
think it over, and I’ve really got to say, hats off, because, at that moment, he had no prospects of anything else.

Then, Meierling calls him a few days later, you know, the boss of the Meierling Detective Agency. Obviously, Brenner was the ideal candidate because he knew the case. On the other hand, wasn’t the highest priority anyway now, let’s say, Brenner absolutely having to solve the case. Because it was primarily an insurance matter.

As far as I know, it was more of a formality, you know, that somebody be present until the insurance matters were settled. And that can take years. So that the insurance company can later say, look, we did everything, nobody can blame us for anything, we even sent our own man after the police had long since gave up on the case.

That he’d actually solve the case, well, at that point in time, nobody could’ve knew that at all.

And today, I really do have to say, hats off to Brenner, because somebody else might not have managed it so easy. A somebody like Nemec might be quicker upstairs, and, on a different case, maybe he’s the better bet. But, be it as it may, it was here. The corpses in the lift, foreigners. No witness, no clues, no motive, no nothing! So, once again, Brenner was the right one.

If you’d seen him looking the way he did in Zell, you wouldn’t have guessed that he was a private detective. Even though he was no undercover detective. Anybody who wanted to know, they got told—he was there on account of the lift scandal. How should I put it, though: he didn’t look like a detective.

The strange thing is that he actually looked exactly like how you might picture a police officer or detective looking. That kind of fireplug type where the shoulders are practically broader than the legs are long. Not big but not small, and a real blockhead with two vertical ruts in his cheeks. And a red, scarred nose like a soccer player—what’s his name, quick, the one with the two brothers.

But, I don’t think you would’ve taken him for a detective or a police officer. His aqua-blue eyes surely played a part in that. They’re always nervously roaming around, and in retrospect, it’s easy to say that it’s on account of him always observing everything so closely.

But if you saw him like that, you probably would’ve just got the impression that he was worried. You’d occasionally see him here and there, on Fussballplatz or at the Feinschmeck Café, or at the Hirschenwirt. Or he’d just be milling around on Kirchplatz or taking a walk down to the lake. And because his face was so red, you could see from a ways away how those blue eyes of his were nervously roaming around. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t exactly the type to command respect. As a human being, sure, but not, let’s say, the way Nemec did.

And that must’ve been it, too, why Nemec didn’t like him—there was just something about him that gave you the sense he didn’t belong there. Nemec made fun of it in public:

“Don’t go looking like that with those Czech eyes of yours, Brenner!”

Just a few days after Nemec took over the department, that happened. And to make matters worse, in front of
Brenner’s co-workers, Tunzinger and Schmeller, who got shot six months later during the bank robbery at the, the, the—now where was that again. Brenner wasn’t even aware that he somehow looked strange while he was doing it, and he had no clue what Nemec meant by Czech eyes.

At first he suspected that Nemec possibly had some complex, on account of him having a Czech name. Maybe that’s why he made jokes about Czech eyes. Because Brenner had done a whole slew of training sessions in psychology on the force, especially his first years there.

About that, you should know, Nemec was from Vienna, whereas Brenner—Brenner was from Puntigam, you know, where the beer’s from, Puntigamer, in Steiermark, by Graz. Now, it wasn’t until a year or two later that Brenner found out that the Viennese have all got this idea—or maybe it’s just a bunch of talk—that all Czechs have aqua-blue eyes.

But what am I doing talking about Czechs for. After all, the dead bodies were American. They owned a factory in Detroit. And their son-in-law, Vergolder Antretter, well, he owned the chairlift that they were found dead on. The police figured that out Day One, of course. Just never figured out much more than that, though. And now here comes Brenner three-quarters of a year later and figures out who did it!

Now, you should know the kind of person you’re dealing with. How should I put it—not easy to describe. For instance, it bothered him when somebody he was on a first-name basis with called him by his last name. But that’s how it is on the force: people call each other by their last names.

“What’re you doing looking like that with those Czech eyes of yours, Brenner!”

Needless to say, he had to put up with that from his co-workers pretty often, because needless to say, Schmeller and Tunzinger didn’t keep it to themselves. And when six months later they shot Schmeller, well, it didn’t do him any good, because his other co-workers had caught on in the meanwhile and kept on saying it, too.

But that wasn’t what was giving him a headache. Not the thing about the Czech eyes and not the thing with the name. Only one thing that could give Brenner a royal headache like this, and that was his own head.

About his head, you should know, on the day he quit the force, he also, out of some kind of, I don’t know, quit smoking. And ever since that day, at least twice a month he gets a migraine that leaves him barely able to see out of those Czech eyes of his.