Eternal Life (6 page)

Andi sure liked that, what he’d just come up with in his rage, so much so that he turned around now and yelled over to Vergolder Antretter:

“Lifting the American’ts, Mister Antretter. Want your
regening
?”

But Vergolder didn’t react at all. And the others didn’t laugh, either, because they didn’t dare laugh in front of Vergolder.

“Get it, Detective?
Regening
? In Dutch it means: Do you want your check? Holland’s the best country for tips. Vienna’s good, too. What’s with you, Detective? What, no beer? When are you finally gonna catch the crook?”

Brenner bought a sausage on a bun and then asked Andi,
after he had taken a bite, in other words, with his mouth full:

“Who should I arrest then? Gschwentner or Vergolder?”

“Nah, Detective, you’d better not arrest anybody, how stupid do you really think I am?”

Brenner had this unusual habit. He was one of those people who—okay, when they’re eating a sausage on a bun, they only unwrap the paper-wrapper halfway. Because on the end where there’s still paper on it, that’s where they hold the bun. Frankly, I’ve never gotten my fingers dirty from a bun, but please!

As he was unwrapping his sausage halfway, he noticed that Gruntner, in his early retirement, had had his name printed on the napkins. Gruntner used to work for the train, as a shunter, and it shaved his left leg off, so now he’s retired and still works a little at the kiosk.

He makes a good sausage on a bun, Brenner was thinking when he heard Andi say:

“Should I tell you who put those two Americans in the lift?”

But Brenner just wanted to eat his sausage in peace now and gave Andi no reply. He just looked through Andi, straight through to the curling practically. But Andi wouldn’t give it a rest:

“There are only two in question. Either Gschwentner or Vergolder.”

“This is the second time you’ve said that now,” Brenner says, without looking away from the curling.

“The preacher don’t preach twice,” Andi says.

“So be it.”

“But I’m no preacher. I’m a gas station attendant. And only a gas station attendant can know what I know.”

“What do you know, then?” Brenner asks now, but he’s still watching the curling. But that was just what it seemed like. Because out of the corner of his eye, he’s observing how the handless Frau drinks her beer.

She simply wedges the beer glass between her forearm-stumps, and that’s how she drinks, but not what you’re thinking, cautiously, or, as far as I’m concerned, unappetizingly. No, just like you’d have thought, perfectly normal for a person to drink like that. And smoked, too, at the same time. Because she was a smoker, and not just a few. Practically with her wrists. And interesting. This was the first time in months that Brenner was tempted to smoke again, too.

Brenner realized now that this couldn’t be the first time that the woman had come here. Without asking any questions, Gruntner Schorsch placed a second empty beer glass on this wooden ledge that went around the kiosk. And on top of the empty beer glass he put an ashtray, and so the handless Frau was able to set her cigarette down right from her mouth without any problem. Needless to say, couldn’t have been any easier.

It struck Brenner as being somewhat strange now, the one only had one leg, the other no hands, but that’s the way it was.

“I know there are only two people in all of Zell that come
into question with a crime like this,” Andi just wouldn’t let up and was wagging his finger in front of Brenner’s face now like a know-it-all.

“Vergolder and Gschwentner,” Brenner answered.

“That’s exactly right,” Andi the Fox said, praising him, “but why?”

“Yeah, exactly. Why exactly?”

“Because out of everybody in Zell, the two of them are the only ones that have never given a single schilling’s tip.”

But at that moment, the handless Frau turned to Andi. And that really took Brenner by surprise now. That the two of them knew each other.

“Lorenz is getting out today,” she says.

“Out today, back in tomorrow,” Andi says.

“I’m picking him up,” Handless says.

“The ambulance picks him up. Then we pick him up. Then they pick him back up. Then we pick him back up, then—”

“Are you with me?” Handless says, because this blabber of Andi’s, well, she wasn’t having it one bit.

“Do you mean, do I understand what you’re saying, or am I going where you’re driving to: nuthouse!”

Handless had these thick glasses, the type that was fashionable in the seventies. And thick glasses like that, well, you don’t see much of her face. Just her eyes, and those were twice as big as normal, because she must’ve been horribly farsighted.

With these enormous eyes of hers, she looks at Brenner now and asks him if maybe he’d like to come along. She says:

“I have to pick up my friend Lorenz Antretter from the hospital. He’s being released today.”

Now, Lorenz, that’s Vergolder’s nephew. And it was Lorenz, too, who’d provided Vergolder with his alibi for the night of the murder. Brenner tried to hide his surprise, though.

“You’re here on your own anyway, walking,” Handless says.

Of course, you couldn’t not hear Brenner’s amazement now when he said:

“But, can you drive a car?”

Now, to pick up Lorenz Antretter. Needless to say, Brenner’s interest was piqued. Vergolder was with Lorenz all evening long, December the twenty-first. That’s when Lorenz gets his Christmas gift every year, always the twenty-first, because on the twenty-fourth, of course, just family.

Company Christmas with the ski school on the twenty-second, and with the lift personnel on the twenty-third. On the twenty-fourth, only the closest family, Vergolder’s wife, if she were still alive, and her parents, who came over from America every year at Christmas. Kids, well, none, and since his wife died, only the in-laws. And last Christmas, needless to say, not even the in-laws anymore.

But this piqued Brenner’s interest now, why Lorenz was getting picked up by Andi the Fox of all people. And frankly, even more than that, what interested him was how that’s supposed to work, a woman with no hands driving a car.

But then, it was just like with the beer-drinking. I mean, so far as Brenner goes, it seemed more or less normal to him. There were these knobs mounted on the steering wheel—it almost looked like the wheel of a ship, of an ocean freighter. Like on TV, where the captain just stands and turns, that’s
how it looked, and the German wedged her arm-stumps between these knobs, and that’s how she steered.

Naturally Brenner thought she’d have an automatic transmission, but not what you’re thinking, her having an automatic transmission. She changed gears, that was a real thrill, because, on the gear stick some kind of cup had been screwed on, and she stuck her arm-stump into it, and that’s how she changed gears.

And Brenner was amazed at how safe she drove. He didn’t have much time to concern himself with Handless, though. Because Andi, who was sitting in the back, and Brenner was in the passenger seat, and from the backseat, Andi was telling him his tale, no interruptions.

Now, you should know, people say Andi’s a little slow. And to Brenner, it seemed more like the gas jockey was a little too fast. But they meant the same thing, the people and Brenner.

“That alibi of Vergolder’s, you do know it’s a bunch of baloney, right, detective? A bunch of
Schmarren
?”

This struck the German as odd and she laughed into the rearview mirror now:

“
Schmarren
fit for a kaiser?”

“Nuthouse
Schmarren
,” Andi says.

It seemed to Brenner like Andi’s rage was spreading, like when you get a toothache today and a sore throat tomorrow, and the day after that it’s a middle-ear infection. First, it started off on the asphalt with Gschwentner the farmer, then it caught Vergolder, and now Andi’s rage wasn’t even stopping at his friend Lorenz.

Brenner wasn’t completely certain about that, though. It’s more like when you get an infection that meanders around, practically aimless. Or, Andi’s rage was like when you get yourself all charged up with electricity off a cow fence and then you shake somebody’s hand, and then he shakes somebody else’s hand, and the person who gets electrified isn’t you but the last person in the chain. And the last in the chain, that was Andi’s rage at Lorenz now.

“Why do you say nuthouse
Schmarren
?” Brenner says.

“Where are we picking Lorenz up from, Detective?”

“The nuthouse,” Brenner says.

Interesting, though. Andi didn’t want to hear that get repeated. Another person saying nuthouse about his friend Lorenz.

“It’s not what you think, though,” he says, “because Lorenz isn’t nearly as bad as the other Zellers. Take Mario.”

All of the sudden Mario was standing on the end of the cow-fence chain now.

“You know Mario, Detective?”

“Fürstauer’s assistant.”

“That’s Mario. Every night he stops in to gas up his moped, his KTM. Always right as I’m closing up. And every day he only puts a liter in. So I says to Mario, he should kindly act like a normal person and gas up once a week, because why else does a moped tank hold five liters for, what do you think, Detective?”

“So that you can put five liters in it.”

“Or four, as far as I’m concerned. Mario, though, he says to me: But this is a business, isn’t it. So I says: This
ain’t a business, because I can scrape more off the bottom of my shoe!”

Brenner was immediately sorry that he laughed at that. Because, Andi, naturally:

“I can scrape more off the bottom of my shoe!”

And because nobody was laughing anymore, he got dissatisfied, and needless to say, one last time:

“I can scrape more off the bottom of my shoe!”

Brenner was amazed at how deft the German was on the road. A few times he even caught pedestrians staring, or other drivers looking over and desperately searching for her hands.

But try talking to the German, well, that was currently impossible.

“Interesting how you get the most tips when it’s overcast. But not like you’re thinking. Because certain kinds you never get tips from. Out of principle. Certain kinds of cars and certain kinds of drivers: never a tip. Interesting, though, how those kinds seem to multiply in certain kinds of weather. Nice weather, let’s say. And on top of that, nice weather gets you the most bugs on the windshield. So you’re washing off dead bodies. And bug bodies are the tiniest. But those blue-bloodsuckers. Because those are the kinds, like Vergolder, I never wash their windshields—out of principle. I’m always telling them that there’s no point in weather like this because—too many blue-bloodsuckers out flying around. They get annoyed that I’m always telling them the same story. But they never seem to get it that it’s them, I mean with the blue-bloodsuckers. Those tightwads
theirselves is what I’m talking about, those tip-misers. Because, to be honest, the blue-bloodsuckers aren’t the worst when it comes to cleaning. What’s bad’s the bee-eaters, they’re big as birds—and that’s just when they’re squashed. But it’s those tightwads theirselves I’m talking about when I say to them blue-bloodsuckers that there are too many blue-bloodsuckers around.”

Andi got tired at some point, and by the time they got to the tunnel, he was asleep in the backseat.

“He’s like a child,” the German said.

“You got kids?” the detective asked.

But the car ahead of them, he must’ve been a crazy. Middle of the tunnel he peels out, crosses the double-lines, and overtakes a truck. This was the tunnel that just six months ago five people died in, all because somebody had the same idea. This time nothing happened, only the detective forgot that he’d just asked a question.

“Are you actually from Holland?”

Handless’s German was so peculiar. Awkward, it sounded, or somehow, let’s say, like when there’s an opera on TV. Not just precise High German, but practically right angles. Just like the way High German sounds to us Austrians, maybe that’s how Handless’s language sounds to a High German. Somewhat stilted, the way people sound when they have a perfect command of a foreign language. And the fact that it’s not their native language—you only notice it because they never make a mistake. So Brenner thought, Maybe she’s Dutch.

“I’m from Hamburg.”

And that’s strange to our ears, too, of course, Hamburg German. Or the German they speak way up there, let’s say, like that political guy up in Schleswig-Holstein, where they found him dead in the bathtub with his clothes on.

“But I’ve been living in Zell for more than a year now,” she says.

“
Living
living here?” Brenner says. “Do you know Preussenstadl?”

Of course Brenner knew Preussenstadl. It’s a humongous apartment complex, built in the Alpine-chalet style, four floors, fifty-two apartments, pricey as sin—and almost all Germans who bought them up as vacation apartments.

“I’m a long-term visitor.”

“Just like me.”

“Yes, and like the old Americans, too. They were frequent visitors to Zell.”

“Did you know them?”

“With Americans you can never know for sure if you know them.”

“So you knew them well enough?”

“I speak passable English. And, well, we shared a mutual interest.”

“Curling?”

“No, they had no interest whatsoever in curling.”

The German needed her full concentration now in order to pass two semis on a bend in the autobahn. Then she said:

“Community theater.”

“But they didn’t know a word of German!”

“I don’t always understand the dialect myself. Nevertheless. We actually first met at a
Vormachen
.”

“
Vormachen
? Now I’m the one that doesn’t understand.”

“You’ve never been to a
Vormachen
? You simply must! A lovely tradition. Whenever the next wedding is, you’ll have to come with me to the
Vormachen
. The old Americans rarely left Vergolder’s Castle to come down into the city. Eighty years old, after all. But they always made it to a
Vormachen
whenever they were in Zell. They just loved a good
Vormachen
.”