Eternal Life (7 page)

“But what it is, this
Vormachen
, you’re not going to tell me.”

“Ah,
Vormachen
, it can’t be explained,” the German says and concentrates on the road.

Brenner could’ve cared less whether she explained what a
Vormachen
was or wasn’t to him just now. Main thing, she doesn’t drive into the car in front of them. That was his only concern right now.

“The bride and groom come out of the church, and on the church square, the locals perform a short theater scene for them. Anecdotes from the bride and groom’s pasts. How the couple met. Very comical and often quite beautiful—well, trenchant, let’s say. At every
Vormachen
, I laugh so hard I cry.”

“And the Americans found it amusing, too.”

“What do you mean amusing—every single time they would tell me about the
Vormachen
at their daughter’s wedding to Vergolder Antretter from God knows how many
years ago. You know how old people are always telling the same old story. Vergolder had been seriously offended at the time.”

“Grooms are no fun.”

“As I said, it’s often rather pointed. And evidently, at the
Vormachen
, someone alluded to an affair between Vergolder and a nurse.”

“And that amused the Americans, that their son-in-law was having a thing on the side with a nurse?”

“Not on the side. Earlier. Sins of youth. The old folks simply found the whole circus amusing.”

“That’s something right up the Americans’ alleys. What with their five divorces all the time—a
Vormachen
for every one.”

“No, no, Herr Detective, such sterotypes! They’d just celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary.”

“Which you know all about.”

Brenner almost would’ve preferred for Andi to wake up again now. Because the German had this bad habit. Purely insofar as, let’s say, cars and drivers go. She always looked you right in the eye when she was talking to you. Now, normally, that’s not necessarily uncomfortable. But in this case. She was hissing down the Autobahn at 130. And on top of that, well, no hands after all, even if she was a good driver, unbelievable, but still, just her two arm-stumps on the steering wheel. And when she was talking, she always took her eyes off the road and looked right at Brenner with those enormous eyes of hers. Because they were magnified so big by her farsighted glasses.

“It’s quite lovely here,” she says.

“Here in the tunnel?” Brenner says.

He was thinking, I’ll make a joke, and if I make a joke, maybe I’ll get her to look back at the road again, at least in the tunnel, because this here’s a place with oncoming traffic. But, nothing doing, she didn’t understand it was a joke, and Brenner, of course, ready with a stereotype: Germans, no sense of humor. She looked at him with her polyp eyes and said:

“No, here in Zell.”

“You don’t like it in Hamburg?”

“I do. Quite lovely. Quite lovely indeed. But everything moves very fast there. Whereas here, everything’s allowed to move a tiny bit—just a
bisserl
—more slowly.”

Needless to say, we’re all the same down here. We don’t like it when a German imitates our dialect. And it wasn’t any different for Brenner, a
bisserl
. And then that bit about the “slowly,” practically—well, it’s true, of course, but we don’t like hearing it. But Handless didn’t mean it quite so generally, because now she says:

“Even the murders move more slowly down here. In Hamburg, shot on the spot. And here, deep frozen.”

And then, she even laughed. Brenner thought: This I don’t understand, either, what’s so funny about that. But he didn’t say anything.

Once they got there, they couldn’t find the hospital porter at first. And then he couldn’t find the shift nurse in charge. But don’t get me wrong, everything was clean and well organized. Okay, maybe a little slow. Above all, the
patients, of course—slowed down, I mean, for all practical purposes, medicated—they’d go strolling through the park with this vacant look about them. Because they’ve got a wonderful park there, and it was only just three o’clock now, glorious fall day, warm twenty-seven C, and so of course the patients were thinking, too: I’d better make the most of this while it lasts.

Lorenz wasn’t there, though. Not at all. He’d just gotten picked up fifteen minutes ago. By his uncle, says the shift nurse.

Needless to say, Andi turned very pale now. And the German looked a little off, too. Because Lorenz only had one uncle. And that was Vergolder Antretter. And when the three of them had took off, from the curling strip, Vergolder had still been standing there on the asphalt.

Two days later, as Brenner went trundling down the Schmittenstrasse, it was the ninth of September already. It still wasn’t any cooler, and this
Altweibersommer
—Indian summer, I think you call it—had Zell bathed in a light that would’ve made you think the mountains were right outside your door.

And on top of that, there was music playing—okay, not in reality. Brenner, his head, it had this tic somehow. All the sudden some
Schlager
would pop up out of his memory, and he couldn’t get rid of it again. But not because he’d heard the song somewhere, and that’s why. No, all of the sudden, there it was, out of nowhere. And pay attention now. Because if Brenner had given any thought to how the words to this song actually went, even though he was only humming the melody to himself, then the words would’ve been an exact fit. A fit with the situation he was presently stuck in.

And as he’s walking into the post office now, he starts humming it all over again, this French
chanson
that plagued him all of yesterday. But not what you’re thinking, now he’s finally sending his report off to the Meierling Detective Agency. Because Brenner still hadn’t wrote that yet.

The envelope he was mailing was just a private matter,
on account of his insurance, because that was all a lot more complicated now that he wasn’t on the force anymore. Leni Bacher was sitting behind the counter, and Brenner was struck by how the stylish outfit she had on just served to highlight what a farmer’s face she had.

Leni smiled at him knowingly, because she thought it was his report, and week in week out he’d handed his report to her to mail. And even to Brenner it seemed like she looked disappointed when she read the address, I mean, that the envelope was only going to the insurance company.

It was the same exact postage as it always was when Brenner mailed his report, though, and out of habit, Leni gave him a receipt for it. Brenner pocketed the receipt but he already knew that he’d lose it just like all the others. Nevertheless, only seven schillings fifty.

The song was still humming around in him when, as he was walking out, he stuck a ten in the Quick Draw. And then he had to turn right around again because he won something, ten schillings, and he could pick it right up from the lady back at the counter.

Standing in line in front of him was a businesswoman all made up and with a whole stack of payment slips. Now he was going to have to wait a few minutes for his ten, and that melody was going through his head again—I’m talking a real earworm, even though, so far as the melody goes, it wasn’t an earworm at all.

Then he throws the ten he just won back into the Quick Draw, and he was glad he didn’t win anything this time, because this way, at least, he wouldn’t have to go back in there
again. And actually he should’ve been on Bahnhofstrasse some time ago, in Perterer’s gun shop, because yesterday he hadn’t been able to decide.

But today I need to make a decision, Brenner thought, and there’s that old malady of his. That he couldn’t make up his mind. And maybe that’s why he spent so long fooling around with the Quick Draw before he finally made his way over to the Zell gun shop.

And needless to say, the melody, right back in there again. The first time went like this for him: so, Brenner, just sixteen, and his first girlfriend runs out on him. For days there was a melody going through his head, some kind of American church song is what it was, and dammit if he didn’t hate that song. Well, best case, like a pimple that you pop. But he just couldn’t get rid of it. It’s this—eh, maybe you know it: “Nobody knows the trouble,” in other words, a self-pity song.

But please, at least that’s a popular song. This time, though, it was a song that Brenner only heard once his whole life. The French teacher played it for them in school because she always schlepped some ancient record player to their last class before Christmas and played
chansons
for them. Georges Moustaki, Brenner still knew it to this day. He sang:

“Rien n’a changé
,
mais pourtant tout est different.”

And really, nothing’s really changed. There wasn’t anything new for Brenner to know—anything, let’s say, that you could play up as news in a ten-line summary. And yet. All the sudden everything was different now.

Vergolder picking up his nephew—that just didn’t want to enter Brenner’s skull. When everybody in Zell knew for a fact that Lorenz outright hated his uncle. That’s what made Vergolder’s alibi so watertight, that it came from Lorenz. And now at curling, Vergolder sees Brenner driving off with the German to pick up Lorenz, doesn’t make a peep, and then races out himself so that they can’t catch him.

“Rien n’a changé
,
mais pourtant tout est different”
sang over and over again in Brenner’s head, as he walked to the gun shop, more or less on autopilot. Because guns are a real problem, of course. Especially when you’ve been used to one for twenty years. Since Brenner had left the force, he’d left his gun, too, of course. And what kind of a detective doesn’t have a gun.

Now, maybe you know Zell’s local gun dealer on Bahnhofstrasse. Perterer. Perterer Jr. Because Perterer Sr.—a tragic story. But that wasn’t the first businessman who got noodled up in a tax audit. But these days if it’s a tobacconist or a baker that gets caught, well, they don’t have any dangerous goods in their shops. Practically speaking, they can’t point their wares at themselves. So they sleep on it, and the next day they don’t kill themselves anymore, taxes or no taxes.

But with a gun dealer, of course. It was the Smith & Wesson with Perterer Sr. But that was a full year ago now, still before Brenner’s time.

Perterer was studying in Paris at the time of that tragic business with his father. Languages he studied. Now he had to return home, take over the business. True, he wasn’t as
interested in guns, but his mother, all alone back home, and so he said to himself, Why should I keep traipsing up and down the boulevards of Paris when I could have a trim gun shop back home. And about the taxes, the mayor helped him out a little because—a young man, the Zellers said, we’ll help him out a little.

“Have you made up your mind?” Perterer Jr. asked the moment Brenner walked into the shop. Because this was Brenner’s fourth time in there now.

“I don’t know,” he said, and that was the truth, because he was still torn between three different models, all of which had their advantages.

“Just take your time,” Perterer Jr. says, because he was anything but a pushy salesman, very different from his father. But Brenner almost wished that Perterer Jr. would in fact put a little pressure on him now, because he just couldn’t decide on his own.

“I’m just about thinking I’ll take the Walther.”

“The Walther, yes, you can’t go wrong there.”

“Although, it’s not doing anything for me.”

“It’s a matter of taste, of course.”

“It’s the grip I don’t like.”

“Well, when it comes to the grip, it’s a matter of taste.”

“The barrel I do like.”

“Top-notch barrel.”

“The grip, though.”

“Then, get the Smith and Wesson, it’s got a nice grip.”

But not because Perterer Jr. was trying to talk Brenner into the more expensive Smith & Wesson. Brenner had
been going around in circles for weeks now, should I get the Walther or the Smith & Wesson.

“Or you could take the Glock out one more time for me.”

Without a hint of impatience, Perterer Jr. took the Glock out of the display case.

“Nice and light, the Glock,” Brenner says.

“And the precision.”

“Do you think I should get the Glock?”

“The American cops are using the Glock now, too.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll get the Glock,” Brenner says but sets the Glock back down on Perterer Jr.’s shop counter.

But not what you’re thinking, that Brenner had something against guns, as a matter of principle. In his own quiet way, he was even a good shot. Officially, he’d never shot anybody. Übung
Spitze
, though, that’s this breathing technique. Because Brenner once let a yoga teacher show him this breathing technique on account of his headaches. For shooting, though, a tremendous advantage.

“Maybe I’ll stop back one more time this evening for a look,” Brenner says to Perterer Jr. and then hurries on his way. He just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to make a selection right now. What he needed was to go to the Feinschmeck. But today it wasn’t Erni the waitress that was drawing him to the Feinschmeck.

In the fifties, the Feinschmeck must’ve been the most fashionable restaurant for miles around. As Brenner entered the restaurant now, his gaze fell first on the instruments from the dance band that played there three nights a week,
because that’s the way it’s always been, that there’s music at the Feinschmeck. But needless to say, Brenner didn’t need any more of that.

“Rien n’a changé, mais pourtant tout est different”
started right back up in his mind at just the sight of the instruments.

The Feinschmeck was practically empty. Only the
tarock
players were here, of course, and at another table an old woman was sitting and reading a magazine with a magnifying glass. And way back in the next room that was otherwise completely empty, Lorenz Antretter was waiting for him.

Brenner knew him from having seen him around but had never spoke with him. Lorenz was roughly Brenner’s age. But you couldn’t imagine two guys that were more different.

“Have you been waiting long?” Brenner asks.