Greed (29 page)

The country policeman's colleagues begin to go systematically from house to house asking questions. Who saw Gabriele Fluch for the last time? Not even that can be precisely established. Even late in the evening, even at night, the little detached house in which she lived is brightly lit up. Every window so bright, as if it wanted to invite everyone in, then Gabi will certainly be among the visitors who constantly ring the bell, enter without having properly wiped their shoes, and hold out magazines, to which we are supposed to subscribe, or thoughts about Christ, which we are allowed to enter. No she isn't here, Gabi. Everything has been searched. Her boyfriend has meanwhile gone home, he has to study for an exam. The mother will ring him immediately, if something happens. At his home his parents will do the same, if something happens. The family house of the Fluchs stands in a small group of the like-minded. Everyone knows everyone else but perhaps they don't want to know one another too well. Since the houses are all alike, the people want to be like everyone else too. Each is like the other and no one says anything about the other or to the other. It's an estate for workers, cheaply built in the sixties, but they've got everything inside, even running water, we were allowed to choose the wallpaper ourselves. It's just like life, in which the inclinations live, but if once they work against us, then no one objects to that either. They destroy us, no one weeps, but the result is quite respectable, because our house is still there after all. On this estate the people stick together, even without knowing each other particularly well, it's not even necessary. The inquiries lead nowhere. They are not yet very urgent, since at this point one still hopes that Gabi will come back home, talking and laughing, she doesn't hurt anyone, why should anyone hurt her. No one hurts her. Peace is strong and determined to reign. No one can make a stand against it, it pulverizes even the longest war. A crippling passivity takes hold of people when peace reigns, don't give war a chance. Never again! Peace must immediately seize everything and take possession of it and its reign shall be endless and all-powerful, it is considered very practiced, it can do that no bother!, the peace that gives orders, it is always very strict with us, stricter than war. That's how it should be, and we like to obey this stronger force, peace, its power is secure, its name be praised in all eternity, with brief interruptions. No, not in all eternity, the dead sleep there, and peace no longer needs to reign over them, they're already quiet. Of their own accord.

Don't interrogate the face of a human being, it will tell you nothing, it will grimace or dissemble. The country policeman is partial to the darkness of night. The scene of a crime lures him again and again, and other places, which only a few people know, even if they were born here, also lure him. Whom does the country policeman disturb as he goes on his way? Only the bright feet of time, or is it someone else's feet?, which rush away ahead of him, into the darkness, at a rapid gallop, as if they wanted to laugh at the country policeman. For the victims of murder, nature is a bed, should they have to lie out in the open. But for the murderers, too, it's a made bed, which they are free to use, and for their killing business they cover it with seclusion, so that no one sees them, but one always has to reckon on something happening by chance. The car plows through the night, in the houses lights are still on, slide by as if they were ships, but it's the country policeman driving past. Soon from right and left the forest closes over him like giant folded hands over a head, full of desperation. The village has slipped away from Kurt Janisch, and with the village life slips away, too. It is often poisoned by neighborly acts of revenge, but still, it's life. But also the houses, in which it takes place, they should all rightly belong to him, who himself represents what's right, here, if you please, he has the appropriate regulation gun, its barrel is just as dark as the night, not nickel-plated, not bright as this day, which as surviving dependent has remained behind with lowered head. So, now it reigns at last, for, let's say, at least another eight hours, pain and pleasure and pleasantries disappear together in the forest, snow hangs like a veil over the mountains, so thin that one can't even see it in the darkness. Today the woman didn't keep the meeting on the mountain, something like that has never happened before. A bad sign. Instead she constantly calls him at home and puts the phone down when his wife answers. She's slowly beginning to notice, but she doesn't think anything of it, because her husband has told her: Just you tidy up, and see that you don't forget anything, including under the beds. This revolver, a Glock, its 16 rounds lie properly in the magazine and concentrate on their big moment (it will come once and not be repeated!), surrounded by only a little metal and a great deal of polymer plastic, the butt fits easily into the hand, but it will not be so easy for someone to pull it out, at least that's what we hope. At the moment this weapon is just as relaxed as its owner, but inside it trembles towards an event, which will lend it importance. Night, transfigured night, let me be afraid at last! All right, all right. In the headlight cone a still winterblind embankment, spindly undergrowth, the stream only puts in an appearance right at the bottom, and will certainly work its way up during the summer, with gentle murmuring, at present inaudible because of car noise, a bit of car is already enough for a driver not to hear anything from outside. Here a passing place, right at the edge a stack of wood, a pile of shit, a bright eye, which a team of woodcutters left behind, is cut out of the landscape by the moving light, disappears again. On the left the slope drags itself up, covered in brushwood and dry, old grass, it will throw off its burden step by step, because it will soon be too heavy, the higher it goes, until it is empty, icy, pure rock, where only chamois can survive, will be able to rise up, alone, free, and single; the individual branches of bushes point in the air, the birches over there have already missed their first leaf deployment, on the plain they're already diligently putting forth shoots. Further up there are perhaps even patches of snow, until there is only snow, we also still have to expect night frosts, a tasty dessert to follow the day that remained.

The road grants us the not to be underestimated pleasure of the blue, no the gray ribbon, which only thunderstorms are allowed to cut. The country policeman is on his way to the place, where he has already tidied up the bed of a murder victim several times, but he is repeatedly drawn there, just behind the village is the spot, soil cheated of plant growth, wasteland, but today the country policeman is driving further. Strangely enough he cannot remember whether he removed all evidence. Did he pick up the tissue or not. And if so, perhaps there's another one left over. He would also like to see if something was left lying at another spot, further away, where he also was with Gabi, which also has to be tidied up. He removed every piece of fluff, every scrap, but perhaps there are, left over from earlier intercourse, somewhere else, still a couple of stuck together paper tissues, which he now also wants to dispose of, better safe than sorry, he has a powerful torch, almost a searchlight, with him, the country policeman. Its beam will playfully leap after every thread, until he has caught up with and caught it. At this time, in this cold, no one will notice its hard, strong cone of light, still less down there, right by the river. One wrong move and the water puts one in its sack. It's as if the winter had returned, it has suddenly become so cold again. Over there the crouching back of a sawmill, a giant shadowy shape, there, too, the bridge (lovelessly poured of concrete, but completely suitable for heavy trucks) over which one can drive back and forward, the saws are silent, the lips, too, but the stream whispers, which usually one doesn't hear for all the squealing of the huge, rotating, and wood-spitting metal bands. I say: Away with the stream! Down here at last, if you please: THE RIVER. In with the stream and off it goes. Thank you for your free appearance, but you're too big for me to describe, although I would be paid something for it if I asked. At the moment I'm practizing on the little things, though not with the modesty of some colleagues, e.g. a Mr. K. whom I know personally, no, not the one you're thinking of. Once again, my God, what a coarse language one sometimes has to speak, if even animals and plants are to understand one: If one switches off the engine, one can hear it rushing, use another word immediately, let's say: one hears it talking to itself, the river. So the stream has abruptly disappeared, and now the roaring river steps up to us, which had come strolling around a gentle left-hand bend, which it almost missed, and demands its quota of admiration. Now they are running along side-by-side the river and its embankment road, which has been leant against it, so that it looks halfway good, but the road stands there obstinately, stands firm against the river's desires to pull it down, to play with it, and only the inhabitants of the heights move, as fast as they can. To get away from it, because it is threatening to their tender feet or furs.

Dark alder thickets to the right, deep down below by the river, where one always finds them, I don't have to change much there. In addition there is now, a real rarity, a canape on this road, on which there's hardly any traffic at night, an approaching car with a roof rack: Skis rest in their coffin-like box, funny, it looks like a cap for the car, and this box contains play, sport, and fun in such a small space that it would be impossible to squeeze in people as well; how are they supposed to amuse themselves, when there's room for their apparatus, but not at all for them? The roof rack is practical in any case, I think, people can straight away be buried in it if they have an accident. The car shoots past and briefly finds itself on the fringes of a hail shower of contempt caused by the country policeman, who in any case feels contempt for everything that doesn't belong to him. No reason to get excited. So, it's gone, the fast car, like a wet poodle, but in truth it has remained master of the house, it was an S-Class Mercedes. Despite everything the road is and remains dry. The eyes go ahead, don't turn aside, here comes the turn-off we're looking for. The crime didn't happen here, but here, as already suggested, paper tissues from earlier unions could still be lying around. If someone thought of examining these as well, then they would have a scent, although a cold, dried up one. But we don't quite know what modern forensic medicine is capable of. Yesterday and the day before yesterday Kurt Janisch already drove along the road at night to all the places where he's been with a certain young woman, who disappeared, sleepwalkers both, almost asleep in what they were doing, sometimes also calling to the other body: You can't do that, no, or can you? You can do it better than that! Did we leave out any part of this body by mistake? Then we'll attend to it the next time, till the first bit has healed again. And if it can, the body then remains quite at liberty, until one's home again, where another will without fail take an interest in it. And where those already present there, who never go for a walk because they always have to patiently wait, want to suck one dry again for the sake of this obliging service, even if one has arrived back already completely empty and exhausted and cannot possibly be used again today, except for washing the car, where one has to do nothing else except to be and be there. The car doesn't ask for anything more than that. Nature provides the water. Past. Not a sound in the modern car, which glides more than it drives along. Now just don't make a mistake with the speed, don't attract the attention of a colleague (very unlikely!), until one reaches the river bank and then at a particular spot has to scramble down a fair bit, something only local people would think of. The others, who don't know the area, would think it's a vertical drop, and we're not going to break our necks just for a fuck and we don't want to drown either. It's much cheaper breaking one's neck on the road without having done any sport beforehand. Yes, there, about another two-and-a-half miles, that's where the entry to the path by the river, hidden beneath branches, must point the way to an extinguished smile, to a circling screaming, as if birds had come to visit and couldn't find the exit anymore.

It can't be, do you see what I see?, in front there, on the road, a large dark mass, a heated mass, swiftly coming nearer, but with no glowing headlamps fixed to it, why on earth not. Nothing that could sprout wings and lift up into the air, and yet, how strange, that's exactly what it does do now, and there follows, fractions of seconds later, the soft impact of a body, which only just now came swinging along like a not quite full sack, which earlier, still in the forest, no one could beat, and which is now quickly and briskly drawn up from the road over the windscreen, the wedge-shaped profile of this modern Japanese car, as if by invisible strings, before immediately disappearing again. For another moment the night is darkened even further by the powerful bag of muscles, which like lightning and yet at the same time also ponderously (as if workers were bracing themselves sideways with ropes, grumbling and groaning, their feet pressed against the car body, in order to heave up, heave ho, their burden), slides up over the front part and the front window of the car as on a snow plow and has disappeared again, hardly has it appeared, so evidently the whole heavy mass was flung, almost dragged upwards, by the forward ploughing car and now already, like an unidentified flying object (but the moment that it happens, the country policeman knows what is happening), has risen above the car and landed on the road behind it. For the hundredth of a second the huge, already almost slack sack of fur and bones and horns hangs still and immobile above the vehicle like a strange, black moon, then it strives a little higher towards heaven, on a parabolic flight path, whose zenith (delta t), since the object, commensurate with the speed at which Kurt Janisch's car was travelling, will land 15 yards behind the Japanese car in the roadway, in exactly the middle of this stretch. While the bag of bones flies, it turns without grace a couple of times on its axis, a cumbersome comet, whose horned head, heavily burdened by the weight, points almost majestically in rapidly changing different directions, depending on the phase of the flight, and then lands on the road, the body, and is, for a moment at least, completely still. Quite unexpectedly Kurt Janisch's car was deprived of the momentum (M) which was necessary within the time (t) to lift the mass of a huge stag (m), a full-grown ten-pointer, for the killing of which the owner of the hunting ground up there had coughed up quite a sum, if the stag hadn't anyway had to cough its last, from ground level to the apex of its flight path (a), which was located behind the car, as well as to propel the stag in the direction of travel. The result was a drastic deceleration of the country policeman's car by several miles an hour. The car struck the stag above the fibula, or whatever it's called in this and similar animals, the bumper, therefore, caught one of the hurrying, swinging hind legs, losing contact with the ground, the hindquarters sagged away, down to the radiator, and off it went, off went the backwards flight, right over the car. At the corresponding moment in time Kurt Janisch was no longer driving very fast, he had already been approaching the turn-off down to the river and begun to look round, to see where he could park in the seclusion of undergrowth.

For a moment the stag had been caught between a number of force vectors, to which it had succumbed. As if gripped by impotent rage, something had lifted it up, shaken it like a fist, then catapulted it away, to immediately put an end to the nauseating aversion of the earth, which at last wants a little company, which stays for a while and doesn't immediately run off again. The earth prepares the whole meal. In return it has to pay with one head of population, it always has to pay. No, just a moment, not this time! The cars and the open trucks loaded with wood are always in such a hurry and leave the earth so quickly. Only the dead remain definitely, even if not quite voluntarily, with us, that's no fun for the road nor for us. The dead: so many! What happened to the rest? In maddened anger, in towering rage, the earth, in alliance with the country policeman, has flung the heavy animal in the air, apparently on a whim, like a crumpled, damp handkerchief, like one of those which the hunter and collector has originally gone to look for, and has simply thrown it away, the whole bundle of bones, without thinking anymore about it. But only the earth itself has been struck, the gray road. The heap of meat has been thrown on its counter, now strip off the hide, divide up and sell the meat. Yet even as the animal, not visibly bleeding, turning somersaults, had plunged onto the roadway, the earth had evidently changed its mind, no we can't have such a good conversation with that one, who's interested in what a stag's interested in, acorns, hay, the backsides of hinds, well, and it now lets go the animal quite casually, the good earth. Let's just wait a bit for a human, there'll be one along shortly, at the moment the discos are still full of human tissue, skin, bones, hair, sinews, muscles, and all in the revealing splender of rave and hiphop clothing, sometimes one, sometimes the other, never too much, as far as the little honeys are concerned, our writing and TV-watching youth (up to the age of 50) will tell us what exactly. Correct would be this answer: Tomorrow three girls aged between sixteen and twenty will supply the earth all the more plentifully with fresh flesh, so we'll let the game go for today, without eating it, while we remain here at the meat counter, the sausage stand of life, and stuff ourselves till the grease is dripping from our chins. The animal is struggling up again, the forelegs are still kneeling, but the rear is already rising up, a hair-raising bleating noise, mixed with a kind of belling and groaning, listen, there it is again, what can that be, sounds like a siren. Fate is in such a bad mood that today it didn't even want to put together a decent carcass. The sound is quite close now. The stag stands unsteadily, still thrust forward by its own rage, to face the fate which it hadn't seen coming, after all it doesn't have any eyes at the back, but whatever has happened to it, it stands ready, its hooves lurching over the asphalt to fight with whomever; fate, sluggish as it is, has not even reacted yet to this attack by the meat mass of this animal weighing hundreds of pounds, and already the animal wants to fight it. So, now, with some delay, fate is at last handed the stag's papers, a little late, as mentioned, there's no hurry, it'll not be shot until next year at the earliest, it is an older, but very beautiful beast, and in a year's time it will be still older, still more majestic, perhaps have fled from a younger rival, no, it's not sick, it is, touch wood, healthy, thanks for asking, and has by and large remained so. Now it's back on its feet, it could be king of any forest, its head lowered, swinging, no, the neck isn't broken either, this is the confirmation: Fate's documents are always correct, it knows everything about us. What's happened to the rest? Our brand new Minister of Social Affairs will ask you that in all seriousness.