Eternal Life (3 page)

Of course, he couldn’t be sure: was it from quitting smoking—basically withdrawal, because he smoked forty a day. Or did it have to do with the career change, why he was getting headaches more often than he used to get, from the worrying. Or, third possibility, it was just the weather in Zell that didn’t agree with him, especially now, this heat in September, just unnatural.

Anyway. His head was the reason why Brenner was showing up now at the Zell pharmacy and demanding a pack of Migradon from Ewalt the pharmacist.

“For whom are these tablets intended, Herr Brenner?”

“For me.”

“Have you seen a doctor about this condition?”

Brenner now, headache already so bad that he didn’t know where to look—well, the young pharmacist struck him as being a little long-winded.

“Yeah,” he murmured, and was already out the door before the pharmacist could make herself important.

You should know, “Czech eyes”—not what the women were thinking, no, “child’s eyes.” And add to that, two ruts a centimeter deep in his cheeks, and in a skull with four blunt edges, no less. Needless to say, most of them liked that.

He was in a hurry now to get to his hotel room, though. First, take the pills, then, type up the report for the week. Because every week he had to submit a report to the Meierling Detective Agency. And this week he hadn’t done it yet. And he had the feeling he wasn’t going to get rid of this headache, pills or no pills. It was three o’clock now, the post office closes at five-thirty, and Brenner wanted to get his report in today’s mail. So he had to hurry, only two hours left for the whole report.

Needless to say, to find a familiar face waiting there in the dingy lobby of the Hirschenwirt, well, he was none too happy. Nor was he happy to hear a familiar voice addressing him at the same time. Both belonged to a young man with a tie green as poison on which the word “okay” was printed over and over in all different sizes.

“A little respect, Herr Inspector!” the young man says and makes an idiotic salute.

“Mandl,” Brenner grumbles. He noticed right away how it’d already began its descent, his dread of the lacquered local reporter with the aristocratic manners.

“There’s no kaiser anymore, Mandl.”

“There’s a Lift Kaiser, a Village Kaiser, a Real Estate Kaiser!” Mandl countered so fast that his head gave a little jerk, causing a strand of hair to come loose. Because it’d been glued down with gel, and now it was standing straight up and quivering, just unnatural.

Back when he was still on the force, Brenner used to tease him sometimes and instead of Mandl he’d call him “Myrtle.” But he hadn’t had anything to do with the reporter from the
Pinzgauer Post
for some time now. And today, no desire at all, because A of all, headache, and B of all, a report to finally get sent off.

Even though the report wasn’t all that urgent. Quite the opposite. Meierling—you know, the boss of the detective agency—his name wasn’t actually Meierling but Brugger—had warned Brenner several times that he shouldn’t write such pitifully long reports. And last week he even gave orders that if Brenner couldn’t keep it brief, he should kindly include a ten-line summary as an abstract.

“Nobody reads what you write!” he said, just had to go rubbing Brenner’s nose in it. Now, you should know Brenner’s motto. Because, his motto, write everything down, important or unimportant. And in retrospect, you’ve got to admit, he was right.

But now of all times, just when he felt like things were gradually falling into place, Mandl gets in his way.

But, to be perfectly honest, that was only half the truth, why Detective Brenner was in such a lousy mood just then. Listen up, it happened like this. Mandl asks:

“You on duty, Herr Inspector?” Even though it’d been
over half a year since Brenner had been on the force. And Mandl knew that for a fact.

Brenner, though, he doesn’t let anything show, no, he says, “I’m always on duty, Mandl.”

“And when’s quittin’ time?”

“As soon as I’ve caught him.”

“So, it’s a him—male perp, lone operator.”

Mandl actually talked this way. I’ve got to be honest, he wasn’t as bad as everyone made him out to be. He was still young and wanting to make something of himself at the newspaper. But Brenner could only shake his head at this degree of useless enthusiasm.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Mandl.”

Mandl had got him this far, though. He motioned to the waitress for two glasses of white. The Hirschenwirt is one of these old inns with an enormous bar in the lobby, and the two men just happened to be standing in front of it. The waitress set their wineglasses down, and Mandl pulled a violet fifty out of his poison-green shirt pocket. It was enough to make Brenner sick.

“You trying to lose your very last reader, too?” the detective asks now.

“What, we’ve got a reader?” Mandl asks, and grins like for the dentist commercials, because ever since his report about the underground bordello in the Brucker Bundesstrasse, he’d had two brand-new crowns put in.

“With an old story like this, you won’t be coaxing anybody away from the fireside anyhow.”

“Don’t got a dog, eh? Write an old story, roll up the
newspaper, and throw it. Dog fetches newspaper. Leaves his spot by the fire. Police seize opportunity. Park themselves by the fire. Eh?”

“What’re you getting at? And why’re you always calling me police?”

“At what, Inspector? It’s:
At what are you getting?
Because:
From where’d you get your grammar?
”

How should I put it. Mandl wasn’t putting nothin’ in nobody’s way. He just felt like he had to knock the whole world down, sheer self-importance. Brenner only said:

“You know what I think? I think you did it. Perverse like you are.”

“So, a lone operator, good-looking, perverse? That reminds me of something—where exactly is the American?”

“In America.”

But this was another American that the two of them were talking about. Not the old millionairess from the lift. And this is what I’ve been trying to say this whole time. Why Brenner was in such a foul mood.

You should know, an agent from the American insurance company was in Zell for a few weeks. And from the start, she had something to do with Brenner because he was practically employed by the insurance company, too. That was one blond young American, the likes of which we only know from the movies over here. Or if you can imagine a Barbie doll. Betty was her name. And she was in Zell practically the whole summer.

Naturally there was gossip. Not just Mandl was after her, but more or less every character in Zell, and when it comes
to something like this, there are always a couple old slack-jaws, of course. But that wasn’t the gossip. Because none of the Zellers had any success with the American. So other rumors got invented. That she was actually an American undercover agent. Sent extra by the FBI. Some said CIA, too, and a few even Scotland Yard, but then, Fürstauer over at the deli, he knew that that’s only in Scotland.

Betty was just from the insurance company, though. She was doing some type of local visit to the scene of the crime, and from Brenner she got everything she could ever want to know about the case. He couldn’t offer her much, though. I mean, in so far as the case goes, he couldn’t offer her very much.

And so far as that goes, I’ll only say this much. She also had a room at the Hirschenwirt. And she’d been, ever since she was
ein kleines Mädchen
, a little girl over in America, she’d been in love with Robert Redford. Now, Brenner looks nothing like Robert Redford, but something about him must’ve reminded her of Robert Redford.

That was in August. And now the first week of September’s almost over, and Mandl’s just standing there in the Hirschenwirt lobby and asking:

“Where exactly is the American?”

What I’m getting at with this. I think it’s actually because of that. Why the moment for small talk was passing Brenner by. And when he noticed how disappointed and pale Mandl suddenly got, Brenner pounced again and said:

“The American? The American’s in America.”

It was only then that he noticed how it was doing him
more harm than it was the local reporter. But he didn’t let anything show. Simply turned around and left Mandl standing there with their two wineglasses. Then he went upstairs and finally tried to write his report. Sending it off, though, that he could always do tomorrow.

Nowadays when a person goes around trying to force something at all costs, there’s no way it’s going to work. Maybe that was the reason why Brenner still hadn’t wrote a single word of his report for the Meierling Detective Agency. Even though it’d been a solid hour since he’d left Mandl standing back there.

It was the sixth of September, but still warm enough that he could sit in his room in his bare chest. The rooms on the shady side of the inn, well, another story altogether this time of year. Brenner’s room was sunnyside, though, so needless to say, it heats up something awful during the day, whew, let me tell you.

For over an hour he’d been sitting at that small table in his room, when all of the sudden he realized—he still hadn’t written a line. Because in his thoughts, he was somewhere else completely. That was his old malady, that he couldn’t concentrate. Outwardly, Brenner gave the impression of being horribly calm. There’s that movie where the monk says—you know, an Indian, a Buddhist—he says: If I go, then I go, and if I stay, then I stay. And that’s the kind of impression a person gets of Brenner if you see him going or staying—or as far as I’m concerned, sitting—somewhere. All a facade.

And you’d have to know him pretty well in order to know how anxious he was all the time. And focusing on the essentials, let’s say, that wasn’t his strong suit at all. Nemec, he recognized this Day One and just had to rub Brenner’s nose right in it:

“Concentrate instead of ruminate, Brenner!”

Because that was Nemec’s answer when Brenner asked him if he could take a professional development course. Maybe it’s not that wise, either, when you’ve got a new boss, to ask for professional development on the guy’s very first day, since it’s going to mean at least two days out of the office. Brenner must’ve been thinking of that just now when he realized he hadn’t wrote a single word, even though he’d been staring at his table for an hour already.

Such a small filigree table, I mean, all you had to do was look at it, and it’d wobble. And you couldn’t imagine anyone using it for anything but looking at. Brenner, though. To him, this sort of thing didn’t matter. He had been typing up his reports here, week in, week out, for six months.

His grandfather back in Puntigam had been a carpenter. A thing like this he never would’ve called a table. Brenner still had two cabinets that his grandfather built. Nice, slim walnut units that’d been there in his parents’ apartment since before he came into this world.

And ever since his parents died, Brenner had them in his apartment. Because he didn’t have any siblings, and they fit in good with his government-subsidized apartment. Well, civil service apartment, since only civil servants live there—cheap rent, let me tell you. And now, of course,
Brenner was afraid he’d have to move out since he quit the police.

And then something happened that surprised him. Because up till now he still hadn’t heard anything—no written notice, nothing. And instead of finally writing his report, he thinks now: Probably has to do with his old school chum Schwaighofer. Basically, it went something like this:

When Brenner put in a request for an apartment as in-demand as this one was five years ago, he was in for a surprise. At first he didn’t recognize him, because, bald and twenty years since he’d seen him, but his old classmate Schwaighofer recognized him right away. He was the office manager there and responsible for the allocation of the apartments. At first it was uncomfortable for Brenner, awkward, you know, because what do you talk about with a person when the last time you saw him was twenty years ago. And, even back then, they didn’t really talk all that much. Brenner had always been a bit of a closed book, you can’t forget. I don’t want to say stubborn, but shut off all the time. And Schwaighofer, too, never anything remarkable, that guy.

It didn’t stay uncomfortable for long, though, because, as a bachelor, he’d be put on a wait-list—yes, they’ve got waitlists for these—years!—don’t even ask. Then, three months later, he’s moving in, and goes without saying, his classmate Schwaighofer had made the arrangements. That’s the way we do it over here. The same everywhere.

And now, because he hadn’t heard anything in six months from the Civil Service Housing Authority, i.e. Schwaighofer, Brenner was slowly starting to get his hopes
up. That possibly his classmate Schwaighofer was behind it, and there’d been some oversight—on purpose, I mean, computer or whatnot—about Brenner having to move out.

That’s neither here nor there. But for Brenner, things weren’t exactly going any different. He’s sitting in his hot room and he’s supposed to be thinking about work, but instead he’s thinking about his apartment. And hear me out, what I’m about to tell you now. Coincidence it was not, because—coincidence, well, there’s no such thing, it’s been proved.

Instead of the report now, Brenner must’ve been thinking about that one time he took his co-worker Anni Bichler back to his apartment. Anni, that was one of the two secretaries in his department, but the prettier one. This was a good five years ago that he took Anni home with him, because he’d just moved into his civil service apartment a few weeks before that. The next morning over breakfast, Anni says:

“Frankly—”

Now, you should know, if there’s one thing Brenner can’t stand. When someone begins a sentence with “frankly.” He’d become convinced somehow that sentences like that—that start off like that, with “frankly,” I mean—that they never amount to anything good.

He was in for a surprise now, though, because Anni Bichler said something completely different. Because he would’ve expected his colleague, Ms. Bichler, to maybe complain that he’d taken advantage of her in her condition, i.e. plastered.