Wolf Haas - Brenner and God

When the mighty bronze lions at the waterworks whisked past them, she beamed and said, “It’s good to get away from your own shtreet now and then.”

And believe it or not, it turned out that for the last three and a half years she hadn’t dared to venture any farther from her apartment than the few meters to the gas station across the street. Until the day Brenner hadn’t come back as promised and she’d set off to take Helena to the police.

Brenner didn’t want to believe her at first, but she just said, “They’ve got everything at the gas shtation.”

From her mouth, it sounded like a reasonable explanation for why she hadn’t left her own street for three and a half years. Brenner was just glad she’d had the courage to on the day that she’d saved his life. So many unusual things had happened to him these past few days that he didn’t try for very long to understand why a person would lock herself up at home for three and a half years. “Confession” comes from “Comprehension,” he thought, but he couldn’t even comprehend why this nonsense would occur to him right now. And I’ve got to say, on closer examination, the normal person’s a rarity, and should you ever meet him, you’d be better off asking him how and why and how come.

The VW bus ran perfectly in the mountains, too. Brenner drove it up to Reinhard’s domicile, and incredibly, it was only on the steepest ten meters that he had to downshift to second.

It was early afternoon, and the bank director, of course, wasn’t at his domicile. But his wife was lying in a lawn chair, her face in the shade, her legs in the sun. And you see, a bus is good for this, because Brenner wouldn’t have been able to see over the bushes in a car that was any lower to the ground.

“Why did you park here?”

The South Tyrolean looked a little anxious, and to be perfectly honest, the steeply sloping street looked a little criminal. But the bus didn’t roll away while Brenner walked briskly over to the garden gate and rang the bell. Reinhard’s wife reluctantly got up from her lawn chair and came to the garden gate in a bathrobe. Brenner pressed an envelope into her hand and said he was supposed to deliver it to her husband. Three of the twenty fifties were missing, but Brenner didn’t care.

On the drive back, he explained to the South Tyrolean why he’d returned the bank director’s money, and because they were on the topic of money, he asked her what the VW bus cost.

“I bargained him down to fifty thousand,” the South Tyrolean said, “radio included.”

Because Brenner was still annoyed that she hadn’t bought a more affordable women’s car, he let the question slip, did she have a money tree?

“You might put it that way,” the South Tyrolean replied, and she told Brenner that half of the valley back home belonged to her because her brother had a motorcycle accident and her uncle didn’t have any children. “So I inherited my own megaland.”

“And you sold off a field for the VW bus?”

“Are you crazy? I didn’t give anything away. I shwore to myself that I wouldn’t touch any of it. It’s all leased out. And someday I’ll leave it to someone else.”

“And the fifty thousand?”

“That was last year’s interesht on the savings account,” the South Tyrolean said. “I thought the interesht I could at leasht touch for a car. So I can get out a little. It’s not healthy to be cooped up on your own shtreet all the time. A person’s got to be among people now and then.”

It hit Brenner just then that he was due shortly at Knoll’s funeral, and he asked her whether he could drive straight to the Doblinger cemetery, and she’d drive herself home.

“I don’t undershtand why you go running to every single funeral,” the South Tyrolean said. “You’re worshe than my old aunties back home.”

But Brenner didn’t let that dissuade him, and because the South Tyrolean said nothing against it, he simply drove straight to the Doblinger cemetery and said good-bye to her.

But then he had to look. Because more people had come to Knoll’s funeral than to Kressdorf’s and Stachl’s and Milan’s and Herr Zauner’s and the foreman’s and the security boss’s all put together.

Knoll was officially regarded as Kressdorf’s first victim-not to mention a victim of slander, because of the public’s rush to judgment about the kidnapping. In light of the murder, his smaller misdemeanors like blackmailing slipped right under the table-he was getting a hero’s funeral now, you can’t even imagine. From Opus Dei to the pope’s best friend, from the last Habsburger to the cathedral preacher, they all came together to pay their last respects to the martyr. And right in the midst of the mourners Brenner discovered Bank Director Reinhard. He looked rather troubled. Because, I think for a benevolent string-puller like him it’s always incomprehensible when your little ward-for whose mission he’d truly done what he could, even financing, without any collateral, the abortion clinic’s surrounding offices-turns around and bites the hand that feeds him.

It came as no surprise to Brenner that he’d see Natalie at the funeral because over the years she’d sought out conversations with Knoll time and again. She told Brenner a few things about Knoll’s life, that his father had been one of the first organic farmers and had died of skin cancer, and that the police still hadn’t found the video.

“Maybe it doesn’t even exist,” Brenner said, and he wondered how Natalie got to be so well informed about the police investigation.

But when he saw who picked Natalie up after the funeral, everything became clear to him.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to go ogling after shtrange women?”

Brenner thought he wasn’t hearing correctly. Knoll’s funeral had lasted an hour and a half, and the VW bus was still parked there.

“How come you didn’t drive home?”

“You’re really not too shwift.”

“It lasted too long for my taste, too.”

“I’m talking about your head. It’s not too shwift.”

“That’s what you said the first time we met at the gas station.”

“And unfortunately it hasn’t gotten any better.”

Brenner stood in the parking spot and the South Tyrolean leaned out the open car door and spoke slowly, as though to a slow-witted child, “I don’t have a driver’s lischense, Herr Simon!”

And now that really reminded Brenner of the first time they met. Because just like then, he was searching for a good line, and just like then, nothing came to him. And so the South Tyrolean beat him to it.

“I’m going to need a chauffeur, Herr Simon.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Firsht up, you drive me home.”

That was a good suggestion for Brenner, because he was thinking, by the time we get to her apartment, I’ll have come up with a good excuse.

As they drove out of the cemetery’s parking lot they passed Natalie again, who was standing with Peinhaupt in front of his car and giving him a very serious talking-to. And Peinhaupt was looking rather grim, too. Desperate, I dare say. Brenner would learn the reason why just thirty-seven weeks later. But just Peinhaupt’s luck: Natalie was already well over forty, but she broke it to him after the funeral that, as of March, he’d be paying alimony for a fifth child.