John Brady - Poachers Road

Someone, I forgot, who told me.”

“To Viktring? The DP camp there?”

“I heard Viktring too,” said his opa, but with a cautious look at Felix now. “And other camps. Hey, don’t kid yourself now, not all those people in the camps after the war were refugees. Believe me.”

“Nobody talks about that stuff here,” Felix said after a pause.

“Do they?”

His opa didn’t seem to hear the question. His face lit up with some recollection.

“There were DP camps right in Graz too, the city?”

His grandfather stopped as though frozen.

“Sure there were,” he said quietly. His eyes settled on Felix.

“Other places too. Over in Carinthia as well.”

“For refugees coming in from the east? The ones who had settled up the Danube and all that? Jugoslavian Germans, Swabians?”

His grandfather nodded.

“Guys on the losing side too,” he murmured. “Nothing German to them at all.”

“Grandfather Kimmel was smuggling too, right?”

His grandfather darted a quick glare at him.

“Don’t make my sins worse, Felix.”

“Sorry. I just never heard, never knew this.”

“Are you crazy? Why would a parent burden the next generation with the load of the past? Who knows what he was doing. But the DPs were Yugos, Slovenians a lot of them. I only remember that fact because I couldn’t figure out what the hell Slovenes were in a ‘jail’ for. Okay, not a jail but it didn’t make sense.”

“Like Slovenes who were Austrian maybe before the war?”

His grandfather waved his hand.

“All that history and empire crap. You see? There you are: history confusion.”

“But he made his rounds, visits to these places?

“Just a rumour, Felix. I mean no one would ever ask him.

Christ! Around here? Look. He was a sour, tough fellow. People kept out of his way. ‘Mustard in his arse’ they used to say. But his father had been taken from him. So, who can preach? Cruel stuff, this damned history.”

“But it ended, that stuff.”

“Did it? It wasn’t just Slovenes in those camps you know.

Maybe you were thinking, it’s okay to help out, say, people who are from your own side. A sausage, a crust of bread, a letter? But there were others in those places who got by the Tommys. Yes, we were really relieved when the Russkis left and the Englander took over. Christ, yes! But they were nice men. Naive though but what am I saying? I’ve never been beyond Munich, or that lousy ‘holiday’ in Italy. Italy. You’re a gypsy though, the zigeune of the family. Are they all like that in England, all nice and fair with you, but boring?”

“Food’s bad,” said Felix. “Everything costs a million.”

“‘Dull but decent,’ eh? You’re in no hurry to go back there.”

Felix’s mind was adrift now again, cluttered and sliding, turning back on itself. He watched his oma lift a statue of Mary from the mantel, and dust it. She crossed herself after she replaced it. His opa rolled his eyes, and leaned in. He gestured for Felix him to come closer.

“Did you see that? Best to keep the church at arm’s-length too, I tell you. It’s part of that mess too, you know but don’t tell your oma I said that.”

“Mess?”

“Ach,” he whispered. “It’s years since I heard anyone talk about those times. Even then, it was just like a story, or a fairy-tale, like the old ones up in the forest.”

“What stories.”

“I’ll do you a big favour and say nothing. That is what I will do.”

“Nothing, about what?”

“Ach, you are like a badger, Felix. What I’m saying is just common sense. The leopard never loses his spots. That’s all.”

But his opa was getting up now, making the sighs and groans he used as a way to escape conversation. From the hall Felix heard Speckbauer thank Oma Nagl again. There were chuckles, and he caught most of the words: hospitable, splendid, hearty.

“Just like your dad,” Opa Nagl murmured, half listening to the talk in the hall.

“They are?”

“You are.”

“He talked about this?”

“Talked? He bent my ear, how many times. But it was much later. This was only shortly before, well, you know. I think people get to an age and they look over their shoulder, and they get curious. If you ask me, that’s useless. I am a farmer. I get older, slower, stupider, happier. Then comes ‘freedom.’ I used to worry when I was a kid, about hell and that, but I know different now. God could be a woman. And a fine one too! That fear shit they threw at us, to keep us in line.. a crime.”

He made a sharp gesture as though lopping a branch.

“When I saw what they did back then… It all comes back to the same thing. Them and their stupid politics.”

“Around here, Opa?”

“Here? I don’t know. But the priest here is a nice fellow. Still, he must do what he is told. Tell you the truth, I feel sorry for him.

And you know, he probably hasn’t a clue himself. If he did, he doesn’t believe any of it.”

“Politics?”

“No, no. You know when rats leave a sinking ship? A rat line?

Rats are infernal bastards. Christ, they’re smarter than a room full of Jesuits. They’ll eat through anything. They can climb like frigging monkeys too. Yes, the ‘ratline.’”

“Rats,” said Felix. “What do rats have to do with anything there?”

“Not those rats, boy don’t be a depp. It’s people I’m talking about. The ‘ratline’ is how a lot of the bastards got away. You know who I mean — the higherups.”

“I don’t. Who?”

“Oh come on. The bad guys.

“The war?”

“Of course! But not just here in humble little Styria. I’m talking about ones from all over, and other guys, in the DP camps.

Look, is Yugo a bad word in the city?”

Felix nodded.

“Okay. Well call them what you like. I am not referring to the ordinary ones, the ordinary decent folk. No these were the higherups. What did they call them, the ones down there, the ones who loved Hitler? Ustashi? Yes! That’s their name. But it wasn’t just them hiding in those camps. It was some of the ones from close to Berlin, the really black bastards. They had their escape plans ready for years. Some of them went to places like South America, can you believe it?”

“Where did you learn all this, Opa?”

“I forget.”

“You read it?”

“I said, I forget.”

“But you know a lot.”

“I forget a lot too. A happy man does both equally well.”

There was something sharp in the retort. Then his grandfather’s face softened.

“Look,” he said. “There were ‘ratlines’ everywhere.

Switzerland, Italy, here. Some of them went right to the Vatican, they say. That’s what I’m talking about. Along with loot they’d stolen off Jews, that went with them, some of it anyway. That’s never going to see the light of day, now, is it?”

“Up here?”

“Why not? You ask where I heard this. It was years ago. That’s why I am ashamed to tell you. I went to Grade Six, Felix, but look at you, and Lisi Uni. Fantastic.”

“You heard rumours, gossip?”

“That’s it. People back then believed anything. Remember, this was after the war, when one potato was a feast. People make up stories here in the hills, it’s natural: a giant deer, or a wolf with red eyes, a giant, a mountain of gold anything.”

“Who could tell me?”

His grandfather leaned against the countertop and massaged his knuckles.

“Who?”

“Niemand,” his grandfather said. “No one.”

The door opened and Felix’s grandmother came in giggling at something Speckbauer had said in a low voice.

“Such kindness, I will not forget this. Truly.”

Felix’s opa nodded at Speckbauer in return for his compliment.