Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

“ Living living here?” Brenner says. “Do you know Preussenstadl?”

Of course Brenner knew Preussenstadl. It’s a humongous apartment complex, built in the Alpine-chalet style, four floors, fifty-two apartments, pricey as sin-and almost all Germans who bought them up as vacation apartments.

“I’m a long-term visitor.”

“Just like me.”

“Yes, and like the old Americans, too. They were frequent visitors to Zell.”

“Did you know them?”

“With Americans you can never know for sure if you know them.”

“So you knew them well enough?”

“I speak passable English. And, well, we shared a mutual interest.”

“Curling?”

“No, they had no interest whatsoever in curling.”

The German needed her full concentration now in order to pass two semis on a bend in the autobahn. Then she said:

“Community theater.”

“But they didn’t know a word of German!”

“I don’t always understand the dialect myself. Nevertheless. We actually first met at a Vormachen .”

“ Vormachen ? Now I’m the one that doesn’t understand.”

“You’ve never been to a Vormachen ? You simply must! A lovely tradition. Whenever the next wedding is, you’ll have to come with me to the Vormachen . The old Americans rarely left Vergolder’s Castle to come down into the city. Eighty years old, after all. But they always made it to a Vormachen whenever they were in Zell. They just loved a good Vormachen .”

“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.