Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

But a dead body in a lift seat on the morning line-check, well, Alois the Lift had never had that happen before.

“What in god’s name!” Alois the Lift yelled out.

Now, you should know. For years, Alois had acted in his community theater troupe. The community theater troupe was founded in the mid-sixties by the tourism bureau. It goes without saying, though, billed to the tourists as some relic out of the Stone Age. This winter they put on The Truth about Moser Gudrun . A play in three acts, it said on the posters, by Silvia Soll. And among the actors listed on the posters, Alois the Lift came in third: “Alois Mitteregger (Alois the Lift).”

Alois the Lift was a real darling among community-theater-goers. But when he described the incident from the valley station at the Rainerwirt that night, well, community theater doesn’t come close.

“What in god’s name, I cried out,” he cried out-and so loud that everybody in the whole bar could understand. “I switched that lift off as fast it’d go to Off. Even though it was obvious that there was nothing left to do. But when you’re scared, you do it as fast as you can. Even if there’s no point. Because, if, first thing in the morning, somebody’s sitting on the lift, then he’s been sitting there all night. Since we don’t run it in between,” Alois the Lift says.

“It gave me a scare, of course, so I brought the lift to a halt a.s.a.p. We’ve had first aid, you know, mouth-to-mouth. But you’ll be doing mouth-to-mouth a long time with fifteen centimeters of snow between you and the body. Even though it’d just started snowing that morning. Been a clear starry sky that night. I took the dog out after the eight o’clock movie, and it was clear. And when it’s starry like that here, end of December, it’s at least seven degrees in the dead of night,” Alois the Lift says.

“Seven below,” Alois the Lift says, and looks at his listeners just long enough for them to get a little nervous. Just one of the pauses that they’re always rehearsing at the community theater. And before anyone could interrupt him like a bad theater prompter, Alois the Lift says:

“I’m in shock. I’m running so fast to the emergency brake that it nearly does me in. Even though I could tell right away it’s no use. But I’m running and I’m slipping on the fresh fallen snow. Underneath it’s a plate of ice-don’t budge all winter long. That’s where the load line snakes around, and up you go, easy, since they’re always polishing it with those sharp edges of theirs, all year long, pure formica. Now, I know this-I know every one of the ice sheets around the lift, and I haven’t gone down in years. Ha! They’re always falling all over the place there, the Dutch girls, because you don’t see the crust under the dust. But I do, of course, I know it. But now, I’m so scared that I’ve forgot. Could’ve turned out not too pretty, but I just barely catch hold of the emergency brake-and caught myself, too, right on the red emergency brake. That’s when it stopped, the lift,” Alois the Lift says.

“And I was still standing, too. I walk back to the chair where the body is, a little shaky in the knees from the shock-nearly took me down. But before I could get to knocking the snow off the corpse, the phone in the cabin starts ringing. Now I don’t know: should I knock the snow off the corpse or should I go in and get the phone. But the phone don’t stop, and because it’s too late anyway, I hurry up and go in.”

Maybe the lift operator was exaggerating a little with the pauses, because he raised his beer at this point and took an abnormally long sip.

“Meanwhile, Wörgötter’s made it to my lift terminal up top. An old fox, too, that one,” Alois the Lift says, smiling.

“But now he’s yelling, all excited and beside himself, saying that a body’s just come in on the chairlift up there. And right at that moment, when it’s at the very tiptop, that’s when the lift comes to a halt.”

As far as America goes, Zell’s a tiny speck. But so far as Pinzgau’s concerned: forty hotels, nine schools, thirty mountains over 3,000 meters high, fifty-eight ski lifts, one lake, one detective.

The detective doesn’t actually belong to Zell, though. He was only there, of course, on account of the lift scandal. The two Americans froze to death on the chairlift in Zell at the end of December. And here it is, beginning of September, and the detective’s still here. He was slowly starting to get the feeling that he wouldn’t be getting out of here any time soon.

Like it creeps up on you, that kind of feeling. Or like when you get lost in a labyrinth or you get married and have kids. This is that detective, Brenner’s his name. Woke up in a panic a few nights already. Because he dreamed he was prohibited from leaving Zell until he’d solved the hopeless case of the two Americans.

But then he did solve it, even though it’d seemed hopeless to everybody. Now, it was a good three-quarters of a year after the fact, you’ve got to keep that in mind. Last December, the corpses, and now the next winter season’s already at the door. The police gave up before the month of January was out.

Brenner was still on the police force back then. They’d popped up from the city end of December, made a mess out of everything, and by the end of January they’d split again. Nothing and hopeless. Only the Pinzgauer Post stayed on it a little while longer. Till mid-February maybe. But, then, done and forgotten.

And beginning of March, all the sudden Brenner turns back up again. But not as police, no, as a detective. Thanks to the insurance company. The deceased were the American in-laws of Vergolder Antretter. About them, you should know, they were stinking rich. Both in their eighties and just filthy rich. Vergolder himself’s stinking rich-far and away the richest man in Zell, way above Eder, way above the mayor, leagues above Fürstauer. But, next to his in-laws, a penniless bum.

Needless to say, the Zellers were surprised. First he takes off as police-Brenner, I mean-and then turns back up three weeks later a private detective. Then it comes to light that it’s an insurance story, on the Americans’ end of things, because for them what it was about was a whole lot of money. Yeah, what do you know. The insurance company doesn’t send over their own detective from America, though, because A of all, language problems, and B of all, just easier not to. And cheaper and more efficient and-anyway, they hire a local detective agency. So, they contracted with a detective agency in Vienna. Meierling Detective Agency, it was called.

Now, coincidentally, it turns out that police officer Simon Brenner, Detective Inspector, or whatever his rank was, has quit the police. Now, you should know, he’d been on the force nineteen years. Because he was twenty-five when he started and now he’s forty-four. But he never really got anywhere with the police. That wasn’t the real reason why he quit, though, because he’d never been especially ambitious. More the quiet type. A nice guy, actually, I’ve got to admit.

Now, about three years ago, he gets a new boss-Nemec, who turned up here in Zell back in January, too. And him I wouldn’t necessarily have wanted for a boss, either. Me, personally, I don’t have anything against Wieners-you know, the Viennese-they’ve got nice ones down there, too, and there are so-and-so’s everywhere you go. But he was just such a typical Wiener. Anyway, the two of them just didn’t get along at all. Nemec was young and ambitious, and his department just had to be the absolute best. And Brenner, what can I say. Not that he was a bad police officer, certainly not. But, more quieter, low-key, and, well, right off the bat, Nemec just wasn’t having it.