Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

And a thousand times Andi had pointed it out to him. That he should kindly not open his gas cap with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“Lorenz hung out a lot at the gas station with me. Most of the time he just sat there and smoked. In the shop you can smoke. Sometimes he’d help me out, too. But I was surprised when his uncle came in to gas up that he went out to help him of all people. He can’t stand his uncle. Me neither, of course. Got out of his four-by-four with a cigarette in his mouth just like he always did, of course. Lorenz says to me, Stay put, I’ll take care of him.”

Didn’t matter how long Brenner thought about it, still nothing stuck out to him that would’ve made him say: inconsistency.

Now, though, all the sudden he notices that Nemec’s standing next to him at the cemetery. And they’re all packed in, of course, tight as sardines. Nemec’s standing closer to Brenner now than he ever did all his years on the force, you might even say: physical contact.

So that he wouldn’t inadvertently look to his left and at Nemec, Brenner jerks his head stiffly to the other side now, where Andi was clinging to the handless German’s arm. But no matter how long he looked at Andi, or how often Andi’s testimony from the Pinzgauer Post shot through his head, there was nothing that could’ve helped Brenner:

“I just sat there, surprised that Lorenz would go out to help his uncle. He took the nozzle out, but instead of sticking it in the tank of the four-by-four, he pointed it like a pistol at his uncle. Who’s really the guilty one here because he had that cigarette burning in his mouth again. Of course he’s standing in flames. And then, all I know is how the fire caught Lorenz and then the four-by-four, and then I see myself as I’m running on the promenade by the lake. There are a few hundred meters in between, but I don’t know anymore, and then I hear the sirens and then the hospital.”

“It used to be that everybody only put geraniums on the balcony, because they wintered well,” Brenner hears that familiar voice now in his left ear.

“Geraniums, that’s right. Not as pretty nowadays. Petunias though.”

“Mm, very pretty, petunias. Very, very pretty. But tough to winter.”

“Wintering, who even does that today. Since we got the sauna, I don’t have any more room in the basement for wintering the balcony flowers.”

“Well, you need a good place. And even then, with petunias, it’s still not a sure thing.”

Now, Brenner knew for a fact that he knew this voice. Knew it well. But he simply couldn’t come up with who it belonged to. It was needling him so bad now that this little slip kept happening to him where he wants to turn around, but on the wrong side. And needless to say, he wasn’t going to get very far with Nemec standing there. He looked Nemec right in the eyes. And Nemec grins at him and says:

“Do you know this one?”

It looked to Brenner like Nemec was nodding his head in the priest’s direction, who was just sprinkling those standing around him with holy water. Of course he knew the priest, it wasn’t that long ago that he’d gave him the idea about Engljähringer. But the nimble little man from the Saturday-afternoon mass, it was like, transformed. With his pale, skeletal figure and his lopsided ash-blond head, he looked like he was laying it on a little thick for the funeral today. Now, a person’s apt to ask himself, how does he pull a wedding off, or something cheerful, say, what does he do at a resurrection.

But, once again, Brenner had misunderstood his ex-boss’s question. Because Nemec hadn’t actually been nodding his head over at the priest. Really, Brenner had to have known what Nemec meant when he asked:

“Do you know this one?”

Because this was a habit of Nemec’s. He always tossed his head back so peculiarly before he told a joke that you’d have thought he must be rattling a forgotten joke out of his subconscious and back into his memory again.

“Woman goes into a sex shop and buys a vibrator,” Nemec says.

But Brenner turned his head demonstrably away and looked back at the priest.

“Asks the salesman how you use it, and he says, just like you would a man’s penis.”

Nemec wasn’t even making an effort to whisper. An altar girl-that’s the daughter of Fürstauer from over at the deli-passed the priest the censer now. And with solemn movements the priest wafted the smoke over the whole cemetery.

You’d have thought a gas station was burning somewhere.

You’ve got to picture it like this: he’s holding the silver censer by the silver chain, high above his head, and that’s how he swings it. And every time the censer swings back, it clinks against the silver chain: “clink-clink-clink-clink,” you could hear it throughout the cemetery, even if you were standing in the back and couldn’t see anything.

But Brenner saw it all of course. It didn’t do him any good, either, I mean, that he was making a point of watching the priest as Nemec was trying to tell him his joke. Nemec showed no sign of irritation at all and said:

“Next day the woman goes back to the sex shop and wants to file a complaint.”

The other altar girl passed the priest a little shovel that he strewed some dirt over Lorenz’s grave with. And around the cemetery a few people started blowing their noses as the priest put on his doleful voice and said:

“Remember, O mortal, for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

Brenner didn’t laugh at Nemec’s joke, though. He didn’t grimace. He just said:

“And so it was Lorenz who put the two Americans in the lift. All the sudden you guys are completely sure about that.”

“Compweetwee pfshure!” the cop answered, still making like the toothless mouth of the woman in the sex shop. It only looked like he had no teeth, you know, with his lips sucked in over them like this. Nemec had always had such thin lips.

For a moment now, Brenner considered whether he should do what he’d surely been wanting to do a couple hundred times over these last few years. But, then, he didn’t deck Nemec in the middle of the funeral. Instead, he said, while still not looking the toothless woman in the face:

“That’s awfully convenient for you, anyway.”

Now, not what you’re thinking, that Brenner was actually doubting, let’s say, that Lorenz had done it. It was more because, up against Nemec, nothing else occurred to him at that moment. Because it was in the Pinzgauer Post after all, and people weren’t talking about anything else. That Lorenz had been sending these letters for years. Heidnische Kirche, that really only could’ve been Lorenz’s idea. And then, of course: that Lorenz didn’t get his savings passbook from Vergolder this year at Christmas.

And then, of course, the checks. Lorenz had a talent for drawing, Vergolder could’ve kept it hidden. Ran in the family. Just like everybody in the Moser family are all musical, or Mayr the butcher, they always make the best Leberkäse . Lorenz copied the signature, so exact it made the experts’ eyes pop out of their sockets. But now that his photo had appeared in the paper, a bank teller remembered him.

“All that about the letters you guys figured out pretty fast, though,” Brenner cut a little deeper.

“Actually, it should’ve been clear six months ago,” Nemec says, “but, unfortunately, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.”

Now, of course. Six months ago, that was Brenner’s job back then. He no longer had any desire to prove anything to Nemec. Because Nemec had been the one who’d held him back at the time.

Brenner just wanted out of the cemetery now. But as he turned around, he was reminded all over again that the cemetery was stuffed full of mourners. Making it to the exit would be hopeless.