Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

And besides. What good would it have done him if he’d gotten out of the cemetery. He wouldn’t have known where to go. Because, before he turned around, he was still thinking he could go to the Feinschmeck. That he could go crawling back to Erni the waitress.

But Erni was right there with him. Serious and silent as a stuffed dress form, she stared at Brenner as he turned around. And she had such a look of despair that you’d have thought, she simply couldn’t get over it-over Lorenz, his death, or over the question of how the flowers on her balcony would get through the winter.

It goes without saying. There wasn’t much else for Brenner to do in Zell now. For over half a year he’d lived in room 214 at the Hirschenwirt. But now he just wanted to write his report and just get on with it and out of Zell.

He understood now, too, why he’d been resisting the report so much this whole time. There must’ve been something in the air somehow that this would be his last report for the Meierling Detective Agency, the conclusion, so to speak.

What he didn’t understand was why he was sitting all depressed in his room. Since he’d got back from the funeral at four-thirty, he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed, you’d have thought he’d been struck dumb right at the moment he was about to lie down. And he’d been studying the carpet pattern ever since, and, how should I put it, it was not a very interesting pattern.

Now one thing you can’t forget. Brenner was the kind of person-how should I explain it to you. The job in Zell had helped him not to think too much. Because you can’t forget, it was only a good six months earlier that he’d quit the force, and that’s a situation where you’ve got to make your peace with it first.

And so the months in Zell helped him, of course. The coincidence that there was work for him here right away. But it couldn’t go on like that forever, and now it was over.

And how I should put it, maybe the story with Nemec played a part, too, in why he was so downtrodden now. That it wasn’t him who solved the case but Nemec. In other words, basically six months for nothing.

Never mind. The carpet pattern, it was a floral motif, but more like cogs, so if you can imagine: interlocking flowers. And if you looked at them long enough, you’d have thought they were turning.

Or maybe he was so depressed because, after all, it was a human tragedy. And suddenly it became clear to him. Lorenz. Vergolder. It came as a surprise, why now all of the sudden, why didn’t it become clear to him earlier. But that’s people for you, all of the sudden it becomes clear to you, and you yourself don’t know why.

A few days ago he’d sat with Lorenz for hours and he’d talked to Vergolder. And now there wasn’t even enough of them left for a proper burial.

The carpet was a color you almost can’t describe, like honey that’s gone hard. And the rotating flowers were basically the same color-in the light of day you couldn’t really see them. But they popped out under artificial light.

But that wasn’t it, because Brenner hadn’t turned any lights on-to do that he would’ve had to move. It was already dusk, and Brenner wasn’t quite sure whether he was still seeing the flowers or if they were only turning in his head.

The murdered Americans went through his head. What he’d read about them in Clare’s composition for school, it was all coming back up. He was even feeling sorry for the glow-in-the-dark dial painters now, even though they wouldn’t have been alive today anyway. And the forced laborers who froze to death, or fell to their deaths, building the dam.

Isn’t that just how it is these days, when you’re down in the dumps, then everything hits you all at once, and only the worst of it, of course. And that’s what was going on with Brenner now, all these images surfacing one after another, perpetually slow and sticky, but none of them would disappear again. And all of them churning together, so slow, so viscous, that you’ve got to picture it like a washing machine, except, instead of water, it’s honey.

Even Erni the waitress and her balcony were churning in the honey-washing-machine. And Andi the Fox looked so sad from the honey-washing-machine that Brenner thought: That’s it, I’m getting up and turning the light on. Because by now it was completely dark. But Brenner could still see the flowers turning on the carpet. And next to Andi the Fox in the honey-washing-machine, the handless German was standing there and looking at Brenner through those centimeter-thick bifocals of hers.

Now, pay attention. It was seven-thirty. When Brenner finally went down to the bar in the Hirschenwirt. But he didn’t take a seat. He just wanted a pack of cigarettes. Then, he went out to the street and smoked his first cigarette in eight months.

Now, as anybody who’s quit smoking more than once knows. The first didn’t taste good to him at all, more like horrible. Then, the second and the third usually taste like they used to. But the third still didn’t taste good to Brenner. So he gave up and went back up to his room and went to sleep.

As he was falling asleep, he still found it surprising that the whole time he was smoking those three cigarettes, not a single person passed by on the street. Not a car, not a nothing. Needless to say, maybe he was just asleep already and it only seemed that way, i.e. dream-deserted.

It was eleven when he woke up. Now, you should know, whenever Brenner slept more than eight hours, he woke up with a headache. But now he’d slept fourteen hours. And right about the time he wants a doctor to saw his skull off with an electric compass saw, he wakes up. Needless to say, straight to the bathroom to puke, but the headache was only more severe afterward. You’d like to believe you can puke it out but not so.

At first he just wondered why his alarm had been going off for several minutes. Because he hadn’t set it. And it was only once it’d stopped ringing that he realized that it was the telephone.

As he was finally getting into the shower, it rang again. Now for on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand. On the one hand, he didn’t want to be dumb and, just because the phone’s ringing, turn off the shower. Because, it goes without saying, nothing better to help you not feel a neck full of concrete-there’s only warm water and nothing else. On the other hand, though, the telephone was making the exact same sound as the doctor’s compass saw-okay, it’d have to be more of a ringing compass saw.

Needless to say, cutting off his head would’ve been the best thing right now, the only thing that actually helps when you’ve got a full-blown migraine like this. Showering just doesn’t compare, compared to cutting your head off. But cutting off your head is one thing, and the sound of the compass saw is another thing altogether, because the ringing was driving Brenner crazy now. And he ran out of the shower without drying off and picked up the compass saw.

“Well, I’ll be damned, look who’s got a voice today!” the compass saw bawled.

That’s interesting, though. Before Brenner even recognized Goggenberger the cabbie’s voice, he already had the stench of Virginias in his nose. Now, of course, Brenner thought he was going to puke again, but then he said:

“Hm.”

“You!”

“Hm?” Brenner says, because he was still having a problem with his voice.

“So yesterday I make six trips to the cemetery, yesterday I did. Six times, one day, cemetery, I’ll be damned. But then they were burying Lorenz, didn’t they?”

“Mm,” Brenner says.

“I only ask because I wasn’t there. I wanted to, but I’ll be damned, a two-parter, no can do. I took a ride up to the funeral, and there I’m thinking to myself, this is convenient, you can stay right here, then, and go on in yourself. But on the drive there, another trip comes over the radio, and then another trip and another trip and another trip and another trip and another trip and another trip.”