Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

“Hm,” Brenner tosses in, as if he wanted to say, but that makes seven trips already.

“That’s why I wasn’t there. Took today off, because I’m my own boss. Drove over to Kaprun, to the Seewirt. Ate goulash.”

“Hm!” Ate goulash! Needless to say, that stirred Brenner’s nausea all over again.

“The owner’s a friend. Because I drive over there at least once a week to eat goulash.”

Brenner wanted to hang up already, because the telephone cord wasn’t long enough, let’s say, for him to simultaneously be on the phone and puke into the toilet. So he still heard the cabbie when he said:

“I ask the owner, well, I’ll be damned, why are you as pale as puked up Griesskoch today?”

“Hm.”

“So the owner says, because I’ve got a dead body lying upstairs in one of my rooms. Who is it, I ask the owner, but, don’t know him. I should take a good look at him, she says. I’ll be damned, who do you think the dead guy was?”

“Hm?”

“Yeah, believe it or not, Lorenz!”

“I’ll be damned.”

Those were Brenner’s first words all day. Now, you should know, for the migraines, he had pills that were so strong-I’m talking real bombers-that normally a single one made his stomach flip. But now he popped three right out of the package and swallowed them whole, no water.

Then he got dressed and went to what, at the Hirschenwirt, is called the lift. When he read the word “lift” above the lift, he thought of the corpses in the lift. That was, of course, a ski lift, not an elevator lift, but what can I say. Brenner took the stairs now anyhow, nice and slow, one step at a time, you’d have thought: rehab center.

The pink Chevrolet was parked right out front of the Hirschenwirt. When Brenner opened the car door, of course, immediately the bestial Virginia stench. Nothing, though, Brenner did not puke in Johnny’s Chevrolet.

He let himself drop onto the passenger seat, and the cabbie peeled out. Needless to say, just as slow as ever. But Brenner was downright grateful for that now. He says:

“You’re sure it’s Lorenz?”

But Johnny just smiled, sure of victory. Just under half an hour he needed for the fifteen-kilometer county road, then he parked right in front of the inn. It may have been called the Seewirt, but it looked more like a run-down liquor store.

It was eleven-thirty. Brenner was just glad to be finally getting out of that stinking Chevrolet. The air in the parking lot seemed marvelous to him, a marvelous mountain air, because the Seewirt was pretty high up, 1,500 meters is where it was, and right behind it, the forest. Before he went any further, Brenner paused and took a few deep breaths.

Needless to say, all the worse when he opened the door to the inn. Because in the kitchen they were heating up grease again. Rancid, Brenner thought, and took a look around the bar at the inn. But not a soul was sitting there at this hour. Even before Brenner and the cabbie could take a seat themselves, hasty footsteps came coming down the hall. The kind of footsteps like when a woman in slippers goes scuffling over a stone floor. Apart from the slippers the woman had on a white smock that she probably only washed on Saturdays. And like I said, it was Friday.

She didn’t even ask if the two of them wanted something to drink now, no, had to tell her whole story right away. Because, needless to say, she was afraid that she might be suspected of something. She stood there at the foot of their table and looked at Brenner anxiously the whole time she was talking.

“We close at midnight. But often, if nothing’s going on, we close at ten or eleven, whenever the last guest leaves. Business isn’t so good up here. Since my husband died, it’s got worse every year. Only in the winter, because the skiers come in, is it halfway good. In summer, bad, and now, not at all. Just a few card players.”

Now, you can’t forget that Brenner hadn’t had any breakfast, not even a cup of coffee. But he also didn’t want to interrupt the woman, so he simply fished around in the bread basket on the sideboard, because right beside their table was the sideboard. The old dry slices of yesterday’s bread were exactly what he needed right now.

“Yesterday, though, the card players stayed late, Fulterer, he’s the assistant forester, and Brokal, the engineer from the power plant, and the bank director, and Fandl who owns the place down the road. Every Wednesday they’re here and playing tarock . Normally from about eight to about ten, but this Wednesday there was a soccer game, so they watched it here, a couple others were here, too, because these days, everybody’s got a TV, but some of them prefer to watch here at the bar.

When the game was over, the others left, and Brokal the engineer and Fulterer tried to leave, too. But the bank director wanted to play another hand, because he’s retired and doesn’t have to get up in the morning. And so they stayed.

At eleven, Leitinger came in, he was drunk and ordered himself another beer. Around eleven-thirty another car drove up. Then, in comes a man I’ve never seen before. He was so white in the face that I wanted to ask him what’ll it be. And the card players were watching, too. But before I could even get around to it, he ordered himself a double schnapps and downed it. Then another double and another. Leitinger, drunk himself, says to him: You sure are thirsty.

But the stranger didn’t seem to hear him at all. You’d have thought he didn’t hear or see anything that was happening around him. Then, another double and downed it again. Just after midnight, the card players quit and wanted to leave. I cashed out their tabs, Leitinger’s, too, and then I went over to the stranger and said we’re closing now. So, he says he’ll be on his way, but before he does, he’d like another bottle of rum. I’m thinking to myself, He wants it to go, the bottle of rum, that often happens that people show up here out of the blue because they forgot to go shopping, and buy a bottle of wine or a few beers to go.

The others said, too, that they didn’t think he’d put the rum bottle right in his mouth and empty it in one fell swoop. Like it was water, you’d have thought. And not rum-eighty percent.

We’re all standing around him now, and nobody says a word. In hindsight, though, I think we were all thinking more or less the same thing. But Leitinger was the only one to say it out loud, probably just because he himself was drunk.

At first we all stood there silent, even Leitinger, a whole ’nother minute at least, after the stranger drank the bottle of rum. It was three quarters of a liter of eighty percent. We just watched him and waited for him to fall over. But he didn’t fall over. And so Leitinger said, I think he’s a ghost.

Now, in the light of day, that sounds silly, but at the time, I was actually afraid that he might be, just because he didn’t fall over. And it got more and more eerie, this man, the way he stood there next to his empty bottle of rum and didn’t fall over. And then he asked me if we have rooms, too. Completely normal, not slurring his words. Completely normal, asked if we have rooms, too.

Yes, I said, we’ve got rooms, even though I was afraid, but, on the other hand, I was just glad that he said something at all.

At this point, the men left-they weren’t feeling too good, either, you could tell from looking at them. And I showed the stranger upstairs to his room. He walked behind me, maybe a little unsteady on his feet, but not much, you only would’ve noticed it if you knew about it, but nothing tragic. I said good night, and he said good night, and then I went to sleep-and double-checked that I’d locked up behind me. I couldn’t fall asleep at first, but since I didn’t hear anything else out of the stranger, I fell asleep after all.