Wolf Haas - Eternal Life

“A little respect, Herr Inspector!” the young man says and makes an idiotic salute.

“Mandl,” Brenner grumbles. He noticed right away how it’d already began its descent, his dread of the lacquered local reporter with the aristocratic manners.

“There’s no kaiser anymore, Mandl.”

“There’s a Lift Kaiser, a Village Kaiser, a Real Estate Kaiser!” Mandl countered so fast that his head gave a little jerk, causing a strand of hair to come loose. Because it’d been glued down with gel, and now it was standing straight up and quivering, just unnatural.

Back when he was still on the force, Brenner used to tease him sometimes and instead of Mandl he’d call him “Myrtle.” But he hadn’t had anything to do with the reporter from the Pinzgauer Post for some time now. And today, no desire at all, because A of all, headache, and B of all, a report to finally get sent off.

Even though the report wasn’t all that urgent. Quite the opposite. Meierling-you know, the boss of the detective agency-his name wasn’t actually Meierling but Brugger-had warned Brenner several times that he shouldn’t write such pitifully long reports. And last week he even gave orders that if Brenner couldn’t keep it brief, he should kindly include a ten-line summary as an abstract.

“Nobody reads what you write!” he said, just had to go rubbing Brenner’s nose in it. Now, you should know Brenner’s motto. Because, his motto, write everything down, important or unimportant. And in retrospect, you’ve got to admit, he was right.

But now of all times, just when he felt like things were gradually falling into place, Mandl gets in his way.

But, to be perfectly honest, that was only half the truth, why Detective Brenner was in such a lousy mood just then. Listen up, it happened like this. Mandl asks:

“You on duty, Herr Inspector?” Even though it’d been over half a year since Brenner had been on the force. And Mandl knew that for a fact.

Brenner, though, he doesn’t let anything show, no, he says, “I’m always on duty, Mandl.”

“And when’s quittin’ time?”

“As soon as I’ve caught him.”

“So, it’s a him-male perp, lone operator.”

Mandl actually talked this way. I’ve got to be honest, he wasn’t as bad as everyone made him out to be. He was still young and wanting to make something of himself at the newspaper. But Brenner could only shake his head at this degree of useless enthusiasm.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Mandl.”

Mandl had got him this far, though. He motioned to the waitress for two glasses of white. The Hirschenwirt is one of these old inns with an enormous bar in the lobby, and the two men just happened to be standing in front of it. The waitress set their wineglasses down, and Mandl pulled a violet fifty out of his poison-green shirt pocket. It was enough to make Brenner sick.

“You trying to lose your very last reader, too?” the detective asks now.

“What, we’ve got a reader?” Mandl asks, and grins like for the dentist commercials, because ever since his report about the underground bordello in the Brucker Bundesstrasse, he’d had two brand-new crowns put in.

“With an old story like this, you won’t be coaxing anybody away from the fireside anyhow.”

“Don’t got a dog, eh? Write an old story, roll up the newspaper, and throw it. Dog fetches newspaper. Leaves his spot by the fire. Police seize opportunity. Park themselves by the fire. Eh?”

“What’re you getting at? And why’re you always calling me police?”

“At what, Inspector? It’s: At what are you getting? Because: From where’d you get your grammar? ”

How should I put it. Mandl wasn’t putting nothin’ in nobody’s way. He just felt like he had to knock the whole world down, sheer self-importance. Brenner only said:

“You know what I think? I think you did it. Perverse like you are.”

“So, a lone operator, good-looking, perverse? That reminds me of something-where exactly is the American?”

“In America.”

But this was another American that the two of them were talking about. Not the old millionairess from the lift. And this is what I’ve been trying to say this whole time. Why Brenner was in such a foul mood.

You should know, an agent from the American insurance company was in Zell for a few weeks. And from the start, she had something to do with Brenner because he was practically employed by the insurance company, too. That was one blond young American, the likes of which we only know from the movies over here. Or if you can imagine a Barbie doll. Betty was her name. And she was in Zell practically the whole summer.

Naturally there was gossip. Not just Mandl was after her, but more or less every character in Zell, and when it comes to something like this, there are always a couple old slack-jaws, of course. But that wasn’t the gossip. Because none of the Zellers had any success with the American. So other rumors got invented. That she was actually an American undercover agent. Sent extra by the FBI. Some said CIA, too, and a few even Scotland Yard, but then, Fürstauer over at the deli, he knew that that’s only in Scotland.

Betty was just from the insurance company, though. She was doing some type of local visit to the scene of the crime, and from Brenner she got everything she could ever want to know about the case. He couldn’t offer her much, though. I mean, in so far as the case goes, he couldn’t offer her very much.

And so far as that goes, I’ll only say this much. She also had a room at the Hirschenwirt. And she’d been, ever since she was ein kleines Mädchen , a little girl over in America, she’d been in love with Robert Redford. Now, Brenner looks nothing like Robert Redford, but something about him must’ve reminded her of Robert Redford.

That was in August. And now the first week of September’s almost over, and Mandl’s just standing there in the Hirschenwirt lobby and asking:

“Where exactly is the American?”

What I’m getting at with this. I think it’s actually because of that. Why the moment for small talk was passing Brenner by. And when he noticed how disappointed and pale Mandl suddenly got, Brenner pounced again and said:

“The American? The American’s in America.”

It was only then that he noticed how it was doing him more harm than it was the local reporter. But he didn’t let anything show. Simply turned around and left Mandl standing there with their two wineglasses. Then he went upstairs and finally tried to write his report. Sending it off, though, that he could always do tomorrow.

Nowadays when a person goes around trying to force something at all costs, there’s no way it’s going to work. Maybe that was the reason why Brenner still hadn’t wrote a single word of his report for the Meierling Detective Agency. Even though it’d been a solid hour since he’d left Mandl standing back there.

It was the sixth of September, but still warm enough that he could sit in his room in his bare chest. The rooms on the shady side of the inn, well, another story altogether this time of year. Brenner’s room was sunnyside, though, so needless to say, it heats up something awful during the day, whew, let me tell you.

For over an hour he’d been sitting at that small table in his room, when all of the sudden he realized-he still hadn’t written a line. Because in his thoughts, he was somewhere else completely. That was his old malady, that he couldn’t concentrate. Outwardly, Brenner gave the impression of being horribly calm. There’s that movie where the monk says-you know, an Indian, a Buddhist-he says: If I go, then I go, and if I stay, then I stay. And that’s the kind of impression a person gets of Brenner if you see him going or staying-or as far as I’m concerned, sitting-somewhere. All a facade.