Morgue Drawer Four

by Jutta Profijt

  My mother had hardly changed in the four years since I’d seen her last. Why should she? She’s been wearing her hair that way since the nineteen seventies, and this is exactly how she looked then, too. Her corpulence was still keeping the skin of her face relatively taut—that’s the benefit of extra fat pads: they keep wrinkles from forming. Her legs were stuffed into thick, black pantyhose that better hid the waning juvenescence around her ankles than did the flesh-colored ones she normally wore, but hers were still the ugliest legs I’d ever seen in my life. A disaster for a woman who never wore pants. I used to be pretty embarrassed about my mother’s legs when I still needed them to lean on. My mother looked like a country-butcher’s wife, and basically that’s what she was, too. Her father had been a butcher, her husband was one—at least, he was until he became a wurst manufacturer who earned money by stuffing chopped offal into artificial casings and selling them to people who believed the ham sausage actually had ham in it. Have I already mentioned that for a few years I refused to eat anything but recognizably coherent meat? That is, schnitzel and steak. But that’s when I was still living at home; only the best was served at our dinner table. Later on due to lack of money I transitioned back to ground meat products. Whether a burger between two pieces of cardboard passing for bun, or currywurst, it ultimately didn’t matter.

  Compared to his butcher’s wife, my butcher father cut a finer figure, on the outside. Tanned, only ever so slightly overweight, with stylishly short hair, rimless glasses, and a fashionably tailored black jacket. People would never have thought him capable of the less-than-fashionable blows to the head he inflicted whenever his brat of a son wasn’t minding.

  The brief glances my father was exchanging with my elementary school teacher also explained her attendance. Pretty ballsy bringing your mistress to the funeral of your only son—but then class (ha!) was something he’d never really had. And the assertiveness to stand up to him was something my mother had never really had, either. She knew about his affairs but played along as though nothing were going on. In front of me, the neighbors, and my mother’s family. To my father she kowtowed. He gave her a housekeeping allowance, he determined what was served at the dinner table, and he selected the vacation destinations. Often enough they were places teeming with willing women. Mom pretended she didn’t notice anything and wrote postcards about gorgeous beaches and nice people. The only thing she had to hold onto was me, and unfortunately that was too much for me to deal with. They were both too much to deal with: her love, and his expectations. They had both crushed me, and here and now before my coffin both of them seemed to have conveniently forgotten all that. If I had a sentimental bent I would drivel on right now about how there was more being buried at this funeral than just a body.

  I’ll spare you and me the description of the other guests and bulimic priest, who was leading the devotion. The clergyman was pretending he had known and liked me, but that’s probably his job. Coming out of his mouth my life also sounded way more ordinary, successful, and conformist than I’d ever thought it was, but maybe the mistake was mine.

  Now, you may have noticed that so far I’ve been talking a lot of shit about other people to dodge the actual topic. My coffin. It was grandiose. Black. Shiny black. Like a concert grand piano you might see in the symphony halls of this world. With red roses on top. The color of love. Or of a Ferrari. Or of Pamela Anderson’s bikini. It looked fucking sweet.

  The priest finally finished the devotion, droning, “…eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord…” Martin winced as tinny organ music pealed out of a ghetto blaster. A couple of men came forward, grabbed hold of the cart with the casket on it, rolled it out of the chapel, and all the mourners trundled along behind. My father supported my mother, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone else looked awkward or bored; only the elementary school teacher had a poker face on. And Martin looked sad. Really sad. I steered clear of his gloomy thoughts.

  The other cemetery visitors that day lowered their heads as the funeral procession passed by, pretending to pray for the new admit for a moment, and some of them may have even really done so—but I bet most of them were thinking thank God it wasn’t me.

  Since there wasn’t anything exciting happening apart from this mass shuffle to my grave, my eyes wandered around some, which is when I saw her. Miriam. I thought. I wasn’t totally sure of her name. But I recognized her without a doubt. She was Gugi’s little sister.

  Gugi got his name because he used to talk like those babies on that TV show: some weird kind of double Dutch consisting mainly of random noises. He had a serious speech impediment, but he was the best fucking automotive painter this side of Santa Fe. He could conjure up fantastic worlds, mythical beasts, or smoking-hot women onto cars and trucks. Either following a picture or freehand—however the customer wanted it. He once covered a truck with the entire crew of the starship Enterprise. That rocket ship left all kinds of traffic accidents in its wake from drivers craning their necks at Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest. Yup, he painted only the original crew. And Gugi had a little sister who we of course had never paid any attention to. Little sisters are like measles, mumps, or scarlet fever. In the early stages no one notices them, and then ultimately you end up in bed with them. Miriam—or whatever her name really was—had still been in the early stages in those days. But, holy hotrod, what was she doing here now?

  I had let her distract me, so I missed the end of the procession to my grave. As I looked for Martin, everyone was already standing around the hole, and the coffin was swaying on two wooden planks over it. This kind of sucks, I thought.

  The priest said another couple of words, and then the strong boys walked up to the grave and lowered the coffin into the cold, dark hole. My mother was sobbing louder now; she threw a few roses onto the casket, and then my father pulled her to his side. The other mourners each took a turn stepping forward; I’m sure you’ve seen that before, so I don’t have to describe it in epic detail here. Everyone shook hands with my parents, took a couple of steps to the side, and then they all stood there in a group. Finally Martin walked up to my parents. Martin?!

  “Hey,” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  Martin wouldn’t be deterred.

  “My condolences,” he said, shaking my father’s hand.

  “Thank you,” my father said, then took a second look at Martin. “I’m sorry; I don’t think we know each other.”

  “No,” Martin confirmed. “But I, uh, knew your son.”

  “Martin, cut that shit out,” I said, genuinely irritated. “What are you going to tell them? That I’m living in the basement at your Institute and that I frequently piss you off?”

  “Where did you know him from?” my mother asked, still sobbing.

  “I, uh, he gave me a tip once in a murder case that I was investigating,” Martin said.

  “A murder case?” my father said. “Figures—that boy sank so low. He got mixed up with the wrong kinds of people.”

  “No, no,” my do-gooder here hastened to reassure them. “He only passed on a piece of information. He didn’t have anything to do with the crime.”

  Nice phrasing there, if he was talking about this case that I had taken over the lead on, because near as I can recall there wasn’t another case where I’d have passed on any valuable information to him.

  “So you’re with the police?” my father asked.

  “From the forensics unit,” Martin said. I had the impression that he wasn’t using this circumlocution for the first time.

  “How was he doing, then?” Mom asked. “Was he OK?”

  “Yes, he was doing well,” Martin said, but I sensed that the question was throwing him off track a bit. In fact, he had absolutely no idea how I was doing, or rather, had been doing. He had never asked me what my life had been like. Or where I’d lived. And that made me wonder what was actually going to happen with my apartment.

  “What are they going to do with my apartment?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “His apartment looked so…” My mother was searching for the right words. “So depressing.”

  “A shithole,” my father said, correcting her.

  Martin was terribly embarrassed; he didn’t know what he was supposed to say.

  “It was a temporary solution,” Martin finally said.

  “On his way to homelessness,” my father said. “He threw in the towel on his apprenticeship.”

  Yeah, well, Einstein dropped out of school, too, as I always used to retort back in the days before he threw me out of the house. “Anyone who eats at my table must finish his apprenticeship,” was what he would say.

  “The master mechanic is always picking on me,” I would say. “Well then he must have a reason to,” my father said.

  He was right, of course. The master mechanic was envious. I was the best auto freak who had ever worked in that dive. I only needed to listen to an engine to know what was wrong with it. DTC reader software, inspection checklists: kids’ stuff. Me, I would turn the key and just know what was up. Plus, I could break into any car within thirty seconds. They dispatched me just three weeks into my apprenticeship when a customer lost his key. Me. Not the master mechanic. This kind of cramped his style, which I didn’t know at the time, because he used to go squeeze in a lay every time he left the workshop. That’s why it always took him so long when he was sent out. Because he had at least eight fillies raring to go, who were all apparently just waiting for some yuppie to accidentally toss his car keys into the trash along with his burger wrapper. And then the master mechanic would be off to help both the yuppie and some über-horny little mouse right after that.

  And then I came along. I could break into cars like a world champion, and I’d be back at the workshop in less than thirty minutes. The owner liked that, but the master mechanic didn’t. From then on every day meant putting up with the master mechanic’s hazing.

  And that’s not even mentioning the meager pay. So one day after I’d pulled the emergency car-door-opening routine for, let’s say, a third customer, I got even more shit unloaded on me at work, and then the stress from my mom at home was of course pissing me off, too, and I just hit my limit, ditched the apprenticeship, and moved out. That was four years ago. My mother didn’t even try to get in touch with me, presumably because my father forbade her. That’s how things were at our house.

  Here and now I’d hit my limit again. My father made me sick, although I somehow felt sorry for my mother, even though at the same time I despised her. What kind of mother lets someone forbid her from getting in touch with her only child? I didn’t want anything else to do with either of them.

  “Martin, stop lying to people and start paying attention to more important things,” I said.

  Martin said goodbye to my parents and slowly walked toward the exit.

  “Kitty corner behind you to the right is a girl,” I said, and Martin turned around with a jerk.

  “I think her name is Miriam, or something like that.”

  “Who is she?” Martin asked.

  “The sister of a former buddy,” I said. “I want to know what she’s doing at my funeral.”

  “You don’t mean you want me to just walk over to her and ask that?” Martin said.

  “Well, yeah, dude,” I replied. “There’s got to be a reason, because I hardly knew her. Maybe her being here has something to do with my murder.”

  Martin hesitated. All of this was terribly embarrassing to him, I could sense that clearly.

  “Well, get going,” I pressed, and he gave in.

  She was still standing a ways back from the grave, from my grave to be exact, and as we came closer we could see she had tears in her eyes. What the?

  “Hello. My name is Martin Gänsewein.”

  She had masterful self-control and didn’t start giggling or grinning or anything on mention of his silly name. She just nodded at him.

  “Did you know him well?” Martin asked politely.

  Miriam, who I was still hoping was named Miriam, since she didn’t introduce herself, sniffled. And shook her head.

  “I did,” Martin said. “He told me about you.”

  Her flood of tears redoubled.

  “You’re the sister of the artist, right?”

  “Artist?” She looked at him like he’d just informed her that a large, green mushroom was growing out of the top of her head. “He called Gugi an artist?”

  Martin was somewhat annoyed by her completely dumb-founded expression, and I was annoyed because he had apparently taken note of my whole stream of thoughts from before, which I now found a little embarrassing.

  “Yes, an artist. That’s what he called him,” Martin confirmed, hesitating as though he had to think back and make sure he’d noted the right information under the right name.

  Miriam erupted into loud bawling.

  “He always used to make fun of Gugi and I, especially of Gugi,” she sobbed. “Because of his speech impediment.”

  Of Gugi and ME! roared Martin’s internal grammar check, but he held back.

  I did not! I screamed inside, but I kept my trap shut, too.

  “I’m sure he was just teasing,” Martin suggested, but his intonation expressed his doubt just as clearly as his face.

  “Did you use to make fun of him?” he asked me sternly.

  “Within the normal range,” I said.

  “So, that would be a yes,” Martin determined. Disappointedly, I noticed. “I’m thinking that you were a pretty big asshole while you were alive, huh.”

  Hearing the word asshole within the convolutions of Martin’s brain, at the edge of my open grave to boot, nearly cost me all my self-control. Only Miriam’s presence saved me—and Martin.

  “Just ask her why she’s here,” I said. Miriam beat him to it. “I liked him, despite all that,” she whispered.

  “Oh,” Martin said. “I’m sorry.”

  And that’s exactly how he meant it, too, that dickface. He was sorry she had liked such an asshole. If this guy was supposed to be my only friend on earth, then I’d rather not have any more friends. None at all. That would clearly be better.

  “He could also be funny,” she mumbled.

  “See?” I said.

  “Somehow he was a loser, too, but still sweet,” she said.

  “I was not a loser,” I roared.

  “Yes,” Martin said, fervently. “He really was a loser.”

  “Traitor,” I yelled.

  “But sweet,” Miriam repeated.

  “Do you need a ride anywhere?” Martin asked.

  Now he was making his move—that is not right! I was angry, furious, enraged. I was beyond pissed off. I…

  OK, I’ll be honest: I was mad at myself. For years I’d been hauling whatever worthless skanks into bed with me, as long as they had gigantic tits and opened the gas cap when the nozzle came. Meanwhile here was a rather mousy but undoubtedly very sweet girl like Miriam who had somehow liked me, and I had no clue. And even if I had, I’d have presumably given her the brush-off with a dirty grin on my face because the dimensions of her breasts fell far short of my minimum standard. And what else mattered when it came to women?

  Suddenly I made myself sick. Really. Here I was, standing at my own grave wondering how much of the shit that had happened in my life was actually my fault. Thoughts like these aren’t really particularly pleasant when you’re alive, but if you ask yourself these questions in time you can still change something. Become a better person, et cetera. But in my case: too late! No insight, however clever it might be, could help me now.

  My brain waves were definitely headed in the wrong direction, because I didn’t want to go all sentimental again, like those old ladies who rake the graves and plant those ugly, purple-colored weeds on them that look like they were the only plant that managed to survive a nuclear war. So I banished all thoughts like that from my mind and whooshed along behind Martin and Miriam, who walked back up to my grave and looked at it for a short moment, staring at the shiny black c
offin, and then turned toward the exit. And that’s when we saw him.

  My funeral was turning into a kind of class reunion. But this particular guest was neither invited nor welcome. Miriam saw him at the same time I did, and she whispered, “Oh, shit,” although such words wouldn’t normally pass her lips.

  Pablo. Greasy as ever, his longish black crimps glued down to his head with some kind of glistening slime, acne scars all over his face, and seven or maybe more gold hoops through his left ear. Someone in an extremely inebriated state once suggested that he get a ring through his nose, too. Twenty-four hours and a few strong blows to the back of the head later that someone woke up to find he had a ring through his nose. Since then no one has cracked any more jokes about the ugliest toro north of the Pyrenees.

  Now here was Pablo at the cemetery. The Pablo who had, over the course of two years, sold me certain substances that were subject to trade restrictions pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act. The Pablo who was of the firm conviction that I had landed him in the pen. The Pablo who several interviewed persons had assumed was the one who had pushed me to my death.

  Miriam had apparently also heard this rumor because she started laying into him like a madwoman.

  “You dare show up here?” she yelled, taking long strides toward him. “Couldn’t you tell from the bridge that he was dead?”

  Pablo just kept leaning against the tree, pretending not to hear her.

  “Who is that?” Martin asked, and I quickly filled him in. Martin was anything but enthusiastic.

  Meanwhile Miriam had reached Pablo. She stood in front of him at arm’s length, hands on her hips, and glared at him. God’s avenging angel in sneakers!

  “How perverted are you, that you would dare to show your face here at his funeral?” she asked.