Brenner and God

by Wolf Haas

  “My god, look at you!” they both said at the same time.

  And if it hadn’t been so sad, maybe they would have laughed and could have possibly begun a love story with this simultaneous exclamation, but alas, it was only a death story.

  Well, death story only in the long run, what with all that happened the next week and the dirt that got dredged up, television, newspaper, and, and, and. Short term, as long as they were sitting there on the bench in the police station, no death story, of course, no, just an eviction story. Watch closely: Natalie had his possessions in a cheap duffel bag, and she got him to hand over his car keys and his key to the chauffeur’s apartment. Because Kressdorf had built a modest chauffeur’s quarters above the double garage in the driveway to the Hietzinger villa—quite comfortable—but not Herr Simon’s apartment anymore now because the Frau Doctor said, I never want to see that man again. You see, she was almost more afraid of him than he was of her.

  Natalie handed him an envelope containing one month’s pay, and then she offered him her hand in farewell, and said something terribly nice that pained Herr Simon more than if she’d called him a murderer. Listen closely. She said, “Herr Simon, Helena always liked you.”

  “I’ll find those filthy—” he said, but his voice wobbled so much on “filthy” that he couldn’t get “pigs” out.

  Natalie understood him regardless, though. She gave him a disapproving look just like she used to do, and shook her head in warning, as if to say: don’t make things any worse, Herr Simon.

  This treatment was preferable to him just now, though, because he’d calmed himself down enough to ask in a normal voice, “Have the kidnappers made any demands yet?”

  “Herr Simon,” Natalie said, and pressed her lips so thin that a kiss would have been perilous.

  “In a situation like this a private investigator can find a child much quicker.”

  “Herr Simon!”

  “It’ll take the police three weeks just to find someone competent, by then he’ll be out sick, and after that they’ll say: ‘Now it’s too late, statute of limitations.’ ”

  “Herr Simon, listen carefully to me. You’re not to undertake anything in this case.” She looked at him so seriously with her dark eyes that everything else receded from view. “We know that you used to be on the police force.”

  Naturally she felt the need to emphasize this because until recently she was the only one who didn’t know. “But you’re not on the force anymore,” the psychologist said, professional brainwashing, as it were. “You have feelings of guilt, but you’re not allowed to solve this case with your own fists.”

  “I’m not talking about fists,” he said, “but—”

  “We’re not talking about absolutely anything, Herr Simon. Or else, the child might be brought into only greater danger. The police have already taken the matter in hand.”

  “Have the kidnappers made contact at all?”

  “The detectives will take care of it.”

  “Strange. Kidnappers almost always demand no police. And these are demanding exactly the opposite: just police, no Brenner.”

  “No Brenner,” Natalie said, earnestly and with that certain air of superiority that only people who know they’re doing the right thing get. But one thing to jot down for your own life. Certainty: always black ice. And Natalie didn’t realize the huge mistake she’d just made. Because that was the first time she didn’t call him “Herr Simon,” but rather “Brenner.”

  And it struck Brenner that, in doing so, she was authorizing him to undertake the investigation. Unconsciously, as it were.

  CHAPTER 8

  Thirty hours after the girl’s disappearance, Brenner was back at large. Outside it was raining, and later on he’d often think about how the moment he set foot on the street, what shot through his head were the words “Zone of Transparency.” Because let’s be honest with each other, a normal person wouldn’t think “Zone of Transparency” when he walked out of the police station and into the rain ten times and saw on his watch that the mishap occurred exactly thirty hours ago.

  The rain, by and large, had never bothered Brenner much, and when the windshield wipers were doing their job well it was always calming, meditative for him. Helena was completely in love with the windshield wipers anyway, often he’d switch them on briefly even in the nicest weather just to delight her. But when you’re a chauffeur without a car who’s standing in the rain, then, subjectively speaking of course, that’s the moment when it hits you that you’re having a crisis. And the colossal duffel bag wasn’t exactly making things any easier.

  You should know by now: crisis always equals opportunity! And before you start feeling sorry for Brenner—how he stood there in the rain without a car and without a job and without an apartment and without an umbrella and without a plan and with only this cheap duffel bag and this nuisance of a brainworm, “Zone of Transparency”—there’s one thing I need to tell you: if it hadn’t been raining, if Brenner weren’t so depressed walking in the rain, as if he’d never heard of a bus or a train or a taxi, he might never have noticed.

  When a man follows you for a while in the rain, at some point you ask yourself, why is he doing that? Add to that, when the man, like Brenner, has no umbrella, but unlike Brenner, not a single hair. Total baldness might even be an advantage in the rain, because at least you don’t have wet hair afterward. But Brenner’s shadower was bald in such an old-fashioned way, with a wreath of hair around his head, i.e., the worst kind in the rain, because the raindrops hammer away at the unprotected bald part, and regardless, wet hair.

  The aggravating presence of his shadower pulled Brenner out of his lethargy a little. To this day I don’t know what aggravated him more: that they still held him suspect and had him shadowed, or that baldy was such a dilettante about it.

  And there you have it, once again, the best proof that there’s nothing in the world that doesn’t also have its good side. Because your average Viennese citizen might find it depressing that a new off-track betting parlor opens up every day, but purely for detective street practices, it’s convenient when you can wait in the entrance of the next betting parlor for your shadower.

  “Next time, wear a sign that says ‘Shadowing’!” Brenner advised his trusty stalker, who nearly ran smack into him. “Then maybe you’d be less conspicuous.”

  And not just his face, of course, but his whole bald head, too, turned red, only his lips were white as they said, “I need to speak with you.”

  “There are easier ways to go about it.”

  “I wanted to make sure that we weren’t being shadowed.”

  And at that moment, as the man offered him his hand, it occurred to Brenner where he’d read the heading “Zone of Transparency.”

  “Sebastian Knoll,” the man chipperly introduced himself.

  I don’t know if it was because of the sleepless night in the holding cell at the police station, or simply the state of shock Brenner had been in for thirty hours now, that could explain why he suddenly had the feeling he’d better hold on tight to the door frame to keep himself from sinking into a fever dream.

  In the green light of the betting parlor’s neon sign, he could see all too clearly the large raindrops crawling through Knoll’s wreath of hair. The purple spider veins on his earlobe, from an ancient piercing that had since closed up, looked to Brenner like a cryptic sign of either a cult or something extraterrestrial. Through the open door, racehorses and race dogs and race cars could be seen flickering across a TV screen. Outside, an unnaturally red streetcar sailed elegantly through the spray of rain, and above the door the ventilation system whooshed with the placing of bets, while just a few centimeters in front of Brenner, the dripping wet face of Knoll, the abortion fanatic, was claiming he must urgently speak with him.

  Brenner wasn’t really listening to him, though, because the moment Knoll said his name it occurred to him that one of Knoll’s activists had shoved a brochure into his hand a few weeks ago in which he’
d read the heading “Zone of Transparency.”

  Pay attention: that’s what the glassy membrane of the ovum is called, into which the sperm implants itself—science, as it were. And believe it or not, for that first cell to divide: it takes thirty hours exactly. While the bald-headed man’s voice got increasingly impatient, from the betting commotion and the ventilation system drowning him out, Brenner couldn’t fight the thought that, exactly thirty hours after Helena’s disappearance, a chain reaction was now being set into motion. Just like the automatic sequence depicted so nicely in the brochure, how day after day the cells divide, and divide again, and divide again, without any human intervention. Suddenly he felt certain—or did it just seem that way to him in retrospect, what with the full knowledge one acquires in retrospect—that for anti-abortionist Knoll to turn up exactly thirty hours after the child’s disappearance was a sign that catastrophe would only multiply as automatically as cell division itself, just not in the direction of life. Rather, in the opposite direction.

  “You’re Knoll?”

  Interesting, though. Just now Brenner noticed that the entrance to the betting parlor was also surveilled with a camera. You can understand why they’d surveil it, because a betting parlor attracts a certain kind of person. Surveillance cameras were such a sore spot for Brenner, though, that he pinned this cheap dummy right on Knoll’s shoulders, even though there was no Sectec logo on it like on the cameras in the clinic. Well, figuratively pinned it on his shoulders, because very calmly he said, “I’ve always heard that Knoll never reveals himself, that he just pulls strings from the background.”

  And just to escape the camera, Brenner went inside the betting parlor and sat down at the first empty table he saw. He ordered an espresso. Knoll ordered a hot tea, because he was afraid of catching a chill in his wet clothes. And when the drinks came, he said, “I’m sure you’ve heard quite a bit about me. But, the things that get said about people aren’t true most of the time, you know. Things have been said about you, too, which I hope aren’t true.”

  The arrogance with which he said this rubbed Brenner entirely the wrong way. But he couldn’t help but like how modestly Knoll wiped his bald head dry with the small napkin placed between his tea cup and saucer.

  “Now I finally know what these doilies are good for,” Knoll said, grinning. “Otherwise, they stick so badly to the bottom of your cup that you wonder what the point of them is. If you don’t spill, you don’t need them, and if you do spill, they just spread the mess farther.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Knoll balled up the napkin, but instead of putting it in the ashtray, he slipped it as inconspicuously as possible into his pocket, like someone who doesn’t like to leave any trace behind.

  “I’d like to see the Kressdorf kid returned as quickly as possible.”

  “Talking to me is only going to make you look more suspicious to the police,” Brenner said. “Besides, I just got taken off of it.”

  “It’ll look much the same to the good Frau Doctor. Fired! Without even batting an eye at employment law, of course.”

  “Yeah, well. Gross negligence is reason enough.”

  “They’ll always find something!”

  Knoll had such an inscrutable smile on his lips that Brenner wasn’t sure how serious he was being. The ironic smile fit with his abortion fanaticism about as much as the pierced ear did with his respectable appearance.

  “She would’ve liked to see me thrown out of my own building. And every accidental power outage got pinned on me like it was a terrorist attack and then would appear instantly in the newspapers. These old buildings just have bad wiring. Do you have any idea what maintenance costs are for an old building like that?”

  A few of the gamblers let out a loud communal groan, not out of sympathy with Knoll, though, but because one of the races had produced an unpopular result.

  “And when she’s not capable of looking after her own child, that gets pinned on me, too. Or the driver is guilty.” Knoll signaled to the girl behind the counter that he’d like another cup of tea, since he’d gulped the first one down when it was still scalding hot. “What’re you going to do now that you’re out of a job and an apartment?”

  Didn’t miss a beat. And Brenner might have fallen for Knoll’s concerned tone. Because the pro-life boss had years of practice, of course, coaxing a vulnerable person over to his side. But Brenner kept his cool and answered absolutely correctly, “At the moment, I’m not worried in the least.”

  “I’ve been searching for a bodyguard for the longest time.”

  “Aha.”

  “You could do the same job for me that you did for Kressdorf. As of immediately.”

  Brenner was speechless for a moment. He couldn’t believe how shamelessly Knoll was already scheming about how next to provoke the Frau Doctor.

  “You wouldn’t have to run around with a walkie-talkie and a revolver. It’d be enough for me if you worked as my driver.”

  Fortunately, at that moment Knoll’s cell phone rang. Or unfortunately, I don’t know which I should say. You never know when all is said and done: Was it more fortunate or was it more unfortunate? Will you regret it or not? Not to mention being born. A person’s got to decide even the tiniest little thing in total blindness. The good lord’s a bit of a sadist about it, because you never know: this or that, what’s better for me and all involved when all is said and done? Brenner’s the perfect example right now: would everything have turned out even worse if Knoll’s cell phone hadn’t rung and Brenner had given him the answer that was perched on the tip of his tongue, and what kind of answer would Knoll have given him in return? We can’t know all that, or is it unfortunate that the phone call spared Brenner from answering, summa summarum, resulting in fewer deaths?

  Now, surely you know the interesting phenomenon of cell phone contagion. I won’t go so far as to say the most serious disease worldwide, but among the front-runners in any case. All it takes is the ring of one cell phone for everyone else to check whether they might have at least gotten a new message. That’s exactly how it went for Brenner now. He played nervously with his phone as if he were silencing a call, while he listened to Knoll explain and calm down his callers, they shouldn’t let the reports about the kidnapping dissuade them, because clear as day, the clinic itself is behind the kidnapping, and so the week’s motto: rosary now more than ever.

  After ten minutes of listening to Knoll talk on the phone, it got unbearable for him, and so he called someone, too. Believe it or not, Bank Director Reinhard. Without the job offer from Knoll, which Brenner had never taken seriously, he probably wouldn’t have come up with the idea. Sure, Reinhard had always been friendly to Brenner, never arrogant, where you might think he’s looking down at you. Once in Kitzbühel they chatted about hunting, and another time even about nature. Trees, birds, all of it. And one thing you can’t forget: when Reinhard’s chauffeur wasn’t around, Kressdorf sometimes loaned Brenner out to him. Maybe that’s a way of demonstrating friendship among the better people, just like how the little people might lend and borrow tools among themselves, salt, milk, an egg, and the middle people, maybe the car or the spouse, so among the better-off you’d say, you know what, take my driver, I don’t need him just now, he’ll get you out to Klosterneuburg pronto.

  But don’t go thinking it bothered Brenner. Because Reinhard—always a good tipper, don’t even ask. Brenner hadn’t told the bank director that he had no interest in hunting, of course, and now he was glad about that. Because otherwise, Reinhard certainly never would’ve said he was such a good driver that in case he ever stopped working for Kressdorf for some reason, he could be in touch anytime.

  Brenner hadn’t taken it seriously at the time, because first of all, he had no intention of swapping Helena for Reinhard anyway, and second of all, life experience told him that a guy like Bank Director Reinhard enjoys appearing as his Sunday best, but when it comes down to it, there’s a secretary saying, we’ll call you.

/>   What can I say, that’s exactly how it was. With Reinhard’s supposedly private number, Brenner advanced only as far as the secretary, and naturally, the Herr Director wasn’t in, and in case the Herr Director should ever be truly in need of a driver, we’ll call you. Brenner didn’t need to go back out into the rain for this short conversation, but he didn’t exactly want to make the call with Knoll on the phone next to him, and although it initially struck him as a good phone booth there beneath the covered entrance, the loud ventilation ended up sending him outside.

  I have to be completely honest: no one who saw Brenner standing there in the rain would have guessed his detective past. Or predicted how in the coming weeks he would shake up the city. And you see, it’s for these things exactly that I admire Brenner. Because he didn’t give up after the faux-friendly “We’ll call you.” Instead he called up the Hotel Imperial and asked for Bank Director Reinhard.

  You should know: once while they were waiting in Kitzbühel, Reinhard’s driver had told Brenner that Reinhard kept a permanent suite at the Imperial where he liked to go on his lunch hour to stretch out a bit. Because, stressful sixteen-hour days, and how do you think he always manages to still make the drive to Klosterneuburg when he’s tired from business lunches, or just wants to relax a little now and then? That’s what he had the hotel suite for. But Reinhard never said “hotel room” or “suite,” instead, listen closely: “refuge.” And he always said that Churchill always said that “with a nap midday I get two days in one.”

  On this day, though, Director Reinhard must not have had time for two days, because Brenner didn’t get hold of him at his refuge, either, and so he went back inside the betting parlor.

  “Phone calls constantly!” Knoll said apologetically. Because he must not have noticed that in the meantime Brenner had made a phone call, too. “And? Have you thought it over?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to work for me?”