Brenner and God

by Wolf Haas

  Or four deaths, if you were to say that Brenner was headed that way, too, now. By this point, with the shit already tickling his kneecaps, Brenner himself wasn’t placing any large bets on his life. And me neither, to be honest. Because he really didn’t have any clue that Knoll’s video surveillance system had happened to catch something completely different than what Knoll had been looking for. About that, I always say, most of the time people find something different than what they’re looking for. So what did Knoll find on his surveillance videos? Pay attention, I’m only going to say so much. He couldn’t have brought down the clinic with it. But it would’ve been enough for all of MegaLand.

  In hindsight it would all be revealed eventually, or frankly, not even all of it, or else Vienna would look very different today, don’t ask. But one thing you can’t forget: Brenner’s not in hindsight at this point. Not yet! Because it’s just human nature that you’re never in hindsight until it’s too late. Although it’s true, he was already in the gnats’ realm, he’d been greeted warmly by them, he could even hover in the air a little, nonetheless he himself was no gnat yet. Whereas you might say, as a gnat maybe he would’ve been able to squint with his insect eyes from the other side of the globe, and with foresight, spot the very things which as a human you can only come to know with hindsight.

  But no dice. Brenner knew nothing of the surveillance video. Well, if it had been a gas station surveillance video, he would’ve known everything; he would have been able to recite it backward and forward by heart, but clinic surveillance videos he knew nothing about, because that was Knoll’s secret matter. And if you don’t know something, you can’t give it away, either. You can hang in shit up to your knees, it won’t do any good. It might look like courage, but it’s just stupidity. And as he sank even deeper, he looked like a Jesus with both legs amputated, crossing a shit sea on his stumps, but he still couldn’t tell them where Knoll’s surveillance video was because he didn’t know and—cut.

  Now what do you do in a situation like this, when you don’t know anything, but your fellow man is torturing you in order to make you know something? A person’s always got to do something; not doing anything isn’t an option for us.

  Most people scream their heads off at times like these, but Brenner didn’t scream once, not even when the slurry reached his most ticklish spot. If you think about it in terms of getting into a swimming pool, then you know that the slurry had already risen above the hem of his swim trunks now, and you should know, when it came to the hem of his swim trunks, he took after his sensitive grandfather again.

  And the rope let out even farther. Brenner didn’t feel any ground beneath his feet. He prepared himself for the eventuality that he’d soon feel Knoll with the tips of his toes and shortly thereafter he’d be lying down there beside Knoll, but he still didn’t know what he was supposed to tell the criminals up above to make them pull him back out, and early enough that the lasting damages would be only psychological—sleepless nights, fear of every earthworm—but not bodily.

  When I said that the hem of your swim trunks was uncomfortable, that applied to ice-cold swimming pools. For cesspools: the neck’s much more uncomfortable. And Brenner would have been prepared to betray everything and everyone just so that they’d pull him back out. But the only pulling that the pigs were doing now was on the second rope that bound his legs—so that he couldn’t stand on the tips of his toes anymore and keep his head above the slurry. His mouth would be free for a few more seconds, but he simply knew nothing about a video.

  When he’d been completely under for a full minute or two, as he was starting to share the brotherhood of the cesspit with Knoll, it occurred to him, probably from the deoxygenation, what he had to tell them so that they would pull him out. He’d tell them that Helena would die if they killed him. That he’d hidden her in a basement, and if they killed him, the child would be left miserably alone to die of starvation.

  Brenner, however, was already a little more into the next world than here in this world, of course. He was already so close to feeling eternal peace that he was mixing up the most important details. You should know, total peace is related on many levels to stupidity. Brenner’s lack of oxygen was now to blame for his confusion over the before and after. In reality, of course, he’d said immediately that Helena would die a miserable death without him. It had occurred to him right away, instantly, the very first thing. Because normally when your life is in danger, your only trump hits you pretty fast. And when your death is in danger, you play it right away.

  And Brenner was absolutely normal in this respect, too. In other words: instantly! He hadn’t even been knee-deep in the cesspit when he howled: Kid! Basement! Helena! Helene! Because you can’t forget that his life was in danger. That his death was in danger. And as his thighs were sinking, it had long ceased to be news to the two altar boys by the cesspit and the two gravediggers on the balcony, because he’d already howled it out the moment the shit started seeping into his shoes. Not just once, but ten times, a hundred times, I have the kid, so loud that somebody must have heard it down in Kitzbühel. I still say, someone should really investigate whether someone or other down in the village below heard Brenner—screaming for help, his life in danger—and didn’t lift a finger because that’s how people are!

  Interesting, though: it didn’t seem to him like he was sinking. More like the threat of death was sloshing up out of the earth to meet him. Like the threat to his life was inexorably rising, like sewer water, above his ankles, above his calves, above his knees, and not as if he were sinking ever deeper into the threat of death. Because our senses deceive us like crazy, especially considering the fumes. And even though he bellowed that he knew where Helena was and that she would die without him, it now seemed like he hadn’t said anything, because it only occurred to him once it was too late.

  If there is such a thing! But I say it’s lucky that in such desperate situations, the human mind is prone to mercy. Just like how we often glorify things with age, and it wasn’t all that bad, when I was in the war I got to see Scandinavia, when I was in love I got to visit IKEA several times, just as the consoling brain sometimes arranges the world in such a way that lets us think we had an impact. And when someone has cancer, then we say, well, he could have prevented it, if he’d lived accordingly, because sunburn, alcohol, white flour, dark meat, dreary thoughts, and, and, and. Or canoodling with a smoker twenty-eight years ago, i.e., nobody but yourself to blame for tongue cancer. And with self-blame, everything’s instantly half as bad, because at least an impact was made. And so, with his senses dwindling, Brenner felt around for Knoll in the absolute darkness of the cesspit, and still managed to think: I only have myself to blame because I should have said that I have Helena. And so you see that in dying he was already entering the euphoric phase—and all because of self-blame—and that is the greatest fortune that you can have at the end of a fulfilled life.

  Brenner was happy to meet someone he knew on the bottom of the cesspit, too. But not what you’re thinking, Knoll. Because after sixty seconds in a cesspit—you get what I mean? By that point a person’s generally resembling a gnat already, more soft wing tissue than legs and arms—eternal circulation more than crude perfection.

  Now, who was it, if it wasn’t Knoll? Watch closely: believe it or not, there on the bottom of the cesspit Brenner met the good lord. Of course it was a surprise, don’t even ask. Well, for Brenner a surprise, not for the good lord, of course. He smiled benevolently from the other side of the cesspit, which seemed about as far away to Brenner now as the other end of a swimming pool. But regardless, no doubt who the man was. The very fact that he glowed. Iridescent understatement! You can’t even imagine what a Hello that was for Brenner. Because first of all, he never really expected to meet the good lord even once—and if he did, then he expected a nice setting, with trumpets, with fanfare, with candlelight, with menus, with virgins, and, and, and. But no, Brenner thought—and he had to do a double take, he was so surpris
ed to meet him in this unseemly place—in a cesspit, covered in seven feet of shit, I meet the good lord.

  Interesting, though: the surprise visit didn’t make Brenner nervous. Not even as the good lord came closer now. And one thing you can’t forget: he moved insanely fast, he traveled faster than a light in the dark. And the closer he came, the better Brenner felt. Because the good lord, of course—charisma, don’t even ask. To him, the lackluster surroundings didn’t matter one bit. You hear that again and again, the real celebrities are uncomplicated. Prime example right now: the good lord. He just smiled when Brenner said, “So you do exist!”

  To be perfectly honest, a slight note of indignance accompanied the surprise in Brenner’s voice. “If I had known in my youth,” he said to the good lord, “I would’ve had the girls lined up!” But then it didn’t seem that important for him to complete the sentence anymore, and he thought to himself, forget about it, main thing, don’t let the opportunity go to waste. Just a pity that I can’t tell anyone else now what a good guy he is!

  But “pity” and “reproach” and “main thing,” the whole “alas” and “thank god,” didn’t mean anything real to Brenner anymore. You should know, when you’re sitting in the good lord’s lap, the earthly matters slip right past you. The MegaLand stooges up above were already irrelevant to him, he wasn’t even mad at them because—great terms with the good lord.

  He only got angry when they pulled him out at the last second. And when his mind started up again, its explanations immediately kicked in, too, i.e., the light that Brenner had seen was only the light of day that he’d been heaved back into. His feeling of happiness was only triggered by the pleasant sensation of being lifted up and out of the cesspit. And the good lord’s swift approach must have been triggered by his encounter with Congressman Stachl, who—just as Brenner was being brought back into the light—flew past him into the cesspit.

  CHAPTER 20

  It happens that fast in life. Congressman Stachl had just been standing up there among the people who were trying at all costs to find out where Brenner was keeping the video, and now he was the one lying in the cesspit and Brenner was back up above. Fortunately, Brenner’s promise of information about Helena’s whereabouts proved to be of greater interest to Kressdorf than the million-euro project after all, because—paternal instincts.

  And when Congressman Stachl refused to haul Brenner back out, Kressdorf got his hunting rifle from the house and struck the congressman so forcefully on the back of the head that they later determined from the autopsy that Stachl hadn’t drowned in the cesspit at all, but arrived there with his neck already broken. And so you see once again how much truth there is in the saying practice makes perfect. Say what you will about it. Because with Knoll they determined that Kressdorf had only knocked him out with the hunting rifle and it was in the cesspit that he died.

  But don’t go thinking that the two musclemen blindly listened to Kressdorf and pulled Brenner back out again. The opposite. It got to be much too much for them once Kressdorf completely lost it and went for the congressman. They realized right away, of course, that they couldn’t rely on Kressdorf anymore. And not on their stake in MegaLand either, since he was putting the project at risk. Watch closely. With a shotgun pointed at them, he had to force them to pull Brenner back out and untie him there beside the cesspit.

  I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I can thoroughly understand Kressdorf taking such drastic action, given that he’d learned just two days earlier that Helena wasn’t his biological daughter. Now he saw his one and only chance to take back his fatherhood with force, by doing away with the sperm donor and rescuing Helena. And one thing you can’t forget: after he’d clocked Knoll for rubbing it in his face that he wasn’t even the father of his own daughter, it would’ve been pointless for Kressdorf to stop halfway.

  Brenner, of course, wasn’t waiting a moment’s thought on these things now. He wasn’t even aware at first that he was back up above. His senses hadn’t completely returned to him yet when the shot rang out. And one thing you can’t forget: a hunting rifle’s always a loud shot. But that’s not to say that Kressdorf was shooting into the air with his hunting rifle in order to return Brenner to his senses now—wake the dead, as it were. Quite the contrary. Kressdorf was helping his security boss—who didn’t want to resuscitate Brenner—to quit smoking once and for all, i.e., shot him right in the lungs. And then the foreman did it gladly, though it was no pretty task, because let’s put it this way: Brenner had more freckles on his face than the man who was respirating him. The foreman only did it because his boss was holding a shotgun to his head. But if you’re saying, that’s despicable, then I unfortunately have to tell you, this was still the nice part of the story.

  And if you scare easily, think about something else now. Close your eyes and think of that vacation on the beach, reclining chair, suntan lotion, sound of the waves. And not of that patch of grass beside the cesspit. Kressdorf wasn’t leaving anything half-done there. In other words, Brenner’s first breath was also his rescuer’s last. Because directly in the head. And believe it or not, Brenner almost envied him for it.

  Normally you’d say that a person who’s just come to should rest a little while and not return right away to the mob office that he’s just taken a flying leap from until after a lunch break. But here again is the advantage of being the murderer. You don’t have to go around agonizing about the little moral prescriptions. And Kressdorf wasn’t going to begrudge Brenner the chance to catch his breath now. With shotgun in hand, he forced Brenner, who was still shaky and befuddled, to push the two corpses into the cesspit to join Knoll and Congressman Stachl. And you see, that’s the beautiful thing about misfortune. That is the magnificent thing about sickness and death. That’s the wonderful thing about exhaustion and collapse. You hopelessly outmatch every weapon. Because total exhaustion, terminal illness, complete despair, nothing’s more motivating than a shotgun. But Brenner was just too exhausted still. Even with the strongest of wills, he couldn’t do it. His knees kept buckling—marionettes haven’t got anything on him.

  There was nothing left for Kressdorf to do now. Shotgun or no shotgun, he had to do it himself. In the workplace, he’d heave a loud sigh at every opportunity and bemoan tearfully how he always had to do everything himself. But today, no whining, no sighing, and no stamping his feet. He was utterly focused on the matter at hand. I’d almost like to say it was one of the happiest moments in his life, when there was nothing except him and the task before him, and with a few determined kicks of his foot, he nudged the two corpses over the edge of the cesspit, where each disappeared with an indifferent splash.

  My dear swan, Knoll, the congressman, and the two bully-boys in a cesspit. A party came together there, and you almost have to say, it’s no minor feat when a pool of shit is made qualitatively worse.

  Standing had become so strenuous for Brenner that he sat back down in the grass, right at the edge of the cesspit. He stared into it and tried to remember something important that he’d experienced down there. He mustered all his powers of concentration, but he only knew that it was something terribly important. Something earth-shattering, it seemed to him, that explained why he was so exhausted. But it sank deeper and deeper, never to resurface in him.

  Purely from a detective’s standpoint, it wasn’t so bad that he’d completely forgotten the good lord because the good lord wasn’t the perpetrator. The good lord didn’t make the South Tyrolean take Helena. He didn’t make Brenner forget to gas up the night before. He didn’t make the Frau Doctor implicate her husband in a gigantic construction contract by not reporting an abortion she’d performed on a twelve-year-old child. He didn’t make the congressman spoil Prater Park and get his contractor’s wife pregnant. And above all, he didn’t make Knoll make threats in his name.

  The good lord just gazed upon all of this with a smile because—free will. The sight of the open pit, into which his memory had disappeared for all eternity, was so
discomforting to Brenner that he asked Kressdorf whether he should cover the cesspit back up with the wooden boards or whether it wasn’t worth it because he was still planning to throw him in, too.

  “Close it up,” Kressdorf said. “Why do you think I got you back out, Herr Simon?” Because—unbelievable, Kressdorf, still correct, addressing Brenner formally as Herr Simon. “You I still need. And those few boards can always be quickly removed again. But no innocent person should fall in.”

  Then he sent Brenner to the shower and had him put on some of his clean hunting clothes. And then they drove to Vienna to get Helena.

  CHAPTER 21

  One thing I’ve never liked about the human brain: that in the most dangerous situations, it often attaches importance to the silliest little things. So it bothers you that the executioner uses a bad aftershave, it bothers you that the doctor pronounces your throat cancer with a rolled R, and it bothers you that you can’t claim your wedding ring as a tax deduction. And believe it or not, it was bothering Brenner now that he should have to slip into a hunting ensemble while Kressdorf nagged him.

  But I have to defend Kressdorf here. What was he supposed to do? There simply wasn’t any other clothing in the cabin. And was he supposed to let Brenner sit on his leather upholstery in his cesspit-soaked clothes? He didn’t have to rush him, either, though. As if it were all riding on these few seconds now. Brenner only had two buckhorn buttons fastened when Kressdorf got impatient and pushed him into the car.