by Richard Wake
"I have to call my father," I said.
"It can wait till morning."
"I think you should stay. There's plenty for you to do here. There's a funeral to plan. There are clients to inform. Maybe you can get a little lost in the details. Maybe it will help."
Otto hated my father, who was his brother. It was the first thing we shared. He understood entirely in 1917, when I explained why I couldn't go home. Otto was the older brother by a year, but he never got along with his father, either, and mocked his father’s conservatism at every turn. The way Otto told it, this one time Otto ordered a steak in a restaurant, his father made a face and shook his head, and Otto yelled loud enough for the whole place to hear, "Austerity should be a temporary condition, not a way of life!"
So, when Grandfather Jakob died, he left the mine to my father, 100 percent, against all tradition. Otto was furious, but my father refused to give him even a small percentage. Otto worked for a salary and his commissions and nothing more—except, that is, for the expense account. And just as his father had cut Otto out of the will, I had no doubt that my father had cut me out of his own. So I did as Otto taught me. I lived the same life. I held the same grudges. I embraced the same pursuit of life's finer experiences while simultaneously keeping my distance from almost all of life's people, never coming close to marriage, not really interested in taking the leap between acquaintance and friend anymore.
That was me. That was Otto. Only the relationship with Hannah broke the pattern, but even then only partly. They didn't hide their love, but they didn't announce it, either. Marriage was never considered, at least not by Otto.
"Do you know, Otto never spent the night at my flat?" Hannah said.
"What? That seems . . . impossible."
"He never stayed. He never slept. He got dressed and left—1 a.m., 3 a.m., it didn't matter."
"So he was protecting your reputation?"
"He was protecting himself. Whatever he was doing, everything in his life, he always had one eye on the exit."
I found a small photo album in a desk drawer—the three of us on a day out in Grinzing. For some reason, the owner of the Pine Bough had a camera and sent Otto the photographs. There we were, clowning with the band, posing with pyramid-shaped glasses filled with spring wine that went down like lemonade but kicked the next morning like a mule. In the shot I liked the most, Otto and Hannah were dancing, her eyes closed and her head resting on his shoulder. It was the last picture in the book, and as Hannah stared at it and cried, I read the little note that Otto had penned on the flyleaf: Grinzing, 1934. A grand life. In his formal correspondence, he signed with a great flourish, "Otto A. Kovacs." But on personal notes like this, it was always a capital O with three parallel lines beneath it. When I saw that, I started crying.
"I see that signature, and I think of this note he once left on my desk. I was still just a kid, just back from a trip, and—remember Richard Gruber? From Saarbrücken? The old prick gave me a bad time about something, but he was still a pretty big client back then, and I was worried, and I told you about it, and you must have told Otto. And he left me this note that said, Fuck Old Gruber. And make sure to put an extra bottle of wine on the expenses for your aggravation."
We talked and laughed and cried until four. I left Hannah asleep on the couch, warmed by a comforter. I went to bed and awoke to a knock on my door at ten. Hannah was gone. At the door was a messenger delivering the train tickets to Cologne that she must have ordered.
5
The police headquarters in Cologne where I was to meet Detective Muller and view Uncle Otto's body was at Schildergasse 122. It was a scary-looking building with a tower on one end that looked like a gun turret, with vertical slits just wide enough for a sniper and his weapon, and which offered subtle vantage points in every direction. In all, it was a perfect architectural manifestation of the Nazi relationship to the German people, a relationship built not on trust but on the simple calculus that you never know who’s watching. If the tower hadn't already been there, the Nazis probably would have built one.
Muller's office was on the fourth floor. My heart was already pounding as if I was having a panic attack, and the four flights of stairs just amplified what was going on in my chest. Muller greeted me when I walked in, offered me a chair and a cigarette along with condolences that were somewhere north of rote but decidedly south of compassionate. I didn't smoke, but I took it.
He opened a file folder on his desk, then began talking. "Here's what I know. On the morning of Wednesday, November 18, 1936, the body of Otto Albert Kovacs, identified by the contents of his wallet, was found floating in the Rhine River, hung up in the reeds along the western bank at Mullergasse, near an athletic field, not far from the South Bridge. Given the currents, we believe that Mr. Kovacs jumped off the bridge and took his own life between the hours of midnight and 2 a.m. on the 18th."
I was stunned. I had spent the previous 36 hours convincing myself that it was a heart attack, that there was nothing more nefarious going on than Otto's criminal neglect of his own health. Or just bad luck. Or just life and death, and that it was his turn, his time.
Suicide seemed impossible. "Was an autopsy done?"
Muller arranged the papers in the file. "The coroner examined the body but did not do a full autopsy. This is standard for deaths where the circumstances appear somewhat clear and where the deceased is not a German citizen. He did say that there was no evidence of stabbing or shooting or any other obviously fatal wound. And we did find the body in the water, after all."
"But this would be so out of character—"
Muller interrupted, and in a tone that was suddenly even further south of compassionate. "Mr. Kovacs, in my business, you come to learn quickly that many people have troubles that are buried deep below the surface. Mental problems. Relationship issues. Financial concerns . . ."
"My uncle Otto had no financial problems. He was in a loving relationship. Mentally, there were no signs whatsoever. He was witty, charming, generous—"
"Mr. Kovacs, you do not impress me as being naïve or unworldly. You know people have problems they keep bottled up. You undoubtedly stew about issues that none of your close friends are aware of—not issues that would lead to suicide, but issues. We all have them. When does an issue become something bigger? None of us knows. And besides, I deal in evidence."
"That you spent exactly how long accumulating? An hour? Two?"
"The facts are what they are, sir. I find them to be compelling. Think about it—he was dead in the river, the examination of the body was unremarkable, and he was found down-current from the bridge where we see a suicide a month, maybe more than that. And you know what? The bodies all drift to approximately the same spot on the riverbank, all within about a city block of each other."
"But—"
Muller closed the file and stood. "It is the opinion of this department that the case will be closed once you identify the body and arrange for its transport back to Vienna. Are you prepared to do that now?"
He began walking, not waiting for an answer. The morgue was in the basement. It was very much like in the movies: cold, white tiles, doors in the wall containing bodies on stretchers. I waited at some distance, and watched as two attendants opened the eighth door in the long wall and retrieved a stretcher, the body covered in a white sheet. They hoisted it up and carried it to what was clearly the viewing area—a metal table in one corner. In what was already a blindingly well-lit room, the light in the viewing area seemed even brighter. Muller and I approached tentatively. One of the attendants did the honors and pulled back the sheet. It was Otto.
The whole thing was over in a few seconds. The attendants gave me the name of a local mortuary, and the arrangements were made to have Otto's body transported on the same train with me. I didn't cry, probably for a lot of reasons having to do with male vanity. But the reason I was half-smiling when I walked out of the police headquarters was the sudden realization that it was Wednesday, which mea
nt that Otto's final ride home would be on the Orient Express.
6
Hannah decided that Otto would not have wanted a big funeral, mostly because he always said he didn't want a big funeral, and so there wasn't one. She did not put a notice in the newspapers. There was no wake. The priest agreed to do his business in a small side chapel—Hannah and I, my father and brother in from Brno, Leon and Henry, the three other guys in Otto's bridge foursome, and some random old man who wandered in off of the street and out of the cold. His name was Max. He smelled. The only part of the day that Otto would have liked was Max.
We split into two cars for the drive to the cemetery. My father and brother got the bridge partners, and the rest of us took the other car. Max begged off.
Silence would have been too painful, so Hannah began the round of inanities.
"Your father looks good," she said.
"Too bad he doesn't look sad."
"That's not fair. You don't know—"
"I know. Trust me, I know. The only thing he's worried about is Otto's clients. He started asking about them, and when I would visit them, but I shut him off."
"When?"
"Just now. In the fucking chapel."
I started laughing. So did everyone else.
"You know what your brother asked me?" Leon said. "If you had found Otto's will yet. And how much I thought his apartment would sell for."
Henry joined in. "I talked to him for about 5 minutes outside. It's probably been five years, but your brother is the same asshole as ever. I've got to admit, though, that he's a prosperous-looking asshole. He looks like he's gained 50 pounds."
It was probably 20 pounds, but I appreciated the sentiment. Inane had given way to cruel snark. It was my friends' little gift on a stressful day. Plenty of people have family issues, and the blame for most of them can be spread around pretty liberally, but not here. It was one of the aspects of my life of which I was most confident. Otto was not to blame, and I was not to blame. We were the victims in this family struggle, and we were the survivors, and we had the better lives, and we were happier. Except Otto was dead, and we had become me, and I was alone.
After the cemetery, there was a big, somber lunch at Griechenbeisl, big family-style trays of sauerbraten and dumplings the menu advertised as "light as clouds." Mine tasted like clouds filled with wet cement, but maybe it was just my mood. I couldn't wait to put my father and brother on the train, after which we commenced the serious drinking. Hannah stayed with us for one, and then was hit by the inevitable wave of exhaustion. Which left me, Henry, Leon, and the issue that none of us could shake.
Or, as Leon abruptly said amid a conversation about the SK Rapid center back with two left feet, "You know, the suicide explanation is utter bullshit."
Henry smiled. "Not just everyday, run-of-the-mill bullshit? All the way to utter bullshit? Is that the highest form? No, that's not it. The highest form in Leonese is 'complete and utter bullshit'—isn't that right?"
"Fuck you. You know it's bullshit, too. There's no way Otto jumped off that bridge."
"I know," Henry said. I could barely hear him. And then everything got very quiet. I was suddenly hit by the same wave of exhaustion that had hit Hannah, and Henry and Leon appeared to be getting swept under as well.
I had felt the way they felt about the suicide: that it wasn't possible, not Otto. I had sat in the magnificent bar car of the Orient Express for most of the trip home—the bartenders tending to me in shifts—staring out the window at the passing night, and then the dawn, cocooned amid the wood paneling and warm lighting, coddled by the white-jacketed deliveries of double Hennessys. Suicide? There was just no way. But if not that, what?
My mind started to change when I talked to Hannah. I didn't know how to tell her what the Cologne police jackass had said, and I’d been working on a little softening preamble, but I was still kind of drunk when we sat down, and I just blurted it out.
I had expected Hannah to melt, but she didn't. She just got quiet for a minute, clearly thinking, and then said, "He had a doctor's appointment last week."
"His heart?"
"I don't know, but I don't think so. At least, I asked him and he said no."
"So it wasn't just a routine checkup?"
"Otto? You know better than that, Alex. He never had a routine checkup. All he would tell me was, 'Doc wants to run a few tests. No big deal.' So I said, 'You mean you had another appointment and didn't tell me?' He said, 'We're not married, you know,' and then he put on his coat and left."
Hannah was crying. "It was the last thing he said to me. He got on the train to Cologne the next day."
Maybe he had gotten terrible news from the doctor. It was at least possible. So there was that, and then there was the phone call I’d received the next day from the man at Oberbank. He identified himself as the executor of Otto's estate, and asked me to come to his office for a reading of the will, the sooner, the better. So I went that afternoon.
Werner Schmidt was about as old as Otto. It turned out he was president of the bank.
"I've known Otto since we were both in our twenties and unmarried. I used to tell him that the only reason I got married was that he had exhausted me, but he never stopped."
"He stopped a little, in the last few years, finally. There was a serious woman in his life. Which makes me ask: Why isn't she here?"
Schmidt opened the file on his desk. "Because you are the only beneficiary."
Nothing for Hannah? It didn't seem possible. Otto still did a bit too much of his thinking with his little head, even at 63, but he truly loved Hannah. I was sure of that. How he had not provided for her seemed incomprehensible.
But as Schmidt read the whereas-es and therefore-s, it was clear that it was all mine—all being his three significant assets: his bank account, the deed to his apartment, and the contents of his safe-deposit box. Schmidt shoved a piece of paper across the desk at me. It contained the balance of his bank account, which was more than I expected by a factor of about three. God bless the taxicab, indeed. Between that and the proceeds from the apartment, I had just crossed from upper middle class to lower upper class, which is the bridge between striving and worrying to striving and, well, not worrying. Even after giving a good piece to Hannah, I would still be able to live a more comfortable life than I had ever expected.
"The instructions were for me to empty the safe-deposit box and give you the contents," Schmidt said, pushing an oversized mailing envelope in my direction. Then there were two pieces of paper to sign, one acknowledging the reading of the will and my acceptance of the proceeds from the estate, and another allowing them to combine Otto's bank account with mine. With that, Schmidt stuffed my copy of the will into the big envelope and sent me on my way with a solemn handshake and a dirty laugh about a story from a time long ago, involving him, Otto, and a sophomore named Gretchen. But I was barely listening, suddenly preoccupied with excitement about the money I had just inherited from a loved one whose body wasn't yet in the ground. When I realized what I was thinking, I felt shittier about myself than I had in a long time. But I kept returning to the money all the same.
When I got home, I opened the envelope from the safe-deposit box. It contained the copy of the will and another envelope with my name on the outside. Inside was a letter to me and a bank book from Brust & Co., a bank in Zürich. I opened the cover and saw that it was a joint account, in Otto's name and in Hannah's. Thank God. He had taken care of her after all.
I read the letter.
Dear Alex,
Well, kiddo, this is it. You have always made me proud, the son I never had—a sappy cliché, yes, but true nonetheless. I sometimes worry that I gave you too many of my bad qualities, especially my rootless tendencies, but your loyalty to Leon and Henry always heartened me greatly. You are a good friend and a good person, and you also know a proper champagne for celebrating the signing of a new contract with a client. You are a man in full.
Take care of Hannah for me. Do n
ot give her the bank book yet. Do your best to make it contingent on her leaving the country. The money will do her no good once the jackbooted vacationers arrive. She wants to stay, but you have to convince her. That is your task now, the only thing you can do for me anymore.
Except this: There is a bottle of Hennessy prepaid in your name at Café Louvre. Drink it with Leon and Henry, every drop.
He signed it with the capital O and three lines underneath.
As we drained the bottle, I told Henry and Leon about the mysterious doctor's appointments. I kept the rest of it pretty much to myself, except to tell them the date on the letter in the envelope: November 11, a week before he died.
Henry tried to knock down the implication. "Come on. Even if he was sick, the Otto we know would have set up a second room in the hospital where he could give all of his women a goodbye shot."
We all laughed, but just for a second. The waves of exhaustion just kept coming. As we drank the last of the Hennessy, I finally said, "It might not be utter bullshit."
FEBRUARY 1937
7
The tuxedo, thankfully, was not in a ball at the bottom of my closet—the odds were even-money that it was—which made this a lucky day. I had last worn the tuxedo about six months earlier at a wedding, and pulling it from the closet and looking at it on the hanger, well, it was a summer wedding, and I had barely worn the jacket at the party, and even though it hadn't been pressed, it looked okay. I sniffed it and barely caught the scent of the perfume worn by a bridesmaid named Trudy, whose hugs that night were desperate but not amorous; she was so drunk she could barely walk. I still felt privileged that she’d waited to throw up until after she got out of the taxi.
