Max

by Peter Berczeller

  I planned to do Kleinert after lunch, and Baumgartner the next afternoon. There wouldn’t be a lot of people hanging around the church at that time of day. I never did find out exactly what a lay brother does; what’s his gig? Maybe they’re like a Gabbe in a temple. The guy who hands out the prayer books, shaking his head as he shows you how far they’re already along in the service. And here’s late-sleeping you, dragging yourself in whenever it suits you.

  Anyway, I got to this church on time. No sign sunk in the grass outside, identifying it as “So and So RC Church”, Father Aloysius in charge, Father Antonio second-in-command. In a country like Austria, RC is taken for granted. The place looked Gothic and gloomy on the outside. Architecture as warning; if you don’t believe in what’s happening inside, it’s your spiritual ass.

  Not that I’m such a big expert on churches, but I like them on the empty side. Deserted, a church is the best no-price-of-admission theatre around. A few candles sputtering in the half-light. That smell of wax and incense, married to the special woody breath coming off all those old New Testaments wedged into the racks without an inch to spare. The insides of the spires so high, that they serve as a down payment for how unapproachable heaven really is. You never get rid of the feeling there’s a stiff or two stuck in those damp stone walls, or maybe in those creepy-looking dark chests they have standing around. Where else can you walk right into a place where death, ascension, resurrection and force-feeding of body and blood substitutes take up the whole day, every day?

  It took me a little while to get used to the dark. Asked myself, where do you start looking for a lay brother, especially between shows? Do they have a lounge, or a gym where they work out? Or do they attend classes, where they learn how to get rid of the “lay,” with an eye to becoming truly paternal? A Gabbe you can always find. Either he’s eating herring with sliced onion on rye bread in the lobby of the temple, or you’ll find him teaching Hebrew to a bunch of Bar Mitzvah candidates, disguised as Cub Scouts.

  The place was pretty much empty. Checked out the pews. A couple of people kneeling, but not a sound out of them. Does anybody ever check the pulse, respiration and blood pressure of parishioners who stay in exactly the same position for, let’s say, a week?

  Nobody stopped me, so I just wandered around. I came upon a couple of guys in blue smocks swabbing down the stone floor, but neither of them looked like Kleinert. Then a priest walked by, dressed in summer whites; ditto. The boots were the tipoff when I finally caught sight of him. Shiny, black, and scary-looking as they protruded from under his brown cassock. For all I know, there’s some special Vatican rule that excuses former Gendarmerie commanders from having to wear humble sandals. These gents might be needed to kick some serious ass any moment. He was crouching under a large Christ on the Cross, which hung from a small balcony overlooking the altar, while cleaning a silver Communion goblet with lots of elbow grease. Concentrating completely on the job, with a no-nonsense expression on his red face. Spit and polish. And I was about fifteen feet from him, trying to figure out what angle to use for my shot.

  Asking Strobl to pose had made a lot of sense. But doing the same with Kleinert would have aroused suspicion. He still hadn’t seen me, so I knelt down on the right side of the altar and pretended to focus the bogus camera on the huge hanging cross. Then I brought it down so as to get Brother Major Kleinert’s behind-the-right-ear area in the perfect position. At which point, he scooted over to the other side, polishing everything in the vicinity like there was no tomorrow. Which there wasn’t for him, if you look at the long view. So I had to pull the same reverent readjustment of the camera on the other side of the cross before I got my shot: the click and the answering hiss. Paydirt in about two weeks.

  I took the rest of the day off. Went back to Vienna, took a long walk on the Graben and around the Hofburg. I hadn’t fed anything to my Compulsive Bibliophilia Disorder since leaving New York. Now it pushed/dragged me into a couple of bookstores. In one, I bought some volumes in old German Gothic script, completely unreadable, but I liked the fancy bindings. In the other, before I knew it, I’d paid for the collected works of Stefan Zweig, in translation. As I was schlepping the heavy shopping bags back to Aunt Florence’s house, I was in a good mood. My CBD was satisfied; at least for now. Besides, I was already looking forward to tomorrow, when I’d be zapping Baumgartner, my last candidate in St Marton.

  The next day, no problem in finding his lumberyard on the outskirts of town. The street leading up to it was called Hans- Baumgartner-Gasse. Change the name after the war since the eponymous was a notorious Nazi? Not the St Marton way. The good old days might come back any time. No use being too hasty about taking down old street signs. Coming up to the lumberyard, I already heard lots of action and noise, which can be distracting for the amateur photographer. That annoying, whining sound coming from the kerosene-driven power saws was liable to break my concentration at a crucial moment. A guard stopped me at the gate. I kept saying “Baumgartner, Baumgartner” so often, that he waved me on, pointing to the door of an office. Baumgartner almost missed his destiny, at least for that afternoon. The office was empty. Just as I was leaving, a big white-haired guy with a red face comes running in, yelling. Sounded like what the fuck was I doing there? “Journalist, journalist,” I cringed back, pointing to my cameras. Waved my New York State’s driver’s license in front of his nose, and recited something in German I’d memorized that morning. “I am writing for an American magazine, Confederate Carpenter, about old-time sawmills in the south of Austria. Everybody says this is THE place to take pictures.” After my laborious spiel, Baumgartner showed a sudden, deep desire to shake my hand. A problem. That’s when I got my arms tangled up in the camera straps. Direct contact consequently not possible. The rest was pretty easy. He showed me all around the place, and I took a great right-sided profile of the proud owner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A HARD CASE

  End of July, 1984

  That left only Weissensteiner. The man who’d been in charge of the killing party at the jailhouse wall. I had his address in Wiener Neustadt, an industrial city around twenty or thirty miles from St Marton, where he was living with his daughter and her children.

  I suspected all along he’d be a hard case. The others could all be found in some public place where I could get at them; even Hochberger who commuted between his old store and the tavern, two doors down, on a regular basis. From what I found out at the Chalfin Center, the one I was after now had no hobbies and spent most of his time cooped up at home. How was I going to get a shot at him?

  He lived on a busy street. The first day, I had to spend a couple of hours looking at a newspaper I couldn’t understand, in a little Kaffeehaus across the way, before I could get a good look at him. Even then, I only saw him for a minute, while he was taking out the garbage, dragging a cane.

  Strobl, Kleinert, and the others had no real identity for me. They were just extras who’d helped Weissensteiner kill my father. For that, they were getting the punishment they deserved. But the last guy on the hit parade, number one on my wish list, was another story. Maybe I was reading into things, knowing what he had done – what he was capable of – but seeing him in person was even scarier than the visions I’d conjured up about him when I was a child. The tense way he carried himself, the jerky, abrupt movements. His head swiveling all the time, like a Konzentrationslager searchlight, to give his eyes the chance to make a full sweep.

  The patients in the prison ward, at the County, charged with murder or aggravated assault, had that kind of look about them. But they were already in the can, with handcuffs for jewelry. Which meant whatever puss they put on, no way they could hurt you.

  Keeping my distance from Weissensteiner, I went back to the same Kaffeehaus the next day, waiting for him to come out for another curtain call. Hoping this time he’d at least take a walk, or even go shopping, so I could follow him and somehow slip him the laser while he was in a crowd. Nothing doing. No wo
nder the guy was so pale. Just bringing the trash out once a day isn’t guaranteed to give you a Florida tan. Had guilt made him a total recluse? Or shame? Any sign of remorse at all? Those tiny cups of muddy coffee that were keeping me company while I was doing my surveillance routine were beginning to give me heartburn. I started thinking up some weird scenarios, just to pass the time. For instance, how about me playing the Avon Lady? Knock, knock. “Hallo Herr Weissensteiner, can I interest you in something that will change your life forever?” Or I could set fire to his house in the middle of the night, and zap him while he’s running out in his nightshirt, carrying his most precious possessions: a grandchild on one arm, and his old brown shirt with the swastika on the sleeve on the other.

  The Avon Lady idea wasn’t all that bizarre. I’d been right to do the anonymous bit – no real contact – with the others. The end result was all that mattered. Herr W., on the other hand, not in the same ballpark. What I needed was to make some kind of gesture, to give him that extra heads-up. To make him worry even more, especially once he started hearing about the suicides of some of his buddies. Every day, that much closer to getting carried out the door himself. (Same general idea as taking out the garbage.) I needed to give this one a hint of what was in store for him.

  The time I spent casing the joint gave me a good idea of when I’d find him alone in the house. His daughter drove off with the kids at nine in the morning, came back around three. Nobody else ever went in or out. All I had to do was wait for her to leave, walk across the street, do my Avon Lady shtick, and be on my way.

  When I was a kid, Weissensteiner would pop up in front of my eyes just as I was going to sleep. I was afraid he could come all the way to Ft. Lee, New Jersey, and do terrible things to my parents and me. Also to my dog Hugo. So, this guy and me had a past. The thought of meeting up with him spooked me the same as when he had the lead part in those waking nightmares of my childhood. Why was I so scared, I kept asking myself; what could he do to me? Lock me away in his attic, then march me down to his garden wall to be shot at dawn? This was an old guy! He couldn’t even get around without a stick. But go try to convince your sweat glands and your intestines, just to name a couple of landing points for that special fear that floats around inside of you. The kind you don’t even know where it’s coming from. Go try to fight off a sneak attack like that. Remember Pearl Harbor.

  What I needed right then was reinforcement – not theories – with some succor thrown in. A guy with a little Van Dyke beard, untidy white head of hair, and a worn black suit, ashes from his cigar giving it a fine, irregular, polka dot effect. That’s who I could have used right then. With me stretched out over several café chairs transformed into a makeshift couch, and him saying, “Don’t be such a Hosenscheisser. (trans.: a person with a cowardly anal sphincter.) Just go over there and let the motherfucker have it. Your father would kvell (trans.: a mix of pride and happiness) in his grave about having such a brave son.”

  Just a few minutes with the old gent would have made all the difference. But looking around, all I saw was the frock-coated waiter, reading the paper while picking his teeth (or vice-versa) and two eighty-year-olds playing chess. Staying in that Kaffeehaus, sweating profusely, was giving me cramps in my kishkes. What if my hero father had spun off a weenie? I could talk a good game, but deep down… when the going gets tough, just say you’ve had enough?

  I went back to Aunt Florence’s to take a long, hard look at my psyche, and what I was seeing wasn’t pretty. But another walk around the city revived my will to kill. Brought on this time by taking a closer look at the plump, red-faced specimens filling the streets. Which invariably brings on the unanswerable question: Why us, and not them? Why are so many of us dead, while these clowns are still walking around, munching on crepes stuffed with whipped cream, the lather slobbering down their capacious chins?

  The next day, after another few coffees, I asked Herr Ober, the overdressed waiter, for the bill. In Austria, the customer is expected to tote up his own order. (Just as I’d long been toting up what the Austrians owed me.) But I hadn’t kept track of how many inky cups of coffee I’d had that morning. Now I had to translate the degree of heartburn into numbers, with Herr Ober standing over me, aggressively pushing air out through the gaps between his teeth.

  After I was finally allowed to pay up, everything began to slow down. It felt like it took an hour for me just to cross the street. I don’t remember reaching the other side, or even ringing the bell. But the next thing I knew, there was Weissensteiner standing in the doorway, looking straight at me. Same pissed off, wise-guy look, still some traces of the blond hair I’d seen in his picture. All I could do was blurt out his name, more an exclamation than a question. The quizzical expression on his face suggested he was wondering who the fuck I was, just like Baumgartner. They’re really something, aren’t they? No trouble finding six million Jews to kill, but can’t spot a lone American executioner for beans.

  A part of my brain must have got its wires wet from all those feelings sloshing around. Result: the lower centers, the ones around for millions of years, had to take over. The flight or fight question came up right away. The former must have won out, because, pathetically, I right away high-tailed it from the house to the corner. Weissensteiner must have sensed I wasn’t just canvassing the neighborhood. For an old guy, he ran pretty fast, the old blood lust must still have been in him. Then he lunged at me, knocking me down. The safest thing seemed to be to just lie there for the moment, the twin cameras clutched to my chest.

  Weissensteiner grunted in disgust, indifferent to the possibility that he’d cracked my skull. As he turned to head back to his house, I got my best photo opportunity of the week. Crazy angle, but by now I was a pro.

  Nothing left to do except run after him, shouting the name “Brenner.” Do bad boys like Weissensteiner keep track of their victims? Or were there too many to count?

  Between St Marton and his time with the Wehrmacht in France, he must have had a hand in ending many people’s lives: tortured them, deported them, executed them. What I needed to know was, did he remember his victims’ names? Or at least my father’s? With him, he might have lost his killing cherry. It’s common knowledge everybody remembers their first. Of everything.

  All I could do was to keep mouthing “Brenner” – by now in a low sob – over and over again. To feed him that name, like a slow-acting poison.

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at me, and I stared back. A pissing contest. Still not a word out of him. I gave up first, and turned away. As I was retreating down the street, I heard the door slam.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  FURIOUS FLORENCE

  End of July, 1984

  It was getting to be Friday, and I was leaving Saturday. On Thursday, I could already see a change in Aunt Florence. You know how women let you know they’re not happy? Big difference, in my experience, from showing you they’re just plain unhappy; which may not even have anything to do with you in the first place. Not the same as the former, where it’s usually something you’re doing or not doing, take your pick. The corners of the mouth tighter, the touch cooler, the eyes less shiny. Right after that, you get withdrawal. No more holding on to you 24/7 like you’re about to fall off a mountain any minute, excited about spending every possible moment with you. Your privileges are being cancelled, same as when your credit card maxes out. It’s statistically likely you don’t even know what brought about this change of weather in the first place.

  Anyway, when I came out of my room Friday morning, I immediately understood I was in deep shit. Uncle Emil had already left, but Aunt Florence was still walking around in her schmatte. No peignoir to be seen. Breakfast as usual, except yesterday’s dried-up bread, no poppy seed rolls. Therefore not the usual fallout. A subtle reminder there weren’t going to be any graduation exercises under the piano. Aunt Florence distant. As if I was already far away; but, inconveniently, still around.

  I figured it out pretty quick. I was leavi
ng, that was the problem. As if I lived full-time in Vienna, and my only reason for taking off was to make her platz (trans.: bust.) Go explain you’re just there on vacation. It seems pretty clear to me: if you’re on vacation, you’re not home; vice-versa also. But what’s always in the air is an ugly little rumor: If you really wanted to, you could. But you don’t, so you won’t.

  Austrian florist shops are all the same. Walk into them, right away you’re in a jungle. Plants, gardenias, roses, etc. everywhere. The salespeople stuck behind a little tree in the back somewhere. Like Jap snipers in WWII. Why is the country so stuffed with flowers? What’s with the glut? Thought about it for a while, and then it hit me. It must be because of the pileup of inventory during the war. A lot of citizens (guess who?) got sent far away from home, ended up dying there. According to the neighbors who stayed put, they wanted every which way to pay their respects. But – they keep claiming – there was no way of knowing if flowers were being accepted by the Konzentrationslager around then. How could they have followed their orders?

  After a look around, I ended up choosing a big bouquet. Wrote sort of a dopey double entendre card to accompany it: “Thanks for having me. Your grateful nephew.”

  I carried the flowers back to the house. Sending them wouldn’t have made the same impact. Show me an angry woman who doesn’t soften up even a little bit when she’s on the receiving end of a floral tribute. Aunt Florence was no different. Especially after reading the card. The corners of her lips loosened, and there was the merest glint in her eyes. Before the moment could fade, I went into my spiel. Meeting her all those years ago changed my life – also, her introducing me to Henry Miller – and made me understand, when I was a kid, what I could look forward to later on. Even more importantly, how many people get the chance to do it with the one they always dreamed of doing it with?