Max

by Peter Berczeller

  She didn’t say much, while the glint in her eyes translated itself into a slow dribble of tears. Sure, she was sorry to see me go. But the waterworks must have come on because she remembered how young she’d been, at the top of her game, when she first met me such a long time ago. When I came to Vienna, she needed to update that memory. Offered me what she did best; like a souvenir.

  No mention of the “L” word; then, as before. She understood I had to leave, that my brief furlough was up. But how could we keep alive the memory of what had gone on between us during those few hectic days? She didn’t ask for much. She’d be content with long-distance pillow talk a couple of times a week. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to break off abruptly with her either. At the last minute, I asked if we could continue the German lessons, translating the newspapers the way we’d already done. If everything went according to plan, Aunt Florence would be giving me the latest breaking news on the demise of the St Marton Five.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  WAITING FOR PAYDIRT

  Early August, 1984

  Tell me one person in the whole world who wants to feel like a total asshole. What else would I be, if I go through this whole song and dance and come up with bobkes (trans: zero)? Surgeons are trained to act positive, even when the patient’s family is about to make a coffee date with the funeral director. As things go from bad to worse, you can depend on us to be completely unrealistic about the patient’s chances for survival. Same thing here. Brought up “if” – about the primates in Austria project – a couple of times in my own mind, but my bet was always on “when.” Still, I kept having these notions about what would happen if the laser did the opposite of what I programmed it to do, gave my guys shock therapy instead. Stimulated the brains of the St Marton Five, but never got around to making them commit suicide. Kleinert graduating from lay brother to Archbishop in just a couple of months. After that, a shoo-in for Cardinal, with Pope right around the corner. Weissensteiner, so revved up by the laser, it made him into a bigger, even worse Hitler.

  I always wondered who was going to be the first to break the ice. From my experience with the rats, I knew it didn’t have to be strictly according to the zapping schedule. Sure enough, the next to the last became the first. Baumgartner, the sawmill guy.

  Front page article in Freies St Marton. Aunt Florence read the whole thing to me over the phone a few days after I got back to New York. We translated it together. Gee whiz, we got ourselves a real sensational killing in this rube heaven. Reports from shocked eyewitnesses. The smell of something burning in Baumgartner’s office. Found him with fire and smoke coming out of his mouth. A half-empty can of the kerosene they use for power saws, and a box of long fireplace matches next to him. By the time the ambulance showed up, he was already dead. Initial conclusion by Dr Heinrich, the first doctor on the scene: he took a big swig of the stuff and stuck a lit match into his mouth. The autopsy would tell us more. Aunt Florence moved on to the kind of obit a big citizen gets in a small pond. Husband, father, employer; all the good things he’d ever done. No mention of other activities considered very positive a long time before. How he helped run the Jews out of town, his role in the disappearance of Dr Brenner. Amnesia’s not all bad. Especially if you keep just enough memory to remember what it is you want to forget. I was busting; that story gave me a big lift.

  One of the five who killed my father got whacked for it. If my calculations were on the mark, the rest of the team was bound to follow. It was now just a question of when. Baumgartner doing what he did made me feel good in another direction too. There’s a lot of talk about scientific curiosity, but it’s a pretty curious scientist who doesn’t feel great when he comes up with something nobody’s ever latched onto before. In neurosurgery, when you work with the brain, you’re always playing catch-up. Which means either you have to cut something out that’s already there, or it’s too late to do anything about it. But here, I got ahead of the game, made a brain do what I told it to do. To my relief, Baumgartner killed himself like the amateurs I’d met up with at the ME: aggressive, no namby-pamby. The other four would have to go to some lengths to beat him out for the award I’d be giving out at the end of the season. The Richard Brenner Prize for Creative Suicide.

  Over the next few days, three more of my guys checked in. Actually, “checked out” is more appropriate. First Hochberger, found with his head, or what was left of it, in the grinder that produces hamburgers. The usual obit: blah, blah, blah. From what I could see so far, no tying up his suicide with Baumgartner’s. Next to go was Kleinert. Hung himself on the big Christ on the Cross suspended over the altar in the St Marton church. He’d given me the photo-op when I zapped him. The rope looped around the cross, with his body hanging down, just about facing Jesus. A little bit of unease now creeping into the Freies St Marton account: like “Holy Shit! What’s happening here?” I hadn’t revealed to Aunt Florence anything about what I was really doing in St Marton. For all I knew, she was putting my visits there and the mysterious deaths in the same basket. Still, she didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. No use involving her.

  After a couple of days, my man Strobl made his last appearance. Pretty big spread in the paper, especially since it happened at the fortress; also, the dramatic circumstances. First off, there was the dog moaning and barking next to the well, early in the morning. Somebody went to look for Strobl, but he’d disappeared. The dog kept jumping up onto the side of the well, so people took the hint and looked inside. Nothing suspicious to be seen, but, just to make sure, they sent a burning piece of newspaper down the shaft. It was stopped by Strobl’s body, shoulders wedged into the wall, head submerged. Traditional kind of guy. Did to himself what they’d done to the brides of Forchtenstein. A real dive too – none of that feet first, squeezing your nostrils stuff.

  Separate little article on page two. About the mysterious deaths of four well-respected citizens within days of each other. So far, all of them appeared to be suicides, but foul play was still a possibility. No clues yet, but watch this space. Pissed me off. Felt like sending an anonymous telegram to the St Marton police, set them straight. If you want clues, look next door to foul play. You dummies! Can’t you see fair play when it’s staring you in the face?

  Leave it to Weissensteiner to hold out till the last minute, put a monkey wrench in my works. I was having spilkes (trans: ants in the pants, from anticipation) all the time about whether he’d managed to escape me at the last minute. I kept on rationalizing that four out of five wasn’t so bad either. Which was, of course, horseshit. Herr W. was my main object all along. He was the star of my show, I couldn’t do without him.

  A while later, I got a first thing in the morning call from Aunt Florence. Not the usual time for our transatlantic German lessons/pillow talk. First, the good news: Weissensteiner was found in the park, the one where the jail used to stand, with his throat cut, ear to ear. An old-fashioned razor clutched in his right hand. Now the bad news: he was still alive when a pedestrian accidentally stumbled on him. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was in “serious but stable condition.” All this time, I hadn’t considered the possibility that the assisted suicides might do what I programmed them to do, but that funny things could happen before the trip to the morgue. In other words, they might have the best of intentions to die, but still screwed up the process. What could I do now? Nothing, of course. I wasn’t about to fly back to Austria and take another shot at his locus ceruleus. All I could do was hope that his attempted assassination of himself would give rise to complications. The kind we try to avoid in our postoperative patients, but which would be welcome in the case of Herr W. For a while, no news; either good or bad. But, just as he was ready to go home, he did the right thing. Jumped out the window.

  The last of my father’s executioners finally giving himself what he deserved. Final score: Max 5 – 0 St Marton murderers. Can’t do better than that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?


  September, 1984

  I don’t have to tell you. Feel really good about something you’ve done, next thing you know, you’re in negative territory. Thinking back to the glory days, but feeling like shit. That’s the way I felt after the last of the St Marton Five (they should rest in pieces) bit the dust. The adrenaline that had been splashing around inside of me was just a puddle on the floor by now. I knew I had to do something with the laser, but what? Should I exchange neurosurgery for being a one-man Mossad, hunting down geriatric Nazis in remote corners of the world like La Gloria de Cucaracha, Paraguay? Or stick it to no-goodniks closer to home? Which could be a full-time job. I sat around a lot in my office, pondering these possibilities. I was back to work, but just about. Not paying much attention to the fledglings, who were starting to act like a dog who’s been kicked once too many. My secretary, Marian, moping. The rats, chirping away to the tune of “kill me or experiment on me, but don’t be indifferent.”

  In the end, I began to understand I wasn’t cut out to be a freelance executioner. I’d had a score to settle with the St Marton murderers. Personal revenge is like having a suit made to order. Four buttons on the cuffs, a double vent in the back; refinements like that. Not for everybody, but you get a big kick out of wearing it. Not the same as making yourself into a contract assassin, aiming for the locus ceruleus of people who deserve it, scattered throughout the world. Besides, doing bad to the bad carries its own risks. The bad are liable to take revenge. Which means you could stop living, for good; which is in itself bad. Or you can end up in jail. Which is not a good place to be stuck in.

  No more killing, I vowed to myself. I owed it to the memory of my old girlfriend Eva, to keep the amateur suicides – like hers – to a minimum. Or, better yet, stopping them altogether. I knew how to burn down a suicide center. Now I had to think of a way to keep it from going into business on its own. Like those safecrackers who end up teaching everything they know to the Junior G-Men at the FBI Academy.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A SURPRISE VISIT

  Late September, 1984

  I never did get around to this new project of mine. It started off innocently enough. One afternoon, soon after I got back to New York, Marian told me Dr Kurastami was outside, wanted to see me right away. Also, there was a lady with him. When Marian says “lady,” that’s what you’re going to get; not some bimbo camouflaged to look like one. What Persian Pete would be doing with such a specimen in tow was not in character. The women I’d seen him with, classy wasn’t the first impression that grabbed you. More the opposite: smudged lipstick, gabbing away a mile a minute.

  By then, he was already at my door, barging in as if he owned the place. Big 5 o’clock shadow, a lab coat over his scrub suit. Something funny about the outfit. A silk ascot around the neck, cascading down to cover the opening of the coat. Not part of the usual OR chic. Could be he hadn’t had a chest haircut for a while, used the scarf to hide the evidence. And the lady? As soon as I saw her, my face turned as hot as if I’d stuck my head inside an oven; together with a pulsating headache, suggesting my blood pressure must have soared in an instant. It was Alison Hamilton. I hadn’t seen her since the day she showed me around the Chalfin Center. Within seconds, that urgent need to talk to her ad infinitum, to eat her whole and especially certain of her component parts, and to impregnate my nose with her smell came back to me. The Penile Paradox, my usual Johnny-on-the spot, not far behind. When I was with Aunt Florence, also when I got back to my current social worker, Elena I, at the point of the petite mort – leave it to the French to downgrade an orgasm not into the death we all fear, but its junior partner – all I could see was Alison in front of me. Together with a momentary osmic hallucination. My nose fooled into catching the whiff she gave off – toes wrapped in lotion meeting expensive leather – that day in the stairway leading down from Lynx’s office. Talk about paradoxes. I didn’t have a hope of getting it up with her, but just the thought of her while I was with other people gave me a big jolt in the Marlboro Man direction. I’m all for delving into the roots of words. Finding out where they come from, how they’ve evolved over the centuries. In the case of Alison, maybe that’s why they call it “prick.”

  She’d been on my mind ever since the moment Lynx introduced us. Before going to Austria, I’d tried to get in touch with her. I kept phoning, left messages, but never got a call back. That didn’t stop me. Even tried to storm the Chalfin Center, but couldn’t get in the door. No appointment, no admission. All I was left with were scenarios cooked up by my mind. Bumping into her on the street, when she feels a sudden coup de foudre. The electric shock you feel when THE ONE comes along, when you’ve stuck your finger in just the right socket. Or another improbable event: she’s been thinking about me ever since Lynx introduced us. Tried to control herself, stay cool. In the end, she couldn’t help herself. Called, and confessed she’d been crazy about me all along. Most nights, I’d be rocking myself to sleep, picturing these impossible possibilities.

  But what I never expected was for her to show up in my office, accompanied by Persian Pete. What was she was doing here with that jerk?

  She wore a peasant-type blouse, which must have cost what ten peasants get for a year’s work. Complemented by a light beige skirt dropping to a couple of inches above the knees, made of the kind of linen that’s crumpled on purpose. Great outfit all around. Hair still piled high on her head, which was slightly inclined forward, nodding halfway. As I was helping her into the only available chair (Persian Pete got to sit on the packing case with the rat food), I detected a solitary drop heading down to her right popliteal fossa. That’s the delicious carved-out parking space behind the knee; a great spot to give your tongue a rest after it’s through gliding up and down a woman’s leg. Made me wonder where the drop started out from. A Darwin moment.

  I’ll never forget the first thing she said to me that day. When she opened her mouth, it was curtains for me. There’s always a split-second when your life takes a sharp turn. No particular reason to think so at the time, but it turned out that way. One thing led to another, which is how I ended up here.

  “I’m told,” she says to me with an impersonal little smile – the kind you give the doorman when you ask him to walk your dog – while putting her hand lightly on P. Pete’s arm, “that suicide is your special field of interest.”

  I’d just witnessed the kind of up-close-and-personal dermatology that’s so hard to take, when it’s between a woman you want to eat up alive, and a guy you want to offer to the nearest available alligator. It also brought up some urgent questions. How did she meet Pete in the first place, and was there anything up between them? Had she already heard about the St Marton Five, was that why she was sitting in my office now? And if the answer to the last question was yes, did she suspect I had something to do with it? Or was she just on a fishing expedition, with Pete playing the worm at the end of the hook?

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “What about the rats,” she wanted to know, making small talk. “Do they figure in on the research?”

  “Yeah, but on a very basic level,” I lied. “To compare their anatomy with human anatomy.” Then I told her what Pete already knew from my reports to the Department. That there’s a burntout area in the brains of certain suicides. “I’m trying to put it all together, but who knows if it’s ever going to lead to anything.” End of story. Standard modest scientist bulletin from the front lines. Doing my best, but can’t promise results.

  Now it was my turn. Just as Baumgartner asked when I invited myself into his office: what the fuck are you doing here? Didn’t put it exactly like that, but Alison and Pete caught my meaning. They’d met at a party a couple of weeks before, and she mentioned the puzzling series of suicides in Austria. Her contacts over there knew that all the departed had season tickets in her filing system, so they filled her in on the news. What she couldn’t understand was why they did themselves in so many years later. Something else she found fishy: why
all around the same time? Akbar had told her about me and my research. For sure, I’d be able to help.

  She didn’t put two and two together until she actually saw me. That we’d already met; no introduction necessary. That time at the Chalfin Center, she didn’t even ask what I did for a living. To which, I thought, because you couldn’t care less, playing the Shabbes Goy Prom Queen. Now she was about to bat her baby blues in my direction, hoping for some answers.

  I couldn’t blame her for trying to get information wherever she could. But Pete was another story, showing me off like the organ grinder’s monkey. While, knowing him, all he cared about was grinding his organ. The creep. Figured it was time to send out a false lead. I had to get her off my case quick, before she put two hundred rats and five dead Nazis together.

  Went into the mass hysteria routine. What you read in the papers now and then, about teenagers in the same high school killing themselves. Happy, cheerleaders, jocks. Nobody ever finds out why. Also, told her about an article in a Russian psychiatry journal, about some old army buddies doing the same thing. Ditto, why they did it. What I told her about the Russians was a complete fabrication. Hoped she’d take my word for it, not ask for the reference. I then threw in a bit about collective guilt. “Who’s to know these Austrians you’re talking about didn’t get together for an evening of drinking? Talking about the past gave them all such an attack of low self-esteem, they couldn’t live with themselves anymore.”