The Sweetness of Life

by Paulus Hochgatterer

  He had told her immediately, and before the urge hit her to run outside she had thought of Katharina. Suddenly, they both realized where the bloody fingers had come from the night before, and why their daughter had looked so shocked. “I went up to her bedroom and pulled off the duvet. She was lying there curled up with her fist clenched and the Ludo pieces inside.”

  They had gone to the barn together. For a moment, everything had gone black and she had to sit down in the snow. It was only then that they had contacted the police from her husband’s cell. The young officer arrived twenty minutes later; the others would follow on, he said, and not much else.

  Kovacs looked at the little girl. He pointed to her fist. “Have you got the pieces in there?” he asked. The girl stared into space and said nothing.

  “He fell over and died,” the big sister said. “He was an old man.”

  “That’s what we told them,” the mother said.

  “Have you seen your grandfather?” Kovacs asked. The boy and the older girl shook their heads. The father threw up his arms in protest.

  “For God’s sake, no!”

  “I think it would be a good idea,” Kovacs said. Wieck looked at him, surprised. He leaned over and whispered to her that she should first go outside and make sure that the man’s face was covered. She put her notepad away and stood up. She still looked blank.

  “Is that really necessary?” Luise Maywald asked. Kovacs ignored her. He slowly stretched his hand out toward the little girl. “It’d be great if you could show me the pieces,” he said. The girl looked straight past his right ear.

  “I’d be really happy if you’d let me see the pieces—just for a bit.”

  At the very moment that he touched the child’s clenched fist with his fingertips, she began to scream. The mother pressed her hands over her ears. The girl was screaming bloody murder. She stared straight through Kovacs. She doesn’t give a crap whether I’m happy or not, he thought.

  As he approached the barn, Kovacs could see that Fat Mauritz from forensics was there. He must have shooed Lipp, Töllmann, and Wieck away and was enlarging the sealed-off area. The bank of fog was closing in. The sky above them was grayish-yellow and a few flakes of snow were falling here and there.

  Kovacs instructed Ernst Maywald and the two children to stay where they were. Katharina had continued to scream and so had stayed in the house with her mother. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the father said. He had put on a quilted vest but was still shivering.

  Sebastian Wilfert’s face was covered by a piece of dark-green plastic sheeting. It was impossible to guess what was underneath. “Perfect,” Kovacs said.

  “I photographed everything,” Lipp said. “But then forensics suddenly showed up. I should also tell you that Gasselik’s been released as part of the Christmas amnesty. Because he’s so young.”

  Kovacs shook hands with Mauritz. Sometimes they watched football together.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “The tire marks,” Mauritz said. “Maybe somebody drove over his head. But you know that we don’t normally say anything . . .”

  “Before you . . . first, second, third—yes, I know.”

  Who drives over an old man’s head? Kovacs wondered. He motioned to Maywald and his children to come over.

  “Is that your grandfather?” he asked. The children nodded.

  “What’s that green thing there for?” Georg asked, pointing to the piece of plastic.

  “Somebody drove over your grandfather’s face,” Kovacs said. “It doesn’t look pretty.”

  The girl gulped several times.

  “What are the legs pointing up for?” the boy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Kovacs said. “He was just lying like that.” He means “why?” and asks “what for?” he thought, some people do that.

  “He fell over and he’s dead,” the girl said. “He was an old man.” She gulped several more times. Then she started to cry. Her father gave her a hug.

  “Is that what you wanted?” he asked. “Did you have to put it so bluntly?” Now he’s shaking out of anger, Kovacs thought, and he’s got big hands.

  Mauritz was on the phone. “And a tent,” Kovacs heard him say.

  “Do you mean to spend the night here?” he asked. Mauritz tapped the side of his head. Kovacs looked up: the odd snowflake, no more. But still, he knew that precipitation was the natural enemy of forensic science.

  Wieck walked over to Kovacs. “I thought I’d take a look inside the garage,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps somebody really did steal the car.” She laughed.

  Four

  I’m eating mashed potatoes with fried onion rings. Lore cooked it. It tastes all right, especially the onion rings. She’s still a Polish whore all the same. I’m drinking lukewarm peppermint tea. Gerstmann is going back and forth across the parking lot, clearing it with the snowplow. It’s pointless, since it’s going to snow again tomorrow. Gerstmann does pointless work and we pay him for it. Sometimes he just takes one of the cars and goes for a spin. Then he comes up with some excuse such as the car’s got to have a run around. Dad says that Gerstmann is the most important man in the company after Reiter, head of sales. Because he knows everything that’s going on.

  Daniel’s back. He’s lying down in his room, asleep. He never used to sleep so much. He says he’s got to catch up. He says that after four shitty months of being deprived he really needs to catch up.

  The dishwasher door is jammed. I leave the plate next to the dishwasher. Lore will clear it away. Daniel says that at home she prays to a picture of a saint who worked miracles, and then she does it with various men. Just like all those Polish whores. They’ve all got shocking hairstyles, too, mostly platinum blond.

  I help myself to a slice of Christmas stollen from the plate. It’s from the cake shop and a week old already. Mom says that there’s so much fat in it that it won’t go stale. It tastes like it, too. Maybe a touch of vanilla. The second slice tastes of almost nothing but fat. It’s a miracle that I’m not getting porkier. That’s what everyone says who’s seen me eat. Daniel says that people who are highly strung can eat what they like without getting fat. But that can’t be true, because our dad’s tummy hangs over his belt and they don’t come more highly strung than him.

  The door to Daniel’s room is closed. I imagine him lying there on the bed, on his stomach, his right arm wrapped around his head. He said that sometime he’d tell me what happened inside. He always says “inside” and he says he’ll know when I’m ready. Anyhow, he’s been training for the last four and a half months. You only have to look at his arms to see that. “You’ve grown again,” our mom said when he came home. He didn’t say a word.

  Two things are on my desk: my Game Boy SP and this newspaper clipping. In fact, it’s a copy of a newspaper clipping that Daniel gave me. Kurier, page four. “Was It Really an Accident?” in thick black letters, underlined in red felt-tip. Under the headline, the story of an old man who died when someone crushed his head. “The man’s head was so badly mutilated as to be unrecognizable,” it says. The man’s name was Sebastian Wilfert, and apparently he lived above the town, toward Mühlau. There’s a photo of the man next to the article, but you can’t see what he looked like because red circles have been scribbled all over the face. It could have been anybody’s face. “The Force is going to take control of you,” Daniel said when he gave me the article. To begin with I didn’t understand what he meant by that. Then he whacked me. That always helps. It unblocks everything inside me.

  The racetrack is beside my bed. A huge figure of eight, with four lanes. My dad said that you need a racetrack at my age. He had one, too. I switch it on and put the yellow car with the blue double stripe into the groove. I take the controller and do a lap, quite slowly. I find it pretty awful, to be honest. A lap of F-Zero GX, Devil’s Dungeon for example, in the Blue Falcon, is way more exciting. If I tell my dad that, he just says: a fortnight’s CB
, CB meaning computer ban. If I then tell him that a Gamecube is a console not a computer, his eyes go funny and there’s a little bit of BH, BH meaning bodily harm. Daniel administers it to me, and I don’t tell anybody about it.

  I zoom off, cut my speed just before the bend, and then go full throttle again immediately out of it. If you’re not a total spastic, you can master it in a few hours.

  How can an old man’s head get crushed at Christmastime? OK, old people slip and break their hips, and gardeners reach down into the shredder because a few lilac branches have gotten stuck, and their hands become instant sludge. But someone’s head?

  Tear into the corner so that the back swings right out but the car stays in the groove—that’s the art of it. Of course, to begin with you’re always coming off, and they stand there saying: you’ll ruin all the cars in no time. And: I should have known it—why should you suddenly behave differently from normal? And you can see that the only reason they don’t take it straight back from you is that it’s Christmas.

  I bet that people go to that house wanting to see the body. Each one of them wants to see the head that isn’t a head anymore, but everything’s been sealed off and the police are not letting anybody in. Someone, no doubt, gets all excited and says some crap like, “The public has a right to know!” while imagining this red pile of sludge with perhaps a false tooth sticking out of it.

  I put the blue car with the white star in the third lane and take the controller in my left hand. I’m so hopelessly right-handed that it takes precisely half a lap before the blue car comes flying off. I’m a bit gutted because it’s my favorite car. Cars on, full throttle, go! 360-degree flip! Again. And again.

  Now Daniel’s standing in the doorway. The hood of his gray top is pulled down over his head. He’s started doing that recently. He comes over and whacks me. It’s OK; I expect I made a heck of a racket.

  “Have you read the article?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Have you memorized all of it?”

  “I think so.”

  He hits me again, quite gently this time. “I am your Emperor,” he says, “and you are my creation.”

  I say nothing. I breathe like Darth Vader.

  Five

  Eleven people are sitting in the nave. He can tell that at a glance. It is one of his strengths. Sometimes he has to make an orderly list of his strengths: I can learn things by heart; I can solve quadratic equations in my head; I can tell how many people there are at a glance; I can run the marathon in three hours.

  In the second row, Herr and Frau Weinberger; on the other side of the aisle, old Kocic; behind him, Frau Ettl, the office assistant; next to her, Irma. The two of them are friends. At the back on the right is a young lady he does not know. She is wearing a dark coat and a red scarf.

  Two days ago an old man died. The name Sebastian Wilfert means nothing to him. The others say they usually saw him around on feast days. At least while his wife was still alive.

  Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us.

  Irma is bellowing as usual. In her case it has nothing to do with that sanctimonious volume that some people use to demonstrate their piety. Irma suffers from a chronic calcification of the middle ear and is virtually deaf. The doctors say that it would be useless to operate again.

  A meaningless reading from the Epistle to the Ephesians, warnings aimed at the congregation. Be moderate! How ridiculous—after all, this Apostle Paul was a terrible narcissist himself. What got him going was influence and money. But you cannot say that to some of the brothers. Robert, for example, maintains that Paul was actually more important for Christianity than Jesus himself, and if you challenge him on this he gets offended.

  By now the whole town must be talking about the death of the old man. If you die of pneumonia or a heart attack nobody could give a damn, but if someone drives over your head, then everyone is talking about you. A sculpture of St. Sebastian is fixed onto the second column on the left. Being shot through by arrows would get chins wagging, oh yes.

  The forensic pathologist is saying that it happened in the middle of the night. Because of the low temperatures outside, however, she had to allow for some leeway in the calculations.

  In the darkness of night the spirit of God appears and crushes the face of the enemy. “Crushes” is the right word.

  He tries to remember the moon that night. He cannot. He recalls the massive plaque belonging to Kossnik, the accountant, and his fantasy of driving through the town’s streets in a huge, dark-red snowplow. He wishes he had his iPod on him.

  Just before the Gospel readings, the Weinbergers start to get on his nerves; it is always the same. That expression of conformism, that “please preach something nice to us” look that they fix him with during the week as well, even though they know full well that sermons are not held on weekdays.

  Who hath taken his evil thoughts and dashed them. The Rule. I know that I’d like to smash their faces in, he thinks, and I know I ought not to think that. Grumpy incense, he thinks; whenever I see these two the phrase “grumpy incense” comes to mind. I find it comforting, even though I don’t actually know what it means.

  The altar server rings the hand bell. Her mother works in reception at the Hotel Wertzer on the lake. She has a little brother and lives in one of the blocks of apartments in Furth-Nord. What’s her name? He goes crazy when he cannot remember things. Names, for example. The little girl is wearing ankle boots with a speckled fur trim. The altar smock is too short for her.

  My son is named Jakob, he thinks, he is five years old. My wife is named Sophie and works as an assistant pharmacist. I’ve never forgotten their names. They will come and I’ll collect them from the station. But not until it gets warmer.

  For on the same night that he was betrayed he took bread and, after giving thanks, he gave it to the disciples.

  As always when he raises the host, he cannot help thinking of Padre Pio, whose stigmata opened up during the consecration, it was claimed, and blood seeped into his bandages. He is sure the Weinbergers have a picture of him on the wall at home, above their dining table or bed. That bigoted, conceited, relentlessly self-obsessed Capuchin friar’s face staring down at your soup bowl, he thinks, or at your conjugal duty.

  Then he took the cup of wine and, after giving thanks, he gave it to the disciples.

  He imagines a shadowy figure appearing on the organ platform, aiming a laser gun at the Padre and burning holes in his hands and feet, where the paint marks had been before. Then the figure raises the barrel a little and blasts the priest’s head off.

  I must finish this quickly, he thinks. Afterward I’ve got to take a pill and get some exercise. Then I’ll lie down.

  On bended knee. The mystery of faith. We proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, we praise your resurrection, until you come in glory. Wait. Deep breaths. Sometimes he reaches the point where he needs some instructions.

  Christmas is an awkward time.

  He sees himself running across the cemetery, under the railway line, along the sawmill. He can feel the gravel crunching under his feet. The flickering of television sets through the windows of people’s homes. For a second he stares into a pair of headlights on full beam. The negative images remain in his eyes for a while afterward. He is sure now that it was cloudy that night. No moon. No stars.

  Before then, the Boxing Day visit to his mother and sister. Both staggeringly simpleminded. The fatty meal, the same old conversations. I can quite understand why my father disappeared; it had nothing to do with me, he thinks.

  His iPod is in the sacristy. Once he even listened to music while celebrating mass. It must have been more than three years ago now. Afterward, Clemens forced him to go to the clinic in Graz.

  There are some funny things about my life, he thinks. My father disappeared from one day to the next and never got in touch again. I joined an order because I was on the verge of falling to pieces. But I still fall to pieces on a regular basis
. I secretly believe that Bob Dylan is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

  After the Lord’s Prayer he offers the altar server his hand for the rite of peace. Her fingers are warm and podgy. Her name is Renate—he remembers it now.

  The young lady at the back is standing alone. Nobody is going to shake her hand. He feels sorry for her. He would like to give her a hug. He would like to go up to her, give her a hug, and tell her about Sophie and Jakob.

  Behold the Lamb of God. It takes away the sins of the world.

  The Weinbergers, of course, come up to take communion. Old Kocic comes up, too, and finally Josephine Martin, a Filipino nurse who attends mass several times a week because her husband beats her and this makes her feel guilty. Frau Weinberger opens her mouth wide. She would never take the host in her hand. Her tongue has a yellow tinge, as if she were suffering from angina.

  The host, a sip of wine. Wipe the rim of the cup. Cover the cup. Rituals keep us from falling apart. And the Rule. Who has dashed his evil thoughts.

  He notices the change while uttering the blessing. There are now twelve people in the nave. At the back on the right, standing close to the young lady, is a small figure with a yellow headband over his blond hair. It is Björn.

  Six

  The armchair she sat in was tiny. He had thought that ever since he first met her. An ancient, stained, reddish-brown bentwood chair, with a rip across the seat. Although Irene was slim, her hips protruded on either side.

  As she played, she made slow circular movements with her torso. The neck of the instrument slid back and forth along her left collarbone. Her head was bowed, as if she were staring at a particular point on the floor. She had tied her medium-length hair into a ponytail that revealed just how much her ears stuck out.

  Raffael Horn leaned against the door. He had an erection. It’s Saturday morning, I’m watching my wife play music, and I’ve got an erection, he thought. Life could definitely be worse.