by Wolf Haas
And if you’re going to be a detective in this day and age, you simply can’t let yourself be guided by sympathy. Sure, he liked the waitress—I like her, too, I freely admit. And on his way up to the dining room, he was still secretly holding on to one hope: if, one by one, everyone’s disappearing, maybe in the meantime, the waitress has already disappeared, too, and I’ll get out of doing this.
But the waitress, of course, there as ever. Not to mention the fact that she was sitting there with a schnapps. Completely alone, middle of the afternoon. And Brenner had never seen her drink anything but coffee.
“I could use a schnapps right about now, too,” he said and took a seat at her table.
“You got that right,” the waitress said, tossing the rest of her schnapps back, and walked over to the bar. She didn’t have to stagger so much, though—Brenner could already tell from the way she’d slurred her words that this wasn’t her first schnapps. But you can take a competent waitress off her shift, but you can’t take the competency out of the waitress, and a few seconds later she was back with Brenner’s order.
Except she hadn’t brought a schnapps, not even two, but the whole bottle.
“This is the home brew. For staff only.”
“Am I staff now?”
“You sleep in the staff’s quarters, don’t you?”
“When you look at it that way, all right.”
“Whoever sleeps in the staff’s quarters is staff, so be it. And whoever doesn’t sleep in the staff’s quarters doesn’t get any moonshine.”
“Does Löschenkohl distill it himself?”
“Löschenkohl? He brews Blitz at best.”
Now, though. You don’t need to be a detective to be able to tell that the waitress had a problem. Even someone like you or me would’ve been able to tell right away. Because no one had ever seen her so vulgar before—on the contrary, a lovely woman. Competent waitress, lovely woman. And now something like this.
“This is Klaushofer’s home brew.”
Brenner didn’t say anything to that, he simply took a sip of the schnapps that the waitress had poured him. And I don’t want to alarm you now but—then he had another gulletful. There was a moment, though, when Brenner thought: over and out—and only intravenously from this point forward.
“Eighty-three percent, Klaushofer’s fruit mash.”
“You need a firearms permit for this.”
“But it doesn’t do anything to you,” the waitress said. “Because it’s such pure schnapps, only apples in it.”
“The apples might not do anything. But that percentage will.”
“Where, though? It doesn’t affect you at all,” the waitress said, and filled both schnapps glasses again.
“I could use it anyway,” Brenner said and reached for the freshly filled schnapps glass.
“It doesn’t hurt one bit.”
And down went the second schnapps. Interesting, though, the second burned far less than the first. Needless to say, the third—only apples and they don’t do you any harm.
“People are very distinctive when they’re intoxicated,” the waitress said.
“Very distinctive? Very different, you mean,” Brenner said, because alcohol always makes him need to be right a little.
“Yeah, different. Anyway. But, distinctively different!”
“Mmhmm,” Brenner said, “distinctively different.”
And thought to himself, now I’ve gone and said “mmhmm” just as arrogantly as that Nscho-tschi in Graz.
“One person’s fun, another gets aggressive. And another turns sentimental and squeezes out a few tears.”
“And others lecture,” Brenner said, because he was thinking, why am I letting myself get lectured by a fake chicken waitress instead of taking her to task?
And whether there’s telepathy or not, I don’t know, but it was at that moment exactly that the waitress told him something that would prove revealing for Brenner. “There was a call for you earlier.”
“From who?”
“Here’s the number,” the waitress said and slid a beer coaster at him that she’d written the number on.
“Whose is it?”
“I forget. You can call back, you know.”
“Vienna area code,” Brenner said.
“Oje,” the waitress said.
“What does ‘oje’ mean?”
“Oje means shit.”
“What do you have against Vienna?”
“Nothing, I don’t have anything against frankfurters, either. As long as they’re hot! Debrecener’s are good, too. I have absolutely nothing against sausage.”
“Except your own.”
You see, you often put off something uncomfortable for days before you say it out loud. And then when you do, it’s crass and clumsy.
On the other hand, though, why would you want to make something like that sound elegant, and so maybe it’s better that the schnapps was helping Brenner out a bit.
“I think we’re both feeling the schnapps.”
That was the waitress who said that. Don’t be mad at me, but I can’t bring myself to say “Horvath” all of a sudden. Even if, in the end, it was Horvath who filled the schnapps glasses back up again.
“Prost, Brenner.”
“But don’t get aggressive with me,” Brenner said.
“Me aggressive? Schnapps makes me fun, mostly,” the waitress said, and in the same instant, began to cry. “So now it’s out,” she said softly.
And Brenner said, “Now it’s out.”
And the waitress drank her schnapps and wiped her mouth and said, “Now it’s out.” And then didn’t say anything for a while. And then she said, “Now it’s out. And now you think that I have something to do with the bones in the basement.”
And Brenner said, “Not necessarily.”
And the waitress said, “A man posing as a woman, something must be wrong with him.”
“Not necessarily,” Brenner said.
“Not necessarily. Except bones are turning up in the restaurant where he works,” the waitress said and got up. “I’m going on my break now.”
And then Brenner was left sitting there alone with the schnapps bottle.
But he didn’t pour himself any more schnapps. He sat there and ruminated. Well, more like brooded. Like when you’re sitting in the sun and thinking about something. You think that you’re thinking, but really you’re brooding. And instead of the sun, it was the schnapps that warmed his belly.
If Brenner had been thinking, though, then it probably would’ve been about whether the waitress, i.e. Horvath, was the Bone Man or not. What speaks in favor of this, and what speaks against it? And what sort of motive could there be, he might’ve thought about. And why Löschenkohl’s daughter-in-law? Why Marko? Why Jacky? Why Ortovic and Milovanovic? And who was that very first one they found? And if he’d been thinking, he might have finally brought his investigation into something resembling a line, instead of continuing to stumble aimlessly through East Styria.
But he didn’t think. And maybe all these questions occurred to him while brooding, too, but needless to say, a terrible mess. And maybe, simultaneously, he was brooding over his left shoe, why he always got a hole in the same place, left shoe, pinky toe. With new shoes, too, it’s the same exact thing.
Because that’s the advantage that brooding has over thinking. That you can brood over everything simultaneously. He brooded over the sounds coming from the kitchen every bit as much as the pictures on the wall calendar. Because with brooding, you can’t choose what you’re going to brood about. It’s different than, say, thinking, where you have a bit of choice in the matter.
With brooding, you have no control over what comes out of it. Could be a huge surprise, let me tell you. Another thing that makes it different than thinking is that you can’t dial the surprise down a little. A surprise is still possible with thinking, but it’s not going to bowl you over, let’s say.
I don’t want to say anything against thinking,
though. Because with brooding, less than nothing comes of it most of the time. You brood a little, then you fall asleep. That’s the only surprise you experience in a normal case of brooding. Something startles you awake, and—surprise—you think, I just fell soundly asleep. And most of the time, we only brood because we’re too lazy to think—that bears saying, too.
But now I’m starting to brood a little myself, so you see how easy it is to slip right into—it’s jinxed!
But then Brenner really did get bowled over when he woke up from his brooding: shock, no other way to put it. But not because he’d been brooding over something so profound, a higher insight or something, where you might be able to say, you see, brooding paid off for once, and a good thing I’m too lazy to think.
No, Brenner was startled out of his brooding now because a strange man came in wearing the exact same shirt as one that Brenner owned. Now, the shirt alone could still be a coincidence. But, same pants and shoes, too. And needless to say, double-shock for Brenner, because on Horvath’s feet, he saw for the first time in his life just how noticeable it really was that his left shoe had a small hole in the pinky toe.
“I don’t have any men’s clothes anymore.”
“So my shoes fit you.”
“I’m a forty-one. A little big for a woman.”
“I’m a forty-two, a little small for a man.”
It’s from remarks like this one that you could tell that maybe Brenner had a bit of a complex when it came to his height. He’s a completely average height. It’s not his height that makes him look so compact, though. No, his shoulders are too broad and his legs too short, that’s it, i.e. proportions.
“Better too big than too small,” Horvath said.
“How did you get into my room?”
“Skeleton key. From the housekeeper.”
“So you’re not going as a waitress any more?”
“Going?”
Brenner would’ve been better off biting his tongue: going as a waitress! Like it’s Halloween. I’m going as Charlie Chaplin because all I need’s a black suit, a hat, and a mustache, and then I’ve got a good costume.
Horvath just smiled, though. He was nowhere near crying now. He also seemed completely sober when he said, “No, I’m not going as a waitress anymore.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“Now we go for a little drive in my car.”
Brenner left with this slim man who was wearing his checked shirt, which was way too big for him, and got into the waitress’s Ford Fiesta.
The Ford was full of the kind of crap that certain people have in their cars, a CD was dangling from the rearview mirror, a crocheted toilet-paper-cover doll was standing on the rear shelf, and a “Get Home Safe” picture frame was glued next to the glove box. But the yellowing photo of the man in the frame must have been circa Elvis Presley, because the kiss curl—a catastrophe.
It didn’t come as a particular surprise to Brenner that today’s man can decide: I’d rather be a woman. And there are even operations, and he understood all that. And that an artist might think, I’d like to be an ordinary person again, he understood, too. But that someone would go so far in his transformation as to have a crocheted toilet-paper-cover doll in his car—that was something Brenner couldn’t comprehend. And was thinking to himself now, maybe that’s the reason why the waitress made such a racket every night. Maybe it wasn’t purely lust. Maybe there was also some twinge of a desire to be caught, i.e. ‘liberate me from my toilet-paper doll.’
The schnapps and the drive were making Brenner so sluggish that he nearly fell asleep. But he had to pull himself together because he still didn’t have a good hold on what to make of Horvath. And in a case like this, where it’s your own bones at stake, falling asleep is never the ideal.
After a solid hour, they arrived at an old dilapidated farmhouse that was set back from the road.
“This is where I grew up,” Horvath said, after they’d both gotten out.
“Looks like nobody lives here now, though.”
“Not for fifteen years. Since my father died.”
A garage of sorts had been added onto the small farmhouse, but merely a wooden frame, and no door—the way it used to be, in order to store the hay wagons. This barn, which Horvath led Brenner into, was twice as large as the entire farmhouse. A few rusted tools still hung on the walls, where there were patches of moss and grass that had spread between the wooden beams over the years.
Because, needless to say, nature’s merciless. At first, it was mankind that was merciless, building our way into nature, but turns out, nature’s not so noble, either—the moment a person takes his eyes off things, everything’s already grown over. They’re really just two brutal forces coming together, and I don’t feel sorry for either one of them.
When Horvath pushed open the rough wooden door along the back wall of the barn, Brenner first became aware that he’d been hearing the quiet rush of a stream this whole time. Just behind the back wall of the barn, a stream flowed past. The stone ramp between the stream and the barn wall was just wide enough for two sets of feet to stand side by side. Horvath closed the barn door behind them as they went to stand outside. The wild stream roared so loudly that Horvath had to shout for Brenner to be able to understand him. “When I was a kid, I’d always come out here whenever my father snapped!”
Brenner didn’t say anything to this. First of all, he didn’t want to shout, and second of all, a roaring stream like this is meditative. A stream like this you can stare right into like you can a fire—a person often does his best thinking that way. But Brenner was thinking of one thing primarily right now: in case Horvath’s the murderer and he’s about to shove me into this wild stream, then he will have pulled it off, and not too terribly.
Horvath was still going on with his story, though, which he was shouting into Brenner’s ear. “Outside here, no one could see me crying, or hear me, either, because the river’s so loud. Except for once when I must have been crying so loudly that my father could hear it inside. He came out and saw me standing here. Then, he came over, raised his hand, and stroked my hair. It was so much worse, though, than the slap I’d been expecting him to give me.”
Brenner had never been one to make very much of childhood stories like these. It was uncomfortable for him in the same way that going to a unisex sauna was. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the unisex sauna—no, listen to this.
He’d once had something to do with a woman, that would’ve been Kerstin. She always wanted to go to the sauna with him. And why not, good for the health, and the whole winter that he was with Kerstin, Brenner didn’t catch one cold, because the sauna, goes without saying, great for that. And when it was over with Kerstin in July, of all months, Brenner got the flu, sweated a whole week long—sauna doesn’t come close.
But maybe it was more of a psychological thing, where you might say, a breakup like that and all. And even if it only lasted for one winter, it’s still a matter for the unconscious, and as soon as you’re looking the other way, the virus gets you.
Grew apart, mainly, because Kerstin was a real chatterbox, always yammering on about her childhood and psychology. Brenner was in fact very interested in psychology, but for police reasons. Because psychology’s very important on the force. But Kerstin and her childhood—and there she’d go again.
And you see, that’s what I meant by brooding. Everything’s a little messy, and when a person stares too long into a river, it only gets worse. Or maybe it was still the schnapps that Brenner had drunk earlier that made him useless at snapping himself out of his brooding. But he knew himself well enough to know that it was a good sign when he finally quit thinking. Because thinking had never been one of his strengths. But brooding, world class!
Horvath was standing like his back was glued to the barn wall. He talked a great deal, but the whole time, all Brenner heard was the stream. And it was only when Horvath went back inside that Brenner was torn away from his brooding.
Brenner followed him inside and watched as he opened a door that led from the barn into a workshop. From the road, only the small farmhouse could be seen, but behind the house was the workshop, and behind the workshop the barn, so everything was much bigger than a first glance would have you believe.
“My father was a cartwright, an obsolete craft today,” Horvath said, opening the door, and now pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you.
At that moment when Brenner stepped inside the workshop, he was so terrified that his mind thought of something else altogether: back when they were just kids, they’d once broken open the door to the church tower in Puntigam and climbed all the way up into the bell cage. And there they’d found a pile of skulls, a few hundred skulls it must’ve been, delicately and neatly stacked, one on top of one the other.
Because it was a church custom to collect skulls, more so in the older days, and originally they’d been displayed at the entrance to the Puntigam church, as if to say: remember, mortal, you’re going to die. But then, the murder reforms—so they opened a shop next to the entrance, postcards and all that. Now, where to with the skulls? The priest said, you know what, we’ll store them in the tower, they’re not going to bother anybody there.
Well, the boys were a little bothered, and they ran away so as not to get into trouble. And that must’ve been why it occurred to Brenner just now. That he’d much rather be running away, just like he’d done back then. Because when he entered the workshop, he immediately took in the five butcher blocks.
He was familiar with these, too, from even further back in his past. When the butchers didn’t have the high-grade synthetics yet. They’d cut the meat on wooden tables—you need to picture it more like a square chopping block. Now, over the course of the years—the butchers chopping and chopping all the while—the surface of the wooden tables would grow uneven. Like water running over a stone for a thousand years. And, over time, hilly landscapes formed out of the butcher blocks.
And you see, Horvath had bought up all these butcher blocks and declared them his works of art. Because that’s allowed in art these days, you can just go and pass off anything you find. That wouldn’t have been allowed before, but nowadays, reforms everywhere, church reforms, and art reforms, too. Now the reforms allow Horvath’s butcher blocks.
