Poachers Road

by John Brady

  The lines on his face, by his eyes especially, did not look like perpetual frowns so much. There was the meticulously shaved face, the closely cut hair little more than bristles, halfway toward his scalp as it had been for 60, or even 70 years, and the bushy eyebrows jutting out, all accompanied by the faint smell of shaving soap Felix always remembered. He’d heard the soft sighs as he’d sat and stood, the firm but flat way he had of saying the prayers. But none of these signs allowed Felix to relax around him, or even to feel much pity for this old man, his own grandfather, who had lived long enough to bury his own son.

  Outside the church later his grandfather Kimmel had stood next to his in-laws, a little distracted looking, nodding at times. The small talk was painful. Felix saw that the look on his face was still there. It was that look of restrained politeness, and a distant interest, as though other matters awaited his thoughts and he wished to be away. In bygone years it had been closer to impatience, or even disdain.

  Felix had walked him back to his car. He had even asked his grandfather if he would change his mind and come to the restaurant. He wondered how good an act that had been, and if his grandfather had not seen through it. With a mixture of relief and guilt, he’d watched the old man drive off, returning the wave that the smaller group now made. Come by when you’re not busy, the old man had said, and given him a dry, firm handshake. There were things of his father’s that Opa Kimmel wanted to give him.

  The group walked down the lane in a ragged, talkative clump.

  From behind, Felix heard snatches of Edelbacher’s enthusiasm for strudel, some of his scorn for how the amalgamation of the police forces was proceeding, and the beginnings of a rant about how people took too much for granted these days. Opa Nagl had moved on from turnips to organic crops, and then somehow made it to the topic of topless beaches in Italy. For a moment, Felix’s addled brain tried to trace back how this had happened: was it a remark someone had said, his mother perhaps, about him finally getting time off, and heading for Italy with Giuliana?

  Felix glanced over his shoulder. Behind Lisi and the towering Edelbacher were a few more than a dozen people. The others, the 30 or 40 more he was surprised to see in the pews, had gone off to their jobs, or home.

  But there was Aunt Gusti, the Ancient One, a widow for many years, from the dorf up near Knipplfeld. She was walking sideways, like a horse, next to Willi Hartmann, another neighbour from the old days.Willi Berger Willi was his local name had returned from the war an amputee and unable to reclaim his passion for climbing these mountains. Somehow he had returned to farming, and even now, in his eighties, was robust. Opa Nagl had passed on some wag’s story that Berger Willi was determined to get to at least 88.

  The joke was that Berger Willi had been an artilleryman, his expertise the fearsome 88.

  Felix heard a comment from Opa Nagl, something about topless men at the beaches in Italy, drift over. Such lardy men could only be Germans, of course, not the adaptable and courteous Austrians. The smiles passed down through the group in a ripple.

  Having a colourful local character for a grandfather growing up had to count for something, Lisi had said many times before. Felix had sometimes wondered how a man like his Opa Nagl, a man who spoke out, and mocked things that nobody wanted to talk about, in public at least, how it was that he could be so well liked, and his company sought after in the village, for being so . . .

  “Colourful,” he thought again. Was there no other word? No doubt Lisi had also heard the same stories Felix had: of how Opa Nagl had been outspoken, of how he had even lost a tooth in a scrap over politics. It was well after the war had ended, and it was because he had been serious about his politics then. Being so clearly left at that time was an improbable thing. That was even more so for a farmer up here, in a village where the Soviets had squatted for long after the war. Opa Nagl had been more than willing to concede that Stalin was a lunatic certainly he was! and the Russians could be barbarians undoubtedly so! but a few times he had used his fists to defend his claim that none of these meant socialism wasn’t good, that socialism wasn’t Austria’s future.

  So well liked by almost everybody, Lisi had reminded him. She didn’t need to say the name, of course.They hadn’t talked about the enmity between the two sides of the family since then. It had been one evening not long after their father’s funeral, one of those strangely giddy times, days when nobody had slept, when nights and days seemed little different. There had been a surreal look to everything, Felix recalled, a dreamy quality to the talk and the faces.

  It was a time when grief and laughter collided, and memories cratered into loss so sharp it stabbed, and odd things were dredged up, even odder conversations.

  Opa Nagl didn’t hate Opa Kimmel he had just given up on him years ago. He had mocked him, or to be accurate, people like him who believed in that stuff. No doubt it had turned sour and bitter by times. It hadn’t helped, of course, that Opa Nagl could come up with barbs: “That housepainter arshloch with the moustache, the one who just about burned the world to the ground for some stupid Reich dream!” So savage as to be memorable, word for word.

  But the little pantomimes he did, with his forefinger for a moustache, and his arse in the air goose-step one had surely been performed sometime in the past for the benefit of Opa Kimmel. How else to explain the loathing, the silences, one about the other, over the years? Felix’s mind went back to the goose-stepping troublemaker.

  “What are you smiling about?” his mother asked. “The good memories?”

  He saw her eyes were less red now. She had that half-smile back.

  “Those too,” he managed. He glanced over at Opa Nagl.

  “Actually, I was just thinking about Opa here, listening to him.

  The things he comes up with.”

  “Unique,” she murmured, with a look in her eye that bespoke long practice at summing up her father. “There’s no doubt.”

  “How different,” Felix said, without thinking.

  She gave him an inquisitive look.

  “From the other one, I meant.”

  His mother looked away, and he could not see if she had kept her smile. Laughter broke out behind now, and he turned. Now, somehow, Opa Nagl had brought up the topic of teeth, or horses, or something.

  “Of course, I’m right,” said Opa Nagl. “You want to know a good husband, a good wife, before you go to the church to marry?

  Look at their teeth. It’s like a horse.”

  The manager was waiting for them by the restaurant door of the gasthaus.

  “Grüss Gött, Inspektor.”

  Felix returned the greeting, and shook hands. He was sure he’d hidden his irritation at the title.

  He and Oma Nagl turned, waiting for the stragglers. Aunt Gusti hobbled in last. Berger Willi Hartmann was almost licking his chops in anticipation of a meal. A true pro, Felix had heard before, attending many funerals and memorials, praying devoutly whether Catholic or Protestant. It was as though those indiscriminate prayers along with his energetic stumping along at such an epic age were a way to firmly declare that he had many more years of his own to complete.

  Felix began to believe that some soup and sausage would be manageable now.Then he’d have a grossen braunen to perk him up, its milder mixture of espresso coffee and cream firing up at least some part of his brain. He might make it after all.

  Felix realized his mother was eyeing him. Of course he was supposed to lead, he was the man now.

  “Mutti,” he said to her. She nodded and smiled again.

  “Geh’ ma jetzt? Will we go in?”

  THREE

  GIULIANA WENT BACK TO SLEEP, OF COURSE.

  Felix, the new and improved Felix Kimmel, who had manfully made it through the purgatory of yesterday’s hangover and service and afternoon shift was back on the planet Normal. As such.

  He wondered if it was the prospect of a week away that had lifted him, or more the relief at getting through yesterday. Did it matter which?

 
; Gendarme Felix Kimmel’s optimism crested at the same time that a man on a remote farm in the hills outside Graz finally decided to make a phone call. Though he was sure in some way that it was necessary to get help, he felt like a clown. He did not know who to phone. So he sat in his kitchen, all the while watching his son fiddling with wooden blocks as he had for days now, refusing to leave the house. Should he phone the gemeinde, to ask if they knew about anything going on around here, up in the woods? But how or why would the local authority know anything about this? They were busy enough now with the spring, fixing the roads.

  He had considered the support group where he drove his son every week for two afternoons with others like him. They did shopping, and some games, and even some cooking. His son liked it well enough, especially if one of the minders was the girl he liked. But even this he didn’t want to do now. The man worried that this was a sign of something he hadn’t been told about. It might be a change, that that no one really knew about yet, even the doctors, a deterioration or some kind. After all, didn’t kids like his age faster?

  His son began murmuring, but he couldn’t make out the words. He was talking to the blocks. He wouldn’t play with any of the stuffed animals or the toys he had made for him. Could it be dreams the boy was getting? Maybe something had turned itself over in his mind until it became frightening. It didn’t take much.

  Worse, it was never predictable. Lieber Gött, he almost muttered aloud, it could even be that Petzi the bear from the children’s television show: wasn’t that bear always playing in the woods? That might explain it all right. His son looked over at him, and he saw again the dark patches under his eyes, the stubble.The electric razor frightened him now.

  “Make me a tractor,” he said to him. “A nice big one, Hansi.”

  He went back to trying to figure out who to phone, how to do something about this. How many days had it been? Something had to give.

  Felix had coffee first. He took it to the bathroom, and finished it as he shaved. Then he picked at buns over a second coffee, at the table.

  At ten to the hour, he put on his tie and his belt. He lifted his uniform off the hanger by the door to the apartment without making a sound.

  “Don’t forget,” she said from the bedroom doorway.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “I’m always awake.”

  She yawned and pulled the housecoat tighter. The lust ran up his body in a wave and settled in his groin.

  “Two more,” she murmured. “Then to a beach.”

  It was that bedwarmth smell, he believed. Or her perfume, even yesterday’s worn-out scent hanging in the apartment, or the morning breath on her lips, even. She leaned her head against the doorjamb and finished her yawn with that cat-stretch movement of her arms straight out, in fists, not paws.

  “What,” she said, suddenly still and wide-eyed. “What’s that look?”

  He slipped his hand in the fold.

  “There’s time,” he said. She let him work on the knot there and then glanced down.

  “Well, I can see what’s on your mind.”

  “Mind?”

  Her stillness made him pause.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll wait right here, right here until you get home. I won’t move. I’ll be your little hausfrau. Okay?”

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s evolution. Why argue?”

  “Do you think five minutes is too long?”

  “Well, you got out of the wrong side of the bed.”

  “Lose the belt at least when you get home, okay? Sorry, it’s just, you know.”

  “‘It’s different for women.’ Did I say it right?”

  Giuli had the best range of pout. He offered a smile.

  “The uniform still gives me the creeps,” she murmured. “I hate to say it.”

  “I like it when you’re so frank,” he said.

  “You should change at the station.”

  Felix took two apples from the bowl and rubbed them. The apartment was all her, really. He would have had a bookshelf, a stereo, something to keep his laptop off the floor and near a phone jack, and some hooks. Oh, a place to stack empty bottles, of course.

  And yes, since he’d gotten kicked out of the place he’d shared with Viktor and a rotating series of friends overnighters, hazy friends of friends it still struck him sometimes that he was living in a sort of art gallery. Or perhaps an artist studio. The afternoon light in from the platz reminded him of something from a Dutch Master. How could he possibly complain, living in an apartment in the centre of town, which for years now, Giuliana had added and decorated and transformed?

  “You had a busy evening yesterday too,” she said. “And night.”

  “What? I crashed out the minute I hit the pillow. What was it, one? Is that what you mean ‘busy’?”

  “I meant dreams.You dreamed, didn’t you?”

  “I think I must have,” he said. “I dreamed that one where you and I were like we used to be when we started out. Not this hausfrau and mann routine.”

  “Get lost,” she said. “I’m not the one who puts on a uniform to go to work.”

  “Maybe it’s time to try teaching your students how to make them?”

  “Art,” she said in a monotone. “Uniforms don’t come into it.”

  His thumb had found a soft spot on an apple. He looked down at it.

  “Nine hours,” he said. “And we’re free. Movie tonight, right?”

  She pushed her hair behind her ear to one side. It was the Berlin art student cut, he’d joked at first. When would the severe glasses show up?

  “You talked,” she said. “All night, it felt like.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said.

  Her eyes had lost that glaze now.

  “What,” he said. “A lot went on yesterday. So, sorry.”

  “Your father.You were talking to him.”

  “More than I did in the past, I suppose,” he said.

  He gave her a chaste buss, a kiss, on the forehead. She grabbed him.

  “Oh, it’s okay if you do it, is it,” he said.

  “Be quiet,” she said.

  She brought his head down and kissed his eyes, one by one, slowly. Then she stepped back, her arms at full length on his shoulders.

  “You Italians,” he said. “I don’t stand much of a chance with you, do I? Tease, lecture. Tease, nag, fly off the handle. Hey, instead of a movie, do you want to–”

  “The movie,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to it.”

  Just as he had not. Some documentary thing made by an Italian about Tibet.

  “What a strange and complicated little boy you are,” she said.

  FOUR

  WORK GAVE FELIX A BREAK FROM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT had made Giuliana moody. Sepp Gebhart glanced up from his keyboard as he came into the duty room.

  “Grüss, Gebi.”

  He glanced toward the Bezirkinspektor’s office. Schroek’s desk lamp, one that he put on no matter the time of day, was not lighted. The same Dieter Schroek commanded this post in Stefansdorf by remote control some days. It suited everyone. Felix had heard solid rumours that Stefansdorf would be closed as soon as the amalgamation happened.That was all to the good, in Felix’s mind. More than a few months here would drive him up the walls, he had decided. It had been a soft number for many years now, the “landing strip” it had been called, where they eased in new Gendarmes while they eased out the veterans. Nothing happened in Stefansdorf, a half-hour outside Graz, this village that had stayed small. By way of introduction to the area, Gebi had passed on a clue to Felix shortly after he’d arrived: Why do all the dogs in Stefansdorf have flat noses? went the joke. It was because they were always chasing parked cars.

  Felix put his hat on the shelf and unlocked his drawer. Gebhart sat back.

  “Greetings yourself, Professor. A spring in your step today.”

  Felix winked at him.

  “I’ll think of you while I am away.”

  �
�Italy, you said?”

  “I want to make a good impression on her family. Natürlich.”

  “On a topless beach.”

  “Funny you mention that.”

  Felix nodded toward the closed door to the Bezirkinspektor’s office.

  “Dieter is consulting,” said Gebhart in the same dry tone. “In regards to the investigation of the thefts of those containers up from outside the warehouses last week. The cigarette case.”

  Gebhart had hinted that when Korschak, the other member of the post, went off on the training course to Vienna, they’d expect Felix to be Korschak’s replacement “temporarily.” Big changes on the horizon or not, Felix did not like the sound of that.

  Korschak, the third member of the post, arrived with the huge bag that he used for his sports paraphernalia.

  “Grüss, Gebi. Felix. Wie gehts?”

  “So far so good, Manfred,” said Gebhart. “But you know Stefansdorf. All hell could break loose. You’re duty officer today, right?”

  Korschak nodded and dumped the bag on the floor.

  “What in the name of Christ and His Mother Mary is in the bag today?”

  “Soccer,” Korschak said. “Pylons and things.”

  “You’ll get that burglaries report done before you go? The one on Tirolergasse, last week?”

  “For sure,” he said, and headed wisely, Felix believed to the klo.

  “As for you, Felix,” said Gebhart, pushing back in the chair.

  “You come with me.”

  “Traffic detail?”

  “Genau. What else? Today we make the highways safe. The spring has all our Schumacher wannabes out on the roads. We’re getting calls, and calls. Get the cases and gear, will you? I have to wrap up a thing from last night, the busted windows and puke over in Kleindorf, by the autobahn.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes, again. Soccer fans were from Carinthia. Wolfsberg.

  Barbarians, of course.”

  Felix knew that Gebi’s wife was from Wolfsberg.

  “Coming home from a riot sorry, a soccer match in Hungary.The cops in Hungary don’t put up with crap so these guys were fairly itching to do something.”