Poachers Road

by John Brady

  There were pools on the laneway. It was hard to tell how deep they might be. Felix rolled down the window. The sun had gone in behind a fairly solid mass of clouds not long before. He heard water swish at the floor pan as Gebhart let the Opel down the lane.

  “You said this was a bit out of the ordinary,” Felix tried.

  Gebhart’s tongue had been flicking from side to side as the car wallowed gently and then rose out of the puddles.

  “God’s country,” he said. “Die Heimat. Can you imagine Polizei coming up here? They’d be wiping their shoes every ten metres. Phoning for a translator.”

  “Is it a criminal matter here, Gebi?”

  Gebhart flicked him a glance, and made himself unnecessarily busy with the gears. The Opel bottomed out and shook itself up from a puddle.

  There were reeds growing in the damp spots all about. A lone, thin wire that brought hydro from the road. Someone had taken great care with putting together stone walls near where the lane approached the farmyard. His mind rebelled at thinking how long it had taken to gather these rocks from the fields. By hand? And what could you grow up here anyway? A couple of the cattle looked up and toward the gently bouncing and now muddy police car. A sheepdog came trotting out to the laneway.

  “Here’s the story,” Gebhart said. “Listen.”

  Felix looked over.

  “There’s a kid. But he’s not a kid, that’s the first thing. Just pretend he is.”

  “Do you mean handicapped?”

  The farmhouse came in sight beyond one of the walls. The wood had weathered into a grey but the whitewash on the bumpy stone walls was fresh. A collection of smaller buildings, some with fresh wooden shingles, took up a different side of the near rectangle that was the yard proper.

  “Our job here is to humour this boy,” said Gebhart then. “Got that?”

  A woman was walking slowly from the door of the farmhouse, her headscarf and floral housecoat reminding Felix of somewhere in Yugoslavia, or somewhere east.

  “So he’s not going to make a ton of sense, this boy.”

  “You want to interview him?”

  “Interview? I want you to just, what do your bunch say now?

  ‘Hang with him’? Just listen. Let him relax.”

  “Should I give him a massage maybe?”

  “That’s good, Professor. Now: you’ve had your fun.”

  “But what’s he got for us?”

  The distaste had returned to Gebhart’s voice now.

  “Are you listening to me at all? Don’t they teach listening at Gendarmerieschule anymore?”

  “Gebi, you’re not telling me things.That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “What do you think police work is? You ask, they answer, everybody goes home?”

  Felix’s reply was interrupted by the car’s lurch deeper into a puddle. The Opel’s shocks bottomed out on it, and the car rolled back a little.

  “Jesus and Mary,” said Gebhart, and quickly put it into first.

  Felix heard the water move under the car. He looked down to see if any had come in.

  A Mitsubishi four-wheeler was parked near a tractor. Gebi parked near what looked like a storehouse and yanked up the handbrake. The woman had already called the dog and was holding its collar as she led it away.

  “Put on your hat,” said Gebhart. “And spare me the look, will you? Remember. Number one: your job is to listen. Number two: everything goes slow up here. Slow and polite and serious. People like this don’t call the Gendarmerie just for the heck of it.”

  The woman pulled the door of a shed behind her, and tied it up with a loop of rope. Felix still saw the snout in a gap at the bottom. She folded her arms, and returned Gebhart’s quiet greeting.

  “Grüss Gött.”

  Felix noted the high-pitched accent. He did not want to stare at her lined face. She waited for Felix to come around from his side of the Opel. There was stiff leathery feel to her hand.

  “You are close to heaven here, Frau Himmelfarb” said Gebhart. “Thank God.”

  She nodded, but did not smile. Felix wondered if she even got the lousy pun: Himmelfarb the colour of heaven. She was probably shy more than slow-witted, he decided. Who wouldn’t be, living up here. Except for the four-wheel pickup, this was a place out of time. He adjusted his beret and took in a narrow piece of a view that had not been visible from the laneway in.To the side of a barn, there was a prospect clear over the hills toward Carinthia.

  Frau Himmelfarb had high cheekbones and the ruddy face he’d seen in travel books, belonging to peasants in Andalusia and Bavaria and Holland and the Crimea and pretty well anywhere else east of China. Her husband appeared from a shed then. Stocky with hooded eyes that suggested Hungarian or peoples farther east in the family tree somewhere. He was a little shorter than the missus. He took off his hat, with its depleted feather and one small metal pin, and scratched at his forehead as he came over.

  Gebhart was right, Felix had to admit. These people wanted their police to be people they took their hats off to. And this bandylegged farmer who had the same rolling walk as Opa Nagl, the same deep-set eyes topped by wiry, grey eyebrows he didn’t trim. The same delta of minute veins on his cheeks, more so on his nose, from a life in the open. All the bone buttons were intact on the faded green lapels of his lodenjanker, the traditional Styrian jacket that stubbornly found its way into each generation’s wardrobe. A hand like a swollen ham hock extended to shake Gebhart’s, and then Felix’s hand.

  Introductions made, Gebhart fell easily into a slow and polite parade of pleasantries and chitchat. Wild mushrooms, a passion of many yet, were first.

  “They’ll be whoppers,” said Gebhart. “The snow stayed so late.”

  Himmelfarb did a lot of nodding and made gentle, noncommittal flicks of his head, but said very little. Wild mushrooms were not to be discussed with those who might come back later looking for such delicacies. Felix and Frau Himmelfarb waited. The talk came to cattle, and mad cows.

  Finally, in a lull after a comment about dangers to the hoofs for cattle up here, Frau Himmelfarb came to life: would the gentlemen like coffee? Gebhart said he did not wish to put her to any trouble.

  It was none, according to her, of course.

  “Then most certainly, gnädige frau,” said Gebhart. “A kindness indeed.”

  Felix followed them into the kitchen. The scent of ashes and a fainter scent of the ham, or sausage, that hung somewhere being cured, came to him as he reached the door. Felix began to recall pieces of something his father had related a long time back, about when he was a small kid visiting relatives. Yes: they actually had spoons and knives tied to the table, these ancient relatives, in the old style, where you wiped them with a fetzen, a rag, when you were finished.

  Surprise: the kitchen was all modern convenience. There were even IKEA-ishlooking blue and yellow napkins covering plates of something on the table. But the old tiled kachelofen had been kept, and still used, along with the wood panelling on the walls and door frames.

  “Now,” said Herr Himmelfarb.

  For the first time Felix believed he saw some expression on the weather-tightened face a little pride at this modern surprise, he suspected. He tugged at and wiped his nose in one clutch of finger and thumb. Then he sat heavily down at the head of the table.

  “Hansi won’t talk.”

  Behind him a feral-looking cat lay against the kachelofen staring at Felix. Herr Himmelfarb took the napkins off and began folding them. There was strudel, another pie with red berries, a jug of cream. Felix eyed the big eyebrows moving around as Herr Himmelfarb seemed to be looking for a way to say something further.

  “We get that too,” said Gebhart. “Days, even.”

  It was several long moments before Himmelfarb spoke.

  “Yours is, what, fifteen?”

  Gebhart nodded. Felix found that he was staring at Gebhart.

  He suddenly seemed very different. Even his voice had changed.

  And in the back o
f Felix’s mind something had burst remorse, some anger too, spiralling into itself. How had he not known? Why had Gebhart not told him?

  The only sounds now were Frau Himmelfarb’s careful arranging of things over near the sink.

  “Is he not able?” Felix asked.

  Himmelfarb exchanged a quick look with Gebhart before turning to him.

  “Oh he’s able, all right.We can’t shut him up some nights. Isn’t that so, Mutti? The junge, how he’ll talk?”

  “He likes to talk, it’s true,” Frau Himmelfarb said.

  “He talks to himself,” she went on. “He talks to the dog. He talks to the cows.”

  “That’s often a wise move,” said Gebhart.

  Frau Himmelfarb’s face seemed to ease a little. You take your humour as you find it up here, Felix thought.The Himmelfarbs had an accent stronger than any he could remember in a long time. The half-finished words, some of them fired out and others barely audible, were even beyond the baying, “bellen” tones of most Styrians.

  “But he won’t even talk to you, I’m afraid. I told him, and, well, you don’t see him here, do you?”

  With that, Himmelfarb leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.

  He nodded toward a door that led into the rest of the house, and he winked. Gebhart raised his eyebrows and nodded at Felix too.

  “Schade,” said Gebhart. “That’s a great pity. I do like to talk with Hansi.”

  Himmelfarb cocked his head and kept his eyes on the door. Gebhart waited, and then spoke in the same clear, slow tone, addressing the door.

  “We have the patrol car outside, of course. There are quite a number of toys in that, you know.”

  Frau Himmelfarb undid her scarf then. Felix imagined her careful braids golden yellow again, a younger Mrs. Himmelfarb dancing, laughing. It would have been centuries before she became mother to a retarded kid way up here in the middle of nowhere.

  “Well,” said Gebi. “Fair enough. But I wish Hansi were here.

  We could show him our toys. It’s too bad.”

  The door handle went down and Hansi Himmelfarb stood in the doorway. He was holding a kitten. Felix thought he heard Gebi sigh.

  “Well, Hansi,” he said in a voice Felix hadn’t heard before.

  “May we meet your kitten?”

  Felix didn’t want to stare. He’d seen Down’s people before.

  Who hadn’t? But there was the look of a deer or something to him.

  Maybe it was the stubble hair or freckles. He could be 20, or 40.

  Gebhart was on his feet now. He was allowed to scratch the kitten’s belly and have his fingers chewed a little in return.

  Hansi was suddenly unsure of something. He walked away, and stopped by the sink. He closed his eyes as he stroked the kitten.

  Gebhart sat down again and looked at Himmelfarb.

  “The boy is up at night,” said Himmelfarb. “He is afraid to sleep, he says.”

  “Regressing,” said Frau Himmelfarb, and glanced at her son, who seemed oblivious to their words. She began pouring hot water from the kettle into a jug. Instant coffee, Felix believed. It was better than nothing: a little.

  “Well what has he told you? You said ‘puppets,’ was it?”

  Himmelfarb hesitated.

  “‘Puppets.’ Mostly that. Puppets, forest.”

  Hansi opened his eyes and looked at his father, before turning his eyes toward Felix.

  “The woods? He likes to go in there, you told me before.”

  “He’s regressing,” said Mrs. Himmelfarb again. “Something bothers him.”

  Felix spooned out some cream. When he stole a look back at Hansi, the eyes were closed again. Frau Himmelfarb carried over the tray. The Thermos jug had that scorched smell of instant coffee, all right.

  “That’s too bad,” Gebhart said. “It must be hard on you.”

  “All he says is ‘sleep’ when I ask him. “‘Sleep’ or ‘sleeping.’”

  “Do you need a sleep, Hansi?” Gebhart called out. “A nice sleep?”

  Hansi shook his head several times. He did not open his eyes, but held the kitten up closer to his face. Frau Himmelfarb sighed.

  “He won’t leave the house,” she said. “Coffee for you both?”

  “Three days now,” she went on, as she poured the coffee.

  “I haven’t seen him at the club,” said Gebhart.

  “Won’t leave the house,” said Himmelfarb.

  “And he cries,” Frau Himmelfarb added. “He never cries. He is as happy as the day is long. Even when he is ein bisschen krank even when he’s a bit sick.”

  Nobody seemed to want to say anything then. Felix blew on his coffee, and took sly looks around the huge kitchen. The walls were nearly a half-metre thick by the windows. Hansi stood by the sink caressing the kitten. He was looking out the window now.

  “It’s been a long winter,” Gebhart said quietly.

  “It’s always long,” said Himmelfarb.

  “Hansi is always out,” his wife said. “We blow a whistle, he comes back.”

  “We wonder,” said Himmelfarb. “Did he meet someone out there? You never know these days, the terrible things. People they take advantage of kids it’s happened, I know it. It’s on the news, nicht war, Mutti?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh, the crimes these days,” Himmelfarb went on. “People behave worse than animals.You see it every night.”

  Felix hadn’t noticed a satellite dish on their way in. He’d remember to look when they left. What sense could an older couple like the Himmelfarbs make of all the crap pouring down from satellite channels now?

  Gebhart turned in his chair.

  “You’re a good boy Hansi, aren’t you? I’ll bet you are.

  Everybody knows that.”

  Felix became aware of Frau Himmelfarb’s gaze on him. When he turned toward her, a smile ready, she quickly looked away.

  “Hansi,” said Gebhart. “Do you like the police? Wah wah, the siren?”

  Hansi met his eyes for several moments. Then he nodded.

  “I thought you did, yes. Well, will you meet my friend? I have a new friend, yes.”

  Hansi glanced over at him. Felix noticed that Hansi’s eyes were mostly directed toward his beret. He began to believe that Gebhart could well have predicted, and even planned, every move here.

  Somehow he worked up a smile for Hansi.

  “Come over here, Felix,” said Gebhart. “Felix likes kittens.

  Don’t you, Felix?”

  Felix reached out and got a gnaw from the kitten on his knuckles.

  “Felix will do the wah wah for you, Hansi. Go with Felix.”

  Felix tried a hard stare and his best ESP with Gebhart. There was no go there. What if this boy/man throws a fit with the siren?

  “Go with Felix, Hansi. Felix is a good boy, just like you. But he doesn’t know anything about farming. Or the woods, either. Do you Felix?”

  “No,” said Felix. “I know nothing.”

  Gebi gave him a measured look before turning back to Hansi.

  “See, Hansi? But I hear you know all about the farm. Show poor Felix. Felix lives in town. He’s kind of lost, you know.”

  A look of concentration crossed Hansi’s face. Then he walked to the door, and put the kitten in a basket there. He looked at his father, to Gebhart, and then to Felix. With a sinking feeling, one made up of pity and annoyance, and now a clear desire for some sort of revenge on Gebhart, Felix saw that Hansi was keen now.

  “Wah wah?” said Hansi.

  “Atta boy,” said Gebhart.

  Hansi held out his hand.

  “He does that when he’s bothered,” said Himmelfarb.

  Felix fixed Gebhart with a glare. Gebhart knew better than to look over. He had already begun to compliment Frau Himmelfarb on the strudel.

  Hansi grasped Felix’s hand and tugged on it. Felix opened the door out onto the cement step under the wooden balcony where the window boxes had already swollen with blooms. He heard a
cowbell, then others. He heard the talk about the strudel stop, the quiet, before he closed the door.

  Hansi had the huge hands of his old man but they were soft.

  Felix tried to take his hand back, or at least switch to his left, so he’d be unable to get at his restraints or his pistol even, if this Hansi made a grab for it. Hansi grabbed tighter.

  What if he screamed, or threw a fit, Felix wondered. Or crapped his pants or something?

  “Wah wah.”

  “Oh, I’ll give you wah wah, all right, Hansi. Is that what Gebi does for you?”

  Hansi frowned and nodded, and pulled harder.

  “Easy, Hansi. I need my arm for later, okay?”

  Felix let himself be towed toward the patrol car. He looked over his shoulder, but saw no faces in the window. They could still be watching from somewhere. For a moment he wondered again if this was some joke of Gebhart’s. Had Gebhart or some others at the post come up with this initiation rite, a way to show the new recruit up?

  He tugged back a little. Hansi slowed, and looked at him with a blank expression.

  He had frightened this big lug? For the first time, he stared into

  Hansi’s face. He couldn’t read it at all. He became suddenly ashamed at the thoughts that had come tumbling into his mind along with the resentment and the low burning desire to get back at Gebhart for this crazy things like a cannibal family luring people here, like some dark Grimm tale. If he’d heard right at all, Gebhart had a kid with Down’s, and he and Himmelfarb seemed to know one another because of that. And that was why he’d come all the way up here. Just to help, a bit.

  “Wah wah, wah wah.”

  They stopped at the car.

  “Hansi? I need my hand back so I can get into the car okay?

  For the wah wah?”

  That worked. He sat on the edge of the seat.

  “It’s loud, you know? Are you ready? Loud, okay?”

  He held his hands over his ears. It took a few tries for Hansi to get the idea.

  Felix held his finger over the switch and checked to see if Hansi was ready. So this was part of Gendarme Josef Gebhart’s policing duties, he thought, after a fleeting image of Hansi freaking out with the racket that was coming up when he hit the switch: a Gendarme’s day included an escape from the post, getting up in the mountains, tucking into home cooking, chatting about cattle or weather . . .