Brenner and God (22 page)

When he called and informed her that she didn’t have much to fear, all she said was, “I knew from the shtart that you were a decent man. But could you do me a favor?”

Brenner was a little disappointed, of course, because in his opinion he had just done her a favor. On the other hand, he was glad for the chance to see her again. You should know, to his question
what kind of favor?
she’d only say, “Not over the phone. But if you’re here in twenty minutes, the eshpresso will shtill be warm.”

Her apartment felt a little strange to him at first.

“Everything’s new in here.”

And from Brenner’s mouth, a sentence like that isn’t a compliment.

“Because of the blood, I needed a painter and a floor sander. And because of the painter and the floor sander, I had to move the furniture outshide. And because they were already outshide, I let them get hauled away. I’m happy to be rid of that old junk.”

“And the plants?”

“They’re in the other rooms. I jusht have to put them back again.”

“And that’s what you couldn’t say over the phone? That’s what you dragged me here for?”

“The plants I can move by myshelf. But maybe only a few. It’s gotten to be too many. I’m not some ape living in a jungle, you know.”

“I liked them.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a greenhorn.”

“So then, what do you need me for?”

Beaming, the South Tyrolean led him to the kitchen window and pointed to the street, where a factory-new VW bus with dealer plates was parked.

“You’ll have to drive the car for me. I haven’t driven in so long. It would be a pity if I drove it wrong.”

“A VW bus?” A laugh nearly escaped Brenner. “What do you want a VW bus for?”

“So I can give somebody a ride now and then.”

On the drive, she sat beside him beaming like a kid on her confirmation day and alternated between watching Brenner and watching the pedestrians and the cars and
the bicyclists and the shops. And every few minutes when Brenner pressed on the gas or the brakes or made a turn, expectantly she’d ask: “And? How’s it drive?”

“Perfectly,” Brenner replied, but meanwhile he started up on how a smaller, women’s car would’ve been better for her, a Polo or a Mini or a French Musketeer or a Japanese Micra Mouse, and whether she couldn’t still trade in the bus. But he might as well have been talking to the windshield, because at the next traffic light, the South Tyrolean, expectant again, asked, “And? How’s it drive?”

“I need to step on it a little more,” Brenner said, and he drove along the Danube in the direction of Klosterneuburg. Within a few meters of the road sign he was already going 120, and satisfied, the South Tyrolean determined, “It’s got zing.”

When the mighty bronze lions at the waterworks whisked past them, she beamed and said, “It’s good to get away from your own shtreet now and then.”

And believe it or not, it turned out that for the last three and a half years she hadn’t dared to venture any farther from her apartment than the few meters to the gas station across the street. Until the day Brenner hadn’t come back as promised and she’d set off to take Helena to the police.

Brenner didn’t want to believe her at first, but she just said, “They’ve got everything at the gas shtation.”

From her mouth, it sounded like a reasonable explanation for why she hadn’t left her own street for three and a half years. Brenner was just glad she’d had the courage to on the day that she’d saved his life. So many unusual things had happened to him these past few days that he didn’t try
for very long to understand why a person would lock herself up at home for three and a half years.
“Confession” comes from “Comprehension,”
he thought, but he couldn’t even comprehend why this nonsense would occur to him right now. And I’ve got to say, on closer examination, the normal person’s a rarity, and should you ever meet him, you’d be better off asking him
how
and
why
and
how come
.

The VW bus ran perfectly in the mountains, too. Brenner drove it up to Reinhard’s domicile, and incredibly, it was only on the steepest ten meters that he had to downshift to second.

It was early afternoon, and the bank director, of course, wasn’t at his domicile. But his wife was lying in a lawn chair, her face in the shade, her legs in the sun. And you see, a bus is good for this, because Brenner wouldn’t have been able to see over the bushes in a car that was any lower to the ground.

“Why did you park here?”

The South Tyrolean looked a little anxious, and to be perfectly honest, the steeply sloping street looked a little criminal. But the bus didn’t roll away while Brenner walked briskly over to the garden gate and rang the bell. Reinhard’s wife reluctantly got up from her lawn chair and came to the garden gate in a bathrobe. Brenner pressed an envelope into her hand and said he was supposed to deliver it to her husband. Three of the twenty fifties were missing, but Brenner didn’t care.

On the drive back, he explained to the South Tyrolean why he’d returned the bank director’s money, and because they were on the topic of money, he asked her what the VW bus cost.

“I bargained him down to fifty thousand,” the South
Tyrolean said, “radio included.”

Because Brenner was still annoyed that she hadn’t bought a more affordable women’s car, he let the question slip, did she have a money tree?

“You might put it that way,” the South Tyrolean replied, and she told Brenner that half of the valley back home belonged to her because her brother had a motorcycle accident and her uncle didn’t have any children. “So I inherited my own megaland.”

“And you sold off a field for the VW bus?”

“Are you crazy? I didn’t give anything away. I shwore to myself that I wouldn’t touch any of it. It’s all leased out. And someday I’ll leave it to someone else.”

“And the fifty thousand?”

“That was last year’s interesht on the savings account,” the South Tyrolean said. “I thought the interesht I could at leasht touch for a car. So I can get out a little. It’s not healthy to be cooped up on your own shtreet all the time. A person’s got to be among people now and then.”

It hit Brenner just then that he was due shortly at Knoll’s funeral, and he asked her whether he could drive straight to the Döblinger cemetery, and she’d drive herself home.

“I don’t undershtand why you go running to every single funeral,” the South Tyrolean said. “You’re worshe than my old aunties back home.”

But Brenner didn’t let that dissuade him, and because the South Tyrolean said nothing against it, he simply drove straight to the Döblinger cemetery and said good-bye to her.

But then he had to look. Because more people had come
to Knoll’s funeral than to Kressdorf’s and Stachl’s and Milan’s and Herr Zauner’s and the foreman’s and the security boss’s all put together.

Knoll was officially regarded as Kressdorf’s first victim—not to mention a victim of slander, because of the public’s rush to judgment about the kidnapping. In light of the murder, his smaller misdemeanors like blackmailing slipped right under the table—he was getting a hero’s funeral now, you can’t even imagine. From Opus Dei to the pope’s best friend, from the last Habsburger to the cathedral preacher, they all came together to pay their last respects to the martyr. And right in the midst of the mourners Brenner discovered Bank Director Reinhard. He looked rather troubled. Because, I think for a benevolent string-puller like him it’s always incomprehensible when your little ward—for whose mission he’d truly done what he could, even financing, without any collateral, the abortion clinic’s surrounding offices—turns around and bites the hand that feeds him.

It came as no surprise to Brenner that he’d see Natalie at the funeral because over the years she’d sought out conversations with Knoll time and again. She told Brenner a few things about Knoll’s life, that his father had been one of the first organic farmers and had died of skin cancer, and that the police still hadn’t found the video.

“Maybe it doesn’t even exist,” Brenner said, and he wondered how Natalie got to be so well informed about the police investigation.

But when he saw who picked Natalie up after the funeral, everything became clear to him.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than to go ogling
after shtrange women?”

Brenner thought he wasn’t hearing correctly. Knoll’s funeral had lasted an hour and a half, and the VW bus was still parked there.

“How come you didn’t drive home?”

“You’re really not too shwift.”

“It lasted too long for my taste, too.”

“I’m talking about your head. It’s not too shwift.”

“That’s what you said the first time we met at the gas station.”

“And unfortunately it hasn’t gotten any better.”

Brenner stood in the parking spot and the South Tyrolean leaned out the open car door and spoke slowly, as though to a slow-witted child, “I don’t have a driver’s lischense, Herr Simon!”

And now that really reminded Brenner of the first time they met. Because just like then, he was searching for a good line, and just like then, nothing came to him. And so the South Tyrolean beat him to it.

“I’m going to need a chauffeur, Herr Simon.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Firsht up, you drive me home.”

That was a good suggestion for Brenner, because he was thinking,
by the time we get to her apartment, I’ll have come up with a good excuse
.

As they drove out of the cemetery’s parking lot they passed Natalie again, who was standing with Peinhaupt in front of his car and giving him a very serious talking-to. And Peinhaupt was looking rather grim, too. Desperate, I dare say. Brenner would learn the reason why just thirty-seven weeks
later. But just Peinhaupt’s luck: Natalie was already well over forty, but she broke it to him after the funeral that, as of March, he’d be paying alimony for a fifth child.

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