Men of Snow (33 page)

‘You’ll be missed,’ he said in an attempt at being serious as the taxi drew up.

‘Thanks for this evening,’ was all Franz could manage.

Michael held out his hand, saying, ‘You’ve always been a bit of a mystery Franz.’

‘Goodnight Michael,’ were his last words as he closed the taxi door and gave the driver his address.

Back in his apartment he switched on the lights and drew the curtains. The room was simply furnished. There was nothing that could identify Franz in any way, nothing personal, no photographs, paintings, objects that were his. He had minimal tastes. So long as the place was clean and functional he was satisfied. There was a large television at one end of the large room. He spent many hours watching football, especially the German national team when they were being successful, which they usually were. That he enjoyed more than anything.

In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of water before going into the master bedroom. Here there was nothing on the walls. A wardrobe ran the whole length of one side. Sliding open its doors he stood there for a moment before taking out the uniform. Carefully he lifted it out of its polythene wrapping and laid it out on the bed, smoothing down the material, pulling at a thread that was hanging loose. There were six buttons for the M41 uniform, field grey with a tight collar and his officer lapels. The cloth was always rough to the skin and the uniform’s cut had made movement sometimes difficult. 

Franz took off his dinner jacket and hung it up in the wardrobe. He unknotted his tie and folded it with the rest on a special hanger inside the door of the wardrobe. Unbuttoning his shirt he went back to the kitchen to put it in the wash basket before returning to the bedroom. Now just in his vest and trousers he pulled on the uniform. Standing in front of the wardrobe’s full length mirror he watched himself work the six highly polished buttons before fastening the collar. The uniform was still a good fit. It was a test to ensure his weight had not altered. He turned to the side, smoothing down the front of the material. For a moment he could see himself from all those years ago as though nothing had changed. Franz felt again the pleasure of knowing he could still be the officer.  He was still in shape even to the extent that the uniform felt loose under the arms and across the chest.

                                          ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next morning he was listening to his fitness coach at the private sports club he attended daily.

‘It’s going well Herr Brucker. The more we’ve worked on the arms and shoulders the stronger they’ve become. That’s what we aimed at and with the weights we’ve been introducing, it’s going better than even I expected. You put in the work and it’s certainly paying off. I think we can up the weights a little and maybe spend a little more time on them as well as making it now a forty five minute swim each morning if you’re in agreement with that.’

Franz had just come out of the shower and was towelling himself down. Gunter the coach had a squat, muscular body. He had been working with Franz for the last five years after his previous coach had emigrated to Australia.

‘We don’t want to overdo it,’ Gunter continued, ‘but over the last weeks there has been a marked improvement. Your pulse rate is strong. The time on the jogging machine is becoming easier. The rest periods are shorter. I wish all my clients were progressing as well.’

‘I thank you Gunter. I feel better. In the night my shoulder kicks up once in a while but it’s not as bad as it used to be,’ had been Franz’s response as he enjoyed the afterglow of a good workout. This for him was the best time of the day. He was physically tired but mentally enervated at the same time. He understood the relation between the two. It had always been the same for him, putting in the required effort. The discipline was the basis to it all. He had hardly missed a session in the gym and pool for years. It was the focus of his day. He did not drink or smoke. He had a careful diet that he and Gunter had organised. He had regular check-ups with his doctor. His vitamin supplements had been increased recently and in the evenings he had started short sessions of meditation to relax, to slow himself down ready for a good eight hours sleep.

His regime was thorough and recorded. He had a daily fitness diary that he filled in every evening. It showed the lengths and times of his early morning jogs, the weights he had been lifting, his pulse rate before and after the sessions in the gym, the time it took to swim the fifty lengths of the pool. Each month he put it all on different graphs so he could easily define improvement. At the end of each year these final graphs were pinned up on his study wall and were left there for the next twelve months to show what he had to do for the coming year. In December he took the graphs round to the gym to discuss them with Gunter and to plan what was needed for the next months. His health had become a total project.

‘You’ve the heart of somebody twenty years younger,’ Doctor Stein had told him on his last appointment, ‘Just don’t overdo it Franz, especially now you’re retiring. We’ve talked enough about what you manage each day. It’s excellent so long as you don’t feel it has to be improved on all the time. You have the right balance at the moment. Try and keep it like that. I know you will.’

Momentarily Franz had resented the warning. He knew better than anybody what he was doing. The only reason he visited Stein so often was because of the new technology he had.

Every September Franz was booked into a Swiss health clinic that overlooked a deep valley and the higher Alps. There he felt cleaned out in a different way. At the clinic it was as if the mind was also made stronger, clearer, more focused.

‘Do you think there is a secret?’ he had once been asked by Herr Volner, an Austrian who owned a chain of jewellery shops and often stayed at the clinic, ‘The secret to long life? Is that why we are all here? Do you think Herr Brucker it is possible?’

‘No I don’t Herr Volner, not at all,’ had been his answer, ‘It’s only a matter of luck. You have a biological clock ticking and you cannot do a thing about it. Here at the clinic we pretend that it’s not true, that’s all.’

The Austrian had looked disappointed and foolish. Franz had lied to him so the man would leave him alone. He did not go to the clinic for conversation. He went to wash his mind in the air of the high Alps.

His company had always given him this September break. It was when things started to slow down after the rush of demands towards the summer. Because he was up by five thirty he had time to manage his early morning jog and his sixty minutes at the sports club with Gunter before he had started work. Now he was retired they were working out a different scheme, one that would include two periods in the gym. The morning session would include the swim. In the late afternoon he would concentrate more on the weights and building up his stamina.

He knew he was the lightest he had weighed since the end of the war. He weighed himself every morning and recorded the results. He read all the health magazines, especially from America that had all the new research on lessening the calorie intake. Numerous articles were emphasising that longevity could come from lowering the amount of calories you took on board each day. Franz had taken on this new approach, again discussing it with Gunter.

‘It is a difficult one,’ his coach had responded when the topic had first come up as a serious issue, ‘we have to make sure you have the fuel to manage your sessions, especially if we’re aiming at two of them a day. If we don’t get the right calorie intake you won’t have the sufficient energy you will need.’

Franz let Gunter work it out for himself. The only reason he needed a coach was to have somebody watching and endorsing his achievements.

Every night he would check himself in his bathroom’s full length mirror, watching the skin tighten over the bone structure, the loose folds of excess fat disappear around his waist, see his rib cage becoming more prominent. To look carefully was to see both the process of aging and the results of his resistance. The daily impetus was to be always conscious of what he was doing minute by minute. Discipline was all that mattered, to overcome his body’s weaknesses. The strategies were prepared on a daily basis. The early morning runs to his late evening meditation sessions was a constant repetition. He saw the scar down his cheek and neck. He saw the bullet wound in his left shoulder. They were the marks of the past, the symbols he had overcome. They were part of a period that he had left behind. Nothing for him was left of those years except these two remnants.

                                          ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

‘So how was your retirement dinner? I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,’ Angela Druckter asked as they sat down at their table. Angela was Franz’s lawyer and was one of the only people whose invitation he accepted. Usually he avoided restaurants with their cigarette smoke and stench of cooked meat. He liked to know exactly what he was eating and how it had been prepared.

He lifted his napkin and quickly passed it near his nose so he could smell how fresh it was.

‘Last night was....well it was what I expected.’

‘I wonder sometimes who they are for.’

‘Yes. I think it was more for the company than anything else. I could have done with a quick goodbye in the office, taken my retirement clock or whatever and left it at that.’

‘I wanted to be there,’ Angela said again.

‘No. Believe you me this is better.’

‘If you say so Franz.’

‘Well I do.’

‘But it just shows how much the company appreciated you. Recently being a more mature representative has become trendy.’

‘I have never felt trendy.’

Angela smiled, tracing the outline of her wine glass with her carefully manicured finger as she said, ‘You don’t feel trendy Franz. You either are or you aren’t. It’s what other people think. There’s a worldwide business trying to create what’s trendy.’

As the waiter took their order Franz wondered why Angela was being so complimentary. She was a small, immaculately dressed woman who had worked hard at her own version of holding back the ageing process. She was one of the only people he had ever trusted. When she had first become his lawyer Angela had been smart enough to never ask about his past. She had always been absolutely discreet and that in Germany back in the fifties had been essential.

Angela watched him as he sipped his water before taking a small slice of lettuce on his fork.

‘I’d forgotten Franz how having a meal with you is so undermining.’

‘Why, what am I doing?’ he asked, knowing what the implication was.

‘It’s what you’re not doing. You’re not having a drink. You’re not having a main course. You won’t have a dessert or coffee or tea. You make me feel like a fat, boozy, meat eating Fraulein.’

‘Which you....’

‘No,’ she laughed, ‘don’t say anything more.’

‘I was only going to say which you are obviously not.’

At that she lifted up her glass of wine, ‘Thanks for that Franz.’

He glanced around the dark, busy restaurant.

‘You know I don’t like eating out.’

‘That’s why I relish the fact we’re here. I was so glad you agreed to this.’

‘I hope you were,’ he said, looking intently at her, appreciating how she had never tried to become a friend. Their relationship had always been solely professional, the reason it had lasted so long.

‘So retirement at last Franz, I never thought you were going to do it.’

‘Well I have and I’m looking forward to it.’

‘Knowing you it will be all mapped out.’

‘At my age I think that’s essential.’

‘You’ve always known what you wanted to do,’ Angela said as she set down her knife and fork, looked across and smiled at him.

‘You’re the same Angela.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘You and your two dogs.’

‘Of course, my best friends. I just wish all my clients had been like you.’

‘You’re being very complimentary today, but that’s not what you used to think.’

‘And how do you know what I used to think?’

‘You thought I was a pain in the arse and I probably was.’

Again she smiled, a little more awkwardly this time before saying, ‘You were somebody who was very sure what you wanted and how you were going to get it.’

‘I could drink to that.’

‘If you had a real drink you could. And how are the stocks and shares at the moment, how’s Wolf?’

Franz sat back, the smells of the food around him beginning to make him feel nauseous. But at least Angela seemed genuinely glad to see him. Recently he had begun to find too much talking made him feel agitated, but with her it was different. There was no edge, no other agenda going on. He knew she was interested in him and yet understood the limits there were to such concern.

‘My broker has decided to go on a fishing trip to Sweden.’

‘God, what a bleak idea that is at this time of year.’

‘Wolf likes it bleak. He always has done, makes him feel more of a man or so he says.’

‘I never thought Wolf had any doubts in that department. How many times has he been married now?’