The Bone Man (3 page)

And let’s be honest, people make an unbelievable fuss about sleep these days. It’s got to be the best bed, everything organic, and absolute quiet, of course—the room gone through with a divining rod to see that the plumbing’s rerouted wholesale—just because people need to park their asses somewhere. Needless to say, no one could’ve dreamed of how soundly Brenner was sleeping tonight, what with half the Grill in his stomach.

But the deeper you sleep, the harder it is to wake up. That’s the other side to this story.

When the waitress cleared Brenner’s breakfast dishes the next morning, he had drunk his black coffee, but the rest he’d left. Butter and jam, all sealed up in their plastic capsules like you get everywhere today—might as well be landing on the moon. But it wasn’t the shrink-wrapped portions that bothered Brenner. No, he was just a grouch in the morning—the very model of one, in fact.

The waitress, on the other hand, radiated an unusual cheerfulness: “Didn’t touch anything, eh? Would you have preferred cheese?”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

“Or cold cuts?

“Cold cuts?”

“Assorted sliced meats.”

Brenner knew what cold cuts were, of course. But the very word reminded him of the bones, i.e. the whole story of why he was sitting here at all, and grumpily, he asked the waitress: “What’s with the manager?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s with the manager’?”

“Where is she?”

“The manager? She hasn’t come in yet.” The waitress smiled and tiptoed back to the kitchen with the breakfast dishes.

It would’ve been fine by Brenner to just read the newspaper in peace. Because it’s always interesting to read the local news when you’re in a new place—because you get to read about problems that don’t concern you at all. And to be perfectly frank, there’s nothing more relaxing than that. Klöch’s victory in the Cup took up half the paper. And on the front page, a photo of the goalkeeper being paraded like royalty around the field. More than 3,500 spectators had been in attendance—and that’s in a town of only a thousand inhabitants.

There wasn’t much else interesting in the paper, so Brenner was deliberating:
should I do the crossword puzzle now?
Because that had been a habit ever since his days as a traffic cop. A cop was often happy to work the night shift if it meant he could do the crossword.

But it’s not without its perils, either, doing a crossword like that. A colleague of Brenner’s got caught once after he’d completed an entire crossword puzzle book in one night. Not what you’re thinking, though, he was just that good at crosswords. No, he’d written the same word over and over again. Namely: “depressed.” What with the horizontal and vertical lines, though, it didn’t always work out so well. Needless to say, early retirement at thirty-two. But, you see, you’d like to think the kind of danger that a cop has to face involves a shot getting fired or a car chase. You forget about the crossword, though.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Brenner was an
intuitive person. At work, he’d often wished he was: gut-feeling, and voilà, your perpetrator. But that wasn’t one of his talents. Just like he wasn’t particularly musical. Not especially gifted with languages, either. And even less so with math. He instinctively had no outstanding talent. If it’s true, why shouldn’t a man admit it? But, for once, his instincts were telling him something, and he did not solve the crossword.

Instead, he just watched the waitress roll the silverware into napkins and marveled at how anyone could be so cheerful at this hour of the morning. And men are all a little, you know, with things like this—let’s be perfectly honest here. And so, naturally Brenner was thinking:
the waitress must’ve found herself a good lover to be that cheerful
.

One thing you can’t forget, though. The waitress’s room was immediately adjacent to Brenner’s, and only some thin wood paneling in between. Because it used to be the attic, but at some point, they decided to spare every expense in dividing it up into lodging for their employees. Now, Brenner had slept so deeply through the night that he hadn’t been woken up just before midnight by the waitress’s lusty cries. But even asleep, you still hear it somehow. Unconsciously. And personally, I think that’s why the lover occurred to him while he watched her bundle the silverware into the napkins.

Interesting, though! These days, if you watch a cheerful person, you’ll feel cheerful, too. Well, maybe not cheerful, exactly, but all the same—Brenner was thinking to himself now:
who knows, maybe it’s a good thing that the manager isn’t here yet. I’ll just take a look at the bone-grinder in the basement and have a little chat with the Yugo
.

That Brenner would go down to the basement: not exactly
remarkable. Because the bathrooms were also in the basement—enormous facilities, like at an airport. Because so much gets eaten there that, of course, you need a complementary latrine. And I’ve got to say, everything at Löschenkohl’s: tiptop.

He bypassed the airport bathrooms and followed the squeal of the bone-grinder. It was an endless corridor, and the squealing grew steadily louder. And then he came upon a door. And when he opened the door—my dear swan! Brenner’s morning coffee nearly came back up.

His first glimpse of the Yugo was a wide shot from behind. He was standing up to his hips in a pile of bones, feeding them into a machine that was nearly as long as all fifteen stalls in the men’s bathroom. And the sheer smell of it. If you can imagine adding up all fifteen men’s toilets here, too.

But the Yugo must have felt a draft from the door being opened. And as the Yugo turned around, wringing a couple of chicken carcasses in hands the size of dinner plates, Brenner instantly recognized him as the hero of the penalty shootout.

“You were in tremendous form yesterday,” Brenner said. Because he was of the opinion that if you don’t speak formal German with foreigners, they’ll never learn the language.

“Sorry?”

“Yesterday. Tremendous form!”

“Sorry, my German. Sorry.”

“Congratulations! Oberwart, no goal, you!” Brenner said, and you see how quickly a good intention can crumble. Sometimes, though, success gets stamped: R
ETURN TO
S
ENDER
.

“Oberwart, no goal,” a grin spread across the Yugo’s entire face. And Brenner noticed that the goalie had false teeth, a
complete set of dentures. Because a goalie of this caliber lives dangerously, of course.

“Newspaper write: ‘Hero of Klöch,’ ” Brenner said.

“No hero, no.”

“But newspaper! Write!”

Another broad grin for the goalie now. His dentures were perched so loosely on his gums that they slipped whenever he smiled. And you could actually see the gap between his real gums and the fake gums.
I’m not saying another word to make this goalie grin
, Brenner thought. But what are you going to do. The Yugo goalie was still so happy about the Cup victory and—without Brenner even saying a word—a grin spanned his entire face again. He said: “Oberwart, no goal, extra time, no goal, penalty shootout—”

“Hero, penalty shootout, you!”

And of course, a grin—and not a smudge of Fixodent in sight: “Three shots, I bang Oberwart!”

That’s people for you. Instead of speaking correctly with foreigners, they teach them the dirtiest words.

Brenner took a few steps closer to the goalie, and although he’d been careful not to step on any bones, something cracked beneath his left foot.

“You, promotion, next round!”

“Five thousand money bonus,” the goalie smiled.

“Millionaire, you! Soon!”

“Before, ten years, I millionaire. Division One, Yugoslav. Big car, but the money, all—”

“Banged, I know—”

“No banged! Build house. Beautiful house. Almost the finish. But goalie, all the time the danger. Striker, brutal pig. Shoot
my head, not the ball. I break everything, my head, it breaks. Three month I sleep. All fixed, silver plate. No more Division One. I play Klöch. Klöch good. Two thousand money paycheck. Send money home, more I build house. Soon I fourteen years old.”

“Forty.”

“Ja, forty, no fourteen. Forty! Soon, no more I play Klöch. Then shit. But I go, still. Still!”

“Oberwart, no goal, still!”

“Still! Five thousand money bonus, I send home.”

“You hero.”

“No hero,” Brenner heard him say, followed by that terrible squeal of the bone grinder as the Yugo finally stuffed the chicken carcass into it.

Brenner was reminded of the 3,500 spectators yesterday, and how even the ones seated the farthest back could still hear Oberwart’s bones cracking. Only now it sounded reversed. So, if you were to picture yourself as the striker standing there on the grass, and suddenly you heard the bones of all 3,500 spectators breaking at once—it sounded roughly like that. Not very pleasant, I have to say.

Brenner was quick to disappear now, because first of all, the excruciating noise, and second, he wanted to finally talk with the manager. He thought to himself,
what am I doing snooping around those chicken bones when I don’t even have a real contract yet
.

But when he went back upstairs, the manager still wasn’t there. It took all of a second for this to get under Brenner’s collar. And to be honest, I can understand why. Someone calls you, beckons you here, and when you do come, she’s not here.

He went up to his room, and two minutes later his things were packed. Because that’s how it is sometimes with the good-natured sort: once they get angry, there’s no turning back.

It wouldn’t have been Brenner, though, if something didn’t get in the way. As he was standing outside in the parking lot, he thought to himself,
old man Löschenkohl, there’s an upstanding old man for you, he’s been punished enough, and I’ll just go and quickly say goodbye to him now
.

He noticed that only one car was parked in front of the entrance to the restaurant, a silver trophy car—because before noon, nothing going on, of course. And as Brenner went walking back inside, he heard a loud cry coming from the dining room, and when he opened the door to the dining room, he saw the waitress and old man Löschenkohl and a man he didn’t recognize but who definitely didn’t look like a Porsche driver. Now, you’re going to say, what’s a Porsche driver supposed to look like, then? Anyway, not like Löschenkohl’s son.

“My wife’s disappeared!” he shouts, right at Brenner.

“And you are—”

“Löschenkohl,” Löschenkohl’s son says and offers Brenner his hand. “You don’t know where my wife’s at, either?”

Brenner was struck by how soft his hand was, and above all, how at first glance Löschenkohl junior looked nothing like his father. An unpleasant man, that you could tell right away. The way he talked, you know—insulting and demanding at the same time. And so fat and bloated that, next to him, his purpled father looked damn healthy.

No wonder he didn’t resemble his father, though. Because his father was born in 1929, and he’d enlisted as a
sixteen-year-old during the final days of the War. And compared to those who didn’t come back, Löschenkohl was well-served by his mangled lower abdomen. And maybe later, that even proved to be part of the secret to his success—it’s often the case with these ambitious business types that they’re emboldened by a minor set back like that. Anyway, shortly after the War he married a woman who already had a son. Who he was now giving a dressing-down to: “She’ll turn back up. It’s not the first time she’s disappeared for a few days.”

“But she called me the day before yesterday. Said I absolutely had to come this morning. So that I could talk with the detective.”

He had to be between forty and fifty, but somehow he reminded Brenner of the baby that Oberascher’s wife had with Schmeller, and everybody knew about it—well, except for Oberascher. And now old man Löschenkohl was really giving his son a talking to, like he was a small child:

“The bigger problem is that she called Herr Brenner here. And now she herself isn’t even here. And nothing’s been settled, not even how much Herr Brenner charges.”

The giant baby looked at Brenner now with an injured expression—and all the more aggressive for it, said, “Charge whatever you want.”

“The Porsche,” Brenner nearly said, just as a joke.

But he thought better of it because—a serious situation. Two streams of tears had started forming in Löschenkohl junior’s alcoholic eyes. And so Brenner thought to himself:
better if I don’t make a joke
. Even though he’d come to deeply regret it later.

Back before everybody could afford a TV, people went to the bar to watch TV. That, of course, turned into a real meet-and-greet, let me tell you. World Cup in Mexico—all of Klöch was at Löschenkohl’s. And not everybody even got a seat when the Brazilians dizzyingly played the Italians.

Four to one—I still know it to this day—and all of Klöch on Brazil’s side because Pelé, needless to say, a wizard. And very black, he was a very dark black man, because there are lighter ones, too, but Pelé, black as coal. And white eyes that sparkled, and an artist—you just don’t find that anymore today.

And you’re not apt to find it anymore, either, none too quickly, because—them over there, they’re doing far too well for themselves. And these days if you grow up in a slum, you’ve already got everything—color TV, VCR—they’ve got it all already, people in slums. And so a boy doesn’t apply himself to his kicking that much anymore—unless it’s a real slum, the motivation’s simply lacking. And let’s say he even goes on to become a decent soccer player—no Pelé, though.

They could only dream of color TV back then at Löschenkohl’s. And with black-and-white, well, you were just glad if you could even get a picture at first because—often just sound,
no picture. And then it’d just be picture, no sound. Or a compromise, bad picture but a little bit of sound. Or, you’d have those pesky stripes, half the picture above the stripes, half the picture below—and Pelé walking on his own head in his Pumas.

But that was a long time ago, and people have had their own TVs at home for some time now. And those people who were young then are old today. With every World Cup, you think: another four years have gone by, life is but a flash. You buy a radio, then a TV, then a VCR. And then you order a fax machine and the fax mechanic rings your doorbell and you open up the door, but it’s not the fax mechanic—no, it’s the Bone Man come to pick you up. Isn’t this the way it is, if we’re being honest with ourselves?