Eternal life, p.1
Eternal Life, page 1
PRAISE FOR BRENNER AND GOD
“Brenner and God is one of the cleverest—and most thoroughly enjoyable—mysteries that I’ve read in a long time. Wolf Haas is the real deal, and his arrival on the American book scene is long overdue.”
—CARL HIAASEN, AUTHOR OF SICK PUPPY
“A meticulously plotted, dark, and often very funny ride.”
—THE MILLIONS
“Brenner and God is a humdinger … a sockdollager of an action yarn, revealed via the smart-ass, self-effacing narrative voice that’s a sort of trademark of author Wolf Haas.”
—THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE
“[A] superb translation of one of Austria’s finest crime novels … Haas never loses the thread of investigation, even as he introduces off-beat characters and a very complex plot … This is the first of the Brenner novels in English. We can only hope for more, soon.”
—THE GLOBE AND MAIL (TORONTO)
“Even as Haas darkens the mood of this sly and entertaining novel, he maintains its sardonically irreverent tone.”
—THE BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW
“A pacey and gripping read.”
—EURO CRIME
“A gleaming gem of a novel.”
—CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE
“[From] the insanely talented and clever Wolf Haas … A satirical and cynical criticism of Austrian and German society is very much a part of the plot, just as Chandler, Hammett and the other great American hard-boiled writers had an indictment of our society at heart.”
—THE DIRTY LOWDOWN
“Simon Brenner has been brilliantly brought to life by Mr. Haas’ subtle yet masterful prose, with just the right balance of dark humor … Mr. Haas may not yet be a household name, this side of the Atlantic, but all that is about to change.”
—NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS
“This quirkily funny kidnapping caper marks the first appearance in English of underdog sleuth Simon Brenner … Austrian author Haas brings a wry sense of humor … American readers will look forward to seeing more of Herr Simon.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“One of Germany’s most loved thriller writers: he’s celebrated by the literary critics and venerated by the readers.”
—DER SPIEGEL
“This is great art, great fun.”
—GERMANY RADIO
PRAISE FOR THE BONE MAN
“Darkly comic … American mystery fans should enjoy Haas’s quirky, digressive storytelling style.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“It’s a novel that leaves you laughing even as you work to solve the mystery.”
—THE GLOBE AND MAIL (TORONTO)
“A brilliant book … Already among the greats of mystery fiction.”
—BOOK DEVIL
“The most original figure here is the narrator, who hovers above the action with matter-of-fact detachment, ever alert for moments when he can swoop down and set you straight about what’s going on or change the subject entirely.”
—KIRKUS
WOLF HAAS was born in 1960 in the Austrian province of Salzburg. He is the author of seven books in the bestselling Brenner mystery series, three of which have been adapted into major German-language films by director Wolfgang Murnberger. Among other prizes, the books in the series have been awarded the German Thriller Prize and the 2004 Literature Prize from the city of Vienna. Haas lives in Vienna.
ANNIE JANUSCH is the translator of the Art of the Novella series edition of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Duel, as well Wolf Haas’ Brenner and God and The Bone Man.
ALSO BY WOLF HAAS
Brenner and God
The Bone Man
MELVILLE INTERNATIONAL CRIME
RESURRECTION
First published in Germany as Auferstehung der Toten
Copyright © 1996 by Rowohlt Taschenbuch
Verlag GmbH, Reinbek bei Hamburg
Translation copyright © 2013 by Annie Janusch
First Melville House Printing: January 2014
Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
and
8 Blackstock Mews
Islington
London N4 2BT
mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse
ISBN: 978-1-61219-271-0
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
The translation of this book was supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
CHAPTER 1
As far as America goes, Zell’s a tiny speck. Middle of Europe somewhere. As far as Pinzgau’s concerned, though, Zell’s the capital of Pinzgau. Ten thousand inhabitants, thirty mountains over 3,000 meters high, fifty-eight ski lifts, one lake. And believe it or not. Last December, two Americans were killed in Zell. But for now, get a load of this.
After the war, it was the skiing that brought prosperity to Zell. Suddenly, snowfall meant money on the ground. But it goes without saying: you can’t be too lazy to bend down and pick it up.
Take the lift operators, for instance. All day long they’ve got to watch out that nobody falls out of the lift. Day in, day out, thousands of skiers swooshing right past them. Nobody ever falls out of the lift usually, but if it should happen, not the end of the world, either. Lift operator’s just got to go over to the emergency brake and turn the lift off. And no easy job. Looks easy, but it’s not as easy as it looks. On account of the cold. Doesn’t matter how good a thermal suit St. Nick brings you. Won’t do you any good in the long run. That’s why, throughout the land, you can recognize lift operators by their frostbit red noses. Enough to make you think, Those aren’t lift operators at all, but secret clowns, making fun of the whole charade that’s got them chasing all over the place in every kind of weather.
One lift operator, though, the people tell stories about him, Alois the Lift Operator, or Alois the Lift for short, how he used to sometimes let the local kids through for free. Well, on the morning of December twenty-second, after the longest night of the year, there was something else altogether that had him cursing. Not the crap-ass weather, even though the weather was crap-ass awful.
He rode in like he always did with Wörgötter in his snowcat to the Panorama Lift station in the valley. Wörgötter let him off, and he hopped out into the dawn and went straight to the lift cabin, and, like he did every morning, turned the radiator on first and then the radio.
And just like every morning, one of them little punks from the night before had left it dialed to Ö3, and of course, all Alois the Lift had to say about that was: “Ghetto music.” So, there he is, turning the dial like he does every morning, nice and slowly to the left, because it was an old radio. A person who can turn a dial slower than Alois, well, not easy to find. You’d have thought he was defusing a bomb. And, on top of it all, Alois the Lift’s got his little finger jutting out like some withered twig. On account of him cutting it with a circular saw when he was a kid.
So, he finally gets his station in. Where it’s always the old times all the time. And good music. Half an hour ago, Alois the Lift, sound asleep still. Now, he’s happy just to be listening along over a Thermos of coffee to these old stories.
Take the snow, for instance. Time and again they dig up that story about how twenty or even just a few years ago, there used to be way more snow. Well, needless to say, Alois the Lift knows best: not a word of it true.
It was just the liftees and the innkeepers that started the rumor because, ordinarily, it was only every other or every third winter that there was snow during the Christmas holidays. And needless to say, the skiers, not exactly satisfied—saving up their money all year long up north in the Ruhr Valley just to sit around their hotel rooms.
Or else just to go swooshing over slopes that’ve only got a light dusting on them and ruining their new gear on their first day out. The gastronomes sure liked dishing up that story about the climate change. Because that’s how people are—they cope much easier with some great calamity like the destruction of the earth than they do a minor misfortune like the destruction of their new skis.
And these days when you’re a tourist someplace, you’re just happy if a local talks to you. That’s why every waiter and gas station attendant has got away with dishing up this story since, well, always, to the German and Dutch tourists, about how everything, but especially the snow, used to be way better. And they’re just biding their time till January, because it’ll definitely snow in January, so much that you won’t even be able to ski on account of the avalanches.
But, this December, everything was different. There was so much snow that Alois the Lift could barely see out of the operator’s cabin where he’d just took a sip of Thermos-coffee. On the radio somebody was talking about the last time there was this much snow. Believe it or not: before the war.
As Alois the Lift walks out of the cabin—because he’s got to get the chairlift going on the daily test run—he can still see Wörgötter
Alois the Lift couldn’t see the snowcat anymore now, either, but then Wörgötter switched all eight of its lights on, and needless to say. All at once, all the slopes lit up, bright as day on this dark, dark morning after the longest night of the year.
The parcel that was slowly approaching on one of the lift seats, though. Alois the Lift couldn’t fully make it out yet. Naturally he wondered how there could even be something on the seat. Every evening the lift goes on a quality-control run so that nothing gets left behind on a seat. It was the oldest chairlift in Zell, still a one-seater—didn’t even have a double. But, for as long as Alois the Lift could remember—and he’d been working the lift the second-longest of anybody—there’d never been anything left on a seat in the morning.
“Those idiots!” Alois the Lift muttered, and he was getting cold in the gusts of snow now, because every year, the parkas got better, but the wind just stang all the more.
“Those idiots didn’t do a control run yesterday!”
Those idiots would be the same young liftees who were always switching the radio over to the “ghetto music.” And as the massive parcel got closer, Alois the Lift’s thoughts just turned darker and darker.
He had very good eyes, because he always protected them with those Carrera sunglasses that St. Nick had brought him some years ago. But the bundle was covered in such a thick coat of snow that he still couldn’t make out with any certainty what it was. Even though it was only a few seats away from the station. Or at least that’s how he told it, Alois the Lift, that night at the Rainerwirt.
“That’s when I could tell that it wasn’t just some empty case of beer from New Zealand, the ski disco, like I thought at first. But then,” as Alois the Lift told it at the Rainerwirt on the twenty-second—and then, on the twenty-third, in nearly the same words, all over again at the Hirschen:
“But that’s when I realized.”
Forty years Alois the Lift had been stationed on the lift, and countless serious accidents had happened on the slopes in that time. Often enough Martin the helicopter had to come—twice somebody fell out of the chair. There’d actually been so many deaths that, over the years, they all ran together in Alois’s mind.
Not to mention New Zealand’s victims, who got crushed beneath the snowcat in the dark. See, the drunks fall down in the snow and then are too tired to get back up. And when you’re drunk, the snow seems so warm to you. So they just lie there in the warm snow and get a little shut-eye. Next morning, all you can do is send the corpses back to Germany.
But a dead body in a lift seat on the morning line-check, well, Alois the Lift had never had that happen before.
“What in god’s name!” Alois the Lift yelled out.
Now, you should know. For years, Alois had acted in his community theater troupe. The community theater troupe was founded in the mid-sixties by the tourism bureau. It goes without saying, though, billed to the tourists as some relic out of the Stone Age. This winter they put on The Truth about Moser Gudrun. A play in three acts, it said on the posters, by Silvia Soll. And among the actors listed on the posters, Alois the Lift came in third: “Alois Mitteregger (Alois the Lift).”
Alois the Lift was a real darling among community-theater-goers. But when he described the incident from the valley station at the Rainerwirt that night, well, community theater doesn’t come close.
“What in god’s name, I cried out,” he cried out—and so loud that everybody in the whole bar could understand. “I switched that lift off as fast it’d go to Off. Even though it was obvious that there was nothing left to do. But when you’re scared, you do it as fast as you can. Even if there’s no point. Because, if, first thing in the morning, somebody’s sitting on the lift, then he’s been sitting there all night. Since we don’t run it in between,” Alois the Lift says.
“It gave me a scare, of course, so I brought the lift to a halt a.s.a.p. We’ve had first aid, you know, mouth-to-mouth. But you’ll be doing mouth-to-mouth a long time with fifteen centimeters of snow between you and the body. Even though it’d just started snowing that morning. Been a clear starry sky that night. I took the dog out after the eight o’clock movie, and it was clear. And when it’s starry like that here, end of December, it’s at least seven degrees in the dead of night,” Alois the Lift says.
“Seven below,” Alois the Lift says, and looks at his listeners just long enough for them to get a little nervous. Just one of the pauses that they’re always rehearsing at the community theater. And before anyone could interrupt him like a bad theater prompter, Alois the Lift says:
“I’m in shock. I’m running so fast to the emergency brake that it nearly does me in. Even though I could tell right away it’s no use. But I’m running and I’m slipping on the fresh fallen snow. Underneath it’s a plate of ice—don’t budge all winter long. That’s where the load line snakes around, and up you go, easy, since they’re always polishing it with those sharp edges of theirs, all year long, pure formica. Now, I know this—I know every one of the ice sheets around the lift, and I haven’t gone down in years. Ha! They’re always falling all over the place there, the Dutch girls, because you don’t see the crust under the dust. But I do, of course, I know it. But now, I’m so scared that I’ve forgot. Could’ve turned out not too pretty, but I just barely catch hold of the emergency brake—and caught myself, too, right on the red emergency brake. That’s when it stopped, the lift,” Alois the Lift says.
“And I was still standing, too. I walk back to the chair where the body is, a little shaky in the knees from the shock—nearly took me down. But before I could get to knocking the snow off the corpse, the phone in the cabin starts ringing. Now I don’t know: should I knock the snow off the corpse or should I go in and get the phone. But the phone don’t stop, and because it’s too late anyway, I hurry up and go in.”
Maybe the lift operator was exaggerating a little with the pauses, because he raised his beer at this point and took an abnormally long sip.
“Meanwhile, Wörgötter’s made it to my lift terminal up top. An old fox, too, that one,” Alois the Lift says, smiling.
“But now he’s yelling, all excited and beside himself, saying that a body’s just come in on the chairlift up there. And right at that moment, when it’s at the very tiptop, that’s when the lift comes to a halt.”
CHAPTER 2
As far as America goes, Zell’s a tiny speck. But so far as Pinzgau’s concerned: forty hotels, nine schools, thirty mountains over 3,000 meters high, fifty-eight ski lifts, one lake, one detective.
The detective doesn’t actually belong to Zell, though. He was only there, of course, on account of the lift scandal. The two Americans froze to death on the chairlift in Zell at the end of December. And here it is, beginning of September, and the detective’s still here. He was slowly starting to get the feeling that he wouldn’t be getting out of here any time soon.
Like it creeps up on you, that kind of feeling. Or like when you get lost in a labyrinth or you get married and have kids. This is that detective, Brenner’s his name. Woke up in a panic a few nights already. Because he dreamed he was prohibited from leaving Zell until he’d solved the hopeless case of the two Americans.
But then he did solve it, even though it’d seemed hopeless to everybody. Now, it was a good three-quarters of a year after the fact, you’ve got to keep that in mind. Last December, the corpses, and now the next winter season’s already at the door. The police gave up before the month of January was out.
Brenner was still on the police force back then. They’d popped up from the city end of December, made a mess out of everything, and by the end of January they’d split again. Nothing and hopeless. Only the Pinzgauer Post stayed on it a little while longer. Till mid-February maybe. But, then, done and forgotten.
