Gebhart said nothing, but merely waited for Felix to finish. He wore that look of vague interest that Felix had learned was a screen for something else.
“So there,” he said to Gebhart when he had finished. “That’s about the only way I can describe it.”
Gebhart nodded his head slowly, as though something had happened as he had predicted, or didn’t understand and didn’t want to try. He looked out through the gap in the trees over the forestry road into where they had driven after leaving from the village. Felix had backed the Polo in at speed. It sank to the rims almost immediately. Gebhart, standing by his own car, made no comment.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Felix.
“I don’t. Just some days. And today is such a day.”
Felix looked down at the tracks his shoes had made in the carpet of brown pine needles.
“Well I think you’re stuck,” said Gebhart.
“That’s why I phoned you. I swear to God I’m not making this up.”
Gebhart drew on the cigarette and grimaced before exhaling.
He nodded toward the Polo.
“The car, I was referring to,” he said. He held out his cigarette and looked at it as though it had appeared from nowhere, and he frowned. Then he stubbed it out on the edge of his heel, before grinding it into the mushy ground underfoot.
“But it’s your own doing,” he said. “You look like you want to dump the car.”
“I’m a bit whacked. I wasn’t paying attention.”
Neither man spoke for several moments. The smoke from Gebhart’s cigarette was whipped away immediately by soft gusts of wind. The breeze was inconstant here amongst the trees, but it still had the trunks groaning faintly behind the louder hush of the conifers’ branches high up.
“As odd a request as I’ve ever had,” Gebhart said then. “Tell me again you’re not on drugs. Or going nuts?”
“Look, I really appreciate this. Gebi?”
“What?”
“I can’t believe anything from Speckbauer.”
“Well I can see that. The minute I saw that guy, well, that was clear enough.”
“I thought he just wanted a local guy to drive him around, maybe introduce him to the locality. But he has a different movie going on in his head.”
“But of course he would,” said Gebhart. “‘The Big Picture’ fellows.”
“He must have a lot of clout to get Schroek to put me working for him.”
Gebhart nodded.
“Has Schroek talked to you about him, maybe?”
Gebhart eyed him.
“Only to say that cooperating with him and his group is a priority.”
“Group?”
“Well naturally I looked him up,” said Gebhart. “As far as I could, before I’d get noticed. But I kept banging into unknowns.
Not something that inspires confidence. All I can find out is that his section is some kind of floater, a ‘task-force.’ No details.”
“In the BP, even?”
Gebhart flicked away the suggestion with his hand.
“Our glorious Polizei? The minute I’d try to weasel anything out of them, an old friend of mine even, they’d be looking in my keyhole.”
He heard Gebhart breathe out heavily through his nose once.
He took it to be exasperation more than humour.
“Okay,” Gebhart said. “If this is true, half of it some of it even you have to report it.”
He gave Felix a hard look.
“That’s my advice. And furthermore, if I was you, starting out my career, and I had an eye on getting places… ”
“Go on, Gebi. Say it.”
“I’d be telling Speckbauer too. That’s the real world these days.
Okay?”
“About my grandfather? I can’t screw over my own family.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gebhart and took a step away. “Don’t forget what you told me on the phone. We’re sticking to that. Or else, I walk.”
“Of course we are.”
“So we are on a timer, right? I give you two hours of my time, two hours I have manufactured as ‘police work’ which is true, even if I have gone along with your fashion request here.”
He paused and indicated his street clothes with a small wave of his hand.
“But if this stuff pertains to a murder investigation, or criminal activity…?”
Felix nodded.
“I know,” he said. “I know. We move it upstairs right away.”
“No family favours,” said Gebhart. “None.”
“No favours,” Felix repeated.
Gebhart seemed to linger on Felix’s words. Then he relaxed.
Felix followed him to his car and they both got in.
“And you’re supposed to be on a beach somewhere,” said Gebhart and turned the key. The diesel caught right away and its first wrenching revs rattled loud in the woods.
“With that nice girl?”
“That’s another story,” said Felix. “But not now.”
“Ah,” said Gebhart, and let it into reverse. He turned to see out the back window.
“Or starting out your new career, maybe looking forward to the heavenly union between us and our betters in the Bundespolizei not running about in off-hours with those two.”
Gebhart checked his mirrors, and then put it in first before the car had even stopped reversing. There was a moment’s hesitation before the car changed direction when Felix thought he too had bogged down. He had not imagined Gebhart capable of blue jeans, or looking like anything but the Gendarme who showed up for work in his uniform each day.
“Those two hounds,” said Gebhart. “They won’t rest long.”
“Speckbauer?”
“They’re not idiots. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was all part of their plan.”
“What, us here?”
“Sure. And who is the bigger dummy here, you or me? I should know better.”
Gebhart cleared his throat, and then rolled down his window full. He spat with a peculiar delicacy into the undergrowth slowly drifting by. Felix heard a truck labouring on the road outside, a clash of gears as the driver launched it at the hill with a full load.
“I may be pissing on my pension here,” Gebhart murmured.
“That’s why I had a cigarette. Yes, two and a bit years to go, and I’m starting over. I’ll be the best goddamned house painter you’ll ever see.”
The dark, malty smells from the thawed floor of the forest came through the car even stronger now. Dappled sunlight splashed on the window and disappeared as they rolled bumpily out toward the road.
“I didn’t realize that,” said Felix. “It’s okay if you change your mind.”
“Well now you tell me. But God has made me a magnet for scheisse, it seems. I have no doubt those two pricks will be asking me questions before the day is out.”
“Gebi, look”
“Shut up will you? You don’t know. There’s more here than your mess. All I’m saying is, if I had a brain, I’d be back at the post.”
“I don’t want you to get into scheisse. Look, I’ll go on my way.”
Gebhart sighed.
“Don’t underestimate the desire to get one back,” he said.
“Okay,” said Felix, uncertainly.
“‘Okay’? You haven’t a clue. You don’t need to know. So I never told you.”
“Told me what?”
Gebhart glanced over.
“I didn’t trust you,” he said. “To be frank.”
The car rolled into a lower spot and then a big bump shook the car.
“I know how those assholes work,” Gebhart went on, straining over the wheel to spot any more big dips and bumps. “I learned the hard way. They never believed me. They suspect their own mothers.”
Felix stared at him. Another bump shook creaks from the shocks and Gebhart swore as he righted himself.
“What the hell are you talking about, Gebi?”
“Forget it. It’s bullshit.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Didn’t I just tell you to forget it?”
“How can I? What’s with the freak-out here?”
“You want to know? Okay. I’ll tell you. You show up at the post, training for when Korschack heads off for his officer course. He won’t be back, that’s okay. The post is going to be closed anyway, in a year or two. It’s a soft number, a good place to train. Nothing happens in Stefansdorf, right?”
“But why are you mad at me now?”
“Ach! Listen. I won’t be repeating myself. You show up, I was saying. You screwed around in the Uni, making a crap job of it by the looks of things. Then you’re in the Gendarmerie, the Gendarmerie that’s headed for the amalgamation in a year, a new police force that you’ll automatically carry your job into? And you’ll move up by just turning up for duty, because you have your Matura, and a bit of Uni? Home free.”
“You’re like the others, Gebi. You’re suspicious of anyone who doesn’t talk soccer and drink Puntigamer, and trash people.”
“Have I finished? No I haven’t. So listen.”
Felix waited.
“Well? You think you know things? Let me tell you this, then.
Your father goes out and there’s a whisper about him yeah, I heard. And don’t look at me like that. You know part of why they’re getting rid of the Gendarmerie? Do you?”
“Money?” said Felix. “The EU?”
“No, and it’s not because they have to find jobs for the Customs guys now the Slovenians and the frigging Hungarians and the goddamned Czechs are EU. And it’s not just about saving money, or some asshole in Brussels or someplace, or 9/11 crap.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? Deals corruption, whatever the fancy word is. Nobody admits it in public. But those guys know, they know how bad it is. It’s been going on awhile. There’s a wave of stuff coming through, since things went nuts in Yugoslavia.
It can’t fit under the carpet anymore, see? So, they suspect everybody, everything. Now, imagine how you look to that pair. A background like you have.”
“You’re serious, I think.”
“God, but you’re a depp sometimes. So frigging naive. It’s why I said that I didn’t trust you. And I still don’t. But not the way you think. I don’t think you’re bent, like some plan to get you to infiltrate the new police thing or rubbish like that. You’re not crook material. Believe me, I know. But I just don’t trust you. I don’t trust you not to land me in the crap with this stumbling around you’re at.
I lost both ways, see?”
“No.”
“For God’s sake… If I stay clear of you and your nonsense, and ignore those two puppet masters using you for bait or whatever they’re really doing up here well there’s my stupid conscience screwed. If you get done in, how the hell can I give those brilliant lectures to my kids about doing the right thing?”
The road came in sight. Gebhart slowed his car even more.
Felix felt it begin to sink a little, but Gebi kept it chugging steadily low in second gear.
“And if I get run over again… life has no improvement there, has it?”
“‘Run over?’ ‘Again’?”
“Yes, ‘again.’ They’re not going to do this again. Not to me.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Well,” said Gebhart, speaking now almost through clenched teeth. “So the moment of truth here arrives. Didn’t you ever wonder what the likes of me, a brilliant policeman, is doing behind the door in Stefansdorf?”
Felix saw that the anger had passed, and Gebhart’s sardonic tone had returned.
“Not really.”
“Well you should. I am a good policeman. It’s my career.”
“What do you want me to say?” Felix said. “I just thought, well Gebi, he has his security. Promotions happen. You like a quiet life maybe. ‘The landing strip,’ right?”
Gebhart brought the car to a slow stop near the entrance, checking for any sign of soft ground beneath. With the car idling, he rubbed at his nose and looked across at Felix.
“That’s what the old guys call it, sure. No. Me, I have other things, far more important. My kids, my family. You probably think that’s schmaltzy crap, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. But anyway, I’ll tell you. Any other day I wouldn’t, but you are digging your own hole in the ground here. But when I’m done telling you, I don’t want to hear any questions, observations, comment. Got that?”
Felix nodded.
“Fifteen years ago, the Yugos started up again, right? It had been brewing. They have to murder one another every few years. I don’t care if that sounds bad. It’s true. It’s in their genes or something. But there’s shooting and killing and it only gets worse. You were still in diapers probably.”
“I was seven or eight, actually.”
“Seven,” said Gebhart, as through it were a joke. “Eight?
Anyway, I’m probably never going to talk to you, or to any cop, about this again.”
Felix looked up to the patches of sky between the conifers.
“Things move. Money, guns, drugs, any crime it all goes with war if you call that ‘war.’ And here we are, just in the EU. It’s only been a few years, but we’re next door to this crap. So a lot starts to happen. One thing leads to another. You see?”
“So far.”
“Here’s me then. I work with a guy, I won’t even say his name.
I’m friendly with him. I respect him. I socialize with him. You see the picture, what I am about to tell you?”
Felix shook his head.
“A policeman? A Gendarme? You guess the rest.”
Felix returned Gebhart’s gaze.
“I think I do, now.”
Gebhart held his forefinger to his head, and pulled back his thumb, and let it go.
“The way out,” he said. “For him. But not for me. Obviously.”
“They thought…?”
Speckbauer nodded several times, slowly.
“So when you show up at the post, fresh out of Gendarmerie school, I think, well, so what. It’s a good post for it. But then I see your name. And I ask myself this: They’re putting this kid with me?
Whose father was…? You don’t have to be crazy, or paranoid, I should say. So: got all that? Enough of it?”
“I had no idea.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Gebhart. “Don’t I know it. I didn’t either. That’s what happened to me. They gave up on me after a while, the Internals, but I know damned well my file was marked that day. I mean, what was my defence when they said I must have some idea what my partner was up to, that no one can be that stupid, or naive, or…? Now: forget this. You know enough now.”
Gebhart put the car in first gear. He peered over the banks that bordered this part of the road here.
“Listen,” said Felix. “Just go back. I never saw you.”
“Well now. You sound as out of it as I was then.”
“Really. I phoned you, and you turned me down. I’ll drop all this on Speckbauer, the maps, what I heard from my grandparents, all that.”
“Really?” said Gebhart, from some far place behind his squint.
“I’m over my head. Everything’s screwed up.”
Gebhart drew in a breath, held it, and let it out noisily.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “But the world has already spun on.”
“What does that mean?”
“I put in the search on this Fuchs guy.”
“So the system logged you.”
“The system logged me. Or Korschak, or whoever was in the post. It shouldn’t take them more than one half-second to figure out who.”
“‘Them,’” Felix muttered.
“Funny, isn’t it? ‘Them’ ‘Them’ is us, right?”
“Yes,” said Felix. “But are you sure you got the right Fuchs?”
“‘Equipment operator ‘seasonal operator’ in the forestry, the mill?”
“Red hair, beard?”
“No beard on his driver’s licence. Reddish, rusty maybe.”
“Equipment operator? The only time I met him, he was driving an old man to his card games, having a beer and jausen.”
“Slacker?”
“I don’t know, but probably. What’s his record?”
“Surprise: Herr Fuchs is not a criminal.”
“You’re joking.”
“This is not a joking day. Zero. Like I said. I go left here, right?”
The smoother section of road that Gebhart let the Golf onto soon resumed its steep climb, the clattery sound of the engine coming back to Felix from the banks that lined it here.
“What was the passport picture like?”
“He doesn’t have one. But the EU’s a big place to wander now, isn’t it? Anyone can get into a car and drive to, I don’t know, Paris, and no one has to know.”
“Married, family or anything?”
“Not married, in his thirties, does what he pleases. Sounds like a pretty good life to me. I’ll bet he has a killer CD collection and a garage full of decent tools.”
“And who knows,” Gebhart added after a few moments.
“Maybe he’ll turn out to be a half-decent fellow. So he drives some local geezers about a bit? Sounds like a good thing, one would say.
Families are busy these days, you know. So busy.”
Felix checked his watch.
“Well I phoned my Opa Kimmel. He’s not going out this afternoon, he said.”
“Is he used to you calling in on him?”
Felix shook his head.
“He has all his marbles?” Gebhart asked. “Or enough of them?”
“We’ll see,” was all Felix could come up with. “He can be a bit.. remote.”
“You said the village,” said Gebhart. He pushed against his seat belt to look around at the church and houses receding in his mirror.
“It’s spread out,” said Felix. “Go up the hill here, and watch for tractors. It’s tight. It gets narrower further up.”
Gebhart weaved his head about to get a last look at the church tower in the side mirror before the car took the summit. The road began a gradual descent into a small valley that appeared to be the last before the mountains started behind.
“Is that your family church back there, the graveyard?”
“It is.”
Gebhart braked and then he geared down when the road entered a curving cut between banks. The first of the grass in the meadows here had established itself, and to Felix now seemed to almost hover above the fields in an almost luminous filament, more like baby hair than the hardy, thick grasses they’d be before the month was out.
“Well you won’t often see that,” Gebhart said. “Those masons know their stuff.”
“The masons?”
“That wall by the graveyard. The road was made later, or it sank or something?”
“I suppose.”
“You mean you don’t know, and you grew up hereabouts?”
Flattened cakes of mud from tractor wheels began to spread out more across the pavement. The rumbling coming up from the tires became more constant. Winter had chewed up the edges of the road in many places. Without planning to, Felix had been rehearsing how he’d approach his grandfather, how he’d persuade him to talk about his past. He could already imagine the distant gaze and the indifference in his eyes, the slow, steady enunciation of his words, each weighed.
Gebhart slowed for two potholes.
“Maybe we should have parachuted in.”
“Well you’ll have something to talk to my Opa Kimmel about then.”
“Parachutes? Potholes?”
“He wanted to be a paratrooper. ‘To land on Crete’ my dad told me once.”
“And did he?”
“He was fourteen when that was going on.”
Gebhart changed into second for a steep section.
“All the wind and air up here maybe,” he murmured. “Gets into you, maybe?”
The Golf chugged through the section of road that ran almost through the Klamminger’s farmyard.
“What?” said Gebhart. “The one place we pass, and there’s no action here?”
There was fresh mud in the yard, clothes on the line.
Something about the turn in the road, or the drumming of the muddy roadway, had awakened something in Felix. He thought of his Grandfather Kimmel, that upright way he sat in the church pew, as though he were in a trance.
“Talk about out of the way,” Gebhart went on. “Is he a hermit or something?”
When Felix didn’t answer, Gebhart looked over.
“Second thoughts?” he asked.
“No. I’m thinking. Keep going.”
Felix opened the window. There was a sharp edge to the air up here. Gebhart sighed and reached for his mobile.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Nothing now. I had one bar back in the village.”
Felix pointed to a line of electricity poles and the ragged clump of conifers, a windbreak, where it ended.
“You’ll see the roof in a minute,” he said.
“Where is everybody?” asked Gebhart. “Doesn’t everyone here depend on their neighbours?”
He glanced over.
“Let me guess,” he said to Felix then: “‘That’s another story?’”
“You said it, Gebi.”
“Does this place have a name?”
“It’s called Pfarrenord,” Felix said, looking back down the valley.
“Is everyone here holy or something, this ‘parish’ thing?”
“It’s a local name. Not the name on a map. It’s windy here.
Colder, people say. So someone came up with ‘The North Parish.’”
Gebhart sighed and rubbed his nose.
“Watch, there’s a bend here.”
The road twisted at the spot Felix had fallen off his new bike all those years ago. He remembered having a tantrum, and his mother had soothed him. Later, when he’d brought it up in some argument as to why he had to visit his grandfather at all, she’d told him that anxiety did strange things to a kid. It was something to get over, she’d said; something to build on.
“So tell me,” said Gebhart. “How are you going to get things going here? This ‘little chat’?”
“We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.”
“Which page of the manual is that see-how-it-goes technique on?”
Felix was suddenly glad of Gebhart’s breezy sarcasm.
He turned to him.
“Maybe it’s changed since you last looked at it. Back in nineteen-eighty-nothing.”
“Listen to you. You spend a couple of days with suits from Strassgangerstrasse, and now you’re a thick-head like them. Well done, Mr. Know-It-All.”
Felix studied the cloud shadows that now lay over much of the forest cover on the hills about.
“So now you know what I think about your new friends,” said Gebhart.
“They didn’t fool me,” he said. “Completely, anyway.”
“Richtig? But you’re still going to unload that stuff on them, aren’t you? Those maps and documents you were talking about?”
“Soon.”
“‘Soon’? Cheeky.”
“I’ll decide after I hear my opa.”
Gebhart looked over.
“Well you know those two are not sitting on their hands,” he said. “I’ll bet they’re knocking on that guy’s door already, Fuchs.”
“And that’s why I want to be here first.”
“We, Gendarme, we. Remember that, will you? I’m wearing a big bull’s eye on my arsch here for these couple of hours.”
“Gebi”
“Don’t tell me how you appreciate it. That only makes me worry more. The clock is ticking. Ninety minutes, and I’m back in my uniform at work, at the post.”
“Watch for water on the road up ahead. Sometimes you get a pool here before the warm weather.”
Gebhart left the Golf in second, pulling up the hill at a steady rate, the poles passing slowly.
“Scheisse,” said Gebhart with quiet malice, placing his foot over the brake pedal. “You were right.”
The pool of water seemed to run for 20 or more metres on the road.
“Deep, do you think well look.”
Gebhart brought the Golf to a stop slowly. An Opel blocked the road beyond the pool. Its back wheels were still in the water.
“There’s your answer,” Gebhart said. “That guy tried to plough through.”
He moved the gearshift from side to side in neutral.
“Is that your opa’s jalopy?”
A rally stripe with some kind of blue sparkly stuff ran across the top of the back window.
Felix heard Gebhart stroking his bottom lip.
“The alloy wheels I could forgive,” Gebhart murmured. “But Maria, the Michael Schumacher stuff tacked on there? Your opa’s hardly a Rock 100 FM man, is he?”
Felix couldn’t be sure of another sticker, but two he recognized.
“The plate’s local,” said Gebhart.
“Yamaha,” Felix murmured.
Gebhart stopped playing with the gearshift. He looked over, his eyebrows raised.
“Herr Red-head? Our person of interest? Mr. Fuchs up here on a visit?”
Felix shrugged.
“How very damned convenient,” said Gebhart. “Ran it through here, stalled it.”
He put the car in reverse.
“What are you doing?”
“You think I’m going to just park it on this cow path? I’m going to turn it around. And you’re going to help me.”
Felix stood by the entrance to the field.
“Make damned sure my wheels don’t get stuck when I back it in there,” Gebhart called out. “Or you’ll pull this car out yourself.”
The earth sucked at Felix’s shoes as he took another step back.
The diesel smoke from Gebhart’s car seemed to settle around his face, like gnats. He slapped the roof when he saw the wet ridge of mud begin to form to the side of the tire.
Gebhart took his time making the 50-point turn. Felix watched his hands and arms work the wheel, but he did not make out any words in Gebhart’s steady, philosophical-sounding muttering.
Gebhart stepped out of the car eventually, testing the margins of the road to both sides. Felix was listening to the breeze that was coming over the fields here, suddenly quiet after the Golf’s engine was finally off.
“I’m locking it,” said Gebhart. “This is the end of the road, after your opa’s place, right?”
Felix nodded. He thought he had heard something on the breeze. Maybe a bird, or the faint whistle and sough from the stirring blades of new grass. He looked toward the trees that surrounded three sides of the house again, and caught a glimpse of the roof.
There was no smoke from the chimney.
“Come on,” said Gebhart. “Get it over with. It’s going to be a mud fest anyway.”
After a few steps, he put out his arm to stop Felix.
“He has a dog, right?”
“A Shepherd, yes.”
“Where is it?”
“We’re a bit from the house yet.”
“And does this dog listen to you?”
“Usually. It knows me.”
“‘Usually’? Wait a minute.”
Felix watched him skip back to the car and open the trunk. After a brief rummage, he drew out a rusted rebar, with a curve in it.
“I am not a dog man,” said Gebhart. “But I’m not a masochist either.”
The Kadett was unlocked. There were magazines on the back seat, rolled-up wrappers from McDonald’s, and some pieces of machined metal covered in a fur of oil and dirt. The ashtray was used, a lot. The custom steering wheel had a wood trim.
“A boy racer,” said Gebhart. “In this piece of junk?”
Felix looked at the floor mats in the front. There were moist sections on them.
“Not much of a Schumacher, is he,” Gebhart muttered. “You think he’d know better.”
The side of the house came into view now, its whitewashed wall looking more grey in the shadows of the trees. Felix sought out any movement that could mean the dog was about, and had at least heard them, and was coming to investigate.
“Not much farming done here,” said Gebhart. “Rented out?”
“A few years now,” Felix replied. He stopped and listened.
“You hear something?”
Felix couldn’t be sure. They stepped down off the road by the stone pillars that marked the entrance to the farmyard.
“Cattle, before he retired?” Gebhart asked.
Felix realized that Gebhart was nervous now. The walk up from the car had him breathing loudly too.
“Yes,” he said. “Look, the dog’s name is Tilla. And don’t worry, he’s old now.”
“Tilla? Big?”
“Atilla. He’s a fair size, but lazy, if I remember.”
Felix looked at the kitchen window. He could only make out the reflection of the trees on the surface.
“I’d sure like to know where the beast is,” he heard Gebhart murmur. “I mean, how does it look I come visiting with an iron bar in my hand?”
Felix looked toward the window again. Beyond the mirrored trees and patches of sky, there was someone moving around in there.
He stopped completely when he heard the voice. It was raised, like a question, and angry, but he couldn’t make out the three or four words.
“What the hell was that?”
There was no movement there now.
Then a door slammed inside the house. It was followed by a shout, and thumps that seemed to move through the house toward the side door.
“Is this how?”
The rest of Gebhart’s sentence was cut by the sound of the side door crashing open. It was hard enough and fast enough for Felix to hear the metal grind as it hit its limit, and bounce back.
He was already moving toward the noise when he heard the rasping scrape of a shoe digging into concrete, its owner running.
A red-haired man came around the corner of the house then, his mouth wide open as much as his eyes. Felix saw that Gebhart too was manoeuvering to block Fuchs. Fuchs was breathless already, panicking. He gave a quick glance back at the house even as he came at the two policemen. He wasn’t slowing.
“Fuchs!” Felix yelled, and he went into a crouch. “Stop!”
Fuchs had his arms out already. Gebhart also yelled at Fuchs to stop. Felix heard another shout too, and the sound of the door opening and rebounding again.
Felix began to weave side to side to match Fuchs efforts to sidestep him. The red face and bulging eyes of a madman, he thought, and huge eyeballs rolling around. Was it drugs, he wondered, or a fit? But this flabby bastard wasn’t agile, and probably had never been. He was going to kill himself running like this.
Felix kept calculating where to meet Fuchs, and get a hold on him without risking a head-on. He kept his eyes on Fuchs’ hands.
The figure that now came around the side of the house at a dash drew a quick look from Felix, but Fuchs was within a couple of metres now. He was panting, and trying to say, or shout something. Felix was aware that Gebhart had come around to his left now, and he was shouting again. But Fuchs had given up any effort to twist his overweight, flapping mass into any more dodges.
In the moments before Felix actually reached out to get hold of some passing part of Fuchs, his mind scrambled to put things together, and failed. A dog who usually met you down the road from the farm? This other man who had just run out of the house, with arms raised like wings to slow himself, had to be a policeman one of Speckbauer’s? Who else but a policeman would have a gun in his hand? Even as Fuchs filled up his view, Felix registered that Sepp Gebhart had raised the rebar and had gone into a crouch. Whatever Gebhart shouted was torn away when Fuchs barrelled into him.
Felix felt his feet leave the ground with the impact. He heard a yell on his way up, and was suddenly aware of Fuchs’ smell, even the fabric of his jean jacket. His hand clung to Fuchs’ jacket for a moment, but his fingers slid as he was carried on and out by the force of Fuchs’ rush, and he felt himself falling. He reached out as his knee hit the ground, and grasped Fuchs’ leg. He was dragged for a moment, and he had time to feel the surge of pain coming from his knee and his hip. Then Fuchs’ fat legs were coming down at him, knee first.
All he knew after Fuchs landed on him was that he still had Fuchs’ leg. So it was Fuchs babbling and kicking at him then. Grit ground into his elbows and then his face as Fuchs tried to twist free, his breath ragged and wheezing in between squeals and half-shouts.
Fuchs rolled over on him, and pounded on his arm with his fist.
Felix tucked his head in tighter, curling himself around the leg. A floating feeling came over Felix then. He wondered how you could get such a sound out of a man, like a drum. It was Fuchs’ hammering him in the ribs, while trying to kick him with his free leg. It wasn’t hurting. He wondered why there was no pain yet, especially now that this huge oaf was grinding him into the cement with every twist and blow. And over it all, the absurdity of all this, out of the blue.
Then the hammering stopped, and something heavy slid over him. It was Fuchs, he knew, but a trick. His jacket smelled of petrol and cigarettes and BO. Fuchs was faking it, preparing for a sudden jerk, to get loose finally. Felix knew something was going on around him, but it seemed to be happening at a distance, in some muffled way. He called out Gebhart’s name. He wanted to hear him say that things were fine, or under control, or something. He braced himself for Fuchs’ big move, and he called out again. There were footsteps somewhere, and shouts.
His head felt like it was full of water now. How long had passed since he’d seen Fuchs rushing at him? This was the same as what had happened in that soccer game years ago. He had run into the goalpost for a pass, and it never came. It was that time when all his teammates seemed to go away but they had left their bodies there, and their worried faces looking down at him. But was it really concussion, when you could even think concussion? Ridiculous.
Now Fuchs was talking to him. That must be his head then, that big lump lying on his shoulders? The words were low and short and hesitant. Like talk in a dream, they made no sense.
Someone called out his name. Felix pushed up but Fuchs wasn’t moving. He murmured and gave a soft lisp, like a kid in sleep.
“Gebi,” Felix said, loudly.
There was a thumping sound now and Fuchs gave a jolt. Here was his move then, Felix was sure, and he pulled hard on Fuchs’ jacket. Instead of the blow from Fuchs, or a sharp pull away, he only felt the oaf get heavier. Felix’s mind preoccupied itself for a time with how it could be that he seemed both bigger, or at least more spread out, and heavier. Was he trying to crush him? Something had to give.
He began to push at Fuchs. His hands and knuckles sank into the belly. He heard a wheeze and a sound like Fuchs was about to clear his throat. Felix got one shoulder off the ground, and he craned his neck.
The light from the sky had changed, to a glary, milky luminescence. That was the house over there in the corner of his vision, and that policeman was there, the one that Speckbauer had sent here.
He was standing a few metres back, toward the house, looking at the ground, away from him.
“Get this fat idiot off me,” Felix said.
The man turned to him. His chest was heaving, and he was saying something between breaths, quietly. A frown, something like incredulity or fear twisted his whole face. He began to take slow steps toward Felix, lifting his arm as he drew closer. The man stopped and said something louder, but then made a small staggering lurch off sideways. A sharp crack sounded, and echoed across the yard. He made one swerving step, and seemed about to shout as he fell. There was a dull scraping thud. Felix realized that the policeman hadn’t made any effort to check his fall.
He drew in a breath to yell out. He had to get up, to move away.
He got one knee working and levered more of Fuchs’ weight. He pushed again, and got his forearm into it. He had no strength.
Fuchs flopped more as he pushed, and even seemed to roll back each time. His palms felt slimy grit on the cement under him as he tried to get his other shoulder free. Fuchs had knocked himself out, that was it.
With both hands free, Felix took two tries to get a roll going.
Fuchs’ weight began to budge.
Up on his elbows now, Felix saw red on his clothes, and sprays of red like freckles on Fuch’s arms. Gebhart was lying down closer to the shed. He was not moving. Something else was: a knee waving slowly side to side. Speckbauer’s man? And now he was turning on his side, groaning louder, and pushing himself up on one elbow.
A man called Felix’s name now, and before he could turn around toward the house to see where the voice was coming from, the man’s face flushed red and he seemed to bounce, and the noise of a gunshot echoed across the yard and into the hills.
It was still echoing faintly in the distance when Felix heard footsteps crossing the yard now, slowly, and talking. There was a metallic scrape and a loud click, as metal was pushed against metal.
Part of Felix’s mind understood what the sound meant.
Someone called his name again, in between his own shouts and Felix kicking free of Fuchs at last. The man with the rifle was breathing heavily and slowly, and in between breaths his voice was barely above a murmur in a slow, considered, disdainful tone that Felix recognized.
He began to hear words he could understand. He wondered if the man was dressed in his grandfather’s clothes, and had a mask so exact as the slight stoop and the voice, even the dialect.
“Opa?”
“Bleib ruhig, kid. Quiet. I took care of him. Have you been shot?”
“I don’t think so. I’m going to be sick, I think, or something.”
There was a movement from where Gebhart lay. Felix saw a leg move, and watched Gebhart curl up slightly. He did not want to look down at Fuchs. He let his eyes move around the yard. There was a vague ripple to everything he looked at now. How small it seemed now, where it had seemed so huge when he had been a kid.
Someone was asking if he could get up. His grandfather’s voice.
“I don’t know,” Felix said, or thought he said.
“The other one,” his grandfather said. “The other tschuschen?”
“No, Opa. He came with me, he’s a Gendarme”
Something made the air quiver. Felix had a moment before his throat filled, and then he was doubled up with the spasms. The vomit burned and scraped as it burst from his throat.
Through swimming eyes he saw his grandfather lean down, stooped, over Gebhart. The spasms came slower, and he was able to call out Gebhart’s name. He saw his grandfather’s head turn his way before another spasm tore at him, and left him exhausted. He ignored the grit grinding into his elbow and got on all fours. He was wet, but he refused to look down as he began to scuttle slowly toward Gebhart.
“Opa,” he said. “Is he okay?”
“He’s saying something.”
His grandfather had to pause to get his breath now. “I think he’s been shot.”
“Gebi?” Felix called out. “I’m here, I’m coming.”
He pushed off with his hands. Rising, his leg flashed a pain that almost blinded him, and he stopped, wavering. He worked out of his jacket and threw it in front of him. Everything was rippling and folding around him now. He saw his grandfather shuffling across the yard.
“An ambulance, Opa. The police.”
He let himself slowly down onto one knee. He saw that the red stain had spread and was finding its own way along the cement toward him.
“Can you hear me, Gebi?”
The reply in a calm voice that ended in a sharp intake of breath.
“Too well.”
Gebhart’s jean jacket was wet too.
“You’re hurt. We’re going to have an ambulance in here so fast.. ”
A short breath ended in a hiss. Then Gebhart’s clenched eyes opened.
“What a mess,” he said in voice so normal that it took Felix aback. “What a stupid, dumb mess we’re in, gell?”
“They’ll be here any minute,” said Felix.
Gebhart’s eyes strained now.
“Are there more of those guys? Are they gone?”
“They’re gone. I’m okay, I think. That guy was coming over.
My opa got him.”
Gebhart’s eyes seemed to lose their focus.
“He’s phoning, Gebi, right now. They’ll pull out all the stops.”
He pulled up Gebhart’s shirt tail and saw a darker spot amongst the wash of blood above his trouser belt. He pushed the sleeve of his jacket onto the wound.
“Gebi I have to get you over. I have to get a towel on it.”
“What,” said Gebhart.
Felix’s hand was wet immediately as he reached around. He pushed the sleeve hard into the wettest part. Gebhart grunted, and sighed. Then he spoke in that same clear voice.
“My wife is going to be pissed.”
“She can take it out on me, Gebi. I swear. We’re going to get you to hospital. You can watch her beat me up there, okay?”
Gebhart frowned. His eyes regained their focus.
“That Speckbauer, one of his people?”
“No.”
Gebhart winced and squeezed out a word that Felix didn’t understand.
“That bastard,” Gebhart whispered then. “Look what he’s done. He screwed you around, and now”
He clenched his eyes tight. When he opened them again they stayed wide, and fastened on Felix’s.
“Who is that?”
“That’s my opa. He’s yelling at the police, I think.”
Gebhart started to say something but he made a soft groan, and held his breath and closed his eyes.
Felix held the jacket tighter under Gebhart’s back. He watched his chest expand and contract. His own head felt tight now, and the sourness in his mouth seemed to leak out and take over all about him. The light pulsed above the farmhouse, and he closed his eyes a second to stop it. There were footsteps in the yard again.
“They’re coming,” said his grandfather. “They thought I was joking.”
Felix wanted to tell his grandfather to watch how he carried the hunting rifle. He saw the agitation in the face, something he couldn’t remember seeing before.
He felt, more than heard, Gebi murmur under him. He looked down, and saw that the eyes were half open.
“Gebi? I’m here. Help’s going to be here any minute. You hear me?”
Gebhart made a small, slow nod. Felix laid his other hand on Gebhart’s ribcage and waited for each gentle rise and fall.
His grandfather held out a towel. Felix looked into his face, and saw something beyond the agitation and confusion. His grandfather shook his head once, then again, and looked away.
“I don’t know,” he heard him mutter, but he didn’t look away from the jacket he was drawing out. Gebhart made a sigh, and said something under his breath. Felix grabbed the towel and quickly swapped it for his jacket under Gebhart.
“Talk, Gebi,” he said. “I want to hear your stories. More stories, now. Okay?”
Gebhart opened one eye but didn’t look at Felix.
“Oh Christ,” he whispered, and grimaced, and closed his eye again.
Panic seized Felix, and the yawning space around him pulsed and quivered again.
“You listen then,” he said, louder than he had intended. It was his own voice, his mind said, but it sounded like someone else’s.
The bile at the back of his throat hurt, and the breeze pressed his wet shirt against his skin, chilling him.
“I’m going to talk. Are you listening? I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do when this is fixed. You know that stube out near the Woods, the heurigen place…?”
He paused to hear any word from Gebhart, but he was beginning to shiver.
“I’m paying, Gebi,” he went on. “There’s going to be everything. On me.”
His grandfather was on one knee know, and his face had fallen.
He looked ancient, and his eyes rested on the reddening towel in Felix’s hand. He was mumbling, and for a moment Felix thought he was praying.
“Opa, phone them back, the Gendarmerie. Tell them the helicopter, a mountain rescue one. The road is blocked.”
His grandfather had difficulty getting up. He hesitated before heading for the farmhouse. He looked down at Felix.
“You,” he whispered and shook his head. “You and that father of yours.”