Brenner and God (3 page)

In retrospect, those seemed like the good old days to Frau Doctor Kressdorf. Like a carefree paradise. When she was still capable of getting worked up over a power outage or a water pipe breaking. When she still believed that a flooded clinic was reason enough to call the police. Or when a couple of cameras in the lobby had her running straight to the newspapers. And when, even in the middle of the power outage, it still occurred to her to call her driver before he got to Kitzbühel so he could relay everything to her husband.

She couldn’t have known that her driver wasn’t even on the autobahn yet. Only in hindsight did she realize that, at the exact time of the power outage, Herr Simon was still standing in the gas station convenience mart and having a quick double espresso.

Two gas station drunks were hanging out there, too, but Herr Simon, only coffee. Because first of all, as a chauffeur, no alcohol, and second of all, it didn’t agree with the pills. Interesting, though. Since he’d stopped drinking alcohol, coffee had become all the more important to
Herr Simon
. He never would have dreamed of being called that back when he was still on the police force. But Kressdorf and the Frau
Doctor and everyone at the clinic referred to him that way, a service name, as it were.

Now don’t go thinking that it bothered him, because: best job he’d had his whole life. Kressdorf’s chauffeur, always meeting interesting people, you get the idea. Congressman Stachl, for example, who was just on the gas station’s TV, on account of the morning news. Guaranteed that the gas station attendant and the two drunks didn’t know him. The fatter of the two only laughed at the congressman’s first name, because
Aurelius Stachl
, the fat drunk said,
a name like that’s its own punishment
. But he definitely wouldn’t have thought that Herr Simon might know Stachl personally. And not just know him, but know things about him. And he was overjoyed for Helena that her father had been given a chance with MegaLand because—college tuition, you can’t start thinking too early about that, and you can’t leave it all up to the Frau Doctor either. And one thing you can’t forget. The clinic still wasn’t completely out of debt, on account of the investments and the expenditures—don’t even ask.

Nothing on the docket now except getting Helena to Kitzbühel. A glorious, sunny morning it was, and with his heart beating all the better from the espresso, he took those few steps from the gas station to the car with real attitude, like you might say,
life: perfectly okay
. When you think about what he was like a year ago, you’ve really got to say, hats off to the pills.

But when he saw that the car was empty, the pills had a hard time with him, of course. The double espresso stepped right into the foreground now because as he walked from the gas station to the BMW and didn’t see Helena’s head
through the rear window, his heart stood still a moment, and then started pounding like he’d gulped down not just a double espresso but the contents of the entire coffee machine.

Interesting, though. His heart wasn’t beating where the heart’s supposed to beat, but in his head. Because his jugular must have been thicker than the fuel hose he’d gassed up the BMW with—
unbelievable, what a car like this guzzles
, but he told himself,
why should it bother me, I don’t have to pay for it, and I’m too old for climate change
.

The blood was pumping so hard through his arteries and into his brain now that his entire head was throbbing like the time he’d held his ear right up to the speaker at a Jimi Hendrix concert in Stuttgart, 1969. They fit seven people in an old Citroën on the drive from Leitner’s house to Stuttgart and back—eight of them, considering Leitner’s girlfriend was already pregnant by the drive home. But she told them all it wasn’t Hendrix’s, no, it was Helmut Kögelberger’s.

The hammering in his head was so loud that he didn’t even hear the truck thundering down the street. And I do believe, even to this day, that it saved his life. Because he only noticed the truck after it had driven past him, i.e., too late to throw himself in front of its wheels. And maybe, given how much blood was shooting into his head, maybe that much more of the pills reached his brain. Because suddenly there was a straw to grasp at again, a glimmer of hope again, a silver lining again, in other words—
maybe I’m deceiving myself. Just because I can’t see Helena’s head through the back window when I’m fifteen feet away doesn’t mean that she’s not in the car anymore
.

Maybe she fell asleep and is just a little slouched down in her
car seat, and that’s why I don’t see her
, Herr Simon told himself. Which was complete nonsense, of course, when he knew for a fact that he should be able to see the child from here. Nor can a child really slouch if she’s buckled correctly into her car seat, and Herr Simon never drove three feet without buckling Helena in according to the letter of the law—that you can’t fairly accuse him of.

But by the next step, direction BMW, the blood in his head was already floating that last straw out to sea.
Who knows, maybe it’s just a reflection in the back window
. There are so many cars today with tinted windows you can’t even see through. And now he really did see something, or so it seemed. Helena had turned herself around in her car seat and was staring at him, deathly pale and with panic-stricken eyes. But it was only the reflection of his own face and the panic in his own eyes that caused Herr Simon to barely recognize himself. Now with conviction, another step and another step, but even from two steps away, still nothing of Helena to be seen. And as he stood directly beside the car, still nothing of Helena to be seen, not even through the side window. And when finally, with trembling fingers, he pressed the button on the car’s key fob, it was of no use.

He kept pressing it, but the doors just unlocked and locked and unlocked and locked themselves, making that damned noise. Just once I’d like to understand how this remote-keyless-system actually works, because technology: a world of magic. Herr Simon was less interested in these sorts of things, he’d never had much of a grasp of technology, he used to get criticized for that all the time on the police force. A certain interest had awoken in him more recently
since he’d become a chauffeur, because he’d counted himself fortunate a few times now to be living in an age when there are things that nobody would have dreamed of before, for example, unlocking a car from a distance like a magician. But now he had to accept that there was nothing magical about the key he was holding in his hand, because he could press and he could wish all he wanted, he could lock and unlock a thousand times, and he’d still only produce this knocking sound, like a drummer in a funeral march, driving the tears from the eyes of the mourners at the grave site. But for all that, the little girl, who the Frau Doctor had placed in his care, didn’t pop back up.

Interesting, though. He must have blacked out at this point—missing footage, if you will. Because later he had no memory of how he had run around the gas station. He didn’t remember running through the car wash. He didn’t remember stumbling out of the lot and running up and down the street. He didn’t remember running a second and then a third time around the gas station and through the car wash. Or better put, he did in fact remember it. But in reverse! Now how is something like this possible?

Watch closely. His forward-recollection kicked in only at the point when he ran back into the gas station. He doesn’t mention a word about the child having disappeared, instead:
something’s been stolen from my car
. Because otherwise the gas station attendant is going to call the police right away if he says
what
has been stolen. The police gave Herr Ex-Detective hell for that one.
Why didn’t you call the police immediately, close off the streets, crackdowns, raids, the works!
And I do have to say, with something like this, you’ve simply got
to call the police. Personal history with the police notwithstanding. Herr Simon made a big mistake there. Maybe the pills had him feeling a little too sure of himself. Even if afterward you can say ten times over,
it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, there would’ve been no point in calling the police right away, because already far too late to close off the streets
. But he couldn’t have known that. And at least he would have spared himself a little trouble. In hindsight. Above all he would have been spared those smartasses at the newspaper, because they managed to dig up from some channel or another his ancient police academy photo, and beneath it they put the caption:
BODYGUARD SIPS SLOW DRIP BEFORE CALLING COPS
.

Here I feel the need to add: that’s not quite right, either! Because he only ordered his second cup of coffee in order to strike up a conversation with the gas station attendant now. Whether anything might have shown up on the surveillance monitors. The gas station attendant was very sociable, or really I should say cash register attendant, because attendants don’t attend to the gas anymore these days, just the cash register. His name tag said
Milan
, and the young man explained to his customer in flawless German that the fuel pumps were surveilled, entrance surveilled, cash register surveilled, but over by the air pump, where Herr Simon had of course moved the car, not surveilled. But I have to say, this makes no sense, because an air pump can be stolen faster than a gas pump. But that’s just how it was, and really, Herr Simon already knew as much, the first thing he’d done outside was look to see whether there was a camera in range.

“Can I maybe have a quick look anyway to see whether one of the other cameras picked up the thief getting away?”

“I’m afraid that’s not allowed,” Milan said and set his espresso down in front of him.

I don’t know why, but—did he simply take a liking to Herr Simon, was he hoping for a good tip, did he have a guilty conscience that a theft had occurred on company property, or did Herr Simon just have a look of sheer desperation?—the attendant gestured for him to come behind the counter, and he showed him the flat monitor that hung above the cash register. Ten small cameras, if you can believe it: pump 1, pump 2, pump 3, pump 4, pump 5, pump 6, pump 7, pump 8, entrance, cash register.

Milan rewound the video and after just a few seconds you could see Herr Simon staggering backwards out of the shop, then running backwards around the gas station—you’ve got to picture this for yourself, you see yourself doing something that you just did five minutes ago but don’t remember anymore—backwards into the car wash three times and backwards out three times, the greatest distress of his life looking ridiculous backwards and lasting just a few foolish seconds until, backwards, Herr Simon froze into a pillar of salt, as though Milan had paused the image. And a moment later, an entirely different Herr Simon walked leisurely backwards into the shop.

The attendant rewound the video to the place where Herr Simon was back at his car smiling, dirtying the clean windows, and taking his time sucking the gasoline out of the tank.

From that point on he played the video normally, i.e., forward and at the regular speed. And finally the scenes where Herr Simon was hoping to be able to see something
suspicious. First you see him hanging the fuel nozzle back up. Then he moves the car so that the Volvo behind him can pull up. The Volvo driver gasses up, Herr Simon goes into the shop to pay, the Volvo drives off again without a stolen child. Then a silver Alfa pulls up to another pump, but the driver only walks out of the shop with two cans of Red Bull and no Helena. And briefly you see the red-haired woman—who was standing in Herr Simon’s way as he was trying to balance his double espresso on the counter—walk into the shop. The attendant knows her, though, because she lives right across the street and was only buying something from the shop like she does every day. Then an old white Golf pulls through just because it wants to turn around, such that the license plate can’t be made out, but it doesn’t matter, because it didn’t even come to a complete stop.

And then you see—forward this time and at the right speed—how Herr Simon comes back out of the shop and how he recoils as though the earth were opening up before him. It was almost worse for him to be experiencing this moment a second time now on-screen—or should I say for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” Milan said. “You can’t see anything. Was it valuable?”

“What?”

“What got stolen from your car?”

Herr Simon gave no answer. These forgotten minutes were such a nightmare that, if the screen had revealed him to be the kidnapper himself, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Should I call the police?”

“It’s too late now. They’re already over the mountains.”

He felt so numb that he had no idea what he should do. The pills weren’t helping him, the coffee wasn’t helping him, and the panic wasn’t helping him. Instead, complete power outage.

“Give me another espresso,” he said to Milan.

Because he was like a little kid now who’s gotten into some trouble and thinks that nobody will find out about it if he just closes his eyes or hides behind the house. That the newspapers criticized him so much for it, though, I don’t think is right, either. Somehow he expected two-year-old Helena to come strolling in through the door, and off they’d drive together. And believe it or not, he even bought a medium-sized chocolate bar for her. He told himself a medium-sized bar without any filling is a compromise that all parties could live with, chocolate proponents and chocolate opponents alike.

He ignored his cell phone’s ringing. Or what’s called ringing. Jimi Hendrix played “Castles Made of Sand” because that was what the son of the clinic’s psychologist had conjured up for him his first week on the job. For the first time in his life, Jimi annoyed him because he was playing the same thing over and over. Herr Simon didn’t even look at who was calling because the risk was too great that it might be the Frau Doctor. You should know, when he was on the road she would often check in during an abortion break to make sure everything was okay, and Herr Simon always made a point of asking Helena something so that her mama could hear her voice over the phone, and then she’d be pacified.