Brenner and God

CHAPTER 16

These days, everybody knows the standard links between sex life and human life, where it’s typically thought that the one arises from having done the other-causal relationship, as it were. Not just causal, but a temporal relationship, too, because the one’s always nine months before the other, or maybe even eight or seven months. A pro-lifer would even say, a single day after the former and you’ve already got the latter. But nobody would dispute that, strictly speaking, the one’s always got to come before the other. No one would claim that a special exception can be made and it can happen the other way around-credit at the sperm bank, as it were-and you’ve had your kid two, three years already before you find a five-minute window in your planner to quickly do the sex part for your progeny who’s already making prettier drawings than the other children in kindergarten.

You see, they haven’t invented that yet. It’s been going on for long enough without any personal contact-i.e., porno mag and a reagent cup-that they have it well in hand these days, but even that doesn’t work the other way around, where you’ve already been on vacation with the kid twice when one day the collection letter comes that you’re finally supposed to sire the child. No, everything’s got to wait its turn: first beget, then have.

Just so you understand why Brenner was so shaken up when suddenly it did get reversed. Because what he was about to experience on this night, no man before him had ever lived to tell; on that I’ll stick my hand in the fire.

Watch closely: around one in the morning, after the South Tyrolean had placed another plate of the world’s best midnight spaghetti on the table, and after Brenner had fallen deeply and soundly asleep on a full belly and within five seconds was dreaming about some police academy nonsense, the South Tyrolean hopped into bed with him.

I don’t know, there are often different rituals with women-one says this, another says that-and the South Tyrolean belonged strictly to the group that says: with me, not a chance, bed, sex, case closed, and especially not with you. And when, as a man, you completely understand that, when you’re tired yourself and happy to be crawling into a freshly made bed, when you’re already falling asleep, when you’ve possibly already been the best wife to yourself, when you’re blissfully dozing off-that’s the moment she crawls into bed with you, and the rules don’t apply anymore because she’s changed her mind.

And quite energetically in fact, the South Tyrolean. I’ve honestly got to say, she awoke a young Brenner within the old Brenner. But maybe the sudden change of heart wasn’t the South Tyrolean’s doing alone. I could thoroughly imagine it being his fault. Because one thing you can’t forget: since finding his way back onto the detective track again, Brenner was exuding a completely different magnetism.

You’re going to say, by now Brenner’s already put the longest day of his life behind him-he’d looked the Frau Doctor in the eye, he’d called her husband, he’d read off of Natalie’s neck that Stachl was the father of Kressdorf’s kid, he’d ventured into the Schrebergartener’s lair, he’d found Milan and hired him to find Sunny, he’d done more police work in one day than some of his colleagues had in their entire civil service careers-and so he’s allowed to say let me sleep without his honor as a man being at stake. And even if you’ve slept in a guest bed ten times, you’re allowed to turn down even the best hostess, midnight spaghetti or no midnight spaghetti. But no chance of that, because the secret behind her surge of energy and his newly raging detective hormones weren’t having it. Believe it or not, when the South Tyrolean came to him, he didn’t even cry for help; on the contrary, he said to himself, why not, we’re not getting any younger.

Now surely you still recall the trend that was once popular among tennis players where they’d let out a powerful groan with every stroke. At the time, my dear swan, people said, the way tennis players exult over every ball could put thoughts into even the most respectable person’s head. But here we go again with the before and after. Because these things can flip themselves around like desperation on a surveillance video, and all of a sudden now-as the South Tyrolean grew more and more animated-Brenner thought of televised coverage of women’s tennis. And while the South Tyrolean took ever greater delight in her guest, every possible name of tennis players he’d seen on TV ran through his head, the Czechs were good for a while, the one was lesbian, and the other was even named Hantuchova, now he was just thinking about her, about Hantuchova-when all of a sudden the door opened, and eighty-eight hours after her disappearance, Helena stood in the doorway crying.

“Aw, you’re awake, Schatzele!” the South Tyrolean said tenderly and pushed her long red hair back from her face.

Brenner would always remember the faint electric zap as one of her strands of hair left his sweaty neck. Otherwise, complete mental standstill for Brenner. In a situation like this, of course, when you’re lying in bed and had been asleep before, you can easily escape into the hope that you’re dreaming. But for how long? Two, three seconds? After that, Brenner played for time a few seconds more by contemplating whether it wasn’t just alcohol that was forbidden while on the pills but sexuality, too-ergo, side effects, e.g., hallucinations-and he was just imagining that little Helena was standing in the doorway crying, imagining that there were rivulets of tears running down her upset face, as the South Tyrolean said, “Aw, come here, Schatzele. Did you have a bad dream?”

And you see, that’s what I wanted to say. Before they were even halfway done with the sex part, Brenner and the South Tyrolean were already lying in bed like the happiest married couple with their child. And believe it or not, Helena fell asleep on the spot, because there between the South Tyrolean and Herr Simon was as good as anywhere. The bit of sleeping pill that the South Tyrolean had put in her milk before putting her to bed was having a slight effect still. And because I’m talking about milk: I don’t know whether this stood out to you, but it was definitely taunting Brenner now that he’d overlooked it. The South Tyrolean had explicitly told him that she didn’t drink milk, she couldn’t digest it, she didn’t have the enzyme, and what did she buy the first time he met her at the gas station? A liter of milk! He’d wondered about the newspaper that she bought but didn’t read. But the milk he’d let slip right past. And so you see how often we very nearly miss things in life, because you go looking to the newspaper when the interesting news is right there in the milk.

“Well, now you know that I took her,” she said quietly. “But only because you left her sitting there in the car for hours on end. In the heat! If you’d done that to a dog, there’d be a national uprising and a warrant out for your arresht.”

Brenner’s heart was beating with such relief that he didn’t hear what the South Tyrolean was saying at all. He was just amazed that Helena could even sleep when just a few centimeters away, his heart was beating like a baby dinosaur that was about to hatch out of his chest and greet the world. But the beating was so loud and so rhythmic that no such musical dinosaur could exist, Brenner thought. It sounded like it had swallowed Jimi Hendrix’s drummer, Mitch Mitchell, and he was playing “Foxy Lady” in honor of the red-haired woman in bed.

You know what’s interesting, though? When Brenner really did lose his mind out of fear eleven hours later, he didn’t fully realize it. But, for now, he lay there with a clear mind, watching Helena sleep and thinking to himself, so this is what it’s like when you lose your mind.

The pills probably helped save him from the brink. Because eighty-eight hours after Helena’s disappearance and a few minutes after her reappearance, the pills in him said: these things just happen in life. And as you’ve already noticed, the pills reassured him, the South Tyrolean is a little strange. My god, she took the child. Better than if someone else had taken her. She just borrowed Helena for a few days. “Borrowed” or “born,” they sound so similar that it can’t be that bad. You hear time and time again — the pills floated before his eyes- about women who don’t have children sneaking into maternity wards and snatching newborns. And anything that happens over and over isn’t not a little normal, the pills in Brenner argued. But the dinosaur in his chest said, Here I come! But the pills said, that can’t be a dinosaur, because-too musical, it must be Mitch Mitchell, who, out of thanks that you dedicated the PIN to him, is playing “Foxy Lady” for the South Tyrolean.

You should know, it was the pills that were holding Brenner’s mind together. And he didn’t actually lose his mind. He listened to his heart’s drummer drumming his heartbeat the whole night through and thought about what he should do now. And about why Knoll had landed in the cesspit if he had nothing to do with the kidnapping. How is it all connected, he asked himself, while Mitch Mitchell wouldn’t, wouldn’t quit hammering his foot into Brenner’s chest. He simply didn’t, didn’t get tired, and Brenner couldn’t, couldn’t stop thinking.

What had Knoll wanted from Kressdorf? Was he just another sidecar driver like the nanny’s husband? What had Kressdorf wanted from Knoll? Do Reinhard and Congressman Stachl know that Knoll is dead? Does Kressdorf know that Helena isn’t his? Brenner was riddled with so many questions but never, never the answers.

My god, “Foxy Lady”’s three and a half minutes should be long over by now, he groaned. But Mitch Mitchell played on till morning. He simply wanted to prevent Brenner-after Jimi Hendrix and after Noel Redding and after himself, too-from cashing in his chips before his time. The downside to such a vigorous heart massage, of course, is that there can be no talk of sleep. Helena was sleeping, the South Tyrolean was sleeping, Brenner couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t, couldn’t. But you’d think an answer to his questions would’ve occurred to him at least, like Helena’s accidental kidnapping and Knoll’s death being connected. But it didn’t, didn’t. And didn’t, didn’t. And didn’t, didn’t.