The Sweetness of Life Read online

  “A little.”

  For several months now, Horn had been treating Fux for shoulder-arm syndrome, which was as persistent as shoulder-arm syndromes tend to be. “I only dabble in neurology,” he said, and Fux said that he didn’t mind—he wouldn’t dream of letting another doctor look at him. Recently Horn had given him a corticosteroid depot injection in the upper part of the deltoid muscle and had said that if that did not help then all that was left was dear old Frau Limnig from Waiern with her pebbles and pendulum. Horn felt the upper arm. He could see the medication was working. It was less painful when touched. There was still a small tender area on the back of the shoulder. “You’re a tough nut,” he said. Fux stood up, looked at him, and said nothing in reply. He was half a head shorter than Horn, wiry and tanned. When he stood his body was slightly bent and twisted to the right, an idiosyncrasy that vanished as soon as he moved. “That’s from my work,” he had said when Horn mentioned it once. Fux had been a postman in Furth for almost thirty years and had always carried his large black shoulder bag on the left, which explained the anomaly in his posture, at least in part. And yet, even at the end of his career he was still speedier than all his colleagues. When he retired he was presented with the black and yellow Puch moped that had assisted him on his round for fifteen years. He was the only postman who had regularly used one. Now he used it to go to his beehives, whenever the weather permitted. Apart from that he drove a dark-green Opel Astra Combi.

  “Do you want some honey?” Fux asked.

  “How did you guess?”

  “Everybody who comes here wants honey.”

  “Am I everybody?”

  Else laughed out loud. “No, you’re not,” she said.

  As if it were a scene from a film, Horn could still recall that clearing to the south of the town. Nobody knew him at the time, and they had only sent for him because he was the new psychiatrist. A forestry worker had driven him up a winding farm road in an ancient Lada Niva with zero suspension, and he remembered being delighted when finally he got out of it. In front of them was a timber barn, a brownish-black, weathered log building in the old Alpine style, only slightly taller. To its left were ten or twelve colorful beehives, some of which stood in isolation, while others were stacked on top of each other. In the middle of these was a group of people, only two of whom—both uniformed policemen—had bothered to greet him at first. Then a strong-looking, bald-headed man in civilian clothes had come up to him and offered his hand. “Ludwig Kovacs, Kriminalpolizei,” he said. An elderly lady, a former nurse in fact, had called the police: she had found a note at home from her husband saying he was going to hang himself. After she had searched the house and outbuildings without finding him, there was only one other place she could imagine he might do it. “When my colleagues arrived he was in the middle of cleaning out one of his hives, as if everything were normal,” Kovacs said. Appearing very relaxed, the man had chatted with them. He had said that the whole thing was a big mistake; his wife had just been over concerned. They were about to leave when, by chance, one of them peered into the barn and noticed the stepladder on the cargo bed of the old truck and the steel sling at the top of the lifting arm. When Kovacs had returned to the barn with the wife, the man was distraught.

  Horn had approached the group of people and saw that the policemen were still restraining the man by his arms. His wife was on her knees, trying to talk to him. Kovacs’s brusque comment—“That’s the neurologist”—was still as vivid in Horn’s mind as the expression on Fux’s face. It was the look of somebody who had wanted to die there and then.

  Perhaps it was because he had spared Fux a spell in a psychiatric institution that Horn had struck up a kind of friendship with him and his wife. It was also perhaps because he had never asked about the reasons behind the planned suicide, and that he had accepted Fux’s rejection of every type of psychotherapy. “Give me medication so that the urge to hang myself goes away,” Fux had said. “And don’t try to delve inside me—it’s not going to happen, you understand?” He had given him medication, all sorts of stuff, especially in the early days, and in time Fux no longer had any objection to remaining alive. They talked about different things, about the problems relating to forced and voluntary psychiatric treatment, about the fact that cats and bees were not so different as pets, and about the population of Furth am See, these strange urban-Alpine people, about whom nobody could know quite as much as a former postman. At some point their wives had gotten to know each other, and before long they were all good friends—it had been a logical and natural development. Fux had added more bee colonies, one after another, and each time Horn had been able to reduce the dose of psychotropic drugs. Eventually Fux said that he had more clarity in his life, and Horn had thought that this was as good an outcome as he could have hoped for.

  “Of course I’d like some honey,” Horn said, taking a rum truffle from the plate of biscuits.

  “Everybody wants honey,” Fux said.

  Horn crushed the truffle with his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Else Fux watched him in anticipation. “Well?” she asked.

  Horn swallowed. “You know damn well. The best rum truffle in the world. Mostly walnuts and butter. Fat content: 59 percent. As ever.”

  “You can afford it.”

  “Yes, because Irene doesn’t make rum truffles.”

  Else laughed. “Poor man,” she said. Horn drew back when she shoved the plate of biscuits under his nose. “It’s honey I’m after, not biscuits.”

  Fux went to the door. “Are you coming, or will you tell me what you want?” he asked. Horn said good-bye to Else.

  “Old people lose their patience,” she said glancing at her husband. She knew that Horn always accompanied him to the barn, where he kept his equipment.

  There was an intense smell of wax, which was both soft and strong. At the far end of the room was the centrifuge, partially covered by a white blanket. It drew your attention as soon as the door was opened. Frames in need of repair were leaning up against the wall immediately to the left. Above them hung a pair of ocher-colored overalls and the beekeeping hat with its protective veil. On the shelf stretching along the entire right-hand wall were stacked jars, arranged according to the honey’s origin. In front of this Fux had built a sort of bar out of larch wood. This is where he let his customers try the honeys. Horn sat down on one of the stools. He liked the wooden paneling on the walls and under the roof, as well as the smell, and the sunlight on the jars of honey. He especially liked the large heater, painted rust brown, which Fux had connected to the central heating system of the main house so that the room had at least some warmth in winter.

  Fux talked about a new spot above Sankt Christoph, on the southern side of the lake. A young farmer had offered him this site in the middle of a larch forest, which had been used to store wood but was now abandoned. All he wanted in return was honey for himself and his family. He had settled a first lot of bees there one and three-quarter years ago, only five colonies to start with, as he always did before he could gauge how much a site would yield. The harvest from the first two seasons had been quite incredible—an especially clear and fruity forest honey, very granulated with medium viscosity. He placed a jar in front of Horn together with a small spoon and paper napkin.

  Horn unscrewed the lid, dipped the spoon in, and took it out again slowly. The thread of honey became thinner and thinner. The tiny spiral that he had made when he had scraped the surface disappeared within a second.

  “Can you imagine anybody in this town driving over an old man’s head?” he asked.

  Fux looked at him in surprise. “How can you be so blunt?”

  “You know the people here,” Horn said. An uncomfortable feeling came over him. All I’m doing is treating this little girl, he thought. It’s not good to want to know too much more.

  “I could imagine a few people being capable of it, if they were drunk enough,” Fux said after a while.

  Perhaps it is as simple as that, Horn
thought: someone’s had a bit to drink, like most people round here they’re pretty unobservant anyway, they put the car into reverse by mistake, knock the old man down, and run over his face. “You’re right,” he said. “I can imagine it, too.”

  Horn put the spoon into his mouth. The honey tasted spicy and new. “White bread honey,” he said. Fux nodded in satisfaction. Horn looked at him. He’s wearing glasses, he thought. He didn’t before. He’s getting old.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Is this a medical visit after all then?”

  Horn licked the spoon clean. “You’d never tell the truth in front of Else.”

  “You’re right,” Fux said. “I’m fine—that’s the truth. I’m starting to discover that certain things are untrue, but otherwise I’m fine.”

  “What do you mean certain things are untrue?”

  “It’s untrue, for example, that you forget everything as you get older. The opposite is the case: suddenly you see some things with such clarity that it hurts.”

  “Perhaps that’s got something to do with your new glasses.”

  Fux smiled, grinned and took them off. “I know they’re ugly,” he said. “But I can’t do without them in artificial light.” In the last few days he had been recalling that time—in his very early days of keeping bees—when several colonies succumbed to the varroa mite. He had stood in front of the hives, looking at all the dead and deformed bees; it had almost broken his heart. Or the business with Wertzer’s youngest son, who had climbed onto Fux’s work moped in front of the hotel and then just drove off. He had come back with a huge burn on his calf, howling that he would report Fux and the entire postal service because there was no way that moped’s exhaust was in proper working order—Fux would have to pay him compensation and a disability pension. This boy, only just sixteen, had stood on the hotel forecourt and yelled at him in the most disrespectful manner; Fux was too baffled to say anything in reply. Suddenly, the main door to the hotel had swung open and old Wertzer—quite a small, stocky man—stormed out, stepped between them and, without a single word, gave his grandson a powerful slap in the face, the classic combination: left to right; the flat of the hand first, then the back. Still silent, he pointed to the door, and the youngster marched off without hesitation, his head bowed, and his grandfather’s handprints on his face.

  “Until a few weeks ago these things were buried,” Fux said. “Then they show up again—you’ve no idea where they come from.”

  Horn placed the spoon on his napkin and screwed the lid back on the jar. “Did you ever have anything to do with old Wilfert?” he asked.

  “Wilfert?” For a second Fux gave him a horrified look. Then he stared into space as if he had to think about it. “His house was not on my postal round,” he said at last. “From time to time his daughter used to buy honey from me, like lots of other people.”

  “Any stories?”

  “About him, you mean?”

  Horn nodded. Fux took off his glasses and pressed his fingertips against his eyelids. He now looked very tired. Horn thought back to the episode in front of the barn. Death is still very much on his mind—I should have thought of that. “We can change the subject if you like,” he said. Fux dismissed this suggestion with a wave of his hand.

  “His wife died not so long ago,” Fux said in a soft voice. “It was quite sudden, thrombosis, or something like that. His daughter looked after him, his son-in-law works at the sawmill, there are a few grandchildren. Just a normal old man, people say.”

  “Nothing particular?”

  “He was a hunter, but so are lots of people round here.”

  Cejpek is a hunter, Horn thought; and Martin Schwarz, his neighbor, went hunting too sometimes. Tobias said that all hunters ought to be strapped to a tree and left to the mercy of the animals. When he was older and stronger he would definitely be a vegetarian. At the moment, thought Horn, my love toward my son mainly manifests itself in a clip round the ear, but I suppose this is always the case with the real love of fathers for their sons at a certain point in the relationship.

  Horn took two jars of the new forest honey and a jar of an almost white, creamy rape honey that Irene liked. Fux wrapped the jars carefully in tissue paper and, as usual, refused to allow Horn to pay. Horn had learned that it was useless to protest, so he put his wallet away.

  “What is the varroa mite?” he asked as he was leaving.

  “Something that sits in your neck, sucks out your blood, and turns you into a cripple,” Joachim Fux said. He still seemed exhausted.

  “Me?”

  “If you’re a bee, yes.” They looked at each other. Horn laughed.

  As Raffael Horn headed back toward the center of town, breathing out the occasional small cloud of mist, he thought that the last thing he wanted to do was to bump into Konrad Seihs and his pit bull again. I’ll smash his face in with this bag of honey jars, he thought, and in his daydream neither Seihs nor the dog were expecting it; both of them looked extremely stupid.

  A while later, as he was crossing the river over the Severin bridge and gazing at the hospital to the west, he realized that he had forgotten to ask Fux how bees overwinter.

  Seven

  “Lefti, do I look funny?” Kovacs asked. Lefti, the owner, placed a glass of unfiltered Pils in front of Kovacs and took a good look at him.

  “Of course you look funny, Kommissar,” he said. “I mean, not you personally, but the fact that you’re sitting here on my terrace with your beer in the depths of winter, wearing your black wool hat, at this table that’s been put out especially for you, with all this snow around, and the lake down there that’s already half frozen. Now, if you also take into account that this is a Moroccan restaurant, and that in Morocco people in thick, blue, padded jackets who don’t know whether or not to take off their gloves to drink are quite a rarity; if you take all this into consideration then, yes, you do look funny.”

  “Well, that makes me feel much better,” Kovacs said. He slipped off his right glove.

  “Prost!”

  “Although I suppose that there are some parts of Morocco where they do wear black wool hats, up in the Atlas mountains, in Ifrane for example, or around the Jbel Toubkal.”

  “Well, it also makes me feel better that I’m not so different in every respect.”

  “You don’t understand me, Kommissar.”

  “As usual.”

  “Yes, as usual.”

  Kovacs and Lefti got on well. The fact that skinhead gangs had stopped attacking the “Tin” since Kovacs started showing up there on a regular basis with his team was only part of the reason. There was something more personal too. Lefti had an instinct for whether a customer wanted a full meal with a long story, or just a glass of beer. Kovacs valued that highly. Lefti was a curious type but never intrusive. He loved football and was at war with every kind of bureaucracy, which meant that people trusted him and that he was always well informed. Kovacs valued that too, at least sometimes. And there was also Szarah, Lefti’s wife. She worked in the kitchen day in, day out, and was a total blessing for the business. She had been a particular godsend to Kovacs since his wife had divorced him four years ago. “I would have starved without Szarah,” he sometimes said. Lefti would reply, “No way would you have starved. Look at yourself: you might have gotten the odd stomach ulcer, but you’d never have starved.” Kovacs would then say, “But Szarah’s carrot puree with mint saved my life.” Lefti would keep arguing for a while but he let Kovacs win in the end. He kept an eye on his wife, but everybody could see that this was totally unnecessary: her cypress-like figure and the large curve in the bridge of her nose combined to make her seem so inaccessible that nobody would have tried anything with her.

  The lake will certainly freeze, Kovacs thought. Until recently nobody believed it possible, but the skies have cleared and temperatures are well below freezing. He scanned the municipal outdoor swimming pool, now under a blanket of snow, the indoor pool with its low sunken roof, the narro
w jetties of the boat hire place, the two blocks of the old lakeside hotels, and the marina that was currently empty of masts. Kovacs thought of his own dinghy, which he had left with Fred Ley under cover in Waiern, on the northern side of the lake. It was a nice old boat made of false acacia, with a clear varnish; the covered bow and the seating were teak. Over the past few years he had more often rented the boat out than used it himself, even though he had imagined that after his divorce he would be out in it all the time, to fish or just to sail. Yvonne, his wife, had hated the lake, the tourists who came every year, the fish, and the cool westerly wind that she blamed for her joint troubles. It had been no different with Charlotte, their daughter. From this point of view it was only logical that Charlotte now lived with her mother and Yvonne’s new husband in Traun near Linz, an area devoid of any large bodies of water.

  He put his hand in his jacket and felt for the retractable pencil he always carried. In the past, whenever he had been working on a case, he had written notes in a thick DIN A6 book with an orange cover. He caught Bitterle and Demski in a huddle once, laughing about his notebook, and after that he had left it at home. Occasionally he still wrote on napkins or tabletops, drew diagrams, or sketched ideas. But just having the pencil in his hand was usually enough to give some structure to his thoughts.

  The spate of car break-ins since the end of November was relatively clear-cut. Always at night, always close to an arterial road—in one of the side streets or in the nearest parallel street. They came in the evenings, checked to see which cars had things in them—clothes, bags, electronic gadgets—and, a few hours later, picked the locks. They probably drove around in a car with a stolen number plate, most likely they came from Romania or Moldova and worked from an unknown headquarters. These crooks preferred the medium-size towns in the south and east of the country: Wiener Neustadt, Krems, Steyr, Bruck an der Mur, Villach, Furth. They worked exceptionally quickly and left no significant clues. People speculated as to what they might do if somebody caught them in the act. As this was yet to happen, no one could tell. None of that interests me, thought Kovacs. Let the police patrols do their work—I’m sick to death of outraged people who’ve been crazy enough to leave their laptop in the car.