The Sweetness of Life Page 8

  He noticed his beer getting colder, so he put his pencil away and his glove back on. I don’t give a rat’s ass if people see me, he thought. You can’t always worry about what other people think of you.

  There were several small groups of people on the promenade, including a pair of joggers. The sun was a hand’s width above the peak of the Kammwand; it bathed most of the town in a whitish-yellow, shimmering light. It would be dusk in about an hour’s time.

  Kovacs got a shock when the door to the terrace opened behind him. It was Lefti. He placed the chair he was carrying beside the table and sat down. He had put on a thick, gray-brown sweater and fingerless, wool gloves.

  “Brilliant,” Kovacs said. “I see you’re used to eating outside when it’s freezing.” Lefti laughed. Behind him came Szarah with two large china bowls, spoons, and a white flatbread. She greeted Kovacs with a discreet nod of the head. She’s a goddess, he thought, not immediately beautiful, but there’s an intelligence in her face and an independence in her figure that just knock you down. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Red lentil soup,” she said. She put the bowls down in a rapid but careful movement. Then she disappeared.

  “Bismillah,” Lefti said.

  “Same to you, Mahlzeit,” Kovacs answered. The soup tasted of chili, cumin, and cinnamon. Lefti dunked bread into it, hardly using his spoon.

  “How come you always know what I need?” Kovacs asked.

  “It wasn’t so hard this time. What does a Kommissar who sits on my terrace in winter need? Anyway, the soup was Szarah’s idea, not mine.”

  He’s making a huge effort, Kovacs thought. He trusts me. “You’re a lucky man to have a wife like that,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m lucky to have her, my daughters, and you, Kommissar.”

  “Your Asian politeness sometimes gets on my nerves.”

  “You were less fortunate with your wife and daughter; why shouldn’t I be polite?”

  For a while Kovacs remained silent. He thought of Yvonne’s coldness, and of Charlotte, who over time had become ever more like a sack of potatoes, formless and passive. I was never able to connect with her, he thought; at least Yvonne and I had something for a while. He bit into a large piece of chili and could feel the tears welling in his eyes.

  “Sorry, Kommissar,” Lefti said.

  “You lot just have fewer nerves in your mouths,” Kovacs said. “Far fewer.”

  Lefti paused for a moment. “I meant that about your wife and daughter.”

  Kovacs sipped his beer. It was now so cold that it hurt his teeth. “It’s been a long time since I’ve cried over it. Anyway, do you really believe that it’s all down to luck whether a relationship works or not?”

  “Allah gives you eyes, ears, and the humility to wait.”

  “And Maghrebin landlords who talk in riddles whenever you ask them a concrete question.”

  Lefti bowed his head. “Whatever you say, Kommissar.”

  He may well be right about the eyes and ears, Kovacs thought; my lack of attentiveness may have been a problem from the very start. It’s my job to be far more perceptive than other people, and yet when I met this woman I relied on a vague hunch that she was the right one.

  Twenty years earlier Yvonne had done an internship at the Fernkorn as part of her hotel management training, and on summer evenings she used to show up at Manolo’s Strandcafé. Kovacs had been a regular at the café, because of the Italian coffee, because of the grappa selection, and because of the rattan chairs, which were exceptionally comfortable. Best of all, however, the place was free of the young wannabes or the semi-crooked business set that filled the terraces of the Wertzer or the Fernkorn. Instead it attracted people who swam in the municipal lido and a few individuals whose modest boats were moored in the marina. He recalled that Yvonne had worn a tight-fitting, egg-yolk-yellow top, and there were Band-Aids on her heels, under the straps of her sandals. I stared at her tits, Kovacs thought, and the tits stared back, then I noticed the Band-Aids, and then I looked at her face. You put one and one together and know that the best-case scenario would be some satisfactory sex, but no more than that. Perhaps the contempt she had expressed fifteen years later for the lake and the people sitting around the tables was already present then, but he had not noticed anything. In hindsight everybody had been much wiser than him; they claimed it had been obvious right from the start that nothing could come of it. He had just sat there, drinking beer, then schnapps. In the end he had turned to his telescope. How infantile, he had thought, but in some way it had calmed him down.

  The beer foam that stuck to the sides of the glass had now frozen. Kovacs scraped at it a little, then broke off a piece of the flatbread and mopped up the rest of his soup. “In the old days I would have said I was a Kriminalkommissar first, a husband and father second, and a beer-garden man third,” he said. “Now I’d say I’m mainly a beer-garden man and a Kriminalkommissar on the side. It’s irrelevant whether you get along with your wife or not; if she leaves you, a part of your identity is lost.”

  Lefti turned around and looked toward the restaurant. “I’ve been living in this country for twelve years now. I wear wool sweaters and gloves, I drink your wine, I think in your terms, I say ‘shit’ and ‘asshole,’ but I’ll never understand this identity business of yours.”

  “You don’t need to, because your wife will never leave you,” said Kovacs.

  “True. She won’t.”

  I’m a beer-garden man, a sometime Kriminalkommissar, and third, someone who screws the owner of a second-hand clothes shop twice a week, Kovacs thought. The last of these activities operates on the basis of mutual satisfaction, he thought, nothing more. Not the remotest trace of anything like love. Kovacs knew that Lefti knew, and that was reason enough not to waste any breath on the subject.

  He slipped off his glove to shake hands and say good-bye. “What are you doing for New Year’s?” he asked.

  “Nothing at all,” Lefti said. “We’re still in 1426 and the end of our year is in a month’s time. We’re closing the place. Experience tells us it’s a good move.”

  Kovacs nodded. He had a distinct memory of the time he went into the “Tin” on the morning of January 1, seven years earlier. Lefti was standing, deathly pale, in the middle of the restaurant, wearing a makeshift bandage on his head. Everything around him was a total mess. The ringleader of the gang that had smashed the place up at about two in the morning had been the son of a Freedom Party deputy in the provincial assembly; there had been plenty of witnesses to this. The skinheads had necked champagne from the bottle, then they had hurled all the chairs to the floor. Finally, they’d smeared “Foreigners Out!” on the walls with red candle stubs and given a rendition of the old SA anthem, “The rotten bones are trembling.” When one old man objected that he’d had quite enough of this song during his lifetime, they broke his nose with a peppermill.

  The chief culprit’s father had sought out the judge, which meant that the sentence was a joke: six months suspended. The deputy’s son spent the whole trial grinning, and after the sentence was passed he said that Lefti should just be happy that they hadn’t fucked his wife as well. At the time Kovacs thought what a good thing it was that he did not have a weapon on him some days.

  “I’m just going to thank Szarah again,” he said, zipping up his jacket.

  “I’m sure it was a great pleasure for her.”

  “If only you could be a little less polite . . .”

  “Then you’d know you’d have to be on your guard,” Lefti said. He raised his hand and bent over to clear away the soup bowls.

  Kovacs made for the promenade. He walked quickly, as was his habit, not because he was cold. I’m a fast walker, he thought, that’s also part of my identity. Charlotte had endlessly moaned about it, and he reckoned that Yvonne had only kept her mouth shut because she was so keen to show how athletic she was.

  He reached the lake in front of the boat hire place. Where Manolo’s beach café had once stoo
d was now Franz Holdegger’s water sports shop. Holdegger had started with a surfing center on Cyprus, then for many years he had run a diving school in the Maldives. After accumulating enough money he returned to the town of his birth when the first opening presented itself. The opportunity was somewhat tarnished by the fact that it was the result of Manolo’s accident; but someone else would have moved into the premises if Holdegger had not seized the chance. In any case, there was no way Manolo was coming back from the dead. In his Corvette one sunny October morning, he had taken a bend on the Kanaltal motorway too quickly, careered effortlessly over the crash barrier, and landed in a river bed 150 meters below—a tributary of the Tagliamento. Some people considered this death in Italy to be highly romantic. They were probably the same individuals who used to bitch about Manolo’s homosexuality: it’s a good thing that faggot went back home to die. They were not bothered by the fact that that Manolo was actually from Naples, about a thousand kilometers from the Kanaltal. Anyway, Holdegger did not seem to be queer, and the town was happy about that. In the few years since his return home, moreover, he had become one of the leading experts on the fish and bird populations of the lake, as well as on its climatic peculiarities. Fishermen and surfers would approach him for advice, and he had an excellent relationship with the wildlife observation center. For those tourists who toyed with the idea of doing a dive, meanwhile, he devised a compendium of wild stories. He particularly enjoyed bullshitting the rumor about Nazi gold in the Toplitzsee, insisting that the treasures of the Third Reich had, in fact, disappeared almost in eyeshot of his shop: the transport ship, he claimed, had been scuttled at the foot of the Kammwand, then it disappeared under an avalanche triggered by a controlled explosion. On the back of his story people would sign up in droves; he would lead them to a fishing cutter that had sunk a good thirty years before, and announce that this was the pilot boat that the treasure ship had once followed. The boulders nearby were the result of the avalanche, he maintained. Nobody ever complained about these dives; on the contrary, there were so many enthusiastic testimonies from happy customers on Holdegger’s website that even the town council decided not to set the story straight.

  In my line of work I’m seeking out the so-called facts, Kovacs thought, whereas people just want to be deceived. People always opt for what isn’t true.

  The salt that had been scattered on the promenade had eaten up the rest of the snow and ice. Suitable for everybody to walk on, whatever their mobility, he thought. Maybe there’ll come a time when I’ll be pleased about that. He headed south, past the boat hire place, past the driveway up to the Wertzer, and past the landing stage for the ferries to Sankt Christoph and Mooshaim. At the marina he entered the shade thrown by the mountain. All of a sudden the wind picked up. He pulled his cap down over his ears. At the furthest point of the jetty five or six seagulls were sitting motionless. Each year a few birds stayed here over winter. He felt some sort of connection to them.

  He walked the entire arc of the eastern shore, beyond the end of the asphalt path to where the Fürstenaubach emptied into the lake as a waterfall. There he stood on the bridge and looked back at the town.

  The business with the old man had not yet been cleared up, although he felt that they would soon find an explanation. For example: the son-in-law had been loading wood for the stove onto the back of the old, green Steyr tractor. As it was only a short distance, he had not bothered to tie the logs securely, and so had to keep on looking around to make sure they were not sliding off. This meant he had not seen the old man. Case closed. It would be something simple like that. It was hardly surprising that the man’s face had looked so horrific; any face that had been run over by a tractor was bound to look gruesome. He thought of Mauritz cursing because it was almost impossible to do anything with the splashes of blood in the snow, and because the tire marks had distorted everything even more. And he thought of Wieck, how she had walked beside him, her face pale and yet determined, how her uniform had been a size too large. He would get her onto his team; she had exactly the same energy and urge to uncover the truth that he had had when he turned thirty. And he liked her. I’d love to have a daughter like her, he thought, she’s nothing like a sack of potatoes, not a bit. I’ll call Mauritz, he thought, perhaps he’s already got some results. I know he hates being disturbed on the weekend, but I hate having nothing to go on. I also hate it when it starts getting dark at three in the afternoon, and there’s nothing else to do but go home.

  He could hear the bangs from far away. It was the same every year. A few days before New Year’s Eve the local youngsters herded together—even those who had nothing to do with each other for the rest of the year—and started unleashing their arsenal of firecrackers, bangers and rockets. Although their offerings were no competition for the big fireworks at midnight, by letting off the entire collection ahead of time they could be sure of provoking a reaction from certain residents. There would be the same complaints this year too; his fellow officers would be called out, reprimand the usual suspects, and carry out at least one confiscation for infringement of the Fireworks and Pyrotechnics Law. This satisfied people like Alexander Koesten, who lived in one of the apartments below Kovacs.

  Seven or eight young people were squatting on the railings of the long, rectangular fountain. When they saw Kovacs coming most of them disappeared. Only Matthias Fries, a pale-faced, red-haired seventeen-year-old who bragged that he only wore stolen gear, and Sharif Erdoyan, an unbelievably fat Turkish boy who everybody called “Sheriff,” remained sitting there. It was quite obvious they were smoking hash. “Hi, Kommissar. How’s it going?” Erdoyan said, trying to look serious.

  “Hello, Sheriff,” Kovacs replied. “Very kind of you to ask.”

  “People should have some responsibility for the well-being of their neighbors.”

  “You’re right there. By the way, just tell me quickly—what is the legal limit for personal consumption of marijuana?”

  “Oh, you’ve put me on the spot there, Kommissar. I think it depends on your body weight.”

  Sheriff was twenty-one, he came from Konya, and for the last two years or so he had got his hands on every sort of cannabinoid to be found in the south of the town. As they were convinced he was not into anything else they had left him in peace until now, even though council demands for police intervention had become ever louder. Konrad Seihs, that ghastly secretary of the Business Party, had been particularly vocal on the matter. Mike Dassler, who headed the department for “addiction and habits,” had till now remained calm. Interference from all quarters was part of his daily routine.

  “You can generally rely on fat people,” Kovacs said.

  Erdoyan nodded. “One hundred percent, Kommissar.”

  “Do you know what might make me set these pit bull types at your throats?”

  “Opiates and children, Kommissar. How could I forget that?”

  “Excellent.” Kovacs raised his hand. “Happy New Year, gentlemen.”

  Matthias Fries spat provocatively at the fountain pipes which rose vertically from the middle of the basin. Fries liked pretending to be dangerous, but in fact he was quite harmless. All the same, Kovacs could not stand the boy; there was something of the ferret about him. Erdoyan bellowed something behind him. Not catching what it was he turned round and cupped his hand to his ear. “I might be a father myself soon!” That’s all this town needs, thought Kovacs. He saw a troop of small, chubby Turkish boys, all carrying their hash pipes, and then he pictured Charlotte, who would have no idea what a hash pipe was, and who had never been satisfied in her life.

  Kovacs was approaching block B. He had lived in this former industrial building for three years, and for the first time in ages he had felt at home from day one. He had taken an instant liking to the black-and-red brick walls, the arched windows with their small mosaic patterns, and the enormous gray steel door at the entrance. What is more, he had never minded the few trendies who rented in his area. The divorce had left him with no c
hoice but to sell the family apartment in Furth-Nord. The Walzwerk estate project had turned out to be a highly convenient solution, overcoming all the skepticism he had harbored beforehand. As was to be expected, the social housing in the former workers’ quarters had been allocated quickly. This had further reduced the already questionable appeal of those units left for general occupation in the three former factory buildings, and had kept the prices down. It suited Kovacs fine; he had found a nice seventy square meters with four-meter-high ceilings, direct access to the communal roof terrace garden, and a window by his bed that faced southeast. If she wanted to, Charlotte could sleep on the small mezzanine that had been intended as a work area but that he never used as such. Charlotte never wanted to. He was pleased about that.

  He looked at the Christmas tree which stood on a low side table in front of the bookcase. A present from Marlene. Although the agreement they had for satisfying their mutual needs worked fine, her interpretation of it clearly included the urge to give unattached men Christmas trees with glass baubles and golden angels. There was also the business with New Year’s Eve. She told him she had read something in a magazine about a tiny hotel in the Lungau. Actually, it was a renovated forester’s lodge, and as it only had nine rooms she had booked one, just in case. This in spite of the fact that she knew damn well he would prefer to stay at home drinking beer and—at most—go up to the roof terrace at midnight. He felt really uncomfortable. It began with nothing more than sex; now there were Christmas trees and romantic arrangements for New Year’s Eve. I’ll tell her now, he thought. Right now. He remembered that he wanted to call Mauritz too. He picked up the handset. Marlene first. He punched in the number. Her cell was set to voice mail. “Call me,” he said, nothing more.