“Unless the kidnappers don’t make contact, and the Frau Doctor shuts down the clinic because it’s her last hope for her child to turn up again.”
By all appearances, Brenner spoke objectively. His eyes were glued to the screen and his words clung to his sense of reason. But the worm had worked its way in, he noticed it right away. Because the suspicion aroused by Knoll began to nag at him.
“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Knoll said. “It used to look like we’d be the ones who’d shut down under public pressure and have to leave.”
Brenner nodded in order to act like he was listening to Knoll. To his arguments. But he was only really listening to the worm that nagged at him.
“Up till now the kidnapping’s only helped the clinic,” Knoll blathered on. “Police protection round the clock. Public opinion wholeheartedly against us.”
But while the dogs crawled breakneck around the bend and somersaulted over each other in slow motion, as if that in itself were the contest, Brenner could only think about what Knoll had said before. About the good lord. The good lord might have personally taken Helena. And a terrible fear took hold of Brenner that he might possibly have an almighty thug as an opponent.
“They just want to delay my terminating their lease. Until their new Super Practice in MegaLand is finished,” Knoll said.
“Why MegaLand?” Like a track-standing cyclist trying to maintain his balance, who, at the last moment before falling over, rescues himself with the push of a pedal, Brenner rescued himself back into the conversation again. “It’s going to be a recreational park. Golf course, swimming pool, shops, movie theater, that kind of thing.”
“Haven’t you ever noticed how private practices are popping up in retail centers these days? The dental clinic in the train station, the cosmetic surgeon at the mall.”
“Sure, I’ve noticed the dental clinic.”
“And an abortion between shopping and bowling at MegaLand, it all fits smartly together. Baby Be Gone in designer ambience. With a ten-percent-off coupon for the next time.”
Brenner was almost relieved to see Knoll’s eyes light up with zeal now. Suddenly, he was back on familiar turf with the pro-life boss. Unbelievable, though, how easily a fanatic like that can rattle you when you’re feeling weak and running around with an enormous amount of guilt.
“ Baby Be Gone. You’re pretty cynical.”
“I’m not cynical. The people responsible for such a thing are cynical. Mega-Abortion-Land, financed by a million children’s deaths.”
“Alright, that’s enough.” Things were slowly turning sour for Brenner.
“Something like this has to be professionally branded so that it sells. Mega-Abortion-Land,” Knoll said with that amused look again. “Maybe I should go into business with them and sell them the name.” He was getting carried away by vanity now, and Brenner hoped he might make a decisive slip. “At her new super clinic in MegaLand she’ll have to triple her earnings in order to recoup the costs. But I don’t want to bother you with our fanaticism.”
Knoll pronounced “fanaticism” as if he’d had some kind of tainted alphabet soup for breakfast that only had quotation marks in it, which were gurgling up inside him at this very moment. “Or might I still convince an old workhorse like you of the miracle of life?”
“I’ve even looked at the brochures that your people hand out in front of the clinic. Nature sure puts on a show.”
“A show!” Knoll repeated, scornfully.
Brenner had drawn out the word “show” in order to provoke Knoll. “Miracle” would have worked, too, because back when the brochure fell into his hands, he’d thought to himself: hats off to nature. It wasn’t new to him, of course, what happens behind the scenes during those nine months, but a while indeed since he’d first applied himself to the subject back home in Puntigam, and at that time, of course, he’d only been interested in the procreative part, or better yet, on preventing new life.
“It’s only at a certain age that you can fully appreciate nature,” Brenner formulated, a compromise, as it were. “It’s true, though: your fanatic views do nothing for me. I saw too many fully grown deaths when I was on the force-you can’t be looking out for a bunch of cells, too.”
“So when does life begin for you, if I may ask?”
Brenner wanted to steer the conversation gradually in another direction, but he had to give Knoll a quick answer. “Where I’m from, in Puntigam-”
“You’re from Puntigam? Where the beer’s from?”
You see, that really got Knoll smiling, he was happy to actually meet someone from Puntigam.
“Exactly. In Puntigam, there was an old saying that children were told. Before you were born, you were just flying around with the gnats.”
“I know that one, too. You were just flying around with the gnats. We used to say that as children, too.”
“That’s a good enough explanation for me,” Brenner said. “That you fly with the gnats before-and maybe you fly with the gnats again afterward, too. I think it’s a good solution. For logistical reasons alone. That’s why I don’t understand why you’d waste this short stopover arguing about life. When you consider how short the time is compared to the gnats’ time.”
“You have that worked out quite comfortably. And otherwise, there’s nothing else that interests you about life?”
“I’m interested in what you want from me.”
“I want you to find the girl for me.”
The gamblers grew restless, and Brenner, too, couldn’t tear his gaze away from the screen, as the news came that one of the two dogs, whose sudden collapse was being shown over and over again, had broken its neck. Which is why he thought Knoll was talking about Helena at first, until he noticed the photo Knoll had laid on the table.
“How old would you guess this girl is?”
“No idea,” Brenner said, giving the photo a quick once-over. “Sixteen? Fifteen?”
It wasn’t a particularly good photo. A girl with long dark hair, walking, photographed from an odd angle, like an actress being hunted by the paparazzi. And only on the second glance did Brenner recognize the surroundings, because the photo had been taken right in front of the entrance to the abortion clinic.
“Twelve.”
“Huh, crazy, the Mediterraneans often look downright grown-up for their age. A pretty girl,” Brenner said, indifferently, as if Knoll had shown him a photo of his favorite niece.
“Twelve,” Knoll repeated, and all the more somber for it. “On her way to the abortion clinic.”
“Is that illegal?”
“No, it’s not.” Knoll reminded Brenner of an oracle who says everything twice, first normally, then a second time with grave foreboding, listen: “No, it’s not. For the unborn, there is no protection in our society.”
He pushed the photo at Brenner and offered him 10,000 euros if he found the girl, whose name he didn’t know.
“Seems to me, the unborn matter more to you guys than the born do,” Brenner said. “I was on the force for nineteen years. And I didn’t go trumpeting all over the place that I was fighting for the lives of the born, either.”
Knoll didn’t let himself be provoked, though. You could tell right away that he was used to these kinds of discussions, and he had roped Brenner into a conversation about unborn life and about morality at large, for and against, pro and contra-you could transcribe it for the pages of Religion Today every single time.
And to be perfectly honest: if Brenner didn’t have his own brand of fanaticism, in which he believed himself to be the only one capable of finding Helena, and if rage wasn’t burning in him like a vaccine, then I wouldn’t exactly stick my hand in the fire about whether Knoll stood a chance at persuading him yet. And maybe Brenner would be standing in front of the abortion clinic today with a rosary and an embryo sign and a pious expression on his face, and on the other side of the clinic’s entrance, the young security woman with the lawn-mowed do would have no idea that the old nut was actually Brenner, who used to be a cop and a detective and everything.
And that would be the same Brenner who people tell heroic tales about today, the stuff of wonder, beginning with the cell phone that he swiped from Knoll’s pocket in the betting parlor, allegedly like a real trickster thief.
