Natalie didn’t realize the huge mistake she’d just made. Because that was the first time she didn’t call him “Herr Simon,” but rather “Brenner.”
And it struck Brenner that, in doing so, she was authorizing him to undertake the investigation. Unconsciously, as it were.
CHAPTER 8
Thirty hours after the girl’s disappearance, Brenner was back at large. Outside it was raining, and later on he’d often think about how the moment he set foot on the street, what shot through his head were the words “Zone of Transparency.” Because let’s be honest with each other, a normal person wouldn’t think “Zone of Transparency” when he walked out of the police station and into the rain ten times and saw on his watch that the mishap occurred exactly thirty hours ago.
The rain, by and large, had never bothered Brenner much, and when the windshield wipers were doing their job well it was always calming, meditative for him. Helena was completely in love with the windshield wipers anyway, often he’d switch them on briefly even in the nicest weather just to delight her. But when you’re a chauffeur without a car who’s standing in the rain, then, subjectively speaking of course, that’s the moment when it hits you that you’re having a crisis. And the colossal duffel bag wasn’t exactly making things any easier.
You should know by now: crisis always equals opportunity! And before you start feeling sorry for Brenner-how he stood there in the rain without a car and without a job and without an apartment and without an umbrella and without a plan and with only this cheap duffel bag and this nuisance of a brainworm, “Zone of Transparency”-there’s one thing I need to tell you: if it hadn’t been raining, if Brenner weren’t so depressed walking in the rain, as if he’d never heard of a bus or a train or a taxi, he might never have noticed.
When a man follows you for a while in the rain, at some point you ask yourself, why is he doing that? Add to that, when the man, like Brenner, has no umbrella, but unlike Brenner, not a single hair. Total baldness might even be an advantage in the rain, because at least you don’t have wet hair afterward. But Brenner’s shadower was bald in such an old-fashioned way, with a wreath of hair around his head, i.e., the worst kind in the rain, because the raindrops hammer away at the unprotected bald part, and regardless, wet hair.
The aggravating presence of his shadower pulled Brenner out of his lethargy a little. To this day I don’t know what aggravated him more: that they still held him suspect and had him shadowed, or that baldy was such a dilettante about it.
And there you have it, once again, the best proof that there’s nothing in the world that doesn’t also have its good side. Because your average Viennese citizen might find it depressing that a new off-track betting parlor opens up every day, but purely for detective street practices, it’s convenient when you can wait in the entrance of the next betting parlor for your shadower.
“Next time, wear a sign that says ‘Shadowing’!” Brenner advised his trusty stalker, who nearly ran smack into him. “Then maybe you’d be less conspicuous.”
And not just his face, of course, but his whole bald head, too, turned red, only his lips were white as they said, “I need to speak with you.”
“There are easier ways to go about it.”
“I wanted to make sure that we weren’t being shadowed.”
And at that moment, as the man offered him his hand, it occurred to Brenner where he’d read the heading “Zone of Transparency.”
“Sebastian Knoll,” the man chipperly introduced himself.
I don’t know if it was because of the sleepless night in the holding cell at the police station, or simply the state of shock Brenner had been in for thirty hours now, that could explain why he suddenly had the feeling he’d better hold on tight to the door frame to keep himself from sinking into a fever dream.
In the green light of the betting parlor’s neon sign, he could see all too clearly the large raindrops crawling through Knoll’s wreath of hair. The purple spider veins on his earlobe, from an ancient piercing that had since closed up, looked to Brenner like a cryptic sign of either a cult or something extraterrestrial. Through the open door, racehorses and race dogs and race cars could be seen flickering across a TV screen. Outside, an unnaturally red streetcar sailed elegantly through the spray of rain, and above the door the ventilation system whooshed with the placing of bets, while just a few centimeters in front of Brenner, the dripping wet face of Knoll, the abortion fanatic, was claiming he must urgently speak with him.
Brenner wasn’t really listening to him, though, because the moment Knoll said his name it occurred to him that one of Knoll’s activists had shoved a brochure into his hand a few weeks ago in which he’d read the heading “Zone of Transparency.”
Pay attention: that’s what the glassy membrane of the ovum is called, into which the sperm implants itself- science, as it were. And believe it or not, for that first cell to divide: it takes thirty hours exactly. While the bald- headed man’s voice got increasingly impatient, from the betting commotion and the ventilation system drowning him out, Brenner couldn’t fight the thought that, exactly thirty hours after Helena’s disappearance, a chain reaction was now being set into motion. Just like the automatic sequence depicted so nicely in the brochure, how day after day the cells divide, and divide again, and divide again, without any human intervention. Suddenly he felt certain-or did it just seem that way to him in retrospect, what with the full knowledge one acquires in retrospect-that for anti-abortionist Knoll to turn up exactly thirty hours after the child’s disappearance was a sign that catastrophe would only multiply as automatically as cell division itself, just not in the direction of life. Rather, in the opposite direction.
“You’re Knoll?”
Interesting, though. Just now Brenner noticed that the entrance to the betting parlor was also surveilled with a camera. You can understand why they’d surveil it, because a betting parlor attracts a certain kind of person. Surveillance cameras were such a sore spot for Brenner, though, that he pinned this cheap dummy right on Knoll’s shoulders, even though there was no Sectec logo on it like on the cameras in the clinic. Well, figuratively pinned it on his shoulders, because very calmly he said, “I’ve always heard that Knoll never reveals himself, that he just pulls strings from the background.”
And just to escape the camera, Brenner went inside the betting parlor and sat down at the first empty table he saw. He ordered an espresso. Knoll ordered a hot tea, because he was afraid of catching a chill in his wet clothes. And when the drinks came, he said, “I’m sure you’ve heard quite a bit about me. But, the things that get said about people aren’t true most of the time, you know. Things have been said about you, too, which I hope aren’t true.”
The arrogance with which he said this rubbed Brenner entirely the wrong way. But he couldn’t help but like how modestly Knoll wiped his bald head dry with the small napkin placed between his tea cup and saucer.
“Now I finally know what these doilies are good for,” Knoll said, grinning. “Otherwise, they stick so badly to the bottom of your cup that you wonder what the point of them is. If you don’t spill, you don’t need them, and if you do spill, they just spread the mess farther.”
“What do you want from me?”
Knoll balled up the napkin, but instead of putting it in the ashtray, he slipped it as inconspicuously as possible into his pocket, like someone who doesn’t like to leave any trace behind.
“I’d like to see the Kressdorf kid returned as quickly as possible.”
“Talking to me is only going to make you look more suspicious to the police,” Brenner said. “Besides, I just got taken off of it.”
“It’ll look much the same to the good Frau Doctor. Fired! Without even batting an eye at employment law, of course.”
“Yeah, well. Gross negligence is reason enough.”
“They’ll always find something!”
Knoll had such an inscrutable smile on his lips that Brenner wasn’t sure how serious he was being. The ironic smile fit with his abortion fanaticism about as much as the pierced ear did with his respectable appearance.
“She would’ve liked to see me thrown out of my own building. And every accidental power outage got pinned on me like it was a terrorist attack and then would appear instantly in the newspapers. These old buildings just
