toward the farmhouse. He made a flinty smile.
“Too much talk. It doesn’t settle anything.”
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Felix began. He let the rest of his words go.
“It didn’t happen. Stress? You should see Franzi in action.
Jesus: a maniac.”
He looked over.
“Don’t worry, it’s no big secret. Franzi walloped me so hard I was seeing spaceships with little green men, not just stars. It was a medication thing. He had a lot of pain. Apparently he was sleepwalking.”
“Sleepwalking,” said Felix, numbly. The tiredness had suddenly landed on his shoulders like a dead weight.
“A perfect excuse. ‘Re-enacting’ said the shrink. ‘You mean he’s going to keep doing it?’ I ask. ‘We don’t know.’ ‘I should tie him up? Lock him in? Wear a helmet?’ They don’t have the answers for post-trauma. I sleep with one eye open. Look, I need to use a land phone.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Felix felt no more awake after a third cup of coffee, but at least now, with the thought of Gebhart’s wary gaze, he had some kind of direction to follow.
Occasionally he heard Speckbauer’s voice from the hall. Along with a tone of disbelief, or impatience, or both, but there was more often a steady metronomic ‘Ja’ that Speckbauer seemed to employ to speed up a conversation.
“Mein Gott but he is a different man on the phone,” Felix’s oma whispered. She nodded toward her husband. “I thought I’d heard them all from the count here.”
“I keep reinforcements,” said Felix’s opa. “Don’t worry. For when I am too feeble to chase you about.”
“And he is speaking foreign too.”
“It’ll be a hell of a phone bill,” said his grandfather.
“He will pay,” Felix heard himself say.
“They will pay,” said his grandfather. “The state.”
“He writes a lot of things down,” said Oma Nagl behind her hand.
“The Franzi is a character I can tell you, Felix,” added Opa Nagl, also with his hand to the side of his mouth. “He went out to see the pigs. To talk to them, he said. Where do you find such people? You were a bit wild, naturlich. But these are special.”
Felix made a greater effort to appear relaxed.
“An accident with chemicals,” his grandfather whispered. “Lieber Gott imagine the pain. He must be very dedicated to go on.”
Felix realized he had been thinking of the pair, this odd couple of cops, in the same apartment. One, damaged and close to blowing his lid all the time, the other, an amiable pro on the outside but really, as cunning as they come, and impossible to read. But even Speckbauer could not quite cover up the signs that he was also full of some kind of a ferocity. Maybe he was just as messed up in his head as the other.
“‘Kripo,’” his grandmother repeated, softly. “Kriminal Polizei.
It’s like those police shows on the TV.”
“Shows?” his grandfather said, almost indignantly. “The American dreck that half the country watches? But Felix: this has to be good for you, no? They see you work, they see how settled you are now… ”
Opa Nagl paused, with an awkward smile.
“When your people, our good old Gendarmerie that we know so well, our fellows — or boys when your team gets together with the Polizei, boy, that’ll be the perfect situation for you. Unbeatable, I say.”
Oma Nagl put her hand over his.
“You have it good, thank God,” she said to Felix.
“Do you know if you’ll keep the uniform though?” asked his grandfather. “The tellerkappe? Christ, if that goes, all is lost.”
“Lieber Gott,” said Oma Nagl. “Why is a little beret like that important? The tradition? Ask the boy about promotions and suchlike.”
“It is important. A symbol is important to ordinary people. I mean, when I see a Gendarme, and there he is under that cap, I can relax. Yes! I know I am dealing with a normal fellow. But Lord Jesus, when I see the Polizei there in Graz, I do not relax. No.”
“It’s just city life,” whispered Oma Nagl. “Bus conductor uniforms scare you.”
Felix’s grandfather gave his wife a long look.
“You,” he said. “You are the same. Remember on the TV the other night? The early news, the seven- thirty?”
“Those police talking in Vienna?” she asked.
“You said something about them. You did! ‘Too many police uniforms in one place,’ I think you said or ‘too much uniform’?”
“Ach, don’t be silly. With you it is your conscience, what little is left, and the naughty things of your youth. Or it’s just political you think uniforms are for the bad times, for trouble.”
Opa Nagl’s face took on a contented expression. He eyed Felix.
“This is Mrs. Law and Order, a woman who liked a wild one, once upon a time?”
“You were a naughty kid, Opa?”
“Of course I”
Oma Nagl held up her hand. She tilted her head to hear Speckbauer’s voice growing louder in the hall. Words were clear now.
“Jesus and Mary,” Felix heard, as Speckbauer’s irritation broke over something. He watched his grandparents’ eyes grow bigger.
“For Christ’s sake, what’s the goddamned delay? This is the digital age!”
A soft smile settled on his grandfather’s face now.
“Army,” he whispered. “Must have been. Listen to all that bad language.”
“Damn it, Martin! Step on it, will you? We need to move on this!”
Oma Nagl rolled her eyes. Her husband shook his head, half in admiration.
“Ah we were all a bit naughty then,” he said. It took a moment for Felix’s addled brain to pick up the thread.
“Those little Puch motorbikes we’d ‘borrow.’ Beer of course.
Practical jokes. All fun. But those days, who knows.”
“They all want cars, now, the kids,” Oma Nagl added. “For you-know-what.”
“Nature studies.”
“You don’t miss those annoying whiny two-strokes though,” his grandfather added. “The Japs beat them into the ground with their motorbikes. Just like their little rice cookers beat up NSU and Audi and Merc and”
“Rice cookers is not polite thing to say these days,” said Oma Nagl.
“Rudolf Diesel is a saint,” he retorted. “No rice cooked in a diesel engine, girl.”
“Not so many motorbikes now?” Felix asked.
“Right. But older guys like them still I think, a few anyways.
‘The old days’ kind of thing perhaps. They’ll come back, I tell you.”
“Ach,” said Oma Nagl, and brushed away his opinion. “They are still dangerous. Even with grown men on them. Not dangerous to me, no, I am in a car, but what chance do you have? Remember that crackpot there, not long back? There were still patches of snow even, and he comes out of nowhere. A madman.”
“Yes,” said Felix’s opa. “I remember that. Like a pirate or something. It was on the bend down the far side of the church. He must have been bottled to be out in the cold like that. Big red face no, a beard on him. A Viking or something.”
“A red beard? Red hair?”
