“Second thoughts?” he asked.
“No. I’m thinking. Keep going.”
Felix opened the window. There was a sharp edge to the air up here. Gebhart sighed and reached for his mobile.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Nothing now. I had one bar back in the village.”
Felix pointed to a line of electricity poles and the ragged clump of conifers, a windbreak, where it ended.
“You’ll see the roof in a minute,” he said.
“Where is everybody?” asked Gebhart. “Doesn’t everyone here depend on their neighbours?”
He glanced over.
“Let me guess,” he said to Felix then: “‘That’s another story?’”
“You said it, Gebi.”
“Does this place have a name?”
“It’s called Pfarrenord,” Felix said, looking back down the valley.
“Is everyone here holy or something, this ‘parish’ thing?”
“It’s a local name. Not the name on a map. It’s windy here.
Colder, people say. So someone came up with ‘The North Parish.’”
Gebhart sighed and rubbed his nose.
“Watch, there’s a bend here.”
The road twisted at the spot Felix had fallen off his new bike all those years ago. He remembered having a tantrum, and his mother had soothed him. Later, when he’d brought it up in some argument as to why he had to visit his grandfather at all, she’d told him that anxiety did strange things to a kid. It was something to get over, she’d said; something to build on.
“So tell me,” said Gebhart. “How are you going to get things going here? This ‘little chat’?”
“We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.”
“Which page of the manual is that see-how-it-goes technique on?”
Felix was suddenly glad of Gebhart’s breezy sarcasm.
He turned to him.
“Maybe it’s changed since you last looked at it. Back in nineteen-eighty-nothing.”
“Listen to you. You spend a couple of days with suits from Strassgangerstrasse, and now you’re a thick-head like them. Well done, Mr. Know-It-All.”
Felix studied the cloud shadows that now lay over much of the forest cover on the hills about.
“So now you know what I think about your new friends,” said Gebhart.
“They didn’t fool me,” he said. “Completely, anyway.”
“Richtig? But you’re still going to unload that stuff on them, aren’t you? Those maps and documents you were talking about?”
“Soon.”
“‘Soon’? Cheeky.”
“I’ll decide after I hear my opa.”
Gebhart looked over.
“Well you know those two are not sitting on their hands,” he said. “I’ll bet they’re knocking on that guy’s door already, Fuchs.”
“And that’s why I want to be here first.”
“We, Gendarme, we. Remember that, will you? I’m wearing a big bull’s eye on my arsch here for these couple of hours.”
“Gebi”
“Don’t tell me how you appreciate it. That only makes me worry more. The clock is ticking. Ninety minutes, and I’m back in my uniform at work, at the post.”
“Watch for water on the road up ahead. Sometimes you get a pool here before the warm weather.”
Gebhart left the Golf in second, pulling up the hill at a steady rate, the poles passing slowly.
“Scheisse,” said Gebhart with quiet malice, placing his foot over the brake pedal. “You were right.”
The pool of water seemed to run for 20 or more metres on the road.
“Deep, do you think well look.”
Gebhart brought the Golf to a stop slowly. An Opel blocked the road beyond the pool. Its back wheels were still in the water.
“There’s your answer,” Gebhart said. “That guy tried to plough through.”
He moved the gearshift from side to side in neutral.
“Is that your opa’s jalopy?”
A rally stripe with some kind of blue sparkly stuff ran across the top of the back window.
Felix heard Gebhart stroking his bottom lip.
“The alloy wheels I could forgive,” Gebhart murmured. “But Maria, the Michael Schumacher stuff tacked on there? Your opa’s hardly a Rock 100 FM man, is he?”
Felix couldn’t be sure of another sticker, but two he recognized.
“The plate’s local,” said Gebhart.
“Yamaha,” Felix murmured.
Gebhart stopped playing with the gearshift. He looked over, his eyebrows raised.
“Herr Red-head? Our person of interest? Mr. Fuchs up here on a visit?”
Felix shrugged.
“How very damned convenient,” said Gebhart. “Ran it through here, stalled it.”
He put the car in reverse.
“What are you doing?”
“You think I’m going to just park it on this cow path? I’m going to turn it around. And you’re going to help me.”
Felix stood by the entrance to the field.
“Make damned sure my wheels don’t get stuck when I back it in there,” Gebhart called out. “Or you’ll pull this car out yourself.”
The earth sucked at Felix’s shoes as he took another step back.
The diesel smoke from Gebhart’s car seemed to settle around his face, like gnats. He slapped the roof when he saw the wet ridge of mud begin to form to the side of the tire.
Gebhart took his time making the 50-point turn. Felix watched his hands and arms work the wheel, but he did not make out any words in Gebhart’s steady, philosophical-sounding muttering.
Gebhart stepped out of the car eventually, testing the margins of the road to both sides. Felix was listening to the breeze that was coming over the fields here, suddenly quiet after the Golf’s engine was finally off.
“I’m locking it,” said Gebhart. “This is the end of the road, after your opa’s place, right?”
Felix nodded. He thought he had heard something on the breeze. Maybe a bird, or the faint whistle and sough from the stirring blades of new grass. He looked toward the trees that surrounded three sides of the house again, and caught a glimpse of the roof.
There was no smoke from the chimney.
“Come on,” said Gebhart. “Get it over with. It’s going to be a mud fest anyway.”
After a few steps, he put out his arm to stop Felix.
“He has a dog, right?”
“A Shepherd, yes.”
“Where is it?”
“We’re a bit from the house yet.”
“And does this dog listen to you?”
“Usually. It knows me.”
“‘Usually’? Wait a minute.”
Felix watched him skip back to the car and open the trunk. After a brief rummage, he drew out a rusted rebar, with a curve in it.
“I am not a dog man,” said Gebhart. “But I’m not a masochist either.”
