“I see,” she said, in a sleepy voice, and her hand moved over him now. “You have ideas, don’t you.”
Later he listened as her breathing became whistley. She put her hand on the pillow under her cheek, and after clearing a strand of her hair away from her mouth, her breathing became almost inaudible. He no longer expected to sleep. It was useless trying.
Thoughts continued to roll through his mind, like those slow rollers he’d seen on that beach in Spain. Gebhart’s wife had glasses just like the daughter’s. She sat forward without apparent effort in the chair next to her husband’s bed at the hospital. On first meeting her, her eyes had seemed huge, even walleyed. It must have been the glasses.
She had known him right away the first time his visit coincided with hers. She had been there ahead of him, and sat waiting in the corridor outside for a nurse to do some procedure. It had been awkward. He had begun to believe that her steady gaze was proof of some special powers those big eyes of hers held. He felt he had to explain, to say how sorry he was. She had nodded slowly. She’d kept her gaze on the goings-on down at a nursing station.
“So wie so,” was all she said that first time.
He didn’t know whether it was sarcasm, or that she did not know what to say, where to begin. A doctor came along then and she began to question him about a shunt. A thing with trains, Felix thought, and realized that he should not be there, then. He heard her return his quiet goodbye, but felt her eyes on him as walked down the hallway.
But Gebhart must have gotten wind of it, and a couple of days later Felix’s evening visit coincided with hers.
“It looks good for me,” Gebhart said. “They put fish blood in me too so I’ll never feel the cold again. And I can pee like a drunkard. What can’t they do these days?”
After a pause that gave Felix a moment to see that this effort at light-heartedness had only raised a sardonic expression on Frau Gebhart’s face, Gebhart eyed him.
“But you, you look worse. How is that possible?”
Felix tried to make light of it. The cracked rib and the concussion were nothing really, he tried to persuade Gebhart, but yes, he did feel achy. Gebhart did not make any jokes about how Fuchs’ huge size had kept Felix alive, as well as flattened him. Nor did he ask about Dravnic, the man who had found his way to the farm that day. Felix supposed that Schroek told Gebhart all the news and the gossip, as it was the same newly energized C.O. Schroek who had daily tidbits for Felix also.
Speckbauer was apparently pushing paper in Graz, his field ‘excursions’ curtailed until the inquiry came up with its findings.
Schroek had also heard that Speckbauer had offered to resign.
Dravnic had even turned up on warrants from the European Court in The Hague. He had lived in Germany for nearly a decade before the civil war. It was not clear yet how Fuchs had first made contact with Dravnic’s people. Peter Kimmel had indeed known a Dario Dravnic in years gone by, but that was as far as he went with that.
Felix had heard from his mother or was it one of Lisi’s phone calls? that Opa Kimmel had told them to figure it out themselves.
And that was that.
“Well you have a good, thick Styrian head,” said Gebhart. “And you’re a stubborn bastard, aren’t you? Runs in the family, gell?
How’s that old opa of yours, ‘the marksman’?”
“He is enjoying the attention. But he pretends that he doesn’t.”
“Naturlich,” said Gebhart, with a sly grin and a wink at his wife that she ignored. “I hear he told them to arrest him if they want.
Quite a fellow.”
Felix nodded.
“It’s all Fuchs’ doing, he maintains. Take it or leave it.”
“You believe him I mean I know he’s your opa but do you?”
“Actually I do. Fuchs rummaged all through his stuff.”
“Some friend of the aged,” said Speckbauer. “That old pistol, your opa didn’t even know it was missing?”
“He says no. But now he sees why Fuchs was full of questions about old times, and what he did all those years back.”
“What, he thought Fuchs was studying folklore or something?
Collecting stories, or folk tales, another Peter Rossegger?”
Felix shrugged.
“I think he was glad of the company, that’s all. A chance to talk.
Being alone?”
Gebhart sighed and stretched out his arms.
“Christ but you can wither in here for not doing something,” he groaned. “Are you back to doing your bike stuff yet?”
“Not as much as I’d like, but yes.”
“Come on now. You’re the kind of guy needs activity like that, for energy.”
“I’ll do some more maybe after this week.”
“Well Schroek is Mr. Energy, let me tell you,” Gebhart went on. “He wants to look good with this. He prowls the post like the captain of a ship now, I hear. But, my God, he is nosy, and a gossip, as ever.”
He nodded in the direction of his wife.
“You cleared him out of here one evening, schatzi?”
“I did,” she said. “He was wearing us out.”
“Like another interrogation, I tell you,” said Gebhart. “‘Did he shoot Fuchs first?’ ‘Didn’t he say anything?’ ‘How close was the old man when he put him down with the rifle?’”
Gebhart rolled his eyes and looked down at the carpentry magazines his wife had brought.
“Those two,” he said then, and his face had lost its ease when he looked up from the magazines. “The two James Bonds…?”
“Nix,” said Felix. “The gag order until the investigation reports.”
“‘Must not communicate,’” Gebhart said with a top-heavy irony. “As if they did any, when they were stringing you along. And who would want to talk to those two anyway, the mess they made?”
Felix was aware that Gebhart’s wife was scrutinizing him. He looked to her with a polite smile, but her eyes darted away.
“I forgot to ask you, you know,” said Gebhart. “My brain is on holiday in here. Look, did you see those two show up back at the farm?”
“No. But the place was kind of crazy, with the helicopter and the cars.”
Gebhart smiled.
“That part was funny at least,” he said. “Thinking about them pushing the car into the field to get by. By the way, has the garage phoned? Is it ready?”
“They did,” she said. “They had to replace the handle, they said. And something that winds the window, from inside.”
“That beauty better be perfect,” Gebhart declared. “Or I’ll sue the depp who broke the window and I want it washed after being shoved into that field. That car was taken care of, let me tell you. No BP is going to disrespect that car, smashing a window like that.
Hell, no. Maybe I’ll ask Schroek to look into it. He likes that kind of thing. Then he can take credit for that too.”
“Credit?” said Gebhart’s wife, shifting in the chair, and regaining an even more erect posture. “Let him try. That man…”
Gebhart exchanged a glance with Felix.
“You know,” he said, in a different tone, “the psychology bunch found that married men live longer?”
“They take their wife’s portions,” she said quickly. She fixed her superpower eyes on Felix for a moment.
“Nurses like me have enough nonsense at work,” she said.
“However,” said Gebhart breezily. “I have a point to make here.
