But people are stubborn in this regard. Even in a hopeless situation, a person will still try to predict what’s going to happen next. Because there’s nothing else to be done. And Brenner, of course, was feverishly doing just that while his life was at its greatest risk-or would you say while his death was at its greatest risk? You see, I don’t know anymore, life at risk or death at risk. Anyway, Brenner was in the middle of it, ninety-five and a half hours after the South Tyrolean stole Helena from his car, i.e., half an hour before the start of the fifth day.
Where exactly they’d locked him up wasn’t difficult to guess, even with his eyes blindfolded. Because you can’t forget the smell of the rabbit pen. The animals weren’t there, of course, Kressdorf only got them on special occasions from their foster family. But the smell-merciless. It was the one thing that even the girls complained about when Bank Director Reinhard kept them behind the glass panel for hours on end before granting them a personal appointment. Congressman Stachl hated this quirk of Reinhard’s because then the girls would smell like the pen, of course, especially their long hair-dreadful. And in a weak moment he’d even spoken with Kressdorf about whether Reinhard just didn’t notice, whether his olfactory nerves were just that bad due to old age, or whether he was just making a point.
You can’t be ungrateful, though, because the nicotine fingers that groped his face and tore off his blindfold weren’t that bad now compared to the smell in the pen. Interesting, though: Brenner felt blinder without the blindfold. Because of the mirrored glass separating the hunters’ den from the animal pen. From the other side you could see into his zone perfectly, but from the inside you couldn’t see who was behind the glass, you could only see yourself. Reinhard liked it that way, that he could see the girls but they couldn’t see him.
When you feel blind, your sense of smell intensifies, of course. And even Mr. Nicorette’s sense of smell might have been slowly returning to him in his withdrawal period. Because he told his freckled friend now that he badly needed to get out into the fresh air, he was suffocating in here.
But the foreman shook his head and pointed outside, where the sound of a car being parked could be heard. “There’s no time for that now. Just hurry up with him, then you can get some fresh air,” he said and then left the two of them there in the pen together. Nicorette looked offended and stuck his white plastic pipe back into his mouth. And it was this piddly little straw, of all things, that terrified Brenner. Because an interrogator’s cigarette would have been the protocol. Offer a cigarette, blow smoke in the face, ever see a match burn twice, and so on, all common cruelties, but the withdrawal pipe gave the thug a human quality, and a human quality is always life threatening.
“Did you know that decades of smoking reduces sperm count?” Brenner said. Because he thought he absolutely had to cover up how weak he was feeling.
The security guard from the construction site replied in his own way, i.e., with an attempt at ruining Brenner’s sperm count for good. But the poor watchdog didn’t have that much air left in him, because the kick sent sweat running down his forehead-you’d have thought it hurt him more than Brenner-and it was only after sucking on his straw a few more times that he’d pumped himself back up. He used his gangster patter on Brenner, he could find out fast or slow, nice or rough, however he liked-but anyway, what he was interested in: “Where’s Helene?”
It looked a little strange, the construction-site guard, muscular as an ox, not a hair on his head but twenty-five tattoos on his thick neck to compensate, and he was sucking on the nicotine pipe like an infant. You can only say this in retrospect, but there’s something tragic about someone still struggling to quit smoking even in the last hours of his life.
“What’s that, Herr Simon? Cat got your tongue? Where’ve you got Helene?”
It struck Brenner that he pronounced her name about as wrong as the South Tyrolean and her Marl boo ro. And believe it or not, that reminded him of the only book that his grandparents had owned, or better yet, of a story in the four-inch thick Pious Helene by Wilhelm Busch. That’s how the tattooed ox pronounced her name, like Pious Helene. No, that’s not true, his grandparents had two books, the Wilhelm Busch and The Doctor Pays a House Call. And very good pictures in both! But around a certain age he stumbled upon The Doctor ’s hiding place, and Pious Helene became boring to him, so from that point on, only The Doctor, don’t even ask.
Brenner criticized the tattooed ox now, but not for pronouncing “Helena” like Pious Helene. He acted like it didn’t bother him, because whoever has the gun gets to decide on matters of taste, that’s true the world over. Instead, Brenner answered, “You know for a fact I’m the first person who’d like to know where the girl is.”
“You’re the first person who’d like to know? Before her parents, even, or what? Are you the one suffering here or what?”
“No. The first aside from her parents, of course.”
Yup, you see here, the construction-site ox was just too stupid, because otherwise maybe he would’ve been able to detect from his hasty correction that Brenner was lying. But fine, analysis wasn’t his job anyway. He was just in charge of the questions. For the analysis, that’s what the gentlemen behind the glass were for. Don’t forget the baby monitor that Kressdorf would sometimes switch on, much to Bank Director Reinhard’s delight. He always liked listening to the girls babbling over it, background music, as it were, while he and Congressman Stachl negotiated life’s serious matters. Brenner, of course, was thinking only of the gentlemen behind the screen now, as the tattooed ox sucked the next question out of his little straw. “If you don’t want to say where Helene is-”
“Helena,”-now Brenner did interrupt him-“her name is Helena, and I don’t know where she is.”
“-then maybe you’d like to tell us where your friend Knoll is.”
Ah, of course. Knoll. For the first time Brenner saw that he might have a chance to walk away from all of this with his life. He wasn’t going to tell them where Helena was, in order to protect the South Tyrolean. He hadn’t given any thought yet to his own survival. But now all of a sudden he saw a chance for Knoll to save him again.
He was focused so intently on the room behind the glass that it almost seemed like he could see how the Bank Director and the Construction Lion and the Congressman were sitting and observing him. But not just him; they must have been observing each other, too. He realized now that at least one of them didn’t know anything about Knoll in the cesspit, or else they wouldn’t be letting the ox ask such stupid questions.
“Why should I know where Knoll is?”
“Because maybe you were the last person he was seen with. Nothing goes unnoticed in a Schrebergarten, you should really know better.”
“I followed Knoll there because I thought he would lead me to Helena.”
After half a ton of ersatz nicotine, the tattooed ox found his tongue again. “And him acquiring Neighbor’s Rights by purchasing that Schrebergarten dump, you didn’t know anything about that either of course. And that his lawyer’s already obtained a halt to the construction.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“What don’t you believe?”
“That you care more about your fucking construction site than you do about the girl!”