Poachers Road (27 page)

But now Felix’s grandfather seemed to be weighing his words carefully, his head bobbing slowly and decisively as though counting out a precise number of words.

“I never went up in the wald, in the forest, with those idiots, Felix. I am proud of that.”

“What idiots?”

“Those idiots who do you think, man?”

“The Brauners?”

“Say the name, Felix. Jesus. It’s sixty years ago.”

“Hitler Youth?”

“Yes, Hitler Youth! When I think of it my blood pressure . . .!

Ah forget it.You and your damned beer.”

“You were just a kid though.”

“Enough talk. Christ on the cross, Felix, but you’ll put me in a bad mood yet. Look, I don’t want to speak poorly of anyone. Our Saviour had words for that.”

Felix trudged across the yard after him. He heard the soft, scratching tread of the dog’s paws following.

His grandfather stopped and turned to him.

“I will say one thing though. I’m only telling you this because it is advice for the next generation, for when you start your family.

That crap has an effect on a family for a long, long time. Just remember that.”

“What does? I don’t get it.”

His grandfather waved his arms about.

“Call it something, I don’t know this fanaticism. Delusions, fairy-tale rubbish that ended up with, well, war. When you think about it, Christ! Their Germanic this and their Germanic that, and all the legends and crap they came up with. Bogeymen, and Wotan for God’s sake. Superstitious nonsense and this in a country that does science and music the best in the world? You should empty your head of this stuff. It’s like a snake or something, the more you look at it, the more it . . . ”

Opa Nagl waved away the rest of his words, and made a sound that was more like a grunt than a sigh.

“Thank God your generation won’t have this,” he muttered.

“And that’s why I talk about your dad with such respect. He became like a son to us. I shouldn’t say this out loud, I suppose. But he could relax when he came in our door. No, it wasn’t just he was starry-eyed over your mom. He trusted us. A good man, coming from that . . . that, I don’t have the word wait, I do: that environment.”

He looked to Felix for corroboration that his meaning was clear.

“You don’t get it, do you? I’m saying he didn’t pick up the, the . . . I can’t say it. No.”

“Bitterness?”

“A hard word, Felix. Especially for your own flesh and blood.”

“We avoid too many words, I think sometimes.”

“Well gossip is bad, Felix. Me, I am rough with my words. But I try to follow what Our Saviour has taught us.”

Felix thought back to the anniversary and how he had caught a glimpse of his grandfather, eyes closed tight in prayer, or straining to fight off distractions, or weak thoughts. The old marterls and taferls, those roadside shrines that still dotted the mountain roads here, had been built and kept up by people like Walter Nagl. So too were many graves tended, and churches fixed. A wave of affection broke over Felix. Now wasn’t the time to ask his opa how a mischievous nonconformist could still be so pious too. Maybe it was just a reflex, not a belief at all. He winked at his grandfather.

“You wink, you little noodle? You were pulling my leg after all!”

“No. I would like to know more about things like that.”

His grandfather’s face turned serious again.

“Well maybe you’re right. It’ll draw out the pus, whatever there is now after all this time.”

They turned to the sound of a woman’s voice from inside the house. Berndt went by then, half sideways, his stub of a tail wiggling feebly.

“You old goat,” his grandmother called out. “You’ve got the boy drinking beer already.”

“We talked,” his grandfather retorted. “And that cost us nothing, eh, Felix?”

“Come,” said Felix’s grandmother, and he made his way to her outstretched arms, trying not to notice again how she seemed to be sinking a little into herself, or rather stooping more.

“There’s something about getting a proper hug from a tall and handsome policeman,” she said. “Not like that old bandit I am married to.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
HEY WATCHED
Z
IET IM
B
ILD AT 10.
T
HE HEADLINES WERE
about Israel again.

Felix was beyond sleepy. Berndt was dreaming still, and twitched and made little yelps. Felix was sure the dog was farting away all the while too.

“Poor Berndt,” his grandfather said several times, letting his arm hang down to stroke the dog. “You’re haunted, aren’t you.”

Oma Nagl’s face was flushed from the glass of wine. She had strayed away from asking Felix questions about marriage, his or Lisi’s plans. There were enough anecdotes old and new about the kids become men in the village, what they were doing now, what they were not doing.

Opa Nagl’s reading glasses made him look like something in a painting of centuries past. He held out the city newspaper to read it, and cast the odd glance at the television when he picked up on something interesting.

“Look,” he said, when the ads finished, and a piece about Schwarzenegger and the US presidency came on. “His old man was a cop in Graz. Look what can happen.”

“He is a fool,” said Oma Nagl, unraveling the sweater she had half done before realizing the needles had been wrong. “Only in America can he get this far.”

“We have heard this speech before.”

“If he gets anywhere near the White House, I’m going to march in the streets,” she said.“He hasn’t a clue. He cheats on his wife. He doesn’t know acting from reality. Not that he can act.”

A snort from his grandfather told Felix that the dispute would not be taken up seriously. He turned the page quickly, snapping it almost, and then dropped it on the floor.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” he said. “The minute Arnold turns up on the screen there, old Berndt lets a big one go.”

“You’re glad to blame the poor creature,” said Felix’s grandmother.

Felix sat forward and put his elbows on his knees, and he rubbed at his face.

“Poor boy,” said his grandmother. “You should go to bed. Sleep cures.”

. . . the heavy heart, went the rest of the expression, he knew.

His opa must have mentioned his troubles with Giuliana.

His grandfather got up with a soft grunt, and called for the dog.

“He’ll do his business and we can call it a day.”

Felix watched him persuade the dog to get up and head for the door into the yard.

“Sure, he’s an old goat,” said his grandmother after he left.

“But that stuff, that talk, is just a cover. Don’t forget that.”

Felix smiled.

“He never raised a hand to me, that man. Nor our children.You know that?”

“Yes, Oma.”

“When old Berndt goes, well I don’t know. It’ll be hard. But enough about that. Can’t I get you to phone your mother?”

“I will phone her tomorrow. Really.”

“She was wondering why, well, why you’re not on the holiday.”

“You talked to her?”

“Of course I did. My daughter? After you phoned us to see about staying a while. I told her not to worry. That you had to ‘get away from things’ for a few days.”

Annoyance flared up in Felix, but he smothered it.

“And I know there are things you’re not telling your oma too.

We’re not dodels up here in the mountains, now.”

Felix looked at the night sky on the windows behind the sofa.

“I’ll phone her tomorrow, Oma.”

“No secrets, not between a mother and her boy.”

Felix eyed the Great Arnold waving at some fat Americans with a beach in the background.

“Oma, what went wrong between Mom’s side and Dad’s?”

“Wrong? What do you mean wrong?”

He gave her a wry smile.

“‘No secrets’? Come on now. These are things no one talks about.”

“Why are you asking me? Ask, I don’t know, your mother or him, out there.”

“I tried to but he would only go so far.”

She stopped pulling at the yarn and rested her hands.

“Go to bed,” she said.

“After you tell me.”

“You scamp! You mean your Opa Kimmel, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“Well they used to say ‘Kimmel a little goes with everything.’

But they only said that about your father. It’s because he was so different.”

She leaned forward.

“My theory is that your dad reacted to him and decided he would be different.”

“But did you have a falling-out with them?”

She sat back abruptly, as though she had received a shock.

“Felix, your opa grew up near your Opa Kimmel. I knew him growing up, too. St. Kristoff is a small place. We were polite but kept a distance. It was your dad who broke the ice. We saw him growing up and what a fine boy it was his mother, I know it, your Oma Kimmel. She made up her mind that her boy would be different from her husband. Oh, yes. I always wish I’d known her more, or better.”

Her eyes moved about the room.

“Why didn’t you?”

“She didn’t grow up here at all. She was from the south.”

For a moment Felix imagined Italy.

“Her family was one of the ones they moved out. The Danube Germans.”

“Refugees?”

“After the war, yes. Her mother and her family were in a camp for years.You know about this, don’t you?”

“A little.”

“A little, indeed. There were thousands, tens of thousands.

Camps all over the place here, and over in Carinthia too. But her father, and a lot of her family, they didn’t make it. A crime to speak German then, of course. It’s winner take all, isn’t it? It seemed the whole world was on the move, I remember. The Tommies on the road with their strange talk they were friendly, but the Russians?

Better not to remember some things.”

“I didn’t know any of that part,” he said. “I knew she had relatives, or we did.”

“Oh, a hard life she had. And that’s the kind of wife he wantedss”

She stopped suddenly and grasped Felix’s arm.

“I should not say these things, much less think them! I meant ‘hard’ when she was a refugee.”

Felix met her stare and nodded.

“But then, the cancer! Mein Gött – a few months, it was.When she was gone there was no one to care for him really.”

“Political stuff between you and them, or Opa and their family at least?”

“Well natürlich. That generation, you know. Oh, everything went to hell.”

“The Russians, the war, all that?”

“My God, Felix, but you bring up the strangest things. Are you going through some stress?”

“It was on my mind. The anniversary, you know.”

She nodded and reached out, and squeezed his forearm again.

“It’s sleep you need,” she murmured. “Just like your mother.

Her head would fill up with notions.”

Felix’s grandfather opened the door and waited for the dog.

“The poor bastard. I should give him something for it.”

“Never mind,” said his grandmother. “Let nature do what it can.”

“He’s constipated, my dear,” said Felix’s grandfather with a genial sarcasm. “He’ll need to go outside or he’ll destroy the house during the night. I’ll put him in the shed then.”

“So you should.”

Felix’s grandmother got up. It took her a moment to straighten up.

“He’ll be out there tonight,” she said, but smiled. “I know he will. If that dog doesn’t perform, he’ll get out of bed at two or three, and he’ll be out there. Wait and see in the morning.”

Felix brought the plates and cups to the sink. His grandmother stood by the window.

“There they go,” she said. “The two old hounds.”

She turned.

“I’ll tell you something hard now, Felix. It’s your other side, your Opa Kimmel. May God forgive me if this is not true but your dad’s dad would do away with an old crippled dog.That is their way.

If they cannot use it, out it goes. The old way, you could say: ‘The hill farmer must do what he must do.’ But not these days. That’s all gone. Or I hope it is.”

The tiredness began to roll back over Felix now. His shoulders ached.

“Yes,” his grandmother murmured. “We even have stuff here I’m sure, stuff that was being thrown out. From years ago. If I knew where your dad had put it.”

“My dad?”

“Oh yes, he kept some things over the years. Your mother and I went through it after, well, after . . . you know. But your grand211 JOHN BRADY father turned up things a while back. Out in the shed, I think, some stuff.”

“Is it still here?”