A German Requiem

The American drove slowly, as if he were part of the cortFge, no doubt hoping to spin out his chance to discover who I was and why I was there.

'My name is Shields,' he volunteered. 'Roy Shields.'

'Bernhard Gunther,' I answered, seeing no reason to tease him with it.

'Are you from Vienna?'

'Not originally.'

'Where, originally?'

'Germany.'

'No, I didn't think you were Austrian.'

'Your friend Herr Linden,' I said, changing the subject. 'Did you know him well?'

The American laughed and found some cigarettes in the top pocket of his sports jacket. 'Linden? I didn't know him at all.' He pulled one clear with his lips and then handed me the packet.

'He got himself murdered a few weeks back, and my chief thought it would be a good idea if I were to represent our department at the funeral.'

'And what department is that?' I asked, although I was almost certain I already knew the answer.

'The International Patrol.' Lighting his cigarette he mimicked the style of the American radio broadcasters. 'For your protection, call A29500.' Then he handed me a book of matches from somewhere called the Zebra Club. 'Waste of valuable time if you ask me, coming all the way down here like this.'

'It's not that far,' I told him; and then: 'Perhaps your chief was hoping that the murderer would put in an appearance.'

'Hell, I should hope not,' he laughed. 'We've got that guy in gaol. No, the chief, Captain Clark, is the kind of fellow who likes to observe the proper protocols.' Shields turned the car south towards the chapel. 'Christ,' he muttered, 'this place is like a goddamned gridiron.'

'You know, Gunther, that road we just turned off is almost a kilometre, as straight as an arrow. I caught sight of you when you were still a couple of hundred metres short of Linden's funeral, and it looked to me like you were in a hurry to join us.' He grinned, to himself it seemed. 'Am I right?'

'My father is buried only a short way from Linden's grave. When I got there and saw the colour party I decided to come back a little later, when it's quieter.'

'You walked all that way and you didn't bring a wreath?'

'Did you bring one?'

'Sure did. Cost me fifty schillings.'

'Cost you, or cost your department?'

'I guess we did pass a hat round at that.'

'And you need to ask me why I didn't bring a wreath.'

'Come on, Gunther,' Shields laughed. 'There isn't one of you people who isn't involved in some kind of a racket. You're all exchanging schillings for dollar scrip, or selling cigarettes on the black market. You know, I sometimes think that the Austrians are making more from breaking the rules than we are.'

'That's because you're a policeman.'

We passed through the main gate on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse and drew up in front of the tram stop, where several men were already clinging to the outside of the packed tram car like a litter of hungry piglets on a sow's belly.

'Are you sure you don't want that lift into town?' said Shields.

'No thanks. I have some business with some of the stonemasons.'

'Well, it's your funeral,' he said with a grin, and sped away.

I walked along the high wall of the cemetery, where it seemed that most of Vienna's market gardeners and stonemasons had their premises, and found a pathetic old woman standing in my way. She held up a penny candle and asked me if I had a light.

'Here,' I said, and gave her Shields' book of matches.

When she made as if to take only one I told her to keep the whole book. 'I can't afford to pay you for it,' she said, with real apology.

Just as surely as you know that a man waiting for a train will look at his watch, I knew that I would be seeing Shields again. But I wished him back right then and there so that I could have shown him one Austrian who didn't have the price of a match, let alone a fifty-schilling wreath.

Herr Josef Pichler was a fairly typical Austrian: shorter and thinner than the average German, with pale, soft-looking skin, and a sparse, immature sort of moustache. The hangdog expression on his drawn-out muzzle of a face gave him the appearance of one who had consumed too much of the absurdly young wine that Austrians apparently consider drinkable. I met him standing in his yard, comparing the sketch-plan of a stone's inscription with its final execution.

'God's greeting to you,' he said sullenly. I replied in kind.

'Are you Herr Pichler, the celebrated sculptor?' I asked. Traudl had advised me that the Viennese have a passion for overblown titles and flattery.

'I am,' he said, with a slight swell of pride. 'Does the gallant gentleman wish to consider ordering a piece?' He spoke as if he had been the curator of an art-gallery on Dorotheergasse. 'A fine headstone perhaps.' He indicated a large slice of polished black marble on which names and a date had been inscribed and painted in gold. 'Something marmoreal? A carved figure? A statue perhaps?'

'To be honest, I am not entirely sure, Herr Pichler. I believe you recently created a fine piece for a friend of mine, Dr Max Abs. He was so delighted with it that I wondered if I might have something similar.'

'Yes, I think I remember the Herr Doktor.' Pichler took off his little chocolate cake of a hat and scratched the top of his grey head. 'But the particular design escapes me for the moment. Do you remember what kind of piece it was he had?'

'Only that he was delighted with it, I'm afraid.'

'No matter. Perhaps the honourable gentleman would care to return tomorrow, by which time I should have been able to find the Herr Doktor's specifications.

Permit me to explain.' He showed me the sketch in his hand, one for a deceased whose inscription described him as an 'Engineer of Urban Conduits and Conservancy'.

'Take this customer,' he said, warming to the theme of his own business. 'I have a design with his name and order number here. When this piece is completed the drawing will be filed away according to the nature of the piece. From then on I must consult my sales book to find the name of the customer. But right now I'm in something of a hurry to complete this piece and really ' he patted his stomach '- I'm dead today.' He shrugged apologetically. 'Last night, you understand. I'm short of staff, too.'

I thanked him and left him to his Engineer of Urban Conduits and Conservancy.

That was presumably what you called yourself if you were one of the city's plumbers. What sort of title, I wondered, did the private investigators give themselves? Balanced on the outside of the tram car back to town, I kept my mind off my precarious position by constructing a number of elegant titles for my rather vulgar profession: Practitioner of Solitary Masculine Lifestyle;

Non-metaphysical Inquiry Agent; Interrogative Intermediary to the Perplexed and Anxious; Confidential Solicitor for the Displaced and the Misplaced; Bespoke Grail-Finder; Seeker after Truth. I liked the last one best of all. But, at least as far as my client in the particular case before me was concerned, there was nothing which seemed properly to reflect the sense of working for a lost cause that might have deterred even the most dogmatic Flat Earther.

Chapter 14

According to all the guidebooks, the Viennese love dancing almost as passionately as they love music. But then the books were all written before the war, and I didn't think that their authors could ever have spent a whole evening at the Casanova Club in Dorotheergasse. There the band was led in a way that put you in mind of the most ignominious retreat, and the shit-kicking that passed for something approximately terpsichorean looked as if it might have been performed more in imitation of a polar bear kept in a very small cage. For passion you had to look to the sight of the ice yielding noisily to the spirit in your glass.

After an hour in the Casanova I was feeling as sour as a eunuch in a bathful of virgins. Counselling myself to be patient, I leaned back into my red velvet-and-satin booth and stared unhappily at the tent-like drapes on the ceiling: the last thing to do, unless I wanted to end up like Becker's two friends (whatever he said, I hadn't much doubt that they were dead), was to bounce around the place asking the regulars if they knew Helmut K/nig, or maybe his girlfriend Lotte.