“You are close to heaven here, Frau Himmelfarb” said Gebhart. “Thank God.”
She nodded, but did not smile. Felix wondered if she even got the lousy pun: Himmelfarb the colour of heaven. She was probably shy more than slow-witted, he decided. Who wouldn’t be, living up here. Except for the four-wheel pickup, this was a place out of time. He adjusted his beret and took in a narrow piece of a view that had not been visible from the laneway in. To the side of a barn, there was a prospect clear over the hills toward Carinthia.
Frau Himmelfarb had high cheekbones and the ruddy face he’d seen in travel books, belonging to peasants in Andalusia and Bavaria and Holland and the Crimea and pretty well anywhere else east of China. Her husband appeared from a shed then. Stocky with hooded eyes that suggested Hungarian or peoples farther east in the family tree somewhere. He was a little shorter than the missus. He took off his hat, with its depleted feather and one small metal pin, and scratched at his forehead as he came over.
Gebhart was right, Felix had to admit. These people wanted their police to be people they took their hats off to. And this bandylegged farmer who had the same rolling walk as Opa Nagl, the same deep-set eyes topped by wiry, grey eyebrows he didn’t trim. The same delta of minute veins on his cheeks, more so on his nose, from a life in the open. All the bone buttons were intact on the faded green lapels of his lodenjanker, the traditional Styrian jacket that stubbornly found its way into each generation’s wardrobe. A hand like a swollen ham hock extended to shake Gebhart’s, and then Felix’s hand.
Introductions made, Gebhart fell easily into a slow and polite parade of pleasantries and chitchat. Wild mushrooms, a passion of many yet, were first.
“They’ll be whoppers,” said Gebhart. “The snow stayed so late.”
Himmelfarb did a lot of nodding and made gentle, noncommittal flicks of his head, but said very little. Wild mushrooms were not to be discussed with those who might come back later looking for such delicacies. Felix and Frau Himmelfarb waited. The talk came to cattle, and mad cows.
Finally, in a lull after a comment about dangers to the hoofs for cattle up here, Frau Himmelfarb came to life: would the gentlemen like coffee? Gebhart said he did not wish to put her to any trouble.
It was none, according to her, of course.
“Then most certainly, gnadige frau,” said Gebhart. “A kindness indeed.”
Felix followed them into the kitchen. The scent of ashes and a fainter scent of the ham, or sausage, that hung somewhere being cured, came to him as he reached the door. Felix began to recall pieces of something his father had related a long time back, about when he was a small kid visiting relatives. Yes: they actually had spoons and knives tied to the table, these ancient relatives, in the old style, where you wiped them with a fetzen, a rag, when you were finished.
Surprise: the kitchen was all modern convenience. There were even IKEA-ishlooking blue and yellow napkins covering plates of something on the table. But the old tiled kachelofen had been kept, and still used, along with the wood panelling on the walls and door frames.
“Now,” said Herr Himmelfarb.
For the first time Felix believed he saw some expression on the weather-tightened face a little pride at this modern surprise, he suspected. He tugged at and wiped his nose in one clutch of finger and thumb. Then he sat heavily down at the head of the table.
“Hansi won’t talk.”
Behind him a feral-looking cat lay against the kachelofen staring at Felix. Herr Himmelfarb took the napkins off and began folding them. There was strudel, another pie with red berries, a jug of cream. Felix eyed the big eyebrows moving around as Herr Himmelfarb seemed to be looking for a way to say something further.
“We get that too,” said Gebhart. “Days, even.”
It was several long moments before Himmelfarb spoke.
“Yours is, what, fifteen?”
Gebhart nodded. Felix found that he was staring at Gebhart.
He suddenly seemed very different. Even his voice had changed.
And in the back of Felix’s mind something had burst remorse, some anger too, spiralling into itself. How had he not known? Why had Gebhart not told him?
The only sounds now were Frau Himmelfarb’s careful arranging of things over near the sink.
“Is he not able?” Felix asked.
Himmelfarb exchanged a quick look with Gebhart before turning to him.
“Oh he’s able, all right. We can’t shut him up some nights. Isn’t that so, Mutti? The junge, how he’ll talk?”
“He likes to talk, it’s true,” Frau Himmelfarb said.
“He talks to himself,” she went on. “He talks to the dog. He talks to the cows.”
“That’s often a wise move,” said Gebhart.
Frau Himmelfarb’s face seemed to ease a little. You take your humour as you find it up here, Felix thought. The Himmelfarbs had an accent stronger than any he could remember in a long time. The half-finished words, some of them fired out and others barely audible, were even beyond the baying, “bellen” tones of most Styrians.
“But he won’t even talk to you, I’m afraid. I told him, and, well, you don’t see him here, do you?”
With that, Himmelfarb leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.
He nodded toward a door that led into the rest of the house, and he winked. Gebhart raised his eyebrows and nodded at Felix too.
“Schade,” said Gebhart. “That’s a great pity. I do like to talk with Hansi.”
Himmelfarb cocked his head and kept his eyes on the door. Gebhart waited, and then spoke in the same clear, slow tone, addressing the door.
“We have the patrol car outside, of course. There are quite a number of toys in that, you know.”
Frau Himmelfarb undid her scarf then. Felix imagined her careful braids golden yellow again, a younger Mrs. Himmelfarb dancing, laughing. It would have been centuries before she became mother to a retarded kid way up here in the middle of nowhere.
“Well,” said Gebi. “Fair enough. But I wish Hansi were here.
We could show him our toys. It’s too bad.”
The door handle went down and Hansi Himmelfarb stood in the doorway. He was holding a kitten. Felix thought he heard Gebi sigh.
“Well, Hansi,” he said in a voice Felix hadn’t heard before.
“May we meet your kitten?”
Felix didn’t want to stare. He’d seen Down’s people before.
Who hadn’t? But there was the look of a deer or something to him.
Maybe it was the stubble hair or freckles. He could be 20, or 40.
Gebhart was on his feet now. He was allowed to scratch the kitten’s belly and have his fingers chewed a little in return.
Hansi was suddenly unsure of something. He walked away, and stopped by the sink. He closed his eyes as he stroked the kitten.
Gebhart sat down again and looked at Himmelfarb.
“The boy is up at night,” said Himmelfarb. “He is afraid to sleep, he says.”
“Regressing,” said Frau Himmelfarb, and glanced at her son, who seemed oblivious to their words. She began pouring hot water from the kettle into a jug. Instant coffee, Felix believed. It was better than nothing: a little.
“Well what has he told you? You said ‘puppets,’ was it?”
Himmelfarb hesitated.
“‘Puppets.’ Mostly that. Puppets, forest.”
Hansi opened his eyes and looked at his father, before turning his eyes toward Felix.
“The woods? He likes to go in there, you told me before.”
“He’s regressing,” said Mrs. Himmelfarb again. “Something bothers him.”
Felix spooned out some cream. When he stole a look back at Hansi, the eyes were closed again. Frau Himmelfarb carried over the tray. The Thermos jug had that scorched smell of instant coffee, all right.
“That’s too bad,” Gebhart said. “It must be hard on you.”
“All he says is ‘sleep’ when I ask him. “‘Sleep’ or ‘sleeping.’”