Felix looked at the patterned brocade curtains by the windows, the folk art on the walls and behind the counter.
“Did you speak with him, Frau Hiebler?”
She nodded.
“The crops,” she said. “The spring. The government. But so polite!”
Felix could feel Speckbauer’s questions piling up unspoken, but he waited.
“Schnappsen,” Hartmann said. “He played only to be polite.
But I think he enjoyed himself. The way a quiet man would. And now look.”
“Indeed,” said Felix, and he turned to tousle-haired Fuchs.
“Did you?”
Fuchs shook his head.
“Working,” he said. “I only heard from the TV. Then a neighbour. That was after the other thing.”
“The other thing?”
“I thought they’d gotten it confused,” said Fuchs, “Or that I had. We all heard about what they found up there behind the farm.
The two, the two auslanders.”
“The poor man!” said Liesel, her eyes shining. “And his poor family!”
“He must have had a terrible shock,” said Hartmann.
“Did he talk about it all, when he was here?”
“Well, it was one of us, I think brought it up,” said Hartmann.
“If I’m remembering. Let me see, who was by… ”
Then Hartmann’s head went up, followed by the rest of him.
He stared, eyes wide at Felix.
“What am I saying, Meine Gott, I am losing my marbles! Your opa was here! Yes! Of course he was! Speak up there, Toni! You brought him, for heaven’s sake.”
Fuchs nodded bashfully, and scratched at his head.
“Toni here is not one much to blow his trumpet,” said Liesl.
“‘The chauffeur.’”
“You drive people?” Felix said to Fuchs.
“Well, only if they can’t find someone,” he said.
“Now Toni,” said Hartmann, his voice back. “No one is accusing you of being a saint, but come on now!”
He looked to Felix again.
“Toni drives us old geezers about sometimes — yes, don’t be modest now, Toni! We aren’t safe behind the wheel, you see. So Toni steps in. When he can, of course.”
Fuchs gave a shrug, and waved away the compliments.
“And helps out,” Liesl added. “With something they can’t do themselves.”
“Oh yes,” said Hartmann. “Fix a window — ask Toni. Move furniture — ask Toni.”
Fuchs shook his head gently, and scratched it again.
“Lose at cards — ask Toni,” he said quietly. He had not looked up.
The smile returned to Hartmann’s face for several moments.
“Well, have you seen your opa since the memorial?”
“No,” said Felix.
“I think it’s a good decision, no?” Hartmann asked. Felix didn’t get it.
“Moving,” said Hartmann. “It’s hard, but it’s the right thing to do, for him.”
“I daresay,” said Felix.
“He’s out there on his own too long,” Hartmann went on.
“He’ll have his own room now in the village. What could be better?”
He nudged Fuchs.
“Toni will help out when the time comes, right? Moving stuff?”
Fuch’s lazy smile held. He looked at Felix but nodded toward Hartmann.
“I saw that,” said Hartmann.
Felix was reluctant to draw Hartmann back from the lightheartedness he seemed to be working to regain.
“Herr Himmelfarb,” he said then. “And his card friends, you say, that evening?”
Sure enough, Hartmann’s expression slid back. He turned toward his niece.
“There were others earlier, weren’t there, Liesl?”
Liesl nodded. Felix wondered if he should ask for names. He decided to wait.
“Oh he looked worried,” she said. “Rings around his eyes.
Tired-looking. Of course, he knew that we’d heard what had happened. I didn’t want to put talk on him about it though — if he didn’t bring it up himself, of course.”
“A man would have to get out,” said Hartmann. “Just to get a wee break, even for an hour or two.”
“But he talked about things?” Felix said. “What had gone on?”
There was a small delay before Liesl answered.
“Well, I think he was worried for his boy… wasn’t he, Willi?
He was with your players here.”
“Us old farts,” said Hartmann with a rueful look. “Yes. He said the boy was very… how can one say it, one doesn’t want to say ver-ruckt — crazy, like — let’s say strange. Agitated. No sleep, with all the comings and goings. The boy was excited, he wanted the thing to go on, you see. He didn’t understand.”
“All the activity there?”
“The Gendarmerie and so forth,” said Hartmann, and paused momentarily.
“Those experts, the police experts,” he added.
It was a signal that Speckbauer wouldn’t miss either, Felix knew. He looked over at Liesl again.
“He was not keen to discuss private matters,” she said. “But he said something about how it would take ages for the boy to settle again. ‘He wants the police up there all the time now.’”
“Karl did, himself?”
“No, the boy, Hansi. The police were good to him, apparently, humouring the boy. Playing the siren and that, like a toy.”
“That is how they found the two,” said Hartmann. “He said that Hansi liked one of the Gendarmerie so he brought him wandering up the woods, where he had his ‘dolls.’”
“Dolls?”
“That’s what the boy called them, he said: ‘dolls.’”
No one seemed to want to keep the conversation going after Hartmann’s quiet and doleful remarks. For a while everyone seemed to withdraw into themselves. Felix took another swallow from his beer. Fuchs ran his hand slowly through his hair, but the effect was only to make him look even more the bewildered elf with even more hair askew. Liesl looked away through the window toward the faraway hills, and Hartmann sighed. The quiet was broken only by the sounds of Liesl’s occasional sniffle and a faint whistling that seemed to come from Fuch’s nose.
Then Liesl shifted her feet.
“So geht’s,” she said. “And so it goes. The bad things that happen to the good people. I hope there’ll be a big turnout for the funeral.”
Both Hartmann and Fuchs nodded.
“I am forgetting more and more,” said Hartmann then. “But now I remember. Yes! Poor Karl was clumsy, with his cup, wasn’t he, Liesl? He dropped it and it broke? His hands were shaking a bit. I asked him if there was somewhere he could get a break, him and Mrs.”
“Haunted, he was,” said Liesl, and blew her nose in a delicate fluffing sound.
After several moments, where Liesl looked away through the window toward the faraway hills, and Hartmann sighed, the talk slowly moved to goings on in the district. The winter had been long, as always; tourism last year had not been so great, but there were more people coming up to trek now. Would the Turks finally get their way now, and get a ticket to the EU? The price of a new VW was just stupid, and the quality was down anyway.
Felix listened, saying little, and wondered what Speckbauer was making of it all here. Hayseeds, slow-in-the-heads up here in God’s country? Occasionally he’d glance over at Hartmann, at the liver spots on the back of his hands, and at the lines that the wind and sun and long winter’s cold had dug in from his eyes around almost to his ears. Berger Willi, yes, this ancient fellow had been mad for the hills and mountains since he was a child.
He saw Speckbauer looking at his watch.
He took out his wallet. Speckbauer’s hand was on his forearm before he could open it.
“May I?” Speckbauer asked, looking around the faces. He had no takers.
Felix followed Liesl over to the counter.
“The card guys,” he began. “Are there a lot of them?”
“They come in different days,” she said. “But the older ones are afternooners.”
“Were there many the evening Karl Himmelfarb was in?”
She stopped keying in numbers on the cash register and stared at a mirror behind the counter.
“I’d have to think,” she said. “Berger Willi, of course — and Herr Kimmel, your opa. He is Peter, no? Fuchs, yes. There were others… Hans Prem; he’s in a chair now, a wheelchair. But his daughter has a van for that, yes… She stayed, but she didn’t play. Let me see.. Frank Schober, I think. He drives himself, still.”