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  Poachers Road

  ( Inspector Kimmel - 1 )

  John Brady

  John Brady

  Poachers Road

  The Poacher

  Peter Rossegger, from unpublished journal entries for

  Geschichten aus der Steiermark (Tales from Styria), 1871

  St. Kristoff is approached by minor roads. It was on one of those roads little wider than a cow-path, one of the many byroads known locally as a Wildererweg or poacher’s path, that I came down off the mountains one evening many years ago. It being late, I beheld the last remnants of the dying sunset over the crags and forests above the village as the darkness descended, but not before I perceived the splendid views of an innumerable multitude of hills to the southeast.

  It is a farming village and its people retire early. But as I plodded up one of the narrow lanes that leads to its church, I heard voices within, and soon the tones of an organ. The sound of that instrument has from childhood filled me with a strange mixture of mirth and foreboding, and that night this sensation descended upon me again as though the decades of living in our cities had vanished, and I was a child again, listening.

  It was expertly played, and the old hymns that had sounded here for centuries floated out on the night air to me. Soon they were joined by voices, both men’s and women’s, and I passed a strange and not unhappy half-hour. Around me was the sweet scent of woodsmoke from houses unseen, and the smell of the earth with its autumnal exhalations. I fell into a reverie, where the events of the long day arranged themselves alongside tender thoughts of my wife and little ones awaiting me back in Vienna. Such were the exertions of the day in these mountains as wild and remote as any on the continent, that in a matter of minutes I passed from reverie to sleep there on the grassy bank below the church.

  It was with a violent fright that I awoke not long after, and in the manner of a primitive ancestor awakening in terror at the cave-mouth where he stood guard over his clan, I was on my feet before being quite awake. I was not alone, and for several of the longest moments of my life I remained in that world of the Grimms where the woods are ever deep, and they harbour fantastic beings. In front of me was a monster, I thought, with huge shoulders and horns askew. Is this even the great Wotan, I wondered, that ravening god that has been with us Germanic folk since we became a people.

  The monster spoke.

  “Good night,” it said, in an accent that would be studied amongst my colleagues at the University as though its owner had descended from another planet.

  “Good night,” I believe I replied.

  The dark shape of the monster began to yield some form. Soon I saw that this was one of my own, a human, a hunter, who had brought in a young deer on his shoulders. But it came to me that he was in all likelihood less a hunter than he was a poacher. It is long a custom here for those facing hardship to enter the forest and take a deer without the permit of any of the local nobility or the rich who own the rights here. This, along with the custom of mountain treks that last for days and even weeks by men who must feed their families, walks that neither know nor respect the lines drawn on the bright maps our little ones learn in their schoolrooms.

  “You are a hunter,” I offered then.

  To this he made no reply or gesture.

  “I was passing the church and heard the music,” I said. “I must have dozed off.”

  At this, the monster nodded and shifted his load. I saw that he had a rifle on his back. I began to wonder, and then to marvel, at how this man could have hefted this not inconsiderable load home from the forest.

  “You are a traveller,” he said.

  “That I am.”

  “Everyone is a traveller,” he said. “On God’s earth.”

  I thought to ask him what he might mean by this but something in this man’s demeanour, or perhaps his way of speaking, told me that would be an impertinence.

  “You are late in from the woods,” I said instead.

  “That’s how it is,” he said. “One must wait for the right time.”

  Seeing that the monster was but a man, and that he was in all likelihood a villager here, I was emboldened to try a little mischief.

  “You are not afraid of the spirits in the forest?”

  “The spirits?” he said after several moments. “Which would they be?”

  “The ones we hear of, ones in the old tales. Perhaps you don’t believe in them then?”

  “That hardly matters,” he said after a moment. “They are there all the same.”

  This silenced me, and to this day, I do not know why his sparing words should have had such an effect. I knew immediately that he was not being mischievous with his words, and it galled me that I had no words to address him further on this, so strange was his pronouncement.

  Perhaps it was the air of the mountains, or the long day’s hiking in the woods and over moors and valleys, but the words did not come. He then asked me if I were looking for a place that I might have an evening meal. I was indeed, I told him, and a simple Gasthaus where I could spend the night. He directed me to one, and we then parted.

  I retired that evening after a hearty meal, full sure that my sleep that evening would be the soundest sleep possible, and perhaps the only dreams would be those of the skies and trees, and the bright sun that had guided me all day. Instead I passed several hours pondering our meeting, this hunter and I, and I resolved to tell my colleagues of this man who seemed to live a life no different than one of centuries past. How is it possible, I wondered, that a man in the age of telegraphs and trains can believe as he did?

  We all have our trove of stories, do we not, of bijou events and ‘characters’ that we collect and later relate, to show the rich variety of our world and society? The retelling so often makes our pleasure keener, we believe, especially if they raise a smile or a laugh, and such tales as we collect and retail serve to make us more sociable and to enhance our own public selves while they make those occasions more entertaining.

  But now, all these years later, I cannot conceal from others how I have tired of those coffeehouses and dinners, those lectures and conferences. For all the learning of my colleagues and friends, I find my thoughts returning to that small village of St. Kristoff, high up on that hill, with the forest around it, so remote from the bustle of life here. I returned to the village several times over the years, and it had altered not a whit. Yet I have never been visited by any desire to inquire for my hunter there. For a time, I halfbelieved that I had not met him at all, but that he had come out of my dream. I still remain undecided on the matter.

  I told no one of my meeting that evening so long ago, but committed it here to this journal instead, to consider its meaning yet again.

  ONE

  The day before the two bodies turned up in the woods, Felix Kimmel was staring at the grasses by the side of a road. This klamm, as Styrians call these narrow mountain roads, had all the steep grades and sharp turns that visitors remember long after their travels in this southern province of Austria. Even sophisticates from Vienna who come for the Apfelfest and its potent ciders soon stop comparing the endless rows of hills and green mountains here to the Alps, or to their own summer escape of Semmering, with its picturesque views and cool heights, and its sudden, but few, green valleys.

  Felix had spotted a bird hopping about amongst the spring growth. It had had a worm in its beak, and he was waiting for it to hop into view again. Even thinking about this bird was better than listening to his sister Lisi, in whose car he sat now, hungover and listless. Too many of her stray, random thoughts had been spoken aloud. She’d been nervous, he understood, and sad. Talk was her way of dealing with it. But there was nothing to be done about the day really, just to get it over with.

&nb
sp; He looked up again at the lumber truck that had blocked the road ahead. It was reversing laboriously from a muddy road that led into the woods. The driver had misjudged a metre of ground by one of the wheels. The soil here was still saturated, and for several minutes now he had been gingerly edging the vehicle out onto the roadway. He’d let the truck back a few metres in a controlled roll, and try to coax it back up again. His eyes stayed locked on the rim of mud that was pushed up higher by the rear wheel.

  “You’d think the idiot would know,” Lisi said.

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Didn’t you recognize him right away?”

  “He looked familiar.”

  “Really,” she said. “Did you just wash everything out of your head last night, or have you really forgotten the people here? So soon?”

  He said nothing.

  “Bad enough that they are going to destroy the forest, but it has to be that idiot Maier doing it. Manfred…?”

  “Ah, him. Freddie.”

  “It’s not his fault he’s got that face. But he was dumb. Now he drives a Beemer, a new one. Maybe you’ll catch him speeding in it. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

  “Naturlich.”

  “Well,” Lisi said after several moments, “I’m not superstitious. But you’d wonder. Wouldn’t you?”

  Felix nodded.

  He let his gaze up the hill. Screened by the growth of conifers above the grassy verge was the hilltop village of St. Kristoff am Offenegg. It was well above them yet, with its ancient, baroque church and graveyard perched tightly on the hilltop, and a clutch of houses huddled just below. There were long views from the steps of the church, Felix knew, across the valleys and hills to the south, toward Slovenia. He and Lisi had 20 minutes to reach the village, and that church, where the anniversary service for Felix’s father, also a Gendarme in the Austrian police, was due to begin.

  Maybe that bird knew something, Felix thought. But it had gone, with its prize. He had listed bird watching on his application to join the Gendarmerie. It had been his own joke, the only sly response he could come up with that particular day to his mother’s gentle, persistent nagging. She had brought the application form to him one evening a few weeks after he had come back from his trip. She had photocopies ready: birth, driver’s licence, and, of course, the sorry record of his undergraduate academics up until he had elected not to continue after second year.

  His mother had also prepared the ground, using the contacts she had kept up with the friends and colleagues of her late husband in the Gendarmerie. That was her way, and it worked. Today it would work again, of course. For the second year, it was now the expected duty of Felix Kimmel Junior Felix the Second to take care of his grandfather Kimmel for the memorial service, and to manage the old goat. It meant sitting next to him at the service without appearing too solicitous. It also meant that Felix should be a buffer between his mother’s family and what was left of his father’s.

  “Is Opa Kimmel…?” he began, but soon lost the thread of how he could phrase his question.

  Lisi gave him a knowing look.

  “Is he coming to the restaurant afterwards?” she asked. “Is that it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Relax,” she said. “You know how he is. That’ll never change.”

  It took the lumber truck another minute to make it out onto the road and to begin its trip down to the mill in Weiz. Through the open window of his sister’s Opel, Felix heard the crunch and the hiss of brakes as Maier prepared for the trip down. He gave a big wave as he passed. All of that family had that same lantern jaw, Felix remembered now, the jutting chin of the underbiter.

  Lisi said something under her breath, but she managed a smile and a half-hearted wave to Maier. She let go of the handbrake, revved as she let the clutch in, and resumed the slow, winding climb up toward the village. There awaiting them would be their extended family, neighbours from the old house, and friends of their father.

  Felix kept his window open. His eyes still hurt when he moved them. He rubbed at them but stopped when he heard a strange ticking from them.

  “Ironic anyway,” Lisi said.

  He looked over at her. She was seven years older, but to Felix she seemed middle-aged already, this 29-year-old teacher. The famous 29.

  “The lumber truck,” he repeated. “I get it. Ironic, yes.”

  Could she just not talk, for a minute anyway? He turned back toward the patches of view across the valley that were beginning to appear more and more between the trees. He wanted to believe it was the altitude making this hangover worse. He stared at a gap, and hoped that would beat back the images that were now coming to his mind.

  It was the second year now since Felix Kimmel Senior had been killed in a collision with a lumber truck on the Weizklamm. His duties had been those of Abteilungsinspektor, department chief inspector, in the Judenburg district. In the tribute speech at his funeral it was pointed out that he had been looking in on his aged father, Peter, a widower who lived alone up here. Speed had been a factor, as the phrase went.

  But Felix had had a glimpse of a Scene photo of his father’s Audi. It had been during a class exercise at the Gendarmerieschule on how to use EKIS, the police database. Felix Senior’s car had been accordioned and pulverized by its long fall down off the road. Felix had also learned about the booze in the car.

  His mother had been angry when he’d told her about it, a rare thing indeed between them. Why was it necessary to dig into that? Whom would it help, to know this? Her anger quickly had turned on what worried her now her very own son. Could he not just give this a try? A couple of years only? Couldn’t he see that joining up now was perfect timing? The Interior Ministry was sticking to its plan to do the unthinkable, to amalgamate the Gendarmerie and the Polizei. Things would really be opening up. They would be looking for people who had a few years of Uni. The old days were gone, forever. He could even finish his degree at night, yes!

  Guilt works, mother guilt best of all. Felix had finished his course, passed his Dienstprufung exam, and received his posting. He did not ask how or why he got a posting to Stefansdorf, a sleepy village near enough to Graz that he could hold on to his social life.

  But his friendships from Uni had become awkward acquaintances, and rare phone calls. Seven months travelling from beaches in Spain to a squat in Copenhagen had not really settled him much. Giuliana had remained constant, however, but lately there had been something in the air there too. He did not want to think about that.

  The woods ended. Ahead of them the narrow, winding ribbon of road twisted around another hairpin before its final run into the village.

  “You won’t want to hear this,” said Lisi, “but I’ll say it anyway. You look good in that uniform.”

  She glanced over after he made no reply.

  “You lost your brain in some pub, some stube, the night before Dad’s memorial?”

  “It wasn’t that much,” he said. “Maybe it was an unconscious thing anyway.”

  “Don’t try that Freudian crap on me. I’ve read it, you know.”

  She left the car in second now. He began to think, dimly, if anyone had studied the effects of high mountain air on a hangover. Frische luft, his oma his mother’s mother called it. Frische luft macht frisches herz! Fresh air makes the heart anew!

  “Well, how’s Giuli then.”

  This was conciliatory, he knew, but still he felt like asking her how her boyfriend Karl was, or Superbore, as he called him. Still as exciting as cold Baischel? The thought of that sliced meat lying cold in its greasy sauce made his mouth taste chalky and sour.

  “She’s fine.”

  A lie, he wondered: a white lie? Maybe it was a hope, more than a statement of fact. No: she was fine. Truly. She’d get over it. “It” was this thing that neither of them wanted to put a name on. If it had a name, it might be “commitment” or something like that. “The future,” maybe “our future,” to be precise.

  “It was nice of her
to come to the blessing.”

  For a moment, Felix did not understand.

  “She knows a lot about that stuff,” said Lisi. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Religion?”

  “Not religion exactly: taferls and things.”

  Felix got it now. His sister meant the roadside monument to his father. It was a hand-carved one of Jesus on the cross, paid for by the Association. A local carpenter had made it, not “an artist.” As with so many other of these traditional shrines and statues, it stood by the roadside where the accident had happened.

  “So tell me about your boys’ night out. Where do cops go to unwind?”

  “There’s no one at the post I want to unwind with. It was Viktor and a few guys.”

  She grasped the wheel with both hands and turned to him.

  “Watch the road, will you,” he said.

  “‘Viktor and a few guys’? Jesus, Felix.”

  “I don’t see them that often anymore.”

  He steeled himself for her to say: since you dropped out, and they didn’t.

  “We all know the Gendarmerie are more ‘relaxed’ than the Polizei.”

  She had spoken in the slow tone of a teacher delivering a gem of wisdom. “But associating with Viktor and those other professional students? Really.”

  “Who says I can’t?”

  She laughed a teacher’s laugh.

  “Oh I get it,” she said. “You’re undercover infiltrating them now. Good work.”

  He glanced over and saw that her mouth was set to fire another comment his way. Instead, her attention was taken by an older man standing next to a Skoda parked half in the ditch. He was unloading fence wire from a trailer.

  She waved and he smiled.

  “You know everybody still,” said Felix.

  “He was a friend of Dad’s.”

  Who wasn’t, Felix almost said. Even the poor truck driver that Felix Senior had clipped, sending himself down the gorge in the Weizklamm, battering and flattening it with every crunching slam, end over end, until it stopped a hundred-odd metres…