Free Eternal Life by Wolf Haas Page A

say.”
    Says Brenner:
    “What kind of work did your father do?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “My father helped my uncle with his gilding. He was an actual
Vergolder
. Church painter. Didn’t have any time for gilding, though. So, he trained my father to.”
    Says Brenner:
    “And you? What’s your trade?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “I helped my father with his gilding.”
    Says Brenner:
    “And how do you support yourself today?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “Vergolder is a parasite. Parasite on society. And I am a parasite on Vergolder.”
    Says Brenner:
    “Why did you give your uncle a false alibi, then, if you think so little of him?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “Hate, you might say.”
    Says Brenner:
    “Okay, let’s say hate.”
    Says Lorenz:
    “Because I have an appreciation for him. I appreciate him, I do. On December twenty-first, I go to his house. There, I always get a passbook to a savings account.”
    Says Brenner:
    “And why didn’t you go up to his place this year, then, of all years? And why did you testify that you were up there with him?”
    Lorenz gestured to Erni to bring him another club soda. And Brenner knew, of course, that the best way to recognize an alcoholic is by their constant seltzer-ordering. He took a slug of beer to give Lorenz time. Maybe, somewhere along his convoluted way, he’ll find an answer to my question after all, Brenner thought.
    “All that about the nervous breakdown, I explained it to my uncle,” says Lorenz.
    Says Brenner:
    “You had a nervous breakdown?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “The mountains’ nervous breakdown. The people will see. In December, they’ll see.”
    Says Brenner:
    “What’s in December?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “You’re in for a surprise.”
    Says Brenner:
    “Me?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “No, all you people.”
    Says Brenner:
    “And what kind of a surprise?”
    Says Lorenz:
    “It upset my father that I was so excited about gilding. At first he wanted me to help him, but then it upset him. Because I was only helping him because he couldn’t manage the work alone anymore. But he didn’t mean for me to get so into it. I was just, let’s say, nine or ten years old. Vergolder had a souvenir shop, maybe you know it,
Rieder
it’s called, but Vergolder owns it.
    My father taught me about nature. He used to like to draw. We all have a talent for painting—grandfather, too, a church painter. But he had no choice but to gild. Kids and so on. But now, he was teaching me about nature. Because he saw right away that I have talent. Then, when he took me into the souvenir business because he couldn’t manage the work alone anymore, he was disappointed. Since I was crazy about the gilding, and even about the souvenir business, too. Because I was still just a kid, and I liked all that
Klimbim
.
    And the drawing, maybe he was too strict with me. He always said, you don’t need gold because the landscape glows all on its own. When I was a child I didn’t really understand that, of course.
    Also, the real gold is just fool’s gold, my father says in his hoarse voice, because that was the lung cancer already, but we didn’t know it yet. I didn’t understand about the fool’s gold.
    At first he took me to work with him, and then, I justcouldn’t understand it, not yet. My father says, the landscape glows all on its own. If you only look at it long enough, then you can feel its nerves. I didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean, though, that you could feel the landscape’s nerves.
    I only felt my own nerves. Why would the gold suddenly stop glowing, I wondered, if I’d seen it glowing. Everything in the souvenir shop gleamed, even the schoolgirls’ lipstick cases and the cigarette holders gleamed. Only the landscape didn’t. After my father died, I slowly began to feel like the mountains were getting more and more nervous.”
    It often works this way that a person is sometimes thinking about things, and right at the wrong moment—something completely incongruous. And now Brenner was briefly