The dried fly agaric is to blame. This mushroom, preserved in vodka, not only put the hotelier Urs Zobel in a hallucinatingly different state, but also drove him to the roof of his hotel, together with Olga from room service. There he now wakes up, in her arms, and can let his gaze wander from Munich’s Schillerstraße to the clock in the main train station. It is the beginning of a far-reaching story between some miracles and reality.
“Urs, the Berserker” is the title of Max Bronski’s new crime novel, which the Munich writer, who has also worked under the name Franz-Maria Sonner for many years, has set in the pulsating heart of the city. Fortunately, the novel, set in the shady train station environment, is full of life, but not as martial as the title suggests. From a passing Russian who prepared the mushroom vodka, Urs only learns that his name is reminiscent of Scandinavian warriors who were once called berserkers. And of course you can already guess that their behavior in the distant past also has something to do with Urs today.
Those berserkers, he lets himself be told, were of unconditional consistency and determination. When danger threatened, the warriors munched on a few dried mushroom slices and then began to dance naked in the north wind to the point of frenzy. They “do not arm themselves with equipment, but with exposure. They increase their defencelessness, face the enemy naked and thus find invulnerability that can only come from within,” Urs learns. “They end the path of fear and cross the line beyond which none of this matters anymore.”
His fear also exceeds and overcomes Urs in the course of the crime story – for the second time in his life. The first time, the hotelier’s son, who, in addition to being severely neglected by his parents, also had to endure being taken hostage, narrowly escaped death as a teenager. The second time he witnessed a rampage in Munich involving a Porsche Cayenne, he saw one of the former tormentors sitting in the car. In order to find out what happened back then and to take revenge, Urs actually follows the path of fear to the end.
Bronski tells of this path of his first-person narrator, which is lined by two women, several half-world figures and a philosophizing night porter, in a dramaturgically flawless crime thriller in well-placed, sometimes downright stilted language with many sentences. That suits his protagonist, who would prefer to curl up in an orderly world without passion and emotional chaos. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, life on Schillerstrasse and on its roofs is just too exciting for that. With and without toadstool.
Max Bronski: Urs the Berserker. crime novel. Edition Nautilus 2023, 247 pages, 18 euros.