There was no knock-out, though I’d hoped for one, if only to see a man that size crash to the floor like a felled tree. The fight went the distance and ended in a draw, which disappointed me, not that I knew which of the men I wanted to win; I suppose it just seemed unsatisfactory to me that something as dramatic as a boxing match could end in something as banal as a draw. When my father told me some days later that one of the boxers had died after the fight, I was fascinated. I suppose, in a way, that was my first encounter with death.
For some reason I was reminded of that evening the first time I saw her. God knows why. I’ll never understand how my brain jumps from one thing to another. It fires salvos of associations at me and I just take them as they come.
I saw her in a bar the other day. I didn’t follow her in, but I watched her for some time. She was sitting alone, drinking a colourless drink from a thick-bottomed glass and smoking a cigarette, and when the barman alerted her to the smoking ban, she rolled her eyes and stubbed out the fag in a corner of silver paper torn from the packet. Soon afterwards, a man came to her table—tall, with short dark hair, dressed in jeans and a white shirt. I saw him only in profile and couldn’t hear what he said or what she replied, but I saw that the exchange lasted only a few seconds and that the man, who had been smiling as he walked to her table, was no longer smiling when he left it. Perhaps one should admire the arrogance with which such women go through life. But for some reason I can’t.
In my experience, there are women you get round with flattery and women you get round with insults. But this woman, I feel, would laugh in your face, whichever you tried.
I have spent a great deal of time trying to work out what it is about her that interests me. She looks fragile, but moves as if she owned the world. One day she chain-smokes, the next I see her out jogging. There is something dainty, almost girlish about her, and yet you get the feeling that it would be a mistake to mess with her. She is strangely beautiful, but cynical and aggressive; she rarely smiles, never bows her head, and constantly interrupts others. All that repels me. But there is unquestionably something dark about her, and something vulnerable, too. That interests me. That’s what I want to get at.
6
An icy chill, a clear blue sky, a weak morning sun giving no warmth. Business people and joggers, braving the cold. Cyclists, their faces wound about with scarves.
Walking to work with hunched shoulders and the east wind whistling around her ears, Norah thought of the people who lived on the streets in this weather. She had decided to structure her series on Vienna’s homeless around four or five particularly fascinating stories, but she didn’t want to write mere feature articles; she also wanted to inform her readers about what they could do to help the homeless. For two days she’d been working like a woman possessed. But she hadn’t managed to track down the fortune teller. You’d think there was a jinx on her.
Although it was still early and bitterly cold, the girl with the Alsatian had already claimed her patch. Norah took a twenty-euro note out of her wallet and put it in the girl’s hat. The girl immediately whipped it into the pocket of her parka, as if afraid that Norah might change her mind.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ said Norah, crouching down. ‘The woman who was standing over there with a begging bowl the other day. A tall woman, at least six foot. Fairly old. Dark hair in a plait, and very bright eyes. Kind of creepy. Do you know who I mean?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘She was standing just there.’ Norah jerked her chin towards the middle of the street.
‘Dressed in black,’ she added.
The girl shrugged.
Norah stared at her, trying to work her out. How could she sit there all day and not notice what went on around her? Norah stood up and turned to go. Then she stopped.
‘It’s cold,’ she said. ‘Tonight it’ll be even colder. Do you have somewhere to go?’
The girl hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
‘Sure?’
More nodding.
Norah gave her another hard stare, then rummaged in her bag for her notebook. She jotted down her phone number, tore out the page and held it out to the girl.
‘If ever you need somewhere warm to sleep, just give me a call, okay?’
The girl frowned at her. She didn’t take the piece of paper. Norah left it on her blanket.
‘And if you see the woman or come across anyone who can tell me anything about her, then let me know. I urgently need to speak to her and I’d be happy to pay for it, okay?’
This time the girl replied. ‘Okay.’
As Norah walked away, she thought she felt someone looking at her, but when she glanced back, the girl was rummaging intently in a plastic bag. Norah could see nothing out of the ordinary, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched until she was safe in the office.
•
She left work early that afternoon. She was hungry and there were a few things she needed to sort out at the bank, so she bought herself takeaway rice noodles and ate them on the way.
She could still taste the spices as she queued up in the bank. She hadn’t made an appointment. The grimly clinical foyer was deserted apart from two bank clerks behind the counter—a man and a woman—and four customers in two lines. The female clerk was middle-aged, the man quite a bit younger, maybe in his mid-twenties, and so short and slight that he’d probably look like a fourteen-year-old even when he was ready for retirement. Norah got in his queue; he’d just finished serving a white-haired man in a checked suit. This elderly gent thanked him politely but, as he turned to go, he cast a glance of irritation at the woman waiting behind him. The boy at the counter, too, seemed troubled by the woman, so Norah had a closer look at her. She was tall, with slim legs in skinny jeans, and long black hair worn loose over a smart, navy-blue coat. It wasn’t until she spoke that Norah realised what had been bothering the two men: the woman was trans. Angered, Norah watched the gawping old man leave the bank. She thought of her friend Coco and their recent walk. Norah had talked her into going into town although her face was such a mess, and soon regretted it when she saw the way people stared.
She resolved to call Coco that evening and find out how she was and, coming back to the present, she heard the clerk asking the trans woman for some papers or other. Norah registered with annoyance that he was talking much louder than before, as if she were deaf.
‘Mr Gruber,’ he read out from the papers.
The woman said something that Norah didn’t catch.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ the clerk replied, still talking in an unnecessarily loud voice, ‘but it clearly says Mr here, doesn’t it?’
Norah’s tooth began to throb.
The man glanced at his colleague for approval. Norah saw her suppress a grin and felt herself growing hot. She couldn’t catch what was said next, but she saw the trans woman shrink under the bank clerk’s gaze so it wasn’t hard to guess. From the snatches she heard, she gathered that he was demanding extensive documentation from the woman, although all she wanted was to open a basic account.
‘Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr Gruber,’ the clerk said condescendingly.
Fury seethed in Norah. Since what had happened in Berlin, her rage was never far off the boil, ready to bubble up at a moment’s notice. Why did people have to be so fucking unpleasant?
The woman stood at the counter for a few seconds longer, then turned to leave, defeated.
‘Have a nice day, sir,’ the bank clerk called after her with a grin, as she went out, hanging her head.
‘Pervert,’ he added, catching his colleague’s eye.
‘I mean, isn’t she?’ he asked, when she didn’t reply. ‘Honestly, that kind of thing makes me want to vomit.’
His colleague smiled noncommittally; the man she was serving snorted in amused agreement, but nobody said anything. Norah watched the woman go. Through the glass doors, she saw her cross the road and walk away, so fragile, despite her la
rge build.
‘Next, please.’ Norah heard the clerk’s rasping voice and wheeled round.
‘Hello,’ she said in a loud voice. She threw a last glance over her shoulder, but the woman had vanished.
‘Hello,’ the clerk replied. He saw the look on Norah’s face and misinterpreted it.
‘Ridiculous, isn’t it, the kind of people on the loose these days?’ he asked, grinning stupidly at Norah, half obsequious, half conspiratorial.
Norah smiled and, leant forwards slightly. The man grinned back and leant towards her. Norah saw thick plaque on his teeth; she could almost smell it.
‘A contract killing costs about twenty thousand euros,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It’s an urban myth that you can have someone murdered for two or three grand; I’ve looked into it. Twenty thousand is more like it.’
The man behind the counter blinked.
‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Norah said. ‘I don’t have that kind of money.’ She pushed her hair off her forehead. ‘But a shot in the kneecap starts at about three and a half, and I think I could manage that.’
The clerk stared at her.
‘I’d just have to go without that holiday in the Seychelles in November,’ she said.
There was a pause, while the man processed her words.
‘Are you crazy?’ he stammered out eventually.
Norah waited for a moment before replying.
‘Now you listen to me, you fuckwit,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t care why you’re the way you are. I don’t care if you had a deprived childhood, or if you have complexes about your microscopic dick—though I assume you do. None of that interests me. But if ever I see you treat that lady or anyone else like that again, I’ll hire myself an Andrej or a Giancarlo or a Ditmir, or whatever those reliable Albanians are called, and after that, you can count yourself lucky if you can hobble into the bank on crutches.’
Norah gave the man a dazzling smile, which threw him into even greater confusion.
‘Got that?’ she asked.
‘You’re joking,’ the man said with a laugh, but he must have noticed how hollow it sounded. He pulled a face.
‘You sure about that?’ Norah asked seriously.
The man said nothing.
Norah took a closer look at him—the faded acne scars on his pasty face, the gelled hair, the yellowish teeth. He withstood her gaze for a while, then looked away.
Norah nodded. ‘I thought as much.’
The woman clerk wasn’t serving anyone and Norah could feel her looking at them.
‘I’ll just have to try another bank,’ Norah said, her voice louder again. She turned to go. ‘Thanks all the same!’
Before leaving the foyer, she threw a last glance over her shoulder.
‘I expect the Seychelles are overrated anyway.’
7
‘You know what that’s called in court?’ Norah’s friend Sandra asked, when they spoke on the phone that evening.
‘I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’
‘Impulse control disorder.’
Norah rolled her eyes. ‘The guy was a bastard. You should have seen the way he treated the woman.’
‘I can imagine,’ Sandra said. ‘Still, you can’t do stuff like that all the time, Norah.’
‘What do you mean, all the time?’
Sandra sighed, and Norah wondered whether her clients ever got to hear her sigh like that, or whether it was something she reserved for recalcitrant friends. Sandra had been working in a solicitor’s office for five years, although she was currently on maternity leave.
‘One of these days you’ll get into real trouble,’ Sandra said.
‘Aren’t I already?’ Norah asked.
‘There are worse things in life than libel charges.’
Norah saw Coco’s cut-up face.
‘I know,’ she said softly.
‘How is Coco, by the way?’ asked Sandra, as if she’d read Norah’s thoughts.
‘I don’t really know,’ said Norah. ‘But not great.’
Sandra said nothing. Then she said, ‘Take care of yourself, won’t you?’
‘You know me,’ said Norah.
‘I know you all too well.’
Alone in her flat later that evening, Norah stood at the window, watching couples and small groups of people cross the square on their way to a restaurant or cinema or theatre. After talking to Sandra, she’d sent SOS messages to Max and Paul and Tanja, but got no reply. Her eye fell on the orchid she’d brought with her from Berlin—the only other living thing in the flat. She took up her phone again, then put it down in disappointment. No messages. She went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and stared helplessly at the food she’d bought that afternoon.
The trans woman’s face popped into her mind; their eyes had met for a moment and Norah hadn’t forgotten the look in them. Then her thoughts moved to the bank clerk—his grin, his conspiratorial wink, his nasal voice. Just as she was closing the fridge door, the news came on in the living room. She went and plumped herself down in front of the TV and let the announcements rain down on her; it was like being pelted by the stones of an angry mob. War, greed, drownings, rape.
Norah’s mind began its usual downwards spiral. She thought of all the dictators and arms dealers in the world, of a boy in her primary school whose father had hit him so hard in the face that he’d gone blind in one eye, of a girl she’d been friends with in her teens who’d woken up on a motorway car park one Sunday morning, bleeding and half naked, after someone had spiked her drink. She thought of the concept artist who mutilated unstable young women with a scalpel and called it art. She thought of the head of a weapons company she’d once seen playing the philanthropist at a charitable gala while, in other parts of the world, her weapons destroyed lives. She thought of the bankers in their glass towers, of hunger and thirst, bombs and fire and—
Norah jumped. Someone had rung her doorbell.
‘Hi Norah,’ the young blonde woman said cheerfully, when Norah opened the door.
‘Hi.’
It was the upstairs neighbour, Theresa. Norah forced a smile. ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked, after a silence, and immediately realised how rude she sounded.
‘No. I just wanted to say hello.’
It took Norah a moment to understand that she was expecting to be asked into the flat.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m being really unneighbourly. Would you like to come in?’
Theresa smiled and followed Norah into the living room.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’
‘That would be lovely.’
‘I’m afraid I only have tap water. Or white wine.’
‘Tap water’s great.’
Norah went into the kitchen, filled two glasses and returned to the living room.
‘How are you liking Vienna?’ Theresa asked, taking a sip of water. ‘Yeah, it’s nice,’ said Norah.
‘Where did you live before?’
‘Berlin. But—were you wanting anything?’
Theresa cleared her throat, evidently thrown by Norah’s determination to sabotage her attempt at conversation.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to ask if you felt like coming up to dinner later. I’ve invited a few friends over and I thought since you’ve just moved here, it might be nice to…’
Her words tapered off.
‘That’s really sweet of you,’ said Norah, ‘but I’ve already got plans for this evening.’
‘Shame,’ said Theresa. ‘They’re a nice bunch of people. But if you like, we could do something together tomorrow.’
‘I’ve got plans for tomorrow too.’
Theresa raised her eyebrows.
‘Okay. Maybe next week?’
Norah stared at the floor.
‘To be honest, I really don’t have much time at the moment. I’ve got a lot of work and…’
An awkward silence set in.
‘Sorry,’ sa
id Theresa. ‘I didn’t want to force myself on you.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘When I moved here, I found it really hard to get to know people, so I thought…’
‘That’s really nice of you, Theresa,’ said Norah, cutting her short. ‘It’s just…’
She faltered.
‘You don’t like me,’ said Theresa.
‘We’ve only just met. What reason could I have not to like you?’ Norah knew she sounded stilted.
‘So what’s wrong?’
Norah searched for the words. Opened her mouth. Closed it again. Started over.
‘You remind me of someone,’ she said eventually. ‘And the memory’s painful.’
8
This time it wasn’t a dream that woke her, but music and laughter from the flat above.
Norah sat up with a groan and groped for the lamp on the bedside table. Then she remembered that she’d left both lamp and bedside table in Berlin. She got up and switched on the ceiling light. A glance at her watch told her that it was soon after midnight. Was it too late to ring Max and Paul? Max had always been a bit of a night owl, often working long after everyone else had gone to bed—but, no. She couldn’t cling to them just because they were the only friends she had in the city. She was too old to carry on like that. You’ve only just got here, she told herself. You’ll soon know more people. In different circumstances she’d already have made friends with the woman upstairs. But the memories that Theresa had stirred in her were too fraught, it was all too—
No, she didn’t want to think about it. She looked for her phone, but couldn’t find it and switched on her laptop. Two new emails were waiting in her inbox: a reminder of her dentist’s appointment the next day from a practice she’d found online, and a note from a friend in Berlin who’d had a baby a few months back and been too busy to see much of Norah since. It was a short email; Francesca came straight to the point.
Norah, my dear,
The Shadow Page 3
