DEATH SMILES AT US ALL. ALL WE CAN DO IS SMILE BACK!
Norah didn’t smile; she put a cigarette in her mouth and glanced at her phone. There was a text from an unknown number.
The Goldfinch, now.
She shook her head in annoyance. Some idiot must have made a mistake—like the time she’d got all those texts for someone called Mesut.
Think you’ve got the wrong number, she replied, and slid the phone back into her bag. She felt surrounded by strangers.
Her tram came, the windows fogged from the passengers’ breath. The doors opened and the strangers who had been waiting with Norah got on. She looked about her. Weird—she had suddenly been hit by the same feeling that had overcome her the first time she’d noticed that sickly sweet smell—on her way home in the small hours the other day, up by that wall that she now knew to be the wall of Belvedere Park. But why?
She could smell nothing but exhaust fumes and the perfume of an elderly lady who had just walked past with a small white fluffy dog. She could see no one she knew. And yet. Norah had always trusted her instinct, and her instinct told her that something wasn’t right. Someone was watching her. Norah scanned the pavement. The bustle caused by people getting on and off the tram made it hard to get a clear picture, but a quick glance revealed nothing out of the ordinary. No weird beggarwomen—nothing at all to arouse her interest. She turned back to the tram, which had closed its doors and was about to move off, and her eye was caught by a figure who turned away just as she looked at him. Was it coincidence or had he deliberately avoided her gaze? Norah had no time to find out because at that moment the tram started off.
She watched it go, thinking hard. The figure she’d seen had been a man—she was pretty sure of that. But it was as much as she could say with any certainty. Norah decided to walk the few hundred metres to her flat. She saw the rear lights of the tram as it approached the next stop, and as it retreated, her sense of alarm faded. She walked briskly to get warm, but then realised that she hadn’t come out on the square as she’d meant to. Taking her phone out of her bag to look at Google Maps, she saw another text from the unfamiliar number.
They don’t deserve you.
Norah frowned. Her fingers hovered over the touchpad of her phone for a second. Then she clicked on the green telephone symbol and waited. She had to know who’d written. The dial tone sounded, then she was informed that the person she was calling was unavailable. No voicemail, nothing. Norah hung up and wrote:
Who are you?
No answer.
Coward, Norah wrote.
She entered her address into Google Maps, then changed her mind and searched for The Goldfinch. She knew it was a new, trendy restaurant with a bar, and when she saw that it was only a fifteen-minute walk away, she set off into the night.
The windows of the restaurant lay before her like an illuminated painting. Dark floorboards, petrol-coloured walls. Dozens of little brass-coloured lamps cast a warm light on the faces of the people at the window table who sat deep in conversation, goblets of golden liquid in front of them. One woman whose blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders was so close that Norah could see her cherry-red nail varnish. The woman said something, tossing back her head with a laugh, and the man next to her—evidently her partner—shook his head, grinning; it looked as if the joke was on him. He raised his glass and toasted her. Another woman at their table, a beautiful redhead with short hair and elfin features, smiled and took a sip from her glass. More glowing people.
Norah felt as if she were in a museum looking at a brightly coloured picture painted especially for her.
She couldn’t see the faces of the two men with their backs to the window, but that didn’t stop her from recognising Max and Paul—Paul who was supposedly in bed with a high temperature. She was surprised by the intensity of the pain she felt and for a moment she simply stood there, letting it wash over her. Then her phone buzzed and after ignoring it for a little while, she took it out.
I’m sorry, it said. Norah looked about her, but there was nobody watching her.
She stood and stared at the painting for a moment longer, then turned and let the cold and darkness swallow her up.
20
On the way home, Norah bombarded the owner of the unknown number with texts. What was all that about? How did you know? Who are you? But she got no reply.
For once she was glad to be back in her flat; the city was beginning to spook her out. Soon she’d have things nice and cosy and could start to fill the rooms with life—buy some plants, ask her friends to dinner, maybe even get herself a pet.
What friends? something whispered in her head, and she bit her lip hard.
Norah had never known her father and was a teenager by the time she found out that he’d been dead for some years. Since her twenty-seventh birthday she had been motherless too, and she had no brothers or sisters, no close family. Now that Alex was gone, her small circle of friends was all she had.
She had just closed the flat door behind her when another text from the unknown number came in on her phone.
Are you okay?
Norah jabbed at the screen.
Where did you get this number?
The answer came immediately.
All your friends have your number.
Someone was playing with her. Norah decided not to answer anymore. One day she’d find out who was writing the texts—maybe Werner could help. Until then she didn’t want to encourage this stranger, whoever he—or she—was. She’d been stalked once and that was enough for her. It was one reason she was so careful about giving people her mobile number.
She was about to go and sit in the kitchen when she heard someone on the stairs and recognised Theresa’s voice.
‘No, sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I don’t mind seeing to the rest, but you’ll have to take care of the birds.’
A male voice said something Norah didn’t catch, then both were out of earshot.
Norah stood there, her hand on the door handle. She’d hoped to bump into Theresa on the stairs some time, because she felt bad about turning down her invitation so brusquely and would have liked to apologise. She heard the footsteps growing fainter and eventually a key being pushed into a lock, a door opened and closed. Soon afterwards, music came through the ceiling, fast and rhythmic. Usually it would have annoyed Norah, but today she was glad of any sign of life.
She had a shower, dried off and slowly rubbed cream into her skin, simply to give herself something to do. Then she rummaged around in one of the boxes marked BOOKS. She had just got into bed with a book of poetry—the one with that incredible Stephen Crane poem—when the music upstairs fell silent. Seconds later, a door slammed.
‘You won’t do that again,’ an angry male voice shouted and Norah sat up, book in hand.
A female voice, presumably Theresa’s, said something she couldn’t make out. Then another door was slammed. Norah sat in bed, her ears pricked.
A clatter, the man’s voice, incomprehensible this time, followed by a shrill cry, short and clipped. In seconds, Norah—who had only slipped on a sweatshirt before getting into bed—was back in her jeans and trainers. She grabbed her key and dashed upstairs. Outside Theresa’s door, a shrivelled pot plant was dying a slow death. Norah rang the bell saying Winkler and the voices in the flat fell silent. She could almost feel the hesitation on the other side of the door and rang again.
‘It’s Norah,’ she called. ‘Your neighbour.’
No reply.
‘Everything okay in there?’
Silence.
Norah was about to leave when the door opened a crack. A pale face, brown eyes, recalcitrant curls tied in an untidy bun. Norah had a good look at Theresa. She looked all right.
‘Norah,’ she said awkwardly, opening the door all the way to reveal a young man dressed in black, lurking at the end of the passage.
‘Sorry about the noise,’ she said. And then, jerking her head towards the man, ‘Rico was just going.’
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He stood there without moving, poised somewhere between humiliation, aggression and indifference. Eventually a jolt went through his body and he turned and vanished into a room, reappearing with an army parka over his arm and a black rucksack over one shoulder. He pulled on the jacket, bending to whisper something into Theresa’s ear. Then he was at the door. Norah let him pass without looking at him. She waited until she heard his footsteps reach the ground floor and the front door open and then close again. She leant over the banisters, looking, listening.
‘He’s gone,’ she said and it was only now that she felt the rush of adrenaline.
‘Thank God,’ said Theresa. ‘Want to come in a moment?’
Norah thought of the emptiness waiting for her at home.
‘Love to,’ she said and followed Theresa down the bare passage into the living room.
‘Wine?’ Theresa asked, vanishing into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
Norah looked about her. Unlike her living room, this one was crammed full of stuff. Cushions and blankets were piled up on a chocolate-brown sofa and on the wall above it hung a peculiar composition involving a photo collage, a pair of dainty antlers and a calligraphic print. Norah had to peer at it to decipher the curly letters. Reality is just an illusion.
A tattered chequered rug, pot plants, a small bookcase—and next to the bookcase, a record player standing on an old-fashioned cupboard. In one corner of the room was an empty birdcage, its little door wide open. Flea market finds, Norah thought, stepping closer—and bit back a shriek of delight when she saw the cat she’d met on the stairs, lying asleep on the rug, half under the sofa. Norah could hear Theresa moving about in the kitchen.
‘Who was the guy?’ she called out. ‘Your boyfriend?’
She could hear her voice oozing disdain. Norah hated men who treated women badly.
‘No, God forbid,’ Theresa called from the kitchen. ‘Not anymore, anyway. He just hasn’t quite got it yet.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine. He didn’t do anything. Shouted at me and knocked over a few chairs, but he’s basically harmless.’
‘If you say so.’
Norah went over to the bookcase and crouched down so she could read the spines better. The books seemed to have been sorted by colour. She soon found a whole bunch of her favourite authors: Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Meg Wolitzer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Maya Angelou, Robert Seethaler, Haruki Murakami. She also spotted Shakespeare’s Complete Works, everything by Kafka and all seven Harry Potters. The rest of the shelves were filled with a dozen or so Stephen Kings and on top of the bookcase lay a well-thumbed copy of Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia the Robber’s Daughter. Norah felt a smile spread across her face. Her childhood favourite. She took the thick book in her hands, opened it and leafed through. Something fell out onto the floor and she started and picked it up—a little plastic sachet of weed. She slipped it back between the pages and had just replaced the book on the bookcase when Theresa came in from the kitchen carrying two brimming glasses of red wine.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said. ‘I had to wash a couple of glasses.’
‘No worries.’
‘Why don’t you sit down.’
Theresa put the wine on the floor in front of the sofa and sat down herself. Norah joined her, taking a sip from her glass. The sofa was so soft that she sank deep into the cushions and so small that the two women had to sit closer than Norah would usually have been comfortable with. For once, though, it didn’t bother her; something about this flat was making her feel relaxed.
‘I still haven’t thanked you for getting rid of Maurice,’ Theresa said.
‘I thought he was called Rico.’
Theresa rolled her eyes.
‘He calls himself that, but actually he’s called Maurice. Ridiculous. I don’t know what I ever saw in that moron. But anyway: thanks.’
‘I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’
‘Yeah, but not everyone would have bothered.’
For the first time, Norah allowed herself to have a good look at Theresa. She was slender, almost fragile-looking, and although she spoke incredibly fast and always gave a hectic, chaotic impression, she moved with great elegance, like someone who has been forced to take ballet lessons at an early age. Her extraordinarily pale skin was covered in freckles although it was the middle of winter—and she drank red wine as if it were water.
‘Norah with an H or without?’ she suddenly asked.
‘With,’ said Norah. ‘And you?’
‘Hm?’
‘Your name. With or without?’
‘Oh, I see,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m with an H, too.’
Norah never failed to be astonished at how perfectly people’s names seemed to suit them. Did parents know through some form of clairvoyance what kind of person their newborn would turn out to be? Or was the secret that all children gradually adapted to their names, in the same way that liquid precious metals hardened and set in the shape of whatever mould they were poured into?
‘It’s a nice name,’ said Norah. ‘With or without an H.’
‘Thanks.’
Theresa got up.
‘Feel like some music?’ she asked, releasing her curls from the untidy bun with a flick of her wrist. She flung her hair band into a corner and went over to the record player. Then she turned back to Norah, staring at her through narrowed eyes as if she could read her music taste in her face, opened the cupboard door and pulled out a record.
‘Oh my God,’ said Norah, as the first notes rang out. ‘I love Arcade Fire.’
‘Thought you might,’ Theresa said, smiling. ‘One of my talents.’
‘I’m impressed!’
Theresa took a stage bow. When she threw back her hair, something flared up in Norah’s hippocampus again and her heart tightened.
‘More music, more wine!’ Theresa cried, as if a whole troop of liveried footmen were waiting in the wings, ready to rush into the room and serve them with the best burgundy. She turned up the volume and topped up their glasses.
An hour or so later the bottle was empty and Katinka had left the rug for Norah’s lap. Norah now knew that Theresa came from Innsbruck, was a few years younger than her and still studying. She’d met Maurice at uni. Exciting sex with him had helped her get over a messy break-up, but as time went on, he’d become increasingly clingy and jealous.
‘Vienna’s full of weirdos,’ said Theresa, and Norah told her the story of the woman with the begging bowl who had prophesied that she would kill a man called Arthur Grimm.
‘Whoa,’ said Theresa. ‘Creepy.’
That made Norah laugh. ‘D’you think?’
‘Completely. Who is this Arthur Grimm?’
‘No idea. But he kind of keeps popping up.’
‘How do you mean?’
And in a few words Norah told her.
‘Oh my God,’ said Theresa, when Norah had finished.
She chewed her lower lip.
‘Maybe you should talk to him.’
‘To be honest, I’m more interested in the weird fortune teller.’
‘Why?’
‘Hard to say. There’s something about her. She kind of fascinates me.’
Theresa screwed up her nose.
‘I think you should let this Grimm have it.’
She pulled a fierce face and clapped her fist against the flat of her hand. Norah laughed again.
‘Really? Why?’
Theresa shrugged.
‘No idea. But maybe the old fortune teller knows more than you.’
‘You’re drunk,’ said Norah, smiling.
The cat rearranged itself on her lap, then decided it was time to move on. Norah stroked its soft black fur one last time and set it carefully on the floor. She immediately missed the creature’s warmth—and, at the same moment, realised that she was no longer entirely sober herself. Then—who knows why—a thought came
to her.
‘Theresa?’
‘Hm?’
Theresa was trying to coax a last drop of wine out of the empty bottle.
‘What do you associate with pipe smoke?’
Theresa looked confused.
‘Pipe smoke?’ she said, with a thick tongue.
Norah nodded.
‘Grandads,’ said Theresa. ‘And cosiness.’
She lit a cigarette and passed it to Norah.
‘How about you?’
Norah took a drag and slowly pushed out the smoke, searching for the right words.
‘Something evil,’ she said.
21
It took a certain amount of concentration to get the key in the lock. Norah had drunk more wine than was good for her.
The flat lay dark before her, with its creaking floorboards and humming television. Somewhere in there, too, loneliness was lurking—probably rolled up in a corner like a sleeping snake just now, but sure to re-emerge soon enough. Norah put on the lights and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. She wondered what time it was. She hadn’t looked at her phone all evening—a clear sign of how comfortable she had felt with Theresa.
She had, though, found herself thinking repeatedly of Valerie. At a second glance, the resemblance was less striking, but seeing Theresa had been enough to wash up all the old questions. Would Norah’s life have been different without Valerie? Would she have been less full of anger, more cheerful? Would she find it easier to let others get close to her? There had been a time when she could, but that was years ago.
Valerie had been so vulnerable and yet so forceful—lightness and weight and sweetness and destruction. Yes, Norah thought, my life would have been different without Valerie because I would have been somebody else. If a butterfly beating its wings in Brazil could trigger a tornado in Texas, then a single event could throw a person’s life off course.
But it was no good thinking about it. It was what it was.
Fitful sleep, dreams of Theresa and Valerie—and of a dark figure with disturbingly pale eyes who stood by her bed, looking down at her, unmoving.
When Norah woke, her mouth and throat were so dry they felt sore, and the sheets so rumpled and damp with sweat that she sat up in disgust, despite her throbbing headache. Her second hangover in a fortnight. She got up and staggered to the bathroom, let the water run and drank a few gulps straight from the tap. The face that stared out at her from the mirror—a relic from the previous tenant—looked bleak and grim, like the wanted posters of the Baader-Meinhof gang that had hung in the post office when she was little and spooked the hell out of her. Norah pushed the hair out of her face and reached for her toothbrush—but her fingers closed over thin air. Confused, she stared at the empty tooth mug. She looked on the shelf. Toothpaste, dental floss, heaps of perfumes and cosmetics—but no toothbrush.
The Shadow Page 8
