It was strange. She was sure she didn’t know him. She had an excellent memory for names—maybe it was being a journalist—and if she had ever heard the name Arthur Grimm, it must have been a very long time ago. But something about him unnerved her.
The traffic lights changed and Norah crossed the road. A man passed her on a bike. It had stopped raining, but the damp cold was stubborn and insidious and found its way in, however well wrapped up you were. Norah drew in her head and put her numb hands in her coat pockets. Not a soul anywhere now.
The next street sign told her she was in the seventh district. All at once, the cold seemed unbearable. Then the tiredness kicked in. Norah walked faster, desperate to be back in the warmth. There were no taxis in sight. She took a left, then a right, meaning to retrace her steps, but soon realised she was lost. How stupid that she’d misplaced her phone. Norah stopped to think for a second, then on a sudden impulse she took a left and found herself in a street she knew. It was wide and slightly sloping; if she followed it uphill and turned right, she’d come to that lovely cafe where, in another life, she’d once had breakfast. She knew her way home from there.
The street ahead was lined with embassies. Enormous flags—Norah recognised Brazil and Turkey—hung from the facades, billowing in the night like the sails of a ghost ship in a storm. To Norah’s left was a high wall, the rendering crumbling in places and daubed with inexpert graffiti. She wondered what was behind it. A private garden? A park? Something made her stop. Bare trees stretched to the sky on the other side of the wall. The road and pavements were deserted. Life had gone out like a lamp, people were in their beds, sleeping like the dead, but Norah had a feeling that someone was there, very close. She looked about her. There was no one in front of her or behind her, no one on the other side of the road, no one at any of the windows. It was quite quiet. But then it hadn’t been a sound that had startled Norah; it had been a smell, at once exotic and familiar, sickly sweet. She wasn’t imagining things—she was sure she wasn’t. As if in slow motion, she turned to face the wall. Someone was there, silent and unmoving, on the other side. Someone was standing very still, holding their breath, like Norah.
A car sped past, and Norah wheeled round just in time to see a taxi disappearing out of sight. Fuck. She returned to staring at the rough rendering of the wall, as if she didn’t dare turn her back on whoever was on the other side. She stood and listened for a long time. No, there was no one there. Who knew where the smell had come from. But as Norah was about to go on her way, she heard a noise behind the wall.
Gravel. The crunch of footsteps on gravel. There must be a path or drive on the other side. Norah’s heart was pounding. Whoever had been lurking there was walking away with slow, deliberate steps. The crunch of gravel grew softer and softer. Before long there was only a faint smell of pipe tobacco hanging in the air.
9
Even before she opened her eyes, Norah knew she wasn’t alone; there was heavy breathing coming from the other side of the bed. She almost groaned out loud when it came back to her—the bar, the gin and tonics, the man. She girded herself to have a look. He was lying with his back to her, a broad swimmer’s back, tanned skin; he must have been somewhere exotic—or in the solarium. His hair was light brown. She had no recollection of his face.
Norah’s mouth tasted as if she’d been gagged with an old cleaning rag for several hours, and she knew her head would start aching if she so much as stirred. She sat up and felt the hangover kick in. She had a drink from a bottle of water next to the bed, got up, threw on an old T-shirt and staggered into the bathroom. There was a used condom in the toilet bowl. That was something. Norah flushed the chain, went into the kitchen and made two cups of coffee.
Half an hour later she left for work, dressed for an expedition to the South Pole. It was sunny and so bitterly cold that her fingers immediately turned numb.
Deciding to walk to Karlsplatz and get the underground from there, she set off at a brisk pace to get warm. Some of the people she passed were trying to warm themselves on takeaway coffee cups, but most of them scurried by with hunched shoulders. Several had scarves wound around their mouths and noses, making them look strangely creepy, almost faceless.
Norah passed the Volkstheater. A big banner strung across the front of the building read: Don’t forget: if you can touch it, it can also touch you. In the underground station, she took the juddering escalator down, down into the bowels of the earth and caught her train.
Over coffee, the man in her bed had told her he was studying sport; then it had been time for her to go to work and she’d thrown him out. She had no idea what had induced her to bring him home, but it could have been worse: he was quite cute and made no trouble about leaving. ‘You’ve got my number,’ he’d said, after giving her a sleepy kiss on the cheek and thanking her politely for the coffee, and she’d nodded, without knowing what he was talking about.
The train wobbled along under the city and Norah gingerly felt her tooth with her tongue. She wasn’t in real pain, but she was glad to have got an appointment so quickly.
The straps swung back and forth on either side of the carriage, performing a minimalist ballet—left, right, left, right, left, right. People stared mutely at their phones, or books, or hands, or out of the window—not that there was anything to see except underground shafts, endless-seeming streaks of black and grey. How old was the Vienna underground? What stories did it have to tell? Was there enough material for a feature? Norah reached for her phone to do a bit of spontaneous internet research, then remembered that she didn’t have it. The train stopped and she threw a panicked glance out of the window, but it was only another station. A group of teenagers got on, along with a young, heavily pregnant woman, who was holding a little boy of six or seven by the hand; the woman and the boy sat down opposite Norah. The train started up again and Norah closed her eyes. When she opened them, the little boy was staring at her.
‘Hello,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘You all right?’
The boy didn’t answer or smile back—just looked at her with big eyes. She glanced at his mother who stared back blankly. Norah shrugged and was about to turn away when the boy mumbled something.
‘Sorry?’
The boy said nothing.
‘What did you say?’ Norah asked.
No reply.
‘Leave him, won’t you?’ his mother said.
‘It’s all right,’ said Norah. ‘I’m sorry.’ She got up, glad that they were drawing into the station where she had to change trains.
The dentist’s practice was in a lovely big old house with a cream stucco facade. Norah rang the bell, told the voice on the intercom her name and entered the building, then stopped when she realised that the voice hadn’t told her what floor to go to. She looked about, trying to get her bearings. Next to the letterboxes were four plaques.
First Floor—Huber Architects
Second Floor—Goldberg Solicitors
Third Floor—Dr Bernhard Schlick—Dentist
Norah was on her way to the lift when she realised what she’d just read. Impossible—she must have made a mistake. She turned back and read the fourth plaque again. Her short, sharp laugh echoed in the hallway. Something she’d read somewhere popped into her mind: Chance is the only legitimate king in the world. Wasn’t it Napoleon said that?