Norah fought back a sigh. She never knew what to say when people cried on the phone.
‘I was so stupid,’ Coco said softly.
Yes, Norah thought, you were. But that doesn’t mean you deserved what he did to you.
‘What film did you watch today?’ she asked, to change the topic. She knew that Coco only ever left the house to go to the cinema—partly because she loved films; partly because it was dark in the cinema and no one could stare at her.
‘Beauty and the Beast,’ Coco said.
‘You’re not serious.’
‘No, really,’ Coco said, and Norah pictured her smiling through her tears. ‘Fitting, eh?’
‘I’m speechless.’
‘That,’ said Coco, ‘is an expression I’ve never understood. I’m never speechless.’
Norah smiled to herself. She loved Coco’s wry humour.
‘I googled him,’ Coco said suddenly, like a sinner in a confessional, keen to come clean before losing courage.
Norah groaned.
‘Oh my God, Coco.’
‘I know, I know. But I did it. I found an article about him, a new one, from last week. I thought I was going to freak out completely. All those clichés of his. I’m a simple man. A leopard can’t change its spots. Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla. But do you know what made me really angry?’
‘What?’ Norah asked resignedly.
‘There’s this story he tells the interviewer about how he learnt what fear is. He was playing in the garden one day as a child, and a stranger came along with a knife and attacked him, apparently leaving him slightly injured.’
‘And?’
‘It’s not his story. It’s mine. It’s something I told him on our first date.’
Wow, Norah thought, but said nothing.
‘I’ve no idea how I let him take me in. That pretentious piano-playing. And the way he’s always tossing out Shakespeare quotes. He’s such a conceited bastard. I can’t tell you how revolting I find him.’
Norah said nothing.
‘I could kill him,’ Coco said.
‘Don’t say that,’ said Norah. ‘You’re no more capable of killing than I am.’
‘You have no idea.’
Norah laughed, anxious to take some of the tension out of the situation.
‘You laugh,’ said Coco—she had stopped crying. ‘But everyone is capable of killing, if they have good reason. Even you.’
14
Norah couldn’t sleep after talking to Coco; her guilty conscience got the better of her. There was her poor friend, stuck in a tiny flat in that dump of a small town where her parents lived, hardly daring to leave the house—and it was all Norah’s fault.
Well, not quite all. But she’d done her bit.
She lit a cigarette, went to the window and looked out onto the street.
It had all begun when her boss had sent her to interview that art professor. The first interview had been held in the restaurant of a hotel—the second in the professor’s house. He’d got Norah’s hackles up right from the start. While at his house, she had briefly met his beautiful and considerably younger girlfriend Nicolette, who called herself Coco, and whom he referred to as my muse. He had sat in an armchair with his legs wide apart, while his muse sat in a corner of the sofa, her arms and legs entwined in an acrobatic pose that seemed designed to ensure that she took up as little space as possible.
The professor’s mouth was set in the rictus of a great white shark. During the interview, Coco kept getting up and darting out of the room. She moved almost soundlessly, but everything about her was screaming.
Norah knew that cowering posture, that look of fear. The first time she’d seen it had been at a party in her early student days, when she’d burst into the bathroom to find a girl staring at her with the wild eyes of a deer caught in headlights, crying and trembling. It turned out that their host, a boy Norah hardly knew, had spiked the girl’s drink, then taken her up to the bathroom, got her down on the tiles and done pretty much everything a boy can do to a girl who is just about conscious but completely defenceless. Norah persuaded the girl to go to the police and she went on to press charges, but the boy, not yet twenty, got off more or less scot-free—who wanted to mess up the future of a promising young man from a good family just because he’d made a silly mistake? The girl grew as thin and translucent as a ghost and ended up moving away. The boy stayed on and graduated.
Years later, Norah saw him again, at a reception given by the publishing house she was working for at the time. She recognised him immediately. He looked confident, successful. To her horror, he made a beeline for her. He said he knew her from somewhere—he never forgot a pretty woman—but he couldn’t think where. They hadn’t gone to the same school, had they? No? Ah, they’d been students together—wonderful. Might he introduce her to his wife Johanna?
A beautiful, fragile-looking woman in a short black dress appeared at his side. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘How do you two know each other?’
‘Oh, your husband raped a friend of mine when we were students,’ Norah replied.
Then she turned away and went home, images of the trembling, frightened girl flashing across her mind, and a sick feeling in her stomach because the world was so fucking unjust and she was powerless to do anything about it.
•
Norah stood at the window, thinking of the first time she’d met Coco. It wasn’t long afterwards that the professor made such a mess of her that her own mother probably wouldn’t have recognised her. Norah did her best to help. For the second time in her life, she talked a woman into putting her faith in the law, and once again it backfired. She soon discovered that the professor was extremely astute and legally almost untouchable—especially given Coco’s history of mental illness. He ended up suing the two women for libel and Coco was left a quivering wreck.
Then Nora did something that was to cost her her job and eventually her relationship: she wrote about him. As a student she had learnt that a good journalist must never resort to malice, however good the cause, but she abandoned this principle for Coco. She wrote the article that the professor deserved, and by the end it was less an article than an indictment—an indictment in which not only Coco was given a voice, but all the other women whose lives the professor had destroyed. Because that was what he did; he destroyed women.
When the article was published, all hell broke loose—for Coco and Norah. Norah’s boss was furious about the libel charges. That didn’t surprise Norah, but what did surprise her was the way everyone rushed to defend the bastard, dismissing the women Norah had quoted in the article as greedy and limelight-seeking. She still felt sick just thinking about it.
When it was clear that Norah’s initiative had completely failed, the professor turned up on her doorstep one day. She let him in, her belly full of disgust and hate; she was too curious to turn him away. They stood facing each other in Norah’s study and she asked how it felt to destroy someone’s life. He only smiled smugly, swinging himself onto her desk as if he owned it. Everything about him revolted her—his violence, his greed, the way he smelt, the way he grinned and the suit he was wearing that must have cost as much as Norah’s car.
‘Malice, egoism, vindictiveness—all these things are in our nature, my dear Miss Richter,’ he said. ‘There’s no getting away from that.’
‘Spare me that bullshit. I’m not one of your students. You’re a sadistic bastard, that’s all. And one of these days, I’m going to get you, I swear I will.’
He laughed in her face.
‘I like your sense of humour,’ he said, looking about him attentively, as if he were trying to memorise the contents of the room.
‘We’re not so very different, you and I,’ he said at length, his eyes piercing her, as she stood there with her arms folded. ‘I have seldom seen such anger. I bet that if I were to take a scalpel and cut open your chest I’d find a heart that’s every bit as black as mine. The only difference is that I accept my dark sid
e.’
He flashed his teeth.
‘What do you say to burying the hatchet?’
She felt like punching him in the face.
Is that what he’s come for? she wondered. Does he want to provoke me until I hit him? This thought alone held her back.
‘We have nothing in common,’ Norah said coolly. ‘Nothing at all. And now please leave.’
The professor smiled again.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the trouble with women like you. You think you’re superior to everyone else. But you’re not.’
‘At least I’m not a sadistic old bastard who gets his kicks out of destroying young women,’ she said. ‘And now get out.’
The smug grin he gave her as he left haunted her for days.
‘Why can’t you just drop it?’ Alex had asked one evening.
She looked at him as if he were off his head and gave him the only answer she could think of.
‘Because what he’s doing is unfair.’
Alex wasn’t convinced.
‘Norah, wake up. The whole world’s unfair.’
‘What are you saying?’ she asked. ‘That I should give up? That I should just accept everything?’
Alex had smiled condescendingly, as if she were a child refusing to accept that she couldn’t adopt every dog in the dogs’ home. She saw him differently after that.
It was soon afterwards that she found the ring, hidden away in a drawer, under his clothes. For a few seconds she stared at it, as if it were something gruesome, but fascinating—an open wound showing white bone.
When Alex came home that evening, she told him it was over. Coco’s life was ruined; Norah’s reputation, her job, her relationship—all gone to pieces. A total disaster. The professor’s triumph was complete.
Norah stubbed out her cigarette. She mustn’t think of all that now, or she’d never get to sleep. She lit up again and blew smoke into the night.
15
Wrapped in a once-fluffy dressing gown that was now rough and scratchy, Norah stepped onto the balcony, sipping her coffee. The sky was wide and grey; there was no way of knowing what kind of day it would be. She went back into the flat and googled the article that Coco had mentioned. It didn’t take her long to trace the contact details of the professor’s latest ‘muse’. She wrote the young woman an anonymous email from a disposable address—a brief, but unequivocal warning about her new boyfriend—and began to feel better.
An hour or so later, Norah was sitting at her desk in the office, translating her interview with the Hollywood star. When the letters began to blur on the screen, she headed for the kitchen.
Luisa and Eva were standing by the coffee machine, chatting over steaming mugs. Norah said hello, opened the window and lit a cigarette.
‘Are you doing the Abramović?’ Luisa asked, and Norah pricked her ears. She was a big fan of Abramović and would have loved to talk to her.
‘I wish,’ Eva said. ‘The boss bagged that one.’
Norah knew that she would have to wait her turn to be offered that kind of work. She’d only got the interview with Michael because she knew someone from the studio that had produced his latest film. Even so, she felt a small pang of envy. She consoled herself by planning to go and see a museum sometime—the Kunsthistorisches Museum or the Albertina.
‘What’s the boss bagged?’ asked David, who had come into the kitchen soon after Norah.
‘The interview with Marina Abramović.’
‘Who’s that?’
Blowing smoke rings out of the window with her back to the others, Norah pulled a face. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t best friends with her new colleagues, but she had a feeling she was going to run into real trouble with David at some point.
‘Er, let’s see,’ Eva said sarcastically, ‘maybe the most famous performance artist on the planet?’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘God, you really are a philistine.’
‘I prefer to think of myself as an outdoorsman,’ said David, and Norah didn’t have to look at him to know that he was grinning complacently.
‘Action art?’ Eva said. ‘Marina Abramović? Hermann Nitsch? Wolfgang Balder? Ring any bells?’
David shrugged.
‘I’ve heard of Balder. Isn’t that the guy with the gutted animals?’
Norah’s stomach turned over.
‘No, that’s Hermann Nitsch. Balder’s the one with the electric shocks.’
Norah dragged on her cigarette, closed her eyes and tried to think nice thoughts. She’d been to the Kunsthistorisches Museum twice, but she’d never visited the Albertina.
‘The what?’ David asked.
Yes, Norah thought, she’d go to the Albertina as soon as she had a moment to herself; she could see Dürer’s Young Hare and Degas’ Two Dancers.
‘He did this performance once where he had three women sitting in a room, a blond, a brunette and a redhead. The public could look at them through glass and give them electric shocks.’
Any second now, he’ll ask which woman was given the most shocks, Norah thought. As if that were the point. She looked out at the milling pedestrians.
‘And another time he poured pig’s blood all over a man waiting at a station.’
‘God!’ David said. ‘What gives him the right to do that?’
‘It’s art, you uncultivated morons,’ said Eva. ‘The guy’s a genius!’
‘You’re not serious,’ Luisa cried. ‘That’s perverse!’
‘No, it’s not. The electric-shock thing was a fascinating combination of action art and social experiment.’ Eva sounded teacherly.
Norah only just stopped herself from groaning out loud. She was interested in art and hated it when people spouted specious half-knowledge. She bit back the caustic remark on the tip of her tongue. What did Max say: No one likes a smartarse, darling.
‘Oh, okay,’ Luisa said sarcastically. ‘And the thing where he cut up that woman’s face? Was that a social experiment?’
‘He what?’ David asked.
‘Ah! Now you’re interested!’ Eva cried.
‘How can you cut a woman’s face without breaking the law?’
‘He calls it performance,’ Luisa said, pulling a face.
‘God!’ David said again. ‘How does he find people willing to let him do that to them?’
Eva shrugged.
‘That’s sick,’ David said. ‘That’s not art, it’s grievous bodily harm.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Eva said. ‘What if the girls agree to it? How can it be grievous bodily harm if it’s voluntary?’
‘Didn’t one woman sue for damages?’ Luisa asked.
Norah turned round; things were getting interesting.
‘That’s out of order,’ Eva said. ‘She could have decided not to get involved. But coming along afterwards and saying, Oh, by the way, I’ve decided that wasn’t what I wanted after all; I’d like a hundred thousand euros, please—that’s not on.’
‘In the end, all you girls are interested in is money,’ David said.
Norah imagined taking a fork out of the drawer and ramming it into his neck.
‘Ha ha,’ Eva said, feigning annoyance.
‘Well, I don’t know who I find worse,’ Luisa said, ‘the old perv or the girls who go along with it.’
Norah bit back another caustic remark. She was bad at keeping her mouth shut. It had got her into a lot of trouble at the last place she’d worked and, in her more honest moments, she knew it was an annoying habit.
‘He’s a genius,’ Eva said, refusing to give up.
‘You’re bonkers.’
‘But he’s got us talking, hasn’t he? Even David, who doesn’t usually join in unless we’re talking cars or mountaineering.’
‘Go on, take the piss,’ said David, ‘but as far as I’m concerned, all this conversation’s done is reinforce my belief that modern art is not for me. Nothing but a load of nutcases.’
‘Philistine!’ Eva shouted.
; ‘Silly bitch!’ David said with a grin.
Norah looked away. Typical David—always testing his limit.
‘Watch it!’ Eva said, with mock menace. ‘I won’t stand for sexist names. If I hear anything like that again, I’ll go straight to the equal opportunities officer.’
‘You’re the equal opportunities officer,’ David said.
All three laughed.
‘I can’t imagine the women knew what they were letting themselves in for,’ Norah said.
She could hear how harsh her voice sounded. A sudden quiet fell over the room, as if her colleagues hadn’t realised that the shadowy figure smoking silently at the window could talk. Norah regretted having spoken.
Luisa nodded politely, as if she thought it a point worth considering, but she said nothing. The other two raised their eyebrows at each other.
Thirty seconds later, the kitchen was deserted except for Norah. She stubbed out her cigarette.
‘Hey, which of the three women got the most electric shocks?’ she heard David ask, and thought to herself how much simpler her life would be if everyone were as predictable as he was.
In the late afternoon, as Norah was getting ready to leave the office, she got an email from Werner.
It turned out, he wrote, that there were several people in Vienna called Arthur Grimm: a two-year-old boy, a man who was getting on for ninety, and another man in his forties. Which would she like him to focus on?
The man in his forties, Norah replied, and after adding a few words of thanks, she hurried out. She had to be in the seventh district at 5 p.m. to meet a young woman who ran a ‘cold bus’—a converted minibus to help the homeless make it through the winter. But first, she wanted to have another look on the pedestrian precinct for ‘her’ homeless woman. The idea that her colleagues might be playing a prank on her now seemed ridiculous. She considered herself a good judge of character and could see that although certain of the editorial staff might not be entirely happy that the supposed new talent was a standoffish German, they were, as far as she could tell, hard-working and professional people with no time for such childish nonsense. Luisa and Tom had seemed honest, when she’d asked them about the woman with the begging bowl. And Anita? Norah wondered as she left the office building. Yes, Anita, too, she thought. In fact, it was only David who might be capable of funny games, but he didn’t seem particularly interested in her—why would he want to freak her out? Norah could make no sense of any of it.
The Shadow Page 6