I Was Jack Mortimer (Pushkin Collection) Read Free

continue on her way, when she recognized him.
    “Ah!” she said, and since he was standing so close to her, “It’s you, is it?” But she didn’t stop and kept walking.
    “Yes, it’s me,” he said, and, searching for words, tried to stand in her way. “Would… would you like me to give you a lift? I was so upset yesterday about that little incident. My driving’s really quite good…”
    She looked at him. A shadow of a smile flitted across her mouth. A row of dazzlingly white teeth flashed for a brief second.
    “I’m glad!” she said. “How long have you been a driver then?”
    “Four years. Do you drive yourself?”
    “Me?” she asked in surprise.
    “Yes.”
    “A little,” she said.
    “I had an idea you would have a car. Of course,” he added immediately, “I learnt to drive somewhere else… with my relatives, you understand.” And he paused for a split second. She looked at him as though she couldn’t quite fathom why he had said “you understand”. And it must have crossed her mind: “What relatives? What on earth have they got to do with it?”
    “When I first started,” he continued immediately, “I’d far rather have done something else than be a driver…”
    “Really?” she said, and made as if to walk on again.
    “Yes,” he said hastily, “I even spent a whole year in… a cadet school… Actually, my father was…”
    It seemed she couldn’t care less that he had been a cadet. “Yes,” she said, “nowadays all sorts become drivers. That’s the way it is… one just has to…”
    He tried to smile. She looked away, but then turned towards him again. He was above average height, well built, only his hands were rough. As she looked at his face, she noticed he had beautiful eyes.
    She blushed slightly, nodded curtly, and turned away.
    “So, no car?” he asked.
    “No, thank you,” she said quickly, and walked on.
    He stared after her.

2
    H E FINISHED HIS SHIFT AT SIX . He didn’t take the car home, however, but gave it, together with the day’s takings, to the other driver, Georg Haintl, in Margaretenstrasse. Then he caught a tram to Fünfhaus, one of the outer suburbs, where he rented a room from Herr Oxenbauer, a railwayman, near the garage where he kept his cab.
    Without taking off his coat, he sat down on his bed and leant against the shabby old wall-hanging depicting a lurcher giving chase to a hare.
    The smell of petrol wafted from the adjacent room; the door to it, blocked by a washstand, was shut.
    He got up and flung the window open.
    On the far side of a backyard, which was bordered only by a low wall, rows of street lights flickered around the perimeter of a large undeveloped plot of land. In the darkness of an adjoining garden, shrubbery rustled in the wind. He pulled off his coat, threw himself on the bed and lit a cigarette.
    Shortly afterwards, the railwayman’s teenage daughter brought him his supper on a black tray with a faded goldenpattern. She was about to put it on his bedside table, but he motioned with his head to the other table.
    “Why does it smell of petrol?”
    “I can’t smell anything,” she said.
    “I should have known!” he turned on her. “Every time there’s a smell, I’m told there’s no smell at all, every time the soup’s off, I’m told it’s not off at all, and so on!”
    She went out, slamming the door. He followed her with his eyes from under closely knit brows.
    She didn’t like him because she couldn’t stand Marie Fiala.
    Marie Fiala was his girlfriend.
    She arrived about ten minutes later. When she entered, he was still lying on his bed and hadn’t eaten anything.
    She kissed him and asked why he hadn’t touched his food. Wasn’t he hungry? They’d be late for the film. Unless, of course, he didn’t want to go. In which case there was no need to go out at all. She didn’t really mind. And she sat down in her coat, next to him.
    “I don’t really feel like going anywhere,” he said.
    She nodded, got up