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Nora is single, and she works as a typist in a law firm. Her life is gray and monotonous and characterized by lovelessness. Only reading novels brings color into her everyday life, but without awakening any longings. Before her fiftieth birthday, experiences accumulate that make her doubt her previous life. Can she overcome the crisis and turn her life around? The novel describes the female counterpart to the character of Gerold Trank in "Time Reclaimed" by the same author.
Andreas Pritzker was born in Windisch (Switzerland) in 1945. He studied physics at the ETH Zurich and worked as a researcher, consulting engineer and in science management. As a writer he has published nine novels, two novellas and three non-fiction books. Moreover, he has edited various texts as a publisher.
Originally published in German as Unscheinbar by
BoD, Norderstedt (Germany) in 2017
Translated from the German by Ursula Reist and
DeepL Translate
© 2021 Andreas Pritzker
Produced and published by
BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt (Germany)
Cover photo: CanStockPhoto
ISBN: 978-3-7534-1435-5
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Nora was an inconspicuous person. People only took notice of her when she got in their way. Otherwise she was simply overlooked. She, on the other hand, examined the people who came into her field of vision - as if she were looking for something in their appearance.
The world of things she perceived in the same way. The paving – in places made of expensive granite slabs. House facades between Art Nouveau and Modernism. A waiting bench. The linden trees. The streetcars with fronts like dogs' snouts. The shop windows with mannequins that were quite different from most people. But first and foremost, her attention was on the people.
She was walking along Bahnhofstrasse with her nephew Daniel, and after a while she asked him what people he had noticed on the way. Daniel could only remember unusual appearances, mostly women he found attractive. But he hadn't noticed the worker in the red overalls who was emptying the waste baskets. And he wouldn't have noticed Nora either if she had been a stranger to him. On the way, he sometimes glanced at her from the side, often doubtfully, when he didn't like what she was saying. She, on the other hand, observed everything and thought the boy was going through life blind and deaf.
She reproached him for merely perceiving what was announced to him in a striking way. What did not immediately attract his attention, did not exist at all. She asked him if he at least thought about what he saw. Whether he took note of the things that were beneath the surface. No, he explained. If there was something that concerned him, it would come to him sooner or later anyway.
"And what good, pray tell, does it do you to watch everything closely and think about it?"
She didn't know the answer to that. To perceive the totality, to recognize differences and similarities, to rethink what she perceived, and to be able to establish connections in the process, that was simply part of her nature, she said. Perhaps it helped her to understand the world.
"And for what purpose do you want to understand the world?"
She had no idea, she confessed. She just did it, and it gave her satisfaction. She also made up stories about what she saw.
He thought and replied, "It's different with me. I can't just let my thoughts wander. I focus them on a fixed goal. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get through my studies."
„And I benefit from that“, she said with a laugh. Daniel supported her in questions of computer handling. And to thank him, she had invited him to lunch. At her home. She would prepare a meat pie for him. He loved it more than anything. Surprising, really, since young people tended to be vegetarians. The recipe came from her mother's collection of inexpensive dishes. Her mother had used it before to lure the headstrong grandson to her house.
"Do the stories you make up have any relation to yourself?" wanted Daniel to know.
She paused. No, she didn't relate the stories to herself. She didn't do it any more than she did with all the novels she read. She made up stories because they opened up new puzzle pieces of human existence for her that were no less real than those in the world in which she lived.
"So what do these stories look like?"
She tried to put herself in the place of the worker who emptied the waste baskets. What was he thinking? It was good that people produced garbage, so at least he had a paid job? Or did he find his work pointless because it never led to a final goal? Perhaps he thought nothing of it at all. But if he did, he might share his thoughts with a colleague when they were having an after work beer. Or with his wife, when he started to think about it during a Sunday walk. Or he might talk about it with his son when being asked how he spent his day.
Daniel started to say something, but then fell silent.
At the main railroad station, they got on the streetcar. On the way, she suggested that Daniel could visit his grandfather. Her father had problems with his hearing aids, and Daniel would certainly be able to help the old man.
"I'd love to, but I don't have time. I've got midterms coming up, so I've got to study my ass off. That's why I have to go back to the university right after lunch."
Nora looked through the window at the passing city. Autumn announced itself early this year. An unpleasantly cool wind brushed through the streets, the clouds hung low and gloomy over the houses, the daylight shimmered dully and seemed about to go out, the colors had disappeared, leaving behind a dirty gray view of the world.
When they got off at the streetcar stop near her apartment in the Seebach district, Nora saw a young woman waiting. She stood there, thin, pale and inconspicuous. Daniel didn't give her a glance, didn't see how she screwed up her face and covered one ear with her hand. „She's in pain“, Nora murmured, and now Daniel looked too, surprised that his aunt was interested in such a thing. Nora stopped. She would have liked to comfort the young woman with a few sympathetic words, to ask if she could help her, while Daniel urged her to go on. But a darkly dressed, white-bearded old man with light blue, watery eyes approached and stated, "You have pain in your ear, it shows."
The young woman groaned, "What's it to you?"
The old man patted her arm and explained, "I just want to help." He placed his hand on the young woman's ear. The bystanders – and now even Daniel – looked intently at the couple. Was the woman putting up with this? She let it happen and after a while exclaimed, "The pain is gone!"
The old man said, "See?"
"And what happens when it comes back? Can I come to you then?"
"No need, because you can heal yourself. You just have to want to, and think hard about driving the pain out of your ear."
It doesn't help to drive away the pain, Nora thought. There must be a cause, and it has to be addressed.
A streetcar pulled up, the two people got on, the young woman sat down at the window, still holding on to her sick ear and looking puzzled.
While Nora prepared the meal, Daniel looked around the apartment. He even dared to glance into the bedroom. He came into the kitchen. His expression radiated rejection. He said, "You should redecorate. With IKEA furniture. The whole apartment would immediately appear more friendly. Now it looks, excuse me, stuffy."
Nora wanted to know what was wrong with her furniture.
"Everything is old and worn, and thrown together. It's all right for a student digs, but you're fifty and you make a decent living."
Nora had lived in her apartment for twenty-seven years – her first after moving out of her parents' house. Initially, the two rooms had been almost empty. She had been able to take a few pieces of furniture with her that had come from her grandparents: a dining table and six Ticino chairs from the 1930s, a wardrobe, and one of the two marital beds, an ugly, antiquated rack with springs and a horsehair mattress. Over the years, other pieces had been added, all inherited except for a modern bed she had bought herself.
Now there were pieces of furniture from her late mother in the apartment, and when her father had moved into the nursing home, more furniture had been added. And whenever her brother and his wife had bought something new, the old furniture had regularly ended up with Nora. At least she had discarded older furniture with these gifts, otherwise the apartment would have been even more crowded. Her gaze roamed the living room. The dining table was larger than necessary, because she hardly ever had more than one guest. When she looked at it more closely, she noticed that the legs were already badly battered, and the tabletop was covered with stains that had perpetuated themselves so that they would withstand any furniture polish. The corduroy cover of the sofa also bore the marks of time. Once dark red, the fabric was now just brownish, and the ribs were worn away on the seats. The sofa was huge, but she lived in it. She would lie there and read, or watch a movie on television. And sometimes, when she was too tired to go to bed, she would pull the covers over her and sleep curled up. The next morning she stood in the shower with back pain and resolved never to do that again.
While she set the table, Nora tried to see the apartment through Daniel's eyes. The way he saw the world, he certainly missed design here. She had to admit that he was right. The apartment had been haphazardly filled and overstuffed in the process. The furniture was also impractical. It did not allow her to arrange things that belonged together. Yet she was reluctant to redecorate. She did not feel capable of carrying out such an undertaking. Everything spoke against it. She didn't drive a car, she hardly knew anyone who would help her, because she didn't dare call on Daniel for this as well. And she was afraid to spend money.
Daniel continued. "The apartment is gloomy, even more so in this weather. The window size defies any norm, the rooms are too small, the balcony is puny, even without a barbecue on it. Why don't you move and renew your furnishings in the process?"
Nora sighed. Why change anything, she thought. She could manage her life with what she had. Moving would have been too much for her. Such matters are not for someone like me, she thought automatically, and it was as if this sentence had been impressed on her all her life.
"And another thing," Daniel continued, "there's not a single mirror in the whole apartment where you can look at yourself full size. Don't you ever check your appearance?"
Nora declared she didn't need that. With her, there was nothing to see. She knew the clothes she put on in the morning, she knew she was too fat, and she could see her face in the bathroom mirror. Apart from a day cream, she didn't wear makeup, and it wasn’t for nothing that she had adopted a short hairstyle that didn't need any care.
Daniel shrugged and sat down at the table. She looked at him and realized in amazement that he – or anyone else – had never raised these issues before. And then she realized that Daniel was quite capable of noticing his surroundings when he wanted to, and even thinking about them. Stupid cow, she thought. And I live in this apartment day in and day out and don't even notice it.
She felt she should thank her nephew for his advice, even if she didn't follow it. Daniel grinned. "After all, I didn't follow your advice either. Remember how you recommended that I drink pure water for my pimples, a liter a day? I didn't do that because I didn't believe in it. I probably would have if I had found that tip in the newspaper or on a television program. Where did you get the idea, anyway?"
Nora explained that it was an old home recipe. She had found it in the novel of an American author. A Negro mother gave her daughter this advice. She knew, Nora continued, that no one today expected pure water to do anything. There had to be a medicine with as natural a substance as possible, sun-dried oysters or squeezed lianas from the rain forest, the juice filtered with sea sand, so that people believed in an effect.
"Now don't exaggerate, Auntie," Daniel exclaimed. 'Auntie' he called her only when he was upset. Then he saw that she was smiling and laughed along.
Over lunch, Daniel got to talking about IT. Nora's boss, attorney Grief, in whose office she did all kinds of typing as well as the bookkeeping, had put her, in addition to making coffee and managing the files, in charge of PC support, after the young lawyer who had been doing this job on the side left. She had wanted to refuse, but Grief had said that if she couldn't take on the task, he would have to look for someone younger.
She used a PC for her typing and bookkeeping. She had attended an introductory course in Windows and Office, and the accounting program did not cause her any problems thanks to her experience. Otherwise, she understood next to nothing about IT. Grief had recognized this and granted her an advanced course at the firm's expense. Since he had paid for the course, Grief had decided that the additional function did not merit a salary increase.
Grief, who was sixty years old, refused to use a computer, and he was proud of it. This was done for him by his assistant Saskia. Apart from Nora and Saskia, there was a PC for the young lawyer who earned his spurs in the office until he got bored and made way for a similar successor. The young men could use the most important applications of the office program, but had no idea about the maintenance of the software. And if anything didn't work they were at a loss. They all thought that the employer had to take care of the smooth functioning of these tools by hiring a specialist.
The in-depth course had been conducted by a young woman. She had taken apart a PC in front of the students, showed them the hard drive and other components, and explained how the whole thing worked. Nora had liked that. She had learned to keep the software up to date and to install the necessary security programs, and in the end she was able to connect the three machines in the office, including the printer, to each other and to the Internet via a wireless network.
Nevertheless, the IT operations kept malfunctioning. Daniel had explained to her that the systems were not so sophisticated that they worked stably – whatever that meant. However, Nora had quickly noticed that the necessary information for solving everyday problems was readily available on the Internet.
If there was a major problem, such as the entire WLAN failing or a machine getting stuck, Nora used Daniel's most successful recipe: shutting down the equipment and restarting it. And only when that didn't work either did she call him.
Now Daniel gave her the advice to continue her education. "Your boss should realize the importance of this. I won't always be around to help. So you should tackle the next level of the course, and after that be able to reinstall a PC and solve any network problems."
Nora doubted that this proposal was realistic. First of all, she did not trust herself to develop further. Maybe if she had been twenty years younger. And secondly, Grief would not see why he should invest in Nora's further training, because after all, the firm had no problems with its IT applications.
Nora turned up at half past seven and unlocked the office. She was always the first. For this reason, she had been given her own key. However, she had had to sign a document written in the most beautiful legal language, in which she was threatened with serious consequences should she misuse or lose the key.
She switched on the light. Outside the windows there was still the gloom of a rainy autumn morning. The lighting was indirect. After his father-in-law and ,partner, attorney Nagel, had retired Grief had had the premises redesigned. Abstract paintings hung on the walls, and pedestals with equally modern sculptures dotted the room. The furniture was from USM-Haller.
Nora unlocked the archive room. She had a key for that, too. The only thing that remained locked to her were the lawyers' offices. But the gentlemen, including Grief, were so careless that they usually forgot to lock the doors. Nora switched on the wireless network and the printer. She checked that the printer had enough ink and paper. Then she booted up her computer. Once, as a service, she had also started Saskia's machine. Saskia hadn't tolerated this, but she didn't complain directly to Nora. In such cases, she always turned to the boss. Grief had called Nora over and told her that she had no business on Saskia's computer. Nora remained standing with raised eyebrows. "What?" Grief had barked. Didn't she have to maintain Saskia's computer anymore?, Nora had asked. Grief had thought for a moment and then ordered that in the future she would have to do it together with Saskia. Saskia would enter the commands according to Nora's instructions. Nora didn't care, but the procedure made Saskia nervous.
At a quarter to nine Saskia arrived, and at nine Grief. He was wearing his dark blue suit with pinstripes today. That meant he either had to go to court or meet an important client. He brandished a catalog and stood with it at the reception corpus by Saskia's desk. Saskia immediately jumped up and joined him. Grief wanted a small seating area for his office, and the two eagerly delved into the furniture show. Grief's office was also furnished with USM furniture, except for a magnificent antique metal safe cabinet. The safe had a shiny black finish, a gilded lock, gilded feet, and a gilded superstructure with floral motifs. Grief was mighty proud of the piece. "The seating area is going to be in front of the safe, it definitely has to match," he exclaimed.
When they had made their choice, Nora approached Grief and asked if he had a moment. "Please", Grief said with a patronizing air, "what can I do for you today?" Nora was embarrassed that Saskia was listening in. She told them both it would be good if she could take an advanced course in PC support. The field was constantly evolving, she said, and sometimes problems arose during maintenance for which she had previously asked her nephew for advice, but he had less and less time. Saskia looked doubtfully at Grief, who said he would think it over. Nora returned to her corner and devoted herself to her paperwork.
*