‘I wouldn’t say that cows are predatory.’
‘No, not predatory but they can definitely kill, albeit accidentally, if they choose to stampede.’ Then I left the juggernaut and walked to the crevice in the rocks. I peered through and saw the road down below. It was flooded. ‘We can’t make that. We better turn back’ But then I saw that the road back was steep, so steep it was just a few degrees shy of being vertical. Really? Could we really get the juggernaut to go up there? I closed my eyes, feeling vertiginous and when I opened them again, she was stood there. Combat Woman. Hands on hips, a questioning and slightly annoyed look on her face. She reached up and rustled a hand impatiently through her short, dark hair—an act which would have spoilt a hairstyle except she didn’t have a hairstyle. It was just hair. ‘Come on. You have to keep trying.’
Gretchen jolted and grabbed the arm of the sofa to stop herself from falling. It took a few seconds to realise that she was sat on the sofa. Looking down, she saw the notebook still clutched in the other hand. Only 18 minutes had passed by. She must have nodded off. Well, of course she nodded off—it was only 4 AM. After hours of tossing and turning and desperately hoping for sleep, Gretchen had dragged herself through to the living room. Isn’t that what they say? Don’t lie in bed if you can’t sleep. Get up, do something else, take your mind off it. Which was why she thought she’d read the next 2 pages, although strictly speaking, a childish cartoon figure wasn’t exactly what passed for literature, even in contemporary fiction. But, at least she was getting a clearer idea of what it was about. Something had happened to his girlfriend/wife/sister/mother/who knows. That much was obvious. Was she the Underpass Woman? Gretchen shook her head—no, that didn’t feel right, the timeline was out of synch for that to be the case. Maybe Maja was his woman and she’d left him because he was psychotic/violent/hiding secrets/who knows. Maybe that’s why she was so freaked out about the book—because she realised that he’d tracked her down. But she’d served him in the tearoom, so that couldn’t be it and could such a broken man be that much of a threat anyway?
Gretchen sighed. Her head hurt. Her eyes hurt. Her thoughts hurt. There were too many, flapping about, beating each other with their frantic wings. Why did she dream about Combat Woman again? Was it because of Underpass Woman? They definitely weren’t the same person, that was for sure, but they did both dress in black so perhaps it just nudged her memory. She was pretty sure too, that what Combat Woman wanted her to ‘keep trying’, was the numbers. God. The fucking numbers. If she could just sort the fucking numbers out, then could she finally sleep at last?
At 5:10, she got up from the sofa and went to get some breakfast. Day 10 had started.
An hour later, she went to the gym. Not out of any desire to exercise and not even really because her schedule (albeit a self-imposed schedule) dictated as much. Gretchen just couldn’t think of anything else to do to pass the time before she could realistically go back to bed. She wasn’t expecting there to be that many people around at such an early hour on a Sunday and she was right. The changing room was empty. Gretchen slumped on the bench and hung her head down. This didn’t seem like a good idea anymore and it was a shit one to begin with. Who knows how long she sat there? Time was becoming a ductile substance, capable of stretching to unfathomable lengths. Sometimes she reckoned that hours had passed but surely not. In the end, she convinced herself that she mustn’t have seen the clock clearly in the first place. A noise broke through her alpha brainwaves—a scuffle, as if someone suddenly tried to change direction but their feet let them down. Gretchen looked up and did an exaggerated double-take. It wasn’t a deliberate affectation; she was just processing data with extremely slow rates these days. On the second look, it was confirmed though. It was the Tea Room Girl.
Maja looked sucker-punched, then almost reverent and finally, resigned.
‘My mother always said that fate will push you where it wants you to go. I never believed her but, well, here you are. Again.’ she said, as if this would explain her triad of expressions. ‘But she was a suspicious, frightened and cowed woman fashioned by the ignorance of her meagre education.’ With that she shrugged, dropped her bag onto the floor and sat down opposite Gretchen.
Too exhausted to attempt any preamble, Gretchen spoke.
‘I’ve been reading the notebook. Do you know who the man is? The man who wrote it. The broken man.’
‘Why does he matter to you? It’s just a notebook. It’s just ramblings.’
‘He mentions Lezka Ivkam.’
Maja looked quizzically at Gretchen and, with a slight shaking of her head, indicated that she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
‘I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept for 10 days now but sometimes I drift off briefly and then I dream. And I kept dreaming of this name: Lezka Ivkam. And then it’s there. In the notebook.’
There was a long pause. An earnest-looking woman came into the changing room. Her hair—a glossy brunette—was tied back in a ponytail. Gretchen noted automatically that it was slightly off-centre at the back of her skull and she itched to reposition it with a tug. The woman packed her things away in a locker and gathered up a litre-sized water bottle, lilac hand towel and matching lilac yoga mat. No surprise there then. She looked the type.
And then the room was empty again.
‘So you want to find out from him who this Lezka is?’ asked Maja. For a few seconds, Gretchen was confused, as she’d already forgotten most of what’d been said, but eventually pieced it back together and nodded. Another pause, and then:
‘I don’t know him’, announced Maja. Gretchen drew back with a frown and her mouth open with incredulous disbelief. That definitely didn’t ring true, she knew that for sure.
‘Bullshit. If you don’t know him, then why were you so scared to see the notebook? Why are you lying?’
‘I’m not lying! I don’t know him. He’s been into the tea-room but I don’t know him.’
Despite her foggy brain, Gretchen realised that Maja was avoiding her first question, but before she could focus in on that, her mouth started spouting off new ones. It was shooting them out as quickly as they formed, recognising that there was no available storage for them. It was a case of ask them or lose them.
‘When was the last time he came in? Is he alone? What does he look like?’
Maja leaned back and surreptitiously eyed up the exit. Should she answer or just get out? In the end, Gretchen’s desperation tweaked her sympathy. She rubbed her hands across her face, squeezing her eyelids tightly closed then sat up, taking a decisive deep breath.
‘He used to come into the tearoom once a week. Every Wednesday. Tried to sit in the same place—a table in the back corner. He always looked nervous and watched the door constantly. He’s just an average looking man. Not tall, not short. Not fat, not thin. Probably in his late thirties. Looks a bit scruffy. Not dirty, just like he doesn’t really care about fashion.’ There was a silence and Maja stared into space, examining her mental images. ‘His hair wasn’t usually combed’ she added. Gretchen waited then opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a word, Maja continued.
‘A few times, a woman came in and joined him. They knew each other but they never hugged or smiled. They seemed like friends but unhappy friends. She seemed nervous too. The only other chair at the table was opposite but she always moved it around so that she could see the door too. They would talk, all huddled up, but always on the look-out.’ Another long pause. Gretchen kept still and quiet. ‘Sometimes, they would be looking at the notebook. Sometimes they seemed to be arguing about what was written there but it was that kind of forced, whispered arguing, where you don’t hear any words but you still hear the anger. The Wednesday before last he just left the notebook behind. Just there. On the table. I don’t think that he forgot it. How could he have forgotten it?’
Gretchen was 95% sure that it was a rhetorical question but nevertheless, she observed Maja for any social clues which would indicate that an answer was actually required. And then the realisation pinged into her head and, like a ricocheting bullet, the words blurted out.
‘The Wednesday before last? That was 10 days ago!’
Maja didn’t seem to grasp the significance of this though and Gretchen felt too disoriented to explain. They lapsed again into a strained silence which was broken by Maja standing and announcing that she had to go. Gretchen panicked briefly—she had so many more things that she needed to know but what? In a rapid sequence of reviewing the possibilities, she prioritised them and asked her first question again: ‘Why were you scared though? Why did the book scare you?’
With a distinct narrowing of the eyes and rapid breathing, Maja recalled that day. It was seared into her memory. Flicking through the notebook, reading bits here and there, until…
‘You’ll see,’ she muttered, ‘Wait till you get to page 11 and you’ll see for yourself.’
The Absence Of Sleep 