At the front desk of the Hotel Metropol, Louise worried that there weren’t any rooms available. Either that or the concierge was taking his time. She would be out of a train ticket if that was the case, as well as a comfortable night’s stay in a hotel. Then her hasty decision would have all been for nothing. She turned to Iris, where she stood waiting with the rest of her friends, and gave them a thin smile.
“Ah, yes, mademoiselle, we have a room, at the rate of—”
Louise felt the breath escape her. “I’ll take that one, thank you very much.”
Afterward, once they had all checked in, they decided to go sightseeing. Louise hadn’t really felt like it, had wanted nothing more than a hot bath and good, long sleep—where she could avoid thinking and rethinking her decision, wondering whether he had followed—but Iris had begged, pleaded, had practically turned a bright pink in her exertions to convince Louise. In the end, she felt there was very little she could do but nod and smile weakly, telling her new friend that she would be delighted to come with them.
It was decided that they would go to Kalemegdan Park, to see the fortress.
Set among a sprawling green space, the trees were an array of reds and yellows and oranges. A perfect autumn day, Louise thought, pulling her coat closer to her. They had started in the city, on the main pedestrian street, Kneza Mihaila, and walked from there, the buildings slowly disappearing around them. At the entrance to the park, where a few vendors sold gifts and souvenirs, they paused. The young men purchased beer tankards, a set of large knives—something closer to daggers, really—while Mary and Susan bought a few postcards to send back home.
Afterward, walking through the gates of the fortress, they explored what was left of the castle and strolled along the Sava Promenade. They stood and looked out at the city, the view resplendent from atop the cliff. They turned and looked toward the water, where the Sava and Danube Rivers met. After, they stopped by a food vendor and purchased burek, which they cut up and passed around their group of seven. The warmth and grease worked to improve Louise’s mood.
The group seemed kinder toward her, too, since they had departed the station. Even Michael had ceased in his assault—although Louise still felt an occasional glance thrown her way. She stopped herself from bristling too much, remembering what Iris had told her. Instead, she began to consider that maybe Iris was right about her friends.
They saved the Roman well for last. One of the girls in the group, Mary, shivered upon entering the darkened space and decided almost immediately that she wanted to leave. The rest of them filed out rather quickly after that, though Louise chose to stay behind.
There was a tour group being led around by a rather enthusiastic guide, despite the bleak subject matter, and Louise found herself curious. “Some say that this well possesses a dark history,” the guide intoned. A few people in the group stifled yawns, others rolled their eyes. It seemed that the imposed gravitas was boring his audience. Louise leaned in closer. “They say that the well was never used as a well or a cistern,” the man was explaining, “but that an alternative use was made of this sixty-meter hole.” Louise thought she knew exactly where this particular tale was headed. If history was anything, it was reliable in its repetitiveness, in the dependability of man’s cruelty. “According to some, skeletons were discovered below. Prisoners.”
Louise looked down.
“An oubliette is what they called it. A dungeon that could only be reached by an opening in the ceiling and, in this case, impossible to escape. The prisoner was trapped at the bottom, unable to get out, held at the mercy of his captors.”
Louise felt a shiver run through her. Oubliette. Presumably, she reasoned, from the French oublier, meaning to forget. A forgotten place, then. She recognized it from the Gothic novels she had read as a child, the heroines locked away by tyrannical husbands. Louise had never been trapped in a dungeon herself, but she had been locked away all the same, and the escape had seemed just as insurmountable. She felt something turn cold inside her, felt for a moment as though she could not breathe.
She searched for the entrance.
Outside, in the light, Iris was waiting for her. “Where did you disappear to?”
Louise struggled to compose herself. “I was listening to the guide back there, at the well.”
“You’re braver than I am.” Iris gave a shudder. “The boys were saying that one of the locals claimed it was used just recently, that some man tried to get rid of his wife by throwing her body down the well. They didn’t find her for ages.”
Louise didn’t doubt it, but she said, “I’m sure they’re only exaggerating.”
Iris shrugged. “Maybe. Still, I don’t like it. I suppose if anywhere were likely to be haunted, it would be a place like that.” She looked at Louise. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, why do you ask?”
“No reason, you just look a bit peaked, that’s all.”
“Nothing a glass of something strong won’t cure,” Louise teased.
Iris laughed, linked arms with her friend. “Do you know, I don’t think a well is that ingenious of a place to hide a body. I would have chosen the Danube, I think. Less chance of getting caught. What about you?”
Louise broke her friend’s hold, reached into her purse, and withdrew a packet of cigarettes. “I don’t suppose I would. Try to hide it, I mean.”
“What? You would just leave the body out for someone to find?”
Louise inhaled, felt the cigarette burn its way down her cold lungs. “Why not? If you’re bound to get caught, what’s the point of trying to hide what you did?” She blew out a puff of smoke. “And they all do—get caught, I mean. In the end. Your Christie tells us that.”
“You’re being awfully macabre. Look, Vee. I’ve still got gooseflesh.”
Louise wanted to tell her that was from the chill weather rather than anything to do with lingering ghosts or whatever else she had gotten into her head, into both of their heads now. She told herself to stop being ridiculous, that there were no such things as ghosts. But then she remembered the way she had felt standing there, looking into the abyss. She shivered and looped her arm back through Iris’s own. “Come on,” she said, forcing a lightness into her voice that she did not feel in that moment. “Let’s go find the others.”
Once reunited with their party, Louise watched them as they spoke, as they laughed, tiny asides leading to longer anecdotes, the shared history, the familiarity, running between them. She wondered what it would be like to be a part of something like this, a group of people, of friends, who knew one another’s faults, their worst bits, presumably, and still laughed and cared for one another. She thought of the way Iris had defended Michael, had not denied his selfish, narcissistic nature, but had declared her love, her loyalty for him, nonetheless. She felt it then—an ache, a longing, sharp and insistent. Felt the possibility of it, something she had never before experienced, so tantalizingly close, a possibility where before there had been none.
It was only a mirage, she knew.
Louise drew her coat closer to her, steeling her nerves against the cold—against everything.
After returning to the hotel, they went to prepare for supper. Louise promised she would meet them all in the lobby at seven, despite already knowing she would not.
Instead, she walked back out into the cold and stepped into the taxi she had asked the concierge to order for her. She knew that Iris would be baffled by her absence, offended, maybe, but it couldn’t be helped. Louise needed to be alone. She wasn’t certain what it was—that damn well, maybe, reminding her of before, or perhaps it was Iris and her friends, a vision of what could have been. Louise knew only that she could feel it, a type of darkness, threatening to sweep her up, overtake her, wrapping itself around her like a cocoon.
And so Louise left the hotel on her own, needing to dispel the shadows lurking around her, to cast them off, before she was dragged down into the oubliette along with them. It would do her no good, she knew, to sit in her room alone, but nor could she bear the idea of being the odd one out at dinner, prying eyes and questions constantly thrown her way. She had asked the concierge to make a reservation for her somewhere in the city, somewhere away from the hotel, away from the crowds of tourists.
The driver stopped in front of a row of buildings that looked more residential, in a part of the city Louise didn’t recognize. “Here?” She frowned, stepping from the taxi. Louise wondered if this was some sort of scam, whether the driver wouldn’t now demand money from her to take her back to her hotel, or whether he didn’t have someone else lying in wait. But the driver only pointed at one of the doors, and when she still did not see—for she was certain it was a residence, nothing more—he alighted from the taxi, pressed one of the buzzers on the door himself, and waited with her until she heard the corresponding click a few moments afterward. Embarrassed, she thanked him, placing an outrageous tip in his hand.
Inside, the building was almost completely dark, and as Louise stood in the foyer, she found herself wishing that she had asked the taxi driver to wait. Glancing up at the wrought iron railing of the steps before her, she found herself further convinced the wrong address had been given. She turned to go, but something—a noise, a fraction of a light—caught her attention. Stepping farther into the foyer, she glanced toward what she supposed was the garden flat and saw a thin sliver of light emerging from somewhere just beyond. Louise considered only for a moment, remembering her words to the concierge, her desire for something local, something away from the regular tourist haunts, and started down the steps.
Stepping inside, she found herself immediately overwhelmed—by the amount of people, the noise, the smell of the food flooding the cramped space. She felt too warm in her coat, felt the sweat begin to gather on the small of her back.
Louise was shown to her table in a room that looked more like a conservatory than anything else, green plants placed in every corner and hung from above, so that they looked as though they were spilling from the ceiling. The effect was jarring, for while there was no sun in this subterranean flat, it felt as though she were seated outside on a sunny day.
“Hungry?” the waiter asked.
She wasn’t, but she was surprised by his crisp English and found herself saying yes. A menu was handed to her, one that was written in Cyrillic, but she found she didn’t much care what she ate, so she pointed to a few things, which the waiter graciously translated, and then accepted his suggestion of a honey-flavored rakija.
The drink came first, followed by another round, and then another, so that by the time the food arrived, Louise found that she was starving. She devoured the cevapi first—tiny little sausages that came with a flatbread and sour cream. She ate the burek next, a coil of pastry so thin it cracked upon touch and was filled with egg and cheese and spinach. The one they had shared in the park earlier paled in comparison—this was warm and left her fingers coated in a layer of golden oil.
She had hardly eaten in Paris, turning away the sweets that usually delighted her, ordering the plainest, simplest of foods instead. Now, she ate greedily, licking the grease from her fingers. Perhaps, she thought, her appetite had returned because she was somewhere that was unknown to her. Here, she could decide who she was and what future she wanted, unlike in Paris, where the past still tied her, tethered her to the person she was before. It was the reason that she had decided on Istanbul. The chance to disappear and start again. To be someone else. She hadn’t believed it possible, had thought she would feel the same everywhere, that she would not be altered by the place and people around her.
For the first time, she found herself hopeful that she might be wrong.
Afterward, she walked.
The host at the restaurant had wanted to call her a taxi, had insisted, but she had waved him away, eager for the fresh air against her skin. She turned on Bulevar despota Stefana, toward Skadarska. Back at the hotel, the concierge had recommended a short stroll to the Skadarlija following her dinner, likening the neighborhood to Montmartre. Louise had raised her eyebrows in skepticism at the claim.
“The gypsies lived there, then many artists,” he promised her. “Bohemia.”
As she walked, she looked for him, the man from Oran, wondering again if he had managed to follow her off the train, or if he was, even now, barreling toward Istanbul.
The winding street of Skadarska was livelier than the street she had just come from, despite the darkness, filled with cafés and galleries and restaurants. Louise looked around her, thought of the promise the concierge had made, and decided that he was right. Gone was the severity that had defined other parts of the city. Between the soft glow of the lamps casting their light on the iron benches, the trees stretching over the cobblestoned streets, the tables and chairs pulled outside each restaurant, filled with people eating and drinking, smoking and laughing, Louise could have been in Paris, could have been sitting down at one of her favorite spots in Montmartre.
She came to a stop under one of the streetlamps, where a number of vendors had set out tables, selling a variety of arts, crafts, vintage castoffs no doubt left over from the war. The thought made her feel sad—or perhaps maudlin was a better word—but she put it down to the weather, which was colder than Paris, the chill of autumn turning into something more wintery.
At one of the stalls, she lingered, her eyes roaming the articles on display—someone else’s ring, someone else’s comb, someone else’s purse—all glittering under the lamplight. She didn’t want any of it, didn’t want the responsibility, the weight, of being tasked as the keeper of someone else’s memories. Her own were more than enough. Still, she felt the eyes of the sellers on her, felt pity that they were forced to part with items that had once brought someone joy, perhaps even themselves. Louise dug in her purse for some of the dinars she had exchanged for her francs back at the hotel. She bought a clutch threaded with shining silver beads, the inside lining yellowed and torn. In the taxi back to the hotel, she looked down at her new purchase, ran her hand across the beaded design, did her best not to think about who might have done the same before.
In the end, she left it in the back seat, for someone else to find.
At the hotel, Louise lay on the floor in the bathroom. Her stomach churned, but every time she felt as though she might be sick, the feeling retreated and she was left with something even worse. At some point she fell asleep against the cold tiles, woke up shivering, certain she had heard something. She sat up, her eyes searching the hotel room, but there was no one—nothing. She was only imagining it, she knew. There were no ghosts lurking around her, trying to drag her down into their wells. There were no monsters, either, hiding beneath her bed. She bit her lip, frowned. She was the only one in the room—the only thing to be frightened of.
Still, Louise did not close her eyes again that night.