One Wednesday morning, I’m sitting with one of my favourite students. Edeltraud is around seventy and has decided to spruce up her English. Four years ago her husband died – at the same time as she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Since her recovery, she has taught street kids in Kathmandu, learned to play the harp, got a tattoo of a blue morpho butterfly on her shoulder and soon she’s going to start Finnish classes.
‘Which household remedies help with colds?’ I ask as I try to conceal a small yawn. We’re currently going through chapter seven of the Berlitz Level Four book: Illness and Household Remedies. Outside a police siren wails.
‘Personally I prefer a large glass of Glenmorangie,’ Edeltraud sighs. ‘Do we have to carry on with this chapter?’
There are only ten minutes left of the lesson, and until I’m meeting Ben, so I’m happy to skip the jaunty lines about garlic, chicken soup and steam baths that chapter seven boasts. Edeltraud takes a magazine out of her bag.
‘In the New Scientist there’s an article about the liquid methane gas on one of Saturn’s moons,’ she says. ‘I didn’t understand all the words, but perhaps you could help me?’
Outside, I hear yet another police siren, followed by a third a couple of seconds later.
‘Of course,’ I say.
There’s a light knocking at the door.
‘Yes?’ I say.
The administrator, Dagmar, sticks her head in. In the staffroom there’s a rumour going round that Dagmar gets turned on by stationery, and Mike reckons he once saw her stroking a red Bic biro in a way that just felt wrong.
‘I just wanted to say everything’s OK,’ she says. ‘Stay where you are and carry on with the lesson.’
‘What’s happened?’ I ask.
‘A robbery,’ Dagmar replies.
‘Oh no, they haven’t taken the grammar books have they?’ I exclaim.
Dagmar looks at me blankly. There’s also a staffroom rumour that Dagmar has undergone a long, complicated procedure at the general hospital to remove her entire sense of humour.
‘Not here,’ she says. ‘On the other side of the street. There’s nothing to worry about. Just carry on with your lesson. But stay back from the windows. And unfortunately we have to remain in the building until it’s all over.’
‘OK,’ I say.
As soon as Dagmar has closed the door, Edeltraud and I rush over to the window. From our fourth-floor premises we can see five police cars parked on an otherwise empty Mariahilferstrasse. Twenty men dressed in black with the word COBRA in white across their backs have surrounded Die Erste Bank across the street. The bank I once went into to fill out a withdrawal slip to calm myself down.
‘I wonder how many robbers there are?’ I say.
Both Edeltraud and I crane our necks to see more, in vain. The black-clad Cobra officers spread into a semi-circle formation. Further down Mariahilferstrasse, I can see the police trying to hold back curious onlookers. Many of them are holding up their mobile phones to film the drama.
‘Amateurs,’ Edeltraud says.
‘Why do you say that?’ I ask.
‘Everyone knows the best time to rob a bank is on a Monday morning,’ Edeltraud replies. ‘No one expects to be robbed then. Austrians always get it wrong.’
‘I don’t agree with you. I love Austrians,’ I say as we sit watching the drama outside. ‘OK, they can be a bit arrogant and unfriendly sometimes, but they really know how to enjoy life. A good glass of wine, finishing work early on a Friday, opera, theatres, delicious baked goods, all the Christmas markets, Müller Rice with cinnamon, Eurovision singers with beards, the beautiful countryside, the fact that there are vineyards within the Vienna city limits, the ice-cream parlour on Tuchlauben. And there’s a sexy kind of decadence here, as though we’re all going to live forever or die tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but Vienna.’
‘Austrians close their eyes to the world around them,’ Edeltraud says bitterly.
Both Edeltraud and I jump when the bell rings to tell us the lesson is over, and I remember I’m meant to be meeting Ben. Which is impossible at the moment, because we’re not allowed to leave the building.
‘Have you ever been robbed?’ I ask Edeltraud.
‘Only in Brazil,’ she says and holds up her fingers. ‘Three times. One time at a restaurant, once while I was swimming with a couple of other tourists in a lagoon, and a third time when the police stopped the taxi I was in.’
‘The police?’
Edeltraud nods.
‘The police robbed me,’ she says. ‘And you? Have you been robbed?’
‘Yeah, by one of the ice-cream parlours by Schwedenplatz,’ I say. ‘I paid for three scoops of ice cream but I only got two. They never gave me my strawberry scoop. Bandits.’
Suddenly there’s the sound of gunshots from the bank. The Cobra officers immediately crouch down and half of them press themselves against the outer walls of the bank. One of them waves at the building we’re in to say we should get away from the windows. An ambulance and two more police cars arrive. From the other classrooms I can hear that everyone else is ignoring Dagmar’s and the Cobra officer’s orders as well.
‘Julia!’ I hear suddenly.
Edeltraud looks at me, but I don’t know if I heard right.
‘Julia!’ we hear again.
‘In here!’ I reply.
The door is thrown open and Ben marches in. In three long strides he is by my side and embraces me with a long kiss.
‘You’re OK!’ he exclaims, relieved.
‘Of course I’m OK,’ I say.
Ben shakes his head. His forehead is shining with sweat.
‘I had no idea what had happened,’ he says. ‘I was on my way down Mariahilferstrasse when a man in black with a submachine gun started shouting at me in German that I couldn’t go any further. Since all the police cars were outside the language school, I thought something had happened here.’
‘Like what?’ I say. ‘A student going berserk?’
‘Who knows? Maybe he got annoyed about some verb or comma or whatever it is you do here. I’m so glad you’re OK. If you’d been harmed I would’ve ripped their scalps off.’
‘There’s a robbery over the street.’ I gesture at the bank opposite.
Ben looks out of the window. ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I hope the bank robbers win.’
I suddenly remember Edeltraud, who’s staring at Ben.
‘Edeltraud, this is Ben,’ I say.
‘Hi,’ Ben says, and they shake hands.
Edeltraud nods at the street.
‘But how did you get into the building?’ she asks.
‘I got into the backyard and then climbed up a drainpipe,’ Ben says. ‘For a while I thought the pipe wasn’t going to hold but luckily it was all right. A nice woman on the second floor let me in when I knocked on the window. And then I ran up here.’
‘My hero,’ I say.
Dagmar sticks her head into the room again. At first she looks a bit surprised to see a strange man standing beside me and Edeltraud, but she quickly adjusts her expression to something she probably thinks of as ‘Efficient yet accommodating’.
‘We’re closing the school,’ she says. ‘They’re saying this could go on for hours, so for everyone’s safety we’re closing for the day. We’ll have to leave through the back.’
She disappears again.
‘Doesn’t it feel like being sent home from school when it snows?’ Edeltraud says merrily.
‘I was one of those kids who loved school,’ I say.
‘Did she say through the back?’ Ben asked.
‘Yes, through the back onto the street behind us,’ I say. ‘Although I prefer your dramatic route up the drainpipes and through someone’s private apartment, Spiderman.’
Ben looks a bit crestfallen, but then claps his hands together.
‘In that case I have to at least carry you out in my arms,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘I’d rather walk. But thanks.’
‘You can carry me out,’ Edeltraud says.
Ben scoops her up immediately, and she yelps in delight.
‘Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can …’ Ben sings as he runs out of the room with Edeltraud in his arms.
I gather my books and stuff them into my bag, smiling.
During our next lesson, Edeltraud asks where one might find someone like Ben.
‘In a bush,’ I reply, and think it’s probably time for my friends to meet Ben after all. And for him to meet them.