Free Woman of the Dead by Bernhard Aichner

From Sölden to the service station near the Italian border. None of what happened will go away, it will stay in her mind all day and all night.

twelve
    Blum no longer feels the pain that has been eating away at her for three whole weeks; she has almost suppressed her longing for him. That feeling has gone, leaving only Dunya. And Mark. Somehow it is as if he has come back to life and she is sharing something with him, she has discovered something he kept hidden. Mark, her husband, her love, the father of her children. He lives on in the conversations that she listens to as she drives through the city searching for Dunya – a stranger to her, a woman without a face. All that Blum knows of her is her voice and that she comes from Moldavia. Blum knows that she speaks extraordinarily good German and is sleeping rough, somewhere under the autobahn. This woman without a surname who has suddenly changed everything.
    She doesn’t say a word to anyone. She has decided to keep quiet for the moment; first she wants to talk to Dunya herself. Only then will she go to Karl or Massimo and ask for help. If it’s true. If she can find Dunya. Innsbruck is not a large city but it is difficult to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. Blum prepares for a long search; the staff at the soup kitchen can’t give her any information. No one knows a woman called Dunya, the name means nothing to the homeless people Blum speaks to. Even money can’t persuade them to tell her where to look. Dunya has left no trace. All Blum can do is search the city, the parks, under the bridges, under the autobahn. She drives around for hours, walks for hours, but to no avail. There is no Moldavian woman speaking almost unaccented German, no sign of her for three days.
    Then, suddenly, there she is, in the supermarket. A slender woman in old clothes. She looks too beautiful, too radiant to be homeless. Dunya is carrying a bag of bottles; she wants to exchange them for money, but the machine isn’t working. The salesgirl comes and takes the bottles from her, sorts them into crates and writes out a voucher for the cash. Nothing has changed yet, Blum is still searching, she is on the point of giving up, she has searched every nook and cranny of this town, has checked every place that someone might hide. But Dunya wasn’t there. Dunya had disappeared. Now they are standing side by side.
    Dunya takes the voucher from the salesgirl. Blum puts the rice noodles that she has taken off the shelf into her trolley and carries on up the aisle. She doesn’t see Dunya shaking her head and opening her mouth, she only hears her asking the salesgirl to check her figures again. The sum is fifty cents short, she says. The salesgirl is impatient, she doesn’t want to check her sums, she is sure she got them right. But the familiar voice goes on claiming those fifty cents. Blum turns around. There’s no need to kick up such a fuss for fifty cents, says the salesgirl. But Dunya insists. Politely, but loud and clear, she demands her fifty cents and makes the salesgirl alter the figure on the voucher. It is the voice that Blum has been trying to track down for the past three days.
    Blum looks at Dunya. She has imagined her differently, wounded, more damaged. From all she has heard, this woman must be devastated, there ought to be nothing left of her, not an attractive feature on her face, not a spark of hope. But her expression betrays none of what has happened to her. Briefly, Blum wonders whether the voice is really hers, but only briefly. Then she is sure, she knows it beyond any shadow of doubt. She follows her through the supermarket, making purposefully for the cash desk, where Dunya gives the cashier her voucher, takes her money and leaves, with Blum in pursuit. Blum has abandoned her shopping trolley; she mustn’t lose Dunya, she must follow her, speak to her.
    Dunya crosses the car park quickly and reaches the bank of the River Inn. She walks along the riverside