Free The Snowman by Jörg Fauser

Blum’s arm.
    â€œNow, let’s all go upstairs without any fuss and make friends. And then . . .”
    â€œI think you’re all rather overestimating yourselves,” said Blum, breaking free and running for it. He was in luck – the road was gritted here. He had reached the corner when Renée shouted, “You’ll pay for this, Blum!”Her voice was like the voice of a brewer’s drayman who was going to be a jackal in his next life.
    But I won’t pay you, thought Blum, hailing a taxi. Sighing, he leaned back on the upholstery and mopped the sweat from his brow. It was still winter here, but you got to sweat more than in the south. The bar in the Metropol was still open, but although as he reached reception he could hear the voice of the drunk whose husband gave introductory seminars on stocks and shares to the inmates of Stadelheim, Blum went into it, taking his key. He urgently needed something as normal as beer.
    This time she was not alone at the bar, but she was still the only woman, and it didn’t seem to be doing her any good. She was clutching a man’s suit with her left hand and a brandy glass with her right and trying to play the vamp. Her trouser suit was stained. Ash had left grey streaks on its yellow fabric, and she had spilled red wine on it too. The red-faced men sitting around her on bar stools looked as if they were waiting for her to fall over and open her legs. Beer, sweat and Chanel No. 5. The Arabs were sitting in the corner again, staring at the drunks. They’ve made sure of a front seat for the gang rape, thought Blum, trying to order a beer as unobtrusively as possible. But the Yugoslav ignored him. Then the blonde spotted him.
    â€œThere you are, you faithless man!” The men smirked. “But you’ve had something better than liana wine today, right? He drank nothing but liana wine for three whole years, you know, when he was with the Hottentots.”
    â€œJust what it looks like,” Blum heard someone say.
    The Yugoslav put a cognac down in front of him. Blum shook his head.
    â€œFrom the lady,” said the Yugoslav.
    â€œHe can’t take it any more,” suggested one of the men. The blood rose to Blum’s head, but he said nothing. With five pounds of cocaine under your bed, you don’t start brawling with drunks.
    â€œI’ll have a beer,” he said, emptying the cognac at a single gulp. It was Mariacron. The Yugoslav must have conceived a healthy dislike of him. Blum smiled at the blonde over his empty glass. Yesterday he had almost got into bed with her; today he just felt sorry for her. One of the men already had his paw on her behind. The Arabs ordered more coffee. They did not seem to care about the hostile looks of the sales reps, for whom every rise in the price of fuel was a blow below the belt. Perhaps they actually owned the hotel.
    Blum got his beer, and as he drank it he felt the eyes of the blonde on him and tried not to hear what she was saying in her befuddled state, until suddenly he did hear it, indeed he heard it very clearly, because she was talking about him.
    â€œâ€”and then the porter put down this carton full of shaving foam – shaving foam, I ask you! And he was talking so big about the Amazon.” She saw that he was listening and turned directly to him. “Am I right or am I right? Well, if you have all that shaving foam you could at least shave properly.”
    This set the reps roaring with laughter. Spluttering, whinnying laughter, with much thigh-slapping, and the man with the big paw was now openly kneading her bottom. Blum stayed calm. But the drunks were now moving in on him.
    â€œYou’re standing on my foot, mate.”
    â€œOh, am I?” The man had a face like runny Camembert sprinkled with paprika, and his eyes were focusing with difficulty. “Didn’t you hear? You want to shave properly!”
    Blum slowly withdrew his foot from under the