ii. Ali Smith

You stand at the bar; you look at the list of available drinks and coffees chalked above your head. You're not from here and you know it, and everyone in this cafe knows it, but you're a world traveller, you know how to ask for a coffee in a way that lets people know you're no tourist, you know the language, you could live here if you wanted, and not just live here, you could, well, anything, write a newspaper column about it for a paper back home, Notes from Vienna, Letter from Vienna, because you're a person who knows where you are in the world. From outside, the Czerny presents as blank a face to the world as the rest of the street, and once you pass through the frosted glass door, the impression is superficially the same. Yes. That sounds right. That sounds good. Nobody better mistake you for someone who doesn't know exactly who and where you are.

The blonde waitress comes towards you. She looks at you. She looks through you; her look is as bleak as the glass was on the old door you just came through. It makes you forget the words, the ones for coffee and please. You stutter. You try to remember. You can't. You smile and try to ask in English, but by then she's passed you as if you're not there, already serving someone else round the other side of the bar. It's funny, it makes you want to laugh; imagine forgetting something so simple, something you've known for so long, for what feels like forever, and you look above your head again at the words but the letters look outlandish, like the complicated roots of vegetables you've never eaten. You look away. You shake your head slightly. You look back. It's like an alphabet you've never learned. You look at the backs of your own hands. They're reassuring. God. You want to say it out loud. It would be nice to be able to say it to someone you know but it doesn't have to be someone you know, it can be to a stranger, the nod of a stranger would do. You look round. The place is full of strangers so resolute it's as if someone's paid them to be strangers. You cough, you shrug. The person along the bar from you, drinking something hot and harsh-smelling, doesn't look up, doesn't even blink.

There I was, New Year's Eve, miles from home, end of the line, and I couldn't even, and nobody'd. Already you're thinking how fine it will be to be able to say these words to someone in the future when you're out of this, when you're no longer here, right now, in the present with all its strangeness. How strange - the present has never struck you as quite this strange before. Where is it you are, again? The Czerny. You remember you once saw a film with an actor in it whose name was Henry Czerny. It was that film, it was about a circus, was it? was it a Canadian film? about a dog that dies and someone buries it in, is it snow? because your head can only see snow, as if the screen is showing nothing but a snowy waste, then the waitress steams something at the machine behind the counter, there's the strong mixed smell of bitter and pleasant and it's as if the memory which you had right there at the tip of your, your, what was it? fogs over, goes dim, disappears. Where is it you are, again?

The Czerny. Come on. Vienna. You put your hands on the bar.

The Accidental, Ali Smith's latest novel, is out now in paperback  Read more