Shroud by John Banville

earnest look of them. She waited on the pavement as it passed, her bag in her hand, her raincoat over her arm. She felt like a figure from an earlier time, with that coat and bag, her plain dress and old-fashioned shoes, the eager, untried younger self of someone who in time would be famous, famously tragic, perhaps. Often she saw herself like this, in other guises, other possible lives, and so vividly it seemed she must have lived before. She shivered a little, and put on her raincoat; she had expected it would be warmer, this far south. Later the sun would come out. She had hardly slept on the train, huddled in a corner seat in a crowded compartment with her bag under her feet and her folded raincoat for a pillow. The train had kept stopping at deserted stations, and would stand for long minutes creaking and sighing in the night-deep, desolate silence, before setting off again with a series of loud clanks. Once she had pressed her face to the window and peered up and had seen that they were racing along beside a range of high, jagged mountains, whose sheer bases came to within a yard or two of the track. She had supposed they must be the Alps. She could glimpse their peaks, sparkling and unreal so high up there in the moonlight. She remembered being in the mountains once long ago with her father; he had pulled her up a slope on a sled, and afterwards had let her take a sip of his mulled wine. In the dark hour before dawn she dozed for a while; it was less like sleep than one of those fretful night fevers of childhood, and she woke repeatedly with a start, thinking one of the other passengers had touched her, or tried to interfere with her belongings. As they were arriving at last a fat man had stood up too soon and when the train stopped he had pitched forward and almost fallen on her, and to save himself had clapped a huge hand on her shoulder, hurting her. He had smelled faintly of vomit. Now, shaky and light-headed, she set off across the broad avenue. In the piazza before her the starlings were waking noisily in the trees, and a great flock of pigeons rose up, their thousand wings making a noise like derisive applause.
    She did not know what she would do when she got to the hotel. It was still early, and she would have to wait at least an hour before she could think of announcing her arrival. She would not mind waiting in the lobby, but she was not sure the hotel people would even let her come inside at such an early hour. The voices in her head started up then, as she had known they would, as they always did when she was uncertain or nervous, seizing their chance. It was as if a motley and curious crowd had fallen into step behind her, hard on her heels, and were discussing her and her plight among themselves in excited, fast, unintelligible whispers. She stopped for a moment and leaned against a shuttered shop window with a hand over her eyes, but with the world blacked out the din of voices only intensified. She took a deep breath and went on.
    Dozing in the train she had dreamed of Harlequin in his half-mask. Then she had roused herself and brought out her notebook, her fountain pen. H. the headman, his mask and bat. Maistre on the executioner: "who is this inexplicable being…?" Rip the mask from his face to find – another mask. Father father father.
    The phantoms behind her fell back.
    And now already here was the hotel, with a laurel bush in a pot at the foot of the steps. The glass door swung open automatically before her, and she wondered if instead of approaching it at the measured pace that was demanded she had run at it full tilt would it have still managed to open in time or would she have been too quick for the mechanism. She saw herself sprawled there on the marble step, amid big lances of shattered glass, the blood pumping from her throat and wrists. It struck her how like hospitals hotels are. A young man in a smart black suit behind the reception desk smiled at her non-committally. She walked past