Excerpt from The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler

At four-thirty on a Monday morning, Robert Simon left his lodgings in war widow Martha Pohl's flat. It was the late summer of 1966 and Simon was thirty-one years old. He had breakfasted alone—two boiled eggs, bread and butter, and black coffee. The widow had still been asleep; he'd heard quiet snores from her room. He liked the sound, found it strangely touching, and sometimes he cast a glance through the crack of the door to where he pictured the old woman's nostrils flaring in the darkness.

Down on the street, the wind hit him. When it came from the south the breeze carried with it the market's stench, the smell of rubbish and rotting fruit, but today it came from the west and the air was fresh and cool. Simon passed the gray housing block for retired tram workers, Schneeweis & Sons' metal workshop and a row of shops, all of them still closed. He cut down Malzgasse to Leopoldsgasse and, crossing Schiffamtsgasse, reached the short end of Haidgasse. On the corner, he stopped to take a look inside the former market café. He leaned his forehead against the glass and screwed up his eyes to see where Johannes Berg was raising the shutters of his butcher's shop with a great clatter.

"Morning," said the butcher. "You can hack a couple of blocks of ice for me, if you like."

"I've got enough to do with the veg," Simon said. "Nineteen crates of swedes."

The butcher shrugged and set about extending his awning, twisting a long rod in the mechanism. He was sweating, the back of his neck shining in the early-morning sun.

"I'll grease those hinges for you later, if you want," Simon offered.

"I can do that myself."

"You used rancid lard on them last winter. You could smell them all the way to the Prater come spring."

"It wasn't lard, it was suet."

"Just let me know if you want any help," said Simon. "I can do it later. Won't take long."

"Right you are," said the butcher. He unhooked the rod, placed it next to the front entrance and wiped his hands on his bloodstained apron. His face looked soft in the filtered light beneath the red-and-white-striped fabric.

"We've got a nice day ahead," he said. "Plenty of sun but not too hot."

"You're right there," said Simon. "See you later."

Robert Simon was a gaunt man with sinewy arms and long, thin legs. His face was tanned from working in the open air; his ash-blond hair flopped over his brow. His hands were large and strewn with scars, the kind you get from working with rough wooden crates. His eyes were blue. They were the only hand¬some thing about him.

He walked more slowly than usual as various stallholders raised a hand or called out a friendly word or two. It was his seventh year on the market and today was his last day, and as they watched him stroll past they didn't know whether to be pleased or sad for him. clearly. Chairs and tables were stacked in front of the big black counter. The wallpaper was faded and bulging in places; it looked as if the walls had faces. The plaster needs air, Simon thought. The windows would have to stay open for a few days before he started painting. The mustiness and damp. The old shadows and the dust. He pushed himself back from the glass, turned around and crossed the road to the market, At the loading dock, he heaved crates of swedes and onions onto his shoulders and carried them over to Navracek's fruit and veg stall. He snipped green from the onions and sprouts from the potatoes, restacked winter firewood so it wouldn't go mouldy, and piled up empty pallets. At the fishmonger's, he cleaned scales, slime and blood off the ice tubs. He stuffed dirt¬ied ice and fish heads with their staring eyes and gaping mouths in a sack and lugged it to the rubbish. Later, he went to the stall selling toys, wooden cars and brightly painted tin carousels, where he cleaned the rust off the latticed floor with a scraper. He had always enjoyed his work: the variety, the physical effort, the tips that jangled in his pockets at the end of the day. He liked the cold clear winter air, the summer's heat that softened the asphalt enough for bottle tops to sink into it; he liked the stallholders' hoarse voices as they shouted over each other, and the idea that he was a small part of a living, breathing, noisy organism.

Excerpted from The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler. Copyright © 2025 by Robert Seethaler. Excerpted by permission of Europa Editions. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.