Clear

by Nicola Barker

  ‘D’you think he gets horny?’ I ask, a few minutes later, ‘just lying there all day.’

  ‘Of course he does…’

  She frowns. ‘But then after a while everything gets imbued with it. The original urge just filters down into each movement. Each spasm. Each blink…’

  ‘How very Zen,’ I say, tartly.

  ‘The way the box rocks,’ she sighs ‘His breathing. The hunger.’ She falls quiet again, smiling.

  ‘You love watching him,’ I murmur thickly.

  ‘When he’s sleeping,’ she says, slowly nodding. ‘Yes I do. When it’s quiet…’

  (Is that a subtle hint, perhaps?)

  ‘Are you a fan of his magic?’ I ask (already knowing the answer).

  ‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not especially. And it might sound ridiculous, but I never really intend to come…I mean, sometimes I’m on my way somewhere else, and then…’ She shrugs.

  ‘You get distracted?’

  ‘You probably think it’s pathetic,’ she mutters, glancing over at me for a moment, then straight back up at Blaine (as if she’s driving the car of Blaine- has to keep her eyes on the road at all times), ‘but being here while he sleeps, before he wakes, as he wakes…’ She grimaces, ‘It just makes everything feel better. Feel whole again. And often- if I concentrate really hard-I can hang on to this feeling for the rest of the day-this quiet, this hopefulness. I can cook and wash and go into work…’

  She smiles. ‘Remember Christmas time, when you’re a kid, and the presents are all laid out under the tree? Nothing opened yet? Just pure anticipation?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s like that.’

  Okay. I nod.

  ‘And it’s the tiniest things…’ she continues (warming to her subject now), ‘the way he holds himself as he sleeps. I find such amazing comfort in that. And in all the insignificant stuff. All the details.’

  I gaze up at the magician myself, hunting for the minutiae. I see a dark blob in a bag. The lights. The glass.

  ‘Either he’s flat on his back…’ she says, observing my interest, and (much to my delight) responding, ‘and I imagine him just gazing up at the sky, at the stars, at the vapour trails at dawn, or having these astonishing dreams. Oh my God. The hallucinations…Can you imagine how wild they must be by now?’

  She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Or else he curls up, on his side, like a boy. Like a little kid. And there’s something so fragile about him. So lonely…’ Her voice is softer, almost tender.

  ‘Then as he actually wakes,’ she continues, her eyes sparkling now, with a real sense of drama, ‘he moves his hand. Just this tiny bit. And then he adjusts his head on his pillow. And then he rubs his fingers through his hair–you’ll have noticed his hair is getting longer, and curlier…’

  (Oh will I?)

  ‘And then he has a little scratch. Of his beard. A real root around…I mean it’s nothing significant, just trivial details. Things you wouldn’t notice if he was right there in bed with you. You wouldn’t see them then. Or you might even find them irritating…’

  She ruminates on this point for a while. ‘Or maybe if you knew him, they’d just be a part of a picture which was already drawn–if you know what I mean…’

  She glances over at me. A nod appears necessary, so I nod, accordingly.

  ‘But there’s so much in so little here…,’ she says, her eyes sliding back again. ‘When he wakes, for example, he wakes very quickly. He has a lovely no-nonsense approach to rising. He’s like, yup, I’m awake. Let’s sit up…And then he sits up…’

  Her voice is full of wonder: ‘And his eyes are so innocent. Like he’s washed clean. And then almost straight away he sees us watching him and he feels a moment’s anxiety–you can sense it, this tiny tremor–then he responds. He lifts his hand. Very weakly. Automatically. The hands are beautiful. I love to see his hands–I know it’s kind of corny–but his hands say everything about him. They’re the way he speaks. They’re his tongue…’

  She inspects her own hands for a moment. ‘After two seconds, maybe three, he switches off. He picks up his pen and his notebook, looks down, frowns. And it’s a lovely moment, somehow, that brief closing off. And really necessary. Because often when I see him in the day–when I’m wandering past on my way out shopping, or to the hospital–he’s so empty. Just open. Resigned. Everything’s simply flooding in. But at that moment, when he awakens, he’s entirely himself, and you get to see all this confusion and sweetness, this incredible unease…’

  She smiles.

  ‘That’s why I come.’

  I sneeze (I’ve been holding it back for a while, now, not wanting to ruin her moment or anything–I mean God forbid I should impair her charming description of his delicate hands with my barbaric, phlegm-racked expostulation).

  ‘Bless you,’ she says.

  ‘So you never saw him do a trick?’ I ask.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s weird.’

  She shrugs.

  ‘He cut off his ear…’ I say, wiping my nose, ‘at the press conference.’

  ‘Did he?’

  She’s barely even listening.

  ‘It was like he was going out of his way to kill his credibility,’ I bumble on. ‘And when he’s finally finished–all this grunting and groaning, all this false blood and gore–some guy in the press corps goes, “What about the other one?”

  ‘I mean to pull a stunt like that. And right then. These are hardened professionals. These are probably the same people who laughed at David Copperfield for flying around on wires, pretending like he was Peter fucking Pan.’

  She frowns. ‘David who?’

  Oh dear.

  ‘In one of Blaine’s films,’ I say, suddenly determined (more than anything) to make her interested, ‘there’s this little kid, just walking along a New York street with his mother, and Blaine goes up to the kid and says, “Hold on a minute…” and reaches out and pulls a strand of cotton from the collar of his sweater.’

  I inspect the collar of her sweater and pull off a stray hair.

  ‘Why’d he do that?’ she asks (glancing down, worriedly, at her own shoulder). I don’t answer.

  ‘So Blaine shows the kid this strand of cotton,’ I continue, ‘and then puts it into his mouth…’

  ‘Into the boy’s mouth?’

  ‘His own mouth. He chews on it for a while–really concentrating–then he swallows, then he opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to show the kid that the piece of cotton’s not in his mouth any more…’

  I stick out my own tongue, to demonstrate. She winces. I guess it might be a little furry. (But so far so good.)

  ‘Then he waits for a while. Looks a little confused–like he’s not entirely in control of what’s happening–then he winces, lifts up his shirt and starts inspecting his chest.’

  I lift up my own shirt.

  ‘Why?’ she asks, staring at my belly.

  ‘That’s the trick,’ I say (pulling it in slightly).

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He inspects his chest with his fingers for a while, and then he suddenly locates something. Like an imperfection of some kind, on the skin. Right in the middle. And he starts to pick at it, and to pull. And he pulls, and he pulls…And suddenly you can see that he’s pulling a strand of cotton, through his skin. Actually through his skin. There’s a close-up and everything. The skin is actually tenting under the pressure of his fingers and the cotton…’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ she says. ‘Tenting…’ (She’s disgusted by my vocabulary, note, yet not even remotely alarmed by Blaine’s visceral exhibitionism.)

  ‘I know.’

  ‘My God,’ she marvels, ‘and it’s the same piece of cotton…’

  ‘You think so?’

  She frowns.

  ‘Because for the trick to work,’ I explain, ‘I imagine he implanted a piece of twine into his chest earlier- maybe under his actual flesh, or under a flap of false skin. Then he approac
hes the kid and pretends to pull a strand of cotton off his collar- but he probably already has the cotton in his hand…maybe it’s normal cotton, or even cotton that dissolves in saliva- and he eats it, then lifts up his shirt. The two events are entirely unrelated…’

  It takes her a while to digest this information.

  ‘So it’s your job,’ I say, ‘to smell things?’

  She nods (still frowning over all the other stuff).

  ‘At the hospital?’

  She blinks. ‘The hospital?’

  ‘Isn’t that where you work?’

  She shakes her head, almost chuckling at the notion. ‘John Lewis,’ she says, ‘the department store. Years ago, I was a sniffer there.’

  ‘A sniffer?’

  ‘But now I mostly do consultation work. I’m actually a qualified perfumier.’

  I stare at her nose. She stares at my nose.

  ‘He was an actor,’ I say, ‘to start off with.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Blaine.’

  She stops staring at my nose.

  ‘Really? An actor?’

  (I can tell she doesn’t particularly like this idea.)

  ‘A child actor. Adverts. Soaps…’

  ‘An actor,’ she murmurs, glancing up at the box. ‘So you think he’s acting in there?’

  I shrug.

  ‘An actor,’ she says again, then frowns.

  ‘A sniffer,’ I say.

  She flaps her hand, irritably.

  ‘But that’s interesting.’

  ‘No. It’s boring,’ she says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m hypersensitive to stuff. Strong scents. Tastes. Dust. Pollen. I get headaches.’

  ‘Migraines.’

  Silence.

  ‘I’d like to smell him though,’ she says, tipping her head towards the magician.

  ‘You would?’

  ‘Yeah. I could tell his people things. I could help. I can sense minor physical imbalances. Gauge certain underlying stresses…’

  ‘Like a horse. Horses smell fear.’

  She smiles. ‘Exactly like that.’

  She turns and appraises me closely for a second. ‘You wear Odeur 53,’ she says, ‘Comme des Garçons. It’s very sweet. Very feminine. I noticed it the first time you walked past. They marketed it as a scent with a gap in the middle of the aroma…’ She grins. ‘Like an anti-scent. It was very clever. I mean complete bullshit…’

  She pauses. ‘But you fell for it, eh?’

  Before I can respond she lifts up her left leg. ‘D’you like my shoes?’

  She rotates her foot.

  I’m still lagging behind a little.

  ‘Uh, no…’ I slowly shake my head. ‘I really don’t.’

  ‘Good. Come home with me,’ she says, and stands up.

  But I’ve got the flu.

  Her shoes are awful.

  And I wanked at eleven…

  That’s only a couple of hours ago.

  Well, okay. Four.

  Nine

  I am awoken–at ten–by Solomon, who takes the unusual step of journeying downstairs to pay me a brief visit; not out of any concern for my health–it soon transpires–but because Bud (the dog) has devoured the post again.

  He holds out a tragic-looking copy of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man/ The Truce, and a slightly less well-masticated copy of David Blaine, Mysterious Stranger.

  ‘I have an earlier edition of this upstairs,’ he says, pointing at the Levi, ‘if you’d only bothered to look.’

  Then he grimaces and adds, ‘You have tufts of tissue everywhere.’

  I paw at my face, blearily.

  ‘Everywhere.’

  I paw again.

  ‘Have you read it, then?’ I ask (as I paw).

  ‘Well that’s generally what books are for…’ he murmurs.

  ‘Is it good?’

  Solomon ponders this question for a moment. ‘Is it good? One of the intellectual titans of the last century writes a legendary first-person account of his experiences of the Holocaust…Is it good…?’

  He smiles brightly: ‘Yeah. It’s a romp.’

  He tosses the two books on to my bed and then glances down at the abandoned Kafka. He kicks it, gently, with a leather-booted foot.

  ‘Let me get this straight…’ he murmurs, ‘I break up with Jalisa…’

  ‘Shhh!’ I whisper, then peer suspiciously over my shoulder, then perform my (frankly, utterly hilarious) zipping mime. He stares at me, blankly.

  ‘I break up with Jalisa,’ he repeats, and to help me get over the whole thing you immediately resolve to transform yourself into her slavering, half-witted, intellectual disciple.’

  ‘The Kafka was great,’ I shrug, ‘for your information she was right about the Kafka.’

  ‘Well, bully for her.’

  His mouth tightens, jealously.

  ‘It’s given me a whole new perspective on this stuff,’ I say airily. ‘In fact I’ve been making some enquiries of my own and was wondering if you might give me her phone number…’

  ‘No way on God’s Earth,’ he snaps.

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘You actually went out last night?’ he asks, pointing at my sweater (which I didn’t bother pulling off before I fell into bed).

  ‘For a couple of hours.’

  (I’m sounding a little defensive, a little wheedly.)

  ‘Where?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘Where?’

  (Who’s he think he is? My dad?)

  ‘A walk. I was feverish.’

  He stares at me, unblinking, and then…‘Oh my God,’ he says, ‘that fucking magician! You went to see Blaine, didn’t you?’ I shake my head.

  ‘Three in the morning,’ he gurgles. ‘You’re half-dead with flu. Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘I went to see Aphra,’ I squeak.

  ‘What?’ Solomon reins himself in, quite commendably.

  ‘One of the guards told me she was down there most nights. And I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to go and take a quick look.’

  ‘And she was there?’

  I nod.

  ‘Alone?’

  I nod again. ‘Aphra, a couple of guards and a tramp. Three fifteen a.m.’

  He takes a small step back, stretches out a well-muscled arm and leans against the chimney breast. ‘Then what?’

  ‘We talked.’

  He slits his eyes. ‘You do fuck?’

  I ignore this.

  ‘We went back to her apartment…’

  ‘Apartment,’ he scoffs.

  ‘We went back to her flat and looked at her shoe collection,’ I say haughtily. ‘She collects second-hand shoes.’

  ‘Does she actually wear them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wrinkles up his nose. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘She’s a sniffer,’ I continue (suddenly rather revelling in the perplexing wonder that is Aphra). ‘She used to work at John Lewis, in the Returns Department. She told me how they hire people with sensitive noses to sniff the returns and check if they’ve been used or not.’

  ‘I’ve heard about that before,’ he says.

  ‘Bullshit you have.’

  He shrugs.

  ‘So did you do fuck?’ he asks again (I mean who could guess that this horn-ball had just broken up?).

  ‘Well once we got home,’ I sidetrack, ‘she told me I had to be very quiet, because there was someone sleeping in the spare room…’

  ‘Who was it?’

  I shrug. ‘No idea.’

  ‘The sister,’ he chuckles, ‘the one who took your number. She comes out of the bedroom while you’re looking at the shoes, buck-naked, and rotates like a small tornado on your lap…’

  ‘It might’ve been a man,’ I say, ‘I think I heard a man’s voice at one point. Heard someone call out, like they were having a bad dream or something…’

  ‘Hang on there…Let’s just wind back a bit…’ Solomon quickly insp
ects his watch. ‘I need some coffee. I have an appointment at eleven. Come upstairs with me and finish off.’

  I don’t move. He scowls.

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ he promises.

  ‘Jalisa’s number,’ I sigh, collapsing back smugly on to my pillows, ‘or no details.’

  He gives this some thought. ‘Only if it’s really mortifying,’ he says.

  ‘Trust me. It is.’

  ‘I mean really humiliating. Really awful. Utterly degraded. Vile. Sickening.’

  ‘I can tick all your boxes,’ I brag, ‘but give me Jalisa’s number, up front, or the deal’s off.’

  Solomon heads for the stairs.

  ‘Gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,’ he mutters.

  God. I should’ve known he’d get his own back.

  Twenty minutes later (meeting? What meeting?) Solomon is delivering me a lengthy lecture on the myth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  ‘It was essentially the cornerstone of the anti-semitic idea,’ he says. ‘This fantastical notion of a shadowy group of Jewish Elders who are holding secret meetings, raising funds, forwarding the Jewish agenda on an international platform and setting serious social and political changes in motion…’

  ‘But they didn’t even exist?’

  ‘Nope. Just anti-Jewish scaremongering.’

  I blow my nose, bleakly.

  ‘All I’m really saying,’ he continues, ‘is that Jalisa is perfectly good–in fact extremely talented–at repackaging the chat and the gossip and the hearsay. She’s an intellectual firecracker. A magpie. She loves nothing better than to line her nest with all that sparkles in the culture. But the dull stuff? The flat stuff? The dates? The facts? The context? Uh-uh. Nothing. Zilch. Nought. Zero.’

  I blow my nose for a second time.

  ‘I mean I should know. I dated the girl for two damn months. If you’re looking for depth there then you’re diving in at the wrong end, my friend.’

  ‘Fine.’

  (Let’s just ignore the diving metaphor, shall we?)

  ‘And if the water’s too shallow, you’re gonna end up breaking your neck.’

  (Should’ve known he wouldn’t let us get away with that.)

  ‘Because what’s the point of reading the Kafka if you can’t set it into some kind of historical perspective, huh?’