The Rules of Seeing

by Joe Heap

  ‘My children. Two girls. And my wife. If I can’t get a job …’ He tails off.

  ‘That’s no excuse for beating someone senseless.’

  He shifts, and though Nova can’t read body language, she doubts he is adopting a friendlier pose. Panic is pumping through her, rattling her half-made vision like a hurricane. The sound of bees is near-deafening. When Hassan speaks again, his words buzz.

  ‘You know what the Qur’an says about blindnezzz? Huh?’

  ‘I … I’m not Muslim.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Nova says nothing. He recites to her: ‘“It is not the eyes that grow blind, but it izzzz the heart.”’

  Hassan Rana laughs. Her eyes are stinging. Why does this bother her so much? She wants to brush the bees away from her face. She remembers the line, remembers the first time she read it in Braille. On the lips of this criminal, this father, it becomes an accusation – Nova can see, but can’t understand. Her eyes are cured, but she is still blind.

  Addressing the officer now: ‘I’m sorry, I … can’t go on with this interview. He already confessed.’

  Without waiting for the officer’s response, she leaves.

  Nova doesn’t exactly run from Scotland Yard. In her whole life, she has done very little running. Running means bumping into things, and it isn’t something that naturally occurs to her, even under duress. Nevertheless, she hurries from the station, eyes tracing the path her feet are to take, ignoring a call of her name from behind. In her rush to be free of the building, her dark glasses are left behind – they are in her locker with an avocado salad and a can of pink lemonade.

  None of that is important now, because she only wants to be away from the man and the way he made her feel. She wants to escape, as though moving quickly enough might stop the memory from forming. All she has to do is get the bus home, get back to her flat, and she will be fine. She can phone the station on her journey, tell them that she had to leave because she’s unwell, something to do with the operation. They will understand. In ten years, she has been sick twice – once with food poisoning, once when she was knocked over by a cyclist and broke her collarbone.

  She has made the journey countless times. But she doesn’t have her stick now, and without the glasses she doesn’t feel she can ask for help. Her story seems ridiculous every time she says it out loud.

  She sets off, as quickly as she can, not wanting to be caught. The pavement in front of her is easy enough to follow at first, a band of pale yellow bordered by dark tarmac on one side and a red-brick wall on the other. But by the end of the street the path breaks up – there are pale patches, strips of tarmac, dark squares of drain cover.

  Nova hesitates, like a gymnast balancing on a beam. It’s too much – she can’t tell what is solid and what is space. She can hear and feel the street rushing around her. One wrong move and she might be washed away. This walk has never been difficult before.

  She tries to tune out what she is seeing, to think about how she has moved and how far she has walked, and where that would put her in her mental map. Before, the map was clear, but now all this foggy light has rushed into her head. She looks around again, trying to find something that might give her bearings. Huge forms tower around her, prickling with straight lines and dark squares. The buildings seem to get closer the longer Nova looks at them, looming like gigantic waves – waves made of glass and stone and metal, heaving gelatinously, ready at any moment to crash down on her head.

  Her heart is beating too fast, propelled by the same awesome fear she felt back when she first saw the doctor’s face. She screws her eyes shut and breathes slowly, trying to pull her heartbeat into sync with the rise and fall. She tries to forget what is waiting for her behind the closed door of her eyelids.

  ‘Excuse me, excuse me, ’scuse me, ’scuse?’ The voice is cracked, and very close to her shoulder. ‘Spare a quid, love?’

  Nova opens her eyes and looks at the beggar. She can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Their face is dark with grime, and the body next to her is an even brighter patchwork than the city – neon green, pink and yellow. There is a terrible smell, but that is behind the vision. Eyes burn in that dark face, terrible eyes. An eager hand grabs her sleeve and tugs Nova as though trying to bring her closer to the vision.

  ‘I’m sorry, I …’ Nova stumbles away, terror tightening around her like a second skin. The buildings are crashing down.

  ‘Come on, love, don’t be tight … hey, you all right?’

  Nova crumples to the floor. She can’t breathe. She doesn’t know what is happening. She has never felt like this before. Without an explanation, she assumes that the beggar must have grabbed hold of her, and is squeezing the air out of her chest. She tries to call for help, but has no air. She tries to struggle, but her body has gone numb.

  Nova blacks out, thinking of swimming up, back to where the air is.

  The cinema is five minutes’ walk away, the same one they always go to, unchanged since they were kids. The colourful carpets are stained with a million spilled soft drinks, the plaster of the faux art deco lobby is crumbling, and the whole place has an ingrained smell of stale popcorn. Basically perfect.

  There are only two screens, one showing a gaudy kids movie that has been out for a month, the other an action blockbuster. Vi and Kate haven’t shared many interests since they were five – Vi likes Vogue magazine, country and western music and menacingly spicy curries. Kate hates fashion, listens to classical, and has a sensitive stomach. But they have always liked action movies, can list their favourites and rank the heroes. The movies are dumb, but that’s part of the fun.

  ‘What, no bandages?’ Vi teases, striding up to Kate. ‘I thought you’d come in here wheeling a drip.’ Vi hugs her, which is something of an honour. ‘I missed you. Don’t do that again, yeah?’

  ‘How is he?’ Kate changes the subject, pointing to Vi’s pregnant belly as they break away. Vi shrugs.

  ‘Keeps kicking me in the bladder, so I guess he must be happy.’

  ‘Men.’

  ‘I know, right? His dad had long legs. Well, I think that was his dad.’ Vi smirks.

  ‘Time will tell, I guess.’

  They each get a small box of sweet popcorn and walk into the darkened auditorium. They chat through the adverts about Kate’s stay in hospital and Vi’s latest checkup. Kate doesn’t say anything about the argument with Tony. Vi doesn’t like Tony, and it’s not a conversation Kate wants to be having now.

  She doesn’t look at the screen until the film starts. Like some of the best, it goes straight into the action. They are in the middle of a gunfight in a half-finished tower block. Bullets ricochet off bare concrete, bodies duck in and out of sight, the game of cat and mouse rising through the building.

  The view cuts to a helicopter on the roof of the building. The bad guys are trying to escape. It is the first scene, so they probably will, but Kate is still enjoying herself.

  Up to this point, nobody has been hurt – bullets zip past ears, everything kept at a distance by the guns. As the chase rises another level through the tower block, one of the henchmen stays behind, hiding around a corner. When the hero rounds the corner, the henchman leaps out, pointing a gun to his head. The hero fends this off, hitting the gun right out of his hand, then punching him in the face. The henchman falls back, his head slamming into the concrete.

  Kate feels her lungs contract. A wave of anxiety washes through her, radiating from her core, shivering out to her fingertips and toes, settling in her belly like acid. She tries to breathe evenly. How the image on the screen has connected with her memory, she does not know. But the two films, inside and out, played in sync, two heads slamming into the floor at the same moment.

  She’s not sure what is happening, only that something bad is going to happen to her, any minute now. She feels doomed. An invisible straightjacket is tightening around her, pulling her arms in close and cramping her lungs.

  The action continues on-screen, but Kate isn’t lo
oking any more. She glances sideways at Vi, who is munching popcorn and grinning at the action. She closes her eyes and thinks of returning home. She wants to be somewhere safe, but she doesn’t want her friend to know that something is wrong.

  If Vi notices, Kate will pretend that she fell asleep.

  Eight

  THE WAITING ROOM HAS eight plastic chairs. Four are taken. There are magazines on the table, but Kate has no desire to read about carp fishing or celebrity weddings. She looks at the other people who are waiting to see the neurologist.

  Opposite is a woman in her fifties, clutching tightly to her handbag but otherwise normal. Two seats down from her is a young man who rocks back and forth – not in a rapid, catatonic way, but like someone on a boat. He keeps his eyes fixed on a picture on the wall, a quit-smoking poster, but otherwise seems untroubled.

  The last is an old man, sat as far from the rest as possible, pressed into the corner near the door. His head is bandaged, and a dull brown patch has seeped through the dressings near the temple. His body is still, but his eyes flick about the room. Kate suspects that the man is tranquilized in some way, and that his eyes are the only parts of him still able to move.

  As for Kate, what does she look like? She hopes that she looks normal, but is finding it hard not to stare at the other patients. As she looks at the woman with her bag, an ill-defined dread settles on her like a shroud. She looks down at the magazines and decides that she does want to know about carp fishing after all.

  Kate flicks through the year-old magazine, looking at pictures of smiling men in rubber waders. She reads a recipe for ‘boilies’, a kind of bait, which extolls the virtues of pineapple chunks for luring wary carp. She is almost enjoying the diversion of the magazine when she turns the page over to the centrefold. A man is holding up a tremendous fish, its scales tinselling the light, suspended by its mouth from the fishing line. The picture makes her feel sick.

  Kate decides to copy the young man, deciding to fix her attention on the carpet, though. The carpet is fine – the carpet cannot feel the feet that press down on it daily, cannot feel the points of high heels or the cold mud of workmen’s boots. Since the film yesterday, Kate hasn’t shaken off the invisible straightjacket, making her breath shallow, her shoulders bent inward. She barely slept, and now her eyes are heavy. The carpet is fine but dull.

  Her eyes are starting to droop when the door to the waiting room opens.

  Kate looks up and sees a young woman being ushered into the room by a nurse. The woman has her eyes tightly closed, and it seems that she’s being guided. She wears a battered leather jacket and cherry-red boots, and is about a foot shorter than Kate. She has light brown skin and a halo of dark hair, and for a moment, Kate feels as though she’s about to remember a detail from a dream she had. The woman will have to sit next to someone in the waiting room, but nobody looks keen.

  ‘Just wait in here,’ the nurse says, as soon as the woman is inside the room, ‘the doctor will find you.’

  The door closes behind her, and the woman stands there, abandoned. Kate is about to offer her help when the woman opens her eyes.

  Years before, Kate had watched a programme about glaciers in the Arctic. The top ice was white, like you expect, but then the old, deep ice had turned blue over time. Something about air bubbles being forced out until it was just pure, frozen water. That is the colour of the woman’s eyes – dazzling and pure.

  It’s just a flash, as she scans the room, trying to get some essential piece of information. When she finds what she’s looking for, she closes her eyes again, walking slowly over to the seat next to Kate, and sits down. Kate watches her for a moment out of the corner of her eye. She is very still, her eyes still closed. She is beautiful, Kate decides. Her skin is tinged pink at the cheeks. Her wavy, dark hair was tied up in a bun, but has mostly escaped. She is small and perfect like Kate is tall and ungainly.

  Kate looks at the wall, where there is a defibrillator. The symbol on the box is a green heart with a white thunderbolt passing through it.

  After a minute, the woman inclines her head towards Kate.

  ‘Sorry, but do you have the time?’

  Kate guesses the woman can hear the ticking of the giant clock on the wall in front of her, but has decided she doesn’t want to look. Her accent is northern, Yorkshire perhaps.

  ‘Sure. It’s half-three.’

  ‘Ah. Thanks.’ The woman flashes her a grin. They sit a moment more in silence, and the woman breaths a trembling sigh.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Kate asks, immediately regretting the question.

  ‘Peachy keen.’ The woman smiles again, then pauses. ‘Well, no, not really.’

  Kate tries to think of something kind or consoling or just not stupid to say when the consultant peers out of his office and calls her name.

  ‘Sorry, I’d better go.’

  Kate sits on a low wall outside St Mary’s, smoking a cigarette. Behind her, the hospital towers in its shining glory. It feels almost indecent, to Kate, for the building to look so grand when such awful things are happening inside.

  After the film, Kate had left Vi to walk home. When she got home, she found a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter in her jacket pocket. Kate doesn’t smoke, but Vi had sensed she might want one. The thought of her friend’s clumsy affection makes Kate want to cry, but she holds it back. That’s what she feels like all the time now – always on the verge of laughing or crying, always about to embarrass herself in some way.

  She has to hold it in.

  She has to act normal.

  Now, after the first cigarette, Kate feels a little better, more distant from her own thoughts and feelings. She considers walking, but is lightheaded from the nicotine and decides to sit a moment more. She’s about to get up when someone sits down next to her.

  It’s the woman from the waiting room, the girl with the blue eyes. But she’s wearing dark glasses now. Something stirs in Kate’s memory – a face, lit by a fluorescent glow, dark glasses, an angry man – but does not surface. A nurse has ushered the woman this far, as though she really is blind. But Kate is sure she had looked around the waiting room, and chose where to sit.

  ‘Just wait here, love, the taxis pull up right in front.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The nurse leaves, and Kate debates with herself for a second. Her stupid question in the waiting room makes her pause. But she is drawn to the woman, not with the quick-snap of magnets attracting, but with the invisible current of a planet being lured into orbit a new sun. She watches the girl as she sits on the wall, arms hugged around her middle, bent slightly forward. It’s a subtle posture, something Kate wouldn’t usually notice. Looking at the girl, who doesn’t seem to perceive her at all, Kate feels herself bend forward, hunching her body against the world. Watching her unseen, Kate feels protective, not predatory.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Oh, hi! I didn’t know you were there.’ She turns in Kate’s direction.

  ‘Sorry. We were in the waiting room together.’

  ‘Oh sure! My name’s Nova.’ She puts out her hand, smiling radiantly, and Kate shakes it. ‘Jillian Safinova, actually, but everyone calls me Nova.’ Her hand is small and warm, like a child’s.

  ‘I’m Kate. Uh, would you like a cigarette? I don’t usually smoke …’

  ‘Me neither.’ Nova rolls her head around as though deciding. ‘But I think I’d like a death stick right now.’

  Kate shakes a couple of cigarettes from the pack and pauses awkwardly for a moment, wondering if she should hand it to the girl, or place it in her mouth. Nova resolves her dilemma by pouting, and Kate carefully places the cigarette between her lips.

  The strange intimacy gives her butterflies. Nova is pretty – Kate wants to take a picture so she can remember her better. She takes the neon-plastic lighter and cups the flame while Nova draws on it. They sit and smoke in silence for a minute.

  RULE OF SEEING NO.68

  Smoke looks alive – twisting and pu
ffing itself up like a grey snake. Don’t be scared.

  ‘So …’ Nova drawls in her soft, Yorkshire accent. ‘What’s driven a sweet girl like you to take up this sinful habit?’

  Kate laughs, feeling awkward.

  ‘I gave you a cigarette – you owe me.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Nova grins devilishly.

  ‘I mean, uh, you go first.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Another drag on the cigarette. ‘Get this – I used to be blind.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. Since I was born. And then, a few weeks ago, I was cured.’ She drawls the word as though it’s ironic, but Kate doesn’t understand why.

  ‘And that’s not good?’

  ‘No …’ Nova holds the cigarette up and considers its thin, rectangular silhouette against the sky. ‘Well, it’s complicated.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘No offence, but I doubt you can. It’s a royal pain in the arse. I can see, but not clearly yet.’ She pauses, and Kate wonders if she’s looking out at the passing cars, from behind her dark glasses. She wonders what they would look like to her.

  ‘Anyway, mystery lady – your turn!’

  ‘Oh, nothing that interesting. I hit my head and had a bleed on the brain. I’m just here for a checkup and to …’ She trails off, feeling that she has said more than she intended to.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To get some medication … I’ve just been very anxious, since the operation.’ She clears her throat.

  Nova doesn’t reply, but reaches and pulls her dark glasses down to the bridge of her nose. Her eyes open, glittering blue in the sunlight. She considers for a moment, and Kate wonders what she’s seeing. Placing the cigarette between her lips, Nova reaches forward carefully and strokes Kate’s cheek with the back of her hand, just once.

  Kate feels Nova’s touch, and a shiver passes through her. She’s relieved that the other woman probably can’t see her blushing. When did she start blushing, anyway?

  It is over in a moment. Nova closes her eyes and pushes the dark glasses back up. They smoke in companionable silence for a minute. Kate watches as the strange woman takes a final drag.