The Rules of Seeing

by Joe Heap

  ‘This is done, right?’ She holds up what is left of the cigarette.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Nova stubs it out on the wall and sighs.

  ‘Thanks again.’ She pauses. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re busy, but do you want to get a drink?’

  Kate doesn’t pause before saying yes.

  Nine

  THEY HAVE TO WALK to find a pub, and Nova takes Kate’s arm. The hospital has furnished her with a pair of dark glasses, but there were no white sticks to spare, and Nova said she could manage without.

  ‘Wow, you’re tall!’ she blurted out, when the two of them stood.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sorry, I just can’t tell, sitting down.’ Nova waves up at Kate as though she’s on a balcony high above. ‘Hellooooo there!’

  Kate laughs, disarmed. They walk on as the sun starts to set – the air is warm. When they come to the place, Nova looks up and is momentarily dazzled.

  ‘What is that?’ She points.

  ‘That? It’s the sign for the pub. It’s lit up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Because this place is called the North Star,’ Kate explains.

  ‘A star …’

  Nova looks up, her mind crystallising around the shape –

  A

  star

  with five

  points, burning against the blackened brick, clearer

  and brighter than anything that she has

  seen before this moment,

  a point that seems to sizzle

  with white

  hot fire.

  She doesn’t believe in omens, but she’s prepared to pretend that this is auspicious. Inside, the North Star is cool and dim and a little musty. Nova, reassured by the lack of bright light, takes her glasses off, while Kate fetches her a pint of bitter and a white wine for herself.

  ‘Cheers.’ They clink glasses and sip. The pub dog – a fat Labrador – does an orbit of their table before disappearing behind the bar like a shaggy comet. Kate looks at her companion, taking in her well-worn NASA T-shirt, the tiny heart tattooed between the thumb and index finger of her left hand, the way her cheeks dimple when she smiles.

  ‘So, Kate, what do you do?’

  ‘Architect.’

  ‘That sounds like fun. It’s all about triangles, right?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Something I heard … a triangle is the strongest shape, right? You can make all sorts of things out of triangles. Triangles are badass.’

  Kate laughs. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right.’

  ‘So, have you designed many buildings?’

  ‘Only one – I’m very proud of it, but it seems nobody else felt the same.’

  ‘You should show me it sometime. Not that my opinion is worth very much. All buildings bigger than a house look … precarious.’

  Kate laughs. ‘Well, I just do interiors now. Actually, I’m renovating a flat to move into …’ She almost says, ‘with my husband’, then stops without knowing why. ‘So, what about you?’

  ‘Interpreter, for the police.’

  ‘That explains the interrogation.’ Kate pauses to judge whether her joke has offended, but Nova’s bullet-proof grin gives nothing away. ‘What languages?’

  ‘Arabic, French, Italian and Urdu,’ Nova reels off. ‘And before this palaver’ – she points to her eyes – ‘I was learning Russian. Konechno.’

  ‘My parents are from Italy, but my Italian sucks.’

  ‘You should practise! Everything sounds good in Italian.’ She raises an eyebrow suggestively. Her blue, blue eyes open for a moment, and Kate has to stop herself from staring.

  ‘I tried once, but I’m better at maths than words. I like shapes – you don’t have to explain a triangle to someone.’

  ‘You do to me! But I know what a triangle looks like now. And a circle, and a square. The others I can figure out with a bit of thinking.’ She sounds proud.

  ‘Humour me – you’ve learned, what, five languages? Why is learning to see so difficult?’

  Nova turns the pint glass around in her hands, thinking.

  ‘Because … it’s like trying to learn all five languages at the same time. Because it’s like all of these conversations are going on simultaneously – colour and depth, shape and texture, light and dark – and I’m trying to translate them all at once.’

  ‘That sounds like something that would drive a person to drink.’

  ‘Mais oui.’ Nova drains her beer. ‘Like, right now, with my eyes closed, I’m finding it easy to listen to what you’re saying. But if I were looking at your face at the same time, I would see your lips moving, head nodding, eyelashes flicking. It would be distracting.’

  RULE OF SEEING NO.78

  Watching someone while they talk is like hearing an echo – the image lags behind the words. Sighted people do not experience this.

  ‘Wow …’ Kate is lost for words.

  ‘But, hey, I think it’ll get easier.’ Nova chuckles – a habit of hers when she feels she’s made someone uncomfortable. ‘I’m coming up with these rules in my head, to help me remember it all. The Rules of Seeing.’

  Nova hasn’t mentioned the rules to anyone before, and she’s not sure why she does now. Kate is silent for a moment, thinking.

  ‘That reminds me of a book my dad bought me when I was a kid. We were on holiday in Venice, and he got me this Italian book on drawing called Impara a Vedere.’

  ‘Learn to See?’

  ‘It’s from a Da Vinci quote. It was on the inside cover …’ Kate closes her eyes and tries to remember. ‘Impara a vedere. Renditi conto che ogni cosa è connessa con tutte le altre.’

  Nova thinks for a moment, then interprets – ‘Learn to see. Realize that everything is connected to everything else.’

  Kate smiles. ‘Everything is connected – I always liked that. The trouble was, my Italian was always rubbish, so I never got much out of the book except for the pictures.’

  ‘You draw?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I used to. I liked to paint, but I gave it up. I guess I draw enough things for work.’

  ‘Drawing is crazy. I don’t know how you can take all of this’ – Nova gestures vaguely around the room – ‘and put it all on a flat piece of paper. It seems like a magic trick. You shouldn’t give it up.’

  Kate feels heat in her chest and ignores the comment. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to, with practise.’

  ‘Hm, you never know. I should just practise the seeing bit first.’

  ‘How do you practise?’

  ‘Well, they gave me these cards …’

  Nova reaches into her bag, pulls out three playing-card-sized packs, and lays them on the table. On the packs are the words SHAPES, OBJECTS and BODIES, with the same written below in Braille.

  ‘What are they?’

  Nova opens the first pack – SHAPES – and hands the cards to Kate. On one side, there is a picture of a simple shape: a square, a triangle, a spiral. On the reverse of each card is the name of the shape, along with the name in Braille.

  ‘They’re pretty cool, actually, like a kid’s dictionary.’ Nova’s good cheer sounds forced.

  Kate opens the other packs. OBJECTS is a mixture of manmade items and natural forms: kettle and oak leaf, toothbrush and mushroom. BODIES is full of human body parts: hands, eyes, lips, plus a selection of the more common animals: cat, pigeon, squirrel.

  ‘Want me to tell your fortune?’ Nova shuffles the cards.

  ‘Sure, I guess.’

  Nova picks a card at random from each of the decks, places them face-up on the table and peers down.

  ‘Is that a triangle?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ha – there you go, Miss Architect!’ She looks a moment longer, while Kate watches her face. ‘I can’t figure out the other two.’

  ‘That one’s a baguette and the other’s a knife.’

  ‘Oooooh!’ Nova intones, putting her hands to her temples as though a vision is appearing. ‘You’r
e going to give up your job as an architect. Then you’ll rent a garret in the Latin Quarter of Paris, retrain as a sous chef in a sexy new bistro, and shack up with the nubile dish washer.’

  ‘Sounds like me.’ Kate laughs.

  ‘You want another drink, to toast your career change? My round.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Nova navigates to the bar and orders two more drinks, and two whiskies, abandoning any pretence that she’s drinking other than to get drunk. Okay, maybe there’s one other reason. She was sure that flirting was easier before, but at least she doesn’t have to ask Kate where the toilets are. She recognizes the pictograph for the ladies’ loos, though can’t see how it looks anything like an actual lady. She carries the drinks back on a tray. Kate accepts the whisky, laughing, and knocks it back with a wince.

  ‘So, you were blind from birth?’

  Nova chases her whisky with a sip of beer and nods solemnly. ‘Yep, that was me. I could see colours, a little bit. Just this big, fuzzy world, like the inside of a duvet.’

  ‘You make it sound nice.’

  ‘It was nice.’ Nova nods, and Kate can hear the tightness in her voice. ‘I didn’t have much to complain about. Though meeting girls was a pain in the ass.’

  Kate registers ‘meeting girls’, but says nothing. Another moment where she could mention Tony. It passes.

  ‘So, does it help, the drinking?’ Kate changes the subject.

  Nova sips her beer thoughtfully.

  ‘This is a preliminary experiment. If successful, I might begin a full-scale observational study. How about you?’

  ‘Hm …’ Kate looks around the room. ‘I’ve a sneaky suspicion it’s making things worse. She leans forward to rest on the table, breathing in Nova’s musky perfume, and her head swims.

  ‘If not beer, maybe cigarettes are the way to go.’

  ‘Or hard drugs.’

  ‘Aw, cheer up, sparky! At least that knock on the head didn’t kill you. Then you wouldn’t be here, enjoying a drink with another attractive fuck-up like me.’

  Nova tries with all her energy to perceive if her flirting has worked. This would definitely be a good thing to get better at.

  Kate sips her drink and – Nova thinks – smiles.

  ‘Very true.’

  They leave when office workers start to fill the pub, but this means travelling at rush hour. They say goodbye and Kate puts her hand out to shake, but Nova has other ideas, pulling her into a hug. Her face buries into Kate’s breastbone, then Nova pushes up on tiptoes and plants a kiss on her jawline. Kate mumbles goodbye and the two go in opposite directions.

  Nova somehow finds standing space on the Tube, pressed on all sides by other commuters. She’s desperate for a pee. Opening her eyes, she can see all the people in the carriage, their tight-packed heads like hairs lining a gut. The train moves slowly, in laboured peristalsis, until finally they arrive at her stop, the last on the line.

  The streets of Brixton smell bad, the run-off from the fish stalls and cast-off vegetables in the bins heating and fermenting in the summer heat. Nova feels woozy from booze and the Underground, rebreathed air. At the hospital, they’d told her she’d had a panic attack and given her Valium. The neurologist told her to avoid crowded spaces and try to integrate her new sense bit by bit. She wanted to tell him that there was no ‘bit by bit’, but it didn’t seem worthwhile. It’s not like there are any alternatives.

  She walks past one of the fish stalls, slowing to take in the display. There are row upon row of silvery-bright lozenges (presumably fish), cancerous nodules that she knows are crabs, and red-mesh bags of blackish lumps that she guesses are mussels. They are resting on a shimmering bed of nothingness – Nova can’t see the crushed ice, only the way it bends and buckles the light like heat haze.

  She turns the corner to her road and sees a shop sign, in high, yellow letters. She has learnt the shapes of the Roman alphabet, but is slow to recognize them. As she walks, the words become clear: SUNNY MORNING. It’s the shop that Hassan Rana tried, unsuccessfully, to burgle. Nova thinks of him, back in his cold cell, with the blue light staining him corpse-like. Her breathing speeds up, and for a moment she thinks of the arms of the phantom beggar squeezing the air from her chest.

  Inside her flat, Nova triple locks the door, draws the curtains, and swallows a Valium with some cold water. She sits on the sofa and waits for the tension to melt out of her. It duly does, on order and on time, leaving her calm and liquid, pooling comfortably into the hollows of her sofa. She puts her head down, the pull of sleep lapping over her. Before she sleeps, the last thing she thinks about is Kate.

  Nova can’t recall anything about how the other woman looked – she is still completely face-blind, but for most people she might remember their hair colour or if they had a prominent mole. She remembers precisely Kate’s voice, which carries all the attributes that sighted people read into an ‘honest face’. Her voice is not deep, but seems anchored inside her somewhere, gentle without being quiet. Nova feels safe with a voice like that.

  The absolute last thing she thinks, which causes her to bob back up for a second into wakefulness, is that they have arranged to meet again.

  ‘My phone is dead.’ Kate had said and, for a moment, Nova assumed she was making an excuse. ‘But I’ve got a pen, if you know your number?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  Kate had taken a beermat and scribbled it down.

  ‘I’ll send you a message.’

  Nova smiles at the memory, then sleeps.

  The flat is quiet when Kate gets home. The whisky and wine are sloshing around in her, but she hasn’t minded until now. Suddenly she is scared without knowing why. She is scared of being found out, but by whom? And for what? The flat feels empty. She starts to walk down the hallway when Tony calls out.

  ‘You’re back?’

  Kate freezes, heart hammering. ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  Kate is sure that she can’t be this afraid of the man she married two years ago. She steadies herself with one hand on the passage wall. She looks at the pictures in frames on the wall – holidays in Greece; her own feet sticking over the edge of a boat; standing with a group of friends at a wedding, their own wedding; cutting the cake; standing under a lichgate as paper confetti rained down on them.

  Kate thinks of all the people who were there that day – family, friends, colleagues. She remembers all the eyes watching her at the altar, feeling ungainly in her dress – too tall, too broad, too much to be a bride. She thinks of all those happy faces, all those kind words. She thinks of the earnest words she spoke.

  Her mind moves without her permission these days. It seems like an animal, pacing inside her skull, wanting to get out. If she could just find a way to open the cage, maybe she could get some peace. She takes a deep breath.

  I don’t want to think about this now.

  She walks down the corridor, pushing open the door to the living room and kitchen. Tony is at the dining table, reading papers with a coffee in front of him.

  ‘Still working?’

  ‘Nothing important, just keeping on top of things.’ He starts to gather the pieces of paper, but leaves them there in a pile on the table, not hiding anything. Maybe it’s the whisky, but Kate feels an urge to reach out and take the paper and read whatever’s written on it, just to show she can.

  ‘You’ve been gone ages.’

  ‘Yes. The hospital took a while …’ She thinks about lying to him, but she knows he will pick up the alcohol on her breath.

  ‘And then I went to the pub.’

  ‘The pub? Is it that bad?’ He laughs.

  ‘No, no … I just needed to relax.’

  ‘Did you go with Vi?’

  ‘No.’ She searches for something to do with her hands, with her eyes, knowing that she’s not good at lying, and especially not to him. But he seems not to notice. Things seem more normal, though Tony hasn’t gotten up from his chair to hug her. Still, Kate feels calmer, as though she could slip ba
ck into her old life. She walks over to the table and sits down.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that I’m still recovering.’

  Tony nods once, then stares at her as though trying to figure something out.

  Anxiety bubbles up in her, and Kate gets up again. She goes and puts the kettle on to boil, takes out a peppermint tea bag. She needs to sober up.

  ‘Did you say you went to the pub on your own? You were gone a long time.’

  His hand is on her arm, making her jump. He holds her bicep between thumb and forefinger. It doesn’t hurt, but the gesture feels strange, like something you’d do to a skittish animal. Kate turns to face him. ‘No, actually. I went with somebody I met at the hospital.’

  ‘A man?’ Tony’s eyebrow is raised, and there is still the hint of a smile on his lips, but Kate feels she is in dangerous territory. He lets go of her arm. Tony is protective of her around other men, but also likes to make a joke out of the idea that she could be seeing anyone but him.

  ‘No, a woman. She’s seeing the same doctor as me. We both had a hard day.’

  Tony nods once, his interest visibly fading. She hates how he can tell when she’s telling the truth. She hates that he was worried about her going to the pub with another man, but the other woman doesn’t interest him. She’s angry that Nova doesn’t interest him.

  Nova is everything that Kate isn’t – confident, clever with words, graceful. The whisky is catching up with her. She feels grotesque, lurching around the kitchen. She wants to shrink down, down, down, until nobody notices her any more.

  She makes the peppermint tea and carries it through to the bedroom. She sits on the edge of the bed for a while, too tired to move. Slowly she gets ready for bed, undressing, putting on a comfortable cotton nightdress that Tony doesn’t like, brushing her teeth and getting into bed.

  Kate reaches for her alarm, then remembers tomorrow is the weekend. Then she remembers that, in any case, she’s signed off work for another week. She thinks about going back to the kitchen, to tell Tony that she’s going to bed. But there’s no sound from the kitchen, and she isn’t in the mood to talk. Life has become a bad dream, and if she goes to sleep, maybe she can wake up from it.