The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  Absolute blindness is rare. There’s usually some suggestion of movement, some sense of light and shade. Not in my case. What I ‘saw’ was without texture or definition: it was constant, depthless and impenetrable. Sometimes I thought: Your eyes are closed. Open them. But they were already open. Wide open, seeing nothing. I could look straight into the sun and my pupils would contract, but I wouldn’t know it was the sun that I was looking at. Or I could put my head inside a cardboard box. Same thing. There were no gradations in the blankness, no fluctuations of any kind. It was what depression would look like, I thought, if you had to externalise it.

  Miss Janssen spent part of every morning at my bedside. It was her job to motivate me, though I found most of her efforts infantile and embarrassing. Take the rubber balls, for instance. She told me to hold one in each hand. I was supposed to ‘squeeze and then relax, squeeze and then relax’.

  ‘What’s it for?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said, ‘how quickly muscles atrophy.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, it is. If you don’t exercise, they just wither away.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ I said, ‘there’s one muscle we definitely shouldn’t overlook.’

  She brought the session to an abrupt end.

  The next morning she was back again, as usual. She made no reference to what I’d said the day before. In what was intended as a gesture of repentance, I asked her for the rubber balls. I lay there, one in each hand, squeezing and relaxing. I behaved. And, since her voice was all there was, I began to listen to it. Not the words in themselves, but the sound of the words. I tried to work out how old she was, what she did in her spare time, whether she was happy. There were moments when I thought I could picture her, the way you picture strangers on the phone, just from their voices: I saw the colour of her eyes, the shape of her mouth. It was like what happened when the dream I had was over: the gradual assembly of a physical presence. Some mornings I found that I could only see her breasts. Her voice seemed to be telling me that they were large. The curve from the rib-cage to the nipple, for example. That fullness, that wonderful convexity. Not unlike a fruit bowl. But I could never sustain it. Sooner or later the picture always broke up, fell apart, dissolved. And, anyway, they weren’t her breasts. They were just breasts. They could have been anybody’s.

  I tried the same thing with the man in the next bed. His name was Smulders. He used to work for the national railways, first as a signalman and, later, as a station announcer. Then he got cataracts in both eyes. They’d operated during the summer, but the results had been disappointing. I asked him the obvious question, just to start him talking: ‘Can you see anything at all?’

  ‘Sometimes I see dancing girls. They move across in front of me, legs kicking, like they’re on a stage.’ Smulders took a breath. His lungs bubbled.

  He must be a smoker, I thought. Forty a day, non-filter. The tips of two of his fingers appeared, stained yellow by the nicotine.

  ‘Anything else?’ I said.

  ‘Dogs.’

  ‘Dogs? What kind of dogs?’

  ‘Poodles. With ribbons and bows all over them.’

  ‘No trains?’

  ‘Once.’ Smulders chuckled. ‘It was the 6.23, I think. Packed, it was.’

  He talked on, about his work, his colleagues, his passion for all things connected with the railways; he talked for hours. But nothing came. Nothing except a pair of black spectacles, their lenses stained the same colour as the fingertips. Then I realised that they belonged to a friend of my father’s, a man who used to work at the post office, in Sorting. I couldn’t seem to picture Smulders at all. Somehow his breathing got in the way, like frosted glass.

  These were, in any case, minor entertainments, scant moments of distraction. There were days, whole days, when I lay in bed without moving. Almost without thinking. The TV cackled and muttered, the way a caged bird might. Meals came and went on metal trolleys – hot, damp smells that were lurid, rotten, curiously tropical. My head felt as if it had been wrapped in cloth, layer upon layer of it. I often had to fight for breath. Once I tried to tear the covering from my face, but all I found beneath my fingernails was skin.

  My skin.

  There was no covering, of course.

  Nurse Janssen sat with me each morning, her voice in the air beside me. It was still a kind of seed, yet I could grow nothing from it, no comfort, no desire. I’d lost all my wit, my ingenuity.

  ‘How’s your face?’ she asked me.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘It’s looking much better. How does it feel?’

  ‘Feels all right.’

  ‘You know, there are three trees outside your window,’ she said, ‘three beautiful trees. They’re pines.’

  If this was an attempt at consolation, it was misconceived, hopelessly naive. I stared straight ahead. ‘Pines, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can smell them.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful smell, isn’t it?’

  I scowled. ‘If you like toilet cleaner.’

  Later that day I picked up one of my rubber balls and threw it into the blankness in front of me. Now that was beautiful, the silence of the ball travelling through the air, an unseen arc, and then the splintering of glass. I hadn’t realised there might be a window there. I saw the impact as a flower blooming, from tight green bud to petals in less than a second. It was like those programmes on TV where they speed a natural process up.

  The next morning Visser put me on a course of medication. I took the drug in liquid form. It was acrid, syrupy in texture, but I didn’t make any fuss. I drank it down and then lay back, waiting for the effect.

  What happens is this:

  The world shrinks. The world’s a ball of dust. It rolls silently along the bottom of a wall, meaningless and round. You watch it go. You don’t have to think about it any more. It’s got nothing to do with you, nothing whatsoever.

  You’d wave goodbye to it if you could lift your arm.

  Not long after I surfaced from the anaesthetic, Visser visited me. He told me that he had replaced the missing bone with a piece of precision-engineered titanium. The fit was perfect; he’d checked it with a CT scan. There had been no complications, nor was there any trace of infection – at least not so far. The entire operation had taken less than four hours. The way he described it, he made my head sound like some kind of jigsaw, and there was a note of genuine pride in his voice, as if it had been clever of him to finish it.

  ‘In short,’ I said, rather drily, ‘it was a success.’

  I heard his lips part on his teeth. ‘Oh yes. Most certainly. How do you feel?’

  ‘Not bad.’ I paused. ‘It’s a strange idea, though, a piece of metal in your head –’

  ‘No stranger than a hip replacement,’ he said.

  I didn’t agree. The point was, it was in my head. That’s what made it squeamish.

  But Visser would have none of it. ‘You might experience some numbness where the cut nerves are,’ he went on cheerfully, ‘but there shouldn’t be too much discomfort. You’ll be up and about in no time.’

  He was right about that. Within a week I’d recovered from the surgery and I was embarking on my rehabilitation. Every afternoon I was taken to the Mobility Training Centre, a special room in the east wing. It was laid out like a surreal, random version of the world outside. There were flights of stairs that stopped in mid-air. There were arbitrary brick walls – some knee-high, others reaching to the ceiling. There were kerbstones, but no roads. This was Dr Kukowski’s domain. Kukowski had a patient, almost weary manner, and his skin smelled of vinegar. I sometimes speculated on the effect his work might have on him. I could imagine him pausing halfway up the stairs at home, for example, unwilling to go further. Or stepping off the pavement into the path of an oncoming car because he had completely forgotten about the possibility of traffic.

  Kukowski gave me my first cane. It was lighter than I’d expected. Lo
nger, too, almost shoulder-height. I was supposed to hold it at waist-level and then walk forwards, scanning, rather in the manner of someone with a metal detector. Tap, tap, tap went the toughened nylon tip. There was something ludicrous about the whole process; I wanted to pour scorn on it. But behind Kukowski’s patience there lurked a threat: it was either the cane or it was back to tranquillisers, headaches, isolation. I took the cane.

  In the mornings I was still seeing Nurse Janssen. During the afternoons I had to pick my way through the obstacle course that was Kukowski’s world – a world that would be mine, he assured me, as soon as I was discharged. Towards evening Visser would pay me a visit. Sometimes he stayed just long enough to ask after my health. On other occasions we’d talk for an hour or more. He was almost always complimentary. Bilateral cortical damage is so rare, Martin. It may sound tactless, but it’s a privilege to have you here. Whenever I was alone I was encouraged to work on what Kukowski called my ‘long-cane technique’. There was the physical manipulation of the cane itself, of course, but there were also various mental skills and disciplines which had to be mastered. I had to learn how to use sound to determine distance and direction. I had to sensitise myself to echoes (a method known as echolocation). I had to be able to memorise a route. And so on. There seemed to be no end to it. It was the height of summer now, and I spent as much time as I could outdoors. Most days, after supper, I could be found in the clinic gardens, practising.

  And that was when it happened.

  One evening I was crossing the lawn, feeling as if I knew each mound, each root, each blade of grass by heart, when I realised that what lay in front of me – what I could ‘see’, as it were – was not the usual grey, featureless and empty. It was green, and there were shapes in it. You must be imagining it, I told myself. This is one of the illusions Visser warned you about. You think you’re seeing, but you’re not.

  I stood quite still and looked around me.

  The shapes in the green were trees. And I could see the lawn, too, reaching away from me, then sloping down. There was a smoothness at the end of it. A lake. I could see a stand of poplars, tapering like rockets as they lifted into the sky.

  The sky!

  For a moment I didn’t dare to move in case it all cut out and I went blind again. Then I knew what I would do. I chose one tree and slowly began to walk towards it. The tree grew larger. At last I was close enough to touch it. I reached out. There was bark beneath my fingers, ridged and damp. I looked up. Leaves shifting in the evening wind.

  This was no illusion. I was seeing the tree, the gardens – everything. I was seeing. I stood there with the tips of my fingers touching bark. Leaves turned and turned above my head – the rush of blood through arteries.

  I couldn’t move.

  At last I set out across the lawn, my cane scanning the blades of grass in front of me, left and right, left and right. I climbed the steps to the entrance, feeling for dimensions, height and width, as I’d been taught. Inside the clinic I followed the corridor that led to my ward. My vision had faded slightly, but I could still make out the pipes massed on the ceiling, the plain wooden chairs against the wall in the visitors’ waiting-room. I had to be careful to ignore the doctor who was walking towards me. I had to make sure I didn’t move to one side. Suddenly it struck me – an exquisite moment, this – that I was only pretending I couldn’t see.

  I didn’t say anything about it, though. It was partly excitement, partly disbelief. Partly fear of ridicule as well, no doubt; I didn’t want people thinking I was mad. I felt I ought to explore what was happening for myself, to get the measure of it. I needed to be sure of what I had.

  When I got into bed that night I still hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. I lay there in the dark and stared at the ceiling. The paint had cracks in it. I saw the great rivers of the world – the Ganges, the Amazon, the Nile. I saw areas of nothing – the Russian Steppes, the Empty Quarter. My heart was jumping like something on a trampoline. It just kept jumping.

  It was hours before I slept.

  Bits flying off me.

  This time it’s my eyes. I watch them spring out of their sockets (somehow that’s possible). I notice how they bounce on the road behind me. I see them burst.

  But I run on.

  Then it’s my nose, my ears. Some teeth. The skin of my face peels off like a mask and flaps away into the bright gold distance. A bat, a leaf. A pricked balloon.

  I’m still running.

  A tiny section of my skull detaches and whirls backwards. Asymmetrical, off-white, it looks like broken china, part of a vase. That priceless missing piece.

  As I run I can feel the sockets where my eyes once were. Hollow, smooth, picked clean. My skull’s a flute. The air plays haunting music on it.

  When I wake up, it’s morning and I’m blind again.

  That day passed more slowly than any day I can remember. To be given back my sight and then deprived of it again – I could imagine no greater cruelty; it seemed an act worthy of a torturer. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes on to the pillow. I wouldn’t talk to anyone, least of all to Nurse Janssen; I couldn’t bear her kindness, her concern, both of which seemed inexhaustible.

  At last, towards evening, I willed myself to sleep.

  I heard the clock strike ten. As I raised my head off the pillow I saw the same green that I’d seen the previous night. And there were shapes in it. Only this time they were beds, not trees. Rows of metal beds, each one painted the same colour. The eerie, shiny cream that institutions like so much.

  I pushed the covers back and swung my legs on to the floor. I stood up. The lino was cool beneath my feet, and slightly sticky. I could see Smulders in the next bed, one solid curve from his shoulder to his knee; for the first time it occurred to me that Smulders might be fat. I moved out into the ward, stepping delicately through rectangles of moonlight. The night was thick with blind men’s dreams.

  Two doors separated the wash-room from the ward. Between the doors was a ventilation area, open to the air at either end. Placing my hands on the railing, I gazed out over the orchard and the vegetable patch. A smell lifted past my face, a smell that was like my childhood distilled: warm asphalt, grass clippings, the skin of plums. Beyond the clinic grounds the land rose up, a replica of Smulders’ sleeping form. I saw lights dart across the sky. I couldn’t tell if they were shooting-stars or aeroplanes. They were too far off.

  I passed through the second door, closing it softly behind me. Though I was familiar with every feature of the wash-room, that very familiarity was strange, based as it was on discoveries I’d made while blind. Now I could make the same discoveries again, using my eyes: the tin basins, the window-catches, the spigots on the taps (as bulbous as murderers’ thumbs) – nothing was too ordinary to escape my attention. I was shocked, though, by the dilapidation and neglect I saw around me. There were broken windows high up in the wall, draughts haunting the jagged gaps. There was paint peeling from the ceiling. There was damp. I don’t know how long I’d been in there when I was startled by the sudden rattle of loose glass panes in the outer wash-room door. I stepped behind the wooden partition that hid the toilet, and waited. The inner door opened and somebody walked in. At first I wasn’t sure who it was. Then I recognised the breathing. Smulders.

  Peering round the edge of the partition, I watched intently as he stripped his nightshirt off and let it fall to the stone floor. He stood stark naked for a moment, listening. Then he reached out with both hands. He looked like a ghost – his arms horizontal, his fingers tickling the air. At last he found a tap. He turned it on, began to soap himself. His hands sucked and belched in the fleshy pockets of his armpits. The hair that grew there was matted, long and lank, identical to the hair you might pull from the plughole of a bath. It was like seeing a human being for the first time. We’re ugly, aren’t we? It’s extraordinary how ugly we are. For a moment I was afraid I might vomit. (I hoped I wouldn’t; apart from anything else, I didn’t want Smulders knowing I was
there.) I sank down, behind the partition. As I fought the nausea I had a curious thought: what a blessing blindness could be, what a respite from the frightful squalor of the world!

  At last I turned back.

  There he was, still soaping himself, his breath issuing in ragged gusts and the occasional grunt of satisfaction. I let my eyes course his ample contours. It looked as though handfuls of fat had been attached to him at random. There were creases and folds all over his body, places where one parcel of obesity had collided with another. And what would happen if you opened out those creases? You’d find a sort of melted butter there, mottled and rancid. The smell would be enough to burn out whole banks of olfactory cells. And then there was the ultimate crease, the most elaborate of folds: his foreskin. I balked at the idea of that.

  Just then the panes in the outer door rattled for a second time. Smulders jumped, his flesh reverberating – a kind of visual echo. I shrank back into the corner of the toilet stall, between the cistern and the wall, and waited.

  ‘That’s enough, Smulders.’

  It was Visser. His voice gentle but firm, with just a trace of amusement.

  ‘Come on now. Back to bed.’

  Smulders lumbered through the open doorway, his armpit hair still dripping. Visser followed. I saw him for a moment, over the top of the partition. All I got was an impression of his profile – his forehead, nose and chin – and a glimpse of a moustache.

  As I lay in bed that night I had one further thought: among the blind there is no tact, no modesty; there doesn’t need to be. It followed that, so long as I stayed in the clinic, I would constantly be assaulted by the most hideous visions. I didn’t belong among the blind. I was in the wrong place. The sooner I got myself discharged, the better. The last image that appeared before I fell asleep was that of Smulders’ penis, apprehensive, cowering beneath his belly, as if terrified that, at any moment, it might be crushed by the great burden of flesh that hung above it.