The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘Nurse?’ I spoke more loudly now. ‘Don’t go yet.’

  ‘… apologise for the delay … pleasant journey …’ In the next bed, Smulders coughed. ‘Do hope you’ll travel with us again …’

  Nurse Janssen wouldn’t speak to me. Once she was dressed she simply turned away and walked off down the ward and out through the swing-doors. I lay in bed and stared up into the air. The darkness pulsed. I could feel the sperm drying on my stomach and my thighs. I could imagine the brittle, shiny crust, as delicate as flies’ wings, or glue. I wondered at what I’d witnessed, tried to make sense of it. She had no way of knowing I could see her, so she couldn’t have been doing it for my benefit. It had to have been some pleasure of her own, a private fantasy that she was acting out – unless …

  It seemed far-fetched – laughable, really – but it was the only other explanation I could think of. I remembered how she’d cried when I told her I was breaking off my engagement. I knew how moved she’d been by that decision. Well, maybe this was her way of rewarding me. Some kind of symbolic tribute to my selflessness, performed in my honour, with no expectation of acknowledgement. Like the offerings people used to make to gods.

  I began to stay awake at night, my eyes fixed on the doors at the far end of the ward. Would there be a repeat performance? And, if so, would she come up with a new routine, something more inventive, more exotic? (Not that I was complaining.) But I waited for a week and Nurse Janssen didn’t reappear – at least, not when she wasn’t supposed to. Her reward, if that was what it was, suddenly seemed a rather meagre one. I wished she’d thought of something more conventional. Flowers, for instance. Or even a brand-new pair of rubber balls. It was the beginning of a period of great restlessness.

  One night I could stand it no longer. I decided to go for a walk. At two or three in the morning, there were hardly any staff on duty. I put on my dressing-gown and reached for my white cane. I carried it with me at all times now, like a disguise. After all, I didn’t want to arouse suspicion. If I was caught, I was just a blind man who’d got lost on his way to the lavatory.

  I moved down the ward and out into the hallway. To my left was the notorious broom cupboard. Ahead of me, I found another set of doors. I pushed through them. An empty corridor confronted me, all cream walls and gleaming linoleum. It stretched away into the distance. It stretched so far, I couldn’t see an end to it.

  I began to walk.

  Silence. Only the trees shifting beyond the narrow windows and the tinkering of fluorescent lights. Something about the stillness unsettled me. It seemed to be constantly on the verge of becoming movement. It was like the stillness in horror films – stillness as anticipation, stillness as the prelude to a shock. I walked the length of the corridor, then turned left. Another corridor, almost identical. Shorter, though. With orange doors on both sides.

  This corridor had different acoustics. For instance: the sound of my footsteps seemed to be coming not from where I actually was but from a point five metres behind me. I wondered what would happen if I used my voice.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  Nothing odd about that. I tried again.

  ‘Mr Blom?’ I said. ‘What are you doing, Mr Blom?’

  No, it just sounded as if I was talking to myself. In the middle of the night. I didn’t like the feeling.

  I reached a flight of stairs and began to climb.

  I remembered what Kukowski had taught me about the use of memory. It was a trick: you had to imagine walking into what you were leaving behind. The future was the same as the present, only backwards. So. I’d have to go down the stairs (keep count of the flights), turn right into the corridor with the acoustics, turn right again into the corridor that had cream walls. My ward would be somewhere at the end of it.

  My breathing had thickened and I could taste blood. For the first time, I realised how much strength I’d lost. The operations, all those weeks in bed … How quickly muscles atrophy. There was a lop-sided sensation in my head, as if one half was heavier than the other. I had to steady myself, one hand braced against the wall.

  I was lying halfway down a flight of stairs. Sweat had surfaced all over me; my hair hung in my eyes, a fringe of wet quills. I sat up and pressed my face against the cool plaster of the wall. First one cheek, then the other. Then my forehead. Outside, the wind had risen. There could have been an ocean in the garden.

  I climbed slowly to my feet. Touched the place where the plate was. No feeling at all. It was as if my fingertips had entered another dimension. The deadness of titanium. Sometimes it seemed to count for more than all the sensate parts of me, and I could imagine my body rotting around it. Surely that was the end of the dream. The flesh and bone would fall away. The spirit, too. All that would remain of me was a piece of metal on an empty street, sun glancing off it. That single piece of metal. Perfect. Everlasting. Alien.

  I took a deep breath and climbed back up the stairs. On the landing I rested. It was a landing like any other – a firehose reel fastened to the wall, a metal trolley piled high with towels. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement, something white and quick, but when I turned it was gone. A trapped bird, maybe, or dust in the moonlight. Not far beyond the firehose was a door. I tried the handle; it wasn’t locked. When I opened it, fresh air pushed past me, like a crowd of people that had been waiting to get in.

  I was on the roof – or part of it, at least. It was narrow where I was, the width of one person. There were metal handrails on both sides. What I was standing on was metal as well, the kind of perforated metal used for fire-escapes. To my left I could see the main body of the clinic, dark and turreted, a chimney releasing smoke that seemed casual until the wind took it, scattered it across the sky. Lower down, below me, was a row of lit windows. To my right, just darkness, trees. A sheer drop to the ground.

  I moved along the walkway until I was opposite a window. I looked down into a small, square room that was almost bare: a steel table, two or three moulded plastic chairs, a water-dispenser – that was it. I moved on. In the next window I saw a man. I wasn’t sure who it was at first because he had his back to me. But then he turned and walked across the room. It was Visser. I watched him pick up a file, then put it down again. He appeared to be deep in thought, the fingers of one hand pulling at the edge of his moustache. Only then did I realise what was written on the cover of the file: my name, MARTIN BLOM, and stamped across that, in red block capitals, the words HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. I leaned against the cold rail of the walkway. The trees below me tossed like furious black water. Highly confidential? What could be highly confidential about a patient at an eye clinic?

  Turning back, I noticed the other files on his desk. They were marked with the same red capitals, but the names were different. On the far wall, pinned to a cork board, were at least a dozen X-rays. In each X-ray I could see the titanium plate, which showed as a white object lodged in the dappled, moon-like grey-and-white of the cranium. At first I assumed the X-rays were of me, but if I compared one with another I saw that each plate had a slightly different location. I’d been standing there for some time, pondering the X-rays, when I sensed something had changed. Visser had walked to the window. He seemed to be staring up at me. I held still, trying to slow the sudden pounding of my heart. Then I realised he couldn’t see me. All he could see was his own reflection in the window. All he was staring at was the stream of his own consciousness.

  The next morning, when he appeared on the ward, I said I wanted to ask him about my case. He wondered what aspect I was interested in particularly.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘how unique is it?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘The insertion of a titanium plate, for instance. Is that common?’

  ‘Not common, no,’ Visser replied. ‘Though it does happen from time to time.’

  I hesitated. ‘So there aren’t many people who’ve had it done?’

  ‘The last plate I fitted was probably,’ and he paused, ‘three years ago.’
>
  ‘There’s nobody in the clinic then,’ I said, ‘apart from me?’

  ‘Nobody.’ I thought I could hear Visser smile. That faint, wet click of lips drawing back from teeth. ‘In that sense, you’re certainly unique.’

  ‘Something else,’ I said, in what I thought might be a cunning lateral shift in my approach. ‘Are you engaged in any research at the moment, Doctor? Or is your time entirely taken up by your duties at the clinic?’

  ‘If only there was money for research!’ Visser said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to dictate a letter to the government on my behalf.’

  This was an extremely clever riposte, and I had no choice but to chuckle quietly and let the matter drop. After he’d gone, I thought back over what I’d seen the previous night. Had my eyes deceived me? Or was Visser lying? And, if so, why?

  During the next week or two I tried on several occasions to return to the walkway in order to verify my findings. Kukowski’s memory techniques proved worse than useless. One night I found myself outside, in the vegetable garden. In frustration, I pulled up half a dozen carrots, brushed the mud off them and ate them on a bench in the moonlight. Another night it was the laundry: washing-machines with drums the size of jet engines and huge cast-iron calendar-rolls for pressing sheets. Once I even mistakenly walked into the Reminiscence Room. It was while I was there, sitting on the therapist’s chair, that I decided that I didn’t have a past. I had a present, though, and it remained a mystery to me.

  The summer faded, and the nights grew cooler. I started wearing socks for my clandestine expeditions. Visser toured the ward each day, the truth concealed beneath a white coat that seemed as crisp as the leaves that now lay strewn on the clinic lawn.

  One evening I woke from a nap to see Nurse Janssen bending over me. She was wearing all her clothes, and gave no sign that she might be about to take any of them off. I’d referred to her performance once or twice – the references had to be oblique, of course – and she’d promptly accused me of being ‘just like all the others’. I’d disappointed her, she said. She’d thought I was different. ‘I am different,’ I told her, though there was no way she could understand what I meant by that.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

  ‘What, again?’ I said. ‘I’m not here.’

  ‘It’s the police. The gentleman who came before, if you remember. Detective Munck.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ I said, sitting up, ‘in that case. Yes, of course. What a relief.’

  ‘It’s not often you hear that, as a policeman,’ Munck said.

  He stepped out from behind Nurse Janssen, who turned and walked away, leaving us alone together. This was the first time I’d seen him. He was a tall, gangling man, with dark hair that was neatly parted and rather dry, and teeth that were ridged, like celery.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ I laughed. ‘I thought you were my fiancée. My ex-fiancée, I should say.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Munck drew up a chair.

  ‘No, no. Don’t be. It was over long before all this,’ and I gestured to include the ward and all the blind men in it. ‘This just made everything clear to me. Does that sound odd?’

  ‘Paradoxical, perhaps. Not odd.’

  I liked Munck. He was somebody I could talk to. He had a brain. And that sleepy voice, I now saw, was perfect for the work he did. It was an instrument for winning confidence. He could use it to coax information out of witnesses. Or lull criminals into confessions.

  He opened his briefcase, took out a brown-paper bag and put it into my hands. ‘I don’t know whether you like pears,’ he said.

  ‘How kind.’ I opened the bag. Inhaled.

  ‘I was passing the market and, well –’

  ‘Thank you.’ I told Munck about my trips to the city as a child and how my grandmother always used to bring a pear for me to eat on the tram.

  He was nodding. He seemed happy to have chosen the right fruit.

  ‘But this is not a social visit, surely,’ I said. ‘Is there some news?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Not really.’ He leaned his forearms on his knees, hands dangling. How old was he? Forty? Forty-five? ‘There was something I didn’t ask you before. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning …’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The night you were attacked, a woman saw a youth running out of the car-park. He was wearing a T-shirt with a message on it. A slogan. It said, THIS TIME IT’S FOR EVER.’ He paused again, looked up. ‘I don’t suppose that rings any bells?’

  I searched my memory, but there were no running youths in it, no T-shirts. ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Just the tomatoes?’ he said.

  I smiled.

  ‘We checked with the manufacturers. They do a whole range. THIS TIME IT’S FOR EVER, YOU KILL ME, I LOVE YOU TO DEATH. They sell hundreds every month, apparently.’ He sighed. ‘And, anyway, the woman didn’t think she could make a positive identification.’

  I wanted to comfort him, but didn’t know how.

  ‘Sometimes you’re looking for connections and they’re just not there,’ he said after a while. ‘It’s small things that you’re looking for. Habits, for instance.’

  ‘Habits?’

  ‘Yes.’ His voice had quickened. ‘Take you, Mr Blom. You have an interesting habit.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yes. You have this way of passing your hand across your head. Slowly, almost warily, from front to back. It’s what some men do, men who are worried they might be going bald –’

  ‘It must be the operation,’ I said, ‘the plate I had put in.’ I was slightly disconcerted; he’d told me something about myself that I didn’t know.

  ‘There you are, you see? A connection.’ The triumph in his voice didn’t last. ‘But this youth with the T-shirt –’

  He sighed again and this time I sighed with him.

  ‘As the victim of an unsolved felony you’re in the majority, of course. I only wish it was otherwise. I’m afraid most crimes in this country go unpunished.’

  I had the impression that he felt personally responsible for what had happened.

  ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I always wanted to be a policeman. Ever since I was a boy. I used to dream I’d solve some famous case and then I’d have a street named after me. Or a square –’

  ‘Maybe you should’ve gone into politics,’ I said.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then, dreamily, he said, ‘Avenue Paul Munck.’

  I smiled. ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘It’ll never happen.’

  ‘It might.’ I was trying to encourage him, this seemingly doom-laden man.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s like I told you. Most criminals are never brought to justice. Not by me – not by anyone.’

  ‘That’s interesting, though,’ I said, ‘about the habits.’

  ‘Yes.’ He rose wearily to his feet. ‘Well, it’s time I was going.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, Detective. Do call in again. If you’re ever in the area, that is.’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘And thanks again for the fruit.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ Munck lifted a hand as he turned away, then lowered it as he remembered I was blind. ‘Goodbye, Mr Blom.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  I watched him move off down the ward, arms paddling in the air, feet slapping on the floor. So it was Munck who walked like somebody in flippers. This knowledge endeared him to me, and I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before I saw him again.

  Towards the end of September I made one final attempt to solve the mystery about the X-rays. As usual, the clinic fooled me and I was soon adrift in a maze of corridors and hallways. In some places, the ceilings were low and curved; I could touch bare brick if I reached up with one hand. There didn’t seem to be any windows. It was damp too, a chill that I felt on the back of my neck but, curiously, nowhere else.

  So far as I could tell, I was still at ground-level. I needed to be higher: three floors up, maybe four. As
I walked, I was sure I could hear people behind me – the whisper of crepe soles on the lino, murmured words – but when I turned round, there was never anybody there. I wondered if this wing of the building could be haunted. Certainly it was antiquated enough. Almost derelict. It was a disgrace, really, now I thought about it. Just because we, the patients, were blind, they felt they could keep us in conditions that were scarcely even fit for animals.

  I found a stairwell and began to climb. Up and up it took me, opening at last on to a landing that was unfamiliar to me. The air was still, the floor littered with empty pill bottles, old magazines, bits of broken glass. I noticed a dandelion flower floating motionless above me, as though it had been there for centuries. Dead flies lay on the windowsill in heaps. At the far end of the landing was a door with a horizontal bar on it. I leaned on the bar and the door opened. A cool night wind. The roof. But which part of it?

  I picked my way through heating-vents, fuel-gauges, pipes, my shoes sticking to the soft, tarred surface. There was a sudden rush of air above my head. Pigeons. I heard the clock strike three, each note blown out of shape by the wind and the cold. No walkway anywhere; no lit windows. I reached the edge of the roof and lifted my face towards the sky. I could smell salt now – no more than a trace element, but it was there. It was the sea that I could smell, pushing against low dunes some twenty kilometres to the west. The city lay south-east of where I stood, its skyline of domes and spires concealed behind a ridge.

  I climbed on to the parapet, feeling like a swimmer at the beginning of a race. I bent from the waist and stretched my arms out past my ears. Then peered down. A drop of thirty metres, maybe more. I wasn’t tempted. Those thoughts of suicide that Visser had predicted, they’d never be mine. I had to reshape my life, that was all. I would live the way people lived in primitive societies, only the other way round: I’d get up when the sun went down and go to bed when it came up again. I was glad it would be winter soon. What good was daylight to me? No good at all. It was an obstacle, a hindrance – the last thing I needed. I remembered Claudia’s idea – how she wanted to look after me. I imagined her constant presence, her careful ministrations. I shuddered. It would have ruined everything.