The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend,’ I said.

  ‘Her name’s Helga. She works at the factory. I told you I was in Sponge Cakes?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, she’s next door. In Chocolate Éclairs.’

  I asked him what she was like.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Half the men in Jam are after her.’

  In two hours we had reached the place. It was a run-down farmhouse, three kilometres from the nearest town. We sat in the kitchen – a bleak and cheerless room, its whitewash stained floral yellow by the damp. There were tools leaning against the walls, and the wood stove in the corner had burned down far too low. I could smell dogs, mildew, washing. The man offered us a schnapps, which we both accepted. Cold from the drive, I drank mine down in one.

  ‘I never saw nothing like it before.’ The man’s hands fumbled the top back on to the bottle. He had the kind of hands that look as if they don’t feel anything, that look numb.

  Loots asked him what it was exactly that he saw.

  ‘I were inside the shop and he were outside of it, just, you know, peering in the window, see if something took his fancy. He were an ordinary-looking bloke – or so I thought until he disappeared.’ The man wiped his nose on the side of his forefinger, which was rough as pumice-stone, and reached for the schnapps. He poured us both another glass. ‘I don’t mean he disappeared into a crowd or nothing. There weren’t no crowd around him. Weren’t nobody near him at all. He just disappeared.’ The man wiped his nose again. ‘Short bloke, he was. Ginger hair.’

  We drove into the town. The shopping precinct was deserted except for a couple of youths sharing a cigarette by the fountain. A weekday night in the provinces, rain tumbling through the dull orange light of the street-lamps. We stood outside the shop where it had happened. In the window there were power-tools, lawn-mowers, rolls of wire-mesh fencing. We trawled the damp air for the missing man. But there was only the scrape of waste-paper on concrete and the crackle of archaic neon. The next time I looked round, we were alone in the place. Even the two youths had gone home.

  We ate in a cheap restaurant on the main road. It, too, was deserted, apart from four drunk men in hunting-caps who were sitting in the corner singing songs. I didn’t have much appetite; I could only eat half the chicken dish I’d ordered. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there.

  Loots thought we should stay the night, though. ‘It was only two days ago that he was seen. I’ve got the feeling he’s still here somewhere.’

  I agreed, but without much enthusiasm.

  As we left the restaurant, turning our collars up against the rain, something unexpected happened. Two men approached out of the darkness and introduced themselves. A reporter and a cameraman from a local TV station, they wanted to do a report on The Invisible Man for a regional news programme. They’d already talked to the farmer who’d actually seen The Invisible Man. Now they wanted to talk to me.

  ‘You’d be better off with Mr Loots,’ I said. ‘He’s the one who organised it all.’

  ‘No, no,’ they said. ‘You don’t understand. It’s you we want.’

  They explained that a blind man was a more potent image, a more poignant symbol of the quest. It would be good television, too. I’d just have to take their word for it.

  Loots pulled me aside. ‘It’s OK, Martin. You do it. But listen. Talk to him directly. It’ll work better than answering questions. And use his real name. I think that’s the mistake we’ve been making – not using it.’

  I thought Loots had a point. One thing worried me, though. If I was on TV, people would see me. Maybe even the people I’d left behind would see me. Claudia. My parents. Dr Visser. Then I remembered that we’d be broadcasting from an obscure town near the eastern border, at least two hours’ drive from the capital. A programme like that might actually work in my favour, as disinformation: it would throw everybody off the scent. I suddenly became amused by the idea: someone who didn’t want to be found looking for someone who didn’t want to be found. It was like a lift with mirror walls: if you stand in the right position you can replicate yourself, there are hundreds of you, nobody can tell which one of you is real. I patted Loots on the back and walked over to the reporter.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m ready.’

  Towards eleven that night we checked into a small family hotel on the road that led out of the town. We took a room with two single beds. While Loots showered, I watched an old black-and-white movie on TV. Aliens were taking over the planet. I thought of Nina, who loved science fiction. I sat on a chair by the window with the phone on my lap. The receiver smelled of cleaning fluid. Lemon flavour.

  Loots emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.

  ‘Did I do OK tonight?’ I asked him.

  ‘You were great,’ he said. ‘Specially that bit you said – what was it? “We’re not trying to put any pressure on you. We just want to be sure that you’re all right.’”

  ‘You think that was good?’

  ‘Great. And at the end, when they pulled back and showed you standing all alone on that empty street. Even I felt sorry for you.’

  I smiled.

  ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ Loots said. ‘I’m really tired.’

  ‘Does the TV bother you?’

  He said it didn’t. Springs winced as he climbed into bed and drew the blankets over him. He was asleep in minutes.

  I sat on my chair by the window. The aliens were going to lose. They always lost. There was always something on earth which they just happened to be allergic to, something ridiculous like toothpaste or concrete. I dialled Nina’s number, expecting her machine. I didn’t mind if I got the machine; at least I’d hear her voice before I went to sleep – or maybe there’d be another sound-effect intended specifically for me. But she answered and, for a moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I remembered how she liked to start conversations in the middle.

  ‘Do you think he saw us?’ I whispered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man with the tattoo on his neck.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Do you think he liked it?’

  She laughed softly, but didn’t answer.

  ‘I liked it,’ I whispered. ‘All of it.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’

  ‘Loots is asleep.’

  I told her where we were. She didn’t ask what we were doing. She didn’t even sound surprised. Sometimes it bewildered me, this utter lack of curiosity. It made me feel irrelevant, disposable. I didn’t think it was intentional. She had her own world, that was all. But still. I changed the subject. I talked about the house that Loots had mentioned earlier, the house by the lake. I said she was invited, too.

  ‘You should see the clouds tonight,’ she said. ‘Orange and grey, and swirling round and round, like someone’s stirring them …’

  ‘It’s raining here.’

  ‘Do you remember clouds? From before you were blind?’

  ‘I’ve got memories,’ I said. ‘You go blind, you don’t lose everything.’

  There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘I was with Greersen,’ she said.

  I didn’t follow.

  ‘The night I didn’t show up. I was at Greersen’s place.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Greersen ran the Elite. That was all I knew about him. ‘I was there all night,’ she said.

  I walked to the window. The phone was in my hand. For a few seconds it had the feeling of a weapon.

  ‘Quick,’ said someone on TV. ‘Get down.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I never promised –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  I parted the brown curtains. The rain was still falling. In the building opposite, there was a man sitting on a chair. The room was pale-green. He was alone.

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean –’

 
; ‘It doesn’t mean what?’

  There was another silence, then she sighed.

  ‘I think I’d better go,’ I said.

  I waited.

  As I took the receiver from my ear, she said something. I only caught a fraction of it, her tone of voice rather than the words themselves; I thought she sounded anxious. I tried to call her back, but the line was busy. I stood by the window with the phone in my hand, watching the rain fall on a town I didn’t know.

  By late afternoon I was in a multi-storey car-park, waiting for Loots. It had been a wasted day. We’d got nowhere. That farmer in his kitchen, the empty shopping precinct, Nina’s confession on the phone. I felt tired and desolate. I didn’t like standing in car-parks either, no matter how many storeys there were. I started imagining men with T-shirts on. I started imagining tomatoes.

  At last I heard footsteps approaching. I didn’t hear any keys, though. Loots had this habit of bouncing keys on his hand as he walked towards his car. A lot of people do it. It’s slightly irritating, actually. It’s like people who shake the ice-cubes in a drink just before they finish it. I listened to the sounds surrounding the footsteps. I listened hard. No keys.

  ‘Loots?’ I called out. ‘Is that you?’

  The footsteps stopped. A voice said, ‘Mr Blom?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You were on TV last night.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘It seems you’ve been looking for me.’

  I turned to face the voice. ‘The Invisible Man!’

  ‘Used to be.’

  It was still daylight and I had no vision, so I did the only thing I could think of: I held out my hand.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

  And I shook hands with The Invisible Man. It was the most curious feeling. The hand was there – but, at the same time, it was not. It was recognisable as a hand and yet it was absent, somehow. Recognisable by its absence. Maybe that was the best way of describing it. Absence of hand – or, maybe, hand-shaped air. In any case, an unforgettable sensation.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I liked the poster.’

  One light laugh, and the hand withdrew. He was gone.

  Then I heard Loots’ footsteps. He was whistling. The car keys tingled on his palm.

  ‘Did you see him, Loots?’ I called out.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Invisible Man.’

  ‘You’re joking. He was here?’

  I talked all the way back to the capital. I’d formed a theory; it was based on that one phrase: used to be. The Invisible Man was tired of being different, special. Tired of living up to expectations. He wasn’t interested in being THE INVISIBLE MAN! He wanted to be ordinary, with no exclamation mark after his name – invisible in the way that normal people are. So that was what he’d done. Become invisible, with a small i. Or, more appropriately, visible. With an ordinary v. You could be sitting next to him on a bus or a train, in a restaurant or bar, at home on the sofa, you could be sitting next to him right now and there’d be nothing invisible about him, nothing invisible at all. That was what had happened, I was sure of it. And that, I told Loots, was what he should say to Anton when he saw him again.

  The city seemed to welcome us as we drove in – green lights all the way and rockets exploding in the bright, snow-heavy sky above the Metropole. We’d done the impossible. We’d found The Invisible Man. I wanted to tell everyone I met. I suddenly wished I had more friends. Well, at least there was Gregory. I dropped in at Leon’s and there he was in his donkey jacket, white hair rising off his head like steam, his shiny hands wrapped round a cup of coffee.

  ‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been?’ His head was lowered, bull-like, and he was glowering at me through a kind of undergrowth: his eyebrows.

  ‘Smoke,’ I said, ‘you won’t believe what happened.’

  I told him the story of the last twenty-four hours. As I reached the end I saw that he’d forgiven me. I bought him a dessert, just to make sure: Leon’s famous blackcurrant jelly, with a dome of whipped cream the size of the Kremlin.

  When I unlocked the door of my room just after two o’clock, the phone was ringing. I snatched it up.

  ‘Blom.’

  Never had my name sounded less gloomy. The m hummed happily, like bees in summer.

  ‘It’s me.’

  Nina!

  ‘I have to see you, Martin. Right away.’

  What she was saying seemed to prove the theory I had about her, that there was always room for hope. I’d already decided Greersen didn’t mean anything to her. It had been a whim, an aberration (she probably regretted it now). There was no reason why I couldn’t go on seeing her. Who knows, maybe we could even get married. It would have to be a night wedding, of course. I’d invite Gregory, Victor, Leon. I’d invite The Invisible Man, too. Loots could dance with Nina in that quaint, old-fashioned style of his.

  ‘Will you meet me somewhere?’ she was saying.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Where?’

  She told me she’d drive over. There was an all-night café-bar inside the train station. She’d see me there in twenty minutes.

  I put the phone down. Half an hour later I walked into the café. Nina had taken a booth at the back, near the toilets and the cigarette machine.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not long.’

  She was wearing a fake-fur jacket and a beret, and no lipstick. All I could think about was kissing her. The waitress came and stood beside our table. I ordered coffee and a pastry.

  Nina waited until the waitress had gone. ‘You don’t like pastry.’

  ‘I’m celebrating,’ I said.

  ‘What are you celebrating?’

  ‘We found The Invisible Man. Me and Loots.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘I talked to him, Nina. I actually shook his hand.’

  ‘That’s great.’ But she put nothing of herself into the words. They were hollow, empty. Insincere. I felt my good mood being gradually dismantled.

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’ I asked her.

  She touched her beer mat, just the corner of it, with one finger.

  ‘It must have been important,’ I said, ‘for you to drive all the way over here at this time of night.’

  ‘It is important.’

  My coffee arrived.

  ‘I don’t love you,’ she said.

  ‘Who do you love? Greersen?’ I stared at her in disbelief.

  She didn’t answer. She lit a cigarette, then started turning her beer mat on the surface of the table.

  ‘Maybe I loved you in the beginning,’ she said, after a while, ‘but I don’t any more.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to say it again,’ I said. ‘Maybe I didn’t hear it the first time.’

  She sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I stared at my pastry, its flaky crust baked to a perfect gold, its dusting of spotless white sugar. I wished I was blind. We should have met in the daytime, like before. Or some bright place. Somewhere with fierce lights, preferably fluorescent. Then I wouldn’t have been able to see her. Then I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. Then I wouldn’t have been staring at a fucking pastry.

  ‘Guess what?’ I said. ‘I was on TV.’

  ‘Were you?’ She was somewhere else, though. She’d hardly heard me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

  ‘No, tell me.’

  I stood up. ‘I’ll pay on the way out.’

  ‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘Will you wait for me?’

  I sat down again. This hurt more than almost anything else. Will you wait for me? So trivial, so everyday – and yet it meant there was something between us. We were connected, together.

  I didn’t watch her walk away. Instead, I looked at the place where she’d been sitting. There was a shallow indentation in the plastic. I reached over, touched the inde
ntation. It was still warm. Then I noticed her bag on the seat. She’d left it behind. Without thinking, I slipped my hand inside it. The usual jumble of lipstick, make-up, money. A notebook, too. Scalloped edges to the pages. Her addresses. I picked up the book and tucked it into my pocket. I wasn’t sure why I’d done it. And by the time I thought about putting it back, it was too late. I heard the door to the toilets open. She was walking towards me.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’ I pointed at the seat. ‘You left your bag.’

  She was staring down at me. No warmth in the look, no suggestion of any intimacy at all. It was more sort of dissatisfied. Disillusioned even. I obviously wasn’t handling this the way she’d hoped I would.

  ‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’ she said.

  I sat there for a moment longer, trying hard to concentrate. I kept thinking of her address book in my pocket. I still didn’t know why I’d taken it. I shook my head. ‘No.’

  She walked ahead of me, up to the cash-register. She reached into her bag.

  ‘I already told you,’ I said. ‘This is on me.’

  She took her hand out of the bag again. She hadn’t noticed that her address book was missing. I paid for two coffees and a pastry.

  ‘Didn’t you like the pastry?’ the waitress said. She seemed to be taking it personally, the fact that I hadn’t touched it.

  ‘I lost my appetite,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  When I walked out of the café, Nina was waiting in the station concourse. There was that whispering again, the sound I’d heard when I first returned to the city. Voices lifted into a great emptiness. Voices appealing to something they didn’t even know was there. She took hold of my arm. ‘There’s a man staring at me.’

  ‘There’s always men staring at you,’ I said, irritated suddenly. ‘The saxophone-player the other night. He stared at you, too.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I told you. I can see at night.’

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, ‘This is different. I’ve seen him before.’