The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  Visser had lost contact with me in the physical sense, but his mental hold on me was as strong as ever; if anything, he’d tightened it. It appeared that they’d found a way of feeding TV channels directly into my brain. They were broadcasting on my own internal screen. I’d become a hybrid – part human being, part television. And someone else had the remote.

  One night I watched the same channel for hours. The next night it was twitch-time: a different channel every five seconds. As to why this might be happening, I had no idea. I was sure of only one thing. I had no control over it. None.

  I talked to Visser again. I decided beforehand that I would keep it short and to the point; after all, I didn’t want the call to be traced.

  ‘Visser here.’

  ‘It’s working, Visser. I just thought I’d let you know.’

  ‘Is that you, Martin?’

  ‘That’s right. It’s me.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because the last call ended, how shall I put it, somewhat abruptly.’

  ‘There’s been a new development,’ I said, ‘as I’m sure you’re aware.’ I was using his phrases deliberately. I wanted him to taste his own medicine.

  ‘A new development?’

  ‘You’ve really surpassed yourself this time.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I’m getting pictures,’ I said. ‘Images.’

  The silence lasted. It was an uncomfortable silence on his part. Guilty, I would’ve said. He knew I was on to him.

  ‘I’m getting signals,’ I said.

  ‘And what’s your interpretation?’ he said at last, struggling to sound objective, to remain uninvolved, aloof.

  ‘I think it’s television. I think I’m receiving electromagnetic waves and internally reconverting them into visual images.’ I paused. ‘Strange thing is, I don’t recognise any of the channels. I think I must be getting cable.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ he muttered.

  ‘That’s what I thought. You must be pretty proud of yourself.’

  ‘Martin, I’m worried about you. I’ve spoken to your parents. They’re worried, too.’

  I walked to the window. Though I could feel the cold glass beneath my fingers, all I could see was a game of football. I’d been getting a sports channel for some days now. There was a team in a red strip playing a team in white. I couldn’t identify any of the players; it was probably some foreign league. In any case, the score was 0-0 and the red team was in possession, on the halfway line.

  ‘The trail’s gone cold on you, hasn’t it?’ I said. ‘You don’t know where I am.’

  ‘I think you should tell me, Martin. I could help you.’

  Smiling, I turned back into the room. I’d lost him. That was all I needed to know. Perhaps I could allow myself a little more freedom now. Perhaps I could even venture out at night. As for the rest of it, Visser was no different from Arnold. He wasn’t going to admit what he was up to. There was too much at stake. Maybe he’d even signed some kind of official secrets act, forbidding him to talk about his work.

  ‘I’m going now.’ I grinned to myself. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right –’

  ‘Martin, wait –’

  Against the run of play, a white forward beat two defenders and drove the ball into the top left-hand corner of the net. A brilliantly taken goal. Mouth wide open, arms outstretched, he raced towards the touchline. The red team stood around with their hands on their hips, looking at the ground.

  ‘One-nil,’ I said. Then I hung up.

  That night I watched thirteen hours of TV – thirteen hours without a break; the titanium plate was hot, it had been on so long. I liked the game show best, though I forget what it was called. The host was a middle-aged man with a sun-bed tan and a toupee. He flounced. He twirled. He was constantly opening his eyes too wide, or flapping his hands, or rounding his lips into an O. He got on with everyone – but that was because everyone had been told to be nice to him. He was like an invalid, I thought, or a dictator. My favourite moment came when he revealed the prizes, when the contestants learned that they’d won a holiday for two in a resort nobody had ever heard of. Or a set of crystal glasses and a travel rug. Or luggage. How I longed for somebody to bellow, What? Is that all? But no. They whooped, they punched the air; they shook both fists at the same time. One woman even cried. Appearing on TV was clearly a powerful homogenising force.

  My mind jumped sideways. If this was an experiment, then what kind of experiment was it exactly? What was the rationale behind it? What were its aims and goals? It was difficult to concentrate with a game show going on in my head, but that, in itself, set me thinking. The way I saw it, there were two possibilities (or maybe they were different applications of the same basic principle). Firstly, it was an attempt at social engineering. Ideally, everybody would be fitted with a small titanium plate. It was a simple operation. The scalp healed in no time, the hair grew back. By feeding people with TV – intravenously, as it were – you could keep them distracted, pacified. It was lobotomy on a grand scale. There would be no crime, no violence. You’d have a nation that was incapable of rebellion or dissent.

  The second possibility was no less sinister. Obviously, this new generation of television (drip TV, as I had started calling it) could be used as a form of persecution. It’s hard to think when there’s a TV on inside your head. It’s hard to have much of a sense of yourself. People could be driven mad that way. And perhaps that was what was being explored. The use of visual images in psychological warfare. Torture by satellite. TV as a weapon. No wonder Visser didn’t want to talk to me: either I was part of some hush-hush weapons research programme, or else I was the first in a long line of passive citizens (or PCs, as they would doubtless come to be known).

  Visser didn’t want to talk to me. It was only to be expected. Strangely, this realisation didn’t depress me. In fact, there was a sense in which it cleared the air. If I wanted to get at the truth, there was only one way to do it. The doorbell jangled as I walked into Sprankel’s shop. I’d waited for a break in transmission before leaving Loots’ apartment, so I was able to see that Sprankel had changed his layout in the past two months. Instead of plastic waste-bins there were TV aerials. Hundreds of TV aerials. They were dangling upside-down on lengths of string, twisting slowly in the dark air near the ceiling.

  ‘Sprankel?’ I called out. ‘Where are you, Sprankel?’

  ‘I’m right here.’ His head appeared above the cash-register, which, reassuringly, was still lined with Astroturf.

  ‘There’s no need to hide from me, Sprankel. I’m not going to hurt you.’

  ‘I wasn’t hiding, sir.’

  Poor old Sprankel. It was embarrassing, really.

  ‘I need two pairs of gardening gloves,’ I said, ‘a torch, and something to cut glass with.’

  Sprankel’s eyes began to twitch and hop behind his glasses. I knew he was curious – a glasscutter? gloves? a torch? – but probably he remembered how stern I’d been with him the last time.

  ‘Before you start guessing, Sprankel,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you. I’ve got a job.’ I tapped the side of my nose. ‘A job. Know what I mean?’

  ‘No, sir. I –’

  I threw my head back and laughed. The tips of a thousand TV aerials reached towards me, glittering and complicated.

  ‘I’m going to be doing a spot of burglary, Sprankel. Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s something very important that I’ve got to steal.’

  Sprankel was chuckling almost before I’d finished the sentence and he went on chuckling much longer than I expected him to, much longer, in fact, than I considered necessary. Surprised at his sense of humour, a little puzzled, too, I stared at him. I’d never realised how small his teeth were.

  ‘If you don’t give me a good price,’ I said, ‘I might have to make you an accessory.’

  He was still chuckling.

  ‘And will you be needing any black paint today?’ he asked me.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘T
hose days are over.’

  ‘Those days are over,’ he repeated, half to himself.

  He wrapped my purchases and I paid for them and put them in my bag. On the way to the door I paused, turned back.

  ‘By the way, Sprankel, I like your display,’ I said, pointing at the ceiling. ‘Very imaginative.’

  The following afternoon I was woken by what I thought was someone knocking on the door. I lay quite still, my body heating with anxiety. Sweat collected on my chest, behind my knees. Surely it couldn’t be Gregory again? But after listening carefully, I realised the knocking sounds were coming from inside the apartment. Also they were grouped in sixes. It wasn’t someone at the door at all. It was Loots, throwing knives at Juliet.

  I wrapped myself in a blanket and moved towards the corridor.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Loots said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No, no. I was just dozing.’ I watched his knives fit snugly to the curves of Juliet’s hips and thighs. ‘Gregory called round the other night.’

  ‘Yeah? How was he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t let him in.’

  Loots lowered the knife that was in his hand and stared at me, his eyebrows high on his forehead, like they were when he was dancing.

  ‘I asked you not to tell anyone where I was,’ I said.

  ‘But Gregory’s a friend –’

  I stepped closer to Loots. ‘I trust you, Loots. That’s why I’m here. But there isn’t anyone else I trust. I certainly don’t trust Gregory.’

  Loots didn’t speak for a while. Then, finally, he said, ‘You’d better tell me what all this is about.’

  ‘I’m hiding from someone.’ I saw his eyebrows lift again. ‘Don’t worry. It’s not the police.’ I turned back into the living-room. ‘If you get me a drink, I’ll tell you everything.’

  I had no intention of telling him everything. That was the mistake I’d made with Nina. I was in possession of secret knowledge, but unlike most secrets, mine had a foolproof quality. Each time I tried to tell it to someone, it became unbelievable, untrue; it was like a command built into the substance of the secret itself, that it could not be shared. I would tell him as much as I could make him believe, and no more. I sat down on the sofa. He handed me a small glass of his uncle’s peach brandy. I thanked him and swallowed it in one. I felt its quiet fire rise through me. I wondered how to begin. I thought I’d use words that had worked with him before – the words of Anton the clown.

  ‘This is going to sound strange,’ I said.

  I started with the missing bone, the part of my skull that had been shattered by the bullet. I described the operation to replace it with a specially measured piece of titanium. I saw Loots wince and look away. I waited a moment, then asked if he’d ever heard of people who had so many fillings they could pick up radio stations on their teeth. Yes, he thought he’d heard of that. I told him that was what was happening to me, only it was more sophisticated. The titanium plate, I said. They were using it to experiment on me. It was a device that allowed them to transmit images directly into my brain. I looked at Loots. His eyes had filled with water. I had frightened him.

  ‘Images?’ he said.

  I spoke more softly now. ‘Pictures,’ I said. ‘Like on TV.’

  The man responsible for the experiment, I went on, the man in charge, was my neuro-surgeon, a certain Dr Visser. I described Visser’s unhealthy interest in my case. He had a file on me, for instance, which was marked HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. He’d been following me, too.

  ‘He even appeared at the Kosminsky.’ I shook my head; I still couldn’t believe it. ‘That’s why I had to leave so suddenly. That’s why I was sitting on your doorstep the other morning.’

  Loots poured us both another drink.

  ‘I never heard of anything like this before,’ he said.

  We both drank.

  He asked me what I was going to do. I reached down into my travelling bag. I took out two pairs of gardening gloves, a torch, and a tool for cutting glass, and I laid them on the table in front of him.

  ‘You’re not a thief, Loots. You told me that.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’

  I left another silence, then I spoke: ‘How do you feel about breaking and entering?’

  As Loots drove through the city, I felt a pleasant tension, a kind of burning, in the pit of my stomach. I pictured Visser in his swivel chair. He looked tired, dispirited. I thought I detected a trace of grey in his moustache. I’d spent weeks trying to fathom his motives and his strategy, weeks attempting to evade him, out-manoeuvre him. Now I could sense the tables turning. Now, for the first time, I was taking the initiative. And it was the perfect night for it. There was no moon. The sky was cloudy, almost brown. When we stopped at traffic-lights, I felt the car rock on its suspension. It was the wind, gusting out of the east. That would help us, too. Any sound we made, the wind would cover it.

  I talked for most of the journey. Partly it was to reassure Loots, to drive away any remaining doubts he might have. Partly it was my own adrenalin. Visser had a secret file on me. I wanted it. That was all. We had to break into the clinic in order to steal the file, but we would do as little damage as possible. It wasn’t revenge I was interested in, but proof. Proof of the way I’d been exploited. Proof of the crimes that had been committed against me. We weren’t the criminals. They were.

  ‘Do you see, Loots?’ I said. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, Martin. I do.’

  We drove north, through the wide, grey streets. The puddles on the pavements had iced over. It was almost three o’clock in the morning.

  The clinic was on a main road. We parked in a quiet, residential street directly opposite. I could just make out the building, with its towers and chimneys, black against the dull brown of the sky. We walked towards it through the shadows. I turned to Loots, saw the tightness in his shoulders and in the muscles near his mouth.

  ‘We’re not the criminals,’ I told him again. ‘Remember that.’

  We found a section of the clinic wall that wasn’t overlooked, then we pulled on our gardening gloves. Loots made a step out of his hands and I clambered over. He clambered after me. On the other side, we crouched in the bushes. Listened. The only sound was the trees dreaming above our heads.

  We crossed a wide expanse of grass. The wind dropped and I thought I could hear crows in the distance like old doors opening on rusty hinges, doors in horror films. Then only the keys in Loots’ pocket and our breathing. A sudden whiteness sizzled through the air in front of me. I had to stop and hold my head.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t see.’

  Loots didn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s almost like he knows I’m coming,’ I muttered. ‘Like he’s making it difficult for me.’

  I’d been expecting a TV programme to follow that flash of white, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I could see the grey lawn reaching down towards the lake.

  ‘Do you remember where his office was?’ Loots said.

  ‘Not really.’ I tried to think. ‘There was a walkway outside. A metal walkway …’

  Trees surrounded us. I glanced up into their branches, bare of leaves. I would like to have explained their significance to Loots, but there wasn’t time. A clock somewhere was chiming the half-hour. Loots tightened his grip on my arm. We were passing the main entrance.

  He chose a window in the west wing of the clinic. It was more isolated, he said. No lights. He cut a small hole in the glass and knocked it through into the room. After waiting a moment, he cut round the edge of the pane, next to the window-frame. He put one hand into the hole and gripped the glass, then tapped on it sharply with the other. The pane came loose. He reached in, turned the handle.

  ‘You first,’ he said.

  We stood in a room that smelled faintly of methylated spirits.

  Loots crossed to the door and opened it. I asked him what was out there.

  ‘No
thing,’ he said. ‘Just a corridor.’

  I warned him about the corridors – their labyrinthine qualities, their disturbing acoustics. If he thought he heard somebody behind him, he was not to worry; it was probably just his own footsteps, echoing. I spoke of the scale of the building, too and, while I was on the subject, I mentioned Kukowski’s memory techniques. Not that they’d ever helped me much, I said, but maybe he’d do better. It was important to remember which way we went in case we had to leave in a hurry. Loots listened with a slightly lowered face. He seemed to be absorbing everything I told him.

  We left the room and began to walk. We were in a part of the building I didn’t know; I didn’t recognise the corridors at all. Every now and then a sizzle of white moved across my field of vision. That sudden, blinding wash of magnesium light: it was as if I’d put my face inside a photocopying machine. I didn’t want game shows, not now. I didn’t want the nervousness, the hysteria.

  Once, we heard footsteps. It was a good example of what I’d been talking about, and I was just going to point it out to Loots when he opened a door and pushed me through it. I began to protest, but he put a hand over my mouth. I heard the footsteps grow louder, move past us, fade into the distance.

  ‘It was a nurse,’ he whispered.

  A nurse? It could have been Maria Janssen on the early morning shift. What would she have said if she’d discovered us? Was she aware of what they’d done? I saw her walking among the pear trees with Visser. It was possible. When she was first assigned to me, they might have thought it best to let her in on it. Perhaps that explained her initial awkwardness with me. There’d been times when she seemed to be floundering, out of her depth … It might also make sense of the night when she took off all her clothes. That strip-tease could even have been part of the experiment.