The Insult

by Rupert Thomson

  I leaned over the toilet-bowl again, my whole body arching, straining to yield something, my hair spiked with sweat – but there was nothing there. The convulsions were so violent, it felt as if I was about to tear a muscle in my stomach. When the nausea subsided, I sat back against the wall and moaned out loud in sheer relief.

  I tried to think as clearly as I could. The titanium plate. It had to be an implanted device. Some kind of receiver or decoder that was capable of interpreting the signals being sent back by my eyes. All my theories about a chance connection, some freak hook-up, my own fragile miracle, they all crumbled in the face of something so logical, so scientific.

  Obviously it was a prototype, though. That night in the gardens, objects had appeared through a kind of green gloom. There’d been little or no sense of colour at that point, just shape and movement – a night-camera effect. Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, it began to change. The scarlet of those capital letters slanting across the cover of my file. The pale-yellow of the tiles in Leon’s restaurant. The glittering blue of Loots’ circus pullover. And yet it was far from being infallible. Which explained my lapses of judgement, my miscalculations. They weren’t clumsiness, as I’d sometimes thought, or panic. They weren’t my fault at all, in fact. They were simple malfunctions. A temporary loss of picture. Do not adjust your set. No wonder Visser spent night after night working late in his office. No wonder there were cranial X-rays everywhere, and confidential files. The system was still in development. He was still perfecting it.

  I kneeled by the basin, put my mouth to the cold tap. First I rinsed the water round my teeth and spat. Then I drank some, felt it cool my aching throat.

  At last I could see through him. That docile voice (about as docile as a snake sleeping on a rock!). His infinite patience, his solicitude (genuine and false, both at the same time). How close I’d come with that question about research, and how expertly he’d fielded it! It wasn’t the way I’d thought it would be – glimpses of the truth, gradual revelations. No, it was more dramatic than that, and more fundamental. The whole ingenious façade had dropped away, like plaster from a wall with damp in it.

  It seemed to me that we’d both been playing games of subterfuge, bluff and counter-bluff. I wondered if, by appearing to discourage me, by insisting that I should face what he called ‘reality’, he hadn’t actually been provoking me a little. Providing me with a regime I could rebel against. Indirectly pointing out the course he hoped I’d follow. How clever of him to allow me to think of him as stupid! He’d wanted me to believe that I was in possession of a secret power. He’d been curious about my reactions, curious to see how far I’d go. I’d been part of an experiment. His experiment.

  I still was.

  Later that evening I called Directory Enquiries and asked for the number of the eye clinic. There was no reason to hide, not now that I’d seen Visser less than twenty metres from my room. I would probably meet my parents next, weeping tears of joy as they came whirling through the revolving doors. Or Claudia, in one of those ghastly négligés that are supposed to put the excitement back into your sex life. Or, even worse, I’d step out of the lift and find my entire past gathered in the hotel lobby, like some nightmare episode of that famous TV programme. There’d be girls I’d betrayed. Relations I’d never written to. Friends I’d abandoned. There’d be people whose faces I couldn’t even remember – but they’d remember me. Oh yes, they’d remember! They’d be standing there, with glasses of cheap champagne and toothy smiles. Grimacing, I dialled the clinic. When the receptionist answered, I asked for Visser. In my mind I was walking those endless corridors again, and my heart had speeded up, as if I could hear footsteps behind me. The phone rang internally – once, twice, three times. I was almost hoping there was no one there. But on the fourth ring, someone picked it up.

  ‘Visser.’

  I hesitated. The idea that I shouldn’t have any contact with the man had become so deeply ingrained that, for a moment, I couldn’t speak at all. Then I heard myself: ‘Surprise, surprise!’

  ‘Who’s speaking, please?’

  I swallowed. ‘It’s me. Martin Blom.’

  ‘Martin!’

  Oh, he was good. That lift in his voice. The inflection was perfect. Concern, astonishment, delight – even a little relief. They were all there, and in exactly the right proportions. That voice of his, synonymous with deceit, with exploitation. Suddenly I found my tone.

  ‘You must be tired, Doctor.’

  ‘Tired?’

  ‘Up half the night,’ I said, ‘in strange hotels.’

  He tried to speak, but I talked over him.

  ‘A man of your distinction,’ I said, ‘in a hotel like that. And running, too!’

  ‘Where are you, Martin?’

  ‘You know where I am.’

  ‘I’ve been worried –’

  I interrupted him again. ‘I’m fed up with games, Doctor. I want the truth.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The plate you put in my head. The titanium plate.’

  ‘Are you feeling some discomfort?’

  I had to laugh. ‘Discomfort? That’s good.’

  He waited for me to continue. He gave me time, as always.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t call it discomfort exactly,’ I said. ‘More like malfunction.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t follow you –’

  ‘All right. I’ll be as straightforward as I can. I think you’re experimenting on me. No, wait. I don’t think. I know.’

  ‘Martin, that’s absurd.’

  ‘That’s one word for it. There’s another word. Obscene. Or here’s one that might get through to you. Unethical.’

  ‘Martin, listen to me –’

  ‘That’s the whole problem right there. I listened to you. All along I listened to you. I should never have done that.’

  ‘Martin, listen. I warned you about this the last time I saw you. I told you that you might experience phases of denial, or even recurrences of your hallucinations. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. You’ve taken on too much. I think it would be best if you came in to see me. Then I could –’

  ‘I’m surprised you’re still bothering with that old story. Especially after last night.’

  ‘I think you should come and see me at the clinic. I really do. Or I could come to you, if you’d just tell me where you are …’

  I was laughing again. He was like an actor who goes on playing his part, even after the curtain’s gone down.

  ‘So you’re not going to admit it, Doctor? You’re not going to come clean?’

  ‘Admit what?’

  I couldn’t listen any more. The calmness, the compassion. That slight anxiety. All totally dishonest. Bogus. Fake.

  ‘Fuck you, Visser.’

  I slammed the phone down. Then I picked it up again. He was still there.

  ‘Hey, Visser. Fuck you. All right? FUCK YOU.’

  I sat on the edge of the bed, trembling. What would he do now? Would he send a private ambulance? Would he come for me, with muscular attendants? Would he pump me full of tranquillisers?

  Would he operate again?

  Just after six-thirty in the morning I heard a bicycle bell, and I knew from the sound of it that it was Loots returning from the factory. I turned to look and there he was, upside-down as usual, only this time he was juggling a pint of milk, some eggs and two or three bread rolls. His breakfast, presumably. Even though my situation was desperate I found that I was grinning.

  By the time he stopped outside the building he was the right way up again, with his provisions safely stowed in a brown-paper bag. Whistling to himself, he locked his bicycle to a lamppost. I was sitting in the shadows, on the stoop, and he didn’t notice me until he started towards the front door, brown-paper bag in one hand, keys bouncing in the other.

  ‘Martin?’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  I stood up. My bones ached from the long wait in the cold.

  Loots was eyeing my suit
case. ‘What’s happened?’ He came closer and peered at me. ‘What happened to your face?’ His voice had lifted an octave, in shock.

  ‘I tripped and fell. It’s nothing.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like nothing. Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘Loots,’ I said, ‘could I possibly stay with you for a few days?’

  ‘Of course. Stay as long as you like.’

  ‘It seems like I’m always asking you for favours –’

  ‘Nonsense. Juliet will be delighted. She’s taken quite a shine to you.’ He put an arm around my shoulders. ‘Are you hungry?’

  We ate breakfast at his kitchen table – fresh rolls with butter and honey, slices of cheese, a pot of coffee (I wondered what had happened to the eggs). The radio was on, low-volume. Some news programme.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Loots. I can’t just yet.’ I paused. ‘And, if I did, you wouldn’t believe it.’ I yawned. ‘God, I’m tired.’

  But Loots wouldn’t let me sleep until he’d seen to my injuries. There was a deep gash where my left eyebrow joined the bridge of my nose. He cleaned it with iodine and stuck a plaster over it. Then he gave me a bag of ice to hold against my swollen cheek while he made up a bed for me on the sofa in the living-room.

  ‘One last thing,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anybody to know I’m here. Nobody, Loots. Do you understand?’

  ‘OK.’ He spoke hesitantly, still puzzled by my behaviour.

  ‘I appreciate this,’ was all I could say. ‘I really do.’

  When we woke up in the afternoon, he told me that he didn’t have another night off until the weekend. He hoped I’d be all right on my own. He’d get some keys cut before he went to work.

  ‘There’s no need,’ I told him. ‘I won’t be going out.’

  ‘What? Not at all?’

  I shook my head.

  He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t either,’ he said, ‘not if I looked like you.’

  This hadn’t occurred to me as an excuse, not until Loots mentioned it, but I seized on it with gratitude. ‘I may be blind,’ I told him rather pompously, ‘but I still have my pride.’

  Though I’d moved away from the Kosminsky, I didn’t feel as if I was out of danger (after all, I could easily have been followed to Loots’ apartment). I took a number of precautions. I decided not to leave the house, for instance, not under any circumstances. Not even at night. I devised an escape-route, too. As soon as Loots left for work in the evening, I double-locked the door and jammed a kitchen chair under the handle. I took another chair and stood it directly beneath the skylight in the living-room. I climbed on to the chair, opened the skylight and pushed my white cane out on to the roof. On the floor beside the chair I placed a travelling bag that was already packed with a few necessities – money, codeine, a change of clothing. I practised my emergency exit several times that week. It began in one of two ways: a ring on the bell downstairs or – more urgent this, more threatening – a knock on the door of the apartment itself. The procedure was the same, though. I would slip the strap of the bag over my shoulder and climb on to the chair. Then I’d reach above my head and, gripping the frame of the window in both hands, I’d haul myself up into the night. I knew I could be out of the room and across the rooftops in less than the time it would take to force the door. My only worry was the chair. Its position under the skylight might betray me. After a great deal of thought, I decided to leave it facing the TV, with the newspaper on the floor in front of it. The newspaper would be opened on the page that listed the programmes for that day, and certain of the programmes would be circled. That would explain the chair’s position in the room. Even if it didn’t work, it ought to buy me a few precious minutes. It was cold in the apartment with the skylight open; I had to wear a coat and gloves. I would close the skylight when I heard Loots’ footsteps on the stairs, but he often remarked on the temperature when he walked in. I’d put a grin on my face and breathe in deeply. ‘Ah,’ I’d say, ‘fresh air.’ Each night, after he’d gone, I’d be back on the chair with the skylight open again and my eyes fixed on the door. Before too long, I knew it intimately. Every nick and dent and scratch. Every pattern in the grain. Say it went missing and the police wanted a description. They couldn’t have done better than to question me.

  When the knock came, on my fourth night in the apartment, I was ready. Like a spirit departing from a body, I rose out of the chair and stood beside it, in a kind of half-crouch, scarcely breathing. The knocking came again, more insistent now. The wood seemed to bulge each time the stranger’s fist pounded on it. Curved lines appeared in the air, the way they do in comic-books, to show the power of the blows.

  ‘Blom? Are you there?’

  It was Gregory. Surely they couldn’t have recruited Gregory? They must have been more desperate than I thought. I was still standing beside the chair, motionless, hunched over.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Blom. Open up, will you?’

  But I wasn’t opening the door for anyone. I had a curious sensation suddenly. The door wasn’t made of wood at all, I felt, but glass, and Gregory could see me through it. He was staring at me through the door, and I was crouching there, next to the chair, pretending that I didn’t exist. It was absurd. But it was unnerving, too, somehow.

  ‘Come on, Blom. Open up.’

  The blows on the door were harder still, and there were more of them. They came in groups of five instead of two. I reached down, hooked the strap over my shoulder, then I placed one foot on the seat of the chair. My heart had a heavy, sluggish beat to it, as if the blood it had to pump round my body weighed too much.

  ‘Blom? Come on, Blom.’

  I must have stood on that chair for fifteen minutes. Eventually I realised that Gregory wasn’t about to break the door down. At first I was angry to have been disturbed in this way, for no good reason. Then I thought that perhaps it had been good practice – a useful false alarm. In the end, though, I just felt sorry for him. I almost stepped down off the chair and unlocked the door. But how could I have explained the delay? His blows grew weaker, less impassioned. I heard him murmuring outside, like something dying. I was astonished he’d kept it up for so long. Is persistence a sign of wisdom or stupidity? Normally I would have said, Well, it depends. But we were dealing with Gregory. Wisdom wasn’t even part of the equation.

  Sometime later I watched him from the window as he walked off up the street, his shoulders hunched inside his donkey jacket, his scalp showing through the usual thinning mist of hair. Yes, I felt sorry for him – but what could I do?

  During that same week I noticed a dramatic alteration in my vision. I was watching the door one night when a kind of whiteness flashed in front of me. I didn’t think of TV interference, not right away, but later I realised that that was exactly what it had been like. There’d been a buzzing, too, loud at first, then fading to nothing. And suddenly a woman was standing in front of me. She was holding a packet of soap powder. And she was smiling, as though she knew me.

  My first instinct was to climb on to the chair. But even as I did so, I realised it was too late. The woman was already inside the apartment. I looked down at the woman. Her smile didn’t seem to be affected by the sight of me standing on the chair. She didn’t seem to find it peculiar, or even funny (she didn’t make any jokes about mice, for instance). I was about to ask her who she was and what she was doing in Loots’ living-room and, more to the point, how she’d got in, for Christ’s sake, when I noticed that it wasn’t his living-room that she was standing in. It wasn’t a living-room at all, in fact. It was a kitchen. And not his kitchen either. Slowly I lowered myself back down to the floor.

  The woman showed me a soiled T-shirt. She seemed downcast, dismayed. I’d no idea why she was showing it to me. It wasn’t mine. And it didn’t look as if it belonged to anyone I knew either. I could hear her talking about stains. I heard the words grass and blood. I watched her put the T-shirt into a washin
g-machine and add some powder from the packet she’d been holding. When she took the T-shirt out again, only seconds later, it was clean and white. She held it up for me to see. Her plump cheeks shone with happiness. It occurred to me that I was watching TV, even though the TV wasn’t on. I was watching TV inside my head.

  I tried to stay calm, establish what was happening. It was a commercial channel, but not one I recognised. When the commercials were over, I was returned to a film which had something to do with police corruption. It had all the usual car chases and shoot-outs and, every twenty minutes, there were more commercials: cars, beer, holidays – and soap powder, of course. I saw the woman with the T-shirt so many times that night that I knew almost every second of the thirty seconds it took her to find happiness.

  When Loots came home, he found me pacing up and down in a state of disturbed excitability. The skylight was still open, and the chair was facing the door. The woman was about to take the clean white T-shirt out of the washing-machine again.

  ‘What is it, Martin?’ Loots said. ‘What’s going on?’

  But I couldn’t find an answer for him. I just stood at the window, staring out.

  ‘Is it dark, Loots?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s still dark.’

  I stared out of the window, but I couldn’t see the chimney-pots in their uneven clusters, or the slanting, tiled rooftops greasy with rain, or the pale, dome-shaped glow of the city sky beyond. I couldn’t see them, even though I knew they were there. All I could see was a beach of pure white sand and a girl in a blue bikini.

  So it was true. Some kind of transposition had taken place. It wasn’t vision that I was getting, not any more. It was television.

  What I was beginning to believe was that the eye clinic was affiliated to some government agency – one of those secret research establishments, rows of long, low buildings protected by attack dogs and electric fences. Visser worked both for the clinic and for the agency, though in what precise capacity I couldn’t be sure. There was something a bit too smooth about him, a bit too seamless – I’d always thought so. This new theory of mine explained the misgivings I’d had about him, misgivings I’d never been able to justify in rational terms.