Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

‘He was right ,’ she says. ‘Too much meat. Too much sitting down. That’s at the heart of it.’

‘And you’ve been sitting here how long?’ I flirt.

She clucks on her tongue, then glances up, then falls deep into her trance again.

‘D’you think he gets horny?’ I ask, a few minutes later, ‘just lying there all day.’

‘Of course he does…’

She frowns. ‘But then after a while everything gets imbued with it. The original urge just filters down into each movement. Each spasm. Each blink…’

‘How very Zen,’ I say, tartly.

‘The way the box rocks,’ she sighs ‘His breathing. The hunger .’ She falls quiet again, smiling.

‘You love watching him,’ I murmur thickly.

‘When he’s sleeping,’ she says, slowly nodding. ‘Yes I do. When it’s quiet…’

(Is that a subtle hint, perhaps?)

‘Are you a fan of his magic?’ I ask (already knowing the answer).

‘No.’ She shakes her head. ‘Not especially. And it might sound ridiculous, but I never really intend to come…I mean, sometimes I’m on my way somewhere else, and then…’ She shrugs.

‘You get distracted?’

‘You probably think it’s pathetic,’ she mutters, glancing over at me for a moment, then straight back up at Blaine (as if she’s driving the car of Blaine- has to keep her eyes on the road at all times), ‘but being here while he sleeps, before he wakes, as he wakes…’ She grimaces, ‘It just makes everything feel better. Feel whole again. And often- if I concentrate really hard-I can hang on to this feeling for the rest of the day-this quiet, this hopefulness. I can cook and wash and go into work…’

She smiles. ‘Remember Christmas time, when you’re a kid, and the presents are all laid out under the tree? Nothing opened yet? Just pure anticipation?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s like that.’

Okay . I nod.

‘And it’s the tiniest things…’ she continues (warming to her subject now), ‘the way he holds himself as he sleeps. I find such amazing comfort in that. And in all the insignificant stuff. All the details.’

I gaze up at the magician myself, hunting for the minutiae. I see a dark blob in a bag. The lights. The glass.

‘Either he’s flat on his back…’ she says, observing my interest, and (much to my delight) responding, ‘and I imagine him just gazing up at the sky, at the stars, at the vapour trails at dawn, or having these astonishing dreams . Oh my God . The hallucinations…Can you imagine how wild they must be by now?’

She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Or else he curls up, on his side, like a boy. Like a little kid. And there’s something so fragile about him. So lonely…’ Her voice is softer, almost tender.

‘Then as he actually wakes ,’ she continues, her eyes sparkling now, with a real sense of drama, ‘he moves his hand. Just this tiny bit. And then he adjusts his head on his pillow. And then he rubs his fingers through his hair — you’ll have noticed his hair is getting longer, and curlier…’

(Oh will I?)

‘And then he has a little scratch. Of his beard. A real root around…I mean it’s nothing significant, just trivial details. Things you wouldn’t notice if he was right there in bed with you. You wouldn’t see them then. Or you might even find them irritating…’

She ruminates on this point for a while. ‘Or maybe if you knew him, they’d just be a part of a picture which was already drawn —if you know what I mean…’

She glances over at me. A nod appears necessary, so I nod, accordingly.

‘But there’s so much in so little here…,’ she says, her eyes sliding back again. ‘When he wakes, for example, he wakes very quickly. He has a lovely no-nonsense approach to rising. He’s like, yup , I’m awake. Let’s sit up…And then he sits up…’

Her voice is full of wonder: ‘And his eyes are so innocent . Like he’s washed clean . And then almost straight away he sees us watching him and he feels a moment’s anxiety — you can sense it, this tiny tremor —then he responds. He lifts his hand. Very weakly. Automatically. The hands are beautiful. I love to see his hands — I know it’s kind of corny — but his hands say everything about him. They’re the way he speaks . They’re his tongue …’

She inspects her own hands for a moment. ‘After two seconds, maybe three, he switches off. He picks up his pen and his notebook, looks down, frowns. And it’s a lovely moment, somehow, that brief closing off. And really necessary . Because often when I see him in the day — when I’m wandering past on my way out shopping, or to the hospital — he’s so empty. Just open. Resigned. Everything’s simply flooding in. But at that moment, when he awakens, he’s entirely himself , and you get to see all this confusion and sweetness, this incredible unease …’

She smiles.

‘That’s why I come.’

I sneeze (I’ve been holding it back for a while, now, not wanting to ruin her moment or anything — I mean God forbid I should impair her charming description of his delicate hands with my barbaric, phlegm-racked expostulation).

‘Bless you,’ she says.

‘So you never saw him do a trick?’ I ask.

‘Nope.’

‘That’s weird.’

She shrugs.

‘He cut off his ear …’ I say, wiping my nose, ‘at the press conference.’

‘Did he?’

She’s barely even listening.

‘It was like he was going out of his way to kill his credibility,’ I bumble on. ‘And when he’s finally finished —all this grunting and groaning, all this false blood and gore — some guy in the press corps goes, “What about the other one?”

‘I mean to pull a stunt like that . And right then . These are hardened professionals. These are probably the same people who laughed at David Copperfield for flying around on wires, pretending like he was Peter fucking Pan.’

She frowns. ‘David who ?’

Oh dear.

‘In one of Blaine’s films,’ I say, suddenly determined (more than anything) to make her interested, ‘there’s this little kid, just walking along a New York street with his mother, and Blaine goes up to the kid and says, “Hold on a minute…” and reaches out and pulls a strand of cotton from the collar of his sweater.’

I inspect the collar of her sweater and pull off a stray hair.

‘Why’d he do that?’ she asks (glancing down, worriedly, at her own shoulder). I don’t answer.

‘So Blaine shows the kid this strand of cotton,’ I continue, ‘and then puts it into his mouth…’

‘Into the boy’s mouth?’

‘His own mouth. He chews on it for a while — really concentrating — then he swallows, then he opens his mouth and sticks out his tongue to show the kid that the piece of cotton’s not in his mouth any more…’

I stick out my own tongue, to demonstrate. She winces. I guess it might be a little furry. (But so far so good.)

‘Then he waits for a while. Looks a little confused — like he’s not entirely in control of what’s happening — then he winces, lifts up his shirt and starts inspecting his chest.’

I lift up my own shirt.

‘Why?’ she asks, staring at my belly.

‘That’s the trick ,’ I say (pulling it in slightly).

‘Oh.’

‘He inspects his chest with his fingers for a while, and then he suddenly locates something. Like an imperfection of some kind, on the skin. Right in the middle. And he starts to pick at it, and to pull. And he pulls, and he pulls…And suddenly you can see that he’s pulling a strand of cotton, through his skin. Actually through his skin. There’s a close-up and everything. The skin is actually tenting under the pressure of his fingers and the cotton…’