Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

‘That’s disgusting,’ she says. ‘ Tenting …’ (She’s disgusted by my vocabulary , note, yet not even remotely alarmed by Blaine’s visceral exhibitionism.)

‘I know.’

‘My God,’ she marvels, ‘and it’s the same piece of cotton…’

‘You think so?’

She frowns.

‘Because for the trick to work ,’ I explain, ‘I imagine he implanted a piece of twine into his chest earlier- maybe under his actual flesh, or under a flap of false skin. Then he approaches the kid and pretends to pull a strand of cotton off his collar- but he probably already has the cotton in his hand…maybe it’s normal cotton, or even cotton that dissolves in saliva- and he eats it, then lifts up his shirt. The two events are entirely unrelated…’

It takes her a while to digest this information.

‘So it’s your job ,’ I say, ‘to smell things?’

She nods (still frowning over all the other stuff).

‘At the hospital?’

She blinks. ‘The hospital?’

‘Isn’t that where you work?’

She shakes her head, almost chuckling at the notion. ‘John Lewis,’ she says, ‘the department store. Years ago, I was a sniffer there.’

‘A sniffer?’

‘But now I mostly do consultation work. I’m actually a qualified perfumier.’

I stare at her nose. She stares at my nose.

‘He was an actor,’ I say, ‘to start off with.’

‘Who?’

‘Blaine.’

She stops staring at my nose.

‘Really? An actor ?’

(I can tell she doesn’t particularly like this idea.)

‘A child actor. Adverts. Soaps…’

‘An actor,’ she murmurs, glancing up at the box. ‘So you think he’s acting in there?’

I shrug.

‘An actor,’ she says again, then frowns.

‘A sniffer ,’ I say.

She flaps her hand, irritably.

‘But that’s interesting.’

‘No. It’s boring,’ she says.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m hypersensitive to stuff. Strong scents. Tastes. Dust. Pollen. I get headaches.’

‘Migraines.’

Silence .

‘I’d like to smell him though,’ she says, tipping her head towards the magician.

‘You would?’

‘Yeah. I could tell his people things. I could help. I can sense minor physical imbalances. Gauge certain underlying stresses…’

‘Like a horse. Horses smell fear.’

She smiles. ‘ Exactly like that.’

She turns and appraises me closely for a second. ‘You wear Odeur 53,’ she says, ‘Comme des Garçons. It’s very sweet. Very feminine. I noticed it the first time you walked past. They marketed it as a scent with a gap in the middle of the aroma…’ She grins. ‘Like an anti- scent. It was very clever. I mean complete bullshit…’

She pauses. ‘But you fell for it, eh ?’

Before I can respond she lifts up her left leg. ‘D’you like my shoes?’

She rotates her foot.

I’m still lagging behind a little.

‘Uh, no …’ I slowly shake my head. ‘I really don’t .’

‘Good. Come home with me,’ she says, and stands up.

But I’ve got the flu .

Her shoes are awful .

And I wanked at eleven…

That’s only a couple of hours ago.

Well, okay. Four .

I am awoken — at ten — by Solomon, who takes the unusual step of journeying downstairs to pay me a brief visit; not out of any concern for my health — it soon transpires — but because Bud (the dog) has devoured the post again.

He holds out a tragic-looking copy of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man/ The Truce , and a slightly less well-masticated copy of David Blaine, Mysterious Stranger .

‘I have an earlier edition of this upstairs,’ he says, pointing at the Levi, ‘if you’d only bothered to look.’

Then he grimaces and adds, ‘You have tufts of tissue everywhere .’

I paw at my face, blearily.

‘ Everywhere .’

I paw again.

‘Have you read it, then?’ I ask (as I paw).

‘Well that’s generally what books are for…’ he murmurs.

‘Is it good?’

Solomon ponders this question for a moment. ‘Is it good? One of the intellectual titans of the last century writes a legendary first-person account of his experiences of the Holocaust…Is it good …?’

He smiles brightly: ‘Yeah. It’s a romp .’

He tosses the two books on to my bed and then glances down at the abandoned Kafka. He kicks it, gently, with a leather-booted foot.

‘Let me get this straight…’ he murmurs, ‘I break up with Jalisa…’

‘ Shhh !’ I whisper, then peer suspiciously over my shoulder, then perform my (frankly, utterly hilarious) zipping mime. He stares at me, blankly.

‘I break up with Jalisa ,’ he repeats, and to help me get over the whole thing you immediately resolve to transform yourself into her slavering, half-witted, intellectual disciple .’

‘The Kafka was great,’ I shrug, ‘for your information she was right about the Kafka.’

‘Well, bully for her.’

His mouth tightens, jealously.

‘It’s given me a whole new perspective on this stuff,’ I say airily. ‘In fact I’ve been making some enquiries of my own and was wondering if you might give me her phone number…’

‘No way on God’s Earth,’ he snaps.

‘Oh come on .’

‘You actually went out last night?’ he asks, pointing at my sweater (which I didn’t bother pulling off before I fell into bed).

‘For a couple of hours.’

(I’m sounding a little defensive, a little wheedly.)

‘Where?’

I don’t answer.

‘ Where ?’

(Who’s he think he is? My dad ?)

‘A walk . I was feverish.’

He stares at me, unblinking, and then…‘Oh my God ,’ he says, ‘that fucking magician ! You went to see Blaine , didn’t you?’ I shake my head.

‘Three in the morning ,’ he gurgles. ‘You’re half-dead with flu . Are you out of your mind ?’

‘I went to see Aphra ,’ I squeak.

‘What?’ Solomon reins himself in, quite commendably.

‘One of the guards told me she was down there most nights. And I couldn’t sleep. So I decided to go and take a quick look.’

‘And she was there?’

I nod.

‘Alone?’

I nod again. ‘Aphra, a couple of guards and a tramp. Three fifteen a.m.’

He takes a small step back, stretches out a well-muscled arm and leans against the chimney breast. ‘Then what?’

‘We talked.’

He slits his eyes. ‘You do fuck ?’

I ignore this.

‘We went back to her apartment…’

‘ Apartment ,’ he scoffs.

‘We went back to her flat and looked at her shoe collection,’ I say haughtily. ‘She collects second-hand shoes .’

‘Does she actually wear them?’

‘Yes.’

He wrinkles up his nose. ‘That’s disgusting.’

‘She’s a sniffer,’ I continue (suddenly rather revelling in the perplexing wonder that is Aphra). ‘She used to work at John Lewis, in the Returns Department. She told me how they hire people with sensitive noses to sniff the returns and check if they’ve been used or not.’

‘I’ve heard about that before,’ he says.

‘Bull shit you have.’

He shrugs.

‘So did you do fuck ?’ he asks again (I mean who could guess that this horn-ball had just broken up?).