Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

Then get up, get dressed, go out and buy an i-Pod.

This is serious .

It takes me a whole ten days to transfer the most vital constituents of my record and CD collections on to this marvellous piece of ‘cutting edge’ technology.

I mean to have it all , right there, at your fingertips, whenever you want it.

Hoo-wee .

On the tenth day, Bly drops by.

‘It’s been two weeks,’ she says, holding her bag nervously in both hands as she stands behind the kitchen table and stares at the dogs (who are sitting in a neat row on the other side, and staring straight back at her).

My level, he said. My level.

‘In dog psychology,’ I tell her, ‘the stare is generally associated with aggressive behaviour. Try and blink a little.’

She stops staring.

‘There’s subterranean rumblings at the office,’ she says, gazing up at the ceiling (like Damon Albarn at the peak of his Britpop mania), ‘about giving you the old heave-ho.’

‘But I’ve had the flu ,’ I whine.

‘I know. That’s what I said. But the flu isn’t really in vogue right now — for the flu to work, conceptually, everyone needs to be catching it — and two weeks is… well …two weeks .’

She pulls out a chair.

‘Make yourself at home,’ I say.

‘Thanks.’

She sits down. She tucks a tuft of flaming hair behind a small, white ear. She clears her throat. ‘So…’ she says, then pauses, worriedly. ‘Why on earth are you looking at me like that?’

‘You’re actually quite a show-stopper,’ I murmur (Well, underneath all that defensive blubber).

She blushes, ‘Don’t be stupid ’, and starts messing around with the pepper dispenser.

‘Pretty face ,’ I qualify.

Her eyes tighten. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘That you’ve got a pretty face, I guess.’

‘You think I’m overweight? Is that it?’

‘No. I just think you’ve got a pretty face .’

(Jesus Christ. What’s it take to make a compliment work in this town?)

She rolls her eyes.

‘But how heavy are you?’

‘Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘I’m a size fourteen. That’s an average size.’

‘Yeah. Of course . In the West.’

Her brows shoot up (Nice brows. Personality-ful. Brows like Julianne Moore’s after a month in the wilderness sans tweezers).

‘What d’you mean, “In the West ?”’

‘I mean that it wouldn’t be your “average” size in, say, Algeria.’

‘In Algeria my size would be an irrelevance,’ she snipes, ‘because I’d be dressed head-to-toe in bloody purdah.’

I choose not to argue this point with her, but merely smile, sympathetically.

‘You’re actually quite skinny ,’ she snaps, ‘for a man.’

Then she pauses. ‘ And short.’

Then she pauses again. ‘And your hair …’

But she runs out of steam at this point.

(‘High styled’, springs to mind, ‘beautifully coiffured’, perhaps, ‘brave’, even.)

‘Five foot nine is average,’ I murmur.

She shrugs.

‘Why the shrug?’

‘In this country, maybe, but in — say— Ethiopia …’

She sighs. ‘It’s all relative, I guess.’

‘Well, this is nice,’ I mutter.

Silence .

‘Blaine’s actually looking a whole lot thinner now,’ she observes.

I merely grimace.

‘Why the face?’ she asks.

‘This is my face,’ I say (a delicate combination of haughty and apologetic).

‘So after weeks of analysing him into the damn ground,’ she muses, ‘suddenly Blaine is persona non grata? ’

I wave my hand, airily. ‘It’s a crazy old life, eh? ’

‘What?’ she snorts. ‘Skiving off work? Downloading your record collection on to an i-Pod?’

I shrug.

‘That’s not being busy ,’ she sneers. ‘That’s just pointless duplication .’

I shrug again (Is this girl entirely oblivious to all basic forms of body language?).

‘It’s just reformatting ,’ she gradually builds up speed (Yup. Now we’re for it), ‘I mean how could Capitalism possibly survive without inventing a hundred different ways of doing the exact same thing?’

‘Interesting point,’ I demur.

‘It’s like life is a can of Coke ,’ she points at an empty can on the table, ‘and instead of just drinking it we spend all this time and this effort deciding whether to have it in a glass or sip it through a straw .’

I nod.

‘But it’s the liquid that matters, Adie, not how you consume it.’

‘Straight from the can, in my case,’ I aver (angling — unashamedly — after the purist vote).

‘I think you just missed my point,’ she mutters.

‘Well, if there isn’t a can ,’ I say, ‘how the heck do you expect to hold all the contents in?’

‘I swear to God,’ she says (effortlessly sidestepping my fine, philosophical barb), ‘that you’ve only lost interest in Blaine lately because you’re scared he’s a gentile, and that’ll mean all your exciting little conspiracy theories won’t actually add up.’

‘ Terrified ,’ I scoff.

She smirks at me.

‘I was never that interested anyway,’ I obstinately persist, ‘just momentarily diverted .’

‘But does it really matter what Blaine’s background is?’ she battles on. ‘Surely the important thing is what he chooses — consciously or otherwise — to “represent”, and how people respond to it?’

‘Of course what you are matters,’ I scowl: ‘You have to be legitimate at some level. Otherwise it’s all just bullshit. You have to walk the walk to talk the talk. Everybody knows that.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ she murmurs. ‘You were offended by Blaine’s use of Christian iconography, to begin with. Then you found out that he was a Jew, and because people were throwing eggs at him, that was just dandy…’ She pauses, frowning. ‘Although in my book, if he is a Jew, then using the Christian stuff in such an unapologetically self-aggrandising way strikes me as perhaps a little dodgy…’

‘Oh Great ,’ I sneer. ‘ Now you get all sniffy about it. But when I was getting upset about the Christian angle, I was apparently just “overreacting”…’

She flaps her hand at this (like my words are just gnats). ‘You’re too literal,’ she says, ‘and that’s your problem. This is Art. It’s not about the person so much as the statement they’re making. It doesn’t really matter what his racial origins are…’

‘Try telling that to the people throwing eggs at him,’ I squeak.

‘That’s exactly my point,’ she jumps in, cackling exuberantly.

It is?

It is ?

I frown, confused.

‘The way I’m seeing it, there are two things that Blaine is obsessed by,’ she holds up a couple of fingers, ‘suffering and mystery . Fortunately (for him) all religions, all nationalities, all cultures can relate to those things in some way or other. His work has a universal application. It’s not about any particular denomination , but about the trials of humanity.’ ( Work ? Who does she think he is? Picasso ?)

I say nothing.

‘You’re just sulking,’ she says. ‘You were hoping to take the moral high ground over this whole Jew farrago, but the water’s suddenly risen and now you’ve found yourself stranded on some rocky little promontory, feeling like a complete dick . But the truth is, you can swim. You’re a good swimmer. So why not just jump in ?’