Rupert Thomson - The Insult

Towards the end of my first week, on the Saturday, I asked for fried sweet cabbage with my steak (onion rings were off). A boxing match was on TV that night. Two heavyweights. Fff. Fff, fff. Blat. Fff. Blat, blat. BLAT. Over the din of people cheering I heard the legs of the chair opposite me scrape on the floor.

‘Mind if I sit down?’

I looked up slowly from my plate. It was a man in a donkey jacket, maybe fifty-five years old. His bald head had the high shine of a dance-floor. What was left of his hair floated above it like dry ice.

‘You live in the hotel, don’t you.’

I put down my knife and fork and stared at him.

‘The Kosminsky,’ he said. ‘Eighth floor.’

I was still staring at him. ‘You following me or something?’

‘Following you?’ He paused. ‘No. I live across the hall. Room eight-thirteen.’

‘I haven’t noticed you.’

He laughed. Or coughed. I couldn’t tell which.

‘The name’s Gregory,’ he said.

I stared at him for a moment longer, then reached across the table with my hand.

‘Martin,’ I said. ‘Martin Blom.’

He took my hand in his and gripped it. His palms were dry, almost shiny, and one of his fingers was missing.

‘You probably noticed the finger,’ Gregory said. ‘I lost it working on the trawlers.’

He told me how. Twenty years ago now, maybe more. Up in the Arctic, fishing for cod. His hand got caught in a rope as it whipped around a winch. The finger was too chewed up to sew back on. Funny thing was, he didn’t remember feeling any pain. In fact, he’d never been calmer in his life. He just stood there, asked someone for a cigarette. Smoked it while they tied the tourniquet. After that they called him Smoke. People still called him Smoke today. Most of them didn’t know the reason, though.

‘What about you?’ Gregory said. ‘You always been blind?’

I hadn’t talked to anyone for days — not across a table, anyway, not like this. There was a kind of warmth about it that made whoever you were talking to irrelevant. It occurred to me that I was about to tell my story for the first time. It was a strange feeling, releasing it.

‘It happened in February,’ I said. ‘I was shot by someone. In the head.’

‘Shot in the head? Jesus Christ!’

‘I was coming home from work. Normal day. Stopped at a supermarket to pick up some groceries. Walked back to my car. All of a sudden — BAM!’ I brought my hand down on the table. It caught the lip of a spoon and sent it somersaulting over Gregory’s shoulder. He didn’t even notice.

‘Jesus Christ —’ he said again.

‘Yeah, well. That’s how it happened.’ I decided not to mention the tomatoes; I didn’t think he’d understand. Instead, I found myself making a confession. ‘Sometimes it’s scary. Not the blindness so much. More the memory. You know, of being shot. So sudden like that. Out of nowhere …’ I paused. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t much care for car-parks any more.’

‘I bet you don’t. Did they find out who did it?’

I shook my head. ‘Nobody saw anything. Even I didn’t see anything.’

It was such a relief to tell the story out loud, just those few disjointed sentences, to a complete stranger, that I did something I never normally do: I ordered dessert — a slice of apple strudel, with cream.

‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s still out there somewhere …’

Later, as I walked the red-light streets of the 14th district, I thought of how we’d traded, Gregory and I: his finger for a piece of my skull. That was what people did. They found something they had in common — an injury was always good; so was a disaster — then they traded. I suddenly saw my dream in a new light, not as fear but nostalgia. Returning to myself as I used to be, if only for a few moments. Revisiting a version of myself that no longer existed. The complete me.

Someone was pulling on my sleeve.

‘Hey, blind man. I’m fucking beautiful and you can have me for twenty-five.’

I looked at her. ‘You’re not beautiful.’

The whore let go of me. ‘What the fuck do you care?’

My life was simple, some might say monotonous. Most days I got up at four-thirty in the afternoon. Outside, dusk would be coming down. If I opened my window I could watch the street-lights fizz, then flicker on. People spilled from their office buildings, out into the orange gloom, all moving at the same speed, but in different directions, like cells under a microscope. At six o’clock I left my room. I walked along the west bank of the river, passing the rowing club, closed for the winter, and the outdoor swimming-pool, its blue floor strewn with leaves. Or else I followed the path that led through the park and round the artificial lake. Or sometimes I visited the zoo. In the street behind the hotel there was a café which was famous for the rudeness of its waiters. It was here that I ate my breakfast. They soon became accustomed to me, sitting at a table in the corner with my glass of café au lait and my slightly stale brioche. After breakfast I returned to the hotel. If it was Victor’s shift, I’d stop for a chat. He had asked me about myself one night when I came in. I’d told him the story. Naturally, he wanted to know what it was like to be shot, right down to the last detail. I didn’t mind his ghoulish enthusiasm. At least it was honest. If Arnold was on reception, however — morbid, chain-smoking Arnold — I’d walk straight past the desk; Arnold wasn’t a man you could talk to easily. Back in my room I switched the TV on and pulled up a chair. For the next two hours I watched whatever they were showing: soap-operas, news programmes, dramas — anything. I’d been astonished when I realised I could actually watch TV. Since I’d established that my vision was linked to darkness, and since the light emitted by a TV screen is so intense, I’d automatically assumed that watching it would be impossible. But it was one of those vagaries of my condition — another mystery or miracle — that I could see the picture as clearly as I could see Victor’s fingernails or Gregory’s bald head.

Lunch at Leon’s was the high point of my day. I always looked forward to my steak and onions, the bustle and clatter of the kitchen, the conversations I could listen to. I liked the plastic hoop ear-rings the cashier wore; I liked the way the cook’s face hung in the steam above some boiling pot or pan. And it was Leon’s that had provided me with my first real acquaintance. Gregory worked nights as a security guard at a bank, and he often dropped in halfway through his shift for a cup of coffee and a pastry. During my second week in the city, I ran into him again.

‘I thought I’d find you here.’ Gregory sat down at my table, without asking this time, and slumped over the Formica.

I could see that, before too long, I’d have to find somewhere else to eat. We were both lonely men, Gregory and I; the difference was, he hadn’t chosen it. Still, by hearing me out the other night, he’d done me a favour (even if he wasn’t aware of it), and that made me generous.

‘Smoke,’ I said, ‘how’s things?’

A grin split his face wide open. All you had to do was use his stupid name and he’d be happy.

For a while we talked generally, about the present — his job, his daughter’s wedding, sport — then he narrowed it down, went back in time. He began to tell me about the factory he worked in for twenty years. He used to pack fish. This didn’t surprise me. The first time I met him I thought I could smell fish, and now I realised that I hadn’t been mistaken. It was as if the smell of cod had been preserved at some deep level of his skin, layers down, the way a tree’s rings can record a bolt of lightning or a flood.