Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘Feel this,’ Gregory said. ‘Feel my hand.’

I reached out and felt it. I remembered it from the week before. It was smooth and shiny, like touching fibre glass. I told him so.

‘That’s twenty years of packing fish, that is.’

His hands were ruined. Where I had lines, he had cracks. And the cracks, he told me, often opened up and bled. There was nothing he could do about it. It was the price you paid, working in those factories. Before that, he’d sailed on trawlers, up into Arctic waters. ‘But I already told you that …’

I nodded patiently. I was thinking about getting away, back to my room. I was thinking about turning on the TV. Maybe I’d drink a schnapps or two. Then, later, a walk through the red-light streets, peep-show neon silvering the puddles …

‘You’re a good fellow, Blom,’ he said, and he stared at me, all watery-eyed and serious.

At first I wasn’t sure why he had that look on his face. Then I realised what it was, and almost choked on my steak. The poor fool felt sorry for me!

‘You’re new to the city,’ he said, ‘aren’t you.’

‘I got here about a week ago.’

‘You know anyone?’

‘Only you.’ I grinned. ‘Sounds like a song, doesn’t it.’

‘You know, you should get out,’ he said, ‘meet some people.’ His voice brightened suddenly. His daughter’s wedding, he’d mentioned it already, it was in a few days’ time. Maybe I should come along.

‘That’s very kind of you, Gregory, but —’

‘Loots is coming.’

‘Who?’

‘Albert Loots. He’s a friend of mine.’ Gregory leaned forwards. ‘He used to work in a circus. Works in a factory now. Cakes and biscuits.’ Gregory sighed, but it was a sigh of deep satisfaction. He liked it when lives described a curve, as both ours did. He liked to have some kind of proof that fortune’s wheel had turned. ‘I see him on his bicycle sometimes. Usually it’s when I’m going home, six or seven in the morning —’ Gregory yawned. ‘Wish I could hit the hay. Ah well, no rest for the wicked.’ He heaved himself to his feet, looked down at me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you think you’ll come?’

‘I’ll try.’

I watched him leave with dread rising in me like a river whose history it is to burst its banks. Gregory’s daughter’s wedding. It was bound to be one of those interminable suburban functions. There’d be a band — some bunch of tone-deaf alcoholics playing folk tunes. There’d be dancing, which I’d always thought of as a kind of illness, like Parkinson’s disease, or epilepsy (someone call an ambulance, for Christ’s sake). There’d be displays of sentiment and bonhomie on every side. I was going to have to get out of it — but how? I walked through the 14th district for most of that night, trying to think up excuses.

Towards dawn I was on my way back to the Kosminsky when I saw a man riding a bicycle down the middle of a wide, deserted street. It was still very early, the trees loud with birds, light slowly beginning to ease into the sky. Because he was just about the only thing moving, I kept my eyes on him. He was some distance away, though; I couldn’t see his face.

As I watched, the man swung himself up into the air. Suddenly he was upside-down, one hand on the handlebars, the other on the saddle. It was so deft, so effortless, that he appeared weightless, immune to the laws of gravity. And the bicycle was still travelling down the middle of the street; if you’d traced its progress with a piece of chalk, if you’d drawn a line on the tarmac, I doubt there would have been even a kink in it. The man wore tight-fitting, pale-yellow trousers and a glittering blue jersey with stars on it. It seemed to me that he was juggling what looked like oranges with his feet. Then, just before he disappeared from view, he dropped back down into the saddle, his feet synchronising with the pedals, the oranges vanishing, one by one, into his pockets. I found myself applauding.

‘What happened?’ asked a passer-by.

‘It’s over now,’ I said. ‘You missed it.’

As I prepared for bed I remembered something Gregory had told me. Used to be in a circus. Sometimes I see him on his bicycle. Surely it had to be the same man. That friend of his, the one he’d invited to his daughter’s wedding. What was his name? Teats? Groot? Something like that. I felt my anxieties lift, my excuses fall away. I’d spent half the night in torment — and now? I realised I was actually looking forward to the event. All it had taken was a man on a bicycle and half a dozen oranges. I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror. I watched my mouth open wide, I saw my teeth. I was laughing.

That same week I noticed a disturbing phenomenon. It was after returning from Leon’s one night. I pressed the call button outside the lift. Nothing happened. I must have waited five or ten minutes, first pressing the button, then leaning on it, but the lift never came. In the end I took the stairs.

I’d just reached the second floor when I saw something that brought me to a sudden standstill. Two people, having sex. They were lying on the carpet, half in and half out of the lift. One of the woman’s arms trailed across the corridor, as if she was practising her backstroke, as if the whole thing was taking place in water and she was trying to swim away from it. Every now and then, the lift doors closed on her — then opened again. There were red marks where the stainless steel had bitten into her hips. It was like seeing one form of life caught in the jaws of another. This didn’t seem to detract from her pleasure, though; in fact, it could well have been contributing. I smiled, murmured an apology and, stepping carefully over her outstretched arm, continued up the next flight of stairs. They didn’t seem to notice me at all.

I might not have thought any more about it — after all, they were probably just business people: a company director and his secretary — but then, two days later, I saw another couple. They were sideways-on to me, at the far end of the corridor. The woman lay on her back, though her shoulders were taking most of the weight. She was folded almost double, her heels tucked into the old-fashioned radiator that stood under the window. Blue light flashed on the stretched backs of her thighs as a tram rumbled past outside. The man, dark-haired and muscular, half-stood, half-sat above her, knees slightly bent. As he pushed downwards, into her, he happened to glance round. A gold medallion swung across his chest, one stroke of a pendulum, and came to rest. Did he see me standing there in the shadows by the stairs? And, if so, was he reassured by my dark glasses and my white stick?

That was Saturday. As chance would have it, during the next week, the lift was either in use or out of order (for reasons I was now beginning to understand); most nights I was forced to climb the eight floors to my room. On Monday I saw the woman I’d last seen trapped in the lift doors. This time she was bent over the small table that had the hotel telephone on it. She was naked and a man was standing behind her, wearing a tuxedo and a pair of black socks. I didn’t recognise him. The telephone was ringing underneath the woman. ‘Don’t you think someone ought to answer that?’ I said. They looked at me, but didn’t say anything. On Wednesday night, as I reached the second floor, I saw three girls in black leather sitting on the sofa. They were smoking. One of them wore a long metal ring that extended beyond her middle finger like a second, sharper nail. Halfway along the corridor I could see a short fat man on his hands and knees. He wore a black T-shirt, a black PVC mini-skirt and black high-heels. His legs were shaved. One of the girls stretched her thigh-length boot out as he crawled across the carpet towards her. He bent down and began to suck the toe. ‘You got a problem?’ one of the girls said suddenly (it was the girl with the ring). ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I hurried on up the stairs. On Thursday I decided not to stop on the second floor, no matter what I saw, but as it turned out it was a quiet night. There was a girl in white-lace underwear standing in the doorway of a room. A man in a suit was talking to her. He had his hands in his pockets. The two of them were deep in some private negotiation, though they fell silent as soon as they noticed me. The girl didn’t have the kind of face you’d associate with somebody who was almost naked; it was attentive, businesslike, as if she was in an office, or a bank. The man was probably a pimp, I thought, as I began to climb towards the third floor. At that moment he looked at me, over his shoulder. His face was entirely without expression.