Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘So if they didn’t actually allow you to throw knives at the circus,’ I said, ‘what were you doing there?’ I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking beer, while Loots fried some chicken breasts.

‘It was just a labouring job,’ he said.

He had to pitch tents, set up rows of seating, clean out cages. It was manual work, hard and tedious; if it hadn’t been for The Great Miguel, he wouldn’t have lasted.

‘The Great Miguel?’ I said.

The Great Miguel was the circus knife-thrower, Loots told me. For his performance he wore a red-and-white-striped blanket, a straw sombrero and a pair of knee-high boots with spurs. He whirled around the ring, flashing his eyes and shouting words like ‘Caramba!’. Cleo, his assistant, appeared behind him, striking defiant poses against a painted backdrop of cows’ skulls and cactuses. She wore a tasselled leather bikini, which was very popular with the crowds. She wore huge false eyelashes, too. And then came the moment when The Great Miguel closed in on her, eyes still flashing, and surrounded her with knives, machetes, even tomahawks. Cleo was The Great Miguel’s second wife and it was testament to The Great Love she felt for him that she had asked to act as his assistant. He’d killed his previous wife, a knife severing the artery beneath her arm. The blood had drenched a party of children from the local school. She was dead in four minutes.

Loots had heard this story late one night as he sat in a roadside restaurant with The Great Miguel. They were drinking schnapps together, just the two of them. The Great Miguel talked a lot about superstition that night. He talked about the third knife, which was the one that had killed Agnes, his first wife. He would never throw a third knife again, he said. He didn’t trust the number three any more. He would never take a room on the third floor of a hotel, for instance. If he was driving a car, he always went straight from second gear into fourth. The Holy Trinity was something he couldn’t even begin to contemplate. At last Loots understood why The Great Miguel always threw his first two knives, but dropped the third, point down, into the sawdust at his feet, before continuing. He’d always assumed it was showmanship. Now he realised that there was tragedy in that dropped knife, and that it wasn’t just fear either, but an act of remembrance, a kind of homage.

That same night The Great Miguel talked to Loots of passing on his craft. He drank too much, he said; his control was going. He held his right hand level in the air and showed Loots how the fingers trembled. ‘No good,’ he said. ‘No damn good.’ He drained the bottle that was in front of him and threw it past Loots’ shoulder. Loots couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. There was a huge plate-glass window behind him; he’d noticed it on the way in. He braced himself for the explosion, glass smashing glass. But, strangely, there was only silence. He turned round. The window was there, but someone had opened it. It was three or four seconds before he heard the bottle land, a faint sound on the road somewhere below.

Ordering another bottle, The Great Miguel went into a kind of rhapsody. He told Loots that he wanted to teach him the rhythm of the knife. The movement of a knife across the air was like a piece of music. That was what he said. You felt a bad knife the moment it left your hand. It had no rhythm to it. It didn’t sing. You should almost be able to score the air the knife passed through. Loots listened, fascinated. His only worry was, The Great Miguel was drunk; by morning he would have forgotten all his promises. But he didn’t. Loots was still paid to pitch tents and clean cages. Whenever he had free time, though, he watched The Great Miguel practising and studied his technique.

Loots paused for a moment, then he sighed. ‘It was Cleo who spoiled it all.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘What happened?’

‘I’d been with the circus about a year,’ he said.

Then, early one morning, he was woken by a loud thud close to his head. Another thud. Then a gap. Then another. At first, still half-asleep, he thought somebody was knocking on his door. ‘Who is it?’ he called out. There was no reply, but the thuds kept coming. One after the other, at two-second intervals, against the side wall of his caravan. He remembered the gap after the second thud and thought: The Great Miguel. The Great Miguel was throwing knives at his caravan at six o’clock in the morning. But why? Several times he called out The Great Miguel’s name — which, actually, was Erik — but still nobody answered.

At last he climbed out of bed and opened the door. He was just in time to see his mentor trudge away through the early morning mist, stoop-shouldered, still dressed in his striped blanket and his knee-high boots from the night before. Frowning, Loots walked round to the side of his caravan. There were thirty-six knives in all, not counting the one that stood upright in the ground, and between them they spelt a single word:

It turned out that Cleo had become jealous of the attention The Great Miguel was lavishing on him. She’d told her husband that Loots had stolen money from their caravan. Some jewellery, too.

‘So they fired you.’

‘Yeah.’ Loots nodded gloomily.

‘But there wasn’t any proof, was there?’

‘There didn’t need to be. I was just some kid they’d taken on to put up tents. He was The Great Miguel.’

‘Erik,’ I said, and gave Loots a wry smile.

Loots was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not a thief, you know.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know that.’

Later, when we’d moved into the living-room and we were drinking coffee, I thought about The Great Miguel and how his story paralleled my own. There are some things that happen and then everything that happens afterwards is different. I wasn’t thinking of forks in the road, small deviations. I was thinking of sudden change, extreme and violent. The third knife. A bullet fired from an unknown gun. I began to tell Loots about it, though it was difficult. I kept starting sentences I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t mention what kind of vision I had, and yet my story seemed empty without it, pointless and depressing; I didn’t see how he could possibly be interested. I dredged up a few old anecdotes — Smulders talking in his sleep, Nurse Janssen’s rubber balls — but even then I had to be careful. I wanted him to laugh, not feel pity for me.

Towards five in the morning I told him I ought to be going. He insisted on running me back to the hotel. I followed him down the narrow stairs and out on to the street. There was no sunrise, only a low sky and a drizzle falling; I pulled my jacket collar up and walked quickly to the car. Since the insertion of the plate, I no longer liked the idea of rain on my head. Maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t feel it when it landed. Maybe I was afraid I’d rust.

‘Are you all right to drive?’ I asked Loots. I didn’t want him losing his licence on my account.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘You think it would be better if you drove?’ Laughing, he pulled out into the traffic. The first set of lights we reached, he turned to me. ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘How did it go the other night?’

‘How did what go?’

‘With that girl. You know. The one from the wedding.’

‘Oh yeah.’ I smiled. ‘She didn’t turn up.’

‘Really? I’m sorry.’

I didn’t say anything. I was still smiling, though.

‘You don’t seem too upset,’ Loots said.

‘No, I’m not.’

Loots was staring at me. I could feel it, even without looking. Somebody behind us began to pound on their horn.

‘Loots,’ I said, ‘I think the lights have changed.’