Rupert Thomson - The Insult

I walked the streets in sub-zero temperatures. I felt I was part of something that was decaying. During the day there was the illusion of purpose — activity, movement, noise — but it was just the obscene bustle of maggots on a corpse. At night the truth revealed itself. The wind could be heard on the avenues and in the squares. The buildings with their blank façades. People sleeping in tram shelters, cardboard boxes, alleyways. People drunk and bleeding. I stood in front of a travel agent’s window. The posters looked surreal at four o’clock in the morning: sunshine, laughter, turquoise water — some lunatic’s hallucinations. But everybody fell for it.

Towards the end of that week I returned from Leon’s to find Victor taping a notice on to the lift.

‘It’s out of order,’ he said.

‘What? Again?’

‘They’re going to fix it tomorrow. Arnold said.’

‘They’re always fixing it. But it’s always broken.’

‘I know, I know. But what can I say? This isn’t the Metropole.’

I began to climb the stairs. When I reached the second floor I instinctively glanced in both directions. And there, in her crisp white uniform and her starched white hat, was Nurse Maria Janssen.

I stared at her in disbelief.

She began to walk towards me, smiling. Her eyes were looking into mine. Her hands reached out to me. I could almost hear her voice. Outside your window there are three beautiful trees …

But then, as she came nearer, I realised it wasn’t Maria Janssen at all. This woman was older. She must have been standing under the light. That was the only possible explanation. The light in the corridor had deceived me.

‘I saw you,’ the woman said. ‘The other night.’

Now she was closer she reminded me a little of Gregory’s ex-wife, Hedi: the peroxide hair, the drinker’s skin. Certainly she looked nothing like Maria.

‘You were lost,’ she was saying, ‘don’t you remember? I should have helped you, but I didn’t. I don’t know why …’

I could smell vermouth, I thought. Stale tobacco, too, and soiled underclothes. My stomach heaved. Why was the woman talking to me? Was she mad?

‘What’s wrong, dear?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

I turned away from her and suddenly I was falling. I saw the banister rotating past me like a stick flung to a dog. I ended up at the bottom of a flight of stairs. I wasn’t sure exactly how it had happened. I must’ve turned too quickly, lost my footing. I’d have to be more careful in future. Look where I was going.

‘Are you hurt?’

Oh God. The woman was still there, somewhere above me. She was wearing slippers that were like my mother’s — brown leather with a pattern of embossed gold flowers, and black fur trimming round the ankles.

‘I’m fine.’ My elbow hurt. My left leg as well. But it was only bruising.

‘Are you sure?’ She was peering down at me in that way I hated. ‘If you come to my room,’ she said, ‘I’ll bandage it for you.’

What? Bandage what? I wished I could bandage her. I’d start with her mouth. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘All I want is to be left alone. All right?’

‘Oh.’ She straightened up. ‘I was only trying —’

‘I said, leave me alone.’

‘But —’

Some people never get the message, do they?

‘Will you just PISS OFF!’

At last she shook her head of brittle hair and climbed back up the stairs. I watched her fat hips glumly oscillate. A few moments later I heard the click of a door closing further down the hall. I stood up shakily and leaned against the wall. That backside of hers, when she turned in the confined space of the stairs! It reminded me of a cat in a litter tray. What was she doing on the second floor? Some old whore, I supposed. Must have been pensioned off by the Kosminsky brothers. Given a cheap room in recognition of her years of faithful service.

Maybe I’d been wrong to shout at her. I couldn’t help it, though. I was angry with myself for having been so careless. For having panicked like that.

For having lost control.

Later that night, after bathing my injuries, I sat in front of the TV. At about three in the morning, the phone rang. There was only one person it could be. I picked up the receiver.

‘Martin?’ She sounded breathless, as though she’d been running.

‘Nina,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at work. I can’t talk.’ She wanted to meet me, but it had to be on neutral ground, somewhere public. Before I could ask her why, she said, ‘I was thinking of the city library. Tomorrow. Two in the afternoon.’

‘I never go out in the day. You know that.’

‘Just this once. For me.’

I wouldn’t be able to see her. And I’d have that blankness to contend with, blankness I usually slept through. But the last few days had been hard on me. Empty, too. If this was all she was prepared to offer me, I had no choice. It was a measure of my desperation.

‘Where in the library?’ I said.

She had it all worked out. ‘There’s a reading room on the first floor. Rare Books and Manuscripts. In there.’

The next day the streets were icy, and my left knee was stiff and swollen. I allowed an hour and a half for what would normally have been a twenty-minute walk. I was still late. I tapped my way up the library steps at two-fifteen and in through the revolving doors. Once there, I had to ask someone to guide me to the information desk.

‘Is it Braille you’re looking for?’ the information officer said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Rare Books.’

He escorted me across the foyer to the lift, then travelled with me to the first floor. He had trouble with his sinuses. All kinds of snorts and snuffles. We turned left out of the lift and walked thirty paces. He held a door open for me and I passed through it.

‘Rare Books,’ he said.

I thanked him.

I knew he was watching me, waiting to see what I was going to do. I didn’t do anything. I just stood there, both hands resting on my cane, as if savouring the air, or just thinking. In my experience blind people are often viewed as mentally deficient, and it amused me to play on this misapprehension. I listened to his footsteps as he walked away, hesitant at first, because he was looking back at me over his shoulder, but becoming more rapid, more definite, as he decided to leave me to my own devices.

I used my white cane to explore. There were twenty-eight rows of metal shelves, with narrow aisles between them. The rows of shelves were bisected by a wide central aisle. I could smell dust and old paper, and the two smells seemed related, part of the same family. At the far end of the room was a reading area, with tables, chairs and lamps. I found an empty place and sat down. Not wishing to attract attention, I took off my dark glasses and opened a newspaper. Trust Nina to be even later than I was.

The minutes passed. I turned to the next page of my paper. A man coughed. The doors at the far end of the room swung open — but it was only someone with a trolley. The trolley had hard rubber wheels. For a moment I was back in the clinic.

Then something touched me on the shoulder.

‘Come with me,’ Nina whispered.

I followed her into one of the narrow aisles. There was a small table at the end of it, by the wall. She sat me on a chair. For a moment I thought the sun had come out; I could feel it against my back, the warmth of it. Then I realised it was just a radiator. It was the heat coming off a radiator that I could feel.

‘This is difficult,’ I said.

Something creaked. The table. It was Nina, leaning against it. I had no way of telling what kind of mood she was in.

‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her.