Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘When was that?’ Karl said.

‘Eleven. Maybe twelve.’

Karl looked at my father, but he didn’t say anything.

We headed north, out of the town. The road took us through farm country, then it veered east and began to climb up to a ridge. This was the second route. To the left you could see the bare brow of the hill, all outcrops of rock and windswept grass. On the right, there was a long drop to the lake below — a steep scree-slope which plunged into the water at an angle of seventy-five degrees and kept on going.

There was no sign of the truck.

When we arrived at the fork again, Karl stopped the car in the banked-up leaves at the side of the road and left the engine idling. He sat there, staring through the windscreen.

It was after six o’clock and the sun had almost gone; what was left of it was pink and raw, like part of a skinned animal. We’d been looking for almost three hours. It seemed hopeless. But, without meaning to, I spoke: ‘I think we should try the first route again.’ The two men didn’t say anything, but I could hear their reluctance, their exasperation. ‘I’ll walk it if I have to,’ I added.

Karl was motionless for a moment longer, then he shifted into gear and pulled back on to the road.

We’d only been driving along the lake for a few minutes when I saw it. I shouted at Karl to stop the car, then I opened the door and jumped out. We were on a bend. The road swung left, away from the lake, though it was still just visible about thirty metres below. I ran back to the tree, crouched down. There. A piece of bark had been torn away at bumper-height and the blond wood under it was smeared with plum-coloured paint. I’d only missed it the first time because I’d been looking for the wrong thing. I began to make my way down the slope towards the lake. The ground was so steep, it was hard not to lose control and fall headlong.

I followed the trail of damaged trees, some creaking, as if they were still recovering from what had happened, some scratched or gouged, some split wide open. I saw Eileen Poppel first. She must have been hurled through the windscreen, hurled clean through. You wouldn’t have thought a little thing like that would have weighed enough to break the glass. She lay at the foot of a tree, her arms spread over the roots, her face in profile, like someone worshipping the earth. Her cheek and her forehead were ribboned, crazed with blood. At last they seemed appropriate, those eyes of hers, which had always looked as though someone’s thumbs were pressing at them from the inside. I ran on down the slope.

I found the truck with its radiator grille dipped in the lake, like a cow drinking, its headlamps staring gloomily into the silent, dark-green water. I could see my brother in the cab, his chin resting on his chest. I called his name softly, but he didn’t move. It was then that I noticed the smell of sulphur. I dropped to my knees, put my fingers in the water, tasted it.

I stood up. It didn’t feel as if my feet were quite in contact with the ground. I walked to the door of the truck. My brother seemed thinner. I knew what it was. The steering-wheel had pushed his ribs up against his spine, and the organs had been forced sideways. His face was unmarked, though, and there was no blood on him at all. I wondered when his skin would turn yellow, when his eyes would narrow. I knew he wouldn’t want to look like a foreigner in the land that he was going to. I could imagine him on the battlements already, watching me from halfway across the world, watching me as I stood beside him.

I was aware of everything around me, trees and sky and ground, and I was at the centre of it, and I knew then that it was right, what I had done. I took a deep breath and let it out, and then I heard the two men come trampling through the leaves towards me, and I heard something else, too, not a cry exactly, but a voice, a small voice, and I looked down into the cab and saw the child, not more than six months old, my brother’s child. The wooden drawer he always travelled in was on the floor next to the gear lever and he was lying on his back in it, staring upwards through the shattered windscreen at the trees. He was holding his arms away from his body, moving the inside of his wrists against the air.

‘— I told you it needed work.’

‘I only looked at it a few days ago. I didn’t notice anything —’

‘You didn’t notice anything. When was the last time you noticed anything?’

I rocked the baby in the crook of my elbow. He made no sound. He just stared up into my face the same way he’d stared up into the trees.

‘There, Mazey,’ I whispered. ‘There.’

Five days later I stood beside the grave.

The weather had changed. A cold October wind pulled at the blanket I’d wrapped Mazey in. I folded it more tightly around him. I’d lost a brother and inherited a son. I was nineteen years old.

All I could think of was what I’d said after we found the bodies. In the car, on the way back to the village, I was the only one who’d spoken.

‘That stupid son of a bitch,’ I said. ‘He never could drive.’ Then I burst into tears.

I cried for hours. Most of it was sheer frustration. If only he’d listened to me, none of this would’ve happened. If only he’d thought for once. It was nobody’s fault but his. He’d chosen it.

So there I stood, on that cold October day.

My father had built the box, as he’d built Felix’s seven years before. It took him longer than usual. One evening, shortly after the accident, I walked out to the house. I found him on the back porch, staring into the darkness. I asked him how it was coming, but he didn’t answer. I went and looked in the barn and saw the box lying on trestles, less than half-built. I wondered if he was using the right wood. Axel had said there were different kinds, but he’d never taught me how to tell them apart. Returning to the porch, I took the chair next to my father’s. From where he was sitting he could see the truck, parked next to the goat shed on the far side of the clearing. There were people in the village who thought he should’ve sold it for scrap, but he insisted on keeping it. For parts, he said. It wasn’t morbid, it was practical, and he wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. I had no idea what he was staring at. Maybe it was the truck. Or maybe it was the small pond glimmering beyond it, among the trees. Or maybe it was nothing. I didn’t know what he was thinking — I’d never known — and he wasn’t about to tell me either. I sat beside him for an hour and we were silent the whole time. When he finally spoke to me, I was almost asleep.

‘You remember your uncle’s box, with the dancing shoes on it?’

I sat up. ‘Yes.’

‘What about Axel?’

That wasn’t difficult.

‘A mountain and a castle,’ I said, ‘and snow, too, because it’s high up where the castle is.’

He turned and looked at me.

‘It’s a place he always dreamed of going,’ I explained.

He was still looking at me, and it was a while before he spoke. ‘I’m not sure I can do snow.’

The two boxes were lowered into the same hole, first Eileen’s, then Axel’s. My father had surpassed himself. He’d carved a range of mountains that stretched the entire width of the lid. He’d also carved the castle, perched high up in a lonely pass. He’d even carved a snowline. I noticed several members of the Poppel family peering suspiciously at Axel’s box, and I thought they were right to be suspicious. That lid, it was a hint. Axel wasn’t with Eileen in the ground at all. Axel had gone to a completely different place.

I glanced down at the child in my arms. He was wide awake and staring up into the sky, a sky filled with racing clouds and frantic autumn leaves. His eyes moved to my face. His mouth opened and his hands moved this way and that in the air, palms upwards, as if he was trying to balance it. He didn’t make a sound, though. Not a sound.