Rupert Thomson - The Insult

I nodded to myself. ‘A coward’s all he is. And what you were saying about Eva, well, the same goes for Kroner.’

Karl looked at me across the rim of his glass, but I didn’t want to talk about my husband any more. There were nights when I could feel he was ready and he tried to put it into me, but it had been a long time since I wanted him — in fact, maybe I never had. His white belly lowered over me, his flesh so soft I lost my fingers in it. The way his skin flushed in a wide red collar round his neck. I only had to think of Axel lying by the stream before the sun came up, the colour of his skin in the morning light, the clean wood smell of it …

And anyway, I knew what his game was, as surely as if he’d been wearing a stocking over his head and carrying a sawn-off shot-gun. He’d stolen from my body once, and I wasn’t about to let that happen again. I still dreamed about the roses sometimes, all twenty-six of them, and I always woke up feeling sick.

‘No one in our family knows how to marry,’ Karl said.

‘Maybe Felix got it right,’ I said. ‘He didn’t even try.’

Suddenly I looked at Karl, my brother, and I smiled. I’d just realised. This was the first time we had ever talked.

But there was a moment, later, when everything spread out sideways like melted glass, and Karl turned to me and said, ‘You know, I never did like you very much.’

At first I laughed, treating it as a joke, but his face didn’t change. And suddenly I wasn’t drunk any more. Something like that, it sobers you from one moment to the next. In a way, though, I’d known it was coming. By sitting on the empty stool, I’d asked for it. The truth behind those years of silence.

‘I just never did.’ He was still looking at me with his three-day growth of beard and his sudden, drunken clarity. ‘Know why?’

‘You’re going to tell me, aren’t you.’

‘Oh yeah. I’m going to tell you.’ He turned on his stool so eagerly, so clumsily, I had to smile.

‘You smile,’ he said. ‘But underneath, you’re not smiling.’

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘And what am I doing,’ I said, ‘underneath?’

‘You never let anything out, do you. You fucking never,’ and his hand closed in a tight fist as he fought to explain himself, ‘you never give anything away.’

I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake by walking into the bar. I wished I’d driven right past it. The shoe shop seemed a far better place to be.

‘Maybe that’s why you look the way you do,’ he said.

I asked him what he meant.

‘Our mother, she was beautiful. That’s why she left —’

‘You remember that?’

‘Karin’s got something of her, in a way. But you —’ He looked down at the bar and shook his head. ‘Me, all right, I get drunk,’ he said, ‘I make a fool of myself, I knock people down, sometimes I spend a couple of nights in prison cooling off — but I’m not dangerous.’ He leaned closer to me, one finger lifted, pointing. ‘It’s you. You’re the one who’s dangerous.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘People are terrified.’

But what he was saying tied a string around my heart and pulled it tight. I’d always wondered if anyone knew. If anyone had guessed.

‘I’m right, aren’t I. Aren’t I.’

I was hoping he’d drink enough to forget what he’d said. At the same time I knew it came from deep down, years back. Being drunk was not the source of it. That was just a way of gaining access. And besides, I’d never believed what people said about being so drunk they couldn’t remember anything. Still, I bought him another beer. Just in case it was true.

‘You don’t hit anyone or go to prison,’ Karl said. ‘You just sit there, behind those spectacles of yours, and you could kill us all, one by one, and you wouldn’t feel a thing.’ He reached out for my glasses, but I swayed back on my stool. ‘Ah,’ and he waved a hand past my face, disgusted now, and drank.

I lit a cigarette.

‘You’d do it, wouldn’t you,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe you did it already. Maybe you already killed someone.’

‘Like who?’

‘See? You’re doing it right now. That’s it, right there. The look I’m talking about.’ And he pointed right into my face with a finger that drew unsteady circles, like the shapes flies make in the air. ‘Like who?’ he said, imitating me. ‘Like who?’

I pushed his hand away so hard, he almost fell backwards off his stool. He was right. I could’ve killed him. Right there and then. The anger bursting through me like the rush of hot pus from an abscess.

‘I got to you.’ He sat there, chuckling. ‘You might as well admit it. I got to you.’

‘Yeah, Karl,’ I said. ‘You got to me.’

You stupid son of a bitch.

It was all bluff. Curiosity and bluff. He was no threat to me at all. No threat to anyone. I used the mirror behind the bar to look at him. His damp face, the lids of his eyes inflamed.

‘Karl,’ I said, ‘you’re so fucking drunk, I could pour you into a bottle and put a cork on it.’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you.’

‘Anything,’ I said, ‘to shut you up.’

I ordered a whisky, to clean the taste of beer from my mouth. I stared at the girl on the poster. I found myself wondering what my mother had looked like. No one had ever told me. I’d never even seen a photograph. That could be her, for all I knew, in those red shorts. It was six o’clock and the bar was beginning to fill up with men from the nearby building site. I would have to be going.

As I climbed down off the stool, Karl took hold of my sleeve. ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Axel’s boy. Why’d you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘Why’d you take him in?’

I shook myself free. ‘I’m tired of your questions, Karl. I’m going home.’

‘Home?’ He stared into the forest of green and brown bottles on the shelf above the bar. ‘Yeah, there’s always that.’

Outside, it was dark. The street-lights bounced. I’d thought the fresh air would clear my head. It only made things worse. Now I had to drive.

The car didn’t seem to want to move. I had to press down hard on the accelerator. After a few minutes I smelled burning. The handbrake was still on.

I drove slowly, seeing double. Luckily, the roads were empty.

Then, three kilometres from home, I misjudged a bend. I’d known it all my life, but it seemed sharper than usual that evening and before I could do anything the car was sliding sideways into a field. I got out. Water seeped in over the top of my shoes. I found a fence-post and wedged it underneath the wheels. But when I tried to reverse back on to the road, the wheels spun and the wood just fell apart. I looked around. The trees kept gliding away from me, away from me. The sky was made of dots — millions of tiny, busy dots. It didn’t seem very likely that anyone would come along. That was why I’d chosen the route in the first place. I was going to have to walk.

The evening was cool and dry, no sign of any rain. Still. Three kilometres. I spat into the hedgerow, my saliva thick with alcohol. Something Karl said to my father on the day of the accident came back to me. When was the last time you noticed anything? The words spread through me and went on spreading, like something that had spilled out of a bottle. I had the sudden, uneasy feeling that Karl knew more than he was telling. He had asked me why I’d taken Axel’s child, but he already knew the answer. He just wanted me to admit it to him. He wanted to hear me say that it was out of love. A new love, but distilled from a much older one, and all the stronger for it. On the other hand, did it really matter if he knew? He was hardly going to go round telling people. But the secret was his, and he had to carry it. Perhaps that was the source of his disgust with me, the reason for his silence.