Rupert Thomson - The Insult

I stared at him. ‘You didn’t do it?’

‘No.’

The lights in the kitchen flickered, but stayed on.

‘Is he dead?’ Karin asked.

She lifted her glass of milk to her mouth with both hands and drank from it. Nine years old, with dark-blue eyes and brown hair curling down on to her shoulders. She felt less like mine than ever.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s not dead.’

‘Old Miss Poppel’s dead. She —’

‘We’re not talking about Old Miss Poppel.’

Kroner put his sandwich down, only half-eaten. ‘There’s no need to shout at her.’

I went over to the sink, ran the tap and rinsed my hands in the warm water. I noticed my reflection in the window.

‘So you don’t know anything?’ I said, with my back to the room. ‘It’s not another of your little games?’

I heard Kroner’s chair scrape backwards and saw his reflection rise behind my own.

‘Karin,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time you went to bed.’

I stared at my face, then at his. Then I stared into the blackness that was beyond us both. There’s no such thing as an accident, I whispered to myself. There’s no such thing.

One night, when the moon was almost full and Kroner was asleep, I crept into Karin’s room and woke her up. I put my mouth close to her ear. Told her to get dressed.

‘Is it an adventure?’ she asked me.

I nodded. ‘It’s a secret, too.’

I took her by the hand and led her down the stairs. Standing in the passageway outside the dining-room, I could hear Kroner snoring in his bed one floor above. I opened the side door and we walked out into the gravel car-park. Then down the steps, towards the pool. Karin was wide awake now, and too filled with wonder at being out at night to say a word. We moved past the fir trees at the back of the hotel, over some rocks and along a narrow path, into the shadow of the woods. It was half an hour to the main road. I looked at Karin, walking beside me. ‘You’re not tired, are you?’

She shook her head. ‘Where are we going?’

I smiled mysteriously. ‘You’ll see.’ In my right hand I had a bucket and every time it swung, the moon broke into a thousand pieces.

I’d spent the afternoon smashing empty beer bottles and pickle jars behind the shed where the pool equipment and the gardening tools were kept. Everyone was out except for Mazey, who was upstairs, listening to his chimes. (Miss Poppel had been as good as her word: The wind-chimes that hang from the crab-apple tree in my front garden, I hereby bequeath to Mazey Hekmann.) Even if he heard me, though, it didn’t matter. He was hardly going to tell anyone.

When we reached the main road, we crouched down in a shallow ditch. ‘This is the place,’ I whispered.

Karin looked at me. It wasn’t anywhere she knew.

I showed her how the road sloped upwards, dipped, sloped upwards once again, then curved to the left and vanished behind some trees.

‘From here we can see them coming.’

‘Who?’ she said. ‘Who’s coming?’ Her eyes had widened. Maybe she thought it was Holy Jesus, or the Three Wise Men. Christmas was only a few weeks off.

But I didn’t answer. I put one finger to my lips and watched the road. Minutes passed. Then I touched her shoulder, pointed to the west. There was a beam of light in the distance. At first it looked like a triangle, long and golden, lying on its side. But as the car came accelerating round the bend, the triangle turned into circles, two circles, also gold. They were so bright that we had shadows, even though the car was still at least a kilometre away. I tipped the bucket, shook some broken glass on to my hand. I waited until the car was hidden in the dip, then stood up and threw the glass across the road. I ducked down again, one hand braced on my knee.

It was almost frightening — the size of it, the speed, the sudden noise. I saw glass glitter underneath its tyres. But nothing happened. The car hurtled over it and on. Its tail-lights were snuffed out. It was gone.

‘Church-goers,’ I muttered.

I reached for the bucket, and looked round at Karin. She was kneeling beside me, biting her bottom lip.

‘Now it’s your turn.’

I shook the bucket as if it was a game and she could choose any piece she wanted and maybe win a prize. She hesitated, though. The trees above us shifted in the wind.

‘Don’t you love your brother?’ I whispered.

Her eyes looked into mine.

‘Your brother, Mazey. Don’t you love him?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Come on, then. Cup those hands of yours.’

I trickled glass out of the bucket. Her hands were so small, even when they were joined together. I hoped it would be enough.

‘Careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t cut yourself.’

No sooner had I set the bucket down than I heard the sound of an engine again. It came and went in the silence, the way mosquitoes do. Headlights were searching the darkness on the bend. I waited until they disappeared, then took Karin’s arm.

‘Now, girl. Do it now.’

I watched her step out into the road, lightly, almost on tiptoe, as though she was afraid the surface might give way beneath her. She stood still for a moment, then she flung both hands upwards into the air. She might have been releasing something she had caught — an insect, or a butterfly. The glass bounced prettily. But it held her there too long. She’d forgotten all about the car. And now the headlights were rising above the level of the road and bearing down on her, two circles merging into one fierce glare. I reached out, seized her arm and pulled her down into the ditch.

The car howled past us. The hot diesel blast of it.

I heard a tyre blow. As I lifted my head, I saw the car swerve. Then it was rolling, the metal spitting sparks. It hit a tree, bounced off it, turned over half a dozen times. Then it was lying motionless, on its side, two hundred metres down the road.

I stood up. Kicking most of the glass into the ditch, I walked towards the car. One of the headlights pointed into the undergrowth, as if it was trying to show us something. I could smell burnt rubber. Nothing was moving.

Two people were inside. The man wore a suit and a pale hat. His mouth was open. One of his teeth had a green jewel in it; the rest were glistening with blood. There was a woman, too, but she was harder to make out. She was beneath the man, all folded up in what was now the bottom of the car. One of her shoes had fallen off and I could see her stockinged foot, the underside of it. She had high arches. I thought she might be a dancer.

‘Trying to kill my son,’ I said.

I took Karin’s hand and looked down through the windscreen at the ungainly tangle of their bodies.

‘Murderers,’ I said.

Two days later, at the breakfast table, I read a report of the accident in the local paper. The two occupants of the car were named as J. Swanzy, also known as Emerald Joe, on account of the gemstone he wore in his front tooth, and his companion, Kamilla Esztergom, the singer. Both were killed outright. Police were calling it a case of reckless driving, since the levels of alcohol in the blood of both the deceased had been well in excess of the legal limit.

I touched the names with the tip of my finger. Emerald Joe. Kamilla (the singer!). Had they been talking when the car hit that patch of glass? And, if so, what about? What had their lives been like? I couldn’t even begin to imagine. I’d never met people who wore emeralds in their teeth. They reminded me of the stories Felix used to tell. I thought of Mazey, who would walk with a limp until he was dead. Mazey in the ditch, alone, in pain. I brought my eyes back into focus. Only then did I see the misprint: instead of reckless, they’d written wreckless . What had happened had happened — but, at the same time, somehow, it had not. All the accounts were balanced, all grudges cancelled out.