Rupert Thomson - The Insult

‘Hello?’ I said.

Nothing odd about that. I tried again.

‘Mr Blom?’ I said. ‘What are you doing, Mr Blom?’

No, it just sounded as if I was talking to myself. In the middle of the night. I didn’t like the feeling.

I reached a flight of stairs and began to climb.

I remembered what Kukowski had taught me about the use of memory. It was a trick: you had to imagine walking into what you were leaving behind. The future was the same as the present, only backwards. So. I’d have to go down the stairs (keep count of the flights), turn right into the corridor with the acoustics, turn right again into the corridor that had cream walls. My ward would be somewhere at the end of it.

My breathing had thickened and I could taste blood. For the first time, I realised how much strength I’d lost. The operations, all those weeks in bed … How quickly muscles atrophy. There was a lop-sided sensation in my head, as if one half was heavier than the other. I had to steady myself, one hand braced against the wall.

I was lying halfway down a flight of stairs. Sweat had surfaced all over me; my hair hung in my eyes, a fringe of wet quills. I sat up and pressed my face against the cool plaster of the wall. First one cheek, then the other. Then my forehead. Outside, the wind had risen. There could have been an ocean in the garden.

I climbed slowly to my feet. Touched the place where the plate was. No feeling at all. It was as if my fingertips had entered another dimension. The deadness of titanium. Sometimes it seemed to count for more than all the sensate parts of me, and I could imagine my body rotting around it. Surely that was the end of the dream. The flesh and bone would fall away. The spirit, too. All that would remain of me was a piece of metal on an empty street, sun glancing off it. That single piece of metal. Perfect. Everlasting. Alien.

I took a deep breath and climbed back up the stairs. On the landing I rested. It was a landing like any other — a firehose reel fastened to the wall, a metal trolley piled high with towels. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement, something white and quick, but when I turned it was gone. A trapped bird, maybe, or dust in the moonlight. Not far beyond the firehose was a door. I tried the handle; it wasn’t locked. When I opened it, fresh air pushed past me, like a crowd of people that had been waiting to get in.

I was on the roof — or part of it, at least. It was narrow where I was, the width of one person. There were metal handrails on both sides. What I was standing on was metal as well, the kind of perforated metal used for fire-escapes. To my left I could see the main body of the clinic, dark and turreted, a chimney releasing smoke that seemed casual until the wind took it, scattered it across the sky. Lower down, below me, was a row of lit windows. To my right, just darkness, trees. A sheer drop to the ground.

I moved along the walkway until I was opposite a window. I looked down into a small, square room that was almost bare: a steel table, two or three moulded plastic chairs, a water-dispenser — that was it. I moved on. In the next window I saw a man. I wasn’t sure who it was at first because he had his back to me. But then he turned and walked across the room. It was Visser. I watched him pick up a file, then put it down again. He appeared to be deep in thought, the fingers of one hand pulling at the edge of his moustache. Only then did I realise what was written on the cover of the file: my name, MARTIN BLOM, and stamped across that, in red block capitals, the words HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL. I leaned against the cold rail of the walkway. The trees below me tossed like furious black water. Highly confidential? What could be highly confidential about a patient at an eye clinic?

Turning back, I noticed the other files on his desk. They were marked with the same red capitals, but the names were different. On the far wall, pinned to a cork board, were at least a dozen X-rays. In each X-ray I could see the titanium plate, which showed as a white object lodged in the dappled, moon-like grey-and-white of the cranium. At first I assumed the X-rays were of me, but if I compared one with another I saw that each plate had a slightly different location. I’d been standing there for some time, pondering the X-rays, when I sensed something had changed. Visser had walked to the window. He seemed to be staring up at me. I held still, trying to slow the sudden pounding of my heart. Then I realised he couldn’t see me. All he could see was his own reflection in the window. All he was staring at was the stream of his own consciousness.

The next morning, when he appeared on the ward, I said I wanted to ask him about my case. He wondered what aspect I was interested in particularly.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘how unique is it?’

‘In what sense?’

‘The insertion of a titanium plate, for instance. Is that common?’

‘Not common, no,’ Visser replied. ‘Though it does happen from time to time.’

I hesitated. ‘So there aren’t many people who’ve had it done?’

‘The last plate I fitted was probably,’ and he paused, ‘three years ago.’

‘There’s nobody in the clinic then,’ I said, ‘apart from me?’

‘Nobody.’ I thought I could hear Visser smile. That faint, wet click of lips drawing back from teeth. ‘In that sense, you’re certainly unique.’

‘Something else,’ I said, in what I thought might be a cunning lateral shift in my approach. ‘Are you engaged in any research at the moment, Doctor? Or is your time entirely taken up by your duties at the clinic?’

‘If only there was money for research!’ Visser said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to dictate a letter to the government on my behalf.’

This was an extremely clever riposte, and I had no choice but to chuckle quietly and let the matter drop. After he’d gone, I thought back over what I’d seen the previous night. Had my eyes deceived me? Or was Visser lying? And, if so, why?

During the next week or two I tried on several occasions to return to the walkway in order to verify my findings. Kukowski’s memory techniques proved worse than useless. One night I found myself outside, in the vegetable garden. In frustration, I pulled up half a dozen carrots, brushed the mud off them and ate them on a bench in the moonlight. Another night it was the laundry: washing-machines with drums the size of jet engines and huge cast-iron calendar-rolls for pressing sheets. Once I even mistakenly walked into the Reminiscence Room. It was while I was there, sitting on the therapist’s chair, that I decided that I didn’t have a past. I had a present, though, and it remained a mystery to me.

The summer faded, and the nights grew cooler. I started wearing socks for my clandestine expeditions. Visser toured the ward each day, the truth concealed beneath a white coat that seemed as crisp as the leaves that now lay strewn on the clinic lawn.

One evening I woke from a nap to see Nurse Janssen bending over me. She was wearing all her clothes, and gave no sign that she might be about to take any of them off. I’d referred to her performance once or twice — the references had to be oblique, of course — and she’d promptly accused me of being ‘just like all the others’. I’d disappointed her, she said. She’d thought I was different. ‘I am different,’ I told her, though there was no way she could understand what I meant by that.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

‘What, again?’ I said. ‘I’m not here.’

‘It’s the police. The gentleman who came before, if you remember. Detective Munck.’

‘Oh, well,’ I said, sitting up, ‘in that case. Yes, of course. What a relief.’

‘It’s not often you hear that, as a policeman,’ Munck said.