Rupert Thomson - The Insult

Why had I fallen, though?

I hadn’t been careless or impatient — in fact, I was sure I could remember watching my feet sink, one after the other, into the pure, unblemished snow. There was no reason to have fallen, none at all.

I limped to the edge of the pool. I knelt, reached down with one hand. Above the waterline the walls were sharp to the touch, encrusted with mineral deposits; below it, they were smooth, almost velvety, the consistency of dust. A rope had been fastened along the side in even loops, for people to hold on to. Over the years it had petrified, and it was now as hard as china.

The sound of the water, that sulphur smell, the rope’s strange texture — all this I could claim to know.

I slowly raised my head.

But what about the things my undiminished senses couldn’t help me with? What about the trees on the far side of the valley? What about the stars?

The night before, in the middle of her story, Edith Hekmann had taken me to Mazey’s room. She was so insistent, pulling on my sleeve, that I couldn’t refuse. It was up the stairs and through the door I’d put my ear to once, the door marked PRIVATE. Then along a cramped passageway, no more than shoulder-wide. Mazey’s room was at the end, on the right. She let me go in first. After what I’d heard, I’d been expecting something bizarre, extravagant — if not demented. I was disappointed. It was a room like any other room. A window, a single bed, a chair. A basin in the corner. Taps. A perfectly ordinary room. And Edith Hekmann was just a mother, proudly showing off her child. I found myself thinking of Gabriela, the Gabriela who appeared in my dreams. Always being admired for something, being special, winning.

Almost angrily, I said, ‘What am I supposed to be looking at?’

Edith Hekmann laughed. ‘Above you.’

I reached up with my left hand. Nothing at first, just air. Then I felt something that was made of wood. It was smooth, carved into a shape. And it moved when I touched it.

At last I made the connection. ‘It’s a baby.’

I let go of it and it swung sideways. There was a series of small collisions, as wood knocked against wood. Click click CLICK CLICK click click — it reminded me of pool balls on a table, the sound they make when somebody breaks.

‘How many are there?’ I asked her.

‘I never counted.’ She came and stood beside me. ‘It’s years since he made one, but he still looks at them. Still lies there on his bed and looks at them.’ She walked past me, into the room. ‘He’s got talent,’ she said, ‘don’t you think?’

I didn’t know if talent was the word. I murmured something.

‘Karin took the baby away from him,’ she said, ‘and once they were gone there was no one who could explain it to him, not even me.’ There was a silence. ‘She turned him into what he is.’

I was only half-listening, though. I was still looking up into the mass of babies that were hanging from the ceiling …

It was a while before I turned to face her. She was standing by the window, looking out into the night. I thought she’d forgotten I was there. But then she spoke again.

‘Are you artistic, Mr Blom?’

I was still kneeling at the edge of the pool. I was no longer aware of my heart beating, or the places where I’d hurt myself; I was no longer aware of the cold. I was thinking about the wooden babies twisting on their strings –

A perfectly ordinary room.

There was a feeling now, a feeling that I remembered having in the car-park after I’d been shot. I was falling from a plane, and the plane was flying on without me. It wasn’t just separation, abandonment. It was the falling itself. Something giving way, something seeming to expand in front of me. A kind of gap had opened up, and it was widening. I left my screams behind, thin sounds curving into absolute infinity.

My dark glasses, my white cane. Where were they?

I tried to remember the lay-out of the steps. Think. THINK. There were three flights in all. You walked down the first flight, then turned to your right and walked down another one. Then you turned to your left. The last flight was the longest. I must have fallen somewhere near the top of the last flight.

I began with the bottom step, feeling the length and breadth of it, searching the ground on either side as well. It was a laborious process, and my hands were almost numb, but I could think of no other way. It would look odd, I thought, if someone saw me from an upstairs window. It would look like worship, part of some quaint religion.

I found my cane on the seventh step. I sat down and examined it; it seemed undamaged. The glasses would prove more difficult. A wind pushed at the trees near by — a night wind; I could detect no daylight in it yet. Not that it made much difference now. There would no longer be any days or nights for me. There would only be time — continuous, unvarying.

The eighth step yielded nothing. I was cold and tired. What if the glasses had landed some distance away, in the shrubbery?

As I started on the ninth step, my hand discovered something hard and rounded, with a kind of edge around it. I bent my nose to it. Leather.

It was a shoe.

‘Mrs Hekmann?’

Wait a minute. It wasn’t a woman’s shoe. It was too big to be a woman’s shoe.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

I found a second shoe.

‘Loots?’ I said. ‘It’s not you, is it?’

No, it couldn’t be. Not yet.

‘Who are you?’

My son. He’s come back.

‘Mazey?’

I was standing now. I could feel his breath on my face.

I had no idea what he intended. I had the feeling I should treat him as I would an animal. Stay calm. No sudden movements. Whatever you do, don’t run.

Something was placed against my chest. I was pushed backwards. I staggered down one step, then another. I didn’t fall, though. It must have been his hand.

I still had my cane. Supposing I used it as a weapon?

No sooner had the thought occurred to me than the cane was snatched out of my grasp. I heard it leave his hand. The sound it made, the sound a whip makes when it cuts through empty air. I heard it land in water somewhere to my left.

The violence was happening in silence.

Nothing was being said.

‘What is it, Mazey? What do you want?’

The hand pushed me backwards once again. I managed not to lose my balance. I had to be somewhere near the bottom now. I reached out with my foot, found level ground.

Words would be no use. He wasn’t even going to speak.

Was he trying to frighten me? Probably not. He didn’t know what fear was. I remembered what Edith Hekmann had said. The simple things he doesn’t understand. Like we get older.

Like we die.

I thought she must have told him that I’d wronged her. Now he was trying to get rid of me. He wanted me gone. Was he capable of measuring his own violence, though? Somehow I doubted it. He could kill me and not even be aware of it. He would stoop over my body with a kind of abstract curiosity, not understanding why all the movement had gone out of it.

It was also possible that she’d loosed him on me like a dog.

I walked backwards, trying to determine where he was. But he was moving quietly, if he was moving at all; the snow took every sound and softened it. Suddenly my heel tipped; there was nothing under it. I’d reached the edge of the pool. There was only one way to keep track of him — at least, only one that I could think of. I had to translate each movement he made into a noise. I had to make him visible.

I turned quickly, jumped in.

It was warm, warmer than I’d expected. Almost the same temperature as a bath. I rose to the surface. My head cooled as the night air closed over it. I was out of my depth. I worked the toe of one shoe against the heel of the other. I worried that Mazey might leap in after me, land on top of me. I wouldn’t stand a chance then.