The Insult (18 page)

‘Loots?’ I called out. ‘Is that you?’

The footsteps stopped. A voice said, ‘Mr Blom?’

‘Yes?’

‘You were on TV last night.’

‘That’s right,’ I said.

‘It seems you’ve been looking for me.’

I turned to face the voice. ‘The Invisible Man!’

‘Used to be.’

It was still daylight and I had no vision, so I did the only thing I could think of: I held out my hand.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said.

And I shook hands with The Invisible Man. It was the most curious feeling. The hand was there – but, at the same time, it was not. It was recognisable as a hand and yet it was absent, somehow. Recognisable by its absence. Maybe that was the best way of describing it. Absence of hand – or, maybe, hand-shaped air. In any case, an unforgettable sensation.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I liked the poster.’

One light laugh, and the hand withdrew. He was gone.

Then I heard Loots’ footsteps. He was whistling. The car keys tingled on his palm.

‘Did you see him, Loots?’ I called out.

‘Who?’

‘The Invisible Man.’

‘You’re joking. He was here?’

I talked all the way back to the capital. I’d formed a theory; it was based on that one phrase:
used to be.
The Invisible Man was tired of being different, special. Tired of living up to expectations. He wasn’t interested in being THE INVISIBLE MAN! He wanted to be ordinary, with no exclamation mark after his name – invisible in the way that normal people are. So that was what he’d done. Become invisible, with a small i. Or, more appropriately, visible. With an ordinary v. You could be sitting next to him on a bus or a train, in a restaurant or bar, at home on the sofa, you could be sitting next to him right now and there’d be nothing invisible about him, nothing invisible at all. That was what had happened, I was sure of it. And that, I told Loots, was what he should say to Anton when he saw him again.

The city seemed to welcome us as we drove in – green lights all the way and rockets exploding in the bright, snow-heavy sky above the Metropole. We’d done the impossible. We’d found The Invisible Man. I wanted to tell everyone I met. I suddenly wished I had more friends. Well, at least there was Gregory. I dropped in at Leon’s and there he was in his donkey jacket, white hair rising off his head like steam, his shiny hands wrapped round a cup of coffee.

‘I haven’t seen you for ages,’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been?’ His head was lowered, bull-like, and he was glowering at me through a kind of undergrowth: his eyebrows.

‘Smoke,’ I said, ‘you won’t believe what happened.’

I told him the story of the last twenty-four hours. As I reached the end I saw that he’d forgiven me. I bought him a dessert, just to make sure: Leon’s famous blackcurrant jelly, with a dome of whipped cream the size of the Kremlin.

When I unlocked the door of my room just after two o’clock, the phone was ringing. I snatched it up.

‘Blom.’

Never had my name sounded less gloomy. The m hummed happily, like bees in summer.

‘It’s me.’

Nina!

‘I have to see you, Martin. Right away.’

What she was saying seemed to prove the theory I had about her, that there was always room for hope. I’d already decided Greersen didn’t mean anything to her. It had been a whim, an aberration (she probably regretted it now). There was no reason why I couldn’t go on seeing her. Who knows, maybe we could even get married. It would have to be a night wedding, of course. I’d invite Gregory, Victor, Leon. I’d invite The Invisible Man, too. Loots could dance with Nina in that quaint, old-fashioned style of his.

‘Will you meet me somewhere?’ she was saying.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Where?’

She told me she’d drive over. There was an all-night café-bar inside the train station. She’d see me there in twenty minutes.

I put the phone down. Half an hour later I walked into the café. Nina had taken a booth at the back, near the toilets and the cigarette machine.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not long.’

She was wearing a fake-fur jacket and a beret, and no lipstick. All I could think about was kissing her. The waitress came and stood beside our table. I ordered coffee and a pastry.

Nina waited until the waitress had gone. ‘You don’t like pastry.’

‘I’m celebrating,’ I said.

‘What are you celebrating?’

‘We found The Invisible Man. Me and Loots.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘I talked to him, Nina. I actually shook his hand.’

‘That’s great.’ But she put nothing of herself into the words. They were hollow, empty. Insincere. I felt my good mood being gradually dismantled.

‘What did you want to see me about?’ I asked her.

She touched her beer mat, just the corner of it, with one finger.

‘It must have been important,’ I said, ‘for you to drive all the way over here at this time of night.’

‘It is important.’

My coffee arrived.

‘I don’t love you,’ she said.

‘Who do you love? Greersen?’ I stared at her in disbelief.

She didn’t answer. She lit a cigarette, then started turning her beer mat on the surface of the table.

‘Maybe I loved you in the beginning,’ she said, after a while, ‘but I don’t any more.’

‘Maybe you’d like to say it again,’ I said. ‘Maybe I didn’t hear it the first time.’

She sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

I stared at my pastry, its flaky crust baked to a perfect gold, its dusting of spotless white sugar. I wished I was blind. We should have met in the daytime, like before. Or some bright place. Somewhere with fierce lights, preferably fluorescent. Then I wouldn’t have been able to see her. Then I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. Then I wouldn’t have been staring at a fucking pastry.

‘Guess what?’ I said. ‘I was on TV.’

‘Were you?’ She was somewhere else, though. She’d hardly heard me.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

‘No, tell me.’

I stood up. ‘I’ll pay on the way out.’

‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ she said. ‘Will you wait for me?’

I sat down again. This hurt more than almost anything else.
Will you wait for me?
So trivial, so everyday – and yet it meant there was something between us. We were connected, together.

I didn’t watch her walk away. Instead, I looked at the place where she’d been sitting. There was a shallow indentation in the plastic. I reached over, touched the indentation. It was still warm. Then I noticed her bag on the seat. She’d left it behind. Without thinking, I slipped my hand inside it. The usual jumble of lipstick, make-up, money. A notebook, too. Scalloped edges to the pages. Her addresses. I picked up the book and tucked it into my pocket. I wasn’t sure why I’d
done it. And by the time I thought about putting it back, it was too late. I heard the door to the toilets open. She was walking towards me.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Nothing.’ I pointed at the seat. ‘You left your bag.’

She was staring down at me. No warmth in the look, no suggestion of any intimacy at all. It was more sort of dissatisfied. Disillusioned even. I obviously wasn’t handling this the way she’d hoped I would.

‘Is there anything you want to ask me?’ she said.

I sat there for a moment longer, trying hard to concentrate. I kept thinking of her address book in my pocket. I still didn’t know why I’d taken it. I shook my head. ‘No.’

She walked ahead of me, up to the cash-register. She reached into her bag.

‘I already told you,’ I said. ‘This is on me.’

She took her hand out of the bag again. She hadn’t noticed that her address book was missing. I paid for two coffees and a pastry.

‘Didn’t you like the pastry?’ the waitress said. She seemed to be taking it personally, the fact that I hadn’t touched it.

‘I lost my appetite,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

When I walked out of the café, Nina was waiting in the station concourse. There was that whispering again, the sound I’d heard when I first returned to the city. Voices lifted into a great emptiness. Voices appealing to something they didn’t even know was there. She took hold of my arm. ‘There’s a man staring at me.’

‘There’s always men staring at you,’ I said, irritated suddenly. ‘The saxophone-player the other night. He stared at you, too.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I told you. I can see at night.’

She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, ‘This is different. I’ve seen him before.’

I looked around. I couldn’t see anyone. ‘Who is he?’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve seen him before, though.’

I looked up at the roof, moving my feet inside my shoes to warm them up. She was still clinging to my arm.

‘Will you walk me to my car?’ she said.

I said I would.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No.’

We left the station by the main exit and turned right, into a side street. Our breath speech-bubbled up into the air. It was very cold.

‘So you’re not coming away for Christmas?’ I said.

‘Coming away? Where to?’

I reminded her about the house by the lake.

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ she said, ‘do you?’

I didn’t answer.

‘There’s too much going on. I need some time.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

The wind rose. Snow blew sideways across the street, vicious as ground glass. I thought I could hear footsteps on the pavement behind me, but when I glanced over my shoulder there was no one there. I nodded to myself, remembering the clinic corridors at night.

‘He’s still there,’ Nina said. ‘He’s following us.’

‘Where’s your car?’ I said.

We had to cross the street. I tucked my chin into my collar. My feet felt as if they were made of something different to the rest of me.

‘Is that where you live?’ she said. ‘The Kosminsky?’

I nodded.

‘That’s the place you wanted to show me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you show me now?’

‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ I said, ‘do you?’

She’d parked right outside the hotel. I left her by her car. Just walked away, towards the steps.

‘Martin?’ she called out.

For a moment I couldn’t move. Her voice had that power over me, the power a dream has, to lock muscles, making it impossible to run. I didn’t look round. Instead, I hunted through my pockets for my
room-key. It was a charade. I didn’t have the key on me. I’d left it in a pigeon-hole behind reception.

‘Martin?’ she called again, more urgently this time.

But I had reached the doors, and they were beginning to revolve.

I was inside the building when I heard the car door slam. The engine spluttering, the crunch of gears. And then a sound that was like a seagull’s cry: Nina’s tyres spinning as she took the corner. It wasn’t her fault. It was the new road surface they’d put down. It happened to everyone.

Friday came. I was in my room, watching a carol concert on TV, when the phone rang. It was Loots calling from downstairs, in the lobby. I closed my suitcase, put on my coat and left the room. Loots was standing outside the lift when the doors slid open.

‘Where’s Nina?’ he said.

‘I forgot to tell you. She can’t come.’

There was a sudden switch in the expression on his face: eagerness to disappointment. ‘What’s wrong? Is she sick?’

‘No, she’s not sick.’ We passed reception. ‘Well, Happy Christmas, Arnold.’

‘It’s Victor, actually. But thanks, anyway.’

I shook my head. I could’ve sworn it was Arnold I was looking at. Maybe it was just that Victor had taken up smoking.

‘If she’s not sick,’ Loots said, ‘what is it?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

I followed him out of the hotel and down the steps, and climbed into the back of the car. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Helga. We shook hands. Loots pulled out into the evening traffic.

As we turned right at a set of lights, I thought I saw Dr Visser on the pavement. If it wasn’t Visser, it was a man of the same height and build, with a similar moustache. I sank down in my seat, below the level of the window. Probably he was just doing last-minute Christmas shopping. In fact, I was sure I’d seen some packages under his arm. Or maybe it wasn’t even him. A narrow escape if it was, though. Very narrow.

‘Martin?’ Loots said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine.’ I sat up straight again. ‘I just dropped something, that’s all.’

I settled back. It felt good to be getting out of the city for a few days. I’d been thinking of staying behind, in the hope that Nina might call, but then I’d decided against it. I’d done the right thing. If she called now, I wouldn’t be there. She wouldn’t know where I was either, and she’d have no way of finding out. I drew some comfort from this small, imagined revenge. More to the point, if she didn’t call, I wouldn’t be sitting there, depressed.

Besides, it was Christmas. Most people left the city. I thought back to a holiday weekend one summer when I was twenty-two or – three. I had stayed in my apartment, thinking that I would learn the city’s secrets, thinking that, if it was empty, it would be more likely to reveal something of itself to me. I could still remember the streets – sunlit, yet grey, somehow, and utterly deserted. And that dusty colour, that emptiness, had crept into my blood. I could remember lying on a single bed under an open window. Sometimes a car drove by. There were smells of rotten fruit and chip-fat; there was the smell of the canal. The phone didn’t ring at all. One night I slept for more than thirteen hours. And then, at last, the people returned. They were tanned and easy in themselves, full of entertaining stories. I found that I had nothing to say. I couldn’t even seem to make my loneliness sound funny; every time I cracked a joke about it, I felt as if I was about to cry. An eternity had passed. What had I done?

‘Are you warm enough?’ Loots called out.

I told him I was fine. Just fine.

I listened to Loots and Helga discussing junctions, exits, distances – which route would be the best to take. Though much of what they said was practical, desultory even, I couldn’t help but feel envious. Their voices were like the gentlest kind of acid: all thoughts of revenge on Nina quietly dissolved in it. I just wished that she was sitting next to me, her head against my shoulder, as we travelled towards the cabin by the lake. Her face as the motorway lights washed over it. Her voice dreamily describing clouds, the sky …