The Insult (7 page)

Then, during dessert, my mother broached the subject I’d been dreading.

‘How’s Claudia?’

I raised my napkin to my mouth, dabbed once and let it drop into my lap. I leaned back in my chair. ‘Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Tell us what?’

‘We’ve split up.’

My mother let out a contemptuous sound. ‘To be honest, it doesn’t surprise me. She’s a pretty girl, of course, but I never thought she had quite what it takes. I always thought there was something missing somehow. Backbone, I suppose. And now, at the first sign of difficulty, well –’

This was my mother all over. She used to dote on Claudia (both my parents did). She used to say that Claudia would make the perfect wife – not just a wife either, but an example, too. Throughout my twenties I had drifted from job to job, never really settling, and my mother considered Claudia a good influence in that respect. Maybe, at last, I would start thinking in terms of a career. It was all Claudia, Claudia, Claudia. But my mother could never resist an opportunity to feel let down by somebody.
I always thought
– that was classic. There was nothing she relished more than being able to claim she’d known all along that something would go wrong, nothing she relished more than being dreadfully, dreadfully disappointed. I stifled a smile. It was
almost enough to make me want to marry Claudia after all. I found myself in the highly amusing position of having to defend the girl.

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘you don’t understand. Claudia’s blameless. She offered to live with me, look after me. Nothing would’ve made her happier. I was the one who said no. It was me who ended it.’

‘But why?’ Something about the way my father lurched forwards, over the table, reminded me of a cow. That numb weight, that clumsiness.

I tried to explain it to him. ‘Everything’s changed,’ I said. ‘Everything. Don’t you see that? It’s like when someone close to you dies. It draws a line through your life. Nothing’s the same after that. The choices I made,’ and I hesitated for a moment, ‘the choices I made before I was shot no longer apply.’

A kind of shiver went through the room; even the heavy velvet curtains seemed to shift.

‘Of course, you won’t be working for a while,’ my father hurried on, glancing anxiously at my mother, ‘not in your condition.’

I lost patience suddenly.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I could always sell matches.’

My mother stood up. But then she didn’t seem to know why she was standing. People look like that if they walk in their sleep and wake up in the middle. They’re not quite where they thought they’d be. There has to be a moment of adjustment. At last she fell back on habit and began to clear the table. My father mentioned that the news would be starting soon. I wasn’t sure which of us he was talking to. Perhaps, like Smulders, he was simply saying something that he always said, regardless.

We drank our coffee in the next room, watching television. The economy was in trouble again. Two children had been murdered. There was severe flooding in the north-west. I wondered if I’d been on the news when I was shot. Probably not. They like you to be famous. Or else you have to be a child, preferably under the age of ten. GIRL, 12, MURDERED – that sounds all right. But BABY MURDERED sounds much better.

‘More coffee, Martin?’ my father said.

I rested my head against the back of the sofa and closed my eyes.

I stayed awake that night and slept for most of the next day. I didn’t appear downstairs until just after five in the afternoon. My parents thought I’d been avoiding them. That wasn’t the reason for my behaviour, of course – it was simply one of the side-effects – but there was no persuading them of this and, in truth, I didn’t really try. The mood in the house was awkward for the whole of that first week. I was still having dreams, too, dreams where my body came apart. I would wake up in the bed I’d slept in as a child, muddled, panic-stricken, sweating. I would hear my parents whispering about me in the room below.

Towards midnight, when they were asleep, I would go out for a walk. We lived on the outskirts of the town. At the end of our street there was a wooden stile and then just fields; in the distance the ground lifted to a ridge which was dense with firs and pines. I kept to the roads. I saw few people, even fewer cars. It was very quiet. I passed front gardens – waves of autumn roses breaking over fences, metal gates with rising-sun designs built into the wrought-iron. Not far from our house there was a restaurant that was open late. I used to go there when I was sixteen or seventeen. It had coloured light bulbs in the garden and a sign that said RESTAURANT – DANCING. I sometimes dropped in for a coffee or a schnapps. The place had changed hands recently and I didn’t know the new owner. If he’d heard about me, he didn’t let on; he just served me drinks and made the usual small talk. I appreciated that.

When I got home, the silence deepened. I spent hours at the window, watching the railway line that ran behind the house. Trains appeared from the left, one strip of yellow light, and slanted diagonally across the land towards me. At the last moment they seemed to speed up and, like some legend’s sword of gold, plunged into the bank of trees that stood next to the cemetery. Though it was the same every time, I never tired of it. It reminded me of Smulders. And, by association, of Maria Janssen as well. There were no such consolations here. I’d never
imagined that I might miss the clinic, but, sitting by the window, I would often think back to the night of the strip-tease. Claudia would never have done anything like that for me. She would have been too embarrassed, too ashamed.
No, I couldn’t.
Or,
I’d feel silly.
Then, later,
I don’t satisfy you, do I?
And my reply: a weary,
Yes. Yes, you do.
I was almost relieved when my mother woke me one morning with the news that Visser was on the phone. I took the call upstairs, in my parents’ bedroom. He told me that he wanted to visit me the next day, if that was convenient. I asked him if we could meet outside somewhere, and mentioned the restaurant. He thought that was a good idea.

It was almost dark when I arrived the following afternoon. I bought myself a beer and took a seat by the window. The place was empty except for an old man who was wearing one of the green hats that used to be traditional in our part of the country.

I’d been sitting there for twenty minutes when Visser came up behind me. He held my elbow for a moment.

‘Martin,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

He ordered tea, with lemon.

I was surprised he’d come so far and told him so, but he assured me it had been no trouble; he’d been in the area in any case, for a conference.

‘Though it is a weakness of mine,’ he admitted, sipping his tea. ‘I can’t seem to let go of my patients,’ and he paused, ‘especially the difficult ones.’

This was one of his rare attempts at humour. I dutifully chuckled.

We discussed my parents for a while and I conveyed a much greater degree of understanding than there actually was. He interrupted me. According to my mother, he said, I was sleeping during the day. Every day. I didn’t deny it. Having known they’d go behind my back, I was prepared.

‘Since I can’t see the sun,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t make much difference to me. And anyway, I prefer nights. They’re more peaceful.’ I smiled faintly. ‘I had this conversation with Nurse Janssen once.’

‘You’re not hiding, then? This isn’t another version of the broom cupboard?’

I laughed. ‘Well, maybe a little.’

He liked the honesty of that.

I asked him, as casually as possible, how long a convalescence was supposed to last.

He fingered his moustache. ‘That depends on you. Your progress and so forth.’

‘So if I feel ready to strike out on my own –’

‘It’s a little early for that,’ he said, ‘don’t you think? After all, you’ve only been home a week.’

‘I know, I know. But still –’

I’d come a long way, I told him, since I’d been given my cane six months before. I recalled for him my first, tentative attempts at walking, the feeling that the ground was opening in front of me, the sudden sense of an abyss. I was convinced that if I took one step I would fall. And because I didn’t know how far there was to fall, it would be like falling for ever. Like the game that children play with cracks in paving stones. I used to long to lie down on the floor and somehow wrap my arms around it and hold on.

‘It seems so long ago.’ I shook my head at the memory.

With Nurse Janssen’s help – and his help, too, of course – I’d learned to employ my remaining senses to overcome my fear, to orient myself. And then there was old Kukowski, with his talk of tactile clocks and sonic spectacles. Touch, taste, hearing, smell – they all played a part; it was a vision that had to be worked on, practised – earned. Though I wasn’t looking at Visser, I could sense him nodding. I was happy with my speech so far. The exaggerations seemed just right, as did the gratitude. Surely it would not be long, I went on, before I was ready for a challenge, before I wanted to explore my condition – its true limits, its possibilities. After all, I couldn’t spend my whole life locked in darkened rooms!

Visser responded with one of his famous silences. He was delighted with my attitude, he said at last; it never failed to impress him. My
optimism could only serve me well – provided, he added, with what I took to be a warning glance, provided I didn’t once again lose touch with reality.

Once again? What did he mean,
once again?

I’d always had the feeling, talking to Visser, that reality was something there was only one of. As if it was in some way responsive to testing, as if it could be proved to be constant in all its particulars and identical for everybody. When I had that feeling, I always thought of his moustache. I could hardly restrain myself, at times like that, from reaching out and giving it a good tweak. I’d find my hand wandering out into the air, and I’d have to rein it in. Make it pull at my earlobe instead, or probe my temple.

At last we rose from our table and walked out into the cool evening. Fog had drifted across the town; the light around the street-lamps was soft and round, the density of candy-floss. Across the road from the café was a wooded area. I suggested a stroll. To my surprise, Visser agreed.

We walked in silence for a while, pine needles snapping beneath our feet. Light flashed through the gloom in a flat, blue arc: a jay.

Still looking into the distance, I said, ‘Sometimes I have the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘Really? What kind of thing?’ He turned to me, smiling.

‘I don’t know. Something to do with me.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying, Martin, that’s a typical reaction.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘You’re reacting to not being able to see. You feel excluded. It’s only to be expected.’

Typical Visser, more like. Any question I asked, he always sidestepped or deflected it; he always turned it into a symptom of my condition. The substance of the question could be ignored. What he focused on was the fact that I’d asked it. I never got a straight answer. All I got were dull extrapolations from his diagnosis.

‘Can I drive you back?’ he said.

I nodded.

As we approached his car, he turned to me again. ‘If you want me to tell you something,’ he said, ‘in my opinion, you’re moving too fast. You’re being a little
too
optimistic.’ He reached into his coat pocket for the keys. ‘However, I don’t suppose it can hurt. Not so long as you’re prepared for disappointments. Not so long as you’re prepared to fail …’

Standing beside him, with one hand resting on my blind-man’s cane, I laughed good-humouredly. ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I’m prepared for that.’

Fail? I thought. I’m not going to fail.

One evening not long afterwards I walked out into the garden. It had been raining when I woke up and water was still dripping from the trees. I turned and stared up at the house. Walls of pale-yellow shingles and a low slate roof. Shutters painted green. A terrace with a grape arbour to shield you from the sun. Nothing had changed in years. Even my sister’s room on the top floor. I could see her ballet slippers in the window, shrimp-coloured, their plump toes crossed like fingers. A pointless exercise. There was no luck in our family; there never had been. I thought of her room with its pop-star posters and its shelves of sporting trophies and awards. A museum to her golden childhood. Anyone would think she was dead. I looked round quickly. I hadn’t meant to laugh out loud.

I heard the french windows open behind me. My father joined me on the lawn. ‘Bit damp out.’ He stood there in his sheepskin coat, peering intently at the sky, half-smiling. I was sure that he’d been sent outside by my mother, to talk to me. He had the look of someone who had drawn the short straw.

He was a slow man, my father. Life was something he’d entered into reluctantly and withdrew from whenever possible. It came as no surprise to most people to discover that his hobby was collecting snails – though hobby was probably too weak a word for it: it was more of a passion, an obsession. When he worked at the post office, for example, he used to keep a photograph of his favourite snail on the desk in front
of him (of his wife and family, there was no sign). The snails lived in a shed at the bottom of the garden. Their cages were fish tanks, which he’d bought second-hand and then converted. He’d built the environments himself: first a layer of sand, then one of earth and, lastly, various assorted pieces of bark, broken flower-pot and moss. Each cage had a pane of glass fitted over the top of it and weighed down with a stone to stop the snails escaping. He kept a notebook which was filled with observations about their ages, their distinguishing features, even the composition of their faeces. He gave them bizarre names, the kind of names that would have suited racehorses – Bronze Mantle, Lightning, Columella Girl. I remember asking him once if the names were supposed to be ironic. He gave me a blank look. He claimed they referred to individual characteristics.

‘Lightning,
though?’ I said.