The Insult by Rupert Thomson

accustomed to me, sitting at a table in the corner with my glass of café au lait and my slightly stale brioche. After breakfast I returned to the hotel. If it was Victor’s shift, I’d stop for a chat. He had asked me about myself one night when I came in. I’d told him the story. Naturally, he wanted to know what it was like to be shot, right down to the last detail. I didn’t mind his ghoulish enthusiasm. At least it was honest. If Arnold was on reception, however – morbid, chain-smoking Arnold – I’d walk straight past the desk; Arnold wasn’t a man you could talk to easily. Back in my room I switched the TV on and pulled up a chair. For the next two hours I watched whatever they were showing: soap-operas, news programmes, dramas – anything. I’d been astonished when I realised I could actually watch TV. Since I’d established that my vision was linked to darkness, and since the light emitted by a TV screen is so intense, I’d automatically assumed that watching it would be impossible. But it was one of those vagaries of my condition – another mystery or miracle – that I could see the picture as clearly as I could see Victor’s fingernails or Gregory’s bald head.
    Lunch at Leon’s was the high point of my day. I always looked forward to my steak and onions, the bustle and clatter of the kitchen, the conversations I could listen to. I liked the plastic hoop ear-rings the cashier wore; I liked the way the cook’s face hung in the steam above some boiling pot or pan. And it was Leon’s that had provided me with my first real acquaintance. Gregory worked nights as a security guard at a bank, and he often dropped in halfway through his shift for a cup of coffee and a pastry. During my second week in the city, I ran into him again.
    ‘I thought I’d find you here.’ Gregory sat down at my table, without asking this time, and slumped over the Formica.
    I could see that, before too long, I’d have to find somewhere else to eat. We were both lonely men, Gregory and I; the difference was, he hadn’t chosen it. Still, by hearing me out the other night, he’d done me a favour (even if he wasn’t aware of it), and that made me generous.
    ‘Smoke,’ I said, ‘how’s things?’
    A grin split his face wide open. All you had to do was use his stupid name and he’d be happy.
    For a while we talked generally, about the present – his job, his daughter’s wedding, sport – then he narrowed it down, went back in time. He began to tell me about the factory he worked in for twenty years. He used to pack fish. This didn’t surprise me. The first time I met him I thought I could smell fish, and now I realised that I hadn’t been mistaken. It was as if the smell of cod had been preserved at some deep level of his skin, layers down, the way a tree’s rings can record a bolt of lightning or a flood.
    ‘Feel this,’ Gregory said. ‘Feel my hand.’
    I reached out and felt it. I remembered it from the week before. It was smooth and shiny, like touching fibre glass. I told him so.
    ‘That’s twenty years of packing fish, that is.’
    His hands were ruined. Where I had lines, he had cracks. And the cracks, he told me, often opened up and bled. There was nothing he could do about it. It was the price you paid, working in those factories.Before that, he’d sailed on trawlers, up into Arctic waters. ‘But I already told you that …’
    I nodded patiently. I was thinking about getting away, back to my room. I was thinking about turning on the TV. Maybe I’d drink a schnapps or two. Then, later, a walk through the red-light streets, peep-show neon silvering the puddles …
    ‘You’re a good fellow, Blom,’ he said, and he stared at me, all watery-eyed and serious.
    At first I wasn’t sure why he had that look on his face. Then I realised what it was, and almost choked on my steak. The poor fool felt sorry for me!
    ‘You’re new to the city,’ he said, ‘aren’t you.’
    ‘I got here about a week