Glass (13 page)

‘Could you just summarise them?'

He picked the knife up and began to approach me.

‘Are you making a joke with me?' he asked, brandishing the knife.

‘No!'

‘You think it is easy to take all the tinnitus of existence and make a nice little phrase?'

‘I, no, I'm just – I don't even know anything.'

He turned, walked back to the chopping board and started attacking the California roll. ‘A sculpture is hewn, not built.'

‘That's a nice little phrase right there,' I muttered under my breath. He swivelled round, baring his teeth.

‘Good. You are learning. Very good.'

14

Bundles

The morning I was due to help Blades clean the IMAX in Waterloo began badly: I had run out of Dutch waffles. For the first time since Mum had died, I had to eat something else for breakfast, and what's more, the only thing in the house was sushi. Deciding it would be an insult to mother's memory, I went hungry, and going hungry is something that I am very loath to do.

I had told myself that I was definitely going to cycle, but, with the morning I was having, I decided to let Frank drive me today. I would cycle next time. Also, I had a bit of a fight with Blades over using my own equipment.

‘Why do you need your own pouches?' he asked. ‘Why can't you just wear what everyone else wears?'

‘You hired me because I do things my own way, so let me do things my own way.'

‘But it doesn't make any sense. What do you need different sprays for?'

‘This is regular cleaning fluid, this one's distilled water in case of any problems with the solvents, and this is something called GOMORRAH. It “wipes filth away for good”.'

‘I thought that stuff was banned in Europe?' he said.

‘Well … It gets the job done.'

‘What is it about the regular equipment that offends you? I've been using it for years. You're good, but you're not better than me. Until you are, it's my way or the highway.'

‘I just don't understand why you have to be such a damned fascist about it! I get the job done, don't I?'

‘I'm telling you, Günter, don't bring it again.'

We continued cleaning in silence. I spent a long time on my own, up a rope, thinking about how, on my first proper day of work, I had called my new boss a fascist. It had just slipped out. To calm myself down, I tried to think up various scenarios in which the conversation could have gone better, most of them involving not calling him a fascist, and, in a broader context, not sleeping with his ex-wife. Was it better or worse that I'd done it twice?

We had split off in different directions around the circular building, and so, inevitably, we met on the opposite side of the building. He grabbed me by the safety rope, ensuring that I couldn't escape.

‘You know, Günter, the word fascist is very misunderstood.'

I couldn't think of anything to say except, ‘Oh?'

‘You young people have been fed all this liberal trash by the media, and you don't realise that there are different sides to every story. I won't even ask what they taught you about World War Two.'

I glanced out at the cars on the roundabout, looked down at the drop, and tried to carry on window washing.

‘Fasci were just like-minded political groups,' he continued. ‘It means bundles. People naturally bunch together, don't they? You wouldn't mix a bundle of hay with … Well, anything else. Fascism was about strength through unity. People don't realise nowadays that by tolerating all these different religions and what have you, they're diluting the country, destroying its purity. You see this building we're hanging from?' he asked.

I nodded meekly, running my squeegee down a window.

‘Well, a few years back it had glass cancer. When you introduce an impurity into the glassmaking process, it's as if the glass knows; it can feel a traitor in its midst. The impurity may be opaque, or have a different melting point; it might have a hundred other properties. In some ways it doesn't matter what the impurity is; the important thing is that it is not glass. The glass around it will fracture. Sometimes whole panels have been known to shatter spontaneously, seemingly without provocation. But there was provocation in the very making.

‘And no one can tell when the trouble will start. It might look fine now. But it's a time bomb without a timer. In the IMAX, it happened a year after the building was opened. There were a few pedestrians walking under it at the time and a pane shattered above them suddenly, raining splinters.'
⁴⁸

I tried to imagine a rain of glass and thought it must be like a hailstorm. The drops would hit me on the head with sharp little digs, then nestle into my hair and my clothes. But rather than getting wet as they melted away, I would be dry, and covered in sparkling prisms of light, flashing agelessly like stars.

‘I'm not saying foreigners can't be good people,' he said. ‘I'm just saying they don't belong here. If you're from Poland, you belong in Poland.'

‘What if your own government wants to kill you? What if you had to leave your home because you were being persecuted there?'

Blades shook his head gravely.

‘Don't even get me started on all these illegal asylum seekers.'

‘You can't have an illegal asylum seeker. The only way to seek asylum is legally.'
⁴⁹

‘I'm not interested in the fine print. The point is they shouldn't be here if they don't want to work.'

‘Asylum seekers aren't allowed to work.'

‘Well then they should force them into work. Get all the asylum seekers and all the convicts and make them work in a call centre or something.'

Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I hadn't woken up for work yet, and it was still the early hours of Monday morning, and this was all a dream. I gently knocked my head with the titanium end of my scraper to check. It hurt.

We unlatched ourselves and started packing our equipment away. Neither of us spoke for a good ten minutes. Eventually, Blades reached out to take back my rope, and said, ‘I know it isn't popular to say you're a fascist now, but back in the day lots of ordinary people were proud of it. We have a lot in common with Fascists.'

We started heading down the stairs, back towards the solid earth.

‘Let's agree to disagree.'

‘No,' he said. ‘This is important.'

‘I just don't think I have anything in common with Fascists,' I said.

‘But what evidence are you basing that on?' he cried passionately. ‘They wanted the whole country to be a single, secular community, to keep the economy strong and foster consumer demand, same as us. They wanted a single leader of the country – sure, he had to pretend to be appointed by a king or voted in to satisfy the little people, but everyone knew it was just a ceremony. Same as us. They wanted a strong national identity, and that meant pulling people together. Easiest way to get your people to pull together is to start a war or two. Same as us. And they didn't think women were much good at anything except cooking and fucking. If you dispute that, you should meet my ex-wife.'

My heart beat so hard that my vision shook. I would confront him, but not now. Not yet. First, I wanted to find out more about him, to figure him out. Maybe I could record our conversations and have him dragged through an employment tribunal. Something like that. But first, I had to let out enough rope and see if he hanged himself, or dropped off the end.

The main advantage I had, being me, was that no one expected me to know anything about anything. I could wear my clumsiness like a camouflage net. No one ever suspects the tubby window cleaner.

Max texted me to say that he was going to be in London the next day for a foreclosure auction, and asked if I wanted to meet for lunch. Naturally, I was suspicious, so I asked him why, and he explained that Dad had been behaving strangely. I said I couldn't get away from work for long, but he said he could meet me anywhere, so I didn't have much choice.

Max picked me up in the four-by-four. Naturally, I didn't agree with him using it, although it was actually quite fun to be so high up, bearing down on the other cars. It made me feel authoritative and powerful. It was a shame that so many of the things which made a person feel manly were bad for the environment. Apparently you shouldn't eat meat, either.

As we drove, I watched the little monitor that he kept on his dashboard, which gauged the volume of ambient noise. Someone slammed their hand on a car horn as Max changed lanes, and the gauge jumped from green to amber and nearly into the red. Max didn't seem alarmed. To him, it didn't ultimately refer to anything. He might be able to hear a little, with his hearing aids, but it wasn't how he processed the world.

Max talked a little bit about his job. He was the guy at the bank who financed big ‘consumer purchases' like cars and yachts and diamond watches. It was perfect for him because it required only deftness with arithmetic. He was simply employed to calculate whether the applicant could pay back the loan or not. He had always seemed to be more keen on the language of arithmetic than the written word. It was complete, precise, self-referring, where words were vague and pointed out at the world of experience, the world hearing people lived in. Despite having had his new job for less than a year, Max had thrown himself into it, and intended to become a true connoisseur of the talismans that people exchanged for money. He had even started going to foreclosure auctions to capitalise on others' misfortunes (hence the new watch).

After we'd ordered, he told me his department had just funded a car dealership which had got hold of a Koenigsegg CCX, one of the rarest cars in the world. It was shipped from Sweden to the USA, where the dealership was planning on trying an experimental biofuel upgrade which would put its horsepower at over 1000. It was bought before they could start to modify it – before it was even listed. As one of only twenty-five in existence, its movements were being tracked by some very wealthy people. The head of the dealership wasn't too happy about having to part with a flagship car so soon, and since he might never see one again, decided to take it out for a little spin before he handed it over. Rumour had it that he had been challenged to a race by a rival car dealer, but whatever he was doing, it took the whole front off the car. Today, Max had received an email from the guy who'd crashed it asking for finance to buy one of the twenty-four remaining Koenigseggs, because his customer had read about the crash in the paper and was getting worried.

Max laughed heartily at this, a stuttering, nasal laugh that turned a couple of heads. Oblivious, he speared a bit of ravioli on his fork and went serious.

It's a shame though. The CCX is like an endangered species. It's like shooting a panda in the face.

It's not like that,
I signed.

How is it different?
he asked.

Pandas have feelings. They're part of what makes this planet amazing.

Well, the guys at Koenigsegg have feelings too. You wouldn't understand. Those guys, they're trying to make something perfect.
He picked his fork up again.

I decided to let it go. Max wouldn't know perfection if it killed him.

So what is going on with Dad?

Max shrugged.

He's just not doing very well.

How do you mean?
I asked.

Now that there's no one around,
he replied.
He's drinking too much. He's stopped opening the mail. Poor bastard can't even make a Cup-a-Soup without fucking it up.

Why don't you go round?
I asked.

Max glared at me.

The thought had occurred
, he replied jerkily.

I imagined the spent case of the emergency whisky still hanging from the wall in the kitchen, the fake glass broken, the emergency ongoing.

So why are you telling me?
I asked.
To shift the blame?

He looked down. No one knew we were arguing. The beauty of sign.

How are you helping Dad?
I signed in front of his face.
What are you actually doing?

He looked angry. Good. He tapped his fork on the table a few times, the way people bite their lip to make sure they don't say the first thing that comes to mind.

Well, what are you doing?
he signed.
Why don't you get down off your fucking high horse and do something yourself?
He hastily finished up his plate. Clearly we were enjoying each other's company as much as ever. Max wiped a hand on a napkin, and we sat looking at each other without speaking. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Well, this has been a real treat,
he signed.

He tapped his watch face at me as he got up, both to indicate that he needed to leave and, I'm sure, to point out the watch again. He left me seated, thinking about his watch, black and chrome, or silver or platinum. The neutral blackness of it seemed to mirror and accentuate the qualities of the things around it. Elegant, raunchy, morbid, comforting, mysterious, empty. Black was nothing but what was made of it. The new black.

I looked around me at the other diners. They appeared to know we had been arguing. The waiting staff weaved around my table in such a way as to make me aware I wasn't wanted any more. Max hadn't put any money down.

I just didn't know how we always ended up arguing like this. We had to try so hard to get on, even for a minute. Weren't siblings supposed to be close? Weren't we supposed to feel automatic affection for one another? He'd grown up beside me for twenty-one years, and he still felt like an acquaintance – the kind that you try to avoid making eye contact with in the street.

Over the next week, I didn't text Max and he didn't text me. If I contacted him first it would be an admission that I was in the wrong, which I definitely wasn't. And if I was in the wrong, which I wasn't, I didn't want to look like I was.

It's not as if we would remember this argument in ten years' time, or twenty. Well, perhaps we would remember the fact that we had argued, or the fact that we always argued. But in the grand scheme of things what did it matter if we never got on? He would die eventually and so would I, and then it wouldn't matter to either of us. Everyone I knew would die some day, a thought which, if not exactly reassuring, at least put things in perspective. Everyone always lived as if the people around them were permanent fixtures, but it was the biggest, fattest lie of them all.

The whole week passed in solitude. The Steppenwolf had locked himself in his room and Blades left me off the timesheet. I texted Lieve to see if she was free at all, but she didn't reply so I just sat in the flat.
www.what-do-turtles-eat.info
said that turtles eat all kinds of food depending on their age. It said that eggs were a safe bet, so I boiled two for myself and one for Archimedes. After unpeeling and throwing it in the bath with a satisfying plop, I stood at the Steppenwolf's door listening for signs of activity, but I heard nothing.