Glass (15 page)

‘I'm sure you're not as bad as you think,' I said.

‘Yes! That is a great example. Thank you.'

He scribbled some more. I reached for the coffee and put my elbow in a puddle of blue paint.

‘I've been meaning to ask, why is there always paint everywhere? I thought you were writing a book.'

‘Ah yes, but sometimes I paint instead. I cannot stop working or I will not finish in my lifetime, but sometimes I get tired of words, and as they say, a change is as good as a rest.'

‘Maybe that's why I like books with pictures,' I said. We mulled silently over our coffee for a while. ‘Oh, I've been meaning to ask – any chance you're an expert on cagoules?'

‘I know everything that is useful, and nothing that is not.'

‘All right then, try and solve this one –'

‘A riddle?'

‘I don't know, I haven't solved it yet.'

‘I will put on my lateral thinking hat.'

He duly went off and came back to the table wearing a battered bowler.

‘What could a cagoule have to do with fascism?'

‘A cagoule? Or the cagoule?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The cagoule, or
la
cagoule?'

‘What, is the Holy Grail disguised as some kind of mystical French raincoat?'

‘La Cagoule. With a capital C. Otherwise known as the Comité Social d'Action Révolutionnaire. It is better translated as the Hood.'

‘And what was the point of this hood? Did someone wear it, or …?'

‘It was not about items of clothing. It was a French underground society. Right wing. Terrorists in the French sense, they wanted to create order in society through terror, like Robespierre.'

‘It's not an actual cagoule?' I asked.

‘No. A secret fascist society. They liked to explode people. They used false flag tactics, meaning that they would kill their own allies to make their enemies the Communists look like unhinged murderers. Truly ironic, to have to commit a crime on behalf of those you wish to be guilty. I have a book somewhere…' He got up and wandered over to the bookcase, the Post-its swaying like narcissi on a faint breeze, and walked his fingers along spines. ‘It is not alphabetical, I am afraid. Alphabetical is a good system, you know, Dewey is fine, I started to develop my own indexing system based on Boolean, but these … it should be here somewhere … You see, we have entered an age of fractal specialism, as access to knowledge becomes freely available and new technology is built on the foundations of past specialisms. More and more we see people who devote whole lives to tiny branches of branches of branches of thought. In some ways it is best to write books on one thing only … but that is why my book of life is so necessary … no one to turn all the little puddles of knowledge into a reservoir.' He now seemed to be mounting the bookcase, like a randy spider.

‘I'll borrow the book later, shall I?' I asked.

‘Yes, yes. Quite an interesting case in fact …'

False flag tactics. Good thing that sort of thing didn't happen these days. I stared at the toast in my hand, threw it down in disgust and went to the cupboard for a waffle.

15

Tissue of Lies

Lieve texted me:
I want to see you
. I considered playing hard to get while I took out my bike, which had already grown cobwebs, and cycled across town to Lieve's. Everyone on the road seemed very angry with each other – cars with buses and vice versa, pedestrians with everything that was moving and vice versa, cyclists with the world in general, except for those on Boris bikes, who pottered obliviously. By the time I got to Baron's Court I was sweating like a hairy pig, so I decided to dry off in a café.

I found another one of those fake French cafés. It had the same wicker chairs and the same ‘Chat Noir' poster in the corner. I had another coffee. I had had a lot of coffee, having already shared a cafetière with the Steppenwolf, and my hand was beginning to shake a little on the cup. After that I went into a perfume shop and made a great pretence of sniffing at a few bottles before liberally applying one of them to my neck and arms.
Eau Sauvage
, apparently. Smelt like a bath bomb to me, but then you could fit what I know about perfumes on the back of a stamp. Lieve answered her door in full soothsayer regalia, floaty clothes and wide hoop earrings.

‘Why don't you wait upstairs? I'm just finishing up. You look twitchy.'

‘Yes, I am quite. Did you know those coffee chains put two espressos in each coffee? No one told me.'

She leant in. ‘You smell different.'

‘It's a new aftershave,' I said.

‘I prefer your natural odour.' She smiled to herself and hurried back through to the lounge, where I saw a nondescript-looking man in a grey suit. He was holding up a Tarot card and inspecting it. She shut the door on me just as the man turned round, so that he didn't see me.

I walked up the stairs and decided to relieve myself (often, going to the toilet is no cause for relief, but, after all the coffee, this time I felt it flooding through my bloodstream). I went to the basin to wash my hands, and since there was a wastepaper bin there I decided to throw away an old train ticket and a chewing gum wrapper. In the course of this mundane act, I saw something extraordinary: there was only one thing in the bin, and it was a pregnancy test, wrapped up in tissue paper. I didn't know whether I should unwrap it to find out the results, especially since it had been comprehensively soaked in urine.

In the end I left it, partly because hygiene has always been important to me, and partly because not knowing the answer was almost the same as not knowing the question had been asked.

I padded back through thick carpet to the bedroom, which was decorated plainly in comparison to the bedouin tent below. A small grey stuffed penguin sat over in the corner by a row of perfumes. It could have been there for any number of reasons.

I thought about opening her drawers to look at her things. If she came in now, it would not be easily forgiven. I checked the time. I thought about getting in the bed, but I had only really had two proper dates with her, and wasn't sure if this was a bit presumptuous, so I just sat on the edge.

After a few minutes I decided that I might as well find out the results of the pregnancy test. I crossed the landing again, went into the bathroom, got down on my knees and opened the bin lid. I picked out the damp tissue and began to peel it away from the test. The extreme dampness of the tissue had compromised its structural integrity, and it broke apart as I tried to peel it off; on top of which my hand was shaking from the coffee. Nevertheless, I saw that it said ‘+' very clearly on the blue display. A cross like the little baby Jesus, perhaps. Or a little tombstone to indicate that another little egg had passed over. Or a plus, meaning that she had tested positive for baby-chemicals. Although, perhaps in our Malthusian modern world, it was considered a plus not to find oneself pregnant, and the sign indicated the all-clear.
⁵⁴

I sat there for a minute, holding the pregnancy test and trying to calm myself by recalling the various folk methods of diagnosing pregnancy, such as weeing on toads. It was definitely something like that.

As I got my phone out to look it up, the door opened and the man in the grey suit strode in, having already half-undone his flies. He only noticed my bulk crouched by the cistern as he was undoing the button on his underpants and I made a small noise of alarm. He stood, holding his penis, staring down at me as I stared back up at him, one hand full of wet tissue and a pregnancy test, and the other holding my phone. He was evidently in shock because he seemed rooted to the spot. I decided to take the situation into my own hands.

‘Please can you stand outside and wait until I have finished?' I said in a low voice.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘Yes, of course. Sorry to – didn't mean to bother you.'

‘Not at all.'

He backed out of the room, shell-shocked, fiddling with his crotch. I locked the door, wrapped the pregnancy test back up and disposed of it again. Then I washed my hands with soap, dried them, washed them again, dried them, and then smelt them. They smelt of soap.

We glanced at each other meaningfully as I exited. I understood the look to mean,
let's keep this between us.
I had exchanged a similar look with my father on the way back from the glass museum as a child. The look that said mother wouldn't understand, nor should we ask her to try. I went back to the bedroom, where I listened patiently to the sound of a flushing loo, and the sound of rushed pleasantries by the front door.

Lieve opened the door to the bedroom as she removed a large hoop earring. She kissed me on the mouth before removing her top and stepping out of her skirts. I felt touched to have been included in this simple intimacy. She put on some jogging bottoms and a T-shirt. It didn't fit with my image of her, but I suppose everyone has to let their hair down, and at least she didn't seem to own jogging bottoms for exercise. I never knew why people went running. It was pointless. Either you ran in a big circle, ending up where you started, or you ran on a treadmill, which was as dystopian a vision as I could imagine. To run without having anywhere to be is depressing enough, but to be made to run by a shifting floor without even moving from the spot was a Sisyphean nightmare.
⁵⁵

She sat down on the bed and pulled me to her, putting her arms around my waist. I held her too, and slipped my hand under her T-shirt, beginning to fiddle with her bra clasp. Perhaps if we got nude, we wouldn't have to talk.

‘I have some big news.' She paused while I retracted my hand. ‘Are you ready?'

‘As I'll ever be.'

She raised her eyebrows in anticipation of my surprise. ‘I'm pregnant.'

‘Oh! Pregnant, you say?'

‘Yes. I just found out.'

‘Right. So I guess you must have taken a pregnancy test or something.'

‘Yes Günter. That's how people find out.'

‘Yes of course. And is it—'

‘Don't even think about asking that question.'

I stalled. ‘So, well. Obviously I didn't mean to, um … So. What shall we do? Can I … help? In some way?' I asked eventually.

‘I'm just telling you as a courtesy. It's not something for you to worry about. It's my body and I'll take care of it myself. I just thought you should know.'

‘Well, yes, of course. Especially after everything you've been through. It can't be easy, you know. So if you want me to be there. When …' I trailed off.

‘Thank you. God. I've been so worried about telling you. I can't tell you how much it means to know you understand. You're a very special person, Günter. Very special.'

My window of opportunity for nudity seemed to have passed, but I didn't mind. I had found the only woman in the world who was willing to speak openly in a language I could understand, and that was good enough for me.

‘I'm going to get you a glass of water,' she said. ‘You look like you're on drugs.'

True enough, my hands were still shaking and I had a bit of a cold sweat coming on. I saw now that caffeine was cruel. It enhanced nothing, only contaminated the purity of my senses. Perhaps I should cut it out of my diet altogether.

Lieve brought me a glass of water and I felt it spread down my throat like menthol, clearing out my sticky throat, quelling my bubbling stomach. Pure water. I looked through the bedroom window at the sun sailing through the sky and wanted to be back up there, lifted out of the chaos and noise, scraping at the sky. The air was cast in a cobalt blue of such calibre that my eyes couldn't quite settle on it. I stared into it and saw spots. No clouds – only the endless theatre of the sky.

‘What are you watching?' she asked.

‘Oh, nothing in particular.'

I tore my eyes from the sky and turned to her. She started to cry. I kissed her softly, my lips a cushion against hers, which had tensed as if forming an ‘m'. I brought my hand up to her cheekbone and it was cold.

‘I'm sorry. Sorry. It's the' – she waved at her stomach – ‘I'm not normally like this.'

‘You don't need to apologise.'

She shook her head and pulled away from me. ‘Look, thank you for being so honest and straightforward with me' – I thought back to the moment that her client had discovered me with my hand in her toilet bin – ‘and for coming round at such short notice, but I have another client coming in ten minutes. I'll see you soon, okay?'

‘Okay.'

‘I'm glad we could talk about this.' She put her hand on my knee. Was there still some hope of nudity? Probably not.

The hemp-bag lady must have heard me fumbling with my keys, because she came out of her flat as soon as I arrived.

‘I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for the other day, unloading on you like that. I hope you don't think I'm awful and desperate!' she laughed nervously. ‘You just caught me at a funny time, that's all.'

‘Please, don't worry about it. I was happy to listen. And it was nice to meet you properly …?'

‘Emma.'

‘Glass,' I said. ‘Günter Glass.'

We stood in silence and I got the impression that she was testing my surname in her head to see if it sounded nice after ‘Emma'.

‘Well, I'd better get in,' I said.

‘Yes, I've got to get to court,' she said, straightening up.

‘Oh dear, what did you do?' I asked.

She laughed and touched me playfully on the arm as if I'd made a joke. ‘Really, I should go. See you soon, Günter.'

As I reached the other front door I remembered that she was a lawyer. I never seemed able to remember these things during conversations, only afterwards. It worried me occasionally that I didn't seem to be able to understand events until after they'd occurred. Only when I was up high did the world feel immediate, like it was all really happening to me, there and then. I smiled as I recalled the picture of me clutching the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. Up in the air, I was like a hippo in water. Up there I could really breathe.

I unlocked the front doors, put my keys down and opened the fridge absent-mindedly. There was nothing in it but a book:
Murder in the Metro
.
⁵⁶
There was a Post-it on the book which said,
No More Eating! You are fat. Here is the book. Do some cleaning.

I tried calling Dad, but with no luck. It just rang and rang. I doubted somehow that he had left the house, which could mean that he had become so apathetic he was no longer prepared to move. It was still morning, so there was a possibility he was still passed out from the night before. Or he had committed suicide. He probably hadn't committed suicide. But I should try again later.

I lay down on my futon with the book. It would be nice to have some furniture. I opened the book and a little clipping fell out from the middle, where it had bookmarked a certain page. I picked up the clipping – another one of the Steppenwolf's little essays.

I wondered if he might have lost this section, so I slid it gently under his door. There was a flurry of sound like a burrowing animal and the door flew open, the Steppenwolf before me in rags, incandescent with rage.

‘I have a system! Do you mean to bring about my undoing
'