Outside, the projectionist’s box was clearly labelled and its door was, in any case, ajar, making it very easy to identify – an unattended projector purring away there, a dense push of light darting out through the small glass window, thinning as it spanned the cinema and then opening itself against the screen. It was always so cleanly defined: that fluttering, shafted light. Frank briefly wondered if the operator had to smoke, or scatter talc, raise steam to make sure it stayed that way, remained picturesque.
In the foyer, there was the boy with the dirty shoes, leaning against a pillar and looking drowsy.
‘There’s no sound.’
‘What.’
‘I said, there’s no sound.’
The boy seemed to consider saying what again before something, perhaps Frank’s expression, stopped him.
‘I said, there’s no sound.’ Frank not enraged, not about to do anything, simply thinking – no one helps and you ask and it doesn’t matter because no one helps and I don’t know why. He tried again. ‘I can’t hear. In the normal way I can hear. But at the moment I can’t. Not the film. Everything else, but not the film. That’s how I know there’s something wrong with the film and not with me.’
The boy was eyeing him, but didn’t seem physically strong or apt to move abruptly.
Frank believed that he felt calm and was not at risk. He continued to press his point. ‘There is a problem with the film. The film is playing, but there’s no sound.’ And to explain what he’d been doing for all of this time: ‘It’s not been started long and it has no sound.’ Although this maybe made him seem foolish because who would have normally waited more than half an hour in a cold, dark room for a film to start?
‘There’s no sound?’ The boy’s tone implied that Frank was demanding, unreasonable.
Frank decided that he would like to be both demanding and unreasonable. If he wasn’t the man he had been, then surely he ought to be able to pick the man he would be. ‘There’s no sound.’ Frank swallowed. ‘I would like you to do something about it.’
This wasn’t a tense situation, he’d thought it might be, but he’d been wrong. His potential opponent simply shrugged and told him, ‘I’ll go and find the projectionist.’
‘Yes, you should do that.’ Frank adding this unnecessarily because the boy had already turned and was dragging across the foyer carpet.
Something would be done, then.
Frank sat on the small island of seats provided, no doubt, for short periods of anticipation – people expecting to be joined by other people, parties assembling, outings, families, kids all excited by the prospect of big pictures, big noise, a secure and entertaining dark. The door to the larger auditorium was open and he could see a portion of the screen, the giant chin and mouth of a woman. There were also figures in some of the seats, film-goers. Or models of film-goers, although that was unlikely. They must have been stealthy, creeping in: or else they’d arrived before him, extremely early. Either way, he’d not heard them, not anticipated they’d be there.
That was surprising. Frank prided himself on his awareness and observation and didn’t like to think they could fail him so completely. In a private capacity this would be alarming, but it would be disastrous in his work. He was resting at the moment, of course. Everybody who’d said that he ought to rest had been well intentioned and well informed. He’d needed a break. Still, there would come a day when he’d return and then he’d need his wits about him.
Expert. That’s what he was.
‘There are other things you can do.’
She hadn’t understood. When you’re an expert then you have an obligation, you must perform.
‘There are other things to think about.’
She’d never known the rooms he’d seen: rooms with walls that were a dull red shine, streaking, hair and matter; floors dragged, pooled, thickened; footprints, hand prints, scrambling, meat and panic and spatter and clawing and smears and loss and fingernails and teeth and everything that a person is not, should not be, everything less than a whole and contented person.
Invisible rooms – that’s what he made – he’d think and think until everything disappeared beyond what he needed: signs of intention, direction, position; the nakedness of wrong; who stood where, did what, how often, how fast, how hard, how ultimately completely without hope – what exactly became of them.
Invisible.
At which point, his mind broke, dropped to silence, the foyer around him becoming irrelevant. A numbness began at the centre of his head and then wormed out, filling him with this total lack of anything to hear. He tried retracing his thoughts but they parted, shredded, let him fall through into nowhere. And the man he’d been before was gone from him absolutely, he could tell, and whatever was here now stayed suspended, thoughtless.
No way of telling how long. Big numb space, not even enough to grip hold of and start a fear. Maybe mad. Maybe that’s what he was. Broken or mad. Broken and mad.
Then in bled a whining: a thinner, more pathetic version of his voice and his mind seemed to catch at it, almost comforted.
No one helps.
It felt like a type of mild headache.
No one ever helps. I just stay at home and the light bulbs die and the ceilings crack and everything electrical is not exactly as it should be – there are many faults – and I call the help lines and they don’t, I call all kinds of people and they don’t help, I spend hours on the phone and I get no answers that have any meaning, I get no sense – there are constantly these things going wrong, incessantly, every day, and I want to stop them and I could stop them but no one helps and I can’t manage on my own.
Like that evening with the blood – he couldn’t very well have been expected to deal with those circumstances by himself.
He’d done all he could, waited in the kitchen and kept the soup on a low heat so that it would be ready for her. Except that wasn’t the main point.
His finger was the more important detail. He washed that under the tap and then wound it round with an adhesive dressing from the first-aid kit. He’d used the kit in the hallway cupboard rather than go and maybe disturb her in the bathroom.
The bathroom, that was more important than his finger. He’d been guessing she was in the bathroom, because the hot water was running, he could tell from the boiler noise, and she’d probably be in there adding bath oil, enjoying the steam, getting the temperature right for steeping in – he hadn’t known. He never had seen her bathing, the details.
The bathroom was connected with his finger because he’d bound his injury downstairs so as to avoid her and had possibly not done this well, maybe he should have taken better steps to close the wound, because the scar that he’d eventually grown was quite distinct. If anyone examined his hands closely they would see it – an identifying mark.
Then – a key detail – he’d noticed that his shirt was bloody and he should change it, padded upstairs, and that had meant changing his plans and going upstairs, sneaking into their bedroom, pulling out any old sweater and wrestling it on.
The smell of her in the bedroom. Same thing you’d get when you hugged her, or rolled over on to her pillow when she wasn’t there. Frank had seen men hug their wives, the way they’d fit their chin down over the woman’s shoulder and there would be this smile, a particular young-seeming grin with closed eyes – always made him think – bliss.
That one soft word, which in every other context he did not like or use.
Going up to the bedroom had been a risk – she might have been there, too, resting on her pillow, or undressing and having some kind of large emotion that she didn’t want to be observed. But he’d been careful to listen at the bathroom door as he passed it and had heard the sound of her stirring in the bath, a rise and fall of water, some kind of smoothing motion.