So when Visser shook my hand outside the clinic and said he’d never seen such a positive response to sudden vision loss, I couldn’t keep myself from grinning. I was grinning as I stepped into the waiting car. Grinning as it moved off down the drive and out through the gates. Still grinning as it passed the boy who stood there with one foot on the pedal of an ancient bicycle.
By the time we arrived at Central Station, the weather had changed. Climbing the steps into the train I could feel mist against my face, the rust of winter on my tongue. I followed my driver through the carriage. My cane touched rubber, then metal. Then someone’s leg. I apologised.
The driver found me a seat in a second-class compartment and lifted my case on to the luggage rack. I thanked him, said goodbye. He gripped my shoulder for a moment, then he was gone. I felt for the catch on the window, slid it open. I leaned out. There was that coalscuttle smell that stations always seem to have, a smell that’s poignant, associated as it is with separations, tears, the end of love.
‘Good luck, Mr Blom. Good luck.’
It was the driver, standing on the platform somewhere below. Thanking him again, I told him not to wait. I’d be fine, I said. The truth was, I was looking forward to being alone.
I sat down. Through the window I heard the PA system crackle into life, something to do with platform four. Whoever the announcer was, he wasn’t in Smulders’ league: he didn’t have that imperturbable quality, the gift for making people feel that everything is running smoothly. The train lurched forwards, checked. A piece of luggage burst open on the floor. Five minutes passed; the train still hadn’t left the station. One of my fellow passengers began to grumble about the state of the railways. Slowly he gathered momentum, his theme expanding to include inflation, the decline in morals, political incompetence. I sat back in my seat. I was thoroughly enjoying myself; this was the kind of thing I’d missed.
‘What are you grinning about?’
I wasn’t sure if it was me the man was talking to, not until another passenger, a woman, spoke up in my defence.
‘Leave him alone. He’s blind.’
I looked at the place where the woman’s voice had come from.
‘I just got out of the clinic this morning,’ I told her. ‘It’s my first day of freedom.’
The train lurched forwards once again, and this time it kept going, stumbling over sets of points, following a long curve to the south. I knew the route by heart. Out of the station, past the grim, brick backs of warehouses and apartment blocks. Across the river on a narrow, cantilevered bridge. Green water below. White birds rising from pale spits of sand. On the marshy east bank, one or two men fishing. The suburbs next. More apartment blocks, with flower boxes on their balconies. A few shops selling car parts, fridges, tiles. The TV mast up on the hill, its red eye only visible at night. Then out into the countryside. Villages so still, they seemed uninhabited. Ponds reflecting the inevitable clouds. Copses, ditches — fields of sugar beet. I drew some comfort from this journey, which I’d undertaken so many times before.
My parents only came to see me once while I was in the clinic. (This was understandable; they lived some distance from the capital, and my father had a heart condition.) It was just a pity I was unconscious the whole time. In the months since their visit we’d talked on the phone and our conversations had been civil, at times even affectionate, if rather unspecific: the word ‘blindness’, for example, had never been mentioned. However, Visser still thought it best that I convalesce at home. I’d be in a place I knew, among people who cared for me. And as he pointed out, against any objections I might raise, I’d already dismissed the only other candidate — namely, Claudia. But I didn’t object. I’d been longing for freedom, freedom on any terms, so I eagerly embraced the idea.
As soon as I stepped down on to the station platform I knew the whole thing was a mistake. By then it was dusk, and I watched my parents appear in front of me like a Polaroid developing. There was a hollow, histrionic feel to my mother’s embrace that I found unbearable (I felt sure she’d been reading self-help manuals: How to Care for Your Disabled Son, In Three Easy Stages, or Be a Popular and Successful Mother of an Invalid). As for my father, he scuffed his feet, smiling foolishly into the cheap fur collar of his coat. I knew what it was. The dark glasses, the white stick. I’d become extreme, theatrical, embarrassing — a travesty of something they hadn’t even been comfortable with in the first place.
When we got home, I pleaded exhaustion. The journey, the excitement. I thought I should go upstairs, lie down for an hour. I couldn’t help noticing that they seemed relieved.
That night we ate together in the dining-room. Flowers stood in a vase on the table and tall white candles burned in silver candelabras. My mother was wearing the necklace she always wore when she attended banquets or the theatre.
‘What’s the occasion?’ I said.
‘Oh, Martin.’ Her voice was rich with mock reproach. ‘Let’s drink a toast to your return.’
Reaching for my wineglass, I knocked it over. Deliberately.
My mother rushed out to the kitchen for a cloth. My father gripped the arms of his chair like someone in an aeroplane expecting turbulence. I pretended not to notice the wine sliding towards me. I let it cascade on to my trousers, my eyes staring off into the corner of the room.
My mother had cooked some of my favourite dishes — a soup of white beans, braised lamb, marrow from the kitchen garden — and my father had selected a good bottle from his cellar, yet I had no sense of ease or familiarity. My father kept darting glances at me, surreptitious, sidelong glances, as if he was frightened I might catch him looking (which I did, of course). My mother plucked at her ropes of emeralds and pearls with insistent but strangely absent-minded fingers and gave me looks that were worthy of our country’s most famous tragic actress. We talked about the weather, local politics, distant relations. My father entertained us with a story we must have heard at least half a dozen times before (the day a pig got into the post office and ate all the pay cheques). There was a tension in the air, as though, at any moment, somebody might burst through the french windows with a machine-gun and riddle us with bullets.
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.