‘You know you used to work in a circus?’
His face turned slowly on his palm. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Gregory.’
‘He’s such a blabbermouth.’
I sipped my brandy. ‘I just wondered. What did you do exactly?’
‘I’ll give you a clue,’ he said. And then he said, ‘Listen.’
Ah yes, I thought. Here’s somebody who understands. It wasn’t just that he was using the kind of language someone blind could respond to. It was the timing of it. It felt as if he knew my vision had just failed and he was playing with it. Uncanny.
I heard him stand up and unzip his jacket. Then I heard a kind of singing sound as one … two … three … four … five … six metal things, I thought they must be knives, yes, knives, slid out of their individual sheaths into the air.
‘You were a cook,’ I said.
Loots began to laugh.
‘A cook,’ he said. ‘I love it.’
He took me by the arm and led me out through the back door. It was cold suddenly. We crossed a yard, our feet catching in torn streamers, sending paper cups in giddy half-circles. My heart was beating fast. I felt like a child who’d got into a stranger’s car. I asked him where we were going.
‘It’s another clue,’ he said.
We were walking on grass. I heard the wings of geese carving through the damp air overhead. The house was quiet behind us. I wondered what Gregory would think if he happened to glance out of an upstairs window, glass in hand and yawning blearily.
Loots stopped. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Perfect.’
We had to climb a fence. Loots made a step out of his hands for me. I put my foot on it and clambered over. Then dropped down, my feet sinking into spongy grass. Loots landed beside me, breathing through his mouth.
‘All right?’
I nodded. ‘Where are we?’
‘The next-door neighbour’s garden.’
We walked a few paces, then he pushed me up against a wall.
‘Stand there.’
The wall was made of wood. Maybe it wasn’t a wall. Another fence, then. No, I could feel where it ended. A shed of some kind. The side wall of a shed.
Six knives. The side wall of a shed.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘I think I know.’
‘Stand there,’ Loots called out, ‘and don’t move.’
‘But I know —’
Loots was chuckling, some distance off.
‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘You won’t even see them comin —’
The g was cut off by the whistle of the first knife through the air and the thud a split-second later as it stuck into the wood next to my ear.
The other five followed, at two-second intervals. I dug my fingernails into the crack between two boards and held on, grateful that it was light and I couldn’t see the blurred blades come hurtling towards me.
‘Hey!’
‘Who’s that?’ I said.
‘It’s an old guy,’ Loots said. ‘He looks angry.’
I grinned. ‘It’s probably the next-door neighbour.’
‘That’s right, it’s the next-door neighbour,’ the next-door neighbour said, ‘and the next-door neighbour wants to know what the fuck six knives are doing stuck in the side wall of his garden shed.’
Loots tried to explain that he used to work in a circus and that he was just demonstrating the art of knife-throwing to a friend.
The next-door neighbour interrupted him. ‘First I’m kept awake half the night, some wedding, now there’s a fucking circus in my garden. Go demonstrate in your own garden, for Christ’s sake.’ He blew some air out of his mouth. ‘Jesus.’
Loots retrieved his knives, then led me towards the fence.
‘And don’t fucking break my fence,’ the next-door neighbour shouted after us, ‘all right?’
We didn’t start laughing until we dropped down on the other side. Then we couldn’t stop. Every time Loots said, ‘It’s probably the next-door neighbour,’ we started again. My stomach ached with it.
‘Were you really a knife-thrower?’ I asked him.
‘Well, I trained as one,’ he said, ‘but they never actually let me loose on anyone.’
The two of us laughing, but more quietly now. Sitting on a damp lawn, with our backs against the fence. Dawn in the suburbs.
At last we walked back towards the house. There was something I was still curious about, though, and now seemed as good a time as any. I turned to Loots.
‘Do you do any tricks with bicycles?’
‘Bicycles?’ He sounded baffled. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said casually. ‘Handstands, juggling — that kind of thing.’
‘No, I don’t know anything about that.’
I smiled to myself. Obviously he didn’t want to talk about his bicycle trick. He was probably still perfecting it. I decided not to press him. Loots was a man of many talents, and some of them were hidden. If anyone understood the value of secrecy, it was me. The fact that he also had secrets didn’t frustrate or discourage me at all; if anything, it lifted him higher in my estimation.
We travelled back into the city together. The tram was empty to begin with, then it filled. The people getting on hadn’t been awake for long. They talked in murmurs, if they talked at all; they were still carrying their last night’s sleep with them. I heard the stamp of tickets being punched in the machine. The wheels grinding on the rails. The whiplash of electric cables overhead. Loots fell asleep beside me, his cheekbone knocking against my shoulder. I opened the window and cool foggy air flowed in. November.
Just before my stop, I reached into my pocket to check that my key was there. My hand closed round a piece of paper. I lifted it to my nose. The scent of apple blossom still lingered.
Inge had suggested that I choose the place. Somewhere you’re comfortable with, she said. Somewhere you know. While it was thoughtful of her, it wasn’t easy. All the places I knew — or rather, used to know — I couldn’t go to any more. I could only think of the Bar Sultan, which was in a small street on the east side of the railway station. Gregory had taken me there one night.
We’d agreed to meet at nine o’clock. I was there at three minutes past. I couldn’t see her, though, so I took a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. It was a long, narrow place. Dark wood, framed photographs of local football teams (the owner used to keep goal for the city), and a juke-box and a pool table in the back. I wondered what would happen when she arrived. I didn’t think we’d dance again; there was nobody to blackmail me into it this time and, besides, the music wasn’t suitable. Maybe we’d talk. I didn’t have much to say that anyone would believe, but I was curious about her. I knew so little. I drank my beer and when it was gone there was still no sign of her. I ordered another.
It’s all right to be on your first drink when you’re waiting for somebody, or on your second, that’s all right, too. But if you’re on your third, it starts to feel like something’s wrong. I asked the bartender what the time was. Ten-thirty-five, he said. Inge was an hour and a half late. My neck ached from looking round whenever the door swung open. My head ached as well. I’d been looking forward to the moment when the crowd parted to reveal her, like something at the centre of a flower. I’d been looking forward to it, and now it wasn’t going to happen.
By the time I ordered my fourth beer I was past caring. I drank it down in two savage gulps and ordered a fifth immediately.
Someone sat down on the stool I’d been saving for her. Well, she wasn’t going to be using it. She wouldn’t be coming now, and that was probably just as well. I couldn’t even remember what she looked like. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to leave, though. It wasn’t twelve o’clock yet, and, anyway, I didn’t feel like going to Leon’s. I went to Leon’s every night. So there I was, five drinks inside me, sitting at the bar.