At last he climbed out of bed and opened the door. He was just in time to see his mentor trudge away through the early morning mist, stoop-shouldered, still dressed in his striped blanket and his knee-high boots from the night before. Frowning, Loots walked round to the side of his caravan. There were thirty-six knives in all, not counting the one that stood upright in the ground, and between them they spelt a single word:
It turned out that Cleo had become jealous of the attention The Great Miguel was lavishing on him. She’d told her husband that Loots had stolen money from their caravan. Some jewellery, too.
‘So they fired you.’
‘Yeah.’ Loots nodded gloomily.
‘But there wasn’t any proof, was there?’
‘There didn’t need to be. I was just some kid they’d taken on to put up tents. He was The Great Miguel.’
‘Erik,’ I said, and gave Loots a wry smile.
Loots was silent for a moment. ‘I’m not a thief, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know that.’
Later, when we’d moved into the living-room and we were drinking coffee, I thought about The Great Miguel and how his story paralleled my own. There are some things that happen and then everything that happens afterwards is different. I wasn’t thinking of forks in the road, small deviations. I was thinking of sudden change, extreme and violent. The third knife. A bullet fired from an unknown gun. I began to tell Loots about it, though it was difficult. I kept starting sentences I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t mention what kind of vision I had, and yet my story seemed empty without it, pointless and depressing; I didn’t see how he could possibly be interested. I dredged up a few old anecdotes — Smulders talking in his sleep, Nurse Janssen’s rubber balls — but even then I had to be careful. I wanted him to laugh, not feel pity for me.
Towards five in the morning I told him I ought to be going. He insisted on running me back to the hotel. I followed him down the narrow stairs and out on to the street. There was no sunrise, only a low sky and a drizzle falling; I pulled my jacket collar up and walked quickly to the car. Since the insertion of the plate, I no longer liked the idea of rain on my head. Maybe I was afraid I wouldn’t feel it when it landed. Maybe I was afraid I’d rust.
‘Are you all right to drive?’ I asked Loots. I didn’t want him losing his licence on my account.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘You think it would be better if you drove?’ Laughing, he pulled out into the traffic. The first set of lights we reached, he turned to me. ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘How did it go the other night?’
‘How did what go?’
‘With that girl. You know. The one from the wedding.’
‘Oh yeah.’ I smiled. ‘She didn’t turn up.’
‘Really? I’m sorry.’
I didn’t say anything. I was still smiling, though.
‘You don’t seem too upset,’ Loots said.
‘No, I’m not.’
Loots was staring at me. I could feel it, even without looking. Somebody behind us began to pound on their horn.
‘Loots,’ I said, ‘I think the lights have changed.’
Four days had passed and still I hadn’t heard from her. I sat on the edge of my bed with the phone on my knee. I was aware of my heart beating; it felt too close to the surface. When we were in the drawing-room of that mansion, stoned, she’d made me say her number over and over, until I had it memorised. She wouldn’t have done that, would she, if she hadn’t wanted me to call?
I dialled the number and then leaned back against the wall. It was a machine. Her voice, though. The usual phrases. Sorry there’s no one here. Please leave your name and number. I’ll get back to you. I left my name and the number of my room at the hotel, then hung up. I waited a few moments so the machine could re-set itself and called again. I just wanted to listen to her voice. This time I didn’t leave a message.
She called twelve hours later, as I was preparing for bed. My window was open. Eight floors below the first tram of the day was pulling into Central Station — the sound of a knife being held against a grindstone. She said she couldn’t talk for long. It was loud where she was. Music, voices. Glasses. I could only just hear her.
‘Did you get my note?’ I said.
‘Yeah, I got it. I couldn’t read it, though.’
‘Really? How come?’
‘I don’t know. It looked like you wrote something and then you wrote something else on top of it.’
Strange. I could remember writing the name of the hotel and my room number on one line. Then, below it, on a second line, the message.
‘What did it say?’ she asked me.
I told her.
‘That’s nice. I like that.’
‘Can I see you again, Nina?’ The sound of her name on my tongue was unfamiliar, exotic — awkward, too, in a way. As if I’d been designed to say names, but not hers.
‘Sure.’
‘When?’
‘We could meet tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘After I finish work.’ She gave me the address of a bar. ‘I get out earlier tomorrow. I should be there by two.’
There was a man at her table when I arrived. He was just leaving. I didn’t get much of an impression of him: a baseball jacket, long blond hair parted in the middle — pretty nondescript. I sat down opposite her.
‘You look good,’ I said.
She leaned over the table and kissed me on the mouth. ‘How would you know?’
I laughed. She was so easy with the idea of my blindness. She didn’t adjust or patronise. She never said the things that other people said: It must be difficult or I’m so sorry. She just accepted it, as part of me. She even seemed to appreciate it, the way you might appreciate any physical attribute — the smell of someone’s hair, the shape of their hands.
‘There was somebody here,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘Robert Kolan. He comes from this old aristocratic family. He’s one of my closest friends.’
They’d lived in the same house when they were students, she said. That was how they’d met. He always looked after her if she was tired or depressed or ill. He’d do anything for her.
‘He’d kill someone for me if I asked him to.’
I didn’t think she was boasting. It was just a simple statement of fact. If anything, she talked about this friend of hers, this Robert, with a kind of awe. As though she found it hard to believe that someone could devote themselves to her like that.
The waitress asked us what we were having. Nina ordered a cognac. I thought about it, then I ordered one as well.
‘So,’ Nina said, ‘what do you want to do?’
She seemed different from the first night, more distracted, edgier.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said.
I took a package out of my pocket and handed it to her.
‘It’s soft,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Open it.’
The tissue paper quickly came apart in her hands.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘A scarf?’
‘It’s a blindfold.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘It’s for when we’re in bed,’ I said. ‘So we can be the same.’ I realised I was deceiving her. Somehow it didn’t feel wrong, though.