‘Oh.’ She straightened up. ‘I was only trying —’
‘I said, leave me alone.’
‘But —’
Some people never get the message, do they?
‘Will you just PISS OFF!’
At last she shook her head of brittle hair and climbed back up the stairs. I watched her fat hips glumly oscillate. A few moments later I heard the click of a door closing further down the hall. I stood up shakily and leaned against the wall. That backside of hers, when she turned in the confined space of the stairs! It reminded me of a cat in a litter tray. What was she doing on the second floor? Some old whore, I supposed. Must have been pensioned off by the Kosminsky brothers. Given a cheap room in recognition of her years of faithful service.
Maybe I’d been wrong to shout at her. I couldn’t help it, though. I was angry with myself for having been so careless. For having panicked like that.
For having lost control.
Later that night, after bathing my injuries, I sat in front of the TV. At about three in the morning, the phone rang. There was only one person it could be. I picked up the receiver.
‘Martin?’ She sounded breathless, as though she’d been running.
‘Nina,’ I said. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at work. I can’t talk.’ She wanted to meet me, but it had to be on neutral ground, somewhere public. Before I could ask her why, she said, ‘I was thinking of the city library. Tomorrow. Two in the afternoon.’
‘I never go out in the day. You know that.’
‘Just this once. For me.’
I wouldn’t be able to see her. And I’d have that blankness to contend with, blankness I usually slept through. But the last few days had been hard on me. Empty, too. If this was all she was prepared to offer me, I had no choice. It was a measure of my desperation.
‘Where in the library?’ I said.
She had it all worked out. ‘There’s a reading room on the first floor. Rare Books and Manuscripts. In there.’
The next day the streets were icy, and my left knee was stiff and swollen. I allowed an hour and a half for what would normally have been a twenty-minute walk. I was still late. I tapped my way up the library steps at two-fifteen and in through the revolving doors. Once there, I had to ask someone to guide me to the information desk.
‘Is it Braille you’re looking for?’ the information officer said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Rare Books.’
He escorted me across the foyer to the lift, then travelled with me to the first floor. He had trouble with his sinuses. All kinds of snorts and snuffles. We turned left out of the lift and walked thirty paces. He held a door open for me and I passed through it.
‘Rare Books,’ he said.
I thanked him.
I knew he was watching me, waiting to see what I was going to do. I didn’t do anything. I just stood there, both hands resting on my cane, as if savouring the air, or just thinking. In my experience blind people are often viewed as mentally deficient, and it amused me to play on this misapprehension. I listened to his footsteps as he walked away, hesitant at first, because he was looking back at me over his shoulder, but becoming more rapid, more definite, as he decided to leave me to my own devices.
I used my white cane to explore. There were twenty-eight rows of metal shelves, with narrow aisles between them. The rows of shelves were bisected by a wide central aisle. I could smell dust and old paper, and the two smells seemed related, part of the same family. At the far end of the room was a reading area, with tables, chairs and lamps. I found an empty place and sat down. Not wishing to attract attention, I took off my dark glasses and opened a newspaper. Trust Nina to be even later than I was.
The minutes passed. I turned to the next page of my paper. A man coughed. The doors at the far end of the room swung open — but it was only someone with a trolley. The trolley had hard rubber wheels. For a moment I was back in the clinic.
Then something touched me on the shoulder.
‘Come with me,’ Nina whispered.
I followed her into one of the narrow aisles. There was a small table at the end of it, by the wall. She sat me on a chair. For a moment I thought the sun had come out; I could feel it against my back, the warmth of it. Then I realised it was just a radiator. It was the heat coming off a radiator that I could feel.
‘This is difficult,’ I said.
Something creaked. The table. It was Nina, leaning against it. I had no way of telling what kind of mood she was in.
‘Have you been here long?’ I asked her.
‘About half an hour.’ She paused. ‘You sat right next to me. It was uncanny.’
‘You were already here, you mean?’
‘Yes. I was early.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I was watching you pretending to read the paper. You even got it the right way up.’
I could smell her perfume. It didn’t belong there. Perfume, ancient paper, dust: it felt wrong as a combination.
‘I didn’t make it to your place,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I noticed.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘That was five days ago,’ I said. ‘You didn’t call.’ I hesitated. ‘I was worried about you.’
She still didn’t say anything.
‘I went to the club —’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘They told me.’
I ran my hand along the edge of the table. It was rounded, worn. I stared at where my hand was, but I couldn’t see anything. I shouldn’t be here, I thought. I should be in bed. Away from all this. As far away as possible.
‘Did you hear the message?’ she said. ‘On my machine?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘It was for you.’
‘It sounded like a funeral.’
‘You told me about your name once, how it was like a bell. Don’t you remember?’
I was looking up into the corner of the room. Where the corner of the room would be if I could see it.
She sighed. ‘Why are you being like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘This isn’t going anywhere,’ she said.
I almost said, What isn’t?
‘This conversation,’ she said, ‘is not going anywhere.’
‘I love you, Nina.’ I just blurted it out.
She eased down off the table. I heard something metal touch the radiator. A belt? A ring? I didn’t even know what she was wearing.
‘I love you,’ I said.
Then it was silent.
‘There’s a man down there,’ she said. ‘He’s got a tattoo on his neck. A spider’s web.’ She paused. ‘Only you can’t see it.’ She paused again. ‘Because it’s daytime.’
‘Nina—’
‘Reach out,’ she said. ‘Your left hand.’
I reached out slowly through air that seemed to thicken, to resist the passage of my fingers. Slowly through the air, so any contact would be gentle, soft as the contact between capsules when they link or separate in space.
I felt the heat of her skin before the skin itself. She took a quick breath, then she seemed to hold it. My hand didn’t know where it had landed. Her bare skin — but where? It moved one way, then the other. Identified a curve. Moved further over. At last the tiny hairs explained it. Her thigh.
She was wearing almost nothing. Had she arrived like that? If not, I couldn’t imagine how she’d taken off her clothes without me hearing.
My hand moved softly inwards, upwards. I felt her body arch and stiffen against the point where I was touching her.
‘I don’t think you should leave me,’ I said.
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s too exciting.’
‘Really? Who for?’ She could hardly talk.
‘You.’