The Insult Read Online Free PDF Page B

doctors and nurses – people who understood my condition, and were trained to deal with it. As I was talking, I realised what an enormous relief it was to be able finally to put an end to our relationship. I’d just been waiting for a good opportunity, the right excuse. I wondered how long it would’ve taken if I hadn’t been shot in the head. Years, probably.
    ‘Forgive me,’ I said, ‘if I don’t show you to the door.’
    She began to cry again, her mouth crumpling, curving downwards, despite her efforts to straighten it, as if there were tiny weights attached to the corners.
    I turned away from her, gazed vaguely into the room. I even wobbled my head a little, the way blind people often do. I heard her gather up her coat and rush out.
    With Claudia gone, some kind of atmosphere or trance appeared to lift, its departure smooth, almost imperceptible – one level of reality shedding another. It reminded me of lying in bed at night when I was young. Sometimes a car passed and its headlamps entered the room. The way the block of light slid along the wall. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with the car in the street outside or the sound of an engine. And yet the two were linked. That was the feeling I had suddenly. I was no longer sure why I’d acted the way I had. I hardly recognised myself. Was this the new personality they’d been talking about? If so, wasn’t it rather early for it to be manifesting itself? Where was the numbness, the anaesthesia? Where were the suicidal thoughts?
    I sat in my armchair, staring at the fireplace and breathing steadily.
    At last Nurse Janssen came to fetch me. She was surprised that Claudia had left before visiting hours were over. She’d thought that every moment would be precious. No time goes faster, she told me, than the time that star-crossed lovers spend together.
    ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘The voice of experience.’
    I’d like to have heard her on the subject. I’d like to have known the truth about her and Visser. Were they involved? And, if not, what were they doing walking practically hand in hand among the pear trees? But she would not be sidetracked. All she was interested in was how I’d got on with Claudia. One or two of her nursing colleagues had joined us in the corridor. They were all clamouring to know.
    In the end I gave them the substance of our conversation. I’d felt it only fair, I said, to bring the engagement to an end. I talked of selflessness (my own) and the need, at certain times, for sacrifice. By the time I’d finished, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place. It was all I could do not to wind up with the words, ‘And she was such a lovely girl …’
    During the week that followed, Claudia wrote to me every day, sometimes more than once, catching both the morning and the afternoon post with an efficiency that seemed to augur well for her career in law. Nurse Janssen took it upon herself to read the letters to me. Terrible, heart-wrenching letters they were, too, full of pleading and regret. Fortunately, I’d never been much of a listener; within seconds of hearing the words My dearest Martin, my mind would be somewhere else entirely; there were times when I even drifted off to sleep, exhausted after having been awake for most of the night. I was only dimly aware of the tremble in Nurse Janssen’s voice as Claudia reaffirmed her undying love for me or begged me to reconsider – though, once, Nurse Janssen had to break off altogether, and the rustle of starched cotton told me she was searching the pockets of her uniform for a tissue.
    ‘Are you all right, Nurse?’
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said tearily. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ A quick blast and then a sigh. ‘Tell me, Martin, have you spoken to her?’
    I told her that contact would only raise the poor girl’s hopes. It was better to maintain a silence, no matter how punishing that might be – for everyone.
    ‘I suppose you’re right.’
    ‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘I am.’
    At the end of that