Part 16 (2/2)

'No ear.'

'No. There was just skin where the ear should have been. I didn't have time to see whether there was a hole...whether the actual auditory ca.n.a.l was still there, but at any rate I could clearly see that the ear wasn't there.'

'You never said.'

'No. I felt as if...it was my secret. Or hers and mine, if you like. At the end of the day I went and asked if I could borrow the tape. The Wall. The thing about her ear meant I could ask. I know why, I've thought about this a lot, I've had plenty of time to think about it, but it's not important. Besides which, I think you understand.'

'More or less.'

Matte looked at me and something changed in his eyes.

'How are things with you, anyway? What's life done to you?'

I shrugged and told him, keeping it short. The jobs, the drifting around, the travelling, the years with Helena, Laban. I summarised it like this: 'A feeling that everything is kind of temporary, somehow. As if things never really get started. Or that it's already over, and I haven't noticed. But I'm still alive, and there's Laban after all.'

'And what about later on?'

'Later on?'

'When Laban's grown up?'

'I...I don't know. Video games are getting better and better.'

'That doesn't sound like much of a future.'

'It's perfectly OK. Many people are in a much worse position.'

Matte looked at me for such a long time that I started to feel uncomfortable, and hid my face behind the teacup. The tea was cold, and tasted better than when it was hot.

'Good,' he said eventually. 'In that case I think...I think you'll be able to understand.'

'Understand what?'

'What I'm going to tell you.'

Matte folded his hands on his knee and gazed at a point beyond the walls or behind his eyes. I waited. A sorrow so great surrounded Matte that you couldn't even call it sorrow. It was more of a condition, the element in which he lived, like a deep sea fish in his black cave.

'I took the tape home and listened to it, over and over again. I had one of those bean bags, you know, filled with plastic beads, and I lay on it for hour after hour, only getting up to turn the tape over. That initial feeling never came back, but instead I really started to love the music. I just got the whole story. The Wall is about society and what it does to people, but above all I saw it as a requiem for a life that had ended before it had even begun.'

'That was my line.'

'Yes, and my way of thinking probably wasn't quite so advanced at the time, but...loss. It's about loss. And the form is in perfect harmony with the content...Anyway. Forget that. The following day I took the tape back to school, said I thought it was...I can't remember which word I used, but anyway I was allowed to keep it. As I had hoped. So I spent another evening on the bean bag. My dad was completely out of it in those days, I don't know if you remember. When I was hungry I just used to take money out of his wallet and go out and buy something.

'That evening I poured myself a decent measure of whisky too, topped it up with c.o.ke and drank it while I listened to the tape. It was...I thought it made the music even better. I went to the bathroom and threw up. Then I carried on listening.'

'What a life. For a thirteen-year-old.'

'Yes, but you know, while it was going on...I just felt...cool. I thought I understood so much that you kids couldn't even begin to grasp. Tragic, absolutely, but I was also old enough to kind of play the role to myself, if you know what I mean. I could see myself from the outside. Anyway, kids drink at thirteen these days.'

'Not on their own.'

'No, that's true. But it's not my tragic upbringing we're talking about here. The following day it was school again, and I felt like s.h.i.+t.'

'Sorry, Matte, I just have to ask. Have you been in a psychiatric hospital?'

'A psychiatric hospital, yes. Various kinds. For a long time.'

'But I don't get it...I'm sorry to come out with this, but...I kind of thought you'd be a bit...simple, if I can put it that way. But it's obvious you're more lucid than I am.'

'Plenty of people in inst.i.tutions are lucid. When it comes to certain things. And completely useless when it comes to others. Living, for example. And I'm on medication. Very strong medication.'

'So this business about the ear...'

Matte frowned and looked annoyed.

'It's got nothing to do with that. The ear was gone. Or...it had never been there. I'll get to that. Can I go on?'

'Of course. Sorry.'

'OK. So in English the same thing happens again: she calls me up to the board to spell ”conscious” while the rest of you are working in your books. And I pick up the chalk to write, and I remember this because it was...I knew the word ”unconscious” and I was going to ask her if it was the same word without ”un”, you see. And of course it is, but my head was full of cotton wool that day, which is probably why I...instead of asking her, I prodded her in the back. I mean, you don't normally do that to a teacher, but...I prodded her in the back to get her to turn around. And do you know what happened?'

'No.'

'Nothing.'

'What do you mean, nothing?'

'Nothing. I prodded her in the back and she didn't react. So I prodded a bit harder. Nothing.'

'Maybe she-'

'That's what I thought too. That she was making a point.'

Matte glanced at the photo.

'You said before that you thought she was...what did you say... kind of disagreeable. Can you remember why you felt that way?'

'No, it was just a feeling, I suppose.'

'She never touched us. Never. Normally, if a child is sitting working on a task, if the teacher comes to help...she might put a hand on the child's shoulder, stroke his arm or hair, something. But she never touched us, do you remember?'

I thought about it. It was true, I supposed: I couldn't recall a single occasion when Vera had touched me, but when I thought back I couldn't remember any other teacher touching me either. Except when Sundgren, the music master, grabbed me by the back of the neck when I was plucking the strings inside the piano. But that was something else altogether.

I shook my head, but my expression must have betrayed my thoughts to Matte.

'I know. You don't remember. But I noticed it because when she said I could borrow the tape, I tried to be a bit grown-up. So I held out my hand to shake hers and say thank you. But she didn't take it. She just made a gesture kind of like this...'

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