Clear: A Transparent Novel. Nicola Barker

      So it’s a ludicrously huge bathroom (to set the scene), made up, in essence, of the entire attic area. There’s a sloping roof, a wooden floor, a free-standing bath and a free-standing shower. Solomon is sitting in his favourite, ancient, red leather armchair, tapping his boot to the erratic beats of Wayne Shorter’s post-bebop masterpiece, Juju, smoking weed, sipping Rooibos tea, encircled by Dobermans (I’m uncertain of the collective noun here – Dobermen? Dobermens? – but suffice to say, that there are three of these viciously angular, prick-eared bastards, which – in my humble opinion – is three too-damn-many. Especially when I’m in the buff and they haven’t actually eaten since 8 a.m. yesterday).

      Solomon is currently (but of course) holding royally forth on his current subject of choice: David Blaine (seems like this canny illusionist is cheerfully perching on the tip of everybody’s tongue in this town right now).

      ‘You honestly think Blaine wants to be Christ?’ he asks, snorting derisively (in caustic response to something utterly uncontentious which I just idly tossed into the discussion-pot), ‘but you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely, Adie. Blaine doesn’t want to be Christ, he wants to be black.’

      ‘But what about…?’

      ‘He wants to be a brother.’ Solomon marches defiantly on, ‘That’s why he invented “street magic”, don’t you see? He wants to be “down”, yeah? He wants to be…’ (Solomon performs a satirical hand gesture) ‘where it’s at. Most fundamentally,’ he continues, ‘he wants to be the stranger in the room, the “unknown quantity”. He wants to be the mystery, the alien, the refugee…Because that’s what blackness denotes in this country, and in America, for that matter…’

      Even I (full as my mind is of Aphra, and Shorter’s maddeningly persistent sax, which is rather like having an irate wasp lodged inside your alimentary canal) can’t let this pass.

      ‘Well I’ve rarely seen,’ I state provocatively, ‘so many people, from such diverse ethnic backgrounds, in such constant attendance at a single, live event, ever. (Even En Vogue at the Hammersmith Apollo, 1993.) ‘And I think – by and large – that they’ve mostly come to show their support, not to mock or to denigrate. If they sense a fraud or a wannabe, then they’re certainly not making any big fuss about it…’

      Solomon waves me away. ‘We natives love a spectacle,’ he opines grandly. ‘We aren’t threatened by the theatre of life. Or by the pain of it, either. We embrace all that. Only Whitey shies away from the essentials. Whitey needs to live in his box, see? To make his point – to feel secure – he builds his own prison. And he fashions it with such apparent care, such deliberation – so fucking painstakingly – but then he forgets to include the windows, he forgets to include the doors. He builds these constructs out of fear, Adie, and then tries to make everybody else live inside of them. We Melanic¹ Peoples are different. We build our palaces out of language and music, sex and chaos. These palaces have no ceilings and they have no walls. The White Man may’ve caged our bodies, ruined our economies and appropriated our cultures, but our souls remain unencumbered and our spirits, vibrant. More than almost anything, the White Man loathes vibrancy…’

      ‘Guff,’ I say, and fart in the water. A neat row of bubbles rises to the surface.

      ‘Why so needlessly oppositional, Massa?’ Solomon enquires tenderly. ‘I mean why allow yourself to be restricted by that intellectually reductive configuration of either/or? It’s so pale, so obvious, so horribly predictable…’

      ‘Fuck off!’ I glug (over a frantic Elvin Jones drum solo), then sink down even lower in the water and drape my face with a flannel.

      Five seconds ‘silence’.

      Solomon inhales on his spliff, then exhales, with a little cough.

      I pull the facecloth off.

      ‘I remembered,’ I said, ‘while you were talking just now, where it was that I saw Aphra before…’

      ‘Aphra,’ Solomon muses, ‘Aphrah. “Declare ye it not at Gath, Weep ye not at all; In the House of Aphrah, roll thyself in the dust.”’

      I sit up (the water sloshes), ‘What?!’

      Solomon remains impassive, ‘Micah, 1:10.’

      ‘The House of Aphrah?’

      He nods, ‘In Hebrew, the House of Dust, no less.’ (Does this dude have a well-manicured afro-cockney finger in every pie?)

      He sips his tea. ‘So where?’ he asks.

      I lie back down, musing, spreading the flannel across my chest. ‘Remember Day Five or Six,’ I say, ‘when I met that angry girl with the miniskirt and the terrible hair?’

      ‘No,’ Solomon says.

      ‘The girl,’ I continue, ‘with the corkscrew perm, who slipped on a stray tomato and nearly twisted her ankle?’

      ‘Ah,’ Solomon exhales.

      ‘Monday night. About twelve o’clock. There’s this nasty half-riot under way and we’re right in the middle of it. The police have just turned up…’

      ‘I remember.’ Solomon sounds very bored.

      ‘And I grab this girl and take her up the back exit…’

      Solomon snorts.

      ‘Of the bridge, you twat. The stairs out the back. And we got to that cosy little corner, halfway up…’

      ‘Spare me the gory details,’ Solomon groans.

      ‘But that’s the point,’ I expostulate crossly. ‘There were none. Things were just starting to get nice and steamy, up against that wall – she had her tongue down my throat, I had my hands up her skirt…when suddenly the girl freezes on me.’

      Solomon doesn’t look nearly as astonished by this revelation as I think he perhaps should. ‘Halitosis?’ he ponders ruminatively.

      I scowl.

      ‘Faulty technique?’

      ‘Thanks,’ I deadpan.

      ‘Someone’s coming?’ he finally offers (rather more helpfully), then ruins the effect by gently adding, ‘Prematurely?’

      ‘Yes,’ I nod (pointedly ignoring the ejaculatory slur). ‘Another woman. And instead of just walking by, like most people would, this other woman pauses and then whispers…’

      I pause myself, as I recollect (then I digress), ‘I mean obviously I have my back to her, and the girl has hers against the wall, so she can see her better. But we’re in a clinch…’

      Solomon slowly rotates his hand to move me on.

      ‘But when she hears a voice,’ I continue (ignoring him), ‘she pulls away slightly, opens her eyes, and she sees this other girl. This woman. And this woman in standing there, smiling, like something from Fatal Attraction…’

      ‘And she says?’ (Solomon obviously finds the film reference a step too far.)

      ‘And she taps me on the shoulder and she says, “You. In Bow. The VD Clinic. Six o’clock. Last Tuesday evening.”’

      Solomon snorts so hard that he spills ash on his trousers.

      ‘Fuck,’ he curses, and quickly taps it off.

      ‘But that was her,’ I say, ‘that was Aphra. I turned round and I saw her, from the back, retreating. But it was definitely her. I remember her hair, and her