Under the Skin by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online Page B

house for a couple of days.’
    ‘That was kind of them,’ murmured Isserley, observing the lights of the Kessock Bridge winking in the distance. ‘Are they expecting you back on the way home?’
    ‘No, I think not,’ he said, after having pushed that particular utterance up a very steep hill indeed. ‘I believe I … offended them in some way. I don’t know how. I think my English is not as good as it needs to be in certain situations.’
    ‘It sounds excellent to me.’
    He sighed. ‘That is the problem perhaps. If it was worse, there would be an expectation of …’ He laboured silently, then let the sentence roll back down the mountain. ‘There would not be the automatic expectation of shared understanding.’
    Even in the dimness she could tell that he was fidgeting, clenching his big hands. Perhaps he could hear her beginning to breathe faster, although the change was surely, she felt, quite subtle this time.
    ‘What do you do back in Germany?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m a student … well, no,’ he corrected. ‘When I get back to Germany I will be unemployed.’
    ‘You’ll live with your parents, perhaps?’ she hinted.
    ‘Mm,’ he said blankly.
    ‘What were you studying? Before your studies ended?’
    There was a pause. A grimy black van with a noisy exhaust overtook Isserley, muffling the sound of her own respiration.
    ‘My studies did not end,’ the hitcher announced at last. ‘I walked away from them. I am a fugitive, you could say.’
    ‘A fugitive?’ echoed Isserley, flashing him an encouraging smile.
    He smiled back, sadly.
    ‘Not from justice,’ he said, ‘but from a medical institute.’
    ‘You mean … you’re a psychotic?’ she suggested breathlessly.
    ‘No. But I almost became a doctor, which in my case would perhaps have been the same thing. My pairends think I am still studying at the institute. They sent me a very far distance and paid a lot of money so that I could study there. It is very important to them that I must become a doctor. Not just a regular doctor, but a specialist. I have been sending them letters telling them that my reezurch is proceeding very smoothly, Instead, I have been drinking beer and reading books about travel. Now I am here, travelling.’
    ‘And what do your parents think of that?’
    He sighed and looked down into his lap.
    ‘They don’t know anything about it. I have been training them. So many weeks between letters, then so many weeks more, then so many weeks still more. I always say that I am very busy with my reezurch. I will send them my next letter after I am back in Germany.’
    ‘What about your friends?’ insisted Isserley. ‘Doesn’t anybody know you’ve gone on this adventure?’
    ‘I had some good friends back in Bremen before my studies began. At medical school I have many acquaintances who want to become specialists and drive a Porsche.’ He turned towards her in concern, although she was doing her very best to keep calm. ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘Yes, fine, thank you,’ she panted, and flipped the icpathua toggle.
    She knew he would fall against her, turned sideways as he was. She was prepared for it. With her right hand she kept steering straight and true. With her left she shoved his slumping body back into position. The driver of the car behind her would just assume there’d been an attempted kiss and she’d rebuffed it. Kissing in a moving vehicle was universally acknowledged to be dangerous. She’d known that even before she’d learned to drive, had read it in an ancient book about road safety for American teenagers, not long after her arrival in Scotland. It had taken her a long time to fully understand that book, studying it for weeks on end while the television chattered in the background. You could never predict when the television might make something clear that books couldn’t – especially when the books came from charity shops.
    The hitcher was toppling towards her again. Again she shoved him back.