Читать книгу Gliding Flight - Anne-Gine Goemans - Страница 13

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I am like you training my geese for a project. I cannot run into the details. It is secret and surprise for my mother. Like your rescue flying, my project is also an action of rescue. As I already wrote, my geese do not excel in listening. They behave sometimes completely stupid. When I give them an ordering, I want them to stay in the same place, even when I am no longer visual. But when I am not visual for the geese, they start looking for me. They panic and search for me and they are consummately happy to see me. I must punish, but I have trouble. They are not making a serious mistake. They are following the nature. I try to be goose. I cry, Christian Moullec. How to stay in 1 place?

I look in book for dog. The dog is also like geese the best friend of the person. I try with a low voice. Sit and stay. But they do not listen. I do not scream. In the book dog it says: screaming orderings is useless. The book is right. My neighbour woman Dolly screams orderings at her children on whom I babysit. The children also scream, but they do not understand each other.

Book for dog says for training use an open stream of water. But for leaking they have fear. As I already wrote to you, my geese see me as a cousin or brother. They do not see me as head of the platoon.

Tony’s mother stood at the window with one hand on her hip. The telephone was clamped between her shoulder and her ear. From the back, Liedje looked like a high school girl. Her jeans were stretched tightly across her bottom. Her hair was long and golden blond. Gieles sat on the couch gazing at Liedje.

‘My God, honey,’ she said, ‘you never told me. I had no idea.’ Then she turned around. With her tan face full of wrinkles and her creased lips, she was Tony’s mother again. She was wearing a low-cut gold-coloured sweater. Her tanned cleavage was so full of crevices that it looked as if a tic-tac-toe board had been gouged into it. Tony called his mother ‘lame-o,’ ‘ass wipe’ or ‘weasel,’ depending on his mood. He had an inexhaustible collection of metaphors on hand to describe her.

Liedje lit a cigarette and went back to the window. She nodded her head vigorously and kept repeating ‘uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh’ and ‘oh my God’ as she plucked at the mint green lace curtains. Liedje was a mint green fiend. Everything in the house was mint green: the couch, the toilet seat, the kitchen cabinets, the door mat, the dog basket.

Tony put two glasses of cola on the coffee table and flopped onto the couch. On TV there was a black girl dancing with four black men. They hardly had anything on. Gieles looked over at Tony, who was slumped down with half his back on the seat of the couch. He was muscular, but he wasn’t much to look at. His eyes were small and too close together and his nose was the colour of a veal cutlet (and just as shapeless). Maybe it came from eating all that stuff from his father’s butcher shop.

Working with a thumb and forefinger, Tony squeezed a pimple on his chin. He wiped the pus off on his pants, next to a dark grease stain.

Liedje rubbed a sleeve of her gold sweater over the display cabinet. Liedje was very neat; she followed Tony and his little sister around all day with a damp cloth and the dustbuster. Inside the display cabinet were miniature motorcycles. The whole family collected them. Liedje’s were mint green.

Liedje was silent for a while, said ‘oh my God’ and ‘uh-huh’ for the umpteenth time and hung up.

‘That Polman woman got cancer, too,’ she said absently.

‘Which Polman woman?’ said Tony, followed by a burp.

‘Renee,’ said Liedje.

‘Renee from the gay café.’

‘Cut the crap,’ she said with irritation. ‘The woman’s name is Renee Polman.’

‘Sick Renee with her vayjayjay.’

‘God, you’re disgusting. I don’t know where you get it from.’

‘Big hairy deal.’

‘The woman is only sixty-five! That’s a very big deal! And lay a towel down before you sit on the chairs with your filthy pants. How many times do I have to tell you?’

His mother made noises that sounded like she was chasing away a cat.

Big hairy deal. Tony said that all day long. Big hairy deal, and he said it with a look on his face as if he were telling the whole world to go fuck themselves.

‘Thanks for the cola,’ said Gieles, and rushed out behind Tony.

There were white angel figurines in the front yard whose wings had been spray-painted mint green. Airplane spotters who were driving by often stopped in front of the house to take a look. It wasn’t a big house but it certainly was striking with all that green. Tony lived with his parents and little sister on the same road as Dolly. It used to be a lively neighbourhood before the runway came. Each spring the residents organised a street party, and in the winter they put braziers and pans of pea soup out on the sidewalk. Now only four of the houses were occupied. Even the squatter who knew how to make paint bombs had moved away. It was spooky, he thought. The airport had built the runway right through the heart of the community. Residents who lived in the danger zone were bought out, and those who refused to leave were dispossessed.

Tony and Gieles walked to the backyard shed. Two motorcycles and a motorbike were lined up side by side. Liedje’s Kawasaki looked as good as new. Not a spot of dirt on it anywhere.

Tony put on his father’s helmet and tossed his own helmet to Gieles. Gieles smelled it first. The inside smelled like scalp. The idea that Tony, with his wet chin, had had this helmet on his head, was truly disgusting.

‘Hurry up,’ said Tony impatiently. He had already ridden his souped-up motorbike out of the shed. Pebbles flew in every direction.

‘What exactly are we gonna do?’ asked Gieles. He shut his eyes and put on the helmet.

‘Nothing. You know. Grab a bite by the chink.’

They rode slowly past the security camera. True to form, Tony gave it the finger. The whole area was full of security cameras. The airport was perpetually on guard. Gieles had charted the position of every single camera. He knew exactly where the gaps in the system were. That would be essential for Expert Rescue Operation 3032.

Once they crossed the intersection, Tony stepped on the gas. Gieles tried to relax. Tony started screaming a story. ‘I’m now in an alliance guild!’ Tony shouted. ‘For eighteen years old and older!’

He was probably talking about World of Warcraft. Tony gamed himself silly in a virtual world that consisted of elves, trolls and dragons.

‘I’m member 250!’ Every time he turned halfway around, the motorbike swerved. ‘I have priority with everything because I play more than twenty hours a week!’

They were going eighty.

They took the main road to the shopping centre. Tony parked his motorbike in front of the snack bar and walked in. Standing behind the glass case were a small man and a woman. They were Chinese. Tony ordered something unintelligible that the woman immediately understood. He came here every day. She scooped some French fries into the deep fat fryer and slid in a frikandel. Tony sat down on a bar stool with his helmet on his lap. He lit a cigarette and threw some money into the slot machine. Smoking in the snack bar was prohibited.

‘I have to buy something,’ said Gieles, who was standing behind him. ‘Be back in a minute.’

Outside he took a deep breath of fresh air. He walked down the shopping street and passed a small group of girls he knew from the higher grades at school. Reflexively he smoothed down his high voltage hair.

Once inside the department store he went to the sunglasses department. Gravitation had asked for photos. First she talked about Scandinavian music and metal bands, then she said she was a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal ‘drip drip drip.’ He didn’t understand what she meant by Jake Gyllenhaal and ‘drip drip drip,’ and wrote back that he thought he was awesome, too. Then he made the mistake of declaring that, like her, he was a fan of the metal bands Lostprophets, Cradle of Filth and The Vandals.

‘Real original,’ she wrote back, promptly asking for photos.

Naturally she’d see that he was younger. That’s why he needed the sunglasses. He stared into the display mirror and tried to look impressive by squinting and rubbing his hand over his chin. Satisfied, he noticed that his hair was lying down flat. It probably came from the greasy helmet. He exchanged a nonchalant glance with himself.

Then he pulled up the left corner of his mouth. He had seen Elvis do that on one of Tony’s mother’s DVDs. Sometimes she watched Elvis for days on end, especially his performance in the black leather suit. Gieles had to admit that it did look cool when he did that thing with his mouth.

He saw that one of the sales clerks was watching him. She was smiling at him in a motherly sort of way, leaning against a pillar. Gieles felt like an idiot. Embarrassed, he grabbed a pair of sunglasses from the display. They were dark grey with mirror lenses. He didn’t dare put them on, afraid the woman was still laughing at him. At the checkout he discovered that the sunglasses far exceeded his budget. So he paid with his bank card and left the department store.

Halfway down the street he saw Tony coming with a boy he didn’t like. The boy’s father ran a waste processing plant, which you could tell somehow just by looking at him.

With his head lowered he turned into a side street and went into a CD shop. He wandered through the shop for a few minutes and looked outside. On the other side of the glass was a red mobility scooter. His jaw dropped. The body in the scooter was far and away the fattest body he had ever seen in his life. The double chin looked like a swimming tube with a head bobbing around inside it. The rest looked like an explosion that was just barely being contained by a grey sweatsuit. Gieles was convinced that the shop window was creating a funhouse mirror effect. So much fat—it just wasn’t possible. He went to the doorway to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

Gieles stared at the enormous mass, mesmerised. It took a few minutes for him to realise that all that flesh was home to a single human being. The flesh belonged to a man, and the man was clearly in trouble. The back tyre of his scooter was flat. The man tried to pull himself up, but at the halfway point he gave up and dropped back onto the seat. Minutes passed. Tony and his little waste-processing friend were nowhere to be seen. Gieles just stood there and the man just sat there, immobile and abandoned. He didn’t ask anyone for help. Passers-by looked at him as if he were stuck fast in his own shit.

Gieles made up his mind to slip out of the shop and take the bus home. He hurried outside.

Don’t look!

But he couldn’t help himself, and at that very moment their eyes met. The man gazed at him with fierce intensity, as if he were the last remaining dog in the animal shelter and Gieles was his final hope. It would be rotten to pretend he hadn’t seen him.

Reluctantly he walked up to the man. ‘Sir … you have … a flat tyre.’

‘I know,’ came a voice from under the layers of fat. ‘The problem is that I can’t go any further. It would ruin the rims.’

He pronounced the last words with such defeat that Gieles felt even more sorry for him.

‘Can you walk?’ asked Gieles.

‘If I hold onto something I ought to be able to manage it.’ He had a thin man’s voice, smooth and fluid. ‘I live right back there.’

‘I can drive the scooter,’ Gieles heard himself say, much to his alarm. ‘My uncle has one, and I drive it every now and then.’

‘I gladly accept your offer,’ the man said with relief, and he held out his hand.

Gieles looked at the lump of blubber with dismay. Then he shook it, trying to hide his disgust, and his entire hand disappeared inside it, as if he were putting on a baseball glove.

‘Super Waling. Pleased to meet you.’

‘Gieles,’ he said. ‘Gieles Bos.’

With immense effort, Super Waling hoisted his mountainous body out of the mobility scooter. Gieles didn’t want to look, so he turned his face upward, to the sky. A plane flew overhead, its white belly appearing very vulnerable.

‘Can you provide me with a little counterweight?’ the man gasped. ‘Yes, yes, there … in the back … yes … yes, right … very good …’

Gieles sat down in the scooter. The seat was still warm. He choked down his saliva with difficulty. The man held onto the back of the seat with his right hand while Gieles drove at a snail’s pace. After a hundred metres the man came to a stop, swaying slightly. ‘I appreciate this enormously,’ he said with a long-winded wheeze. ‘Really … enormously …’

Running away was out of the question. The colossus heaved himself forward in slow-motion.

They passed shops and a restaurant. UNLIMITED SPARE RIBS it said on the sign. Gieles wondered whether that applied to everyone.

After an eternity they stopped at the orange front door of a small house in a new subdivision. The man unlocked the door with trembling hands.

‘Come in,’ he gasped, out of breath.

‘I really have to go,’ said Gieles to the gigantic expanse of back as the man slowly shuffled his way into the living room. He didn’t answer.

He’s gonna drop dead. I’ll wait until he’s sitting down and then make a run for it.

The man sank into a big armchair. Gieles stood at the doorway.

‘Have a seat.’ His face was covered with strange purple splotches.

‘On second thought, pour yourself something to drink … you’ve earned it … there in the kitchen … at the end of the hallway.’

I’ll walk to the front door and run away.

Gieles didn’t run away. He walked obediently to the kitchen, which looked as if it had never been used. The refrigerator was surprisingly small. Its contents surprised him, too. He had expected buckets of mayonnaise, chunks of cheese, mountains of sausages, kilos of cooking fat. But all he could see were a couple of packs of dairy products. The crisper was full of cans of grape soda. Gieles took one out and studied the wall, which was papered with folders from probably all the home delivery services in the area. Gieles never ate take-out. Uncle Fred didn’t like it.

A soft humming sound was coming from the living room.

Gieles snuck to the door. The armchair in which the lump of fat was sitting had turned into a vibrating recliner. His stomach heaved like a waterbed under his sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was made of the same soft fabric as children’s pyjamas. Dolly’s youngest son slept in pyjamas like that.

Gieles coughed. The back of the chair rose immediately.

The man pressed a button that made his lower body vibrate twice as fast. Then he lowered the leg support.

‘This chair can give three-dimensional massages,’ he said.

‘Can I get you something to drink, too, sir?’ asked Gieles bluntly.

His name had escaped him. Super? And then? Something with a W.

Super Waffle?

‘I’m fine,’ he said, and pointed to an end table next to the massage chair. There were bottles of water on it and a stack of books. ‘And no “sir”. Let’s not stand on formality. Have a seat. Yes, that’s good. Make yourself comfortable.’

Gieles sat down on the edge of the leather couch and clamped the can of grape soda between his knees. The wall opposite him was one big mountain landscape. It was the first time he had ever seen wallpaper like that. The tops of the mountains were covered with snow. The lake in the valley reflected the mountain range. The wallpaper looked so real that it made Gieles feel cold. Hanging on another wall were bizarre paintings of buildings that looked like castles. It wasn’t the image that struck him as strange so much as the colours it was painted in. Fluorescent purple and orange, bright green, canary yellow. The colours hurt his eyes.

‘The big three. The Lynden, the Cruquius and the Leeghwater,’ said the man, who had followed his gaze. ‘It’s because of them that we’re sitting here right now. God made the world, but the Dutch made their own country. Those three pumping stations sucked the whole Haarlemmermeer dry.’

Gieles took a closer look, and through the hysterical colours he made out a group of steam pumps.

‘I have to do a report at school on the history of the steam pumps,’ said Gieles.

Super Windhole?

The man perked up with delight. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. I know everything about the pumps. I give … well, I used to give tours there.’

His lower body was still vibrating. His socks were spotlessly white. Gieles wondered where his shoes were.

‘Personally, I find the Cruquius the most impressive. Some people called her a vomiting monster. But I think she’s beautiful, with that round Victorian exterior. At one time she was the most powerful steam pump in the world. No one could pump as much water as she did. Did you know that the Cruquius has the world’s biggest cylinder?’

He turned the massage chair off, and soon the sloshing mass of flesh began to calm down.

‘It isn’t always fun being the biggest of something, but in her case I think it’s a real plus.’

Neither of them spoke. Gieles was just about to get up and leave when the man suddenly asked him, ‘Do you have any hobbies? I like the Swiss Alps and steam pumping stations.’

Gieles stared at him in amazement.

‘Oh, yes,’ he added with a smile. ‘I also like Country Western music. And you?’

The man looked sincerely interested.

‘I like table tennis,’ stammered Gieles. ‘And geese.’

‘You like table tennis and geese,’ he repeated, pushing himself up in the chair.

‘Well, not exactly “like.” I think they’re funny. I have two at home. They’re American geese. Tufted Buff geese, with that tuft, you know. They look like they have a lump on their heads.’

‘Are they pets?’ he asked. ‘I mean, do these geese live in the house?’

Gieles chuckled and squeezed the can of soda. ‘No. If they did, we’d be knee-deep in shit. They walk around outside, but they act like house pets. They’re as alert as watch dogs. If a stranger comes by they bark, and when they see me they start wagging their tails. They’re two females,’ Gieles added. ‘They can also open the kitchen door with their beaks. Uncle Fred, my father’s twin brother, isn’t too thrilled about that. Because then they shit all over everything and eat whatever they find. Uncle Fred calls them feathered vacuum cleaners.’

The fat man laughed a contagious laugh.

‘But they’re also real smart,’ Gieles rattled on. ‘I’m training them for a special project. I can’t say anything about that though. It’s a secret.’

He tried to infuse the last words with as much significance as possible.

‘What fantastic geese you have,’ the man said. ‘Were they born at your place?’

Gieles was now sitting so far forward that he almost slipped off the leather seat. ‘No, thank God! One of our neighbours had an incubator. When the chicks hatched, they gave him a good long look. With one eye. When a goose wants to look at something very closely, he does it with one eye.’

To demonstrate, Gieles squeezed his right eye closed. ‘That’s what my geese do. If I have a new stick, for instance. I use a stick to teach them to listen to me. I train them with it. I don’t hit them, of course. But then they fix me with that black eye of theirs. My neighbour’s chicks thought he was the mother goose. They followed him around all day long. It drove him crazy. They even slept with him in bed. Otherwise they’d just keep on peeping.’

No one had ever laughed so heartily at his goose stories. ‘A goose can live to be thirty years old,’ Gieles went on, warming to his subject.

‘Thirty?’ He laughed again and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Poor man. Thirty years with geese in your bed. How’s your neighbour doing now?’

‘No idea. We live near the airport runway and he let the airport buy him out. And then I got two geese from him. My father won’t let me have any more. They were different than the ones I have now, but since then I’ve gotten pretty good with geese.’

‘And you haven’t been bought out?’ the man asked gravely.

Gieles shrugged his shoulders and took another gulp of grape soda. ‘No, my father wanted to stay. He figures we were there first. My mother doesn’t really care. She’s never home anyway.’

The man was silent and bit his lower lip. ‘That’s very noble of your father,’ he said meditatively. ‘Not letting yourselves be bought out, regardless of the price.’ His voice had a kind of militant tone.

Gieles wondered how old he might be. The man had no wrinkles. Every groove was filled in with butter. But his hair was in pretty good shape. He had auburn hair that shone like the fur of a stuffed lion in a shooting gallery at the fair.

‘Your geese,’ he asked. ‘What are their names?’

No one had ever asked about their names before, and now it had happened twice in close succession.

‘I never named them,’ said Gieles. He didn’t have to lie. This was someone he didn’t have to impress.

‘Deliberately?’

‘No, I just never got around to it. But a name can be pretty handy.’

‘It certainly can,’ said the man guardedly. ‘What kind of geese did you say they were? Tuffs buffs?’

‘Tufted Buff,’ Gieles corrected him.

‘If they had names they might be more responsive. You said you were training the geese?’

Gieles nodded. Maybe that was the problem. They didn’t listen well because they didn’t have names. He’d ask Christian Moullec about it, although he realised it might be a complicated job for a French ornithologist with hundreds of geese of his own.

‘But it’s up to you, of course. I don’t want to stick my nose into your affairs.’

Super Waling! That was his name!

Gieles looked at him with one eye, the way his geese did. He couldn’t imagine an adult taking an interest in his life. Uncle Fred was caring, his dad never asked him anything and his mother conveniently assumed that he was doing fine. That’s because the rest of the world was doing so badly. They had AIDS, they were hungry or they butchered each other. But this ten-tonner actually listened to him.

‘Can I offer you a tour in the Cruquius?’ Super Waling asked him. ‘For your report?’ he hastened to add.

The question sounded so sincere that Gieles immediately said yes, much to his alarm. He had completely lost track of space and time.

‘Fantastic!’ the man said happily. ‘Just tell me when you can go. In the meantime, I have some material for you to read, if you like.’

‘Material?’ repeated Gieles stupidly, watching as the man attempted to get out of his massage chair. Relocating his weight was a regular mass migration.

‘I have a story,’ he puffed, putting his feet on the floor, ‘about … the … land reclamation. It’s the first part.’