Читать книгу Thirty Days - Annelies Verbeke - Страница 10

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29

Next morning he finally gets hold of Cat. She seems cheerful.

‘You’re feeling good, then?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, unhappy with the subject. ‘But I have to go now.’

‘Where to?’

‘Well, to yoga. Another four days.’

‘Have fun.’

‘Bye, Alphonse.’ She’s never come up with a shorter form of his name, which is something he appreciates. Apart from her parents, everyone calls her Cat. Not very long ago she had a malignant tumour. They have to assume it won’t come back.

‘Fonzy!’ Dieter calls out. He’s wearing a dark-blue bathrobe, clearing away the breakfast things. ‘Great that you also work on Saturdays,’ he says in English. Sometimes people do that, suddenly address him in English, even after he’s had conversations with them in Dutch and even though there are four languages he speaks more fluently.

Els, who let him in, has jogged out of the door, this time with Björn on the lead. In the garden, bent over their swimming board, wearing anoraks, the girls are sitting on the top rungs of their ladders writing something on a piece of paper or card. When they see him standing at the window they wave in the manner of ladies-in-waiting. In reply he imitates the pope driving past.

Dieter’s gaze flutters out past his shoulder, a nervous moth that, despite the call of the light, quickly returns to the semi-darkness. He mumbles that he’s going upstairs to get dressed, walks across the living room to the hall but stops when he hears Alphonse slide the door open. He’s a father, Dieter is, and he’s obliged to entertain some slight suspicion when an adult man, ultimately a stranger, wants to talk to his adolescent daughter and her friend without involving him, and without there being any clear reason for it. So he returns to keep watch, Dieter does, peering into the garden, which he’s increasingly been avoiding, touched as ever by the harmonious relationship between the girls, a thing no longer talked about between these walls for fear of damaging it.

The children’s faces become more undecided, more serious during their conversation with Alphonse. What is he asking them? Is it time to step in? Then there’s some nodding. The girls nod, Alphonse nods, and they all turn in his direction, smiling feebly, it seems to him.

‘Sit down for a moment,’ says Alphonse, shutting the door behind him. In the background Mila and Lana bend down over their concerted scribblings once more.

Dieter does as he’s asked, resting his hands on his thighs and looking at the floor, paler than before, the bathrobe now lending him a fragile serenity.

‘Sieglinde and Ronny didn’t kill the cat.’ Alphonse stays on his feet as he talks.

‘I thought not.’ Dieter doesn’t look up. ‘How did it happen?’

‘It was a friend of the girls. A local boy who’s never dared come round since.’

‘I know the one. I’ve never seen him here blowing darts.’

‘It was an accident. The boy shouldn’t be punished for it. And neither should your daughter or her friend.’

Dieter nods. And nods again.

After that the glue that seemed to fill the room during their conversation flows out. The silence is driven away by metallic noises: the extending legs of his own ladder, his screwdriver opening a lid. Upstairs, Dieter takes a bath.

For most of the day the three family members leave him to paint in peace. They steal past respectfully, or express their approval when he turns to look at them. The work progresses quickly. Wall after wall begins to shine.

Just before midday he hears Els and Dieter’s voices intoning through the ceiling, Els getting agitated about something, then coming round. When they eat lunch at the kitchen table, they want him to sit with them. Once he’s there, no one can think what to talk about. They put local cheeses on his plate, peeled fruit, straight from the tree, he simply must taste it. Björn too awaits his reaction.

As he’s clearing up in the evening, they both grow restless.

‘A beautiful job,’ Els tells him. ‘And so quick.’

‘To think you’ve been here for barely two days,’ says Dieter.

Alphonse taps on the window. Mila and Lana wave back. Then he shakes Els and Dieter’s hands.

‘I’m not far away,’ he says. ‘On Monday I start next door.’

They nod.

‘There’s more work here too.’ Panic in their voices.

‘The rooms upstairs could do with repainting this year.’

‘You know where to find me.’

They walk with him along the hallway, catching his eye at every opportunity.

When he reaches the van and turns back toward them, Björn rushes at him full tilt. He picks up the floundering dog and carries him to the front door, where he lays him in Els’s arms. For one second she looks at Alphonse as if he’s just delivered their baby, then they laugh it off.

On the village square in Watou he orders a coffee on the empty terrace of a full bar. He has to admit the barman is right: it’s summer at last and the weather seems odd. There are motorcyclists passing through, and two youngsters on slender horses. At the church, overlooking the square, a statue of Jesus stands with arms spread. In the middle of the square is a soldier, accompanied by a lion.

He finds himself in a strange, beautiful life. Does he demand too little? Does he receive too much?

After settling up, on his way to the van, he sees the front of the statue. The soldier is holding a revolver to his chest, barrel pointed away. The nearby figure of Christ, head bowed, now seems frozen in the act of raising his hands.

Some things continue to amaze him here. Like having to drive twenty minutes for a shawarma.

It’s a new place, with a sign outside made of glittering sequins so that the letters Pita Merci move in the wind and reflect the weak evening sunlight. Inside it’s clean and empty. Linoleum. With great precision the young man at the till is arranging a roll of tinfoil, some knives, and a large salt cellar. Next he concentrates on laying all the plastic forks in the holder the same way round, teeth toward him. His face is strikingly flawless.

‘Gardesh,’ he says happily when he sees Alphonse come in.

They don’t know each other. It’s a long time since anyone called him that and he likes it.

‘Nice place.’

‘Thanks. Expensive, though. Work, work, work.’

‘No doubt. I’d like a large shawarma with all the veggies and samurai sauce, please.’

The young man laughs. ‘Spicy then. Always.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You guys always want spicy sauces. And lots of chicken.’

Although Alphonse has now opted for the other rotating pillar of meat, it’s true that he eats a lot of chicken. Like almost everyone he knows. And it’s true that he has a preference for spicy sauces. He doesn’t want to feel as if he’s been caught out in some way. ‘I thought my eating habits were my own. A personal thing.’

‘Well they’re not,’ says the man and then—suddenly roguish, suddenly even younger—‘With every shawarma: a free show!’

He puts the pita bread in the oven and leans down over his smartphone, which he’s connected to a speaker. After a false start he finds the right track. There are swelling tones that then ebb away, like searchlights across a dark expanse. He performs stretching exercises of some kind with his fingers on the counter between him and Alphonse, arms extended, his head of thick, slicked-back hair slightly bowed. He fixes his customer with the gaze of a falcon. Alphonse wonders whether anything is expected of him. Then an electronic beat bursts forth, intertwined with a regularly repeated, orientally inspired motif. He walks over to a pillar of meat. Alphonse can’t really see how he cuts slices from it, but time and again he swaps the two knives he’s wielding, throwing them briskly behind his back, above his head. With a graceful bow he then whisks the bread out of the oven and, juggling with salad servers, fills it with tomato, onion, cucumber, and grated carrot. At one point the salt cellar, which he’s not using, describes ellipses through the air. A tub of spices brings up the rear, leaving a red cloud with every twist. He keeps everything in motion, including the salad servers, not just with his hands but with taps from his elbows, shoulders, and left hip. When the salt cellar lands upright on his head, he moves it left and right like an Indian dancer while shaking red spices into the pita. Alphonse applauds. As two knives and a small cleaver are launched into the air he takes a step back. The way the young man transfers the meat—still sizzling a little on the hotplate beneath the rotating pillars—into the bread while knife-throwing remains a mystery. Impossible to miss, though, is the moment when he stiffens and the knives and cleaver clatter to the ground around him. With trembling lips and a heavily bleeding ring-finger stump he turns and looks at Alphonse.

Alphonse yanks a dozen napkins out of the holder and the shawarma man presses them to the wound. ‘Where’s the finger?’ he asks.

They both simultaneously twist round to check the hotplate and when they can’t see it there it comes almost as a relief to Alphonse—although relief of a kind that doesn’t preclude goosebumps—to spot the body part under his shoe. He narrowly manages to prevent himself from switching his weight to that foot and lifts his leg as if stepping away from a landmine. The extreme helplessness of a severed extremity, the unreality of it. He picks it up off the floor with a paper napkin. It’s the third time he’s witnessed this. The other two involved fingers as well. He recalls an accident with a power saw at a building firm he worked for. That finger stood upright on the ground, as if someone on the floor below was pointing up through the ceiling. Longer ago there was a fingertip belonging to Aline, his sister, who’d been helping in the kitchen with a knife far too big for her.

The dull thud of the fainting man drives out those memories. He’s lying in a strange, crooked position on the spattered tiles. All that’s moving now is the blood pouring out of the wound. With one hand Alphonse lifts two heavy feet onto an upturned plastic bowl, then goes in search of a freezer. Most of the shelves are frozen shut. The first one that he manages to open, after some wrenching and tugging, is filled with the most detailed ice sculptures, figures the size of Playmobil characters, a Viking, a king, an oriental warrior, all with the same face. It must be the unusual face of the proprietor, the young man on the floor. Alphonse doesn’t have time to look any further. He’d rather not use such finds to staunch a wound. In the next drawer up he comes upon normal ice cubes.

He divides them between two tea towels, laying the finger on one of the stuffed towels and placing the other on the young man’s forehead. It’s a while before consciousness returns. Alphonse is just about to call an ambulance when the victim looks up at him in alarm.

‘Can you stand?’

The young man nods and allows himself to be helped to his feet.

His name is Duran. On the way to the hospital and in the casualty waiting area, his expression evolves from appalled confusion to resigned gloom. Every time his bandaged finger stump sinks dispiritedly to his lap, Alphonse urges him to bring it up to his ear again, which reduces the bleeding and raises the spirits.

‘My father said, “Duran, you live too far away. What are you going to do in that hole? Your family can’t help you run the shop and you can’t do it alone, with your eyes.” I tell him, “My eyes are good, that’s all in the past.” I used to have a lazy eye, a patch on my spectacles, difficult for a child. “You can’t see the butterflies,” my father said—he meant that test, with the butterflies and so on, hidden among blots, everyone saw them jump into view except me. “I don’t need to see those butterflies,” I tell him. Lots of arguments, but I made the move anyhow. I thought: just you wait, Father, there are blots everywhere, keep looking and eventually I’ll jump out from them. You’ll see me then.’

He holds the bandaged stump in front of him, horrified by it. Alphonse is just about to urge him yet again to keep his hand vertical when a round-chested doctor comes marching along the corridor. She must be in her late forties and she has orange brushed-up hair, as if her head is on fire.

‘Lost a finger?’ she asks.

‘I’ve got it with me.’ Alphonse points to a plastic bag on the seat next to them. The towel with the ice inside is soaked through.

‘Can I have a look?’ She can’t wait, plainly. He hopes he’s not about to disappoint her. He’s wrapped the finger in a wad of cling film, fearing it might otherwise be damaged by the cold. Duran looks the other way, as nonchalantly as possible.

The doctor takes the wrapped finger and gently taps it on the arm of the seat. ‘Good. Not frozen.’ A delighted little laugh escapes her. ‘Follow me!’

‘But you have to look! How often do you get the chance to see the inside of your finger?’ She’s talking to Duran, who might perhaps have preferred to be given a general anaesthetic.

The doctor stops sewing briefly to turn her attention to Alphonse, who has gone to sit on a chair by the wall. ‘You can come a bit closer if you like.’ The fact that neither of them responds to her cheery invitations seems to disturb her. She’s meticulously described and named everything she’s done; surely a patient could expect no more of her than that?

‘Will he be able to use the finger again?’ Alphonse asks, sensing that her bemusement is subsiding into annoyance.

‘If I’m the one putting it back on, that’s just about guaranteed,’ she says, with a hint of defensiveness but mainly with pride.

Duran’s ring finger is encased in a tight bandage stiffened with a strip of metal. In the car he takes his hand out of the sling that was secured around his neck in the hospital.

‘A ring finger is better than an index finger,’ he says, determined to get back to work that evening. ‘And I’m left-handed.’ He looks askance at his driver.

Strange, thinks Duran, that this man is the only person ever to have seen him unconscious. He didn’t leave him for one moment, not in the shop and not in casualty. He’s struck by how normal that seemed.

‘Thanks.’

Alphonse takes his eyes off the road and raises one corner of his mouth.

‘No, I mean it. Is there anything I can do to thank you?’

‘There is something, actually. Those little figures in the freezer—I’d like to take another look.’

Sometimes air can be displaced by a feeling. Suddenly the car is filled with embarrassment from floor to roof. Am I the only one who knows about the ice men? Alphonse wonders. ‘They’re beautiful. That’s why I’d like to see them again.’

‘It’s a strange hobby, but then all I do the rest of the time is work. I work really hard. Often fourteen hours a day. And I go to the gym, too.’

Alphonse doesn’t insist. He agrees to let Duran make him something to eat. He parks right in front of the shawarma shop. In this part of the country there’s never any shortage of parking spots.

With the good fingers of his injured hand, Duran moves a teabag up and down in a cup of hot water. ‘You can take a look,’ he says. ‘But over there if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course,’ says Alphonse. ‘Otherwise they’ll melt.’

They place two chairs next to the open freezer and bend down over the drawer.

‘They all look like you,’ says Alphonse, at the risk of rekindling Duran’s embarrassment.

‘That’s why they’re all called Duran,’ says Duran. ‘This is Duran Khan, dressed like Genghis Khan, and this is Ataduran.’

Apple tea steams on a low table close to Alphonse’s legs. The sweating pillars of meat have resumed their dervish dance and the floor is daubed with blood. Companionship comes in strange guises, he thinks merrily.

‘Here,’ says Duran. ‘If you can guess his name you can have him.’ He shows Alphonse a Duran dressed in straw and feathers, with a loincloth, a spear, and a shield.

‘Shaka Duran?’

‘Yes. So he’s yours. Never show him to anyone.’

At home Alphonse liberates the ice man from the freezer-block flat Duran has shut him into. He puts Shaka Duran in the smallest plastic box he can find and lays him to sleep between two packs of spinach in the freezer compartment at the top of the fridge. If Cat finds him, he’ll have to explain it was a well-intended gift.