Читать книгу Sleepless Summer - Bram Dehouck - Страница 11

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1 | Monday

Herman Bracke lay staring at the window. The orange light that shone through the pinholes in the metal roller shutters danced to the rhythm of his breathing. Herman looked from the window to the black of the ceiling, not pure black but a collage of dark specks. He closed his eyes in an attempt to get the specks to amalgamate into the black hole into which he hoped to sink, but his exhausted brain conjured up another image, the bane of the insomniac. Herman Bracke saw a sheep.

Mutton is underrated meat, Herman thought. He himself preferred it to the far-too-young beefsteaks that were so popular lately. Where were the days when beef was allowed to age properly and did not have to be baby-pink in order to sell?

He was now wide awake.

Herman sighed. He turned over. The orange specks left a vague blue impression behind his eyelids. They no longer danced. They hummed. Like flies around a turd.

They had been humming for five nights now.

It all seemed so optimistic last week, when the ten Windelectrix turbines officially went operational. There had been a mass migration from the big city and the surrounding villages for the inaugural festivities. The turbines towered over Blaashoek like enormous idols. Speeches by the mayor and the minister fluttered away in the wind that from that day onward would provide Blaashoek with power. The mayor’s ego did not stand a chance against the whipping blades. They hogged all the attention, impressive as the rotors of invisible airships.

Only Herman’s sausage stand equaled the success of the turbines. Craning their necks made people hungry, and soon enough the crowd thronged his kiosk. Not only the sausages did well that late June evening: Herman’s famous pâté sandwiches were gobbled up too. Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté, that was the name of his pride and joy, although the locals called it ‘summer pâté’. What they called the delicacy did not concern him much; all that interested him were the compliments it received—such a refreshing pâté, how do you do it?—and his wife Claire particularly enjoyed the rewards the specialty of the house brought: the trip to Spain, the swanky Audi and the landscape pond they had had installed last year in the garden. They could afford a city break just from that evening’s profits alone.

The turbines were a blessing for Blaashoek, Herman thought, as the mayor, himself the beefy type, bellowed with laughter above the crowd. Herman imagined the thousands of tourists the hypnotizing blades would draw. Thousands of tourists who would work up an appetite from peering upward. Thousands of tourists who would relish Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté.

But even then Herman was disquieted by a menace he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘You look like you’re afraid the thing’ll come crashing down on your head,’ the mayor had laughed, his face swollen from years of consuming beer, cheap champagne and savory snacks, while Herman handed him a napkin to wipe mustard off his chin.

Herman simply nodded and turned his gaze back up toward the imperturbably rotating turbine. Its dizzying height hurt his neck, and the reflection of the evening sun on the blades made his eyes itch. He had to admit he was overcome with the absurd fear that the colossus might indeed snap off. He saw the blades sag forward and then come thundering down with a metallic shriek he recalled from the film Titanic. There was no time to scream as they spun downward like maple-tree whirlybirds and obliterated dozens of lives in one fell swoop. Blood and pus spattered from the mayor’s cleaved body like the mustard from the bun he still held in his hand.

‘How ’bout it?’ The rudely worded order shook Herman from his daydream, and he dutifully speared a sausage. ‘Cool, huh?’ the young man said, nodding upward, as he walked off. Herman nodded back. The blades were still firmly attached to their shaft. What an idiot he was.

When he lay in bed that night, satisfied at having sold every last sausage and slice of pâté, he thought at first there was something wrong with the refrigeration unit.

‘Do you hear that?’ he asked Claire, who had rolled herself up in the bed sheet.

‘Don’earathing’, she mumbled.

He pulled on his trousers and tottered down the stairs to the butcher shop. There was nothing wrong with the refrigeration unit. But when he returned to the bedroom, the noise was still there. It sounded like an idling car. Herman knew he should just ignore it, otherwise he would never get the rumble out of his head. So he rolled over, closed his eyes and thought of Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté. A superb name for a superb product. How do you make it so refreshing, the thousands of tourists would ask. It wouldn’t be long before …

Now the humming sounded like an idling truck.

Ignore it.

Perhaps he should convert the garage into a small delicatessen, with a rustic interior to give the impression that it had been around since Grandfather Bracke’s day, where the tourists would savor the pâté and other specialties. He could ask the tourist office to distribute his flyers. Blaashoek had put itself on the map, and if he played his cards right his butcher shop could stand to benefit. He would discuss it with Claire in the morning, but for the time being …

The hum seemed to crescendo.

That first night, tossing and turning, swearing under his breath, Herman realized that it was not an idling car that kept him awake. Nor was it a truck. It was the wind park.

Claire said he was exaggerating. She had chortled contemptuously when he mentioned it the day after the inauguration. ‘You’re imagining things, Herman, those turbines don’t do anything except go around in circles. The heat must be getting to you.’ Case closed.

The humming continued the second night too, and the third, and the fourth. Every one of those nights he tossed and turned until the sheets chafed his skin, he threw off the covers like a dead weight, shuffled out of the bedroom and went down to the living room to watch TV. One news bulletin after the other passed through his exhausted brain. At daybreak, after a cloying announcer’s weather report, he dragged himself to the butcher shop. Every day the fatigue assaulted his disposition anew. Every evening he vowed to ignore the turbines. On the third night he used earplugs, but he heard the turbines through them, amplified by his heartbeat. The earplugs plopped gently against the wall when he flung them angrily into the darkness. Claire raised her head, snarled what in God’s name was he up to, turned over and fell back asleep.

Now, five nights after the festivities, he once again lay staring at the ceiling, and caught himself stupidly musing on the virtues of mutton.

Claire snored with drawn-out snuffles. She slept right through the hum. Perhaps thanks to the numbing effect of the white wine. Until six days ago, Herman snored too. His hand glided over the bulge of his belly and hooked itself under the elastic of his pajama bottoms.

We’re too fat, he thought. We’re both too fat, and that’s why we snore.

A useless thought in the middle of the fifth useless night.

◆

Postman Walter De Gryse liked the tingling pain in his legs. The wind from the Blaashoek Canal caught him from the side and yanked on his handlebars. It did not bother him in the least. He could have used a motorbike or a car, if only to save time. But he had been given permission to deliver his route by bicycle, rain or shine, until his retirement. Or until his body gave out.

For Walter, the daily bike ride from the main post office to Blaashoek and back was the best remedy against minor infirmities. His body consisted of bone, tendon and muscle. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. In his twenty-five-year career he hadn’t taken a single day of sick leave. Not a single day! This did not make him popular with his fellow postmen, who had all unanimously cheered the introduction of motorbikes and delivery trucks. While Walter happily mounted his bicycle for the seven-kilometer trip to Blaashoek, they grumbled and groused about the new routes and lit up a cigarette as soon as the foreman was out of sight.

The wind made Walter’s eyes water and sucked snot out of his nose. He cleared his throat and spat a wad of phlegm onto the grassy shoulder. He righted himself, looked across the water and saw the turbines. Beautiful, the stately way they dominated the landscape. The same wind that rattled through his spokes was being converted into electricity. Marvelous. Fifteen years ago, as chairman of the action group ‘No Nuclear Waste in Blaashoek’, Walter took up arms against the government, which was planning to dump radioactive garbage in this haven of natural beauty. At home he kept a scrapbook with all the newspaper clippings from back then. The construction of the wind park in his town felt like a personal victory over nuclear energy and the dark forces intent on propping it up. He shifted to a higher gear to allow the pedals to turn at the same tempo as the turbine blades.

The turbines were beautiful for another reason as well. They reminded Walter of the coast, where as a child he always spent the last week of the summer vacation. For hours on end Walter would build sand castles and dig moats, which to his delight filled with water at high tide. Then he had a real fortress, surrounded by a real moat that no one else could cross. And it was only truly finished when he had carefully placed the paper windmills on top of his edifice. How often had his cursing father dragged him from the beach, because back in their stifling efficiency apartment dinner was getting cold while Walter sat gazing at his little windmills at sunset. After a school year full of tedious bookwork, he yearned for the sea, the sun and the paper windmills.

Later, when he outgrew windmills and his interests shifted to bikinis, he dreamt of exotic oceanic tableaux with waves that made the North Sea look like a puddle. But he never got to see palm trees and pearly-white beaches. His youthful romance with Magda—and particularly her unexpected pregnancy at age seventeen—kept him in Blaashoek. For twenty-eight years now they had lived in her home town, which compared to the Shangri-las of his dreams was no more than a sandbox where toddlers jealously eyed one another’s sand-cake stands.

In the sandbox of Blaashoek, Walter was the kid with the smallest bucket. Practically everyone in the town lived with the comforting thought that there was always someone less well-off than they: Walter the postman and his little woman Magda. It did not bother him, he was content. He and his puny bucket had also built dream castles.

Shortly after Laura was born he went to work as a postman. Barely a year later Lisa completed the family. The girls’ upbringing took a big chunk out of the family budget, but conscientious bookkeeping meant he and Magda could afford to give them a happy childhood. Walter took great pleasure in planting little windmills atop his daughters’ sand castles during vacations at the beach. At Sinterklaas they always got less than they had hoped for, but were content to play with the cheap toys. Lisa wore Laura’s hand-me-downs without grumbling. Thanks to all their economizing they were able to send both daughters to university. Now Laura earned twice what he did, and if Lisa got her promotion next year she would earn three times as much. His daughters’ busy schedules prevented them from visiting regularly. He regretted that. Money alone did not buy happiness.

Walter glanced over his shoulder and pulled onto the two-way road just before the Blaashoek exit. He took the first curve and banged with a short kadunk onto the sidewalk. Time to deliver the mail.

◆

Herman heard the familiar klunk with which, every workday, Walter coasted up onto the sidewalk. He had to grab hold of the delivery van. He looked at the half-pigs that dangled from the meat hooks like abstract artworks. His eyes wouldn’t focus. The meat seemed to swell and the van shrink, or vice versa, and the dead meat’s delicate odor, much reduced by the refrigeration, turned his stomach. He was tired, dead tired.

‘Just bills for you today,’ he heard Walter say. Herman let go of the van and took the envelopes. The electric company’s logo floated on one of them. The address consisted of vague, dark flecks.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Walter looked into the delivery van and sniffed.

‘Mighty cozy in there.’

Herman smiled and looked as well. Now he saw the cadavers in razor-sharp relief. Then they went all blurry again.

‘Magda’ll come by later to pick up some of your pâté,’ Walter continued. ‘Set aside a nice big slab for her.’

Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté. Herman realized he urgently needed to whip up another batch. Today.

‘I’ll be going, you’ve got your hands full here,’ Walter said, placing his foot on the pedal, ready to push off.

‘Do you hear them too, at night?’ asked Herman.

Walter took his foot off the pedal.

‘Pardon?’

Herman hesitated.

‘Do you hear them too, the turbines?’

In Walter’s face were the eyes of the gaping sheep.

‘Do I hear … I’m not sure I get your drift.’

‘I thought maybe you also … that you …’

Now Walter looked as if he felt the cold metal of the electric pistol in his neck that would turn him into a lamb chop.

‘Never mind.’

The postman squeezed Herman’s shoulder. ‘You take these little piggies to market, and I’ll deliver a few more bills.’

He winked and rode off. Herman followed the sinewy body and the dark mop of hair, and wondered if he was the only one who heard the turbines. That couldn’t be. Surely the drone deprived someone else of a good night’s sleep? The awful idea that he alone lay awake night after night, that he alone endured that torture, made his spine stiffen. As though he dangled in the delivery van among those hunks of meat.

He looked over the rooftops and saw them.

‘Monsters,’ he muttered.

◆

A new girl had come to live in the subsidized housing. Walter inspected the name on the envelope. He peered through the letter slot, as though she might be standing there on the other side, waiting for him. Nothing but an empty hallway. He smiled at his own foolish thought, pushed the letter through the slot and rode, whistling, to the next mailbox.

◆

Saskia Maes did not wake up from the clatter of the letter slot. She had already been awake for about an hour, waiting for the moment that she might hear the postman, in the almost unbearable hope that he would not pass her by again today. She had given up waiting for the clatter; the hope had turned to certainty that today, too, she would receive no answer. Why would anyone go to the trouble of writing her a letter? Letters got written to important people. Not to a nobody like Saskia Maes. No, she had to face facts: she stood at the bottom of the social ladder. Not on the second rung, not even on the lowest one. She was a piece of lint under the mat where people wiped their feet. That is what she was thinking when Walter De Gryse pushed an envelope addressed to her through the slot.

She sprang out of bed, threw on her bathrobe, ran—skipped—through her ground-floor apartment, opened the door and peered into the hallway. There it lay, just behind the front door, a white rectangle that beckoned her the way a banknote beckons a homeless person. She trotted into the hall, the blood flowing thicker and faster through the veins in her throat, and her eyes latched onto the envelope. She was halfway through the hall when she got a massive slap in the face. Not from an open palm, but from the realization that the letter was not for her. She stood still for a moment. The letter was for Bienvenue, the Senegalese asylum seeker who lived upstairs. Of course! How could she be so stupid as to think otherwise? Because you just are stupid, a voice in her head answered.

She gingerly approached the letter, her legs wobbly and her eyes fixed on the still-illegible address. Then she noticed that the name above the address was short. Too short to be Bienvenue’s unpronounceable full name. Her heart leapt. And then she saw it clearly: ‘Ms. Saskia Maes’, in elegant feminine handwriting. Underneath: ‘Blaashoekstraat 27’. There should have been an ‘A’ after the number, because she lived in apartment A and Bienvenue in apartment B, but that was a technicality. Now more than ever it was just a detail, now there was proof that someone considered her worth writing to, and that within a few seconds she would know what they had to say. Above the address was something else that made her heart skip a beat: the logo of the insurance company in the city. It was the letter she had been expecting for days now.

The envelope tore open under her nervous fingers.

The letter was folded neatly into thirds, with only the address, the date and the salutation visible.

Dear Ms. Maes, it said. They called her ‘Ms.’, and ‘Dear’! A wave of pride flowed through her body. That pride evaporated when she read the rest of the letter.

Dear Ms. Maes,

Thank you for your interest in the position of secretarial staff member. We have studied your application thoroughly and I regret to tell you that your qualifications do not meet those necessary for this vacancy.

We will keep your résumé in our files for future reference. Should there be an opening more suited to your profile, you will be most welcome to submit a new application.

Yours sincerely,

Severine Baes

Director, Personnel and HR

Severine Baes, what an impressive name, Saskia thought, although she had no idea what HR meant. She folded the letter back into the envelope and shuffled to the apartment. Severine Baes’s last name might differ from hers by just one letter, but their lives were worlds apart. She could understand it, the rejection letter. They had studied her résumé and had come to the only logical conclusion: that she was not fit to participate in society. Her initial pride sank in her stomach like a hunk of congealed fat. She was stupid, homely and useless. And a weakling, for she was unable to hold back the tears. There was only one thing she could do: crawl back into bed and allow Zeppos, her three-month-old cocker spaniel, to lick her tears dry.

◆

There was no pâté. Magda De Gryse already saw as much. She was third in line at Herman’s Quality Meats, after old Mrs. Deknudt and the wife of that stinking-rich veterinarian Lietaer. Her relief at the refreshing coolness of the butcher shop was short-lived. While Mrs. Deknudt read out her order she had plenty of time to inspect Herman’s deli counter. After allowing her gaze to drift over the farmer’s brochettes and country steaks, she noticed a gap between the Beauvoorde pâté and the chopped liver. That gap was where the summer pâté—or what Herman rather ludicrously called ‘Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté’—should have been. But now there was a gap as empty as the skull of her dear Walter.

She sighed and had a good look at Herman, who by mistake had just wrapped up 500 grams of steak tartare instead of ground beef, and had to start again. When he reached over the counter for the container of tartare, his hair fell in greasy strands over his sweaty forehead. His hands trembled. His usually rosy cheeks were pale, while the swollen skin under his eyes was a gruesome shade of purple. He settled up with Mrs. Deknudt. Where was Claire, anyway? Off shopping for dresses in the city again?

‘Really, Herman,’ Deknudt said, ‘now you’ve given me back a twenty instead of a ten.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ he mumbled.

There was something the matter with him. He seemed … drunk.

‘Herman, there’s no pâté,’ Magda said as Mrs. Deknudt folded the ten-euro bill into her wallet and before Dr. Lietaer’s wife could order. She gave Magda a dirty look, but Magda ignored her. Madame Princess could just wait.

‘I haven’t had time, Magda. I’ll make a batch later today, if I get the chance.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He rubbed his eyes, as though he were about to cry.

‘I hope so, Herman.’

He sighed.

‘They make quite a racket, don’t they, the windmills,’ he said. The three women looked at him sheepishly, Mrs. Deknudt because she was stone-deaf, that bimbo Lietaer because every spring she fried her brains on a tanning bed, and Magda because she had misunderstood Herman’s comment.

‘Your meat mill, you mean?’ she asked, biting her bottom lip to keep from asking in jest if he’d been tilting at windmills. He did not answer. He grunted and like a zombie took the Lietaer woman’s order. Of course only the most expensive cuts of meat were good enough—no country steak for her, it had to be sirloin.

Magda was so nonplussed by Herman’s wretched appearance that she ordered country steaks instead of the breaded Swiss patties Walter liked so much. On the way home she fantasized about what had worn Herman out so. It couldn’t be Claire’s lust. She smiled. Liquor, that must be it.

Her irritation about the lack of summer pâté made way for a blissful warmth. For the first time in ages, she had something to be cheerful about.

◆

Zeppos was the ideal antidepressant. When Saskia came sniffling back inside, Zeppos darted under her bathrobe to lick her feet. Giggling, she led him to the sofa, where he slobbered all over her calves and behind her knees. Tears of sorrow became tears of laughter. She even got a little aroused by it.

Now that she was in the shower, she could look on the bright side. Tomorrow she had an appointment with the social worker, and although she was nervous about her reaction to the job rejection, there was good news too: she was in somebody’s files! For the first time in her life, people thought she was worth keeping on file. Maybe the insurance company would offer her another job. A secretarial post was perhaps aiming too high, but she would be happy to deliver the mail or answer the phone. Moreover, she was quite the speed typist. Of course, she still made oodles of mistakes, and she could always brush up on her grammar. At any rate, being kept on file was a first step.

She turned off the faucet and got out of the shower, more refreshed than before, as though the water massaged not only her body, but her thoughts too. What’s to complain about? She had been given this beautiful apartment, even though instinctively she felt she did not deserve it.

She hastily finished her bathroom routine. All her life Saskia had been stuck in a whirling carousel of guilt, retribution and labor, worked ragged like a beast of burden during the day and scorned as a downright nuisance during her meager free time. Pleasure and relaxation were for namby-pambies. But she had escaped from that nest of vipers and tried, once in a while, to enjoy life.

‘Come, Zeppos,’ she said, ‘time for our walk.’

She did not need to call him, he sprinted toward her of his own accord. She stroked his brown head while he licked her hand. He’s a lick addict, she giggled to herself.

‘Have you eaten up all your food, Zep?’

She peered into the kitchen. Zeppos’s dish was as clean as a whistle.

‘Let’s go then.’

Before pulling the door shut behind them, she glanced around the apartment, at the living-room suite she had bought with the last of her savings, to make it feel a bit like her apartment, at the cabinet where the compilation CDs were neatly arranged next to the old CD player, at the round dining table with the cheap chairs. She cleaned house at least twice a week. The sober interior meant more to her than just a collection of thrift-store furniture. Here, she decided things for herself. Here, no one could harm her.

◆

Zeppos sniffed around lamp posts and doorsteps, wagging his tail, and occasionally lifted his leg to offer the Blaashoekstraat a sign of his appreciation. Saskia’s feelings swung between the enjoyment of a summer stroll and the acrid guilt of not really deserving this little pleasure.

Then she heard a car approach. She froze and flattened herself against a wall.

‘Zep, come,’ she hissed, and the little dog cowered at her feet. She dared not look, and turned her face to the wall. She heard the rattle of the old engine, recognized its sound. She braced herself for squealing brakes, the slam of a door and her furious grandfather’s screams and blows. Her escape from the ugly past was about to come to an end, with Granddad dragging her into the dirty green Mercedes, back to the farm. Back to the life she deserved.

The car slowed, then picked up speed and drove past. It was in fact a Mercedes, but a clean blue one. Saskia felt her heart sink back into her chest. Her breathing returned to normal. But the fear would never pass. She was constantly on edge, took the putt-putt of a lawnmower for Granddad’s jalopy, or her heart skipped a beat every time a Mercedes drove by, like just now.

She had to put it out of her mind. She watched Zeppos’s carefree sniffing and tried to enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face. She’d been living in the town for three weeks now—if you could call a street with a hundred houses at most a town—and she was getting to like it here more and more. The first time she rode into Blaashoek on the bus, something struck her as strange. Along the Blaashoek Canal were ten tall poles, like chimneys from an underground factory. But no smoke came out, and the sight had something surreal about it. The poles appeared to have no use whatsoever. All they did was spoil the view of the countryside.

A few days later she realized that they were not chimneys at all. Silly me, she thought, when she saw the blades rotating in the air. She had to admit they couldn’t have found a better place for the turbines: a persistent, potent wind blew over Blaashoek. Even now she felt it tug at her clothes, like a child nagging for candy.

Despite its modest size, Blaashoek offered its inhabitants all the amenities you could want: there was a butcher shop—the butcher was a jovial fellow, and his wife always politely nodded hello—and a small grocery, where the manager Patricia was always up for a chat. Saskia liked the town’s casual friendliness.

The neighboring pharmacy was the one place she unconsciously gave a wide berth. She hoped never to have to set foot inside. Since learning what the pills had done to her mother, she couldn’t walk past a pharmacy without a chill running down her spine.

The only drawback was the poor bus connection to the city, just one per hour. Tomorrow she’d have to take the 7:15 bus to make her appointment with the social worker. She would love to have a car, but didn’t know how to drive. Who would have taught her? Granddad said women behind the wheel was about as good an idea as pigs in a cockpit.

Her daydream had led her further from home than she’d ever been until now. She didn’t like going out much, and if she did, she usually chose the other side of the town. She glanced around.

‘Oh, Zeppos, look!’ she said. The dog skipped expectantly toward her, but returned to the flower planter when it became clear he was not going to get a treat. Saskia squinted in order to read the brass nameplate across the street. JAN LIETAER, VETERINARY SURGEON. The brilliant sunlight gave the hard-to-read letters a golden halo.

‘Now we don’t have to go to the city anymore for your shots,’ Saskia laughed. She pulled Zeppos away from the planter and crossed the road.

◆

The large sliding glass doors in the study offered a splendid view of the backyard. The lawn gleamed: yesterday he had treated it with Evergreen lawn fertilizer. The grass was bordered with lavender, sunflowers, grapevines and juniper shrubs, plants meant to evoke a Provençal atmosphere. Something that worked perfectly on a dry, hot day like today. Pieris rapae butterflies—‘small whites’ in everyday language—cheered up the yard with their romantic flutter. He gazed with fitting pride at the five small olive trees that marked the back edge of the garden. All that was missing was the chirping of the horny cicadas, the mating song that gave most people that blissful vacation feel.

Jan Lietaer sighed, and his relaxed posture—hands loosely behind his back—tightened into a cramp. Irritated, he kneaded his left wrist with his right hand. Since last week his eyes hadn’t had a moment’s rest. Every two seconds, dark blotches swept like monstrous slugs across the lime-green grass, only to vanish, quick as a wink, behind the fence. The shadows disrupted the orderly composition of the yard, they sliced the meticulously mowed rectangular lawn into irregular wedges as they rotated with the wind. Even more than the fact that they were there, it irritated him that they were there for good. He looked up and sighed again. How could he boast to his friends about the exceptional character of his garden anymore if they were forever being distracted by these ghostly shadows?

Chinese torture, that’s what they were. They incessantly assaulted his life’s work. And with each new shadow that passed across the lawn, the cramp in his hands become more resolute.

Nice yard, Jan, but those shadows, enough to drive you bonkers! He could just hear them saying it, he saw them laughing up their sleeves, because even though their yards might not be so gorgeous, at least they weren’t defaced by some stupid wind turbine. Worse yet, he could just hear his mother, with that icy, pinched voice of hers: a man with balls would have seen to it that they built their turbines somewhere else.

He wanted to sigh a third time, but his breath was cut short by the gentle tinkle of the bell, followed by the sound of footsteps and agitated clicks on the floor. The door to the waiting room squeaked. A client with a dog. He wrenched his eyes off his tormented backyard and hurried to the office.

Jan’s practice was on the rocks. Ever since farmer Pouseele’s daughter had gone into veterinary medicine, he had lost his livestock clients one by one. So he turned to specializing in house pets, but how many house pets were there in Blaashoek? Three cats and a pair of hamsters. It didn’t bother him. Thanks to the generous inheritance from Grandfather and Papa, his practice was no more than a hobby. And once Mama finally went to join dear old St. Peter—and what relief that would bring him—he would have no financial worries whatsoever.

He nevertheless gave his few remaining clients all the attention they deserved. He switched on the computer. He fumbled around in the drawers and laid a few pencils and ballpoint pens on the desk. He opened the filing cabinet and placed three manila folders on the tabletop. There, that looked good.

He went into the hallway and opened the waiting-room door. Sitting there was a mousy girl he did not recognize. She wore cheap clothes—gym shoes, white socks under a pair of wash-shrunk jeans, and an untucked yellow T-shirt whose collar was already a bit frayed. Her auburn hair had been twisted into a short ponytail. Her brown eyes were intelligent-looking but timid. Despite her plain appearance, she was not unattractive. With a little more attention to her looks she would certainly turn a few men’s heads when she took the cocker spaniel that lay between her feet out for his walk.

‘Good morning,’ he said amiably.

The girl nodded shyly, the dog pricked up his ears and leapt up with a short bark.

‘Do come in,’ Jan said, leading them to the examination room.

He showed the girl a chair.

‘Are you new in town?’ he asked after plopping into his leather desk chair.

The girl nodded.

‘Just three weeks now. I live in an apartment.’

‘Ah.’ The only apartments he knew of were from the subsidized housing, so he added: ‘Let me guess: number 27?’

She nodded and cast her eyes downward, blushing.

‘And you live at number 72. I thought that was a funny coincidence.’ She stuttered with embarrassment. He thought she was adorable.

‘We’ve already got the digits of our house numbers in common. And a fondness for animals too, I suppose?’ His smile relaxed her.

‘I’m so happy I can have Zeppos. I take him out for a walk every day, and when I’m not home I put him in the courtyard.’

Jan nodded.

‘You’re doing the right thing. A spaniel’s terribly cute, but he needs plenty of exercise. A lot of people forget that. They buy a dog and make him spend his whole life in a doghouse. And then they’re surprised when he keeps the neighborhood up all night.’

He rolled his eyes as a sign of rapport. The girl giggled.

‘I take him out every day, rain or shine, sleet or snow.’

‘Good heavens, don’t tell me you drag poor Zeppos through snowstorms?’

In just a second her cheeks and neck went blood-red.

‘No, no,’ she stuttered, her hands folded in a cramp that seemed even more painful than his own hand-wringing as he fretted over the garden. Startled by her reaction, Jan turned to the computer.

‘I’ll just open a new file, and you can tell me what’s up with your dog.’

He hoped she would get over his misplaced joke by the time he had entered her data. The program had finally finished loading—it took forever, it was high time he got a new computer—when the front door slammed shut and he heard the clatter of high heels. The kitchen door shut a bit too loudly, he thought, a sign that his wife did not expect anyone besides him would hear it.

‘There, the program’s loaded.’ He brought his hands to the keyboard. ‘I already have your address,’ he winked, ‘but perhaps you could also tell me your name.’

He had typed just three letters of her first name when the high heels approached. The door to the practice swung open and Catherine appeared half in the doorway. Still, after fifteen years of marriage, her stylish beauty took his breath away. His stomach knotted up when her long blonde hair glided over a shoulder.

‘I’ve got sirloin for later,’ she said. He nodded, and only then did she notice the young woman sitting motionless in the chair. The dog had turned toward her and inquisitively wagged its tail.

‘Oh, you’ve got a visitor. I’ll leave you to it, I’m just going out. Don’t worry about dinner, I’ll be back in time.’

Before she closed the door she said ‘good day’ to the statue that appeared to be riveted to the chair. She suggestively raised her eyebrows.

◆

Panic gripped his heart. The melody of Magda’s voice told Walter she was expecting an answer, but he hadn’t been listening. He was engrossed in a newspaper article about a court case that would start in September. ‘The trial of the century,’ screamed the headlines in boldface. A policeman in Ieper had murdered five people in cold blood. Even a year after the fact, he remained remorseless. The international media had got hold of it, and soon enough heads rolled: the Chief of Police and the Interior Minister. The Ieper court had moved the trial to the Expo Hall on the outskirts of town to accommodate the onslaught of press and public. The newspaper interviewed a female expert in criminal profiling who had been called in by investigators. She was quick to note that the local police had bungled the case, like a bunch of amateurs. And that the murderer had brilliantly misled her too, which still caused her sleepless nights.

Walter folded up the newspaper and leaned forward, his arms crossed on the table. He would have been happy to admit his inattentiveness to his wife, but he feared that the punishment for his crime would, as usual, be disproportionate. First a half-hour lecture, and then being made to do the washing-up on his own. He waited for the tirade, but it did not come. Magda batted the dust from the candlesticks on the window sill and simply repeated what she had just said: ‘Something’s up with Herman.’

Walter recalled Herman’s pallid face and vacant look. Magda glanced over her shoulder and saw his attentive posture as a sign to continue. She appeared to be conducting an orchestra with her feather duster. There were no candles in the candlesticks. Candleless candlesticks, what could possibly be more useless?

‘It’s hardly surprising, what with all Claire puts him through. I saw her the other day in yet another new dress. She’s got enough outfits for three a day. And all those trips, they must cost him a fortune. And have you had a good look at that car of theirs?’

Herman’s Audi Q7 was a luxurious behemoth, but Walter was not all that interested in cars. He much preferred the bicycle. Magda drove a second-hand Citroën C3, although she regularly dropped hints that an Alfa Romeo or a Volkswagen would suit her better.

‘It is pretty showy, that car,’ he conceded.

‘Showy?’ She let the foolish word sink in. ‘Now that’s an understatement. It’s a car for multimillionaires! Just think how much pâté and sausages he’d have to sell! And it’s never enough for Claire. Always more and more and more. It’s killing him.’ Walter nodded. He kept quiet, because Magda was on a roll, and she always saved the best for last. She laid the duster on the table and put her hands on her hips. Although he and Magda were the only ones in the room, she lowered her voice.

‘He’s drinking. I noticed it this morning at the shop. He could barely stand up. He was trembling and sweating like an … alcoholic.’ She spat out the last word.

‘It can’t be as bad as that,’ Walter ventured, but she cut him off.

‘Of course it’s as bad as that. You should have seen it! Incidentally, there was no summer pâté either. Oh, excuuuuse me: “Bra-cke’s Blaas-hoek Pâ-té” was sold out. He’s slipping, Walter.’

‘And I even asked him to put aside a piece for you.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Magda sighed, and in that sigh Walter recognized her long-standing frustration that he never got his act together. He couldn’t even manage to reserve a slab of pâté from the local butcher. She took the duster from the table and vanished into the kitchen.

‘There’s a new girl living at number 27.’ He counted the seconds before she reappeared in the doorway. It never took her longer than four.

‘What’s that?’

‘There’s a new girl living at number 27. Saskia Maes. I delivered a letter for her this morning.’

She let the words sink in. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

‘You mean that pathetic skinny thing? She’s been there for three weeks. You’re miles behind, as usual.’

He blushed.

‘It was a letter from the insurance company in the city.’

She did not miss a beat.

‘She’ll be in debt with them, no doubt.’ And then added: ‘Does that Negro still live there?’

‘His name is Bienvenue. Last week I delivered a package for him.’

‘A package?’

‘I don’t know what was in it. There was no return address.’

‘Shady business.’

‘He does odd jobs for the town council. And he always nods politely when he cycles into the city.’

‘Well, why doesn’t he just stay there.’

‘He’s not doing anyone any harm, Magda.’

‘Maybe not, but he’s not doing anyone any good either.’

She marched off to the kitchen and added, from the stove: ‘except the locksmith’.

◆

Jan Lietaer stared at the garden. He saw the shadows and was repulsed by the sight of them. Then he walked to the living room and stood in front of his gun cabinet, an entirely out-of-place metal monstrosity. Catherine frequently cursed it, but Jan loved it, and loved its contents even more. He opened the cabinet, took a deep whiff of its scent and stroked the guns. The Winchester 70 Featherweight, the Beretta Silver Pigeon III, and his favorites: the fantastic Browning B525 Hunter Elite and his grandfather’s old Sauer. All the way down at the bottom lay the crown jewel. Not a hunting rifle, but the Remington Rand M1911A1, a pistol given to him by his father, who had bought it (so he said) from an American soldier right after Liberation. The soldier had shot it just three times—and not killed anyone. Jan had never used the pistol himself, but he maintained it meticulously. He secretly hoped an intruder would oblige him to fire the remaining five bullets. He took the Sauer, the lightest gun in his collection, out of the cabinet, got a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator and went out to the backyard.

◆

Saskia Maes did not notice, as they passed the pharmacy, that Ivan Camerlynck was watching them. The pharmacist stood at the left-hand window, blocked from view by the rack of suntan lotion he placed there during the summer months. In the winter he restocked it with cough syrup and throat lozenges. Ivan Camerlynck turned up his nose as the girl passed. She strolled as though life were one big vacation. She looked fit and healthy enough to work. But apparently she chose to sponge off the government, to live off taxpayers’ money, off people like him who earned an honest wage. She was dressed like a frump. Really, people who had nothing to do all day and didn’t even take the trouble to make themselves presentable! But what truly turned his stomach was that stupid animal walking alongside her.

How often hadn’t he seen it on TV? Have-nots who moan that they can’t make ends meet on their welfare check, but then maintain half a zoo. Okay, the little cocker spaniel was cute, with his floppy ears and waggling backside, but how did that hussy manage to feed it? Ivan Camerlynck ground his teeth. He could well imagine how that floozy financed her extravagances. He hardly needed to spell it out. A blow job for three cans of dog food. Something like that.

That this banana republic of theirs was going to hell in a handbasket was one thing, but he could not stomach the fact that these excesses had now reached Blaashoek. And practically his own doorstep. Ivan Camerlynck sniffed indignantly.

It was all the fault of those good-for-nothings on the city council. What had they got up to the past few years? First they dredged the Blaashoek Canal. What on earth was the point of that? If a cargo ship tried to sail through it, it’d run aground on duck shit within two meters. No, the tens of thousands of euros’ worth of dredging projects were invested, according to the city council’s report, to facilitate recreational boating. Recreational boating, for God’s sake! So now the banks were regular mooring spots for small yachts, captained by bloated nouveaux-riches in white trousers and plaid shirts, cronies of the mayor, of course, and undoubtedly just as crooked.

Then when the old lady next door died they bought up the house and turned it into subsidized apartments. He took the occasional peek over the wall. Best to keep an eye on these things: before you knew it they’d be breaking all sorts of building codes. The bathrooms they’d put in were nicer than his. And for whom? Parasites!

His registered letters to the mayor received the usual hackneyed replies. First a woman with two young children came to live on the ground floor. The racket those rowdy little monsters made! Ivan was always on guard when the mother and her quick-fingered rascals came into the pharmacy. One day the woman just vanished into thin air, and a darkie moved into the upstairs apartment. A strapping, well-fed colossus, he hardly looked like an impoverished refugee. And judging from the loud half-conversations Ivan heard through the wall, the man wasn’t the least bit concerned about his telephone bill.

And the icing on the cake: a week ago they opened that damned wind park. Ten of those berserkly whirling turbine towers! And what did his fellow townspeople do? Did they protest when they heard of the building plans, all those smarty-pants neighbors of his? Half of them hadn’t even read the article by the local journalist, a puppet of the mayor, that had been buried on page three of the newspaper. The simpletons he spoke to about it thought the wind park was a grand idea. It would lift Blaashoek out of obscurity, they said. Blaashoek would become famous for its green energy, they blathered. Finally something actually happened in the town, they yapped. Brainwashed by the hollow words of the powers that be, that’s what they were. But Ivan did not consider starting a petition himself, or taking his case to the local media. He kept his head down. It can’t always be the same people who raise their voice in defense of the public good. There’d only be a backlash. With a heavy heart he watched the townspeople flock to the opening ceremony and gorge themselves on the sausages and offal pâté from that pig of a butcher. Imbeciles! If he didn’t live here himself, Ivan would say that Blaashoek deserved it.

He sniffed. The girl had slipped into the house. He could barely hear her, that’s how deviously she had refined her methods of receiving clients. He left his sentry post behind the rack of suntan lotion.

He went to the lab at the back of the pharmacy, where his antipathy toward the girl made way for a sense of excitement. He was eager to prepare the triamcinolone acetonide ointment for Mrs. Pouseele, the farmer’s wife, who suffered from eczema. It was a complex preparation; the ointment was prone to curdling. And Mrs. Deknudt would be coming by for her zinc syrup. Even though that one was a snap, he nevertheless looked forward to it.

He had not become a pharmacist just to sell aspirin, suntan lotion and Band-Aids. For that, you could just as well become a salesclerk. His passion was self-made medicines. Even as a student he had excelled in making suppositories, the trickiest preparation of all. Only with patience, precision and cold-blooded concentration did one achieve the ideal result. It was painstakingly difficult to spread the medicine homogeneously throughout the suppository. Moreover, the pill had to dissolve at body temperature, not at room temperature. First you warmed up the powder mixture until it was completely melted. Then you let it cool off. Proper timing was essential, because the mass mustn’t be allowed to solidify. Pouring the preparation into the molds at just the right temperature required nerves of steel. When you finally removed them from the refrigerator, you had to pray that the pills would not stick to the molds.

It had been years since he had made suppositories. When the daughters of the postman Walter De Gryse were young, Magda would bring along a prescription once a week, to his delight. His last suppository customer, he now recalled, was Wesley Bracke, the butcher’s son.

◆

Catwoman’s sumptuous lips closed around his erection. Her head went gently up and down while her tongue glided along his cock. Her cheeks were dimpled from the sucking action. She began slowly, but her movements speeded up in time with his breathing. She pressed the tip of her tongue against his gland, she sucked along the edge toward the center and flicked her tongue vigorously up and down.

Now it was Machteld, the prettiest girl in school, who was riding him. Her small breasts danced to the rhythm of her hips.

Wes Bracke tugged at his hard penis, which he had swathed in toilet paper. Ever since his mother started questioning the dwindling supply of handkerchiefs from the bathroom cupboard, he had switched to toilet paper. The change had numerous advantages. He no longer needed to hide the stinking, stiffened hankies in his nightstand. The soiled tissue could be flushed, unobserved, down the toilet, and a missing roll of paper was far less obvious than the inexplicable disappearance of the handkerchiefs.

Machteld groaned her way to a climax and Wes spurted his warm semen into the toilet paper. He heaved a sigh, zoned out for a few seconds, squeezed the last drops of sperm out of his cock and cleaned himself up. He put his clothes back on. In this weather Machteld probably wore a tight T-shirt and hot pants, which offered a splendid view of her legs. Wes cursed the summer vacation, because it meant not seeing Machteld for nearly two months. His report card was such that his parents were unlikely to take him into the city all that often, certainly not for a party, and the chance that she would show her face in Blaashoek was zilch.

Wes opened the door and dashed into the bathroom. He dumped the paper into the toilet before dropping his pants to piss sitting down. Experience had taught that after jerking off, he would spray all over the place if he stood.

‘Wesley, is that you?’

His mother. He felt his cock and balls tighten.

‘Yeah, who’d you expect? And call me Wes, not Wesley.’ How many times did he have to tell her?

‘Dinner’s ready.’

He sighed. He stood up, examined the evidence one last time and then flushed it with a single pull of the handle.

His parents were already sitting at the kitchen table. You would think that, after a day in the butcher shop, sausages and hamburgers were the last thing in the world they would crave, but no, his parents consumed meat by the kilo. Father Bracke tolerated bread, vegetables and potatoes at most as a garnish; a meal was not a meal if it did not include at least one juicy hunk of meat. Tonight, pork chops were on the menu.

Was this the right moment to inform them of his new lifestyle choice? His father did not look particularly good-humored. More like a corpse in a slasher film. But what did it matter? He was going to hit the roof anyway.

When his mother prepared to dish him up a pork chop, he raised his hand in a defensive gesture.

‘No chops for me, Ma.’

The slab of meat floated above the table. His mother hesitated, looked over at his father. A drop of grease fell onto the tablecloth.

‘Are you sick?’

Wes shook his head.

‘I’m a vegetarian.’

The curse his father let out made the glasses in the china cabinet jingle.