Читать книгу Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir - Sylvia Kristel - Страница 17

13

‘Mrs Kristel?! Mrs Kristel?!’

The man in the hotel lobby is getting upset. It’s Mr Janssen, who runs the newspaper shop across the street from the hotel. Aunt Mary hurries off to find my mother, who comes down looking surprised, a chrome thimble on her finger.

‘Yes, Mr Janssen, what can I do for you?’ she asks nervously.

‘Keep your girls under control, Mrs Kristel! Keep them under control!’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘How old are they, now?’

‘Sylvia will be ten this autumn and Marianne is eight, why?’

‘Ten and eight … well, it doesn’t augur …’

‘What doesn’t it augur?’ My mother is getting impatient.

‘It just doesn’t augur well, that’s all!’

My mother turns towards me and starts interrogating me.

‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?!’

Mr Janssen interrupts me.

‘Mrs Kristel, since the beginning of the summer your daughter and her little sister have been cavorting on the tables of your restaurant. At around 3 p.m., when the room is empty. Laughing, singing, gesticulating –’

‘But they are children, Mr Janssen!’ my mother cuts in. ‘Children do play and dance!’

‘Yes, but not naked! Totally naked! They undress and parade around, stroking themselves and wiggling about so outrageously that passers-by stare, and then bash into the telephone box! Look, the glass panel has broken! Your daughters find it amusing, especially the older one. If the collision is violent, they leap off the table like fleas and scarper. I’m the only one who’s seen what they’re up to. Don’t you hear them?! They sing their heads off, which is to say they screech. I can hear them through an open window on the other side of the road! I haven’t said anything until now, but I’m warning you –’

My mother interrupts Mr Janssen again.

‘OK, Mr Janssen, OK. Please forgive us, I’m very sorry. Sylvia sometimes likes to draw attention to herself, you know how they can be at her age, and her sister is still young and easily influenced … but it won’t happen again.’

The neighbour goes off, shaking his head and still muttering: ‘Ten and eight …’

My mother is bright red. Her time has been wasted and her local reputation trashed. She runs around the hotel screaming and foaming at the mouth. She is tracking me down, full of threats.

‘Sylvia! Sylvia! If you don’t come here right now …’

But I’ve been out of there for a while. It had been obvious that Mr Janssen wasn’t coming over to discuss the day’s gossip. I am crouched down in my new hiding place, the cupboard on the half-landing of the stairs. Aunt Alice knows but she doesn’t let on. She has seen me and has stationed herself just in front, with her back to the cupboard.

‘Where is Sylvia?! Do you know where she is, or what?!’

My mother’s rage isn’t passing. She has armed herself with the big willow carpet-beater she uses on the mattresses, and of course her long pointy nails that pierce the skin like staples. She threatens Aunt Alice, throwing her hands up in the air and yelling that she ‘didn’t deserve this’!

I stay in that cupboard for two hours, not making a sound. My mother is bound to calm down eventually. It is a matter of time. Soon she will get out the little steel goblet she hides in her sewing box like an oversized thimble, and drink dozens of small sips of sherry or white wine, sometimes even the whole bottle – but by thimbleful, persuading herself that these sips added up to less than the whole. She will fall asleep, shattered, beaten and drunk. She will forget. I will escape the willow whip.

So Mr Nosy’s nose exploded like a ripe fruit? Tough luck. I am up for anything to avoid boredom and get some attention.

My brother has found another, effective way of getting attention. He shapes his faeces into little geometric sculptures that he attempts to stick to the walls, laughing and running off with dirty hands and stripes on his face like an Indian. My mother swears and rages, apologises to the customers, pleads her helplessness with a sponge in her hand. Marianne spends more and more time at the neighbours’ house with her friend Anneke. They are as thick as thieves. When I bump into her in the hotel she smiles at me. She gives off a mysterious smell of tobacco these days. She seems happy with her life next door.