His mother is at the top of the stairs. She’s the kind of woman who immediately makes you feel at ease, motherhood personified with fleshy arms and a laugh that is always about to come bubbling up, a laugh that will set her flesh to quivering.
She says, ‘Ooh, is it raining again? Get that coat off.’
I give her my mac and quickly run my fingers through my sopping-wet hair. The living room is dark, but pleasant. Outside it’s still light, but they’ve already drawn the heavy curtains. In the left-hand corner an armchair is turned to face the windows. Cigar smoke curls up above it and I hear the rustling of a newspaper. To my right, sliding doors with yellow light shining through the matt bubble glass divide the room in two. From the adjoining kitchen come the very promising smells of a feast in the making.
‘We’ve got wine,’ Lode winks, triumphantly displaying a corkscrew.
‘Yvette!’ his mother blares from the kitchen. ‘Set the table! Lode’s friend is here.’
I hear some bumping and the sliding doors open.
‘This is my sister. Wilfried, our Yvette.’
She has her brother’s black hair and the same blue eyes. Her lips are painted red and she is wearing a dress that would be more appropriate in summer: cream with a pattern of black and purple stripes and puff sleeves that extend halfway down her upper arms. A black patent-leather belt low on her waist. She is thin, or rather, wiry—a swimmer’s body. Meet your future great-grandmother, son, in the glory of her heyday…
I hold out a hand. ‘Good evening, Yvette.’
She grins at me and says, ‘Oh? Where’s your present?’
‘What… Is there something I don’t know?’
‘Really, Lode!’ She takes a playful swing at her brother’s arm while he’s trying to open the bottle of wine. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’
Lode puts the bottle down and gives her a little poke in reply. ‘My mate’s only just stepped through the door and you’re at it already. What kind of manners is that?’ He tries to pull her closer to tickle her.
Fighting him off, she screams at me, ‘It’s his birthday, smarty! His twenty-first. A grown-up at last. At least, he thinks he is. Stop it. Let me go!’
I’ve broken out in a cold sweat. His birthday and I’m standing there empty-handed.
Brother and sister keep teasing each other, ignoring me. I watch them and don’t know what to do with myself.
Finally a thunderous curse rises from the armchair facing the curtains.
‘Can you two cut it out?’
‘Our dad,’ Lode whispers, raising a finger to his lips.
I step over to the armchair. ‘Good evening, Mr Metdepenningen…’
A man with cauliflower ears, a moustache over his cracked lips and very little hair on the top of his head accepts my hand and holds it tight. ‘Wils, I believe?’
‘Wilfried Wils. Good evening.’
‘Not the Wilses from the barber’s shop on Rotterdam Straat?’
‘Come on, Dad,’ Lode exclaims. ‘You’d have seen him before. That’s just here across the square.’
‘No, Mr Metdepenningen,’ I say, ‘not the barber’s.’
‘Thank God for that…’ the butcher growls. He looks a little reassured and releases my hand. ‘Good. We’re having beef olives. Yvette, will you put those plates on the table at long last?! Lode, give that guest of yours a glass of wine.’
I have to tell you, son, that at that moment I myself had little interest in the carnal love that dominates personal relationships. To me, it seemed like a contract you close, nothing else. I couldn’t yet picture myself lying in bed fiddling with someone else. I fiddled with myself shamelessly and that was enough. It never even occurred to me to fantasize about a woman obeying my every command while I was at it. And no, I didn’t need to think of a bloke’s body either to ejaculate while standing at the window of my stuffy little room. Because isn’t that the first thing you thought of while reading these lines? No, I thought about other things I have no desire to tell you about. And before you go off on another tangent and start thinking we were all cowed by the cross and suffering under rules and commandments, I have to call a halt to your imagination again. My parents were no knee-benders, especially not my father. He felt nothing but contempt for all those churchgoing pallbearers who slept with their hands over the sheets and saw the soutaned priest at the altar as their merciless guide to the zoology of lust. He was a freethinker, but kept it private because of a stubborn conviction that it was nobody’s business but his own. In retrospect he was a hunter, through and through. He could spend days only letting out the occasional grunt, but when the conversation turned to women he couldn’t hold his tongue. I can still hear him saying it, just following the train of his thought and with my mother sitting right there at the table: ‘The first thing you should do as a young fellow at a dance is look around calmly. Don’t go straight to the bar for a beer. But don’t drag the first girl you bump into out onto the dance floor either. Before you know it you’ll have to spend the whole evening with someone you have to be polite to but don’t really fancy. No, Wilfried, have a good look first, always have a good look around. Where are the opportunities? Who has good posture, because a woman who doesn’t sit nice and straight… Your Aunty Emma now, does she sit nice and straight? Where do you think those stomach problems come from? I’m not saying a word, don’t get me wrong. But posture is one thing. Another’s—’ This was where my mother interrupted him. ‘Jozef, is this necessary?’ My father held his breath and finally added: ‘The other thing is inclination. You can develop a sense for that. You can sniff it out.’
It’s a memory I enjoy. It was actually the only time I didn’t view him as a sinister accomplice to a conspiracy whose sole purpose was to turn my life into a prison. Do you feel trapped too? If you do, it’s a sign you’ve got a head on your shoulders.
Yvette studies me while a stack of beef olives in gravy gleam on a dish on the table. If we’re talking about the hunt, it’s me who’s her prey at that moment, something my father would have undoubtedly seen as an inversion of the proper order. An amused Lode has seen through his sister immediately. Their mother keeps dishing up the food and their father leads the discussion. As heavily built as he is, his conversational techniques turn out to be finely honed, as sharp as the knives he uses to bone beef in the back of his shop. The word ‘bookkeeper’ makes him mistrustful. Once that subject’s been dealt with, he tells us about a procession he saw a few Sundays ago: all local boys dressed in black uniforms and marching behind a banner with crowds on either side. Lode wants to butt in, but his father lets him know with a glance that his opinion is not required. Then he moves on to the king, who has stayed in the country, and the government, which doesn’t seem at all keen to come back after fleeing to London. I say I don’t really know much about politics. With his mouth slowly chewing a beef olive, he joins his daughter in studying my expression. It becomes clear that he wants to know where I stand, whether or not I’m pro-German. But he’s so cautious about it that I, in turn, try to find out where he stands first. Do you know the joke about two hedgehogs making love? Bit by bit and very carefully. A corny joke, I know. Meanwhile I’m eating my meat just as carefully, like a nun in a white habit, because I suspect that the slightest spillage will make all-seeing Yvette burst out laughing. I feel a clamminess growing in my armpits when I see that I’ve accidentally nudged a pea off my plate. And that father of theirs just keeps on going. Whether I’ve read this in the newspaper and what I think about that and if we have a radio at home. Concerning the last one, I say that my father likes to listen to Beethoven. Blithering nonsense of course, but inside of me Angelo considers it fitting, imagining himself with a father who pulls on a pair of waders to go fishing in the cultural river, as Meanbeard would have it.
‘Beethoven…’ says Mr Metdepenningen thoughtfully.
‘The composer…’ Lode adds.
He catches a glare from his father that makes him go quiet again.
�
��Music makes us more human,’ I say quickly as Yvette smothers her laughter in a napkin.
‘Most people adjust to circumstances…’ the butcher concludes slyly.
Lode has already forgotten his temporary silencing. ‘Kanonenfleisch!’ he says. ‘That’s all we are. Cannon fodder! Wir sind Kanonenfleisch!’
I can see what he’s referring to in his eyes. At least, I think I can. Since that cold winter’s night, when we led the Lizke family to Van Diepenbeek Straat, we haven’t said another word about it. Our going through it together was coincidence, a consequence of the field gendarmes grabbing us both at the same time. Normally they don’t send two probationary constables out on patrol together. That means I don’t know what he’s been through since and he knows just as little about me. In the meantime a few other things have happened. Sometime in January, for instance, I had to accompany a few ‘racial itinerants’ with an older constable. That’s the official term for Gypsies—what we call Bohemians—and they’d been daft enough to register for a temporary residence permit at the office for foreign nationals on Steenhouwers Vest. The staff couldn’t believe it. The police there on the phone to us, us on the phone to the Germans (our inspector, at least), and next thing we know, we’re off to Van Diepenbeek Straat. We managed it without too many incidents. Those Bohemians were oblivious to just about everything, my partner laughed. If you asked him, he said, they were just pissed, and it’s possible. What I’m trying to say is it’s almost routine now. Everyone keeps mum. Hardly anyone ever complains about anything; most people just keep their heads down. After all, you never know where other people stand. I hear on the street that some divisions always roster the pro-German cops together. I have no idea if that’s really true; it’s definitely not the case at our station. Of course, the few who are pro-German let their sympathies show; the rest shut up, as if there’s an agreement to not make things too difficult for each other. Not forgetting the constant menace, the threat of betrayal. You soon find out that even the friendliest of people can get you into trouble if you’ve let something slip, and Lode knows that too because he’s far from stupid. But what becomes clear at that table is just how much that whole Lizke affair is still churning around inside his head.
Yvette asks if we shouldn’t raise a toast. She’s already holding up her glass. Their father wipes his mouth as a sign of consent. We clink glasses and wish Lode good health.
‘And a good girlfriend!’ cries the birthday boy.
‘Steady on,’ says the butcher.
Yvette looks at me and points discreetly at her chin. A splash of gravy on mine. I turn red.
Back home there’s no Beethoven ringing through the living room. My emasculated father is just sitting there. My job is all that’s keeping the household afloat and my first steps towards a new life, no matter how far away it might seem, fill him with deep envy. What’s more we have a visitor. Aunty Emma, the woman who, according to my father, can’t sit straight and therefore suffers stomach problems, has dropped by. She’s drinking a glass of liqueur with my mother, her sister. What Mother lacks, Aunty Emma has in abundance: charm and vivaciousness.
‘Oh, Wilfried,’ she calls out, ‘people would pay good money just to look at you! Didn’t you have to work today? I’m dying for a chance to admire you in uniform!’
I’ve already told you that my mother comes from a posh family and that she and her sister represent the tail end of this fortunate lineage. Mother married beneath her station (by no coincidence, this mainly annoys her husband), and in the twenties Aunty Emma got a little carried away with a divorced banker, which cost her a place in her parents’ good books. We don’t see that much of her, even though she lives nearby. Our house is in Kruik Straat, which leads to Boey Straat, which leads in turn to a main road called Van den Nest Lei, where she lives in with a wealthy family. ‘Jews,’ my father confided in me. ‘She’s there at their beck and call day in, day out.’ She’s a maid, in other words, which apparently doesn’t dim her joie de vivre, on the contrary. She is more than happy to wear Madame’s hand-me-downs and they always look good on her.
I ask her how her stomach’s holding up. She touches her belly and looks at me in surprise. My father feigns ignorance.
‘Darling, I have a cast-iron stomach! You wouldn’t believe all the things I have to make for my people and I always eat it up bravely myself too.’
‘It’s getting late,’ Father says.
Aunty Emma turns to my mother. ‘I haven’t even had time to tell you why I’m here.’
‘Come on,’ Mother says with sparkling eyes, ‘quickly.’
Aunty Emma takes a sip of her liqueur, which adds gravity to her voice. ‘With all the bad luck I’ve had in life, I think it’s only appropriate to let my family know when things are going well for once.’
‘You’ve won the lottery,’ my father jokes eagerly, his curiosity aroused now too.
‘Much better than that…’ announces Aunty Emma. ‘I have a new beau.’
‘No!’ Mother exclaims in disbelief.
‘And not just anyone. He’s called Gregor and he’s an officer in the SS.’
‘Do I hear Kanonen?’ I whisper. Nobody pays any attention.
‘Emmy…’ my mother says quietly, ‘shouldn’t you be careful with that? Next thing you’ll lose your job.’
People say that men think about sex every however-many minutes. It’s possible. Presumably you’d agree. You’re a growing boy and a female glancing in your direction is probably enough to set you off. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to convince ourselves that we still have a raging beast inside of us, a beast that wants to mate, but maybe that’s only camouflaging a deep despair. There are other drives, after all, at least as strong or gradually growing stronger, and I don’t know how thoroughly they’ve been investigated. The longing for normality, for instance. When you live through a war, everything changes; the city puts on a new mask. It’s the shock of the new. When someone’s been having it off and is about to become a father or mother, everyone warns them: watch out, everything’s going to be different from now on. Having kids is the most normal thing in the world until you’ve got them and find yourself looking at a creature in a cradle and everyone expects you to change everything to accommodate it. Everyone acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world, but it doesn’t feel like it. Everyone gathered round the cradle bleats that you should be happy to have a healthy child and that’s all there is to it. When a city is occupied by new masters, new customs, you get the same thing. After the shock, most people can’t wait to act like it’s normal. Life goes on, you have to adjust, as Lode’s father told me. Just keep doing what you’re doing and the rest will work itself out. The flags in the city, all those uniforms and the bars full of soldiers. All normal. The craving for the ordinary is so strong you can almost smell it and then human adaptability comes into play. In the cinemas you don’t see Hollywood movies any more, but that doesn’t matter, because the German films are just as enjoyable. They have laughter, men chasing women and getting romantic, murders that urgently need solving, and now and then the beautiful Zarah Leander sings a song that has all the women reaching for their hankies. I’ve always loved the cinema. I’m sitting in the Scala in Anneessens Straat. The film is being introduced by a fellow from the People’s Defence, an organization that counts Meanbeard as one of its members. His speech is moronic. He talks to us as if we’re little brats who don’t know a thing. We have to face reality. The Israelites are poison. Come off it, everyone’s poison, is what I think at that moment. How can this fellow with his grand gestures and swollen voice not see that? What’s poisonous is the craving for normality, the hypocrisy it brings and everyone’s slave morality. But this film has come with an express recommendation from Meanbeard so I stay put. It’s a period drama with wigs and beautiful expensive sets. A bigwig with a pencil moustache and a beer gut gets crowned duke. But he needs money, a lot of money, to lead the lifestyle that goes with being a bigwig and a duke. He gets that mone
y from an Israelite with cupboards full of gold and jewels. The Israelite shaves off his beard and ringlets and puts on a wig so they’ll let him into the city where they actually despise Israelites. I find the charming fiendishness of the actor who plays the Israelite amusing. He becomes the bigwig’s adviser, then takes over and bleeds the city dry with extra duties and taxes. He has his adversaries tortured and hung, and blackmails and rapes women who refuse to bend to his desires, but the people rise up against him. In the end he’s defeated, the bigwig has a heart attack and the liberated people declare that everyone must take this as a warning. Curtains. Applause and a little bit of booing. Jews out! Everyone off home, acting normal.
‘And? How was the film?’
Meanbeard accepts the copy of Rimbaud’s poems I borrowed from him and urges me to sit down. Gaspar the parrot is not in a good mood. I can hear him screeching all the way upstairs.
‘He’s got colic,’ says Meanbeard.
‘I enjoyed the film,’ I say.
‘Big audience? How did they react?’
‘There was some shouting.’
‘I know you have an inner self who is keen to match deeds to words. Shouting is not enough, I agree. But what matters is planting seeds that will soon grow to maturity. Have I made myself clear?’
I nod out of habit.
Will Page 5
