Normally her mother would jump out of her skin. Her lax, tolerant attitude is more than alarming for Sarah, who isn’t even allowed to eat an apple whole. This strange man is standing slipperless in the kitchen and scraping a spoon across the delicate surface of the Tefal pan. Who can explain it?
What Sarah reads into this is a passionate soap opera. Her mother is unpredictable, and in her unpredictable logic there’s always an explanation to suit her. So it’s quite possible that Mieke, who is one hundred percent devoted to her husband, has Another Man. Sarah gulps for air at this offensive speculation. It would be horrible, first of all for her but also for her father, who works so hard six days out of seven, mows the lawn every weekend, and sometimes just sits there staring so distractedly that it makes her blood run cold. If it’s true, he’ll have to leave the house and there’ll be a dreadful fight over her and the lawn mower. Those kinds of catastrophic divorces are common fare for the people in the village, her mother has always said scornfully: the riff-raff who switch partners at the drop of a hat and just keep passing the children back and forth.
The man abruptly interrupts his mechanical eating and slurping activities when he catches sight of Sarah the spy through the crack that gives away her hiding place. His jaw drops, his sauce-filled mouth emits warm air and gasps for the cold. He swallows and calls her by name. Sarah patters shyly into the kitchen. Like a Chinese serving girl on lotus feet, she carries the women’s magazine for her mother.
Standing before Jempy is a four-foot-six beanstalk in corduroy pants and a pullover with bright yellow daisies scattered across it like flowers in a green meadow. A large head is doing all it can to hold itself erect on the slender little body. Curious, wide-open eyes stare at him, almost as pitch black as the child’s bobbed hair. ‘You sure do look like your mother, unbelievable,’ says the man with delight as he tosses Sarah into the air like a featherweight package, catches her, gives her a hug and plants her in front of him on the kitchen floor in order to look at her from a distance. ‘The last time I saw you, you were just a little thing, two, three years old. What a pretty girl you’ve turned into. Don’t you remember your Uncle Jempy?’ Sarah doesn’t know what to say, and she stiffens as her cheeks turn crimson. Mieke stands behind her daughter and lowers her delicate hands onto Sarah’s shoulders as she would on a piano keyboard. This rare, tender contact clears away the cloud in her head.
‘This is Jean-Pierre,’ Mieke says to Sarah. ‘My brother and your uncle. He’s come to stay with us for the weekend. You may call him Uncle Jempy.’ And with this Mieke has supplied all the necessary information. Jempy, the man about whom Sarah has heard so many stifled comments such as ‘nail in my coffin’ and ‘nuisance’, is now here in the flesh, right in front of her nose, slurping spaghetti.
‘I’m going to stay here awhile, if that’s all right with you.’ Sarah’s uncle smiles at her.
After having tricked her way into the big wide world, the big wide world itself has come to her. It’s as if a new person had stepped out of the back room of her tender young life, someone Sarah has never seen before but always knew was there. This cowboy is a member of her family.
Mieke moistens her handkerchief with the tip of her tongue. She goes down on her knees to scrub a drop of sauce from one of the kitchen tiles.
‘Where’s my change?’ she asks Sarah.
‘I didn’t get any change.’
‘Just what I expected! Can you believe it? I told you, that guy from the newspaper shop is a real scoundrel. Cheating children like that.’ There’s sweat on Mieke’s upper lip. ‘Get out there right now and start weeding. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.’
When Sarah storms into the house after a lightning fast round of weeding, the stove exhaust fan is whirring at such a rate that the curtains are in danger of being swallowed up. The box of Useless Giveaway Presents has been taken down from the attic and all the perfumed candles in it are now lined up and burning in the kitchen, but the smell of cigarettes has penetrated even the most virginal spaces. ‘Please, Jempy, if you’re going to smoke, do it outside.’
Mieke and Uncle Jempy speak a language full of aspirated letters and amputated words that Sarah unfortunately has not mastered. They talk loud and laugh often. Sarah compares the two family members, combines their silhouettes, and comes up with a hilarious monster: some in-between creature with an agitated babble, roaring laughter, thin wrists attached to hefty arms protruding from shirt sleeves, and the legs of a gazelle in Romika slippers.
‘As long as you aren’t as naughty as your uncle,’ Jempy says, beating Mieke to the punch.
Stefaan works on Saturdays, much to Mieke’s displeasure. He’s just spent three days in bed with a peculiar chronic fatigue virus, so he’s going to have some catching up to do (Stefaan) and he’ll still have to take it easy (Mieke). After his Saturday work he slavishly drops in on Granny every weekend. He frequently tries to entice Sarah to come along by promising her cake, and sometimes he even uses emotional blackmail, but most of the time she doesn’t want to go. Granny smells bad and she doesn’t talk and she always looks so angry (as if she wanted to bewitch Sarah). That’s why she’s sitting at the kitchen table now, drawing music staffs. While Mieke makes herself presentable, Uncle Jempy takes his things to the guest room.
At seven o’clock Stefaan comes home, just as Mieke is putting the last dish on the table, as usual. He says Granny sends her greetings to Sarah, that she thinks about her a lot and is very proud that Sarah is really doing her best at school. Granny can’t possibly have said all that. Then Stefaan shakes Uncle Jempy’s hand. Jempy said he’s looking damned good, but what do you expect with a wife like his little sister? Stefaan doesn’t know how to respond to such a comment. He walks over to the record cabinet and interrupts Chopin’s lively romantic piano Prelude, setting Dylan on a long epic journey through ‘The Gates of Eden’.
Jempy jumps to his feet. ‘That reminds me,’ he says, and he runs over to a plastic bag from the Unic department store, ‘that I brought a present for you, Sarah.’
He rummages through the bag and hands her a CD from which the cellophane wrapper has already been removed. Sarah sees a comic strip drawing of collapsing skyscrapers with the freaks from Iggy Pop’s ‘Brick by Brick’ swarming in between.
‘Oh dear oh dear,’ says Mieke. Sarah puts the CD on.
‘Not too loud,’ says Mieke, ‘so we can still hear each other talk.’
The reeking sauerkraut is passed around, and on every plate there’s a skinned chicken fillet.
‘So healthy,’ laughs Uncle Jempy. ‘This is sure to give me stomach cramps.’ He leans back, hands behind his head, a joker who feels at home everywhere.
‘I like it, Mama.’ Sarah wants to show her mother that she’s grateful—for the food, for Uncle Jempy. Ingratitude, as her mother always says, is the devil’s workshop.
‘Isn’t there any ketchup or mayonnaise, sis?’
Uncle Jempy is waited on hand and foot. He smothers his food in ketchup and mayonnaise that emerge from some secret stockpile, since these leading causes of American and French heart attacks never appear on the table here. Sarah gets half a teaspoon of ketchup, just this once, and she has to make sure she doesn’t abuse the privilege.
‘The food inside isn’t very healthy. Yesterday there was a whole family of worms in my mashed potatoes … ’
‘Inside where?’ Sarah asks.
‘In jail,’ Jempy answers.
‘Change the subject,’ Mieke hurries to interject. ‘How’s Sonja doing?’
‘Don’t talk to me about that woman.’
Uncle Jempy eats with relish and is perfectly relaxed. A man of the world.
‘Yeah, Stefaan, at least you chose well. If Mieke wasn’t my little sister I’d know for myself.’
‘Hey! Jempy! What