Madam Cherry is a frugal old woman who lived through the Great War and has a back as crooked as her fruit trees. At five-thirty every morning she mounts a ladder and climbs fifteen feet up into the branches. She’d rather risk her life than let all that magnificent fruit from God’s garden go bad or leave it to the birds. Even that pious lady, supermarket bag tied to her head to keep off the drizzle, has fallen for Uncle Jempy’s charms. She won’t let him leave without one more bucket of sour cherries. Nothing would please her more; he’s doing her a favour.
In the kitchen, juice is streaming from the pitting machine. The pits tap against the covered marble tiles like hailstones. The three of them are hard at work, as if together they had formed the conveyor belt of a perfect little family: Mieke washes and selects the cherries, Uncle Jempy runs them through the machine, and Sarah, down on her knees, gathers up the pits that fall beside it. The cherries leave red splashes of blood on the kitchen cabinets, which Sarah must wipe off immediately with a damp cloth. Sarah wheedles her uncle into telling them tall tales. She wants to know what kinds of crimes the other prisoners were in for.
‘Sarah, give your uncle some peace and quiet.’
‘Yeah, Sarah, how about you tell me something? Or let me hear what you’re learning at the music academy. Where’s your guitar?’
Sarah doesn’t dare. She’s much too shy. ‘Some other time, uncle. I’m all messy right now.’
‘Yes, Jempy, she’s right. Leave her alone or my whole living room will be covered in cherry juice. I don’t know how she does it, but somehow she manages.’ Sarah, who for more than ten years has come to know Mieke’s sardonic speech pattern like the back of her hand, is surprised by the cheerful undertone of her mother’s comment.
They’re all in high spirits. Mieke even makes a joke when she hears over the radio that gangster boss Patrick Haemers is being put under additional surveillance in prison. She says she’s going to set an extra place tonight at supper tonight for Jempy’s buddy, because he’s certainly going to find a way to escape despite the extra surveillance. Fine with her, she says. He looks like a respectable young man, with his blue eyes and beautiful sweaters. Who’s going to wash the sweaters, she wonders? In response Uncle Jempy throws a handful of cherries at her head. Everything falls silent. Only the news presenter continues. Sarah looks at her mother. Tears are suddenly streaming down Mieke’s cheeks. ‘That’s not allowed,’ she sobs, ‘you’re not allowed to do that.’ Uncle Jempy puts an arm around her shoulder, tries to calm her down, and promises he’ll clean everything up. Against all expectations he actually does, wringing out shammy cloths until the water runs clear and the kitchen has lost a layer of paint and is back to being a proper place for preparing the evening meal.
That evening, just as all four of them have swallowed the last of their soup, the telephone rings.
‘Oh dear oh dear, who can that be?’ Mieke asks. Oh dear oh dear: her life is set to the rhythm of oh dear oh dear. Oh dear oh dear (get a fresh tablecloth) in response to a drop of milk next to a glass; oh dear oh dear (the power of nature) said in astonishment at the sunflowers, which are so abnormally large this year; oh dear oh dear (is that for me?) of silent pride in the surprisingly beautiful bracelet she got from her husband and daughter for Mother’s Day; oh dear oh dear as a bell tone (what danger is lurking now?). Oh dear oh dear.
Mieke thinks Jempy should answer the phone, since she’s a hundred percent sure it’s for him. They don’t know anyone so rude as to call during dinner, except maybe Granny, who makes a game out of calling at the most ungodly hours for the most trivial reasons. The last time it was to say that Sarah was ten years and eleven months old. The poor thing is starting to lose it.
‘Let it ring,’ says Uncle Jempy. ‘I’m hungry.’
They’re having schnitzel with fried new potatoes and broccoli tonight, something uncommonly unhealthy and festive at the Vandersanden-De Kinder home.
‘Please answer it,’ Mieke says. ‘Then we can have our dinner in peace.’
Uncle Jempy goes over to the phone. He listens for a few seconds and barks a few short phrases into the receiver, such as how much and where and now’s not a good time but anyway and it’ll be all right because it’s you and so close already. He hangs up.
‘I’m going out for just a minute, be right back,’ he says, and without further ado he goes out to the hall. The heavy front door closes behind him. They hear an old jalopy come to a halt, idle noisily, and take off again.
Mieke thinks it’s rude to start without Jempy. The three of them sit there twiddling their thumbs around the steaming dishes. They can wait for twenty minutes. For two hours even. When the two hours are up Mieke’s so mad at her brother she could strangle him, but unfortunately he’s not here. He’s a disgrace, he’s rotten, he’s a bad influence on Sarah, a rat, everything that’s bad. She thinks it’s outrageous and incomprehensible that she still lets herself get mixed up with that prick. They’ll never again see that money they lent him, guaranteed. And so forth. And so on. She rushes to the kitchen and starts washing the cooking pots. Stefaan and Sarah pick at the food behind her back. Mieke comes back to the dining room and sweeps the entire evening meal from the table. Before Stefaan and Sarah can utter a word of protest, the cargo from the brimming dishes sinks to the bottom of the garbage can. Shiploads of the most delicious food descend into the depths, just like that, irrevocably lost.
‘This has got to stop!’ Stefaan roars suddenly. He slams his hand on the table like a peasant in a black-and-white Flemish film from some distant Sunday evening of yesteryear.
If there’s something Stefaan can’t laugh about, it’s this: the food he has a right to, that he’s looked forward to after a whole day of drudgery, being picked up before his very eyes and mercilessly tossed out.
‘This has got to stop, I said!’ Stefaan repeats.
‘What?’
‘That thing you do, plucking the rugs bare!’
‘What are you talking about now?’
‘The rugs.’
‘Is it that you don’t like them? You helped pick them out yourself, so don’t come complaining about it now.’
‘You spend hours at it. It’s just not normal.’
‘It’s because your daughter makes a mess of my rugs. That’s why. She’s out of control. I don’t know what to do with that kid.’
‘Hello, I’m still here,’ says Sarah, who’s sitting at the table.
‘The problem isn’t Sarah,’ says Stefaan. ‘It’s not Sarah at all! Any child would get nervous with all that hysteria in the air.’
‘That child is just being defiant.’
‘Stop it. I don’t want to talk about Sarah.’
‘Oh, right. That’s true, too. How could I have forgotten? We’re not supposed to talk about problems in this house.’
‘Oh, yes we are. There’s nothing I’d rather do. But you refuse to talk about the biggest problem of all,’ Stefaan roars all at once. His voice is loud enough to leave scorch marks, as if the volume had accidentally been turned up to full blast.
‘Oh dear oh dear, are you all right? Is everything okay?’ Mieke asks, suddenly the very picture of peace, and brilliant in her role of solicitous wife.
‘Your brother!’ Stefaan explodes.
‘Now it’s all my fault?’
‘Yes, he’s your brother and he can do whatever he likes here, wreck the place and toss out our dinner … ’
‘He didn’t do that.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Stefaan is gasping for