Papa and Sarah have been sitting in her parlour for fifteen minutes already. There’s a sultry old noise in the background, as if the house had been set to a Russian wartime channel that’s still being broadcast from Siberia. Granny stares ahead with glassy eyes and endorses all sorts of obscure things, more to herself than to them. She’s already repeated Sarah’s name ten times. She’s a strange old lady, but maybe the only reason Sarah thinks she’s strange is because they don’t know each other. What you don’t know is always strange. Granny has pressed three thousand-franc notes into Sarah’s fist, a precious secret. She knows Stefaan saw her do it; he was too explicit the way he turned his head to the other side.
‘Your battery, mother, your battery,’ Stefaan shouts.
Granny wriggles a snail out of her inner ear. ‘I thought I heard something peeping. You see that? The battery from your hearing aid is dead.’ A son takes care of his mother. Hanging on the wall behind Granny are two yellowed photos in wooden frames. Even before she could talk, Sarah knew she was never, ever to say anything about those photos. Mama made that clearly understood. Granny lost a child. That unutterable grief turned her to stone, Mama says, the few times she speaks about Granny without a trace of venom. She usually can’t resist adding that there are some people who become more human because of setbacks. Granny has never exchanged a single word with Mieke, that’s how heartless and jealous she is of her son’s happiness. Even ‘hello’ is more than she can manage, Mieke says, ‘and that is the unadulterated truth, I’m really not exaggerating.’
‘Every day,’ says Granny.
‘What every day, mother?’
‘I ask him every day.’
‘What do you ask, mother?’
‘I ask him to come and take me.’
‘Here’s a nice one.’ Stefaan points to one of the pastries with his fork and places it on Granny’s plate. ‘One with marzipan, a little pig—you like those, don’t you?’
‘That child needs to eat well. Give her another pastry. And take one for yourself.’ Granny straightens up. ‘Eat it all up. Whatever’s left you have to take with you.’
‘Where are you going, mother?’
‘Leave a body in peace for a change. To my own little corner, Stefaan, please.’ She walks to the cellar door and pushes the door open. ‘I’ll be right back. You just eat.’
When Sarah stands up to take a second pastry, just like her father, she looks through the tongues of the sanseveria and sees the foolish face of Berta the goat. Berta is spying on them through the window. She’s what gets Granny out of bed in the morning. The ancient goat moved with Granny from the farm to the bungalow. Berta is covered in rough, shabby fur and she has dirty legs, but Granny thinks she has magical powers. She’s also immortal.
‘Granny is starting to forget things,’ says Stefaan to his daughter. ‘Getting old like that isn’t easy.’
After quite some time a huge box comes into the living room with Granny behind it.
‘My heart is at rest now that she’s eleven years old. And it’s the men in our family that cause all the problems, right, Stefaan? I’m not going to say anything. Listen, son, how are you doing these days? Can I have a little peace and quiet?’ babbles the old lady merrily as she starts setting out the contents of the box on her side tables. She presses a knitted octopus into Sarah’s hands. And the figure of an angel. And a songbook from twenty years ago. And a mother-of-pearl necklace.
‘Don’t worry, mother, everything is perfect. Look at Sarah.’
‘Too bad I don’t see so well,’ says the rotund little woman. ‘That’s my mother’s jewellery, Saaaraaah, so take good care of it. Then you can wear it yourself some day …’
‘Why are you giving all your possessions away?’ Stefaan asks with alarm.
The most motley collection of junk has found a home in this box: a damaged extension cord entangled in a very expensive necklace, Hummels, Druivelaar calendars still in their wrappers, a green lampshade, pen holders made from toilet paper rolls that she and her girlfriends fashioned in the parish hall. ‘We take what the people don’t want anymore after they’ve wiped their bottoms and make something beautiful,’ Granny explains.
Granny keeps handing things out and rattling off instructions on how you can use vinegar to clean crystal glasses but not biscuit porcelain. She keeps it up for quite some time before dropping into her armchair, exhausted, and silence descends on the bungalow once again. Her world is a box whose lid is slowly closing.
‘That Jean-Pierre,’ Stefaan sighs in an attempt to resuscitate the conversation, ‘he’s more than anybody can handle.’
‘It takes all kinds, eh?’
‘Mieke’s had it with him. I’m going to throw him out.’
‘Mieke will do that herself,’ says Granny. Outside Berta the dwarf goat bumps her snout against the window pane. ‘Our Berta is going to outlive me, poor lamb. And it won’t be long for me, you know.’ Sarah nods meekly. Surprisingly enough, Granny smells just like Jempy. She has the same wild smell, the smell of a neglected animal.
Granny gropes for another pastry from the plate, breaks it in two like a consecrated host and shoves both pieces into her mouth at once. She keeps shaking her head as a mysterious little smile forms around her mouth, bursting with disbelief in this world.
‘Sarah, I’m so glad I’ve been able to see you just once more. Really, would you believe that I don’t have much time left?’
The very last quarrel between Uncle Jempy and Mama wrenches him from Sarah’s young life just as abruptly as when he entered it. There’s a lot more at stake than the hundred-thousand-franc debt that Uncle Jempy racked up in one night and for which number 7 Nightingale Lane was presented with the bill. This is a war being fought out between continents, a clash of ideologies and genes. Mieke is insisting that Jempy leave at once.
He raises his yellow fingers to his chapped lips as if needing time to reflect on this coup de grâce. ‘I’m not wasting my time here any longer,’ he finally says. ‘Belgium isn’t worthy of me. Yes, go ahead and say that Jean-Pierre De Kinder is too big for his boots. Belgium has never given me anything.’
‘You’ve never given Belgium anything, either. It’s easy to let yourself go the way you have. If I were to let myself go, there’d be a lot involved. We’re made of the same materials, but you’ve built a shack and I’ve built a villa. To each his own.’
‘Oh, madam is feeling superior again. Everything I’ve built up has been taken from me. Well, I’ve seen enough, I’m leaving.’
‘So go. I’m not the one who stood here on the kitchen tiles begging to be taken in. For just a little while. Well, that little while was up a long time ago. You’ve already had your good times here. I have to think of my family, too. We’ve done our duty.’
‘Ça va, ça va. You don’t have to put up with me anymore.’
‘Okay, go then.’ She opens the back door.
‘Oh, sweetie,