Both of them applied for the same position as director of research and development. Berkvens’s wife says it’s a beautiful baby, Stefaan hears. She’s a nurse in the maternity ward at the Sacred Heart Hospital. Don’t nurses have a code of professional confidentiality? Stefaan himself wanted to be the one to announce the good news at work.
‘A girl! This calls for a drink,’ says Berkvens.
‘What shall we drink?’ asks Stefaan. He hears the remoteness in his voice. For Stefaan, the line between work and private life is of crucial importance. He guards it closely.
His mother has raised herself from the armchair and is now standing next to him. She takes a dust cloth from her apron and rubs it over the bakelite telephone with its ivory dial, an heirloom from Mieke’s parents.
‘What shall we drink? A beer at the pub, of course, to celebrate the birth!’ says Berkvens, his colleague.
‘A beer,’ Stefaan repeats.
Berkvens knows that Stefaan doesn’t drink beer. Never did, even before he came to understand that beer is for plebeians. The feeble bubbles and bitter taste are lost on him. After working long hours at his part-time job in the print shop while studying in America, his beverage of choice consisted of several glasses of a bright yellow soft drink.
‘I don’t know,’ says Stefaan. ‘I don’t know if I have time for drinking.’
His mother is still flitting around behind him. She has strong principles, always has. She won’t allow a single drop of alcohol to be drunk in her presence, for instance, no matter what the occasion. Single-handedly she has become Flanders’s biggest temperance brigade. She’s merciless in her condemnation of the respectable Fleming who joyfully returns to his wife and kiddies with ten glasses of beer in his belly: all the worse for him. According to her theory, alcohol is not only stupefying but it’s also very bad for the liver. ‘One glass? For the liver that’s no different than trying to bolt down a kilo of chocolate. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can ask Dr. Verastenhoven.’ ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ ‘Exactly. The drink, you know.’
The last time his mother drank in public in the open air was at a small dinner party she organized following the commemorative mass held for her husband André. She had ordered and paid for dinner for thirty-eight: for the pastor, his nuns, her stone-deaf girlfriends from the retirement society, and her family. At that particular memorial she consumed everything that was left in the aperitif glasses, the wine glasses, the beer glasses, and the hard liquor glasses. At first her customary silence went unnoticed. Her guests never suspected a thing until she dropped the stuffed pear garnish from her serving of quail down her décolleté and, after spooning out the last of the advocaat, proceeded to throw up in the bushes next to the restaurant chickens.
‘It must have been the potatoes,’ she explained, gasping for air. ‘Probably a green one. I’m terribly sensitive to green potatoes.’ The establishment was being run by a gang of profiteers who let their filthy, Pamper-clad children run through the restaurant, which also may have had something to do with it, she said.
When Stefaan cautiously suggested it may have been the drink, she denied it up and down, only to toss in five minutes later as part of her sobering-up tirade: ‘Marie Brizard, anise liqueur—come on, who drinks that stuff anymore? Maybe the occasional cleaning woman who gets hooked on abandoned bottles when nobody’s looking. But otherwise?’
Stefaan sees his mother pulling faces, fishing to find out who’s on the other end of the line. He’s eager to end the phone call with Berkvens and says, ‘Another time.’
‘Another time then,’ responds Berkvens. ‘We’ll go out another time. I won’t forget, now.’
Stefaan hangs up. Fortunately he doesn’t like to go drinking. He has neither the time nor the inclination. He’s never shown his face in either of the two village pubs. He also finds it completely unbecoming to hang around in a drinking establishment when you’ve just been given the most beautiful daughter in the history of humanity.
‘How are you, Mother? It wasn’t too tiring for you, was it?’ He redirects his attention for the moment to his discontented mother.
His mother mutters something. She always seems angry at him. She is very creative in her reproaches, but they all arise from one underground reservoir of guilt and sorrow.
‘Did you see or hear anyone?’ he asks.
‘No,’ she snaps. ‘Now that you have a daughter you’re going to behave yourself and be happy, is that right?’
Stefaan ignores the caustic remarks that he has come to expect from his mother. ‘I’m going to the hospital. I’m taking some sugared almonds, a nightgown, and a couple of towels,’ he says. ‘But I’m bringing a present back for you. That should make you happy.’
The hours slip past. With a creak in her heavy joints Melanie stands up. She goes to the kitchen and spreads butter on half a slice of gingerbread. She gives herself permission to eat in the armchair, a small indulgence that she hopes will not leave too many crumbs. At some indeterminate point later on, Melanie wakes up with a start that reverberates through all her chins. Stefaan doesn’t seem to have been gone for long, although sleeping has caused her to lose track of time. Her mouth feels as sticky as a honeycomb. According to her doctor she doesn’t drink enough water. That was eight years ago. Now the doctor himself has died. Her son comes into the room with a carrying case. He zips the case open and takes a video camera out of the padded interior. Melanie’s heart skips a beat. Is this the present? It’s an ungainly metal hulk with one big, round eye.
‘Wouldn’t you like to see her?’ Stefaan asks.
He carries the camera in his arms like a child. The camera is frightfully expensive, which is exactly why Stefaan bought it. Stefaan wants to spend money on his daughter. He’s just itching to replay the scene that he observed with his own eyes through the lens of the camera. Now he wants to see it with his mother. He can also send the images from the camera to the television via a cable, an extra option he has paid a pretty penny for.
‘You’re not going to tell me … ’ she says. She shifts the fulcrum of her body and raises her right buttock. A loud salvo is heard. Because of her deafness she cannot hear the sound of her own farts. Both her hands grasp the arms of the chair as if her body were about to fly upward, but it abandons the effort under so much weight. She struggles for breath, all the way down to the deepest tunnels of her massive body. The hand that had just been flapping freely lands on her prow, the other points to the unwieldy apparatus that Stefaan is cradling in his arms. Another of her verbal assaults is brewing. ‘ … you’re not going to tell me … that the birth is recorded on that thing?’ She nearly faints.
‘That’s right,’ Stefaan confirms enthusiastically. He crouches next to the television console and tries to connect the camera to the TV via the cable.
‘What will they think of next?’ Melanie spits out, along with another handful of words. Her unusual loquacity has to do with an attack on the present age. ‘No matter where you turn today, everything is out there for all to see. My goodness, a little baby can’t help it if he comes into the world in his birthday suit, but I don’t have to see your wife in all her glory, thank you very much. It’s become a regular scourge these days—there’s an ad for a new gas stove and bang, they have to put a naked lady in it. That’ll warm things up all right. Who wouldn’t be cold walking around in their altogether? Or yesterday in the theatre section of the newspaper. Yes, they have the nerve to call it theatre, getting undressed down to their last stitch with everyone looking on. To say nothing of that modern art nowadays! It’s all an excuse to show off a lot of filth. That guy with his whore and her bare breasts, the two of them in a sculpture. And we’re supposed to think it’s beautiful? Coarse, cheap, vulgar, too dreadful for words, that’s what I say. You can go ahead and call me old fashioned but it’s the unvarnished truth.’ Then she falls silent and