‘It all came out one evening, at a party,’ Ronny goes on. ‘A party right here in our house, actually. They were our guests. First they sulked in a corner for some reason or other … ’
‘Well. She did.’
‘Then they had too much to drink as usual and suddenly it was “another coincidence” that we had a dark-blue Peugeot. It’s not even the same model! And over there, didn’t that chandelier seem familiar to them, and that shrub at the bottom of the garden and I don’t know what else.’
‘Well, okay, but the idea that we brought Lana into the world purely because they’d just had a baby. Tell me, Albert, who would ever think that way?’
‘Alphonse.’
‘Pardon me. Who would think that way? I was in my late twenties. Everyone around us was having their first baby then. I was four months gone before I realized she was pregnant too. But no, we were copying them. How full of yourself do you have to be to think something like that is even within the bounds of possibility?’
While speaking, Sieglinde and Ronny have stood up to perform an angular dance that for Ronny now ends with a punch to his thigh and in Sieglinde’s case is still ebbing away in one index finger, which taps the centre of her forehead like a woodpecker’s beak.
Alphonse settles into the backrest of the chair. When a confession starts as energetically as this, it usually lasts a while.
‘If it’d stopped there, well … But no, no, it gets even more absurd.’ Sieglinde is now bending down onto the coffee table like a she-ape, weight on her fists, buttocks in the air, nostrils wide, like her eyes, magnified by her glasses. ‘Did she say anything about her pussy?’
Alphonse has to give the question time to sink in. ‘It’s dead, I believe?’
‘She said a bit more about it than that, I’ll bet. Her story is that we killed their cat.’
‘Yes, and the reason why is even more interesting. We killed it because our own cat was run over and because they think we think they did it—we, incidentally, don’t ask ourselves who was responsible, we assume it was an accident—and that’s why we, eye for an eye … ’
‘Cat for a cat!’
‘ … killed their pet—get this—by impaling it with a dart! A dart from a blowpipe! We shot a poisoned dart at it!’
‘Because that’s what we’re like, Alphonse! That’s the kind of thing we get up to!’
‘Alphonse,’ says Ronny.
‘That’s what I said.’
For the bedroom ceilings he recommends Balanced Mood, from the Colores del Mundo collection. They agree that the pale bluish-green he slides out of the colour swatch will do perfectly.
On his way home Alphonse crosses wide fields on narrow roads. The low sun gilds the stalks of tall grain and an indefinable longing. No one else knows that in the mornings, still brittle and directionless after the embrace of sleep, he rarely listens to music because he finds the immediacy of it almost impossible to bear. Now he puts on the radio and when he looks up there’s an oncoming vehicle, making no attempt to slow down. He drives right up to the edge of a maize field and stops the car to listen.
Duke Ellington’s ‘Caravan’, in a version by Dizzy Gillespie. He knows every note. Camels trek through the desert, but the trumpet sets fountains playing. The water flows over his shoulders, down his back. That strange violin solo, too. When the track finishes, he turns off the radio.
He eats the remains of yesterday’s pasta. Does it seem peaceful or merely quiet without Cat? He hopes the yoga retreat has given her what she expected from it, even if he doesn’t quite know what that was.
She’s not answering her phone. He needs to return Amadou’s call. Why does he keep putting that off? His friend getting in touch again after all these years made him so happy he immediately invited him to come and stay for a short holiday, bringing his new girlfriend with him. In a large part of his memory, Amadou walks at his side. There’s no reason to avoid him now.
Or he could start up Skype and see his mother. She’s always there, in a full house, surrounded by people who need her advice or just want to be with her, some of them feeding on the fruits of her goodness.
He’s tired and can’t seem to shower away the fatigue. What he feels is getting harder and harder to name. He knows what it isn’t. It’s not anything that hurts. Not at all. But it’s some kind of waiting.
The bleep of the phone, the landline this time, cuts through the water in his ears. He turns off the tap and wraps himself in a bathrobe. His guess is Dieter.
‘Alphonse?’ It’s Sieglinde.
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘I just wanted to call you. Because we got rather carried away today and because we’re not proud of it. We’d also like to thank you for listening.’
‘That’s all right. Don’t cry.’
‘It’s out of our control, know what I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Sorry to disturb you. Have a good night.’
‘Sleep well.’
-
29
Next morning he finally gets hold of Cat. She seems cheerful.
‘You’re feeling good, then?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ she says, unhappy with the subject. ‘But I have to go now.’
‘Where to?’
‘Well, to yoga. Another four days.’
‘Have fun.’
‘Bye, Alphonse.’ She’s never come up with a shorter form of his name, which is something he appreciates. Apart from her parents, everyone calls her Cat. Not very long ago she had a malignant tumour. They have to assume it won’t come back.
‘Fonzy!’ Dieter calls out. He’s wearing a dark-blue bathrobe, clearing away the breakfast things. ‘Great that you also work on Saturdays,’ he says in English. Sometimes people do that, suddenly address him in English, even after he’s had conversations with them in Dutch and even though there are four languages he speaks more fluently.
Els, who let him in, has jogged out of the door, this time with Björn on the lead. In the garden, bent over their swimming board, wearing anoraks, the girls are sitting on the top rungs of their ladders writing something on a piece of paper or card. When they see him standing at the window they wave in the manner of ladies-in-waiting. In reply he imitates the pope driving past.
Dieter’s gaze flutters out past his shoulder, a nervous moth that, despite the call of the light, quickly returns to the semi-darkness. He mumbles that he’s going upstairs to get dressed, walks across the living room to the hall but stops when he hears Alphonse slide the door open. He’s a father, Dieter is, and he’s obliged to entertain some slight suspicion when an adult man, ultimately a stranger, wants to talk to his adolescent daughter and her friend without involving him, and without there being any clear reason for it. So he returns to keep watch, Dieter does, peering into the garden, which he’s increasingly been avoiding, touched as ever by the harmonious relationship between the girls, a thing no longer talked about between these walls for fear of damaging it.
The children’s faces become more undecided, more serious during their conversation with Alphonse. What is he asking them? Is it time to step in? Then there’s some nodding. The girls nod, Alphonse nods, and they all turn in his direction, smiling feebly, it seems to him.
‘Sit down for a moment,’ says Alphonse, shutting the door behind him. In the background Mila and Lana bend down over