‘Sieglinde and Ronny didn’t kill the cat.’ Alphonse stays on his feet as he talks.
‘I thought not.’ Dieter doesn’t look up. ‘How did it happen?’
‘It was a friend of the girls. A local boy who’s never dared come round since.’
‘I know the one. I’ve never seen him here blowing darts.’
‘It was an accident. The boy shouldn’t be punished for it. And neither should your daughter or her friend.’
Dieter nods. And nods again.
After that the glue that seemed to fill the room during their conversation flows out. The silence is driven away by metallic noises: the extending legs of his own ladder, his screwdriver opening a lid. Upstairs, Dieter takes a bath.
For most of the day the three family members leave him to paint in peace. They steal past respectfully, or express their approval when he turns to look at them. The work progresses quickly. Wall after wall begins to shine.
Just before midday he hears Els and Dieter’s voices intoning through the ceiling, Els getting agitated about something, then coming round. When they eat lunch at the kitchen table, they want him to sit with them. Once he’s there, no one can think what to talk about. They put local cheeses on his plate, peeled fruit, straight from the tree, he simply must taste it. Björn too awaits his reaction.
As he’s clearing up in the evening, they both grow restless.
‘A beautiful job,’ Els tells him. ‘And so quick.’
‘To think you’ve been here for barely two days,’ says Dieter.
Alphonse taps on the window. Mila and Lana wave back. Then he shakes Els and Dieter’s hands.
‘I’m not far away,’ he says. ‘On Monday I start next door.’
They nod.
‘There’s more work here too.’ Panic in their voices.
‘The rooms upstairs could do with repainting this year.’
‘You know where to find me.’
They walk with him along the hallway, catching his eye at every opportunity.
When he reaches the van and turns back toward them, Björn rushes at him full tilt. He picks up the floundering dog and carries him to the front door, where he lays him in Els’s arms. For one second she looks at Alphonse as if he’s just delivered their baby, then they laugh it off.
On the village square in Watou he orders a coffee on the empty terrace of a full bar. He has to admit the barman is right: it’s summer at last and the weather seems odd. There are motorcyclists passing through, and two youngsters on slender horses. At the church, overlooking the square, a statue of Jesus stands with arms spread. In the middle of the square is a soldier, accompanied by a lion.
He finds himself in a strange, beautiful life. Does he demand too little? Does he receive too much?
After settling up, on his way to the van, he sees the front of the statue. The soldier is holding a revolver to his chest, barrel pointed away. The nearby figure of Christ, head bowed, now seems frozen in the act of raising his hands.
Some things continue to amaze him here. Like having to drive twenty minutes for a shawarma.
It’s a new place, with a sign outside made of glittering sequins so that the letters Pita Merci move in the wind and reflect the weak evening sunlight. Inside it’s clean and empty. Linoleum. With great precision the young man at the till is arranging a roll of tinfoil, some knives, and a large salt cellar. Next he concentrates on laying all the plastic forks in the holder the same way round, teeth toward him. His face is strikingly flawless.
‘Gardesh,’ he says happily when he sees Alphonse come in.
They don’t know each other. It’s a long time since anyone called him that and he likes it.
‘Nice place.’
‘Thanks. Expensive, though. Work, work, work.’
‘No doubt. I’d like a large shawarma with all the veggies and samurai sauce, please.’
The young man laughs. ‘Spicy then. Always.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You guys always want spicy sauces. And lots of chicken.’
Although Alphonse has now opted for the other rotating pillar of meat, it’s true that he eats a lot of chicken. Like almost everyone he knows. And it’s true that he has a preference for spicy sauces. He doesn’t want to feel as if he’s been caught out in some way. ‘I thought my eating habits were my own. A personal thing.’
‘Well they’re not,’ says the man and then—suddenly roguish, suddenly even younger—‘With every shawarma: a free show!’
He puts the pita bread in the oven and leans down over his smartphone, which he’s connected to a speaker. After a false start he finds the right track. There are swelling tones that then ebb away, like searchlights across a dark expanse. He performs stretching exercises of some kind with his fingers on the counter between him and Alphonse, arms extended, his head of thick, slicked-back hair slightly bowed. He fixes his customer with the gaze of a falcon. Alphonse wonders whether anything is expected of him. Then an electronic beat bursts forth, intertwined with a regularly repeated, orientally inspired motif. He walks over to a pillar of meat. Alphonse can’t really see how he cuts slices from it, but time and again he swaps the two knives he’s wielding, throwing them briskly behind his back, above his head. With a graceful bow he then whisks the bread out of the oven and, juggling with salad servers, fills it with tomato, onion, cucumber, and grated carrot. At one point the salt cellar, which he’s not using, describes ellipses through the air. A tub of spices brings up the rear, leaving a red cloud with every twist. He keeps everything in motion, including the salad servers, not just with his hands but with taps from his elbows, shoulders, and left hip. When the salt cellar lands upright on his head, he moves it left and right like an Indian dancer while shaking red spices into the pita. Alphonse applauds. As two knives and a small cleaver are launched into the air he takes a step back. The way the young man transfers the meat—still sizzling a little on the hotplate beneath the rotating pillars—into the bread while knife-throwing remains a mystery. Impossible to miss, though, is the moment when he stiffens and the knives and cleaver clatter to the ground around him. With trembling lips and a heavily bleeding ring-finger stump he turns and looks at Alphonse.
Alphonse yanks a dozen napkins out of the holder and the shawarma man presses them to the wound. ‘Where’s the finger?’ he asks.
They both simultaneously twist round to check the hotplate and when they can’t see it there it comes almost as a relief to Alphonse—although relief of a kind that doesn’t preclude goosebumps—to spot the body part under his shoe. He narrowly manages to prevent himself from switching his weight to that foot and lifts his leg as if stepping away from a landmine. The extreme helplessness of a severed extremity, the unreality of it. He picks it up off the floor with a paper napkin. It’s the third time he’s witnessed this. The other two involved fingers as well. He recalls an accident with a power saw at a building firm he worked for. That finger stood upright on the ground, as if someone on the floor below was pointing up through the ceiling. Longer ago there was a fingertip belonging to Aline, his sister, who’d been helping in the kitchen with a knife far too big for her.
The dull thud of the fainting man drives out those memories. He’s lying in a strange, crooked position on the spattered tiles. All that’s moving now is the blood pouring out of the wound. With one hand Alphonse lifts two heavy feet onto an upturned plastic bowl, then goes in search of a freezer. Most of the shelves are frozen shut. The first one that he manages to open, after some wrenching and tugging, is filled with the most detailed ice sculptures, figures the size of Playmobil characters, a Viking, a king, an oriental warrior, all with the same face. It must be the unusual face of the proprietor, the