She sprang out of bed, threw on her bathrobe, ran—skipped—through her ground-floor apartment, opened the door and peered into the hallway. There it lay, just behind the front door, a white rectangle that beckoned her the way a banknote beckons a homeless person. She trotted into the hall, the blood flowing thicker and faster through the veins in her throat, and her eyes latched onto the envelope. She was halfway through the hall when she got a massive slap in the face. Not from an open palm, but from the realization that the letter was not for her. She stood still for a moment. The letter was for Bienvenue, the Senegalese asylum seeker who lived upstairs. Of course! How could she be so stupid as to think otherwise? Because you just are stupid, a voice in her head answered.
She gingerly approached the letter, her legs wobbly and her eyes fixed on the still-illegible address. Then she noticed that the name above the address was short. Too short to be Bienvenue’s unpronounceable full name. Her heart leapt. And then she saw it clearly: ‘Ms. Saskia Maes’, in elegant feminine handwriting. Underneath: ‘Blaashoekstraat 27’. There should have been an ‘A’ after the number, because she lived in apartment A and Bienvenue in apartment B, but that was a technicality. Now more than ever it was just a detail, now there was proof that someone considered her worth writing to, and that within a few seconds she would know what they had to say. Above the address was something else that made her heart skip a beat: the logo of the insurance company in the city. It was the letter she had been expecting for days now.
The envelope tore open under her nervous fingers.
The letter was folded neatly into thirds, with only the address, the date and the salutation visible.
Dear Ms. Maes, it said. They called her ‘Ms.’, and ‘Dear’! A wave of pride flowed through her body. That pride evaporated when she read the rest of the letter.
Dear Ms. Maes,
Thank you for your interest in the position of secretarial staff member. We have studied your application thoroughly and I regret to tell you that your qualifications do not meet those necessary for this vacancy.
We will keep your résumé in our files for future reference. Should there be an opening more suited to your profile, you will be most welcome to submit a new application.
Yours sincerely,
Severine Baes
Director, Personnel and HR
Severine Baes, what an impressive name, Saskia thought, although she had no idea what HR meant. She folded the letter back into the envelope and shuffled to the apartment. Severine Baes’s last name might differ from hers by just one letter, but their lives were worlds apart. She could understand it, the rejection letter. They had studied her résumé and had come to the only logical conclusion: that she was not fit to participate in society. Her initial pride sank in her stomach like a hunk of congealed fat. She was stupid, homely and useless. And a weakling, for she was unable to hold back the tears. There was only one thing she could do: crawl back into bed and allow Zeppos, her three-month-old cocker spaniel, to lick her tears dry.
◆
There was no pâté. Magda De Gryse already saw as much. She was third in line at Herman’s Quality Meats, after old Mrs. Deknudt and the wife of that stinking-rich veterinarian Lietaer. Her relief at the refreshing coolness of the butcher shop was short-lived. While Mrs. Deknudt read out her order she had plenty of time to inspect Herman’s deli counter. After allowing her gaze to drift over the farmer’s brochettes and country steaks, she noticed a gap between the Beauvoorde pâté and the chopped liver. That gap was where the summer pâté—or what Herman rather ludicrously called ‘Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté’—should have been. But now there was a gap as empty as the skull of her dear Walter.
She sighed and had a good look at Herman, who by mistake had just wrapped up 500 grams of steak tartare instead of ground beef, and had to start again. When he reached over the counter for the container of tartare, his hair fell in greasy strands over his sweaty forehead. His hands trembled. His usually rosy cheeks were pale, while the swollen skin under his eyes was a gruesome shade of purple. He settled up with Mrs. Deknudt. Where was Claire, anyway? Off shopping for dresses in the city again?
‘Really, Herman,’ Deknudt said, ‘now you’ve given me back a twenty instead of a ten.’
‘Oh, sorry,’ he mumbled.
There was something the matter with him. He seemed … drunk.
‘Herman, there’s no pâté,’ Magda said as Mrs. Deknudt folded the ten-euro bill into her wallet and before Dr. Lietaer’s wife could order. She gave Magda a dirty look, but Magda ignored her. Madame Princess could just wait.
‘I haven’t had time, Magda. I’ll make a batch later today, if I get the chance.’ He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He rubbed his eyes, as though he were about to cry.
‘I hope so, Herman.’
He sighed.
‘They make quite a racket, don’t they, the windmills,’ he said. The three women looked at him sheepishly, Mrs. Deknudt because she was stone-deaf, that bimbo Lietaer because every spring she fried her brains on a tanning bed, and Magda because she had misunderstood Herman’s comment.
‘Your meat mill, you mean?’ she asked, biting her bottom lip to keep from asking in jest if he’d been tilting at windmills. He did not answer. He grunted and like a zombie took the Lietaer woman’s order. Of course only the most expensive cuts of meat were good enough—no country steak for her, it had to be sirloin.
Magda was so nonplussed by Herman’s wretched appearance that she ordered country steaks instead of the breaded Swiss patties Walter liked so much. On the way home she fantasized about what had worn Herman out so. It couldn’t be Claire’s lust. She smiled. Liquor, that must be it.
Her irritation about the lack of summer pâté made way for a blissful warmth. For the first time in ages, she had something to be cheerful about.
◆
Zeppos was the ideal antidepressant. When Saskia came sniffling back inside, Zeppos darted under her bathrobe to lick her feet. Giggling, she led him to the sofa, where he slobbered all over her calves and behind her knees. Tears of sorrow became tears of laughter. She even got a little aroused by it.
Now that she was in the shower, she could look on the bright side. Tomorrow she had an appointment with the social worker, and although she was nervous about her reaction to the job rejection, there was good news too: she was in somebody’s files! For the first time in her life, people thought she was worth keeping on file. Maybe the insurance company would offer her another job. A secretarial post was perhaps aiming too high, but she would be happy to deliver the mail or answer the phone. Moreover, she was quite the speed typist. Of course, she still made oodles of mistakes, and she could always brush up on her grammar. At any rate, being kept on file was a first step.
She turned off the faucet and got out of the shower, more refreshed than before, as though the water massaged not only her body, but her thoughts too. What’s to complain about? She had been given this beautiful apartment, even though instinctively she felt she did not deserve it.
She hastily finished her bathroom routine. All her life Saskia had been stuck in a whirling carousel of guilt, retribution and labor, worked ragged like a beast of burden during the day and scorned as a downright nuisance during her meager free time. Pleasure and relaxation were for namby-pambies. But she had escaped from that nest of vipers and tried, once in a while, to enjoy