Slaves to Fortune. Tom Lanoye

To his astonishment, even rage, thoughts of his mother had been popping into his head since Mrs. Bo Xiang’s death. For the first time in how long? Her? The woman who had ordered him to address her as mummy, even when he was 16 and she well into her 40s.

      Mummy! Mamaa-tje! There wasn’t a language in the world as polluted by the diminutive as the Flemish variant of Dutch. Every other word had a -tje or a -ke tacked onto it to make it sound smaller and more precious. Every time you went into a post office: ‘How many envelopkes would sir like?’ A bank employee to his adult customers: ‘Have you got your kaartje or do you know the nummerke of your bank account by heart?’ Mutual degradation under the pretext of politeness. And always, always, with that persistent, asinine immaturity, even as they prattled away so fluently. This was how he remembered Mamaatje’s imperium, the little landke in which he’d grown up.

      But why was he longing for it from the bottom of his heart? Now, all of a sudden? A little steak with a little glass of wine. A little stroll around the garden. A little newspaper, a little cigarette, a little cup of coffee—all at a nice, easy, little pace. It all sounded so damned tempting, so painfully tempting. Fuck no. He didn’t want this. He’d never wanted this. If he had to choose between homesickness and cancer, he’d choose cancer. But he didn’t have a choice, he realized, shivering, reeling with seasickness in his chair.

      They were things you just got. Both of them.

      What would she look like today, his Mamaatje? Twenty-five years after he’d made his escape. How had the ravages of time abused her?