Will, стр. 14

as ‘old tosh’, but that song does something to blokes like us. In that instant it makes us maudlin and raucous and we both laugh at the gusto with which the other is belting it out. At that moment there is already an irreparable breach between us, something men don’t talk about, something to do with resentment. Lode is still handsome, though you can already see signs of occasional bingeing. But that applies equally to me, like the bulk of our fellow officers. We’re still in what they call our bloom though. He’s working for immigration, I’m in vice. Behind his back they call Lode ‘the Bull’; my nickname is ‘the Velvet Monkey’. But that’s irrelevant. We play chess once a week because we’re brothers-in-law and we fight our battles out on the board. He and I are bound together and neither of us can take it any more. We’re like two Belgian shepherds chained permanently to a shed, with an owner who never takes them out for a walk. But we don’t howl at the moon; we play chess and have a beer. That’s enough. No, we pretend, we accept the game.

Almost thirty years later. Lode asks how things are at home and I shrug. I’m more interested in the bishop he’s slid forward to attack my queen together with the rook he positioned beforehand, something I can’t do anything about. I’ll have to give her up and that makes me particularly bad-tempered. This is still our weekly ritual and I am always too cowardly to think up an excuse to wriggle out of it.

‘How is she now? You never tell me anything.’

‘She spends all day lying on the bed blubbering.’

I take his bishop with my knight and he sighs while taking my queen with his rook, which—infuriatingly—will have to go unpunished.

‘Didn’t you see that?’ he asks.

‘Piss off. Of course I saw it. I just couldn’t do anything about it. Anyway, I’m not sure you realize this, but chess is a game in which the purpose is to checkmate the opponent’s king.’ My voice sounds too irritable of course, too childish. It’s not enough to have him humiliate me—I have to draw attention to it as well.

‘Will, your granddaughter’s missing. It’s making me feel sick too. I understand Yvette being a wreck. But you…’

‘I’m working on it, Lode. Don’t worry. I’m working on it.’

‘On what?’

‘She’s twenty-one. You know what she’s like. She’s always doing crazy stuff. Soon we’ll get a call to say she’s off somewhere or has taken some drugs or is with some bloke in the Ardennes. What the fuck do you want me to say?’

‘She’s one of a kind. But you still get on well with her.’

‘You do too, don’t you?’

Lode lights a cigarette and looks at me. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She’s crazy about old grandads like us. I’ve heard she’s been to see you a few times.’

‘That was to do with her course. I helped her a bit. Hey… what’s up with you all of a sudden?’

While writing this down, son, this conversation about your aunt from so many years ago, I hear that Armenian again, with his wistful song. Bohemians, Bohemians, we were young, we were mad.

And then I immediately see Lode humming along too, his hand elegantly teasing out the beat over the chessboard like an effeminate choirmaster’s while he thinks about how to twist the knife further with his rook or knight. He always plays defensively, waiting for me to launch a furious attack on his position. It’s not serious chess but, like I said, that’s not what it’s about between the two of us.

I raise a hand to order another round.

Not taking his eyes off the board, he says, ‘It’s on me. It’s my birthday after all.’

‘Oh, bugger,’ I mumble. ‘Completely forgot.’

He looks at me. His bright-blue eyes are sinking in an advancing forest of wrinkles. But now I no longer see cruel mockery in his gaze.

‘Do you remember?’ he asks.

It’s Wednesday, 19th February 1941.

Lode says, ‘Ah, you made it! What a downpour. Come in, quick!’ while opening the door wide. He leads me up the stairs to the family home above his parents’ butcher’s shop on De Coninck Plein. Yesterday he told me there was a party at his place and asked if I felt like coming. We’ve known each other for about six months now, with our paths crossing almost every day at the station and going for a beer together now and then, but the invitation still came as a surprise. We both still live with our parents, but inviting him to mine doesn’t bear thinking about. My father’s been withdrawn for quite some time because he’s lost his job, and Mum, with her wig and that possessive anxiousness of hers… I wouldn’t inflict it on anyone. That was why I wavered for a moment before accepting the invitation, worried it might oblige me to invite him round to ours as well sometime. But meat has grown scarce and a party at a butcher’s is not a thing to turn down, come what may.

His mother is at the top of the stairs. She’s the kind of woman who immediately makes you feel at ease, motherhood personified with fleshy arms and a laugh that is always about to come bubbling up, a laugh that will set her flesh to quivering.

She says, ‘Ooh, is it raining again? Get that coat off.’

I give her my mac and quickly run my fingers through my sopping-wet hair. The living room is dark, but pleasant. Outside it’s still light, but they’ve already drawn the heavy curtains. In the left-hand corner an armchair is turned to face the windows. Cigar smoke curls up above it and I hear the rustling of a newspaper. To my right, sliding doors with yellow light shining through the matt bubble glass divide the room in two. From the adjoining kitchen come the very promising smells of a feast in the making.

‘We’ve got wine,’ Lode winks,