Will, стр. 15

‘Yvette!’ his mother blares from the kitchen. ‘Set the table! Lode’s friend is here.’

I hear some bumping and the sliding doors open.

‘This is my sister. Wilfried, our Yvette.’

She has her brother’s black hair and the same blue eyes. Her lips are painted red and she is wearing a dress that would be more appropriate in summer: cream with a pattern of black and purple stripes and puff sleeves that extend halfway down her upper arms. A black patent-leather belt low on her waist. She is thin, or rather, wiry—a swimmer’s body. Meet your future great-grandmother, son, in the glory of her heyday…

I hold out a hand. ‘Good evening, Yvette.’

She grins at me and says, ‘Oh? Where’s your present?’

‘What… Is there something I don’t know?’

‘Really, Lode!’ She takes a playful swing at her brother’s arm while he’s trying to open the bottle of wine. ‘Didn’t you tell him?’

Lode puts the bottle down and gives her a little poke in reply. ‘My mate’s only just stepped through the door and you’re at it already. What kind of manners is that?’ He tries to pull her closer to tickle her.

Fighting him off, she screams at me, ‘It’s his birthday, smarty! His twenty-first. A grown-up at last. At least, he thinks he is. Stop it. Let me go!’

I’ve broken out in a cold sweat. His birthday and I’m standing there empty-handed.

Brother and sister keep teasing each other, ignoring me. I watch them and don’t know what to do with myself.

Finally a thunderous curse rises from the armchair facing the curtains.

‘Can you two cut it out?’

‘Our dad,’ Lode whispers, raising a finger to his lips.

I step over to the armchair. ‘Good evening, Mr Metdepenningen…’

A man with cauliflower ears, a moustache over his cracked lips and very little hair on the top of his head accepts my hand and holds it tight. ‘Wils, I believe?’

‘Wilfried Wils. Good evening.’

‘Not the Wilses from the barber’s shop on Rotterdam Straat?’

‘Come on, Dad,’ Lode exclaims. ‘You’d have seen him before. That’s just here across the square.’

‘No, Mr Metdepenningen,’ I say, ‘not the barber’s.’

‘Thank God for that…’ the butcher growls. He looks a little reassured and releases my hand. ‘Good. We’re having beef olives. Yvette, will you put those plates on the table at long last?! Lode, give that guest of yours a glass of wine.’

I have to tell you, son, that at that moment I myself had little interest in the carnal love that dominates personal relationships. To me, it seemed like a contract you close, nothing else. I couldn’t yet picture myself lying in bed fiddling with someone else. I fiddled with myself shamelessly and that was enough. It never even occurred to me to fantasize about a woman obeying my every command while I was at it. And no, I didn’t need to think of a bloke’s body either to ejaculate while standing at the window of my stuffy little room. Because isn’t that the first thing you thought of while reading these lines? No, I thought about other things I have no desire to tell you about. And before you go off on another tangent and start thinking we were all cowed by the cross and suffering under rules and commandments, I have to call a halt to your imagination again. My parents were no knee-benders, especially not my father. He felt nothing but contempt for all those churchgoing pallbearers who slept with their hands over the sheets and saw the soutaned priest at the altar as their merciless guide to the zoology of lust. He was a freethinker, but kept it private because of a stubborn conviction that it was nobody’s business but his own. In retrospect he was a hunter, through and through. He could spend days only letting out the occasional grunt, but when the conversation turned to women he couldn’t hold his tongue. I can still hear him saying it, just following the train of his thought and with my mother sitting right there at the table: ‘The first thing you should do as a young fellow at a dance is look around calmly. Don’t go straight to the bar for a beer. But don’t drag the first girl you bump into out onto the dance floor either. Before you know it you’ll have to spend the whole evening with someone you have to be polite to but don’t really fancy. No, Wilfried, have a good look first, always have a good look around. Where are the opportunities? Who has good posture, because a woman who doesn’t sit nice and straight… Your Aunty Emma now, does she sit nice and straight? Where do you think those stomach problems come from? I’m not saying a word, don’t get me wrong. But posture is one thing. Another’s—’ This was where my mother interrupted him. ‘Jozef, is this necessary?’ My father held his breath and finally added: ‘The other thing is inclination. You can develop a sense for that. You can sniff it out.’

It’s a memory I enjoy. It was actually the only time I didn’t view him as a sinister accomplice to a conspiracy whose sole purpose was to turn my life into a prison. Do you feel trapped too? If you do, it’s a sign you’ve got a head on your shoulders.

Yvette studies me while a stack of beef olives in gravy gleam on a dish on the table. If we’re talking about the hunt, it’s me who’s her prey at that moment, something my father would have undoubtedly seen as an inversion of the proper order. An amused Lode has seen through his sister immediately. Their mother keeps dishing up the food and their father leads the discussion. As heavily built as he is, his conversational techniques turn out to be finely honed, as sharp as the knives he uses to bone beef in the back of his shop. The word ‘bookkeeper’ makes him mistrustful. Once that subject’s been dealt with, he tells us about a procession he