Will, стр. 17
I ask her how her stomach’s holding up. She touches her belly and looks at me in surprise. My father feigns ignorance.
‘Darling, I have a cast-iron stomach! You wouldn’t believe all the things I have to make for my people and I always eat it up bravely myself too.’
‘It’s getting late,’ Father says.
Aunty Emma turns to my mother. ‘I haven’t even had time to tell you why I’m here.’
‘Come on,’ Mother says with sparkling eyes, ‘quickly.’
Aunty Emma takes a sip of her liqueur, which adds gravity to her voice. ‘With all the bad luck I’ve had in life, I think it’s only appropriate to let my family know when things are going well for once.’
‘You’ve won the lottery,’ my father jokes eagerly, his curiosity aroused now too.
‘Much better than that…’ announces Aunty Emma. ‘I have a new beau.’
‘No!’ Mother exclaims in disbelief.
‘And not just anyone. He’s called Gregor and he’s an officer in the SS.’
‘Do I hear Kanonen?’ I whisper. Nobody pays any attention.
‘Emmy…’ my mother says quietly, ‘shouldn’t you be careful with that? Next thing you’ll lose your job.’
People say that men think about sex every however-many minutes. It’s possible. Presumably you’d agree. You’re a growing boy and a female glancing in your direction is probably enough to set you off. Sometimes it feels like we’re trying to convince ourselves that we still have a raging beast inside of us, a beast that wants to mate, but maybe that’s only camouflaging a deep despair. There are other drives, after all, at least as strong or gradually growing stronger, and I don’t know how thoroughly they’ve been investigated. The longing for normality, for instance. When you live through a war, everything changes; the city puts on a new mask. It’s the shock of the new. When someone’s been having it off and is about to become a father or mother, everyone warns them: watch out, everything’s going to be different from now on. Having kids is the most normal thing in the world until you’ve got them and find yourself looking at a creature in a cradle and everyone expects you to change everything to accommodate it. Everyone acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world, but it doesn’t feel like it. Everyone gathered round the cradle bleats that you should be happy to have a healthy child and that’s all there is to it. When a city is occupied by new masters, new customs, you get the same thing. After the shock, most people can’t wait to act like it’s normal. Life goes on, you have to adjust, as Lode’s father told me. Just keep doing what you’re doing and the rest will work itself out. The flags in the city, all those uniforms and the bars full of soldiers. All normal. The craving for the ordinary is so strong you can almost smell it and then human adaptability comes into play. In the cinemas you don’t see Hollywood movies any more, but that doesn’t matter, because the German films are just as enjoyable. They have laughter, men chasing women and getting romantic, murders that urgently need solving, and now and then the beautiful Zarah Leander sings a song that has all the women reaching for their hankies. I’ve always loved the cinema. I’m sitting in the Scala in Anneessens Straat. The film is being introduced by a fellow from the People’s Defence, an organization that counts Meanbeard as one of its members. His speech is moronic. He talks to us as if we’re little brats who don’t know a thing. We have to face reality. The Israelites are poison. Come off it, everyone’s poison, is what I think at that moment. How can this fellow with his grand gestures and swollen voice not see that? What’s poisonous is the craving for normality, the hypocrisy it brings and everyone’s slave morality. But this film has come with an express recommendation from Meanbeard so I stay put. It’s a period drama with wigs and beautiful expensive sets. A bigwig with a pencil moustache and a beer gut gets crowned duke. But he needs money, a lot of money, to lead the lifestyle that goes with being a bigwig and a duke. He gets that money from an Israelite with cupboards full of gold and jewels. The Israelite shaves off his beard and ringlets and puts on a wig so they’ll let him into the city where they actually despise Israelites. I find the charming fiendishness of the actor who plays the Israelite amusing. He becomes the bigwig’s adviser, then takes over and bleeds the city dry with extra duties and taxes. He has his adversaries tortured and hung, and blackmails and rapes women who refuse to bend to his desires, but the people rise up against him. In the end he’s defeated, the bigwig has a heart attack and the liberated people declare that everyone must take this as a warning. Curtains. Applause and a little bit of booing. Jews out! Everyone off home, acting normal.
‘And? How was the film?’
Meanbeard accepts the copy of Rimbaud’s poems I borrowed from him and urges me to sit down. Gaspar the parrot is not in a good mood. I can hear him screeching all the way upstairs.
‘He’s got colic,’ says Meanbeard.
‘I enjoyed the film,’ I say.
‘Big audience? How did they react?’
‘There was some shouting.’
‘I know you have an inner self who is keen to match deeds to words. Shouting is not enough, I agree. But what matters is planting seeds that will soon grow to maturity. Have I made myself clear?’
I nod out of habit.
‘What did you think of our friend Rimbaud?’
‘Masterful.’ That wasn’t a lie. You have to read that sometime, son, if only