Will, стр. 72

hat that’s almost covering his sulking face. Look at this and look at that. Keep looking long enough and you’ll see a Breughel in contemporary colours with both you and the painter on the outside. Because looking stays looking and in the end it dispels absolutely nothing. I have to think of my doomed granddaughter, Hilde. See us walking together. We stroll down the Meir. Sixteen or thereabouts, she’s hooked her arm through mine. The twentieth century has started on its last ten years. We’re experiencing the end of history, or so we read in no less than two of our local newspapers, which evidently believe they are announcing something special that has wafted over to us from that eternal foreign elsewhere. Everything is happening in the present, no longer in the past, and from now on nobody will be burdened by the deadweight of yesteryear. Complete bullshit.

‘This whole pleasure centre is designed to squeeze money out of you, Bompa.’

‘Oh, my God. And here I was, just about to treat you to some new clothes.’

‘Is there something wrong with these?’

She lets go of my arm and turns on the spot. She’s wearing one of my old coats, which she nagged me into handing over. Around her neck she has a long, rainbow-coloured scarf some friend of hers knitted for her. Her feet are in army boots she has decorated with all kinds of symbols in white paint. She is wearing tights with skulls on them. Her lipstick is black and so is her nail varnish. Her hair is sticking straight up. She has countless rings in both ears and one through her nose.

‘To be honest, you look a fright,’ I laugh.

‘Aren’t you ashamed to walk down the street with me?’

‘Terribly.’

Our arms link up again. How is it possible, I think in that instant, how is it possible that I get to call this glorious degenerate my granddaughter? She has something to say about everything.

‘That family man is dressed like a twelve-year-old. The other one hasn’t had any for ages. You see that straight away, Bompa. Look at those kids! Complete retards! And there! Did you see how those ladies hugged their handbags a little bit tighter when that cool black dude went past? Shit, I’ve run out of smokes and money too. And I’ve got a runny nose. Can we go to Groen Plaats? Some friends of mine are hanging out there.’

‘You don’t mind being seen with this old fogey?’

She goes quiet for a moment. She seems to be taking my question far too seriously and finally smiles as if only she knows my secret and will therefore defy with great contempt any mocking glances she might reap because of the love she feels for her grandfather. It is hard for me to conceal my pride. I’m glad she just babbles on as if nothing has happened.

‘This crowd is driving me crazy. If you think about how tourists are always funnelled through this nuthouse before they let them loose on the rest of the city, it tells you everything you need to know. It’s so they can squeeze all the money out of them right at the start. And it’s no coincidence either that there’s a monstrous tower at the end with a bank’s logo on it. People are sheep…’

‘Does everyone your age think like that?’

‘Most of them are losers, so no, not really.’

‘I hope you don’t inflict talk like this on your grandmother.’

‘No,’ she says, squeezing my arm, ‘only you. You understand.’

Once again pride makes my eyes swim. I clear my throat, I cough, I swallow my tears.

‘I’d like to go to Berlin.’

‘What do you want to go there for?’ I croak.

‘At least there’s some cool people there. I’ve already saved the money but they’re giving me a hard time about it at home.’

‘You’re only sixteen.’

‘If you could just talk to them…’

‘I’m not butting into that.’

‘I’m your godchild!’

‘That’s why. I don’t want you ending up in some Berlin gutter surrounded by lowlifes and ruffians.’

‘Now you’re teasing me.’

‘Yes,’ I lie, against all my inclinations. Because there’s a chance she’ll talk me round so that I end up trying to convince her parents to let her go. And that’s something I don’t want either. I want to protect her.

*

‘Who do you want to protect, Mr Wils?’

Nicole has a firm grip on my elbow. Suddenly I’m shuffling through the city with her, not my granddaughter. Suddenly I’ve been dumped back in the present and I don’t know how it’s happened. Nicole’s talking about clothes I need to buy.

‘I don’t want to protect anyone. I was talking to myself.’

‘Sometimes I think you just don’t know any more if you’re talking to me or it’s all just in your head.’

‘I’ve lost my cigar…’

‘If that’s all you’ve lost, you’re doing all right. You haven’t had any cigars in the house for months now. I gave them all away. Don’t you remember?’

‘Of course I do,’ I say as decisively as I can, ‘of course… It’s a private expression of mine, that’s all.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Nicole sighs.

‘Me too…’ What else is a fellow to say? Grab a bike, then maybe you’ll keep up? Nobody laughs at those feeble jokes any more, especially not Nicole.

She leads me through streets filled with mothers and fathers who are convinced that the spring air is good for their offspring even though it’s still much too cold. Some families have already fulfilled their duty and are standing irritably at tram stops as if the world has disenchanted them yet again, surrounded by big plastic bags like sandbags trying to form a dam to hold back the melancholy nobody dares mention. My mother, she with the invariably crooked wig on her head, thought of the search for new clothes as something beautiful. I don’t think she could have imagined this world, a time to come in which commercialism, whipped up by so much advertising, would turn us all into cheerful babbling brats reaching out with sticky hands to grab something that’s