Will, стр. 79

‘Get used to it,’ Gaston shouts back.

It’s a nice day and she wants to go for a ride. Her mother will lend me her bicycle.

‘Where shall we go?’ she asks.

The things she says, the way she looks at me—they all raise the suspicion that I’m still in limbo as far as her heart is concerned. That feeling makes me shrink, just as I am now, on her mother’s rickety bike, a head smaller than her too. We turn into Van Maerlant Straat, past the house where Chaim Lizke is still hidden, which suddenly makes me long to work on my poems, my ‘Confessions of a Comedian’, which only come to me there, at the table where the Jew reads his books, and don’t grow until it’s my turn to take him his supplies again. The moment that thought occurs, the poems start swirling around my head. But Yvette is keeping such a close eye on me I can’t afford to get carried away. I have to be with her now, nowhere else. We turn left, cross Italië Lei and ride a good distance along Paarden Markt. She follows me without a word, without asking where we’re going. Close to the red-light  district, I turn right and we cross Anker Rui. There are the boats bobbing on the greenish-black water of Willem Dock, where the seagulls screech louder than anywhere else in the city. We clatter over the lock bridge.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Away from the city,’ I say and it sounds like ‘away from the dirt and filth’.

We ride past sailors’ bars where swaying, hang-head drunks are already leaning on the front walls for support, even though it’s still morning. The fishmongers have put their wares out in wooden trays, but there are hardly any sober people around at all. The city hasn’t woken up yet.

After London Bridge, where the larger boats are moored, we see the beckoning green of the riverbank, which we follow north.

‘Ha,’ she laughs. ‘Is that where we’re going? It’s not the season for it yet.’

Although it has already got significantly warmer, summer is still far away. And that’s why I want to go to North Castle with its woods, beach and swimming ponds. There won’t be a soul there, that’s what I’m guessing. I want to be alone with her.

It’s quiet.

She stares at the water licking at the abandoned beach. On the poplar-lined opposite bank, not too far away, three fishermen are sitting on their baskets. I take her by the hand and lead her to the bushes and trees.

‘What are you up to?’

The look in her eyes suggests she already knows the answer to that question and is now curious about how I intend to go about it. It’s a test, that’s what she’s telling me: do this properly and we have a future; fail and it’s over for good.

I spread my raincoat out on an out-of-the-way patch of lawn behind some thick bushes. She sits down elegantly, as if at a picnic with sandwiches and tea, surrounded by gloved butlers.

‘Do you have a cigarette for me?’

I ignore her question and kiss her on the throat. I sense her smile. The tip of my tongue traces a path from her collarbone to the back of her ear. The smile grows wider. I run my hands over her breasts until my thumbs find her nipples through her bra and the cream-coloured fabric of her blouse. I undo two buttons. At the third, her hand seizes my left wrist. My other hand shoots up to her throat and I force her backwards, to the ground. She lets go of my wrist. Her blouse is now open. I slide up her satin camisole while making sure she doesn’t slip away. She averts her eyes. When I lick her neck again while holding her down, she can’t repress a slight groan. I work her tube skirt up to reveal her suspenders. I nip one of her thighs. And then I bite her everywhere I feel her flesh. That surprises her, but I push her head back down. ‘Beast…’ she says, but it sounds like a question. And that question only provokes me. I answer with, ‘No, it’s me.’ Me, the bastard, just me. And I push her skirt up until it’s under her bum and bite and lick some more. ‘I want…’ she whispers a few times in a row, ‘I want…’ Whereupon I answer that it’s not up to her to want anything, that she should keep quiet. And miraculously she doesn’t smile. I raise her buttocks and pull her lacy knickers down past her stockings. She claps both hands over her crotch. I grab her wrists, push her hands to  the ground, stare at her bush and keep staring. ‘What are you doing?’ she giggles, suddenly nervous. ‘I’m going to eat you up whole,’ I say, looking her straight in the eyes. She nods very briefly, that’s all.

‘You filthy swine. Leave that girl alone!’

I turn. A fisherman with a red face and a drooping moustache is staring at me in total fury.

‘Shove off,’ I say calmly, ‘shove off right this minute or you’ll be fish feed.’

‘Listen to the gob on it.’

I stand up. ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m not joking. Go home. Your mama’s got to fry those fish.’

The fisherman looks past my shoulder at Yvette, nods meekly and goes back to the path to the river. I’m still standing with my back to her when she finally whispers, ‘Come here.’

‘There’s something you have to do first,’ I say.

I push down my zip. She half rises.

For the first time I feel no hesitation. For the first time I feel greedy. I push my underpants down and am now standing just in front of her. She looks.

‘Open your mouth,’ I say.

Our love-making lasts until dusk. Now and then a voice comes closer, then moves on again. We pay them almost no attention. I bite her. She rakes me with her nails.