Will, стр. 86

‘Uh-huh,’ I say.

‘He hit her…’

I nod. Why did Yvette get a death notice when I didn’t?

They’re burying the old lady in St Andrew’s, her old parish. Late Gothic on the outside, baroque on the inside, a church for sinners with style, in sharp contrast to the down-and-outs gathered on the side entrance steps. Children, old people with trembling hands, a woman with a baby. I hurry past, running late. Yvette didn’t want to come. ‘I don’t want to see that mother-murderer’s face again!’ But I do. I want to see Meanbeard. I want him to see me, so I can read his face and judge where I stand.

The church is much too big for the modest turnout. I stand at the back, recognizing the landlord of the White Raven, flanked by two men who could be a couple of his regulars.

At most there are some twenty mourners, spread out over the pews. Not a single German is present, nor anyone from the Flemish SS. I can’t see any bosom friends like Omer either. A few old people and some of his sentimental drinking buddies, that’s all. Two wreaths near the coffin. I’m too far away to read who sent them. I slink a bit further to the right to get an angled view of the people at the front. Jenny is sitting next to Meanbeard, as if the funeral is suddenly doing double service as their wedding too, albeit in a minor key. Every time he rubs his eyes or lets his head hang, she routinely rests a gloved hand on his back, like someone calmly assisting a retching friend. She herself has paid attention to every last detail of her clothing, a bride in black. It’s a shame she couldn’t resist that crimson lipstick, but that’s Jenny for you. Meanbeard, still bending forward, lets out loud, echoing sobs in response to the priest’s whispered words. It sounds so grotesque it’s easy to imagine this grieving son, this newly minted orphan in his late forties, grinning like a fiend behind his turned-up collar. I wait until the time has come to pay your last respects by the coffin and join the end of the queue. We shuffle forward. It’s Jenny who sees me first. She squeezes Meanbeard’s arm. I make the sign of the cross next to the coffin, bow deeply and accept a holy card from the sexton. Before turning at one of the pillars to return to the back, I see the look on his face as he stares at me. Is that fury in his eyes or fear?

A few days later he mumbles ‘Christ almighty…’ when I appear at his front door with, tucked under my arm, various books in German that I borrowed from him for the entertainment of a certain Chaim Lizke. He scans the street in both directions before letting me in. It’s more pulling me in, hurried and embarrassed.

‘Who’s that, sweetness?’ Jenny calls, a little bored and clearly in the bedroom.

‘Were you already in bed? Sorry…’

Meanbeard looks at me and shakes his head.

‘Come up to my study with me.’ He calls out to Jenny that it’s nothing, just me.

We climb the stairs quietly. He closes the door carefully behind us, then snaps at me, ‘You’ve got some gall.’

I put the books on one of the side tables. ‘I know. I should have brought them back long ago.’

He looks at me in astonishment, his jaw literally dropping. ‘Who do you think you are? How did you become so bloody full of yourself?’

‘My innocence makes me weep…’

‘What?’

‘Mon innocence me ferait pleurer. La vie est la farce à mener…’

‘…par tous. Yes, boy, I know it too, you show-off. Are you really coming up with Rimbaud now? Not everything’s a farce. What gave you that idea? You’re not him, you’re no Rimbaud! You’re a fucking traitor or a fool who doesn’t know what kind of game he’s playing. Don’t you understand that? You should see your face! What kind of mask is that… What is it with you? How is it possible that I let myself be… Me, of all people, by you!’

He’s trying to talk as quietly as he can, but at the word ‘you’ his anger comes rushing out loud and clear.

‘Sweetheart?’ sounds immediately two doors along.

‘It’s nothing, Jenny. I just sneezed!’

With a quivering hand, he pours himself a liqueur and knocks it back straight away. He pours himself another. Nothing for me. I sigh and sit down in one of his reading chairs.

‘I have no idea what you’re bloody—’

‘No!’ Meanbeard stretches an arm out towards me. His eyes flame. He reminds me of a picture of the Grand Duke of Alba, the Iron Duke, Governor of the Netherlands, who burned the rebels here at the stake, an illustration in the bright colours that thrilled me as a schoolboy without my knowing why. The broken limbs of tortured bodies left out for the crows to pick, black silhouettes on gibbets, banners high in the sky, the duke’s horse lifting one of its front legs as if hesitating at the edge of an abyss its rider doesn’t even suspect, the feverish rings around Alba’s bulging eyes as he looks at the peasant scum who are so recklessly defying him with their raised pitchforks. ‘Crush this lunacy! Take them to the gallows!’

‘You seem to be enjoying this. Are you retarded or what?’

‘Not at all,’ I say, ‘but if you could tell me what—’

‘Come off it, you’re doing it again! You’re treating me like an imbecile. Stop the act! I know—does that make it clearer? I know about you. You’re the bastard, you’re the traitor! That silly bugger of a naive half-baked professor said so in so many words. Did you really think kneeing him in the balls would shut him up? I could tell something was fishy right away. We got it out of him before the day was over, Omer and me… Do you have any idea?…’

Meanbeard turned