Will, стр. 88

hanging over our heads. Lode doesn’t need to tell me he’s still cooperating with his friends in the resistance. One glance at him is enough. He seems to have a constant smirk on his face, as if he could detonate a hidden bomb at any moment. It’s like he’s defying the whole world with that expression, more and more recklessly. But so far the world seems insufficiently interested. And I have my nightmares, my periods of swaggering confidence followed by panic attacks, my this and my that. What really does my head in is that the zazous seem completely indifferent. They really don’t give a shit. Music is all that counts. They want to dance and do as they please. Sitting there slumped on those seats like babies with their eyes half shut and their lips puckered, waiting for their girl’s maternal teat. No, I feel it. It’s over. I’m already too old. And nothing’s even started yet.

‘At least there’s hardly any Jerries here…’ Yvette laughs and her teeth gleam too white for words.

‘It’s true. Finally no Hunnish in our ears.’

‘Hun-what?’ Yvette laughs.

‘They’ve been here for years and you’ve never heard that? The Hun doesn’t speak German, he speaks Hunnish.’

It’s something my father says. He’s had enough. No decent food, having to queue much too long for coupons and not a decent summer coat or pair of new shoes to be found in the whole city. According to him the clothes left in his wardrobe aren’t fit to go out in.

We hear some rustling up the front—musicians taking position behind the curtain—and the buzz stops almost immediately. The curtain rises.

There’s Stan Brenders, bowing to the audience, together with some fifteen musicians, greeted by whistling and furious applause. Stan Brenders is God. He bows again and gives us a little wave. The musicians sit down. Stan turns to face them and it’s like the sky comes blaring down on top of us. His baton conjures up one ecstatic dance fiend after the other. Right from the first melody you see the women moving on their seats and the men clicking their fingers.

‘Go, Stan, go!’ a few shout after yet another number, when the applause dies down for a moment. Brenders looks over his shoulders and winks shyly.

‘What a nice man!’ Yvette sighs.

‘Boom, head over heels,’ Lode laughs and looks at me. In his eyes I don’t see any real happiness, only darkness.

Meanwhile the horns are all standing up and it’s as if we’re taking off with them. A lot of people have got up on their feet too to cheer them on. ‘Go! Go!’ The ushers are having trouble getting them to sit back down again. Some of the zazous are not so easily tamed. A tenor sax starts a high-speed solo while the other horns sit down again. His notes swerve around countless curves at a million miles an hour. When he is finally playing the refrain together with the rest, he too gives us a little nod while we clap until our hands are almost shredded. Lode is going wild. He whistles loudly with his fingers in his mouth and shouts at the top of his lungs, almost impossible to understand. Then the trombonist stands up while fanning ever longer notes out over us with his damper.

‘Drink?’ Lode asks, holding a hip flask up in front of my face.

I nod and take a slug. The jenever burns. Unable to keep her eyes off the stage, Yvette hasn’t noticed our little tête-à-tête.

After I’ve passed the flask back, she turns her head and tells me urgently that we have to keep our eyes on the drummer. The drummer, the drummer!

‘Jos,’ Lode explains, ‘a local lad.’

The rest of the band backs off while the drummer starts a solo. He looks out through his round specs and nods encouragingly and we all start tapping out the beat, louder and louder. People keep jumping up and the ushers are having an even harder time of it. Jos gives a roll on his snare drum, makes his cymbals sing, sends thunder into the hall with the pedal on his bass drum. Suddenly he stands up and starts dancing around his drum kit without losing the beat. People cheer. Again he looks at us and nods to the rhythm of the clapping. Then he abandons his drum kit altogether and starts playing on the boards of the stage, on the bannister leading down to the auditorium. We’re still clapping along, but softer so we can hear the drumsticks, now tapping his horn rims. He keeps it up, drumming his way deeper and deeper into the hall, following the armrests of the seats until he reaches a young woman, who jumps up in front of him. From the armrest his drumsticks go to her enormous belt. Now we’re all holding our breath and clapping along almost inaudibly. The tips of the drumsticks keep tapping out the beat in perfect time on the metal buckle, as if under it, in the young woman’s belly, a new accelerated time is about to be born while she proudly plants her fists on her waist and lets the drummer have his way.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ Lode pants, covering his eyes as if watching any longer will plunge him into even deeper trouble or drive him to more desperate deeds. Then the drumsticks leave the belt and Jos makes his way back over armrests, floor and bannister to the wooden stage and finally the drum kit, like a character in a film that’s being run backwards before our eyes. The rest of the band come together again for the finale, louder than ever, then it’s very still for the briefest of moments before everyone is on their feet clapping, whooping and whistling. The drummer looks at us a little sheepishly, as if he has already forgotten what kind of god he was just a minute ago. Stan Brenders, on the other hand, stays God, even if he too looks a little shy.

‘The