A Father's Affair, page 6
‘Please enter my humble abode,’ Robbert says when we get to an open door off the first landing. The house smells of stale beer and cigar smoke, and is in other ways reminiscent of a student apartment. In the living room is a colossal couch, its brown corduroy upholstery covered in stains. Across from the couch, an equally colossal TV, and an oak club chair with ears. Empty beer bottles have been tossed everywhere. As have old newspapers, magazines, unopened mail, a TV guide from a young, swinging broadcasting company. In the bookcase are a few volumes commemorating a lapsed law study, a six-year-old Snoecks agenda, two shelves full of comic books, and a hardback edition of The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch. The only decoration on the wall is a framed cover from Privé magazine, with a blurred photo of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and a flaxen-haired girl. ‘REVEALING! The Prince’s Secret Love. Will this blonde become our queen?’
I’m just about to say something about time standing still, but Robbert beats me to it. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he says. ‘The eternal student! Well, that’s right. I’m studying the senselessness of life. And let me assure you, it’s a damned fascinating subject. Between classes I amuse myself with a little consultancy, which occasionally generates a bit of hard cash – what more could a fellow want? Well, all right, some sweet nookie, but even in that my needs are met on occasion. And besides, you know better than anyone the problems that can bring with it. I mean the more intensive dealings with those of the feminine persuasion – how long ago did you two split up? Come on,’ he says, before I have a chance to respond to his question. (Split up? Could it be that he really doesn’t know . . . ?) He turns and walks back out onto the landing. There I see a second door which opens into a room that’s been converted into a prim and proper office. Glass table, glass desktop, a computer, parquet floor, an abstract painting on the wall, black leather chairs with chrome legs.
‘Who lets you consult on them, for God’s sake?’ I ask.
‘Not so snippy, please,’ he grins. ‘Retailers. One-man operations. Foreign trading companies with names like Asia Trading International and Kabul Trans. A motley crew that I guide through the jungle of Dutch legislation and regulations. Just far enough to keep them happy, not far enough to let them get along without me.’
We return to the living room with the stained couch. ‘What’ll it be?’ he asks. ‘Whisky, vodka or beer?’
‘Whisky.’
‘A Glenfiddich for an old friend with a broken heart. In the afternoon I myself stick to the national addiction of our Russian friends. Cheers.’
We drink. I search for the right words to begin my interrogation, but once again he’s too quick for me.
‘So come on, out with it, what’s bothering you? What are these memories that keep you from your well-deserved sleep?’
‘Recently, I’ve been given reason,’ I begin circuitously, ‘to believe that I, during the years I was with Monika, after a manner of speaking, was not the only man in her life.’
‘Ho, ha, as if I hadn’t guessed!’ Robbert crows. ‘Did you find a letter she wrote but never, for reasons no longer to be uncovered, got around to posting? Are you being bothered by an anonymous caller who summons you from bed in the middle of the night and pants in your ear about what a sweet fuck Monika was, and how much he misses her? Ha ha ha!’
His pleasure at his own eloquence overwhelms him, and he pours himself another vodka as a reward. ‘How about you? Drink up, by all means. No better remedy for a broken heart than deep alcohol narcosis.’
‘What I want to know,’ I say, ‘is: did she ever speak to you about something like that? Did she ever mention anything along those lines?’
‘Um, um . . .’ He stares straight ahead, deep in thought. ‘What did we talk about in those days? Most of the time we fought, I remember that. She was always spouting that left-wing, feminist crap. As far as that goes, I was pleased enough to lose her to you, I don’t mind telling you that. My masculine pride was dealt something of a blow, but then you must understand that now better than you did then, ha ha ha.’ He’s looking straight at me, the grin on his face the same as the one he met me with at the door – a grin that awakens boundless aggression in me. It’s the same grin, I realize now, he was wearing in that photo with Monika. What reason did he have then, at our party, in our house, to grin like that?
‘Did you ever go to bed with her back then . . . ?’
‘Back when she was fucking you? Of course, my good man. You were already fucking her when she was still with me, or at least when I thought she was still with me. How could you have forgotten?’
I should have counted on him bringing that up, but still . . . I suddenly feel very small, as if I’ve been caught red-handed.
‘I regret that,’ I say weakly. ‘That it had to happen that way.’ But I don’t mean it, and he knows it, and he knows I know he knows. He tops up my glass again and lets a long silence settle in. On the floor above our heads, someone crosses the room with heavy tread.
‘I’m going to tell you something,’ he says then, ‘that you won’t like.’ His voice sounds different. There’s pent-up rage in it. But also a little quiet triumph. Vindictiveness. I can feel the Glenfiddich burning in my stomach.
‘Do you remember that time I came to your party? How long was that after Monika and I split up? At least a year and a half, maybe two. She was a few months pregnant – I remember that, because she wasn’t drinking any more. But still, strangely enough, that evening, there it was again, that animal attraction between male and female, one might say the oldest emotion on earth.’
Once again he looks straight at me. A terse, nasty little smile is playing around his lips. ‘I can’t even explain to you,’ he goes on, ‘how I noticed, but there it was. Something in her look. Something in the way she touched me. It had been at least a year since she’d touched me of her own free will. As far as that goes, though, I can reassure you: once she’d worked up the courage to tell me she was fucking someone else, there was no more intimacy between us. No matter how I tried, no matter what sensible arguments I brought to bear – I reckoned I at least had the right to a decent farewell hump, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I blamed you for that for ages.’
He empties his glass, fills it again. And then suddenly that grin is back on his face. ‘That evening she walked me to where the night bus stopped. Did you know that?’
I didn’t know that.
‘We walked down the Ceintuurbaan. She let me put my arm around her. I was drunk, of course. And I was as horny as a . . . as a . . . That’s what she said, too. “You’re drunk,” she said. “And you’re horny.” I swear, she started in about it herself. I said, “Yes, I want to fuck you. Really hard and real long.” I hadn’t had a fuck in months, I was in a bad way. She said, “That’s impossible.” I said, “That’s possible.” “That’s impossible,” she said. “But you know what might be possible . . .” And she pushed me into a doorway. It was next to a shoe shop, I remember that. A dark corner between the shop entrance and a door with bells for the flats up above. She jerked me off right there. I wanted her to blow me, but she wouldn’t. Didn’t matter. I don’t think I’ve ever come as fast as I did in that doorway. A pity, actually. That it was over so soon. Does that answer your question?’
Again, that grin.
Later on, in the bar with Dees, I slam my fist down on the table in pure frustration. Causing a glass of beer to fall over. Causing the beer to run off the table. Causing a gigantic wet spot on my crotch. Causing me to become more furious than I already was.
‘The son of a bitch! That arrogant arsehole! You should have seen him sitting there. When he’s finally finished revealing nothing at all, he lights up a cigar. “How is that son of yours – God, what’s his name again?” he asked me. The miserable bastard. He just abused the situation, that’s all. Monika was completely unstable back then. Pregnant women are all like that. What a filthy pig!’
But Dees doesn’t say a thing. Only when I’ve finished ranting, and when new beers are on the table, does he say, ‘At least now you know he isn’t Bo’s father. Reason enough for a certain relief, I should say. And even if what he says is true, I reckon things like that do happen. Which of us has never done things we’d rather not know about ourselves? Would you like to confess your most venal sins before a jury of all the women you’ve ever been to bed with?’
‘But I didn’t ask to have Monika’s most venal sins spouted all over me by some frustrated, cigar-smoking, vodka-guzzling fake consultant, did I?’
‘Well, yes, you did.’
‘I did?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yeah, maybe I did.’
‘So how do you two handle things with that child?’ Robbert had asked afterwards.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Well, if I understand you correctly, you two have broken up. Do you raise the kid, or does Monika?’
So he really didn’t know.
‘I do,’ I said.
‘And what about Monika?’ he asked.
I stood up, put on my coat and left.
‘To tell you the truth,’ Dees goes on, ‘I believe fuck-all of that story of his about being walked to the bus stop, or that jerking off. Sounds too much to me like the ultimate frustrated juvenile fantasy.’
I’m so glad Dees is my friend.
14
Death heralded its arrival the same way new life does: with nausea. On a chilly April morning (the magpies were working on their nest again) I was engrossed in the roles of alpha- and beta-adrenergic receptors in liver cells when Monika suddenly came into the room. She looked pale, and her lips felt cold when she kissed me.
‘I don’t feel well,’ she said. ‘Queasy. Headache. I’m going to bed right away.’
I made a pot of linden tea, but when I brought it in to her she was already fast asleep. I finished my correction work and Monika slept. I took Bo to the house of a friend he played with twice a week, and Monika slept. I picked him up again, and Monika slept. Early in the evening she finally woke up. She felt even worse than she had that morning. I made a fresh pot of tea and she drank two cups. Then she wobbled to the toilet, where she stayed for at least twenty minutes.
‘I need to throw up, but I can’t,’ she said when she reappeared at last. Her face was ashen. She had dark rings under her eyes, and her usually buoyant hair hung in limp strands.
‘You’ve got the ’flu,’ I said.
‘Yeah, and a whopper at that.’
‘Mama has the ’flu,’ Bo said.
‘Fever?’ I asked.
‘I think so.’
I laid my hand on her neck, and felt her forehead, but she seemed cold rather than hot. A few minutes later the thermometer read 40.2. Monika shivered. I put another blanket over her.
‘Mama has the ’flu,’ Bo said. ‘Mama needs to sleep.’
‘That’s right, Mama needs to sleep.’
I took him to the living room, tucked him up on the sofa with a pillow and the new Bert and Ernie duvet that Monika’s parents had given him when he turned three.
‘Read a book?’
‘Yeah, let’s read a book.’
‘In a remote, narrow mountain valley,’ I read aloud, ‘somewhere far in the north of Scotland, sat Leta, a beautiful golden eagle, on her huge nest of branches and twigs. She was sitting on two big spotted eggs. They would be hatching soon, and she was pleased about that.’ By the time the chicks had emerged from their eggs and father eagle had gone to nail a ptarmigan for his children, Bo was asleep. (That was back before his nightmares, back when he still slept with his eyes closed. His eyes slowly fell shut, popped open again in a last-ditch attempt to ward off sleep. But then sleep overpowered him at last, and he surrendered with a sigh – the loveliest moment of the day.) Fulgor the Golden Eagle and Timur the Tiger were Bo’s favourite books, while the only thing he liked about Kra the Baboon was the cover, because it showed a wild leopard pouncing from a rock onto a baboon. Otherwise he thought it was a stupid book, although he couldn’t explain why.
While Bo slept, I read on until I got to Fulgor’s first hunting lessons – Bo’s favourite passage. ‘Fulgor was wild with happiness when he discovered his first mouse,’ I read. ‘His legs held stiff in front of him, he dropped, and suddenly he felt something soft and furry move in a deathly struggle beneath his right talon. A second later the little animal was dead, and for a few minutes the young eagle toyed with it the way a cat does, rolling it through the grass and seizing it again, then taking it into the air for a moment and dropping it again, until he finally decided to eat it, which he did at one hungry gulp.’
Monika always said Bo was much too young for books like that. But Bo didn’t agree, and neither did I.
‘Death is a part of life, Mo,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing unusual or cruel about it. Before long Bo is going to want a hamster, and animals like that die much too fast, of course. So he might as well get used to the fact that animals die. People, too.’ (How was I to know what was about to happen? Besides, I hadn’t yet read the verse from the Gospel of Philip that goes: ‘In this world there is good and evil. Its good is not good and its evil not evil. But there is evil after this world which is truly evil – what is called “The Middle”. It is death.’ I never again read to Bo from Fulgor the Golden Eagle.)
The next morning Monika still didn’t feel better. The fever had abated a little, but all the vitality seemed to have been sucked out of her. She stared at me with hollow eyes, and all she said was ‘Jesus, I feel so rotten.’ She drank her tea, but only after a lot of coaxing. And she didn’t want to eat.
‘If you don’t feel better by this afternoon, I’m going to call the doctor,’ I said.
‘Does Mama still have the ’flu?’ Bo asked, a touch of disapproval in his voice.
‘Yeah, Mama still has the ’flu.’
That afternoon the doctor came, but none too eagerly. (‘Can’t you wait a day and see how it goes?’ ‘No, I can’t wait a day. I’ve never seen her like this.’ ‘What’s her temperature?’ ‘I don’t know, she’s too sick to take it herself. But last night it was 40.2, and this morning it was 39.9.’ ‘What I would recommend is—’ ‘What I would recommend is that you come round this afternoon.’ He came.)
I’d never met the man before, but I could tell he was shocked when he saw Monika. The testiness with which he’d shaken my hand disappeared immediately. He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to talk to her. Her left arm lay white and fragile on the blankets. For the first time, I noticed there were little red spots on it.
‘Monika?’ the doctor said quietly. ‘Monika?’
She didn’t react right away. When it finally sank in that someone was calling her name, she opened her eyes just a crack. Her lips formed a word, but no sound came out.
‘How are you feeling, Monika?’
‘Bad,’ we heard then, very softly.
‘Do you have a headache?’
She nodded, almost imperceptibly.
‘Nauseous?’
‘Not any more.’
‘Where does it hurt?’ He laid his fingertips carefully on her right temple. ‘Here?’ She shook her head.
‘Here? Or here?’
‘Yeah.’ A little to the left of centre.
‘When did this start?’ he asked me.
‘Yesterday morning. She came home from work about ten thirty. She said she was nauseous. And she had a headache. She slept all afternoon. And almost the whole evening. And last night. And almost all day today. But it doesn’t seem to make her feel any better.’
‘I need to take her temperature,’ the doctor said. ‘We can do it orally.’
He took a thermometer out of his bag, tapped it against the palm of one hand and slid it into a plastic sleeve. ‘Could I put this in your mouth, Monika?’
She opened her mouth. He inserted the thermometer. Simply closing her mouth again seemed to wear her out. The doctor remained seated, bending over her. He put his hand on her forehead again. Looked at her face.
‘May I?’ he said, and picked up her arm to study it carefully. As he waited for the mercury to rise, his eyes never left her for a moment. The way he gave her his undivided professional attention was reassuring and alarming, all at the same time. His ‘tsk-tsk’ when he read the thermometer was just plain alarming.
‘It would be best, Monika,’ he said, ‘for you to go to hospital, just to be on the safe side. You might have a nasty infection. They can see that better in the hospital than we can here. And, more importantly, it will be easier for them to do something about it there. Do you have a car?’ he asked me.
‘Not any more.’
‘Hmm. She’s really too sick to take a taxi. Her temperature is almost up to 42. Could I use your phone?’
‘Of course.’
I showed him the phone. He called the hospital, briefly explained the situation, and asked for an ambulance.
‘No reason to be too concerned,’ he said after he’d hung up. ‘It was good that you had me come. But I need to rule out a few things. It seems to me that she’s come down with an infection. That could be anything. The important thing is to find out where the infection’s located. I need to be certain about that. If you like, you can go with her in the ambulance. I’ll take the boy with me. I’ll follow you there.’
He smiled, but without much conviction.
‘Would you like that, Bo?’ I asked.
Bo clutched my trouser leg and said nothing.
‘We’ll see,’ the doctor said.
I went back into the bedroom and began putting some of Monika’s things in a bag.
‘Where’s Mama going?’ Bo asked.
