With his counterfeit papers he could risk being out on the street during new moons in fall and winter. He went alone. They had precisely calculated the days in advance on the calendar, together. “So, Nico, from — to — you can go for a quiet little walk. No more than an hour, and not too far from the house. And don’t come back to the house too late, because of the neighbors.”
“Yes, thank you, Wim.”
They shared his happiness. “At least you can stretch your legs. You’ll still have to do without sunshine.”
But he appeased them and said that even this little thing felt like a piece of good fortune.
Good fortune! — And still the constant fear that a flashlight would suddenly come on in the darkness before him and a stern voice would ask, while the light blinded his face: “Aha! So, ah… Where do you live?” He doesn’t say anything.“Come on, tell me already.” He stays stubbornly silent. “You’ll tell me all right. Come with me.” And he knows what that means. He will confess everything, yes, he will say everything… I live at… No, no, not that, that would be cowardice, villainy, they didn’t deserve that. Even if they killed him, tortured him to death, he would keep his mouth shut, despite, yes, despite all their torture and… Marie, Wim, you can count on me, they’ll get nothing out of me!
When he stood up from the family table that evening, he walked into the front room and stood for a long time in front of the vase, a few steps away from it. Finally he went up to it and pensively smoothed out a little crease in the lace doily it stood on.
VII
Marie was still standing in the kitchen doing the laundry when Wim appeared at her side. He made a noticeable fuss busying himself about the stove and the stone kitchen counter, where pots and bowls were standing that he shoved back and forth as though he were looking for something. He didn’t find it, whatever it was. All the while he was sneaking a surreptitious look at Marie, who pulled a shirt out of the soapy water, looked at it, and then dunked it back in. No, she wasn’t crying anymore. She seemed calmer to him. Her face was still red but that could just as well be from the effort and the steam.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, without looking up, and kept working. Laundry these days, when you couldn’t get any decent detergent anymore…!
“Oh, never mind.”
“Matches?”
“Yes, I thought they were here—”
“In the drawer on the right.” She turned her head without taking a break from her scrubbing. “No — there — yes. Aren’t there any in the room?”
“I couldn’t find them there either,” Wim said. Then he saw them lying on the ledge by the stove, behind the photograph of his mother. He took the box and left again.
She hadn’t asked, but the doctor must be coming back at any moment. Wim was growing impatient.
It was Nico’s shirt that she had pushed back into the soapy water. She hadn’t waited until Coba came; she herself started washing whatever clothes of his she could find.
He had brought only clothes with him; Marie had given him sheets and towels. She also darned his stockings and mended his suits. So much was falling apart, and he didn’t have much. Most of the wash, and Wim’s clothes, she took to a laundry.
During his illness he had gone through especially many clothes; she had to change the sheets three times, plus the washcloths, the pajamas. At first it was just an ordinary cold — stuffy nose, scratchy throat, a hacking cough every now and then. As so often happens when the seasons are changing. Nico had managed a few jokes about it at first. “My right tonsil,” he said, and he seemed to swallow, his hand on his throat. “The right — you know, if you take the time to do it you can watch it yourself and see very nicely how it progresses. Tomorrow it’ll be in the left one too”—again his hand on his throat, a painful swallow—“I feel it today already.”
Marie had laughed too, even though she could tell how dejected and defeated he felt.
They treated it themselves, with aspirin, hot fluids, a scarf around his neck in the evenings. Wim had come home and told them how many people at his factory were out with the exact same symptoms. It is always a consolation to learn that something unpleasant is shared by everyone.
One evening he suddenly had a fever. Aspirin again, a bigger dose. When his temperature reached 102 they decided to fetch their doctor. Dr. Nelis, an even younger man, energetic, unmarried, understood right away what the situation was, even before Wim had brought him all the way into his confidence. He had several such cases in his practice at the moment.
“Doctor, there’s one more thing…”
“The neighbors? I understand.”
“It’s that my wife… and I… They can see, of course, that we’re still healthy and up and about…”
“What do you mean?” the doctor replied. “There are invisible illnesses too, that you can have and still be up and about.”
“But they know that we’ve never been sick. And so if you start coming more often now… all at once like this…” He looked at the floor.
Silence. Dr. Nelis folded his hands and thought hard about it for a moment.
Suddenly he looked up and said, “Do you have a record player?”
“A record player?” Wim was absolutely staggered. What could a record player possibly have to do with it? “No!”
“Too bad.”
Silence again.
“Maybe I could borrow one,” Wim responded, without knowing why exactly he should borrow a record player. Neither of them was particularly musical, Marie and him.
“Really? Oh, never mind, we don’t need it,” the doctor said. But Wim noticed that the doctor was still thinking about this record player.
Finally he worked up the courage and asked, “Why, Doctor? Why a record player?”
Dr. Nelis smiled a little and looked fixedly at Wim.
“Oh”—the words came out of his mouth slowly and with a slight drawl, as though he were making a little fun of himself—“well, I’m crazy about records, I have quite a collection myself. It’s my hobby. Everyone in town knows that about me — people know something like that about anyone who’s even a little in the public eye, after all. I could say that I was visiting you to listen to one of your records. A particular record I’ve been trying to chase down forever and that you happen to have, ‘L’invitation au Voyage’ for example, with words by Baudelaire, music by — Duparc? or Poulenc?… which one is it again?”
“I have no idea,” Wim answered. “I don’t know it.”
“Too bad,” the doctor said, “it’s heavenly — the vocals… ‘Luxe, calme, volupté.’ ” He hummed the melody softly. “I wish I owned it.” He stared at the ceiling, lost in a reverie. “Enfin, I’ll come to give your wife a couple of calcium injections against fatigue and general listlessness. There’s a lot of that going around these days. Goodbye.”
In the meantime, Marie had told Nico that Wim had gone for the doctor.
“Isn’t it too risky — for you…” he had asked in a dull voice.
“Don’t worry, Nico. Dr. Nelis is good, in every way. And you’re sick.”
“Yes, I do feel sick,” he answered softly, and he leaned back deeper into the pillow and shut his eyes. He had always known that they wouldn’t leave him in the lurch here…
“As long as it doesn’t turn into a double pneumonia,” Dr. Nelis said to Marie and Wim downstairs in the back room, after he had thoroughly examined the patient. “He isn’t strong.”
Marie turned pale. “I do what I can, with the food situation…”
“I know, it’s impossible to manage,” the doctor replied. “His inner defenses too are not that strong… at least that’s how it seems to me. And no wonder!” he added. “I gave him an injection. I’ll come again tonight.”