We had reached the edge of the comprehensible and dashed against the contrariness that lives inside each of us and perhaps leads us each to our doom. We We had reached the edge of the comprehensible and dashed against the contrariness that lives inside each of us and perhaps leads us each to our doom. We acknowledged that reality in silence.
I knew exactly how it felt to be powerless. Whenever I sat behind Ruud on his dirt bike, I could sense the other girls’ eyes boring into my back. Before Ruud came along, they barely acknowledged my existence, but now they just had to know where I bought my skirts and my black ballet slippers, how I managed to keep my ponytail standing so tall. Even my bad report cards worked in my favor: They proved that I didn’t care about our parents’ world, a world where ambition, self-discipline, and appearances were all that mattered.
When Ruud took a corner at full speed, we came so close to the asphalt it was as if he wanted to polish the road surface with our bodies. I held my skirt down with one hand, clamped the other tightly around the front of his stiff leather jacket. We’d left the other kids behind on the square, beneath the blue-and-white signboard in front of Milano, the ice-cream parlor. They’d all scatter in different directions, now that Ruud was gone. They were nothing without him. His presence turned them into a group.
It was drizzling. The news that the frost had pulled back to northern Scandinavia had brightened up our dinner hour at home. “Anything can happen,” my father said. “I remember one year the canals were still frozen in March. King Winter has not yet been defeated.” He talked like that to the children at school, all that “King Winter” stuff.
Despite the light rain, the air was almost warm. I’d never been in this part of the city before. The rowhouses were all four or five stories high, set like two parallel walls with a narrow street between them. There was a café on every corner, people hanging around outside as if it were a summer evening. A little girl sat on an orange crate, sipping lemonade through a straw.
We stopped before the dimly lit window of a furniture store. Ruud set his dirt bike on its kickstand, fished a key from his pocket, and opened the door. We slipped inside, and he carefully locked up behind us. All around us in the gloomy half-light were couches, dressers, dining-room sets, all jumbled together. I wanted to ask what we were doing there, although I knew exactly what we were doing there. I just didn’t want to believe it. We moved to the back of the store, where rolls of carpet standing on their ends kept watch over bedroom sets that just hulked there waiting for someone to buy them and carry them away.
“Whose place is this?” I asked.
“My father’s,” said Ruud gruffly. He shrugged out of his leather jacket and tossed it on the nearest bed. In three steps, he was beside me. He stood there for a moment, motionless. Now he’s supposed to tell me he thinks I’m beautiful, I thought, and special, and all he can think about, that he’ll go crazy with desire if I don’t give myself to him right this second.
He leaned in to me and pressed his lips to my mouth. I was huddled against one of the rolls of carpeting, and it prickled my back. Must be coconut, I thought, only coconut matting prickles like that. My upper lip was snagged for a moment between his teeth and mine.
“Have you ever done it before?” asked Ruud.
I resisted the temptation to act all experienced and indifferent, as if I had a real past to be ashamed of. “No,” I said truthfully, annoyed that my voice sounded so shy and uncertain.
With a sweeping gesture, Ruud said, “Which of these lovely beds strikes your fancy?”
I looked around the showroom. The beds were monstrous, each with its matching night tables and gold-braided bedside lamps. They were like my parents’ bed, pompous and prudish at the same time. It disgusted me to think that I’d been conceived in their bed, that I’d originated from their bodies.
“Pick one out,” Ruud ordered. There was an undertone of insult in his voice.
As obediently as if I’d been hypnotized, I walked between the rows of four-posters, king-sized beds, and bunk beds, searching for the one in which I would have done to me what everyone always talks about without saying the actual words, that thing the girls in the group assumed I’d done long ago and about which my parents maintained a tight-lipped silence. At the end of a row, I discovered the most nauseating display of them alclass="underline" golden posts at all four corners, topped with heavy finials and chubby little angels bedecked with garlands of carved wooden flowers.
“Ruud,” I cried, “I found one!”
He came towards me with a thick folded comforter.
“Now this,” I said, running a hand over an angel’s head, “is fantastic.”
I hoped he’d notice my sarcasm, but he just said, “Great!” and began to arrange the conforter on top of the satin spread that was already arranged there. The sacrificial cloth, I thought.
Why didn’t I just turn around and go, back between the rows of beds, the rolls of carpet, the kitchenettes, the bureaus, the sectional sofas? Why did I always let him make my decisions for me, from the very first moment I saw him? Was it his eyes, bluer than blue, that gazed over other people’s heads and saw far-off horizons they never noticed? Was it his dark blond hair, so perfectly combed? Was it his self-confidence?
He smoothed the wrinkles from the comforter and stood up straight. He laid his hands on my shoulders, looked meaningfully into my eyes, and pressed me slowly to the bed.
When I was about twelve, my mother’s oldest brother had innocently brainwashed me into a realm of erotic fantasy. Since then, I’d cherished the dream of the ideal, irresistible woman, a role I myself would sooner or later yearn to play.
“The most beautiful women of India,” said Uncle Harry, “came from Singaraja. Supple, enchanting, as perfect as a lotus blossom. They knew what a man wanted and deserved.”
I saw before me girls with waist-length blue-black hair, light brown skin, narrow hips, wreathed in sarongs and with garlands of flowers around their necks.
“Harry,” my father said, “I don’t doubt that the women of Singaraja were lovely creatures, but would you try to remember that we’re in Holland, with two impressionable young girls at the table?”
Uncle Harry laughed uproariously. My mother glanced nervously at my father, and then hid a giggle behind her hand.
“You know,” said Uncle Harry, “that girls their age—” he nodded towards Louise and me — “are already ripe? They already know how to get their hooks into a man.” He lowered his voice. “Your Dutch girls are artificially locked into childhood for much too long.”
My father, who wasn’t used to being lectured in his own house, haughtily suggested that it was time to change the subject.
Uncle Harry brought my mother fragrant soaps from faraway places, bottles of perfume, hand-painted fans, and exotic candies — all gifts which were over the top in my father’s eyes and, for that very reason, seemed incredibly wonderful to us. Anytime Louise and I asked him, Uncle Harry would gladly pull up his sweater to show us the scars on his back. The Japs had whipped him because he would imitate even the most feared of them behind their backs. We wished we were Uncle Harry’s kids and could go to India with him — at least if it really looked like the painting in his room promised: in the foreground, deep green oases surrounded by palm trees, in the background a towering mountain’s snowy peak bright against the pale blue sky. Why didn’t that snow melt, if it was really as hot as Uncle Harry claimed?
After Ruud tugged off my petticoats and skirt, unsnapped my garters, and stripped off my stockings, he turned his attention to the top half of my body. I’m an object, I thought. I just let him do whatever he wants. He untucked my blouse, and I raised my arms. As if it were perfectly normal, I gave myself over to the age-old tradition of the submissive woman. The only moment I was even involved was when I interrupted his fumbling with my bra to unhook it for him. These ridiculous details completely contradicted the dreams I’d built up and cherished over the years, dreams of an unbridled passion which would ultimately explode into dazzling fireworks, followed by an eternity of tender caresses, explorations of each other’s bodies, and finally a total melting together that would make the world disappear, at least for a while.