There she lies, your wife, beside someone else, the pleasure radiates all the way down to her toes, she can’t remembering ever having. .
Well, all right, there are other differences between you and him. . The fact, for example, that he’s as black as my shoe. She had him brought in from Egypt and paid for his ticket, and now he’s lying on your side of the bed, looking at the gray light falling through a crack in the curtains. Maybe the new man is thinking about you right now as well, about the one who went before him. He knows the spot beside her in bed has been cold for a long time — he didn’t exactly wrest that spot from you, no, but he is making the best of your worst-case scenario, and he wonders whether he would ever have had a chance if you were still—
He turns brusquely to this woman in love, the link between the dead man and the living, eyeing each other distrustfully in the shadows.
Here’s what went before:
‘What are we supposed to call him?’ India asked when her mother said she was going back to Egypt to retrieve her lover for his first visit to the Netherlands.
‘Mahfouz, that’s all, that’s his name,’ Regina said.
‘I’ll call him “Papa” if you want.’
‘Why would I want that?’
‘Because it can be very difficult for a woman when her children don’t accept her new husband. The mother may feel torn between loyalties, and that can sometimes prove a divisive element with the family.’
‘Where on earth did you ever come up with that?’ Regina said.
Regina Ratzinger went to Egypt to marry Mahfouz Husseini, out of love, but also to provide him with the documents needed to visit the Netherlands. In Cairo she met with a swarm of lawyers, the hours spent in the waiting rooms of blistering hot administration buildings were a torment, but by the end of the week they were man and wife.
They took a two-day cruise on the Nile, then caught a plane to Holland. It was 10 December; the sky, gray as a pigeon’s wing, hung low over our heads.
When the Egyptian climbed out of the taxi on Achterom, the first thing he did was sniff the air like an animal. Did he smell the comfort of the delta? Of washlands that flooded at set times, as the Nile once had? His little suitcase contained a Koran bound in gazelle skin, a carton of Marlboros for Joe and India, a picture of his father taken in his shipyard and another one showing the whole family. For the rest a few clothes, but not many.
Joe came outside in his stocking feet and held out his hand. Husseini sighed deeply, as though a wish had been granted him.
‘My son!’ he said, locking Joe in his arms.
He hugged him like that for a time, held him at arms’ length to look at him, then drew him back into his embrace. India appeared in the doorway. Her mother shrugged at her apologetically, as though to say, ‘So many countries, so many customs.’ Joe came out of the embrace a little rumpled. The Egyptian then turned to India and shook her hand. Later, India said that she had felt deeply insulted.
‘Why didn’t he. . grab me like that? Has he got something against girls? Was there something wrong with my hair? Could he smell that I was having my period? Does he think menstruating women are unclean?’
‘Quit it, would you!’ her mother shouted. ‘Mahfouz did that out of respect. Arabs have a lot of respect for women.’
Mahfouz Husseini was to become Lomark’s first official Negro. Even though he wasn’t really a Negro at all, he was Nubian; but hey, what did we know? White is white and black is black. Around here we can’t tell the difference.
Husseini stayed until just before Christmas, then flew back to Egypt to arrange his definitive departure. One of his brothers would take over his shop in the Sinai; in Cairo awaited the bureaucratic hell through which one had to pass before receiving the right stamps and emigration forms. Regina pined, Joe and India were left to their own devices — their mother neglected the housekeeping and smoked more than she breathed.
‘Mom, you have to eat something,’ India said.
‘I’ve already had two rice waffles.’
She shuffled out of the kitchen. Three weeks to go. India shouted after her.
‘If Mahfouz sees you like this he won’t think you’re pretty anymore! Jesus, Joe, why don’t you say something for once?!’
‘What do I know about it?’
And with that he had spoken a great truth. For what did he know about it? He and Engel Eleveld shared a colossal contempt for love. I never heard him talk about it, but it seemed as though he saw love as a less-than-worthy pastime. As spinning one’s wheels. Christof felt differently about it; like me, he had a crush on the South African girl.
I remember one time in the garage that summer, when Christof drew Joe’s attention to P.J.’s existence. A few days later we saw Joe looking at the new arrival as she sat with her girlfriends on the low wall around the schoolyard.
‘So, what do you think?’ Christof urged.
Joe slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good eye, Christof. It’s definitely a girl.’
The freeze set in, the water in the washlands was higher than I’d ever seen it. Then one evening at the table I heard Willem Eleveld’s voice on national radio. As an ‘inhabitant of the disaster area’, they’d called him to hear about the ‘alarming water levels’ in the big rivers. Eleveld was interviewed live, you heard him pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello?’ real slowly.
‘Good afternoon, am I speaking to Mr Eleveld from Lomark?’
‘You are.’
You could hear this horrible feedback in the speakers, because
Willem Eleveld happened to be listening to the same station.
‘Mr Eleveld, it’s good to hear that you’re listening to our
program, but could you please turn off the radio?’
Engel’s father put down the phone, fumbled around a bit, and
the feedback vanished.
‘And who would I be talkin’ to?’ he asked.
‘Joachim Verdonschot from IKON radio, you’re on the air live,
Mr Eleveld. If I understand correctly, you live in the middle of
the disaster area. Could you tell us what things are like
there?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, the flooding, for example.’
‘Oh, not much to tell.’
‘No water in your basement?’
‘No more than usual.’
There was a rustling of paper in the studio in Hilversum.
‘The high water has been causing a lot of problems, you and
other inhabitants of your municipality are surrounded by it
on all sides. When will you finally leave your house, Mr
Eleveld?’
‘Ferry Island,’ Willem Eleveld said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Ferry Island isn’t a municipality.’
‘Ferry Island. When will you leave your house, Mr Eleveld?’
‘It’ll go down again. No bother for us.’
‘Well, then that’s a blessing in disguise, as it were. Thank you
very much, Mr Eleveld of Lomark, I hope you all stay dry out
there!’
‘No problem.’
January 1 arrived, there’d been a little drinking the night before, a few fireworks had been shot off, and now everyone was sound asleep, ready to wake up later in a shitty mood in a new year. The river had gone down some and was frozen hard, and the washlands lay beneath a layer of perfect ice on which the sun conjured up deep-golden flames by day — but now it was still night, and I was on the dyke, straining my eyes in the dark. Joe and Christof had just skated away into the blackness, shoes in hand. Today Joe was going to try to get the plane off the ground for the first time. Murmuring in the darkness they had pushed off, until all I could hear was the scratching of their blades growing wispier and wispier.