He looked up at the grandmother, who was putting her handbag down at her feet.
“Marcel to a tee …”
“He’s inherited his mother’s eyes,” she said, “but for the rest — an out-and-out Ornelis.”
Cyriel turned to me again. “So you’ll be another staunch Fleming, will you?”
“That depends,” the grandmother said.
*
In the meantime Wieland had appeared with the camera, an unwieldy contraption in a dark leather case.
“I suppose I’ll have to use the flash,” he said eagerly, fitting a fresh film into the slot. “The sun’s gone now, and there’s not much light here because of the sheets on the roof.”
Mechanically, as if he were loading a gun, he clicked an outsize metal disc onto the camera. He held it up against his nose and stepped around the veranda like an automated Cyclops.
“Must find the best angle.”
The grandfather rose from his chair. “Quite an old model, isn’t it?”
“Never gave me any trouble …” Cyriel gasped. “Bought it in Cologne … Made in Germany, never wears out …”
“And then they say Germany lost the war!” Anna chimed in. “You should see their industry. All those factories …”
“You’ve all got to move a bit closer together,” Wieland instructed, posting himself in a corner of the veranda.
The grandfather stood next to Anna on one side of Cyriel’s chair. The grandmother hovered on the other side with me planted in front of her. All of us focused on Wieland’s Cyclopean lens. Cyriel crossed his arm over his chest to hide the oxygen tube.
Wieland was clearly enjoying himself.
“Now if you all say cheese,” he cried, “then you’ll look as if you’re laughing … One … Two …”
“Never mind about that,” Anna said, “what’s there to laugh about, anyway?”
The whoosh of an umbrella bursting open was followed by a blinding light.
*
Six weeks later the photograph was prominently displayed in the grandmother’s glass-fronted cabinet, at the foot of the Yser Tower. We are all on it, white-faced, as though the flash had drained the blood from our veins.
The funeral mass was attended by a crowd of boys in short trousers. They stood in the nave swinging Flemish Lion flags so vigorously that they churned up a strong breeze. Wieland, with bowed head, shuffled in the wake of his elder brothers and sisters behind the coffin. Our eyes met briefly. There was no flicker of recognition as he set his features in an expression of dramatic grief. His mother must have got her way in the end, for he had had a haircut. His jet-black hair was much shorter now, although still long enough for him to toss it out of his eyes.
*
“Sad, very sad” was the only thing the grandmother said all the way home. Her handbag bulged with the papers Cyriel had given her. I had seen them when Wieland took the photograph: a thick wad of envelopes, yellowed and frowsty-looking, slit along the top.
Arriving home the grandmother left her handbag on the chest in the hall as usual. She took her coat off, helped the grandfather out of his, hung both coats on a hanger and disappeared into the parlour.
“He’s had it,” I heard the grandfather say, before the door shut behind them.
The grandmother went to the kitchen to make supper. I could hear her banging cupboard doors.
The handbag stood on top of the chest. All I needed to do was reach out my hand — one of the envelopes was sticking out. I drew it out between thumb and forefinger.
The beams of the house stretched and settled plaintively in the heat of the summer afternoon. She, who otherwise heard everything, heard nothing now. She rattled the pans and filled the kettle.
I undid a few buttons and slipped the envelope inside my shirt.
Upstairs, in the attic, I spread the letter out flat. The pencil had faded with the years, and the spidery handwriting was hard to read. It said something about tomatoes being “wonderful here. Four, five kilograms per plant, and as sweet as apples.”
What fascinated me most of all was the great bird on the outside, with its curved beak, strong talons, spreading tail feathers. Miss Veegaete would love it.
CHAPTER 5
THE DRESS WAS ALMOST READY. THE BUTTONS STILL needed to be sewn on and it had not been pressed yet, but it hung grandly on its hanger against the wardrobe door. In the gathering gloom of the sewing room it was like a deserted fortress looming up out of the clutter of fashion magazines, bolts of material and dress patterns. Putting my head under the skirt and just standing there in the purple sheen was enough to make me feel as if I were Miss Veegaete herself, large and bloated, bosoms and all.
Evening rolled down the attic stairs, percolated into the corners of the rooms, trickled imperceptibly down the walls, robbing the furniture of its colours, its distinctive features, and eventually its contours. Miss Veegaete’s dress became a capacious, floating shadow pressing up against its alter ego in the wardrobe mirror. Dress and mirror image seemed to hug one another in the night, two wavering silhouettes in search of a body.
The grandmother had sent me off to bed early as usual, and as usual I had crept out from the covers within the hour. The evening freshness cooled the roof, which gave out a surprisingly loud salvo of clicks. As the night wore on a soughing sound ran through the rafters, as if the house were sagging into a leisurely pose. Stella would be doing the same at this hour. After supper she hung her apron among the dishcloths in the kitchen and withdrew to listen to her radio: a soft male voice burbling genteelly from her room.
At the end of the corridor the door to the parlour was ajar: a dark slab with light around the edges. Tiptoeing into the beam, I was able to see the grandmother sitting at one end of the table. All I could see of the grandfather through the crack was his elbow resting on the tabletop.
I moved closer. The grandmother was wearing her reading glasses. She was holding one of the letters Cyriel had given her. The others lay in a pile between her and the grandfather.
I saw her lips move, but could not hear what she was saying. She must have been speaking in a low whisper. They always kept their voices down after I had been sent to bed. She was reading aloud, and as she read I saw her nod her head. Her eyebrows shot up intermittently, and I could hear the grandfather’s little grunt at the end of each sentence, indicating that she could proceed. When she faltered I knew it was because he was interrupting her. I saw him clench and unclench his fist.
The grandmother shook her head vigorously, paused a while and then went on nodding. The grandfather’s hand rose up above the tabletop, as if he were addressing an invisible third party occupying the chair opposite him. His hand reached out two or three times, at which the grandmother shook her head with mounting agitation.
“That’s not true, and you know it …”
Her voice faded.
“What does it matter,” I heard him say. His hand stopped moving.
They fell silent.
Then the grandmother resumed her reading, only to raise her eyes from the letter almost immediately.
“A lot,” she blurted, in a surprisingly loud voice, which evidently shocked her, too. “It matters a lot,” she continued, sinking to a whisper, “to me.” She patted her chest with her left hand. “A lot.”
She replaced the letter in its envelope, which she laid down on her right before taking a new one from the pile.
She read aloud for the next hour or so, working her way steadily through the pile of letters, spreading them out flat, folding them again and adding them to the slowly growing pile to her right. Now and then a fresh disagreement flared up, which soon subsided.
Finally all the letters were in the pile on her right. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. I heard the scrape of a chair as the grandfather rose to his feet. I strained to hear whether he was heading for the door, my mind racing with calculations as to how long it would take me to hide on the stairs to the attic.