In death he is nineteen. Just left school. Passed his driving test. Proud of his first car. As if it would be any use to him now, in that place without echo or response.
My mother must have cut the photograph out of the paper, and I never got round to throwing it away. It turns up occasionally between the pages of books, sometimes fluttering down on to my lap. The reporter did not lack an eye for drama, for the picture shows the truck driver being led away by the police. There are several vans and an ambulance. A passer-by, hands clapped to her cheeks, surveys the white sheet on the kerb with a trouser leg plus trainer poking out from underneath, and the twisted wreck of his bike which is partially hidden by the wheels of the truck.
It can’t have been more than half an hour after it happened. The body has yet to be released, the officers have yet to make their inquiries as to the cause of the accident. Someone has hastily covered him with the white of a shroud or christening robe.
For a long time I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what he must have looked like lying under that sheet, even though I had seen him in his coffin afterwards. I clung to the idea that he had let himself fall backwards, the way he flopped on to the lawn at his parents’ house on Fridays after school, with that enviable ability he had to exchange one world for another without a thought. It was like a miraculous postponement, like those few seconds of fierce concentration on the diving board during swimming class, before leaping into the air and falling into the chalice of water.
I still dream of him some nights. The images are becoming blurred, but the body is unmistakably his. His arms draw me close. His chest heaves calmly against my back. I feel the old rush of pleasure as his arms tighten their grip, gently but firmly, and then I wake up, only to find myself in the same bleak emptiness as on that Saturday when Roland drove into the yard in the early morning.
He had rented a van for transporting the heaviest items of furniture. I had lain awake most of the night, and watched the day dawn in its accustomed, lethargic way, peeling the darkness off the walls so that the place became awash with the vibrant red of an early autumn morning, quiet and compelling.
I got out of bed and went over to the window. I saw my cousin clamber down from the front of the van. He was wearing brown overalls with a zip up the front, and he whistled as he went round to unlock the back. My mother was already up; I’d heard her dry little cough as she passed my door on her way downstairs. Soon afterwards the smell of coffee floated from the kitchen through the rooms, most of which were already bare.
They noticed my sadness. Roland rambled on about which items would have to be loaded first and whether there were sufficient blankets and ropes to hand, while I sat and stared vacantly at the table in front of me, astounded that things could go on as if nothing had happened, that the world didn’t stop and hold its breath, not even for a second. I could barely swallow a mouthful.
There was a silence when I left to go back upstairs, and I knew my father would be laying his hand on my mother’s, that he would look at her and no doubt heave a deep sigh once I turned my back.
I sat on the edge of my bed. I could hear my mother going from room to room opening boxes, rummaging in them and shutting them again.
She pushed the door open and said, “I’ll press a suit for you to wear, shall I?”
I could tell she was upset, and nodded.
“I’ll do your grey one. It suits you so well. And you’d do better to wear your black shoes — I’ve given them a polish. They’ll look better than the brown pair.”
On my way to the bathroom, I passed Roland and my father in the passage, heaving a dresser between them. Roland was in front, and my father, red-faced, begged him to slow down by the step.
She’d put out an extra towel, and there was a bottle of eau de Cologne on the shelf beneath the mirror.
I turned on the taps and listened intently to the water rushing in the pipes, gurgling past the occasional bubble of trapped air. Then I poured soap into the tub and stirred the water to make foam.
My body hesitated as I stepped gingerly into the bath, avoiding contact with the tiles on the wall, and gave a little shudder as the warmth chased goose pimples up my arms.
I stretched out. Let myself slide under water, heard my skin rub against the sides.
“The first load’s ready to go,” Roland called out from downstairs. The doors of the van slammed, the engine revved, then the sound died away over the dyke.
They must have closed the coffin by now, I thought. Probably yesterday evening, last night maybe, who knows, perhaps it was happening at this very moment, with everyone there, his father, his mother, Katrien, all of them watching the shadow sliding across his forehead as the lid was lowered, without him raising his bandaged hands to fend it off.
I tried to lie completely still, like him, with the water covering me like a shield. I listened to the beating of my heart, until suddenly my body lunged upright with a great splash and my lungs filled themselves to bursting with an abandon that left me distraught.
I stood up and slipped my bathrobe on. Crossed over to the washbasin. Wet my cheeks. Rubbed shaving soap on them. Took the razor in my hands.
In the mirror I saw a haggard face with a snow-white beard. A body that seemed versed in being old and bent, shuffling down a corridor in a home somewhere in soggy slippers, dressing gown untied, complaining bitterly to the nurses for being late with breakfast. In his eyes a look of resignation which, over the years, had dulled every glint of former happiness and made it futile.
Willem loomed in my mind’s eye. I became very angry. You’ve robbed me, I thought. You’ve stuffed my days in your inside pocket as if they were old letters, and next you’ll hurl yourself on the fire like an old handbag.
*
I was almost done when there was a knock at the door and my father called my name.
“Come on in,” I said, “I’m nearly ready anyway.”
He had slung his vest over his shoulder, and was sweating profusely.
“That cousin of yours seems to think I’m a lad of twenty,” he chuckled, and went on, “Take your time. I can wait.”
I sat down on the lavatory seat, stared at nothing, rocked to and fro. I felt my testicles shrink, my stomach contract.
In spite of everything I felt sort of hungry. I’d have a slice of bread, I thought. Have a crap before leaving. Have another wash tonight. Cut my nails for the umpteenth time. Wipe my armpits with a towel. Brush my teeth. Routinely reflect that my ears were far too big. Time and again. Twice daily the small irritations of the oldest marriage in my personal history.
“Anton?”
My father was towelling himself dry.
I raised my eyes.
Our eyes met in the mirror.
“It’ll pass, you know,” he said.
My eyes prickled.
He bundled his towel on the rack self-consciously. Came towards me, took my chin in his hands.
After a pause he said, “Nothing you can do about it.”
“I know.”
He tried to strike a lighter note. “The least you can do for that poor boy is get a decent shave.”
His thumb slid across my jaw, my lower lip.
“There’s still some stubble.”
He wet his hands, took the tube of shaving cream from the shelf and spread a fresh layer on my face.
“Chin up.”
He steered my face to the right with his fingertips, then laid the razor against my cheek.
“You should just go with the flow. Follow the natural line, then you won’t cut yourself so easily.”
He touched the skin beneath my ear lobe and showed me his fingertip smeared with blood. He fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette paper to staunch the flow.