‘Of course I’d like it,’ she said. ‘But I’m so afraid … so afraid that everything, taking care of him, will end up on my shoulders. Especially when you’re stressed out by a new book or something. Just try to understand that.’
Now she was crying for real. Between the wails I could hear Jean Nehr singing a cappella and nearly bursting out laughing in the process.
‘The cooking, Minchen, the washing up, I shamelessly leave that all to you when it suits me. But raising a child … that’s something else entirely. Responsibilities. Trust me.’
‘Adri, I don’t want my life to end once I’ve had a child. I have to achieve something. So …’ (with a comically pleading voice) ‘promise you’ll help out?’
I gave her my word, in all sincerity, while at the same time my heart skipped a beat. Responsibilities. Miriam sat up next to me, rubbing her face with both hands. She sniffled a bit more and then said: ‘We could try as soon as the end of July.’
‘And if we waited another month? End of August?’ I can’t rule out that I was already backpedalling. ‘I want to get myself cleaned up a bit inside. Lot of poison been put through the ol’ system lately.’
‘Then I’ll quit smoking,’ Miriam said. ‘End of July, no, then it’ll be an April baby. That’s no good. Rather May or June.’
We sat in silence for a while, hand in hand, each with our own thoughts, listening to the drawn-out sighs of Gregory’s accordion and Jean’s nasal vocals. The organisation of my life suddenly stretched out before me in a different, more rigid configuration than I was accustomed to up until now. Not unappealing, although something like nostalgia began to hum inside me as well. I would, for starters, finish all open projects during Miriam’s pregnancy. I would expel all the scoria and sluggishness from my blood, and restore my youth to its former glory, despite my impending fatherhood.
15
‘So we’re on?’ I asked all at once.
‘We’re on,’ Miriam said, smiling.
The elongated flame of the candle, the rising moon, and, in between them, the rugged terrain of Villa Tagora — everything took on the scent, the colour, the sheen of our decision.
‘Let’s drink to it,’ I said. ‘While we still can.’
I fetched a new carton of Var wine, and snipped open the spout. Red drops balled up on the scissor blades. ‘And no wisecracks about snipping the umbilical cord — from now on everything is symbolic.’
Miriam didn’t care for more wine. I knocked back one Duralex tumblerful after the other. Even after the music was finished, we stayed sitting there chatting for so long that our fleeting kisses did not particularly disrupt the conversation.
‘So …’ I started all over again.
‘Yes, we’re on.’
‘Really?’
‘We’ll do it. Really.’
‘I was just thinking …’ I said. ‘As soon as it’s born I’m going to keep a diary of his, or her, life. Every day. Everything. As a present for his or her eighteenth birthday.’
‘Then you should start with the pregnancy,’ said Miriam. ‘As a prologue.’
‘No, with today. The decision. And everything from this moment on. I’ll start tomorrow.’
All I can recall from the rest of the evening is that most of our sentences began with: ‘I could …’ or ‘We could …’ And the choice of a home birth versus a hospital came up.
‘At home, at home,’ Miriam said decisively. ‘No hospital birth for me.’
‘Y’know, Minchen, not to get on your case, but … until now, whenever we talked about having a child you were so intractable. I’ve often suspected you were secretly afraid of the pain.’
‘Oh no, no way. The pain? Then you don’t know me.’
16
I had won Miriam over so convincingly that I lost sight of my own doubts and fears about fatherhood. They reared their head now that, even with all her conditions, she had relented. I had created a danger zone for myself, and dragged Miriam and me over the line.
Within two weeks of the decision, we took the express train back to Amsterdam, so impatient were we to cleanse and prepare our bodies for procreation in the intimacy of our own home. Miriam would quit smoking, I would — at least until after a successful conception — stay off the booze. Miriam was such a moderate drinker that she had no trouble forgoing that one glass.
While we felt ourselves becoming more radiant and healthier by the day, my mother-in-law’s birthday approached. Wies had lobbied for a grandchild for so long — demanded it, almost — that we figured she’d be delighted with the news that we were bringing our bodily equilibrium into balance in preparation for a perfect copulation and a pure conception.
A misjudgement. I phoned her up.
‘No, Wies, we’re coming for your birthday, don’t worry. The only difference is that won’t be drinking on account of —’
‘Well, don’t bother coming then. Not even a little nip, what a pair of killjoys. Either we celebrate my birthday or we don’t.’
Not a word of happiness about the imminent addition to the family. It wasn’t, incidentally, her doing that in the ‘dry’ weeks that followed (abstinence from alcohol, but not from sex: Miriam would only go off the pill once our degenerated bodies had been revitalised), doubts started to creep back into my head. Whether I would be up to the responsibility of raising a child. To placate Wies, we broke down and hit the 45 per cent Polish vodka that friends of Natan in Cracow still sent him. At home, too, we occasionally cheated on our self-imposed regime. I still found, to my relief, emptied blister pill strips in the bathroom wastebasket. Maybe it wouldn’t come to parenthood all. Whenever we loosened the reins I’d sneak an extra splash into my glass. Miriam would do the same with each new half-smoked cigarette, and say it would be irresponsible to go off the pill so soon.
17
Shortly before leaving Aix, we received the news that Miriam’s aged cat Baffie had died. Once back in the Netherlands, we stopped off at my parents’ in Eindhoven on the way to Amsterdam. We hadn’t been there even an hour when I asked my father if there was an animal shelter nearby. Yes, he knew of one, not so far away. Without further ado he drove us there. Miriam glanced at me occasionally, her eyebrows raised, but she, too, refrained from asking anything.
A staff member led us past the hysterically barking dogs, their claws haphazardly playing the harp on the cage fronts, to the cat unit.
‘This litter was born in June … they’re less than a month old.’
Miriam promptly fell in love with a tabby with undersized front legs and who allowed herself to be constantly overrun by her siblings. She hadn’t even picked the runt up yet, and its claws were already tangled in her hair. ‘No getting loose now. I’ll have to take her.’
‘She’s not meant just to replace Baffie,’ I said. ‘Her job is to be a constant reminder of the pledge we made in Aix—’
‘What,’ Miriam said, kissing the kitten on the pink heart-shaped spot on its nose. ‘Is the poor little thing supposed to go back to the shelter once the promise has been fulfilled?’
So the adoption was sealed. In anticipation of a definitive name, we provisionally baptised her Brilliant-but-with-Undersized-Legs. Back on the Obrechtstraat we temporarily housed her in the bathroom, which proved to be a bad idea. The stunted front legs did not prevent her from clawing her way up the outside of the laundry basket, and jumping from the lid into the tub. She slid all the way down the slippery porcelain and practically into the drain. That’s how we found her the next morning: totally bruised, swollen with internal fluids, and bleeding.