Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, No. 5. Whole No. 819, November 2009

The Candy-Factory Girls by Tessa de Loo

Translated from the Dutch by Josh Pachter

Called “one of Europe’s most accomplished novelists” by Kirkus Reviews, Dutch writer Tessa de Loo is a Soho Press author in the U.S., with two novels out so far in English: The Twins and A Bed in Heaven. She is also a superb short-story writer. In Holland, her stories have recently been reissued in a collection. The story we selected for translation for her EQMM debut is one of her most famous. It has previously been translated into a number of other languages, but never before English.

“Who wants a piece?” Cora asks.

Her plump hand holds out the half-empty candy box, but as usual, no one pays any attention to it.

Trix wipes a stray strand of blond hair from the corner of her mouth, but it’s impossible to tell if it’s hers or his. Lien struggles to light a cigarette without success. Her hands tremble.

I just sit there, staring at them, vaguely expecting one of them to explain what’s just happened, to assign some responsibility for it. Is there some special word that labels the guilt we all feel, some legal designation?

“Well, I’ll eat them, then,” Cora says, and one after another, the bonbons disappear between her scarlet lips.

“Dammit,” says Lien, gazing at us meaningfully, each in turn, through the thick lenses of her glasses.

We laugh nervously.

Trix’s eyes shine, the palest blue I’ve ever seen them. “If they start asking questions,” she whispers, “I don’t know a thing about it.”

“None of us knows a thing about it.” Cora’s fingers fumble with a pink wrapper. “They can ask whatever they like.”

“We never even saw him.” Lien claws her heavy glasses from her doll’s nose, dramatically exposing her half-blind eyes. “Never,” she repeats with conviction. Then, as if her words have startled her, she strikes another match and touches the flame to her cigarette. This time it lights, and she coughs wildly, choking on the smoke as if she were a child experimenting with tobacco for the very first time. Tears spill from her eyes and run down her cheeks.

My thoughts tumble over each other feverishly, and although each of them is clear, its meaning obvious, together they cause me only confusion. Have we — although each of us has her own independent life from the moment we step down from this train, exhausted, at the end of the day, until the following morning when we drag our sleepy bodies back up the metal steps into our compartment — have we now somehow shackled ourselves together? Will the events of this morning rivet us to each other for all eternity? How can the warm sense of camaraderie which flows through me reconcile with the clammy conviction that I myself am responsible for what has happened?

We approach our destination. The sterile landscape of arrow-straight canals will soon give way to the crazy patchwork of gardens that announce our arrival in the city. Till now, I’ve always shivered at the thought of having to live on one of the farms that dot this geometric no man’s land. Not today, though: today the world has shrunk down to this one compartment and we four women who occupy it.

“Before morning, one of you will betray me,” says Trix, her voice hollow, and I imagine that the look she gives me is intended to remind me that I am, after all, the newcomer in this company.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Cora cries. “We’re all in the same boat.” Same as every morning, she stuffs her empty candy box into the trash can below the window and sighs, satisfied. She’s had her breakfast.

Cora, Trix, and Lien have been riding together in this compartment for years now, way at the back of the train, at the very tip of its tail. Our compartment sticks out past the far edge of the station’s roof when the train comes to a halt, as if it’s not really a part of the train, as if, should it disappear while underway, no one would even notice its absence. Each morning, the first of them to arrive at the station commandeers the compartment and holds it for the rest of us, chasing away any potential trespassers.

Although this daily journey is a long-standing habit for the rest of them, it’s less than a month since I first joined them. After they’d gotten to know me a little at work, they’d invited me to enter their sanctum, their Holy Compartment, as if it was specially reserved just for the candy-factory girls.

They bring to the compartment the ambiance, the intimacy, of a living room or a neighborhood café: Cora’s inevitable box of bonbons sits in the middle of the fold-down table by the window like a pot of coffee or a bottle of gin; Lien never stops knitting for a moment; Trix stretches her long, stockinged legs across the seat and pages through a fashion magazine or gossip rag. They share their innermost thoughts back and forth, give each other advice, each laughing the loudest at her own personal misery.

The news means less to them than the scenery that floats by outside the train’s window: World events unfold outside their ability to influence them, and although of course things are always changing, their own lives remain constant, and it’s pointless to pick apart situations you can’t do anything about.

The three older conductors who work this run call them “the girls.” Every day, Cora offers to share her candy with them, too, but, like us, they always refuse. Not without disgust, their eyes go back and forth between the box and Cora’s overblown figure, as if she is full to her fingertips with bonbons, as if it’s pure cherry liqueur that courses through her veins.

But let one of them have a cold or seem even mildly distracted by whatever, and they gladly let Cora mother them. If she makes a comment about their beer bellies, their encroaching baldness, their potency, their protestations are rote — no real offense taken.

Trix, the object of their eternal admiration, never hesitates to encourage it. The moment the door swings open, she poses for them coquettishly. The on-duty conductor’s gaze arrows straight to the alluring passenger, then, instantly ashamed, passes on to Cora, who returns it meekly.

They chatter with Lien about the weekend’s soccer scores, about skating, boxing, bike racing, depending on the season. She and her husband never miss a local sporting event, and, though her knitting needles never hesitate in their dance, she knows exactly what’s happening at every moment of every contest.

For the conductors, our compartment is an oasis of constancy in a train filled with an ever-changing population. In return, they forgive us girls our occasional trespasses — if, for example, one of us forgets to renew her monthly pass, they let it slide. Sometimes, they’ll even delay the train’s departure while Cora buys a cup of coffee from the station’s vending machine and waddles in her matronly way back to our oasis at the far end of the train.

Outside the glass panes of the garden door, the unnaturally large red tulips somehow seemed to accentuate the lecture my father was delivering. The three of us — my father, my mother, and I — sat around the oval dining table under the flyspecked shantung shade of the hanging light fixture.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said, his voice ominous.

I moved my foot beneath the table, felt it bump another foot, and pulled it back abruptly.

“I have to say, it’s impressive how thoroughly you’ve managed to waste every chance you’ve been given.”

My mother turned away.

“The only thing you seem to be able to do well is talk.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Apparently you got up in front of your class and delivered a poem. You had it pinned to your skirt, so all you had to do was glance down every once in a while to make sure you got the words right.”

I snuck a furtive glance at my skirt. It wasn’t the same one, but it was the same style: yards of fabric, with three petticoats under it. One by one, Ruud had slipped them off me. His eager fingers had clawed a hole in the light yellow one.

“And all the while some gang of dirt-bikers stood outside the classroom, staring in at you, hooting and hollering.”

Illuminated by bright sunlight that glittered off their handlebars and headlights, they made fun of the school and all the idiots who taught there. Right in front, leaning casually against his bike, was Ruud, dressed all in black. The only colors in the picture he presented were the blue of his squinting eyes and the red tip of the wooden match clenched between his teeth. Every so often, he languidly brushed back his Elvis-impersonator hair with the tips of his fingers.

As if in a trance, my voice rang out:

Miss Kalmoes tapped nervously on the window and waved the bikers away. She was a powerless little mouse with her dun-colored suit and her salt-and-pepper permanent. The boys stared back at her curiously, as if she were an exotic monkey doing a crazy little dance. The classroom felt like a kennel must feel to the dogs when a new keeper comes in and rattles their cages. My classmates were practically barking. But under the teacher’s glare, I stubbornly continued with my recitation:

“You don’t care about anything,” said my father, “except the opposite sex.”

“They never marry girls like you,” my mother added softly. “They chase after you, they use you up and throw you away and wind up with a decent girl instead.”

She looked pale, bloodless. There were dark circles under her eyes.

It must be awful, I thought, to have to spend your whole life with that man. I’m already sick of him.

“We’re at the end of our rope, your mother and I,” continued my father. He pulled the watch he’d gotten in honor of his twenty-fifth anniversary as a teacher out of the inside breast pocket of his jacket, glanced at it, and put it away again. It was his bridge night, so the inquisition couldn’t go on much longer.

“First we tried you in the regular high school, and when that didn’t work out, we thought, let’s put her into Home Ec classes, at least she’ll learn to cook and sew. But that’s just turned out to be a waste of time and money.”

A fly circled his head slowly, sluggish after spending the winter inside the house.

“You know,” he said, “your father is a socialist.” He waved the fly away from his face. “Freedom, equality, and brotherhood are all high on my list. But the masses have had all the culture siphoned out of them. When they don’t have to think, they’re in their element. And it’s sad, but you’ve joined that herd. I expected better things from my daughter, but you’ve decided otherwise. Well—” he cleared his throat — “go get a job. I don’t care what: cashier, maid, factory work, janitor, whatever.”

As if she had just heard my death sentence pronounced, my mother stared at me, her gaze heavy with pity and shame. She sat there stoically, her own daughter’s victim.

I can’t, I thought.

If only I already had a job, in a store or a factory, it couldn’t possibly be as boring as sitting in this room with my parents, bombarded by the terrible things they said about me, accusations I had no way to counter. Turning away from them didn’t help; there was no comfort anywhere else in the room. Everything just made me tired: the crocheted runner draped along the mantel, the sansevierias on the window sill, the portraits of dead relations everyone had hated on the walls, my father’s bulky armchair, with the worn stripe of fabric down the middle, that had long ago conformed itself to the shape of his body.

I am so tired of my father.

My sister and I always had to wait for him after school, while he placed his notebooks and textbooks in his briefcase with minute precision, stored his pen, eraser, and ruler in their special places, wiped the board clean, arranged the desks in orderly rows, picked wadded-up balls of paper from the floor and dropped them in the wastepaper basket, locked the schoolhouse door, chased away the kids who were hanging around the playground. After that, as we were about to cross the busy street in the shade of the tall chestnut trees, he would intone, with one hand tight on the back of my sister’s neck and the other tight on mine: “Look left, then right, then left again.” And then we would finally cross, our steps perfectly synchronized.

“La douce France,” he would say, peering at me over the top of my French reader, which he held open before him. “La douce Fraaaance.” Saliva would spray from his mouth and sting my face. “France is the cradle of Western European culture. She gave us famous philosophers, teachers, painters, authors, politicians. The French aren’t as crude as we Dutch. They prrrrrrrronounce their words like this.” He would trill the r like a songbird.

I had never been to France, and hoped I wouldn’t ever have to go there.

Except for Cora, we all worked in the licorice department, where Trix supervised the steady drip-drip-drip of the liquid licorice into the metal molds. Sometimes the flow was too fast, and the black goo spilled over the edges of the molds like molten lava, ran over the sides of the conveyor belt, and formed a glimmering black river beneath the machine. When that happened, Trix would shut down the line and call for a mechanic to set things right. Meanwhile, we had the chance to stretch our backs.

I was one of four women at the end of the line. Our task was to seal the cellophane bags of candy as they emerged from the previous step of the process. We cheered the occasional breakdowns, sometimes we prayed for them, just to get a momentary relief from the din that rattled our bodies and our souls.

Cora worked in bonbons. Every afternoon, she liberated a box for the next morning’s train ride. My eyes must have bugged out of my head the first time I saw her eating her daily “breakfast.” Her pudgy hands, rings on every finger, unwrapped one candy after another. “A body has to eat,” she said, absently smoothing out the wrinkles from a silver wrapper. “At home, I just can’t make myself eat a thing in the morning.”

She was so heavy she almost took up two seats. In her lavender dress with bright yellow buttons, she looked like a marvelous Easter egg. Above her head hung a photo of a slender woman in a white dress, leaning against an old-fashioned Dutch canal bridge.

“Why not?” I asked her.

“My husband,” said Cora. “He’s been sick for six or seven years. Parkinson’s, the doctors tell us. They could keep that little piece of information to themselves, in my opinion. What does my husband need with Mr. Parkinson’s disease?”

Her dark brown eyes glared at me indignantly, as if she’d heard the diagnosis only yesterday. I felt uncomfortable, as if it was partially my fault. The most serious illnesses could just suddenly be there, from one day to the next. Billions of bacteria and viruses lurking day and night, waiting for their chance to weasel into our bodies and begin their attack on the weakest parts of us. Even worse were the dangerous genetic elements, inheritances from our ancestors, already present inside us from the moment of our birth, quietly waiting for the right time to reveal themselves. Just thinking about it made me hot and sweaty with fear, feeling phantom pains in random places.

“He can’t control his muscles anymore,” said Cora. “I have to wash him every morning, get him dressed, help him downstairs, and feed him his oatmeal, half of which winds up dribbling back out of his mouth and onto his clothing.” She yawned widely. Her tongue was a pink animal, quivering in its den. “Now the children are out of the house, I wind up with this full-grown child to take care of.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw a cartoon image of a grotesque manly woman with a surly face, carrying her struggling husband under her arm as if he was a pile of kindling for the fireplace.

“Sometimes he announces that he’s going to go out for a bike ride,” said Cora, “but he’s already had three awful spills.”

“Let him ride his bike if he wants to,” murmured Trix. “Maybe next time he’ll keel over dead.” She gazed out the window dreamily. Streamers of mist drifted over the fields. When she closed her eyes, her long lashes almost touched her cheeks. “Then she’ll finally have some peace.”

Lien polished her glasses with a man’s checkered handkerchief. Her mousy eyes aimed at Cora, who shrugged her shoulders.

My first week on the job, I came home every evening dead tired. My limbs were leaden, my spine felt like I’d been tied to the mast of a sailing ship during a heavy storm.

At dinner, I couldn’t even sit up straight. My father criticized my table manners, and my mother seemed worried. I wondered whether she was afraid of a new battle breaking out or concerned about my health — and in my exhausted state, I figured it was probably whichever was the greater of two evils. When I finally went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. Images of the workday crawled through the labyrinth inside my skull, and a chorus of human voices tried in vain to drown out the echoes of pounding machinery and blaring music.

Mornings, on the train, if anything more tired than I’d been the previous evening, I couldn’t imagine how the others had been able to stand this for all these years. If this is my future, I thought, I’d rather be dead. But immediately my father’s voice began to protest inside my mind — not against the idea of my death, but against the possibility of my giving up the job. He challenged me with his beloved clichés: Work is honorable, the people have a right to work, workers of the world unite, idle hands are the devil’s playground, roll up your sleeves and get to work, many hands make light work. His voice was shrill, he laughed nastily and rolled his head crazily and cried: “We live to work! We live to work!”

Just like everyone who hates their job, I found Mondays the worst. The week was a mountain and I was Sisyphus, eternally rolling a boulder towards the top.

At first I thought it was that listless beginning-of-the-week feeling that kept Trix staring unpleasantly out the window when we came into the compartment, although the raindrops trickling down the glass clouded her view of the world outside. Like a dog shaking itself dry, Cora shook off her raincoat, spattering our faces. She took her place across from Trix, sighing deeply as her full weight landed on the seat. With a practiced hand, she opened her box of bonbons. Then at last she seemed to relax and become aware of her surroundings.

“Jesus,” she cried, startled by Trix’s appearance. “What happened to you?”

Trix shrugged. Their profiles — Cora’s with mouth open wide in surprise — appeared as shadows on the window.

“Who did that to you?” Cora demanded.

“Dolf,” Trix replied dully.

“Look at this,” said Cora. Her heavy body bent closer. With unusual tenderness, she cupped her hands around Trix’s face and turned it gently towards us.

“Oh my God,” said Lien.

For just a moment, in the dim light of the compartment, it seemed as if Trix’s left eye had been plucked out, leaving behind a dark crater that ran from her eyebrow halfway down her cheek. I wanted to run out of the compartment so I wouldn’t have to see it. Port-wine stains, harelips, spastics, hunchbacks, mongoloids, cripples — if I don’t look, they don’t exist. Motionless, I took in the left half of Trix’s face.

The skin was a dark purple. Her eyelid had swollen, practically obscuring the entire eye. I wondered if she could see out of it at all. A cut across her eyebrow was clotted with dried blood. It looked so bad it couldn’t possibly ever heal, like she’d spend the rest of her life with a face that was half angel, half leper. Her good eye, usually an intense blue, was now gray and expressionless.

“Why?” Cora asked.

“Because he’s a bastard.” Trix turned away and looked at the floor. It was very quiet in the compartment. The rain streamed down the outside of the window. My wet socks began to dry. They itched me, but I didn’t dare scratch.

“Does it hurt?” I heard myself ask, my voice hoarse.

“It hurts here,” said Trix, cupping a pathetic hand beneath her left breast and darting a quick glance at us with her one good eye.

“What happened?” asked Lien.

Trix sighed. “I knew I was going to have to explain. I wish I could just drop out of sight for a month. What can I say? It started Saturday night, at my brother’s wedding reception. Eppo Engelhardt, a friend from when I was a kid, he was there. I hadn’t seen him in years. Last time I saw him, he was a skinny little boy with zits — I remember I beat him up once, after school. He’s grown into a real man, though, with a bristly black beard, I could hardly believe my eyes. If he hadn’t been there, nothing would have happened. It’s so stuffy in here. Can I open a window?”

“It’s raining,” said Cora.

“We danced and laughed till we practically couldn’t stand up anymore. It was crazy—” her voice softened, and we had to lean forward to hear her — “but, just for a moment, I thought, this is what I live for, just to be able to enjoy a night like this once in a while.”

She fell silent.

“What can I say? It happened.”

“What happened?” Lien asked again.

Trix examined her fingernails. “The more fun I had, the more upset Dolf got. He was storming around with an evil look in his eye, like he wanted to mow everyone down with a machine gun. At eleven-thirty, he pulled me off the dance floor. He wanted to go home. ‘Go,’ I said, ‘I’ll be along later.’ But he didn’t want to leave by himself. ‘Then stay,’ I said. ‘My brother’s only getting married this one time.’ ‘That remains to be seen,’ he said. ‘If that’s all you have to say for yourself,’ I said, and pulled my arm free and headed back to the dance floor. But he came after me and hissed, ‘You’re going home with me right now, or you’re gonna get it!’ That did it. I put my lips right up to his ear and whispered, ‘Piss off, Dolf, and leave me in peace.’ He turned away, furious. And then he was just gone. Excellent, I thought, that’s got rid of him.”

She rearranged herself in the seat, trying to find a comfortable position. “Has anyone got a cigarette?”

Lien scrabbled in her purse and handed over a whole pack, with the eager expression of a teenager shoving another coin in a jukebox to keep the music playing.

“I look pretty gorgeous, don’t I? Be honest: How bad is it?”

“It looks more like you’ve been in a car crash,” Cora lied.

“You think they’d believe me,” said Trix eagerly, “if I said I smashed my car?”

“Get back to the story,” Lien pled.

A bit less nervously, Trix went on: “I got home about three a.m. All the lights in the house were on. The only house on the block that wasn’t dark. That doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. But when I walked into the living room, I got the shock of my life. Have you ever seen a car crash, some poor soul dead on the ground, covered in blood? That was Dolf, spreadeagled on the couch, his clothes all red. Except when I got closer I realized that it wasn’t blood, it was rose petals, from the bouquet he gave me last week for our anniversary. He’d picked the roses apart, petal by petal, there must have been hundreds of them. He lay there leering at me. ‘Madam finally graces us with her presence,’ he said, ‘at three-thirty in the morning.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and madam is going straight to bed.’ ‘That’s what you think,’ he said, jumping to his feet, scattering the petals to the carpet. He grabbed my arm — his fingers felt like steel claws. ‘Now it’s my turn,’ he yelled. The veins on his forehead were swollen, his eyes were bloodshot and feverish, like the animals in the zoo, pacing back and forth in cages too small for them. I felt contempt for him, I wished I’d never met him. ‘I’m going to bed,’ I said again. ‘No, you’re not.’ He was squeezing my arm so hard. ‘It’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘Now that he’s had his, it’s my turn.’ ‘Now that who’s had his what?’ I said. ‘You make me sick. You don’t even know Eppo.’ Well—” she shrugged indifferently — “that’s when it happened. What else can I say? You can see for yourselves.”

I didn’t want to see for myself, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Trix. Her smooth perfection had always seemed incorruptible. That the emotions contained within another being, balled together into an angry fist, could change all that and leave such horrifying evidence of its power was terrifying to me. And, meanwhile, the itching was driving me crazy. I realized that itching — when circumstances make it impossible for you to scratch — can be just as bad as pain.

“Did you faint?” asked Lien.

“Yes,” Trix said. “No. Well, sort of.” She hung her head. “I fell down. My ears were ringing. I only half realized that he was pushing my dress up around my waist. He held my wrists together above my head with one hand. I could hear him cursing. I thought it would never stop.”

“What a pig,” said Cora. “I wish I could get my hands on him.”

They say Cora once broke up a fight at the factory, banged two men’s heads together. She’s incredibly strong, they say. In a vision, I saw her as an omniscient goddess of revenge crushing Trix’s husband to her breast, a faint smile on her lips, a bonbon between her teeth.

It was almost impossible to breathe. There was condensation on the inside of the window. We were sitting in a steam cooker under high pressure.

“What are you going to do?” asked Lien.

Trix stared at the toe of her shoe with her one good eye. Her long hair spilled loose across her face.

“I can’t leave him,” she said. With trembling fingers, she shook another cigarette from the pack.

No one spoke. Lien pulled out her knitting. Cora helped herself to a bonbon. I finally scratched my leg.

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 all: 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.

He tossed my bra aside as if he hated it. And then his cool hands finally slid across my skin. To my disappointment, I wasn’t the least excited. I just lay there, thinking clinically and rationally: What’s he going to do now? What’s his next move?

His hands moving quickly, expertly, he pulled off my panties. Then he sat up, took off his own clothes, and dropped them to the floor. For a moment, he stood beside the bed, looking down at me. And although I was surely as curious about his body as he was about mine, I immediately shut my eyes. How attractive could I possibly be? I wished I could see myself through his eyes. If only I could sink away through the bed, through the floor, through the depths of the city, straight down through the earth to the other side of the world to land on a quiet beach where everyone would just leave me in peace.

He slowly lowered himself onto me. And now I’m supposed to have these deep, intense emotions, I thought, aimed at this man who’s about to give me a brand-new experience that can never be undone. But the conscious, contemplative experience I’d dreamed of simply wasn’t there. It was as if I was being dissected by a razor-sharp blade. From the center of my body, a flaming gulf of pain spread through me in every direction, to the tips of my fingers, to my toes, to the roots of my hair. I screamed, but — as in a nightmare — made no sound. Again and again he thrust into me, as if he wanted to tear me apart, as if I would never be whole, never be myself again. With each rush of pain, I felt warmer, oceans of my life’s essence drained out of me and washed away in the dry bed.

His head rested on my shoulder; his hair smelled earthy, male, and consoled me in some incomprehensible way. I burrowed my face into him until he raised his head with a brief cry of surprise. From far off, I heard the wail of an ambulance. Suddenly, it seemed clear to me that I had been wounded and would have to be taken to the hospital, where an understanding surgeon would lovingly heal me, would restore my virginity and purity.

Ruud lay on top of me as if he was incapable of movement. He seemed to be getting heavier. I could barely breathe. Finally, he rolled over and lay with his back against me. He gazed up at the ceiling, then turned his face toward me to gauge my condition.

“How’d you like it?” he asked.

“It hurt,” I said.

“It’s supposed to hurt,” he told me with an abrupt laugh, almost proud of the pain he had brought me.

He lit a cigarette. I stole a glance at the glowing red point of light. It irritated me that he was able to switch from one form of enjoyment to another so effortlessly. Soon afterwards, I was quickly and efficiently driven home. The drizzle had turned into a driving rain. There’s no one I can tell about this, I thought, and I cried with my face pressed against his back. My tears mixed with the raindrops and fell onto the asphalt, marking the route from the furniture store to my parents’ house like a trail of breadcrumbs.

At the factory, every day was the same.

As quickly as a fire spreads, that’s how slowly the time passed. This was where we spent the largest part of our week — everything else, the outside world, was just window dressing. It was as if we labored in an enormous blacksmith shop deep in the heart of the earth, feverishly stoking the fires that kept the planet revolving, ignorant of what was happening up on the surface.

One afternoon, the boss bustled into our department with a man who looked American with his healthy appearance, his bebop hair, and an easy laugh that promised that anything was possible, no mountain too high, no problem that the human brain couldn’t solve, no battle that couldn’t be fought and won.

“We need a charming hostess,” said the boss, raising his voice to be heard above the hiss and rattle of the machinery, “who can demonstrate our product line to potential customers.”

They examined us closely. Our eyes remained shyly lowered, and the sealing of the little bags of candy proceeded without interruption.

What did they see, our jolly boss and his crewcut colleague, as they searched for their Chosen One?

They saw themselves reflected in Lien’s thick spectacles, they saw the permanented gray hairdos of the two other women, they saw me the way I’d been feeling since I’d spotted a girl with a tower of black hair sitting behind Ruud on his dirt bike with her arms clasped around him.

“No beauty queens here,” cried Lien snippily. “You want a beauty queen, try over there.” And she waved them over to Trix.

“They’re all the same,” Lien growled. “They want a Madonna for their kids and a Marilyn Monroe in bed. Look at this!” She pulled her hands from the line and, as the unsealed bags immediately began to pile up against each other, smoothed down her sweater. “You wouldn’t think I’ve had two children, would you?”

The handknitted yellow-and-black-striped sweater accented her little-girl breasts, then bunched up again the moment she stopped smoothing it.

“Paul’s the same as the rest of them,” she said. “That’s why I keep my eye on him.”

“You mean you don’t trust him?” I asked.

“What do you think?” She was indignant. “You think I like going to all those soccer games and boxing matches?”

The sun tries its hardest to break through the low-hanging mist. We are moving through the prettiest part of our route: the heath, dotted with fantastic pines and beeches that glimmer silvery white through the fog.

I would gladly step out into that mysterious world. In my poor, city-girl imagination, I envision the gradual clearing of the mist and reemergence of the sun. In my mind’s eye, I can see the forest animals awaken and stretch themselves lazily.

I can’t remember the last time I was in the woods. All I can recall is the city park, which has too little that’s natural and too much that’s man-made: gravel paths, mown grass, neatly planted flower beds, geometric streams littered with orange peels and decaying half-eaten sandwiches, patrolled by well-trained ducks and crawling with pensioners, actually nothing more than a graveyard except no headstones, the corpses out in the open, sitting on the green park benches, twittering, scattering crumbs to the birds.

Maybe none of us has gotten enough sleep over the weekend. Like overfed house cats on velvet cushions, we gaze drowsily out the window. Cora sucks on a bonbon for a long time, apparently not realizing what she’s doing.

When the compartment door is suddenly thrown open, we are shocked out of our lethargy. A young, gleamingly polished conductor — new to us but equipped with all the tools of his trade — steps into our car.

“All tickets, please,” he says, his voice stiff and formal.

He examines us impatiently from behind wire-rimmed eyeglasses, as if it surprises him that we’re not sitting on the edge of our seats with our tickets at the ready. As slowly as possible, searching distractedly in handbags and coat pockets, we locate and present our monthly passes. With the precision of a schoolmaster, he studies the small print on each pass.

“This is expired,” he says, and glares at me through the glittering lenses of his spectacles. “You should have renewed it this morning.”

“Oh,” I say, and my hands fly automatically to my cheeks, “I completely forgot.”

“Nothing to worry about,” says Cora good-naturedly. “It happens to all of us. You’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

“Then you’ll need a round-trip ticket today,” says the conductor.

“What do you mean, a round-trip ticket?” asks Cora suspiciously.

“For today,” he says again. He’s irritated; this is taking too long. Cora stares at him, speechless. I flush with the realization that I have no money on me.

“You’re funny,” Cora laughs. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

With furrowed brow and unpleasantly tight lips, he looks her up and down. He seems to want to will her away, to wish he was looking at something else — his girlfriend, perhaps, who always has her ticket with her, who at this hour of the morning is still in her frilly pink bed, dreaming of him and of the everything-first-class trips they’ll someday take at someone else’s expense.

“We’ve been riding this route for years,” cries Cora, insulted. “The railroad’s made a fortune off of us, but you can’t excuse one honest mistake?”

The conductor pulls out his ticket book and begins to scribble.

Cora turns red. “What’s your problem? We were riding this train before you were born!”

He ignores her and tears a ticket from his pad. As he offers it to me, Cora’s pudgy hand snatches it from his fingers.

“Jesus!” She leans towards Trix. “Look at this: The bastard’s charging her a fine.”

And then, as I sit there like a fool with my empty wallet open in my hand, Cora gives him a withering look and takes action in the same cool and detached way a queen of the olden days whose patience had reached its limit would turn away from an accused subject and wave an imperious hand at her bailiff and order, “Lock him up!” or, “Off with his head!” and then instantly forget all about it and move on to other matters.

She stands up brusquely and — the yellow buttons on her purple dress jiggling with every movement — she gets right in his face and snatches his eyeglasses from his nose.

“No,” she says.

As if his very soul has been stolen from him, the conductor blinks helplessly and chews on his lower lip.

“Give those back,” he says hoarsely, and grabs for them, but Cora holds them high above her head and out of his reach. “Give me my glasses!”

Cora laughs at him, her sweetest laugh, little stars twinkling in her eyes.

Mama, mama, the bear is loose, I think. A strange and delectable excitement courses through me. I feel like something irreversible has been set in motion, and none of us will ever be the same again.

“You’ll get your glasses back when you rip up that ticket,” says Cora. “Not till then.”

He stares at her, confused by the sudden shift in power. He holds tightly to the leather pouch around his waist with one hand and to his cap with the other, as if to reassure himself of his position.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says sternly.

“Fine, then.” With a deep sigh, Cora hands the glasses to Trix, who is sitting in the corner by the window. As if they’ve talked it over at length and agreed how to play out the scene, Trix does exactly what Cora must want her to do: She opens the window and thrusts the eyeglasses outside into the misty air, her graceful posture emphasizing the soft curve of her waist and hip. With her lovely smile, she looks just like the women in the ads, leaning seductively against the hood of a Mercedes to lure businessmen into buying it.

“Don’t!” cries the conductor, panicked. “Give them back!”

“I’ve told you what we’re willing to trade for them,” Cora says calmly, as if she’s refusing to haggle with a merchant at the market.

Cornered, he looks around the compartment furiously and then fearfully at the window, where the expensive lenses precisely suited to the weakness of his eyes are in danger of being dropped and shattered.

“I’m going to report you at the next station,” he cries.

“Hear that, girls? He’s going to report us!”

With an ease as if she’s merely lifting it from a hat stand, Cora plucks the cap from his head and sets it jauntily atop her own dyed black hair. She turns her head and laughs at us over her shoulder. Without his cap, the conductor seems weak, fragile, his silken blond curls at the nape of his neck.

“You know you have beautiful blue eyes?” asks Cora.

He swallows with difficulty, as if he’s got a plum pit stuck in his throat, and grabs clumsily for his cap, but Cora is faster than he is and hands it off to Lien. “Don’t you think he has beautiful blue eyes?” One by one, we line up beside her and gaze at him with the same fanatical admiration we would give to a James Dean film, which makes him even more nervous. He obviously can’t stand the hysteria of women who would swarm past the security guards and bodyguards onto the stage to touch an Elvis Presley; he feels solidarity not with Elvis but with the rent-a-cops, the men in the caps and uniforms.

“Now give me your little pouch,” says Cora. He stares at her, astounded. No one has ever dared talk to him like this. Speechless, he shakes his head.

“Come on,” says Cora. “Otherwise, you know what’ll happen to your glasses.”

With supple movements of her wrist, Trix sways the spectacles back and forth in the mist.

Something has erupted in Cora, a power that is stronger than any possible opposition, like a river in monsoon season swelling beyond its banks and ripping trees out of the ground and washing them out to sea.

“Let’s go, sonny, give mamma your toy.”

Beaten, he unhooks the pouch from around his waist. Without even glancing at it, Cora passes it over to Lien, who stashes it in the corner behind her worn shopping bag, her knitting needles sticking up like the antennas on a portable radio.

“So,” says Cora, “have you changed your mind?”

They face each other expectantly, Cora a full head taller than he is. How did she get so tall, I think, and so strong?

At that moment, it seems that a peace treaty is in the offing, as if his next words will be: “You’re right, what am I so worried about? It doesn’t make any difference to me. Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

But suddenly he shoves Cora out of his way and lunges towards Trix, falling onto her with his full weight. His attention is riveted to his eyeglasses — his hands scrabble for them, and it’s a wonder that Trix doesn’t drop them out of pure shock.

Just for an instant, Cora seems to have been taken out of the game: She stands there, dazed, like a fat woman who’s lost her little dog. Oh my, he was just here a second ago!

But then she throws herself onto Trix’s attacker, grabs the collar of his conductor’s jacket, and yanks him off her. His eyes bug out and he growls, thirsty for blood. He’s like a dog, pulled off his worst enemy in the heat of the battle.

Trix brushes strands of hair off her face and smoothes her dress. She doesn’t seem the least bit disturbed. No, she’s like a young girl after making whoopee with her boyfriend, crawling out of the bushes with a flushed face and a sparkle in her eyes.

Outside the window, a UFO flies by: Lien has thrown the conductor’s cap from the compartment like a Frisbee.

His legs trapped, his arms flailing, the young man tries to free himself. Cora grabs his wrists and forces them behind his back.

“Get his legs,” she hisses. Trix and Lien each fasten onto a leg and force it down. My heart pounds in my throat. I have no experience of violence. At home, our disagreements are cool and dispassionate — our wars are always civil.

“Let’s take off that cute little jacket,” says Cora. Because each of us ought to have a hand in the taming of the beast, her eyes turn now to me. With trembling hands, I pull on the coarse fabric of the sleeve. It’s no easy task, relieving a struggling man of his jacket. If he would just play along, I think, it’d be so much easier. I can tell from Cora’s expression that it takes all of her strength to hold him down. He’s fighting to escape like a wounded tiger, and his eyes are filled with hate.

“Now the tie,” says Cora, calm as a surgeon asking a nurse for a scalpel. I bend over him obediently and we gaze straight into each other’s eyes. I have his necktie in one hand as if I’m about to strangle him.

What do I know about people? Nothing. There are a few, like my father, about whom I’ve been forced to think deeply. But I can see the fear in this man’s huge blue irises, darting this way and that like frightened fish in the deep blue sea. I think his fear runs even deeper than his hatred, which itself helps to keep him from drowning. An inappropriate wave of pity washes over me and confuses me. I quickly untie his tie.

“Well,” asks Cora, in a tone that says she no longer anticipates any response, “what do you say, boy?”

He says nothing. He just lies there, absolutely still. Is he plotting some unexpected move?

We watch him, waiting. And then his body tenses, and he swivels his head and spits right in Cora’s face.

Cora smiles, and wipes away the spittle with her purple sleeve. “Shirt,” she says.

My father has the exact same cufflinks. I fumble them loose. When I have the first sleeve halfway free, the conductor makes a sudden wrenching motion and the fabric rips, like a rabbit ripping its own skin as it struggles to release itself from a hunter’s trap. His chest is pale, his chest hair thin and blond.

I lean back.

“Pants.” Cora seems impatient. “We’ll show him he’s just an ordinary little boy, nothing special.”

“Take away a man’s uniform,” says Trix, “and there’s not much left.”

Uniforms. They’re so, so German. Marching around in perfectly synchronized columns, black leather boots stamping the ground, each with one hand angled skyward in a salute, chanting their battle hymns — I’ve seen it in so many films, read it in so many books, heard it from so many survivors who saw it in the flesh. What are wedoing? I think. It’s too late to stop, though — we’ve unleashed something that is stronger than ourselves.

As I undo his belt, I can see Ruud in the dim light of the furniture store, standing by the side of the bed, undoing his belt with self-assured movements, and I’m spread out on the soft bed filled with surprise and disgust at my blind obedience. It puzzles me: why do I keep on doing things I don’t want to do?

It’s not easy for Lien and Trix to get his glossy black shoes off him, but they manage. I almost have to rip off a leg to remove his trousers. Just like a boxer waits for his opponent to drop his guard so he can attack, the conductor picks his moment and lets fly with a well-aimed kick. Trix goes sprawling and clutches her face in both hands.

“You’re going to regret this,” he gasps.

Why her, I think. Why Trix — hasn’t she taken enough punishment already? But his bare foot hasn’t really done much damage, and she recovers quickly. Without any further interruption, I unpants him.

And that seems to break him. His upper body lies limp in Cora’s lap. They could pose for a deposition from the cross, with Cora as the grieving Mary and the conductor as the martyred Christ, except for the light-blue boxers he wears instead of a loincloth.

If I ever get married, I think, I’m going to buy boxers just like those for my husband.

Now what? Is there really any doubt? We exchange questioning glances across the conductor’s body.

“Let’s finish it,” says Trix. She shakes back her mane of hair from her eyes.

“Go ahead.” She nods at me.

I stand beside him. I’ve never seen anyone brought down so low.

He looks like we’re about to toss him out the window or, worse, as if he’d prefer that fate to the one we have planned for him.

What is it we want? Is it revenge, to completely debase him? Or do we simply need a new kind of excitement to get us out of our daily rut?

I can’t move. If only I was a mechanical toy with a key in my back, so they could wind me up and I could do what was expected of me. Three pairs of eyes urge me on, one pair begs for leniency. Is this now the touchstone of our friendship? Do I have to prove myself worthy of being “one of the girls”?

“I’ll do it,” says Trix.

She sits up. Ashamed and relieved, I move out of the way. Let her take over, it’s better that way, I can see it in the seductive smile that flickers across her lips.

In one last burst of anger, he roars, “Stay away from me! Goddammit, leave me alone!”

Then, reduced to desperation, he assumes a fetal position on the ground. I can feel his leg muscles straining. Trix resolutely grabs his boxers with both hands and pulls them down to his ankles.

He turns away, his humiliation complete. A shaft of sunlight breaks through the mist and illuminates the compartment, enveloping the conductor’s body in a warm glow.

We are silent, and the rattle of the train’s wheels over the rails seems to swell.

Cora, a peaceful matron, examines his naked body thoughtfully. All thoughts of vengeance seem to have left her. Her hold on his arms loosens, and he hangs against her like the prodigal son returned to his mother’s lap.

Lien strokes his leg absently, scrunching up her nose to reseat her glasses, an unconscious tic we’ve seen many times before.

Trix’s usually bored expression is gone, replaced by one of lively interest. She blushes with excitement, her nostrils flare, and her eyes gleam. I’ve never seen her so beautiful. She holds the light-blue boxers in her hand like a religious icon.

The sun is warm on my back. I feel the tension drain out of me, the way it feels after a heavy storm has passed. I wouldn’t mind if the train kept on forever.

As majestic as an ancient priestess, Trix leans over and kisses his chest. He shivers, the leg in my hand jumps as if it has a mind of its own. Slowly, carefully, Trix’s lips trace their way from his chest to his stomach, her long blond hair accompanying their descent. From his belly, she describes an arc along his hip to his thigh, tickling the fine hairs which catch the sunlight.

No one says a word. It is as if we are witnessing some secret ritual — and, wonder of wonders, his body reacts to her touch and salutes her. As if in a trance, Trix runs her lips along his thigh. A groan escapes him, accompanied by a violent shaking of his chest and shoulders, and the mood that has swept us all away is broken.

Trix sits up, and her lust gives way to astonishment as she sees him sobbing in Cora’s lap, trying to hide his face in the folds of her purple dress. Cora, the all-forgiving and understanding mother, strokes his hair tenderly. Dismayed by the effect of her caresses, Trix plucks nervously at the boxers she still clutches in her hand.

The train begins to slow.

I only know what’s been happening in our compartment. Of all the yawning and coughing, the silent glances and gossipy exchanges, the irritations and dreams in the rest of the train, I can only guess. In principle, the conductor is the only person aboard who remains completely neutral, as he makes his rounds from car to car.

Not this conductor, though. This one hasn’t finished his rounds. As we approach the station, he regains his awareness of his surroundings. Exhausted, he rises from the floor and, unsteady on his feet, slides open the compartment door.

“Wait,” says Cora, “your clothes.”

We gather his things together. He doesn’t seem to pay any attention. We no longer exist for him. He staggers out into the corridor, Cora tottering along behind him, us in her wake.

“Get dressed,” she says. “You can’t let them see you like this.”

We wrap his pants, socks, shirt, tie, glasses and leather pouch in his jacket, tie the sleeves together, and press the bundle into his arms. He gazes at us blankly, as if he’s just been handed an orphaned child in a blanket.

Thank goodness there’s no one else in the corridor. We hustle back into our compartment — this isn’t our stop. Our excited bodies huddle close against each other as we press our noses to the window and watch the conductor leave the train.

Quite a few passengers are waiting on the platform. They step aside for the naked traveler.

He strides forward through the crowd with the little bundle of clothing held to his chest, staring solemnly before him as if he is carrying his first-born son to the baptismal font.

Copyright © 2009 by Tessa de Loo

Translation Copyright © 2009 by Josh Pachter