The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

HOMECOMING

I’VE COME BACK, come in through the gate, and I take a look around. It’s my father’s old farmyard. The puddle in the middle. Old, useless machinery, gathered into a heap, blocks the trapdoor into the cellar. The cat lurks on the railing. A torn piece of cloth, once wrapped around a pole in a game, lifts in the wind. I’ve arrived. Who’ll be the one to greet me? Who’s waiting behind the door to the kitchen? There’s smoke rising out of the chimney, they’re making coffee for their supper. Is it cosy, do you feel at home? I don’t know, I’m not sure. It’s my father’s house, but each brick lies cold against the next, as if occupied with its own affairs, which I’ve partly forgotten, partly never knew. What use am I to them, even if I am my father’s, the old farmer’s, son. And I don’t dare to knock at the kitchen door, I just listen from a distance, I listen standing at a distance, not so that I could be caught listening. And because I’m listening from a distance, I hear nothing, all I hear is a quiet clock chime, or I think I’ve heard it, chiming out of my childhood. What else is happening in the kitchen is a secret known only to those sitting inside it, who were here before me. The longer you hesitate outside the door, the more of a stranger you become. What would it be like if someone opened the door now and asked me a question. Wouldn’t I seem like someone who wants to keep his secrets.