Tirza

1

Jörgen ship's steward is in the kitchen and cuts tuna for the party. With his left hand he holds the raw fish. He uses the knife as he has seen on the course 'Self sushi and sashimi', which he for five years with his wife has followed. Do not apply too much pressure and that is the secret.

The kitchen door is half open. As it is hoped Tirza both. Already a few days analyzes them intensive weather reports, as if the success of its public depends on the weather.

The partiers will be able to take possession of the garden. There will be plants trampled on. Reachout will show up on the wooden stairs that to the living room leads, others are going to hang the 4 garden chairs which has purchased a ship's steward when they have come to live here. And others will penetrate to the small barn where a ship's steward in the past after celebrations often empty beer bottles have been found, glass is half full wine next to the mower, bottles with exotic names around the engine which he saw on Sundays in the spring and autumn the apple tree pruning. A bag of chips that we had forgotten to tear open and that he was on a morning ate without thinking.

Tirza has more often for parties, but this evening is different. Just like life can party fail or succeed. Although Tirza has not said the ship's steward, feels that many of these evening depends. Tirza, his youngest daughter the greatest. Very successful, both inside and out.

The sleeves of Hofmeesters shirt are rolled. In order to protect it against stains he has an apron, that he had ever bought as a gift for Mother's Day. For his do it looks male. Six days he has not shaved. He had no time for. Immediately after the morning he was seized by the thoughts that he had not previously, not to the extent: planning, memories of the children when they could have just creep, ideas to him in the early morning were brilliant. Will he quick shaving. Representative and charming he wants. So will the partiers see him: a man who has lived not for nothing.

He will go around with sushi and sashimi, neatly displayed on a specially in the Japanese shopping purchased plateau. With this or that he will have a chat, between Nose and Lips he will say: 'Try the squid-sashimi.' A itself wegcijferende parent, that he will. The secret of parenting: yourself heroism. Parental love is the sacrifice that is placed in silence. All love is a sacrifice. No one will be slightly to see him. There is also nothing to see him. Some will congratulate him with Tirza's impressive figure list, a single teacher who is invited Tirza will ask him what it is going to do, and he will respond with the plateau in his hand: 'First Time they travel for a while. Namibia. The Republic of South Africa. Botswana. Then she comes back to study.' is an excellent host will he be, a six pairs of eyes at the same time. Not only will the guests of food and drink provided, also the lonely and neglected he will carefully monitor. Those who have no one else to talk to than the own glass or a sushi will by ship's steward to be entertained. The shy partiers he will offer his company. And dancing, there will also be danced.

Ship's steward engages in a bucket is full of lukewarm hot rice, he kneads the rice, and while he is the frame of the kitchen door as if he had never previously worked on this worktop. He sees the flaking paint, a dull place on the wall next to the frame, where once was a shoe that came to his Tirza main had thrown out. They had 'geenstijl'. Or after that it no longer knows for sure. Still lucky that the framework very remained.

He looks at the rice in his hand. The Japanese do it always better. Hofmeesters sushi is form. The surrender with which he kneads surprise him, as he surprised about silliness from its past. The type of silliness that not too much damage is done.

Also he raises a glance at the flaking paint him to his own skin feel. He has a zalfje for, but of is already a coat few days did not come. With the rice in his hand he begins to consider this House, to sell his house, First he takes the idea not seriously, he considers that if on points which will not become reality. Let you freezing after the death and one hundred years later wake up for example. But grows slowly the conviction. The time is ripe for this. How long should he still waiting, and where?

In the past he had such plans rejected straight away. His house was are proud. The apple tree that he himself had planted his third child. The idea house and apple tree of the hand to do if the water him to the lips although he had previously had, but it was not. It was impossible, against natural. Where he had to go with his family? The apple tree could no longer be excavated. He sat in this House, he was on everything. And when friends and acquaintances are not much an intriguing sight on ship's steward knew to say, what happened from time to time, there was always a who said: 'But Jörgen lives in position.'

On position. This was essential for a ship's steward. Had to ambitions in lead. That an address was usually. A certain amount of striving taken possession of him as his street'. As if his identity, everything he was and for which he was, rolled was street name, house number and postal code. Even more than the name ship's steward itself, even more than his professional or the title of Bachelor of Science in which he sometimes for his name was without distorting the truth to do, told us about his post code who he was and who he wanted.

He does not need to attend more on position. That sense that it is no longer necessary, him, while he is a piece of tuna on the rice drap honors, for if a redemption.

He is too old to be released, he told. And if you are too old to be released, you are also too old to attend on position. If the nursing home is only a small decade of you is removed, will this not more to on. He knows people of his age already senile dementia. They have a lot of drunk, though.

Away from this House, away from this area, away from this city, which is everything that he can still think as he searches for the contents of the word "solution". There are people who are waking up in the morning with the idea that there should be a solution to all of this, so it can not continue. Ship's steward is one of them.

The children are the house from or are in the process of the House to go out, his work has repl bleed until a thin occupation furnish details which have nothing more to do with productivity, only waiting. They can go to the east. In the past when he German studied and opinions about expressionist poets proclaimed as if he had known them personally, he was planning to go to live in Berlin and the big book of the expressionist to write poetry. That he can do now. For such a book it is never too late.

He would have been postal code, the impression that his address on some people, miss. The suggestion of managed it sticks. The smell of success. Now his youngest daughter leaves to Africa, he should also but disconnecting its postal code. There is no need for a parent to be attended evening more, no teacher more to be shaken. Who should he still impress?

He must admit that only sentiment and fear of change still bind him to this place. Since a ship's steward at a point in his life is that he ended up in particular need cash and a flight route, a way out, he decides of sentiment and fear not to attract a lot more.

Impetuously the tuna. He cuts So does the sushi master that, Hak, chop, chop. The fish must be the knife welcome it if a friend. He puts a piece of tuna in its mouth. The shrimps are a theeschoteltje to wait for their rice.

This morning he drove to Diemen to do your shopping in the catering wholesale. The raw tuna on his tongue will ship's steward a pleasant sensation. Fresh. Comes to sashimi.

His wife is running the kitchen within in its dressing gown, flip-flops on the feet. She asks: "Has Ibi called?'

Ship's steward is not yet its presence used. She has moved, three years ago now. More than three years ago. The course 'Self sushi and sashimi' had not helped.

But against all expectations in return they came. Six days ago. For an hour or seven in the evening.

Ship's steward stood in the kitchen. He often stood there since his wife had left him, but also all of that time. The cooker was his true work place. The wife had never felt called to work in the kitchen. Her talents, further than lasagna, were more urgent than the education. Something in her life always had heavier than the feeding of weighted her family.

The voordeurbel went, six days ago, and ship's steward called: 'Tirza, do you also open?'

'Papa, I am on the phone,' she shouted back.

Whil Tirza much. This is normal, he has heard of other parents. The phone can become a hobby. Self call he rarely. When the telephone is ringing, Tirza. And if a consummately worker and a excellent papa says the father than: 'You can reach her on her mobile phone. This is the number.'

Ship's steward was that evening an oven dish to prepare. The recipe came from a cookbook. Since the wife left him, has a ship's steward gradually to an impressive collection of cookery books built up. Improvising he found no sign of creativity, but pure laziness. For him it was the recipe sacred. A teaspoon is a teaspoon. He had to remain in the kitchen. The preheated oven was enough. He had the scale there just slid in.

'Tirza, do open,' he cried again. 'I can also not. It will be the neighbor are. But I say later in the evening at him come. Do open, Tirza!'

The neighbor is a young man who actually not so young, but still officially free companion, and that the top floor of the house is for sole occupancy that ship's steward at the end of the 1970s as advantageous to the head has reprimanded. The young man complains regularly, studying for notary, located at ship's steward on various issues often have the same: stench in the bathroom. At least once per week for the door with complaints and lamentations.

Ship's steward promises time and time again have better, two reliable plumbers explained to him that there is little to do is, unless he all pipes will refresh, what a power costs. He has a power not, and if he had already, he would be not to have a peak to spend the new tubes.

In addition to all of the other is also a ship's steward house boss.

He heard Tirza swear, he heard her walk toward the front door. Then it was quiet and he concentrated on the oven dish in the belief that the tenant on the pavement with unsolicited advice, barely veiled threats.

The Rent protection, renowned lawyers, the housing committees. With which he has not threatened? Everything has a ship's steward in his life as a landlord had already on the floor, but they have not been given him under. The Predator ship's steward has fights back against the authorities, against the tenants, against the law, who are often only seems to be to take him to graze. The Predator ship's steward is tough.

One minute later, more will not have been Tirza came the kitchen within walk. He found that they looked there appeared, bewildered. But probably he had there later at invented and saw them there always so. Without that he was noticed, was the distress ever appeared on her face and never left.

'It is mama,' she said.

Intuitive he purportedly collected the dish from the oven and turned the gas. He stared endeavor. Cod and potatoes. Simple but nice. He knew that this would take a long time. This was not a breath of fresh air in the bathroom of the lessee. This was for the change is not the sewer, but the mother of his children.

Although no pay rent wives, but just as the lessee, with whom the landlord per definition of war is on foot, complain. The complaint which has the wife with the tenant in common, the accusation. The threat. The sucking. And behind all this is the underlying dependence as a disease.

House Construction Committees, inspectors of the rent protection, lawyers: he had brushed aside and with a sham, but the woman who was hiding behind the forgotten word 'mama', the mother of his children, had never stop talking. She was more dangerous than the rent protection, cunning than the inspector of agricultural and home monitoring.

With the tea towel with which he the dish from the oven had lifted in his hand still he walked to the front door. What amazed him that they had come precisely this evening. At meal times.

The first months of its disappearance, in the first year he had actually taken into account almost every day with her return. Sometimes he had from his work to house called to see if they would record. She had the keys and he had still not change the locks. He could not believe that they never would come back. He could not imagine that they were prepared to exchange this address for an address that is as much as was less, as much as much banaler insignificant. A houseboat, they had told him.

But after some time he had to admit that his assessment was found to be false: they didn't return. They did not even bother to contact him or her to retrieve remaining stuff. She was road and they stayed away. He learned life with its silence, as he had lived with her presence.

With his eldest daughter, Ibi, had the wife initially sporadically contact. They met each other in the city, in a cafe where people who do not want to be seen meet. But later also that not more. About those meetings was not much to hear a ship's steward and called is not to at Ibi, which actually called Isabelle, but which from its birth was called by everyone Ibi. No, what Ibi still discussed with her mother, remained secret.

Tirza wanted nothing more with her mother, and with him, the father of her children, had the wife since her departure no word changed. Not even by letter or e-mail. Ship's steward knew that they were still alive, that after the houseboat abroad was gone, but much further his knowledge not 1722–1776 With the rest of the world began the black hole. And that much regretted it.

As the silence lasted longer, took the regret. The time heals not all wounds, he discovered, the time tears open wounds, ensures poisonings and inflammation. The death is perhaps an end to all the pain, the time that after.

Ship's steward had its course to be able to call or send a ansichtkaartje can, but he did neither. He had his pride, he waited in silence until they could see its mistake. A childhood love on a houseboat, that was a mistake. It could not be any other way. The houseboat itself was finally a mistake. He lived peacefully, pending the insight about his wife.

First he did that go on living with two children. But after a half year did the oldest what they had seen doing her Mother: she went out of the house.

When in the evening the call went, he caught the first months still on the idea: that is they, my wife, they is back. But gradually was an expectation become a ritual, a habit without content, and together with the expectation disappeared hope. The mother of his children had moved. That was a fact and facts are so called because they are mostly immutable.

But now she was standing there in full regalia, Fact or no fact. In the hallway. With the same case as to which they had gone. A red suitcase on wheels. She was the calm door ran her departure was not a tragedy, not her departure.

The sight of the wife made him more than he would have believed when he was in the kitchen the oven dish on the worktop. Why? I thought a ship's steward. Why tonight? What would have happened? He understood this visit, and he was not someone who wanted to understand the things. The irrational abhor he as others vermin.

His desire for rational considerations which lead to thoughtful practices continued to perfect unsatisfied. Unwanted thoughts about him fell. He was, he had to admit, already become nervous when his daughter the word that he hoped that no longer existed in this House. Mama.

What was God for atheists was mama for the family ship's steward. Nobody spoke about the mother who had taken the legs. Nobody had the infamous word. Nobody said: 'When mom still lived with us…' Even on older evenings, which he visited with a certain fanaticism, was not referred to the woman who is the mother of his children was. Did him as a single father and in such a way that its surroundings veinsde thoroughly that ship's steward ever since his birth was never something else than this. That he was so intended as a toddler. Designed to be single father. And it had to be said: he was grown in his role.

There was no mama. It disappeared for the existence of the word. He was there now, mother and father in a. The only, therefore the real, the left, and with him everything would be better.

When he stood opposite her, noticed Jörgen that he was wound ship's steward. Not in the sexual sense of the word, but excited as you are excited an exam, even if you know that you have learned. Anything could happen. That was what the adrenaline told him that was what the concentration with which he looked at her influisterde him: a lot can go wrong.

He monsterde her, her head first and when her suitcase. Also he felt for him incomprehensible challenge its against itself and to press its minutes long against located on printed. Everything he did was with his right hand leaning against the wall, quasi-casually. The tea towel bungelde in his left hand. Ship's steward was a man with a life-long to an attitude had sought and there, now that life almost was over, had still not found. Not an attitude is a tea towel.

The only thing he could think was: the always happens if you are not expecting. As if it were just so it happens, because you might not expect.

How long he had not been looking forward to? That they would be in front of the door. She was left in the past, but she was always come back. After a few days, after a few weeks, for more than two months had never lasted for its bevliegingen. And on a day they came than back home. Without embarrassment, without a word of regret, haughty, a tad aggressive, but she was there, for his door. The last time this happened so not the last time was different than all those times. The last time it was definitively.

And now that he is not expected more, now he did not need to expect because the children were large enough to be able to without her, and he was old enough to for a young widower to continue, she had landed at him as if it were the beld commonplace. What it was perhaps also. It remained the mother of his children. She had lived here for many years, first with him, when only with him and the girls. Perhaps she wanted to also check how the with its pots and pans, admire apple tree, which indeed had grown.

He looked at the woman who had claimed that he had her life spoiled, not only spoiled, Kan. He hadn't let her life. If a magician he had her life weggegoocheld, blow three times and road. She wanted the back, that life of her. That is why she left. As the ladies and gentlemen of the rent protection was they went out of the house, calm but not without resentment. He had still nageroepen: 'I will call a taxi?' But they had said: 'I do with the tram.' He had the door closed and he was in the living room to sit down with the evening newspaper in his lap.

'I thought: I come in and have a look how you feel,' she said and they region what hairs from her face. Its movements, the way they stood there, confident, confident that this was the ideal moment to check how the there with her family for was that they all nights no better had been able to choose, a bland smile around her mouth, a pair of sunglasses on her head, that everything should claim the contrary to its voice heard that they also was nervous. So nervous as he is. Maybe it was three times along the house seized for them had to call to action. It was probably they already weeks ago returned to Amsterdam and she had him when he looks begluurd work, when he went with groceries sjouwde, when in the evening he Tirza guided to her bicycle, if they are out of the house was to visit her boyfriend. And how he than treuzelde and remained standing first to look Tirza wegfietste and then for his street and the park, that had the wife.

A man of his home. That he was on that kind of evenings. No, a man in age of his home. In the bathroom mirror he had to get to know the sensation to something to look at what is over. And that was a relief. What decamped to its existence to him was that it was behind him. If he was looking for long enough, he would in his past life.

This was the wife cannot know. They had everything can know, took a ship's steward. And that is why it was rather surprising him all the more that they had done this evening what they should have done earlier or for always should have: bell on the pavement with its red suitcase on wheels.

What they wanted from him he understood not. Sex would be not. A years ago she was never has been. That he is so yummy had to learn how to cook she could not know. That was something of after her departure. What was there on this point of his life still of him to? Where they came back, not for him. Not for whom he was now. For whom he had been in the past? But what he was what they had been in place, was not reproducible. How you look at it, they returned or turned came too late.

He took his hand from the wall. He looked at the hand. The work in the garden had left its traces. Still he searched the correct posture. He wanted a man who is a chat with the postman, interested but also somewhat absent, as it is now once as you with postmen talk.

People go away with a reason, thats for sure. And they come back with a reason. You do not accidentally after three years for the door. If this was a brainwave, what was the rest of your life?

He had simply ask what they wanted from him. Also he considered to say: 'Is the urgent? There must be something in the oven.'

She had the front door not closed. Ship's steward looked past her, to the street.

'How do you come here?' he asked. He did a step forwards, he drove by her, he smoke her, he was still a few steps, when he was outside. He looked to the left, he looked to the right. The street was empty. As if he were still a lover expected that neatly remained outside while they wait the bunch of inspected. A nice man with blue eyes. Youthful. The type for those who desire is an inconvenience which others him daily harassment. He knew that type, visited him in his dreams, lard characterised the history of his life: the other man who remained invisible but yet always there was every second of the day.

Far away from the corner played a child with a tennis ball. No lover. No childhood love. An evening in the early summer. As there are so many evenings. The promised to be warm, hot, humid and stuffy, good for the sun worshippers. Ship's steward was not a sun worshipper.

'Met the taxi,' she said.

Then he went back inside and closed the door. He picked up a promotional leaflet. What did they need? What came claim them? The children were too old. Which were of no more. Who had friends about who they seriously spoke and even more serious thought. Friends with whom they could imagine the rest of their lives to wear. He had already been discussions about engagements captured, not even irony. With Rings and al. The marriage was working on an offensive. An indestructible institute was it. No war could ertegenop. The atomic bomb, which perhaps.

But the eyes of the wife to the spoke he made the reservation. They looked at him very friendly, almost soft. She looked not angry or distant, they claim was perhaps nothing. She was, he could not pretend that he had not seen the, emotion.

They saw its past he thought. And she thought: Jesus, I have lived all these years? This is the man with whom I have over two decades spent at intervals, yet? This was my life? They saw something unmistakably of her was and what they nevertheless could not at home.

This again called for a ship's steward the desire to and giggle. To laugh hard and long to liberate themselves from a voltage on which he is no Council knew. Inconvenience in first protrudes easy snigger, later in silence, later again in sex, and then comes the silence returned. The smile which would overcome everything, including the past, remained Off. Not even a smile appeared on his face.

He remembered, now the mother of his daughters after years of resistance against him, was the birth of Tirza. Waiting in the hospital. There was no private room free. A piece or ten women had decided that night all at the same time to give birth. Early in the morning was he went home. He could not. He was fled for the blood and home he had brought the crib in readiness, waiting for a call from the hospital.

'You of Far?' he asked.

'of the station.'

The neighborhood was heaping criticism of her departure. Months long. They could not get enough. It was progressive, had a hate imperialism, but the ability to speak shame not deprive dropped. From pride he had as far as possible for its included as the gossip him at the butcher, the greengrocer or simply on the street. 'It was also not,' he used to say. 'For the children this is much better.' ship's steward had done as if it were all completely to the wish was to expire. With mild irony he had the disappearance of his wife reasoned. And if people asked him whether or not it was difficult for the girls, he said smiling: 'A large part of her dressing room is still in my cabinet, so they will be in the next few days will be emerging in the lives of her children.'

But that emerge was therefore not came, despite the dressing room. To that evening, six days ago.

They looked still reasonably good, he found. Less heavy done. Tanner, though, as if they were regularly under the couch was.

'Get inconvenient?' she asked the question without audible spot.

He looked back to her case. Also the suitcase looked fairly. After all those years.

'I am to cooking, but really inconvenient you can not call it. I mean, what is wrong?'

She took a step in his direction, as if they wanted him hug. It was a manual pressure, a firm.

'I wondered how you went,' she said. 'And' In Tirza the mention of that name appeared a small and sad smile on her face. And when he was the name of his youngest daughter heard he shrank also collapse, as though it were a whip hard with him on the spine had beaten up.

Tirza, how would Tirza?

That was the emotion that he had seen. They had gone, but they had obviously missed something. There was a piece in her life. On a day she no longer see her daughters grow up. The puberty for her youngest daughter knew they mainly from hear say and perhaps not even that.

And now they stand eye to eye with which had stood daughter, urged the consequence of her life through to her.

His hand was released.

Ship's steward wiped hand as inconspicuous to his pants. The sweat of the other stuffy him. It was him too intimate. How onkwetsbaarder the other seemed, the easier it was to be a predator. If he had learned something in his existence as a landlord, was it that the tenant does not man could be because of people you were weak. You admitted, you said: 'I leave this repair, but I leave that to repair, a new bed, no problem. A new cabinet, why not?' ship's steward leased his upper floor furnished. The furniture enabled him the tenant if desired without too much legal red tape to remove. For this reason alone if the tenant does not man, because then came the sentiment in your back to top if the hiccups, and you could find the tenant does not remove more rücksichtslos. The weakness, he abhor the weakness. He hated the weakness.

The sweat of the wife was vulnerable sweat. That is why it had to be wiped off. He looked back as if he was expecting that Tirza would, but Tirza was not there. She was on top of her room to call. Or she was in the kitchen, she loved be quiet and listened to the call. If a consummately spionne. He remembered again the days, the hours of her birth had preceded it. Crazy that those natal him was so much better than that of its memorable oldest daughter. He even remembered the face of the gynecologist. A man he later a good bottle of wine had brought a bottle of certainly thirty guilders, with Tirza on the arm. 'It is they,' he had said. And he had the man a shaggy haired baby shown with brown unstitched, as there are so many shaggy haired baby. Tirza was badly creased pitch came in the world and it took a long time for the wrinkles disappeared. The gynecologist had adopted the wine and the father congratulations. Thereafter he had still said: 'Heavy childbirth is often something beautiful on, something very special.' The gynecologist had looked closer as a professional secrecy told us about.

'It goes well,' said ship's steward. About his arm bungelde the tea towel, in his left hand he kept the advertising brochure that he has a couple of times double-folded and when eight-free in his pocket.

'It goes well,' he repeated. 'Tirza is successful. Two nines. Consider necessary. A single seven. Nothing less than a seven. Next week gives them a feast.'

He told the proud, but when he was finished speaking he remarked how absurd it was this to Tirza's mother to tell us. This was so why near the shame of her had spoken, and probably of him. You may not be strange for your children. They are for you, you not for them.

Now he is not a promotional leaflet more in his hand, he had to withdraw his lower lip, what he did more often if he did not understand something, if he is not somewhere came out.

'What is good,' she said. 'Die nines. But I had not expected otherwise. For what?'

'For Which what?'

'For which she has received that nines?'

'For Latin. And for history. Did you know that or not? Have you heard nothing? Nothing at all?'

Its ignorance astonished that annoyed him, it is even a little. Someone had decided to come back, how temporary, had discreet can inform themselves about the latest state of affairs concerning her daughters and man. It was a whim, this return, as many in her life.

'Of whom I had the be heard? Of Ibi? I have already spoken times are no longer. They never call.'

He saw that they can go to the manual looked to his lower lip sat. He knew that they were annoyed at this old nerve pull and he was there.

They never call. The wife was of the opinion that her children had to call her. And not vice versa. It was her.

'If I not noisy,' she said, 'we will go inside?'

They were indeed ever more easier in the hallway.

'Come on,' he said. 'I have just in the oven stopped. I mean… The is no longer in the oven, but it was there in.'

They looked at him. She had the hinge cover of the suitcase already in her hand to him to roll in the room but when she let it go and said: 'I understand what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. You are as, well, as always. You are unchanged.'

We had the Christians and other believers does not take into account. That the weather with the killing in paradise sometimes in a most uncomfortable adventure might result. Politeness calls in the sky. A manual pressure which should have been a hug.

He helped her silently from her coat, a light blue raincoat that he did not know. It was not a cheap jacket, that he immediately recognized. They did not cheap stuff. He hung the jacket carefully.

Slowly calmed it. Ship's steward had everything under control again. This was how life went. People have disappeared. And sometimes these people returned, one evening in the early summer. Just at the moment that the oven dish in the oven had done, but that they could not know. If you looked back, disappeared the careful planning, inspirations were visible, coincidences emerged, wherever you looked reigned the combination of circumstances.

Just now that he is calm and tranquillity itself, it seemed they to hesitate.

'Or is there someone?' she asked. 'Have you someone?'

Ship's steward heard his youngest daughter come to walk from the kitchen. As he had thought they had meegeluisterd. Curiosity is a sign of intelligence, but an intelligent child also means that the parents always on their guard against. With an intelligent child you never know who in the ootje. Tirza threw her father a devastating look and walked up the stairs. Along her mother, along the blue raincoat of her mother who so gaudy to the coathanger depended.

'I have someone?' asked ship's steward when his daughter the door of her room had closed noisy. He had to laugh. 'I have someone? Not really. No. I live here with Tirza. It is of course to be somebody but not like you mean it.' ship's steward smiled still. There he could not stop, he felt embarrassed. 'Come on,' he said when he was finally to scorn. He went to her for to the living room. He remained at the bank, but they did not sit. They turned around to as if they were all agree wanted to look good. As if there was someone else, a strange, in this room where they had lived for so long, where they had been evenings, with him, only and with guests, where they had given celebrations, where they cribs and boxes had put down, where her daughters had crawled over the ground, where they occasionally had painted still lifes.

'There is not very much has changed,' she said. 'You don't. As has been said. Basically unchanged. You have everything behind paints?'

'De bookcase is new. As you can see. The chair there too. Tirza has chosen. There is something changed.' her question he ignored deliberately. Who is not a question purports to have heard, may also not fresh sermons. If house boss he heard the most questions are not. This forgetfulness was an excuse that he could years ahead.

They did not look at the seat that had investigated, nor Tirza to the bookcase. They started just stand in front of him, they studied the ship's steward. Like a painting in a museum that you only know from postcards and catalogs and now you right opposite the original condition, trying to understand why the sudden a tad disappointing. Not much, a tad.

'You have the bunch of not let paints,' she said after a few seconds. 'I see it, everything yellows slowly. You will maintain the not good, inside. A house you should also be maintained inside. But for yourself you have good.'

They sounded satisfied. But at the same time also surprised. What she had expected? A alcoholics? A patient? Trembling hands, a poorly seated dentures? A WRECK with bright moments? In that bright moments had nothing better to do than to leave everything to paint, the parquet to paint and sewage pipes to refresh?

That he is without its had manifestly exceeded rescued its expectations, but its also disappointing. As the lack of paint on walls its disappointed.

There was more than a fortuitous agreement between the lessee and the wife. Both found them always a plafonnetje that necessary in the paint had to be always something to they encountered in the House what was time for a replacement. They had no idea of money. They could not imagine what workmen today for an hour jobs asked. It was always there was a complaint, in the case of the wife a complaint that disguised as love.

She did a step backwards. 'Are you happy to see me?' she asked.

The question came over him. The question about most did it.

'Happy,' said ship's steward. He looked at his watch. 'Yes, I am happy, but I am also to cooking. If I had known that you were coming i had more. You had to call you. The number has remained the same. But…' He had to take a break, not because of the emotion, but because he had to think of what he actually wanted to say. 'It is good to see you. You're curious, but in any case i.'

The astonished ship's steward that the words he expected to give decisions at the back with this woman is not about his lips came, they were not even challenged in him. Now that he could not rule they finally, he was they forget. He wanted to charming. Strong. The cane was not only unbroken, it was not even bent.

'curious as to what?'

'To you,' he said. 'How the with you. What you do. How you live in. How did you perished.'

'How I live? Why have you never called? In those three years. I told you hear. In scents and colors. I had not kept secret. If you had taken the trouble to call.'

That was typical. They disappeared and she expected that her chasing ran to gather information about its ups and downs and to ask them if they still needed anything.

'Dat seemed to me not good,' said ship's steward. In order to call 'yours. I wanted me not to be imposed upon us. If you have a lot of hungry, can I still a egg packs. I also had your new number not.'

'I am not here for the food,' she said and she took place on the bank to which they had been for many years. Ship's steward again let him. Tirza had the learning sorted out. Together with Tirza he sought much.

'something else than an egg perhaps?'

'Jörgen, I have not hungry.' she said it is not, it proposed the with emphasis.

'You do not need to have hunger to eat. I am working on my oven dish. That is famous. Tirza's girlfriends love it. We do not eat because we are hungry, we eat since the meal time.' He said it as a teacher who a book tries to prices which he knows that the pupils there is nonetheless a hate will have.

That view was to prevent its familiar, the tone of the corrector, the tone of someone who has furnished the other sins errors. 'I not,' she said. 'I do not eat more because it is time to eat. I obey not more to absurd sentences. I eat because I wanted to. I am not here for your oven dish.'

When she stuck a cigarette. Her purse was new. A tad too hip and too young for its age. With all decorations. Ship's steward thought on the basis bags from the friends of Tirza. Early in the morning, after celebrations, they stood in the kitchen with their bags, with beads out pieces of glass, everything could serve as decorations today. Ship's steward sorry if he came in the kitchen in his pajamas and Tirza found with her friends in boisterous condition, smelly to smoke and sometimes also to stagnate and food. Soon he donated than a glass of milk in or picked up a apple of the fruit bowl and fled back to his bedroom, or in fine weather in the summer to the barn, where he next to the rake and the machine sit back and wait for the saw went until the girls to bed or had gone home. Tirza was popular. A single time he had strange boys found in the bathroom, boys who he did not know and which also not on him were proposed, but who had stayed overnight. Boys to whom a ship's steward had to ask: 'Would you like a towel?' Because Tirza slept. Once they have slept, they slept through anything. The boys were always wake earlier than his daughter. They do not really refreshed smoking, which he figures who from time to time in the bathroom found. What the boys of Tirza had in common was their smell. But now she had a fixed friend and or that smelled had a ship's steward have not been able to establish. He feared the worst.

'you smoke,' he said, with his look still in her hand bag.

He sounded concerned. What Rather irritated him. What he said was too personally. If her cigarettes it slightly bemused. Its lungs were her case. Her body. Her body was no longer his responsibility.

'Stoort the?'

'Not really,' he said. 'My not. I question whether it Tirza an ashtray. I have the ashtrays stowed.'

He turned to the hallway and called: 'Tirza, you can an ashtray for mama?'

Ship's steward remained Tirza wait, but did not respond. She was probably in her room to call. Real passion you never let loose. They also discussed everything with her friends, down to the last detail. She had ever told him during the food. 'About me?' he had asked. 'You Talk also about me?' 'natural', she had responded. "You're yet my father. Why should I not talk about you?'

The wife smoked coarse further.

'Tirza,' shouted ship's steward now slightly harder, 'an ashtray for your mother. Please.'

He looked at the cone of ash that slowly became bigger, which soon would fall within the scope of his eyes and he could not keep from, he seemed hypnotise, he said: 'It is always very helpful. Otherwise than in the past. Even when they learn was for her graduation she was out to help me.'

Ship's steward talked as in a dream, he dared to speak out, like he had more to himself than against her as if there were no one else in the room was, he alone. As if he were for rehearsals for what he was going to say if the others finally arrived.

When Tirza didn't appear he went itself but to the kitchen and was looking for an ashtray. Where were they? Nobody smoked more in this House. Visit for a ship's steward was rare. Also the worker did not. They drank a glass sometimes, but smoking, no. And if the girlfriends and boys of Tirza smoked, what they rarely did, than they went out to the garden. Or they did the hanging out the window. Tirza did not smoke, but of boys.

He found no ashtray. Ship's steward had the ashtrays properly stowed in the expectation they never needed will have to. That is why he grabbed a dish. It was not correctly, but for now it went. Correct, that was for a ship's steward where all morals amounted to. If he could rely on his defense, than it was that he had been correctly.

When he came back in the room he saw the shaft into the left hand side of the spouse. He 1722–1776 and the dish its asked them whether they needed a wet wipe. 'I have refractory hands,' she said and they laughed. Just as in the past. People change hardly. They find a new environment for their obsessions. There are wrinkles, there are teeth, there break bones, components are replaced by machines, but they did not change.

When she was laughed at she said: 'If you like it, if you want to, and I know that you would like to eat a snack, i but don't bother. Enter the leftovers just me. Sloof you are not out.'

Ship's steward, freeing a vase with roses on the table which was the flowers had Tirza a few days ago. He made place for the wife who meeat a snack. He asked whether the suddenly surfaced again wife had courage inge drunk in a nearby cafe for they adhere to its old house had gone, with its suitcase.

'Cooking is no struggle,' he said soft. 'It should get closer to the action. I have a family. I cooking. That is my task.'

There was already covered for two. He covered the table long for the food was ready. Sometimes he started immediately after he came home from his work. Because he could not wait until Tirza and he would be to that table, because that moment the balance recovered that always would be lost. Tirza and he, to table, eating. The appearance of a family and more than that, an alliance. A holy covenant.

He took a board from a cabinet. He remembered his duties. The oven dish, the oven, there had to be cooked. He was uncomfortable with the board in his hand, as though he did not know whether the visit could only. Or the had to be invited to come to the kitchen. To talk about this and that from a distant past. How you say something? 'you also note to the kitchen?' when he put the board on the table. There was covered for a third person. The wife. Tirza's mother.

With a bite note-food was started. With a lamb chop the family had a ship's steward began. Jörgen had cooked for the woman who later the wife would prove to be. The man was better than the birth cutlet. He thought to the case that in the corridor. The first time that she was with him to eat she had a homemade cake in itself.

'They changed,' said the wife, with its view of a painting that hung on the wall. She had itself hung, she had also painted itself, and ship's steward had never bothered to remove it, although Tirza had a few times asked: 'Must we the rest of our life that fruit bowl look? It is absolutely essential if?'

'Who? Tirza?'

The tea towel was still on his arm.

'Yes, Tirza. She is beautiful.'

'They shall become a woman,' said ship's steward. But when he said, he had immediately regret it. A woman? What was a woman? Well, they had received and something of breasts hips. But when you actually was a woman? What made him a man? The genus part that between his legs bungelde?

He did not know what he had to say about Tirza, what he wanted to say about her. That is why he said: 'she was always nice. As a baby she was badly creased pitch, but that are all babies. Ibi was less badly creased pitch, which again had other defects. If you want to drink something?'

They shook her head. 'I unzip the itself. I am also completely satisfied.'

He stared at her. The satisfied woman who in the past that was never, despite all still lifes that she had painted. But now she was therefore satisfied. Somewhere in the story hid himself the good end, he was there not only.

It was a ship's steward to the kitchen, they would probably only be entertained in the living room. He dish pushed back into the oven. He then moved a bottle of white wine open and he put the egg alarm clock on a half hour. Ship's steward could not cooking without egg alarm clock. Then he explained the cookbook back on a stack of other cookery books.

In the vicinity of the oven he continued. His hands slid perilously on top of the counter as if he was a blind, braille to read. If the food on the table once stood, would it something to within shooting against the visit to say. 'you have traveled a lot?' or 'lives you mother still?' when they walked away with him, her mother was seriously ill.

He thought about its work, Tirza and the trip they went. Botswana was a malaria area, he had read.

The egg alarm went and he brought the oven dish with unmistakable love to the living room. The wife was on the bank to lie down. She had her shoes pulled out. Its eyes were closed. It smelled of cigarette smoke.

'I will also support framework for addressing you,' he said and he set out the food on the table.

They did not. They were all the vast and happy with them, as if they had never been away. As if they were just what currants balls was to get them and on the road was delayed. A file, was not been more, its three-year absence, a file of human flesh.

In the hallway he cried: 'Tirza, food!' He persuaded the cutlery and a glass for the guest and the bottle of wine from the kitchen.

'Where I will sit down?' asked the wife when he had the wine pouring. All glass is exactly the same vol. Each little thing there was a. He lived in his role. The waiter, the house Knecht.

She was a slow of the bank. They walked barefoot to the table.

'Here at the head,' said ship's steward. 'Dear is always the visit. You have beautiful shoes. Italian?'

'French'.

They sat down. Ship's steward scooped up. Again he cried, now harder: 'Tirza, food!'

On the signs was food. But nobody ate. There was on the child waited.

'a gift,' said the wife, while its fork already in hand loved. To the ring finger of her left hand was a jewel that he did not know.

'What?'

'De shoes. A gift.'

'What kind. Here you have also a piece or ten pair of shoes. Did you Know that? I wanted to send them, but i did not know where to.'

He took a piece of bread from the bread basket that already a few hours on the table.

'I thought you they would have given away.'

The bread was dry.

'surrendered to whom? Your shoes you mean?'

'My shoes, yes, I thought that you would be discarded. All my stuff that you would do so. I thought. Still not as crazy thought? I have bought everything new.'

'Why your size? I know nobody with your size. You have a difficult measure. Tirza, food! Everything is exactly as you have it stored in the cabinet. You had to be able to come back to it.'

They looked at him, inquiring, as if they wanted to know whether he is a joke.

'My feet are a jewelry, I am told,' said the wife after a short pause. They laughed friendly. She did her best, as far as was clear. But he also. That was there become of them: two people who did their best. Who knows they were always been that.

'Have you viewed them? I have my jewelry well maintained.'

She went a bit on his seat and stretched her feet along the table. The nails were pink dyed. The tip of the toes Hofmeesters reached upper leg.

He anxiety.

With the dry piece of bread in his hand and threw a glance at the bare feet and the naked lower legs of the spouse. The toes that his pants touch anything. When he crossed the dry piece of bread in his mouth and began to chew.

'You have nothing to say, after all these years?'

"Something To Say?'

"Something an intriguing sight. Do you like me to see again?'

'On your feet do you mean? Something an intriguing sight?' The bread was very dry, but he had no meaning to stand and the side to be toasted.

'You know how important certain things for me. You would have something to say hartelijks, after all that time. You will still feel.' She moved her toes a few times and ship's steward threw another view on her feet.

Cordiality, that was so there you expected when you wife again after three years on the pavement.

'Your feet are unchanged,' he said.

'Is that all?'

'I think so.'

'They are a jewelry, Jörgen. My feet. Many have looked at them. It is often said to me.'

When she made her legs back under the table.

Ship's steward stared at the flowers. It was an expensive forest. Perhaps thirty euro. Of those who had received Tirza who? She did not have a name. They rarely mentioned names of boys. At the table they spoke about everyday things. The news, the food, the weather, her friends, the school exams, a single time came to her trip around the world. But political calls avoided them. About Africa were different they believe.

'I think…' started a ship's steward. Because he did not know what he thought, he took a break and at that time he heard the stairs and get rid Tirza he decided that it was no longer necessary to make its meaning. That was the Tirza an intriguing sight and hartelijks something to say, if there if necessary hartelijks something had to be said, what was doubtful, but if it should, if necessary, than it was on her to do it.

'Gadverdamme, what stinks the Tirza here,' shouted. She wore a white bloesje, she was dressed. Otherwise they are not verkleedde for the food. Unless there was visiting. And if there was visiting over the past years, than was the Tirza's visit. Only the worker came from Ghana for ship's steward, but they could visit in the strict sense of the word are not mentioned.

The daughter Went and sat. Ship's steward took his glass and said: 'Let we drink, Tirza, on the unexpected visit of your mother. Let us make drinks that all of us here, almost all together again, sit as a… well, if a family. And that we are healthy.'

The daughter had its glass already raised, but put it down and said: 'Daarop drinking i not. And here it stinks, Papa you can smell that not? She has just sit Paffen. There must be no smoking.' Tirza Also could, if they wanted to speak, as a teacher. Its Dean had once said: 'They is a born leader, they shall take the initiative. They will always comes first and then drag the others.'

There was a silence. Ship's steward arm of the nerves still a piece of dry bread in his mouth.

'We drink…' started a ship's steward.

'No,' said Tirza. 'I do here not participate. To this rubbish.'

They prakte with its fork hard safe in the oven dish of her father.

'Well,' said ship's steward, 'on the life than. On your list of marks, ok, Tirza? On your final exam. On your future. On you.' before someone could make further objections, nam ship's steward quick the first sip. The wine was not cold enough but it went just. On such a night as this was much.

Hofmeesters casseroles were better in the past have been successful but as long as there was eaten everything went well. It was under control, the evening, the company, the family.

After a few snack persuaded the wife the sunglass of her head and she asked: 'And Tirza, how are you? I told you that I you father personable found.'

Tirza peuterde a trickle comes out of its cheese knife. There was also cheese through, it was a recipe from a French cookbook. Tirza said: 'as if you so half-heartedly that what care.'

'Yes, that can me cares,' said the wife. 'Dat cannot even very much care. I have often thought to you. You are really personable.'

'?'

'Even more exciting. Than you already was. You were always personable, but you are now really, how will I have to say in full bloom.'

And Tirza replied: 'O, funny.' She at with long teeth. If a child at them. Ostentatious reluctantly. She played with the food.

'Funny?' asked the wife. 'What is funny?'

'Funny that you remember that I had also previously was personable. Funny that you can care less what the with me. I have noticed that the last few years. Say: Nothing.'

After this little incident at men silently. But the nervousness had taken possession of a ship's steward, even more than just now, when he had stood in the vestibule and to the case of his wife had a look. That is why he is still only a couple stuffed his willie pieces of dry bread in his mouth. He worked for the complete contents of the bread basket. It had to be. Discarded was sin.

When her board was practically empty, asked the wife: 'What is this for wine?'

'South African,' said ship's steward. 'Tirza and I have discovered the South African wine.'

'Discovered?' She snickered. 'What do you mean, discovered? What have you discovered exactly?'

'On Saturday afternoon organizes the liquor store just around the corner tastings. This will continue and i ve been Tirza. Not, Tirza?'

The mother of Tirza studied the label and said: 'Oh, you are just two turtledubs. On Saturday afternoon together to the wine tasting. What romantic. Who would have thought? You again as well with each other might find?'

'Papa,' said Tirza.

But the father did or he had heard nothing. He said: 'Tirza is particularly interested in South Africa, in the whole region there. Tirza is really interested in the whole of Africa. I say it so well? In the whole of Africa? Tirza would prefer by public transport from the southernmost tip of South Africa to Morocco, but that I have prohibited. Of course there is also little public transport. Public transport in Cameroon, what we must also contain proposals? The death. I have read that they are not even hearses, that they are simply the dead in the bus need to be taken to the cemetery. Under the arm.'

He laughed. The idea that you dead family members under your arm in the bus to the cemetery had to take, death a lot less threatening. If you but it did as if there are not as many on the basis there was also not so much on the basis. He got a shovel against his leg. That was for him the character to the crumbs from the bread basket to collect and to stop his mouth. Food was mercy.

'Dus you want with the public transport by Africa?' The mother of Tirza did her best, but it did not. She had the best of intentions, always had, but she was fully occupied by itself.

Tirza did not reply. They miniseries again against the leg of her father. Perhaps that was also a reply.

'I have said to her,' said ship's steward, 'dat public transport in Africa…' is a shovel.

'Tirza,' said ship's steward when his mouth was empty, 'Here I can do anything about it. Here I can happen to really do anything about it. For the change.'

Tirza shook her head only. They continued to shake of the head, if a toddler who actually should be sleeping and that of the fatigue has become dreinerig.

'It is not a question of whether you will be able to do something about this, papa,' she said, 'What is important is that I am not against can. I am not against. Do you want to stop? Please keep in mind.'

They emphasized the need for every syllable.

Ship's steward looked to her. The half of its portion oven dish was left untouched on its board. With the other half was played only. He understood very little of the people. Sometimes even got his own children it incomprehensible for. Trusted, but strangely. Just like the guys that ship's steward from time to time in the morning in the bathroom had found, also seem strange yet familiar. As if they were the whole night in that bathroom on him were waiting. On him and a towel. The friends of his daughter, for whom he was not more than a glorified supernumerary, while he would still like to be, he wanted to lie to itself no longer, something else that we have that.

'Where should I stop?'

'Met to do so. With this call. With this ridiculous call. You must stop, otherwise against me to do than otherwise. You must stop this drama, dad. Just because that man sit here.'

When they 'human' said, was its voting harder, they shouted almost.

'Doe i than would otherwise?' asked ship's steward. He tried both his wife and his daughter at the same time to keep in the holes. Just as if they were going to tackle them if he would lose the eye. 'I am talking different? I eat different? Or am I suddenly stopped slurpen?' He smiled for its joke, but he was the only.

'You guzzles not, but you are talking about more than different, papa, yes. Otherwise I am especially talking and you bend or you ask: "What does her father?" And then we wash. And you say also almost nothing. You are listening to what I say. And that is not very. Sometimes I ask: "What have you experienced today?" And you say: "Not much." I think the fine. That is who you are. You can not do otherwise. And that is still more than what they can. Only this call, this is absolutely ridiculous call, I can not against.'

Ship's steward felt the scale of the oven dish. That was still hot.

'SOMS I am talking with you, Tirza. So now you know. You know that very well. And I read you often from the newspaper. The funny pieces. Also you know that.'

'It does not matter, dad. On your way I love you. On your way you are very sweet. And that your funny pieces from the newspaper articulates while we eat, I find nice too. I think they are not always funny but okay. You can find them funny. And that is the most important. But may I ask you what, now we are talking now that we not funny pieces from the newspaper to read, may I ask you something?'

'Yes, of course,' said ship's steward. 'Everything, Tirza. Everything you want.'

'Why have you that people will not kicked out the door?'

Just as he had the tendency to withdraw his lower lip, but he oppressed that need. Ship's steward donated still what wine on, first, when the wife Tirza and then itself. He tried the wife a glimpse of understanding, but she smiled bland snacks without him really to note. Then he said: 'You are kicking women not out the door, Tirza, and certainly no women with whom you have two children conceived. That man is your mother. I have therefore introduced in place of her to kick out the door. That seems to me to be a good reason. She is your mother. It was. It will always be.'

Tirza's mother pulled a face that here a other parent was discussed. Another mother with another child.

'Met trouble,' she said, while they played with her sunglasses 'met trouble, Jörgen, you have two children. O, talk you could well, talk, talk, talk. It seemed sometimes just an erotic hear in our game bed. But in order to make children you must do something, Jörgen. Not do something, better to do so. You must use your instrument in the correct hole stop.'

Hofmeesters thoughts were also hooks to that erotic hear game. He had itself regarded as a silent, discreet man, but on others he was apparently not so.

'she has been left in the lurch,' said Tirza and they stressed the fork to the woman who not so long ago its feet on a ship's steward had shown. There was still some oven dish to the fork and which was now on the table cloth. 'They had perhaps reason for you to leave in the insert, papa, since she had probably all sorts of good reasons for this, but they had no reason, absolutely no reason to me to abandon its voting did over'. Ship's steward felt panic rising. A terrible panic.

'Not with your fork, Tirza,' said the father. 'Not to do so. There may be accidents happen.'

And he region on his hair, as though that would help, as if the call in a different direction would push, innocent. The summers which previously were better. School. Africa if necessary. Public transport anywhere in the world.

Tirza's voice sounded increasingly fierce. Ship's steward knew what it meant. There would be wept. Tears, there he could not against. His own weakness made him nauseous. Which of his children made him furious.

Soon he looked to the wife who quiet of its wine drank and there was still like it its not really. He had to save the lot, and now, nobody else would do. No one else could do so.

'You must not say that,' said ship's steward. 'They did not left in the lurch. She has done to personal development.'

The wife was sleeping. They explained its support framework. 'You can safely say that I would not be your uithield, Jörgen Tirza knows as well as I do that know the whole neighborhood. That you do not have to mention self-development. These loony euphemisms of you always. It was not a self-development. I loved it here. Nobody had the holding out here. No one who is normal.'

'Well,' said ship's steward, 'self-development. We will provisionally on account. Is that not a reasonable compromise? Sometimes it is self-development is the same as the somewhere not warmest days. There is not much of a difference between the A and the other.'

'Papa,' shouted Tirza, 'do not so stupid. Do not be so today.'

'I want to eat at rest,' shouted ship's steward, 'Tirza, that is the only thing that I would like to. In rest food. I have this oven dish in the rest position. I would like him to eat in the rest position. And that is going to be successful. As I am that for three years is successful.'

The daughter did with her left hand on table. A fork fell on the ground. 'I do not wish to have that man to sit around the table,' she shouted. 'I want that man never see more. Never more.'

Tirza stood up. 'I hate,' she was screaming. 'It would have been better if you had come here. It would have been better if you had never here. I would like that you were dead.'

It ran from the top.

Ship's steward wiped his mouth a few times, freeing the bottle of wine a few centimeters and asked: 'Would you like a desert?'

The wife stared in its glass and removed a piece of cork that ended up therein. 'As she was always,' she said quietly.

'There is still some of yesterday,' he said. 'I have made tiramisu. I always do on Wednesday. I can offer you. Or fruit?'

'They may not forgive.'

'I can also fruit salad.'

'They may not forgive itself. Can you forgive yourself, Jörgen, can you yourself actually forgive?' It and put the sunglasses back on, if a her band.

'Fruit Salad? I will make that for you? It is so happened.'

The wife was sleeping.

'Well,' she said, 'let's talk about something else. If you want that necessarily. How are the glass washer?'

'What glass washer?'

'Die man who once a month the windows did, that old man. How is it?'

'O THAT,' said ship's steward, 'Yes, it is dead.'

He continued to be seated and picked to its lower lip.

'You have to learn how to cook,' said the wife. 'There must said.'

'Dank you,' said ship's steward.

When he was on and ran up the stairs to the room of his youngest daughter. But halfway up the stairs he conceived, he remained equally and returned to the living room. He went back to sit around the table.

The wife was still. Not as a guest but as someone who was at home here. What they in the strict meaning of the word that was. She was never officially deregistered. The calls for the wife to go out and vote came here still to and ship's steward put them tradition on the small box in the hallway, until the elections were over and he with some melancholy found that the wife is not of its voting rights had made use of them.

'she has a boyfriend?'

'Tirza?'

'Tirza, yes. Of course. Who else?'

'I come sometimes boys against in the bathroom.'

'In the bathroom?'

'In the bathroom, hold it there they are often.'

'What do they do?'

'What people do in the bathroom. They take a shower. I suppose. They go to the toilet. I am not asking: "What are you doing here?" So inhospitable i am not. This is her house. This is also Tirza's house.'

The wife sighed deep and emptying her glass. 'And what you say than against them?'

'Dan i ask them,' said ship's steward, 'al will you may be surprised to learn that: "You want a clean towel?" I am asking them. But who knows do you have any other suggestions you might have better ideas, maybe I should they ask: "meaning in a glass of champagne, young friend? Was the fuck good? Hopefully with condom, but if not, then there is no man over board." You would otherwise have dealt with that, I know, you have always been jealous of the friends of your daughters. But I would therefore simply: "You want a clean towel?" and not more.'

'hold on,' she shouted.

Also it was quiet, said: 'We shout ship's steward against each other.'

'Yes,' she said. 'Dat is stupid. We do it again, and we have no further reason to shout against each other. We really have no reason to do that.'

They walked to the bank, picked up cigarettes from her bag, was a on and went back to the table.

'Is that glasses also French?' ship's steward pointed to the sunglasses with the ridiculously large glass they still as a kind of her band was wearing.

'Italian. The shoes come from France, the glasses from Italy.'

The smoke now also annoyed him but he said nothing.

'Have you set up its against me?' she asked. 'Or was it obvious?'

'It was all by themselves,' said ship's steward. 'I did nothing to do.'

2

'Jörgen, I have asked you. Has Ibi called?'

Ship's steward sweeps up his hands to finish off his apron. There displacing a few grains.

'Ibi,' he says, gazing to the mother of his children in her dressing gown. 'Ibi. That has to be called. But I have not talked to her. Tirza had her on the line. She is on her way.'

The wife is smiling, though it is not exactly a satisfied smile, she swipes with the back of her hand on his cheek. Remove them something to his nostril depends. He cannot see what it is. A small piece of shrimp, a huidschilfertje, something ondefinieerbaars green, perhaps wasabi.

'You need you shave," she says. 'You looks like a country runner.'

'I do. But first I make this a while.' He points to the raw fish.

She wants to drain. Ship's steward keeps her to her dressing gown. 'Let this celebration Tirza nou on about. Just let it all about Tirza. Keep you get as much as possible in the background.'

She looks at him also der Grijn transmit, as if he has made a joke. One of his old, known jokes. Then run slowly, and he has been working in the sushi with a surrender to him not more surprises. This is his life and this is his rice. I like him, in spite of everything. He likes it more than three years.

That evening, that first night of her return, six days ago, was not Tirza came from its room. After a while he was for the second time went upwards and he had on her door beat, but she did not respond. A minute or five he was to remain there are, without knowing what he had to do so. Hesitant, the various possibilities predominantly, anxious. In this way he stood for her door.

If the order is Tirza he had always been afraid, even before they became ill, all from its birth. A fear that he never had in his eldest daughter, not to the extent in any case, a fear that it no longer has released from the first moment he her in his arms loved: the fear of the loss.

'Tirza,' he had gently but when they called also on his praise not responded, he was down and had a second bottle of white wine opened, also South African. For an hour or eleven was the second bottle so empty if the first.

He and his wife had him silently drunk. There was not much to say. Her return was silent, calm, moving. Precisely because he is so by and by all day. So was the wife is not, as she was still there.

They snoof. 'Have you there something in stopped?' she asked.

'Where?'

'In the oven. I smell something.'

'I have nothing more in stopped, you smell once again things which are not there,' he said sharp.

Ship's steward waited a few more minutes, looked at his watch and said: 'It is late, I do not know where you want to sleep, or you have an address you regularly? In the event of friends?'

'With friends?' She shook her head. Is smiling, just as before. She had her hair to grow, he saw. It was first struck him not. He was not a good look. There were so many things to look at. Her shoes, its suitcase, its raincoat, her ring, its sunglasses, her lips. The hairs were longer than when they had gone, and that its not misstond

'In which friends?'

He had the answer. What friends they still had and what they had discarded, he did not know.

'No, I do not address controlled,' she said so yourself. 'I have nothing regulated.'

They sounded proud, as if they were the worst in Private person could rule. Something they always have liked to do. They had to constantly remind the fate that they existed. As if it could be forgotten.

He brought the dishes and utensils and the two empty bottles to the kitchen and when he is in the house room was, he said: 'If you want, you can continue to sleep.'

He had for a long time there is not need to think about. It was not a choice, rather the opposite: a lack of alternatives.

'Dat is sweet of you,' she said. 'I'm tired. It was a long journey.'

He had half a glass of wine. He went to sit down again. 'Well,' he said.

Ship's steward played with the two corks that were on the table remain there, showed them tops, began working on and said, when one of the corks on the ground was cases: 'Well, that is then settled.'

It was too late to now a hotel for her to find, or a guest house, it would be rude and kil, that too. A hotel for the mother of your children, that went against everything in which a ship's steward believed. He did not kil are rather warm. Glowing.

Love was a word that meant less than in the past — almost all words meant less than in the past — but there were consequences to half a century of life, and more than half a century ship's steward is already lived You showed some people inside, you gave their food and a bed. A sense of responsibility, a deep, everything by urgent sense of responsibility, that had the life left behind him.

He was set to the living together with Tirza. Set on the large empty house where he could quietly pecking without too many others. The absence of a partner was not a curse but, freedom, a harrowing, viewpoint, but still: freedom freedom. He was together with his child. And it was as if it was supposed to be heard, as if it were. They were inseparably, the child and he. Sometimes they already knew what he was going to say even before he had spoken. The guys that he from time to time in the bathroom had found, were nothing than passers-by.

It would also get used are, a guest. Although it was a guest the wife. He emptying are glass, picked up the cork on and went to the top. He walked along the red suitcase on wheels, which still jaunty in the corridor. What would it be? He wondered. Along the blue raincoat, and then along the room of Tirza, he saw that they had taken off. Only when he was in his bedroom has arrived, he realized that the wife him at an appropriate distance was followed.

She went to sit on the bed. On their side. The side where they had previously located. And where now books and newspapers layers. They picked up the books and newspapers and explained to them on the ground. Also the substance that under the books and newspapers on the sheet was, wiping them on the ground. Thus was the double bed is a real double bed.

She took her head in her hands and left it when again. Not only were her hair longer, they had also been given a different color. The color that they had ever had. Long ago. They explained to her sunglasses on the bedside table.

Ship's steward did his necktie af and hung over a chair.

'The mattress,' she said. 'That is still the same?' She dented the with her hands in, they tested the and he looked at the necktie, one of the gifts that he had obtained his employer had been faithful for two decades. A really nice necktie. Tasteful. The secretary had picked him personally in the Bijenkorf. It was also so much easier employers faithful to individuals.

'The mattress is as far as I know is still the same.'

'It is no longer good,' she said. 'And it was no longer good. You can not centuries on the same mattress.'

He took the scene in located on, they are sitting on the bed, commenting on the mattress. As if they were at home here, like it had never had disappeared. It was almost to laugh.

'You will sleep híér?' he asked and looked at his books and newspapers which months, no years, as a woman with him in the bed had located. In his life was the meat has become word.

'You have invited me.'

'But here?' He pointed to the bed, the mirror, the night tables.

'Where else? In Ibi's old room?'

'This is not a little strange?'

'Strange? Why would the odd? Sleep here than someone?' she asked. 'I lie on a place where someone else? I take a piece of the bed in that not for me is that?'

'Not really,' said ship's steward after a hesitation of a few seconds. 'nobody will be sleeping. I mean, I sleep here. And my newspapers.'

'Well than.'

He did his shirt and they were sitting on the bed her bare feet.

'But it remains strange," he said, more against themselves than against her. 'Everything to you is strange.'

They turned to him, so that they could see him, standing at the window, with the shirt in his hands. She said: 'You're as white, even whiter than in the past. It seems as though you still whiter. You may never in the sun? Women do not hold of white meat.'

He hung the shirt carefully on the seat, he went to sit down and did his shoes and socks. The socks were in the shoes stopped. Also the socks he had received from his employer, a publisher, employed after two decades. Two decades, now there were already more than three. They loved him to give useful gifts. Something you could attract. And what you could pull out again. He said: ('est you moved, i had no complaints. Not on my white meat. Not about lack of sun. For anything. The symptoms have disappeared. Only the tenant logs still from time to time.'

When he is not expected more, when he was a second forgotten that it was there, they whispered: 'As white that it is almost scary. You meat.'

Her voice, which was also not changed. Something in that voice had long been him against. From the moment the special, the exceptional in its ceased to be exceptional and only was a source of irritation.

Her dress had bright colors. A summer dress. They are mainly used to have black worn. Jeans, many jeans, that too. Until he had one night to say: 'You are not a teenager more. It is time that we discussed for another uniform.'

'As If you are sick,' she said. 'As If you die. Are you dead? Is that it? Jörgen, you will go to death?'

He walked to the bathroom, he did the light on and they followed him. On her bare feet. Her shoes were still at the bottom, in addition to the bank. Via the mirror over the sink looked at him. She was to be changed. Wrinkles where no first wrinkles, had been its face was thicker, or thinner. Now, in the bright light of the bathroom he saw it. In that minimal changes were blocked three years. Little is so terrifying, and calls therefore also so much hatred on, if the older women. It summarizes the expiration together, it has made to wreak havoc on all feast.

Ship's steward kuchte, moved a pot hand cream.

'My toilettas is downstairs in my suitcase,' she said. 'I have no meaning to tackle it. I have no force more. I am so tired. Have you got a toothbrush for me?'

On the sink layers two toothbrushes. She looked forward.

'De green is of Tirza,' said ship's steward.

They picked up the blue toothbrush, Put toothpaste on and began her teeth, which they themselves looked at in the mirror.

With dismay saw a ship's steward how his toothbrush in her mouth was gone. How to brush in her mouth was moved back and forth. Slightly irritated him that, did something him disgusted, the idea that are now toothbrush in her mouth sat was unbearable. He wanted to declare: 'keep it on, dirty pig, keep this immediately on', and the toothbrush from her mouth snatches, but he said: 'I can drop down a new address for you. That is perhaps fresher.'

'Doe no trouble,' she replied with a mouth full of foam. 'It is fine.'

'What are you saying?'

'Doe no trouble,' repeated them. 'I said. It is soft enough so.'

He waited until she was ready to clean its teeth. They took a long time. When did he carefully the toothbrush. It remained in addition to the washbasin, spend staring at ease, but. As if they had been yesterday and past week, a month ago. And he remained but coils. He Tempest the toothbrush as if that thing could contaminate it with something. A thought. A faith. A disease.

Its legs were thicker, saw a ship's steward now. Gently will not be as swollen aesthetic as before, less the unreachable. But he too was changed. He had two jaw operations. You could see it, he saw, she had to have seen, but they had kept silent about it, as they had been almost anything. And just as they had no questions asked. Why?

When he thought to Tirza. Still a few weeks she was here. A few weeks, more it was not. Then she went on a trip, on a sort of world tour, with her friend that he had not yet had met, but that he would meet, on her party, its big celebration. He had already asked: 'is perhaps one of those guys that i ever early in the morning in the bathroom have come?' she had him smiling at me and said: 'Oh well, PAP, that were onenightstands.'

He had smiled and they all tell us: 'Aha.' The world of the onenightstands and that of his daughter he had never directly linked with each other, and now that they are so casually did was he brought his piece. Not really shocked, or maybe a tad concerned. There was something for him ongemakkelijks to the combination of those words: daughter and onenightstand. Ongemakkelijks something. No more. 'I have the boys with a clean towel offered,' he said, but that he could not conceal the inconvenience and apparently Tirza saw that, because she said: 'Papa, don't worry. I really knows what I do, I am not fond.'

'No, no,' he had said, 'natural', and he had turned to continue with what he was doing, though it was he himself long forgotten what that was exactly.

While he began to brush their teeth, standing next to the wife, he had to that call with Tirza thinking, to the guys who were here, often in the semi-dark, fearing as they were to the lights. As if they knew that they were illegal in his bathroom, the bathroom of Jörgen ship's steward.

'You need have no fear,' she said. He turned around a quarter of a turn to so that he could view her better, he persuaded the toothbrush from his mouth. Where she had to take over? When he just turned back to the washbasin, arc is prone, spoog the foam pad and washed ashore his mouth. August came and than would have disappeared Tirza. He would only, but occasionally shocked by the lessee who had discovered a new breakdown. The next stage in his life, the Tirzaloze would start phase.

'You need have no fear,' she said again.

He took a towel and wiping his mouth. There was a painful spot on his lip, he had probably out bitten.

'What for?'

'For when I next to you Lig.'

He folded the towel. A white. That is not fully cleaned well had become the was in. There were still a blood smears.

'Why should I fear? For what?'

'To me.'

'For You?' He had to chuckle.

'Where is the soap?' she asked. 'I want my washing hands.'

'There is only liquid soap. Tirza uses only liquid soap, if they already have soap used. She says that soap is not good for the skin, that you will be much better with only some water can wash, only what lukewarm water.' He opened a cupboard and gave her the bottle.

She did her ring. He looked forward and early also wonder where her wedding ring. When washed her hands.

'If i just next to your sunbathing,' she said, while her hands under running water loved, 'You do not have to feel uncomfortable.'

He looked in the mirror to its breasts, his shoulders, upper arms. Indeed white meat. Raw. More so than in the past. A little dried out, also that. He had received a crèmepje for, against the flakes. Old meat. Old Men, he had on his work noticed, often thought that they still were attractive for young women, but the only thing was attractive for those women was their position and their dominant, their money. A tragedy took place between them, a misunderstanding that he has often had observed. A hormonal misunderstanding.

'I mean,' she said at you should think of anything, I mean, sorry that there are so uncomfortable comes out, but that it had nothing to do with us.'

Also a ship's steward waste now his hands.

'Dat what has nothing to do with us?'

'I here. My presence.'

'I have never expected it to mean something,' he said. 'You are here, you have a bed required. A man must sleep. Every child knows that. I have no meaning to Granted, I have taken everything as it came. I take everything as it comes.'

'Yes, I know all of this, a man must sleep, but I just referred to that you have no sexual attraction to me. That you do not need to be afraid of. That you do not need to do what you do not want to do. God, why let you explain to me so? Why can you help me not a little?'

Thoroughly washed ship's steward his hands. As if he were the whole day with his hands in the earth. As if he had worked in the garden. He had not forgotten tomorrow morning from the box under the sink in the kitchen, where he toothbrushes saved, a and get to the bathroom. To each his own toothbrush. The beginning of happiness was the correct allocation of the property.

'I do in principle no sense in which I am. But it is not always on meaning. Let me put it this way: you do things not because you fancy, you do them because they must do.' He krabde to his right arm. An insect had put it there. Perhaps when he last night a time with expose upper body had stood in the garden to his apple tree to look ahead to his tomatoes and pumpkins. Pumpkins were just weeds. If you did well, than dispersed the pumpkins is expanding rapidly. It was a beautiful night, the first beautiful night of the season. Not yet warm, but all nice. The promise of heat.

'I am not talking about work,' she said. 'I am not talking about the household or about dementia parents for whom you must make sure. I am talking about sex. It is not a question of need, that is a question of meaning. I said: "You have nothing to do what you do not fancy' in order to avoid that you would think that I am here in the hope that we will start doing something, that we again have something because I hope not, and I would like to make that not. I have no meaning in. I do not want more. I just wanted to see how you did. With you and with Tirza.'

'I understand you are not. I cannot understand this. You Raas Kalt. And it is late. Let us go to sleep.'

'I mean that we do not need to have sex, we will not do more to.' She talked as if they had to explain to a child that slowly from concept is, a children with learning difficulties.

'That is pleasant,' he said and he dried his hands. 'It would complicate things.'

'De boel?'

'Dit household. Everything is going well here. Everything is arranged. There is a worker. A new. She is coming from Ghana. There is a dad. Does not come from Ghana. There is a child. There is money there is food, there is love, it surprises you perhaps but there is love. And the last weeks that Tirza here is i no complications, no fuss, no voltages of up and up until they are intolerable. Tirza's figures are since your departure jumped. I am not saying that there is a relationship, but it is a coincidence. Do you not? Coincidence?'

He explained the blue toothbrush carefully in addition to the green, as he did every evening.

'I will not get in the way,' she said. 'To me will not be up.'

He leaned with both hands on the sink. Although it was not very hot in the bathroom, he felt the sweat under his arms.

'Why have you got?' he asked and his look of its averted. 'What do you want? What is there to discuss yet?'

'Dat i just said. I would like nothing. Look at how it goes with you. That is what I wanted. And I would like to discuss anything at all.'

They took his oorlelletje, the lelletje of his left ear, and nip in it. He stared at the washing machine. Which had initially been in the kitchen, but because they have stood in the way she had moved to the bathroom. It was one of the last things the wife had taken on its behalf, for her departure.

'Stoort the you I am there?' she asked. 'STOOR I? Will I continue?'

He rubbed his hands against each other in order to feel or the skin rough and dry and he asked whether you on his hands could see how old he was. He had read it. The fight against age had moved from the face to the hands.

'I don't,' he said. 'Or bother you. If you want to know to be honest, I do not know. Perhaps it would have been better if you had not been concluded, but there you are. That is good. And you want to continue to sleep. That too is a good thing.'

She had still been lelletje between her fingers. 'Ah Jörgen,' she said. 'My Jörgen.' She showed his oorlelletje. 'You Know? I never felt attracted to you. Never. Not even in the beginning. You know what it is, attraction? I mean, says that word for something? Except than theoretical.'

He rejected his face. He felt the stubble and he brought his face slightly closer to the mirror, not much, a few centimeters.

'Attraction, what for appeal? Where have you on?'

'The beast,' she said at is attraction. The beast. What you can not think, because the there is. As it is. Anything you can excuse. Anything you can smooth brushing. Something that is stronger than yourself. That is attraction. That is what people sometimes falls when they see another. It can also die, usually dies, you see the other still, but you do not take more true if a child with a sex. If a child with a usable slaughtered.'

He studied himself in the mirror and when also it, through the rear-view mirror.

"I feel no attraction for you,' he said soft, because he was suddenly afraid to wake Tirza. He continued to examine themselves while he whispered: 'If that is what you want to know if that is what you mean. I find your not exciting. Also never found. You may have the for other men. But not for me. I found your particularly representative. I was with you for the day without me to be ashamed, generally, exceptions, why I gave you selected. Because in my career at my house and a woman heard. And I thought you that would be. That You are the woman who was my career would complement each other.'

A little closer he brought his face at the mirror. Yes, his skin was less tight than in the past, less smooth. There lubberde something. A double chin developed. Previously, in that word was more than just their own history and thus blocked its, and those of Ibi, and those of Tirza not to forget. In a word that was the life clogged.

'But Jörgen,' she said, 'denk you that I never knew before? Do you think that I would never have seen? And have never felt? Do you think that I have never noticed how you looked, as you already looked? The revulsion which you looked. The panic.'

He did not reply. He focused on his mirror image. His gaze slid across the bathroom, on the marble, the bathtub, the towel basket that at the same time also a heating was so you in the morning in the winter warm towels. Everything is arranged, everything is clean. All of it as it was supposed to be.

'But you,' she said, 'You have not seen. Nothing. All those years. Blind were you. I wanted you just as you wanted me. But that you saw not. I found your old. But you felt it is not. You had to pressure. I do not know that, but you had to pressure.'

'Old?'

'too old.'

'too old? What do you mean? When is someone too old?'

'Old, Jörgen. Just old. Too old for me. My girlfriends asked: "What do you do with those ouwe berkien?" Listless i found you, not only in bed, also outside. So awful listless, on the pathetic, as if your inertia you made particularly so behave in the same way you. And if you're not listless was that few times you not was lethargic… than were you… oh well. And do you know why I left off? Because the men to whom I fell, the men who I say, exciting, exciting, to whom I was in love, sometimes weeks, months, all had something in common. They would not be good for my children, if they already wanted to raise children, but that was not even the biggest problem. The problem was that they had never been so for them would ensure, I thought, if you were to do that.'

He walked to the toilet, ruptured a toilet-paper, snoot his nose and threw the piece of paper in the toilet. He looked forward, how the in the water. When he travelled by. The noise of the pulling a weird way on the voltage, it seemed that he took a second as unbearable to break had experienced.

'That bothered us not?' he said, gazing in the pot. 'too old. Where did you take over? How many years there is actually between us? Do you therefore come to? Because you forgot something i had to say, at one time?' He snickered. The idea was absurd, be absurd, like some of the complaints of the lessee. Exactly as absurd as too old to continue to be dismissed.

'We care enough. And it is becoming more and more. The age difference is becoming ever greater. Mark you don't? It is not exactly how much we care about. It is something mentaals. It has nothing to do with years, with the date of birth in your passport. You are just old and you are already very long. You have ceased to be exciting. In so far as it ever was. Exciting, says that word you something?'

He took the roof is released from the enchantment that the toilet bowl had exercised on him. He turned to his wife. 'You're right,' he said. 'There was no lust between us. But lust is not the biggest, the most beautiful, the most important, the only. For example, i found the smell that spread repulsive. But I have never seen anything of said, because it is not a question of smell. If it still to smell, after two children, there is something wrong. Not? You would still about smells whine?'

'What smell?' she asked and she came a step closer. 'What did you smell?'

He put his finger from, hustle and bustle which is also on her breast bone. A eight gesture.

'You know. You know that very well. Your fragrance. The smell that you distribute. Always, twenty-four hours a day.' He ran from its road in the direction of the washing machine. Backing up against the washing machine he continued, casual and pensive, arms akimbo. A pose was it. As peaceful as he stood there he was not. He was tense. Each rejection, everything which he recognized chased it out rejection In the life he had recognized the rejection. Therefore also had the life he hunted.

'Where You're talking about? Fragrance! Do you think that you can afford? Because you have saved a few years without me? Do you think that you now suddenly someone? Better than I do? Stronger?'

The preheated towel basket was a gift. He had to install them at the same time the course 'Self sushi and sashimi' had been followed. A ideetje of the relationship therapist. Go together to do something. Go together to make something. Give one another occasionally a gift. Be made for each other.

'You may be younger than I,' he said, 'what actually is true. You may find me old and slow and have always found, on the pathetic, what a rather subjective observation is moreover…'

'An old draft horse.'

'Let me express an opinion. You may find that everything and proclaim the smell that spread was not to harden.'

He began his right hand massage as he sometimes did when he had spent a day with writing letters and e-mails.

'Can you describe this odor?' she asked. 'Can you more precise? Do you mean odour? Is that what you say, that I am the off season? We are talking about odour?'

They stood for him. He could not reverse, because behind him there was the washing machine. He could the individual pores on its skin distinguished, the black of her eyebrow pencil. Perhaps she equal, he had its gewalgd. But it was no reason for the disgust separation, disgust was the epitome of intimacy. The final point of intimacy. Where the inevitable came out. The familiarity of the revulsion, the invariability of the melancholy that they called. The desire once more of the other to be disgusted. And thus also a bit of yourself.

'not per se, odours. Odour, which is the sewer. The tenant complains about odour. Not every unpleasant smell deserves surtitles stench. Orphan nuanced.'

'I off season, is that what you say? Is that what you are trying to say?'

'No, no,' he said, 'You not listen, just as before. Unpleasant smell is not unpleasant odours, smell is unpleasant smell, and I am sure I am not the first who has pointed out that do not naive. Do not be so innocent.'

'Where did that smell come from? I ask you?'

He looked to her, right in her face, briefly but it was enough. In its main were remarkable things, in its main found shorts. The lightning hit from time to time. He was the forgotten, he had the displaced.

'Why do you want to know? I have not said that it does not matter? I would like to end this conversation.'

They took his arm, the arm that itched as something in his absence was inserted.

'I want to know,' she said. 'I have the right to know.' The word 'recht' sounded hard and effectively. As if they were indeed had 2 grants employees on something they claim came out now. Its share of the spoils.

'From your mouth,' he said. 'especially if you been drinking wine. But you drank each day wine, so that made very little. Than was that smell soon so predominant that from your toes seemed to and from your hair, from your whole body. It was unbearable. And repulsive. If i strange to you have looked, must have the located.'

Squeezing gently, almost tenderly, in his arm and asked: 'you can smell him now? That smell? You can smell it? He is again?'

He shook his head, confused and irritated. Hunted he felt, through its presence, by its questions, by its proximity. A few hours ago he was started to make the oven dish, really happy, but without be aware. Lucky you shoot until afterwards to within. Ach, when I was happy, stupid that I do not have better attention.

'I am colds,' he said, 'furthermore you have just cleaned your teeth. I smell my own toothpaste. That too is no fun.'

'Come on,' she said. 'smell.' She brought her mouth near his nose. They blew. He felt the warmth of its asem on his face. Once again they blew. Close she was now. He was able to see everything. But he looked not more.

Ship's steward picked up her with his left hand at her throat. He pinch in her throat. They blew again. He nip her throat close with averted face. He set out a force. 'way to go,' she whispered, 'way to go. I must call the police? As in the past, Jörgen? Should I call them back?'

When pushed it. They fell against the wall next to the bathtub. But they are not required had for a long time to recover. She pulled the shower curtain aside and spoog a few times in the bathtub.

'Now I know the,' said ship's steward slowly, while he hand her in her throat is crimped had opened and closed. As if he was to the physio and dutifully did the exercises that had been assigned to him.

'Now you know what?'

'Now I know why you have come. Because you could not outstanding. You couldn't bear that I was happy. You Liked the intolerable that i had built up a life with Tirza. That i without you just saved. You are lucky always unbearably found. If you have no reason to cry and to cry, you have the feeling that you're not alive. If you face is not behind a veil of tears can hide, do you think the best of the existence wrong to walk. Without tragedy is for you the life nothing. Nothing. A…'

'Call this life?' She pointed to him. They pointed to the washing machine and the towel rack.

He did not reply. He opened the medicine cabinet and looked for stuff that you lubricate the mosquitoes bulten can. They had to have some left of past summer. It was a summer with many mosquitoes. Also had a nuisance to Tirza had. He had bought a mosquito net for her, but they were killed on miraculously through, the mosquitoes.

He found nothing. Iodine, plasters, aspirin. No mosquitoes stuff. For the purpose of Council with the Nagel he hustle and bustle of his thumb in the bump.

'Jörgen,' said the wife.

'Yes,' he said with the nail still in are mosquitos Bult.

'Who do you think really attractive? I am not. I know that. I knew that for a long time. I think it is nice that you can still also have said in so many words. Better say anything. More of your heart no murder pit. But I am curious who you or find attractive. Surely you must find íémand attractive. I wonder whether it might be men. I have to ask you that never, because I was afraid that you would find that to confrontational, that there was nothing of you would remain nothing at all, still less than now. I was afraid that you would feel unmasked, helpless, that you would collapse, to substance would wreck. But now that we are friends, just friends, not more than that, who knows best friends, I thought: I can also inform the men to whom your calls? Boys? Young boys? Blond, in a tight jeans? Or rather a little Indian?'

She came to him again. He did not. His left hand was moving mechanical about the mosquitoes Bult. It had not really helped, the nail in the bump. The itching was at best become less intense.

Just two steps away from him they remained.

'Are you so fortunately now?' she asked. 'Because you finally can be who you are? Undisturbed. Still in the secret of course, imagine, but undisturbed. They come late at night, as Tirza sleep, or in the weekend, if they are staying at a friend? Only, or a few at the same? In the learning? With moustaches? And smooth back hair combed, still wet and shimmering of the gel?'

Also he saw on her face the same emotion that he suffered an hour or five had seen, when they had stood in the vestibule, with its case on wheels. It was an emotion that he knew of her not. Between all high courage by, between all its defensiveness sarcasm appeared occasionally something on her face what it strongly reminiscent of despair. A look, a trait with its mouth. Along the way they looked around him. The sound of its voice. That despair was new and made her unexpected fragile. And also by him. Where they broke, he broke.

'Go away,' he said. 'You're crazy.'

Crazy? That you have previously said to me. Crazy? Because I know it? Because I no longer have something with that crazy game of you? I have many years of silence, so that you could feel better, so you in your own fraud could believe, and quiet could think that everyone, including i, since it is also believed. I was crazy, because I you and your self-deception have left in peace, because I have never said: "Jörgen, it is better for everyone if you admits, just give it, we are no longer living in the nineteenth century. There are worse things." But now I also kindly ask what the situation is, I love, now I ask, from interest, from pure interest, in friendship, who you actually find attractive, loss I suddenly my sense?'

'You're crazy,' he repeated. 'Even more bizarre than in the past. Why should we be pronounced, why can you see things not alone — why you have no respect for the silence? Why is that so threatening for you, so unbearably?'

She pulled her dress over her head. She threw him to disregard such as someone who is in a hurry I am told. Not the haste of the desire, the rush of the habit. The haste of sleep. Now sleep. Fast. As you do if you are a night not have an eye close done in an aircraft that also was delayed. She wore no bra. He turned his gaze.

'Jörgen,' she said soft, 'This is where you are afraid of? Is this what you abhor to me? That I am a woman? Is that what you're odour had? The stench of the woman? You yards away smell, because the more spooked your for something, the better you can smell the, that is the law of the animal kingdom, not? Is this what you do disgusted? You can now say in all honesty, I would like to know. I take no pain. The truth can me no hurt. I think the silence painful. The lies. The collusive fuss.'

'Go away,' he said with curved head. 'Please dont go away. Go to a hotel. This evening. I will give you money.'

'What for?'

'For a hotel.'

They lifted her breasts up a little. She was a smooth brown, they could the topless sunbathing is still not let.

'you see them,' she asked, 'durf see your watch? These are the breast that you have children for suckling. You can see them? They are not going to become stuck or puckered as with other women. Nothing is so harmful to the skin if contract and expand, contract and expand, but my breasts are not shrunk. They have remained as they were. Have you ever really looked at it? Have you missed them? The feeling of revulsion that they aroused for you. That you can still also miss? But thank God there is still one thing bigger than you disgust, it is not, you desire to meet social conventions.'

He ignored her breasts. He looked her in the eyes and when that no longer went, he looked past her.

'I am sorry,' said he eventually. Because he did not know what he had to say. Because they stood before him, touch and unreal at the same time, but especially nude.

A naked wife. On age.

He brought his hand to his head and felt His hair, skull, he had also itching.

'What you regret?'

He was hesitant, he did not know what it exactly unhappy, he knew that he only unhappy.

'DI ate it was not,' said he eventually.

You 'was not?'

'De man to whom you requested.'

'No, that wasn't.'

She showed her breasts.

'but i was also not,' she said after a few seconds. 'I was not the person to whom you requested.'

'No.' He felt the wound on his lip. 'As you can say. If the must. Then we are quits.' He had the idea that the undertail coverts.

'Quits, yes. That is also a way to look at it. Quits. Yet there are knapperds in my life. Feel not guilty, feel not overindebted.' She said the dreamy and business at the same time. They summed up the facts on, now it was them here. The profit and loss account was presented to him.

'Knapperds?'

'Knapperds. One had rasta hair.'

'Is that it? How do you describe it? How the hot?' he thought it was a word for his daughters. Knapperds. And if he would have had to laugh, he had a great laugh. Thank and energetic. Long, itself on the upper leg banging. Mother and daughter looking for knapperds.

'De man to whom I wish is a knapperd, yes. My girlfriends said: "He is no knapperd, but he will be well on your children." They said: "He is listless, but he will cook for you and to do some shopping, remember." My girlfriends said: "He is old, but if he is dead you still have a life for you." Look at me and tell me: What do i for me? A few days ago I was at a fortune-teller netherlandsbelgiumall. "There will be a lot of change this year. Otherwise everything will be," she said. "Wait. Everything is different." Look at me, Jörgen. What else is?'

He instep by his hair, which their original color were lost. They were white. For the first time he felt something of compassion with her, for the first time in years she was not the woman who him and her children had left in the lurch to always voze happiness to search on a houseboat.

'You have two children with me,' he said.

'Yes, and? Should that now my consolation and my salvation? What is a woman without a child? A PROSTITUTE. Less. A whore can have children. And i told you already: to bring kids seemed to me to be perfectly suitable. I could find anyone who was better, Jörgen. No one who wanted in any case. But the children have not saved me. The powerless desire in the eyes of a man who has done me more than the begging look my daughters. Other mothers to think that the love is, but it is hunger, Jörgen, ordinary, death normal hunger. And then that screeching, sometimes night long, yes, did you ever ear buds in, and later did you find that not even more a screeching problem, you loved it, it gave you what to do, but i had other ideas about life than listening to the screeching of my thirsty girls.'

He did his best not to see her. Weather instep he over his head. He would have hairs can paints, as the color it was old. He thought that it had something that white. Something gedistingeerds, he found that he did. He felt that he by the color of his hair uitstraalde authority. But perhaps he was mistaken.

'I do not know what you want from me,' he said soft. 'I do not know and I am also nothing to, but I am not gay. And I also never has been.'

When that he possessed he had dreamed about this, that he had experienced it all in a dream, that he with her in the bathroom had been and that she was naked. She was often nude. In the summer they had parties for the children which they half or sometimes completely naked had appeared, to other parents complained of her behavior and ship's steward promise had to his wife to order and to ensure that they are also located on tropical days not nude among the children would be interfering, when operating under its apple tree India Antje played. Also not half-naked, he had himself to be added. Because he knew the wife. But in the dream in which he had already seen all the call was otherwise expired. It was not about homosexuals.

'What are you?'

'What would I do?'

'If you are not a uniform. What do you do? What are you in God's name?'

'Is that what you want to know?'

'Yes'. Perhaps. Now you mention it. I believe that I can have peace with what happened with everything that happened, if I finally know what you're. Who You Are, Jörgen. Who are you?'

Ship's steward outdated breath, his hand rested not more on his crown. There was a blue spot on its upper leg, he saw. She was overturned. Or she was kicked.

'I'm nobody,' he said. 'My ego was large but i have halved and you have the further crunched into a giant meatball. I am the father of Tirza and Ibi. Especially the latter. That is what I am, yes, not much more, but also not less. The father of Ibi and Tirza. I am father.'

'You know,' said they slowly, as if they had difficulty finding the right words as though they spoke a foreign language, 'What I wonder? Have you never thought: Wow, what strange?'

'What do you mean? Yee? What did I have to find strange?'

'What I mean? Come on, hold you do not Jörgen of Domme.'

'I do not know. I have no idea what you're talking about. I already have a time no idea what you're talking about.'

'Have you never thought: what strange that i my wife never have an orgasm? What strange. Perhaps it is time that I am going to do that, or go to learn how to do that. There are books about follow overwritten, educational videos about are for sale in almost every reform house. Have you never thought: I must agree to do something, even if only once. Have you never thought: what to. For her. What do they think of me? Perhaps I should study. Perhaps I should practice. To me do.'

He stared at her as to a mouse in a mousetrap that for twenty years in the kitchen is and where never has sat in a mouse. And on a morning, just a mouse. It is not to believe. You think of a hallucination. A mistake.

No, in the dream was all different. Not that it was a pleasant dream, quite uncomfortable even, but this was onprettiger.

'we will end this conversation?' he proposed. 'Dress. Let us go to sleep. Pull a pajamas. Or a t-shirt. And let us just go to sleep. As if nothing is wrong. There are enough t-shirts here. You pajamas there are. Everything is there. Everything has on your lying in wait.'

Weather slipped his gaze to the blue spot on her thigh. She was careless, and inconvenient. They are often bumped. The color of its pants Pink, pleasant pink was, salmon pink. Not that hard-hitting pink that hurt your eyes, but that it also had something. A little too exceiting, precisely because it hurt to the eyes.

'I want to know,' she said. 'There are a few things I would like to know now that I am here. This is one of them.'

He nodded.

"You want to know about it,' he said. 'You want to know about it. Now, what I can remember, but maybe my memory me in the insert, maybe I am already dement slightly, but what i remember is that I sometimes you have not delivered orgasm regularly but from time to time it happened. Not every month, not every quarter, from time to time. But anyway, I think it is ridiculous to talk about, at this point in time, I think it is unreasonable. I think it is inappropriate.'

'Never',' she said. 'You not, Jörgen. Others, yes. The man with the Rasta hair, almost every day. You never. Never, you hear me. Never.'

He did a step in her direction, as he had the challenge its resistance to the throat to intervene, his arm went up, but he already controlled itself.

'I have you,' he siste, 'two children. Is that not better than an orgasm, is that not a thousand times better? Where are you? Two children, two healthy children, weighs not against all of the world? orgasms'

He did a step backwards.

'Dus you is in the illusion,' she said, 'You wrong in the illusion — it is to whining and howl. Have you ever tried to look with whom you have lived all these years? Have you ever really looked at me? Where have you been actually? On which planet have you been all those years?'

He mass by his wrist. Since he had wrist sprains with tennis, mass did he often lost moments. Sometimes in the middle of the night, as he could not sleep, or in the garden between the wieden and saw by. There was a lot to weeding in his garden. And to saw. And then he was still the cottage of his parents in the Betuwe, with garden, and what for a!

'What do you want? I made a mistake. Is that what you want to hear? I would like to say it. I made a mistake, I have never stood still. I thought that I can do you a orgasm edited but it was a mistake, it now. Ok, congratulations. And it is too late, thank God it is too late to do it. It is over. Your orgasms are my case no longer and vice versa. Others will have to take care about you, others have you taken charge. Why you come to me you complain? You have three years had time of your life, you have three years of orgasm lived up to orgasm, if I am not mistaken, what do you now still pressure for such few years in which the life that something else than an orgasm?'

'a few years? A few decades you will mean.'

'You had do it,' he cried. 'If it really was so important, if the for you such a case, the self-made.'

'I have done,' she shouted back. 'yours i had nothing to expect.'

'Dan i understand fully not available to you and which complains ouwe cows here from the ditch will get out. Forget it. Spacious your memory. Make way for the future. Press and hold on your resentment and your resentment to legs. You are young. You have said so yourself. Beginning with something new. You are started with something new. That is what you did become you had been proposed, I am sorry but let me with rest, let Tirza with calm. She has had the already difficult enough.'

'Late?' she said. 'But Jörgen, nothing is too late. Nothing is really. You have dropped me my life. That is the state of affairs. I can make no place for the future. I can do in the future. Because it has yet to be somewhere, in my life. Here it is a lie. I am come to collect it.'

She looked around, they waved with her arm, they pointed to the bedroom.

Not good point, he thought. Typewritten. Even worse than in the past. Getikter than ever.

'I have the you returned. Three years ago. When you get to your houseboat had moved. As I already had received your. This was also the opinions diverge. I need you to nothing, is not to be forced children, do not lead to a marriage, not to sex. The were all your ideas.'

'precisely,' she cried, 'You say yourself. The were all my ideas. Everything we did, were always the my ideas.'

Both to hear something they thought and they fell silent. They have made to wake her. The child.

When they saw that they had made a mistake, she said softer than therefor: 'what that will i come, Jörgen. That is why I am here because I want to return.'

She looked around, slightly haggard, but no more insane, on a peculiar way less insane than ever. Sober and determined.

He sweat as if it were a tropical day was. He rubbed his forehead.

They looked at him, while her dress was in addition to her as if she had him thrown down because he was in the washing machine. He would have to pick him, he would wash him, he would give him the label ironing, when it gave permission to at least.

'which body part to the woman you will find actually the most repulsive, Jörgen?' she asked. Her voice now sounded blandly. 'The breasts? Or the buttocks? If you look at me, where disgusts me you than the most of?'

He felt his jaw. If he is calmly came the pain sometimes go back, it was actually no pain, it was aware that there was such a thing as a jaw.

'I have you already said that I am not a uniform. I love women.'

They laughed. It was an unpleasant and hard smile.

'But of what then? Of what for women? They need to be of Uranus or any other Solar System? The dwarves perhaps, female dwarfs?'

Ship's steward swallowed. He regretted that he had offered her to continue to sleep.

But he did not know how he had to solve the otherwise. She was published, with a suitcase, they had eaten, she had drunk after eating and drinking was sleeping. Only this he had not expected. He is not anticipated.

'Tirza sleeps. Let us talk gently.'

'I was asking you what. Of which women hold you? Of what kind of?'

His face stuck, his hands, and he felt his jaw, which attracted as a machine that is not properly adjusted.

'I have never them classified according to species. I am not your type. You not mine. Is that not enough? We now know is not sufficient, in so far as we do not have known for a long time? We have the beast together rarely woken up, might never, unfortunately. But we have two children. That is more important. The beast in us is dead.'

He walked to the washbasin, loved his head under the tap and drank. That the water was luke warm he didnt care, he drank eagerly.

'Not in me, Jörgen,' she said, 'in me the beast is not dead. You've done, but it lives. It lives.'

He turned the faucet and turned to. 'Mewe,' he said, 'but in my view it is dead and buried, I have overcome. I have it under control. I am stronger than the beast. That is why I am free and you not. Pull slightly. You vessel cold.'

'Your beast,' she said, 'really live i have never been able to mention. Live as beasts. Your beast from the outset was seriously injured. You have given me the illusion that the live and nuclear healthy, but that was only to entice me, to me here to drag. I was not here, I still had not taken my feed, or the beast died a plant that never get water. O, occasionally was the wake up, but that was all game. What I do not all have had to do to your beast from the winter sleep. That is a thing of the past, you are right. It is all a thing of the past. But now I am here, and as often as I am not, say the me Jörgen, otherwise I will go away with the idea that I spent all this time with a homo lived, that the father of my children a gay. That is not a matter, not that I have anything against homosexuals. But I say: what women winds you?'

He pushed his hands against his sleep as if he had a headache that he tried in that way.

'Just say it,' she said in her most charmingly voice, 'are the male women, women with moustaches, without breasts, women with short hair or no hair at all? Half the children? The disabled? Women with a wooden leg? Unscrew that they can before they reach your bed with creep?'

He shook his head.

'or are the are secretly men? Now you can say. I am your girlfriend, your best friend. Someone who knows everything about you and yet nothing very place because it all is behind it. The marriage. The affair.'

'I,' he said, he had to take and he had to take one more time while he tried the unpleasant feeling in his losing denounced, 'I hold of vulgar women.'

As she was quiet. Then she began to laugh. It estimates. She threw her head to the rear.

'How raunchy?'

'tacky. I do not know how. I believe that you should mention the so. Tacky. Now you know enough? Should we go to sleep? Is the past?'

They continued to laugh. She did not on laughing.

'I was not tacky enough? How raunchy should they are? For them to your requirements?'

'I don't,' he whispered. 'I do not know and you are tipsy.'

'Come on Jörgen, tell me. Tipsy, of that bottle of wine? Come on. You can tell me everything. Now you can tell us all about it. You need not be afraid that I am angry word. I will never get angry. I have no interest in further. I am indeed, as you said, there is nothing more. If you encounter a vulgar woman, the beast in you wake up again? Or is it really dead, as you said, dead?'

She did a step closer. He saw her breasts, not wrinkled, that were virtually intact. He looked to the side to the washbasin, where a green toothbrush next to a blue was ready for the morning.

'Cashiers,' he said. 'women who work in bakeries. Women in shops and canteens. What does the there is also increasing. Sales assistants, in all types and sizes.'

A hissing sound came from her mouth. Excessively long and exaggerated hissing. 'Series,' she said, 'is for you simply class struggle.'

'Color Plays.'

They picked him with his chin as the lady grasp a naughty pupil. Serious and ironic at the same time. The criminal belonged to the game. 'racist,' she said. 'Color Plays.'

She showed his chin. Do not disconnect. She came to some closer. They wanted him pillow. He felt the, he saw to the expression in her eyes. They hustle and bustle its lips on his. And he would answer her kiss, he had to answer her kiss, he could not be otherwise, even if it was to not to harm her, the mother of his children, the mother of Tirza. He could not refuse its kiss, if he so wished, he had to reply to him.

Although that was not easy from his position, he gave her a reprimand.

They stumbled. They balked at reverse. They cringed.

And just as it seemed as if they scheel looked. It was probably the light that was incorrectly, or its own fatigue.

'You see,' she said, together as if he has shrunk, her in her stomach had gestompt, 'you see? It is not true. The animal in you is not dead, it is wake up again. I have woken up.'

He repair welding depth with a toilet-paper his lip, which had started bleeding. He had bitten. The voltage, the stress. It happened more often. With the piece of paper he about its mouth wiped.

'I apologize,' he said.

She was she crouched. In addition to the washing machine. And she looked at him.

'I offer my apologies,' he said again. 'I tried to answer your question, because you insisted on. Because you wanted to know if necessary. I tried your question to answer as honestly as possible. That I had not to do.'

They stood up. They are standing. van Heeswijk The color of its cheek made him livid. But it was not active fury, a passive, a quiet and silent rage that would result in the ridges of the hair, the lowering of the sheets, the preparation of an oven dish.

'You see,' she said, 'The beast is there, the beast will be there as long as you are, Jörgen, only i can wake up the cushion, admit it.'

He looked at its near-naked wife with the red Wang, and he looked like something to remember, also seemed the past to come to life, but when the weather was way, such as when you know that you wanted to say something, something important, but you can not remember what.

'What does the also?' he whispered, especially against himself. 'What does it matter?' And when harder: 'I have you already said that lust is not the highest. I have already said that this is a House of love.'

'Yes,' she said, 'You've done. Each shop a new imagination, the shop must be for you a paradise. But does work? Or will it remain with fantasizing? The whole life nothing but a trinket there where reality is not to be measured, or where it is because those fantasies in reality something would be too threatening. God, I think about how i your semi-rigid sex from me to within had to come, it is a miracle that we even have made children. A miracle. And God knows what for art handles all the more I have had to play tricks. Jesus, what was the sad and inconvenient. And all that time I have thought that it was because you secretly gay was. But You found me not tacky enough. That was it. I was not tacky enough. And now? You will find me now not raunchy?'

He took the toilet-paper of his mouth. He looked at his feet. When he looked to the paper. There was a small dark red droplet.

'You're tacky,' he said soft.

The Left cheek of the wife was still dark red, like they have on one side violently blushed.

He sweat becoming worse and worse, increasingly fierce and more intense.

'Why do you,' he asked, 'if it all so sad and was inconvenient?'

'For the children.'

'Why have you started to children?'

'I have already said. You listen to me? You listen to me?'

They stood for him, just in front of him. In one quick movement they handle him in his cross. They took it there and she loved it.

She loves, he thought. But he did nothing. He was there with the toilet-paper in his hand.

'Is there one woman,' she asked, 'die not burst out laughing? Or are they so numbed that they do not even laugh more if they see you doing? There is one woman who so much patience if i? Because how long does it take before you finally have a rigid? A half-evening, sometimes even more. Or mud you tablets nowadays? Vulgar women. It would be to laugh if it is not to cry. Get them now and then by chance or must you find them? You have to make to the town? Or to areas where the color shows live?'

He took her back to the throat. He could not otherwise. They had it and they did not. He could not have let go.

'Doing it,' she said. 'shows that the beast is not dead. I admit that I made the wake up, as I always have to make you wake up. Come on, Jörgen. Give me a reprimand. But not so gently. As in the past. That is the only way you can. You have not otherwise. Only if you hit you say: "I love you." Say it!'

As sure as he knew that his daughter was Tirza, as sure as he knew him on his work had told us that he was too old to be released, so sure he knew at that time that her he hated. He was struck with the back of his hand. On its other cheek. Hard and exactly. So hard that they released him and fell on the ground.

Also it was quiet. Dead quiet. As if they were in the mountains. High in the mountains, where no other people were, only snow and stone.

And then he saw it. In the opening of the door was a big hug with Tirza in the manual. They still slept with a hug. A blue donkey, at least a little donkey that ever had been blue.

They stared at her parents. The wife in her pants have crawled the basis until they arrived at the washstand ophees which they can. Its one Wang was red and the other dark red, against the blue.

"There is nothing on the basis, Tirza,' said ship's steward. He did a step in its direction. They looked at him impassive to, one might almost say neutral, with the donkey in her arms.

'Not afraid, Tirza. Never fear. My Mom and I play.'

3

He shaves rapidly but thoroughly. Occasionally he feels a little spot has forgotten. You feel better than that you see it, in this light.

The sushi and sashimi are ready. He has generously repurchased; ship's steward is prepared for hungry guests. As always on these occasions he is led by the fear that there will be too little, that hungry people to go home or that they will say: 'They are very efficient at the Hofmeesters.' Sardines, he has also purchased. Later in the evening, if the vote, is he plans with garlic to fry. Simple but tasty. He has done so often on summer evenings, and always have had success.

Through the mirror he sees the wife by the transitional pecking, still in her dressing gown.

About an hour will be the first guests to come. The people who arrive early because they do not want to go home late, and that despite their good intentions than bind and only for four hours in the morning with stains on their blouse the bicycle of the lock. It is restful to young people watch that gradually getting hit a surplus. Their desperate attempts to adults to imitate, all our efforts to claiming what there has not yet been and — as far as he knows now — what there never will be. Their attempts to reassure ship's steward.

He washes his face, make sure the foam on the ears and the nose to remove and then searches a shirt with matching necktie from. A few seconds are quiet for he wardrobe in the bedroom, with necktie and shirt in his hands and looking at the wife who in its cabinets rummages where her dresses are sticking. Than he decides: no necktie. It is Tirza's party, something ever a party was called. Something you live at without necktie even though you the father of the party spirit, and even if there are teachers. Not all its teachers of course. The invitations to Tirza has he left. It is her evening. Her farewell of the gymnasium, of puberty, who also know of Amsterdam and of him, Jörgen ship's steward, the father who now almost ready with his father household tasks. The education is over, it will be time for themselves, even though he has no idea what he with that time should begin. The rest of his life is for him as a desert.

He likes the shirt for his pants, check the colors. This fits together? Colors are never its strongest side. Maybe you should put it this way: clothes have never been his strongest side.

Ship's steward has his favorite teachers. There is no parent evening without him passed. Usually he came far too early, the duty called, and gradually become friends he was with that obligation. Preferably he became friends with Tirza's teachers, but making friends is not his strongest point. When Tirza is still on the lower school, he had her teacher is also invited to the food. It was an enjoyable evening. At the end there was a pet game played. 'We need,' he had explained to his wife, 'de lady of Tirza make it clear how special Tirza is, and that we can best do so by her and to invite to get a bite to eat. So that they can see is its natural Tirza environment.'

The children were initially mainly an idea of his wife. One morning at breakfast, that it now appears as a breakfast in a different life, it would have said: 'We get a child.'

'How can that?' he had asked.

And she had replied: 'I have stopped taking the pill.'

'a child,' he said. "God, there are not enough on this world? And you know for sure that it was a healthy child is?'

But they only had said: 'If i had to wait on you, there it was never did.'

A morning long he was in the war of the idea, until it after lunch decided to accept the duty. He waited until the five hours and peddled my way to then was the bank, where he is a life insurance concluded without his wife to say something. It had to be a surprise, the money that would be released if he came unexpectedly to death.

This was a ship's steward father become Jörgen as a man of paternity not more clear and also not wanted to know more than that it was wise a life insurance before the child made its appearance in this world.

When Ibi once was born, changed the duty of nature. The first months was Ibi between mother and father in, although in her bedroom neatly a cot. But they slept better in the large bed, safe between the two parents in.

And when she was two, slept they still, which Rittes im Bunde. Sometimes he made his wife woke up to assign her to Ibi. 'Look," he said, 'look, how quiet it is to sleep.'

And then came Tirza. The wife had said: 'If we have one, there is still a second at.' ship's steward had kinked and a few months later he went back to the bank in order to increase the life insurance.

He picks up another shirt from the cabinet and keep it up to the light to see if there are spots in remain tight, but he likes the color not. He would like to be cared for and distinguished appearance. For the teachers who will be the friends of Tirza Tirza, for itself. Yellow is not distinguished.

Three teachers called him after the failure of the runaway wife, the teacher Mathematics, German and Dutch. They had heard it, something not stop, hold down and they spoke to him to encouraging, they knew the phenomenon, sometimes from his own experience, and they loved it how Tirza did it under these difficult conditions, yes, about Tirza he did not to worry. Mrs Excavating, the Dutch which also Tirza Teacher's classes teacher was, early: 'you might want to come to talk about them, also in connection with Tirza? You will find that pleasant?'

'Oh no,' he had replied, 'dat is not necessary. And pleasant, it is not.'

He found the pleasant that they called him, but about a missing wife was not too long in the public to be talk. That is why he continued to maintain that the drain of the wife completely according to plan expired. It even had encouraged. 'walk away you can not call it,' he said to the teacher Mathematics, 'it is more so that we have a time holiday of each other. I voted against its said: "Walking but road, you will turn back."'

If his favorite teachers do not arrive tonight, he will present them speak some other time or their write a note. To his feelings for them would do nothing to change that. From time to time he would think about. At least once a week, perhaps more frequently.

Feelings, it is a word which he also remains stationary if an attraction along the way. He depends shirts and tie back into the cabinet. A polo shirt is better.

'I had something new to buy,' says the wife. 'What do i need? The best I have taken on board. The best I've lost. And the rest fits me not more. Or is it just not.'

Ship's steward points to what they in her hand, a dress of which he is the existence cannot remember. Airy, but they like airy dressed. Also when the weather begging for such clothing.

'You're disinterested," she says. 'You see not how incredible from the fashion this is? How terribly dated this is? In addition, just can not. The grease…' she looks at him, helpless actually. Dismayed, about the changes that her body.

'Fat?' he asks. 'Which grease?'

They pretend to her owner is returned, he thinks. To have hope on liberation, you need to have the chain located. For some it is the chain of hope.

He wants to Tirza's room walk, but they hold it against.

'Jörgen," she says. 'They will find it not crazy that I am there again?'

'Who?'

'De guests.'

'De guests? Which does not grant you.'

'I mean. They will not ask the question: who is that? Who is that Mrs?'

'I think not. There are a lot of people. Then it is one more or less. In addition you are the parent of Tirza. Whichever way you look at it. You can also always say. When people ask: "What are you doing here?", you say: "I am Tirza's mother." It is a plausible reason for her party.'

She looks at him full of doubt, it is not convinced. And she has her clothes in her hands that are out of fashion. That makes it all worse. 'But I have come out.'

'Dat denies no one. But that people do not know more. That they are forgotten. They have a bad memory. There are so many people. On the Vossius they have concept for this type of cases. They had in any case concept for me.'

He smiles in the reminder. The teachers called him when his wife by went with a childhood love. He will never forget, how friendly they were, without a. Also called nobody, not for him at least.

Ibi they had on the Barlaeus done, but after joint experiences Tirza they decided on the Vossius to do so. In particular it was a ship's steward who had decided. He found Tirza very talented. Already when she was eleven months and its first steps. Five steps, no more, but nevertheless, it was allowed to walk are called. He told it to anyone who wanted to hear it. 'They may already walk, they luff.' above all is to parents with children in approximately the same age he told the study with interest, and he did not — he was overwhelmed by his enthusiasm — that he called irritation. The word 'luff' was matured him in the mouth. When she was a few months old he was in the evening minutes long, sometimes up to twenty minutes about Tirza curved, to look at how they slept. The arms spread out. Sometimes she smiled in her sleep. Even Tirza's mother was not understood exactly where he watching them. What he saw there. In the baby.

Ibi was moved to its own bed, now Tirza slept in between them. And if the wife there also was not or late came home, than slept in addition to her father's Tirza He was sometimes in a corner of the bed because Tirza tend to make had wide, but he didnt care. The bed was of her.

Gently, almost tenderly he slides the wife aside.

He sees that the door of her Tirza room has closed, he wants to do not disturb its, that is why he goes to below and check the kitchen. Everything is ready. Everything can be served and eaten. The color composition of the sushi and sashimi has the appearance of professionalism, something to evade the homely. As if it is prepared by a catering service. That is the way it looks.

Ship's steward leave nothing to chance. We must prepare themselves for what may go wrong. Who need an excuse, has not been adequately prepared for a possible fatal error.

In the garden he torches, four in total. Shortly, when twilight, they will lighting.

Jörgen ship's steward goes to the barn, set the mower, the shovel, the machine saw and what smaller tool aside. There is enough space for clubbers who have also to isolate to each other to give a discreet kisskiss. He leaves the barn and looks at the trees. In the garden of his parents in the Betuwe are also many trees, which he must maintain an only child now that they are no longer present. Fruit trees shall be pruned.

He walks slowly on the grass back to the house. He takes a deep breath, he is satisfied. It is a nice party. As Tirza wanted it. 'It is my last party in this House,' she had said, 'what that will I would like to give a big party. Do you think that is good, pap? Really a big party.'

'Yes, of course,' he had said, 'but how large exactly? What do you mean by large? And I will go away, you will find that Nice? I will be a weekend in the Betuwe continue?'

'No,' she said, 'keep but. You can find my celebrations are always so much fun?'

And he had kinked. 'Yes,' he had said, 'very nice.'

If he is back in the kitchen he hears the voordeurbel. Also he is waiting to see or Tirza or wife will open it. If that does not happen is he himself to the front door. The ladies have to pressure with toilet.

It is Ibi. It has a small bag with him, what a ship's steward a little disappointing, because this means that they will not be many continue. She now lives in France, around sixty kilometers north west of Geneva.

It discloses its, laborious, a tad clumsy, he will stand on her toes, he apologizes, unintelligible. And also that something has onhandigs apologize.

Of his children he expected much, but of Tirza he expected more than of Ibi. Of Ibi he expected much, of everything. Tirza So was it. You must say. Everything.

'You squeeze me fine, papa,' says Ibi. 'Doe quiet.'

Sometimes he discloses the measured, sometimes it is again too enthusiastic, it is difficult to find the right balance.

He loves her at the shoulders, does a jog reverse, but do not let her shoulders.

'You looks good,' he says, without knowing whether he believes, without really looked to her.

'It is busy. The season has begun.'

Ibi, almost four years older than Tirza, has her study physics in France a Bed & Breakfast to start. If he thinks if he really thinks of, if he is all good until late penetrate, makes the ship's steward nauseous. How can you define your study physics for a Bed & Breakfast? Ibi had met a Frenchman, with him is they started the Bed & Breakfast. It was his idea of course. What normal human being asks for something like this?

According to a ship's steward he is no real Frenchman, although he has a French passport, but a color enthusiast who according to the rules of the game behind her money to it. Its honor he has already grabbed away, so what remains? Ship's steward wishes there are no words more to dirt. This he lost.

When she told not to proceed with physics, and as if that was not enough her father and sister of its intention in the foreseeable future to move to France, decided to take a ship's steward contact with a social worker to him by referred to a psychologist. 'How can you physics-ins for a Bed & Breakfast, how can you define the science for the elaboration of beds?' he asked the man during the first session several times.

"Do the your daughter might be happy?' suggested the psychologist eventually. Dismay the man aangestaard had a ship's steward, this traitor of science, this guy. Fortunately? That both his daughters would promote he considered something innate, if the least, the least of the least. He was not prepared to abandon the obvious, and for what? For short-term happiness. He spoog out. He goldsmiths clung to the seamlessness of the success to the show that he is with the life of his children had made. A beautiful, great show was that, a classic vision big and impractical, but especially big. In order to submit the science he had raised them, not to fold sheets in a hostel, with a man of dubious origin as innkeeper. Ideals could not be traded for voos happiness. He was stood up had the psychologist silently a hand and was never returned.

Ibi runs to the kitchen. She looks around. 'Jesus, what have you got your back expended. How many people expect you doing? Where is Tirza?'

'above. You may have already heard?'

'What?'

'Of Tirza.'

'what then? What should I have heard?'

'Dat Mama is there again. She has been returned. I do not know for how long, but she is there.'

'O.'

It seems no great Ibi news. It is perhaps also not a big news. 'Have you what to drink?' she asks.

'natural' ship's steward thinks he is a poor host and a bad host is a poor father. He does the refrigerator open. 'What do you: beer, wine, lemonade? There is homemade lemonade. Lemon, source water and some sugar. Pure nature. What you will find so tasty.'

'Meach.'

He gives her a glass in. They drink in one breath of empty. Then wipe them with the back of her hand her mouth.

'You were well heard or not?'

'What?' she looks at him as if he was not necessarily.

'Of mama.'

'Yes, that I had heard. Should I find something of?'

'Well…' He hesitates. They must find something of? It is a good question. He will find something of?

'I do not know whether you should find something of, but perhaps you have something to say, and yes, maybe you will find anything.'

'It is your life.' gaze. Re She is probably tired of the long journey. This morning in the morning is the house in droves. On steps in Paris. With the metro from one station to the other. He has so often said: 'If you have luggage, take a taxi, you get the money back from me.' But taxis are Ibi, and it is a waste of money at its independence.

Now he is a little bit is used to Ibi's proximity, he looks what she has. A camouflage trousers and a shirt in colors that it systematically giving birth.

'How are you?' she asks them and they put the glass on the worktop. 'I mean further. What will happen?'

'Go? Pressure.' He washes the glass out right away.

'That?'

He feels her anger, no, more than anger, hatred. The inability to forgive me, the hatred which remains lit long after others everything has already been forgotten.

'On the publishing house.'

He is not asking how things are in its Inn. Its Inn does he death. A larger favor he may not prove her. He finally, when he saw that he had lost money has given them to the Bed & Breakfast is something he has not able to supplant. There is no float white spots by his past. Things that he does not want to know more, things which he has tried to remove from its memory. It is not successful. He knows everything. He thinks. The task of the historian is to select details for the progeny of interest, thus condemned other details to oblivion. Whom nothing forgotten, has no life. In the password is the future. Ship's steward was after a year and a half to his study history stopped, he was German and criminology study. He couldn't forget. That is precisely why he stayed in his own past around like a blind.

Those who want to sabotage the truth, only has a faulty memory is needed. Terra incognita. One should at discovery trip can go in the own past and in a foreign country. The jungle. Bushmen, a cauldron. The cannibals welcome you welcome and slowly while the water heats up, you can see all the white spots no longer as white spots, but exactly as it was. A movie. Say Finally you know who you are and then begins to boil the water. They all have a price.

She points to his cheek.

'You happened," she says.

'I just shaved.'

They tear a piece of a paper towel and press it against his cheek. Since they are, father and daughter, awkward but intimate. It is undeniable, this is what intimacy is, this is what remains after the volatile omhelzingen in a vestibule, at an airport in a parking garage.

In her eyes he sees a remarkable chill that he knows well, but to which he has not able to get and he never want to understand. He relies on forgiveness, because he himself is prepared to forgive, after he helped with his dog. The mouth of a Predator, the claw of a real ship's steward.

'Are you happy?' he asks, while the paper slowly from his cheek. There remains a piece of sticking.

She looks at him surprised, but it is surprising that there is thick at the top there is, it is not real astonishment. It is the last, stubborn remainder of anger.

('est when you take a keen interest in for my luck, pap?'

He is doing a step backwards. 'I too am for your well-being. You are my daughter. I only have two daughters.'

'welfare is not the same as happiness. Stay, I get that crumb paper of your cheek.'

He is dead quiet, while Ibi to his cheek krabt, he feels its nail on his skin, he holds his breath and he tries to recall his life when he was still not had daughters, when he was still no function when he had as much as he had to admit a posteriori by the space wafted as an uncommanded projectile, a projectile that in addition to the editor only house boss was.

The day that ship's steward at the notary public the purchase contract for this House, he decided to rent out the upper floor, otherwise it was cramped, the money, are meager salary. The house was always going to be too large for him, even for a family.

He leased initially mostly to business travellers, for a month or a quarter. Men who worked throughout the day and in the evening exhausted on bed fell again early morning hastily to disappear in their carefully coated suits.

The floor was decorated with cheap but manageable furniture. Especially the view was overwhelming. The Vondelpark. When a ship's steward the apartment showed, he always insisted on to the Vondelpark, and that in such a way as if it was from him. Presumptuous park, presumptuous front garden.

When the businessman than said: 'Yes, this is good, I take the', was hastily a handwritten contractje brought out if they wish each month could not be renewed automatically.

'If you pay in cash,' said ship's steward at the conclusion of the contract for a tone as though he offered something special what nobody else got, 'on the first of the month, if you pay in cash, you get five percent discount.'

Five percent discount. That wanted to tenants.

So climbed a ship's steward on the first day of the month the flights of stairs to get to collect the rent, which generally all recent Xmas line up for him in a small envelope. And if not, he continued to wait, had a chat, and loved climatic considerations, because he spoke about the weather like and seemingly passionate. And he waited. He had patience. To the lessee at last to his purse handle to the agreed amount to count.

Missing the business travellers. ship's steward, was always a reason for the lock is not completely having to pay back, or better said: not at all. A crack in the wallpaper, a door knob that was off cases, a crack in the marble of the sink. 'I am sorry,' he said, 'but as it was not here when you withdrew three months ago. This is something I have to have it repaired. I find it annoying, but this is going to cost money.'

Not that ship's steward malicious was, but he had the money, he was so shy. His future depended. Later also the future of his daughters. What was freedom if you had no money to pay for that? Only the rich were fairly and even that is not always.

Occasionally jokte he was a bit, he did not like, but he jokte with verve. He pointed to holes in the ceiling which had been already, stains on the wallpaper that even though were not new, or he had the cutlery in the kitchen — he also rented the specifications — and suggested blandly told that there knives and forks were gone. With this small lies to abide did the shame are introduced.

He hated the lessee who is not of itself said: 'we will than the half of the lock but leave it on?'

Or why not the entire deposit? He hated the tenants who forced him to lie, because they were so stingy, because they were asking for. So he that his study German had completed successfully — although he was not promoted, but that was a detail and there were explanations for — was forced by the upper floor of his house to scrape looking for new defects. He got better things to do had to negotiate about how much it would cost a wall from two to four to witten. There were tenants who said: 'Otherwise i buy tomorrow as a pot of paint and then I do it yourself. That saves you a lot of concerns and me money.' But that was not the intention. It was not the wall or the paint, but to the lock which could not be returned. That was there is no longer.

Agile talked ship's steward around it, he drove over, he sighed, he jammerde, he raised pity on and then, apparently without cause, he was aggressively. 'If we cannot agree to your departure, which lock but, but we will not succeed you, because you have no right to the lock, you do not have a leg to stand on, you have it here run down.' He shook his fist and he thought he went on in the negotiating as another in a film, a book, a play. There were moments that he lost itself, than he had to order, also to take a deep breath. Thereafter it was the weather. A man must be self-control, otherwise do others for him.

As that his parents had been through, somewhere in the nineties, in hindsight perhaps already in the eighties, still had become more disconcerting. It was not a dementia, it was something else, a disease without a name. Because he was not so well knew what he had to let go of a ship's steward his parents but paralysis. He has had to ensure everything, the manage money, the house and the garden. He showed their power forward to its own account on booking. He had the necessary. Really immoral could not be said, because his parents were paralysis. The lawyer had assured him. That word said everything. Paralysis.

Hofmeesters father had a tool shop in Geldermalsen, his mother had sung in a choir, but that she had no money earned. The singing was its indulgence.

And he, the only son, was widely acknowledged, that was what you had to do, that was what was expected of him. Climb up. Because only the wealthiest members were not pushed around.

Hofmeesters parents were pushed around, that you could see them, that you could smell to them.

Come back to rest he could smile on that the tenant five days longer in the apartment had may continue without something was brought into account. And in the end he said: 'You know what. I ask you the extras lost, but we forget the lock just. Sandy about it. Sand on the lock. Satisfied as?'

He fell as quickly as possible than the stairs and the dormant feeling of self-contempt he could only be suppressed by itself there for the umpteenth time to convince you that he did for his family. First time for him and his wife, later especially for his daughters. For their future. Saints, he had ever heard in the church, have a past necessary. A future sinners. His daughters were the exception to this rule: they had a future and they were not yet sinners.

Gradually started the tenants to stay longer than a few months. It saved him the effort of the search for a new occupier, every quarter. The engagement of an agency that an alarmingly high rates for inept service early he had sworn anyway.

Ship's steward did it self. He was looking for the tenant as a groom for his daughter, as meticulous. He spelde ads in almost all newspapers to find the right one for you. The quietest, the netste, the most reliable, the cleanest. Preferably a which had another address elsewhere, that only a pied-à-terre searched in another city was registered. He made a great effort for its extra income from the hands of the tax. Because freedom and hunger were each other's enemies. And although he never had known hunger, had the fear of hunger with which he was raised and do not leave him.

What stayed was the ascent of the staircase on the first of the month when the tenant of the envelope containing the agreed amount not in time to ship's steward in the letterbox had pushed. That was the recurring ritual in his life. His worship. So the only way he lodged the supreme being. The first of the month he purportedly collected on what it was.

If he was then descended, always with the feeling that he had smeared, he had money after in the house room in order to be subsequently to mountains in a safe place until there is enough to the discreet disappear to an account outside the Netherlands. First Luxembourg, later Switzerland. And if he counting and deer Ellen, was he regularly by the thoughts of financial independence. About to fall, that was the, the thoughts about him fell, do not let him. That kind of moments he was held hostage by his own visions. He calculated how many years he still had been removed from this independence. He had the months. If illness and death but not earlier than financial independence. It was a matter of decades. Perhaps less. As the exhibition climate organiser.

But the joy of the slow growing power abroad, that had to ensure that Ibi and Tirza would never know as poverty, that the doors that open only for the rich were also open for them would be that they would be able to study at the best universities anywhere in the world, was decimated by the degrading corridor that ship's steward every first of the month. He could not understand why the tenant of the rent is not itself also came, he had already called for a few times. But if the tenant of the first of the month to eight hours in the evening was not yet published, he went to the outside and called again at the next door to his. The door which gave access to the apartment that ship's steward leased. He was not. He could not wait, afraid if he was that they would forget him.

Also on Sunday he was there. The first of the month was the first of the month. Ship's steward knew no Sunday, because he had a dream. And he forgave are debtors as they him conf Aven. The money was the forgiveness. Ultimately, if it came to the crunch, was always forgiveness money.

But also could not prevent this forgiveness that he has since the twenty or twenty-eight bad slept. He dreamed about the lessee, the envelope and about defects in his house. He dreamed of how he climbed the stairs to the house of the lessee and how everything was missing, the furniture and cutlery, the tenant, the clothes, the cabinets, everything, the only thing there was still, was a leak and a kattenlijkje in the sink, already in far-reaching state of dissolution wrong. Although the lessee was expressly forbidden to bring pets. Still no goldfish.

The soft but envying sound of water that on a carpet dripped, ended his dream always. And with the kattenlijkje in the sink, ship's steward who whiny by the apartment was looking for an elusive envelope with the rental. His nightmares were wet for leaks, damp from the mold, fluffy of cat hairs. In his bedroom he was visited by the ghosts of the real estate.

On a day he had, for the purpose of Council when he was, tensioned by sleeping lack, a brainwave. 'Ibi,' he said. She was then twelve, she played violin, they tenniste and she was recognized as an intelligent and clever to see. 'Ibi,' he said, "Do you want to earn five guilders and an ice cream?'

They nodded dreamy. She was a dreamy girl. Others mentioned its blurry. It is not, he gave the dreamy.

'Dan should you be so up momentarily to go to the lessee and then you say: "I come the rent." You will get a reply envelope. And that you bring to me. Do not dally and nothing else. But polite continue.'

He brought her to the front door opened, which remained standing and look at how they aanbelde at the tenant.

Since she went. His daughter. One of its two darlings. A lovely child. That had to be said. He said he was controlled: 'It is a lovely child. It must be said.' as if it were an objective determination was be no discussion which. Just like the gravity.

When he heard the stairs to climb her, closed the door and waited impatiently in his own vestibule on her return and his look focused on the doormat, arms akimbo.

Within two minutes she was there. Ship's steward threw himself on the envelope as a hungry beast. He had once he had two times. The banknotes flashed through his hands as if it were playing cards which he had to shake. Then lock it the money on in the dresser at a secret location, and gave Ibi, after her about her dark blond hair caressed, five guilders and some extra for an ice cream.

'MAG I buy now?' she asked.

'What?'

'The ice cream.'

'Yes,' said the father, 'you should buy now. Go but. Go but quickly. Because we are so food.'

And they ran to the outside. Relieved and cheerful. Not bothered by shame or crap that she was sticking. They knew no dirt.

From that day was the tradition: Ibi inde the rent.

Ibi did what the father is no longer able to do so. On the first of the month they went to top in order to achieve this where the family ship's steward entitled to it.

She became over time so accustomed to that they themselves often said: 'Papa, it is the first. I go to top.'

And he was going to rely on her talents, its charm, its understanding of the human psyche, what was tantamount to insight into the psyche of the lessee. They even appeared a strange pleasure to develop in the provision of these every day, in Hofmeesters eyes almost perverse pastime, who had always had the feeling that he was really too good for was that he was filthy, each month onreiner dirtier every step. But there was an important difference between Ibi and her father: ship's steward inaligning the rent. They had to play the only. When ASCENDING THE STAIRWAY, imiteerde her father. They persifleerde him, you would have to say. She was not mature, but they did so as though, and how. They did it with verve. And that was the salvation, imitation by him they drove to imitate the demons of her father. In its imitation of him, in its sometimes grotesque exaggeration was its freedom.

After a period of time it is no longer a ship's steward did warn. 'not dally and nothing. Come back immediately.' She knew the rules, she was at the height of the instructions for use of the ritual and she was there even proud that they each month again the mission completed immaculate. For her was the rent a spoils that had to be conquered and that they should share in the proceeds.

It was sometimes for that they came back from its trip to the lessee and against her father said: 'He asks whether it is good if he pays in a few days.'

Than said ship's steward: 'Of course it is good, but without a five percent discount. The discount i if cash on the first day of the month is paid does not if cash on the third or fourth is paid, it is the full amount. Remember that. The first of the month to midnight on and then it is the full pound.'

And when they then on the third or fourth appeared with the full amount, he went to sit behind his desk and Telde, with the calculator for themselves. Because the money abroad grew naturally, money should grow. It is fertile and in the right hands multiply itself as weeds. And it remained to watch. Ibi stared at her father who had the money, with a look of understanding and something that could be called stirs tenderness. As if they already knew better. It was no longer the father who full stirs tenderness toward the daughter looked, it was the daughter of a certain stirs tenderness to the father stared.

And if he had enough together again, he took two chop up days and traveled to Switzerland to the rent at a reliable bank, where experts for him to discuss the financial independence. Slowly, but closer. Day after day. Hours after hours. Minute after minute.

Ibi was older, they went to the secondary school, began to, in so far as they have not had already done when they are still in the lower school, they began to make heavier, she had squalls and scolded her parents, she lost her interest in the violin, o, the bitter disappointment of the education, but what was unchanged, what stayed, was the ritual: the first of the month they went to the top of the rent.

And when they came back with the envelope looked her father mischievously to them, as if they knew what they had just done, as if they were realized which they cooperated, like they understood that he could not. As if they were his shame seen through him. And that insight made her less free, bond her to the man that they had to mention 'papa'.

When he was finished with the merely a witness embraced her he, he hustle and bustle its against itself and kept its so also. The simple mission had been given weight, interpretation. It was what father and daughter bond, it was their secret, though it was not really secret, it was their covenant. It really was the only moment that they father and daughter were and not strangers who happened to be in the same house lived on the same bathroom made use and occasionally on the same table their supper to within worked.

He gave her no more money for an ice cream, but for a skirt or a movie. He said not more for which it was, he gave the ordinary. Silent, with a wink. Sometimes if he the financial independence within reach faster than expected saw the exhibition was years very note, he gave his daughter storage.

Often they came down with messages of the lessee, that he wanted to withdraw from the contract or that he wished to extend precisely. They saved her father one to which he had hate. And after two years it seemed as if it was always so. As though it should have been. The family ship's steward had a family business.

One lessee, the other, but Hofmeesters oldest daughter climbed at the beginning of the month the stairs to the top floor. The invaded her not difficult, it could not be denied: we paid her. Its pay was a pleasure. The envelope was personally, was a favor which the lessee was granted.

Since Ibi was co nceded less complained about wet spots on the wallpaper, a heater which gave too little heat, a framework that is not properly closed. Her smile took the complaints, did her legs a strong suspicion that it was very expensive to evaporate. Its eyes compensated for the dripping tap. Ibi weighed heavier than the defects of the furnished apartment.

And when, on an evening in the autumn, the first of the month — always the first of the month; if a ship's steward looked back on his life he saw an endless series of pay days — she was long any cowardice. Ship's steward weld a evening newspaper, listening to a cello concert of Elgar, but when he joined the opinion had arrived page he read the newspaper as a book, he began concern. She was already more than half an hour away. He read further but the pieces on the opinion page were not up to him by. After inserting each meaning he continued and his thoughts strayed off to Ibi.

Well, you could not of course the money and run away, you had to occasionally a chat continue to make. He reminded the is still on the earlier him this unpleasant task. But a chat of half an hour was no chat more. That was a conversation that was a half dinner.

He was already twice to the door jammed to see if they was coming, as you go to trams which looks but do not want to. The ridiculous assumption that look a little avail. That a compelling look that what is not more likely to will appear.

She could not fall over, they did not have the street.

He understood there is increasingly less. His wife was the door to retrieve Tirza, which continue to play a girlfriend was. Ship's steward could be with no one share unrest He dropped Elgar, walked to the garden to his apple tree to look at and between the branches of the tree by gluurde he upstairs to the Windows behind which the tenant is hidden, but he saw nothing special. The curtains that there always hung and which really need to be washed. Nothing moved. It was a nice evening for the beginning of October. Nothing zipper elde in the bushes. Nobody shouted. Silence. Eternal stillness.

He went back to the living room, there was little else on, and he took the evening newspaper of the bank.

A few days before was Ibi fifteen. Some of the gifts that they had obtained were laid out yet dresser. As they did that always as one of the children was minor. The gift table, so they called that. They were there not quit, not even now Ibi was fifteen. Nor with the garlands. Ship's steward depended on them, as he previously had the rent: systematically collected and dedicated.

He stared at the gifts, a watch that he had given Ibi, they had requested it. And he had a good investigated, days he was working on it. It was an expensive watch, but that could be for your daughter who had become fifteen. He wanted to buy one that they would be happy, one that they really wanted to have and they are proud of her friends to see.

A trouser there was further on the gift table, a game that he did not understand. A swimsuit. Two books. A drawing of Tirza, a drawing of a boat. The rest was already removed, eaten, or put into use.

Then he decided to call. This took too long. She was kept on all kinds of nonsensical complaints which the tenant — Andreas was called he, a young, German architect — ship's steward already a couple of times had filed on the street. On the street! The tenants had no more ways. No civilisation. He felt the, he saw and he read about it. The people were courageous, as a greasy and that about courage in depended the air. That was what ship's steward smoke as in the evening he went outside to just to walk through the Vondelpark. A combination of laziness and had taken possession of courage of the people of the city, a combination that ship's steward scared him outside ditch, because he has not could participate, because he had good time to understand that it has the courage of its enemy natural rooted idealism: The children must have better.

Count on everything that can go wrong is the opposite of courage.

He shook his head, although no one could see him. It did not only a girl of fifteen difficult to coincide with the defects of a furnished apartment.

Ship's steward called in to the door beside the HIS. Specifically, but not too long. You had to remain polite as landlord. The wood could once again be painted, maybe next year. Not right now. Now there had to be spared, otherwise it would never be what with those financial independence.

Ibi was probably also start to do their shopping. But they knew that they first the rent at him had to deliver? She was always meticulous. They knew the importance of the ritual. She knew what it meant for her father.

No one did open. There was a call but there was not open. The architect was apparently not home, or he slept.

Hofmeesters unrest increased. He took his keys from his pocket and searched for the key of the house of the lessee.

If he once the week was home during the day he entered the house of the lessee secretly. Not really to spying, just to see what is really transpired, with whom he actually had to deal with. What kind of meat he had in the cockpit. He opened cupboards and drawers, but rarely found incriminating evidence. At most some porn, a letter from a debt collection agency, Love letters. He took everything volatile by. You could not careful enough. But one thing has become clear to him: if people have secrets, keeping those not in their pied-à-terre.

Again he phoned to. For the security. Slightly longer, but not too long. That was uncivilised.

Also now no response.

Prudent he opened the door, a bit like a thief, with a vague feeling of debt, and he climbed the steep stairs. Slowly. He had, he remarked, Load of asphyxia.

It was the first time that evening that he realized that he was to be old. With physical defects came an inevitable end to the last illusions of the youth. And respiratory distress was a bodily unsatisfactory condition, that nobody could deny.

He hijgde. He heard loud music. A modern twist, but with violins. Someone was so home, or the architect had the music forgot to turn off. Lamps illuminate. In the winter the heating is switched on with the window open. Each year they were more decadent and brutal. It was not even decadence, it was a perverse indifference that ship's steward as a personal insult formulated, because he could not afford. Because he refused to afford.

The respiratory distress increased. Halfway up the stairs he remained stationary. Ship's steward would not meet his heart? Perhaps he had to investigate, a cardio gram, or what was that? A total and radical research in any case. Long ago had he smoked cigars, but when the wife of Ibi in her belly he had stopped. The cigars could not, it was something else. Another, unknown disease was to blame are respiratory distress.

As he was higher the music by more urgent. He could the text word for word means, but he lette it. Had so much difficulty he has never taken the few steps to climb. Thus began the death so, asphyxia on the stairs. A joke, that was it. Life.

Ship's steward entered the room which served as the living room. The door was open. There did not have to be beaten.

The lessee was behind Ibi. The trousers to the ankles.

Hofmeesters daughter was with her bare upper body half on the dining table that he had ever looked into and that it seemed extremely suitable for an apartment that had to be furnished. Its nail skirt was up poached. Poached, that was the word that was left sitting in Hofmeesters Main. Poached. Poached.

The scene made him think of certain movies that unsavory channels afforded after midnight. And then that music.

All about his respiratory distress were gone. That he just in the stairwell was still think about a premature end he could already do not remind me again.

One second he continued to his Ibi to watch. Then he did a step forward. With his left hand, he hijgde still somewhat, handle a small stalamp he laid the wife had investigated, but that unfit for your own house. Hand-me-downs moved to above.

His daughter was fucked if a beast. A scene that you expected to take action on a farm, in a stable. Not in the best part of the Van Eeghenstraat.

Hofmeesters breathing squeeked.

He grip the stalamp more firmly. He could not move in this direction. It felt as if he was, hard and fucked deep. As if the impact is not intended for his daughter, but for him. As if he was humiliated, the landlord, the owner of this property, in his own house humiliated. His body was pain. His body was dying for breath.

He had the strange sensation that he was torn open. The longer he looked, the more he became convinced that he was the person who by the tenant fucked was, hard and indifferent. With dedain.

Finally we heard them.

At least, the tenant heard it. The man turned around to saw his house boss, showed Ibi, his hands slid perilously of its submission.

The architect did something ship's steward could not hate: he grijnsde. With his pants, a gray trousers, on its knees. He grijnsde as though it was a joke, an unfortunate but still funny meeting. The grin of the hilarity was firmly on the face of the architect. It was a tad uncomfortable, it was actually to prote hours. That he gleamed. Hilarity, nothing but hilarity.

No shame — no fear, a grin.

The stalamp ship's steward grip even more firmly. He did a few steps in the direction of the lessee, looked at him in the eyes and hit when, while Ibi broke away from the dining table as if it were only now its realized that a provisional end was copulatie, hard with the stalamp on the head of the lessee. The sound of breaking glass still insisted to ship's steward and then he saw stains, as if he had stood up too quickly. He felt dizzy, but he did not in each other. Did the tenant.

Without too much noise to make the tenant fell on the ground.

Perhaps it was also the music which was so hard that all the other was drowned out. How could you music as loud? There were sometimes no neighbors? Had the ears are not enough to suffer from street noise?

The architect was cases and ship's steward was standing here with the stalamp in his hands while he heard his daughter shrilling: 'Papa.'

Around him was glass. The small, round lampshade was shattered by skipped. And he was there with the remnant of a stalamp in his hand. A stem, more there was really not about. One moment he did not itself more exactly where he was. And why he was here, what he came again. He had to grip, he had to stop and think.

They krijste. Ibi krijste as a child. If a hysterica.

They ran to the corner of the room and then back again. They covered her breasts. They withdrew its nail skirt downwards. That they forgot not. She was so worked now again not. They continued to pull down the, she loved it, they goldsmiths clung to its own nail skirt set as if it was a life jacket.

If you only to its screeching listened, you would say: a psychiatric case, advertisement in the Valerius Clinic. Then maybe you could say: the madness has its invaded, the madness has its won.

Her face made a older impression than her body. By the makeup probably. By so often and thoroughly that they play an adult it was a bit grown up. In her face. In her eyes. In the way in which she looked at.

But her body told a different story.

Her upper arms were thin as a scharminkel. As a child. There was no meat on its buttocks. That was all yet to come. The story of her body was childish.

No reason to screeching, no reason to be so worked up.

Its trainers, of a mark that is currently very popular but whose ship's steward but not the name could remember, were under the endearing spijkerrok This shop requires.

Everything he saw everything he took in located on, while his daughter ran back and forth by the living room of the lessee, as if they did not know what was her, what may also be so. A beast, in panicking by the storm on a summer evening.

But the father was a word. He was there with the remainder of the stalamp in his hands.

On the table he saw an envelope. The rental.

This was Ibi come here. He was already ready for her, the envelope. But something was between them and then it was that remain envelope. Innocent and immaculate.

The money brought him again at risk phrases. Money was just a todo cold water over your head. The thought of the rescued rent it from the overriding feeling of paralysis.

Slowly came a back to life in the body of the lessee. He moved. He called on end. crab He addressed the Commission. He pulled up to the table edge. From a wound on the top left of his forehead droop blood.

His trousers was hanging again on his ankles.

The grin on his face was fortunately disappeared.

When understood exactly where he ship's steward was. The hoped for by him. He was looking for Ibi. His Ibi. That was why he was here. Ibi was not returned.

He had listened to Elgar and an evening sheet read, to him too long until he had received suspicion.

The stalamp, at least the remainder thereof, he put down and he schraapte his throat.

The tenant looked at him, confused, as though he did not understand what had happened, as if no one here understand what exactly happened.

But a ship's steward recalled the humiliation, the tenant standing behind Ibi, triumphantly and hungry, as he had been there. The Triumph of the beast, that he would not forget in a hurry. The Triumph of the man. Because that is sex for the man, a victory. I have her, I take her, I use her, I take her in use.

And by who knew a ship's steward again reminder he went to say. What he had to say, what he already had a long time ago had to say.

'Turn music from,' he roared just up.

That he remembered now again, he did not speak, he went roar. He could harder than the roar music, he could everyone and everything about screaming.

The young architect week reverse, and it was only when he tried to walk, he seemed to note how difficult the situation was. How unpleasant it was the landlord with trousers and underpants on the ankles.

He drew up the pants, hastily and inconvenient. On his forehead was that large bloody place. The blood was not yet solidified, it was still fresh and only trickled. But the nakedness annoyed him apparently more, the nakedness was more urgent.

The architect wore a boxer shorts saw a ship's steward. He hated boxer shorts.

And he saw something: the man had no condom around.

Ship's steward really was disgusted by the architect. He had him from the outset should not have been adopted. To nice, slimy, to kowtow to, and if it came to the crunch, too difficult. When his daughter was not there, he had his hands now to the throat of the architect and the life from him, as you squeeze life from a tiny kitten squeeze. Also by pressing, also persist, also the attention closer and road is life.

When the architect had now tidied — his shirt was still open to his navel — and he is outside the range of Hofmeesters hands he was finally to the cd player and turned it off.

'Hugh, Hugh,' said ship's steward, 'at last. Christ was still an.'

He wetted his lips with his tongue and he gestured to the lessee, but who do not understand.

The 'Create the close,' said ship's steward, 'your shirt, button the close. I can see everything. I do not want to see everything. I have already seen far too much.'

Ibi stood by the door and lured her upper body rhythmically. They cried in silence.

The tenant tied his shirt further close, at the top of the stud.

When did a ship's steward with his right fist on the table so hard that he and the lessee still bezeerde two steps backwards. 'You pay for this apartment,' shouted ship's steward. Because he had recalled that he had to scream, that it had planned to make huge roar, if an injured animal. 'For the furniture you pay for gas and light, for the views of the Vondelpark, for the privilege that you in the best part of the Van Eeghenstraat resides, in the best part of Amsterdam and that for a reasonable price, very reasonable i would say, but you do not pay for my daughter. Is that what you understand? Not for my daughter.'

He kept his forehead as if he had to think of fixed what he wanted to say yet, but he had not more to say. This was what he had to say. He had said. Now he could continue. Yes, he had said everything that needs to be said. He could continue. He had greatly restricted to cases of abuse.

But otherwise than he had expected, the architect not bedremmeld remained and debt are aware silence, the architect said with hoarse voice: 'will you be sorry. This will not remain without effect.' He betastte his forehead and saw the blood that his hand was sticking. He looked forward, bowled, more bowled than alarmed. In the confrontation with the blood seemed to come the pain. Because he often moaned. No, he jammerde gently. A parent child, also that still. Of course, the worst were kons mother.

And ship's steward heard his daughter whispering: 'Andreas.'

What made him very. Ibi's whispers. His daughter which the lessee 'Andreas'. He was the tenant does not name. A lessee who had a name, was busy family, who got the door not more. The lessee was called tenant. No more.

What was went wrong? Why did he not better attention? How he had this man ever can get?

'I Declaration,' said the architect, and his accent was stronger than ever. 'Dear. I do this declaration, Mr ship's steward. This will not remain without effect.' He remained but to the blood on his hands. As far as it was not. A few drops. As if he were at work in the garden had cut.

Ship's steward grabbed as in a reflex the stalamp. But it was more something to hold, to seek support, than for a weapon at hand. What kind of weapon was so'n broken stalamp is at all?

Previously used as child had a ship's steward often under the blood interned. He had I made?

'I,' he said only. 'You can also on. I will make a declaration. My daughter is not available for rent. It is not included in the price.'

He roared just up again.

When he griste the envelope of the table and ran through to Ibi, which had ceased to cry. Flickering she was standing against the wall.

What were they lean. A child is still. Now the game was delayed, it was clear to see. Nobody could deny.

'come with me,' he said.

They shook her head.

'come with me,' he said again.

'I stay here,' she shouted.

Ship's steward looked his daughter. Her hands for her small breasts. On the bank was its bloesje, also a birthday gift. Of her mother. And of Tirza. They had the selected together. He took the, gave it to his daughter, and said: 'pull this, Ibi, and come with me.'

And in addition to the cd player was the architect, with the back of his hand against his forehead pressed. Certainly afraid to bleeding to death.

The man was too confused or too shy to go to the bathroom to walk and something in the medicine cabinet to search. A Mole. More was not necessary.

The bloesje Ibi withdrew with her face to the wall. As in the dressing room of the gymlokaal. She took hardly worth the close to buttons. She wore no bra. They did not think it was necessary. 'I have almost nothing,' she said one evening. 'Why should I wear a bra?'

Ship's steward had left this rhetorical question unanswered. His wife was not that evening. His wife was often uithuizig. 'You're just a a finicky bitch,' he had ever against the wife said. 'What must be your daughters?',

'I stay here,' repeated Ibi when they the blouse is wearing them and they no longer have to go to the wall did to watch. 'I stand by Andreas.' She was calm. In the calm came the determination.

Andreas. That name. Ship's steward had the impression that he was beaten with a gear lever. He knew no Andreas. He wanted to know no Andreas.

Ibi saw was found. There were still some tears on her cheeks. It heard at puberty. Shout, shrilling, crying. Nothing to worry about. Other teens did the same.

She looked at the tenant as they probably already had looked at him when he had met for the first time, when they had come here for the rent, anxious but strictly, sincere and yet challenging. Self-assured, but without hope. She came to the envelope, but they had a different job — one that they had given itself. It was a game for her, one big game. And look what it came as you did not know that you had to stop playing.

The architect said nothing more, he continued his wound palpation and he looked not to the subsidiary or to the father. He looked at his own hands, the table, the floor. He had the pressure with itself.

'You coming with me,' said ship's steward, 'otherwise you can stay here and for always.' He waited not for an answer, like he knew and feared, more than anything else the answer on his last warning feared. He took it in its upper arm, he pinch in its upper arm and pushed her out the door from the stairs.

In the stairwell began the shrilling again. The Crying. The moaning. The Spades. She was trying to kick her father. They tried in extricating themselves from Hofmeesters handle, but it did not and her attempts were also perhaps half-hearted. They had no choice. By Andreas continue? How will this be? As if they were deep in her heart knew that also Andreas didn't want that they remained.

Ship's steward pushed its for itself, how they tried to him biting and kicking. This was a rescue operation. Act on it. came Once they have downstairs was, she could to himself.

The house of the living room in to the bank where the evening newspaper on him was waiting. The evening newspaper that he is so quiet and peaceful had read, while his daughter two floors up was raped. If you had to mention that yet. So he called the in any case.

They showed on the bank. They deployed as a hedgehog.

The wooed you was not ceased. With long strokes went by and it seemed like there never would come to an end..

In his hand was a ship's steward the envelope with the money that now was not counted. Not once and not twice. The tradition was broken. Everything was different. There was also no hope of financial independence, no dreams in that hope we heard. Only his daughter was there. In coils on the bench. One large crumb misery. Sobbing, whiny.

'Doe quiet,' he said. 'Ibi, run quietly. Soothe. You are back home. Everything is good. You are safe.'

He ran for the bank back and forth. Now he was here again, he could not stop with polar bears. Something he had overlooked, something went wrong was, and he had not thought of in advance. He had made a mistake, while he had hate to errors. 'Ibi,' he said. 'Sweetheart. It is a good thing.'

The wooed you loved. They looked at him as he had the tenant outsiders. They were not for nothing family. He recognized the look.

'Geenstijl,' she said.

He kept his hand on his foot as if he sneezing, but the nies was not. He travelled to his lower lip. Vague he felt an emerging headache.

Never before had they called him geenstijl. It was a word which he had to consider a word which he no Council knew. They had never been kicked him. Geenstijl was worse than shovels. That is why he ignored the. He did as if he had heard nothing. He wanted to hear it, he did not know how he had to respond to. There were more daughters who their father called geenstijl. He had his father never called geenstijl. Unthinkable.

Ship's steward said only: 'Ibi, soothe. You are now securely. You are back home.'

The only answer to his request for calm was that they stood up. They ran to the door. Ship's steward was her for. Old he was, as he had climbed the stairs he suffers from respiratory distress, but this was here for him a question of survival and when you are busy to survive, you can forget all respiratory distress. He blocked the door.

'Where do you want to go?' he asked.

'upwards,' she shouted.

'To your room?'

'upwards,'. Repeated 'To him. To Andreas.'

'Why?'

'I want to top,' she said one more time now quieter. 'Plain. Therefore. It is absolutely none of you. I am no longer a child. I may go where I want. You are my boss.'

Simply 'Why is no reason. You have nothing to search. Here you live. To me, at your parents, from your sister living you. Here you have to find something.'

'You're my boss krijste not,'. 'hold on the boss about me to play, only because you have no one else can play the boss.'

That was. The pain was already in place before he could really think of what they referred to in those terms. All truth did pain, but still more, each year a little more.

'I don't play the boss about you, I can tell you that you only friendly also not to top Can.'

'My panties is there still krijste,'. I would like 'what that will upwards.'

'What is still there?'

'My panties, idiot. My panties. My panties. Do you understand the now?'

They screamed as he its long time, perhaps had never hear you scream.

And something made a ship's steward ziedend again. The way in which they said it, the way they looked at him, the word 'stab', a terrible word. 'Pants" was bad enough but 'Tab'. A slippery word, a word that made him uncomfortable almost crazy. In his own house, opposite his own daughter.

He was furious as above, in the house of the lessee. The anger torn and destroyed him and that made him still woedender. The word 'Tab', the fact that wooed you his eldest daughter so suddenly, so easily came to an end. The emerging headache.

That is why he did something which he had never done, not by his daughters.

He gave Ibi a slap. A hard. He could not save soft. If he did, it was hard.

They remained standing.

They krijste not. They cried not. They looked at him. Speechless.

It was quiet and it was quiet. It was as though he was finished with the counting of the rent and they now afwachtte what he would give her. Its share.

This seemed at the time that they both weather father and daughter were. The time full of interpretation, the ritual. But he said nothing, he had already something.

In Ibi's eyes he saw no gratitude, no joy over its share, no confidential wink about the secret operation which they had together each month, only contempt. An overriding contempt.

When he heard foot steps on the stairs. He turned around to and saw his wife hastily to accentuate the stairs with Tirza behind. The small Tirza.

They were in the meantime come home. The between time. How long he was actually above? How long had it all time? He had no idea. A few minutes and no more.

'What is going on here?' asked the wife. 'What is that noise? And what do you see out!'

How did he take out? He put his shirt in his pants, wiped the sweat of his brow. He looked as always, felt.

Ship's steward looked at Tirza. They had a red lolly in her mouth. Always as they are to that girlfriend, Emilie was called, they had been a lollipop in her mouth. Ship's steward disgusted of lolly's. They were poor. Bad for the teeth, bad for the stomach, bad for the child.

'What is going on here, Jörgen?' asked the wife again.

'De stalamp is broken,' said he finally, after he has a couple of times around itself had a look as if he is ensure that he wanted in his own home.

'What stalamp?'

'Die of the lessee. You first had bought for us.'

'Is that the problem?'

He was sleeping. He brought the envelope of the one hand to the other.

'The problem?' he tried to remember what the problem was and how he could make the best, in a few words. 'No, that is not the problem.'

When looked at the wife to her daughter. 'Ibi,' she said, 'what is going on here? What is the problem?'

Ibi remained silent. Glares at her father. Contempt, compassion and anger, that was what he saw. His eldest daughter of man. When he just turned back to the wife.

'The problem,' said ship's steward soft, 'is the tenant. The tenant must go. He makes us broken.'

Ibi did a step forward. Not for her mother to her father. 'No,' she said, 'Andreas is not the problem. You are not the problem, dad. And that you are already very long.'

Instinctively he raised his hand.

He kicked his children do not. He did but not his children. Net only. A minute or so ago. An exception. A slippertje.

He left his hand pockets. This time he controlled, he had everything under control. He had to control itself. Then came the rest. The handling of current affairs, spraying the garden during dry periods, the caps of the trees, the collection of the rent, life itself. Check yourself, since it all started.

'Doing it but,' said Ibi. 'You can my love for Andreas still not save me.'

That name, the terrible, cursed name.

He looked to his wife, but he did not see a glimpse of understanding. No sign of understanding.

Love for Andreas. At another time he is laughing hard he would have laughed and yet a tad concerned. What did his daughter of love? 'such great words,' he would say, 'orphan very carefully.'

'Can someone tell me now what is going on here?' asked the wife. They sounded irritated. As if he were a strange for its was a boy on the street that her daughter had attacked, and now they wanted to find out what exactly happened before she considers Velde.

He ran without answer to the kitchen, crossed the envelope in his pocket and washed his hands. First one times, then a second time and then washed his face, in the hope that the dormant would eliminate headache. He dried ends with a tea towel. He found no towel.

When he walked into the room again, were the wife and his daughters on the bank, with its three people, and they looked at him. They said nothing. The only sound that should be heard it was smak reaching sound of Tirza to its lolly sucked. A gaping hole was it.

The newspaper was slid to the ground. He folded it up and laid him on the coffee table.

Why they said nothing? What they wanted from him? What he had to do then? Nothing? The sidelines and secretly leave?

He did an extra knot of his shirt open, as if it was what the breath benam him, to close clothing.

'Tirza,' he said, 'throw that lolly road. Lollipops are bad for your teeth.'

There was no reply. The mother was not at. The mother only said: 'Let that child in peace. You have already seen enough damage tonight.'

The respiratory distress was decreased. What is in the place was it was a stiff feeling in the whole body. Perhaps he had to the physiotherapist. Or more tennis. Pain, that was the, his body was pain.

'Damage?' asked ship's steward. 'Damage? Where did you take over? Damage? You know what was going on above? Do you really know what in your own house is in progress?'

'It was your idea,' said the wife soft, 'die floor to rent. I would not have had the.'

It felt like Hofmeesters foot muscles were paralyzed. As if he was stunned by a dentist and still could not speak.

'would not have? But how we had to be able to live here than ever? Would not have. For you,' he cried, 'for you i have done so. For your future. And, take those Tirza lolly from your mouth.'

He looked his wife and daughters to but they seem not to understand him. 'would not,' I muttered he. 'would not.' He could only shake his head due to the lack of understanding shown.

'Jörgen,' said the wife, 'Ibi is a large girl. Ibi is a woman. It is not the way to treat her friends to.'

'But that is her boyfriend not,' shouted ship's steward. The tenant is '. You understand that not? You understand nothing? And she is still a woman. She is not mature. She is a child, a child. It is my fault. I had never been to above must send the rent for.'

He looked his own family, searching for something of understanding, but he saw nothing what seemed. He spoke a different language. He came from another country. He was a different man than the rest of his family, a become Fremdkörper. in this family. A remnant, but of what? From the moment of conception. The fact that his wife had twice fertilised. He was the remainder. An unnecessary remainder, such as a umbilical cord. And only one thing made to that end is not necessary: the money.

'You're really not normal,' said Ibi. 'Denk you that I am the only in my class i with an older boyfriend?'

He looked at the wife, but they seemed to find this normally. All-day confessies along you go if the weather. Everything it was surprising they normally. Everything he rejected, it was also good to understand and does not present a problem. He was old-fashioned, a stand-in-the-road. Indeed, an unnecessary hangover from a different time.

'MAAR,' said ship's steward, and he heard the despair in his voice, 'dat is not your friend. That is the tenant. That can be a friend are not. That is the tenant.'

'Papa,' said Tirza.

He looked to her. She was small for her age. They belonged to the smallest of the class, but the family doctor had said that the growth spurt. That they are not worried about having to worry.

'Papa,' said Tirza again.

'Yes,' he said and he realized that he for his own family stood as before a court of law. 'Doe lolly leave anyway. You can find the not even tasty. It is pure chemical rubbish. And there is other candy that you really nice place.'

'I have also a boyfriend. He is seated in the lady in the class. Stine'

Ship's steward wiped on his forehead. Sweat in his hands and sweat in his neck, sweat everywhere. That was perhaps also with the respiratory distress and with that uneasy feeling in the chest, arms, legs. The own body was an inconvenience. An instrument that was inadequate, and that he should be discarded if it were not for the fact that there is no replacement was. That was the age, which began today on the stairs.

'Dat is very nice,' he said. The ceremonies during the evening you must eat everything about tell, about lady Stine.'

'Not About lady Stine. About my boyfriend.'

'Yes, that is what I mean, dear Tirza, that I mean it. About your boyfriend.'

When it was quiet, and also Hofmeesters strayed off and that it was thought that everything has been resolved. This evening that they were talking about and lady Stine about the boyfriend. As each evening they would sit around the table. Maybe a little taciturn. Ibi looked often grumpy, but that belonged to the puberty. They would sit around the table, he would sit there. This was his family, these were his family members. He belonged to these people that he would soon to realize, as Tirza table about lady Stine told us, or about her boyfriend.

Just when he almost convinced that everything had was that everything went as it always was he heard the wife ask 'How are you this good now?'

He Regaining his back. If he thought about it or sank into in daydream, he often took a slightly curved posture.

'Good? Where have you on?'

And Tirza said with its high, sweet voice: 'Yes papa, how are you going to make this good now?'

He travelled to his lower lip. He had the idea that he has no side on could be, and that in his own home.

'But Tirza,' he said, as if they were the only thing was that it had made that question. 'I do nothing to make good. The tenant must something. Because he is a dirty man. He is a dirty architect. He is a dirty tenant. He is so dirty that he can no longer. I put it to the house.'

I also 'Dan,' shouted Ibi. 'Dan i now. So I take my stuff. I am still tonight disappeared.'

They stood up, they walked to the gift table.

'You see not what you do?' asked the wife, and they talked now not more quiet and calm. 'You see not what you do? Do you understand something of your daughter?'

'I understand very much of my daughter,' he said. 'I understand that she is attacked. No, that she is raped, and that they are in the war. That we must see a doctor. To the police. I understand that. They may be pregnant.'

'No,' shouted Ibi. 'Let him stop. Let it cease.'

They picked up the watch that they had obtained. She loved it in her hand.

'stop that? To stop, Ibi? Are you me in my house the law? Are you tell me what I can and cannot do that?'

'I am not pregnant' shouted Ibi. 'I am on the pill, geenstijl.' She threw the watch for located on the ground and with its right foot stampte they insisted as if they were too large a spin wild death stairs. They remained until the beast death pitching was. 'and that I do not need more,' she shouted. 'I do nothing of you. I need never something of you.'

Ship's steward wiping his nose, even though there is nothing to wipe fell. Too old, he was too old to children and actually started against his will. But when he was young, there were the expressionist poets who at the same time as child and pet in his life figured.

'Why do I know nothing?' he asked soft. 'Why nobody tells me something? Why do I always as last?'

'Because you never ask,' said the wife. 'You ask nothing. Besta you really? Do you live here with us?'

So that is the he thought, I never ask something. But how do you certain things? And when? In the dessert? Or on sunday afternoon, if it rains?

'There must you say,' said he could quietly, 'You almost every night when a a finicky bitch the house from rent. I do everything, and with pleasure, not, I go to the parent evenings, i stay at home for the children, but you are not there, you just need to be there not because you are artist. Yes, dear children, you mother is an artist. Nobody wants to buy its work, and between us and silence: it is not to be seen, but not that makes her, she paints by.' He raised his voice. 'And then complains that she said to me that I do not know that my eldest daughter on the pill. How did I that need to know? I must ask for the four weeks confuse the bathroom and see if I left in the medicine cabinet the pill of my daughter? Or should I each evening on the food questions: "Who of you is on the pill, dear children? A show of hands. Which of you has had a sexually transmitted disease, dear children? A show of hands. Who of you is today on the school square in the arse fucked, dear children? Hands." Is that what it means to be father? According to you? And then I begin there today. I did not believe that this should be the case. I had no idea that I was expected. No idea.'

Ibi was there. The wife was on and picked up the remnants of the watch on, they looked as if they wanted to investigate forward or the still could not be repaired. And Tirza looked with its large, brown eyes. Curious. But also tense. She looked like they understood.

Nobody responded to his diatribe. They Galilee to him as if he was an alien. Not anxious, rather curious and surprised, but with the remote that is an inevitable if a man is an alien.

'I am discreet,' said ship's steward eventually but, 'what that will do I not certain questions. Out of politeness.'

The wife went to him. 'Jörgen,' she said, 'it is not. Or you discreet or not. As we do to solve this. This is what it is all about. And it is not only you. It is me. It is. Ibi It is also a Tirza.'

He pushed her aside in an attempt to leave the house room. But so easy they gave not. They went into the opening of the door. 'Jörgen,' she said, 'denk after, word quiet. Just do you do things you regret in.'

He hustle and bustle its against the wall, it rattled as Ibi just had vibrated loose. At the top of the residence of the tenant. A child. A flickering child she was. Only her head was an adult and no more.

There was a matter of urgency. He understood the. There was almost to everything. His daughters had almost as if they felt that it would circumvent their life for the good and was begun. But hurry was no excuse.

'Are you me now also with a stalamp on my head?' asked the wife. 'Is that what you are going to do?'

He showed her, he walked to the kitchen.

Weather waste his hands, he had forgotten that he had already done just that. Under the sink in the box where the toothbrushes and the soap were preserved, were also empty plastic bags. He took a plastic bag, remained in the corridor for the mirror and decency by his hair. Then he walked out of the house. He had his wife and the children in the living room to hear about him, whisper, but he gave no attention to. They would heave, would ultimately they all understand. Ever. Later. It is for their sake.

First he walked in the direction of the Vondelpark, but when he crossed the street was, he continued and walked back again. The empty plastic bag Union flew in his hand.

Many met him incomprehensible for, the people and his own family, the views of the people, incomprehensible and unknown. There he could not penetrate. Not in their ideas, not in the people themselves.

For the lower door of the lessee, he remained. He stood there, as he had been earlier. With a handkerchief wiping his face.

Then he phoned to.

He waited.

This time it was open.

For the second time that night he climbed up the stairs and again he experienced the sensation that there is too little air his lungs was sucked in. You learn to live with respiratory distress and other defects. You know after a time not better, you avoid certain activities. So it would be. More than just he remarked how he was stuffy a little stairs.

Finally he was above. He sweat as if he was in the tropics.

The tenant was on his dining table. Ship's steward studied it from the hallway. As if he were a peep show was binn agreed the cracks. Not to go to a naked woman to look at but to an injured tenant.

The man had still not related or plaster on his forehead pasted. The blood was solidified. Were the fragments of the stalamp tidy. He was there simply. Without doing anything. With the door open.

When a ship's steward was entering the room, did the man is not. He looked his house boss is on and when he stared back to the table where what paper on layers, a magazine about architecture, a few pencils.

Ship's steward searched in his bags, he was also in panic because he thought to have lost him but he found the envelope in his back pocket. He presented it on the table. He rejected on his face, his neck. He had the feeling that he sneezing.

So he continued to wait as if he wanted to find out whether only the lessee would tackle the money, but the envelope remained on the table.

He waited and he waited and eventually he remembered for which he was. Everything he remembered. Ship's steward said: 'I come to bring you the rental.'

There was no reply. Also looked at the architect ship's steward, when he founded his look back on the tabletop.

'I come to bring you the rental,' said ship's steward, 'because you are here not more desirable. You have five days. I will give you five days to get here to get away with it.'

The architect looked at him. Blankly, strictly neutral, as if a ship's steward had said: 'Good weather, but about five days we get a thunderstorm.'

When a ship's steward not expected more that he was going to say something, said the architect: 'I do not know what your daughter has told you, I assume the truth, Mr ship's steward, but it is not what you think, not what you appear to believe. What is between me and your daughter has occurred, was mutual.'

Ship's steward submitted his warm hand on the table in the other hand he still loved the empty plastic bag, bowed himself to the man, he remembered the dream of the cat in the sink. Nauseous made him this man. Misselijker than all previous tenants together.

'Mutual,' he said when he went to the old dream of had opted out, 'How can something mutually between a man of your age and a girl of fifteen, of less than fifteen? That comes here to collect the rent. Do you really know what you say? How can that mutual? How old are you? You have no idea what is reciprocal. Between you and me, that would be mutual. Between you and me. Mutual. A girl of fifteen. Have you no sense of responsibility? Are you a beast? Is that what you are trying to tell me that you are a beast, disguised as an architect, that above my family a beast lives? The best that I spot in Amsterdam rented a beast?'

Ship's steward cried almost. It was not a sorrow, it was impotence. He wanted to say more, but he understood that it was useless. He put his left hand in his neck. A wet neck. It seemed as if he had fever.

'Your daughter,' said the lessee and he often looked almost happy as if he were to angels to someone who thought, cleaner picking him and out of the mud travelled, 'is an intelligent and luff girl. No child.'

The word 'luff' came to ship's steward as a beating.

'Luff?' he asked. 'How do you mean, for-?'

'It is early variety.'

Ship's steward shook his head. First slowly and then faster. 'You are a pervert,' he said. 'Dat is the. That is the only thing i can think of. A pervert with excuses. The cost of the stalamp i pull on the lock, you understand. That is not more than fair. It was not a cheap stalamp.' He hijgde of the voltage of the pain in his chest, the excitement about the language which uitsloeg man.

Then there came at last another expression on the face of the architect. The money would have been shaken him, money churns the tenant always wake up. The landlord saw anger on the face of the architect.

'That is not at all fair, Mr ship's steward.'

He wanted to get up but a ship's steward said: 'you remain seated. If you do not want any accidents happen, you will remain seated. I am not for myself. Do you know that? It is a feeling that you are not responsible for yourself, that you yourself have no longer control? That someone else is controlling your body?'

He showed his large, warm hands. He showed them to the lessee as if only the appearance was enough. The hands with which he worked in the garden, its own garden and the garden which of his parents had been.

Perhaps this was the by the wound on his forehead, or by the way in which a ship's steward had spoken, but the tenant was not. He stayed where he was.

Ship's steward ran through the room and his look focused on the floor. It postponed a chair, looked under the table. Finally, in a corner next to the bank, he found what he is looking for. A thong, a black thong. He picked it up and did it in a plastic bag.

Also he continued to stand still.

He looked at the man who now total seemed on the figure who had his daughter fucked as a beast. The architect was there as a school boy who is caught by the cheating. Younger than just he seemed. Actually more boy than man. Then said ship's steward: 'Over six days I come here again, then your stuff Road, then you are away. And then leave me and my family for always with peace. My daughter is not included in the price. Remember that. Children are not included in the price.'

'Meneer ship's steward,' said the architect while he gazed back to the table top. 'You understand something not. You want does not understand anything. With rent this has nothing to do with love has to do.'

Ship's steward rendered the plastic bag with the panties more firmly as if he was afraid that it would deprive him. The architect looked forward. He had set up his head.

It was a translucent bag. You could see what's in it.

'what you have done with my daughter,' said the father, 'dat is not a love. That is a punishable offense. That is the only what it is. That is the only thing that can be said about it. Love is never a punishable offense.'

He wanted to turn already, but the architect stood up. He came not to ship's steward, he was only.

The architect was a long man. Long and lean. Not unattractive but not personable. On the street he would at most noticeable because of its length.

'thinking you that I was the first?' asked the architect. 'thinking you know? Is that what you bothering? Let me help you out of a dream. I was perhaps the fourth or fifth. I did not dare to ask again the echo i was. Of me she has nothing to learn. Previously vice versa.' He snickered. At first it was a gentle smile, but it was becoming increasingly fierce., gegrinnik The reminder of Hofmeesters oldest daughter did the architect chuckle.

There was a ship's steward with the plastic bag in his left hand, he looked at the tall man, to the ridiculous wound on his forehead. The courage that that man uitstraalde, that so many people nowadays did lack luster, the assured, the lack of defeat suffered, the fact that they had any claim to everything and the idea that everything was for sale or rent, even his daughter, that he've despised. A non had him, when he was still on the secondary school, learned that humanity is a matter of nullity was. The better you do your own nullity see how more humane you. They knew no invalidity, the people, more they were their own nullity smooth forgotten. They were opposed to revolt, but it would be a high price to pay. Without nullity was not.

'It is not a question of whether you was the first,' said ship's steward, 'or the eighth. You was the oldest. This is what it is all about.'

The plastic bag creaked in his hand.

'took the initiative,' said the architect. 'I have against its said: "This is wisely? I have nothing to offer you." But they wanted to hear anything. They are there early today, Mr ship's steward. Increasingly earlier. Everything starts earlier and ends later. Your daughter is not from you. Do you think that. That hopes you. But it is not so. On a day you will still come back. They were looking for a listening ear. They are looking for someone to whom they could tell everything. At her home had made the obviously too busy with other things. Well, that is how it is. A. They are looking for — I am sorry that as its right in your face to say — they were looking for affection.'

The husband went down again. As if he had said what he had to say. As if he had participated in a conference and also had stood up to the speaker on a few points friendly but decided to correct it.

Ship's steward breathed in deeply. Take a deep breath was always a good way to unwind. But the deeper he inademde, the better the pain he felt his chest.

'How long has it been going on?' he asked eventually, when he was again a little air could obtain.

'a few weeks, a few months at most. God, I have not kept up to date, I have other things on my main than your daughter, Mr ship's steward.'

Ship's steward snoof if an injured beast.

When he nodded. He had nothing to ask for more. He knew everything. The architect had other things on his head.

He was still the same, pro forma actually. He wanted to see the money the man. He wanted to be there if the tenant are money, that is no longer was accepted in his pocket.

Because there is nothing happened, he said: 'Unzip the money.'

Also watched the tenant to the envelope when he pushed him toward him and set it with a slight smile in his pocket.

This event was completed. It was over. Ship's steward had done what he had to do so.

'I have to do with you,' said the architect.

'How do you mean?' ship's steward was already on the way out, but he turned around to.

'How do you mean?' he asked again.

'I sympathise with you. I would prefer an arm around you save. Because I understand you best. I would arm around you want to store and against you want to say that it is not so bad, that they on its feet. Ibi. It is young, personable, intelligent, horny, I am sorry that I must use that word, but that is also important for a woman in this time, and it is the more than anything else. And she knows, she knows damn well. Cunning is that they are also. No, it is not good with her. Surely you will also have seen? How horny she is, and how they need to play in order to fool us?'

Ship's steward listened to the catalog of good characteristics of his eldest daughter. And he smiled briefly internally, because he has had the feeling that he was doing to be insane.

'Met me?' asked ship's steward, when the list came to an end. I have 'you pity?'

'I am not the only one who thinks so. Others have me the idea. I am by others you will see otherwise. Not only as an intolerable house boss, but as a human person with weak spots, with a story, a history, someone you can understand. O, you say to yourself, so he does so. As is. And then you can live with it.'

The bag with Ibi's panties has always seemed to be heavier. As if there was iron in or a kilo of steaks. Ship's steward did only return again, away from the door, a pass in the direction of the table. The word 'horny' showed him still do not disconnect. As he had never been to his children.

'How do you mean?' he asked. 'You are not the only?'

'As I am doing.'

'what you say?'

'Dat others also sympathize with you.'

'Who? Who are the others? I would say that people know?'

'Your daughter for example. Ibi. It also has sympathy with you. They're ashamed not only for you, they also has sympathy with you. She has told me they came here really not only for the sex. They also wanted to talk to.'

If there is still a had been stalamp ship's steward the architect again on his head skipped. Hard and long.

There was no stalamp more. And he knew what he did. He mastered.

'You are trying to protect them,' said ship's steward, without knowing against whom he talked, 'as well as possible, because really protect them you can not but you try it, and then on a day they someone like you. So it goes. Obviously. And then you go back, you go back in time and you think: where i made the mistake, where i have overlooked something, what have I done that i could not do better? It is never in you raised, it is never in your main era, idea? That is a child? Have you never thought: she is a child? The child of my landlord?'

The architect shook his head. 'But it is not the child,' he said, 'they was long ago ceased to be children. She is less child than we do with two together. Do you know what they said to me? "Sex with boys of my age, that is always so inconvenient. And clumsy sex is bad sex." Yes, I also did not know what I heard. Clumsy sex is bad sex. Well, I found them not inconvenient.' The architect giggled.

Ship's steward stared at the man as to a pop in the haunted house that suddenly appears to be true, no wax that depends to deter people, no, against all expectations in a truly common. What ever live and was for some time now and not more.

'It is save,' said the architect, 'and i have its occasionally helped a little. Because it is its great dream. Or large dream, it is one of her dreams, I believe. She has a lot on such as that goes with people of that age.'

'On the savings, for what?' ship's steward asked the question mechanical, without thinking. His body he was still under control, but his voice not more.

'For a breast augmentation. She says: "I have nothing." And that is so. From above is just a little boy. The hope that the natural will do it has dropped, but she is to save, as I have already said. Occasionally I stopped her what. A vijftigje, a honderdje. You can smile. But for her it is a matter of life or death. The tits. No, it is a special child, a bold young woman who knows what she wants. You can be proud of her. You are also proud of her, I know. Just as I am. We are proud of her.'

Ship's steward ran out the door without to say something more, he ran down the stairs, went his house and walked right through to the kitchen. He was, what he was? He knew what he was no longer. Or is, he knew the, accident, that he was. A brok accident, accident made of bones, meat and what brain.

There was Tirza, on a stool, she was engaged to open kitchen cabinets.

'What are you looking for?' he asked.

'something to eat.'

'We are going so food.'

He placed the plastic bag on the worktop, took the panties out and lock the plastic bag on under the sink, where all empty plastic bags were stored.

'Why do you get angry, papa?' asked Tirza while taking in the crank climbed.

'I am not angry.'

'Why have you Ibi than skipped?'

'I have not skipped.' Ibi He searched for words, but the only word that came back again and again that it is not left, that he had never more would be leaving, was the word 'medelijden'. May have to daughters their father? Girls of fifteen? Just fifteen. And why? There was no reason to pity with him. He lived with his family in the good part of the Van Eeghenstraat, he had a respectable job as editor of a literary publishing, two beautiful daughters, one did all gymnasium, the other went to do that, he had a woman and a worker, he was not learns a sophisticated thanks to financial policy for him and his family. He was not a man to pity to have. Well, are oldest daughter saved for a breast augmentation. In the puberty many people did the craziest things. Were probably ten thousand girls of fifteen saving for breast augmentation. It heard. Nothing to them. He was an old father perhaps, but he was not a man to pity to have.

'I have calmed her,' he said soft and pensive.

'It says that you have beaten her.'

He put his hand in his neck, which was still moist. 'Ibi is a bit confused. How was it at school?'

'Ibi says that they may have no boyfriend.'

'They may best a boyfriend.'

'MAG I have a boyfriend?'

'You may also have a boyfriend.' He took Tirza on and continued its back on the crank. 'obviously that,' he said, 'I still keep yours Tirza. You may everything.'

They looked at him seriously, inquiring, and he wiped with a handkerchief on his face to remove the sweat. Only when he the handkerchief in his pocket wanted to stop, he saw that the Ibi's panties.

He explained the weather on the worktop, looked to one second. A black thong with a versierinkje that he could not at home. A beast. A butterfly? A? A Bumblebee?

He saw Tirza look. He lifted her. It took him effort. He had its long not raised. As he stood there in his kitchen, with his youngest daughter on his arm.

'Papa,' she said, 'is that of Ibi?' She pointed her finger to what on the counter.

'Yes,' he said. 'Dat is Ibi's pants. She has forgotten.'

Together they looked to the pants, Tirza and her father.

'If I am large later' asked Tirza, 'I get no tits?'

He took a deep breath.

'You will get them. Every woman gets breasts. Also you. And Ibi. But we need to be patient. You must learn to be patient. Everyone must have patience.'

When he pressed Tirza closer to adhere to and he remembered how he had held Tirza when she was a year old. He had lifted high into the air, above his head. 'Tirza,' he had said, 'you most beautiful of me, you love most. Do you know what you are? You are our solar queen. You have. And later if you large, go maybe dancing, or discover a new star, or you're writing and you win the Nobel Prize. Everything can be, my love Tirza, everything you like, because you are the solar queen. And now I will you completely dead cuddle.'

In fact he had its Mala, he had on a Mala read, to his wife a few days before the birth said to him: 'Mala means "bad" in Spanish. As a child you can not?'

When they had decided to call its Tirza, first with h, later but without, in order to avoid Hebrew associations.

He would not that his youngest daughter be called "bad".

'Come, Tirza,' he said. 'You're too heavy. I put you back on the ground.'