Tirza

1

The guests drip than expected later within a ship's steward. It is half past eight and there is still no one. That is why he eats the first batch baked sardines itself but. In fact he had only later in the evening to begin with baking the sardines, but he was not able to take in. Three sardines he has already. He eats the spine. You noticed there is very little of it is such a small fish.

He runs to Tirza's room to her a freshly baked sardientje. She has a black dress to that for years in her closet will not dress which he, together with her for this celebration has purchased. One of three hundred euro with matching shoes of almost the same amount.

He must have looked at disappointed because they saves an arm around him and says: 'I just might put it on, PAP, but tonight he wouldn't state. Tonight is really not. I am not in the mood. It is simply not the dress from this night.'

He smiles generous with the board sardines in his hand. 'But we have bought him for this evening, Tirza, specially for your party,' he would say. He remains silent. His disappointment are case. They must remain invisible to the world. If Tirza is turned over smiles her father still, seemingly sensitive. 'You state everything,' he says and let her only.

Ship's steward opens the bathroom door. Ibi is in bad lie with the ELLE, the ladies like that they used magazine've despised. 'Papa' calls on them, 'You can not correct?'

He let his gaze thought loos her body glide, a few seconds it to its abdominal tail. 'Sorry,' he says, 'Are you pregnant?'

'Papa' calls on them, 'stel not that kind of weird questions and leave me alone.'

It closes the bathroom door and enters the bedroom within. The wife still do not know what they will attract. To make the difficult decision — perhaps shoot something suddenly her föhnt within — they first her hair. Almost nude she for the mirror in the bedroom, hairdryer loosely in her hands. A smoldering his cigarette in an ashtray. Apparently she has the ashtrays somewhere found.

Also state ship's steward silently to her to watch, he wants to say something, something feel free to tell ends and vriendschappelijks, something you say against a good old friend who after years once again on the visit. Nothing to fire him within. Then he drops down the stairs. He wonders whether she will ever want to leave. He sees on against her departure, but the idea that they are never from now on it will leave him not less benauwt

He is now back in the kitchen on a stool and eat, without really enjoy, still but a fried sardine. He has completely forgotten his youngest daughter with a sardientje to pamper yourself. 'Tirza,' he calls with half-full mouth, 'You must also go to taste. They are so fresh, so you get even in Portugal not.' There is no answer. He would carefully sardientje a baked in her mouth wanting to stop, and then continue to look at how they enjoy. Then he would want her mouth wipe with a paper towel, but he does not impose on them. He remains without to chew, he hears how someone hard the front door closes. Tirza would leave just before her party, now the guests can appear at any time? He does not understand why they do not want to come to him together with him of the sardines to enjoy. Slowly resumed chewing the ship's steward. There is so much what he does not understand. More and more.

Two times he is already with the plateau full of sushi and sashimi ingewandeld the garden. To practice for as the young people are the future. The plateau is specially for Tirza's party purchased in the Japanese shopping in the Beethovenstraat. He is proud. They know him in that shop by name.

The torches are lit. Its apple tree has a ship's steward two weeks ago nobody pruned to allow the risk in tipsy condition against a low hanging branch to walk.

He has also now tidied itself, he looks good and yet unobtrusive, he says. As fathers to see hear out, they want at least prevent the child is ashamed for them. To children is good to note how natural assimilation. The child would like nothing better than the color of its surroundings.

Jörgen ship's steward is like a rocket which is ready for the launch.

It stands on the crank and pours himself a glass of kir. On the worktop he has a makeshift bar installed. He has prepared for the creation of five different kinds of cocktails.

In fact he keeps not of kir, but it is Tirza's favorite drink. They have agreed that all guests to start a glass of kir get unless they explicitly ask something else. Even though because of the color. Will be nice. All that bright red.

Are to kir sweet, he throws in some white wine to drink and the glass hastily empty. Then he looks at his watch. Quarter for eight and still does not have the dog. They will be able to do it? It is not his party, he gives all years no celebrations, for decades not more, but he is worried. Visions that they did he leave Tirza choke and that the family ship's steward all sushi only be eaten. These visions votes him, with the glass of kir in his hand, boatyard, as though he were already know that they will actually become reality. As if it were not to be in any doubt that his fear dreams will come true. He gives himself a second glass of kir in and shout out also with his fingers on the worktop. Earlier at Book presentations he felt the same, the fear that he would be only with the author, shame on him most did when he had to come to the Author with the words: 'I think we should do with two, but that is our fine.' The panic that it could fall over just before he had to take a short speech in which he on serious and at the same time ironic, author and book or translator and book would imply. For the press who rarely was inconvenient. But that is now all over.

Soon he drinks his second glass of kir empty. 'Tirza,' he calls. 'Tirza.' There is no reaction.

He picks up the plateau with sushi and sashimi and is there for the third time in the garden. He introduces himself that the garden is full of guests. He will be the reachout which he has not met earlier tell us who he is, Tirza's father, then interested in their stories to listen. Who knows he will be a young man a convivial stub shaft in the abdomen and whisper: 'Have you not a time in my bathroom met?' Nothing will bring him out of his balance. It will be a perfect hosts. They will go home, the children, and think: what has a nice father's Tirza

After a tour through the garden, run it transmits the plateau back to the kitchen, covered with foil and put it in the fridge. He remains at the sink stand panting. Towing with the raw fish put it. He gives a glass of kir.

No, for book presentations he need never worry about. There is a reorganization of the publisher. First they wanted to dismiss him, but then they found out that because of his age was impossible. The law did not stop, the law stood between him and his dismissal in, and the law was relentless in such cases. At the beginning of April he was summoned to the Director, who are generally only with the finance and the wishes of the main office occupied herself. A heady and difficult to fathom god, the main office.

First keuvelden them enough about everyday affairs, the director and he. The children. The climate. Both of the exhibition as of the society but also in the more meteorological sense of the word. The warming of the earth came in a phrase. And then some less enough matters. The fatal disease of the head of the marketing department. Marokkaantjes for difficulties made jam problem., Especially the latter was the managing director to the heart, he lived in Naarden.

After the congestion issue you raised, was the director lazy in his chair hang from, as if the call was in fact already past, and when he had asked: 'Jörgen, what important author have you discovered really is for us, all the years that you worked here? Have you ever watched author discovered?'

The question was about a ship's steward, because they had just come to the question of Moroccans and traffic jams.

He looked out of the window when the director, then to the office and then back out the window. There was a tree in front of the window. The tree was carefully in bloom.

'I did especially translated fiction,' said ship's steward. 'I do especially translated fiction,' improved himself. 'Germany, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, is happening today much interesting. And for a while I worked on the sports book, but that was me frankly.'

'No,' said the director, 'sport Books Are you not. But you can also discover an author in Germany, or in Eastern Europe? I am wrong? The problem of the authors who brought you have is that they only have cost us money, never diverted, cost only.' He leaned even further behind. 'You know, Jörgen,' he said, 'You will not believe what I have to say. We wanted to dismiss you, but our lawyer has discovered that in view of your age is impossible. And you know what we do now? We pay you just two and a half years from, or what it is, that two years and eight months which you still have to go to you. That we pay you, including everything, insurance, holiday allowance, tended. But you do not more. You need never to come to the office. You are free to go.'

When was the director on and grabbed der Grijn transmit Hofmeesters hand so ship's steward felt compelled to also. The Director looked as if he were a television closer presenter was that its candidate the main price should be able to issue but a ship's steward could not believe that the Director really thought that this is a main price was. This was not a main price.

'What are you saying?' asked the director. 'What did you say, Jörgen?'

Ship's steward did his best to look friendly and for the first time since he had to think times his parents and to his secondary school time. Apparently it didn't matter how old you was, fifty-four, fifty-eight, sixty two, once a skipped school boy in you was to come and live and not in good time, then he remained verjoeg always there. The humiliation, that was the constant factor that was what him with the person who he bond had been at thirteen years of age. The imaginary humiliation, which perhaps was even worse than the real thing.

'I do not know what I have to say,' said ship's steward and he took his hand gently from that of the Director. Are always warm and wet hands, the eternal fear to be caught, but which, that he did not know. In fact there was nothing that they could catch him. He took no pushpin home from the office.

'I did want to continue, but this is of course also fine,' he said. He wondered why he failed to say that this is what it is concerned not at all was fine, why is he not from his mouth got. Why he is so keen to give the impression that everything went. That things are always went on as he would have liked to have seen.

For the change gave the impression that he is not very convincing. He felt bewildered and he doubted that the distress, completely against his sentence to read on his face was. Perhaps more than confusion: terror.

To allay fears, to the whole of the appearance of a friendly conversation, suspected ship's steward, slammed the director the net is not discharged employee a few times on the shoulder and said: 'Is this not the dream of us all? By paid but not more need to work? Enjoy it. Go travel. Or rowing. You will still always like just rowed across? Disconnect your desk empty and take the. I am jealous of you, I say it you are honest, I am jealous of you, but yes, I cannot yet not road, Jörgen.' The director picked for the second time Hofmeesters hand and ship's steward felt now a pop, controlled by others. Not he himself, but someone else checked his movements, his statements, even his thoughts. Something was stronger than his will. The fear, shame, the calculation that it was better not to cause problems.

There is a certain amount of school pride in the man who did everything which is not of frenzied afbeet itself. The pride of someone who would be extremely quiet and continue as if nothing has happened.

'We are not forget what you have done for this company,' said the director. 'It is a hope and it was not always easy, we know that. In short, we of course take another official farewell of you. In due time, you must let us know but how you propose that something perhaps intiems. A candlelight dinner? Or a discount voucher? For now I would just like to say that it was a pleasure to work with you and you go well, Jörgen. Enjoy it! You know…'

He brought his head even closer to that of a ship's steward, as if there is now a secret that came already have a time on his tongue had lit. 'It is perhaps strange to hear from someone who throughout his life has worked with books. But the most beautiful in the world are not the books, the most beautiful in this world are the children. Go to your daughter in France. It will be the small children. Also delicious. Go with them rowing, go with them sailing, go with them water cycling. Children love water.'

In his mouth felt ship's steward a small pit, a grape seed probably. He had at the lunch a container fruit salad eaten. He had to take the pit by.

The director was pronounced.

In Mind recessed door to the ship's steward ran. Since he just turned around and asked: 'De-business, I still transfer to someone?'

The Director made a gesture with his hand. Good temper and boys-like. He went to sit on his desk. 'Forget it," he said, 'rgeet the. Fiction from the east, since we only on. We are going to do things differently here. The time that a book only in the book trade was available is behind us. The petrol station, supermarket, bank, yes even the bank, pharmacy, the waiting room of the doctor, the coffee shop, everywhere we will offer book them on every street corner we will book them utopianism. We must not allow ourselves to be marginalized. That is dangerous for a society, as the vanguard withdraws, if the elite is satisfied with a marginal position. True culture, real culture is the power of the number, nothing else, Jörgen. The power of numbers.' The director lost some saliva, saw a ship's steward, and that was a sign that he was enthusiastic. He was rarely enthusiastic, but if the at high exception occurred, than he lost when the talk of saliva Ship's steward had no choice, he had to remain at the door, because there was still what an encore, on his resignation that no dismissal should be mentioned, a swan song on his disappearance, an improvised farewell song for the writer translated fiction.

'Groups which is said: "Who read never", Jörgen,' said the director, 'we will get them to read. Low educated men. You will see: in a year or five have that the road to the book is found, perhaps not through the book shop, perhaps via the fuel pump, or the video store, or the liquor store or the peep show for my part, but the road to the book will also have their way. Muslims, forget it, everyone says. That is not read. The illiterate are the. Nonsense, I say, but you need to know to reach you, you must deepen in their needs. Orthodox Jews. The same is true. Jehovah's Witnesses who people watch ever wanted tv, Underhill, and if they secretly watching tv, they can also sometimes secretly read a book. Sales is demography. And we are going to give the customer edit demographic, we are going to examine him, we are going to examine it, and then we are going to operate it on size. Public friendly. And size. Also the long-term unemployed, the hooligans. What for the mass media, applies for the publishers. We can only survive if we the customer as an equal partner. If we stop talking about the heads of the customers to regulate forcibly what is good or bad. Everyone can today. Let the customer and the writer each other but complementary. The people also have no more time. Not for the newspaper, not for the book, not for the tv. We have to take that into account. We need to make books for people who do not have time to read. Yes, Jörgen, what awaits us is nothing less than a revolution. Digital of nature, without ideology, or rather an ideology, the only ideology which all of us will survive: The customer is king. The customer is king, Jörgen. Have we forgotten that, because we have isolated, because we have to dismiss this where we were in. You will all agree to follow, I assume, remotely. Disconnect your desk empty and immerse yourself in the Freedom. You are a brave soldier. Others take you now. With new weapons.'

'I have never just rowed across,' said ship's steward still. When closed the door and ran quickly, as he had to the toilet urgently, to his own room. He heard the Director before the laugh at the revolution that all and everything would come, whether or not digital of nature.

He went behind his desk. In addition to the computer was a cup of cold tea. That he drank slowly. He answered a few e-mails, in none of the e-mails he made mention of his departure or of the imminent revolution and when he waited.

He waited until everyone had left the building. He waited motionless, sitting on the chair on which he had been thirty-three years. There was very little has changed in this property. The changes would now. After him.

Ship's steward thought, not to nowhere are future, not at the time that he had spent here, not to his wife, not to his children, just as he thought to Tirza. This is not that they should come to know that nobody should come to know this. This was a shame. And it came to him for that his entire life to this disgrace had redoubled. He heard again the director questions: 'What important author have you discovered really is for us, all the years that you worked here?' He had no answer to that question. He had talents farmed which were died for they had been able to come to fruition, but was that his debt?

When he certainly knew that everyone had left the building, that only the cleaners were still, he stood up and went for the window. He looked at the garden, where he in the summer with a group of veterans are bread and fruit salad opat, and where since short, now the smoking ban also to this company was realized a few employees their cigarette smoke. He stared sensitive to the garden and his look had nothing sentiment eels, he was most surprised that he would never again see garden. That the farewell as quickly and as casually, especially the last. The farewell was ended up in a rush job.

He thought the departure of his wife, that he had not expected. Not the departure itself, since he had taken into account, but that they no longer had come back, that amazed him. If Ibi enTirza went to bed he had minutes long, sometimes up to an hour to sit next to the phone, waiting and hesitant at the same time, predominantly what he would say if they would call. The awareness that they can contact him if she had wanted, that was the violation. Who was it that was remember him clear for the spirit, which he would never forget.

After a few minutes to have been so, he looked at his watch and said soft against himself: 'I need my stuff I must get started.'

Many personal possessions he had not taken to his work. Other than colleagues who did their best to set up the office as a living room, he had his for contemporary concepts generous workspace as sober as possible.

Especially photos of his children he had hung, in all ages. Toddler, infant, a teenager. Some of these pictures were with adhesive tape on the monitor of his computer confirmed. He made them carefully, so as not to damage them. Then he did it in its agenda, so that they would not be creases. On the wall was a postcard which had sent Tirza him when they with school of Rome was traveling. He had let them hang him, although Rome Travel now for a year and a half ago it was because the words ontroerden him. So once a week he turned the card and gently weld the short text which began with the words: "Dear papa'.

In addition to the keyboard was a wooden kameeltje that Ibi before him had brought from Egypt. He went to the toilet, tore what toilet paper and wrapped the kameeltje, fearing that on the bike in his bag would damage.

There was still a drawing of Tirza on the wall, a self-portrait. Also that he concentrated. Frightened by both the wall to damage if the drawing.

Then it was his chamber is empty. He opened a few desk trays to see if he had forgotten nothing but the rest was not of him. He no longer treuzelde. His working life was over, it was fast and relatively undetected, that too. No major authors discovered that summed it together.

In the hallway he came a cleaner, a worldview against. Ship's steward had always suspected that the clean-maker for the Taliban had worked but he had never expressed that suspicion. It would now for always unspoken continue. In passing I mumbled he polite: 'good evening', he had any doubts are still not that the Afghan, just like those counterparts of him, the Trojan horse was that they had won.

When his bike broke away, conceived his leather briefcase still was a manuscript of an author from Azerbaijan that it in English translation for the assessment was sent. He went out of his bag and wanted to go back to the on his desk for the successor, but he stayed with his bike with the manuscript in his hands and did it ultimately back in his briefcase. Nobody would miss it. Everything would be otherwise.

He was a month for Tirza's final examination a free man. Free of obligations, free from the Clerk existence, free of very urgent financial emergency — because he was simply paid by — free of work which he had hate but which he still had to conduct. Production meetings for example. The freedom that it was suddenly given a desert seemed.

Home clogged he the wooden camel, the photos and the drawing in his tray with briefs. Then he worked on two lamskarbonades. And while he was busy with the carbonade, he said to himself: 'it is a disgrace. Unnecessary Resistance is a disgrace. Maybe I am always have been superfluous.' The pronouncement of these thoughts in a weird way momentarily. As if he had not necessary had put the foot cross by that so clearly to appoint. He took the pepper mill and proceeded.

'What was your day?' asked Tirza to table when she board had eaten empty.

'Well,' he said, "Press, we are working with the Autumn offer. It is a nice offer. And, how did your school research?'

The next day he rode as every morning at a desk or nine with his briefcase to the steering direction town. At the height of the Leidseplein he realized that this is perhaps not such a good idea. What he was still in the town to search? He could sit in a cafe, but then he ran the risk colleagues who might wonder what he did in the middle of the day, in a café. He stepped, thought just after and turned when. He started in a southern direction to cycling.

Arrived at Zuid/WTC station he was tired. He did his bike lock and ran a time with his briefcase under his arm by the station. To this him began to get bored. How long can you by a relatively small station walking? Most of the magazines in the newspaper kiosk he had already leafed through. He saw that the only twenty past ten was, freedom took a long time. Without thinking he bought a ticket to Schiphol.

Since he walked by the Departures Hall, first he did the first, when the second, and then by the arrivals hall. He got hungry and bought a sandwich with Brie, that he just sit on a bench in the departures hall opat. From his briefcase he purportedly collected the manuscript of the author in Azerbaijan. He began to read. Routinely he made here and there with a pencil notes in the margin.

Then he bought an apple and remained an hour and a half in the arrivals hall to passengers to watch. Once it he put his right hand up and waved. Like someone who is on the other side of the glass of the baggage band, ship's steward had recognized and passionate to him had waved. A family member, a good colleague, a childhood friend who for thirty years he had not seen.

He did it only for not too much in the holes to walk. Who the whole day hanging around Schiphol Airport, is located in a precarious situation. In these times. Everyone is suspected. That have common to all travellers, the suspicion.

At half past five he decided that his mind could go home. The day was slow to start but he was ultimately detour. He took the train to Amsterdam Zuid/WTC and peddled from there to his home in the Van Eeghenstraat, wherever he washed and the evening food, chicken and fried potatoes, prepared.

When they were done with food, he said to Tirza: 'When I hear you should have, you should say so.'

'No, PAP. How was it at your work?'

'The went well,' he said. 'We are being flooded with manuscripts.'

He travelled from that day five mornings a week to Schiphol.

The literary publisher did better, but the airport was also not disappoint.

Ship's steward developed a routine. In the morning he did the two departure halls, than lunch break, a sandwich brie and an apple, he drank water on the gentlemen toilet. During the lunch break he read the manuscript of the author in Azerbaijan. And in the afternoon he did the arrivals hall.

He did the halls, so it felt, he checked them, he supervised them.

Not too much in the holes to walk now and then he continued for a monitor, sighed loud, and mumbled: 'Damn, still delayed.'

Also he bought sometimes a rose, with which he than for the glass of the arrivals hall went up to return an imaginary passenger to say goodbye. But this he did only if he had the idea that his presence too very began to fall. Sometimes he left the rose in the rear axle, sometimes he took him to house, cut it short and put him in a glass in the kitchen.

He was a kind of private keeper. Minutes long he could for the monitors in the departures hall and there were days when he notes made in its agenda of the delayed flights. At the end of the week he leaves the agenda by and saw for example that on 2 June the KLM flight to Warsaw was delayed.

After a few weeks he had the feeling that he has all his whole life had spent at Schiphol Airport. Publisher are decades were pushed into the background, had received surreal about. The keeping of delays at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, view of the passengers and their luggage, differed not much of the work in the garden or in the publication of books.

Two years ago when they with the entire publishing a boat trip on the River Linge had allowed to come closer together, was a colleague next to him, and had asked him: 'Jörgen, which living your name?'

They both had a few seconds to the Linge looked ship's steward in comparison with memories from his youth suddenly found against falls.

'I live for my work,' said ship's steward after a long silence, 'for the publishing and for the children.' for his wife he could not justify more life, who had taken the legs.

But now he had to admit that this is not a particularly apt. He did not work more and yet there was hardly anything in his life has changed. Instead of five times per week to the Herengracht cycling he went five times per week to the airport. He saw what less people, no, that were not, he saw more people, but they saw him not. Or they had seen past him was of course the question. He lived not more for his work and yet there was no significant changes in its existence. He lived for the children, he lived for Tirza. That he was to say, on the Linge, in that boat.

Each trash on Schiphol knew he has, at least at its side of the customs, every newsstand, each check-in desk was familiar to him, each change was on and was a breach of its rhythms. The others were hell he had never believed. He had found it strange that it is precisely that quotation from Sartre had become so famous. There were better and more interesting quotes from Sartre, less cynical, less black, less lonely.

What he discovered was that the less the other existed, how which was more bearable.

He waited in the Arrivals Hall, just like dozens, sometimes hundreds of others, but it is different than the people around him he was waiting for someone who did not exist, he called someone who would never come on, he put his hand into the air without really to believe or the hope that his greeting would be detected by a person on the other side of the glass. He waved at most so that a coincidental passer would think: this is an ordinary man.

There are benefits to passengers too shaky to retrieve never appeared. It saved him stories that perhaps should get bored, disappointments, complain that: 'You are listening not.' tensions.

A time came to him a man with a sign bearing the name of a traveller was written. 'You are here even though a time, I see,' said the man. A driver is likely. 'How Long all I ask you? What flight awaits you?'

'A WEEK OR SIX I am standing here already, had a ship's steward must reply', but he said: 'a few hours." And he was all his briefcase firmly as if his life was in.

'but on which flight awaits you?' urged the driver to, a sweaty, squat man.

On the flight he waited? From that side he had never viewed.

'I is not waiting for a specific flight,' said ship's steward.

He opened his briefcase as if he was looking for something. He found an apple and bite. The driver remained standing look at ship's steward, how he the apple opat. As if the driver had hoped that there would be something, a word, a look, a sign of rapport. Two men of a certain age in the arrivals hall who know what it is to wait. There was not a word more from Hofmeesters foot. He ate his apple, gazing to the baggage number 12.

Even now his work, he was Schiphol never without a briefcase from housing. He had him of his wife received ever, long before the first time they disappeared long for Ibi, when she was only just together in the Van Eeghenstraat lived.

How less human existed, how they were more enjoyable. That he discovered at the airport. But that has not meant that there was something wrong with the people who do exist.

Writer he was been translated fiction. He had his entire life involved with the non-existing, with the possible at most, the probable perhaps. Now was the difference between what existed and what did not exist, between the border was unclear. Foggy as the airport in the morning in the autumn. You had the whip of the fantasy about the reality which would otherwise reality you as a rearing horse from the saddle as far as knew, ship's steward now sure.

High it he put his right hand in the air. Sometimes he went to the passport control and waved them that nobody else were waved goodbye.

After the first sardines all alone has eaten, he goes to the top. The bathroom door is open, the bath leave Ibi has. In the bedroom is the wife still for the mirror. Her hair is geföhnd. Its upper body is unfounded. She has a spijkerrok This shop requires to, and in her mouth a cigarette.

'What is that?' requires a ship's steward. He points to the skirt. With extensive arm. His lips are still grease of the fish.

'Dit? This is a skirt of Ibi.' They talk without the cigarette from her mouth and look at it themselves.

'Yes, I see that the of Ibi is. But why did you?'

Only now does the cigarette out of the mouth. The pose of movie star is less. They will be the wife, the wife who returned unexpectedly.

'because I had nothing to attract and paste. I am just about as thin as Ibi on its fifteenth. But do you remember what a dikkerdje she was at its 11th? They had just to the menstruate or we named her the garbage container. Because they all residue opat. She had the whole day hunger.'

Ship's steward shakes his head. The past he now wants to not discuss. This is not the right time for an evaluation of the past. The question is what time. 'it could not,' he says. 'it goes too far. And I do not want you smoke in the bedroom.'

The wife looks at himself in the mirror. There is a brush for her on the table, the hair dryer, lipstick, a comb, hairpins. They inhales and blows the smoke from, if a child that shall exercise for later, a child that is still not really can smoke.

'Why it cannot find the not flattering?'

'It is…' says ship's steward. He squeeze in his nose as if he were a cold and he begins again. 'The state from flattering or not flattering. He is too short. A MINISKIRT. That nothing is covered. That is not possible.'

'You will find him too short? You will find my legs than not nice?'

She goes on his seat and plug with some effort both her legs into the air.

'You will find they are not nice? I thought you liked my legs so. I have they cleared. Specially for this evening.'

'I think,' says ship's steward and he squeeze in his right arm, 'dit skirt sletterig.'

'Sletterig?' She tail him.

'Yes, sletterig. I have no other word for it and I like you, I am sorry that I must say there too old for. I think it is something for if you are eighteen, something for Tirza and her friends. Even this bear this kind of clothes not more. And how much you would wish, you are not her friend. You are her mother.'

They are going to just sit. Its legs are now largely hidden from view Hofmeesters.

'but I thought," she says, 'You a little sletterigheid in women, that men in general that. The way they want it, all they dare not say men like you. Not that responsible, that timid. That neat. I throw my weapons in the fight, Jörgen. If I do not now, than it does not need more.'

He pulls his polo shirt from, a shirt is better anyway. He also has too many gezweet, it is too hot. For the guests is the delicious, a warm evening, but he must operate. The hands in the holes. An empty hand means an empty stomach.

He will feed the hungry and not superfluous. He will never be superfluous.

The polo shirt is wet. He throws in bed.

While he chose a shirt, he says: 'It is Tirza's party, if someone its weapons in the fight should throw the Tirza is, but they do not, it is too modest. To decent.'

'Jörgen, what sort of weapons they would be in the fight to throw?'

'What do you mean?' he draws a shirt from the cabinet and runs on the wife. 'What do you mean?' he asks again and retrieves the shirt of the hanger.

The cigarette is extinguished. Finally.

'How I mean? That You know better than I do. Of the top has them nothing. She is from top as flat as from the rear. I do not know how it is that both our daughters have remained virtually without tits, to me has not located. Look at me. I am voluptueus. Do you think it is surprising that men call me "voluptueus?'

Ship's steward let the shirt fall. He has only the pendant in his hand. He tail to the wife. The madness, he thinks. The madness. This family makes me insane. No, not this family, this woman. My wife. How is it that I've waited on her, how can it be that evenings at the telephone was sitting with the idea that I would call to eventually from to see how is it that they appeared in my life because I hate her. She was never returned. She was but any cowardice. That would have been better. How can you be jealous of your daughter? On everyone you can be jealous of, on the neighbors, colleagues, family members, you man, your wife.

And almost everyone is a ship's steward itself also sometimes jealous, but not on his children.

He notes not, tense is that he receives with the wooden hanger against his leg stores.

'HOW DARE YOU THAT about your own daughter to say,' he finally there. 'And it is not true. This is still the worst. Tirza is a beautiful woman, a beautiful young woman. Everyone loves her, all the boys love her. Everyone is in love with her, I hear of all its teachers. I know of no more beautiful girl. And she is not flat. That they are not of these large lubbe Rende, vulgar hang tits, like you, which only Moroccans and Turks geilen is a blessing.'

She turns around. Away from the mirror.

'Hanging Tits?' she asks.

He saves with the hanger, stolen from a Swiss hotel, rhythmically on his leg.

'look good, Jörgen. They are? Do you call this? Are you so old that you are no longer good looks? You have a pair of glasses? Do you know the difference between a hangtiet voluptueus and?'

She picks her right breast, they caresses the breast, no, it is not a caress, they touches it thought Loos and ship's steward keeps on with the on one leg. Somewhere in the house is a door closed with force.

'They hang not, not yet perhaps,' he says, concern that he began a quarrel plane for the feast. He has all his concentration to operate, the sardines, the cocktails, wine. But now he once started is to tell the truth, he can no longer return. 'I am no expert in this area, I do not know where the hangtiet begins and the ordinary tit ceases, but I know that they hang from, that you can see. If you look closely you will see that they are all a bit of sticking, if you look carefully you can see that it with your tits done is as it is done with you. That is why I can also come back. Because you could look anywhere else. Because you know that it is over, your adventure, you flirt, you decolleteetjes, you paintings, it is all past, complete a thing of the past. That is why I am here. Because you could look anywhere else. But that is no reason to have the way about your daughter who its great celebration gives this evening. It makes me sick. It makes me sick. As I previously became ill of you, as word i still.'

He has regret these words, now already, while he enunciated. And again he thinks: the madness. There is a curse on this family. Perhaps there is a curse on me, but also puts a curse on this family. It does not matter to whom the curse rest, on my wife, on the children, on me, ultimately it rests on all of us. We share the curse.

She says nothing, it keeps the nipple of her right breast, it seems as if they squeeze.

He picks up his shirt on the hanger on the bed. At one time they were on Curaçao, with the whole family, but as hot as he has now had not earlier. It is the excitement, baking the sardines. The hot oil. His entire polo shirt smell to it. Fish. Grease.

'Jörgen,' she asks, 'we will fuck?'

She looks at him through the rear-view mirror. For her is the hair dryer. One of Hofmeesters last gifts. They naked is, on the spijkerrok This shop requires of Ibi after. It is five over eight.

'Now?' he asks.

'Yes'. Now.'

He looks at his watch.

'But why? Questions If I may.'

'Why not?'

'De guests come so.'

She shakes her head. 'Die not yet. You are always so as terrified as ever when it comes to guests, so excessive. You have no idea when celebrations start. You walk behind. You have always walked back.'

'De children…' he would also like to say something, but he decides to leave it at that. The children says enough. The children, that explains everything.

'Die amuse themselves. They are mature. Do you that your password? Your daughters are mature. The are no children more.'

'I thought,' he says, after a few seconds to the ashtray for the mirror to have been inconsistent nature, 'I mean, why so suddenly?'

"Well, suddenly, you can suddenly it is not really, Jörgen. We have previously done.'

'But it was always a fiasco.'

'Yes, God, if you want to call as per se.'

She looks at him still via the mirror, and while he is looking back, calls it up to him that he is a significant part of his life with this woman has spent. The best part of his life. The largest part.

I thought that was not the intention. You felt not attracted to me. I think it is not very, but that you have said. Surely this will not suddenly changed?' he takes a deep breath. Deep and thorough as if he is the doctor. 'I thought: you are long because you want to know how it with me and the children.'

'DAT I also wanted to know.'

It closes the door. Gently, when an intruder.

'You are here to guest. We had agreed. We start yet again? We were all agreed that we would begin again. We are so often started again. It was worse every time. We said earlier: "It is good for the children." But you have said so yourself, that children are mature. We do not for the children do.' He talks as if he were a plea to the account.

Although his upper body expose, the sweat still on his back.

'We do not start again. And that in God's name? That?'

He gulps a few times, he rubs his mouth, his back, he removes the moisture as well and it comes from his body.

'Met the fiasco.'

They laughs. Their fiasco is only something to laugh. The echo of the tragic failure: a high-pitch smile.

'Why do you say such things about your own daughter? I think that it is unacceptable.'

'What I said?'

'They flat.'

'but they is flat. Two peas in a small shelf.' She sigh. "You can not protect your children, Jörgen. Not all their lives. The more you protect them, how they are weaker. You have to prepare them for the world. That is what people will say about her. That they are from the front is as flat as from the rear. If I do not say, say the others. They can better of hear me, because I say it with love.'

'They has a beautiful sight.'

'O certainly, she has a beautiful sight, and beautiful hair and a nice figurines. But no tits, Jörgen. No tits.'

'Tirza is your daughter. Your daughter. She was in you. Tirza is…' Tirza What is even more? He does not.

'Well and? I know that it is my daughter. I must therefore see things which are not there? She has no tits, ready. And to give you the truth, I can not stand to her. I know that a parent which is not to say that with this terrible, and bad, and perhaps it is also called, maybe I am terribly and bad, but it is the truth, I can not stand to her. It has also emerged as a heksje, she was already, a toddler. She is evil. And she has never been nice to me, Jörgen. Never. Not even if baby.'

He hears the words still, but they do not penetrate more up to him by. Ship's steward remembers Tirza's disease, her puberty, its presence in his life when not many others more were present. Her school. He decides that the wife in the war. She is probably in the transition. When will the transition? Increasingly earlier. Everything starts at an increasingly early. But the longer he thinks about it, the more he has the feeling that they are always so.

'They do not. She is your daughter.'

'Dan can they still nice to me. They will ignore me.'

'They shall take the blame you that you are on the phone. She had you need.' He despised his own words, so weak he thinks they.

'I had my life must enter its?'

Yes, ship's steward say. Yes, for your children will give your life. Perhaps that is the only where the Parenting is all about. The rest is of secondary importance. But he says: 'that nobody is asking for you.'

'They, Jörgen. It.' a cigarette is learned.

'Smoking in the bedroom i find uncomfortable. You know that. And tits are also not everything. In addition, they… They has small blisters.'

'knobs are no breasts, Jörgen. What are you waiting for?'

He shall establish the shirt that he will attract open. He must concentrate on the role that he in a few minutes, perhaps half an hour. Each time the call. The first guest on a party is always the most difficult. Everything is so touched, so new and fresh. The conversations still does not rotate smoothly.

Previously gave his wife controlled celebrations. He has never felt at home on which celebrations. If he could he retreated in the bedroom, but sometimes had collected there partiers were the wild times. Eventually he went than but on the balcony and looked at what happened in the garden. The sensation totally insulated, which it would otherwise never bothered, was at those times painful. As a disease felt the insulation. If a painful disease that against each drug file was.

Their friends were read her friends. Courtesy calls were bored him because he already had to carry out as many courtesy calls with translators, authors and colleagues. Until he discovered that it helped to go around with snacks. With the man who with the snacks around, nobody talk. As it developed into serv earlier in his own home. An unknown would be in him have seen the waiter. Galant, but silently. Always discreet. A man who coincides with its unobtrusive but relevant actions. Sometimes they were the partiers surprised that the servant, this friendly slave, the owner of the property was found to have.

'What do you want?' he asks. 'What do you do?'

They state. The spijkerrok This shop requires of Ibi is tight to her buttocks. They may not move properly. Engages the image to him. Unexpected and more than he would have believed. This is his young wife, in the skirt of her eldest daughter. It is perhaps not potsierlijk, but it is there to survive.

'What do you want in God's name?' he asks. 'De guests come so.'

'Fuck.'

'But why? It was not between us, it was, how you mentioned, a catastrophe. Not only the fuck, let us be honest. Our marriage.' He smiles, because the truth is summarized in a few words as innocent sounds. As inevitable. No one could do something about it. A TRAFFIC ACCIDENT. There was fog. An oncoming car.

'Because we have no one else.'

He walks on her away in the direction of the balcony door, if an animal which is chosen for the slaughter, but that is also still pro forma opposition.

The expression on her face is changed. She looks at him carefully. 'Or is there someone? Someone who i know nothing? Did you know? And do you want to say? What you have actually done all that time that I was not?'

He shakes his head. 'No, no, no one. Nothing regelmatigs, nothing is worth mentioning. Why did you not to your childhood love? In this houseboat?' He close the balcony doors, fear that the children will hear him.

'something went wrong.'

She does a few steps in his direction. The substance of the spijkerrok This shop requires seems to crack.

'Would you not know what?'

He nods. 'Of course I would like to know. What went wrong? Tell, short.'

'He wanted a child.'

They are at the reminder. smiles She grins. It is for him, half-naked. She seems to be on Ibi. Or rather, Ibi resembles her. Tirza not. Tirza seems to anyone.

'Why have you not made? It could even when you left. You was fertile when you left me. It had been easy.'

"Because he couldn't. He could not. He was barren, showed. And when he was crazy. He said that it was my fault. He turned by. Thus, Jörgen. As you look at, not?' The grin.

The shirt that all that time he has maintained he explains in bed. He takes a look at his watch. What he wants of this woman, with whom he shares little else than two daughters and about half of his life? Perhaps not even that. Why did he not, six days ago when they suddenly turn for the door was, after the oven dish said: 'I will call a hotel for you. We speak a little further on tomorrow? We will have a cup of coffee?' Why he can do not release her? It is time.

'His seed was dead and he said that it was my fault.' She smirks as if they were a mop tells which only they can understand the essence of the problem.

Then he and pulls bending his shoes off.

He looks at her and the wife nods approvingly.

Ship's steward pulls his socks off and the fact that he downstairs in the refrigerator the sushi and sashimi on the guests are waiting. He is proud. Proud of what he that afternoon in the kitchen has made itself, concentrated and with love.

The socks are in the shoes stopped. 'Dead' seed,' he says, 'is no fun.'

Soon he pulls his trousers.

He depends on a seat in tidy, it is his best trousers, he there must still be the whole evening host in play.

So he is in his underpants in his bedroom. A tummy he has, but for a man of his age should have no name.

'Why do you come back?' he asks.

They scrapes her throat. 'You have said himself," she says. 'You know everything you have always conscience.'

'What I said?'

'I could nowhere.'

He sees the nail skirt, he sees the meat that a bit about which lubbert spijkerrok This shop requires, it is not really ugly. It is almost charming and this woman who he hates and which he despised — if not the whole time then certainly regularly, more often than he loves — emotion it for you. More than he had suspected, more than he had to itself like to admit. What its about is, makes him week. Because it is so small. He sees the clear, it cannot be denied. Little. He is the curator of its past, the depositary of its seductive force, he remembers everything he sees who she was, cross through anything. In his life her adventure lakes, every day.

'We are still went to France," she says. 'But it was not. Death seed is not live in France.'

He looks at his feet.

Then he looks at the wife.

She says: 'I specially for you so raunchy made possible, you see that? So I am uncouth have never been.'

'Yes, yes,' he says. He sees.

'They can you anyway not tacky enough? The woman who you want to?'

He nods, he breathes heavy. Not of excitement. Of misery. The reminder of happiness is misery. The reminder. To admit that you have made a mistake. And that from that mistake two people also emerged. Two errors, if you are viewing the pure. Also that he has on his conscience.

'Yes, yes,' he says. 'I see it. You have never been so tacky. And you are for me. Only for me.'

His socks are dark blue with light blue stripes, they put in his shoes as Gnome lakes.

'We must learn quickly,' he says, "because the guests come so. They had actually already.'

Fast," she says. 'very quickly. How you want it?'

'How do you want the?'

She shakes her head. 'You see," she says, 'at the beast in yours is not dead? You can see that it is still there?'

Ship's steward does a few steps in its direction. He seeks his hand, becomes the nipple in which she had gently squeezed.

'Why do we do this? We are not too old for? We would not be better to know?'

She pushes his hand gently road. 'you see it not?' she asks. 'Is the not yet penetrated to you? Are you blind? We have no one else.' She puts the emphasis on every word, every syllable, as if they were a dictee reads.

He delivers his main closer.

'is that?' he asks. 'Is that the only?'

'Why do you think I am coming back to you? Because I knew you would not expel me. Because I knew that you had no one else. Who wants you still? Look good, Jörgen, we are residues. We are what it is about. From us, the beast in us."

'How did you know that i you would not dismissing?'

'You got me never expelled, why should you do now? You are always been afraid. The exit self, that you could not care. But that the people you would speak of shame as they do about poor spouses, that idea was you no peace.'

He gulps saliva road.

'You are now the only, Jörgen, the others…' she smiles. 'De others, they are dead, sick or insane. Or they have received something better, something jongers, and they want me not, not yet for a cup of coffee. The new life must not be compromised. You are the only one, you are the surviving. Finally I you the winner. You got me completely for you alone.'

The curse, he thinks the curse. That leaves you never loose, which drives with you as a cloud, and if you die, who on your children. That is why he had no children wanted, intuitive, he wanted the curse not by. Until they were there. When he was lost, he lost itself, first in Ibi, later in Tirza. He forgot the curse.

'You will find me furious raunchy?'

He looks to her and nods thoughtfully. 'Yes,' says he slowly, 'void tacky.'

'How do you want to do, Jörgen? You have to say. It is your evening. It is also a bit of your party. You have for Tirza ensure all those years.'

Tirza, that name to shake up seems to him, takes him to his positives. Tirza. It is true, he has all those years for her. And for its lived, by its lived with her lived, in addition to its lived, under its. He feels the need to scream, to help to scream but there is no one who will hear him.

'I want you to take over the knee,' he says.

They are smiling and also he can imagine how they stood for others, in better times. For her childhood love for example, on the houseboat, patronising and unreachable. The oscillation of the houseboat, pleasure boats that pass by, shouting and singing of the persons on board. The summer. And then the dead seed.

Ship's steward goes to bed are there are side of the bed. He looks at the balcony doors. From the garden of the neighbors child vote sound

'It is what we are about is," she says and she runs to him. 'It is not much eh? But my beast is flexible, my beast drives me sometimes insane, so is the unaccountability of and also your beast is there still, Jörgen. It is there and it was all time waited on me. You do not have to say. I know. It was all time waited for me.'

She goes with her belly in his lap. Still he hears child votes, but now also howl. Someone has been dropped. They often fall, the children of the neighbors, they are young and impetuous.

His left hand rests on the nail skirt of his eldest daughter, on the buttocks of the wife who to a living boat went. That is the story, the myth of his life.

'As tacky,' she whispers. 'so terribly tacky, is that you are only for can be ashamed.'

Ship's steward caresses her buttocks thought Loos, like a cat caresses which is on your lap to lie down.

'I am mischievous,' she whispers. 'I have always been a naughty only. I am your imagination. Nothing more than that. I am the fantasy that you can touch, Jörgen. That is why I came back. Because I am your imagination. Say it. To say that I am your imagination.'

'Yes,' he says, 'You are my fantasy, you are the fantasy that i can touch.'

He pulls the skirt which is not of his wife is up slightly. With the power of someone in agony is, he shows his right hand on her buttocks come down and nearly at the same time he says: 'They have me supernumerary declared.'

But they do not understand.

Once again he saves her on the buttocks, with the same terror, and he says: 'I am declared supernumerary. I will now ask you supernumerary.'

Still orders them. She controls of his lap. She pulls the skirt of her daughter downwards. As if chastity suddenly plays a role.

'what you call it?" she says. 'I can't. What are you saying?'

'nothing'.

'Sorry," she says, and they caresses on his hair.

'What is there?'

He is seated on bed, as he just sat. They can take place in his lap. The game can continue as it has never been delayed. As if the all those years work has been done.

'Sorry," she says.

'Which sorry? You have done nothing.'

'It is not.'

'What?'

"It.'

'Why not? What does not?'

'The Fuck.'

It stands on the bed, pull the sheet right. Although it is still just as right before he was on the bed plate snam.

'It was a mistake," she says. 'I made a mistake. I am sorry. We are friends. Yet? I wish it was, I wish I could, but I cannot do it. I can not with your FUCK. Not more. I am sorry.'

She gives him a kiss in his neck. 'nothing I can do," she says, 'but I find your repugnant. I was the forgotten, i was the forgotten altogether, but suddenly I knew the weather. Suddenly I remembered everything. When you give me numb. Hierzo.' She shows where he has touched.

Ship's steward condition. 'The does not,' he says. 'I had you already warned in advance.'

'I am sorry,' whispers they, 'dat i not to have been able to help you. I had helped you love.'

They are opposite each other. They retrieves its hands by her hair. They will open the balcony doors. The air outside is still hot.

'nobody need to help me,' says ship's steward. 'I don't need help.'

She looks out over the gardens of Amsterdam South and he is there in his underpants in his bedroom and he wonders what he is doing, who controls it, what demons he obeys.

'come," she says. 'Give me a kiss, I know that you are not angry.'

She runs quickly toward him. Just as quickly She grabs his head and they kiss. Ten to twenty seconds. They kiss as before. No, worse than in the past. They kiss as if the death is already in possession of them. And also that few seconds that the kiss takes, it will be used. Somewhere in the past is the life clogged, and suddenly there is resistance, as if the ship's steward in mind that has been there as if a ship's steward must never forget what he misses.

Then he pushes her gently. 'enough' says ship's steward. 'I have to me with the feast.'

She looks like him lovingly as previously, in the very beginning, the cursed beginning. Then she asks: 'maybe you would have a nagelvijltje for me? I would like my nails also do.'

At this point the voordeurbel.

He tail to his wife, listening to the sounds in his own house, a door being opened, another door by the ride close falls — the garden doors below are open — but nothing else. Silence. Nobody opens the door for the first guest.

Panic about it.

That is why he pulls his trousers and rent as soon as he can down the stairs.

'Jörgen,' calls on the wife. But he now has no time for her. He has other things on his head. The celebration is started. Finally.

With a jerk — by the haste and injures the nervousness he his finger — he opens the door. And since they state. The first guest. He knows her face, well even, that is not the problem. But he also knows no longer how they would.

He puts his finger. He points to her. 'Geography,' he says. 'Geography. Is it not?'

The woman in front of him, is actually quite a young woman, end thirty will they are, at most, shakes her head.

'Field Camp," she says. 'Field Camp is the name. Biology.'

Only then called to ship's steward by how he condition. Pointing to a strange woman, a teacher of his youngest daughter with a bleeding index finger. He pulls back his hand.

'Of course. Please forgive me.' He claps his hands. 'Biology. How could I forget that? Biology. Lady Field Of course Camp. We have often met. The last time…'

She looks down and He follows her gaze. It is at that moment that he sees his bare feet and almost at the same time his naked belly.

'O God,' he says.

'What?'

'I must be excused.'

'What for?' would miss Veldkamp know.

'This.' He points on his belly. His bare chest.

'Nevertheless not at'

'I was showering and then I heard the call and my daughters are…' He coughs. 'My daughters are nowhere to be found.'

"I will otherwise still a cube thin skirt? I think that is not at all very. It is delicious. I have now once the nasty habit always to come too early. I am much too early?'

'You are not at all too early. You are right on time.'

He picks up her right hand and drags lady Field Camp in his house. With his left foot he closes the front door.

Only after a few meters calls it up to him by that it is inappropriate to the teachers of your children in your house to drag. For the door to the living room he let its abrupt and says: 'I must apologize again me.'

'which now?' would miss Veldkamp know.

'DI ate so hard safe with you omspring.'

'O, but that does not matter.' She smiles and somewhat ironic, measured 'I think it is nice if there now and then a little hard safe with me is handled.'

He looks at her skeptical though. Not only is it a half-naked, that is already unpleasant enough, he has the feeling in the grind setting to be taken.

'I am myself not,' he says. 'It is the heat, the celebration, the goodbye. Tirza goes to Africa, as you know.'

'We are all sometimes not ourselves. It would be very boring if we always all would remain ourselves, Mr ship's steward.'

He is studying its because he wants to know whether they are the Meent, to put an end to the unpleasant feeling that he is taken in the grind setting. Than he begins to understand that a half-naked man is not a disaster, not more. Half the world is naked. There is nothing to be concerned about.

"do it easily. I am so with you.'

He will hastily up the stairs. In the bedroom is his wife in her nails to paint. They cross her hand. 'What do you think of this color?'

He pulls his socks and shoes and yet also but again the polo shirt, whether there is a smell of sardines. Will the whole house to sardines smell. Also he remains for the mirror and he caught, to his surprise, grief. A sorrow that all other feelings that sometimes in him welling up about wins. The shame, the fear, the realisation that a disgrace.

'Is this beautiful pink or something to vigorously?' she asks.

'You're right,' he says. 'We have only one another. No one else we can get more. That is it.'

'Is the pink?'

She pushes her hand further in his direction. The smell of the nail polish piques his nose, it mixes with the air of the baked sardines.

'Dus you can now also get no one else. Discarded do you. Why have you got.' He talk more against themselves than against her.

'It is well to pink?'

'No,' he says. 'Just Right. Mrs Field Camp is there. They gave me half-naked having regard.'

'who is Mrs Field Camp? I have no idea more Who is who. You must tell me a little bit earlier proposals to all people. I do not know what more matches face.'

They talk as though nothing has happened. So they always talked. As if nothing had happened.

In the bathroom does he generous aftershave on to the smell of the sardines to dispel.

Ibi is its teeth. 'Where is Tirza?' he asks in a cloud of aftershave.

'Die is her boyfriend to retrieve," she says and they continue to brush.

Energetic and drops welriekend ship's steward the stairs. He goes directly to the kitchen, retrieves the plateau from the refrigerator, remove the foil and parades the living room, where lady Veldkamp mother soul only on the couch.

'Sushi,' says ship's steward, 'sashimi. And in the kitchen is wasabi mayonnaise.'

'What tasty," she says.

'Self-made.'

'De sushi?'

'Too. But I was talking about the Wasabi mayonnaise. Who should I make. It is not easy but i have deepened.'

'O.'

They look at each other as to the teacher, biology and the father of Tirza.

'Wait, I will set up some music.'

He runs to the cd player.

Tirza specially for this evening cd leaflets burned. They are all ready. On a pile.

He puts the first cd and continues to listen what music follows. She not only her music, but also a few songs he particularly likes.

'The Andrews Sisters,' says he is glad, 'it is one of her favorite numbers.'

This is due to him. Actually it is his favorite number. When in the cradle was Tirza, he filmed the Andrews Sisters. On the music he danced with her by the room, and he forgot the curse. Also there was no curse, no history, only the baby in his arms, her look, the smell of somewhat acidic milk, its warm head and the Andrews Sisters.

Now there are no Tirza, there is a plateau with sushi and sashimi and a man on age that despite the aftershave vague to baked sardines smells.

He sings and gently with the music note, for lady Veldkamp, on the couch.

'I'll try to explain. Bei mir bist du schön. So kiss me and say you understand.'

Lady Veldkamp smiles. She has certainly already experienced a lot, and if a ship's steward is sung, she says: 'What Wasabi mayonnaise would be nice.'

He goes to the kitchen, comes back with the Wasabi mayonnaise and a dish and allow lady Field Camp itself brag off with a small wooden spoon. Also from the Japanese shopping in the Beethovenstraat.

He looks proud how they eat sushi.

The happiness, the intensive, intolerant, ravenous happiness of the youth he recalls only a rumor. A fairy tale that he himself never read it.

Of his youth or what we had to continue is a worn song about.

He runs to the cd player and start the CD again.

And while lady Veldkamp him a little surprised and also somewhat fearful aanstaart, with the sushi in her hand, he sings for her.

'Ridi,' sings a ship's steward. 'Ridi ridi ridi ridi, ridi.'

2

To nine hours is the room filled with a fourteen young people, lady Veldkamp, and a teacher economy against whom a ship's steward Hans must say, but of Tirza is still no trace. The wife is hiding in the bedroom, fuming probably, occasionally still smiling to the childhood love with his dead seed, as you albeit with its hand in a failure to smiles. A colossal disaster.

And ship's steward himself with raw fish by the house. It shares a kir from, talks about subjects on which he has never been a word has changed, he already has two cocktails, a caipirinha and a screw driver. Both very successful. He has outdone itself, says he himself, he will constantly this evening.

Without much trouble is growing it above the Jörgen ship's steward from those years ago on the celebrations of his wife taciturn in a corner with snacks around went up in mid call or plant water. Heady celebrations were that, with men many years younger than ship's steward, his wife the status of 'house friend'.

There is progress in Jörgen ship's steward. He is social. Milder and accessible. More than what he is also the father of Tirza now, and in that role he is good temper, uitgelatene. It will not be to him.

In the middle of a tour with edamame, soya beans prepared on Z'n Japanese, he thinks to recognize a boy from the winter on an early Sunday morning is encountered in his bathroom. The boy was on the badrand, sick and showed with red eyes. But if he the boy polite but clearly, while he asks him what edamame has, denies those. 'I've never been,' he says. Although a ship's steward are sure to have seen him in his bathroom, try to have him, he does not go on. Also the youth has the right to politeness to lies.

Ibi is downstairs and sit on the couch, in addition to the teacher of biology. In any case one of his daughters is present on the feast.

After a long silence has developed a call between Ibi and the teacher, what a ship's steward comes on. Ibi is stiff. In the past it was Ibi against everything. There are still days she that is.

The voordeurbel regularly and than rushes Tirza's father to the front door to do what his youngest daughter would have to do. Shaking hands, kisses have adoring review, compliments receipt. Ship's steward it at a firm handshake, in some cases with the words that everything must declare: 'I am Tirza's father.' the word appears a smile on his face which he himself for compelling.

'They shall meet as,' he says again and again, 'it is also her boyfriend.' It sounds as if he knows exactly what he is at that boyfriend as if the proposals must family ship's steward already three times with the boy has been on holiday.

Some of the guests give him the gift that is intended for Tirza. They mumbling: 'Here, for Tirza', and they print it slightly in the manual, without giving him to look. Shy boys, of whom ship's steward suspect that they have been in love ever on Tirza. That they have written her letters, in the middle of the night distraught have sent SMS messages which they later so deep that they were embarrassed by the following day not dared to school. He tries to encourage them. He would not want to define them hope. Shyness can be a curse. Never hope, that is the question. What happens. Not give up hope. Continue.

'They will be pleased with them,' he says, without knowing what is hiding under the wrapping paper. And he puts the presents on the dresser, in the middle of other small and large packs and the obligatory drink bottles, what flowers. The tradition of the gift table holds position. A family is a construction of traditions. Ship's steward would like that they are a family, a small family, half a family maybe. That is why he defends the traditions, therefore he puts them on his own, if necessary.

While he runs down the hallway with three beers and two glasses of red wine and a vodka ice cream on a tray, he sees the wife descend the stairs. She has the old nail skirt of Ibi and a bloesje that is tight. Far too tight. There is crammed with everything from, a female body that protrudes out.

She is walking with high heels. Shoes, bloesje, skirt, it seems from a dress up trunk to have come.

He remains in the hallway to wait for them at the bottom step is reached. The tray in his hands and the slight smell of sweat, aftershave and baked sardines around him. The smell of the party.

'Jesus,' he says soft.

None of the guests it has dared to go into the garden. The torches are lit in lonely. The guests pens together in the living room. They wait for the others, they wait for Tirza.

The wife will stand in front of him and running a radio button. On high heels can its legs the comparison with long ago. Their first introduction, the first days, the first weeks. The time that you have a blank sheet are for the other, the freedom that it entails, the happiness. Somewhere in her legs the freedom that ship's steward is lost, and resistance has been recovered at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. But when tasted that freedom no longer him, better said, since he tasted the true flavor of the freedom: gal.

Somewhere in her legs is the memory of happiness. They were always been nice, legs, long, slim and yet muscular. If they wanted to make impression she did a short skirts. He remembers the cans of other men, they remember the first time that he realized that he had received children with a woman who was actually too young to him, not with his age nor his status paste. Its still lifes claimed not much, but if still life was they themselves unbeatable. Ship's steward gold in the Seventies as a promise, a writer who would want to climb to Publisher. Someone who had to be taken into account. But he continued to sit in his room at the Herengracht Canal, with views of a tree, is concentrating on the translated fiction and sometimes even on the tree until he woke up once and had to admit that no one more account should be taken with him. Only he still. The hell were not the others. He was the self. The hell sat deep in him. Anchored, hidden and invisible, but live and hot. Piping hot.

'Is this not overly?' he asks.

'What? This?' she draws attention to itself. She shakes her head. 'I am exaggerated? I think not. Do you think the exaggerated, Jörgen? I have done my best for Tirza's party.'

'It is precisely for that reason. It is precisely because the her party, its great celebration, did you a bit…' he looks for words, diplomatic solutions. He looks at what is happening in the bloesje pops. Desperately she looks out, but nevertheless not unattractive. The word 'loeder' comes in him. Now the youth also has left his wife, he sees the loeder in her that she will probably always has been. 'You had to keep you in.'

'In account? Why? Do you think it is not nice?'

The tray vibrates in Hofmeesters hands. The voordeurbel.

Go back to top and do something else,' he says. 'I implore you. This is not the case. You are not a sixteen more. We ourselves are not sixteen more.'

'But Jörgen, you are as old as you feel. They have not told you that? I am the flower of the eternal youth.'

She pushes the tray a few centimeters to one side and press her mouth quickly on the HIS. 'Test you?' whispers to them. 'De flower of the eternal youth.'

He struggles, he wants its not kissing, he wants its never kiss. Never again. Two words like a charm. The shortest prayer of the world. The prayer of Jörgen ship's steward. Never again.

The voordeurbel again. 'It is a disgrace,' he says. 'You are a disgrace, as you now stands. And you are no flower of the eternal youth. I am sorry.'

They should again like her mouth pressing on his own, but he is different reverse. The vibration of the tray is worse.

'Dan only i have to you," she says. 'a disgrace if I am, then we just a Monozygotic twins. Then we are made for each other.' She smiles. They laughs as if there has never been something has happened between them. Good brave. To the covenant which no longer exists to emphasize, as she smile.

Then they enter the living room and ship's steward hear the calls are silenced. He remains in the aisle, he would like to shout, as people do who are trapped in an elevator but there is no other sound from his mouth than what heavy breathing.

He runs to the kitchen, set the tray on the worktop and serves a glass of white wine for themselves. 'De flower of the eternal youth,' he panting slightly. There is more memories of him, also pleasant. In the marshlands of his memory are also nice memories clogged. If you remember the happiness than has the existence.

A colleague once said to him: 'You can not live on memories.' Why he said that knows no longer ship's steward. The debate was that he forgot. He knows only that the colleague said to him: 'You can not with a knife into your past rooting as if it were a garden is that you have to omspitten, Jörgen, because one day you go with that knife in yourself rooting.'

Not long afterwards was strokes that colleague.

You are a slave to your memories. That is the way it is, you will ship's steward. Some people remember things that never happened. Also it is for. They are slaves of the fiction. Postmen of their own myth.

He drinks are glass empty, without much more than the cold, Slightly sour taste of the wine. Only when the voordeurbel for the third time, shooting to him within that someone is in front of the door.

He rent there, angry in itself, angry at his wife, angry at the person who is now in front of the door. Ship's steward strives — it cannot do anything — to perfection. This is the party that must be perfect, that must prove that the rumours which is doing the rounds about him are not true. How well he has succeeded, that he wants to say that he wants to bring about and how good the life he has succeeded, how well the children have succeeded.

That is the hidden message of the kir, that is what the sashimi must tell us, behind the caipirinha tells a story: the story of Tirza's father, the story with the good outcome. He had his youngest daughter only educate, but it worked out well. Yes, let his message in God's name for one evening a joyful message.

A girl stands for the door. One of Tirza's many friends, one which he has not seen before.

'Ha,' says the girl.

'Ha,' says ship's steward, while he think of the wife who has become a disgrace and he wonders exactly what is in the living room. As he does after her departure wondered, evening as Tirza above homework to make was telephoned or with girlfriends: where is it now? What is it? In whose arms is she? What did they? She regret? The silence sometimes forced him to turn the tv. There was nobody who argue with. He was his own enemy. If he wanted to annoy, he had a talk show to watch. Scream he did against the tv. Until he got with the pity tv and there silently opposite sat down.

'Are you the father of Tirza?'

He nods, almost delighted because he also derived from which of course unnecessary worries. They are no longer together, they do not have a relationship. As his wife for love like to walk, is that its case.

'I am Ester," she says, 'without h.'

'Ester without h,' he repeats. 'I am Jörgen with umlaut on the o.' He suspects that are sharp answer funny and this presumption is strengthened by the white wine, presents a momentary euphoria. Also is a ship's steward liberated, a few seconds strides he winner by its own course.

In the dressing room he stays are to adopt something in, a jacket, gift, a bag, but there is nothing to believe. Ester without h carries a dingy jeans and on the back of her hands are two telephone numbers written, he sees. Sit at its feet flip-flops. She is without gift. She is, you might say, without clothes. Ship's steward does not of people who refuse to be accepted.

'Can I offer you a glass of kir?' he asks.

The question that he has received almost all guests. A question that is as a house. Thereafter is his experience, the conversation without too many problems.

'What?'

'a glass of kir. Can I offer you that?'

She shakes her head. 'Is there tomato juice?'

'Yes, of course. There is also tomato juice.'

'Without ice.'

'Without ice,' reiterates ship's steward as if he had life long has done nothing else than this: orders recording, hang coats, people of whom he himself barely able to understand the name to others.

'And I would like the toilet use?'

He is going to her for. The toilet is located next to the kitchen. He opens the door, will switch the light on and check quick or the toilet there are decent looks like. It is. For a party.

In the refrigerator he seeks the tomato juice. He has three suits purchased. But where are they? From the living room is the voice of his wife above the music. They talk as if they were on the scene in the theater and they also the rear rows must see to it.

He has bought them, yesterday, he knows for sure, three suits.

Again he opens the refrigerator, somewhere in the refrigerator should the tomato juice. He she crouches down next, He kneels, perhaps in the vegetable drawer? He moves a few suits orange juice and throws in a carton of milk on the ground.

Ship's steward is now kneeled in the milk, for his open refrigerator, and he tail to a dish sushi which he earlier in the day has lovingly prepared.

I must not lose my sense he thinks. This is not the time.

Quick state he and close the door of the refrigerator. He gives a glass of wine in and gently says: 'it is a nice evening. This is Tirza's night.'

He grabs a roll of kitchen paper and wipe the milk carefully.

With the Wet plugs kitchen paper in his hand he remains certainly half a minute motionless. He will hear how the toilet. Gently squeeze it in the kitchen paper. As a charming host he wishes to be recalled. That must be a viable ambition.

This realisation forces him back to action. He throws the kitchen paper road and has the feeling lucky to have had. To avoid a risk to be. On his knees are two damp places to see, but who will look to its knees on a party like this?

He iron his hair smooth, picks up the tray with the beers, red wine and a vodka ice cream and walking to the living room, to his mouth the smile which he has studied for decades. The smile of the translated fiction.

'Can you not see that I am her mother?' he hears the wife say. They state in the event of a small group of Tirza's classmates. The children, to the extent that the children be called, around her as a big fish they shore with difficulty.

Ship's steward takes on new orders and he turns the music a little harder to prevent too many people unintentionally listen to the words of the spouse. Despite the loud music he hears the wife say loud and clear: 'I was traveling, Tirza has an excellent time with my husband. She is an independent child, always been that way. She had no one necessary.'

With the empty tray is a ship's steward back to the kitchen. He makes two new sushi rolls, a with salmon, a with tuna, drink a glass of white wine and then calls on its mobile Tirza phone, but it is not. He slowly begins to get nervous. A father is someone who is always to worry about. Especially if the parent refuses to do so.

He hears her voice. "Hi, this is Tirza. I am also not. But let but a nice message.'

That nice message he has never been understood. Sometimes you can still not nice to leave a message? 'Is your phone there than just for fun messages?' he had asked.

'Yes papa' Tirza had responded. 'My telephone is there for the fun messages. If the messages are not nice, they should you call but.'

'Where are you?' he speaks in. 'Tirza, come home as soon as possible. Your party has long been begun. We are waiting for you.'

Then he on the stool. He expresses his hands against his sleep and remains so until he the economy teacher the kitchen looks within walking.

The economy teacher is after a few laps around the kitchen has come to a standstill, he leans against the worktop and tail ship's steward a tad rude, such as people at parties. They will also take a look elsewhere. In the living room they have a minute or two for the bookcase CSQ and then they wonder: how would the kitchen look like? Kitchens spoilers much.

Ship's steward would not let themselves know, he simply return tail, without is still to be able to move in this direction. The cheerfulness which radiates the man is a ship's steward hostile. Other Mans happiness is a threat.

The man has a bottle of beer in the hand, a linen required depends loosely around his shoulders. He also had a student can be, but he is a teacher and He grins. The economy teacher is a man who always seems to grin.

'How does it, Mr ship's steward?' he asks.

Ship's steward is on the crank. He feels caught as if he is a guest in his own house as if he were in his own kitchen does things that can be done better not. Its black trousers shows on the knees some stains. For the rest you see nothing of the milk. That is the advantage of black. You see there is little. But he feels it still, the moisture. He feels it through anything. A damp man he is, a damp man on age. They may not see it, they will not see it.

'Excellent. Say but Jörgen. I am Jörgen. And you? You'll be entertained a bit?'

Ship's steward talk soft and civilized, he talks if someone involves without him effort.

You'll be entertained a bit? That is a question that you give an economy teacher asks? He has doubts about it but it is now too late to do anything to do so. He remembers that the economy teacher Hans hot. There was not a fairy tale figure which was called Hans?

Ship's steward will feel dizzy. He no longer want to sit on the stool. He concentrates on the shoes of the economy teacher, black shoes with a buckle. A fairy tale figure which was called, he comes Hans. Previously he read a lot for the children, also from books they still could not understand. For the love of art and culture, you should children on their toes. On its tenth nam Tirza knowledge of Don Quixote and his adventures, on its twelfth was Mrs Bovary and her about game in its inwards gelepeld, and when she was fourteen and actually no longer wished to be read out, climbed the ship's steward still the stairs with a copy of the Russian Library under his arm. 'Go away,' krijste them if he saw her bedroom. 'I want those notes from the underground not, I do not want to hear. Go away, dad. Go away, PAP. Go away.' She Trapp elde with her legs, but he went to her foot streelde end sit and its just as long until they have calmed down. He was the book open and las its fifteen minutes for from Notes from the underground. With the large Russians you could not start early enough. If you as a teenager the nihilism seen through him, did you made no further through it.

'It is a nice party,' says Hans. The man looks around, he does not seem willing to go. The kitchen is a good place, cozy and comfortable. Leaning against the worktop gliding the hours away. Weather an evening over.

The weekend in the houses of the people, in the morning the sound of the citrus press, evening tv, once in the quarter of a party. Together to do some shopping. Together Buy or borrow a cd. A crypto grams solve together. So will the economy but teacher life.

It is a ship's steward known for family life, and yet we are not. He iron his hair flat and offers the economy teacher, while he sushi is the life of the man: organized and happy.

Previously, when the silence in the house just had done its appearance, regretted it could be that he was not able to play the piano. Than he had in the evening and on Sunday afternoon behind his piano to be able to sit with three or four lovers around, as other people in the cafe to sit down with a group of friends.

He did not have a talent for friendship, as others no talent for signs or foreign languages. That is precisely why he had to want to play a musical instrument. Instead of talking with them, he had music for the people want. You are talking about to thoughts about. Ship's steward has mainly thoughts which do not need to be conveyed, which are of a secret nature and must be kept secret in the interest of both parties.

Tirza previously played cello. She was very talented, but she had the cello are discarded. Sometimes only after the departure of the wife, if the silence him in the evening threatened to make love, if he no longer uithield, how he also had done his best — twenty buttons walk through the garden, itself aloud from Dostoyevsky's diary of a writer — than he climbed the stairs and knocked at Tirza.

'Are you already finished with your homework?' he asked than. When they said 'yes', he proposed: 'Would you like to come down in order to play on the cello?' But he said that only if she was ready with her homework. School went for everything, school went above the cello.

'a particular girl, your daughter. Sensitive, gifted, quick.' The economy teacher is doorframe with the beer in his hand, as if it were his regret. The goodbye, the fact that Tirza succeeded his own career. The man sweeps up his mouth. 'Of sushi you should not eat too much,' he says.

Ship's steward nods. He opens his mouth. He took the decision to say something. We now need to happen. He is going to speak.

'Very sensitive they,' he says. 'And very gifted, that she was as a kid. When they were no other half was understood them all. Understood them.'

They also is 'Mooi.'

They also is 'Mooi,' agrees ship's steward.

'adult'.

Ship's steward nods for the umpteenth time.

'They are going to make a trip around the world, I heard?'

'No trip around the world. They are going to travel a while. Africa. Botswana, South Africa, Namibia. Perhaps Zaire. She is always been interested in that continent. Do you still have a beer?' ship's steward now leans itself also to the counter. From the living room by a vague urge to the kitchen. Our opinion unanimously. What the wife also all says, ship's steward does not need to hear. It relaxs and must think to Schiphol, the departures hall where he five days per week walk through it. As an aircraft is built to fly, so he is built for the loneliness. Only occasionally he touches the other, when an airplane is the ground. To then quickly, with engine misfiring, take off again. A plane that is too long to stay on the ground, does not loose any more. Each day an emergency landing. Each hour of an emergency landing. His life one large emergency landing.

'Yes, tasty,' says the economy teacher. He puts his empty bottle in the sink.

'A GLASS?'

The guy shakes his head. 'However, make sure that it has its own needles with you if they go to Botswana and Zaire.' He takes a beer bottle of ship's steward and secure it immediately to his mouth.

Ship's steward looks. Weather he will feel dizzy.

'Its own needles?'

'Its own syringes and needles. If you go to Africa, you must bring your own syringes and needles. You never know when you are in hospital.'

The father of Tirza can imagine that pupils secretly or less secretly on the economy teacher in love. He radiates what needs to everyone. Trust, not just in the future, in everything. In life itself. In the goodness of everything alive. An intense confidence he radiates from.

'Are you there than in the past?'

'Africa?" asks the man. 'Never'. Yes, Egypt, Hurghada, the Canary Islands. But you can mention that Africa? I know people in real Africa and which had their own syringes and needles. If you are going to Cape Town, you have no syringes, but is still Cape Town Africa?'

There is a silence. With Cape Town seems to have come to an end the call.

'MAG I ask you what?' ship's steward let the worktop. He folds his arms akimbo. 'a strange question perhaps.'

'Sure,' says the man. 'Of course you may ask what. Also strange questions. I am more accustomed to.' He smiles and takes a big sip of beer.

Weather feels a ship's steward the dizziness. Now even worse. The dizziness is the symptom of a false idea. Thoughts that there should have been not but which do not have to expel that is the hell.

'What is a hedge fund exactly?'

Had just the economy teacher still good temper and inviting laughed. Everything we ask him. He is there. To give answers, also on the unanswered questions can. But this had apparently not he expected.

'A hedge fund?'

'A hedge fund,' reiterates ship's steward. He had asked: 'What is happening with the sex life of the Crocodile?', than the silence bedrukkender had not.

'Yes, how can I explain that?' says the economy teacher after a few seconds. 'It is a kind of investment fund. An investment fund that also makes a profit or can make it as the markets do not increase. The hedge funds are generally not public recorded.' He would also like to say something, but he did not know what. He smiles, for the first time now also itself a tad helpless. Get lost in a conversation that he had never wanted to speak on his free evening.

When a ship's steward some five years ago was abroad with in his briefcase for buisness seven months to rent, had the advisor at the bank with whom he discussed hedge funds. No, he had with her about hedge funds. Hedge funds were completely.

He had read something about it, he had heard about it. The hedge fund were noisy around as a large, but particularly attractive secret.

The explanatory notes to the hedge fund was not quite up to him by squat, but you had to be in this kind of case to rely on your intuition. His intuition had never left in the lurch, at least not if bank matters did.

'An investment in a hedge fund starts with a million,' said the ms of the bank.

A million, that was pretty much everything ship's steward had. He had spared diligently, o, he had more than just the rent to his account at this bank transferred. A erfenisje here, the proceeds of a sailing boat sold there are also regular holiday allowance. Everything went to the investment account to the daughters to give access to the worlds that had never enter ship's steward itself. 'Are you sure your investments do not want to spread a little?' asked the advisor still. A young woman with blond hair, in a sleek, black suit. Lush hair. She was new. He had worked with a man. A man had him of investment advice. A man with brown hair. What was still at least about it. Everywhere balding spots. Ship's steward saw many, and the more he saw the less he dared to say. The more he saw the more thoughts in him that never opborrelden share with the world could be. He was blind, it would him for that reason that have been raised.

'You must have confidence,' said ship's steward. 'a little risk.' The thought of the financial independence that is becoming increasingly came and which would ensure that children are not pushed around would be, as well as the sleek, black suit of the advisor voted hopeful. ship's steward On the courageous. O, there was hope, you had to only keep your eyes open minded. The results which the hedge fund had recorded in the past were spectacular. It could not be said. That was up to him by reduced. Spectacular. A word that stood as a house. A word that it vague reminded the House of sex, prohibited sex in a lift or a toilet.

'I must warn you, the costs are high.'

'but the results have been spectacular.'

'De results are spectacular,' judging the wife of the bank. She spoke the word 'spectacularly' as if it was a rare delicacy. 'And it is a particularly popular hedge fund.'

They looked at him, he found, beaming.

'I want it,' said ship's steward with dry mouth, 'I want that hedge fund.'

And He stared at her as if they were the hedge fund was. As they sat for him as a mannequin there was one moment no doubt: the lady of the bank was a hedge fund of human flesh.

'we will simply have to do it?' she asked as if they still hesitant, but it was as much as was clear, a pro forma question. 'Everything?'

'Everything,' said ship's steward.

The name of the fund to which he now insert power went was exotic and yet reliable, as if it was always there, for decades had led a secret life. And this charming thing only now manifested to him, as a God that he still had unexpectedly chosen to inform him about his existence.

She wrote something on a paper that ship's steward good temper, almost generous with its own fountain pen signed and when she asked: 'Even what coffee?'

'like'.

'What biscuits there?'

'Tasty,' said ship's steward.

When the biscuits arrived there is a ship's steward grabbed the dish, with so much enthusiasm that in its hands crumbled. He looked at the crumbs, he looked to the teacher.

But the lady of the bank wasn't seeing it, and he continued to whom he was, the man who came to bring the rent. Not for him, for his daughters. For their future. For a better future. The affordable happiness.

In March of the following year he was gone back to the bank, with the rent of the last few months. With the hedge fund was excellent. Spectacular, it was the word. Yes, the financial independence was now really within easy reach.

One year later, at the end of March, he travelled back to the bank. Everything was the same, everything went as always, the same train journey, the same office, the same computer, the same advisor, whether she wore now no tight, black suit, but a gray skirt with a white bloesje. Everything was there, including its blond, lush her, and also the coffee lady and the biscuits, they were all there. Only the hedge fund was no longer there. That was in amused. Disappeared. Road.

'How can that?' asked ship's steward.

There followed a long and technically story that he did not understand because he could not listen. He could not concentrate. The damp palm of his hand shaky crumbs of sand numerous biscuit.

He could not help but think: I am reports. But he did not know who or what it had produced reports. Not the lady on the other side of the table with its red lips and its white blouse. A woman he would like a time had wanted to cushion, but the lust he had under control. His lust was a enslave showboating sheep that was in a small but loyal audience. Not the tenants who had not paid neatly the bank, who could do anything about it, as far as he understood from the words of the friendly smiling mrs. They thought it was a real pity, and almost he believed her too. She was just so sad if he fell again and again and the word 'world economy'. That sounded like world Judaism, but then more innocent and therefore even more horrific.

He, Jörgen ship's steward, which the tax and the tenants had been outwit, who had earned his daughters a degree of financial independence to deliver many others which only he could be jealous who had worked because he lived in the belief that only the work was a drug against grief and suffering, he was defeated by the world economy. Was down. The world economy had him on the knees forced. In the world economy had he found the enemy too strong for him, too strong for the predator. Finally a real enemy. But it was an enemy without face and without a name. One who could take no story. The world economy was an enemy that would not break the silence. He would not be warm of this enemy. He could never embracing the world economy to its gently to bite death. The world economy had no face.

'We have had a difficult time,' said the lady with its sad face, and yet he saw that they are not really sad was rather pleased and happy. 'First the Internet bubble, when the 11th September. There are good punch cases, and some players on the market have of that do not fold can recover.'

'De 11th September, what does that have to do with anything?'

He remembered that day as the day that the Wall fell. How against his daughter said: 'Remember this well, this is history.' And so he had also looked at. As to history.

'Ah,' she said, 'Meneer ship's steward, everything has everything to do with today. You know what they say: if they are in one part of the world, cough, hits the other part of the world. But how is it with your daughters? You had two daughters?'

The history threatened to be personally now. The Anonymous world economy got a face, a body, a name. Mohammed Atta, who had a ship's steward are money taken, the financial independence, freedom for his children who was so close, so terribly near. Mohammed Atta was behind it, Atta had beheaded Hofmeesters hedge fund.

'What you asked?'

'How your daughters?'

'Excellent,' he said. 'Why have you not also called me?'

'We could not reach you.'

Slowly approached the end of the conversation. There was still an outstanding on his account, something of two months rent, and he threw the eight months rent he had.

The lady of the bank early still: 'Would you like to invest?' But he said: 'Let's get it on a savings account.'

They gave each other a hand. 'Until over a year than back,' she said.

When he was outside. Spring. Sun. People who for the first time without jacket on street walked. The happy with which that went hand in hand.

So ends the financial independence, he thought. As everything ends. In an hour the done. You will receive an extra biscuit. A regretful gaze. The sympathy that in ten minutes should be handled, because the labor costs are high.

He walked through a shopping street, viewed the faces of the other people and wondered whether they also by the world economy were defeated. Or by Mohammed Atta. Or by both at the same time. They could recognize each other, the report ones? Or they remained anonymous at all times? The winners and losers brotherly next to each other, together strolling through an expensive shopping street. For always on the stroll. No one knew where the chaff from the wheat divorced.

For a shoe store he continued. He studied the ladies shoes. There was a lot of brown on, this spring. He did not brown shoes. Also not brown suits.

He wondered why he now had nothing more. Why everything from him was decreased. A good reason why he could not think of. What purpose was to serve? The game was played there actually? And who played with him?

When he went to the shop within, he applied a few black boots, but during the fit urged up to him by that he could no longer afford this. That he is now even but little could afford. Also, a fraction of a second, he had the disputing the shoe salesperson to ontkleden and on the spot, with her to penetrate to, if only because the control him had anything to offer. Lust is the highest form of indifference. He looked to her. 'I will still be some other boots to show?' she asked. 'or perhaps what low shoes? That is good as well as the earlier summer.'

Who commits a crime is never more only. Wherever he goes, the crime goes with him. But he did not dare, the security guard at the door had him in the holes, and he fled from the shop. He was in such a hurry that his briefcase in the left shoe shop. The salesperson came chasing him.

He looked in the bag. In addition to two manuscripts, four pencils and a banana were leaflets on hedge funds and other investment funds. Colored leaflets, printed on glossy paper, he knew what printing cost. In the busy shopping street he sheet by the leaflets, with the briefcase under his arm. People clashed against him. He stood in the way, but remained standing. He saw the graphs, the figures, the language in which the future was described, a rosy, carefree future.

When did he take everything will be back. Reports are fear was no longer a dream, a vision for warm summer evenings. It was there. The defeat had without notice on the horizon.

How to live after your reports? You can look into the people, or not? Maybe it is better to look to the ground, in the hope that they will not be able to see you as long as you do not see them.

In a McDonald's, he bought a vanilla ice cream, that he is sitting on a pavement opat, next to a group of young people. A few seconds they looked at him and wonderment and ridicule, with their backpacks full of school books in addition to themselves, when they decided to ignore it. The old man with his ice cream. They let him in peace. They let him go.

He had Tirza still. Not everything was dropped him. They had left him something. Tirza. They had left him the most beautiful, the best, the dearest. They had left him the solar queen.

Then he stood on and although he still was reports, walked to the station without solely to look to the ground. Because there was still Tirza, somewhere she waited on him in another world where no hedge funds existed in another country, in another existence.

But in the train back to house could the thought of the solar queen does not prevent him because he is ashamed by the world economy was reports. A terrible shame he was made, comprehensive was she and they resulted in one single idea: I can no longer come under the eyes.

He was a man who looked to the ground as he walked the streets, a man to his shoes when He stared just a supermarket with a trolley his hometown, a man who the cans of others avoided as if he was afraid that his history to his face was to read. The history as a putrid wound. A mark.

Home plugged it the leaflets about the hedge funds in a la. It felt as if he were not only those folders, but his entire life there buried.

'They are very popular,' says the economy teacher. 'You must agree to look forward, though. Viewing, every day to the pension funds invest their money somewhere in. And if the market is stagnating, than is there to seek alternatives. So is the hedge fund. But it really is once again talking about its peak. Why would you know this, I ask you?'

Ship's steward grabs him gently with his linen required, almost in passing as if he were a stain has seen that he, as befits a good host, wants to brush it off when dry.

Tonight is different. Tonight he looks human. Tonight is forgotten everything. Tonight is he who formerly he was, but better, an improved version of the old ship's steward, because this is the feast of the solar queen.

'You must agree to look snobbish,' says ship's steward. 'As a weapon that is loaded.'

'I had the not yet viewed, but as you can see that.'

A Smile, a sip of beer. Still a smile. The economy teacher is truly charming, on the endearing.

Ship's steward release it, he picks up the shaker of improvised bar and begins to shake impetuously. Tirza's friends must now but also more of his cocktails. On the feast of your youngest daughter you let out. Cheerful. Full of good courage. Hopeful. On the feast of your youngest daughter you yourself are a bit of the party spirit. It converts the shaker on the worktop and serves a half glass of wine. It rejects his glass against the bottle of beer from the economy teacher. 'They is something special,' he says. 'They…' he is also not more from his words.

The thought of his daughter quickly overwhelm him, leave nothing of him about reduces him to an appendix of such subsidiary. An insignificant and excess appendix.

'Tirza? Yes. I have a special relationship with her. With more students in its class, it is a special class, but especially with Tirza. So cheerful, as open. And it is always wait and see what comes next year.'

The economy teacher does one step in the direction of the door. He is seen in the kitchen. In sushi yet has no draft. And cocktails is he also not particularly. He will return to the place where the real celebration takes place, the beating heart of the living room.

'They sometimes disappear snobbish, hedge funds?' is called a ship's steward after him. 'they cease to exist. As if they have never been Hofmeesters.' voting is schor. He remembers his excitement after the call at the bank. Decades of rent and gains disappeared. Where is the money he would still like to know. He will not need it back, also with this loss that he is reconciled. He does not know better than that it is not there, but he would like to know who are money now. Capital is not destroyed? It disappears from only the one pocket and thrown into another. He would like to see a face. A photo of the man who made his money now has a photo of the house where all the saved rent of him now live. As he always has been curious to the childhood love of the spouse. A perhaps unhealthy curiosity to the person who has overcome him.

'SOMS disappear hedge funds,' says Hans while he is already in the corridor. 'It is just the nature.'

Then he walks away, as he came in the kitchen. Careless, the bottle of beer in his hand. Luck. Ship's steward looks after him.

He washes his face, dries out with kitchen paper, call Tirza one more time but will once again its voice mail, and then enter the living room to place orders, gossip.

Between the making of a few cocktails by quickly he drinks a glass of wine. He must also relax, such as Hans. Let everything but on him. He can. He has reached the age where nothing more from the balance.

He went back to the party, he finds that he is much better than earlier in the evening. The white wine makes him relax, almost light-hearted. Just and he is frivolous.

In the living room is now danced. The lights above the dining table are turned off and there are what chairs aside.

Three girls, a boy and his wife dancing.

The wife dances with the boy. He knows the boy, he is here a few times on the floor but a ship's steward can not on its name. He only know that it is a name with one syllable. Sometimes he has that even if he reads: what status calls not up to him by, but the syllables he sees. It counts them, one, two, three, four. The syllables jumping for his eyes up and down as the wife now for his eyes with the boy jumps. Dancing is called. You surrender, not onsierlijk, when you consider that her body is in a piece of textile which human yardsticks never should have been pressed.

She could always dancing, and she did it. They still does not bad. Only if you see pictures of her of a five or six years ago, how old they has become. Only when you see the photos to find you.

Even more than to the mother of his children, is that to which a ship's steward to watch is: a woman, plane for the withering, which with a boy of eighteen dance as if there can be no lasting. If her youth will always continue.

And I regret it. He caught on itself, vexation sorry is virtually disappeared, the irritation is weakened. It is so much easier in the enemy to see the stronger. And then it appears that the enemy just as weak as you, perhaps even weaker. Even though reports. A wilted enemy is not an enemy more.

The story, the myth where you get all those years around your identity, shows no longer weefde valid. The mother of my children who by went with her childhood love. The mother of my children who thought that she was the painter. That story is not more. Because that childhood love is there not more. And the mother of your children there is suddenly. In light clothing, but absurdist does not detract from the fact that she is again.

That is what he sees when he to the dance floor looks. Its own history disguised as self-deception. The flour of the eternal youth. That flower does it think of a hedge fund. Promises, glossy paper, spectacular results. A dream of a hedge fund. A dream of a woman. The fragile happiness within easy reach.

The wife lays her hands on the shoulders of the boy. God, how would he? He has eaten here, even twice. A polite boy, a little quiet, though, go there was little on him. He even wanted to help clearing.

Ship's steward considers that he has had a little something with Tirza, but he is not sure. When it comes to love, is it a year and a half ago have been somewhat abrasive. From its fifteenth they already knew that they After her graduation a year to Africa wanted, but when the boys went, changed weekly of opinion. They 'I just good friends,' she said, 'and some of those friends are casual boys, but that does not mean anything. It meant but something.' And then they smiled as if they were a large joke found and ship's steward laughed.

Three years ago, a few weeks after the wife was gone to the houseboat, had at supper Tirza asked: 'Papa, when will I lose your virginity?'

Ship's steward was busy in his desert to surrounded, Panna Cotta from the caterer a few streets away. He heard her question did surrounded with. When he had looked at his watch. 'Everyone is deflowered,' he said. 'Early or late on the everyone, Tirza.'

'For me in the class are nearly all of them deflowered. When will I lose your virginity in God's name? You know everything?'

'Not everything. Little even, really.' He licked his spoon and laid him down. The panna cotta tasted him not more.

'but you will still have everything an opinion? About the oddest things you have a view. What is your opinion about the fact that I have not yet deflowered am? That everyone in my class deflowered, only the nerds and suckers, the pimple heads not, but also everyone but me. What have you got to say?'

Ibi was not there. Ibi was at that time already disappearing, busy trying to resolve to dissociate themselves from the world from which they had come about.

Ship's steward looked at its support framework. He was alone with his youngest daughter he would only remain with her.

'things happen with a reason, and if they do not happen that also has a reason. You have not, you will lose your virginity because you do not have the correct.'

She sighed, Tirza, they said: 'Pffff.' And when once again: 'Pfffff.' There was a half panna cotta on its board, they cut him with her spoon in three pieces. 'Dat is such a crap, PAP,' she said. 'that is so passé. It is not that you lose your virginity by appropriate. The point is that it happens. That is the most important. That is the only thing that counts. I want you to help me. I would like that you say who must go to me came to.'

Ship's steward hustle and bustle his hands against his cheeks as if he suddenly had received serious toothache.

He looked at Tirza, gifted youngest daughter not by just anyone should be deflowered. Previously she had many swimming. She had participated in competitions. Three times per week he brought her after his work on the bike to the Zuiderbad. He was nearly as fanatical as they are. No, he was fanatical. His daughters had to do what he had not done so, what he had failed to do what he by circumstances had failed to do: excel. Because one thing they could not complain ship's steward they could not say that he had not realized that on this world only place was for excellence. The rest was finished, or simply pushed aside, bored in a corner. And even the performances of ontkwamen not always that fate.

To Tirza became ill. When was the last with the swimming.

'I give the names of all suitable boys, and at a given moment you say: "Stop" Okay, we will do the same? I can do not have to choose. I know it is simply not.'

They had stood up from its seat, she was now behind him, she had her arms around him skipped.

And he was there, gazing to his panna cotta, listening to her voice, his hands against his cheeks pressed, and also that the wife is possessed he now perhaps would call, at this very moment to tell where they had been all those weeks.

'You must help me,' said Tirza. 'Fathers are to help their daughters, are nevertheless? fathers Well, help me than, PAP.'

'Tirza,' he said, 'do not as strange. Please do not as strange. Hold on to those nonsense. You can eat panna cotta.'

They are more solid against are hustle and bustle seat.

'I'm going to the names list the boys, with a short description. Are you ready? David, brown, smooth hair, about a meter seventy four.'

'No,' shouted ship's steward. 'No, Tirza. Sit down. Keep this. Sit back.' He did with his hand on table.

They showed him, went back to its own seat.

This was also, and portrait took them a bite of her panna cotta.

'Not sad,' she said. 'Not sad, dad. I would like just so horrible like to lose your virginity. I am not ugly? Why does it not?'

Also he strangled a bite of yet the dessert. They sat down. He rejected his hands off, even though there is nothing to kleefde, and he hustle and bustle them against his cheeks.

'You are very nice, Tirza,' he said. 'terribly nice, this has nothing to do with it. But the boys are shy, only later they are less shy, and even then not always. You must be the guys at their convenience.'

"How?'

He made his hands against his eyes, he remembered how he her to the clinic in Germany had driven, and for the first time of his life he began to pray. Not with words, a singing was, a racket. He were noisy internally as a large insect.

'But how?' she asked again. 'How do i boys on their convenience? They are doing so foolish.'

He made his hands firmer against his eyes. The Racket loved. 'You must not forget,' he said soft, 'dat a little afraid of you. They are for all fears, but the allerbangst are they for you. Therefore you must be the boy who you have chosen to bring with you to a place where no one can see you, a secret place it must be. And you have to have him gently touch. First he will act as a deterrent. But you must not scare. Whatever happens, you should never be alarmed. You need to turn it simply touch. And then you say: "I am Tirza and I love you."'

As far as possible hustle and bustle he even more firmly against his eyes and he hoped but that his hands would absorb the tears, that they do not over his fingers, seep into the vision of the world would be extracted by the hands with which he is so keen on in the garden worked.

'And then if I said that?'

'Dan…' He swallowed. 'Dan — he has a t-shirt or a shirt or a jacket? The boy who you have selected.'

'a shirt.'

'Dan,' said ship's steward, 'dan you should slowly open his shirt, first the upper buttons, and than the lower. He will defend, maybe he will even want to walk, but you have to deal with him in his arm and say: "not drain completely, because I am Tirza and I love you."'

'And then? Tell.'

Ship's steward could almost not more. Sank his head still further away. His eyes were made to red, swollen, hands are wet and old.

'Dan…' he took a deep breath. And again. Such as when he walked up the stairs in search of Ibi which was not returned by the lessee. The same sensation of asphyxia, of suffocation. 'Dan you must add it to your pressing firmly and not forget how afraid he is that he more afraid for you than for the dead, because you are a woman, Tirza. And then you feel him, you must feel him how he is and how he is, you need him, you need him smell kissing, you must attach against him, you have to hold him as if he would like to emerge, and that he would also, but you must continue to hold him. Because he also wants to be held, he wants to escape and he wants to be held, but you have to be stronger, that is the only solution. And then you say: "Who are you? I am Tirza and I love you, but who are you?"'

At that moment a cry Hofmeesters escaped on foot, a slogan as a fog horn. Short but hard, one that can be heard for miles.

Tirza had stood up. Ship's steward, appalled by his own stunt, was also.

'What is there, papa?' she asked. 'What is there?'

Afraid if he was that they would like to see the tears, he pressed up against her. He loved her and he kissed her, on her hair, its cheeks, its nose, its lips, her ears. 'Nothing, Tirza,' he said, 'nothing is there. I had a dream, I had a bad idea. There is nothing. Everything will be fine. Everything is good.'

He opened the garden doors, he took her to the darkness of the garden, although it actually was too cold without jacket to go outside, but he hoped that they are red eyes would not see.

'Dus so I must do so,' she said, when they finally were motionless on the grass. The wet grass.

'If you must do it,' he replied, his head swiveled away something of her, gazing to the barn and the trees, the houses of the 'Willemsparkweg'.

'But why are the guys than fear for me?'

Somewhere on the opposite side were in a room the lights dimmed, a child room probably. The voorleesuur was in order.

And still half of its turned away he said: 'because they think that you are unreachable. As soon as they have broken they will no longer afraid of you.'

She went on her toes. She whispered in the ear of her father: 'I am Tirza and I love you.'

3

Ship's steward at the bank next to Lady Veldkamp, which is already the whole evening has not betrayed, and for the umpteenth time he also wonders where Tirza remains, why not just call. It is wise, indeed no longer a child, adult. More mature than many of its peers, there will certainly be a good reason for its late arrival. Perhaps it is time for you to passé own party to appear. He knows no longer so sure what is and what is not passé, actually, he never knew that.

Also he looks at lady Field Camp. The kir seems to seduce her, she is working on its fifth glass. She smiles at him, he smiles back and then he observes the partiers as a general his troops. There is not a deficit. The orders are already recorded. For the security he said: 'beer and wine you can also become suits in the kitchen.' nobody will with an empty glass. No one will be unfortunate this evening.

Ibi is still next to lady field camp on the bench. But they do not say anything more. It is sitting there are quite simply, as they often formerly sat, withdrew, closed, actually already left, perhaps it was never really had been decided as a child that they are not involved in this family wanted to hear. That they just do not match. Probably she thinks to its Inn, her husband, her boyfriend, how you want to call the man in any case about who wish to remain silent and ship's steward There are things about which you are not speaking. You resigned, but talk, no.

Also, almost in passing, lady Veldkamp Hofmeesters, only to attract his attention. 'Mewe snobbish," she says.

'What?'

'Die dancing people. The children.'

'Yes,' says ship's steward. 'Very nice.' But rather he had the wife is not dance. And certainly not tonight. With all these children that hungry around her.

Then Ibi abruptly and starts to dance also, wild and exuberant, as if they were in the jungle is, in a place where no one can see her, where they have only is and the shame has no function. Shame the other necessary. 'Do you because you think that the other looks, because you look that the other wéét.

It is ten hours. Even a few seconds to stare at the ship's steward Ibi are, like fathers do that, boatyard and proud, though there to him a unfounded fear at. In his children find their own fear, in the meetings with his posterity who fear to life, in everything he recognizes them himself to his control from dictatorship. He finds that his daughters to bad and sloppy on the life has prepared. They complain about him speechless, his children make him who he is and who he is — he must face — is unbearable.

Someone is running the music harder, the wife saves during the dancing its arms to the boy, the boy who sometimes has a snack meegegeten. Still is a ship's steward not on its name. He goes to the kitchen and serves a glass of wine.

If the glass is empty, call he Tirza. Her voice mail. "Hi, this is Tirza. I am also not. But let but a nice message.'

'Sweetheart,' he speaks of 'Your party is in full swing. Almost everyone is now. You really should. It is a stunning celebration.'

The voordeurbel. The weather is not Tirza. It is Mrs Of Excavating, its old class teacher. He also speaks with her about general affairs, politics, a novel of a Belgian of whom he has never heard.

Then walk in the garden ship's steward.

The torches burning even. Yes, that he has done well, they burn through.

He is going to the barn in. Between the machine and the rake the saw he leans to the wood. He says something, but he itself can not understand. Only after a few moments he realizes that the order repeats that he is a minute or so ago and if he has included this is ready, if he is satisfied that he is nothing forgotten, that his memory works, calls it up to him by that he still does not know what a hedge fund. The economy has not teacher should be able to explain, no one has to be able to interpret it. The hedge fund remains a mystery. More than three years after the disappearance of his hedge fund he still know not what exactly has disappeared.

With both hands and rubs his newly shaved cheeks. He remembers that the wife is said to him: 'Fuck', when he had asked: 'What do you want in God's name? The guests come so.' He thinks of the balcony doors in the bedroom, he remembers the evening that they stood on the sidewalk with its suitcase, not so very long ago, but it seems like a different life. As he remains are hands against his cheeks are printed, its memory filled with something called a misunderstanding.

After a few minutes he calls itself to the order. There is a festival. There is a host. There is no pain. Pain is fiction, the most in any case. Who has pain must concentrate, until he feel nothing more. With a broken leg is going to be difficult, that is true. But he has not broken leg. Nothing he has broken.

Someone opens the door of the barn, but he can not see who.

He are staring and are staring by the semi-dark, than he recognizes the girl that tomato juice has ordered.

'The Celebration is within,' he says more unfriendly than intended. 'This is the sanding.'

She seems to act as a deterrent. She had definitely no man expected, only old crap, silence. But she recovers rapidly. It may also be that they followed him. That they are not at all shocked of his presence. That he was the person who an unfounded fear felt.

'And what are you doing here than?'

'I? I get the same breath. Also some fresh air.' He pants as a bad actor with sounds are words should be emphasized. 'I could not find the tomato juice. He must be somewhere. But I could not find him.'

From his mouth, in this barn, on this evening, sounds like a statement for a full life, for the absence of many, for the absence of happiness. The tomato juice was not found.

'I drink something else.'

She has the door of the barn is left open. He looks at her flip-flops, to its jeans from below is coiled a few times. Perhaps it is the fashion, he thinks it is a funny face. Than he recalls its name: Ester. Without h.

It is reminiscent of Tirza him. Even without h.

'Are you a good friend of Tirza?'

'Not really.'

He is off the wall against which he was leaning so enjoyable. He has to go back to the party. We need him. His daughter is probably already arrived.

'I am really a girlfriend of her.'

The father is looking leery toward the girl. What is it doing on this celebration? What do they here? This is an evening for the friends and girlfriends of Tirza, not for wild boar roaming. Not for people who want to free drink because the their tastes better when there was nothing they have to pay for it.

He puts one hand on the mower. Another father had he want to be, which he means: a better father. When it became apparent that there was not for him to in Excel, he had chosen for the fatherhood. To ensure that children are reflective and critical to the world would look. What is intelligence other than the critical distance which itself and the things? They should not take are children, everything had to be called into question. On nothing else than the intelligence of confidence, that he had learned their. He had the intelligence to the rank of God. The god who would make everything. And now he has the urgent feeling that he something about the main has seen, that the critical eye which he and his daughters forced the world has to be seen on the fundamental questions does not answer. The own intelligence as god leaves much uncut. The white spots are numerous. The god will not be possible, the god has no answer.

'Why did they invited you?'

It is true what imaginary substance of his shoulders and making a step in the direction of the door.

There is no answer. The girl is in the door opening, playing with one of her flip-flops. She looks to its tool, the garden chairs, an empty crate in which ever mandarins were and that he has retained for reasons that are unclear. He awaits. Still no response.

'And do you already know what you are going to do? After school?' he asks than but to take the call to finish. Whether they are a friend of his daughter is or not, a call must be completed neatly.

'I go back to school. I am slumped.'

'I am really sorry.' In his pocket will ship's steward a handkerchief and he rubs his forehead. It is not wet he thinks it is wet.

'I am not good in school. They say that I am slim, but that is not the case.'

He knows he is no council with this conf leg. He knows he is not a council with the entire conversation. Another time and rubs his forehead. Stronger than the first time, as though there were scabs on his forehead grow that he must off crabs.

'Have you my sushi?'

'In relationships I am also not good.'

'Have you my sushi? There is also sashimi.' He urges. He wishes to reply. He may not oppose as his questions are ignored.

'I eat no fish. Take them to me never long. A month or so. Two, three weeks. I am sorry to tell you it all.'

'does not. Do you ship's steward embodied vegetarian?' his handkerchief again. He must be returned to the party, but I am not. The longer he remains in the barn, the harder it is to go back, to resume his duties.

'I eat no fish. And certainly not a raw fish.'

A difficult girl. Difficult eaters are difficult people. Ship's steward loves people who eat everything, especially everything he has prepared. There should be eaten. People who cannot talk, food. Even people who can not life, food.

'but you are vegetarian?'

'I eat no fish. I do eat meat. I do not know what you are then. What are you?'

Ship's steward also thinks about this question. Is there a word for? If it exists, he knows it is not. 'Dan you are someone who does not eat fish,' he says after a few seconds.

They are there and they do not seem to want to depart, they do not understand that he should it.

"Well, that is what I am. Someone who does not eat fish.' She smiles, but it is not real smile. Previously a persiflage on the smile.

'I am sorry,' he says one more time he is now close to her, he must push her aside, he must return. 'Of those relations and of school, and also of the fish, I am sorry but you will probably find someone who loves you. And there are also vegetarian snacks. Olives.'

'Ah," she says. 'Yeah. "Hold" is so old fashioned.'

'What do you mean?'

'We do not do more to.' It is almost aggressive. As a reproach. And it felt also for ship's steward, he has the impression that he rightly pointed. A faux pas he has committed, and this girl let him that subtly know.

His hand rests on her shoulder to its friendly but still determined to push aside. The image of his wife in the living room to the dancing is with Tirza's friends bubbles forth in him and bothers him, makes him nervous. Sick, you would have to say. Sick.

'What are you doing?' he asks, his hand still on her shoulder.

At the same time tough and fragile, so they, and its solidity emphasizes the fragility, or rather: emphasizes what there all already is broken.

'We enjoy each other," she says. 'We try at least.'

He rubbed with his right hand by his hair. His left hand remains on its shoulder, as if those hand paralyzed.

Its answers him not, he wants no longer hear them. A so-called rebel, that will they are. Someone nothing, someone who has not understood that it is a question of the world to view critically, that you have to work, work, work and a further work, but believes that can enjoy the goal is. What a about courage. What a heart-free courage.

'We,' he says. 'We? I am not so sure that there is a "we". For example, you and I are we now have a "we"? I think not. Who is "we"? On behalf of whom do you speak?'

What is the problem with him? To what for discussion he begins? What he wants this child, that of fish or school appears to be, evidence? He must leave her only, her in her own sop cook cook it. Do not reduce to its level, what that level might be. He must be above it, he is a man of nearly sixty. Men of almost sixty are above. But what he discovered again and again every hour, every quarter, as if someone not tired him a little to want to prove: for He is not above. Nowhere is it is at the top.

'I believe that there may be a "we". I think that I can say: "We do not, we are not 'Love'. We do not. You might be. We do not. We positive displacement ommen the." hopefully you will find me not cheeky, but I believe you nonsense proclaims. I believe that many people nonsense proclaiming and that they think that may, that that is no problem, because they are older. Or have money. I am not clever. Not as smart as they think, but I know what nonsense.'

'I must return to the feast,' whispers ship's steward. 'We are talking about. Later. Another time. You can love cannot abolish, Ester. I have tried, when i was so old as you. I wanted to abolish the love. I can tell you a lot about. You can also come along to eat. Will love Tirza. Before they leave. She goes to Africa, as you know.'

'We. Now you are saying it themselves. Wé about. We, you see that it exists. We have a second, we are a "we". Whether you like it or not. We are a "we".'

He looks at her face. His hand is still on her shoulder. For the first time he realizes that his life not hurt, better life, his life, he understands that while he is at the face of Ester without h. He must be thinking about what that means. What does pain? 'I need it,' he says, and he hears smekend yourself how it sounds, how little authoritarian, how hopeless. 'Let me through it.'

'MAG I continue?'

'Here?'

His hand slides out of her shoulder. Despite the warm evening he suddenly cold. It suppresses the tendency to flip teeth.

'Here.' She pointing to his garden tool. He sees a bag of manure, a bag of earth, the machine saw, a rake, a mower, a bucket, the box in which mandarins have sat.

'In the barn? But here is the party. Here is nothing, girl. Here is nothing at all.'

'I like to be alone. I must also…'

She picks the bucket, turns around and moves that sit in it.

'Look," she says, 'I'm sitting here doing good. I am no one to load.'

He hesitates. He must find this well? Completely normal is he not. One caught up in the barn while the party in the living room is in full swing. Well, he has celebrations of his wife could be pulled back into the bedroom, but he is a man, and when he did he was already a man on age. One that could make no friends, but who had come to the conclusion that the with only two daughters also best presentation.

'Well,' he says. 'For my part. If you feel like it. If this is your idea of a party. I will give you something to drink. What do you have? And you can make light. There is also light." He points to the light button. 'I will give you something to read? The newspaper today?'

'Dank you. I do nothing to read. I am myself gently pats.'

He bows down as if he were its not good can be understood. He also believes that he has not really understood her. 'What are you going to do?'

'I do myself gently stroke. So.' With her right hand rubs them slowly over her left arm. She is doing slow, that they would feel what eng and is unknown. A reptile. Her arm is a reptile.

A few seconds he looks at the scene and with a light feeling of unease. With a presumption that is becoming more and more urgent: would he not witness. Not right now. Never really.

In the distance he hears the music of the party. Votes.

They rubs on the basis on which telephone numbers are written and then on her bare arm. Back and forth. To accelerate without, but also without.

'Ester,' he says with all the conviction that he can lay in his voice, 'within are very many people who you would want to gently with pleasure petting. Go to the living room, i imagine all kinds of fun people, but I think that everyone already knows. Go with me. Do not stay here. This is not a barn for you.'

'I prefer to do it themselves. Petting. I can do better itself.'

Also he remains motionless. He is in two fight. He must convince her, but he does not know how. He thinks it is irresponsible to its here to leave only. Completely irresponsible. If you are old you may find yourself caught up in the barn while the party in the living room brawl, not if you are young, then you get load of unwanted thoughts.

'Meneer ship's steward," she says, while they are still on her arm rubs, 'is you sometimes gently stroked?'

Without further to say something more about it the sanding. He calls this call to continue no longer. Enough is enough. He feels tempted to scream: 'Cheeky Monkey! Cheeky Monkey who you are!'

But if he is outside, he calls only: 'What do you actually drink? Will I get a glass of orange juice jug and now there is no tomato juice is that?'

'Sinaasappelsap is well,' calls on them. 'But without ice.'

Adjust with large he walks to the kitchen.

Ibi's generation was different. They should be close with Tirza, but nevertheless, such excesses can he of Ibi's girlfriends not remember. No fish food, yourself in a shed stroke gently, slim find yourself. Love is as much as he lethargy.

If he has pouring the orange juice in a glass of wine — other glass he can no longer find — he feels a hand on his shoulder.

He turns around.

'Tirza,' he says. 'Where were you? Where do you come from?'

She looks sweaty from. Something of its eyeshadow.

'I have hard cycled," she says. 'I heard you messages. When I cycled extra hard. It is a bit of fun, find the people like? They will find you sushi tasty, pap?'

She is sweaty, but she radiates. Its eyes rays.

He expresses its against located on and he understands, has not previously understood that so clearly, so overwhelming, so no-compromise, that he wants to have no reason to live without Tirza. Without her is life is no longer conceivable and what is not feasible, is undesirable. It is right to exist. What he presses against gives him at the same time the privilege and the duty to life. Without its voids the obligation, but also the right. He can hardly imagine how he lived when they were not being. Call Waiting, that was it. As he has lived all these years, waiting for Tirza. Though he knew that the Tirza not of course was to whom he waited.

'Pap," she says, "Press me not so nice. That may later. At the airport. You are always so hard safe. I would like you to someone proposals.'

She points to a person who has obviously been a time in the door opening of the kitchen has been.

A boy, perhaps a man. Ship's steward wealth him on twenty-three, twenty-four. Older than Tirza in each case. A fairly dark skin, a wide jaw, heavy eyebrows which he gives the impression surly to watch. Perhaps he looks also surly. Who knows?

'Pap,' says Tirza, 'it is Choukri, my boyfriend.'

Runs slow ship's steward to the opening of the door.

The few steps which he takes from the sink to the door opening to walk, everything he thinks of the devastating age. He is nearly dead. And what is the difference between nearly dead and completely dead? What details you have it, how many square millimeters territory who you have separate the enemy forces? Ship's steward seeks his hand. 'What was your?' he asks. But for the man can reply says: 'Choukri Tirza, dad. It is called Choukri. I have said.'

'Chou-kri,' reiterates slowly, and ship's steward it shakes the hand of the man. 'I am Jörgen ship's steward. Tirza's father.'

The man comes to him is known for. The longer he look at him, the more it with some trepidation that he has already seen.

'Dus you are…' says ship's steward, but because he does not know what he wants to go to say he pauses and the silence makes use by saying Tirza: 'Yes, that is him, that is my boyfriend. He goes with him.'

Still keeps a ship's steward the hand of the man, the basis of the boyfriend of his youngest daughter. A large hand is the, a cold hands. No fine, soft fingers. No piano fingers.

'MEE? Where To?'

'To Africa. I have told you that he says Tirza lasts?'. They depends almost to the arm of her father, but he let the hands of Choukri do not disconnect. My boyfriend goes to Africa, PAP.'

'O Yes, of course, to Africa. And what do you do?' he asks.

'I create music.'

'Music. What Kind of Music?'

'I write texts. And I play guitar. Under other.'

'Guitar. Under other.' He turns the hand of the man and examine the nails.

'I refer to the ship's steward,' says, 'You have long fingernails. People who take seriously the guitar, generally have long fingernails. I have no long fingernails. But I play no guitar. I work in the garden.' He shows his hands on the man. He seeks its arms. He moves his fingers as if he were on an imaginary piano playing. 'Look,' he says, 'gardeners hands. The hands of a gardener.'

'Papa,' says Tirza, 'we are not here on the Veemarkt. You do not need to compare each other's hands. He is just in.'

Ship's steward laughs, and at the same time he knows that he is almost certainly the man ever has seen on tv. But he does not know any more what broadcast, not even in what context. It was somewhat comical, was the news, a talk show?

'You're right, Tirza, you are just in. I must not so many questions.' He turns around to the man. 'But I am curious. I am a curious father. And Tirza is a curious daughter. Not, Tirza?'

He makes two glass of Kir Royal and pays for itself a glass of white wine in. Without asking whether he has meaning in Kir Royal he the man the champagne glass in the hands, the other he gives to Tirza. He puts his arm around her, he expresses its close to adhere to, his life, his right to exist, his youngest daughter.'Cheers,' he says, 'on this evening. I have heard a lot about you, Choukri, and I am glad you now finally to meet. Do you do anything other than make music?'

'I am sitting in the social work.'

'a social worker?'

'Yes.'

'Mewe. Also useful.' ship's steward takes a large sip. And still a. His glass is empty again. It goes quickly. Still he keeps Tirza securely. As if they would walk if he is released. 'You have no need for university education, not? In order to be a social worker, I mean? That goes without university education, is it not? What do you mean by that?'

'a training,' says the man, 'but indeed not University.'

'Not everyone is in the cradle for the university,' explains ship's steward. 'Some people have no interest in science, some people have no talent for science. That also have nothing to search on the university.'

'Pap,' says Tirza. They laughs as Tirza only can laugh, friendly but strictly, played and my sincere, polite but a bit naughty. They caresses her father on his cheek. 'Not now. Not now about science begin.'

'No,' he says, 'not now. Another time. If you want to eat. We are talking about science.' He looks at the friend of his daughter and he is convinced now not more that he already has seen him. He knows it. Only that which he does not know.

'It may be," requires a ship's steward, 'di ate you ever seen on tv? Have you ever on TV?'

The guy shakes his head. 'I create music, but I am not famous. I have never been on TV.'

'But we have already met each other, not? We know each other.'

The guy shakes his head. 'No, not really. This is the first time that I can see.'

'Pap, do not be so weird. You have never met Choukri. You can have still not seen him.'

'Maybe here in the neighborhood?'

'Choukri never come in here. Choukri resides in another area.'

'In which area?'

'In the near the Central Station,' says the man. 'On one of the islands.'

Ship's steward nods. On one of the islands. He makes two further glass of Kir Royal, for the man and for his youngest daughter self he holds the at white wine.

'Dit,' he says, if all glass is full, 'dit here, where we are now, is the best part of the Van Eeghenstraat. Later, after Jacob Obrechtstraat, begins the lesser part. Also nice, but i would not want to live. In fact this place, these few square meters, the best place in Amsterdam and in the Netherlands.'

It rejects his glass against that of the man, then hit it gently against Tirza's glass. 'On this evening,' he says. 'On the feast. On your happiness and that of all the people. In accordance with Spinoza you can not be happy when your happiness others disappointed. You Know Who Spinoza was, I take it?'

'Pap, also no Spinoza tonight. And no Dostoevsky, no Tolstoy. Also not, ok. Please, pap?'

He are empty glass of wine and gives the right back full.

'You see,' he says. 'You see, Choukri, my daughter has me in the pliers. My daughter is my boss. That she was when she was born. From the first moment. And do you know why?' he begins to whisper, as if there is now a secret, something further nobody should know. 'As they are the solar queen. Tirza is the solar queen. Be careful they just now you also in the pliers.'

Ship's steward takes a large sip, puts his glass on the worktop, retrieves the champagne glass from Tirza's hand, drink that empty, switch the also on the worktop and lifts her.

He raises his daughter high into the air. As high as he can. And with difficulty, with smoky voting, because the breath is difficult, he says: 'you see? I can still lift her, my solar queen. If the must, I am wearing her by half Amsterdam. Not, Tirza?'

He then turns a round with her in his arms and another, and even a. He turns around in the kitchen, as a trophy, if a false goddess. He continues to rotate until it is no longer possible.

He puts her back on the ground. He is dizzy, he must hold on to the worktop. The kitchen is running for his eyes. His daughter is running for his eyes.

There is a silence. No one knows what is to be said. Tirza grabs Choukri's hand.

As they were three in the kitchen.

Ship's steward clears his throat. Slowly rotate the kitchen less. He will recover.

But still nobody knows what is to be said.

The silence is continuing. The silence is painful.

'come, we go inside,' says Tirza finally against her friend. 'We go to the party. My mother is there also. That you know it. But I do not you to its proposals.'

'It was fun with you to create knowledge, Mr ship's steward,' says the man. 'But we can see each other again later, I take it?'

'O certainly, we still see each other,' says the father. 'Later in the evening. Or another time.'

She leads the way, his daughter, and the man follows her, his hand in her hand. Also still swings Tirza to Jörgen, she winks at him. He is only in his kitchen.

And at that moment to fire him within what he has forgotten. The sushi. He has not offered their sushi.

He looks at his watch. It is almost a quarter to eleven.

Ship's steward keeps his head under cold running water and he takes a racket where in that head of him, the buzz of an insect, but he now knows what that buzz is. It is a prayer.

Without his face to dry it remains in the middle of the kitchen are dry. He can be against, he is refreshed. Tirza has arrived. Now you can start the party.

From the fridge he retrieves a dish with sashimi, he removes the foil and putting the fish from on the specially procured plateau. He says to himself: 'If the eleven hours, i go again sardines buckets.'

The wife has the boy on whose name is unable to come to the ship's steward but pressed up against a wall, they talk to him, the table is moved to the side, the exposure further attenuated, but the sashimi continues to do it properly. The people drink and eat eagerly. Hunger and thirst go hand in hand.

Tirza and her boyfriend speak with lady Field Camp. A girl, he is already forgotten her name, says to him: 'Come, Mr ship's steward, ga also dancing.' He shakes determination of no. 'I am tonight for the catering,' he says with a very friendly smile.

She listens hardly. The girl is already forgotten him. She pulls the economy teacher note. And Hans will also let pushalong.

In the middle of the living room is a ship's steward with the plateau in his hand. He has the feeling to be invisible. No unpleasant sensation. He is there without being there. The man that nobody stands out, so he can be mentioned. And he is strangely enough proud of. Not previously. Then a colleague said: 'I was on that book presentation and you know what happened?' And after a few minutes when there is a small quiet fell, noted on ship's steward: 'I know, I was there.'

He was been there, he was present, but no one had seen him.

He is studying the party. Tirza and her boyfriend are still in conversation with lady Field Camp. Never knew that lady Veldkamp as animated can talk, she is loosened. Mrs of mining seems also well entertained. Yes, this is the time the people come loose, and if the people come loose, ship's steward like his sashimi. You must have some in your stomach have for you make contact with your deepest and most hidden drifting. He looks at the friend of his youngest daughter he loves him in the holes.

Someone collides with him and asks: 'There is also tuna?'

If in trance he points to a piece of fish and than he tail back to the boyfriend of his youngest daughter.

He continues to stare.

Ship's steward now knows why that face him as familiar, he now knows to whom the boy reminds him. He does not understand that he has seen straight away. Everything is now clear to him. Mohammed Atta. If two drops of water. The same chin, the same eyes, the same style. A Brother of Mohammed Atta. A doppelganger. Mohammed Atta themselves, would he say almost if he is not almost certainly knew that man was dead.

With the half-empty plateau he runs back to the kitchen. He drinks quick a glass of wine, leans with both hands on the refrigerator and think: Mohammed Atta is in my house. Atta has arrived. Atta is resurrected.

It converts a pan on the fire, the oil, garlic, salt, pepper and the sardines within easy reach. The pan must be hot. He touch with his finger at the edge. Please wait. It is still not the case.

Ship's steward know not what to do, he does not know how to stop this disaster, therefore he concentrates on the sardines. But that it is a disaster, doubt he no longer. Mohammed Atta is a disaster. What else?

He makes a new bottle of wine open. Italian gewürztraminer. The wine he has together with Tirza sorted out. He looks for all wine together with Tirza. For many months, for years. They tried it inspects, he is buying.

'Jörgen.'

He turns around.

His wife.

Her body seems even more from the textiles to grow than at the beginning of the evening.

He now has no time for her. He is going to sardines buckets.

'Jörgen.'

The pan is hot. Slow the, if only you wait. Very slowly. But now it is here. The oil can.

'Jörgen, I am talking to you.'

'I am to cooking. You can see that not? I bucket sardines.'

It is a few steps closer.

'I don't, I would just like to know whether there is still some rum is.'

The sardines in the pan. He is doing them one at a time. Of these moments enjoying. He loves cooking. More than on the food itself he holds of the cooking. He is the begin to appreciate, slowly, gradually.

'You Know Who in our house is?' he asks without turning and his look tight on the sardines. 'You Know Who in our living room?'

Anyone, Jörgen? Who is in our living room? The love of my life? Have you seen him?' she giggles as if they were a good joke has told us. The love of her life in the living room. She has reached the age at which that is a joke. What was that girl in the barn said? We do not. Take account of. We positive displacement ommen the.

'Mohammed Atta.'

Five sardines are now in the pan. There is still one at. The sixth. Brotherly they are now next to each other. This is nice. This is what a ship's steward beautiful. The sardines have never left in the lurch. For as long as he does the household, for as long as he cooks for Tirza, it is his specialty.

'Who is Mohammed Atta, Jörgen? I know that? He is the love of my life? I will make him painting? He is suitable as a model?'

'Mohammed Atta, you do not know who Mohammed Atta is? Damn.'

She shakes her head. They concern to him. The father of her children. They smell to it.

'No idea," she says. 'MUST I know him?'

'Where are you in the last few years has? In a cave? Was that living boat on drift?'

The oil splatters cheerful.

Ship's steward picks up an apron and binds the order.

'I have no idea who is Mohammed Atta, sorry. Apparently he is not the love of my life, also good. I just wondered if there is still some rum is, I started with rum-cola and now I would like to continue to do so. There is what?'

'Mohammed Atta,' cries out ship's steward. 'Mo-ham-med At-ta.'

'Schreeuw not so, Jörgen.'

She takes it back. It is against him. They squeeze in its upper arm. The man who they exchanged land for her childhood love. Traded and taken over. And be taken back. Or half taken back. An endless series of takeovers is the love life of the man.

He walgt of her and the more he walgt, the more he hopes that they still have also remains pressed against him. Not long, a few seconds. Longer is not necessary.

'I have no idea what you're talking about. But that does not matter. I came only for the same rum. Those guys are so nice, Jörgen. Those guys of Tirza. Such nice and sensible boys.'

'Las that childhood love of you no newspapers? He had no money for a subscription? He was arm? Or Dom? Or arm and Dom? The tv went sometimes to as Houseboat? Was there a tv? Where have you been? In the world you have lived? And furthermore: when that happened you lived here. At least officially.'

'I was in love, Jörgen, i was in love. Than escapes you ever what and I think you love, I think you actually rather than i have found you ever, but I now say where the rum. And then you must explain to me but who Mohammed can't think. What I all missed. As living boat. I promise you that I will listen. I have always listened carefully if you tried to disseminate wisdom?'

He tail in the pan. Just like and then he must turn the fish. The dripping sweat in his neck, but he has no time now to tackle his handkerchief. The listen closely, this action. Sardines buckets is more difficult than people think.

'Four years ago,' he says while he is the pan of the fire to better distribute the oil, 'four years ago is the Third World War.'

'O that I certainly missed. The Third World War. There was also a hunger winter?'

'hold on,' he calls, 'hold. The hunger winter is yet to come. And I hope that he will affect you as first You deserve it. People like you have earned a winter of starvation, not a, no, to four at the same time.'

It is firmer against him.

'What kind of man I am?' she whispers. 'In which category I fall? The category "has-the-hong winter-earned"?'

'De category who are so happy and invulnerable, that they feel like the newspaper no longer need to read. Which category, that is what I am talking about.'

He picks up a spoon, moves back and forth the sardines to prevent them lard.

'I have the Third World War completely missed. Forgive me, Jörgen, forgive me if I irreverent nature with the World War I handled, but where is the rum? Keep me no longer in voltage.'

With his elbow he pushes her away.

She is coming back. It expresses its abdomen against his buttocks.

'Go away,' he calls, still with the spoon in his hand, 'go away! Dirty woman, go away.'

'Is the Third World War has already past?' she whispers in his ear. 'or is he still working? Notify me. Illuminated me.'

He turns the fish. The cooking calm him down.

'I am not in the mood for flauwiteiten. There is still a bottle of rum in the refrigerator. And I am ashamed for you. Uncultivated. Barbaric. You have. When i got to know you I thought that you would be cultivated. A painter. That must be a cultivated woman. I thought. Art Academy. She will probably know something. Ha! None of them. Heard the bell without knowing where the clapper is, that is the best that you can do.'

'I am also not in the mood for flauwiteiten. I am not bland. I have meaning in rum. I have meaning in you. I have meaning in someone. Are you someone, Jörgen? Are you a person?'

They get a por. And ship's steward remains in the pan stare. It bothers him not that the oil splashes, he tail if hypnotise. The sheet of the sardines is so beautiful, it is nicer than the sheet of the man, but he must admit that he has never seen how human sheet looks like you the bakes in a pan.

The wife opens the refrigerator. They bending itself. They are looking for, as he is an hour or so ago the tomato juice was looking for.

'Mohammed Atta,' he says, 'was one of the hijackers, he was the leader of the hijackers. And the friend of Tirza is his brother, or a half-brother, or a cousin. Or an uncle. Or a married uncle. In any case a kind of Mohammed Atta. The same meat, the same eye, the same jaw. The same thoughts of course. The same hatred. Hatred against us. Hatred against what we are, who we are and why we are.'

'But Who are we, Jörgen?'

They retrieves a few bottles from the refrigerator. They sigh. 'You have it here too full,' she panting slightly. 'As a human can still find nothing?'

And while he has his hands on his apron, effectivenessdrynumber considering that he said 'we'. As far as we are concerned, without thinking. The came eight-free and of course. He hates 'us'.

'I think I know it," she says. She has the rum found. 'Mohammed Atta, of the eleventh. The eleventh, yet? Not? The eleventh?'

They open the bottle. Then she takes cola from the refrigerator.

Mix them the rum with the cola. They consume. 'De 11th September, not? God, what seems that long ago. What I was happy when. In Love. Young i felt myself, I do not know, I felt…'

The sardines are ready. He puts them on a dish. Do not look he reciprocates her.

'20. Eighteen. Sometimes also sixteen,' she whispers.

He throws there parsley over it. Looking at its sardines can it tends to smile hardly suppress.

'You know,' he says, while his apron prejudice, 'You know why they are you and me and the neighbors hate? Because we believe in the happiness. Not in God but in the happiness. Because we are individuals with an individual identity. No group of animals.'

They drink its rum-cola as a child, the glass omklemd with both hands. She looks at him, her face presents the traces of the dancing, the hustle and bustle, the heat in the living room. Overrun is her make-up not earlier blurred and dried. Its wrinkles are visible.

'Jörgen, you do not at all in the happiness. Your God has always been the accident. You wanted not much else of life than unfortunate. And you have it served God, you're never become him, even when infidelity you could feel betrayed right by him, you are the god of the accident. You was his most dedicated servant. You deserves our applause. Why do you think I am with you on the phone? I also wanted to ever come first. I also wanted to be next to someone are responsible for the accident not honored. I could no longer be able to. Against You. Well, against everything you glorified.'

She is walking with him. She wants him pillow, he feels it. He knows.

He pushes her away. 'Go away,' he calls. 'Touch Me, dirty wife.'

She picks its glass. She pays at. 'Who are we?' she asks. "Now that we have discussed it, who we are that they hate us? Who are we, Jörgen? What are we actually doing?'

She is coming toward him, the glass in her hand.

'You need there is ice in do,' he says. 'Rum-cola without ice cream is not to drink. You have no style?'

They saves her arms around him. He pushes its not road. He has the power not.

'You Know Who we are?' she whispers in his ear. And also insert them her tongue in his ear. 'You know what we are, with the two of us we? We are broken.' She speaks the word from as something geils and fijns, as though it were incredibly exciting is to break. The most beautiful and best thing in the world. Something that is usually reserved for models and movie stars. Broken.

'but you must to tell anyone. It is our secret, you agreed? No one should know. We only know.' She remains but a whisper. Even though there is no one else in the kitchen. Then let them finally.

Ship's steward makes his ear dry with his handkerchief.

He picks up the dish with sardines. 'They must now be eaten, they should be eaten warm,' he says, more against themselves than against the wife.

In the living room he calls as a poor imitator of a 'sardines market Koopman:, so fresh you get in Portugal not.'

The guests are afraid for the sardines, or they do not pull out more. With difficulty he wears his fish.

The boy with the name of one syllable notes a. 'It is happiness,' says ship's steward noting the fish, 'it is pure luck.'

He looks at how the boy eating.

And if the boy have second sardine in the mouth, says: 'Contact me ship's steward forgive me, but i forgot your name.'

'Bas.' He talks with full mouth. But 'Bass' is a name you even with full foot well can say.

'Bas,' reiterates ship's steward. 'Is a fun party, Bas?'

'Yes,' says the boy, 'there are also of that tasty snacks.'

Ship's steward nods. 'I have the fish this morning in the morning at the hotel and catering industry Dealers Ven in Diemen purchased. That you can taste.'

Also they stare out to each other, the old and the young man, they look at each other, skeptical though what they will now say. The old man thinks of catering Dealers Ven.

Than the call to conclude, says: 'on ship's steward ven they have the best fish, Bas. Remember that. Do take advantage of it.'

Without awaiting a reply, he runs to Tirza. They still speak always with lady Veldkamp, like lady Field Camp is her best friend. In fact you not Veldkamp lady. A MS is the. He does not understand why they do not themselves against him has said: 'I am lady Veldkamp not, I am Mrs Field Camp.'

'De last is for you, Tirza.' He keeps the dish among its nose so they can smell how fresh they are.

'No, PAP," she says, 'I have still not hungry.'

Mohammed Atta stands behind Tirza. He does not participate in the call. While she speaks, he plays with the fingers of her right hand. Ship's steward sees a few seconds. He is an abomination.

In the kitchen to eat the last sardine yourself.

The wife is still at the worktop, exactly as he has left behind her.

'they found the nice?' she wants to know.

He remains silent. He loves the cup under the tap.

'What are we going to do about it?' he asks.

'Which?'

'Which? Which? You listen when I speak?'

'I listen. I listen today are better than in the past. You also says more interesting things than in the past. To us?'

He dries his hands off.

'to us. No, not for us. I am ready with us. What are we to do Mohammed Atta? How much you hate her may have, it is your child. It is my Tirza. But it is also your child.'

They mixt still what cola with rum.

"Create your yet not so crowded," she says. 'It is a whim. Tirza is still not ripe for a real boyfriend. She is still far too much with himself. It is simply that we have very sweet for Mohammed Atta. How do we have for him, the sooner he has disappeared.'

He shakes his head. Sweet for Mohammed Atta, only the wife can think of something like this.

The Racket in his head is stronger. He goes to the top. He now has to focus on to the rest of the Party, on the snacks, on Mohammed Atta, on the guests.

In the bedroom opens the balcony doors.

Ship's steward takes a deep breath. It is twenty past eleven, he sees on his watch. The feast is nearing its destination. As between twelve and a half are the two half celebrations on their height point he recalls of the parties that the wife previously organised. Even when Tirza was a few months old. It made its nothing. The celebrations went for, its celebrations went for.

He looks at the garden, the houses, the lawn of the neighbors. He thinks of Tirza's travel, that they are going to create together with Atta. Atta, so that is her boyfriend. Atta, so that is the man to whom they think it is better to have him than. He tries to propose those months in the large and empty house. For whom he will buy wine, for whom he will do our shopping? For whom he will in the kitchen? He remembers her illness, as in the case of a person who was a time when the Hofmeesters lived in the house. A uninvited guests. First he had had nothing. The wife of course not. He brought Tirza to its celloles, when an older lady who with an eye diease understaffed, he brought her to the swimming pool. They swam very good they swam competitions, she had champion can be if they had gone. He took her to the pool and in the evening he read her for from the world literature, especially the Russians. Tolstoy that his own art their petty because he sees her as insignificant, if a fun that does not contribute to the happiness of the people that he found Nice. So Nice, that he was not tired from Tolstoy for reading. Loved it, the man who made his own family unhappy, which makes his own wife crazy, which specify his talent to the happiness of the people after hunting.

And all that time he had had nothing in the holes. Perhaps he wanted nothing in the holes. Until he was called by Tirza's classes teacher Mrs brunt.

The wife was in her studio, they had a studio, God should know what they uitspookte. What did they actually at that time except for a lie? He had also met a woman who said: 'I sleep now much, because it will be the children and will no longer be.' The wife had done otherwise, which was going to sleep after the children.

'Maybe,' said Mrs of mining by the telephone, 'want you and your wife have come to talk about Tirza.'

'I meet you only,' he said. 'My woman has the pressure.'

He made an appointment for Friday afternoon half-five. It meant that he slightly earlier of the publisher had to leave, but on friday afternoon there was at that time still bubbled mainly.

To ten about four that Friday afternoon he did the manuscripts that he was planning to go that weekend reading in his briefcase and he peddled my way to the South.

For the Vossius Gymnasium he made his bike with a lamppost and he wondered why we wanted to talk with him, what Tirza could have done.

He ran through the school with the briefcase against itself. There was almost no one more. Uneasy he felt, as always when he the role of father in the public had to fulfill. He played that role ideally as no one could see him.

At the coffee machine were three boys. 'Please excuse me, I find the local of Mrs Of Excavating,' said ship's steward. A small and rather dingy boy with an earring pointed out to him that he could come and while he walked up to the first floor, the briefcase still pressed against, he realized that he was reviewed and that he was ridiculous. Not ridiculous as man, it was to live with. But ridiculous as a father. A ridiculous father, that he was. Someone also always a deep unease had felt when he was in the school yard, when his children are still on the Amsterdam Montessori School, and he is in the middle of the other fathers and mothers had waited to retrieve them. Other parents chatted with each other, knew each other, wanted to get to know each other better. But he had to be hidden behind a tree. And if he is a baby heard Tirza declare: 'Look, there is your father', he had the tendency to look behind them, as if they had about someone.

The door of local nine was closed. He knocked soft, and waited a few seconds. When he was still a times harder. 'come within,' he heard.

He opened the door.

The local was empty, it smelled of sweat and chewing gum. An air that he could not remind you of his own school time. But what he could remember them? Little. The tool shop of his parents in Geldermalsen, which granted him better for the spirit.

Mrs of mining was at her desk.

On the board was something about them and their.

A chair had they already put ready for him.

Mrs of mining was a woman of final fifty, well conserved, sensibly dressed without too frumpy to come about.

They shook hands, smiling, not lavish friendly but inviting, at least inviting for a call.

They had already met a few times on older evenings. Mrs of mining inquired after his work and they called the names of a few recently published Dutch novels that he had not read. Apparently she was forgotten that he foreign fiction did. It forgets that often. As politely as possible he reminded her that he was fiction translated writer and then immediately she said: 'Tirza, let us also about her.'

'Yes,' he said, 'is not doing well? Are there problems?'

"I wanted to correct at questions. There are problems, Mr ship's steward?'

He outlined the briefcase, which he had in his lap time account, on the ground.

'Problems? No. Not that i know. Yes, they are now in the puberty, she is in the puberty, she is fourteen, but problems, no. She goes to celloles, that they will find nice, they sit on swimming, she has a good few girlfriends. I have the impression that a cheerful child is Tirza, she is a bit closed, but that…'

He made his meaning not. He took the briefcase and continued to be in his lap without having to know why. He was looking for something he did not only more what.

'Yes?' asked Mrs brunt. 'What did you say?'

I am also '. Closed.'

She smiled, but according to a ship's steward not wholeheartedly. Why should they?

'Is nothing you noticed?'

He shook his head and nip lightly into his briefcase. What would need to be struck him? He had overlooked something? He could not invent anything.

'No'.

'Dan i will have to say,' said Mrs brunt. 'Our is something seen and although perhaps it is, we have decided, in the light of our experience in the past with other pupils, also to warn you.'

He continued his briefcase should get back on the ground.

'Yes?'

He thought to drugs, or dealing with false elements, all he had no idea what for false elements that would be. Were there any false elements in the south of Amsterdam? There was on the Vossius Gymnasium thing as false elements?

Mrs of mining tapped gently with a ballpoint pen on her desk. 'We think,' she said, while they got on with taps, 'dat Tirza is to develop an eating disorder.'

Ship's steward smiled but only from nervousness. The word alone. Eating disorder. In a manuscript he had there with a pencil a line below. And then in the margin: 'consult with the translator.'

Ship's steward had as its views on what ugly words were.

'And on what basis you this presumption?'

The teacher was with tap. 'We have our experiences,' she said. 'If said, there are symptoms, there is a pattern of behavior that we know of.' She lifted her hand on and showed him in her lap fall as if they wanted to say: 'nothing I can do, that is the way it is.'

'us?'

'My and some of my colleagues.'

He nodded.

'True' he said after a short and fairly tense silence, 'and now?'

'It is not directly our responsibility to take action in such cases. That responsibility lies with the parents but we do believe that it is our responsibility to inform the parents. I have done on this.'

The parents, that he was. She had about him.

They looked at him. Apparently she was thoroughly discussed, because they remained silent. And they did not seem willing to say something more.

'And now?' asked ship's steward.

'Is there really is nothing you noticed?' She could clearly not believe. But it was nothing noticed. Yes, there was anything but it went on to the conclusions which it covenant.

'Eat them for example? And what if I ask you? How many? When?'

He kuchte.

'They has never eaten many, if not, they baby is a small eater. We are in the family almost all small eaters. I, her sister nowadays they do not eat more as much as in the past, my wife, all small eaters. But I will ensure.'

Mrs of mining leaned back. Her look was skeptical. 'Are you not of the opinion that they graat lean is? For a girl of fourteen?'

'Graat Lean.' He had never thought about it. Now he went to do so. Consider, dealing, in deepening of course thoroughly.

'and your wife, what is it?'

My wife is…' He kicked his legs on each other. My wife is an artist, as you know. She is much in her studio. Very much. To work. Painting, drawing…'

Mrs of mining stared him discouraging, he found. In fact without any hope. So they stared at him. Without hope. If on a funeral. When looked at its watch.

'Well,' she said, 'I have informed you. It is now up to you.'

He took his briefcase, he stood up.

'It is now up to me. Yes, of course. But what do I have to do?' he asked for her he hand shook. 'What is expected of me?' It sounded as though he waited a job description and perhaps that is so.

'What is expected from you? Well, you agree with Tirza talk. That to begin.'

'Over the eating disorder?' The Word was difficult, it stood against him. Deep Inside he believed that Mrs of Mining is digested.

'Yes,' said Mrs Of Excavating, 'over the eating disorder. If she has. And if not, then it can also do no harm to talk to her.'

'I talk much with her. My youngest daughter and I talked a lot.' ship's steward felt that he did not have to leave to how he was proposed here as a silent, absent father. He had to its correct.

'and which I ask you? Available to talk you?'

'Available? The last time a lot about Tolstoy. His rejection of the art of the literature, perhaps you know that fascinating essay by him, is unfortunately the only available in German, Was ist Art? In which he sums up the art as "eitle Kurzweil müßiger Men".'

Ship's steward was a bit harder to talk. He was always excited when he began. Eitle Kurzweil müßiger man.

'Daarover you talk with a girl of fourteen?'

He nodded and spent his briefcase from one hand to the other. He opened the lock but he was looking for nothing. He did it without reason. 'They is a very talented as you know. High-high gifted.'

Mrs of mining looked at him, penetrating, and its face was met with — he could not pretend that he did not see the — horror.

He greeted her unintelligible. Despairingly about its sentiments, but just as despairingly about its insensitivity to Tolstojs dilemma.

With the briefcase under his arm he walked through the empty school building. The echo of his own footsteps sounded him in the ear. unpleasant He knew just how you had to talk when it came to matters other than Anna Karenina or notes from the underground, everything outside the world of the translated fiction fell he acted prefer to in a phrase. Let alone that he knew how you had to talk about eating disorders.

On the stairs jump the briefcase open, manuscripts, the four pencils and an apple fell on the ground. Someone walked past and ship's steward dared not to bend down to pick up his belongings. It was only when the sound of the foot steps was faded away, hastily he collected his property.

That evening he climbed the stairs to Tirza's room. With Anna Karenina in his hand, they were kept to page three hundred and ten.

When he came in her room, drew the blankets over them. 'Please,' she cried out from under the blankets, 'tonight Tolstoy. A double portion of tomorrow but not tonight.'

He went to her foot end, the book in his hand, but he did not open. And he does not streelde to calm down, as on other evenings.

He was there and asked: 'Has Tolstoy you nothing to offer?'

'Dear is not,' shouted Tirza, from under the blankets. 'nobody of my age is aloud. Ibi also says that the ridiculous. Ibi says that you love, dad. She says she can prove it.'

He is looking for her hand under the blanket and after some searching he found that. He took the hand of his youngest daughter and showed him not more. Somewhere he felt a pain, a presumption, more was not a light suspicion, and he decided there is no attention to this. He just said: 'Ibi is in puberty, Tirza, so they are a bit rebellious. She is on a difficult age. I am not fond. I am your father.'

When it was quiet. They apparently waited until he would go where they had remained yesterday, page three hundred and ten of Anna Karenina, but he did not continue, he was due to speak.

He looked, with her hand still in his, to the ceiling, to posters on the wall. To the books he had given her, and that they in alphabetical order in her bookcase.

'I was present at Mrs Brunt.'

'De trut,' sounded from under the blanket.

'You will find its not nice?'

'Ah, nice, she seems nice but they simply like a trut. Everyone knows that at school. If you get to know her, you see it.'

Ship's steward waited, he waited for himself, he waited until he knew what he had to say, but it was not. On her desk was a notepad. He had the temptation to open it and read. Perhaps this was all in what he had to know.

In a corner of the room was her cello. The music stand.

'Tirza, is there anything I do not know, but what I should know?' is something…' He had to take the road, he schraapte saliva his throat, but the tickle he felt not disappeared. 'Is there anything I should have asked, but what I for one reason or another have not requested?'

She came half way under the blanket away.

'No,' she said, 'nothing'.

In his hand he kept her hand and in the other he kept Anna Karenina and he pinch in Anna Karenina and he thought: I can't, as this is what fatherhood means, I can not I shall stop, then I have to an alternate search. Someone who can do so. As this is going to be me not succeed.

'You know you sure?'

They nodded. 'Yes, certainly. Why? Has someone told you something? Why imagine this kind of questions? Otherwise do you never do.'

He explained the book on the bed. With his finger he tapped gently on its upper lip. 'There are people,' he said almost whispering, 'die think you a eating disorder.'

She went to sit up straight. 'A what?'

'I know that it is nonsense, I know that you just a small eater, I mean…' and ship's steward remained but with his finger on its upper lip tapping gently. "The True food is knowledge, that is the only and the real food, you know, I know, but I found that i had to discuss with you. That…'

'What?'

'Well yes. I started to think about it. I have given some thought. You are of course also very, how will I say, Tirza, you're lean. Not? May I say?'

'You mean I no breasts?'

'No, no, that is not what i mean. Which come. That are on the go. They have delay. Perhaps that is the. You must use your proposals that they sit in the train, your breasts, and that they are a bit delayed because somewhere a change was wrong, but they come, believe me, no, no, I am talking about your belly, the surroundings of your abdomen; women, girls, have a stomach, a belly, and you not, you have nothing, Tirza, nothing at all.'

He did not now more on its upper lip, but on his forehead, soft and rhythmic and he thought: I can't, I go to broken.

She went on her bed.

'You will find the not nice?' she asked.

She did her nightdress up. A gift of the wife did not want Tirza Tirza pajamas more, wanted a nightdress.

The wife had bought one. Bright pink, candy pink. A terrible color was the ship's steward, the worst kind of pink that there was, the color of the rendez-vous house. But Tirza found the beautiful. She was too old for pajamas. She had said.

'You will find the not nice?' repeated them. With her nightdress up, her belly to her father returned, she waited for an answer.

Ship's steward tried not to look. He concentrated on the music stand in the corner of the room. There was sheet music. It was recently played here.

'I think you very nice,' said ship's steward, 'Tirza, you are the most beautiful girl that i know, but you are too lean. People come to me and complain how lean you are, we have to do something about it. We need more to eat, we must go better food. More regular.'

'Papa, look at me.' They interrupted him with hard voting, as they sometimes could interrupt him if he read out. A few times she found the beautiful. Don Quixote had they partially beautiful found, the hunters stories of Turgenev had talked to her imagination.

'Look,' she said. 'Look.'

And he looked.

She was on her bed. On the blanket. The ridiculous pink nightdress that her mother had purchased in a ridiculously expensive shopping kept them up. Ship's steward stared at its navel. A yellow pants sat underneath, a yellow dots. White dots.

'I am not a girl,' she said. 'I am a woman.'

She showed the nightdress. They explained its hands on the place where her breasts.

'I am a woman with tits,' said Tirza.

They explained to her hands on her belly.

'I am a woman with a belly.'

Her hands went to its upper legs.

'I am a woman with long legs. I am a woman, papa.'

Ship's steward stood up. 'You're very talented, Tirza, high-high gifted, but you are not a woman, that you should still be, and that you will also be, you are a girl, and you have to eat.' When he went to the corner of the room and moved the music stand a few centimeters.

And it insisted on her bed, she was there but they had Tirza, nightdress ripped up again. 'say that I am a woman, papa,' she said.

He remained standing. His hand on the music stand. 'Tirza,' he said.

'say that I am a woman,' she shouted. 'Say it, papa.'

The book was still in bed. The book from which he should have read aloud. 'You're…'

He walked back to the bed, he went for her.

They took him in his hair. That she could easy now on the bed was. She pulled him to his hair. 'krijste say it,' 'papa, they say it, dare to say so. Tirza, you are a woman.'

He showed himself to his hair. It made him. He picked up the book on the bed.

'I am a woman,' krijste them. 'Say it, say it, papa.'

Harder took them to him on his hair, but he felt not he stood there as in trance as if he saw something else and heard something else.

'Say it,', 'Tirza krijste them, you're my wife. Say it, papa, say it.'

They not only krijste more, tears ran over her cheeks. They fall on the bed, her face hustle and bustle in the Laeken Declaration.

'Tirza,' he said, 'You're my daughter.' Now he shouted too. 'You're my daughter, Tirza, my daughter do you and my daughter you will continue.'

Then he ran down the stairs. But he heard her to shout: 'You have no woman, dad. I am the only woman who you have. The only.'

In the living room he went on the sofa and he rocked his upper body back and forth. Just as he had wanted to cry, Tirza but failed him and he could not understand why the failed.

The Monday out during his lunch break, he went to book trade Scheltema. Between the departments philosophy and psychology he found at last a sales star that time had for him.

'I find books about eating disorders,' he said as discrete as possible.

'What?'

'eating disorders,' he repeated, now slightly harder.

'What exactly are you looking for? Novels?'

'Information'.

They took him to a cabinet.

'This row,' she said. 'All eetziektes. And also this row. And it is also still what.'

Ship's steward bent down. But first he had looked or nobody saw him. No vague acquaintances, no colleagues. The offer was overwhelming. Only of supply was already you ill.

It took him more than twenty minutes to find two books which appeared intelligent it slightly.

The cashier asked: 'Is a gift?'

'No,' said ship's steward, 'it is for myself.'

When he went quickly back to the publisher. 'A long lunch break, Jörgen,' said the receptionist. He loved the bag with the two books firmly and snickered inept.

That evening he nest located on the bank of the two books are pencils and a pencil sharpener, because he loved the pencils like sharp.

Tirza entered the room and asked: 'What are you reading?'

'Nothing,' he said and put his hand on the books. 'Nothing major. Rubbish.'

'Papa,' she asked, 'You will find the not very that mama there is so little is that?'

She had her nightdress already, the color made him nauseous. He was the thing on a day secretly ablaze.

'I am only interested in,' he replied, playing around with the sharpener. 'I do not like crowds. Noise. Too many people.'

'But do you think it is not strange that they so little is?'

'We have good agreements with each other, Tirza. It is, I am pressure. Now you need to go to sleep.' He streelde about its cheek.

'Have you actually had a woman?' she asked.

And how much he also loved her, the question forward him. The question was put to him become more sophisticated than in its age paste, so much nastier was that question than its character, so much more insidious than the solar queen that she was and that they would always are.

'MAMA is my wife, Tirza. That You know as well as I do. Now you need to top, I read you tomorrow for further.'

They bow down and bite in its nose. As they did when they are also very close to her father wanted. A relic from its earliest youth. She was started him in the nose to bite. According to a ship's steward because they searched the breast, but it was not very logical, because where his nose also seemed, not on a nipple. And although they all fourteen was, climbed they are still governed by her father on her lap and bite it in its nose.

"You have no woman, papa,' she whispered. 'I am the only woman who you have.'

When they still have a bite times in its nose and controlling them upwards. He stayed behind on the bank, he doubted whether he behind her had to go to her to speak against. He doubted that as long as he could continue to sit but better.

Ibi was in a cafe with friends, the wife painted in her studio and received since its almost exclusively male models, Jörgen ship's steward was sitting in the living room and emphasized the one after the other paragraph in the informative book about the disease of his youngest daughter and in her bedroom next to the cello Tirza was preparing itself very talented starving to death.

So did the family ship's steward at the beginning of the new millennium.

4

From the bedroom balcony where he already had a pedigree, ship's steward the light in the barn. And again. And again. And from.

Someone plays there with the light. Only then he recalls that he Ester without h in the barn has left behind and that he had a glass of orange juice has promised.

A promise is a promise. Soon he goes to the kitchen. He may not so guests was negligible, even though they close up in the barn.

Tirza stands for the sink. Also he thinks that they give in.

'What do you do?' he asks.

'I eat a tomato.' She bends over the sink because of the drool.

'There are so many tasty snacks. There is everything.' It sounds desperate and accusing it at the same time.

'I had meaning in a tomato.' She takes another bite, the juice drips along its chin. Ship's steward gives her a piece of cloth.

'You shirt,' he says, 'it's a bit skewed, I see your bra strap.'

He wants the right, but Tirza says: 'hear so. How do you find him?'

He gives a glass of white wine in, still the Italian gewürztraminer. Each time the Italian gewürztraminer.

'Who?'

'Choukri. What do you think of it?'

The tomato is now eaten.

'Would you also what?' requires a ship's steward. He likes the bottle up. 'This is your favorite wine.'

She shakes her head. 'Later. What did you think of it?'

Ship's steward looks to the ceiling. The must be gewit really necessary. It counts with the naked eye three large brown spots. But the money is. The hedge fund has taken the legs. Everything in Hofmeesters Environment takes the legs. Only in the much-needed invests it now and according to a ship's steward are white ceilings not urgently needed.

'What can i say? I found him rather hesitant. Do not open, not social, difficult to contact. But that is a first impression of course.'

'Of course he is shy, PAP, you would also be shy in such a situation, and identify with it you also shy, that is not exactly an ideal combination.'

'I am not shy.'

He fills his glass with Italian gewürztraminer and drink in one breath of empty, then immediately.

"You're shy,' says them lovingly but emphatically. On this subject they tolerate no contradiction. 'I know nobody who so shy as you.'

'I am discreet, Tirza,' he says. 'Discreet, that is something different than shy, I will not go through to the boyfriend of my daughter. I remain in the background.'

'Pap, you are extremely shy, you know that too. As we were on vacation, than you pushed us the restaurant within to look at how the looked inside. And you stayed outside. You know that not more? You do not remember whether? And when we got to the lower school would put a piece of theater and all parents after proud to the dressing room, plugged you just about behind me. But what did you think of it?'

He claps his hands. Why does he know not. He looks at the label on the bottle.

'DIFFICULT. If you want to know to be honest. Difficult. I could no height from him. It made me think to someone. No, he reminds me of someone thinking.'

'An actor? He seems to be an actor, not? A French actor? You will find it more fun than the few last?'

'De previous?'

'De few last.'

'there were few last? I thought that was not taken seriously.'

Occasionally the music fragments of calling from the living room to him by. He feels he must bins. What sardines There are still many sardines. What is a man without job? Nothing. The buckets of sardines, that is his task tonight.

'It was also not seriously. But they were still there. I have proposed them to your dad, you have seen them all.'

'I have seen boys, here in this House, that is true, now and then I have seen boys, in the last few years, also boys who have continued to sleep, but no favoritism. You said that it had not necessarily mean anything.'

'No, that was also so. It was just for fun, but it was certainly boyfriends.'

He had not understand something. What was there a lot of what he had not understood, and yet he would not want to define itself as naive. Shy nor naive. If something else, but what?

'Tirza,' he says, and seeks his hands to her as toddlers do when they want to be lifted.

Cautious, perhaps. Jörgen ship's steward, a prudent man.

'Tirza,' he repeats, still with arms outstretched, 'Have you got the than not having regard to?'

'What?'

'Your boyfriend. That man. To whom he seems. It is you not noticed?'

She shakes her head. 'a French actor i said, don't you think? An actor?'

He let his arms to lower.

'No, no, no French actor. No actor. No actor in the usual sense of the word. Mohammed Atta. Same face, same eyes, same jaw. Same her.'

She shakes her head again.

'Papa," she says.

And the father, leaning against the worktop, reiterates that two words, Mohammed Atta, as though it were only now starting to penetrate him what he sees, what he thinks, what he feels.

'Doe this well not," she says.

'What?'

'what you are doing.'

'What do I do next?' requires a ship's steward. 'What do I do?'

Tirza goes to him. They discloses him. 'Please,' them in his ear whispers, 'don't. Gun for me that my happiness.'

'But I do not begrudge you your happiness, I do not begrudge you more by luck than anyone else, I wish you all the luck in the world, only: he is your happiness not, he is your accident. Mohammed Atta is your accident.'

Tirza let her father do not disconnect. 'He is my boyfriend. That idea you must get used to it, PAP. Please. That is surely you succeed? Do not you think that you will succeed? That will surely you will succeed?'

Her hair tingling sensation against his forehead, he feels her breath, which vague to peppermint smells. He cannot be allowed to continue, not on its party. There could be any moment someone coming in.

'Listen Tirza, I do not begrudge you the best, most beautiful and sweetest boyfriend of the world, but Mohammed Atta is neither the best nor the most beautiful and certainly not the dearest. He is just about the worst candidate who i can imagine.'

'hold on him to as Mohammed Atta. It is called Choukri and he is my boyfriend.'

Ship's steward is loose from its embrace, He turns around, he looks for the cork screw another bottle of Italian gewürztraminer note to open.

'Everyone sees what else,' he says while he was looking for. 'We are talking about a reality but what do we mean by that, do you know the? You can see in which man your boyfriend. I see in him Atta and I know what Atta wants, I know to which he is, I know what his plans are.' He has the Corkscrew found, finally. He is talking about but by, it makes him not more out against whom. It must be said. It should look like. The truth, the terrible truth.

'I am concerned,' he says, 'I do not want my daughter with Atta treats. Even the most unstable, the most progressive father would say: "My daughter may deal with everyone, a Negro, a junk for my part, a Vietnamese can also still be at, but no terrorist."'

They stores with her hand on the worktop. 'You are going too far,' calls on them. 'It is no fun. Hold on, papa hold.'

He opens the bottle. He has succeeded in producing an open and honest conversation with his daughter. He will treat themselves to a glass of wine to calm down.

'Hold. What should I stop?'

My boyfriend to as a terrorist. That to begin.'

'How should I call it? A freedom fighter? A antiglobalist? An anarchist? An enemy combatant? The victim of a fallacy? An unfortunate?'

'He is interested not for politics. Choukri makes music and I hold of him.'

'What do you love about?'

'What do you know about that, Papa? What do you mean by that? Who do you have in mind?'

He puts his glass down. He rubs his lips dry. 'You,' he says after a while. 'I have to keep yours.'

They look at each other. He hopes that they are now going to mention it, but has nothing. And he understands that it is inevitable that there is nothing more to do, that his life is about, without ever has begun. It is for it began. One thought that it would have to do smile. If you think about it is the insane, and what is a better response to madness than the smile? But the smile does not.

'I thought,' says he eventually itself but, 'in any case I heard that you no longer do so, that the passé, about. Your generation has invented something else.'

'Who told you that?'

'someone here on the party.'

'O. I also still have to meet. I LOVE Choukri.'

Now he smiles. Now if it.

'He used you.'

'I wish him. That is keeping. Mutual use. Respectful use.'

It sounds like something they often said, what they hear others has, what she has read somewhere.

'I have an eye for the people,' says ship's steward. 'I have lived for longer than you, believe me: use is no account of and keep is no use and he is Mohammed Atta. If not the Mohammed Atta of the 11th september, than his successor, His descendant, reincarnation, his rebirth, his alternate…'

They set aside with her hand that he must stop, they interrupts him. 'Dan i of Mohammed Atta. That is the way it is. This is also something you will get used to it.'

He looks at her full understanding and rubs his lips once dry.

She runs to him. 'Papa, please," she says, 'create me this evening is not for the crying.'

He picks up its both hands. 'I do not meet the cry, I try to avert a danger. I would like you never make the crying. Not right now. Never at all.'

'But there is no danger. You think it only.'

'O Yes, it is there. I feel it, I smell the, I see the.'

He let her hands and they purr him about his cheek, his chin.

'bucket continues what sardines for us," she says. I think 'fine. If you have a large variety of the buckets are. This reminds me of the past.'

'I do, Tirza. I shall go deeper into the sardines. In the future. But now… Now I must warn you. Now I need to protect you.'

She shakes her head. 'Not protect, dad. Please, do not protect.'

She goes back to the party. He looks at her after, his glass in the hand. She has changed. It cannot be denied. The wife has the same. But it is not the one on the other day. After her illness is started. During the disease al. All he saw it not. There are so many things which he has not seen. He remembers the books he had purchased for his youngest daughter to cure. But when it became clear that Hofmeesters study of eating disorders and related matters his daughter not helped, was to two psychologists simultaneously Tirza sent. The second wanted to talk with her parents, and as often happens in such cases ship's steward went there alone.

The psychologist was a strict man, but not unfriendly, found a ship's steward. Business, what he had not expected of a responder.

'What are the causes?" wanted to ship's steward know. He was, he had decided not only come here to answer questions, he wanted them. He even had a note book in the inner are required to write stopped what he was going to hear. And that he picked out now.

'There is not one cause, there are always many causes. And the causes are at this moment it is not the most urgent. All is not well with your daughter.'

'But…' ship's steward sat in the armchair and he was looking for words, to hope he sought. He was told that it would turn out all right and that he had not yet heard. 'What we do error? What do I do wrong?'

He had the pencil in the stop.

'It is not about errors. Although within each family, also yours, things for change and improvement.'

Ship's steward looked at his shoes and then to that of the psychologist.

'Where is it doing?' asked ship's steward. 'You have talked to her, what is going on in there to her? What moves its?'

And while he that early shook his head as if he wanted to make it clear that he did not understand what they were doing, that no one could understand that. It was outside of the concept, and hence outside Hofmeesters world.

'Well,' said the man, 'that is not so easy to say, they is control over to get her life to regain control. Her illness is in fact a means. I think that you are to be proposals, control.'

'Control?'

'Yes,' said the psychologist. 'Control'.

'Control' repeated ship's steward, as if it were a word in a foreign language was the interpretation which he did not know, and so it felt also. He did not know more what 'control' meant. He wrote the word in his note book, without that he would understand why, and he underlined the a few times.

'And what should I do? What can i do?' he asked when he was finished with writing and stress.

'to support her.'

I 'al.'

'Maybe not enough.'

Not enough, that was a possibility that ship's steward had not yet considered. He had previously thought: too much, but it was so: not enough.

So they were also silently opposite each other and then said the psychologist: 'Oh, are you, Mr ship's steward, eetziektes will almost only for the white middle class, nowhere else. It is typically a disease of the white middle class.'

It sounded like that everything had to declare as If now everything should be clear.

And while the psychologist got up early, ship's steward will wonder what the man had to say.

'It may be,' he asked, while his note book in his pocket and his jacket attracted the stopped, 'date the there has something to do with that they high-high gifted?'

'Who says? Who says that she is that?'

Ship's steward shook with his hands and arms. The question stricken him. 'Everyone,' said he eventually, 'Everyone has always said, everyone says it.'

'Mmm,' said the psychologist. 'Mmm.'

And it was the consult ended.

A strange man, found a ship's steward. Not unfriendly, at most evasive. When he made his bike lock open and thought about the call, he got the idea that he was that the illness of the white middle class: he, Jörgen ship's steward, in Private person.

And later that day he saw themselves reflected in a shop window and then it was him. This was the disease of the white middle class, this was Jörgen ship's steward.

This realisation was new and also overwhelming, but could not ensure that a ship's steward did something else than he had made the weeks before. He bought more books about eating disorders and that he studied in the evening, with the pencil in the stop, and the sharpener within easy reach. If there was a solution which would be found in books. Where else?

How much he also aankruiste aanstreepte and and from his main taught, Tirza emaciated, its weight dropped, approached a critical limit. There was talk of forced feeding. Hospitalisation, nursing.

And when the wife on an evening just before midnight came home, was a ship's steward at the dining table, surrounded by books all went on the same subject. He looked to her, the mother of Tirza, and he said: 'We are working to make our child death.' Without her coat to do so she went to the dining table. They took a cigarette. When she was standing on and gave itself a drink in.

Tirza's disease not only Tirza destroyed itself, with her illness began the destruction of the family ship's steward, and the more the members of the family should oppose it, the faster it seemed to continue.

The drink put them on the table. She went down again. Also her hat had not disposed of. A Wooly Hat.

'We?' asked the wife. 'We? You say that? We? No, not us. You.' She took her index finger to ship's steward.

He putted the book close that he was reading.

'I? And why I get when I ask you? I do something. What do you think? What have you done?'

The wife inhaleerde.

'You,' she said, 'You have that child poisoned. At no time did you have the left alone. No time had the rest. If it were not to celloles, then it should be called to swimming lessons, if it were not to swimming lesson, than it had to be read out from i know what book from the Russian Library, had to be read out the not, then it should be in order to buy wine. You have destroyed her as you tried Ibi break, but Ibi was too strong for you, thank goodness. Tirza not. For Tirza is everything you say where, Tirza idolized you and you let you know that only too happy to close, you will find the wonderful to finally for someone a false goddess.'

Ship's steward picked up a pencil and began to grinding. 'What You Say,' he said when he was done, 'is as far from the truth. It is such a nasty lie. It is oergemeen. I am concerned about her, because you have neglected her. Someone had to its concern, someone had to its collection of swimming lessons. Someone had to bring her to celloles.'

'But nobody had to force her to swim, forced to do this, force to do that, no one had to say all day how high-high gifted them is. How do you think you would react if you want the whole day would hear? You would therefore not be a little crazy? Would you then also not turning? You have destroyed that child, you and anyone else. You have of her to try to make a colleague, and a friend and also your wife, yes, also your wife. Everything you do in the real world could not find have you tried to get her, and the only thing you can accuse me is that I have to happen, that I have done nothing in any case not enough I have made to you, but I also have a life, I am also but a man, I also have the right to a little bit of luck. Yes, I am also only human, Jörgen.'

He mass by his sleep and when he said: 'If you once said: "I am also but a man", if I need to hear one more time that you also but are a human, than stall out i you.'

'Doing it,' she said, 'stall me.'

He stayed on his sleep rubbing and finally he said, quieter than therefor: 'I do not have the whole day said how gifted she is, I have tried to stimulate her. That is not a crime. Yes, I have of its account, i love her, I may have a special relationship with her than with Ibi, but also that it is not a crime. And I do nothing. Because what I get back is enough, more than enough. How they will come to me laughs, what they tell me her company. If I have done something wrong, I do not know what.'

He broke one of his pencils by middle, it took him a lot of effort and that effort led him from his anger.

'Is that everything you can say?'he asked. 'I have made its broken? Is that everything about our marriage, who is the fault of Tirza's disease?'

They doofde its cigarette. 'Yes,' she said it is what it is about. I am sorry, you are never a father for Tirza. A friend perhaps, a lover, but a father is no lover, Jörgen.'

He stood up. 'What an assumption you?' he asked. 'You are too cold cold and touching her does not mean that someone touching her a criminal. People have need heat. Then they live. Thereof they live. The heat is not a criminal offense. The lack of it is the crime.'

They stood up.

'Where are you going next?' he asked.

'To my studio.'

'What are you going to do there?'

'Slapen.'

'Dear is no bed.'

'There is a bank.'

He came to follow her. In the vestibule he pressed his wife against the wall and nip with one hand its throat close.

'How dare you this against me to say?' he siste. 'How dare you to say what you have said? How dare you? You who do not know about what it means to have a mother, you which no parent evening, you who cares about anything, how dare to say that I am no father? You do not need to keep me, that you do not do I know this for a long time, but you can at least respect, appreciation for what i do here.'

She ran red to, but he did not loose. They miniseries him, but he was not.

It was only when his hand pain began to do, showed her he.

He remained in the vestibule and they ran to the kitchen. He heard her cough, he heard how they ran the tap. Even more coughing, he heard her call.

After five minutes they came from the kitchen.

'What have you done?' he asked.

'I have called the police.'

When she went out the door.

First he remained in the vestibule, then he went back to the living room, he explained the books about Tirza's disease in three equal stacks on the dining table and emptying the ashtray.

He played a time with the two halves of the broken pencil. He neuriede.

When the quarter for had become a, he went to the top to sleep. Gently he opened the door of Tirza's room, he wanted to know if they slept. She had her eyes open.

Ship's steward went on her bed. He could not look to her. If it up to him by realized what he saw there, he had the tendency to hang himself. He was furious because he could not deny the feeling to have failed, and he hated the wife, he hated everyone he recalled that fail.

He took Tirza's hand and looked at the furniture in the room. As he continued to sit. Until he said: 'it cannot go on this way, Tirza. This must stop.'

'I know,' she said, and it appeared that now also its voice was affected by her illness. 'I know, papa, but I can no longer stop. It is too late.'

He focused on her desk chair, on the dictionaries on the desk, an open skipped geography book. He focused.

'I have done something which I could not do better?' he asked when looking at the geography book. 'There are things that disturb you? Here in the house. To me or mama. Is there anything we have done wrong, what I have done wrong?'

He attempted to concentrate on something else. The curtains. Red curtains. Tirza had they themselves were selected.

'You know,' he said, and he talked now almost as soft as they, 'Well, you know, we, Tirza mum and i and Ibi, also of love you if you are not very talented, it makes no difference what you are. You do not have to be the best, you do not need to have, we love you as you are.'

He wanted no answer. But there was a reply. Harder than its previous answer. Loud and clear.

'No, papa,' she said, "If I am not the best, stop anyone of me.'

Still he silently sit also remained a few seconds. Humiliated by the carnival mirror of his ambition, are well-intentioned and really reasonable ambition. Reports by his child for whom he had wanted to sacrifice everything, because he was guilty. In which they can also stood out, they would never do enough to stand out for its debt to die.

When did he not more in the room. He fled.

He went back down and stayed for the dining table. With his finger he knocked gently on the table. A minute and then still a minute, a quarter of an hour he was so half an hour. To the voordeurbel went and he did. It was almost two hours. Perhaps it was the wife who had forgotten her keys? Tirza Ibi was home, also. It could only be the wife.

For the door there were two agents. Boys still, really.

'Meneer ship's steward?' asked the a, so to hear a foreigners.

'Yes,' said ship's steward, 'dat i.'

'We are called. Are there problems?'

'who called you?'

'your wife,' said the other agent. 'You will have a woman? Here you live with wife and children?'

'O THAT,' said ship's steward. 'A ruzietje. It is all over. Sorry for the inconvenience.'

He wanted to close the door again. He had no need for company.

But the immigrant agent early: 'Meyes we also arrive?'

'As you want.'

He had them within, showed the gentlemen the living room. They looked around. The foreigners picked up a book that was on the table and sheet was slowly.

'Your wife wanted to make a declaration,' he said with the book in his hand. 'Is they are at home?'

Ship's steward shook his head.

'No, not at home. You know how women are. Especially Scorpio-women.'

'Is a Scorpio?' asked the agent that no foreigners was.

'Yes, yes,' said ship's steward. He had no idea why he had said. He realized that he sometimes did not know what he was going to say and that there than things which he does not always poked up equally pleasant found. Scorpio-women, how he came out? She was a Scorpio, but who was that what? He had to concentrate. He had to deal is better control control.

'14 November,' said ship's steward. 'Schor peony. It is to her studio. She paints. Men in particular. Sometimes also fruit. Apples, a pineapple, a solitary strawberry on a sign. But mainly men. A single self-portrait, go only men.'

'They said by the telephone,' said the foreigners, 'dat you tried to its edges, maltreatment, since she had over. Can that is true? Have you and your wife have been attacked? Do you have her beaten? Of course you are not obliged to answer, if you do not want to have, if you think: there are problems of. You can make use of your right to silence.'

Ship's steward thought after. He could not more so well remember where it was all about the conversation with his wife.

'We play,' said he finally, 'my wife and i, we play, if two young dogs. We know our own force is not. The game gets out of hand. Please call the police. They can not against hair loss. But it belongs to its game. She is an artist. What I said, she paints. Apples, oranges, Forrest Fruit, but also men. Unemployed, I suspect. The long-term unemployed. They get nothing for a cup of tea, but they have to pull out all their clothes. Would you pull out all your clothes for a cup of coffee?'

The foreigners took the book back to the stack. 'DUS mugging, is doing you not? I ask again very clear: you will illuminate your wife was not?'

'No,' said ship's steward. 'No, of course not. As I say, it is a game. I am the assailant, they are the victims, our house is the park. I am…' he rejected on his mouth, his forehead, his eyes.

'Yes,' said the agent that no foreigners, 'Yes, continue? You Are?'

'I am the beast. And it is it is also a… beast. We are two beasts. That is our game. Two beasts. Two savage and vereenzaamde beasts. Our living room is the steppe, our breath the polar wind. But sometimes the out of hand. Please call the police. It belongs to the game. First stop the game has lost. It is always the first. We play… We play, because…"

Ship's steward recognized itself not more. He therefore had about social skills such as in the case of emergency and man came. Curious social skills, that but, you could only be described as: social skills. He talked.

The Agents looked at him scared, but also a tad speechless.

They said that there is nothing more, they looked around and maybe they saw in the living room of the family ship's steward finally also the steppe, they felt the polar wind.

'Sbeast,' said the foreigners, 'and keep it a little under control.'

Ship's steward had them off. He thanked for the door closed before the effort, but he did not itself on the effort he had and the gentlemen seemed not to know that.

In the living room he pushed the curtain aside a few centimeters and looked at how they wegreden. Then he did the lights off.

Above he sought in his wardrobe in the inside pockets of his jackets to the notebook that he specifically for the meeting with the psychologist had purchased. He has finally found it. There was not much in it. One word: control. Underlined twice.

He looked at his own handwriting, to the word itself, as if in that word in the two underscores, the declaration was for everything. For his life, the disease of his daughter, the disease of the white middle class, the disease that he was and that he no longer wanted. He usually dressed out and went to bed. But he could not sleep. He neuriede, he opened the balcony doors and closed them again. He waited, as is so often the case, to the wife would come home.

The next morning he drove Tirza to a clinic in Germany, specialised in eating disorders. He asked whether they wanted not or they like it, or they thought it would help after all that he had already tried, after all the books he had read, he drove her just get there. Without stopping. And without talking. She sat on the rear bench seat, or rather, it was on the rear bench seat.

He had been given the address of the secretary at the publisher.

Thus supplied ship's steward his daughter at the clinic, in the afternoon, if a parcel. And he himself took up residence in a nearby guest house.

In the evening he phoned to house, but his wife was not there. He was on the phone. Ibi 'I have Tirza to a clinic in Germany,' he said. 'Please tell mom.'

In the village where the clinic was located was one restaurant. There was a ship's steward strain guest. We knew his type of there. Parents who had their child delivered to the clinic, parents who are often at the end of their forces were more death than live. Silent, also against each other when they came with the assistance of another person.

After a few nights he came into contact with a sociologist from Frankfurt, which have just been daughter, three years older than Tirza, at the clinic had delivered.

A few evenings talked with the ship's steward sociologist about sociology, Adorno, Expressionism, the middle mountains, Tolstoy, the small boat of the sociologist with which he in the summer on the Baltic Sea enter again and again the small boat of the sociologist, because sailing was so wonderful. Everything was good enough if conversation subject, except the clinic, the child, the disease. But the fifth evening said the sociologist: 'You will find the well as I do not here this evening you sit at a table bowl?'

'Of course,' said ship's steward, 'no problem.'

He had obviously said something they did not like what the sociologist, perhaps too strong a shaded, but in the eyes of the sociologist unsubstantiated opinion about an expressionist closer. Or was his enthusiasm about the Baltic Sea is not large enough? Ship's steward did not know what had caused the separation, but it made him pain, this small, insignificant incident. The jar.

Also he had contact, as he had found someone, had for a long time the lasted not. And from the evening that the sociologist had said that he was not part of a ship's steward to table wild come together they knikten only, from a distance. Very polite, almost invisible knikjes for third parties were the. Failed fathers who each other on distance loved.

Weeks perished and what no one had expected, ship's steward altogether, happened. Tirza began to heal, slow, very slowly, with the occasional drop, but nevertheless, it was not to deny, they Genas.

All that time stayed in the guest house. ship's steward On his work they understood the. And if not, than they had bad luck. Two times per day he visited his daughter in the clinic. In the morning and at the end of the afternoon. Never long. Twenty minutes, a quarter of an hour. Gradually he dared to see her again.

And between by, whether it is raining or not, snowed or not, he walked through the hills. Now and then he came the sociologist against on a hiking trail and then they very briefly to the knikten together without stand still. These are the moments when I felt a calm and light ship's steward grief.

The clearer every day: Tirza did what her father is not willing or able to do, and he knew he felt. During the walks he thought sometimes I must ask: its how you do that, cure. Where you start and how do you know you are done. But he wanted her not to bother with difficult questions.

And after three months to have spent in the lovely, almost innocent landscape of South Germany, Tirza was acquitted. They should go home.

The father took her in reception and he had to think on its birth, when he her on a cold and rainy day in the hospital in Amsterdam of a sister in his hands had been pressed. A package. A bundle. A worm wrapped in blankets. And he had its cooperation with the wife in a taxi ride home. Was he been proud, but also anxious.

He had the idea that they are now as tar and was sensitive as an infant.

In the car back to Amsterdam she said not much. Only at the border she asked: 'denk you think I should do this year?'

'I don't,' he said. 'I think you all can catch up. Otherwise it is also not a disaster.'

He was no father for his youngest daughter in, that was what his wife had said. A friend, a colleague, a lover, a platonic lover perhaps, but nevertheless a lover, only no father.

Now he had to be father. In the world of the fathers he was a convert, and like all converts: a fanatic.

In the evening he climbed not more the stairs to read Tirza, he brought her more to celloles, it urged its not more to enter swimming competitions, he took away.

Sometimes he was just might for the bookcase, but now he was no longer in a position to read out her had Russian Library her charm for him to be lost. There was no one to communicate his enthusiasm and he understood gradually itself not what he ever to those books had been found.

It seemed like there a cheese cloth as it was implemented. As if the content had become dusty. As if the equal of Tolstoy now really up to him by urged. Eitle Kurzweil müßiger man. No longer a comical and at the same time also tragic conception of a writer on age, a mistake but a inescapable therefore truth.

Still less he went for his books box, there is a book in vain did he already fully never again. Read only he did for his work.

This was a ship's steward has become a man who was afraid to become what he never wanted to be more: the lover of the woman who was his daughter.

He wanted to paternity to properly fulfill, no parent evening he forged on, no call or letter of school he left unanswered, and yet he took measures is not all that much. If Tirza visit had he by the housing demolition, sometimes he went to the barn for its not to interfere in its privacy. He asked minimal where they had been and where they are going, he operated and cared for her, he loved her in silence and seclusion.

Only now can he that silence cannot be maintained. Even the most depraved father would say: 'No, baby, Mohammed Atta, it seems to me that this is not a good idea.'

Also he thinks that the bliksemt, he expects to hear a surprise. But he sees by the kitchen window that the lightning the light in the barn. To turn on and off the. On and Off. Than he recalls where he was doing. Ester a glass of orange juice.

He looks around because he no longer sure whether he already had a glass for pouring it. He can not find.

Ship's steward fill in a wine glass with orange juice. The light in the barn remains on and off. Would that child cause a short circuit? It is crazy?

With ferme steps, the glass in his hand, ship's steward to the barn.

He presses the door impetuously open. It is they, on the reverse bucket, the string of the light in her hand.

"Do you want to stop doing?' says ship's steward measured.

'Doe i something wrong?'

She looks at him sincerely surprised. As if they were never has understood that adults do not play with the light, like they are at home nothing else.

'Yes, you do something error. You play with the light and it has been a while. So we get short circuit.'

'I was in thoughts, sorry.'

She picks up the glass of orange juice from him. They point out, as if there sipping spirits is in.

'This is from a pak with pulp?'

'What?'

She takes another SIP.

'I believe the under a pak, it is the last remnants. Can that is true?'

'It is orange juice, if you do not like you leave the. Listening…' he does his arms akimbo. He thinks he radiates as authority. 'I do not know what you are used to at home, but as far as I am concerned, you now have long enough in the barn. Or you can go to home, whether you're in the party.'

They sigh. She looks tired. 'who are all on the feast?'

Strictly looks down on the ship's steward girl that in his barn on a bucket to sit down and have not more.

'Your classmates, your teachers, my daughters and my wife, Mohammed Atta. Go to see for yourself. Without you not so.'

That tired look.

'Who is Mohammed Atta again?'

Even of the history that they have experienced they know nothing. They have slept through it. The elderly who have not heard the call. Young eldery, that they are. To recoup before the start puberty.

'a rapper.'

'O Yes.'

'He rapte like a madman,', 'and further ship's steward he raps still. I escorteer Ester, you can now go to the living room and then you can take the call with your peers continue.'

It is found on the bucket. Slowly, tormenting dialog they slowly.

'I think nobody nice.'

'Dan you will learn the people but to find nice.' Now that he is in the role of educator shot, he is no longer there. In fact he thinks that role delicious. The character of the educator gives a ship's steward grip. The mild irony of the didactic tone is his stool, are reading glasses, hearing device.

'They find me also not nice.'

'Dat alright. Believe me. There are people who you are and there are people who you less.'

'They will find you nice, Mr ship's steward?'

She looks at him. Mischievous, challenging.

'Who?'

'De people?'

'If they know me well, yes. Usually,' says ship's steward as realistic as possible. It is a fact. The people find him. A certain low profile is perhaps together with nice found. We look at the cross by him. If someone is really too find unkind much trouble.

Her eyes start to unexpectedly sparkle. 'Is there cake in their mouths?' she asks.

'Where?'

'On the feast? Is there cake in their mouths? Have you also organized?'

They will open its mouth and she acts as if it is in their mouths.

'bite," she says, 'bite and even a bite.' than she starts to laugh uncontrollable crying sets in.

'There is no cake in their mouths,' says ship's steward. 'Sgames you have to organise itself but,' but it is barely above her laughter.

They will laugh. Hard and unflappable. Between by nibbles them in the air. Frightening, ship's steward this spectacle. Unpleasant. He picks up her at the shoulders, shakes her back and forth. 'hold on,' he calls, 'keep on with that hysterical fuss.'

Only after a minute shaking called up to him by that Ester not more laugh, but is trying to cry. Maybe it is a time to cry. He has not understand something.

He looks for his handkerchief. Better a dirty than none at all.

So lovingly possible press his damp handkerchief in her hand.

'quiet but,' he says, 'quiet but it is all so very not.'

'What?'

The wooed you is delayed. They also no longer nibbles an imaginary piece of cake in the air.

'Whatever it is that your troubles. It is not as bad. Well, you have failed, you eat no fish, nobody you will find nice, but about forty years, if you about my age you think, I made me pressure to do nothing. The worst was still to come.'

They rubs on her face with its dirty handkerchief, than she gives it back.

'Why do you like you know?'

'Not everything.' He folds the handkerchief. 'I do not know everything. Soothe now but. Do but also very quiet. It is not so bad. It is…'

He makes his meaning not, he knows he is once again not what he wanted to say.

She has red eyes of the cry, the takes pride of its not. Something to her was already a tragedy when they stood on the sidewalk, without gift. Even without red eyes she gleamed already from what he could not express, but what is now finally appointed: people find its not nice and they in turn can find the people not nice.

She picks him in the sleeves of his required. 'Meneer ship's steward," she says, "Is it true what you said?'

'What?'

'Dat you love have abolished?'

He needs to smile at the reminder. Almost a tender reminder is the.

'Ah,' he says, 'When? I was still a half-child. I had to what. God was already dead. The progress is also. The civilization. Democracy also. As a young man you have a project. A plan. A faith. I said the love death on my fifteenth, or my sixteenth. It was anyway summer. And I purchased her.'

He smiles again, even if it is only because he is not so long to itself has thought as fifteen years that it is almost as if he thinks to another.

'and how it was when you have watched her?' She still are sleeves.

He thinks after.

'autonomous,' he says, 'independently. The truth, I fear.'

'De truth?'

'I fear,' says ship's steward, 'I fear, I said. I fear.' that is that calm, bright sadness that he reminds of his walks through the middle mountains when his daughter in the clinic was to cure. So calmly, so light, and yet sadness. Strange. The had nothing hysterical, nothing of what you often see on TV, women who are the hairs pluck, men who powerless their fists balls.

"And when?'

'What do you mean, and when?' he wants to beveled, but he doesn't dare.

"And when, then? What have you even more abolished?'

'I have nothing abolished. What I told you before. It was a mistake. After God and the progress should love turn, but i have failed. I am my own learning infidelity.'

He should actually laugh at these words. He can hardly talk about himself without laughing. He does not know how to do it yourself, explain that to the other, comment on your deeds. A man is what he does and ship's steward is mainly what he has not done so. Its silence is an act. His career, the authors who he has left unattended.

"Now,' he says, 'Now I am old, and I must return to the party. It is all a long time ago and not really worthy of debate. I am also the most forgotten. Large words were it all. I remember that. To forget how small you are. I must sardines buckets.'

They pull harder to his sleeves.

'And if you had the same handing?' she asks.

'Dan,' he says — and now he is the one who must be sighing, because it does not make sense in this conversation, not now, not tonight, he is too much, he has meaning in Italian gewürztraminer — 'dan it was a worthless equal, an equal which nobody had something, nobody has something, you can not old can be an equal that better could not have existed. I must back. Let me loose.'

'I have its also abolished," she says, but still keeps them it. She pulls his sleeves.

'Dat does not matter.' He speaks so airy possible. 'Dat people will continue to do so. It is a club, a club of people who have abolished its, sometimes they recognize each other, sometimes not. I must…'

Ship's steward makes its meaning. He picks up her face carefully with two hands. Moist hands, the heat and the voltage. Of Gewürztraminer is a ship's steward extra sweating. He expresses his foot on its, he kisses. Long has he has not really nice gezoend, very long.

It does you good. It is, how weird that may sound a liberation. This kiss. Maybe the wife equal. The beast is not dead. The had only had blocked, thoroughly to Hofmeesters leash seized. Where was the all those years? In the cellar has the Netherlands?

While its remains kissing, it picks up his head and he feels how her tongue still moving faster, yes, they kisses him, they Kisses back and he finally experiencing something what suspiciously to happiness, he seems to think only: help. Screaming for help omklemt internally he the face of klasgenote Tirza's.

But he kisses by. He no longer knows what he is doing. His hands gliding under its blouse, find her bra, his hands with which he so faithful the weed has become weeding, too heavy branches has cut down, the grass has seeded and mowed. It does not. They let everything.

He pushes her bra up, with the fingers of his right hand and rubs her nipples, something to rough maybe, but what here is still rough? This is what you have to keep after the abolition of the love of a fiasco. An autonomous and sloppy suppressed require that is between all the conventions and agreements wobbles if a hose.

He pushes his hand in her jeans, he pinches. Then he with difficulty, and actually rather clumsy, the knot of her jeans and then also the knots of her briefs.

His hands from her. 'Ester,' he says. A word which suddenly a body stuck and what for body, a word of meat. 'Ester,' he repeats.

He is a man without memory without awareness of place and time. A man who is only what should have been no longer, the rebellious residues of stubborn desire. Nothing of what he was, of what he thought, still exists. What lives in him is a shabby remnants of desire that ever came something must be deficit

He she crouches down next and in one rebellious jolting it draws its nail and pants down. Fanatic, that is the word, rapt.

Forget the sardines, the sushi, sashimi, even Mohammed Atta. The Third World War, the hedge fund, they do not have a chance.

He stands on puts his left hand on her shoulder. With his right hand he bevoelt her sex part. Rough, again, but surely somewhere also tenderly, the echo of tenderness. And he thinks that it is wet, they is damp. He feels that he still influential, he knows: I disconnect its humid, I wind her. She wants to me. They asked me to be debited, but too early, the world has depreciated me too early. I may have lost everything, but Jörgen ship's steward still exists.

And while he thinks he is still exists, while it up to him that he is alive and he is the content of that life seems to see, this is the life, this, nothing than this, this overcome despair, vingert he her. Not very good, not exactly, not gently, about basket by his own desire but then again not very bad for a man of his age, late in the evening, standing in the barn.

After some searching and gropings he has found her clit and now he is not loose.

It is as a type of error in a manuscript, he does not fall off until he has found him. As he has sought, as Esters clitoris a forgotten quote, a Missing comma. With its old has fingers he dug in her as in his garden.

'You will find me, Mr ship's steward?' she asks.

'Very nice,' he says. He has respiratory distress. He is talking about as someone who has run too hard. 'Very nice, more than Nice, much more than just nice, are not nice. Sweet, sweet, awful sweet.'

And he rubs her clit like he does more often, weekly. As if it were his work. As well as working in the garden. Rakes, seeding, caps. Manual labor he never shunned has not at all after the disease of his youngest daughter. It leads him of that calm, bright sadness that actually never has disappeared after that walks through the middle mountains. He thought that life was, light and calm sadness. But no.

And then he bending, He kneels, with its good trousers, in the dirty barn, and he begins the klasgenote Tirza kutje of's to lick. He licked and licked, and remember more of the party, the sushi and sashimi, the time, the thirsty openings, the hungry stomachs of the partyers. For the party he always seems to have forgotten now. Only for him is still Ester.

So you can forget: kneeling in the barn, as licking as a dog, your hands on the buttocks of a klasgenootje of your youngest daughter. And is not forgotten heal? He is now finally on the cure not? It is not turn?

He expresses his face more firmly against her sex part, he expresses his nose against the clitoris of Tirza's klasgenootje which no one nice is found, it rubs against it with its old, molded nose, and he smells, he smells, he pants. If someone is too long has been submerged in water, and which is now finally comes and to breath nibbles. The odour, which smell only, that is the life, the more he that smell, the more he sprinkles it, the more he knows that he lives. Only those scent consists, the rest: reflections on the death, detours, leads.

'You will find me nice?' requires Ester.

He lifts a. Out of breath, saliva around his mouth, on his chin, a part of his cheeks, his nose. The whole of his face is wet with his saliva and esters moisture. He looks like a barbarian.

'Mewe,' says ship's steward, 'more than Nice. Much more than beautiful.'

He makes his pants open, awkward and with trembling hands because of the haste and excitement. But he still exists. Anything other than that he does not feel, does he not, he takes not true, the sensation of its own existence which all predominant, which through anything calls, which no convention quite late. The own desire that nothing and no one protects, who finally claims its place in this God abandoned universe. And then, while his trousers and pants down Kate rolls up, he has this ridiculous idea: my desire, it is God. It is the only living God.

He turns to, they vacillate Ester, is fixed to the handle of the mower and to a wooden board. 'How nice you will find me on a scale of 1 to 10?' she asks and he rubs his sex on its pubic hair, looking for its opening. He can not find the opening.

'How nice you will find me, Mr ship's steward, how nice you will find me well?'

They whines. They keep harping. Its Ester without h. It proposes to ask him at the time that he has lost all his voice. No more words, finally no more words. Deeds.

They should help him. His act requires assistance.

She pushes him to go to inside.

She helps him because she wants him, he thinks.

When he fanatically her jeans down, so fucking he also. Snuivend, gasping for breath. And everywhere it smell her. The sharp smell of her sex part, and vague also the smell of relief. Fresh relief.

He will hear someone in the distance 'papa'. And once again: 'Papa, where are you?'

In a second, in a fraction of a second, is his memory back. At least a part of it.

'Papa,' he will hear again.

He let Ester, abrupt, alarmed. Something called up to him by. Where he is, who he is, what he is trying to do so.

He staggered the barn from, the trouser still on his knees, it for Tirza.

She was already closer than he had thought.

'Papa," she says, 'Lady Field Camp will go home.'

Tirza looks at him, her gaze slides on his body. Its eyes are as two instruments of torture. He feels them.

Still breathes it heavy. He sees now also lady Field Camp. It is they, and she looks at him, initially still smiling, now more serious.

The teacher and the father. Motionless. Two people in a garden, on a warm evening in the early summer. Equally powerless to bring a word. In the living room, the final exam party by

Then recovers lady Veldkamp itself. They will be the person who order in the class maintains, even if unforeseen things happen. It continues to maintain the order. Even here. Even now.

'Meneer ship's steward," she says, 'When I arrived here was you half-naked and you are now the weather.'

He bending, it lifts his pants, frommelt to the belt, he can not find the holes. Where are the holes? What has he thought? Where he was doing? Where are the holes of the belt?

He is panting and everywhere it smell Ester without h, everything smells like her, the whole garden, even lady Veldkamp smells of Ester without h.

But also a ship's steward recovers itself. Now cross hidden from view, it goes back to whom he should be maintained, the host, the man of the sushi and sashimi, Tirza's father.

'I will you outlets,' he says.

'Does you no trouble,' explains lady Veldkamp, 'You seem to have enough pressure here in the garden.'

Then run away. Faux Fur Hemline. In this way they.

She looks even once and to her look he sees now that they do not at all like it. She looks as to a horrible accident. He wonders where it has remained Tirza.

'Tirza,' he calls.

She is the sanding went inside. He hears her talk with Ester, but he cannot mean what they say. And still he seeks the holes of his belt.

He gets closer. He is uncertain. Wank Elend actually. Dizzy the pleasures that he narrowly missed is Always very little of it.

This is Ester. Still with the jeans on her ankles. They state that if a statue. And he would be inclined to swear that they triumphantly looks. Maybe even happy. He would dare to swear.

'Papa, what has been done?'

He shakes his head. 'nothing', 'nothing he panting slightly.' He pulls Tirza the barn from, takes her note to the back of the garden, to the dark area where no one can see them, he thinks.

'Tirza,' he says, 'my Tirza.'

'What happened?' she insists. She is not satisfied with the word 'nothing', while that it so summarizing.

He takes her face between his hands as he previously held face has been esters. She pushes his hands away.

'What happened?' calls on them.

'SSTT,' he says, 'sstt.'

But they will not allay. Tirza do not silence. Not more.

'I know what happened. I know exactly what has happened. I am not fond. Do you think I'm crazy? She is sitting in my class, dad. Ester is to me in the class.'

They reply on behalf of him, she speaks on behalf of the Father who with the best will in the world do not speak can.

He wants its grasp in order to soothe her but she pushes him away.

They cries.

At the very least it began Ester if laugh, as nibble to an imaginary cake.

He thinks it is terrible as Tirza cries. And now even more horrendous than otherwise, this evening much more horrendous.

'How could you do this?' calls on them. 'To my party, how could you do this?' and then repeat them remains: 'Why on my party? Why on my party? Why on my party?'

As if it would have been better if he had let Ester back, on a thursday night if the worker from Ghana the housing side had made. As if the than all had nothing. As if it was fine.

He picks up, despite its opposition, its main, he retains it. He must now say something he must now remember something.

'They gave me seduce,' says he slowly.

'They has seduced you? She is as old as I am, no, they are under. They can not you have seduced. So someone can not seduce you papa.'

They yanks are loose. Tirza rubs her eyes. That now as red as those of Ester just now.

'And even if that were the case, what an excuse? What is that for a lame excuse? Do you know what you are? You are a dirty man, dad. A dirty man.'

They cries now harder.

He should be against a tree sit back, he is afraid that he falls.

'They gave me seduce,' he says again and he remembers how wet she was, was so wet they, as humid. She was soaking wet. He wants to tell Tirza, he wants to say: 'Tirza, my Tirza, Ester was soaking wet', but he is in, he says: 'They was…' He let the tree. A few steps in the direction of his youngest daughter.

'Touch Me,' growling them. 'Go away.'

He remains in place. A glass gewürztraminer from Italy would do well.

'I do not touch you, Tirza,' he says. 'I am… I am… I am also a man. I can do nothing, I am also a man.'

She keeps her hands for her eyes.

'You're no man," she says, 'You're dirty. That is what you are. How can I still looking at you? How can I touch you? How can I find your thinking when dad?', and they shout: 'go away. Go away!'

Why should Tirza well as rude and unkind do? As he knows really only Ibi.

He seeks his hands to her. 'But that is what are men,' he says, 'Tirza soft, that is what they are. Nothing I can do. I know there is no one that is not dirty. The man is his own filth.'

'Go away,', 'Go them whispers Road, dad. Please dont go away. I am sure it is a good one, it is good. But you must now leave.'

Indecisively, he remains a couple of centimeters away from his youngest daughter. He would like to throw at its feet.

'come with me to the celebration,' he says soft. 'We will go together to within, Tirza. It is so nice, you final exam celebration. I return to sardines buckets as though nothing has happened. There is also nothing happened.'

'Go away,' she whispers.

Is he for her, then he walks slowly in the direction of the barn. The Bright, calm sadness that thanks to Ester minutes changed in infectious happiness, is now carried out in something slightly nor calm, but as a disease slaughtered comes on, impetuous as a hurricane, deadly as an earthquake.

In the barn is illuminated light.

Ester still has its trousers on the ankles. But she is sitting. On the bucket.

Ship's steward state in the opening of the door. He looks at the girl on the bucket.

'Are you?' he asks.

'I am at the lakes," she says.

Then he sees the bucket not more vice versa. He also now smells of urine. He smells everything again.

Soon he runs through. As soon as he can, without overturning. That he wants to provisionally not shed more in.

In the kitchen serves himself a glass of wine. Also he thinks of nothing, there is only the taste of the wine.

Than he retrieves, more out of habit than out of necessity, the last scale with sashimi from the refrigerator.

When he enters the room he sees the wife climbed on the dining table is. The lights are still more darkened. The children are around her. It is being playbacken. Dolly Parton. Of course, who else. Its heroine.

One of the breasts of the wife is visible.

While they playbacken is they are doing to get rid of the clothes they her eldest daughter has borrowed.

In a corner of the room condition Mohammed Atta. Ibi has now taken charge about him.

'Jolene Jolene Jolene,,' sings Dolly Parton and ship's steward can not stand to singing.

He wants no Dolly Parton, no sentimental outbursts of the mother of his children.

'Come on,' he calls. But they do not hear. Ever hear him. The music is too hard. The light is too scarce and the wife playbackt if her future depends on it. 'But I can easily understand how you could easily take my husband, but you don't know what he means to me, Jolene.'

They think it is wonderful, the children. Hofmeesters wife on the table. They find the nicer and nicer than its sushi, sashimi and sardines. They encourage her to. They scream its admitted that they should be louder dancing, that they must devote more, and she has quite a lot has been pulled out. Too much. Ibi's nail skirt.

Something they have in their parents have not yet seen. Hofmeesters wife is the attraction of the evening.

With the scale in his hand he goes to the bedroom. It converts the sashimi on the ground, takes place on the bed. It supports his face with his hand and weather it smell Ester. Very good. It smells like its as if they were present.

As Tolstoy on the end of his life rejected the art, ship's steward the sexuality for: 'Eitle Kurzweil müßiger men'.

The Bright, calm sadness smoke to the conifer forests of South Germany.

Only the shame is now still light and calm.

But this here for which a ship's steward no words, this hurt if there is already a word for must be, than but pain, this smell of the genus part of klasgenote Tirza's.

No, smells like Tirza itself.

5

Ship's steward remains motionless on the bed in the bedroom. A prisoner in his own home. He hears the music, he hears the front door open and close, the voice of Tirza, votes of people he can not home. Guests must be let. The party runs slowly on his end.

Many he would make up a glass gewürztraminer be able to drink, but he doesn't dare downwards. He must remain here until everyone has moved.

He hears gestommel above it. The tenant is also still awake.

There are countless thoughts, ideas, but they can not organize a ship's steward. The only thing it sure is that there is no hope. He is lost Tirza, he has its discredited. If a player cannot let he has the best, the most beautiful what he had deployed, and why? What he expected? It doubled that could be?

He has the feeling that he is already days in his bed. Already have a half-life, seated on a bed for the wardrobe. A man who made his bedroom not dare.

Then open the door. He focuses his head on, he expects the wife. It is Tirza. His Tirza. The Solar Queen. They remain stationary. She looks to her father.

'What do you do?" asks them.

He observes his daughter, he is studying her, to the extent that it is still capable of. 'I wait,' he says.

'Where?'

He picks up his shoulders. 'Everyone is already left?' he asks after a few seconds of silence. A tense, unpleasant silence.

'De most. There are still a few. The latter.'

'And? Is it all merged?'

'What?'

'De snacks. The sushi.'

'I don't, PAP, I really do not know.'

She looks around the room. And ship's steward does the same. He sees the belongings of the wife who has its share of the bed has taken into the possession as if they had never been reborn. On a seat are shirts. Neckties. Shoes of the spouse. Sandals.

'Papa,' says Tirza.

'Yes.' He speaks without her to look.

'How should the Nou?'

'That?'

'Met you.'

'Met me?' now he looks to her. 'But Tirza, what is that for a question?'

'How should the Nou with you?' she.

He shakes his head. 'You do not pressure to make. How any odes must. You must make your pressure your future.' And he remembers how he, when she was sick, against her had said: 'You have everything for you, you have the future for you.' as if it were the decisive argument was not starve to death.

Ship's steward sweat. Under his armpits he sees wet spots. The moisture of a long night.

'What possessed you?' The voice of his daughter sounds not accusing but inquisitive. Almost curious.

'When? What I would have had to revitalize?'

'Met Ester. A short while ago. What… What about you?'

He rubs his cheeks, his mouth, his forehead. He would like to say something, but there is nothing in it. The beast in him had spoken, and the beast speaks without words. The language of the beast is speechless. The bite and licked, as well as spitting out and tearing open. But such as people speak, no, not.

'Date you think is bad enough, but that you do. To my party.'

He looks to the balcony. The doors are open.

'It was a nice party,' says he slowly. "Everyone has being entertained, i to all guests are concerned. Nobody is something deficit. There was enough sushi. And also the sashimi is not yet.'

'Papa, give answers.'

'What was asking you?'

'What you possessed? What you thought? What you came about? About did you something?'

He picks up his shoulders, a typical motion for him, and while he that for the second time, as though this movement must be sufficient response, they sit on the bed. In addition to him, but with distance, they do not touch each other.

'I WANT not," she says, 'i not more to you can think about when dad. Mama already exists. Not for me at least. I do not want to be rejected. I want you to papa continues. I am too young to be stressed.'

He would like to scream if a downed soldier who can only hope for a final shot but by his comrades is not found. Nowhere is a ship's steward. And to be honest: nobody is searching for him.

'I remain who i was,' he says with hoarse voice. 'Everything remains as it was. There is nothing has changed.'

'But I think you really dirty. You are dirty for me.' Despite these words she explains her hand in his neck and also does he think he dies, also does he know what it is: die.

'I,' he says, 'we are going down. We will go together to the bottom. It is not very. Ester and I played it. And it ran out of hand. That can happen. Certainly at a party.'

He tries to get up, but he must gather strength and courage. And while he is doing, he tries the word 'dirty' to understand. It is for him that he had always been dirty for themselves and for others, and that its attempts to come closer were nothing else than attempts to be less dirty. In that one word, expressed carelessly, it seems, at the core of its existence. The constant factor.

'What did you?'

'a game,' he whispers. 'a game, Tirza. Sometimes you have to play that you are someone else. That is healthy. You must be flexible dealing with your identity. Only lunatics continue all the time who they are. I am your father, and you are my daughter, my love and my youngest daughter, my love most daughter. But sometimes we play that we have someone else, that you for example the solar queen are and i the high priest. In order not to be completely crazy should we play. To make our sense not to lose. We have no choice. How savvy you are, the better you can play. You are very intelligent, therefore you can play so well.'

When he thinks of the word 'dirty' he thinks of the degree of fear, he thinks of itself: a man with the degree of fear, a man who has his own body looks like a filthy public toilet. And as the expiration of that body shall recover the fear, who actually nothing else than censure, larger.

'I understand you not," she says. 'But that does not matter. I think. It does not matter that I do not understand you. If you get it all but would not deny it. You can also say: "I'm sorry."'

'Yes,' he says, 'you understand me. You understand me very well.'

Still has its hand in his neck and much more than he has just now need a glass of Italian gewürztraminer, bacing alone would provide a solution, the smell, the opening of the bottle.

'I need you when dad," she says, 'you understand? I need you when dad.'

'I need you too,' he whispers, 'Tirza, I need you too." And he pushes his fist in his mouth and he bites. He bites as the beast he reports to have thought, the word dummy beast that lives in him.

Still he will hear the music from downstairs.

'Was you have drunk?' she asks.

'Yes,' he says relieved, 'the drink that was it. The drink.'

Now he can get up. Now he has the force. A simple yet powerful response.

But they do not leave his neck.

'DUS I do not need to worry when I am in Africa?'

'Of course not,' he says, 'Why should you care? To whom? For me? Why?'

'It all goes well, even if I'm not there? Even if mama weather goes away? That makes no difference? You stay here just for yourself?'

'Of course,' he says, 'i live further. As I have arranged for you, I will make for myself, even if you are in Africa. I have heard no necessary. I live there is simply a loose, you know that yet?'

'But papa," she says, 'You can't. Life. Manage that you not at all.'

To her hand in his neck he notes that they cries.

He is still a part of his fist in his mouth. It soothes. The tines in the own meat moons are thoughts for calm.

'Why have you actually made us?'

He has bitten hard enough. The printing of his teeth are in the meat of his hand. 'It was an idea of your mother,' he says, 'but as soon as I saw I was sold. I was sold — sold at all.'

'O.'

He is on, iron are smooth and stops the shirt better in his pants. Also he has the feeling that he has under control again. Now he is the father he wanted to be the last few years, the man who paternity as appeal, in which all its ambitions lead. Distant, but charming. In the word joke about the tenderness, in the flauwiteiten and mops which he and his daughter and her friends to confront is the love that must remain legally.

'And what happens,' he asks, 'if you go in Africa with that Mohammed Atta and you come to a two meter long negro against which you will find very nice? What then?'

'DAN I write you a ticket," she says. 'Dan i write: "Hey pap, I am a two meter long negro encountered which I find quite nice."'

In the distance they hear the sounds of 'bei mir bist du schön'.

They have started again with the music. Everything starts from the beginning.

He runs to the door. 'I,' he says, 'come.' on the ground still the scale with sashimi, but he let him.

Caution If a gray nature he goes down the stairs.

There are five or six people in the living room. Mrs of Mining is in a corner and talk with a pupil. Glass everywhere, serv plants with remnants of raw fish, on the basis of many rice, still more glass, beer bottles, remnants of garnish with which he had drawn up the shells. Against the wall, in the vicinity of the dining table, the wife against a boy printed whose face for ship's steward is hidden. They are involved in a kiss. Mohammed Atta he sees nowhere.

Everything in the room smells of celebration. Old celebration.

He turns to Tirza. 'Where is Mohammed Atta?' he asks.

'Choukri,' says they emphatically, 'Choukri is to house. I have said that he had to go but. I would not that he should have longer firsthand.'

She points to her mother. And in which one eight-free movement is the declaration for many. The mother who cannot. The parent who has never wanted to.

On the table next to the bank is a half full glass of wine. Ship's steward picks it and drank the hastily empty.

'I install your path,' he says. 'I bring you there. You fly from Frankfurt? I bring you to the airport.' It is a coincidence, but one that it gives energy. Suddenly he has hope.

'Dat do not need. We can also with the train.'

'No, no,' says ship's steward, 'let me well. And then we are still a one night stay in the Betuwe, in the house of grandpa and grandma. Then we still a weekend under each other. For you to leave. I mean that of Mohammed Atta did not so bad. It seems that he may be of little use to do so. Do not take it so heavy, take it all with not so heavy.'

'We will see,' says Tirza, 'we shall have to wait and see.'

Father and daughter to stare at Hofmeesters wife. She is in a different world. Which of the desire that goes hand in hand with bright drunkenness.

"Do you know the boy?' requires a ship's steward.

His daughter nods.

'Pap," she says, 'the celebration is past, don't you think? The is ready. We need to send the people.'

'Yes, to send. You are right.'

The final exam feast of Hofmeesters youngest daughter is over. It is somewhere a relief.

He shall do all lights, turn on the music softer and collects a few glass. His clothes sticking to his body, his hair paste to his head and his hands from sticking to the glass.

'Hugh, Jörgen,' calls on the wife, 'must that well, that bright light?'

With three in stacked beer glasses he runs to her. It is not absolutely naked, such as when she was put on the table and did like they Dolly Parton was, but you can still see that they have recently been half-naked.

'The Celebration is past,' says he was very clear. 'It is ready. It is about.' He looks at the boy, it is the boy who has ever meegegeten. The Boy With The short name. He is already forgotten him. One syllable.

One of those guys who had said Tirza: 'He continues to eat tonight.' But he had perhaps been misunderstood. What is actually 'continue to eat'? In the world of Tirza means 'continue to eat' perhaps more than just to eat. What is in the name of God the true meaning of 'continue to eat'?

'Young Man,' he says, 'please say goodbye to my wife. It was a nice party. But it is over.'

'Die formal tone, Jörgen. Please, you're not more fully of this time. And if he wants to remain a moment, he remains. This is also my house.'

He slowly shakes his head. 'No, not more. Your home is a living boat. And if you are on this houseboat is no longer welcome, than I can do anything about it, but this house is no longer in your house. Here you to host.'

While he says he recalls how he evenings hose on the wife has been waiting for, he remembers even that he loves her loved, sweet he found its, right at the beginning, and these memories verschuren him. They make him week, liquid. More fluid than all Italian gewürztraminer together. He tail to her and he has the tendency to its also, very briefly but touching, The wreck that she is. He recognizes the, that is the problem. Hofmeesters wife is the most recognizable wreck that he had ever seen in his life. And in that he finds wreck recognizable his own life.

The guy says nothing. He is to get drunk to even disparagingly or scared to watch. It seems as though the hangover normally until the next morning starts now have already been commenced. Bowled he runs away without Groet. He looks even to the wife. As if it already has forgotten what he did not have two minutes has done this.

Ship's steward hear the front door is opened. Tirza will be the last guests to the outlets.

'you could not leave it?' he asks. The 'give you others involved in our game?'

The wife rubs her mouth. Hair mascara is light, not even be disturbing. Ach, even in this bright light then it is still note.

If you do not know her, it is hardly a problem, if you do not have a past with her, you see other things.

'What game?' she asks, 'what game, Jörgen? Where did you take over? There is still only game and if there are only game, it is not a game more. We have for years been held up with our game. You walk once again behind the facts.'

The trip. Later in the house saves a door is closed.

'Let us do…' he says, 'Let us get carry on as before. The living room is the Vondelpark, it is night, anywhere is the night, and I am the beast. The beast that you come Verschuren, the beast that is on your raises, let me the beast.'

'No,', 'strongly urges them hold. Do you understand the than not yet? You can understand nothing?' she picks him with his required and shake it in so far as they are still has the power back and forth. Also threatens to drop the glass.

'We do not play that we are broken, we are, Jörgen, we pcoducer the. How often should I say something for you understand? I am just returned because I could anywhere else. Nobody wanted to me, Jörgen. Nobody wanted to me. Do you understand? It calls to you by?'

They release it and he panting slightly: 'No, no, I do not understand that.' as if he were just a strange phone message has been received.

Then he walks to the kitchen. On the bank to sit still remaining two children, they seem to sleep, the front door is open, he hears Tirza's voice from the street.

Soon he pays a glass of wine. Then he goes to the garden. The torches are based. He will get rid of it tomorrow. Only the light in the barn is still alight.

He wants the knocking down, but then he sees Ester, on the bucket, albeit not more with the jeans on her ankles.

Ship's steward tail to her, not more if lover, but as a host. The father of the successful. A friendly father.

'The Celebration is past,' he says. 'Everyone has had to go home. You can now go better.'

She takes him in smiling. Arrogant, so she looks. As if they are above him stands, far above this old man who is still not able to reconcile with his own body, who has been able to reconcile with nothing, maybe you should say.

He does not know how his actions should explain to her, but he would like to see it. Even at this hour of the night he continues to search for declarations, ending in apologies and compliments. A man who declares itself, is a man who has congratulated with their own mistakes.

'Allows you to call a taxi for me?'

'Where should you going next?'

'Amstelveen.'

'Amstelveen.' He repeats the word as if they had said: 'Mars.'

Then he walks to the kitchen and call a taxi.

The front door is still open. Tirza is on the street with someone to discuss. As in the past. If they friends or girlfriends spoke after they were to eat she was hours on the sidewalk, even though it was cold or motregende the.

'Jörgen,' he hears. 'Jörgen.'

The sharp and at the same time the hoarse voice wife.

She is wearing glasses, plates and empty bottles to the kitchen. When she was young, when she really was young, she had worked in the catering industry.

She opens the trash can. Residue sashimi, whole sardines and peuken he sees disappear.

'I bring them away,' he says, 'Tirza and its… her boyfriend.'

'Where To?'

'to the airport of Frankfurt. That is cozy. We will continue to have a weekend in the Betuwe. I must still be going back.'

She nods, but he does not have the impression that she has listened to him.

'De rest we do tomorrow," she says. 'And tomorrow is also the worker. We simply ask whether they remain a little longer. In the past is that they are also sometimes have stayed longer. It was no problem.'

He opens the last bottle of Italian gewürztraminer.

'howlong are you?' he asks.

'Here you mean? In the kitchen? In this house?'

'Here. In this House, yes. I would now like to know ever.'

She gets her shoulders. 'I don't," she says. 'I have the you already said: I can nowhere. Where should I go? As far as that is concerned we resemble each other. We can not going anywhere.'

She picks up his hand, are warm and slightly wet hand. He knows now that they can no longer play that they are broken. They are the, but what he is taking proposals, he has no idea. Was he ever something else?

'It is," she says. But he does not know how it is still that he does not know what it is.

'If you want,' she goes further, 'if there is no other women in your life is, can i am slowly undress for you. Then you can look at me if you find comfortable. As consideration for room and board.'

And there is the wreck, just as recognizable as before. He wonders when they started, wreck. And this is, or that they no longer can.

And if they are a wreck is, what is it? Why is he not succeeded in old to be as other people old? Quality and more or less gradually. With that as a matter of course that all animals. The fact that the same thing will happen, the own body and that of others.

'Pap.'

The voice of Tirza is so beautiful, he says.

They called on him, as very earlier when she was potty training. Or in her room and had a question about her homework.

'I come,' he calls back and he thinks: that will be the taxi are. That is why it is called him: the taxi has arrived.

He runs to the barn.

'You taxi,' he says against Ester, which is still in its bucket.

They are not. She looks at him do not agree.

'Have you money for the taxi?' he asks. 'How much is it actually to Amstelveen?'

They are silent.

In his pocket he is looking for his wallet. He takes a note from one hundred euro. He wants to give to her, but it is not.

'Dat is too much," she says.

'I did not less. Come and change but also along, if you coming to dinner. Or simply if you have time. Come and along.'

He lifts her on the bucket. And also state they are close to him in his arms. Also it smell its, an intoxicating smell. A smell that more than anything else young and healthy and feminine. Everything he is not and will not, therefore, he is so.

'Does not hurt your buttocks,' he asks, 'an entire evening at a bucket sit?'

'My buttocks do no pain. Not more than otherwise.'

As if they are injured, as though they themselves can not run, he brings her by the kitchen to the street. The last part he has its only by its upper arm. As you hold a child that is delaying when traversing. The father is afraid of the approaching vehicles. Something to securely, slightly high he holds the child.

Tirza state on the street with a boy and chat. They will ignore her father.

The taxi is not there yet. He has no idea why Tirza called him. But he dares to ask her. She is on a call. He must leave her with peace.

Mrs of mining comes out. She gets her bicycle of the lock. To swing Tirza they still have some time but they pretend they do not see a ship's steward and Ester. The contrasts him. The invisibility, forced invisibility.

'However, Mrs Digging Home,' he calls.

There is no response. They lock depends on its steering.

'However, Mrs Digging Home,' is called a ship's steward again. 'Thank you for coming.'

Again no reply. They ride away as if they were not at the Hofmeesters but at the neighbors.

This is not a calm and light sorrow, but hard pain. The pain of the redundancies, the rejection, the failure.

'a likeable woman,' he says to the girl as Mrs of mining the corner. 'And well conserved.'

As they wait on the street, ester and ship's steward. Its Street, the Van Eeghenstraat, the best of Amsterdam, and the best in The Netherlands. He has lived there. He still live there. But it has not helped.

If the taxi at last, and is already Tirza inwards.

He pushes Ester the carriage in.

'Where do you live?' he asks.

Again no answer.

An arrogant gaze. But not, how will it say so, love-free. In the eyes of the girl he recognizes something of his own desire, and as soon as he has recognized this desire he should think of her sex part, on his hands in that sex part how iden and grazing wet she was. For him. Wet and from him.

And it seems as if all the dignity and humanity that he still held is located in the damp sex part of that girl, as if he were in that moisture, in that horny, has found his dignity, as though he were Mrs of mining and the others is emerging, even if it is only for a moment.

'Where do you live?' he repeats. He squeeze in its upper arm.

'somewhere in Amstelveen,' says Ester without h.

'They must to Amstelveen,' says ship's steward against the driver. The man looks at him, dubious. Disparagingly for Hofmeesters feeling.

'Amstelveen,' reiterates Tirza's father with the smile of a man for whom nobody need fear.

The driver gas.

Ship's steward swings the taxi after without knowing why and without even thinking that will look at him Ester. He waves her after, as he imaginary passengers on Schiphol swaying, not to fall.

If he wants to go to the inside, he notes that the front door is closed and that he has no keys. He must ring the bell. First does he briefly, then if there after half a minute still no response, longer and harder. Impatient. Although he does not want to.

He shivering.

Tirza does open.

'Ibi sleep all," she says. Warning, but not unfriendly.

'Everyone is way?'

'Everyone is way.'

It is not one side. They lean with the side of her head against the tiles in the hallway.

'Did you a nice party, Tirza? You say that it was a nice holiday in spite of everything?'

There is no answer.

They only says: 'Despite everything', but they say it as if they were asked. 'How do you mean: despite everything?' sound.

'Papa.'

He wants to within, he has the cold.

'Papa," she says, "If I do not here more living, how should it be? I would like to know.'

'Let me to within,' he says.

"How?'

Ship's steward thinks of the time that he was in a guest house in South Germany lived and they were working in a clinic to cure. He thinks of her cello. The music stand. On the versions on the music school. He was always on the first row. And he looked at his daughter as if he had its hypnotising, as if he thought that they would play a wrong note if he would take to watch.

'Speel what to me,' he says.

'What?'

'On Your cello. Play what to me.'

'Now?'

'Now'.

They laughs. 'You're not good.' as if he has made a joke, to table, while two friends have continued to eat. A not very successful joke.

Always if friends or girlfriends were eating or play, he made jokes. According to a ship's steward of the father is a struggle.

'It is important.'

They must play for him, as previously, on her cello. That is what he is now still can think, that is all that can save him. His youngest daughter and her cello.

'I have not played for years.'

'Dat does not matter. You are not forgotten. Something rather imposes not.' You

'Everyone sleeps. Mama is also already up.'

'They sleep through it. They are used, of the past.'

'Papa," she says, and with the side of her head leaning back still against the tiled, 'You're not good point. It is true what Ibi me told years ago. You are really not good.'

Between all its other thoughts by he also wonders how it must have been a father that will not good point is, but because he did not reply to that question, he says: 'I am healthy, Tirza. Just as healthy as you. And I ask only or you what to me. A Sentimental question perhaps, a strange question in the middle of the night. But not not properly.'

She looks at him. Its lips curls itself. He has no idea whether it is a smile. 'Papa' whispers to them. She looks to love him, understandable. 'I want best one more time for you to play but not now.'

'No, Tirza. So immediately. This evening. Tonight.'

They are silent.

He does not understand themselves why this is so important to him is a neck now all other matters have been resolved, neck disappeared. What else could still be important in his life?

He picks up his wallet from his pocket. 'I pay you sure,' he says. 'I'll give you extra spending money for Namibia.'

It counts the most of what there is to paper money in it. 'Here,' he says, 'over five hundred euro. You can use the good in Africa.'

'Papa.'

They fingers with the back of her hand on his cheek.

'Papa, why do you want that i for your play?'

He is there with the paper money in his hand. More he has not. Perhaps he has never had more than that. Paper money had to conceal the fact that he had nothing else to offer. It pays. Pay is freedom. Pay is dignity. 'Because it makes me happy,' he says. 'Because it makes me so happy.' He wants its money in the hands push, but she still makes a defense gesture.

He likes to pay for the happiness. In the happiness is an unsustainable debt hidden. A mistake. Something he must be paid as a lump sum.

Now he has not more cold, he has the hot. He feels the sweat resistance along its spine. It seems as if he has fever as if he were cold is trying.

Tirza looks at him, but no longer as the daughter to the father is looking even if the caring daughter who looks at the man who has brought for her, she looks quite different to him. In her view he sees the alien. The tenant to the landlord looks while he is considering the offer.

She turns around, she runs away from him, he hears her up the stairs to run. If a Levite, do ship's steward.

In the kitchen it a glass gewürztraminer in. There is not much more. Cold is the wine even though not. It does not matter. Still shivering he. Of the fatigue, the emotion, shame.

Than he hears the earth orbits the sun. The stairs Tirza He is going to look at. She has the cello. She drags him. As if it were a beast, a recalcitrant cow which should to the slaughter. They will pass without her father to watch him. They put the cello in the living room.

He looks in the opening of the door with the empty glass in his hand how it will do so.

Another time she goes to the top. She is coming back with the music stand and sheet music. Install them all for the window. She picks the cello bow response.

'Are you sure you want to do this?' she asks.

He nods.

'This is what makes you happy?'

He nods back.

'Sit down," she says. The bow in the stop.

And He whispers: 'Elgar, that you could well, that you also played on the music school. Elgar. It was nevertheless Elgar?'

He knows the self not more. He shall take place on the ground. Between the remnants of the feast, between sticky rice grains and chunks of gherkin from a foot are flown.

There are no more. Little is more. The money he explains on the coffee table.

She agrees the cello.

'Papa," she says. 'You're not good point. Is that hereditary?'

'hereditary?'

'I? Should I be afraid that I just as word as you? Should I be afraid that i love word?'

Then begins to play them.

Her shoulders and upper arms are visible, and one of its bra straps.

He looks at her and he remembers everything. He is a shivering body that hear music are daughter sees and everything reminds. And while a ship's steward listening to the music and to his youngest daughter looks for him, for him and for him only, he starts for the first ask why food hurts so much.

Why the actually always so much pain has done.

Not all life. There are people who are not affected. Many have not affected. Presumptuous life. He has thought of everything she does not always thoroughly, but never about pain. That was something for sissies, he had always found. And now he is there for the first time involved, discerns he still somewhat reluctantly. Disgust.

He had everything he has now received nothing more. Even when he had everything, did the pain.

Of the existence he recalls an uncomfortable silence, a rigid dexterity, a nerve pull, a barely suppressed desire. The Eternal need under all circumstances to come over to civilized.

This means Tirza on playing.

They shall submit to the cello down carefully. As you a baby in bed captures those on your arm is asleep. In the hope that he will continue to sleep.

She is on, they get about her father, which is on the ground is just a child that is not yet on a seat or bench seat can sit.

'take it,' he says.

'What?'

They remain stationary. She looks down. There she sees her father, its old father, which may not be children had to begin if disaster him not had forced, as he himself so like used to say: the fate in the form of a woman.

He has done for others. His children, the house, the renting of the upper floor are course, maintaining the home of his parents, also after their death. And that he never that reference work on expressionist poets wrote, also that he has done for others. A life lived for others. On the assumption that you are the only then alive, if you for others it, nothing you as self-catering individual. Have enough on yourself, have enough to your work, have enough to Schiphol, that is the real shame.

'The money. Take it.'

She looks to the notes on the coffee table.

'take it,' he repeats, 'Tirza, you have played. Please, contact the. I have promised you.'

He sees that they hesitates.

He does not dare itself. It is all of her. It is located on the coffee table. They must also tackle the only. That is all. Only suits.

'take it, Tirza,' he says. 'take it well. For you and Mohammed Atta, if you are in Africa.'

'Choukri.'

'Choukri. Also good. For you and for those of you who Choukri once again want to eat.'

She shakes her head.

'We do not go to Africa to enjoy going out to eat papa.'

'You can almost everywhere good food, also in Africa.' He remembers how he suffered an hour or twelve in the kitchen was to the raw fish to cut.

'Please,' he whispers, 'Please, my solar queen.'

They bending itself.

She picks the money. Then run away.

He wants to do something already fleeing her, he wants to say something, but the only thing it is to mind: 'Goodnight.'

He hears her footsteps.

'Goodnight, Tirza,' he calls. 'goodnight. It was a nice party.'

He rubs on his head. He still shivering. If a sick.

'You have played so beautifully,' he whispers.

From the hallway calls on them gently: 'Sleep tasty, PAP.'

He hears her to run up and down stairs.

Ship's steward will still sit back as he was. Then he goes to the cello. He tries to lift up on the music stand.

The attempt failed.

The music stand is now on him, or better said: he is located under the music stand. Not able to stand, or even to move in this direction.

As he continues to lie, he has no idea how long. He realizes only after a time that he will go to the feet of his daughter looks. Tirza's feet. A few minutes, maybe longer.

They are exhausted its hands, she pulls him up. With difficulty. It certainly seems to reluctantly.

He loves her.

Whether it.

Because he is likely to fall.

Finally he is back on two legs, as a man. As a host, supported by his youngest daughter.

'You're so dirty, papa," she says. 'You're so horrible dirty.'

They coast him on his nose, his cheek, his forehead.

They are almost as large, father and daughter.

He lispelt a word, but she seems to him not to mean. Five or six times he must repeat for he sees that the to her by calls.

'Solar Queen,' he says. 'Solar Queen. Sun Queen.'

They do not let him loose, afraid if they seems to be that he will topple, that he will no longer be able to stand up, even with its aid.

And now lispelt ship's steward anything other than that one word. He has a question, he has finally found a question for the solar queen. No opinion, no cheesy joke, no practical application or they would like to let us know how she comes home, no, a real question.

'Solar Queen, why does everything so'n pain? Why does everything so very much pain?' he lispelt in her ear.

They say nothing. She shakes her head gently. The only answer she gives is that they are continuing to hold a ship's steward, in the living room, in addition to the cello and the cases music standard, while the light slowly.

They also can not. Release.

It is in the family.