Tirza

1

On sunday evening in the third week of July will Tirza with her boyfriend from Frankfurt to Wind Angle fly. The ticket of Air Namibia is the cheapest that has been able to find them. First it was they plan per train to Frankfurt to travel, but a ship's steward has its convinced that the faster and more cozy as he taking her with the vehicle. And if they are still together a weekend in the cottage in the Betuwe, it is welcome. A weekend in the Betuwe, that is only a decent start of a trip around the world. And a nice farewell. Once all really together. Well, all, the wife does not of course. She is not invited, and IBI is long weather in France, in the inn with its dark man.

After what against sputtering Tirza has agreed. It had to ship's steward promise that he no Mohammed Atta Choukri would call. Also no Atta. With that promise she took pleasure. Anyone who goes on a trip around the world, gives his father a special surprise.

On Friday morning they leave from Amsterdam.

Ship's steward is already got up early. He wants, now it will be a weekend, performing work in the garden of the house that now over a decade acts as the home of the family ship's steward.

There are already months, he has not been the case. There are fruit trees which he in the spring due to a lack of time has not reduced. That he will now be able to do so. The grass must be mowed and here and there he will again sowing.

In the barn are looking for ship's steward the tool that he wants to carry, because it is not present in the Outdoor, or because it is actually there, but must be repaired. Or simply because of age is that it has become unusable. The parents of Jörgen ship's steward were collectors from miserliness. Discarded was fundamentally sin.

The weeding, the machine saw, a bag of seed and a spoon dragging his from the barn where he three weeks ago an evening with Ester spent, and brings them to the kitchen. An evening is too much said, a half hour, the more it will not been. Not with nostalgia or regret he thinks of Ester back, earlier with a light unease and at the same time a vague desire to its resistance to smell, which sharp fragrance of happiness.

Ester was no longer come to the change. That money could ship's steward doesn't really care about, but he wanted her to speak for Tirza's departure. He wanted to see her again themselves to declare, but is now better, more accurate, more convincing. Why he ever want to abolish the love and why that abolition for him now no longer had such a priority. But that he wanted to wish her every success with everything they abolish went. They would be saved. She was clever.

Presumably he wanted her again to give himself to convince Something, though he knew not exactly from.

Until he understood that they are not more, it would be no shopkeepers to bring back or get a bite to eat. Initially he explained himself to the inevitable. They had to do without any representations. Without a final call. He would remain in her life represented as a father who could not. A man who also no longer knew what control was, and strangely enough this is precisely that we fortunately had felt. At least felt alive. For the first time in a long time: really live.

He dared not to ask Tirza 'Say, how is it actually with those Ester without h?'

About the incident in the barn has been met with silence, over the whole party was omitted. One and a half day after it was as if it had never taken place.

But a few days after its decision to engage in the inevitable, entered in the evening he Tirza's room — she was at Atta on visit — and he searched in her stuff to the phone number of Ester. In a tray he found a list of pupils of the Vossius Gymnasium, Class 6a. Esters name sat there, with the address and phone number.

That same evening when the wife was in the bath, he phoned her from the kitchen. He was first a man on the line, probably the father. 'Met ship's steward,' he said, 'I find Ester.'

No questions were asked, no comments. He heard only: 'one time.', and a few seconds later he had Ester on the line. I really am not good point, he thought.

'Ester,' he said, 'met Jörgen ship's steward, the father of Tirza, perhaps you know who I am?'

'Yes.'

'Sorry I you interference, but i get some money from you.'

'exchange money?'

'of the taxi. I gave you a hundred euro. And you had to Amstelveen. That costs a hundred euros, not even with a taxi.'

He rubbed the worktop with his finger.

'O yes it was something of eur 40. So you will receive the 60 euro. I will talk about it?'

Also felt that he heard Tirza coming home, but it was the wind. They probably remained at Atta sleep. They always remained with him more often sleep.

'You can also give me in cash. That is why I actually prefer. Tomorrow we will drink coffee? Here in the near maybe. Opposite the old Municipal Museum is a nice cafe.'

Silence.

'Hello? Ester?'

'Yes, is good,' she said, 'morgenmiddag?'

'Four hours?'

The next day to five for four he was sitting in the cafe opposite the old urban, he was previously for from Schiphol. On the seat next to him lay his briefcase, he read the newspaper of the day before. Even old newspapers were bored him not.

To ten about four she arrived, also this time in jeans and a somewhat user axles blouse.

There was a chair next to free him. But she took place opposite him.

He had a different cafe you can find out, he now realized, further away from home, ach, it was innocent. It would remain innocent. A final and explanatory call, could more innocent?

As they were against each other — the girlfriend of his daughter which is not really a friend of his daughter was and ship's steward.

'it is still my grandfather.' She picked up the substance of her blouse and instep between its fingers.

'O. Wear your many clothes of your grandfather?'

'I wear does sometimes clothes of my father.'

They looked at him, cheeky, but not challenging. Hautain, but in a natural way, as if the hair is almost sorry that the world could not endorse its approval.

'How is it?'

'That?'

'Met you,' said ship's steward. Of course you ', Ester.'

'good'.

'What do you drink?'

'Doe but red wine.'

He ordered red wine for Ester, and although he had been determined to let the coffee, he also ordered for itself but a glass of wine. It was late in the afternoon, you might say. He folded the newspaper carefully. The war against terrorism lasted.

When they are both a sip of their wine taken had he felt, to his own amazement, quiet. Calm. And yet again a very small amount of live.

About the incident in the barn was not discussed, and that was perhaps but also better. About events there is little to say once they have occurred.

'How are your plans?' he asked. 'The love to abolish it, how is it?'

'I have holiday. I do not do anything. I have a lot of time. My agenda consists of white spots.' She took a large sip of wine, licked its lips and asked: 'And how is it with Tirza?'

He nodded. 'Good. Excellent. She is in her boyfriend. They will soon travel. To Africa.'

The call was otherwise than he had hoped, otherwise than he had imagined.

'Maybe you know,' he said, and he always went softer talk as if he was doing a secret any spoilers, 'that i ever have been also plan to abolish the love to declare, death. It was a project, a marketing had to be, a thick marketing with footnotes. Scientific. Substantiated. With evidence.'

'Yes?'

'In my vault still material, if you are there for you, if you want to have access to it.'

They slowly shook her head, again a tad hautain. 'No, sir ship's steward,' she said, 'I want no trading letter. I know just how it is, that is enough.'

They looked at people. The trams. A taxi.

To his own consternation he said: 'I am happy in your company.' He improved itself. 'I find your ideas refreshing, interesting.'

They again shook her head. 'I have no ideas. I know just how the sitting.'

From the breast pocket of her grandfather's shirt she 60 euro and placed on the table. 'The change,' she said.

'Yes'. It was… it is not important.'

'But I am." She looked at him light reproachfully.

'I wanted to explain to me, I am of course Tirza's father, I am almost exclusively Tirza's father, that is the main thing, but there are special Aachen, small, insignificant ancillary. I am also happy to someone in your company is in.'

He could say it better, but it could also be said pieces worse With this version was to settle them.

He did not now more of his own words. This good call a weird way him.

'I must continue,' she said. 'I think it is nice to many be alone. When I stand up I go first half an hour on the floor and then I myself.' Aad As in the barn evening streelde her own arms, concentrated and accurate. 'I hope not that I am sorry to disappoint you set.'

'We said not "you" against each other?'

'I do not disappoint you set.'

'not at all. What I said, I wished to say. That is all.'

They stood up.

'I have brought something for you. A trivial matter.' He opened his briefcase, took a small black pocket. "I have unfortunately only in German can be found. Was ist Art? It is called. It is a marketing of Tolstoy, you need the word "Art" just by replacing "love", it is actually his farewell.'

'I do not read German.'

'Maybe later'.

She took the booklet, he kissed once on the cheek and walked the café. He looked her after, how they are in the direction of the Concert Hall and meditated. The Shirt of her grandfather was its really too large, he saw only now.

Then he charged bought from delicatessen Pasteuning three bottles of Chilean wine and walked to the house.

'They Have your released?" asks the wife, lying on the bed while a ship's steward required for the journey.

'I have freely taken,' he says. 'They do nothing to give me.' He will take a few seconds of thinking to the director who had said that soon also lower educated men the road to the book would, they are not necessarily through the book trade. It surprised him that his office with views on a tree and a garden which also can be called courtyard, his colleagues, the routine, Monday production meeting, has never missed.

For mid July is the cold and rainy.

He draws a blue required that slightly worn but that he likes to wear.

Ship's steward goes to the kitchen and looks happy to the tool with which he is the garden of his parents will go to tackle. From the fridge he retrieves the food which he has taken to remedy Tirza still one last time before they go to the third world is a good meal for.

In the back of the Volvo loads everything in the ship's steward garden tool, breads, four different types of French cheese, old Gouda, steaks, lettuce, raspberries, cherries, apples, radishes and cucumbers. There is still enough space for Tirza's backpack and the backpack that will undoubtedly bring her boyfriend.

For as long as a ship's steward children, he drives in a Volvo. It is a vehicle that fits in his address he says. As he himself at that address, or perhaps he should say: paste.

Than he knocks on the door of Tirza's room. She is currently developing its backpack in which they specially for this trip has purchased.

Ship's steward had suggested that they have a solid boot of a good brand had to buy, but they laughed him out.

'I go to Africa, PAP,' she had said, 'not to the Cote d'Azur.'

Ship's steward loathes of youth hostels and backpackers. The lack of privacy that radiates backpacking gives him chills. It is no snobbishness. It is a deep, almost animal fear for the dormitory room and the bunk bed.

Time of his students, and especially of the few months he in a student house has lived, he can remember how other students him came after a night out 'Return'. With mattress and was already you than reversed. Then they walked a while over you as if it were a special form of Thai massage. Other students found that is not such a problem, it. He opposed, tooth and what it all made things worse.

'You're almost done?' he asks. He pushes without waiting for an answer the door open.

The room of Tirza is one big mess. Everywhere clothes, toiletries, a passport with its vaccinations, its iPod, her note book, underwear, a bathing cap, a diving goggles.

'I can not choose," she says, 'and there is so little in. It will be somewhere in Africa also be very cold, you think you are not, pap?'

'Fixed,' he says, 'somewhere in Africa is also very cold. Antarctica is not far away.'

'But a warm sweater takes place as much in.'

'I have you said that you had to buy no backpack.'

'still keep on," she says. 'You do not know how people go on a journey. When are you for the last really been traveling? Not a few days to the Buchmesse. Really travel.'

She reduces what from its backpack and crams a sweater in.

'Or is a coltrui better?' she asks.

'A coltrui prickles.'

He goes to the kitchen. The coffee which he has put a quarter of an hour ago gravity. Ship's steward pays for itself a head and calls on than to top: 'Tirza, would you also have coffee?'

There is no answer.

He has the feeling that Africa already in his kitchen begins, that Tirza is already there in the middle of Africa, and it is thus there is also a little, in Africa.

At the greengrocer had a slightly older lady who works there have for years been said: 'Your daughter takes on the world huh? My son is a year ago moved to Asia, but i get each week a long e-mail from him. So I know exactly where he is and what he is doing. So I enjoy with him.'

Ship's steward said 'yes' and after a pause: 'Yes, yes, of course.' Then did he kindly smiling. Join in the fun. The word has a half day chased.

Although they did not reply to his question, he pays for the security of a cup of coffee for Tirza in. They drink in the morning like Hofmeesters coffee. For them to school peddled had he always together with her in the kitchen. Or rather: he looked how it at. That was the essence of the fatherhood for him: encouraging the sidelines. And if there girlfriends were at a little struggle, you out of your best side. On that encouraging and watch it was faded and he could have life.

With his elbows leans ship's steward on the worktop. It is going to motregenen. Africa, he thinks. He hopes but that they the unholy plan to by public transport from the south to the north to abandon will reassure but is he not.

Tirza coming back down with the backpack and a small shoulder bag.

He looks at her luggage. The wise old man. The role that he so like to play. To assign and too old to somewhere to be too. But as he was already at its fifteenth.

'Dat you on a trip around the world," she says, 'does not mean that you need to be clumsy.'

'I say nothing,' says ship's steward. 'I look only.' He wonders how the will to someone terrible to miss. It is a question that he is already a few days. The wife he never missed, he has waited on her. The harder they him how he fiery's, on its waited, but really missed, no. His parents, he also never missed. He has never missed.

He gives his daughter its coffee. They drink quickly and simply.

'Would you have breakfast? I will make toast?'

She shakes her head.

'I do not take jewelry note, only these two rings. That surely? Do you not? And if I lose them or if they were stolen it is also not a disaster.' She shows her left hand.

The one ring he has given her when she was seventeen, the second ring has bought them yourself. Or perhaps they received from a friend, but she wanted to not tell. An older boyfriend with money.

The latter can not imagine a ship's steward, in view of its current choice. Tirza loves men without money. The poverty withdraws its. They fable books about the poverty in Africa, the nature is for her on the second place. Malaria find them more important than a decent sunset. The misfortunes of others gives her a purpose of life.

Ship's steward tail to the rain. 'You're right,' he says, 'no disaster. If they were stolen. Absolutely no disaster. What are rings well at all?'

He had offered Tirza's boyfriend to retrieve, but they had said: 'No, he is here. That is easier.'

About a quarter of an hour, perhaps even less, he will no longer be only with his youngest daughter. About a quarter of an hour begins the rest of his life, the epilogue. The epilogue of an insignificant life because it was insignificant, doubt he is now no longer, in so far as he that in the last few decades has still did. A man who is in the barn on the final exam feast of his daughter a of her classmates is first and foremost insignificant. Unnecessary and supernumerary, without anyone can give the debt. Somewhere in his life must be the fracture have scarcely of promising to insignificant, but he may not break out. The fracture has witnessed unnoticed.

She puts one hand on his shoulder. Together they looking at the garden in which he Africa sees, what he does not even feel uncomfortable. He thinks it is at most strange that he has not previously noticed that Africa in its garden begins.

'We are going about a quarter of an hour away,' he says. 'He is punctual, which…'

Would he say Mohammed Atta. He gulps in.

'Yes, papa," she says, 'very pünktlich, for a Moroccan extremely pünktlich.'

They rent to top, like they forget something. Ship's steward serves a cup of coffee.

In a small leather bag has he what underwear, socks, two shirts and trousers that attracts he if he works in the garden stopped.

He is nervous as if he, himself, on a trip around the world.

For the umpteenth time that morning it counts the money in his wallet, the flight schedule of his daughter by, and consider a list of activities which it intends to carry out in the garden that has ever been of his parents.

If he is ready, the wife in the kitchen. She has her dressing gown. A new. She buys a lot. Still. They cross the arm out.

'goose bumps," she says, 'you see? So cold i. The heater can not?'

He becomes unemployed its arm idea, embodied his wallet again than

'When you are back?' she asks.

'Sunday night. I drive in one flick through from Frankfurt. Their aircraft to eight hours in the evening, so I will be at 7 p.m. the children have waved goodbye.'

'To seven hours you will they have waved away," she says. 'How long does that uitzwaaien gone completely? And then we are under each other, Jörgen. We have to face up to the two of them have to rescue.'

'What do you mean?'

'As I say, than we are. Than we are again à deux. As in the past.'

'As in the past? À deux?'

He runs to the corridor. Tirza comes down the stairs, retrieves its luggage from the kitchen and tighten who already outside.

'Your boyfriend is not there yet,' he says. 'Why should you today outside? On the street, in the rain?'

'I am not in the rain.'

He picks up Tirza's backpack and bring them to the Volvo. 'Jesus, what heavy,' he calls. 'What have you been stopped? A funeral?'

He opens the tailgate, and after he the backpack as good as possible in the boot has eliminated, he remains a bending. As if he were a little to the amicable settlement is, the saw that are not well located, a plastic bag with the seed for grass. But he does not want his daughter sees how he goes down. That is what he is doing, if a machine: failed.

After he has restored he runs back to the kitchen and now also brings its own leather case to the vehicle. An old, worn bag that still of his father.

The wife is to the outside world.

Than they were three in the porch. If a unit as a — there is no other word for it — family. The family is just one more time in the porch.

I get the cold,' says the wife. 'It is not summer. Is this summer? I would like to mention the winter.'

And Tirza replies: 'Go but to top, I am now saying goodbye to you.' She coast her mother once on each cheek.

It is a step back as if they were its still as good wants to watch, the woman from whom they eighteen years ago is playing it. The woman who hated them for many years.

'Write down something,' says the mother, 'or call. Collect call may also. You will find that father laid no problem.'

She goes back to the house and ship's steward looks at her after. Not very elegant is, in spite of its age. By all the expiration back does she always think of the woman who they long, has been a long time ago: the woman who does not wrongly thought that the world was at its feet. Its got to know when a ship's steward, instructed the world on its hands. And now? The hands were tired of wearing. As somewhat abrasive is that world.

Now they are together in the porch, father and daughter. The father more nervous than the daughter, playing with the car keys, friemelend to its required, searching in his trouser pockets. He picks up between the hand of his daughter and squeeze.

'Can you not call him?' he asks.

'He does so.'

So they remain there, two minutes, three minutes, ten minutes. Silently. The man who is to be filled, the daughter of a trip around the world.

Until they called upon: 'You have him!' She looks to the right, the side of the Jacob Obrechtstraat, and ship's steward looks with her.

He sees a man in a tracksuit by the rain, a sports bag casually on his shoulder. Mohammed Atta, he thinks. There you have it. He is back. He is there. That they do not see it.

Tirza rent him meet. Ship's steward remains in the porch and looks at how it discloses. He follows her movements, he is studying the basis of Atta that on the back of his daughter remains lie. He'll wince.

Then walk them together in the direction of a ship's steward, just next to each other.

Atta indicates the father a hand.

'I have you not to wait too long?' he asks.

'A QUARTER,' says ship's steward. 'More not.'

He opens the tailgate of his car and crams the sports bag of Atta in addition to the scoop.

'You have not much to you for someone a long journey. Not even a backpack.'

'What I miss i can always buy, and drying clothes fast in Africa,' explains Atta like he is perfectly aware continent.

'That's where.' ship's steward nods. 'In Africa dries quickly everything.' He remembers vakantiewasjes in Italy. He remembers the holidays when they were a family, a family that was more or less intact. More or less.

Ship's steward crawls back the steering, he put the windscreen wipers. Tirza does alongside him. Atta remains only on the rear bench seat.

The call is cumbersome. To Utrecht they have but two sentences changed. Tirza has set up its iPod. Atta doze off intermittently, ship's steward in his mirror.

The last piece is the better. There is developing a civilized debate on the pros and cons of development aid.

Install After Arrival Tirza is in the room that has already been used as guest room at the time was Hofmeesters parents still lived. Atta runs through the garden and smells like a flower to sporadically. After a quarter of an hour he is sitting in the living room. For the fireplace he plays a game of Scrabble with Tirza.

Mohammed Atta scrabbelt. Interesting. Who would have thought?

Ship's steward itself works in the garden. He must be the tension of the drive to see the voltage of what feels like an unnecessary and dishonorable rest: the last part of his life.

Occasionally he raises a look in through the window and sees his daughter and her friend embroiled in a party game. It allows him not reassured.

Now his children are out of the house, he must learn to die. But he does not know where or to whom he les can take.

Half an hour or two he goes to within and asks: "Have you hungry?'

'hunger is not really,' says Tirza, 'but cold we have it.'

'I will create the fireplace,' says ship's steward. 'I actually had hoped that we were able to dine in the garden tonight. It is more winter food.'

With some effort he receives the fireplace. The bending, causing him to pain in the back. Pain is probably exaggerated, he is aware of his back. A consciousness that he knew not earlier.

If the fire is lit at last, he has good must revive and pokers, he remains a few minutes with the gear lever in his hand. It is nice. He forgets his surroundings. He is a man who, while he is busy trying to enter the, to fire watch and that fire calls memories with him at the time, vague and onsen tele memories of his parents, his youth, his study time.

Only when he his daughter pap hear it said, if him in extricating themselves from his mind.

'Papa," she says, 'I'm a sandwich, I will also make a for you?'

'I do,' he answers. 'Keep you but sit.'

He is the shift lever in the standard, wipe off his hands on the old trousers that he used for in the garden and looks for a few seconds for the word that his daughter is to impose on the board.

'To me only with cheese dates,' says Atta.

'O, do you also want a sandwich?'

'Please, but only with cheese.'

'That's no problem,' says ship's steward while he looks to the game. They may well, Tirza, scrabbelen. 'We are eating the sandwiches with cheese and tomato in our family, we are not fond of ham, we do not hold of sticky meat.'

In a frying pan toasts he three sandwiches with cheese and tomato. The parents of a ship's steward have never purchased a toaster.

At the table in the living room to eat his sandwich on, while Tirza and Atta continue with scrabbelen. With a paper towel wipe it every three seconds off his mouth, afraid if he is that there crumbs sticking to his lips.

"Do you like to peelt scrabble?' requires Atta.

'No,' replies, 'I can ship's steward not good.'

'But pap, you have very often in the past with me gescrabbeld.'

His daughter looks at him surprised. As if he is lying.

'I think it will be a disaster to do, but i found it more fun for example if we played risk, or monopoly or farmers bridge.'

'we will play monopoly tonight, Mr ship's steward?', Atta for.

Ship's steward looks at him, the man who is making, even flowers smells to the father of his girlfriend to vote favorably. But for a ship's steward will not need it. He would like to say to him: 'Doe you best not. It helps not.'

'Well,' he says, 'if I can find the game, we play after dinner tonight monopoly.'

Then he goes into the garden and he concentrates on his work, in order not to have to think.

For an hour or five, while he is dead branches of an apple tree to saw, Atta toward him.

Ship's steward put the saw off. He climbs of his ladder.

"I wanted to ask you what,' says Atta.

'Go Ahead.'

'You don't that i with your daughter on one room sleep?'

Now the father laughing, for the first time he really must laugh this man.

He moves the cutting of his left to his right hand.

'What are you going to do in Africa?' he asks. 'on two different bunk beds are? Two different youth hostels Book? Where do you see me to?'

'Not. Of course not. But here in your home is something different. Maybe.'

This house is just so much of me as Tirza. If it has no objections to it with you on one room to sleep, I think it is excellent.'

Atta looks at the apple tree.

'You do it well,' he says. 'I mean how you the branches saws.'

My parents had a tool shop.' ship's steward can still not say without a light feeling of embarrassment. A tool shop. But it declares a hope. He saw juggling.

'Yes, Tirza told something. Anyway, I just wanted to have asked, my parents are also…'

'Yes? What are they?'

Ship's steward tail to him. Tirza's boyfriend. The man that he not only too old for his daughter, but simply uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in his politeness, uncomfortable in his presence, uncomfortable at first sight.

'You will not find a man good enough for Tirza,' the wife had said. But that is not the case. It is intuition.

My parents are also very conservative.'

'I am not conservative,' says ship's steward, 'I am realistic and practical. Are they religious?'

'My parents? Yes, also that.'

'That,' reiterates ship's steward.

The young man stays procrastinating, while a ship's steward back to top klimt and continuing with saw. If Atta there after three to five minutes state, he comes for the second time down and asks: 'Would you also agree to try?'

'What?'

'Branches refraining. Pruning. In the garden work.'

Atta laughs. "I have never done before.'

'Have you parents are not Garden?'

'They have a balcony.'

Ship's steward wipe with the back of his hand over his mouth, his chin, his cheeks. 'O, but a public house with balcony can also quite nice. Well, if you want to try it?'

Atta hesitates.

'You are going to Africa? You are going to the jungle? A fruit tree in the Betuwe is no obstacle. Beginning but with these small branch.'

Ship's steward pointing upward, to a branch which he can just as well. Not what you would call a dead branch.

Atta hesitates, he saw to the machine.

The weight is not him. So much is clear. But anyone who is such a thing for the first time in your hands, must get used to the weight. With tool that you, like with a man, slowly to be intimate. The better you know the, the more it does what you want.

Ship's steward shows how the saw on. How to get it off. The emergency button. How you must hold him.

'It is a Stihl MS 170,' says ship's steward, 'in its kind the best available.'

The young man climbs the ladder. If he is above, he calls: 'Is this a good idea, Mr ship's steward?'

'It is an excellent idea. If you get the hang of it, have you got your whole life fun of. The MS 170 is very safe.'

Tirza's father stresses once again the branch on which must be cut off. 'You need not be afraid,' he calls. 'You need just your wits.'

Safe, that they had told him, in the shop where they were selling the saw him. Safer than an electric with a cord, easier to use.

The friend of Tirza condition on the ladder and he saws. Soon the branch on the grass. It is a little one.

Atta climbs to below. He is found.

'Was you afraid?' requires a ship's steward hopeful. 'did you think of the death-eng?'

'a little,' says the man who now more on a boy seems than ever. A friendly boy, all with al. If you do not know better. "I believe that I simply not so nice am. And also tired.'

'It is a question of exercise.' ship's steward takes his cutting back on. Satisfied he looks at the tree. His life is in the epilogue, but he knows how a fruit tree has to deal with. He knows how he must face with a garden. That nobody can deny him.

'My parents,' says ship's steward, 'loved fruit trees. They kept more of the trees than of each other.'

'And they had a tool shop?'

'Yes, as approximately,' he says, curt now. 'De shopping was of my father. My mother sang in a choir.' I regret that he has extended the call unnecessarily. What are the boy his parents? He bending is to what weeds under the tree road to reap the benefits. The last thing he needs is that this man is approached. No proximity. Everything except that.

'And they wanted to not that you would take over the shop?'

'They wanted that i went to study abroad,' says ship's steward with the weed in his hand. 'they found important. That their only son would go study. Therefore they worked. And I studied héb.'

'Yes, yes,' says Atta. 'I know. German and criminology, yet?'

'I have never killed criminology. By circumstances. I was offered a job as an editor at a very reputable publishing. I could not refuse the offer. It was in line with expectations that i would be publisher.'

He runs to the dustbin and throws it.

When he comes back, Atta still at the apple tree.

'Is this really the time to saw?" asks the young man.

'Not,' says ship's steward, 'but I am now, therefore i saw. I must take the opportunity. I saw when I am there. Where is Tirza?'

'Die sleeps. She was also tired.'

Atta runs back inside, but just before the House he turns once. 'Meneer ship's steward, can I will help you in the kitchen? With Dinner?'

Ship's steward shakes his head. 'Date i do all itself. The most has already been done. The only thing you need to do is to eat. You are my guest. Remember.'

He remains a look at how the young man to walk in. Through the curtains he sees how Atta in the living room with its open fireplace. The bright euphoria that ship's steward just felt is again disappeared. He has not won, he has lost. And win is the only thing that counts. Everything not win is an excuse, a skillfully disguised as an excuse, but an excuse. Ach, almost everything high is famous in the world, art, politics, is an alibi for losers.

Ship's steward has the dining table for the open fireplace and three steaks baked — for him and Tirza red, for Atta well by baking — which he serves with bread, lettuce and fresh fruit.

The fire crackles, ship's steward opens its second bottle of red Bordeaux from that day. 'What do your parents actually,' he asks to Atta, 'dat you with my daughter to Africa?'

'You mean that I go to Africa, or that i with Tirza go?'

'Both.' ship's steward cuts a piece of bread and dab it carefully in the gravy on his plate is a lie. In fact this may not, but in such a different rules apply outside the home.

'I have not much more contact with my parents. I see very little.'

Ship's steward chews on the bread. It tastes like him.

'Choukri has broken with his parents,' says Tirza and they squeeze her boyfriend in his shoulder.

Broken, the word calls him, but would Ibi has not broken with her parents, who has just pulled back. That is easier than break.

'And why I ask you?'

'They had other ideas,' says the boy. 'Other ideas than i.'

'Other ideas?' ship's steward has its bread. It cuts a piece, offers the Atta but which refuses to polite.

'Other ideas?' reiterates ship's steward.

'Other ideas. As that. Other thoughts. About the life. You will also have other thoughts have than Tirza. About the life. About what is good. About how one should live. About what you need to do a good man.'

Ship's steward looks his daughter. What will they have told that Atta? About him, the wife, the lessees that he has worn, such as the wife lovers.

'I have no ideas,' he says. 'I look like a man with ideas?'

Atta vist with his fingers a last leaf lettuce of his board. 'Well, ideas, I mean that you might be a representation of the life of your daughter. What it would need to see. Later'.

'a representation? Later? If I am dead? I look like someone who knows how you should live?'

Atta laughs nervous.

Ship's steward feels that he is the boy in the close to float. It drives people would like in the closely. Because he fears for them. Because he is not a council with them know. Also his children has he previously in dire straits. Agreed Minute, only minutes, they should be strong. Their vocabulary to extend their the art of argumentation. For it is language is first and foremost a tool to get people to encircle them in the close to float, their to deprive the last resort. The language, one large attempted humiliation. Perhaps he is therefore also going to mention. Out of respect. By way of a refund. The silence is its white flag.

'Dus you think that I have made a representation of the life of my daughter?' ship's steward purports a gentle smile. 'I know what to do to get a good man?'

'I mean… what I wanted to say is that all parents have expectations. Sometimes a little too much. Perhaps sometimes also wrong expectations.'

Tirza has already said nothing time. They still on its beef chews.

'Wrong expectations? How do you know whether expectations are wrong?'

Atta shrugs. 'Well,' he says.

That is why a ship's steward itself but further. 'I have had expectations. I have drawn them back. As your soldiers to withdraw them, because I have time for claiming that expectations were not as good for Tirza. Also a father learns. I have no expectations, not of Tirza, not on its behalf. I do not expect anything.'

'I want some bread.' The voice of Atta sounds now even reroute arising.

Ship's steward cuts the. 'You're a good eater,' he says, and Atta begins at the bread to chew without the dipping in the gravy.

'And now?' requires Atta.

'And now? Now part i Tirza's expectations. In so far as they have. I have perhaps occasionally a View. Often not even. Why should I? I trust in its opinion. How to get a good man should be, I know it is not. I doubt whether even must aspire to. Is it not more important to remain a live human rights than a good man be? And you? What are your expectations of Tirza actually? Except on the sexual plane?'

'Papa,' says Tirza, 'we will skip that tonight and simply play Monopoly?'

The father serves everyone still has a glass of wine. 'It is a rather important subject,' he says, 'especially if you go to the magical center of the Aids epidemic.'

Previously talked often ship's steward sex life of man. How less sex he had, the more he talked about it. Not on the vulgar manner that most men own. On the information campaign, almost scientific way. He Ploos van the sex life of the man. Especially if Tirza's girlfriends remained a snack food, note he forged to thrash this out.

'I do not know what i expected Tirza,' says Atta soft. 'If you of someone, you expect something of those?'

'Are you ready with food?' requires a ship's steward.

Tirza nods.

He stacks the signs on each other and portrait he says: 'us you love Tirza?'

The sarcasm in his voice can not escape anyone. Here it is again, the man who love went, abolish the man who knew that he is going to pass.

Atta nods and ship's steward must think Ester feast at which he had welcomed, where he had lived go, even more than Tirza itself.

'that is nice that you love her. That is very good.'

'Papa,' says Tirza.

He also discusses silently.

At the rear of the cabinet is he Monopoly game.

It counts the money, gives everyone a pawn.

They focus on the game. The conversation is limited to the bones machines.

Only when a ship's steward is trying to win and Atta a mortgage should take on its streets, ship's steward: 'Have you actually read the Koran?'

The dice throws Atta. 'The most,' he says. 'also out of curiosity.'

He has two fours thrown.

'Curiosity?' across the board and bends the father to the boy.

'interest'.

Ship's steward looks at the hands of the boy, with which he holds a blue icon.

'8,' says ship's steward, "You have eight thrown. You come on my hotel.'

There have been previous he played monopoly as he the rent inde, ashamed and yet eager, at the end always bloodthirsty. As if he were then suddenly be reminded that everything that could be called a win was an excuse.

'I have him at me.'

'O YES?'

'Tirza was curious.'

'What?' requires a ship's steward. He knows it is no longer what it was all about. His answers are automatically, his thoughts are elsewhere.

'To the Koran.'

'Oh yes. I am also curious,' says the father. 'Forever. Not only to the Koran. To all of the man. For the other. The other has always fascinated me. Because the other determines who i am.'

The boy shakes his head. 'I determine who i am,' says Atta. 'I am Choukri. I like to play guitar. I love your daughter. That is who i am. It has nothing to do with other.'

They still play a minute or twenty further. The voltage is off. Who is going to win is now clear.

Tirza and her friend as first to top.

Ship's steward remains the same down to the fire in the fireplace to go out and the last glass and dishes to the kitchen. Slow chestairbag his game on, as though the movements hurt him. He let it on the table. Perhaps they can do a game tomorrow, it is a way to meet in the evening.

In the bedroom where his parents have slept well he opens the wardrobe, which is still a few suits of his father. A forgotten shirt.

Also it smell to the bale before he goes on the bed. Now he knows he is nothing sure, a black hole that also pent if the others look at him. As a presenter who has exercised too long only come to life when the red light on the camera starts to burn.

He will fall asleep, is to half three awake at night, he dresses civilised from, it lifts located in an old pajamas and sleep is again.

The next morning it is still rainy and gray. In his pajamas cooks ship's steward three eggs, but because Tirza and her friend lie in and he does not want to give them, eat it the eggs detached in the kitchen yourself.

Before he starts in the garden with the cutting of the grass, but if at eleven Tirza and her boyfriend still sleep, the insult both to him. He knocks at the door of the guest room. 'Tirza,' he calls. 'Solar Queen.'

He opens the door carefully.

His daughter still asleep. The blanket is only half on her. She is in so far as he can see completely naked. On the other side of the bed is Atta. Also completely naked.

Ship's steward remains in the door opening are watching his daughter. Tomorrow they fly to Africa. More than twenty-four hours he is on the airport of Frankfurt.

'Tirza,' he says, 'it is already eleven hours.'

Its only response is that they turn around. On the bedside table is the iPod, which they so happy, a black booklet, which they make notes about her life and in which they sometimes things such as jamming cinema tickets and train tickets, a single time also the account of a restaurant, a recipe for honey cake, but the label of a wine bottle.

He goes out of the room and close the door. Soft In the kitchen washes his hands. Then he in his Volvo. He puts his head on the steering wheel and if someone would have seen him, would certainly those have thought that ship's steward slept. After five minutes to have sat, start he the car and drive to the village. Although he has purchased already in Amsterdam, does he groceries. In the pastry shop he is recognized. We want a conversation about his parents start, but a ship's steward keeps the. Then he drinks still quick two glasses of white wine in the cafe for it to the outside house travels back.

Tirza and her friend are now awake. They sit down at the dining table. Tirza has a long T-shirt, nothing else. Atta wearing a jeans and a shirt that ship's steward can only be described as old.

He offers to eggs to cook for them or baking, but they want only fruit and a tea and coffee.

'Except what I have taken from Amsterdam,' he says, 'there are still grapes which i just bought in the village.'

He washes the grapes and brings them to a scale the living room.

Without that they say anything against takes a seat and sits down. Occasionally also eat he thought a grape. The pips He gulps.

If the bunch is eaten almost empty, he says: 'Let see him.'

'What?' requires Atta.

Not without satisfaction in the bubbler ship's steward notes the voice of the boy. The inconvenience. It is the inconvenience that the other human.

'You Koran,' says ship's steward, 'Let see him. You have him with you?'

'Top in my bag.'

Ship's steward shall examine the tros on a cool grape. 'I have my children agnostic raised, but I have read them or from the bible, like Tolstoy, and also from Turgenev. Do you know that beautiful meaning on the last page of Anna Karenina? "I will with my sense cannot understand why I pray and i will nevertheless continue to pray." You know what I am talking about?'

'I know Anna Karenina not.'

'Dat does not surprise me,' says ship's steward. 'Get him but also. Your koran.'

The Guy goes to the top.

Since they are sitting at the table. Father and daughter. 'You do a little hostile,' says they are soft.

'I? I keep the call is in progress. I show interest. I do my best.'

She shakes her head.

'Pap, do you think that you ever have a girlfriend, a real? I mean: do you think that you ever really good falls in love?'

He thinks of the wife, and to the worker from Ghana with whom he some time on a modest scale has had sexual relations. Nobody knows that further. Such things depends we are large clock. But the worker is him all those years girlfriend enough. In Love he was not on her. In Love. It is really something for Tirza to him to demand that he falls in love. As if it had all not difficult enough, it must also be in love. To whom? And furthermore: he has its yet? He has the solar queen. A real father, one that deserves that word is in love with his children. Life-long. To death. And even then.

'Must i a contact ad?' he asks. 'Is that what you say?'

'I do not know. I think that you know someone must search. That is surely mom continue. You just love again be, as I.'

Atta is downstairs. He has a green paper in his hands. What a ship's steward still wanted to say but He gulps.

'De bilingual edition,' says Atta. 'Special purchased for Tirza. In fact I am also agnostic.'

Browse the father also in, reads a piece. 'Nice,' he says, 'quite nice. But it is not a Tolstoy.'

And in an attempt to be less hostile he asks: "What can I do for you?'

'nothing' says Tirza. 'You can also nothing at all for us.'

He picks up his shoulders, then goes to the garden, starts again in its work. In any case it is dry. He picks up what browsing, pick weeds, retrieves the cutting out a few branches to pruning which he has seen over the head. The time goes quickly if you concentrated in the garden are at work.

Occasionally he thinks of the epilogue that his life is, to the worker from Ghana, which is naturally not as a friend can apply. A friend is someone with whom you have more than just what physical handling on a fixed date. But still.

It was gradually, unexpected and to everyone's satisfaction. On a day she was not only Hofmeesters lady, but also his mistress. It goes without saying that he had from that day also paid a little more. The woman from Ghana did not only Hofmeesters home clean, they also liked his body in order, they regul characterised the juices.

In addition he had her brought in contact with a lawyer who he knew from his students. The lawyer could mean anything from its. She was illegal, as all women in Ghana, but they made good clean. Ship's steward realized that there is a correlation between her willingness and its not completely legal status, but that didn't bother him not further. It is the illegality which people willing. Maybe it was he himself also called illegally, without knowing it. A certain willingness could not be denied him.

At sixes it starts to rain. He brings all the tool to the kitchen. He must tomorrow packing and travel. First to Frankfurt, then back to Amsterdam. This is also something that the garden maintenance. The grass, trees, shrubs.

He opens a bottle of wine and drinks a glass. 'Tirza,' he calls.

Ship's steward drinking his second glass. 'Tirza,' he calls again, 'Where are you?'

He runs to the living room. His daughter is now on the table.

A FRACTION OF A SECOND he needed to the scene. They have heard him nor given.

In the door opening tail to the animal, to the terrible, to the incomprehensible. The Koran is still on the table, and a bowl with the remnants of a bunch of grapes. The Monopoly game. He knows that he should go away, but he can not beveled, it seems as if he is highway hypnosis. He also understands why they cannot see him or hear, why are they not that there someone else in the room. It takes him effort in his daughter is still to see his daughter now with them as is, used, open is being torn. They Keep murmurs something.

He must hold. He is queasy as if he ate something wrong, a damaged oyster, a acute food poisoning. He is dizzy, he does a step backwards, is fixed to the gear lever next to the fireplace in its standard depends. Jörgen ship's steward pants as a cold dog.

The room is running him for the eyes, but they do not hear him. They do not see him. They go on to their game. So hot it yet? Love game.

Eventually he sneaks back to the kitchen, where he three glasses of wine and his face and hands.

Then he walks to the garden and despite the rain he begins to weed out the earth. Especially among the trees and along the edges of the lawn is a lot. He works as a madman, as though he were twenty. Without a pause to award contracts without wiping his hands. So he worked when his parents still lived, when he was still living at home, he worked as a dog, because his parents had taught him: only work makes happy. After a half hour he is wet of the rain and the sweat, everywhere is earth. Even in its ears.

He is the kitchen within, wipe off his hands on a tea towel, which black immediately. It does not matter.

Now he will hear them anymore. The game is delayed. Can it be called sex game? Is that not a mistake, begins where the not correct sex game ceases? Yes, that's it. In the event of sex keeps the on, there begin something else. The fact that what is no game more can be called. The death. There is sand in his ears.

'Tirza,' he calls. 'Tirza.'

He is going to the living room.

The iPod is on the table, the Koran, a dice yesterday evening that he has to appear to have forgotten mountains. The Monopoly game. He picks up the book, scroll back in. He shall submit the dundruk, which all the holy texts own but also some older parts of the Russian Library, back on the table.

Let his shoes large, muddy spots. He must pull them. But he does not work. From his hair dripping water. His shirt sticks to his back.

'Tirza,' he calls again.

He is going up the stairs, but halfway he remains. In the bathroom he hears the shower running, but it can also be the sound of the rain. They will have to take a shower. After the love game showering. The wife will always immediately jumped in the shower after he had practiced her love as if a ship's steward a kind of mud bath was. Tirza is even nicer than the wife in its early years.

He drops the stairs. In his hand he holds the die of the Monopoly game. That touch you always lost. Especially the earlier Ibi still was playing. Who could not do against hair loss. If they were lost them with the dice, and months later they did you than under the heater against.

In the kitchen he opens a new bottle of wine. This does he tastier. Italian gewürztraminer. He drinks two glasses of wine, makes his shoes clean. He drinks detached and think also, although he did not understand why, Ester which love wants to abolish.

Ship's steward decision to go and get food, he has no meaning to cook this last evening. He wants to be with her, with Tirza, only with her, enjoy the time that they were together. Still he will hear the sound of the shower, they do not stop with shower and they want to be hot. That you get from that fuck on the dining table.

'No,' says ship's steward soft against himself, 'it is the shower not, it is the rain. They are doing an afternoon siesta.'

He washes himself in the kitchen, his face, his hands, he feels so dirty. Top clothe he still quickly. He pulls a shirt of his father.

With a plastic bag over his head to the car he runs. Soon he drives to the village. It travels by ponds. The water splash high.

Although it is in this time of the year until ten hours dark, he drives with large light. The roads are deserted. In some he sees opblaasbadjes gardens. It has on something else.

The woman behind the counter at the Indonesiër recognize him.

'You are Mr ship's steward?' she asks. 'I know you have been in the past.'

He nods.

'What do you out.'

'I have worked in the garden.'

'In this emergency again?'

He ignores its note.

'I have for three people eat necessary, make it something tasty from, a little of this and a little of that and what additional Prawn Chips. My daughter loves Prawn Chips. And they will be back tomorrow to Africa. Namibia, Botswana, Zaire, they want to see everything.'

'Oh, Africa.' itself must to see they not think, and rightly so. There are so many beautiful things to see in their own country. If you have an eye for the small. The ants, the beach tents, the roads. The houses. The Birds, the dunes.

'I make it a small rice table of. Always Nice.'

'They are but a few months away. Next year she comes back to study.'

After a quarter of an hour he received two plastic bags containing hot food for three persons and extra Prawn Chips.

It travels to house, with the radio on. An artist he can not bring home sings in Dutch.

The rice, the meat and fish anytime he was on the table from. Really festive are not containers plastic, but to compensate for that he plugs candles. There is also in the lower plastic cutlery, that he decides to use but now he has suffered greatly from it.

'Tirza,' he calls, 'food'.

He brings the bottle of wine to the dining table and opens a new one.

They are still above, they are being so. They are back in bed, he knows he reminds of the past. Sex, excellent. But why then remain so long? Or even worse: fall asleep. If you are already in the middle of the day have sex, then move than do something, roll up your sleeves. Ibi was at least as very. How often he had not at the end of the afternoon her room door open and see her sleep with a guy in her arms? Sexes and sleep, and if he said some of it replied: 'You're crazy.'

But he was not mad he was concerned. Ship's steward knew the future as an all too frequently visited camping.

On the table Tirza's iPod. Idea free starts to play with a ship's steward Just as he does so without thought the caps in his ears. He is listening to music he can not home. It on and starts to dance.

As dance Tirza sometimes also with him in the kitchen or in the living room. The silent disco calls them the.

Normal dance ship's steward not, but now he is not afraid to be seen. He loses itself.

The rain is not delayed. The grass that he has sown again yesterday has been changed in a mud hole. He shall submit the iPod back on the table and runs to the garden. Sin, he thinks. Everything is washed away, all the seed. Road. Disappeared.

He puts a hand in the earth. They must learn to die. He is also in the process of doing just that. Ship's steward is a self-taught in the die.

And while he is, she crouched in his garden, he tries to imagine what will tomorrow. The last day, the day of Tirza's departure. The last day for the epilogue of his life begins.

He will get up early, as always. He will start the day with the making of a nice breakfast for three persons. He himself will the detached in the kitchen food, much hunger will he does not have. On these days he never hunger.

The breakfast for his daughter and her friend he will bring their in bed. They will sit upright in their bed, without saying anything. If they find it strange and uncomfortable outside, such a last day in the old Europe. Such a last day with a ship's steward, and his hand will tackle Tirza, for he is turned over to back down to continue. 'You need to think about love, PAP,' she will a whisper. 'Really good in love, just as I.'

At eleven they will start. To err on the side. Perhaps there are files, wegopbrekingen. You do not know. And you want to have to worry in the car, you would not of the nerves and the voltage at the airport arrival. Far too early they will arrive in Frankfurt.

They will have a cup of coffee in the Departures Hall, hastily, without too much to say. He will sweaty hands.

At check-in, he will leave them alone, the set that is not set, but a mistake. He will continue to wait at the sign which says 'meeting point'.

For them by the customs, will they once come back to him. Shy.

As far as he had to say, but if the moment he will be nothing else than to know: 'Beware. Only well on each other. Carefully do.'

Atta will cause him to hand.

It will ship's steward Tirza against itself and pressing.

Atta will polite a few steps backwards.

Ship's steward will fight against the tears, he will win the of the tears, he has always won by the tears.

'Does your mobile phone out there doing?' he will still have questions.

'Papa,' she will say, 'die do i really not that is much too expensive. If he already doing.'

He will squeeze in her arms. He will squeeze and pinch, he will despair squeezing out of her as the last remnants of toothpaste out of the tube.

'call me if you arrived. No matter how late. Call me. Collect call,' he will say.

They will release him. 'We need to the gate,' she will say.

'You have all the time.'

'It is still a final walk,' she will say.

He will tag along to the customs.

There will be a long line.

If the policeman will have its passport viewed, it will again have to turn around to her father to say goodbye. And he will continue to hold sway wave back and even if he is unable to see them, swinging and wave and even more enthusiastic. He has seen on countless occasions at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. He knows how to do it.

If it is almost completely dark, he understands that Tirza and her boyfriend in a deep sleep. He runs to the hallway and calls yet again to the top, but they do not respond. He will be the rice table should only be eaten. So rude is Mohammed Atta: everything to recline, use all, but nothing to contribute to the Community. Never social. Ship's steward reminds of Ibi and her friend. That appeared in the last no longer for dinner. That is the influence of the color handling. Anti-social behavior.

For he begins to eat he still pays a glass of wine. He is going to sit around the table and tail to the garden which has been of his parents, the garden where Ibi and Tirza have played and he is experiencing once again the day which will come. Because, prepared and well, he can better fight against the tears, the tears which he himself does not permit which are superfluous. Disgusting.

For two hours at night he state. He could not sleep. Careful nobody to wake, he sneaks down the stairs. Ship's steward opens a bottle of wine, Italian gewürztraminer, and drink a glass of hastily, as if someone could catch him.

He is afraid that he loses his understanding, he must do something to calm down. In his underpants off he goes into the garden. It is stopped raining. The fluorescent tube in the kitchen gives him enough light. And he starts the garden on order. Everything he makes on the side. The grass, the flowers, the bushes. He distributes the earth, he sows again in the grass. Yes, this is it. He works so hard that despite his scarce clothing does not feel the cold.

After an hour he is the kitchen within and still open a bottle of wine, although the previous still for three quarters full. He must not be afraid, Tirza will come back from Africa. The Tirzaloze episode will a short episode. He will survive that episode.

It is already light if he stops working in the garden, if he clean the tool and in the kitchen on the ground to dry.

Conceived as he is he still makes the overflow and the living room clean as if there were any time to come visit high. He is also in the browse Koran. A wonderful book for wonderful people.

Then he lying in bed. She wants that i love word, he thinks, they want that i love a good word, but I am already well in love, I already exists.

He sees a chance to sleep over two hours.

That Sunday everything is exactly as he thought. For once the future it proposes not to disappoint. He is there on Frankfurt Flughafen wielding, exactly as it is the day before has proposed.

As a ship's steward has proposed it remains swinging, initially only with his right hand, than with both hands. It stretches from, so that Tirza his hands is still to be seen, above all those other swinging hands.

Until it the evocative feels that he is just like Schiphol is to no one to say goodbye.

Slowly, almost wandering, he runs to the parking garage. He must also to his car search.

If he has found him, he is sitting behind the wheel and noted that there are still earth under his nails. He has a weekend dug in the mud. In the mud lived, you might say.

At the time that he wants to start the dashboard he sees on the iPod of Tirza. He wants to run the vehicle, to the Departures Hall, but he realizes that time he has not by the customs.

Also he remains indecisive with the little thing in his hands. The charger is also at. You call it. Perhaps he can they send to her youth hostel. In any case he wants to let it know that they will not have to worry that her iPod is lost. It is so attached to that thing. But it is already not more. He gets her voice mail, he hears her voice. "Hi, this is Tirza. I am also not. But let but a nice message.'

He is doing the caps of the iPod in his ears and listens to Tirza's music. Very occasionally a number comes beyond that he knows. The Andrews Sisters has also put them on. For him. He here.

With nearly one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour he drives on the motorway in the direction of Amsterdam.

In the vicinity of Oberhausen he must stop at a gas station. He can no longer.

If in trance he walks to the toilet. All toilets are busy. He certainly wait five minutes until there is a free. Than he gives. Prawn, wine, more prawn crackers.

In the middle of a few lorry drivers refreshes he ashamed for the mirror. It is not much help. Uncertain he runs back to the car.

He is sitting behind the wheel. Again he takes the iPod in his hands. He is looking forward to Africa while he thinks. They are now an hour or two in the air. Where will they be? Somewhere above the South of Italy.

Without thought he plays with the iPod, he wonders whether he out of the house has locked correctly, he turns the iPod to only now and see that on the rear slightly engraved.

He must endeavor to be read in this light.

'Solar Queen' condition there. Divided over two rules. Sun Queen.

He shall submit to the device on the seat next to him and leave the vehicle.

Again he walks to the toilet. No, he rent.

He must give again. Everything is now off.

Hanging above the pot, still not in a position to move in this direction, panting slightly: 'Solar Queen. Sun Queen.' The word suggests to reassure him. As long as that word, there are still world.

Back in the car he stops the iPod and charger in his briefcase.

Minutes he remains so. Perhaps a quarter of an hour. For someone to hard on his vehicle is correct. He is right about the end of. Yes, he is not sleeping, he may not sleep here. He knows.

Ship's steward looks at his watch.

Italy, they also have to leave. Libya, they will now are. They are all above Africa.

'I have the of the tears won,' says ship's steward against the steering wheel.

2

He is at half back in the Van Eeghenstraat. Only his bag with clothes he retrieves from the vehicle. The tools tomorrow he brings to the barn. He opens the door carefully, in the assumption that the wife has fallen asleep.

But it is sitting in the living room, at the dining table with a newspaper and a bottle of wine. He looks at her.

They will ignore him or them has not heard him. A minute he remains so, the bag in his hand.

'What are you doing?' he asks eventually.

Now she looks at the newspaper.

'a Crypto grams," she says. 'I have been there for the whole day. It is a difficult.'

They touch with the pin on her arm.

'What happened?" asks them. They will not sound alarmed. Previously bozig.

He put the bag down, he gets closer. The taste of vomit is still in its mouth.

'What do you mean? What would have happened?'

'how you look, You looks so… So… How I will say, you looks so screwed out.'

He is going to sit around the table, rubs his hands against each other. 'It is the emergency. I have worked in the garden. There was a lot of work to be done. I should there more often. The perfunctorily there. Dead branches, weeds, still more dead branches, more weeds.'

'You stinks," she says.

'What you can smell then?'

He travels to the bottle of wine, but sees that time is empty. He would make sense in a glass, but well at this hour of the night to open a new bottle.

'Stank. Nothing special. Just unpleasant odours. How was it? The uitzwaaien?'

He nods, as if they were almost relieved now back to him by calls that his child has taken away. It has swung such as parents that do if their children leave home for an extended period of time. It is only now as though he knows what he is doing here. Coming home, that is what he is doing. Come Home.

'Well,' he says, fast and good. You know how those things go. In an airport. There is always in a hurry.'

Than he is on the table and he feels how they leave him while he is viewing. He knows that they shall examine him, that they are wondering why it took so little mangy alongside looks like. But not for long. Not really. The crypto grams calls. How much interest you can really understand another, especially if you that other know so well? And especially as long al. So terribly long. Half a life.

In the bedroom clothe he. He takes a shower. After he has dried, he retrieves with a pair of scissors the earth under his nails away. The he succeeds not entirely clean his nails. He is doing a clean pants, spraying deodorant under his underarms.

In his underpants off he goes to the bottom. Without real aim. The watering plants, that is a possibility. The provision of everyday actions that must be sufficiently objective. The reassurance that this entails. More he also not necessary, more he seeks not now.

The wife is still at the table with its crypto grams.

He is going to sit on the couch, on the other side of the room. In fact he would want to create music, but he can also not move.

'Are you the door not been out?' he asks.

'Only a quarter of an hour and in the garden," she says, without her gaze of the newspaper to avert. 'Why should I? With this?'

Ship's steward shall examine his feet. His toe nails would once again may be cut.

'I have showered,' he says.

'MEWE.'

Now he can find power to stand on. He runs to her.

'I am chilly again. I no longer off season.'

'Dat is nice," she says. Emphatically.

Ship's steward at the dining table, in his underpants. He does not crypto grams. He has no patience for. Crypto grams are for people who do not take seriously the language.

He feels the need to defend, but he does not know what. He knows only that the proof is that you are alive and that you feel a need. No desire, that sounds too romantic, no desire, that smacks of meat. A need. For example to talk with the wife. To make its voice heard. The voice of the mother of his children.

'I did you know that… that I AND THE WORKER?' he asks.

'De worker and you? What? The old?'

'De new, from Ghana. Did you know that they, and I… that we had something? I have told you that?'

She shakes her head. 'No," she says, 'I did not know. You have not told us. Is it important? Do I need to know? Would you like to say something about it?' There is a light irony in her voice.

'Not important. I thought only: I tell you.'

They shall submit to the pin. 'Die woman from Ghana?' she looks at him unbelieving. Now also surprised. They will find it, he sees, a most remarkable story.

He is going to sit. 'Yes'. In Ghana. I said it. On Thursday. Between the afternoon I rode of my work home and then… than i took her. That is what you do that? Not?'

'Yes, so you can say. If that is what you did, I have no idea, but if that is what you did, then you should mention so.'

'On Thursday afternoon. To twelve hours. I usually took care that I was absolutely on time. It has started once when i was ill. A nasty flu. In fact accidentally. By coincidence. You were already road. You were on the houseboat. It then became a ritual. It is not that we do not speak. You must not think. But they barely speaks Dutch, her English is also mediocre. I therefore took her. Here on the bench. We went to the top. Such a bedroom is so… So intimate. As personal. I also had all books and newspapers on the bed. I thought it was easy. And I thought: if it comes up, do i need to remove. As it was over, Undressed i. Sometimes I took a shower. As I very gezweet had. There are days that you have as sweat, that it takes so long that the difficult. These days, you know them. She went on to the House and I peddled my way back to my work. It is not that I was in love with her, although of course that might have been possible. It is beautiful. It was… it was sex between friends.'

'Between friends. Aha. Why you tell me this?'

He gets her to. Her hand, her arm. Only with his fingertips. If a blind.

'I thought: it is good if you know it. All those secrets. Why now? Why should we ignore the? For each other? We are strangers, yet? Friends, but strangers. Acquaintances. Exen. Maybe we friends, maybe.'

'Maybe.' She smiles. 'Maybe," she says. 'but the last month have you done nothing. In any case I have noticed anything.'

'No, no, we do nothing for a while. She understands the. She has not called for. They may also be without. But I give her yet its perk.'

There is a cork on the table. The shower has the taste in the mouth cannot delete. Vomit. Prawn crackers. Old, wet Prawn Chips.

'I actually find your normal?' he asks.

'Normal?' she looks at him, again surprised, non-ya. 'Why? Why do you do that?'

"Just. Without reason.'

He picks up the cork on, let him turn around.

'Am I normal?'

"God, Jörgen, why do you want to know? I mean is that not a bit late? You are almost retired. You have until now been saved, so it will be loosened. It does not more. What you are. I mean it is over. Your life is ready. The viewable not.'

The cork fall to the ground. He grabs him.

'But When can you say,' he goes further, 'I have a normal sex life? If you do not have sex? Once or twice per week, in a further monogamous relationship, in the bedroom and one in the quarter after a party for friends, in the kitchen. When it is normal, the sex life of human beings? When can you without lying to say: 'I have a healthy sex life."?'

Still groped his fingertips her arm, her shoulder, its neck and now also her face.

It stores the newspaper close. 'I do not know. I do not think that you should ask me whether you are normally. And what is normal. Do you mean what is the standard? What is the average? How often they do it? The other people? I know you too long, to good, I can say nothing about you, ask your colleagues. Ask your daughters maybe. Ask the others.'

His head is true as an infected wound and yet it can not be called a headache.

'What stands are normally?' he wants to know. It is now no longer from what he says and what he does not say. What he betrays, what he does, which secrets it involved the grave in will drag. 'What are not normal? If there is blood from the anus, is it still normal? Where does the abnormal? Where is the border? Where is the moment you realize: Damn, i am somewhere, I have a limit is exceeded, and I can not return, even if I would like, I can not return. I am on the other side, but what is the other side? What is it?' His finger rest on its nose.

'There is blood from the anus? By whom? In the event that woman from Ghana?'

It sounds like a joke from her mouth. A Pointe. But he has not heard the beginning, and now that he does not know why he must laugh.

Ship's steward is silent, he has no idea what he should say more. Half does he expect the wife will now have to get up and move to the top, but they are stuck.

'Maybe,' he says after a time, 'is the most normal ultimately not have sex. Or only with yourself in the bathroom. You early in the morning, lying on the bed while i coffee. Only with your thoughts and half fantasies, indefinite, onuitgeleefde fantasies for which no one can punish you.'

She picks its glass, where even a glimmer of wine in it. The empty them.

'I was your imagination," she says, 'You know yet? Your imagination, that I was.'

He nods. He is tired, his thoughts fade. 'My fantasy,' he does so. 'Yes, that were you.'

They state. 'I go to bed.' She folds the newspaper on the glass. 'You must just not there so much to think about," she says. 'What you do with that woman doing. It is but the worker. There is no in. I mean: hello, that woman comes from Ghana, which will certainly have experienced worse things. And she is our work star. Your work applicant.'

She runs to the kitchen. He is going to follow her. For the worktop and he remains he to clock that tail above the worktop depends. 'They are now above Mali,' he says. 'or Cameroon. How would it?'

'Who?'

'Tirza and Mohammed Atta.'

Together with him tail them a few seconds to the clock.

'or maybe they are above Ghana. Maybe they fly now above the family of your work applicant.'

She smiles and they saves a poor man with whom they have children.

'I am ill?' he whispers in her ear. 'Is that what I am? Is that what the people do not know?'

They release. 'But they know it. It may be their only did not care. As long as they are not subject to it.'

She goes to top. She runs gently, like they could make someone wake up.

'What are they then?' he calls her after. 'If I am ill, what are they then?'

Now he opens but a bottle of wine to the taste in the mouth.

He drinks one and a half glass. And he calls yet again to above: 'What are they then?'

There is no answer.

Seven days after the departure of Tirza asks the wife to ship's steward: 'has actually already phoned them?'

'Who?'

'Who? Of course Tirza.'

He shakes his head.

'They would call when they there was?'

'Dat would they do, but they did not done.'

They sit in the garden. It is hot.

The wife zont topless to the to prevent staining which stick to the sunbathing with bikini.

'Must we are worried?' requires a ship's steward.

'Of course not.' She picks sunscreen and lubricates is in. 'I just wonder whether they had already phoned. Also never called Ibi if they had been traveling. But Tirza. I do not know. I asked the wonder. It seemed to me to be something for her to call. Have you checked your email?' She lubricates thoroughly, as if it is her work.

'I have its called twice,' he says. 'On its mobile. They also has no e-mail is sent. Not for me in any case. We do not ask to you?'

'To me they have never sent an e-mail, Jörgen. And? When you called her?'

'I got her voice mail.'

The wife put the sunglasses.

'Yes, they of course, has no range. What do you think?'

Against the sun he has set up a straw hat. Since he is, He burns kalend quick on his head, even in the shade. It is red and starts to itch.

"I will call someone?' he suggests.

'Who wants to call you?'

'De youth hostel for example, the youth hostel where they are the first days.'

'Jörgen, Tirza is there with her boyfriend, they are in Africa, it is hot. She is on holiday. Keep you a little on the plain. Do you know what those two all the time are doing? They are with the levering.'

'Daarvoor did they not to Africa? They wanted to see something, understand something. Something. And you began to ask: "has already phoned them?" You will here for unrest. Am censuring me.'

'I do not care for unrest. I proposed a neutral question. She has actually already called? This is a neutral question.'

'No, that was not a neutral question. Not just the way you early.'

'Listen, you darlings is a wipkip, you have to accept. It is not so bad.' Its voice will be heard treiterig mockery.

'hold on,' he calls, 'die offensive language you. Stop there. The only wipkip which we have had in the family are you.'

In the kitchen he opens a cold bottle of wine. He likes the bottle against his forehead. A wipkip. How can you mention your daughter a wipkip? What do I have to be someone to do that?

That evening he calls with the youth hostel in Windhoek where Tirza the first days would stay. He has all the information it had about her trip about written in its agenda, as befits a good father.

A woman who speaks English neatly takes. They have never heard of a ship's steward Tirza. They can also find no booking. Not even that. No, a mistake is excluded. Everything is kept. She did not. Not the last few weeks. Perhaps last year. May seem a long time ago. That could be.

'One moment,' he says.

'How would that are actually Choukri last name?' he calls to the wife.

She looks at him surprised at from the bank. 'No idea, I thought you knew that. He was called yet Atta you think. Atta was his name, not? How should I know how that is hot?'

'Thank you, thank you for all your efforts,' he says by the telephone and he hangs up.

He is going to sit on the couch. There buzzes something in his ears. He has once again load of sound is not there.

'Listen, Jörgen, Tirza not running in seven locks at the same time. Bye you not as a lovesick teenager. They dive again. She wants to rest of us. It is simply to another youth hostel. A better, with cleaner showers and less dirty beds. I know a lot.'

'Why should they want peace and quiet of our? I have left her with rest, and you have all her left alone, you have you not to its attention. Rest. Where have you on?'

They cross a cigarette.

'And furthermore you make you also ensure,' he goes further. 'I see to your face. For the first time in your life you start to worry. It is late, but better late than never.'

'I am not worried. That is yet to come. That is still a long way off. I am just curious. I am curious to know how they can. That is all. May I am not more interested in my own daughter? Would you like to its really only for you? Well, I have unkind things about its said but what mother does not do that? I was nicer when i had her age. Spicier. And you know it, Jörgen, you know that I speak the truth.'

"Well," he says, 'Oh, Tirza should also are.'

If the wife, he goes to sleep Tirza's room and he begins to search. He has no idea what he is looking for. A reassurance likely. But there is nothing to be found. Nothing on a reassurance. The video diaries of which he has already read. A calendar with its e-mail address and password, appointments that are crossed out after they have been fulfilled. Photos. Letters of girlfriends and friends. A notebook with short messages of which he is only after a time understands that the smses are that she has written. Sms and of friends, he thinks. 'I miss you. Where are you?' That type of messages. Nicely written down in a booklet with the date and time next to it. Only no sender.

He is going to sit on her bed, he looks around. On the desk a pouch with make-up, for which no place was in the backpack.

Ship's steward is on, opens its wardrobe, the clothes hang on color, he picks up a pair of shoes, tail to the soles as if he were a shoe maker. He will then back onto its bed. It is nicely done. She has the tidy. Its ass lies half under the blanket. Each time they come in. So it seems the if he is here. Each time they come home, if a party, tired and hoarsely, the smell of cigarette and alcohol around them. Downstairs in the kitchen are her friends after a glass of one or other of the drink.

He goes on the bed, press his head in her pillow, puts his arms around her blue donkey and trying to sleep. He finds four hairs on the cushion of Tirza. It will succeed him not to fall asleep.

Early in the morning he goes to his own bedroom. But even there he cannot sleep. He is seated upright in his bed. He looks through the lace curtains how the light.

To wake up the wife. 'What is there?' she panting slightly. 'Jörgen, why you will not sleep?'

'I look at the sun.'

She picks her watch from the bedside table.

'It is still early. Go to sleep. You woke me up.'

'I can't.'

'What not?'

'Slapen.'

'lie down, than val you will sleep.'

She turns around, pulls the blanket over in better.

He continues to sit upright.

'You know that I am not more work? That I no longer have?'

First come there is no reaction. Then she asks: 'Where You Go around each morning?'

'To Schiphol.'

'And what do you do?'

'I walk around. I keep the eyes.'

'You love the eyes? You can walk around?'

'First by the Departures Hall. Then by the arrivals hall. I swing people.'

Now they sit upright. The wife is fully awake.

'Who sweep you off?'

'people. No one can be waved goodbye. That swing me.'

They rubs on her face, by her hair.

'Why do you no longer?'

'They had me no longer necessary. They went to the war with the new soldiers win.'

'What war?'

'No idea. The war for the reader I suspect. The books War.'

'And you could find no other work? In the event of another publishing house? In a book trade? A library?'

'they charged me to my pension. I am too old to still be released. But I did not have more. I am no longer usable. I am sitting in the way of their only. The new soldiers.'

They get off the bed and walk to the bathroom. He hears her puddles.

As she goes back next to him and asks: 'And now?'

'I go to Schiphol Airport, I said anyway. It is interesting, so'n airport. You see everything, but actually see you always the same. It is a type of industrial process. An abattoir. There something disappears and there is something else in return.'

He must sneezing.

'Why she phoned not?' he asks.

'Who? Tirza? Jörgen, hold. This is a form of terrorism. Your unrest terror. Your concerns are terror. It is infectious.'

'I go there,' he says after a few seconds of silence. 'I need there.'

'Where To?'

'To Africa.'

'What are you going to do there? Looking for work? Do you think that you are not suddenly become unusable?'

'No work search. I go for Tirza. It is not normal, as long as we have heard nothing. I would myself the rest of my life remonstrations.'

'Do not hysterical, Jörgen.'

'I do not hysterical. I know myself. I want to make myself not to reproach. Later'.

They stacks the cushions behind better.

'Where do you want to search? In the youth hostel they have never heard of it. Where do you start? Are you on the street with a board? Are you cafes with a thumbnail?'

'Wind Angle is not large, says it. People will have seen her. She is a striking appearance. Perhaps it is superfluous. Well, then I have a few thousand euro discarded. Also no disaster.'

She picks him with his arm. 'helps not.'

'What?'

'It is eight to ten. She is with a man. Jörgen, she is no longer a child.'

'beginning not about which wipkip. I save you if you about the wipkip begins.'

He holds his head. He has more memories than good for him. They walk through each other, are reminders. His thoughts confused him.

'It has other things on its head than to call us,' says the wife now quiet. 'And it does not help. She is on a trip around the world or how you want to name. And then they study. Or they will remain forever on a trip around the world. Or she begins as Ibi an inn, but they will not return here, Jörgen. Take a pet if you too quiet. Go to work in a home for the elderly If you need to claim and caring about, but it would be pointless to go to Africa. You make your ridiculous. And even if your hair, will give you a faltering steps. She has gone. I mean it is out of the house. She begins her own life, without you. You will not want to believe. But they can. People can live without you. I have been. Ibi can. It will also be Tirza. And furthermore: I am again. You have now had no longer Tirza?'

'and if there is something happened?'

'and if there is something has happened, then you are now too late, Jörgen. If they by ten negroid is raped and murdered, than it doesn't matter whether you take the plane or a week later'.

They squeeze in his arm as if that her words.

Ship's steward is quiet. Its arguments are convincing and yet they can not calm him. He has the evocative feeling that they themselves do not completely by its own arguments convinced. He must be there. Peace of mind is that not what counts as the epilogue of your life is started? He must for his own peace of mind. And for those of the spouse.

'Let's play,' he says soft.

'What than, what would you like to play again now?'

'as before.'

'What we played in the past?'

He takes a deep breath. He must concentrate. Who wants peace of mind, should first and foremost create order in the head.

'De living room was the Vondelpark.'

'Yes, yes," she says, 'i know.'

'You was the girl on bike. It was night. Everywhere was the night.'

'Can I further recall.'

'And I was the rapist with the knife.'

'But Jörgen…' They purr about his hair. 'We played when we were in love. It was a fun game. Now is not a fun game. Now it is a sad game. We must not play. That is not good.'

He picks up its pulse. 'Let's play one more time,' he says, 'one more time. Let us do as if it is earlier.'

'Dat does not.'

'Why not?'

'It is not earlier. It is now. It is summer. You are discharged, at least not really redundancies, removed, that is what you are, on non-active. You are unusable, you yourself said to me, and I think you always was unusable. You may in your hands that they are squeezing the rear voile. And Tirza is in Africa and we hear nothing from her, I am… I am someone who can no longer. That is why I am here. What should we play? For whom?'

He loves her wrist more firmly. 'One More,' he says, 'for i go to Africa. As in the past. Please.'

On non-active. The words in his head. That is the so that is what they have done with him. It feels like it is only now up to him by calls.

'Please call first for you to nou long journeys.'

'Met whom?'

'Met the Dutch embassy in Namibia for example, perhaps they know something.'

He let her, they get out of bed, she pulls the curtains open.

'If something has happened, they know it,' she whispers, 'but I am almost certain that they just want somewhere in the desert or the jungle. That they are happy. It is Africa, have you do not go anywhere telephone cells.'

She turns around. 'Well," she says, 'well. We play one more time.'

He comes to her. She picks him in his neck. He puts his hands on her shoulder. 'but only because we are broken, Jörgen," she says, 'the only reason. Remember.'

In the afternoon he receives the Dutch embassy in Windhoek. They have heard nothing of an accident or a crime, so everything will be in order. The man on the phone says that he is not worried. The public telephones in Namibia working with maps and that are not widely available. Certainly not in the desert.

Almost literally gives a ship's steward the by the wife.

They live as if nothing has happened, no houseboat, no departure, no return, no final exam celebration. They live as on a float boat that loss making. Waiting for wind them in a certain direction will push.

Each morning a ship's steward to Schiphol and leaves although the wife there a few times something of said, calls they do not meet that he should stop that idiotic fuss. He has explained to her that he is really the house, that he would otherwise be crazy. That is why he departs in the morning with his briefcase and he runs by the departure and arrivals hall and browse the in-between in manuscript of the author in Azerbaijan. In order not to be crazy.

Spacious two weeks after he has Tirza taken away, says the wife in the evenings in the garden: 'Maybe we should call one more time?'

'Met whom?'

'Met the embassy in Windhoek. Perhaps cease the public transport there and they sit somewhere. Or there is a sand storm. About Namibia read you will never do anything in the newspaper, have you ever read something about?'

He is on his garden chair and begins to polar bears. 'What can i say?' he asks. "Sorry, but cease the public transport with you? There is a sand storm? Who says that the embassy to draw up reports on each miniscule zandstormpje? They explained to me mad. In addition they can naturally only lifts, learn to know me that color performances. We are talking about Africa. Not on the Alsace, or the Austrian Alps. And I have already used the embassy called. We know that they are going to continue to.'

'sit. It helps nothing when you as defeats. Since it is not better.'

He gets into a scale with nuts which the wife next to its seat. It is a nice evening. Hot and not too humid.

'call you,' he says. 'call you. Or else I go there. Perhaps I should just get there. This does not make any sense. This waiting here. This wrangling. This wait. The panic nothing likely.'

It is a time, they bending the nuts from the container to collect his cases.

'Yes,' says they as they are ready, 'maybe you there.'

'What do you mean?'

He is of his piece.

'As I am doing.' She eats the nuts that have fallen on the ground. 'Maybe you there. What can we do?'

The garden chairs on which they sit are old. Ship's steward at that time was a shame to have to invest a lot in garden furniture. He will be pleased to make a good impression, and he is mainly because of its surroundings of a certain style but the garden furniture has no priority.

'And then,' he says, 'if i go?'

'You began it. It was your idea. Then you will find her. Then we are reassured. So it will continue. And then… Yes, then I do not know.'

He leans back on. 'You,' he says, 'You have you not to its concern over the last few years you have not even more called. Not even called. You had to pressure. God should know that. And now you play here to the concerned mother, the woman who could not sleep because the unknown is where her daughter in Namibia exactly whereabouts, if they still is. Maybe they already in Botswana. Or Zaire.'

'I still had a life next to my children, yes. That is not a crime. That is my right.'

'Next? Do you call that next to it? It was not next to it. It was over them, there cross through it. Not next to it.'

'What I also have done over all these years and not done, and what I have said about her, and also what they said to me, I keep her mother. I am no longer your wife, but I am still her mother.'

He is. In the kitchen he keeps his wrists under cold water. He shivering.

Slowly dries his hands.

He sees how they the garden chairs folding and into the barn. They are cold. They put the wine glasses and the nuts on a tray. She runs to him. She looks at him.

'Well,' he says soft, 'I go there. You are right. I should do it. It is better. The unusable goes to Africa.'

They put the tray on the worktop and picks up his hand with a tenderness that he will find provocative. In this phase of his life is tenderness shocking.

'probably find them the fun too, if you were suddenly to emerge in Africa. You know how fond Tirza on you? She is really terrible love you.'

'probably,' he says, 'probably she likes. It would not surprise me. She loves me.'

He raises his hand, he holds his wrists back under the cold tap water.

The next morning he buys a ticket, via Zurich and Johannesburg to Wind Angle, with South African Airways. He must still be waiting three days before he can leave. The next few days are the flights completely full. Cheap tickets are not more.

That last days it does not go to Schiphol. He works in the garden, does groceries, runs a round by the Vondelpark.

The evening before his departure to pick up his suitcase in, a small blue suitcase that formerly he has taken a few times on mission. New York. Turin. Ach, many missions he has now also been created.

He picks up not much of a pak, what shirts, two summer trousers. Long he will not continue. Ten days should be enough. In ten days you can do a great deal.

On a Saturday afternoon in August for half an hour or two state he on the point to leave the Van Eeghenstraat. The wife is in the garden a ladies sheet to read.

'I go forward to outside,' he calls from the kitchen, 'I have called a taxi.'

'Wait," she says, 'I have in front of you.'

She goes to the bedroom and comes back with a packet.

'What is this?' he asks.

'grasp but from.'

He makes the packet of open. There is a dress in a blue summer dress.

'For Tirza. He was in the offer, and he is precisely its size. I thought: a raised, they will be able to use it properly.'

He smiles. 'What nice of you. What kind.' He watches the dress. 'He will continue its good,' he says. 'It is its taste. She loves simple things.'

Carefully pick up the dress again.

Soon he opens the suitcase, under his bag is still fit for the package of the spouse.

'I call you,' he says, 'When I am there.'

He gives her a volatile kiss on the right cheek.

But it does not return to the garden, she runs to go with him to the front door.

'It will well," she says, 'it is good. It is that we have become old, therefore, we make it our concern for our children. Because we are old and our bored.'

'Yes,' he says, 'That's the. Because we have become old. Go back to the garden. Soon the rain starts again. Enjoy the sun also.'

'Here," she says, "it should also bring you.' She gives him an envelope.

Hesitant to pick up to him.

'What is in it?'

'a photo. I thought: it is good if you have a photo with you.'

He takes the photo from the envelope. Tirza, not long before her graduation celebration, a few days before, two weeks perhaps.

'Dank you,' he says. 'Dank you. Where did you find it?'

'In her room. You never know. Perhaps he comes in handy.'

'You know the never,' he says and stops the envelope in his pocket.

'Have you actually told Ibi?' she asks.

'I not,' he says. 'I am not. I have her the last few days not more.'

It goes back to the garden and he goes in the porch. He has his suitcase at his briefcase, containing the iPod, the charger, Tirza's agenda and its notebook, the manuscript of the author from Azerbaijan and its four pencils.

There will be at least ten minutes wait at the taxi. A neighbor says it in passing goodbye. He runs for his own house up and down as a beast in a cage. There are baggage is in the portico on him to wait. Such baggage appears to be something to say against him, but he does not know what.

On the flight to Zurich he has no one next to it and if it to sleep, but between Zurich and Johannesburg next to a he sits French couple. During the food is developing a call. They are going to explore South Africa and he? They want to know.

'I go visit my daughter,' he says in moderate French.

'In Johannesburg?'

'In Windhoek.' He cuts in his chicken. Bleed the call death.

After the food he retrieves the manuscript and his pencils and he begins to read routinely.

In Johannesburg he must wait nearly four hours. His head hurts of fatigue. He orders coffee, sit by the window with a view of the aircraft, but he has no rest for a long time to continue.

With the briefcase in his hand he runs on the airport, which is not great, especially if you compare it with Schiphol or Frankfurt.

A few times he retrieves the envelope from his inside pocket and he looks at the photo of the solar queen. In a shop he buys an adapter plug for South Africa and Namibia, and a hat against the sun. The sun there will be bright. He puts the hat and looks in a mirror, and decision to keep him. He takes pride of ship's steward not, he gives him a little extras.

Now he is a man with a hat.

He runs well in advance to the gate.

A ground air hostess says: 'We have not yet started with boarding, sir. About a quarter of an hour.'

He is doing a few steps back and remains so wait.

She looks at him, the air hostess than she asks: 'Are you going to spend your holiday in Namibia?'

He takes the envelope from his inside pocket. 'I go visit my daughter,' he says in reasonable English. He shows her the photo.

'a nice child," she says. 'Congratulations. And of that lively eyes.'

He looks itself again to the photo, perhaps to the liveliness of Tirza's eyes.

In the bus to the airplane is the human him at that have changed. Still blank, but otherwise blank than him. Other garments, other faces, even other movements. He hears German, Afrikaans, Italian, a little English.

In the plane to Wind Angle he sits next to an Italian who belongs to a group. The Italian examines a travel guide. With a pin striped he occasionally something.

To Hofmeesters surprise they also get on this short flight food. Meat with beans. He eats a few beans, he has not hungry.

'First time?" asks the Italian in almost inaudible if the trays again English are retrieved.

'First time what?'

'Africa? First time?'

'First Time,' says ship's steward. 'My first time.'

'To me,' says the Italian, 'second time. I hold of Africa.'

Ship's steward nods.

He will fall asleep, he wants to sleep, Long and deep. A winter sleeping which is gradually transformed in a total absence of everything alive of life itself.

The landing is accompanied with a great deal of turbulence. Ship's steward is not afraid, but the shaking back and forth makes him nauseous. Afraid if it has been that he will have to give in, he is securely fixed to the seat.

If they are landed almost looks out of the window in the expectation something of a city, or at least a few houses. But he sees only desert. Desert in different colors. A little red, a little gray.

The airport of wind angle is small, on the endearing af, ship's steward.

In the overhead baggage compartment he retrieves his hat. He let others lead courageously. He has no rush. The others do.

There is only one other aircraft at the airport, a large, gray aircraft on which 'Luftwaffe'. If a ship's steward the staircase is descended, he remains stationary. He breathes the warm air in. Here is landed Tirza, here she seized. This is Wind Angle. In the nearby area should they are, here they wanted.

He looks at the air. Sheep clouds, very many sheep clouds. The heat is still inform him. It is dry heat.

If it after a minute or ten waiting in a row is arrived at a regular sums owing, give it the form that was on the plane has already completed.

'What is the reason for your visit?' she asks.

'Tourists' he had nevertheless underlining it on the form? They believe him?

He takes the envelope from his inside pocket. He let her see the photo. My daughter,' he says, 'I come its surprise you.'

She looks not to the photo. They put a stamp on his passport.

At the baggage band in a small, somewhat cramped hall is only really him that he looks slightly different than the other passengers, with its neat trouser from Amsterdam, are slightly worn but neat required, his hat. He is the alien. It cannot be denied. It is a state that it is not concerned. The temporary that the alien is stuck him. The actions of the alien beyond never far, the consequences of his actions are limited, the alien is so gone again. He is naturally light. If a leaf. If a plastic bag.

When he has his suitcase, he runs and determination to the arrivals hall. On a determined step in such cases. In fact he always has been temporarily. A temporary man, so they could also him so easy on non-active.

Also the arrivals hall will see it endearing. A doll house. In a corner he sees an ATM. He tries to get cash, but it is not possible.

The exchange office is closed.

In his pocket he retrieves a handkerchief and wipe clean his face. He takes a deep breath. In vain he looks something on a tourist information point appears.

Then he walks with determined step out. His shoes, which he still in Amsterdam has polished, Glimmen.

A young man called upon: 'Taxi?' he has Hofmeesters suitcase already and for ship's steward good bite and can understand what is going on, he sits behind in a blue Mercedes from the seventies.

'Wind Angle?" asks the young, dark driver.

'Wind Angle,' says ship's steward.

'It is over forty kilometers, you know, boss?' The driver speaks English with an African accent.

'I do not know. But it does not matter. I have to go to Wind Angle.'

The vehicle is started. Ship's steward is running the window open.

'Where in Windhoek, boss?" asks the driver.

'I do not know yet. I find a hotel, a good hotel, you can recommend something? And call me a boss.'

He takes the handkerchief back from his pants, but he will receive his face not dry.

'I will call you not a boss. I am Jefried. You do not hear in the event of a group?'

'No, I am not one of a group. I travel alone.'

Jefried Runs fast. But there is no traffic so that saves. However are looking for ship's steward sitting on the rear bench seat to a belt. That they must learn to die does not mean that the à la minute must be done.

There is no belt. Or rather: the seat belt is broken.

'you will view the country?'

'I come for my daughter.'

Ship's steward retrieves the photo come out and leave it to see Jefried him from his hands and grabs.

Jefried kicks hard on the brake pedal. They are silent along the side of the road in the sand. The driver opens the glove box of the car, retrieves a dingy booklet from, vist a scraps photo from the booklet and press that ship's steward in the manual.

Ship's steward tail to five black children.

'My Family,' says Jefried. 'My children.'

Ship's steward opens the door. 'I need to go outside,' he answers, 'Want a bite to eat.' He gets the car from, with his hat and his briefcase.

He puts the hat on, binds the briefcase under his arm. No traffic on the road. No houses. Sandy and withered grass. Here and there a half bare tree. Gently rolling hills. The sandy seems to the kilometers to change color. Where am i? Calls on ship's steward, what am I doing here? What is this?

It is now also Jefried disembarked. It is next to a ship's steward.

'Not afraid, a boss,' says Jefried. 'I believe in Jesus.'

'I am not afraid, i had to get a bite to eat. And call me a boss.'

A GUST OF WIND does Hofmeesters afwaaien hat. Jefried rent after that. As a dog. He gives the hat back to ship's steward, which he set up but not more.

'Jefried, where are the beasts?'

'What beasts, boss?'

'Call me a boss.'

'What beasts, gentleman?'

Ship's steward points to the empty, half withered plain.

'De wild beasts. Where are they? I see nothing.'

'Die are hiding, sir, it is in the middle of the day. It is too hot for them. They are there, but we do not see them. But of course they see, Mr. They see us and they smell like us."

So they remain. Two men along the side of the road. The first is waiting on the second, the second waiting for something he cannot appoint itself. On a brainwave. A reminder. The reminder of what he came again.

'Meneer,' says Jefried after five minutes, 'You will find the very if we continue the drive to Wind Angle?'

Ship's steward shakes his head. 'no problem at all. To which hotel you go me? I searched on the airport to a tourist information point, but everything was closed. What is a good hotel? Do you know the hotels in Windhoek?'

'In Windhoek. There are many good hotels. What exactly are you looking for? Great hotel, small hotel?'

'The best hotel.'

The best, why not? Such a first night in a foreign country wants to ship's steward take any risks. And duration will not be here. Now the financial independence is destroyed, it may also be wasted. something best

Jefried starts to think out loud and ship's steward feels how are dry mouth is. He gets into the vehicle. On the rear bench seat is still the photo of Jefrieds children. He gives it to the driver and in return they receive the picture of his youngest daughter back. Also he looks back to. Lively eyes. Yes, perhaps that is the first thing you notice if you go to Tirza looks, on this photo. Lively eyes. In a peculiar way of reassuring eyes. As if the world has reassured, and they in turn now to do the same with the world.

'Heinitzburg,' says Jefried.

'What?'

'Heinitzburg.'

'What is there with Heinitzburg?'

'Dat is a good hotel. Really something for Mr.'

Heinitzburg. It sounds like the name of a village forty kilometers across the border in Zevenaar.

'Heinitzburg,' reiterates ship's steward.

'Are you German?'

Jefried starts the vehicle.

'I? No, Dutch.'

'but they speak German there? Where you come from? Huh?'

'They speak Dutch there.'

'but you speak German?'

'I have studied German. And criminology. The last study never killed. I was offered a job on a publishing company, an offer which I could not refuse to do so. It was in line with expectations that i would be publisher.'

Jefried seem not to listen to them. It travels fast. He turn the radio on.

If he is the first houses of Wind Angle, asks: 'You accept ship's steward also euros?'

Jefried looks at him through his mirror. 'prefer not to sir, but there are banks, we can stop.'

'Atms?'

Jefried nods. 'It is a modern country, Mr. We have everything. In addition to work. There is not enough work. Everything here is further.'

In a street which gives the impression to be the main street of an abandoned village, they stop at a gas station. Small Wind Angle is called the here, has a ship's steward on a board. Small, say that to.

Jefried points to him an ATM.

Tirza's father is there.

There are only blacks on street. Perhaps it is the district, perhaps the hour of the day. The few whites who he sees, sit in cars. While his Post Bank Card in the machine stops, he looks again at the blue Mercedes of Jefried.

Jefried can now pulling away. With Hofmeesters stuff. It is not much but it would still be annoying.

Despite the fact that there is little value vols in his luggage, the idea that benauwt Jefried there with his suitcase fleeing. A color handling remains a color handling. Whereas for the machine status, he tries the car unobtrusively into the holes, which he observes that a three to oblige the petrol pump aanstaart him.

He presses the hat more firmly on his head.

Here if he would withdraw money, he just has no idea what the rate is of the Namibian dollars. Against his habit in he has badly prepared on this journey. Say: not. He decides to thousand Namibian dollars, that will be enough for Jefried.

From the petrol station are within a 5 minute walk to the Heinitzburghotel, that a castle on top of a hill.

If the vehicle is parked Jefried, two young men on the Mercedes. They mantle Hofmeesters on luggage. They also want to his briefcase from his hands, but that he will not allow it.

'How much I owe you?" requires a ship's steward to Jefried.

'Four hundred, sir.'

He gives Jefried four hundred and fifty. And Jefried says: 'If you need me, Mr. I drive safely. That you have seen. Where you want to go. Walvis Bay, Swakopmund. Or beyond. To the north. I know the country. If you need me. Call me.' Jefried gives a business card ship's steward.

The business card of someone else. Eight out Jefried has his name and telephone number written.

Ship's steward runs up the hill, he follow the signs to the 'receptie'. The ticket in his pocket.

Also shoot the by him: What if they did not have a room for me? But then they will need a taxi to call him if he should go somewhere else. It does not matter. He is there, that is what it is all about.

The reception looks neat and clean. A scale apples, a rack postcards. A man in a white shirt would welcome him and asks a ship's steward under what name he booked.

'I have not reserved,' he says, 'I am sorry, it came there are not more of. It was all quite unexpectedly. Do you have a room for two, three nights?'

'For how long exactly? Two or three?'

'three nights. It depends.'

There is no prompt which. The man begins in a large book to browse.

On twenty meters away are the two guys at Hofmeesters suitcase. They look at him. They are waiting.

'you are lucky,' says the receptionist. 'We have a room free. A beautiful, spacious room.'

'Fine' says ship's steward. And then: 'Dank you.' as if it is a privilege granted.

Ship's steward picks up an apple and bites. He has dried out.

'If you want to enroll here?'

A guestbook is laid down for him. He fills everything neatly in, where he lives, passport number, only where he will be that he does not know. He lets the but open.

'I will show you your room,' says the man.

The room is really nice. Even in European terms, and that are the only concepts that ship's steward know. A four-poster bed, a bath, a rose next to the sink. Africa. For a ship's steward in any case. Until now.

The two boys come together to him his suitcase. He gives both their money.

Then he only. He sits down on a chair. This is Windhoek, Namibia. Here they wanted, and his daughter, here they had to its world travel. Well, world tour, Africa Travel. She has read a lot about, she has seen some photos. She is committed, Ibi is also commit. As his children. They learn the quick AF.

He puts his briefcase and the hat on the bed. Are Required he hangs in the cabinet. Skirt and trousers he throws have a chair. Pants and socks he makes in the bathroom.

For a viewing mirror himself. It is best for a man of his age. The abdomen, the sheet. The decay.

Then he under the shower.

The water does it correctly it gives him energy. He let the minutes walk over in without having to move in this direction. Without thinking.

Then he pulls a light trousers and a shirt with short sleeves. From its required he retrieves the envelope with the photo and his telephone. He wants to leave the room, but consider themselves and picks up the briefcase and the hat of the bed.

As he walks to the reception.

'Can I here somewhere a little food?' he asks.

The receptionist takes him to the other side of the building where a terrace with views of the city.

There is also no one.

It installs itself. The envelope and its telephone he explains on the table. The briefcase and hat on a chair.

A girl asks him not particularly friendly what he wants to drink.

'I would also like to eat,' he says.

He puts his telephone and slide the photo from the envelope. Lively eyes, it is true. That is the way it is. They are so terrible vivid, which eyes. This is odd that nobody sees that they such beautiful lips and cheekbones, beautiful cheekbones.

After a short examination of the lunch menu he chooses for kipkebab. This will provide little can go wrong, kipkebab.

'And drinks?'

He looks like in the menu.

'Mangosap.'

'Mangosap and kipkebab.' She writes it is not.

'And run but a glass of white wine.'

'In place of the mangosap?'

'No, together. With the mangosap. At the same time.'

He has range, he sees. After a slight hesitation he calls the wife, but it does not record. 'I arrived,' he speaks of 'I am in Windhoek. It looks good here. I am speaking you later.'

From his briefcase he retrieves the manuscript and pencils. He rummages in the bag and finds that he has forgotten sharpener. One of these days he will need to purchase a sharpener.

If the drink is charged, he sees how the girl look to the photo that is on the table.

My daughter,' says ship's steward with a friendly smile, 'my youngest daughter. Tirza.'

"How?'

'Tirza.'

He must spell the name. It seems to be a strange name in these parts.

'It is here in Windhoek,' he says, 'it is here on holiday. Maybe you have ever seen her.'

It is not a question and there is therefore no reply.

The mangosap eagerly he drinks and then the wine.

In the distance he sees a building. The highest of the city, apparently. There is 'Kalahari Sands'. He tail are a while. Kalahari Sands.

Now he is here, he should have a plan in mind. But the longer he to the city looks below him is, how army and kaler his thoughts. What he think of it, it is already disastrous for even before he started.

The chicken eat it quickly and hastily, as a dog, without something to drink.

From his briefcase he retrieves Tirza's notebook and reads the sms and that they have received in the last few months. Crazy that the sender has not there. Or would they are all of the same person?

Perhaps the sms and which it has sent? No, that seems unlikely. The messages that are received. There is something of a bookkeeper in her, as thoroughly as they have the SMS and has to be recorded in the minutes. Some of these messages are not for outsiders to understand, as: 'I am here', or just one word: 'kiss'.

On a blank page he writes with pencil: 'Wind Angle, Kalahari Sands. Papa calls on the solar queen.' And including the date: 10 August 2005.

If the girl is clearing, he asks: 'Where are young people going here in Wind Angle? Tourists from Europe, where will they go?'

She looks full understanding to the man she operates.

'Where are they now?' he asks again. 'De tourist?'

'to the coast,' she responds. 'or to the desert.'

He puts his hat on, grabs his stuff, runs to the reception and ask for a map of the city, which they do not appear to have. He eventually gets a copy of a map of Wind Angle of a few years back.

'How far is it to the center?'

'Met the car?'

'on foot.'

'a minute,' says the receptionist. He draws on the map with a green pin how ship's steward must walk.

After five minutes walking the pavement. Ship's steward now runs through the sand, along a road. By the heat are his feet swollen. The walk is painful. Its leather shoes are not calculated on this road.

Occasionally a ship's steward and sweeps continues his face. He feels the sweat in his neck. Under his armpits are major spots. When he is back in the hotel, will he take a bath. He may have to look forward to.

After a walk of twenty minutes state he Independence Avenue, which, as has the receptionist said, the main street of wind angle is.

He looks to the right, then to the left then back to the right. Someone collided against him.

There are here in any case people. And shops.

He decides to go to the left. Perhaps he could the road to somebody to questions, but he does not know what exactly he should ask. How to get your thing? Ibi and the wife would otherwise have done. Shamelessly, without restraint. Without consciousness.

Ship's steward is a shopping center within, but he buys nothing. However he takes another thousand Namibian dollars. He watches the clothes and souvenirs in the shop windows.

The air conditioning shuts it well. Still a few shop windows he studies, without too much interest.

After ten minutes on the Independence Avenue has fallen, do his feet so'n pain that he must be stationary. To his joy he sees an ice cream parlor cum pizzeria, Sardinia called. Also here. The Italians were everywhere. Even in Windhoek.

He staggered toward the inside the most tables are empty. The operator is seated in a corner. He chooses a table from near the counter.

It is pleasantly cool. With a paper servetje rubs his forehead and his neck. Then he rummages servetje paint to a ball and stops in his pocket.

A guys like girl that for an Italian can continue to be asked what he wants.

He orders an espresso and a glass of white wine. Maybe it is Italian. It would be a nice start for a call: 'Are You Italian?' and then pull out the photo and ask 'Do you know this girl, have you ever seen her?' How are you looking for children if you have never previously done, adult children, in another country?

Until long after he has drunk it remains stuck. He realizes that he will have questions. He will have to start somewhere, why not here? It is precisely here, in pizzeria cum ice cream parlor Sardinia.

Of the table next to him he picks up a paper towel and rubs on the back of his neck, his forehead, his neck.

He rummages in his briefcase.

Than he is on and runs as normal as possible to the counter.

'De account,' he says. And then immediately he retrieves the envelope from his inside pocket and shall submit to the photo on the counter. 'Are You Italian?'

'I am born here.' She responds to him without him to look.

'Ah, I understand. Have you ever seen her here?' he asks.

'Who?'

He points to the photo.

The girl that as a little boy seems casts a glimpse of the photo. She gives a ship's steward the bon.

'No," she says, 'who is it?'

It counts the money, clears his throat. My daughter,' he says. My youngest daughter Tirza.'

And while he says, even while he is speaking is feels he said that they will not believe him.

'MAM,' calls on them.

He wants to store the picture. But he waits. Maybe something the mother.

A woman with bleaches its comes to him.

'How can I help you?" asks them.

Again he emphasized the photo.

My daughter,' he says, 'Have you seen happen to her?'

She shakes her head. She takes the father of Tirza in itself.

'tourist or businessman?'

'I am here for my daughter,' says ship's steward emphatically. The awareness that he does not like father forces him the Father in him what heavier. It stores the photo again. First time in the reply envelope, than in his pocket. He still needs to have something to ask what the people reassuring. For example: 'There is a large Italian community?'

'Are you looking for fun?' The voice of the mother sounds sharp but inviting.

It shakes of no, he walks slowly to the output.

The mother is chasing him.

'Are you looking for fun? Special entertainment?'

He is now outside on the street, the mother also.

Ship's steward must declare itself. He understands the. You can people not just a picture of your child show and say: 'I find my daughter.' They have explanation is necessary. Otherwise they do not trust. Background information.

'I am here for my daughter. She has never been in Africa. Three weeks ago, they moved to Wind Angle. Exactly three weeks ago. And since then we have heard nothing of her.'

The woman looks at him now as if they understand everything. He is relieved.

'No call, no e-mail. My wife says: "It is because we are so old." But what is the sense in your home to eat of the nerves if you also want to Namibia can? What is fourteen or eighteen hours fly in this time? And what is the cost of the well at all? How is this? With the tourist? You are here. There are many tourist?'

He speaks a little excited, but she smiles. Ach, mothers understand that sort of thing. They will help him. They will explain to him which he must go.

'Are you looking for special entertainment," she says, "is that it? I can help you.'

He begins to walk away from her. If he is also fit five, he turns to. They state for its case and looks at him after.

Ship's steward takes his hat. 'Thank you,' he calls, 'thank you for the trouble. I will certainly come back, but i am here for my daughter.'

Than he begins to walk up the hill in the direction of the Heinitzburghotel. Each step takes him now trouble. His shoes seem him four sizes too small. His underpants rubs unpleasant. He must be anus threads with oil. Everything is rough.

From the moment he has left Independence Avenue, is the quiet street has become. Occasionally he hears steps behind. He has the feeling that someone behind him follows several people, perhaps, but he does not dare to look.

He concentrates on each step to feel less pain. He clings to the briefcase. He has the feeling that Tirza in that bag, that he has taken her in his briefcase. The bag that he only have to open and that they will gain the upper hand.

3

When he finally reached the hotel, he seems a heart attack near. With a red and wet head and chest pain he calls at the reception are room number.

'How do you want to dine, Mr ship's steward?" asks the receptionist.

'eight, nine and a half.'

'One person?'

'one person.'

As soon as he is in his room, he himself in bed. He does his shoes off, closes his eyes, rubs gently over his feet.

Certainly twenty minutes he remains so. Half asleep, half-watchful.

It is the noise of the wind to him on his watch does look. Somewhere a flap clicks or a door. Almost seven hours al.

Soon he must eat.

Hastily he goes away, leaving the bath flooding and within them.

In the warm water if him to relax. Also seems this is a basic travel, as he ever made. A visit to an author in his native country, a book fair, a few times a conference. Especially at the beginning of his career he visited them just might, conferences.

Only when his mobile phone in the bedroom tone, urges the purpose of his journey back to him by. Without having to dry off he comes the bath.

As soon as he can he walks to the telephone. He glides almost off, but know to keep his balance.

It is the wife.

'And?' she asks.

'And? I am. That is all I can tell you now. Tomorrow I am going to draw up a plan. At the embassy. Along the youth hostels. But wind angle is not dangerous. Small, especially small. I do not think that they have remained here long. Tourist go to the coast or the desert, I heard.'

She takes the information without much comment to itself.

'call me if you hear anything," she says. 'and read your e-mail from time to time, perhaps sends an email they you'

'I will.'

'And Jörgen.'

'Yes?'

'No, nothing. Let but. Here I am waiting on you. I will keep the garden for you.'

Then he weather in bath. He has time before he to table must be.

In the room next to his he will hear people talking. He tries to mean what language they speak, but the sounds are too far away.

The talk is about in howl. But if he is listening carefully, he hears that it is not, it is crying gehijg.

Before he goes out of the bath, shower he the foam away and here are favorite song. 'bei mir bist du schön, please let me explain. Bei mir bist du schön, means you are grand.'

With a large white towel dries he thoroughly and very briefly he thinks of the worker in Amsterdam.

Only now he opens his suitcase.

The gift for Tirza he embodied in a la. The rest of the clothes he let in his suitcase.

He decides to withdraw a suit, aftershave. You never know who you encounter.

Only when he wants to attract his shoes, he notes that this is not good for more. His feet are battered. The shoes are not set on this heat, they are not made for swollen feet. With pain and difficulties" squeezes his.

Otherwise than he had hoped, dinner is not on the terrace, but served indoors.

He will get a table in a corner. Ship's steward is one of the few men in suit. The other guests are nonchalance dressed. As a tourist in Africa. But he is not casually.

During the appetizer he tries to read the manuscript. Soon he keeps it. The wine and the vermoeienis of the travel stun him light, but pleasant. His thoughts wander off.

He shall submit the photo of Tirza on table in the hope that someone him whether he will. But no one is asking a question. It is adequately controlled. It. Comment on the photo remains off. Is the wine bijgeschonken regularly, he immediately ordered but a bottle. No Italian gewürztraminer, but nice. He plays with the photo, he likes it up. It is about Tirza no question. Nobody wants to know who she is, nobody is interested in what is a ship's steward on its has to say.

After the main dish is the pain in his feet so bad that he spends shoes and socks. The tablecloths are low. We will not see it.

Order a lime relieved parfait. If something does not eat your problem, easy.

While he is in the lime parfait lepelt, he tries to summarize his life, as up to now it has declined. The he succeeds not. If he is looking back, he discovers nothing which he may be proud. What he sees are in the fog of his own history are small, fairly insignificant defeats. No large, an exception. The daily defeat, that cannot be distinguished from the daily shame.

He proudly is Tirza on. It. On Tirza. Proud. Without good to know why. What is his merit? Seed. The preparation of what hot meals. It disciplined to cello and swimming lesson, but we later found out that he had done something to be disciplined. No, it is proud without reason. Senseless proud.

Coffee and cognac he decides to drink at the bar. The dining room is now on a few tables after empty. It is apparently early sleep. Through the window you see below the lights of Wind Angle. In the evening seems to be a nice big city.

He walks slowly to the bar. A waiter comes to follow him.

'Meneer,' says the waiter, 'dit has you forget.'

He loves Hofmeesters shoes and socks up.

Ship's steward looks at his feet. They are exposed.

The shame is something overweldigends, so much stronger than affection.

The waiter gives a ship's steward his shoes and socks.

'Dank you,' he says. 'Dank you friendly. Completely forgotten. What kind of you." And he is going to sit at the bar.

He dares shoes and socks are not pulling. The shame disappears but slow, shame never disappears completely. Stir he concentrated coffee as if nothing is wrong.

The photo is now on the bar. If a proof. A declaration.

The bartender looks. He has no choice. There are no other people at the bar. To whom should he see or hear it?

My daughter,' says ship's steward. 'Tirza. Eighteen years old.'

'What is it?" asks the barkeeper.

Ship's steward shrugs. 'They will be studying,' he says. 'do not yet know what the. One week is the music sciences. Next week psychology. The following week classical languages. Has no idea. They do not have the time.'

He picks up a toothpick and removes discreet something from his mouth. He speaks — he observes the self — with double tongue.

'And where is it now?'

Tirza's father looks at the photo as if it were the answer to that question can be found.

'Here,' he says. He looks around. 'Here. She is somewhere here. In Namibia.'

He says it as if it were a secret.

He kept wanting cognac. The last guests leaving the dining room. Only the staff is still there. Smiling looks the bartender to ship's steward.

'Are you here only?' he asks.

Tirza's father nods. Slow and long. 'I am only here,' he says, 'but not really only, i am here to surprise my daughter. So basically we are together. I wanted my children money to act. A lot of money. A substantial sum. In order for them to open the doors were for me have remained closed. But it has disappeared. The money. It is eaten. Do you know who the has eaten?'

He beckons him, he flutters with his hands. The bartender must be closer.

'De world economy,' he whispers soft. 'After 11 September 2001, when the fairs bloc, they were already fallen, but they collapsed further in, it disappeared my hedge fund. It held to exist. From one day to the other. Road hedge fund. As if it was not there was. Mohammed Atta has eaten my money. Do you remember who Mohammed Atta is that?'

The barman shakes his head.

'Does there should not,' says ship's steward. 'Where the issue is that the people think: Mohammed Atta is dead. Mohammed Atta is there not more. They say. But there are thousands of Mohammed Atta, tens of thousands, millions of Mohammed Atta. Millions. The world economy as far as Mohammed Atta can do not. He also has been home to me. Mohammed Atta.'

Ship's steward stops the photo of his daughter in his inner pocket, withdraw its colbert law. Slowly bending his shoes and socks to pick-up. His back creaks.

'We See you tomorrow?" asks the barkeeper.

Ship's steward nods. On bare feet he walks to his room. There are sounds of insects. The night produces just as his main humming noises. Yes, Mohammed Atta is in his own home, that is something that the people will be surprised. Something that they will still have questions later.

He must be reachable from the outside to reach his room. At every step he set, he has the idea that he is going somewhere, but he does not know which. Small animals likely. Ants. Browse. Mos.

In his room He kneels for the minibar. He picks up a can of cola and a small bottle of white wine from. The tin press against his forehead, the wine he opens. Tomorrow, he decides, tomorrow will he buy new shoes. Tomorrow he goes.

For he is, I am told he for the mirror. He does his both arms raised. And down again. And up again. There is nothing special to see him.

The photo he explains on the bedside table next to his watch. There are spots on the photo, greasy fingers.

Four times that night he is awake. Once he is on to drink water. In the bathroom he realizes that the water may not drinkable is that it can be sick of, and he will return to lie in bed. He begins to understand something. He understands that there is perhaps something awful happened, an absolutely definitive event. That the moment you will not see each other again. But he understands the in his dreams.

The days then buy a few sandals, ship's steward he visits the Dutch embassy, runs quietly and organized by the city and a few cheap hotels within. Here and there he let Tirza's photo. Occasionally he begins a call. He cannot help you further.

Two times he visits an internet cafe, but there is no email of Tirza, only the wife.

In one of the hotels thinks they have seen Tirza true, but we know that they are a Swiss girl was that in the event of a group.

'Dat cannot,' answers ship's steward. 'Dat is someone else.'

In the Heinitzburghotel is now everyone on the height of the fact that a ship's steward searching for his daughter. At breakfast and dinner one speaks reassuring on him in. The one time says the staff that they will be to the north, then they say that Tirza certainly somewhere around Sossusvlei In the desert. The next morning says someone that they might be hitchhiked is in the direction of Cape Town. The lifts in the direction of Cape Town is popular with tourists these days.

Ship's steward makes notes in the booklet that ever has been Tirza, but are diligent annotations cannot conceal the fact that his disbelief spreads. He did not know what he has still to do, he does not know where he should go, he has no idea where he can still find. Hours he runs through a hot city with a photo in his pocket, a hat on his head, a briefcase under his arm. A ms of the embassy says to him: 'It is a hopeless task. Here you can do nothing. Go back to the Netherlands. Wait you quiet.'

The difficulty is that not a youngster all its specialty?

Also in the internet cafe know it now. The man with the hat which a message of his daughter wait. They live with him, as with a movie, but it does not help. And even on sandals do his feet pain.

Every morning he extends his stay in the hotel with one day. Where is he going next? Return to the Netherlands? Excluded. Two times still call the wife, in addition to its friendly, but also what compelling e-mails. The unrest in her voice is heard. She says: "I have the Ibi but told, I mean, what is the point of the for her to conceal the?'

And ship's steward responds only: 'that was not have been necessary. In a few days is them. You must not make the people concerned.'

On a day at the end of the afternoon — he has once again a few hours by the city of prejudice, the envelope with the photo in his pocket, the briefcase under the arm — he climbs the hill in the direction of the Heinitzburghotel. Just go and it will dawn.

Hofmeesters foot is dry. For the first time he has the idea that he can distinguish between pain and despair. Dull and somewhat more paralysis is the desperation and also narcotic. The desperation is no sense, it is the opposite, the awareness that you no longer feel that the feeling is to slip road, you only have to leave behind.

In a quiet street, not far from the car rental company Hertz, he notes that someone just behind him is going to walk. He clasps his briefcase even sturdier than formerly against located on. Although the fear of the first days gradually disappeared, is he prepared for anything. This is Africa.

He accelerates are only.

'Do you want company, sir?' he hears.

Without stopping to walk He turns around and see a girl of — what will it be? — a year or ten, nine in a flodderig dress.

He goes even faster. The echoes after in his head: 'Do you want company, sir?', it is a question, is it not rather the confirmation of a situation? 'Do you want company, sir?' Why nobody has yet that asked him? While the so obvious, it was a small effort. 'Do you want company, sir?' five words, that everything is.five simple words.

There is nobody on the street. Even the keeper who is usually always for Hertz state, ship's steward today. He is probably also to the toilet. Also guards must puddles.

The girl runs with him, better said: they rent with him. He saves a street in which he must strike not at all. This is not the way to the hotel. Here he would never. He must be returned. There are blisters on his feet that noticeable, and also corns.

'Do you want company, sir?' she asks them again.

'No, no,' he sist, without stopping to walk. 'Go away! Go away!'

In the event of a cross with a stop lamp remains stationary. It dices with a handkerchief on his face. She is still there. First behind him, now next to him.

If he has his handkerchief stowed, picks up the child his left hand.

They do not let him. She loves the hand.

The stop light jumps on green. Also he remains, the child to his hand. They must release him, but they do not work. They will continue to hold him. Than he plugs on. With the girl.

As they walk silently in the direction of the Heinitzburghotel. A man and a child, a white and a black, a man with a hat and one without.

At the next crossing he looks again to her. Volatile and ashamed as to a forbidden fruit.

It is only now that he sees that they have no shoes.

He sees her feet. He thinks: there may be a garbage on street are, glass, garbage, food residues. Gently squeeze it in her hand.

She will not return. They will remain firmly hold him only.

And if he is at the front desk to the room key is requested, keeps them still his left hand.

There is to him and the child, but nobody says something. If all other days gives him the room key, and if all other days are being asked to him: 'Use the dinner in our restaurant?'

Ship's steward nods.

Once in the room he puts the child on a chair and is himself in bed. His hand is wet with sweat.

He does his hats, wipe his face with a handkerchief.

The child looks at him, it follows its movements. Hard, but not nervous.

Ship's steward keeps his head, he does not know to which it began. He was here to find Tirza. Now he has a child on his room, a black child in a dingy dress without shoes.

He opens the minibar. 'Water?' he asks. The child is nodding. He gives water in a glass and gives the hair. They are keen to drink.

He is going to sit on the bed again and watches. Then he makes his sandals off. His right foot is on two spots on the bleeding. In his bag he is looking for plasters.

It is his last plasters.

If he is ready to deal with the wounds, he asks: 'How would you?'

'Kaisa.'

"Ka-isa?'

She nods.

'I am Jörgen,' he says. 'Jörgen ship's steward.' He speaks with her in English, slowly and clearly as if he is back in the Buchmesse is and talk about books him, if he is fair, not so much care. They fall against, what is not against compared with Tolstoy?

So they are sitting opposite each other. He is on the bed, it on the seat.

Somewhere in the distance he noticed a novice headache. A novice disease. Flu.

After a quarter of an hour makes them the question they already twice to him.

'Do you want company, sir?'

It shakes his head, opens his briefcase, and he remembers that he still no sharpener has purchased. Searching for something in his briefcase, but what again?

Its glass is empty.

'Water, Kaisa? More water?'

She nods.

He opens the minibar and gives her a bottle.

This time they drink less eagerly. He begins to analyze the situation, as far as is possible, in so far as his life still permits it if analysis, reflection, study, conclusion.

There is a child on his room. That child does not envisage way to go. He will have to give her to eat, that to begin.

'Hungry?' he asks.

She nods.

He looks at his watch, another hour, then they can to table.

'a further hour,' he says. 'Over an hour we eat.' He wonders whether they know what it is, an hour.

Sit down again they silently opposite each other. She looks at him without the a rude staring. The child looks at him as if he is the TV, a puppeteer who every moment with its act can begin.

From his inner pocket he retrieves the envelope. He let Kaisa the photo.

My daughter,' he says.

The child keeps the photo, raises there also take a look. Then she looks at him.

Ship's steward goes back to bed, exactly the way it was all along.

'Tirza,' he says to Kaisa, 'they so hot. When she was so old as you are, I read her for. Also from Dostoevsky. Notes from the underground. With a sure nihilism you can not start early enough. Because you need to get through. If a train through a tunnel. And they understood the. She was…' he gets the word almost not from his mouth but it will succeed it anyway. 'High gifted,' he says with shrill voice. 'They is a very talented.'

He threatens to go as a machine. Also vibrates his lip. But he vermant, everything is under control.

There is a knock on the door. The room maid. She wants the bed ready for the night. He let her within. They know each other, the maid and the guest. They have seen on several occasions. Yet it remains unsettling. And now with the onwenniger Kaisa closer than ever.

The room maid takes as if they do not see the child. Ship's steward withdraws in the bathroom while the bed is done. He brushes his teeth.

If she has disappeared, are the curtains closed. Unlike other nights there is not a single chocolate on the pillow, but two.

He chuckles, he may not leave it.

Ship's steward She grabs, chocolates, and gives them to Kaisa.

It stops them both at the same time in her mouth. Without her eyes off him. She is alert.

'Tirza,' he says, 'has lively eyes. Just like you.' He takes the paper of the chocolate from her and throws them in the trash.

A further three quarter. Then he must with this child in the dining room. He does not know how. He and that black child in that dingy dress.

He opens the minibar and put a bottle of vodka to his mouth.

'Would you like to wash your hands?' he asks.

He is not waiting for a reply. Ship's steward seeks his hand. He takes her to the bathroom, the crane open, gives its soap. They can just at.

The child washes its hands. And if they are ready, she looks him questioning.

'Would you also wash your feet?'

She shakes her head.

'Maybe is good?'

She has her hair in a tail, sees only now ship's steward. He has not properly looked to her, he did not dare.

'Are you sure? I also wash my feet. You can wash as you want.'

He let the bath half full walk, retrieves for the girl the bottle of water from the room, and for themselves the small bottle of white wine that every day in the minibar is stopped.

He put her on the edge of the bathtub with its legs in the water.

'Not too hot?' he asks. 'It is good so?'

She nods.

Ship's steward Kate rolls up his trouser legs on and down next to him. They take a foot bath, the man and the child. Compared with the skin of the child seems not only his own showed, but even unhealthy, ill. Affected.

It does it, a foot bath. He already knows that there are problems not have become less. For the first time since his arrival here are the problems even acute.

Soon he must with her to the dining room. How is it that succeed?

The wine is.

He picks up his feet from the water and picks up a second bottle of vodka from the minibar. Hastily and with somewhat reluctantly he drinks. It is a drug.

'I,' he says, 'we are going to grab a bite to eat.'

On the ground in the bathroom spread a large white towel. He lifts her on, put her on the towel.

Ship's steward kneel and dries the feet to thoroughly.

'also between the toes,' he says, 'otherwise you get mold. You know, I have two daughters. Older than you. I really just wanted no children. I also wanted to marry not. My wife has persuaded me. I had plans. Other plans.'

Her left foot is dry. Now that her right foot.

'I wanted,' he says, 'prove that God nor the progress was dead, but the love." he laughs as if he were a good joke has told us. He loves her ankles and laughs.

'Ready,' he says. 'I have now, then we can eat.'

Behind a cabinet door — it remains discreet — he will clothe, He pulls his suit. Because he has a guest this evening, he makes a necktie for.

He puts his hat. Soon he drinks a bottle of gin empty. The Vodka is.

The child is watching.

'It is a drug,' he says. 'Against the embarrassment.' He picks up a second bottle of gin and drink that half empty.

'And you know what shame? Civilisation.' Portrait and with empty somewhat reluctantly he the second bottle gin. With the empty bottle in his hand he takes place on the bed. 'Yes, civilisation,' he panting slightly, 'dat is the. Civilisation. Civilisation. Civilisation.'

First time to pick up his briefcase, her hand. Just as it is he barefoot.

As they walk to the dining room.

It looks at him as he arrives. And to the child. One looks of him to the child and back again.

The girl that he has on many occasions already operated, says: 'Ah, Mr ship's steward, you have a guest tonight?'

He nods. He brings to its seat Kaisa puts his hat. He thinks he is the best inheriting. But he The calls around him have come to a standstill.

Unlike other nights order he water without bubble. He bows to the waitress as if he wants to tell vertrouwelijks its something. 'sorry for the bare feet,' he says. 'It is the heat. Stuffed feet. The moisture will not go away. The Moisture accumulates in the foot. Why in the foot? I do not know. But it is in the foot, the moisture. Sorry. Excuse us, also to the other guests.'

'Of course," she says, 'Meneer ship's steward, of course. No problem.'

In the event of the bread served as always a few long stems.

He breaks down there a center gives half to Kaisa. 'Eat,' he says.

She eats, while they remain him naughtily drawing pictures.

It mainly lives with his finger soft on the table. The calls around them come but slowly.

'Well,' he says he does not know what to do, 'Kaisa, so I come from the Netherlands, you know where that is located? In the north of Europe. Far away. Fourteen hours fly from here. With about eight steps ten hours. I am…'

He gives her a long stem. This time he breaks through it.

'Or you just want to bread?'

They shake of no.

'I am just before my retirement. Actually you can say that I have already retired and I, because I am no longer active. I am on non-active. They wanted to dismiss me, but according to the house lawyer was that because of my age impossible.' It dices crumbs of the table.

Each evening they run the same music here. It is only now that he is a hundred times to these songs has be listening. Each evening three, four times the same numbers.

'I,' he says, calm by the drug, but still a bit ashamed, 'I am all in all an unfortunate man.' And he laughs as if he has made a joke. He smiles much this evening. 'MAY', he adds, 'nobody noticed. How should they? To which they may be brands? And with the accident must ask yourself…'

He gets the wine card in his hands, without need to think long order he a chardonnay from South Africa. 'and for the young lady,' he says, 'a lemonade? A coca cola?'

She nods.

'Coca Cola?'

She nods again. This time with more conviction. With a degree of enthusiasm even.

'Coca Cola,' he says, 'for the young lady.' as if they were already days on a trip. As if they do nothing more than this. Food, sleep, wake up to eat. They seem to be fully addressed.

Still he gives her a stalk.

She eats with taste.

'Accident,' he says, 'we were talking about. Unhappy, everyone. And if you do that by, it does not matter anymore. The happiness is a pose, a myth, a form of politeness, celebrations, during dinner. I am unhappy, but not more unhappy than others, that I was always taught at difficult moments. My accident was average. I have two children. A nice house. A very nice house.'

Suddenly he keeps on talking.

'Now you tell what.'

It stops with food. A piece of the stem is still in her hand. Knuistje, you would have to say. And ship's steward thinks of the word 'knuistje' as to itself when he was still was different, indeterminate, not or hardly been defined. A story that still had yet to all sides.

'Yes,' he says, 'You must now tell what. How old are you?'

The Chardonnay. He will taste for without testing. It hastily, on the rude. While he does not want that. But he is impatient.

Just wait until the coca cola for the child is served.

'Would you like a citroentje in?' he asks. 'You will find that good? Tirza, my daughter, drank its cola always with lemon. From an early age. But they should almost never cola drinks. We were against cola. I was against cola.'

They shake of no. No citroentje.

'Good than. Than we drink on this… On this evening, on our meeting. On you, Kaisa, on you.'

It rejects his glass against that of her.

They drink as he. With surrender.

If they have received the menu cards, he notes that cannot read them, in any case not good enough. They tail to the menu as they go to him tail. With the semi-open mouth. As if there is something to be. As if the menu card going to speak.

He orders chicken soup for her. Also chicken soup seems to be a medicine.

'And then,' he asks, 'fish or meat?'

She looks at him with the last piece of stalk still in its knuistje.

'fish or meat?' he repeats. 'Kaisa, what will it be?'

'Meat," she says.

He decision: lamb. Always good.

Order for themselves the carpaccio of springbok and then a fish.

The waitress removes, after they do everything has written. He sees that she and her colleagues whispers and he thinks, No he knows that they have over him. For the first time since his arrival in Namibia he is sitting at a table with someone. A black child. 'And he was looking for his daughter,', they will say. 'But it was in reality entertainment. Special entertainment.'

He leans back on.

'Eat,' he says.

She eats the last piece of stalk, that all that time in her hand sat.

'Where were we?' he asks. 'Oh yes, how old are you?'

It is precisely these moments is the art of the conversation. All those drinks which he has attended, Book presentations, book fairs, it is not for nothing, he has learned from you.

'Nine," she says.

He holds his head.

'Dan care we over fifty years,' he answers, 'min or more half a century, we adhere to this. Half a century.'

That look of her. Neutral, But inquisitive.

'fifty years is half a century. You know that yet? How old is your mother?'

It is a one-sided conversation, but a ship's steward does not. His life depends on it, as it feels at least. He takes a few swallow the wine. It is the only medicine against the embarrassment that is effective.

'How old is your mother, Kaisa, you know that, how old they?'

'Mamma is at home.'

She says the soft and almost questioning, but just not completely. In fact exactly as they said: 'Do you want company, sir?' Almost questioning, though not entirely. As if they already knew that he wanted it. As if they had seen.

'Aha,' says ship's steward, 'at home. Yes, the way it should. My parents no longer life. They are shortly after each other about members. The children were still small. But they are never really enthusiastic grandparents. At the end of their life they did the door does not open any more. Even if we arrived. Than we had to return to Amsterdam. Annoying for the children, because we thought that they were going to see grandpa and grandma.'

He gives its cola at.

It will wait until they are going to mention it, but what follows is silence. Even more quiet. That is why he takes the word. He must talk, as long as he is talking about there is nothing wrong, and furthermore it for once not from what he says.

My parents were not ill. But they were also not completely healthy. Whether or not, super healthy, to healthy. They were converted, and they were afraid that the village could find out. That they were converted, that it is in fact of house…' he let his voice drop as if there is a terrible secret follows '… nothing were, That if nobody wants to know. No one knew it too. They were afraid to be different, to fall. At first only outside the home and later also in house. It was their second nature. They hated everything was different. Do you understand? Everything that is not blank. Everything else was, everything was different from the norm. They hated the sick. Because everything that is not the standard, it was the sick. For my parents there was no difference between psychiatric patients, Jews, negroid homosexuals, all patients who were not a cure. They themselves were cure a disease, but they were still afraid that something was still, a scar, a residue, a persistent remainder that could again at any time to ignite. That is why my father once a Jew half beaten to death. For his shop. With a spoon. So no one in the village that would doubt that he was healed. They took the seriously, the cure. But at the end of their life they did the door so no longer open. Even if we arrived.'

He looks at the child. She sees a puppet player in me, he thinks. I am the puppet.

'Know what I like it?' says ship's steward. 'I can talk to you.'

The entree is served, and ship's steward says that they should be careful, that they must blow a bite out for them from the soup. He takes the spoon, he does it for. And it blows.

So they work by the meal. The people at the other tables look less and less on the set. They are a couple? Calls on ship's steward wondered. A temporary set perhaps, but, what other than that? A set. Determine are by definition temporary, still ever decreasing duration than young people.

After the main dish, which they have very few places to eat, lubricates the child is still a he desert, sorbet, and order he usually a cognac. This trip is more expensive than he had originally thought. But what does it matter? If you have lost almost everything, you can also lose everything.

In the cognac), it on and runs to the toilet. In the vicinity of the urinal kicks with his bare feet in nattigheid, and he remembers that he must die. That there is only one way out of this is that all other ways have closed. With his bare feet in someone else's urine he tries his own death.

While he plast, where he deals with one hand on the wall. A bright duizeling he feels. Nothing serious.

Return to table — the sorbet and the cognac have now been charged — he says: 'I think it so much that we can talk to each other, Kaisa. Really talk. What does your mother? And your father?'

She gets her shoulders.

'Is they housewife?'

Weather retrieves the child her shoulders.

And as if it is only now to mind, he asks: "do they not worried? You should not just call us?'

She shakes her head. 'No," she says with a mouth full of ice cream.

'They're not worried? She does not want that you come home? You are of course also a large meid.'

And while his glass jar, considering he cognac that you indeed have to learn that there might be a certainly must have a talent for, die.

He is on, helps the child from the seat. She picks up his hand.

As each evening he walks to the output.

As each evening says the staff: 'Good evening, Mr ship's steward.'

But despite all of the medication which he has swallowed, he sees that they look different than other evenings. He is in their eyes become another. He is no longer the man searching for his daughter, now he is the man who are looking for some fun specially. He has sought and he has found it.

And yet it is not true, he would like to declare. He would like to say: 'It is not what you are thinking.'

In the vicinity of the reception it will remain. 'Well,' he says, 'it was a nice evening. I do not know where you need to go where you live, but I can call taxis for you.'

In Africa makes the night noises. Everywhere he hears insects. Unfortunately he knows little of insects.

Above the reception depends a electro cute machine for small, flying scum. Each time a flight is getting fried, crackles the machine cozy.

'Where is your home?' he asks. 'Is the far, Kaisa?'

They do not leave his hand. While now is the time for release. He should go to bed. Sleep. Sleep for the die.

'Living in Windhoek?'

She seems not to hear him. Just as he looks they now to the electro cute machine for the flying scum. 'Do you want company, sir?' she asks, push of a first with less conviction.

His gaze remains also rest on the machine that are above the entrance to the reception depends. Then he looks at the child. 'No, no,' he says. 'But if you want you can keep you sleep. If it is too late to go home.'

He puts his hat off, wipe on his forehead. Wind Angle is high, 1700 meters. It cools pleasantly. In the evening and I think he is hot.

'It does not matter,' he says, 'if you want to sleep. It is a double room. I do not know what they think of us. But what they think of us makes you, I do not believe in and i do not actually. I am a strange here. It has long been something decided what the people of me thought, because you are what people think of you. But here, now, in this country? I am a tourist. What can they expect me?'

They walk hand in hand to the room.

He shall do the lights on, depends his hat.

They are going to sit on the same seat on which they have already been sat.

'Yes,' he says, 'Are we then.' He does also the lights in the bathroom.

'You certainly don't toothbrush with you?' he asks. 'No, you have nothing at all to you. That is the youth. Goes off staying. Does nothing. Carefree. Time, though. I had also often Tirza of chasing everything when they remained somewhere staying. You can borrow my toothbrush is, I will give him good for your cleaning.'

He holds his toothbrush under the tap and looks, while his teeth cleaning brush, to the child.

They sit there motionless.

'I,' he says.

He beckons her.

They are hesitant to him. He does toothpaste on the toothbrush. He kneels down and he brushes her teeth. Although his toothbrush is a bit too large for its teeth.

It has been a long time ago that he has done, but he is not forgotten.

They will open its mouth without question or protest.

He brushes thoroughly.

'Well,' he says, 'that was that. It is important. The teeth.'

He will take her to the bed, he saves the bed open. The side where normal nobody is located.

She has a pajamas necessary. Nude sleep could, but it seems a good idea.

'Wait,' he says.

He runs to the cabinet and retrieves the dress that the wife has purchased for Tirza. Carefully remove the paper, he he returned in the la stops.

'Doe you dress,' he says.

They slips from her dress in a second. He loves her dress Tirza for.

'It is not real pajamas,' he says, "but we have nothing else. You must do something about in the night. The cools down. This is of Tirza.'

With some effort — he has long no children more decorated — he pulls her dress Tirza.

It looks as if they were dressed up has for a party. He shakes his head and needs to be a little smile.

A fancy dress party, it runs off. This trip. His life. Everything.

It stops her in.

In the bathroom clothe himself. He holds his pants. A pajamas also has he does not have to be.

Then he was on its side of the bed.

'Well,' he says, 'sleep tasty.'

She is on her head on the large white cushion. Droll, that is the word that comes up in him as he looks to her.

'Well,' he says, 'we go to sleep. It was a long day.'

She focuses. 'Do you want company, sir?' she asks.

Slowly shakes his head.

'hold on,' he whispers, 'Kaisa, hold on to those nonsense. Not today. It is too late. See i like this? As someone who needs company? No, really not.' He goes past her to her night lamp is off to do so.

'I am not more used to dealing with strangers in one bed,' he says, 'us please forgive me if I restless sleep. I have slept in recent years. To my wife returned. I like this one side of the bed to use as a table on which you submit papers, newspapers, books. But that was not more, when they came back. Goodnight.'

Now he is doing his night light off. He is certainly still awake twenty minutes. Sometimes he keeps his breath to hear or Kaisa sleeps.

In the middle of the night is he woke up. He dreamed of Tirza. They were on the bikes in the Betuwe. His parents lived. He is on, makes light in the bathroom and also on the edge of the bathtub. His thoughts are still not sharp. Vague he recalls that he was a child in bed. He is now just over a week in Windhoek. He tries to remember when he last Tirza's voice heard. That was when he called her and her voice mail received. Soft he begins to speak against it.

'Tirza,' he says, "I am in Windhoek. A strange city, no city more a village. I talk a bit gently, because not only am I.'

At half past nine is he woke up. Kaisa is already awake. They sit upright in bed and looks at him.

"Good Morning,' he says.

He rubs his face. Of the bedside table to pick up his watch.

'It is already late,' he says.

Without showering it attracts some clothes.

'Keep you often logeren?' he asks.

More quiet.

'or you often remains in people staying?'

"Yes," she says.

'You can of course continue to have breakfast, but then I get started. I am here for my daughter. We are her. Do you know how I call her? The Solar Queen.'

He lifts her out of bed. They did nothing more than to the dingy dress. Caution, afraid if he is the damage that he, he pulls its Tirza's dress.

He picks it back in, commits him in the la and gives her her own dress. She pulls him not to. He is going to sit for her crouches.

'We are going to what breakfasts,' he says, 'You must you dress up.'

She seems to be its nose against those of him to rub, but in the end they press her mouth on to his. He bounces back.

'No, no,' he says, 'That's not necessary. It is not necessary.'

He feels how hot the once again and he smells that clothes that he has attracted a bit smelly. What does it matter? Odour in Africa is something else than stench in the Van Eeghenstraat.

'I need you to dress,' he says. 'We are going to have breakfast.'

Ship's steward withdraws its the dress.

As he continues to sit as if he has forgotten something. 'brushing teeth,' he says, 'doing after breakfast we.'

On the minibar, he sees the photo of Tirza. It stops him in the envelope and the envelope in his pocket. He does this morning but are sandals.

He is running slow with Kaisa to the breakfast buffet that is served on the terrace.

There are two tables filled. He recognizes people last night. Once again the silence calls, now he appears with the child.

They sit down. Guests must operate itself at the buffet, but a ship's steward is not yet. The walk is difficult.

The girl that also last night, 'operated Coffee, Mr ship's steward?'

He nods. 'and for the young lady,' he says, 'hot chocolate, is that something? Hot chocolate.'

His hat he has not set up this morning, but his briefcase he is in itself. Everything is included in what he needs.

Just as he wants to get up with the child to go to the buffet, vibrates the telephone in its pocket. It is the wife.

'Why do I hear nothing from you?' she asks.

The 'Create your worried?' he whispers, although no one can be understood. 'Dat do not.'

'Not for you. To Tirza.'

'I think that they are not more in Windhoek. I think they have gone to the coast or to the desert. I will have a look.'

'Look? Jörgen, it is not a treasure hunt. Is it not time that you go to the police and declaration of a missing person?'

'I know that it is not a treasure hunt. Do you think i for a treasure hunt eighteen hours fly?'

'I want you to do anything.'

'Are you worried?'

'Ibi is concerned. They call twice a day. She makes any odes concerned. She makes me nervous, I know that the nonsense yet. Do you already have been to the police?'

'De police? This is Namibia.'

'Yes, but surely you agree to the police. Or do you want to do in Amsterdam?'

'I call you later. Everything is under control. They come up above water. You have said so yourself. It is our just forget it.'

He flips its telephone close, puts it.

The child looks equally neutral to him as always.

My wife is concerned, they think that it is good if we go to the police.'

Ship's steward is On, runs concurrently with the girl to the buffet. For the buffet engages the child his hand. They shall designate a croissant. He shall submit the croissant on a sign.

'Yoghurt?' he asks. 'fruit yoghurt?'

When they sit around the table and there is a glass of chocolate milk for the children is, he says: 'I have to tell you something, Kaisa. It is really funny.'

With its coffee spoon taste of its he was a bit of fruit yoghurt.

He bows go to her, the spoon still in his hand. 'My life is coming to an end,' he says, 'I can nowhere.'

There are sounds in his voice something triomfantelijks, he hears the itself. As if it is somewhere a performance is to be able to go anywhere. No longer to be able to escape.

She nods. It will be the sound of his voice which have been a gentle smile on her face to appear. The sound of someone generous joking, the sound of a man who is on the point of a child to tickle.

'people,' he says, 'create a story of their life. So they are creating order. That is what stories are. Create order. The story that I have made is…' he takes a large sip coffee. 'It has got out of control.'

Also he feels the calm sadness that he knows from the hills of Southern Germany, when his daughter was in the clinic.

'If there is nowhere more can,' he says, 'keeps the game on, then you finally arrived in reality. My wife and I frequently played. In the past. Than I was the rapist with a knife, and they are a cyclist. In the Vondelpark. In Amsterdam. At Night. We played, my wife and i, what we did was a game.'

He picks up his shoulders. He did not know what he was still further to say.

When the girl are coffee bijschenkt, he sees on her face that he is not a long time in this hotel can continue. He sees a censure which hardly differs from anger. It is not made to travellers special entertainment search, and although he would like to explain that he has no special are looking for some fun, not even normal entertainment, he knows that the hopeless task.

He is on, the child from her helps seat, and runs to his room. As they walk away, engages the child his hand. The Surprise him now not more that it will do so. It seems as if it were to hear.

For the door remains. He bending itself. 'You need to house,' he says. 'where you live, Kaisa?'

She gives no answer, they looks past him.

Again it reiterates the question. Again no answer.

'I need my daughter search, Kaisa,' he says, 'they is lost. People are worried. There is terribly worried. Where do you live?'

He picks up its both hands, squeeze out a little. 'Where do you live?' he asks.

Her answer does not come as a surprise and it makes him nauseous. 'Do you want company, sir?'

He has always thought that the nonsense, people who say that they are sick from fear. He has not really believed. Now he is making the note. He is sick of fear and he knows not even for which he is afraid, or there still is something to be afraid of.

Ship's steward opens the door, the girl slips along him, sit on the seat that they clearly sees as the hare.

'Well then,' he says, standing for the minibar, 'you may still remain a day. I think it is great because we were so good to talk to each other. We understand each other, Kaisa. And do you know why? Because we do not disapprove.'

He expresses his hat on his head, grabs his briefcase back on and take the hand of the child. For the rear view mirror does he also.

'It was in line with expectations that i would be publisher,' he says via the mirror against Kaisa, 'but you know what happened? I was not a publisher. I lost my ambition, I got my faith is lost. My ambition was my faith. A man without faith is not much. Hardened, perhaps, clad. A tank. Watch us, Kaisa. What are we? People without faith. Though we have together. I float through space, I sit on one. To you my hand picked, since the stop light. When i sat up to you. That is the way it is. You had a hand to tackle other, but you picked the mine. What you thought, Kaisa? What you saw when i came over? It was my hat? Had you already addressed many people that day?'

He walks with her to the city. They on bare feet, He on sandals. Now and then he stays at a crossroads and he asks: 'Where are we going, Kaisa?' She pulls him than in the direction which according to its the best. They have a lunch in a petrol station and around four hours in the afternoon drink cola in a billiards club. Occasionally says something about the ship's steward daughter, his work, Africa. Kaisa listens without saying anything in return. Sometimes they whispers: 'money, Mr. Money.' than he gives her a few Namibian dollars, but she has nothing to keep them in. She has only those dress. In the event of a street vendor purchases a vibrant pouch for her. He show her that they are the Namibian dollars can stop. 'Look,' he says, 'this is the open and close.'

The state its, the pouch, the liven up her. They drag with them as a pupa.

In a park in the center of the city, he sit on a bench with a childrens play area. There are swings and two slides, a high and a low. Ship's steward is here the only white. First climbs on the low Kaisa slide, but after a few times they also dare of the high. Ship's steward runs to her by the sand, the prickles between its toes, the spiked in his wounds.

'Come on,' he says at the bottom of the slide, 'it is not eng.' He shall commence its on, and he remembers how his own children ever has acquired so.

He is at 5 p.m. for the internet cafe near Independence Avenue. Also doubt it. Then he runs the staircase that leads to the cafe. He is going to sit behind his fixed computer, the child on his lap.

'Here I come almost daily,' he says soft, 'to see if they mailed.'

He opens his e-mail, there are only e-mails of the wife and what advertising. He reads the e-mails that he has not received, that of the wife, he continues to sit behind the computer without doing anything. Soft he runs his fingers through the girl by her hair.

Still less shall take into account the environment. He forget what the environment could think about him. He withdraws. What they think about him is unimportant. Here in Namibia they may think everything.

Than he opens the briefcase and retrieves the note book of Tirza out. The SMS messages and that she has written about it will save and only occasionally Falls are a message, an eight pressurefrom drawing. Probably made when she was speaking on the telephone. Some people talk while having signs, he does not.

He picks up its agenda, browse the page where her e-mail address and the password.

Ship's steward is watching as if it were a letter. Although not intended for them, but a letter.

Type he then www.yahoo.com user name of Tirza and then its password: ibi83.

He sees the e-mails that he himself has sent and which never read it, he sees e-mails from friends and girlfriends, e-mails from people of whom he has never heard.

All those emails he not, he goes to 'Compose'.

The computer works slowly here. Nervous wait until the following screen appears.

He types his own e-mail address, and the subject: 'At last'.

That is nevertheless: at last.

With the child in his lap he begins an e-mail to write.

"Dear pap,' he type, 'sorry that you as long as nothing heard from me. But I am sitting in the desert and phones are not here in abundance. The nature is beautiful.'

He stop typing, looks the child on his lap. You are ', do you not? That nature here is beautiful?'

He rubs his head with a handkerchief and then also on the head of the child. Despite the air conditioning in the internet cafe sweating them both.

Then he continued: 'We stay here. As soon as we are back in the inhabited world, I will call. Not to be worried. I am happy. It is a good thing. I feel like an intense yumminess. Many pillow, greetings to mama. The sun visor Tirza Queen.'

She wrote that always under cards and letters: Tirza the solar queen.

And that of that intense yumminess she said ever against him when he was her had taken a long weekend to Paris. The bathroom in their hotel was nice and very large. In the evening in bath she cried to her father on the bed to watch tv was: 'Pap, I feel like an intense yumminess.'

He was to go to his daughter in bath to watch. 'Dat is the intention,' he said, 'that is also precisely the idea.' He felt when light, light and not overindebted.

There will be at least two times he reads the e-mail that he has written he on 'Send'.

The child is in his lap. It is to do good. It has everything followed what ship's steward has done and said and at the same time it all seems to be past her. Kaisa draws no conclusions from what they can see and hear.

Now he opens his own e-mail. He reads the e-mail has sent him Tirza net.

The sun visor Tirza 'Queen,' he says. More against themselves than against the girl on his lap. As if he surprised what he has written. Like he still did not expect.

From his inner pocket he retrieves his telephone and gazing to the message that Tirza sent him, he calls the wife.

She takes it quickly. She is probably in the garden, or in the living room on the sofa. In an old crypto grams to resolve.

'I,' he says.

'And? There is news?'

The child in his lap lasts her hands off to the keyboard. Gently he pushes the hand away.

'Yes, there is news. I have received an e-mail of Tirza.'

Ship's steward will continue to watch the message that he himself typed. It is for him that he does not know, is not yet good enough. He would the message should read again. He would have to learn from his head.

'It is in the desert,' he says.

'And? Is it correct? What happened? Why did they not also called or emailed earlier?'

The voice of the wife sounds very different than he is used.

'It is good. There is nothing happened.'

The wife does not sound relieved. Its relationship with Tirza has always been complicated. It appears that there would be no relief that her child is still alive. Life is not really a relief. The death perhaps. Ship's steward would agree to think about. If he has time. He understands itself not with which he has so busy.

'And what she writes?'

Ship's steward reads the e-mail in its entirety for. He is satisfied. The word choice, the short sentences. The message is not too long, and yet it is all about what should be in. That intense yumminess, that he likes. The touched him.

'And now?" asks the wife. 'you now to house?'

Ship's steward rubs his mouth. This is the question to which he has not included. On all questions, but not on that. 'I first go to the desert,' he says. 'I do find her now i am here. It must be nice. Empty, many sandy, this seems to have life when it started life.'

Also is they are silent. It seems as if the wife should think again. 'and the dress," she says, 'de dress that I have given you take that for her note?'

'Of course, of course I take that for her. He is located in my wardrobe. He will note. She will be pleased with them. It is a real desert dress.'

'Let's hear something," she says, 'let's hear something soon. I am pleased. And Ibi will also be pleased.' In her voice he hears a strange doubt. Doubt, he thinks, or they ever hear something of it will. The doubt that lets you talk about someone for always has disappeared.

'I will do,' he says, 'I will call you. As soon as I'm back from the desert i call you.'

'I miss you.'

He moves the phone from one ear to the other.

'What do you mean?'

'As I am doing.'

'That's not,' he says, 'You do me not to be missed. I come back again. And it is also too late, I mean to me to miss at all someone to miss.'

'It is empty here. Please forgive me something?'

He looks at the child in his lap.

'No, nothing. I mean, ach. Things as they are. I do not blame you take. That is what i mean. Nothing.'

'say that I of her Tirza hold, if you see her.' He considers that doubt in its voice to be heard, but he will represent themselves.

'I will.'

'And Jörgen…'

'Yes?'

'It will nevertheless,?'

He let the question unanswered. With a short greeting he closes the call.

He puts the child on the ground and pay at the desk.

'and the girl asks?' of the internet cafe. 'There is news? If you have something to learn?'

'They rightly,' he says, "my daughter, she is rightly, she is in the desert.'

'i said it not?'

He nods.

'Children' says the girl, 'not understand how worried parents can. I have one of two and only now I understand my mother.'

'Yes, yes, you understand your parents until you have children.' ship's steward says but what. He has never understood his parents and vice versa.

He leaves the matter. A corner away for the office of South African Airways he says against child: 'You must the people calm down. It is not always as tidy but it must. A calm man is a happy man. I can not against sadness, against panic. I want the people are calm. I hate hysteria. Emotions, that is the curse of this time, emotions.' He speaks the word out as if it is a dirty word. 'De openness, the proud out, faith in it,' he whispers, 'madness, madness. The feeling is a faith that needs to be overcome.'

Than he opens his briefcase to check whether he Tirza's notebook and its agenda has taken from the internet cafe. Everything must sit, is still in the bag. Only he still has no sharpener purchased. Forget the still. And he can also not remember what sharpener is in English.

'I Are you leaving,' he says, 'we need to say goodbye. It was nice, but I must go. I go to my daughter, and you go to your family. Thanks for everything.' He hesitates, he knows what he is no longer have to say. People clash with their shopping bags against him. 'You need me now really tell us where you live.'

He picks up her face, she crouches down next, and again he says with a hard, desperate voice, as if he is afraid to lose its never will become more: 'where you live, Kaisa? Your mother will surely want you to slowly but surely agree that home?'

She shakes her head. 'I must work,' she whispers.

It shakes the child by each other. 'Where do you live?' he calls in the main street of Wind Angle. 'Kaisa, where do you live?' people watch.

They call a name. A Street, a family, a district, a café perhaps. He has no idea.

It refers to a name that he did not remember and which he also has hardly means, but it is something it is enough.

'I bring you there,' he says.

On Independence Avenue he holds a taxi. In the taxi he let the child repeat the name. He has no idea where they go, but they go to the house of Kaisa. So much is certain.

The taxi is such a taxi that you share with other people. Others steps in and out. Ship's steward must take the child on her lap. Next to him is a fat Negress with two bags and in addition to her a man. In the small car he receives the slow stuffy.

'Is your mother sometimes worried,' he asks soft to the child, 'if you are a few days not home? She makes than ensuring?'

The child shakes the head, it may also be that ship's steward the his doctrine that the vehicle. The driver is hard. There are bumps in the road.

'I,' he says, "From the moment Tirza was born, i saw everywhere i saw everywhere accidents, the disaster. One moment of inattention. There was no more was needed. In order to always be punished. By Tirza i saw the world as it is, dangerous, by and by dangerous. Inhospitable and illogical. A HEATING tube, a elevator door, a bathtub, everywhere danger. Aching. Young children have no fear. You have to be their fear learning, you need the fear on them e.g. embossed, you must learn their shudder. "Au," you must say, "that is au. And that is au. And that too is au." You have young children afraid, otherwise they will go dead.'

They drive by depart from Windhoek where he never has been.

The child look outside, to Hofmeesters idea with a bored look. As if they have already been often has been driven. As if they already have seen on several occasions.

'and the Joy?' he says. 'Dat say the people than. The joy, life is still joy? Certainly, I have joy known. For example in the past. With Tirza. Sometimes I brought her running to the celloles. Then I told her stories, or they explained to me how everything was in. That was joy.'

He speaks the word 'joy' as 'Emotion'. A word that he will not his throat, a hostile word.

'You have also brought joy in my life, but further? Little, I say the fair. Joyless, that was it. Days long. Weeks. I should like to associate me. There will be other people with more joy in their life, but not much. If i had to edit, presented manuscripts i four pencils on table, four pencils all four of which were exactly the same length. It was for me the joy. I have the joy in the search for details.'

Both look outwards. There are few people on the street.

'It was nice,' he says soft, 'de time we have spent together, it was really nice, I will not forget. But I must continue.'

The thick woman with the shopping bags get off, together with the man. It is now a ship's steward only in the taxi, with the girl. She controls of his lap.

He opens and closes his briefcase.

They drive along the airport for domestic flights, Eros called, a strange name for an airport. Airport Eros, the name for an airport where we are looking for some fun specially.

He has the idea that they leave the city.

'Where are we going?' he asks. 'We will go to your mother, we go to your family, not?'

She nods.

It will be put right, he thinks. The child knows what they are doing. She has approached him, they will also need to know how they should be at home. She is not mad.

Then they are silent. Abrupt. Along the side of the road. No house to admit. A highway. But there is also bicycle tours. And walking.

'Is this?' he asks for the child. 'Are we there?'

There is no answer.

'What happened?' he asks to the driver. 'We have de Panne?'

There is something they all tell us what ship's steward not can be understood. He picks up the child at the shoulders. 'Are we there?' he asks. 'say what.'

He shakes her back.

She nods. 'Yes, Mr,' says they are soft but audible.

It pays, too much, but he cannot change waiting, he has no patience. He get off. Now they are on the side of what is called motorway in Namibia.

Ship's steward sees cabins, on the other side of the guard rail, small cabins with something like golf plate on the roofs.

Three men are meat on the grill on the two inverted rain barrels.

The Sun spiked in his eyes. He expresses his hat on his head.

The child grabs his hand and drags him continue, along the men who are grilling meat.

Here are no whites, and he feels that this will also not whites. This is not a nearby for him, this is not a place for him. They walk along identical formations that perhaps houses need to be mentioned. He does not. There are people living there. This justifies the word 'house'. But 'edifice' is better, does more justice to the truth. With a home is the as with beauty, on at anyone who looks. Ever faster pulls the child continue him. 'Wait,' he calls, 'not so fast. Do not pull so my briefcase.'

As he passes another human being, tail he to the ground, knowing that he is not here to hear, knowing that he hated. It makes him not. If you nowhere can, the hatred there also still at.

Yet he is afraid. Afraid to stoned or torn. Afraid to die, although he does not understand. Vreugdelozer than life can cause death are not, but quieter, calmer. More peaceful, especially that. In the death he sees what he has been unable to find life: healing.

'Where you bring me?' he whispers. "So, Tirza not.'

Only after a few seconds calls it up to him by that he has called her Tirza.

He does not even bother to make corrections. She has it not heard.

Still runs faster the child. And now he is the one who holds her hand. If they release me, he thinks, slippery them away in one of those cabins, and then I am lost, I do not know how I come to the highway. They will me from each other, slowly and smoothly silent. They will punish me for crimes of which I have not committed.

'Not so fast,' he says, "my feet hurt.'

After ten minutes they stand for a hut. The door is a shower curtain.

The vestibule consists of three empty pans on the ground. Then there is still a real door, at least, a truer door. Everything here is relatively.

The inside is dark. Ship's steward sees nothing. It smells only much. It smells like garbage.

The stench makes him week. The stench annoys him.

He narrows his eyes, opens them back, but still he sees nothing.

The floor consists of sandy, feels he and his sandals. He has the need to help to create a human voice should be heard. He feels the remarkable need to scream that God should come out. Not that he believers or believers is likely to be. But the idea that anyone today on him, that only the child sees him, that nobody further look at him, is unbearable.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'say something. Where are we?'

He slowly begins to become accustomed to the darkness. In the corner of the room is a man on a sort of bed. Under a cloth.

A woman.

The child pulls him to the woman.

'This is your mother?' he asks. 'Kaisa, this is your mother?'

He frunnikt to are required.

He clears his throat. 'I am Jörgen ship's steward,' he says with the hat in his hand. 'I have your daughter company held a few days. Or better said: They sent me a few days pet. The special days. We have spoken with one another, and that was very pleasant. Your daughter is a hot man, a sweet man.'

The mother is not dead, because they will open its eyes. It flashes with her eyes. The stench ensures that ship's steward feels unwell. He has in any case the unpleasant feeling that he is going to be unwell, that he must give in. That He will go in this hut puke as a dog, that he has the floor to crawl in his own vomit.

'You Mean me?' he asks. You may 'speaks African?'

She moves its lips, they seem to say something, but there is no sound from her mouth.

'I mean not your mother,' he says to Kaisa. 'I understand its not.'

But also Kaisa remains silent.

'I do not understand you,' he says.

He kneels down at the bed. His pants is already stained. In Africa, it makes no difference. This is not the Van Eeghenstraat. In Africa makes little difference. Other country, other rules.

There are fly in the face of the woman.

He gives them away.

'I do not understand you,' he says, 'but I am a friend of your daughter Kaisa, a friend from the Netherlands.'

They now moves her hands.

He is looking forward, he tail to the moving hands as to an exotic puppet play, and it takes him a few seconds to understand that the deaf language. That they go out against him language speaking.

He is. Weather frunnikt he Colbert. He is looking for something in the inner bags. 'I am deaf people do not speak the language,' he says overly loud and clear.

But he thinks: she is deaf dumb, that is it. She is deaf stupid.

'What does your mother?' he asks. 'I understand its not.'

He shout: 'I am deaf people do not speak the language.'

Ship's steward kneels for Kaisa. 'I must continue,' he says. 'I must return to the city. I will give you a kiss, Kaisa, I can not continue. I will give you a kiss. Do you know what your mother says?'

Silence. The sound of insects. The fly valleys with dozens of the same amount on head and body of Kaisa's mother. An airport for fly is that body, nothing else. An airport.

'Do you want company, sir?' whispers Kaisa. 'Sir?'

'No, no,' he says. 'No, no. She speaks the deaf language. You can see it not? She speaks the deaf language. Your mother. She says something, but we do not know what.'

He is looking for in his briefcase, but there is nothing. At least nothing helps him further.

From his trouser pockets he retrieves all loose Namibian dollars which he has, also in his inner pocket he still finds what money and with that money he sprinkles the body of the woman on the bed. Still moves her hands, manically. Maybe it is him in sign language to the swearing at.

'Here,' he says, 'Here, I do not understand you because I am the deaf do not speak the language. Here is some more money. For groceries. Or… for whatever.'

He shall leave the hut as a refugee. He rent, but his feet do too much pain to the long full account. He passes identical edifice. The smell of rot remains him. As Kaisa. They will be behind him. Quick she is. Very fast. She picks up his hand. And he goes back. He squeeze in the hands of Kaisa.

They walk along the men who meat roasting. They conjure up something to him, the men, but a ship's steward not remain. He also has no idea what they call.

'a taxi,' he says, 'we must maintain a taxi. Where can we find a taxi?'

He climbs up over the guard rail, he waves with his briefcase.

There are no cars.

Still it smell the stench. The death in Africa stinks.

'You don't say that you have left the mother so?' he asks. 'I have its money. They must see a doctor. I do not know what she has, but they have to go to a doctor. A doctor who sign language mastered.'

He bows to the child.

'You must now back home. You have to release it, you need to release the people, I have the people released. But you are too young to have them, you must hold them. That is why you must go back to your mother.'

A car comes along. He waves with his briefcase.

The vehicle does not stop.

Wind blows. There are blowing fine sand in his eyes.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'You can't. I go to the desert. I can not going anywhere. I am going to disappear. You can not. You should only do disappear. All you need to do is ultimately only, of course, as it is, but disappear you should really only do so. There you can use no one, especially children, Kaisa. No children.'

He runs a few meters along the guard rail. A truck over. The twilight sets in.

Kaisa runs behind him. She picks up his hand. 'Go away,' he calls. He puts his hat and waves them as with a whisk. 'Go away.'

He bending itself. He kneels on the hot asphalt. His hat in his hand, his briefcase under his arm.

'Kaisa, see you than not who i am?' he whispers. 'you see it not? Do you understand it not? I am what Tirza has made ill, I am the disease of the white middle class. I am the eetziekte.'

They remain stationary. She is not impressed by his words.

'What do you want of me?' he calls and he is again. 'What is it that you want me?'

She is coming closer. She pulls his hand, he must bend. He bending, deeper and deeper.

It puts its mouth when his ear and she whispers: 'Do you want company, sir?'

4

In Hertz he asks the same evening even to a jeep, but that they are not more. Also no small. They still have a light blue Toyota in the offer.

'Can I place the desert in?' he informs.

'If you do carefully,' says the girl from the rental company, 'You can create a final note. Do not drive the vehicle and in a sand storm. If there is a sand storm comes up, stop immediately. Also not slow driving. It has no meaning. You make the car there is only broken note.'

'Meteen stop,' reiterates ship's steward.

Later that evening he leaves the Heinitzburghotel. Because he has not checked out, he must pay an extra night. He did not care. Who loses enough, lose on a given moment are also efficiency. You put the economy as an unnecessary piece of clothing.

The people of the hotel it friendly but with clear remote Pentagon. Nobody informs more to his daughter. Or it is found. Or he is now going. The tip that he has on the bedside table left for the maids is him by the mistress of the nagebracht the maids, an old white woman. "It has you forget, Mr ship's steward.'

He does not dare to say that he has not forgotten the money, ashamed he takes.

During the day a young man who acts as a gardener helps him with the luggage. If the bag in the back of the Toyota, he points on his own shoes. Trainers.

'They are too big, gentleman,' he says. 'As four or five sizes.'

The child Hofmeesters hand, she looks to the man, whose skin color is darker than that of her.

'I have received them, but they are much too large,' says the gardener. 'I can't walk.'

The door of the door is already open. They are ready to leave, Tirza's father and his reisgenote.

"Have you money for good shoes?' The voice of the gardener sounds as if it is a question to which he should not have been. A PROHIBITED question.

Ship's steward looks to the bare feet of the Child on the shoes of the man. Also he also wonders what is such a problem is to large shoes. Better than no shoes, not?

Although a ship's steward the man for twenty Namibian dollars, gives him another hundred. He puts the child seats, show how the belt must be fastened.

His briefcase and his hat he explains on the rear bench seat. He waves to the gardener which if any of the staff outside the Dutchman who has remained so much longer than he had originally planned pentagon to do so.

Ship's steward is moving in the direction of Okahandja. It is already dark. The radio is on, the German program of Namibia. With schlager music. Music elsewhere hardly or not at all to hear. 'Theo wir drive'n nach Lodz. Steh Auf, du Altes Murmeltier, Bevor ich which verlier patience. Theo, wir drive'n nach Lodz.' ship's steward here. 'Du Altes Murmeltier,' he panting slightly. Occasionally he looks at the girl next to him, but they do not seem to respond to the music, nor on its geneurie.

Thirty kilometers north of Wind Angle he sees a sign: 'Okapuka Ranch'. He has too much momentum to quit on time. Than but by driving, he thinks. But after a kilometer or three he decides to return. He has the feeling that there is nothing more. That the Okapuka Ranch is the only opportunity to stop between Windhoek and Okahandja.

And he is tired, too tired to drive long.

For the gate of the Okapuka Ranch is a keeper that slowly, what a ship's steward, slowly, tormenting dialog they car authorised open.

Tirza's father observes the child next to him as a kidnapper are hostage. He would have to buy something for her, shoes, a new dress. If he gives the gardener shoes, he can also buy shoes for her? He has always been postponed. He found that the suspect, wrong associations could calls. He is looking for no special entertainment. At most you could say that he was looking for Tirza. No more than that.

'Yes?' asks the keeper.

'I am looking for a room for the night. Is the open here? The Okapuka Ranch?'

The keeper looks to the child that in addition to ship's steward. He has a flashlight with him, he appears with the car in.

Than he asks: "Have you reserved?'

Ship's steward shakes his head.

The keeper does nothing. He is there. Again he seems with the flashlight in the Toyota. Also on the rear bench seat, where Hofmeesters bag and hat.

Then opens the keeper slowly the gate. A sign warns that entering the premises at your own risk. There are wild animals.

The reception is still a final drive and the sandy road is lumpy. Ship's steward sensors caused hear the sound of stones. He says: 'We will destroy the auto'. The child is not responding.

Behind the reception there is a dark, regular woman.

Ship's steward explains which he comes. He apologizes that he has not reserved. Browse them not greatly interested in a book. There is no one here, in so far as he can see. A shop with souvenirs, but also that is empty.

'Would you still eat?' she asks.

'If the can.'

She looks at her watch. 'Dan need to quickly.' She points to the child. "Do you want a separate bed for her? A cot?'

'It is my niece,' says ship's steward, 'a double bed is fine.' And while he says that he realizes that he sounds like a man who are looking for some fun specially and that has been found. A man who has come to Africa to pick up what he had in his own country is not without problems.

'Hut eleven," she says. She gives him the key. 'De kitchen is open for a further half hour.'

He must be with the car to hut eleven. Walk with luggage is too far. The route leads through a dry river. He hears the sound of sensors caused stones.

The other cabins look deserted. Clearly there are not many guests on the Okapuka Ranch. It is not the season, or the Okapuka Ranch is not so in the Grace. In Windhoek, he had a café holder moaning: 'Namibia has become too expensive for the tourist.' polite if a ship's steward, he had an extra piece of apple strudel ordered. The German past of the country is at first sight especially in culinary quirks and some street names that you forget to change has: Bahnhofstraße for example. Ship's steward had long-term to the street sign.

He sjouwt with his suitcase to the hut. The child runs behind him. There is a ceiling fan. The bed is great, the room clean. A bright, but no unpleasant smell of wood and disinfectant. This is the Africa of the tourist. The world can be classified in tourist and staff. They always and everywhere to leave, the tourist, and those who operate the tourist. Have fun. Engaged. They do can.

Ship's steward washes his hands and attracts a new shirt that he also a few times has behaved in Windhoek, but that just a little less badly creased pitch than the shirt that he spent a whole day wearing them. The child runs around the room and remains at a chair. While a ship's steward his shirt close hangings, he looks at her and he thinks of her mother. A woman on a bed. A woman who it to a cow reminded, principally because of the fly on her face. He will associate fly with cows. Especially when they take place on the body and not more flys away. Were it to fly? Small insects, sure. Dozens of small insects. He is not at home in the animal world. He would also have to read a book about.

'Was your mother always been deaf stupid?' he asks, while he with the knots is in progress. 'Is they so born?'

The child laughs Glint, or is that Hofmeesters imagination? The shaking your head. Aha, the mother is therefore only at a later age become deaf stupid.

'You mother was previously laid a beautiful woman,' he says.

He grabs her hand. 'Let's go food. Do not worry about your mother. I have money left for her. I have money on her bed down, enough to do some shopping. For a week. For a month. They must once again. Too much sleep is unhealthy. There is a human being depressed. Motion, even if you feel uncomfortable, that is healing. O, it is all well with your mother.'

He is talking about as an elderly person during the daily coffee-hour, but he can not help to: he wants reassurance. He must reassure them.

By sharp grass they walk in the direction of the dining room. The child keeps his hand. They remain stationary. 'Meneer," she says.

She points to a beast.

He had not seen. His thoughts were elsewhere. In the Van Eeghenstraat. In the event of the wife, the dress that they purchased for Tirza. Years she has nothing to make themselves heard and when she came back with a dress for the trip around the world. Typically the wife. Unpredictable. Impulsive.

The beast is a meter or twenty of them removed. Ship's steward knows the only photos in books. Here Tirza wanted. Namibia. For the wild animals, but especially for something else, the culture. Culture. He smiles.

The beast flees, disappears in the darkness, makes virtually no noise.

Ship's steward does not believe in culture, in so far as you can believe. What is culture? Its survival strategy is that of adaptation, the ability to make yourself invisible. Or would also culture? How onzichtbaarder, the better. The invisible is immune.

But his children otherwise he attempted to educate, as critical individuals in the Community no safety net but a cage. That Excel, in the swimming pool, on the music school, in Latin and Greek, in mathematics and the natural sciences. And then comes the money itself. All real freedom is money, and if money can buy no freedom, there is simply not enough money. But where he sees Tirza freedom, and Ibi a capitalist conspiracy where. That is back in the mode. And how often a ship's steward also has argued that it is not a conspiracy is that the freedom is, they want to do not believe him.

When she was a child, had every reason to Tirza be happy. She was high-high gifted, they participated in swimming competitions, and they won, they played better cello than other children of her age. And at the height of her high-high nous she decided itself to starve to death. A sin, an offense.

'Mewe huh?' says ship's steward against the child. 'Mewe huh?' he knows not whether he now has the beast that they have seen to run, the sharp grass, the hut, or just the world an sich.

The dining room is composed of at least 18 tables, of which there are only three are busy. Older people. South Africans to hear so, also two Germans of slightly more than middle aged.

We look to the even for Namibian concepts unusual set. The old white and the young, the particular young black. And then there is always the confrontational moment of shame, the time that ship's steward would like to put things right, would like to declare itself. But it takes less time each day. Each day there is more readily distinguishable. The moral breaks little by little. Every day he is a little more the man who is here in him is going to see: a westerner with an unmistakable desire for special entertainment.

That is not the end of the day the only job of human rights? You must be what the others in your wishes to see.

He and the children get a table on the edge of the room, with views of what a ship's steward is reminiscent of a steppe. There are no windows, windows are not necessary here. It is all open. Only a roof. For if agree regent.

The menu is simple. Save, a piece springbok fillet, dessert.

'Eat,' he says to the child.

The child is looking to the steppe, although the darkness little to see. The eat slowly and with a degree of reluctance.

But a ship's steward tastes and the red wine from South Africa tastes him even better. He meedrinken leave the child. She takes a few sips, but they do not find wine tasty. Cola, since she keeps of.

'we sit back,' says ship's steward as the springbok filet is eaten. 'we are down, we cannot get away from each other, Kaisa.'

He leans back and plays with a toothpick, he orders a second bottle of red wine. For the child is still a bottle of cola.

He acts as if he is on holiday. He has perhaps that also. Finally he is on holiday.

'They have me deprived of everything,' he says soft, 'first my wife, when my money. Mohammed Atta did you know Atta? Do you know him?'

She shakes her head.

'Yes,' he says, 'Atta. Many are already forgotten him. Incorrectly. He gave me my money taken. More than a million. He also has other things to be done. Other people he has decreased their children. But he has my money confiscated. My freedom.'

He is looking for under the table to his bag, but realizes that he has those in hut eleven has left. Just like his hat.

'My work they seem to have also decreased,' he says. 'In a certain sense also my children. My family. But I have taken the same way as one the weather. Rain, snow, wind, you can do nothing to change that, Kaisa. Invulnerable Resistance is a virtue, that people do not know more. Who nowhere in believes, is immune. He is above the parties, he is at the top itself. He knows no doubt because he accepts everything. Who offended in doubt., You are also invulnerable, Kaisa. You can purchase anything because you have nothing. How you also mentioned, it makes you nothing, because you are nothing. Even if we would terminate your life, you would not hurt. In Fact i you already dead.'

He takes her hand but leave it loose again if the second bottle of wine and Kaisa's cola.

Immediately afterwards he grabs the hand. He caresses her hand. Soft, small and yet not toothless.

Ship's steward sees a tor walk, a large African tor in bright colors. He points to and cooperation are they looking at the gate. As if it were a popular attraction, specially for them there.

'I had,' says ship's steward, 'or better said: I have a worker from Ghana. A friendly woman. Illegal, but friendly. When my wife disappeared, I got a sexual relationship with the applicant ' s work.'

He loves the hand of the child. He has the idea that they can understand him, that they understand everything he says and can NATO remains. Better than others. They know him.

They cannot forgive him. That is the way it seems in any case, it felt, actually for the first time. They will forgive him in silence

'I can talk to you so well,' he says, "I have often said, but I can not say often enough. I can talk to you, Kaisa.'

There is still a remnant of cola in the first bottle. He empty, for he who fill the glass with the contents of the second bottle. No human being is more efficient, but is still a carefully man.

'It was slightly between friends. That between me and the worker. I arranged a lawyer for her, stopped her what. It was pleasant, very pleasant actually,' he says doorframe, searching for words, slower talking loudly than would otherwise, by the wine and also by the child that he understands. 'I took her on the bank, in the living room. Always from the rear. You know, Kaisa…' He leans slightly forward and back he takes her hand in his own. So small, so soft that basis. 'De core of sexuality between adults is the humiliation. In itself it is not so much, sex, not much good for. On the humiliation after. That is what it is all about, this is in fact the only.'

He delivers his head even closer to that of Kaisa. He can smell her breath.

'If its shit of my pik licked, i was all lost ballast, i had no awareness, and therefore no shame — no debt, i was nothing and everything at the same time, I was the beast. The beast that I always wanted to be that I have always been in. The enjoyment is in the humiliation. And the liberation is losing our disease, the healing of the disease, of our aids: humanism. And of everything that is stuck, still again and again, again and again. Do you understand? It is salvation. The redemption is in the humiliation.'

He delivers his mouth to her forehead, he kisses her forehead, on the table.

'You have already been redeemed,' he says. 'You are dead while you breathe, here in Africa. Nothing can be done you. You are the true onkwetsbaren, invulnerable as a machine, a product, a… thing. You are beyond all the future, that is beyond all the despair.'

Ship's steward drinking wine. He shall ensure that they consume. The other guests are already to their cabins. Also the control is going to sleep, but a ship's steward and the child should remain in place as long as they want to continue, they said. No problem. Though it is half the night.

And that is what they do. They make use of their privilege. They sit and they remain tight.

Hand in hand. Occasionally a ship's steward interrupts are words and he kisses her on the main. They allow the cushion to worry as his words: with much sympathy and silence.

Yes, they accept each other, ship's steward and the child.

'As we are,' he says, 'people will be, invulnerable and unreachable. The others will follow. But they don't know, they want to do not yet know, they will continue to be faded ideals. They still have hope and faith and they see that they do by that hope, by that faith reports will be. Reports, Kaisa. Reports.'

He kisses her again, on the table. Not only the forehead, also the cheeks. He picks up her face with both hands. Caution, as you pick up an expensive vase.

'When I was so old as you,' he says, 'No, a bit older, I worked with a project. God was already dead. When the love still. I have the love abolished. It is diluted, the project, dissolved in obligations, a job, a family, a house, a tenant. Children. But I had to mention the otherwise: the death of the compassion should welcome. I am a human Kaisa, without compassion. I do not know what it is, I do not believe it, compassion, I have got rid of me as an unpleasant, but a persistent cough. Not that I think we want to see others suffering, on the contrary. Generally we want others, not suffer, not really in any case. But compassion? What is that? I can rape, Kaisa, it could be, and just before I go you go inside, I would have thought, I could feel — because you seem to feel the, compassion, they say, they know that can — but then I would have thought: I will leave it at that. That is what I can feel comfortable. I got you the clothes of the corporal jerked, I have a couple of times in your face skipped, and I am now thinking, now I, suddenly, as from nothing, compassion. I think: further than this should i not continue. It is good. It is good that it is. You now understand why I want to have nothing to do? I experience the compassion as a personal insult. The insult me. It makes me livid.'

He let her face.

A few minutes does he, he drinks are only wine. And then he calls her name. 'Kaisa,' he calls. And again, hard and stark: 'Kaisa.'

She looks at him, alarmed. But not so shocked that they would like to stand up and drain. They do not want to drain.

'When my wife again for the door was, I left her within,' he says now, but softer, almost in a whisper. 'Mededogen? Let me not laugh. I have left her within because I accept everything. Also her return, even her home. Because I am willing to adapt me to assimilate, No wife, a wife. Tirza, that is a different story. She was sick and i was the disease. That is the story. Other people can say: "I am sick. I must cure" or "I cannot heal, how much I would wish that." But the disease can not do that. That is the difference between the adjective and the noun. The disease must remain disease. I am the noun.'

The wine is on, but its cola not yet. He picks up its glass. 'MAG I?' he asks. He takes a few swallow. It tastes like it. But he has thirst.

'The story. Yes,' he says, 'the story of the family ship's steward is the destruction of the family ship's steward. That is the story. That is my story. A world without compassion is onvoorstelbaarder than the own death, therefore, we are still on the back, therefore it should be depends. I had in several places in my life have thought: I must back. This road is not mine, this road is not the best. But I did not go back. O certainly, Kaisa, sure…'

He is on, he will stand beside her, puts his hands on her head in her dress, that part of the back of the dress is not covered. 'There are choices,' he says, 'die are correct, there are choices that are bad, there are cases of doubt. As the highest form of compassion consists that you and the other in life, I can only confirm: I am a man without compassion. I lost my control, perhaps. But only when I lost my control, i was who i am. That portion of Jörgen ship's steward that outside the law is his hard core. That is why I am here. So here I am. Because I no longer need to have doubts about who i am.'

The child is running her face toward him. She looks at him. She is not afraid, why? She seems even to laugh. She smiles at the man who say things that they do not understand, words to which they probably do not agree to listen to me.

From the kitchen is music. The German-speaking transmitter of Namibia. Again.

Both listen to the radio them in the distance, without any can mean. And they smile.

And because they smiles, because they finally smiles, he says: 'Kaisa, there is a difference between forgiveness and acceptance? I forgive the world by its to accept. I accept everything. There is nothing I do not accept. And you? You saw me walk, on an afternoon in Windhoek, a hot afternoon. You saw a man who was difficult, because he had wounds to his feet. Of the heat. Shoes knelden. And you came back to me. I do not know why. Does it matter? You picked my hand, you went. We can grant meaning to. That it was supposed to be. It is not possible otherwise. That someone there is an intention to have. Perhaps it had to be, but perhaps not. What is important is that you are there. That we both outside the law. This is what it is all about.'

He bending, are looking for under the table, but he has this evening his bag not included. Forget the again and again. The bag is in the hut. Ship's steward does the child at hand. She finds its seat slide. He is 'Sir' and it is 'company'. That is their game. Now it takes all days.

In the dark, probably as a result of the wine road, he may no longer eleven to hut so easy to find. They walk through the high grass. Slowly. Kaisa cannot quickly, ship's steward can also not quickly. Not at this hour of the night. Not by the high grass. Not here in Namibia, with are still slightly swollen feet.

They run laps. Ship's steward notes, and he says: 'We walk rounds. Where is our hut, Kaisa?'

He takes the child on his shoulders. 'Where is our hut?' he asks. 'Where we live?'

Yet he is running slower now, afraid if he is to fall.

He carefully place the child back on the ground.

'Tirza,' he says, 'Tirza. Yes. The problem with Tirza was that they have high-high gifted was…. High-high gifted. The last few years I lived with her only.'

He is going to sit in the grass.

'Her sister was already to France, my wife was moved to her childhood love. I was only with Tirza and actually, in hindsight, it was the best time of my life. I cooked for her. I am not occupied herself too much more with her life. That I had done. But that was a mistake.'

He is. Something by the substance of the spiked his pants. After five minutes they have finally found eleven hut

Ship's steward does the fan. From his briefcase he retrieves Tirza's iPod. He let the engraving to the child. 'Solar Queen,' he says, 'is there. Sun Queen.'

He charges iPod on, stops the earphones of the device in the ears of the child.

'It is the music listening Tirza,' he says. 'It is her music.'

Ship's steward will sit on the bed while the child to Tirza's music. The fan is running and also knows no longer ship's steward for which he has travelled to Namibia. He remembers still limited. His own past seems a different life. Someone else has it lived, someone else was writer foreign fiction, someone else is on all those places, someone else wanted to abolish the love. He was always in Namibia, with Kaisa.

The next morning they drive in one flick through to Swakopmund, a coastal town. There are many tourist, more than elsewhere. Ordinary tourist also. With charter flights from Germany, for the Sun and the sea and a hint of Exotica. Not of those people who have something special with Africa. They have something special with the sun, they maintained an intimate relationship with their bikini.

Together with the child he moved into the small Eberwein Hotel, not far from the beach. We talk is fluent in German and also the device does very German.

Mrs Eberwein itself is behind the reception. Wrinkled and dried out by the sun but kwiek and even a tad aggressive. Mrs Eberwein here is the boss. Nobody will doubt. It is her hotel. She asks or ship's steward a cot. Here he declares that a large double bed is fine. 'We will not remain long,' he says. 'It is my niece.'

And because it cannot be, he would like the photo of Tirza on the counter. "Have you this girl here may have seen in the last couple of weeks?'

The Woman with White, probably painted, curly hair looking forward. She picks the photo even momentarily. 'No," she says, 'never seen. Who is it?'

My daughter,' says ship's steward, 'my youngest daughter.'

Mrs Eberwein brings the picture even closer to her eyes. 'It looks similar to you," she says. 'They did your chin.'

And then she looks to the girl that in addition to ship's steward. Like Mrs Eberwein the chin of the girl you wish to check.

Ship's steward runs with the child on the beach, tail with the child on the pier to fishing, shares a salad with her in café Out of Africa, and is, while they are in a merry, called by his wife.

He tells the wife almost everything about his travel, accommodation, Toyota, Swakopmund, except for the child.

'I am almost in the desert,' he says, 'I am almost at Tirza. It is still a day of riding.'

'Ibi,' says the wife, 'it is strange that it has heard nothing of Tirza.'

Her voice has still not the invigorating and hoarse sarcasm that he is so much of its usual. The schor that some men as defeats.

'Ibi should not always believe they are the most important.'

There is a silence in the conversation. The merry slows down. Kaisa climbs of her horse. Ship's steward lent its.

'And how do we?' he asks. 'How is it?'

The Van Eeghenstraat seems so far away. A different world. All not more to his.

'Well," she says, 'this is good. Jörgen, what I wanted to say yet, I have a phone call from the mother of Choukri had. Initially i had no idea who it was. They spoke French.'

Kaisa is now next to him. He directs that they still have a round with the merry-go-round mag. Have another round and another and another. He gives its money. But they are its main against his body. As if they were tired. As if they trust him.

Who knows they trust him. It is a matter of time, and need. Especially the last.

He knows no compassion, but he is to trust.

'Jörgen, aren't you?'

'Yes.'

'De mother of Choukri called. She asked where her son was. My French is not so good.'

'I thought he had no contact with his family. The boy.'

'Oh, well yes they sounded… they sounded likeable but worried.'

'You have yet been said that they sit in the desert? What do you think that people, that there in the desert to the ten meters a telephone box condition? They come from the desert.'

'I also said, that they are in the desert. And that there is no range. I have promised to give to you that you should ask Choukri to call his mother. It seems to be urgent.'

The child picks up his hand, the apparently wants by walk.

'Jörgen, do you still here? It seems as though you are omitted.'

Atta must call his mother, he thinks. Atta must go home.

'I am still. Yes, I will pass this.'

'I have purchased a book with pictures of the Kalahari. And of the Namib desert. What would people search in such void? What would do this Tirza the whole day?'

"Look,' says ship's steward, 'Watch. You are watching, you go to the desert.'

The child is now really his hand. It is impatient.

Now they are a wreck, develops the wife suddenly the maternal feelings. A book with pictures of Namibia. Previously they had better things to do.

'I really have to hang up,' he says, 'mensuring i will go to the desert. I call you back in a few days a week or so. Do not worry if it takes longer.'

'Jörgen, how should we go?'

'That?'

'Met us."

'We have about.'

We need to 'maybe try again. With each other. Because we have no choice. Because we old.'

'Maybe.'

'I voted against the lady said that they no longer need to go, I disconnect the house now clean. I have nothing to do.'

He hangs up. The child is tired. The last part of the road to the hotel HE MUST BEAR ITS. In his small room in Hotel Eberwein he closes the curtains. He shall submit to the child in bed, and is itself in addition to lie. It is four hours in the afternoon in Namibia.

Anything after Van Zessen is he woke up. The child sleeps still. It is carefully and clothe located on. He picks up his briefcase and his hat and without noise out of the room.

The twilight has already largely used. Initially it will walk aimlessly by Swakopmund. For a shop window of a travel agency he remains are watching a poster which tours to the desert is promoted. By Jeep, or per airplane. There is something for everyone.

He looks at the desert on the poster. He are staring to the people in the background, as if one of them could be Tirza.

In a textile supermarket purchases a Training pants and a t-shirt for Kaisa. And four briefs which he thinks her.

In the row for the cash register that he is the only white. The concerned him less and less.

Back at Hotel Eberwein take Kaisa crying in bed. One sobbing nugget of misery with all sheets and pillows around her. He takes the child in his arms.

'Not afraid,' he says, 'I do not go away. I really do not go away. I can not going anywhere.'

He let her the t-shirt, the training pants and the briefs.

'You must surely agree something fresh to attract,' he says. 'Not that i dirty of you Ben, but it never hurts to look again to attract something fresh.'

He is going to sit on the only seat in the room. The child has stopped crying.

'how many there are actually of you?' he asks, while its new clothes. 'how many children as you are in this country?'

It is sitting on the bed and tail him.

'Have you are in contact with each other? The children who sell company?'

They remain naughtily drawing pictures him.

He hangs his clothes in the bathroom and running the hot water valve of the shower open, in the hope that the steam the wrinkles in the clothes will delete.

They do not eat that evening. They lie in bed and watch TV. For ten hours, ship's steward the child her nightdress: the summer dress which the wife has purchased for Tirza.

In the middle of the night is the ship's steward awake. The girl is about cross. She has her feet on his belly. He shall carefully hair so that its feet do not more on his belly need to lie. It takes him certainly a hour for he falls back to sleep.

To seven and a half of them. When they arrive in the breakfast room, is Mrs Eberwein still working to build the buffet.

"You are there early," she says. 'Coffee? Tea?'

'coffee dates, and chocolate milk for the child.'

The breakfast is meaner than in hotel Heinitzburg and Okapuka Ranch and for some reason they seem both less trek to have.

At the checkout says Mrs Eberwein: 'It is a nice girl. Your cousin. A very nice girl.'

She gives him an invoice, which ship's steward fold twice and in his inner pocket stops.

He already wants to drain away, but Mrs Eberwein says: 'There are many children without parents.'

Ship's steward has his hat. His suitcase is already in the back of the Toyota. Only if he has briefcase always, clipped under his arm.

He should say something back. But what? What is there to say about children without parents?

'Aids,' sist Mrs Eberwein, 'because they cannot. The blacks.'

He looks serious to the woman with the many wrinkles on the face. He knows what she sees, or rather to see what she thinks.

'Look Out," she says. 'seem children. But they commandeer. O, I understand the best. If I had nothing I would also commandeer. It is in their blood. Always blame others of its own misery.'

There is a scale with sweets. Ship's steward picks up a and stops in his mouth. Then he runs without further to say something with the child behind him to the Toyota.

'We go to Tirza,' he says when they sit in the vehicle, 'we go to the desert.' He folds a map of Namibia open which he has obtained from the rental company. 'Sossusvlei,' he says, 'wanted them back. The dunes.' He puts his hands on the steering wheel. He has no idea what he feels they must submit proposals. The dunes. He wonders where he goes.

To Whale Bay is the road paved. Then begins a sandy road. Initially dares ship's steward not more than forty, fifty kilometers per hour to drive. Gradually the tempo runs on to eighty, almost 90.

At the sound of stones that against the car splashing is he become accustomed.

The radio does not work any more. Also are phone has no range. It is nothing more. It is only with Kaisa.

Occasionally he raises a look on her. She has a bottle of water between her legs clipped. If he asks, she gives him the bottle. In this way he can drink without stopping.

Although he thinks that he is driven, does he takes longer than he had thought. It is already in the afternoon as he arrives in Solitaire. A dot on the map as big as a small town. In fact no more than a motel and a petrol station.

He buys and refueled two pieces of apple pie. The child eat her piece fully. She is hungry.

'Well,' says ship's steward, as if it were a performance.

The Toyota is located under the dust and sand. The girl attracts with its index finger stripes over the bonnet.

'Let us sit down,' he says, 'just relax.'

In addition to the pump are what chairs and tables. They look old, lost by the weather, the time, the use. There is also something a bit more on a really seems café. But they do not have the time. You will ship's steward. They must continue.

He iron with a handkerchief on his head, and then also that of the child. Although they are not sweat.

There is a tree, away a water tower. Then nothing. Sand, stone, what shrubs. A fence around the one plot of the other to separate. But what does plot here?

They remain silent.

'Have you understood what I am in fact doing?' he asks after a time. 'Have you already by?'

She points to the dusty Toyota.

'No, no,' he says. 'Not the Toyota, or perhaps. I am disappearing. That is what I am doing.' The word 'rdwijnen' set to reassure him. It is so much gentler and more innocent than die. It is dying, but without violence.

He must have fallen asleep, because he wakes up from the child that on his cheek touch. The sun is already bearing. His hat fell on the floor.

He rubs his eyes, picks up the hat.

'Yes,' he says, 'we continue.'

They are doing there are two hour to get the Sossusvlei Lodge. Huts in strange colors, in the middle of the desert, that is the Sossusvlei Lodge. But there is no more space.

He had not included. That would be the desert popular.

The girl behind the desk says: 'Try the Kulala Desert Lodge, maybe they have to do something. I can also call?'

'like'.

He is up there with the child to his hand. Dusty and thirsty.

One of those tourists who travel not good had prepared. Sloppy tourist.

The receptionist phone. There is space in the Kulala Desert Lodge. He thanks very much for the trouble.

Despite fatigue and thirst he drives hard further. Almost a hundred kilometers per hour on a sandy road.

If they finally a sign with the Kulala see it is already dark,

The small road — a road it is difficult to say — that there is still performs almost six kilometers long. They are doing there is a quarter of an hour. The only light is that of the vehicle. Ship's steward has ever more difficult to concentrate.

He finally to the Kulala Desert Lodge. A tent camp. But the tents are no tents. The are cabins in the desert.

He park the car. He takes a child, hat and briefcase and runs to the entrance. He staggers, he is dizzy. He probably eaten too little or too little drunk.

There is a young woman at the entrance with a tray. They give him a drink. She has a cloth ornate for its capital skipped.

Ship's steward drink eager, the drink tastes at the same time to tea and alcohol. Also the child drink. Today she wears her new training trousers.

She looks good. Less than in its paid sletterig dress, in so far as a child can look like sletterig there. The word reminds him to the wife. Sletterig, a word as a game that is played for a long time not.

'I am Jörgen ship's steward,' he says, 'there is just called on behalf of me. For one or two nights. Do I need to register somewhere?'

'All comes later," she says.

A man comes on him. A white. The man shows a young Frenchman. It is called a ship's steward welcome, says that all formalities will be dealt with later, asks whether they want to eat something first. Also the baggage will later be removed from the vehicle. Now they should first but rest. Relax.

Ship's steward is led to a table. He is so tired that he forget to turn off his hat. Too tired to brands or and how there to him and the child is being looked at carefully.

If a basket with home-baked bread on the table appears, food he and the child the within five minutes.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'we are there. We are almost there.'

And finally she says what. For the first time that day. With a smile on her face, a smile that almost seems ironic. 'Meneer," she says, 'more bread, dates.'

He beckons one of the girls. They come with more bread. The girl remains at the table and look at the child.

'Your daughter?' she asks.

'My cousin,' says ship's steward.

This will start the girl to sing. She sings in a language which he cannot mean and she makes klak noises with its tongue. She has a beautiful voice, but he wants no singing. He wants to eat, sleep, disappear.

If the girl is sung, caresses on her arm ship's steward Kaisa. While they are in a piece of homemade bread nibbles.

'Not all bread food,' whispers, 'otherwise have a ship's steward you will not be hungry.'

Also it stops chewing. She smiles at the man with whom they are already a few days on a trip.

It makes its not, he thinks. It makes its not from who i am. Also indifference can forgiveness.

After the meal he gives the car keys to a boy who the luggage for a preview of the hut. But after a few minutes the boy is back. He gets the tailgate will not open.

'I think that there are too many sand and dust in the lock,' he says. 'We will tomorrow rinsing. But I am afraid that you now without luggage must spend the night. Is that a big problem? If you have something?'

'No,' says ship's steward. 'No problem. We needed anything.'

They are by the Frenchman to their stay. The cabins are relatively far away from each other. They must be carefully walk. The road is marked with stones, but there is not a lot of light. Sand and dust everywhere.

'Beware,' says the Frenchman. 'Meestal the guests previously. If the light is still.'

The hut meets Hofmeesters expectations. A bed, a fan, a spray against insects, a shower.

'If you want,' says the Frenchman, 'you can sleep on top of the roof. There are blankets. Some people find it convenient to under the starry sky to sleep. It is a special experience. An attraction.'

They walk from the outside toward the rear of the hut, where a ladder condition.

The child has remained within.

Ship's steward nods. 'Are you already long here?' he asks.

'a year or three,' says the Frenchman. 'It is really time that I will continue. But I cannot say goodbye. The desert is addictive.'

They look at the top, to the hut and to the bed that is located on the roof. No bid farewell to. It is a ship's steward known for and we are not. What is so special about this place is that you can?

'And how are you here?" requires a ship's steward.

The Frenchman laughs. "I wanted to know what else.' He is also still as if he expects that there will be even more questions. Than he says: 'Well, I leave you alone. Tomorrow we paint cleaning your car and you will hopefully your luggage. And then you must also show you know which excursions you want to join them.'

Ship's steward goes back into the cabin. He washes his hands. The water is remarkable warm.

'We have no toothbrush,' he says. 'De toothbrush is still in the back and that they are not open. But it does not, yet?'

He goes away from depends his clothes in a small box.

'Would you like this persist?' he asks. 'Now we need your usual nightdress not with us?' he draws attention to the training pants, the t-shirt.

The child is nodding. It is a good thing.

He looks around. There is no phone in the room. Everything is there, on a telephone after. He opens his own telephone. Range has also not here.

As state in his pants. He saves the blankets open, but then think about something. 'Would you perhaps sleep outside?' he asks. 'Outside. On the roof? In order to watch to heaven? The star?'

He points to the ceiling as if he were a little afraid that they do not understand.

'On the roof?' he asks again.

"Yes," she says, "on the roof.'

A little shocked by this answer with the child ship's steward runs to the rear of the hut. The sandy does not feel uncomfortable with his bare feet. He did not know that they wanted. Sleeping on the roof. Well why not. It is an attraction. Perhaps has done the same Tirza.

'You Go first,' he says. 'If you fall, than to catch up.'

Climb slowly the child the ladder. They are halfway. She looks down.

Go 'but' says ship's steward. He pushes against her buttocks, afraid if he is that they will get unexpected fear of heights. Afraid that they will fall.

The ascent of the ladder costs him more effort than he had expected. Stiff joints, muscle weakness, the expiration.

Without the rather blankets cold on the roof. The nights are fresh in the desert.

He pulls the blankets about themselves and the child.

The child remains shivering.

'come but,' he says, 'I hold you.'

While he holds Kaisa, he looks to the sky. Star. Indeed, as promised. This is nice, he thinks, but why is this nice? It is an appointment? Or find all people the nice without something of the appointment to know?

The Sleeping would not come, while he has traveled throughout the day and tired. After a time he notes that the child does not sleep.

She has her eyes open.

Just as he is. But she looks or sleep with her eyes open?

You need to look at the stars? Is that the intention of this attraction? Specially designed for the westerner, so that this is also know what it is, the naked sky.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'sleep you already?'

There is no answer.

'Have you the cold?' he asks. 'Kaisa?'

Again no answer. He feels something on his cheek. A manual. The basis of Kaisa.

They purr of him, it seems. She has her hand on his face. But its main has not moved.

He is not seeing. The manual remains lie.

Silence. Silence and darkness. That is the desert in the night. Occasionally the sound of the wind.

'You know what it was with Tirza,' he says soft, 'You know what it was?' he does not need to whisper, but he does it. It is so quiet here, his voice seems tens of meters away. 'They seemed to me. That was it. She was… She was…'

The hand moves slowly on his face, as the basis of a blind. It is not a stroke is the search. But what are the hand, Kaisa's hand?

'I came the living room,' he whispers, 'de living room which has been my parents, and there it was. On the table. Tirza. She heard me. He also not. It makes so much noise, Kaisa, sex. It is so noisy, that makes it all the unpleasant for third parties. The noise. The noise. Nothing but noise.'

The hand on the face of a ship's steward does not moving. His mouth. Its ears. His nose. Everything is touched.

'I actually wanted to leave. To the kitchen. I was doing something. I do not remember what. Drinking wine. I think. Italian gewürztraminer. But I stopped. I found it strange that they had heard me. That is why I continued to watch. It was so love Loos, Kaisa. Suddenly I saw that. How love free it was. How To…'

His lips are dry. He has a thirst, but he has not taken up water and he is too tired now to go down in the hut to find a bottle.

The manual is silent on the nose. It is not unpleasant sensation. It is a pleasant hand. A soft grip.

'Love Free is sex,' he whispers, 'in general, always under all conditions, I thought. That i saw. The had me not be surprised, and yet surprised me. I mean the beast knows no love, the Kent at most rage. Hunger, Thirst, fatigue. And I thought: what is happening here? What is happening here? What is going on here? My daughter is getting a good service, that is the problem that is happening here. And those words, a good service, remained in my head, remained orbiting around, they did not want to leave as a… as a prayer, Kaisa. A good service, I thought, a good service, that is what my daughter is getting of life. And I looked at his buttocks, the buttocks of Mohammed Atta, and I thought: what are they white. What he has a white buttocks for a brown man. What funny. White buttocks. I was there at the fireplace, I saw them go up and down, which buttocks, like a movie. I had to go as i was received, silent and cautious, but i did not go. I did not believe me. I stayed there to watch, to which white buttocks.'

The manual is now on his cheek. The fingers seem to play the piano on his cheek. And he thinks that it is me the tickling. They tickling sensation.

'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'You can you not imagine, but as i was there. Minutes seemed, in reality but seconds, but it seemed minutes, hours, half a life. And although i said nothing and did nothing, they saw me suddenly, or they had heard. What try. In any case arising Mohammed Atta his head. And I thought: this is what I have already said all experienced. I am so old that i have seen everything twice. And Tirza saw me also and they climbed from table. She was not even completely naked. She was… She was half-naked, not naked actually. And I thought: why on my dining table? A dining table is a table where you can eat as the word says. You eat it. I thought: Mohammed Atta, you have my money from me declined, and now you take my daughter on my dining table, on the dining table which has been my parents. Well, they did the last years of their life is no longer open, but that is another story.'

The basis of the child moves now on his forehead.

'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'your hand is so soft. So soft. Fine is that.' He thinks after. A few seconds, a minute. 'Yes,' he says, 'she was there, and she said, Tirza: "Papa, what are you doing here?" Not angry, surprised. Maybe a little appalled that i stood there. I had better ask: "What are you doing here? This is a dining table. Our dining table. We are not going to eat in the future." But I thought: what is Tirza especially nice, what is they love. What she has a sweet face. And beautiful eyes and a good character. A caring nature. If toddler though she was so considerate. We did not have to apply only on her, they also on us. And I was thinking of her shoes, its first shoes, which I bought for her. They were so small, that there are three, four in one hand sonically. I have kept them, the first shoes of Tirza, somewhere in the Van Eeghenstraat in a box. And I thought: it is the solar queen, I thought, my solar queen is they, my love most solar queen. And when I grabbed the shift knob and i hit on its head. They immediately fell in each other and i hit one more time when they are already on the ground, and again, and while I did I continued to think that it is my solar queen, she is my love most solar queen. She is the solar queen. And to her shoes I thought, her very first shoes. Blue they were, without laces, tangle with straps.'

He feels that there is a hand on his face is located, the warmth of the Child, which he also feels, go not much more.

'Kaisa,' ship's steward, 'franchise whispers hand is so nice. Your hand… Now you know who I am. I did not do so. You do not know who you are, until you are losing control. Only then called to you by. And he that Atta, you know what he did? He stormed away. The hero. He assumed by. I found him in the kitchen. He rattled, he rilde. He was… he was nothing more. A wreck. Nothing. No man. Nothing at all.'

Hofmeesters foot is dry. He gulps a few times.

'Kaisa,' whispers, 'ship's steward Kaisa. Atta was in my kitchen at the door, he had not even taken the time to dress decently. And you know what he said? "I implore you, Mr ship's steward. I beseech you," he said that. And it is at that moment I understood that I have in my hands poker. The poker of my parents. And he begged and jammerde. I moan? When Mohammed Atta afpakte my money, and my daughter? I never moan. I did a step in his direction and at that time he grabbed my Stihl, which I have in the kitchen had put down to dry and clean. My saw. The whole day i had worked in the garden. I love to work in the garden.'

There will be more wind. The sound of the ship's steward reassure proposes. It gives him the idea that nobody hear him, even Kaisa not. 'Fruit trees you must properly maintained,' he whispers, 'de garden you must maintain, dead spruce refraining, pull out weeds, grass seeding. That is my work. I quite like that. I leave me my Stihl MS 170 not reduced and certainly not by Atta. I left the gear lever and I picked up the saw from his hands. He had him not even properly. He does not know how you have such a thing must operate, how you must grasp Him. He rattled too much. He was in the war, he was common practice.'

He feels Kaisa's foot against his leg, but even more than that her hand on his head. 'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'Kaisa. My Kaisa. He ran to the living room as a cat in the closely. With his pants still on its knees. Atta. I went to follow him. What should I do? I could not let him escape, i had no choice, Kaisa. He stood there, completely in a panic. In the war. A nerve collapse near. And on the table, on the dining table, was always that Monopoly game and its Koranic. A green paper with a hard cover. I looked forward, with the saw in my hand. And when I was all clear. I understood the, the misunderstanding, the error, the irrational that on this earth as a ghost hunts, if a hurricane. I said to him: "Atta, who do you think is stronger, Allah or the MS 170? Pray To Allah, perhaps he can help you. Or to the prophet, perhaps the prophet you help, Atta." But he did not pray. He refused to pray. Can you imagine that? I ruptured a page from the Koran and i said: "If you do not want to pray, you'll eat, Atta." I stuffed his willie the page in his mouth. And he ate. He ate, Kaisa. But there was no help. Of course there was no help. I was the aid. "And pull back today you, o the guilty," was there on the page, and more of that kind of cries. I came closer, Kaisa, even closer to Atta, ever closer. I could smell him, fear stinks, the smell of Fear goes through anything, and on the basis was my daughter, my solar queen. She was cured of her illness, but apparently not completely, not me, of me was not cured, I do not think we can cure.

What could I do? He had a page of the Koran in his mouth, Mohammed Atta, if a circus beast. He did not dare agree to swallow it. He does not. kauwde Staring at me. If a monkey. "Where is Allah," I asked? "Where is the Prophet? Why are they not come to you to help? You may not have enough, you may not have enough surrender prayers? Call up yet again. Allah, call on him but, call on him as you dog calls that get lost in the park. Let us call him, Atta, perhaps he comes when we call him. Perhaps it was a bit deaf." And you know what he said, you know what he replied to that page of the Koran even in his mouth? "I am Mohammed Atta did not. I am Mohammed Atta did not." "Of course," I said, "you will not say that you are Mohammed Atta Of course you would use an alias. Who has the courage to admit that today he is Mohammed Atta?" Then I did the MS 170, and once that is turned on, then you hear little more, no prayers, no votes, actually no roar, then you hear only the MS 170, that is a kind of music. Above that music I cried out, "Call again, Atta. Call again very hard to Allah. Perhaps he understood you not because of your accent. Perhaps it is Allah also on holiday." But Atta said nothing more. And then I cut him, as a fruit tree. If a diseased fruit tree with all dead branches. The left-hand side first and then the right side, and then the bottom and all the way to the end of the top. The MS 170 is a compact saw, but he goes through everywhere. That is why amateur gardeners just love him. He is also economical in use.'

He turns around. The manual now rests on the back of their heads.

'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'Kaisa. My Kaisa. I crops in the kitchen, as best they went, and my clothes clean brushed and a shirt attracted that still of my father had been. Because my own shirt was not more clean. It was dirty. Then I go get food in the village. A rice table. A small rice table for 3 people. With extra Prawn Chips. And i have that rice table all the way in my own eaten. I had such a hunger, such a frantic hunger i had, some trays i empty slick. Kaisa, you also have sometimes such a hungry? I then a pit dug into the garden. I am the whole night. I had no time for two pits. And I have the children were put, I have dragged them there i must say, with my last strength. The solar queen in its entirety, the other in chunks. As you of the remnants of the cuts in the coarse dirt anywhere. And then I slammed the codend. I have the garden is so beautiful made possible, he was still of my parents. And when I first myself then washed and the MS 170 cleaned and then the House, because everywhere was the juice of the fruit tree to find. Everywhere I and leaves of the foodplant had forgotten to stop in the codend. You do not know who Atta was, you do not know what he would have done with us if he had had the chance. And when everything was clean, everything was to side, only the Koran was on the table. And that I started to read. There was only one page torn. I am a curious person. I could not sleep. There are some interesting things in it. 'truly have the owners of the garden on that day is a joyful pastime,' I read. Such things. And I thought: that I am, I am the owner of the garden. But the MS 170 is stronger than Allah, stronger than God also, more powerful than Jesus. The Stihl MS 170 is the ruler, Kaisa, our ruler. And all that while I thought, I felt nothing. To ensure the most practical things. Or the house, but was really clean. Or I had forgotten nothing. I do not have slept, just gedommeld, and in the morning i have breakfast made for three people. I shaved and the zalfje used against my dry skin against dander. And then I went to the airport of Frankfurt driven. And I have the children waved goodbye, until I saw them anymore.

Now you know who I am, and why I am here. Because I Tirza search, while I know that they will never has been. But the strange thing is, there are moments when I doubt. That I know for sure. I think: it was all a game, a game in my own main. I guess they are nevertheless to Namibia has flown Atta, that I am not the things recall correctly. I can not imagine that I shall never see Tirza. It is crazy but for many years I have had a vague inkling that I was a sample, a beast. And when i finally confirmed that suspicion, I could not believe it. In the past, when I was young, when I played with my wife, we played that I was the beast that at night by the Vondelpark was puttering at. To all this I am here in Namibia, Kaisa, to disappear to resolve, because I can no longer. Perhaps that is the definition of the game that you can always go back to whom you were for the game began. But I can not go back. I am cut off from whom I was, Kaisa. I am for you without a future, without the past, neutral if a banknote. A Westerner, one of the many, lost in his own life. They say they spirituality search, or rest or something else, but they are all the same mean Kaisa disappear. I WANT… I like you say how nice it is to speak with you. Your Pet is… you company is important for me. People have company needed for they disappear.'

He is now saying nothing more, but he could not sleep. It is located in the desert, feel the warmth of the child, dig in its memory and taste the flavor of old wine in his mouth. There is nothing monsterlijks to him. Everything monstrous to him, is buried in its memory. He is there as a child.

Stiff ship's steward awake. He also continues to lie and gives Kaisa. It is seven hours in the morning.

In the hut he takes a shower, a short, because he wants Kaisa also have some hot water. Then elongates he.

At breakfast asks the Frenchman or they want to participate in an excursion. 'like' says ship's steward, 'de desert we want to see the dunes.'

'I will be a separate excursion organise for you,' says the Frenchman, 'because you have a child with you. Most people without children here. At half past three Elago will pick you up.'

'Dank you,' says ship's steward.

'No thank you,' says the Frenchman. He seems to want to drain off, but he remains in place. 'It is born here?' he asks. He points to the child. Ship's steward nods and than nods the Frenchman, as also the answer he was expecting. And as if he were already knew. 'If you still need something, and o, for I forget it, we have your car clean painted, the luggage will be brought to your hut.' The Frenchman goes to the following table.

Ship's steward looks after him. A friendly man in a Khaki trousers. Who knows what he was in France. What he has done.

They spend the day on the edge of the small swimming pool. Occasionally the child there with her feet. But they do not dare to swim or they can not swim.

Ship's steward is located on a chair, he has his shirt open knotted, he refuses the all the way out.

To half a long, 3 black man to ship's steward. Elago.

The jeep has been converted and extended. The chairs are set down as a tribune, so you over the heads of the people for you to enjoy the views.

But there are no other people. The ship's steward, Kaisa, and Elago.

They drive away, first slowly and then faster and faster. Elago talk much and makes jokes that rather bland, but where a ship's steward of courtesy to laughs.

The desert is constantly changing of color, the desert is becoming increasingly more reddish.

Stones are here not or hardly. Only sand, and some bare shrubs.

'If you are coming from the nearby?' requires a ship's steward if they are stopped in the event of a dune. Press the Silence heavy on him.

'I come from the north of the country,' says Elago. 'Dear is also my family.'

'And go often?'

'We work three months, then we have three weeks. About two weeks i back.'

They drive another piece of further. In the event of two high dunes they stop. 'It is Big Daddy,' says Elago, 'and that is Big Mama. Big Mama is slightly less high than Big Daddy, but the view is the same.' He please wait. 'If you want to top, if you want to Big Mama, still going to be here with the child. Here are normally more people around sunrise which. But now it is quiet. The dune is completely of you.'

'Yes,' says ship's steward, 'I want to Top.'

'Take some water with you,' says Elago.

Ship's steward clamps the briefcase under his arm. The hat he let in the jeep behind.

'Would you not leave them here? Your bag?'

'Oh, I take it with you,' says ship's steward. 'He is not heavy.'

He climbs out of the jeep, he takes a bottle of water in receipt of Elago and he begins to run.

'Are you sure?' is called Elago him after. 'Die bag you can also leave them here. There will be nothing happen.'

Ship's steward acts as if he does not hear him.

First is the sand is still firmly but gradual drop it there ever deeper in road, to his knees.

If he is to turn around he sees Kaisa behind him arrive.

Nowhere another man or animal to admit. Only sand in different colors.

They are still not very high but the jeep seems so small and insignificant.

Kaisa climbs faster than he. She is as with him.

'You need to remain Elago,' he calls. 'Keep at Elago. He will apply to you.'

He continues. His arms hurt, are breathing is heavy. His sandals are just get in the way. He does so.

After twenty minutes they are out of sight of Elago disappeared.

He is going to sit. Kaisa remains standing. His body is exhausted, his mouth dry.

'Now go back, Kaisa,' he says, 'I only go further. I am going to disappear.' It takes him no bother to say. He has so often thought about he has so often polite in his mind, this time. He stands on her, coastal forehead, gives her the bottle of water that still is half full.

He can walk, also goes firmly by the dune downwards, then back up. He runs on the ridge of the dune, where the sands of two sides was blown up. There is no view, only more sandy, more dunes.

Ship's steward throws his sandals road. He has no longer required. Sometimes he falls, than he goes a few meters on hands and feet on the sand. Yes, this is disappearing. So do you do it. That is the way it looks.

The Sun spiked in his eyes, but he feels that the heat is reduced.

If he is to turn around he sees Kaisa but a few meters away from him. She is it nail open.

He swears he. 'Go away,' he cries. He waves his arms, he waves with his bag, to make it clear that they should be given back to the car. Away from here, away from him.

But they will only be closer. Faster and faster, as a beast that the desert is accustomed, she runs through the sand. She gives itself is not the time to get away to lower. It seems a dance which it carries out, a dance without public.

He then turns around and begins to walk away from Kaisa.

But she is faster, she gets it in. She picks him by his leg.

He wants to beveled, with the result that he falls. 'Go away,' he calls, 'Kaisa, you see is not what i am in fact doing? You don't see it? He is on his belly. Everywhere is sand, in his ears, in its nose, in his mouth, in his briefcase.

The child sits down next to him. They purr him about his hair.

'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'I have surely you said that I should disappear? Let me.'

He is going to sit upright. He picks up the hands of the child. 'You will find me sick?' he asks. 'Is that what you think? But if I am ill, what is healthy, what is normal?'

He is.

'I am a product of civilisation,' he calls, 'I am what happens when you release the civilisation of the beast. That I am. I never want something other than civilised.'

The wind splutters the sound of his voice.

He runs further, He staggers, but he continues. The child does not. She picks up his hand. She pulls him in the other direction. They fight, it seems.

Than he lifts, with his last forces, the child a few seconds in the air. He has made his briefcase for this last effort on the ground must have.

'Look,' he says, 'look how nice it is here. Nowhere to admit a man Only sand. That is nice. A world without people, beauty. Darkness is man, nothing other than that, the epicenter of darkness, and the only light that comes from him, is the light of the beast.' He put the child back on the ground.

'I need to stay here,' he says against the girl, 'there is no place for me, I have my place specified in the world of the people. I have placed outside of that world. I belong to the world of the sand. The sandy must take pity about me.'

Ship's steward keeps the briefcase against his forehead to his eyes to protect against the light. The sun is still below.

Then he sit down again, he takes the bottle of the child and drank a gulp.

'Formerly,' he says, 'stonden they settled on Sunday morning at my door, Jehovah's Witnesses. I did always open. Even though my wife was against it. But I found that you had to be polite, even if they were in front of the door to save your soul. And then they said things like: "God if you are looking for." things like that. But the sandy has sought me, you feel that not, how the sandy me are looking for? That was really what the Jehovah's Witnesses meant. I do not know. The sand is looking for me. And always searched for. It could be.'

He opens the briefcase. Dust escapes from.

'Look,' he says, 'I'm just sit somewhere, it does not matter where, somewhere here, one dune seems on the other, and then I open my bag. Everything I need is in it. My Four pencils, the manuscript that I was reading, Tirza's booklet, its agenda, Tirza's iPod, the charger. I will do everything displaying, around me, and wait. I keep good memories of those four pencils. And to the Solar Tirza Queen. And on the bag. A gift of my wife. So I will sit down with that stuff, I will be very quiet. Sometimes I look at the pencils, then back to Tirza's booklet, and then to the bag. I suggest to me. Sand will come and compassion with me. And you should slowly go back. Not too fast, because I do not want to be found. "God are you looking for," they said that Jehovah's Witnesses. I did not want to be found, not by God, not by the people. Now you know everything. Now you must go back. This keeps our game on, Kaisa. I walk a bit further by, and you go back.'

He is. His briefcase under his arm. But Kaisa grabs his hand and they do not leave them on to that hand and at the time of the ship's steward stronger than they are threatening to, at the moment that he is likely in extricating themselves, bites them in his hand.

'Au!' he calls. 'Are you completely mad?'

The noise travels here not far. Even the beasts can not hear him. He hears itself hardly.

Now if its, in the confusion, pulling it downwards.

He falls in the sand, and she climbs on him.

They hold it and eventually he keeps its also found.

A GUST OF WIND sprays them with grains of sand, the grains in his nose. He sniff, he muzzle.

Finally vibrates ship's steward, finally shudders he, and finally there are tears. Not because he intends to disappear, not because he has sorry of missed opportunities — as virtually everything is a missed opportunity, we need the individual missed opportunities not more regrettable — not because he the solar queen more fog than it is willing to give, but because he feels, because he somewhere sure, that he is not able to tearing of the child. That he is too weak to break cracks and so that he will not disappear. Not yet. Not as he had hoped, not as he had seen, not as he himself had thought.

He is on, he does a few steps, but he is not in the direction in which he had been chosen. The child pulls him. He runs back, back to the car, return to life where he no longer go wild.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'What is this, what does this have to mean?' But it is a rhetorical question. He expects no answer and there is also no answer.

Halfway through the dune continue them both. They drink the last water out of the bottle. And also must ship's steward laugh. 'look to us,' he says, 'you see us?'

She looks at him but they not laugh. She grabs his hand and pushes him further from the dune, as if they were the donkey and he the carriage.

'Where are you?" requires Elago. 'I was thinking that you will never again would be. I was worried because of the child. She wanted per se with you, Sir. She was not.'

Then he sees that ship's steward nothing more to his feet.

'Your shoes, sir.'

'They are disadvantaged on the dune,' says ship's steward, 'no problem. Surely it is too hot for sandals.'

Now they are both barefoot, he and the child.

He climbs into the jeep, does his hat.

'Would you like to drink?' requires Elago.

'Water' says ship's steward.

The child sits down next to him and as if it were the case is still not trust, as if a ship's steward again at any time an attempt to escape can do, keeps the Hofmeesters hand. The entire ride back to the Kulala Desert Lodge.

The following morning in the morning they drive further south. The Desert has a ship's steward nothing more to offer.

On the card he has seen that there is a small town on the coast, Lüderitz, he wants. Since he must then only a times try: disappear.

He thought there in one day be able to travel, but the roads are bad. He stops halfway to a farm where rooms are rented.

The Peasant Man and woman are children of German emigrants have also on age, which the German tradition.

I would first like to give it a ship's steward no room. 'Where are your shoes?" asks the peasant girl.

'I have they lost in the desert.'

'What are you nice German,' says the peasant woman, 'where have you learned? I can hear that you are not a German, but you does very your best.'

'I have learned at the university, I am almost promoted.'

That is a response that will reassure her. His conversation talent has fulfilled its obligation is fulfilled.

Ship's steward understands that decent people shoes to their feet, but they are really to be swollen. The farmer is on its old day mild and wise enough to see that some tourists who have no idea where they went to their shoes can lose in the sand. But nevertheless civilised.

He will get a room with two single beds that are not next to each other. The mattress is hard. The air in the room is stuffy. In the box you will he forget a piece of clothing of a previous guest: a t-shirt.

During dinner, there are meatballs served and slightly too long cooked cabbage, the call on Gravity Heinrich Göring, the father of Hermann, who is here in Namibia Commissioner was of the emperor, and at least for some rest did to ensure.

The Peasant Man and woman food itself not, they have eaten, but they keep a close eye on what their guests all the way to the inner stop and also what they are.

'The indigenous people had respect for him,' says the peasant girl.

Ship's steward is limited to kinks. He has views of a cabinet with glass doors, with what porcelain. And next to the box on a large cross.

The conversation goes in German. Neatly German without loan words from other languages.

'In Lüderitz," she says, 'must you but a few sturdy shoes buy. Although we always go to Keet Mans hope to do some shopping.'

And to nine hours she says: 'nine hours, which is midnight for the farmer. We do the lights off.'

Kaisa is asleep at the table.

With the child in his arms is a ship's steward to his room.

He is too tired to themselves and to dress the child. They are going to lay in bed as they are. Sticky and dirty. Insignificant.

During the breakfast the next morning the Peasant Man and woman at a ship's steward and Kaisa. They are apparently a landmark. Many tourists come here and those not along long, driving through quickly.

There is on the drought. The farmer says: 'We do there are two, three years on a cow fat.'

He says the with sadness, but also through resignation.

'Our herd has been contracted,' says the farmer. He points to his wife: 'And now we too.' shrink

The word is a ship's steward on and pay.

When they sit in the vehicle and he and the child looks he understands that, how many circles he also by this country will drive, he that at a given moment will have to stop. You can not forever from one place to another. What he said about the child applies to him, more for him, much more for him. He is without a future but not as he had expected, without despair. That he still has disappeared and that he actually does not know how to do that, makes him puzzled. He has no idea how to say goodbye to the life of their own. And yet, so difficult is it not possible.

Sixty kilometers for the town of Aus they receive on the sandy road a burst tire. Ship's steward get together with the child. The sun is bright and sharp.

They need help. There is a spare wheel, but I am not the only ship's steward to be swapped.

They continue along the side of the road to wave cars that pass by. There are very few cars over.

His briefcase means a ship's steward above the head of the Girl, for her to protect against the sun.

They say nothing against each other.

But they will remain close to him, she loves him in the holes, even if he is behind the bushes disappears to urinate.

They still do not trust him, she is worried that he will try to disappear. And the deeper that fear of her to ship's steward by calls, the more he is aware of the better he understands that it will be very difficult to disappear. That he perhaps has missed.

How the rolls are have ever been seen, now he is a prisoner of the girl.

Two South Africans in a white jeep ultimately with changing the belt. They do it in twenty minutes. Ship's steward offers money but they want to know nothing about it. 'We can help each other,' they say. 'We are dependent on each other.'

Ship's steward thanks long-term and emphatically and then continue driving.

For a crossing he stops and tail a few seconds to its reisgenote.

'I am not the solution,' he says, 'I am the problem that you understand is it?'

But she understands him apparently not because they grabs his hand. She loves the hand, they squeeze in, they press a kiss.

By Aus begins the tarmac road. Here it is again has range, because Hofmeesters telephone starts beeping. Someone has called him a couple of times. It is the wife, he sees.

In Aus refuelling he and get off to the legs and also to call. The child remains in the vehicle, the looks at him after he loses no time from the view.

Standing under a tree gets connection with Amsterdam.

It takes time for the wife record.

'You have dialed,' he says. 'What is so urgent?'

'good that you call.' Its voice will be heard nervous. Hunted. Her voice makes him restless. As in the past, when he heard her voice that there was something different. Something was often the same: a man.

'They found.'

'Who?'

'Tirza, Jörgen. Who else? You have to go to Home.'

He is also still, he looks at the child in the car.

'Yes, yes,' says he eventually.

'You need as quickly as possible to come home, Jörgen, promise you that?'

And then he says: 'Yes, yes.'

'Jörgen, promise you the? We must now not abandon them. Jörgen…'

He hangs up.

Slowly he walks to the vehicle. The operated from the pumping station looks after him.

Ship's steward is sitting behind the wheel, it rubs on the stubble of his cheek.

'we will buy some candy?' he asks for the child. 'Have you meaning in candy? Chocolate?'

5

Lüderitz is a small town that ship's steward more to Scandinavia than to Africa. The sea is cold. And the wind blows there so hard that the noise of the wind even in the hotel room with windows closed is unbearable.

The port is in decline. Glares warehouses. The airport is a small tower in the desert. A runway of sand. Nothing further.

Nest Hotel called the hotel where he with the child is staying there. Three days he is now all his room not materialised. He is seated on bed, watch TV, listen to the radio. In the evening he order room service. For he is going to sleep he hangs a little note to the door with what he called the next morning for breakfast. Always the same. For him what toast and marmalade, for the child yoghurt and fruit. Furthermore coffee and chocolate milk.

There is little to do more. There is steady little more, so feel it. The present is reduced to a hotel room, a bed and a child. The opposite of future is a child, as far as he knows it now. For Kaisa is a day a year. There are times that he is experiencing as a relief. The lack of expectation and hope, the absence of plans and maps.

In the event of a business book trade has he immediately upon arrival color pencils, a pencil sharpener and a character pad purchased. He has not purchased shoes. However candy and chocolate.

A Westerner with bare feet, a briefcase under his arm, a hat on his head. We looked but half of in Lüderitz. Some westerners are now once crazy in Africa. They have sunk, they unloading on, they go never returned, they take the color of their surroundings.

The girl is a signatory. Ship's steward follows her movements. While he goes to the window and look at the sea. The windows are dirty. No glass washer can get closer to the action.

There are reminders, but he has not more under control. It is mainly details which are not necessarily related to other details. A hedge fund, infancy, blue, with klitten straps, the MS 170.

At high tide provide the waves to their window. If the noise of the wind him too much, he puts the radio hard. Here too the German-speaking Namibian transmitter.

He listens. Music and conversations with listeners who complain about the poor functioning postal services in Namibia, or sometimes just looking for something: a lift to Cape Town for example.

His phone has a ship's steward turned off. There is waited for him, there is an urgent waited for him, probably more urgent than ever in his life. But what does it mean?

Two times per day he takes a bath.

There are a few thoughts on the expressionist poets, the reference work that was not. The love that was declared dead and abolished, but all in all it was the abolition also a promise which is never materialised. Just like that reference work. The Warm body of the love, he note has ended

And every hour calls the better up to him by that he is not going to be able to continue, that he also in Lüderitz will not disappear. Although he is sure that the sea just as much as compassion will have with him if the sand. He did not doubt. But he has his opportunity has been lost. Now he is here with a child in the Nest Hotel. A child that no foreign more can be called. That fast. As soon keeps the other on foreign. Also in Namibia has he already had a past, he is a man with a history. That is why he returned. Back to where he came from. He has been created. We want to talk to him, even if it is only because the idea that acts have no repercussions is unbearable. It despises everything has no implications. Also a game must have consequences. In the game.

He shall inform the. Return is worse than disappear. Return is worse than the death.

'You know,' he says to Kaisa, on the fourth day of their stay in Lüderitz. The child goes to bed and signs. Her mouth is dirty of molten chocolate. 'You know,' ship's steward, 'time whispers Tirza three was, we are for the first time with her on winter sports. My parents found winter sports nonsense. In the summer we went three weeks to Limburg, nothing happened. That was enough. Why throwing money? But I thought: Tirza must learn skiing. And the earlier you learn skiing, the better you can. She has also sometimes to competitions previously. She was good in skiing but she was still better swimming.'

He is on his stomach on bed. The child draws by. He cannot see what it should be. Perhaps a house, a tree. The sun. A man.

He is talking about quiet, though they know each other for years and he joined the dessert yet another unknown and yet very familiar anecdote of stable.

Ship's steward is silent, he listens to the radio. A schlager. Again a schlager. Always but variety.

It dices Kaisa's mouth clean. 'I never went skiing,' he says, 'I sat down on her to wait. In the hotel. Or in the middle of the slope, by a tree. Sometimes I saw her than passing, if in a flash. At the very beginning, when she was three, I ran behind her. By the snow. Then she not so quickly. For if they would fall, therefore I ran behind her.'

She looks at him the child, otherwise than in the beginning. She looks at him as to someone they know.

'You know,' he says, 'You know, Kaisa… It sounds weird, but I think I am just about as old as you. I am…' he no longer knows what he wants to say, or, he knows. Of course he knows it. He wants to say that he, Jörgen ship's steward, the adult Jörgen ship's steward, the writer translated fiction, really does not exist and never existed. A role was that the child to power and ultimately with more and more precision and refinement played. A game.

He takes Kaisa in his arms, he covered her body with pillow and while he does, listens to the radio.

A woman singing. 'Laß uns leben,' she sings, 'jeden Traum. Everything geben, jeden Augenblick.'

Ship's steward does not on the girl to cushion. He kisses her without thinking about it, he kisses her as if it is obvious. Each part of her body, its entire main, her back, her belly, he kisses her as if he has something to get in.

He tries to remember why he has remained a nine-year-old, but there is nothing to him within. Just do it themselves for the spirit if nine-year-old. How did he look like? What he transferred? What did his parents against him and against his parents? His memory is a desert.

He only know for sure, safer than all the other, that he in fact never been anything else than a nine-year-old. Of course, his body has grown, his feet, his head and his nose, that everything is grown, but the rest remained what it was. The growth of the heart, the soul, how you want to name it has come to a standstill. As sure as he knows he is beyond all the future is, so sure he knows now that he, although he almost has reached retirement age, about as old as Kaisa.

And the woman on the radio singing: 'Bist du bereit, für unsere Zeit?'

Also here he he likes, the melody. 'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'I must back. There is waiting on me.'

He does not state who is waiting for him. He knows it was not exactly.

The girl picks up its pencils and continues with signs. He purr on its shoulders. The chocolate and the color pencils have stains in the Laeken Declaration, he sees. The idea is off.

For the first time since forty-eight hours clothe himself on. He does even a necktie for. Something must compensate for the lack of footwear.

Then elongates he the child. The t-shirt, the training trousers. He has a handwasje done.

'I,' he says, 'we go hiking.'

The wind is overwhelming, yanks to their clothes, their hairs, to Hofmeesters hat. Only occasionally offers a house or a wall protection. They walk carefully. There may be glass lying in the street.

The child hold it. And he is convinced now not more to whether he is ill. He knows that it is not. Sick people see the reality is not. They hear what is not there, they see what does not exist. Everything what he hears, is there and everything he sees, exists.

It feels good to have to walk with Kaisa. His presence in her life is natural and inevitable. This is the way it should be.

On a terrace in a shopping center that it prevents they drink fiendishly modern coffee, it with a lot of milk and sugar. He has no hope, but he is not ill. Perhaps the opposite, healthy. A healthy man. Jörgen ship's steward.

'I come back,' he says to Kaisa, 'I come back. I would you may adopt. This will not be so difficult. Then I take you to Europe. There you get a good training. I may be wrong, I know so well you not yet, but I think that you are very talented, high-high gifted.'

High-high gifted. He speaks the word from as others about the Prophet of God.

They walk through the town, along the church, a station that does not more if station works, walls with drawings and texts as 'Fight Aids, not people with AIDS.'

There is not much to see.

At daybreak, walking them back to the hotel.

'I can also,' says ship's steward, 'a foundation begin. A foundation for children like you. For street children in Namibia who sell something. With how many are you doing? Thousand? Ten thousand? Do you know each other?'

As soon as the twilight starts, the disappearance of the people from the streets. Lüderitz in the evening is a ghost town. Even more than during the day, although it may be something of a ghost town. Abandoned and forgotten, and always that sound of the wind. It makes a ship's steward crazy.

'I go away, Kaisa,' he says, 'but I will come back. Booking of i must what. And if I am back, i a foundation. Maybe I can live with you? At the street children? In a house or a tent. We can also sell something together. I can help you to set up an organization. At the time I worked at the trade union for literary translators who were also not organised. The principle is the same.'

For the first time since their arrival in Lüderitz food they are not in the room but in the dining room. There is a travel companion arrived. A bus load men and women of around the forties. The mushroom soup is cheesey and the shrimp are dry. It makes a ship's steward nothing.

In the dessert he sings soft for Kaisa. 'Ridi,' he sings, 'ridi.' And if he is sung, He whispers: 'It is so nice to sit here with you. I love you.'

She plays with her spoon and she says: 'Do you want company, sir?'

It is no longer a question, it is the confirmation of a condition.

After eating they don't immediately to the room but sit at the bar. For Kaisa he retrieves still quick the color pencils and what paper. He orders wine and cola and looking at how she draws.

Fortunately he is not, happiness he would not want to mention this, never. But he is a few seconds happy. An insane and incomprehensible joy that has come out of nothing and will shortly be returning in that nothing will disappear.

For that night they fall asleep, He whispers: 'I come back to you to adopt children, I am young enough to weather the father. I can even years.'

Early the next morning they leave direction Keet Mans Hope. He had thought in one day to Windhoek International Airport to drive but it is already evening when they arrive in Mariental and hence is certainly still three, four hour drive to Wind Angle. He decides to remain in Mariental sleep.

There is a hotel. Everywhere there are hotels. A bed, a bathroom, a night cabinet, a few hangers the to hang your clothes. He would have for some time to be able to continue. From hotel room to hotel room with the child, his hat and his briefcase. Not found for the world. But he must return to the Netherlands, back to the Van Eeghenstraat. In order to adopt Kaisa it should he has to explain.

Also I am surprised that he has not previously considered to adopt a child. But why would you adopt a child that you do not know? Kaisa he knows. And they him. They fit together. They complement each other. They see something in each other. The two.

In Mariental he buys shoes, for him and for the child. Black, simple shoes for him, and brown sandals for the girl. The shop is no shoe shop, rather a supermarket, but that does not matter. They are now no longer barefoot.

The Shoes pinched. Oh, he understands that he is not on bare feet on Schiphol can arrive. They would arrest him immediately. Times have changed. Aware of danger everywhere.

Kaisa is proud of its sandals. Otherwise she runs on sandals. If a lady run.

'I can,' he says that evening in the small dining room of the hotel in Mariental, 'I can teaching. When I come here live. I can learn German, for example. I can read aloud. I can tell you about Tolstoy, that literature, art people not happy. And that he has therefore categorically rejected. But we should prepare a plan, a plan is important. What do you need, you children who sell company? You do not have a house and no shoes. You need to set priorities. Those who do not have a house and no shoes, has to start shoes necessary.'

The child does not answer, but she picks, although they are still the food is, his hand, as if she feels that he wants to disappear, that he wants to escape. Now they eat with one hand. Because they do not let him more.

After dinner and the wife he calls.

'I travel tomorrow,' he says. I wanted to 'you also let us know.'

'You must take place as soon as possible,' she responds. 'I try you already to call the whole time, Jörgen. They have been here. And… And…' he likes her voice still less. So nervous, so hunted, as uncertain. 'I tell you all know if you are there. Everyone is looking for you, everyone is waiting for you. There have also been called journalists. Where are you?'

'I have said that I am leaving tomorrow. I am about to take place tomorrow in the afternoon. I am in Namibia. Where else? Create your but not worried. Everything will be fine.'

'We need each other now. We had never been to.'

'No, no,' he says. But he has no idea what they mean. No idea. 'I have never yet been left in the lurch?'

'Jörgen, come back as soon as possible. Please. If you now — we can still…'

'keep you well,' he whispers.

With these words he terminates the call. He puts his phone off again. He does not want to be disturbed, the last hours.

He asks the receptionist of the hotel with South African Airways to call and his return flight to book the next day. It is still a lot of hassle because he has forgotten the to do so in due time, but if he the mrs of South African Airways half the story tells about the disappeared, daughter, she says: 'I make sure that it is done, Mr ship's steward, I understand very well that you under those circumstances also not thinking of us.'

'Kaisa,' he asks, 'What would you do if you want to take a stroll in the evening?'

They walk by Mariental. Empty streets. Only the petrol stations are still open.

'I doubt,' says ship's steward, while he is in the shop of one of the petrol stations winegums buy, 'I doubt more and more. I mean what has happened and what has not been done. How seriously you can play a game? With my wife I also played. It was night, always night, and I was always the beast, the beast. And when my first daughter was born, i played that i became father. On the publishing house i played that i was writer, I have always played. I could not do otherwise.'

He she crouches down next and adopt its face carefully between his hands. In the row for the checkout. 'because I really am as old as you. I have always played. Not only with Tirza. That was otherwise.'

They both may not sleep that night. It notes and he tail to the ceiling. He has a hunch that he cannot indicate. But it is not a hunch, it is his own life.

His flight to Johannesburg leaves at ten about three in the afternoon. All around noon he is at the airport in Windhoek. He brings his car to Hertz, the damage. Ship's steward protests not. He takes the blame for all damage, even of the damage that he has not caused. Then he retrieves all the money from the wall in such a way that there are still wants to come out and stop that in his briefcase. He will check in.

'Would you like him as hand baggage?" asks the gentleman of South African Airways.

Ship's steward looks at the suitcase with which he ever went on mission.

'No,' says ship's steward. 'I check him in.'

Now he has only his briefcase.

He runs without purpose with the child over the airport. They are watching the passengers, eat a sandwich with chicken, picking the chicken sandwich because they only want to eat the chicken, but let the end of the half of the chicken. They go outside to sit on a bench. In front of the departure hall. There are tourist with giraffes of wood as a memento to house. They must both there a bit to laugh about. A giraffe of wood.

Until he no longer can deny. He must by the customs, he must go. This keeps the. This is the border.

In the grass she crouches down next he for Kaisa down. 'I go now,' he says, 'i should go. But I come back, I promise you that I come back.'

He picks up the briefcase.

'Look,' he says, 'I leave it here. This is for you.'

He opens the bag.

'Four pencils,' he says, 'a pencil sharpener, the iPod of Tirza Tirza, charger, music, her note book, maybe there are things in writing or drawings in. Its agenda. A manuscript of an author from Azerbaijan. What you it does. And here in this box is the money. But I will come back. I promise you that I come back. On this note is my number, my address in Amsterdam. If you like you can call me. And oh yes, here are two sachets winegums. But you should not be too many lollies, that is unhealthy. You need…'

He is on, he looks at his watch. She picks up his hand.

Ship's steward, crouches down again.

'I come back, Kaisa,' he whispers, 'This bag is the collateral. As long as you have this bag, you know that I come back. My life is in this case. I must come back to that. I can not otherwise. Everything I have is contained herein. You must adapt. As you have on me appropriate.'

He expresses its against itself. 'Kaisa,' he whispers, 'Kaisa, I forgive you, I forgive you that you do not have me disappear, I forgive you that you have seduced me to stay here, I forgive you everything. But I must now road.'

He looks around.

It seems as if no one to watch them.

'I do not know,' he whispers, 'how you should die, while you realize that you never played a role in someone's life, not even in your own. How do you do that, while you understand, taking account of the possibility, to take proper account of the possibility that nobody has given you, that nobody was important enough, that… I come back to learn to die, Kaisa, I can not yet, but you go in the me learning. I can learn German and in return you go learn me that is the die appointment.'

He begins to sing for her. 'Unerreichbar,' he sings, 'schweres Herz.' He is the words forgotten. 'Ridi,' he sings, 'ridi ridi ridi.'

He walks on her away. Unsettling without briefcase.

They will be behind him, grabs his hand.

He presses are loose. 'I need road,' he whispers, without having to go to her to watch, 'but I come back. Go to the city. I will be back, Kaisa.'

Weather She grabs his hand. From his eyes he sees how large are briefcase for her. A type of house. Dangling around her shoulders still the brightly colored fabrics pouch that he for her in Windhoek has purchased in order to save money. Who sells company, must be money well hiding.

He is now almost at the customs.

He turns around. The child is being held up by someone from the security.

'I come back,' he calls, 'Kaisa, I come back.' He waves with his hand. And then also with his hat. Someone behind him in the row pushes him to continue. 'I come back,' he calls again. Then he sees its not more.

The row is not long.

He gives his passport to the policeman.

And although he is not the child can see more, he hears suddenly her voice. 'Do you want company, sir?' cries she by the Departures Hall. Above all from its voice is heard.

The policeman put a stamp on his passport. Ship's steward will get it back. And then he hears a shrieking Kaisa in the departures hall of Wind Angle. 'Do you want company, sir? Sir?'

Ship's steward must hold on to the cubicle of the policeman. He has the feeling that he must have. It vibrates. But he also laid themselves from. In order not to lose the control, not to give in to that impulse: return to run to the Departures Hall. Kaisa to grip. To rent a car. To drive away. To resolve. Together with her.

Ship's steward now knows what the alternative is to die for, he now understands what happens to people who do not disappear in a timely manner.

Early in the morning he arrives in Zurich and in the afternoon he comes to Schiphol. It is partly cloudy and eighteen degrees in Amsterdam. At the passport control he need only to keep up his passport.

He decides the train to Amsterdam Zuid/WTC. Hence he travels further with tram 5. There are hardly any thoughts. How would you feel about Kaisa in the five? He thinks. What would they find a tram? He looks at the city with the eyes of Kaisa.

On the corner of the 'Willemsparkweg' and the Van Baerlestraat he steps. All this is well-known and strange, because he looks with Kaisa's eyes.

His suitcase is not heavy and it is not far. He would be easy to walk, but because he sees the two, decision he has two stops away on the tram.

Why not? Great convenience.

It is all strange for. Unreal. Absurd. A decor.

On the stop Cornelis Schuytstraat he steps. He is the only one who gets out.

In the event of the wine trade remains he, he looks at the shop. There are people in the shop, but no one sees him. They allow themselves to advise, the seller reserves a bottle up. Almost press he against the window.

His hat sits on his head. It still feels strip without briefcase. He has a tendency to look backwards where Kaisa remains. It is waiting for a hand in the his gliding.

After a few minutes he runs through again.

He saves the corner.

He is now in the Van Eeghenstraat.

There are many people in the street. It is him on that they are precisely for his house. It is a hustle and bustle of importance for his house. An accident, he thinks, something has happened.

He is a few meters closer. Some people he considers to recognize. There are also cameras at, he sees now. Yes, he recognizes some people. Of the tv. Familiar faces are in for his house. And he also sees an agent, no doubt the inquisitive people on to keep your distance.

That you always have access to such matters. Inquisitive people who should be kept at a distance.

Ship's steward puts his suitcase on the floor. With his handkerchief and rubs his head. It is not hot, but he has the hot. Horribly hot.

From the crowd for his home state makes a woman. She is coming toward him. The wife. He recognizes its. Its motor skills. And they also has seen.

Than he recalls the itself. There was something with Tirza. But what exactly?

He thinks of the song that he always sang for her. If he than it carried her of celloles, after swimming if they had won a competition, but also just after the swimming, during winter sports, for reading.

'or all the boys I've known and I've known some. Until I first with you I was lone some. And when you came in sight, dear, my heart grew light. And this old world seemed new to me.' Yes, ship's steward remembers the a and other. 'Ridi,' he sings gently, 'ridi, ridi,' while the wife to him, intervened.

He hears against him how someone says: 'Do you want company, sir?' But it is not, it is Tirza Kaisa's voting. He thinks Tirza's voice to be heard.

Tirza, the solar queen. The high-gifted solar queen. His life. His hope. Its future.

Still krampachtiger he tries to remember what there was exactly with that life of him, that future which now is nearby, so terribly near. There are sun queen. There is something to him, only so vague. Extremely vague.

Jörgen ship's steward stands for its own memory as for the entrance to the paradise that he will never enter.

A meter or thirty, than is the wife is living with him.

Now it falls within. Finally.

She is found.

She is found. Tirza. That name alone. That word. Tirza.

He must call her to say that they found. From his inner pocket to pick up his telephone.

He shall review its number.

The wife is only ten meters removed from him. She is remain stationary. She looks at him, smekend seems. See little mangy alongside them out. Unwashed. As if they were to graze is taken by a beast.

It expresses its index finger on her mouth. This keeps them there. And she looks at him smekend with the index finger on her mouth.

The people of his home are now. They are meaningless. Not only do they not have cameras with him, he sees, but also microphones to fishing rods. He will assist them, if they wish to do so. If the ship's steward is that they want to speak. He will tell us about the desired their foundation that he wants to set up. For children who sell company.

Then he finally hear her voice, the voice of the solar queen, with no other comparable.

"Hi, this is Tirza,' he hears. He presses the phone firmer against his ear. Not a word he wants to miss, no letter, no breathing. 'I am not. But let but a nice message.'