over so he could hear the soft-spoken, silvery-gray wife of an ex-rector. His eyes wide open and his head alongside her elongated ear, he caught sight of Joni, more or less by coincidence; he smiled and winked but she did not see him. Her beautiful face was concentrating on something else, probably on her mother next to him.
Then he sees it. The dark-brown Siberian cap above Joni’s face jogs something in his memory. Apparently his mouth produces a sound, a sigh or a groan, or something, because the woman whose ear it enters shrinks back. He straightens himself, nods absently, opens his mouth wide and snaps it back shut. The resemblance penetrates his consciousness as something hot, as a liquid that attempts to smother him. Boiling lead. He is dizzy. The phenomenal ability of the brain to recognize faces, effortlessly, unhesitatingly. It has always fascinated him, but now it is killing him. It is not even recognition, it is far more, on all fronts. What he experiences is …
identification
. Joni’s attentive expression, five, six meters away, the dark fur hat whose brim lies across her smooth forehead so that he sees her, for the first time, as a
brunette
. The make-up, heavier than usual, the glossy lips parted in concentration. All her features, the broad purity of her compelling, self-assured face, everything that determines the way his daughter looks, shifts over that
other
face, a face that he, in a sense, also knows like the back of his hand—until his perspiring brain goes “click.”
It’s her
.
“Siem, darling—are you OK?” Tineke’s cool hand grabbed him by the wrist, she made an effort to look at him. He didn’t focus properly, he saw the grainy structure of her purple eyeshadow, heard her say that he looked pale, that he hadn’t been getting enough sleep the last few weeks. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, took a step forward and said something to the woman in front of him. He stared at Tineke’s broad back, wrapped in the purple gown she’d had specially made for this afternoon.
“Tomorrow you’ll be sitting on a plane to Shanghai,” she whispered, once she was next to him again. “We’re in the home stretch. You’re doing great. You were just thrown off by that news about Wilbert. I can tell.”
His protectress, the lovingly bowed second violin, it is the role Tineke has been playing ever since he lay like a shipwreck on the Antonius Matthaeuslaan and she came upstairs to join him for coffee. Then, too, she talked him through his depression, consoled the inconsolable with cheerful empathy. And now, once again, that endless understanding, although this time, thank God, she didn’t have an inkling as to what it was about.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It worries me. I hate that man. And I hate my son.”
“I know you all too well,” she said. “Forget that boy. Forget both of them. That Menno is nothing but 100 kilos of rancor. He came here deliberately, just to rile you. They’ve released Wilbert because he’s ready to return to society.”
Of course Tubantia University’s anniversary celebration was bigger than himself, a figurehead is attached to the prow, and the prow to the ship; everything else went as planned that Thursday, starting with the ceremonial dinner in Koetshuis Schuttersveld,where he found himself, smiling, once again at the head of the table.
Calm down!
hissed a pinched voice in his head during the toasts to the academy, during the supper of red bass, during his own speech. He thought: it’s impossible. It’s statistically impossible, it’s morally impossible, it’s logistically impossible. He knocked back goblets of white wine to drown out the heckling in his brain. He and Tineke arrived back at the farmhouse, reeling, at half-past one in the morning, and when he flopped down beside her in bed, his back to her, he sank into a raccoon-like slumber. He hadn’t given his son’s release a moment’s thought the entire evening. All he could think about was
Then he sees it. The dark-brown Siberian cap above Joni’s face jogs something in his memory. Apparently his mouth produces a sound, a sigh or a groan, or something, because the woman whose ear it enters shrinks back. He straightens himself, nods absently, opens his mouth wide and snaps it back shut. The resemblance penetrates his consciousness as something hot, as a liquid that attempts to smother him. Boiling lead. He is dizzy. The phenomenal ability of the brain to recognize faces, effortlessly, unhesitatingly. It has always fascinated him, but now it is killing him. It is not even recognition, it is far more, on all fronts. What he experiences is …
identification
. Joni’s attentive expression, five, six meters away, the dark fur hat whose brim lies across her smooth forehead so that he sees her, for the first time, as a
brunette
. The make-up, heavier than usual, the glossy lips parted in concentration. All her features, the broad purity of her compelling, self-assured face, everything that determines the way his daughter looks, shifts over that
other
face, a face that he, in a sense, also knows like the back of his hand—until his perspiring brain goes “click.”
It’s her
.
“Siem, darling—are you OK?” Tineke’s cool hand grabbed him by the wrist, she made an effort to look at him. He didn’t focus properly, he saw the grainy structure of her purple eyeshadow, heard her say that he looked pale, that he hadn’t been getting enough sleep the last few weeks. She gave his shoulder a squeeze, took a step forward and said something to the woman in front of him. He stared at Tineke’s broad back, wrapped in the purple gown she’d had specially made for this afternoon.
“Tomorrow you’ll be sitting on a plane to Shanghai,” she whispered, once she was next to him again. “We’re in the home stretch. You’re doing great. You were just thrown off by that news about Wilbert. I can tell.”
His protectress, the lovingly bowed second violin, it is the role Tineke has been playing ever since he lay like a shipwreck on the Antonius Matthaeuslaan and she came upstairs to join him for coffee. Then, too, she talked him through his depression, consoled the inconsolable with cheerful empathy. And now, once again, that endless understanding, although this time, thank God, she didn’t have an inkling as to what it was about.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It worries me. I hate that man. And I hate my son.”
“I know you all too well,” she said. “Forget that boy. Forget both of them. That Menno is nothing but 100 kilos of rancor. He came here deliberately, just to rile you. They’ve released Wilbert because he’s ready to return to society.”
Of course Tubantia University’s anniversary celebration was bigger than himself, a figurehead is attached to the prow, and the prow to the ship; everything else went as planned that Thursday, starting with the ceremonial dinner in Koetshuis Schuttersveld,where he found himself, smiling, once again at the head of the table.
Calm down!
hissed a pinched voice in his head during the toasts to the academy, during the supper of red bass, during his own speech. He thought: it’s impossible. It’s statistically impossible, it’s morally impossible, it’s logistically impossible. He knocked back goblets of white wine to drown out the heckling in his brain. He and Tineke arrived back at the farmhouse, reeling, at half-past one in the morning, and when he flopped down beside her in bed, his back to her, he sank into a raccoon-like slumber. He hadn’t given his son’s release a moment’s thought the entire evening. All he could think about was
Similar Books
