you’ve got so much to think about. The wall of my cupboard holds no secrets from me – I know every last crack, scratch and paint mark. My mind wanders through it like a walker in an empty landscape. When no one is there, I sing softly to myself. After a while you go into a kind of trance, or dream that you can fly. It gets really crazy at the end of the day when the bus comes to pick us up. It is full of angels – a really motley bunch. We each have our own way of coping: coke, tranquillisers, maths problems. We are all exhausted and bubbling over with stories. The angels in full view have a particularly hard time, because people say the strangest things to them: declarations of love, abuse, obscenities. They know we are not allowed to react, and some people seem to get really turned on by that.
Almut and I have said nothing more about the week I was away. I keep those days locked inside me. Sometimes I think about what we will do next, and whether we should stay in this country. I know that Almut would like to go home, but I am not ready to leave. What I would really like to do is to go into the desert on my own, but I do not dare say that to Almut. In the evenings, when she is downstairs in the hotel bar, I unwrap the painting, put it on the table and lean it against the wall. Then I sit across from it, like a nun at her devotions. After a few minutes, it starts to have an effect, and I feel a longing that I can’t put into words, but that I know will be part of me forever. I don’t want to say anything to Almut, at least not yet, and though I am not sure this is something you can decide, I think I will always be a wanderer, so I can make the world my desert. I have enough food for thought to last a lifetime. There are honey ants and grubs wherever you go, or else roots and berries, and now I know how to find them. I can survive.
2
ERIK ZONDAG WAS NOT SURE EXACTLY WHAT MOOD HE was in when he boarded the train to Austria, which was hardly surprising. It was cold, he was feeling under the weather, and he did not know what to expect, other than that he was on his way to a health spa that his friend Arnold Pessers had recommended. Arnold, like Erik, had reached that unmapped area described by poets as a ‘dark wood’ and by doctors as ‘midlife’ – an absurd label, especially since the end date is generally unknown. If the end occurs earlier than the statistical norm, ‘midlife’ ought to shift along with it, so that in some cases it was already far behind you and you did not even know it, a reflection that did not make Erik Zondag any more cheerful. The train was late. Through the dirty glass roof of Amsterdam’s Central Station, he could see the gusty winds blowing sleet across the water of the IJ. It was Friday, and still too early to buy the newspaper for which he worked as a literary critic, which meant that he could not read the printed review in which he had savaged the latest novel of one of Holland’s literary giants. Some writers did not age gracefully; after a while you knew all of their mannerisms and obsessions. There was not enough dying going on in Dutch literature. Reve, Mulisch, Claus, Nooteboom and Wolkers had all been writing when he was in his cradle, and it did not look as if they were ever going to stop. He could only conclude that they took the idea of immortality much too literally. His girlfriend Anja – an art editor at a rival paper – had accused him of writing an unfair review.
‘You’re in a bad mood because you’re going off on your journey tomorrow.’
‘That has nothing to do with it. I’ve known the man my whole life. By now I feel as if I could write his books myself.’
‘So why don’t you? Maybe you’ll even earn some decent money for a change.’
Anja was eighteen years his junior, and that was in excusable. They had been living together for the last four years – if you could call it that, because they both still lived in their own apartments: hers in
Almut and I have said nothing more about the week I was away. I keep those days locked inside me. Sometimes I think about what we will do next, and whether we should stay in this country. I know that Almut would like to go home, but I am not ready to leave. What I would really like to do is to go into the desert on my own, but I do not dare say that to Almut. In the evenings, when she is downstairs in the hotel bar, I unwrap the painting, put it on the table and lean it against the wall. Then I sit across from it, like a nun at her devotions. After a few minutes, it starts to have an effect, and I feel a longing that I can’t put into words, but that I know will be part of me forever. I don’t want to say anything to Almut, at least not yet, and though I am not sure this is something you can decide, I think I will always be a wanderer, so I can make the world my desert. I have enough food for thought to last a lifetime. There are honey ants and grubs wherever you go, or else roots and berries, and now I know how to find them. I can survive.
2
ERIK ZONDAG WAS NOT SURE EXACTLY WHAT MOOD HE was in when he boarded the train to Austria, which was hardly surprising. It was cold, he was feeling under the weather, and he did not know what to expect, other than that he was on his way to a health spa that his friend Arnold Pessers had recommended. Arnold, like Erik, had reached that unmapped area described by poets as a ‘dark wood’ and by doctors as ‘midlife’ – an absurd label, especially since the end date is generally unknown. If the end occurs earlier than the statistical norm, ‘midlife’ ought to shift along with it, so that in some cases it was already far behind you and you did not even know it, a reflection that did not make Erik Zondag any more cheerful. The train was late. Through the dirty glass roof of Amsterdam’s Central Station, he could see the gusty winds blowing sleet across the water of the IJ. It was Friday, and still too early to buy the newspaper for which he worked as a literary critic, which meant that he could not read the printed review in which he had savaged the latest novel of one of Holland’s literary giants. Some writers did not age gracefully; after a while you knew all of their mannerisms and obsessions. There was not enough dying going on in Dutch literature. Reve, Mulisch, Claus, Nooteboom and Wolkers had all been writing when he was in his cradle, and it did not look as if they were ever going to stop. He could only conclude that they took the idea of immortality much too literally. His girlfriend Anja – an art editor at a rival paper – had accused him of writing an unfair review.
‘You’re in a bad mood because you’re going off on your journey tomorrow.’
‘That has nothing to do with it. I’ve known the man my whole life. By now I feel as if I could write his books myself.’
‘So why don’t you? Maybe you’ll even earn some decent money for a change.’
Anja was eighteen years his junior, and that was in excusable. They had been living together for the last four years – if you could call it that, because they both still lived in their own apartments: hers in
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