driven by a different authority, would poke the fork into his cheek. Half past seven, clearing the table and making coffee. Quarter to eight, coffee and "my fourth cigarette. The fifth I smoke before I go to bed."
The heavy scent of a Black Beauty wafted through the room.
"What is it like," asked Arnold Taads, "not to have a father?"
This man asked only questions to which there were no answers. So Inni did not reply. Not to have a father was not to have something. So there was nothing to say about it.
"Did you ever miss him?"
"No."
"Did you know him?"
"Until I was ten."
"What do you remember of him?"
He thought about his father, but because it was virtually the first time he had ever done so deliberately, he found it difficult. His father used to say "so long" when leaving the house, and once he had hit his mother in Inni's presence, and, as Inni had gathered, on other occasions too, when he was not present. And one night when, woken by the air raid siren, he had rushed down the stairs in a panic, he had surprised his father on the sofa with the nursemaid. From that, in retrospect, somewhat uncomfortable position, he had ordered Inni back to his bedroom. Later his father had married the nursemaid, his mother having disappeared as a result of one of those mysterious manoeuvres with which grown-ups bend the world to their will. Inni had stayed with his father and the girl, but in the hunger winter he had been sent to his mother, who lived somewhere in Gelderland. At the end of that winter his father had been killed during the bombing of The Hague. The news had filled Inni with pride. Now he, too, was really part of the war.
He had never seen his father's grave, and when he had begun to take an interest in it, it was no longer there. It had been cleared, someone told him — a very special variant of "cleared away" — and so he had remembered this: his father had been cleared away. In yellowy war photographs he would see a balding man with sharp features, a sombre clerk from the late Middle Ages, although his mother had told him he used to dance on bar tables, to gypsy music. These were the memories he had of his father, and there was only one conclusion: his father was well and truly dead.
"I don't remember much."
Then Taads again, this time in the disguise of a professor. "Sartre says that if you have no father, you are not burdened with a super-ego. No father on your back, no bullying regulating factor in your life. Nothing to rebel against or to hate or to measure your conduct against."
I don't know about that, thought Inni. If it meant that he was alone in the world, it was correct. That was just what he felt, too, and it suited him splendidly. Other people, like the man facing him now, had to be kept at a distance. And they should not talk too much about him either. So long as they talked about themselves, or about his relations, none of whom he knew anyway, it was fine. He had twice been expelled from boarding school because he "did not fit in with the other boys", he "did not join in", he "had a perfidious influence on the other students". They hated him — that would have been a more accurate way of putting it. They had put litanies of hatred in his bed ("Sour lemon, pray for us"), but it had left him strangely unmoved. Those boys were different. On visiting days they were surrounded by families, fathers in brown suits and mothers in floral-print dresses. He had nothing to do with them, any more than with this man here who had come straying into his life. He refused to allow them in, that was what it boiled down to. It was just as if everything happened in a film. He might be sitting in the audience following the action attentively, certainly if the actors were as fascinating as this one, but really to be part of it was impossible. He remained, even when he felt sympathy for the actor, an onlooker. If you kept silent, the stories would come all by themselves.
And come they did.
In that silent room, the
The heavy scent of a Black Beauty wafted through the room.
"What is it like," asked Arnold Taads, "not to have a father?"
This man asked only questions to which there were no answers. So Inni did not reply. Not to have a father was not to have something. So there was nothing to say about it.
"Did you ever miss him?"
"No."
"Did you know him?"
"Until I was ten."
"What do you remember of him?"
He thought about his father, but because it was virtually the first time he had ever done so deliberately, he found it difficult. His father used to say "so long" when leaving the house, and once he had hit his mother in Inni's presence, and, as Inni had gathered, on other occasions too, when he was not present. And one night when, woken by the air raid siren, he had rushed down the stairs in a panic, he had surprised his father on the sofa with the nursemaid. From that, in retrospect, somewhat uncomfortable position, he had ordered Inni back to his bedroom. Later his father had married the nursemaid, his mother having disappeared as a result of one of those mysterious manoeuvres with which grown-ups bend the world to their will. Inni had stayed with his father and the girl, but in the hunger winter he had been sent to his mother, who lived somewhere in Gelderland. At the end of that winter his father had been killed during the bombing of The Hague. The news had filled Inni with pride. Now he, too, was really part of the war.
He had never seen his father's grave, and when he had begun to take an interest in it, it was no longer there. It had been cleared, someone told him — a very special variant of "cleared away" — and so he had remembered this: his father had been cleared away. In yellowy war photographs he would see a balding man with sharp features, a sombre clerk from the late Middle Ages, although his mother had told him he used to dance on bar tables, to gypsy music. These were the memories he had of his father, and there was only one conclusion: his father was well and truly dead.
"I don't remember much."
Then Taads again, this time in the disguise of a professor. "Sartre says that if you have no father, you are not burdened with a super-ego. No father on your back, no bullying regulating factor in your life. Nothing to rebel against or to hate or to measure your conduct against."
I don't know about that, thought Inni. If it meant that he was alone in the world, it was correct. That was just what he felt, too, and it suited him splendidly. Other people, like the man facing him now, had to be kept at a distance. And they should not talk too much about him either. So long as they talked about themselves, or about his relations, none of whom he knew anyway, it was fine. He had twice been expelled from boarding school because he "did not fit in with the other boys", he "did not join in", he "had a perfidious influence on the other students". They hated him — that would have been a more accurate way of putting it. They had put litanies of hatred in his bed ("Sour lemon, pray for us"), but it had left him strangely unmoved. Those boys were different. On visiting days they were surrounded by families, fathers in brown suits and mothers in floral-print dresses. He had nothing to do with them, any more than with this man here who had come straying into his life. He refused to allow them in, that was what it boiled down to. It was just as if everything happened in a film. He might be sitting in the audience following the action attentively, certainly if the actors were as fascinating as this one, but really to be part of it was impossible. He remained, even when he felt sympathy for the actor, an onlooker. If you kept silent, the stories would come all by themselves.
And come they did.
In that silent room, the
Similar Books
