confronts you with the human incapacity to truly communicate and understand each other. Her characters are driven by irrational and at times destructive forces and desires. They stay with you long after you have finished reading. Her work belongs to the best writing The Netherlands has to offer.’
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Esther
Gerritsen
craving
Translated from the Dutch by
Michele Hutchison
WORLD EDITIONS
New York, London, Amsterdam
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Published in the USA in 2018 by World Editions LLC, New York
Published in the UK in 2015 by World Editions LTD, London
World Editions
New York/London/Amsterdam
Copyright © Esther Gerritsen, 2012
English translation copyright © Michele Hutchison, 2015
Cover image © Claro Cortes IV
Author’s portrait © Paulina Szafrańska
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available.
ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-002-3
ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-022-1
First published as Dorst in the Netherlands in 2012 by De Geus BV.
This book was published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Twitter: @WorldEdBooks
Facebook: WorldEditionsInternationalPublishing
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FOR THE FIRST time in her life, Elisabeth unexpectedly runs into her daughter. She comes out of the chemist’s on the Overtoom, is about to cross over to the tram stop when she sees her daughter cycling along the other side of the street. Her daughter sees her too. Elisabeth stops walking. Her daughter stops pedalling, but doesn’t yet brake. The entire expanse of the Overtoom separates them: two bike paths, two lanes of traffic, and a double tramline. Elisabeth realises at once that she has to tell her daughter that she is dying, and smiles like a person about to tell a joke.
She often finds making conversation with her daughter difficult, but now she really does have something to say to her. A split second later it occurs to her that you mustn’t convey news like that with too much enthusiasm and perhaps not here, either. In the meantime, she crosses the Overtoom and thinks about her doctor, how he keeps asking her: ‘Are you telling people?’ and how nice it would be to be able to give the right answer at her next appointment. She crosses between two cars. Her daughter brakes and gets off her bike. Elisabeth clutches the plastic bag from the chemist’s containing morphine plasters and cough mixture. The bag is proof of her illness, as though her words alone wouldn’t be enough. The bag is also her excuse, because she hadn’t really wanted to say it, here, so inappropriately on the street, but the bag has given her away. Hasn’t it? Yes? And now, so abruptly, Elisabeth is crossing the Overtoom, slips behind a tram, because it isn’t right, her child on one side of the street and she on the other. It isn’t right to run into your daughter unexpectedly.
The daughter used to be there all the time, and later, when she wasn’t, Elisabeth would be the one who had dropped her off. Later still there were visiting arrangements and in recent years not much at all. In any case, the birthdays remained. Things had always been clear-cut and she’d got used to not thinking about the daughter when the daughter wasn’t there. She existed at prearranged times. But now there she was on her bike, while they hadn’t planned to meet and it was wrong and had to be resolved, transformed, assimilated, she still has a tramline to cross, just behind a taxi that toots its horn and causes her coat to whip up. Her daughter pulls her bike up onto the pavement. The final lane is empty.
Elisabeth notices at once that her daughter has gained even more weight and blurts out, ‘Have you had your hair cut again?’ because she’s terrified her daughter can read that last thought about her weight. Elisabeth likes to talk about their hair. They have the same hairdresser.
‘No,’ her daughter says.
‘Different colour then?’
‘No.’
‘But you still go to the same hairdresser’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too,’ Elisabeth says.
Her daughter nods. It begins to drizzle.
‘Where are you going?’ is too nosy, so this: ‘I thought you lived on the other side of town.’
‘I have to move out soon, the landlord’s given me notice.’
‘Oh,’ Elisabeth says, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘How could you have known?’
‘I… I don’t know.’
‘I only just found out myself.’
‘No, then I couldn’t have known.’ The rain becomes heavier.
‘We’re getting wet,’ Elisabeth says.
Her daughter immediately goes to get back on her bike and says, ‘We’ll call, OK?’
‘My little monster,’ Elisabeth says. Her father had always called her that. He still did. It sounded funny when he said it. Her daughter gapes at her. Then her lips move. Go away, she says, silently. Elisabeth isn’t supposed to hear and she respects that; her stomach hurts, but she hasn’t heard it. Her daughter’s short hair lies flat and wet against her skull. Elisabeth thinks of towels, she wants to dry her daughter, but her daughter turns away from her, one foot already on the pedal.
So Elisabeth is forced to say, ‘I’ve got some news.’ Done it. Her daughter turns back to her.
‘What is it?’
‘Sorry,’
