of the world. How can she be so stupid, Mieke says to herself, knowing her daughter already made a failed attempt to run away from home at the age of five and tore her dungarees on the barbed wire around the chicken coop. These are the ideas Mieke is combing out of her head, but they don’t disappear entirely. It’s just like the neighbours. Even if they’re not walking past all the time, they’re always there and they can pop up unexpectedly at any moment. Her neighbour Evi is forever wiping her feet on the unwritten law that you don’t just show up at each other’s door whenever it strikes your fancy.
Evi Vanende-Boelens lives with her husband, the top surgeon Marc Vanende, in a hypermodern house with octagonal windows on an enormous plot of land. One year ago they had an English garden installed, complete with labyrinth, in exactly fifteen days. The garden clashes with the design of the eighties-style house, with its conversation pit, open kitchen, countless different levels, and indoor swimming pool. But the Vanende-Boelens family, liberal to the core, think nothing of making whimsical, ridiculously expensive changes every now and then that send shock waves through the Vandersanden-De Kinder family. Emily is the product of a jovial bon vivant of a father who has been known to hang over the operating table in a shaky state of near delirium but who never loses his concentration, and a devil-may-care mother with the looks of Jane Fonda who takes part in the latest Adidas jogging trends and, with her filthy puff-ball of a dog, fertilizes the front gardens of even the most dignified of the housing estate dwellers at eight o’clock every morning while merrily waving to the passing cars during the daily migration to the city, when any respectable housewife and mother knows she should stay indoors where she belongs. It’s one of the fundamental rules that applies to all the housewives in the villas on the mountain: you can sit on your lazy ass all day long, but in the morning between waking up and waving goodbye you’re expected to work yourself to death for your offspring. Morning is the only time you really have something to do without having to talk yourself into it. Breakfast has to be cleared away, the beds made, and the rooms aired, and for those who are so inclined it’s just a matter of grin and bear it before the first bottle is broken out or the first pack of cookies is torn open, for There Must Be Discipline. This does not apply to the Vanende-Boelens family. Marc is still sleeping it off in bed, Evi is chattering away and laughing, her ponytail bouncing back and forth, and daughter Emily is going about her business. She’s been able to prepare her own sandwiches since she was three and she’s never lost the knack.
‘Mieke, I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but do you happen to have any ice cubes?’ Eyelashes gleaming, Evi is fidgeting at the door and pulling on her short little dress as if she were trying to persuade gravity to lengthen it a bit.
‘Ice cubes?’ Mieke’s eye falls on the sticker she invitingly hung on the doorbell. RAIN OR SHINE, ALWAYS WELCOME, says the flippant little text balloon on an orange background. That has got to go. ‘Of course, Evi, just a minute.’
When Mieke comes back to the front door, Evi points down with her diamond-beringed finger to her neighbour’s legs.
‘Something happen to your knees?’ Mieke looks at the red spots on her knees and shrugs her shoulders.
‘I knew you’d have ice cubes, Mieke. I can always count on you. Oh, yes, I have a letter here. It was in our mailbox for a couple of days but I completely forgot. Sorry. Who is Jempy De Kinder?’
‘My brother. Thank you. And if you need more ice cubes, be sure to come by,’ Mieke says with blatant insincerity.
Looking out the bathroom window she watches the neighbour’s cat search for a comfortable place among her freesias. The words WHAT CATS HATE rise to the top of her mental shopping list for the garden centre. The neighbours aren’t going to teach the cat, so someone else is going to have to set the limits.
Mieke steps into the shower. She never takes a bath. Baths are for lazy people who have too much time on their hands. The Romans took leisurely baths and even had bath houses. It’s no wonder their decadence was their downfall. In his letter Jempy writes that he’s coming to visit her soon. How long has it been since she’s seen her brother? How anybody can live like Jempy does is beyond her, but it’s out there in that great beyond that her love for her brother lies. He’s like a cat: you don’t know where he’s come from and whose flowers he’s going to destroy, but you can be pretty sure he’ll be back, in perfect health and beaming all over. Stefaan is more like a dog. She lovingly keeps him on a short leash. Every now and then he’s moody, sometimes even paranoid, and when he’s in his basket he licks his own wounds. He’s not always Mr. Cheerful, but she values his sincerity. On the other hand, the blindingly white smile of Marc across the street is a perfect example of play-acting. When you take out the garbage cans after sundown and you catch a glimpse of his professional doctor’s grin, it can scare the living daylights out of you. As if his fee had something to do with the width of his smile.
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SARAH 1990-1991
‘How much did you get?’ Emily asks. They’re walking to the beat of the jingling fortune in Sarah’s pants’ pocket. It’s sixty francs and not a centime more. Sarah’s absolutely sure of that. She’s even more sure that she’s not allowed to walk here with Emily. Excessive contact with other people is not a good idea, Mieke says, even if you just happen to bump into them, even if it’s the girl across the street who’s like a sister to you and whose mother takes turns driving you to school. Not even then.
For an only child living in a villa on the mountain, the childhood years are a Kafkaesque labyrinth of rules and prohibitions. If you walk down the street you’re riff-raff, and if you play music in your room you’re committing a major crime because you’re making noise.
At the tinkling of the doorbell the owner of the newspaper shop comes out from his dark infernal lair full of children’s screaming and televised din in the back. This man, Mieke has assured her daughter, is going to try to cheat her. This upside-down camel, whose humps are hanging out in front, takes his own stupidity for shrewdness and is so stupid that he thinks his customers are stupid and that he can easily put one over on them. He makes a game of it and keeps on trying, over and over and over again, even though he gets caught on a regular basis.
The Libelle Rositas are on the camel’s counter. All Sarah has to do is take the magazine and count her change. Mieke has told her in no uncertain terms not to look around too much. There’s nothing there to interest her, especially in the back of the shop. Some of the magazines there are covered in silver wrapping paper with XXX written on them in black letters. As unusual as those obtrusive letters are, that’s how conspicuous and exposed to the real world Sarah feels. She conducts her transaction with downcast eyes, and when no change is forthcoming she turns to Emily, who follows their cleverly thought-out scenario and puts a twenty-franc coin on the counter. ‘And Marlboros for my mother,’ she says. ‘It’s three francs too much, but that’s all right.’ This is too quick for the camel. He puts a pack of Marlboros on the counter and goes to work with his Texas Instruments calculator, but the two girls grab the magazine and cigarettes and rush out the door before he can react.
Behind the town hall opposite the newspaper shop Emily strips the pack of its transparent skin. Sarah takes one of the cigarettes, sniffs it, and places it between her fingers as if she were smoking it. The gesture feels like freedom. Sarah isn’t allowed to eat candy because candy makes you fat, and if you’re fat you have fewer chances in life. Her mother hasn’t laid down any rules for smoking. A car drives past slowly. She quickly slips the sharp-smelling stick of pleasure into the sleeve of her jacket. Pleasure is best done as quickly as possible so you can get on with your normal life.
Along with that thought, an invisible angel of haste comes to perch on Sarah’s feathers. A delay of a couple of minutes can be reason enough for Mieke to call the police. It wasn’t long ago that she called in the police when a strange man set a ladder against the chimney. The man had come
