that’s something you don’t have to worry about.’
‘I’m not worried about it. I just want to know.’
‘Yes, Sarah. Uncle Jempy is in jail, but this weekend he has vacation. The director of the jail is letting him spend a weekend home, and apparently he can’t think of a better home than his favourite sister’s house, where he hasn’t set foot for at least six years,’ Stefaan tells her.
‘Why is he in jail?’
‘Mama and Aunt Lydia would rather not talk about it.’
‘Is Uncle Jempy a terrorist?
‘You watch too much news, Sarah.’
‘Why did they arrest him then?’
‘Why on earth do you want to know?’
‘He’s part of my family, he’s my uncle.’
‘Granny is part of your family, too. She’d so much like to see you again. You have to be nice to old people, Sarah. Before you know it Granny will be gone and then you’ll be sorry.’
‘But if people are dead, they’re still part of your family, right? Isn’t your little brother part of the family anymore?’ It feels as if she’s touched something red hot, something that will hurt her father and leave a mark. She knows very well that this is forbidden territory.
‘Sarah!’ His lower jaw begins grinding as if he were gnawing on a bone. ‘That’s enough talking. Time to go to sleep.’
‘Papa, you’re weird.’
‘Go to sleep. Now.’ Stefaan doesn’t even plant the customary cold kiss on her forehead but simply turns off the light. When he returns to the living room, Sarah goes to the top of the stairs and listens.
‘She left me in the lurch, took my own kid away, and now I’m supposed to pay her?’ she hears Uncle Jempy say.
‘That alimony is for your daughter, birdbrain,’ Mieke interrupts. ‘To buy her food and clothes and to pay for her school books.’
‘My daughter doesn’t even want to go to school. It’s to pay for Sonja’s jewellery, that’s what it’s for. I worked for her all during our marriage, day and night. If she decides to run off I’m not going to be stuck with all the responsibility.’
‘According to the law … ’
‘I know you’ve studied it all, but I don’t give a shit about the law.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘I wipe my ass with the law. You have your principles, I have mine.’
‘So you’re all locked up and sitting pretty and we’re left holding the bag.’
Her mother’s sideswipes come galloping up to her while her uncle’s bass tones remain submerged under the water of the ceiling like whales. In a little while the refrigerator’s built-in freezer door shuts with a click. Would they be eating that bright yellow, grainy, passion fruit sherbet? Sarah and Mieke brought it home yesterday. The cashier at the Delhaize was handing out free products. For Mieke, anything free is suspicious by definition, but she had no choice than to accept the sherbet because it’s rude to refuse a gift. Everyone but Mieke has been going out of their way to avoid the Delhaize since the Nijvel Gang held it up. But she won’t let herself be scared away. Besides, the last place that the gang would want to attack anytime soon is this Delhaize. What’s there to interest them? After the glass bowls have been spooned clean and shoved into the dishwasher, Stefaan announces that he’s turning in. Mieke patters to the hallway to lock the five locks on the front door. Preparations for night-time are underway at number 7 Nightingale Lane.
Ten minutes of tooth brushing and make-up removal later the house is sunken in deep repose. After a great deal of foot-stamping, brooding, tossing and turning, and with the distant thunder of hunger in her belly, Sarah still hasn’t fallen asleep. She’s thinking about her father’s little brother. What would it be like if he were still alive? Or if he had only been dead a short time and then came back as a little brother for herself and a friend for her papa? Now there’s probably nothing left of the little brother. Uncle Alain has turned into a tiny little person, like all the other dead people. These little people roam the earth endlessly without ever bumping into each other. Her father works with little people, too—viruses, bacteria—but they’re bad little people. Maybe Papa thinks his brother was kidnapped by those bad little people. She thinks it’s really sad for him, but she’s glad Mama has found her brother at any rate.
The next day Uncle Jempy is snoring loudly on the sofa when Sarah comes down for breakfast. Seven bedrooms and he sleeps on the sofa, is Mieke’s litany. His feet are resting on the ceramic figure of a Chinese warrior. Next to him on the sofa is an empty bottle of Marie Brizard, keeping him company like a shameless lover. He had a go at the liquor supply that gaily decorates the writing desk. As soon as Mieke turns on the juicer he opens his eyes. He comes into the kitchen and pours himself a cup of coffee. Mieke presses her lips together.
‘It’s Sunday. The weekend is as good as over,’ she says. ‘Better leave now, then you’re sure of not being late.’
He nods, puts his hand on Sarah’s head and musses her hair. When he goes outside to smoke a cigarette, Sarah begins to whine: ‘Why are you chasing him away?’
‘We’re not chasing him away,’ Mieke snaps at Sarah with the same combativeness that she uses in her exchanges with Jempy. ‘Uncle Jempy has to go back. The weekend is over and we’ve done our duty again, more than our duty.’
On a clear Saturday afternoon in the autumn of 1990 Stefaan has once again been unable to get Sarah to come see Granny. Granny still has her presents for Sarah’s tenth birthday, Stefaan said before leaving the house alone. Ingratitude is of the devil, isn’t it, Mieke? But more than anything else, Stefaan wants to keep his daughter away from Jempy, who’s bound to show up at the door again sooner or later. As long as he can’t find an adequate solution for protecting his household from this guy, with his female admirers calling on the phone and the bill-collectors coming to the door (a bailiff!), he’ll have to take his daughter away to a place of safety. His appeal doesn’t make much of an impression on Mieke. Sarah will just stay at home with her.
Of course Mieke likes to see her brother, but every time he comes it takes an enormous amount of nerve-racking deftness to let Jempy into her house in such a way that the neighbours don’t notice. Fortunately he doesn’t have penitentiary leave every weekend, his behaviour within the prison walls being far from irreproachable. But once he’s in the house it gives her secret pleasure. Jempy is able to shake something loose in her, a kind of playfulness that she can’t activate with Stefaan. Even so, it would be better for Jempy to start looking for something for himself. Every time he comes, Jempy assures her he’s in the market for real estate, but you can’t rush something like that because it’s too easy to make a bad investment.
It won’t be long before Jempy is released for good, something Mieke can hardly bare to contemplate. If her brother was the only one she was focusing her worries on, she thinks she could manage. But Mieke also has a family, and neighbours. And a mother-in-law who has taken to calling every other minute to talk to her granddaughter. As if that weren’t enough, she also has to fob off all the lady friends.
It was Sarah who picked up, that first time a call came
