in the eyes for the first time. She had brought her best friend Elvira along on their first date, but by the second Mieke said with a husky voice that she had no need of a chaperone. Every time he thought she had mustered enough civility to tell him he needn’t try anymore, every time he was sure that the next coffee date would be their last, she would nod passionately and suggest something about a concert or an exhibition.
Mieke admired Stefaan because he was so atypical, so modest and dogged at the same time, so authentic and so unmanly, so full of self-confidence and so elusive. She said so quite openly. He let these dubious compliments pass over him and smiled. And even though he learned through the grapevine that she came from a fabulously rich family that he was no match for, he set his heart on her. There was a time and a place for everything, and this was the time to clear a path for the love of his life. So when her family actually welcomed him with open arms, nothing stood in the way of their marriage. Now, more than ten years later, they’re the proud parents of Sarah, just when Stefaan had almost given up hope of ever having a child.
Stefaan works a sugared almond out of the box and places it on his tongue. The sugar melts. He gets down on his hands and knees, making himself small enough to fit under the table. As a little boy he loved to hide under the kitchen table at home. It’s one of his first memories: being under the sturdy table, his mother above him, changing his little brother’s cotton diaper. He looks at his mother’s weather-beaten face and listens to his brother’s cries until they’re smothered on his mother’s breast. Stefaan lies down on his stomach, just at his daughter’s height. This is how Sarah will crawl through the house. She’ll press her peach-soft cheek against the objects in the house to learn about the limits of things and of space, and to familiarize herself with her home.
Downstairs the phone rings. Who knows, maybe Mieke has awakened from her comatose sleep. In his attempt to stand up quickly Stefaan bangs the back of his head against the underside of the table. He laughs at his own clumsiness. He doesn’t even feel the pain. Out in the hall, when he picks up the telephone receiver and the insolent ringing stops, he hears a bass voice. The voice sounds familiar but he can’t immediately place it. Maybe it’s the fatigue, or because the man comes from another world where there are no newborn babies. It isn’t until the end of the congratulations that he recognizes the voice of Fernand Berkvens. He and Berkvens studied at Leuven together. Stefaan graduated with honours while Berkvens had to be happy with a simple satisfactory. Now he and Berkvens are colleagues. Berkvens lives in the village, Stefaan in the housing estate on the mountain.
Both of them applied for the same position as director of research and development. Berkvens’s wife says it’s a beautiful baby, Stefaan hears. She’s a nurse in the maternity ward at the Sacred Heart Hospital. Don’t nurses have a code of professional confidentiality? Stefaan himself wanted to be the one to announce the good news at work.
‘A girl! This calls for a drink,’ says Berkvens.
‘What shall we drink?’ asks Stefaan. He hears the remoteness in his voice. For Stefaan, the line between work and private life is of crucial importance. He guards it closely.
His mother has raised herself from the armchair and is now standing next to him. She takes a dust cloth from her apron and rubs it over the bakelite telephone with its ivory dial, an heirloom from Mieke’s parents.
‘What shall we drink? A beer at the pub, of course, to celebrate the birth!’ says Berkvens, his colleague.
‘A beer,’ Stefaan repeats.
Berkvens knows that Stefaan doesn’t drink beer. Never did, even before he came to understand that beer is for plebeians. The feeble bubbles and bitter taste are lost on him. After working long hours at his part-time job in the print shop while studying in America, his beverage of choice consisted of several glasses of a bright yellow soft drink.
‘I don’t know,’ says Stefaan. ‘I don’t know if I have time for drinking.’
His mother is still flitting around behind him. She has strong principles, always has. She won’t allow a single drop of alcohol to be drunk in her presence, for instance, no matter what the occasion. Single-handedly she has become Flanders’s biggest temperance brigade. She’s merciless in her condemnation of the respectable Fleming who joyfully returns to his wife and kiddies with ten glasses of beer in his belly: all the worse for him. According to her theory, alcohol is not only stupefying but it’s also very bad for the liver. ‘One glass? For the liver that’s no different than trying to bolt down a kilo of chocolate. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can ask Dr. Verastenhoven.’ ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ ‘Exactly. The drink, you know.’
The last time his mother drank in public in the open air was at a small dinner party she organized following the commemorative mass held for her husband André. She had ordered and paid for dinner for thirty-eight: for the pastor, his nuns, her stone-deaf girlfriends from the retirement society, and her family. At that particular memorial she consumed everything that was left in the aperitif glasses, the wine glasses, the beer glasses, and the hard liquor glasses. At first her customary silence went unnoticed. Her guests never suspected a thing until she dropped the stuffed pear garnish from her serving of quail down her décolleté and, after spooning out the last of the advocaat, proceeded to throw up in the bushes next to the restaurant chickens.
‘It must have been the potatoes,’ she explained, gasping for air. ‘Probably a green one. I’m terribly sensitive to green potatoes.’ The establishment was being run by a gang of profiteers who let their filthy, Pamper-clad children run through the restaurant, which also may have had something to do with it, she said.
When Stefaan cautiously suggested it may have been the drink, she denied it up and down, only to toss in five minutes later as part of her sobering-up tirade: ‘Marie Brizard, anise liqueur—come on, who drinks that stuff anymore? Maybe the occasional cleaning woman who gets hooked on abandoned bottles when nobody’s looking. But otherwise?’
Stefaan sees his mother pulling faces, fishing to find out who’s on the other end of the line. He’s eager to end the phone call with Berkvens and says, ‘Another time.’
‘Another time then,’ responds Berkvens. ‘We’ll go out another time. I won’t forget, now.’
Stefaan hangs up. Fortunately he doesn’t like to go drinking. He has neither the time nor the inclination. He’s never shown his face in either of the two village pubs. He also finds it completely unbecoming to hang around in a drinking establishment when you’ve just been given the most beautiful daughter in the history of humanity.
‘How are you, Mother? It wasn’t too tiring for you, was it?’ He redirects his attention for the moment to his discontented mother.
His mother mutters something. She always seems angry at him. She is very creative in her reproaches, but they all arise from one underground reservoir of guilt and sorrow.
‘Did you see or hear anyone?’ he asks.
‘No,’ she snaps. ‘Now that you have a daughter you’re going to behave yourself and be happy, is that right?’
Stefaan ignores the caustic remarks that he has come to expect from his mother. ‘I’m going to the hospital. I’m taking some sugared almonds, a nightgown, and a couple of towels,’ he says. ‘But I’m bringing a present back for you. That should make you happy.’
The hours slip past. With a creak in her heavy joints Melanie stands up. She goes to the kitchen and spreads butter on half a slice of gingerbread. She gives herself permission to eat in the armchair, a small indulgence that she hopes will not leave too many crumbs. At some indeterminate point later on, Melanie wakes up with a
