and found their mark. Yet clients started talking to him more and more frequently. They laid their secrets out before him with an eagerness he found overwhelming; it was as if they hoped he might rescue them from their lives. ‘You’re just ridiculously patient,’ Cat has tossed at him more than once. She still feels quite a bit of annoyance at the amount of time he devotes to his clients. He’s never really managed to explain to her exactly what happens when the unburdening begins, why he keeps responding to it. He can barely convert the experience into thoughts. Mutual hypnosis—that’s how he’s tried to express it to himself. According to Cat he’s a magnet to the deranged, and colleagues and friends in the past have pointed to some such power of attraction. He can’t convince himself of it. These are simply people who want to change the colour of their walls. They’ve spotted his number on the internet or under the rainbow logo on the side of his van. They’re not marginal figures mumbling to themselves before noticing him across a crowded town square and sidling over to him. This isn’t the exception, this is the norm behind closed doors.
What about him? If it’s true that he has more patience than most and therefore, for whatever reason, evokes more trust and sparks more hope, is he the one who needs to adjust?
He’s never found listening difficult. Giving advice is a different matter. He’s sparing with it, although clients often seem to expect him to pronounce. When it comes to an escalating row like that between Dieter, Els, Sieglinde, and Ronny he ventures to be resolute, since the people involved—these four aren’t the first he’s encountered—will all stand and shout that it’s the quarrel itself that’s the real torment, patching it up the only remedy. They know this, but they can’t act upon it. Then he happens along, and casually makes the whole thing drop away.
Happy has tiptoed shyly past the door on several occasions. This time she decides to mention something. With each bark her tiny white body slides a centimetre back.
‘Pee-pee?’ He sounds hoarse. His voice has been sleeping for several hours.
The dog races down the stairs ahead of him.
He opens the door to the garden and waits inside until the animal has finished and is flurrying around him again with nervous leaps. He strokes its head until it falls asleep on the living-room carpet.
This is something he can do. Listen, soothe, comfort. Sometimes confront. Encourage? Clients who want to change more than the colour of their interior decor have to do that for themselves, ultimately. Do you really have to rule out offering help, even when you’re asked for it, for fear it might be true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? If he’d come upon a single case in which his intervention had made things worse, he’d have found himself a different job. It’s not abnormal to enjoy this, not wrong to be happy to leave for work in the mornings because people are waiting for you. It’s not vanity. Not arrogance. It’s something that happens to him and something he can do. He pushes the paint roller up and down, surrounding himself with Balanced Mood. He still has no idea what he’s going to say to Sieglinde.
Happy barks when the door opens. He can hear from Sieglinde’s footfall that it’s her arriving home. She comes straight upstairs, two steps at a time.
First she looks around the room. ‘Yes. Peaceful. Beautiful. Thanks.’ Then she turns those enormous eyes to him: ‘Well?’
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘It’s a test from four months ago. I kept it. I’m five months gone now. It’s too late to do anything about it.’
Is she five months pregnant? ‘Some people find peace and a greater sense of freedom once the options are limited. Others don’t, of course.’
‘I kept the test because sometimes when I wake up in the morning I think it’s not true. And I’m hardly putting on any weight.’
‘Does your husband know?’
‘Yes. He says it’ll be different this time.’
‘That’s something at least.’
She looks at him. She still hasn’t told the whole story. She doesn’t seem to take offence at his inability to guess.
‘Hey, I do hope you’ve had something to drink today.’
‘I brought some water with me.’
‘Just take what you need, all right? Shall I make tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
She hurries back down. ‘A Chocotoff?’ she calls up from the bottom of the stairs.
Through the half-darkness he drives into Zoetemore, the village where they live now. He’s hungry, he’ll have to call in at Duran’s place shortly; he wants to know how he’s doing, but he doesn’t feel like eating shawarma this evening. He thinks of Duran’s finger and the severed fingers he saw in earlier years. Life consists of an immense number of accumulations, most of which you’re not even aware of: all those times you experience similar things, the actions you undertake—how often you fill a bucket, kiss a shoulder, sit on a swing, and how many times still remain to you. He thinks about this as he puts the key in the lock, then looks up in response to a knock on the glass. Willem waves at him from his first-floor window, gesturing to him to wait. He seems in a panic.
‘Have you seen it yet?’ his elderly neighbour asks, dashing out of his front door with a wallpaper scraper in his hand. He points past him to the concrete wall across the street, a monstrosity full of asbestos that the council has promised to remove before spring. Although the last elections were several months ago, a poster has been stuck up there of an extreme right-wing politician. Willem throws himself at it, scouring it off with his scraper. ‘It’s those sons of the newsagent’s,’ he says. ‘Or the father. The mother, possibly. Both their families disgraced themselves in the war. That never washes out.’
Alphonse remembers the woman, who always struck him as an ungainly little girl grown old. In their fleeting moments of contact he felt sorry for her. Could she have done this? He doesn’t know. Neither does Willem. Are there other people in this village who want him out? His legs feel weak as he walks over to his neighbour and stands next to him until the last bits of paper have gone.
‘Voilà,’ says Willem. ‘Like a drink? Something strong?’
Alphonse shakes his head. ‘Thanks all the same.’
At home he takes his things out of his backpack. His smartphone tells him Amadou has twice tried to call. He pours himself a glass of fruit juice and rings him.
‘Ah, there you are.’
‘Yes, at last, sorry. And man, ça va?’
They laugh for a moment, at the rapid Wolof larded with French that they’re speaking, that they share, and to declare unimportant the times he didn’t ring back.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Yes, yes. When are you coming?’
‘Next week, if that’s still okay?’
‘Yes, fine.’
He hears a woman mumble something in the background. Amadou’s girlfriend. He’s never met her.
‘Is your wife happy with that?’ asks Amadou.
‘Cat
