a bright spell. He presses the pedal with his foot, steers sounds in a loop that continues after he rests the bass in its frame and takes the rounded back of the kora into his lap. Against a hard crust of bass the kora tells a polyphonic story, about the tirailleurs’ trench foot, the cakes Marie-Jeanne baked, the laughter of thirteen-year-old daughters, the sick and dying in Liberian streets, buzzing swarms of bees without his aunt. And through the window the fields, always the fields, the trees alongside them: out of the ground, into the sky; he watches it happen, time and again.
-
27
Only Sieglinde was still home when Alphonse arrived. She hastily led him through the bedrooms and announced she had to go to work, but an hour later she’s still here. She walks from room to room, upstairs and down, the little dog in her arms. He passes them on the stairs and meets them in the kitchen where, lost in thought, she presses a pointy kiss to the tiny canine skull. The animal keeps its eyes fixed on Alphonse, who believes he can read ‘say something’ in them.
‘Ça va?’ he asks.
The eyes behind the lenses of her spectacles seem even bigger and bluer than before.
‘Do you have a family?’ she wants to know.
‘A girlfriend. Partner.’
‘No children?’
‘No.’
She scrapes her lower lip with her upper teeth, knows it’s a risky question but asks nonetheless: ‘Why not?’
‘That’s the way life has gone,’ he says.
‘You still want them?’
He finds it strange that most people talk about hypothetical children in the plural, as if they usually present themselves as a class. ‘It’s something I’d welcome. It’s not essential.’
‘So it doesn’t matter?’ She makes no effort to hide her incredulity. ‘What does your partner think about that?’
‘At the moment she’d rather not think about it.’
That could mean a lot of things. Sieglinde has now started licking her lips: one of many tics designed to prevent her curiosity from being transformed into words. Then her face hardens. ‘She’d better. Yes. Think about it.’
‘There’s still time.’
That’s not what she means. She speaks quickly and solemnly, as if performing a theatrical monologue she’s known for years. ‘A lot can change, in yourself, and not always for the better. All I’d heard about having your first child was that it’s the best experience of your life, an unbeatable experience that connects you with everything. That it’s only then that you really feel what love means, what it is to be human. That’s what I was told. Of course I knew you could find the occasional degenerate woman wandering about who’d never be ready for it, a weak link that just wasn’t intended to procreate. I turned out to be such a person. I didn’t foresee that as soon as I fell pregnant I’d start going down. During the contractions I was sucked into a deep hole. It’s because of the pain, I told myself. Soon they’ll lay the child on your tummy and the euphoria will come. Then they laid the child on my tummy and all I could think was: get it off me! The next day was no different, nor the day after that. A year and a half passed before I could feel anything but loathing. Not just for the child. No one knew, other than my husband. If it wasn’t for him I’d have ended it all. That’s another thing I remember from all those months: it defies imagination, how much you can hide. I held the baby in my arms and chattered away with an endless succession of visitors, all the time hoping that if a meteorite landed it would hit our house. I think she’s doing fine, my daughter, but I’m always afraid it’s left its mark on her. Because it wasn’t anything natural, what I had. Nature has its own cruelty, I’m fully aware of that, indifference too, certainly, but there was no sense in the way I was, it was pure devastation, and it took control of me without any trouble at all.’
The silence grows. She’s finished for now, he thinks, but there is more.
‘Lana’s really nice.’
‘Yes.’ Shaken, she bends over the little dog in her arms and plants more kisses on the tiny scalp. ‘When did you meet her?’
‘She was with Mila, on their ladder. We had a brief conversation.’
She stares at him without blinking. ‘They were here. Our neighbours. Yesterday they were suddenly at our door. We thought what now? But it was cake. Cake and a lot that was left unsaid, a lot of awkwardness. Made tea. Chatted for a bit about the children and the dogs. About you for a moment, too. Walking on eggshells. Within an hour they’d gone and Ronny and I didn’t know what to say. All in all it wasn’t too bad.’
She puts the dog on the floor. ‘Anyhow, I have to go. I’m already late. And I’m keeping you from your work.’
‘What’s he called?’ Alphonse asks.
‘Who?’ Again those blue flashing lights behind the glasses.
He looks down at the dog, which is lying on the floor with its head on the toe of his shoe.
‘She’s called Happy. A bitch. And she seems to be comfortable with you.’
He wobbles his foot. Happy raises her head and lies down somewhere else, allowing him to carry his things upstairs.
‘Alphonse,’ she says from the bottom of the stairs when he’s almost at the top. ‘Can you take a look in the bathroom? It’s between the bedrooms.’
‘You want me to paint that too?’
She hesitates. ‘Not necessarily. Just say what you think about it. But not right now. See you this evening.’
She hurriedly puts on her coat. Happy yaps at the closing door.
There’s nothing unusual about the bathroom, nothing to paint or repair. The walls are tiled from top to bottom, the ceiling coated with a damp-proof membrane. What does she want him to look at? Then he sees it, on the rectangular washbasin, between the tap and the hairbrush. He holds the white stick closer. The blue cap has been broken off. One short and one longer vertical stripe indicate a positive result, he believes. Not necessarily a favourable one.
He doesn’t know what he should tell her and he racks his brain while taping the skirting board. What he certainly must make clear is that he’s got no experience at all with post-natal depression.
In Brussels, in the many periods when he was unable to make a living from his music, he worked on and off for a building firm, sometimes as a painter and decorator. People used to tell him all sorts of things then too. As a musician it happened less often—it must have to do with interiors, with insides.
He was warned about the dour, taciturn character of people in the Westhoek, but in his experience they’re no different from clients he’s had in the past; after reluctantly presenting their problems, they make no secret of the needs that accompany them. Cat says his skin colour underlines the fact that he’s an outsider to their lives, and that’s why they allow him access. His colour is the clergyman’s cassock, the psychiatrist’s duty of confidentiality. He’s not convinced by this theory; in Brussels he worked with other Africans, many of whom had a greater tendency to prompt suspicion, or at least reticence, even
