our death our death.
And when I have prayed enough, perhaps I’ll go to the hairdresser, a real hairdresser who takes the time to massage my scalp, and treats my hair with lotions, and asks if I’d like a coffee and then brings me a cup with a biscuit, or a praline. A hairdresser who calls me ‘madam’. ‘What would madam like?’ ‘Did madam have a particular style in mind?’ ‘May we recommend madam our new shampoo?’ ‘Is madam considering colouring her hair?’
Madam considers whether she is considering it.
Even the nuns don’t pray twenty-four hours a day.
Do they go to the hairdresser? Do they cut each other’s hair? Or their own hair?
Sister Virginie’s hair looks as if she cuts it herself. Fortunately she doesn’t shave it, and so she won’t ask me to shave my hair off.
Those poor women after the war… And they just went with the Germans so they could eat. What were they supposed to do? Let themselves starve like the Jews in the camps?
A person’s first duty is to survive.
Thanks be to God that they did not shave my hair off here in prison. If He wishes I will cover it with a cloth. With a scarf. Like Audrey Hepburn and Cathérine Deneuve, or Jackie Kennedy. Or like my mother when she came back from the hairdresser. And cleaned the house, in her weekly battle against dirt, which was mine too. My battle, I mean. And my dirt, I assume.
Please let me go to the hairdresser, God. And perhaps to a beauty salon too. I have never set foot in a beauty salon. They say you feel reborn. The pores of your face are opened up with steam for deep cleansing. All the dirt in your body evaporates. You feel reborn, just as our house was reborn every Saturday.
Me in a beauty salon. Un institut de beauté.
I’ll give it a try.
If I could choose, if someone were to say: go ahead and choose, do what you like—I’d go to the hairdresser at the seaside. First a beauty salon, then a hairdresser, and then shopping. Not necessarily to buy anything but simply to see what is in the shop windows. Lèche-vitrines. And perhaps going in somewhere and buying something after all, for me or the children. And eating mussels washed down with a glass of wine. All in one day. In Knokke. Or Le Coq. Or Ostend. But not in Blankenberge. And definitely not in Middelkerke.
My parents-in-law used to have a chalet in Middelkerke. On a campsite. They called it a ‘chalet’ but it was no more than a glorified caravan, a shed. Of course that mustn’t be said and stupid Odette could not keep her big mouth shut, and went rattling on about Knokke this and Knokke that, and how sweet the little shop was where my mother bought her gloves every year. It was such a funny sight, all those gloved hands on pedestals in the window. Leather gloves, yes yes, calf, that was the supplest.
Forget it, Odette. It was stupid of you, you got your punishment, your well-deserved punishment. You learned to hold your tongue, and you owe him a debt of gratitude for that, down to the present. How would you have kept afloat here if you hadn’t learnt to hold your tongue? Speaking is silver, silence is golden. He can’t do any more to you. Not even when you’re released. Then you’ll be able to go to Knokke as often as you want. And he won’t. He can’t even go to Blankenberge or to Middelkerke. He can only go from one prison to another, from one courtroom to another, till he drops dead.
Idiot, who thought he could escape.
I’ll escape, he won’t. When I leave this prison, I will do it surrounded by police officers, lawyers, judges, bailiffs, warders, magistrates, and a document in my hand with signatures and stamps and seals, perhaps even that of the king, who trembles and shivers, and who held the country together so bravely when M and I had turned it on its head. So that they can’t shut me up again, ever. And then I’ll go to the seaside. One fine day I’ll go to the seaside. Nothing and no one will stop me. And I’ll go and eat a dame blanche in the Titanic. If it still exists.
Much will have changed. I must be prepared for that, says Anouk. It will be a shock. And I won’t be able to return to prison if I want to.
Does she really think I shall want to do that?
The Titanic was called the Titanic because the owner’s grandmother had gone down with the ship. She had a rich, sickly friend, who had paid for both their passages. The friend wanted company. A woman alone day and night on a boat like that gives men ideas, even if she is sickly. ‘Now, be careful,’ said my mother, ‘some women are out for that. They like nothing better.’ My mother was not that kind of woman. Neither was I.
The ice creams in the Titanic were served in boat-shaped dishes and named after ships. You could get a catamaran, or a barge, a sloop, a yacht, a rowing boat, a tanker, a tug, a schooner, a galleon and naturally also a titanic. That was the most expensive, and the most delicious. If my mother was in a good mood, she would order two titanics. And a glass of elixir for herself. I was too young for that. Later, she said, when I was married. Then I would also have to have my hair cut and have a perm. And I would sip elixir, the only strong drink a respectable woman could afford to drink in public without jeopardising her reputation.
The walls of the ice-cream parlour were decorated with photos of the Titanic and the drowned grandmother. You saw passengers cheerfully embarking and waving large white handkerchiefs at the people on the quayside and at the brass band, which was still playing. A circle had been drawn in black ink around the face of one of the waving figures. ‘Emilie?’ someone had written beside it. The last photo was of a lifeboat with about ten people in it. They were all that was left of that laughing, waving crowd.
The friend had neither a husband nor children, but the grandmother did. Her sons were three, five and eight years old at the time. Their portraits were also hanging there, as children on their Mummy’s lap, and as grown men. They had suffered greatly from the loss of their Mummy. Actually they had never got over it.
‘She would have done better to stay with her children,’ said my mother. ‘What was there for her on a ship like that? But well, she wanted to take it easy. Women who want to take it easy had better not have children.’
Yes, Mummy.
She never set foot in a beauty salon.
Perhaps it would have been better if she had.
Shame on you, Odette! I don’t want to hear that kind of thing again! What a cheek!
Sorry, Mummy. It won’t happen again, Mummy.
I thought she was so ugly. Even with her most chic silk scarf and her Chanel lipstick and her Lancôme powder and her diamond earrings—a present from my father on their tenth wedding anniversary—I thought she was ugly. And I think she knew. I couldn’t keep anything secret from her.
She would have done better not to tart herself up. It made her uglier.
Who did she do it for?
God rest her soul. Died while her daughter was in prison, and was loathed by the whole country. The fruit of her womb. Le fruit de ses entrailles. La pauvre.
They buried her next to my father. Her name and date of birth had been carved in the tombstone for over thirty years. And there was also room for me, she said. I bet she was counting on dragging me into that grave with her. If she had had the chance, she would have done it.
I don’t know if I want to go there. I don’t need to go. I can see that grave
