whom she had just got engaged. ‘Leave the tram!’ ordered the conductor sternly, but no one wanted to miss the spectacle, and neither did my mother, a young bride-to-be. Imagine: a German officer in uniform whose trembling body is filling the aisle. The arms were flailing, the legs were stamping. Urine was streaming from him.
My mother had wanted to throw herself on the epileptic. She had kicked off her shoes and had slid to the edge of the seat. She placed her hands to the left and right of her thighs, ready to push off for the leap. Her body would calm his, like a blanket thrown on the flames. The realisation that she would become part of the spectacle stopped her at the last moment.
Nothing would have stopped me.
When the conductor had finally thrown the passengers off his tram, my mother realised that urine had leaked from her too. Not as much as from the German officer, but enough to feel it. Was there a stain on her dress? On her coat? Oh, the shame, the shame! And now there was also a ladder in her new stockings. What on earth was happening? She had bought the stockings especially for the visit to her future parents-in-law, although it was wartime. Stockings cost a fortune, but her mama had said: ‘If you’re serious about that man, you must wear stockings.’
The other stranded passengers had carried her along with them to a bar. She had tried in vain to drink the Dutch gin a fellow passenger had offered her. Her teeth were chattering against the rim of the glass. Someone said that she must eat, but she couldn’t swallow a thing. The ambulance siren drove them all back out into the street. They saw the epileptic being taken away on a stretcher and disappearing into the belly of the ambulance. The tram continued on its way, but my mother could not bring herself to get on. She felt exhausted and soiled as if she had had sex with the pissing, foaming man in the aisle in full view of all the passengers. She would have liked nothing better than to break off the engagement.
At home she took off her clothes and threw them away, not into the laundry basket, but into the rubbish bin. War or no war, she did not want to wear them anymore, she could not wear them any more.
First she soaked in the bath, and then she scrubbed herself clean at the washbasin. But the gagging man still clung to her. He never disappeared from her head or from her body.
‘That day evil was planted in my womb,’ she often said.
Because she and my father were respectable people. Des gens convenables. And so were their parents. I couldn’t have got it from them.
If I was fathered by that sick SS officer on that Sunday afternoon, it was a pregnancy of over sixteen years. Long enough for a Devil’s child.
But I was not fathered in that tram.
Sometimes they turn into wolves.
That isn’t true.
M could turn into a wolf, a wolf that stands on its hind legs so that everyone can see its penis. His wolf’s penis. It was a test. He wanted to see whether I would get into a panic. I forced myself to stay calm. I folded my hands and prayed. In my mind I folded my hands. If I had really done it, he would have torn me to pieces with his wolf’s teeth, his wolf’s claws.
Wolves are less dangerous than people think. They attack when they have no other choice. Actually they are frightened of people.
Don’t force me, M often said.
I didn’t force him. I tried not to force him.
Sometimes I forced him without realising, or I realised too late. With that story of my mother’s about the epileptic, for example. I thought it would amuse him, and it did seem to amuse him. I could have sworn that he giggled when I told him how my mother, with wet knickers, was ready to jump on the poor man in the midst of a full tram. It made me reckless. I made up details to extend my moment of triumph, and laid it on thick. Pathetic, I know, and unforgivable. I heard myself rattling on, though I knew perfectly well that people rattling on drove M nuts. He let me tell the story. He didn’t interrupt me. And then suddenly there was his hand over my mouth and four grim words: my brother has epilepsy.
Which brother? I didn’t dare ask. He had so many.
‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘Please tell me you forgive me.’
‘There’s no point,’ he said. ‘I can forgive you and you’ll do it again tomorrow.’
He didn’t hit me that time. I wasn’t even worth the effort.
-
2
The murderess-mother, the mother-murderess lies on the ground in the living room of her house. Sunlight streams in through the tall windows, but that isn’t much good to her right now. She thrashes about like a fish that has just been landed. Her mouth goes gulp, gulp. In her fall she has pulled the cloth off the table. It is now lying half on top, half underneath her. Fortunately there was no vase on the table, fortunately there was no water in the vase, fortunately there were no flowers in the vase, fortunately the cloth, well, the cloth is cotton, and can go straight in the washing machine. Thirty degrees, no prewash necessary.
The woman likes to keep her house neat and tidy. In the light of events everyone would regard shards and broken-off flowers as a negligible detail. Not her. Nothing is a detail for her. Everything must be in perfect order. Everything must be in perfect order. Everything must…
Shush, darling, shush.
She has hit her shoulder on a chest of drawers. In the hospital the doctor will notice and record the bruise, but won’t draw any conclusions. The doctor has an open mind. Prejudgements are alien to him, as is rushed work. He strives for scientific rigour and objectivity. Her husband does too, but her husband is not home. He is Dutch, an engineer with a demanding job. For now no one thinks it necessary to inform him of the drama unfolding in his house. For now it isn’t a drama for anyone. An epileptic fit is not a drama. On the other side of the ceiling are the cots with the bodies of the three youngest children, but for now the mother is the only one who knows that. And probably she doesn’t know herself anymore. A lightning bolt has struck her brain. It has yanked the glasses off her nose and thrown them obliquely onto her face. It sends electric shocks through her nerves. The neighbour who has been summoned to help does not dare touch her, for fear of also getting a shock, and she also keeps her little son away from the epileptic. From a safe distance she makes soothing noises, though she doubts their effect. She tells the children that everything will be all right. There’s no reason to panic. She says it without believing it herself.
‘Listen, there’s the ambulance already. It will look after your mummy.’
Knock, knock, who’s there?
She smiles a reassuring smile, although she feels anything but reassured. She knows that she’s going to have a sleepless night and that her son will have nightmares again later. If this goes on, she thinks, they will have to move. For her neighbour’s children it is different. They’ve become used to their mother’s attacks by now.
The ambulance crew come into the house. They know the woman and they know the family. It’s not the first time that they’ve screeched to a halt in the drive to give first aid. ‘Where are the three little ones?’ one of them wants to know, while the other tends to the mother. ‘Upstairs,’ says the eldest son. ‘Mummy has given them a bath.’ The paramedic looks at the neighbour, who interprets his look as a request, which it is. She goes upstairs. ‘They’re in their beds,’ she says when she comes back downstairs. ‘They’re sleeping like logs.’
Dull-witted
