the area. Gieles never ate take-out. Uncle Fred didn’t like it.
A soft humming sound was coming from the living room.
Gieles snuck to the door. The armchair in which the lump of fat was sitting had turned into a vibrating recliner. His stomach heaved like a waterbed under his sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was made of the same soft fabric as children’s pyjamas. Dolly’s youngest son slept in pyjamas like that.
Gieles coughed. The back of the chair rose immediately.
The man pressed a button that made his lower body vibrate twice as fast. Then he lowered the leg support.
‘This chair can give three-dimensional massages,’ he said.
‘Can I get you something to drink, too, sir?’ asked Gieles bluntly.
His name had escaped him. Super? And then? Something with a W.
Super Waffle?
‘I’m fine,’ he said, and pointed to an end table next to the massage chair. There were bottles of water on it and a stack of books. ‘And no “sir”. Let’s not stand on formality. Have a seat. Yes, that’s good. Make yourself comfortable.’
Gieles sat down on the edge of the leather couch and clamped the can of grape soda between his knees. The wall opposite him was one big mountain landscape. It was the first time he had ever seen wallpaper like that. The tops of the mountains were covered with snow. The lake in the valley reflected the mountain range. The wallpaper looked so real that it made Gieles feel cold. Hanging on another wall were bizarre paintings of buildings that looked like castles. It wasn’t the image that struck him as strange so much as the colours it was painted in. Fluorescent purple and orange, bright green, canary yellow. The colours hurt his eyes.
‘The big three. The Lynden, the Cruquius and the Leeghwater,’ said the man, who had followed his gaze. ‘It’s because of them that we’re sitting here right now. God made the world, but the Dutch made their own country. Those three pumping stations sucked the whole Haarlemmermeer dry.’
Gieles took a closer look, and through the hysterical colours he made out a group of steam pumps.
‘I have to do a report at school on the history of the steam pumps,’ said Gieles.
Super Windhole?
The man perked up with delight. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. I know everything about the pumps. I give … well, I used to give tours there.’
His lower body was still vibrating. His socks were spotlessly white. Gieles wondered where his shoes were.
‘Personally, I find the Cruquius the most impressive. Some people called her a vomiting monster. But I think she’s beautiful, with that round Victorian exterior. At one time she was the most powerful steam pump in the world. No one could pump as much water as she did. Did you know that the Cruquius has the world’s biggest cylinder?’
He turned the massage chair off, and soon the sloshing mass of flesh began to calm down.
‘It isn’t always fun being the biggest of something, but in her case I think it’s a real plus.’
Neither of them spoke. Gieles was just about to get up and leave when the man suddenly asked him, ‘Do you have any hobbies? I like the Swiss Alps and steam pumping stations.’
Gieles stared at him in amazement.
‘Oh, yes,’ he added with a smile. ‘I also like Country Western music. And you?’
The man looked sincerely interested.
‘I like table tennis,’ stammered Gieles. ‘And geese.’
‘You like table tennis and geese,’ he repeated, pushing himself up in the chair.
‘Well, not exactly “like.” I think they’re funny. I have two at home. They’re American geese. Tufted Buff geese, with that tuft, you know. They look like they have a lump on their heads.’
‘Are they pets?’ he asked. ‘I mean, do these geese live in the house?’
Gieles chuckled and squeezed the can of soda. ‘No. If they did, we’d be knee-deep in shit. They walk around outside, but they act like house pets. They’re as alert as watch dogs. If a stranger comes by they bark, and when they see me they start wagging their tails. They’re two females,’ Gieles added. ‘They can also open the kitchen door with their beaks. Uncle Fred, my father’s twin brother, isn’t too thrilled about that. Because then they shit all over everything and eat whatever they find. Uncle Fred calls them feathered vacuum cleaners.’
The fat man laughed a contagious laugh.
‘But they’re also real smart,’ Gieles rattled on. ‘I’m training them for a special project. I can’t say anything about that though. It’s a secret.’
He tried to infuse the last words with as much significance as possible.
‘What fantastic geese you have,’ the man said. ‘Were they born at your place?’
Gieles was now sitting so far forward that he almost slipped off the leather seat. ‘No, thank God! One of our neighbours had an incubator. When the chicks hatched, they gave him a good long look. With one eye. When a goose wants to look at something very closely, he does it with one eye.’
To demonstrate, Gieles squeezed his right eye closed. ‘That’s what my geese do. If I have a new stick, for instance. I use a stick to teach them to listen to me. I train them with it. I don’t hit them, of course. But then they fix me with that black eye of theirs. My neighbour’s chicks thought he was the mother goose. They followed him around all day long. It drove him crazy. They even slept with him in bed. Otherwise they’d just keep on peeping.’
No one had ever laughed so heartily at his goose stories. ‘A goose can live to be thirty years old,’ Gieles went on, warming to his subject.
‘Thirty?’ He laughed again and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Poor man. Thirty years with geese in your bed. How’s your neighbour doing now?’
‘No idea. We live near the airport runway and he let the airport buy him out. And then I got two geese from him. My father won’t let me have any more. They were different than the ones I have now, but since then I’ve gotten pretty good with geese.’
‘And you haven’t been bought out?’ the man asked gravely.
Gieles shrugged his shoulders and took another gulp of grape soda. ‘No, my father wanted to stay. He figures we were there first. My mother doesn’t really care. She’s never home anyway.’
The man was silent and bit his lower lip. ‘That’s very noble of your father,’ he said meditatively. ‘Not letting yourselves be bought out, regardless of the price.’ His voice had a kind of militant tone.
Gieles wondered how old he might be. The man had no wrinkles. Every groove was filled in with butter. But his hair was in pretty good shape. He had auburn hair that shone like the fur of a stuffed lion in a shooting gallery at the fair.
‘Your geese,’ he asked. ‘What are their names?’
No
