welled up in Sophia. It started in her belly, bubbled upwards and ended on her tongue. She planted herself in front of the pork seller, legs wide apart and hands on hips.
‘Your pigs have more decency than you’ll ever have. They should put you in that sty.’ Her voice was remarkably calm. Before the pork seller was able to utter a word in response, Sophia had turned her backside to him. She walked away with her nose in the air, close on the child’s heels. When they reached the linden tree she stopped her. Squatting down, she smiled at the little girl, who stared at her with vacant eyes.
‘Are you hungry?’
Her eyes showed no sign of life. The only colour in her face was the yellow ooze in the whites of her eyes.
‘Is your mother here, too?’
She smelled the pungent odour of excrement.
‘Can you talk?’
There was a crust of snot and blood on her upper lip.
‘Come on, I have food for you.’
The girl silently followed Sophia into the hollow tree. Sophia settled herself once again at eye level and motioned to the girl to come in through the opening in the bark. The girl obediently followed her instructions. She could easily stand up inside the tree. After looking all around her (prudence was in order), Sophie reached under her shawl, broke off a piece of cheese and put it in the little upraised hand.
The child didn’t eat, she devoured the food like a famished beast—slobbering, gulping and smacking her lips. Insatiable, she kept holding out her little black claw while uttering bestial cries. She bolted down the entire chunk of cheese and one piece of sausage. When everything was gone, she followed Sophia around like a bitch in heat. Any more stealing that day was out of the question; Sophia was far too conspicuous with the stinking child in her wake. Together they returned to the shantytown. On the way back, the little girl stopped on the sandy path and vomited her guts out.
-
5
Gieles read the story three times. Who were Ide and Sophia? Had this Super Waling written the story? Impossible. He was way too fat to write about certain things, about sex.
On her hands and knees. Her bottom, sticky with sand. Impatiently pressing against his erection. Her tongue in his ears and nostrils.
The tongue part was disgusting, Gieles thought, but it excited him.
He put the story in his desk drawer. There amid all the junk he saw a crumpled up ticket. It was admission to the air show of Christian Moullec and his wife Paola that he had gone to the year before with his father and Uncle Fred. His mother had been spending two weeks in some bone-dry Sahel country at the time.
Gieles picked up the ticket and looked at the photo of Moullec in his magical flying two-seater motorbike surrounded by the lesser white-fronted geese. Moullec had grey hair, just like Captain Sully. Gieles had been looking up with thousands of other spectators, but he felt as if he were the only one—as if Christian Moullec were putting on the show just for him. Music by Ennio Morricone swept across the grounds and a guy at a microphone was blaring a story about Moullec that Gieles already knew, but it didn’t bother him. He was enjoying the spectacle.
When the guy bellowed through the loudspeakers that geese always return to the place where they had learned to fly, his father had said, ‘Let’s hope Ellen does the same.’ Uncle Fred said soothingly that quarrels were a fact of life.
It was at that moment that Gieles first realised that things were not going well between his parents. He put the admission ticket on top of the story about Ide and Sophia Warrens and closed the drawer.
He decided to skip the appointment he’d made with Super Waling (Gieles really didn’t want to be seen with a walrus like that) and turned his attention to the game board that was lying on the desk. Using white masking tape he had made a runway across the full width of the board, and had pasted a yellow and a blue goose on the runway. Then he had stuck pins in the cardboard that were topped with little coloured balls. The pins were the security cameras. Naturally he’d have to make sure that the cameras didn’t film him leading his geese onto the runway for Expert Rescue Operation 3032. That was a crime. But they would have to show him later on as he, Gieles Bos, chased his birds away from the runway. That was an act of heroism.
Gieles had once seen a platinum blond TV reporter ask Captain Sully, ‘But how did you do it?’ How do you safely land an Airbus in which both engines have been disabled by a couple of geese?
The woman looked at Sully as if he were a sex machine who had also invented the electric light. WWSD was emblazoned on T-shirts and caps. ‘What Would Sully Do?’ Americans asked themselves when faced with a problem. Sully had become a compass for making life choices.
Gieles stood in front of the mirror above the sink in his room and combed his hair, which was always standing on end. Then he put on the new sunglasses with mirror lenses. ‘Gieles,’ he said, with the same rapturous tone as the platinum blond reporter. ‘How did you do it? How did you manage to get those geese out of the way at the very last second?’
‘Well, let me tell you,’ said Gieles nonchalantly, thrusting his chin forward. ‘I was standing near the runway waiting for my mother. She had never been away so long before and I wanted to wait for her at home—so we’d be able to wave to each other. But suddenly I saw two geese out on the runway.’
The reporter would gape at him with fear and adoration. Of course he wouldn’t tell her that he had ordered the geese to go there himself.
Gieles crossed his arms. ‘By now everyone knows how dangerous geese can be for airplanes. Do you know Captain Chesley Burnett Sullenberger? The pilot who parked his plane on the Hudson on January 15th, 2009?’
The reporter would nod enthusiastically and exclaim, ‘But of course I know him! Who doesn’t? Now we finally have our own Dutch Sully!’
‘Gieles!’ he heard his father call. ‘We’ve got to go!’
Gieles took off his glasses and hid the game board behind a partition where his old toys were stored.
His father was already outside, in the barn. He was standing at a workbench that had a row of fox tails hanging above it. The fox tails were russet with white tips. Killing birds was painful for Willem, but he had no problem hunting foxes and rabbits. After he shot a fox he would cut off the tail and dip the raw flesh in denatured alcohol to keep it from rotting. Then he would tie off the tail with a piece of string to allow the flesh to dry and have fur hats made from the pelt. Everyone got a hat, even his fellow bird controllers. But no one ever wore them.
His father held one of the tails under his nose and turned it around as if it were a glass of wine. Then he hung the amputated body part up again and walked out of the barn.
They got in the car and headed for the demonstration of the robot bird, listening in silence to the monotone radio conversations between the cockpit and air traffic control. Every plane was directed through the air space affably and efficiently by an unknown voice. ‘Eight-zero-nine, you can land.’
Gieles had downloaded the conversation between Captain Sully and air traffic control. Spectacular! ‘We can’t do it. We’re going to be in the Hudson.’
Not a hint of emotion. As if Captain Sully had said, ‘Hey, I’m stuck in traffic. I’ll be getting
