of that? If a cargo ship tried to sail through it, it’d run aground on duck shit within two meters. No, the tens of thousands of euros’ worth of dredging projects were invested, according to the city council’s report, to facilitate recreational boating. Recreational boating, for God’s sake! So now the banks were regular mooring spots for small yachts, captained by bloated nouveaux-riches in white trousers and plaid shirts, cronies of the mayor, of course, and undoubtedly just as crooked.
Then when the old lady next door died they bought up the house and turned it into subsidized apartments. He took the occasional peek over the wall. Best to keep an eye on these things: before you knew it they’d be breaking all sorts of building codes. The bathrooms they’d put in were nicer than his. And for whom? Parasites!
His registered letters to the mayor received the usual hackneyed replies. First a woman with two young children came to live on the ground floor. The racket those rowdy little monsters made! Ivan was always on guard when the mother and her quick-fingered rascals came into the pharmacy. One day the woman just vanished into thin air, and a darkie moved into the upstairs apartment. A strapping, well-fed colossus, he hardly looked like an impoverished refugee. And judging from the loud half-conversations Ivan heard through the wall, the man wasn’t the least bit concerned about his telephone bill.
And the icing on the cake: a week ago they opened that damned wind park. Ten of those berserkly whirling turbine towers! And what did his fellow townspeople do? Did they protest when they heard of the building plans, all those smarty-pants neighbors of his? Half of them hadn’t even read the article by the local journalist, a puppet of the mayor, that had been buried on page three of the newspaper. The simpletons he spoke to about it thought the wind park was a grand idea. It would lift Blaashoek out of obscurity, they said. Blaashoek would become famous for its green energy, they blathered. Finally something actually happened in the town, they yapped. Brainwashed by the hollow words of the powers that be, that’s what they were. But Ivan did not consider starting a petition himself, or taking his case to the local media. He kept his head down. It can’t always be the same people who raise their voice in defense of the public good. There’d only be a backlash. With a heavy heart he watched the townspeople flock to the opening ceremony and gorge themselves on the sausages and offal pâté from that pig of a butcher. Imbeciles! If he didn’t live here himself, Ivan would say that Blaashoek deserved it.
He sniffed. The girl had slipped into the house. He could barely hear her, that’s how deviously she had refined her methods of receiving clients. He left his sentry post behind the rack of suntan lotion.
He went to the lab at the back of the pharmacy, where his antipathy toward the girl made way for a sense of excitement. He was eager to prepare the triamcinolone acetonide ointment for Mrs. Pouseele, the farmer’s wife, who suffered from eczema. It was a complex preparation; the ointment was prone to curdling. And Mrs. Deknudt would be coming by for her zinc syrup. Even though that one was a snap, he nevertheless looked forward to it.
He had not become a pharmacist just to sell aspirin, suntan lotion and Band-Aids. For that, you could just as well become a salesclerk. His passion was self-made medicines. Even as a student he had excelled in making suppositories, the trickiest preparation of all. Only with patience, precision and cold-blooded concentration did one achieve the ideal result. It was painstakingly difficult to spread the medicine homogeneously throughout the suppository. Moreover, the pill had to dissolve at body temperature, not at room temperature. First you warmed up the powder mixture until it was completely melted. Then you let it cool off. Proper timing was essential, because the mass mustn’t be allowed to solidify. Pouring the preparation into the molds at just the right temperature required nerves of steel. When you finally removed them from the refrigerator, you had to pray that the pills would not stick to the molds.
It had been years since he had made suppositories. When the daughters of the postman Walter De Gryse were young, Magda would bring along a prescription once a week, to his delight. His last suppository customer, he now recalled, was Wesley Bracke, the butcher’s son.
◆
Catwoman’s sumptuous lips closed around his erection. Her head went gently up and down while her tongue glided along his cock. Her cheeks were dimpled from the sucking action. She began slowly, but her movements speeded up in time with his breathing. She pressed the tip of her tongue against his gland, she sucked along the edge toward the center and flicked her tongue vigorously up and down.
Now it was Machteld, the prettiest girl in school, who was riding him. Her small breasts danced to the rhythm of her hips.
Wes Bracke tugged at his hard penis, which he had swathed in toilet paper. Ever since his mother started questioning the dwindling supply of handkerchiefs from the bathroom cupboard, he had switched to toilet paper. The change had numerous advantages. He no longer needed to hide the stinking, stiffened hankies in his nightstand. The soiled tissue could be flushed, unobserved, down the toilet, and a missing roll of paper was far less obvious than the inexplicable disappearance of the handkerchiefs.
Machteld groaned her way to a climax and Wes spurted his warm semen into the toilet paper. He heaved a sigh, zoned out for a few seconds, squeezed the last drops of sperm out of his cock and cleaned himself up. He put his clothes back on. In this weather Machteld probably wore a tight T-shirt and hot pants, which offered a splendid view of her legs. Wes cursed the summer vacation, because it meant not seeing Machteld for nearly two months. His report card was such that his parents were unlikely to take him into the city all that often, certainly not for a party, and the chance that she would show her face in Blaashoek was zilch.
Wes opened the door and dashed into the bathroom. He dumped the paper into the toilet before dropping his pants to piss sitting down. Experience had taught that after jerking off, he would spray all over the place if he stood.
‘Wesley, is that you?’
His mother. He felt his cock and balls tighten.
‘Yeah, who’d you expect? And call me Wes, not Wesley.’ How many times did he have to tell her?
‘Dinner’s ready.’
He sighed. He stood up, examined the evidence one last time and then flushed it with a single pull of the handle.
His parents were already sitting at the kitchen table. You would think that, after a day in the butcher shop, sausages and hamburgers were the last thing in the world they would crave, but no, his parents consumed meat by the kilo. Father Bracke tolerated bread, vegetables and potatoes at most as a garnish; a meal was not a meal if it did not include at least one juicy hunk of meat. Tonight, pork chops were on the menu.
Was this the right moment to inform them of his new lifestyle choice? His father did not look particularly good-humored. More like a corpse in a slasher film. But what did it matter? He was going to hit the roof anyway.
When his mother prepared to dish him up a pork chop, he raised his hand in a defensive gesture.
‘No chops for me, Ma.’
The slab of meat floated above the table. His mother hesitated, looked over at his father. A drop of grease fell onto the tablecloth.
‘Are you sick?’
Wes shook his head.
‘I’m a vegetarian.’
The curse his father let out made the glasses in the china cabinet jingle.
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2 | Tuesday
The sheep bounded up the hillside. Herman
