Peter Buwalda - Bonita Avenue

After Namur he exits the freeway. Taking the country roads, which soon become stony paths, he passes craggy, leafy woods, hardened snow around the gray tree trunks. This is another world, here the earth is bleak, just as it is bleak almost everywhere except in his own country; in the Netherlands nature dives underground like a metro and only resurfaces in Scandinavia. His life is bleak. Sometimes that life races down a village street with houses as gray as stringy rags, and then covers long stretches without seeing a single building, only woods and farmland, every so often a spotted tile roof deep down in a valley.

On the way down a hill he turns onto a snow-covered dirt road that leads to a green-black pine forest. A few minutes later, completely surrounded by the tall fir trees, he parks as far off the path as possible. He sits there for a quarter of an hour, too tired to move. Tineke, he really must phone Tineke. He enters the number and listens to the ragged foreign ringtone. After the seventh ring he hangs up. Blood is pounding in his ears. He tries to rehearse the conversation: what, in fact, does he plan to say? Before he’s come up with some platitude, she calls back. “Hello dear,” he says hoarsely. Just let her do the talking. They are having breakfast, his wife tells him, they’re looking out over the slopes, the trails are still being prepared — but he hardly takes it in. She wants to know when to expect him, he says it will be late, he’s just leaving Enschede, count on midnight. She’s taking ski lessons, she says: news meant to counter his own silence, so he mumbles something enthusiastic, but his thoughts slip away — he almost gags. The black pinky, think of that burned-off gangrene finger . “What did you eat yesterday?” she asks. “Did you remember to turn down the heat?” While he inhales and exhales deeply she rattles on, maybe because Hans and Ria are within earshot, maybe because she’s suppressing thoughts about the photos he’s nearly forgotten already. She says he sounds tired, “did you have a cold night?” No. Yes. He mustn’t warm himself on her normality, on the stubborn unchangedness on her end of the line — not yet. Soon. Later.

“Did you get everything in the roof pod?”

“I’ll try now,” he answers, and as soon as they’ve hung up he calculates how long ago it was that he left the utility room with his skis under his arm. Six hours? Could just as well be six years. He lets his cell phone sink into his pocket.

He had already walked around the side of the house to the Audi a few times, his footsteps crunching, first with his travel bag, then his laptop and attaché case, cautiously forging a path in the light that shone out from the sunroom onto the softly ionizing layer of snow. He tried to recall his mood at that moment, the weary restlessness that accompanied him on his last inspection of the farmhouse, looking for blood stains or anything out of place, before he carried his skis into the utility room. Cautiously optimistic relief? He had turned on the outside light — only then? — and in the yellow glow saw the entire terrace light up. The snow was falling harder now; he opened the kitchen door and stepped outside. White powder fluttered from the thatched roof and the crown of the chestnut. As the icy wind cut through his clothes he looked at the trail of his footprints running parallel to the sunroom; only now, though, did he notice a second, much narrower, trail branching off into the backyard. His eyes followed the snow-dusted footprints. They led to a hump at the edge of the terrace, about six meters from where he stood. Something was lying there . An oblong, snow-covered object, right about where the patio stones met the grass. His skis slipped out of his fingers, the slap muted by the snow. Fucking hell, he was lying there . He took a step back and watched closely. Wilbert. On his back, the broken arm bulging up under the bomber jacket. Snow was starting to cling to his clothes, the legs were spread slightly, feet pointing outward, the toes of the shoes were white. His head was facing the farmhouse, bent backward at an odd angle. He could see the battered face, the left eye was open a crack. The nose, he observed with a shock, puffed out little clouds of vapor.

The thought of that face. Pressing the slimy wound on his chin, he looks around. Think of something else, damn it, think of … Joni? He sits panting in a parked car on a forest lane in the Belgian Ardennes, on the verge of fainting. Think of something … good . The game Joni used to play on Bonita Avenue, a game she called “America’s Good-time Girl.” She’d poke her little blond face around their bedroom door, the new day shining on her face like fresh dew, and chirp: “Dad and Mom, OK, Round One. America’s Good-time Girl. Stay in bed.” He lets his head fall back against the headrest, allows his eyelids to droop for a moment, and immediately they suck themselves against the white of his eyes. From their bed they’d hear her downstairs in the wood-paneled kitchen, squeezing oranges, making coffee and toast; there was an evening variant too, when she’d whirl through the cramped living room like in a fast-motion film, a busy little bee lighting candles, closing curtains, the adorable fumbling with a corkscrew and a bottle that wouldn’t—

It backfires. His happiest memories plunge him into a deep gloom. He opens his eyes, rolls down the driver’s window and stares out into the woods for several minutes; the black trunks are close together, he can’t see any farther than thirty meters or so. In the depths: darkness.

He couldn’t move, he could only stare. How long had that bastard been lying there? It looked like he had slipped, he must have lost his footing, maybe he fell on his head, or on his arm. Did he try to get back up? The surrounding snow looked raked about. He’s sleeping it off . Was that it? The rum — he was completely blotto, he fell, thrashed about with his one good arm and when nothing helped he thought: nighty-night. The idiot was sleeping off the rum at 13 below zero.

He debated with himself. How often had he debated with his better self lately? This time they quickly reached an agreement. He stood for a moment longer, his gaze fixed on the sleeping figure in the freezing cold, and then he turned away. He picked his skis up out of the snow, put them on the brushy doormat in the utility room and meticulously locked up. Back in the kitchen, he took the carving knife from the block again. He went into the sunroom, out of habit switched on the light, then turned it off again. His eyes glued to the body, he walked around the long table without banging into anything, turned a chair with exaggerated care toward the glass wall and sat down, knife in his hand, his hand on his lap. His son had an ugly, balding head.

At first he did not know exactly why he was sitting there. Was he guarding his fort? Or did he have other intentions? As the minutes ticked by he was interested in only one thing: condensation — in the furthest reaches of the outdoor light he saw the damp discharge of Wilbert’s breath. Shivering, he zipped his ski jacket up over his Adam’s apple. He watched the breathing obsessively. He noticed his own reflection in the glass, faintly, like a watermark, a contour ten times weaker than the illuminated face out there in the snow, a strange, skewed face that belonged to a blind-drunk, hypothermic body, a body in need of assistance.

Become a monk. How can you stare at the same thing, attentively but devoid of all thought, for an unlimited amount of time? He pressed his left knee up against the icy windowpane. There was nothing but condensation, soft little puffs filled his consciousness. Switch off your thoughts, you’ve thought enough by now. And yes, it worked, his head cleared immeasurably, no more unfinished thoughts, no reflection, only snippets, what fifteen blows of a sledgehammer could do —they slipped out of his brain but he quashed them in the cloudlets outside. Not once did he take his eyes off the volcano that kept smoldering, emitted those puffs of sulfur — they kept on coming, low, tirelessly. Still, it was freezing out there: cold in, warmth out, cold in, warmth out …