Dimitri Verhulst - The Latecomer

That image was very useful. Convincing the outside world that my whole filing cabinet was rotting away was now my task.

But rot has a rhythm of its own and too much haste would betray me.

It’s known that dementia is generally diagnosed much later in people who have a tendency to be absentminded. I, too, would have to live with the fact that my inner circle refused to be perturbed or even surprised by my follies. Of course it was fear I had read in my children’s eyes when I came home with a toaster instead of a fruit tart. But a few minutes later they were entertaining each other by recalling the countless other stupidities I had committed, with the story of the caravan trotted out yet again and still good for spasms of laughter.

The dazed look on Dad’s face, remember?

In this initial phase a slight increase in the frequency of my slip-ups seemed the best strategy. And I have to admit to feeling an old, half-forgotten pleasure, usually reserved for toddlers and surrealists: the simple amusement of turning reality on its head and lifting all kinds of things out of the rut of their everyday context. Instead of putting out the rubbish bag, I put the laundry basket out on the street. (Where it disappeared, much to the fury of Mrs De Petter.) I fed the fresh bread to the birds without waiting for it to go stale first, showered with my socks on, put the dirty dishes in the washing machine. (Not recommended: it makes a hellish racket, which is then drowned out by shrill shrieks when your wife sees her parents’ bone china dinner service being smashed to smithereens by a washing programme designed for cotton shirts.) I put tomato soup in the coffee thermos, hung teabags in the toilet bowl, turned the heating up to maximum on the rankest summer afternoon … Until something in Moniek’s tiny mind finally twigged that there might be more going on than simple absent-mindedness. And to better present that joyous moment, I need to return quickly to one of the first nights of our marriage. The third or fourth, I think.

Specifically the night I dared to pass wind under the sheets in the presence of the woman who had just promised before God and our monarch to be mine for better or worse. It wasn’t a vulgar fart. I mean, I didn’t start squeezing extra hard to show off my flatulent talent. It wasn’t a stink-bomb that would cause permanent damage to the bronchial tubes of all who sniffed its odours. No, just a common-or-garden fart, the kind that is born ingloriously in its billions every day through the ventilatory orifice of humans and animals alike, something that couldn’t possibly have the power to drive a wedge between husband and wife. None the less my parp had barely sounded before my wife was beside herself with rage. Who did I think I’d married? A barbaric, ill-mannered freak? Someone who was used to sleeping in a pigsty?

It was impossible to calm her down. Moniek leapt out of bed and rode her bike back to her parents’, where she spent the next two nights. I never found out what she told her family about me. She must have told them something, because they can’t have been expecting to see their married daughter back home in the middle of her honeymoon.

(‘Mother, help, I’ve married a farter!’)

When she returned — as if from a period of quarantine and furious to boot because I hadn’t made the slightest effort to get her back — I had to promise never again to lower myself to such bestial practices in her presence. And I now know that acceding to this demand meant squandering my last opportunity to make something of my life. After all, she was the one who had left me; I was in the right. I could have divorced her with my head held high. But I took her back and, like a shameful creature, began a life of surreptitious windiness.

Until this moment: the dawn of a new era!

A fart and, I can assure you, one that more than made up for all the strangled exhalations of the previous decades. A cannon shot that would have delighted me even more if it had reeked to high heaven as well. Unfortunately one can’t have everything in life, and definitely not at the same time.

I waited for an unprecedented scolding, an eruption of fury that would be heard up and down the street, to the great amusement of all our neighbours. But no, not a thing. Moniek didn’t even react to my sonata for bombardon. She wept. In silence, the way I was supposed to break wind. She wept her tears and I knew my triumphal procession had begun. She had lost her last shred of doubt. She knew that soon she wouldn’t have a husband to nag and harangue. She’d have the house to herself and could die in it alone.

If she didn’t feel sorry for herself now, then, well, who would?

I’m crossing the Styx and taking: a tube of toothpaste (just for a joke), a stray Joseph Roth quote, the wondrous memory of an ardent kiss I never got, bread crumbs, greater solace than a good Berliner ever offered me …

In Azalea Street the appearance of a police van is still an event that gets tongues wagging. I’d almost say, a festive event! The siren doesn’t even need to crank out its angry lament, just having the vehicle drive down the street quietly sets the dogs barking and has the local gossips taking up their positions behind their curtains. A story is on its way, preferably one concerning the suffering of others. The scandalmongers rub their hands, for once life seems to have been plucked straight from TV. Hip-hip hooray!

The last time the gendarmerie came calling in this neighbourhood was to inform the Vanderelsts at number 54 that their daughter hadn’t survived the trip back from the disco.

I can’t say with any certainty that the neighbours expected equally exciting news when two police officers parked their van in our drive, but it was remarkable how everyone, despite the late hour, suddenly needed to empty the letterbox or sweep the pavement in order to move a few steps closer to the mystery and uncover the reason behind the arrival of the boys in blue. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Felix from number 47 inspecting an imaginary problem with the side of his house and getting the shock of his life when he spotted my dishevelled self in the back of the van, a place usually reserved for people who have just been arrested. He immediately hurried back inside, no doubt to inform his family. I felt the eyes of the whole neighbourhood on me. The buzz of assumptions and suppositions.

‘Is that the cops at the Cordiers’?’

‘Nothing bad, I hope.’

‘That’s weird, they’ve got Désiré with them.’

‘Désiré? Is he hurt?’

‘Not that I can see. Maybe he’s been up to something. Being taken in for questioning.’

‘Désiré? Up to something? A respectable old plodder like him? I really can’t imagine what.’

My wife too must have thought back to the pitiful fate of the Vanderelsts after seeing the blue glint of the silent yet menacing lights flashing over her pan of cold stew. Maybe that was why she turned deathly pale and came rushing out, terrified of that one piece of information that would make the past turn into something she’d imagined.

What could have happened to me? A brief recap. She knew that just after lunch I’d gone into town to buy some new books. For Moniek, a shopping mall was heaven on earth, but there was no question of her retail Valhalla including a bookshop. It was one of the four trillion points on which we were polar opposites, so it would never occur to her to come along and I had a free hand to go and satisfy my craving for reading material. ‘Off to buy books, you say? I’ll leave you to it, then.’