Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

It would also get used are, a guest. Although it was a guest the wife. He emptying are glass, picked up the cork on and went to the top. He walked along the red suitcase on wheels, which still jaunty in the corridor. What would it be? He wondered. Along the blue raincoat, and then along the room of Tirza, he saw that they had taken off. Only when he was in his bedroom has arrived, he realized that the wife him at an appropriate distance was followed.

She went to sit on the bed. On their side. The side where they had previously located. And where now books and newspapers layers. They picked up the books and newspapers and explained to them on the ground. Also the substance that under the books and newspapers on the sheet was, wiping them on the ground. Thus was the double bed is a real double bed.

She took her head in her hands and left it when again. Not only were her hair longer, they had also been given a different color. The color that they had ever had. Long ago. They explained to her sunglasses on the bedside table.

Ship's steward did his necktie af and hung over a chair.

'The mattress,' she said. 'That is still the same?' She dented the with her hands in, they tested the and he looked at the necktie, one of the gifts that he had obtained his employer had been faithful for two decades. A really nice necktie. Tasteful. The secretary had picked him personally in the Bijenkorf. It was also so much easier employers faithful to individuals.

'The mattress is as far as I know is still the same.'

'It is no longer good,' she said. 'And it was no longer good. You can not centuries on the same mattress.'

He took the scene in located on, they are sitting on the bed, commenting on the mattress. As if they were at home here, like it had never had disappeared. It was almost to laugh.

'You will sleep híér?' he asked and looked at his books and newspapers which months, no years, as a woman with him in the bed had located. In his life was the meat has become word.

'You have invited me.'

'But here?' He pointed to the bed, the mirror, the night tables.

'Where else? In Ibi's old room?'

'This is not a little strange?'

'Strange? Why would the odd? Sleep here than someone?' she asked. 'I lie on a place where someone else? I take a piece of the bed in that not for me is that?'

'Not really,' said ship's steward after a hesitation of a few seconds. 'nobody will be sleeping. I mean, I sleep here. And my newspapers.'

'Well than.'

He did his shirt and they were sitting on the bed her bare feet.

'But it remains strange," he said, more against themselves than against her. 'Everything to you is strange.'

They turned to him, so that they could see him, standing at the window, with the shirt in his hands. She said: 'You're as white, even whiter than in the past. It seems as though you still whiter. You may never in the sun? Women do not hold of white meat.'

He hung the shirt carefully on the seat, he went to sit down and did his shoes and socks. The socks were in the shoes stopped. Also the socks he had received from his employer, a publisher, employed after two decades. Two decades, now there were already more than three. They loved him to give useful gifts. Something you could attract. And what you could pull out again. He said: ('est you moved, i had no complaints. Not on my white meat. Not about lack of sun. For anything. The symptoms have disappeared. Only the tenant logs still from time to time.'

When he is not expected more, when he was a second forgotten that it was there, they whispered: 'As white that it is almost scary. You meat.'

Her voice, which was also not changed. Something in that voice had long been him against. From the moment the special, the exceptional in its ceased to be exceptional and only was a source of irritation.

Her dress had bright colors. A summer dress. They are mainly used to have black worn. Jeans, many jeans, that too. Until he had one night to say: 'You are not a teenager more. It is time that we discussed for another uniform.'

'As If you are sick,' she said. 'As If you die. Are you dead? Is that it? Jörgen, you will go to death?'

He walked to the bathroom, he did the light on and they followed him. On her bare feet. Her shoes were still at the bottom, in addition to the bank. Via the mirror over the sink looked at him. She was to be changed. Wrinkles where no first wrinkles, had been its face was thicker, or thinner. Now, in the bright light of the bathroom he saw it. In that minimal changes were blocked three years. Little is so terrifying, and calls therefore also so much hatred on, if the older women. It summarizes the expiration together, it has made to wreak havoc on all feast.

Ship's steward kuchte, moved a pot hand cream.

'My toilettas is downstairs in my suitcase,' she said. 'I have no meaning to tackle it. I have no force more. I am so tired. Have you got a toothbrush for me?'

On the sink layers two toothbrushes. She looked forward.

'De green is of Tirza,' said ship's steward.

They picked up the blue toothbrush, Put toothpaste on and began her teeth, which they themselves looked at in the mirror.

With dismay saw a ship's steward how his toothbrush in her mouth was gone. How to brush in her mouth was moved back and forth. Slightly irritated him that, did something him disgusted, the idea that are now toothbrush in her mouth sat was unbearable. He wanted to declare: 'keep it on, dirty pig, keep this immediately on', and the toothbrush from her mouth snatches, but he said: 'I can drop down a new address for you. That is perhaps fresher.'

'Doe no trouble,' she replied with a mouth full of foam. 'It is fine.'

'What are you saying?'

'Doe no trouble,' repeated them. 'I said. It is soft enough so.'

He waited until she was ready to clean its teeth. They took a long time. When did he carefully the toothbrush. It remained in addition to the washbasin, spend staring at ease, but. As if they had been yesterday and past week, a month ago. And he remained but coils. He Tempest the toothbrush as if that thing could contaminate it with something. A thought. A faith. A disease.

Its legs were thicker, saw a ship's steward now. Gently will not be as swollen aesthetic as before, less the unreachable. But he too was changed. He had two jaw operations. You could see it, he saw, she had to have seen, but they had kept silent about it, as they had been almost anything. And just as they had no questions asked. Why?

When he thought to Tirza. Still a few weeks she was here. A few weeks, more it was not. Then she went on a trip, on a sort of world tour, with her friend that he had not yet had met, but that he would meet, on her party, its big celebration. He had already asked: 'is perhaps one of those guys that i ever early in the morning in the bathroom have come?' she had him smiling at me and said: 'Oh well, PAP, that were onenightstands.'

He had smiled and they all tell us: 'Aha.' The world of the onenightstands and that of his daughter he had never directly linked with each other, and now that they are so casually did was he brought his piece. Not really shocked, or maybe a tad concerned. There was something for him ongemakkelijks to the combination of those words: daughter and onenightstand. Ongemakkelijks something. No more. 'I have the boys with a clean towel offered,' he said, but that he could not conceal the inconvenience and apparently Tirza saw that, because she said: 'Papa, don't worry. I really knows what I do, I am not fond.'

'No, no,' he had said, 'natural', and he had turned to continue with what he was doing, though it was he himself long forgotten what that was exactly.

While he began to brush their teeth, standing next to the wife, he had to that call with Tirza thinking, to the guys who were here, often in the semi-dark, fearing as they were to the lights. As if they knew that they were illegal in his bathroom, the bathroom of Jörgen ship's steward.