Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

'You need have no fear,' she said. He turned around a quarter of a turn to so that he could view her better, he persuaded the toothbrush from his mouth. Where she had to take over? When he just turned back to the washbasin, arc is prone, spoog the foam pad and washed ashore his mouth. August came and than would have disappeared Tirza. He would only, but occasionally shocked by the lessee who had discovered a new breakdown. The next stage in his life, the Tirzaloze would start phase.

'You need have no fear,' she said again.

He took a towel and wiping his mouth. There was a painful spot on his lip, he had probably out bitten.

'What for?'

'For when I next to you Lig.'

He folded the towel. A white. That is not fully cleaned well had become the was in. There were still a blood smears.

'Why should I fear? For what?'

'To me.'

'For You?' He had to chuckle.

'Where is the soap?' she asked. 'I want my washing hands.'

'There is only liquid soap. Tirza uses only liquid soap, if they already have soap used. She says that soap is not good for the skin, that you will be much better with only some water can wash, only what lukewarm water.' He opened a cupboard and gave her the bottle.

She did her ring. He looked forward and early also wonder where her wedding ring. When washed her hands.

'If i just next to your sunbathing,' she said, while her hands under running water loved, 'You do not have to feel uncomfortable.'

He looked in the mirror to its breasts, his shoulders, upper arms. Indeed white meat. Raw. More so than in the past. A little dried out, also that. He had received a crèmepje for, against the flakes. Old meat. Old Men, he had on his work noticed, often thought that they still were attractive for young women, but the only thing was attractive for those women was their position and their dominant, their money. A tragedy took place between them, a misunderstanding that he has often had observed. A hormonal misunderstanding.

'I mean,' she said at you should think of anything, I mean, sorry that there are so uncomfortable comes out, but that it had nothing to do with us.'

Also a ship's steward waste now his hands.

'Dat what has nothing to do with us?'

'I here. My presence.'

'I have never expected it to mean something,' he said. 'You are here, you have a bed required. A man must sleep. Every child knows that. I have no meaning to Granted, I have taken everything as it came. I take everything as it comes.'

'Yes, I know all of this, a man must sleep, but I just referred to that you have no sexual attraction to me. That you do not need to be afraid of. That you do not need to do what you do not want to do. God, why let you explain to me so? Why can you help me not a little?'

Thoroughly washed ship's steward his hands. As if he were the whole day with his hands in the earth. As if he had worked in the garden. He had not forgotten tomorrow morning from the box under the sink in the kitchen, where he toothbrushes saved, a and get to the bathroom. To each his own toothbrush. The beginning of happiness was the correct allocation of the property.

'I do in principle no sense in which I am. But it is not always on meaning. Let me put it this way: you do things not because you fancy, you do them because they must do.' He krabde to his right arm. An insect had put it there. Perhaps when he last night a time with expose upper body had stood in the garden to his apple tree to look ahead to his tomatoes and pumpkins. Pumpkins were just weeds. If you did well, than dispersed the pumpkins is expanding rapidly. It was a beautiful night, the first beautiful night of the season. Not yet warm, but all nice. The promise of heat.

'I am not talking about work,' she said. 'I am not talking about the household or about dementia parents for whom you must make sure. I am talking about sex. It is not a question of need, that is a question of meaning. I said: "You have nothing to do what you do not fancy' in order to avoid that you would think that I am here in the hope that we will start doing something, that we again have something because I hope not, and I would like to make that not. I have no meaning in. I do not want more. I just wanted to see how you did. With you and with Tirza.'

'I understand you are not. I cannot understand this. You Raas Kalt. And it is late. Let us go to sleep.'

'I mean that we do not need to have sex, we will not do more to.' She talked as if they had to explain to a child that slowly from concept is, a children with learning difficulties.

'That is pleasant,' he said and he dried his hands. 'It would complicate things.'

'De boel?'

'Dit household. Everything is going well here. Everything is arranged. There is a worker. A new. She is coming from Ghana. There is a dad. Does not come from Ghana. There is a child. There is money there is food, there is love, it surprises you perhaps but there is love. And the last weeks that Tirza here is i no complications, no fuss, no voltages of up and up until they are intolerable. Tirza's figures are since your departure jumped. I am not saying that there is a relationship, but it is a coincidence. Do you not? Coincidence?'

He explained the blue toothbrush carefully in addition to the green, as he did every evening.

'I will not get in the way,' she said. 'To me will not be up.'

He leaned with both hands on the sink. Although it was not very hot in the bathroom, he felt the sweat under his arms.

'Why have you got?' he asked and his look of its averted. 'What do you want? What is there to discuss yet?'

'Dat i just said. I would like nothing. Look at how it goes with you. That is what I wanted. And I would like to discuss anything at all.'

They took his oorlelletje, the lelletje of his left ear, and nip in it. He stared at the washing machine. Which had initially been in the kitchen, but because they have stood in the way she had moved to the bathroom. It was one of the last things the wife had taken on its behalf, for her departure.

'Stoort the you I am there?' she asked. 'STOOR I? Will I continue?'

He rubbed his hands against each other in order to feel or the skin rough and dry and he asked whether you on his hands could see how old he was. He had read it. The fight against age had moved from the face to the hands.

'I don't,' he said. 'Or bother you. If you want to know to be honest, I do not know. Perhaps it would have been better if you had not been concluded, but there you are. That is good. And you want to continue to sleep. That too is a good thing.'

She had still been lelletje between her fingers. 'Ah Jörgen,' she said. 'My Jörgen.' She showed his oorlelletje. 'You Know? I never felt attracted to you. Never. Not even in the beginning. You know what it is, attraction? I mean, says that word for something? Except than theoretical.'

He rejected his face. He felt the stubble and he brought his face slightly closer to the mirror, not much, a few centimeters.

'Attraction, what for appeal? Where have you on?'

'The beast,' she said at is attraction. The beast. What you can not think, because the there is. As it is. Anything you can excuse. Anything you can smooth brushing. Something that is stronger than yourself. That is attraction. That is what people sometimes falls when they see another. It can also die, usually dies, you see the other still, but you do not take more true if a child with a sex. If a child with a usable slaughtered.'

He studied himself in the mirror and when also it, through the rear-view mirror.

"I feel no attraction for you,' he said soft, because he was suddenly afraid to wake Tirza. He continued to examine themselves while he whispered: 'If that is what you want to know if that is what you mean. I find your not exciting. Also never found. You may have the for other men. But not for me. I found your particularly representative. I was with you for the day without me to be ashamed, generally, exceptions, why I gave you selected. Because in my career at my house and a woman heard. And I thought you that would be. That You are the woman who was my career would complement each other.'