Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

And just as it seemed as if they scheel looked. It was probably the light that was incorrectly, or its own fatigue.

'You see,' she said, together as if he has shrunk, her in her stomach had gestompt, 'you see? It is not true. The animal in you is not dead, it is wake up again. I have woken up.'

He repair welding depth with a toilet-paper his lip, which had started bleeding. He had bitten. The voltage, the stress. It happened more often. With the piece of paper he about its mouth wiped.

'I apologize,' he said.

She was she crouched. In addition to the washing machine. And she looked at him.

'I offer my apologies,' he said again. 'I tried to answer your question, because you insisted on. Because you wanted to know if necessary. I tried your question to answer as honestly as possible. That I had not to do.'

They stood up. They are standing. van Heeswijk The color of its cheek made him livid. But it was not active fury, a passive, a quiet and silent rage that would result in the ridges of the hair, the lowering of the sheets, the preparation of an oven dish.

'You see,' she said, 'The beast is there, the beast will be there as long as you are, Jörgen, only i can wake up the cushion, admit it.'

He looked at its near-naked wife with the red Wang, and he looked like something to remember, also seemed the past to come to life, but when the weather was way, such as when you know that you wanted to say something, something important, but you can not remember what.

'What does the also?' he whispered, especially against himself. 'What does it matter?' And when harder: 'I have you already said that lust is not the highest. I have already said that this is a House of love.'

'Yes,' she said, 'You've done. Each shop a new imagination, the shop must be for you a paradise. But does work? Or will it remain with fantasizing? The whole life nothing but a trinket there where reality is not to be measured, or where it is because those fantasies in reality something would be too threatening. God, I think about how i your semi-rigid sex from me to within had to come, it is a miracle that we even have made children. A miracle. And God knows what for art handles all the more I have had to play tricks. Jesus, what was the sad and inconvenient. And all that time I have thought that it was because you secretly gay was. But You found me not tacky enough. That was it. I was not tacky enough. And now? You will find me now not raunchy?'

He took the toilet-paper of his mouth. He looked at his feet. When he looked to the paper. There was a small dark red droplet.

'You're tacky,' he said soft.

The Left cheek of the wife was still dark red, like they have on one side violently blushed.

He sweat becoming worse and worse, increasingly fierce and more intense.

'Why do you,' he asked, 'if it all so sad and was inconvenient?'

'For the children.'

'Why have you started to children?'

'I have already said. You listen to me? You listen to me?'

They stood for him, just in front of him. In one quick movement they handle him in his cross. They took it there and she loved it.

She loves, he thought. But he did nothing. He was there with the toilet-paper in his hand.

'Is there one woman,' she asked, 'die not burst out laughing? Or are they so numbed that they do not even laugh more if they see you doing? There is one woman who so much patience if i? Because how long does it take before you finally have a rigid? A half-evening, sometimes even more. Or mud you tablets nowadays? Vulgar women. It would be to laugh if it is not to cry. Get them now and then by chance or must you find them? You have to make to the town? Or to areas where the color shows live?'

He took her back to the throat. He could not otherwise. They had it and they did not. He could not have let go.

'Doing it,' she said. 'shows that the beast is not dead. I admit that I made the wake up, as I always have to make you wake up. Come on, Jörgen. Give me a reprimand. But not so gently. As in the past. That is the only way you can. You have not otherwise. Only if you hit you say: "I love you." Say it!'

As sure as he knew that his daughter was Tirza, as sure as he knew him on his work had told us that he was too old to be released, so sure he knew at that time that her he hated. He was struck with the back of his hand. On its other cheek. Hard and exactly. So hard that they released him and fell on the ground.

Also it was quiet. Dead quiet. As if they were in the mountains. High in the mountains, where no other people were, only snow and stone.

And then he saw it. In the opening of the door was a big hug with Tirza in the manual. They still slept with a hug. A blue donkey, at least a little donkey that ever had been blue.

They stared at her parents. The wife in her pants have crawled the basis until they arrived at the washstand ophees which they can. Its one Wang was red and the other dark red, against the blue.

"There is nothing on the basis, Tirza,' said ship's steward. He did a step in its direction. They looked at him impassive to, one might almost say neutral, with the donkey in her arms.

'Not afraid, Tirza. Never fear. My Mom and I play.'

He shaves rapidly but thoroughly. Occasionally he feels a little spot has forgotten. You feel better than that you see it, in this light.

The sushi and sashimi are ready. He has generously repurchased; ship's steward is prepared for hungry guests. As always on these occasions he is led by the fear that there will be too little, that hungry people to go home or that they will say: 'They are very efficient at the Hofmeesters.' Sardines, he has also purchased. Later in the evening, if the vote, is he plans with garlic to fry. Simple but tasty. He has done so often on summer evenings, and always have had success.

Through the mirror he sees the wife by the transitional pecking, still in her dressing gown.

About an hour will be the first guests to come. The people who arrive early because they do not want to go home late, and that despite their good intentions than bind and only for four hours in the morning with stains on their blouse the bicycle of the lock. It is restful to young people watch that gradually getting hit a surplus. Their desperate attempts to adults to imitate, all our efforts to claiming what there has not yet been and — as far as he knows now — what there never will be. Their attempts to reassure ship's steward.

He washes his face, make sure the foam on the ears and the nose to remove and then searches a shirt with matching necktie from. A few seconds are quiet for he wardrobe in the bedroom, with necktie and shirt in his hands and looking at the wife who in its cabinets rummages where her dresses are sticking. Than he decides: no necktie. It is Tirza's party, something ever a party was called. Something you live at without necktie even though you the father of the party spirit, and even if there are teachers. Not all its teachers of course. The invitations to Tirza has he left. It is her evening. Her farewell of the gymnasium, of puberty, who also know of Amsterdam and of him, Jörgen ship's steward, the father who now almost ready with his father household tasks. The education is over, it will be time for themselves, even though he has no idea what he with that time should begin. The rest of his life is for him as a desert.

He likes the shirt for his pants, check the colors. This fits together? Colors are never its strongest side. Maybe you should put it this way: clothes have never been his strongest side.

Ship's steward has his favorite teachers. There is no parent evening without him passed. Usually he came far too early, the duty called, and gradually become friends he was with that obligation. Preferably he became friends with Tirza's teachers, but making friends is not his strongest point. When Tirza is still on the lower school, he had her teacher is also invited to the food. It was an enjoyable evening. At the end there was a pet game played. 'We need,' he had explained to his wife, 'de lady of Tirza make it clear how special Tirza is, and that we can best do so by her and to invite to get a bite to eat. So that they can see is its natural Tirza environment.'