Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

This morning he drove to Diemen to do your shopping in the catering wholesale. The raw tuna on his tongue will ship's steward a pleasant sensation. Fresh. Comes to sashimi.

His wife is running the kitchen within in its dressing gown, flip-flops on the feet. She asks: "Has Ibi called?'

Ship's steward is not yet its presence used. She has moved, three years ago now. More than three years ago. The course 'Self sushi and sashimi' had not helped.

But against all expectations in return they came. Six days ago. For an hour or seven in the evening.

Ship's steward stood in the kitchen. He often stood there since his wife had left him, but also all of that time. The cooker was his true work place. The wife had never felt called to work in the kitchen. Her talents, further than lasagna, were more urgent than the education. Something in her life always had heavier than the feeding of weighted her family.

The voordeurbel went, six days ago, and ship's steward called: 'Tirza, do you also open?'

'Papa, I am on the phone,' she shouted back.

Whil Tirza much. This is normal, he has heard of other parents. The phone can become a hobby. Self call he rarely. When the telephone is ringing, Tirza. And if a consummately worker and a excellent papa says the father than: 'You can reach her on her mobile phone. This is the number.'

Ship's steward was that evening an oven dish to prepare. The recipe came from a cookbook. Since the wife left him, has a ship's steward gradually to an impressive collection of cookery books built up. Improvising he found no sign of creativity, but pure laziness. For him it was the recipe sacred. A teaspoon is a teaspoon. He had to remain in the kitchen. The preheated oven was enough. He had the scale there just slid in.

'Tirza, do open,' he cried again. 'I can also not. It will be the neighbor are. But I say later in the evening at him come. Do open, Tirza!'

The neighbor is a young man who actually not so young, but still officially free companion, and that the top floor of the house is for sole occupancy that ship's steward at the end of the 1970s as advantageous to the head has reprimanded. The young man complains regularly, studying for notary, located at ship's steward on various issues often have the same: stench in the bathroom. At least once per week for the door with complaints and lamentations.

Ship's steward promises time and time again have better, two reliable plumbers explained to him that there is little to do is, unless he all pipes will refresh, what a power costs. He has a power not, and if he had already, he would be not to have a peak to spend the new tubes.

In addition to all of the other is also a ship's steward house boss.

He heard Tirza swear, he heard her walk toward the front door. Then it was quiet and he concentrated on the oven dish in the belief that the tenant on the pavement with unsolicited advice, barely veiled threats.

The Rent protection, renowned lawyers, the housing committees. With which he has not threatened? Everything has a ship's steward in his life as a landlord had already on the floor, but they have not been given him under. The Predator ship's steward has fights back against the authorities, against the tenants, against the law, who are often only seems to be to take him to graze. The Predator ship's steward is tough.

One minute later, more will not have been Tirza came the kitchen within walk. He found that they looked there appeared, bewildered. But probably he had there later at invented and saw them there always so. Without that he was noticed, was the distress ever appeared on her face and never left.

'It is mama,' she said.

Intuitive he purportedly collected the dish from the oven and turned the gas. He stared endeavor. Cod and potatoes. Simple but nice. He knew that this would take a long time. This was not a breath of fresh air in the bathroom of the lessee. This was for the change is not the sewer, but the mother of his children.

Although no pay rent wives, but just as the lessee, with whom the landlord per definition of war is on foot, complain. The complaint which has the wife with the tenant in common, the accusation. The threat. The sucking. And behind all this is the underlying dependence as a disease.

House Construction Committees, inspectors of the rent protection, lawyers: he had brushed aside and with a sham, but the woman who was hiding behind the forgotten word 'mama', the mother of his children, had never stop talking. She was more dangerous than the rent protection, cunning than the inspector of agricultural and home monitoring.

With the tea towel with which he the dish from the oven had lifted in his hand still he walked to the front door. What amazed him that they had come precisely this evening. At meal times.

The first months of its disappearance, in the first year he had actually taken into account almost every day with her return. Sometimes he had from his work to house called to see if they would record. She had the keys and he had still not change the locks. He could not believe that they never would come back. He could not imagine that they were prepared to exchange this address for an address that is as much as was less, as much as much banaler insignificant. A houseboat, they had told him.

But after some time he had to admit that his assessment was found to be false: they didn't return. They did not even bother to contact him or her to retrieve remaining stuff. She was road and they stayed away. He learned life with its silence, as he had lived with her presence.

With his eldest daughter, Ibi, had the wife initially sporadically contact. They met each other in the city, in a cafe where people who do not want to be seen meet. But later also that not more. About those meetings was not much to hear a ship's steward and called is not to at Ibi, which actually called Isabelle, but which from its birth was called by everyone Ibi. No, what Ibi still discussed with her mother, remained secret.

Tirza wanted nothing more with her mother, and with him, the father of her children, had the wife since her departure no word changed. Not even by letter or e-mail. Ship's steward knew that they were still alive, that after the houseboat abroad was gone, but much further his knowledge not 1722–1776 With the rest of the world began the black hole. And that much regretted it.

As the silence lasted longer, took the regret. The time heals not all wounds, he discovered, the time tears open wounds, ensures poisonings and inflammation. The death is perhaps an end to all the pain, the time that after.

Ship's steward had its course to be able to call or send a ansichtkaartje can, but he did neither. He had his pride, he waited in silence until they could see its mistake. A childhood love on a houseboat, that was a mistake. It could not be any other way. The houseboat itself was finally a mistake. He lived peacefully, pending the insight about his wife.

First he did that go on living with two children. But after a half year did the oldest what they had seen doing her Mother: she went out of the house.

When in the evening the call went, he caught the first months still on the idea: that is they, my wife, they is back. But gradually was an expectation become a ritual, a habit without content, and together with the expectation disappeared hope. The mother of his children had moved. That was a fact and facts are so called because they are mostly immutable.

But now she was standing there in full regalia, Fact or no fact. In the hallway. With the same case as to which they had gone. A red suitcase on wheels. She was the calm door ran her departure was not a tragedy, not her departure.

The sight of the wife made him more than he would have believed when he was in the kitchen the oven dish on the worktop. Why? I thought a ship's steward. Why tonight? What would have happened? He understood this visit, and he was not someone who wanted to understand the things. The irrational abhor he as others vermin.