Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

'I am discreet,' said ship's steward eventually but, 'what that will do I not certain questions. Out of politeness.'

The wife went to him. 'Jörgen,' she said, 'it is not. Or you discreet or not. As we do to solve this. This is what it is all about. And it is not only you. It is me. It is. Ibi It is also a Tirza.'

He pushed her aside in an attempt to leave the house room. But so easy they gave not. They went into the opening of the door. 'Jörgen,' she said, 'denk after, word quiet. Just do you do things you regret in.'

He hustle and bustle its against the wall, it rattled as Ibi just had vibrated loose. At the top of the residence of the tenant. A child. A flickering child she was. Only her head was an adult and no more.

There was a matter of urgency. He understood the. There was almost to everything. His daughters had almost as if they felt that it would circumvent their life for the good and was begun. But hurry was no excuse.

'Are you me now also with a stalamp on my head?' asked the wife. 'Is that what you are going to do?'

He showed her, he walked to the kitchen.

Weather waste his hands, he had forgotten that he had already done just that. Under the sink in the box where the toothbrushes and the soap were preserved, were also empty plastic bags. He took a plastic bag, remained in the corridor for the mirror and decency by his hair. Then he walked out of the house. He had his wife and the children in the living room to hear about him, whisper, but he gave no attention to. They would heave, would ultimately they all understand. Ever. Later. It is for their sake.

First he walked in the direction of the Vondelpark, but when he crossed the street was, he continued and walked back again. The empty plastic bag Union flew in his hand.

Many met him incomprehensible for, the people and his own family, the views of the people, incomprehensible and unknown. There he could not penetrate. Not in their ideas, not in the people themselves.

For the lower door of the lessee, he remained. He stood there, as he had been earlier. With a handkerchief wiping his face.

Then he phoned to.

He waited.

This time it was open.

For the second time that night he climbed up the stairs and again he experienced the sensation that there is too little air his lungs was sucked in. You learn to live with respiratory distress and other defects. You know after a time not better, you avoid certain activities. So it would be. More than just he remarked how he was stuffy a little stairs.

Finally he was above. He sweat as if he was in the tropics.

The tenant was on his dining table. Ship's steward studied it from the hallway. As if he were a peep show was binn agreed the cracks. Not to go to a naked woman to look at but to an injured tenant.

The man had still not related or plaster on his forehead pasted. The blood was solidified. Were the fragments of the stalamp tidy. He was there simply. Without doing anything. With the door open.

When a ship's steward was entering the room, did the man is not. He looked his house boss is on and when he stared back to the table where what paper on layers, a magazine about architecture, a few pencils.

Ship's steward searched in his bags, he was also in panic because he thought to have lost him but he found the envelope in his back pocket. He presented it on the table. He rejected on his face, his neck. He had the feeling that he sneezing.

So he continued to wait as if he wanted to find out whether only the lessee would tackle the money, but the envelope remained on the table.

He waited and he waited and eventually he remembered for which he was. Everything he remembered. Ship's steward said: 'I come to bring you the rental.'

There was no reply. Also looked at the architect ship's steward, when he founded his look back on the tabletop.

'I come to bring you the rental,' said ship's steward, 'because you are here not more desirable. You have five days. I will give you five days to get here to get away with it.'

The architect looked at him. Blankly, strictly neutral, as if a ship's steward had said: 'Good weather, but about five days we get a thunderstorm.'

When a ship's steward not expected more that he was going to say something, said the architect: 'I do not know what your daughter has told you, I assume the truth, Mr ship's steward, but it is not what you think, not what you appear to believe. What is between me and your daughter has occurred, was mutual.'

Ship's steward submitted his warm hand on the table in the other hand he still loved the empty plastic bag, bowed himself to the man, he remembered the dream of the cat in the sink. Nauseous made him this man. Misselijker than all previous tenants together.

'Mutual,' he said when he went to the old dream of had opted out, 'How can something mutually between a man of your age and a girl of fifteen, of less than fifteen? That comes here to collect the rent. Do you really know what you say? How can that mutual? How old are you? You have no idea what is reciprocal. Between you and me, that would be mutual. Between you and me. Mutual. A girl of fifteen. Have you no sense of responsibility? Are you a beast? Is that what you are trying to tell me that you are a beast, disguised as an architect, that above my family a beast lives? The best that I spot in Amsterdam rented a beast?'

Ship's steward cried almost. It was not a sorrow, it was impotence. He wanted to say more, but he understood that it was useless. He put his left hand in his neck. A wet neck. It seemed as if he had fever.

'Your daughter,' said the lessee and he often looked almost happy as if he were to angels to someone who thought, cleaner picking him and out of the mud travelled, 'is an intelligent and luff girl. No child.'

The word 'luff' came to ship's steward as a beating.

'Luff?' he asked. 'How do you mean, for-?'

'It is early variety.'

Ship's steward shook his head. First slowly and then faster. 'You are a pervert,' he said. 'Dat is the. That is the only thing i can think of. A pervert with excuses. The cost of the stalamp i pull on the lock, you understand. That is not more than fair. It was not a cheap stalamp.' He hijgde of the voltage of the pain in his chest, the excitement about the language which uitsloeg man.

Then there came at last another expression on the face of the architect. The money would have been shaken him, money churns the tenant always wake up. The landlord saw anger on the face of the architect.

'That is not at all fair, Mr ship's steward.'

He wanted to get up but a ship's steward said: 'you remain seated. If you do not want any accidents happen, you will remain seated. I am not for myself. Do you know that? It is a feeling that you are not responsible for yourself, that you yourself have no longer control? That someone else is controlling your body?'

He showed his large, warm hands. He showed them to the lessee as if only the appearance was enough. The hands with which he worked in the garden, its own garden and the garden which of his parents had been.

Perhaps this was the by the wound on his forehead, or by the way in which a ship's steward had spoken, but the tenant was not. He stayed where he was.

Ship's steward ran through the room and his look focused on the floor. It postponed a chair, looked under the table. Finally, in a corner next to the bank, he found what he is looking for. A thong, a black thong. He picked it up and did it in a plastic bag.

Also he continued to stand still.

He looked at the man who now total seemed on the figure who had his daughter fucked as a beast. The architect was there as a school boy who is caught by the cheating. Younger than just he seemed. Actually more boy than man. Then said ship's steward: 'Over six days I come here again, then your stuff Road, then you are away. And then leave me and my family for always with peace. My daughter is not included in the price. Remember that. Children are not included in the price.'