Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

She turns around. Away from the mirror.

'Hanging Tits?' she asks.

He saves with the hanger, stolen from a Swiss hotel, rhythmically on his leg.

'look good, Jörgen. They are? Do you call this? Are you so old that you are no longer good looks? You have a pair of glasses? Do you know the difference between a hangtiet voluptueus and?'

She picks her right breast, they caresses the breast, no, it is not a caress, they touches it thought Loos and ship's steward keeps on with the on one leg. Somewhere in the house is a door closed with force.

'They hang not, not yet perhaps,' he says, concern that he began a quarrel plane for the feast. He has all his concentration to operate, the sardines, the cocktails, wine. But now he once started is to tell the truth, he can no longer return. 'I am no expert in this area, I do not know where the hangtiet begins and the ordinary tit ceases, but I know that they hang from, that you can see. If you look closely you will see that they are all a bit of sticking, if you look carefully you can see that it with your tits done is as it is done with you. That is why I can also come back. Because you could look anywhere else. Because you know that it is over, your adventure, you flirt, you decolleteetjes, you paintings, it is all past, complete a thing of the past. That is why I am here. Because you could look anywhere else. But that is no reason to have the way about your daughter who its great celebration gives this evening. It makes me sick. It makes me sick. As I previously became ill of you, as word i still.'

He has regret these words, now already, while he enunciated. And again he thinks: the madness. There is a curse on this family. Perhaps there is a curse on me, but also puts a curse on this family. It does not matter to whom the curse rest, on my wife, on the children, on me, ultimately it rests on all of us. We share the curse.

She says nothing, it keeps the nipple of her right breast, it seems as if they squeeze.

He picks up his shirt on the hanger on the bed. At one time they were on Curaçao, with the whole family, but as hot as he has now had not earlier. It is the excitement, baking the sardines. The hot oil. His entire polo shirt smell to it. Fish. Grease.

'Jörgen,' she asks, 'we will fuck?'

She looks at him through the rear-view mirror. For her is the hair dryer. One of Hofmeesters last gifts. They naked is, on the spijkerrok This shop requires of Ibi after. It is five over eight.

'Now?' he asks.

'Yes'. Now.'

He looks at his watch.

'But why? Questions If I may.'

'Why not?'

'De guests come so.'

She shakes her head. 'Die not yet. You are always so as terrified as ever when it comes to guests, so excessive. You have no idea when celebrations start. You walk behind. You have always walked back.'

'De children…' he would also like to say something, but he decides to leave it at that. The children says enough. The children, that explains everything.

'Die amuse themselves. They are mature. Do you that your password? Your daughters are mature. The are no children more.'

'I thought,' he says, after a few seconds to the ashtray for the mirror to have been inconsistent nature, 'I mean, why so suddenly?'

"Well, suddenly, you can suddenly it is not really, Jörgen. We have previously done.'

'But it was always a fiasco.'

'Yes, God, if you want to call as per se.'

She looks at him still via the mirror, and while he is looking back, calls it up to him that he is a significant part of his life with this woman has spent. The best part of his life. The largest part.

I thought that was not the intention. You felt not attracted to me. I think it is not very, but that you have said. Surely this will not suddenly changed?' he takes a deep breath. Deep and thorough as if he is the doctor. 'I thought: you are long because you want to know how it with me and the children.'

'DAT I also wanted to know.'

It closes the door. Gently, when an intruder.

'You are here to guest. We had agreed. We start yet again? We were all agreed that we would begin again. We are so often started again. It was worse every time. We said earlier: "It is good for the children." But you have said so yourself, that children are mature. We do not for the children do.' He talks as if he were a plea to the account.

Although his upper body expose, the sweat still on his back.

'We do not start again. And that in God's name? That?'

He gulps a few times, he rubs his mouth, his back, he removes the moisture as well and it comes from his body.

'Met the fiasco.'

They laughs. Their fiasco is only something to laugh. The echo of the tragic failure: a high-pitch smile.

'Why do you say such things about your own daughter? I think that it is unacceptable.'

'What I said?'

'They flat.'

'but they is flat. Two peas in a small shelf.' She sigh. "You can not protect your children, Jörgen. Not all their lives. The more you protect them, how they are weaker. You have to prepare them for the world. That is what people will say about her. That they are from the front is as flat as from the rear. If I do not say, say the others. They can better of hear me, because I say it with love.'

'They has a beautiful sight.'

'O certainly, she has a beautiful sight, and beautiful hair and a nice figurines. But no tits, Jörgen. No tits.'

'Tirza is your daughter. Your daughter. She was in you. Tirza is…' Tirza What is even more? He does not.

'Well and? I know that it is my daughter. I must therefore see things which are not there? She has no tits, ready. And to give you the truth, I can not stand to her. I know that a parent which is not to say that with this terrible, and bad, and perhaps it is also called, maybe I am terribly and bad, but it is the truth, I can not stand to her. It has also emerged as a heksje, she was already, a toddler. She is evil. And she has never been nice to me, Jörgen. Never. Not even if baby.'

He hears the words still, but they do not penetrate more up to him by. Ship's steward remembers Tirza's disease, her puberty, its presence in his life when not many others more were present. Her school. He decides that the wife in the war. She is probably in the transition. When will the transition? Increasingly earlier. Everything starts at an increasingly early. But the longer he thinks about it, the more he has the feeling that they are always so.

'They do not. She is your daughter.'

'Dan can they still nice to me. They will ignore me.'

'They shall take the blame you that you are on the phone. She had you need.' He despised his own words, so weak he thinks they.

'I had my life must enter its?'

Yes, ship's steward say. Yes, for your children will give your life. Perhaps that is the only where the Parenting is all about. The rest is of secondary importance. But he says: 'that nobody is asking for you.'

'They, Jörgen. It.' a cigarette is learned.

'Smoking in the bedroom i find uncomfortable. You know that. And tits are also not everything. In addition, they… They has small blisters.'

'knobs are no breasts, Jörgen. What are you waiting for?'

He shall establish the shirt that he will attract open. He must concentrate on the role that he in a few minutes, perhaps half an hour. Each time the call. The first guest on a party is always the most difficult. Everything is so touched, so new and fresh. The conversations still does not rotate smoothly.

Previously gave his wife controlled celebrations. He has never felt at home on which celebrations. If he could he retreated in the bedroom, but sometimes had collected there partiers were the wild times. Eventually he went than but on the balcony and looked at what happened in the garden. The sensation totally insulated, which it would otherwise never bothered, was at those times painful. As a disease felt the insulation. If a painful disease that against each drug file was.