Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

While he runs down the hallway with three beers and two glasses of red wine and a vodka ice cream on a tray, he sees the wife descend the stairs. She has the old nail skirt of Ibi and a bloesje that is tight. Far too tight. There is crammed with everything from, a female body that protrudes out.

She is walking with high heels. Shoes, bloesje, skirt, it seems from a dress up trunk to have come.

He remains in the hallway to wait for them at the bottom step is reached. The tray in his hands and the slight smell of sweat, aftershave and baked sardines around him. The smell of the party.

'Jesus,' he says soft.

None of the guests it has dared to go into the garden. The torches are lit in lonely. The guests pens together in the living room. They wait for the others, they wait for Tirza.

The wife will stand in front of him and running a radio button. On high heels can its legs the comparison with long ago. Their first introduction, the first days, the first weeks. The time that you have a blank sheet are for the other, the freedom that it entails, the happiness. Somewhere in her legs the freedom that ship's steward is lost, and resistance has been recovered at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. But when tasted that freedom no longer him, better said, since he tasted the true flavor of the freedom: gal.

Somewhere in her legs is the memory of happiness. They were always been nice, legs, long, slim and yet muscular. If they wanted to make impression she did a short skirts. He remembers the cans of other men, they remember the first time that he realized that he had received children with a woman who was actually too young to him, not with his age nor his status paste. Its still lifes claimed not much, but if still life was they themselves unbeatable. Ship's steward gold in the Seventies as a promise, a writer who would want to climb to Publisher. Someone who had to be taken into account. But he continued to sit in his room at the Herengracht Canal, with views of a tree, is concentrating on the translated fiction and sometimes even on the tree until he woke up once and had to admit that no one more account should be taken with him. Only he still. The hell were not the others. He was the self. The hell sat deep in him. Anchored, hidden and invisible, but live and hot. Piping hot.

'Is this not overly?' he asks.

'What? This?' she draws attention to itself. She shakes her head. 'I am exaggerated? I think not. Do you think the exaggerated, Jörgen? I have done my best for Tirza's party.'

'It is precisely for that reason. It is precisely because the her party, its great celebration, did you a bit…' he looks for words, diplomatic solutions. He looks at what is happening in the bloesje pops. Desperately she looks out, but nevertheless not unattractive. The word 'loeder' comes in him. Now the youth also has left his wife, he sees the loeder in her that she will probably always has been. 'You had to keep you in.'

'In account? Why? Do you think it is not nice?'

The tray vibrates in Hofmeesters hands. The voordeurbel.

Go back to top and do something else,' he says. 'I implore you. This is not the case. You are not a sixteen more. We ourselves are not sixteen more.'

'But Jörgen, you are as old as you feel. They have not told you that? I am the flower of the eternal youth.'

She pushes the tray a few centimeters to one side and press her mouth quickly on the HIS. 'Test you?' whispers to them. 'De flower of the eternal youth.'

He struggles, he wants its not kissing, he wants its never kiss. Never again. Two words like a charm. The shortest prayer of the world. The prayer of Jörgen ship's steward. Never again.

The voordeurbel again. 'It is a disgrace,' he says. 'You are a disgrace, as you now stands. And you are no flower of the eternal youth. I am sorry.'

They should again like her mouth pressing on his own, but he is different reverse. The vibration of the tray is worse.

'Dan only i have to you," she says. 'a disgrace if I am, then we just a Monozygotic twins. Then we are made for each other.' She smiles. They laughs as if there has never been something has happened between them. Good brave. To the covenant which no longer exists to emphasize, as she smile.

Then they enter the living room and ship's steward hear the calls are silenced. He remains in the aisle, he would like to shout, as people do who are trapped in an elevator but there is no other sound from his mouth than what heavy breathing.

He runs to the kitchen, set the tray on the worktop and serves a glass of white wine for themselves. 'De flower of the eternal youth,' he panting slightly. There is more memories of him, also pleasant. In the marshlands of his memory are also nice memories clogged. If you remember the happiness than has the existence.

A colleague once said to him: 'You can not live on memories.' Why he said that knows no longer ship's steward. The debate was that he forgot. He knows only that the colleague said to him: 'You can not with a knife into your past rooting as if it were a garden is that you have to omspitten, Jörgen, because one day you go with that knife in yourself rooting.'

Not long afterwards was strokes that colleague.

You are a slave to your memories. That is the way it is, you will ship's steward. Some people remember things that never happened. Also it is for. They are slaves of the fiction. Postmen of their own myth.

He drinks are glass empty, without much more than the cold, Slightly sour taste of the wine. Only when the voordeurbel for the third time, shooting to him within that someone is in front of the door.

He rent there, angry in itself, angry at his wife, angry at the person who is now in front of the door. Ship's steward strives — it cannot do anything — to perfection. This is the party that must be perfect, that must prove that the rumours which is doing the rounds about him are not true. How well he has succeeded, that he wants to say that he wants to bring about and how good the life he has succeeded, how well the children have succeeded.

That is the hidden message of the kir, that is what the sashimi must tell us, behind the caipirinha tells a story: the story of Tirza's father, the story with the good outcome. He had his youngest daughter only educate, but it worked out well. Yes, let his message in God's name for one evening a joyful message.

A girl stands for the door. One of Tirza's many friends, one which he has not seen before.

'Ha,' says the girl.

'Ha,' says ship's steward, while he think of the wife who has become a disgrace and he wonders exactly what is in the living room. As he does after her departure wondered, evening as Tirza above homework to make was telephoned or with girlfriends: where is it now? What is it? In whose arms is she? What did they? She regret? The silence sometimes forced him to turn the tv. There was nobody who argue with. He was his own enemy. If he wanted to annoy, he had a talk show to watch. Scream he did against the tv. Until he got with the pity tv and there silently opposite sat down.

'Are you the father of Tirza?'

He nods, almost delighted because he also derived from which of course unnecessary worries. They are no longer together, they do not have a relationship. As his wife for love like to walk, is that its case.

'I am Ester," she says, 'without h.'

'Ester without h,' he repeats. 'I am Jörgen with umlaut on the o.' He suspects that are sharp answer funny and this presumption is strengthened by the white wine, presents a momentary euphoria. Also is a ship's steward liberated, a few seconds strides he winner by its own course.

In the dressing room he stays are to adopt something in, a jacket, gift, a bag, but there is nothing to believe. Ester without h carries a dingy jeans and on the back of her hands are two telephone numbers written, he sees. Sit at its feet flip-flops. She is without gift. She is, you might say, without clothes. Ship's steward does not of people who refuse to be accepted.