Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

They saw its past he thought. And she thought: Jesus, I have lived all these years? This is the man with whom I have over two decades spent at intervals, yet? This was my life? They saw something unmistakably of her was and what they nevertheless could not at home.

This again called for a ship's steward the desire to and giggle. To laugh hard and long to liberate themselves from a voltage on which he is no Council knew. Inconvenience in first protrudes easy snigger, later in silence, later again in sex, and then comes the silence returned. The smile which would overcome everything, including the past, remained Off. Not even a smile appeared on his face.

He remembered, now the mother of his daughters after years of resistance against him, was the birth of Tirza. Waiting in the hospital. There was no private room free. A piece or ten women had decided that night all at the same time to give birth. Early in the morning was he went home. He could not. He was fled for the blood and home he had brought the crib in readiness, waiting for a call from the hospital.

'You of Far?' he asked.

'of the station.'

The neighborhood was heaping criticism of her departure. Months long. They could not get enough. It was progressive, had a hate imperialism, but the ability to speak shame not deprive dropped. From pride he had as far as possible for its included as the gossip him at the butcher, the greengrocer or simply on the street. 'It was also not,' he used to say. 'For the children this is much better.' ship's steward had done as if it were all completely to the wish was to expire. With mild irony he had the disappearance of his wife reasoned. And if people asked him whether or not it was difficult for the girls, he said smiling: 'A large part of her dressing room is still in my cabinet, so they will be in the next few days will be emerging in the lives of her children.'

But that emerge was therefore not came, despite the dressing room. To that evening, six days ago.

They looked still reasonably good, he found. Less heavy done. Tanner, though, as if they were regularly under the couch was.

'Get inconvenient?' she asked the question without audible spot.

He looked back to her case. Also the suitcase looked fairly. After all those years.

'I am to cooking, but really inconvenient you can not call it. I mean, what is wrong?'

She took a step in his direction, as if they wanted him hug. It was a manual pressure, a firm.

'I wondered how you went,' she said. 'And' In Tirza the mention of that name appeared a small and sad smile on her face. And when he was the name of his youngest daughter heard he shrank also collapse, as though it were a whip hard with him on the spine had beaten up.

Tirza, how would Tirza?

That was the emotion that he had seen. They had gone, but they had obviously missed something. There was a piece in her life. On a day she no longer see her daughters grow up. The puberty for her youngest daughter knew they mainly from hear say and perhaps not even that.

And now they stand eye to eye with which had stood daughter, urged the consequence of her life through to her.

His hand was released.

Ship's steward wiped hand as inconspicuous to his pants. The sweat of the other stuffy him. It was him too intimate. How onkwetsbaarder the other seemed, the easier it was to be a predator. If he had learned something in his existence as a landlord, was it that the tenant does not man could be because of people you were weak. You admitted, you said: 'I leave this repair, but I leave that to repair, a new bed, no problem. A new cabinet, why not?' ship's steward leased his upper floor furnished. The furniture enabled him the tenant if desired without too much legal red tape to remove. For this reason alone if the tenant does not man, because then came the sentiment in your back to top if the hiccups, and you could find the tenant does not remove more rücksichtslos. The weakness, he abhor the weakness. He hated the weakness.

The sweat of the wife was vulnerable sweat. That is why it had to be wiped off. He looked back as if he was expecting that Tirza would, but Tirza was not there. She was on top of her room to call. Or she was in the kitchen, she loved be quiet and listened to the call. If a consummately spionne. He remembered again the days, the hours of her birth had preceded it. Crazy that those natal him was so much better than that of its memorable oldest daughter. He even remembered the face of the gynecologist. A man he later a good bottle of wine had brought a bottle of certainly thirty guilders, with Tirza on the arm. 'It is they,' he had said. And he had the man a shaggy haired baby shown with brown unstitched, as there are so many shaggy haired baby. Tirza was badly creased pitch came in the world and it took a long time for the wrinkles disappeared. The gynecologist had adopted the wine and the father congratulations. Thereafter he had still said: 'Heavy childbirth is often something beautiful on, something very special.' The gynecologist had looked closer as a professional secrecy told us about.

'It goes well,' said ship's steward. About his arm bungelde the tea towel, in his left hand he kept the advertising brochure that he has a couple of times double-folded and when eight-free in his pocket.

'It goes well,' he repeated. 'Tirza is successful. Two nines. Consider necessary. A single seven. Nothing less than a seven. Next week gives them a feast.'

He told the proud, but when he was finished speaking he remarked how absurd it was this to Tirza's mother to tell us. This was so why near the shame of her had spoken, and probably of him. You may not be strange for your children. They are for you, you not for them.

Now he is not a promotional leaflet more in his hand, he had to withdraw his lower lip, what he did more often if he did not understand something, if he is not somewhere came out.

'What is good,' she said. 'Die nines. But I had not expected otherwise. For what?'

'For Which what?'

'For which she has received that nines?'

'For Latin. And for history. Did you know that or not? Have you heard nothing? Nothing at all?'

Its ignorance astonished that annoyed him, it is even a little. Someone had decided to come back, how temporary, had discreet can inform themselves about the latest state of affairs concerning her daughters and man. It was a whim, this return, as many in her life.

'Of whom I had the be heard? Of Ibi? I have already spoken times are no longer. They never call.'

He saw that they can go to the manual looked to his lower lip sat. He knew that they were annoyed at this old nerve pull and he was there.

They never call. The wife was of the opinion that her children had to call her. And not vice versa. It was her.

'If I not noisy,' she said, 'we will go inside?'

They were indeed ever more easier in the hallway.

'Come on,' he said. 'I have just in the oven stopped. I mean… The is no longer in the oven, but it was there in.'

They looked at him. She had the hinge cover of the suitcase already in her hand to him to roll in the room but when she let it go and said: 'I understand what you mean. I know exactly what you mean. You are as, well, as always. You are unchanged.'

We had the Christians and other believers does not take into account. That the weather with the killing in paradise sometimes in a most uncomfortable adventure might result. Politeness calls in the sky. A manual pressure which should have been a hug.

He helped her silently from her coat, a light blue raincoat that he did not know. It was not a cheap jacket, that he immediately recognized. They did not cheap stuff. He hung the jacket carefully.

Slowly calmed it. Ship's steward had everything under control again. This was how life went. People have disappeared. And sometimes these people returned, one evening in the early summer. Just at the moment that the oven dish in the oven had done, but that they could not know. If you looked back, disappeared the careful planning, inspirations were visible, coincidences emerged, wherever you looked reigned the combination of circumstances.