Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

Just now that he is calm and tranquillity itself, it seemed they to hesitate.

'Or is there someone?' she asked. 'Have you someone?'

Ship's steward heard his youngest daughter come to walk from the kitchen. As he had thought they had meegeluisterd. Curiosity is a sign of intelligence, but an intelligent child also means that the parents always on their guard against. With an intelligent child you never know who in the ootje. Tirza threw her father a devastating look and walked up the stairs. Along her mother, along the blue raincoat of her mother who so gaudy to the coathanger depended.

'I have someone?' asked ship's steward when his daughter the door of her room had closed noisy. He had to laugh. 'I have someone? Not really. No. I live here with Tirza. It is of course to be somebody but not like you mean it.' ship's steward smiled still. There he could not stop, he felt embarrassed. 'Come on,' he said when he was finally to scorn. He went to her for to the living room. He remained at the bank, but they did not sit. They turned around to as if they were all agree wanted to look good. As if there was someone else, a strange, in this room where they had lived for so long, where they had been evenings, with him, only and with guests, where they had given celebrations, where they cribs and boxes had put down, where her daughters had crawled over the ground, where they occasionally had painted still lifes.

'There is not very much has changed,' she said. 'You don't. As has been said. Basically unchanged. You have everything behind paints?'

'De bookcase is new. As you can see. The chair there too. Tirza has chosen. There is something changed.' her question he ignored deliberately. Who is not a question purports to have heard, may also not fresh sermons. If house boss he heard the most questions are not. This forgetfulness was an excuse that he could years ahead.

They did not look at the seat that had investigated, nor Tirza to the bookcase. They started just stand in front of him, they studied the ship's steward. Like a painting in a museum that you only know from postcards and catalogs and now you right opposite the original condition, trying to understand why the sudden a tad disappointing. Not much, a tad.

'You have the bunch of not let paints,' she said after a few seconds. 'I see it, everything yellows slowly. You will maintain the not good, inside. A house you should also be maintained inside. But for yourself you have good.'

They sounded satisfied. But at the same time also surprised. What she had expected? A alcoholics? A patient? Trembling hands, a poorly seated dentures? A WRECK with bright moments? In that bright moments had nothing better to do than to leave everything to paint, the parquet to paint and sewage pipes to refresh?

That he is without its had manifestly exceeded rescued its expectations, but its also disappointing. As the lack of paint on walls its disappointed.

There was more than a fortuitous agreement between the lessee and the wife. Both found them always a plafonnetje that necessary in the paint had to be always something to they encountered in the House what was time for a replacement. They had no idea of money. They could not imagine what workmen today for an hour jobs asked. It was always there was a complaint, in the case of the wife a complaint that disguised as love.

She did a step backwards. 'Are you happy to see me?' she asked.

The question came over him. The question about most did it.

'Happy,' said ship's steward. He looked at his watch. 'Yes, I am happy, but I am also to cooking. If I had known that you were coming i had more. You had to call you. The number has remained the same. But…' He had to take a break, not because of the emotion, but because he had to think of what he actually wanted to say. 'It is good to see you. You're curious, but in any case i.'

The astonished ship's steward that the words he expected to give decisions at the back with this woman is not about his lips came, they were not even challenged in him. Now that he could not rule they finally, he was they forget. He wanted to charming. Strong. The cane was not only unbroken, it was not even bent.

'curious as to what?'

'To you,' he said. 'How the with you. What you do. How you live in. How did you perished.'

'How I live? Why have you never called? In those three years. I told you hear. In scents and colors. I had not kept secret. If you had taken the trouble to call.'

That was typical. They disappeared and she expected that her chasing ran to gather information about its ups and downs and to ask them if they still needed anything.

'Dat seemed to me not good,' said ship's steward. In order to call 'yours. I wanted me not to be imposed upon us. If you have a lot of hungry, can I still a egg packs. I also had your new number not.'

'I am not here for the food,' she said and she took place on the bank to which they had been for many years. Ship's steward again let him. Tirza had the learning sorted out. Together with Tirza he sought much.

'something else than an egg perhaps?'

'Jörgen, I have not hungry.' she said it is not, it proposed the with emphasis.

'You do not need to have hunger to eat. I am working on my oven dish. That is famous. Tirza's girlfriends love it. We do not eat because we are hungry, we eat since the meal time.' He said it as a teacher who a book tries to prices which he knows that the pupils there is nonetheless a hate will have.

That view was to prevent its familiar, the tone of the corrector, the tone of someone who has furnished the other sins errors. 'I not,' she said. 'I do not eat more because it is time to eat. I obey not more to absurd sentences. I eat because I wanted to. I am not here for your oven dish.'

When she stuck a cigarette. Her purse was new. A tad too hip and too young for its age. With all decorations. Ship's steward thought on the basis bags from the friends of Tirza. Early in the morning, after celebrations, they stood in the kitchen with their bags, with beads out pieces of glass, everything could serve as decorations today. Ship's steward sorry if he came in the kitchen in his pajamas and Tirza found with her friends in boisterous condition, smelly to smoke and sometimes also to stagnate and food. Soon he donated than a glass of milk in or picked up a apple of the fruit bowl and fled back to his bedroom, or in fine weather in the summer to the barn, where he next to the rake and the machine sit back and wait for the saw went until the girls to bed or had gone home. Tirza was popular. A single time he had strange boys found in the bathroom, boys who he did not know and which also not on him were proposed, but who had stayed overnight. Boys to whom a ship's steward had to ask: 'Would you like a towel?' Because Tirza slept. Once they have slept, they slept through anything. The boys were always wake earlier than his daughter. They do not really refreshed smoking, which he figures who from time to time in the bathroom found. What the boys of Tirza had in common was their smell. But now she had a fixed friend and or that smelled had a ship's steward have not been able to establish. He feared the worst.

'you smoke,' he said, with his look still in her hand bag.

He sounded concerned. What Rather irritated him. What he said was too personally. If her cigarettes it slightly bemused. Its lungs were her case. Her body. Her body was no longer his responsibility.

'Stoort the?'

'Not really,' he said. 'My not. I question whether it Tirza an ashtray. I have the ashtrays stowed.'

He turned to the hallway and called: 'Tirza, you can an ashtray for mama?'

Ship's steward remained Tirza wait, but did not respond. She was probably in her room to call. Real passion you never let loose. They also discussed everything with her friends, down to the last detail. She had ever told him during the food. 'About me?' he had asked. 'You Talk also about me?' 'natural', she had responded. "You're yet my father. Why should I not talk about you?'