Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

'I know,' she said, and it appeared that now also its voice was affected by her illness. 'I know, papa, but I can no longer stop. It is too late.'

He focused on her desk chair, on the dictionaries on the desk, an open skipped geography book. He focused.

'I have done something which I could not do better?' he asked when looking at the geography book. 'There are things that disturb you? Here in the house. To me or mama. Is there anything we have done wrong, what I have done wrong?'

He attempted to concentrate on something else. The curtains. Red curtains. Tirza had they themselves were selected.

'You know,' he said, and he talked now almost as soft as they, 'Well, you know, we, Tirza mum and i and Ibi, also of love you if you are not very talented, it makes no difference what you are. You do not have to be the best, you do not need to have, we love you as you are.'

He wanted no answer. But there was a reply. Harder than its previous answer. Loud and clear.

'No, papa,' she said, "If I am not the best, stop anyone of me.'

Still he silently sit also remained a few seconds. Humiliated by the carnival mirror of his ambition, are well-intentioned and really reasonable ambition. Reports by his child for whom he had wanted to sacrifice everything, because he was guilty. In which they can also stood out, they would never do enough to stand out for its debt to die.

When did he not more in the room. He fled.

He went back down and stayed for the dining table. With his finger he knocked gently on the table. A minute and then still a minute, a quarter of an hour he was so half an hour. To the voordeurbel went and he did. It was almost two hours. Perhaps it was the wife who had forgotten her keys? Tirza Ibi was home, also. It could only be the wife.

For the door there were two agents. Boys still, really.

'Meneer ship's steward?' asked the a, so to hear a foreigners.

'Yes,' said ship's steward, 'dat i.'

'We are called. Are there problems?'

'who called you?'

'your wife,' said the other agent. 'You will have a woman? Here you live with wife and children?'

'O THAT,' said ship's steward. 'A ruzietje. It is all over. Sorry for the inconvenience.'

He wanted to close the door again. He had no need for company.

But the immigrant agent early: 'Meyes we also arrive?'

'As you want.'

He had them within, showed the gentlemen the living room. They looked around. The foreigners picked up a book that was on the table and sheet was slowly.

'Your wife wanted to make a declaration,' he said with the book in his hand. 'Is they are at home?'

Ship's steward shook his head.

'No, not at home. You know how women are. Especially Scorpio-women.'

'Is a Scorpio?' asked the agent that no foreigners was.

'Yes, yes,' said ship's steward. He had no idea why he had said. He realized that he sometimes did not know what he was going to say and that there than things which he does not always poked up equally pleasant found. Scorpio-women, how he came out? She was a Scorpio, but who was that what? He had to concentrate. He had to deal is better control control.

'14 November,' said ship's steward. 'Schor peony. It is to her studio. She paints. Men in particular. Sometimes also fruit. Apples, a pineapple, a solitary strawberry on a sign. But mainly men. A single self-portrait, go only men.'

'They said by the telephone,' said the foreigners, 'dat you tried to its edges, maltreatment, since she had over. Can that is true? Have you and your wife have been attacked? Do you have her beaten? Of course you are not obliged to answer, if you do not want to have, if you think: there are problems of. You can make use of your right to silence.'

Ship's steward thought after. He could not more so well remember where it was all about the conversation with his wife.

'We play,' said he finally, 'my wife and i, we play, if two young dogs. We know our own force is not. The game gets out of hand. Please call the police. They can not against hair loss. But it belongs to its game. She is an artist. What I said, she paints. Apples, oranges, Forrest Fruit, but also men. Unemployed, I suspect. The long-term unemployed. They get nothing for a cup of tea, but they have to pull out all their clothes. Would you pull out all your clothes for a cup of coffee?'

The foreigners took the book back to the stack. 'DUS mugging, is doing you not? I ask again very clear: you will illuminate your wife was not?'

'No,' said ship's steward. 'No, of course not. As I say, it is a game. I am the assailant, they are the victims, our house is the park. I am…' he rejected on his mouth, his forehead, his eyes.

'Yes,' said the agent that no foreigners, 'Yes, continue? You Are?'

'I am the beast. And it is it is also a… beast. We are two beasts. That is our game. Two beasts. Two savage and vereenzaamde beasts. Our living room is the steppe, our breath the polar wind. But sometimes the out of hand. Please call the police. It belongs to the game. First stop the game has lost. It is always the first. We play… We play, because…"

Ship's steward recognized itself not more. He therefore had about social skills such as in the case of emergency and man came. Curious social skills, that but, you could only be described as: social skills. He talked.

The Agents looked at him scared, but also a tad speechless.

They said that there is nothing more, they looked around and maybe they saw in the living room of the family ship's steward finally also the steppe, they felt the polar wind.

'Sbeast,' said the foreigners, 'and keep it a little under control.'

Ship's steward had them off. He thanked for the door closed before the effort, but he did not itself on the effort he had and the gentlemen seemed not to know that.

In the living room he pushed the curtain aside a few centimeters and looked at how they wegreden. Then he did the lights off.

Above he sought in his wardrobe in the inside pockets of his jackets to the notebook that he specifically for the meeting with the psychologist had purchased. He has finally found it. There was not much in it. One word: control. Underlined twice.

He looked at his own handwriting, to the word itself, as if in that word in the two underscores, the declaration was for everything. For his life, the disease of his daughter, the disease of the white middle class, the disease that he was and that he no longer wanted. He usually dressed out and went to bed. But he could not sleep. He neuriede, he opened the balcony doors and closed them again. He waited, as is so often the case, to the wife would come home.

The next morning he drove Tirza to a clinic in Germany, specialised in eating disorders. He asked whether they wanted not or they like it, or they thought it would help after all that he had already tried, after all the books he had read, he drove her just get there. Without stopping. And without talking. She sat on the rear bench seat, or rather, it was on the rear bench seat.

He had been given the address of the secretary at the publisher.

Thus supplied ship's steward his daughter at the clinic, in the afternoon, if a parcel. And he himself took up residence in a nearby guest house.

In the evening he phoned to house, but his wife was not there. He was on the phone. Ibi 'I have Tirza to a clinic in Germany,' he said. 'Please tell mom.'

In the village where the clinic was located was one restaurant. There was a ship's steward strain guest. We knew his type of there. Parents who had their child delivered to the clinic, parents who are often at the end of their forces were more death than live. Silent, also against each other when they came with the assistance of another person.

After a few nights he came into contact with a sociologist from Frankfurt, which have just been daughter, three years older than Tirza, at the clinic had delivered.