Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

He did not now more of his own words. This good call a weird way him.

'I must continue,' she said. 'I think it is nice to many be alone. When I stand up I go first half an hour on the floor and then I myself.' Aad As in the barn evening streelde her own arms, concentrated and accurate. 'I hope not that I am sorry to disappoint you set.'

'We said not "you" against each other?'

'I do not disappoint you set.'

'not at all. What I said, I wished to say. That is all.'

They stood up.

'I have brought something for you. A trivial matter.' He opened his briefcase, took a small black pocket. "I have unfortunately only in German can be found. Was ist Art? It is called. It is a marketing of Tolstoy, you need the word "Art" just by replacing "love", it is actually his farewell.'

'I do not read German.'

'Maybe later'.

She took the booklet, he kissed once on the cheek and walked the café. He looked her after, how they are in the direction of the Concert Hall and meditated. The Shirt of her grandfather was its really too large, he saw only now.

Then he charged bought from delicatessen Pasteuning three bottles of Chilean wine and walked to the house.

'They Have your released?" asks the wife, lying on the bed while a ship's steward required for the journey.

'I have freely taken,' he says. 'They do nothing to give me.' He will take a few seconds of thinking to the director who had said that soon also lower educated men the road to the book would, they are not necessarily through the book trade. It surprised him that his office with views on a tree and a garden which also can be called courtyard, his colleagues, the routine, Monday production meeting, has never missed.

For mid July is the cold and rainy.

He draws a blue required that slightly worn but that he likes to wear.

Ship's steward goes to the kitchen and looks happy to the tool with which he is the garden of his parents will go to tackle. From the fridge he retrieves the food which he has taken to remedy Tirza still one last time before they go to the third world is a good meal for.

In the back of the Volvo loads everything in the ship's steward garden tool, breads, four different types of French cheese, old Gouda, steaks, lettuce, raspberries, cherries, apples, radishes and cucumbers. There is still enough space for Tirza's backpack and the backpack that will undoubtedly bring her boyfriend.

For as long as a ship's steward children, he drives in a Volvo. It is a vehicle that fits in his address he says. As he himself at that address, or perhaps he should say: paste.

Than he knocks on the door of Tirza's room. She is currently developing its backpack in which they specially for this trip has purchased.

Ship's steward had suggested that they have a solid boot of a good brand had to buy, but they laughed him out.

'I go to Africa, PAP,' she had said, 'not to the Cote d'Azur.'

Ship's steward loathes of youth hostels and backpackers. The lack of privacy that radiates backpacking gives him chills. It is no snobbishness. It is a deep, almost animal fear for the dormitory room and the bunk bed.

Time of his students, and especially of the few months he in a student house has lived, he can remember how other students him came after a night out 'Return'. With mattress and was already you than reversed. Then they walked a while over you as if it were a special form of Thai massage. Other students found that is not such a problem, it. He opposed, tooth and what it all made things worse.

'You're almost done?' he asks. He pushes without waiting for an answer the door open.

The room of Tirza is one big mess. Everywhere clothes, toiletries, a passport with its vaccinations, its iPod, her note book, underwear, a bathing cap, a diving goggles.

'I can not choose," she says, 'and there is so little in. It will be somewhere in Africa also be very cold, you think you are not, pap?'

'Fixed,' he says, 'somewhere in Africa is also very cold. Antarctica is not far away.'

'But a warm sweater takes place as much in.'

'I have you said that you had to buy no backpack.'

'still keep on," she says. 'You do not know how people go on a journey. When are you for the last really been traveling? Not a few days to the Buchmesse. Really travel.'

She reduces what from its backpack and crams a sweater in.

'Or is a coltrui better?' she asks.

'A coltrui prickles.'

He goes to the kitchen. The coffee which he has put a quarter of an hour ago gravity. Ship's steward pays for itself a head and calls on than to top: 'Tirza, would you also have coffee?'

There is no answer.

He has the feeling that Africa already in his kitchen begins, that Tirza is already there in the middle of Africa, and it is thus there is also a little, in Africa.

At the greengrocer had a slightly older lady who works there have for years been said: 'Your daughter takes on the world huh? My son is a year ago moved to Asia, but i get each week a long e-mail from him. So I know exactly where he is and what he is doing. So I enjoy with him.'

Ship's steward said 'yes' and after a pause: 'Yes, yes, of course.' Then did he kindly smiling. Join in the fun. The word has a half day chased.

Although they did not reply to his question, he pays for the security of a cup of coffee for Tirza in. They drink in the morning like Hofmeesters coffee. For them to school peddled had he always together with her in the kitchen. Or rather: he looked how it at. That was the essence of the fatherhood for him: encouraging the sidelines. And if there girlfriends were at a little struggle, you out of your best side. On that encouraging and watch it was faded and he could have life.

With his elbows leans ship's steward on the worktop. It is going to motregenen. Africa, he thinks. He hopes but that they the unholy plan to by public transport from the south to the north to abandon will reassure but is he not.

Tirza coming back down with the backpack and a small shoulder bag.

He looks at her luggage. The wise old man. The role that he so like to play. To assign and too old to somewhere to be too. But as he was already at its fifteenth.

'Dat you on a trip around the world," she says, 'does not mean that you need to be clumsy.'

'I say nothing,' says ship's steward. 'I look only.' He wonders how the will to someone terrible to miss. It is a question that he is already a few days. The wife he never missed, he has waited on her. The harder they him how he fiery's, on its waited, but really missed, no. His parents, he also never missed. He has never missed.

He gives his daughter its coffee. They drink quickly and simply.

'Would you have breakfast? I will make toast?'

She shakes her head.

'I do not take jewelry note, only these two rings. That surely? Do you not? And if I lose them or if they were stolen it is also not a disaster.' She shows her left hand.

The one ring he has given her when she was seventeen, the second ring has bought them yourself. Or perhaps they received from a friend, but she wanted to not tell. An older boyfriend with money.

The latter can not imagine a ship's steward, in view of its current choice. Tirza loves men without money. The poverty withdraws its. They fable books about the poverty in Africa, the nature is for her on the second place. Malaria find them more important than a decent sunset. The misfortunes of others gives her a purpose of life.

Ship's steward tail to the rain. 'You're right,' he says, 'no disaster. If they were stolen. Absolutely no disaster. What are rings well at all?'

He had offered Tirza's boyfriend to retrieve, but they had said: 'No, he is here. That is easier.'

About a quarter of an hour, perhaps even less, he will no longer be only with his youngest daughter. About a quarter of an hour begins the rest of his life, the epilogue. The epilogue of an insignificant life because it was insignificant, doubt he is now no longer, in so far as he that in the last few decades has still did. A man who is in the barn on the final exam feast of his daughter a of her classmates is first and foremost insignificant. Unnecessary and supernumerary, without anyone can give the debt. Somewhere in his life must be the fracture have scarcely of promising to insignificant, but he may not break out. The fracture has witnessed unnoticed.