Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

They will release him. 'We need to the gate,' she will say.

'You have all the time.'

'It is still a final walk,' she will say.

He will tag along to the customs.

There will be a long line.

If the policeman will have its passport viewed, it will again have to turn around to her father to say goodbye. And he will continue to hold sway wave back and even if he is unable to see them, swinging and wave and even more enthusiastic. He has seen on countless occasions at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. He knows how to do it.

If it is almost completely dark, he understands that Tirza and her boyfriend in a deep sleep. He runs to the hallway and calls yet again to the top, but they do not respond. He will be the rice table should only be eaten. So rude is Mohammed Atta: everything to recline, use all, but nothing to contribute to the Community. Never social. Ship's steward reminds of Ibi and her friend. That appeared in the last no longer for dinner. That is the influence of the color handling. Anti-social behavior.

For he begins to eat he still pays a glass of wine. He is going to sit around the table and tail to the garden which has been of his parents, the garden where Ibi and Tirza have played and he is experiencing once again the day which will come. Because, prepared and well, he can better fight against the tears, the tears which he himself does not permit which are superfluous. Disgusting.

For two hours at night he state. He could not sleep. Careful nobody to wake, he sneaks down the stairs. Ship's steward opens a bottle of wine, Italian gewürztraminer, and drink a glass of hastily, as if someone could catch him.

He is afraid that he loses his understanding, he must do something to calm down. In his underpants off he goes into the garden. It is stopped raining. The fluorescent tube in the kitchen gives him enough light. And he starts the garden on order. Everything he makes on the side. The grass, the flowers, the bushes. He distributes the earth, he sows again in the grass. Yes, this is it. He works so hard that despite his scarce clothing does not feel the cold.

After an hour he is the kitchen within and still open a bottle of wine, although the previous still for three quarters full. He must not be afraid, Tirza will come back from Africa. The Tirzaloze episode will a short episode. He will survive that episode.

It is already light if he stops working in the garden, if he clean the tool and in the kitchen on the ground to dry.

Conceived as he is he still makes the overflow and the living room clean as if there were any time to come visit high. He is also in the browse Koran. A wonderful book for wonderful people.

Then he lying in bed. She wants that i love word, he thinks, they want that i love a good word, but I am already well in love, I already exists.

He sees a chance to sleep over two hours.

That Sunday everything is exactly as he thought. For once the future it proposes not to disappoint. He is there on Frankfurt Flughafen wielding, exactly as it is the day before has proposed.

As a ship's steward has proposed it remains swinging, initially only with his right hand, than with both hands. It stretches from, so that Tirza his hands is still to be seen, above all those other swinging hands.

Until it the evocative feels that he is just like Schiphol is to no one to say goodbye.

Slowly, almost wandering, he runs to the parking garage. He must also to his car search.

If he has found him, he is sitting behind the wheel and noted that there are still earth under his nails. He has a weekend dug in the mud. In the mud lived, you might say.

At the time that he wants to start the dashboard he sees on the iPod of Tirza. He wants to run the vehicle, to the Departures Hall, but he realizes that time he has not by the customs.

Also he remains indecisive with the little thing in his hands. The charger is also at. You call it. Perhaps he can they send to her youth hostel. In any case he wants to let it know that they will not have to worry that her iPod is lost. It is so attached to that thing. But it is already not more. He gets her voice mail, he hears her voice. "Hi, this is Tirza. I am also not. But let but a nice message.'

He is doing the caps of the iPod in his ears and listens to Tirza's music. Very occasionally a number comes beyond that he knows. The Andrews Sisters has also put them on. For him. He here.

With nearly one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour he drives on the motorway in the direction of Amsterdam.

In the vicinity of Oberhausen he must stop at a gas station. He can no longer.

If in trance he walks to the toilet. All toilets are busy. He certainly wait five minutes until there is a free. Than he gives. Prawn, wine, more prawn crackers.

In the middle of a few lorry drivers refreshes he ashamed for the mirror. It is not much help. Uncertain he runs back to the car.

He is sitting behind the wheel. Again he takes the iPod in his hands. He is looking forward to Africa while he thinks. They are now an hour or two in the air. Where will they be? Somewhere above the South of Italy.

Without thought he plays with the iPod, he wonders whether he out of the house has locked correctly, he turns the iPod to only now and see that on the rear slightly engraved.

He must endeavor to be read in this light.

'Solar Queen' condition there. Divided over two rules. Sun Queen.

He shall submit to the device on the seat next to him and leave the vehicle.

Again he walks to the toilet. No, he rent.

He must give again. Everything is now off.

Hanging above the pot, still not in a position to move in this direction, panting slightly: 'Solar Queen. Sun Queen.' The word suggests to reassure him. As long as that word, there are still world.

Back in the car he stops the iPod and charger in his briefcase.

Minutes he remains so. Perhaps a quarter of an hour. For someone to hard on his vehicle is correct. He is right about the end of. Yes, he is not sleeping, he may not sleep here. He knows.

Ship's steward looks at his watch.

Italy, they also have to leave. Libya, they will now are. They are all above Africa.

'I have the of the tears won,' says ship's steward against the steering wheel.

He is at half back in the Van Eeghenstraat. Only his bag with clothes he retrieves from the vehicle. The tools tomorrow he brings to the barn. He opens the door carefully, in the assumption that the wife has fallen asleep.

But it is sitting in the living room, at the dining table with a newspaper and a bottle of wine. He looks at her.

They will ignore him or them has not heard him. A minute he remains so, the bag in his hand.

'What are you doing?' he asks eventually.

Now she looks at the newspaper.

'a Crypto grams," she says. 'I have been there for the whole day. It is a difficult.'

They touch with the pin on her arm.

'What happened?" asks them. They will not sound alarmed. Previously bozig.

He put the bag down, he gets closer. The taste of vomit is still in its mouth.

'What do you mean? What would have happened?'

'how you look, You looks so… So… How I will say, you looks so screwed out.'

He is going to sit around the table, rubs his hands against each other. 'It is the emergency. I have worked in the garden. There was a lot of work to be done. I should there more often. The perfunctorily there. Dead branches, weeds, still more dead branches, more weeds.'

'You stinks," she says.

'What you can smell then?'

He travels to the bottle of wine, but sees that time is empty. He would make sense in a glass, but well at this hour of the night to open a new bottle.

'Stank. Nothing special. Just unpleasant odours. How was it? The uitzwaaien?'

He nods, as if they were almost relieved now back to him by calls that his child has taken away. It has swung such as parents that do if their children leave home for an extended period of time. It is only now as though he knows what he is doing here. Coming home, that is what he is doing. Come Home.