Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

'Well,' he says, fast and good. You know how those things go. In an airport. There is always in a hurry.'

Than he is on the table and he feels how they leave him while he is viewing. He knows that they shall examine him, that they are wondering why it took so little mangy alongside looks like. But not for long. Not really. The crypto grams calls. How much interest you can really understand another, especially if you that other know so well? And especially as long al. So terribly long. Half a life.

In the bedroom clothe he. He takes a shower. After he has dried, he retrieves with a pair of scissors the earth under his nails away. The he succeeds not entirely clean his nails. He is doing a clean pants, spraying deodorant under his underarms.

In his underpants off he goes to the bottom. Without real aim. The watering plants, that is a possibility. The provision of everyday actions that must be sufficiently objective. The reassurance that this entails. More he also not necessary, more he seeks not now.

The wife is still at the table with its crypto grams.

He is going to sit on the couch, on the other side of the room. In fact he would want to create music, but he can also not move.

'Are you the door not been out?' he asks.

'Only a quarter of an hour and in the garden," she says, without her gaze of the newspaper to avert. 'Why should I? With this?'

Ship's steward shall examine his feet. His toe nails would once again may be cut.

'I have showered,' he says.

'MEWE.'

Now he can find power to stand on. He runs to her.

'I am chilly again. I no longer off season.'

'Dat is nice," she says. Emphatically.

Ship's steward at the dining table, in his underpants. He does not crypto grams. He has no patience for. Crypto grams are for people who do not take seriously the language.

He feels the need to defend, but he does not know what. He knows only that the proof is that you are alive and that you feel a need. No desire, that sounds too romantic, no desire, that smacks of meat. A need. For example to talk with the wife. To make its voice heard. The voice of the mother of his children.

'I did you know that… that I AND THE WORKER?' he asks.

'De worker and you? What? The old?'

'De new, from Ghana. Did you know that they, and I… that we had something? I have told you that?'

She shakes her head. 'No," she says, 'I did not know. You have not told us. Is it important? Do I need to know? Would you like to say something about it?' There is a light irony in her voice.

'Not important. I thought only: I tell you.'

They shall submit to the pin. 'Die woman from Ghana?' she looks at him unbelieving. Now also surprised. They will find it, he sees, a most remarkable story.

He is going to sit. 'Yes'. In Ghana. I said it. On Thursday. Between the afternoon I rode of my work home and then… than i took her. That is what you do that? Not?'

'Yes, so you can say. If that is what you did, I have no idea, but if that is what you did, then you should mention so.'

'On Thursday afternoon. To twelve hours. I usually took care that I was absolutely on time. It has started once when i was ill. A nasty flu. In fact accidentally. By coincidence. You were already road. You were on the houseboat. It then became a ritual. It is not that we do not speak. You must not think. But they barely speaks Dutch, her English is also mediocre. I therefore took her. Here on the bench. We went to the top. Such a bedroom is so… So intimate. As personal. I also had all books and newspapers on the bed. I thought it was easy. And I thought: if it comes up, do i need to remove. As it was over, Undressed i. Sometimes I took a shower. As I very gezweet had. There are days that you have as sweat, that it takes so long that the difficult. These days, you know them. She went on to the House and I peddled my way back to my work. It is not that I was in love with her, although of course that might have been possible. It is beautiful. It was… it was sex between friends.'

'Between friends. Aha. Why you tell me this?'

He gets her to. Her hand, her arm. Only with his fingertips. If a blind.

'I thought: it is good if you know it. All those secrets. Why now? Why should we ignore the? For each other? We are strangers, yet? Friends, but strangers. Acquaintances. Exen. Maybe we friends, maybe.'

'Maybe.' She smiles. 'Maybe," she says. 'but the last month have you done nothing. In any case I have noticed anything.'

'No, no, we do nothing for a while. She understands the. She has not called for. They may also be without. But I give her yet its perk.'

There is a cork on the table. The shower has the taste in the mouth cannot delete. Vomit. Prawn crackers. Old, wet Prawn Chips.

'I actually find your normal?' he asks.

'Normal?' she looks at him, again surprised, non-ya. 'Why? Why do you do that?'

"Just. Without reason.'

He picks up the cork on, let him turn around.

'Am I normal?'

"God, Jörgen, why do you want to know? I mean is that not a bit late? You are almost retired. You have until now been saved, so it will be loosened. It does not more. What you are. I mean it is over. Your life is ready. The viewable not.'

The cork fall to the ground. He grabs him.

'But When can you say,' he goes further, 'I have a normal sex life? If you do not have sex? Once or twice per week, in a further monogamous relationship, in the bedroom and one in the quarter after a party for friends, in the kitchen. When it is normal, the sex life of human beings? When can you without lying to say: 'I have a healthy sex life."?'

Still groped his fingertips her arm, her shoulder, its neck and now also her face.

It stores the newspaper close. 'I do not know. I do not think that you should ask me whether you are normally. And what is normal. Do you mean what is the standard? What is the average? How often they do it? The other people? I know you too long, to good, I can say nothing about you, ask your colleagues. Ask your daughters maybe. Ask the others.'

His head is true as an infected wound and yet it can not be called a headache.

'What stands are normally?' he wants to know. It is now no longer from what he says and what he does not say. What he betrays, what he does, which secrets it involved the grave in will drag. 'What are not normal? If there is blood from the anus, is it still normal? Where does the abnormal? Where is the border? Where is the moment you realize: Damn, i am somewhere, I have a limit is exceeded, and I can not return, even if I would like, I can not return. I am on the other side, but what is the other side? What is it?' His finger rest on its nose.

'There is blood from the anus? By whom? In the event that woman from Ghana?'

It sounds like a joke from her mouth. A Pointe. But he has not heard the beginning, and now that he does not know why he must laugh.

Ship's steward is silent, he has no idea what he should say more. Half does he expect the wife will now have to get up and move to the top, but they are stuck.

'Maybe,' he says after a time, 'is the most normal ultimately not have sex. Or only with yourself in the bathroom. You early in the morning, lying on the bed while i coffee. Only with your thoughts and half fantasies, indefinite, onuitgeleefde fantasies for which no one can punish you.'

She picks its glass, where even a glimmer of wine in it. The empty them.

'I was your imagination," she says, 'You know yet? Your imagination, that I was.'

He nods. He is tired, his thoughts fade. 'My fantasy,' he does so. 'Yes, that were you.'

They state. 'I go to bed.' She folds the newspaper on the glass. 'You must just not there so much to think about," she says. 'What you do with that woman doing. It is but the worker. There is no in. I mean: hello, that woman comes from Ghana, which will certainly have experienced worse things. And she is our work star. Your work applicant.'