Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

He gets the wine card in his hands, without need to think long order he a chardonnay from South Africa. 'and for the young lady,' he says, 'a lemonade? A coca cola?'

She nods.

'Coca Cola?'

She nods again. This time with more conviction. With a degree of enthusiasm even.

'Coca Cola,' he says, 'for the young lady.' as if they were already days on a trip. As if they do nothing more than this. Food, sleep, wake up to eat. They seem to be fully addressed.

Still he gives her a stalk.

She eats with taste.

'Accident,' he says, 'we were talking about. Unhappy, everyone. And if you do that by, it does not matter anymore. The happiness is a pose, a myth, a form of politeness, celebrations, during dinner. I am unhappy, but not more unhappy than others, that I was always taught at difficult moments. My accident was average. I have two children. A nice house. A very nice house.'

Suddenly he keeps on talking.

'Now you tell what.'

It stops with food. A piece of the stem is still in her hand. Knuistje, you would have to say. And ship's steward thinks of the word 'knuistje' as to itself when he was still was different, indeterminate, not or hardly been defined. A story that still had yet to all sides.

'Yes,' he says, 'You must now tell what. How old are you?'

The Chardonnay. He will taste for without testing. It hastily, on the rude. While he does not want that. But he is impatient.

Just wait until the coca cola for the child is served.

'Would you like a citroentje in?' he asks. 'You will find that good? Tirza, my daughter, drank its cola always with lemon. From an early age. But they should almost never cola drinks. We were against cola. I was against cola.'

They shake of no. No citroentje.

'Good than. Than we drink on this… On this evening, on our meeting. On you, Kaisa, on you.'

It rejects his glass against that of her.

They drink as he. With surrender.

If they have received the menu cards, he notes that cannot read them, in any case not good enough. They tail to the menu as they go to him tail. With the semi-open mouth. As if there is something to be. As if the menu card going to speak.

He orders chicken soup for her. Also chicken soup seems to be a medicine.

'And then,' he asks, 'fish or meat?'

She looks at him with the last piece of stalk still in its knuistje.

'fish or meat?' he repeats. 'Kaisa, what will it be?'

'Meat," she says.

He decision: lamb. Always good.

Order for themselves the carpaccio of springbok and then a fish.

The waitress removes, after they do everything has written. He sees that she and her colleagues whispers and he thinks, No he knows that they have over him. For the first time since his arrival in Namibia he is sitting at a table with someone. A black child. 'And he was looking for his daughter,', they will say. 'But it was in reality entertainment. Special entertainment.'

He leans back on.

'Eat,' he says.

She eats the last piece of stalk, that all that time in her hand sat.

'Where were we?' he asks. 'Oh yes, how old are you?'

It is precisely these moments is the art of the conversation. All those drinks which he has attended, Book presentations, book fairs, it is not for nothing, he has learned from you.

'Nine," she says.

He holds his head.

'Dan care we over fifty years,' he answers, 'min or more half a century, we adhere to this. Half a century.'

That look of her. Neutral, But inquisitive.

'fifty years is half a century. You know that yet? How old is your mother?'

It is a one-sided conversation, but a ship's steward does not. His life depends on it, as it feels at least. He takes a few swallow the wine. It is the only medicine against the embarrassment that is effective.

'How old is your mother, Kaisa, you know that, how old they?'

'Mamma is at home.'

She says the soft and almost questioning, but just not completely. In fact exactly as they said: 'Do you want company, sir?' Almost questioning, though not entirely. As if they already knew that he wanted it. As if they had seen.

'Aha,' says ship's steward, 'at home. Yes, the way it should. My parents no longer life. They are shortly after each other about members. The children were still small. But they are never really enthusiastic grandparents. At the end of their life they did the door does not open any more. Even if we arrived. Than we had to return to Amsterdam. Annoying for the children, because we thought that they were going to see grandpa and grandma.'

He gives its cola at.

It will wait until they are going to mention it, but what follows is silence. Even more quiet. That is why he takes the word. He must talk, as long as he is talking about there is nothing wrong, and furthermore it for once not from what he says.

My parents were not ill. But they were also not completely healthy. Whether or not, super healthy, to healthy. They were converted, and they were afraid that the village could find out. That they were converted, that it is in fact of house…' he let his voice drop as if there is a terrible secret follows '… nothing were, That if nobody wants to know. No one knew it too. They were afraid to be different, to fall. At first only outside the home and later also in house. It was their second nature. They hated everything was different. Do you understand? Everything that is not blank. Everything else was, everything was different from the norm. They hated the sick. Because everything that is not the standard, it was the sick. For my parents there was no difference between psychiatric patients, Jews, negroid homosexuals, all patients who were not a cure. They themselves were cure a disease, but they were still afraid that something was still, a scar, a residue, a persistent remainder that could again at any time to ignite. That is why my father once a Jew half beaten to death. For his shop. With a spoon. So no one in the village that would doubt that he was healed. They took the seriously, the cure. But at the end of their life they did the door so no longer open. Even if we arrived.'

He looks at the child. She sees a puppet player in me, he thinks. I am the puppet.

'Know what I like it?' says ship's steward. 'I can talk to you.'

The entree is served, and ship's steward says that they should be careful, that they must blow a bite out for them from the soup. He takes the spoon, he does it for. And it blows.

So they work by the meal. The people at the other tables look less and less on the set. They are a couple? Calls on ship's steward wondered. A temporary set perhaps, but, what other than that? A set. Determine are by definition temporary, still ever decreasing duration than young people.

After the main dish, which they have very few places to eat, lubricates the child is still a he desert, sorbet, and order he usually a cognac. This trip is more expensive than he had originally thought. But what does it matter? If you have lost almost everything, you can also lose everything.

In the cognac), it on and runs to the toilet. In the vicinity of the urinal kicks with his bare feet in nattigheid, and he remembers that he must die. That there is only one way out of this is that all other ways have closed. With his bare feet in someone else's urine he tries his own death.

While he plast, where he deals with one hand on the wall. A bright duizeling he feels. Nothing serious.

Return to table — the sorbet and the cognac have now been charged — he says: 'I think it so much that we can talk to each other, Kaisa. Really talk. What does your mother? And your father?'

She gets her shoulders.

'Is they housewife?'

Weather retrieves the child her shoulders.

And as if it is only now to mind, he asks: "do they not worried? You should not just call us?'