Arnon Grunberg - Tirza

He picks up her face, she crouches down next, and again he says with a hard, desperate voice, as if he is afraid to lose its never will become more: 'where you live, Kaisa? Your mother will surely want you to slowly but surely agree that home?'

She shakes her head. 'I must work,' she whispers.

It shakes the child by each other. 'Where do you live?' he calls in the main street of Wind Angle. 'Kaisa, where do you live?' people watch.

They call a name. A Street, a family, a district, a café perhaps. He has no idea.

It refers to a name that he did not remember and which he also has hardly means, but it is something it is enough.

'I bring you there,' he says.

On Independence Avenue he holds a taxi. In the taxi he let the child repeat the name. He has no idea where they go, but they go to the house of Kaisa. So much is certain.

The taxi is such a taxi that you share with other people. Others steps in and out. Ship's steward must take the child on her lap. Next to him is a fat Negress with two bags and in addition to her a man. In the small car he receives the slow stuffy.

'Is your mother sometimes worried,' he asks soft to the child, 'if you are a few days not home? She makes than ensuring?'

The child shakes the head, it may also be that ship's steward the his doctrine that the vehicle. The driver is hard. There are bumps in the road.

'I,' he says, "From the moment Tirza was born, i saw everywhere i saw everywhere accidents, the disaster. One moment of inattention. There was no more was needed. In order to always be punished. By Tirza i saw the world as it is, dangerous, by and by dangerous. Inhospitable and illogical. A HEATING tube, a elevator door, a bathtub, everywhere danger. Aching. Young children have no fear. You have to be their fear learning, you need the fear on them e.g. embossed, you must learn their shudder. "Au," you must say, "that is au. And that is au. And that too is au." You have young children afraid, otherwise they will go dead.'

They drive by depart from Windhoek where he never has been.

The child look outside, to Hofmeesters idea with a bored look. As if they have already been often has been driven. As if they already have seen on several occasions.

'and the Joy?' he says. 'Dat say the people than. The joy, life is still joy? Certainly, I have joy known. For example in the past. With Tirza. Sometimes I brought her running to the celloles. Then I told her stories, or they explained to me how everything was in. That was joy.'

He speaks the word 'joy' as 'Emotion'. A word that he will not his throat, a hostile word.

'You have also brought joy in my life, but further? Little, I say the fair. Joyless, that was it. Days long. Weeks. I should like to associate me. There will be other people with more joy in their life, but not much. If i had to edit, presented manuscripts i four pencils on table, four pencils all four of which were exactly the same length. It was for me the joy. I have the joy in the search for details.'

Both look outwards. There are few people on the street.

'It was nice,' he says soft, 'de time we have spent together, it was really nice, I will not forget. But I must continue.'

The thick woman with the shopping bags get off, together with the man. It is now a ship's steward only in the taxi, with the girl. She controls of his lap.

He opens and closes his briefcase.

They drive along the airport for domestic flights, Eros called, a strange name for an airport. Airport Eros, the name for an airport where we are looking for some fun specially.

He has the idea that they leave the city.

'Where are we going?' he asks. 'We will go to your mother, we go to your family, not?'

She nods.

It will be put right, he thinks. The child knows what they are doing. She has approached him, they will also need to know how they should be at home. She is not mad.

Then they are silent. Abrupt. Along the side of the road. No house to admit. A highway. But there is also bicycle tours. And walking.

'Is this?' he asks for the child. 'Are we there?'

There is no answer.

'What happened?' he asks to the driver. 'We have de Panne?'

There is something they all tell us what ship's steward not can be understood. He picks up the child at the shoulders. 'Are we there?' he asks. 'say what.'

He shakes her back.

She nods. 'Yes, Mr,' says they are soft but audible.

It pays, too much, but he cannot change waiting, he has no patience. He get off. Now they are on the side of what is called motorway in Namibia.

Ship's steward sees cabins, on the other side of the guard rail, small cabins with something like golf plate on the roofs.

Three men are meat on the grill on the two inverted rain barrels.

The Sun spiked in his eyes. He expresses his hat on his head.

The child grabs his hand and drags him continue, along the men who are grilling meat.

Here are no whites, and he feels that this will also not whites. This is not a nearby for him, this is not a place for him. They walk along identical formations that perhaps houses need to be mentioned. He does not. There are people living there. This justifies the word 'house'. But 'edifice' is better, does more justice to the truth. With a home is the as with beauty, on at anyone who looks. Ever faster pulls the child continue him. 'Wait,' he calls, 'not so fast. Do not pull so my briefcase.'

As he passes another human being, tail he to the ground, knowing that he is not here to hear, knowing that he hated. It makes him not. If you nowhere can, the hatred there also still at.

Yet he is afraid. Afraid to stoned or torn. Afraid to die, although he does not understand. Vreugdelozer than life can cause death are not, but quieter, calmer. More peaceful, especially that. In the death he sees what he has been unable to find life: healing.

'Where you bring me?' he whispers. "So, Tirza not.'

Only after a few seconds calls it up to him by that he has called her Tirza.

He does not even bother to make corrections. She has it not heard.

Still runs faster the child. And now he is the one who holds her hand. If they release me, he thinks, slippery them away in one of those cabins, and then I am lost, I do not know how I come to the highway. They will me from each other, slowly and smoothly silent. They will punish me for crimes of which I have not committed.

'Not so fast,' he says, "my feet hurt.'

After ten minutes they stand for a hut. The door is a shower curtain.

The vestibule consists of three empty pans on the ground. Then there is still a real door, at least, a truer door. Everything here is relatively.

The inside is dark. Ship's steward sees nothing. It smells only much. It smells like garbage.

The stench makes him week. The stench annoys him.

He narrows his eyes, opens them back, but still he sees nothing.

The floor consists of sandy, feels he and his sandals. He has the need to help to create a human voice should be heard. He feels the remarkable need to scream that God should come out. Not that he believers or believers is likely to be. But the idea that anyone today on him, that only the child sees him, that nobody further look at him, is unbearable.

'Kaisa,' he says, 'say something. Where are we?'

He slowly begins to become accustomed to the darkness. In the corner of the room is a man on a sort of bed. Under a cloth.

A woman.

The child pulls him to the woman.

'This is your mother?' he asks. 'Kaisa, this is your mother?'

He frunnikt to are required.

He clears his throat. 'I am Jörgen ship's steward,' he says with the hat in his hand. 'I have your daughter company held a few days. Or better said: They sent me a few days pet. The special days. We have spoken with one another, and that was very pleasant. Your daughter is a hot man, a sweet man.'