Tommy Wieringa - Joe Speedboat

Joe came outside in his stocking feet and held out his hand. Husseini sighed deeply, as though a wish had been granted him.

‘My son!’ he said, locking Joe in his arms.

He hugged him like that for a time, held him at arms’ length to look at him, then drew him back into his embrace. India appeared in the doorway. Her mother shrugged at her apologetically, as though to say, ‘So many countries, so many customs.’ Joe came out of the embrace a little rumpled. The Egyptian then turned to India and shook her hand. Later, India said that she had felt deeply insulted.

‘Why didn’t he. . grab me like that? Has he got something against girls? Was there something wrong with my hair? Could he smell that I was having my period? Does he think menstruating women are unclean ?’

‘Quit it, would you!’ her mother shouted. ‘Mahfouz did that out of respect. Arabs have a lot of respect for women.’

Mahfouz Husseini was to become Lomark’s first official Negro. Even though he wasn’t really a Negro at all, he was Nubian; but hey, what did we know? White is white and black is black. Around here we can’t tell the difference.

Husseini stayed until just before Christmas, then flew back to Egypt to arrange his definitive departure. One of his brothers would take over his shop in the Sinai; in Cairo awaited the bureaucratic hell through which one had to pass before receiving the right stamps and emigration forms. Regina pined, Joe and India were left to their own devices — their mother neglected the housekeeping and smoked more than she breathed.

‘Mom, you have to eat something ,’ India said.

‘I’ve already had two rice waffles.’

She shuffled out of the kitchen. Three weeks to go. India shouted after her.

‘If Mahfouz sees you like this he won’t think you’re pretty anymore! Jesus, Joe, why don’t you say something for once?!’

‘What do I know about it?’

And with that he had spoken a great truth. For what did he know about it? He and Engel Eleveld shared a colossal contempt for love. I never heard him talk about it, but it seemed as though he saw love as a less-than-worthy pastime. As spinning one’s wheels. Christof felt differently about it; like me, he had a crush on the South African girl.

I remember one time in the garage that summer, when Christof drew Joe’s attention to P.J.’s existence. A few days later we saw Joe looking at the new arrival as she sat with her girlfriends on the low wall around the schoolyard.

‘So, what do you think?’ Christof urged.

Joe slapped him on the shoulder.

‘Good eye, Christof. It’s definitely a girl.’

The freeze set in, the water in the washlands was higher than I’d ever seen it. Then one evening at the table I heard Willem Eleveld’s voice on national radio. As an ‘inhabitant of the disaster area’, they’d called him to hear about the ‘alarming water levels’ in the big rivers. Eleveld was interviewed live, you heard him pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello?’ real slowly.

‘Good afternoon, am I speaking to Mr Eleveld from Lomark?’

‘You are.’

You could hear this horrible feedback in the speakers, because

Willem Eleveld happened to be listening to the same station.

‘Mr Eleveld, it’s good to hear that you’re listening to our

program, but could you please turn off the radio?’

Engel’s father put down the phone, fumbled around a bit, and

the feedback vanished.

‘And who would I be talkin’ to?’ he asked.

‘Joachim Verdonschot from IKON radio, you’re on the air live,

Mr Eleveld. If I understand correctly, you live in the middle of

the disaster area. Could you tell us what things are like

there?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, the flooding, for example.’

‘Oh, not much to tell.’

‘No water in your basement?’

‘No more than usual.’

There was a rustling of paper in the studio in Hilversum.

‘The high water has been causing a lot of problems, you and

other inhabitants of your municipality are surrounded by it

on all sides. When will you finally leave your house, Mr

Eleveld?’

‘Ferry Island,’ Willem Eleveld said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Ferry Island isn’t a municipality.’

‘Ferry Island. When will you leave your house, Mr Eleveld?’

‘It’ll go down again. No bother for us.’

‘Well, then that’s a blessing in disguise, as it were. Thank you

very much, Mr Eleveld of Lomark, I hope you all stay dry out

there!’

‘No problem.’

January 1 arrived, there’d been a little drinking the night before, a few fireworks had been shot off, and now everyone was sound asleep, ready to wake up later in a shitty mood in a new year. The river had gone down some and was frozen hard, and the washlands lay beneath a layer of perfect ice on which the sun conjured up deep-golden flames by day — but now it was still night, and I was on the dyke, straining my eyes in the dark. Joe and Christof had just skated away into the blackness, shoes in hand. Today Joe was going to try to get the plane off the ground for the first time. Murmuring in the darkness they had pushed off, until all I could hear was the scratching of their blades growing wispier and wispier.

When I got cold I started rolling the chair back and forth, back and forth. The sun was taking a long time to come up. I decided to go for it: the other shore, I wanted to be there, to see the takeoff up close. I rolled down to the Lange Nek, to the red-and-white-striped barrier gate where the road disappeared under the ice, and out onto the river there. I’d never wheeled on ice before. No wonder it made me a little nervous at first, but once you got out there it was no big deal — just the feeling that you could skid at any moment, and your tyres slipping every time you yanked on the handle. In the almost complete absence of friction, progress was easy. A fuzzy strip of purple light was rising behind the Bethlehem Asphalt grounds, and I was all alone on that huge expanse. I might as well have been a downed aviator in the desert. The silence was bewitching, and I was in no hurry to get to the shed.

Lately I’d noticed a few more signs of life in my own body; I’d even made a deal with myself to get out of the chair and start learning to walk a little. It may sound strange, but my plan was to jump-start this old wreck of a locomotor apparatus — I was about to turn seventeen, had an erection now and then, but I was so damned spastic that self-gratification was almost out of the question. Somehow, though, I sensed that my body held a certain potential — limited though it might be — for finer motor development and, who knows, maybe even a form of non-wheeled propulsion. I had actually started a secret exercise program a while back that consisted of holding onto the table or my bed with my right hand while shuffling across the floor on my knees, keeping my torso upright all the while. That may not seem like much to you, but it’s important to realize that what I was doing here, in fact, was re-enacting the entire course of evolution, all by my lonesome — this was what one might call the amphibious phase. I had just emerged from the primal ooze and could start thinking about holding my head up higher.

When I moved around the room like that it looked like I was doing some kind of penance; if Ma had seen me I know she would have rejoiced at another of her prayers being answered, quoting Isaiah and saying, ‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing,’ and so on, because some people would rather see wonders than willpower.

Whatever muscles I had left had to be revitalized. For years my body had been lying around in bed and slouching in its chair with no idea whether it was capable of more. My rehabilitation specialist hadn’t held out much hope, it’s true, but that was such a long time ago. I was older now, and sometimes you have to hand yourself an assignment. And when unreasoned optimism starts coursing through your bloodstream, that’s the time to do it.