Erwin Mortier - My Fellow Skin

I still dream of him some nights. The images are becoming blurred, but the body is unmistakably his. His arms draw me close. His chest heaves calmly against my back. I feel the old rush of pleasure as his arms tighten their grip, gently but firmly, and then I wake up, only to find myself in the same bleak emptiness as on that Saturday when Roland drove into the yard in the early morning.

He had rented a van for transporting the heaviest items of furniture. I had lain awake most of the night, and watched the day dawn in its accustomed, lethargic way, peeling the darkness off the walls so that the place became awash with the vibrant red of an early autumn morning, quiet and compelling.

I got out of bed and went over to the window. I saw my cousin clamber down from the front of the van. He was wearing brown overalls with a zip up the front, and he whistled as he went round to unlock the back. My mother was already up; I’d heard her dry little cough as she passed my door on her way downstairs. Soon afterwards the smell of coffee floated from the kitchen through the rooms, most of which were already bare.

They noticed my sadness. Roland rambled on about which items would have to be loaded first and whether there were sufficient blankets and ropes to hand, while I sat and stared vacantly at the table in front of me, astounded that things could go on as if nothing had happened, that the world didn’t stop and hold its breath, not even for a second. I could barely swallow a mouthful.

There was a silence when I left to go back upstairs, and I knew my father would be laying his hand on my mother’s, that he would look at her and no doubt heave a deep sigh once I turned my back.

I sat on the edge of my bed. I could hear my mother going from room to room opening boxes, rummaging in them and shutting them again.

She pushed the door open and said, “I’ll press a suit for you to wear, shall I?”

I could tell she was upset, and nodded.

“I’ll do your grey one. It suits you so well. And you’d do better to wear your black shoes — I’ve given them a polish. They’ll look better than the brown pair.”

On my way to the bathroom, I passed Roland and my father in the passage, heaving a dresser between them. Roland was in front, and my father, red-faced, begged him to slow down by the step.

She’d put out an extra towel, and there was a bottle of eau de Cologne on the shelf beneath the mirror.

I turned on the taps and listened intently to the water rushing in the pipes, gurgling past the occasional bubble of trapped air. Then I poured soap into the tub and stirred the water to make foam.

My body hesitated as I stepped gingerly into the bath, avoiding contact with the tiles on the wall, and gave a little shudder as the warmth chased goose pimples up my arms.

I stretched out. Let myself slide under water, heard my skin rub against the sides.

“The first load’s ready to go,” Roland called out from downstairs. The doors of the van slammed, the engine revved, then the sound died away over the dyke.

They must have closed the coffin by now, I thought. Probably yesterday evening, last night maybe, who knows, perhaps it was happening at this very moment, with everyone there, his father, his mother, Katrien, all of them watching the shadow sliding across his forehead as the lid was lowered, without him raising his bandaged hands to fend it off.

I tried to lie completely still, like him, with the water covering me like a shield. I listened to the beating of my heart, until suddenly my body lunged upright with a great splash and my lungs filled themselves to bursting with an abandon that left me distraught.

I stood up and slipped my bathrobe on. Crossed over to the washbasin. Wet my cheeks. Rubbed shaving soap on them. Took the razor in my hands.

In the mirror I saw a haggard face with a snow-white beard. A body that seemed versed in being old and bent, shuffling down a corridor in a home somewhere in soggy slippers, dressing gown untied, complaining bitterly to the nurses for being late with breakfast. In his eyes a look of resignation which, over the years, had dulled every glint of former happiness and made it futile.

Willem loomed in my mind’s eye. I became very angry. You’ve robbed me, I thought. You’ve stuffed my days in your inside pocket as if they were old letters, and next you’ll hurl yourself on the fire like an old handbag.

*

I was almost done when there was a knock at the door and my father called my name.

“Come on in,” I said, “I’m nearly ready anyway.”

He had slung his vest over his shoulder, and was sweating profusely.

“That cousin of yours seems to think I’m a lad of twenty,” he chuckled, and went on, “Take your time. I can wait.”

I sat down on the lavatory seat, stared at nothing, rocked to and fro. I felt my testicles shrink, my stomach contract.

In spite of everything I felt sort of hungry. I’d have a slice of bread, I thought. Have a crap before leaving. Have another wash tonight. Cut my nails for the umpteenth time. Wipe my armpits with a towel. Brush my teeth. Routinely reflect that my ears were far too big. Time and again. Twice daily the small irritations of the oldest marriage in my personal history.

“Anton?”

My father was towelling himself dry.

I raised my eyes.

Our eyes met in the mirror.

“It’ll pass, you know,” he said.

My eyes prickled.

He bundled his towel on the rack self-consciously. Came towards me, took my chin in his hands.

After a pause he said, “Nothing you can do about it.”

“I know.”

He tried to strike a lighter note. “The least you can do for that poor boy is get a decent shave.”

His thumb slid across my jaw, my lower lip.

“There’s still some stubble.”

He wet his hands, took the tube of shaving cream from the shelf and spread a fresh layer on my face.

“Chin up.”

He steered my face to the right with his fingertips, then laid the razor against my cheek.

“You should just go with the flow. Follow the natural line, then you won’t cut yourself so easily.”

He touched the skin beneath my ear lobe and showed me his fingertip smeared with blood. He fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette paper to staunch the flow.

“I’ll put some aftershave on it later,” I said.

He knocked the foam off the razor, held it under the tap, resumed shaving. I could see his eyes narrowly following his fingers.

One day I would tell him things that would pain him as superficially as cuts from a razor blade, although the wounds would sting for longer. He would be left with questions that would itch like old mosquito bites every time he saw me arriving alone in my car, no kids to be scooped up from the back seat and hung around his shoulders like a garland of flowers. From that day on, too, he would suffer from niggling insecurities in his chest about having said too little to me or too much, while his silences spoke more volumes than entire libraries, enough for me to read for the rest of my life.

I watched him put the razor away and hold his hands under the tap. His stomach sagged over his trouser belt. The hair on his chest seemed to be thinning. He was a smooth, marbled pebble, all the sharpness worn down, gleaming in the sunlight. A safe place for him would be in the palm of my hand. I’d take good care of him.

He shook the drops off his fingers.

“At least you look respectable now,” he said. “You’d better rinse that foam off your ears.”

I stepped past him to the washbasin. Leaned over. He laid his hand on my back.

When I looked up he had gone.

*

The grey suit lay at the foot of my bed. It evoked a sense of expectation, the buzz of weddings or garden parties, which I found disturbing as I slipped my arms into the sleeves of the jacket with the shoulder pads that made me look twice as broad.