Authors: Peter Buwalda
Too nauseous and blinded to drive, I maneuvered the Alfa into the first possible lay-by, turned off the engine, and rested my head
on the steering wheel. All I had in my purse was paracetamol, no Imigran, which is what I needed now. The box was already empty before I left for California. There might be some ibuprofen 600 on the boat. I put on my sunglasses, but the frenzied flickering was on the inside: thoughtburn. I swallowed three paracetamols and concentrated as best I could on Christmas in Val-d’Isère.
The baby would fix everything
. I didn’t tell Boudewijn, simply because he didn’t have a damn thing to do with it—but this idea did, in the end, keep me from having the abortion. Night after night I lay on the communal sofa of the pueblo, tossing pine cones into the fireplace (the strange hardness of the scales, their crackle and hiss as soon as the flames flared up and made short work of them), brooding, reasoning,
feeling
; and the more my waist vanished and my belly swelled, the more I realized what a
trump card
I had in my hand. For the first time since the sliding glass door I allowed thoughts of Corsica in, tried to recall the emotions of the vacation. We knew full well what we were doing when we made love. On the boat, on the way back in Nancy.
We wanted this child
. It wasn’t conceived by mistake. I knew Aaron would acknowledge paternity at once, he would put everything aside to raise the child. And damn it, it was on its way—irrevocable. And wouldn’t this irrevocability cancel out that other irrevocability? A child, Aaron’s and mine … Did I realize what I was doing? I lay there on a sofa in Silicon Valley making Siem a
grandfather
. And after fully realizing that, I knew without a doubt: this thing in my belly would be stronger than what drove us apart. We’d become father and mother and grandpa. I would birth us back together.
The fires of purgatory subsided. I drove 160 kph all the way to Hyères, where the freeway ended and the headache began. The coastal road that looked so enticingly short on the map turned out to be a small intestine: endless hairpin turns and rocky cliffs, I
had to constantly alternate between gas and brake. Rather than its azure sparkle, the Mediterranean showed its true colors: an indifferent black drink. I lowered a window, the ice-cold sea air screwed itself into my throbbing temples. Saint-Tropez exit, now that’s more like it. As soon as I reached Sainte-Maxime I’d coast straight to the marina, park the Alfa as close as possible to the
Barbara Ann
. In my thoughts I dived into the water and swam like a dolphin toward the medicine chest.
I wove around a cliff and suddenly, way down to the right, saw the slender little white boats alongside what looked like endless tables set for dinner. I drove too fast across a bridge and descended to where the tortuous
route nationale
turned into the beachfront boulevard. By now I was howling from the pain, a monotonous yammer.
Winter was very much in charge here; chairs were stacked and parasols tightly wound shut on the café terraces opposite the moorings. I had my choice of parking spots. I killed the engine—silence at last—and rolled my head and shoulders. For a few seconds I knew for sure I was going to throw up. Breathe calmly. Hair loose,
now
. Catch your breath, swallow, just swallow it back. I took a swig of mineral water and got out.
The sea wind blew straight through my coat and what little I had on underneath. Where was that sloop? The glazed kitsch that the marina exuded at the height of summer had gone into hibernation. The rows of winterized yachts displayed themselves at their hardest, the pleated white plastic, the polished wood, the tinted windows that were meant to express speed and exclusivity—floating insults, that’s what they were, we’d given the middle finger to soberness and self-restraint.
Aaron threw a wrench into everything. What kind of father would he make? Who would let that kind of guy become a father?
It had all seemed so logical, the two of us showing up in Val-d’Isère unannounced, you couldn’t really call it a surprise anymore, it would … I walked along the stone paving to the marina office, a low white building with a roof deck. The door was locked: in offseason it was open only between three and five. So much the better, no stammering in French to an unintelligible harbor master. I had pictured us making our surprise entrance at Hans and Ria’s, waltzing into that gingerbread house of theirs, serious but excited. I glanced at myself in the reflection of the office window: spikes of tousled hair framed a face like sweaty old cheese that begged for sympathy. The same girl that cycled from home to the campus in a free fall to Mommy. I’d inherited the migraines from her, but she gave me no sympathy. “I get headaches too sometimes, Joni. You really
can
talk
normally
.”
If he saw me like this, his elder daughter with a pregnant body, everything between us would simply evaporate, I was sure of it. We needn’t say a word about last summer, or maybe in fact we
should
, those million-year-old mountains might be just the place to get it out in the open. We could do whatever we wanted. We would do what was best. And after New Year’s, Aaron and I would get into the car and drive to the farmhouse. And just like after the fireworks disaster, we’d stay. And I would give birth in my parents’ farmhouse.
My temples throbbing, I fished the keys to the cabin out of my purse and walked up the third pier; if I remembered correctly we were moored at the very end. And yes, around a forty-five-degree bend in the walkway, among the rest of the big boys, I spotted the undulating of a familiar tush.
Barbara Ann
’s high-class ass. I picked up speed as I walked along the black water, gritting my teeth against the screech of a million seagulls. The painkillers were up on the deck, in one of the compartments in the wheelhouse, or
else in the bathroom of the big cabin in the nose of the boat. “Hi Babs,” Aaron would always say as he climbed onto the stern, and I caught myself parroting him. The steps up to the sun deck were covered in gull shit; brownish water had collected in the gutters and corners. If only I could pull the tarp off the purple sunbeds and lie down. Instead, I opened the doors of the pilothouse. Not without regret: I recalled how the Palmer Johnson instructor had taught Aaron and me how to maneuver these twenty meters of luxury safely in and out of harbors in just a week.
I sat down on one of the leather captain’s chairs and opened a cupboard next to the rudder. The first-aid kit. Band-aids, gauze, scissors, Aaron’s temazepam—
ibuprofen
. I ripped open the sachet and washed it down with a few gulps of mineral water. And now, flat out. The guy would be showing up in just over four hours. So what if it’s messy. I pictured myself on the large round bed, felt the luxuriant lift of the mattress, shades drawn, telephone off.
I went down the stairs, too fast maybe, because as I passed the U-shaped sofa in the salon I had to grab the edge of the table. Vomit filled my mouth. I staggered into the kitchen and puked into the sink. The fancy faucet ran as though it was last used yesterday; I rinsed my mouth, hoping I hadn’t puked up the magic powder. In fact it really was a hell of a mess down here, you could see we took off back home in a hurry: two crumpled-up swimsuits of Aaron’s; dishes, washed but not put away; tools I had no idea we’d ever used. On the dining table, an open bottle of uncorked rosé.
How sick was Aaron? How unwelcome was this surprise now? What was I supposed to tell them about the father of my child?
Beyond the salon was a guest cabin you had to pass through to get to the master suite, a roomy sluice with two sofa beds, never used, ditto the smallish shower cubicle. I squeezed through it and opened the door at the other end. Only now did I smell my own
puke-breath: a heavy, sweet-rotten smell. A few steps later I reached the bed; on it was a pair of high heels and, unfortunately, just a thin sheet. I dropped the water bottle, sank onto my left side and buried my head into one of the pillows. I lay there for only thirty seconds, until I nearly suffocated.
So would it be “all’s well that ends well” after all? Would a grandpa and a mother alone be enough to make this work?
Don’t think, just relax. I took my head out from under the pillow. God, what a smell. The sound of the seagulls, the rustle of the waves in the bay farther up, the traffic on the quay had all but vanished, and I sank away as though gravity doubled over on itself; I was driving in a car along dark, narrow roads, familiar surroundings, it looked like the campus, I plowed the Alfa through arid farmland, it was rough going, the wheels got stuck, strangely enough I became incredibly tired. In the distance I saw someone whom I recognized as Aaron, his bald head gleaming in the moonlight, shining over the sand beds like a second moon. He looked happy, his sheepskin coat was wide open. “Where have you been?” he called out.
It felt like I’d slept for hours, but was probably more like a few comatose minutes. The headache spread to my shoulders and neck, I turned my head the other way.
Maybe it was that unreal smell that drew my eyes along the glossy wood of the wardrobes toward the floor, the hesitant start of an exploratory glance. A piece of clothing caught my eye, it lay like a red river of fabric on the cream-colored carpeting. Intriguing, that hundredth of a second, the fraction during which unsuspecting becomes suspecting. Your brain sends SOS messages at neuron-speed to all parts of your body, to your muscles, your sweat glands, your heart, your lungs—I had to catch my breath. My eyes followed that river upstream: the coat—it was a heavy red
coat—was lodged in the matt-glass bathroom door, forcing it ajar. It did not belong there. I kept staring at it, paralyzed. I lay there for six months, maybe even a year, my eyes glued to that coat—and then I slowly got up.
My headache was gone, that’s how fast the blood drained from my brain. There was someone in the bathroom. A junkie with Christmas plans. A serial killer with Christmas plans. With two soft steps I stood at the door and pulled it farther open. The same terrible stench hit me like a ton of bricks. The bathroom was disproportionately huge, design overkill that played on the nouveau-riche thirst for luxury: suspended toilet, his-and-her washbasins, bathtub, water-tight shower whose sliding glass door, I noticed at once, was open.
The next moment there were flies—a swarm of metallic flies, a pestilential cloud that lifted off and, as if on command, alighted again. Pinching my nose, I approached the shower. The flies clung to a body that hung from a noose of orange nylon, the rope we used to fasten the boat. It was clothed; the torso was like soaked fruit in a lambswool sweater—it looked set to explode. The shins—swollen, festering, moist—bulged above the thick-laced hiking boots. The inside of the cubicle was smeared with dark wetness; in the corner, a toppled bucket. The head—
his
head. The rope, tied with a sturdy knot onto the hinge of the open vent, pulled it skew, the neck had an unnatural kink. The face—
I choked back my vomit. Aside from being bluish-green, the face was swollen, the tongue stuck out of the twisted, grimacing mouth. On the chin, a whopper of a scab. The left eye was closed, but not the right one, it bulged out. It was more out than in. It stared as though it had collected all the torment and agony that a person could suffer.
I puked before I reached the toilet. The contents of my stomach
sloshed onto the plastic floor tiles between the cubicle and the bowl. I squatted, gagged twice more and stood back up. My head. My heart was up in my skull. I went over to the washbasins and turned on the faucet.
“Don’t cry, God damn it. Don’t.”
Cold water. I rinsed my mouth and my face. I stared into the drain. Paper: a piece of paper stuck out of his breast pocket. Had I seen it right? An envelope, a napkin?
I mustered all my courage and turned around. I took a step toward the shower. Without looking at the face, I reached for the breast pocket, first came up against the dead chest, felt the sluggish weight, and jerked back my hand. Panting, I grabbed hold of the doorpost. “Dad. What—” Then I took the body by the hips and held it tight.
It was an envelope. I brought it with me through the bedroom and upstairs to the deck. I sat down on the bench in the pilothouse and caught my breath. I tried to breathe normally, focusing on a red buoy off in the distance, where the bay met the ocean. Only when I started freezing—half an hour later, an hour?—did I look at my hand that still clasped the envelope. It was a standard size, it looked like it contained a postcard. My belly felt heavy. I tried to tear it open, but my fingers were trembling. And my head was about to explode. I laid the envelope on the table and got up.
Suicide?
What had happened to the fighter? I tipped a second packet of ibuprofen into my mouth and forced the powder down with spit.
Suddenly there was the barrage of questions, stupid ones and idiotic ones all jumbled up together. How did he get in? Did he have a key? Why did this have to happen? Did he already have the key when we got back from vacation? Did I have a knife? Or
scissors. Couldn’t leave him hanging there like that. Why did he do it? Has anyone missed him yet? Mom? His department? Those flies had to go. Is it my fault? I had to lay him on the bed. That rope around his neck. Call the police?
Why didn’t you call me?
I had to go into Sainte-Maxime to find a police station. I had to call Val-d’Isère.
But I didn’t get up, I stayed put. “If you really had such a problem with it, Dad,” I said, “why didn’t you
fuck
ing come take it out on me?”
With barely functioning fingers, I opened the envelope. There was indeed a card inside, a repro of an old Sainte-Maxime poster, I’d bought it that summer and left it lying there, Jugendstil with a palm tree and a beach. Something was written in pen on the back; through my tears I could make out his surprisingly childlike handwriting. Instead of reading it, I tore the card into little pieces and threw the scraps overboard.
At Venlo he crosses the Meuse. Large ice floes hug the edge of the graphite water, a long barge carrying mountains of beige sand keeps a middle course. On both meandering banks he sees the provincial clusters where thousands of families will soon be waking up to the gray December light; for yet another consecutive night the snow covering has thickened. Aaron’s parents: didn’t they live in Venlo? He met them once, in their son’s house. Mild people with mild opinions. He should call Val-d’Isère, he had promised to call before leaving home. A message from a mild husband with mild opinions. As long as it keeps freezing. He rolls down the back window a bit farther.