{"id":26534,"date":"2017-01-04T11:08:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T10:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=26534"},"modified":"2017-08-03T14:29:19","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T13:29:19","slug":"sample-translation-a-beautiful-young-wife","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/tommy-wieringa\/tommy-wieringa-a-beautiful-young-wife\/sample-translation-a-beautiful-young-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – A Beautiful Young Wife<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tommy Wieringa –\u00a0A Beautiful Young Wife<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He rowed. She sat on the little bench at the back of the boat. There was almost no current. The fields turned gradually to woods. Old, tall trees, individuals with names of their own. As they went gliding between round, mossy banks, mansions shimmered through the greenery. private property, no mooring. He thought about the families with their mysterious names; they had not held up, the weight of all the possessions and history had broken their backs. The chronicles stood written in mold on the damp walls. Great lawyers and statesmen had stepped forward from their ranks, men who had shaped the nation and passed it along in good shape to the next generation. That permanency, that was over and done with. Their great-grandchildren had become bankers and writers, their lives dedicated to their own.<\/p>\n

The green folded closed above their heads, the crowns shot through with arrows of prismatic light. He rowed soundlessly. Where the oars disappeared into the water there arose silky purls of black and silver. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up. She thought his arms were nice.<\/p>\n

They slid back into daylight. On the shore they spread a blanket and lifted their faces to the late sun. Behind them was a cherry orchard, covered in green netting. He unpacked the basket and she asked: \u201cDid you make all this yourself?\u201d Little sandwiches. A salad, the dressing kept apart. \u201cI love purslane,\u201d he said. \u201cIt tastes the way earth smells.\u201d<\/p>\n

When they had eaten a bit she said, \u201cCome on, let\u2019s go buy some cherries.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wore a white cotton dress, her legs were tanned. At the entrance to the orchard, a woman in an apron was sitting in a little shelter. Edward bought a pound of cherries. They were crisp and sweet, the spring had been warm and dry. They walked back to the river and spit the pits as far away as they could.<\/p>\n

They drank wine and talked about her sociology study that wasn\u2019t going well, and about the trips he took, the conferences he attended. He looked at her. Did she realize that she was drinking a bone-dry Apremont, perfect for an occasion like this? She scratched her leg. White furrows appeared beneath her nails.<\/p>\n

The evening after he comes up and talks to her in the cafe, she types his name in the search box. She sees pictures of him at international gatherings, apparently some bigwig in virology. He\u2019s taller than the rest. She thinks a beard looks good on him. A few days later there\u2019s an invitation in the mailbox, for an outing with the boat. That same day she responds with a postcard.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As darkness starts to fall he is the first to climb into the boat. He reaches out to her. She grabs his hand, takes a giant step. He rows back, the current stronger than he\u2019d thought. In the darkness beneath the trees he wants to stay right in midstream and correct as little as possible, it needs to be perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait a minute,\u201d she says after a while. She leans forward and places her hand on his. He stops rowing. \u201cHear that?\u201d she whispers. \u201cSo quiet… Not even a bird.\u201d Only the drops falling from the oars. Just before they touch the bank he brings the left oar alongside and lets it rest in the water. Standing up, she says: \u201cPermission to leave ship?\u201d They clamber up onto the bank and he ties the boat. She disappears between the tall, smooth trunks, her white hair fluorescent and enticing. A creature that brings misfortune to those who follow her song, deeper and deeper into the woods.<\/p>\n

The English country garden belongs to the mansion further along, tucked away amid the trees. The windows are darkened, there is no sign of life. He\u2019ll buy it for her and look at it from a distance each day, by nightfall, an illuminated beehive. That\u2019s where he will live and make children with this glorious woman, one child for each room.<\/p>\n

She excites him incredibly, but he doesn\u2019t want to ruin it by being too greedy, by revealing his desperate longing. More than ever, he realizes now, being in love connects him with the boy he once was, with the first time, his mouth dry and his heart pounding, the first time of all first times that followed. He never married and was never with the same woman for long, he has always remained a collector of first times. Now he is forty-two and knows for a fact that everything has gone the way it\u2019s gone only in order to bring him to this girl.<\/p>\n

She laughs as she reappears among the trees, a light-footed, heathen goddess. \u201cThis is such a wonderful place,\u201d she says. She speaks rather softly, as though the trees and the grass might hear. When she stands on tiptoe and kisses him, he has the confusing feeling that she went into the woods to consult with others of her kind, nymphs like her, gathered around the black reflecting pool.<\/p>\n

They lie on the humid bed of grass and moss and make love slowly, with the timidity of bodies not yet fully acquainted. So soon, so soon, a voice inside him says. Her willingness makes him dizzy with happiness. The thrill at the back of his throat at her young body, a dash of light on the forest floor. Haste creeps into his movements, hunger. He forgets all he knows, hurried as a boy he licks her belly, her salty sex, in abandon, as though he has drunk too much. Later, when he drives into her and leans on his arms, she writhes beneath him. He thrusts into her, she laughs and says \u201cI wondered when you\u2019d get there\u201d. Her experience surprises him, he has forgotten that people her age already know everything.<\/p>\n

Their bodies, covered by the green half-light. Sweat that grows cold, semen contracting on skin. She lies on her side, in the shelter of his arm, his hands resting on her buttocks. \u201cToo bad you don\u2019t smoke,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been told,\u201d he says, \u201cthat artists feel like they\u2019re further along than their predecessors. That they look at their work and think they\u2019ve outstripped history. A feeling of… liberation. And triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n

He grins. \u201cLiberation and triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s silent for a moment. \u201cYou mean, like now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNice guy,\u201d she says. And, a little later: \u201cAnd what about the next part?\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich part\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe part where it never gets any better than this?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When the opportunity presented itself, he took Ruth along to a medical ski conference in Aspen. At the airport a driver waited, holding aloft a sign. mr & mrs landauer. Not much later Ruth was standing at the window of their hotel room, looking out over the silent white mountains. Edward lay on the bed, his hands folded behind his head, happy as a gangster who has just covered his moll beneath a flurry of banknotes.<\/p>\n

She turned. \u201cWho\u2019s paying for all of this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlaxoSmithKline,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

She looked outside again. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a clue,\u201d she said to the glass. \u201cWe really don\u2019t have a clue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the morning he attended lectures and mingled with old acquaintances. Speakers appeared wearing their ski outfits. The last speaker of the day already had his goggles pushed up on his forehead and said: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, I\u2019m going to be brief, because of course you all want to get out on the slopes as quickly as possible…\u201d Laughter from a thousand throats.<\/p>\n

Edward and Ruth brunched on waffles with maple syrup, blueberries and poached eggs, and didn\u2019t take the chairlift up until far past noon. Neither of them could ski very well. His joints bothered him. After a few runs, in the chairlift again, she laid her head on his shoulder and said that something like this, this fantastic view, would have seemed impossible to her when she was little and growing up in Bozum, where mountain landscapes sometimes appeared on the horizon \u2013 but those were clouds that disappeared after a while, leaving you in that green vastness with only a steeple here and there.<\/p>\n

Even back then, she told him on the deck with a valley view where they sat that afternoon, the farmers had tended to keep their cows inside as much as possible, in the spring and summer too \u2013 only the rare dairyman let his cows out to pasture. They simply didn\u2019t care. But her vegetarianism, the decisive moment, only came after she had slept over at a girlfriend\u2019s house and heard the pigs being taken away in the middle of the night. Their screams as they were herded into the trucks was so unspeakably horrible that that night a deep awareness of the suffering of other species had been carved into her soul. An animal that screamed like that knew everything. It possessed a form of consciousness of its fate and experienced a fear for which no comfort existed. She had understood that wordlessly. That night, a boundary between her and all other things living on this earth had been lifted, and once that happened there was no going back.<\/p>\n

There was no distance between the little girl who felt sorrow about these things and the woman who related her memories to him in the snow.<\/p>\n

Edward had heard the story before, with slight variations and additions, he forgave her the repetition. He did his best to empathize with the life of the soul of a nine-year-old girl, but sometimes thought back in regret on the things that had vanished from his repertoire, the scaloppine al limone<\/em> and the lamb chops with a crust of breadcrumbs and Parmesan, dishes with which he had impressed others.<\/p>\n

A little more than two years ago, not long after they met, he had bought a few vegetarian cookbooks and adopted her dietary laws at home; she was resolute when it came to meat, but would eat shellfish by exception. An advantage was that he had lost more than twelve pounds during their first six months together. The hope that he would lose even more weight was in vain; he remained bobbing somewhere around two hundred and twenty, which was still a good forty pounds too much for a man his height.<\/p>\n

Early on in her student days, Ruth had prepared macrobiotic meals in the common kitchen of a squat, but was quickly banished to waiting on tables when she proved to have no talent for cooking. On a few occasions they\u2019d had friends from her old activist milieu over for dinner. Their vegetarianism had something barren and whiny about it, Edward thought, whereas hers seemed pure and noble.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By five that afternoon they were back on the valley floor. Ruth went to the hotel, he still had a few duties to perform. A poster session at the conference center. Snow still clinging to their shoes, gin-and-tonics in hand, the researchers strolled past the posters. Two young post-docs from his institute, the best of their batch, had arrived in Aspen the night before. The girl, unfortunately, was not very pretty; good looks were always an advantage. Long ago, when he was still a teaching assistant, he had stood in front of a poster at the Amsterdam research institute with a hockey girl from Laren \u2013 flattered, but a bit offended for form\u2019s sake, she had said: \u201cI\u2019ve been offered three internships in the space of two hours!\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the evening he and the post-docs walked from the conference center to the hotel. The session had gone well, a man from a pharmaceuticals company had been enthusiastic about their method to promote the efficient mutation of viruses, and there had been interest in the neutralizing antibodies that could wipe out a whole group of viruses at one swoop. It was the only research project Edward still took part in. The virus he was dealing with had originated in factory farming \u2013 minor outbreaks had been reported, the damage had remained limited. A few dead animals, the clearance of potentially infected stock \u2013 the who and the Food and Agriculture Organization worked quickly and efficiently. Doing research reminded him of his Amsterdam years, but to his regret it never assumed quite the same sense of urgency. Maybe he was just no longer capable of such feelings, because his heart was slowly guttering and dying.<\/p>\n

They were already on their second round by the time Ruth came into the hotel bar. She was wearing a Norwegian sweater and shiny white trousers. He still didn\u2019t feel, he realized, like she was really his. It was as though he hadn\u2019t won her heart, but acquired her by theft. Something about her aroused a hunger in him, and excitement. There were women who never lost that, that sense of something blossoming and healthy. As they grew older their blonde hair only changed a few tints and they became gray-blonde, like Linda Evans in Dynasty<\/em>. No one in their group, he realized, would know who Linda Evans was. Their youth had known other celebrities.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should take a couple of lessons,\u201d the male post-doc was telling Ruth, \u201cthen it goes by leaps and bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterally,\u201d his female colleague said.<\/p>\n

Edward didn\u2019t like seeing her with people her own age. It revealed what had happened in the time they\u2019d been together: she had not made him younger, because of him she became older. In the company of her peers she took on her true age, light and sparkling, while he remained behind on his island in the distant future, grumbling through his whiskers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Ruth just didn\u2019t get pregnant, they went in for a fertility test. Edward jerked off in a hospital room, with well-thumbed smut and a silent movie from the prehistory of pornography bouncing across the screen. He closed his eyes and thought about Marjolein van Unen\u00a0 popping the snaps on her lab coat, one by one. Her breasts, skin glistening with youth. She leans back on her stool, her back against the fume cupboard, and lets him go in…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The receptionist jotted down his particulars on a label, which she then stuck to the pot, so that his seed would not be taken for that of the North African who sat beside him, expressionless as a piece of fruit. A little later they passed each other, driving at a snail\u2019s pace across the parking lot, the North African in a weathered Fiat, he in his Volkswagen Touareg. His sperm may have been as worthless as an immigrant\u2019s, but his car was\u00a0 a cut above.<\/p>\n

Only thirty-five percent of his cells were viable, the gynecologist told him a few weeks later,\u00a0 \u201cmore or less the percentage you\u2019d expect from a truck driver\u201d. The bulletin board behind the doctor\u2019s back was hung with birth announcements. Joy, joy. He told Edward about his research, which focused on exceptionally fertile men. \u201cIf you want to find out what makes Porsches so good,\u201d he said, \u201cthen you need to study Porsches, not Trabants.\u201d
\nThey left the office, after the gynecologist had told them about the future they could expect: a route that would lead them in mounting degrees of despair past the wonders of modern assisted-reproductive technology. Intrauterine insemination, in-vitro fertilization, and if even that didn\u2019t work there was always icsi, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which the most lively sperm cells were fished out from among all the dead material and injected into the plasma of the egg cell. Two fertilized egg cells were then replaced in the uterus, which accounted for the preponderance of twins born after this treatment. In the parking garage she ran her index finger over his crotch and said: \u201cA Trabant<\/em>, honey-pie?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dutifulness crept into their sex life. They made love with awkward bodies, Ruth kept track of when they had to. Abstaining from alcohol on weekdays made him so grumpy that she would shout: \u201cWell then open a bottle of wine, for Christ\u2019s sake!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the evening, when they stood before the bathroom mirror, he saw a young woman and an old man. At age fifty every man has the face he deserves, Orwell had said, but Edward was convinced that that moment had already arrived on the cusp of his forty-eighth birthday. There were days when it looked as though he had never wiped the sleep from his eyes.<\/p>\n

He and Ruth, he noted, had slid gradually into a tragic vortex of age. She had adapted to fit his years, rather than his personality. Yes, that\u2019s how it had gone: she became older because of him, and he got even older\u00a0 than he was because of her. When naked in front of her, he was careful not to bend down from the waist, for then his belly and breasts seemed to separate from his frame and dangle in shapeless pleats; he would squat instead to pick up the cap of the toothpaste tube. He tried not to groan aloud when he did so.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this was his pain, he thought, the pain the Buddha had called the principal source of suffering: the acute awareness of decay. With a wife his own age that would have been different, he suspected; they would have grown old together in dignity and closed their eyes discreetly to each other\u2019s decline.<\/p>\n

Ruth and he would not grow old together. He already was that, and would not, if the general demographic precepts held true, become old enough to see her do so. What he would have given to be able to return to the very beginning, before things like this began to torture him so. The triumph he had felt at that evening\u2019s conquest! But now, six years later, he knew it was a victory that could never be claimed. What had started as a triumph was now an unequal battle.<\/p>\n

Each morning he took a handful of pills, the benefits of which had been proven only barely or not at all. He was vaguely ashamed of his unreasoned belief that seaweed, ginseng and royal jelly could provide him with youth and strength, but put this in perspective by recalling how Herman Wigboldus had wiped his feet on the patch of lawn before his house.<\/p>\n

For the rest he bore as little similarity to his old mentor as he did to Jaap Gerson, forceful personages both who felt that happiness was their just desert. Like paratroopers they dropped on life and took it by force. God, such nonchalant power, Edward thought \u2013 power he knew he could imitate but did not actually possess. He could seduce a woman with its intimation, but not convince her in the long run.<\/p>\n

Ruth had been in the shower for a long time, a sign that she was getting ready to have sex with him. He wondered whether he was capable of summoning up the requisite lust. Maybe if he licked her first.<\/p>\n

She rubbed a peephole in the steamy shower door and pressed her nose against it. He planted a kiss on it. \u201cI\u2019ll be there in a minute,\u201d she said from beneath the hissing spray. He lay in bed, toying with his organ in the hope of instilling a little life into it already.<\/p>\n

He remembered well what it was like to get a hard-on just by pointing at it, as opposed to that result of focused efforts which he had once heard Ruth described as \u201chardish\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only head start I have on you,\u201d he once told his students, \u201cis that I know what it\u2019s like to be you, while you haven\u2019t the faintest idea what it\u2019s like to be me. That\u2019s our only advantage, otherwise the world is furnished to accommodate you people. We may hold the buying power, you possess the far more valuable capital of the future, whatever that may turn out to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Ruth slid in beside him a little later and whispered \u201csorry, love, you\u2019re on duty again\u201d, he cursed the fact, and not for the first time, that one could grow accustomed to a beauty even as exceptional as hers. Everything became humdrum, and what was habituation if not death\u2019s gate? Her beauty didn\u2019t lead inevitably to randiness; on the contrary, someone like Marjolein van Unen excited him with undeniably more urgency than his own wife, who was a thousand times prettier. And with that girl in mind \u2013 the finger he slid up her butthole \u2013 he was able to live up to his obligations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As\u00a0 socio-psychological research at the University of Nijmegen had shown, the chance of a male being unfaithful during his wife\u2019s pregnancy was twenty-seven times greater than at any other point in a marriage. Whereas a man contained himself as well as he could during his wife\u2019s periods of illness and recovery \u2013 and, more generally, during the slow but certain process of the loss of beauty and vitality – during her pregnancy he went all-out. The periodic sexual obsession of his bloated wife frightened him, her protruding labia and excessively slimy cunt made him a bit nauseous. In addition, he experienced the clear and generally quite correct premonition that after the child was born his life would be more or less over \u2013 all the reason one could need to commit adultery.<\/p>\n

After a departmental boat tour of Amsterdam\u2019s canals and the River IJ, followed by drinks at Hoppe\u2019s on the Spui, Edward decided not to take the night train back to Utrecht, but to go by taxi. Beside him in the back seat was Marjolein van Unen. As they kissed, she opened his zipper and jerked him off until he almost came. He had enough self-control to push her hand away in time. They had the cabby drop them at the central station and found a public toilet. Fishing a one-euro coin from his pocket, he thought: a euro to take a piss is fairly steep, but a euro for a fuck is a real bargain. He locked the door behind them and pulled off her trousers and panties. She sat down on the toilet bowl and leaned back, her hands resting on the lid, he unbuckled his trousers and knelt between her legs. That was how he fucked Marjolein van Unen for the first time, beneath the glow of purplish fluorescent tubes and amid the odor of stale piss. He came as though it was the very first time, and in a sense it was. She leaned against the back wall with a saintly smile. So this was it, he thought, this is what it was all about, this border-crossing from which there was no going back \u2013 the cunt of Marjolein van Unen, the center of the universe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ruth\u2019s pregnancy went serenely, dreamily, she was bothered almost not at all by the discomforts she\u2019d heard girlfriends talk about, the chronic nausea and inexplicable pains. She felt a bit preoccupied, but in a way that pleased her, as though she was barely in contact with the physical world. She converted her study into a nursery and went in there every day for a while to rearrange the little rompers, socks and caps, her movements charged with a glow of expectation for which she had no words. She told no one that it was going to be a boy, and that his name would be Morris. Even before the child was born,\u00a0 Edward already knew what it was to be part of the little conspiracy against the outside world that a family is. Not only Ruth was pregnant, the whole house was \u2013 it radiated out into the park and far beyond. Their principal conversations were reduced to friendly chitchat about who their son would be and which traits they hoped to recognize in him and which not. Life compacted to a cocoon, with room only for them. In the morning she remained behind in it and he left for the institute, where there awaited the encounter with Marjolein van Unen. She proved a discreet mistress, but still he had the daily feeling that he was suddenly light years removed from the padded little world he had just left. He had locked himself out and struggled against the thought that this was irreversible.<\/p>\n

She was twenty-eight, the age Ruth had been when he\u2019d met her. She had a two-room flat in the Kanaaleiland district; he asked her to put away the scented candles, because Ruth\u2019s pregnancy had whetted her sense of smell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe things I do for you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m your boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCome on, then, boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was small and slim and limber. The hunger of thin women. She knew how to move her pelvis independently of the rest of her body and was what the Emperor Tiberius had termed a \u201csphincter artist\u201d, in the sense that, straddling him and seemingly immobile, she could make him come by means of powerful, internal contractions. She did her best, she had taken courses in Tantra and applied the techniques she\u2019d learned with a barely perceptible smile. He didn\u2019t know exactly what she wanted from him. \u201cWhat does your boyfriend think of all this?\u201d he asked once. She raised a finger to her lips. \u201cSssh. Everything you say out loud comes back to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her cunt was well-proportioned and hairless, she knew no shame. Sometimes, on hands and knees in front of him, she would shake her hair out of her eyes, and it took a while before he understood what he was seeing. She acts as though there\u2019s a camera running<\/em>… the vain endowment of pornography.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you got anything to drink?\u201d he asked, and a few moments later she came into the room with a bottle of Metaxa she\u2019d brought home from Greece. They lay back on the pillows, he held the glass in one hand and put the other hand between her legs, where it was open and wet. \u201cI already knew everything,\u201d he said. \u201cThe way you taste, how you feel, smell, I knew it all already.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow boring then,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you get a hard-on when you thought about me?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA thousand times over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

She was from Veghel, her father had died when she was seven. A month later there was a new man in the house. \u201cMy mother couldn\u2019t stand\u00a0 being alone. She still can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she was twelve the man had assaulted her, she kept silent but left home when she was only fifteen.\u00a0 She said those were \u201cdifficult times\u201d, but meanwhile she had finished high school on her own and was admitted to the lab technicians\u2019 school in Leeuwarden, as far as possible from her parental home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat year were you born in?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cFifty-eight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Without a hint of surprise, she said: \u201cJust like my mother. Which month?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s funny. Then you\u2019re older than she is… A Taurus, I bet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The hard light of a late afternoon at the end of summer. The merciless hour. Moroccan boys were racing up and down the street on mopeds.\u00a0 With a tender gesture, she smoothed back a few of the long hairs sticking out of his eyebrows.<\/p>\n

He saw framed photographs of her with a well-built young man. In one of them he was wearing a wetsuit, in the other a Dutch Marine Corps uniform. An embrace in some departure hall. \u201cHe\u2019s stationed in Afghanistan,\u201d she said. \u201cWe Skype almost every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he comes back,\u201d Edward said, \u201che\u2019ll be a veteran. Thirty-something and already \u2013\u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s thirty-two.\u201d<\/p>\n

His name was Michel, he had taken care of her when she was in a bad way. \u201cWithout him I wouldn\u2019t be here. Not like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanging across from the toilet was a poster with the text: \u201cIf nothing ever changed, there would be no butterflies.\u201d When she massaged his feet, he began to weep. No one had ever touched his neglected feet like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of meridians come together in your feet,\u201d she said. And: \u201cIf you ask me, you\u2019re a lot more sensitive than you think.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When he came home, he didn\u2019t know whether he was Zhuangzi dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuangzi, but at night in Wilhemina Park across the way there crept a man with an automatic rifle and camouflage stripes on his face, who forced his way into the house and opened fire on the double bed and the crib beside it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He dreams about it for the first time during her pregnancy: how she leaves him and takes their child with her. He won\u2019t find them back. He can go on living in Utrecht or move to Amsterdam, there is also a variation in which he returns to the village of his childhood. It makes no difference, he has been cut loose from everything. He can turn left or right, nothing keeps him from going in any direction whatsoever \u2013 only the way back, that has been cut off. Somewhere in the whitened world he stands, frozen, catatonic. He tried to pick up his life the way it was before he met her, but he has truly become too old for that. He will remain alone and occasionally, disappointed and filled with loathing, meet someone through a dating site, and sometimes he will burst out in tears at his memories. This is what he\u2019s made of his life, a barrens stretching out on all sides, and of all the feelings he\u2019s ever had only fear and confusion remain. Register this man as childless, a man who has known no happiness all his days…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dream contained strikingly practical elements, he felt, which didn\u2019t seem a part of the desolate space around him. Whatever the case, he awoke each time in the bed he shared with Ruth with such an overwhelming sense of relief\u00a0 that he swore then and there to better his ways. With a shiver of loneliness he crept up against her pregnant, sleeping body. He had made a mess of it, but things could still be set aright, it wasn\u2019t too late. She never needed to know about it and he, if he only stopped now with all the things that lowered him, if he tied the loose ends together, would forget about it too in time. It would never have happened, or it would become like the memories of a book you\u2019d read as a child, the mood of which you could still summon up but from which the events themselves had dissolved into thin air.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Sam Garrett<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tommy Wieringa –\u00a0A Beautiful Young Wife     He rowed. She sat on the little bench at the back of the boat. There was almost no current. The fields turned gradually to woods. Old, tall trees, individuals with names of their own. As they went gliding between round, mossy banks, mansions shimmered through the greenery….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":26530,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-26534","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26534\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/26530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}