{"id":35543,"date":"2019-07-04T11:55:14","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T09:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=35543"},"modified":"2019-07-04T12:06:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T10:06:10","slug":"sample-translation-the-rumours","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/hugo-claus\/hugo-claus-the-rumours\/sample-translation-the-rumours\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – The Rumours<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hugo Claus – The Rumours<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DOLF<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dolf Catrijsse stands at the window with his back to the dining-room and the person sitting in the wicker chair with floral cushions, which has been Dolf\u2019s preserve for years.<\/p>\n

That person is family. That person is his son, Ren\u00e9, who has turned up out of the blue after an absence of almost three years and who is now occupying the chair by the stove as if he has never known it to be his father\u2019s rightful place.<\/p>\n

Dolf\u2019s back in the blue-grey dustcoat is motionless. It is quiet in the house, and has been for the past half hour. Half an hour since Ren\u00e9 mumbled something about how hot it was. Unclear whether he meant the warmth of late summer or the humid heat of Africa, from where he has just returned.<\/p>\n

Dolf asks himself whether he is being impolite to his son, turning his back on Ren\u00e9 in the uneasy, awkward silence. But he can\u2019t help himself; he can\u2019t look Ren\u00e9 in the eye. Never could, really.<\/p>\n

Almost three years.<\/p>\n

Last night, towards dawn, there had been a soft tapping sound against one of the shutters at the front of the house. Then a persistent scratching, like that of a hungry cat.<\/p>\n

And Alma threw on her dressing gown, all of a flutter.<\/p>\n

And from outside came a croaky, almost unrecognizable voice.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hey, hey.\u2019(Not: \u2018Father, Father.\u2019)<\/p>\n

And Alma wriggled her feet into her slippers and gave a joyful squeal as she shuffled towards the bedroom door, hurriedly as though she had been waiting even as she slept for that furtive noise in the night. \u2018It\u2019s him,\u2019 Alma said.<\/p>\n

Him? Who?<\/p>\n

\u2018Ren\u00e9,\u2019 she said, with that anxiously happy expression of hers which Dolf hadn\u2019t seen for months.<\/p>\n

It was him. The Ren\u00e9 of the old days, a bundle of nerves, a malicious, dangerous lad, and at the same time he was this burnt-out case, this haggard-looking person who had barely glanced at his father before dropping into the wicker chair in which he now sat. He wore a jacket with bulging breast pockets, tennis shoes stained with rust or dried blood. An army backpack stood leaning against his ankles.<\/p>\n

He had slept in his clothes last night. He may have been lying on the wooden floor. Dolf had heard creaking and sighing.<\/p>\n

Now Dolf sees his son reflected in the windowpane, like an unsharp newspaper photograph.\u00a0 Dolf himself has had his picture in Het Belang van Waregem,<\/em> the local paper. On the front page, sitting next to Alma on their garden bench, with behind them the geraniums, the dahlias, and the back of the house. Both looking directly into in the lens. Alma stern, Dolf with a startled grin. The caption said that they were god-fearing, hard-working parents, saddened by the lack of news from their eldest son Ren\u00e9, who had last been sighted in the company of three other Belgian deserters on the island of Zanzibar in close proximity to the godless dictator Sheik Karume. And that the Catrijsse family prayed daily to Our Lady of Fatima that he might return unhurt in body and soul.<\/p>\n

Dolf and Alma had seen white soldiers in Africa on television a couple of times. They were slinking through the bush, stooped over, when they suddenly came under attack from a hail of spears and arrows. They had shouted to each other in the West-Flemish dialect. One of those voices could have been Ren\u00e9\u2019s. The soldiers started running, flailing their arms, but none of them looked like Ren\u00e9. Not the last one either, who couldn\u2019t reach the helicopter in time and stayed behind, on his knees, with a dozen arrows sticking out of his back and neck.<\/p>\n

The black assailants, who were shouting and dancing and firing their automatic pistols at the helicopter, were fourteen-year-old boys in women\u2019s clothes, with straw-coloured wigs and Belgian kepis. Some of them wore white bras with bloody nipples painted on.<\/p>\n

The morning remains dull and grey. Then the picture in the window wavers and blurs. The distorted figure rolls a cigarette, lights it, and a pungent, sweetish smell billows into the room. Dolf takes a last lingering look at his vegetable patch, the football field behind it, and beyond that\u00a0 the chimneystacks of the brewery. As though saying goodbye to a sense of order that is sure to be disrupted now that Ren\u00e9 is back. He turns to his son.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mother has gone to the supermarket,\u2019 he says. \u2018Let\u2019s hope she won\u2019t forget our cigarettes. Because they are putting the prices up next week. The government begrudges us even the smallest of pleasures. That\u2019s what you get with Catholics and Socialists governing in tandem.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dolf steps into the familiar dining-room, now filled with the sweetish smell.<\/p>\n

Last night Ren\u00e9 uttered three sentences in total. They came out in short bursts, as though with difficulty. What he said Dolf was unable to make out, as the words were addressed exclusively to Alma, and had broken off into a fit of coughing.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ren\u00e9 doesn\u2019t want people knowing he\u2019s here,\u2019 Alma told him in bed afterwards. \u2018He was dropped off at the house by a friend of his. I asked if it was anyone I know, if his friend was somebody from around here, but he kept mum. Like a dog before it snaps at you. He looks terrible. Goodness knows what\u2019s wrong with him. The Congo is rife with hundreds of different ticks and worms. And malaria bugs. He stared around his bedroom if he\u2019d never seen it before. Whereas we haven\u2019t touched a thing in his room since he left. Whatever I said or asked, he couldn’t bring himself to reply. He fell asleep where he stood. What if he\u2019s got the sleeping sickness? I said to him: \u201cThere have been rumours about white soldiers fighting among themselves, that it\u2019s not just the negroes getting killed out there, but that you all get drunk and start shooting at each other. I couldn\u2019t sleep a wink when I heard that. And nor could your father, nor your brother Noel!\u201d But he just carried on sleeping on his feet, with his backpack at hand. I told him we\u2019d been to a talk at the municipal school and that Master Ars\u00e8ne had introduced the speaker, who showed us slides and told us all about the Congo and other faraway places, which was how we heard about white soldiers getting drunk to cope with their fear and then shooting at each other. The speaker said the negroes found this behaviour incomprehensible.<\/p>\n

\u2018I also told him that you\u2019d dozed off during the talk and that I gave you a poke when the subject turned to cattle-raising in Africa, as I thought you ‘d be interested to hear\u00a0 how the negroes cut a small hole in a cow’s artery to drain off some blood, which they mix with milk and flour. The hole is closed off with mud.\u2019<\/p>\n

After an hour Dolf begins to worry. Not about Ren\u00e9 mutely staring at the dead television. About Alma. What\u2019s keeping her?<\/p>\n

The traffic on the road is criminally dangerous. Alma\u2019s far too excited about her lost son\u2019s homecoming to take proper care, she’ll be scooped up by a Swedish lorry, she\u2019s dumped in the middle of the road, she rolls over ten times, her shopping basket\u2019s flattened by a an oncoming car, and in a rising cloud of flour and caster sugar another car drives across Alma\u2019s chest and then over her skull.<\/p>\n

Dolf asks Ren\u00e9 if he wants some fresh coffee. Ren\u00e9 shakes his head, screwing up his eyes.<\/p>\n

He looks wilted, Dolf thinks to himself, that\u2019s the word, wilted like a whore who\u2019s been on the game for too long. Can that be our young Ren\u00e9, the lad who stood in the kitchen and howled for a full half hour when Stan Ockers was fatally injured in that accident on the treacherously slippery cycle track at the Antwerp Sports Palace? Stan Ockers, holder of the world record for endurance . Fifty-seven kilometres an hour average speed, wasn’t it? Something like that, anyway.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have one more try. If he doesn\u2019t give me an answer he can drop dead for all I care.<\/p>\n

\u2018Ren\u00e9,\u2019 Dolf says.<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 grunts. That\u2019s a start, at least. Now for something to hold his interest. \u2018Tell me, are those negroes any good with money?\u2019<\/p>\n

The boy, deathly pale, is listening to a sound from outside. He seems just about to reply\u00a0 when Alma taps on the kitchen window.<\/p>\n

From the kitchen she calls \u2018Coo-eee!\u2019. This is something she hasn’t done for years, not since the wilful child left for his jungle, his desert, his murderous rampages.<\/p>\n

\u2018But the boy hasn\u2019t even had a coffee yet!\u2019 Dolf is taken aback by his wife\u2019s cheerful tone.<\/p>\n

\u2018I did ask him,\u2019 he says. \u2018Didn\u2019t I, Ren\u00e9?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I bought some bananas,\u2019 says Alma as she sets out her purchases on the checked oilcloth – all the things she has splurged on for the sake of her heart\u2019s dear one, the bane of her life. Packets of biscuits, bars of chocolate both dark and milk, beer sausages, chewing gum, cigarettes for the whole family, five paper bags bulging with strange-looking fruits whose names Dolf can never remember. (There is even a fruit called Japapas. Or some such.)<\/p>\n

\u2018I could barely stop myself from telling everybody in the supermarket. And Nicole \u2013 you don\u2019t know her, she\u2019s only been there for a year, at the meat counter \u00a0– well, Nicole looks at me and says: \u201cAlma, nice to see you smiling.\u201d I say: \u201cMe? When?\u201d She says: \u201cRight now, at my cash desk. Got yourself an admirer, have you?\u201d I was bursting to tell her the news. Especially because one of her brothers has an office job at Kilambo. Or was it the telephone company?\u2019<\/p>\n

Alma has the same pale, cold eyes as Ren\u00e9. Her other son Noel \u2013 my other son \u2013 has my eyes. My character too, worse luck. We\u2019re too good for our own good, Noel and me. They shit all over us and yet we say: much obliged. Take Ren\u00e9. What he\u2019s put me and his mother through, it beggars belief. And yet, seeing him again looking such a miserable mess \u2013 it pains me. Whereas he\u2019s sitting there all grim-faced like in the old days, thinking about how he’s going to twist my balls all over again. Because we’ll be in for some trouble now with him back, and no mistake. Even if only because of that illegal stuff he smokes. All we need is for one of the neighbours to come into the shop and smell it and go straight to Officer Blaute and before you know it we’ll have a police car coming round and there we’ll be, with steel handcuffs clapped round our wrists, and back on the front page of Het Belang van Waregem<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u2018What shall we do about Julia?\u2019 asks Alma. Dolf can\u2019t tell who she\u2019s asking. Ren\u00e9 knows who Julia is, but he doesn\u2019t respond, aside from a faint frown appearing in the smooth forehead.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019ll ask Noel when he brings the newspaper this evening.\u2019 Noting the frown, she hurries on, suffused by that stubborn maternal love of hers. \u2018Because we get the paper from Mijnheer Bijtteboer when he\u2019s done with it. Sometimes it hasn\u2019t even been unfolded.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9\u2019s reply is a coughing fit.<\/p>\n

\u2018Do you think things look different here? The man from the brewery says we ought install strip lighting in the shop. It saves money over time, apparently…\u2019<\/p>\n

Over time. What Alma called the shop used to be their parlour. Dolf and Alma had cleared out the parlour in a fit of dumb, excited giggling. They had been married five years when they decided to open a shop selling drink. The sideboard was sold, the velvet drapes made into jackets for Ren\u00e9 and Noel, the cosy corner dragged up to the attic. Then up went the racks and everything was painted beige; a counter was supplied by the brewery. How many bottles of genever had they displayed on their glossy shelves in the first week? Five? Six? Half a dozen, probably. How many bottles of red wine? Alma had sought advice from the Right Reverend Lamantijn, who went to France every year in person to replenish his wine cellar. Bought an awful lot of Sauvignolles <\/em>in those first couple of years. Only then did it start to sink in that most of the locals resented them. Even the villagers who liked them went to the small supermarket.<\/p>\n

The Sauvignolles<\/em> turned sour.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tonight we\u2019re having lamb and cauliflower in white sauce,\u2019 Alma says. \u2018Because you mustn’t think I’m going to cook rice or manioc. Unless you say: \u201cMother, I have this huge craving for the African food I got used to out there.\u201d No? You know you only have to open your mouth, Ren\u00e9, and I’ll get whatever you want. Just say.\u2019<\/p>\n

Over time, the shelves filled up again, the bell tinkled more often, the villagers lingered in the shop to gossip and Alma managed to find her way around the rules, instructions, regulations, taxes, and deductions. But she remained fearful of unannounced visits from the two dark-suited gentlemen from Customs and Excise with the law on their side, an elastic, unpredictable, incomprehensible law that could suddenly reinstate some idiotic rule dating from the far and distant past, whereby a customer could be stopped on leaving the premises and the shopkeeper heavily fined if the said customer had purchased fewer than two bottles of genever.<\/p>\n

\u2018Believe it or not\u2019, says Alma, \u2018as I went past Caf\u00e9 De Kroon I saw Master Ars\u00e8ne sitting there. I was dying to step inside and join him at his table and say: \u201cMaster Ars\u00e8ne, your brilliant pupil \u2013 no need to rack your brains as to who I mean \u2013 has come home, he\u2019s back with us. Just shows how much he missed his parents.\u201d It was on the tip of my tongue. But I stopped myself. As usual.<\/p>\n

\u2018By the way, we had a visit from two gents, first I thought they were the Customs and Excise people, but they turned out to be plain-clothes policemen. They wanted to know your address. I said: \u201cHe\u2019s abroad.\u201d They said: \u201cOh yeah? Abroad you say, but where abroad?\u201d They didn\u2019t believe me when I said I didn\u2019t know. \u201cHas he gone to America? Asia? Australia? Or is he just in Europe?\u201d I said: \u201cI think he\u2019s in the continent you haven\u2019t mentioned yet.\u201d \u201cMadam Catrijsse,\u201d one of them said, the one with the moustache, \u201cyou can\u2019t fool us.\u201d I said: \u201cI\u2019m sorry, but that\u2019s all I know.\u201d And I just stood there with my cheeks ablaze, a mother who doesn\u2019t know where her child is, a child that won\u2019t even give his mother his address or phone number.\u2019<\/p>\n

Over time, thinks Dolf, we\u2019ll stop feeling ashamed for our son. Over time Alma will stop fetching and carrying for him over there, he who looks exactly like her, the person with the flashing eyes, the unwashed hair sticking out, the snooty silences.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

ALMA<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alma is irritated by Dolf. Not that he is to blame. I\u2019m not myself, she thinks. Our Alma\u2019s gone off her milk, as my mother would say in her Roeselare dialect. Alma is irritated by the cap on top of Dolf\u2019s weatherbeaten head. The cap presses down on his ears so they seem folded over, it looks silly, how many times hasn\u2019t she asked him to take his cap off indoors.<\/p>\n

Alma is irritated by her own irritation. Why can\u2019t she let herself be carried away by the joy she felt last night when she led her exhausted boy to his own old bedroom and his own made-up bed?<\/p>\n

I got this from my mother. My mother and I don\u2019t want to be consoled.<\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t I enjoy my time on this earth? I know the answer. I just never let it rise to the surface.<\/p>\n

Shall I phone my mother? Ren\u00e9 was her favourite. He sat on her lap when the three of us went to Aunt Virginie\u2019s eightieth birthday party. A tipsy man with goggle eyes sat facing us in the train. He never took his eyes off my mother while she looked out of the window as the allotments rushed by, people\u2019s back gardens, railway platforms, factories plonked in the middle of the fields. The man wore a three-piece striped suit and a shiny gold wristwatch; just as we were approaching Dendermonde he laid two fingers on Mother\u2019s thigh.<\/p>\n

\u2018Madam,\u2019 he said, \u2018I have the honour of being acquainted with you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mother went on staring out of the window. The train slowed down.<\/p>\n

\u2018And you, too,\u2019 the man said to me. \u2018You were a nurse during the war, if I am not mistaken. The Phoenix rubber factory. In Eschwege.\u2019 He rose to his feet, holding a small cardboard suitcase. \u2018You\u2019re quite right,\u2019 he said, \u2018to want to forget about all that. Hard times, they were.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Sir,\u2019 said Mother, without raising her eyes. \u2018Why don\u2019t you mind your own business.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Madam,\u2019 said the man after a pause. \u2018I have seen a thing or two in my time, but never a face as stuck-up as yours.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Sir,\u2019 Mother drawled.<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes, Madam, what is it?\u2019<\/p>\n

Mother dandled wide-eyed little Ren\u00e9 on her knee. \u2018Your face, sir, deserves to be shat on.\u2019<\/p>\n

The man nodded. He went on nodding. The station of Dendermonde slid into view.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s strange,\u2019 said the man, \u2018but someone told me that once before.\u2019<\/p>\n

My haughty, resentful mother is now a bag of bones, clattering dentures, dead skin. Cancer of the throat.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give her a call later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And Ren\u00e9 has eaten two slices of bread with boiled bacon; wolfed them down. Next he lights a crumpled, half-smoked roll-up which gives off a spicy smell.<\/p>\n

\u2018You should change your shirt,\u2019 Alma says. \u2018Give it to me and it can go in the wash. You can wear one of your father\u2019s for now.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018No,\u2019 says Ren\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\u2018Or one of Noel\u2019s.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Have it your own way. But this thing could do with a wash and iron, surely.\u2019 Alma grabs a slip of the gaudy silk kerchief round his neck. Ren\u00e9 slaps her hand. The kerchief has shifted. Alma points to a purply-blue bruise on Ren\u00e9\u2019s throat, a pansy outlined with ochre yellow.<\/p>\n

\u2018Have you been in a fight? Some caf\u00e9 full of riffraff?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018So long as it isn\u2019t about politics,\u2019 Dolf says. \u2018Politics drive people round the bend these days. Especially now, with that fat-boy Paul Henri Spaak in charge of Foreign Affairs.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 adjusts his kerchief. He goes off to the kitchen, from there to the veranda and then down the gravel path leading to the vegetable patch.<\/p>\n

The neighbours can\u2019t see him, unless one of the Agneessen boys is spying through the skylight. Dolf notes Ren\u00e9\u2019s uncertain gait. The gait of a stranger.<\/p>\n

Time was when Dolf first set eyes on the wrinkly, amber-yellow little head of this stranger in a hospital ward. Alma was sitting up in bed, propped up by six or seven pillows. She gave Dolf a sleepy smile.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, what do you think?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Takes a bit of getting used to,\u2019 Dolf said. \u2018He\u2019s all yellow.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019ll pass.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Let\u2019s hope so.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018He’s ever so handsome, don’t you think?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes, very handsome,\u2019 Dolf said. \u2018I can\u2019t believe he\u2019s mine.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018He isn\u2019t.\u2019<\/p>\n

He scanned her young, shining features for a hint of fun and mischief. He saw the dark nipples through the damp nightdress. He knew he should play along with her; it was a side of her that would forever be strange to him.<\/p>\n

\u2018So whose is he then?\u2019 he managed to say<\/p>\n

\u2018Take a good look.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018That nose.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Dolf, my father\u2019s got a nose like that. Go on, take another look.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The dimple in his chin.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Ars\u00e8ne the schoolmaster\u2019s got one of those.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh no, Alma, no, not Ars\u00e8ne, please.\u2019<\/p>\n

She laughed out loud.<\/p>\n

\u2018Come here,\u2019 she said, and flung her warm sleek arms around his neck, whispering something unintelligible. Then she said: \u2018You will never know,\u2019 and hooted shrilly in his ear. He cried out.<\/p>\n

\u2018Silly young folk,\u2019 the midwife said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Silly man,\u2019 Alma said. \u2018Just look at the baby\u2019s toes. He got those toes from you, and nobody else but you.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 comes back into the room. I can\u2019t say I\u2019m glad he\u2019s back, thinks Dolf. He scares me even more now than that time he did a runner and the national and local police force – for once in fraternal accord \u2013 went chasing after him.<\/p>\n

\u2018You haven\u2019t asked how your brother Noel is, not once,\u2019 Alma says. \u2018You used to get on all right. You\u2019ll hardly recognize him when you see him.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018He\u2019s got a job now,\u2019 Dolf says. \u2018At the Bijttebier firm. Loading and unloading. He likes the work. He\u2019s outdoors a lot. Does him good. Now and then he helps out in the Right Reverend\u2019s garden, or drives him around when he\u2019s too tired to take the wheel himself.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Your father and I think he\u2019s courting. You\u2019ll never guess who.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Julia Rombouts,\u2019 says Dolf. \u2018She\u2019s coming round to pick him up to go to the cinema, or to a disco. She\u2019s taught him to dance.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I take a rather dim view of it all. It won\u2019t last, and then he\u2019ll be left high and dry. Which may not be a bad thing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Alma sniffs. Nobody is good enough for her two sons, good-natured Noel and wilful Ren\u00e9. Like if Queen Juliana of Holland came into the shop and went down on bended knee with a cheque for five million Belgian francs in her bejewelled hand and begged us to allow Ren\u00e9 or Noel to marry one of her princesses, Alma would wrinkle her nose, thrust out her lower lip, and reply \u2018Your Majesty, I shall have to sleep on it. Because at first sight I\u2019m not too keen on the idea.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 clears his throat, pats his kerchief, presses two careful fingers to the bruise. He says: \u2018What sort of car does our Noel drive?\u2019<\/p>\n

Our Noel.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Right Reverend\u2019s car.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018A Daf 55?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018With one of those smart gear boxes?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Think so,\u2019 Dolf says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

REN\u00c9<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s wasting away, thinks Ren\u00e9. She\u2019s shrunk, she who used to be so stately and upright. She has trouble swallowing, too.<\/p>\n

For the fourth time she asks me if I\u2019m glad to be back. How cramped their shop is! Four paces long, three paces wide.<\/p>\n

They drink table beer.<\/em><\/p>\n

The taste of my father\u2019s home-grown tobacco is sharp; sharper than I remembered when I\u00a0 lay thinking of it under the pitch-black sky of Bamako.<\/p>\n

My mother wants to apply a poultice to my neck. I refuse yet again. She gives me a reproachful look. Which lasts four whole minutes;\u00a0 I know because I\u2019m looking at my watch.<\/p>\n

She is busy topping and tailing snow peas.<\/p>\n

\u2018Here, taste one. You didn\u2019t get those in the army, did you? Fresh snow peas? Did you? Tinned, maybe. Not fresh.\u2019<\/p>\n

The snow peas are fresh, young, juicy.<\/p>\n

The night here is a quivery grey-black. Another twenty nights or so. Thirty. Thirty more daybreaks.<\/p>\n

\u2018Go on, scram,\u2019 hisses my mother. I\u2019m too slow to react, so she grabs me by the sleeve and hauls me into the scullery<\/p>\n

A dog, coughing, hesitating between coughing and yapping, jumps up against the counter and then against the scullery door.<\/p>\n

\u2018To heel, Georges! Heel, boy,\u2019 someone says. I recognize the voice, it belongs to F\u00e9licien, who must be at the entrance. I am crouching down behind the door.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well hello, F\u00e9licien,\u2019 my father says, adding a jovial, oily laugh. My father bows and scrapes to everyone, no distinction. It\u2019s all he has ever known.<\/p>\n

\u2018How are you, F\u00e9licien?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Can\u2019t complain.\u2019 The voice is insincere. There is the squeak of rubber boots.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well F\u00e9licien, how can I help you?\u2019\u00a0 My mother, unbearably cheery.<\/p>\n

\u2018Alma my dear, I\u2019ll have half a litre of the Balegem genever. Because that French genever burns up my stomach. And you know we all have weak stomachs in my family. The least spicy food or the least aggravation is enough to make our gut shout for help. And I\u2019m expecting company on Sunday, ten people or more, for the annual memorial service for our beloved late mother.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Will half a bottle be enough then, F\u00e9licien?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018If they have any sense, Dolf, they\u2019ll bring their own drink. Georges! To heel! Heel I say!\u2019<\/p>\n

Georges the dog has pushed open the door, which was ajar. He coughs, slips into the scullery and sees me crouching down. Georges is a pasty-white Collie; he growls. I crawl out from behind the door, grab him by the scruff of the neck and squeeze his jaws shut with my left hand. He whines. I squeeze harder and bring his head up close to my chin. I blow into his face. He whimpers like a hoarse child, shakes his wet nose, his wet teeth. I let him go and he scurries to the door.<\/p>\n

\u2018Heel, Georges, heel.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well then F\u00e9licien, thank you again and much obliged. Have a nice day. Thanks.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018To each his own nice day.\u2019<\/p>\n

I can feel the sweat trickling down my back and between my thighs. I step into the living room.<\/p>\n

\u2018Did you kick the dog?\u2019 she asks.<\/p>\n

\u2018That dog\u2019s been mangy for years,\u2019 my father says.<\/p>\n

My mother puts her hands on her neck. She pushes her head down, all the way to her knees. She used to be a nurse, and made it to volley-ball champion of South-West Flanders. I can\u2019t recall when that was, nor the category she was in.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s done with her exercises my father brings her a glass of pale ale. To fortify her. So she will die after me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve kissed the mouths of foul-smelling strangers, but as for her over there with foam on her upper lip, I\u2019ve never touched her, let alone stroked her, never kissed the amber-coloured cheekbones, nor the clammy neck with the moist wisps of curly black hair. Not the web of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes either.<\/p>\n

\u2018How do you like our television?\u2019 asks my father. \u2018We got it at a discount from Jantje Verdin. Best reception is Brussels French. Next best is Holland. But Dutch tv is all talk and little else. Or they show cripples or mongols. Or it\u2019s about the war the whole evening. Twenty years ago and still they go on about the war.\u2019<\/p>\n

The photo hanging above the television is the one that used to be kept on the mantelpiece. Black-and-white, with the shaky cracks and pale flecks of an enlargement. A soldier lost in a snowstorm. His helmet pulled down over his forehead, the top half of his face in shadow, the rest of the oval a vague, muddy-grey. His grey coat reaches down to his ankles. He waves a gun, his target remaining invisible, beyond the frame. A whirl of snowflakes. In the background, at a guess, a forest of birch trees.<\/p>\n

\u2018How do you mean?\u2019 I asked my mother. \u2018Who\u2019s guessing? The soldier can\u2019t see the trees, he\u2019s blinded by the snow.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was winter. My mother sat with her bare feet resting on the glossy nickel fender around the glowing Mechelen stove. I had to do my homework. I wished she would put her clammy, amber feet on my knees.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s us, looking at the picture, we\u2019re the ones guessing it\u2019s a birch forest.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Alma, let that boy get on with his homework,\u2019 said my father.<\/p>\n

She took no notice.<\/p>\n

\u2018That soldier\u2019s doomed,\u2019 she said. \u2018He can\u2019t see the birch wood because of the snowstorm. If he could see it he would\u2019ve known where he was and would\u2019ve found his way back to his lager, because the trees were marked with black swastikas and arrows. But he\u2019s doomed.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Alma, stop bothering the boy with all those stories from the past.\u2019<\/p>\n

Later, when I was fifteen, Ars\u00e8ne the schoolmaster commented on the enlarged photograph when he saw it. \u2018His gun looks like a Garand M. It can\u2019t have been his standard issue gun, because that was the Mauser forty-two. Ergo, he must have taken that Garand off a dead American.\u2019<\/p>\n

The only times in my young years that I saw my mother more or less happy or content, was when Noel was not there and she was telling me about the photo, often with me sitting on her knee.<\/p>\n

\u2018What else can you see in the snowstorm, Ren\u00e9?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018White bears.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes. Good. Very good. And what else?\u2019<\/p>\n

I reflected on this. I remember my thoughts being scattered by Farmer F\u00e9licien\u2019s tractor. When the tractor drove off I said: \u2018Snow beasts.\u2019<\/p>\n

She whispered the words after me. \u2018Snow beasts.\u2019 She smiled, as though she loved me and had only just discovered that it was so. As though she would never forget it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Translated by Ina Rilke<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hugo Claus – The Rumours   DOLF   Dolf Catrijsse stands at the window with his back to the dining-room and the person sitting in the wicker chair with floral cushions, which has been Dolf\u2019s preserve for years. That person is family. That person is his son, Ren\u00e9, who has turned up out of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1135,"featured_media":0,"parent":32570,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-35543","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35543","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=35543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/35543\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}