Will

by Jeroen Olyslaegers

  The landlord looks at Lode in fury. ‘Aren’t you the son of the butcher here on the square? You’re in the police, aren’t you? And you stay sitting on your fucking arse while they smash up my business! They’re trying to ruin me and you and your mate don’t do a thing!’

  ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ his wife sobs at Lode.

  ‘We’re not allowed to do anything,’ Lode answers as calmly as possible.

  ‘Spineless bastards! We’ll find your kind after the war. Get out of my bar! Now, damn it!’

  Meanbeard is off on ‘an excursion’, as he whispered to me himself an hour ago, which means he’s gone to see Jenny or some other prostitute, leaving Yvette and me alone with his mother, who only relaxes once her darling son has left the house. She has long since stopped noticing me. Yvette is the one who matters, Yvette with the gentle nurse’s voice, who is still, as if it’s an almost never-ending story stretched over countless leather-bound tomes, reading ‘The Curse of the Count’, published in a periodical—Volume 9, Number 5—and consisting of some thirty miserable pages held together by two staples.

  ‘Read on, child. I’m sitting comfortably.’

  ‘But excessive contemplation withers the spirit. Happy are those—so Robert de Tiège told himself—who are lucky enough to awaken in a soft bed without having to ascertain that they have betrayed themselves. The guilty party was none other than he himself! No one else could be blamed for this betrayal. Forever he would deny himself sleep. His suffocating sense of guilt would not allow it. No, Robert de Tiège himself would forbid it. He would prop his swollen eyelids open with splinters of wood! At dawn they would find him bolt upright, as if he…’

  A gentle snoring fills the room. The old lady is sound asleep again, like an elderly squirrel that has just consumed an extralarge nut to start its hibernation—her head crooked, a fine thread of saliva connecting her mouth to the shawl wrapped around her shoulders… convinced she’s in safe hands.

  ‘That didn’t take long,’ Yvette whispers cheerfully. Today she has a tic that’s driving me crazy. Every now and then, not often, she presses the tip of her tongue firmly against the left corner of her painted mouth. Then the bottom of her tongue is like a little animal, wet and pink, rapidly carrying out some repairs on the gates of lust. She looks at me over her shoulder and gets an inkling.

  ‘I want to kiss you,’ I whisper, trying not to pant too much.

  She shrugs, but raises one of her eyebrows coquettishly at the same time. A wave of gratitude passes through me. The clips that keep her hair up and reveal her delicate ears; thank you. The lipstick that makes her lips look so passionate; thank you. The way her eyes sparkle through that mascara; thank you very much! That smell of lily of the valley escaping from her fairly decent neckline; a thousand thanks, O universe, for all these things that make my heart consent so gratefully to being ground to dust.

  ‘What say you now, Robert de Tiège, traitor to your own heart?…’ she whispers in a mocking voice, still with that raised eyebrow.

  Slowly I pull her up from her reading chair and lead her out of the old lady’s sitting room. As usual she doesn’t notice a thing. I lead Yvette down a few steps to a landing with a vestibule that doesn’t go anywhere but is taken up with coats hung neatly on hooks and shoes and hats on shelves on either side. There we stand under the arch of the entrance, lit by a yellow light and surrounded by clothes, worthy of Hollywood, the start of a happily ever after, just before the volume of the music shoots up and the final credits start to roll.

  I reach for the light cord. Kiss in the dark?

  But her lips have already found mine and we kiss in the light, surrounded by the smells of beeswax, mothballs and shoe polish. I sometimes think of myself as an aroused beast, but her mouth is always there to teach me it’s nothing compared to what’s going on inside her: a storm of lust, which she resists and lets rage at the same time. A gentle kiss suddenly becomes devouring and the gasps she lets out now and then move me to a level of excitement I could never reach alone, as if the entire universe is roaring its willingness. At the same time it’s all just in my head and I can never fully match her surrender. When my kisses intensify, she calms me down, only to send me soaring once more with a subtle lick of her tongue. I think too much, I suspect, while she simply follows the fire in her belly, sometimes gentle, sometimes overwhelming. What we do with our mouths is a story in itself. Then, and this always happens when my lips are starting to feel raw, she forces me to look deep into her eyes. If I try to compel her to do something like that, she always looks away first. But if her eyes seek mine, she fixes her gaze on me, making me feel much too naked, much too vulnerable, much too alone. In moments like this Angelo will often reveal himself, something she always seems to sense, so that today for the first time she even says, ‘There he is again.’

  ‘Who?’ I ask, ninny that I am, idiot without qualities, standing there with his eyes lost in hers and otherwise stripped naked.

  ‘The sexy bastard, the dirty traitor,’ she replies without batting an eyelid. Try squaring that with the ‘sweeties’ with which she peppers the letters she is still constantly sending me. My mouth stems the words she wants to add. She turns her head to the left and again her tongue licks a path along mine. Our tongues writhe around each other, sometimes slow and seeking, then fast and joyous, and every change of rhythm makes my head lighter, as if I will never be able to keep up with her, as if in the end I will be no match for her desire, which is so much more inventive than mine, and, who knows, maybe dirtier than I want to find out. I take her hand and put it on my fly, prepared to apologize immediately and for the rest of my life if this offends her. There is, however, nothing to suggest any such inclination. On the contrary, she squeezes me gently with that one hand while pulling the cord and cloaking us in darkness with the other. And yes, she’s right, of course, because what I suddenly seem to want so impulsively—was that me or was it someone else?—is best done in the dark. She kneads me through my trousers as if she knows exactly what she’s doing and, at the same time, is engaged simply in an innocent exploration, a combination that drives me even crazier. I keep my eyes shut, I can’t look now, it all just has to keep happening in pitch darkness. I have to keep kissing her and simply enjoy what she is doing down below. After all, she has just rejected the hesitant hand on her breast and I don’t dare reach for anything else. Her fingers have found my zip. She unzips my fly and the excitement with which she does it confuses me, making my head spin. Does she find this just as enjoyable as I do, maybe even more? She’s left me behind again. Now she’s touching me through the cotton of my underpants and when she discovers the wet spot at the top she squeezes a little harder. Meanwhile her tongue keeps finding new ways to make me gasp for breath. Without hesitating she unhooks the waistband of my trousers. My fly is now wide open. I wonder if she is sneaking glances at me while kissing and stroking my throat, but I still don’t dare to open my eyes, as if that would make all this suddenly disappear, never to return. I feel two fingers on either side of the elastic in my underpants. She pulls the elastic towards her first and then pushes the white fabric down. My exposed cock gulps for air and points straight up. I immediately smell my own excitement, my beastlike masculinity, and blush to the roots of my hair. Her mouth finds mine again and her kisses become soothing. ‘Come here,’ she says, ‘come here.’ By which she seems to mean: ‘Trust me, put yourself in my hands.’ My knees almost buckle as she starts to stroke me, and the sounds I make are completely out of my control. When she grips me a little more tightly I tense up for a moment because of the dryness of her hand. But how do you say something like that? What kind of words do you use to convey something so practical? She stops her kisses at once and lets go for a moment. I am still trying to find the words to explain when suddenly I feel her hand again, wet and welcoming. That alone, her wetting her hand without asking, probably spitting silently onto her palm to pleasure me, stops me on the very verge of coming, as close as I am. A chi
ll runs through me. As excited as I am, something dark starts to sing within me, a question starts to take shape to the notes of a melody. ‘Why is she doing this? Why is she doing this?’ Is it because she knows that we are now ‘family’, as Lode claims? Does she actually know about the Jew her father and brother are keeping hidden? Does she know I know? Is our union meant to be sealed now, in this way, with me unable to escape, not wanting to escape, and her hand on my twitching cock? Because you’re practically family? And why is it Lode I hear whispering that last sentence in my ear? No, that’s drivel, stop thinking. Just keep your eyes shut and let it happen. Her mouth hushes me, again she evokes an excitement that is more bestial than passionate. And again I give in, totally hers. She varies the technique with her hand too. Gentle changes to firm; quick tugging becomes calm squeezing. I go from one sensation to the other, no longer knowing where I am, what I’m doing or who I am, nothing beyond the fact that every quiver of pleasure tells me I am hers and hers alone. I am about to explode. And she feels that too. Suddenly she pulls the cord and I am standing there in the harsh light. She tugs even harder. Her mouth leaves mine. She forces me to look into her eyes and says, ‘Do it.’ Whereupon my semen shoots out and probably ends up between the old lady’s winter coats. And then, without letting go of my still twitching cock, she kisses me again, once more with an excitement I don’t come close to, not even in the moment of climax.

  Suddenly we hear a loud groan. We look at each other.

  Yvette soothes me. ‘She’s dreaming again.’

  Silver-buttons never walk alone. That sounds like a bloody song. But it’s true: a policeman alone, without a partner, can only look suspicious. Rest assured I’ve thought about it. What do I wear when it’s my turn to feed the Jew? Civvies or uniform? Lode was wearing his while waiting for me. In the end I decide to do the same, hoping I won’t bump into any field arseholes along the way who might ask me what I’ve got in the sack. If you really want to know: two sausages, three potatoes and a bit of horsebread. If you have to go into hiding, you’re best off choosing a butcher or a farmer as your protector. Lode left the sack and the keys behind the gate next to the butcher’s shop. That makes me nervous too, as it’s somewhere I could easily be spotted. We couldn’t think of an alternative. While fruitlessly searching for one, whispering in the dark on the way back from Lizke’s hiding place, I was overcome by the folly of it all. The set-up wasn’t good enough; it needed improving, I just didn’t know how. Picture me in the meantime rapping out that code on the door concealing Lizke: a Keystone conspirator, a babe in the woods, a bungler. What’s worse: knowing you’re an amateur or thinking you can do better but not knowing how? Knock-knock, the door opens and I am welcomed by the enigma Chaim Lizke. He looks at what I’ve brought for him and asks if he could have some eggs next time. I shrug and mumble something. This time the place smells of brilliantine. Is this man really a diamond cutter, a craftsman? I can’t believe it. He sniffs the bread, gently squeezes the sausages, strokes the potatoes, smiles and turns to me.

  ‘Bitte, please sit…’

  ‘Leider keine Zeit,’ I answer.

  ‘Aber natürlich…’

  Again I think that he might very well be a paying guest, kept here by father and son like some kind of monster from one of the Grimms’ dark fairy tales. But who is in whose power? What happens when his reserve of money or diamonds or jewellery is exhausted? Did they agree a daily amount or was it a lump sum? Will Lode’s father kick him out if his budget proves insufficient?… But no, that’s impossible, the risks are insane. In circumstances like this neither can afford to offend the other. If they told Lizke to piss off because he’d run out of money and he got picked up, it would come as no surprise if he talked them all onto the gallows. Am I the first one to think of this or have father and son considered it too? Can the father still think clearly without being distracted by greed and profit? Because the cards are on the table. If this is just about the money, it’s the stowaway who’s in charge of the boat.

  I ask for the sack, nod politely and already have my hand on the doorknob.

  ‘Sie scheinen mir ein Intellektueller…’

  I stop for a moment, wondering why he thinks I look like an intellectual and not sure how to reply.

  ‘Haben Sie Bücher?’

  I ask what kind of books.

  He shrugs. Anything, but preferably in German.

  I nod and say I might be able to arrange something. There’s only one person I know who has German books in large numbers and the thought of borrowing them from him puts a smile on my face for the first time today.

  That was how, soon afterwards, I came to appear before the enigma Chaim Lizke with a linen bag full of books, all German. Meanbeard didn’t know what to make of my sudden enthusiasm for German literature. Somewhat perplexed, he bundled up a few volumes: some Schiller, Hesse and Jünger. Not all books are attuned to the new national consciousness, he told me. However, as long as his ex libris was in the front with his name and some kind of Latin motto, I was welcome to take them all.

  Lizke pulls them out of the bag one at a time, arranges them on the slightly rickety dining table and winks. His wide mouth forms a smile. Nodding, as if recognizing old friends, he picks one out after some hesitation and sits down in one of the two worn armchairs. Without giving me as much as another glance, he opens the chosen book and starts to read. Now and then he lets out a sigh of contentment. I am dismissed, it seems. He licks his index finger before turning a page, glances in my direction for a moment, then reads on.

  I stay sitting at the table and roll a cigarette. While smoking, I study Lizke. His calm or his capacity to immerse himself in a book from one moment to the next confuses me. It’s as if this hiding place no longer exists and any danger he might be in no longer matters. Should I admire his cool-headedness or is this expression of a craving for normality more an affectation? Whatever I may or may not think, it leaves him completely cold. I could sit here blowing smoke rings, yawn ostentatiously or fart, he’s not going to look up a second time. Again he licks a finger and turns the page. The silence between us clears the way for other sounds. The ticking of an old clock slows your heartbeat, as if getting you ready to snore loudly in an armchair, like an old cat by a stove. The previously almost inaudible conversations outside now murmur like anxious voices from another world, still too far away to be of any import, too pathetically minute to make any kind of impression. The armchair creaks. Chaim Lizke moves on his seat. He scratches the back of his head and sniffs loudly. He reaches for a hankie and coughs into it. Another page further. A subdued ‘Heh-heh…’ Is he finding the first pages of Der Steppenwolf such a delight or is it more an amused contempt for Herman Hesse’s writing talent? I can’t tell. ‘Careful, first edition!’ Meanbeard said. But in the hands of this man, the book is just something to read, not a treasure. Should I impress upon him that he mustn’t dog-ear any of the pages, crack the spine or leave too much saliva on the corners? No idea how to say any of that in German.

  ‘Das sind nicht meine Bücher…’ I try.

  Lizke looks up and smiles again. ‘Danke schön. Sehr freundlich…’ His chin juts forward a little, his eyes screw up and combine with that frozen smile to form a mask of gratitude and appreciation. ‘Very pleased,’ he adds, nodding now too, while his eyes return to the printed page.

  I sigh and suddenly think it doesn’t matter. I have an idea these books will never be going back to their owner. Or maybe they will, but when Meanbeard won’t be able to do anything except shrug his shoulders because of other, much more pressing, worries. All at once it strikes me that everything is temporary. I’ve never thought about it before but now Chaim Lizke’s reading in seclusion has driven it home.

  But even that realization doesn’t make me want to sit in the lotus position under a tree with a gently babbling stream in the background and the teachings of Buddha draped round my bare neck like a comfy silk shawl. Yes, everything is temporary, but the disquiet Lizke evokes in me s
eems to have broken free of time. It is deep and unpredictable. I can’t have him staying here much longer. He’s started appearing in my dreams, sometimes wordless, but very present. Yesterday he held the door open for me and whispered like a butler, ‘Allow me, sir,’ after which he stuck his fingers in his mouth to whistle and a coach appeared out of the fog of Victorian London, in slow motion with two unruly black stallions foaming at the corners of their mouths. Lizke has to go. He’s getting under my skin, without me being able to work out why. Lately Lode has been relying more and more on me to provide him with food. It’s clear that he’s busy doing other things, acts of resistance probably, maybe sabotage. We all notice the increasing tension, as if everything is about to come to a head. Bollocks, of course. Life in this city drags on from incident to incident. One thing leads to another. Occupation or not, that’s all it is. Sometimes, when everything seems normal, I suddenly shiver and clutch at my stomach. It never lasts long, a minute at most, as if a robot inside of me has received a communication from a mastermind with a cynical plan to destroy the world.

  At our front door in Kruik Straat I’m reaching in my pocket for the key when someone puts a hand on my shoulder and tells me to come with him. Before I realize what’s happening, I’m in the back of a car between two men in leather coats. The man who is slowly manoeuvring the car along België Lei has one hand loosely draped over the wheel and is holding his cigarette half out of the open window with the other. Nobody says a word. At Harmonie Park the car turns left into Karel Ooms Straat. The man on my right makes a show of coughing.

  ‘Can’t you give us a break from those filthy cigarettes? I haven’t got over that bronchitis yet.’

  ‘Kiss my arse,’ says the driver.

  Nobody says a word to me. I’m cargo that has to be transported from point A to point B. I try to concentrate on my breathing and think of the Jew whose hand I shook in farewell just half an hour ago. I put my hands together on my lap. Here comes the reckoning. Here comes the moment I haven’t wanted to picture in detail, but have sometimes imagined on a rare restless night. We reach a residential neighbourhood and the car turns right. What was I thinking? I see Lode warning me, Yvette smiling at me, my mother crying in the kitchen, and I see myself, alone and abandoned, eating sandwiches in Vesting Straat’s dirty canteen. I feel my way through possibilities, possible retorts and alternative interpretations, things that have the ring of truth about them, explanations of suspicious behaviour. Here comes your big scene. This is your moment, Wilfried Wils. Don’t try to tell yourself otherwise. Start jumping on the spot to warm up in the wings. Make sure you don’t shit yourself. Be prepared for anything, especially the pain of truncheons raining down and beating you until you’re tender and bloody like an exquisite steak, the kind they used to serve up before the war in Hotel Weber on Keyser Lei, still bleeding and awash in thick brown gravy you could stand a fork up in, bleeding like Christ on the cross. Fear is what keeps you alive, fear is what keeps you alive. This sentence forms a refrain in my head.