I’ve long thought that life was all about ignoring the black spots. But when I was lying on my mat last night, I thought about what Natalie had said. “It doesn’t work like that for me.” What if it didn’t work like that for me either? I tried not to think about that either.
I drew up my tablecloth, even though I knew I wouldn’t fall asleep anytime soon. It was warm in the gym; the glass in the door to the hallway was covered in condensation. I changed position a few times. And then I felt the pink diary under my mat. With my back to the others I leafed to the previous Sunday. I marked it with a cross. Under Monday I wrote “Lotteke left,” under Tuesday “no internet,” and under Thursday “gathered all food.”
I crossed out Melissa’s swimming lessons.
Day 95
We haven’t turned on the computers in a long time. The last time we turned them off again, there still wasn’t any internet. Until then we still opened the browsers every day. Though perhaps that was just habit, like in the old situation, tearing a page off my calendar every morning, even though I already knew full well what day of the week it was, or what date. But the more often you do something, the stranger it is not to do it. So I can’t say whether we still believed the internet would come back. Just that we kept hoping it would.
It is perhaps hard for you to imagine how important the internet once was. I also find it hard to imagine. Perhaps it really wasn’t all that important.
But I think it was.
People said: You can find anything on the internet. But you had to search for it first. Even more than searching, we liked looking at things other people thought we wanted to find: Pictures in which they stretched out one arm to take their own picture; songs about relationships that had just begun or just ended; videos of animals or babies doing things.
Me, I had a preference for videos of cats. I didn’t love cats. But I did love to see cats getting tickled, walking on a piano, or falling off something. I also loved videos with guinea pigs.
Of course we weren’t just watching cats and guinea pigs. Many people watched other people. In the old situation you could also do that at the supermarket. But at the supermarket most of those other people had their clothes on: You didn’t often run into people without any clothes on. Scarcity creates demand and demand creates supply. Supply caused the scarcity to decrease, but not the demand for people without clothes. And so the internet was soon full of naked bodies. If you paid you could even make the naked bodies move.
But, above all, the internet was a communication medium. Yes, communication might have even been the most important constant in the old situation. All day we were sending messages. Some messages had a specific goal. They were calls to action: To be at the meeting around 3:00 or to bring Thai food. The intentions behind other messages were more vague.
“I’m going to have dinner now.” “I’m listening to a song.” “I read an article in The Guardian.”
Such messages were aimed at people who hadn’t been searching for them but found them anyway, all through the day, on their computers, tablets, or phones. We didn’t know that we wanted to read this information. But then again, these messages didn’t have anything to do with wanting. They were there. Like the weather. Before you could even wonder whether it was raining, you saw that it was raining. Before you could wonder if you wanted to know what other people had eaten that day, it was there for you to see.
The strange thing was, we didn’t realize the importance of these messages then. Some people said: It’s all nonsense, I’m not doing this. Other people said: It’s all nonsense, but I’m doing it anyway.
Only now do I understand what purpose those messages really had. They assured us that there were others out there—the only information that really matters, and the only information we craved during the first days of the new situation.
But craving something that isn’t there is torture. To spare ourselves, we started craving other things. Things that were there. Though they were becoming scarcer by the day.
Day 7
I’m hungry. So hungry I can’t sleep. The last time we ate was five hours ago. An oatmeal bar and a single serving of school milk. Exactly according to our new schedule.
“We should really start to calculate how much we can take per day,” we kept saying. But then we took three sheets of lasagna again. And covered them with a whole can of tomato paste.
This morning was the first time we really talked about rationing. Looking at all the sell-by dates, we agreed that we should first eat the things that would go bad the soonest. Only when those things run out will we start on the boxes of pasta and rice. We just didn’t know how we should divide those.
Kaspar said, “It’s simple. We determine a minimum amount of pasta per day and divide all the boxes into those portions.”
Leo said, “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, radically reducing what you eat from one day to the next: The body can’t take that. We’re better off starting with medium-sized portions and then gradually reducing. That way we can hold out longer.”
Kaspar said, “But then we run out of our stock faster. We won’t hold out longer if the food runs out faster.”
Leo said, “We will if we train our bodies to be able to skip portions.”
Kaspar said, “I’d rather eat a little bit every day than nothing at all on some days.”
And then Barry said, “I sometimes fast on lemon juice for ten days. But then you also gradually reduce. You start with cups of soup, and from day three onwards you eat nothing. After a week I usually feel fine.”
In the end, we picked Leo’s method. We’d gradually reduce. But then we’d do so according to a formula Kaspar had devised. According to his plan, we have a full nine weeks of food. I looked at the chart but I didn’t understand it. I could have checked the calculations. Then perhaps I’d have discovered that something was wrong: That the rations won’t last us nine weeks and that we should eat less. But I don’t want to eat less. And I don’t want to be here longer than nine weeks. So I didn’t check Kaspar’s chart.
* * *
I wonder if the others can also hear my stomach growling. I try to think my way out of it, the hunger. To pretend it doesn’t matter.
There is an American torture method in which prisoners of war are constantly played rock music. Most prisoners can’t stand it. They scream, break their fists against the wall. That anger gives them adrenaline. Thus keeping them from sleeping. But there are always a couple of prisoners who aren’t bothered by the music, who just sleep through it. Because they know that sleeping and music have nothing to do with each other.
That’s the way I’m trying to think. Hunger is only awful when I think it’s awful. I don’t need any energy. I lie down. I sleep. Sleepers don’t need to eat.
I have to dissect the hunger. Defuse it by pulling it apart. Think about that animation I once commissioned. The glycogen level in my liver has decreased: A red arrow shoots down. My stomach produces the ghrelin hormone: A little blue ball slips through my blood stream to my brain stem. There it is converted into a red, throbbing ball: A brain signal, the little sign that makes my brain ask for food.
A throbbing little red ball. That’s all it is, that so-called hunger. I only have to kick the ball away. But it doesn’t work. Because it’s warm in the gym, because Yuri says something, because Natalie is going to the bathroom yet again.
And I am hungry.
Day 11
We went to get books. From the school library on the third floor. Barry and I were there this morning.
“They’ve got Astrid Lindgren!” Barry exclaimed. “She used to be my favorite.” He said it in that tender tone people often use to talk about their past, as if they’re already moved by the simple fact that they used to be a child.
“The Children of Noisy Village! And look, Karlsson-on-the-Roof!” One by one Barry pulled the books out from the shelves. There were also new things: Lemony Snicket; Jacqueline Wilson; a lot of books from the How to Survive High School se
ries. In the end we only chose books we’d already read when we were small. Perhaps because the new things didn’t seem fun. But probably because we want our own childhood to remain the only childhood.
“I just really feel the need for Lasses, Lisas, Longstockings, and homemade gingerbread,” said Barry when we were walking down the stairs. “Those How to Survive books won’t work for me. Well, maybe How to Survive a Fucking Apocalypse.”
It didn’t make me laugh. But I wanted to laugh. So I laughed.
At the foot of the stairs, Yuri was waiting for us. His cheeks red, his hair sticking to his forehead.
“Yo!” Barry called out, waving a book. “Want me to read to you?”
“Hm,” said Yuri. “Maybe later.” He stuck his hand up to give Barry a high five. “Is Leo upstairs?”
We shook our heads.
“I’ve been looking all over for him,” said Yuri. “Do you wanna help find him?”
“Yeah, sure,” said Barry. “Nothing better to do anyway.” He winked.
“We were going to shoot hoops,” said Yuri.
“Wow,” Barry exclaimed, “cool.”
Leo is teaching Yuri how to play basketball. Since the day before yesterday all he wants to do is dunk, dribble, and pass. Not with us. Just with Leo.
Before he became a TV host, Leo was a professional basketball player. The six-foot-six Dunkin’ Dutchman: They all wanted him in America. For years he played professionally in North Dakota. But it was here that I first saw him dribble. I’d never seen Leo look so athletic. Or no: So fanatical. Running, sweating, screaming.
“Come on, Yuri!” – “One, two… jump!” – “Just cover me, bam, cover me!”
It was also the first time I heard Leo raise his voice. Mostly he speaks slowly, carefully. His voice works like a massage, people become calm just hearing him speak.
“Leo!” Yuri called.
“Leoooo!” all three of us called.
“Maybe in the kitchen?” asked Barry.
Yuri nodded. “Maybe.”
In the kitchen, we found Kaspar and Natalie. Sitting on desk chairs behind a table they’d gotten from the teachers’ lounge. They were busy dividing up rice and bowtie pasta. Natalie poured some rice onto a saucer, Kaspar put the grains, one by one, in plastic cups. It seemed laborious to me. But it’s what we all agreed on.
“We’re looking for Leo,” said Yuri.
“He’s not here, sweetheart,” said Natalie.
Yuri looked at Kaspar, “Do you know where Leo is?”
Kaspar didn’t answer, he remained focused on putting grains of rice into cups, “Two, four, six.”
“Kaspar’s just counting right now,” said Natalie.
Something about this conversation was off.
Yuri asked, “Should I help?”
Natalie said, “I don’t think that’s necessary. Kaspar already made a whole chart and everything.”
That was it. Kaspar. Yuri had always called Kaspar Mr. Kaspar. Natalie had followed suit. Just like parents call their own parents “Grandma” and “Grandpa” in front of their children, and their partner “Dad” or “Mom,” Natalie had only ever said “Mr. Kaspar.” I wondered who’d been the first to stop doing that. Yuri, who no longer saw Kaspar as his teacher. Or Natalie, for whom Kaspar had become more than her son’s teacher.
“What kind of chart did you make?” asked Yuri. He pointed to the page on the table in front of Kaspar.
“A chart that shows how much we can eat in the coming days,” said Kaspar.
“Is it based on a formula?”
Kaspar nodded. “Of course.”
“Can I see it?” Yuri asked eagerly, almost desperately. As if it were a gift he wasn’t allowed to unwrap before his birthday.
Kaspar frowned, I thought about the nine weeks. Probably we were all thinking about the nine weeks. Quickly, we all started talking at the same time.
“Maybe later.”
“Hey, I already looked at the chart, looks great!”
“Shall we go look for Leo first?”
“You’re going to dribble, right?”
“Oh, and can you pass the ball yet?”
Kaspar folded the piece of paper shut. He said, “I’d go look in the principal’s office if I were you.”
* * *
Leo was lying on his stomach, his face to the floor. Silently and breathing regularly, he pushed himself up: Three push-ups, four push-ups, five. He pushed his body up from the floor as easily as someone else would put a teacup in a cabinet. That’s what it looked like at least.
He’d taken his shirt off, probably so he wouldn’t have to wash it later. That had to be done with hand soap, and clothes take a long time to dry.
I don’t know if Leo noticed we were standing in the door.
I looked at his torso. I’d seen it before. At night, in the gym, the times he had tossed off his coat in his sleep. I knew how broad and muscular it was. But seeing Leo push himself up like this, quiet and controlled, almost serene, I looked at it differently. The back that came up again and again, the tightened muscles in his arms, the furrow between the shoulder blades that sometimes broadened but never disappeared. This wasn’t Leo on the floor of the principal’s office. This was a body, an untouchable body, so massive that it made the floor creak and so strong that it would never decay.
The three of us stood there, watching quietly. I twirled my hair, Barry pressed his books against his body. Twelve push-ups, thirteen push-ups, fourteen, fifteen. Then Leo got up, turned around, and looked at us. He didn’t seem startled or surprised.
“Good afternoon,” he said, as he sat on the desk. His abs bulged; I wondered if he was tightening them.
“Why this committee visit?”
“We were looking for you,” said Barry. “Or, well, Yuri was. Yuri was looking for you.”
Yuri nodded, “Are we going to dribble?”
“Better believe it, man!” Leo twisted a plastic bottle open, drank some water, put on his shirt, and jumped off the desk. A monitor trembled.
“But first we have to visit Kaspar.”
* * *
We waited in the hallway while Leo stuck his head around the corner of the kitchen door.
“How are things over here?” we heard him ask.
“Oh, fine.” Natalie’s voice.
“Do you need any help?”
There was no answer—were Natalie and Kaspar shaking their heads?
“You really don’t?” asked Leo.
“No, really,” Kaspar finally said. “Just go ahead, go play basketball and read those books you got.”
* * *
We played basketball until Yuri got too hungry, then listened to Leo read to us from Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter.
“Did the woods in North Dakota look like Ronia’s?” Yuri suddenly asked. Leo nodded, “Yeah, man. Although it was a lot colder in North Dakota, I think.”
“But how many degrees colder exactly?”
The way Yuri sat there, between Barry and Leo, with his messy hair, child’s glasses, clear eyes, he looked just like you would imagine a prodigy would look. That’s why we picked him after all, three weeks ago.
The show would be about talent. We’d already booked a professional soccer player, an opera singer, and a scientist who would talk about nature versus nurture. All we needed was a prodigy. Or, in the words of our editor-in-chief, “one of those preschoolers who skipped four grades, speaks Chinese, plays Chopin with his eyes closed, and reads Marx in his spare time.” Through schools and clubs we found various children. But they all lacked something. They shut down in front of the camera, could play the piano very well but couldn’t do simple sums, looked fifteen while they weren’t even ten yet, or turned out to be children of expats and thus not Dutch, or in any case not Dutch enough to appear on our show.
That left Yuri.
Yuri is no prodigy. Or in any case not a gifted child. Ask a gifted child what a straw is and it’ll say, “A tool made from a light plastic, primar
ily produced to transport liquids through the creation of a vacuum that causes the atmosphere bearing down onto the liquid’s surface to press the liquid in the direction of the mouth.” Ask Yuri what a straw is, he’ll answer, “Something to drink through.” But Yuri did earn first place in the national Mathematical Olympiad. His father let him do math exercises four hours a day as training. So we weren’t sure whether Yuri’s gift was innate talent or a coached trick. But hey, he was an articulate eight-year-old who looked really smart. What’s more, his mother was willing. Natalie had never seen our show, but when she heard that Leo hosted it, she immediately consented.
Leo was new. The editor-in-chief had hired him to draw more viewers. The fact that Leo drew guests as well as viewers was a nice bonus. Although, according to our editor-in-chief, he also just fit our show perfectly. Ok, Leo was hunky and had occasionally done half-naked magazine shoots. But he was also intelligent, read Hobbes and Hawking, and in his free time edited collections of American short stories.
That it would be nice if, in addition to Yuri and his mother, Leo would also interview Yuri’s teacher, that was my idea.
Only, Mr. Kaspar didn’t want to at first. He was busy, he said, didn’t feel the need to be on TV. Then we had Barry call him. From my desk I could hear him tell Kaspar how important he was for our piece. How his story would really add something, how it would be great publicity for the school, how it would take no time at all, and how Yuri would be much more at ease if his teacher were there. The first things weren’t true per se, and the last was a wild guess. But Barry would often balance between lie and suggestion when he was convincing guests. In the end he managed to convince Kaspar. The interview wouldn’t take more than an hour and Barry would only ask questions he had also asked during the pre-interview, as long as Kaspar promised to give the same answers.
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