Everything There Was

by Hanna Bervoets

  The pill bottle was empty. So somebody had run out of Halopax.

  * * *

  This is what I know about Halopax: You don’t just take it. We once did an item about antidepressants. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft: brand names for fluoxetine or paroxetine, prescribed for persistent depression. Many people feel better when they take these drugs. So we know that they work. But we don’t yet know how exactly. That doesn’t matter in and of itself. Many antidepressants fall under the banner: no harm no foul. And that they don’t do any harm – at least no demonstrable, court-actionable harm – that much we know for sure, because that has been studied for years. For pharmaceutical companies it’s more important that a drug does no harm than that it’s effective.

  Halopax is a different story. Halopax you don’t take to feel better. You take it because you think you’re Jesus. Because voices are telling you that your license plate is a letter from Satan. Because it seems like a good idea to nail yourself to the kitchen door with knives. No harm, very foul, because to abruptly stop taking it is dangerous. Although this morning I couldn’t remember what the effects would be. I was mainly wondering how the pill bottle had ended up in my trashcan. Probably one of us had thrown it in there.

  But who? And when?

  The Sunday we arrived, all the trashcans were empty. It could be that someone had already thrown out the pill bottle that afternoon. But it was also possible Kalim had changed the trash bag again after the bang, just like he’d kept watering the plants. In that case the pill bottle had been tossed out later. And someone had recently run out of medication. Two weeks ago, one week ago. Or maybe yesterday.

  The question now was whether one of us had thrown anything in the trash on the day of the shoot: a napkin, a cup, even a piece of gum. Because if that was the case, it was gone now. And that would mean that Kalim had indeed changed the bag.

  Trash is the last stage of consumption. To find out if anyone had thrown anything in the trashcan, I needed to find out if anyone had eaten, drunk, used, or finished something on our first Sunday.

  In my head I went over the events of that day. I’d done so many times already, but I’d always been wondering about other things. Whether we’d followed the instructions correctly, whether all the windows and doors were really shut, whether anything could come in from outside or vice versa, and what in god’s name we’d been doing at the time of the bang. The things we’d done in the hours before the bang had seemed unimportant. This morning was the first time I’d thought about that time too.

  * * *

  The conversations with Yuri and Kaspar we would tape in one go, our camera constantly pointed at them. But the viewers also wanted to see Leo during the interview. That’s why Lotteke would tape some Q&A shots beforehand: footage in which Leo tilts his head lightly, smiles a friendly smile, gives an understanding nod, and asks questions of the void.

  So Leo and Lotteke had arrived at the school first. Kalim must have opened the door.

  They could have of course eaten something between takes. But that seemed unlikely, as it wouldn’t have meshed with Lotteke’s tendency towards efficiency.

  At the same time, Barry and I were on our way by car. The road was quiet. The benefit of working on the weekend: Traffic only starts moving after breakfast in bed and ready-to-bake croissants. We hadn’t had breakfast ourselves. Barry was battling a hangover and wanted “something with puff pastry and meat.” In the end he bought a hotdog at a gas station, eating it on the spot; he must have tossed out the cardboard tray then. I bought a prepackaged sandwich myself, to eat in the car. The sandwich of the month: clove cheese with bean paste. I still remember because Barry and I talked about it the rest of the way.

  I said, “Who invents these sandwiches?”

  Barry said, “Someone with a great job.”

  Together we decided that there was a guy who invents a sandwich for the gas station every month. A freelancer, because inventing one sandwich a month is not a full-time job. The guy probably also invented other sandwiches. Sandwiches of the month for other brands, bakers, and supermarkets. A seasonal salad sometimes. Anyhow, this guy was a perfectionist who didn’t want to repeat himself. So the ingredients and the combinations of his sandwiches kept getting weirder. Hummus with mango and Serrano ham. Egg salad with walnuts and arugula. Bean paste and clove cheese. That would explain my sandwich, Barry and I told each other. Of course we both knew that wasn’t the case. But it was a funny thought. And apparently that’s what we needed that morning: funny thoughts.

  The wrapping around my sandwich, what had I done with it?

  Barry hated trash on his dashboard. So I must have put it in my bag, probably before we got out. At the school Natalie and Yuri were already waiting.

  Yuri I immediately recognized from YouTube clips about the Mathematical Olympiad, but Natalie didn’t look like her profile picture. That picture had been taken in a studio, with a gray backdrop and lamps highlighting her jaw line from three sides. I wondered how Natalie hoped others would see her. As a woman with a sharp jaw line? Or as a woman who has studio portraits taken? On the phone she’d sounded young, now she looked older than she was. Blond strands ran tightly over her skull; they seemed greasy, perhaps they’d just been washed. Natalie clutched a large canvas bag under her arm. This morning I couldn’t remember Natalie ever taking anything edible out of there.

  When we entered the classroom, Kaspar was already sitting at a table. He was drinking something. Maybe from a plastic cup that he’d later throw away, but probably from his own teacher’s mug. You only use plastic cups in spaces that aren’t yours, and the school was Kaspar’s domain.

  Next step: I introduced Natalie to Leo. He shook her hand. She reacted the way most people react when Leo says his name. She nodded with interest, but smiled too widely and said her own name too hastily, betraying her nonchalance. Briefly we all stood in the classroom. Then we headed to the teachers’ lounge.

  Where was my sandwich wrapper at that point? Had I thrown it away in the classroom? This morning something like that occurred to me: the wrapper in my bag, the silver trashcan, my foot on the pedal. But it could also be a false memory originating from logical assumptions.

  Tell a group of test subjects that they were kidnapped as children and suddenly they’ll remember what the kidnappers’ van looked like. And there are still people who believe they witnessed Pim Fortuyn getting shot on live TV. The brain fabricates those images as a coagulant: fishing line neatly sowing together the things that used to be. This way our past becomes a logical story. And our need for logical stories is stronger than our appreciation for truth.

  To find out whether I’d really thrown out the wrapper, I stepped on the trashcan’s pedal this morning. Now I knew for sure. I’d done this before. I’d thrown the wrapper in the trashcan on Sunday, and I also remembered what I was thinking when I did: I’m doing something that’s not allowed. It had felt like stepping onto a freshly painted zebra crossing, breaking the sugar seal on someone else’s crème brûlée. This trash bag hadn’t been put into the can for me, but for a teacher and a class who expected an unsoiled empty trashcan on Monday morning. But this morning I was happy that I’d thrown out my sandwich wrapper after all. Now I was sure that Kalim had changed the bag afterwards, and the pill bottle had been thrown in after the bang. Briefly I was satisfied.

  Until I realized how little I could do with this information.

  * * *

  Clear phrasing. No digressions or clichéd expressions. One sentence, no adverbs. A neutral but friendly gaze. Just asking a simple question.

  That was what I’d intended.

  Kalim was sitting on his mat, stringing beads on a woolen thread. He has made more such necklaces over the past few days. All made from beads in two colors, alternating one by one: red-yellow-red, black-blue-black. According to Barry the necklaces have something to do with Kalim’s religion, but I think he’s stringing beads to stay busy. To not be doing nothing. Just like we’ve started doing coloring s
heets with horses on them. But this afternoon I didn’t ask him about the necklaces. It would distract from what I really wanted to know.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Kalim looked up. His fingers kept working on the beads.

  “When was the last time you changed the trash bag in the classroom I sleep in?”

  Kalim frowned. “Do you want me to change the bag?”

  “No, no!” I moved my index finger up and down, like a mother scolding her child. I never usually do this, I thought.

  “No, I want to know when you changed it.”

  Kalim dropped a bead. It rolled off the mat until it was right at my feet. I picked it up, Kalim held out his hand. Like a beggar, I thought. I shouldn’t think that, I thought immediately after that.

  “Did you change the bag three weeks ago?”

  Kalim was staring at the bead, which I was now holding between my thumb and index finger.

  “Or two weeks ago?”

  Kalim didn’t respond, but looked like he was thinking.

  “Two weeks?”

  Kalim started to nod.

  “Or three?”

  Kalim nodded again.

  “Or yesterday?”

  Kalim was still nodding.

  He didn’t understand me. Or he’d forgotten, it didn’t matter: He wouldn’t answer. I gave Kalim the bead, expected him to string it to the necklace. But he tossed it back in the box with the rest of the beads.

  “That was your question?”

  “Yes,” I said, “that was it, thanks.”

  “So,” Kalim said, suddenly determined. “How are you?”

  “Me?”

  When Leo or Barry asks me how I am, I usually briefly tell them about how I slept. I didn’t think that’s what Kalim wanted to know. His “how are you” must’ve been a way of saying goodbye. A greeting out of a sense of duty or kindness. Although perhaps those are two different things.

  Before I could return the question, Kalim asked, “Did you sleep well?”

  He did want to know after all. And while I was saying I had slept just fine, I realized that I was the one who didn’t really want to know. And also didn’t want to talk. At least not to Kalim.

  “See you later,” he said.

  Day 22

  “I wouldn’t do it, dear.”

  Barry held up the pill bottle against the fluorescent lights in his classroom, the way scientists on old pictures inspect test tubes. I had told him what I was planning. That I wanted to show the pill bottle to the group before or after dinner that night, ask who it belonged to and whether that person needed our help. But Barry shook his head.

  He said, “No one is going to admit they need those pills.” And, “If someone had wanted help, they’d asked for it a long time ago.” And, “You’re only stirring things up by doing this.” But Barry also said, “Maybe nothing’s going on. Maybe someone just found that pill bottle somewhere, under a cabinet or something, and threw it in the closest trashcan.”

  “But if nothing’s going on, can’t I just show it?”

  Briefly all we heard was the white noise of the radio. Barry leaves the thing on all day. Against the silence, he says. Plus, if the music comes back, he’ll be the first to know.

  “Hm, right,” Barry eventually mumbled. “Still, I would just see what happens. See if anyone gets hyper or apathetic.”

  “Are those the symptoms of someone quitting without gradually reducing?”

  “Yes. Well, in any case they’ll start displaying atypical behavior.”

  With his thumb and index finger Barry picked a brown hair off my shoulder. It’s falling out, my hair. My body thinks I no longer need it.

  I asked, “How do you know all this?”

  Now Barry squinted, as if he didn’t understand my question. “Come on, Merel,” he said slowly. “Didn’t we do a whole item about it?”

  Barry’s probably right. Showing the pill bottle would only stir things up. I’ll just wait and see. Wait and see if anyone exhibits any strange behavior.

  Only: What is strange?

  You only notice what is atypical when you know what typical is. But I don’t know how most of the people here used to behave, outside of the school, before the bang. Who was mostly happy, active, or somber. Who was an evening or a morning person. Who called themselves a “people person,” enjoyed being alone, was creeped out by closed-off spaces, slept in the nude, let fate make most of their major decisions, or didn’t actually like rice.

  So I also don’t know who has started to behave differently. Or who stayed the same. Perhaps the latter would be even stranger. In atypical situations people should behave atypically.

  Take airplane hijackings. If someone’s suddenly standing in the aisle with a gun, passengers will either fight or flee. Fleeing in an airplane means staying quietly seated and behaving as inconspicuously as possibly. But there are always two or three passengers who fight: Jumping up and throwing themselves on the hijackers. Usually they get shot immediately. But sometimes one of them manages to overpower a hijacker by grabbing his wrist in the right spot and twisting it behind his back. People who succeed in doing this are called heroes. Who the heroes will be is hard to predict during takeoff. At least: not on the basis of their behavior before departure. The colleague who seldom says anything in meetings could suddenly be grabbing wrists and twisting arms behind backs in catastrophic situations. Often these people do have atypical brains. Low dopamine and high testosterone levels, making them braver in threatening situations. The same, by the way, goes for many airplane hijackers. Often the hero is the one who most resembles the hijacker.

  Day-to-day behavior is thus not the best point of reference for a person’s actions in extreme circumstances.

  Circumstances such as those we find ourselves in now.

  So I’m better off directing my attention to the past few days. Since the first week, right after the bang, some people have indeed started to behave differently. Although I don’t know whether that is typical or atypical either.

  * * *

  “What do you think of Kalim?” I asked. “All those necklaces, doesn’t that suggest a kind of madness?”

  “I don’t know,” said Barry, “I really think it’s something religious.”

  “Religion is madness too.”

  “But still, I think Kaspar has something funny about him too.”

  * * *

  Kaspar makes things. A washboard made from a tabletop. A light that turns on when the clock radio’s alarm goes off. A big “Y” on a necklace like the ones rappers wear that he made for Yuri with a coping saw. And ginger powder, a lot of ginger powder. All that building, sawing, ginger grinding; they’re not typical activities, they’re missions. That at least is how Kaspar executes them, with the precision and tenacity of a mercenary.

  Kaspar’s current mission: Charging our empty phones. We can’t use them to call anybody, but Yuri misses the games with birds and bubbles. And I think the others do too.

  First Kaspar went to look for a charger. He looked in all the classrooms, drawers, desks, and cabinets. It looked like no one had left behind an iPhone charger. But one drawer resisted Kaspar’s attempts at opening it, the one in the principal’s desk. Again Kaspar searched all the drawers and cabinets, this time also checking the pencil cases. He didn’t find a key that fit the lock on the drawer. He did find a coil of metal wire, in a utility closet. Kaspar twisted it into little hooks he stuck into the lock one by one. We stood and looked at it for a while. Until Kaspar said, “Sorry guys, but you’re really distracting me here.”

  In the end Kaspar broke the lock by bashing it with a blackboard eraser. There was a picture of a woman on a carousel horse in the drawer. Under it a post-it with a phone number and its adhesive strip covered in dust. Under that were letters about the school’s foundations, all the things that were wrong with it, and how much it’ll cost to fix it. And underneath that, underneath everything, no charger.

  Now Kaspar is trying to charge t
he phones differently. He took apart a game of “Operation” and did something with wires from a printer. None of us can gauge to what extent Kaspar’s attempts are of any use. Maybe his behavior really is abnormal or manic. But we leave him to his work: We want to charge our phones.

  * * *

  “And what about Natalie?” asked Barry.

  “But we hardly hear from her,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  * * *

  Natalie, on the other hand, is doing less. She sleeps a lot. And when she’s not sleeping, she says, “I’m so fucking stiff, man.” Or, “My back is really killing me today.” She also says it when Yuri is around, even though he never responds. Maybe he’s used to it. Maybe Natalie also said these kinds of things at home.

  She did at some point tell us she used to always be busy. That it felt like she was living her life for others: for Erik, for Yuri, for her customers and clients. Perhaps a woman who lives her life for others will stop as soon as she gets the chance: Stop living for others, or living altogether. Although it could also be that Natalie is so exhausted because she’s missing her medication.

  And another thing: Natalie told me she’s been sterilized.

  That was Wednesday. I’d gotten my period that morning, which scared me. Getting my period suddenly seemed like something from a distant past, apparently I’d subconsciously believed that it wouldn’t happen to me under the new circumstances. That I also bled here, far from my home and past, felt weird, like getting a letter from a dead friend. In my bag I found a single box of tampons, but it was as though someone else had put it in there: A present from grandma, to open on the road. If I’m careful, that box can get me through the week. But I don’t know what to do after. And I wondered how Natalie was managing.

  “Ok, just like, a woman’s question…”

  That’s how I started the conversation. Perhaps because I thought that was the way Natalie talked.