23:06 – 6 seconds of silence
* * *
He was shouting. I was shouting too, I was angry. He needed to slide the letter under Barry’s door after all, only then would everything go back to the way it was after the bang. But Leo didn’t want to. Said it was too late. And that he didn’t want to lie. Because he loved me and not Barry. “That doesn’t matter,” I tried. “It’s about what Barry believes, not about what you think is true.” But Leo said it was. And all the other things he said are now on every page. Looking up doesn’t help, then the words just slip from the hands on the clock, emanate from the creatures on the blackboard, or sound from underneath the bobbing sheet.
* * *
It’s no longer any use, Merel, Barry has made his choice; the fact that you don’t respect that is selfish.
Let it go, Merel, you can’t control everything, you have to accept that, let it go.
Don’t do it, Merel, this is madness, give that letter back, now!
No, I’m not going to let you go, Merel, you have to calm down, think, for once, think about the baby.
Kalim told me that. I thought you’d told him? Why didn’t you tell me, Merel? That stomachache, that’s what that was, right?
Ow, you’re hurting me, hush now, just breathe.
Barry doesn’t want to, just let him go, there’s hardly enough food for the three of us, and you know it.
It’s no use, why can’t you see that, in a few days the food will run out, then we’re all doomed.
* * *
Especially that last line keeps repeating. I don’t get it, sentences like Escher drawings: I walk up and end up at the bottom. Because if we’re all doomed, why does Leo want me to think about you? And if we’re all doomed, what does it matter if one of us is selfish? If we’re all doomed, why were we standing there screaming?
If we’re all doomed, why am I not lying next to Barry?
Day 104
00:13 – 6 seconds of silence
02:02 – 6 seconds of silence
03:01 – 7 seconds of silence
03:45 – 8 seconds of silence
04:35 – 7 seconds of silence
06:00 – 8 seconds of silence
10:00 – 6 seconds of silence
12:59 – 8 seconds of silence
13:39 – 7 seconds of silence
17:00 – 9 seconds of silence
19:03 – 8 seconds of silence
19:33 – 9 seconds of silence
19:40 – 7 seconds of silence
19:55 – 7 seconds of silence
21:36 – 9 seconds of silence
22:03 – 10 seconds of silence
22:14 – 8 seconds of silence
23:04 – 11 seconds of silence
23:14 – 11 seconds of silence
23:20 – 10 seconds of silence
23:22 – 9 seconds of silence
23:34 – 10 seconds of silence
23:40 – 11 seconds of silence
23:41 – 11 seconds of silence
23:43 – 12 seconds of silence
23:45 – 10 seconds of silence
23:46 – 15 seconds of silence
23:48 – 15 seconds of silence
23:50 – 23:52 – silence
23:55 – 40 seconds of silence
Day 106
Tonight you had tentacles: All your suckers stuck to me, my stomach lining turning red. Briefly you stuck there, a starfish on aquarium glass. Then you suddenly slid up, through my stomach up to my esophagus. I saw it in the mirror, a bump above my ribcage: A snake devouring its prey, me the garter snake, you the mouse, I just didn’t gobble you down, but up. And almost choked when you reached my throat.
“Your mouth can open wider than you think, really, it’s a natural process,” said Leo.
“I wish I could take on your pain,” said someone I didn’t know.
And meanwhile you stuck to my vocal cords, your tentacles tapped on my teeth, and I threw my mouth open so wide my jaw joints popped loose: Snap, snap, both of them, one by one, I retched like a cat that’s eaten grass, braced myself, coughed, vomited with all my power, until you were on the teacher’s desk in front of me.
Your body an egg, white and wet, eight tentacles, slippery and slack, the dead worms on the bike path, a little tap and they slid off your face. Two blue ridges you had for lips. Ridges full of white saliva. I would give the ridges my last portion: a piece of pasta from the pill bottle, cooked so long it had become a tampon. I pushed it in your mouth, the tampon. But the thing got stuck halfway: I looked at you until you swelled up and your blue lips turned purple and thick brown hairs poked through your slippery white skin.
“His sheet,” shouted Leo, “before it’s too late!”
And I was saying you were a she, but he threw a white sheet over you that turned more red the more years we sat beside it, red like my stomach lining, my burning stomach lining, but getting up was impossible because we couldn’t miss a thing, Leo dabbed my forehead with the origami paper I later took notes on: 23:55 – 40 seconds of silence, 00:02 – 43 seconds of silence, 00:10 – silent, after that we couldn’t write any more because the paper was too sweaty. It wasn’t necessary either. Leo said it was over. That the sheet was no longer bobbing.
And then I was suddenly my mother. And I walked to the window. Pushed down the door handle, quickly said, “I’m going.” And then I shut my eyes, and there were melting cupcakes. And when I opened my eyes again, thick fog was all there was.
Day 97
Yesterday I told you about Leo. In case there is an after and one of us won’t make it there. Today I thought: Then who will tell you about you?
I don’t know where to begin. So I’ll just start with your grandma.
Your grandma wanted me very badly, so badly that she paid to have me made in a dish. A flat little plastic container with an egg of hers, and seed from the bank. This means you have no grandfather, you just have his genes. But those genes were well considered.
No heart or skin conditions, no cancer in the family. Tall, Caucasian, dark hair, dark eyes like your grandma’s: Your grandma chose a donor with her phenotype. Because if she looked like him, I would look like her. And I did, my baby pictures were indistinguishable from hers. Yes, I was carefully conceived and made with precision. And still I wasn’t the desired result.
Your grandma had imagined that everything would be better as soon as I was there. That she was only unhappy because I wasn’t there. But it worked out differently. I didn’t turn out to be the remedy for her life, rather the fatal lung infection. Your grandma had multiplied herself and doubled her sadness in the process, and I became the crawling embodiment of this. After eight long years, the very sight of this failure became unbearable. So your grandma walked to the window.
She pulled open the curtains, pushed down a handle, shoved aside a flowerpot.
I was on the floor, saw that two flowerpots were now far too close together: Twigs snapped and leaves bruised. Briefly your grandma looked around.
“I’m going.”
Then she put her foot on the windowsill. And opened the window.
We lived on the fourteenth floor and I looked down for a moment, after. Nobody has ever asked me what I saw.
* * *
The next chapter in your story is me.
“And who are you?” we often asked each other in the old situation. Then we said our names, and after that what things we did to collect money.
“My name’s Merel,” was my answer. “I work in TV.” I knew that immediately conjured up a picture. A picture that did not completely correspond to what my days usually looked like. But also a picture that made their own days look shabby in comparison. So I didn’t do anything to change the picture. And didn’t say how many nights I was at home looking at screens to avoid thinking of everything I wasn’t doing: looking at real estate, trawling dating websites, signing up for driving lessons, living in Barcelona. It was all possible. But making a decision meant giving up options. Every choice l
eading to loss. So I did nothing and watched my screens to see the choices others made. The fact they hardly ever made them happy.
And then came the bang.
The bang that blew up all options at once. The superstore collapsed, only a few shelves were left, and I took what was there. I can’t say if that’s good or bad, I can only say it made me happy.
There were others. There was a schedule to the days. There was a routine and that meant a reason to get up, go on.
Only: There are fewer and fewer others. And the others who are left stick to the routine less and less, some suddenly just lying down all day. That’s why going on suddenly no longer seemed the only option.
But then, then came you.
I don’t have to be afraid of you, because I won’t regret you. And now that you exist, it’s not my choice to determine whether you will be there or not.
I can only decide for me. But if I go, you go. So I think I’ll stay a while.
Day 108
They say I slept for three days. I’d believe anything they tell me. One day, seven days, two days, three days, I’ve never been so tired.
There were six portions; I only wanted to eat three of them.
The rest doesn’t belong to me.
“Just take them,” Leo said. “They also would’ve been eaten otherwise.”
Otherwise: a parallel situation in which Barry is still there. These were his portions. But Leo pointed at my belly, at you or at me.
“You have to eat more now.”
He looked serious; he meant it. Perhaps he thought that Barry had been eating your portions all this time. Everyone’s always eating portions that are really someone else’s. We get by as long as we don’t know whose.
I started to sit up.
“Wait!” Leo gestured. His arm around my waist, he took my hand but I wasn’t ready yet. One foot on the mat, other foot next to it, my head rose, the rest didn’t cooperate, my legs gave out.
“You can’t yet,” said Leo.
But I clutched a table’s edge, “Yes I can. I’m fine now.”
From upstairs came a sound like cats in heat.
“What is that?”
Leo looked at the ceiling. “Kalim,” he said. “He’s singing, for Barry. Only now in Latin, I think because of his religion or something.”
“Kalim doesn’t have a religion,” I said. And I thought about what Kalim did know. “He read Melissa’s diary.”
“Who’s Melissa?”
Again Leo’s arm around my body, perhaps that arm belonged there; the pillow that’s on the kitchen chair because it’s too low otherwise.
“Melissa… Someone from the office?” He said it in a whisper, careful, checking whether the Band-Aid can already come off.
“I want to go to Barry.”
* * *
I smelled it immediately; it hadn’t been a dream after all.
I put a hand on my mouth, but soon let go. Inhale. What I should do is inhale. If a smell is the only thing the dead leave behind, isn’t smelling a way to speak to them?
Kalim stood next to the teacher’s desk, stopped singing as soon as he saw me.
“Merel, you’re awake…”
He took a few steps backward, I took his place, standing right next to Barry.
They’d touched him. Turned him on his back, drawn the sheet up to his chest. Placed a necklace around his neck: orange and red beads. They clashed.
And who had closed the eyelids? Leo: a last tribute to a dear friend. Or Kalim: the umpteenth act of service, like watering the plants.
They hadn’t been able to close his mouth. It hung open a little; a carp on dry land.
So different from in the mortuary. The faces we’d once filmed there had been gray; some of the dead had blue rings around their eyes. But Barry’s face was white. A solid white like the wall, the curtains, the computer, the chalk: like most things in the classroom. Barry was one of them now. A white thing in the classroom.
Carefully I prodded the forehead. The skin didn’t give. Somewhere behind me Kalim cleared his throat. I felt him looking at me. Seeing how I took the necklace in my hand.
I pulled, and the head came up.
Briefly it seemed like it would flop backwards, like newborns when you don’t put your hand behind their little necks. Like the head would come loose, roll off the table, bounce a few times. Perhaps the eyes would pop open.
But the head didn’t flop backwards. The neck had turned to concrete and the upper body let itself be hoisted up on the necklace. The higher it got, the farther the necklace stretched: ever more string between the beads.
The white thing was almost sitting up at this point. But my arm trembled, it was heavier than it looked, string cutting into my hand, until the necklace finally snapped.
Beads shot in all directions, I heard them clatter onto tables and chairs, saw them rolling across the floor. Some beads popped onto the sheet. They lay still, bugs on flypaper.
“Merel?” Leo. With the glass of water he’d promised me.
“What happened?”
“The necklace clashed.”
“With the sheet?”
“With Barry.”
I heard Kalim leave the classroom.
“Do you want to go back downstairs instead?” Leo asked.
I shook my head. Didn’t take his water because I tugged at the sheet, wanted to make sure there weren’t any more necklaces underneath. Beads rolled off the stomach, bounced on the tabletop.
And then Leo was holding my wrist.
His fingers squeezed, his grip was strong. I could no longer move my arm.
“Ow!”
“Sorry. But you’d better leave the sheet, what’s underneath is not a pretty sight.”
The dead chick I had once found in an egg, his neck snapped, his downy feathers wet. The smell had made me retch. Now the sheet had been pulled down a bit, the smell appeared to have gotten stronger. I almost tasted the chick.
“Bedsores?” I whispered.
“Something like that.”
I let go of the sheet. And sat down on the floor amidst the orange beads.
“Shit,” Leo said, high above me.
* * *
His face in front of my face. “You ok?”
* * *
Glass of water, sip.
* * *
Kalim, brush, dustpan.
Day 109
The dead chick. The smooth white face. “Bedsores?” – “Something like that.”
It didn’t add up. There was something else. Something I hadn’t seen, because it’d been covered up.
* * *
It was still dark, but I got up.
* * *
The flashlight was in its place; they probably hardly used it. The battery was almost empty too; the wan little spot of yellow didn’t even reach the steps of the stairs, barely illuminating my hand on the railing.
* * *
Couldn’t afford to fumble. I held the light right next to the door handle. Don’t make a sound, Kalim was sleeping nearby.
Silently I shone inside. A yellow circle on the dark. A yellow circle that didn’t help, luckily I knew exactly where to find the thing I was looking for.
* * *
He was wearing a new necklace. There was growling, my growling. Because this necklace too needed to be destroyed, the fly spooned out of the soup, the spider slapped out of my hair, but I knew how many necklaces were still in Kalim’s classroom. Lizards’ tails always grow back.
* * *
I placed the palm of my hand on the throat and brushed down, over the chest and over the sheet. I felt ribs, the hard stomach, a pelvis protruding so much I could grab it right through the fabric: a hilt to move it around with.
My hand slid further down, found the scrotum, squeezed the upper legs, pressed the knees, smoothing down the sheet, moving a little more farther. And stopped there. Because suddenly there was only tabletop.
* * *
Again my hand on the upper leg. I sq
ueezed, brushed down, felt the knee.
And all of a sudden my hand was on the table again.
* * *
The flashlight was bitter, iron tingles the tongue. But it had to go in my mouth to be able to quickly jerk the sheet away with both my hands.
* * *
The stench: the dead chick stuffed in my throat. I coughed, heard the flashlight bang on the table. The light landed next to the legs. And shone right on the stump.
* * *
I picked up the flashlight.
The knees had been knotted off with necklaces, the arms and upper legs were full of little holes; diligent mutilation. I moved the light closer to the beads. Yellow and white around the knees, blue and pink around the neck. A sacrifice.
But to whom?
* * *
My knee knocked into the railing, tripping down the last few steps. I felt nothing, only thought: How long has it been since I’ve been in the gym?
* * *
The hallway was a dark hole, the flashlight a firefly revealing my hand. The fact that I had a hand. Only then did I smell it.
* * *
I walked towards where I thought was the center of the gym. The brazier was there. The benches, the bucket. Two saucers. And the bottle of soy sauce.
I held a saucer to my face: the same smell that hovered in the hallway.
The sacrifice, I was now certain. They had made it to themselves.
* * *
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