The next morning the subject was not broached with a single word. Fortified in their beliefs, the women continued on their way.
The workmate was found and ended up stuck in quarantine, where a short time later he died from an unknown infection.
Hanck had never told this story to his son. He had got it into his head that the ‘workmate’ never actually existed, and that his father had wanted to make one last confession.
But of course Toby wanted to know who the Sneezers were.
‘They were Christians,’ said Hanck. ‘Very devout Christians. The only thing they wanted was to commune with their God, the father of Jesus.’ Toby nodded. He knew who Jesus was and that God was his father. ‘They believed that when a person sneezed, he came close to God.’
‘Sneezed?’ said Toby. ‘Like when you get a cold?’
‘Yes, apparently.’
‘I don’t like sneezing.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Hanck. He noticed that the boy was thinking so hard that his cheeks turned red. ‘You’re thinking so loud I can hear it.’ Toby nodded. ‘What if you sneezed right now?’
‘But I don’t have a cold.’
‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘But what if you sneezed anyway? What happens then, right at the moment when you sneeze?’
‘It feels like . . . like I’m exploding.’
‘And then . . . when it feels like you’re exploding . . . What do you think at that moment?’
‘Damn,’ said Toby.
‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘By then you’re already done sneezing. I mean at the very instant that you sneeze.’
Toby again thought so hard that his cheeks flushed. Then he gave a big smile because he’d discovered the right answer. ‘Nothing!’
‘Exactly,’ said Hanck. ‘When you sneeze you’re essentially dead. Something happens inside your body and . . . and you can’t think or do anything. That’s probably the whole point. There aren’t any thoughts to disturb or annoy you. Your soul is empty, and then God can pay attention.’
Toby was by nature very gullible, but after thinking about this for a moment, he made up his mind.
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘It’s true,’ said Hanck.
But his son shook his head. He had his doubts.
‘Your mother was a Sneezer.’
Now Toby stopped shaking his head. He knew that his father would never joke about such a matter.
‘Was she there?’ he asked. ‘Out there with that old man?’
Hanck nodded. He had walked across the sodden field, getting his feet wet. And from quite a distance away he had noticed that he was being observed by the people in the houses. There was movement behind the curtains. They didn’t seem to care for uninvited guests.
When he arrived, the door was opened by a very ugly man. He had a big, filthy beard, and he wore a kind of tunic with a belt around his waist. He stepped out into the light and squinted his eyes.
Hanck nodded to the man and introduced himself in the way he always did when he was unwelcome. It made no impression. But the man did murmur, ‘God’s peace.’
Even though the Sneezers were reclusive, they were clearly curious as well. One by one they came out of the house. A woman, obviously mother to a number of half-grown children, and another, younger woman with toddlers who looked rather odd, and finally a woman that Hanck couldn’t help looking at a bit closer. She had a marvellous smile.
Hanck paused in the storytelling so the boy could take everything in. The main character had just made her entrance.
When Toby started smiling in that happy way of his again, Hanck knew that he had realised that it was his own mother who had just stepped into the light.
‘Was she nice?’
‘Was she nice!’ said Hanck. ‘She was the nicest, most beautiful woman that I’d ever seen!’ It sunk in easily, in spite of the fact that it was actually the only lie he had told so far. ‘How else do you think you could have turned out to be so good-looking?’
Toby shrugged his shoulders, looking both embarrassed and sceptical, because he was still back there, he wanted to be there, on a boggy, tainted field far away, in that place where his mother once lived and where he himself was born under circumstances that had never been explained.
‘I asked them politely whether they’d seen anything special in connection with the fire at their neighbour’s warehouse. That was my job. I hoped that they would calm down and realise that I had no intention of troubling them . . .’
But they were clearly troubled, nevertheless. No one had seen anything. It had happened at night. ‘And that’s when we’re in bed asleep,’ the man had said, in a plaintive tone of voice. He was obviously the spokesman.
‘What about Mamma?’ said Toby. She was the only one he wanted to hear about. He didn’t care about the old man or his old barn.
‘I left my business card,’ said Hanck, ‘and thanked all of them.’ He paused again.
Toby was disappointed. ‘But . . .’
That was all that was needed. ‘But a couple of days later, something happened . . .’
Toby’s face brightened. An arrow was shot, a string trembled. He recognised the tone; it was a signal heralding something. He had no memory of his mother, had never even seen her, but he was going to see her soon, in someone else’s memory, which he could then make his own.
It was afternoon. Hanck had come home from work earlier than usual because of a power outage. The Central Memory had its own backup electrical plant, and it had to be checked, so all the monitors in the whole block had been turned off. Hanck was happy to leave a little earlier. He had just moved into his flat and had plenty of things to put in order.
It was his very first flat of his own. For several years he’d taken rooms as a lodger in another part of the city, but he’d never been happy there. Big converted barracks filled with drunken Walloons. Constant antagonisms that made people simple-minded. Immigrants who wore wooden clogs and embraced their ‘New Haarlem’, using their clogs to pound the skulls of the native citizens, who persisted in sitting in the Old Flanders pub, drinking beer and bellowing. The barracks had been erected in one of the last parks in the city, a so-called green area. There was a ballad about that park, and the few old folks of the district would sit in the taverns roaring that song with a fervent sentimentality. As if they had once strolled around in the green park, even though that was utterly impossible. The site had been dead, barren ground for at least two generations. Not even the ‘pond’ mentioned in the ballad could have been a real memory. But they sang as if they’d bathed in the pond themselves.
Hanck had little sympathy for such patriotism, and he was glad to move away from there. The barracks where he had taken lodgings were also overcrowded. In the centre of the building lived a couple who had decided to populate the world with their offspring. The place was swarming with children of all ages, dirty laundry, pots and pans, and broken furniture. Hanck had lasted for three years in all that commotion without ever hearing the couple exchange a single kind word.
His own flat was located in one of the oldest neighbourhoods of the city, on the outskirts of the ‘pleasure district’. It had three rooms. If his money ran short, he could always rent out one of them.
Like many other blocks of flats in the area, his was several centuries old, a solid structure with thick walls made of real bricks. There were chimneys and fireplaces, and the door was equipped with three locks and a wrought-iron gate. The cooker worked, and there was water in the taps.
But best of all was the silence. He’d lived so long in a crossfire of shrieks and quarrelling that the quiet was sheer luxury. It made absolutely no difference that the flat was worn and decrepit, that the floors sloped, or that a number of the windows were cracked. The silence compensated for any shortcomings.
Filled with enthusiasm he had brought his old mother over to show off his new living quarters. With pride he had opened the door for her. She had stepped inside, hung up her coat and indifferently sat
down in a corner to stare at a TV she’d brought along. He had tried to spark her interest. ‘Wouldn’t you like to . . .’ and ‘Perhaps you’d like . . .’ But it was pointless.
His mother, like so many people her age, had spent the past few years in front of TomBola. She was a gigantic woman who had been on TV for as long as Hanck could remember. The broadcast from her bed was filmed round the clock, and a large segment of the population slavishly followed her every move. They slept when she slept and ate when she ate – preferably the same food – and they took care of other needs in accordance with the same pattern.
With one exception. After devoting her day to cooking and reading stories – she provided an important forum for contemporary authors – every night, around midnight, she would go to bed with a different man. They were violent exhibitions. The men were often carried away from her bed unconscious, at times even lifeless. A man could end up with a rib puncturing his lung and blood spurting out of his mouth as he expired with a delighted smile on his face.
At the end of each month thirty men were chosen from an enormous group of prospects. The queues would wind around several blocks near the premises. Young, stylish men with ‘upgraded bodies’, tattooed from head to toe, were willing to put their lives at risk.
It was a process that engaged the entire viewing public. People would vote for their favourites and bet money on the men they thought would survive. The gambling increased whenever TomBola was pregnant, which happened with astonishing regularity. Then the betting and speculating about the father would go on for nine months. Well-known authors wrote lengthy CVs for the candidates of particular interest.
When the child finally came into the world, with the birth transmitted live to every single monitor, and the paternity was firmly established, new millionaires would crop up in the city.
Older viewers, like Hanck’s mother, preferred to ignore that aspect of TomBola’s life. Their attitude was a bit complicated: they adored her yet couldn’t refrain from making derisive remarks. At least once a day Hanck’s mother would say, ‘What a bloody ugly wig! How can she?!’
On the day when Hanck had invited his mother to see his new living quarters, the gigantic woman was lying on the operating table to undergo liposuction. The fat that was going to be extracted from her was selling for unfathomable sums, as if it were some miraculous ambergris, an elixir that would bring happiness and promote fertility.
After the procedure was over, Hanck’s mother went back home. She shuffled out to the hall, put on her coat, and said, ‘Get yourself a TV.’
‘I will,’ he said.
‘And a wife.’
‘I will.’
But nothing had come of either promise.
Hanck had settled comfortably into the silence of the flat. When it occasionally felt as if something were missing, he could always listen to the organ and sink into a tone, to be filled with a sense of anticipation that was rarely satisfied.
Now the silence was broken by someone knocking on the door. A cautious knocking, shy and timid, if that could be said of a sound created by someone’s knuckles tapping on an old wooden door.
She was one of the Sneezers. Her name was Rachel. He described her to his son: ‘She was dressed in her best, wearing a hat and coat. She had big brown eyes just like yours. And she smiled, just like you do.’
That was true, and he received an immediate response. Toby smiled exactly like his mother, but the difference was that the boy’s smiles always meant something. Hanck understood them. Rachel’s smiles he had never understood, not entirely. In reality, at first they had made him hesitant; he wondered what they could mean. And when he couldn’t find any clear explanation, they had made him feel uncertain, almost annoyed. This was part of his memory of her, the fact that he had tried to see something joyous in those smiles and had failed.
This was not something that he told his son. ‘She was a Christian,’ he said. ‘But even though her family believed in a number of strange things, she was an honest person. She believed in some sort of justice. She knew exactly what had happened to that old man’s barn, but her father had forbidden her to say anything. He was afraid that they would be punished if they gossiped.’
‘Gossiped about what?’
‘She’d gone out on that evening to use the privy. It was still light outside, and she could clearly see that two berserkers were lighting a fire right next to the wall of the building. She’d seen them before, and she could identify them if necessary.’
This much Hanck had found out. But he was never quite clear whether it was the only reason why the woman had come to see him – this sense of justice which could cause her much torment if it was infringed.
It was an unusual attitude. There was something almost Old Testament about it, something that might arouse suspicion.
Instead he told the boy that his mother had acted magnanimously, ready to sacrifice herself for an old man’s rights in the face of strong and powerful forces and their formidable henchmen. Hanck had had time to think through everything, and since he’d never seen any clear and unambiguous truth in the matter, he could just as well choose the bright and hopeful version. The opposite was entirely conceivable and – her god forbid – possibly just as valid.
He actually hadn’t recognised the person standing in the hallway. He saw a young woman who had tried to clean herself up as best she could before making this visit to the city, though she hadn’t been completely successful. She had borrowed her big sister’s coat and her mother’s hat, or whatever it was she had actually been wearing. In reality, his first impression of her was that she must be a homeless person who had heard that he might have a room to rent, or someone who was intent on begging in an unusually bold manner.
But then came that smile. And when he recognised her, he had invited her in. She accepted a glass of lemonade and sat in silence with that inexplicable smile on her lips – something that he at first interpreted as a benevolent candour, a form of courtesy, a signal that she was prepared to offer trust.
She had been in his flat for quite a long time before the topic of the old man came up. When it did, Hanck had a feeling that the purpose of her visit, truth and justice, was merely a pretext. Judging by her smiles, she could very well have other reasons up her sleeve; excuses and evasions.
Hanck had been on his guard, well-trained in the art of reading people’s intentions, looking for inconsistencies and faulty logic, minefields and deliberate falsifications, all meant to confuse an official from an insurance company.
But in her case, Hanck had failed. He didn’t allow his son to hear any of these work-related ponderings when, ten years later, the story was retold; and by then it had accrued some of the glow of the past. Hanck preferred this gentler light. He harboured no romantic notions whatsoever, but he was a considerate and thoughtful father.
Actually it was Rachel herself who had sown doubt and voiced objections. She said, ‘I know that I’m a worthless witness. I know what people think about us. Nobody would care what I may have seen.’ And then that smile.
‘I care,’ said Hanck.
The smile that now came could mean that she didn’t believe him. He decided that was exactly what it meant. So to convince her, he had set a monitor on the kitchen table and let her see with her own eyes how he typed up her statement.
‘Take a look,’ he said. ‘You can see for yourself. I don’t need to reveal my source, so I can protect you and your family.’
Rachel peered at the monitor. Hanck watched her eyes move back and forth, up and down, and then start over at the top again. He assumed that she didn’t know how to read.
When she said: ‘You don’t have to do that. God protects us,’ her smile was totally different, filled with faith, almost a bit condescending since it was directed at a non-believer.
‘If that were indeed the case,’ said Hanck, ‘then your father could have come forward as a witness.’ That was at least one way to get her to stop smiling.
‘He didn
’t want to get involved,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t want anything to do with the Adminsteration.’
Hanck glanced at her, just a hasty, searching glance. The smile was back. Would it disappear again if he corrected her? Is that what he wanted? He could press her by asking whether it was actually called ‘adminsteration’, speaking in that tactful way that was nothing more than sheer arrogance.
No, he wanted to be cautious with this particular witness. He chose a different approach.
‘I’m no authority,’ he said.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Of course,’ said Hanck. ‘I don’t think any citizen really wants to have anything to do with the Administration.’
Again a quick glance. He thought that he had slid right over those ‘istra’ syllables almost undetectably. But he saw that she had noticed. She bit her lip, lowered her eyes. Maybe she was ashamed because she’d never gone to school. Maybe she was furious at feeling ashamed in front of someone who had learned a bunch of fancy words but nothing about the Word.
‘It’s the Clan’s fault,’ he said.
It was just a comment, so that she would understand where he stood. And she did understand, though it took a moment. She looked up again, studying him as if to say: ‘Do you mean it?’ As if it were an idea that surprised her.
For his part, he tried to look sincere and unwavering. That was truly what he thought. He didn’t belong to any particular opposition group, or to those who had made the word ‘claustrophobic’ popular. But that didn’t mean he had no opinions.
Presumably she saw a man who could think for himself, and then the smile reappeared. She trusted him. She reached out her hand to stroke his cheek. Just a light caress, but he didn’t know what to do. He pretended to type a few more comments that appeared on the monitor, sincerely hoping that she really couldn’t read, because he managed only some random remarks, repetitions, ‘rhetorical redundancies’ as his new boss called such things – a man who walked around with a sticky wooden cross hanging round his neck.
The Hurricane Party Page 4