‘T’es maigre comme un clou,’ I said to myself.
I stayed at the graveside until the workmen were ready to heave the slab in place. When Uncle Werner died Aunt had ordered her name to be chiselled into the bluestone in addition to his, and her date of birth followed by a dash, which could now be complemented by the date of her death.
Since then the concession has been extended twice already. Eternity seems to be less and less durable these days. On both occasions I hesitated by the reception area in the council office, thinking how absurd it was that even the dead were charged for bed and board despite a leaky roof and mould-infested walls, but both times I signed my name at the bottom of the form and paid the dues. That burial vault is a millstone round my neck, or an anchor, or a stake in the ground to which I am chained like a sheep in a field, and I cherish my chain.
The grave resembles a king-size double bed, notwithstanding its triple occupancy. On the mattress lies a crucifix of polished black granite. Aunt resides on the left-hand side, and on the right, roughly at Uncle Werner’s feet, rests my father, considerably smaller in death than his twin brother, although the reverse was true in life. I picture them sometimes, crumpling up with laughter on the shared, heaving mattress, like children staying over at a friend’s house.
The monstrosity was paid for by my mother, so I learned later. Even now, when I stand at the foot of that grotesque cradle of death, I have a feeling that they were somehow let down, done down, done away with, no doubt for my own good.
The anger welling up each time I stand there is not directed at them, but subconsciously at my mother. My mother, who enabled me to attend the best schools, to travel as much as I pleased and to take my pick from the pert middle-class girls she presented to me like strongly scented bouquets.
I suppose I paid her back by adopting the role of obnoxious teenager. The moment I realised this all the resentment fell away, and I was left merely with a person in her late fifties who dyed her hair the wrong colour and wore oversized earrings, a woman who had no connection whatsoever with the beautiful, dark-haired young mother looking down at the small boy hugging her shins as he watches the ducks in some pond.
The grandchildren she hoped would some day arrive never came. I would have made a far too posthumous sort of father.
I was taken ill that Friday evening in September when I returned to Stuyvenberghe after my first fortnight at the Jesuit school. I still take the same trip now and then, just to feel the city leaching from my shoulders as the train rumbles across the River Leie.
I had felt a hot swelling in my throat all week, on top of which came a splitting headache in the last couple of days. When I swallowed I could hear my eardrums creak. I felt bruised all over like a fruit about to burst with fermenting pulp.
When the train left the last suburbs behind and started across the river, I propped my elbows on the table beneath the window and pressed hard, as though moving my bowels. Release took minutes to arrive, racking my midriff like birth pangs until it all came out in waves.
I felt myself gushing out of my body and turning into someone else in the same compartment, someone with a stricken look, watching the tears run down the face of the child sitting opposite with his cap on and his travellingbag between his feet, suffocating in a sadness both harrowing and brief.
I heard my own sobs reverberate against the wood cladding of the compartment. I heard the rails thrum beneath the wheels, rumble in my midriff. Through the window I saw vegetable plots, garden sheds and alder bushes flash past in the twilight of a day that had known little sunshine. It was around seven, the evening rush hour was over. There was no one in the compartment besides me.
We sat there like brothers, or like sweethearts who haven’t dared to tell their parents yet, forehead to forehead, mouth to mouth. I felt the tears trickling down my hands into my sleeves and my cap sliding off my head and on to the table.
Someone slid the door open. The ticket inspector rapped his punch against the metal surround and said good evening. While I hunted frantically in my pockets he whistled a jaunty tune. Perhaps he was new at the job. When he handed me my ticket back I wanted to crawl under the bench out of mortification.
I pulled myself together, dried my cheeks with my handkerchief, folded my arms and leaned forward on the table. I tried to count the far-off church towers, but in the gathering dusk it was increasingly hard to avoid seeing my face reflected in the glass.
*
In the blue evening haze, the village roofs were settling in around the church like lambs in the fold, under a huge sky balancing precariously on the bell tower. I could hear the high-tension cables hum as the train gathered speed on its way to the horizon.
The cafés on the station square had already lowered their blinds. A cat ambled along the edge of the pavement. From some buildings wafted the sound of the evening news; elsewhere spoons clattered in saucepans.
Past the rectory garden I turned left to strike across the churchyard as usual, but I came upon a metal barrier behind which a tent of grey plastic sheeting had been erected. Red-and-white strips had been tied between the lindens, one of which had a sign nailed to its trunk saying WORKS EXIT. Muddy tyre tracks fanned out on the asphalt of the high street.
I had to take the long way home, past my old school and past Miss van Vooren’s house, which was engulfed in the shadow of the cedars that would, in years to come, press against its walls like fingers. I was shivering with fever, my cheeks were on fire.
Dogs began to bark in the back gardens on the other side of the hedges lining the church lane. Worm-eaten apples hung from the branches among the last remaining leaves. I felt my weekend bag scraping against my ankle. The fever engulfed me in waves of Saharan heat.
It had started to drizzle. All around me the smell of long-parched earth yearning for rain floated up from the cracks in the pavement.
On the near side of the church, against the north transept, the graveyard had not yet been cordoned off. The gravestones stood erect, shoulder to shoulder, like a row of house-fronts in the greenish ground that rarely got any sun, but on the far side, over the brick wall, more barriers and tents awaited me. The shop looked out on a mass of plastic sheeting. Against the wall by the choir lay the nozzle of a hose, agape like the maw of a prehistoric beast.
I pushed open the door as Aunt was serving her last customer, who glanced over his shoulder to see who had come in. I heard him say, ‘Well now, here’s the student.’ The handle of my bag slipped from my grasp.
‘Gracious, lad,’ cried Aunt, ‘whatever’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing, it’s nothing,’ I replied, but I couldn’t stop shaking.
‘Children,’ said the customer, ‘a never-ending worry, eh?’
I couldn’t put one foot ahead of another, so overpowered was I by the aromas coming my way like the old familiar faces of elderly relatives approaching in carpet slippers.
The smell of peppermint, freshly roasted coffee, smoked ham, snuff tobacco. The smell of cinnamon, of wild thyme, and the primness of the lavender sachets piled up at the far end of one of the shelves, waiting to suffuse every wardrobe with moth-free eternity. My ears were tweaked, I was tapped under my chin, I heard whispers. I saw the tins swell up on the shelves, I could hear their contents slop like digestive tracts. Beneath my feet the floor appeared to tilt and sway.
A cramp in my midriff doubled me up and prised open my jaws. I began to retch.
‘Good Lord,’ cried Aunt, rushing out from behind the counter with her apron held out in front of her. ‘Not on my floor! I only just mopped it!’
I pushed her away. ‘It’s nothing, I’m all right again now.’