'Yoghurt?' he asks. 'fruit yoghurt?'
When they sit around the table and there is a glass of chocolate milk for the children is, he says: 'I have to tell you something, Kaisa. It is really funny.'
With its coffee spoon taste of its he was a bit of fruit yoghurt.
He bows go to her, the spoon still in his hand. 'My life is coming to an end,' he says, 'I can nowhere.'
There are sounds in his voice something triomfantelijks, he hears the itself. As if it is somewhere a performance is to be able to go anywhere. No longer to be able to escape.
She nods. It will be the sound of his voice which have been a gentle smile on her face to appear. The sound of someone generous joking, the sound of a man who is on the point of a child to tickle.
'people,' he says, 'create a story of their life. So they are creating order. That is what stories are. Create order. The story that I have made is…' he takes a large sip coffee. 'It has got out of control.'
Also he feels the calm sadness that he knows from the hills of Southern Germany, when his daughter was in the clinic.
'If there is nowhere more can,' he says, 'keeps the game on, then you finally arrived in reality. My wife and I frequently played. In the past. Than I was the rapist with a knife, and they are a cyclist. In the Vondelpark. In Amsterdam. At Night. We played, my wife and i, what we did was a game.'
He picks up his shoulders. He did not know what he was still further to say.
When the girl are coffee bijschenkt, he sees on her face that he is not a long time in this hotel can continue. He sees a censure which hardly differs from anger. It is not made to travellers special entertainment search, and although he would like to explain that he has no special are looking for some fun, not even normal entertainment, he knows that the hopeless task.
He is on, the child from her helps seat, and runs to his room. As they walk away, engages the child his hand. The Surprise him now not more that it will do so. It seems as if it were to hear.
For the door remains. He bending itself. 'You need to house,' he says. 'where you live, Kaisa?'
She gives no answer, they looks past him.
Again it reiterates the question. Again no answer.
'I need my daughter search, Kaisa,' he says, 'they is lost. People are worried. There is terribly worried. Where do you live?'
He picks up its both hands, squeeze out a little. 'Where do you live?' he asks.
Her answer does not come as a surprise and it makes him nauseous. 'Do you want company, sir?'
He has always thought that the nonsense, people who say that they are sick from fear. He has not really believed. Now he is making the note. He is sick of fear and he knows not even for which he is afraid, or there still is something to be afraid of.
Ship's steward opens the door, the girl slips along him, sit on the seat that they clearly sees as the hare.
'Well then,' he says, standing for the minibar, 'you may still remain a day. I think it is great because we were so good to talk to each other. We understand each other, Kaisa. And do you know why? Because we do not disapprove.'
He expresses his hat on his head, grabs his briefcase back on and take the hand of the child. For the rear view mirror does he also.
'It was in line with expectations that i would be publisher,' he says via the mirror against Kaisa, 'but you know what happened? I was not a publisher. I lost my ambition, I got my faith is lost. My ambition was my faith. A man without faith is not much. Hardened, perhaps, clad. A tank. Watch us, Kaisa. What are we? People without faith. Though we have together. I float through space, I sit on one. To you my hand picked, since the stop light. When i sat up to you. That is the way it is. You had a hand to tackle other, but you picked the mine. What you thought, Kaisa? What you saw when i came over? It was my hat? Had you already addressed many people that day?'
He walks with her to the city. They on bare feet, He on sandals. Now and then he stays at a crossroads and he asks: 'Where are we going, Kaisa?' She pulls him than in the direction which according to its the best. They have a lunch in a petrol station and around four hours in the afternoon drink cola in a billiards club. Occasionally says something about the ship's steward daughter, his work, Africa. Kaisa listens without saying anything in return. Sometimes they whispers: 'money, Mr. Money.' than he gives her a few Namibian dollars, but she has nothing to keep them in. She has only those dress. In the event of a street vendor purchases a vibrant pouch for her. He show her that they are the Namibian dollars can stop. 'Look,' he says, 'this is the open and close.'
The state its, the pouch, the liven up her. They drag with them as a pupa.
In a park in the center of the city, he sit on a bench with a childrens play area. There are swings and two slides, a high and a low. Ship's steward is here the only white. First climbs on the low Kaisa slide, but after a few times they also dare of the high. Ship's steward runs to her by the sand, the prickles between its toes, the spiked in his wounds.
'Come on,' he says at the bottom of the slide, 'it is not eng.' He shall commence its on, and he remembers how his own children ever has acquired so.
He is at 5 p.m. for the internet cafe near Independence Avenue. Also doubt it. Then he runs the staircase that leads to the cafe. He is going to sit behind his fixed computer, the child on his lap.
'Here I come almost daily,' he says soft, 'to see if they mailed.'
He opens his e-mail, there are only e-mails of the wife and what advertising. He reads the e-mails that he has not received, that of the wife, he continues to sit behind the computer without doing anything. Soft he runs his fingers through the girl by her hair.
Still less shall take into account the environment. He forget what the environment could think about him. He withdraws. What they think about him is unimportant. Here in Namibia they may think everything.
Than he opens the briefcase and retrieves the note book of Tirza out. The SMS messages and that she has written about it will save and only occasionally Falls are a message, an eight pressurefrom drawing. Probably made when she was speaking on the telephone. Some people talk while having signs, he does not.
He picks up its agenda, browse the page where her e-mail address and the password.
Ship's steward is watching as if it were a letter. Although not intended for them, but a letter.
Type he then www.yahoo.com user name of Tirza and then its password: ibi83.
He sees the e-mails that he himself has sent and which never read it, he sees e-mails from friends and girlfriends, e-mails from people of whom he has never heard.
All those emails he not, he goes to 'Compose'.
The computer works slowly here. Nervous wait until the following screen appears.
He types his own e-mail address, and the subject: 'At last'.
That is nevertheless: at last.
With the child in his lap he begins an e-mail to write.
"Dear pap,' he type, 'sorry that you as long as nothing heard from me. But I am sitting in the desert and phones are not here in abundance. The nature is beautiful.'
He stop typing, looks the child on his lap. You are ', do you not? That nature here is beautiful?'
He rubs his head with a handkerchief and then also on the head of the child. Despite the air conditioning in the internet cafe sweating them both.
Then he continued: 'We stay here. As soon as we are back in the inhabited world, I will call. Not to be worried. I am happy. It is a good thing. I feel like an intense yumminess. Many pillow, greetings to mama. The sun visor Tirza Queen.'
She wrote that always under cards and letters: Tirza the solar queen.
And that of that intense yumminess she said ever against him when he was her had taken a long weekend to Paris. The bathroom in their hotel was nice and very large. In the evening in bath she cried to her father on the bed to watch tv was: 'Pap, I feel like an intense yumminess.'