EQMM, November 2009 Read online

  They chatter with Lien about the weekend's soccer scores, about skating, boxing, bike racing, depending on the season. She and her husband never miss a local sporting event, and, though her knitting needles never hesitate in their dance, she knows exactly what's happening at every moment of every contest.

  For the conductors, our compartment is an oasis of constancy in a train filled with an ever-changing population. In return, they forgive us girls our occasional trespasses—if, for example, one of us forgets to renew her monthly pass, they let it slide. Sometimes, they'll even delay the train's departure while Cora buys a cup of coffee from the station's vending machine and waddles in her matronly way back to our oasis at the far end of the train.

  * * * *

  Outside the glass panes of the garden door, the unnaturally large red tulips somehow seemed to accentuate the lecture my father was delivering. The three of us—my father, my mother, and I—sat around the oval dining table under the flyspecked shantung shade of the hanging light fixture.

  "You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said, his voice ominous.

  I moved my foot beneath the table, felt it bump another foot, and pulled it back abruptly.

  "I have to say, it's impressive how thoroughly you've managed to waste every chance you've been given."

  My mother turned away.

  "The only thing you seem to be able to do well is talk.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Apparently you got up in front of your class and delivered a poem. You had it pinned to your skirt, so all you had to do was glance down every once in a while to make sure you got the words right."

  I snuck a furtive glance at my skirt. It wasn't the same one, but it was the same style: yards of fabric, with three petticoats under it. One by one, Ruud had slipped them off me. His eager fingers had clawed a hole in the light yellow one.

  "And all the while some gang of dirt-bikers stood outside the classroom, staring in at you, hooting and hollering."

  Illuminated by bright sunlight that glittered off their handlebars and headlights, they made fun of the school and all the idiots who taught there. Right in front, leaning casually against his bike, was Ruud, dressed all in black. The only colors in the picture he presented were the blue of his squinting eyes and the red tip of the wooden match clenched between his teeth. Every so often, he languidly brushed back his Elvis-impersonator hair with the tips of his fingers.

  As if in a trance, my voice rang out:

  What would I do without you

  But die and die again?

  Who would there be to love for me

  Without you?

  Miss Kalmoes tapped nervously on the window and waved the bikers away. She was a powerless little mouse with her dun-colored suit and her salt-and-pepper permanent. The boys stared back at her curiously, as if she were an exotic monkey doing a crazy little dance. The classroom felt like a kennel must feel to the dogs when a new keeper comes in and rattles their cages. My classmates were practically barking. But under the teacher's glare, I stubbornly continued with my recitation:

  No matter how far, you are

  My heart's desire.

  Like the summertime sun, you're the one

  Who fills me with fire.

  "You don't care about anything,” said my father, “except the opposite sex."

  "They never marry girls like you,” my mother added softly. “They chase after you, they use you up and throw you away and wind up with a decent girl instead."

  She looked pale, bloodless. There were dark circles under her eyes.

  It must be awful, I thought, to have to spend your whole life with that man. I'm already sick of him.

  "We're at the end of our rope, your mother and I,” continued my father. He pulled the watch he'd gotten in honor of his twenty-fifth anniversary as a teacher out of the inside breast pocket of his jacket, glanced at it, and put it away again. It was his bridge night, so the inquisition couldn't go on much longer.

  "First we tried you in the regular high school, and when that didn't work out, we thought, let's put her into Home Ec classes, at least she'll learn to cook and sew. But that's just turned out to be a waste of time and money."

  A fly circled his head slowly, sluggish after spending the winter inside the house.

  "You know,” he said, “your father is a socialist.” He waved the fly away from his face. “Freedom, equality, and brotherhood are all high on my list. But the masses have had all the culture siphoned out of them. When they don't have to think, they're in their element. And it's sad, but you've joined that herd. I expected better things from my daughter, but you've decided otherwise. Well—” he cleared his throat—"go get a job. I don't care what: cashier, maid, factory work, janitor, whatever."

  As if she had just heard my death sentence pronounced, my mother stared at me, her gaze heavy with pity and shame. She sat there stoically, her own daughter's victim.

  I can't, I thought.

  If only I already had a job, in a store or a factory, it couldn't possibly be as boring as sitting in this room with my parents, bombarded by the terrible things they said about me, accusations I had no way to counter. Turning away from them didn't help; there was no comfort anywhere else in the room. Everything just made me tired: the crocheted runner draped along the mantel, the sansevierias on the window sill, the portraits of dead relations everyone had hated on the walls, my father's bulky armchair, with the worn stripe of fabric down the middle, that had long ago conformed itself to the shape of his body.

  I am so tired of my father.

  My sister and I always had to wait for him after school, while he placed his notebooks and textbooks in his briefcase with minute precision, stored his pen, eraser, and ruler in their special places, wiped the board clean, arranged the desks in orderly rows, picked wadded-up balls of paper from the floor and dropped them in the wastepaper basket, locked the schoolhouse door, chased away the kids who were hanging around the playground. After that, as we were about to cross the busy street in the shade of the tall chestnut trees, he would intone, with one hand tight on the back of my sister's neck and the other tight on mine: “Look left, then right, then left again.” And then we would finally cross, our steps perfectly synchronized.

  "La douce France,” he would say, peering at me over the top of my French reader, which he held open before him. “La douce Fraaaance.” Saliva would spray from his mouth and sting my face. “France is the cradle of Western European culture. She gave us famous philosophers, teachers, painters, authors, politicians. The French aren't as crude as we Dutch. They prrrrrrrronounce their words like this.” He would trill the r like a songbird.

  I had never been to France, and hoped I wouldn't ever have to go there.

  * * * *

  Except for Cora, we all worked in the licorice department, where Trix supervised the steady drip-drip-drip of the liquid licorice into the metal molds. Sometimes the flow was too fast, and the black goo spilled over the edges of the molds like molten lava, ran over the sides of the conveyor belt, and formed a glimmering black river beneath the machine. When that happened, Trix would shut down the line and call for a mechanic to set things right. Meanwhile, we had the chance to stretch our backs.

  I was one of four women at the end of the line. Our task was to seal the cellophane bags of candy as they emerged from the previous step of the process. We cheered the occasional breakdowns, sometimes we prayed for them, just to get a momentary relief from the din that rattled our bodies and our souls.

  Cora worked in bonbons. Every afternoon, she liberated a box for the next morning's train ride. My eyes must have bugged out of my head the first time I saw her eating her daily “breakfast.” Her pudgy hands, rings on every finger, unwrapped one candy after another. “A body has to eat,” she said, absently smoothing out the wrinkles from a silver wrapper. “At home, I just can't make myself eat a thing in the morning."

  She was so heavy she almost took up two seats. In her lavender dress with bright yellow buttons, she
looked like a marvelous Easter egg. Above her head hung a photo of a slender woman in a white dress, leaning against an old-fashioned Dutch canal bridge.

  "Why not?” I asked her.

  "My husband,” said Cora. “He's been sick for six or seven years. Parkinson's, the doctors tell us. They could keep that little piece of information to themselves, in my opinion. What does my husband need with Mr. Parkinson's disease?"

  Her dark brown eyes glared at me indignantly, as if she'd heard the diagnosis only yesterday. I felt uncomfortable, as if it was partially my fault. The most serious illnesses could just suddenly be there, from one day to the next. Billions of bacteria and viruses lurking day and night, waiting for their chance to weasel into our bodies and begin their attack on the weakest parts of us. Even worse were the dangerous genetic elements, inheritances from our ancestors, already present inside us from the moment of our birth, quietly waiting for the right time to reveal themselves. Just thinking about it made me hot and sweaty with fear, feeling phantom pains in random places.

  "He can't control his muscles anymore,” said Cora. “I have to wash him every morning, get him dressed, help him downstairs, and feed him his oatmeal, half of which winds up dribbling back out of his mouth and onto his clothing.” She yawned widely. Her tongue was a pink animal, quivering in its den. “Now the children are out of the house, I wind up with this full-grown child to take care of."

  In my mind's eye, I saw a cartoon image of a grotesque manly woman with a surly face, carrying her struggling husband under her arm as if he was a pile of kindling for the fireplace.

  "Sometimes he announces that he's going to go out for a bike ride,” said Cora, “but he's already had three awful spills."

  "Let him ride his bike if he wants to,” murmured Trix. “Maybe next time he'll keel over dead.” She gazed out the window dreamily. Streamers of mist drifted over the fields. When she closed her eyes, her long lashes almost touched her cheeks. “Then she'll finally have some peace."

  Lien polished her glasses with a man's checkered handkerchief. Her mousy eyes aimed at Cora, who shrugged her shoulders.

  * * * *

  My first week on the job, I came home every evening dead tired. My limbs were leaden, my spine felt like I'd been tied to the mast of a sailing ship during a heavy storm.

  At dinner, I couldn't even sit up straight. My father criticized my table manners, and my mother seemed worried. I wondered whether she was afraid of a new battle breaking out or concerned about my health—and in my exhausted state, I figured it was probably whichever was the greater of two evils. When I finally went to bed, I couldn't sleep. Images of the workday crawled through the labyrinth inside my skull, and a chorus of human voices tried in vain to drown out the echoes of pounding machinery and blaring music.

  Mornings, on the train, if anything more tired than I'd been the previous evening, I couldn't imagine how the others had been able to stand this for all these years. If this is my future, I thought, I'd rather be dead. But immediately my father's voice began to protest inside my mind—not against the idea of my death, but against the possibility of my giving up the job. He challenged me with his beloved clichés: Work is honorable, the people have a right to work, workers of the world unite, idle hands are the devil's playground, roll up your sleeves and get to work, many hands make light work. His voice was shrill, he laughed nastily and rolled his head crazily and cried: “We live to work! We live to work!"

  Just like everyone who hates their job, I found Mondays the worst. The week was a mountain and I was Sisyphus, eternally rolling a boulder towards the top.

  At first I thought it was that listless beginning-of-the-week feeling that kept Trix staring unpleasantly out the window when we came into the compartment, although the raindrops trickling down the glass clouded her view of the world outside. Like a dog shaking itself dry, Cora shook off her raincoat, spattering our faces. She took her place across from Trix, sighing deeply as her full weight landed on the seat. With a practiced hand, she opened her box of bonbons. Then at last she seemed to relax and become aware of her surroundings.

  "Jesus,” she cried, startled by Trix's appearance. “What happened to you?"

  Trix shrugged. Their profiles—Cora's with mouth open wide in surprise—appeared as shadows on the window.

  "Who did that to you?” Cora demanded.

  "Dolf,” Trix replied dully.

  "Look at this,” said Cora. Her heavy body bent closer. With unusual tenderness, she cupped her hands around Trix's face and turned it gently towards us.

  "Oh my God,” said Lien.

  For just a moment, in the dim light of the compartment, it seemed as if Trix's left eye had been plucked out, leaving behind a dark crater that ran from her eyebrow halfway down her cheek. I wanted to run out of the compartment so I wouldn't have to see it. Port-wine stains, harelips, spastics, hunchbacks, mongoloids, cripples—if I don't look, they don't exist. Motionless, I took in the left half of Trix's face.

  The skin was a dark purple. Her eyelid had swollen, practically obscuring the entire eye. I wondered if she could see out of it at all. A cut across her eyebrow was clotted with dried blood. It looked so bad it couldn't possibly ever heal, like she'd spend the rest of her life with a face that was half angel, half leper. Her good eye, usually an intense blue, was now gray and expressionless.

  "Why?” Cora asked.

  "Because he's a bastard.” Trix turned away and looked at the floor. It was very quiet in the compartment. The rain streamed down the outside of the window. My wet socks began to dry. They itched me, but I didn't dare scratch.

  "Does it hurt?” I heard myself ask, my voice hoarse.

  "It hurts here,” said Trix, cupping a pathetic hand beneath her left breast and darting a quick glance at us with her one good eye.

  "What happened?” asked Lien.

  Trix sighed. “I knew I was going to have to explain. I wish I could just drop out of sight for a month. What can I say? It started Saturday night, at my brother's wedding reception. Eppo Engelhardt, a friend from when I was a kid, he was there. I hadn't seen him in years. Last time I saw him, he was a skinny little boy with zits—I remember I beat him up once, after school. He's grown into a real man, though, with a bristly black beard, I could hardly believe my eyes. If he hadn't been there, nothing would have happened. It's so stuffy in here. Can I open a window?"

  "It's raining,” said Cora.

  "We danced and laughed till we practically couldn't stand up anymore. It was crazy—” her voice softened, and we had to lean forward to hear her—"but, just for a moment, I thought, this is what I live for, just to be able to enjoy a night like this once in a while."

  She fell silent.

  "What can I say? It happened."

  "What happened?” Lien asked again.

  Trix examined her fingernails. “The more fun I had, the more upset Dolf got. He was storming around with an evil look in his eye, like he wanted to mow everyone down with a machine gun. At eleven-thirty, he pulled me off the dance floor. He wanted to go home. ‘Go,’ I said, ‘I'll be along later.’ But he didn't want to leave by himself. ‘Then stay,’ I said. ‘My brother's only getting married this one time.’ ‘That remains to be seen,’ he said. ‘If that's all you have to say for yourself,’ I said, and pulled my arm free and headed back to the dance floor. But he came after me and hissed, ‘You're going home with me right now, or you're gonna get it!’ That did it. I put my lips right up to his ear and whispered, ‘Piss off, Dolf, and leave me in peace.’ He turned away, furious. And then he was just gone. Excellent, I thought, that's got rid of him."

  She rearranged herself in the seat, trying to find a comfortable position. “Has anyone got a cigarette?"

  Lien scrabbled in her purse and handed over a whole pack, with the eager expression of a teenager shoving another coin in a jukebox to keep the music playing.

  "I look pretty gorgeous, don't I? Be honest: How bad is it?"

  "It looks more like you've been in a
car crash,” Cora lied.

  "You think they'd believe me,” said Trix eagerly, “if I said I smashed my car?"

  "Get back to the story,” Lien pled.

  A bit less nervously, Trix went on: “I got home about three a.m. All the lights in the house were on. The only house on the block that wasn't dark. That doesn't mean anything, I told myself. But when I walked into the living room, I got the shock of my life. Have you ever seen a car crash, some poor soul dead on the ground, covered in blood? That was Dolf, spreadeagled on the couch, his clothes all red. Except when I got closer I realized that it wasn't blood, it was rose petals, from the bouquet he gave me last week for our anniversary. He'd picked the roses apart, petal by petal, there must have been hundreds of them. He lay there leering at me. ‘Madam finally graces us with her presence,’ he said, ‘at three-thirty in the morning.’ ‘That's right,’ I said, ‘and madam is going straight to bed.’ ‘That's what you think,’ he said, jumping to his feet, scattering the petals to the carpet. He grabbed my arm—his fingers felt like steel claws. ‘Now it's my turn,’ he yelled. The veins on his forehead were swollen, his eyes were bloodshot and feverish, like the animals in the zoo, pacing back and forth in cages too small for them. I felt contempt for him, I wished I'd never met him. ‘I'm going to bed,’ I said again. ‘No, you're not.’ He was squeezing my arm so hard. ‘It's not that simple,’ he said. ‘Now that he's had his, it's my turn.’ ‘Now that who's had his what?' I said. ‘You make me sick. You don't even know Eppo.’ Well—” she shrugged indifferently—"that's when it happened. What else can I say? You can see for yourselves."

  I didn't want to see for myself, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from Trix. Her smooth perfection had always seemed incorruptible. That the emotions contained within another being, balled together into an angry fist, could change all that and leave such horrifying evidence of its power was terrifying to me. And, meanwhile, the itching was driving me crazy. I realized that itching—when circumstances make it impossible for you to scratch—can be just as bad as pain.