Saturday, September 20
Caz
Ghent
“I have to get to the undertaker and go and see the minister,” Tieneke said tersely after a breakfast of bread, jam, cheese and a boiled egg. “Let people know about Mother’s death and so on. Can I drop you somewhere?”
Tieneke’s accommodating attitude of the night before had vanished. Caz had noticed it the moment Tieneke had given her the wifi code with barely a greeting.
“Is there anything I can do for you? Help you with?”
Tieneke shook her head. “You don’t know anyone, and you don’t speak Flemish or Dutch. How did you think to help me?”
“I don’t know, Tieneke, but if there’s anything, just tell me. Babette, the woman at the shop down the street, understands me quite well, by the way. I speak Afrikaans to her because she doesn’t know much English.”
“That may be so, but I’ll manage. I want the funeral to be as soon as possible. I’m thinking of Tuesday. If I can manage it, there should be no reason for you to stay after Wednesday. You don’t have to go to the notary’s office with me. I’m familiar with the contents of Mother’s will. Everything comes to me.”
As if there could have been any doubt. What bothered Caz more was that Wednesday was the twenty-fourth. Fourteen more days until Lilah returned. Two weeks without accommodation.
“Look, Tieneke, I understand you’d like to be rid of me. There’s no further reason for me to stay. But I’d like to ask you a favor. You know how much luggage I have. A lot of it I brought along for Lilah, but I won’t see her before October the eighth.”
“October the eighth? I’m sorry, but you can’t expect me ...”
“Hang on,” Caz stopped her. “I had a look at Google maps. After the funeral I want to go to Doel and then to Leuven. But I’d like to leave most of my luggage here and travel light. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, a few days at most. As soon as I return I’ll think of something else.”
Tieneke thought for a moment. “Fine, I can lend you a smaller suitcase. Just stack all your bits and pieces neatly so that I don’t fall over them.”
Caz nodded. “Thanks, Tieneke. And yes, you can drop me in the town centre. Please. I’ll take the bus back.” Tough luck if Tieneke didn’t want help, but she was definitely not going to stay here alone. The place was suffocating. It was as though Fien was still hanging around in ethereal form.
“I’ll get the car. Wait at the front door.”
Caz was surprised when an almost-brand-new Polo drew up with Tieneke behind the wheel. It was a very snazzy car for such a stingy person.
“Nice wheels,” she said when Tieneke pulled away.
“A woman on her own needs a reliable car.” Tieneke kept her eyes on the road.
“Mother Fien agreed?”
“Mother was an invalid long before I bought the Polo. Quiet, I have to concentrate.”
Caz grinned to herself and wondered how many other things “Mother” had never known of.
Luc
Damme
When he woke up this morning Luc knew he had opened a door that should have stayed shut.
Laura had definitely read more into their outing than there could ever be. It was clear from the way she had kissed his cheeks when she said goodbye. Not like a colleague. Surely it was enough to air kiss only one cheek? But no, left, right, left the kisses had come, the last one a lingering one. Definitely not an air kiss.
Not that he could do anything about it at the moment. He would just have to keep his distance in future. She would realize soon enough they could never be more than colleagues. She was a nice person, but the thought of two equally boring people together was simply unbearable.
Which meant, of course, that any hope of finding a woman to share his life with was futile. He had no interest in boring women, and interesting women didn’t like nerds. So why was he thinking these thoughts in the first place? He’d made peace with his bachelorhood a long time ago and he certainly wasn’t looking to complicate his life.
It annoyed him that the image of the woman with the long gray curls kept popping into his mind. The subtle sway of her hips. The arch of her back when she had looked up at the gables. The way in which she had shielded her eyes from the sharp light, the little finger slightly raised above the rest of the slender hand.
Surely he had more important things to occupy his thoughts?
He went through the house with feather duster, vacuum cleaner and polisher, made sure that the water supply to the hydroponic system in the greenhouse was in order, watered his flowerbeds, pulled out a few weeds and tidied up. He swept the small patio and wiped down the outdoor furniture.
Eventually he gave it up as a bad job. Even while his hands were busy, his thoughts kept returning to all the unanswered questions that had been plaguing him since his conversation with Lieve. He made himself a cup of coffee and put the note with the names on the table in front of him.
Josefien Colijn. Cassandra—maybe Colijn. César—maybe Janssen. Tabia. Elijah.
No use trying to find out more about Tabia and Elijah. But Cassandra Colijn was a different story. Social media, he had realized yesterday in the Aula, held the answer.
Though he was registered on Facebook and Twitter, he did not use social media himself. He had liked the webpage of Ghent University and that was about it. It was just not his thing.
He entered Cassandra Colijn’s name. There was only one hit. A woman in Holland. He glanced briefly at the photograph. No, she was in her twenties. A daughter, maybe? But in Holland? He found a Cassandra Collin and a Cassandra Clare. Those were the only Cassandras whose last name began with C.
He fared no better on Twitter.
South African women took their husbands’ last names, he remembered. At her age she would surely have been married at least once. It was hopeless.
He was about to close Chrome, when he paused and went to LinkedIn. It was the only other social media platform where he was registered. He couldn’t quite remember why. Someone had pestered him on email to join, if he remembered correctly.
A number of Cassandras, but none from South Africa seemed a likely candidate.
A few Sandras showed up when he scrolled down. Cassies too. He typed Sandra Colijn in the search box. Thousands of Sandras, but no Colijn. He typed Cassie. No Colijn. Right at the bottom a Colijn. Caz.
He clicked on the link.
Caz Colijn. Stanford, South Africa. Translator. English to Afrikaans, Afrikaans to English. Editor and proofreader of fiction—Afrikaans and English. A BA degree in languages from a university in Potchefstroom and a string of diplomas for translation, editing, advanced language courses and so on. Mostly through Unisa. No photo. Numerous recommendations.
Should he send a request to join her network? No, rather not. Not now. First he had to consider whether he wanted to stir up another hornet’s nest. If it turned out to be her.
He went back to Facebook and then to Twitter, but there was no Caz Colijn. No photos. Except for a presence in her professional capacity on LindkedIn, the woman was as private as could be.
Could this Caz be Ammie’s daughter? As he had no idea how old she was or whether her full name was Cassandra, it was impossible to say. But it did seem significant that she was from South Africa.
In the course of his studies he had discovered that fact, background information and intuition often went hand in hand. Reliable information and extensive knowledge were at the top of the list, of course, but academic intuition and the odd stroke of luck sometimes played a significant role.
His intuition told him he had found the right Cassandra. But empirical evidence was all that counted. And that never came easily.
Luc closed the lid of his laptop and got up to make more coffee. He considered reading his book, but in the end he sat back down at his desk with a sigh and again studied the note with the names. As if it could make him any the wiser.
Fine. There was a Caz Colijn in South Africa, but was her real name Cassandra?
Josefien Colijn, if she was still alive, was probably also still in South Africa. He doubted that she would be using social media.
César Janssen might be dead, but at least he was Belgian. Would he have returned here, like Ammie? Left a trail?
He opened his laptop again and searched the name César Ronald Bruno Janssen. Moments later he drew a sharp breath.
More than four hundred and fifty thousand hits. Verdorie, couldn’t César have had a less familiar last name?
Most articles were about Pierre Jules César, the astronomer who had discovered helium, among other things. And then there was Ronald Janssen, the murderer who had confessed to three, but was suspected of fifteen murders, dating back to 1991, as well as twenty rape counts since 2001.
But he had been born in 1971. At best he could be related to the César Luc was looking for. Which was irrelevant.
If there was any information about César Ronald Bruno Janssen among this multitude of hits, it was going to be a near impossible task to find it.
César was probably older than Ammie. Though Luc doubted that Twitter or Facebook was an option, he gave it a try. Who was to say a man in his eighties couldn’t tweet?
There was a César Janssen after all. His profile was not visible but, judging by the few photos, he was young. There was also a Ronald Janssen in Holland—evidently a dog lover, who believed Sinterklaas’s assistant, Zwarte Piet, should remain black, despite the debate about racist implications that was currently raging. This Ronald appeared to be in his forties, at most.
Out of sheer desperation he entered “Josefien Colijn” on Facebook. Nothing. He erased Josefien and left Colijn. Cassandra Colijn, the same one from before, the one who was too young, and lived in Holland. Geertje Colijn, a housewife from Beverwijk in North Holland. Looked to be in her late sixties or even older. Tieneke Colijn, from Ghent, as it happened, could also be in her sixties, but the photo was blurred. The rest had Colijn as a first, not as a last name.
Geertje, he saw, had had a birthday on March 23. No one called Josefien had congratulated her.
The settings on Tieneke’s Facebook page were private. A few links shared by friends were all he could see. While he was looking, a new message appeared. A picture of a floral bouquet, with the message: Just heard of your mother’s passing. Sincere condolences. Please inform us of the funeral arrangements.
Okay, that was one time in your life when you didn’t deserve to get inquiries from strangers. He closed the page.
It was a lovely day he was spending indoors, poking his nose into other people’s tragedies. There were better ways to enjoy his last free weekend before the start of the academic year.
Yet he didn’t get up immediately. If Tieneke Colijn was in her sixties, her recently deceased mother had probably been in her late eighties. Could she have known the Colijn family who had emigrated to South Africa so many years ago?
He brought himself up short and got to his feet. Too late now, the old lady had passed on.
Ammie
Leuven
For the umpteenth time Ammie wished Luc had never visited her. Since then everything felt more muddled than before.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was haunted by the Congo, Jacq and Tobias’s ghosts had also risen again.
She kept dreaming of them. Dapper Jacq, dressed to the nines. The gray goatee trimmed just so. Every hair in its place. The tailored suit perfectly dry-cleaned, the tie precisely knotted. A weakness for Italian shoes.
And then there was Tobias, with the unkempt hair and bushy beard. Overweight in faded denims and plaid work shirts. His big hands, rough and knobbly, that betrayed how he earned his bread.
Tobias had been a skilled cabinet-maker, but not a brilliant one, while Jacq had been a renowned professor, an expert in his field.
Initially she had admired Jacq’s intellect and could listen to him for hours. But to Tobias she could talk. Jacq was a gentle, careful lover. Tobias was passionate and enthusiastic.
But there was one quality the two of them shared. Neither had a drop of malice in their nature. Both were men with integrity. That was the difference between them and César. Probably between them and herself as well.
Combined, Tobias and Jacq represented the qualities she had loved in Elijah. When Elijah was on his way to a meeting, he was always impeccably dressed. At home he spent his time in khaki shorts and sandals. She could both listen and talk to him. Sometimes their lovemaking was gentle, sometimes passionate.
But Elijah was more than just a combination of Jacq and Tobias. He had a deep-rooted kind of wisdom that had nothing to do with academic knowledge. He was without pretension, yet a fully rounded person. There was something noble about him. He loved her with all his being, not just when it suited him.
His only failing was that he was so incredibly naive. That he believed in the goodness of humankind and God. That he could not see that some people were evil to the core and that God didn’t give a damn about the human race.
For that he had paid a heavy price. And so had she.
He almost had her convinced that everything would work out for the good. Especially after Patrice Lumumba became prime minister. And look what had happened.
If there were a God who cared about his creatures, he would have allowed Elijah to realize his potential. Patrice as well. Or He would at least have seen to it that the child she carried was Elijah’s.
And then Lieve wondered why she wanted nothing to do with God or the church.