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MIEKE 1998

Mieke is organizing the files of the foundation, which is under the protection of her majesty the queen, placing them in little stacks. For an outsider it’s hard to believe how much is involved in sprucing up just one historical building, or restoring it to its original condition.

Shamefacedly, she herself has been forced to admit that she seriously undervalued Elvira’s work. All that time she thought of it as a fine and noble diversion that mainly gave Elvira the chance to do a lot of travelling. Now when she looks at Elvira’s busy schedule she considers herself lucky to be able to operate from home as treasurer (and partly also as secretary). Elvira is in Boston on work for the foundation, and this afternoon she’s scheduled to meet with an interested, cultivated businessman. Where does Elvira get the time to eat a decent meal? How does she manage to always walk around so stylishly and impeccably dressed? You’ll never see her twice in the same outfit. Where does Elvira get her worldly wisdom from?

From the world, of course. Two cappuccinos and fifteen proseccos in Milan, wine tasting in Rome. Mieke tapes the receipts from the trip to Italy onto a large sheet of paper. She notes them in her ledger according to the amount and date. Two pasta vongoles in Turin, two ossobuco in Aoste. Stefaan has already tried sitting her down at the personal computer on the other desk in the room. She’d be able to input and save everything very nicely in the computer’s memory. The data can even be saved on a disk. She’s tried it a couple of times with Stefaan’s handwritten instructions on her lap, but the letters on the screen make her nervous. They flicker so much; they can’t be trusted.

She stands up to get the stapler from the cabinet just as the phone begins its merry ringing. She lifts the receiver from its cradle with an equally merry ‘Good afternoon, Vandersanden-De Kinder here’. It’s Elvira calling from Boston. The people from the Historical Society are a bit disappointing. They barely listened to her speech, which they received with tepid, polite applause. Historians who cannot be aroused by a story about the historic importance of building preservation are people she’d rather not have much to do with. But the good news is: this afternoon Elvira had lunch with Ron Hoffman.

Mieke begins a feverish inventory of her memory. Ron Hoffman, she’s heard that name before. Yes, it does seem to ring a bell. But what bell? For all those years she spent as a housewife she did far too little thinking, and that’s why the answer isn’t springing to mind. Elvira explains that she knows Ron Hoffman personally from when they went to parties together in New York. The gears click into place. Mieke’s memory begins working again. Ron Hoffman, Jewish businessman, has lived in New York for years, the last great love of Jacqueline Kennedy, the unforgettable Jackie Kennedy. Mieke’s regular habit of buying and reading Royal every week has finally paid off. Hoffman stood by Jackie Kennedy with such moving loyalty when she became ill, until she died of cancer in 1994. Hoffman and Jackie were both crazy about the antiques and interiors designed by Maison Jansen. Jackie devoted her whole life to the restoration of public buildings, beginning with the White House. Mieke jumps on board; she’s in.

‘He’s well disposed toward the foundation, surely, with his love of antiques?’

‘Yes, Ron is a great admirer of our work. He told me confidentially that he and Jackie had plans for a similar foundation.’ Elvira perfumes her sentences with a hefty splash of good cheer. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he were to give us a substantial shot in the arm. Oh, Lord, my taxi’s waiting. Let’s talk again soon! Bye!’

‘Bye!’ Elvira’s optimism is infectious. Mieke takes a whiff of her orchid plants, blissfully happy. Full of disbelief, she looks back on the Mieke who acted so foolishly a couple of months ago and said she’d ‘have to think about’ Elvira’s offer to become her right-hand woman in the foundation. Together they went on to convince German scholar Ulrike to join them as well, so she can be responsible for the project descriptions.

Mieke is now part of a cultivated club of women who are trying to talk their manager husbands into securing sponsorship money. An organization under the protection of her majesty the queen—what respectable company can refuse to support that? It’s for a good cause, a neglected cause. Children in Africa are suffering from hunger, everyone knows that. There are hundreds of organizations dedicated to that cause; they do terrible work and the money disappears into their own pockets. That won’t happen with this foundation. These women are involved in a modest effort to make the world a more beautiful place and to give all those abandoned buildings what they deserve: attention and rehabilitation. It may be a modest goal, but the women’s dedication is palpable. With her hand on her heart Mieke can truthfully say that no one puts any money in their own pocket. On the contrary, they’re all making personal contributions, one more than the other (Ulrike).

One week later, while having coffee in the city, Elvira confides in Mieke that she had more than a friendly relationship with Ron Hoffman. The relationship ended quite some time ago in his home base in Boston. The affair is anything but shocking to Mieke. She has always harboured so many suspicions and imagined so many scenarios that even the most improbable outcome seldom comes as a surprise. A disappointment, yes. She doesn’t know what to make of it because she doesn’t like to pass judgement on Elvira.

She considers herself fortunate that Elvira keeps her so well informed regarding her trips. That way she can travel with her in her imagination.

‘Mieke, I have to go back to Boston soon for the Paul Revere Housing Project. How about coming along? It would be such fun.’

‘Boston?’ Oh dear oh dear. She hadn’t seen this coming (she had hoped for it, though, between the lines of her diary). Mieke’s in seventh heaven. This is her chance to go on a business trip. Would she consider it? Stefaan is constantly travelling for his work these days. Sarah would like nothing better than to see her mother disappear for a while. It’s a fabulous fantasy, but the scrupulous Mieke from the olden days cannot make room for the reborn Mieke of today. Not yet, she says.

‘Two is better than one,’ says Elvira.

‘What do you mean?’ Mieke asks, much too harshly. She would never leave her family to fend for themselves while she went off with Elvira to Boston, even though the invitation alone does plenty to fuel her daydreams. Emphatically denying her escapist fantasies to the outside world is all part of it, of course.

‘Take your time and think about it.’

‘Homemade lemon cookies with bits of lemon peel? Fantastic!’ Mieke accepts Ulrike’s cookies with a bouquet of thank-yous and takes her coat so she can join Elvira in the parlour. Who would ever think of imitating Ulrike and showing up with homemade cookies? Another stingy bitch who doesn’t want to part with any money at Neuhaus, most likely. Mieke is holding an informal meeting with Elvira and Ulrike at number 7 Nightingale Lane. She has offered to host the meeting in her home. That’s how she was in grade school: the first to raise her hand when the teacher asked if anyone had room at home for a dwarf rabbit.

‘Lemon zest is what the Anglo-Saxons call it,’ says Elvira. ‘Grated lemon peel.’

‘And the Chinese?’ Ulrike asks. A family photo on the windowsill attracts her attention, the family in their Sunday best at Mieke and Stefaan’s wedding anniversary several years ago. ‘Wow, Mieke, your daughter looks so much like you.’

Until a year ago Mieke heard this so often that she didn’t know how to respond. Now none of her girlfriends could claim that the little girl in the photo, leaning awkwardly against the patio railing and exposing the gap between her two front milk teeth with a grin, still bears a striking resemblance to Mieke. Where has that darling little girl gone? She’s been standing there forever in the sun, the focus of attention. Despite Sarah’s frequent protests, Mieke continues to display the photo ostentatiously on the windowsill.

‘Isn’t that Les Tuileries, the restaurant with pretentions of being Versailles?’ Ulrike has changed since her divorce. She still has the same unattractive looks but she tends to speak her mind more than she used to.

‘You look a little like Jackie Onassis in that photo. Remember that we called you Jackie O in boarding school?’ Elvira asks. At boarding school Jackie O was Mieke’s big idol, her modern version of the Virgin Mary, a woman full of depth and love. A woman with many faces, too, a grieving widow scarcely fourteen years older than herself.

‘The resemblance isn’t all that far-fetched,’ says Ulrike. ‘You still look exactly like her.’

‘If only it were true,’ says Mieke, beaming.

‘It is true!’ the women insist.

‘Although,’ says Mieke in a panic, ‘she hasn’t been among us for four years now!’

The others laugh. Mieke fails to see the humour. ‘Poor Jacqueline Kennedy, she fought the cancer battle and lost.’

‘I mean: she was a woman with rare class,’ says Elvira. ‘No one would deny that.’

Mieke imagines herself a real president’s wife. ‘Yes,’ she says shyly, accepting the compliment. Her girlfriends are expressing their admiration for that strong American president’s wife who showed character and style like no other and dared to be different.

‘Jackie O’s long line of men, we could have done without that,’ says Mieke to scale back the resemblance somewhat. ‘But everyone has their faults.’

‘She must have been desperate for love,’ says Ulrike, not yet officially divorced from a professor of economics and overextended collector of seats on various boards of management, ‘and a president like that doesn’t have a minute to spend on his wife, of course.’

‘Oh, come on,’ says Elvira sympathetically, ‘everyone has his shortcomings.’ She shifts in her chair and smooths out her chiffon dress. Whenever Mieke sees Elvira she thinks of Ron Hoffman. Even when she doesn’t see Elvira she thinks of Ron, who personally assured her yesterday on the phone that his promised contribution was on its way.

‘Just between us, I think it’s a bad idea, dating a man for his money,’ says Ulrike resolutely. ‘It didn’t make her any happier, in any case.’

‘I don’t think I agree with you,’ says Elvira.

‘Money is a way to keep people small; it’s abuse of power.’ Ulrike’s former sporadic sympathy for the working man has taken a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn toward socialism.

‘Her last husband was a tower of strength for her,’ says Mieke, ‘and it just so happened that he was well off.’

‘Just so happened,’ Ulrike sniffs.

‘Is that any worse than going out with a man for his looks or his brains?’ asks Elvira.

‘Cookie, anyone?’ Mieke asks.

‘Mmm, yes,’ says Ulrike, and she grabs one of her own homemade cookies from the plate.

‘Delicious,’ is the unanimous praise for the lemon cookies. They’re very crumbly. Mieke goes to get the little dustbuster and kneels down to vacuum a few crumbs from the rug.

‘How do you make them?’ she asks from her knees.

‘It’s very simple. I’d be glad to tell you later on,’ says Ulrike. ‘But there’s something else I wanted to say: I think marrying a man for his money is a form a prostitution.’

‘Aren’t you going a little far?’ Mieke interjects.

‘For the looks, for the money, for the brains—I don’t see why one is all right and the others aren’t. Frankly, I think it’s quite common for a woman to go out with a man for his money,’ says Elvira.

‘That’s not always true,’ says Mieke enigmatically. ‘Or haven’t you heard?’

‘Who’s been gossiping about me?’ Ulrike asks sharply.

‘It’s not about you, it’s about Evi Vanende,’ says Elvira. ‘She’s having an affair with the dog-sitter.’

‘Well, what do you expect? She spends the whole day at home and doesn’t even stick her nose out the door. Except for other men, apparently.’

‘And not only that, but she’s pregnant by him. I don’t want to gossip, but last week she was spotted at the abortion clinic.’ Elvira takes another cookie and nibbles on it sparingly.

‘If she was spotted it isn’t gossip. There’s also such a thing as facts.’ Ulrike pops a whole cookie into her mouth.

‘Terrible,’ Mieke declares. ‘Abortion is murder.’

‘Aren’t you exaggerating a little?’ Unashamedly Ulrike brushes the crumbs off her lap and onto the recently purchased Varamin rug, the queen of carpets.

‘A foetus already has a life.’ Mieke sits up straight and takes the dustbuster in hand once more, vacuuming the crumbs from the rug.

‘The lemon in these cookies had a life, too,’ says Ulrike.

‘Please don’t make it ridiculous, Ulrike, that’s a totally different matter,’ says Mieke, waving the dustbuster around.

‘No it’s not. All those people who go on and on about life, they all eat meat. They don’t have any problem with letting living creatures be slaughtered in terrible ways for their own pleasure.’

‘I just don’t think it’s right, abortion. It’s almost become a form of birth control these days. That’s terrible, isn’t it?’ She returns the dustbuster to its holster with a firm snap.

‘Not at all,’ says Ulrike. ‘There are just way too many of us. I read somewhere that soon we’re going to pass the six billion mark. Do you two realize how many people that is? It’s the source of all our misery. How are we going to feed all those six billion mouths? There’s already so much hunger in the world. It’s enough to make you depressed, the more you think about it.’

The conversation meanders as only conversations between women can. All three of them effortlessly follow the trail of associations.

‘Depression,’ says Mieke sharply. ‘Now that’s what I call a sign of weakness. Letting yourself go, hanging your head. It’s a disease of civilization.’

‘It’s hereditary.’

‘I don’t believe that for a second. Then abortion is hereditary, too. It’s free will,’ says Mieke. Polite courtesy has been pushed aside. The curtains open for an increasingly honest discussion. Not a quarrel. It’s quite possible to disagree in a civilized fashion without one of the parties walking away in a huff.

‘It’s the spirit of the times,’ Elvira says soothingly.

‘Is there such a thing? Show me where to find it,’ Mieke asks.

‘You can’t make me believe that everything used to be better,’ says Ulrike. ‘I saw the film Daens this weekend about the abuses in the Flemish textile factories at the end of the nineteenth century. It took place in our very own beloved Flanders. Right here.’ Ulrike presses home her argument by stamping her foot—right on top of the last of her lemon cookies, in a worst case scenario. Ulrike has changed enormously in the last few years. She’s worse than socialistic. She’s become both communistic and blasé. Under those circumstances you can’t stay married to an economics professor, of course, since he knows better than to believe such naive claptrap and to eat tofu at the same time.

‘Children today don’t have good manners, there’s no denying it.’

‘Nobody’s taking the trouble to raise them.’

A recent discovery has been made to deal with the child problem: the nanny. When Sarah was little there was no such thing. Not that Mieke would ever make use of one. She’s raising her child by herself, entirely alone. By contrast, the new women in the neighbourhood are not raising their own children, nor can they be accused of excessive domestic activity. Causing problems, yes—gossiping and stirring up trouble, that they do in spades. But otherwise? That’s the problem with this neighbourhood: too many people with too much money and too little taste have found their way to the housing estate on the mountain. Nouveaux riches have installed themselves among the old faithful, erecting their palaces of kitsch. Many of the parvenus don’t even speak proper Dutch. A Ron Hoffman would stand out here like a sore thumb.

‘So they don’t know their children anymore and can’t see when they go off the rails.’

‘Although I’m not sure it’s always the parents’ fault,’ says Ulrike.

‘I think it is. If the children go off the rails, the parents have made a mistake—that’s what my father always said and I think he was right,’ Mieke says. Stefaan is conspicuous by his absence. That’s also a mistake.

‘I wouldn’t be too quick to judge, Mieke.’ Is Ulrike now putting her in her place?

‘Those nannies do good things, too, you know,’ says Elvira indulgently.

‘By the way, have you heard the awful story about those kids and their drugs?’ Ulrike pauses to let the silence take over. She wants an audience that hangs on her every word and begs her for details. Mieke is obliging and lets the pause take effect. Stories have priority over conflicting ideologies. The coffee pot makes another round.

Ulrike tells them about four kids from the neighbourhood who were arrested for theft and grievous bodily harm. They managed to get hold of some Viagra (unknown to Mieke) and other kinds of pills, not just one pill but entire strips of them. They jammed them down the throat of a mentally disabled boy. The hospital had just enough time to pump out his stomach or that would have been the end of him. How the kids got all those pills is a mystery.

It’s a good thing Mieke’s parents no longer have to witness such perversities of the modern world. Her father would have grabbed his hat from the hatrack and gone after the owners of the pills to teach them a lesson. Yes, he liked to stick up for the underdog. He would have called the entire neighbourhood together for a crisis meeting.

‘Do you ever have that with Sarah, that you feel shut out?’ Ulrike asks Mieke, casting Elvira a sidelong glance. Elvira leans forward, closer to the hostess.

‘Oh, no,’ Mieke says airily with one eye on the clock, which is telling her that Sarah is already forty-six minutes late. ‘I have absolutely no complaints in that regard.’ She is strictly opposed to candour and only opens up at moments of her own choosing. After all, the news presenter Martine Tanghe doesn’t spontaneously break down in tears every night at the showing of gruesome images, does she? At the most you might suspect something, a flicker of discomposure, but even that can be handled professionally and enacted, even by such formulaic means as ‘Thank you for watching and have a very pleasant evening.’

That’s why Mieke inevitably refutes any form of criticism of her family. It’s one thing to suffer the disintegration of a family that had never been perfect but is at least surviving in the midst of all the new family-type constructions. It’s something else to hang out your family’s dirty laundry. This is something Mieke’s father drilled into her. Even though she finds family life so suffocating at times that she can barely catch her breath. It makes her feel like a fish that has fallen out of its aquarium and is flapping its gills in misery. Everyone thinks it’s applauding but actually it’s choking to death. Fortunately the foundation is giving her a bit more breathing space, but somehow she’ll keep applauding no matter what the circumstances. She’ll keep her facade intact until the end of her days.

Mieke stands up and invites Elvira and Ulrike to come with her to the dining room, where she’s set the table for their meeting.

There’s a folder for each of them containing all the necessary documents, with a ballpoint pen clipped to it bearing the name of Stefaan’s company. ‘Enough chit-chat. Let’s get on with the project definition.’

When Ulrike takes her leave, she turns to Mieke and, with an exaggerated, somewhat masculine wink, she says, ‘Finally, a woman with character. I really enjoyed our differences of opinion.’

Mieke doesn’t know what to make of this. The new Mieke laughs with the poor, run-down Mieke and her rug obsession. Which makes her think that her rugs could use another thorough going-over. She can’t let herself slip into the other extreme and neglect them. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. What if Ron were to attend one of the meetings here?

Mieke has spent a week in intensive reflection, thinking about the trip to Boston and weighing all the pros and cons. That evening she puts the question in all seriousness to Stefaan, a question she has already answered. He’s between two business trips and is finally spending an evening at home. There are never too many answers if you already know the right one.

‘What do you think about my going to Boston for the foundation?’ she asks her husband.

He looks as if his whole head were stuffed full, like a small garbage bag that weighs far too much and could burst open at any moment. And then that tormented look. It’s a slow-motion ordeal for Mieke. What is the matter with this man?

‘What do you think?’ he asks. His face is ashen. His Mona Lisa smile is unchanged. Even on his death bed that smile will still be on his lips, Mieke says to herself.

‘Boston is far away, but … ’

‘If only I could stay at home,’ Stefaan interrupts with a sigh.

‘Can’t you arrange to do that instead of walking around like you’re under a cloud? You’re working yourself to death. It’s inhuman. You’re badly in need of a vacation.’

‘A vacation like our trip to America last summer,’ he says. ‘Why don’t we go to Israel some time?’

‘Stefaan, what are you talking about? Israel? What would we do there? Tanks? Accidents?’

‘The Jewish culture is fascinating.’

‘And very dangerous. Those Jews are only too glad to give it up. That’s why they’re going to live on the land of the Palestinians. What you have to do before anything else is take some vacation time. It’s almost spring. You can clean the gutters. There are cracks in the tiles in your shed. I don’t even dare to go inside. It’s probably not clean, either, judging from the smells coming out of that place.’ The sparks of her irritation rain down on him, but he’s a steel Faraday cage.

‘Staying home,’ says Stefaan, untouched and listless. ‘What bliss.’

‘I thought so, too,’ says Mieke with a kind of masochistic obstinacy. If her husband doesn’t encourage her to break free of her surroundings then she’ll stay inside, forever. She’ll throw away the key to her cell and limit her world to the square feet constituting this lot and the cubic feet of air inside this ponderous house. There’s still so much for her to take in hand at number 7 Nightingale Lane, so much to be cleaned with her unobserved, grim industriousness.

‘I’m staying home,’ she announces, as if it were her own choice.

One evening a week later, Mieke winds up the bookkeeping for her properties. It’s a huge job, making sure that all the rents have been properly paid each month. Stefaan’s monthly salary has been climbing higher and higher, but the yawning gap between gross and net income is steadily increasing. It’s enough to make you scream for revenge, how little concern the state shows for its valuable human resources. Managers always take a beating. As the clock strikes ten she shuts the filing cabinet with the key. Then she goes to the kitchen, fills a glass with water from the tap, and swallows her fish oil tablet with difficulty.

Mieke is home alone and is enjoying the humming silence she’s become so accustomed to over so many years that music often disturbs her, like a scratchy, overly warm blanket around her shoulders. Sarah can come home any time now. Stefaan’s return will not be immediate, since he has a business dinner tonight with a couple of Indonesians who only eat Indonesian food and like to take their time, a whole row of spicy dishes consisting of thick chunks of meat, copiously sauced, alternating with yogurt full of chopped chives and stale herbs. Stefaan takes no pleasure in such food because it takes him three days to digest it. She’s not looking forward to it, living with a husband at death’s door.

Suddenly alarm bells go off in her head. For a long time she’s pushed her sputtering marriage aside to concentrate on the state of the world, projected onto the big screen of the world stage. It’s all very well to devote yourself to a foundation, but your housekeeping mustn’t suffer as a result, and your marriage shouldn’t become unglued. A marriage is something you have to work on. A marriage crisis can be solved if you have the good will to do it. She is the only one who can turn off the alarm. The time has come to take the responsibility that politicians are always talking about. She is not the kind of woman to stand with her hands behind her back and watch the ship go down. She has to surprise her husband because marriages thrive on surprises; at least that’s what Queen Paola said in a heart-warming story in Royal. A surprising new hairdo or delicate lingerie, you won’t catch her doing anything like that; it’s just not her style.

What you would catch her doing is surprising her husband on his own turf. Mieke decides that for the very first time she’s going to enter Stefaan’s most precious two hundred square feet on the planet, his hobby shed, and straighten it up. She can’t remember the last time she was there. Of course she knows enough not to touch his things, but she has enough energy for two, and a good round of cleaning never hurt anybody. If that doesn’t make him grateful, she doesn’t know what will.

Armed with a bucket, yellow rubber gloves, Vim, and another whole battery of cleaning products, she goes outdoors by way of the utility room. She never does this sort of thing. No, not even once has she ever ventured forth after ten o’clock at night to clean anything. Take it as a sign of love, she says to Stefaan in her mind. When she reaches the newly built deck the lights flash on. But from the garden path onward she’s plunged into darkness. Inch by inch she shuffles along the stones. The tablet of fish oil is repeating on her. The wind sends tremors through her bushes and crocuses, which are now blooming in the spot where Sarah had planted a mini vegetable garden as a child. Every spring her little daughter would persistently flood her scrap of earth. With great dedication she’d screw the garden hose to the chicken coop tap and drag it to her garden. Sarah had wanted to plant a rice field until Mieke introduced her daughter to rhubarb, an undemanding plant that did well in Sarah’s patch. Sarah was crazy about the prehistoric plant. She expected a tiny dinosaur to stick its nose out at any moment. On warm summer days Sarah and Emily would behead the rhubarb and Mieke would wash the stalks. The girls would suck on the rhubarb along with a cube of sugar, their faces contorted from the sour taste.

The dark soil has a strong smell. There’s nothing like living in the housing estate, a mixture of healthy outdoor air and city refinement.

She stands in front of the wooden door of the shed where her husband goes to regain his equilibrium. The house is her terrain, where he feels for the chalk marks with his fluffy slippers. Here she finds herself facing his world. She feels proud of his imagination, which comes here for shelter, and proud of how good she was to grant her husband this space, even though it’s been difficult recently to muster any sympathy for him. She trusts that she’ll be able to recover the love that’s hidden so deeply under all the layers of irritation—dig it up, dust it off, reuse it, and rehabilitate it. She taps the side of her bucket, an incentive to repress her anxious premonition and get it under control.

She pushes the creaking door open, which could use a bit of oiling. The smell hits her immediately. That there are secrets hiding here is something she takes for granted. Anyone who might accuse her of being naive is sadly mistaken. She even hopes that her husband has something that is intrinsically his and his alone, that no one else has to know about (as she has Ron). Mieke knows exactly what’s going on; it’s just that the details haven’t been coloured in yet. Stefaan has his mind on someone else. She can hardly blame him. Their daughter, who is loitering in the waiting room of real life and thinks she’s going to conquer the world with her guitar tunes, is a source of greater concern to her, truth be told.

His hobby shed is a shambles, just as she expected. The universe is also an organized chaos, is how Stefaan defends his junk. The workbench in the back is covered with paint cans, brushes, and all sorts of stain removers, polishes, and varnishes. It looks almost unreal, like the laboratory of a blundering professor from a children’s series that can blow up at any moment. She leaves that part of the hobby shed undisturbed; Stefaan can take care of that mess himself.

Mieke takes her dust cloth and goes over a row of books, his entire Dylan collection consisting of surviving cassettes from the sixties and well-thumbed vinyl records as well as CDs, and a stack of paperwork pressed into an advertising folder from the Gamma do-it-yourself store. Like a fairy rising on her tiptoes from a great flowery feather duster, she taps logs and removes dust from tools and cigar boxes. Even the ceiling gets a dusting. Taking the path of least resistance, sheets of paper whirl down from behind a coffee can filled with rusty nails. The sheets of paper are covered with scribbles just waiting to be read.

Having a sealed envelope in her hand, and a whistling kettle on the stove eager to lend its steam to loosen the glue, could make her die of curiosity, but she will not act on it. She would never even think of checking the numbers on her husband’s angrily summoning beeper, or inspecting her daughter’s drawers. Her honour is a precious commodity.

As a legal expert she knows that confidentiality of the mails is inviolable. Article 29 of the Constitution on the Belgians and their rights. But if these papers happen to be exposed, like a newspaper on a very old wall where the wallpaper is being removed, she can hardly avert her gaze. Does that make looking a legal offence? Eyes can do nothing but pick up stimuli and signals; that’s what they’re made for. Mieke’s eyes are just too good. That is her great misfortune.

Mieke starts to read, gleaning a strange sort of story. She can’t make out very much from the stops and starts, the sketches, the words inside circles with arrows shooting off to other circled words, snippets that she kneads together into one incomprehensible whole in her overheated brain. Dislocation is literally what she feels. Her own powers of reasoning are shaken loose, manu militari, by the whipped-up hostile soldiers whose boots are stomping loudly over the cobblestones in her head.

It’s not as if these scribblings were of earth-shattering importance. In fact, after looking at two of the sheets she’s ready to stop and turn away. But the soldiers press her against the wall, pushing the letters into her eyes and ordering: Read!

Her husband’s handwriting is a barbed wire of flat lines with sharp, piercing points attached. It contracts and billows, sweeping from left to right. Alain, Sarah, André, Mieke, Melanie, Jempy, Berkvens—the soldiers drag one name after another into the torture chamber and wait for them to crack. Who is the guilty one? they cry out in unison. Bewilderment, repugnance, and uneasiness are all closing ranks and surrounding her. She gathers the papers together and shoves them into the Gamma advertising folder along with all the others, pushing the folder hard as if to crush them.

Mieke trusts him the full hundred percent and loves him with everything she’s got, sometimes to the point of despair, these days often out of habit. But the fact that he doesn’t seek her out when there’s something wrong, that’s what she cannot understand. That he’s endlessly slapping down frightening words on paper, that’s creepy. That he would rather do that than come to her is downright selfish. She continues with her cleaning. A window requires no more than hot water with a splash of ammonia and a spotless cloth. Simple tricks do wonders. Mix bicarbonate of soda with lemon and you’ll never need bleach again. That’s what she’s thinking. Only that. She says the words out loud to keep from admitting the disgust she feels.

When she’s done, Mieke gathers her cleaning materials together and goes back to the kitchen with a heavy heart. The sensors above the patio flash on to light her way. Loneliness accompanies her into the house, sits down at the kitchen table, and makes itself at home. For the rest of her days loneliness will occupy this big house, and she’ll have to spend her time alone with him here when Sarah leaves the nest and goes off to college.

The ringing of the phone makes her jump. She’s almost sure that Stefaan is trying to reach her. She won’t answer; the shock is too fresh. It nauseates her just to think about it. As if she’s being enlisted to accomplish something that no one has explained to her. She shouldn’t have read all those scribbles. The phone keeps ringing. She stands and picks up the receiver. She hears the thin little voice of Sarah, who’s calling to say that she’s leaving MH’s house now. They were practising a new number that they just couldn’t get the hang of, which made them lose track of time, but now she’s coming home. It’s already ten-fifteen so she’ll be at least fifteen minutes late.

Sweet of her to call, Mieke says to herself.

This time Sarah didn’t even make an attempt to get permission to stay overnight. Mieke herself has never slept in a castle without paying for it. Who knows, maybe she can coax Sarah into organizing a party at Marie-Hélène’s family’s castle? She pours all her thoughts into that gutter of shallow thinking so there’s no room left for anything else. In any case she has to organize a party where she can see Ron and focus all her attention on him.

After half an hour of torment, staring into the eyes of Loneliness, her new lodger, Mieke wakes up. A car comes careening around the corner and deposits Sarah at the door. Mieke calls to her from inside the front door and tells her to come around back, since all the locks on the front door are locked and it’s such a huge job opening them again.

‘Hi, Mama,’ Sarah says at the back door while pulling off her shoes. She’s carrying her guitar on her back. ‘Sorry I’m so late. We’re practising for a gig and I lost track of time. I’m going to have a glass of milk.’

‘Of course,’ Mieke says hoarsely. ‘Drink something before you go to bed. And eat a Betterfood cookie, too. You could use it. Do you eat well, there, when you’re playing with the group?’

‘Sure, we eat fine,’ Sarah chirps. ‘There’s a cook at the castle.’

There’s a sound of rattling at the front door, then the bell. It’s Stefaan, who can’t get in.

‘I think all the locks on the front door are locked,’ he shouts.

‘Of course they’re locked!’ shouts Mieke, back in her role of conscientious housewife. ‘Come around the back!’

She goes to the kitchen to keep Sarah company. Sarah takes the carton of skim milk out of the refrigerator door and pours herself a large glassful. With her narrow back to her mother, Sarah waits the sixty seconds of warm-up time at the microwave. Mieke lives in a house with two strangers, one of whom she bore herself. Two people who don’t hesitate to deceive her with their secrets. She can put up with a lot, but if there’s one thing she can’t stand it’s deception. She refuses to be deceived. She doesn’t want to beat around the bush, not tonight. Mieke asks her daughter the burning question that’s been on her lips for so long. ‘Sarah, have you had any contact with drugs?’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Sarah says. She looks at Mieke, her cheeks glowing from the cold outside, her eyes glassy with fatigue, and takes a swallow of milk. ‘I even deal drugs. Haven’t I told you that yet?’

‘No,’ says Mieke slowly. It takes a fraction of a second for her to step into her daughter’s little drama. ‘But have you got quality merchandise?’ Mieke has kept herself informed. As a modern-day mother you can’t let yourself be ignorant about these things. On Thursday afternoon, when she had an hour to kill, she bought a book about narcotics and hallucinogenics, from amphetamines to morphine, from whisky to Xanax.

‘Want to try some hash?’ Sarah asks.

‘I’ll stick to cocaine, preferably without the ground glass.’

An idiotic conversation develops, with Sarah staring in disbelief at her mother’s extensive knowledge of drugs, not only about rolling joints but also about hard drugs and varieties she’s only heard about through the grapevine. Mieke is reassured that her daughter is still a child who enjoys a glass of milk.

‘Papa, Mama is a housewife who cultivates drugs,’ says Sarah in an effort to draw her father into the conversation. Stefaan has silently seated himself at the kitchen table and is ensconced behind The Economist.

‘Shh, Sarah, that was our little secret,’ hisses Mieke with a laugh. She’s pleased with his paper shield. She doesn’t have the courage to look him in the eye.

In all these years he hasn’t told her anything; he has shut her out, humiliated her. Now the light has turned green and she’s ready to do what she’s always been longing to do, without scruples.

‘And what did you eat tonight, Papa?’ says Mieke, turning her attention provokingly to Stefaan.

‘Huh. What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t you eat that delicious Indonesian pigswill you’re so crazy about?’ Mieke asks. Sarah laughs and almost chokes on her milk.

‘Hey,’ Stefaan asks, falling back to earth, ‘what is this? What are you two talking about? What’s your problem?’ He stands up, goes to the closet to get his scarf, and walks outside to his shed, in the dark. He’s smelled trouble. As soon as Sarah is upstairs, Mieke also goes out to the garden. She closes the back door quietly behind her.

Relationship in nature is the logic of the transitive: the one wolfs down the other, and the other is nibbled on, skin and all, by yet another, who then flies into a rock and is smashed to pieces, after which a bird of prey gets him in his sights and happily enjoys a fresh evening repast. Human beings consume each other, too, skin and all.

Yes, she went through his things. There are no apologies. Nor does she have any intention of apologizing to her husband. On the contrary, she’s afraid of him, but she’s not going to let on. She’s going to go on the offensive rather than be forced to her knees.

The door of the shed is ajar, as if he were expecting her. When she goes in he jumps out from behind the door, where he’s been oiling the hinges. Mieke pushes him with his face to the wall. Roughly, without mercy. He doesn’t know what’s happening; she doesn’t know where her inspiration will lead. She pushes him harder against the wall, his cheek pressed flat against its surface. The power of fifty horses is concealed in her wiry body, just enough to clasp his body so hard that he knows he needs her.

‘You’re mine,’ she whispers in his ear. She repeats the word. ‘Mine.’ She attacks him. She beats him on his back, on his buttocks. Her ring rebounds off his spine. He turns around and looks at her. Fully aware of how cruel and severe she is being to her husband, she goes further. He deserves it. For all these years, he has cheated not only himself but her as well.

The wooden door rattles in the wind. His erection is solid. She sits down on his desk and pulls him toward her by the ends of his scarf. With her eyes fixed on him she commands him wordlessly. She gives a tug on the scarf around his neck. If she wanted to, she could cut off his air supply and choke him. She squeezes his throat shut with the scarf. She’s so angry about all that silence, all the consolation he deprived her of, everything she could have done for him. She wants to love him, but he won’t let her in. ‘Look at me,’ she says, and she keeps pulling on the scarf. He looks at her with wide-open, terrified eyes, choking. He’s at the very point of toppling to his death, without oxygen, finished. ‘We are your family. We.’ He hides his face in her neck while they tear each other’s clothes off, and he starts fucking her standing up. But she feels this less—his penis inside her—than she feels the painful distance bristling through their two bodies.

‘I’m totally lacking in life experience,’ Mieke writes the next day in her diary in a trembling, panicky hand. ‘I’ve been married for years to a man I don’t know.’