Twenty minutes. That’s how long I would sit here, and not a minute longer. It was too crazy for words, but I simply had to have tried. One time, today, and then never again. It was busy. In the train station of Antwerp Central, the rush hour lasted all day.
Ten minutes.
In vain, I looked in my shoulder bag for a peppermint. A skinny lady asked me if I had a light. I shook my head and looked over my shoulder at the clock.
Fifteen minutes.
I looked around me, pretended to be waiting for something or someone. I was. I was waiting for Godot, and it seemed that Godot was not going to turn up.
Twenty minutes.
Maybe it wasn’t even true, that he came here regularly. Maybe nothing he had said was true, except for the part about the effect of the supplements.
Thirty minutes.
I rose. This had taken long enough. With my head bent down, I walked through the main hall of the station, towards the Astridplein. At the entrance of the modernized zoo, a long queue of people was waiting. A mascot dressed as a bear was very popular with the waiting children. Suddenly I saw Veerle walking. She saw me at about the same time, skipped in my direction and gave me three kisses on my cheeks. ‘Well. Aren’t you in a hurry!’
‘I’m not, really.’
‘Oh, good, because I wanted to talk to you about something. That’s a colorful bag!’
My shoulder bag was definitely colorful and fit her wardrobe better than mine. ‘Bought it in the Offerandestraat. For 10 euros.’
‘Nice. I should go by there sometime. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.’
‘I figured as much.’
‘I wanted to thank you, Carine. Those supplements are great. I can really feel it, that they’re doing something to me. It’s a shame I didn’t get to know them sooner. How much different my life would’ve been if I had!’
I felt warm inside. ‘I know the feeling.’
Veerle lifted the strap of her handbag, which had sunk down, back onto her shoulder. ‘And do you know what the crazy thing is?’ She laid a hand on my shoulder and moved her face closer to mine. ‘This was predicted.’
‘Predicted?’
She grinned when she saw my face. ‘I saw a fortune-teller a couple of months ago. I know you’re rather skeptical when it comes to things like that, but I was at a paranormal fair and I was really at wit’s end. So when I saw a fortune-teller sitting there who gave consultations for free, I took a seat in a spur of the moment. And did you know what she told me?’
Veerle awaited my response, but continued: ‘She told me that a man would come, who would change my life. I told her that I was happily married, but she shook her head. It had nothing to do with love, she said. There was something else, something to do with my disease. The solution for it, that’s what this man would bring me.’
Preoccupied, I stared at the yellow facade of the Radisson Blu hotel, with next to it the red facade of Aquatopia. ‘All of that is a bit vague, though.’
‘Do you think so?’ she asked, surprised. ‘I thought it was rather clear, though. You’ve learned about those supplements through J.P. and they have changed my life. And she could tell very specific things about him.’
‘Like what?’ I asked eagerly.
Veerle shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course I’m not sure if it’s all right, but she said that it was a tall, slender man, who was not too unpleasant to look at, and that he lives in Antwerp, but hardly ever on the same address for a long time.’
I got a knot in my stomach. That did indeed sound very specific. ‘That’s about right, I think.’
‘She also said he was an artist.’
‘An artist?’ I could imagine it, J.P. as an artist.
Veerle laid her hand on my shoulder again. ‘Well, you know, she didn’t literally say he was an artist, but she did talk about a sketchbook.’