The Evenings

  “Goddam me, fantastic,” Frits said, clapping his hands. “That is amazing.” “They found him with the frozen shit inside his coat,” Louis went on. “They put him in the bath, fully dressed, coat and all, and started tossing buckets of water over him. Then the turds came loose. Floated around like flakes in the water.” He grinned, making a dispersive motion with his hands. “Grand, quite grand,” Frits said, “distasteful, but grand.”

  “Are there things that you find truly distasteful?” Louis asked. He turned his chair around and rested his feet on the hood of the oil burner. “No,” said Frits, “you mean, things that spoil my appetite? No, it would have to be awfully bad for that. What I do find quite filthy is what someone told us at home one time, a nurse. She was helping out with a family where the mother was ill. Three children, three boys, who every evening, after undressing for bed, ate the black stuff from between their toes.”

  “Wha!” Louis shouted, stamping his feet on the floor, “bah, bah. Yes, oh yes. That is very good.” He put his feet back on the oil burner. “Now I truly know nothing more to say,” Frits thought. “The Sunday before last I was sitting here too. There is little hope in store for this evening.” “Do you know, Louis,” he asked, “that your hair is becoming rather thin? There’s not much to it any more. It definitely won’t be long before you go completely bald.” “Do you suppose?” Louis asked flatly. “It seems to make little difference to you, whether or not there is anything growing on top of your head or not,” Frits said. “Is it all the same to you?”

  “I won’t go bald, not for the time being,” Louis said. “It’s starting to fall out very quickly at the corners,” Frits said, “I must be frank. And because you don’t have so much hair to start with, I see baldness approaching. But if you don’t care all that much, well, all the better. You have bald people who are quite happy. Not that I can imagine that, I’d rather be dead myself, but you do hear of them.” “Well, really, I’ll never go completely bald,” Louis said. “All right, now he’s going to run his hand over it,” Frits said to himself, “here we go.” Louis raised his hand slowly and felt at his forehead and crown.

  “What do you use on your hair?” Frits asked. “Nothing,” Louis answered. “Well then, what keeps it so slick?” Frits asked. “Water, I comb it with water, nothing else,” said Louis.

  “Listen, that’s exactly it,” Frits said, “you put water on it and think that can do no harm. A very common misconception. On normal skin, without any hair on it, water dries up. Like on your hand, or your arm. But on your head, that’s something very different. It’s like walking around in a wet bathing suit when it’s cold outside. The skin between the hairs becomes eroded. The roots as well. A great deal of grime, that would otherwise blow away, remains stuck in the pores.” Louis said nothing.

  “As of yet, no one actually knows what causes baldness, did you know that?” Frits asked. “They talk about ageing, subcutaneous fat imbalances, skin ailments, vitamin deficiency, aberrant blood pressure, you name it. But they still haven’t found a solution.”

  “Don’t you think it might be hereditary?” Louis asked. He was chewing on the stub of a pencil. “I don’t think so,” Frits replied, “because you very often see people with a thick head of hair in a family of baldies. No, I’ve looked into that. It doesn’t apply. It’s an individual thing.” “Do you think it’s actually a sign of old age?” Louis asked, tapping the pencil against his teeth.

  “Do you know what it might be?” Frits said suddenly. “People go on too long producing children. That’s it. You have people of thirty-five, or forty, or fifty, or sixty—I’m not kidding you—who still produce children. If those parents are already close to baldness themselves, then they pass that trait of reduced hair growth on to their children. I believe that must be it. That is the whole problem. Old people go on making children with impunity. That should be stopped.” “Sit down and write a pamphlet right away,” Louis said.

  “No, seriously,” Frits went on, “I’m firmly convinced of that. Old people cause a lot of the world’s misery. They contaminate our lives. They spread a sour smell in the tram. Like a pot of fruit preserves that has been opened and then forgotten. Everything over sixty should be done away with.” “Why not everything over forty?” Louis asked. “You wouldn’t hear me complain,” Frits said, “but we have to stay humane. Between forty and sixty there are still signs of life.”

  “Transplanting it from one head to the next wouldn’t work, would it?” Louis asked. “I’ve thought about that too,” Frits said. “To take the scalp of a dead person and transfer it to the head of a bald one. Then you would know right away whether it was a matter of something in the blood or something with the skin. Not the blood, I think, because at other spots on your body it keeps on growing like a pine forest. Even your beard goes on growing.” “It’s about time I left,” he thought.

  “At the Museum of Safety they have the skin from someone’s head on display, the whole thing,” Louis said, “in formaldehyde. Torn off by a machine.” “After an accident like that, can’t they just put it back on quickly again?” Frits asked. “I don’t know,” Louis replied, “if it got dirty and all crumpled up in the machine, I shouldn’t think so.”

  “And how is your own health, Mr Spanjaard?” Frits asked. Louis remained silent. “Do you know what I think?” said Frits. “I think there’s something inside your head. It is growing and swelling. It touches the inside of your skull and the pain begins. Until finally it breaks through, until a blood vessel bursts, at which point it is all over.”

  “No,” Louis said, “I don’t believe so. Otherwise they would have seen that on the slides.” “Still, I think an operation would be good,” Frits said. “Maybe it’s somewhere in a recess, or behind a lump of bone. If they would just open it up, there’s a chance they might find it. They’re awfully clever these days.” “If it was my only hope,” Louis said, “but as long as they don’t say so themselves, we’ll just wait and see.”

  “They admitted a fellow to hospital once,” Frits said, “who had fallen head first into the hold of a ship. About eight metres deep. Landed right on his skull. Cracked open completely. Full of fissures. But he wasn’t dead. That was highly irregular, of course. So all right, in the hospital they waited for him to die. But he didn’t; he simply remained unconscious. Then a professor came along who said: Let me give it a go, I’ve never seen anything like it. That professor sawed off the entire skull, tidied up the man’s brain again, took out all the dirt and blood, put the lid back on and closed it up. And that fellow is still alive. But he has to put in an appearance at a medical conference once a year, to show them his noggin. They reimburse him for the train ticket at least. Incredible, isn’t it?” “That was an awfully silly story,” he thought, “I’m going to leave.” Louis, wearing a pensive look, kept his eyes on the floor.

  “Someone told me a real whopper recently, have you heard it?” Frits asked. “It’s something you should save for when there are ladies present: it will definitely be a big hit. It’s wonderfully pathetic.” “Then do tell,” Louis said, “that always comes in handy.” He raised his head and snapped his fingers. “It really happened, or rather, the person who told me didn’t actually say that it hadn’t. So it’s possible. In any case, a good one for a rainy day. A father is playing with his little child of about eighteen months, tossing it in the air and catching it again. But he misses. The child is lying on the floor. Dead. A trickle of blood coming from its mouth. The father screams at the top of his lungs.” “Of course,” Louis said, “that is a mighty blow for a father.” “The mother hears it,” Frits went on, “and comes running in from the kitchen. She looks at the child: a great lamentation. Suddenly the wife remembers the child of a few months old who she had been giving a bath to in the kitchen. She runs back: the child has already drowned. She had simply let go of it in the bath. You should tell that one when there are women around, you’ll laugh yourself silly.”

  “Didn’t you tell me that one
before?” Louis asked. “No,” Frits replied, “you’re confusing it with the one about the father who picked up his children by the head. In fact, you told me that one yourself. That it had really happened, that’s what you claimed.” “Yes, yes,” Louis said, “but this one is also very good. Wonderful stuff.”

  “I have to leave,” Frits said, “I promised to be home around eight.” He stood up. “I’ll walk with you,” said Louis. He turned off the heater and straightened the sheets of paper and books on his table. “We’re off,” Frits said. They descended the stairs in silence. “He is not obliged to say a thing,” Frits thought, once they were walking outside. “Why doesn’t he have a coat on? But I mustn’t be the one to start talking. I can simply collect my thoughts.” He kept glancing over at Louis’s face. “This day,” he said to himself, “was grim. It was a veritable ordeal. But beware, lest we overlook that which must still come to pass. Let us think on what is yet to come, before darkness falls. Hallelujah.” He shortened his pace, so that each step came down in the precise centre of a paving stone.

  “I will shore up my courage until midnight,” he mumbled. “I must persevere till then. There is nothing else for it.” “Still, I really should say something,” he thought, “but I don’t know what. Let me go home. The chill is working its way into everything.” “Do you enjoy wintertime, Louis?” he asked. “Definitely,” Louis answered without turning to look at him, “but I always find it so much colder than the summer. Besides that, though, I have nothing against it.”

  “This day was empty,” Frits thought, “I realize that.” “Here is where I turn right,” he said, “you’re going straight on, aren’t you?” “Yes,” Louis said, “I wish you a great deal of stamina.” He poked Frits in the side. “My best wishes accompany you,” Frits said. “Let us pause to recall that this is the final evening of the year.” He felt his eyes grow moist. “New Year’s Eve,” said Louis, “good thing you mentioned it.” They had stopped. “Perhaps I offended you this evening, with something I said,” Frits said. “No, no, not in the slightest,” Louis said. “It was most convivial. Highly enjoyable.” They shook hands. Louis walked on without looking back. Frits turned right, but after a few metres he retraced his steps, slipped into a doorway and, sticking his head around the corner, watched as Louis walked away.

  “So here I am standing in this darkened doorway,” he thought, “like a spy. What else am I, if not a spy?” He waited until Louis was out of sight, and sighed. “Once a spy, always a spy,” he said to himself. “Peering out from darkened rooms into lighted streets. And so it is.” He took off at a jogtrot and, having reached the front door of his house, continued to run in place as he pulled out his key. “Up the stairs,” he thought, “at a single go. Don’t stop to think.” Entering the downstairs hallway at a bound, he slammed the front door loudly behind him and remained standing for a moment. Then he walked slowly up the stairs and into the front hall.

  The house was filled with the smell of frying. From the kitchen he could hear the hissing of fat in a pan. “Close the door behind you,” his mother said when he came in, “otherwise the smell goes all around the house.” “Are you making oliebollen?” he asked. “Apple beignets,” she replied.

  On the kitchen table was a deep bowl with chunks of apple and a plate of batter. Between them lay four peeled apples. She took a handful of chunks from the bowl, dipped them in batter and tossed them one by one into the black stewing pan. “If you do it that way, you get all kinds of shapeless lumps,” Frits said, “because those pieces of apple are all different. You should actually have peeled a few apples first and punched out the cores. Then you can slice them into rings. So that you get pastries that look nice too.”

  “I would, if I had one of those things to core them with,” his mother said, “but it’s not in there any more. You probably did something with it.” “No,” Frits said, “there’s one here.” He opened a drawer under the kitchen cupboard, felt around in it without looking and pulled out an apple corer. “Here you are,” he said, laying it on the table.

  “I can’t work with one of those things,” she said. “If it slips, you hurt your hand. I’ve had that happen.” “There’s nothing to it,” Frits said. He seized one of the apples and poked out the core. “That’s the way it goes,” he said as he picked up the paring knife from the counter and cut off three slices of apple. “Here you have your rings,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, using a fork to flip six of the finished beignets onto a plate, “but I’m not sure how much batter I have left. I’ll make a plate of these first. They’re round, everyone likes these.”

  “Fine by me,” Frits said. “You want to make balls of batter with bits of apple in them, like you do with raisins. But then you should do it right. Now there’s a thick chunk of apple in each one. That will never become cooked. When you bite into it, you first come across something soft. But the pieces are still hard in the middle. Just like apple sauce that isn’t cooked all the way. You need to dice them fine and put a lot of them in each ball of batter. Tiny little cubes. Or else cut them into rings. If you do that, the slices of apple should be thin. The way you’re doing it, the pieces stay hard.” He took one of the oliebollen from the plate, broke it in two and, with the index finger of the other hand, picked out a chunk of apple that was still hard. “Damn me, that’s hot,” he said, blowing on the piece of pastry and waving it back and forth, then dropping it on the floor. “Pick that up, would you,” his mother said, “I swept in here only this morning.”

  He retrieved the crumbs and pieces of apple, stuck them in his mouth one by one, made blowing sounds, left the kitchen and went to his bedroom. Turning the shade of the desk lamp towards the ceiling, he walked slowly back and forth, then took the toy rabbit from the bookcase. “Good rabbit, sweet rabbit, of you I’m fond,” he said aloud. He set the rabbit on top of his head and, balancing carefully, moved to the mirror. “He may sit on my head,” he murmured quietly, moving his lips for emphasis, “he may ride along.” “No matter how many plagues are sent our way,” he said to himself, “we will never leave each other in the lurch. Afflictions mount. Yet still, the end is not in sight.”

  He put the animal back where it came from, sat down on his bed, slid aside the curtain that covered the lower shelves of the bookcase and sat there, staring quietly. Leaning forward suddenly, he stuck out his hand and snatched a book from the row. It had a hard, light-blue cover. “W.F.C. Timmerhout,” he said aloud, “France and Classical Antiquity.” He leafed through it, closed it loudly, opened it again, examined the first few pages closely and, at page forty-eight, blew away a dead mosquito he found crushed there. He took a deep breath and, examining the binding, found the middle of the volume, spat between the pages there and slammed it shut. “And this is what young people, mere children really, are forced to read,” he said to himself. “I’m not making that up: that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” “So help me God,” he said out loud. He looked at the binding and slid the volume slowly back into place.

  “Frits!” his mother shouted. “Take it easy,” he said to himself. “I’ll let her call me one more time, then I’ll go.” “Frits!” she shouted again. “In fact, a third time would be even better,” he murmured. “Frits, could you come in here?” he heard her shout. “I haven’t had my fingers in the cookie jar,” he thought, “I’m almost sure of that.” He stood up, turned off the light and shouted loudly: “Just a minute. I’m coming.” He pounded his chest, sucked in his stomach and went to the kitchen.

  “Look,” his mother said. She was standing at the stove and pointing at the counter behind her. “Do you mean that bottle?” he asked. On the counter was a bottle containing a dark-red liquid. The neck was sealed with an orange capsule. He came closer. “What is it?” he asked. “I bought a bottle of wine for this evening,” she answered, scooping a few oliebollen from the pan. “That’s lovely,” Frits said. He picked up the bottle by the neck. It had a blue label with a yellow border. “Berry-apple
,” he read quietly. “Berry-apple,” he said to himself, “berry-apple. Help us, O eternal one, our God. See us in our distress. From the depths we call to you. Hideous.”

  “Mother,” he said. “Yes, mouse,” she answered. “Mother,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter, but this is not wine.” “Not wine?” she asked, turning around. “The man tells me: Apple-berry, fruit wine. Wine, the man tells me.” “Yes,” Frits thought, “the man says: Apple-berry, wine. Besides, it’s berry-apple. Oh, look upon us. Stretch forth thy hand.”

  “No,” he said, “wine it is not. And it says so on the bottle. Berry-apple. Prepared from the juice of fresh-picked, top-quality redcurrants and reinette apples. It’s nothing but juice. With sugar added, let us hope. But it doesn’t have anything to do with wine.”

  “Let me look,” she said, taking the bottle from him. Peering over the tops of her spectacles she examined the label, then handed it back. “I can’t see a thing,” she said, “these glasses are fogged up. I’ll take a look in the other room, in a bit.” “There’s no reason to look, it’s not wine,” Frits said.

  “Then don’t open it yet,” she said, “I can take it back the day after tomorrow.” “No need for that,” Frits said, “I’m sure it will taste fine anyway. What did you pay for it?” “The man said: Apple-berry,” she said, “wine.” “How much did it cost?” he asked. “And that woman said the same,” she went on. “He asked her: do you have any of that wine left? Yes, she says, over there.” “How much did you pay for it?” he asked. “Three guilders ten,” she answered, “including the twenty-five cents for the bottle.” “I’m sure it will be good,” said Frits, “it doesn’t matter much.” “And now the moment for tears has arrived,” he thought. His eyes grew moist.