Craving Read online

  ‘Well, then I’ll put some on, if you want coffee.’ Elisabeth sighs, turns her rollator, and goes to the kitchen.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ Coco calls after her.

  ‘I’m just not used to it,’ Elisabeth calls back as she enters the kitchen, ‘having to make coffee for someone else all day again. I drink two cups in the morning, myself.’

  Coco comes stomping downstairs, walks past her into the kitchen. ‘You’re the one who suggested coffee!’

  Elisabeth fills the kettle. Puts the full kettle onto the rollator and wants to walk to the other end of the counter with it. The water sloshes out.

  ‘Can’t you just put the coffee on? It’ll be much quicker.’

  ‘If you want coffee, Mum, you can just ask for it, you know. I’m more than happy to make coffee for you.’

  ‘No thanks, I don’t drink coffee in the afternoon.’ Coco stares at her, the kettle in her hands. Dark look. Away with her, away. Don’t ask, don’t try to understand what it is this time. ‘What?’ she shouldn’t have asked. Leave it, leave it. Let it go.

  ‘I was studying.’

  ‘Yes, and I was having a lovely rest in my bed. I don’t mind being on my own.’

  ‘Luckily. I’ll leave the coffee then, I have to cut down anyway. I’ll go back upstairs.’

  Elisabeth experiences panic at the thought of Coco going back upstairs. As though Coco is cycling on the other side of the Overtoom again and there’s constantly something wrong. Away with this, with this wrongness, this unseemliness. But Coco goes out of the kitchen, and each step she takes away from her she makes everything more unseemly and because ‘go away’ isn’t possible, because ‘disappear, don’t exist,’ isn’t an option for a mother, she uses words she finds ugly, Wilbert-words, Coco-words. She’s already in the hall.

  ‘Maybe it’s not working.’ The footsteps stop. The child understands these words. ‘Maybe it’s not working, Coco.’ Coco comes back, her expression different now. Elisabeth sits down on her rollator. Onwards now. Coco back in the kitchen. ‘It doesn’t matter if you can’t cope with me. Martin wouldn’t mind helping you move back out. I’ve already asked him.’

  ‘What have you already asked him?’

  ‘That, when, as soon as—that he …’

  ‘You want me to leave?’

  ‘I want you to be happy.’ This is true. One of the things. One of the true things. Oneofthethings oneofthethings ofthethings.

  Coco sits down at the kitchen table and says, ‘I want to be here.’

  Buffer. The wooden buffer for the toy train. That’s what Coco’s sentence is like.

  A bigger buffer now. ‘I want you to go.’ It has been said. It’s done. Don’t fight it. Failure. Now wait for the words, everything passes. Just let the story become: Things were never resolved between the mother and daughter.

  Coco stays calm.

  ‘Go.’ Her daughter will shout in the end.

  Silence still. Come on.

  ‘I don’t have anywhere to live right now.’

  What is happening? Where is the shouting, the wailing, the stamping?

  ‘I don’t have anywhere to live right now.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what you said.’

  ‘My room. I had to move out.’

  ‘You have to move out?’

  ‘I’m already out. I already had to leave. I told you, didn’t I? That I had to move out?’

  Tumbling. Elisabeth scarcely knows what is tumbling, only that it’s tumbling. There are always abstract constructions of thoughts that she thought didn’t exist, but which suddenly can tumble and therefore do exist. Now her daughter’s dedication collapses and tumbles.

  ‘I did tell you, though,’ her daughter says.

  Elisabeth can only nod along now and replies, ‘Yes, you said that … on the Overtoom.’ Because she does have a good memory. It’s just she should have thought more, made connections. It’s her own fault.

  ‘Where are all your things?’

  ‘I don’t have that much.’

  ‘And when did that all happen?’ Elisabeth asks, and she remembers similar sentences from years ago: And when did you see her then? And how long has it been going on?

  ‘Does it matter?’ her daughter asks.

  ‘That’s what your father said too,’ Elisabeth says.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘“Does it matter?” … “It’s not about the other person. It’s about what we have. Or don’t anymore.”’

  ‘What are you going on about now?’

  ‘Oh, that whole business, back then.’

  ‘The divorce, you mean.’

  ‘Yes, that whole business with Miriam.’

  ‘Was he already seeing her then?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It wasn’t about that.’

  ‘Christ, Mum, you split up ages ago.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘So you had to move out, but … it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I had to move out, yes.’

  ‘And you wanted to be with me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you had to move out.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you also wanted … really did … to be with me. That’s what you wanted.’

  ‘I could have moved back in with Dad.’

  ‘And Miriam’s massage parlour then?’

  ‘You mean the shiatsu practice.’

  She waits and then asks, ‘Is it working out for her?’ Coco says nothing. Ask again is the rule, to prove that she’s genuinely interested. Ask again, otherwise you prove to them that you’re not interested at all. That you have a good memory, but can’t remember the word ‘shiatsu’ because you don’t want to remember it. Too tired. Tumble then. Let all the interest drop too. She gets up, the question still hanging in the air: Is it working out for her?

  ‘I’m going for a lie-down.’ Rollator. Past the daughter. Don’t touch her.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ her daughter calls after her.

  ‘Very tired!’ is true. Very tired. Back to bed with her hands on her stomach, let the child swim. The little fish in her.

  #

  Coco calls the hairdresser and asks him whether he wouldn’t mind coming to the house just this once. She knows how much her mother likes seeing him. It’s a gift.

  She didn’t lie about her lodgings. She runs through all the words that have passed between her and her mother and is sure she hasn’t lied. Yet she still wants to give her mother a gift, like someone who wants to make up for something.

  ‘I don’t actually do that,’ the hairdresser says, ‘home cuts.’

  ‘She’s dying,’ Coco says. Everything to persuade the hairdresser. The hairdresser hesitates.

  She says, ‘It might be the last time,’ and feels the warmth rising to her cheeks. Bloody hell, wash and set, she has her hair set these days and likes to go to the hairdresser’s once a week. No way that she’s going to die within the next seven days.

  ‘Fine,’ the hairdresser says.

  After that she calls Martin and says that her mother can hardly be left alone anymore. She’s declining fast. The more she talks, the more it sounds like the truth and Coco begins to cry automatically and then she asks him, ‘It’s really true, isn’t it? She’s not doing well, is she?’

  Then she calls Hans.

  ‘Mum’s not doing well.’

  ‘Poor sweetheart.’

  ‘It looks like I should stay here for the time being. No other option.’

  ‘Have you already spoken to her GP?’

  ‘He’s coming this week, I think.’

  ‘Then you’ll know more.’

  ‘When will I see you?’

  He doesn’t reply at once. ‘Nothing has changed,’ he says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ve stopped believing in it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you don’t want to see me anymore?’

  ‘Of course I want to s
ee you.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I just don’t think I can do that to you. I have to let you go.’

  ‘Do you want that?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Let me decide. I’ll decide myself what you can do to me or not? OK? … Please?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘There’s an exhibition in Haarlem I’d like to see. Sculpture.’

  ‘Then we’ll go to the exhibition in Haarlem,’ Coco says. ‘Can you make tomorrow?’

  When she hangs up, she’s delighted.

  Coco sings a Russian song during the cooking. She stamps along, and when she is waiting for the water to boil for the rice she even claps her hands. Her good mood lasts for a long time, even as she eats with her mother. It isn’t until she’s lying in bed thinking about the next day that she realises that she doesn’t want to go to a sculpture exhibition at all and then falls asleep angry anyway, thinking: that’s clever, that I can do that, be angry and fall asleep.

  #

  Elisabeth gives the taxi driver the address of the framer’s and sighs, relieved, as though she’s done now—this is the final journey. She allows herself the fleeting thought: I never have to go back after this. This is how she observes the houses in her street one more time as they drive past. She crosses over at the junction one last time, turns into the narrow street with the shop for the last time.

  The car stops in front of the glass façade. The taxi driver helps her to get out. Marlie is standing at the computer and looks up. She waves, much too enthusiastically. That’s how you wave to people who don’t come often, not to a colleague, not to someone who simply belongs there.

  As she goes into the shop, her colleagues throng around her. They block the route to her table and greet her at length.

  She doesn’t look at them, she tries to see past them and says, ‘I want to go to my table.’ Martin gets a stool and puts it at her table. She sits down, knows that she never sat here but always stood, closes her eyes, and feels for the tools hanging from the corner of her table. She can find her things blindfold. Hammer, present. Pincers, present. Wiper. The wiper has gone. She opens her eyes.

  ‘Who’s got my wiper?’

  ‘Which one was yours?’ Marlie asks.

  ‘The one with “only for table” on it. It’s supposed to be hanging here.’ She feels tears. Her wiper has gone. Frans, who should be standing at the back at the cutting machine, brings her her box.

  ‘Isn’t it in here?’ he asks.

  ‘Put it back,’ Elisabeth says. They are only going to bloody give her the box of tools, the way you give things to people who aren’t coming back.

  ‘Have a quick look.’ Frans goes to put the box on the table.

  ‘Put it back.’

  ‘Don’t want a look?’ He puts it on the table.

  ‘PUT THAT BOX BACK.’ They don’t know her like this. She doesn’t know herself like this.

  ‘Put that box back right away!’ No one moves for a second. She isn’t going to smile now, for god’s sake don’t smile. Don’t make amends, there’s nothing to amend here, not here, please not here. Twenty years and no one has found her strange here. For twenty years she didn’t have to think about how she should relate to others here. Twenty years and everything is still going to be ruined. When Martin gives her his hanky, she realises that she’s crying. Frans puts the box back on the shelf and finally goes back to the cutting machine to the rear of the shop.

  Please let someone turn on a machine. As though her thoughts have been heard, she hears the underpinner start up. Chack. Chack. Carry on now, just these sounds.

  Martin gets a golden frame. He puts it around a colourful painting of flowers on her table.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asks. ‘Is the inside edge still too fussy or should we leave it as it is?’

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’ Elisabeth asks. For twenty years her eye had been important, now his question was to reassure her. Martin doesn’t reply.

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’ She gives him back his hanky. The whole shop, which had consisted of the right materials, the right smells, and the right sounds has become a morass of people. Intentions and thoughts have been let in. The shop is leaking. If she stays sitting here for a while there’s a chance clients will come in too. How can she get away without drama? How can she flee without being seen? Give it up. The shop is broken. She lets herself sink from the stool, quaking. Martin catches her just in time.

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ Martin says, ‘wait here, I’ll fetch the van.’ He helps her back onto the stool. She closes her eyes and lets her head hang.

  ‘Everything is lost,’ she says. She remembers Wilbert saying that at the end of every drunken evening: everything is lost. And how pretty those big words were and how lovely that she didn’t know what they meant, but all she had to do was support him on his way to bed and undress him and repeat, ‘It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter,’ and she only had to lie down next to him. Everything is lost. She didn’t know at the time that he was unhappy, that it felt like this, like now, like this.

  In the evening she falls over. All of a sudden her legs stop working. When she’s lying down she’s peaceful, but Coco soon finds her, in front of the toilet door.

  ‘If I hadn’t been here,’ Coco begins, ‘you would have died there in the night.’

  ‘Bloody hell, yes,’ she says.

  #

  Coco is on her way back from the chemist’s. Hans’s Mercedes is there already. He’s early. Coco hurries inside as though she has to save him from her mother, but she hears him laughing. She stops in front of the door and listens.

  ‘… so you don’t recognise yourself in the description of a person with autism?’ Coco becomes angry, until she hears her mother answering him in a reasonable, calm tone of voice.

  ‘I don’t have any trouble putting myself in someone else’s shoes.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘You don’t think so either, do you?’

  ‘That’s a good one.’ Hans laughs loudly.

  My explicit boyfriend, Coco thinks. Why doesn’t she ever ask her mother questions like that? All of a sudden it seems so simple, put that way.

  ‘You have a good memory?’

  ‘Exceedingly.’

  ‘Can I ask about your childhood?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Fucking hell, Coco thinks, he is treating her like a client. They jump when she opens the door. She likes that. She’s jealous. She doesn’t yet know of whom.

  ‘Coco, there aren’t very many of them, I was right,’ her mother says, ‘cars in that colour grey. I always say that, don’t I, that it’s such a nice colour, his car. And then you act as though I’ve said something strange, or as though I’m avoiding something, or whatever, as if I’ve just started talking about the paint instead, but it really is an usual shade.’

  ‘I was just saying to your mother that she has an unusual relationship to matter and that I’d like to interview her about that.’

  ‘Interview?’

  ‘I’m writing an article about anthropomorphism.’

  ‘For Seattle.’

  ‘Seattle’s about neuroses.’

  ‘… Maybe there’s … an overlap …’

  ‘I’ve already finished my Seattle speech.’

  ‘Seattle?’ her mother asks.

  ‘Conference,’ Hans says.

  ‘Yes,’ Coco says, ‘he’s the keynote speaker.’

  ‘Is that true?’ her mother says.

  ‘Are you interested?’ Hans seems pleased.

  ‘Mum has to rest,’ Coco says.

  Hans stands up. ‘I’ll call you,’ he says to her mother, ‘will you manage on your own?’

  ‘Martin will be here in an hour,’ Coco says.

  When she’s sitting next to him in the car, she says, ‘What you’re doing is too intimate.’

  She expects him to be shocked, bu
t he just says calmly, ‘Yes, funny isn’t it, that it feels like that? I do understand, you know. You don’t have to feel embarrassed.’

  ‘I’m not, no.’

  ‘Oh, me? I’m supposed to be embarrassed, you mean?’

  She doesn’t reply. He doesn’t ask for a reply. He finds his own question absurd.

  ‘Do you ever feel embarrassed?’ she asks him.

  ‘Embarrassment isn’t one of my talents,’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t deny it, your mother and me, there is a spark.’

  ‘Unusual.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Hey, if it’s really important to you, I’ll keep my distance. If it’s really important to you, you just have to say so.’ Coco still doesn’t dare play her trump card.

  She places her hand on his leg, moves the hand slowly to his crotch. Everything is soft there. She rubs, squeezes gently. Nothing happens.

  ‘We need to get petrol,’ he says.

  Coco thinks about Caramac. ‘Are you starving already too?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  #

  Elisabeth sleeps more and more. When she opens her eyes, Wilbert has suddenly appeared, on the sofa next to her bed.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Coco and Martin made up a roster, so you don’t have to be alone anymore.’

  ‘She hates me.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘… so that I’ll never be alone.’

  ‘She said you fell.’

  ‘Yes, so what?’

  ‘She’s worried.’

  ‘Revenge is sweet.’

  ‘Try and be normal.’

  ‘Did she just let you leave?’

  ‘Miriam’s never been difficult about you.’

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Are you annoyed that I’m here?’

  ‘No.’ Her head is still, it feels heavy. She tries to look at Wilbert, see his eyes, but Wilbert keeps looking away. ‘You told Coco that I locked her up.’

  ‘Did she bring it up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, yeah, it was true.’

  ‘She didn’t remember it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And now she does.’

  ‘And that’s my fault?’

  ‘Yes.’