‘You’re a Jew-lover, Wils, you can’t fool me. A stooge of the plutocracy, that’s what you are.’
‘Think what you like.’
‘Very generous of you, boy. Thank you! I know you warned the local Abes in the summer so they had a chance to get away. No doubt they paid you well for it. Others profited too. But you’re a special case, Wils. You’ve got yourself covered. You know what I think when I see you drinking a beer with our goateed friend in the Raven? You know what I think? I think, just wait. That’s all. Just wait. Because fellers like you always slip up. Fellers like you get cocky. You should see your mug. The arrogance. Wils, enjoy it while you can… It won’t be long. And you, we won’t beat you up in a cellar somewhere before throwing you off a dock like a crushed walnut. No, we’ll gift-wrap you and hand you over to the men in leather coats.’
Not for one second does the Finger stop chewing. His rodent teeth keep grinding away with his mouth half open. It’s like his words are amplified, trumpeting out of his nose and echoing off the nicotine-stained walls.
‘Careful with those bones,’ I say in a voice that’s thin after all because of the fright he’s put into me. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you choke.’
Words I regret even before they’ve died away. Unfortunately sentences like that always hang in the air. Time underlines them, drawing them out and making them resonate. The Finger shakes his head and starts to chuckle. ‘You’re something else, Wils. Fuck me, you’re really asking for it. You really don’t know who I am.’
I start to roll the cigarette as slowly as possible, despite still having two untouched sandwiches in my lunchbox. I’ve only just lit it when he starts to sneeze.
‘Pardon,’ he says immediately, as if he still owes me, the mole, the treacherous bastard, a duty of politeness. But the sneezing doesn’t stop and gets even more intense. Hachoo. Again. Hachoo. Bits of fish spray out of his mouth. I lean back as far as I can. His tiny red eyes are suddenly flooded. I stare at that body that no longer knows what to do with itself, abruptly at the mercy of the tickling in that enormous nose and as ineffectual as an overgrown child’s. He manages to blurt, ‘What the hell’s this?’ Yes, what’s going on with all this sneezing, I think to myself. Eduard Vingerhoets unbuttons his uniform jacket double-quick and sneezes again. Tears roll down his badly shaved cheeks. Another sneeze. His nostrils flare. With his crumpled wet eyes closed, he reaches for his inside pocket. A hankie with light-blue stripes appears. Immediately he presses it to his red and swollen nose. But his brusque fumbling has also caused his wallet to flip out. It’s lying on the floor, open and defenceless. In a flash I see a deckle-edge photo of him in a dark suit next to a smiling woman and two children, whose faces have popped up under her hefty bosom, a son and daughter with their mother’s sparkling eyes. A dried flower covers the rest of the family portrait. How proud he looks in that photo, how loving too, how… Between two sneezing fits, he snatches the wallet away.
‘Don’t forget, Wils…’ he squeaks, ‘don’t forget. I know where you live.’ He stuffs the wallet back in next to his heart and hurries out of the canteen with the hankie pressed firmly to his nose. I hear him sneeze again on the stairs. Haaa-choo. He’s left the half-eaten fish on the table in the greasy paper. I stub my cigarette out on it. My hand is shaking, not Angelo’s.
As far as my duty roster allows, I am meant to spend my Sundays with my sweetheart’s family. Under no circumstances may I refuse the midday meal. The one time I tried to get out of it, it caused an almighty crisis. ‘So, you can’t have been so very sick,’ I heard the following week, seeing as I’d been spotted strolling through Harmonie Park with a mate who later took me to the Welcome Inn in the German quarter for a beer. Complete twaddle—I’d spent the whole day in bed. Yvette’s recriminations were furious, but behind her back Lode was winking at me. The nasty sod had made it all up to ensure that from then on I would feel completely obliged to turn out on parade every Sunday freshly washed and shaven and wearing a neatly ironed white shirt.
Yvette’s father recently assigned me a fixed spot at the table, to his left. Directly opposite me sits his son with my girl next to him and Mother sits at the other end of the table. She brings the soup in from the kitchen and dishes it out at the table. She towers over us and follows a strict order. First Father gets his soup, then I, as the guest, get mine, and then the others. We pass our bowls to her one after the other in that order, so she can slowly pour the soup into them. Father tastes his, blowing on it gently first with pursed lips. After he has given a nod of approval, everyone else is allowed to start. On Sundays hardly a word
