A Father's Affair (7 page)

‘A hideous experiment was once performed on baby monkeys,’ I told him. ‘Some of the monkeys were taken away from their mothers at birth and put in a bare cage, with nothing but
a bottle and a nipple they could drink from. Other monkeys were put in the same kind of cage, but were given a doll wrapped in a piece of soft fur: a sort of artificial mother. The third group of
monkeys were allowed to stay with their mothers. And what do you think happened? The monkeys in the bare cage without a doll drank the milk and spent the rest of the time in a corner, shivering in
terror. The monkeys with the doll clamped onto it – so tightly they wouldn’t even let go long enough to drink. They preferred starvation to leaving their artificial mother. Later on,
studies were made of how the different groups had developed. The ones who’d been in the bare cage were the worst off. They couldn’t deal with other monkeys, and they were the first ones
to go down with diseases. The monkeys who had been given a doll caught up in physical development after the experiment was over, but never really turned out right. Only the ones who hadn’t
been separated from their mothers grew up to become normal, healthy monkeys.’

We were crossing the intersection at the Vrijheidslaan.

‘Papa,’ Bo said suddenly, ‘Papa, there’s a leprechaun in the bag.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘It’s moving.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. The bag is moving.’

‘Uh-oh.’

Beside Bo on the back seat was a plastic bag containing a chunk of wood that was growing little golden-yellow toadstools. ‘Shall we take it home to show Mama?’ I’d suggested.
Bo had thought that was a good idea.

‘Eeeeee!’ Bo screamed suddenly. His shock shocked me, because Bo didn’t shock easily. I turned around to see what was happening. I tried to grab the plastic bag.

‘Aaaaieh!’ Bo shrieked.

The very next moment we ploughed into the boot of a double-parked, shiny black BMW.

‘A leprechaun?’ said the stunned owner of the BMW, a half-eaten meatball sandwich still in his hand.

‘A leprechaun?’ puzzled the traffic cop.

‘A leprechaun,’ mumbled the driver of the tow-truck as he jacked the twisted front wheels of Monika’s car off the ground.

I took the bag in one hand, Bo by the other. The Ceintuurbaan was within walking distance. At the house we took out the piece of wood. There was no leprechaun anywhere. But the toadstools were
broken.

‘There was a leprechaun, really,’ Bo insisted stubbornly. ‘I saw it.’

I was standing under the shower, rinsing the sweat and the dirt and the fear off my body, when Bo poked his head around the shower door. ‘Come here,’ he whispered.
He was holding a finger to his lips. ‘The leprechaun’s come back.’

I stepped out of the shower, dripping wet. The chunk of wood was lying on the coffee table. Beside the wood, a shrew was crawling around dazedly. Bo screamed with laughter. ‘You see it?
Look!’ The terrified shrew crawled back into the dark hole where it had hidden while we were examining the toadstools in the woods.

‘A leprechaun?’ Monika said when she got home.

‘Yeah, a leprechaun,’ Bo said. ‘Look.’

Monika groused at me for the next three days.

‘We’ll buy a bigger one,’ I said.

‘That’s not the point.’

‘A prettier one. Newer. One that’s safer.’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Well, what is the point?’

‘A car isn’t a thing, a car is a place. Like a house. Its value is determined by the memories you have of that place.’

I said, ‘To tell you the truth, it was all Bo’s fault.’

No one could laugh as derisively as Monika.

R
obbert Hubeek does not, as his address might lead one to believe, live in an upmarket area. He lives in the most run-down house in the most
run-down section of a street that only half belongs to the most chic part of Amsterdam-South. He undoubtedly pays an exorbitant amount of rent (for the location), and undoubtedly awards the address
a prominent place on his business cards (for the mistaken impression it creates).

‘R. Hubeek & RPF Consultancy’, the nameplate says. I ring the bell, which is mounted crookedly on the doorpost.

‘Armin, my good man, is that really you?’ Robbert had shouted into the phone when I called him. ‘How nice to hear from you again.’ I ignored his joviality.

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘Lately I’ve been bothered a bit by memories of my time with Monika. There are a few things I can’t remember very well any more,
and I thought maybe you’d be able to throw a little light on them.’

‘My heavens, poor boy!’ he shouted. ‘So she still won’t leave you alone! But of course, you’re always welcome. Talk about old times, with a drink and a cigar. Of
course, of course, by all means, do drop in. What a surprise! To be honest, I haven’t thought about the two of you for a long time, about you and Monika I mean. And how is that little one of
yours – what’s his name again?’

‘Bo.’

‘Oh, yes. Bo. Always did find that a peculiar name.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Bo is doing just fine.’

‘Big by now, of course.’

‘Yes, he’s big.’

‘Well, you’ll have to tell me all about it. When would you like to come round?’

His Filofax seemed to impose few limitations, because actually, as he said himself, any time at all would be fine. We agreed to meet late that afternoon. (‘Then we can have a little drink,
although as far as I’m concerned we can do that at eleven in the morning, too, ha ha ha!’) It also gave me a good excuse not to stay too long.

Robbert has to come down the stairs to open the door. He stations himself pontifically in the doorway, arms folded across his chest, a broad grin on his face.

‘Well, well,’ he says, eyeing me carefully. ‘Age has not passed you by entirely, I see. Even though one does one’s best to hide it.’ He points a pale, fleshy finger
at my shoes. ‘Red All-Stars. Haven’t had those in my house since Monika’s day. Come in.’

He leads me up the stairs. Beige corduroy trousers, leather slippers. His shirt-tails hang nonchalantly out of his trousers, but fail to hide the fact that he still has no arse at all.
(‘See what I mean?’ Monika said when we ran into him at a café one evening. ‘I’ve made a great leap forward in the arse department. If only for that reason, I’d
never go back to him.’ But she’d had a good deal to drink by then, and when she’d been drinking she wanted sex later on, and when she wanted sex she started paying me
compliments.) There’s no carpeting on the stairs, and the paint is peeling. There are deep gouges in the walls where oversized objects have been dragged up. Someone has drawn a star of David
on the wall in black magic marker and written ‘Fuck the Hicks, Ajax For Ever!’ underneath.

‘Please enter my humble abode,’ Robbert says when we get to an open door off the first landing. The house smells of stale beer and cigar smoke, and is in other ways reminiscent of a
student apartment. In the living room is a colossal couch, its brown corduroy upholstery covered in stains. Across from the couch, an equally colossal TV, and an oak club chair with ears. Empty
beer bottles have been tossed everywhere. As have old newspapers, magazines, unopened mail, a TV guide from a young, swinging broadcasting company. In the bookcase are a few volumes commemorating a
lapsed law study, a six-year-old Snoecks agenda, two shelves full of comic books, and a hardback edition of
The Discovery of Heaven
by Harry Mulisch. The only decoration on the wall is a
framed cover from
Privé
magazine, with a blurred photo of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and a flaxen-haired girl. ‘
REVEALING
! The Prince’s Secret
Love. Will this blonde become our queen?’

I’m just about to say something about time standing still, but Robbert beats me to it. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he says. ‘The eternal student! Well,
that’s right. I’m studying the senselessness of life. And let me assure you, it’s a damned fascinating subject. Between classes I amuse myself with a little consultancy, which
occasionally generates a bit of hard cash – what more could a fellow want? Well, all right, some sweet nookie, but even in that my needs are met on occasion. And besides, you know better than
anyone the problems that can bring with it. I mean the more intensive dealings with those of the feminine persuasion – how long ago did you two split up? Come on,’ he says, before I
have a chance to respond to his question. (Split up? Could it be that he really doesn’t know . . . ?) He turns and walks back out onto the landing. There I see a second door which opens into
a room that’s been converted into a prim and proper office. Glass table, glass desktop, a computer, parquet floor, an abstract painting on the wall, black leather chairs with chrome legs.

‘Who lets you consult on them, for God’s sake?’ I ask.

‘Not so snippy, please,’ he grins. ‘Retailers. One-man operations. Foreign trading companies with names like Asia Trading International and Kabul Trans. A motley crew that I
guide through the jungle of Dutch legislation and regulations. Just far enough to keep them happy, not far enough to let them get along without me.’

We return to the living room with the stained couch. ‘What’ll it be?’ he asks. ‘Whisky, vodka or beer?’

‘Whisky.’

‘A Glenfiddich for an old friend with a broken heart. In the afternoon I myself stick to the national addiction of our Russian friends. Cheers.’

We drink. I search for the right words to begin my interrogation, but once again he’s too quick for me.

‘So come on, out with it, what’s bothering you? What are these memories that keep you from your well-deserved sleep?’

‘Recently, I’ve been given reason,’ I begin circuitously, ‘to believe that I, during the years I was with Monika, after a manner of speaking, was not the only man in her
life.’

‘Ho, ha, as if I hadn’t guessed!’ Robbert crows. ‘Did you find a letter she wrote but never, for reasons no longer to be uncovered, got around to posting? Are you being
bothered by an anonymous caller who summons you from bed in the middle of the night and pants in your ear about what a sweet fuck Monika was, and how much he misses her? Ha ha ha!’

His pleasure at his own eloquence overwhelms him, and he pours himself another vodka as a reward. ‘How about you? Drink up, by all means. No better remedy for a broken heart than deep
alcohol narcosis.’

‘What I want to know,’ I say, ‘is: did she ever speak to you about something like that? Did she ever mention anything along those lines?’

‘Um, um . . .’ He stares straight ahead, deep in thought. ‘What did we talk about in those days? Most of the time we fought, I remember that. She was always spouting that
left-wing, feminist crap. As far as that goes, I was pleased enough to lose her to you, I don’t mind telling you that. My masculine pride was dealt something of a blow, but then you must
understand that now better than you did then, ha ha ha.’ He’s looking straight at me, the grin on his face the same as the one he met me with at the door – a grin that awakens
boundless aggression in me. It’s the same grin, I realize now, he was wearing in that photo with Monika. What reason did he have then, at our party, in our house, to grin like that?

‘Did you ever go to bed with her back then . . . ?’

‘Back when she was fucking you? Of course, my good man. You were already fucking her when she was still with me, or at least when I thought she was still with me. How
could
you
have forgotten?’

I should have counted on him bringing that up, but still . . . I suddenly feel very small, as if I’ve been caught red-handed.

‘I regret that,’ I say weakly. ‘That it had to happen that way.’ But I don’t mean it, and he knows it, and he knows I know he knows. He tops up my glass again and
lets a long silence settle in. On the floor above our heads, someone crosses the room with heavy tread.

‘I’m going to tell you something,’ he says then, ‘that you won’t like.’ His voice sounds different. There’s pent-up rage in it. But also a little quiet
triumph. Vindictiveness. I can feel the Glenfiddich burning in my stomach.

‘Do you remember that time I came to your party? How long was that after Monika and I split up? At least a year and a half, maybe two. She was a few months pregnant – I remember
that, because she wasn’t drinking any more. But still, strangely enough, that evening, there it was again, that animal attraction between male and female, one might say the oldest emotion on
earth.’

Once again he looks straight at me. A terse, nasty little smile is playing around his lips. ‘I can’t even explain to you,’ he goes on, ‘how I noticed, but there it was.
Something in her look. Something in the way she touched me. It had been at least a year since she’d touched me of her own free will. As far as that goes, though, I can reassure you: once
she’d worked up the courage to tell me she was fucking someone else, there was no more intimacy between us. No matter how I tried, no matter what sensible arguments I brought to bear –
I reckoned I at least had the right to a decent farewell hump, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I blamed you for that for ages.’

He empties his glass, fills it again. And then suddenly that grin is back on his face. ‘That evening she walked me to where the night bus stopped. Did you know that?’

I didn’t know that.

‘We walked down the Ceintuurbaan. She let me put my arm around her. I was drunk, of course. And I was as horny as a . . . as a . . . That’s what she said, too. “You’re
drunk,” she said. “And you’re horny.” I swear, she started in about it herself. I said, “Yes, I want to fuck you. Really hard and real long.” I hadn’t had
a fuck in months, I was in a bad way. She said, “That’s impossible.” I said, “That’s possible.” “That’s impossible,” she said. “But you
know what might be possible . . .” And she pushed me into a doorway. It was next to a shoe shop, I remember that. A dark corner between the shop entrance and a door with bells for the flats
up above. She jerked me off right there. I wanted her to blow me, but she wouldn’t. Didn’t matter. I don’t think I’ve ever come as fast as I did in that doorway. A pity,
actually. That it was over so soon. Does that answer your question?’