Breakwater by Marijke Schermer

Author:Marijke Schermer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2022-08-25T13:50:36+00:00

Chapter 12

After graduating in medicine, Jacob told Viktor and Emilia that he wanted to become a psychiatrist. Viktor fell off his chair laughing.

“Don’t you need, er, empathy for that?”

Jacob retorted that he wasn’t going to become a social therapist, that it was still a branch of medicine.

“And incidentally, my interaction with people including my unhinged little brother has given me a kindhearted view of humanity.”

“Your unhinged little brother?”

“Yes. Look at you sitting there with your drooping shoulders and your inward gaze.” They’d fought, half for fun, and half for Viktor, to prove that although he wasn’t a man of Jacob’s magnitude, he made up for it in passion. Viktor had already spent three years studying a different subject each year. He wanted a broad education, he said, and wasn’t interested in a career. He worked at an anarchist radio station. He spoilt all their evenings with his urge to argue. Emilia was sixteen at the time and still living at home. She visited Jacob every other week, fitting seamlessly into the life he led. On the Sunday evening she would sit in the train home with a hangover, exhausted but recharged.

“Mercy, mercy,” Jacob roared, to humour Viktor.

They trawl through those memories at the huge table in the vast kitchen of the enormous house that Jacob and Lieke live in. The doors to the garden are open, the rain is tipping down, and the sky is an improbably dark grey. Everything about Jacob is big: his head, his hands, his ears, his arms, his belly. He radiates a coarse sort of stoutness. His hair is brown with a red sheen. He has a probing, arrogant gaze, which scares people who don’t know him and means that his patients have to overcome a degree of timidity before they reveal themselves, but also that ultimately they don’t dare lie to him.

On the kitchen counter, four large slices of salmon are waiting for the gathering to be complete.

“Didn’t Dad ever ask what we got up to in Amsterdam at weekends?” Jacob asks.

“I wasn’t speaking to him in those days.”

“But later you did, right?”

“Later I did, yes.”

“And then you stopped again.”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

“It no longer matters. He doesn’t recognize anyone. He has no memory. He’s forgotten everything.”

“I thought it was an act. To make it all go away.”

“Did you really think that?”

“Yes.”

“He’s got Korsakoff’s Syndrome. I thought you knew.”

“I don’t know anything. But never mind. I don’t need to know.”

She stands up and lingers next to the sink. She sticks her finger into some soft cheese and strokes the fish’s pink flesh.

“Get a knife if you like. And a serving board.”

She opens the fridge and inspects the contents. There are only expensive things in it. Jacob and Lieke do their daily shopping at the delicatessen.

“Have you ever treated a rapist?”

“Has it ever struck you that our conversations often resemble interviews?”

“No. Really?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And?”

“What do you want to know?”

“The motive.”

“Anger, mostly. Hatred of women. Sexual deviance, sometimes. Sadism, occasionally.”

“And yours?”

“Anger. Poor impulse control.”

“Can I open that champagne?”

“Of course.

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