My Fellow Skin by Erwin Mortier

Author:Erwin Mortier [Erwin Mortier]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782270874
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2014-11-22T16:00:00+00:00

The four o’clock bell unleashed anarchy. Mr Bouillie stood in the flurry of departing bicycles, flailing his arms as if he were trying to net a school of herrings and hated to see any escape.

Roland was cycling way ahead of me and Willem. He was in a team with his mates, talking and shouting, but they fell silent at a stroke when they spotted a bunch of fluttery schoolgirls in blue uniforms starting off home on their bikes.

The girls stopped en masse by the bandstand on the square, dismounted and tied their jerseys around their hips to shorten their skirts. They were like wading birds on the shore of a lake, chattering away, darting looks at the boys dawdling by the cafés on the edge of the square, bouncing the frames of their bikes against their thighs as they talked.

“Do you want to hang about for a bit?” Willem asked, hunched nonchalantly over his handlebars.

“My father said I should stick with my cousin over there,” I said.

Roland did not seem to be in the slightest hurry. He had tied his jacket on his luggage carrier and had rolled up his shirtsleeves, and was now deep in discussion with some other boys.

The atmosphere was tense. Surreptitious looks flashed to and fro. Racy comments ricocheted off the pavement. The girls would be flapping their wings and taking off next.

“You’ll be taking the road through the wood, won’t you?” Willem said. “We can wait for him there.”

We crossed the market square on our way out of Ruizele and cycled uphill, not stopping until we reached the point where the road plunged in among the trees.

Willem pulled back his long hair into a ponytail, which he secured with an elastic band.

“It’s not allowed at school,” he said.

Leaning on his handlebars with his arms crossed, he gazed out over the roofs, the hospital grounds and the church tower with gold lettering over the belfry: Destructa 1914—Resurrecta 1920, it said.

“Are you always so serious?” he asked.

“Dunno…” I said haltingly. I had never thought about myself in those terms, really. Maybe that’s what I was: serious. I knew I had been much jollier in the past, when there was a heap of parcels under the Christmas tree or when it was my birthday. But none of the presents I’d had for my first Communion a couple of months ago had given me the same kind of thrill.

Even my elation at Uncle Roger’s gift of a wristwatch had been short-lived, for it was too blatant a reminder of the rules and duties that would govern me from now on. You had to see to it that it didn’t run ahead of the proper time or slow down and even stop altogether. The face had a little window showing the date, which changed all by itself at midnight exactly. I knew this because I’d stayed awake on purpose. The next morning my thumb was sore from the grooves on the winder.

Time was something I wanted to get away from.

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