The Evenings by Gerard Reve

Author:Gerard Reve [Gerard Reve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782272274
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2016-11-14T23:00:00+00:00

VIII

SUNDAY MORNING at eight thirty he awoke with a mouth dry as cork. The first thing he remembered was lying on his bed the day before, to rest, then realized that this was Sunday. It was not until then that the course of the previous evening came back to him. He raised himself onto one elbow. Only after making chewing motions did moisture return to his mouth. The inside of his head felt as though a fluid were under pressure there: the tension extended all the way to the back of his neck. He was thirsty.

“The best thing,” he thought, “is to get up immediately, wash my face, brush my teeth and rinse my mouth thoroughly. Then go out for a breath of fresh air. Don’t eat a thing, and drink water a little at a time.” Then he fell asleep again. A few minutes past nine thirty he awoke once more. “How very attentive, to hang the watch up like that,” he thought. He raised only his head, but had to let it fall back from the pain, which arose in the throat and behind his eyes. “Those clothes have been tossed down sloppily,” he thought. From the intensity of the light and the colour of the sky he tried to determine what the weather was like, but reached no conclusion. Lying on his back, he raised his knees and, in the dim light he admitted by holding the bedclothes aloft, examined his chest and belly, which he had bared.

Then he climbed out of bed, went to the toilet and from there to the kitchen, where he drank water from the tap. “Incredible, what a stench,” he said as he entered the bedroom again. “You only notice it when you’ve left for a moment.” He opened the window a crack and crawled back into bed. “It all depends on the will,” he thought. “Where that is lacking, everything comes to a halt.”

He remained supine, his eyes fixed on the wall, until eleven. “It’s not so easy, getting up with the window open,” he said aloud. Squeezing his eyes half-shut he tossed off the blankets and went quickly to the kitchen. He hawked loudly into the sink and began washing himself. “The body is gravely damaged,” he mumbled, peering into the round shaving mirror.

His mother came in, put two plates and two cups on the counter and asked: “So, has the young gentleman woken up a bit?” “Yes,” Frits said. She went back to the living room. After washing his face, he felt unrefreshed. While shaving, he cut himself in two places: beneath the nose and on the left side of the chin. “It’s not actually cutting,” he thought, “more like shaving off the top layer of skin. It has been scraped off.” After rinsing and drying his face, he dabbed at the abrasions with a styptic pencil. As he waited to see whether the bleeding would return, he looked out over the gardens at the rooftops.

“No two roofing tiles are exactly the same colour,” he thought.

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