The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories by Joost Zwagerman

Author:Joost Zwagerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141395739
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

3

So what is it about remembering the dead? Yes I know, I won’t get an answer to that, nor to the question I really want to ask, which is, How is it that the older you get the more your life begins to look like an invention? Hard to say which is worse, getting old or being dead, but then you have never been old and I have never been dead.

I think the reason I have made the place so bare and empty is that I don’t want my invention to bear any resemblance to anyone else’s, though that’s nonsense, of course, because at best it’ll only be another invention, one that you do not come across that often. You knew all of those things all the time. You were an avid reader, but there was always a niggle, as if there was something missing. It was from you I got that idea about invention. We had been to see a film, which I found moving, as I remember. Almost the real thing, you scoffed as we left the cinema. Everything is a copy of something else, it’s hardly worth living when some guy can come along and squeeze your whole life into a ninety-minute feature film or a book you read in two days. To each his own novel, I say, but even that would take too long. Imitation, that’s all there is. I believe I was shocked; in any case I was lost for words. You went on to say something about time being compacted, and I could almost feel it happening. We were walking from Leidseplein to Vondelpark, where the gravel underfoot intensified the sensation. Our steps keeping pace with physical fact struck an accusatory note, as if they were clamouring to be conflated into a film sequence or into a line in a novel like every other. Nigel, who rarely said anything remotely personal, once remarked in the middle of a game, Paula, you’re in too much of a hurry to live. Nigel, another conquest. Nigel, who was having an affair with Dodo, who was married to Gilles. A whole pile of novels. You tried us all, tried all the films. Maybe Nigel was the only one you ever really cared about, but maybe not. So mysterious-looking with that white face of his, was all you said on the subject. He was the only one you couldn’t have. You had me, easily. There was no mystery about me then, there still isn’t. I went all out for you from that very first evening, and that was a story you’d read a hundred times already. The only time we made love you answered my transparency with yours: I don’t see what’s so special about fucking. C’est un geste rendu, no more than that. No less either. And afterwards you said: Evidently you and I were not made for each other. Don’t look so miserable, this is only the beginning. Good to get that out of the way. Best friend I ever had.

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