Speechless - Tom Lanoye

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sculpture is on an oval wooden base and under a glass bell jar, to stop it getting dusty. Under that wooden base is also a napkin, of antique Bruges lace. When their house contents are sold off, in just over a year’s time—he leaving alone for the oversized room in his old people’s home, she for the institution for human jetsam—the lace napkin and the glass bell jar will fetch more than the Holy Family.

      They have now almost finished their pizza and their salad, and are listening, chewing attentively, to the weather forecast, which this evening is being broadcast to them by their favourite weatherman, the one with the moustache. That gives us the chance, before the fatal moment arrives, to cast a quick glance over the rest of the setting. The decor is half the story.

      The candelabra has three arms, each of which is gilded and elegantly curled and ends in a matt-glass rose, at the heart of which is a bulb. The arms are all attached to the outside of a ring, also gilded. On the inside hangs a graceful chalice of cut matt glass, hollow side upward. Underneath, at the centre of the chalice, a gilt protuberance hangs down, like the point of an inverted First World War German helmet, pointing to the round living-room table just below, the one with the glass top that rests on a wickerwork base. One of the few possessions that will survive the move to his oversized room in the old people’s home.

      Apart from a wall clock and a pair of bone-dry holy water fonts—a crumbling palm branch has been pushed behind each of them—only monumental items are displayed on the walls. Above the mantelpiece: a mirror with bevelled edges and a luxuriant frame, again gilt, almost as high and as wide as the chimney breast itself. On the wall opposite: a machine-woven tapestry, in which two late-medieval characters are riding through a wood on horseback with falcons on their fists, without noticing the many hinds and hares behind their backs, watching them go past in surprise. The tapestry is partly hidden by a two-person couch—an elegant, stylish piece of furniture with white wooden feet, curled arms and decorations in gold paint, covered in moss-green velvet, fastened with an endless row of brass drawing pins. The cushions are the same moss-green velvet and at the top, halfway along the back, where friends, family members and total strangers have to lay their heads, there is again a battery of napkins. ‘To protect my cushions. [she, disgusted] You can’t believe what people put on their hair nowadays. That’s if they wash it at all.’

      Above the cupboard designed by her brother stands a painting by her elder sister, Maria the Artistic, who for years lived a few streets away. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone, [she, slightly embarrassed] but I always thought your Aunt Maria was better than your uncle. Our Maria had a golden touch, everything she painted came to life, while he had to sweat and strain to achieve half what she achieved. He used to stand and curse over still lifes of hers, which were so striking, so natural. He had to become a house painter, and the rest didn’t amount to much any more. But he saw to it that she stopped too. If only that woman had been able to go on painting! She didn’t have an ounce of support, and in those days it wasn’t usual, a woman making a career in art. Our Maria could have conquered the world. Now the poor thing is in an institution, she no longer knows what she said or ate yesterday, she has difficulty recognizing her children and can’t remember her paintings at all. If I ever get like that, you must shoot me straight away. It’s not compassion keeping someone like that alive. It’s cowardice.’

      The work by Maria the Artistic, above the long cupboard, is a copy of the Negro Heads by Rubens. Four times the same African with a fringe of beard, ‘painted from life from different points of view’, as art catalogues describe it. A black model, a lost soul from sixteen hundred and something, who can be found in many other paintings of the Flemish master as a Wise Man from the East or as a slave, and who thanks to Aunt Maria looked at me all through my childhood, indeed from different points of view. While I was reaching my verdicts, alone in the abandoned flat, I felt four pairs of eyes boring into my back. Each time a condemnation from the very same occasional judge from sixteen hundred and something.

      (The junk dealer whistled in admiration. ‘Not bad, for an amateur.’ But he was buying it for the frame, he said. Sober, good craftsmanship, with a nice patina.)

      Finally, just above the china cabinet there hangs, quite daringly in view of the colossal weight of the carved frame alone, the crown jewel of her pictures. An engraving of the old school, easily a metre square, probably printed at the beginning of the twentieth century, depicting Rubens’ studio while he is painting and commenting, standing at his easel facing a white female model in a feathered hat. They are surrounded by visitors and walls covered in well-known masterpieces. ‘They’re going to be fighting over this! [she, proudly] It was almost included in an exhibition, here in the Municipal Museum, during the Rubens Year. But they didn’t quite have enough space for it.’

      (The Rubens House in Antwerp, when emailed with a photo of the etching attached, was to decline our generous offer with thanks. The junk dealer who took the Negro heads offered a ridiculously low price. The item remained in the family.)

      Supper is over, and the plates are in a pile with the cutlery on top, ready to be taken into the open kitchen. Shielding her mouth with one hand, she digs at her dentures with a toothpick, mechanically, more from habit than necessity. ‘Like a toothpick should be. [she, dogmatic down to the smallest details] Hollow with two sharp ends, in white paper packaging, and made of material resembling the shaft of chicken wings or hedgehog spines, which people once used to make their own toothpicks from.’ On the TV an announcer lists the evening’s programmes.

      He has got up and opens the terrace door, giving in to one of his few vices. His curiosity. In the shop he had the nerve to interrogate everyone in a friendly manner, without distinction, from children to old bags, widows to the unemployed. He did not avoid any subject. Divorces, illnesses, rows, gossip. Until his Josée called him to order with a hiss, and also—invisibly, thanks to the counter—gave him a kick in the shins. ‘What are you up to, Roger? [she, in a whisper, but meanwhile looking very affably at the same customer] You’re giving that poor old dear the third degree. You’re just like Sherlock Holmes, you are.’

      He puts his head outside, full of curiosity. There’s a wind blowing, it’s drizzling, dusk is falling, not very inviting for a walk. The evening rush hour is almost over, except at and around this junction of which their property forms one of the corners and where, in spite of all the department stores in the town centre and all the shopping malls for miles around, a number of small shops still do good business, because together they form a mini shopping centre. A baker’s next to a greengrocer’s next to a newsagent’s, a little further on a chemist’s and a florist’s, diagonally opposite a shop selling bird seed and bird cages and chewing rings for dogs, round the corner a supplier of cement and bricks, and over there a butcher’s—it’s true: no longer under their flat. Their previous tenant, without warning and just before his lease expired, opened a brand-new butcher’s shop on the other side of the street, quite simply in a terraced house.

      At first they were furious and desperate; now they are grateful to him. Their former business has become an added attraction, from which the whole neighbourhood benefits. Anyway it’s a perfect location for a shop like that, on a corner and, mark you, on the oldest road to Antwerp. Actually it’s something that was always lacking here. A chip shop.

      ‘Roger, love? [she, annoyed] Do shut the door. There’s a terrible draught.’ That’s the last thing she says in the language he is familiar with from her.

      ‘They’re queuing out in the street again,’ he says, contentedly closing the terrace door and pushing the roll-shaped draught excluder firmly back against it. ‘It’s the same every evening at this time. One car after another parked or stopped in the middle of the road with all four indicators on. And to judge by the plastic bags, it’s not only chips they’re buying. One person takes away half a chicken, or curried sausages or hot dogs, or what do they call them nowadays? A chip shop like that sells everything, from cans of lager to soft drinks and cigarettes.’ He turns round to her and has the fright of his life.

      Her eyes are unrecognizable. Empty, deathly, icy. She seems to be staring at something behind him. Her lips purse, relax again, purse, relax. As if they were preparing to spew out something large. Saliva is leaking from her mouth. A first drop is already falling from her chin into her lap. Her napkin remains unused.

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