A Father's Affair by Karel van Loon Page A

that’s already won my heart completely, she says, ‘The goldfish.’
    ‘The goldfish?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    I whistle through my teeth and laugh. ‘In an alcohol solution of 3.1 per cent, a goldfish will lose its ability to swim upright within six to eight minutes.’
    ‘That’s a lie! You’re making that up.’
    ‘No, really. For years, goldfish were used to test the effects of alcohol on learning capacity. It seems that when you teach goldfish a trick in water laced with a little alcohol, they
forget the trick when they’re back in normal water, but they can repeat it once they’re intoxicated again. Later on they tried the same experiment on people. And it worked exactly the
same way.’
    She looks at me, still dubious. ‘And exactly what kinds of tricks did they teach those goldfish?’
    ‘To swim simple mazes, for example. You don’t believe me, but it’s true.’
    She says, ‘You’d make a good father.’ (I’ve never forgotten that. I’d just turned twenty and I’d never thought of myself as a potential father – being a
father was something for my father, but certainly not for me. Her saying it just like that amazed me and excited me and moved me, all at the same time. And I thought, maybe my father’s right:
maybe it
is
time I started going after girls instead of watching birds.)
    After we’d had our coffee, we went to the women’s-wear department. She tried on two blouses, while I waited patiently at the entrance to the changing rooms, as
though we’d known each other for years.
    ‘How do you like this one?’ she asked twice.
    The first blouse didn’t look good on her, and she saw that on my face before I could say anything.
    ‘Oops,’ she said. ‘I get it.’
    The second one looked lovely on her. ‘You’re absolutely gorgeous,’ I said.
    ‘Bullshitter.’ Again, she laughed when she said it.
    When I’d walked her to the tram stop, she asked, ‘Don’t you want my phone number?’
    That’s how it started. As unexpectedly as it ended.

16
    D uring the eight weeks after Monika’s death, I edited two hefty textbooks. One was about
Photosynthetic Mechanisms and the
Environment
, the other was on
Pancreatic Islets.
When I take those books off the shelf now, it’s as if I’ve never read them. Entire chapters deal with concepts I’ve
never heard of. During those first eight weeks, the drunken filing clerk of my memory must have been lying in a coma.
    When I go into the publishing house to deliver the final corrections on the book about the pancreas, Dees says, ‘There’s no more work for you for the next six
months.’
    ‘You’re lying,’ I say.
    ‘You’re right. But I want you to go home anyway. Call me if you need me, but I don’t want to see your face around here for the next few months. There are all kinds of things
you should be doing, but sitting around with your nose buried in manuscripts isn’t one of them.’
    I go home, make dinner, which we eat in front of the TV, put Bo to bed, read to him from Bert and Ernie (which he hates) and tell him to try to go to sleep, even if he isn’t tired yet.
Then I drink four glasses of whisky, lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling until the pain in my eyes warns me that my corneas are drying out. I blink a few times, then start again.
    At four in the morning I turn on the light in the living room. The park is still covered in nocturnal darkness, but on the eastern horizon a new day is dawning. The first blackbird sings the
day. I walk over to the bookcase, close my eyes and run my finger across the spines. I take a book off the shelf without opening my eyes, sit down and open it.
    I read, ‘No one will hide a valuable object in something large, but many a time people have tossed countless thousands into a thing worth a penny. Compare the soul. It is a precious thing
and it came to be in a contemptible body.’
    I think about that until it’s light outside. Then I put the book (which turns out to be an apocryphal