A Father's Affair by Karel van Loon Page B

gospel I didn’t know Monika had) back on the shelf and get dressed. I wake Bo,
slice bread and warm some chocolate milk, and put it all in a backpack. I dress him warmly and have him pull on his own gumboots. A little later we’re walking hand in hand, into the
still-silent city.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Bo asks.
    ‘We’re going to look for Mama.’
    We walk down the Ceintuurbaan to the Amstel. On the bridge we stop to watch the birds. A grebe dives and comes back up with a fish in its beak. Bo claps his hands. The bird
gulps down the fish and disappears under water again. Its body is so streamlined that it leaves barely a ripple. We don’t see it surface again.
    ‘Maybe it’s got a nest down there,’ Bo says, ‘and now it’s sitting on its eggs.’
    Along the Weesperzijde, a frumpy blonde is letting out two Doberman Pinschers. Just to be safe, Bo moves around me and takes my other hand. At the Berlage Bridge we turn left. We wait under the
trestle until a train comes over. Bo tilts his head all the way back and peers up.
    ‘Maybe,’ he says once the train has roared by, ‘Mama is on the train.’
    At Amstelstation I buy a day ticket, so we can travel as much as we want. While we’re waiting on the platform for the first intercity train to Nijmegen, we drink some warm chocolate milk.
A man in a suit and trenchcoat sits down beside us.
    ‘Taste good?’ he asks Bo.
    Bo looks up at him, but says nothing. The man pulls a newspaper out of his briefcase. (‘Moscow trembles,’ the front page says. I’m glad Bo doesn’t consort with people who
read the
Algemeen Dagblad
.) When the train pulls in we wait until the man gets up and walks to the closest doors. Then we enter two doors further up.
    ‘I saw Mama,’ Bo says once we’ve torn past Holendrecht metro station, where the platform was filled with people on their way to work. He’s sitting on my lap, peering
intently out of the window.
    ‘What did she look like?’
    ‘She had on a green coat. And she had an umbrella.’
    ‘Not like her to carry an umbrella when it’s not raining,’ I say.
    ‘No,’ Bo giggles, ‘not like her, hee hee.’
    At the station in Utrecht we see Monika again. She’s stepped down off the train opposite and is walking towards us across the platform. This time she’s wearing a denim jacket, and
instead of an umbrella she’s carrying a duffel bag made of Indian fabric from Guatemala or Mexico. Pinned to her jacket is a badge with a picture of Che Guevara. Her red hair stands up
straight and short. She’s just come from the hair salon. When she walks past our window I squint and watch her through my lashes – that way the illusion won’t be destroyed.
    ‘Her hair’s awfully short,’ Bo says.
    I want to ask him if he thinks she’s pretty, but no sound comes out.
    ‘What happened to that pigeon?’ Bo asks.
    In the sand at the foot of a broad, low pine lie the remains of a wood pigeon. That is to say, its feathers.
    ‘It was eaten by a hawk,’ I tell him.
    ‘What’s a hawk?’
    ‘It’s a bird of prey. Sort of like Fulgor the Golden Eagle, but smaller.’
    ‘Why don’t you ever read to me from
Fulgor the Golden Eagle
?’ Bo asks. Then he answers the question himself: ‘Because Mama thinks I’m too
little.’
    ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Because Monika thinks you’re too little for that.’
    We’re on the heath at Planken Wambuis, but there’s no sign of Monika here. We’ve had our sandwiches and finished the last of the chocolate milk, and now Bo is starting to get
tired. He says, ‘I want Mama to come back.’
    ‘Mama isn’t coming back. But she’s not really gone, either.’
    ‘Mama is dead!’ he says angrily and kicks at the pigeon feathers with his little boot.
    ‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Monika is dead. But we’ll still see her a lot.’
    ‘I don’t want to see her any more.’
    I don’t know what to say to that. I pick him up and give him a piggyback. From the way his