The Blessed Rita: the new novel from the bestselling Booker International longlisted Dutch author

Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

First

Second

Third

Fourth

Fifth

Sixth

Seventh

Eighth

Ninth

Tenth

Eleventh

Twelfth

Thirteenth

Fourteenth

Fifteenth

Sixteenth

Seventeenth

Eighteenth

Nineteenth

Twentieth

Twenty-First

Twenty-Second

Twenty-Third

Twenty-Fourth

Twenty-Fifth

Twenty-Sixth

Twenty-Seventh

Twenty-Eighth

Twenty-Ninth

Thirtieth

Thirty-First

Thirty-Second

Thirty-Third

THE BLESSED RITA

Tommy Wieringa was born in 1967 and grew up partly in the Netherlands, and partly in the tropics. He began his writing career with travel stories and journalism, and is the author of several internationally bestselling novels. His fiction has been longlisted for the Booker International Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Oxford/Weidenfeld Prize, and has won Holland’s Libris Literature Prize.

Sam Garrett has translated some fifty novels and works of nonfiction. He has won prizes and appeared on shortlists for some of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, and is the only translator to have twice won the British Society of Authors’ Vondel Prize for Dutch–English translation.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

Originally published in Dutch by De Bezige Bij as De heilige Rita in 2017

First published in English by Scribe in 2020

Text copyright © Tommy Wieringa 2017

Translation copyright © Sam Garrett 2020

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

9781925713268 (Australian edition)

9781911344902 (UK edition)

9781925693737 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia and the British Library.

scribepublications.com.au

scribepublications.co.uk

For my father, mushy eater

And for Marinus

First

Paul Krüzen spat on his hands, seized the handle, and swung the axe over his head. The log on the chopping block burst open, but didn’t cleave. Birds seeking evening shelter in the trees fled into the dusk. Furiously twittering blackbirds burst through the undergrowth. Paul Krüzen brought the axe down, again and again, until the chunk of oak parted. Then it got easier. The pieces flew. Woodchips everywhere, spots of light on the forest soil. Let the axe do the work, his father had taught him long ago, but what he liked was to put some power behind it.

A few pale stars appeared in the sky. Deep below that, in the clearing in the woods, the demon swung his axe. He made it crack like a whip. Blocks tumbled through the air. The beeches all around, strong and smooth as a young man’s arms, shivered with each blow.

This was his life: he put wood on the block and he split it. His shirt stuck to his body. Jabs of pain in his lower back. Each blow found its mark. He had been doing this for so long, all with measured, controlled haste. He had to sweat; it had to hurt.

He swiped his armpits with roll-on and put on a clean check shirt. ‘I’m off,’ he told his father, who was reading in his chair beneath the lamp.

The evening air was chilly, with a whiff of celery above the grass. With the car window open, he drove to the village. Three jarring speedbumps. Speed ramps and roundabouts were a mark of progress, of a jacked-up pace of living that had to be slowed down, even in Mariënveen, where the clodhoppers tended to get themselves killed at the weekend. Once every couple of years, Paul Krüzen would sit straight up in bed, awakened by the impact, the sirens, and the whine of chainsaws a little later, the play of phantom light on the oaks along the curve. The next morning, he would see that yet another wedge had been ripped from the bark. In recent years, the bereaved sometimes placed flowers and photographs beside the tree.

Paul pulled up in front of Hedwig Geerdink’s place. He rang the bell and went back to wait in the car, the door open. He had no thoughts at all. Early June, the last light on the western horizon. A little later, Hedwig slid in beside him. ‘Good evening, one and all,’ his friend said in his high voice. Hedwig had two voices: the high squeaky voice, or his low, hoarse, chesty one. Anyone hearing him for the first time immediately saw him split in two: the high Hedwig and the low Hedwig. Horseradish Hedwig, as they called him in the village.

Paul pulled his legs into the car, closed the door, and drove into the village.

At Shu Dynasty, formerly the Kottink Bar & Party Centre, Laurens Steggink and a stranger were at the billiard table.

‘Gents,’ Steggink greeted them.

Paul took a seat at the end of the bar, in the pine-panelled niche. He liked to have his back covered, like a cowboy, where he could see whoever came in. Hedwig slid onto the barstool beside him. The radio was stuck halfway between channels; waves of static brought them Die Sonne geht unter in Texas.

Mama Shu said ‘Hai Paul’ and ‘Hai Hedwig’, and put down a bottle of Grolsch in front of Paul and a glass of cola for Hedwig. The pirate station thanked cafeterias, contractors, sawmills, and wrecking yards for their support. Paul knew where the studio was, in a shed off the Tien Ellenweg; the booming bass could sometimes be heard for kilometres around.

Steggink bent down and eyed along the cue. He took his time. He was good. Learned to play billiards in the army, during the long, empty hours in the tactical unit bar at Seedorf.

Paul Krüzen, Hedwig Geerdink, and Laurens Steggink had all been in the same class at school.

One day, Paul and Steggink had built an underground hut in the woods. They were going to sleep there. They roasted frozen hot dogs over a smoky fire and rolled out their sleeping bags, but when it got dark Paul baulked at spending a night in the burrow, amid the spiders and woodlice, and cycled home. Steggink remained in the woods alone. He wasn’t afraid of the dark.

The friendship faded; Paul had developed a growing distaste for Steggink’s pranks and stories, as well as for the greasy plait that hung over his collar. At Theo Abbink’s twenty-third birthday party, Steggink had taken three kittens that belong to Abbink’s girlfriend, wrung their necks, and tossed them into the field. His defence: he was drunk, and he hated cats.

The silence between them had lasted about twenty years.

The day Paul heard that Steggink had been convicted for maintaining a weed plantation in the barn belonging to his fiancée’s parents, and of fraudulent practices on a classified advertising site, it came as no surprise. Not to Paul, not to anyone else, really. They had all seen it coming. Laurens Steggink didn’t have a biography, he had a charge sheet. His ex was still scared shitless of him.

When they let him out, he moved his business activities across the border. In what used to be a printing plant at a pathetic industrial estate outside Stattau, he ran a brothel with girls from all over the world. His long frame perched on a bar stool, he watched over Club Pacha with a soft drink in front of him and his phone glued to his ear. Nothing escaped him. But today was Monday, and on Monday the club was closed.

Paul sometimes crossed the border in the hope of finding one of his favourites, profligate Thong from Bangkok or, even better, motherly Rita from Quezon. Anyone who didn’t believe in the existence of love that could be bought knew nothing of their fervent hearts.

The ball thumped dully against the cushion of the long rail, nicked the yellow ball, and smacked straight into the red. A fine sound, Paul thought, the tick of a skilful shot delivered with power and confidence.

Steggink took two more before missing. The other man moved into position; his face appeared under the lamp. Pale eyes, a Pole no doubt, the stooped torso heavy from lard and pig’s trotters. They showed up on Paul’s driveway on occasion, the Mareks and Witeks, they were never much of a good deal. But you had to be ready for the exceptions. Like the dealer from Wrocław, who had showed him a wonder: a trunk full of Russian summer uniforms from the Great War, the medals still pinned to them.

The Pole took his shot. The balls skipped across the felt.

Skittishly, the Hennies entered and sat beside each other at the bar. They bent over their new phone, the light from the screen casting a blue glow over their faces. After a few minutes, the female Hennie looked up and asked, ‘And your father, Paul?’

Paul Krüzen held up his hand and made a so-so gesture. What use was there in telling them about how every day he had to disinfect the wound on his father’s shin that simply wouldn’t heal? Before long he would have to take him back to the hospital to have it checked.

They had been in each other’s lives for forty-nine years now, his father and he. One day, not long from now, he would remain behind, alone in the Saxon farmhouse at Muldershoek, where he would retreat into strangeness and conversations with himself.

The billiards clock buzzed. Steggink took a fifty-cent piece from the pile on top and dropped it in the slot.

The Hennies went back to their new Sony Xperia. The myriad ways one could spend one’s benefits. At home, their kiddies were already in bed. You could ask yourself whether people like them should be allowed to reproduce, but the calamity had already taken place; beyond the watchful eye of some government agency or other, they had multiplied their misfortune twice over.

Soon, with the arrival of Theo Abbink and Alfons Oliemuller, the band of loners was complete. Ashtrays were laid out. The smoking ban had not yet made it to this part of the country; before reaching Mariënveen, the law had lost much of its force and lustre.

When the little mountain of coins atop the billiard clock had dwindled to nothing, Steggink and the stranger dismantled their cues like hitmen and slid the halves back into their soft cases.

The bar was now full, down to the very last stool. Alfons Oliemuller looked over the shoulder of the male Hennie and said: ‘You need 4G for that. In Kloosterzand they’ve got 4G, here there isn’t any.’ And on the conversation rolled, about the flexibility of the new iPhone and the factory defect in the housing of the Galaxy Note. Talk died, however, when Steggink jammed his sinewy arm like a sword into the group. They all fell silent, dumbfounded, as though he had laid a handful of winning cards on the table.

‘What’s that supposed to be?’ Oliemuller asked.

‘What do you think?’ Steggink said.

Oliemuller took the smartphone from his hand and turned it over. ‘Gresso,’ he read out loud.

‘Made in Russki,’ Steggink stated. He grinned at the unknown Pole.

The object glistened obscenely in Oliemuller’s hand. They all stared at it, the same way they had all stared at Steggink’s Ferrari the first time he pulled up in front of the bar. Like serfs along a sandy road, seeing an automobile go chuffing by for the first time. If he had honked the horn they would have fallen to their knees and genuflected.

Steggink’s blood-red Ferrari Testarossa, his sun chariot — no one should have it so good. And especially not an equal, a boy from Zouavenstraat who they had seen fall and get back onto his feet, fall and get back onto his feet, all the way to where he was now.

‘Bit of a wee screen, if you’re asking me,’ said Oliemuller at last.

‘Sapphire,’ Steggink said. ‘And the case, that’s gold and African ebony, the case is.’

‘Shi-it,’ Abbink breathed.

At the far end of the bar, Paul Krüzen raised the bottle of Grolsch to his lips without taking his eyes off the group. His index finger smelled of rotting onion.

‘Only one like it in the world,’ Steggink said smugly.

‘But what ’bout that screen?’ said Oliemuller.

Steggink stuck out his chin. ‘What about it?’

‘Well,’ Oliemuller said hesitantly, ‘it’s not that big or nothing.’

‘That’s what they call design,’ Steggink scowled. ‘By an Italian fellow you’ve never even heard of.’

No one spoke for a bit. On the radio, the pirate dealt out greetings.

‘That there Italian fellow’s into wee screens like that,’ the male Hennie sniggered amazedly. And Theo Abbink chirped: ‘Does it come with a magnifying glass, Laurens?’

The group burst out laughing, and recovered their damaged self-esteem.

In the nineteenth century, their forefathers had become small property holders. A patch of land, a cow, and a farmhouse. Back when the prices were still good, the last two generations had sold everything their ancestors had culled so painstakingly, and went off to live in the new housing tracts. And so they had become dispossessed farmers once more, peering into each other’s livings with greedy little eyes, closely comparing their own prosperity with that of their neighbours.

Ming, the Shus’ grown-up daughter, shuffled around behind the bar on flip-flops and spoke openhearted, broken English with the stranger. From snatches of their conversation, Paul Krüzen made out that the man was Russian and not a Pole. He grunted in disapproval. Russians, he had no use for them, not here and not at the all-inclusive resorts in Thailand or the Philippines where he and Hedwig spent a few weeks each year.

Mama Shu swiped at the screen of her phone. A thousand filaments attached her to a distant land. Her body was here, but her thoughts were in a sooty megalopolis in southwestern China. She knew about an attack in Chengdu sooner than a car accident down the street.

The Russian, who had started off keeping his mouth shut, now began shouting ‘Hey-ya Mutti!’ ever-louder, every time he wanted a beer. When he smacked the male Hennie on the shoulder and yelled: ‘Za hollandskyo-russkyo druzbu!’ everyone knew they were in for a case of Slavic drunk and disorderly in Shu Dynasty that evening, and that it would end with the entire Shu family coming out from behind the swinging kitchen door to wrestle the big Russian out onto the street.

Paul Krüzen braced himself. You didn’t want to miss anything, but at the same time you wanted to stay out of it. Beside him at the bar, Hedwig was whining about the RTV East broadcast from which he had gleaned the term ‘shrinkage region’. A good term, Hedwig thought, a perfect description of the pace at which the clientele of his little grocery shop was declining. ‘They’re all dying on me,’ he said. ‘Last week it was Ullie.’

‘Ullie?’ Paul said, in spite of himself.

‘Tonnie’s Ullie. Burial’s on Wednesday. The way things are going, there won’t be anyone left.’

‘But you’ve made your millions already, Hedwig!’ the female Hennie said suddenly, in a louder voice.

Hedwig blinked as though someone had snatched his glasses. Did he actually ever shave, Paul wondered suddenly? He couldn’t recall him doing that during their holidays. Maybe he had no beard growth at all. His cheeks, at least, were as smooth and pale as wax.

‘What’s that, Hedwig,’ said Laurens Steggink, elbows on the bar and his beer bottle clenched in his big hands, ‘are you a millionaire?’

Hedwig’s chin jutted in a rare fit of stubbornness; he straightened his back. He crowed: ‘You bet I am!’ He nodded, sniffed loudly, and said in his high voice: ‘Easy. And what about it?’

The barely perceptible blip in time. With nervous chuckling, life began again. It could be true, Horseradish Hedwig being a millionaire. They all knew the stories about tight-fisted farmers who turned out to be filthy rich after they were dead. Hedwig Geerdink fit the profile. Always a tight hand on his purse, come to think of it — he would spend three euros when Paul spent thirty. He always ordered half a portion of babi pangang or nasi goreng, then stole the chicken from Paul’s plate.

Steggink raised his shoulders. ‘Well, that’s fine, isn’t it?’ He looked around. ‘Good old Hedwig, or am I wrong?’

‘Dumb,’ Paul said quietly.

‘But if it’s true, I’m not going to lie about it, now am I?’ Hedwig said shrilly.

Paul shook his head. Stay small, he’d told him that often enough before, always look smaller and dumber than the others. To have nothing and be capable of nothing, that’s what they know, they can live with that. But it wasn’t that kind of evening for Hedwig Johannes Geerdink, who felt like sloughing off his puny, pale hide and enjoying the doubt he had sown. Hedwig the mill-ion-aire, oh yeah!

Paul could tell from the way Hedwig raised his glass to his lips and tried to drink like a man. Somewhere inside him lay a hidden reserve of testosterone, and he had tapped into it now. Of course, Hedwig had plenty of money, but he lived like a church mouse, always afraid he would lose it all and die in penury. That was why he already acted like he had nothing, not a single penny.

He had bought land, Paul knew, a little here and there, and back behind De Steenkoele even a few hectares for the new housing estate. Land was worth a fortune, and Hedwig had an unknown quantity of it, scraped together by his family cent-by-cent, ever since 1911, selling bushels of buckwheat and beans in the grocery shop on Bunderweg.

And now everyone knew.

Second

Paul Krüzen’s mother was a daughter of the last blacksmith in the village. His smithy had been across from the church, at the start of Bunderweg, where later, during the construction goldrush, a white-stone insurance office would arise. The smith’s name was Mans Klein Haarhuis and he was tawny as a Sicilian fisherman, but his two daughters were creamy-white children of Mariënveen. His son Gerard, the youngest, looked like him though: stocky, and with a head of dark, wavy hair.

It was the Klein Haarhuis sisters who were biking along Bunderweg to Kloosterzand on that cloudy day in 1955. Marion and Alice crossed the little bridge over the Molenbeek and did not notice the boy sitting beside the stream, listening to their cheerful twittering. Once they were past the bridge, he climbed onto the road and watched until they disappeared from sight. From along the banks he quickly picked all the flowers he could find — irises, cowslips, and a few final spikes of seeding elderflower — and placed the bouquet on the road when he saw them coming back in the distance. Then he hid behind a tree, his heart pounding. Just as they reached the bridge, a fire-engine red McCormick roared past — the girls could barely maintain their balance and hissed indignantly at the machine.

Aloïs Krüzen was twenty-six when he married Alice Klein Haarhuis. Round, blushing, and in the blossom of late youth, she stepped across the grey paving stones to the altar, arm-in-arm with the smith in his Sunday best, his greying curls held in sway at the last moment with Brylcreem. Square and grim, he was on the verge of giving away the loveliest thing he possessed. Her clearly audible, sing-songy ‘I do’ a few minutes later broke, with equal clarity, a few of the hearts present in the church. The fait accompli — she had vanished through the door ironclad by the sacrament, and all they had left to hope for was the breach.

It was a miracle that Alice Klein Haarhuis had fallen for Aloïs Krüzen, and only because, as people said, she refused to marry a farmer. Aloïs had gone to teacher’s college in town and returned a schoolmaster. A man with an indoor job and a fixed income, how much better could it get? That was how Aloïs Krüzen got his bride, and no one could help but feel that it was cheating.

They went on honeymoon in his father-in-law’s car, the first automatic in the village, a brand-spanking-new, 2.6-litre Opel Kapitän; Mans Klein Haarhuis had walked around Aloïs’ Lloyd Alexander TS a few weeks earlier and said: ‘You can’t take your lassie away in that …’

They skimmed down the road like a canoe through water, six cylinders working in silence. Her hand lay on his thigh, as still as though she’d forgotten it. The low sky was of graphite, green as the first day on earth.

After they had crossed the IJssel at Zutphen, the landscape changed. Dark rises on the horizon, where the old ice had left moraines. Rivers of lead snaked across the low land. The further south they ventured, the heavier the stone on Aloïs’ chest became. The horror that awaited them — the frontal collision that would crush them, their blood mixed with oil on the asphalt …

Him counting his blessings — a magnificent girl beside him, a bag full of money, and an automatic at his fingertips — didn’t help in the slightest: