Joe Speedboat (33 page)

Joe's real name has brought P.J. and me closer together. Guilt
feelings rise to the surface when I'm alone again and lie looking at the dying light of day. Sometimes I see Engel, the expression on his face with which he assesses this, and somehow it seems unlikely that any of this would have happened were he still around. Joe stands alone in the face of a new three-cornered construction of a woman without scruples (‘She is not depraved or bad, she simply lacks a conscience: that is all' – from
About a Woman
) and two friends who quietly hate him at times.

When I'm not in the mood to feel guilty I tell myself that it's actually nothing more than an exchange of intimacies: he's seen my dick, I've seen his name. So what if we know that about him, he has P.J., doesn't he? It's only fair that I then take back something in return. Compared to him, I'm nothing but a petty thief. But when in my mind I again hear the hideous laughter of the desk clerk at the Hotel Olympia, I can't defend that train of thought. Joe Speedboat is more than an adolescent whim, it's his destiny. The men of God became different people because of their new names, and it's unthinkable that they could have gone back to who they were as Abram, Simon or Saul. But that is exactly what has happened to Joe. We no longer see the beloved sorcerer's apprentice, but Achiel Stephaan Ratzinger, like a kind of Christof who long ago tried to disguise how pathetic he was by adopting Johnny Monday as his
nom de plume
.

I see that P.J. in her thoughts has begun calling Joe ‘Achiel'; a certain nonchalance has crept into the entirety of actions with which she expresses love: every kiss and every glance now poisoned by irony. Sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal. Agonizingly slow, she's busy tearing him apart.

I believe every person must have a holy core, one area where he is reliable through and through; the same holy core that has
become corrupted in me and that I have never been able to discover in P.J. Only that predatory opportunism that possesses a beauty of its own, definitely; when she takes care of me, she lets me feel like I'm truly important to her. This has bound me to her more intensely, the knowledge that she does not possess love but does her best nonetheless, for reasons we may never know. Metz writes: ‘Perhaps she does have a heart, but keeps it in a thousand places.' I think P.J. really wants that, to be like other people, that she's envious of the abandon and loss of self with which Joe loves her, and that she despises him for it.

She is obviously still fascinated by the notebooks, my
History of Lomark and Its Citizens
. The day will come when she will ask to read them. I will give in, for if anyone is to be allowed it is she. She is as welcome in my world as I am in hers. But the day I'm talking about is this one, now, the day she makes a drawing on the cast on my arm. The drawing shows Islam Mansur as King Kong, who is holding me (tiny, but clearly wearing a sling) in the palm of his hand and looking at me with one bulging eye. T
HE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD
, she writes beneath it. She draws well, Mansur's incarnation as gorilla is striking. As she colours the gorilla blue she is very close, I hear her deep, quiet breathing, I feel the warmth of her body like a stove. Sometimes, when grains of plaster block the tip, the flow of ink stops. When the light falls in a certain way, her eyebrows are almost reddish.

‘Sit still,' she says as a spasm rolls by.

I lean forward a little to muffle the start of an erection in the folds of my trousers. Who wouldn't be edgy, with her around? Even knowing who she is, you remain susceptible to that seductive ruthlessness that one could also dismiss as humorous naughtiness. That's the whole point: you can recognize her manipulative nature if you choose, but to close your eyes to it is
an act of the will. That makes P.J. a self-imposed fate. And I, I do not wish to be spared.

King Kong is almost finished, P.J. looks up. I look the other way, fix my gaze on the tabletop and the things on it. The atmosphere is suddenly, how shall I put it,
charged
, making it difficult for me to swallow.

‘What is it, Frankie?' she asks quietly.

I feel caught; sometimes my thoughts are like muffins you can pull right out of the oven. The next thing I know is that her hand,
her hand
, is at my crotch. If only she doesn't feel my hard-on, I think in a panic, before realizing that that is precisely what this is all about. It is the hand of God with which she gives me soft, dizzying little squeezes; never before has my dick in someone else's hand been something to squeeze softly, only to shake firmly or scrub rigorously, but not this, not like this. She glances out the window and loosens my belt. I don't budge, deathly afraid of anything that will stop this. She opens the zipper and slips her hand into my underpants. Good hand, warm hand that closes around my cock, making me almost choke with bliss. P.J. pulls it out and slowly begins jerking me off.

‘You're so hard,' she says, more to herself than to me.

Her hand moves a little faster, the fingers tightening their grip, greater joy cannot be imagined. I hear the cloth of my trousers rustling against her wrist, her breathing grows faster. A little pensive fold appears between her eyes. She slows, slides her thumb across the head of my cock and my vision darkens to the speckled image of snowfall at evening, I come all over her hand and my trousers. I stifle the scream, my upper body doubles over. Then the cramps ebb away and she lets go. She smiles serenely, gets up to fetch a dish towel from the kitchen and wipe the sperm off her hand. She cleans off my trousers as well.

A little later she walks to the door, holding her bag. In the doorway she turns and asks, ‘Did I take good enough care of you today, Frankie?' and bestows upon me a little smile. Shattered, I lean back in my chair and know that there is no limit to what I would do for her. Her faithlessness was heralded, she has proliferated as naturally as lice on a child's scalp, and all the things I've thought about myself are true as well, it was only a matter of time before it came to the fore. That knowledge contains an element of freedom; facts are better than suspicions.

Today I have chosen to end my misery; the pleasure of P.J. in exchange for my only friendship seems like a fair trade. And if you didn't feel so shitty about it, nothing would be the matter.

A few days later I look on in regret as the nurse cuts P.J.'s drawing right down the middle. Beneath the cast the arm has grown much thinner, for the next month or so I won't be able to do anything strenuous with it. Late in June comes the longest day, rainy and a gusty gray. Ma says it's going to be a wet summer, and that we'd be better off getting used to it; partial to heavy clouds with occasional rain or drizzle, daytime highs between nineteen and twenty-two degrees, and lots of earwigs.

The first time I open a can of frankfurters on my own I'm afraid the arm is going to break again, but after a while everything is back to normal. It takes some effort to get back into my training rhythm, I can't imagine that Joe and I will go on with everything like always, but for him there's no doubt about it. The doubt exists only in my own head, where the things of the last few months converge in the moment when I come all over P.J.'s hand. This is the life that comes after. All my innocence was only guilt that hadn't materialized yet.

Sometimes Joe says things like ‘I don't know, man, sometimes I'm so scared. Since Engel died I keep having the feeling that something terrible is going to happen.' He sniffs his armpit: ‘I can actually smell it. Fear.'

He works himself silly on that bulldozer, he goes in search of
physical labour to counteract afflictions he can't really put into words. He too will become human, naked, afraid and lonely like all the rest.

The Paris–Dakar rally is costing him a wad; he's found a couple of sponsors, with Bethlehem Asphalt chief among them, and for the rest a few shopkeepers who are in for a laugh. They give him T-shirts with their names and logos on them. The arm wrestling has paid off well, and with that job of his he'll make out all right. On 1 January he has to be in Marseille for the start of the rally. Sixteen days later the whole circus will grind to a halt in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt; just because it's called Paris–Dakar doesn't mean it automatically starts and ends there.

One day, when Joe comes by with a big map of Africa and shows me the route, I suddenly realize that he has an ulterior motive: Sharm el-Sheikh is on the Red Sea, not far from the village of Nuweiba where Papa Africa kept shop when he met Regina. But Joe says nothing about that, and I don't press the point. He rolls up the map, then reconsiders.

‘Shall I hang it up in here?' he asks. ‘Then you can sort of see where I am.'

It's a nice, big classroom map on a scale of 1:75,000,000, a Wenschow relief-like map. Joe has traced the route with magic marker.

Outside the poppies stand out remarkably red against a seashell-gray sky, at times the sun breaks through at evening and colours the clouds. Wood pigeons and magpies hop about on the roof of my house, I can hear them clear as day. They pick at the moss growing on the corrugated asbestos.

I can move freely again, but Lomark feels different. The dyke, the streets have become foreign to me. The hope once prompted by Joe's arrival is extinguished, we are what we were
and always will be. Joe is a redeemer without promise; he didn't bring progress, only motion.

‘We do our best,' he said a long time ago, ‘we build an airplane in order to see the secret, but then you find out that there is no secret, only an airplane. And that's fine.'

He cast a spell on our world, but after it rains the colours wash right off again.

The E981 is getting closer all the time, you can already see the machines in the distance and after dark there is a flood of artificial light from over there. The provincial highway is one big obstruction, people complain, but too late. Egon Maandag is rubbing his hands in glee, the E981 means a mega-order for him. In the end, though, I think it will work out badly for Bethlehem too; the lack of an exit will hurt his company's logistics.

Summer blends into fall, I'm getting back into decent shape and sometimes wrestle against Hennie Oosterloo to keep the rhythm going. I don't think Joe and I will be attending any tournaments this year, he's too busy with other things. After Paris–Dakar we'll see how it goes.

One day I run into India on the dyke, she's moved out of the house and is studying ‘something with people' in the west of the country. A light drizzle is falling from the yellow sky. India is pleased to see me, she's dyed her hair black, which makes her face very pale.

‘Frankie, I haven't seen you for such a long time,' she says.

She looks like she's going to cry. I take out the notepad and write that she looks like an Indian, with that hair of hers. The paper grows soggy in the rain. India runs her hand matter-of-factly through her hair.

‘This isn't hair,' she says, ‘this is a mood.'

We move off together toward Lomark, when we part she seems very concerned.

‘Keep an eye on Joe a little, would you, Frankie? He seems kind of . . . kind of lost lately. You know what I mean?'

I know very well what she means, and watch her go, in her olive-green army coat that Joe once wore and that belonged to their father, if I'm not mistaken. The coat is dark with rain and hangs heavily on her shoulders. She turns and gives me a little wave, the girl who you think smells faintly of peaches.

On 20 December Joe takes off for Marseille, to be there for the start of the race. He doesn't have enough money for a flatbed, he'll have to drive the whole way himself.

‘Gives me a chance to test the thing right away,' he says.

He has meticulously traced out a route along the back roads; on the main roads there's too much of a chance of being stopped and asked troublesome questions. Once the rally starts, though, he's home free. I admire his stoic disregard for time, effort and gravity.

In the early morning hours the three of us – Joe's mother, P.J. and I – go out to wave goodbye. It's cold, it's raining, the world is full of blue shades. Regina holds her umbrella over me so that only my left side gets wet. She's dried up ugly, as we say around here when a woman doesn't grow old gracefully. Dull is what she's become, crushed by love.

The bulldozer is growling on the parking lot in front of the bank. Joe says, ‘Well, I guess I'll get going now,' and P.J. cries a little. They hug and Joe whispers something in her ear that I can't hear. She nods sadly and bravely, they kiss. Then Joe holds his mother tight and tells her not to worry, that he'll come home safely because ‘nothing can happen to you in one of these babies'. He shakes my hand and smiles.

‘Don't forget your calcium, Frankie, OK? I'll see you next year.'

He hugs P.J. one more time, she doesn't want to let go.

‘See you soon, girlie. I'll call.'

He climbs into the cab, it's an awesome sight to see him up on that thing. He touches the gas, the wipers sweep across the glass, the monster starts to move. Joe sticks his hand out the open window, rolls out of the parking lot, honks and heads down the street. This is the last we'll see of him until 1 January.

Then there is the TV bulletin on RTL 5, each night from eleven-thirty to midnight, with all the news about the rally. I watch in my parents' living room, we see the drivers in a park near a grandstand, there's a marching band and a cadmium-yellow bulldozer sticks out above all the rest – covered with stickers from Bethlehem Asphalt, Van Paridon Rentals, Bot's butcher shop and a few other lesser sponsors. He made it, he got to Marseille along the back roads, and that in itself is a miracle. Now he only has to drive 8552 kilometres to Sharm el-Sheikh. At the table, Pa mutters that Joe's ‘not right in the head, ever since those bombs, too'.

The first day, the caravan heads to Narbonne; the next day to Castellon in Spain, close to Valencia. In the harbour of Valencia the whole shooting match is loaded onto a ferry to north Africa. In Tunis Joe drives into the sun, one day later he reaches the desert. Sometimes, when the rally is filmed from the air, we catch a glimpse of him with a huge cloud of dust fanning out behind. The drivers make a beeline south, and on the fourth day Joe gets in just before the time limit. If you don't make that, you can turn around and go home. I hear him mumble something about ‘the nick of time'. It seems like he was mistaken, that the bulldozer isn't as perfect a desert vehicle as he thought. The landscape is beautiful but demanding, the first drivers become stranded in sand dunes and deep holes in dried-up wadis. The
rest arrive in Ghadamès, a dot just across the Libyan border, in that part of the world where the map turns yellow with 6,314,314 square kilometres of desert. Joe is really in the Sahara now, with a bulldozer . . .