The Mussel Feast (2 page)

Although I found the mussels creepy, I went over, as I didn’t want to be cowardly; and they looked revolting, lying there, some opening slowly, fairly slowly, and then the entire heap of them started to move with this rattling sound. Unbelievable, I said, how revolting these creatures are, gasping as instead of seawater they get air, which they can’t breathe, and they’re also being scalded in the boiling water, and then they all open, which means they’re dead. The thought suddenly occurred to me that maybe it was only revolting because I knew we were killing them. Maybe it wouldn’t have looked so disgusting otherwise; I remembered having seen half-open mussels on the beach without feeling anything. I even threw some of them back into the sea, not out of any real pity and not all of them – just for fun. Anyway, I didn’t find them creepy or revolting like these ones here. My mother and brother cut the last few potatoes into batons, acting as if they hadn’t been listening, and finally I said that if you knew someone was going to die in an hour, let’s say, do you think you’d find them revolting; I’m positive you would, simply because you knew, and it would be even worse if you had to kill them yourself, like we were killing the mussels. Such thoughts plunged me into a really morbid mood, while the other two acted as if they weren’t listening; it’s mass murder, I said, all of them at once, at the same time, by boiling water; the mussels got me so worked up, the mussels had created a morbid atmosphere in the room. It’s unbearable, I said, to which my mother replied sternly, what are you talking about, although Mum harboured plenty of fanciful ideas herself; when my father was on business trips the three of us told each other the most fanciful stories, without ever being appalled. Before my father came home, however, all these fanciful ideas vanished, especially my mother’s. My father regarded flights of fancy as childish, my father stood for sober objectivity and reason, and of course my mother showed consideration for his objectivity and reason, conforming and switching to wifey mode when he came home. And when my mother said, what are you talking about, I knew at once that she’d switched to wifey mode, and the rage of disgust which I felt towards the mussels was now directed at my mother. Aren’t we allowed to think any more, I said, but my mother said, is that what you call thinking, can’t you think something useful rather than those sinister thoughts. In our family sinister thoughts and fantasies were regarded as squandered thoughts, especially when my father was at home, and although he wasn’t there yet he might arrive at any moment. Can’t we make them close again, I asked. I don’t think thoughts can be squandered, because by their very nature they’re the loveliest way to while away the time. Eventually I discovered that the mussels close when you put a knife into them; it triggers some sort of reflex and the mussels close rapidly again. Look, I said, taking the small kitchen knife that Mum had used for cleaning, and stabbing it into the mussels, one by one, the rattling no longer bothering me; they closed instantly. I stabbed and stabbed again. I actually encouraged all the mussels to close, and watching them close was comforting; I wasn’t at all bothered when my brother said, you’re crazy.

The chips had all been cut and my mother said, right, it would be good if he arrived now. Dinner was already late, we always ate at six o’clock because my father came home from the office at half past five; first he’d read the paper and drink his beer in peace while Mum prepared dinner, and at six on the dot, as I said, we ate, except when he was away on business, then the schedule went by the wayside and everything was different. There were cheese rolls and hot chocolate, we ate whenever we wanted to, sometimes standing up in the kitchen and with our hands. I don’t think we ever ate with a knife and fork when my father was away. We let our hair down while you were away, Mum said when my father asked, what did you get up to without me; it’s really nice to let your hair down a bit sometimes, Mum continued slightly wistfully, because she had as much fun as we did and less work, too, when we were alone with her. We seldom argued, and I liked it when we let our hair down, but my father didn’t want to hear any more of it and so she switched to wifey mode. As it was now getting on for seven o’clock she’d already switched. We were all expecting him to come through the door and ask, so, what do you have to say, because his promotion was virtually in the bag, and we would have said what a clever, successful father we had, and my mother would have been pleased, too, and then we would have celebrated his success, listening to him talk about his business trip, and we would have completely forgotten our wild behaviour – only: it was seven o’clock and he hadn’t come back yet. So Mum’s wifey mode appeared silly and pointless; my brother even said, we’re sitting here all dressed up and nowhere to go. This didn’t stop my mother dashing into the bathroom and, as a precaution, combing her hair and reapplying her lipstick, which she had already put on an hour earlier; she walked around with her evening face on display, saying, he’ll be here soon. My mother would often switch modes several times a day, and for each switch there was a change of face. At school she wore her serious face and was strict. She tried to replicate this face at home, but it never worked with us. We weren’t afraid of her in the slightest, although her pupils were; her school face was really scary. Once my brother and I sat at the back of her class and listened in. We could have died laughing – she looked so strict, we couldn’t actually believe that this woman was our mother. Respect is essential, she said; my father, too, said that respect was essential, an absolute necessity, otherwise you don’t learn anything; but it never crossed our minds to show our mother respect. At home she wore her knackered, exhausted face, her household face; when she came back from school in the afternoon, she said, I’m knackered today, I don’t have much energy after six hours of school. My father often said, how are you treating your mother, kindly show her some respect; in vain my father tried to instil in us the respect for our mother which she could not command from us herself. He said, can’t you see how she’s slaving away for you two, she grafts all day long. Of course we could see her grafting and slaving away, lugging heavy bags. When my father came home in the evening, she continued to graft and slave away, and if there wasn’t any beer she’d dash out, for his cigarettes, too, and everything else my father had forgotten on his way home, she would dash out to get it in the evening. My father was a heavy smoker, and Mum often had to dash out, but he couldn’t stand my mother’s knackered face, and so she switched to her after-work face, which she would paint on quickly in the bathroom at half past five, before my father came home. But this after-work face only lasted for an hour and needed reapplying. Now she was walking around with her after-work face on display, saying, he’ll be back soon, and I thought, I can’t stand all this switching. When my father was away on business I used to have more respect for Mum; although she tried to be strict then, too, we basically got on well when there wasn’t any switching. Most importantly, she couldn’t spend the evenings telling my father about what we’d done wrong, so we had more respect for her. Sometimes she said, isn’t this nice, children, just the three of us, probably because she found switching modes strenuous too. But when I asked, why do you bother conforming and switching to wifey mode, she replied, that’s what it’s like when you’re married and have a job, you’ll see. I’m pretty sure I won’t switch to wifey mode, I said; she just laughed at me, saying, you won’t find a husband anyway. She was seriously worried that nobody would ever marry me, unlikeable as I was, and unappealingly stubborn since early childhood. Luckily I never regarded my ultimate aim in life as being to switch to wifey mode at half past five every evening. I didn’t like it when Mum switched; I found it embarrassing, and when we did it, too. I preferred us when my father was away on business. You see we all had to switch for my father, to become a proper family, as he called it, because he hadn’t had a family, but he had developed the most detailed notions of what a proper family should be like, and he could be extremely sensitive if you undermined these notions.

But now, as it was already seven o’clock and he still hadn’t arrived, my father was undermining his own notions. Mum’s after-work face seemed a complete waste of time, and the mussels started making that noise in the pot again. My brother was the only one of us who was still looking forward to his mussels and chips. Mum and I had lost our appetites and were both edgy. It was the waiting. If my father had come back at six we wouldn’t have noticed how silly and pointless it was for us to switch, Mum to wifey mode, we to child mode. Shortly after seven Mum said, I do hope nothing’s happened; and out of pure spite I retorted, what if it has, because all of a sudden my father was a spoilsport in my eyes, or, to be more precise, a mood-wrecker. Suddenly I no longer wanted him to come home, even though an hour earlier, as I said, we all were prepared for him to walk through the door and ask, so, what do you have to say, because he’d been successful. Mum looked at me, not as horrified as I’d expected, but with her head to one side, and then she smiled and said, well, we’ll see, and she didn’t sound as if she’d find it surprising or even terrible if he didn’t come home. And gradually we stopped thinking that he’d arrive at any moment. Only we didn’t know what to do with the mussels, which were still rattling away quietly in the pot because we’d thought my father would be at the door at six on the dot, his promotion virtually in the bag, and that would have been good reason to celebrate with a mussel feast. My brother’s mood also turned, and although it was not yet eight o’clock we all knew that this day was special, unexpectedly so. Only we couldn’t decide what to do. So my mother went and cooked the mussels. We couldn’t just leave them to die, so she cooked them quickly and I thought, who can eat mussels now; in fact none of us ate any mussels, although my brother did eat some chips, which Mum made while the mussels were cooking; later the mussels sat in a huge bowl on the table and nobody touched them. As if they’d gone off and were poisonous, my mother said, but my brother said, toxic, not poisonous, because we didn’t say poisonous in our family any more; for some time now we’d been saying toxic, my mother had said poisonous by accident. Our family used different expressions now; for example, when we burned our mouths on potatoes that were too hot we no longer shouted, Christ that’s hot; sometimes we still said it by accident, because we hadn’t switched modes, but my father would say, potatoes have a high heat capacity, that’s the more accurate way of putting it. But when my father was away on business we burned our mouths on potatoes as before and shouted, Christ that’s hot, and Mum said that the mussels looked off and poisonous, and when my brother said toxic she laughed and said they’d become truly inedible. Afterwards we wondered whether by then we already knew what was up, but of course we couldn’t have known; we talked the whole time in hushed tones, as we still imagined that the door might open at any moment and he’d be standing there and catch us talking about him, and that really wouldn’t be right: instead of being delighted to see him and jumping up to welcome him back home, we’d be caught red-handed talking about him, and nobody wanted that. Anyway, nobody dared to because he could be extremely sensitive and unpleasant, he couldn’t bear people whispering behind other people’s backs; but after I’d said, well, so what if something has happened to him – out of pure spite because my mother had already switched to wifey mode, but she hadn’t reacted horrified, only saying, we’ll see – after that, for it sounded as if she didn’t think it so terrible either, we wondered what we would do if he didn’t come back now, and soon it turned out that both my brother and I would prefer him not to come home; we no longer liked being a proper family, as he called it. In truth we didn’t see ourselves as a proper family. Everything in our lives revolved around us having to behave as if we were a proper family, as my father pictured a family to be because he hadn’t had one himself and so didn’t know what a proper family was, although he’d developed the most detailed notions of what one was like; and while he sat in his office we played at being this, even though we’d far rather have let our hair down than be a proper family. Of course, all this came out very hesitantly; to start with I kept quiet because I thought, if he does eventually come back then Mum will blab, and my brother also thought she’d blab, and I thought my brother would blab, too, because he wants to play the loving son with my father, and my brother thought that I’d blab because I wanted to show that I was Daddy’s girl. In those days, you see, we still said that I was Daddy’s girl, and my brother was Mummy’s boy, as my brother was very affectionate, a cuddly boy, and was forever kissing Mum. I didn’t, I wouldn’t have any of that; I take after my father, I thought, who was a logician, and my mother and brother were anything but logicians. And that’s the reason why we, my father and I, always mocked them. And they were very wary of saying anything to me, complaining to me about my father, because they thought I’d blab about them to show everyone I was Daddy’s girl. In actual fact all of us blabbed, everyone blabbed about everyone else if I think about it, and my father was burdened by the family’s blabbing, even though he’d enjoy it as well, for it meant he was very important in the evenings, resolving matters in his family as he imagined happened in proper families. He’d drink beer and cognac and interrogate us in order to find out what had been going on, and we gave our statements in turn while the others waited outside. In the end he’d draw logical conclusions, fix punishments and mete them out; we were all pretty scared, to be honest, because the punishments were fixed according to logical conclusions which none of us could really understand. I pretended to understand them; it was to my advantage if they believed I was Daddy’s girl and therefore logical, although in truth I couldn’t really understand my father’s logic and only pretended to. Neither of the other two could pretend. It was clear they belonged together because they’re cuddly rather than logical, forever wanting to give each other kisses; while I belonged with my father, because I’m logical and I think, which isn’t always the case with girls, but it’s far better than kissing. Of course my father would have preferred our characters to be the other way around, for my brother to be the logical one, and my mother and I the ones who weren’t logical, but our relationships weren’t arranged in the way he thought they ought to be in a proper family. What the boy lacked was wasted on the girl, he said, but overall I wasn’t as badly off as my brother, who was the younger one, too. But maybe my mother was worst off, as she had to ensure that we behaved like a proper family, surely a Herculean task given my father’s notions about what constituted a proper family; they may have been incredibly precise, but were impossible to fathom as none of us understood the logic behind them. Especially not my mother, who did what she could, but, in doing what she could, she very often got it totally wrong; even though she blabbed as she ought to in a proper family, it often rebounded on her. And that evening, when she realized he wasn’t coming home, she said, you can’t imagine how it is, and then she said, I get really scared sometimes. Why, we asked. Although we were relieved, hearing our mother’s confession felt extremely unnerving; besides, none of us could be certain that the door wouldn’t open any second.