Free Rituals by Cees Nooteboom Page B

ivory crucifix, entire families of Sevres and Limoges, Persian carpets, servants — he was being wrapped up in it all as in a warm shawl.
    "How people can live among the shit of the past is a mystery to me,"  said Taads when they were alone for a moment.
    "Everything is tainted. Everything has already been admired by others. Antique stinks. Hundreds of eyes that have rotted away long ago have looked at it. You can tolerate it only if you have a junkyard inside yourself as well."
    Inni did not reply. If this was so contemptible, there must be something wrong with him too. He thought it was all blissfully comfortable, and at the same time it expressed power and therefore distance from the world outside.
    "Therese, a bourgeois is being born this afternoon," said Taads as his aunt entered the room. "And you are standing by the cradle. Just look at the delighted face of your new nephew. He recognizes his natural surroundings. Watch the easy grace with which he is immediately turning into a Wintrop."
    Arnold Taads's entry had been impressive enough. Even when formulating it to himself, Inni thought it sounded exaggerated. But that afternoon he had discovered, for once not judging by his own example, that a distance can exist between people which expresses such a terrible otherness that anyone witnessing it will almost die of melancholy. Everyone knows these things, but no one has always known them — upright-walking creatures of the same species, who moreover use the same language to make it clear to each other that there is an unbridgeable chasm between them. A fool — this Inni could see, too — had arranged this lunch. The three plates from which they were to eat — the "uncle" had not yet manifested himself — were practically engulfed by an overabundance of cold meats. My God, how many ways there are to mess about with the corpses of animals. Smoked, boiled, roasted, in aspic, blood red, black and white checkered, fatty pink, murky white, marbled, pressed, ground, sliced. Thus death lay displayed on the blue-patterned Meissen. Not even a whole school could have eaten all that. Taads, who looked much smaller in this house, stood behind the chair assigned to him and surveyed the battlefield. Filtered sunlight caressed the white, the yellow, the soft, the hard, and the blue-veined cheeses.
    "This is a Brabant lunch," said his aunt. She raised her face towards Taads, full of anticipation. It was for him she had put on this display. Taads remained silent. The single eye scanned the table mercilessly, relentlessly. At last the verdict came, a whiplash. "I say, Therese, haven't you got any ham?"
    His aunt reeled under the blow. Red blotches rushed to her face. She staggered out of the room, and from the hall they heard a long, smothered wail that ran up the stairs at a gallop and vanished behind the slam of a door.
    "This is a Brabant lunch," Taads said with satisfaction as he sat down. "Revolting late-Burgundian affectation. Those wealthy textile farmers still seem to think they are the heirs of the Burgundian court. This is the Bavaria of the Netherlands, my boy. A Calvinist doesn't belong here."
    "I thought you were a Catholic, too," said Inni.
    "North of the great rivers, all Dutchmen are Calvinists. We don't believe in too much, too long, or too dear. If these people here had their way, you'd be sitting at the table until three o'clock."
    There was a tap on the door. A girl came in with a dish of ham that she put down in front of Taads.
    "Will this be all right, sir?"
    She was tall and slender, with big breasts and a crooked comedian's face in which green eyes could barely control their laughter. She spoke with a broad Brabant accent.
    Inni fell in love with her. Later (the dreadful, mischievous later that seemed to rule over everything and in which all experiences were to be filed as in a court of law), he would define those sudden, senseless infatuations: "The physical element has almost nothing to do with it. At most it