Free The Portrait by Willem Jan Otten

Singer’s eyes so that they’re just the way they’ve turned out — so … how can I put it …?
    So almost not looking, Lidewij said.
    That, at least, was what I was hoping for, Creator said — that they would end up like that. Almost not looking. Or almost looking. But when I had more or less managed that, the day came for me to start on the middle with everything else completely finished — and then, in a flash, I knew what I should have known straightaway, from the moment I started sketching him three weeks earlier —
    Creator broke off. He’s no storyteller. It was obvious to me that he thought he was exaggerating it beyond redemption. He felt like shouting, Fuck psychology!
    After a long silence, Lidewij asked, Does this Tijn still exist?
    She had heard the name mentioned for the first time just ten minutes before and now, as she spoke it, it was as if she was touching Creator’s lips.
    I lost him and he lost me, Creator said. A long time ago. There’s not actually anything to tell.
    No? Why did you start then?
    It’s not what you think, Creator said. It’s not something I can explain.
    If you’ve lost someone, Lidewij said, and you still have to think about them, then it’s always worth telling.
    While saying this, she looked at me and smiled. Her gaze had rested momentarily on my middle, a smile had come to her lips, and then she had looked at me, at my eyes, which I now knew to be almost not looking. Or almost looking. And she winked.
    Creator hadn’t noticed; he was still brooding on his story and staring out at the birch wood, behind which the sun now glowed like a burning bush.
    We were inseparable, Creator said, Tijn and I, for the first two years of secondary school. We found each other at lunch on the first day, immediately. We both saw immediately that we were the only ones who hadn’t automatically ended up at a table with friends, and Tijn rode home with me after the last period on that very first afternoon, the way you do at that age, jumping on your bikes together and riding next to each other for a while until it’s time for you to turn right for your own house, and then you keep going a bit, until there’s another right, and because you’re talking away and listening, you end up at the other one’s house, where you decide to do your homework together, and they ask you to stay for dinner, and then you finally go home after the eight o’clock news, and then the other one rides part of the way with you, through the August evening, and every time you reach a landmark where it would make sense for him to turn around and go back home, he rides on, until the next landmark and then, somewhere exactly halfway, you reach the true point of farewell — where you have to cut the big knot, severing the strand of the newfound friendship — and you both stay standing there until you really can’t stay any longer, it’s getting dark, parents are worrying, they’re phoning each other … there at the halfwayest point you really are together and apart from everyone and everything else … But, Lidewij, you have to realise that Tijn lived a full hour’s bike ride from school and I lived a full hour away as well, but in the other direction, me to the west and Tijn to the east, and that we also lived a full hour away from each other — you see, our friendship was completely equilateral, and of course the next day I rode with Tijn and did my homework at his house, and I was allowed to stay for dinner, and I was happy to have Tijn ride part of the way home with me, until exactly halfway on the endless bicycle path that hugged the border between the province of Utrecht and the province of North Holland and connected my house to Tijn’s.
    I’m telling you this so you can understand what kind of friends we were. We wanted to be just like each other. We got the same marks, we spent the same hours in