The Discomfort of Evening

by Lucas Rijneveld

Lots of people want to run away, but the ones who really do rarely announce it beforehand: they just go.

No one asks how anything went; they just announce – when they think of them – the things we have to do, and forget to find out what happens next.

I’m still alive, and that’s the only thing they pay attention to. That we get up every day, however slowly, is enough proof for them that we’re doing all right.

There are people whose smiles are always visible even when they’re sad. The smile lines can no longer be erased. It’s the other way round with Mum and Dad. Even when they smile they look sad, as though someone’s put a set square next to the corners of their mouths and drawn two lines pointing down.

She says nothing but I know she’s thinking. She can do that, think before she speaks; with me it’s the other way around.

We silently watched the sun go down and on the way back got a bag of chips from the chip man which we ate in the car, making the windows steam up, and my eyes too because for the first time I briefly didn’t feel alone: chips unite people more than any other type of food.

Dad once said, ‘Death always comes wearing clogs.’ I hadn’t understood. Why not ice skates or trainers? Now I get it: Death announces itself in most cases, but we’re often the ones who don’t want to see or hear it. We knew that the ice was too weak in some places, and we knew the foot-and-mouth wouldn’t skip our village.

If your head turns red it’s heavier, because embarrassment has a larger mass.

There’s a lot Dad misses. He looks at the ground or up at the sky more than at the things at eye height. At my current size I’m right between those things, and I’ll either have to make myself bigger or smaller to be seen by him.

Ants can carry up to five thousand times their own weight. People are puny in comparison – they can barely lift their own body weight once, let alone the weight of their sorrow.

‘Pretend to be happy,’ I say quietly to Hanna. ‘I’ve forgotten how to.’ ‘As though it’s for the school photo.’ ‘Oh, right.’

One wrong answer and you’re sent to your bedroom to reflect on things. Dad doesn’t realize there are already so many things to reflect on, that more keep on turning up, that our bodies are growing and that these contemplations can no longer be switched off with a peppermint, like in the church pew.

Moles like to live alone. They go into the darkness alone, like everyone has to fight their dark side in the long run. It’s pitch black more and more often inside my head.

Death hasn’t only entered Mum and Dad but is also inside us – it will always look for a body or an animal and it won’t rest until it’s got hold of something.

When I wake up my plans always seem bigger, just like how humans are bigger in the morning because of the moisture in your intervertebral discs which makes you a couple of centimetres taller.