Post Mortem

by Peter Terrin, Laura Watkinson

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Emiel Steegman, an unknown writer with a handful of novels to his name, is seeking a way to escape a dinner with Estonian colleagues. Although things are plodding along quite happily, he cancels at the last moment "due to a rather difficult time for the family". A nasty feeling immediately comes over him: is he inviting trouble for his family in doing so? And what if a biographer stumbled on this? Would he not then suspect that something significant had happened in his life? The thought gives him a great idea for a new novel about a successful author, T, who becomes famous with an existential crime novel and increasingly worries about what his future biographer will write about him, so he withdraws entirely from public life. But Steegman's initial misgivings prove well founded. Because fate does strike. One afternoon, his daughter Renée falls asleep and it is impossible to wake her . . .

Release date: October 1, 2015

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 256

Sample

Like a blind man, he searched for the towel, arms outstretched. Opening his eyes would only make the stinging worse.

When was the last time he’d got shampoo in his eyes? He couldn’t remember. Probably when he was a child. But maybe he often got shampoo in his eyes, better shampoo, shampoo that didn’t sting. Or was he getting old, hypersensitive? Was he going to have to start using Renée’s shampoo, the strawberry-scented one?

You’re forty, thought Emiel Steegman. Forty’s not old.

To make matters worse, not one single towel was hanging within reach on the chrome rack above the radiator.

He always tried, by setting a good example, by hanging the towels on the rack, to show others how they could please him with such a simple action. His attempts had failed.

His message had not been clear. They thought he was doing it to please them instead. And eventually they came to see it as normal.

How would Otto Richter deal with this situation? The famous, best-selling author obviously enjoyed the benefits of his advancing years these days, but what about when he was forty? Had he already had a younger, subservient wife to pay attention to such things as towels? What if the lack of a towel upset Richter so badly that his words abandoned him for the rest of the day? That was unthinkable. He employed a housekeeper. As with his sumptuous apartment in the capital’s wealthiest neighbourhood, it didn’t matter if he could afford a housekeeper or not. Writers were people who shaped the world to their own will, weren’t they?

A flash of Tereza, his own wife, in a lace-trimmed pinafore, a cap on her head, and nothing else; she wasn’t there about the towel.

He dismissed the thought, not enough time, but already he felt less appalled about her neglect.

He knocked over bottles, bath salts, toys, the big plastic frog with the small plastic frogs inside. Leaning on the edge of the bathtub, he reached out as far as he could for a towel that might be on the radiator. His eyes instinctively moved behind his closed eyelids, following his hands, looking at what he was imagining, and every movement intensified the stinging. Perhaps it was some neurological disorder, suddenly triggered by the heat of the gushing water. There is no remedy for this rare condition. Only painkillers can help, but they also make him feel groggy, so it’s impossible to write. A few sentences a day, at most, typed with his eyes streaming. The rest of the time spent dozing on the sofa. Getting fat.

Why was he looking for a towel? How was a towel going to relieve the pain? Whatever was he thinking of?

He saw the map of Europe again, this time adorned with strange, moving stars, his eye muscles pushing them one way before they gradually slowed and shot off in another direction. When he was a child, in that initial darkness after the nightlight went out, the same kind of stars used to appear against the black interior of his eyes. Always two of them. At the time, they hadn’t reminded him of stars, but of the glowing eyes of an owl, the rest of the bird invisible. It was a wise creature, watching over him; in his mind, never out loud, he called it Mr Owl. It stayed with him all night, disappearing just before he woke in the morning. He told no-one; it was as natural to him as having a father and a mother.

Perhaps his Mr Owl, which bore no resemblance to the Mr Owl in the children’s T.V. show, had been an early sign of some latent ocular disorder.

He navigated the stars across the map of Europe, upwards, to the north-east, to the Baltic and the trio of former Soviet republics. He’d already briefed himself for the dinner, and knew, would never forget, that Estonia was the topmost of the three states, capital: Tallinn.

He’d also found a picture of one of the other guests on the internet. Presumably at the photographer’s request, the author, a man of around his own age, had turned his least flattering side to the lens. Unless perhaps his other side was also afflicted by a lump of flesh in the crease of his nostril, which seemed unlikely. But it was even more unlikely that the Estonian author had deliberately allowed his ugly side to be photographed, as a statement to all those readers who think it important for books to be written by beautiful people, because in every other respect the man looked perfectly presentable, an amused smile on his lips, content with the world. In keeping with the intellectual image, he was wearing an open-necked shirt and a corduroy jacket. The photographer certainly had a sense of the aesthetic, but a clear vision was lacking.

The lump was not a classic wart, more like a growth, like a knot in a tree trunk, which would inevitably increase in size as the man grew older, making more and more of an impact on his face.

Perhaps, thought Steegman, as he heard the water dripping from his chin onto the tiled floor, he hadn’t dared to challenge the photographer. An unknown writer, happy to have a promotional picture taken.

Because, of course, that was what they all were: unknown.

A dinner with good, unknown writers. Half of them from Estonia. Expertly organised by collaborating cultural bodies, who hoped to raise the profile of their country’s literature. A select company – no more than twelve people, he’d been assured.

Charmed by their good intentions and by the undeniable honour of the invitation, he hadn’t said no straight away.

He never said no straight away.

“No” could always come later. You never knew how something might be of benefit. From which direction that helping hand might come. Every little helps . . . Et cetera, et cetera. He detested the pettiness that well-meaning people kept trying surreptitiously to foist upon him.

Even after ten years of writing, after five books, he still had to content himself with small tokens of goodwill, such as midweek dinners with Estonian writers who were staying at a nearby castle for a month, and who were to be entertained in a suitably cultural fashion tomorrow evening. An exchange of intellectual capital. How many of his colleagues had declined the honour before the organisers, finally, had thought of him, of Steegman, always so grateful?

He let go of the edge of the bathtub and stood upright. Afraid of slipping, he slowly turned on his axis, and felt around for the tap. A towel was not going to solve anything.

It is written in the stars that he will end up sitting beside the man with the fleshy lump on his nose. For the duration of the entire meal, he’ll be able to study the growth at close quarters. It robs him of any appetite and wakes him screaming in the middle of the night from his worst nightmare in years. The man, of course, is just as polite as he is himself. They top up each other’s water, offer the bread basket. They enquire about each other’s work with interest. He talks about his book that’s about to come out, The Murderer, yes, that’s right, it’s his sixth, and together, the two of them solemnly raise a glass to the success of his new book, as if they’ve been friends for years. He doesn’t burden the disfigured Estonian with his lack of confidence in the book’s reception.

The showerhead sputtered and the heat came sliding down over his head like a long robe. The water sealed his ears. His voice, inside, was sonorous, serious: “Owing to a somewhat difficult situation at home.” He waited for a moment and then repeated the words. “Owing to a somewhat difficult situation at home.”

He was particularly pleased with the word “somewhat”.

When he’d repeated the sentence a third time, he knew that he’d formulated a viable excuse, largely because of that “somewhat”. It was both vague and urgent. Mitigating, yet threatening. At first everything sounded fine, but still it was “somewhat difficult”. The apology coming so late would make it all the more believable.

It also felt as if, with that one little word, he were confiding something personal to the organisation’s managing director, without specifying what. His candour would be met with immediate understanding, as she would be reminded of her own concerns. In her reply to his email, within quarter of an hour, she would wish him all the best, promise discretion. If there was anything she could do . . .

He leaned with both hands against the wall, head bowed, as if starring in his own movie, a man confronted with “a difficult situation”. He’d almost forgotten the stinging in his eyes, and now he turned his face into the hard jets of water, but did not dare to look.

He saw the managing director, the tulips in the elegant vase on the linen tablecloth. She’s waiting for her husband, who has cooked for her – he’s gone to get the pepper. She could mention it now, across the cooking island, but she waits, appreciatively inhaling the spicy vapours rising from her plate. She’s a woman of nearly fifty, goes to the hairdresser’s every week. You’ll never guess what happened, she says to Hans or Henk, as he smiles and pulls up a chair. Steegman, you know the one, blond hair, those glasses with the chunky frame? He’s cancelled. He’s not coming to the dinner. Dropped me a line today. It must be something serious. Something to do with his wife or his daughter. Steegman never says no.

He decided to do a countdown, as he would with Renée. It was the only way. But when he reached two, to prove to himself that he was a man, he opened his eyes. He had to force them to stay open, resist the reflex to shut them. He thought he could feel every one of those sharp jets of water making a tiny dent in his soft eyeballs. Again he decided to count, up to ten this time, and by then the rest of the foam should have washed away. But he counted to twenty because, by the time he’d got to five, staring into the splashing mist was beginning to feel pleasant. By twenty, the stinging had turned into a new, unfamiliar sensation, which seemed a lot like dehydration.

After some blinking and rubbing, he looked around, as a test. Everything in the bathroom was in its usual place. The aquamarine wall tiles from the late 1950s, at shoulder height all around the room, still dominated the space, conjuring up images of beautiful swimming pools in summertime. The bidet with the broken tap. The dusty pots and bottles on the wooden shelves, with the towels below. The large washstand, the mirror, flecked with brown, the brightly coloured fish with their swirling tail fins, swimming in a line across the window.

He couldn’t feel the stinging anymore. His vision was sharp, without glasses. More clearly than ever, he could see the objects that had worked their way into this house and worn themselves into his life.

Steegman stacked the post he’d collected over the past four days into a neat pile on the corner of the dining table. On the top was an envelope from a bank. Lodewijk. The first name of his neighbour from across the road stood out, there in the address window, the image of the word. Lodewijk. You so rarely saw that name anywhere these days, only in announcements of births or deaths.

They’d met two years ago, on Lodewijk’s front lawn, soon after moving in. Lodewijk gave Steegman permission to call him “Wiet” or “Wietje”, which is what everyone else in the street and the village called him. Steegman decided, when no explanation was forthcoming, that it must be derived from “Louis”, the French equivalent of Lodewijk. But something about Lodewijk’s posture, something about his shoulders, something around the corners of his mouth indicated that he was not really the kind of man who went for diminutives and nicknames, and that he used that name, or had permitted it to be used, just to create a certain impression. To curry favour with the villagers, to show he was one of them, to be accepted. But that, deep down, in the seclusion of his own living room, at night, he felt an aversion, bordering on loathing, to anyone who dared to call him “Wietje”. He was a retired bank clerk with forty-four years of loyal service! The riff-raff! How dare they?

At the same time Steegman knew his neighbour would take offence if he didn’t accept the invitation. It would be tantamount to rejecting the man himself. As if Steegman, the city slicker, refused to accept that Lodewijk was just a humble, amiable villager. He’d be seen as arrogant.

The conversation lasted nearly ten minutes. He kept on practising in his mind, so he’d remember to say “Wiet” at least once. In the end, though, he couldn’t bring himself to utter that ridiculous name. He felt no inclination to address a man he barely knew as “Wiet”. The man’s insistence felt like a violation of his privacy. So when he left, he just gave him a friendly smile and went for “Lodewijk”. It was, after all, the man’s name.

He saw no reaction on Lodewijk’s face. Perhaps he thought Steegman wanted first to earn the familiarity he’d so generously offered. Or worse, that he meant to start using the name when they next met. But, to Steegman, those three carefully enunciated syllables had sounded like hammer-blows on a flagpole marking out his territory.

*

The pile of post in one hand, Renée holding the other, he headed down the path from the front door, at the side of the house, to the street.

He was thinking about the blue basket.

The day after they came back from holiday last year, Lodewijk, as early as the usual postman, had come round with his blue basket. The post, which he’d taken from the letterbox at Steegman’s request, had been stacked in the basket and separated by sheets of A4 paper with the day and the date noted on them in calligraphic handwriting. In date order, with important correspondence on top of junk mail.

Steegman had thanked him profusely.

Lodewijk didn’t want the basket back straight away. He looked at it and said he didn’t need it right now, that they could take their time to go through everything. When there was no reaction to this statement, he added that the next day would be fine. Sometime in the morning. As it happened, he and his wife would be out tomorrow afternoon. But Steegman could return the basket in the morning. He asked if that was convenient, and when Steegman nodded he said, “Good. Then it’s agreed. Tomorrow, before midday.” Tereza’s attempts simply to take the post out of the basket and put it on the table were met with violent protestation. Lodewijk really didn’t need the basket for anything. And the next day would be fine. Before twelve thirty. Because his wife wanted to leave by half twelve at the latest, Lodewijk said, looking Steegman in the eyes.

It really wasn’t much of a basket. Ancient, baby-blue plastic from the 1960s. Steegman couldn’t imagine what other use Lodewijk might have for it.

He hadn’t needed a basket for Lodewijk’s post. Their holiday was only five days, hiking in Alsace. The post would easily have fitted into Renée’s little hand.

At the end of the street, two sharp explosions in an exhaust pipe – a small car shot forward. A body-kit hid the wheels, the front spoiler hanging so close to the road that it could have cleared snow. Inside the car, a massive drum thudded away. Steegman could feel Renée’s fear, the way she hesitated to take that step onto the pavement.

This was what made their quiet street, no more than one hundred and fifty metres in length, so dangerous. Unhindered by other road users, tempted by the slope, drivers went hurtling downhill. At first, Steegman had wanted to run after the reckless morons and teach them a lesson, like Garp in the film adaptation of the book. But Garp was a wrestler. Steegman couldn’t remember now if he actually used physical violence. But every idiot who raced through this residential area filled him with visions of frenzied violence. He dragged them out of the car, ordered them to stand up straight while he thumped them in the face a few times with his bare fist. He offered no explanation to the wailing boy racers. When they were lying on the ground, bleeding, barely conscious, he turned his back on them and went home. No witnesses dared to speak to him or try to stop him. Most of them nodded their approval.

But Steegman had never hit anyone in the face. He’d always avoided conflict, his sense of self-preservation getting the better of his fury. So he just gave the speed demons his filthiest look from a distance. Standing there on the pavement, it was the best he could come up with. Making gestures would only provoke aggression. He gave them the dirtiest look that a university-educated father with a comfortable career could summon up. At best, his furious gaze bounced off the windscreen like a pebble, making the driver blink. But usually it was more like a blossom petal or a dandelion seed, caught on the breeze, skirting the entire length of the car without ever touching it.

All that could be seen sticking up above the steering wheel was the long peak of a cap. The driver stared out like a toddler peeking over the edge of a bathtub, jolted around by every little irregularity in the road surface.

As this pandemonium roared past them, Steegman instinctively squeezed Renée’s hand. Thirty metres down the road, the little car had to brake hard to avoid being launched into space by the raised crossing. The exhaust boomed again, a flame shooting out of the pipe.

“That car’s on fire.”

“No, sweetheart. It just looks like it. Look, it’s already stopped.”

“Why has it stopped?”

“Yes, it’s a shame, isn’t it?”

“Why?”

He cast a glance at the nearby houses to see if any windows were open. But there was still enough noise, from the engine, from the drum, to drown out his words. What exactly did he think anyone was going to catch him doing, anyway?

“If the car was still burning, the red fire engine would have to come and put out the flames.”

Irritation at the silly tone of voice he was using to speak to her. It was false jollity, it was patronising, the way you were supposed to speak to children, intended for the ears of anyone who might be listening.

“Why?”

That vacant, automatic “why” – any attempts to answer it we. . .