Shutterspeed by Erwin Mortier Read Free Book Online

an Alderweireldt on the team the heavens will be all right. What do you say, Joris, do you think you could do it?’
    I hunched my shoulders. Miss van Vooren’s wheedling tone put me on my guard. I had expected to be made to wait while she took a scrap of paper and made a list of what she needed from the shop. This invariably meant thinking long and hard over each item.
    She would suddenly look up from her list and tell me rather sharply not to forget the tomato sauce. She always needed one tin of concentrated tomato purée, which was such a staple ingredient among all the various others – limp fillets of chicken breast, tiny portions of pale liver pâté or smidgins of low-fat cheese at which, Uncle said, even a mouse would turn up its nose – that I often simply forgot to add it to her shopping basket.
    What on earth did she need it for? I pictured her sitting in the burble of the television in the evening, where, instead of having a biscuit or a slice of cake with her mug of weak tea, she would be spooning the tomato purée into her mouth straight from the tin, looking just as gleefulas I caught Aunt looking at breakfast sometimes, when she licked her finger after scraping it around a practically empty pear treacle jar.
    ‘It’s far too good, and too dear, to let it go to waste,’ she would say to excuse her weakness, but that was nothing compared to Miss van Vooren’s celebration of the joys of scrimping.
    Miss van Vooren hoarded insufficiency. She bought minute quantities of food, regardless of type. She seemed determined to supply herself with a never-ending reservoir of disappointment, an unremitting hunger for more, and as a result of this subtle form of self-chastisement her tough, bony frame was visited by an incredible number of maladies. It was as though the different parts of her body were constantly engaged in getting their own back on the purity of her soul. But all this suffering only contributed to Miss van Vooren’s complacency and pride.
    There were times when she was incapable of keeping her wealth of afflictions to herself. Then she would sail into the shop, one of her famous migraines ablaze like a swarm of fireflies around the flossy hair at her temples. Everyone knew what was up immediately.
    At such times she usually wore very dark sunglasses, which magically transformed her into a wasp or a horsefly. Even before she had shut the shop door behind her she would be giving stiff little waves of the hand to say that she was in no mood for any palaver.
    Uncle Werner knew exactly what to do. He put on a serious face like a mask tied with elastic round his ears,leaned over the counter and enquired: ‘Had a bad night then, Rosa?’
    ‘Oooh, dreadful,’ was the likely answer. If there had been a hailstorm overnight she would be sure to add: ‘It was just as if I could feel the stones pelting right through my forehead.’
    I was expecting her to have had one of her bad nights, spent in hellish pain as per usual, but that morning she looked remarkably brisk. She repeated her question about me helping to carry the canopy, making it sound like a great privilege.
    ‘There is one condition, though,’ she added, crinkling her cheeks: ‘you have to be a virgin. I’m sure you know what I mean. But that won’t be a problem, will it now?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I stammered. ‘I’ll ask at home.’
    ‘Right then, no problems on that score,’ she said with a secretive chuckle. ‘You’ll earn ten francs for your trouble, but I wouldn’t go wasting all that nice money at the fair if I were you.’
     
    When I returned home Aunt asked me how I had got on.
    ‘She asked if I was a virgin,’ I replied.
    Uncle Werner ducked beneath the counter to hide his laughter, but I was left with a tight feeling in my stomach for the rest of the day.
    I was drawn to Miss van Vooren as to the cool blackness of a long-dead star whose gravity is impossible to resist. The light that so unmistakably beamed from her