Read Comedy in a Minor Key for Free Online Page B

a second upstairs and strained to listen. The milkman? No, he didn’t come until around noon. A woman’s voice! It must be—he heard laughter and bright voices—it must be—and suddenly the cry of a child’s voice between the others, so it must be little Jaap with his mother. Good people, Marie had said, during a friendly hour with him when she had let him in on something about her circle of acquaintances. Good people, but a little simple. Be careful, very careful. Luckily they never stayed long.
    Later, hidden behind his curtain, he saw little bowlegged Jaap across the front garden, his mother following behind him while still turned around to talk toMarie, who stayed in the door to the house. The garden gate was open. Look at that! A horse-drawn wagon! But little Jaapje stayed standing on the threshold and waited.
    “Mama, Mama!” he yelled. “Tum!” And he could talk too! He’d really come a long way in the last six months.
    “He’s calling me to come, I have to go,” said Mama, proudly. “Bye, Marie!”
    When they were gone, Marie called him downstairs. “Would you like to dry the dishes with me for a change?”
    “I’d like that, Marie.”
    He stood downstairs in the kitchen, carefully took the plates and cups in his left hand, and wiped them all around with his right, which held a cloth all crumpled up.
    “You don’t need to press so hard, Nico. Like this . . . softer . . .”
    The next time it went better. Marie could wash so fast that Nico fell behind with the drying. Plates, cups, and pots piled up on the green rubber mat.
    “Slower, slower, Marie, I can’t keep up.”
    Marie laughed. She just did it automatically; it was as if the plates and bowls flew from the boiling sink water onto the table. “Wim is totally at his wit’s end when he helps me,” she said. “He says he gets dizzy just watching.” She held the big aluminum pot for boiling potatoes in the water, turned it all around so that little sprays ofwater fell on the stone counter and into the basin, while working on the inside of the pot with a wire mesh scrubber. “You can’t buy what you need to clean pots with anymore. It takes twice as long. You can feel the war even in the kitchen, whether the pot is full or empty. Always the same old story.”
    She poured the dishwater out and grabbed a cloth to wipe off the basin and clean out the drain. Then she helped him dry the rest of the dishes. “And then I’ll make us a cup of coffee.”
    A sojourn downstairs like this was like a trip to another country.
    One time he went downstairs himself, without thinking about it, when he smelled burned milk in his room and throughout the house. Marie must have gone out to get something; she must have been planning to come right back and had put the milk on the stove in the meantime. The smell was getting stronger every second.
    When he walked into the kitchen he ran into Marie at the stove. Nico was startled. “Oh, I thought . . .”
    “What’s wrong, Nico?” It sounded a little surprised, but still perfectly friendly.
    “The milk smelled so strong.”
    Then the doorbell rang and Marie went to answer the door. Nico stayed behind in the kitchen. The burned milk had boiled away into a dark brown crust on the black stovetop.
    The fishmonger stood outside with a big woven basket full of his fresh catch on the stoop in front of him. Arare opportunity! She always let him into the kitchen, where he cleaned the fish. Marie couldn’t send him away, he would never come back again. And they all liked to eat fish. But now Nico was in the kitchen.
    Marie was confused and left the fishmonger standing there, ran back into the kitchen, disappeared behind the closed door, and said in a whisper, a little indignant, “The fisherman, Nico—but where can you go? Shhh, keep quiet. Your voice—” Nico stood pressed against the kitchen table and looked at Marie, full of distress. What should he do? Go out to the back garden? He couldn’t do that