Sleepless Summer. Bram Dehouck

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ is purely coincidental.

      Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is available

      ISBN Trade paperback 978-1-64286-016-0

      ISBN E-book 978-1-64286-035-1

      First published as Een zomer zonder slaap in the Netherlands in 2011 by De Geus

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Twitter: @WorldEdBooks

      Facebook: WorldEditionsInternationalPublishing

       www.worldeditions.org

      -

      With thanks to Femke Beerten, Sarah Lingier and Dorothee Cappelle

      -

      Drinking in the morning sun

      Blinking in the morning sun

      Shaking off the heavy one

      Heavy like a loaded gun

      What made me behave that way?

      (‘ONE DAY LIKE THIS’—ELBOW)

      -

      THE DRAMA IN Blaashoek began as all great dramas do: with a trifle.

      Immediately following the tragic events, sociologists and psychologists scrambled to pinpoint the cause of this human cataclysm. Loneliness, cried one. Alienation, bellowed the next. Small-town insularity, opined the third. It was only a matter of time before a fourth would come up with inbreeding.

      It was much simpler.

      The town’s demise was brought on by a well-meant project supported by statistics, spreadsheets, measurements and calculations. No one saw it coming. No one could have known.

      The root of it all was an eighty-four-word item in the local newspaper:

      FIRST WIND FARM IN BLAASHOEK

      The province and municipality have licensed alternative energy provider Windelectrix to erect ten wind turbines along the Blaashoek Canal, on the outskirts of the town of Blaashoek. Windelectrix hopes to complete the construction of Belgium’s first wind farm before the summer. ‘Our surveys have indicated this as the most suitable location,’ according to chief engineer Didier Deroo. ‘It is not only the optimal site for generating wind energy, but the chance of causing a nuisance or disturbance is minimal.’

      Perhaps the word ‘minimal’ should have alarmed a few people. But it did not. According to some survivors, the trail could be traced back to the butcher Herman Bracke. In fact, everyone’s troubles started more or less at the same time, but for the sake of convenience let us begin with the butcher.

      -

      1 | Monday

      Herman Bracke lay staring at the window. The orange light that shone through the pinholes in the metal roller shutters danced to the rhythm of his breathing. Herman looked from the window to the black of the ceiling, not pure black but a collage of dark specks. He closed his eyes in an attempt to get the specks to amalgamate into the black hole into which he hoped to sink, but his exhausted brain conjured up another image, the bane of the insomniac. Herman Bracke saw a sheep.

      Mutton is underrated meat, Herman thought. He himself preferred it to the far-too-young beefsteaks that were so popular lately. Where were the days when beef was allowed to age properly and did not have to be baby-pink in order to sell?

      He was now wide awake.

      Herman sighed. He turned over. The orange specks left a vague blue impression behind his eyelids. They no longer danced. They hummed. Like flies around a turd.

      They had been humming for five nights now.

      It all seemed so optimistic last week, when the ten Windelectrix turbines officially went operational. There had been a mass migration from the big city and the surrounding villages for the inaugural festivities. The turbines towered over Blaashoek like enormous idols. Speeches by the mayor and the minister fluttered away in the wind that from that day onward would provide Blaashoek with power. The mayor’s ego did not stand a chance against the whipping blades. They hogged all the attention, impressive as the rotors of invisible airships.

      Only Herman’s sausage stand equaled the success of the turbines. Craning their necks made people hungry, and soon enough the crowd thronged his kiosk. Not only the sausages did well that late June evening: Herman’s famous pâté sandwiches were gobbled up too. Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté, that was the name of his pride and joy, although the locals called it ‘summer pâté’. What they called the delicacy did not concern him much; all that interested him were the compliments it received—such a refreshing pâté, how do you do it?—and his wife Claire particularly enjoyed the rewards the specialty of the house brought: the trip to Spain, the swanky Audi and the landscape pond they had had installed last year in the garden. They could afford a city break just from that evening’s profits alone.

      The turbines were a blessing for Blaashoek, Herman thought, as the mayor, himself the beefy type, bellowed with laughter above the crowd. Herman imagined the thousands of tourists the hypnotizing blades would draw. Thousands of tourists who would work up an appetite from peering upward. Thousands of tourists who would relish Bracke’s Blaashoek Pâté.

      But even then Herman was disquieted by a menace he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘You look like you’re afraid the thing’ll come crashing down on your head,’ the mayor had laughed, his face swollen from years of consuming beer, cheap champagne and savory snacks, while Herman handed him a napkin to wipe mustard off his chin.

      Herman simply nodded and turned his gaze back up toward the imperturbably rotating turbine. Its dizzying height hurt his neck, and the reflection of the evening sun on the blades made his eyes itch. He had to admit he was overcome with the absurd fear that the colossus might indeed snap off. He saw the blades sag forward and then come thundering down with a metallic shriek he recalled from the film Titanic. There was no time to scream as they spun downward like maple-tree whirlybirds and obliterated dozens of lives in one fell swoop. Blood and pus spattered from the mayor’s cleaved body like the mustard from the bun he still held in his hand.

      ‘How ’bout it?’ The rudely worded order shook Herman from his daydream, and he dutifully speared a sausage. ‘Cool, huh?’ the young man said, nodding upward, as he walked off. Herman nodded back. The blades were still firmly attached to their shaft. What an idiot he was.

      When he lay in bed that night, satisfied at having sold every last sausage and slice of pâté, he thought at first there was something wrong with the refrigeration unit.

      ‘Do you hear that?’ he asked Claire, who had rolled herself up in the bed sheet.

      ‘Don’earathing’, she mumbled.

      He СКАЧАТЬ