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Europe is burning, while we casually order another drink. Do we defend our freedoms or our appetite? On the clash of religious fanaticism and freedom, from whatever.

Terror isn’t blind, in fact, it has its sights set on what the West has built. Europe shakes and trembles, feels suddenly transported by a revival of religious fanaticism back to an age that seemed to have been put to bed forever.

Did we feed those monsters ourselves? The urgent need for answers and solutions meets no response. Despite all that impotence we can perhaps reply to the horror by attacking with artistic beauty, attacking with literature. Let the ink flow, because there too danger threatens.

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Dimitri Verhulst

Dimitri Verhulst (1972) has emerged as one of the great European writers of the day. He has published 19 books, his work has been filmed and adapted for the stage and has come out in 25 countries. Many of his books have won literary prizes, including the Gouden Uil Audience Prize and the Libris Literary Prize. Verhulst writes novels, stories, novellas, poetry and plays.

His classic, The Misfortunates, sold 400,000 copies; 732,000 copies of his 2015 Book Week gift De zomer hou je ook niet tegen found their way to his readers. The autumn of 2016 sees the publication of Het leven gezien van beneden and Spoo Pee Doo, two books both motivated by the same sense of urgency. In the spring of 2017, Verhulst presents the new VPRO travel series featuring key locations relating to European culture, Made in Europe.

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Dimitri Verhulst

Spoo Pee Doo

Translated by Sam A. Herman

Uitgeverij Atlas Contact

Amsterdam/Antwerpen

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Copyright © 2016 Dimitri Verhulst

Designed by Bart Desnerck

Photography Michiel Hendryckx

E-book Suzan Beijer

ISBN 978 90 254 5054 0

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Spoo Pee Doo

She says, I probably won’t see you before breakfast?, and you answer that you don’t imagine that it’ll be late this evening because you’re tired, which is true, and you have a feeling that you won’t see many people you know, that it’s the end of the month and most people are low on cash so they have to cut down on going out. People have been celebrating holidays, Saint Hippolytus, Saint Hula-Hoop, barbeques, street parties and all that sort of thing, they’ve had plenty to eat and more than enough to drink, no one’s really in the mood, and anyway the end of the year is just around the corner, and then they’ll have to stuff themselves again, pralines and ethically fried duck liver and assorted calorie bombs, the end of the year when the income tax forms land on the doormat with a heavy thud. You manage to scrape so many reasons together why you won’t be late, but the question is whether you believe it yourself. She clearly doesn’t believe a word of it. Sure, Dirk just sent a text to say that Lee was back in the country and staying with him for the weekend, and that they’re sitting outside at The Marree Man, of course, The Marree Man, if Dirk is at a café then ten to one it’s at The Marree Man, and he was wondering whether you fancied a drink. Your girlfriend doesn’t know Lee but that doesn’t really matter, no one remembers Lee. That’s the way it goes, life, even for icons. And that’s fine. In the end, darkness settles over everyone and everything. Lee Who? The guy who exhibited his drawings last year at that gallery on Ajuinlei, when the show opened five people and a stray dog turned up. Yes. Lee. Him. She remembers, she thought those drawings were awful. Fine, you don’t think you won’t be back until morning. One drink, maybe two, five at most, and then home. But she knows morning will come and that your side of the bed will still be cold. That just as she’s waking up you’ll be slipping a couple of coins into the fist of some burly bouncer as you step out of the bar, surprised that it’s already light. Your stomach will scream at you for something oily, and ignoring that the night is irrevocably over and all the chip shops are shut, you’ll wander the streets in search of fries and a dollop of mayonnaise and a hot dog. Julien’s will be closed, and if the shutters are drawn at Julien’s chippy you can be sure there’s not another hot dog to be had in the city, the turn of Julien’s key has all the accuracy of an atomic clock, the night comes to a grateful end in his rubbish bin full of chip bags and plastic forks. But even then you’ll carry on obstinately to Thingummy, whose name escapes you, the proud owner of the vilest chip shop in the country, namely the Vleeshuis. The man’s hygiene is so abominable he probably fries his spuds in the grease from his own armpits, and his fries are, guess what, absolutely inedible, even the pigeons refuse to drill their beaks into the chips that drop from his customers’ drunken mouths, yet needs must and mankind is capable of the strangest extremes, and chips from Thingummy are just one of those things. But even Thingummy will be shut, and growling and grumbling you’ll trot home hungrily, passing a whole assortment of people staring at you disapprovingly out of their successful lives because you, well yes why, you don’t really know why. Naturally you’ll imagine that your footwork is well under control. And no one can tell that you’ve soaked up a bucketful of gin. You think. And it’s lucky you live in the centre of town, within walking distance of everything, because it would be entirely in character for you to believe that your mind is completely clear, clear for thought and clear for action, and entirely capable of driving a car. And even though it may be good for the species that every now and then someone gets run over, you’re happy the task doesn’t fall to you. It doesn’t bear thinking about. In fact it’s usually the wrong people who get run over, there’s not a scrap of justice in a car wheel. So you carry straight on, at least you think so. While the prim and proper of the world stare disdainfully, you can’t fool them, they can tell from three miles off that you haven’t been anywhere near your pyjamas all night. In your head, the beat still thumps away relentlessly, music by Us3, songs like Tukka Yoots Riddim, You Can’t Hold Me Down, and, of course, of course, Cantaloop, that marvellous homage to the incomparable Herbie Hancock. You’d be dancing through the streets if it didn’t leave you feeling guilty towards all those people with their successful lives, a feeling they want you to have because for them the day has already started in earnest, they have work to do, children to raise, that too, and shopping to do, shoes to try on, coupons to cut out and to spend, and because you and your rubbery legs and your watery eyes are a painful reminder to them that there’s an alternative to all that happiness of theirs. And so you’ll get home, pale from hunger and a dryness already tickling your throat. Your girlfriend will be awake, has been for a while already, the smell of fresh toast gone from the kitchen, a load of clean laundry already hanging out to dry, and she’ll say, It wasn’t going to be a late night, or did I miss something? No man has an answer to a question like that. Yes, it wasn’t going to be a late night, sorry. You’ll want to fry yourself an omelette. Eggs laid by philanthropic hens for midnight ravens. Eggs absorb the alcohol-induced toxins in the body although there’s the disadvantage that they burden the already overburdened liver. Canned tuna is another excellent post-alcoholic food. But tuna are struggling in the wild. Things aren’t looking good for tuna, either. So you don’t buy tuna anymore, your own piddling contribution to mother nature. Soap for your conscience. And when you open the fridge you’ll find there are no eggs left in the house. No soft drinks either. Because it never rains but it pours. A glass of grapefruit juice would have been perfect, it would have eased your dehydrated brain. You had all night to drink grapefruit juice, till you burst, but you never ordered a single glass. So you’ll go to bed hungry and thirsty. You’ll wish you had something nice to say to your girlfriend, words that would express your infinite love for her, words to comfort her and to reassure, because she fears the worst for you. It all seems to be going wrong, a blind bat could see that. Only last week Emmy warned you to watch out you didn’t end up like Luke, that one day they would find you in the morning, dead, the light switched off, without a sound, without a noise, no theatre, no drama, just dead. Your organs won’t keep cleaning your insides indefinitely, they get tired. You were talking about death, because that’s what every conversation eventually comes round to, everything leads there, not to Rome, like some people say, but to death, and you said that you didn’t want to be cremated when it was your clock’s turn to stop ticking. Cremation was too quick for you. You’re a laggard, and you want to decompose at leisure, lying comfortably on your back, rotting away peacefully. And she had added that you had probably already started to decompose. So you see, people have begun to notice your wild lifestyle. You hardly eat, which is not necessarily a bad thing, you never were a big eater, the skinniest beanpole in your class, year after year, but the combination is lethal when you also hit the bottle and you smoke. You cling to your cigarettes as if they were oxygen tanks. No, no one will tell you straight to your face that you have a drinking problem. Actually, during the day you only drink coffee. You wouldn’t even be able to drink alcohol during the day. But in the evening, lately there’s always some reason to raise a glass, a birthday here, an exhibition opening there, a party somewhere else, and then there’s no stopping you. An unguided missile. You don’t have a drinking problem, keep repeating that mantra to yourself, old boy. No drinking problem. None. But you’re a hair’s breadth away. Say something to that beautiful girlfriend of yours. Everything’s fine. It won’t become a habit. You won’t drink tomorrow. The top’s back on the bottle. And you’ve had enough of those cigarettes too. She even more. Because your breath stinks, your mouth is like a cemetery full of dead worms, your gob tastes of wet rags and even wetter mud, it’s no fun having to kiss you. Except maybe for a non-smoker. Which she’s not. She hears you coughing and clearing your throat every morning. She tolerates your stained fingers inside her when you make love. And she fears, with reason, that you’ll be decomposing peacefully on your back faster than you think. That rattling in your rib cage may well be cancer. It’s possible. Could be. But you don’t go to the doctor. Doctors are for minor symptoms, not for diseases. There’s an acupuncturist in town who studied in China, where acupuncture isn’t called acupuncture, it’s pinyin. For a steep fee which isn’t covered by insurance, the guy will stick a couple of titanium needles in your ear and your desire for nicotine instantly evaporates. Abracadabra. You’re going to see that guy. Soon. Promised. And maybe he can pinyin his needles in some other bit of your anatomy, to stop that constant drinking of yours. Say it. And then crawl into bed, on her side which is still a little bit warm and smells of her. Oh my god, you love her so, yet you’re gambling her away like nothing.

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I probably won’t see you before breakfast, she says, she’s saying it rather than asking, and you reply as you so often have, in all honesty. What’s this wanderlust, why do you have to go out again? Don’t say that there are so many different places and you want to have gone to them all. Most of humanity is hardly worth the snot up their nose, you rarely derive any pleasure from meeting specimens of your own kind. Dogs, you can get on with them. And cats too, actually. But without drink, most people are hard to bear, teetotallers know that all too well, they radiate tedium with a passion. And that’ll be the joke later at the bar, that you’ll be sitting there with a load of other people who are basically also drowning their misanthropy in drink. All the misanthropes happily together. There are thousands of reasons to stay home. To have that one drink with Dirk and Lee and then come straight back. Look at that girl, look at that woman, she’s the most beautiful child in the universe and by some miracle she is head-over-heels in love with you. How often have you looked at her and thought, How did I do that, how did I manage to persuade that girl to fall in love with me? It would be so easy to stay at home tonight. You could play scrabble, for example, it’s been a long time now you think of it, determined to affectionately and humiliatingly demolish her. It would have to be more than a triple word bonus, it would have to be a triple word bonus with top letters. With an x or a q or a z. Or at least two of those letters in the same word. Bezique. Equinox. Quetzal. And then throw in a j: jukebox. Or read, sitting together on the sofa. When one chuckles the other asking why. Reading passages to each other. Or watch a film, by Ettore Scola. Or Pasolini, and then go upstairs, hot as mustard, and make love. Or you could lie on the sofa listening adoringly as she plays Chopin. After all you still love her, really, it comes in waves, but when she plays Chopin you don’t know what to do with yourself. Then you might do something stupid like go over to the piano yourself. You can’t really play, but you like to try. Much of the misery in this world is down to people who want to do stuff they are completely incapable of doing. And that’s you at the piano, you play like a Muppet, pling-pling-plong, I fell into the ocean, plong, when you became my wife, plong, I gave it all against the sea, pling, to have a better life