Can't you ever remember anything, for god's sake!") but also that, as he grew older, the available supports and footholds needed for a trip to the underworld of the past were beginning to disappear. That Aunt Therese had exchanged her tangible flesh for the blurred shadow which from time to time roamed through a dimly lit corridor of his brain was bad enough, as was the fact that the driver of the white Lincoln convertible had been killed in a crash together with the uncle who belonged to Aunt Therese. But worse than this was that the lodging house in which Inni had spent the first few years of his adult life had sunk without trace, together with his memories, into the hole from which would rise a clutch of eight service flats and which had sucked even the hydrangeas, chestnuts, larches, rhododendrons, and jasmines down into the depths from which nothing ever returns.
Nothing?
Those large, decaying houses, built once upon a time by former colonials, were themselves repositories of memories from an equally indisputably decayed era. They bore such names as Terang-Tenang or Madura, and the skinny, nervous, romantic Inni of those days could, especially in the soft fragrance of a summer evening, imagine himself to be living on a plantation somewhere near Bandzung, an impression strengthened further by the presence of colonial old timers who had their lodgings in that same, ridiculously large house. The smells of tropical food wafted through the villa, and there was a shuffling of slow slippers on the rush mats in the corridor, tongue clicking, and high, soft, strangely drawling voices saying things he did not understand but which he associated with books he had read by Couperus, Daum, and Dermout.
He hated his photographs from those days, not so much the ones in which he appeared together with other people — everyone looked equally ridiculous in those — no, the ones in which the attention could not be diverted from the person he had obviously been. He was on his own, posing, grim, imitating some statue and at the same time seeking the support of a tree, a gate, or any object that would presently occupy at least part of the picture so that he would not have to fill it all by himself. For what would such a photograph show? Someone so thin that he had been rejected for military service and, what was worse, who dared not therefore undress on a beach, someone who had been expelled from four different high schools and had quarrelled with his guardian so that the allowance his grandmother had so generously agreed to pay him had been stopped, someone who lost himself in the most desperate infatuations and spent his days in an office to be able to pay for his lodgings. A person of minimal independence.
This was how it must have been, more or less: he was sitting in his room when his landlord's Indonesian voice called him from the corridor.
"Misterr Wintrrop, therr is a lady here to see you."
A moment later she was standing in his room, which was difficult enough, because it was really too cramped for two people and she was almost two all by herself.
"I am your Aunt Therese," she said.
"You are a real Wintrop," she said.
She edged past him, briefly enveloping him in a soft, musklike scent, and looked out of the window. She did not like what she saw. Her next utterances did not so much come in a logical sequence but as a staccato run, all in the same tone. "He reads books. How small it is in here. I have heard about you. You can't turn your backside in here. My God, this place makes me feel gloomy. Has anybody ever told you about me? We'll go for a drive. I'll introduce you to someone who writes books." She said writes with such emphasis that it was clear she regarded this as an activity far superior to reading.
It was Saturday afternoon, and springtime. Later he reflected that she never asked him if he wanted to come. They simply went, or rather, she breezed down the stairs, flew through the garden as if it were a hostile
Nothing?
Those large, decaying houses, built once upon a time by former colonials, were themselves repositories of memories from an equally indisputably decayed era. They bore such names as Terang-Tenang or Madura, and the skinny, nervous, romantic Inni of those days could, especially in the soft fragrance of a summer evening, imagine himself to be living on a plantation somewhere near Bandzung, an impression strengthened further by the presence of colonial old timers who had their lodgings in that same, ridiculously large house. The smells of tropical food wafted through the villa, and there was a shuffling of slow slippers on the rush mats in the corridor, tongue clicking, and high, soft, strangely drawling voices saying things he did not understand but which he associated with books he had read by Couperus, Daum, and Dermout.
He hated his photographs from those days, not so much the ones in which he appeared together with other people — everyone looked equally ridiculous in those — no, the ones in which the attention could not be diverted from the person he had obviously been. He was on his own, posing, grim, imitating some statue and at the same time seeking the support of a tree, a gate, or any object that would presently occupy at least part of the picture so that he would not have to fill it all by himself. For what would such a photograph show? Someone so thin that he had been rejected for military service and, what was worse, who dared not therefore undress on a beach, someone who had been expelled from four different high schools and had quarrelled with his guardian so that the allowance his grandmother had so generously agreed to pay him had been stopped, someone who lost himself in the most desperate infatuations and spent his days in an office to be able to pay for his lodgings. A person of minimal independence.
This was how it must have been, more or less: he was sitting in his room when his landlord's Indonesian voice called him from the corridor.
"Misterr Wintrrop, therr is a lady here to see you."
A moment later she was standing in his room, which was difficult enough, because it was really too cramped for two people and she was almost two all by herself.
"I am your Aunt Therese," she said.
"You are a real Wintrop," she said.
She edged past him, briefly enveloping him in a soft, musklike scent, and looked out of the window. She did not like what she saw. Her next utterances did not so much come in a logical sequence but as a staccato run, all in the same tone. "He reads books. How small it is in here. I have heard about you. You can't turn your backside in here. My God, this place makes me feel gloomy. Has anybody ever told you about me? We'll go for a drive. I'll introduce you to someone who writes books." She said writes with such emphasis that it was clear she regarded this as an activity far superior to reading.
It was Saturday afternoon, and springtime. Later he reflected that she never asked him if he wanted to come. They simply went, or rather, she breezed down the stairs, flew through the garden as if it were a hostile