The Mussel Feast Read Online Free PDF Page A

packing, and there were eight eggs, two each, but no salt as a proper family should have with them on holiday; this is the end, we all thought.
    We didn’t watch the news that evening, either; it had gone eight o’clock and nobody thought of switching on the television. We sat at the table with an eerie sensation because things weren’t normal. Had we turned on the television we’d just have been pretending; the evening had stopped being normal long before then, but it became even less normal; the abnormal situation that existed shortly after eight o’clock – with their low specific-heat capacity the mussels had long gone cold – was made even more abnormal by our failure to watch the news as usual; we intensified the abnormality in whichever way we could.
    And so the mood turned sour and toxic, which is why all of sudden I said out loud what up till then I’d been quietly thinking to myself: he really knows how to spoil the mood. This abnormality, you see, had taken me right out of the celebratory mood we had forced ourselves into; only now did I realize I hadn’t been in that mood spontaneously, I’d put it on like a dress because we had to stop letting our hair down in preparation for my father’s return; and then my mother said, if he came now we would really spoil his mood because we’re not being celebratory. Now all three of us had said it, we were no longer worried that one of us might blab to my father later; and my brother said, we always spoil his mood anyway, which was true, because my father’s mood was completely spoiled whenever he heard that my brother had received another Four at school; I often lied and unfortunately he often found out that I’d lied, and that he couldn’t abide. Having to get to the bottom of the truth in the evenings – even if he could see and enjoy the beauty of logical conclusions – as well as meting out punishments and restoring order in his family, spoiled my father’s mood until long after the news. We said we’d ruined his whole life, and he said it too, this endless disappointment with my family is ruining my life; his family represented nothing but a disappointment to him, especially his children; but my mother, too, must have been a continual disappointment. She may have acted all jolly at half past five, but just before she’d dash into the bathroom to backcomb her hair; my mother’s hair is fine and soft and, despite the perm, her hair collapses when she’s exhausted and it looks sad. She wasn’t particularly good at backcombing because backcombing didn’t interest her; she didn’t think you needed a backcombed hairdo to look beautiful, and sometimes she tried to fix her hair with hairspray, but to no avail, her hairdo collapsed regardless. She’d quickly put on some lipstick, too, and as it had to happen so quickly, when she opened the door and my father came in she’d often have lipstick on her teeth, and the sight spoiled my father’s mood altogether, because the ladies in his office, his secretary for example, were pure eye-candy. One weekend he stood at the window and tears came to his eyes when he saw boys playing football outside; my father had played football, too, as a boy; in fact he played it very well, everything my father did he did very well. So he saw the boys playing, my brother was playing with them, but my brother was not very good at football; actually he just stood on the side looking awkward and clumsy, hoping that the others would forget he was there and not pass to him. Sometimes he pretended to run a bit in the wrong direction, to avoid looking as if he was rooted to the sidelines, and my father stood at the window, behind the dining-room curtain, and he saw how awkward and clumsy my brother was, and how dreadfully afraid of the ball he was, and my father even said, he’s running away from the ball, and tears came to his eyes; that’s supposed to be my son, he said to my mother, that’s really the biggest disappointment.