The Mussel Feast Read Online Free PDF Page B

good at everything he did; my father was a good sportsman and scientist, but music, which my brother may have veered towards, was not important; my father would have been pained by such effeminacy in his only son, such daydreaming makes his heart bleed and spoils his mood.
    We suddenly felt utterly helpless and awkward and didn’t know what to do. My mother stood up; we’re sitting here in the dark, she said, switching the light on. I can’t see those revolting things any more, she said, instead of her usual, I don’t care for them much; I can’t see those revolting things any more, and they did look disgusting, the mussels, they gleam when they’re freshly cooked, but now they’d dried up and were all wrinkly. They also seemed darker; yellow with green edging and the shells wide open offered an unpleasant sight. I’m feeling bilious, my mother said, and this made complete sense to me even though I didn’t know exactly what bilious meant; my mother knew, she was forever suffering from bilious complaints. And we glared at the mussels until my mother fetched from the fridge the wine meant for that evening’s celebration. It was a
Spätlese,
a special one; we always drank
Spätlese
on special occasions, and on really special occasions we drank sweet ice wine. The more a wine tastes of liqueur the better quality it is, and this
Spätlese
was bound to be very expensive and high quality, in fact we ought not to have been drinking it before my father arrived home, but we couldn’t spend the whole evening staring at the vile mussels, with my mother feeling bilious. She opened the wine and we felt terribly insubordinate. We sat around the dead mussels as if part of some conspiracy and drank father’s second-best wine without him, gradually realizing that the mood had been spoiled for all of us; my brother said, this sticky stuff, is this what he considers to be high quality. We couldn’t help laughing at my brother’s grim expression, and he and I drank as quickly as our mother, only she gets tipsy more quickly; our helplessness and anxiety faded away, and at that point we were fairly sure that he’d had a car accident because he still hadn’t come home. As we drank the
Spätlese
our mood became ever more peculiar; we normally drank tea and milk in the evenings, only my father drank beer and sometimes cognac. He always drank cognac while drawing his logical conclusions, a fact we discovered by chance that evening when my brother said, as he fetched the glasses, I loathe that wall unit in the living room, he always starts by pouring himself a cognac from the bar in the wall unit, and then he gets going. He behaved in exactly the same way with me; he’d always go to the bar – the name he gave to the collection of bottles in the middle of the wall unit – and pour himself a cognac before he started asking questions and drawing logical conclusions. My brother couldn’t have known that he did the same with me, and I couldn’t have known that he did the same with my brother, as he always locked the living-room door and put the key in his pocket; nor could my mother have known, for she was in the hall the whole time. Mum couldn’t stand the wall unit, either, in her case because it was new-old German style, and her taste was altogether different, not so solid or weighty, but my father didn’t allow them to buy cheap furniture any more. My mother also found the wall unit too dark, she would have preferred it to be a little lighter, a little more friendly-looking, she said, but of course she never mentioned this to my father. He was extremely assured in his taste; he didn’t like his taste being questioned. I couldn’t bear the wall unit, as I told them that evening, due to my head having been smashed against it on a number of occasions; the handles are positively lethal, I said. The drawer handles were made of turned oak, and protruded dangerously, my mother often banged her knee on them while cleaning; the keys in