By Pieter Thomassen

When mummy has to have an operation on her womb, Axel is allowed to stay with mummy’s best friend Bea Buitendijk. Her five children are very formal towards their parents, and to Axel’s amazement address them as ‘father’ and ‘mother’. Breakfast is porridge with a knob of butter and dinner consists of overcooked purslane. A deferentially whispered, ‘Father, can you pass on the spuds?’ is the sign for Axel to inconspicuously shift his vegetables into the man-high staghorn fern.
      After pudding and prayer, they play football in the church square until the sultry dusk is nothing but a resonating box of children’s voices. In St Anne chapel light still wavers. By the light of three devotional candles, Axel watches a woman prostrating in front of the saint and shouting: ‘Anne, Anne, give me a man.’
      In the boys’ bedroom of the Buitendijk family, Axel and Bas stroke each other’s erections. Under his duvet, Bas fantasises about a derelict house in which he slowly disrobes and tortures the lovely Manon. That same night, Axel dreams that he pees on his parent’s loo, but when he spots the flushed face of Bea Buitendijk through his eyelashes, carpet beater to hand, he realizes that he can’t escape getting house arrest for bedwetting.

© Pieter Thomassen
© Translation Holland Park Press

Axel 20 – Axel 19 – Axel 18 – Axel 17 – Axel 16 – Axel 15 – Axel 14 – Axel 13 – Axel 12 – Axel 11 – Axel 10 – Axel 9 – Axel 8 – Axel 7 – Axel 6 – Axel 5 – Axel 4 – Axel 3 – Axel 2 – Axel 1