Sleepless Summer. Bram Dehouck
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not doing anyone any harm, Magda.’
‘Maybe not, but he’s not doing anyone any good either.’
She marched off to the kitchen and added, from the stove: ‘except the locksmith’.
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Jan Lietaer stared at the garden. He saw the shadows and was repulsed by the sight of them. Then he walked to the living room and stood in front of his gun cabinet, an entirely out-of-place metal monstrosity. Catherine frequently cursed it, but Jan loved it, and loved its contents even more. He opened the cabinet, took a deep whiff of its scent and stroked the guns. The Winchester 70 Featherweight, the Beretta Silver Pigeon III, and his favorites: the fantastic Browning B525 Hunter Elite and his grandfather’s old Sauer. All the way down at the bottom lay the crown jewel. Not a hunting rifle, but the Remington Rand M1911A1, a pistol given to him by his father, who had bought it (so he said) from an American soldier right after Liberation. The soldier had shot it just three times—and not killed anyone. Jan had never used the pistol himself, but he maintained it meticulously. He secretly hoped an intruder would oblige him to fire the remaining five bullets. He took the Sauer, the lightest gun in his collection, out of the cabinet, got a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator and went out to the backyard.
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Saskia Maes did not notice, as they passed the pharmacy, that Ivan Camerlynck was watching them. The pharmacist stood at the left-hand window, blocked from view by the rack of suntan lotion he placed there during the summer months. In the winter he restocked it with cough syrup and throat lozenges. Ivan Camerlynck turned up his nose as the girl passed. She strolled as though life were one big vacation. She looked fit and healthy enough to work. But apparently she chose to sponge off the government, to live off taxpayers’ money, off people like him who earned an honest wage. She was dressed like a frump. Really, people who had nothing to do all day and didn’t even take the trouble to make themselves presentable! But what truly turned his stomach was that stupid animal walking alongside her.
How often hadn’t he seen it on TV? Have-nots who moan that they can’t make ends meet on their welfare check, but then maintain half a zoo. Okay, the little cocker spaniel was cute, with his floppy ears and waggling backside, but how did that hussy manage to feed it? Ivan Camerlynck ground his teeth. He could well imagine how that floozy financed her extravagances. He hardly needed to spell it out. A blow job for three cans of dog food. Something like that.
That this banana republic of theirs was going to hell in a handbasket was one thing, but he could not stomach the fact that these excesses had now reached Blaashoek. And practically his own doorstep. Ivan Camerlynck sniffed indignantly.
It was all the fault of those good-for-nothings on the city council. What had they got up to the past few years? First they dredged the Blaashoek Canal. What on earth was the point of that? If a cargo ship tried to sail through it, it’d run aground on duck shit within two meters. No, the tens of thousands of euros’ worth of dredging projects were invested, according to the city council’s report, to facilitate recreational boating. Recreational boating, for God’s sake! So now the banks were regular mooring spots for small yachts, captained by bloated nouveaux-riches in white trousers and plaid shirts, cronies of the mayor, of course, and undoubtedly just as crooked.
Then when the old lady next door died they bought up the house and turned it into subsidized apartments. He took the occasional peek over the wall. Best to keep an eye on these things: before you knew it they’d be breaking all sorts of building codes. The bathrooms they’d put in were nicer than his. And for whom? Parasites!
His registered letters to the mayor received the usual hackneyed replies. First a woman with two young children came to live on the ground floor. The racket those rowdy little monsters made! Ivan was always on guard when the mother and her quick-fingered rascals came into the pharmacy. One day the woman just vanished into thin air, and a darkie moved into the upstairs apartment. A strapping, well-fed colossus, he hardly looked like an impoverished refugee. And judging from the loud half-conversations Ivan heard through the wall, the man wasn’t the least bit concerned about his telephone bill.
And the icing on the cake: a week ago they opened that damned wind park. Ten of those berserkly whirling turbine towers! And what did his fellow townspeople do? Did they protest when they heard of the building plans, all those smarty-pants neighbors of his? Half of them hadn’t even read the article by the local journalist, a puppet of the mayor, that had been buried on page three of the newspaper. The simpletons he spoke to about it thought the wind park was a grand idea. It would lift Blaashoek out of obscurity, they said. Blaashoek would become famous for its green energy, they blathered. Finally something actually happened in the town, they yapped. Brainwashed by the hollow words of the powers that be, that’s what they were. But Ivan did not consider starting a petition himself, or taking his case to the local media. He kept his head down. It can’t always be the same people who raise their voice in defense of the public good. There’d only be a backlash. With a heavy heart he watched the townspeople flock to the opening ceremony and gorge themselves on the sausages and offal pâté from that pig of a butcher. Imbeciles! If he didn’t live here himself, Ivan would say that Blaashoek deserved it.
He sniffed. The girl had slipped into the house. He could barely hear her, that’s how deviously she had refined her methods of receiving clients. He left his sentry post behind the rack of suntan lotion.
He went to the lab at the back of the pharmacy, where his antipathy toward the girl made way for a sense of excitement. He was eager to prepare the triamcinolone acetonide ointment for Mrs. Pouseele, the farmer’s wife, who suffered from eczema. It was a complex preparation; the ointment was prone to curdling. And Mrs. Deknudt would be coming by for her zinc syrup. Even though that one was a snap, he nevertheless looked forward to it.
He had not become a pharmacist just to sell aspirin, suntan lotion and Band-Aids. For that, you could just as well become a salesclerk. His passion was self-made medicines. Even as a student he had excelled in making suppositories, the trickiest preparation of all. Only with patience, precision and cold-blooded concentration did one achieve the ideal result. It was painstakingly difficult to spread the medicine homogeneously throughout the suppository. Moreover, the pill had to dissolve at body temperature, not at room temperature. First you warmed up the powder mixture until it was completely melted. Then you let it cool off. Proper timing was essential, because the mass mustn’t be allowed to solidify. Pouring the preparation into the molds at just the right temperature required nerves of steel. When you finally removed them from the refrigerator, you had to pray that the pills would not stick to the molds.
It had been years since he had made suppositories. When the daughters of the postman Walter De Gryse were young, Magda would bring along a prescription once a week, to his delight. His last suppository customer, he now recalled, was Wesley Bracke, the butcher’s son.
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Catwoman’s sumptuous lips closed around his erection. Her head went gently up and down while her tongue glided along his cock. Her cheeks were dimpled from the sucking action. She began slowly, but her movements speeded up in time with his breathing. She pressed the tip of her tongue against his gland, she sucked along the edge toward the center and flicked her tongue vigorously up and down.
Now it was Machteld, the prettiest girl in school, who was riding him. Her small breasts danced to the rhythm of her hips.
Wes Bracke tugged at his hard penis, which he had swathed in toilet paper. Ever since his mother started questioning the dwindling supply of handkerchiefs from the bathroom cupboard, he had switched to toilet paper. The change had numerous advantages. He no longer needed to hide the stinking, stiffened hankies in his nightstand. The soiled tissue could be flushed, unobserved, down the toilet, and a missing roll of paper was far less obvious than the inexplicable disappearance of the handkerchiefs.
Machteld groaned her way to a climax and Wes spurted his warm semen into the toilet paper. He heaved a sigh, zoned out for a few seconds, squeezed the last drops of sperm out of his cock and cleaned himself up. He put his clothes back on. In this weather Machteld probably wore a tight T-shirt and hot pants, which offered a splendid view of her legs. Wes cursed the summer