Ien remembers vividly. After a terrible
fight her mother said:
"As you can see I cleaned up the stable.
Not that I've thrown things away definitely."
"You've done the windows."
"Judging by your face, that's
not meant as a compliment."
"No, now my zebra has gone."
"Your zebra? You don't mean that pigeon drop?"
"In the end it had only three legs
but still ..." And from the bathroom:
"My coyote as well! I still remember
how it looked like: staggering away
after a copious meal."
Friday afternoon in the pub 'the Racehorse of Genius'.
"Listen, here I have a notebook, with all the things
we have made so far." Not more than ten pages, but in
the sometimes euphoric mind of Paul, this might turn
out something like ... Onegin. The book Paul this
time was totally in to. But Henk, more down to earth
interrupted him. No, we mustn't be epigones. It's
enough to know that Pushkin could use anything …
song, letter, novel, verse and he could digress or
call it a day, when he wanted. By the way, gushing
about poetry and heroes ... no way. Like those
creeps from Dead Poets Society. But that version
of the preface, that yielded Paul an A, do you
have that in your notebook, Ien?"
