English excerpts from 'Lam' by Hannelore Bedert

Excerpt from Lam, p.10, translated by Paul Vincent Hannelore Bedert, Lam, Angèle, 2018, 320 p.

As she stood there, in the vague glow of the bathroom light, Lucia realised that she had only her underwear on. She waited and saw him scratch his belly without the least embarrassment. Nausea moved from her stomach to her throat.

‘I’ve forgotten your name,’ he mumbled and rubbed his eyes.

Somewhat taken aback, he looked at her and burst out laughing. ‘I haven’t got a clue. Honestly I haven’t.’ And while he looked around him: ‘What kind of dismal cave is this anyway? Haven’t you got any lights here?’

She surveyed the young man, and wanted him out of her flat as soon as possible.

‘No, there’s no light in here,’ she said. ‘And you can’t raise the blinds, they’ve been stuck for a few years. And I don’t know your name either, let alone how you wound up here. But as far as I’m concerned, we don’t know each other. You’re too young. Too skinny. And you have too much hair. You must go. Now.’ She saw how each word hit home, how the young man at first went on laughing, how the laughter became surprise and how he then cringed.

She was immediately sorry for what she had said, but he did what was asked of him. He got out of her bed, pulled on his jeans, grabbed his T-shirt and his sweater and went to the door. As he passed her, he glanced at her, plucked up all his courage and said: ‘What a frigid old cow you are.’

It could have been nice. She knew that. At a different moment, on another day. But not now. Now it was ugly, weird. A mistake.

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Excerpt from Lam, p.191-192, translated by Paul Vincent

One evening she finally told Halina about her mother.

‘I was beginning to wonder,’ said Halina, ‘whether you had a mother.’

Lucia told her about the day she had disappeared, about the grief, the loneliness in the house, about her father. She said that things had been fine when her parents were happy. And together. That she missed that.

They also talked about later. About Lucia’s future, which she could not picture. About the fear of being alone again. Halina said she must talk to her father, tell him what was going on inside her. But Lucia replied that it was too late for that.

Halina smiled and said that it was never too late to talk things out.

‘Unless you’re dead.’

They drank a lot of coffee together.

‘You threw your first coffee at the wall, you can just enjoy your second cup,’ Halina said winking when she offered Lucia coffee for the first time again.

They had not been able to get the coffee stain off the wallpaper in the kitchen. ‘’The next owner will strip it off,’ Halina had said.

‘They were very often silent. In the evening, after Grundners, Lucia always cycled back to the farmhouse. Then they would sit on the bench in the yard and drink wine. Or they would lie on their backs in the grass at the far end of the meadow, looking at the sky.

‘You won’t see me up there,’ giggled Halina. I haven’t been good enough. Knock on the ground if you want to talk to me, I won’t get into heaven anyway.’

Halina talked about heaven more than was good for her, or for Lucia, though it was always with a laugh. But as the days went by Lucia was less and less able to laugh along when Halina made jokes about dying and what would follow it.

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