Nadine Ronde

Nadine Ronde (she/her, 2002) primarily writes prose and (children's) theatre and is an editor for the collective De Laarpoerlaar. Her writing is rich in humour, often centred on wonder, and she seeks the beauty in small, everyday things. Death is a recurring theme in her work, but with absurdity and silly characters as a lighthearted counterpoint. She hopes to move her readers emotionally or make them laugh, but preferably both at the same time.

Gerinkel

When her partner Jonas suddenly dies, the main character of "Gerinkel" returns to the small village where they both grew up as outsiders. Now she finds herself alone again in a place she would have preferred to avoid. Amidst the villagers who look down on her, snub-nosed butchers, her well-meaning mother, and the flyers for the upcoming village festival, she tries to figure out how to cope with this loss, her memories, and herself. This tragicomic novella takes you on a journey through a grieving process filled with nostalgia, love, cheese soufflés, caterpillars from a piano, and a dog named Spijker.

Excerpts:

Loss smells like the bottom layer of pointed cabbage burnt in the pan. Loss smells like flowers chosen for their appearance rather than their scent. It smells like asphalt and tastes like water from a cup that has just been filled with coffee, and it also tastes like the sticky residue on an envelope. It stings like Head & Shoulders shampoo on a scratched scalp.

Loss feels like counting snakes; you feel like the counting snakes on a road, the two black cables that are there to keep track of traffic. The traffic is heavy. You lie there, and you feel the world moving past you. Countless cars, bicycles, and scooters whizz past you. As quickly as they passed over your first cable, they've already left your second cable behind, disappearing into the distance. Some glance down and see you lying there, hollow snakes, briefly noticing you like the bumps in their path. You lie there, registering every breath expelled from you. Loss smells like air from a hollow rubber tube and sounds like the "pah" it makes; you could blow out a candle with it.

--

"And whose name is that in?"

The snub-nosed butcher pretends not to know who I am. He's not kidding me; when he looked up from the jingling doorbell, I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes, which he then quickly suppressed. I'd greeted him as friendly as a village where everyone knows each other requires, and told him I was picking up an order for my mother. Since I've been back here, I've been eating meat again. Because, well, what does it really matter?

Our last name is barely out of my mouth before he's already put the beef tenderloins in a plastic bag (they still do that here) and slides it over the counter to me. That's nine euros and twenty-four.

My fifteenth birthday was the first Christmas after my father's death, and also the first Christmas I celebrated with Jonas. It was a snowless white Christmas; the sky was so cloudy it looked like a puddle of milk. That evening, the snub-nosed butcher personally delivered a roast. This was something new, as my father had made stew every year. He never cooked anything else, only when he was making stew. Now he was gone, and there was no stew either. That family tradition had died with him.

The snub-nosed butcher helped my mother heat the roast. When she gave him the oven mitts, he held them for just a few seconds longer than necessary before taking them from her. Afterwards, he was given a beer at my father's place at the dinner table. The beer, too, was still my father's. When Jonas, sixteen, jokingly asked if he could have one too, I glared at him. He didn't understand. His inability to read my mind has always irritated me more than I should have been honest with him. Now that he's gone, I'm afraid he can. With my father, I always found that a comforting thought: that he wandered around like a phantom and could sense what was going on in my head, so I didn't have to tell a picture frame I missed him, because he already knew that. With Jonas, I'm just afraid he can sense that I'm just rehashing our arguments in my head, and that he'll realise I really don't know what to do without him.

Five minutes before my grandparents rang the doorbell for Christmas dinner, the roast had been approved, and the butcher with the snub nose had finished his second beer. He gave me a pat on the back, which I didn't appreciate, "Enjoy your meal, girl," and before he stepped into the darkness, he got a kiss on the cheek from my mother, "Have a nice holiday."

"Have a nice day," I say as I leave the butcher's shop. The little doorbell rings. The butcher with the snub nose doesn't reply. He heard me.

On the door hangs a "support the farmer" poster and a poster for the upcoming village festival. It's already the forty-eighth edition. The colours yellow and red are central to the poster. In a village with only one supermarket, it's only natural that there are two snack bars. And soon, in January, it'll be that time again: Snackbar Japie (red) and De Smikkelhoek (yellow) will announce their turnover for the past year. Since the 1970s, the two have been locked in a fierce battle that splits the village in two, like a kind of Montague-Capulet situation. At the village festival, you wear red or yellow to show your alliance. The snack bar with the highest turnover gets the honor and a gold sticker on their front door.

Even now, I see that Snackbar Japie, a few doors down from the butcher shop, is running a stunt to hopefully rake in some extra cash in these last few weeks of the year: frikadellen of various lengths strung horizontally on a skewer, so it looks like a Christmas tree. Vegetarian options are also available!

"Did he say anything to you? Or ask about me or something?" my mother asks casually over dinner.

I cut my beef into pieces and mix them into the kale mash on my plate. "No, not at all. He acted like he didn't know me."

"Idiot," my mother mutters. The tone of her voice makes me think there's more to it than just anger at her daughter's wounded pride. I look at her questioningly, my cheeks covered in mash.

She waves it away. "We'll talk about this another time." Meaning, we're never going to talk about this.