It was already 24 degrees, a quarter past eight in the morning, there was a heat haze over the land and yet I ran over the Gelderse Heath, which turned deep purple at this time of year. In the distance I saw the beginning of the forest, with the forest house in it and again my family, who would just about wake up now. I looked at my clock: fifteen done, twenty to go.
Now that my back pain had disappeared except for one bad night, I didn’t dare to stop running, even on vacation. The reward for that zeal was in the new decor, in this case one of Scottish highlanders, a Wodanseik, closets of houses and a shelter for psychiatric patients. The only shop in the village mainly sold sweets and tobacco. The day before we had met a ‘socially parked person’ who bought cookies for his nieces and nephews, because ‘just because life has been different for me doesn’t mean I can’t be a nice uncle’.
I passed the cottage at the back and saw the bathing suits on the leash, the pinecones on the porch, the seat on the side. Five more songs, I guessed, five songs for the coffee, and I ran on to the village.
At home I had regular rounds, fixed times, fixed faces, I even recognized the dogs that belonged to those faces. I knew exactly where it got tough, how long it took me to complete each piece, and I even knew where to pull up my T-shirt to air things out, because no one was there anyway. To keep the fun going you had the variables, the music in my ears, new shoes, and gradually, I didn’t understand how it was possible either, I got attached to running. Sometimes, when I was running lighter than usual, I would fantasize about a New York finish, 42 kilometers in the legs, or better yet, how I was competing for Olympic gold, and then I would imagine the last hundred meters, could she do more? squeeze, she was going to do it, give everything one more time, this athlete you wouldn’t have given a dime for six months ago, yes, there she came, past Jamaica and past Kenya, E-va Hoe-ke, she it’s going to blow up, and then when I ran right through the ribbon of glittering cobwebs, I was moved by myself.
Maybe I was caught up in that fantasy again.
Maybe there was just an uneven tile, I don’t know. All I know is that all of a sudden I went down, stretched out, knees first, then hands, and finally my right cheekbone, and there I lay, while Paradise by the Dashboard Light crackled out of my earplugs next to me, that too. I did what everyone else does at that moment: look around you, make a quick inventory of the damage and then pretend nothing is wrong, but before I got up I noticed a woman sitting two meters away from me. to watch. She was sitting on the bench at the entrance to the mental institution, wearing a velvet cap, tousled hair, plastic bag at her feet and was just spinning a cigarette. I looked at her, she looked at me, the sweat poured down my body, the blood ran from my knee, my bun was crooked and it was now 60 degrees, if not more, and I saw her think: and then find she mad me.