Director's Cut Read Free

ferociously. Mara, the youngest, retreated to the corner of her playpen, while Francisca invariably burst into inconsolable tears. Gala was the only one to defy him by brazenly trying to stare him down. She was no less scared than her younger sisters, and yet she loved it when the dangerous man showed his fangs and slowly crept closer and closer until finally their noses were touching. She squealed with fright and fought to resist her terror. It was like climbing out of a roller coaster that had just had you screaming and sick to your stomach with fear and immediately wanting to get back in line for another ride. The tension Gala felt in these moments was addictive, and when her father backed off, forgoing the horrors he had just been threatening, she was more angry than relieved. As soon as he turned around and forgot to be dangerous, Gala felt slighted, as if he were convinced that she wouldn’t overdo it and considered her too inconsequential to bother with. She couldn’t bear for him to think that she wasn’t a worthy adversary. Enraged, she would grab whatever happened to be within reach and hurl it at his head. It could be a colored pencil or a napkin, but it might just as well be a book or a plate of hot food. Sometimes he simply threw it back, and if he hit her he would cheer as other fathers do at a football match. More often, though, he deemed her unworthy of his attention. He left the business of punishing their daughters to his wife—who, like all women in low countries, was named Anna. At moments like these, Gala felt a strong desire to provoke him even more the next time, to actually hurt him, and to keep it up until he finally did more than just show his teeth.
    To push him over the edge, she marched into his study one afternoon when she was sure he was concentrating on his work. Without looking up, he asked her again to leave, which only made her moredetermined. First she crawled under his desk, then behind it, then climbed up on top of it, pushing aside a pile of essays to make room. He swung at her the way you swat at a fly, but after missing, he ignored her, forcing Gala to take it one step further. As soon as he had finished adding his comments to a page of the essay he was reading and had placed it on the pile of work he had already marked, she took it off again and assumed her version of a reedy, affected voice to read out the things he had just written in red pencil. Then she deliberately put the page back: upside down on top of the unread pile.
    The first time he acted as if he didn’t care, returned the sheet of paper to the correct pile, and kept working. The second time he responded in exactly the same way, but when Gala picked up a green felt-tip pen and started to draw a little man on the third page, he slid his work aside and watched carefully until she’d finished. She took her time, giving the figure a moustache, a briefcase, and wings, and finally adding a hat with a flower with a center like a shining sun.
    â€œFine,” Jan said, taking the piece of paper from her and calmly studying it, “here we go.” He put the essays away in a drawer, then slammed it shut with tremendous force. The mocking expression disappeared from his face in that same instant.
    â€œJust remember, you brought this on yourself.” For a few seconds he stared at her, making Gala tremble somewhere deep inside, a trembling she had never known before. She was angry with him for trying to impose his authority and happy that in the whole world there was nothing else vying for his attention. When she heard him growl, she did not know what she longed for most intensely, to bite or to be bitten.
    This was no longer a game, she felt that. It was quite possible that it might forever change everything she had ever known. Maybe she had set off something that was more dangerous than she suspected, but if it destroyed her, she would take him with her. She was no longer a fly to be shooed away