Chapter 19: Contingencies

Easter break began without feeling like a break.

The lecture halls emptied first. Then the library tables. Then the cafés near the faculty, which lost half their noise and became suddenly able to hear themselves. Bicycles disappeared from the railings in uneven clusters. Students left with bags over their shoulders, boxes of laundry, borrowed notes, and the false confidence of people who believed two weeks without lectures would become two weeks of study.

I understood the mistake by Monday morning. Routine had been a form of scaffolding. Lectures, training, tutoring, meals, Marieke’s hours, my own hours, the small necessary geography of getting from one obligation to the next. Remove enough of it and the unfinished things did not become lighter. They stood where I could not step around them.

Marieke’s envelope had left her hands.

The notary’s draft had not left mine.

Koen’s window had a date in Peeters’ narrow handwriting, Thursday after Easter, eight o’clock if the glazier did not lie.

I put those three facts on separate sheets of paper because separate sheets made them look as if they could not touch one another. Then I made coffee, burned it, drank it anyway, and opened the folder from Mrs. Claes.

The bank did not trust Easter either. Her note was short, professional, and worse for being kind.

Updated reserve calculation required after first repair scheduling.

Proof of liquid funds to remain available after deposit.

Draft purchase agreement to be reviewed before signature appointment.

The words were not hostile. That was the problem. Hostility would have let me dislike them. Procedure only waited while I made the numbers fit.

Outside my window, Leuven looked almost gentle. A pale spring morning lay across the courtyard. Someone’s sheets moved on a line. A pigeon landed on the roof opposite with the air of a man arriving late to a meeting and expecting no one to comment. The city had no interest in my reserve calculation.

I wrote the repair numbers in a column.

Window.

Radiator valve, front room.

Gutter inspection.

Temporary sealant, attic side.

Peeters had stopped using adjectives.

Van Acker answered the door in his shirtsleeves and looked at me as if I had interrupted the building by existing in front of it.

The stairwell smelled of damp coats, old dust, and the cabbage someone on the first floor had boiled too long the night before. Koen’s door was closed. Behind it, a radio played softly, old Flemish voices and static. The cracked window at the front of the second floor had been covered from inside with plastic sheeting and tape. It rattled faintly whenever wind found the street.

Peeters stood on the landing below it with his clipboard.

“The glazier confirmed Thursday,” he said.

“Morning?”

“If morning still means before noon to him.”

Van Acker made a sound from the stairwell. “It means when he arrives.”

Peeters ignored him. He was good at ignoring men who treated volume as evidence. “I would do the valve while the wall is open. It is not urgent today. It will be urgent at the worst possible time if you wait.”

“How much?” I asked.

He gave me the number. I wrote it down. Then I wrote it again under the reserve column, where it became worse.

Van Acker watched the pencil. “You want the building or not?”

“Yes.”

“Then bring the papers. Not promises.”

That was all. No wisdom. No performance. He turned and went down the stairs as if the conversation had been a bill he had paid already. Peeters waited until the front door clicked below.

“He is not wrong,” he said.

“I know.”

Peeters looked at his clipboard. “The glazier will need the hallway clear by eight.”

We went into Koen’s room after knocking. Koen opened with one hand still on the edge of a book, his face careful until he recognized Peeters, then more careful when he saw me. The room held the flat chill of bad glass. His desk had been moved away from the window. Two sweaters lay over the back of a chair. The plastic over the crack trembled in the draft.

“Thursday?” he asked.

“Thursday,” I said. “If that still works for you.”

He looked at me quickly, then at Peeters.

“For me?”

“You sleep here.”

The sentence seemed to make him less comfortable, not more. I understood that too late. Students are used to being managed. Being asked can feel like another kind of trap if no one has asked honestly before.

“Yes,” he said. “Thursday is good. I can be here.”

“You do not need to miss anything important,” I said. “Peeters can be here. I can be here.”

Koen’s mouth moved as if he did not know which answer would cost least.

“I have class in the morning,” he said. “I can leave the key with Mr. Van Acker.”

“Leave it with Peeters,” I said.

Peeters looked at me once. Koen nodded.

The window rattled again. I wrote the number beside the Thursday date and felt the building change shape under my hand. It was no longer a future asset, no longer a clever purchase, no longer a line in a plan drawn from memory and ambition. It was a cold room where a young man had moved his desk away from the draft and had still asked whether repair worked for him.

The decision became easier. The number did not.

By the time I returned to my room, the future had become helpful in a way I distrusted.

There was a football result I remembered because in the first life a corporal from Genk had complained about it for three straight days, not because the match mattered in itself, but because he had lost money on the kind of certainty men buy when they are bored and call it judgment. The odds were not ridiculous. The amount I could make from a large enough bet would cover the window, the valve, and enough of the gutter inspection to make Mrs. Claes’ reserve calculation less ugly.

I wrote the fixture on the back of an envelope.

Then I wrote the amount that would solve the problem. That number sat there looking too efficient.

A young man with no income history, a conditional property purchase, growing investments, tutoring cash, and unexplained betting slips did not need a miracle. He needed a file that stayed boring. Mrs. Claes could approve boring. A bank could tolerate boring. A notary could sign boring. No one trusted lucky.

I crossed out the amount.

I did not cross out the fixture.

On Sunday, I would place a small bet. Ordinary. Wasteful in the way students were allowed to be wasteful. Enough to satisfy the memory without letting it become a rescue. The reserve remained tight.

Mrs. Claes called that afternoon, which meant the bank had found a way to make even my phone sound institutional.

“Mr. Vandael,” she said. “I received the updated repair estimate.”

“Yes.”

“The reserve is becoming narrow.”

“That is one way to describe it.”

“It is the bank’s way.”

I sat at the desk with the crossed-out amount still turned face down beside the folder. Through the window, a boy in the courtyard tried to carry a laundry basket with one hand and a crate of beer with the other. He nearly lost both and saved neither gracefully.

“I can increase the reserve,” I said.

“With documented funds?”

“Yes.”

“From the same investment account?”

“Partly.”

A pause. Paper moved on her side. I could hear the discipline of her office in it. Files, screens, stamps, a calendar with appointments that became real because someone had entered them correctly.

“Partly is a word that creates work,” she said.

“I know.”

“Then please send the supporting statements before the appointment. No new surprises. No large unexplained deposits. No cash movement that appears clever.”

I almost smiled at that.

“Appears clever?”

“The bank prefers dull men with dull explanations.”

“I am working hard to become dull.”

“You are not succeeding completely,” she said. “But you are improving.”