Chapter 20: What the Hands Are For

The notary’s office smelled of polished wood, old paper, and coffee that had been made too early and left to believe in itself.

I arrived thirteen minutes before nine with the folder under my arm and the envelope from Mrs. Claes inside it, because the bank preferred to be present even when no employee had crossed the street. Leuven had woken wet. Rain had thinned to a mist by the time I reached the door, and the cuff of my trousers held a dark line where water had climbed from the pavement.

Van Acker was already there.

He sat in the waiting room with his coat folded over one knee and his hands resting on the worn head of an umbrella. His face suggested that punctuality had disappointed him by giving him nothing to complain about. Beside him lay a brown envelope tied with string. He did not look at it. A man like Van Acker knew that paper did not become less dangerous by being watched.

“You brought the file?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Men without paper should stay outside buildings.”

“Good morning.”

He looked at the rain on my coat. “It was until you made it social.”

I sat two chairs away from him. The waiting room had three prints of Leuven in winter, all framed slightly too high. A clock ticked above the secretary’s desk. The secretary typed without urgency. Somewhere behind a closed door, a man laughed once and then remembered the building expected him to be serious.

The folder on my lap had weight in a way money did not. Money moved invisibly until someone asked for proof. Paper made the invisible behave. Proof of reserve. Proof of identity. Inspection acknowledgement. Draft purchase agreement. Mrs. Claes’s last note, clipped to the front page with a metal clip that had left a small tooth mark in the paper.

No new deposits.

No unexplained movement.

No alterations to terms without review.

No cleverness.

She had underlined the last one.

The notary called us in at two minutes past nine.

He was a narrow man with clean hands and hair combed so precisely it seemed contractual. His office held two bookcases, a desk large enough to make ordinary chairs feel accused, and a window looking onto a courtyard where rain collected in the cracks between stones. He greeted Van Acker by name, then me, then made no comment about my age. I liked him for that more than I should have.

We sat.

The agreement lay between us.

It did not look like a life changing. It looked like paper that expected signatures and had no interest in drama. Purchase price. Two hundred seventy-eight thousand euros. Subject to financing confirmation, notary review, required certificates, inspection acknowledgements, transfer date to be fixed. Deposit conditions. Responsibility for disclosed defects. Access for agreed works before transfer only by written consent of the seller.

The notary read the clauses aloud in a voice built to survive people who mistook enthusiasm for understanding.

“Before we proceed,” he said, looking at me, “you understand that this is not the deed of transfer.”

“Yes.”

“This agreement binds the parties under the conditions stated. Ownership transfers only at the authentic deed, after the remaining requirements are fulfilled.”

“I understand.”

Van Acker made a low sound. “He understands words. It is buildings he has not met properly yet.”

The notary did not smile. He turned the page and waited for me to sign.

I signed where indicated.

My hand did not shake. That seemed almost disrespectful to the size of the thing. The pen moved across the paper, black ink on white, my name becoming obligation line by line. James Vandael. Buyer. Twenty years old, though the page did not say that. Medical student, though the page did not care. Dead once, though there was no box for it.

Van Acker signed after me. His signature was shorter than mine and looked as if it had been arguing with officials for decades.

The notary blotted nothing. Modern ink, modern paper, modern efficiency. A disappointment, almost. He checked both signatures, stacked the pages, and passed copies to the secretary through the half-open door. She took them with the calm of someone who handled other people’s thresholds every morning.

“Access for the agreed repairs,” the notary said.

Van Acker reached into his coat pocket and brought out a single key on a plain ring. It was brass, worn at the teeth, with a small paper tag tied to it in blue string. Voor werken, he had written. For works.

He placed it on the desk between us.

“Front door and stairwell,” he said. “Not tenant rooms unless arranged. Not the cellar unless Peeters is with you. Not after eight in the evening. If you lose it, I take it out of your hide.”

The notary looked at him.

“Metaphorically,” Van Acker said.

The notary moved the key toward me.

I picked it up.

It was lighter than it should have been.

Transfer would come later. Registration later. The true ring of keys later, if the bank remained polite and the roof did not reveal a new personality. But the small brass key sat in my palm like an advance payment from responsibility.

Outside the office, after the secretary gave us stamped copies, Van Acker put on his coat with the impatience of a man leaving a church before the priest found extra words.

“You look disappointed,” he said.

“I do?”

“You expected trumpets.”

“No.”

He shrugged and looked down the street. “You expected something,” he said, to the street rather than to me.

I looked at the key in my hand, then at the folder under my arm.

“I expected weight.”

He snorted. “Wait for invoices.”

Then he left me under the awning in the thin rain with my stamped copy, a working key, and no sensible way to explain why the morning felt less like arrival than paper being folded shut.

May began with Anatomie II, Ontwikkeling en voortplanting, practical lists, and the slow grind toward exams.

Transfer waited for June.

The invoices began in May.

I carried the repair key in a separate pocket from my room key because mixing them felt like a superstition and I distrusted myself around superstitions. It opened the front door stiffly the first time, then more smoothly when I learned to lift the handle before turning. The hallway accepted me without welcome. Damp coats. Old plaster. The bicycle that still lived under the note forbidding bicycles. Mailboxes with names taped over names. The staircase rubbed pale at the center of each step by years of feet that had not cared who owned the wood beneath them.