On Tuesday, the fifth day, Joop called him over to the counter at a quarter to six and showed him the order book.
It was a school exercise book with a green cover, the kind you could buy at the Hema for a guilder, and on every page Joop had written the date at the top and then a column of little strokes, in pencil, in groups of five, with the crossbar.
One column for each thing he sold.
PAT.
FRIK.
KROK.
KAAS.
BAMI.
DRANK.
He turned the pages back.
Last week.
The week before.
The week before that.
Each column of strokes about the same length, week after week, like a fence that ran on into the distance.
Then Friday, the nineteenth.
The PAT column was twice as long.
The FRIK column had gone over onto the next line.
Saturday was longer.
Joop turned the book round so Max could see it properly.
He didn’t say anything.
He put his finger on the FRIK column for Saturday and left it there.
“Sixty-three,” Max read.
“I usually sell thirty on a Saturday.
Thirty-five if Vitesse win.” Joop took his finger off the page.
“They stand there with their two kwartjes (quarter-guilder coins) and they smell it.
You were right.
Your grandmother was right.”
“Oma’s usually right.”
“Your grandmother,” said Joop, “has been right about everything since 1956.” He closed the book.
“I’ve had to order more frikandellen (fried sausages).
The man from Van Lieshout’s coming on Thursday instead of Monday.
He wanted to know if somebody had died.”
* * *
Hennie and Tim had been fighting all week.
Not out loud.
Neither of them ever said a word about it.
Hennie came in at the end of his shift, every day, at about half four, in his blue jacket.
He bought a broodje kroket (croquette), ate it at the counter with his back to the machine, and then turned round and stood in the queue like everyone else, with two kwartjes on the edge of the cabinet.
Tim came in after school at about a quarter past three and stood in the queue until the flats called him in for his tea.
On Saturday night the top of the table had said HEN 14210.
On Sunday, by the evening, it said TIM 15880.
On Monday, HEN 17040.
On Tuesday, Tim got to the fourth maze for the first time, PUNTJE (Little Dot), the hard one, where the ghost house had two doors and the walls had gaps you couldn’t see until you got close.
He died in it, three times, quickly, but the score was enough.
TIM 19220.
On Wednesday, Hennie did something Max had never seen an adult do in an arcade.
He came in on his day off, in a brown jumper instead of his uniform, ordered nothing, and sat at the table by the wall for an hour.
He didn’t play.
He watched other people play.
He watched the ghosts.
Then he got up, put two kwartjes in, and played one game.
HEN 21400.
He walked out without looking at the table.
“He was studying,” Otto said, awed.
“He sat there and studied the red one’s patterns.
For an hour.
A fifty-year-old bus driver.”
He’s got the hunter’s instinct.
“He’s got a pension and a lot of time,” said Otto.
“But yes.”
Tim came in at a quarter past three on Thursday, saw the table, and stood very still in front of it, his hands in his parka pockets.
Then he said, to the room in general, “Hennie’s a cheat,” and Joop said, “Hennie’s a bus driver,” as if that settled it, and Tim got in the queue.
* * *
On Thursday night, after the last envelope, after Joop had wiped down the counter and turned off the fryer and said “Seven days,” and nothing else, Max carried the week home in a Hema bag.
There were seven little cloth bags in it, one for each night.
Each one had a strip of tape on the side with the date in biro.
He’d counted every one with Joop, on the counter, at closing, the way he’d promised.
But he hadn’t put them together yet.
He’d been saving it.
He tipped them out on the kitchen table under the lamp, one at a time.
Sanne came down the stairs in her nightie.
She’d been in bed for an hour.
She stood in the kitchen doorway with her hair sticking up on one side and looked at the table.
“Is that all money?”
“It’s all money.”
“Is it ours?”
“It’s ours.
Sanne pulled out a chair and sat on it and put her chin on her hands.
Max let her stay.
They counted it together.
Kwartjes in piles of four, piles of four in rows of ten.
Ten guilders a row.
Sanne did the stacking, very carefully, with her tongue between her teeth, and Max did the rows, and Otto did the sums, and the kitchen clock ticked, and outside a moped went past on the Velperweg and faded out.
Friday, thirty-eight fifty.
Saturday, sixty-one.
Sunday, forty-four.
Monday, thirty-six fifty.
Tuesday, forty-one.
Wednesday, forty-seven fifty.
Thursday, forty-six.
“Three hundred and fourteen guilders fifty,” said Otto.
Max sat back.
The kitchen table was covered in silver.
Thirty-one rows.
It shone in the light of the lamp like the inside of a pirate film.
That’s more than the cabinet cost, he thought.
In a week.
“That’s more than the cabinet cost in a week,” Otto agreed.
“It’s also the free week.
From tomorrow, it’s half.
So call it a hundred and fifty-seven a week, give or take, and it’ll drop when the novelty wears off.
Most things do.
Then it’ll level out.” A pause.
“I’d still like to note, for the record, that it’s more than the cabinet cost in a week.”
“How much is it?” said Sanne.
“Three hundred and fourteen fifty.”
Sanne looked at the rows of kwartjes, then at Max, and her eyes went very wide, and she put both hands over her mouth.
“We’re rich,” she said, through her fingers.
“We’re not rich.”
“We’re a bit rich.”
“We’re a bit rich,” Max allowed.
* * *
There were things to do with it.
Otto had a list.
Otto had had a list since Saturday.
But the first thing Max did, before the list, was count out five guilders in kwartjes, twenty of them, into a separate pile, and push it across the table.
“Head tester,” he said.
Sanne looked at the pile.
Then at him.
“For me?”
“For you.
You played the first game.
You named the mazes.
You stopped traffic.
You told Oma to come to ‘t Hoekje.”
Sanne went red.
“I didn’t tell her.
I just said you were going.”
“Same thing.”
She put her hands round the pile, the way you’d put your hands round a candle, and pulled it towards her very slowly across the table, so that none of the stacks fell over.
“Every week?” she said.
“Every week it works.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“Then you have to test it,” said Max, “until it does.”
Sanne thought about this.
She took one kwartje (quarter-guilder coin) off the top of the pile and put it back on Max’s side.
“For Puntje,” she said.
* * *
Then the list.
The first thing on it was not exciting.
That was why Otto had put it first.
“The Postbank,” it said.
“You’re going to put most of this in Oma’s name on Saturday, in an account she opens, because a fourteen-year-old with three hundred guilders in kwartjes under his bed will eventually be robbed, or asked questions, or both.
You keep fifty out.
The rest goes in.”
Fine.
“Second.
Tempel for November, twenty-five, from this, not from Oma.
Third.
Sanne’s winter shoes.
I’ve seen her feet. The source of this chapter is g.com.
The left one’s got a hole.”
I know about the hole.
“I know you know.
I’m writing it down.
Fourth, Ruiter.
A proper heatsink for that power supply, which I’d like to point out I mentioned at a quarter to two in the morning on Friday, and which you said would do for now, and it’s been ten days.”
It’s fine.
It’s running.
“Hot.
Fifth,” said Otto, “and I’ll say this once and then let it go.
A colour television.
Sooner or later.”
Later.
“Sixth,” said Otto.
“This.”
It went quiet.
Max waited.
“I’d like to keep the books properly,” Otto said.
“Not in my head.
On the MSX.
It can do it.
It’s got a cassette and BASIC and an evening when you’re not too tired.
Every bag, every night, every guilder in and out.
Joop’s half.
The electricity.
Parts.
If this is going to be a business, it needs a book.
And if it ever needs a grown-up to sign for it, which it will, I’d like to be able to show them the book.”
Max looked at the money on the table.
You want a spreadsheet.
“I want a spreadsheet,” said Otto, with something that, in a person, might have been longing.
“I’ve wanted a spreadsheet since the first of September.”
* * *
He wrote it that night, after Sanne had gone back to bed with her twenty kwartjes in a sock under her pillow.
It was a BASIC program on the MSX, eighty lines, with columns that went across the screen in green-on-black letters.
DATUM.
OMZET.
JOOP.
STROOM.
ONDERDELEN.
NETTO.
(Date.
Turnover.
Joop.
Power.
Parts.
Net.) He typed in the seven days of the free week.
At the bottom, in a little box, it added them up.
314,50.
He saved it to a new cassette and wrote on the label, KASBOEK 1990 (cash book 1990), and put it in the drawer next to HUISHOUDBOEKJE (household book) and PROGRAMMER V1.
“Thank you,” said Otto, very quietly.
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in two lifetimes.”
You’ve only had one.
“I’ve had a good one,” Otto said.
* * *
On Friday afternoon at half past four, the first day of the half-and-half, Max went into ‘t Hoekje to bring the electricity envelope and check on the machine.
There were six kids in the queue.
Hennie was at the counter.
Tim was at the joystick, on DE SLANG, working round the outside of the snake with his two fingers and his thumb.
Joop came round the counter.
He was carrying a tray of frikandellen to the fryer, and he stopped next to the cabinet and put his free hand flat on its side, on the black paint, low down, between the orange ghost and Femke’s tiny white dot.
He took his hand away quickly.
“Jongen,” he said.
“This thing’s as warm as my fryer.
Is it meant to be that warm?”
Max put his own hand where Joop’s had been.
Low on the side, where the shelf was, where the power supply sat on its square of biscuit-tin lid.
It was hot.
Not warm.
Hot, like a radiator in January.
“It’ll do,” Otto said, very quietly, “for now.
I wrote it down.”
* * *
Thanks for reading.
Every chapter goes free here in time.
~ F0rk