SLEEPLESS NIGHT

Margriet de Moor made her fiction debut in 1988 after pursuing a career as a classical singer. She has written many novels including The Virtuoso, The Kreuzer Sonata, The Storm and The Duke of Egypt. Her work has been translated from Dutch into twenty-four languages.

“Compact, haunting, and lovely … it is unhurried and assured; no word is wasted … In both its rich and unapologetic descriptions of domesticity and frank attitude toward sex … the book is a treatise on one individual’s womanhood.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A subtle, enigmatic, and beautiful elegy to a husband and marriage that ends in tragedy. De Moor’s book is sensual and spare, whether she’s writing about love, a walk in an ice forest, or baking a cake in the middle of the night. There are layers of meaning here, which with adroit subtlety De Moor lets readers puzzle for themselves.” —Claire Fuller, author of Swimming Lessons and Bitter Orange

“Poignant … delivers insightful ruminations on marriage, love, love lost, and the unsolved mysteries lurking underneath the surface of everyday lives … Sleepless Night is a meditative novel where the seemingly mundane reveals itself to be the harbinger of profound insights.” —Foreword Reviews

“De Moor’s novel is encased in calm, its surfaces appearing to be safe—until they suddenly crack open like thin ice beneath our feet. A beautiful, mysterious and shocking book.” —Nancy Kline, author of The Faithful and Lightning: The Poetry of René Char

“Fluid and musical … this hypnotic portrayal of an amorous and sensual resurrection gracefully tells of regret over failed encounters and the fragile hope of new beginnings.” —Le Monde

“The charm of Margriet de Moor’s book is due to a combination of sensuality and reflection, as well as a musical language of great beauty that explores the meanderings of the human soul with great clarity.” —Le Figaro

“Carefully narrated, cleverly constructed and fascinating in its psychological finesse.” —Frankfurter Rundschau

1. What time period elapses in the novel and the events it comprises?

2. What role does baking play in the book and the life of the narrator?

3. How perceptive is the narrator about others and herself?

4. What does the narrator find appealing about the man she’s just met?

5. What role do weather and the natural elements play in this tale?

6. How did the narrator and her husband feel about each other?

7. What’s the nature of the relationship between Ton and his sister Lucia?

8. How does Ton’s death shape the protagonist’s character?

9. What is the narrator trying to discover and does she succeed?

10. She thinks often about her husband. Do you think she’s gaining clarity, healing herself, or merely tormenting herself by these recollections?

11. What happens after the cake is ready?

A special calm is needed to make this dough.

It’s wise to have everything on hand before you start. Flour. Salt. Sugar. I take the big bowl, dissolve the yeast in milk. You knead the mixture for five minutes first, and only then do you add the eggs. From that moment on, you have to be careful. Yeast and eggs are extremely volatile ingredients. They make the mixture swell. They give off gases. And, a process which never fails to astound me, they double the original volume. I start by raking my fingers firmly through the ingredients.

It’s nonsense, of course, to suppose that I do not remember Ton. Every woman remembers her husband. Things happened. Pleasant things, most likely, natural, too—so natural they seemed to happen of their own accord and left no impression. On Sundays, we were in the habit of having breakfast under the pear trees. We sat on rickety antique chairs. Ton boiled the eggs and served them up in an oven glove to keep them warm. How often would it have been? A summer long, a handful of times? I laid a garland of nasturtium around his plate, trickled honey into the calyxes of the edible flowers. Why? Out of love? Some sentimental notion? Because that morning my hair had fallen into a fetching wave?

I press the base of my thumb into the dough. The surface still crumbles slightly. With slow, steady movements, I squeeze the mass together. I work in silence. It’s unthinkable that the mixer might shred the intense stillness of the night. The machine stands next to the stove, gathering grease and dust. I might as well toss it out altogether, for even during the day, when there could be no objection to using it, the notion never enters my head. Its nerve-jangling din is superfluous in any case. My fingers do the job as well as any pulsating dough hook, if not better. It’s simply a matter of making sure your hands don’t get too warm and turn the mixture gummy.

Ton. His name was Ton. Not a name that struck a chord with me, it was just a good fit. It matched the way he walked and talked, the blue sweater he draped around my shoulders that day we went sailing. Oh, when I think of the ease with which he turned the boat into the howling wind and brought us to a clean halt six inches from the pier. By that time my lips were chewed raw; I tasted blood for hours.

I turn on the faucet and rinse my hands with cold water. Then I dust the counter with flour. It is an old-fashioned granite surface. The stone was still free of cracks, and Ton and I saw no need to replace it with stainless steel. It is a source of pleasure to me now. It’s true what they say, the coolness held in a slab of nature never disappears entirely.

This is where things get ugly. I plant my feet wider apart and take a deep breath. In the dead of night, I begin to pound away, slamming my fists into the pale, pliant lump in front of me. Just as well there’s not another living soul around to witness this. It’s like a scene from a nightmare, one of those silent terrors that leave you swallowed up by some unreal entity, clingy and elastic. Of course I remember my husband. All I have to do is start at the beginning, with an image I can call to mind effortlessly, at any given moment.