The Evenings by Gerard Reve (tr. Sam Garrett)

First published in the Netherlands in 1947, The Evenings is a difficult book to describe, so please bear with me while I endeavour to give it a go!

This brilliant, strangely compelling novel revolves around the life of Frits van Egters, a twenty-three-year-old office worker who lives at home with his parents in a small flat in Amsterdam. The story, such as it is, unfolds over the ten days leading up to New Year’s Eve in 1946, as Frits struggles to fill the interminable downtime that falls between Christmas and the New Year.

Frits is a master in the art of procrastination, content to fritter away great swathes of time in the act of thinking about something without actually doing it. At one point, he notes that now would be an excellent time to have a tidy-up, only to spend the next couple of hours doing nothing in particular. Similarly, a pause to look at a newspaper becomes two hours staring out of the living-room window – not a word is read during this interlude on a sleepy Sunday morning.

“I just sit here and sit here and don’t do a thing,” he thought. “The day’s half over.” It was a quarter past twelve. (p. 14)

For Frits, the atmosphere at home is severely strained, dictated as it is by relations with his parents. While Mother tries to maintain some semblance of order around the flat, her tendency to fuss and prattle on leaves Frits in a perpetual state of irritation. The situation is compounded by the predictable nature of her conversation, so predictable in fact that Frits takes a kind of perverse delight in goading or prompting his mother down a particular path, just to provoke the expected response. In this scene, Frits has cajoled Mother into looking for the previous day’s newspaper, knowing full well that Father is currently reading it.

“Well, Mother,” he said, “it’s not here on the table. If you think that I am incapable of searching, why don’t you try?” “It’s as though the two of you were morons, as though no one in this house has any sense,” she said. “Don’t you two have eyes in your head?” What’s all this screaming?” his father asked. “Nothing,” Frits said, “there is no conflict whatsoever. It is a friendly debate. Later on there will be an opportunity for you to pose a few questions.” (p. 269)

Father is another source of exasperation for young Frits, courtesy of his dodgy hearing and annoying personal habits. ‘Fire a cannon beside his ear for a joke, he’ll ask if there’s someone at the door,’ Frits muses at one point as he ponders his father’s deafness. Other regular irritations include breaking wind, slurping while drinking and asking Frits whether he has anything new and interesting to report on his return from work. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before something awful happens to Mr and Mrs van Egters, as Frits half-jokingly remarks to his friend Viktor.

“I’m only waiting for them to hang themselves or beat each other to death. Or set the house on fire. For God’s sake, let it be that. So why hasn’t it happened yet? But let us not despair. All things come to those who wait.” (p. 120)

Frits is equally provocative, if not more so, when in the company of his friends. (The trouble is, people never quite know whether he’s kidding or being serious.) Baldness is something of a preoccupation for Frits, and he proceeds to point it out in others at every possible opportunity. There are multiple examples in the book, not least in the gleeful taunts Frits throws at his brother, Joop, when he drops by for a visit.

Early death or degradation is another running theme, frequently cropping up in Frits’ dreams and conversations, steadily infusing the narrative with a palpable sense of bleakness. While some of Frits’ friends find his disturbing jibes somewhat uncomfortable, others know he is only joking, responding with their own equally controversial comments. There is a seam of mordant wit running through this novel, an air of gallows humour that permeates throughout. (It is worth recalling at this point that The Evenings was published just two years after the end of WW2, and while the war is barely mentioned explicitly, the sense of darkness clearly remains.)   

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way Reve give us access to Frits’ thoughts alongside his speech, so while Frits often seems to be engaging in fairly banal conversation – typically with his parents – the running commentary on what is going on in his head tells a very different story. While some of these inner thoughts are peppered with dry humour, others are imbued with a feeling of desperation, a kind of existential angst that typifies Frits’ existence.

Suddenly the kettle began singing in the kitchen. “Make that noise stop,” he thought, “for God’s sake, make it stop.” (p. 20)

As Frits tries to make it through the evenings without killing someone or losing his mind, life goes on in the van Egters household. There are bland meals to be cooked, coal to be fetched, fires to be lit, keys to be found and the radio to be turned on and off (a particular bone of contention between Frits and his father). The way Reve manages to make the mundane feel stealthily compelling is an art form unto itself.  

A few minutes later his mother came in with the dishes. “I’m going to Bep Spanjaard’s,” he said, “and from there we’re going to a midnight showing at The Lantern, at eleven thirty.” “What time will you come home then, for God’s sake?” she asked. “It will probably be around two o’clock,” he replied, “be sure not to bolt the door.” “One of these days you’ll go completely mad,” she said. “True,” Frits said, “I am already moving in that direction, by leaps and bounds. But don’t tell anyone.” (p. 224)

As the novel moves towards its undeniable conclusion – a New Year’s Eve that Frits seems destined to spend with his parents – there is a growing sense of dread. A fitting note, perhaps, for an evening that often seems like an anti-climax, such is the pressure to enjoy oneself irrespective of circumstances. There is a marvellous scene in which Frits’ mother produces a bottle of apple-berry cordial, thinking it is fruit wine, while a ‘non-stop programme of Hawaiian melodies’ plays out on the wireless. Needless to say, the evening is excruciating, all the more so for Frits, who is desperate just to get through it.   

In summary then, The Evenings is an excellent novel, by turns savage, hilarious, poignant and biting.  Who knew that a narrative about the mundanities of everyday life, the interminable passing of time and our endeavours to idle away the hours, could be so darkly comic and oddly touching? Bravo to Pushkin Press and the translator Sam Garrett for rescuing Reve’s text from obscurity and publishing the first English translation in 2016. (My thanks to the publishers for kindly providing a reading copy.)

I’ll finish with a final quote, one that seems to capture something of the futility of Frits’ life. Perhaps we are all just shuffling paper, taking cards out of a file and putting them back again to little or no avail, steadily dispensing with the days until our time on this planet is over…

“I work in an office. I take cards out of a file. Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.” (pp. 53–54)