On the way home Kirsten stops by the bakery she likes. She buys sourdough and a cinnamon bun. She unlocks her bike and puts the paper bag in her front basket. As she merges back into the cycle lane, a man shouts at her from behind. She turns around to apologise. But he is already speeding past, shaking his head at her.
A while later, she locks her bike and lets herself into the flat. Bilbo, the landlord’s cat, is waiting for her by the door, miaowing for attention. He does this a lot, especially at night. Mika finds it annoying, but Kirsten doesn’t mind. She’s often awake anyway.
Hello Bilbo, she says, squatting down to stroke his head. The cat rolls onto his back. He purrs. Kirsten sinks down onto the floor. Her back hurts. Last week, a Dutch doctor told her she’s too young to have back pain. Take a paracetamol, he said. Go for a nice walk. It’s sunny in Amsterdam. You should make the most of it.
Bringing one hand to her back, Kirsten gets up from the floor and takes the bread into the kitchen. The cat follows her. He follows her everywhere. Mika says she’s spoiling him. He says: you do realise he’s not even our cat.
Kirsten looks down at Bilbo, and picks up his food bowl from the floor. He miaows. She sits down at the kitchen table and watches him eat. Her back is hurting, and she has no idea why. She’s too young, she thinks, for that kind of pain. What about yoga? the doctor said. She gets up from the chair and forward folds. She doesn’t like yoga. It annoys her when it helps.
Meanwhile, the cat has finished his dinner. He walks over to her and miaows again. What now Bilbo? she says, and shoos him away. He runs off.
Now she feels bad. She gets up and goes looking for him. He’s curled up in his usual spot in the middle of the bed, pretending to ignore her.
I’m sorry, Bilbo. Please forgive me.
The cat briefly opens his eyes.
Please? She lies down next to him on the bed, and starts stroking his head.
The cat considers for a moment. Then he purrs.
When Mika comes home from work, Kirsten is still in bed with the cat. She realises that this isn’t helping her case.
Kirsten? His face appears in the doorway. What are you doing?
Nothing, she says. I’m stroking the cat.
Mika sighs. Have you had dinner yet?
No, I was waiting for you.
It’s eight.
Oh, she says. I bought bread.
At the kitchen table, they talk about Mika’s day at work. It’s the reason they moved here.
I’ve got this student, he says. She wants to work on climate change and penguins. So I’m like: okay, what’s the angle? And she goes: I don’t know. So I’m sitting there pulling my hair out about penguins, talking about aesthetic mediations of nature shows, and the cultural narratives that make some species appear worth saving and not others. And she just sits there smiling and goes: what about polar bears?
Kirsten laughs. How do you do it?
Do what?
Think about depressing shit all day. I can’t even watch a David Attenborough without getting upset.
He stabs his fork into an open jar of pickles. It is depressing. But still, it helps to think things through. None of this is inevitable. It’s good to remind people of that.
What’s not inevitable?
Humans destroying everything. The end of the world, I guess?
Is it not? But you’re always saying it’s too late. Isn’t that what the climate scientists are saying?
It is too late. But that’s not the same as saying it’s inevitable.
I don’t get it. Is it too late or is it not?
Mika sighs. It is. But the structures that have led to this—the world doesn’t have to be this way. It’s worth remembering that. It could have all gone otherwise, and so it can still be otherwise. That’s important in its own right.
Kirsten picks up the last pickle and puts it in her mouth. Okay.
Mika looks at her. How was your day?
Fine. One child had a stomach bug and projectile-vomited all over another child. It’s fine though. The other child, I mean. She took it pretty well.
Mika laughs. Her job always makes him laugh.
I don’t know how you do it. Being around kids all day.
Kirsten shrugs. Kids aren’t the problem. They’re insane, but at least they’re honest about it. It’s adults who mostly suck.
Mika gives her a funny look. When they first started going out, he found her misanthropy cute and refreshing. Now he just gives her that look.
I’m going to bed, he says.
At two am, Kirsten wakes because she has to pee. The cat follows her to the bathroom and rubs his head against her legs. She strokes him while peeing, and then goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water. For a while she just stands by the balcony window, looking out into the darkness of the gardens below. In the daytime, you can see life and light in the windows opposite, people they don’t know going about their day. Now everyone is asleep, except her, standing here with a glass of water and not even drinking it. Just standing and looking at nothing.
In the morning, her alarm goes off at six. She has to be in work by half seven, before the first parents arrive to deposit their children. She doesn’t mind the early mornings. They’re part of the job. It’s the evenings she’s afraid of. Having time to think about things.
Kirsten showers. She makes coffee, and spreads a thick slice of bread with butter and jam. Mika is still asleep. He usually doesn’t get up until eight or nine. He likes to start his day with emails, Bluesky, and the news, mostly in that order. Kirsten prefers to do Sudoku on her phone. She’s good at it too, figuring out what goes where, putting numbers in their right places.
At seven, she’s in the hallway, getting ready to leave. Bilbo is hovering nearby, watching her. In another life, he could have been a dog. In this life, he’s just the cat of some guy who’s abandoned him. Kirsten gives him a last pat on the head, and locks the door behind her.
The daycare is in a residential neighbourhood, on the ground floor of an apartment building from the 1930s. When it’s quiet, during naptime, Kirsten can hear the footsteps of the people living above. Otherwise, she can only hear what’s around her.
At the back of the building, there is a small garden. It’s basically a square of fake lawn surrounded by a tall wooden fence. The older kids have little bikes to zoom around on, a small playground with a climbing tower and a swing, and a sandbox. Next to a small shed where the toys are kept, there is a row of large pots filled with dying plants. They are supposed to teach the children that food doesn’t grow in supermarkets. Occasionally, Kirsten will point at the pots and say: look, this is where tomatoes come from.
After breakfast, Kirsten and Esmee take the yellow group outside. They put sun cream on the children’s necks and faces, and help them put their jackets on. Soon they’re outside, pumping air into miniature bike tyres, or investigating for leaks. Kirsten had no idea how to fix a bike before coming here. Now she does it a lot. It’s one of the more satisfying aspects of the job, being a fixer rather than a breaker of things. At least that’s how the children see her.
Kirsten watches them play. She runs around the lawn to prevent bicycle collisions. She goes inside to fetch crackers and juice. She applies more sunscreen. She tells a kid to stop putting sand in his mouth. She goes through all the motions of her job, and feels a sense of relief. There is always something to do, some minor disaster that isn’t one.
Why don’t you take a break, Esmee says.
Kirsten nods. She goes inside to pee and make some coffee. In the room next to the kitchen, the red group is learning to sing a song. She listens for a while. She listens and drinks her coffee, wondering, not for the first time, about the point of it all.
After the children leave, Kirsten stays behind to help with tidying up. Everyone is happy it’s Friday. Only Kirsten isn’t sure. She has promised to go to an event that Mika has organised. She wishes she wasn’t going. She is tired, and her back is hurting. It’s always hurting, except when she forgets.
In the lecture hall, she finds a seat at the back of the room and looks around. Mika is on the podium with the speakers, doing a nervous thing with his hands. It takes him a while to notice that she is here. When he does, he smiles and waves at her. It’s nice to know she can still have this effect on him, after all these years. He has this effect on her too, but she’s not very good at showing it.
When the event begins, Kirsten feels a little bit ill. She hasn’t had dinner, and her stomach is doing flips. She is aware that it would be difficult to leave the room without drawing attention. She tries to focus on the talk. After a round of introductions, the first speaker approaches the podium to read a prose poem. It’s about conveyer belts, and entropy, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Kirsten has no idea what it is about.
The poet smiles and sits back down amongst the panel. Mika says a few things about how generative it was. The panel nods and agrees. For a while they talk about why everything is bad. Then the audience starts chipping in. There is broad agreement that we need materialist analyses of things. Climate change is terrible. Perhaps Marx could help.
After the talk, the speakers go to a nearby bar. Kirsten tags along. She tries to be pleasant, but it’s hard. Her back is hurting, and she is worried about the cat.
That was great, she says, to the poet walking next to her.
The poet smiles. Thanks.
Do you do this often? Write poems, I mean?
Oh, yes. All the time.
Why?
The poet laughs. Why?
Yeah—sorry. You don’t have to answer that.
No, no it’s okay. I guess I do it because—it helps me process things. It makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere. Until I look up and realise the world’s still the same. He laughs. What about you? What do you do?
I work in a daycare.
Right. What’s it like?
It’s good. I mean, it’s exhausting. But I like it, you know?
The poet steps onto the pavement. Kirsten does the same.
It’s just sometimes—the job breaks my heart. The kids we look after, most of them are convinced grown-ups are amazing. We give them free shit, and help them wipe their butts. And when they cry, we tell them it’s all gonna be okay. If only they knew, you know? The things we do to fuck up their world. But they don’t. They don’t know anything.
The poet looks at her. Do you wish they knew more?
Kirsten shakes her head. No, she says. I don’t wish that on anyone.
She doesn’t talk to the poet again. Instead, she drinks Belgian beers and listens to Mika talk to one of the speakers about the demise of the humanities. Nobody asks her anything. They just assume she would speak if she had something to say. Perhaps that’s how conversations work.
The poet is the first to go home. He is tired after a long day. Half an hour later, everyone else leaves too, until it’s just her and Mika, both of them a little drunk.
Why do I even bother coming along to these things?
I’m sorry, Mika says. His voice is hoarse from talk and alcohol.
You’re sorry? For what?
I’m sorry my friends didn’t ask you anything.
Your friends? You’ve met them like, yesterday.
He shrugs. My colleagues, then. Whatever.
Yeah, exactly. Whatever.
Why are you taking it out on me? You know I’m not like that.
Oh, you’re not? Forgive me for mistaking you for one of them.
Mika sighs. Oh come on Kirsten, can we not do this again? I’m sorry I’ve made you move here. I’m sorry that you’re not happy. What else do you want me to say? He gets up and goes to the bar to pay the bill.
Kirsten looks around the room. It’s full of students, having beers and bitterballen for dinner. On the table next to them, a couple is playing chess. They look as though they know what they’re doing, drinking as they are and having fun with the moves. Not all of humanity will go extinct, the poet said. Some will survive and become kings of the ashes.
They cycle home in the dark. Amsterdam is beautiful at night. It would take a different kind of person to take it all in. To say: look, how beautiful, and actually mean it.
Kirsten looks at Mika cycling in front of her. She wonders if he might be that kind of person. Perhaps he’s always been that person, and somehow she didn’t know.
At the next traffic light, he turns around to her. Shall we get food?
Kirsten nods. They park their bikes and go to a small falafel shop. They are so hungry, they order everything: wraps, fries, cokes, and halloumi sticks. They eat without talking. At some point, Kirsten puts down her wrap.
Don’t you ever worry that it’s all pointless? We could be dead tomorrow, and everything would still be the same.
He takes a sip of his coke. I don’t actually.
I don’t get it. How can you be optimistic about humanity, still? Knowing what you know?
I’m not optimistic. I just don’t think that everything’s pointless. This here—he points at her and the food. It’s not pointless. It’s all we’ve got, but that doesn’t mean it’s pointless.
So the meaning of life is—falafel?
He laughs. You know what I mean.
Bilbo is waiting by the door when they arrive. Kirsten hopes he hasn’t been waiting long. She hopes he isn’t angry at her for feeding him so late. She is angry with herself regardless. She goes to the kitchen to put food into Bilbo’s bowl, and then returns to the living room, where Mika is lying on the sofa. She sinks down onto the rug in front of him, and folds forward to stretch her back.
Kirsten? What’s wrong?
She looks at him. My fucking back. It hurts so bad.
He sits down next to her, and presses his hands into her lower back.
How’s that?
Excruciating.
Right. Do you want me to continue?
Not really. But yes, please.
He laughs, and presses a little deeper.
After a while, Bilbo comes over to check what’s going on. He jumps onto the coffee table, and glances down at them. What are you idiots doing, he seems to say.
Kirsten strokes his head, and tells him she doesn’t know.
*****
Jana Cattien is a writer based in Amsterdam. She teaches feminist philosophy, and is currently working on her first novel.
