by Annet Schaap
Lampie is about to answer, “No,” but Fish speaks first.
“If, if…If my father dismisses you, then…” The boy is sitting up very straight. Lampie has never seen him like this before. “But he would never do that. My father is a fair and decent man.”
“Huh!” sneers Martha. “And what would you know about that, monster?”
“He is not a monster!” Lampie screams the words.
Lenny, who is crumpling up pieces of newspaper into balls, does not dare to look at his mother when she is so angry, but he shakes his head too.
“Oh really?” Martha says, waving the wet plate around. “Then I’d like to know what it is. Look at it sitting there, half-human, half…” But then she stops waving her hands around and does not say the word. “Oh. What do I know? Never mind.”
“Mermaid,” says Lampie.
Clatter—there goes the plate.
Before long though, the shattered plate has been swept up, and there is tea on the table. Nick makes sandwiches and passes them around in silence. Everyone is waiting for Martha to speak. And after a while she does.
“Oh dear,” she says. “Oh well. It’s such a long time ago now. When she lived here, when she…No one was allowed to know. That was the agreement. She was…Well, of course she was beautiful. Strangely beautiful, with green hair and very peculiar eyes. But yes, beautiful. We just weren’t all that keen on her. Such a strange race. Unnatural. Our dear Lord can never have intended for something like that to live among us, among normal folk, let’s say. But we didn’t say anything. For the master’s sake. We never spoke to her. She didn’t say much herself either. Nothing, in fact. I can’t remember her ever saying a word. And when she walked past, we made the sign of the cross behind her back and spat on the ground to ward off the evil. It has to be bad luck, that kind of thing. Who knows what unholy bargain she made to turn her tail into legs?
“At first she could still walk like normal, so it wasn’t even that noticeable. But we knew. Of course we did, all of us did. That she used to go swimming at night. That Joseph would unlock the door for her. That she was going out more and more often. And that the master said it wasn’t allowed. Whenever he yelled at her, we could hear it through the wall.
“ ‘You are not a fish!’ he used to scream. ‘So stop behaving like one!’
“She was hardly ever allowed to take a bath either. She was forbidden to go in the pond and certainly not allowed in the sea. But whenever he went off on his travels again, she did it anyway. She slipped out of the house more and more often. Until he got her pregnant, and then she hardly ever came downstairs. We sometimes saw her, just her silhouette, at the window up there, but no one went up to see her. No one but Joseph. Yes, I felt sorry for her. But well, you can feel sorry for anyone, can’t you? Not my business. You know how it is. And after that…well, I actually never saw her again after that.”
“Yes, you did,” Nick says, nudging her. “For that photograph.”
“What photograph?” asked Lampie.
She notices that Fish looks rather pale. He has not even touched his sandwich.
“Photograph? There is no photograph,” says Martha.
“It’s over there, isn’t it? In that drawer?” says Nick, pointing helpfully.
Martha rolls her eyes and walks over to the kitchen cabinet. She slides open one of the drawers, rummages around, takes something out, and throws it onto the table. It is a sheet of thick, yellowing paper.
“It happened just the once,” she says. “This man came to the house. They said he was a photographer. Had one of those machines with him, under a sheet. It was because…they’d made the master an admiral. That was why. It had to be announced in the newspapers, and they needed a photograph to go with the story. The master wanted it to be a picture just of him, but no: What about your beautiful wife? You’re married, aren’t you? And that was that. And then he decided that the house and the staff and everyone had to be in the picture. What a disaster.”
Lampie gently picks up the photograph off the table and turns it over.
“They had to carry her downstairs. She couldn’t take a single step herself by that time. We sat her in a chair, and we had to cover her in blankets, and put a pair of sunglasses on her, so that no one could see anything. The master was really annoyed. He was furious with everything all day, especially with me. Because the photographer wanted to have Lenny in the picture too. Goodness knows why. And back then Lenny kept running away all the time. He couldn’t stand still for a second, but you need to be still for a photograph, for a really long time. The sweat on my forehead! I must have aged ten years in one afternoon. The picture never even ended up in the newspaper. They used a portrait of the master instead. All that fuss for nothing!”
Lampie slides the photograph across the table to Fish so he can see as well. On the steps, in front of a much neater house, stands a young, angry Martha, gripping an arm that is attached to a white whirl of movement. She sees the admiral, his eyes in the shadow of his cap. Beside him is a very pale woman in a chair, wearing a pair of dark glasses. There are some other members of staff, people Lampie has never seen before, except for Nick, who seems to have even bigger ears than he does now. And behind the chair is a man with tousled white hair and a lopsided smile on his lips.
“Joseph,” whispers Fish.
Lampie did not think that Martha could get any angrier, but it seems she was wrong.
“Yes, Joseph. Yes,” she says with an icy chill in her voice. “The man who always solved all our problems. Joseph, yes, who was always upstairs, at first with her, and then with that…With you. Always up in that tower, never with us, never with Lenny. I had to deal with everything by myself. Up there all the time, day after day, until one day he didn’t come back, until…” She looks at Lampie. “And you think he’s not a monster, do you? Go on. Tell her what you did to Joseph, monster!”
Lampie looks at Fish, who is so horrified that he is gasping for air. He’s not a monster, she wants to say, but Fish is already speaking. Shakily at first, but not for long.
“N-nothing. I didn’t do anything. He just…” He sits up straighter and looks at Martha with his dark eyes. “He always explained things to me. Lots of things. Everything. Books and maps and stories. Until he started to forget what he’d already said, and he told me the same things again and again. N-not that I minded. But he kept falling asleep too, and I had to shake him awake. Or give him a nip. Because he wouldn’t wake up otherwise. And then…Well, um…” He swallows.
“And then…what?”
“Then he just fell over. Suddenly. It was such a shock. And he was dead. There was nothing I could do about it.”
Martha looks into the boy’s strange eyes and realizes that she believes him. Yes, that must be what happened.
She nods.
“It was awful,” says Fish. “Everyone just dies. I hate it.”
“So do I,” says Martha. She can feel a tear coming, but she blinks it away. “Well,” she says, “you can, um…Just keep the photograph. I look funny in it anyway.”
Fish looks up. “Really?” he says. “Thank you. I really appreciate it, Mrs.…”
“Call me Martha,” she says. When she gets up to go and make coffee, she sees that the boy is holding the photograph right up close to his face, so that he can take a better look.
“Ah,” she says. “Oh. Hmm.” She turns around. “What I wanted to say…I’m sorry for you…that you came out so…um, wrong. I mean…”
Lampie swallows down her last bite of sandwich. “But he didn’t. Not at all,” she says. “Really. I thought the same at first, but it’s not true. You should have seen him this morning. You have to show them, Fish.”
Soon they are standing together beside the cleanish pond, which is of course not a harbor, let alone a sea, but there is still just enough room for a backward dive and a somersault or two.
“When your father sees this…” says Lampie, when Fish has stopped to catch his breath. “He has to see you!”
“I need to do that somersault better,” pants Fish. “It’s not good enough yet, and that backward…”
“We still have time. He’s not here yet, is he? Oh, or do you still need my help with the housework, Martha?”
“Most of it’s done,” begins Martha. “But…”
“Well, then maybe we have a whole afternoon to practice. Or are you too tired, Fish?”
“No, not at all.” Fish pushes away from the side for another series of leaps.
“Lenny,” says Lampie. “You have to help too. We need someone to hold the hoops. Can you do that?”
Lenny nods happily.
“Lenny was going to pick a bucket of blackberries this afternoon, weren’t you, son?”
Lenny gives his mother a look of dismay. He would much rather hold the hoop.
“Never mind,” says Nick. “I’ll pick them.”
“Yes, but…”
“Let them do it,” whispers Nick, gently pushing Martha back to the house. “Let them give it a try.”
Martha shakes her head. “I don’t think the master will approve…”
“No,” says Nick. “Neither do I. Come on, give me a bucket.”
The rest of the afternoon, the sound of splashing, screaming, and laughter fills the garden of the Black House. The windows look down in surprise. They thought that life here was long over, that this was a dead house, a dead garden. But that is no longer true: Two dogs are barking and running circles around the pond. Drops of water splash over the hedge animals around the lawn, a twisting dragon, a swan, half a rhinoceros, and two big green dogs that look a lot like their brown brothers. In the long shadows of the late sunshine, they almost seem to come to life.
the admiral’s return
The deck is packed with men saluting, standing neatly in line. The admiral returns their salute, as straight as a ramrod, as always. It is more of an effort now though. His old bones are getting stiff and beginning to protest as he gets older, but he has never listened to them before and he doesn’t plan to start now. His faithful lieutenant, Flint, towers over him, his shoulders almost twice as wide as the admiral’s. But height alone is not enough to make an admiral, as the admiral is well aware. And muscles alone cannot win a man respect. His fingertips tap his forehead. That is what is important. Mind over matter.
He clicks his heels, turns around, and walks down the gangplank with Flint.
They are waiting for him down there, the mayor and the sheriff, for some routine formalities. Oh, you’ve been away for so long. It’s good to have you back with us, safe and sound. Yes, yes. A ship on the rocks, a lighthouse keeper found guilty. The admiral is only half listening. He is tired, and he feels old. After a while they let him leave.
“I’ll take you home, sir.”
“Hmm,” says the admiral. “Home.”
He has put this off for as long as possible, but now he has to go there. To his house that is not a home and has not been for a long time.
It is packed with old junk, objects he used to like and would bring to the house from far-off places. But what good are they to him? The house is also much too big, and he cannot find any peace there.
That child, the eyes of that child who is his son and yet—God in Heaven!—not his son at all.
He should start afresh. Maybe get married again, have a woman in the house, so that he no longer has to rattle around the place all by himself. A woman who would hang curtains here and place cushions there and who would bring him something in the evenings, a glass of port or whatnot.
Flint leads over two horses, and the admiral mounts his smoothly. He has to grit his teeth as he swings his leg up, but no one notices.
“Another hurrah for the admiral!” the men call from the high deck. “Hurrah!”
Yes, yes, hurrah, waves the admiral. He is so very tired of the sea.
They turn the horses and ride out of the harbor. A large crowd has gathered. It is not every day that a ship like the Excelsior comes sailing in, his magnificent white Excelsior with her steel bow, which cuts through ice floes like a knife through…blah, blah, blah. He sighs.
A pleasant woman. She does not need to be beautiful. He has had enough of beauty.
They ride in silence over the cobbles and out of the town. Suddenly his horse rears up. Someone is standing in the road, right in front of him.
“Whoa, boy. Easy now,” says the admiral, patting the horse’s warm neck. It is a woman, and she is not getting out of the way. Not a beautiful woman, getting on in years, and dressed entirely in gray. She begins to talk.
“I’m so glad to have bumped into you, Admiral,” she twitters. “I came as soon as I heard your ship was here. I thought you would want to hear this at once and…”
He doubts that very much. God, he is only just back on land and already it is beginning. He is in no mood to listen to women’s chitter-chatter. He needs to look for one who at least knows how to keep her mouth shut. But the woman is still standing right in front of his horse; he can hardly ride into her and knock her down.
“You have my attention, madam.”
Flint’s horse snorts, right beside her, and she jumps back in fright. The admiral coughs to hide a smile, while giving his lieutenant a look of disapproval.
“I really wouldn’t tell you this if it were just gossip, you know that. But I’ve heard it from various sources from different people. Even so, I wouldn’t have come to you if I hadn’t seen it myself with my own two eyes.”
Doesn’t he know her? Isn’t she a schoolteacher? Yes, that’s right. What does she want with him? He just wants to end the conversation, to ride on.
“As any right-minded person knows, those kinds of creatures don’t exist. At least they really shouldn’t. You know that, and so do I.”
The admiral is so taken aback that he almost falls off his horse. What is the woman saying? What exactly is she talking about?
“But if they do exist—and I’m saying ‘if’—then they most certainly do not belong in our town, among civilized folk. Yes, at the fair, one hears rumors, of course, but it’s only to be expected in places like that—unbelievable freaks, abominations. Anyone who goes to that kind of place, well, they’re just asking for it; that’s my opinion.”
My God, thinks the admiral, it’s starting again. For twelve years, it has been quiet, and now it is starting again. He tugs on the reins, so hard that the horse rears up a little. The woman jumps and takes a few steps back, but she does not leave, and she does not shut her mouth either.
“But when it happens on the public road. Right near your house. Your own house, Admiral!”
“Madam, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he does know, he knows very well, and he is trembling with fury as he sits there in his saddle. Has the boy been outside? Has he allowed other people to see him? This has never happened before.
The woman takes a small step closer, but remains at a safe distance from the horse’s legs. “I never wanted to believe it,” she says seriously. “I want you to know that. People gossip all the time, but I never let myself be swayed by such talk.”
“That does you credit, madam.”
“But now, now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. And felt it with my own flesh!”
“Your flesh, madam?” He hears Flint snort beside him. But the admiral does not feel like laughing, not at all.
Solemnly, Miss Amalia pushes up her sleeve and shows him
the bandage around her wrist.
It is not going to be easy to get rid of her, the admiral realizes. She appears to have all manner of things that she wishes to discuss and would clearly be quite happy to come home with him to do exactly that. That will never happen, of course; he would rather be strung up. But when the woman has finally left, taking her wound and her story with her, when he has assured her that such an encounter will never occur again, on his word of honor as an officer, when she has finally disappeared around the corner with her respectability and her bonnet and her skirts, the admiral turns to his lieutenant. The man is staring at him, eyebrows raised but, like the good soldier that he is, he asks no questions.
The admiral clears his throat. “Flint,” he says. “What I am about to tell you is in the strictest confidence.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And then I have a job for you.”
Over the roofs of the city, the admiral gazes at the dark forest and the road that winds through it to his house.
His mind is made up.
blackberry pie
Lampie dangles her feet in the water. The sweltering heat hangs over the pond and over the garden, making everyone sleepy, except Fish. He does his double somersault over and over again, until it is almost a triple one. Lampie is terrified that he will hit his head on the marble edge of the pond, but he keeps just missing it.
“Fish,” she says. “Shouldn’t you have a little rest?”
But Fish shakes his head so firmly that it sprays a shower of water. He has almost got the hang of the third twist. Almost, but not quite.
Lenny has rolled up his trouser legs and is hanging his big feet next to Lampie’s.
They have been sitting there since very early this morning, because once Fish gets an idea in his head, then it has to happen. He turns and jumps and darts back and forth, the sunlight sparkling in the water and in the drops that are splashing all around.