Rivers

by Martin Michael Driessen

  They watched as the emigrants walked along the dike back to Nijmegen, where there was a train station.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Now I’ll make a phone call to my old associate in Rotterdam,” Julius replied.

  The nearest telephone was in a café in the village. When he returned, he shook his head. “New owner,” he said, “who says he can’t do anything for us.”

  They spent the night in one of the sheds. There was little activity in the port. The next day a two-horse cart came to fetch the lumber. No one seemed to know who the raft belonged to, and a week later it was still moored there. Julius eventually found out it was owned by a building contractor in Dordrecht. He wrote to him in German and English, offering their services, but got no answer.

  For the time being, they slept in the shed, counted the guilders Julius still had, and looked out over the broad and glistening river that flowed past them. They frequently inspected the raft, which they now considered theirs, until they had identified every last timber mark on the logs.

  The contractor finally got in touch and offered them fifteen guilders to bring the raft to Dordrecht, which would save him the extra cost of a towboat.

  That evening they stood together on their raft and made plans.

  “The crossing to America costs more than I’ve got, even for second class,” Julius said, “but maybe we can work our way across—washing dishes, for instance. That’s how nearly all the millionaires in America started.”

  “America?” Konrad said. “I don’t want to go to America.”

  “Where to, then?”

  “Only to the end of the river.”

  “Suit yourself. Once we get to Dordrecht, you’ll almost be there.”

  It had started snowing; a translucent whirlwind of snowflakes descended on the dark river.

  “We’ll be needing peaveys,” Julius said. “And about three days’ worth of provisions.”

  They walked back and forth over the logs.

  “What happened?” Konrad asked out of the blue. “Why did you and your wife divorce?”

  “Because she was better off without me. She had an Ariernachweis.”

  “I thought the Melzers were Jews too.”

  “They were. But her grandparents converted.”

  “And yours didn’t?”

  “Only my father. But that wasn’t enough. I’m grateful he doesn’t have to endure all this.”

  “Couldn’t she help you after the divorce?”

  “She could have. But it wasn’t a good marriage,” Julius said. “Let’s leave in the morning.”

  That same evening, in the shed, Konrad took out the wrought-iron hook he had been carrying with him all these years and attached it to the tip of a long willow branch. Then he brought out his hip boots.

  “I wouldn’t bother with them,” Julius said. “The Waal’s a calm river, but if you fall in with those things on, you’ll drown all the same.”

  But when we sail into Dordrecht, Konrad thought to himself, I’m putting them on.

  Neither man slept much that night, and they heard every hourly chime of the Ewijk church bell.

  At daybreak they undid the chains and pushed the raft out of the inlet and onto the river.

  Konrad was vigilant, like a man who, after many years, meets up with a woman he once loved. After all, she went by another name and this was her country, not his; who knew what had become of her? She might be rancorous, unpitying, hurtful. But the river, broad and unambiguous, flowed smoothly between the flooded washlands and the snow-covered breakwaters. It wasn’t cold, a few degrees above freezing, and there was hardly any wind. They could make out the blades of the windmills through the light snowfall. The cattle had already been brought inside; only a few sheep grazed along the dike.

  “Keep to the edge of the channel,” Julius had warned. “I’m not sure if the cargo ships’ll give us right of way. They used to, but we’re not on the big raft now.”

  Indeed, the first barge that overtook them did not yield, and Konrad steered outside the buoys. First the tar-black bow appeared, showing the name Spes Bona. The shipmate on the roof of the deckhouse signaled to the pilot, but even if he had wanted to steer clear, it was too late. Many meters of riveted steel glided past them; the tautness of their lashed logs made the raft bob dangerously. A decidedly ill-humored spitz trotted along the ship’s gangway, keeping even with them for as long as the passage lasted. When the pilothouse passed, the captain opened the door and cried out, in Dutch: “Well, I’ll be damned! A raft? I thought we were rid of those wretched things.”

  “Dankeschön,” Konrad called back, ignorant of what the man had said.

  The dog glowered at them from the poop deck, snowflakes sticking to its furry head. Like his master, he was not keen on a raft on their river, let alone a raft manned only by a fellow wearing a long black coat and a hat and another armed with a metal-tipped pike.

  They read, under a faded Dutch tricolor on the stern, the unpronounceable place name Gorinchem.

  “Maybe we should hoist a flag too,” Konrad suggested. “If only to be a bit more visible.”

  “I wouldn’t know which one,” Julius replied.

  “We’ll stay outside the buoys,” Konrad said. “The river’s wide enough.”

  “Just tell me what to do. You’re in charge.”

  “Go stand at the back and warn me if something comes along.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” Julius said, and walked to the rear of the raft.

  Every so often Konrad glanced over his shoulder. Julius stood stock-still, his hands on his back, as if he were not only surveying the river, but his entire past.

  “By the way,” Julius said that night, “I picked up Evchen in Koblenz, on the way back from delivering the big raft to Holland.”

  Konrad said nothing, and stoked the fire. It was too cold to sleep outside, and they hadn’t found any shelter for the night. They had knocked at the door of a large farmhouse, but were not welcome. They would stay up and push off again at first light. From here, they could reach Dordrecht in one day.

  “I wanted to take her back to Wallreuth. I offered her a job at my parents’. Housekeeping, or in the yard. I had to pay off the madam. Evchen still owed her rent.”

  Konrad tossed willow twigs onto the fire. They might be the property of the farmer who had turned them away, but he didn’t care.

  “We had to change trains at Frankfurt. I left her on a bench in the waiting room, and when I got back she was gone.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “To buy cigars.”

  “And you never saw her again?”

  “No. And I don’t think we ever will.”

  Daybreak. A skein of geese passed above the Waal.

  Maybe she eventually found a man after all, Konrad thought, who would look after her.

  Loevestein Castle loomed ahead.

  “Just another hour or so until Dordrecht,” Julius said. “Any idea how we’ll get this thing into port?”

  “You’ve done it once already.”

  “Come now. All I did was sashay around in my white suit.”

  Julius walked to the edge of the raft to relieve himself and thought: I still haven’t told him the truth. He wasn’t Jewish, not even half. He and Hermine had divorced because he squandered his entire inheritance on speculations. But even if I tell him that, he thought, it still wouldn’t be the entire truth.

  The river had changed names again, like a woman who keeps remarrying, and was now called the Merwede. Just before its confluence with the Maas and the Noord, Konrad brought the raft close to the bank so that Julius could jump ashore with a rope in his hand.

  I’ve rafted pretty much the entire river, Konrad thought, from Wallreuth to Holland. My adventure is almost over.

  They had just about reached the jetty, and the current was strong. Julius would have to weave among lampposts and parked automobiles, alternately tightening and slackening the rope. He turned up his collar and hung th
e coiled rope over his elbow.

  Onlookers gathered on the quay; it had been years since they’d seen rafters at work here. A youth in a corduroy coat and cap jumped from his bicycle and gestured for them to throw him the rope. The water in the harbor was carpeted with duckweed and debris. A police car drove up; officers got out and took in the scene. The boy removed his cap, he was very light blond, and he waved it and gestured that he would pull in the raft. A policeman cupped his hands around his mouth and asked to see their permit.

  “Julius!”

  Julius straightened his gold-rimmed glasses and looked up, and Konrad suddenly saw how old he had become.

  “Let’s keep going!”

  Julius tipped his black hat in consent.

  The raft drifted further along the current of the Oude Maas, leaving the bemused helpers behind on the quay.

  “What’s fifteen guilders?” Konrad said. “I want to reach the sea.”

  The current carried them further west, and Julius, who had been silent for some time, consulted his map.

  “That church steeple over there, that should be Puttershoek.”

  “And after that?”

  “There is no city after that.”

  It was not snowing, but it was colder than ever.

  They opened their last swingtop bottle of beer. Jenever would have been better.

  Did you see that boy with the corduroy jacket, on the bike? That’s how I could start, thought Julius. And then Konrad would say, “The one with the cap, you mean, in Dordrecht? Of course. Why?” And then I would say: “I can’t stop thinking about him. Konrad, the truth is, I’m not attracted to women. That’s why Hermine divorced me. I couldn’t perform my duties as a husband.”

  And then instead of speaking, Konrad would think back on the night when Julius returned from his failed adventure with Thekla von Wiedenhausen.

  “Didn’t you ever suspect anything?” would be Julius’s next question.

  He was fairly sure Konrad would answer no.

  But say Konrad were to add, “You were plenty excited in that brothel in Koblenz.”

  Then it would be the moment to confess: “It wasn’t because of Evchen. It was because of the Senegalese fellow. And because of you.”

  “I have to tell you something,” Konrad said, holding up the beer bottle to be sure he didn’t shortchange Julius before taking his last swig. “I have no imagination. You do. Rafting down this river was the only idea I’ve ever had. I’ll go back to Wallreuth now, and once I’m home I’ll fix up my mother’s house. You’ll go to America.”

  “Yeah,” Julius mumbled and took the tin cigarette case from his coat pocket. “And set up a business in car tires and be a millionaire before you know it.”

  It was already getting dark when the river curved to the north and five tall flames appeared in the sky.

  “What’s that?” Konrad asked, excited and uneasy at the same time. The river was becoming stranger and stranger. He felt like he was in a Jules Verne story, where the heroes witnessed things they couldn’t explain until the scientist traveling with them spelled it all out.

  “Oil refineries at the Vondelingenplaat. They burn off methane gas.”

  “Without you I’d have never learned a thing,” Konrad said. After a pause he added, “Without you I’d have never rafted all the way down this river.”

  “It’s been a long voyage,” Julius mumbled as they passed the lights of Delfshaven. It started snowing again, and they halfway covered themselves under a tarpaulin.

  Konrad pointed to a large white sign on the shore with the number 17 on it.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Seventeen kilometers past Rotterdam, I think. This is the Nieuwe Waterweg.”

  Not much of a name, Julius thought, but it’s still the same river. We were boys on the creek, youths on the Main, men on the Rhine. I loved him, I betrayed him, my whole life revolved around him. But we’ve never been closer than we are now, and in a few hours we’ll reach the sea together as old men, without knowing each other. And we’ve essentially stolen this raft.

  An enormous passenger ship with a thousand illuminated portholes charged past them on its way to sea and forced the raft to the edge of the canal. After Konrad had held them off the cement bank, he resumed his place next to Julius on the crate.

  Julius took the tin case out of his pocket and offered him a flat cigarette.

  “Do you know what love is?” Julius asked after they had lit their cigarettes.

  “No,” Konrad said, “I don’t. I’ve never loved anyone. Not even myself. You’re more worldly than I am.”

  “But surely you . . .”

  “Once, with a pharmacist’s widow in Nierst. But it didn’t do anything for me. It was like I wasn’t even there.”

  “You were in Egypt, sir, and did not see the pyramids?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Sorry. Just a quote.”

  “All I’ve ever read were six books by Jules Verne,” Konrad said as he stood up to unravel the system of range lights, beacons, and buoys on this busy stretch of river.

  The last day of their journey began. Behind them, the clouds in the east resembled pennons that had caught fire in the rising sun.

  The raft floated steadily downstream, rotating slowly toward the sea. They sat back-to-back on the crate, the pike raised like a mast without sails, and saw daybreak, the lightless west, and all points of the compass repeatedly pass by; reaped-clean beet fields, streets, quays, cranes, and factories, a maelstrom of loveless land.

  “D’you think there’ll be surf?” Konrad asked.

  “I suppose so.”

  “I’m finally going to see the sea!”

  “It won’t be long now,” Julius replied, “but don’t get your hopes up.”

  Pierre and Adèle

  He shall be purified by

  Fire, Water, Air, and Earth

  The deer stumbled after the reverberation from the shot had already died away, as though it only then realized it had been hit. Its forelegs buckled, and it slid, kneeling, in the direction of the river, its head held high. It was seized by the kind of panic that can also strike a human when he realizes something terrible has happened to him but doesn’t yet know what. Lurching on its three good legs, it tried to reach the far side of the vale.

  Two men—one young, one old—appeared from the bushes, their shotguns raised. Their hunting dog set off in yelping pursuit.

  The deer, a young doe, plunged into the creek and waded through it with short, crooked leaps; her head, with rolling eyes and dripping chin, just above the surface.

  Two other men appeared from the woods on the opposite side.

  They, too, had their rifles at the ready, but rather than being aimed at the deer, they were pointed at the men across from them.

  “Not one more step!” bellowed one of them. “Keep off our land!”

  The deer staggered up the muddy bank toward the inevitable, sagged to the ground, and lay prone on the grass, its long neck bent backward.

  The first pair of hunters approached. The eldest, who walked with difficulty, broke open his shotgun and draped it over his bent arm, the barrel pointing downward; at the same time, with his right hand, he felt in the pocket of his corduroy coat and slipped two new shells into the barrels.

  “Listen, man,” he shouted hoarsely. “Be reasonable. We shot her on our property. She’s only five meters from us. It’s our kill.”

  “Not a chance. She’s on our land. Everything on this side of the boundary is ours.”

  As though to accentuate those words, his companion lowered the muzzle of his shotgun and, hardly taking his eyes off the men across from him, shot the deer in the head.

  Her legs stretched for a brief moment, as though she considered a last-ditch flight and then gave in.

  The dead, clouded-over doe eye still reflected two wooded riverbanks and four men. What it no longer saw was the dog, which, yapping with enthusiasm, had swum across the river and poun
ced upon her body.

  “Call off that damn dog,” said the one who had fired the coup de grace, “or he’ll be next.”

  “Babouche, ici!” shouted one of the hunters.

  The dog wagged its wet, furry tail in acknowledgement of the command, but at the same time it sank its teeth into the dead animal’s soft underbelly.

  “Ici, Babouche! Viens!”

  “Call him off, or I’ll blow him away,” the man repeated, leveling his rifle. “It’s my right. He’s poaching.”

  “Don’t you dare, you swine!” the older hunter threatened. “Babouche, heel!”

  The dog, torn between duty and bloodlust, pulled a strand of gut from the deer’s torn-open belly and backed through the mud and into the water, its ears pitched backward to hear its master’s voice, its eyes glued on the enemy.

  “Make him let go! I’ll shoot!”

  The younger hunter stepped into the creek, the water flowing above his rubber boots; he grabbed the dog by the collar and dragged it onto the shore.

  The intestine now floated in the water like the loose end of an umbilical cord.

  The shooter placed his foot on the deer, and one last puff of air escaped from the cadaver’s belly.

  The hunters kicked their dog, who had no idea what it had done wrong.

  “You know this means war, don’t you, bastard?”

  “It’s been war since your ancestors turned heretics. They should have wiped you all out. You’ve got no business in France.”

  “I’m warning you, you dirty collaborator. Set one foot on our side of the creek, and we shoot. I don’t care if it’s your dog or your daughter.”

  “Pathetic old cripple. Come on, let’s get this game of ours home.”

  They lugged the deer by its legs up the bank, rifles clamped under their free arms, while the other hunters retreated into the woods on their side of the vale, dragging their befuddled dog with them.