‘. . . have cleaned that up ages ago,’ said Oma Mei. ‘Now see what comes of it.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ said the Dad.
‘Kwatsj,’ said Oma Mei. Nonsense.
‘Setting up a cigar-making workshop is no ulezeik.’ No owl’s pee.
‘Did you tell those kids they didn’t have to do the weeding?’
‘They’ll have plenty of time for working.’
‘Do you want them to become good-for-nothings?’
‘A bit of play won’t do them any harm, surely!’
Angry footsteps sounded across the living room floorboards towards the kitchen. Then we could hear the sloshing of water being scooped from the bucket and poured into the kettle. There was silence for a while. We crouched on our knees in our nightdresses. It was late October, and the nights were already frosty. After sitting still for ten minutes, we were shivering with cold. Eventually the aroma of coffee came through the crack, and we heard chairs being moved about. It was a delicious aroma, the sort that made you want to be there, downstairs. But we knew that if we went down there we’d never find out why Oma Mei was acting so strangely, so we ignored the aroma, the cold and our sore knees.
‘We should never have come here,’ said Oma Mei.
‘We absolutely had to get out of there,’ said the Dad.
‘You can’t fool me, Antoon. You’re not fooling anybody. The only one you’re fooling—’
‘Oh, come on, Mother Mei—’
‘—is yourself. Of all the places you could have chosen . . . ’ ‘There weren’t very many to choose from.’
‘Of all the places, you had to pick this one?’
‘A large house. A veggie garden. At last, separate bedrooms for the boys and the girls. I can see what you mean.’
‘Watch out, Antoon Boon.’ There was a sharp edge to her voice.
There came a deep sigh from the Dad. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Bringing up those children is no ulezeik either, you know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And all the while, I’m already standing with one-and-a-half feet in my grave.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And then you have to go and choose this house, of all houses.’
‘What is the matter with this house?’ the Dad asked.
‘I can only hope that it’s found rest.’
‘Who has found rest?’ asked the Dad.
There was no answer. We heard nothing more than the ticking of the cuckoo clock and the bubbling of the kettle on the fire. Above us, the wind rustled through the gaps between the roof tiles, making a rumbly sound.
I was the first to give up.
Then Jess snuggled up to me, shivering.
Finally, Muulke got up stiffly. She pulled back the blankets angrily, crawled into bed and sat up straight. The sheet came untucked and let in a cold draught. Jess groaned.
‘Something has happened here,’ said Muulke.
‘Yes, a tragical tragedy.’ I yawned.
‘Go to sleep,’ said Jess.
But Muulke kept stubbornly staring into the half dark, her eyes glittering.
the tomb in the cellar
The stairs creaked when Oma Mei and the Dad came upstairs. We lay shivering in a knot of ice-cold arms and legs. Outside, the wind howled. A storm was blowing. The moon broke through the clouds, throwing a blue glow over the bedspread. The metal knobs on our rickety old bed lit up. In the silence, we could hear the Dad settling into his bed. There was a grumbly sigh and then a long silence.
‘Can I go soft?’ asked Jess.
‘No,’ Muulke and I said together.
‘Just for a little while.’
‘No, you’re not allowed.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why not.’
Jess started breathing in gasps.
I sighed.
‘Don’t give in,’ said Muulke.
‘I’m not giving in.’
Jess started gasping even worse.
‘It’s not for nothing that heart and hard sound so similar,’ Muulke said.
‘How long for?’ I asked Jess.
‘Just ten minutes.’
‘Five,’ said Muulke.
‘You should stay out of this,’ said Jess and changed places with me before Muulke could object.
Our bed had been specially made. The outer parts each had a long mattress filled with wool. Muulke and I slept on those. The middle part just had a wooden bottom with a woollen blanket over it. That was Jess’s place.
Jess had a vertebra that moved, became dislocated. You couldn’t see it, only feel it. This was easiest with your eyes closed. The vertebra sat at the level of her shoulderblades. If it slipped out, she had terrible pain in her back, and sometimes she couldn’t even walk. When that happened, the vertebra had to be pushed back in, and then she had to lie flat on her back for a long time.
When it had first been discovered, two years ago, Muulke and I had competed to see who could find it fastest. We became experts – we could do it even faster than the doctors who examined Jess.
On the very day it had been diagnosed, Oma Mei had walked the twenty kilometres to Maastricht and back again to get Jess’s corset, which was called a ‘straightener’.
‘That’s not a backbone we’re dealing with, it’s a wreckbone,’ she joked when she came back late that evening.The sole of her left shoe had come loose and flapped with every step she took.
Jess cried for a week about that straightener. It was an ugly sausage-like tube with leather straps that you had to tighten. At the back were wooden slats, which had to go on either side of her backbone. She had to wear it during the day. Jess thought it was horrible, particularly when she discovered that the leather and the buckles squeaked and creaked if she moved too fast. Only when Oma Mei said that without it she would grow as crooked as a letter C did she stop resisting.
Muulke got up and put on a jumper.
‘What are you going to do?’ I whispered.
‘You know what.’
Jess said that getting up was about the last thing she was thinking of.
‘Jess is right,’ I said, but before I knew it I had my vest on.
The three of us crept past Oma Mei’s door, which stood ajar.
We went down the stairs. The house creaked and groaned.
‘Mind the sixth,’ whispered Muulke. ‘Mind the sixth.’
We skipped the wailing tread.
Behind the door to the cellars, the dark was as pitch-black as fresh sjlamm.
Muulke went in front with the smoking kerosene lantern.
‘I’m not going one step further,’ said Jess.
‘She’s right,’ I said, but Muulke dragged me along. All I could do was grab Jess’s hand. And so the three of us went down the cellar steps together. Down, further and further down. It felt as if we were descending to the centre of the earth.
Something strange happens to smells at night. It’s as if the night polishes them up. Every smell that night was super clear: the muddy smell of potatoes, the musty smell of the horse blankets and, far away, the thin smell of beer. There was something that wasn’t attached to anything in particular, too: the cellar smelled of time gone by.
The preserve jars in the first cellar seemed to be floating in the flickering light. We kept hanging onto each other’s hands. We bumped our knees, our shoulders, our heads; there were rustling and scratching sounds; but we kept hanging on tight to each other.
‘I’m going back,’ whispered Jess. ‘I’m really going back now.’
‘Go on, then,’ grumbled Muulke. ‘Go on upstairs, sjiethoes.’
I felt Jess’s hand clasping my wrist like a small claw. I tried to loosen her fingers. What on earth were we doing here? And why on earth had I come along? I could have just stayed in my bed, couldn’t I?
Shivering, we moved towards the third cellar. Muulke stumbled and nearly dropped the lamp. Then we stood motionless because Jess thought she’d heard Oma Mei.
&nb
sp; ‘What did you hear really?’ I whispered.
‘I don’t know. Something.’
Our hearts thumped. We didn’t know which we’d rather believe: that it had been Oma Mei, or the opposite. Because if it wasn’t her, then who or what was it?
Here, underground, it was still and dark and icy-cold.
‘This is what it’s like when you’re dead,’ said Muulke.
‘Blabbermouth,’ I said, but I heard my voice trembling.
Muulke handed me the lantern and opened the door to the third cellar.
All those strange objects floating about chaotically in the light were far more creepy than the stuff in the first and second cellars had been, because this time we had no idea what was what. These objects could be anything.
‘You’re squashing my hand,’ Jess said to me.
In the back of the third cellar stood an enormous old weather-beaten mirror.The top edge of the frame was missing. The mirror was covered in black spots, so our mirror images looked as if they’d got lost in a black snowstorm. We stared at ourselves: the jumpers over our nightdresses; our pale faces full of strange, sharp shadows.
‘We look as if we’ve been through something frightful.’ Muulke’s voice sounded weird and high.
‘Hurry up,’ Jess squeaked. ‘Where is that tombstone?’
Muulke pointed.
Jess and I took the tiniest little step closer.
And another one.
‘Didn’t you say it was a gravestone?’ I said.
‘With skulls and everything?’ said Jess.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Muulke, looking confused.
But what we saw was a bedhead. True, it was a strange bedhead. It really did look like a tombstone, with its round arch. Inside the arch, a border had been carved out, and two dates had been carved into the wood:
30 August 1863 – 7 July 1870
But you could clearly see the legs of the bed. It was just a bed with a headboard, nothing else.
‘Come on, let’s go now,’ I said.
‘Wait,’ said Muulke, holding the lantern closer. ‘There’s more writing here.’ She brushed away a thick layer of cobwebs.
‘Niene . . . Nienev . . . ’ ‘Nienevee,’ said Jess. ‘It says Nienevee.’
‘Is that who has to find rest?’ asked Muulke.
I sighed crossly. Wasn’t it just complete kwatsj for us to be staring at an old bed in the middle of the night? We weren’t little children anymore, were we?
‘Stupid carry-on,’ I mumbled.
That’s when we heard the first ‘argh’!
And that first ‘argh’ came from under the ground.
Many memories change over time, but that ‘argh’ coming from under the ground has never changed. It sounded muffled, as if it had to force its way up through the earth, and then through the concrete of the cellar floor.
‘Aaarghhhh!’
A terrifying, croaking, moaning sound.
‘The wind,’ I said.
But if it was the wind, why was I suddenly jumping back? Why was I suddenly standing on a chair? Why did the floor of the cellar feel as fragile as an eggshell, as if at any moment something terrible could come up through it? Jess grabbed me and hung on tight. The chair creaked and wobbled. I jumped off and landed on Jess’s heel, and she kicked Muulke’s shin in her fright. We all jumped back.
‘Ogodogodogod,’ Jess squeaked. ‘There!! Look, there!’ We had scrambled back to the first cellar. Muulke swung the lantern around and our shadows moved away from us. They moved around all over. Even the glass jars of preserved fruit on the shelf next to us began to look sinister. As if the light-red cherries and the white pears weren’t fruits, but something else, something . . .
‘Something deadish,’ whispered Jess.
Then came the second ‘argh’, even more drawn-out and disconsolate than the first.
I scraped my head against the ceiling. Muulke hit Jess’s chin with the lantern. We tripped over each other trying to get upstairs. We could never work out later how we managed to get out of that cellar without doing each other mortal injury; and how we eventually ended up upstairs and back in our bed, gasping for breath, hearts thumping, still wearing jumpers and vests over our nightdresses, without waking up Oma Mei.
I did know one thing: it was all very nice for me to think we’d grown too old for certain things, but, whatever they were, those things obviously didn’t agree.
the opposite of
worrying [1]
The next morning the opposite of worrying arrived, on Nol Rutten’s handcart: three heavy sacks packed in rush matting, and a stack of five crates. In the back lay a stack of wooden templates with rounded slits in them.
‘This is for the fillers,’ said Nol, pointing at the sacks.
‘The fillers,’ said the Dad.
‘And the wrappers are in those crates.’
The Dad looked from the sacks to the crates, casually repeating what Nol said. His eyes were shining.
‘And these are the presses. This one here rather needs a drop of oil, but the other one is still in tiptop condition.’
‘A drop of oil. Of course,’ said the Dad.
Our brothers unloaded everything. Oma Mei told Nol she really hoped he wasn’t taking his old mate the Dad for a ride, because she would strongly resent that – he could see that, couldn’t he, her having to look after all these half orphans? And in the same breath she told him that half orphans counted for as much as whole orphans – sorrow was sorrow, after all; you couldn’t divide it in two. And though she wasn’t complaining about the fact that she, the widow of a supervisor, had to keep a whole family going while she already stood with one-and-a-half feet in her grave, bringing up children was no ulezeik, and would he like a piece of fruit pie.
Nol said that she was absolutely right, and yes, thank you, he would like some pie – no, not the plum jam one, that was a bit filling this time of day; he’d rather the apple. He found Oma Mei’s sharp tongue easier to bear than the Dad’s looks of doggish devotion.
‘Don’t go on about it,’ he said to the Dad a bit later, when they stood by the side of the road. ‘I let you pay for it. Well and truly!’
Then he made himself scarce.
Muulke, Jess and I watched our brothers trying to move the screw of the unoiled press, Piet and Eet on one side, Krit and Sjeer on the other, their faces red, their cheeks puffed out.
‘Are you children still here?’ Oma Mei worried. ‘Hurry up, off to school!’
We ran down Sjlammbams Sahara, Oma Mei’s warning not to run and to stay together still sounding in our ears.
We ran as far as the market.There we stopped, at the corner. We straightened each other’s hair ribbons and waited for Jess to catch her breath.
‘Am I still squeak-creaking?’ asked Jess.
‘No.’
‘Listen really hard,’ she said.
‘We are listening! We are listening!’ we promised. ‘You’re as silent as a mouse.’
Luckily, we were just in time. The classes hadn’t lined up yet.
I didn’t really miss our old school. It had been a small, untidy building with only three rooms, and the head was stone-deaf. But I still had to force myself to walk onto our new playground. Jess was even more shy. Muulke, on the other hand, had marched up to a group of girls on the very first day, and less than a minute later she was skipping rope with them.
We were in separate classes this morning. As I rattled off times tables, parsed sentences and recited from the catechism, inside I was getting ready for playtime. I was sure Muulke was going to talk about last night. And that she was going to make Jess even more scared than she already was.
‘It was the wind,’ I said when the time came, before Muulke had a chance to even open her mouth. We were standing together in the gloomy little courtyard below the statue of Mary, which looked just as bedraggled as the rest of the building. ‘It was the wind, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘The wind doesn’t s
ay argh,’ said Muulke. ‘And certainly not from under the ground.’
‘It only sounded like it came from under the ground,’ I said.
‘Do you know for sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you at the time?’
‘Straightaway,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah?’ asked Muulke. ‘Then why did you jump two metres into the air?’
‘Because you were making me nervous,’ I replied.
‘There is something there,’ said Muulke. ‘I swear. And that Niene . . . eh . . . ’ ‘Nienevee,’ said Jess.
‘That Nienevee has something to do with it.’
‘A tragical tragedy, of course,’ I said. ‘Just stop it. There’s nothing the matter with that house. There’s nothing the matter with that cellar.’
Jess looked from me to Muulke like a hungry little mongrel dog that’s offered two sausages and doesn’t know which one to choose.
After school, we waited for each other outside Saint Michael’s Church in the market square. There we met Fie, who walked with us as far as Putse Gate. From there, she solemnly waved us off out of the town, the way she’d done every day since we’d moved. And we waved back, leaving the town’s walls behind. We felt brave and forlorn at the same time.
At the beginning of Sjlammbams Sahara, there were still a few houses.There was a farm belonging to Mr Wetsels, who also owned the field next to our house. Diagonally opposite that was the whitewashed house of ‘Nose’ Hermes. The third farm was Farmer Kalle’s. Further on, there was nothing.
The further autumn progressed, the bigger this nothing seemed. Once the grain had been harvested and the beets pulled up, the undulating land became more and more bare. In the end, all that was left were the furrows made by the ploughs, like a promise for the new year.
Since we’d moved, Oma Mei had seemed more determined than ever to prevent my sisters and me from becoming good-for-nothings. The windows had to be washed. The washing had to be soaked, scrubbed clean and put through the wringer. The straw mattresses our brothers slept on had to be shaken up, the blankets pulled off and hung out to air. Even the coal corner in the cellar had to be scrubbed clean once a week. And the floor with the cracks had to be swept, and swept again.
Nine Open Arms Page 3