‘It’s as if the sand is constantly creeping out of it,’ Muulke complained. She was down on her knees sweeping so wildly that dust flew in all directions and made my nose itch. She glared at Jess, who was sticking new labels on preserving jars.
‘Why don’t you ever have to do anything?’ she asked.
‘I’m doing something, aren’t I?’ said Jess. ‘Fing, aren’t I doing something?’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘But we do more,’ said Muulke. She looked at me. The large ribbon in her hair was half undone. ‘Fing, don’t we do more?’
‘We don’t have a wreckbone.’
‘She’s just putting it on.’
‘She says I’m just putting it on,’ said Jess.
‘She’s not just putting it on,’ I said.
I was glad when Oma Mei called me.
Every day, we had to get water from the pump in the new cemetery, because the well next to our house produced only muddy slush.
We had an old pram with its cradle removed. In its place, the Dad had fixed a wooden platform. Two zinc tubs stood on that, and that was where the water went.
I pushed the pram ahead of me. On the other side of the road there was a gap in the hedge. It wasn’t an official entrance, that was on the town side. This way in had probably been made by the people who lived in Nine Open Arms before us. I squeezed the pram through the gap. You only realised how deep the hedge was once you forced your way through – a thick, swaying castle wall.
The new cemetery was no longer new, really. It had been laid out in 1905 because the old cemetery, in the centre of the town, was full.
This cemetery was also beginning to fill up now. Opa Pei’s grave was here. The town end was the most crowded. At our end only a few plots were occupied, with simple gravestones of grey stone, not yet overgrown with moss, barely weathered. The only tombstone that looked older was one close to the hedge. This tomb had no upright stone, only a knee-high, flat slab overgrown with ivy.
I pumped up the water. The screech of the pump-handle cut to the bone.
When I returned, the Dad and my brothers were busy making a separate entrance to the cigar workshop. My brothers stood staring at the window that was going to be made into a door. Piet squatted on his knees and drew the door’s outline with chalk. He looked back over his shoulder.The Dad shouted ‘excellent’ before he had even had a look, but my brothers didn’t think that was good enough. They calculated the angles to two decimal places, sketched a new door, wiped this effort away again . . . as if changing a window into a door was a matter of life and death.
That evening, Muulke was already sitting by the crack in the floor when Jess and I came into the bedroom. She had wrapped her overcoat around her like a cape and had a woollen cap on.
‘This evening,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jess.
‘We’ll wait until they’ve gone to sleep again,’ said Muulke without paying any attention to her.
‘This evening I’m staying in our lovely warm bed,’ I said.
‘Oh, shut up!’ Muulke whisperd loudly, but Jess and I didn’t take any notice.
‘Come on, quick,’ I said, pulling on my nightshirt, shivering. ‘If you stay out there it’ll take even longer for the bed to warm up.’
‘Couldn’t care less,’ Muulke hissed.
‘Why is she staying out there?’ said Jess as we crawled under the ice-cold blankets.
‘She probably thinks Oma is going to tell another story about this house,’ I said.
‘I’d rather have a story from the Crocodile,’ said Jess.
The Crocodile was Oma’s ancient large suitcase. It was covered with linen, the corners were reinforced with reddish-brown metal caps, and it had a handle of cracked green leather – crocodile skin, Muulke knew for sure.
On good days, Oma produced photos from the Crocodile. They were carefully packed in various cloth-covered compartments with zippers and buttons. She would put a photo on the little silver tray that was also packed in the suitcase. The tray we were allowed to touch, but never the photos. There were always stories attached, in which our grandfather or our mother played a part.
‘Ask about the time Opa Pei came home with three goats,’ she would say, for instance. ‘And ask what those blasted animals did to Monday’s laundry.’ And she’d tell the story of the farmer who’d paid Opa Pei in kind for some work he had done on a new shed, and how Oma Mei had wanted to bring in the washing, only to discover there was no more washing, only three chewing goats.
We didn’t know exactly how many photos there were in the Crocodile. Some of them had more than one story, but asking about that was strictly forbidden. If you did, Oma Mei was known to firmly shut the case. So we had learned to be quiet, to wait, no matter how much we wanted that story.
The day Oma Mei unpacked the Crocodile and displayed the photos would be the day we were going to stay somewhere. For good.
‘I bet Oma will tell us a story tomorrow,’ I whispered.
‘Do you think so?’ Jess rolled onto her side.
‘Lie straight.’
Obediently she turned onto her back. I tickled her nose.
‘Not all mothers have a heart as soft as a rag doll, do they?’ Jess asked softly.
‘Only very rare mothers,’ I said.
‘How rare was ours?’
‘As rare as a wreckbone.’
I heard Muulke shifting. One of the buttons on her coat ticked against the floor. She scratched under her woollen cap. I wondered how long she would last. Jess shook me by the arm.
‘Tell me.’
‘What?’
‘A crocodile story.’
‘Go to sleep now. Muulke?’
‘Just an-nother m-minute,’ Muulke chattered stubbornly. ‘It’ll s-start any m-minute now, I’ll b-bet.’
But Oma Mei made coffee, the clock ticked away, and the Dad and our brothers played cards.
That was all.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Muulke when she crawled into bed next to us.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Jess. From her voice, I could hear she was smiling.
We lay still and listened. Nine Open Arms told stories, too. When the wind blew, the tiles on the roof babbled, and when it blew from the east the windows whistled in their frames as well. But on still evenings like this there was also plenty to hear from the house. Some of the sounds were hard to recognise. Frr-frr, the house would say. Or it would make a humming sound, very high, and sounding distant.
disasters
The first disaster happened two days later.
Muulke, Jess and I were getting the washing off the line in the attic when suddenly the sunlight dimmed. We leaned on the ledge of one of the dormer windows and looked out.
‘Miljaar!’ said Jess.
From the east, above the undulating horizon of empty cornfields, pitch-black clouds were approaching. Between the earth and the clouds, a dense, glowing curtain moved along.
‘Here comes the rain the summer kept back,’ Muulke said dreamily. ‘And now it’s come to make up for it all.’
When it started, it sounded as if apples were falling on the roof.
‘Muulke?’ Oma Mei called from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Muulke?’
‘I’m not doing anything,’ Muulke called back indignantly. ‘It’s the house!’
We heard the shower pass over, like a large, clumsy animal lifting itself over the roof with great difficulty. One moment, the window in the dormer was dusty; the next, I saw the rain beat off all the dirt and wash it down. Then the roof started leaking. No, not leaking – it was as if there was no longer a roof, that’s how fast the water streamed inside.
First our brothers stormed up the stairs, then the Dad, and finally Oma Mei, carrying the grey umbrella.
‘Fing, Jess, Muulke, over here.’
We stood under the umbrella while the rain pelted down.
‘Leave it to us! Leave it to us!’ shouted our brothers.
‘Should
n’t we . . . ’ I started.
‘And have you all in bed with pneumonia?’ said Oma Mei. ‘I think not. Boys aren’t girls, and girls aren’t boys.’
We watched our brothers and the Dad fussing about. They fired contradictory instructions at each other, and meanwhile the water poured in by the bucketful, until Oma Mei intervened. ‘Fing, rags and buckets from the kitchen cupboard. Muulke, pots and pans.’
‘And me? And me?’ Jess asked eagerly.
‘You keep an eye on everything,’ said Oma Mei. ‘Hurry up, Muulke and Fing.’
Even though we caught some water here and there, it was really a hopeless job – the house leaked like a sieve. The Dad and our brothers got their hair wet; then their white shirts became transparent and I could see their vests and their bony shoulders. Wet, they were even more alike than dry.
It only rained for ten minutes, but it created terrible havoc. It was as if a giant hand had picked up the house, dragged it through the River Meuse and slammed it down again on Sjlammbams Sahara.
The east side of the house bore the brunt of the storm. On that side, not only the attic but also our brothers’ bedroom had begun to leak. Krit’s and Sjeer’s straw mattresses were soaked through. But that wasn’t the worst.
Our brothers said it was because it hadn’t rained for such a long time. This had made the soil so hard that the water could drain through the top layer and no further. Through the small, unglazed windows of the cellar, the water had streamed into the house and flooded the cellar. The potatoes floated in their bin of brown, muddy water. In the second cellar, the sjlamm had got wet and had spread out; only the very top of the heap stuck out above the water. And we’d all forgotten about the tobacco. The five bales leaned limply against each other, like elderly men on a hot day.
But even that wasn’t the worst.
Under Oma Mei’s soaking-wet mattress, the Crocodile lay in a puddle of dirty water. When we pulled it out and lifted it up, grey water poured out of it. Inside, behind green velvet, behind zippers and buttons, behind everything we’d thought made it secure, the photos of our grandfather and the Mam with the rag-doll heart, were curling up and sticking together.
more disasters
Oma Mei didn’t say a word. There wasn’t even a peep out of her when we dragged Eet’s sodden straw mattress downstairs and it got hooked on a nail, leaving a trail of half-perished jute and straw all the way down the stairs. All she did was blink with her good eye. As if she was giving every bit of damage a secret mark and storing it in her head.
The Dad, who was used to a constant stream of reproaches, found her silence hard to cope with. He escaped to a bar in town and our brothers quickly followed him.
Muulke, Jess, Oma Mei and I were in the living room. The stove was burning full pelt. We spread the potatoes and onions out on the floor. The briquettes of sjlamm we wrapped in old newspapers. Over every door, chair and the table hung wet rags, blankets and sheets. Plaster came crumbling down from the roof. In one spot, the wallpaper in the living room had come loose, and behind it a crack had appeared in the wall.
‘This is going to end badly,’ Muulke whispered later that evening.
Oma Mei lay on a borrowed straw mattress in the corner of our room. She was going to sleep with us until her room was usable again. Next to her, the Crocodile leaned on its open lid, the zippers undone, the straps loosened. What had become of the photos we didn’t know. When Muulke had asked about them, all she’d got from Oma Mei was a snarl.
‘This is going to end badly,’ Muulke said once more.
On the day we’d gone to Mr Walraven’s shop to get wallpaper, we’d shouted, ‘Unpack, unpack.’ But now that the photos were out of the suitcase at last, we no longer knew if this was what we wanted.
It took two weeks for Nine Open Arms to get back to normal, more or less.
We had the stove burning from early in the morning to late at night. It was stiflingly hot, but no one dared complain.
The third cellar was the last part to be cleaned up. Pulling faces, our brothers and the Dad brought everything up: the stacks of soaked blankets covered in green mould, the mirror with its crumbling frame, the broken chairs, the smelly beer barrel. And the tombstone bed.
‘See, now you’re saying it yourself,’ Muulke said to me.
‘What?’
‘You said the tombstone bed.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Did so.’
‘Did not.’
‘Iepekriet.’
‘Blabbermouth.’
‘Liar.’
‘Softy.’
‘Nuisance.’
‘Bellyacher.’
‘Doesn’t it look like a tombstone?’ Muulke asked Jess, but she didn’t want to look.
‘Sjiethoes,’ said Muulke to Jess. And to me: ‘It is so a tombstone.’
‘Then it’s the first ever tombstone with legs,’ I said.
We didn’t get much time to have a closer look. Oma Mei shooed us away, and when we came back everything was gone.
‘Where’s it gone?’ asked Muulke.
‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ said Oma Mei, ‘but it’s gone to the tip, and there it’s been burned.’
Muulke cursed as soon as our grandmother was out of sight, but I didn’t feel too sorry about it.
We weren’t the only ones who had suffered from the rainstorm. In the town, too, cellars had flooded and attics had sprung leaks. But ours was the only place where both things had happened.
All through the week following the storm, it was as if Oompah Hatsi was back and had set up house not just in one street but in all of the town. Everywhere you went, from the market to Putse Gate, you found pieces of furniture: plush chairs, lampshades, sideboards, even complete beds, all waiting for a ray of sunshine.
We hadn’t known that Sjlammbams Sahara had so many colours, either. The rain had revealed them all. The dust had been washed away, and rocks and pebbles lay glittering in the sun. The earth itself showed up, too – for a whole day it was reddish-brown, dark beige. In spots where the freshly washed grass grew, the soil had an almost purple glow.
In November, it was winter for a week. The hedge looked as if it had been sprinkled with caster sugar. It was a strange thing to see, a careless mixing of the seasons. Sjlammbams Sahara made quick work of the winter, though – the snow disappeared the moment it touched the ground. There was a big puddle that stretched along the cart ruts in the road, making it nearly impossible to reach the house without getting your feet wet. You had to go very close along the cemetery hedge, scraping against the dense greenery.
Meanwhile, Oma Mei and the Dad were speaking again, but something was obviously not right. I knew it had to do with money. It couldn’t be otherwise – it was always about money – but now the problem seemed to be more dire than ever before.
One afternoon when we came home from school, the door that had once been a window (and now wasn’t properly one or the other, just a hole with a board nailed across it) stood open. The Dad was sitting on a stool at the workbench. The rest of the space was still empty. He was wearing his best jacket. A wilted carnation sat in his buttonhole.
‘Tell me again about the opposite of worry,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Piet, Eet, Sjeer and Krit have jobs.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Slaughtering.’ Smiling, he pulled a face. ‘For a short time. Until the tobacco permit gets here.’
‘And when is that coming?’
‘Sometimes it takes a while.’
‘Can’t you just start in the meantime?’
‘If I got caught, I’d be fined. But there is no need. Piet, Eet, Sjeer and Krit have jobs.’ He said it as if it was some sort of magic spell. ‘Perhaps I should . . . ’ He gave me a look.
I knew what I was supposed to say. I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but the words came of their own accord. ‘You don’t need a new job. That permit is coming,’ I said. ‘An
d then Krit, Sjeer, Eet and Piet will come back and you will all make cigars. The best in the town.’
‘Believe first, then see,’ said the Dad.
‘Exactly.’ I tried to laugh.
He looked at me, wanting more, but I couldn’t bear the thought of more fantasy. Muulke could, though. When I told her about the Dad, she instantly invented a cigar factory that was famous all over the world, and a town green with envy. There was a cigar emperor who couldn’t sell his cigars because of the Dad’s success. Then the emperor went mad and took to drink.
‘The Dad’s not going to work at that abattoir, too,’ she said when her story was through. ‘He already went – that’s why he’s wearing his best jacket – but they didn’t want him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Don’t ask why they didn’t want him.’
‘I can guess,’ I said.
That evening, Muulke counted the disasters.
‘One: that flood. Two: the permit that’s not coming . . . ’ ‘It always takes a while,’ I said. ‘The Dad said so himself.’
‘Three: Oma Mei and the Dad quarrelling.’
‘Oma Mei is always quarrelling. You know that as well as I do.’
‘And four . . . ’
‘Four nothing,’ I snapped.
She looked at me stubbornly. ‘Didn’t I say so?’
‘What?’
‘That Nienevee has something to do with this.’
‘Did you say that?’
‘This house is cursed.’
‘Oh, is it? First you said it was a tragical tragedy.’
Oma Mei came into the bedroom in her nightdress. She didn’t have her nightcap on yet, and her grey hair stuck out in tangled tufts.
‘Why aren’t you in bed yet?’ she wanted to know.
‘We’re waiting for Jess,’ said Muulke.
‘You can wait lying down. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
Nine Open Arms Page 4