Nine Open Arms

by Benny Lindelauf

  Muulke shouted that their voices had become a lot deeper in a week. Of course she was exaggerating, but I was also aware that something had changed. It was as if that letter had dragged Nine Open Arms out of its hibernation, into the real, grown-up world. And taken us with it.

  ‘Now we’ll have to tell ourselves not to run,’ said Muulke on our way to school. ‘Now we’ll have to cuff our own ears if we get our shoes dirty or tear our clothes.’

  She grinned.

  ‘Keep walking,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Oma Mei,’ said Muulke.

  ‘Or we’ll be late.’

  ‘No way if you are with us,’ said Muulke.

  ‘Have you got the dough?’ I asked.

  ‘Dough?’

  ‘For the baker, you idiot.’

  Muulke stared at me stupidly. I sighed.

  ‘Oma put it out ready in the kitchen. In those two towels.’

  We didn’t bake our own bread. The Dad had promised to build a brick oven, but he hadn’t yet got around to it. So Oma Mei kneaded the dough, and then it was baked at the bakery. That was cheaper than buying bread.

  ‘Miljaar!’ Muulke shouted and turned about.

  ‘You’ll be late,’ I warned. ‘Forget about it.’

  But Muulke would rather face the nuns’ wrath than Oma Mei’s. She raced off. I heard her footsteps fading in the distance.

  Jess shuffled along behind me.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Muulke will be back in a minute.’

  We emerged from the cutting and the wind hit us in the face.

  ‘I want to go back to our old school,’ Jess said. ‘I want to go back to our old house.’

  ‘Can’t be done,’ I said. ‘Keep moving.’

  A few girls were standing about at the corner where we usually stopped to catch our breath. I didn’t really know them, but I knew it was wise not to pick a fight with them. They came from a part of the city you’d be better staying away from.

  ‘Do you want anything?’ they said as we passed by them.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ I told Jess.

  ‘Not answering?’ One of them grabbed me by my sleeve. She was the only one I knew by name: Fat Tonnie. They said she had been attacked by a rabid dog once, and had bashed the animal to death with a hammer. She was much older than the others in the group; she’d had to repeat a year twice already, and I had heard that the nuns only let her move up to get rid of her.

  The group blocked our way.

  ‘Aren’t you lot from outside the walls?’ asked one of the girls.

  ‘We have to go,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Fat Tonnie with a grin.

  ‘They stink,’ said another girl. ‘Everything from outside the walls stinks.’

  They started to surround us, and I don’t know what would have happened if Muulke hadn’t come panting round the corner just then. She looked Fat Tonnie up and down with her sergeant major look, and Fat Tonnie looked her up and down. An icy silence fell.

  Then Muulke said calmly, ‘Come on, it’s late.’

  ‘Very late,’ said Fat Tonnie.

  She didn’t let go of my sleeve, but I found I could get myself out of her grip without too much effort.

  When I walked into the school grounds in the mornings now, I no longer felt sick. The girls in my class waved or said hello. Sometimes they chatted with me or I joined them skipping rope. But I had no true friends. I told myself it was because they had known each other for a long time. But when I watched Muulke, who had a crowd of girls following her every playtime, I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. And I felt a stab of jealousy.

  a table full of better-

  luck-next-time cigars

  ‘Of course, you don’t become a cigar emperor just like that,’ said the Dad.

  It was evening. We had eaten and cleared the dishes, and halfway through washing up, Sjeer had come into the kitchen and announced they had a surprise.

  ‘That’s sure to be something special,’ Oma Mei had said scornfully. But she’d gone along anyway.

  The table in the workshop was covered in tobacco leaves, fillers, knives and moulds, and in the centre lay the better-luck-next-time cigars. There were some with split outer leaves. They had been packed too tightly, the Dad explained. Then there were some that were floppy because they hadn’t been packed tightly enough. And there were dud cigars that only looked alright from the outside.

  Piet, Eet, Sjeer and Krit swept them all up and put them back down again one by one.

  ‘Filler too soft,’ said the Dad, giving a cigar a little squeeze. ‘This one will burn up faster than newspaper. And that one there is too hard.’ He solemnly put the cigar into his mouth and held a match to it, but the thing would barely catch fire. ‘A stone would burn more easily,’ he said, holding the cigar between his teeth.

  Suddenly, Jess burst into tears. Everybody looked up. Oma Mei sat her on her lap.

  ‘What’s the matter, little one?’

  ‘Now it i-is n-never going to h-happen again.’

  ‘What, leeveke?’ What, darling?

  Jess said something, but nobody could understand her.

  ‘What?’

  She tried to control her gulping breathing. Her nose was running. ‘The op-p-p-osite of w-worrying.’

  ‘Where did you get that idea?’

  Jess’s shoulders shook. Her voice cracked. ‘Everything g-goes wr-rong. Everything goes wrong all the time.’

  I heard Oma Mei take a deep breath.

  ‘No, not really,’ the Dad began, but then his voice fell silent.

  I could feel my feet tightening up inside my shoes. The silence dragged on.

  ‘That’s exactly the idea,’ Oma Mei said then. ‘Better-luck-next-time cigars have to go wrong so that you learn how not to do it. And after that, you make, err . . . good-luck cigars. Isn’t that how it works, Antoon? First better-luck-next-time cigars, then good-luck cigars. Isn’t that right?’

  The Dad cleared his throat, stared at the ceiling and found his voice again. ‘Exactly. How, err . . . do you think, err . . . Nol started off? Or Leon Kamps in Station Street? Or Filip Mols, the cigar emperor? Do you think they got everything right the first time? No, of course not. Of course they didn’t.’

  He followed that up with the usual talk – the seeing, the believing, the opposite of worrying – and we groaned and spluttered, but deep inside we were relieved. It felt as if we had escaped a major disaster by the skin of our teeth.

  Eet brought in the cherries in brandy. ‘To celebrate.’

  Oma Mei resolutely shook her head. ‘There will be something to celebrate when you’ve sold the first cigar.’ She took the blue jar back to its top shelf in the cellar. So we toasted with orange cordial instead.

  ‘Here’s to the good-luck cigars!’ our brothers shouted.

  ‘Here’s to the opposite of worrying,’ shouted the Dad.

  Oma Mei didn’t join in, but when we asked for the Crocodile she didn’t object. ‘Ask me about that time Opa Pei had a wall built for an elephant,’ she said.

  It was a story about our grandfather, soon after he had become a supervisor. Oma Mei and he had just recently moved into a new house.There were a few things still to be done to it, and because he was so busy, he had instructed his bricklayers to finish off the kitchen wall.

  ‘Are you sure that thing is solid?’ Oma Mei had asked suspiciously.

  And Opa Pei had replied,‘My dear woman, even an elephant can safely lean against it!’

  But when, the next evening, he started hammering a nail into the wall to hang up their wedding photo, it first started to sag like melting butter and then, with a huge roar, it crumbled.

  We peered at the photo. It didn’t really go with the story, because Opa Pei was a lot older in this one, but there weren’t many good shots of him. For this picture he had posed properly. Opa Pei stood in front, with a number of men behind him. His eyes were shining, h
e had a grin from ear to ear, and he wore an expensive-looking felt hat and a silk vest. Behind him, his bricklayers wore shabby shirts and caps. One of them seemed to be laughing uproariously.

  ‘Why is that man laughing so hard?’ asked Muulke.

  Jess and I nudged her furiously.

  ‘Of course, those bricklayers were in big trouble,’ Oma Mei said after a few icy seconds. ‘And they had to rebuild the wall immediately, even though it was Sunday. Because a supervisor’s wife with a fallen-down wall was just not on.Yes, that’s what your grandfather was like.’

  Later that evening, when we were in bed, we discovered why Jess had burst into tears.

  ‘The Crocodile is back in her bedroom,’ said Jess. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

  ‘I can’t see what’s so terrible about that,’ said Muulke. ‘It’s been there before.’

  ‘Yes, but it was always under her bed.’

  ‘Isn’t it under her bed anymore?’

  Jess shook her head. ‘No, iepekriet. It’s standing next to her bed. On its side.’

  Muulke was too upset to even abuse Jess back. ‘Hell’s bells!’ she muttered.

  If anyone could sense that there was another move in the air, it was Oma Mei. And we in turn could tell from where the Crocodile stood how long we were going to stay somewhere.

  ‘Next to her bed,’ said Muulke. ‘Then it will be another month at the most.’

  Jess shivered. ‘But that isn’t all. The cover is even on it already.’

  Muulke looked scared. ‘Three weeks at the most then.’

  ‘Stop it now,’ I said and they turned their glares on me. I took a deep breath. ‘You know as well as I do that she’s terrified the house will start leaking again, so she’d hardly put the Crocodile under the bed, would she?’

  ‘But . . . ’ they said.

  ‘It’s much safer on its side – can’t you see that?’ I said. ‘And with the cover around it, it’s even more protected. And Oma Mei would not have agreed with the Dad about the opposite of worrying if she’d known that everything was going to go wrong again.’

  I could feel Muulke and Jess breathe out. ‘You pair of sjiethoezer,’ I said. Pair of chickens.

  ‘Iepekriet,’ Jess shot back with a sigh of relief.

  I turned over, felt Jess’s left foot sliding over mine, and I knew that with her right foot she was trying to find Muulke.

  ‘So you believe that the opposite of worrying is here to stay?’ said Jess, snuggling into the crook of my arm.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I believe my wreckbone will be cured.’

  ‘Shush,’ I said.

  ‘And that everything is going to be alright.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Shush.’

  ‘Believing first, then seeing.’

  ‘Go to sleep now.’

  ‘Do you remember Nine Open Arms?’

  ‘Sleep.’

  ‘That name was because of me, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely because of you, but now close your eyes.’

  Muulke was the first to fall asleep. Then it took quite a while for Jess to drop off. I twisted and turned in our bed. What if Jess was right? What if the opposite of worrying would never really happen? What if, before long, we had to move once more? Pack up all our things, move to a new place and start all over again?

  ‘Moving is letting your story start afresh,’ the Dad had said once. But I didn’t need a new story. Not that Nine Open Arms was the house of my dreams. But sometimes just staying somewhere was good enough.

  It took me a long time to go to sleep.

  more riddles

  It was midday.The washing had been boiled and mostly put out to bleach. The bedsheets and the tablecloth were hanging over the fence to dry in the spring sunshine. We were just dealing with the last of the washing when our brothers and the Dad came outside.

  ‘Gone,’ said Sjeer.

  ‘Vamoosed,’ said Eet.

  ‘Vanished,’ said Piet.

  ‘No, stolen,’ said Krit.

  They said it must have happened while they were having coffee in the kitchen. Our brothers had left the workshop door open, and when they’d returned, the cigars had gone.

  ‘Twelve of them,’ said Sjeer. ‘We’d made fifty and now there are only thirty-eight left.’

  We all looked at the Dad, who stood among the brothers but so far hadn’t said anything. Thoughtfully, he chewed the inside of his cheek.

  Then he said briskly, ‘At least someone thinks they’re worth stealing.’

  Oma Mei said nothing. She didn’t blame the Dad for leaving the door that used to be a window standing open. She didn’t even make a snide remark about them having been bad cigars that probably nobody would want to buy anyway. But when Jess was too scared to go upstairs that evening after Muulke had said the cigar thief was hiding under our bed, she let fly.

  ‘Just think and stop being such a sjiethoes for once,’ she snapped at Jess. ‘How big do you think that cigar-snatcher can be, if he fits under your bed? There’s hardly enough room for a cigar under there.’

  She seemed shocked by her own outburst, because she went upstairs with Jess after that and looked under the bed; and when Jess was still uncomfortable, she fetched a broom and poked under the bed with it.

  ‘There you are, now he’s dead as a dodo,’ she said. ‘And now undress and into bed with you.’

  The next day, on our way home from school, we saw a man riding a bicycle down Sjlammbams Sahara ahead of us. At least, he was trying to ride his bike: there was a strong headwind, and there were so many potholes and muddy puddles that he had to constantly stop and get off. Sometimes we lost sight of him for a bit, before he showed up again at the end of a curve, or on top of a rise.

  ‘Where’s he heading?’ Muulke wondered.

  ‘Perhaps he’s a customer,’ Jess said.

  ‘A customer?’ Muulke said.

  ‘Someone who wants to buy our cigars.’

  We looked at each other.

  ‘Come on,’ said Muulke and took off at a run.

  ‘Not so fast,’ Jess puffed. And before we even got to the next bend she stopped, gasping for breath, furious. ‘Wait! Wait!’

  When Muulke and I arrived home the man was standing at our gate. His bicycle, which he had put against the fence, was covered in mud, and the cuffs of his trousers were stained. His thin hair was stuck to his forehead.

  ‘Is your father at home?’ He didn’t look at us. Instead, he stared at the door that had once been a window, where we could clearly hear the Dad cursing the press.

  ‘Have you come for the cigars?’ I asked, still puffed.

  ‘They have a really good flavour,’ Muulke panted. ‘And they’re nice and spicy,’ she added. I gaped at her, wondering where she’d found those words.

  The man was still staring at the workshop. The Dad had obviously given the press a kick, for we heard a muffled thump followed by a string of very clear swearwords.

  ‘Hello?’ the man called, without much conviction. He looked at a muddy puddle that lay between the gate and Nine Open Arms, and then at his shoes – patent leather shoes with black laces. He opened his flat briefcase and produced a bright-white, uncreased envelope.

  ‘Will you give him this, please?’ he requested. He blushed as he asked, and that in turn made me go red. I nodded and accepted the letter. He grabbed his bike and, obviously relieved, started on his way back, his heels on the pedals.

  ‘Don’t forget!’ he called.

  ‘What’s that?’ Muulke wanted to know when he had disappeared around the first bend.

  ‘A letter,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, even my nose can see that. What sort of letter?’

  ‘How should I know?’ I held the envelope with both hands. The folds were sharp as knives. A severe white letter.

  ‘The Rotterdam Banking Society,’ Muulke read. ‘Isn’t that the Dad’s bank? Why would the bank send him a letter?’ Sh
e looked worried. ‘It must be about money. Open it.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘What do you want to do, then? Wait until the Crocodile leaves of its own accord?’

  ‘No, but . . . ’ ‘Give it to me!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Fine. So don’t.’ She shrugged as if she didn’t care, but the moment my attention wandered she grabbed hold of the letter.

  ‘Let go,’ I hissed.

  ‘You let go.’

  ‘Muulke, let go!’

  And then the inevitable happened: with a dismal sound, the letter tore in half. Horrified, we stared at the two pieces.

  Things happened very fast after that. Jess came around the bend, her eyes teary and angry. At the same moment, the workshop door opened and the Dad came out. I panicked, but it was a strange kind of panic, because while my heart was hammering in my chest and I could feel myself go scarlet, my hands were calm. I snatched the other half of the letter from Muulke’s hands, tore the whole thing into tiny pieces, and threw them in one movement towards the cemetery hedge. The wind took them along.

  Muulke stared at me. Her face seemed undecided between horror and admiration.

  There was a full moon that night. Jess was lying on her back, frowning in her sleep. Muulke was on her side, one leg forward, the other back, as if she was running. I twisted and turned, so much so that it was a small miracle neither of my sisters woke up.

  What in the name of heaven had I done? What if someone found out? An important letter like that couldn’t just disappear. But had it actually been an important letter? A letter about money. About more debts. Could it be something else? But what?

  There was only one thing to do.

  I slipped quietly out of bed, put on my dress and jumper, grabbed my socks and shoes, and walked very carefully out of the room and down the passage. The moon shone through the little window on the landing, drawing a straight track over the uneven floor. For a moment I stood by the dark stairwell, listening.