Nine Open Arms

by Benny Lindelauf

  What happened next he would rather forget.

  Three boys. The blacksmith Hermes’ son and farmer Kalle’s two boys. They had lit a fire behind Saint Rosa’s Chapel.

  A skinned rabbit, the bloody skin carelessly thrown on the ground.

  ‘Bottletop!’

  They proudly showed him the rabbit, half raw, half burnt. He didn’t know why he started talking about Nienevee. Maybe he was still angry.

  They jumped up as one. ‘Where?’

  He was sorry already, but there was no going back. He pointed vaguely.

  Their eyes glittered. They stalked off. He followed.

  They said, ‘Those bloody travellers need to know their place.’

  He was hoping they wouldn’t find her.

  They found her.

  He hoped they would just play a joke on her.

  It wasn’t a joke.

  Kalle’s youngest boy grabbed Nienevee’s chair and smashed it.

  The blacksmith’s son produced the blood-covered rabbit skin.

  Nienevee bit a hole in the blacksmith’s son’s cheek. She kicked Kalle’s eldest in the crotch, but then they got a firm hold on her. They pushed her down onto the maize bed, sat on top of her. She cursed, she kicked, she cried, first out of fury, then out of helplessness.

  ‘Stop it!’ Charley shouted. He tried to pull them away, but they easily shoved him aside.

  They pulled up her skirt.

  Charley heard a terrifying roar: crying and screaming together. As if the cornfield was roaring. The next moment, Lexidently appeared. He had a bandage around his head, but it was half undone. He had never looked so big. The first boy in his way he simply swept off her with a single blow. The next one he dragged into the cornfield by his hair. Those two made themselves scarce. The blacksmith’s son he pushed down with his face in the mud, exactly the way he’d done it to Charley two weeks before. Only this time he sat on the boy’s head.

  ‘Lexidently!’ he shouted. ‘Lexidently!’

  The blacksmith’s son’s body was shaking. Charley could hear him retching, but Lexidently’s big hands wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Lexidently!’

  ‘Let go!’ shouted Nienevee. ‘Let go!’

  But Lexidently was totally out of control.

  The blacksmith’s boy groped around in the soil, tried to get a grip, clawed into thin air.

  Growled and twitched.

  Shook and spat.

  Trembled and gurgled.

  The clawing hand relaxed.

  A man appeared from among the corn. He grabbed hold of Lexidently and dragged him off the blacksmith’s son, who started to recover, panting and retching at the same time. His nose, his eyes, his ears, were all full of mud.

  ‘What is going on here?’ the man demanded.

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ Nienevee wanted to know.

  Charley held his breath. He had recognised the man. It was Van Wessum.

  ‘This land belongs to me, my girl,’ said Van Wessum.

  ‘Land belongs to nobody,’ said Nienevee.

  Van Wessum looked at her thoughtfully. He was a tall, bony man, with eyes that moved quickly, like water. As if a bit of the ocean had stayed behind in them after his journey across the sea.

  ‘Maybe that’s how it was once,’ he said. ‘And maybe it will be like that again sometime. But now, it belongs to me.’

  Nienevee looked as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t get the chance.

  ‘I just want to know what’s going on,’ he said sharply.

  The blacksmith’s son was happy to tell him all about it. The boys had just happened to be in the area. They’d heard somebody was stealing corn from the brickworks. They were just going to have a look, but were attacked. By at least ten travellers. ‘Isn’t that right, Charley?’

  Charley looked at Nienevee, but she said nothing. She clamped her lips together.

  Van Wessum looked slowly from one to the other. His glance lingered on Nienevee.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘We should get the police,’ said the blacksmith’s boy, spitting out a tooth.

  ‘I have a better idea,’ said Van Wessum. He and the boy stared at each other. ‘What I really feel like doing is giving all of you a good hard kick.’ He started to take his coat off. ‘Of course, you could wait for that kick, or . . . ’ That was all anyone needed. The blacksmith’s boy disappeared into the corn to the left, Lexidently, Nienevee and Charley to the right.

  ‘That didn’t hurt at all,’ said Nienevee when they stood on Sjlammbams Sahara. And she walked away without saying another word.

  The following evening, he waited for her in the cornfield. But she didn’t come.

  Nor did she the evening after that.

  Then, as suddenly as the travellers had arrived, they disappeared again. It happened a couple of weeks later, the night after the summer fruit harvest was finished. The muddy field was empty, apart from a few horse droppings and a faded, torn piece of cloth that flapped about in a tree.

  One afternoon in late autumn, Charley and Dimdog turned up at Van Wessum’s cornfield, quite by accident. It was now covered in stubble. Nothing was left of the house drawn in the soil. Rain and early snow had wiped out all the lines. Only the short, thick post Dimdog had been tied to that summer was still there.

  ask who could

  set fire to water

  Five years had passed.

  ‘So,’ said Nienevee. ‘So, Bottletop.’

  She stepped into the workshop, and at first Charley hardly recognised her. Tall and thin she had become. Her copper hair was tied back in a severe knot. Instead of the too-large coat, she wore a jacket whose sleeves were too short, making her look even taller. But the reckless eyes in the freckled face were the same.

  ‘How is your dog?’ she asked.

  ‘Good. And Lexidently?’

  ‘Dead.’

  That shocked him. Not so much Lexi having died – that wasn’t all that surprising – but the casual way she said it.

  ‘How?’

  ‘A tree that was too tall.’

  He bent over the lathe. When he dared look up again, she’d gone.

  The next time, he was working with Lame Krit. She came in, a silhouette against the bright afternoon light outside.

  ‘She’s come to see me,’ Charley said quickly.

  Lame Krit had obviously not recognised her, for he just muttered something and shuffled off to the back room. ‘Those clamps can come off.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And tell Walraven that timber has to go back. It’s full of knots.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And when you’ve finished with those clamps, I’ll need two dowels.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Lame Krit picked up his stick and walked slowly out of the workshop.

  It was quiet. Church bells sounded in the distance.

  ‘Who said I’ve come to see you?’ she asked.

  ‘I just thought.’

  They were silent again.

  Then she said, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those boys in the field. The rabbit.’

  Typical Nienevee from Outside the Walls. Walk in after five years and, bang, take the bull by the horns. But he was happy that she’d said it.

  Three times he had seen the travellers from afar, since that first time. They always came in late summer to help with the fruit picking and disappeared again halfway through autumn. And every time, there was the same trouble. But no more animals were poisoned, and Nienevee had never been bothered again. Sometimes the group was larger, at other times smaller. Sometimes they missed a year, but when they came, she was always with them. There was no more time for Nienevee to draw houses in the cornfield, though. She had to pull her weight.

  ‘How long are you here this time?’

  ‘Are you here all day?’

  ‘Until after the harvest?’

  ‘Do you ever go the c
ornfield?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘When do you never go there?’

  ‘I’m not Lexidently,’ he spluttered a week later when she grabbed him by his shirt tail and led him among the dense maize. This time, there was no open space. She flattened a patch of maize and there they lay down, shoulder to shoulder. Awkwardly, he lay next to her and stared up at the sky. Of course he had kissed girls before, and the rest he had almost done, too, a few times, but Nienevee wasn’t a girl. Nienevee was . . . well, Nienevee.

  The creaking of a passing cart sounded in the distance. Somewhere, a blackbird sang.

  They lay still: five minutes, ten, twenty. Clouds came over and disappeared again.

  He thought of her dark eyes. He thought of her voice. All he could do was think about her, because he didn’t dare look sideways.

  He must have fallen asleep. How that was possible, he didn’t know. When he woke up with a start, she had already got up and was brushing off her skirt and jacket.

  ‘Are you my girlfriend now?’ he asked. He’d wanted to make it sound casual, but it sounded more like a mouse squeaking.

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘So . . . no?’

  ‘Don’t start getting ideas in your head, Bottletop,’ she said.

  He didn’t know why she went on seeing him. To be honest, he didn’t really know why he went on seeing her, either. You couldn’t say she was good-looking. Tall and straight as a stick, she was. Nor could you say she was nice, or that she was fun to be with, for all they did was lie on their backs looking at the sky.

  What he did know was that she was Nienevee from Outside the Walls. That she had come from Much Further Away, and that she would go Much Further Away again.

  ‘You used to say you were going to live in a house with a stone doorstep.’

  ‘You used to say you were going to be tall.’

  He looked at his short arms and legs. At his small hands. He just wasn’t growing. That happened sometimes.

  ‘Then you wouldn’t be my Bottletop anymore, though,’ she said.

  Had she really said ‘my’, or had he imagined that?

  He didn’t dare ask.

  One day, he took Dimdog along to the cornfield.

  ‘Hello doggie, hello lonely doggie,’ she said. She clapped her hands.

  Dimdog wagged her tail and pressed her blunt nose against Nienevee’s jacket.

  ‘She remembers you,’ said Charley.

  ‘I think this is what she remembers,’ she said, producing a piece of sausage from her jacket pocket. Snap. Swallow. Gone. Nienevee was still Nienevee, and Dimdog was still Dimdog.

  ‘You’ve never told me how you saved her,’ he said. ‘Or why your dogs were so sick the following day.’

  She tickled the dog behind the ears. Dimdog sat down, sighing with contentment.

  ‘Travellers’ secret, I suppose,’ he tried.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can you really set water on fire?’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Everybody. Can you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Give someone kidney stones?’

  ‘Does everybody say so?’

  ‘Yes. Can you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Curse someone so he dies, or will never have children?’

  ‘A bit harder. But it can be done.’

  Was he meant to believe her? Her face gave nothing away. He took a deep breath.

  ‘And can you also make somebody better?’

  She looked at him, for a second, no more.

  ‘Your old man, I suppose.’

  How could she know that?

  ‘Don’t pull such a face,’ she said. ‘The first time I saw your father he took such strides, even with that crippled leg, that most people couldn’t keep up with him. Now he shuffles along like an old man. You don’t need to be a traveller to see he’s ill.’

  ‘They think it’s his bones,’ he said. ‘But they don’t know what exactly. He’s getting stiffer all the time. At first it was just his back. Now it’s his legs, too.’ He stared straight ahead.

  ‘Hey,’ Nienevee said softly. ‘Weren’t fathers supposed to be bastards?’

  A week later, she gave him a little bundle: a crumpled-up piece of cloth with string around it. There was something inside it. Something gritty. It smelled a bit musty.

  ‘Give it to him,’ she said.

  ‘What should he do with it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Should he eat it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just give it to him.’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  She gave the usual answer, then added, ‘And I’m certainly not doing it for him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about the townspeople. I don’t give a shit about the whole world, if it comes to it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Just so you don’t think that’s why I’m doing it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because deserve it he doesn’t.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And don’t you start getting ideas in your head, Bottletop.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you actually say anything other than no and yes?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, piss off.’

  Lame Krit was in the tiny kitchen, sitting on the tall chair Charley had made especially for him. It was the only chair he could still get off without help.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Something good for you.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘It was a present.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘You have to carry it with you.’

  ‘I have to nothing.’ Lame wheezed, his face flushed red after just those few words.

  ‘Just take it,’ said Charley.

  ‘Don’t make me angry, Bottletop! I can still beat you. With one finger, if necessary.’ Lame swept his stick over the table. He missed the bundle, but hit a cup. It shattered on the tiled floor. ‘Stiff doesn’t mean mad! Do you hear? Do you hear me?’

  That night, from his bedroom, Charley heard his father rummaging and cursing. For some time now, Lame Krit had been afraid of going to sleep. He was afraid he would wake up with his whole body stiff as a plank. Afraid he would only be able to move his eyes. Afraid that he would die.

  ‘Pick it up,’ Charley muttered softly. ‘Please pick it up, old man. Please pick it up.’

  Three months later, well after Nienevee had left, Lame died. Charley found him. For the first time in a year, he was lying in his own bed, the blanket pulled smooth over him, as if the bed had just been made. In his right hand, he was holding the little bundle. And his face was so peaceful that many people at the wake had to look twice before they could recognise him.

  ask who built

  her a house

  The year after Lame’s death, Dimdog was the first to know. She’d been wandering about outside, running along Sjlammbams Sahara, through Putse Gate into the town, through the streets, waiting for the milk cart, pissing near the broom-seller’s stall. She nibbled on a piece of bone that had fallen from the slaughterman’s cart and then strolled calmly into the workshop.

  At first, Charley didn’t notice anything. He heard her nails ticking on the floor while she turned around and around till she’d found the perfect spot. Then she lay down, uttering a heartfelt sigh.

  He grinned. ‘Hello, old girl.’

  Then he set the heavy wheel of the lathe in motion and started turning wood. The piercing sound of metal on wood and the wood shavings flying about would chase most dogs away, but not Dimdog. Since Lame Krit’s death, she had been allowed to lie in the workshop.

  After an hour, Charley wiped the sweat off his forehead and turned round. Only then did he see it.

  Hanging from the little dog’s collar was a corncob.

  His heart missed a beat.

  That afternoon, on his way ba
ck from the timber merchant, he nearly bumped into her in the market square. Nienevee showed no sign of recognising him, because she was not on her own. The woman with the boxer’s nose was with her, as well as a third unfamiliar woman. They were at the butcher’s, trying to swap pieces of brightly coloured cloth for meat.

  Charley walked past her without saying a thing, but he stopped two stalls further along. He pretended to listen to the knife-grinder’s spiel, but meanwhile kept an eye on her.The butcher made a scandalously low offer. The women spat on the ground, turned around and disappeared.

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ said the butcher once they were out of earshot.

  There was laughter.

  ‘So, Bottletop,’ said Nienevee that evening. They stood in the shelter of the cutting, but Charley felt as if he was standing in the middle of a wide open plain. He grinned at the toes of his shoes.

  ‘So, Nienevee.’

  She had changed. No longer was she straight as a stick, he had noticed that already in the market square.Tall she certainly was still – at any rate taller than him. Not that this was saying much. She had become more beautiful, though he couldn’t say exactly how and where.

  ‘I haven’t set fire to water yet,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The way you look at me.’

  He blushed. She laughed, but it didn’t sound mocking. Awkward, rather. Lucky Dimdog was there. You could say a lot about Dimdog, and then it sounded like a conversation. The things he really wanted to say stayed locked inside him. He didn’t dare.

  ‘Well,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said.

  And they went their separate ways.

  To calm down, he sharpened the chisels and gouges in the workshop. His small hands worked with great care. He even managed to get the small mortice chisel back in shape and sharp. The steel sparkled.

  The workshop was beginning to look like a storeroom for the new furniture Van Wessum had ordered. There were chairs in a stack. A tabletop without legs leant against the wall. The writing desk was still being glued. The double bed was nearly finished.

  In the town, they said Van Wessum had always been crazy. Who else would grow maize just for fun? Who else would order new furniture and have a new house designed even before he was in a proper relationship? For that matter, who was still a bachelor on his thirty-ninth birthday?