The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)

by Joost Zwagerman

  He examined them one by one and thought every one of them beautiful, a thought that gave him pause, for they were all wearing green veils, in a greater variety of shades than he had ever seen – sea green, translucent green, from light to dark and all the way to greenish-black, bronze green, emerald green, mackerel green, spruce green – and he could peer through all the veils and see the green hearts. Although he knew they could not be beautiful, he felt drawn to them. Looking at one, he longed to look at another, and once he turned to the other, he was drawn back to the first. That’s how love begins, Cloverleaf said to himself. I never thought I would have anything to do with love, and I’ll be amazed if some stupid spirit can change that. Has my time come after all?

  He spread his arms and was about to stand up and wrap them around one of the figures, but he could not. She straightened and rose, the veil falling from her head, her large malachite eyes gazing into him. Two braids slithered over her shoulders, two green snakes. The mouth opened and the voice was like waves crashing on the rocks: Here is the green man. He has stolen the colour from all the grass in the world, all the trees and all the seas, for his own use. He has drunk all the light of the sun. See how he glitters in his green glory, a tree of peacock plumes. We must sit in his shadow or we shall turn pale and wilt.

  It’s true, thought Cloverleaf, I am what I abhor.

  All the figures rose and paced in slow circles around him, in their trembling veils. The one who had spoken approached, sank down before him and laid her hand on his knee. Around him blew a rustling wind of sighs. When he held out his hands to her, he saw that they were as green as emerald. It made him cold, and he did not dare to touch her. Shivering with fear, he took off his jacket and tore off his shirtsleeves. His arms were the colour of stems growing in the dark, with streaks and patches of faded green. His chest was oak bark covered with a thick layer of chilly moss. He thrust his hand into it, pulled out his heart and saw that it was a heavy piece of green marble. He grew angry, hurled it far away and heard it fall with a clap like thunder beyond the trees.

  Yes, said Cloverleaf, sitting at home, that was a very bad dream. But why do I still feel as though I am green on the inside? The malachite eyes were not real, I know that – I haven’t lost my mind. Yet somehow they have found their way inside me; their spirit has latched onto mine. Is it a game or vengeance? And am I really in my right mind? Who can tell me that? If I go to a psychologist, he’ll ask me a thousand questions, and even then, he won’t know. Maybe he’ll explain that it was only a dream and I shouldn’t let it worry me. And if I say I can still feel the green eyes here inside me, he’ll tell me not to let my fancy run away with me. And so on and so forth, and meanwhile I’ll be no closer to the truth. But I’ll find it in the imagination, and it must be blue.

  Translated by David McKay

  4

  Nescio

  Young Titans

  Titaantjes

  1

  We were kids – but good kids. If I may say so myself. We’re much smarter now, so smart it’s pathetic. Except for Bavink, who went crazy. Was there anything we didn’t want to set to rights? We would show them how it should be. ‘We’: that meant the five of us. Everyone else was ‘them’, the ones who didn’t see it, didn’t get it. ‘What?’ Bavink said. ‘God? You want to talk about God? Their pot roast is their God.’ Other than a few ‘decent fellows’ we despised everyone – and, secretly, I still think we were right. But I can’t say that out loud to anyone now. I’m not a hero any more. You never know who you might need later. Hoyer also thinks you shouldn’t offend anyone. No one ever sees or hears from Bekker any more. And Kees Ploeger talks about the good-for-nothings who led him down the wrong path. But back then, in our crazy days, we were God’s chosen ones, we were God himself. Now we’re sensible, again except for Bavink, and we look at each other and smile and I say to Hoyer, ‘What did it all get us?’ But Hoyer doesn’t see it that way, he’s a lost cause, he’s turning into one of the bigwigs of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party and all he does is raise his hands in doubt and shrug.

  We were never clear about what we were going to do exactly, but we were going to do something. Bekker had some vague idea about blowing up all the offices, Ploeger wanted to make his boss pack his own clocks and then stand there watching him with a cigar in his mouth, cursing at people who can never do anything right. We were unanimous that we had to ‘get out’. Out of what, and how? The truth is we did nothing but talk, smoke, drink and read books. And Bavink went out with Lien. Looking back, I think we were a magnificent bunch of young men, we deserved a fortune but despised ‘having lots of money’; Hoyer’s the only one who started to think a bit differently about that before long. Bavink didn’t understand why some people could ride in carriages whenever they wanted and wear expensive coats and order other people around who weren’t any dumber than they were. You didn’t see many automobiles yet in those days.

  We spent whole summer nights leaning against the fence around Oosterpark and talking and talking. We could have earned enough for a whole living-room set if only we’d kept track of it all. People write so much nowadays.

  A lot of the time we were less talkative. We sat on the kerb until long past midnight, right on the street, and were melancholy and stared at the bricks and then up from the bricks at the stars. Then Bekker said that actually he felt sorry for his boss, and I tried to write a poem, and Hoyer said he had to stand up because the cold from the blue limestone kerb was seeping into him. And when, in that short, balmy night, the darkness turned pale above our heads, Bavink sat with his head in his hands and spoke of the sun, almost sentimentally. And we thought it was a shame to have to go to bed, people should be able to stay up for ever. That was one of the things we’d change. Kees was asleep.

  And then we were off to the Zuiderzee to watch the sun come up, except for Kees, who went home. Hoyer complained about the cold but Bavink and Bekker didn’t notice it at all. They sat on the stones down on the dyke with eyes half closed and looked through their eyelashes at the little arrows of dancing gold that the sun made in the water. The sight made Bavink go mad; he wanted to run across the long, long, glittering stripe all the way to the sun. But he stopped at the water’s edge after all and stood there. I remember one day when we, Bavink and I, went to the seaside and half the sun lay big and cold and red on the horizon. Bavink hit his forehead with his fist and said, ‘God, God, I’ll never paint that. I’ll never be able to paint that.’ Now he’s in a mental hospital. When we came back from the Zuiderzee we couldn’t see anything except yellow spots for a long time and our bosses didn’t like these excursions of ours at all. I was half asleep at the office afterwards and Bekker, who could handle it better than I could, sat at his desk daydreaming about the sun all day and looked out at the lit-up treetops on the far side of the garden more than usual and longed for six o’clock more desperately than ever.

  We were also big on excursions after work to the ring of dykes around the city. We sat in the grass down on the dyke, among the buttercups, and inquisitive cows came up to us with their big eyes and looked at us and we looked at them. And then it was a sure bet that Bavink would start in about Lien. One way or another those cow eyes must have had something to do with it. And then the twilight started to shimmer, the frogs started croaking, one frog made a horrible racket right next to my shoe, my foot was almost in the ditch. You could hear other frogs softly, far, so far away. The cow that in the half dark you could hardly see any more you could still hear, trimming the grass. One started mooing pitifully in the distance. A horse ran back and forth, you could hear it but not see it. The cow near us snorted and started to get restless. Bekker said: ‘It’s nice here. If only it stayed like this.’ Bavink stood up and spread his arms wide and listened, and then sat down again and said that we didn’t get it either, and we never would, he himself didn’t get it, and really we were not much better than everyone else, and I think he was very nearly right about that.

  No, we didn�
�t actually do anything. We did our work at the office, not all that well, for bosses we despised – except Bavink and Hoyer, who had no bosses, and who didn’t understand why we went in to see ours every day.

  But we were waiting. For what? We never knew. Bekker said: ‘For the Kingdom of God.’ At least that’s what he said once, without explaining any further. Bavink always talked about ‘the end that is also a new beginning’. We knew exactly what he meant and said nothing more about it.

  2

  That summer we met almost every night at Kees’s attic. Kees had decided he needed a ‘place’ too. His place was the biggest and the easiest for all of us to get to. The neighbours didn’t like everybody going up and down the stairs every night. Kees’s father didn’t see the point of the whole thing. Now Kees’s father greets me very politely and calls me ‘Mr Koekebakker’, because he’s seen my name in the Handelsblad.

  Bekker told Kees how he had to decorate it. They bought cheap wallpaper with a little flower pattern for three cents a roll and then glued it to the wall reversed so that the plain green backing faced out. Bekker wrote out a proverb in calligraphy and stuck it to the wall next to the door: ‘J’ai attendu le Seigneur avec une grande patience, enfin il s’est abaisse jusqu’à moi.’

  I don’t know any more where he got that from. Kees couldn’t read it. But Kees did contribute something, he made a shovel and Bekker managed to attach it to the wall pointing at the proverb. It wasn’t clear at first what it was supposed to mean, but later it turned out that Bekker wanted to go and live on the heath someday and work a little piece of land, and never have to go back to the office. Bavink thought that was a good idea but was afraid Lien wouldn’t agree, and Hoyer preferred to hang around in bars.

  Then we sat there and tore everything to pieces. Or almost everything. I remember that Zola and Jaap Maris came out more or less unscathed, maybe one or two others. Bekker read to us from Dante, he knew Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs and the Book of Job by heart. It was very impressive. Not much of the outside world made it into Kees’s attic. The only window was almost shoulder-height off the floor; when you sat at the table, you couldn’t see much more than a sliver of sky, the colour slowly draining out of it, and a few stars when it was dark out.

  Paint? Who still knew how to paint nowadays, to hear Bavink tell it! You could palm anything off on people today, literally anything. I should paint a picture myself – he was talking about me, Koekebakker. He would tell me what to do. ‘Paint two horizontal stripes, one on top of the other, same width, one blue and one gold, and then put a round gold bit in the middle of the blue stripe. We’ll write in the catalogue #666: The Thought, oil on canvas. And we’ll submit it under my name: Johannes Bavink, Second Jan Steenstraat, number so-and-so, and we’ll price it at eight hundred guilders. Then you can just sit back and see everything they come up with. They’ll discover all sorts of things in there that you didn’t have the slightest idea of.’

  Bavink was still very young back then. Later on, Lien came over too sometimes and made tea. One time, she scrubbed the floor and dusted everything, but that was very unpleasant. It caused some embarrassment for Kees when she came over, because his old man had definite misgivings about the young lady, and Bavink was never the way we liked him when Lien was around. He was always giving her little squeezes and pinches. It was annoying.

  Luckily he started to leave her at home before long, because he thought she was making eyes at me. Bekker said, ‘Girls, they’re not worth it,’ and puffed on his clay pipe with especial satisfaction the first time she didn’t come. And that evening it was really nice too. We sat for hours in the dark. The lamp got fainter and fainter, then went out. We just stayed there sitting and smoking, for hours. Every once in a while someone said something. Bavink decided that painting was the dumbest thing anyone could do. Kees didn’t understand anything, as usual. ‘You have to just sit quietly and stay like that,’ Bavink said, and looked up at the sky. A big greenish star twinkled. ‘You have to just sit quietly and stay like that and long with all your might, without knowing what for.’ He filled a fresh pipe.

  3

  It was a strange time. And when I think about it, I realize that that time must still be happening now, it will last as long as there are young men of nineteen or twenty running around. It’s only for us that the time is long since past.

  We were on top of the world and the world was on top of us, weighing down heavily. Far below us we saw the world full of activity and industry and we despised those people, especially the important gentlemen, the ones who were always so busy and so sure they’d got pretty far in the world.

  But we were poor. Bekker and I had to spend most of our time at the office and do whatever those gentlemen said, and listen to their ridiculous opinions when they talked to each other, and put up with the fact that they thought they were much more clever and capable than we were. And when they thought it was cold then all the windows had to be shut and in winter the lights had to come on much too early and the curtains had to be pulled shut so we couldn’t see the red sky and the twilight in the streets and we had no say in it at all.

  And we had to live on streets that were too narrow, with a view of the oilcloth curtains across the street and the tasselled fringe and the potted aspidistra with an impossible flower on top.

  Oh, we took our revenge, we learned languages they had never even heard of and we read books they couldn’t even begin to understand, we experienced feelings they never knew existed. On Sundays we walked for hours on paths where they never went, and at the office we thought about the canals and the meadows we had seen and while they ordered us to do things that we didn’t see the point of we thought about how the sun had set behind Abcoude on Sunday evening. And how we had thought our way through the whole universe, without words; and how God had filled our head, our heart and our spine, and how stark raving mad they would look if we told them about it. And how, with all their money and their trips to Switzerland and Italy and God knows where else and with all their clever hard work, they could never feel such things.

  But still, they had us in their power, they confiscated the greater part of our time, they kept us out of the sunshine and away from the meadows and the seaside. They forced us constantly to fill our thoughts with their incomprehensible business. Even though that only went so far. They chewed us out; at the office we were totally insignificant. ‘Ah, Bekker,’ they said to each other. The gentlemen had been well brought up; the woman on the third floor said, ‘That hare-brained idiot,’ but the gentlemen were too well brought up for that. And they were bright, much brighter than the woman on the second floor, whose husband was a lamplighter, a good job that didn’t need much education. My boss asked me if I wrote poetry by any chance. Bekker thought that a man like him shouldn’t utter the word poetry, shouldn’t be allowed to. ‘What did you tell him?’ I hadn’t said anything. I only looked at his face and saw what a thick skull he had and I thought: He doesn’t know who he has standing here in front of him, he hasn’t got the brains. And they paid us badly, the gentlemen did.

  4

  And we were in love. For months Bekker went out of his way to walk down Sarphatistraat every morning. He was in love with a schoolgirl of about seventeen or so, and he walked fifty steps behind her or on the other side of the street and he looked at her. He never knew her name, never said a word to her. Over the Christmas break he was unhappy. In February he took an afternoon off to wait for her when school got out. He stood there on the quiet canal-side street in the snow and a man rode by on a white horse wearing a blue smock and a straw hat. How odd, that on precisely that afternoon he had had to see something so ludicrous. But Bekker left at five minutes to four, he didn’t dare stay. He walked slowly away, and on Weteringschans she caught up with him. She was laughing loudly with a friend, another girl. I don’t think she ever knew Bekker existed.

  Bekker wanted me to tell him where this was heading; it couldn’t go on like this. And it didn’t either. After t
he summer vacation she never came back.