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

by Joost Zwagerman

  13

  And Bavink?

  In the battle against the ‘goddamed things’, Bavink lost, or surrendered. The things that wanted to be painted and then, when you thought, Well, in that case it’ll have to happen, turned out not to want to be painted after all. He was just starting to become famous when the struggle came to an end.

  Two months after my return he came and told me, in a very calm voice, that he had cut his View of Rhenen to pieces. And so he had. The river, the mountain, the Cunera Tower, the blossoming apple trees, the red roofs of Rhenen, the chestnut trees with their red and white flowers, the brown beeches and the little windmill somewhere up on the mountain – into sixty-four identical rectangles 15 by 12 1/2 cm each, with a blunt penknife. It was hard work too.

  The thing just wouldn’t stop pestering him. It was worthless, totally worthless garbage. He wanted me to tell him why anyone would paint. What’s the point? He didn’t know anything any more. He stretched out his arm and waved it around. There, that’s where the things are. He hit his forehead with his fist. And here. They want to come out, but they don’t come out. It’s enough to drive you out of your mind.

  Almost a year later I saw him at Centraal Station, seeing someone off on the eight o’clock train to Paris, a hairy guy with long black curls and a huge beard, more hair than man, and a high forehead with nothing behind it. The setting sun shone big and red, it was at the edge of the glass and metal roof, there was a reddish light in the window panes and the varnish on the train cars. Bavink was drunk. The train pulled away, slid out from under the station roof and curved to the left. As it turned, the light flashed brightly on the cars.

  We strolled to the end of the platform. We came to a man with a signal lamp and I saw that as he passed us he looked at a conductor standing on another platform and made a drinking movement with his hand near his mouth. We stopped past the end of the roof and looked at the sun. ‘You see the sun, Koekebakker?’ The sun was especially clear, right in front of us, close by, bigger and redder than I had ever seen it. It almost touched the rails, it didn’t flash brightly on things any more, there was a dull glow only on the frosted window panes of the train shed to the right of the track.

  ‘You think I’m drunk?’ I did indeed. ‘It doesn’t matter, Koekebakker, when I’m sober I don’t understand anything anyway.

  ‘Do you understand what the sun wants from me? I have thirty-four setting suns leaning against the wall, one on top of the other, all facing the wall. But every evening it’s there again.’

  ‘Unless it’s cloudy,’ I said. But he wouldn’t let himself be distracted.

  ‘Koekebakker, you’ve always been my best friend. I’ve known you since – how long has it been?’

  ‘About thirteen years, Bavink.’

  ‘Thirteen years. That’s a long time. You know what you need to do? Do me a favour. You have a hatbox?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Put it in a hatbox, Koekebakker. In a hatbox. I want to be left alone. Put it in a hatbox, a plain old hatbox. That’s all it’s worth.’

  Bavink blubbered drunkard’s tears. I looked around helplessly. A man in a uniform with a yellow stripe on his cap came up to us and spoke to me.

  ‘I think it would be better, sir, if you took the gentleman home.’

  I saluted and held out my arm for Bavink. He came willingly. He fell asleep in the taxi and woke up for a minute on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal when we drove over a pothole, and he wanted to start in on the hatbox again. But he fell right back asleep.

  One morning he sat staring blankly in front of his last sunset. I arrived at his place with Hoyer. He didn’t recognize us. He just looked at the sun, a big cold red sun setting behind the clouds.

  ‘It just looks at me; neither of us knows what to do with each other.’ He didn’t say anything else.

  Now he’s in an institution. It’s very peaceful there and he’s calm. He just looks up at the sky, or gazes at the horizon, or sits staring into the sun until his eyes hurt. He’s not supposed to do that but they can’t get anywhere with him. They can’t get him to talk. His paintings fetch a high price nowadays.

  And old Koekebakker has turned into a sedate and sensible man. He just writes, receives his humble wages, and doesn’t cause trouble.

  God’s throne is still unshaken. His world just takes its course. Now and then God smiles for a moment about the important gentlemen who think they’re really something. A new batch of little Titans are still busy piling up little boulders so that they can topple him down off his heights and arrange the world the way they think it should be. He only laughs, and thinks: That’s good, boys. You may be crazy but I still like you better than the proper, sensible gentlemen. I’m sorry you have to break your necks and I have to let the gentlemen thrive, but I’m only God.

  And so everything takes its little course, and woe to those who ask: Why?

  Translated by Damion Searls

  5

  F. Bordewijk

  The Briefcase

  De aktetas

  It was already nearly ten years since the liberation. In that time Mr Kars had seen his family increase, he was approaching middle age and he was still working – after some previous uncertainty in employment – in one of those government offices concerned with the liquidation of war damage and restoration of rights, and intended to be self-liquidating. Thus he had finally become a civil servant.

  But Mr Kars, who had quite soon risen to a senior position, was not at all afraid of his own liquidation. He had done too much creditable work for the government not to want to keep him on. He knew his value and fortunately the man at the top knew it too, so that in due course he would be sure to find reasonable state employment elsewhere.

  He did a lot of extra work at home in the evenings, taking difficult files with him to study them at leisure. He came from a long line of civil servants, and remembered tales told by his grandfather, in whose day there were no such things as briefcases. The gentlemen of the various departments walked empty-handed, or with at most a stick or an umbrella, to and from the office. They devoted the evenings to their part-time jobs. Part-time jobs were very necessary in those days. It was impossible to say what had come first: low civil-service wages or the part-time job; anyway, no one worried their head about such matters.

  But Mr Kars, without the time for or need of a part-time job, did need a briefcase. This had become so much a part of his public persona that his wife often had to relieve him of his briefcase before the start of a Sunday walk. It had only been absent-mindedness, and yet Mr Kars didn’t enjoy the walk as much as he did during the week, although he recognized the compensation offered by the presence of his charming other half.

  On this delightful May afternoon at slightly after five o’clock, Mr Kars was making his way home from work. He always walked. It wasn’t far, about twenty minutes, from his office, in a large high-rise block, to his house in the same neighbourhood. Exercise was good for him, as he had a tendency to corpulence, and he liked walking. He was a fairly small chap, a fraction stooped, and usually paid little attention to his surroundings as he walked along, with his thoughts focused mainly on his files, as was the case this afternoon. He had never had much of an eye for young greenery, unless Mrs Kars pointed it out to him. She knew about his slight absent-mindedness and constantly warned him to be careful in traffic. In reply he appealed to the animal instinct for self-preservation, but, feeling that this reassurance was not quite sufficient, he added that he also kept a sharp lookout.

  Mr Kars’s route always, and hence also today, took him over a complicated junction. Somewhere close to his house he had to cross a large highway consisting of various lanes: a footpath of fine gravel, an asphalt bicycle lane, a clinker roadway, two tram lanes with overgrown grass between them, another asphalt bicycle lane, and another footpath of fine gravel. All these lanes were separated from each other by single lines of thick trees, which made the avenue very attractive but also obscured the view, so that a
pedestrian could not make do with looking in each direction in turn as they crossed but definitely had to peer round the trunks as well. And in the place where Mr Kars used it the highway had a further feature, which made it a junction: it was used by another double tram lane for an S-shaped crossing.

  At about quarter past five Mr Kars, coming from work that afternoon, crossed the avenue, which was carrying heavy traffic in both directions. Somewhere along the way he had the oddest sensation he had ever experienced. It couldn’t be put into words in any language, nor could it be translated into a sound or an image or expressed in gestures. It was beyond the realm of sensory perception and at the same time it had something omnipresent about it. But the strangest thing was that he instantly forgot it.

  He walked on. He had crossed the avenue. There ahead of him lay the winding cross-street through which the other pair of tram rails meandered. From now on he would follow the old familiar route: at right angles across this road then along a footpath with a small hill and gates at the beginning and end to keep out cyclists, then the residential area where he and his family rented a couple of rooms and he would definitely be home in five minutes.

  However, once he had made his way across the second thoroughfare and was standing safely on the other pavement he was compelled by an inexplicable force to look back, and the first thing that struck him was a stationary motor vehicle between the rows of trees along the big avenue, at the front of which a group of spectators had already formed. That front swelled, and Mr Kars, who was standing there perfectly safely, with the entrance to the hilly footpath at his back, saw more and more curious people come running up and cyclists and moped riders dismount and cars stop. He saw it clearly from this short distance away and at the same time with a certain lack of interest. By nature he was not someone to want to be confronted by a traffic accident at close quarters. However, for a moment it recalled his strange sensation of just now. Had it perhaps been a kind of premonition that something was about to happen? Because look, hadn’t it been in more or less the same place? And yet it was not so much the accident that fascinated him, as the impact it had on those around it, and the reaction fascinated him more than usual, though he wasn’t aware of it.

  He saw people asking questions feverishly, latecomers standing on tiptoe, everyone packed more and more together; he noticed the advantage of those with a large build, he saw buses slowing down in which the rows of heads suddenly turned towards the same spot and necks craned as far as they could. Meanwhile, another tram came sliding along the road where he was standing and when it followed its S-shaped line across the avenue where the accident was he saw all the passengers get up from their seats as if in response to a command, and rush to the windows as if the vehicle were a full pleasure-boat in rough weather.

  Not thinking at all of the unfortunate who was undoubtedly lying there under the cowcatcher, Mr Kars watched with a slight amusement, which had come on slowly and was not at all in keeping with his character. Then came the blare of a police siren from somewhere. Mr Kars caught a glimpse of the closed horse-drawn carriage, but the throng was such that he lost sight of the rest and continued calmly on his way home. He would soon have something to tell his wife, tonight he would hear more about it on the radio and tomorrow morning he would read the report in the paper. Now, though, they were scarcely reports, since as accidents increased in number, their individual size decreased. The jokes column of the old daily had been replaced by the accident column of the present paper, and the typeface had remained the same.

  Reflecting on these matters, not without some secret satisfaction at this comparison, Mr Kars climbed the gentle hill of the footpath, which was very little used, manoeuvred his way through the first gate with his customary routine, which required no more than three steps and three twists of the hips, and a little later manoeuvred in the same way through the gate on the other side of the hill. As he negotiated this second obstacle something unusual happened in that a strapping young man negotiated it at the same time, from the other side. The gates were daily witnesses of politeness and rudeness, of courteous invitations and stiff nods in reply to slight greetings and momentary smiles, frowns, curses under the breath and out loud, and besides the psychological clashes physical ones too. However, it escaped Mr Kars, who had not seen any reason to give right of way to the strapping young fellow, that on this occasion a mysterious feat had been achieved.

  Mr Kars was now in the first avenue in the residential quarter. Four minutes and he would be home. It was quiet, and in the distance Mr Kars could hear four notes in a regular rhythm, melodious and melancholy. The signal stopped abruptly. It must be the ambulance.

  It was not this four-note signal in itself that suddenly made Mr Kars go cold, nor was it the fact that – for the first time – he associated the sound specifically with death – it was that at the same time he became aware of his briefcase and, realized, he did not know how, that the case was dead. It gave him a feeling of unimaginable cold. Yes, it really was his briefcase, really his briefcase, quite scuffed from use, but tough and stuffed with files. He carried it as always in his left hand, he had not let go of it for an instant, and yet the briefcase no longer had any weight, it was not actually dead, but more, or less; Mr Kars was carrying a ghost. For a moment he considered taking his fingers off the handle, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid; he knew that the briefcase would go on floating. Then he felt huge beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead and at the same time felt that they were not there. And he heard, he did not know from where – inside him or outside him – words that he had perhaps once read, or overheard, caught in passing in the street: death does not immediately free itself from the earth.

  Mr Kars stood there like a statue. And saw it in front of him. When he went home he didn’t need the key, he could pass straight through the closed front door, through the door of the room, and no one would know. His wife would pick up the telephone and hear an unfamiliar deep voice:

  ‘Madam, highway police here. I regret to inform you that I have some very grave news. We’ll be with you shortly.’

  Perhaps his wife was holding the receiver to her ear at this moment. Yes, she was. She was ashen. And, oh God, his children were there too.

  Translated by Paul Vincent

  6

  Maria Dermoût

  The Sirens

  De sirenen

  The story goes …

  It was not a man but a woman who bought the proa, a beautiful proa, carved, gaily painted, on the stem the single, wide-open, ‘all-seeing’ eye, tall masts of bamboo, which could be lowered when the wind would not come, triangular sails of plaited leaves, brown and red, which could also be lowered, or could serve as an awning in storm or shower, or when there was too much sunlight or too much moonlight.

  A proa with a broad bamboo wing on one side, and of shallow draught to get through the straits between the drowned lands, with here, there and everywhere small islands, one large island far away on the one side, and a great continent far away on the other. Where?

  Once everything had formed part of that continent: the single large island, all the little islands, the drowned land in between, all one land. The Land of the Tiger had been its name, long ago.

  The Land of the Tiger was there no more.

  The sea was still there, as of old.

  The woman did not buy the proa because she loved the sea. She did not love the sea. She was afraid of the sea.

  She loved the great continent she had never seen but where she longed to go; she must! She should! That was the reason she had bought the proa. That was the reason she had left the one large island, her home.

  Where along the river, on the edge of the woods, under the trees, stood the ‘longhouses’ (which belonged to the women), built on high stilts, with beautiful carved beams, with beautiful carved flights of steps leading upward.

  Where every night torches were lit, exactly half an hour after midnight, and the men had to leave the women, going down the steps of
the longhouses, down a dark path to their own quarters, some distance into the woods.

  Where she, too, lived in a longhouse with her mother, who was the head of the family, of all the families in the longhouse. The women and children in the houses, the men on their own in the woods.

  And she the eldest daughter!

  Where life could have been good, waiting for her turn to buy, for so many sarongs and headcloths woven with gold or silver thread and weighed on the scales, a man she liked; waiting to bear children, preferably female children! Listening to the roaring waters, the tall rustling trees, and at half an hour after midnight the crackle of blazing torches, and the sound of the men’s voices coming through the dark, as they climbed down the stairs of the longhouses, complaining as they went. Waiting for her turn to become the head of the family, of all the families in the longhouse, after her mother had died.

  But this woman had not awaited her turn, she had bought a proa with everything that went with it, and a young man for her shipmate; and a cat, a striped cat, yellow and black, for the mice. She was afraid of mice. And she had put to sea on the proa, with the man, with the cat, sailing through the straits between the drowned land and the myriad small islands, which she visited one after the other – with the one large island where she would never return to one side – to search for the great continent on the other. For days, for months, for years.

  She never found the continent, the story goes.

  In the marketplaces on the little islands the villagers drew in their breaths, and stared at one another.

  The woman! A heavy, full sarong woven of real gold and silver threads, a black girdle around her waist, a cloth of black silk swathed about her breasts, her black hair combed tightly back and oiled; moving easily, her shoulders pulled back, looking straight ahead of her, and always in front.