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

by Joost Zwagerman

  Hidden in a shallow doorway, I had to rely entirely on the noises just round the corner where Lodijzer lodged with a grocer. I could not understand any words; fortunately, it did not last too long. After the door banged I expected to see Hugo walking back past me or in any case past the end of the side street, but the footsteps moved further away, merging with the footsteps of other pedestrians and then vanished, just at the point when I hesitantly turned the corner. One glance in the high street told me that he must have disappeared. Fighting back my despair, I first looked for Rusman’s house, above one of the cloth merchants. All dark. Past the twill and the unbleached cotton, which I couldn’t smell now, I ran to the next side street, looking round the whole time. Just when I had established that no one was walking there either, I heard a door behind me, voices, another farewell, I dashed away, huddled against a low garden gate that sprang back a little, and listened to the footsteps, to see if they would come closer or go in the opposite direction. The former was the case. After a few moments Hugo Verwey limped past my side street, further down the high street, in the direction of the square-like extension of it, which from a distance looked dark and became even darker after the last street lights. Behind me to my left the moon was becoming clearer, seeming to surge from my direction against the houses, where our shadows floated on, his bending, shrinking, as it were, nodding in contemplation at each limping movement. Although the number of walkers had considerably reduced here too, I had the feeling I was still in the centre of the town. Moon and stones – I didn’t think about the sea. Gradually, and according to a kind of calculation, I quickened my step: only catching up one after each three steps – I was about fifty paces behind him – so a hundred and fifty was the time difference – that was perhaps two minutes. Suddenly, threatening and surly, lit as it were from the wings by a pale lemon-yellow wall lamp, the old gate loomed up, by which the skippers always stood spitting and the yellow butcher’s dogs lay on the cobbles. No one was standing or lying now. The distance between us had shrunk to no more than fifteen paces, when he disappeared into the dark gateway fleetingly lit brown on both shoulders. The coat of arms above the gate was foreshortened, two crossed hands faded into gloves that had been taken off: I had also hurried in, quite prepared to bump into him on the other side. I forgot all precautions; I left my fear, my despair behind me; I didn’t know what I would say to him, but because it was dark there, I couldn’t care less about being hit or kicked again … A cool westerly wind, a damper atmosphere, the furthest wink of the elegant lighthouse announced the sea. Unexpectedly I saw him at extreme left, on his way to the little harbour, which surrounded by two short piers, was scarcely worthy of the name, sanded up as it was. Fishing boats could never get more than halfway, the other half was navigable only for rowing boats, which were also usually moored there, as common property, particularly of the young. All one needed, as a strapping lad, was to make friends with an arbitrary idling fisherman, to become the hirer of one of those boats. The grammar-school boys at least were always exempted from a hire charge; even wear and tear was not charged for. As I followed Hugo over the sandy section that led to the north pier, constantly stumbling over pieces of wood and barbed wire that had come loose, I still hadn’t a clue what he was planning. The moon shone so brightly that beyond the harbour mouth silvery blue stripes could be followed almost to the horizon, but there was a distant ethereal mist whipped up by the moon and blown back again by the wind, or perhaps generated automatically by the ambiguously rising or falling water around the Gravel Bank, which was a half-hour’s row out to sea and was covered at high tide. Although I had been there often enough, the sand bank took a more mysterious meaning for me than usual, simply because in that direction the sea revealed itself so unexpectedly far, without being directly shone on like the twinkling water of the harbour, past which the figure of Hugo Verwey was limping. But not before at the beginning of the harbour he began to descend one of the crude sets of steps hewn out of the basalt did I realize that he must have been attracted by that mysteriously changing island out to sea. Perhaps he was longing for the fresh air, water splashing on his cheeks, the company he had just left …

  I crouched down behind a fat bollard painted black and white that smelled of tar and waited to see what he was going to do. It was a strange sight to watch that crippled figure stepping into one of the boats, fixing one of the oars and pushing off with the other. The water rippled as far as both piers; the splash of oars was the only sound in the deserted harbour. He was now rowing quite fast. He might be away for an hour, or less – but also half the night, till the moon set! I couldn’t wait here. And until I had asked my question a second time, I couldn’t go home either … That was why I decided to follow him in one of the other boats, observe him, speak to him on the Gravel Bank or out at sea (this appealed to me not because I would be safe from a second hiding, but because of the romantic aura, of which I was gradually becoming aware), and in the most unfavourable case to follow him home, after which I could buttonhole him on land. When after the rhythmic splashing of the oars in the harbour mouth had died away I hurried in the same direction as him, towards the rowing boat that was most in the shadow, I began to be filled with reckless confidence. The firmer my resolution grew, the more I became free of the despair that had dominated me on my journey through the town. Far out to sea he could no longer despise me, that was impossible. He would understand how seriously I took it, and that there was no other way, because of Sophie. He would respect my daring; he would refuse me nothing! Finally I might even bring him back to Sophie’s feet … With my head burning, I cast off and stepped into the boat. The water level was falling, in an hour it would be low tide, the distance between the tidemark on the basalt steps and the surface of the water was already over a metre. I tried to row as fast as he had done. Under my bent knees swayed a rectangle of water, on which the moon would soon be shining, like on a coat of arms I was carrying with me. I could almost have cried with joy, as I pulled hard on my oars, but just outside the harbour, with on my left the first full beams of the lighthouse, I kept looking over my shoulder so as not to catch up with him too fast …

  My exultant mood lasted for the first ten minutes of my voyage to the Gravel Bank; after that everything became more confused and no longer completely accessible to my memory. Water, splashing around me, the singing wind, the creaking of the oars, together formed the accompaniment to my happiness. From one side of the sky to the other the lighthouse rolled its eyes. I had to steer a slightly southerly course, because of the current. I almost loved the sea, because it wasn’t the sea but moonlight on sea, and in it two people who would find each other. But then sleepless nights went to my head like wine, suddenly and irresistibly; I thought I would tumble forwards, but kept rowing and when I turned round felt the wind full in my face, and mechanically scanned the horizon where the grey-yellow line, with waves lapping gently around it, must appear. I couldn’t see his boat, but where else can he have gone but the Gravel Bank? And if he wasn’t there, I would imagine he was: limping, leaping like a light-brown insect on that round bank with the gleaming shells, which shrank and disappeared at high tide, to re-emerge at low tide, six hours later, and then he would still be on it waiting for me and saying for the first time what united our hearts. Didn’t we row as well as each other? Weren’t we at grammar school together? … No, none of that contorted face, Hugo Verwey, none of those contemptuous words! … Away with that copper-coloured face that attacked me here in order to restrain me, threatening, searching, accusing – and it did disappear, and it blurred in the outlines of the sand bank onto which I climbed with the rushing waves. Perhaps the three of us should sing together in Revd Kalmans’ church choir, on the hard pews, and I would take back all my reservations about the God of love. If his boat was not there … But his boat was there, although there was no sign of him on the low island, which must be almost at its largest now, a quarter of an hour’s walk around it. Just after I felt the first impact of land, I not
iced the long black mark, on my right, not very far away. The boat lay there without a rope attached to a metal peg: he must know too that it was low tide and high tide only in six hours. Far up in the sky the moon shone on the slightly sloping surface with the scattered constellations of shells; I let my own boat run aground between two of them, and there lay the two boats on the sand, as if they would never part. If he was not on the island, I would of course have to take his boat back with me, to show him what I was capable of … Yes, I must do that, that must be done, what need did he have of a boat?! It seemed to me more difficult than anything, but perhaps it would be straightforward. I was already itching to do it; it was the last task I had to accomplish to find peace, to be able to sleep. Where was the rope? Was it long enough? How strange, those oars that I did not need and so could place carefully to one side. Pushing his boat back towards the water, securing the rope in the right place to mine, and then floating both boats, it was a splendid exercise, and only now was I aware of the lighthouse, which waved back from far away. Yes, I was making headway. He could stay there for ever, limping in the moonlight. If he wanted to go back, I would come and get him, the same way, but first his boat must be taken to safety. Or perhaps he would not even want to come with me, because what friends did he have on shore? … In any case, I had defended him against his enemies; at school he would have a quiet life with me, and he would know everything, understand everything … How the wind was blowing from behind me after all, playing with the boat that was tugging at mine, and scarcely cooling my forehead. It all seemed so peaceful, a good end. And yes, there was the lighthouse, half-size, and there right before my eyes was the second boat, which wanted to go left or right of the direction in which the ever-receding sandbank lay, or occasionally stayed in the middle and then whenever I looked round, the lighthouse again, under which I would eventually be able to go to sleep, when the lights went out, at daybreak, in the town six hours later …

  No, he didn’t drown, though no one could have hoped for his rescue, myself included, in those days when our old doctor spoke of ‘brain fever’ and consultation and observation. My sister sat next to me day and night, until she also had to take to her bed. And the Christmas cantata became so insignificant besides all this that it was not even talked of any more, when I went back to school and heard about the outcome. No one ever knew what really happened, no one suspected that it was me who took the boat off the Gravel Bank, not even my sister, despite my wild utterances in my delirium. The two boats, which I had brought back to their place in the harbour in my half-somnambulant condition, were still tied together by a rope, but there was never an investigation, as far as I know. In fact, people spoke only of the miraculous rescue. Hugo Verwey must have struggled heroically against the rising tide, for hours and hours, at first with his clothes on, then naked, in turn swimming and standing on tiptoe where shells made the seabed firmer. At five in the morning he was spotted by fishermen and pulled chilled and exhausted into a rowing boat. Pneumonia followed, a cure in Davos – but it’s quite possible he’s still alive, although he never came back to us. I am still proud that he coped so well in the element that I hate, since he was, after all, my friend. And just because he was my friend, I did what released me from my passion and left no room for myself. Only for that reason. Anyone who thinks I brought the boat back out of revenge – revenge for my sister, or revenge for the hiding he gave me – has understood nothing of my story, and perhaps that is the best way to read it – the best way for myself, who for years afterwards, at least till I was twenty or twenty-one, when my feelings for him had long since disappeared, had to suffer the punishment of dreaming about Hugo Verwey: how I rowed after him, caught up with him, lay next to him on an endless golden expanse of sand, where supernatural voices sang far above our heads, where there was no place for separation and no way back to the town, to which I, alone, had fled.

  Translated by Paul Vincent

  8

  Belcampo

  Funeral Rights

  Uitvaart

  By two men who did not speak his language but who could clasp his arms in an immovable grip, he was chucked down the stone stairs into the darkness. There he lay and bled. With a booming blow the iron hatch slammed shut above him.

  By the reverberation he gleaned that he had been cast into a large space. It could be a hall. He was lying on a stone floor; he could feel damp sand here and there. There was nothing he could see; it seemed pitch dark there. He could hear something. Shuffling sounds now and then, other ones too occasionally, as if a paw was being put down, a body turned over. Breathing, too.

  He was not alone there. Animals? Would he be eaten later on? Had they already smelled his blood? His teeth chattered with fear; his knees began to tremble and he no longer had the power to subdue them.

  Though he did not know yet whether the end of his life was imminent, his fear was already accompanied by the feeling of complete desolation each dying human being experiences in his last moments of consciousness. No one any longer could do anything for him; all of humanity had turned away from him: he was alone. All his past experience appeared to have been deception. To be betrayed by life itself: this is the bitter end of every man.

  Yet, the space he was lying in seemed gradually to clear up a bit; perhaps his eyes, blinded at first by the sudden darkness, were slowly getting used to it. He began to discern something, to distinguish between things in the dark. The pale gleam of limbs, it would seem. Dim movement, here and there. He recognized human forms, mainly lying down, a few sitting up. No, he had not ended up in an animal pit but in a human one. It grew ever clearer. The entire floor of the subterranean hall seemed covered with a curious life form, with a layer of the living.

  Slowly, the terrible truth penetrated his tortured brain: here, in this bottommost darkness, the warriors of vanquished peoples were left to their own devices.

  No one any longer spoke a word; not even the whispers between two of them could be heard; all were completely cast back upon themselves. Language had ceased to exist. Nothing else remained but resignedly to undergo the decline of the body.

  A movement seldom came, and extremely slowly even then; movement had become precious, it took away from the only thing that remained to them and upon which their lifespan depended: their reserves of strength.

  He had a number of wounds but there was no point in examining them; nothing could be done about them anyway. Just wait and see whether he would still survive the healing of his wounds. It was turning into a contest.

  There was nothing to do except cling to life. Escape was out of the question: that which walled them in was the impenetrable rock of the earth itself. And concerted action could never again go forth from this realm of shades: at best, concerted death would. In the feeble dusk which grew no clearer, he distinctly saw attitudes of dull resignation all around him, of surrender to the waiting, the waiting for nothingness.

  He, too, settled himself down as comfortably as possible on the warm rock in such a way as to benefit most of its support, closed his eyes and did the only thing he was still capable of doing and which they all did: in his thoughts he returned to the past, to where his freedom lay. He had a sudden urge to re-experience his entire past life, more clearly, more consciously than the first time, to realize, before the end, an inner flowering of the images of his memory the way a tree, too, wastes its last strength in an uncommon flowering.

  Particularly the first part of his life, before the start of the war, was what he would remember at leisure: when they were still happy and had feasts, when the world was still a friendly dwelling place to him. The darkness turned out to help him in this; in the dark he could bring those images clearly to mind, and the silence, too, allowed him to hear the sounds of the past more clearly. This, to all, was the only thing that remained.

  He managed to lull himself within his memories to such an extent that, occasionally, he would catch himself out smiling. In this pit that seemed like a blasphemy, its negation. It would
only happen when he felt little pain. Each time when, as a result of lying for too long in the same position, his wounds began to smart, his thoughts would stray to the war, to his life as a warrior: they became searing.

  Besides the fact that the business of war itself is pervaded with deep suffering, there had moreover been the certain realization of fighting against a superior force, in this case, of having to experience the fall of his tribe. To die without issue is already a double death, but to leave a world behind in which your language is being annihilated is the most bitter thing of all. And not because of an inner decline but because of a foreign power.

  What splendid people they were! Full of strength and agility; rich in ingenuity, in making use of nature. And their women: so elegant and so stubborn at the same time, as good helpmeets in battle as pleasure grounds of passion in times of peace. No, they had not been brought low by better opponents but by more numerous ones.

  And how many tribes such as the one he belonged to had gone this way and were still going? During the transport here he had soon not seen a single fellow tribesman any more. They were being mingled in. As regards those who must die, too, did they still conduct their policy: the extermination of the foreign tongue? Gods were preserved but languages were exterminated: thus was the conqueror’s will.

  On one occasion it did occur to him that there was still something he could do: crawl out of reach of the big stairwell above him. Stairwell in two senses of the word: the well of all their empty stares. By touch, he slowly moved himself forwards.

  He could easily have gone upright, stepping over the others; though he had indeed been weakened by his injuries, he could still draw on a large quantity of reserves of strength even so. They had been given food during their transport, extras too, occasionally, from women along the way. He still had muscles, he still even had fat. If he preserved his energy as much as possible, he could hold out a good while yet. But why, really? Merely to let his thoughts roam for a week, a month longer. Absurd was what it was.