‘Or demolished. Or had burned down,’ I said. Charlotte’s eyelids twitched.
Evert and Mary have become involved now too. Remarkably soon after their previous visit, they came driving up, this time without the children, in their perfectly maintained British car, the very latest thing. Charlotte must have alerted them. No courteous preamble, as we’re used to from them (they never show up unless they want something), with Evert first trying to engage Bertus in discussions about vertical price fixing, cartels, market mechanisms, and then, together with Mary and eagerly assisted by Charlotte, who is always absolutely delighted by her elder son’s infrequent visits, steering the general discussion to subjects such as warm-air heating, private string-quartet evenings at home, cosy farmhouses for the weekend, collections of Japanese woodcuts and Biedermeier furniture. This time they came straight to the point: the ground floor of Father’s house for them, thinking of the children and the business; the three of us upstairs; the costs shared.
‘It’s an ideal house for sharing, in terms of location and layout,’ said Mary, warmly persuasive, after Evert had dealt in detail with the financial aspects: ‘that extra kitchen on the first floor means you’re completely independent, and the attic could be converted into a charming flat without too much effort. You’ll have to decide for yourselves how you want to live, Mother together with Uncle, and Elza upstairs, or Mother and Elza on the first floor and Uncle up in the attic …’
So, rooms that had been locked and empty for twenty years would be put back into use? All the time I’d lived with Father after the war, I’d always walked across the landing on the first floor as if that section of the house were no longer part of it. Even though I knew I’d never run into them again, those officers in their Feldgrau, and that I would never again have to look in through doors that happened to be open to see rooms forever altered by their presence and the kitchen that had been installed for their billeting; time on the first floor has stood still for me since then, and no new wallpaper or fresh coat of paint can make me forget the runic symbols, the creaking of the boots, the loud voices, the image of that lonely drinker on a ‘Feierabend’, leaning against the counter, with unbuttoned uniform collar and glassy stare, his self-pity and vaguely menacing slur disrupting the dreams of my twelve- or thirteen-year-old self for months on end. Seen through the upstairs windows, the wintry trees along the avenue look like naked, mutilated creatures.
I looked at Bertus, who was wearing his wooden face, a mask with pursed lips and dots of colour on the cheekbones.
‘Uncle and Elza aren’t keen on the idea,’ said Charlotte reproachfully, indignantly.
‘Come on! Such a delightfully big house!’ cried Mary, in the tone she uses with her children when they don’t want to eat something.
Evert started from the beginning again, talking in what was, for him, a jovial tone; in other words, throwing the occasional tongue-in-cheek working-class pronunciation into his argument, a student habit he’d picked up, along with taking a tightly rolled black umbrella wherever he went: ‘Oh, lass, you know you can go and live in a big posh house again without suffering any pangs of conscience, you’ll likely not be teaching no more workers’ babbies now, and, God knows, they’re the masters in our modern democracy – their tellies, their fridges, and their cars are a lot more important to them than the culture that sweet idealists like you want to share …’ Neither did he spare me his usual tirades about what he refers to as ‘so-called progressive education’. Mary and he are all for discipline and for class-conscious education, children need to learn about authority from an early age, as that prevents misunderstandings in society, where a healthy sense of values … blah, blah, blah. People of my generation, a few years younger than I, but just as alien as inhabitants of another planet. As so often happens when Evert’s in full flow, I felt as if I were listening to my father speak in a young man’s voice, as if the Victorian era had been resurrected in the shape of what the advertisements like to call an ‘up-and-coming young man about town’. I unconsciously closed my eyes, but of course I couldn’t shut my ears.
Bertus came to my rescue: ‘When Elza has completely recovered, and if it’s what she wants, she’ll go back to that school. I think she’s absolutely right. Teaching children to write, to read, and explaining to them what that means, that’s quite something.’
Now it was the turn of the vigilant Mary to nip any differences of opinion in the bud: ‘But to get back to the house, Uncle. We could call in a friend of ours, who’s an architect. That attic, for instance …’
Charlotte had told me that Father often used to thrash Bertus as a punishment when he was a boy (Bertus himself never talks about it). ‘Up in the attic, in the trunk room … with a walking stick. If we’d both got up to mischief together, I had to watch … when it was over, he’d give me a couple of hard whacks on my palms …’ Always those details, imparted by Charlotte with downcast eyes, and yet not without a secret sense of malicious glee, and fear and guilt that she’d yet to overcome. Father never hit me. He was no longer that bothered. Even as a child, I could see the tensions coming to the surface as soon as he was together with Bertus and Charlotte. They were scared of him; he seemed disappointed in them. He would twitch his leg impatiently, or drum his fingers on the arm of the chair when Bertus was slow to respond, or spoke hesitantly with bursts of stuttering. He treated Charlotte with the somewhat condescending courtesy that conservative old men reserve for women, but had no qualms about interrupting when her chattering bored him (which didn’t usually take long), abruptly putting her in her place, even in the presence of her husband, the professor, towards whom he behaved almost submissively. That was in the years before the war, when the three of them used to come for lunch every Sunday; we would sit around the oversized table in the oversized panelled room, and after the soup Father would speak only to the professor, as Charlotte pretended to listen or let her gaze – with the haughtiness of insecurity – wander over us and around the room, and Bertus ate in attentive silence, with the occasional quick nod in my direction, and then during dessert he would begin to fold animal figures out of sheets of coloured tissue paper which he always carried in his wallet. Afterwards, he gave them to me, and I had shoeboxes full of them, upstairs in the attic, in the trunk room. I played up there for hours, shifting the old furniture around, rummaging in chests and boxes, murmuring all the while to my invisible companions. Later, during the war years, I would climb up onto the seat in the depths of the dormer window, to do my homework or to read; the trunk room was the place where I felt safest, furthest away from the residents on the first floor. Since I found out that Bertus was punished beneath those slanting beams as a child, I can understand why he never used to follow me when I wanted to show him my domain. When Charlotte brings up those punitive expeditions to the attic, she never neglects to mention ‘that one time, I was still just little, so I didn’t have to watch, but I was standing at the foot of the stairs, I could hear you screaming, you had to stay up there the whole day, you didn’t get any food …’ and sometimes I can’t resist asking: ‘But Bertus, what on earth had you done wrong?’ Bertus always shrugs his shoulders: ‘I don’t remember.’
‘That house is unfit for habitation.’ Which of us is going to say it, Bertus or I?
When Bertus pulls his wooden face, as he is now, it’s impossible to get a word out of him. These days, any dissenting opinions that I utter are automatically connected to my illness of a year ago, with what Evert and Mary refer to as my ‘depression’.
‘Mother, who are they, the people in this portrait? It says 1915 on the back. What a couple, delightful, such an old-fashioned photo. So sweet, eh, that black pinafore, she’s all decked out in her Sunday best. Wherever did you find it?’
As Charlotte explained, Evert came to look over his wife’s shoulder: ‘How peculiar. That doesn’t sound like Grandpa! But apparently old people often delve into the past shortly before their death.’
Mary: ‘Can we take it with us? I
have a black oval frame, I’ll put it in that, it’ll look amusing on our striped wall, above the dresser with the paraffin lamp.’
Evert: ‘1915, half a century ago. In the middle of the First World War. Crazy, to have lived through that time in a neutral land, out of harm’s way. I’m sure you must be able to remember those days, Uncle.’
Charlotte: ‘You won’t get anything out of your uncle, nothing at all. He has no memory.’ And Mary again, studying the portrait that Evert is holding, which looks more yellowed than ever beside his very white cuff: ‘A man in a cap and a striped shirt, with braces. That woman … she has rather a sweet face, I think. Look, Evert, don’t you think that’s a fine, sensitive face, for that sort of person? And those children, so comical, with the boy’s knee-length trousers. They’ve clearly dressed up the little girl for the occasion; you can see it was an expensive dress, all lacy frills, hideous, but they think it’s wonderful. My goodness, so quaint, one of those charming little nineteenth-century workers’ cottages, all on one floor, with a brick path to the door …’
Charlotte: ‘It’s the gardener at our grandparents’ country house, with his family.’
Mary: ‘Well, isn’t that divine? Evert, don’t you think that’s divine? Not having your ancestors on the wall, but their staff?’
‘Feudal, feudal,’ I murmured, which made Charlotte purse her lips, and Evert and Mary looked at each other with the familiar pitying expression: Ah … there goes Elza again.
‘Let them hang that thing on the wall!’ Bertus suddenly said, his voice loud and harsh. Evert tentatively broke the stunned silence that followed this outburst: ‘Given the lack of decent family portraits … All we have is from Grandma’s side.’
‘The house in the country burned down, you know that,’ I said. ‘So all the portraits will have been reduced to ashes too.’
This was intended as a signal for Bertus, a secret sign of understanding. But he didn’t react, just went on sitting, still red all the way down to his neck from his mysterious fit of rage, turned away from us, filling his pipe. Evert and Mary, so steeped in our mythology that it didn’t even occur to them to ask questions, didn’t respond to my words this time either, following the unwritten rules. They did, however, decide it was time for them to say goodbye. Charlotte shrugged her shoulders and glared at me as she walked past into the hall. I followed them.
‘How are you doing, Elza? Have you started going out again, shall we go into town together one of the days?’ Mary was standing in front of the mirror, nimbly arranging her hair around the brim of her fur hat. I know she feels sorry for me, and thinks she has to give me special attention from time to time. Her affectionate tone was genuine; it was also something of a discreet declaration of independence aimed at Charlotte, as she disapproves of her handling of my character and situation. To show that I appreciate her intentions, I would have liked to accept the offer. But the mere thought of the stifling heat and the glaring lights of December department stores fills me with loathing. Giant glass cages, vending machines, through which consumers are sucked; spaces filled with a constant buzzing and banging. I am an unwilling participant, tormented by the noise, by the tepid scent of soap and textiles, unable to saunter, unable to rummage along with everyone else, dizzy in the crush around the counters, through which someone like Mary purposefully makes her way. It’s more than a physical phenomenon; I break out in a sweat at the suction that hollows out these people into little figures on a graph, constituent elements of the economically significant masses. Passively ascending and descending on escalators, I gasp for air in a world of noise, colours, obtrusive tangibility, which will fade away as if it had never existed, already dust, already mirage. So I declined, and walked back into the living room, so that I didn’t have to see the look that Evert and Mary were undoubtedly exchanging yet again. I did overhear Charlotte’s whisper, though: ‘She still can’t cope with crowds. What’s going to become of her? Will she ever be able to teach at a school again? I have serious misgivings …’
They’d forgotten the portrait. It was still lying on the table inside.
Nineteen hundred and fifteen. That was already the distant past in the 1930s, which I can vaguely remember. What do I know about 1915? Workman in the portrait in your striped shirt, with your merry eyes beneath the peak of your cap, the lines on your face, which could be forty years old, or just as easily sixty-five, no voting rights and no social laws for you as yet. I remember that much from the booklets: you still had years to wait for an old-age pension and health insurance and for the eight-hour working day – if you ever got to see them at all. I don’t think you were unhappy, though, you certainly loved those children that you’re showing so proudly to the photographer and to the future. You’re standing there, no, not in front of a gardener’s cottage, it looks more like one of those two-room houses that can still be found in the oldest suburbs of our town; in the twilight between the curtains through the half-open window I can make out a plant in a pot. You had a little garden, just a few metres wide, separated from your neighbours by fences on both sides. It was a sunny day in the late summer of 1915, your dahlias were blooming; it must have been a special day, because you had yourself immortalized (in shirtsleeves because of the heat) with your wife and those two neatly dressed children. Your wife’s face shows emotion, and the way you’re holding up the little girl is both solemn and touching. What is it about the portrait that I find so touching? That woman on the point of walking away and holding up the black pinafore in front of her eyes, or the man standing there, wide-legged, somehow boldly, naively defiant? Around his house, the neighbourhood, with the smoke from the factories overhead (those trees in the background can’t be trees on a country estate); around the town, the land where peace still reigned; around the land, closer than he realized (or am I mistaken?) the trenches, the battlefields.
Later. Charlotte has been restless all evening, sitting, standing, sitting again, busily fussing with things she could just as easily have ignored or done another day. Finally the silence becomes too much for her (Bertus, unseen behind a newspaper that has been opened to its full extent, only answers when he has no choice, and keeps it as brief as possible; he hasn’t said anything else directly to me).
‘I think your behaviour is extremely childish. Why do the two of you always have to be so contrary? As if it would be so terrible to live in the house where we spent our entire childhood. If only out of respect for the memories …’
Bertus folds the newspaper in four, shakes his head.
‘It’s pure stubbornness. You take pleasure in frustrating my plans. I’d feel at home there. And it’s important for the children. Evert’s future …’
‘The first floor, the attic,’ I say, angrily stumbling over my words, ‘do you think Bertus wants to live where he was beaten and locked up as a boy? And what about me, do you think I’d feel at home in the rooms where the Krauts were …?’
Bertus looks at me, now he must know that I understand, now he’ll understand something about me that I can never talk about.
‘You’re overwrought,’ says Charlotte, ‘it’s just sick emotionalism.’
Bertus slams the folded newspaper on the table. ‘This place is good enough for me.’
Charlotte: ‘You’re so selfish.’
Bertus: ‘Those children of yours want for nothing. Evert will end up where he wants to be, it’s in his genes. Keeping up appearances by living in that house – it’s an irresponsible waste of money. Let the council buy it for the elderly.’
I could see it coming; Charlotte starts to shake.
‘Oh God, you have such a small-minded attitude. Do you want to stay here until you die, in your little flat, four rooms plus a kitchen, your tobacconist across the street, your local on the corner where you go to play billiards? The three of us don’t have room to swing a cat, it weighs me down. What kind of man are you? I sometimes understand perfectly why Father got so annoyed with you, you have no ambition, no initiative, you pen-pusher, you pet
ty little man …’
‘May I?’ Bertus’s voice sounds calm, but there’s something about his tone that should warn Charlotte to take care. ‘If you don’t like it, you can leave.’
Charlotte is pulling and picking at her handkerchief. As I watch, her face becomes softer, less defined, and the frightened child looks out through her eyes: ‘On my own?’
‘If I leave, I’ll look for another room,’ I say.
She turns to me: ‘You’re just like Bertus. Always that resistance, that false shame, as if it’s a scandal to come from a good background, to have standards. You should see yourself. No one would think you were brought up as a lady. Why were you being so hateful again today about the house in the country? You know absolutely nothing about …’
We’re sitting tensely on the edge of our chairs opposite each other in the living room, a peculiar mixture of Bertus’s sober, sombre furniture and the French brocade tablecloths, lamps, and petit-point cushions that Charlotte brought with her when she moved in. Behind Bertus’s head, the books are lined up, carefully arranged by subject and in alphabetical order, his only luxury. The clock ticks.
Bertus: ‘Where did you get all those ideas about a country estate?’
Charlotte: ‘You’re acting so strangely. Father said …’
Bertus: ‘Father never said anything.’
Charlotte is unable to look away from him. Bertus is sitting very straight, both hands flat on the armrests.
‘Mother, then. It doesn’t make any difference.’
Bertus: ‘You wouldn’t think so.’
Charlotte: ‘Mother said …’
Bertus: ‘Are you absolutely certain about that?’
Charlotte (agitated): ‘We were only small …’
Bertus: ‘So you don’t actually know?’
The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) Page 21