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

by Joost Zwagerman

  Meanwhile, even the corridors – especially around the toilets, which were abuzz with activity during the interval – were laden with an indefinable but distasteful kind of third-rate nursery-school eroticism. Girls slunk away, peering out of the corners of their slitted eyes, which were almost invisible under their demurely lowered lashes. They looked and did not look at the boys at the far end of the corridor, who were shouting to each other over the embarrassing splash of water in the sinks as they went in and out of their designated room. Outside the dance hall a vague playroom odour permeated the school, as if the boys and girls still had a few things to learn from their schoolmistresses about hygiene.

  The chairs, the stands and the drum set were slid forward onto the stage while the curtain was still closed. They were all in a good mood again; they’d been waiting so long to get to work that they were raring to go. They put greater flair than ever into testing their instruments, tuning and warming up. A microphone was scrupulously checked. ‘Ready?’ the leader asked from his seat at the piano. The only one who didn’t nod was Koos, who sat hunched and sullen. ‘Koos,’ the leader said, ‘you ready?’ Koos grumbled something like, ‘Get on with it, man.’ Looking troubled, he grabbed the mouthpiece of his trumpet between his index finger and thumb, picked up the instrument and raised it to his lips, a unique gesture for which he was well known. ‘Like baby birdies having sex,’ Tom had once described it.

  The leader raised one hand above the keys – a last call for their attention – and the others looked tensely out of the corners of their eyes at his foot, which began to tap out the tempo, softly and sharply – just the downbeats at first, then all four, as usual. The band leaped into action like a machine. Finally, the leader smiled. The curtain was slowly raised to applause from the audience.

  They played a short signature tune, and the closing bars were followed by raucous cheering. The older teachers looked surprised but forgiving as the fanatical heads of the children screeched with gaping mouths.

  The leader stood up from the piano and announced the first set. ‘One of these numbers is a special request,’ he claimed, and the old trick worked as well as ever: more cheering and grateful applause.

  By the third number, the musicians were getting into the groove. The two trumpets bit into the melody with self-important brawn, as if they were a little put out at having to perform such syrupy stuff. But the trombone swelled to the occasion, singing vibrantly in its upper register like a pious orphan girl, modest and mild, but with enough carrying power to make itself heard and felt. Not by the audience, maybe, but by other – imagined – musicians, wherever they might be. The only people here were underage kids and wrinkled teachers. The trombonist fancied himself ‘a musician’s musician’, a phrase he’d picked up from some American magazine.

  The children danced earnestly, the girls sagging at the knees like she-bears on every downbeat, then bouncing back – they looked a little like experienced Javanese rice-pounders. But the hips of even the smallest girls pulsed and gyrated like the haunches of panther cubs in heat, forming an absurd contrast to their sickly sweet, often bespectacled, virginal faces. ‘The ritual dance of shame,’ Tom whispered to Armand, who had just launched into a smart, prissy clarinet solo. The schoolboys clomped arhythmically around the hall, chaste and agitated.

  They kept it up until eleven thirty. On stage, guys were exchanging compliments with a sincerity found nowhere else on earth. ‘That was one vigorous solo there, Tom,’ the drummer said. They smuggled the joys of their music into unsuspecting ears. They played a few requests, but the soul of every number remained on stage. The phrasing, refinement, tone, ingenuity, lyricism, arrangement and effervescent swing were for the musicians; the melody was for the audience.

  A short break was announced, so that the students could hold a raffle. The curtain remained open and the band stayed seated, resting their instruments on their knees, a haughty, interior look in their eyes as they stared absently out into the hall – all except for Koos, who was tinkering with his trumpet.

  On stage directly in front of them, a robust young woman was standing at the microphone with her back to them. She picked numbers out of a basket and read them aloud, provoking wild cheering by the winners. Once, as she bent all the way forward, Armand stealthily pointed his clarinet at her backside. The other musicians sniggered softly. Tom saw from the side that it was the same blonde he had chased off stage before the show. At that very moment, she looked back at him, and her mature, womanly eyes darkened. She said nothing.

  She picked another two or three numbers out of the basket, read them out, and then said into the microphone with a smile, ‘One moment, please.’ Still sweetly smiling, she tripped off stage.

  Meanwhile, Koos was complaining to the bass player: ‘Did you hear how shitty I sound tonight, with that stuck valve?’

  The bass player looked up at the ceiling pensively and responded, in a cheerful tone, ‘Nope, sounded just like always to me!’ Koos nodded glumly. He too left the stage, taking his trumpet with him. He wanted to rinse off the valve that was wounding his soul in one of the sinks in the toilets.

  At one end of the long, deserted hallway were doors bearing the words ‘Girls’. Seeing no others and not having much time to look around, Koos pulled one of them open, revealing an interior filled with sinks and mirrors. Everyone was out in the dance hall, and he assumed they would stay there. And otherwise it would be easy enough to explain what he was doing. Anyone could see he was at the sink with his trumpet, valve and tube of oil.

  Scarcely a minute later, the door through which he had entered was closed from the corridor. He could hear the key turning in the lock. ‘Hey!’ he shouted, but it was too late.

  ‘Where the hell is Koos?’ the leader said. The raffle had ended some time ago. Hundreds of schoolchildren were staring at the band in aggravated expectation, and teachers were discreetly but wearily checking their watches. But the band did not begin. ‘Let’s get on with it, gentlemen!’ a deputy headmaster said with raised eyebrows to the bandleader, who responded, on the verge of weeping, that he had lost one of his boys. ‘Musta hung himself,’ Armand said, aware, as ever, of his professional duty to be a smart-arse. The bass player was told to go and find him; he did know where the men’s toilets were and wandered around them gamely shouting ‘Kobus’, but of course nobody answered. On the way back, he noticed that blonde girl at the entrance to the hall, telling a deputy head and an older teacher, ‘While I was on stage, they were touching my behind.’ Blood rushed to the scandalized teacher’s matronly cheeks.

  Because the children were starting to chant hateful things – some girls crossing their eyes and sticking out their tongues – and because the headmaster was shooting him questioning looks, the bandleader decided to start without Koos.

  Right from the start, the arrangements sounded strangely hollow, almost childish; they had to scrap the two-trumpet special, not to mention Koos’s big solo number. That was not such a bad thing, maybe, considering the state of his valve. This train of thought led to a misunderstanding among the musicians, who surmised that Koos had fled because he couldn’t face the prospect of his solo. ‘He could have used my trumpet for the one tune,’ Tom said with a shrug. ‘What kinda guy just runs out on his buddies?’ (You could almost pick up a hint of the fierce rivalry among trumpet men.)

  A quarrel broke out because the leader wanted to go ahead with one tune, for fear that they would run out of repertoire, while Tom said it sounded ridiculous with only one trumpet. The trombonist refused to play too. Armand peevishly struck up a different tune, but the leader insisted and started to count off the tempo. The audience laughed scornfully and started booing. The blonde schoolgirl, now chatting with a balding teacher, said, ‘This band sure stinks, doesn’t it, sir?’

  They made a fresh start and put all their effort into it, but without the usual pleasure in their work. The guitarist cursed as he broke a string; in the music business, as in most other businesses, bad things r
arely come alone. In the relative silence of the bass solo – filling in for the temporarily disabled guitar – they could finally hear the sad, pathetic banging on the door in the corridor. The audience and band all laughed in unison.

  The guitarist tracked down the source of the sound – followed by a couple of chortling kids – and found Koos, screeching streams of curses behind his locked door. The key was nowhere to be found.

  The band stopped. They were outraged. ‘Get that guy outta there, or we won’t play another note,’ they shouted.

  It took a long time to find the key. In the end, it was the blonde who, suddenly, with a kindly, authoritarian smile, seemed to recall something about a duplicate. Like a rescuing angel, she set Koos free. With his trumpet clasped foolishly in one hand, surrounded by giggling schoolchildren, his stooped form stumbled back to the stage. The audience jeered as he took his seat. ‘Where’d you go off to?’ the leader asked snidely, but Koos let out another potent stream of profanity, to the effect that he should shut his ugly mug. The microphone picked up this exchange, and the crowd burst into satanic applause. In this tumult, the blonde rushed on stage, quick as a cat, snatched up the mike, and shrilly announced that for the next bash, in December, they would hire a good band. She was rewarded with a standing ovation.

  Just as they were hurrying to play again so that they could drown out the blonde, a teacher with a balding cranium and piercing canine eyes strode on stage, spreading his arms wide and gesturing to them to stop. ‘You come along with me, mister,’ he said to Koos, who gave him a blank look and refused. The man grabbed Koos’s arm, pulled him to his feet and hissed, ‘Get moving, chum, or I’ll call the police.’ Tom wanted to fight, but the leader jumped out from behind the piano, calmed the teacher down, and signalled to Koos to go quietly. The audience unleashed a fresh volley of abuse.

  The pimply boy with the armband, the one who had met them at the entrance, started jumping up and down awkwardly between the instruments, demanding to know whether they were going to play any more goddam music or not. After he knocked Koos’s trumpet off the chair, Tom landed a single punch that sent the boy flying off the stage. There was a moment of total silence in the hall, followed by a tidal wave of hostility. ‘Dirty faggots!’ two or three breaking voices shouted. ‘Perverts!’ cried a girl whose face had turned crimson. That last cry was quickly echoed by many other spectators.

  Some of the musicians could hear the teacher huffing backstage: ‘What were you up to in the girls’ toilet? Tell me the truth!’ The response was inaudible.

  Two or three of the guys ran over to the teacher, shouting and swearing: ‘That cat was just cleaning out his horn, not that we expect a prick like you to understand. No doubt you would have gone there for something else.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ cried the bandleader, white as a sheet, as he and the headmaster both came hurrying over at once. A young gym teacher, having forced his way backstage, got into a tussle with the bass player and the drummer, who both had highly developed wrists, thanks to their occupations, and made short work of him.

  Meanwhile, Tom and the trombonist were packing away their fragile instruments – half precaution, half reprisal. ‘I won’t play another note in this joint,’ they told each other. The others followed their example, once they had liberated their ‘buddy’ Koos. The baldy stomped off, saying he would call the police, his jaws grinding with rage.

  They sat on stage with their instruments in the cases, their arms crossed. The audience was shrieking. The drummer went on calmly dismantling his set, turning his back and his protruding behind on the furious mob. He dropped his shining cymbals on the stage floor with a deafening crash, like a loud declaration of war.

  Teachers, waiters and older students with armbands were wandering in all directions, looking pale. (It was surprising how many of them were wearing those bands; everyone, no matter how young, wants to be important.) ‘This is a breach of contract,’ the bald man shouted, returning from the telephone in the headmaster’s office. The children, forming a column as wide as the dance hall, stared at him, and then at the uncooperative band, and began, as if driven by some Red Indian impulse from their collective unconscious, to storm the stage. That is, at least twenty boys started climbing and scrambling like soldiers on a suicide mission, mounting the glacis of a fortress.

  Tom, the drummer and the bass player, chuckling, defended their position with the finesse of professional boxers. One schoolboy after another was slammed back into the seething throng. Their pain and anger were infectious, and they were egged on by girls with red faces. With nervous war cries, a new wave of attackers followed, from a class that had debated World Peace that very afternoon.

  The caterers, with the instincts of the self-proclaimed oppressed, immediately sided with what they saw as the hired help, joining forces with the musicians. One tall one with glasses banged two boys’ heads together before hurling them back into the crowd.

  The director raised his arms over his head and tried to reach the microphone, which was giving off a low, constant rumble. His shouts were incomprehensible without electrons. A tall girl jumped on stage, right in front of him, and slitted Koos’s face open with the nail of her middle finger. The bassist grabbed her head and pushed it down as if holding her under a running tap. As she tried to wriggle out of his grasp, he felt her panting mouth warm and wet between his fingers. Then she bit, and he let go with a shriek, but at the same time thrust one knee into her skinny behind, sending her flying forward into the mike, which collapsed onto the headmaster, nearly putting him out of commission. (He limped away.)

  ‘Enough is enough, goddam it!’ somebody shouted in an Olympian voice from an otherwise empty balcony directly opposite the stage. They all stopped, but it wasn’t clear whether that was because of the voice, or because of what was discovered at the same time in the silent corridor.

  Some of the girls were sobbing. On the floor of the corridor lay, unseen at first, a boy from one of the lower forms, having a seizure. A long trail of fluid ran from underneath him over the stone floor, slowly and silently spreading. It was as if the unfortunate boy had sacrificed himself in the interests of reconciliation.

  Amid an emotional silence, the figure from the balcony was heard stomping down the stairs. I can’t work with that hand, the bass player thought. That’s gonna cost money.

  The descending man proved to be a broad-shouldered police officer with grey, bristly hair and a sense of drama – a Hindenburg type in a civilian uniform. He ordered the attackers back to their starting position with an outstretched arm and a quivering index finger and warned the musicians to remain calm with a contemptuous curl of his upper lip. ‘Back in your seats!’ he commanded them, tipping his head at the chairs on stage, some of which were lying on their sides. Only Tom and the bandleader did not obey. Who is this creep? they seemed to ask each other with raised eyebrows, as united as if they were equals in the band.

  The policeman took charge with a self-satisfied smirk. The wounded – suffering mainly from lumps and scratches – were led away and attended to. The enterprising blonde turned out to have a first-aid certificate (she didn’t mind a little blood), which came in handy, and the gym teacher, too, made the rounds like Dunant at Solferino.

  The young patient in the corridor was carefully taken home in one of the teachers’ cars. A slightly flushed schoolmistress, with the help of the caretaker, wiped away the shameless fluid on the floor, which suddenly seemed to have acquired a supernatural origin and significance that challenged the very foundations of society. Or maybe it was the lighting in the corridor. The two of them worked in silence.

  Meanwhile, the first worried parents – it was almost twelve thirty – were coming through the front entrance and pounding on the main door of the hall. ‘What’s going on here?’ a woman’s voice warbled through the glass. The all-knowing police mastermind went up to them, spoke soothing words and kept the dance hall closed. He seemed to be concerned that the pupils would charge the
stage again.

  The headmaster returned, back in form again and intending to make a speech, but fortunately the microphone had broken when it fell. The teaching staff and the police jointly organized a kind of humanistic tribunal where everyone could ‘talk it out’ and ‘clear the air’. This awakened the musicians’ professional cynicism, and the chances of serious dialogue seemed slim. The bass player mumbled something about the United Nations; he had demanded that his attacker personally bandage his hand. ‘Could you do my knee while you’re at it?’ he asked her. ‘I didn’t know your rear was solid rock.’ She tended to his hand without comment, like a seasoned nurse.

  The attractive blonde pupil, who had been standing off to one side all this time with a superior smile on her face, testified at the tribunal that she had locked up that scary man (Koos) to protect the younger girls from rape – at the very least. Her flattered captive beamed with pleasure. His musical alibi was eventually, reluctantly, accepted.

  Somewhat unexpectedly, the band was required to complete its performance according to contract. Considering all the delays, that meant another twenty minutes or so. Armand suggested that they play the same number ten times in a row; the leader started to turn pale again, until it was explained to him that this was just a joke.

  Shaking their heads, the musicians took their instruments back out of their cases, and the pupils – angry, surprised and honoured all at once – no longer danced but looked on like merciless judges. Still, the youngest ones yawned occasionally; then they no longer looked naive, but moronic. ‘Behold the future electorate,’ the trumpeters mumbled to each other.