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

by Joost Zwagerman

  A stinging blow to his ear, a shove to his back. He lost his balance, felt something scratch over his thigh, a fingernail or the point of a blade, he couldn’t tell which. Now and then the beam of the lighthouse swept past, but no one could see them in the shadows behind the tarpaulin.

  ‘Now bend over, hold on to those planks, legs wide, but not too much now, or Bennie can’t reach … Virgin, eh? If you shout I’ll cut your throat. That would be a shame, and unnecessary. You know what? Put that scarf over your mouth, go on … First I’ll soap you up some, you tight-assed shit.’

  The scarf smelled of ash. He heard the man clear his throat, he felt the wetness slide down between his buttocks, felt the cold air, the touch of a leather jacket on his skin, a hand gripping his hip. The man panted, breathing obscenities, but from the moment he was split open and a rasping pain filled his lower body he no longer heard the words.

  He fixed his eyes on the shoe and sock he stood in, and pictured himself walking along the sea, leaving footprints that would fill with water, one after the other in a long trail, dozens of footsteps; he imagined the spaces in between, the shells, wisps of plastic, seagull feathers, but most of all the sand, here and there in ridged banks interspersed with long pools which he skirted around. On and on he went, past the pier, to the next stretch of shore, past beach huts, through dunes overgrown with marram grass. He found himself in a friend’s garden, where a birthday party was going on. A warm evening, women with bare arms and legs. He had been tipsy, in a combative mood. One of the women had laughed and shaken her head at him, saying he was like a schoolboy, and he had felt attractively boyish, with a casual smile that would never fade. That night he had made love like a boy, too, carried away by the swift vigour of his loins, and Lucy had flashed into his mind, and a sister of one of his friends, young, sweet, unreachable. Afterwards Gemma had dug her nails into his shoulder.

  The pain had become narcosis, his back a rigid right-angle, legs dangling underneath.

  He unscrewed the showerhead from the pipe and, crouching down in the shower stall, tried to hose himself as best he could. There was a little blood, too little to tinge the water round his feet, but in a wave of panic he thought: I might be infected. And then, with calm indifference: So what?

  After his shower, he realized that the glass door had been ajar. He mopped up the puddle with a towel from the laundry basket and wrung it out over the tub in which Gemma had left her bathrobe to soak. The fire in his behind had returned and he dabbed himself with one of Gemma’s face creams, which felt greasy although it promised hydration. He rinsed out his socks until all the sand was gone, and stuffed them along with his underwear into the laundry. His jaw was red, he had bruises on his legs, there was a gash at the base of his left thumb, must have got caught on a nail or a splinter. He tipped it with disinfectant, but the skin was already sealed and he felt nothing. He took a sleeping pill: six hours of respite.

  Gemma lay on her side. He switched off the bedside lamp, which she had left on with the shade turned away so the light didn’t shine in her eyes. He slid between the covers beside her, lay still on his back. His breathing was shallow.

  ‘Why did you take a shower? You always shower in the morning.’ Her voice sounded soft, but not sleepy. ‘Been with her, have you?’

  He laid his hands on his chest and slid them down to his belly. The soreness there resembled muscle ache. He said: ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she said. ‘Not funny, sorry. I was so upset when you left. Where have you been? I thought you’d walked out on me, and I could see why – nobody would put up with me when I’m like this. And I think you’re right about having a mirror in the elevator, it’s bound to be an improvement. I’ve been crying my eyes out, I look a mess. I don’t know why I brought up the subject at all, why I get in such a state, about her, about the child, I get so miserable, and then I want to leave you, but I’m scared of losing you and I just don’t know what I want any more. It’s strange, I thought people who don’t have children were extra close.’

  ‘I drove to the shore,’ he said. ‘I went for a walk on the beach.’

  ‘I thought you hated the sand. Is that why you showered? I’d quite like to have gone with you, actually. Fresh air. I won’t drink any more, not during the day anyway. I’ll stop, I promise.’

  The room seemed to become airless; the panic returned: I’ve been infected. It’s nestled itself deep inside me, spreading already. He said: ‘Say “no”.’

  ‘How do you mean, “no”?’

  ‘Please, Gemma, say “no”.”

  ‘No. But what for? Oh, how horrible all this is, life can be so cruel. I know, I know, we should never have moved here. It was a mistake, I want to live on the ground floor. It’s so windy up here. The whole building sways to and fro at night, as if it wants to rock us to sleep, but I don’t want to be rocked to sleep all the way up here, it scares me to death. What are we to do, for goodness’ sake?’

  ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I fell, you see, and I’m feeling a little shaky. I want to sleep, I’ve taken a sleeping pill.’

  ‘You fell.’

  ‘There was a man who’d lost his dog. I went looking for it with him, and I tripped over something, don’t know what, and fell against a stack of wood. A dismantled beach pavilion, I think it was.’

  She touched his arm and his entire body grew tense.

  ‘Even that hurts?’ She fumbled for the light switch on her side of the bed.

  ‘No light, please,’ he said. ‘I’m almost asleep.’

  She lay back, waited a moment, then said: ‘Theo? That dog, was it found?’

  He could hear that she was close to tears.

  ‘Yes, it was found.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll say “no” again for you, if you want. No.’

  He reached for her hand. For a long time they lay side by side, staring up in the dark, as though some revelation were in the offing …

  Translated by Ina Rilke

  23

  Nicolaas Matsier

  The Minnema Variations

  De Minnema-variaties

  1

  In the abstract I have no problem with him. His description is as follows. He has the form and attitude of the doomed poet. A coat that flaps about; I can scarcely imagine him without wind. He always looks battered, always ready to absorb the next blow, never discomfited. He feels as if he is the representative of something. Something has chosen precisely him, and no one else, as a mouthpiece. Something that cannot do without him.

  He is the ravaged young man that one has sometimes seen sitting in cafés. At the reading table, but not reading. The young man who – totally oblivious of his surroundings – pursues his thoughts with his ballpoint pen, and now and then watches crestfallen as they disappear in the distance round a corner that, on foot, he will not be able to reach soon enough. Other customers, who while having a surreptitious drink – which is entirely unnecessary! – glance at him, ascribe inspiration to him at those moments, or think their own thoughts about the exhibitionist. Meanwhile, he, the poet, is in despair: something escapes him once and for all.

  He is the detached young man sitting completely alone in a Chinese restaurant that does takeaway meals. From outside a passer-by might be able – it is pouring with rain – to see the title of the book lying next to his plate (La pratique du Zen). Inside it doesn’t interest the man behind the counter at all that he, the doomed poet, occupying only his own place, is slowly eating white rice, and nothing but white rice. His luggage consists of two plastic bags. His coat, which he has kept on, is thin and torn like himself.

  Obviously he has no fixed abode or base. He lives and works everywhere. He is constantly on the move. When he arrives somewhere, it is only to be able to set out from there again. As he leaves he is sure of returning here.

  Not only for me but for him too it is a mystery how he comes by something as simple as money. As if in a dream he does temporary work in some office,
which is in fact simply a backdrop for his thoughts, his breathless thoughts. He is also constantly occupied with creating. He has no idea of the names of his colleagues or what they look like. His creative urge does not relate to trivia like places and people, or other things with names. His love for himself and for the universe coincide.

  All he possesses are writing materials. Varied, as his different moods require different felt tips and many sizes of paper. This is the only thing that really matters, and of course the only thing that doesn’t count. If necessary he writes on cigarette papers, flyleaves, more or less blank pages torn out of telephone directories, and menus.

  What bothers me is that he is no longer nameless. What bothers me is the by now overwhelming number of proofs of his existence. What bothers me is the complete monotony of that existence, which imposes itself powerfully on me.

  2

  Our doomed poet is called Minnema. In our head and later in our conversations he began unobtrusively as ‘someone’, who was succeeded by a ‘a certain Minnema’, who in turn evolved into the present, unmistakable, simple Minnema one couldn’t get rid of, whose first name we shall know for ever without ever using it. The sight of his initials evokes a gamut of emotions, including: jollity, boredom, murderousness and resignation.

  The first letters from Minnema didn’t strike me as exceptional at the time – for the obvious reason that then, in the autumn, they were not first letters, but just letters. Letters from someone or other … Who of course had some name or other, an address and so on … Letters from a pile of correspondence that I was going through without interest. Going through says it all. It was, so to speak, only the later letters of Minnema that ensured that there could be any question of ‘first’ letters. What is important is the quantity of Minnema’s letters, the weight in kilos.

  Minnema is the man who sends ‘work’, or – a word he uses even more frequently – ‘material’. If we had kept Minnema’s work or material, and he was dead, we would now have the complete Minnema. The collected Minnema. But Minnema refuses to become complete. He refuses to regard his work as finished! All we are constantly confronted with is the creative process of Minnema’s work. His work is never finished, all versions are provisional, or worse still: fragments of provisional versions. Hence material. Yet he sends constantly and indefatigably, often many times a day, all those versions to us, although we long ago made it clear to him that his work or material does not interest us in the slightest, leaves us cold, and irritates us. First in neutral terms, then in downright rude and then in insulting ones. When we had informed him that further submissions from him would no longer be dealt with, he continued to praise and follow our work. He continued, as our colleague and most loyal contributor, to follow and compliment us, down to the most recent publications and most obscure interviews, and he continued to ask us to give attention to his material. When we had informed him that his work would henceforth be returned unopened – since the absence of a reply turned out to give him grounds for hope – he started putting his work through the letter box in person, without an envelope, hence as it were already opened. When we had informed him that with immediate effect his work would go into the waste-paper basket, his submissions doubled. We don’t know what to do about Minnema. We don’t understand what we are for. We don’t understand what Minnema is for.

  3

  I’m an editorial secretary. People should be careful not to have too rose-tinted a vision of my activities. Like everywhere it is a matter of manoeuvring, self-importance, humble work, stealing postage stamps, drinking company coffee, genial conversation with the other – really nice – staff, and more particularly reading other people’s work. Let me be clear about this once and for all. About that reading, that is. I read as if – this cannot be emphasized enough – as if what I am reading interests me personally. And what do I read as if it interests me personally? A lot! Poems, an unending stream of poems. Long ago I calculated that one in ten of my countrymen writes poems. And one in thirty essays. And what a joy it would be to read all this writing really personally and fascinated and intrigued. And certainly I am a warm supporter of people formulating things for themselves and in that way becoming a little less perishable for each other. Welcome, all you who wield the pen. Welcome and more than welcome. All of you, write about your experiences, which in that way can become ours.

  But the accompanying letters … Of which, by the way, I have established an archive so as to be able to devote a comparative study to them afterwards. The humble, the hopeful, the confident, the okay, the naive, the neutral letters. Handwriting, spelling, letterhead. At a glance I can see whether I am dealing with stubbornness, quality, imitation. But I don’t leave it at that one glance. Humbly, confidently, naively I read through all that work, as if I have not realized long ago what is wrong with it. I read. I read on in a disciplined way, so as not to formulate or blur any judgements that are not mine.

  To be honest – I interrupt the work frequently for a visit to a neighbouring espresso bar. Sometimes I take work with me. For some reason it is easier for me to take cognisance of those outpourings in a somewhat tarnished environment, amid the spluttering of the espresso machines, conversations, ladies who leaf through magazines like ours with well-concealed boredom. Cultured lunches! I also chew cautiously on a roll with a fantasy name understood only here, while I, equally cautiously, study the hopefully submitted copy. Just as relationships between people become unreal in espresso bars – comfortably furnished vacuums, where time does not exist and where the staff is of an equally great if not greater spiritual nobility than those who are being absent-mindedly served – just as, I was trying to say, relationships between people evaporate in such bars, so my relationship with the texts I have brought with me evaporates. I like espresso bars.

  Back at the publisher’s, once I have finished reading, I take a pile of envelopes, I take a pile of photocopies, I fill in the date and after Dear I write a name with a hurried pen stroke. (I must have at one time filled in the name Minnema there.) One of my first actions as secretary was that, making two hundred of those letters. I think with melancholy of my humane, existential predecessor, also a good actor. Who always answered in person: warm, direct, careful! I however turned out not to be able to keep myself in check. Hence I resorted to the cool copies and I stopped pretending, extending the pretence that I read the copy personally to the pretence that I was personally replying to those involved.

  So I expect I sent some submitter of worthless poems the following mechanical text:

  (date)

  Dear (Mr Minnema),

  We regret to inform you that we do not consider your submission suitable for publication in our magazine.

  Yours faithfully, on behalf of the editorial board,

  (my signature)

  4

  Minnema for his part returned my rejection.

  Now the phenomenon of a troublemaker is well enough known. I expect that I didn’t pay particular attention to some letter from some meanwhile completely forgotten submitter. It was, though, a strange letter that I took out of the envelope. In a fraction of a second I actually thought it was addressed to me … The way that one immediately starts treating someone who is the spitting image of a very good friend with blind sympathy, I expect that the handwriting, for a moment, inspired me with confidence – my own handwriting filled in the photocopied rejection of a certain Minnema. I am not now remembering that name but the letter. In amazement I turned it over. On the back was written: ‘What do you mean by “not suitable”, if I may ask?’ Or words to that effect. I tossed it in the waste-paper basket with a smile.

  Subsequently, I now know, a ‘collection’ of Minnema’s must have arrived, entitled Reunion. The fact that these poems were sent by the same Minnema, the same at that time completely nameless Minnema of previous forgotten poems, must have escaped me. And would probably have escaped me just the same if the sender, whether or not deliberately, had not omitted his name and address. The ring-b
inder sheets, written on in ballpoint pen, were held together by a thick woollen thread in which a knot had been tied. I looked, I remember, at that thread. It gave something benevolent, something caring to the whole. Not that the poems held together by it gained in consistency or quality (questions of identity, wordplay, what was worse: seriously pursued wordplay). But that thread. That thread made me uncertain for a moment. Because that thread reminded me of a woman I had known. She was also in the habit of bundling papers like that. I hadn’t treated that woman in a way … But why am I telling you this anyway?