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

by Joost Zwagerman

  I used to keep such stray papers in a special folder to be able to send them back as soon as the forgetful writer got in touch. Which, in fact, never happened: foundlings. Hesitantly I threw the ring-binder pages in the waste-paper basket.

  Suddenly Minnema acquired his name. Probably this was the direct result of my silence about the ‘collection’ Reunion. Minnema interpreted my silence as consent. Precisely the omission, whether or not deliberate, of name and address – led Minnema – only now has that become clear to me – to emerge from his relative anonymity. At high speed his identity was created. That is, his identity in relation to us. This sounds contradictory, I must admit: identity-in-relation-to-us. Nevertheless, I don’t think Minnema has any other identity.

  Minnema acquired a name because he started sending numerous letters every week. I got to know his handwriting … With a sigh I opened one letter after the other. They followed each other so quickly that I did not feel like returning them in the same breathless tempo. They piled up, Minnema’s letters. And increasingly they irritated me. His tone! His constantly repeated autobiographical comments (‘still have no house’, ‘the writing has now entered a new phase’, ‘am currently unemployed’), his familiar tone. In virtually every letter, strangely enough, there is an allusion to a forthcoming visit to the editors, a contact to be followed and maintained. As if he knew us!

  Minnema’s letters piled up – a bundle of paper, kept somewhere apart, in expectation of something, as it were in quarantine, so as not to infect the other items of post. Minnema’s letters arrived constantly, by now he was familiar to all the editors. In the space of a few weeks he had established a place for himself. He had acquired the same unasked-for and ignored axiomatic presence as the renowned works of art hanging in the editorial office. Minnema had been able to lend himself a kind of inevitability, that we gave a wide berth … It had got to that point already, where we pussy-footed around him!

  Meanwhile, it seems obvious that Minnema, having prepared his presence forcefully, should appear in person.

  5

  Thank God I had just finished my work. I was on the point of leaving when a man of my age came in – resilient was the dominant impression, if it was not cat-like, the way he put out his hand: ‘Nanne Minnema’. The way he said that! As if we had known each other for years. As if this introductory ceremony were taking place years after the event … Pen pals! I meet my pen pal from Southern Africa. Practically speaking we know all about each other. All too late in the day. The only thing we don’t know about each other is what we look like in the flesh.

  Minnema was curious, and at the same time full of anticipation. There was a presupposed mutuality in his behaviour. Something he presupposed was mutual. His behaviour was through and through that of an equal. It wasn’t I who looked at him in anticipation, meanwhile, he looked at me in anticipation! As if I had taken the initiative for this meeting. He stood in our office space (approximately 6 by 7 metres) perfectly relaxed, as if he were a friend, a brother. Minnema was fully present. Not a trace of embarrassment!

  I told him we were going to leave the premises, as I had just finished work. He seemed to find every suggestion quite normal.

  He waited cheerfully until I had completed a number of insignificant, winding-up, more or less ritual actions. In accordance with the company code I emptied the ashtray, put a cover on the typewriter, slid my cup into a washing-up bowl, pushed the drawer of a card index closed, put the telephone book back in its place, locked a filing cabinet, put the outgoing post into a tray, pushed my chair under the table, moved the stapler from the centre to the edge of the table, and put on my coat. I did all those things as if Minnema was not there at all. Hectically, absent-mindedly. I was simply on my way home. And Minnema, for his part, waited. Just waited. I went outside, with Minnema behind me, but as if no one was following me. However, since I simply couldn’t escape the fact that it was Minnema following me, I slowed down. So that he caught up with me. And so the two of us walked on side by side. Minnema in the previously described cheerful and resilient mood, from which he occasionally looked at me from the side. I, on the other hand, looked straight ahead. And I walked, partly, as if Minnema was not walking next to me, and partly as if he was walking next to me. And so the three of us as it were went into the espresso bar where – who can say? – I had perhaps read Minnema’s work for the first time.

  For that matter, why is it that I cannot possibly recall Minnema’s appearance? I can more or less remember our vacuous conversation in that espresso bar. But what he looks like … Is that because from the very first moment I negated Minnema, because he tried to weave me into a sticky web that he picked up every day anew? Would I only be able to recognize Minnema in order to avoid him, to be able to look the other way in good time? The way one cannot remember a pain, but can recognize it.

  What increasingly surprised me was that Minnema seemed to find everything that happened normal. Constantly, during the whole conversation, he seemed to be in conversation with exactly who he wanted to be in conversation, and the things that were said seemed to be exactly the things he had imagined. Everything had his constant consent. I gasped for breath.

  For my part I left no stone unturned – no effort was too great – to convince Minnema, to impress on Minnema and to persuade Minnema that his work left the editors entirely indifferent. Nevertheless, Minnema talked about his material as if it interested us both equally, as if I were an initiate in the same mystic cult. I think that, even if I had wanted to understand anything about it, I still would not have been able to understand a thing. Minnema was unfathomable. His individual sentences did not sound strange. Each of them could have issued from other mouths. But collectively it was impossible to get a handle on them. Minnema simply indicated, but defined nothing. As a result there was no connect between his utterances. Quicksand.

  He referred to ‘a certain way’ that he ‘must go’ … He informed me that various possibilities ‘were now becoming ever clearer’ … He preferred not to talk about ‘certain things’, which ‘had recently come to his attention’ …

  I told him I didn’t understand a thing he was saying. He, for his part, went on talking, not only as if I had not said this, but on the contrary had made it clear that I understood him perfectly. In order to unburden myself of at least some of my discomfort, I suggested that he, Minnema, was undoubtedly a very religious person. I must say that he reacted in a very alert way. He must have heard in my words or seen in my face this aversion, and no other, because he reacted as if to an affront. He enquired – the only sensible question he asked! The only question at all, now I think about it, Minnema made only statements – he enquired whether I had anything against religion. Which I fully confirmed. Whereupon I suggested he might enter a monastery. Saying that, he seemed like a mystic to me. I was making fun of him, and he knew it. While Minnema completely ignored all my direct rejections – it was in fact impossible to reject Minnema, this one indirect remark about religion and monasteries seemed to him to be hostile in intent. He must have sensed infallibly that I meant madness and asylums.

  This finale of our conversation produced the only silence on both sides that satisfied me. The haziness of our dialogue – conducted in broad daylight, solely between actors of flesh and blood – had lasted exactly as long as I needed to drink my cappuccino without too much hurry. Minnema’s cup was still half-full. He saw that I saw that his cup was still half-full, and to my amazement that was enough. I could not deny Minnema a certain elementary development of character. A little later then we were in the street. Subsequently too Minnema would have accompanied me anywhere at all – we had only exited together – if I had expressed the wish. For there was no end to his adhesive capacity. So I said, ‘I’m off now.’ And I went. On my bike. Minnema was on foot. I did not look round. It was windy. Although I did not look round, I have a clear picture of Minnema’s figure, his long strides, his coat hanging open and flapping, his bent head.

  6


  Min-ne-ma … A monument to failure that does not know itself. I had not heard his name for the last time, had not seen that ghost for the last time. Minnema went on existing unimpaired, sending material, and keeping in contact with us on his side.

  A curious phrase cropped up regularly in his letters: ‘Certain steps would now seem logical, in view of the preceding.’ What steps, why they were logical and what had preceded them, and especially who was to take them – Minnema left all that unspecified.

  I think that there is no room in his head for more than one idea at a time. An idea that takes possession of him in all its intensity and wears him out. An idea that he circles around and continues circling without realizing that it is the same idea. Until the idea in question is suddenly replaced by another idea, after which the process begins anew. And I think that that sudden replacement of one idea by another corresponds with, if it does not coincide with, Minnema’s departure for another town or another island. Every move is a transmigration of the soul for Minnema. From each new address he sends us new material.

  It is not improbable that the absence of ‘certain steps’ heralded his next, extremely short visit. I had already on several occasions found memos on my desk indicating that a certain Miedema or Meinsma had asked after me. As I parked my car in a parking spot, I already saw Minnema. Instinctively I stayed in the car. I considered driving straight off again. I got out. Minnema made energetically for me.

  ‘I’m leaving for Paris this evening.’

  ‘Have a good trip,’ I mumbled. I stayed by the car.

  ‘You’ve still got material of mine.’

  I did not say yes or no.

  ‘I need to take it with me.’

  I offered to send it back today or the next day. ‘I don’t have much time,’ Minnema insisted.

  With reluctance I saw him standing in our office again. I looked for his papers. I said sourly that another secretary would have long since thrown away his work, which had no return postage enclosed. That I, strangely meticulous, kept all correspondence for a year, I didn’t really know why myself. That he had absolutely no right of return. That we did not want any further work.

  Minnema looked through the papers. He seemed to know his work by heart.

  ‘The letter from Schiermonnikoog is not here.’

  I raised my eyebrows. For form’s sake I leafed through the file a little further.

  ‘And my first collection, where is that?’

  ‘Collection?’

  ‘Reunion.’ It didn’t occur to him that his own interest in his own work might be more detailed than mine, and that my question was not a request to activate my memory by mentioning a title.

  Like an unpleasant counter clerk I looked at Minnema. ‘Everything you sent was in this file. I have given back to you everything that was in this file.’

  ‘Can I have a look for myself?’

  ‘No,’ I said, as I had already looked twice.

  Minnema left. And I thought, of course, that we were rid of him. I knew vaguely that there was something wrong. Why that reluctance to give him back his stuff?

  Meanwhile, Minnema did not leave at all – on the contrary, he intensified his relations with us. What he did was to initiate an exhaustive telephone enquiry into the whereabouts of his vanished poems. He was suspicious and persistent. He went to work very systematically. After his visit to me he rang editor N., who in a very friendly way denied all knowledge of the poems. Then he rang editor O., who if possible denied with even more sincerity and amazement having anything to do with these poems and advised him to contact the secretary. Subsequently Minnema rang me again. I told him, but not benevolently like N. and O., that we had discussed this subject previously. He didn’t believe a word we said. That is, he did not know what words he could give credence to. Perhaps he was inclined to believe the last speaker but one. And since he was tossed to and fro between his need to believe and his passionate longing for his poems, he found himself obliged to continue his telephone assault. So he rang editor N. again, whose amazement this time transferred from the vanished poems to the poet, who was all the more present. And so he rang editor O. again. And so he rang me again.

  I realize now that these telephone conversations were not just irritating, but also somehow painful. Minnema missed his poems like an amputated limb that retains its feeling. Like a dog he trotted to the place where his master’s stick yet again does not fall, because the latter, his boss, has again made a feint. Minnema’s telephone conversations were like the umpteenth search along the same cupboards, under the same beds, behind the same sofas, along which, under which, and behind which one has already searched, but not well enough. We were the places where Minnema was searching for something.

  The telephone conversations ended increasingly curtly. The series ended where it began: with me. Minnema suspected me most, partly because the round of investigation had begun with me and hence it was my turn to start the new round. He rang in the evening.

  ‘This is Nanne Minnema.’ Very resolute. ‘I’ll be in the K. restaurant next to the Concertgebouw until eight o’clock, and I’ll expect to see you there with my poems.’

  Because my fellow editors, N. and O., had been worrying me for days with questions and requests for measures to be taken, I had thought about the matter. By pure chance and concentration I had been able to retrieve the image of the ring-binder sheets held together by a woollen thread, and of the waste-paper basket, in which it could have lain for more than a day. I explained carefully that there had been no name and address. I put plenty of feeling into my voice. I looked in vain for another expression than ‘er … threw them away’. With one word, I made comprehension possible. But Minnema was implacable. He kept repeating that he wanted his poems, thrown away or not, back now. After I summed up the situation again, with much less feeling in my voice, and in different words, and he on his side started from the beginning, I said:

  ‘So you’ll have to go to the dump.’

  ‘So you won’t be coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I shall be obliged to make this a police matter.’

  ‘You must do what your heart tells you,’ I said, and hung up.

  For the first time I had the completely absurd idea that Minnema might have a knife. Min-ne-ma … Knife in my stomach.

  7

  Minnema next distanced himself from us – literally, by going travelling. But what he could not help doing meanwhile was to emphasize his absence. In a nocturnal phone call from Paris he wished editor N. success with his work. He did not send any material, but did send postcards from significant places like Arles. We hoped fervently that he would continue his journey in a southerly direction and that it would be a one-way journey. But from Marseille he complained that he wasn’t producing much. Perhaps, I could well imagine, his desperate gaze had fallen on that bell … in the wall of the fort in the Vieux-Port. Where foreigners can lose their identity day and night by enrolling in the legion.

  After his return everything began anew: thick envelopes, sent from quickly changing addresses. With one difference: he now focused exclusively on editor N., in whom he presupposed an equal degree of interest in his, Minnema’s, work, as he, Minnema, showed for N.’s work. ‘The work is streaming off me,’ Minnema wrote to him quite superfluously. Naturally N. soon lost interest, he left the letters unopened and asked me to settle the matter.

  However, I could not resist opening Minnema’s absurd communications. Poetry (the collection Reunion II … the collection About-Face … the collection Return …) and letters on poetry, and letters about our silence with regard to the letters on poetry, and letters about them in turn. A self-generating and self-perpetuating work. A work that read itself. This was what fascinated me, that Minnema tried to communicate by means of a completely self-contained system – his oeuvre. I studied the symptoms of Minnema’s lunacy. I took his letters home with me.

  But it did not escape Minnema that his friend, editor N., was not respond
ing (‘you can regard the previous letters as unread’), but later asked him to pass on the material to editor O., ‘who will understand, as he is a real poet’ (the latter words double underlined). On following submissions he wrote: ‘For O. who is a poet’. In this way the work kept changing position while it was in my folder the whole time.

  When O. did not answer either – as was said, because I did not bother him with Minnema’s material – Minnema stressed that he was not aiming for a ‘breach’. After that he began to complain in secret language. That is, there were things in his letters that O. the poetry-writing editor could not possibly understand, but which I did. There followed veiled threats.

  He was torn. On the one hand he sent more and more material, and the other letters in which he demanded all his work back – sometimes with the statement that he was now in contact with a publisher (the last word double-underlined). Some letters carried as a kind of motto the words: ‘Whoever understands it keeps it.’ I think that in Minnema’s logic distorted by will-power, there is no difference between ‘Whoever understands it keeps it’ and ‘Whoever keeps it understands it’.

  Whatever the case, I kept the material. I kept it until Minnema began to be a nuisance again. By this time he enjoyed such celebrity at the publisher’s that I heard from various quarters that he was pacing up and down in front of the building. He did so in a strange way: he did not walk on the pavement but past the bumpers of the cars parked at an angle by the waterside, which gave his route, according to the staff of the publisher’s, a meandering, capricious quality. One day he met me as I walked along. He asked for his material. I promised I would send it on. He wanted to take it with him immediately. I first had to collect it, I assured him. He said he had time. I said I didn’t have time until tomorrow.

  Again that reluctance, I thought to myself. The same day I photocopied a few of his letters, secretly. The machine had a problem with the colours of Minnema’s felt tips. Listening for possible footsteps of members of staff who might be able to see me in this strange activity, I traced Minnema’s blurred signature and I heard the words resisting and I felt my heart pounding, and I was glad when I could turn the light out and leave.