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

by Joost Zwagerman

  I am the crocodile. I lie in the mud, encompassed by willows, covered by the shade of the lotus. When I sneeze the light dances, but I am tender and loving when I hold my jaws open for the crocodile bird, which wanders over my teeth, picking out scraps of food and leeches with its long beak. You are that bird, Gamal! Every Tuesday I meet him at the door with the firm intention to let him go, but the right moment never arrives, so strict are the rules that prevail between us.

  Almost every day, I go out for a stroll around seven in the evening. Most people are having supper then, and I have the city to myself. Today wind from various directions sweeps veils of elm blossom through the streets. The petals pile up like tissue-thin tokens along the kerbs, and I walk through the gutter dragging my feet till the mounds of blossom reach above my ankles and then kick the stuff into the air, where the wind catches it again. Gravity seems suspended. Above me clouds glide past and over each other, and there are heavenly revelations and a fierce sun that blinds me and gives me the feeling that I am made of pure light. It’s as if after a long illness I have come outside again for the first time, and I think about dying, the way a boy sometimes thinks about dying, with a yearning that is so intense only because it will stay unfulfilled for so long.

  Then, on the other side of the canal, I see Gamal walking ahead of me. It is the first time that I have run into him outside work. If I go to him now, we will have to do without the deep grooves of our rituals. This is our chance to start afresh. I see his black hair, one arm of his glasses, the legs of his trousers resting on his shoes in weary creases, heavy with dust and ashes from the streets. From his hand – only the fingertips emerge from the sleeve of his sagging jacket – there hangs a plastic bag with lettering that has almost worn away, the same one he’s been carrying for the past three years. ‘Fresh from the butcher – always the best’, it used to say. He walks without looking up, hastily, as if on his way to work.

  When someone behind you calls your name, even if it’s someone you wish to avoid at all costs, your legs betray you, snapping to attention – but as my voice echoes from the house fronts, Gamal trudges on, the bag in his hand swinging in an unchanged rhythm. I put my thumb and index finger to my lips and whistle. ‘Gamal!’ He walks on without a twitch of hesitation, as if stone deaf. I remain standing by the canal-side. For a moment, I feel the urge to run across the water to his side over the thick layer of blossom.

  I am weighed down with guilt, sunk in grief. No, I have not yet come close to putting my affairs in order. That moment when death seemed welcome was entirely premature. Sorrowing over Gamal, I take a right into a narrow side street. I wander over a bridge and past a row of shops and turn around with a start, because in the front window of an ironing service I glimpsed his form passing through a landscape of snow-white shirts, as absent and mechanical as ever. How could he have overtaken me so quickly? It can’t have been more than a minute ago, it seems, that I was standing beside the canal. But maybe I was daydreaming there and lost track of time. ‘Gamal! Just a second! I need to talk to you.’ He does not answer. The sun gleams from the lenses of his glasses. No waters run between us now. Three swift strides and I’ve caught up with him. When I try to grab him by the arm, it’s as if we’re two identical magnetic poles – I can’t do it; I have to let him go.

  For the rest of my walk, which as usual follows a route so haphazard I could never retrace it (but always the very same route, I’m sure of that), I am repeatedly struck by the feeling that he is still nearby, like a guardian tiger, a feeling that always turns out to lack any perceptible basis. So it’s all the more surprising when later that evening I’m back at home, about to close my window, and I see him pass again in the street below. What kind of person are you, Gamal, not to remember your house of bondage with a single look?

  Translated by David McKay

  25

  Oek de Jong

  The Motionless Man

  De onbeweeglijke

  Although I do not like other people and avoid meeting them, I entered his room one evening and asked, ‘And what about you? How do you occupy yourself?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, but after some time he spoke with a sigh, and it seemed like the final part of a longer answer:

  ‘… and with nothing in particular.’

  That somewhat surprised me, as I had always regarded him as an active and enterprising man. How many times had I seen him roaming the stairs and hallways with strangely sparkling stones, books or small dead animals? I didn’t know the man’s name. I called him Tze.

  I turned my gaze on his curved back and his head, which he’d propped on his fists, piling up the flesh of his cheeks. He’d slid the chair he was sitting on almost halfway under the table and bent so far forward that only fifteen centimetres of space remained between his face and the bare wall. Even out of the very corners of his eyes all he could see was the wall. There was not a trace of strangely sparkling stones, books or small dead animals.

  Tze’s room was remarkably small. If I stretched my arms above my head, I’d touch the ceiling; if I took a step forwards and reached out my arms in front of me, then I’d hit the opposite wall; holding out my arms to the side to their full length was only barely possible.

  Without the slightest movement, Tze now said quietly, ‘And you, sir, what is your name, and how do you occupy yourself?’

  ‘Kalk is my name, and I occupy myself with writing an account of myself, though without any particular need to do so. I regard it as a pastime.’

  ‘And have you been working on your attempt at this account for long?’

  ‘For over seven years now, with many interruptions.’

  ‘And why is it that you interrupt your work?’

  ‘I don’t actually know what precisely the interruptions are: the days when I work on my account or the days when I don’t. Let’s just say: I fast for five days so I can gorge myself for two, and find both activities unimportant, but prefer fasting to eating.’

  ‘Yet after five years of fasting, you must be approaching a point where you can formulate your wisdom briefly and simply.’

  ‘That is true. Two years ago I completed my account, and it ran to many thousands of pages. Then I began rewriting and after every day’s work there were fewer sheets remaining than the day before. For a while now, there has been just one sheet left. What is written upon it encompasses but a few seconds of my life, and yet its entirety.’

  I waited some moments, looking intently at Tze. During the course of the conversation, he gave an occasional shiver, as the words increased in number. He pressed his stomach even more tightly into the edge of the table now, hooked his feet behind the legs of the chair, opened his fists and folded them firmly around his head like large leaves. Then he sat motionless again, and I continued, ‘On that one sheet of paper is described what I once saw, in the middle of the night, on the cusp between waking and sleep: I am sitting in a room that has no obvious character, although it is not empty. A man enters; in the embrace of his arms he is holding great bunches of flowers, brightly coloured and of many different varieties. He lays them on a table, makes up bouquets, and puts them in vases, of which there appear to be a great number in the room. Then he leaves. At first I’m delighted by the beauty and the fragrance of the flowers, but then their presence becomes unbearable. I pull all the flowers from the vases and throw them out of the window. The room is empty now, and the scent of the flowers slowly fades. I feel as if I’ve been liberated and have escaped from a great danger, but at the same time I’m deeply saddened.

  ‘The next day, the man returns, bringing the flowers. Again, I enjoy them at first, but then I become afraid and throw them all out of the window. I am relieved but sad. This same event is repeated over and over again.’

  Tze said nothing, so I stood there feeling awkward. After a long time – I was just about to leave – he said: ‘If I understand the profusion of your words correctly, life is both appealing and terrifying for you, and that saddens you.’
>
  ‘That is true. I avoid people now and become involved in life only when necessary.’

  ‘So is there some necessity for your presence in this room?’ asked Tze, and I heard something defensive in his voice.

  ‘Every principle requires an inconsistency, or it cannot be a principle; and that inconsistency makes the principle all the more desirable.’

  ‘That sounds very fine,’ said Tze. I suspected he was smiling with gentle irony.

  ‘In youth, one is more voluble, yet emptier,’ I apologized.

  ‘That sounds very fine indeed,’ replied Tze.

  I deemed this moment of agreement a suitable one to approach him a little more closely. Very cautiously, I left my place by the door, where I had been standing until then, with the intention of catching a glimpse of his face. But no sooner had I moved than Tze said, ‘Be so kind as to remain still. Even my own movement is unbearable to me. I hate motion, things changing makes me ill. I used to occupy myself with small dead animals, but they rotted away in my hands. So I read books. Twice I would read the same page, and twice I would find something different written there. Finally I sought my answer in the stones. But I could never see their sparkle in the same way twice.’

  I understood now that his aim was to be motionless, and that the sight of the wall was as much as he could bear. I began to question him about his motionlessness, but he no longer answered. The peculiar shivering of his body slowly ceased.

  And no matter how keenly I watched him, I could not detect any movement. So I left the room, without a sound.

  A week after that first meeting I returned to Tze and from then on I visited him almost daily. By then I knew my way blindfolded through the maze of stairs and hallways that made up most of the house. In his room, I stood by the door, as still as possible. Tze sat motionless in his chair, and we spoke to each other.

  Sometimes he would stretch his stiffened arms and legs for a moment, but always with great reluctance and considerable effort, as the clothes he wore were exceptionally tight and close around his body. I used those moments to shift my weight unnoticed from one leg to the other.

  Tze was the only person with whom I had any contact. And I actually tried to win him over by keeping my words to the point, and every now and then remaining silent for a while. My account was finished, but it had merely brought me to a dead end. I now had no direction or aim, and was in a state of great uncertainty.

  One evening I asked Tze to leave his room and accompany me on a walk. After much hesitation, he agreed. He pushed back the chair and, with difficulty, stood up. For the first time, I saw his face; it was narrow and sharply chiselled. His face skimmed past, close to mine, then towered high above, up against the ceiling. Tze was a giant. He must have been thirty centimetres taller than me. His chest was almost as wide as the door, and he could have grasped around my neck with one hand if he’d wanted to.

  We found our way through the darkness of the stairs and hallways and, after some time, arrived outside. Then we followed a narrow path, which twisted among bare, undulating fields. We walked for a long time, constantly descending. The path was so steep in places that we had to brace ourselves so as not to fall.

  It was a great effort for Tze to propel his lumbering body forward. As he walked, he panted heavily and at first all his joints creaked. He’d tilted back his head to look up at the dark, star-strewn sky, which always remained there above him, no matter how he walked. That made it bearable for him. He allowed me to take his arm and guide him down the path.

  We came to a river, which flowed broadly onwards. The water swirled and splashed, whipped up by a strong wind. On the other side, very distant and barely visible, were mountains.

  Tze stood with his back to the wind and shook my hand from his arm.

  ‘I can hear that you have brought me to water,’ he said bitterly. ‘A lake or a river.’

  ‘It’s a river. But I didn’t do it intentionally. I didn’t know where the path we were following would lead. Like you, I’m a stranger to these parts.’

  ‘Rivers are unbearable,’ said Tze, ‘one never steps into the same water twice. A fine place you’ve chosen for my farewell! You should have taken me to the mountains instead!’

  He seemed indignant at me for persuading him to leave his room. So that our only walk together would not be spoiled by an unpleasant silence, I told him the first thing that came into my mind, remembering the mountains he would have liked to see.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the man who left his house one morning, just with the clothes he was wearing, and headed for the mountains in the distance. He arrived towards nightfall, and he lay down like a bridge across a narrow yet deep ravine. There he remained, seeing only the deadly depths below, and enduring the heat of the day and the cold of the night without complaint. He thought he had achieved perfect motionlessness, and hoped to turn to stone and become a natural bridge. But spring came, and the snow on the mountains melted. A stream went tumbling down the slopes, searching for the lowest point and, furiously swirling, it flowed beneath the man and through the gorge. Now he saw constant movement and change. Finally he could bear it no longer, so he stood up and cast himself into the ravine.’

  Tze was silent.

  ‘The same will happen to you,’ I continued. ‘There will always be movement somewhere to make you shiver and feel restless. Why not step into this river in order to achieve perfect motionlessness? Do it now, the moment is right: there is no one to rescue you against your will!’

  ‘No,’ replied Tze. ‘I want to live motionlessly.’

  ‘That sounds like a paradox.’

  ‘It is a paradox. But the paradox is the only way,’ Tze cried, incensed and inconsolable. ‘It’s easy for you to talk, with your paradoxical understanding of life, which does not oblige you to anything.’

  I wanted to respond with a torrent of words, as uncertainty makes a man speak. But no sooner had Tze said this than he turned his back on the river, lowered his head, and began to climb the narrow path. He did so with such great strides that, within just a few moments, I stopped trying to keep up with him. I stayed by the river, on my own.

  After this incident, I didn’t dare to visit Tze for a few days. I felt that it had been foolish to tempt him to take a walk, but even so I cursed him and decided many times to leave him alone in his motionless state. I even considered seeking solace among others. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress my longing to see him, and finally I returned to his room.

  Tze had used screws and nails to fasten his chair immovably to the table and the floor. He’d secured himself to the arms, the back, and the legs of the chair with leather straps. His head, chin resting on his chest, was now all that he could move. But it was immediately clear to me that he would never do so again, any more than he would speak. I took up my familiar position by the door.

  ‘You must forgive me for that walk,’ I said, ‘it was foolish of me to urge you to do it. If you forgive me, remain motionless. If you do not, then make a movement, and I will leave.’

  And so I assured myself of his company, and prolonged my indecision. I spoke to him again as I had before, but now without interruption, and answering my own questions. By doing so, I came to have some remarkable thoughts. But eventually my imagination was exhausted and I began to repeat myself. Then I tried to recall all the conversations we’d had and to repeat them word for word. To practise this exercise, I changed the order of the conversations and recited each of them from back to front. But when that, too, no longer required any effort, I fell silent. For a few days, I considered acquiring a chair and sitting down beside him – there was still space at the table.

  Then I tried again to leave him alone in his motionless state, as I had many doubts and reproached myself for having brought about Tze’s demise with that walk to the river. But I had become so attached to him and his presence gave me such deep peace that I continued my visits, standing silently behind him for a few hours every day. />
  One day, just before the end of a visit, I heard a buzzing and a gentle tapping on the walls and ceiling of that quiet room. I looked around and finally spotted the insect on Tze’s neck. Without thinking, I took a step forward and crushed it with my hand. The giant head fell sideways and the neck ripped open. Legions of insects now emerged from his clothes and advanced towards the tear.

  Sadly, I left his room and the house. Outside, I began to climb the path, although my heart drew me to the river.

  Translated by Laura Watkinson

  26

  Thomas Rosenboom

  Tincture

  Tinctuur

  ‘I have poison. If you want poison …’

  In my fear, I never forgot where Mattij was. During the school day I saw him in class; after school he would make his slow way to the bicycle shed as it rapidly emptied out. His friends would cluster around him then, a dense throng, and Harm was with them, not as a friend but as their possession. Sometimes it took more than an hour before they were done with him. When they finally let him go, he barely had the strength to mount his bicycle. From behind an advertising column, I could see Mattij and his friends come out of the shed a moment later. I would wait until they too were out of sight before riding off to the closed brickworks between the edge of the woods and the river. There I would build a fire, sit out on a wing dam and fish, wander the scrubby hills, or walk along the channels in the water meadow with my hand net.