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

by Joost Zwagerman

  ‘I haven’t made it yet, but I could start right away … Just let me know when you want it.’

  It was unclear why Harm was the one they had chosen for the bicycle shed, but still, I could understand it. He had certain qualities that almost invited it, and those qualities grew more intense the longer he played his role … You might say he grew into it.

  But the other thing I understood was that I had the same qualities. Once they got tired of Harm, I would be the obvious replacement. That was why Mattij filled me with panicky fear, why I always knew where he was, why I could not stop staring from behind that column out over the empty schoolyard at the seemingly long-deserted bicycle shed. From the very first, I had parked my bicycle next to a tree near the column, so that I would never have to go in there. Not daring to give the slightest impression of a connection between me and Harm, I hadn’t said one word to him ever since it started. All I knew was what I could see from the outside.

  ‘You can use it on animals … It affects the heart. You interested?’

  My fear continued to grow. I sorely wanted to escape Mattij’s grasp by giving him something, something to create a bond, something bad, and in doing so I would become bad myself, on the same side as Mattij, as safe as a crow among crows. But I had nothing to give, until one day at the brickworks I was taken by surprise by a couple out walking their dog.

  The weather was fantastic, and I was dozing in a ventilation shaft when I heard them. I took a cautious peek around the corner and saw them right away. They were walking along the forested edge of the overgrown site, towards a patch of purple flowers that had been in bloom for a couple of weeks and stood out against the tall trees behind them. A little dog ran ahead. The woman called it back; it wouldn’t listen. She told the man to call the dog.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Don’t you see those purple flowers on the tall spikes? Those are foxgloves!’

  ‘Well, what about them?’

  The woman’s snort resonated as far as the shaft where I lay. ‘You don’t know the first thing about flowers, do you? Foxgloves are poisonous … what if he eats them?’

  A couple of hours later, back at home, I found confirmation in the Flora of Europe: ‘Common foxglove (Digitalis purpurea): forest edges, marshy soil … contains digitoxin, which stops the heart but can also be taken medicinally in a diluted tincture of oil.’

  The very next day was the first time I offered him the poison. Mattij said nothing. But I raced to the brickworks on my bicycle right after school to get started. I had everything I needed.

  The long spikes of flowers still looked the same, but not to me: they were poisonous now. I threw my bicycle against the shaft, put on my mother’s housecleaning gloves, and holding a pair of scissors in one hand and a plastic bag in the other, I moved in closer.

  It hadn’t rained in a while, but the soil around the foxgloves was soaked with water that had trickled down from the hillside. The weather was still amazing, a loud buzz hung over the purple spikes, and no sooner had I reached towards the first flower with the scissors than a bee came flying out. From the uppermost flower, a whole head taller than me, to the dark green rosette of leaves on the ground, I did not stop until the stem was bare, surrounded by a growing swarm of bees from the purple goblets, which were dotted with red and white on the inside.

  Back at home, I stashed the full plastic bag in the barn. After dinner I retrieved it and started making what, after consulting the dictionary, I understood to be a tincture. I decided to use petroleum, the most volatile oil I knew of, so that it would evaporate down to a concentrate more quickly. I didn’t know, then, that Mattij would continue to turn down my offer for weeks. I ground the flowers to a pulp between two paving stones, left the pulp for a few days to dry into a powder, added the powder to a pan of mineral oil, and whisked the viscous mixture until it was as purple as the flowers had been.

  ‘Maybe you don’t need it right now, but I’ve started working on it anyway – you know what I’m talking about …’

  The purple grew deeper by the day as the oil evaporated. I eventually sealed the lid with tape so it wouldn’t vanish completely. For two weeks I went on offering the poison, without ever receiving an answer. That didn’t change until one day in chemistry I took the next step and ventured a concrete proposal.

  ‘I made a tincture. It’s ready … If you want I can give you a bottle tomorrow. It’s your business what you do with it. Tomorrow during lunch break … at the front gate, okay?’

  For the first time, Mattij seemed to hear me; he nodded; a giddy wave swept through me. Then he actually smiled, but again, without looking me in the eyes. That must be how it was with those boys, I thought; they kept their distance, didn’t get too close to each other, wouldn’t be too quick to touch you. My heart swelled with a feeling of safety as I returned to my desk.

  That night I crept back into the barn. I had poured the nose drops out of a bottle and removed the label, and I’d smuggled a pipette out of the chemistry lab. I pulled off the tape, removed the lid from the pan, and saw that it still held too much of the purple petroleum. Above a burner, I warmed the liquid until there was just enough left to fill the small bottle. But every constituent of the flowers, including the poison, was still in there. The vapour rising from the pan still smelled like petroleum and nothing else, so I concluded that all that time nothing had evaporated but the oil. I dipped the pipette in the oil, filled it, and squeezed it out into the bottle, thinking how incredibly concentrated it must be.

  The more important an appointment is, the slower time passes while you wait, and I had an appointment with Mattij! To avoid breaking the fragile bond between us, I didn’t so much as look at him all that slow-footed morning. Then the buzzer sounded for lunch.

  My hand on the bottle in my trouser pocket, I wound my way across the already teeming schoolyard towards the gate. Though I tried as hard as I could not to hurry, I got there first. Just as casually as I had strolled through the crowd, I glanced over my shoulder at the groups in conversation, but Mattij came from a different direction and was suddenly standing in front of me.

  ‘Ha ha!’ I laughed nervously, but I immediately composed myself, even going so far as to lean back against the brick gatepost. I slung one leg over the other as if about to light a cigarette, took the bottle from my pocket, and held it out to Mattij.

  ‘Here you go, but be careful – it’s highly concentrated!’

  Mattij did not move, yet the bottle was taken from me … At first I saw only the hand, and then the man; it was the headmaster, who from outside the gate, around the corner of the post, reached into the gap between Mattij and me and then emerged completely from his hiding place.

  ‘Well, I’ll be … You were right!’ he said, looking back and forth between Mattij and the bottle in his hand.

  ‘He’s been bugging me about it for two weeks,’ Mattij said with a sigh. ‘I ignored him at first, but when he said it was ready, I thought it could be dangerous …’

  ‘Good idea to tell somebody,’ the headmaster said.

  ‘I wanted you to see for yourself that I didn’t ask for it. He just offered it to me anyway. That’s how it was from the start.’

  ‘Sure, sure, I understand, Mattij. We’ll have one of the chemistry teachers analyse the contents. I’ll keep you informed. Thanks!’

  Without a word or even a glance in my direction, the headmaster vanished around the corner with the bottle. Mattij turned in the other direction, and the next moment he too had vanished among the groups in the schoolyard. Tingling from top to toe, I remained slumped against the post, certain of nothing except that every word Mattij had spoken was true.

  I’d offered him the poison, again and again, for two weeks.

  All that time he took no notice.

  As my blood went on slowly curdling, I sat through the rest of the school day. After the last buzzer I could barely move. But a few minutes later, I was crossing the schoolyard as if nothing had happened. I wanted to go
straight home, but first I took a quick look back from behind the advertising column. Just then Harm came riding out of the bicycle shed, standing on his pedals, stronger than ever. Still, nothing could surprise me any more. I walked on to the tree where I always left my bicycle, but it was gone.

  Bewildered, I circled the trunk, looked all around – in my excitement that morning, maybe I’d propped it up against a different tree. Or was I so dazed that I’d picked the wrong tree now?

  As I glanced around again, two of Mattij’s friends came out from behind a van and, with smiling faces, solved the mystery.

  ‘Can’t find your bicycle? Don’t worry, we put it in a safe place for you,’ one of them said.

  ‘Why do you always leave it here? That’s what we have a shed for,’ the other one continued.

  ‘We moved it for you this time, but from now on you’ll have to park it there yourself,’ the first one added.

  ‘Come on, let’s go get it … Mattij is there too,’ the other one concluded.

  Waving his arm invitingly, the first boy urged me on ahead, as the other one lifted a hand in silent insistence in the air behind my back. Untouched but thoroughly boxed in by my escorts, I started walking, back to school, growing dizzier with each step, tottering from one leg to the other.

  Ahead of us gaped the deserted bicycle shed. By the time we went in, there was nobody else coming out.

  Translated by David McKay

  27

  A. F. Th. van der Heijden

  The Byzantine Cross

  Het Byzantijnse kruis

  ‘Hinge scissors are not of European origin, but were probably imported from Byzantium or the Islamic world.’

  (From: Excavations in Amsterdam, Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1977)

  The other day I bumped into an ex-girlfriend in the street. She had just got back from Karachi, where she had been working for a while as a nurse in a home for the mentally handicapped, run by nuns. Out of pure altruism or out of a feeling of guilt – you sometimes can’t tell with those boarding-school cows – she told me a few things. Nice mess, over there in Pakistan. They have no notion of the mentally defective. Only those possessed by the devil. The mentally handicapped are hidden away anxiously by the family. Chained up in kennels behind the house. Often beaten. In the slums of Karachi the nuns sometimes trace them and transfer them to their institution. One day they found one with a group of travellers. A boy of about twelve. He was chained in a barred cage, and could not move a muscle. Naked. Swarms of flies obscured his open wounds from view. His skin was one big relief map of scars. The nuns did not manage to take him with them. Out of the question. But that same night he was left, cage and all, as a foundling at the gate of the institution. Once he was released, he turned out not to be able to walk upright. The nuns had to drive him ahead of them like a monkey to the bath. He allowed himself meekly to be fussed around. Until one of them appeared with a pair of scissors to clip his nails, which were ten centimetres long. When he caught sight of the things, he lost control. He went berserk like an animal.

  ‘We had a terrible job knocking him out with sedatives,’ she said. ‘And once we’d pumped him full, his nails were clipped at top speed. As if he could come round any moment, with a heavy dose like that in his body. We cut his hair, too, as it was also too long. And full of vermin. Man, you should have seen him when he came round. Completely disorientated. He realized at once what had happened to him. He kept looking at his hands and grabbing at his head with his hands. He was in a panic. Not because he had lost his nails and his hair, no, because he saw that we had used scissors on him. That panicked him. He was frightened of scissors. Frightened to death. And he stayed that way. I’ve never seen anyone driven into such a corner by a simple utilitarian object. He only needed to suspect the presence of some somewhere, and he went up the wall. He shied away from everything that even gleamed like a pair of scissors. For example, there was no point in approaching him with cutlery. A fork could upset him for hours. I was once with him when he was completely calm. Really no trouble at all. He was playing at my feet. Suddenly his head jerks up. Immediately he sits absolutely still. Just like an animal getting a whiff of danger. I see his eyes darting back and forth. Until out of the corner of his eye he keeps peering at a particular corner of the room and starts trembling all over his body. I go and look. What’s there? An open safety pin. Something shiny immediately gave him the shivers. It drove him completely wild. It was as if he was repelled with the same force that a magpie is drawn to it. For that matter, there was something about him like a magpie at the end of its tether. Now that I mention it.’

  A real chatterbox, that cow I had bumped into quite by chance. But she finally shut her trap for a moment and gave me a long, enquiring look. Then she quickly asked what kind of life I had been living recently. Was I still studying?

  ‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘I’ve packed it in.’

  ‘What does the future look like now?’

  ‘My future? Darling, you’ve just given a striking image of it yourself. No, really, no kidding. I couldn’t think of a better one off the top of my head.’

  And that was enough for her. We’d said all we had to say. For ever.

  Pusher, dealer … I hate those words. I hate them. They’re slippery words. You let them slip. I never use them. There’s no Dutch equivalent. They no longer belong to any language. And they don’t seem ever to have been part of any language. They came out of nowhere. They were heard and remembered. They are so often used that they have lost all flavour. They have rolled off the tongues of so many nationalities that they are not even words any more. They are sighs. They are indictments. And they are only heard by those who have ears to hear. They are associated with endless calls. Phone calls, house calls – in telephone boxes that don’t work and on steep steps. Endless and in vain. Again and again. Hour after hour. Up huge flights of steps. You know exactly where the bell is. You can find it blindfold. Unerringly. Your howling arm knows the way. That poor, helpless, porous arm of yours. It knows the way. It hooks up. It connects. In vain. Late in the evening, at night – they keep you ringing. At night, at night and again at night. And early in the morning, at the end of everything. Huge great steps, towering houses. They often live so high up that you can’t even hear the bell ring. So that you never know if the thing is off or not.

  And if, to be on the safe side, you try listening at the flap of the letter box while you’re ringing, then you can’t reach the button. It’s so high up. You’re so small at that moment. You’ve simply got to ring and wait. When you have waited long enough and are fed up, you go to the next address. And on to the next. That can go on for whole nights. If you have three addresses, the city is reduced to a triangle, consisting of the shortest distances between those three addresses. The city disappears into that triangle. It fits precisely into it. It is that triangle. And the night is the incessant passage from angle to angle. En route you leave colourless vomit behind. Luminous puke of a lunatic dog. You’ve puked all over all their doorsteps. You’ve stood there in the cold, sick and helpless. All night long.

  And they see you. Somehow they can see you. If they’re sure you’ve got dough, doors open for you. Even at night. Preferably at night. They open up in sunglasses. They pull the ropes to let you in and stand at the top of the stairs with sunglasses on. Even the evenings are too bright for them, the night isn’t dark enough. Their stairs are high and steep. They’ve disappeared again before you’ve reached the top. For a second you saw him hanging around in the stairwell. You saw the light of the street shining in the lenses of his sunglasses, and he’s gone again. You’ve got to knock. Again. Louder, louder. And again. A conversation through the door. He doesn’t trust you. Suspicion is the name of the game in those circles.

  There are other addresses too. Usually in back streets. That’s where your money comes from. That’s where you flog what you’ve been able to get together on a day like that. Complete car interiors are sold on. At a heavy loss for you and a fa
t profit for him. You accept what they offer. You’re in a hurry. If what they offer isn’t enough, you’ve still got your scissors. Then you score half a fix, and move on. Then you scrape a little more together. Bags of addresses. You weigh things up and ask and sell till you have enough bread for the next half fix. You hustle and you sell and buy till you have enough for the whole day. Then either you sleep or you don’t, and then you start over. Again and again. You’ve got your scissors.

  If anything typifies us, it’s this: an open pair of scissors in a closed hand. It could be our emblem. Closed fingers and points and rings poking out on all sides. The narrow blade with the pointed tip between the index and middle finger. That’s the key. The only usable part of the scissors. That is the barb that works its way into the safest locks. A bit stiffly to start with, but gradually more supply. It gets notches in it that make things easier.

  At right angles to it, between middle and ring finger, the wide blade with the blunt end. Unusable as a key, indispensable as a grip. One ring pokes out from behind the thumb, the other presses into the palm of your hand. Or against your wrist – depending on the length. They are mostly big scissors. You carry them interwoven through your fingers. Like a cross. That gives the best grip. They arm your hand. They hold your hand straight. Your limp, helpless, trembling hand. They form its skeleton. They are anchored in it. Provided you hold them firmly.

  There are people (I know them) who take their scissors apart and just keep half. The narrow part. They take them to bits. Not for me, a gruesome little thing like that. It doesn’t give as good a grip. It keeps slipping. Particularly when you are getting to the end. When you’re in a hurry. When you start getting the shivers. Give me the whole pair of scissors. So I can feel the wide part gripped firmly between my fingers. A clenched fist with a cross of steel, I think to myself. Not a cross of honour, of dishonour. All the better, and beautifully chrome-plated. Gleaming treacherously in the torchlight.