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

by Joost Zwagerman

  Jacob even thought that the invalid was at a great advantage knowing what he would die of. This certainty must give one great peace of mind. Each new day that was such a trial to a healthy individual was a godsend to the invalid. While someone who was healthy was faced with the vagaries of fate every day – not to mention the ever-present danger of death from which no one was ever safe – the invalid could lie calmly in bed and only had to ponder matters of the greatest importance: life and death and God.

  Jan Roggeveen, however, did not seem to be aware of his privileged state. He invariably lamented his fate and was jealous of Jacob, who would get what was withheld from him – a career as ship’s captain. To free him of his jealousy, Jacob told him, while stipulating that he kept it strictly secret, that he had no desire to go to sea. Jan, however, did not believe him.

  Jan Roggeveen spent all his days studying the voyage he would never make. He spoke of the Southern Continent as though he had already visited it. Where his father had always been cautious enough to speak of ‘some land tract’, Jan had drawn up entire lists and tables from the safety of his bed, and had calculated with the aid of statistics how great a likelihood there was of some vegetation and what might be the nature of its soil, its raw materials and climatic conditions. For his calculations he made use of all possible data about countries that had been discovered round the fortieth latitude in both northern and southern hemispheres. He classified this data according to a variety of organizational principles. He also made an estimate of the surface area of the Southern Continent with the aid of the comparative method and the premise that there was as much land on the earth as water. He ended up producing a Provisional Description of the Southern Continent, illustrated with a map, of which he was extremely proud.

  In order not to disappoint him, his father behaved as though it was a work of great scientific value. Jan went on to insist on its publication so stubbornly that in the end his father had it printed at his own expense. The edition had a run of three copies, one for each member of the Roggeveen family. The author, who considered that his work should be read throughout the world, felt richer than a king. He asked Jacob what people thought about it in Leiden. And because Jan wasn’t in a position to discover the truth, Jacob lied. ‘Interesting, extremely interesting,’ he told him. The successful author thought that nothing stood in his way now and asked his father when he was planning to set sail. The latter, who hadn’t dared admit that he had given up hope, avoided the question. ‘Soon, my boy, soon.’

  6

  To elude his father’s wrath, the flunked law student pretended that he had passed and was looking for a job. It was the first of many plans for his life that he’d think up, not for himself but to satisfy other people’s expectations. And just because it seemed to have nothing to do with him, he was able to invent prospects with the greatest of ease. He also had no problem offering advice to others when asked. He noticed that a good intention was much more appealing to people than actually implementing one. It was a long while before people were required to answer for what they said – a seemingly disastrous situation that one could, however, get out of by accompanying the failure with a new good intention.

  His father expressed his delight that his son had embarked on his studies with such enthusiasm, and asked with the utmost confidence in his son what sort of position he was seeking. The latter declared that he would first have to think about matters carefully, because one should not approach one’s future too lightly. His preference would have been to leave his future as it was – blank, in other words. Because, before you knew it, you had exchanged your future for a past. The drawback of a past was that it was set in stone. With one’s future all directions were possible.

  When he spoke to his father he used a more cautious formula for this idea that he held for the greatest wisdom, ‘The future offers you a variety of things, but you only get one past.’ His father could easily agree with this, thinking of all the years he had spent testing exotic products – while he had never been on a voyage, although that had been his great dream.

  After his father had encouragingly patted him on the shoulder, Jacob launched on his first plan. First of all he divided human labour into two categories: the static and the dynamic professions. The static ones consisted of repetitive transactions. Their advantage was that not a great deal of commitment was required: after all, the part of the body that carried out such things functioned independently, so that the rest, especially the mind, remained free. Their prestige – and that was after all his first concern – was little, however. The ‘dynamic’ professions were much more respected. These consisted of constantly changing activities which required all one’s energy, both mental and physical. But if one prepared properly, one could realize such esteem with little effort. Esteem, after all, was acquired by something that was seen.

  But what?

  A procession of generals, grand pensionaries, navigators, aldermen and kings passed his mind’s eye. But none of these professions seemed destined for him. Then he saw one that was hidden behind the others and barely visible in this display of power – he could be a spy. A spy – or, in public life, a diplomat – was someone the nature of whose work was not to be seen, but in such a way that everything he did, no matter how trivial, appeared to conceal something of great importance.

  His father regarded the diplomatic service as a splendid profession, since it meant that his son would be moving in superior circles, something that would prove favourable for financing a later voyage of discovery. He did, however, wonder how Jacob thought he would realize this plan. The latter had no idea and just shrugged his shoulders; at the same time he put on a meaningful and secretive expression and he must have done this quite effectively as his father gave him a conspiratorial smile. That’s how these things work, Jacob thought with satisfaction.

  For a while he took pleasure in his reputation as a prospective diplomat, which he had acquired with so little effort. From one day to the next his decision meant that he was no longer anonymous. On his strolls through Middelburg, with which he occupied his empty days, people asked him enquiringly when he would be leaving for the capital to receive instructions from the Estates General for his first mission. With a smile he answered that political affairs, as one could easily imagine, were conducted behind closed doors and not on the street. An answer like this made him appear even more distinguished and the people he met gazed after him for a long while.

  Unexpectedly the prospective diplomat left for France. He explained to his father that he could give him no information about this as the assignment was a confidential one. In actual fact he went there to accompany a preacher who had been banished to Dordrecht. (He had met this preacher on one of his walks and was profoundly under the influence of his religious ideas.) Due to a curious twist of fate he ended up in France anyway as the preacher proved not welcome in the province of Holland either and the only acquaintances still willing to give him shelter lived on the Loire.

  Jacob set great store by his inability to make a decision; after all, it had brought him what he had longed for – a life in the service of the Lord, escape from his father, who had prepared a fate for him that he would never have chosen for himself. Henceforth he would devote his days to walking and to the musings that originated in the rhythm of his feet. Once a day, he would preach a sermon full of fine words and that would be it. God knew no limits. He stretched out lazily across the world and left everything as it was.

  The preacher, a man called Justus van Oyen, seemed like a wise man. He spoke little and listened a great deal. How many people – and he had his professor of theology at Leiden in mind – thought that they knew better than their Creator. God’s laws were simple and those who needed a lot of words to explain them had understood nothing. Justus did not care to speak about God. If Jacob made a remark about religion, Justus pointed with a sweeping gesture to the surrounding countryside: please be silent; He is here in our midst.

  He preferred to listen to
Jacob talking about what he intended to do in life. And Jacob, who spoke about his plans openly for the first time, could barely hold his tongue. His words always led to new words and, to his own astonishment, he came up with ideas that to his knowledge he had never entertained. Beyond Arras in the rolling hills of Artois, his torrent of words had led him to a lucid life principle which consisted mainly of not having any plans, so that everything remained possible. Justus’s response was a huge belly laugh that was reinforced by the shaking of their coach.

  On reaching Saumur on the Loire, Jacob began for the first time to doubt the piety of his travelling companion. On their way he had viewed his reticence as originating in a pious awe for the works of the Lord. He felt it strange, however, that Justus remained silent in his new abode. A preacher after all was supposed to preach. When he remarked on this, his companion roared with laughter. Do people learn from their own mistakes? he asked and proceeded to laugh even harder. All this gave Jacob pause for thought.

  Justus spent the whole day at home with his friends. They spoke in a jargon that Jacob didn’t understand. A slattern brought them food and wine and willingly let herself be felt up as she brushed past them. She made Jacob nervous and he preferred not to stay in the house too much. He roamed around the countryside, but no matter where he was, under a bridge or on the castle walls, God’s eye was on him. Why was He pursuing him? Was He angry, because he had let the preacher drink wine instead of urging him to preach His name? Only later did he realize that God had foreseen it all: Justus was no preacher, but an adventurer, which was a euphemism for a confidence-trickster. The friends turned out to be pickpockets. As for Jacob, he continued to chant the praises of the Lord and His good works if only to drown out the jingling of their ill-gotten coin.

  The road back home was beset with obstacles, because little remained of his money, which he had shared with Justus. He travelled alone, trusting no one. Nor did he knock on anyone’s door to ask for lodgings; he slept under the skies and of necessity he stole from the farmers while God watched him anxiously. He thought he would never return home, but one day to his astonishment he saw the coast of Walcheren.

  With his tattered appearance, the former envoy attracted a lot of notice in Middelburg. He was greeted noisily with compassion, while malicious amusement whispered stories behind his back. He didn’t need to offer any explanation, because they already had one. He had been robbed. And it was true; he had been robbed, although they had no idea what of. Every word he spoke and every step he took in his life added to his disappointment. Why couldn’t everything stay as it was? If only everything just began and went no further. Because things that come to an end are worthless.

  Was it God’s purpose to deprive him of everything?

  He awaited his fate with resignation.

  8

  The day came that his father passed away; he died peacefully in his sleep. Initially Jacob felt betrayed: without so much as a word his father had gone on ahead, leaving him to his fate. Things had taken place that he had no part in. Members of the family turned up and they carried the deceased out of the house. (Jacob had proposed that his father should be granted a seaman’s grave, as a final honour, but his suggestion was dismissed indignantly.) After that he was entirely alone. What could he do without his father; what was there left to avoid? He was unwilling to believe that his father’s decease was final. There had to have been a misunderstanding. He remained sunk in his thoughts – how could he have ceased to exist?

  An unbearable compassion overwhelmed him. He felt an inexplicable loss. It was as though he saw things through his father’s eyes and he was filled with a strange longing for the things around him, which seemed to have undergone a profound transformation – it was as if he was seeing everything that he saw for the last time. Instead of his father who had ‘fallen asleep’ so peacefully, it was as if he was the one who had to say farewell. The tears welled up in his eyes when he pictured his father up there in heaven, surrounded by all those strange souls, and thinking of all those things and people dear to him whom he had had to leave behind: his own body, his sons, his maps of the world, the little port of Middelburg with its ships sailing out without him. Perhaps from where he was now he could see the Southern Continent. Poor father in heaven gazing for all eternity at a world that was able to get along without him. He was inconsolable at the thought of his father’s loneliness. The dead man had been cheated in perfidious fashion: it wasn’t he who had gone, with everyone waving goodbye, but the others who had departed, all of them together, leaving him alone in his tomb.

  Jacob considered it his sacred obligation to cherish his father’s memory: if he stopped thinking about his father, he would vanish into the bottomless pit of oblivion. He alone was responsible for his destiny. To his astonishment, however, he observed that when he thought of the dead man, he was really only picturing himself. He could only summon up his father by imagining him as himself. He missed being alive and cursed the work that had never been completed. And the reason why he had experienced his father’s death as such a shock was because he saw it as a harbinger of his own death.

  Members of his family found a position for him with the East India Company, because he had to earn money for his own livelihood and that of his brother. He accepted the work gratefully. He had the feeling that in this way he could at any rate pay off part of his debt to his father. This debt consisted of everything that his father had expected of him and of which he hadn’t paid back one jot. The balance had been drawn up and the debt was insoluble.

  During his life he had never respected his father and he had rejected everything he represented. Any plans he had made for his life were evasions: he was determined never to become like his father. He wanted to be nothing at all. His preference had been to let everything stay the same, just a host of possibilities. Many lives were possible; only one could actually be lived. Posthumously he strove to live up to his father’s demands. To reject them would mean that he had confirmed that his father was irrelevant. Only through respect could he compensate for all he had lost.

  Jacob worked hard for the Company, where he held the post of notary: his task was to draw up and annul contracts. In the evening he studied his father’s plans for discovering the Southern Continent. He overcame his dread of the sea, because his own wishes no longer counted: he sacrificed himself without stint. With Jan, his invalid brother, he discussed the chances of fulfilling their father’s dream. He wasn’t enthusiastic, but it seemed to give meaning to his father’s death if he trod in his footsteps; he continued where his father had left off and they would achieve their goal together. He had taken on a task that was greater than himself; he had a destiny now. At least that was what he told himself – but without realizing it he was already planning a new evasion, one however that was doomed to failure, because how could he escape someone who was dead? There was nothing he could do about his father’s incomplete legacy.

  9

  The Company sent him to the East Indies and despite his reluctance he went to this remote region, because he had no choice. He already felt homesick in the harbour and when the ship sailed out he gazed behind him the whole time – it was a horizon that held ever less promise. He saw himself vanish: he was only a dot in the ubiquitous blue around him. At last he had become something; he had made one choice out of the endless possibilities life offered: he was an insignificant little pen-pusher, entirely lost behind the immense form of He who is all things.

  He experienced disembarkation in the trading post of Batavia as something miraculous: he had followed many paths and in each case he had visualized the end. It was nothing like this, yet here he was. He saw that everything he undertook led to something else, something that he neither knew nor had expected. And strangely that gave him hope. There had to be something that would release him and his father from that cursed Southern Continent.

  But what could it be?

  He still remained spellbound by the idea that there actually was something. Faithf
ully the official went through his dossiers, in full confidence that the true meaning of this futile work would one day be revealed to him.

  Nothing was what it seemed. He found proof of this everywhere. He was maddened by the sounds that surrounded him, yet when he looked he saw nothing. The façades of the buildings looked so Dutch, but they were set in a strange dazzling light. He saw himself sitting in the offices of the Company, but he also saw himself watching himself sitting there – he couldn’t work out where he was seeing himself from. Perhaps it was from above. He could not find God anywhere in this desolate realm. If he thought of Him, he thought of Middelburg, and he found Him there too – in the grey spaces offshore.

  Year in year out the notary worked with great zeal and diligence, but the true reason for his stay on earth was not revealed. He was often visited by memories of his father and then he felt a deep compassion, because his father had never found what he sought. Then he returned yet more determinedly to his work. In this way he hoped to repay the debt he owed, even if the task seemed impossible: no matter what one did, it was always too little.

  He thought of the story of the fortune seeker who arrived in Eldorado. He found so many diamonds and gold ingots there that he could not take them all away. He grasped all he could till his arms were full and he had to lift his thigh to prevent his spoils from slipping out of his grasp. Standing like this, stooping a little and with his leg raised, he saw so much more gold and diamonds gleaming, that the gold and diamonds he already had seemed like a sorry amount. He would leave with that poor amount but he would always think of that which he had not been able to carry off. And so he dropped his spoils and thought as he stretched out his empty hands towards the horizon: All this is mine.