Once, shortly after he was appointed, there’d been a student who came and settled a denim-clad buttock on his desk and looked at him with a provocative smile. Could the door to his room be locked? Yes, he’d said, and the windows can open. He stood up and went over to the light switch. And this, he said, is a switch for turning on the light. Actually, he said, this whole room is full of gadgets. She shook her head, gathered her papers and left. That entire year, whenever he came upon her in one of the corridors, she shook her head.
Women, he’d said to his father during one of his annual visits, I wish I could figure them out as quickly as an early mediaeval text. His father had pushed his straw Bing Crosby hat back on his head. He wasn’t having any problems, was he? No, Dad, no problems. Did he want another Manhattan?
Manhattans and straw hats. How, he’d been asking himself for most of his adult life, could two people differ so much? His father, whom he could characterize no differently from the way a newspaper had done, as the mattress king (his invention had something to do with mattresses), had over the years come to resemble the stereotypical American from a television series, a spruced-up version of Walter Matthau. His mother was still who she’d always been, a woman who consumed her pleasures with relish. He didn’t know which he preferred, but he did know whom he took after.
In the evening they sit in her room, in soft, wood-muffled light. He opens the bottle of vodka he’s brought from the Netherlands, fills two water glasses and talks about himself. Which is to say, he drinks two glasses of vodka and then begins to talk about himself. About his love, the fragmented text, about his mother and her dessert-preparing boyfriend, about the mattresses that made his father (who now makes himself useful only on mattresses), about the odd poem he writes now and then. She looks and listens. He stands up, holding his glass, and recites one of his poems, without saying that he was thinking of her when he wrote it.
This evening you were here and every time
I tried to kiss you something broke
between us and I pulled back.
How ashamed the heart can feel
of what it does not receive.
She drinks her vodka in little sips, but no less quickly than he does.
‘It’s a beautiful poem,’ she says.
He looks at her in astonishment.
She laughs.
The bottom of the bottle comes in sight. She continues to sit unmoved in her chair, while he stands up again and again and explains things, glass in hand, gesticulating, in an incantatory voice. Then, the glasses empty, the bottle in the waste-paper bin, his heart sinks in his chest. He no longer knows what to do. He stands up, his face taut, lips thin, and walks to the door.
Later, on his way to brush his teeth, he passes her room. The door is ajar. A strip of yellow light fans out into the hallway. He turns his head to one side and looks in. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, hands together, head bowed, wearing a long white nightdress with tiny flowers. He goes on looking until she’s finished and stands up to turn off the light. Then he realizes that she sleeps with the door open, that she did indeed hear him leave the previous night.
The next morning it rains. He runs through the downpour to the main building. The hotelkeeper brings him coffee.
‘So you’re leaving too?’
He looks up and considers this.
‘That’s what Miss Ven Kronning said when she left.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ he says.
The bus to Ipswich is a boat that glides along a smooth, straight river.
Endless rain.
Translated by Liz Waters
31
Manon Uphoff
Poop
Poep
Once there was a nice, tall man who was very poor and never had a great deal to spend. He liked to go walking along the city’s canals in the early-morning air. At that hour the light from the houses burned a watery yellow and the canals were still smooth and taut. The gentle sound of the leaves and pebbles beneath his feet made him feel almost content, as though for a moment the water, the canals and the houses were his. His poverty, however, stung him, but there was not much he could do about that.
One day the nice, tall man set out again to walk along the water. Having reached the very end, where the big canal bent sharply and turned back on itself, and where the old trees were covered in mossy green, he stopped to pick up a few stones. These he skimmed across the water as low as he could, then watched until they sank and left the surface taut and unperturbed once more. He breathed in the water’s calm and sighed deeply. A little further along he settled down on a wooden bench. The bench was in front of a lovely white house. A house with a stately entranceway – with tall stained-glass windows and bright yellow silk behind the panes. A house with a charming garden, the kind of garden that went with a summery England or France, but which in Holland always strikes a rather aristocratic and defiant tone.
That kind of house, mused the man who had so little to spend, in a house like that, with a garden like that, that’s where I should be living. I could give a house like that what it needs – why doesn’t that house belong to me? It made him feel sad and almost rebellious, but he spoke firmly to himself and went back to staring at the water and the leaves, which lay along the banks in gold and yellow and red.
At that very moment the door of the lovely house opened and a lady came out with two large dogs. The dogs tugged briskly at their leashes and dragged the lady behind them in their eagerness.
‘Ah, me,’ the lady said a little later. She had let the dogs run free. They were two huge, extremely well-groomed Great Danes. Their short fur gleamed and their pinkish-red tongues lolled happily from their broad jaws. They danced through the piles of leaves and chased each other cheerfully.
‘They’re so strong,’ the lady spoke. ‘At times I can hardly hold them back.’
She panted as she said this, and sat down beside the poor man on his bench. You could see that everything about her had cost a great deal of money. The leather of her little boots fairly crimped with softness in the chilly autumn air, and her long coat smelled of beavers. Her hair had been washed and rinsed until it resembled gold filament.
‘I always come here with the dogs,’ the woman said. She pointed over her shoulder. ‘It’s so convenient, I live so close and this way the darlings don’t bother a soul.’
‘I like coming here too,’ the man said, ‘it’s lovely here.’
‘Oh, isn’t it, though?’ said the lady, fairly gasping with pleasure. ‘There’s such an absolutely gorgeous view of the canals from the orangery. It’s only a pity one sees passers-by so often. I mean, people who have no business being here, who are incapable of appreciating beauty.’
She laid one neatly manicured hand on the knee that showed beneath her warm coat.
‘Do you come here often?’ she added, with a smile kept perfectly in check.
‘What’s often?’ the poor man replied. ‘Maybe two or three times a week. As I said, it’s lovely here and your house is truly beautiful. Very impressive, that white amid the greenery.’
‘The house is very expensive to keep up, but it’s worth it to me. It belonged to my late husband. Oh, one lives here in such wonderful calm. A house like that makes everything easy. Is your home attractive as well?’
‘I have a room downtown. It’s small, but I can live in it.’
‘Oh yes, a house like mine means a great deal in one’s life, really, it makes up for all the misery.’
The poor man could no longer contain himself.
‘You’re so right!’ he cried. ‘So very right! What I wouldn’t do to live in a house like yours. There are no words to describe it.’
As he spoke these words, the Great Danes sprang boisterously into the canal. A few minutes later they struggled back onto the bank, barking excitedly. They ploughed through the piles of leaves with their moist noses. Then – as though on command – they stopped and squatted beside each other on their haunches to deposit, with
an expression that resembled prayer, two huge piles of poop on the moist embankment. A distance of about a dog-and-a-half lay between the two mounds, which steamed in the autumnal morning air.
The lady, huddling in the depths of her exclusive fur coat as she reflected on the man’s words, suddenly developed a peculiar gleam in her finely made-up, silvery-blue eyes. A strange, but not entirely unpleasant tingling began at the tips of her toes and ran all the way up to her tummy.
‘Perhaps I could make you a proposal?’ she began. ‘Did you see what my two darlings just did?’
‘They jumped in the canal,’ the man replied. ‘They are fast, athletic animals, as anyone can see.’
‘Along the embankment,’ said the woman, pointing. ‘There! You could hardly call them rabbit droppings.’
Her mother-of-pearl nail directed his gaze towards the two gleaming, dark-brown piles of dog poop.
‘If you eat both of those, I will give you my house. The house of your dreams, with the garden and everything along with it.’
The poor man who had so little to spend looked at the woman, and from the woman to the two piles. The dogs were far away now, barking at a dachshund on a short leash.
The morning was of a purity that almost pained him, and then to have to hear such a ridiculous proposal from someone who wallowed so lavishly in her own wealth.
‘Both piles. Completely, without spitting out any of it, and then I will give you the key to my house.’
The woman rummaged about in her leather purse and pulled out a keyring. She removed the largest key from it and held it before the man’s eyes.
‘Both of them,’ the man said quietly. ‘Every last bit, and I’m not allowed to spit out any of it? And if I do you’ll give me that key?’
‘That is the long and the short of it,’ the woman said.
She slipped the key back into her bag and looked out contentedly across the canal’s smooth surface.
The poor man stood up, stretched his stiff legs a bit, took a deep breath of fresh air and headed for the two enormous turds, which seemed to summon him mockingly: ‘Eat us, eat us.’
I’ll do it, damn it, the man thought. I’ll eat them both; it’s only a pair of lousy turds.
In two strides he arrived at the place where it would have to happen. He squatted down, bent far over and stuck his finger into one of the piles. Then quickly, and without thinking, he began to eat, one bite after the other.
From the bench the woman stared in a mixture of horror and silent amazement at the hunched back of the man as he gobbled and gulped down the stinking meal. The dogs, looking startled, came padding over.
She saw his shoulders heave and heard him gag heavily after the third bite.
The lengths people will go to, she thought with the tranquillity of the well-to-do. Wait until I tell Lidy, Cecile and Margaret about it this evening. They won’t believe what one finds walking about here, even in the better parts of town.
So occupied was she with her own thoughts that she failed to notice that the man was already bolting down the second half of the bolus. He was trembling violently now and she could hear him making strange noises – noises that sounded somewhere between a sob and chuckle.
Gradually the doubt came trickling in, and though her disbelief grew with every bite he took, along with that disbelief a simple truth now came to her as well. A truth almost too horrible to entertain: he had almost finished his first turd!
One more and she would have to turn over her lovely house to this idiot.
The poor man who had so little to spend was overpowered by the feeling that he had been eating poop for years on end. Life as it stretched out before him now had only one colour: dark brown, and only one flavour: the flavour of dog shit. He didn’t dare to think about the next bite, and didn’t dare at all to glance to the side, where yet another hideous pile was waiting for him.
He couldn’t! He couldn’t! Sweat was pouring down his back.
Come on! he shouted silently to himself. One more turd, just one more, and you can call yourself the owner of one of the loveliest houses in this city! But he couldn’t. His stomach, his gullet and intestinal tract had taken over, and their decision was unanimous. It was over. He couldn’t do it any more.
Exhausted, and having grown old and bitter in the space of five minutes, he stood up. He tossed the lady, who was still seated on the bench with her hand over her mouth, a glance she interpreted as triumphant, but which in fact was one of deep fatigue.
‘Stop!’ she cried out. ‘Stop!’
She ran over to him and placed herself between him and the second, still-untouched pile, as though to guard it.
‘Wait! For God’s sake, wait! Can we make a deal? This is impossible. This isn’t right. You’re a person of flesh and blood, like me. What am I to do without my house? My lovely home. You don’t really expect me to give up everything, do you? What if I take that second pile? I’ll do the same thing you did, and I won’t skip any of it. I won’t spit out anything, I swear. Then the house will still be mine. Would that be acceptable to you?’
The poor man could barely make out what she was saying, his head was pounding too loudly. The poop was wreaking grim havoc on his taste buds. But he nodded; he realized she had asked him something, and whatever she wanted of him could not possibly be worse than this.
With almost girlish optimism the lady unbuttoned her fur coat and tucked it up behind her.
Come on, she said to herself.
On her knees in the wet leaves, she too bent over now and began to eat, in great haste, afraid that the man might change his mind. The two dogs circled around her hesitantly, not entirely sure of themselves. They both barked once, brief and shrill.
The woman saw and heard nothing more. With all the strength within her she tried to imagine roasted chicken, sugar-coated almonds and toffees, but the taste of the turd was more powerful than her most powerful flight of fancy. Her shoulders, too, began to shake.
Such a filthy stench, she thought at one point, such a hideous taste.
Yet the fear of losing her house was greater than her disgust, and so she ate faster, faster and faster, until not a smidgen was left. The same exhaustion that had overtaken the man now settled over her as well, and she leaned back in the grass.
The house seemed smaller to her now, much smaller and of much less consequence than it had ever seemed before. She didn’t want to look at the man beside her. After a few minutes she rose to her feet, coughed and shook the leaves from her coat.
‘Aaron!’ she called out. ‘Atlas!’
The two huge, well-groomed dogs came running back to their mistress and snuffed her tenderly.
‘Down!’ the woman shouted. Her voice had grown high and harsh. She hooked the leather leashes to their collars again and pulled the two dogs forcefully along behind her. Without looking back, she ran through the wet leaves, up the path and into her lovely garden. She locked and bolted the door behind her.
Inside, in the warmth of her English-style living room, the woman sat on her soft couch. Before her on the walnut coffee table stood a stiff glass of cognac. Her feet were tucked away securely in thick woollen slippers. Yet still the woman trembled. She picked up the snifter, but the trembling grew worse and worse, until she had to put it back on the table without a sip.
Why did I eat poop? she thought as the cognac gleamed golden in the glass.
Outside the man rose to his feet. He stared for a long time at the spot where the two boluses had lain, then turned his gaze from that spot to the house.
The canal curved smoothly and calmly through the city. A little further along, the old trees stood green and unperturbed. He could hear the pebbles crunching beneath his feet. It was very quiet in this part of town, but the man covered his ears with his hands to protect himself from the noise that came from within:
Why in God’s name did I eat poop? said the pounding at his eardrums.
Why did I eat poop?
Translated by Sam Garrett
32
Joost Zwagerman
Winnie and the Innocence of the World
Winnie en de onschuld
The love song of a clandestine guardian angel
Ten minutes ago Winnie was still thinking the world should simply end. This morning she had a fight with someone I don’t know. I expect it’s one of those clever dicks trying to claw their way up the ladder at that rubbish advertising company that has taken her on as a temp. The spat wasn’t serious, but believe me, less significant incidents have been known to send Winnie into a broody spin over corruption, mortal sin, violent revolution, environmental disaster and total annihilation. Winnie is one of those people who at the first little setback console themselves with the thought that everything on earth will inevitably come to a crashing end. But it’s the height of summer, luckily, and she’s walking down the street in a T-shirt (white) and jeans (skinny, ripped at the knee), and the sun, which is, after all, blameless, makes her skin glow, so it’s no surprise that Winnie is already thinking of other, more appealing things: a glass of beer, a shady terrace, a filter cigarette.
If you really want to know: I was once in love with Winnie. Once. Now I just love her the way, on a day when I’m ready to face whatever I have to face, I also love the sun. It was one of the few things we had in common, Winnie and I: we loved the sun. On summer days in the village where she and I used to live together in my rundown garden shack, half the inhabitants would rush off to the beach to scorch themselves in the sun alongside the tourists. On those days we would ride our bikes along the quiet streets, exhilarated. Winnie perked up when there was less traffic, with all the cars parked at the seaside blinking in the sun. Winnie despised cars, and especially their drivers, but as soon as they were out of sight and the hatred inside her ebbed, she became receptive to the love I was always so keen to smother her in.
The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics) Page 53