We must found the club,' I said once more. 'If we wait too long with it there'll be enemy clubs already; you know that too.' Again I had him come along to the box room where I now lit a candle. Then I wrote our names down in an old pocket diary I had brought out from underneath the chest. 'Now the club exists,' I said, having read out our names slowly. 'It's called the Burial Vault Club, the B.V.C. Everyone who's a member, in his garden we can make a burial vault. That's very important.'
'You understand, of course,' I continued, 'that someone has to be the boss who, for instance, says when there's a meeting. Best to be someone at whose place the club has been founded: Werther nodded but I didn't believe that he was listening attentively. I got up and went and leant against the wall.
'I'm the chairman,' I -said, 'that's already been written down. You're the secretary but that has to remain a secret. You'll become secretary of course, but the chairman does everything that needs to be done: it's always like that.' Werther now asked whether the dub would only concern itself with the making of burial vaults.
'Club members also make windmills,' I said, 'this has a lot to do with burial vaults, as of course you understand: Cause the one who can make a burial vault, who thought of it first, he's also the boss of the mills. If there's someone who wants to mess up the club, his prick'll be cut off. Let me tell you exactly what kind of club it'll be'
I, however, no longer knowing what else to say, looked for old shoe laces, divided them between us and lit them. Having blown them out we sniffed the smell they continued to spread, smouldering. I blew out the candle so that by swinging our arms about we were able to make fiery lines and circles that produced a faintly purple light in the dark: for a good while we continued to sit there lost in thought. I felt sad. 'We should go to the sand,' Werther said. He was going to meet Dirk.
We went on our way, the three of us.
When we reached the plain behind the dike, the wind had risen slightly, blowing little clouds of dust along from time to time. As we made our way, we jumped in and out of potholes during which we searched for objects the diggers might have left behind but there was never anything more than an insignificant plank or a half buried newspaper.
When we reached a generous pit, quite deep, I requested them to join me and sit down inside it. It was cold; the wind pushed a puff of sand into our hair. 'This is the first meeting of the club,' I said. 'The chairman is going to make a speech.' I waited a moment. 'Dirk, you have to say something and then yield the floor to me,' I said, "cause you're to be the assistant secretary.' He, however, said nothing and plucked at the roots of some grass. Again some sand was blown on to our heads. 'You can become assistant secretary,' I went on, 'I can see to that. It stays a secret of course because the chairman does everything that needs to be done. You must now yield the floor to the chairman: He remained silent. I now addressed my request to Werther. 'Elmer, go and make your speech,' he said.
I got up and began: 'Honourable members. The club has been founded. It's called the So there's a club but that's not all there is to it, not by a long chalk. It must not become a club of which we're merely members; it must be a club with clout. A dormant membership is no earthly good to us. And members who, when the chairman asks them to say something, don't: they're a complete waste of time. They'd better resign.'
'We should pull a tree down over there,' Dirk said, pointing at the municipal gardens behind him. He took a long strong piece of rope from his pocket.
'You're an enemy of the club,' I said. 'You must be bound.' We grabbed hold of him, cast the noose, already present in the rope, round his ankles and dragged him around in circles. He held forth in a tearful voice that we should let him go free, instead of which we clambered from the pit and pulled him by the rope over the edge. Because the rope was cutting into his skin, he now began to cry terribly so that we let go of him and ran away. When it turned out he wasn't coming after us, we began to amble along normally and continued our way across the bare plain.
'It's his own fault,' I said. 'He wants to mess up the club 'cause he's the spy; this happens frequently, that someone first behaves as if he wants to join the club and then goes and tells everything to the enemy.'
We now arrived at a boggy bit of land which we called the wilderness. Here, in a shallow brown little stream that seemed to well up from the earth and which ran through a pool with reeds into a ditch, we made a dam from stones causing a dirty little waterfall. Then we tore it down again and, hidden behind elder bushes, we threw the stones at little flocks of sparrows until we hit one. It was impossible to tell whose throw it was. Though the bird seemed to have been crushed, it turned out, once Werther had pushed the stone away from it, still to be trembling slightly. We kept looking at it glumly. 'This is the secret bird of the spies' club,' I said, "cause they've founded one. They're very wicked; they don't dare to do anything themselves and they send birds to collect letters.'
We stayed and waited in order to take the creature with us to be burned once it was dead, but the movements wouldn't stop. In the end I quickly built a little pyre from bits of old reeds and asked Werther to lay the creature upon it. 'This is the punishment for spying when our club's building waterfalls,' I said, once Werther had acceded to my request. I lit the little pyre but the flames went out each time. In the end all my matches were finished and we left it behind, smouldering. The light was already fading to dusk. We walked along in silence in dejected mood.
In the vicinity of Werther's house we entered a little grocer's shop where Werther bought some licorice. I wanted to wait outside at first but he urged me to come with him. It was dark inside and it smelled of damp earth.
While we waited for someone to come to the front, I became convinced that a trapdoor must be hidden behind the counter, giving access to an extensive subterranean space. Here the earth creatures lived who crept along between the tree roots that served as pillars. Without Werther seeing it I held on with both hands to a rod that ran along the counter, so I wouldn't suddenly be dragged below ground without being able to resist.
At last a pale little woman with grey hair came forward who went to count out the licorice. 'Excuse me please, excuse me,' Werther suddenly asked in a slow, stupid voice. 'How do they actually make licorice?' The woman said she didn't know.
'They make licorice from special flour,' I said. 'And from herbs that grow under trees: those are actually the most important, 'cause there's only a little bit of flour in it: In fact, I hadn't a clue as to its manufacture. 'I think it's odd, you not even knowing that,' I went on. 'You're quite a dunce really:
When we got outside I said: 'You can stay in the club if you know a lot. You'll have to get out otherwise. Members who are stupid are no good to us at all.' We sucked the licorice and trundled on with no clear plan. We must see to it that it becomes a good club,' I -added, dully.
We reached the shelter at the terminus of the bus route. Here we went and sat shivering on the muddy floor and remained silent a good while. Finally, in order to say something, I asked how old his sister was. 'She'll be nine,' he said. The wind had increased slightly and slipped rustling past the wooden walls.
'I've got a brother and he's run away from home,' I said: 'he's on a ship.' Once I had assured myself of the fact that Werther was listening, I went on: 'He's just as old as I am.' Werther now asked why he had run away.
'It's quite a story,' I replied, 'and a very sorry one.' I waited a moment.
'I've never told anyone before,' I continued, 'but I don't mind telling you, but you mustn't tell anybody.' This he promised. 'Fine; I said, 'but if I tell you and you give it away then you'll be cut to death - you understand that don't you?' He nodded. 'It's really too late to tell it all now,' I said, 'for the afternoon rushes to an end: darkness is falling already.' (These last eleven words I remembered as having read them somewhere.)
'That brother was a real rotter,' I began, "cause he always acted mean. He's cut off fishes' heads. And then my mother locked him up in the cellar. He climbed out t
hrough the window when it was dark. He took almost noth'n with him, just the blankets from his bed.' I waited for a moment and added:
'D'you think I enjoy telling you something like this? Then you're mistaken. It's something really bad. That's why I'm so sad this afternoon. D'you know his name?'
Once again I waited a moment. I couldn't think of a name offhand. 'He's called Andre,' I then said. 'And the ship's the Prosper: that means they sail forwards.' (I had read the name on a dredger.) 'He's sailing far, far away but when he comes home he'll bring back an animal and that's for me.'
A bus driver chased us from the shelter. We ambled to my house. 'Andre once brought me back a parrot,' I said, 'which he'd bought. It would say anything you did. But it died. All animals die anyway.'
Having reached my house I invited him to the box room again. 'There's going to be a big festive gathering of the club at my place,' I said: 'we need to discuss that.' When we were sitting on the mat behind the jute sacking once more and I had lit the candle again, I said: 'It's really, really bad what happened to my brother then, but one mustn't always be sad. This is why the club is having a festive gathering tomorrow afternoon at my place. I'll prepare a wow of a programme. You must see to it you're on time, otherwise you run the chance of arriving and it's already started. I'll be making a big speech.'
'Can Martha come along?' he asked. 'That would be possible,' I said slowly, in a grave tone of voice. We might make her a prospective member; she can become a proper member later on then.'
Mute silence flowed in; the cold was making. us stiff. 'I'll show you the photograph of that brother,' I said and I requested him to wait while I went inside.
In the living room where dusk was already settling, my mother was sitting near the window, snoozing. Carefully, I took the frame in which a mass of little photographs had been arranged behind glass from the wall. In doing so I lightly knocked both the blown eggs hanging on either side from thin wires. (These were a large white ostrich egg and a smaller, black egg of an emu. Each time there was some horseplay or something was being thrown, my mother would cry: 'Mind the ostrich egg! Mind the egg of the emu!')
On my way to the box room I chose a small image of a boy on bare feet beside a large dog, in a kind of park. (I didn't know who it was.) 'This is Andre,' I said, 'this is that brother I've had so much sorrow over and still have now.' Werther inspected the photo thoroughly but then he also began to study the others. 'They've got nothing to do with it,' I said and snatched the frame roughly from his hands. Doing so, I banged it against the doorpost so that a crack appeared in the glass, in the corner. I said nothing and returned the photos to their place in the same unnoticed way I had taken them in.
On leaving, Werther declared he would be coming next day. I did not accompany him further on his way than the exit to the garden and took my leave, mumbling.
Until meal time, out of the mat from the box room, I built a tent at the edge of the garden, up against the neighbours' bicycle shed; in the middle I planted a heavy concrete block in the soil.
'This is the centre of the temple,' I said softly. I set down an old, cracked casserole on the block and made a little wood fire inside it, slipping into reverie as I did so. A lot of smoke developed. I took the old blue cover of an exercise book, smoothed it out and, having gone and sat down in the tent, I wrote on it in chalk: 'To Andre, who's a brother. On the ship, On Board that is. They must give him this letter'. I rolled up the sheet and cast it into the flames.
Now something strange happened: in the adjacent garden, footsteps approached and halted right next to the tent. I put the lid on the casserole. There was some mumbling and immediately following that a bucket of water was tipped out on to the tent. I sat there quite motionless and didn't make a sound. The water did not come in but ran down in noisy streams. Then the footsteps removed themselves, a handle rattled and a door closed. I thought it possible that the casting into the fire of the letter and the crashing down of the water enjoyed a magical connection but I could not understand it. Until I was called to have my meal I continued to sit there, shivering. 'He stinks,' my brother said when I was sitting at the table: 'He's just like a ruddy bloater. He only does filthy things. It has to be filthy or else he won't do it.'
I spent the next day decorating our bedroom. I fixed branches of Christmas trees I had brought in off the street to the wall with drawing pins and braided them with strips of white paper. Then I was going to install the wire for the lights.
A good while back already I had been allowed to buy a sixty cents doorbell transformer but until now I had not been allowed to use it because my mother didn't trust the device. I was now allowed to on condition that I showed it beforehand to an acquaintance in the neighbourhood, a small, hunchbacked tailor called Rabbijn: he had the reputation of being knowledgeable on the subject of electricity. 'Yes, that's an ordinary transformer,' he said at once, but he held me up a long time, telling me how the poles had to be connected even though this was clearly marked on the bakelite casing. His wife, who was racked with rheumatism and could barely move her swollen fingers any more, looked at the device with her poor eyesight and said: 'You shouldn't play pranks with such things.'
Her husband now asked me whether I knew that there were people who took the covers from electric sockets and held their fingers to the poles for fun.
At the same time he told of what had happened to him a few days previous. In his work room, which looked out on to the garden, he had fixed up all kinds of loose wiring which hung like washing lines around the room. One late afternoon, while he was cutting, holding up the cloth to get some good light on it, he had cut through the wire connecting the lamp. A bang and a flame had occurred; he had received a violent shock and a short-circuit had been caused instantly. Neighbours in the adjacent garden had come rushing in and had described the light phenomenon as being a 'blue spurt of fire'. He himself was convinced that a layer of worn lacquer on the eyes of the scissors had saved his life for him.
On returning home I fixed up the transformer and connected three bicycle lamps to it which I allowed to be half hidden by the fir branches. On a piece of cardboard I drew in coloured crayon: 'Join the B.V.C.' and hung it among the greenery. Finally I switched on the current. Then I asked my father to come and have a look.
A hand in his pocket, he looked round with a mocking expression curled round his mouth. 'What's the B.V.C.7' he asked. 'That's a secret which only the members know,' I said in apparent triumph but in fact depression had taken me in its grip. It had begun to thaw and it was raining lightly.
At the table on the landing I went and wrote a programme that ran as follows: '1. Meeting opened by the chairman. 2. The chairman welcomes those present and explains the purpose of the meeting.'
I couldn't think of anything else after this. For a long time I continued to sit staring in the half light. In the end I added: '3. Speech in which the points to be touched upon are: a. a club with clout; b. no dormant membership; c. nobody may act funny to members or to the chairman; d. a department will be instituted for building and technology, primarily for mills that run on wind; the head of this is called the mill-wright: he has to be someone who has built many mills before.' I made a neat copy of everything and rolled up the paper. Then I surveyed the decorations and the burning lights. Silence was all around; occasionally the voices of children in the street or the barking of a dog would penetrate, as if only from a distance: it was as though the grey sky, like dull felt, dampened all the racket.
It was past three o'clock when Werther and his sister arrived. She was a pale, podgy little girl with a flattened face. She wore a knitted dress of orange wool that emphasised the cumbrousness of her figure even more clearly. She spoke in a whisper almost, after which she would burst out giggling time and again. We went and sat on the beds in the bedroom.
I had switched off the lighting in advance but now I lit it all of a sudden. Martha said: 'O-oh'; Werther looked round, silent and indifferent.
I got up, went and
stood behind a table and unfolded my piece of paper. 'I hereby declare the great festive gathering of the B.V.C. open,' I said. With a ruler I banged a few times on the table. 'Come in,' Martha said and began to giggle. 'Isn't Dirk coming?' Werther asked. 'I think not,' I replied, curtly.
'As chairman I welcome the esteemed members and the prospec tive member,' I said. 'Hi-de-hi,' said Werther. 'Let me set out the purpose of this meeting,' I went on. 'It's not the intention that our club should only have afternoon parties: we shall have to have other meetings, about serious things. We must end up with a good, strong club, a club with clout. Dormant members we can do without. Members who are just members but otherwise only make mugs out of everyone, are a waste of time. The next issue I wish to speak on is the fact that there are members who act funny to club members or to the chairman. That's not on. Esteemed members! A department is to be instituted for building and technology, primarily for mills that run on wind. The head of this is called the mill-wright: he has to be someone who has built many mills before. Or someone very good at installing electric wires for lights 'cause that's got something to do with it. That's what I had to say,' I concluded, scrunched up the paper and went and sat next to Werther. 'The afternoon meeting has begun,' I said vaguely.
Half a minute past during which no one said anything. 'When does it begin?' Werther asked. 'Only a few members have turned up,' I replied. 'It's a shame to perform the entire programme for just the few attending.' Werther now proposed picking up Dirk. The three of us went to his house.
The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy Page 29