The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy

by Richard Huijing

  'You can't shoot through a layer of feathers,' I said. I declared the undertaking, though pleasurable, to be useless. Maarten fought my arguments emphatically. He maintained that my shot had missed but that his had struck a duck in the chest at which little feathers had flown about. 'You saw it, didn't you?' he asked. 'That those feathers burst loose and flew up?' 'I didn't see it all that well,' I replied feebly; I knew it couldn't be true.

  He now added to this that the stricken animal couldn't continue flying but would have to come down slowly, to bleed to death. Doubtless we would be able to find it next day, so his expectation ran. We walked back in silence.

  I went along with him to his place. His parents were out. In his little room he didn't connect up the electric lamp but lit a candle. Then he took the fitting from the ceiling and connected an instrument to a lead that crackled and made blue sparks. He had brought it out from a chest. The moment it worked he blew out the candle after which we continued to watch in silence.

  There were two meccano arms with carbon rods from an old battery at their ends; the rods had been brought close together; in between hovered a blue, rustling little flame. The whole thing had been mounted on a plank which Maarten set on the ground. He invited me to come and sit next to him on the edge of the bed to watch. We pushed the cloths of the canopy aside.

  'It isn't even a strong current,' he said. 'I've put resistors in it. It's perfectly alright to touch the rods; it won't give you a shock.' He invited me pressingly to touch them but this I did not dare. To divert his attention, I asked whether the device would ever go out of its own accord; he gave no answer to this. I sniffed the scent of the sparks and stared into the dark. Maarten's face could only barely be made out in the blue dusk.

  A moment later his parents came home. He rapidly put the device away but didn't light the candle. He listened and asked me to stay put, not moving a muscle. We breathed cautiously. His mother took a step inside, tried the light switch and muttered something; she halted a moment. I had my hands in my crotch and listened to the silence that began to rustle. My heart was pounding for I believed that, once we were discovered, something terrible would follow.

  When she had left again, Maarten still did not restore some light. We continued to sit in the dark. We have to talk carefully,' he said. I opened my mouth but was silent. Staring with wide open eyes into the darkness, I squeezed my genitals to find out how much force I need apply before it hurt. I believed I had to flee. 'I have to go home,' I said hastily: 'or else I'll get what-for.'

  Maarten showed me out through the window. I ran home quickly and crept up to the loft. Though the electric light was fine, I lit a candle I kept in the cabin trunk. Then I opened a window, brought out the cardboard box from beneath the roof tile and took the sheet of paper from it. I left the window open to listen to the wind making a gate rattle somewhere, for it had begun to blow.

  'I am in the Enchanted Castle', I wrote in pencil on the reverse of the sheet, 'but it is the houseboat of Death. I know that: it is going to sink into the deep'.

  Draught blew in which set the candle flame a-swaying so that the shadow of my head was swung to and fro across the white surface of the wall. It looked like a big black bird that had no wings, yet because of a mysterious power it could fly and it awaited me to do me harm.

  Folding the paper I fell prey to doubt as to the question where I might best put it away. Adding it to the rolled-up label in the wall I thought risky because perchance my brother might discover it. Neither did I think the spot underneath the roof tile could be trusted because the boys in the neighbourhood could see me hide the box from their gardens and betray where it could be found to my brother. I decided to keep it, folded up tiny, in my trouser pocket. The thirteen cents I left in the box which I put back in its place. Until I had to go to bed, I remained sitting by the candle.

  Late next morning, Maarten came to fetch me to go and find the duck said to have been struck. We set out at once. In case we saw fish in the water, I brought along a little net and a jam jar. The weather was just as dreary as the day before; it seemed as though dusk was already falling in the morning.

  We carefully searched the area we had been the evening before but found nothing. I wasn't expecting to and only looked around mechanically. The grey sky gave the water of the watercourse a matt, cloudy colour; I believed it possible that weed-encrusted watermonsters lived on the I had thought earlier - that could come up to drag us down into the deep by our manly parts. I looked regularly at the surface of the water therefore.

  When we were forced to abandon the search, Maarten declared that we were too late and that the bird had already been taken by others. I did not contradict this. We walked on and passed a narrow, shallow side-ditch where we went fishing with the net. There wasn't much to see. I did bring up an oblong, beetle-like creature with little pincers. It was about half an index finger long. I dared not touch it, but lifted it with two sticks; then I threw it away as far as possible from the water into the grass. I wasn't easy about this, however, so I found the animal again and ground it into the soil with my heel. 'It's a rotten mean creature, I read so,' I said to Maarten. 'It has to be killed.' In fact I wanted to make the beetle's return to the water impossible, for he would doubtless inform the watermonsters about me otherwise.

  Soon we reached a shallow spot where clearly attempts had been made to make a dam; everywhere there were bundles of brushwood and stones in the water that had become shallow. Here I discovered a big gramophone horn in the shape of a calix, most of it under water. We fished it out. At its broadest point it had a diameter of three quarters of a metre, no less. It had been painted green on the outside, pale pink within. The paint had flaked off here and there. 'It's mine,' I said, "cause I discovered it. If you find something, for example, and you're the first to point it out then it's yours.' I rinsed the horn clean, knocked the water off, and hollered into it. Then I went and acted daft with it. 'Listen folks,' I cried, 'to perform for you now the great elephant Jumbo. Ta-ta, you sods!' We ambled on meanwhile. I put the horn across my shoulder with its opening facing backwards so I could continue to holler into it regularly. 'The one who has this horn is most powerful,' I thought. 'Maarten,' I said, 'listen. We've talked in passing about the club but it's got to be for real now. We mustn't wait at all any more for you know only too well that they're making hostile clubs everywhere.' When he let my words pass, I went on: 'If we found the club this afternoon we've got a horn for starters. And a club with a horn is very good indeed, in fact - you know that too. We can blow it when the meeting starts. It is of course best if the chairman does that. By this you can see it's a good club.'

  Maarten barely seemed to be listening. With my net he fished a few minnows from the ditch and put them in the jam jar. 'When we have a club we can also catch fish and make a pond together,' I said, half despondent already.

  At that moment an unknown boy in blue overalls was coming towards us. He was a head taller than me, at least, and had a pale, bony face and very pale blond hair. He came up to me with a leering expression, halted in front of me, studied the horn and tapped against it with his index finger. I began to tremble.

  He had small, sunken eyes. On his upper lip I saw scabby swellings like those of a skin complaint. He grinned malevolently, tapped, a little harder this time, against the hom and asked, taking no notice of Maarten, how I had got hold of it. I gripped the instrument convulsively and couldn't think of anything to say at first.

  'We fished it out of the ditch here,' I said. 'It'd been lying there for ages 'cause it'd been thrown away: it belonged to nobody.' I wanted to continue speaking but ran out of things to say. I looked at Maarten but he said nothing 'Well, as long as you know it's mine,' the boy said. 'It's not up to you, taking things away I've left here for the time being. D'you hear, laddie? Just you hand it back here: chop-chop.'

  'We need it badly,' I did still say, softly, but I knew the horn was lost. The boy grabbed it, took it from me and sauntered off. We halted and w
atched him go. Then we walked back home. The rain, which had been almost unnoticeably fine until now, became a little denser.

  'Ah, never mind,' I said, 'it was a bummer anyway. No use to anyone. You could see. Anyway, I have an uncle: he has loads of those horns: I can have as many from him as I want.' Maarten didn't reply; he held up the jam jar and peered at the fish.

  We must found the club instantly, this afternoon,' I said. 'Then we'll make an army - all good clubs have one. The chairman of the club becomes the chief: it's always done like that.' Maarten shook the jam jar and continued to be absorbed by the fish.

  Reaching my house, I requested him to come along to the loft. There, I opened the little window and showed him the box beneath the roof tile. 'That's the club's secret place,' I said. 'All the things that are written down we keep there: that's the cave 'cause nobody can get at it.'

  I looked for paper, put it on the cabin trunk and invited Maarten to draw up the first document together. 'First we must have an army,' I said, "cause a club without an army is noth'n.' I requested him to wait and quickly wrote down a few things. Then I read out: '1. There's a club army that can track down too. Should there be someone, for instance, who keeps on nicking horns then we go after him. Then he gets taken prisoner'. I saw that Maarten was looking at the stuffed-up gap in the wall. It had stopped raining; patches of light slid past in the sky.

  'So now the club's been founded,' I continued loudly. 'It's called the New Army Club, the N.A.C.' This last sentence I wrote down behind the figure Maarten was listening now, so I thought, but I didn't believe he was enthusiastic.

  'You have understood, haven't you, that it's very important that we make an army?' I asked. 'If the club wants to we can take that sod who's nicked our horn prisoner.'Cause I know his name and where he lives.'

  'Who is he then?' Maarten asked. This question put me on the spot. 'That has to remain a secret for now,' I replied, "cause the army isn't quite ready yet.' Just what I did mean, precisely, wasn't clear to me either. I quickly folded the sheet, laid it in the cardboard box and put it back beneath the roof tile. 'It's completely hidden,' I said. 'You really don't need to be afraid that someone'll find it. Should it rain, for instance, it'll stay dry 'cause the roof tile's over it.' That instant, I took the jam jar Maarten had put down on the floor and emptied it out on to the roof tile. Maarten uttered a fleeting cry but then watched quietly with me how the fish were washed away and disappeared down the guttering. 'They go in the ground because they're very dirty creatures,' I said inwardly. The jam jar I tossed into the garden where it flopped down to earth without breaking. I closed the window and went and stood behind the cabin trunk as though it were a shop counter. From here I looked at Maarten who continued to look out of the window. 'He's the cat and has got to go into the trunk,' I thought.

  'You don't have to become a member at once, today,' I said persuadingly. 'If you're not quite sure, you'd better wait until tomorrow.'Cause coming into the club right away is easy enough but then you'll become a dormant member, perhaps.'

  Maarten began to feel along the gap in the wall and pull out the paper stuffing in tatters. I made him stop this. 'That's something else that'll be included in the club's regulations,' I said: 'you're not allowed break anything in each other's houses. The one who does that has to leave.' I wrote down at once: '3. When there's a meeting in someone's house nobody may break anything. Anyone who does has to leave.' I read this to Maarten, took up the axe and began to knock plaster from the wall a good way beyond the hole. All of a sudden Maarten said that he had to go home, and he left. While he was going down the stairs I watched him furtively and then slipped quietly up to the loft again. I took out the paper I kept in my pocket, struck out what was on it on both sides and wrote: 'PLANT TORTURES. While it's still fixed to the plant, you can nail down a thin branch to the fence. Then it will slowly die. You can also cut into it and put ink on so it gets inside; then it goes a different colour completely and dies, but it takes very long.' I left a blank space and wrote a little lower down, in a new paragraph: 'If there's a toadstool you can light a fire of matchboxes underneath it. Then it gets roasted underneath while it's still in the ground 'cause it's still standing there.' In the final paragraph I put: 'If there are spiders on the plant you must make a fire underneath it too. Then they can't get away any more.' Having folded it, because I no longer thought my trouser pocket sufficiently safe, I put it under my vest on my chest.

  I called our cat, one with grey and white markings, upstairs and cherished her for a while. Then I fetched a few bits of biscuit from downstairs and put a tall, square little chest, which once had contained tea, in unstable equilibrium on the edge of the stairs with the opening towards me. I fed the cat some bits of biscuit and tossed the last few into the box. The cat walked into it, disturbed the balance with her weight and plummeted down inside it. I followed the fall assiduously. I returned to the loft to read the document concerning plants afresh. When I was on the verge of folding it up again I heard my brother coming upstairs, so I ate it.

  It was rainy on Monday morning as well; in the afternoon it stayed overcast. Having come from school, I wanted to go to the loft but my mother turned out to be busy up there, hanging the washing. Despite the chill, I now went and sat in the box room. When I was getting too cold for comfort, I lit a tin can with methylated spirit and looked into the rarefied, motionless light. 'This is the devotional flame,' I said solemnly. I caught a daddylong-legs and tossed it into the glow. 'Sacrifices are being made from all sides,' I said, half singing the words. From time to time I cast a glance into Maarten's garden.

  When I saw him, I put out the methylated spirit and sauntered up to him with indifferent tread. He was standing there in his rain coat looking up at the sky. 'Is it going to rain?' he asked. 'I think so,' said I, 'but not much: Hurriedly I went on: 'It doesn't matter whether it happens to be bad weather, for I've already got a club room where we can have meetings: we're allowed to use that always.' Maarten continued to look at the sky. 'It's there,' I said, pointing at the box room. 'There are members, perhaps, who don't think it's that good, because it's cold, but we're allowed to have a fire. That's a flame in a jar. It stands in front of the chairman and it doesn't go out yet so you don't have to throw anything on to it.' I asked him to come with me to see it but he announced that he had to run an errand, to a clockmaker's, to collect a repair. I went with him.

  As we walked along we said nothing for a long while. Finally I broke the silence. 'You can still join the club,' I said. 'Or don't you think the New Army Club's a good name?' I pointed out to him that a fresh meeting could be held in that case. When he replied that he thought a club of two members who, moreover, lived close to one another, was preposterous, I proposed a drive for new members. 'I don't want to be in a club at all,' Maarten said in the end. We were silent for a long while again. Once more I was the first to speak. 'Are you someone who's very quickly frightened?' I asked. 'Not at all,' he replied. 'Even so, I thought you weren't very brave,' I persevered. 'You don't look very brave really. I don't believe for a moment that you're really tough.' He said nothing back. Up until the shop we didn't exchange a word.

  A narrow little street was where we needed to go. We halted in front of the shop for there was something in the shop window we had to stay and look at. It was a composite piece of machinery which I first took to be a pair of scales. On closer inspection it proved, however, to be a machine without any useful purpose and only intended to amaze the public or to amuse.

  At the top, metal balls of varying sizes plunged at intervals into a brass bowl at which point a large hand indicated their weight. Then the balls fell into the compartments of a paddle wheel propelled by their weight. The traction of this wheel was passed, slowed down, to a very long arm going up and down a distance of a few centimetres, protruding from the machine. This supported two parallel carriageways, separated by fences, for a little racing car which ran incessantly up and down them, first the one, then the other: at the extremities
niftily constructed connecting bends saw to it that the little car could turn without colliding or tipping over and run back. This little vehicle moved me. It was a little red car bearing the registration W13'. On a black pennant the driver was holding, it read in pale blue letters: 'Death Ride'. His head was wrapped in a crash helmet and a leather mask that hid his face. In front of the whole thing stood a sign in capital lettering with the text: 'This Perpetuum, Racing Car Track, was assembled from 871 parts in 14 months (all Parts home made too). By a handicapped miner who seeks to provide for his livelihood in this way. Cards are available at 20 cents each or from J. Schoonderman, Beukenplein 8 hs. SC14,4,1,75 for ten.'

  Faded picture postcards bearing a depiction of the apparatus were lying roundabout. Quite a bit of dust had fallen. 'It's a fine thing,' I said. In reality I felt a great sadness approaching. 'I must go and see someone,' I said hurriedly when Maarten was preparing to go in, 'I'd forgotten about that: I've run out of time.' Before he had been able to reply I had already set off at a trot and left the little street. When I was sure he wouldn't catch up with me any more I went and stood by the ditch along the road and looked out keenly for pieces of wood, but I saw nothing of the kind floating about. In a porch I stayed and waited for Maarten. When he had passed me, I followed him at a distance all the way home. 'I'm walking behind him but he doesn't know that I'm following him,' I said to myself.

  Getting close to home I peered around carefully and discovered Maarten in his garden. I couldn't get to the loft yet, so I decided to stroll around for a while. It wasn't very cold; the drizzle felt lukewarm. I walked past Werther's house and made my way to the parks by the dike. Here, having looked round a bit to make sure, I entered the little spinneys.