The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men

by Georges T. Dodds

  The funeral over, the elder took the younger by the hand and brought him home to Haarlem with him. Neither one dared look behind them.

  On their way, wishing to break with their past, they opened the cage of the last skylark their father had trained. Disoriented, it perched momentarily on little Jan’s finger, tottered as if inebriated with its sudden liberty, flapped its wings, rose, turned, and tore off towards sunnier climes beyond the horizon where the big windmills seem to grind up the fog continually—without even a word of goodbye

  CHAPTER II

  Adrian’s wife was older than he. Widowed, already a mother, she had made him understand the very day of their nuptials, that her late husband having been rich, and Adrian not being so, she did not wish to have any new children who would be beneath, as she put it, their uterine sister, and consequently that they would have no children together. Dumbfounded, the young man could only mutter:

  “If only you had told me earlier!”

  “What for? It was time enough tonight.”

  “But I’ll make money, I’ll work...”

  “I certainly hope so, I chose you for that very reason.”

  Adrian had lowered his head, and never since raised it.

  On the whole, Adelaide Brinckleymann was a good woman. A barmaid whom Brinckleymann had married after a country fair, and whom he had put in charge of the Brinckleymann café, she had almost been forced to a quasi-avaricious stinginess. He was an easy-going drinker, gambler, eater and drinker, and not, like most of his race, of a cold and near-melancholic disposition; his bursts of laughter were enough to split a beer stein. As long as the party went on all night, he was always ready to put the tab he had encouraged his friends to build over the day onto his own tab, the ledger of profits and losses. With his potbelly, his widely-set jaws so well adapted to chowing-down that his cheeks seemed horizontal, and especially the crimson blush of his bloated face, Brinckleymann should have lived in the days of Franz Hals, whose wide-ranging and bold genius would have immortalized him, among the marvels of a nearby museum, in the forefront of his banquet of freebooters. The cellar was emptying without the till filling. A few more years would have brought ruin. Adelaide, having brought nothing more into the marriage than her corsage and her work ethic, was constantly careworn. Nevertheless, her first husband dead, dead of natural-causes, of no other sickness than a week of partying, she had promised herself a husband who would take on all the worries, and would keep as quiet as she had.

  She could have found no better.

  The clientele changed: the old, now fewer since they could not pay up their tabs on a regular basis, were complemented by a more profitable one of merchants and landlords. The establishment kept the name of its founder: Café Brinckleymann, but the new manager, Adrian Maas, appeared more like a servant in his own home.

  The good folk, sitting side by side on the moleskin-covered benches lining the walls, enveloped in the smoke of large cigars and long clay pipes, rarely moving but to unfold a newspaper or pick up a glass, their lips speechless, their motions noiseless, resembled a row of well-oiled, silent automatons arrayed behind smoky windows. Adrian served them, often leaning against the door with his towel under his arm, glancing around but oblivious, given that he lived there, to the originality of this Haarlem landmark. The bells and the famous organ pealed out their songs in the church over to the left, but Adrian heard none of it. However, a single sharp clang struck by his wife had him scurrying to see who needed him. One of the automatons wished to pay, or was in need of oil; there was change to make, a stein to fill. Then he would return his post.

  When the museum opened, a few strangers wandered past, some countrymen from adjoining provinces, Friesian, whom a stray beam of sunlight would on occasion light up by the forehead-strap and pendant-decorated blinders in a glitter of gold. Dogs, their tongues hanging out, followed the bakers’ and herb-sellers’ carts. Adelaide rang again. Adrian leaned his elbow on the marble top of the waxed oak counter behind which she sat in state. The great array of windows behind her allowed a view of a narrow courtyard with tiers of red geraniums that conferred a pinkish hue to the nape of her neck and the rims of her ears. He admired her at length: pink-complexioned, fresh, blond, chubby, bearing a vague smile, as if dozing from the rocking of her ample bosom and its endless drone. When she drew him from his reverie, her finger stretched out, her rings glistening less than her skin, pointing out a drop of spirits or the ring left by a saucer on the last table vacated by a customer, he would sigh, and wipe it down.

  This love, which the wife’s crabby dominance only allowed to blossom on rare occasions, Adrian’s simple heart ended up reallocating in friendship upon Saskia, his predecessor’s daughter. She believed him to be her father, and every time she, in chatting with her dolls, called him “dad” he would hug her and feel his life was not so bad after all. He missed her more than she missed him when they sent her off to school as a day-boarder. Every morning he would prepare her little lunch-basket, hiding all sorts of treats, which her mother pretended not to see, under her primers. He would see her there and pick her up again at the end of the day.

  On his way back from Rotterdam, he was not without some apprehension as to how the imposing Adelaide, decidedly stingy, would welcome little Jan, now their dependant. A last hesitation was slowing his steps across the square, when Saskia, serving a doll’s dinner-party on an outdoor table on the terrace, spying them out, left her games, jumped up to hang on Jan’s neck, whom she then breathlessly pushed towards the counter, her hands clapping, crying out loudly: “Oh! mommy, daddy’s brought a little brother.”

  The mother did not contradict her, smiled at the lad, and Adrian always reckoned that it was thanks to Saskia’s intervention that his wife had not pouted for more than a minute.

  The two children grew up together.

  The part of the bench along the great array of windows was their little nook, usually empty, for the customers generally lined up near the entrance. They play-acted a wedding, being husband and wife. They imitated their mother and father: Jan set the table, did the cooking, the groceries, the big jobs; Saskia sat and made tick marks on a chalkboard with the gravity of her mother tabulating accounts on the counter, losing patience with his slow progress, accusing him of being good-for-nothing, then, seeing him heavy-hearted and on the brink of tears, she would quickly give up her shrewish role, call him silly for crying over nothing, sit him in her place, fix the awkwardness brought on by her scolding, and climb up onto her knees on the bench to hug him and force-feed him the better part of their play meal. His cheeks bloated, he hesitated between hugs and cookies, eventually passively accepting both. However, being timid and no glutton, he preferred the kisses, not daring to return to the candies.

  One day, Adelaide told her daughter that it was not appropriate to hug little boys all the time. Jan moved off to the other end of the café to sulk, and Saskia, surprised, asked which boy, for in her mind Jan was not a little boy; he was her brother. The mother did not answer, but that night in her room she asked her husband point-blank what kind of future he intended to provide for Jan. Was he addressing the situation? Had he even considered the question? At 14 he was no longer a child. Why continue sending him to school? Given that he was penniless would it not be better for him to learn a trade, a useful job which would allow him to be self-sufficient later on? She recounted the earlier events. Without reading into these games more than was reasonable, she wished them to stop. Any minute now these children would learn that they were in no way related, their friendship could blossom into love, and their separation would then be far more painful than now.

  So much foresight dumbfounded the good man.

  “My poor little Jan!” he repeated, having indeed never thought of such things. The children were so happy together. Jan was still only 14. He congratulated himself at seeing him playing and laughing so nicely, eating and running so well. A thought frequently tormented him: it was that the others, his other brothers and sister
s, died as a result of their closeted life, their wretched roach’s life in a Rotterdam basement. Here, in the open air, with the care and food that were lacking there, he heartily wished to save the last-born, the little Jan. Honey, the others, it was only in their 20th year that the horrible sickness...and his little brother was still only…My God! how dreadful, at the least cough…

  He was almost sobbing. Adelaide, even-tempered, powerfully moved, comforted him, multiplied her words of support in her good-times voice: He was not thinking. He could not see clearly! He had daguerreotype of the poor brothers and sisters of which he spoke. Well, all were good looking, drawing it from their father—Philip Maas their father—dead of a weak chest. Adrian, meanwhile, had survived and his young brother, Jan, would live because they took from their mother, still alive, if off her head. He need only compare, look at himself, then look at Jan. Look, look, you big puppy-dog, do you not both share the same nose, mother Maas’ nose? See for yourself...

  Adrian checked. A teardrop was hanging from the inner crease of his left eye. In squishing it to dry under the pad of his thumb, he felt his nose, verified his wife’s assertion, and went into the room next door where Jan slept and from whence he thought he had heard a groan. Yes, the sleeping child, his face sunken in the white of the pillowcase, also clearly showed their mother’s nose, long, round and pendulous at the tip, the color of unripe prunes.

  Jan was not sleeping but had been listening and had indeed moaned plaintively. He kept quiet, pretending to be asleep when Adrian came in, but alone again in the darkness, he opened his eyes and burrowed under his covers to cry at his leisure. So, he had been mistaken until now: Saskia was not his sister. The lie exposed tore him apart. They would send him away. He recalled the need, expressed by Adelaide, for a quick separation, and what was no less heart-wrenching, what she had said about his resembling his brother. He feared being ugly, of making Saskia laugh at him. Remembering, finally, the remainder of the conversation, he understood, without trying to figure out why, that his nose, which he already imagined flushed red in response to Saskia’s malice, was, on the other hand, a kind of guarantee of good health. He fell back to sleep, bewildered and not knowing whether to rejoice or lament.

  Keeping all he had heard that night to himself, Jan unknowingly took on the habit of scratching his nostrils. The frequency of this gesture surprised Saskia, who teasingly asked him why he always looked like a preening cat. He shut himself up in silence, kept to the shadows, intimidated by the least glance his way, imagining that what he most feared was occurring: that his nose was expanding and reddening by the minute. From then on he bore the humble smile and resigned sadness that were to be his forever.

  They apprenticed him to a gardener. At first he would spend his evenings at home with his family, but during the winter he would often stay in a room at his employer’s, a small bachelor pad, simple and clean, at the back of the garden atop a storage shed for the greenhouses. As the heater, the upkeep of which was his responsibility, was located in this shed, he enjoyed, on the floor above, a temperature that allowed him to spend a portion of his nights engaged in one of his favorite pursuits: reading books which, little by little, filled the shelves he had built around his room. His master limited himself to jokingly chiding him when he had to call on him several times after a long night. Jan provided him, in a seemingly carefree manner, with the welcome results of a number of horticultural techniques forgotten and rediscovered in old books. The good man, guileless and honest, soon let him sleep, allowing him to work how and when he wished, telling all, with a wink of his eye, that his apprentice would go far, would bring back—who knows?—the Haarlem of legend, where the bulb of certain tulips sold for several thousand florins.

  Saskia, having become a beautiful young woman, blonde, pink-complexioned, her bosom giving, like a summer’s peach, a longing for a bite, happy with the excellent reputation garnered by the one she continued to call her brother, would greet him with a bright smile, reproaching him for his infrequent visits. He was smart enough, yet he still buried himself in those terrible books.

  “If only that would shrink my nose,” Jan would answer, smiling. She told him off for bearing a grudge so long, thinking that he was referring to some childish teasing from long ago, and she insisted, to punish him, that he take her for an outing every Sunday.

  When one day, at the noon hour, sitting pensively behind the cash register where she was taking her mother’s place, she had, after her customary greeting to him, more quickly than usual returned to her embroidery and thoughts, he in turn had laughingly wagered with her that he could guess what she was thinking about. What an idea! She was thinking...no she was not thinking of anything, really. Bending over he whispered a name in her ear, that of Martin Heltzius, the son of a textile manufacturer, and, seeing her blush and her bosom heaving, he tenderly apologized. A few days before, Heltzius junior, for whom Jan had fagged when they were together in school, accosted him, something he never did, and feigning a cheerfulness that the jiggling of his chubby body belied, had him come to his home, offered him tea and cigars, took him to soak up the sun along the shores of the Spaarne, arm in arm as if they were inseparable. Jan, wishing to calm his fears, told him to relax, that he understood the friendly interest he bore towards his dear sister Saskia, and would happily pass on a message. Martin jumped up and hugged him around the neck in the middle of the street. He was a good boy, one of wealthiest born of the Haarlem merchant-class. Jan became the two lovers’ confidant, not, however, without having assured himself, with a tactful honesty, that her mother would approve of such a marriage for Saskia.

  In the middle of a flowerbed, having perused the newspaper he had just received, he returned his attention to unpotting some hyacinths, when his master, unfolding the newspaper he had tossed on a bench, asked him what number had come up in the Amsterdam Orphans’ lottery. Jan had not looked. He had some tickets, but had given them to Saskia as a present. The florist insisted this was not the case, that Saskia had only accepted half the tickets if he would keep the other half. He eventually remembered that he must indeed have, somewhere up there in the drawer of his table, among some seed packets, five extra tickets. Once he was done, he would try to remember to go and have a look.

  The old fellow, less patient, wanted to see right away, climbed the stairs, turned over the drawers, full of a jumble of things, moved over into the light of the open window, tickets in one hand, newspaper in the other, read, tried to call the one he loved like a son, but could only frantically wave the ticket, held out at arms’ length, choking, collapsing in joy against the casement-window. Jan rushed up to help him, compared the ticket with the newspaper, saw that to avoid any error they reprinted the winning number several times throughout the paper, in letters and in numbers, and said calmly that he was lucky, for now he could buy Saskia the long-chain pocket watch she had for so long wished for.

  “At least go and tell your parents.”

  “Not the way I am, no sir”

  Then, his hands black with potting soil, his sleeves pulled up, without a tie, in gardeners’ boots and apron, he slowly proceeded to wash up.

  Before he was even finished, his boss, who could not wait to bring the story to the Brinckleymann café, or to disseminate it on the way, brought back a good part of the city with him, Adelaide and her husband in the lead. The clapping died down and the staircase was creaking under the press of those wishing to congratulate him. Among all those there, including the silent and intimidated winner and his crazed employer, dancing with joy, the happiest was Adrian, who wrapping his little brother up in his arms, could only speak in monosyllables. The floor of the little room was at risk of collapsing. Those who could, got in where they could. Many curiosity-seekers were still coming in to see the newspaper in which it was printed, to see the ticket, and especially to see Jan, the winner of the jackpot, who when poor had only a few friends, but now shook the many hands extended towards him and mumbled some thank-yous, overcome in the end,
not by his sudden fortune, but by the emotions of others. Upon the request of those below, he had to present himself in the window frame in the image of a conqueror. The bravos rang out twice as loud in a last burst. Jan, returning to his elder brother, held out his hand to him.

  “Well you know, brother, it’s halfsies.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t refuse me. Accept half...”

  “No, it’s yours, and yours alone. Not a guilder for me or my wife. We don’t need anything. You, you’re young.”

  Adelaide had pinched her husband on the elbow, but not early enough to interrupt his answer. Besides, Adrian was delighted at his own quickness, for he knew and understood that to avoid the domestic scene he now foresaw, he would have hesitated to appear disinterested, however sincere it might be. He further added, in the faint hope of softening his irascible wife:

  “My word, little brother, you’ll be able to buy the little Saskia a lovely present.”

  “Ah now, you blabbermouth, we can’t hear anyone but you,” said Adelaide with the ghost of a smile, “Mr. Jan knows better than you what he should do.”

  She curtsied, then embraced and invited Jan, now Mr. Jan, my dear Mr. Jan, and went home repeating: “’Til this evening, ’til this evening,” at the bottom of the stairs. Adrian followed her. Jan, delivered, went back to his cleaning up. Then, dressed, with several hours to kill, he chose a book and decided to go for a walk. The remarks, the glances, the exclamations, the questions with which each passerby assailed him, his story already spread everywhere, not to mention a group of children who stuck to him like glue, forced him towards an alley into which he entered, in order to take a shortcut. Gossips to the left and to the right, assembled and drawing close to look him over and complement him, formed two rows of ample bosoms between whose happy jiggling he had to proceed slowly and prudently, like a river-pilot entering one of those difficult canals, from which he knew he would never emerge if he unfortunately came under the sway of the canal-bank eddies. This pass traversed, he escaped to the Brinckleymann café.