'How's it possible that you can ride on water?' asked Isaac, surprised. 'It's a matter of practice,' said the man, 'I began by putting a pin down flat on the water. If you do that very carefully it stays afloat. Over a long period of time, I took ever more heavy objects. My bike was what I was after, of course, and in the end I did make my first measly circuits of the town pond. Now I ride across the entire world. I don't come ashore anywhere but because I must eat from time to time, I'll frequently ride up to a ship. I prefer to go in dark of night best of all. Everyone's asleep then. The first few times I went up to ships in broad daylight but people went all of a doodah then. First they cried out that this was the most beautiful thing they'd experienced in their entire lives and then they began to talk gibberish or they went mad. I intend to do forty-thousand kilometres across the mind a few kilometres more here or there, I don't: as long as I'm right round the globe. I want to do something no one's ever been able to do before. That's always been my ideal.' 'Are you never afraid of drowning?' Isaac asked.
'Why no,' said the man. 'It's the way you steer the thing, that's the clue, and carefully adding a touch more acceleration each time, and easing off. A high wave, for instance, you should never take at a great speed otherwise the sides of the tyres get wet and once that's happened, you're up the creek.' 'Yes, I can see that,' said Isaac who was looking at the man, full of admiration. The man was quite simply gorging himself. He drank too: lots of milk and alcohol. Finally he asked for a little bottle of iodine, for he had need of that. Meanwhile an hour had passed and the man slung his bike overboard again and hung it on the rope ladder. Then he took his leave of Isaac. The latter asked whether it wasn't possible for him to join him for the rest of the journey on the motorbike, riding pillion. 'I could show you the way, for I've sailed a lot,' he concluded his question. But the man burst out laughing. 'You'd have to practise for years first,' the man said, 'but if I wanted to as such, I'd take you along. I can steer well enough and I could pump up my tyres so that it'd work, but I don't feel like it. What are you to me? I've been riding at sea for months now and then all of a sudden you'd join me for the final week? What point'd that be? I happen to be after a single-handed record. I can't explain to the people at the finish that you only joined at the final stage, can I? Besides, I'd have to do my level best to keep the bike going with two people. And I've never practised with a second. How do I know what unexpected movements you might make? The thing is to dance airily across the water, as it were,' the man went on. D'you know about tight-rope walking?' he asked, Isaac who, not quite understanding the point of the question, said 'no'. 'Well,' the man said, 'you've got to keep your balance all the time with the bike and you must keep your tyres as high as possible on the waves.' Then he took his leave and descended the ladder again with his bike. Isaac wanted to adjust the rope ladder a touch but again the man cried 'Careful, careful!' at every turn, very loudly this time. Almost having reached the water, he started the engine, full pelt, so that the wheels whizzed round in the air above the water. Occasionally the man would hold the tyres very carefully against the surface of the water and at a given moment he jumped, in an unexpected movement, from the rope ladder on to the roaring bike which jetted off at breakneck speed. It was already getting light a little. Isaac felt sad. The bike had disappeared over the horizon within a quarter of an hour. So Isaac went to bed for an hour. Next day he told the radiographer what had befallen him that night. The latter shrugged his shoulders and when Isaac kept pressing him he began to laugh. An hour later the entire ship knew that Isaac had seen a man ride over the water at night. Everyone laughed. Once the day had passed Isaac was very sleepy. But before going to bed he walked down to the afterdeck for a moment. The sun had just gone down. It promised to be a fine night again. A little more cloud this time. Involuntarily, Isaac began to search the sea, peering. But of course the man on the motorbike was nowhere to be seen. Isaac was on the verge of tears; he didn't belong ashore, he didn't belong to the crew, he didn't even belong to the man with the motorbike. He looked at the foaming, dangerous wake and at the birds flying along, following the ship. He had the feeling he was a lonely man and gradually he came to the realisation that it would always stay like that. He lit a cigarette and began to hum a psalm but he could barely hear his own voice. It had begun to blow and that's why the propeller would rise from the water now and then, spinning like mad, only to end up back in the water again with a booming blow. Isaac looked at one of the sea birds and wished he was able to fly like that creature and go where he wished. He wanted to fly, following the ships, or far away over the horizon. Without him being aware of it himself, he began to imitate the movements of the wings of the albatrosses in the air. The bosun happened to see it. He giggled, for he saw that Isaac was standing with his feet planted firmly on
Willem Brakman
At a time of day when it was very quiet in the village, two men were approaching along the path that descended the rocks and ran close past the shipwreck. By the shuffling of their feet through the shale of the path and the listless dangling of their arms it was easy to see that they were at their last gasp. The larger and elder of them was dressed in a ravelly black suit too big for him on all second thought, it was little more than a collection of dumped, baggy rags. His was a bony figure; though his head, thin and all-jaw, drooped in a tired manner, his prominent light-grey eyes still stared brightly and distrustfully around him. The nose was not the best part of his face: the nose of a progenitor, a robust foundation, large, hooked and doggedly know-all. His companion was a young man with a small head, his skull tapering a little at the top, the nose full and fleshy, jaws broad and heavy, the mouth large and thick-lipped. This was a primal head; the eyes of indeterminate colour stood close together.
The two men sat down by the side of the path and looked at the village: it simply seemed a quiet village yet there was something apparently bothering the old one. 'It's too quiet for my liking,' he said after a while, 'and strange things happen in a village that's too quiet.' While he was saying this, he took off his hat and revealed a wealth of white, fluffy hair; the gesture was a solemn one, but nevertheless his eyes, prepared for any eventuality, roamed along the windows, along the red-grey roofs and on, towards the sombre profile on top of the hill, probably a castle's or otherwise that of a strongly fortified monastery.
Little sounds, like the ones an over-quiet village can transmit, were reaching him now, after all: the unmistakable sound of a last gasp, the muffled screeching of someone being smothered in a pillow, soft hawking elsewhere again, the snap of a chicken's neck, the agonized flutter of wings. These were the bitter sounds from a quiet village, a chabot village.
'See to it that you get talking to them,' the old man said, 'but not in the street or in a doorway: inside, at a table, a kitchen table's best, in the morning and with a woman. I once showed Moses the word, beautifully carved and chiselled out. D'you like my word?' I asked, and I held up the tablets, but he shook his head, for he was as spoilt as he was large. 'Honestly not?' I asked, out of sorts; I took him by the hand and led him into a cool cave. Not inside a pretty cave either?' 'Not in a cave either,' said Moses, for he could be as stubborn as a mule. Then I took him high up on to a plain; the wind blew around us and I held up the word, causing a dizzying rush, but his eyes were dark and his lower lip pouted. 'Well?' 'Not here either,' he jeered, and he stuck out his tongue. 'And with a pretty balloon?' I asked, and I showed him one, red and gleaming and without a scratch on it. 'O-o-oh!' I cried, What a pretty balloon!' But that pigheaded fool stamped his foot and cried: 'I'll chuck it on to the rocks, to smithereens,' and he ran off, down below. No, No You have a thin neck and your ears are on the large side and your eyes are dark and moist: this'll send men up the wall, not women. Tell them at the kitchen table about a splendid city, built alongside a lake of gold across which barques are sailing in a setting sun, lute music everywhere and young men who know all the finer points. If you can explain all that to them, can show them what I have see
n and describe the joys I have partaken of ... They would no longer leave you alone but embrace the very last word from your skinny neck.'
The lad looked at his broken-down, patent leather shoes burrowing back and forth in the coal dust, and he said: 'I'm going to the village.'
'I wouldn't if I were you,' the old one said, 'but if you do, make sure you nick some greasy bacon and brown: it makes me fart some tobacco, too, if poss.'
The young man got up, laboriously.
'Just one thing more,' the old one said, 'a long time ago a young man arrived at a monastery in a wild, deserted region, looking a bit like that one there on the hill. He looked at the tremendous wall turned to the world like a grumpy, sulking back, and deep inside the stone he heard the grumbling of the monks against their Lord. Those brothers were skinny as tally-sticks, only drank rain water and they ate turnips straight from the soil. They raked and dug all day long, preferably as bent over as possible, never looking up, and at night they dragged themselves to their cells to mutter there, to wring their hands and give a kick against the door now and then, or against the wall. This was all perfectly visible from the outside, and so the man shivered when he knocked at the gate and waited. Night was falling rapidly and on the horizon gleamed the yellow light of bad weather in the offing.
The porter brought him to the guest's cell, chucked a bit of wet peat on the fire there, put out water and bread, laid a blanket on the wooden bed, and during all this to-ing and fro-ing he crossed himself, repeatedly and bitterly. Then he lit a stubby bit of candle and disappeared. The man bit into the piece of black bread but instantly had a mouth full of beetles; he wanted to drink some water but this turned out to be so slimy it would not let itself be poured. He felt the straw on the bed, so wet it squelched, and the blanket was hopping with nits.
Disgruntled by such inhospitality, he stepped into the corridor, but everything was as silent and dark as the grave. In order to wake the monks, he called out all kinds of biblical sayings, but the echoes scattered so strangely back and forth through the corridors that the oddest of commandments now startled the monastery: 'feed the dead, bury the naked, dress the thirsty.'
This, in the end, brought the abbot himself on to the scene; he was accompanied by the porter who held up a mean little oil lamp so that two chabot heads floated threateningly towards the traveller. The abbot's mouth was large and black, his skull small and pointed, his nose large, coarse and heavy. 'In my nocturnal prayers,' he said in a sonorous voice, 'I had just arrived at the cursing of the children, the dancers, the lovers, the bards and the rich, of all who just do as they please, gadding about; to these I shall now add the traveller who simply comes and goes as he pleases, goes about crowing and hollering as it suits him and plods about in sin. Seize him, brothers, that harpy, and bundle him in clink; tomorrow we'll nail him to the cross, with big fat nails and without a bum-rest.' At that moment, some sturdy monks loomed out of the dark who grabbed the man, knotted him down firmly and laid him in his cell on the soggy straw, without saying a word.
Next day, when the weather was beginning to grow dark, they fetched him from his bed, put a heavy cross on his neck and pushed him up the hill.
'Why am I being crucified?' the man asked. 'Is it that you think that my soul's bursting with song, like the robber's or the sailor's?'
'Why no,' said the brother going along beside him, and with his stick he gave a firm blow on the toiling one's knuckles, so hard that the latter heard the pain scream throughout his entire body, something that made him fear the worst about things at the top of the hill.
'Or did I remind you of a soft bed with butter and sugar and fine morning tea?' the man cried plaintively. 'Or of a serving wench with thick hair, a springy middle and warm armpits?
'Not at all,' laughed the brother who did not stray from his side but this time struck him a goodly wound in his neck with his knout, so that the man reached the top, glowing in wondrous splendour, feeling dizzy and confounded. There, a hole was quickly dug, one the cross would come to stand in.
'One favour before I die,' cried the unfortunate.
'No delay,' said the abbot, I simply cannot bear to wait any longer.'
They stripped the man, struck him on the mouth when he wanted to say something, and nailed him down firmly. Then they placed the cross upright in the hole and thoroughly firmed the soil up around it. I remember it well: the man hung there against a wine-red sky, all rolling muscles the way these develop on a cross, the bulging rib-cage sharply defined by the glancing evening light, the stomach nicely sunken, thighs well-formed, hobnails splendidly lit, fingers gnarled round them like roots. The monks went and sat down in a circle on the ground and looked on eagerly and attentively. They pointed out details to one another and whispered things in each other's ears causing smiles and rubbing of hands.
Some day, this,' cried the abbot. 'Oh, God's glorious Grace,' the brothers joined him in support, 'and this is only nightfall; later, when it has got dark, we will hide ourselves away but we'll continue to watch, for then the dogs that gnaw the bones will come and the birds that peck out the eyes, and that can take hours.'
Full of dismay, the traveller listened to all this. 'But why?' he cried, writhing in despair.
'For our great sins and His redeeming Passion,' the abbot said piously. 'To know of it is one thing, but to realise it is another, and a good deal more too.'
'Beware of the women,' the old man cried rather inconsistently, irately shaking a gnarled index finger, 'they're leech-lizards, particularly when you tell them stories.' Groaning softly, he settled himself down on the ground so that his torso was in the shade and his legs in the sun.
'That's the sighed with cosy contentment and sought his handkerchief. When he had finally managed to get it out, with difficulty, his head sagged forwards in a sudden bout of sleepiness. 'Dear, dear,' he said to himself, worried, 'how my powers do wane of late.'
Things were quiet around him; the tree casting its shadow over him stood motionless; some birds rustled among the leaves and far in the distance there was the sound of footsteps. That was the young man walking with slow tread through the main street; he held his small and peculiarly shaped head that from the side resembled a tapir's muzzle, to one side and his big ears caught every sound indeed, to the very smallest. Thus he heard how the villagers got up, very carefully, to steal on tiptoe to the window and stand behind the curtains to follow him with their gaze. There's something up, here, they thought, he's come here to poke his nose into other men's business, to steal chickens or to take little girls with him, around the corner. This was why they followed the stranger, with sullen eyes and with great acuity.
In the middle of a large square the man suddenly saw a dog - where it came from all of a sudden he didn't know either, but there it was, with drooping head and panting flanks from the heat. The creature had a thin, miserable carcass and a tail gnawed bare by fleas, crooked paws through abysmal feeding and bald patches because of something else again. With a cocked, dozy head the man absorbed this image of physical misery, the muzzle hanging open, the dried-up tongue, and above the immense square he felt the mercilessly empty and glinting sky. 'Blessed be the fly,' he cried resonantly across the square, 'that drowns in wine, but woe betide the one that sinks in honey or sticks to ointment, or the arms and legs of which are torn off by a playing child and left, forgotten, on the kitchen table. Blessed the dog that dies an easy death, snuffed out with a gentle breath and in a single sigh.
'But woe betide the one that dies in a square, openly, dusted with sand, scorched by the sun.' Saying this, he took out a bowl from nowhere, poured it full of cool, clear water and placed it on the stones.
Soft muttering behind hands went round the village, and the windows of the houses on the square misted over with distrust. The dog looked dully at the dish, whimpered and then trudged off across the cobbles. This was a timid and practised looker-round: the back already arched for stick and stone, watchful down to the last knobbly joint.
&n
bsp; Looks don't deceive, the villagers said.
The man with the small and peculiar head crossed the square, turned into a narrow street and there he entered one of the little houses. It was cool and dusky there, for all the curtains had been lowered because of the sun. In a comer of the room a woman was sleeping, a heavy, pale woman, her large hands in her lap, palms up, sagged open in sleep, the turnip-like head resting against the back of the chair.
Carefully, the man went and sat at the table in order to stare out ahead of him there, intently, but he stumbled about so clumsily that the woman awoke with a start and believed for a moment to be eye to eye with her murderer. Then she recovered herself, roused herself painfully and, uneasily because of her large feet, she waddled over to him. 'Is that you, my boy?' she said, embracing him tenderly. 'How lovely, you looking in on us again; have people been good to you?' Her hands felt the man's skinny back for a moment, then she pressed his small, pointed head to her chest and began to stare strangely into the room. Her eyes glazed over and turned upwards too, which made a lot of the white of her eyes visible, and things seemed to indicate strongly that the encounter had all become too much for her. Her hands also had changed: instead of heavy and thick, they were now suddenly long and thin, with curled up banana-fingers.
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